Back | Next
Contents

4.1
18 November

St. Joseph of Cupertino Monastery

South Polar Mineral Territories

Lunar Surface


Father Bertram Meagher

St. Benedict’s Monastery

1012 Monastery Rd.

Snowmass, CO, USA

Earth


Dear Bertram,

Per your request, I leave off both the “est” and the “my”, leaving only bare salutation to the job of expressing how direly your presence is missed here on the south tip of Lune. Bad enough to hear that skyward transport of our eight additional brothers hath been delayed again—indefinitely this time?—whose absence even now leaves us daily shorthanded and busy as hymenoptera. Bad enough, yes! Do we not need our engineer? Our banker? Our adjunct theosophy professor? Right now we have Brother Groppel doing the books and Brother Me leading prayers. Engineering is done also by Groppel, and by Purcell, and when they are beggared for answers, they beg Harvest Moon. Which costs, Bert. Nothing free here in Heaven, and so I have even pressed our Russkie defector into service for certain technical matters, and yes I know it may be legally and politically unwise, but we had (for example) a leaky cyanogen valve that endangered our ability to produce both foods and medicines—made direr of course by the arrival of said Russkie in place of our overdue cyanogen shipment, leaving us short of the carbon and nitrogen you Earthlings take for granted.

Bad enough, all of that. But you? Really? Ticker trouble is nothing to play around with, so if you’re permanently grounded for health reasons, do please then stay on the permanent ground. However, (a) this leaves your prior (me) without an abbot (you), which as a side effect makes this place a mere priory, and not the grand Abbey of our dreams. They say telling God your plans is the surest way to make him laugh, but still, I had hoped the thing I gave my life for might actually be the thing itself. Ah, well. I hope retirement agrees with you.

Also and more importantly, (b) you and I shall never be face to face or shoulder to shoulder again? Seriously? Your traitor heart is breaking my own, and I have never been more in need of your counsel than now. This ghastly Beyene extinction strains the fabric of our community, and I—I??—am supposed to carry others to carry on? I had thought, more than once, that the first death here might come soon enough to shock, for the dangers of this place cannot be overstated or under-feared. But never have I suspected that shuffled mortal coil would be of a student in our care.

We were doing it, Bert! Teaching the future as we build it: the church a central player in the world again, as in bygone times when we nursed the knowledge of a fallen age. It used to mean something, a monastery education, and it was meaning something again. As in that yore they came to us, unbidden and uncajoled, drawn by the advertisement of our mere existence. All are welcome, if they can only find their way! Antilympus may be a beauty contest (indeed, notice how attractive are the leading contenders, each and every!), but whoever wins it will be looking Hereward for example. Mars bearing forever the imprint of our teaching, echoed down through the ages yet to come! And although it’s of lesser import, the written history of Mars may well remember us, too. That’s the promise of our endeavor, of which Etsub Beyene’s death makes flinders and mocks. What shall they now remember? The gasps of a dying man who surely would have been one of their own.

The guilt is unfathomable, more so because it may not be happenstance, but murder. Beware the ides! Oh, God, what have I done? What have I allowed to be done? If this be some error of ours, or mine, then how are we (or I) to find and correct it? How, especially, without your help? Am I to weather this with only your letters for company? Is this really our fate, that a homicide detective should be en route here in your stead? Very well, very well, but there are names in vain I struggle not to say.

In answer to your query, yes, our safety inspections have been twice as thorough as the absurdity they already were. Every suit and seal, every hatch and bolt. I have walked around the monastery’s exterior with an oxygen detector, noting the gas flux from every module. Everything leaks a bit, inevitably, because the sealing gaskets are made of atoms, and so is the gas that slithers out between them. But everything appears to be in order; the flux is low in every spot I’ve checked. Ditto for solar radiation leaking in; we can’t keep out one hundred percent, but hopefully enough that it won’t be the first thing that kills us.

It’s sweet of you to worry about us but, needless to repeat, I am twice as worried about you. Your Lunar dreams are more dashed than ours, and your health in jeopardy to boot. I would bring you soup and blankets if I could, but alas I am as remote from you as any two humans ever were. Be well, please.

Brother Michael Jablonski de la Lune


Brother Michael Jablonski

St. Joseph of Cupertino Monastery

Luna


Michael,

As always, such florid letters, from such a bland fellow as yourself, never cease to surprise. Of all your flights of fancy, though, I’m most puzzled by this idea that I’m stronger than you, and have some fountain of wisdom that you’re somehow lacking. You’re a rock, my friend, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way. Certainty can be either a blessing or a curse; for the most part you channel it well, but if it makes you certain of an outcome you deserve, and then something different happens, you don’t get to fall all to pieces. Things never have worked that way—least of all with you.

I am quite sorry about this misfortune. Still, how much disaster has befallen our monasteries over the millennia? How many have been sacked and torched, their lay workers carried off into slavery? How many were dissolved by legal fiat, with their lands and goods expropriated by greedy governments? Did you think this was the first murder ever committed on monastery grounds? I assure you, it’s not. We endure.

I’m sorry you have to go this alone. I really did want to be there, and I tell you I actually imagined my own grave would be the first you dug. But for heaven’s sake, Mike, you would’ve had to be strong then, too. God helps those who help themselves, and he seems to have a particular fondness for the passionate. That man who stood up to Pope David about the mission of the Church? Be him. You have ten men looking to you for guidance, and three living students for whose grief you’re the logical spiritual counselor. And this man, Andrei Bykhovski, who came to us for sanctuary—are you going to show him this hand-wringing instead? Mars will remember what you teach, and I’ll trust you to keep that in mind while you do the things that need doing.

“Retirement” is an ugly word, by the way. It may please you to hear I’m technically still the abbot of Saint Joe for as long as I want to be. You talk about written history a lot, and although it’s vain, I do want my name in there, if only as a footnote to the deeds you and the boys are accomplishing firsthand. Also, your worries about me are misplaced. Not only can I fetch my own soup and blankets, I can even admit there’s a part of me that’s relieved to be staying here on Earth. I miss you, too. I miss all of you, but I’m having fresh-caught trout for supper tonight, on a patio with a gorgeous mountain view. It will be cold, yes, but I’ve got a hat and scarf, and fresh air to breathe. And if this heart stops beating tomorrow, then I will go to an even finer place, where all good souls will eventually reunite.

With Love and Kindness,

Fr. Bertram Meagher, MDiv


Back | Next
Framed