“But there is no God.”
“What!” said Leda. “What would you know about God? You’re a toy!”
Zephyr’s ears went flat. “I’m not a toy. Excuse me. I have work to do.” The robot left her alone, now with a headache.
She felt like she’d been mugged. You didn’t attack people’s faith like that! It was wrong! Zephyr’s beliefs, if he even had beliefs, were the work of some scientist who’d programmed him to think that way. She felt sorry for the robot, a kind of thinking being yet a soulless captive to some atheist’s mental domination. Zephyr would never really be free, because freedom was the ability to fulfill God’s will.
But maybe, could you serve God without even knowing Him?
Zephyr’s existence weighed on Leda and distracted her over the weeks that passed aboard Castor. Every day but Sunday she worked among the plants and fish to create new life from the raw elements, bringing forth wealth from nothing. One evening, she sat at the docks with Sir Phillip and two sisters of the family, Megan and Ann. They’d finished work and were drying in the sunset heat.
Ann was saying, “I’m still not comfortable with these clothes. They’re almost sinful.”
Sir Phillip had seen that their suits and dresses were impractical for the swimming and stair-climbing that this place required. He said, “It’s not an ideal situation that you sisters should be made to dress this way. What you need is to decently cover yourselves.”
The words made Leda’s swimming clothes feel slick and tight as though she were naked. “What should we do? I can sew something more traditional.”
Sister Ann said, “Brother Duke said that these outfits were right and good for swimming, though.”
“Did he, now.” Phillip stared at the sun as it sizzled into the sea, paving a golden road from it to Castor. He stroked his beard and said, “Troublesome. I will pray on this.”
It struck Leda that their clothing was far from the most important issue facing Phillip’s people. The work was the most critical thing, wasn’t it? “Sir?” she asked. “Is it right, what we’re doing out here? Being farmers in this strange place?”
Phillip said, “Of course it’s right. I was guided to this place so that we could build a new life.”
“But there are unbelievers here.”
Phillip stared at her with his mouth slightly open, as in disbelief that she would dispute his ideas. Ashamed, Leda looked down. “I’m sorry. The outsiders have a robot that says strange things.”
Sir Phillip grunted. “The outsiders aren’t part of our family. What good are their ideas or their toys?”
“Of course, sir.”
That night she lay in her bunk, thinking about the bridges she’d burned to join this family and come here. No relatives or outside friends anymore, no filthy apartment on a dark street. Here she was safe in a concrete castle surrounded by brothers and sisters of the spirit who loved her unconditionally. The only real cost for this new life was to have faith, to trust God and Lee and their prophet Phillip. Plenty of other people had no problem doing that, so what was wrong with her?
It was that stupid machine! It was almost against the rules to talk with him, since he was a walking encyclopedia, probably tainted by constant contact with the outside world. What sort of person would make a machine that taught people to doubt? Or should she blame the machine himself? Full of questions, she couldn’t sleep. She should give that Zephyr a piece of her mind!
The dormitory breathed, as her sisters exhaled in time with the waves. The rhythm guided her in getting out of bed, into sandals and a robe. She climbed with insignificant footsteps up to the deck. Here the wind joined in with the wave sounds and the hum of machinery to drown out her straying thoughts. What would Saint Lee have done in this situation, questioning his place in the world?
He’d had to, once. As Sir Phillip often told, Lee’s defining moment came when that tyrant Lincoln offered to give him the Northern Army. Lee had made his stand instead with the people he belonged to, those nearest to him by blood and spirit. He put Lincoln behind him and gave up the temptations of the world. Leda could look out to sea and picture Saint Lee riding the Merrimack — on which he’d had many an adventure — but telling her that the real temptations were here on Castor! Here was relative comfort and safety, instead of the troubles of the fallen world outside. Maybe she’d actually chosen the easier path and had run from her problems. “Sir Phillip isn’t a tempter!” she told the wind. There was no answer. She needed to tell it to someone who could listen, and her thoughts were too confused to bother her sisters with. There was no point in making the rest of them hurt too.
The stairs took her down to North Tower, down to Dockside, before she found Zephyr. He and that girl Tess sat in a pool of light, playing a game. Those two kept odd hours.
“Leda?” said Tess. She was wearing that computer headset of hers.
“You know my name?”
“Yeah; he met you, so I know.”
Zephyr moved a red plastic pyramid on the game board. Tess saw it, frowned, and stacked it on another, muttering, “Not nice.” She didn’t seem to be responding to the game but to something the machine had said silently.
Leda looked back and forth between them, feeling off-balance. She’d hoped to find Zephyr alone. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?” she said to Tess.
Tess said, “I’ll sleep when I want to, thanks. What about you?”
“I was hoping to speak with Zephyr.” Then again, there was an actual human available.
Zephyr faced her, laying his plastic ears back like a live animal. “Why? You said I’m a toy.”
“Well, you are — I mean…” She’d meant to give the robot an earful, but now he was trying to make her feel guilty! She pressed on. “How can you go around insulting people’s religious beliefs like you did?”
“I only said they weren’t true.” He made another move.
Tess looked at the board. “Zephyr, I told you.” She stared at him for a few seconds, with both of them playing their game in silence. Leda found them unnerving to watch, as Tess muttered something inaudible and Zephyr spread his hands in a frustrated gesture. Finally Tess said, “We think maybe you and he should avoid each other.”
Leda’s skin felt cold in the breeze through the Dockside door. “What’s going on here?”
“Telepathy,” said Tess. She pulled her headset, and offered it.
Zephyr said, “Don’t.”
“Come on, I want to show her. Say anything.”
Leda, confused, took the headset and set the unusual curve of it to her jaw.
A voice in her mind said, “What hath God wrought?”
Leda pulled off the headset and dropped it on the table with a shaking hand. “What was that?”
Tess took the thing back and donned it. “A bone-conduction speaker-mike. I can talk with Zephyr without making noise either way.”
“Of course,” said Leda. Those things worked with silent vibrations in the jaw and skull. Still she felt something was deeply wrong here. “Why are you mocking me?” she said to the machine. “What do you know about God?”
“I’m not mocking you. And I know what Tess knows plus several books about the concept. You humans are confusing.”
“You know… what she knows?”
Tess answered. “Figure that we have each other as a secondary memory and concept network. I mean, he can tell me something he doesn’t understand, or send me pictures, and have me free-associate and help him almost instantly.”
“And I’m of some use to her,” said Zephyr, “since I ate Wikipedia. But this is science, not religion. You wouldn’t be interested.”
Leda stared at them. “God made people. He didn’t make robots, or whatever hybrid collective you’re building.”