“Recruiters said they landed in the pampas.” Maxwell said, breaking the argument. “There’s nothing out there. Nothing worth landing there for except us. Settlers, colonists, towns.”
“It’s most of our agriculture.” The thin man replied. “It’s not the people they’re after, it’s the food.”
“But what would they need the food for if they weren’t going after the people?” Ephesus asked.
“What do I know?” The thin man said throwing up his hands. “I’m no exec am I? I’m just a soldier now, not even a trained one. But i say, this whole thing is a farce. Corporations fight with automata. So there is nothing to defend except more automata. I’m only in it to get what I can while it lasts, and when it’s over, whoever’s won, I’ll go back to spraying oats with pro-biotics and digging peat from the bogs. Won’t matter to me how the whole war goes.”
“It’ll matter if you die.” Maxwell grunted.
The group sat around the campfire late into the night. Maxwell shared a story about a brawl he’d been in with some famous outlaws and the thin man told them about his sisters’ husbands, and they listened to the pale boy with the thin mustache snore as he sat next to the fire. Ephesus speculated about the things they’d see. Still there were long stretches of silence in which each were occupied by their own thoughts as they watched the lumps of peat char and glow. Moses’ own thoughts dwelt on what he’d left behind, what had been, what could have been, and what might never be again. He wished vaguely that he could still go to Cardino to listen to him talk and talk and make sense of everything he had on his heart while he followed his head.
Eventually Maxwell bid them all good night and Ephesus followed suit, both stretching out a short distance from the fire where the smoke would leave them alone. Moses followed but found, laying on his back looking up at the still occasionally shifting stars, that sleep did not come that easily. There was a duty he still owed. One Cardino reminded him of when he tried to run away. He’d forgotten it, but it would have to be taken care of before they were shipped out, and he thought he knew how. Dawn found him, finally, asleep on the ground beside his brother.
When the bell in the Church tower rang out the eight o’clock hour Moses and Ephesus were mustered with the rest of the recruits in a loose group in front of Carmichael’s big stone Church. A willowy man no one had seen before but in one of the black synthetic army uniforms jumped the stairs to survey them from the door of the Church.
“Well you’re an untidy lot.” He said by way of greeting. “I suppose most of you can see the stripes on my shoulder.” He indicated them, two white lines that slashed across the shoulder. “They make me a lieutenant colonel for this here army. Doesn’t matter much to you what it means of course, what you need to know is just that I’m an officer and you lot don’t even have a rank yet. Long as you're part of this army you see a man with more stripes than you, you do as he says. Is that understood?”
Most of them nodded and he shook his head in bemusement. “That’s not the spirit boys, you don’t nod, you yell out yes sir!” He drawled the shout and the group called back a loud “Yessaaah!”
“That’s more like it.” The officer continued. “Now you’re all second Battalion boys, so your flight leaves today. Hoppers will be landing in one of the fields in an hour so you be here square on the ringing of the bell to follow an officer to the boat or you’ll be left behind and called a deserter. The bad guys in the sky haven’t started shooting out our transport hoppers for reasons unknown but you’ll meet enemy fire on the other side and we don’t want you taking risks so you move fast when you load and unload. Until then, the morning is yours. I recommend anybody that hasn’t, take some time in this here Church, the father is saying confessions of anyone feels the need, otherwise clear out. I don’t want to see you in this square. I’ve got other Battalions to issue orders to. Understood?”
“Yessah!” A few of the bright ones shouted, and the officer smiled. “Carry on.”
At the mention of the sacrament Moses felt himself torn. He’d made plans for their last hour, but those plans had entailed a duty less onerous than that which confession could appease. He looked at his brother and nodded for him to follow. “Come on.” Moses started to make his way towards the church while Ephesus lagged behind.
“Do we have to spend the last hour in Church?” Ephesus asked.
“You said you’d listen to me.” Moses said. Ephesus scowled and Moses studied him, then nodded into the Church. “Come on. Might be the last chance at confession for a while.”
The interior of the Church was mostly empty, silent but for the scuffling of their feet and the mumbled prayers of an old woman in the front row of pews. In the back a very short line of men was forming for the confessional. Moses and Ephesus stepped in line and Moses put Ephesus in the spot in front of him. “Don’t take too long.”
“I won’t.” Ephesus replied in an impatient tone.
When Ephesus emerged from the booth after his turn to take a place in one of the pews, Moses made his way in and knelt in the semi darkness in front of the thin sheet of sibsig tarp that formed the grate.
“Forgive me father for I have sinned.” He whispered into the darkness. “It’s been, several months since my last confession.” The speech he’d prepared while he waited bubbled up and spilled out in a jumble. “I snuck away from home to join the army.” He said. It was not a lie, incomplete, but true. He had not run away, but he had not told his parents, as was their due. The fourth commandment, if he remembered them in the right order, required that he should have. “And… there was a girl.”
“I see.” The priest said.
