Бен Бова - Uranus

“Not my help,” said Umber gently. “God’s help.”

Raven bowed her head as she asked, “What must I do?”

“Attend services at the main chapel tomorrow at six A.M.”

“Chapel services?”

“Get to know God and what He expects of you. His yoke is light, His way is the path to salvation.”

Raven was too surprised to reply. Does he actually mean what he’s saying? Is he really trying to save my soul? He’s not after my body?

Using her apartment’s computer, Raven found that the habitat’s main chapel was actually the big auditorium she and the other new arrivals had been taken to on her first day in Haven.

The following morning, she arrived at the auditorium a good ten minutes before six, wearing one of the dreary gray outfits that hung in her closet. She slipped quietly through the heavy wooden double doors.…

And stepped into another world. The auditorium had been transformed into a chapel. It was only half filled with worshipers, but the vast chamber soared above their bowed heads like a magnificent vision of heaven. Stained glass windows lined both sides of the nave, displaying beautiful scenes of saintly men and women in strikingly bold colors. At the front of the chapel, behind the many-colored marble altar, stood a mammoth image of the crucified Christ, staring out from His cross, a beatific smile on His bearded face despite the bloody nails through His hands and feet and the cruel crown of thorns pressed down upon His head.

She remembered the brief glimpse of this setting from her first day at Haven, but somehow, with the chapel half filled with kneeling worshipers, it all seemed more powerful, more stirring.

Raven thought the Christ image was staring directly at her, as if there were no one else in the church. It took an effort of will for her to tear her eyes away from its hypnotic gaze.

Standing on trembling legs at the rear of the church, Raven saw a splendidly robed priest rise to his feet at one side of the altar and raise his hands in blessing.

A voice from nowhere filled the cathedral, pronouncing, “Dominus vobiscum.” The congregation replied in unison, “Et cum spiritu tuo.”

“Ite, missa est,” said the priest, his arms raised in blessing.

As one, the people replied, “Deo gratias.”

Then the people—men and women, a few children—rose from their pews and walked slowly along the central aisle, heads bent reverently, past Raven, who was still standing by the massive rear doors. No one spoke a word. To Raven it seemed as if they had all been struck dumb.

She stood there until the last of the worshipers filed past and left the church, leaving it empty, silent.

Suddenly a crisply authoritative voice boomed, “Scrub the Catholic setting. Cue up the Quaker façade.”

The beautiful cathedral disappeared like a lamp suddenly clicked off. The church went totally dark for a moment, then a new vision lit up before Raven’s astonished eyes. Somehow the church was now much smaller and utterly unadorned. No stained glass windows, no elaborate crucifixion scene, no marble altar. The walls were bare, simple black and white.

A handful of plainly dressed people began filtering into the church. Raven shook her head, as if to clear it, and stumbled back into the walkway outside, which was filling up with pedestrians striding along, talking, laughing, living lives that Raven could understand.

By the time Raven got back to her quarters, she had made up her mind that she would not return to the chapel, or cathedral, or auditorium, or whatever it was. Not for me, she told herself. If Reverend Umber ever asks me about it, I’ll tell him I tried but it didn’t work for me.

She wondered if that was the right way to go. But she knew that joining a congregation of worshipers, bowing and kneeling and repeating phrases that were thousands of years old—that was not for her. If she did it, she would be playacting. She felt no sense of belonging among those people. None whatever.

The message light was blinking at the bottom of her living room screen. A message from Tómas, she saw. She called out, “Play message, please.”

Gomez’s broad-cheeked mestizo face appeared on the screen, looking distraught. “Raven, I need your help. I’m ready for the final checkout of the submersible, but I can’t find the checklist that inventories the sub’s consumables. I’ve looked everywhere but I can’t find it! Do you know where it is?”

Raven almost laughed. It’s probably in your back pocket, she said silently to the image on her screen, filed away on your personal notebook.

Instead, she made herself look almost as serious as he did, then called out, “Reply to message.”

Gomez’s image shrank to a corner of the screen as Raven said aloud, “I’ll come over and help you look for it, Tómas. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

She sent the message, shut down the screen, then got up and went to her front door, heading for Gomez and problems that she understood.

The spherical submersible craft sat in a cradle of plastisteel beams in the middle of the docking area. A trio of robots paced slowly around its globular shape, examining every seam and joint along its length. Tómas Gomez stood up on the raised balcony high above, intently watching the automatons, his personal notebook clutched in both hands.

Raven climbed the spiral metal staircase and stood beside Gomez, keeping her face blank, noncommittal, hiding the amusement she felt. Wordlessly, she took the notebook from Gomez’s hands.

Sure enough, the checklist that he’d been unable to find was tucked among the data filed in his notebook, along with a lifetime’s collection of notes, blueprints, photographs and other miscellanea.

As she watched Gomez’s intent face staring down at the robots and the submersible, Raven thought, He really would be lost without me. He’s like a very bright little boy, brilliant but absentminded. I wonder who looked after him on Earth?

Raven knew from peeking into Gomez’s personnel file that he was unmarried, unattached. He seemed to have time only for his work, his research, his passion to unlock the secrets that Uranus hid at the bottom of its planet-girdling ocean.

She turned her head slightly to gaze down at the submersible. It was a perfectly rotund shape of dark metal, designed to withstand the immense pressures at the bottom of Uranus’s sea.

My rival, Raven thought. He doesn’t have time for anything or anyone else. I’m playing second fiddle to a machine.

Almost, she laughed. Almost. But she was thinking, once that contraption goes into the ocean, once it’s cut off from communication with him, once he’s alone up here without his precious toy—that’s the time when he’ll have no one to talk to, no one to console him, no shoulder to cry on. That’s when I’ll get him.

Yet a voice in her head asked, Why bother? You don’t need him. He can’t raise your status in this imitation heaven. Waxman’s the one with power. Waxman and Umber. But Umber’s not available and Waxman is.

That evening, after a solitary dinner in her own kitchen, Raven looked up the station’s computer file on Evan Waxman.

Born to great wealth. Married twice, twice divorced. Met Kyle Umber when the reverend was serving a brief prison term for leading a protest against a state law that allowed people to hunt and kill the few brown bears still living in the national forests. Spent almost all his family’s considerable fortune to construct this space station in orbit around Uranus, the station that Umber christened Haven . Devoted his life to working with Umber, helping him turn Haven into a refuge for Earth’s downtrodden poor.