Hell's Heart

Once I'd agreed to share a bed with a complete stranger and paid up-front for the privilege, the landlord told me to take a seat and wait to be called through for supper. That I did, and as I sat I found my eyes being drawn back to the screen on the wall and its rotating images of monsters and merchandise. I would count the seconds before the first ship-picture gave way and the beast in the fog appeared again until I convinced myself that I could predict its arrival down to the eyeblink.

I'd convinced myself wrong. Somehow it still surprised me every time. Or maybe that's just how it feels now, looking back. We were called through to the dining hall in little clusters of three or four. The room was small and would almost have been homey if it hadn't been for the lack of underfloor insulation. On a frozen world heat leaves through the soles, and my boots weren't thick enough or powered enough to keep my feet from going numb. The food, though, was more than adequate; the polypous meats of Europa's native sea life grilled and served in a stew alongside dumplings made from some cheap hydroponic grain. It was warming, filling, and cholesterol-rich enough to fuel my endocrine synthesizers, which had been blinking a warning light on my arm for two days.

My companions were a mixed band: a tall Phobosi who I hoped wouldn't start trouble; an impractically dressed Ganymedian dandy whose burgundy morning suit looked wonderful in a dome but would offer no protection at all if a seal failed; a slim, pale woman wearing a trapezoid necklace of shining silver wire sat beside a smaller and if anything even paler man sporting the same iconography.

Something about them caught my eye, an odd mix of commonality and distance. They both wore the bracelets of shell casings that were common amongst Deimosi munitions workers, which was a job I'd done myself when I was much, much younger.

There was also the fact that they were sitting a little aloof from the company, and the part of me that liked to pick scabs and fuck strangers wanted to find out what the hell their deal was.

"Not wanting to be rude," I said, and I genuinely didn't. Although not wanting and not doing were different things. "But do you have some kind of problem with the rest of us?"

"We mean no disrespect," the woman replied, which put us even on disingenuous disclaimers. "Our faith teaches us to avoid the First Devoured where practical."

I should have left it there, but I had to ask. "And those would be... "

The man next to her—a man I'd soon come to know better, in some ways at least—gave me an apologetic smile. "Sorry," he said. "Sister Jermyn is a missionary so she's a bit...explicit."

Sister Jermyn turned her head just slightly in her companion's direction. "Mr. Marsh, condescending to unbelievers is all very well but your speech strays perilously close to secularism."

"I just meant," Marsh explained, "that since she doesn't know what the First Devoured are—"

The Phobosi nudged me. He was a large man with radiation burns up his arms and warsuit interface ports visible at his wrists. Not every Phobosi was a merc, but enough were that it was a safe assumption. "You won't get sense out of these fuckers," he said. "They're Wisdom."

"They're what?" There were literally thousands of tiny peculiar sects out there, I could think of at least half a dozen "Wisdom" cults from Deimos alone.

"Church of Starry Wisdom," he explained. "They think the whole universe was made by a giant space monster and that one day it'll come back and eat everybody except them."

Sister Jermyn raised an eyebrow, and I really tried not to find her attractive. I have this idea in my head that very religious people are good in bed on account of all the repression. It's never been true yet but I can't quite stop checking. "A common misconception. Our faith holds that the Devouring God will consume everything including us. But we will be last, and we take solace in that."

Marsh, if I was being honest, didn't look like he took very much solace in it.

"They also," the Phobosi added, now sounding actively contemptuous, "think that melanin is a curse from the ancient space monster, which means the whole order-of-getting-eaten thing depends on your skin tone."

"Thus we maintain the purity of our faith, and the purity of our blood," Sister Jermyn confirmed, as if that made total sense.

"In order that we may be the last devoured," Marsh concluded, like an amen. And I recognized a rote quality in his recitation, a quality I'd heard in my own voice so often. One I'd spent half my life hoping nobody else would spot.

"And you really think"—what can I say, I was still in that scab-picking, stranger-fucking mood—"that the fact your skin is a slightly lighter shade of brown than most people's"—I saw Sister Jermyn stiffen, and I'd later learn that Starry Wisdomers hate to be reminded that they aren't literally a different color from all other humans—"remotely matters to an all-devouring space god from beyond oblivion?"

To my surprise, Marsh looked genuinely hurt. "You know, it's not polite to mock other people's religions."