Richard Russo

by Ship of Fools

  His motion was seconded and passed, with the bishop abstaining. Nikos was about to close the meeting when the bishop spoke up.

  “You say that the two issues are resolved. But that is not necessarily true. What if nothing is found in our records? What if that information, the location of some speculative advanced culture or society, doesn’t exist?” He leaned forward again. “What if it isn’t there?”

  “I don’t think that’s a very likely outcome,” Nikos said. “Is it, Bishop?”

  The bishop didn’t answer.

  THREE hours later, the full Planning Committee came to order. Nikos, Cardenas, and I made our presentation. There was surprisingly little discussion, and the vote was overwhelming. Toller and Maria Vegas would begin their search through the Church records, and the engineers would immediately begin preparations to construct the docking mechanism—we were leaving, and we would take the alien ship with us.

  40

  I wanted to apologize to Father Veronica for putting her into a difficult position with the bishop. I also wanted to know how she was holding up.

  As I entered the cathedral, I caught a glimpse of her leaving, stepping through a doorway on the right, behind the apse. I was going to call out to her but I stopped, my mouth silently open, when I saw all the long, narrow metal columns in front of me—several mounted in the floor, others hanging from the ceiling at various heights. I’d never seen them before, and had no idea what they were.

  I hurried the length of the cathedral, staring at the columns; as I neared them, I realized they were longer and larger than I’d realized. I climbed the half dozen steps to the first of them, and saw they held long glass tubes that I guessed to be light sources. Still puzzled, I turned away from the lights and went through the doorway on the right.

  I was in a long, gently curving corridor, dimly lit and gray. I thought I could hear footsteps in the distance. Again I stopped myself from calling out; instead, I followed the sounds.

  Closed doors lined the right wall, but I passed them all. I heard a door hiss shut far away, then nothing. Two minutes later the corridor ended at a suit locker, which in turn led to an air lock; panel lights warned that there was someone suiting up inside—Father Veronica was leaving the ship.

  I waited until the panel lights indicated the air lock had cycled and she was outside (I didn’t have a choice; the doors had automatically locked and didn’t unlock until she was gone), then entered the locker. I donned a suit, waited impatiently for it to size itself to me, then started the cycling process. Fifteen minutes later I, too, was outside the ship, drifting free.

  I didn’t see her anywhere. The ship’s hull spread out around me in all directions, a dark and jagged metallic plain. Yet it was not as dark as the alien ship, and tiny shafts of light leaked out of view ports in the distance so that I did not feel lost or isolated or abandoned, as I sometimes felt on that other vessel. But I did not see Father Veronica, although I turned slowly in a full circle. No signs of movement anywhere.

  A brief flash caught my eye; I looked up, and saw her moving far out from the ship. The flash had been one of her suit’s small jets. I crouched, then kicked hard, launching myself from the ship, angled away from Father Veronica.

  My momentum carried me quickly away from the Argonos, and soon I was passing her, about fifty or sixty meters distant. Her outward motion had stopped, and her suit’s attitude jets were briefly firing again, orienting her so that she was now directly facing the ship.

  Somehow I had made it past without her seeing me. I hit my own suit’s jets and brought myself quickly to a stop. A couple of minor adjustments and I, too, was facing the ship. We both drifted in the dark, surrounded by stars, the ship in front of us. I watched her, wondering what she was doing out here.

  It started so slowly that I was barely aware of it at first—a diffuse flicker of color on the Argonos hull. I was watching Father Veronica, and only dimly sensed it in the periphery of my vision. I almost ignored it. Then I realized something unusual was occurring and I turned to look at the growing bloom of color. Just as I did, it silently, almost blindingly exploded to life.

  Christ on the Cross.

  The enormous stained glass window at the head of the cathedral, which had always been too dull, indistinct, and chaotic to reveal any concrete images, now blazed in the depths of space, burning in the side of the Argonos. The Church’s beacon to the stars.

  The Crucifixion.

  A crimson sky blazing as if the air itself was on fire.

  Against that flaming sky, the Cross, the wood so dark it was almost black, stained with sweat and blood.

  Jesus hanging from the dark wood, metal spikes driven through wrists and ankles. He stared not upward but out at the universe, at whoever looked at Him. At me.

  Blood on His forehead, His chest, His ankles and wrists. His mouth open in His suffering.

  The images seemed both three-dimensional and somehow alive. I thought I sensed movement—the twitching of a thigh muscle; the strained and ragged shudder in His chest; beads of sweat inching along His jaw; the tremor of His cracked and bleeding lips. I knew I had to be imagining it, but it seemed so real. I began to feel hot and sweaty inside my pressure suit.

  Terrible and beautiful . . .

  I realized I’d been holding my breath, and I finally let it out. My breathing was deep and ragged for a time, as His must have been. My heart ached for Him, for His suffering.

  What was happening to me?

  I wanted to turn away from Him, but I couldn’t. His image seemed to be growing, becoming even more vibrant and alive. I felt lightheaded, dizzy. Finally, unable to turn away, I managed to close my eyes.

