The Chaplain's War Read online

  “But in the confines of this structure, you act as official for all of these, yes?”

  “The chaplain did,” I said. “I just keep the building clean and make sure everyone knows that they can come in here during daylight. It’s what’s called multidenominational.”

  “The Mormons do not come here?”

  “Not usually.”

  “Do you compete with them? For followers?”

  “What?”

  “The avians and amphibians, it was a major part of their societies, to compete for and hold adherents to a particular flavor of belief.”

  I thought of the internecine religious struggles which plagued Earth, right up to the present. I wondered if the mantes hadn’t already cleansed humanity’s homeworld in the same manner as had been done to other species previously.

  “Some places that happens,” I said. “But not here. There aren’t enough of us that it’s worth fighting each other.”

  “The Muslims, at their mosque, they told me I was the devil.”

  I smiled a little bit. “Some Muslims are like that. They think everyone who isn’t Muslim is evil. Even, sometimes, other Muslims.”

  “Then why do you have their symbol on your religious furniture?”

  “Not all Muslims go to the mosque. Some of them—the open ones—they come here sometimes.”

  “But never Mormons.”

  “Look, I don’t really know what the beliefs are of the people who come to the chapel. I don’t put a sign out advertising for specific faiths. Once someone keeps coming for a while I usually talk to them and figure out what they believe, but sometimes people don’t say anything at all. They come in, they sit, and whatever else they do inside their hearts and heads, well, it’s not my business.”

  “Then how does one join your church?”

  “I don’t have a church to join. The building . . . it’s separate from their belief. The word ‘church’ therefore has double meanings. My chapel just happens to service multiple religions. The others—the mosque, the synagogue—are each for one ‘flavor’ only.”

  “Fascinating,” said the Professor.

  “What’s so urgent,” I said, “that you needed to drag a couple of Mormons across the valley to talk to me in the middle of the night?”

  “Tomorrow I am bringing my students. I already have permission from the Mormons for my students to attend their church. The Buddhists as well. Since the mosque is closed to us, I ask that my students be allowed to come to you to learn Islam. And Judaism. And any other flavor you can show to them.”

  “What about Hinduism?” I said.

  “There was no building for this Hinduism.”

  “Hindus. They’re around, though not many.”

  “Then yes, that too.”

  Dammit, where was the chaplain when I needed him? He’d have loved an opportunity like this. A chance to illuminate the enemy—to preach the gospel among the alien heathen. But the chaplain was dead, and I was stuck in his place. I knew just enough about the major Earth religions to get by, but that was all. I felt it was a serious mistake to attempt to teach any of the mantes about religions that I myself didn’t understand beyond their basic precepts.

  But first, I needed an answer of my own.

  “Why should I do this for you, when your people plan to destroy my people?”

  The Professor considered.

  “That is a fair question, assistant-to-the-chaplain.”

  “Well?”

  “The logical answer is, you should not.”

  “What if I tell you that I won’t cooperate at all? Unless you promise me that you’re going to go to the mantes—to this Quorum you talked about—and convince them to spare the valley. In fact, convince them to hold off on the Fourth Expansion, period.”

  The Professor’s forelimbs made an expression of being taken aback.

  “I am a scholar, not a politician,” he said. “You ask me for things which I cannot promise, and may not even be able to attempt.”

  “You told me that enough mantes wanted to avoid the ‘mistake’ of killing humans before you understood us. What if you talked to and convinced them? How much influence does that body have?”

  “Again, you ask for that which I cannot deliver.”

  “But you and your ‘school’ mates obviously have enough leverage to at least get your Quorum to think twice?”

  The Professor’s forelimbs rattled on his dish—agitation.

  “No, assistant-to-the-chaplain, I cannot do it.”

  “Then I won’t help you. In fact, I will go to the other religious leaders and I will tell all of them what I know—about the genocide that is to come—and we will all promise together to not reveal even a single additional piece of information.”

