Lights in the Deep (30 page)

“Stop,” I said. Though perhaps too quietly. It was a plea, not a command. My eyes were closed, but that didn’t prevent the tears.

“My apologies,” said the Professor, when he noticed the muddy streaks on my cheeks. “It was not my intent to cause you grief. I was merely curious. It seems to me a very large irony that you of all humans should be a non-believer. Yet this has been my slow, hesitant conclusion. After spending many years away from you, during which I was able to further digest our mutual experiences. You support and feed the belief of others. You have made it your mission in life. Yet you cannot partake of that which you give.”

“I’m…I’m not sure
what
I goddamned believe,” I said, though perhaps too loudly. The gentle, whispery sound of Adanaho’s voice had ceased. And suddenly the clicky-clacky speech of the Queen Mother replaced it. The Professor listened intently for a few moments, then looked down at me—his body and disc just faint outlines in the near darkness.

“I must go. The Queen Mother wishes me to translate.”

He left me there, feeling embarrassed and miserable.

I put away my food and water and re-wrapped myself in my jacket. Nights in the desert—any desert—tend to be cold. Though I didn’t think the chill was entirely physical.

Chapter 8

Captain Adanaho woke me.

“Chief,” she said in a whisper.

“Hmmm?”

“Sun’s coming up. We need to get moving.”

I slowly uncurled—stiff and cold.

At least on Purgatory there had been something akin to trees from which we’d harvested firewood. On this nameless sphere there wasn’t so much as a tumbleweed to burn. I shakily fished some food and water from my pack, the captain and I ate in silence while the mantes watched dispassionately, then we began trudging into the brightening dawn.

The labor of the march warmed me up soon enough, and before long I felt myself sweating as the bright, alien star climbed steadily into the sky.

This time it was the Professor who led. He claimed to have felt the ghost of a flicker of a mantis signal due roughly southwest, and he stretched out a large distance between himself—with the Queen Mother riding on the front of his disc—and Adanaho and I as we walked side by side in their wake.

“Is it true?” she said to me as I put one boot stubbornly in front of the other—we were going too fast; there’d be blisters at this rate.

I yelled for the Professor to slow it up, then asked, “Is what true?”

“That you’re not really a religious person.”

“That was a private conversation,” I snapped.

“The mantis voice system doesn’t do whispers. I heard everything the Professor said.”

I didn’t respond right away. Just kept walking.

“Let me put it this way,” I said, letting my words roll around in my brain a few moments before they came off my tongue, “in my time as an assistant in the Chaplains Corps I’ve been exposed to virtually every systematized form of human religion in existence, and a great many examples of non-systematized faith—either the do-it-yourself smorgasbord variety, or the deeply personalized, individual one-of-a-kind variety.

“Almost everyone claims to have discovered some unique or otherwise ‘true’ path to God, or the Goddess, or at least to a deep connection with the Cosmic. The more I saw all of it, together, and heard all the insights and the prejudices and could observe the blind eyes being turned to this or that inconsistency or hypocrisy, the more convinced I became that we’re probably just fooling ourselves.”

“So if it’s all a load of shit,” she said, “why didn’t you quit and do something else?”

“I never said it’s a load of shit,” I replied, my eyes still on the gravel two meters in front of me. “I told you before: I like people. And many people on Purgatory would have withered and died if they’d not had their beliefs to hold on to. Just because I don’t necessarily believe in any of it doesn’t mean I have to doubt or deride its value for other people. That’s one of the problems with our modern society. General Sakumora had it in his eyes and in his voice: obvious contempt.”

“You noticed, huh?”

“How could I not?” I said, throwing my arms out in exasper-ation. “It practically oozed off the man. He thought I was nuts.”

“And yet you are closer to his view than he ever suspected,” she said, a tiny smirk on her lips.

“No,” I corrected her. “Disbelieving and being openly scornful of belief are not the same thing. I don’t begrudge those with faith. In fact, I admire it. I admire it a great deal. All those people who walked into my chapel all of those years while we were imprisoned? I thought they were impressive. I think one of the reasons why I stuck with my job was because I wanted to find out what made those people tick—how did they manage it?”

