Eucharist for a Sinless Mankind

by Bertil Falk

Chapter 2: The Not-Sinning Ones

part 4 of 7

”Lord open my lips.”
“So that my mouth can proclaim your glory.”
“Oh, God, come to my salvation.”
“Lord, hasten to my salvation.”
“Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.”

The single-handed leader of matinal prayers this early morning was met by a powerful responsum from mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, surtors and brallors and laypeople inside the many-thousand year old church of Danderyd.

“As it was in the beginning, it is now and always shall be, world without end. Amen, hallelujah.”

Verses from the Book of Psalms and songs of praise filled the church. Burning candles illuminated the hall and the antiphonies came and went.

A strange procession traversed the church just under the ceiling. A woman looking like a Lucia came walking out of nowhere followed by a crawling, floor-kissing man; but they thinned out and disappeared before they reached the altar.

The singing groups alternated. The beauty of the early morning was reflected in the flickering lights and a slightly floating banner, many times restored, which had been captured during some old-fashioned, thirty-years long war in a distant past, rippled in the draft from a partly open door.

The death’s heads on the grave monument of Johan Banér made sinister faces with their empty eye sockets, but the heat from the candles and from the gathered churchgoers moderated the cold that prevailed in the winter night, where the torches threw shadows on the runic stone of Jarla Banke.

Cardinal Björn Personit leaned against his companion, a man about twenty-five years old, and whispered, “It went well, Paxi.”

The person addressed nodded. “Yes,” Pater Paxinterra agreed.

The Cardinal smiled a soft smile. For the time being, the efforts of the Federation had been brought more or less to nothing. The clanger of Xavier Pascal was the reason. His brain must have come loose from its attachments. A sheer own goal! Pascal should by now be aware that he had done the Federation no favors. On the contrary, he had stamped off into a political security minefield by kidnapping that clerical thing.

At the Department of the Incorporation of New Worlds, they must have had a proper job clearing up the mess Pascal had caused. Would Teresia Nightmare take the matter into her own hands or would she toss off a torpedo?

However, the threat against the Faith far away at Betelgeuse was the big problem. One would hope that the Salvation Bureau had time to investigate the truth behind the beings’ unethical behavior of not sinning according to the Book. It was in every respect a mission for all good forces to pursue.

The Cardinal turned to his sidekick and said, “Let us get in touch with Mervil Tojas.”

* * *

The ghostlike being shimmered and assumed the form of Cardinal Saulcerite under the very nose of Urbanus Collectus. They were no longer in the corridor, where Saulcerite had caught him. They were in a glade in a forest that looked like a coral reef, glittering with forms of life. The pinkish heaven was filled with small planets, and in the background a red star was glowing, at least nine times bigger than Sol as seen from Earth.

“Where are we? What happened?” Urbanus Collectus exclaimed.

“We are on your newly discovered planet, where people have the cheek not to sin,” Saulcerite said. “The planet is situated like a capital in an enormous belt of small planets.”

“Teleportation???”

“Well, yes, but not through the teleport system of the Federation. I have used a way of transportation we picked up during an evangelization spree in a small system in the constellation of Cancer,” Mother Saulcerite excused herself. “The method is simple: one makes a knot in space-time.”

“A granny knot,” Urbanus Collectus muttered distrustfully.

“Not good enough.”

“A reef knot?”

“It seems to me that you have tied one or two loops in your day. No, it wasn’t a reef knot.”

“I have been a Wolf Cub and a Space Scout in the Intergalactic YMCWhatever. Could it have been a sheet bend?”

“It takes a clove hitch around a continuum of some kind,” Saulcerite hissed and rolled her triangles heavenwards.

“Isn’t space-time itself a continuum?”

“Don’t be cheeky!”

“What kind of continuum?” Urbanus Collectus persisted.

“It is conditioned by quantum mechanics in some way. Don’t ask me. I failed quantum mechanics.”

“Does the Federation know this method?”

“Knowledge of it must exist somewhere in their archives. But it was our technicians who realised the relevance. We use this method only in extreme cases. Now we are here, and we shall find out why this mankind has the bad sense not to sin.”

“Has it been used many times?”

“No.”

“No?”

“This is the first time. As I said, we only use it in extreme cases. Like this one. Now let’s see...”

A flux of colorful atmosphere billowed, the existence saturated with oxygen was filled with plantlike forms of life that either vegetated in a fixed state above the ground or moved at different speeds through a greenish haze. Everything breathed calm and stillness. There was a strange rosy shimmer Saulcerite never before had experienced. She called Urbanus Collectus’ attention to it.

“Mother Saulcerite is right,” he answered. “There’s something strange about life on this world. But there is nothing that seems to be threatening. I would say quite the reverse. What is the opposite of threatening? Threatlessing?”

“Promising, protecting,” Saulcerite said. “It is promising in some way. And it is beautiful.”

A life form that looked like a spiral galaxy slowly whirled around Urbanus Collectus. A soft feeling of affectionate warmth spread through the body of the young man and he heard and sensed and perceived the notion of “welcome.”

“They communicate,” exclaimed Mother Saulcerite.

“Of course I do,” the form of life verified. “Now come with me to the hill.”

Contact was established with a sinless mankind.

* * *

To be continued...