"How much farther, Papa?"  Emily asked, from her spot on the knoll.

A lantern approached, waving back and forth in the darkness.  Papa carried that lantern.  When he finally reached her, he said, "Just to the top."

Emily sighed.  She adjusted her cloak for the hundredth time and blew quick bursts of steaming air into her cupped hands, vain efforts to stay warm.  She was dressed lightly, too lightly for Santa Barbara in August and would have rather been back at the fellowship hall helping Mama and the others prepare for the morning feast. 

"And how long will this take?"

Papa's crimson robe ballooned in the wind, but where it was soaked below his waist, it clung to him like an extra skin.  "Not long, I promise," he said.  "I have to be getting back, too—but it's the clearest night in weeks."

Emily looked up.  She hadn't noticed all the stars out until now.  The dust clouds were confined to the horizon for once, and she could begin to make out the Milky Way overhead.  Her gaze now wandered down to the darkling ocean, from where applause wafted up, momentarily drowning out the surf and salt-tinged breeze.  Another tenfold had been baptized, plunged beneath the cleansing flood as they said, added to the roll of believers.  The cycle would continue until all the latest converts had been initiated.  The masses would then head back to the sanctuary in town for an all-nighter of preaching and prayer.

"You should go down afterward and see the glorious sight in the ocean," he said, noting Emily's stare.  "We've baptized hundreds already—and we'll baptize hundreds more before this Revival is over."

Emily stifled a chill.  And a laugh.  She had little use for the ocean, it being the consistency between something too thick to swim in and too thin to plow during this age.  People said converts oftentimes came back from the ceremony with a spiritual glow.  They glowed all right, she thought, but it sure wasn't spiritual.

Papa moved on, holding the lantern high, its light throwing a long shadow behind him.  "And there will be much more to do tonight," he added as Emily followed.  "We'll be preaching on Leviticus . . . on purity in our lives . . ."  He trailed off, nearly out of breath.  He didn't stop his climb until he reached the knoll's summit.  "And purity in our world," he finally managed.

Emily hadn't broken a sweat.  "Oh," she said, but then bit her lip.  She almost added the word "again."

Looking across the top of the knoll, she spotted an odd silhouette in the darkness.  She glanced at Papa, as if asking for permission to investigate.  Seeing his reassuring nod and smile, she did so and found a telescope.  It was old, obviously dated from the Era, but well kept for. 

"It's a reflector, isn't it?" she asked, the joy obvious on her face.  She rambled on for a few moments about primary and secondary mirrors, about focal lengths and magnifications. 

Papa smiled at the brief lesson in optics.  "Are you happy that you came now?"

She ran her fingers along the smooth optical tube.  "Yes, but is this contraption permissible, Papa?"

"Allowances for some things have been made."

"And do you intend to show me the new comet in Aquila?"

Papa raised an eyebrow.  "Did you learn of that in Monterey last week?"

Emily ignored the question.  Her flint stare hadn't changed.  "Well?"

A grin blossomed on Papa's face.  "Would I have left the Revival, dragged you up here for a dirty snowball, Em?" he asked, raising his arms, allowing the robe to sag to his shoulders.  His arms were thin and spotted.  Rumor had it that he had contracted the skin and blood disease.  Many old-timers in their early forties got it.  But Emily knew better and chalked it up to ritual fasting and the deficiency.  Or so she hoped. 

"Then why am I here?"

"Because I need a healthier pair of eyes."  Papa dimmed the lantern. 

"And what may I ask are we looking for?"  She nearly raised her hand like one of his overworked schoolboys.

Papa gave her a furtive glance.  "A new star streaking across the aether," he said, matter-of-factly.

Emily felt a chill run up her back; it had nothing to do with the cold.  There was only one way Papa could have known about this ahead of time. "You've received a communiqué . . .  on the shortwave?"  It really wasn't a question.

"From Perth and Halifax a day ago.  But they've been too dusted out for a positive identification."  Papa then frowned, considered his next response.  "The burden has fallen to us."

Papa stroked a device wired to the telescope, a keypad, as he called it.  The mount reeled and clicked as it slewed the instrument to a southern patch of sky that Emily recognized as Capricornus, some forty degrees above the horizon.  Her eyes nearly dark-adapted now, she noticed other pieces of equipment, black boxes, if you will, for lack of better words, strewn around the telescope on the ground.  There was certainly more to this "instrument" than met the eye.

"That should do it," he said.  "I've put it in grab-and-show mode.  Anything coming into its field of view will be tracked.  Now we wait."

Which was fine for Emily, because she really hadn't talked to Papa since her return.  Or better put, he had hardly talked to her, with the Revival underway and all.

She looked at him sideways.  "I saw a lot of things in Monterey, Papa."

"Really," he said, making a play of checking the instrument, reading some dials, avoiding Emily's eye.

"Like the new locomotor device that hauls people."

"Indeed."

Emily brightened.  "And you should see their gen-ray-tor . . ." The new word was a mouthful but she felt invigorated nonetheless.  "They say it splits tiny rocks, just like Moses did, but instead of water it produces energy.  Energy for the whole village, Papa."

