And what she said was true, of course. There was nothing to think about. It was all explained, all neat and orderly. The Story told of the Beginning and the beginning of the End. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing for one to think about.
There had been Chaos and out of the Chaos order had been born in the shape of the Ship and outside the Ship there was Chaos still. It was only within the Ship that there was order and efficiency and law—or the many laws, the waste not, want not law and all the other laws. There would be an End, but the End was something that was still a mystery, although there still was hope, for with the Ship had been born the Holy Pictures and these, in themselves, were a symbol of that hope, for within the picture were the symbolism-values of other ordered places (bigger ships, perhaps) and all of these symbol-values had come equipped with names, with Tree and Book and Sky and Clouds and other things one could not see, but knew were there, like the Wind and Sunshine.
The Beginning had been long ago, so many generations back that the stories and the tales and folklore of the mighty men and women of those long-gone ages pinched out with other shadowy men and women still misty in the background.
"I was scared at first," said Mary, "but I am scared no longer. This is the way that it was spoken and there is nothing we can do except to know it is for the best."
He went on eating, listening to the sound of passing feet, to the sound of voices going past the door. Now there was no hurry in the feet, no terror in the voices. It hadn't taken long, he thought, for the Folk to settle down. Their Ship had been turned topsy-turvy, but it still was for the best.
And he wondered if they might not be the ones who were right, after all—and the Letter wrong. He would have liked to have stepped to the door and -hailed some of those who were passing by so he could talk with them, but there was no one in the ship (not even Mary) he could talk to.
Unless it were Joshua.
He sat eating, thinking of Joshua in the ponic gardens, pottering around, fussing with his plants. As a boy, he'd gone there, along with the other boys, Joe and George and Herb and all the rest of them. Joshua then had been a man of middle age who always had a story and some sage advice and a smuggled tomato or a radish for a hungry boy. He had, Jon remembered, a soft gentle way of talking and his eyes were honest eyes and there was a gruff, but winning friendliness about him.
It had been a long time, he realized, since he'd seen Joshua. Guilt, perhaps, he told himself.