Her son nodded for a moment, saying nothing.
Then as he turned, preparing to leave, Miocene used her final plea.
“But I do love the ship,” she told him. And everyone. “You were wrong then, and you’re still wrong. I love and cherish the ship more than you ever could! And I’ll always love it more than I love you, ungrateful little bastard…!”
Twenty-one
A carde of captains and gifted architects had designed the Grand Temple, and for a thousand years the best artisans had labored over it, while every adult Loyalist gave time and willing hands to its construction. Even half-finished, the Temple was a beautiful structure. Six gold-faced domes were arranged in a perfect circle. Graceful parabolic arches of tinted steels straddled the domes, riding higher and higher on each other’s backs. The central tower was the tallest structure on Marrow, and the deepest. Its foundation already reached a full kilometer into the cold iron, and in its basement was a reservoir of pure water where the occasional neutrino would collide with a willing nucleus, the resulting explosion producing a lovely cone of light that proved to priests and to children what every Loyalist needed to accept without question: Marrow was a small part of a much greater Creation, a Creation invisible to the eye but not to the believing mind.
The Wayward defector had asked to be brought to the temple, which was a perfectly ordinary request.
But the Submaster had reviewed the field reports as well as the transcripts of both official interrogations, and the only certainty was that nothing else about this defection was ordinary, much less simple.
The temple administrator was a nervous woman made more so by events. Wearing the soft gray robes of her office and a tortured expression, she greeted Miocene with a crisp, “Madam,” and a cursory bow, then blurted out, “It is an honor,” even as she prepared to complain what a great disruption this business was.
Miocene didn’t give her the opportunity. Firmly and not too gently, she said, “You’ve done a marvelous job, so far.”
“Yes, madam.”
“So far,” she repeated, reminding her subordinate that failure was always just one misstep away. Then with a softer voice, she asked, “Where’s our guest?”
“In the library.”
Of course.
“He wants to see you,” the administrator warned. “He practically demands that I bring you to him.”
They were standing at one of the minor entranceways, the heavy door carved from a single virtue tree, ancient and gigantic. Because she refused to be rushed by anyone, Miocene paused, letting one hand caress the old wood, dark as clotted blood and perforated with spongelike holes where nodules of battery fats had been. Her guards—a pair of trunklike men with quick, suspicious eyes—stood nearby, watching the quiet side street. For an instant, Miocene’s mind was elsewhere. She found herself thinking about the ship, and in particular, her wood-lined apartment not five hundred meters from the Master’s quarters.
Then she blinked and gave a sigh, feeling a familiar little sadness, and a knot of secret fears…
“Well, then,” she muttered, straightening her back, then the creases of her uniform. “Take me to our new friend.”
Public services were being held in each of the six main chambers. Citizens elected their priests, and as a result, each had his own style and perspective. Some spoke endlessly about the Great Ship. Its beauty, its grace; its unfathomable age, and its endless mystery. Others readied parishioners for the glorious day they would meet their first aliens. And an ecletic few dwelled on more abstract and far-reaching topics: the stars and living worlds and the Milky Way, and the vast universe that dwarfed everything that humankind could see and touch or even pretend to comprehend.
One service was wrestling with such cosmic wonders. A satin-voiced gentleman was singing praises of G-class suns. “Warm enough to bring life to more than many worlds at a time,” he called out, “and long enough lived to feed a creative evolution. Our home world, the great Earth, was born beside such a golden sun. Like the seed of a virtue tree, it was. It is. And our universe is full of billions of seeds. Life in its myriad forms is everywhere. Life thick and life lovely, and life forever.”
“Forever,” chanted the small audience, in careless unison.
Ceramic arches and ported flycatchers separated the hallway from the chamber. A few faces happened to glance to one side, noticing the Submaster striding past. Murmurs rose, spread. But the priest standing up front, leaning hard against the diamond podium, ignored the noise, pressing on with his speech.
“We must prepare, sisters and brothers. The day is waning, gradually but inexorably, and we will see the time when each of us is needed. Our hearts and hands, and our minds, will be thrown into the construction of the bridge.”
“The bridge,” some repeated. While others, distracted by the concrete and the present, watched Miocene and her guards pass behind the altar, followed closely by the flustered administrator. The altar was built from native diamonds mounted in a tube no wider than a human arm. At its base was an intricate mock-up of the city and the finished temple. The tube rose up to the domed ceiling that was painted to resemble a darker sky, and where the ragged stump of the first bridge clung tight, the diamond bridge joined seamlessly, flecks of bright light forever streaking upward, showing the migration of the loyal multitudes—their glorious reward for so much sacrifice and enthusiastic hope.
Miocene barely glanced at the parishioners.
It was perfectly acceptable for her to visit the temple, and she didn’t want them noticing anything remarkable in her manner or her eyes.
“When the time is right,” the priest shouted, “we shall climb. Climb!”
Then he whirled, his gray robe fluttering and one arm beginning an overly dramatic gesture at the diamond spire, and when he noticed the Submaster and her tiny entourage, his surprise collapsed into instant ritual.
Bowing, he cried out, “Madam.”
The audience behind him shouted, “Madam,” and fell forward in their iron seats.
Thankfully, she had reached the library stairs. After a hurried wave and the briefest look, Miocene turned and began to climb, leading her guards and them worrying because of it. The senior guard told her, “No, madam,” and unceremoniously slowed her with a strong hand to the shoulder.
Fine.
She eased her gait, perhaps more than necessary. The guard passed her as the staircase spiraled its way up through the heart of the great building. If memory served, the stair’s architect was a difficult grandchild with a narrow genius. She had used the shape of DNA as her inspiration. The fact that only a sliver of modern genetics were encoded in that delicate compound made no difference. It had struck the architect as a suitable symbol. Rising through the oldest language to reach the newest… or some equally forced symbolism, wasn’t it…?
To Miocene, symbols were crutches for the lame. It was a very old opinion for her, and the last three millenia had only reinforced it.
Like the temple, this quasi-religion was thick with symbols. G-class suns were equated with virtue seeds. What nonsense! There were only so many colors in the universe, at least to human eyes. And Miocene had seen many, many Sol-like suns. If she wished, she could warn the parishioners that under no circumstances would a sun and a seed be confused. Not in brightness, or in color. Gold was a simple thing, and sunlight never was. Ever.
And yet.
This temple and its cobbled-together faith were as much her idea as anyone’s. And the Submaster hadn’t ordered the temple’s construction for easy cynical reasons. No, the temple would serve as the foundation for the coming bridge. Physically, and otherwise. It was imperative that the Loyalists understood what was going to happen. If they didn’t comprehend and embrace these goals, and keep themselves unswayed by the Waywards’ bizarre faith, there was no point in escaping from Marrow. This temple, and dozens of smaller temples scattered across the land, were meant to be places of education and focus. If people required symbols and sloppy metaphors to build a consensus, then so be it. Miocene just wished that the grandchildren would stop being so inventive, and so earnest, particularly with things about which they knew almost nothing.