John wished that Godsworld had a “moon", as described in Genesis, to provide a little illumination. He had no clear idea what a moon was, only what the Bible said and that Earth had one and Godsworld didn't, but even a “lesser light” would have been welcome.
He and Miriam were not the only passengers; three others, all men, made the flight with them, all closed into a small windowless chamber with golden walls that appeared to be-but of course, could not be-plastic, furnished with benches upholstered in a strange, soft fabric dyed a vivid red. The other passengers ignored John, Miriam, and each other. One of them seemed to have a mild congestion of some sort, and could be heard breathing, but the others might as well have never been for all the companionship they provided.
John debated trying to strike up a conversation, but decided against it.
The two crewmen who oversaw the loading of freight and the embarkation of passengers were tall dark men armed with pistols, men who spoke slowly and in an oddly slurred manner; John guessed, from Timothy's description, that these were People of Heaven.
As he felt the airship shifting beneath him, John began to wonder if he were making a wise move. Perhaps he should have stayed longer in Little St. Peter, learned what he could there, before venturing on. The airship might be a trap of some sort-could there really be an “airship” on Godsworld? Such wonders were the stuff of old legends of Earth, not everyday reality.
But then, machine guns and the luxuries of Little St. Peter weren't exactly commonplace, either.
Miriam fell asleep resting her head on his arm; judging by the man's slumped posture and steady breathing, the congested fellow also dozed off. In the silent tedium, John lost all sense of time and was unsure whether he was still really awake himself.
Just when he was becoming certain that he had fallen asleep, and that recent events were all a dream and he would awake to find himself back in Marshside, the door slid open.
“Everyone off,” a voice called, “We're here.” John noticed that it was a Heavener's voice, with the odd slurring-the words were actually more like, “Ehwhuh awh, wuh heh.” There were some variations in speech among the various peoples of Godsworld, but John had never heard so extreme an accent.
He stood up, letting Miriam's head fall; she awoke, and muttered in mild confusion.
“Come on,” John said, finding her arm and pulling her up. “We're here."
Dragging a groggy Miriam and the bundle of cloth that had occupied a third seat, John stepped out of the airship and found himself in a corridor. Startled, he looked closely, and made out a seam between the corridor and the wall of the airship. He marvelled that the pilot had been able to bring his ship in so close to the “dock", or whatever it was, that the corridor matched up to the side of the vessel with less than a two-inch gap anywhere.
He wished he were able to see something through that narrow slit, but only darkness was visible. The walls of the passageway were of the same substance as the walls aboard the airship, he noticed, the stuff that looked like plastic.
Behind him the other three passengers were waiting impatiently, eager to be off the airship and on about their business.
“Welcome to the Citadel of Heaven,” said a man standing halfway down the short corridor. He spoke with the Heavener accent; John looked at him closely and noticed that the buttons on his shirt were absurdly small, less than an inch across. The texture of the shirt was odd, too, and the cut of the collar was strange. The jeans seemed all right, though they were tighter than customary. He wore a gun on a singularly narrow and unobtrusive belt, a gun not like any John had seen before-there was no cylinder, no hammer, no slide, just a smooth breech and textured grip.
“Have you been here before, sir?” the Heavener asked.
“No,” John admitted.
“Straight ahead, then.” He pointed down the corridor to a bright red door-hellishly red, John thought. He ambled slowly past the guard, or greeter, or whatever the Heavener was, toward the indicated door, taking in his surroundings and watching for any indication that he should take action somehow.
Behind him he heard the Heavener ask the next passenger whether he had ever been in the Citadel before.
“Yes,” the man answered, “I have a trade license."
“May I see your card?"
John glanced back over both his own shoulder and Miriam's and saw the passenger handing the Heavener something small and thin, something that fit comfortably in the man's palm and gleamed silver. The Heavener accepted it and touched it to a spot on the wall that John had taken for decoration; letters appeared on the smooth surface of the wall above the spot, letters that John was too far away to read.
He almost walked into the red door at the end of the passage. He fumbled for the latch as the Heavener said, “Thank you, sir-first door on the right."
There was no latch; instead he found a small button where the latch should be and pressed it. The door swung open and admitted him and Miriam to a good-sized room, again finished in golden plastic. John glanced around at it. How had that message appeared in the corridor? Was this stuff that the Heaveners used for their walls something other than a simple building material? Were there machines hidden on all sides? That was a frightening thought, reminiscent of nursery terror tales of the computers in the walls that watched everyone on Earth in the days before the Crossing.
The corridor had been windowless-and, John realized, he had seen no lanterns or lamps of any sort, yet it had been brightly lit. On the airship light had come from lamps set in the ceiling; he had been unsure whether they were electric or something else. Certainly they were brighter than any lamps he was familiar with; flames or filaments, however, had been hidden behind frosted glass.
This room he now found himself in, however, had a window-a very large window, taking up most of one wall in a single sheet of glass. John had never seen a single pane so large before. Beyond it the sky was still black-he had lost his sense of time and wondered if dawn might have arrived, but plainly it had not.
In the center of the room a plain young woman, clad in a traditional brown dress, stood behind a sort of lectern. She smiled cheerfully.
“Hlo,” she said, using a word John had never heard before. She continued, speaking with the Heavener accent, “Welcome to the Citadel of Heaven. May I have your name, please?"
“J'sevyu,” he replied politely. “I am Joel Meek-Before-Christ, and this is my wife Miriam, from the Church of the Only God, in North Dan.” Miriam, still drowsy, nodded agreement. She had not spoken since boarding the airship.
The woman drummed her fingers unevenly across the lectern, glanced down, then looked up again.
“Mr. Christ,” she said, “I'm glad to meet you. None of your people have come here before; are you here as a private individual, or as a representative of your tribe?"
Disconcerted by the peculiar mistake the woman had made in her abbreviation of his false surname-which would, of course, become “Meek", not “Christ", in conversation-John hesitated before replying, “Ah… as a private individual-but I'm sure that my family and friends will be interested in what I tell them when I get home."
She smiled. “I'm sure they will. I take it, though, that you don't have the authority to make a treaty with our protectorate on their behalf."
“No, ma'am, I'm afraid I don't."
“Well, that's fine; we just had to ask."
“No, ma'am, I'm here to sell woolens. A fellow in Little St. Peter told me that I could probably get a good price for them here."
A flicker of doubt crossed the woman's face. “Woolens? Not raw wool?"
“No, good woolens-I've got a hundred and fifty yards of the best weave you'll find, without kinks or runs, either raw, bleached, or dyed blue."