“But they lived well until then,” Freia said.
Fr. Xris smiled.
“I suppose,” he said, “but only to the degree that they lacked foresight. And as St. Augustine would point out, any happiness which depends on being blind to the obvious is not a happiness worth having.”
“There may be something to that,” Freia said.
Chapter 7
When the ship got to the slip-stream entrance point, it only had to wait a few hours to enter. The northern path on Sol’s slip-stream is less popular, as there’s less that it leads to, and what there is is newer and so less developed.
Entry into the slip-stream meant that they resumed sideways gravity for the first week, as they accelerated up to cruising speeds. As disconcerting as walking on the walls can be, Fr. Xris thought that there was a certain poetic justice in so much of an unnatural thing like space flight spent with gravity pointing in the wrong direction. Considered this way, it kept you from taking spaceflight for granted.
The day after Freia asked Fr. Xris to talk to Katie, he stopped by the engineering room during Katie’s shift.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” Katie said. “Come to take me up on my offer?”
Her tone was back to being acerbic without a trace of sultry. That reassured Fr. Xris.
“No,” he said. “Actually, Freia asked me to talk with you.”
“Why?” she asked, a hint of ice in her voice.
“She doesn’t want you to be in a bad mood for the entire trip.”
“And she thinks that talking with you is going to improve my mood?”
“Not necessarily directly,” Fr. Xris said. “I’m not entirely sure what she’s thinking. She’s far more subtle than first impressions of her suggest.”
“What’s your game?” Katie said.
“I’m not playing a game,” he said.
She looked at him, then pulled the neckline of her shirt down to her belly button, exposing her chest.
“If you want some, go ahead.”
“Please cover yourself,” he said, carefully holding her gaze without looking down, but also without flinching or looking away.
“I’m not going to have sex with you or anyone else on this ship, and the sooner you stop, the less time you’ll waste.”
Whose time, he was careful not to specify.
Katie paused a minute, then restored her shirt to its original position.
“For now,” she said. “So what do you want?”
“To talk,” Fr. Xris said.
“About what?”
“What do you like to talk about?”
“I’m not all that fond of talking.”
“Don’t like putting yourself out there, or don’t like listening?”
“What business is that of yours?”
“None, but what does it matter to you whether I know?”
“Are you asking why I want to keep my private business private?”
“Now you’re the one not answering questions.”
“Are you flirting with me?” she said incredulously.
“Not even a little bit,” he said. “But as long as you’re not taking me seriously, I don’t see why I need to take you seriously either. And I’ll admit, it’s just possible that if I frustrate you enough, you might give up trying to get me to sleep with you.”
Her shoulders slumped.
“What’s the matter,” she said, her voice breaking a little. “Is it just that you don’t think I’m pretty?”
Her eyes glistened slightly, but she held her jaw steady and her lips didn’t quiver at all.
Fr. Xris clapped.
“Bravo!” he said. “I’ve never seen better acting in a movie. That really was very good.”
Katie broke out crying, and hid her face from him.
“Clever,” he said. “doubling down in case I’m bluffing. But look, whatever Freia might really believe, I’ve never bought the idea that you’re into me. Though I will admit, she’s been selling it very well. Out of curiosity, is that bit your idea or hers?”
“You’ve got to be the meanest person I’ve ever met,” Katie said between sobs.
“Look, I realize that having put this much effort in, you have to keep it up for a while to see if you can shake my confidence, but you’re not going to. There’s no way that you’re going to get me to believe that a pretty woman is interested in me. I mean, just look at me.”
He dropped to a sitting position on the floor, his head in his hands.
“Do you think I have no experience with women? Do you think I never tried dating? Women half as pretty as you have told me they’d rather cut their hands off than touch me. Why do you think I became a priest?”
He sniffled back some tears.
“Do you have any idea how much this hurts?” he said. “There’s nothing worse than false hope.”
Now the tears came unchecked.
They both sobbed quietly, neither looking at the other.
It was Fr. Xris who broke the silence.
“How long can you keep this up? I can do it about another ten minutes.”
A small laugh escaped Katie’s lips.
“Damn you,” she said, looking up at him. “Making me laugh is not fair.”
He smiled at her.
“I think we left fair behind a few million kilometers ago,” he said.
She laughed again.
“This doesn’t mean I like you,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “But can I make you an offer?”
“What?” she said, a note of caution or perhaps suspicion in her voice.
“If you tell me what it is you’re afraid I’ll do if you talk with me openly... I won’t do it.”
She looked at him. He wondered what considerations she was trying to weigh.
“Do you promise you won’t try to convert me?” she said.
“Certainly,” he said.
