Tamar laughed out loud. Reuben filled his glass again and raised it to her in a toast of admiration. Jared was still shaking his head, but Tamar and Reuben clinked their glasses together and swallowed every last drop.
Two days before the second, more decisive conference was held at Christian Avalone’s mansion on the River Walk, Lucinda’s aunt Gretchen arrived in Semorrah. My aunt Gretchen, too, Tamar had to remind herself; but she had had nobody, no blood relatives, for so much of her life that even now she could scarcely credit the existence of a sister, let alone a more distant connection. And this Gretchen (as described kindly by Lucinda and humorously by Reuben) sounded like such a difficult, contrary, domineering woman that Tamar viewed her arrival with a mixture of reluctance and dread.
She was alone in the lovely, airy bedroom Christian had assigned to her and Jared when she heard voices in the hall. “Where is she? Where is that child? Is this the room?”
“Here, let me knock and see if—”
But Lucinda had no time to put her knuckles to the door before it was swept open and a hurricane swirled in. Tamar jumped to her feet, fingers automatically closing around her mother’s locket, feeling an absurd leap of panic in her chest. The woman who entered was thin, graying, sharp-faced, and crammed with so much restless vitality that it snapped around her as visibly as an aura. Nonetheless, she came to a dead halt just across the threshold, and stared at Tamar as though at an apparition.
“Dearest, sweetest god, it is indeed you,” she whispered. “And you did not die, after all. He could not kill you. Oh, child, if I had known you were alive, I would have searched the earth and heavens for you. I would have taken you with me to safety. Tell me you believe that, for it is the god’s own truth.”
Tamar smiled with some difficulty. “I believe you. From the story I was told, you could never have thought I was alive.”
Gretchen came closer, still staring, still marveling. “And the life you have led. It makes my blood go cold. I will curse that devil Conran till the day he dies for not telling me the truth, when for twenty-eight years he knew it—”
“Don’t curse Conran,” Tamar said, smiling a little more naturally now. “He did very well by me. He kept me alive, and you must thank him for that at least.”
Another step closer, the faded eyes still searching every plane and angle of Tamar’s face. “Well, the face is well enough, and of course you’ve got fine eyes just like your sister, but your hair! Child, couldn’t you have found a better cut? And you may have thought that dye was attractive once, but it’s nowhere near as pretty as your natural color. I think it’s time to put a little more thought into your appearance, especially with everyone arriving for this big important meeting.”
Lucinda burst into uncontainable laughter, sagging against the door frame and cramming a hand across her mouth. Tamar felt her own laughter bubble up, more and more uncontrollably as Gretchen’s face began to simmer with irritation.
“Well, I don’t think I said anything so funny, and you’ve got just as much work to do with your hair and clothing.” Gretchen fumed, rounding on Lucinda and shaking her finger. “Running wild the way you have! I would never have sent you to Ysral if I thought you would forget everything I’d taught you about manners and decorum, every single thing—”
“Aunt Gretchen, I adore you,” Lucinda said, stopping the older woman’s diatribe by enclosing her in a comprehensive embrace. “Don’t you ever change. Come. Let’s sit down and get to know Tamar.”
So that had been much less alarming than Tamar had feared, though she thought it would take her years to grow accustomed to Gretchen’s close, personal attention and forthright criticism. Nonetheless, in an instant she had been added to Gretchen’s short list of people for whom she would fight till the death. It was strange, oppressive, and wonderful to mean so much to another human being. Something else it would take years to grow used to.
Gretchen liked Jared, though. She fussed over him as she would a wealthy guest come to spend the summer at the Manor, or at least so Lucinda said. She looked after his comfort, deferred to his opinion, and never lost an opportunity to tell her nieces how handsome he was (“in looks and behavior, because one means nothing without the other”). Jared accepted her homage with his usual flawless courtesy, and laughed about it privately but never unkindly.
