The cables and support machinery had been cleared away. The starship stood by itself, solitary and somehow vulnerable-looking, in the center of the sandy clearing, a shining upright needle, slender, fragile. The area was roped off; we would watch from a distance, so that the searing flames of the engines would not harm us.
A crew of three men and two women had been selected: Judith, who was one of the rocket scientists, and Leonardo di Filippo, and Miriam’s friend Joseph, and a woman named Sarah whom I had never seen before. The fifth, of course, was Moshe. This was his chariot; this was his adventure, his dream; he must surely be the one to ride at the helm as the Exodus made its first leap toward the stars.
One by one they emerged from the blockhouse that was the control center for the flight. Moshe was the last. We watched in total silence, not a murmur, barely daring to draw breath. The five of them wore uniforms of white satin, blindingly bright in the morning sun, and curious glass helmets like diver’s bowls over their faces. They walked toward the ship, mounted the ladder, turned one by one to look back at us, and went up inside. Moshe hesitated for a moment before entering, as if in prayer, or perhaps simply to savor the fullness of his joy.
Then there was a long wait, interminable, unendurable. It might have been twenty minutes; it might have been an hour. No doubt there was some last-minute checking to do, or perhaps even some technical hitch. Still we maintained our silence. We could have been statues. After a time I saw Eleazar turn worriedly toward Miriam, and they conferred in whispers. Then he trotted across to the blockhouse and went inside. Five minutes went by, ten; then he emerged, smiling, nodding, and returned to Miriam’s side. Still nothing happened. We continued to wait.
Suddenly there was a sound like a thundercrack and a noise like the roaring of a thousand great bulls, and black smoke billowed from the ground around the ship, and there were flashes of dazzling red flame. The Exodus rose a few feet from the ground. There it hovered as though magically suspended, for what seemed to be forever.
And then it rose, jerkily at first, more smoothly then, and soared on a stunningly swift ascent toward the dazzling blue vault of the sky. I gasped; I grunted as though I had been struck; and I began to cheer. Tears of wonder and excitement flowed freely along my cheeks. All about me, people were cheering also, and weeping, and waving their arms, and the rocket, roaring, rose and rose, so high now that we could scarcely see it against the brilliance of the sky.
We were still cheering when a white flare of unbearable light, like a second sun more brilliant than the first, burst into the air high above us and struck us with overmastering force, making us drop to our knees in pain and terror, crying out, covering our faces with our hands.
When I dared look again, finally, that terrible point of ferocious illumination was gone, and in its place was a ghastly streak of black smoke that smeared halfway across the sky, trickling away in a dying trail somewhere to the north. I could not see the rocket. I could not hear the rocket.
“It’s gone!” someone cried.
“Moshe! Moshe!”
“It blew up! I saw it!”
“Moshe!”
“Judith—” said a quieter voice behind me.
I was too stunned to cry out. But all around me there was a steadily rising sound of horror and despair, which began as a low choking wail and mounted until it was a shriek of the greatest intensity coming from hundreds of throats at once. There was fearful panic, universal hysteria. People were running about as if they had gone mad. Some were rolling on the ground, some were beating their hands against the sand. “Moshe!” they were screaming. “Moshe! Moshe! Moshe!”
I turned toward Eleazar. He was white-faced and his eyes seemed wild. Yet even as I looked at him I saw him draw in his breath, raise his hands, step forward to call for attention. Immediately all eyes were on him. He swelled until he appeared to be five cubits high.
“Where’s the ship?” someone cried. “Where’s Moshe?”
And Eleazar said, in a voice like the trumpet of the Lord, “He was the Son of God, and God has called him home.”
Screams. Wails. Hysterical shrieks.
“Dead!” came the cry. “Moshe is dead!”
“He will live forever,” Eleazar boomed.
“The Son of God!” came the cry, from three voices, five, a dozen. “The Son of God!”
I was aware of Miriam at my side, warm, pressing close, her arm through mine, her soft breast against my ribs, her lips at my ear. “You must write the book,” she whispered, and her voice held a terrible urgency. “His book, you must write. So that this day will never be forgotten. So that he will live forever.”
“Yes,” I heard myself saying. “Yes.”
In that moment of frenzy and terror I felt myself sway like a tree of the shore that has been assailed by the flooding of the Nilus; and I was uprooted and swept away. The fireball of the Exodus blazed in my soul like a second sun indeed, with a brightness that could never fade. And I knew that I was engulfed, that I was conquered, that I would remain here to write and preach, that I would forge the gospel of the new Moshe in the smithy of my soul and send the word to all the lands. Out of these five today would come rebirth; and to the peoples of the Republic we would bring the message for which they had waited so long in their barrenness and their confusion, and when it came they would throw off the shackles of their masters; and out of the death of the Imperium would come a new order of things. Were there other worlds, and could we dwell upon them? Who could say? But there was a new truth that we could teach, which was the truth of the second Moshe who had given his life so that we might go to the stars, and I would not let that new truth die. I would write, and others of my people would go forth and carry the word that I had written to all the lands, and the lands would be changed.
Perhaps I am wrong that the Republic is doomed. What is more likely true, I suspect, is that this world was meant to be Roma’s; so it has been for thousands of years, and evidently it always will be, even unto eternity. Very well. Let them have it. We will not challenge Roma’s eternal destiny. We will simply remove ourselves from its grasp. We have a destiny of our own. Some day, who knew how soon, we would build a new ship, and another, and another, and they will carry us from this world of woe. God has sent His Son, and God has called Him home, and one day we will all leave the iron rule of this eternal Roma behind and follow Him on wings of flame, up from the land of bondage into the heavens where He dwells eternally.
ROBERT SILVERBERG has won five Nebula Awards, five Hugo Awards, and the prestigious Prix Utopiales. He is the author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels—including The Longest Way Home, The Alien Years, the bestselling Lord Valentine trilogy, and the classics Dying Inside and A Time of Changes—as well as more than sixty nonfiction works. Silverberg’s acclaimed Majipoor Cycle, set in perhaps the grandest and greatest world ever imagined, is considered one of the jewels in the crown of speculative fiction.
Robert Silverberg, Roma Eterna
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