“I didn’t sleep with her.” Moses said. “But, I tried. It just…”
Her name was Lisa. She was barely seventeen, and more beautiful than a sunrise to his eyes. They’d spent his last night together on a blanket at the stream bed they’d made their special rendezvous over the course of a year long courtship. He’d told her he was going to leave for the army, and she’d insisted on them spending some time where they could be alone before he went.
Not that they’d ever been anything but alone together, fully clothed, but alone none the less. Neither had ever met the others family except in passing at the outpost where they’d met. She’d kissed him a year before while her father was inside making a call and his own father was haggling over a new axe head. No one else had been in the dusty yard, surrounded by the jungle of sibsig trees and hip high ferns. “Come see me again.” She whispered and told him about the stream. He shouldn’t have gone.
She shook when she tried to take off his clothes on their last night. He had to stop her when they were half undressed. “Not like this.” He told her. He could imagine what Cardino would have said, the sins he would have enumerated. But she was everything, everything he’d ever dreamed of wanting, and she was holding him for what felt like the last time.
“Why not?” She said. “Don’t you like it?” The look in her eyes was one of fear, not love.
“I love it.” He said and kissed her., “But you’re scared.” And he, what was he? Convinced that it was a sin, that was one thing. He also wanted her, wanted her so bad it felt like his blood was running out of him to pool around them. “And I love you.” He said. “So we’ll wait. Until you’re ready.” He added the last part, the “until you’re ready”, a part of him still battling to drink this girl in until there was nothing left when he knew, he knew the hard thing that he had to do. He’d known it a long time ago, when he’d first gone out to meet her, to weak, even then, to do the hard thing and leave her be.
“I’m ready now. If you want to.” Again that fear in her eyes.
“I don’t.” It felt like pulling a knife out of his chest to say it. He did. He wanted it more than life, but not more than death.
“Alright.” She didn’t pull her shirt back on but straddled him and pulled herself into his chest, buried her face in his neck as he held her and she shook. She had short curly hair, cut sho
rt to manage the mass of curls that still managed to spring from her shoulders and tickled him as he held her. “But now you know what’s waiting for you.” She said. “You’ll come back. You’ll have to come back. If you want this.” She pulled away, put his hand on her breast and kissed him. “You’ll come back won’t you? You won’t find someone else? You won’t forget about me? You won’t die?” She tried to hold his gaze, but tears came and she pulled him into a fierce salty kiss. “You won’t die will you? If I’m waiting for you?”
“I won’t die.” He said. He felt helpless when she cried and all he had were words. Lies at that, but lies she wanted to hear. She’d cried before with him. On their third meeting they’d kissed and lay in the moss and she’d said she loved him. He had mimicked the words, feeling like a coward but telling himself that he could make it mean something, that he would take care of her, or care for her, or something. She’d cried then but not the way she was crying now. “I’ll never find someone else.” He said, cupping her cheek. He could keep that promise he thought. On the spur of the moment he added “When I get back, we’ll get married.”
She smiled through her tears and it was like a beam of sun into his heart, more beautiful than even the sight of her naked chest in the starlight. It made the guilt of his cowardice even more painful, even as he smiled for her. How could he make such a promise when he didn’t plan on coming back?
“Really?” She asked. She pulled away and studied him through her tears and her smile. “Really really?”
“Really really.” He said with a kiss and a smile. She was happy, it made him happy, and he promised himself, that if he could do it, he would keep the promise. Marry her, if he made it back.
She pulled herself into him again. “I love you.” She said.
“I love you too.”
If he’d wanted her, and he had, the way she cried convinced him it had been a good idea to tell her no. She loved him, she loved him without a hint of guilt or cowardice the way he love her, and he didn’t want to ruin it by making their last moments about taking something from her. He wanted to give her, everything, but he had nothing to give her. Only words, and this small thing. To say no to the raging desire that made his limbs shake even now. Do the hard thing, he thought, and the rest of life gets easier. Do the hard thing, and say goodbye. But he wasn’t really. He’d dragged her love after him by promising that he would return and build a place for them. He’d held on, when he should have been letting go, and he felt disgusting for it.
They didn’t dress afterwards. They lay alone together in the starlight until dawn, holding one another and whispering about the future while he tried, mentally, to justify staying when all of his reasons told him that he had to go. To stay would be pleasant, to go would be purpose. There could be no debate except with weakness, and he knew he didn’t wnat to be weak. When the sky began to lighten and he knew he’d have to go she clutched him to her and whispered “Don’t go.”
“The sun will be up soon.”
“No. I mean. Don’t go to the recruiters. Stay here, with me. We can get married, start a homestead of our own.”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Why? What’s so important for you there?”
How was it possible to be so divided, to hurt, physically at the thought of saying goodbye, and to fear the very thought of the future she offered him, a return to his father’s offer and the uncertainty of reasons and goals. The question “why” to the opportunity to live or die. Why why why? He shook his head. “I have to.” Was all he said. “I don’t have a choice.”
“I don’t want you to die.” She whispered.
He kissed her.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if you don’t come back.” She said it in a small voice with a scared expression.
“I’ll come back.” He said.
“Promise?”
