Mike and Farrow shared a look, and the Basque engineer gestured with a nod toward the stone he had used to kill Liu. The Fast Eddie's master quickly brought the rock to Potter.
Potter tried to push it away. "Liu was Company man. Precious ore. Mountains filled with it." He wanted to tell them to bury it, to throw it out the airlock from orbit; never to let the Companies or the CoDominium know it existed, but he was so tired; the fight with Liu had worn him out, and he was so cold. He needed to sleep, just for a little while.
Mike seemed to understand, though. Passing Potter's bulk to Farrow, Mike stood and put the zirconium ore on the ground, where the frozen marsh that comprised the landing zone had been softened by the morning's test-firing of the shuttle engines.
Mike put his boot over the bloody rock and pushed it beneath the gluey, crunching surface. After a moment, there was no sign it had ever been there.
Potter looked at the mountains in the distance, at the dark, fierce storm clouds, the first snowflakes beginning to fall.
No two alike, he thought. He closed his eyes.
"He was a good man," Mi'huelo said to Farrow.
Farrow nodded. "He was my friend, Eminence," Farrow said.
Mi'huelo looked back over his shoulder. "I wonder what that stone was?" The Basque spoke idly, but his tone was cultured, educated.
"I don't know, Eminence."
Mi'huelo shrugged. "No matter. If this-Company man-was interested in it, than all the more reason to deny his masters the chance to despoil another world."
He knelt to help Farrow pick up the body of Captain Emmett Potter, who although not a Harmony, had yet been an harmonious man. To the Harmonies, who sought to harmonize with all things, such a man was highly regarded; the Universe being ultimately in harmony, those few with the capacity to harmonize naturally were cherished as better parts of its Song. In that perfect song, the Universe sent to the faithful just such voices the faithful required to help them sing it.
And so, they believed, it had sent Emmett Potter, for he was the means through which Mi'huelo Costanza, Metropolitan of the First Church of the New Harmony, had been guided to this seemingly insignificant moon. For the Harmonites, too, had their secret scouts among the survey ships of the CoDominium.
Metropolitan Costanza now knew this seemingly insignificant moon could be made to resonate with that Harmony for which he and all the others of his order strove. Conditions on this harsh and unforgiving world would be a perfect place for the Harmonies to gather in solitude and security, for a little while, at least; for who else would want such a place? Metropolitan Costanza could see no reason for this place to stir greed among men, and here they might live in solitude, unmolested by the anthrocentric CoDominium, with its planet-raping Americans and their equally rapacious Soviet partners.
Metropolitan Costanza and Acolyte Farrow buried Captain Potter and First Officer Connolly next to Icaorius and Owens, who had been good, true friends; alongside Ike, who had also been a Harmony. The bodies of Liu and Miller they left for the ravens, or whatever their equivalents were on this world, to nurture any scavengers that might roam the skies of the new world, as those buried would nurture the scavengers that moved within the ground.
Then, preparing to leave, Mi'huelo turned for one last look at the land around them, now disappearing behind curtains of snow, falling faster by the moment.
"What did you say Owens called this place?" Mi'huelo asked Farrow.
Farrow thought a moment: "A garden spot, your Eminence."
Mi'heulo shook his head, smiling. "You see, Thomas? All things harmonize, if only we seek to accept them as part of the Song. Consider the four men buried there, and the two who lie exposed nearby. Theirs were lives claimed by this harsh world that might one day yet become a haven for we Harmonies."
"Creation willing," Farrow repeated, nodding. There was so much to understand, but he thought that perhaps today, he had just picked up one thread of one strain of the Music here.
"Remember," Mi'huelo went on, "as a part of the Song, this place may claim the lives of many more as it plays its part in that music." He put his arm across Farrow's shoulders. "The lives of men are only notes in that movement, and it is only the aggregate effect of those notes which may be fully apprehended. These six, Thomas, these six are the first strains in the movement that contributes the story of this place to that song.
"The deaths of these men are the first blossoms of Spring in this world, their bodies the bone-white seeds, and their blood the bright-red blossoms of the ultimate Harmony, the attainment of which we can only seek, and whose real nature can be known only to itself.
"Kneel beside me, Thomas, and let us seek some small measure of that Harmony."
The steel floor of the airlock was cold against their knees, its hardness a further challenge to their concentration. No matter; counterpoint was important, too.
Each sought his own path for a few moments; Farrow was devoted to Costanza, and though many Harmonies found some of the Metropolitan's interpretations-unsettling-still, he was regarded as a voice of vision.
For himself, Costanza fretted constantly over the Harmonies; they needed so much care and tending to protect them. They were babes in the woods, and they did not understand that those woods were full of peril. The Harmony of existence was a song of many movements, many parts, and though all, by definition, harmonized, not all were pleasant to hear. And despite the order's belief in harmonizing one's self to circumstances and events, Costanza knew that every great orchestration needed conductors.
His own song was thus sometimes a lonely one. But he was grateful that he and Farrow had been caretakers of this garden where such seeds of Harmony had been sown.
"Let the blood of those who lie here nourish the seeds of the Song thus begun, and let such fruits flourish and multiply in measures everlasting."
. . . flourish, and multiply . . .
From Crofton's Encyclopedia of Contemporary History and Social Issues (2nd Edition):
Church of New Universal Harmony
The Church of New Universal Harmony espouses a kind of active pacifism that seeks always to "harmonize" with everything and everyone at all times. Such accommodations, conciliations, and compromises have rendered the Harmonies (also known, usually pejoratively, as Harmonites) vulnerable to many kinds of attacks over the years, but have also, somehow, managed to sustain at least the central core of beliefs embodied in their HARMONY WRITINGS, which include the Concordance of Referents and various attached holographic testaments, but very little, if any, actual ritual or dogma.
Although Harmonies are often called Peacemakers, it must be remembered that peace is not necessarily a harmonic of particular situations or circumstances. Although pacifist, the Harmony religion is not passive, and not without its inherent potential violence.
Garner "Bill" Castell, self-proclaimed wandering scholar, during his self-conducted trial for vagrancy in Austin, Texas, in the Old United States of North America, discovered that hoades of young people not only flocked to hear what he was saying, but offered him donations, services, and even devotion. His talks quickly took on the aura of revelation, and he apparently encouraged such feelings, at least tacitly. His Harmony ideas flourished, a meme gone wildfire, and soon his influence seeped into the secular arena as well. When he began structuring his talks into an avowed church, he found even wider acceptance. He quickly organized this outpouring of enthusiasm into an efficient fund-gathering organization, combining the best of both old style church tithing and contemporary business methods.