Gretchen was less pleased with Reuben, and Lucinda’s news that she planned to marry the Edori. “Except that Edori don’t marry, so perhaps I just mean that I will be spending the rest of my life with him. Or at least, what portion of his life he isn’t away at sea. I don’t have the details worked out yet. But he’s the man I love.”
“He’s well enough for an Edori, but you’d be wasting your life to be throwing it away on such a man,” was Gretchen’s reply, and the two of them argued about it obliquely for the next several days. Lucinda remained completely unruffled about her aunt’s disapproval, and confided her suspicions to Tamar later.
“I think she was in love with Conran once, but he wasn’t faithful,” she said sunnily. “You can see it even now when she looks at him, that she remembers this sort of bone-deep despair. It’s turned her against all Edori forever, I think.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s turned her against Conran, because I saw them holding hands on the rooftop garden the other day,” Tamar replied.
Lucinda bubbled over with laughter. “Did you really? I can’t imagine—but you know him better that I do. Can you picture him with Aunt Gretchen?”
Tamar thought. “Well, all the Jacobite women are strong-willed, as a rule, but he always seemed to be involved with the most hardheaded ones of the group. If you’d ever met Elinor … Actually, Gretchen reminds me a little of Elinor, and she was the love of Conran’s life.”
“What happened to her?”
“Died at the Jansai’s hands, six or seven years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
Tamar shrugged to avoid a direct reply. “Anyway, I can’t see him mending his ways at this age and becoming a tame old house cat. I can’t see him settling down on Angel Rock and helping Gretchen run the hotel.”
“No,” said Lucinda, a bit regretfully. “But however it turns out, I think she’s enjoying herself now.”
But Gretchen was one of the few guests at Christian Avalone’s house who had come merely for personal reasons. As the days passed and the house filled up, it became clear that the other visitors had arrived charged with sober purpose: to decide the fate of the world.
Representatives from almost every group on Samaria had been invited: river merchants, Manadavvi, Luminauzi, Edori, farmers, Jansai, oracles, priests, angels. They had constituted themselves a parliament of sorts, and every member would need to vote on any referendums that they drafted. But the real work of mapping out a plan for the future lay with a select group that met one day in Christian’s elegant conference room. Christian was there, of course, and the Manadavvi Ben Harth. Jared and Mercy spoke for the angels, Jecoliah for the oracles. Conran was the only Jacobite allowed in the room, if you didn’t count Tamar, who was only there because Jared insisted. Reuben and Lucinda had been invited because, as Christian said, “they can speak for Jehovah better than the rest of us.” Everyone else was barred from the room.
“First order of business,” Christian said once the group had been called to order, “what do we do with Bael? And what do we do with Omar?”
“Kill them both,” Conran growled, but Mercy hushed him impatiently, and everyone else tried to ignore him. “Kill them,” the Jacobite repeated, raising his voice. “Between them, they’ve murdered hundreds of innocent men and women. They’re criminals and assassins, and they need to be tried as such.”
“This is not a society that has ever condoned execution for any crime, and we are not about to institute it as a punishment now,” Mercy said, swinging on him and speaking hotly. “I understand your own life has been full of brutality, and I regret that for your sake, but you will not bring your bankrupt ethics into
this meeting and expect us to sympathize. If you cannot say something constructive, then please do not speak.”
Well, that was almost entertainment enough to make Tamar glad she had come to the meeting. She had never seen Conran so wrathful or so silenced. She turned her head away to hide her grin.
“If we are to leave them living,” Christian said dryly, “what are we to do with them? We could exile them to Ysral—”
“Poor Edori,” Jared murmured.
“Ah, the Edori are very forgiving,” said Reuben. “They will welcome the Archangel and his son and try to teach them the simpler joys of life.”
