Jovah's Angel (10 page)

“He could, if you could just perfect your design,” Noah said with a smile. “It is the invention that is at fault, not the destination.”

“Possibly—but you cannot even be sure of your destination!”

“It has been told to us by descendants of those who have been to Ysral and returned,” Thomas said. “They have described the beautiful land and its sumptuous fruits, the water sweet as honey—”

“I know, I know,” Caleb interrupted, “and nothing but harmony there as the Edori live in peace among their brothers. The Edori have talked of a homeland in Ysral since before the days of slavery under Raphael. But those are myths—legends—those tales are from so long ago that you cannot remember which father first told it to his son. How can you be sure those journeys were actually made—to and from Ysral? There is no proof. There are no mementoes ferried back across the ocean. There are only stories.”

“How do we know that Yovah exists and that he carried us to Samaria in his own cupped hands more than six centuries ago?” Thomas asked gently. “We have no proof that he guards us, that he listens to our prayers—”

“Especially lately,” muttered someone in shadow on the other side of the fire.

“Don't start a theological discussion with me,” Caleb warned. “I am not a man with much religious faith. That is the wrong parallel to draw.”

“No faith?” Thomas asked, clearly incredulous.

“Don't start,” Noah murmured. “Truly—”

“But where exactly is your faith uncertain?” Thomas asked, unheeding. “Surely you believe that Yovah dwells in the heavens above us, ready always to hear our petitions and respond to our needs?”

Caleb took a deep breath and expelled it. “Where is the proof of that?” he asked finally. “How do we know he is there?”

Thomas gestured. “The rains, the winds—”

“They come as they will. We have studied this, a little. When water evaporates into a cooler air mass, it condenses. In a laboratory, you get mist on your glass. Over a continent, you get rain.”

“But the control of the rain! The dispersion of the storms! When the angels fly aloft and sing their prayers, causing the clouds to part—”

“The clouds will eventually part no matter what. Sun and storm make a pattern we can forecast even when we cannot alter it. And,” Caleb added, nodding toward the shadowy form who had spoken earlier, “if the angels ever had any ability to influence weather, they appear to have lost it now.”

“Not the Archangel,” said a woman sitting to his left. Both Caleb and Noah looked sharply her way; Caleb was the first to realize that she referred to the woman who had replaced Delilah at the Eyrie.

“They do say Yovah listens to her when he hears no one else,” another Edori agreed. “But still there are storms.”

Thomas continued addressing Caleb. “And still you do not believe?”

“I am not that impressed by weather.”

“What of the other manifestations? The thunder and the lightning bolts that the god throws down when men have misbehaved or failed to honor him?”

Caleb spread his hands. “What thunder? What lightning? Have you personally witnessed this?”

“In the time of Rachel and Gabriel—”

“Rachel and Gabriel! A hundred and fifty years ago!”

“Yovah sent lightning twice in the space of a few days. Once to bring down the Galo Mountain when the Gloria was not sung on the appointed day. And once to destroy Windy Point, when Gabriel asked him to level that evil place.”

“Were you there?” Caleb asked quietly. “Did you see this? Did anyone you know see this?”

“The tale has been told by the fathers of our fathers' fathers, who were there and saw it. And they told their sons, who told theirs, who told theirs.”

“A story,” Caleb said simply. “A legend.”

“Then why is the Galo mountain burned black with marks that
will not wash out after more than a century of rain? Why is the ground below Windy Point covered with smashed boulders that appear to have been flung from a great height? What destroyed these places, if not the god?”

“Anything,” Caleb replied. “A stone that fell from the sky. Such a stone fell twenty years ago, causing the whole plain north of the Heldoras to light up like fire.”

“But that stone left a crater half the size of the Plain of Sharon,” Noah pointed out. “Not jagged rocks as sharp as cut glass.”

“Well, then, there are other explanations. If in fact lightning smote the mountains, why not just plain old lightning? There's plenty of that. Who said every bolt had to be generated by the god?”

“Well, no, not every bolt, but these were documented—”

“Not well enough for me,” Caleb said.

Thomas continued to regard him steadily, more with amazement than ire. “So,” he said. “you are truly an atheist. Then how do you account for us being here at all—living on Samaria—brought here by what device if not by Yovah himself?”

Caleb grinned. “Now, that's a mystery that puzzles me every time I open my mind to it,” he admitted. “The Librera says Jovah carried us here in his cupped palms, over a great distance, from a far place filled with violence and hatred. But how did he do that? How did he pick us?
Why
did he pick us? Although the why is not nearly as compelling as the how. In his cupped hands? What does that mean? If I chose to carry something over a great distance, I would find a box or a bucket or a container of some sort. Say I were going to move a colony of ants from Gaza to Breven. I wouldn't want to carry them in my
hands
. They'd never make the trip safely. Hands must be a metaphor in this context, but a metaphor for what? And what exactly is meant by a great distance? The distance from Samaria to the stars that we see above us—how far is that? We can't even guess how to measure that sort of space. Perhaps it was no more than the width of the ocean. Perhaps Jovah carried us
away
from Ysral, a place of violence and hatred—”

That, of course, was going too far; half-a-dozen Edori voices rose in protest. Caleb laughed and flung his hands up for peace.

“Anyway, you see, these are the questions that vex me when my thoughts turn to Jovah and the origin of the race,” he said. “I am a man of science. I question everything. And so far, religion
has not provided me with any answers I like.”

Thomas turned to Noah and patted him on the shoulder, while gesturing back toward Caleb. “Be sure and guard this one very closely,” he said in a kind voice. “His way is hard, and he is likely to stumble.”

