Quintessence Sky (5 page)

It was the largest room in the house, and
Matthew found his father there with six manticores, a trusted cadre
of Christian converts whom his father was educating. He ran the
house like a seminary, housing as many as a dozen, to whom he
taught daily classes on Hebrew, Greek, and Biblical theology. In
fact, he devoted a lot more attention and passion to this work than
he did to the running of the colony, one of the many reasons
Matthew considered him ill-suited to the governorship. Matthew had
to admit, however, that his father had done a remarkable job of
forging a kind of peace with their manticore neighbors after the
fighting last year, far more successfully than anyone else could
have done.

John Marcheford was dressed exactly as he
would have been in London: an austere, black doublet and gray hose,
sober attire with a formality completely out of place in a remote
island colony. There had been a time, long ago, when Matthew had
revered his father as a god. Back home, he had been important and
respected, his knowledge vast and his morals above reproach, and
Matthew had wanted to grow up to be just like him. In those days,
Catherine used to say he was a miniature version of his father, a
mannequin who dressed the same and repeated the same phrases.

Now, Matthew had to keep his mouth shut in
his father's presence if he didn't want to start a fight. His
father's distinguished manner, so suited to London, seemed
out-of-place and preposterous here. His clothing was impractical
and ridiculous, and worst of all, he denounced quintessence and its
use in everyday life as a corrupting and atheistic influence.

"I have to talk with you," Matthew said.

His father lifted a finger and continued his
lesson. He was aging, Matthew noticed. The lines of his face had
grown deeper, and his hands, which Matthew remembered for their
strength and purposefulness, had grown knotted and spidery.

"Please read from verse fourteen," his father
said.

A manticore stood awkwardly cradling an
English Bible in its pincers. "He causeth grass to grow for the
cattle, and herb for the use of man, that he may bring forth bread
out of the earth."

Matthew recognized it as Psalm 104, a chapter
about God's sovereignty over the natural world.

"
God
causeth the grass to grow," his
father boomed in his preaching voice. "It is not the rain or sun
which causeth it, however God might please to use them in his
service. Therefore, if the grass fail, should we beseech the rain
and the sun for help?"

"Nay!" the manticores chorused.

"Should we measure the rain and calculate the
angle of the sun to understand why it will not grow?"

"Nay!"

"What then?"

One manticore raised a pincer in a ridiculous
parody of a English schoolboy raising his hand. Marcheford called
on him.

"We should seek the Lord in prayer," the
manticore said.

"Very good," Marcheford replied, his eyes
boring into Matthew's. "Only the Lord can make the plants
grow."

Matthew sighed. He wondered if they had been
studying this passage before he arrived, or if his father had
brought it up simply to make his point to Matthew. There was so
little they agreed on anymore, and Matthew found it unsettling.
Everything he thought and believed came originally from his father.
Once, he would have taken every word from his father's mouth as
gospel truth.

His father was wrong about quintessence,
wrong about the experimental study of the natural world being an
atheistic philosophy. But that meant his father
could
be
wrong, and if so, what if he was wrong about everything? Matthew
still believed his Protestant faith: that salvation was by faith
alone; that the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper was a symbol,
not the actual flesh and blood of Christ; that God alone was to be
worshipped. But he wasn't certain why he believed them. Was it just
because his father had always said so? It was only in the last year
that it had really occurred to him that his father could be wrong.
It was as if the pillar supporting everything Matthew believed had
suddenly been swept away, and he wasn't sure if anything he thought
he knew would stand anymore.

"We need to talk right now," Matthew
said.

His father nodded. "Lessons are adjourned
until tomorrow," he said.

He led Matthew to his study, a room which,
when Christopher Sinclair was governor, had been strewn with
flasks, powders, jars of animal organs, dried insects and bones—all
tools in the service of the natural philosophy. Now, the room was
filled with rolls of paper, the manuscript of his father's ongoing
attempt to translate the Bible for the manticores. The manticores
had no written language, but his father had created one, using a
combination of Latin letters and pictographs to represent the tail
motions that were so important a part of their communication. It
had been his father's lifelong wish to bring the gospel to a group
of people unreached by the gospel, and no group was more unreached
than the manticore tribes. He was living his dream.

"You know we're running out of salt," Matthew
said. "I just came from the lily fields. We have a month at most.
We need to start compulsory rationing."

His father shrugged. "Why come to me with
this? I have nothing to do with your atheist Quintessence
Society."

"We're not atheists. And I come to you
because you're the governor. You're supposed to be leading."

His father had been offered the governorship
with little discussion or objection after Christopher Sinclair
died. As a bishop, he had the highest rank and social class of
anyone in the colony, so most people accepted his leadership as
natural. To Matthew, it seemed ridiculous. His father was the
opposite of all Horizon stood for, a man who looked backward
instead of forward, who clung to the ideals of London society, who
thought young men should respect their elders, women should stay
home and be quiet in public, and people should accept their
God-given place in life instead of striving to make themselves a
new one. What was he doing as their leader?

This was
Horizon
. They could heal any
disease, manipulate invisible powers, run for miles without tiring,
and practically fly. They were gods. Why should the old rules
apply? In this new world, it was Matthew whose knowledge and skill
exceeded his father's, not the other way around. His father had
been revered by many in London for his religious zeal and his rank
in the English church. But Matthew, at only nineteen years old, was
the one revered here. Not for his connections or place in society,
but for what he could
do
.

