Chapter Four

~ Leda ~

 

Leda Jones had come very far. Now she floated in the autumn sea. Her hands untangled fronds of seaweed from wires, separating plant and metal. The cables’ vibration needed to be controlled, or it would shake the plants apart.

God and Lee had guided her to this wonderful place. Here Leda could live in peace and be surrounded by friends. Gallant Sir Phillip and bold Brother Duke had led their family to a promised land. Everyone was excited at the new work, the comfortable isolation, the mesmerizing scenery. She kept looking up from her work to see the endless blue sky fading into the sea. In the distance, her friends worked and sang with many voices that were one voice. She shut her eyes and listened before adding her own weak, hesitant sound.

Back on land, she’d felt the same way about the Holy Confederacy’s village, surrounded by woods, yet bustling with the family’s farming and handicraft work. The honest labor of laundering clothes, sewing, and carving wood had driven from her mind the thoughts of her descent, the life she’d left behind when she joined the family. Leda shivered at memories best left gone, of pain and fear and guilt, but she was happy now. Safe.

One evening, after sunset prayers, she stayed behind on the station’s deck. At this hour the strangers were busy elsewhere. Since there was nothing to do until bedtime, she felt like having some quiet instead of going into the tower. She saw a darkening, twinkling ocean under a burning red sky built up with cityscapes of clouds. A world turned upside-down.

Her clothes felt bizarre, too. The slick grey dive-skin contrasted with her coffee-dark complexion, and the bloomer pants were unfamiliar. She could move well enough in them to try climbing the ladder on the deckhouse, the captain’s office on the topdeck. Now she was above everything with the cold steel rungs in her hands and the illusion of a solid island falling away. Past the deck’s little wall there was nothing, just water dark and far away. She crouched on the deckhouse roof and clutched the flagpole there, but found that the wind was too strong, pulling at her like a living thing. So Leda scuttled back down to the more stable, reassuring world of the open platform. She lacked the strength to stand above.

A faint whirr reached her from the stairs. When she turned to look, she saw that robot.

She’d seen this “Lark” before, but hadn’t had a good look at it. It stood at a child’s height, with a body of segmented plates in tan and brown, textured like fur. A tail clicked and curled behind it and little ears swiveled. The effect was like the work of a mad medieval armorer.

“Hello?” said Leda, not sure what she was dealing with.

Lark stopped and turned its head to see her, then approached methodically. “Hello. I’ve seen you, but I don’t know your name.”

Leda told it, him, rather. “What exactly are you for?”

“Nothing in particular. This body is designed for ocean use and social interaction.” Lark paused. “The Net doesn’t know you, ma’am.”

Leda watched the last of the sun. “I left my original name behind.”

“Interesting. So did I.”

Leda looked at him again. “But you’re a machine.”

“As are you.”

“Excuse me?” said Leda. “I’m a child of God, and you, you’re something else.”

“You’re a human. Humans are animals and animals are biological machines. Therefore–”

“People aren’t animals!” Although certain people acted that way.

“You’re mistaken.” Lark turned slightly as though talking to someone else, then said, “What about the word ‘beast’? We seem to be arguing about definitions. Would you agree if I said you are an animal in the sense of a biological creature, but not a beast in the sense of an amoral, non-sentient creature?”

Leda boggled. “I suppose. What are you, a dictionary?”

“I like learning things. If you have time, then I’d like information about your group.”

Leda relaxed a bit from the machine’s strange conversation, falling back on the lessons she’d learned. It didn’t matter that her audience wasn’t human; it would reassure her to speak the truth even to the empty sky. “This is a fallen world, you know. There was a time when people knew how to live in peace–”

“When?”

“A long time ago. But now the world is full of pain and struggle, and we need something to hang onto. We found God and Lee.” Facing the sea, she tried to retell the story of the great general who’d resisted all the temptations of the world to lead his people for an ideal.

“That General Lee account doesn’t match generally accepted facts,” said Lark.

“But it’s the truth,” said Leda.

“Based on what sources?”

“Sir Phillip, of course. God speaks to him and we can sense the rightness of it.”

Again Lark looked away, ears perked, before answering her. “Phillip is your prophet?”

“He was chosen by God.”

“But there is no God.”

“What!” said Leda. “What would you know about God? You’re a toy!”

