Glow (31 page)

Austen shook his head.

Kieran took the woman’s reddened hand and squeezed it, hoping to feel something in return, but not even her breathing changed. He stood. “I think you’re doing a really good job,” he said to Tobin, who was standing behind him, looking on. “How’s
your
mom?”

The boy smiled. “She talked this morning. She knew me.”

Kieran sensed that Tobin had forgiven him. “What has she been saying?”

“We talked about Dad, mostly, where he probably is. What we’ll do when he comes back. She wants to make him a cake.”

Kieran smiled. “Can I have a piece?”

The boy nodded grudgingly. “Sure. You can have a piece.”

The next day, Kieran felt strong enough to survey the damage to the agricultural bays. He had no idea what forty hours of zero gravity might have done, and he was anxious to see for himself.

Seth had taken care of the most pressing issues, but there were still problems. The granary lights were much dustier than usual. A stand of aspens in the arboretum had fallen, and a team of boys was feeding them into the mulchers. In the tropics bay, a palm tree had toppled into a lemon grove, killing several smaller trees. The small herd of goats had sustained some injuries, but the chickens seemed healthy, though the coop was filthy. Otherwise, the damage was surprisingly minimal, and Kieran knew that if the boys worked steadily, they’d be able to make the necessary repairs.

But keeping them working was a problem. The mood on the ship was somber. More than six weeks had passed since the girls were taken, and with each passing day, the boys’ worry grew. They were no longer ruled by panic, but by a heavy despair. A few of them had stopped working altogether, and the rest were losing heart. Kieran knew he had to do something about it. He had to find a way to give them hope.

TRANSFORMATION

One evening, after a long day of running the combine in the cornfield, Kieran sat in the Captain’s chair in Central Command, watching the com terminal. The sensors would pick up a ship long before he got visual contact, but he still liked scrolling through the different outside views, peering into the murk of the nebula as though he might just catch a glimpse of the New Horizon or his mother’s shuttle. The only other person with him in Central Command was Sarek, eating mashed grain and beans, his face awash with the bluish light from his com screen. Kieran sipped a mug of tea from the Captain’s private reserves, a deep Earl Grey made from bergamot flowers and cured tea leaves grown back on Earth. It was fragrant, sharp without sugar or goat’s milk, and it focused his mind.

Sarek set his bowl down on his desk and rubbed his hands over his face. Always serious and quiet, he’d matured even more since the attack and had shouldered almost as much responsibility as Arthur.

“I never thanked you, Sarek,” Kieran said.

The boy turned. “For what?”

“For helping me out at my trial. I think you might have saved my life.”

“I don’t think so. Seth looked more scared than you did.”

“You stuck your neck out just the same. I appreciate it.”

Sarek’s black eyes fixed on Kieran’s. “Morale is low, you know.”

“How could it not be?”

“Matt Allbright didn’t show up to relieve me today. I found him in his mother’s bed. He said it’s pointless to keep trying because we’ll never find them. Too much time has passed. He’s not the only one saying it, either.”

“I’m not sure what I can do about that, Sarek,” Kieran said, wishing he
were
sure. He sounded like the old Kieran who never knew what to do.

“All I know is I’m doing more work with less time off,” Sarek said. “And I see more guys shirking their duty and sulking around. The ship can’t run like that.”

Kieran set his mug of tea in the cup holder next to the captain’s chair and leaned back. He’d come to trust Sarek almost as much as Arthur. He was reliable in a way few other boys were. “What makes the difference, do you think?”

The boy looked at him, puzzled.

“You haven’t given up. What’s the difference between you and Matt Allbright?”

Sarek leaned an elbow on the arm of his chair while he thought about it. He shook his head. “All I know is that I get up every morning, I point myself toward Mecca, and I say my prayers.”

“And that helps?”

Sarek shrugged. “It’s what my dad would want me to do.”

Kieran nodded, thinking back to that terrible night when he was nearly at the end of his strength, the night the voice came to soothe him.