The captain didn’t say anything after that, for several minutes.

“So,” I said, clearing my throat and spitting the grit from my tongue, “what conversation did you and the Queen Mother have? Any groundbreaking heart-to-hearts?”

“I don’t think she understood a word I said,” Adanaho replied.

“The Professor told me it sounded like you were praying. I didn’t ask before, but I want to ask now: are you a Muslim?”

“No,” she said. “Copt.”

I stopped short.

After the purges in Africa in the 21st and early 22nd centuries, many religious scholars doubted that the Coptic Christian religion had survived at all—that any modern Copts extant were “revivalists” trying to re-invent the faith following its literal extinction.

As if reading my thoughts, the captain chuckled.

“Oh, we managed,” she said. “On the down-low, of course. Family legend has it that my ancestors fled North Africa, and went to Australia. Succeeding generations then went to Southeast Asia, then South America, then North America, and finally back to North Africa as part of the resettlement agreement with the Brotherhood. Once the war with the mantes began, our enemies among the Muslims had a new devil to hate, so they left us alone. For a change.”

“Do
you
believe?” I said. “Are you a Copt in your heart, as well as by birth?”

“I didn’t used to be,” she said as we started up walking again.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You,” she said.

I stopped short for the second time.

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever could I have done that re-ignited your belief?”

I felt my face growing warm again, and not from exercise.

“When I got out of officer school and went to the Intelligence branch, I began studying the roots of the armistice. I read all of your depositions and your final summary. It wasn’t scholarly writing by any stretch of the imagination. But I agreed with you then: the cease-fire was a practical miracle, achieved against all odds. Without it, humanity would have ceased to exist. The mantes had every intention of doing to us what they’d done to previous intelligent competitors in the galaxy. That they did not, and that they did not for the sake of something so utterly beyond their understanding and experience, as religion, spoke to me of a higher power at work.”

“Yeah, well….”

“You are a modest man, padre,” she said. “I know you try not to take too much credit. I personally believe you were a tool. And I don’t mean that in the pejorative sense.”

“Others have said as much, before,” I admitted.

“You are uncomfortable with this.”

“Of course I am uncomfortable with it!” I said, almost shouting. “Do you know how many human pilgrims have passed through my chapel in the last decade? All of them wanting to sit at my feet like I’m some kind of fucking Buddha? An enlightened one? A
savior??
”

“To their minds, that’s not far-fetched.”

“No doubt!” I said, facing her directly. We were deep into the weeds of the discussion now, and there was no holding back. “But do you have any kind of idea how much
pressure
that put on me? How badly I felt when these people—from all over human space—came to my chapel and sat in my pews, and expected some kind of transfiguring or overwhelming experience, and didn’t get it? I saw it in their eyes when they left. Every time: confusion and disappointment. I never wanted to be anyone’s damned prophet. I was never good at preaching. I was never good at teaching. All I was ever trying to do was provide people with a quiet, clean, calming space where they could come and find their own answers. For themselves.”

“Because you made a promise to your Chaplain,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, breathing heavily.

The Professor had stopped too. Had the mantes overheard? He was chattering for the Queen Mother’s benefit; she seemed intensely interested. I suddenly felt a sharp desire to melt into the ground. Some messiah I’d turned out to be. I’d only delayed the war, not averted it. Things seemed to be more pointless than ever before. I’d have quit right then if I’d not still felt deep down that there was a chance—if only we could get the Queen Mother back to her people, she could make them listen.

“Okay,” I said, waving all three of them off. “Let’s get moving again.”

The Professor and the Queen Mother floated off without protest.

The captain resumed her place at my side.

“Thanks, Chief,” she said.

“For what?” I asked, embarrassed.

“I think I’m finally starting to understand you.”

I grunted, and didn’t say anything more.

We kept walking.

Chapter 9

On the third day after landing, a rainstorm blew in.

