The Second Star, page 47
“You know,” Rob said suddenly, apropos of nothing, as though he were picking up a conversation they had left off in the middle at some point in the recent past, “there are times that you are disconcertingly aware of what is inside my head at any given moment. Even when I am someone else than myself entirely. But it is very difficult to figure out what you are thinking. You use silence as a shadow and a shield.”
“You mean right now?” Stella whispered, with a small smile. “I’m sorry, if you think the drawbridges are up. I didn’t mean to raise them.”
“I know. But what are you thinking?”
“About what you have lost.”
He roused. “About what I have lost?”
“It doesn’t seem likely that we will set our eyes again on the last three of your crew that they still hold in the habitat,” Stella said. “And once you were willing to give up the stars themselves if you did not have your brother beside you amongst them. And now…”
“I carry him,” Rob said, and tapped himself on the chest, and on the temple. “Here, and here. We both knew what the possible price would be when I came out with you, after Lily Mae. We both agreed to it. We said the au revoirs there in the habitat.”
“More of an adieu,” Stella said. “The other sounds like you planned to…”
She could have kicked herself. This was hardly the moment to point out the permanence of what Rob had done.
He didn’t respond, not directly, but a small sigh did escape him at her words. “I won’t say that it didn’t—or even that it doesn’t—hurt to feel that separation,” he said. “But neither of us is alone right now. He has those companions with whom he has endured so much, with whom he shares so much that can never be told to anyone outside that circle. And I… look at what I have.”
“Me,” Stella said. “Only me. It doesn’t seem like an equivalent…”
He laughed, softly, in the dark. “Dear heart,” he said, “you could never be an equivalent to anything. But you are a treasure in yourself. And Lily Mae is here, for me to be able to fulfil all the things that I need to be for her, as part of that crew. And then there are the friends in the other room, unlooked for, people I am still not entirely certain I deserve. I am a starship navigator by trade, Stella, and Philip called you our guiding star—the second star, maybe, for him, for his own purposes and his own story. But I am quite happy with the journey on which your particular star has led me, and while we may never again have a quite completely safe berth in a quite completely safe harbor, or any specific or closely planned-for destination, I am content with the voyage of the ship I have been given to guide. Are you?”
“He said he was going to tell the Church about it,” Stella said, a complete non sequitur that took Rob by surprise.
“The Church? About what?”
“About Jerusha. About his wrestling with what she means. He says the Church needs to know.”
“Maybe they do,” Rob said after a beat. “He knows them better than…”
“We made a deal,” Stella said, “not to tell anyone about you. About Illogon. Never mind about Jerusha and what it all came to be. We still can’t—I think we still can’t—if anyone on Martin Peck’s crew knew the truth. If Philip is going to write to the Church and tell them everything, I should write to Martin and tell him nothing. Just tell him that we found Lily Mae. That we are all out here. That none of us is coming back.”
“He knows,” Rob said. “But write, if that will give you the kind of closure you need to have. As for Father Philip and the Church—that’s complicated. But I think you know that he would never put that child in danger. If he wrote to someone in the hierarchy about all of this… it will be to build a wall around her, until she is ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“Maybe nothing,” Rob said, smoothing her hair away from her forehead. “Maybe things none of us are prepared for on this night. Stella, I ask you if you are happy and you start talking about conspiracies and the big picture. You aren’t there, not yet. You’re here, now, tonight. Are you…”
She curled up against him, closing her eyes.
“Best kind of voyage,” she murmured against his chest. “The night behind, and only dawn and a horizon ahead. And I trust the navigator.”
“Then,” Rob said, “the stars are waiting.”
To His Holiness, Pope Constantine II
Most Holy Father,
I write to you from a place both difficult and exalted, and I barely know where to begin—this is, of course, a very personal account on behalf of a single soul of which you have the titular care but I believe, should this story become more widely known as there is every possibility that it may do in time, many more people who share my faith will be in a position to wrestle with the same questions which have troubled my own thoughts and prayers.
If I begin by reminding you of the basic premise of our doctrine and our faith, please forgive me for expounding on the obvious—but the Christian faith began with the birth of the Christ Child, fathered by God upon a virgin unspoiled maid whom no mortal man’s hand had touched. A birth prophesied before it came to pass, a birth to which a star shining above Bethlehem’s manger led the worshipping shepherds, and the three wise men of legend. The divine Child then grew to manhood and was given the power, by His Father, to perform the miracles that proclaimed Him as who he was, the Son of God, come to Earth to speak for the sinners who dwelled upon it and to save their souls for God.