“I promise.” The shame which had died as they lay together burned again as he made the promise, trying to mean it, wanting to mean it. To give her that much. To love her that much, even if he had to go, even if that meant giving his life and failing in this promise.
“Why are you here?” The priest asked him in the confessional when Moses finished the words he’d prepared, inadequate things that they were.
The question startled Moses. “I’m here, for confession.” He replied.
“I mean, why did you come looking for forgiveness? Is it because you were sorry?”
“Of course.” It wasn’t quite so simple, but it was still true. He was sorry he hadn’t slept with her, sorry they’d gone as far as they did. Sorry he had to disappoint her and sorry he’d made all those promises he had no way of ensuring he could keep. Sorry to make her cry. He was ashamed, and guilty, and just wanted to find a way to make it alright again.
“Why were you sorry?” The priest asked.
Moses thought of the act of contrition and quoted it. “Because my sins offend the Lord, who is all loving and deserving of all my love.”
“You are quick.” The priest said, then sighed, and Moses thought of the dozens of other men who must have found the priest here each week to offer up their sins, a continual litany of human failings. “Love is a difficult thing.” The priest said. “Love of God, love of a woman. It requires faith, doesn’t it. We all sin. We all have weaknesses that get in the way of our ability to love, both with God and with the people around us. Confession is the true test of love, isn’t it? Saying sorry, even when we may not want to. Recognizing our sins for what they are and coming back again and again to tell God that we still love him, that we are trying, and asking for help in the endeavor. It won’t be different if you are ever married, I can assure you. Were you my own son, I would be prouder of you for admitting your failures than for every act of strength or virtue. It shows the confidence you place in God and his mercy. It shows your love for him” The priest was silent for a moment..” We’re going to have to find a penance for you aren’t we?” He added.
The words had washed over Moses, comments he would have to parse for days in order to apply them to his choices. “Yes father.” He said quickly.
“If you were in my place what sort of penance would you have me assign?”
Moses thought of ordering himself back to his parents and quailed from the thought. He said it anyways. The confessional was no place to be afraid. This was a battle like any he would have to fight. Better to do the hard thing now and die to self so that dying to the world would be easier. That’s how Cardino would have said it. “You could send me back to my parents.”
“Yes, that would be a good atonement.” The priest said. “But you have obligations to your superiors now, especially as you’ve signed on with them, and that would only create a new breach wouldn’t it? No we won’t ask for anything so drastic.”
Moses whispered a quiet prayer of thanks.
“Where you are going, virtue is going to be hard.” The priest said, still invisible behind the screen. “An army base is not a place where love and holiness are held in high esteem. Nor is it a place where promises made at home are easily kept. I want you to remember, and this will be part of your penance, i want you to remember this moment, and the desire for holiness that you have brought with you here. You will carry it with you for the rest of your life, and the rest of your campaign. If I assign you a lifelong penance do you think that you can keep it?”
“I can try.” Moses said, dubious.
“I won’t be so harsh. We’ll make it a week, but I want you to do it for the rest of your life. The penance will be over after seven days, but your struggle with vice and virtue will continue. So to aid you, and for your penance, I want you, every single night, no matter how hard the day has been or what you have undergone, to say to the Lord, before you fall asleep, Jesus, I love you, and I trust in you. I am sorry for my failings, but commit myself to an ever greater love of you, tomorrow and for the rest of my life. Do you think that you can do that?”
“I think so father.”
Moses said the prayer and the priest said the words of absolution but as Moses stood to go the priest stopped him with a whispered word.
“Every day, every moment of our lives, we stand on the brink of eternity, don’t we? Not only in war. You know that you could die, i’m sure, not just in the battles, but any day, when you least expect it. You love God now my child. Never let that love far from you. If you keep it, it will keep you, even when you wander far far from home.”
Moses found his brother kneeling in the pews before the tabernacle and slid in beside him. He knelt and looked up at the wooden cross hung from the rafters and he prayed. Mostly he prayed for forgiveness, but also for the strength to carry out his penance and earn a good death, the prayer his brother had taught him to direct to St. Joseph to appeal for his intercession. He was sorry now that he had not told his parents that he was leaving. He might have forestalled Ephesus long enough for his parents to weigh in with their opinion and the responsibility for the boy might not have fallen on his shoulders, but it was there now, and he was glad he’d taken him to confession. It was a good way to start this stage of their life. In the end he cut his prayers short. There was still one more duty they had to perform.
“How much longer until the bell strikes?” Moses asked the door man of the Church on their way out. The man consulted the Church cube. “Twenty minutes.” He said. Time enough.
Moses led Ephesus back to the general store and there Ephesus made a B line for the mirror once again. Moses stopped him and dragged him over to the counter. “I’d like to make a call.” He told the owner’s son across the counter.
“Don’t cost much, but we do ask for something.” The boy said. He couldn’t have been older than Ephesus, spectacled and wearing a white shirt of manufactured cloth that marked his station above the Porqine shepherds and harvest laborers that would call on him.
“I have some sweet fish.” Moses said.
“Can’t do anything with sweetfish.” The boy said.
Space Knights- Last on the Line Page 9