  For a few moments a cool relief washed through me and I felt almost in control again. I kept my eyes closed, although I could still sense the bright colors through my eyelids, and breathed slowly, deeply.

  But when I opened my eyes again, His image overwhelmed me once more. I was being drawn into Him, toward the scorched wood, the crimson blazing skies behind Him, toward His scourged flesh, drawn into His glowing visage. . . . His eyes . . . His eyes . . . so deep and penetrating and . . . and what? Terrified? No, I realized. Tortured. It was awful, and I felt I was being accused by those eyes. But accused of what?

  “Who’s there?”

  It was Father Veronica’s voice, coming over the open suit channel. I looked at her and saw she had turned toward me. More than that, I was now much closer to her than I had been—she was drifting away from the ship, or I was drifting toward it. Or some of both.

  “Who’s there?” she said again. There was no fear in her voice, but there was puzzlement.

  The spell of the stained glass broke. “Bartolomeo,” I finally managed to say.

  I used the jets to shift closer to her, and matched her drift until we were only a few meters apart.

  “You followed me.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I expected her to ask me why, but she didn’t. Her face was visible through her clear helmet, but her expression was indistinct. I could not even guess at what she was thinking or feeling.

  “I wanted to see it one last time,” she said, turning back to the blazing images.

  “One last time?” I said.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. Although it is possible I never will see it like this again.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We’ll be closing with the alien ship soon. Presumably we’ll be docking with it.” There was a long pause. “I will not illuminate this image while we are joined with that other ship. It would be blasphemous. Or at least indecent and disrespectful.”

  “Have you changed your mind about the alien ship? Do you now think it is evil?”

  Father Veronica shook her head. “No. But the terrible things that have happened in there . . .”

  “Terrible things have happened on the Argonos.”

  “That’s true. But they are our terrible things.” She turned back to me. “I don’t
know if that distinction has any meaning to you, but it does to me.”

  “I’m not sure it does,” I said. I glanced at the stained glass, then turned again to her, and finally asked her the question I had wanted to ask for a long time. “Either way, though, how is it that God lets these terrible things happen?”

  She hesitated before answering. “That is a meaningless question,” she eventually said.

  “I don’t understand. Isn’t that the kind of question the bishop and priests try to answer all the time?”

  “I have beliefs somewhat different from others in the Church.”

  “Having belief of any kind would be different from the bishop,” I said.

  I thought I could see her smile. “Oh, the bishop has beliefs,” she said. “God just isn’t one of them.”

  I was no longer surprised at her candor about the bishop. But I wondered if she would be equally so about herself.

  “Tell me about your beliefs,” I said to her.

  I thought she was going to say that her beliefs were a private matter, and that she would not talk about them. But then I caught the slow exhalation of a sigh, and she began to speak.

  “When I was a child, everything seemed fairly simple and straightforward. I believed in a benevolent, all-knowing and all-powerful God who watched over us at all times, who acted upon our lives, who answered the prayers of the faithful. If it sometimes seemed that he did not answer your prayers, it was because your prayers were selfish or self-serving, or you had done something, or not done something, that made you unworthy.

  “I’ll try not to be tedious with all the particulars, but from very early on, from the time I was six or seven years old, I wanted to be a priest. As soon as I could, I began my studies toward that goal. Bishop Soldano was Father Bernard at that time, and I studied under him for many years.”

  We drifted in silence for a time; I could see the bright reflection of the stained glass in her suit helmet, but I avoided looking directly at the images.

  “He was ambitious even then,” she went on, “though I only recognized it in retrospect. But I am fairly certain that his faith and belief were both strong and sincere during those years.” There was another brief pause. “I don’t know what happened to him later. It could have been something similar to what happened with me, but I don’t think so.”

  This time the pause was much longer and I sensed her reliving that period in her life. I wondered if she looked back on it with fondness, regret, or a sense of loss.

  “There came a time of grave doubts,” she resumed. “I was in my early twenties, finally an adult, a grown woman, although I had not yet entered the priesthood. I was very close to taking my vows.

  “There was no one thing that raised doubts within me, no one tragedy or horror. It was an accumulation of small, personal tragedies and miseries that I saw all around me, directly and indirectly, in all parts of the ship, in stories people told me, in the Church’s historical records as well as my own observations of daily life. There were so many people, good people with deep and abiding faith, who nonetheless suffered terribly in their lives—physically or emotionally, or both. People whose prayers never seemed to be answered.

  “The most distressing, and troubling, were the children. Young, innocent children who could not have sinned, who could not even know what sin was, and yet who lived protracted, agony-filled lives, or died horrible, painful deaths. There weren’t many, but I couldn’t understand it for even one. Why did these things happen?” She slowly shook her head. “I had no answers. None.

  “I could not reconcile these things with my earlier conception of a benevolent, all-powerful God who listened to our prayers and who interceded in our lives. The priests would tell me that the suffering was a test, or a lesson for us to learn from. Or, alternatively, that God’s ways were just too mysterious for us ever to understand, that applying any kind of logic or looking for rational reasons for why things happened was useless.”

