Glass Cloud

Glass Cloud

By James Patrick Kelly

The Messanger’s mission on Islington Street sprawled over an entire block, an unholy jumble of architectural afterthoughts appended to the simple neogothic chapel that had once been the Church of the Holy Spiriti. There was a Victorian rectory, a squat brick-façade parochial school built in the 1950s, and an eclectic auditorium that dated from the oughts. The fortunes of the congregation dad since declined and the complex had been abandoned, successfully confounding local redevelopers until the Messangers bought it. The initiates of norther New England’s first mission had added an underground bike lockup, washed the stained glass, repaired the rotted clapboards, and planted an arborvitae screen around the auditorium and still Wing thought it was the ugliest building in Portsmouth.

In the years immediately after first contact there had been no contact at all with the masses; complex and secret negotiations continues between the Messengers and various political and industrial interests. Once the deals were struck, however, the aliens had moved swiftly to open missions for the propagation of the message, apparently a strange brew of technophilic materialism and zen-like self-effacement, of the message was a closely held secret; the Messengers would neither confirm nor deny the reports of those few initiates who left the missions.

Glass Cloud. Photo : Elena

Wing hesitated at the wide granite steps leading to the chapel; they were slick from a spring ice storm. Freshly sprinkled salt was melting holes in the ice and there was a shovel propped against one of the massive oak doors. It was five-thirty in the morning – too early for protesters. No one inside would be expecting visitors, which was fine with Wing: he wanted to surprise the Messenger. But the longer he stood, the less certain he was of whether he was going in. He looked up at the eleven stone apostles arranges across the tympanum. Tiny stylized flames danced over their heads, representing the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. He could not read the apostles expressions; acid rain had smudged their faces. Wing felt a little smudged himself. He reached into his back pocket for the flask. He took a swig and found new courage as a whiskey flame danced down his throat. He staggered into the church – twisted in the good old-fashioned way and too tired to resist Ndavu anymore.

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Fifth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois. St. Martin’s Press, 1988.)