  “This is the second time you have pretended to antagonize me,” he said.

  “And this is the second time I have had to remind you that I’ve got nothing to lose. Can you say the same?”

  The mantis stared at me, his beak opening ever so slightly. A flush of blue along the semi-soft portions of his carapace told me that I’d flustered him badly. He’d not expected me to bargain, only to obey.

  “It will take time,” he said.

  “Take all the time you want. Just stop your people from killing us.”

  The Professor stared at me, then turned his head and looked long and hard at the altar: the cross and crescent and the six-pointed star gleaming slightly in the wane light from the dimming oil lamps.

  “The difficulty is great,” he said hesitantly. “If I return with my students, you will know your answer.”

  “And if you don’t return at all?” I said.

  “Then that too will be an answer.”

  He left as the last lamp flickered out, leaving me in cold darkness.

  CHAPTER 5

  ANOTHER WEEK PASSED. THEN TWO WEEKS. TEMPERATURES IN the valley began to drop. Purgatory’s axial tilt wasn’t as pronounced as Earth’s, so the seasons weren’t so well defined. There was no spring, summer, winter, or fall, just a warmer season and a colder season, with reflective growth and decay of alpine vegetation.

  My little garden needed work as a result. I spent time carefully picking through the rows, saving every little root, bulb, and leaf that could be dried or stored for the cool months. Then I razed the rest of the plants to the ground, tilled them under, and set about sowing seeds for the stuff which would be able to survive and grow with the lower temperatures. A trick I’d learned from one of the parishioners who’d grown up on a farm on one of Earth’s interstellar colonies.

  A winter crop, he’d called it. Something I’d not even thought possible, having grown up on Earth, where almost everything anybody ate merely came from the store, three hundred sixty-five days a year.

  One afternoon, when I’d just come inside from working in the soil, Hoff and his boys reappeared in my doorway.

  “You didn’t follow orders,” he said to me as I wiped my hands on my overalls—the pair I saved for outside chores.

  The sharpness in Hoff’s tone caused the four worshippers sitting in my pews to become uncomfortable. They quickly got up and left, brushing past the indignant officer while avoiding his gaze. Which was directly upon me as I stood up from my stool and began to walk up the central aisle.

  “Sir,” I said, feeling a bit more conciliatory since the last time he’d visited, “you asked me to bring you any relevant information. If I had something remarkable to report, I’d have done it already.”

  “You’re a bad liar,” Hoff said. “We’ve been from one end of the valley to the other. We’ve talked to the other religious folk. We know the mantis is some kind of researcher, asking lots of questions about church stuff. Supposedly he’s bringing more mantes—to study us. I’d call that pretty important information. Or are you just a dumbass who doesn’t realize what he’s stumbled into?”

  A hot flush flowed up my neck and into my face.

  “It just didn’t seem relevant,” I said, opening my arms
wide and throwing out my hands. “How is this one mantis bringing more mantes to talk to us about our religion going to solve our mutual problem of captivity? Is it going to get us off this planet? Take us back home?”

  Hoff didn’t appear to have a good answer to these questions. I suspected that if he knew the full truth, it might make him more annoying than he already was. Perhaps even dangerous. I was glad I hadn’t revealed a thing to any of the other congregational leaders—though I knew most of them by name. If Hoff had been curious enough to go cross-examine them, he’d have ferreted out the fact of our impending demise one way or another.

  “It doesn’t matter what you think,” Hoff spat. “That’s what officers are for. We do the thinking around here. You just do as you’re told.”

  “Sir,” I said, working hard to remain calm in the face of Hoff’s belligerence, “since you clearly found out as much as I know from talking to the other denominations, what point would there have been in me confirming redundant information? Yes, the mantis says he’s bringing more of his kind to study us. But have you seen hide or hair of that mantis since he made that promise? Neither have I. I suspect maybe we’ve been dealing with an eccentric. He’s the first civilian mantis any of us have ever seen. Maybe he’s serious, and maybe he’s just a quack. I don’t see how it makes a difference since he clearly can’t get us off this world any more quickly than we ourselves can. Frankly, I’m glad he’s gone.”

