One day he stroked her breast and she screamed and screamed and bit her lip until it bled and he was forced to give her a sedative. The next day, her eyes were even more glazed over than usual and she felt stiff to his touch.
He didn’t leave the medical centre for a month. Martha came every day and helped him with feeding, showering her and tidying up their living quarters. She led them in prayer that Amelie might get better and one day was rewarded when she murmured “Amen” along with Moses and herself.
One day Matthias asked for him to come down to the observatory, leaving Martha to care for Amelie. He had gathered everybody together, it was the first time that he had seen them since it happened. Matthias took him by the arm to where they were grouped around the platform and took Moses up to stand beside him.
“Brothers and sisters, my children” he swept his gaze over them and they lowered their eyes in supplication. “I have brought Moses here today to join in with us in our daily act of worship. We have prayed each day that he might be given strength and solace in the ordeal he now faces. We have prayed that Amelie might be restored to health and that her heart and mind may be healed in His name. We have prayed for the lost soul of Hack that His boundless love may bring forgiveness for even the heinous crime that he committed and that he may, in God’s good time be spared the perpetual fires of Hell in which he surely now dwells. Let us pray!”
After the meeting, they spread out through the observatory, some to watch a film, others to access the library, some to look through the telescope and some simply to use the shower room. Moses just stood around watching and Matthias left him to himself so that inevitably he came face to face with Gitangali, wearing her fleece with F7 embroidered over her left breast.
Their eyes met and he trembled. Her huge, liquid brown eyes engulfed him, now unfathomable, her emotions unreadable. She came to him, stood face to face with him. He could hear her breathing, see her breasts heaving under the anonymous garment. He swallowed but could not speak. She reached out a hand and touched his arm. “Hello Moses” she said softly. “I am pregnant, I am going to have your child.”
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Amelie, thankfully, was asleep. He sat beside her, Gitangali’s words echoing through his mind. ‘Pregnant. Your child.’ Her enormous brown eyes, looking for his love.
“How can you be sure?”
“I was sick this morning. I have missed my period.”
“It is a punishment!”
“Punishment? I don’t understand you. What do you mean?”
“I have grievously sinned. Whilst I lay with you, Amelie was being raped by Hack. Now her mind is deranged and I killed him, the shuttle was destroyed. You were the temptress. If you had not ensnared me and taken me to your tent, none of this would have happened. Beautiful as you are, it must be Satan who gave you the beauty to seduce me from the path of righteousness, to ensnare me. Now you seek to ensnare me further. You are the embodiment of evil, Gitangali. I renounce you!”
And she had fled from him weeping, as well she might. He would pray for her wicked soul but first he would need to seek the wise council of Matthias. Was it not Father who explained to them that they must practice the strictest abstinence because they could not afford to feed extra mouths. Having a child would be grossly sinful. It would take the inadequate reserves of food from their own mouths and they would all be hungrier as a result.
Gitangali would have to be punished for the sin of fornication. The question was, what should the punishment be?
Chapter 14
“Father, do you remember that next week is Saint Manny’s Day?”
“Moses, dear Moses. Yes, I had remembered. How can it be four years ago that it all happened? Four years! We must plan so that it coincides with the hibernation changeover. If I am truthful, Moses, I am not looking forward to it. With Martha asleep, I will miss her terribly and I worry about how she will manage over the next four years after that when she has been awakened and I am asleep.
“I had thought about that too, Father. I have prayed for His guidance and last night, He spoke to me in my dreams. He told me that what I must do is simple. I must take your place Father. I will not sleep at all so that you and Mother can lie side by side and then both awake together when we reach our new destination. You have given more of your lifespans to this expedition than anyone else. We will continue to need your wisdom in the later years when we colonise our new home.”
“Oh, Moses! I cannot think that this is fair and right for you. It would be a dreadful sacrifice. I do not think that I can agree to it.”
“Father, there is more to consider. I have thought long and hard about things in these last few weeks. When you and Mother become tired from your burdens, the Lord will need to call another to grow in your places. It is ordained that I shall be the one. It will be for me to take up His Ministry in your stead, only I am young and do not yet have the maturity or the strength from suffering that will be needed. When we reach our new home, I will be four years older than any of the others and they will be able to look up to me and respect my experience. Then I will be ready to take up His Holy Ordinance as the first priest in the new settlement.”
Matthias gazed at him and there were tears in his eyes. How Moses had grown during this time of travail. What suffering he had already endured, and with never one word of regret or one of complaint. It was as if by killing Hack he had purged his soul. How faithful he had been to poor, sad Amelie. How patient with her poor deranged spirit. For all those years he had devoted himself to her. No man could have been kinder or more forbearing, no man could have truly given more love and kindness to his partner, but sadly with so little reward for his efforts. It seemed that Hack had stolen her personality in that terrible violation of her. Com1 had been instructed to give all his endeavours to diagnosing and healing her mind but his programs were limited and lacked the sophistication to achieve anything much. After four years she could walk, talk, wash and dress herself. She ate with the others and joined in with their hymns and prayers but her mind was still lost in some kind of catatonic state and she could not be engaged in meaningful conversation.
But she was increasingly good at her bible study and now regularly achieved an acceptable success rate in the quizzes so that maybe in the fullness of time she could become an incumbent in the first convent when they set up their first colony. Already,
Gitangali had decided to devote herself entirely to the service of God. Matthias’s tears welled anew from his eyes as he recalled those first terrible days when she had announced her dreadful sin of fornication and that she was with child. She had never confessed the name of the father, even when Moses had demanded that she be publicly named and shamed. How sad that they had made her wear sackcloth and ashes in penance and reduced her rations to half until she should speak the name of the father, only she never did until, one day, she collapsed with weakness and lost the baby by spontaneous abortion (or so he supposed it to be).
It would be a release to everybody when both she and Amelie were hibernated and the changeover crew could be revived. Matthias worried about how well they would be. Hibernation weakened the constitution of the slumberer and repeated hibernation might have cumulative effects. When they awoke they would need supportive therapy for some weeks with an enhanced diet and a regime of exercise, sunbed and massage which Com1 planned out for them on an individual treatment timetable. Fortunately, they would not have a great deal of work to do, they would just have to manage the on-board systems, see to the maintenance of H3 and now the extra hydroponic garden in the shuttle bay – which latter had enabled them to have an adequate, if not over-generous diet.
Before he hibernated, he intended to plan a programme of bible study for them. For the first year or so, they would need to be prepared by regular lessons until they could each begin to meditate upon the Word of God and ultimately achieve such s
pirituality that when the first colony was established and they multiplied and were fruitful, the men would be ready for their roles as the first disciples. The Eight, led by Moses and supported by their eight wives, assuming that Amelie and Gitangali were given to God. Moses had already made his vow of celibacy and thus would live alone. It was an orderly arrangement, thought Matthias, it would please Him and, he felt certain, He would smile favourably upon them because of it.
When the time came, Matthias pondered, he intended to baptise Moses in the waters of the new planet and give him a new name. No longer Moses, but one greater even than he. He would rename him ‘Peter’ because he would be the rock upon which the first Ministry in the new world would be founded.
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