The Crystal City Page 0,136

Arthur Stuart figured that as long as Measure kept his makery secret, nobody would give him the credit for how fast the clearing of the land was going.

But Measure left the work and came along. And when they got to Alvin's cabin, there inside it were a gaggle of women. La Tia seemed like the president of the women of Furrow-spring County, and what had gathered here might have been the great council: the leading women of the exodus, including Marie d'Espoir, Rien, and Mama Squirrel, and some of the women who had known Alvin and Peggy in years past, come to be part of the long-awaited city. Purity, a young preacher against Puritanism from New England, who still seemed to be in love with Verily Cooper-who hardly noticed she was there-and Fishy, a former slave from Camelot who had become something of a great woman among the abolitionists of the north in the years since her escape. And, of course, Peggy.

"I can't stay in this room," said Taleswapper. "So many glorious women, I have no choice but to be in love with all of you at once. It'll tear me apart."

"Live with it," said Peggy dryly. "I think you know them all."

"Them as I don't know, I hope I soon will," said Tale-swapper. "If I don't die in the next few minutes from pure happiness."

"That man talk some," said La Tia appreciatively.

"I didn't know there was a meeting," said Alvin.

"You wasn't invite," said La Tia. "My meeting. But you welcome a stay."

"What's the topic?" asked Alvin.

"The name of that thing what you build," said La Tia. "I don't like what Verily call it, me."

Peggy laughed. "Nobody likes what anybody calls it," she said. "But La Tia was reading in the Bible and she has a name."

"You lead us out like Moses," said La Tia. "And Arthur Stuart, he lead us like Joshua when you gone. Not like Aaron, no! We got no golden calf! But we the book of Exodus, us. So this thing you build, I find out in the Bible, she a tabernacle."

Alvin frowned. "Makes it sound like a church meeting place."

"Oui!" cried Rien. "Only instead of you go and a priest pretend to be God, we go inside and find out where he live in our heart!"

"For a building that don't exist yet, everybody's got a good idea of how it's gonna work," said Alvin.

But of course they did. Alvin had already made thirty-two of the crystal blocks-big ones, heavy, hard to haul. They were stacked up waiting to be laid down as foundation stones, but there was hardly a soul in Furrowspring County what hadn't walked the corridor between those blocks and looked into their infinite depth. You walk among them and it feels like you're in a place larger than the whole world, with all of what was and is and is yet to come beside you on either hand, and the ordinary world looks so small and narrow, when you see it at the end of that glistening corridor. But then you walk away from the stacked up blocks and they get to looking small, and quite plain. Shimmery, yes, reflecting the trees and the sky, the clouds and the river, if you're standing where the reflection of the Mizzippy could be seen. Small on the outside, huge on the inside-oh, they all knew what this building was going to be like, when it was done.

"In the Bible," said Marie d'Espoir, "the tabernacle was a place where only the priest could go. He'd come out and tell everyone what he saw. But our tabernacle, everybody's the priest, everybody can go inside, man and woman, to see what they see and hear what they hear."

"It suits me fine," said Alvin. "I know I don't want it to be a church or school or such. Tabernacle's as fitting a name as any, and better than most. Though I know Verily's gonna be disappointed to find out you didn't like 'observatory.' "

"I like it," said La Tia. "But I don't can say it, me."

That issue decided, the women went on talking about which families didn't have clothes enough for their children, and which houses weren't big enough or warm enough, and who was sick and needed help. It was a good work they were doing, but the men weren't needed in the discussion and soon Arthur Stuart found himself outside. But not with Alvin and Taleswapper-they were off looking at the big house where Papa Moose's