Lark’s ears went flat. “I’m not a toy. Excuse me. I have work to do.” The robot left her alone, and with a headache.

She felt like she’d been mugged. You didn’t attack people’s faith like that! Lark’s beliefs, if he even had beliefs, were the work of some scientist who’d programmed him to think that way. She felt sorry for the robot, a kind of thinking being yet a soulless captive to some atheist’s mental domination. Lark would never really be free, because freedom was the ability to fulfill God’s will.

But maybe, could you serve God without even knowing Him?

* * * *

Lark’s existence weighed on Leda over the weeks. Every day but Sunday she worked among the plants and fish to create new life from the raw elements, bringing forth wealth from nothing. One evening, she sat at the docks with Sir Phillip and two sisters of the family, Megan and Ann. They’d finished work and were drying in the sunset heat.

“I’m still not comfortable with these clothes,” Ann said. “They’re almost sinful.”

Sir Phillip had seen that their suits and dresses were impractical for the swimming and stair-climbing that this place required. “It’s not an ideal situation that you sisters should be made to dress this way. What you need is to decently cover yourselves.”

The words made Leda’s swimming clothes feel slick and tight as though she were naked. “What should we do? I can sew something more traditional.”

“Brother Duke said that these outfits were right and good for swimming, though,” said Sister Ann.

“Did he, now?” Phillip stared at the sun as it sizzled into the sea, paving a golden road from it to Castor. He stroked his beard. “Troublesome. I will pray on this.”

It struck Leda that their clothing was far from the most important issue facing Phillip’s people. The work was the most critical thing, wasn’t it?

“Sir?” she asked. “Is it right, what we’re doing out here?”

“Of course it’s right,” said Phillip. “I was guided to this place so that we could build a new life.”

“But there are unbelievers here.”

Phillip stared at her with his mouth slightly open, as in disbelief that she would dispute his ideas. Ashamed, Leda looked down. “I’m sorry. The outsiders have a robot that says strange things.”

Sir Phillip grunted. “The strangers aren’t part of our family. What good are their ideas or their toys?”

“Of course, sir.”

She’d burned bridges to come here, she thought from her bunk that night. No relatives or outside friends anymore, no filthy apartment on a dark street. Here she was safe in a concrete castle surrounded by brothers and sisters of the spirit who loved her unconditionally. The only real cost for this new life was to have faith, to trust God and Lee and their prophet Phillip. Plenty of other people had no problem doing that, so what was wrong with her?

It was that stupid machine! It was almost against the rules to talk with him, since he was a walking encyclopedia, probably tainted by constant contact with the outside world. What sort of person would make a machine that taught people to doubt? Or should she blame the machine himself? Full of questions, she couldn’t sleep. She should give that Lark a piece of her mind!

The dormitory breathed, as her sisters exhaled in time with the waves. The rhythm guided her in getting out of bed, into sandals and a robe. She climbed with insignificant footsteps to the deck. Here the wind joined in with the wave sounds and the hum of machinery to drown out her straying thoughts. What would Saint Lee have done in this situation, questioning his place in the world?

He’d had to, once. As Sir Phillip often told, Lee’s defining moment came when that tyrant Lincoln offered to give him the Northern Army. Lee had made his stand instead with the people he belonged to, those nearest to him by blood and spirit. He put Lincoln behind him and gave up the temptations of the world. Leda could look out to sea and picture Saint Lee riding the Merrimack, on which he’d had many an adventure, but telling her that the real temptations were here on Castor! Here was relative comfort and safety, instead of the troubles of the fallen world outside. Maybe she’d actually chosen the easier path and had run from her problems.

“Sir Phillip isn’t a tempter!” she told the wind. There was no answer. She needed to tell it to someone who could listen, and her thoughts were too confused to bother her sisters with. There was no point in making the rest of them hurt, too.

The stairs took her down to North Tower, down to Dockside, before she found Lark. He and that girl Tess sat in a pool of light, playing a game. Those two kept odd hours.

“Leda?” asked Tess. The girl wore a towel around her shoulders like a badge of office, and had a big plastic bowl and other junk stacked beside her.

“You know my name?”

“Yeah.” Tess pointed to Lark. “He met you.”

The robot pushed a red plastic pyramid on the game board. Tess saw it, frowned, and stacked it on another, muttering, “Not nice.”

