“Here,” she finally said. We emerged into what I might best describe as an observation deck. A transparent dome in the side of the ship, into which a platform projected. I walked out onto it with the Queen Mother leading the way, and we stopped at the very end. I noted that the stars were fixed. No relativistic compression of light.
“Is there a problem? We’re at sublight velocity.”
“We have dropped to conventional propulsion for a routine navigational calibration. I am using the opportunity to seek your counsel. Look into the universe and tell me what you see,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
She aimed a forelimb into the inky depths of the cosmos, pinpricked a hundred thousand times by tiny, bright stars.
“Look, and tell me the knowledge of your heart.”
A very curious choice of words, I thought.
But I caught her drift. The Professor and I had played this game many times while stargazing back on Purgatory.
“If you’re asking me for a metaphysical answer, I can tell you that when I view the galaxy—especially a view as magnificent as this—I am overcome with a sense of humility.”
“You are humble?”
“Yes. The galaxy is vast, and yet it is only one of a countless number of galaxies spanning a virtually endless ocean of space.”
“An ocean,” she said somewhat dubiously.
“Not literally,” I said. “It’s metaphor.”
“I see. So you look upon space the way your ancestors once viewed the seas of your home world. A liquid medium across which to explore and travel, seek new lands, colonize, and expand.”
“You see it differently?”
“No, the traditional mantis view is much as yours. I speak to you now only of my particular struggle. When we were marooned on that nameless world onto which your human lifeboat landed, I was struck by the fact that while each of our peoples pretend to ‘own’ space, this ownership is an illusion. The distances between stars are immense. It would take lifetimes to travel at sublight speeds. Both our races have been primarily focused on those planets and resources concentrated nearest the stars themselves. But we know from study that there is a great deal between the stars too—planets without stars, as well as gasses, whole clouds of minute rock and dust particles, all swirling in an immense gravitational dance according to the specific masses of the aggregate whole.”
“Indeed,” was all I said. I caught the gist of her pontification, though it seemed to me she was expressing much of it for the sake of prefacing a deeper argument.
“For perhaps the first time,” she said, “I asked myself, what is it all for? The universe, I mean. If not for the boundless expansion and dominance of the mantis people, then what? Sharing this universe with humans is not merely a question of territory, padre. A long-term peace means sharing space with humans in our collective consciousness. We will be admitting that we are no longer alone. That there is a type and kind of mind in the universe that is equal to our own. If not precisely in function or capacity, then at least in value.”
I watched the stars intently, not looking at her as I spoke.
“On my world, many hundreds of years ago, the dominant nations faced a similar question. Indeed, we have been forced to face that question in terms of gender, in terms of ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomics, whatever way in which one human can be different from another human, we’ve been forced to adapt to the fact that there are people different from ourselves, that they exist with the same rights and fundamental freedoms, and that no one human group or collection of groups has the authority to revoke those rights or freedoms. Despite the fact that values and perceptions of values continue to clash.”
“I do not understand,” the Queen Mother said. “Are you telling me that it is common for humans to fight other humans?”
“Precisely,” I said. “Because the raw truth of it is that many humans cannot tolerate sharing the universe with many other humans.”
“Example,” she said, in a most demanding tone.
I considered for a moment.
“Consider the captain. She was of a religious order known as Copts. Not generally the same as an ethnicity, the Copts were persecuted and driven practically to extinction by the Muslims. Another religious group which believed both similarly and also very, very differently from the Copts.”
“Yes,” she said. “This I know of from the archives: the races we discovered previously also warred in this way. I am perhaps surprised to learn of such human conflict occurring recently.”
“It’s still ongoing,” I said. “Before the mantis threat was discovered and the original war begun, Earth itself—and its colonies—were divided. In fact several of the colonies were established precisely as a way for certain humans to flee the persecution they’d experienced as a result of coming into conflict with other humans.”
“Remarkable,” the Queen Mother said.
“Unfortunate,” I added. “Had we spent the last few thousand years as a unified people—as the mantes have—I wager that when our races met, we might have been on par with yours. With an equally enlarged footprint in the galaxy proper. Instead, we were caught by surprise. And though we learn and adapt quickly, I believe very much that our ultimate fate still rests in mantis hands.”
“You say this without shame,” she said.
“I was ashamed once,” I told her. “The Professor saw that, when he first went to Purgatory to talk to me. I was ashamed, and I was angry. At the mantes. At humanity too. So much so that I attempted to provoke the Professor on more than one occasion.”
“Provoke,” she said. “I can’t imagine how.”
“It doesn’t matter. After the armistice I grew to accept the situation for what it was. To borrow terms from an ancient human game, the mantes held all the face cards. We might resist you for a while. We might put up a brave and extended fight. But there are simply too many of you, and too few of us. Sooner or later, humanity will be overwhelmed.”
“Something I am afraid I was only too eager to prove,” she admitted. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flush form along the semi-soft portions of her carapace.