“So you believe in God,” Kieran said.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Sarek seemed bewildered by the question. “It just seems obvious to me, I guess. That there must be something behind all this.” He gestured out the windows, where a star or two winked dimly through the nebula. “I mean, all of creation? You? Me? Just because of some cosmic accident? It doesn’t seem realistic.”

“I know what you mean,” Kieran said pensively. “But do you think we’re in the minority?”

“How do you mean?”

“Do you think we’re the only believers on board?”

Sarek shook his head. “Not by a long shot. Not anymore, anyway. Dad always said there are no atheists in foxholes.”

“Why wasn’t your family chosen to go on the other ship?” Kieran asked. It was something he’d often wondered about his own spiritual family, who had never quite fit in on the Empyrean.

Sarek shrugged. “I don’t think the Muslim families would have fit in on the other ship, either.”

Kieran nodded pensively.

That night, Kieran lay in the Captain’s bed and reflected on how he’d led the boys until now. He’d been practical, logical, and responsible, but he hadn’t inspired them.

“Am I failing them?” he whispered into the dark.

They need a vision,
said the voice.

He sat up, his sheets rustling around his legs.

“Are you really there?” he whispered. “What do I do?”

Give them a vision.

“How?”

You’ll find the way.

“I need more than that!” he yelled.

But he was alone again.

A vision,
the voice had said. That’s what the boys lacked. A place they could imagine as their destiny, some goal to work toward even as they grieved.

Kieran remembered the night when so many of the boys had learned they’d lost parents in the shuttle bay massacre, and the sermon he’d found. That sermon had given the boys enough hope to keep trying, or at least not give up, because, Kieran realized, it helped them to feel that they were still connected to their lost loved ones, as Sarek said.

He had to find more sermons like that.

He got out of bed, turned on the desk lamp, and scrolled through the Captain’s computer. He found the folder with the sermons in it and read through titles like “Barren of Womb, Fertile of Heart” and “Our Crops Are Our Children.” Few of the sermons spoke to the problems he and the boys faced, but he read them all. They talked about the greater mission and the glorious day when the ships reached New Earth and the work of terraformation could begin. It was a sacred mission, a pact with God and the rest of humanity, not only those back on Earth, but their children, and their children’s children, for millennia to come.

These words caught at Kieran, and he felt them to be true. The Empyrean’s mission
was
the greatest endeavor in all of human history. The continuation of Earth-origin life depended on it, and it must not fail. Surely this must be the work of God.

Why, then? Why had God let those people kill their families and take the girls away? Why would He put the mission in jeopardy? Unless … was that part of His plan?

Suffering has purpose,
thought Kieran. His time of pain and starvation in the brig had purified him and made him ready to receive God’s message. God allowed the attack so that all the crew of the Empyrean would be open to His voice.

Kieran stayed up all night long, reading the sermons, taking notes, and writing down his own thoughts in the wreath of yellow light from his desk lamp. The more he wrote, the more strongly he felt that he was meeting his destiny. The voice had pointed him here, and he’d found what he was meant to do.

By morning, when the rest of the boys stirred from their beds and wandered into the central bunker for their breakfast, they found rows of chairs arranged before a podium. At the podium, wearing his black suit and tie, stood Kieran Alden, clean-shaven, reddish hair slicked back, fingernails spotlessly clean. Kieran fitted the loudspeaker to his mouth. “Please take a seat, everyone,” he said. “I have some thoughts I’d like to share with you.”

The boys hesitated until they saw the pieces of fresh bread with generous dollops of blackberry jam placed on each chair. Then they sat down happily enough.

Only about half the boys had come, but that was all right. It was a good start. He nodded at Arthur, who pressed a button on the intercom, and a recording of a Beethoven sonata began to play. Arthur dimmed the lights, keeping a single spot on Kieran so that he glowed. Kieran imagined himself reflecting the light in manifold, taking it into himself and releasing it as a gift to the sad, frightened little boys.

Could he really do this? Was he really this kind of man?

“Thank you for coming.” Kieran looked at his notes, which had seemed so brilliant the night before. Now that sixty pairs of eyes watched him, waiting, his words seemed thin and weak. He felt his light fade.