Leda looked back and forth between them, feeling off-balance. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“I’ll rest when I want to, thanks,” Tess answered. “What about you?”

“I was hoping to speak with Lark.” Alone. Then again, there was an actual human available.

Lark faced her, ears pressed back like an annoyed animal. “Why? You said I’m a toy.”

“You are. I mean...” She’d meant to give the robot an earful, but now he was trying to make her feel guilty! She pressed on. “How can you go around insulting people’s religious beliefs like you did?”

“I only said they weren’t true.” He made another move.

Tess looked at the board. “Lark, I told you.” She stared at him for a few seconds, with both of them playing their game in silence. Leda found them unnerving to watch, as Tess muttered something and Lark gestured with spread hands. “We think maybe you and he should avoid each other.”

Leda’s skin felt cold in the breeze through the Dockside door. “What’s going on here?”

“Telepathy,” said Tess. She pulled off a sleek headset that had been hidden in her hair, and offered it.

“Don’t,” said Lark.

“Come on, I want to show her. Say anything.”

Leda, unnerved, took the headset and set the unusual curve of it to her jaw.

A voice filled her mind. What hath God wrought?

Leda pulled off the headset and dropped it on the table with a shaking hand. “What was that?”

Tess took the thing back and donned it. “A bone-conduction speaker-mike. I can talk with Lark without making noise either way.”

“Of course,” said Leda. Not magic; those things worked with silent vibrations in the jaw and skull. Still she felt something was deeply wrong here. She looked at the machine. “Why are you mocking me? What do you know about God?”

“I’m not mocking you. And I know what Tess knows plus several books about the concept. You humans are confusing.”

“You know...what she knows?”

Tess answered. “Figure that we have each other as a secondary memory and concept network. I mean, he can tell me something he doesn’t understand, or send me pictures, and have me free-associate and help him almost instantly.”

“And I’m of some use to her,” said Lark.”But this is science, not religion. You wouldn’t be interested.”

Leda stared at them. “God made people. He didn’t make robots, or whatever hybrid collective you’re building.”

“Hybrid?” said Tess.

“This can’t be. You can’t manufacture souls.” Yet this machine acted as though he were really alive. Sir Phillip had said ‘he’ was a clever toy and of course Phillip was right, but she still questioned. “Tess, is this robot your friend?” Leda was arguing more with herself than with them.

Tess high-fived the robot. “Yeah.”

She turned on Lark. “You can’t exist! How can you be free of your programming, to have ideas and friends and feelings?”

“I’m not ‘free of my programming’. I am my programming.”

“But where do you fit? How can you be here in a world with a God that made men, when we’re supposed to be unique and you’re a stand-in for one of us?”

“Simple,” said Lark. “There is no God.”

“How do you know!”

Footsteps came down to them. Leda, Tess and Lark turned to the stairs to see a bleary-eyed Captain Fox in red pajamas, looking absurd. “Is there a problem?”

“No!” said Leda, with the roar of the sea in her ears. She brushed past Fox and hurried away to be as alone as she could manage.

And though that was only a corner of the deck, where she could sit with her knees pulled up on a layer of black solar-panel cloth that was very alone.

* * * *

“Sister Leda, you look exhausted.” Ann was dressing for the morning’s work, energetic as ever.

Leda yawned, feeling the fatigue on her eyelids and shoulders. All night she’d been pacing or huddled on the deck or laying in bed with eyes that wouldn’t shut. Coffee would be nice, but Phillip forbade it. She wished he hadn’t.

“What is it?” asked Ann.

Leda looked at her, seeing a true Sister with her own cross to bear. Ann had lost everyone she ever cared for before learning of Phillip. He had given her the courage to talk about what happened, and to begin a new life. How could Leda keep secrets from someone who’d been willing to cry on her shoulder? “I’m afraid.”

“We’re all here for you. Is it the sea? It bothers me sometimes. Too open.”

“It’s not that.” Though the ocean was always there. It was part of this new world, and could rise up and crush them at any moment.

“We need to go upstairs,” Ann said. It was time for the morning muster. Leda looked to the stairs and followed her.