Papa nodded reflectively, then sighed.  "The ultra-source."

Even in the low light, Emily could see enough of her Papa's face to tell what he was thinking.  "You're disappointed."

"I sent you to Monterey to see the apostasy for yourself, Em.  Now I fear we're going to have the same old conversation."  Applause came up from below again; Papa nodded at it.  "Many have come from as far away as Ventura and Simi Valley this time, braving the glacier and the cold.  Our ways still appeal to many.  Why do they not appeal to you?"

"Is it so bad to warm our houses and light our streets more efficiently?"

"The tracts of Leviticus are clear."

"I know the tracts," Emily snapped.

"But do you keep them here?"  Papa asked, softly pounding a fist on his chest.

Emily waved off his response as if she could wave away the entire matter.  "It's a waste not to take advantage of the old ways.  I will make a proposal to the village council to adopt the reforms in Monterey."

Papa's eyes widened as if he hadn't expected that.  But he quickly smiled again, though veiling it through a thin lip.  "That's within your rights, of course.  You're fifteen, after all.  But you will find none on the council that will disagree with me."

Emily huffed and thought of the council.  She wondered if there was ever going to be a way of keeping elderly men out of positions of authority.  She also wondered if the problem was only peculiar to her epoch or had it plagued all times.

"And who's the one disappointed now?"

"I see not the wisdom of it, Papa.  Will the old ways ever see the light of day?"

The telescope suddenly came to life and began tracking a bright, star-like object crossing the sky.  Papa, humming a hymn far older than Emily's fifteen years, idly stepped up for the first peek through the ocular. 

The hymn drew on.  And Emily's patience grew thin.  "Well, Papa?"

"It may be some unremarkable rock catching sunlight," he said, stepping down.  "But my eyes are too dim.  Have a look."

Emily took her turn.  At first, she thought it was a trick of light and shadow in the aether, a phantasm confounding her eyes.  But then there was no denying it.  The object crystallized out of the void, as sleek as a spear with lights winking on and off in a kaleidoscope of colors.  A white-hot flame propelled it across the starry background.  She knew what it was; it was on the tip of her tongue, but she just couldn't get the word out.

Finally, she said, "Spaceship."

"As I feared," Emily heard. 

"Why?" she asked, cupping the ocular in her hands as if she could span the incredible distance and touch the ship.  "This is a blessing."

"Are they human or alien, Em?  Either could be friend or foe.  And do they bring the scourge with them, the blight of the old ways that devastated our world?"

Emily stepped down.  "I don't know and neither do you.  I think they must have come very far.  Perhaps that's proof enough that they've learned to live with the old ways."

Papa sighed and lowered his head.  "The world is changing, they say, getting warmer, getting smaller again.  The glaciers are receding and the dust is falling.  And this business in Monterey . . ."  His lament trailed off into a muffled prayer in some dead language.  The words seemed to weigh him down more than his soaked ceremonial robe. 

"These are bad signs," he said at last.

"Signs?"

Papa opened his eyes.  "The use of the ultra-source and this ship."

"Are they connected?"

"There are things hidden in the tracts, Em," Papa said.  He shifted the keypad between his hands.  Emily hadn't noticed the antennae extending from the device before.  "The ultra-source disturbs the aether, draws attention to our world, and thus draws these impurities to our skies."

"Still, I think we have to give them a chance.  Pity we cannot send them a signal."

Papa punched the keypad fiercely again, all the while humming that accursed hymn.  The black boxes began thrumming and arrays of lights on their surfaces swam out of the darkness.  Like forest eyes at night, Emily thought.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Sending them a signal."

Emily jumped back up to the ocular.  A host of lights unto a lesser flame came alive in the aether.  Came alive, swarmed around the spaceship . . . and then smacked it with fiery darts.  The greater light wavered amongst fitful explosions so bright that Emily shrunk from the telescope.  She looked up into the sky unaided now, but by the time she shook the afterimages out of her eyes, the show was over.  And the streaking ship was gone.  Just the starry sky as it was before. 

"What have you done?"  Emily muttered, feeling very, very nauseous at the thought of those intrepid spacefarers turned to ash.  She leaned on the cold telescope.  The machine was motionless and dark.

"I've done my part," Papa said, eyes like smoldering embers in the weak lamplight. 

Emily found her voice, after a deep breath.  "But we didn't know their intentions."

Papa nodded.  "And we'll never know."

Applause came up from below, stronger than the ones up until now, with a hint of finality in it.  Afterwards, hundreds of voices started singing.  People were heading back to town.

Papa picked up the lantern and turned up the light, but to Emily's eyes it seemed so very dim.  Certainly not enough to find one's way in the night, she thought.  How could they possibly make it back?

"Come, daughter, and let us worship," he said, descending without so much as a glance.  His head bounced away like some disembodied form.  "We have much to be thankful for."

Emily held onto the telescope and watched the stars wheel almost imperceptibly overhead.  After a while, she mustered the courage to let go but stumbled in her first footsteps and fell.  Emily so very much wanted to follow her Papa but didn't know if she could.