Anvil of Stars

Rosa looked puzzled for an instant, then smiled again and raised her hands, sweeping all around. “The Most High is never not touching us. But it does not tell us what to do, and it does not speak to us in words; its presence is the conviction we all feel, that there must be a loving observer to whom we are very important, and who loves us.

“The love the Most High feels is not the love of sexuality and reproduction—it is the love of one of us for our own bodies, our own cells, a constant love made of care and nourishment. But we do not interfere with our own cells.”

Martin could poke holes in this like ripping a finger through rotten cloth, but he did not want to; he found himself explaining away the inconsistencies, the poor metaphors, as weaknesses in Rosa’s perceptions, not in her message.

“I don’t think anything watches me, or cares about me,” Thorkild Lax said. “I watch out for myself and for my crew-mates.”

“I felt that way. I felt lost,” Rosa said. “I thought no one cared—not my crewmates, certainly. I was slovenly, out of touch. I didn’t really belong. No one was more lost than I was. But there was this final loving in me, this urge to reach out.” She folded her hands in front of her, then swept them out and up like two parting doves, fingers spread. “I reached out in the middle of my pain—”

“Enough of this shit,” a masculine voice called out. “Tell the story.”

The crowd turned and Martin saw George Dempsey, blushing at the accumulated stares. He got up, started to leave, but Alexis Baikal reached up and held on to his hand, pulled him gently down, and he sat.

Martin felt a warmth, and then a tremor of unease. The group spirit, the bonding again—the wish for strong answers, for transcending love. The special time.

He thought of his father and mother, and the touch his father could give, and the warmth of his mother, large and all-encompassing, the way she wore full dresses to cover her ample figure, the sweetness of her round face wrapped in dark silken hair, the complex and giving love of both; and he thought of that love writ large, the beginning place for that sort of love.

“How do I reach up and out?” Terry Loblolly asked, voice small in the cafeteria.

“When you need to, you will do it as a hungry flower blooms beneath the sun,” Rosa said. “If you do not need enough, you will not; your time is not yet.”

“If we don’t love, does the Most High blame us? Does he hate us?”

“The Most High is neither male nor female. It does not blame, it does not judge. It loves, and it gathers.” She curled her arms as if to gather unseen children to her breast and hug them.

“I need that touch badly,” Drusilla Norway said. “But I don’t feel it. Is that my fault?”

“You have no faults except in your own eyes. All fault is human judgment.”

“Then who will punish us for our sins?” Alexis Baikal asked, voice distorted with sorrow.

“Only ourselves. Punishment is our way of training ourselves for this level of life. The Most High does not acknowledge a court of law, a court of judgment. We are forgiven before we die, every moment of every day, whether we seek forgiveness or not.”

Martin thought of Theresa waiting at the end of this long journey to explain these things to him, part of the all-enveloping warmth; he put Theresa’s face over Rosa’s, and wanted to sleep in the comfort of this thought, hoped it would not go away.

“Is Jesus Christ the son of the Most High?” Michael Vineyard asked.

“Yes,” Rosa said, her smile broadening. “We are all its children. Christ must have felt the warmth like a fusion fire, even more strongly than I do. It glows from his words and deeds. The Buddha also felt the warmth, as did Muhammad…”

Hakim seemed displeased to hear the Prophet’s name in Rosa’s mouth.

“… And the many prophets and sages of Earth. They were mirrors to the sun.”

“All of them?” Michael persisted.

“All knew part of the truth.”

“Do you know only part?” Michael asked.

“A small part. You must explain the rest to me,” Rosa said. “Tell me what you find in yourselves.”

In murmurs, in challenges and questions, in Rosa’s parables and explanations, give and take, for the next two hours the crew spoke and confessed. A current went through the room as something palpable, as if she were a tree, and the wind of feeling passed around her, through her. When others in the crew cried, Martin found tears in his own eyes; when others laughed with a revelation of joy, he laughed also.

“I am not a prophet,” Rosa said. “I am simply a voice, no better than yours.”

“How can we hate our enemies, when they are just like us?” someone asked.

“We do not hate them; but they are not just like us, they are desperately wrong and we fight them with all our strength, for that is how we correct the imbalances. We must never be cruel, and we must never hate, for that damages us; but we must never forget our duties.”

Martin felt the Job fall into place in his thoughts; nothing holy about death and destruction, but a necessary part of their existence, their duty. A natural act, action to reaction.

Nothing they did was sanctioned; nothing they did was judged except by themselves, and by the standards that flooded them from the light of the Most High. The passion of revenge had no place here; it was an abomination. But the duty of correcting the balance, that was as essential as the breath in his lungs and the blood in his veins.

Groups pushed in close around Rosa, hands linked. Together they sang hymns, the wordless Hum, Christmas carols, ballads, whatever they remembered, while others searched the libraries for more songs. All their musical instruments had been absorbed in the emergency, but their voices remained.

The singing lasted an hour. Some were hoarse and weary, and some fell asleep on the floor, but still Rosa ministered to them. Jeanette Snap Dragon brought her a chair and she sat in it atop the table, her red hair standing out in radiant frizz around her head. Jeanette and others sat around her, on the table, at her feet. Jeanette placed her head on Rosa’s knees and seemed to sleep.

Others came, until almost all the crew filled the cafeteria. Some looked bewildered, feeling the current, but not letting it pass through them yet; hopeful but confused, resistant but needy.

The special time. Ariel came close to him and he hugged her as a sister. She looked up at him, head against his shoulder, and he smiled, loving all his fellows.

At Rosa’s request, the floor softened. The crew lay together on the floor, around the table, as the other tables and chairs lowered and were absorbed. Jeanette’s wand projected light behind Rosa and the room fell dark.

“Sleep,” Rosa said, her hair an indistinct shadow in the rosy glow. “Soon we begin our duties again. Sleep in peace, for there is work to do. Sleep, and reach into your dreams to find the truth. When you sleep you are most open to the wishes of your friends, and to the love of the Most High. Sleep.”

Martin closed his eyes.

Someone tapped his shoulder. Hans kneeled beside him. He shook Martin, whispered into his ear, “Cut it out. Come with me.”

Martin rose, a shock like electricity tingling through him. He seemed stuck between two worlds, shame and exaltation. Hans’ grim expression and tense marching posture seemed a reproof. Ariel followed, and at first it seemed Hans might send her back, but he said, “All right. Both of you.”

Rex Live Oak stood in the corridor, smiling wolfishly.

“Fantastic,” Hans said, shaking his head. “She’s so good. She’s got them all now.”

Martin’s head cleared as if with a dash of ice water.

“She just needed a little help and encouragement,” Hans said. Rex chuckled. “I damn near felt it myself. Didn’t you? I think we have this situation under control now.”

Ariel touched Martin’s shoulder but he shrugged away the touch.

“All she needed was a little reason to live, something just for herself,” Hans said.

“Don’t slick her too much,” Rex said. “Keep her lean and hungry.”

Hans shook his head ruefully. “Got to ration my blessings,” he said. “I only have so much to be generous with.”

Rex and Hans walked along the corridor. Ariel watched Martin for a moment and saw the anger on his face.