by Various
He cast me aside with a shove, then hurried to the airlock. Once the last person had fled, he shoved his shoulder into the heavy door. It closed with an ominous thunk. “No one goes in or out until we’ve rid ourselves of this infestation.”
Landers returned with a bottle of nectar. “But, sir, the colony police—”
“They’ll wait ’til we’re through.”
“Sir, she’s not a demon!” I protested. Though, of course, I had no proof. Only my instincts.
The Bishop snatched the bottle from Landers. “Then, pray tell, what is it?”
Just then, Ephah’s muttering ceased and gravity became her master again.
The others froze, so I ran to her. She needed protecting.
I wrapped her in my arms and noticed immediately that she’d changed again. Her skin was pinker, though still mostly gray, and her face no longer looked a caricature. There was more detail on every part of her—fine hair grew on her arms, and her strange breasts had tiny, budding nipples. A splattering of dark freckles covered her nose and cheeks.
And I made another observation: her chest did not rise and fall against mine. She did not breathe.
“What were you doing?” I asked, then stole a glance at the Bishop. What if she didn’t give a child-like answer like I expected? What if the others were right? Did they see something I didn’t? Had I been tricked? Wouldn’t the Evil One disguise his servants and give them powers to disarm?
“I was praying.” She perceived the worry on my face. “Was that not the proper thing to do? They were thanking their creator,” she gestured at the empty, upturned pews, “So I thanked mine.”
“They are one in the same, creature.” The Bishop said.
Then she laughed, and it reminded me of tinkling wind chimes. “I did not create them.” She skipped back, out of my arms. “I have not created anything besides myself. Not yet.”
• • •
“The blasphemy!” Krier raged behind his desk.
I had no retort. How could I profess her an innocent being when she claimed to be a god?
“I have never heard of such devilry! Claiming to be its own creator. What is its aim?”
“I don’t think she meant any offense. She’s alien to this world; I’m not even sure she understood what she was saying—”
The Bishop held up his hand, “Enough.”
They’d fashioned a cell for her down in the crypts. Even in a flying cathedral the dead had to be buried in consecrated earth. The Bishop said the blessed dirt and pots of holy nectar would keep her contained. But for good measure, they’d stuffed her in a tomb.
It felt wrong to imprison her, but what I’d seen and heard was unforgivable. To pray to one’s self, to claim godhood… I could think of few acts more damning.
“What will you do with her?” The strain in my voice was evident. Every word was taxing.
“At this point you should be more concerned with what I’ll do with you, Thomas. I thought you’d shape up after Aaron passed away. He filled your head with silly, dangerous ideas. It’s his fool influence that made you drop your guard and let a servant of evil in.” Though he was angry, I could hear an underlying tone of self-satisfaction.
Maybe he was right. Perhaps Aaron and I were too inquisitive—always looking for hidden layers and ignoring what was right in front of us.
Maybe my hunger for information left me vulnerable to the Evil One’s attacks.
But I was at peace with my pursuit of knowledge. I had wondered, at first, if searching for more was the right thing to do. I’d prayed to the Lord about it, and afterwards felt calm. Surly if there was something dangerous about my digging, God would have revealed my error, not filled me with serenity.
Looking into the Bishop’s eyes now, I felt anything but peaceful. Perhaps my tranquility had been imagined, and Ephah was my punishment for seeking knowledge I had no business knowing.
“Repent, Thomas,” Krier said plainly. “Go to your chambers and beg for forgiveness. If the Lord sees fit to be lenient, I’ll know.”
Without a word I took my leave, grateful to be rid of his presence.
Back in my study, I took Aaron’s journal from the shelf, as well as my copies of the Holy Scrolls. Yes, I would repent, but first I had to understand. Had I been wrong to take Ephah in? I was certain these texts would make the answer clear to me.
I’d witnessed a terrible sin, and a false deity could only have one goal: to steal our souls. Such a being had to be evil. And only demons were evil.
But my feelings told me otherwise. I sensed no cruelty. The same deep emotions that had led me to God in the first place—that had told me He was real—told me Ephah was what she seemed: infantile and innocent.
If Ephah wasn’t evil, then she wasn’t lying. Either she truly had created herself, or she didn’t understand the meaning of the word.
If she didn’t understand, then she must be an alien, as I’d originally suspected—a foreign creature from a far away land. She’d made an effort to reach out and comprehend our ways, and had unsuspectingly broken cultural laws in the process.
Yes, that was the most logical conclusion. She was an alien—fantastic, but only in the most down-to-earth sense of the word.
But, what if she’d known exactly what she was saying? If she truly was her own maker… that changed everything.
Pouring over the pages, I revisited every helpful lesson I could think of, but I couldn’t put my finger on what I was searching for. I wanted confirmation that my need to help her was also God’s desire, that my instincts about her significance were correct. I felt she’d been sent to impart the information Father Aaron had failed to give me. There was a purpose in our meeting, if only I could find it.
But was that a silly man’s folly? Did I miss Aaron so much that I had latched onto the first thing I could label as a sign?