  She turned and looked directly at me. “I could not accept any of those answers. I still can’t. So I began to seriously doubt God’s existence. Or, I told myself, if God did exist, if he was omniscient and omnipotent, could intercede in our lives and ease or end our suffering, but chose not to, or in fact chose to make us suffer . . . then I wanted nothing to do with such a God.”

  She stopped again, still looking at me, but I couldn’t read her expression. “Father Bernard recognized my growing doubts, even though I had not overtly expressed them to him. Actually, they were more than just doubts. I was ready to quit my studies and abandon my plans to become a priest. Father Bernard asked me into his chambers and talked with me at length. He encouraged me to take some time for myself—away from the Church, away from my studies, away from my family and friends. He encouraged me to meditate upon my doubts, upon my faith. Like Jesus, I went into the desert.”

  She paused, and it took me some time before I made the connection.

  “The Wasteland?” I said.

  “Yes, the Wasteland. I spent ten days there, ten days in the desert. I packed food and water for two weeks, a sleeping pad, and nothing else. Not even a Bible.” Again she paused as if reliving her desert retreat. When she resumed speaking, her voice had a distant but sure quality to it.

  “After ten days, I had what I can only describe as a revelation. An unconventional revelation, some might even call it heretical, for it differs from the standard Church doctrine. Some people might put it off to a fevered mind addled by heat and thirst and semistarvation, hallucinations caused by days of isolation. But it was so crystal clear to me, everything finally falling into place, and it all made sense to me at last. It felt right, it felt true. Most importantly, the understanding, the feeling of rightness, stayed with me long after I’d left the Wasteland and returned to my quarters. It remains with me to this day.”

  I had to fight the urge to question her, to encourage her to speak.

  “Free will,” she eventually said. “That’s what I finally understood. True free will.”

  She looked away from me, although not toward the stained glass. It was as if she was staring into the depths of space, into the depths of time.

  “When God created human beings, He bestowed upon us the greatest gift besides His love. Out of His love. Two gifts, really, but so interconnected they are like one. First, the capacity to do anything, good or evil, wise or unwise, loving or hateful. And second, true free will to act upon that capacity.

  “Those are God-like qualities. Not in power, but in choice. If He had created us in such a way that we could only do good, if we were incapable of acting badly, selfishly, causing pain or harm, then the notion of free will would be meaningless, would it not? Not only that, true free will precludes God’s intervention in our lives. There is no real free will if God intercedes to protect us or save us from the consequences of our own or other people’s actions and choices. We have to face those consequences ourselves. That is the price we pay for free will.”

  Father Veronica sighed heavily, and when she resumed there was an ache in her voice. “Can you imagine the sacrifice God has made to provide us with this gift? He knows we will not always make good choices, He knows we will cause ourselves and others terrible pain and grief. Can you imagine His own pain and grief, knowing that He could intercede, could change our lives and ease our suffering, but knowing also that to do so would be to take back the wonderful gift He has bestowed?

  “For we can also love and comfort one another, we can choose good over evil, we can relish and appreciate life, we can revel in all the small, wonderful pleasures of being alive, we can love and be loved, and those things are all the greater because they are freely chosen. Because we are not puppets.”

  I had listened and reflected all this time without interrupting, and I finally questioned her.

  “Does God know everything that will happen? Every choice we will make? All the future laid out before him?”

  “No. He knows everything that is happening now, as time
flows, He knows everything that has happened in the past, and He can make very accurate assessments, I am certain, of what any of us will choose to do. But, once again, our free will would not be true free will if He knew absolutely what every choice would be. When He created us, and gave us free will, He effectively canceled out His foreknowledge of the future.”

  I thought about that, and I could see that it made a kind of sense. But I still had more questions, and although I had in the past refrained from questioning Father Veronica about her beliefs, about her faith, this seemed, at last, the time for it.

  “You mentioned prayer, earlier, and some time ago you said you would talk to me about it. What is it, if God will not answer? Worthless? A farce?”

  “No, not worthless at all. Misunderstood. Misguided and misdirected. When I talk to people about prayer, I try to explain to them what I believe is its nature and use.” She sighed. “Most don’t listen, or they dismiss what I have to say, because they want the promise that conventional belief gives them—that if you ask for something in prayer, it may be given to you.”

  “Explain to me,” I said. “I will listen.”

  “Yes, you will listen, Bartolomeo, even if you won’t believe.” She paused for a moment. “Prayer is a kind of communication with God. It is opening yourself to God’s presence, to His Spirit, to His essence. And when you are truly open to Him, God’s essence can provide comfort and understanding, and guidance. That is why some prayers are answered, in a way. Not because God has actively interceded in our lives, but because people have taken that comfort, and taken in the guidance and understanding that are there for us, and then they act, they live their lives and view their lives informed by that, in such a way as to essentially answer their own prayers.”

  That, too, made a kind of sense, although I wasn’t sure I completely understood what she was saying.

  “And what about Him?” I asked, gesturing at the crucified figure glowing in the side of the ship, that terrible and beautiful vision of light and life, and a death that held the promise of new life. Or so the Church claimed. “Why?”