Literally.

I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or scared. The wind was ferocious, whipping my poncho about and driving the water into me sideways. It was cold water too, and before long the captain and I realized we’d be in danger of hypothermia. Unlike when the sandstorm hit, there were no hills or outcroppings of rock to hide behind. We simply had to sit down on a raised mound of half-buried boulders and do the best we could.

If the storm bothered the Professor, he didn’t show it. Though the Queen Mother looked perfectly miserable.

After an hour, things calmed down enough for me to get up and walk over to where the Professor was hovering over the Queen Mother, doing his best to protect her from the elements. My hands were shaking and my teeth chattered as I spoke.

“Is she in danger?”

“Yes,” the Professor said, matter-of-factly.

“She can have my poncho if it will help,” I said. “Though I can’t say it’s done me much good. The captain and I are both soaked to the bone.”

I removed my poncho and went to place it over the Queen Mother, who had curled up tightly on the rock, when I felt a sudden wave of delicious warmth on the top of my hand.

It was coming from the bottom of the Professor’s disc.

The mantes may have been insect-like, but they were as warm-blooded as humans, varying only by a few degrees. I realized that the Professor had to be burning a lot of power to keep both himself and the Queen Mother warm.

“How long can you keep it up?” I asked.

“I do not know for certain,” he said. “I can shut down various functions to compensate for the raw energy expenditure, but if these sorts of storms are the norm for this planet, and not the exception, it will dramatically reduce my carriage’s longevity.”

“Do you mind if the captain and I try to share the heat? We can’t make a fire, and our uniforms aren’t designed for warmth when wet.”

“Proceed,” he said.

I beckoned the captain over, and her face went from an expression of utter misery to utter amazement as she put her hands into the zone of pleasant heat directly below the Professor’s disc.

We quickly huddled up close and stuck both arms and legs under the shadow of the disc, our ponchos over our heads and backs while our rear ends remained cold and soggy on the damp stone.

For awhile, I dozed. Between the lack of adequate food and walking many kilometers every day, I was definitely feeling the physical toll. Eventually I felt the captain slump against me, and I allowed myself to do likewise, my head balanced on top of hers, a little patch of protected warmth growing between us. I closed my eyes.

They didn’t come open again until hours later.

The storm had passed, and the sun was out again.

Still brighter and cooler than either Purgatory’s star, or Earth’s own Sol, but a welcome sight just the same. It was mid day, and there was a bit of a breeze, which meant the captain and I might be able to dry our clothes out—essential, if we were going to survive the night without further draining the Professor’s energy reserves.

The Queen Mother had drawn herself out from under the Professor’s disc and was perched on a boulder a few meters away. Her wings were spread widely and she appeared almost frozen in place, forelimbs outstretched and her head tilted back. She seemed to be soaking in every last ray she could get.

The sound of running water nearby reminded me that we’d best replenish our own water supply while we had the opportunity. I regretfully roused the captain, who jumped at the chance to refill our bottles. We located a formerly dry creek bed—now swollen with slowly running, very soiled water—and began to fill up. The mouth of each bottle had a micro filter on it that screened out the bulk of the soil. Leaving only the thinnest of hazes. Unsure of the bacterial hazard, we unscrewed the filters and dropped survival tabs into each bottle—the tabs made the water taste chemically nasty, but it would be safe to drink.

Returning to where the Professor kept watch on the Queen Mother, the captain and I each did an about-face and stripped to the skin. Our emergency packs had one-piece smocks in them, which we quickly donned, then we laid our uniforms, underwear, boots, and socks out on the rocks as best as we could, hoping that the strong daylight and fresh breeze would be enough to dry things out. The smocks weren’t nearly as sturdy as we needed them to be, and the slip-on shoes that came with them would quickly disintegrate on this planet’s rough, unforgiving terrain.

With nothing better to do, Adanaho and I ate a little, drank a little more, went and did our business as far away from each other as possible, then returned and stared at the Queen Mother—who’d remained motionless as a statue the whole time.