Now he was shocked. “Oh, you can’t remove it,” he said. “This is the archives. Everything must stay.”
“Well, then, I guess we’re here for a long night,” Reuben said.
George was shaking his head. “I could take a picture of it for you,” he offered.
Lucinda and Reuben exchanged quick glances. “Copy it over, you mean?” the Edori asked cautiously.
The student shook his head. “No. It’s a new process. It reproduces any visual medium in a matter of minutes. Sometimes the copies are a little distorted, but I don’t think that should matter in this case. Do you? As long as you can read the words?”
“Shouldn’t matter at all,” Lucinda said with a smile, handing him the paper. “We’ll wait right here.”
As soon as George was out the door, Reuben leaped to his feet. Lucinda had never seen him so animated. Like all Edori, he usually moved with a slow, purposeful grace. Now he paced around the room as if his body could not contain its energy.
“I’m thinking these aren’t exactly the files your friends have been searching for,” he said, and even his looping, lilting speech was hurried. “Part of the files, maybe. A careful set of instructions.”
Lucinda laughed at him, breathless though she was herself. “And you could tell that much from a few words?”
“Ah, but the words were formal, not conversational, which indicates that the speaker would be teaching or instructing the listener. And the word yovasita. It can mean so many things— a big room, even a big natural site, a cave, for instance. The root word is yova—Yovah, of course. Yovah’s site, Yovah’s chamber. Sometimes the Edori call the Plain of Sharon yovasita, because it is a huge place, and because it is where Samarians go to worship the god.”
“So is this telling us to go to the Plain of Sharon?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. As I said, I’ll need to be studying the manuscript awhile before I can be certain of its meaning. But yovasita is also a word the Edori use to refer to the sanctuaries where the oracles commune with their god.”
“Mount Sinai,” Lucinda breathed. She had not spent weeks in Sahala without learning something from the Jacobites. “Isn’t that where Alleluia was supposed to have been when she was taken up by the god?”
Reuben nodded. “So I have always heard the story told. And the words you were reading could be interpreted to say, ‘Stand in the center room of Mount Sinai and—’”
“And what?”
He laughed. “Well, that’s all you told me!”
She couldn’t sit still another second. She jumped up to pace beside him, her wings flowing over the pristinely kept floor. “So what do you think?” she demanded. “These are Alleluia’s directions on how to board the spaceship Jehovah?”
He shrugged. He seemed to be growing calmer just as she was growing more agitated. “Well, we won’t know that until we’ve read the whole text,” he said. “But Caleb Augustus and his angel wife had plenty of Edori friends who could have helped them prepare that paper.” He laughed. “And there have been plenty of Edori in the past century who have passed through the gates of the Augustine school possessing both a good sense of humor and plenty of time on their hands.”
Lucinda felt as if her whole body contracted, head, chest, and feathers deflating into husks. “A hoax?” she whispered. “But who would do such a thing?”
Reuben shrugged. “Alleluia herself, for all we know,” he said. “Or anybody in the world who came after her and had a command of Edori. Alleluia may have been a madwoman. She may have believed she flew up to some great silver spaceship in the sky and conversed with Yovah, but she may have been completely lunatic. Or she never said it happened, but somebody, at some time, took the opportunity to ascribe the adventure to her. Who knows? We are dealing in pure speculation here. Even if we decipher the manuscript tonight, we will not be able to prove what it says is true.”
“Unless we go to Mount Sinai—or wherever it tells us to go—and try the directions for ourselves.”
He laughed. “Unless we do that. Yes, mikala, then we will know.”
“Well,” she began, but the door opened and George stepped back into the room.
“Sorry it took me so long,” he apologized. “It took the machine a little while to heat to usable temperature. Everything gets turned off at night in the archives.”
“Let’s see this new technology,” Reuben said, taking the original and the copy and studying both. “Very impressive, indeed! You can read every word on the reproduction.”