On deck the whole family stood at attention. The station’s unbelievers made a point of being elsewhere, as usual, and the sky was as clear as it always seemed to be. Yet the wind tasted unreal and cold, and she felt as though she couldn’t be on an island made by men. Only God made land. This whole place was some illusion, or an abomination. Yet there it was, under her feet. Leda and Ann stood on slick black ground.

Brother Duke came up and paced the deck in front of the assembled Confederacy. “Attention!” Everyone stood straighter. “It pains me to announce that Sir Phillip is indisposed.”

A murmur spread through the group, but Duke quelled it after a few seconds with a raised hand and a frown. “Alas, I know, such a thing shouldn’t happen to one so virtuous. But God works in mysterious ways. While Sir Phillip recovers I must perform his duties. So, regarding today’s work...”

Leda listened to the day’s assignments. Sir Phillip would sometimes be secluded in prayer for a day or two, but was never absent for another reason. It felt like sand had been thrown into the clockwork of the family’s routine. Everyone seemed to share her unease. At least she had Ann to work beside, doing mindless cutting of plants at the water’s surface. Today the routine didn’t work its usual gradual healing on her spirit.

“It’s not just the ocean,” Leda said after a while. The sun beat down even through her soaked hat and salt-crusted sunglasses. “It’s the fact that we’re out here.”

Ann wielded a diamond knife to snap the fibers of a frond held taut by Leda. “God led us here. He’ll provide.”

“But why?”

Ann shrugged. “It’s not our place to ask.”

“Maybe we should. Ann, I–” Leda floated there, looking at the bright ripples of the sea. “I don’t know if I can believe in all this anymore. About Sir Phillip and Lee and God. What if it’s all a mistake?”

Ann stared at her. “How can you say that? Of course it’s not a mistake. God said so!”

“But people think God says a lot of different things, and some people don’t even think He exists.”

“He does!” said Ann. “You’re incredible! You think we’re all crazy, don’t you, that all our work is for nothing!” Ann didn’t even seem to notice the knife held tightly in her hand.

“I didn’t say that. I meant I don’t know if it’s true, what we were taught. I don’t feel like I know how to tell.”

Ann gave a sharp laugh. “Of course you know. Look in your heart.”

Leda floated in the wilderness, asking herself and God for an answer. She could imagine that feeling of profound certainty and belonging that had helped her escape from her old life, but it was far away, a feeling not honestly earned. A lie.

“No,” said Leda. “I don’t believe.”

Ann swam away, abandoning their tasks and leaving Leda alone.

Leda threw herself back into the work but knew that it was pointless, that the world didn’t care one bit if she sank and no one ever saw her again. There was no purpose to her being here, or anywhere. She’d been lying to herself all along! When she couldn’t stand to be in the water any longer, she went to the dock and climbed, feeling weak and stupid.

Ann was waiting there with a grim expression. “Brother Duke wants to see you.”

Leda followed her towards South Tower. But when the wind and sun of the open deck hit her, Leda flared up, planting her feet. “Why, Ann? Why did you tell him? I thought I could trust you.”

She seemed incredulous. “Because it’s wrong to turn your back on us. Brother Duke will sort you out.” She paused. “Maybe he can help you.”

Leda knew she’d been wrong to doubt Lee. Whatever punishment the world threw at her, she deserved. She crossed the deck and descended into darkness.

Deep in South Tower, Duke stood before the Altar of Lee. The bunting, the crossed-cannons insignia and the great man’s portrait were all obscured behind Brother Duke, who wore an expression of anguished love.

“Stay, Sister Ann,” said Duke. “Shut the door.”

The three of them stood there for a while with Leda staring at Duke’s polished boots. After a long time Duke spoke again. “It wounds me to learn of your lack of faith. It pains all your brothers and sisters.”

Leda said nothing. Duke was right. She’d hurt them and it was right to be hurt in return.

“Do you believe any longer in the divinity of Lee?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

“Why, Sister?” asked Ann.

“We’re not concerned with ‘why’,” snapped Duke. “Sister Leda, do you believe in God with all your heart, with every fiber of your being?”

Leda couldn’t bring herself to say she had doubts.

“Answer me!”

“I don’t know,” said Leda.

“I didn’t ask what you know. Do you believe?”

Ann’s simple question of why still echoed in her ears. If Leda had been believing without good reasons, ones that she could articulate, then she was telling herself she had faith when really, she didn’t.