  Hoff walked up the aisle and met me halfway. I had him by a couple of centimeters, so he actually had to look up into my face. His jaw was clenched and I sensed from him the urge for violence. Much as the Professor had once sensed it from me. With the odds being three to one, I figured I’d get my ass handed to me if the major really wanted to pick a fight. I felt sweat springing out across my skin as we stood there in the middle of the chapel glaring at each other.

  “You’ve been warned,” he finally said. “Screw with me again, and I will make you sorry for it. Understood?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Yessir.”

  Hoff pivoted quickly on a heel and stalked out, his henchmen following.

  I braced myself on the backs of two pews, breathing deeply and heavily while the adrenaline of the moment slowly wore off.

  God, I hated pricks like that.

  Not all Fleet officers were as bad as Hoff. But enough of them had rubbed me wrong to make me understand that I had not been, nor would I ever be, a great soldier. Taking orders from people I judged to be idiots just wasn’t my thing.

  With no one in the chapel, I began to wander up and down the rows of stone benches, collecting bits of detritus that had been swept in on the feet of visitors. When noon arrived and I still had no one, I made myself a modest meal and propped a stick-built chair at the front door so that I could get a little fresh air while afternoon wore on into evening.

  Purgatory’s sky was dappled with clouds.

  I suspected there might be rain in our future.

  Heaven knew we needed it. The sparse cold-season snows on the peaks didn’t last long into the warm season. The handful of valley lakes usually began to run dry just a little after the midpoint of the warm months. Thus drought was almost a perpetual state for us, making the rare thunderstorm a welcome thing.

  The chapel had a catchment system which I’d engineered into the roof.

  It would be nice to have fresh, relatively clean water instead of the silty stuff I was always pulling out of the distant creek.

  A figure wearing a poncho and a wide grass hat walked up. The brim of the hat was pulled low so that I couldn’t see the person’s face.

  “Did that major come to bother you?” said a woman’s voice.

  “Hoff?” I asked, recognizing Deacon Fulbright.

  “Yeah, that’s the cocksucker.”

  I chuckled. The Deacon had been a noncommissioned officer—and a gunner—before turning her attention to Christ. She still had her salty mouth. Whether or not she had any actual pastoral bona fides from her previous civilian life was a mystery to me. Not that anyone gave a damn here.

  So much of the valley’s religious fabric was like that. Once the mantes had us beaten and it was obvious we weren’t going anywhere, dozens of would-be congregational leaders sprang up from the ranks.

  Deacon Fulbright and I had been on good terms since the beginning.

  “Come take a load off,” I said to her, going inside and bringing out another stick-built chair.

  She sat, and together we leaned against the wall of the chapel while the sun set.

  “Hoff’s trying to rally as much of the former officer corps as he can,” she said.

  “Is he having much success?”

  “Yes and no,” she said. “There are some colonels who aren’t taking kindly to Hoff’s attitude. I think if he keeps this up there’s liable to be an ass-whippin’ at his expense.”

  “Couldn’t happen to a more deserving man,” I said.

  The Deacon snickered at my sarcastic comment.

  I stared at the sky as the clouds continued to thicken.

  A low rumble, almost so far off we couldn’t hear it, told me my earlier suspicion of rain would turn out to be correct.

  “Harry,” she said—we only used first names when things got candid.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you sure you don’t know anything more than I know?”

  “What do you know?”

  “What Hoff said I know.”

  “And that’s all I know too,” I replied flatly.

  She stared at me.

  “You’re a bad liar.”

  “And you’re not the first one to tell me that today.”

  “Look, fuck the major, this is between you and me. What’s really going on with this mantis and the ‘students’ he says he’s bringing back? I talked to the Mormon Bishop two days ago and he’s all excited about it. Though he said he’d expected the mantes to be here by now. That they’re not here yet has him a little worried.”

