I sign myself, your ancestor,
And there was a scrawl that Jon could not make out.
He let the Letter drop to the dust-laden counter top and words from the Letter hammered in his brain.
A ship that started in a myth and moved toward a legend.
But that was wrong, the Letter said.
There was a purpose and there was a destination. A destination? What was that?
The Book, he thought—the Book will tell what destination is.
With shaking hands he hauled the Book out of the drawer and opened it to D and followed down the columns with an unsteady finger, desquamative, dessert, destinate, destination
Destination (n) The place set for the end of a journey, or to which something is sent; a place or point aimed at.
The Ship had a destination.
The Ship was going somewhere.
The day would come when it would reach the place that it was going.
And that would be the end, of course.
The Ship was going somewhere.
But how? Did the Ship move?
He shook his head in disbelief. That the Ship moved was unbelievable. It was the stars, not the Ship, that moved.
There must be, he felt certain, another explanation.
He picked up the Letter's second sheet and read it through, but didn't understand it all, for his brain was tired and befuddled. He put the Letter and the Book and bulb back in the drawer.
He closed the drawer and fled.
THEY had not noticed his absence in the lower level and he moved among them, trying to be one of them again, trying to pick up the old cloak of familiarity and wrap it around his sudden nakedness—but he was not one of them.
A terrible knowledge had made him not one of them. The knowledge that the Ship had a purpose and a destination—that it had started somewhere and was going somewhere and that when it got where it was going that would be the End, not of the Folk, nor of the Ship, but only of the Journey.
He went into the lounge and stood for a moment just inside the doorway. Joe was playing chess with Pete and a swift anger flared within him at the thought that Joe would play with someone else, for Joe had not played chess with anyone but him for many, many years. But the anger dropped quickly from him and he looked at the chessmen for the first time, really saw them for the first time, and he saw that they were idle hunks of carven wood and that they had no part in this new world of the Letter and the Purpose.
George was sitting by himself playing solitaire and some of the others were playing poker with the metal counters they called "money," although why they called it money was more than anyone could tell. It was just a name, they said, like the Ship was the name for the ship and the Stars were what the stars were called. Louise and Irma were sitting in one corner listening to an old, almost worn-out recording of a song and the shrill, pinched voice of the woman who sang screeched across the room:
Jon walked into the room and George looked up from the cards. "We've been looking for you."
"We've been looking for you."
"I went for a walk," said Jon. "A long walk. On the center levels. It's all wrong up there. It's up, not in. You climb all the way."
"The stars have not moved all day," said George.
Joe turned his head and said, "The stars won't move again. This is as it was spoken. This is the beginning of the End."
"What is the End?" asked Jon.
"I don't know," said Joe and went back to his game.
The End, Jon thought. And none of them know what the End will be, just as they do not know what a ship is, or what money is, or the stars.
"We are meeting," said George. Jon nodded.
He should have known that they would meet. They'd meet for comfort and security. They'd tell the Story once again and they'd pray before the Picture. And I, he thought, and I?
He swung from the room and went out into the corridor, thinking that it might have been best if there'd been no Letter and no Book, for then he'd still be one of them and not a naked stranger standing by himself—not a man torn with wondering which was right, the Story or the Letter.
He found his cubicle and went into it. Mary was there, stretched out on the bed, with the pillows piled beneath her head and the dim bulb burning. "There you are," she said.
"I went for a walk," said Jon.
"You missed the meal," said Mary. "Here it is." He saw it on the table and went there, drawing up a chair. "Thanks," he said.
She yawned. "It was a tiring day," she said. "Everyone was so excited. They are meeting."
There was the protein yeast, the spinach and the peas, a thick slice of bread and a bowl of soup, tasty with mushrooms and herbs. And the water bottle, with the carefully measured liquid.
He bent above the soup bowl, spooning the food into his mouth.
"You aren't excited, dear. Not like the rest."
He lifted his head and looked at her. Suddenly he wondered if he might not tell her, but thrust the thought swiftly to one side, suddenly afraid that in his longing for human understanding he finally would tell her. He must watch himself, he thought.
For the telling of it would be proclaimed heresy, the denying of the Story, of the Myth and Legend. And once she had heard it, she like any of the others, would shrink from him and he'd see the loathing in her eyes.
With himself, it was different, for he had lived on the fringe of heresy for almost all his life, ever since that day his father had talked to him and told him of the Book. For the Book itself was a part of heresy.
"I have been thinking," he said, and she asked, "What is there to think about?"
And what she said was true, of course. There was nothing to think about. It was all explained, all neat and orderly. The Story told of the Beginning and the beginning of the End. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing for one to think about.
There had been Chaos and out of the Chaos order had been born in the shape of the Ship and outside the Ship there was Chaos still. It was only within the Ship that there was order and efficiency and law—or the many laws, the waste not, want not law and all the other laws. There would be an End, but the End was something that was still a mystery, although there still was hope, for with the Ship had been born the Holy Pictures and these, in themselves, were a symbol of that hope, for within the picture were the symbolism-values of other ordered places (bigger ships, perhaps) and all of these symbol-values had come equipped with names, with Tree and Book and Sky and Clouds and other things one could not see, but knew were there, like the Wind and Sunshine.
The Beginning had been long ago, so many generations back that the stories and the tales and folklore of the mighty men and women of those long-gone ages pinched out with other shadowy men and women still misty in the background.
"I was scared at first," said Mary, "but I am scared no longer. This is the way that it was spoken and there is nothing we can do except to know it is for the best."
He went on eating, listening to the sound of passing feet, to the sound of voices going past the door. Now there was no hurry in the feet, no terror in the voices. It hadn't taken long, he thought, for the Folk to settle down. Their Ship had been turned topsy-turvy, but it still was for the best.
And he wondered if they might not be the ones who were right, after all—and the Letter wrong. He would have liked to have stepped to the door and -hailed some of those who were passing by so he could talk with them, but there was no one in the ship (not even Mary) he could talk to.
Unless it were Joshua.