“Isn’t it your duty to try to convert everyone?” she said. Her tone was more accusatory than interrogative.
“It’s my duty to spread the good news, and to baptize those who want baptism. You’ve heard the good news, and you don’t want baptism. So I’ve no further duties to you, and it’s not my job to bully anyone into anything.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard that from a Christian,” she said.
“How many Christians have you known?” he asked.
“Four,” she said.
“Two were your grandparents. Who were the other two?”
“A friend of theirs, and their priest.”
“And which of them were pushy?”
“All of them,” she said.
“That’s a pity,” he said. “But a priest’s main job is to bring the sacraments to the faithful. We don’t get much training with non-believers, and unfortunately not everyone has good instincts. Religious bullies often mean well, both theistic and atheistic bullies. They grasp that the question matters. What they don’t get is that feelings don’t, and habits are, at best, minor considerations. ‘If people just had the right habits, everything will be fine,’ they think. ‘So I’ll just push them into the right habits, and it will all be OK.’
“It’s complete nonsense, of course. It only matters what a person believes in if he believes in it with his whole person: body, mind, and soul. Hoping that if you just push his body into it, the rest will follow is... to put it kindly: optimistic.
“If you care, by the way, it’s usually the result of someone mistaking cause and effect in their own lives. They were raised with something which they haven’t rejected, and so they conclude that the key is to be raised with it, or at least to do it a lot and come to think of it as the done thing. It’s just sloppy thinking—no one does all of the things they were raised with, and the difference between what they’ve kept and what they’ve dropped has nothing to do with how consistently they used to do it, it has to do with what parts they held onto and what parts they let go of.”
“So
is that a promise not to try to convert me?” she asked.
“I promise,” he said.
“I’m not saying that I trust you, but I’ll believe you for now.”
“That’s what trusting someone is,” he said.
“So what do you want?” she asked.
“How about being open?” he said.
“That brings us back to my question. What business is it of yours?”
“Do I matter?”
“What?”
“Do I matter to you?”
“No.”
“Then what does it matter whether it’s my business? What does it matter what I know? Suppose I learn something about you I don’t approve of. Who cares? If I don’t matter then my opinion doesn’t matter, and if my opinion doesn’t matter, then there’s nothing left to be afraid of.”
“You could waste my time.”
“True,” he said. “There is always that risk. But since you don’t know me, you have nothing to base that judgment on. And since we actually have a lot in common, it’s likely that I wouldn’t entirely waste your time.”
“How do you know we have a lot in common?”
“Freia has talked about you,” he said. “And we do both have an engineering background. And we both like realtime strategy games.”
“How do you know I like RTSs?” she asked, suspiciously.
“I heard your answer when Xiao asked what you were playing.”
“You’ve played Violent Conflict Resolution?”
“I have,” he said. “It’s actually one of my favorites. I like playing as the Archons.”
“But the humans are so much more flexible.”
“True. You have to plan ahead more with the Archons. Since they have fewer types of units, defense is more about strategic placement and having quick response plans in place than about picking your units to exploit weaknesses in the enemy.”
“Maybe, but there’s no good way to defend against spec-ops units calling in air strikes.”
“Actually, if you have fast scouts patrol around the effective range of spec-ops, you tend to pick up on them before they can call anything in, and even scouts have enough firepower to take out spec-ops--”
“But scouts on patrol that far out would be trivial to take out with a few fighters.”
“Not if you have the patrols move in circles so they don’t engage and just retreat back over your air defenses if anything is coming at them. Unless you’re careful in giving orders to the fighters, they’ll follow the scout back and get clobbered. And if you are careful about the fighters’ orders, the scout can call in heavy air support.”
“But that back and forth would leave you open to a spec-ops coming in further down in the patrol pattern of the scout...”
* * *
The conversation continued for several hours debating optimal strategies in the game. At last a reminder went off for Fr. Xris of an appointment with Hannah, and he told Katie that he had to go.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Hannah asked me to meet her at 5,” he said.
Katie was silent.
“Please don’t go back to the sexual accusations,” he said. “I’m under no illusions that you suddenly like me, but that stuff is just tedious. I’m really, honestly not having sex with her, nor am I trying, nor would I consent to it, nor will it ever happen.”
Katie looked down for a moment.
“That stuff you said about every woman rejecting you. Was that true?”
“Not at all,” he said. “I dated several women before I understood my calling to be a priest. In fact, I broke up with a woman when I entered the seminary. Did you really think anything about that was sincere?”
“It was very well delivered,” she said. “And the easiest way to seem sincere is to be sincere, after all.”
“Oh, I’m sorry if you thought that I might have been telling the truth. I thought that it was clear from context that I was pretending as much as you were—it’s only a lie if there’s a chance a person might think that you’re telling the truth.”