  “You seem to think this mantis scholar tells me more than he tells you, or anyone else around here. Why?”

  “Because he came to you first,” she answered.

  “Diane,” I said, “believe me when I tell you that if I had any knowledge I thought would be good for you to know, then you’d be the first to know it. Okay? There’s nothing for me to say. We’re friends. I respect you.”

  “And I respect you,” she said.

  “Then let me be,” I replied gently.

  After a long silence, she whooshed out a frustrated breath.

  “Suit yourself, Harry. I can’t make you say what you don’t want to say. But I trust you. Just please promise me that if you change your mind, my door will be the first one you knock on.”

  “I promise,” I said.

  “Good. Now I’d better get back before the storm hits.”

  “I think it’s just minutes away,” I said.

  The Deacon stood and we exchanged farewells, before she walked away.

  More rumbling in the sky, and a smattering of tiny drops on the parched soil, told me it was time to go in and close all the shutters.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE STORM HIT, AND HIT BIG.

  Flash flooding kept us all busy for a few days while we cleaned up the mess. Thankfully my chapel didn’t get damaged. This time. I’d not always been so lucky.

  During one particularly violent downpour, a runnel was cut under the northeast corner of the building, causing the wall to crumble. I wound up having to rebuild and repair not only that corner, but the roof above it as well. It took me the better part of two weeks, during which the interior of the chapel was both drafty, and prone to gathering more than its usual layer of noxious dust.

  But now, with our water supply somewhat renewed, the mood in the valley grew optimistic. Funny how our time in this place had simplified our expectations. Even something as mundane as an unusual abundance of water could be a cause for rejoicing.
/>   Me? I remained quietly anxious.

  Over the next ten days I had half a dozen repeats of the conversation I’d had with the Deacon, only with different people from different congregations around the valley. I told them all what I could—omitting the one big piece of information I dared not reveal—and life went on its merry way.

  The wait become a month.

  Then two months. Then three.

  No sign of the Professor.

  My dread of the inevitable began to deepen. The Professor had never specified when the end might come, so I had no way of knowing if this was a delay in the course of events as he’d described, or merely the running out of the proverbial sand into the bottom of the proverbial hourglass. Since he’d not come back I suspected that any hope I might kindle—and this happened more than once—was a false hope. So I stuffed it down inside and tried to be resigned to whatever fate awaited us.

  If nothing else, the Professor’s visits all over the valley sparked interest among the general population. My chapel’s average attendance grew substantially. I wasn’t sure what to think about that, other than being grateful for the increased donations of goods and food at my drop box by the front door.

  I still didn’t preach—would not have had the foggiest idea what to say to any of them—but I kept the chapel clean, I made sure the altar and all the objects on it were tidy and arranged according to pattern, and I welcomed in everyone who felt the need to come.

  When an entire Purgatorial year passed—perhaps one and a half Earth standard—I began to wonder if the Professor really had been an eccentric. A nutball. Such people existed among humans, why not the mantes? He had been chasing religion, after all, and I had nothing to corroborate what he’d said. Perhaps he’d been the mantis version of a millennial—someone attracted to and fascinated by “end times” myth. Enough to spin me a story?

  The first sign of the inevitable came when the hill farmers reported that The Wall was beginning to close in.

  Deacon Fulbright and I rushed out to the valley rim, hiking for hours up to the peaks so that we could take a look for ourselves.

  Seeing was believing.

  “Christ in Heaven,” she said under her breath. We were less than a meter away from The Wall—silent, shimmering, and deadly. I kicked a couple of stones up to it, one in front of the other. Perhaps three centimeters apart. As we watched, The Wall gradually and inexorably drifted over the top of the first stone, then over the top of the second. Not terribly fast. Maybe a millimeter per minute. But given the fact there was nowhere for anyone to go, it didn’t matter.