But Mercy was shaking her head. “Bael has a powerful voice, and I understand that Jovah—Jehovah—can hear all of us from any point on the planet. If Bael were to raise his voice in song and ask for thunderbolts, for instance—”
“I agree,” Jared said, speaking more soberly this time. “I think he must be incarcerated, and in a soundproofed chamber, much like the music rooms we have at the angel holds. There are engineers at the Augustine school who could construct a comfortable prison for him.”
“Comfortable!” Conran exclaimed. “Is this a man who deserves comfort? Is this a man who—”
“I agree,” Christian said, ignoring Conran. “And what of Omar?”
“I would incarcerate him alongside his father,” Jared said. “I sometimes think, even now, that Bael acted from belief—he had heard the recording of the Alleluia Files, yes, but he could not credit its veracity. Or, if he did, he was afraid the truth would destroy Samaria—a fear all of us must face right now. But Omar acted out of sheer power lust, and for that I do not think he can be forgiven.”
Jared looked over at Mercy, as if expecting her to challenge him, but she was nodding slowly. “Much as it pains me to say it,” she said, “I agree with Jared. Neither of them can be allowed to run free, or they will harm us in some manner.”
“Then we will have a place built for them,” Christian said. “And may it be far from here. Next item. As we all know by now, the so-called god is a ferociously powerful spaceship programmed to destroy Samaria if certain events do not occur. Must we live the rest of our lives, and must our children and their children also live, in fear of the destructive force of this machine? Is there any way to reprogram it so that it will not listen for the Gloria? So that we can be free of that annual requirement and the doom that hangs over us?”
Everyone in the room turned to look at Reuben, whose face had assumed a thoughtful expression. “I asked much the same question while we were aboard,” he said. “And was not surprised when the ship replied that it did not believe its circuits could be altered. But we could not expect it to help us out with that particular chore. Can it be reprogrammed? Not by me. Perhaps some of your Augustine engineers can work the magic. But I would guess that feat would be a generation or two away.”
“Very well, then,” said Ben Harm. “Say we are required to produce a Gloria every year. Can we not record it ahead of time and play it back from the Plain of Sharon on the appointed day?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Lucinda said, speaking for the first time. “The mass has to be different every year, doesn’t it? And it has to contain the voices of people from all over Samaria, right? And if you go to the trouble to gather them all together to record the music, wouldn’t it be just as simple to gather them together to sing the Gloria?”
“And doesn’t Jovah track the Kisses we wear in our arms?” asked Jecoliah, glancing around the table with her milky eyes. “Wouldn’t he sense it if we were not actually on the Plain, performing our required song? Would he not consider that a breach of contract and respond in kind?”
“It’s a risk,” Christian admitted. “I am not eager to run it very soon.”
Mercy was glancing around the table and bridling in indignation. “And how does it hurt you—any of you!—to join together once a year and prove that you can live in harmony? If you were able to make these recordings and trick Jovah, would you want to do so? Would you want to live in a world where Edori and Jansai did not have to try to live in peace? I think the Gloria keeps us civil—and even so, we are not a peaceful people. Without the threat of the world’s destruction, would we be able to live as harmoniously as we do?”
No one answered for a long moment, though Tamar heard Conran mutter a few observations on how civil his life had been for the past thirty years. At last Jared lifted his eyes from contemplation of the polished table, and he smiled somewhat crookedly at Mercy.
“You’re right, of course,” he said. “But I find I am curiously reluctant to sing my prayers to an entity that I know is only so much metal and electricity. I can sing mathematically calculated melodies that will produce the desired physical response, but I cannot pray to such a thing. I cannot worship it. I cannot give my heart to the god when there is no god.”
Mercy gazed back at him a long time, searching his face with her eyes. “Jovah is not a god, we know that now,” she said slowly. “But I do not believe that means there is no divine presence watching over us at all. When our ancestors came to Samaria, they brought some divinity with them—they taught us our words for worship and piety. They believed in a power stronger than themselves, which they could not outrun by crossing millions of miles of space. We have misinterpreted their god, perhaps, but they had one, and it was not Jehovah.