"I warned you about this," his father said.
"You think you can replace God with no consequences. You think that
because you understand how bread is made, you don't need God to
provide it. Now God is withdrawing his hand, and what are you left
with, after all your wisdom? No bread."

Matthew clenched his fists. "You live in a
house forged by quintessence. All the food you eat was created with
quintessence." He gestured around the room. "Even the paper you use
for your precious Bible translation is available in such quantity
because of a quintessence-powered process, invented by people like
me."

His father shrugged. "' When ye thought evil
against me, God disposed it to good, that he might bring to pass,
as it is this day, and save much people alive.'"

Matthew recognized the quote again, this time
from Genesis 50. "Evil? You call feeding and protecting this colony
evil?" This was why he avoided talking to his father. It made him
furious. He felt like pulling all those scrolls down from their
shelves and setting a match to them.

"No, son." His father shook his head sadly.
"What you have accomplished is truly wonderful, and I praise God
for it. The evil is in thinking you no longer need God."

"You're going to lose the governorship, if
you're not careful," Matthew said. "Ferguson has been talking to
almost everyone, listening to their grievances and blaming the
shortages on you. He implies, though he never quite says, that if
he were in charge, things wouldn't be so badly managed."

His father didn't blink. "I will not stoop to
politics, Matthew. God has given me this role, but I would lay it
down gladly if he wishes it."

"I'm not asking you to go door to door and
curry favor," Matthew said, though he didn't think it would hurt
any if he did exactly that. "I'm asking you to address the
problem."

"I am addressing the problem. I preach
repentance from the pulpit every Sunday."

"Ferguson calls you a manticore-lover. He
preys on people's fears, tells them you're not on their side. He
wants to expand the colony's land holdings and drive the manticores
out."

"He's a fool."

"He's a fool people are listening to."
Matthew searched for a way to reach his father. "'They are as sheep
having no shepherd,'" he tried, a reference to Matthew 9:36.

"I am their shepherd," his father said, "and
I am feeding their souls. If their bodies should lack in future
months, that is no bad thing."

"So you won't call for rationing?"

"I will, if you wish it. But don't be fooled
into believing that all you need is more time. What you need is
prayer and repentance. You may discover why the salt in the soil is
disappearing. You may even discover the mechanism by which it moves
from the ocean water to the soil, but the truth will remain that it
is God who commands it. 'Thou openest thine hand, and they are
filled with good things. But if thou take away their breath, they
die and return to their dust.'"

Psalm 104 again. "The rules have changed,"
Matthew said. "We don't need God to explain why things live
anymore, or why they die."

"I know someone else who believed as
much."

"Christopher Sinclair, you mean. And you know
what? He was right." Matthew pointed his finger at his father's
chest. "He was right about this island, and he was right about
quintessence. He even brought Catherine back from the dead."

"Nearly at the cost of every life on the
island, and ultimately at the cost of his own."

Matthew couldn't stand this conversation
anymore. With each of his father's glib responses, hot blood rushed
through him, making him want to hit his father or grab his throat
and strangle him. His father just stood there, calm and untroubled,
which made Matthew even angrier. He threw up his hands. "I can't
talk to you," he said. He opened the door. "Sinclair died saving
your life, you old fool." He slammed the door behind him.

Matthew stalked through the mansion, furious
and, at the same time, deeply ashamed. He wished he could be like
Sinclair and set himself completely against God, but he couldn't
shake the sense that God really was there, watching him. There or
not, however, he would let his father say the prayers. He wasn't
going to stand back and wait for God to provide. As far as he was
concerned, if there was a way to save this island, it was up to him
to find it.

He walked out of the front door of the
mansion into darkness. He looked up, expecting that another storm
had covered over the sun, but no. Instead of clouds, he saw a
rapidly moving stream of blackness, like a river in the sky. An
immense whirring sound accompanied it. The river was composed of
tiny grains, like pouring sand, and Matthew realized it was made of
thousands and thousands of black beetles.

He started to run, ignoring the pain in his
thigh. These were compass beetles, the same kind that Catherine's
father, and later her mother, had used to navigate across the ocean
to find Horizon in the first place. A huge colony of them lived in
the beetlewood forest that surrounded the human settlement. The
creatures had the unusual trait of knowing the direction to their
home regardless of how far away from it they were, which made them
immensely useful. Put one in a box and it would point toward home,
even across a thousand miles of water.

But now, they were leaving their home behind,
migrating en masse toward the interior of the island. What did it
mean? Was there not enough food in the forest? Or were the leaves
they ate no longer providing enough salt to keep them alive?

Matthew reached the invisible barrier around
the settlement and ran through it into the forest. It didn't take
him long to see what he had feared. Littering the earth around him
were what looked like stones, rounded pieces of rock the size of a
silver half crown. He picked one up. It was like a compass beetle,
perfectly carved out of stone. It was solid, not a husk like
molting cicadas might leave behind back in England. These beetles
had petrified, and the others had fled before they met the same
fate.

He looked up. High above him, the mossy
branches of the trees bent with the weight of similar stone
beetles. Hundreds of them.

Matthew had been sixteen—it seemed like an
eternity ago—when the mysterious ship had sailed into London harbor
filled with human statues and chests of sand. They knew now that
the sailors had food made with quintessence in their flesh, and it
had transformed back to salt and sand when they traveled too far
from Horizon. To see these beetles, petrified like this, here on
Horizon, was like reading a death sentence. If it could happen to
the beetles, it could happen to them.

CHAPTER 3