Archie Freeman did not step away from the pulpit as his son joined him on the stand. The two men stood a few feet from each other. Ray, as I have mentioned before, stood at least seven feet tall. His father appeared to be three or four inches shorter than him, and a lot thinner.
“Tell them what you told me, son,” Archie Freeman said in his handsome baritone.
“There was a war,” Freeman said. “Four of the arms wanted to leave the Unified Authority. They had a fleet of self-broadcasting battleships. They attacked Earth and defeated the Earth Fleet.” Here he paused for just a moment. “And they destroyed the Mars broadcast station. Without the Broadcast Network, Navy ships cannot travel between systems. The ship that came here a few days ago is stuck out here, too. It will be back.”
Until that last sentence, the room remained silent. When Freeman told them that the fighter carrier would be back, the people started talking among themselves.
“How can you know that?” an old man on the first row yelled. It sounded like a challenge.
“It takes four to five days for a carrier to fly here from the discs,” Freeman said. “The one that came here didn’t have enough time to reach them before they went dark.”
I heard shouting and crying. I saw men yelling at each other, then turning and yelling at the women beside them, and I realized that these people had just been told that their world was doomed.
Archie Freeman put up his hand to calm the crowd, but the commotion continued. “Raymond and his friend have offered to move us to another planet.”
That last sentence quieted the crowd.
I had this strange feeling, like I was intruding on a family matter. I was an outsider. Hell, Ray was an outsider, and he was born and raised among these people. They had something special, something I could never have. Looking around the congregation, I knew that even if I moved in among these people, I would never be one of them. They were family …and I was a clone. I took one last look at Ray standing tall, mute and confused, and maybe even intimidated, on that stand. Then I quietly got up and left the meeting.
It was early evening. The sun had set but the sky was bright. All the blue had faded from the sky. The horizon showed orange and red, and the sky above me was white. The temperature had dropped to a comfortable seventy degrees. Little Man was always a hospitable planet. It was the inhabitants that worried me.
A soft breeze blew in from the fields, carrying the scent of freshly turned soil and fertilizer. I stood and stared at the ground with its rows and furrows. Beyond the fields, a red and green forest stretched out as far as a man could see.
“It looks so pretty at night,” a woman said. “I almost forget all the sweat and hard work that goes into it.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, turning back. The woman walked in my direction. She had brown skin. It was the same color as Ray Freeman’s skin, but more tanned. Her skin was parched, but not as badly as Archie’s.
“You’re not going to stay for the meeting?” I asked.
“They don’t care what I have to say any more than they care what Ray has to say. We’re pariahs, and decision-making is a job for God’s elect.” She wore a long-sleeved white blouse and her plain gray skirt went all the way to her feet. These must have been her church clothes. They looked clean and pressed. “I’m Ray’s sister, Marianne.” With this, she put out her had for me to shake.
“Wayson Harris,” I said, shaking her hand.
Her palm and fingers were hard and rough, far rougher than mine. I had climbed ropes and dug trenches in school, but the life of a Marine is mostly spent in combat armor. This woman had spent her days plowing and digging with tools, not equipment. Her palms were calluses.
She had broad, manly shoulders, and her wrists were as thick as mine. She stood only an inch shorter than me. Her lips and skin were almost the exact same color. Her hair was black and long. It hung down to her waist. She was elegant and strong, and I thought that in the proper setting, dressed in soft clothes with her hair done up, she might be beautiful. In another world, where she was perfumed and pampered, she might be exquisite.
“Why are you and Ray outcasts?” I asked.
“Raymond couldn’t stand living in a religious colony. He never believed in Jesus, and he and Archie hated each other. When Raymond was old enough, he caught a ride on a supply ship and got as far away as he could. I think Archie was glad when he left.” I noted that she called her father Archie, as if he were a friend or an acquaintance. “He wanted someone to follow in his footsteps and lead the armies of God. That wasn’t Raymond.”
I tried to imagine Ray Freeman as a minister and found that I could not picture him without his armor and his guns. “Does Archie know what Ray does for a living?” I asked.
“We don’t talk about that,” she said.
“But you stayed,” I said. “What makes you a pariah?”
“I stayed, but my husband didn’t. I have a little boy named Caleb. He’s in the meeting, sitting with his grand-mother. I don’t know how Jesus feels about divorced women, but I can tell you how the women on this planet feel about them. If I so much as talk to any of their men, tongues start wagging.”
“So you’d be glad to get off this planet?” I asked.
“Mr. Harris …”
“Call me Wayson.”
“Wayson, I don’t think we’ll leave this planet. Our little colony might not look like much, but we’ve worked night and day to build it. Delphi is a lot nicer than the other planets I’ve seen. Frankly, Wayson, starting all over again scares me more than that carrier out there.”
Easy to say when you haven’t seen what one of those ships can do , I thought. But I did not say this.
Darkness spread across one side of the horizon. The air continued to cool. I felt a pleasant chill in the breeze. “You haven’t been here that long. Your crops haven’t even sprouted. How hard could it be to start over again?”
Marianne laughed and smiled. Her teeth were white and even. “That field …We worked on that field night and day. We still haven’t cleared it properly. We got out most of the rocks, but there’s a lot more we can do. We’ve planted almost every seed we have in that field, Mr. Harris.”
“Wayson,” I said.
“If we leave that field …I can’t speak for everyone, Wayson, but the people I have spoken with would rather die than leave.
“And it’s not just that we are neo-Baptists. We used to do this for the church, but that ended a long time ago. Now we’re colonists first and neo-Baptists second. The church wanted to create colonies just like the Catholics. That was their deal. Us, we wanted to make a home. Now that we finally have a planet that will sustain us, you can’t really expect us to turn it over.”
“Why did your husband leave?” I asked.
“He thought there must be a better life on other worlds, so he flew off on a supply ship, just like Raymond. He asked me to come with him, but I didn’t want to go. I believed God wanted us to build a colony. I had my boy, my Caleb, and I wanted him to grow up in a righteous colony. I believed that God would bring us to our promised land, our Goshen. I believe he has.
“Do you believe in God, Mr. Harris?”
There was a loaded question. She had to have known that I was a clone. I thought about the conversation about clones and souls that Tabor Shannon had with that priest on Saint Germaine. “I don’t know if I believe in God,” I said. “And I don’t know if he believes in me.”
It was not love at first sight. It probably wasn’t even love, but I felt attracted to Marianne. I liked her. I only had one other woman with which to compare her, a girl named Kasara whom I met on leave. Kasara had been beautiful, irresponsible, self-centered, and fun. She was a girl. Marianne was something else. She was raising a boy on her own; she worked hard on a farm; and she kept her head straight in a lethal situation. If Kasara lived to be a thousand years old, I doubted she would ever grow into the woman Marianne had already become.