George looked shyly pleased. Lucinda wondered if he’d had some hand in the invention of the machine. “We’re hoping to find a market for such equipment in Samaria,” he said. “Christian Avalone already has one, though it is still illegal there.”
“It won’t be for long,” Reuben said absently. Most of his attention was on the page before him. He had laid aside the authentic paper and was poring over the copy.
“Really? Why do you think that?”
“Because Christian Avalone is a man who knows how to translate his desires into hard reality,” Reuben said, looking up. He bestowed his warmest smile on the boy, and George beamed happily back. “Thank you. This is excellent. May we take this copy with us as we leave?”
“Oh, yes. It’s yours. Will it be helpful? Does it have what you want?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. I’ll need to read the whole thing.”
“Do we owe you any fee?” Lucinda asked.
“Oh, no!” George replied, shocked again. “Knowledge is meant to be shared! Otherwise, how can we all learn?”
“The credo of the Augustine school,” Reuben observed. “As always, it simplifies our lives. George, my friend, you have been of great help to us. If you would now see us to our rooms, we would be happy to release you for the night.”
“Oh—yes—certainly! But I—” He hesitated.
“We don’t know yet,” Reuben said gently. “If we discover anything, we will let you know in the morning. You can be the one to tell the others.”
George blushed, smiled, looked away, and smiled again. “You must be tired,” he said at last. “Let me take you to the dorm.”
It was well past midnight before Reuben had finally completed his translation. By this time, despite everything, Lucinda was nearly asleep on one of the narrow dormitory beds that seemed unlikely to accommodate one person comfortably, let alone two. She had at first perched upright on the edge of the mattress, but as the next two hours passed, her body had gradually angled down toward a horizontal position until she finally gave up and stretched out on the bed. She had even hiked up one of her wings to cover her face and block out some of the harsh overhead light.
So she was actually dozing when Reuben said “Done!” in a cheery voice and laid aside his pencil. She sat up, blinking rapidly and fighting off the dizziness she always experienced when she was woken too suddenly. “Yes? The Alleluia Files? Yes?”
He laughed at her. “Should this wait till morning?” he teased. “Are you too sleepy to hear the greatest news of your generation? It has kept for a hundred years, it can wait one more night.”
“No, I’m awake, I’m awake, tell me what it says.” She yawned mightily, clapped her hand across her mouth, and begged him with her eyes. “Please. I swear I’m awake.”
“Well, some of it’s a little rough, but this is how I think the words are meant to go. ‘Stand in the center of Mount Sinai and look for the—’ I think the word is ‘pentagon’ but I’m not sure. The Edori don’t have a word for pentagon, but this says five-sided star. Pentagram? ‘Look for the pentagon on the floor. Go to the—’ I’m guessing again here. ‘Go to the blue—window? screen? blue screen?—in the middle of the wall. Spell the word—’ and here there’s just a series of symbols written very carefully. Must be a word in the oracle’s language, and she didn’t even try to find an Edori word to match. ‘Push the green button. Go quickly back to the pentagon and stand there. You will be covered in a golden light. You will feel your bod
y—’ I think she says ‘evaporate’? Could that be right? ‘When the light fades, you will be in a room of white and silver. This is the place where Jehovah resides.’”
“She says that? Jehovah?”
He nodded. “Phonetically. Hard to miss.”
“And then what?”
“‘If you speak to Jehovah in your language, he will reply. He will answer any question you put to him. When you wish to return to Mount Sinai, simply ask for teleport.”’
“For what?”
Reuben shook his head. “I’m just reading syllables here. Teleport. I don’t know what it means.”
“Then what?”
“That’s all it says.”
She fixed her gaze on him, a visual reference point to occupy her eyes while her mind tried to assimilate the information. Well, it sounded simple enough; but then, Edori was a simple language, with very few scientific terms. The Edori who loved the new technology (and they were many) had to discuss it in the Samarian tongue. Alleluia had deliberately used a very unsophisticated language to convey an extremely complex process. Another way to disguise her information, to throw off her pursuers? Or a way of saying, “This is not difficult. Stand here, push this, say that. There is nothing to alarm you”?
