“Hybrid?” said Tess.
“This can’t be. You can’t manufacture souls.” Yet this machine acted as though he were really alive. Sir Phillip had said “he” was a clever toy and of course Phillip was right, but: “Tess, is this robot your friend?” Leda was arguing more with herself than with them.
Tess high-fived the robot. “Yeah.”
She turned on Zephyr, saying, “You can’t exist! How can you be free of your programming, to have ideas and friends and feelings?”
“I’m not ‘free of my programming’. I am my programming.”
“But where do you fit? How can you be here in a world with a God that made men, when we’re supposed to be unique and you’re a stand-in for one of us?”
“Simple,” said Zephyr. “There is no God.”
“You don’t know that!”
Footsteps came down to them. Leda, Tess and Zephyr turned to the stairs to see a bleary-eyed Captain Fox in pajamas and randomly spiky hair, looking absurd. “Is there a problem?” he said.
“No!” said Leda, with the roar of the sea in her ears. She brushed past Fox and hurried away to be as alone as she could manage.
And though that was only a corner of the deck, where she could sit with her knees pulled up on a layer of black solar-panel suncloth, that was very alone.
“Sister Leda, you look exhausted,” said Ann. Ann was dressing for the morning’s work, energetic as ever.
Leda yawned, feeling the fatigue on her eyelids and shoulders. All night she’d been pacing or huddled on the deck or laying in bed with eyes that wouldn’t shut. Coffee would be nice, but Phillip forbade it. She wished he hadn’t.
“What is it?” asked Ann.
Leda looked at her, seeing a true Sister with her own cross to bear. Ann had lost everyone she ever cared for before learning of Phillip. He had given her the courage to talk about what happened, and to begin a new life. How could Leda keep secrets from someone who’d been willing to cry on her shoulder? “I’m afraid,” Leda told her.
“We’re all here for you. Is it the sea? It bothers me too sometimes. Too open.”
“It’s not that.” Though the ocean was always there. It was part of this new world, and could rise up and crush them at any moment.
“We need to go upstairs,” Ann said. It was time for the morning muster. Leda looked to the stairs and followed her.
On deck the whole family stood at attention. The station’s unbelievers made a point of being elsewhere, as usual, and the sky was as clear as it always seemed to be. Yet the wind tasted unreal and cold, and she felt as though she couldn’t really be on an island made by men. Only God made land. This whole place was some illusion, or an abomination. Yet there it was, under her feet. Leda and Ann stood on slick black ground.
Brother Duke came up and paced the deck in front of the assembled Confederacy. “Attention!” Everyone stood straighter. “It pains me to announce that Sir Phillip is indisposed.”
A murmur spread through the group, but Duke quelled it after a few seconds with a raised hand and a frown. “Alas, I know, such a thing shouldn’t happen to one so virtuous. But God works in mysterious ways. While Sir Phillip recovers I must with regret perform his duties. So, regarding today’s work…”
Leda listened to the day’s assignments. Sir Phillip would sometimes be secluded in prayer for a day or two, but was never absent for another reason. It felt like sand had been thrown into the clockwork of the family’s routine. Everyone seemed to share her unease. At least she still had Ann to work beside, doing mindless cutting of plants at the water’s surface.
“It’s not just the ocean,” Leda said after a while. The sun beat down even through her soaked hat and salt-crusted sunglasses. “It’s the fact that we’re out here.”
Ann wielded a diamond-coated knife to snap the fibers of a frond held taut by Leda. “God led us here. He’ll provide.”
“But why?”
Ann shrugged. “It’s not our place to ask.”
“Maybe we should. Ann, I—” Leda floated there, looking at the bright ripples of the sea. “I don’t know if I can believe in all this anymore. About Sir Phillip and Lee and God. What if it’s all a mistake?”
Ann stared at her. “How can you say that? Of course it’s not a mistake. God said so!”
“But people think God says a lot of different things, and some people don’t even think He exists.”
“He does!” said Ann. “You’re incredible! You think we’re all crazy, don’t you, that all our work is for nothing!” Ann didn’t even seem to notice the knife held tightly in her hand.
“I didn’t say that. I meant I don’t know if it’s true, what we were taught. I don’t feel like I know how to tell.”
Ann gave a tense little laugh. “Of course you know. Look in your heart.”
Leda floated in the wilderness, asking herself and God for an answer. She could imagine that feeling of profound certainty and belonging that had helped her escape from her old life, but it was far away, a feeling not honestly earned. A lie.
“No,” said Leda. “I don’t believe.”
Ann swam away, abandoning their work and leaving Leda alone.
Leda threw herself back into the work but knew that it was pointless, that the world didn’t care one bit if she sank and no one ever saw her again. There was no purpose to her being here, or anywhere. She’d been lying to herself all along. When she couldn’t stand to be in the water any longer, she went to the dock and climbed, feeling weak and stupid.
Nothing happened all that day, but in the night, Ann found her. She was waiting alone with a grim expression. “Brother Duke wants to see you.”
Leda followed her towards South Tower. But when the wind and darkness of the open deck hit her, Leda flared up, planting her feet and saying, “Why, Ann? Why did you tell him? I thought I could trust you.”
She seemed incredulous. “Because it’s wrong to turn your back on us. Brother Duke will sort you out.” She paused. “Maybe he can help you.”
Leda knew she’d been wrong to doubt Lee. Whatever punishment the world threw at her, she deserved. She crossed the deck and descended into the darkness.
Deep in South Tower, Duke stood before the Altar of Lee. The bunting, the crossed-cannons insignia and the great man’s portrait were all obscured behind Brother Duke, who wore an expression of anguished love.
“Shut the door, Sister Ann,” said Duke.
The three of them stood there for a while. Leda stared at Duke’s polished boots. After a long time Duke spoke again. “It wounds me to learn of your lack of faith. It wounds all your brothers and sisters.”
Leda said nothing. Duke was right. She’d hurt them and it was right to be hurt in return.
“Do you believe any longer in the divinity of Lee?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
Ann said, “Why, Sister?”
“We’re not concerned with ‘why’,” snapped Duke. “Sister Leda, do you believe in God with all your heart, with every fiber of your being?”
Leda couldn’t bring herself to say she had doubts.
“Answer me!”
“I don’t know,” said Leda.
“I didn’t ask what you know. Do you believe?”
Ann’s simple question — Why? — still echoed in her ears. If Leda had been believing without good reasons, ones that she could articulate, then she was telling herself she believed when really — “I don’t.”
Duke said, “Perhaps you should sit.” Ann scrambled to bring a chair so Leda could huddle in it. Now he could look down at her, intent on her face as he leaned closer with a faint smile. “If you don’t believe, then there’s nothing to save you from the fires of Hell.”