“I think you’re a big silly!’ she answered, exploding in a frenzy of knees and elbows to run rings around the pole. “You’re a bi-ig sil-ly! You’re a bi-ig sil-ly!” The third girl, obviously her sister, joined in. “Sil-ly, sil-ly, SIL-ly!”
No-longer-horrified girl bounced forward. “I’m a four. We’re all fours. Well, four is really nine, but we say fours. Only papa says we’re too little to Gather. But mama says this is the big one, so we should, and wouldn’t you be sorry if it was and they not even there? But you’re a pilgrim. So you must be a four too. Only you look old. Are you a three? Mama’s a three. Did you Gather before? Sometimes people are really old before they Gather.” Her eyes went wide again. “But you’re waiting for Uncle Collie. Maybe— are you a Seer? You’re never a Seer, are you? Like cousin Laurel?”
At which the other two gasped and stopped running. The little boy’s face went white. Un-horrified girl looked re-horrified, and just stood gaping.
Asach thought fast. Whatever was meant by the question, there could be only one answer. Asach took a calculated guess about the rest.
“No, honey, I’m not a Seer. I’m going to visit your Uncle Collie, that’s all. And I hope to get to meet Laurel while I’m there. We have some things to talk about.”
Color returned to the boy’s face. He nodded sagely again, then leaned over to stage-whisper into horrified-girl’s ear: “They’re gunna talk about the Gathering.” Then he announced: “Well, I’m a four, and I‘m not too little to Gather!”
With that, horrified girl broke into a gale of giggles, and led the trio in a new romp around the windmill. “Sil-ly’s gunna Gath-er. Sil-ly’s gunna Gath-er.”
Asach leaned back and smiled as dust boiled toward them from the distance. Threes and Fours and Seers, oh my. They’d have a lot more to talk about than mining claims.
9
Angels in Heaven
Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth not so apparently devoid of angels. We become very tired with pretending we like to earn a living, with the ordinary objects and events of our lives.
—Jim Harrison, Letters to Yesenin
Saint George, New Utah
The Librarian also had an early start, punctuated by a scary moment entering the TCM Security Zone. Entry was controlled by double barriers. As his FLIVR was held up between them for inspection, the guards suddenly dived behind the concrete bunkers, leaving him stuck like a little rat in a have-a-heart trap. He thought for a chilling moment that they’d found an explosive in the undercarriage. It was a deadly-force-authorized zone, so he also thought it inadvisable to simply leap from the vehicle. He slowly opened the windows, then the doors, to ask what was up. Finally, a shivering clerk motioned that he was to come inside. Apparently, mortars were falling somewhere so distant that he could not even hear them. After five minutes they received the all clear, without actual incident. It was his first brush with the dark underside of Saint George that they had all felt, but never seen, on previous arrivals.
He questioned the clerks, but they were not very forthcoming. “Troubles!” they answered, shaking their heads. “More troubles! It starting again!”
“What’s starting again?”
They just looked disgusted. “You people, you Imperials come, it starts. Before you come is OK, but then you go away again it starts. Like last time.”
Barthes frowned. They were suddenly frightened; quick to clarify. “Not you! You OK, we know. But bad people—” he spit—“bad people, they start. From outside. We tell them: Go Away! If you want to kill Imperials, go away and kill them somewhere else. Stop killing us.”
But the Temple was closed that day, for some ecclesiastical procedure that he’d never heard of, as was the university. With nothing to be accomplished, he decided to return to his local office. And then “it started” in earnest. He drove back amid reports of bad fighting in the East of the city, and sporadic outbreaks elsewhere. So they closed up early, his assistant grabbing her skirts and running full bore down the street, now empty of anything but the usual stench and swirling dust.
It was a rough night. He was repeatedly awakened by explosions rattling the building, from where he could not tell. One was close enough to send spent gravel pattering gently against the glass. He gave up trying to sleep and, with some sense of irony, watched an old war video. He was somewhat reassured by the lack of actual gun ships, police sirens, or ambulances. His street was a major thoroughfare, so had anything really bad happened nearby, it would have lit up. He heard distant shouting; a rattle of gunfire. Then the generator died.
Still sleepless, he switched on a battery lamp; pulled out the charred old conference paper, and settled in to read. He got about half-way through before his eye began to droop. It was a somewhat more interesting, and clearly more valuable, document than he’d thought. As he fell asleep, two phrases whispered in his mind. New Utah would not now be dependent upon selenium supplementation….this data is directly relevant to questions of how life begins on and propagates across many worlds.
But in the morning, all was as if he’d dreamt it. The shops along the way opened as usual, albeit a little late. He set off groggily. Then, once at the office, he had trouble concentrating on the work at hand. He decided to try the Temple again. The more complicated University installation was nearly complete. It was time to coordinate the Temple archives hook-up.
This time, Barthes entered the Zone without incident. He parked at the back of the Temple, near the delivery bays, and knocked on a side door marked “Service Entrance.” As a non-member, the main sanctuary was closed to him; in any case, he’d come for a working meeting, not a Temple tour.
He was in luck. The clerk who answered nodded, gestured follow me, and led him directly to the Archivist’s office. Not only was she in; she was delighted. “Delighted!” she said, pumping his long, graceful hand with both of her tiny ones, “What an honor! Never did I think to meet so august a colleague in our remote little corner!”
“You’ve heard of the Imperial Library, then?”
“Heard of! How could I claim to be a professional, and not dream of going there one day!”
She was grateful he’d come.
She was grateful for this tacit recognition of her archive as a library of merit.
She was grateful for his offer of the Imperial Pre-accession Package.
She was grateful for any assistance in re-establishing the trunk connection to the Zion University Library.
She expressed no interest whatsoever in eventual live LM linkage to the Imperial Newscast Networks. “Oh no,” she said, “I don’t think the Bishop would approve that. We’re not backward, you know. It’s not that.”
He remained impassive.
“It’s just that we take seriously our responsibility to avoid confusion among our flock.”
Colchis briefly nodded.
“So we prefer to preview recorded cubes before distribution.”
Colchis patiently explained Imperial policies regarding non-interference with local science and technology. Explained that the feed would be filtered in any event, depending upon how New Utah was classified.
She marveled at this.
Suspecting that her personal technological expertise might not be up to this discussion, he asked if he might speak with her technical operations manager. They spent a pleasant few minutes chatting about Temple collections while they waited.
“My guide at Zion said that you back up many of their collections?”