“Certainly it is. But it is not simply a matter of rational deduction—the way the twining proves the existence of God. God’s Plan is first of all a matter of faith. We believe He has a plan for us because it gives order and meaning to our lives.”
“Precisely my point, Pastor,” Stoddard said. “How do you get from the coincidence to the meaning? How do you know that the twining has anything to do with God’s plan?”
Pastor Kline sighed, looking for words. Telly knew that he had reached his limits. He had seen the pastor in discussion groups before. He was good on the doctrine that he’d learned in seminary school—he was even competent at providing spiritual support for most of his parishioners. But he had trouble putting the pieces together from real life, from real things like today’s big twining and the dozens of smaller ones that happened all the time.
Telly smiled, then almost before he knew what was happening, words jumped from his lips. “We don’t,” he said. “We don’t know what the twining has to do with God’s Plan. Not right now.”
The others at the table all stared down at him, making his face feel hot and his forehead sweat. All were his senior, all except Malcolm’s apprentice, Mark Wayland, who sat across the table from Telly. Wayland had a constant sneer on his face. It was a consequence of eyes that were too far apart, separated by the oversized bridge of his nose, and a chin that was too small. Now he seemed to be mocking Telly’s boldness to enter into the conversation of adults.
“That’s true,” Pastor said, drawing the attention away from Telly and leaving him feeling terribly relieved. “We won’t know what it means until we’ve discussed it. And we may not know even then. Sometimes the meaning of a twining doesn’t emerge until days or weeks later. But let me assure you, when the meaning does become clear, there is no doubt that it was part of God’s Plan.”
“It sounds truly magical,” Stoddard said, using such a tone that Telly could not be sure if he was in awe or if he was being sarcastic. “I feel deprived of the experience of such certainty.”
“And well you should,” Captain DuPage said. “It is a wondrous thing. Though to tell the truth, the way I’ve always seen it is that God’s Plan is the duty to serve your fellow man, keep your honor, and protect your family.”
“Ah, now that’s a plan I could keep to,” Stoddard said. “With or without twinings to prove God’s hand in the matter.”
“To be honest,” Kline said, “much of the time, that seems to be what God is telling us.” The pastor looked down the table, and his eyes fell on Telly. For a moment, he felt as if those words had been meant for him. And for a moment he felt a fierce anger at the pastor.
Anger because he did not want that to be God’s plan for him. Not now, not ever. Because the way Pastor Kline interpreted those words, Telly knew it meant he should remain at home on Schenker Float with his parents.
And because Telly wanted to believe that the twining had a special meaning for him and him alone—that this ship was meant for him, meant to take him away to Bishop Anchorage and the Navigation School.
Telly cursed the tyrannies that set the limits of his life as he walked back home after the feast.
Chief among them was the slow crawl of time, of Okeanos itself making its long orbit of the Furnace. He looked up through the leaves at the white dot in the sky and tried to imagine a billion miles of distance between here and there. It was the long sidereal year of Okeanos that kept him prisoner here, a captive of his mother’s will.
Until he had made one full circuit around that bright young star, he would not know the freedom he longed for. That journey took more than nineteen long watch-years—nineteen Christmases and nineteen Easters and nineteen Feasts of Aidan. Telly hated the bitter knowledge that seventeen was not nineteen. And that he was not yet a man.
He had hoped to sneak into his hut unobserved, coming up on it through the pigtail ferns on the far side of the rational, away from the pond. But the Furnace was still high in the sky, and the two dogs under his porch—Smo-key and Harry—began to bark as soon as he was within earshot, running to him as he reached the edge of the yard.
“Telly, is that you out there?”
His mother’s voice cut through the barking of the dogs, who were now alternately nipping at his feet and leaping into the air in front of him. She stepped out from behind the far side of the house, a broomstick in her hand.
Chryseis McMahon was a tall woman with long hair the color of a golden sunset. Her youthful beauty had not faded with age, but it had become twisted ever so subtley by the pendulum of her moods.
She had been sweeping the door-yard, as she did whenever the watch-night fell during side-day. Hour after hour, she would scour the ground. No fern or seedling dared show its face in her corner of the rational or in the common area around the cook stoves.
Scrack… scrack… scrack.
The sound of the broom against the dark organic soil built up over hundreds of watch-years would go on and on into the night. The shutters could block out the light of the Furnace, but not the sound of his mother’s sweeping. She did it because there was nothing else to do—not after she had cleaned the hut, mended the clothes, and tended to the rational’s nightly chores.
“Yes, Mother,” Telly called to her. “It’s me.”
“Do you know how late it is? They sounded the nightwatch bell hours ago. Where have you been?”
Telly approached her slowly, dragging his heavy feet across the yard. He began to speak, to explain, but his mother cut him off.
“I know you’ve been up to something,” she said. “I can tell when you’re hiding your heart from me. Just look at you—all tied up in knots from holding it in. Well don’t just stand there—explain yourself.”
“I was down at the docks,” he said. “I went there with—”
“That’s what I thought. You’ve been out with that Skeptical girl again. That Eppie Borges. What have you two been doing? You know you can’t let yourself get involved with one of them. What would your aunts say?”
Telly felt his heart pound, and his mouth grew dry. He wanted to tell her about the feast aboard the Relief, but he was afraid that if he started talking, everything would spill out.
His mother was unrelenting. She went on and on about the embarrassment he could cause if he and Eppie did anything as foolish as producing a child. “I would just die. Do you know that, Telly? I would just die.”
Telly turned to his mother, took a step to close the distance between them, and put his hand on her shoulder. He waited until her eyes looked up from the ground and the broom, and met his.
“Mother, listen to me, please.”
She hesitated, then softened. The fire and electricity that seemed to possess her soul faded, and she sighed. “You know, son, sometimes you look just like your father did when he was your age.”
“Mother, I wasn’t with Eppie Borges. I was down on the ship that came in today with Duncan Blake. He invited me aboard for supper.”
She fell silent for a moment, and Telly was satisfied that she had listened to his words and even accepted them.
But then she came about and took off on a new tack. “You were eating down there when we had food for you waiting at the table here? What a waste. No wonder we had to throw the leftovers to the dogs. Where are those animals anyway? They’re good for nothing but food testing anyway.”
Telly swallowed the lump in his throat and dragged himself wearily up the steps to his hut and into his room. He knew that he would not try to talk with her any more tonight. There was no point. When she was like this, it was hard enough to get her to listen to even simple things. It was best to just go along with her and leave the matter until she was willing to hear him out.