Recent circumstances to which I have been personal witness have shaken my complete unsullied faith in that story, as it has been always told, to its foundations. Because I am here to tell you this: that three men (of whom I am one), who may or may not be reckoned ‘wise’ in the manner of those Kings of old, were nevertheless led—by a dedicated and passionate woman whose given name literally means “star”—to a young woman carrying a child through no mortal agency, a child that carries a spirit that is known to me to not originate on this world. You may dismiss all of this as complete coincidence but I will also say that the spirit in the child of whom I speak of here has communicated that this is not the first time that one of its kind has visited the Earth, and that the first visit ended in a particular kind of catastrophe which caused that original visitor to snatch at survival in the only way open to it at the time—that of entering a newborn child. When I heard that the first visit occurred almost exactly at the time when the story of the Christ Child is said to have taken place, the coincidences became too much to be accidental.
Most Holy Father, if the Church gives credence to prophecies concerning the Christ’s birth, there are also the prophecies invoking his Second Coming, to finally deliver this world from its iniquities. It might be possible to account for these new circumstances of which I speak by invoking those prophecies—if the babe, who is now four weeks old—lives to the age at which Jesus of Nazareth began the ministry on which our faith is built, and finds itself possessed of similar gifts. If so, then maybe it might behoove the Church to prepare for such an eventuality. If the babe does not do so, or if the Church chooses to dismiss everything as no more than the coincidence that it might wish things to be, then of course nothing changes—but I believe, fully and completely, knowing all the circumstances that underlie this birth, that this child might shake the ground that the Church stands on, the ground that has been firm and steady for thousands of years. I believe in this so strongly that I will be writing to the Superior General of my order, the Society of Jesus, to request dispensation from my vows—I intend to renounce all that stands in the way of what I now perceive to be my duty, and that is to remain close to this child, to shelter and protect it until it reaches the age and maturity to take over that responsibility, and thereafter to provide such aid and advice as I am able in the light of the role which I believe this child may be called upon to play in the fullness of time.
I fully realize that I am not giving you all the details necessary to corroborate my report—but you already know all about the Parada and her crew, and you can build from that. With respect, I will not be doing anything to make identifying particular actors in this drama any easier, or helping to locate them. The new identity of the mother and child I will keep hidden—because while my faith has been the guiding light of my life and my allegiance to my Church has been absolute I am also not completely unaware of the times that the Church has taken the necessary steps to remove that which it perceived as a threat to its existence—and this child might prove to be a threat to the existence of the Church as we know it today. It may be that the Church will need to adapt and change because of this event. But I will not sully my own soul nor throw temptation into the path of the Church’s own great power and pride by offering up this innocent as a sacrificial lamb, at least not unless or until more coincidences start playing out and the child, when grown, is subjected to the same judgment as that which our Christ once faced. But I will not hand the babe unto Herod, or unto the Pharisees; I have no doubt that the Church, if it cares to delve that deeply and that hard, might well discover this information for themselves, but my allegiance in this case would lie with the child and I would rise to stand against the Church I have loved and obeyed all my life in order to protect that child.
My life, my faith, and my immortal soul are laid down upon this altar.
I know that I cannot let the Church continue to exist in ignorance of what has happened, and what I believe it signifies, and I have done my part in dispelling that ignorance by means of this letter. I write to you in fulfillment of duty, and from a place in which I continue to believe I stand in the light and the glory of God. Whether you choose to disregard this missive completely and chalk it up to folly or error of a broken faith, or take it seriously enough to give it doctrinal consideration, that remains your own prerogative.
I remain, although I may be signing myself thus for perhaps the last time in an official capacity, faithfully yours,
Father Philip Carter, S.J., PhD.
(CC Father Lorenzo Garibaldi, S.J, Superior General of the Society of Jesus)
To: Father Lorenzo Garibaldi, S.J., Superior General of the Society of Jesus
Dear Father General,
I am enclosing a copy of the letter I have written to His Holiness Pope Constantine II in regard to the matter about which I write to you now.
Father Garibaldi, I am the fourth generation of my family who has embraced a vocation and a call of faith and has joined the clergy. In my great grandfather’s generation one of the family’s male progeny became a priest; in my grandfather’s, a younger son of the family chose to join the Society of Jesus; in the generations that followed, including myself, that became the order to which those of us in our family who entered the service of the Church all chose to give our allegiance. The Society of Jesus has had a hand in my upbringing from a very early age—from the family connections to the order, through my education right until my postgraduate degrees which were entered upon in consultation with the order, and it has been a pillar of my existence, part of the altar upon which my faith has been laid, for as long as I remember. I have been proud to serve my order in any way in which it called upon me to do so, up to and including serving as one of your own under-secretaries for just under two years—at which time I was seconded to a Government project involving a top-secret clearance, as the priest sent at their request to be a part of the team to deal with the return of the starships sent out by this planet. I was uniquely qualified to take this position, as a Jesuit, as a man of faith and of science, possessed of a strong faith in my God and my Order and my Church and also of a solid secular education with my doctorate in psychology. I went where my superiors sent me, to serve where they believed my gifts to be best placed and most valuable in that service.