“And you’re sure that I was completely lying?”
“Entirely,” he said. “Look, I have no idea how you would rate a picture of me if you’d never met me and it came up on hot-or-not, but yes, I am certain that you have no romantic or sexual interest in me whatsoever.”
“How do I know that you’re not bluffing? And haven’t you been convinced of things that you turned out to be wrong about?”
“I did think that I was wrong once, but it turned out that I was mistaken,” he said, and laughed.
“That joke is ancient,” she said.
“At least 500 years old,” he said. “But either way, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”
He turned and started walking towards the door.
“I love you,” she said half heartedly as he walked off.
“No you don’t,” he said without turning around, and climbed onto the inter-deck ladder. She didn’t see it, but he smiled as he said it. It would be a tiresome game if she kept it up, but at least it was an honest game, now.
He didn’t see it, but Katie smiled in spite of herself too.
* * *
Hannah was waiting for him in her room.
“Hi!” she said cheerfully. “I just finished the Gospel of Mark, so your timing is great.”
“Cool!” he said.
“What were you up to?” she asked.
“Talking with Katie,” he said.
“Really?” Hannah said. “What about?”
“Text or subtext?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, sorry. The text is the words actually spoken, and the subtext is the meaning behinds the words. But never mind. Most of the time, we were talking about strategies in a video game.”
“You play video games?”
“Not often, though I do enjoy them. But as a priest, it’s a good practice to have a wide range of experience, as it often makes conversing easier. It only works if there’s a wide range of things that you enjoy, of course, though sometimes you can have a good conversation about how you just couldn’t get into something.”
“That seems a little cold and calculating, somehow.”
“I suppose,” he said, “but I’m not talking about pretending to like things. I just mean that it’s good to make the effort to get off of your butt and do things.”
“I see what you mean, but even so, isn’t it better to do things because you want to, not just because it makes good conversational fodder? That seems a little... dishonest.”
“Perhaps it is, but few people are reflexively perfect. For the rest of us, it works better to think about what you want to achieve, then consider how to achieve it, then do that. Reflexes are only good when they lead you to do good things. If your inclinations are to stay on the couch, it may be less ‘honest’, whatever that means in this context, to get up and go try racquetball, but I don’t think that staying on the couch will make you a better human being. Being true to yourself can be disastrous. What’s really worthwhile is being true to the perfect version of you that you owe it to yourself and everyone else to be.”
“Fair enough, I suppose,” she said. “Anyway, I’m surprised that she talked about video games with you. That just seems more... intimate, than I would expect. I mean, she’s consistently been hostile to you for a while now.”
“I stopped by engineering on the request of Freia, who, incidentally, is convinced that Katie is sexually interested in me.”
“I can’t see it. I don’t mean the general concept of a woman being mean to a guy she secretly likes, but this particular case. She never brought you up when she and I were friends.”
“Yeah, I have my own suspicions about Freia’s theory, but anyway, I agree with you completely. Katie’s not interested in me in the least. Which, honestly, is very convenient. On the other hand, the way that Katie pretended to be interested in me wasn’t.”
“She did what?�
�� Hannah asked.
“She asked me to come to her bed once, and she started stripping in front of me twice.”
“What!?”
“I’m not exaggerating,” he said. “That’s what she did.”
“Why?”
“She wanted to prove that I was a hypocrite, I believe,” he said.
“Why!?”
“The answer to that is more complicated. The proximal reason is that she would like to eliminate me as an annoyance. The more remote reason is that she wants to prove to herself that her grandparents—Christian converts—were wrong. Or maybe I have that backwards. And it’s possible that she has other reasons too.“
“But to throw herself at you like that... if she doesn’t want you, you must really threaten her.”
“Well, we can never know whether she’d have actually gone through with it. And, not to put too fine a point on it, I’m not sure whether she would consider sleeping with me or any man to be very significant.”
“You mean she’s a slut?”
“No,” he said. “Or at least, not exactly. A slut is a woman whose self control has been overcome by her desires. For that to apply, she has to believe that she shouldn’t have as much sex as she’s having. There are different reasons for that beside common morality. For example, if you want to use sex to build a strong emotional connection with people, you have to keep it to a few people or it loses its specialness. Whatever the reason, if you believe you should have few sexual partners, it’s possible for your desire to overcome that and to have more partners than you think that you should have. But if you don’t believe your partners should be limited, there’s no question of whether your self control is stronger than your impulses. You can only be a slut if you believe in sexual self-restraint. Not everyone does. And I don’t know that Katie does.”
“So you’re not doing anything wrong if you don’t believe you are?”
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