The Messenger: Destination

The thought distantly occurred to Phelps that he had not technically completed the baptism ceremony. He hadn't had the time to speak his line - so do I - before the command hit him. North, said the voice, and north he went. When the crowds thickened, his run slowed to a very fast walk, dodging between pedestrians and cutting through alleys.

He was heading deeper into the shade of downtown New Sidon, where the buildings were more often constructed in the N'aaa style, poking three stories above ground and extending several stories below. Their broad, flat roofs nearly touched, scattering slivers of light over the crowd. The hot white sun flashed at him between the gaps as he moved northward.

The word had burned an imprint on his mind, and he had moved without thinking. The implications were only just beginning to chase him down. He was seeing apparitions and hearing voices. But others were seeing them, and hearing them. Which meant they were really from....

His pace slowed, and he held a hand to his forehead. Mariah was a priestess. She thought in terms of God constantly. Could it have been a coincidence? N'aaa were known for their insight. Could she just have picked up on something in his demeanor?

But he knew nothing about her, or the temple. The angel had.

Even as he thought it, he stopped walking. A large building stood straight ahead of him. A flight of broad steps descended to the main entrance, with a fountain cascading down the steps on the far right. A water feature, in New Sidon. Phelps had never seen anything so opulent.

Here.

The voice. The same calm certainty. The same authority.

God was speaking to him.

The Messenger: Instructions

"You knew I was coming," Phelps finally said.

Deacon Mariah smiled, the tiny creases between the thin plates of her face stretching apart.  "A dream," she said, her wispy voice purring over the "r" sound.  "Yeshua's angel."

On the transport had been a congregation of New Lunar Baptists.  After listening to their ravings over the long trip, he had almost gotten used to hearing the Christ called Jesus, rather than Yeshua.  Mariah spoke the name carefully, with reverence.  A far cry, as it were, from the proselytizers on the ship.

Phelps could already tell that Mariah spoke English only with great effort.  But a half-N'aaa priestess in this city...  "Wrri, ihhi tchaun'eh an hal," he said in Nrru.  She told me to come to you.

Mariah drew her head back in a serpentine motion, again expressing her surprise.  "And she told me to baptize you," she said simply, in unaccented Nrru.  Even as she spoke, she knelt down and took a handful of green-blue sand.

Phelps froze.  "I... wait..."

The deaconess fixed her blank gaze on him, her hand held high, gently trickling sand.  "It is unbefitting a prophet to be unbaptized.  Will you submit to it?"  She drew herself up, facing him directly.

"I'm not... look, the last time..."

Her hand was suddenly on his chest.  For a moment, he forgot that it was a common N'aaa gesture of friendship.  "Yeshua knows your fears," she was saying.  Gently.  "And he says to you this: you did not leave me there.  I went after you from that place."

The chapel, back in Phoenix.  The guilt.  He was there again.  But now, with her words - with his words - the weight of the memory evaporated.  All at once.  Gone.

Oh, Lord... "I will submit to it," Phelps breathed.

Mariah did not hesitate for even a moment.  Phelps' chest tightened as her hand drifted over his shoulders and head, pouring a trail of sand.  "You have one Lord," she said.  "What is his name?"

"Yeshua."  The sand settled on him, and with it, a strange calm.  He held still.

Silence.  In the quiet, the noise of the city far distant, he lost track of time.  Only three seconds passed, but Phelps felt every moment before she spoke again.  "And as he died, so have you," Mariah intoned.  "And..."  She stopped, took a gasp of air.  He could have sworn he heard her giggle.  "And as he lives...."

In response, Phelps tilted his head and leaned back, spilling the sand down his back.  He had barely enough time to register his suprise at how easy the ceremony was after all before the sensation hit.

It was a voice, but not audible.  A compulsion, but not irresistable.  A certainty.  A call.  A command.

North.

Phelps hesitated for only an instant.  "Which way is north?" he demanded in Nrru.

Deacon Mariah pointed, and he ran.

The Messenger: Introductions

St. Luke's Temple was not what Phelps had in mind.  It took him two hours to make the 20-minute walk through New Sidon; two hours of feeble excuses rehearsed over and over, none of which could overcome the weight of the apparition outside the transport window.  He had paced back and forth over the same three blocks, bumping constantly into traders and pilots, and eliciting curses in a dozen languages.  With his training, he could have understood them all, had he been less distracted.

When he finally arrived at the Temple, he thought he might be in the wrong place.

It stood in a gap between two tall pseudocrete buildings, one gaudy orange, the other a matte white.  He had not been thinking of a temple in the N'aaa fashion, certainly not for a temple to Christ.  But there it was, the unwalled patch of blue-green sand, the surface fused into glass and polished.  Like a calm, rolling sea of Earth, frozen between instants.  On the back left corner of the patch sat the arrangement of transluscent red stones, as expected.  But, Phelps noticed with a start, they depicted not the traditional N'aaaian sacred runes, but a cross.

He was about to step onto the undulating glass when he heard the voice.

"Rrrraun i'i'al-hn-cta'i."

The only N'aaa phrase he knew.  Phelps looked down and tried unsuccessfully to hide his surprise at the creature who had addressed him.  She wore a blindfold, a single, wide band of dark green cloth which covered where her nose would be if she were human.  Or rather, full human.  Her skin was more like a carapace - deep brown, with bright white dots like freckles - and her scalp smooth and hairless.  She had four thin fingers on each hand, all of which ended in claws.

And the collar of her polyfiber vest was distinct in its round design.  She was clergy.  A deacon.

"...Deacon Mariah?" he said, mumbled and at a whisper.

The half-N'aaa priestess thrust forward her head in surprise.  Then, she smiled.  "Fel-uufs.  Hallelu."

And once again, Phelps had no words.

The Messenger

"This is impossible," Phelps mumbled inaudibly, pressing himself against the wall opposite the window.

The woman floating outside the window nodded, her arms crossed over her chest.  "It is."  Her voice was in no way muffled by the thick transparent barrier between them.

"How are you-"

"When you arrive in New Sidon, go directly to St. Luke's Temple.  There you will meet Deacon Mariah.  She will give you your instructions."

Phelps gawked at her, mind racing.

Then, she smiled.  "Farewell, prophet."

"Wait!  Wh-"

"All passengers, please secure yourselves for landing.  We will reach the outer atmosphere shortly.  Arrival in New Tyre will be 7:00 am, local time."

Phelps looked up involuntarily at the intercom announcement, then looked back to the window to see nothing but stars.