What I found in the place where I was sent began right from the outset to test the limits of both my own personal values and beliefs and those of the authorities I went there to serve and represent. I used my personal connections to remove myself from a place where I perceived myself to be in a position precarious to both my own physical self and the position of the Church—and then I found myself in a position that was even worse, because I had to choose between my absolute obedience to everything I had vowed to respect and obey, and a possible catastrophe which I could not bear to consider myself (or the Church I stood for) responsible for.
So I confess, here, that I used what power I had in the Church and in my Order to make certain the safety and indeed survival of individuals I believed to be in danger—perhaps in danger of their lives. I lay that at your feet, in penance. Some of this I have already laid at the feet of a confessor—but much of it was the product of wrestling with both my own fears, doubts and inadequacies, and with my strong convictions that I did what I did as the only thing I could have done in the name of that Christ and that God whom I came to lay my life at the feet of, and whose guidance I have always striven to follow in that life.
It has now become clear to me—for reasons which will become clear to you when you read the letter I have written to His Holiness the Pope—that my path diverges from the Society of Jesus at this point in my life, and I will be seeking formal dispensation from my vows. But that remains a formality, because as you will glean from the letter to His Holiness I fully intend to pursue a course of action which will not be subject to any further orders, requests, or suggestions from any source considered to be doctrinally ‘official’ in the hierarchy of the Church. I have come to a moment where the only thing I feel I am able to listen to, and follow the guidance of, is the conversation that is taking place between my own immortal soul and my God…
Philip stopped writing, his pen poised above the paper mid-thought, his eyes suddenly and inexplicably full of tears. He stared at the letter he was in the middle of writing as though he had never seen it before. He recognized the words. He recognized the thoughts. He would not have taken a word of it back. And yet…
He put the pen down and pushed his chair back, just far enough from the desk to lift his hands away and lay them palm-down on his thighs. He still wore a cassock—out of habit and out of comfort—although the letters he was in the process of writing were more or less his letters of resignation after which he would probably no longer feel completely entitled to do so. But right now, his right hand still remembering that the last thing it had done was to write down the word ‘God’, it felt as though touching the cloth of the cassock was an answer to a prayer he had not been aware he had even been thinking about making.
He stared at the letter which he had just been writing, and found his mind curiously blank. He remembered having talked about doing this with Stella, back in the Fall, in the dark empty parking lot sheened with October damp, in the immediate aftermath of Jerusha’s birth; it was early March now, and it had taken him this long to bend his will to the task. Stella had not pressed him about it in the interim, but she had made no secret about being against the idea right from the outset. Philip understood that, and yet he had felt driven to write the letters anyway; but now, finally in the process of obeying that urge, he found himself unable to pin down exactly the instinct that had made him do it. It wasn’t that he had changed his mind and had come to agree with Stella—it wasn’t as coherent as that. It was just an edge of something that he could not quite identify, and he hesitated. The world was still not completely firm under his feet. This had seemed like the right thing to do. How was he to know? How was he to trust any instinct at all?
His hands spasmed into fists against his legs, and then he relaxed them again with a deep sigh, bowing his head, closing his eyes, as though in prayer. When he looked up again, it was to meet Joseph White Elk’s understanding dark eyes.
“Are those the letters for your superiors?” Joe asked.
Philip’s head jerked up sharply. “Stella told you?”
“Just that you thought you needed to do this. Not why. Although I can probably fill in the blanks.” He paused. “This thing of which you wish to speak to the people you are writing to… what is it that you think it is going to make them believe, or do? If you tell them too little… they may itch to find out more. If you tell them too much… it will be very easy for them to find you, then. And through you, her. The child. And I do not think that you wish them to do that.”
Philip grimaced. “I have thought about it. It’s just that I think God should know—that I feel compelled to make sure that those who speak for Him here on this world…”
“Nobody speaks for God but you,” Joe said calmly. “You and I, my friend, I think we are fundamentally alike in one important aspect. We both believe in that Something that is greater than ourselves. Where we diverge is that you put human intermediaries between you and the holy thing that you carry, and you somehow see them as being closer to your God than you are. But how can that be? God—or that great Spirit in whom I believe, who holds the world in his hand—that being, that mind, that soul, he already knows all that can be known. And you have used a word that speaks to me of how you are seeing this. You say you were compelled. What compels you?”
“I swore a vow, once,” Philip said. “Amongst other things, a vow of obedience.”
