The increase in gravity was the first indication of the beginning of the end. Security Tech II Vartan Omanian felt it as he rose from Svetlana Pushkin’s bed. Cocking his head, he could hear it, feel it through his bare feet. Ashanti had changed. The sound and vibration of the ship, the air, even the surrounding sialon hinted of hard acceleration.
Vartan made his way to the toilet, relieved his full bladder, and re-crossed the small room to Svetlana’s bed. Nominally, as a member of the Messiah’s Will—as the enforcers were called—he slept in the men’s dormitory. His rank, as Second Will—or the second in command of Batuhan’s enforcers—granted him certain privileges. That included access to available women as long as they weren’t ovulating.
Among the Irredenta, the tracking of a woman’s cycle was of paramount concern. During those critical days during ovulation, she became the sole property of the Messiah—and if more than one female was fertile at the time, the responsibility of the First Chosen to inseminate.
Those who had objected to the True Vision of the Prophets when it came to women and reproduction had long since become immortal. Vartan had been responsible for most of the disciplinary actions. The one thing the Irredenta couldn’t afford was any hint of division or strife. Those who might have doubted, who suffered from a lack of faith, would finally discover Truth in their next existence. After they’d been consumed, purified, and reborn.
Vartan himself had once doubted. Back then. In the beginning. But he had learned, adapted, and as the universe taught, survived.
Privately he wondered if his ex-wife, Shyanne Veda, didn’t still doubt. As Second Will, he had her and her few friends watched. With the death of her year-old son a little over a year ago, she’d had a period of recalcitrance and grief, but had acted in no overt manner to demonstrate any apostasy or disbelief in the revelations of the Prophets. Now she doted on six-year-old Fatima, her remaining daughter.
But then, they all had secrets. Private thoughts that each of them desperately hoped the universe wasn’t privy to.
We live in fear.
Vartan stopped at the side of the bed, staring down. Svetlana slept on her right side; her long body lay mostly exposed, a twist of sheet around her midriff and left thigh. The swirl of her long brown hair curled behind her head. Her arms were bent, hands tucked next to her lips.
He settled himself on the side of the bed and dialed up the room light to dim. As he did he felt the ever-so-faint change in acceleration. The ship had just kicked it up a bit.
“Hey, wake up.”
She shifted onto her back, blinked her brown eyes. “It’s been three times already. You’re an animal. Let me sleep.”
“Ship’s boosting. Gravity’s changed. I think we’re starting the long burn toward Capella III. Listen. Feel.”
She did, coming fully awake. Sitting up, she wiggled past him, stood. “I feel heavier.”
“Ashanti is killing delta vee. It’s actually going to happen. Just the way the Prophets said it would.”
She studied him, brown eyes pensive, the light casting shadows across the complex patterns of Initiation scars that marked her as the second of the Messiah’s four wives. After the Cleansing, she had been one of the first to offer herself to the newly acclaimed Messiah, had borne his first two children, and was waiting to see if she’d conceived the third.
Vartan reached up where she stood before him, ran his fingers along the long scars that marked her body. At his lingering touch, she shivered, closed her eyes, and leaned her head back to let her hair cascade down her back.
“The path of souls,” he whispered, tracing down the line of scar that led to the thick mat of her pubic hair. He gave the curly mat a light tug, causing her to stare down at him with irritated eyes.
He softly asked, “Do you really believe that the souls of the dead have followed the same route my fingers just did? That they were reborn inside you?”
She chuckled just as softly. Said, “I could feel it. Both times I conceived with the Messiah. Wasn’t anything like a regular orgasm. What began as more of warm honeyed feeling burst through my hips like a brilliant light that filled my uterus. An explosion of life that wracked my entire body.”
From her expression, the tone in her voice, he wasn’t sure if she was having fun at his expense. Or might have been just parroting the Messiah’s lines.
That was the thing about Svetlana. He could never quite know if she believed the revelations of the Prophets, or if she was the penultimate survivor who accurately assessed the situation and sided with the man most likely to prevail.
All of which made his relationship with her so fascinating.
“I see that look,” she told him with a grim smile. “You still wonder, don’t you? But let me ask you, do you really believe? Because I think, like me, you’re a survivor.”
Another lurch, increasing the sensation of weight.
She looked up, as if she could see through the decks to Ashanti’s AC. “It’s really going to happen. So, how do you think this will play out, Mr. Policeman?”
Vartan rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “No matter what the Messiah says or believes, they’re not going to welcome us with open arms. To them, we are going to be monsters.”
She reached down to lift his chin and stared into his eyes. “We’re alive, Vartan. As long as we are, there is hope and opportunity. And many of us are still under Contract. You were trained in law enforcement and security. You know of any law that says eating another human being is illegal?”
“No. But killing them for apostasy or heresy most certainly is.” He raised a hand to take hers. “We plead that Galluzzi, by starving us, forced us into the practice. That we could either die or bow to necessity.”
“Batuhan and the Prophets insist we’re the tools of the universe. The chosen,” Svetlana told him. “They believe. And so do most of the rest. After the Harrowing and Cleansing, the Revelations were like a straw floating on a sea of fear and guilt. The desperate not only grabbed onto it with two hands, it’s become the only salvation left to keep them afloat.”
He nodded.
Still staring into his eyes, she said, “You and I both know who among us might just be playing the game, keeping their heads down until the hatch opens. And when it does, they’re going to run right to the Corporation and condemn us all.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
Another lurch of acceleration pulled at his body.
“Figure it out for yourself. Maybe we are the mystical chosen, and the universe will see to our ultimate triumph. Works for me. But when that hatch is finally open, I want to be positive that I, and my children, have a way out.”