Or was it even Alleluia who had left this message behind?
“We have to go there,” Lucinda heard herself saying.
“To Mount Sinai?” Reuben asked.
She shook her head. “To Jehovah.”
Reuben stared at her, and then burst out laughing. “What?” she demanded, instantly defensive. “Someone has to. We have to see if these directions are accurate. Conran and Tamar are gone, or we could send them. They’d love a chance to come face-to-face with Jehovah.”
“And I’m thinking they’re going to be just as welcome on the gracious continent of Samaria as you’d be. Even more so,” he replied. His voice, which had been cool and clipped while he attempted to translate the paper, now resumed its customary lazy cadence. “Aren’t you here in Ysral specifically because your admirable aunt Gretchen did not believe you were safe near the other angels and their kin?”
“Yes, but we can be careful for a day or two,” Lucinda said impatiently. “We’ll be safe enough once we’re in Mount Sinai. I don’t think Jecoliah is about to turn us over to the Jansai.”
“Who?”
“Jecoliah. The oracle at Mount Sinai.”
“Yes, but will she allow us to draw pentagons on her floor and call down great blazes of golden light? I’m thinking that sounds like an odd request from anyone, let alone a rogue angel and an Edori!”
“We’ll think of something to tell her.”
“And what then? We stand in the middle of Mount Sinai and wait for Jehovah to sweep us up to his famous white chamber? And nothing happens? What do we say then to this very unhappy oracle?”
“Well, she’d probably be even more unhappy if we were swept up to Jehovah,” Lucinda said practically. “She’d much prefer it if we remained standing there, looking stupid.”
He shook his head. “I’m thinking it’s too much of a risk.”
“And I’m thinking,” she said, mimicking him, “that you don’t have to come with me. I can fly to Samaria on my own, thank you very much.”
“But you would not do so, would you, to prove a very tenuous theory?”
“I thought you wanted to know. Just as much as I did. I thought you wanted to prove the existence of the Alleluia Files—or expose the lie. I thought you were excited about this. Am I wrong?”
“You’re right, mikala, and you know it. I am just not certain that we are the ones who should be doing the proving. It is not our quest, after all. And I am not joyful at the prospect of putting you again at risk.”
She smiled at him, teasing him, deliberately provoking him. “And I thought you were Reuben sia Havita, great Edori adventurer. You’ve crossed oceans in a boat smaller than this bedroom. And you’re afraid to take one more journey, travel to a place no one living now has ever seen? Were your Edori ancestors afraid to sail for Ysral, never having laid eyes on it? Would you have been afraid to make that trip?”
Reluctantly he smiled back. “It is not the same thing,” he said.
“It is exactly the same thing.”
“I think we should wait till Conran returns.”
“You wait. I’ll go without you.”
“You are a very stubborn mikala. And you appear to be such a docile, even-tempered girl.”
“My aunt Gretchen always says much the same thing,” she replied serenely. “‘How anyone with a face as sweet as yours could be such an intractable child will be a mystery to me till I die.’ Her very words. Come with me or stay behind.”
“I’ll go with you. When do you want to leave?”
“As soon as we’ve returned the car to Sahala.”
A day later they took off for Samaria. They had left the Augustine school early in the morning, despite the fact that neither of them had gotten much sleep. They paused only to make a brief farewell to George, telling him honestly what they believed the paper said. He had listened with his mouth agape and his eyes bleached with disbelief.
“And this is true? It’s genuine?” he had demanded, choking the words out with some difficulty.
“As to that, neither of us can say,” Reuben had replied. “These are the words the documents contain. We cannot verify more than that.”
As they sped away in their little car, south toward Sahala, Lucinda had asked, “Do you think that was wise? Shouldn’t this secret have been kept a little longer? Or at least until we’ve proved it?”
