Shatterday

I wish to God I could remember what the line was.

“Quae nocent docent.”

Then, and only then, like some mysterious Prisoner in the Iron Mask hidden from everyone’s sight, only then, when the gigantic vessel slipped out of normal continuity and entered the megaflow, only then did the man they called Moth emerge from his stateroom.

As the immense tambour shields rolled down into the body of the vessel, exposing the boiling white jelly that was the megaflow surging past beyond the great crystal ports, the door to his stateroom rolled up and he emerged, dressed entirely in white. Clown-white circles around his dark, haunted eyes. Everyone looked and stopped talking.

The lounge of the gigantic vessel was packed, with voyagers grouped by twos and threes and fours at the bubble tables with their thin stalk supports. Voyagers who had boarded at 4:00, at Now, at Here, at three dimensions—bound for 41:00, for the 85th of February, for Yet To Be, for There, for the last stop before the end of measurable space and time and thought. They looked at Moth and they stopped talking.

Their faces said: Who is this person?

And he walked down among them haltingly; he did not know them. This ship of strangers, and Moth.

He sat down at a table with one empty chair. A man and a woman already sat there. The woman was slim, neither attractive nor unattractive, a mild-looking woman, difficult to discompose. The man looked kind, there were crinkle lines at the comers of his eyes. Moth sat down across from them, as the gigantic vessel hurtled through the megaflow, and the kind-looking man said, “It wasn’t your fault.”

Moth looked sad. “I can’t believe that. I think it must have been my fault.”

“No, no,” the unperturbed woman said quickly, “it wasn’t! There was nothing that could be done. Your son would have died nonetheless. You can’t castigate yourself for believing in God. You mustn’t.”

Moth leaned forward and put his face in his hands. His voice came faintly. “It was insane. Dead is dead. I should have known that… I did know it.”

The kind-looking man reached across and touched Moth’s hand. “The sickness was put on him by God, because of something you had done, you or your wife. It couldn’t have been the child. He was too young to have known sin. But you knew you or your wife were filled with sin. And so your child fell ill. But if you could be as brave as the Bible said you must be, you could save him.”

The calm woman gently pried Moth’s hands away from his face and forced him to look into her eyes. She held his hands across the table and said, “Doctors could not save him… you knew that. God sets no store by science, only faith. Keeping them from the child was necessary. Hiding him in the basement was important.”

Moth whispered, “But he grew worse. He sickened. It was too cold down there, perhaps. I might have let the family do what they wanted, let a physician see him, at least.”

“No,” the kind man said imperatively. “No! Faith cannot be broken. You maintained. You were right. Even when he died.”

“It was holy the way you sat vigil over him,” the woman said. “Day after day. You said he would rise on the second or third day. And you had belief in God.”

Moth began to cry silently. “He lay there. Three days, and he lay there. His color changed.”

“Then a week,” the kind man said. “Faith! You had faith! In a week he would rise.”

“No,” Moth said, “not in a week. Dead.”

“Twenty-one days, a magic number. It would have been on the twenty-first day. But they came and the law made you give him up, and they arrested you, and all through the hearings you insisted on God’s Will, and your good wife, she stood by you through the hatred and the anguish as outsiders reviled you.”

“He never rose. They buried him in the earth,” Moth said, drying his eyes. The clown-white had run down his cheeks.

“So you were forced to leave. To go outside. To get away to a place where God would hear you. It was the right way; you had no other choice. Either believe, or become one with the faithless people who filled your world. You need not have guilt,” the kind man said. He touched Moth’s sleeve.

“You’ll find peace,” the calm woman said.

“Thank you,” Moth said, rising and leaving them.

The man and woman sank back in their chairs, and the lights that had been lit in their eyes as they spoke to Moth… dimmed and grew sullen. Moth moved through the lounge.

A young man with an intense expression and nervous hand movements sat alone. He stared out the port at the megaflow.

“May I sit down here?” Moth asked.

The young man looked at him, taking his eyes off the swirling, bubbling jelly of the megaflow reluctantly. But he did not reply. There was loathing in his expression. He turned back to the crystal port without answering Moth.

“Please. May I sit with you? I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t talk to cowards,” the young man said. His jaw muscles spasmed with anger.

“I’m a coward, yes, I’ll admit it;” Moth said helplessly. “But, please, let me sit.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, sit already! But just shut your mouth; don’t speak to me!” He turned once again to the port.

Moth sat down, folded his hands on the table, did not speak, stared steadily at the young man’s profile.

After a few moments the young man turned his face. He looked at Moth. “You make me sick. I’d like to punch you in the face, you disgusting coward.”

“Yes,” said Moth miserably, “I wouldn’t stop you. I’m a coward, as you say.”

“Worse! Worse than just a coward. A hypocrite, a silly posturing fool! You spent your whole life playing the big man, the big stud, the cavalier. The tough, cynical mover and shaker. But you weren’t any smarter or tougher than any other simpleminded jerk who thought with his groin.”

“I made mistakes,” Moth said. “Just like everybody else. There’s never enough experience. I thought I knew what I was doing. I fell in love with her.”

“Oh, that’s terrific,” the young man said. The tone was frankly vicious. “Terrific. You fell in love. You moron! She was nineteen. You were over twice her age. Why did you let her whipsaw you into marriage? Come on, you idiot, why?”

“She said she loved me, thought I was better than other men, said if I didn’t marry her she would go away and I’d never see her again. I was in love, I’d only been in love once before. No, that isn’t right: I’d only loved once before. The thought of never seeing that face again filled me with fear. That was it: I was afraid I’d never see her again: I couldn’t live with that.”

“So you married her.”

“Yes.”

“But you couldn’t sleep with her, couldn’t make love to her. What did you expect from her? She was a child.”

“She talked like a woman. She said all the right things an adult woman says. I didn’t realize she was still confused, didn’t know what she wanted.”

“But you couldn’t make love to her, isn’t that so?”

“Yes, it’s so. She was like a child, a daughter; my thoughts weren’t straight; I didn’t realize that was what was happening. All interest in sex just vanished; for her, for any woman. I thought—”

“What she thought. That you were impotent. That you were falling apart. She got more frightened every day. A lifetime to spend with a man who would never show her any passion.”

“But there was love. I loved her. Without reserve. I showed it in a million ways, every hour of the day that