The Voices of Heaven Read Online Free Page B

humans—Garoldtscharka, the Tuch-man, the two males who proposed suicide to the female—it is clear that their behavior is quite disturbing. Are they "crazy," in the same sense that you your self have been?
    No, of course not. With them it wasn't psychosis. It was their religion.
    This distinction is unclear. You have said that in your illness you are aware of objective events but you interpret them in nonrealistic ways. Does not "religion" also involve nonrealistic belief systems?
    Well, yes, but they're really two different things. I mean, personally, I don't have any doubt that Millenarism is really crazy. I guess most religious people think that all the people who happen to believe in some religion other than their own are pretty loopy. When I was ten years old in catechism class you should've heard what my old parish priest had to say about the Mormons across the street, for instance.
    But that sort of thing is accepted, and my kind of craziness wasn't. Not by anybody. Not even by me.
    That's why I was so nervous about calling my son, you see. I guess every divorced father is a little tense about his kid's birthday, but not every father has not been in the same room with his son since the boy was two years old, asleep in his bed, and the father was bending over him with a butcher knife.
    You heard me, a butcher knife. The kind of thing people kill people with. I don't think I had any actual intention of hurting Matthew. I was just very, very confused.
    All the same, I think it was probably pretty lucky that my wife Gina—my then wife Gina, who is not my wife anymore for obvious reasons—happened to look into the bedroom just then. She screamed. I didn't hurt her, either. I just threw the knife into a corner and ran out of the room, babbling.
    I couldn't run far enough to keep the police from catching me and putting me away, though; and that was the last time I ever saw my son in the flesh.
     
    So, as I say, I was a little nervous on the flight down to the Lederman landing pad. I didn't talk much to Captain Tscharka, who was full of his own thoughts anyway. When we were docked the man he called his chaplain was waiting for him, looking excited. "It's looking good, Garold," he called, waddling over toward us, and then noticed me. "Who's he?" he demanded.
    Tscharka introduced us. "Our fuelmaster, Barry di Hoa. Di Hoa, this is Reverend Tuchman."
    He was bigger than he had looked on the screen, at least ten centimeters taller than I was, and he gave me a quick grip that was stronger than I had expected. Then he forgot me, drawing Tscharka away and telling him that he'd reserved telecom time for their testimony at the colony hearing. If I really noticed Tuchman at all, it was only because he was obviously sixty or so and Millenarists don't usually stick around that long. Then I forgot him, too—for the moment, anyway.
    Normally I would have taken the subway through the crater wall to my office in the manufacturing compound—the community where Lederman people live is outside the wall for alleged safety reasons—but I was in a hurry. I found a privacy booth and made some calls. I logged in with my reports; I left messages for my crew to tell them that they wouldn't need to decommission Corsair 's fuel storage because it was already clean; I put through a call to my girlfriend, Alma Vendette.
    I caught her just coming out of the shower. "You shouldn't answer the phone when you aren't dressed," I told her.
    She looked at me innocently. Innocent is one of Alma's best looks; it goes with her blue eyes and gentle smile. "I put a towel on, didn't I? Anyway, I knew it was you. Are we on for today?"
    "Give me half an hour. Meet you in Danny's."
    "Danny's in half an hour," she said, blew me a kiss, and blanked the screen.
    Then I took a deep breath, checked to make sure the privacy door was closed and put through my call to Earth.
    It was my ex-wife who answered the phone.
    "Hello, Gina," I said, noticing that, though she had put