“And even if they had founded Samaria, cynical and atheistic, I would still believe there was a god,” she said, her voice growing stronger. “Who drew the patterns of the stars, if not a god? Who designed the marvelous cycle of cloud and rain and river, if not a god? Who made you—and you—and you—if not some god whose name we have forgotten?”
“Science could answer every single one of those questions,” Conran snorted. “And has already begun to do so. We can take apart your flesh fiber by fiber and tell you why you have every bone in your body and every mineral in your blood. As for the dance of the stars, mass and gravity will give you those formulas, and there is nothing easier to explain than how the sea turns into storm.”
“You are missing the point,” she said to him calmly. “If there is no god, what is left but science? What is left to endow us with any grace? You can tell me the chemical makeup of my skin and my brain, but how can you explain away my soul? And if there is no god to watch over me, chastise me, grieve for me, rejoice with me, make me fear, and make me wonder, what am I but a collection of metals and liquids with nothing to celebrate about my daily living?”
“You have your friends for that!” he exclaimed. “They love you when you’re good and despise you when you’re not. Who needs more than that?”
Mercy regarded him fixedly. “Do you truly want to live in a universe where you, Conran Atwell, are the highest achievement, the only moral arbiter and the final judge? I do not trust to your goodness enough. I do not trust to any man’s. If we do not have a god, we have no limits. And a race without limits will become savage in a generation.”
“I am not a savage,” he muttered. “And I need no god to keep me moral.”
“But if there is a god, how do we find him? Where do we look?” Jecoliah asked. “Do we create him ourselves, from our hopes and our desires? We have been down that road before, and it was a blind alley. We do not want to delude ourselves again.”
“Alleluia said that Jehovah has great stores of information about our ancestors and their society,” said Jared. “Perhaps we could turn to it for guidance, for it may hold the knowledge we seek. And if not—”
“We can all live as the Edori do,” Reuben interposed. “Believing in one great nameless god who watches over the entire universe, who is everywhere at once but nowhere reveals himself. He hears every prayer, though he does not always answer—”
“Because he does not exist!” Conran shouted.
“No, I believe he does,” Tamar said, speaking suddenly when she had had no intention of even opening her mouth. She was embarrassed to find all eyes upon her, but she plunged ahead
anyway. “I have been raised to deny the existence of Jovah—of any god. And yet, when I was at my most desperate and most afraid, I prayed. The words rose to my mouth before I knew I was thinking them. And help came. I think we need a god so greatly because some god has created us, and he left behind that deep desire. I don’t believe in Jovah, but I believe in something.”
“That’s because you’re a credulous, uneducated fool!” Con-ran roared, practically leaping across the table as if he would take her by the throat and shake her. Jared shoved him back with more force than the Jacobite expected, and every other voice was raised simultaneously. Christian had to call repeatedly for silence before the room reluctantly quieted down.
“Among other things, it would seem that we need to form a commission on the study of religion,” the merchant observed when he finally had at least half the attention of everyone in the room. “And we can decide who should head that commission after we have decided a few more key questions. Namely, do we still require an Archangel to lead Samaria? And if so, who will it be? And if not, how shall we run this country?”
“We have had enough of Archangels, and angels, too,” Ben Harth said at once, clearly expecting Christian’s instant agreement. But the river merchant surprised Tamar by cocking his head to one side and looking extremely thoughtful.
“You and I may have—our friend Conran certainly has—but I am not so sure the rest of Samaria is ready to be done with Archangels,” Christian said slowly. “Jared is right. We have such a huge transition ahead of us that I view the coming months with a certain trepidation. And how will the common people of Samaria feel to be stripped of everything in a single blow—their god, their government, their system of redress? Even if the Archangel no longer serves the god, don’t we still need an Archangel to mediate between Jehovah and Samaria? Don’t we still need an Archangel to lead the Gloria? To direct the angels? To inspire the people of Samaria? To serve a civil, if not a divine, function?”