The Alleluia Files (56 page)

“She can’t hear what the machine says, so she sees no need to come,” Caley said.

“You could interpret for her.”

Caley smiled briefly, a pretty flash of mischief across her tired face. “She doesn’t like secrets. She says no secret revealed ever did anybody good.”

“This one will. That I am sure of.”

Caley led the way upstairs and into a small, featureless room with a single window and drab decor. Faded wallpaper covered three walls; the fourth, once presumably hidden behind the false front, was of rough brick. There were really only three pieces of furniture in the room: a narrow bed covered with a thin coverlet, a rickety old chest of drawers with a cracked mirror leaned on top of it—and a bulky metal box studded with gauges and knobs.

A clench of unbearable excitement tightened Jared’s stomach almost to the point of nausea. Recording equipment. It looked
nothing at all like the sleek black transmitters he had seen in Luminaux and at Christian’s, but in an odd way it resembled the machinery in the music rooms at the angel holds. And when Caleb Augustus built this piece of equipment—for who but that rogue engineer would have constructed such, a thing?—the only recorders he had encountered had been those ancient, mysterious systems brought in by the original colonists.

Caley gestured at the metal box. “Is this what you’re looking for?” she asked. “I have no idea how it works.”

Conran was on his knees before it, and Duncan and Sal hovered behind him, but it was young Wyman who was the only mechanic of the group. Or so Jared surmised. When Wyman said, “Let me see,” the others fell back. He bent over the box and studied the controls.

“Hunh,” he said, and began touching dials and switches. Everyone tried to remember to breathe, but clearly the room was airless; they were all pale from lack of oxygen, from excitement, from fear. There might be nothing inside this old, bulky music box; there might be everything.

“Ah,” was Wyman’s next pronouncement, and the lid of the contraption flew open and almost struck him in the chin. Everyone jumped back a pace. Jani stepped on Jared’s wings, which caused him to bite back a yelp of pain and move hurriedly to the back of the room. Strange clickings were emanating from the old equipment; it sounded like a piece of metal heating up to a sizzling pitch.

“Well. I see. If that … no,
that
one,” Wyman said, and his voice was laced with satisfaction. “Okay. Hold tight. I think this may be the ‘go’ button.”

He turned a knob, and the room was filled with the sound of a woman speaking. Jared was caught first by the utter sweetness of that voice, chime-sweet, child-sweet, beguiling as birdsong on the first day of spring. There was nothing this woman could have said to him that he would not have believed absolutely; nothing she would have asked from him that he would not have gladly done. He had heard of speakers blessed with hypnotic voices but he had never, till this moment, encountered one, and certainly would not have expected any recorded voice to have such power, divorced from the speaker’s spirit by six decades of death.

It was therefore a few sentences into her speech before he registered what she was saying—and the words were just as astonishing as the voice.

“… Such knowledge, while important, has such calamitous and far-reaching effects that I fear to share it with the rest of Samaria. Our society lives by the rules set down by our god— our world maintains its graces and its civilities primarily because these have been ordained by Jovah. If the god were to be removed from our calculations, I do not know how our society would continue to function. I do not know. I am afraid to find out.

“And yet, having been taught to revere truth, I cannot in conscience fail to correct a lie. I will tell only one living soul what I have learned, but I will leave this record for future generations who may deal more hardily with knowledge than my own. If Jovah has taught me one thing, it is that a truth will be revealed when that truth is desperately needed, and so I hope this secret becomes known when the time is right.

“The god Jovah is in reality a space-going vessel called the
Jehovah
. It ferried us here from Eleison more than six hundred years ago, and it still orbits above us today. It is built from unimaginable technology and stocked with priceless commodities—seeds, chemicals, potions—that the ship can release to us upon request. It is also armed with powerful weapons, weapons so terrible and so precise that they can strike down a man standing in a crowd of men or destroy the whole world we call Samaria.

“It is voice-activated. It hears the angels’ prayers and responds to the cadence of our songs. When we sing for rain, it sprays chemicals into the clouds to make them gather overhead. When we pray for medicine, it releases drugs that we do not even know how to decode.