But thin and weak was better than nothing.

“We’ve been through a lot in these past months,” he began. “We’ve lost loved ones, been separated from our families, our friends, and we don’t know where they are or if they’re safe. Until this nebula clears, there’s nothing we can do but wait and hope for the best.”

Kieran heard an angry scoff from the back of the room, but he didn’t pause to look up or even acknowledge it.

“Why did this happen to us? We’ve been sent into the vastness of creation to remake our new home in the image of God’s perfect creation on Earth.” Many of the boys looked at him with puzzlement; still more looked thoughtful. “We all believed unquestioningly in the rightness of our mission, didn’t we? Let’s raise our hands in a show of solidarity that our mission is God’s work.”

Kieran raised his right hand, and most of the boys raised their hands, too.

“Look around you. Look at all these raised hands. The majority of us have known all along we were performing God’s work, haven’t we? Now, put your hands down, and let me ask you another question.”

Obediently, the hands dropped, and Kieran paused, looking at the boys, all of them watching him, waiting to hear what he would say next.

This was so much easier than he’d thought it would be.

“Now, raise your hand if you attended services once a week.”

Only about five hands went into the air, as Kieran knew would be the case. “How many went once a month?”

Six more hands raised, but most of the boys looked at Kieran shamefaced.

“You can put your hands down.” Kieran waited for the boys to drop their hands. “Now I’m wondering how different things might be if we had been paying attention to the spiritual side of our mission. What if we’d been more mindful? Would God have been kinder to us in the hour of our need? Would our mothers and fathers and sisters be with us here today, if we’d paid Him more attention? If we’d gotten down on our knees, just once a week, and thanked God for giving us the privilege of being the first generation to set foot on the planet that soon all of humankind will call home, forever after?”

He looked around the room. There were skeptical faces in the crowd, sure, and plenty of boys seemed not to be paying attention at all, but most of them seemed to be thinking about what he was saying. Some of them even looked tearful.

“I think in our day-to-day lives, we’ve forgotten who we are. We are the forefathers of a new civilization. We will lay the foundation for countless generations of human beings in a corner of the galaxy where nothing”—Kieran drew breath to build his voice and called out—“I say
nothing
like us has been seen before. We
will
get the girls back, and with them we will create a new world!”

He had them. Many of them were looking at him with guarded awe. Amos Periwinkle had folded his hands under his chin and was staring at Kieran, rapt and amazed. Tobin Ames, the boy who had been plotting against him before, seemed thunderstruck by the enormity of Kieran’s ideas.

“This is why I’m starting a new tradition. Every Sunday morning, we’re going to come here, we’re going to eat bread together, and we’re going to talk about these things. We’ll end every service by getting on our knees and thanking God for putting us on this miraculous ship and sending us across the galaxy. We’ll give our thanks to God for choosing us to be…” Here he paused, made them wait for it: “The world makers.”

Kieran walked around the podium so the boys could see his full length, and with great ceremony, he got on his knees, folded his hands, and bowed his head in prayer.

It took a few minutes. At first they just stared at him, but then, one by one, the boys got on their knees, leaned on the chairs in front of them, and bowed their heads.

A few stayed seated. Kieran expected this. But the overwhelming majority had latched on to this new idea. Kieran stayed kneeling for several minutes, feeling the pulse of the room. It was perfectly silent while the boys prayed, but slowly, some indefinable tension in the air seemed to ebb away. When finally Kieran felt a peace settle over his congregation, he looked up, smiled, and said, “Amen.”

The next Sunday there was flatbread with garlic and olive oil, and Kieran gave thanks to God for the harvest. The Sunday after that, there was cornbread and sheep’s butter, and Kieran praised God for the new batch of chicks that had hatched in the poultry bay. After a few months, he added a segment during which anyone who wanted could speak his prayers aloud. This was a good way to get a sense of how the crew was feeling. He knew the services were helping morale when one Sunday a boy named Mookie Parker stood and squeaked, “I thank God for these services because they make me feel better.”