“Sit,” said Duke. Ann scrambled to bring a chair so Leda could huddle in it. Now he could glare down at her, leaning closer with a faint smile. “If you don’t believe, then there’s nothing to save you from the fires of Hell.”

The images and sounds that Sir Phillip had conjured up mixed with the hell of her own past life, and Duke was stoking the flames. “For I say unto you that Hell is a real place, where the air is burning smoke and the water like unto molten lead, where the ground writhes with the moaning damned and Satan dances in naked splendor and laughs over his domain.”

Leda barely heard him any longer; she was there. His hot breath was filled with brimstone, vipers coiling up her throat while the ground shook and the voice said, He that believeth not is condemned already; the wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit has opened its mouth under them. And someone was sobbing, far away.

“That’s right,” murmured Duke, close to her ear. “But I’m here to help you. Because unconverted men walk over the pit of Hell on a rotten covering; and they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; and your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead.” Leda felt him stroke her chin, prop her head up so she had to look into his deep, betrayed eyes. “Your soul is in mortal peril, held over the abyss as an abomination unto God. His love turns to wrath as He sees the pain caused by a single tainted spirit, and he looks to His Son and General, wanting to know only if you choose His infinite love and mercy over the obliteration brought by doubt and defiance.”

Leda cowered in her chair, head in her hands and fingernails cutting into her scalp while Duke paced around her, telling her of infinite loneliness and black despair. “All this awaits those who reject God’s servants, at any instant, and there is no place one can flee, no moment one can rest, no step that might not land beyond the world of men.”

Duke stopped in front of her, one foot rapping the floor like the thud of a casket. “Do you give yourself totally over to God and His messengers? Do you believe?”

Leda tried to think of her love of God, who had saved her from evil, from her old life. But all that was in this place was the Devil and the empty sea. “No,” she said, in a voice that was very small.

Duke let the word echo. “There are the black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm.” He shut his eyes, shedding a single tear. “Such is your choice, and may the Lord stay His hand against us all. You are no longer one of us.”

“Brother Duke!” Ann squeaked his name but nothing more.

“Alas,” said Duke. “We will not speak of her again.”

Though she could barely see through her stinging eyes, Leda ran from the room.

She went up to the deck where the sky was burning and the ground was black like lava stone. She was alone in the middle of nowhere and she’d lost her family after all and God Himself hated her because she’d cast Him aside through sheer disbelief. She was staring at the churning abyss below with no strength left in her, no purpose. She’d wasted her life for a horrible lie. Hell was real, even if she didn’t believe, and it burned inside her heart and waited to consume her. There was no God to save her from it, or God didn’t want to.

God, let it all end!

The water was there below her and she climbed the railing, praying to be granted the one mercy of sinking, of letting go so she wouldn’t have to be afraid any longer.

Someone grabbed Leda’s arm.

She looked back. The figure was the color of clean sand, bright like the sun, with a billow of wings against armor.

“A robot must never harm a human, or allow one to come to harm through inaction.” said a familiar voice.

Slowly Leda’s vision resolved and she squeezed tears from her eyes to see, of all things, that machine. “I don’t belong,” she said. “I’m nothing.”

“I came from nothing. It’s no fun there. Climb down.”

“What do you know about anything!”

“Not very much. But I want you to stay alive.”

“Why! Why does it matter?”

Lark paused, hand still on her arm. “What about your God?”

“You were right. It’s all a lie! And now everyone hates me, God hates me, Lee hates me, Duke tried to help me but I couldn’t say yes.”

“I make mistakes too. How about a deal?”

“A deal?” Leda said with a sniffle, angry that he’d stopped her. Without thinking she tried to pull away, going backwards overboard, but the hand tightened and stopped her. Her heart pounded at the moment when she’d almost succeeded, almost finished everything and gotten what she deserved. She shuddered; she couldn’t do it again, not leaping forwards or falling backwards. She lacked the courage to do it or even to stand up, and only Lark kept her from sinking to her knees again.

“A deal!” said Lark, his grip hurting her arm. “This God thing is important to you, and I want to learn about humans. How about if you stay alive, and I try to find God with you?”

He was mocking her; he was an angel. She was dead and gone already; she was here and someone wanted her help. There was Hell in her heart and Heaven in the blue sky.

It took Leda a long time to say, “Yes.”