Starborne

His ostensible reason for derailing the conversation — that they need to concentrate instead on the challenge of Planet B — is legitimate enough. But behind it lies something else entirely, a matter of compassion, of concern for the most delicate member of the ship’s community. He could see, even if none of the others could, the look of fear on Noelle’s face, and he could hear the little quaver in her voice. Suppose these angels, or whatever they are,did exist, and suppose shecould in some fashion open her mind to them, how did anyone know what would become of her? His mind had gone at once to all those Greek myths of women who had wanted to be embraced by this or that god in all his might, and had been granted their wish, and had been consumed unto ashes by the full glory of the deity. They needed to consider, very carefully indeed, all the consequences of a mental union between Noelle and one of these supposed creatures of the void, before shoving her into the attempt.

So the desire to protect Noelle lurks beneath his stated reason for tabling the project. And because — he isn’t sure why — he is reluctant to reveal that underlying desire to the others, he has chosen to hide it behind an acceptable but secondary explanation that would achieve the same goal. That was a manipulative act, he feels.

The selfishness is hidden one further layer down. What if Noelle tries to speak with these creatures, and succeeds, and actually strikes some détente with them under which the communications channel linking her to her sister could be reopened? What, then, would become of his own hard-won deal giving him the right to participate in the Planet B landing expedition in return for accepting a third year as captain? Many of them, he suspects, had voted for the change in the Articles of the Voyage only because they believed that contact with Earth had been forever lost and they were under no obligation now to obey inconvenient regulations that Earth had imposed upon them. But if that contact were to be restored—

He has put the “angel” thing aside, therefore, for three good and proper reasons, one that is simply sensible, one that is tenderhearted, and one that is out-and-out selfish.

But the year-captain knows that the Abbot, if only he could be consulted in these matters, would focus on the third of those reasons, and would ask him whether it was likely that the other two would have had much force in his mind if the third one had not been driving him; and there would be no good answer to that. There never were any good answers to the Abbot’s questions. He never condemned; he left that job to you yourself; but he could never be fooled, either.

Alone in his cabin now, the year-captain closes his eyes and the formidable figure of the Abbot rises vividly in his mind: a small, compactly constructed man, a fleshless man, bone and muscle only, ageless, indefatigable. He was probably about a hundred years old, but no one would have been greatly astonished had it been demonstrated that he was twice that age, or three times it, or that he had come into the world in the latter days of the Pleistocene. He seemed indestructible. An unforgettable face: broad forehead, dense mat of curling dark hair, piercing violet eyes, firmly jutting nose, practically lipless mouth. No one knew his name. He was simply the Abbot. Had he founded the monastery? No one knew that, either. The residents of the monastery did not indulge in historical research. They were there; so was he; he was the Abbot. Beyond that, very little mattered.

The year-captain revered him. In the hour before dawn, when he would arise and go down to the icy shore for the first of the day’s rituals of discipline, he would always find the Abbot already there, kneeling by the water’s edge, holding his hands beneath the surface. Not to mortify the flesh, not to incur the sin of pride by demonstrating how much self-inflicted damage he could tolerate, but simply to focus his concentration, to clarify the operations of his mind. All of the Lofoten exercises were like that. One performed them for their own sake, and not to convince others or even oneself of one’s great holiness. Holiness was beside the point here; the monastery, in this entirely secular age, was entirely secular in its orientation.