“When we gather every year to perform the Gloria, it counts our voices and calculates our numbers. If we were to remain silent, it would smite us with all the destructive power at its command. It has no malice for us. It has no love for us. It is programmed to act in this way. It is a machine.

“But it is a machine that controls our lives. One of the great engineers of my time has said he cannot see a way to dismantle it. Thus we cannot disregard it. We cannot, for instance, cease singing the Gloria simply because we do not raise our prayers to a god. In fact, a god might be more merciful than
Jehovah
.

“But
Jehovah
is also a wonderful, fabulous thing. It has stored in its memory banks all the knowledge of the universe. It has taught me more than I could ever record here, and I have not asked it one-one-thousandth of the questions it could answer. It can tell us how our bodies are formed, how our minds work, where our ancestors were born, and where people just like us live on other planets orbiting other stars. It can tell us how to build machines just like it, that would carry us elsewhere, to new worlds beneath different suns. It would tell us all this, but we are not yet ready to understand the answers. Or so I believe.

“How do I know all this? How can I be so sure? Because I have stood face-to-face with
Jehovah
. I have traveled to the interior of this ship, and heard the voice of its electronic brain speak to me as I am speaking to you now. I have touched its keyboards and controls—I have walked its vast white halls. I have stood there and despaired, because my god was a machine. And I have stood there and rejoiced, because I learned the truth.

“There is a way—a simple way—for any man or woman to transport himself to the interior of the spaceship as I have done. I have left those instructions elsewhere, in other trusted hands. Forgive me if I am being too careful. I have guarded this secret with my life, for so much of my life, that I am afraid to have said as much as I already have. But I believe that if you are meant to find the rest of the puzzle, you will find it. And if not, you can do very little harm.

“I have asked
Jehovah
, who is wiser than any human I know, when the time might be right for Samarians to learn the truth about their god. He gave, as he sometimes does, a cryptic reply. He said, “That day will come when the twinned destinies of angel and mortal become one.’ Perhaps that answer will mean more to you than it does to me.

“I have no more to say, but I beg you to use the knowledge you have gained only for the good of the world. I am the oracle Alleluia, and I bid you farewell and amen.”

The recording ran for another full minute, making a quiet little whirring noise in the heart of the machine, but there was not another sound in the room. Jared felt heat at all the junctures of his body, a breathless pressure across his chest, and
he
had not spent his life looking for this very revelation. He could imagine how stunned the Jacobites were, how elated, how their very
blood must be reveling in their veins and whirling their brains into ecstasy.

Caley was the first to speak, and her voice was amused and a little ironic. “She must have given quite a speech. I don’t believe one of you has breathed since she started talking.”

All the Jacobites looked at her, still too choked to reply, and Jared said, “You could not hear her?”

Caley shook her head. “Isn’t that strange? They say almost everyone could hear Alleya, even those who had been born deaf and never heard another voice in their lives. But my great-great-grandmother Mara never heard Alleya’s voice, and I cannot catch it either. I can hear you. I can hear most others. But not Alleluia.”

“You have missed—an incredible performance.”

“That’s what he said, too.”

“That’s what—
who
said that?”

Jared saw Conran’s head whip around, although the other Jacobites did not seem to be paying attention. They had begun to move now, in careful, fractional gestures, and to speak in voices scarcely above a whisper. They appeared to be shaking themselves loose from near-fatal comas and describing their experiences in awestruck tones.

But Conran stepped a pace closer to Caley and repeated Jared’s question. “Who said that? Someone else has heard this recording?”

Caley nodded. She appeared surprised. “Oh, yes. About five years ago. It took him much longer to convince my grandmother to let him up to this room, though.”

Conran and Jared shared glances of alarm. “Who was he? What was his name?”

“I don’t remember his name,” she said. “He was an angel, though. Older. With—” She fluttered her fingers around her head. “Silver hair, kind of wild. And a silver beard. He had the most beautiful voice. I could hear every word he said.”