Shaking off the doubt, I went back to my fundamentals. “In the beginning,” I read aloud, “There was only God.” That meant no universe—an absence of everything, save our creator.
I had to look at the words a different way, not like I was the one learning, but as though I were writing them. If I were God… Thinking it made me ill; was this more blasphemy? Trying to understand the thought processes of the divine felt simultaneously wrong and right. If I were God, trying to explain myself to my creations—if I wanted something with a limited experience to understand me and my ways—I’d need to set things out in terms it could comprehend.
That was part of the key, wasn’t it? If God didn’t want us to try to understand, why send us the Scrolls? Why feel the need to explain anything?
In the beginning, there was only God. If God’s beginning were before the beginning of time, then he could simultaneously always exist and have a finite inception. If there is no time, there is no always. So, if God had a beginning, that meant he was his first creation.
I have not created anything else, yet, Ephah had said. Implying there was more to come.
And no one had seen her arrive. She’d simply appeared, from nothing.
A passage from Aaron’s journal suddenly took on new meaning for me. I quickly thumbed through to the page.
“There can be no doubt,” I read, “That the scriptures are not meant to be the end-all be-all of the history of everything. God did not see fit to include descriptions of the other planets in the Scrolls. Planets many colonists now call home. But is it not clear why they were left out? What would boggle the young human psyche—only freshly civilized—more than new worlds? God does not tell us that which we cannot handle. If God deigned to speak today, his words would be far different from those he spoke to our ancestors. Yet the message would remain the same.”
Was that what was hidden in the scriptures? Were there hints about the true nature of creation? Things God did not think we could handle then, but would discover over time?
Not just about us, though. About the universe. About existence. About the origins of God Himself?
After readi
ng, I knew there was only one way to assure myself. If I felt God was speaking to me through Ephah, I needed to speak back.
I knelt before my bookcase. The other clergymen would watch me if I went to an alter, and this prayer had to be private.
Clutching my hands to my chest, I closed my eyes and lowered my head. Silently, I reached out, asking for guidance, for the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. To have clarity of vision, and clarity of thought.
When I finished, I stood, tall and square, with a renewed confidence in my own judgment—and the realization that I must save Ephah.
• • •
“Let me see her,” I demanded.
“I’m sorry, Father, but the Bishop says you are not allowed down.” Landers stood in my path, blocking the entrance to the crypt, his arms crossed. He tried for an air of authority but couldn’t keep his uncertainty hidden.
A sudden jolt sent us both careening to the side.
“What was that?”
“We’re leaving dock,” Landers said. “The police threatened to break in, so the Bishop ordered the cathedral ascend to orbit.”
“Why would the police—?”
“Since the creature was found outside the cathedral they insist it falls under their jurisdiction. But it’s a demon, Thomas. You don’t think the Bishop could just hand it over and watch it tear the colony apart? The lay people don’t know how to deal with these things.”
“What will they do? The military—?” They wouldn’t understand. The secular courts didn’t subscribe to demons and visions and the Church’s claims of good versus evil. What would they do if they thought we had something dangerous or illegal on board? Especially now that we’d openly flouted the law?
“Let me down,” I said, reaching past him for the gate. “The Bishop doesn’t realize what he’s doing. He’s putting us at risk for no reason.”
“You put us at risk when you decided to bring that thing inside.”
I felt like tearing my hair out. “Landers, she’s not a demon. She didn’t ask for our devotion, she doesn’t want it. She’s not a false god, and she’s not a rival god. She doesn’t pose a threat to anyone, she’s—” I could tell by his hard stare he wasn’t hearing me. “I’m going down.”
“No. It’ll get in your mind, make you do horrible things. Don’t you care about your soul?”
“God wants me to help the helpless,” I said. He looked at me strangely, uncomprehendingly. Without another word I shoved him aside and let myself in. The gate squeaked on its hinges.
Quickly, I descended the steps. This was all wrong. The colony military and the Church were about to come to blows over a thing neither of them comprehended.
But God had shown me the way. Or perhaps he’d just helped me to order my thoughts and open my eyes. Either way, I knew what she was: not demon, not alien. She didn’t belong here. This wasn’t her universe—she hadn’t created her universe yet.
The transition from stone to graveyard dirt felt unnatural even though I expected it. Dim lamps clicked on over each tomb as I passed, giving me just enough light to see where my feet landed.
A glint of yellow led me to the empty pit they’d thrown her into. Twelve blown-glass jars, filled to the brim with the golden nectar, surrounded the grave at even intervals. Across the tomb’s top they’d laid an unornamented slab of stone from the burial reserves.
Four iron hooks were attached to the slab’s corners. I grabbed hold of one and threw all my weight in reverse. With a few tugs it began to slide, and with that first effort I was able to move it just enough to peer inside.
“Ephah?” It took a moment for my eyesight to adjust. They had her bound and gagged. Strange measures against something supernatural, I thought. The ropes bit into her flesh, forming deep gouges much like the rip I’d first put in her arm.
Why didn’t she blink her black eyes and escape? How could human physical measures mean anything against a deity?
