we slow to 275 knots.

Not to bore you with the details, but we drop under 20,000
feet and pull open the forward cabin door. Then the pilot's gone, and even before I
shut
the cabin door, I stand at the edge of the doorway and take a leak after him.
Nothing in
Each time we count and we're dancing. The flowers in all the crypts up and down the
walls
lean out over us. The marble smooths under our feet. We're dancing. The light is
through
stained-glass windows. the statues are carved in their niches. The music comes out
the
speakers weak and echoes off the stone until it's moving back and forth in drafts
and currents,
notes and chords around us. Amd we're dancing. "what I remember about the cruise,"
Fertility
says, and her arm is curved to rest against the whole length of my arm. "I remember
the faces
of the last passengers as their lifeboats were lowered past the ballroom wiondows.
Their orange
canvas life vests sort of framed their heads, so their heads looked cut off and put
on
remember. Growing up inside the church district colony, Half your studies were
about church
doctrine and rules. Half were about service. Service included gardening, etiquette,
Fabric care,
cleaning, carpentry, sewing, animals, arithmetic, getting out stains, and
tolerance. rules for the
outside world included you had to write weekly letters of confession back to the
elders in the
church district. You had to refrain from eating candy. Drinking and smoking were
forbidden.
Present a clean and orderly appearance at all times. You could not indulge in
broadcast forms
of entertainment. You could not participate in viceual relations. Luke, Chapter
Twenty, Verse
Thirty-five:" But they which shall be accounted worthy... neither marrry, nor are
given in marriage."
Elders of the Creedish church made celibacy sounds as easy as choosing not to play
baseball. Just
say no. The other rules just went on and on. God forbid you should ever dance. or
eat refined
sugar. Or sinh. But the most important rule to remember was always: If the members
of the
church district colony felt summoned by God , rejoice. When the apocalypse was
imminent,
celebrate, and all Creedish must deliver themselves unto God, amen. And you had to
follow.
It didn't matter how far away. It didn't matter how long you'd been working outside
the
district colony. Since listening to broadcast communication was a no-no, it might
take years for
all church members to find out about the Deliverance. Church doctrine named it
that. The
Deliverance. The flight to Egypt. The flight out of Egypt. People are All the time
running from
one place to another in the Bible. You might not find out for years, but the moment
you found
out, you had to find a gun, drink some poison, drown, hang, slash, or jump. you had
to deliver
yourself to Heaven. This is why there were three police and the caseworker here to
collect me.
The policemen said,"This isn't going to be easy for you to hear," and I knew I'd
been left behind.
probablysecondonlyto that of the Weosley twins." Hereweore," hcsaid, leering;down
at Harryas
herappcdthreetimcs on Profcssor Umbridge's door andpushcdit open." The Pottreboyto
seeyou,
Ma'am." Umbridge's office, so veryfamiliar to Harryfrom his manydetentions, was
thcsameos usual
except for thelorgewooden block lying;across thefront of hredcsk on which golden
letters
spellcdtheword: HE ADMISTRESS. Also, his Firebolt It was the apocalypse, the
Deliverance, and despite all my work and all the money I'd earned
toward our plan, Heaven on Earth just wasn't going to happen. Before I could think,
the
caseworker stepped forward and said, "We know what you've been programmed to do at
this
point. We're prepared to hold you for observation to prevent that." Back when the
church
district colony first decreed the Deliverance, there were around fifteen hundred
church district
members scattered all over the country in job postings. A week laters, there would
be six
hundred. A year later, four hundred. Since then, even a couple of caseworkers have
killed'
themselves. The government found me and most of the other protects by our letters
of
confession we sent back to the church district colony every month. We didn't know
we
were writting and sending our wages to church elders who were already dead and in
Heaven.
We couldn't know that caseworkers were reading our tally every month of how many
times
we swore or had unpure thoughts. Now there was nothing I could tell caseworker that
she