“I’d prefer to be just Adel, if you don’t mind,” he said. “And no, I’m not particularly religious, I’m afraid.”
She sagged, as if he had just piled more weight on her frail shoulders. “Then I will pray for you. If you will excuse me.” She stepped back into her room and the blue door reformed.
plus buzzed—we were rude to her—
—we told the truth—
“Don’t worry,” said Kamilah. “You can’t offend her. Or rather, you can’t not offend her, since just about everything we do seems to offend her. Which is why she spends almost all her time in her room. She claims she’s praying, although Speedy only knows for sure. So I’m in Delhi here, and next door you’re in The Ranch.”
—Kamilah’s next door?—buzzed minus.
—we hardly know her don’t even think it—
—too late—
They stopped in front of the door to his room, which was identical to Sister’s, except it was green. “Press your right hand to it anywhere, say your name and it will ID you.” After Adel followed these instructions, the door considered for a moment and then vanished with a hiss.
Adel guessed that the room was supposed to remind him of home. It didn’t exactly, because he’d lived with his parents in a high rise in Great Randall, only two kilometers from Harvest’s first MASTA. But it was like houses he had visited out in the countryside. Uncle Durwin’s, for example. Or the Pariseaus’. The floor appeared to be of some blondish tongue-and-grooved wood. Two of the walls were set to show a golden tallgrass prairie with a herd of chocolate-colored beasts grazing in the distance. Opposite a rolltop desk were three wooden chairs with velvet upholstered seats gathered around a low oval table. A real plant with leaves like green hearts guarded the twin doorways that opened into the bedroom and the bathroom.
Adel’s bed was king-sized with a half moon head and footboards tied to posts that looked like tree trunks with the bark stripped off. It had a salmon-colored bedspread with twining rope pattern. However, we should point out that Adel did not notice anything at all about his bed until much later.
—oh no—
“Hello,” said Adel.
—oh yes—
“Hello yourself, lovely boy.” The woman was propped on a nest of pillows. She was wearing a smile and shift spun from fog. It wisped across her slim, almost boyish, body concealing very little. Her eyes were wide and the color of honey. Her hair was spiked in silver.
Kamilah spoke from behind him. “Speedy, he just stepped off the damn stage ten minutes ago. He’s not thinking of fucking.”
“He’s a nineteen year old male, which means he can’t think of anything but fucking.” She had a wet, whispery voice, like waves washing against pebbles. “Maybe he doesn’t like girls. I like being female, but I certainly don’t have to be.” Her torso flowed beneath the fog and her legs thickened.
“Actually, I do,” said Adel. “Like girls, I mean.”
“Then forget Speedy.” Kamilah crossed the room to the bed and stuck her hand through the shape on the bed. It was all fog, and Kamilah’s hand parted it. “This is just a fetch that Speedy projects when she feels like bothering us in person.”
“I have to keep my friends company,” said the Godspeed.
“You can keep him company later.” Kamilah swiped both hands through the fetch and she disappeared. “Right now he’s going to put some clothes on and then we’re going to find Meri and Jarek,” she said.
“Wait,” said Adel. “What did you do to her? Where did she go?”
“She’s still here,” Kamilah said. “She’s always everywhere, Adel. You’ll get used to it.”
“But what did she want?”
The wall to his right shimmered and became a mirror image of the bedroom. The Godspeed was back in her nest on his bed. “To give you a preview of coming attractions, lovely boy.”
Kamilah grasped Adel by the shoulders, turned him away from the wall and aimed him at the closet. “Get changed,” she said. “I’ll be in the sitting room.”
Hanging in the closet were three identical peach-colored uniforms with blue piping at the seams. The tight pantaloons had straps that would pass under the instep of his feet. The dress blue blouse had the all-too-familiar pulsing heart patch over the left breast. The jacket had a double row of enormous silver zippers and bore two merit pins which proclaimed Adel a true believer of the Host of True Flesh.
Except that he wasn’t.
Adel had long since given up on his mother’s little religion but had never found a way to tell her. Seeing his uniforms filled him with guilt and dread. He’d come two hundred and fifty-seven light-years and he had still not escaped her. He’d expected she would pack the specs for True Flesh uniforms in his luggage transmission, but he’d thought she’d send him at least some civilian clothes as well.
—we have to lose the clown suit—
“So how long are you here for?” called Kamilah from the next room.
“A year,” replied Adel. “With a second year at my option.” Then he whispered, “Speedy, can you hear me?”
“Always. Never doubt it.” Her voice came from the tall blue frell-leather boots that were part of his uniform. “Are we going to have secrets from Kamilah? I love secrets.”
“I need something to wear,” he whispered. “Anything but this.”
“A year with an option?” Kamilah called. “Gods, Adel! Who did you murder?”
“Are we talking practical?” said the Godspeed. “Manly? Artistic? Rebellious?”
He stooped and spoke directly into left boot. “Something basic,” he said. “Scrubs like Kamilah’s will be fine for now.”
Two blobs extruded from the closet wall and formed into drab pants and a shirt.
“Adel?” called Kamilah. “Are you all right?”
“I didn’t murder anyone.” He stripped off the robe and pulled briefs from a drawer. At least the saniwear wasn’t official True Flesh. “I wrote an essay.”
Softwalks bloomed from the floor. “The hair on your legs, lovely boy, is like the wire that sings in my walls.” The Godspeed’s voice was a purr.
The closet seemed very small then. As soon as he’d shimmied into his pants, Adel grabbed the shirt and the softwalks and escaped. He didn’t bother with socks.
“So how did you get here, Kamilah?” He paused in the bedroom to pull on the shirt before entering the sitting room.
“I was sent here as a condition of my parole.”
“Really?” Adel sat on one of the chairs and snapped on his softwalks. “Who did you murder?”
“I was convicted of improper appropriation,” she said. “I misused a symbol set that was alien to my cultural background.”
—say again?—buzzed minus.
Adel nodded and smiled. “I have no idea what that means.”
“That’s all right.” Her medallion showed a fist. “It’s a long story for another time.”
We pause here to reflect on the variety of religious beliefs in the Human Continuum. In ancient times, atheists believed that humanity’s expansion into space would extinguish its historic susceptibility to superstition. And for a time, as we rode primitive torches to our cramped habitats and attempted to terraform the mostly-inhospitable worlds of our home system, this expectation seemed reasonable. But then the discovery of quantum scanning and the perfection of molecular assembly led to the building of the first MASTA systems and everything changed.
Quantum scanning is, after all, destructive. Depending on exactly what has been placed on the stage, that which is scanned is reduced to mere probabilistic wisps, an exhausted scent or perhaps just soot to be wiped off the sensors. In order to jump from one MASTA to another, we must be prepared to die. Of course, we’re only dead for a few seconds, which is the time it takes for the assembler to reconstitute us from a scan. Nevertheless, the widespread acceptance of MASTA transportation means that all of us who had come to thresholds have died and been reborn.