Forever Free

We put the boots in the hole and he refilled it and patted the dirt smooth. “Did she have a religion?”

“Orthodox New Catholic,” I said.

“I can do that.” He absorbed the shovel and became a tall priest in a black cowled robe, with tonsure and heavy cross on a chain swinging from his neck. He said a few words in Latin and made a cross gesture over the grave.

Still the priest, he walked with us back to Molly Malone’s, where several people were sitting on porch chairs and a rocker. Stephen was weeping uncontrollably, Marygay and Max holding on to him. He and Anita had had a son together, who died in an accident at nine or ten. They drifted apart after that, but were still friends. Rii brought him a glass of water and a pill.

“Rii,” I said, “if that’s some sort of trank, I could use one myself.” I felt as if I was about to explode, out of grief and confusion.

She looked at the vial. “It’s mild enough. Anybody want to take a nap?” I think everybody took one, except Antres 906 and the priest. Marygay and I went up to the inn’s second floor and found a bed, and collapsed in each other’s arms.

It was almost sundown when I woke up. I got out of bed as quietly as possible and found that Molly Malone’s plumbing still worked, even to hot water. Marygay got up while I was washing, and we went downstairs together.

Stephen and Matt were making noise in the dining area. They’d pulled several tables together and set out some plastic dishes and forks, and a pile of food boxes. “Our fearless leader,” she said. “You get to open the first box.”

I didn’t really feel like eating, though I should have been famished. I picked up one that said chili in bright red letters, with a picture of Donald Duck holding his throat, fire issuing from his beak. I pulled the top back and it worked, the chili sizzling and filling the room with an agreeable odor.

“Not spoiled,” I said, and blew on a forkful. It was bland, meatless. “Seems okay.”

The others popped boxes, and soon the place smelled like a cafeteria. Cat and Po came down, followed by Max. We ate the small meals in stunned silence, except for mumbled greetings. Po said grace before he opened his box.

I left mine unfinished. “See what the sunset looks like,” I said, and got up from the table. Marygay and Cat came along.

Outside, Antres 906 and the Omni, still looking like a priest, were conversing in croaks and squeaks, standing where Anita had died.

“Discussing who the next will be?” Cat said, glaring at the priest.

He looked up, startled. “What?”

“What caused that,” she said, “if it wasn’t you?”

“Not me. I could do that to myself, if I wanted to die, but I couldn’t do it to someone else.”

“Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?” I said.

“Couldn’t. `Physically impossible,’ to put it in words of four syllables. To use your belief system.”

“So what happened? People don’t just explode!”

He sat down on the edge of the porch and crossed his long legs, lacing his fingers over his knee, looking toward the sunset. “There you go again. People do explode, obviously. One just did.”

“And it could have been any of us.” Marygay’s voice shook. “We could all go like that, one by one.”

“We could,” the priest said, “including me. But I hope it was just an experiment. A test.”

“Someone’s testing us?” I was feeling dizzy and trying to control nausea. I sat down carefully on the porch floor.

“Always,” the priest said quietly. “You’ve never felt that?”

“Metaphor,” I said.

He made a slow sweeping gesture. “The way all this is metaphor. Taurans understand that better than you do.”

“Not this,” Antres 906 said. “This is something I cannot contain.”

“The nameless.” The priest said a Tauran word I didn’t know.

Antres touched his throat. “Of course. But the…you say `nameless’? They are not literally real. They are a convenience, a symbol, talking about…I do not know how to say it. Truth underneath appearance, fate?”

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