Jared felt his lips mouth the word but he could not say it aloud. Conran was staring at him, shaking his head very slightly. It was not possible.
Was
it possible? Had the Archangel been here five years ago, successfully solving the riddle the Jacobites had puzzled over for decades? Had he heard the oracle Alleluia proclaim that the god was a spaceship, swear it in a voice so
calm and so convincing that no one could disbelieve it? Had he not believed her?

Had he believed her?

Was that why he had so venomously attacked the Jacobites? Had he, ruthlessly and with complete knowledge, set out to exterminate the reckless band of rebels who sought to shed a searing, terrible light on their entire world? Had he done it to save Samaria, to protect it from the confusion and turmoil that would overturn every law of their society once the truth was made public?

Or had he done it because he alone wanted the power that would come with knowledge? If there was no god, how could the god care who was Archangel? Why could Bael not remain Archangel for another year—another ten years—for the rest of his life? Who would stop him? Who would limit him? Who would challenge him?

The Jacobites …

Oh, Bael had known very well what he was doing. He had styled himself a prophet in the service of the god, but he was a cold-blooded killer eliminating any threat to his own bid for glory. Christian had said the Archangel was an evil man. He did not know the half of it.

“Was it who I think?” Conran asked in a very quiet voice. Everyone else in the room was still ignoring them.

“It was Bael,” Jared said.

“Then we are in even more danger than we thought.”

“I agree,” Jared said. “I think we should get back to Ysral as soon as we can.”

“We must bring the equipment with us.”

Jared shook his head. “You can try. My guess is that it’s immovable. Or why else is it still here?”

“Why does it still exist at all?” Conran shot back. “Why didn’t he destroy it before we found it?”

Jared spread his hands. “Unfathomable. Unless he thought he might someday want proof, and this was the only proof he had. He must not have thought you would ever find it. He must have believed it was safe here. And that no one would be able to remove it.”

Conran stared at him a moment and then, eyes still on the angel, barked out, “Wyman.”

“Yo.”

“This machine. Can you detach it? Take the recording out?”

“Just what I’ve been wondering,” the young engineer said. Conran and the angel turned to find him still kneeling on the floor before Caleb Augustus’s unique piece of equipment. “I can’t figure out where it’s connected or how to loosen the bolts. See, here’s where it looks like it screws into the wall, but when you twist that—”

“Then the answer is no,” Conran said impatiently, and Jared read a rising anxiety in his voice. “Everybody listen to me. We need to leave here. Now. Instantly. Make our way back to the rendezvous point. If something unforeseen happens, abandon the group, do you hear me?
Abandon the group
. Flee as fast as you can back to Ysral and take this information to the others.”

There was a babble of questioning voices (“What’s wrong?” “What did Wyman say?” “I’m not abandoning anybody!”) but they all seemed to catch some of Conran’s edginess. At any rate, when the Jacobite leader pointed a finger at the door and said “Go!,” Jani, Loa, and Horace instantly ducked out and clattered downstairs. Caley went with them. Duncan, Sal, and Wyman followed less willingly, and Tamar lingered even after the others had left.

“What was that girl telling you, Conran?” she asked, but her eyes were on Jared.

“That we are not the first to seek this recording. Go. Downstairs. Run for it.”

“But we—”

“Conran!” The frenzied shout came from downstairs, a heartbeat before someone shrieked. The air outside was suddenly alive with whoops of celebration and the small thunder of running feet. In the distance, but rapidly coming nearer, Jared heard the grumble of big transport trucks roaring down the quiet Chahiela road.

“Jansai!” Conran whispered, and grabbed Tamar by the arm when she would have hurtled downstairs after her friends. “No,” he hissed. “Stay here and hide.”

“But they—”

“Hide!”
he repeated in that fierce undervoice. “What you know is more important than who you can save.”

Below them was tumult: more screaming, the sound of a few solid blows landing across rebellious flesh, Caley’s voice uselessly demanding, “Who are you? What do you want? Get out
of my grandmother’s house!” Conran forced Tamar toward the small bed and jerked her to her knees when she still resisted, shoving her head toward the floor and under the rickety frame. Jared stood tense but indecisive. There was really no place for an angel to hide—in one of the other bedrooms? in some huge closet where he could draw close his wings?—and the window was far too narrow to allow him to escape.