"Peace is ours to offer," Reverend Castell said. His voice boomed. His eyes flashed. Every soul in that room felt stinging heat and electric thrills. "In concert is harmony's power found, and in harmony all shall thrive." Raising a hand, Reverend Castell pointed at Julian Anders. His fingers traced a staff in the air, then added eight symbolic notes in a scale.
Anders gaped. His flask lay dropped, leaking brandy onto his lap. He quivered. His eyes remained wide, but a new look came upon his features. And then he laughed.
In the silence it was a strident sound, and no one joined in. A sharp edge of hysteria cut the laugh short.
With an inhalation of breath that seemed to go on forever, Reverend Castell stood so straight and tall that he seemed to grow before our eyes, and in an even, singsong tone that broke each word into its component syllables, he said,
"Anger is the enemy, "Act with thought, "Strike no false note, "Harmonize with all forces, "Resonate with all events, "Sing with all beings, "Be still "as the silence "at the heart "of the song."
With that he pitched forward, sprawling amidst hot coals.
Ashes swirled, confusing sight for a time. Sparks flew and some people swatted at their garments in terror.
Moving forward, I circled the pit and leaned inward. By stretching I reached the reverend's right hand and grasped it.
Leaning back, I pulled, dragging him through the embers.
Other acolytes helped by pulling on me, until another could snare the reverend's other hand. Intense heat had my, eyes watering. I gasped for breath and inhaled ash and smoke.
When Reverend Castell's head came up above the fire-pit's clay lip, he shouted, "Help me, please."
A woman standing near grabbed a tea pot and hurled its water at Castell's face, raising blisters.
He shrieked and then bellowed, "Help me, damn you."
It was then that I noticed his eyes. They were staring upward, through the hole in the roof. His gaze followed the smoke and ash upwards, and I shuddered, because I knew then that he was demanding help not from us, but from his father.
A doctor rushed in and at once applied a salve to Reverend Castell's blistered face, which looked small now without the beard. After a quick examination, the doctor said, "He's not burned, not even his feet. The water boiled and blistered him, but the coals and flames did nothing."
Anders stood and left the room, taking Tate and several newcomers with him. I noticed a few of the Chosen following, too, as people crawled from the room on hands and knees in a childlike herd.
We would soon discover that Anders kept going when he left the meeting, taking eight hundred souls with him into Haven's wilderness, each carrying as much as possible in the way of provisions and equipment. The loss, echoing the first desertion when we Chosen first arrived, affected us little as the remaining three thousand or so integrated themselves to our ways in the warm glow left by Reverend Castell's flaming renewal of our faith in him, his cause. Whether planned or inspired, the gesture worked, for a while, to weave us back into organized, orchestrated harmony.
Flopping back, I rested until my breathing evened. I found myself gazing upward through the smoke-hole. I could see only Haven's wind-scoured sky.
VI
Reverend Castell thrust out his hand, in which was a crumpled ball of paper. His face, bare since the fire-pit a few months back, contorted in frustration and impotent rage. "We've been on Haven barely two Earth standard years, Key. There is constant discord over living space, provisions, supplies, equipment, and even over the simplest elements of doctrine, since the four thousand arrived."
I looked at the paper in his hand. Paper was a fairly rare item. I owned none myself, other than my copy of the Writings. Only a few standard months earlier, one of our artisans had produced the first new paper on Haven, using rice and ancient Japanese methods his grandfather had taught him. To crumple such a precious commodity was almost blasphemous because it tempted waste to begin a melody all its own.
These were to have been the expansions to our town," the reverend said. "Improvements, such as birthing pits dug deep to increase the air pressure, even as mine-shafts in South Africa did on Earth. I drew up the plans myself." He grimaced. "No doubt the miners can help with this."
"Shall we strike a chord of harmony?" I asked, seeking a solution as well as trying to console him.
He appraised me with mockery in his gaze. "You can't mean that we're lucky, even as Anders said." He shook his head. "No, Key, Kennicott is not harmonious, they are cacophony." He stood and began pacing. The crumpled papers he tossed into the fire. My careful plans, ruined in a mob-shout of BuReloc stupidity and Kennicott greed." He kicked the altar in the corner, tumbling a candle, which went out.
Hanging my head, I waited for his storm to pass. His rantings lasted longer these days, I noticed. They produced less determination, cleared less mental air, too.
Reverend Castell had been raging ever since Major Lassitre, who had stayed on Haven, brought word from Splashdown Island that Kennicott Mining Company, in cooperation with the Bureau of Relocation, intended to set up a mining enterprise on Haven. Even as we spoke a shipload of immigrants got closer to shuttle-down.
My place as head acolyte had grown until I was Reverend Castell's confidant. He confided doubts, dislikes, and discords to my ears more often than he talked to his wife, whom he saw only during sleeps. Now and then he thought aloud about creating for me a post of Deacon, but nothing had come of that yet.
Burdens stacked on me kept my brow furrowed most hours of my day, and I'd begun losing weight as worry affected appetites.
As the Chosen harmonized as best they could with the newcomers, my forays into outlying farmland became erratic, hasty jaunts, rather than regular journeys. In town, now called Castell City by jest and general usage, I circulated as best I could. At households where once I found welcome, I'd lately begun finding suspicion. Some called me Castell's spy to my face. Others hinted that I'd been bought by Kennicott, or some other commercial enterprise.
"We must organize church services again," Reverend Castell said. "Secret meetings of the truly faithful." Bitterness warped that latter phrase into a self-condemnation, so I said nothing. In my mind I railed against the CoDominium. The thousands on their way would be mostly from the United States, and many professed to be Harmonies, as well. Lassitre's communications shack even caught some cross-talk between BuReloc officials and CoDo representatives aboard the immigrant ship, and from it he brought us word that we would receive a small food plant, to convert raw molecules into edibles, reminiscent of Earthly shortages. It seemed they were serious enough to try helping us slightly.
Reverend Castell said, "Have you nothing to tell me of how our songs are being sung?"
I sipped some Hecate tea and savored its piney aromatics. "Our sons are quiet but strong," I said.
He chuckled. You've been around me too long, perhaps, if you're learning the arts of such speech."
With a smile I denied that I could ever be too long with him, then said, "My wish is only to hold my own counsel until I know more details. I've heard many disturbing things, and I'm sure, my ears are among the last to receive such grace notes."
A nod cast a shadow as sap flared in the fire. "If it's about the mineral assays done by Byers' crew when Haven was first discovered, I've dreaded the findings for years."
"Only part of what I hear echoes Kennicott Mining Company, but I'm sure they've a use for Haven or they'd never have paid the freight for the North Americans who wanted to come here."
He looked at me hard again, as if seeking confirmation of a new trait, one not necessarily pleasing to him. "Politics is a shame in one so young.