“You are embarrassed by the new war,” I said.
“Yes. But not just that. I am growing more horrified every moment at the thought that somewhere out there right now, mantes and humans are killing each other. And I caused it. I prepared the way, and I started the fight. Because I had no room in my imagination for a universe with humans.”
“Many humans have no room in their imaginations for a universe with mantes,” I said, trying to balance the scale.
“If that is a crime,” she said, “then it is a small thing compared to what I have done. Padre, what reckoning can I hope for? Even if I am able to establish an understanding with my successor, and get the Quorum to recall all of our forces…how can I hope to mend the damage? I cannot resurrect the many lives lost. I cannot give to the kin of the dead—to the family of Captain Adanaho—any apology sufficient to the enormity of their suffering.”
Now I turned to look directly at the Queen Mother. The semi-soft portions of her carapace had become so discolored I realized I’d never seen a mantis this sorrowfully emotional before. Had she been a human, I imagine she’d have been sobbing.
“Stopping the war is all that matters now,” I said.
“No,” she said, her speaker box failing to translate the bulk of her distress, though it clearly showed on her. “I must find some way to mend what I have done. This war I’ve created—”
“You didn’t create it alone,” I said. “General Sakumora and the other officers of Fleet Command were also eager for the fight. Having been beaten and humiliated in the first war, they wanted a second crack at you. Though anyone with eyes and a brain could have told them it was futile.”
“Pride,” the Queen Mother said. “My pride. Your general’s pride. And blindness. Both of us, so blind…”
Her head hung and her forelimbs lay limply on the front of her
disc. I hesitantly reached out a hand and touched one of those forelimbs. The chitin was hard, but not cold. She was as warm as the Professor had been.
“What you’re seeking is something we humans call absolution,” I said.
“I do not understand that word.”
“It means you’re feeling the full weight of your…wrong choices, and you are trying to find a way to make up for them. Because it…hurts inside when you think about those wrong choices.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, suddenly rearing up. Her forelimbs tapped at the center of her thorax. “It hurts, padre! I hurt, and the world is flat, and I cannot see how any of this will change!”
I suddenly remembered a midnight conversation the Professor had had in my chapel, with a couple of folk from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints. They’d been specifically discussing the standard Mormon practice of immersing people fully in water, prior to making them members of the church. The Professor had been engrossed in the concept, because no such concept had ever existed in mantis culture: a cleansing of the soul, for an accumulated lifetime of errors.
Had it, the Queen Mother could seek the mantis equivalent of a priest, a rabbi, a shaman, someone capable of understanding what she was going through, and either assign proper penance in the Catholic fashion, or perhaps give the Queen Mother a framework in which to grapple with her growing sense of self-horror.
Were it also that men of Earth’s history—Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Osama Bin Laden—had found their consciences as readily as the Queen Mother had apparently found hers, perhaps there might have been a lot less blood shed during the so-called birth of the modern human age.
“I’m not sure I can do you much good,” I said. “I told the Professor this again and again. I am not a chaplain, just the assistant. I do not preach nor do I pretend to hold any kind of moral or spiritual authority.”
“But you must believe in something,” she said. “Otherwise why did you build your chapel at all? Why did you let Captain Adanaho talk you into coming with her to the summit meeting between myself and your General Sakumora?”
Now it was my turn to flush. Dammit, why did this keep coming up? Why did things always find a way of circling back around to what I believed? As if what I thought was true had any bearing on this mantis or her people?
The Mormons had once told the Professor that their version of Heavenly Father was the God of all—human, mantis, and any other sapient life in the universe. The Professor had found the idea rather extraordinary. I’d thought it a gross presumption on their part. Even I would not have pretended to make such statements no matter how strongly I felt about my beliefs.
Now I actually regretted not having such faith. The Queen Mother was in pain. She needed answers. And I was ill-equipped to give them because I’d never sought out such answers in my own life—had not demanded them of myself. Easier to hide behind a veneer of benevolent neutrality. Play at being a facilitator for the spiritual progression of others, while ignoring my own.
I realized for the first time how much of a coward I’d been. Tears leaked down my face.
“For me?” The Queen Mother asked.
“Yes,” I said. “And for myself as well. Were I a better man, I believe I could give you some of what you seek. Or at least point surely to a way of gaining clarity. But your predicament—this new war, and all that’s come with it—has exposed me to the fact that I have been deluding myself.”
“How?”
“It’s difficult to explain. Just that Captain Adanaho and the Professor both called me on the carpet about it. You’re not the only one with sins to atone for.”
I wiped at my face and sniffled, trying to compose myself.
“Then we are allied in more ways than one,” she said. “Padre, your Captain Adanaho once told me—by way of the Professor—that all of this was happening for a reason. She believed it firmly. Perhaps she is right. What that reason might be I cannot say. But you and I must work together to find solutions to our mutual problems. The question for me at this moment is: where do I start?”