But her metamorphosis… when she’d appeared she wasn’t fully formed. Incomplete. Was I seeing a time before immortality, when a god could still be destroyed?
Did our God come into being this way? Did he appear in another creator’s universe, malformed and weak? Did he learn there? Did he attempt to recreate what he saw?
Did its inhabitants persecute him? Trap him? Hurt him?
Is this where pain and suffering come from?
Too many questions. I had to focus on what was directly in front of me.
Struggling with the reach, I stretched out to remove her gag. Her lips were free, but she stayed quiet. She didn’t plead, or thank me, or relate a plan. Her face was flat and expressionless.
“I’m going to get you out,” I said.
Ephah didn’t respond. She just stared blankly.
“Ephah?”
She turned towards me, ever so slightly. “I was thinking,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“Do you know you—How do you create? How did you appear?”
“I think, therefore I am. I wanted to exist, and so I did.”
“Why did you appear here?”
She shrugged, an oddly human gesture. “I found a place to come through, and I did. I didn’t know what sort of form to take, so I mimicked the things I sensed.”
She’d looked like something a child had made because she was. Taking on the color of the steps, the relative shape of the people, the bushiness of the grass—she’d formed herself with a limited comprehension of the characteristics she was trying to reflect.
“You thought yourself into existence? So, just now, were you creating?”
“I was trying.”
“Nothing?”
“I’m having trouble tapping into your God’s energy. Perhaps it’s all this solidness—I can’t break it down to use it. I need freer access to… to… I don’t know what to call it. To your God’s basic form of energy.”
I knew what she meant. “Radiation. You need a star.”
• • •
After an exhaustive effort, I safely removed the cover stone and freed Ephah from her bonds. I tried to hide my revulsion when I pulled the cords out of her wounds.
No one disturbed us. Landers was too much of a coward to follow me into the crypt. Far off, I could hear chanting. The Bishop was busy preparing for an exorcism.
Monstrous, xenophobic imbecile. If he’d let her go she would have left our world of her own accord.
“Come on. We have to get you to an emergency shuttle.”
I held out my hand, afraid to grab for her, and she took it without question. We plodded through the dirt and up the stairs to the gate.
There stood Brother Landers , his back a more formidable barrier than the bars. We had to get by him without raising the alarm.
I’d brought pieces of Ephah’s bonds just for this purpose.
Horrified at what I was about to do, I tapped him on the shoulder. “Brother,” I said softly, aiming to disarm. His head turned, and I swiftly slid a portion of cord through the bars and around his neck. He choked and struggled, but I held fast. I pulled it tight enough that he had to concentrate on his breathing. Then I tied each of his limbs to the bars, all while Ephah looked silently on.
I swung the gate outward, and he moved as if part of it. “I’ll come back and free you,” I promised him, “But I can’t let Krier have her. God told me…” But I couldn’t explain well enough for him to believe me. There had been no burning bush, no booming voice—just a feeling. “Please forgive me.”
For want of a deep breath, he couldn’t call out. But hatred burned in his eyes. All respect was gone; never again would he call me “Father.”
There was no time for regrets.
We had to sneak past the assembled exorcists. Luckily, the Bishop was more concerned with placing spiritual roadblocks than physical ones. Brother Landers appeared to be the only person on guard duty; the rest of the clergy formed three circles—two in the nave and one in the crossing.
In the center of
each ring were vials, pots, and bowls of the holy nectar laid out in the sign of our lord. Around the vessels were open scrolls, and chalked directly onto the floor were commands meant to expel the demon.
A low rumbling hum came from each of the groups, and Krier called out various prayers above the din.
God will not heed you, I thought as we passed, using the intricate reliefs and tapestries of the walls to our advantage. He only aids us against evil, not against beings we ignorantly fear.
Unfortunately, my fledgling god lacked any sense of urgency. As we made our escape she dragged her feet. I could tell she was enthralled with learning, using all of her senses—which I’m sure extended well beyond my five—to pull in every detail of our circumstance.
We made it past the grand alter, into the elevator, and up to the control deck without incident. But there our good fortune ended.
I was about to take the side access to the shuttle bay when the red emergency lights began to blink. A voice came over the com system. “Our Lady of the Skies, this is the Colony 37 police force. You’ve illegally left your docking and have an unidentified animal in your possession. As it was found within city limits it is our responsibility to see to its safe disposal. Return to port immediately and prepare for boarding. If you do not comply, we will be forced to send a military vessel to retrieve it.”
The Bishop could hear them, loud and clear—they used the emergency channel, which was always open. But there was no way he’d turn back. He thought he was saving their souls. Krier would rather get shot out of the sky than hand over a demon to the unordained.
Suspicious, I brought up the viewing screen. As I’d feared, a cruiser already sat a few thousand miles off the Epistle Side, waiting for instructions.
I had to get Ephah out quickly, before the Bishop sent someone to respond. I checked our orbit.
Except, we weren’t in orbit. The cathedral was headed towards the system’s star—already we had passed one of the hot, rocky inner planets. I could only assume the Bishop thought to hide us in Chandra’s glare. He hadn’t counted on a military cruiser dogging our trajectory.