Free The Voices of Heaven by Frederik Pohl

first to the fuel-insertion room. No fuel was being inserted at the moment, but next to it was the storage chamber where the prepared pods waited to be filled. And there they were, his first hundred pods, looking like giant steel watermelons, each one already hooked up to the power leads that would run its coolers and magnets when the antimatter was inserted.
    "They're empty," he said, frowning.
    "Of course they're empty. As soon as a pod is full it's out of here; we don't keep antimatter around. As soon as they start filling them for you, we'll shoot them up to the catchers so we can start loading."
    "And when are you going to load?"
    "When I tell them to start filling," I told him.
    He didn't look as though he liked that, but he wasn't looking at me anymore. He was staring at the pods, and the expression on his face surprised me. It seemed to reflect a kind of emotion I didn't really associate with Millenarists. If I'd had to put a name to it, I would have called it . . . well . . . love .
    He made me uncomfortable. I said, "I'll probably have the refueling order tomorrow, so you'll be leaving pretty soon."
    He looked up at me, as though I'd interrupted a precious thought. "I suppose so. All the supplies are in, and the personnel list is all set. Not everybody is as hostile to the extrasolar colonies as you, di Hoa. We've had more volunteer colonists than we could carry, with all that load of antimatter."
    I mentioned, "I know one of your volunteers. A man named Rannulf Enderman."
    He thought for a moment, then nodded. "Enderman, yes. A deeply religious young man. You would be a happier man, di Hoa, if you had his faith."
    I didn't know what to say to that. I couldn't tell whether Tscharka really believed what he said about Rannulf—"deeply religious," for God's sake!—or whether he actually remembered Rannulf at all. I took refuge in what my old shrink had told me.
    "A man named Benjamin Franklin said something that makes sense to me," I said. "Franklin said, 'In the affairs of this world men are saved, not by faith, but by the lack of it.'"
    I don't know what I expected from him. Maybe a thundering condemnation of Franklin's blasphemy, maybe a supercilious dismissal of his ignorance. What I got surprised me. Tscharka mulled that over for a moment, and then said, "Why, di Hoa, that is a very penetrating observation, for a secular. I must admit that this man, Franklin, is partly right."
    I blinked at him for that.
    "You see, in this world," he explained, "you really can't be saved by faith. You can't be saved at all, except by getting out of it."

6
     
     
    WHAT is the meaning of the word "faith" as it is used in this context? It seems there are many meanings of the term.
    Well, sure, "faith" means lots of different things. I can say I have "faith" in a person. That means I believe that person is decent, and trustworthy, and maybe even kind. Or I can have "faith" that a given action will produce a particular result; that kind of "faith" is based on prior experience.
    Is either of those the kind of "faith" you and Garoldtscharka were discussing?
     
    "No, of course not. We were talking about religious faith. That's powerful stuff. If a person is serious about his religious faith it takes precedence over anything else. It isn't based on any kind of evidence. It's irrelevant to such things as, say, a person's character, or the things he experiences. It transcends all that real-world stuff. It shapes what you do, in ways that an outsider can't predict, and that's why Tscharka was so good at concealing his intentions.
    Whatever Tscharka's intentions were, as he was getting ready to return to Pava, he didn't communicate them to me. And certainly when I first met him I might not have known how things would go in the long run even if I'd been able to read his mind. I don't know if he even had those intentions yet.
    If you want me to make a guess, I'd say probably Tscharka and his chaplain, the one he called Friar Tuck, cooked