“Not if it’s the truth,” Reuben had replied. “What if Conran and all his band are taken prisoner in Samaria? What if you and I perish in our flight across the ocean? Enough people have died for the Alleluia Files. If they exist, it is time the secret was revealed.”
“And if it’s a hoax after all?”
Reuben shrugged. “No harm done. A few engineering students make their way to Mount Sinai and cause the oracle great annoyance. And the watching god laughs. And the world spins on.
However, they did not, in Sahala, tell the Jacobites exactly where they planned to go. It would be too unwieldy, Lucinda thought, to try to discipline a horde of fanatic rebels who would all want to cram into Mount Sinai at once to watch the miracle, No, best to send a small party first, and wait for news.
So they packed, slept, and took off early the next morning, giving only the vaguest information about their destination. The skies were clear, and Lucinda settled quickly into her most efficient pace. Reuben was one of the few men she had ever encountered who seemed to enjoy being carried by a woman, who took the opportunity to gaze around at the world from this unique vantage point, who did not worry that he was too heavy or too dependent.
Flying at top speed and barring any battering head winds, an angel could cross the ocean in two days. With a two-hundred-pound man in her arms and a couple of packs strapped around her waist, Lucinda wasn’t sure she could meet that goal, so she planned to attempt the trip in two and a half. Which meant they would have to find two friendly ships to shelter them overnight, which meant they had to look for Edori vessels, which meant they had to follow a more northerly course than the direct one between Ysral and Breven.
“And of course we can’t stop at Angel Rock for the night,” she murmured in Reuben’s ear. “That would create a furor. Aunt Gretchen would never let me leave the island.”
“Not a bad idea, perhaps,” he replied, but she merely laughed.
They were lucky the first night: They spotted an Edori ship almost the instant they decided to start looking. Lucinda Was not surprised, upon landing, to discover that Reuben was somehow related to the captain and one of the crew members. Even had that not been the case, she was sure they would have been welcomed just as warmly.
“Flying on to Breven, is that it?” the captain asked them over dinner. “We’d be glad to take you the whole distance, if that would suit
your plans. No trouble at all.”
“Actually, I like the flying,” Reuben said with a grin. “I wouldn’t have believed such a thing was possible, but it’s even better than gusting through the ocean at top speed just a mile ahead of a storm.”
Plainly the Edori disbelieved him but, before the angel, hesitated to mock him. “Well, then,” one of the sailors replied, “that’s the favor I’ll ask from the god next.”
The next morning, they were on their way again before the first fragile light of dawn skittered across the horizon to their backs. And for the first few hours of the flight, the day passed much as the one before it had. The heavy heat of the sun was brushed away by the incessant spiral of wind rising from the restless sea; above them and below, there were only shades of turquoise, cobalt, and celestine. The rush of wind, the call of seabirds, the slap of water, and the beat of angel wings were the only sounds in a vast, immobile, empty world. The serenity was deeper than death.
And yet, as the afternoon advanced, painting both air and water with an overlay of gold, Lucinda felt her arms grow tired and her breath pull more laboriously into her lungs. She felt the steady rhythm of her heartbeat skip and falter, and dread washed across her like a blush. She ceased replying to Reuben’s idle comments and put all her energy into gaining another mile, and another, without dropping her burden into the ocean and sinking after him like so much blond-and-alabaster stone.
It was not even sunset before she started searching the horizon for a ship that could take them in for the night, but it was another half hour before she spotted something suitable. And even then it was not ideal: an independent freighter out of Lisle, flying the green Gaza flag under the standard of its merchant owner. But as long as the sailors weren’t Jansai, Lucinda had little fear. No respectable tradesman would refuse to take in an angel.
And she was right, though the welcome here was civil as opposed to genuine, and there was a lengthy wait before the captain was able to clear out a cabin for their use.
“We ask a berth for just one night,” Lucinda assured him. “And we can pay you.”
“No, no, no payment is required,” he replied stiffly. “Of course, we would be happy to have you join us for dinner.”