I considered the question, looking at her through my unexpected tears.
“Get rid of the carriage,” I said.
She backed away from me.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s got to be it. You said it yourself when you came to my quarters. The disc is hampering your natural perceptions in ways you didn’t realize until you had to do without a disc long enough to tell the difference. I think the choice is an obvious one.”
“I would be a permanent cripple,” she said. “You know the carriage is part of who we are. I can no more do without it than you could do without your arms and legs.”
“Then find a way to compromise,” I said. “Break it up. Pare back the carriage’s functions one by one until the ‘flatness’ fades or disappears.”
She looked at me, the flush along her semi-soft chitin beginning to dissipate and her forelimbs caressing the front of her disc thoughtfully.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes!”
Almost immediately, she spun on her vertical axis and shot back down the length of the platform.
“Wait!” I cried, but she was gone.
And I’d been left to find my way back to my compartment, alone.
I stayed on the observation deck for a few more minutes, then slowly walked back into the ship’s interior.
Chapter 48
Target planet (Purgatory), 2155 A.D.
The mantis carrier put down in a mountain valley. As did over a hundred other carriers just like it. We were herded out of the pods like cattle. Thousands of us. The ragged survivors of a once-mighty human flotilla. With only the clothes on our backs, or what we’d been able to salvage in duffels, bags, packs, and satchels. Anything that wasn’t obviously a weapon, but which might still offer some kind of use.
Perhaps a third of us were wounded. Some very seriously, like the chaplain.
With mantis infantry standing watch at the valley rim, we were left to figure ourselves out.
“No escape,” one NCO remarked bleakly.
Chaplain Thomas was looking worse every hour.
A Fleet nurse who’d been trying to do his best to stand in for an actual physician approached me and pulled me aside.
“He’s not going to last much longer.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I replied tersely. “Is there anything you can do for the pain? He’s hurting bad.”
“I want to save the pain meds for the people I think we can save.”
I wanted to retort in anger, but realized the futility of it. If we’d had the capacity to get Chaplain Thomas to a surgeon, even his present injuries—dire as they seemed—weren’t life threatening. But the nearest surgery center had been back aboard the Fleet starship we’d left behind, and which had now obviously been destroyed, or tucked tail and run when the tide turned.
There would be no help for the chaplain’s injuries.
He chuckled bleakly at me when I told him the bad news.
“Figured as much, all by myself,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish there was more I could do.”
“You can do something,” he said.
“What?”
“When I’m gone, build me a chapel.”
I stared at him.
“I am completely serious,” Chaplain Thomas said. “If the mantes have let so many of us live, there’s got to be a reason for it. Sounds like they’re not letting anyone in or out of the valley. Which means we’re prisoners of war. And that means these people—all who have survived—are going to need somewhere to come and cry out their sorrows to the Lord.”
“But I don’t know anything about architecture—”
“You don’t have to know,” he said. “Noah built an ark with nothing but the power of God to guide him. Surely you can put together something with four walls and a roof? If you want to do something for me, Harrison Barlow, you will build me a chapel. Keep it clean. Keep it neat. Make sure anyo
ne and everyone is welcome. So that they can come in, sit down, maybe talk about their problems, and seek some peace of mind.”
“I’m not convinced there will be any peace of mind for any of us,” I said. In a matter of days, all our lives had been smashed to ruins. Earth was cut off from us. Our friends, our families. Gone. And we ourselves might as well have been dead, for how much optimism I saw in the expressions on the faces of the people around me. The surviving officers and Fleet NCOs were trying to rally. But the shock still hadn’t worn off. People milled about in little camps and circles: hollow-eyed, flinching at even small sounds, and so very, very afraid.
My dour reverie must have been apparent.
The chaplain snapped his fingers at me.
“Yessir?” I said.
“Boy,” the chaplain said to me, snagging my hand in his, and pressing his fingers into my flesh with as much strength as he could muster. “Tammy swore to me that you were a good one. The kind of fellow who could make a difference in peoples’ lives. Listen to me now. Whether or not you live or die is no longer important. You hear me? Not anymore. That’s completely in the Lord’s hands now. Which means all you need to decide is what you want to do with yourself in the time the Lord’s got left for you. Are you going to sit around and be so frightened that you can’t move or breath? Or are you going to try to make the world a better place?”
He began coughing terribly, wincing all the while. Bits of blood speckled the front of his armor suit now.
“Ripping up my own lungs,” he wheezed.
“I’ll go bring the nurse back,” I said.
“Forget it. It’s almost over. And I’m sorry, son. I truly am sorry. For me captivity will be short-lived. I go to my reward. But for you? The Lord’s got a trial in mind for you. And a work to be accomplished. You dodge that, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. Such as they are. Don’t run away from it, Harry. Time to grow up and take it by the horns. Life is filled with challenges, and you’ve got a big one now. Promise me you’ll build the chapel? Promise me.”
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