After we passed the twenty-second skeleton, my guide brought me to another tunnel. This one was short and narrow (lined with stacked leg and arm bones, baled neatly with copper wire), and at the bottom of it we popped up into a perfectly ordinary metal-walled node, such as one might find aboard any other spacegoing vehicle. “Nearly there,” the deacon’s voice assured me as his motorized skeleton opened a hatch. “Ah, there you are! Do come in.” This time the voice from the other side of the opening was clearly live and human.
The skeletal guide stood aside as I floated through the entrance. I half expected to find even more gloom, but instead I found myself in the interior of a fabric-padded sphere graced with functional, if minimal, furniture appropriate to a life of contemplation (sleeping cocoon, desk, a feedstock urn) all extruded in cheerful primary colors. The sole exception was the person behind the desk, who had chosen to cocoon himself in the black, cowled robe of a prehistoric representation of Death incarnate.
My host pushed his hood back. “I am Deacon Dennett. I hope the journey here did not disturb you?” His smile was fey and somewhat insincere.
“This is a church.” I shrugged. “I confess, however, I was not expecting quite so many . . .” I hesitated to say corpses.
The deacon appeared to be a fully gendered male, possibly to the extent of being equipped with the coupling peripherals required by a follower of the holy pleasure. (His robe, thankfully, concealed any such distasteful details from view.) What I could see of him suggested that his body was nearly as thin as his silent charges—he was almost skeletal. But while they were clearly Fragile and dead, give or take a few wires and motors, he was clearly Post and alive. His skin was midnight black, his eyes a solid sapphire blue that matched his close-cropped hair—and large, befitting a body tailored for life in the abyssal depths of space. He showed few other obvious signs of phenotypic modification away from the archaic Fragile human baseline. “The skeleton—may I ask what you’re using it for?” I asked.
“We had some, ah, trouble.” The deacon clasped his hands. He had long fingers. “We had plenty of spare cams and motors but not enough bodies to attend to all the chores, so Father Gould—our artificer-engineer—improvised some remotes. But that’s of no matter. Have you much experience of attending to the needs of the Fragile?” he asked. His voice was soft and slightly hoarse.
“I’m afraid not, not as such. But I’ve been on Hector. They’ve got Fragile there: I even know—knew—some socially. I’m willing to learn.”
“Mmm-hmm.” He stared at me, face giving nothing away. “I gather you want to work your way inward toward Shin-Tethys.”
“Yes.”
More of that unnerving stare. “What do you think of what you have seen of our chapel?”
“It’s very, uh, picturesque,” I tried. “Beautifully maintained and clean and totally, um, focused on serving the needs of the, uh . . . um . . . passengers . . .” I ran out of words and forced myself to stop speaking.
“They’re all dead, you know.” Dennett separated his hands briefly, then laced his fingers together. They reminded me of the sculpted air-lock wheeclass="underline" long and bony. “All of them.”
“Oh no! Are they supposed to be?”
“‘Behold the way and the mortification of the flesh.’” The deacon sighed heavily. “No, they’re not. Keeping the Fragile spark of life burning in the endless dark is harder than you might imagine. We did very well for the first hundred and sixty years after the Cathedral dropped us off: The suspension tanks performed brilliantly, the Gravid Mother delivered fresh broods like clockwork to replace those culled by cancer and radiation damage, and the mission was going well—right up until the unfortunate incident with the micrometeoroid and the chlorine-trifluoride tank. The Fragile are not built to withstand exposure to hot hydrofluoric acid and hard vacuum, Ms. Alizond; it was a tragedy. Complete, utter, and total tragedy.” He wrung his hands.
“But you’re still heading in-system toward Shin-Tethys?” I asked.
“It is our divinely ordained duty to spread Fragile Humanity to every planet, so that the children of Adam may eventually find their new Eden and prosper therein. After the accident, I diverted to Taj Beacon so that we might borrow their hotline and petition the Cathedral for guidance. It is the archbishop’s penance upon us that we deliver our passengers’ mortal remains to a water burial, thereby discharging our mission. New seed has already been taken on board from the beacon station’s vault, the Gravid Mother has largely recovered from her nervous breakdown, and we will in due course impregnate her and restart the project . . .”
He paused and stared into my eyes, searching for some spark of understanding. “Will you help us?”
“I”—I flapped my jaw for a moment—“well, I have business on Shin-Tethys”—best not to be specific—“but I’d be happy to work my passage, to the best of my abilities, of course”—a thought struck me—“but I suppose you had a complete crew when you set out? What happened to them? Why are you looking for a spare set of hands?”
“It was the accident.” The deacon shook his head slowly. “It didn’t just kill our Fragile charges; everyone who was in the chapel at the time was injured or destroyed. The priestess in charge of our mission, Lady Cybelle—burned alive! Also our engineer-mechanical and our doctor and the choirmaster—all charred to the marrow! Two more, brothers of my lineage, died fixing the radiation leak after the meltdown. We recovered their soul chips, of course, but they were in questionable condition . . . and there was other damage. The Gravid Mother was traumatized, and Father Gould, our artificer-engineer, is overworked and overloaded. This is not a numerous mission. There were few enough of us to begin with. It should be no surprise that the faith of some of the survivors was severely shaken: Three have opted to stay behind on Taj—”
“So you’re shorthanded? Just how bad is it? Who’s left?”
Dennett looked uncomfortable. “Just me! Well, I’m the only fully operational line officer. Cook and the Gravid Mother chose to persevere, after some persuasion, as did some of the maintenance mechas and Father Gould. And our high priestess, the Lady Cybelle, is regenerating and will be fully herself sometime after departure. But I’m the only ordained officer of the Church currently operational. However, I am not on my own. I’m wearing both my brothers’ soul chips! I just need a few spare brains from time to time to help manage the remotes. We—he—I can’t split my attention too much. Father Gould is running eight of the remotes simultaneously, and he’s barely able to function. Which is why we need more hands.”
The picture was becoming clear, and it wasn’t a good one. The Church of the Fragile had a long-standing mission to spread the seed of our ancestral species to the stars. Sometime ago—a couple of centuries past—one of their peripatetic interstellar cathedrals passed within a light-year of Dojima System. Accordingly, a small chapel was put overboard, crewed by a volunteer ministry, shepherding a small cargo of Fragiles and an incubator to manufacture replacements. Ancestors only know what they meant to do when they arrived at Shin-Tethys, but at some point during the long deceleration burn, the chapel ate a micrometeoroid, which did bad things to its structural integrity. (Bad things involving corrosives and a reactor meltdown.)