Noah was grinning. “I do what I can for him. He's fairly hopeless. A good mind, you know, but somewhat disordered.”

“I am not the only one who thinks this way,” Caleb pointed out. “The more we know of science, the more we question about god.”

“Questions are good,” Thomas said. “I hope you find your answer. There is only one, but it may take you your lifetime to discover.”

“Well,” Noah interjected, “there's one answer he hasn't given us yet, and that's whether he'll help build the boat. Yes? No? Let me think about it a day or two?”

“I think it's crazy,” Caleb said. “But I understand your desire. I'll help, if the offer's still open.”

“Yes!” Noah exclaimed, knocking his fists together in a gesture of victory. “I knew you couldn't resist the challenge.”

“You need me,” Caleb said. “You're not smart enough to design such a project on your own.”

With a yelp of protest, Noah lunged for his friend and wrestled him to the ground. They rolled clumsily from side to side, bumping into bodies and kicking apart the fire. Around them was the sound of Edori laughter and the smell of disturbed ashes. Caleb was laughing too hard to put up much of a struggle, but he eventually managed to fight himself to a sitting position, with Noah's hands still clamped around his neck. It was a raucous end to a pleasurable day, and he found himself preferring it to another night at Seraph. When Noah released him, one of the Edori brought them each another mug of ale, and they continued drinking companionably well into the night.

Thus, Caleb was not at his best the next day, more tired than he should have been and dragging from the effects of the alcohol. He put in a good day's work (not at Seraph this week; one of the music schools wanted him to design a machine that would automatically strike hammers against their collection of bells), and figured he would make an early evening of it at his own place for a change.

It was a regime he followed for three days running, and he was surprised at how pleased his body was at the early nights and
extra hours of sleep. He was not surprised, the evening of that third day, when one of the baker's daughters told him he had company awaiting him on the balcony outside his door.

“It's an angel lady,” she said, her voice lowered, as if those bright wings endowed the beings with enhanced hearing as well as flight and beauty.

“No doubt,” Caleb said a little wryly. “Why don't you—I'll take some of those sweet rolls as well, while I'm here. Since it looks like I'll be entertaining.”

The girl put four sticky buns into a bag. “She's very beautiful,” she offered. “I didn't know you knew any angels.”

“Well, I know one.”

“She didn't give me her name, and when I asked what I should tell you, she said, ‘Tell him it's the Archangel.”'

Caleb laughed, although it struck him as odd that Delilah would so name herself before this young girl—before anyone, actually. It was a title she seldom laid claim to.

“Thanks for the advance warning,” he said, and left the shop to take the iron steps two at a time. But when he arrived at the top of the landing, he received a profound shock: The slim blond angel standing motionless before him was not Delilah. It was no one he had ever seen before in his life.

Alleluia had left the Eyrie with a sense of relief. So many of her days seemed hedged about with difficult decisions, deep uncertainties, tasks to be performed that she had somehow overlooked. Now at least, however unsuccessful her mission might prove to be, she was taking action, and this made her feel somehow stronger. She was a woman with purpose, on a mission, with a goal.

Even better—she was escaping. She had always loved the Eyrie, ever since she first went there to live—loved its glowing rosy walls, its endless labyrinth of rooms, the color and motion and sound that made it such a vivid place. Especially the sound, for the Eyrie was alive with music. Night and day, singers gathered in two- and three-person shifts to sing from the open room built at the highest point of the hold—so, night and day, the air was flavored with the sweetest of music, the heart was soothed by the most harmonious of sounds. Every singer in the hold took his or her turn in the duets and small chorales; it was one of the details for which the Eyrie was famous.

But sometimes—and it was almost sacrilege in a land devoted to the principle of harmony—sometimes Alleya found herself longing for a moment or two of silence. An hour, perhaps; indeed, she would not complain at a day's worth of stopped music. It was one of the reasons she so often took refuge in the soundproofed music rooms; there she could have complete quiet for as long as she desired.

Now, of course, that angelic harmony was the least of the noises to assault her. More likely, it was a merchant's angry voice or the sound of someone calling her name on a note of panic.
Doors slamming. Arguments. She longed for a cool, still place where no one spoke for hours at a time.

In fact, that was one of the reasons she had decided to make Mount Sinai her first stop, although she had perfectly legitimate reasons for going there, too. Knowledge of past history had served her so well in her dealings with the Manadavvi that she thought general research might give her more ammunition in future debates.

It was Samuel who had suggested that Mount Sinai might offer other treasures as well, for it was the first site to be opened by the oracles when the colonists arrived on Samaria. It was generally held to have the most complete library of texts brought by those early settlers. But those manuscripts, as Alleya pointed out, were in a language long since discarded by the Samarians.

“But isn't that the language the oracles still use?” Samuel asked. “When they're speaking with the god?”

She had stared at him, for of course he was right. “And they must learn it somehow,” she added for him. “So there must be—what? Grammar books? Manuals? Dictionaries?”

“Something,” he agreed. “If you look, you'll find something. Or you can always ask Job or Mary how they learned and if they'll teach you.”

They had looked at each other a long time, weighing that. Then—“Nooo,” they said in unison, and they both laughed. Alleya had so far managed to steer pretty much clear of the oracles; she didn't need one more set of people telling her what to do.

So on a cold, brilliant day she left for Mount Sinai, the first stop on a trip to Luminaux to look for an electrician who could bring her music machines back to life. It sounded very productive and necessary—not at all like she was fleeing to a place of silence and peace.