Chapter 60
Fleet put Diane and I both on indefinite orders. As official attachés for the duration of our trip to Purgatory. We were deemed cultural exchange officers. Many mantes had remained behind on Earth in a similar capacity. The Queen Mother and her official party had been the first mantes to ever see any portion of Earth society—in an informal setting—and a small group of them had been left behind, to form the first official mantis embassy to another sapient race, in the entire history of their species.
Meanwhile, on Purgatory, we were starting over from scratch. My chapel, and everything else in the mountain valley, had been razed to the ground when hostilities were renewed. There was nothing left. Not even bodies. The mantes had dropped a very small asteroid right down into the middle of the valley proper, and that was the end of that.
Now, two former human residents of Purgatory had returned. This time, to a different valley altogether.
Our new home was quite a bit different from our last on this world. A beautiful mountain lake spanned the bottom of the valley, with healthy meadows of Purgatory grass stretching into the foothills on all sides.
The drop pod from the drop pod carrier made a decent enough shelter, until Diane and I could get the new chapel built. And we had crates filled with Earth seed to begin growing crops. Plus some Earth livestock to boot. Tending them was certainly a learning process, as neither Diane nor I had ever been farm kids back home. But we managed.
With the Queen Mother’s help, of course.
That wasn’t her official capacity anymore. The exchange of power at the Quorum of the Select had been as similarly officious—in mantis terms—as the signing of the treaty had been in human terms. Much speaking and acting-out of formal ritual. Though Diane and I had been forced to use a translator to tell us what was going on, as everything had been done silently—mind to mind.
When I asked her what we should call her now, the former Queen Mother was at a loss for words. Even she had no idea.
“You’ll need a name eventually,” I said.
She thought about it.
“I should use the station in which I function,” she said. “Much like you called the Professor by his function.”
“So what’s your function now?” Diane asked.
The former Queen Mother considered at length.
“I think we shall call me…Pilgrim.”
Which was good enough for all three of us.
Pilgrim’s new arm was growing back rather rapidly. She looked comical with this little pee-wee version of her big forelimb, waving about and gesticulating, its chitin looking fresh whereas all the rest of her was well-seasoned.
I took it as a good omen. But it wasn’t the only one.
Diane and me, well…we were getting to know each other like never before. And for once in my life I didn’t feel like I was the only one being expected to answer all the questions. Of which Pilgrim still had many.
For relaxation and exercise, we all spent about as much time as we could hiking around the valley. If the planet had a garden spot, this seemed to be it. And by day, work meant assembling the chapel proper, or tending the little farm that surrounded the growing chapel walls. If Pilgrim was annoyed at having to exert herself with so much physical labor, she didn’t show it. In fact she appeared to rejoice in it every bit as much as Adanaho had rejoiced in the challenge of her own toil—liberated from VR.
Occasionally Pilgrim explored her flight envelope with her wings. We’d all climb up to the top of a bluff or other high point at the valley’s edge, and she’d go running as fast as she could, shooting off into the air and spiraling elegantly around and around, back down into the valley floor, sometimes even getting as far as the shoreline of the lake before she’d put down.
It was a beautiful thing to see.
At night, Diane and I would go to our bed, and do some exploring of our own. Newlyweds that we were, it was clumsy stuff, at first. But both of us had waited a long time. There was time enough for learning. And when we were lying in the rumpled blankets, we’d look up through the drop pod’s portholes at the stars in the sky above.
Bright, and pure, and promising as they’d never been before.
“So, Chaplain Barlow,” Diane said to me as I felt myself sliding towards slumber.
“So…Missus Chaplain Barlow,” I said in reply, smiling in the dark.
She giggled, and wrapped an arm around my shoulders while snuggling up to my ear.
“Back on Earth,” she said, “you told me you were done hiding from truths you knew in your heart. I’m pretty sure at this point I know what that means.”
“That I’ve always loved you?” I replied. “Yes.”
“No, silly. That you’ve finally accepted God.”
I lay there, feeling her warmth next to me, and thinking that it was pretty difficult to remember any time when I’d felt quite so content. An old and reflexive part of my brain wanted to reject her words. But that part had steadily grown more quiet over the days since we’d returned to Purgatory.
“Chaplain Thomas seemed to think there was a reason we got spared, back during the first war,” I said. “He thought it was part of God’s plan. I said he was talking nonsense at the time. But now…what else am I to think? Yes, I’ve accepted God. More than that, I’ve accepted the idea that forging peace with the mantes was only the first step. I’ve got to help Pilgrim find and accept God too. She’s just the first. There will be others like her. Other mantes. I am sure of it.”
“I am too,” Diane whispered, kissing my ear. “You know, you were always in the back of my mind, Harry. The one guy I kept wondering about, when the nights got lonely. I thought I’d never see you again, especially when the war cranked up a second time. Watching you walk into my place that afternoon in San Francisco…I knew it wasn’t an accident.”
“No, I don’t think it was either,” I said.
We kissed deeply, then pulled the blankets over us—the distantly gentle lapping of the lakeshore serenading us to sleep.
— The End —
The Chaplain's War - eARC Page 38
