Anderson wouldn’t let me land. He put us down directly in the courtyard of the monastery, right in the middle of the four beautiful walls. No one greeted us there. Sergeant Anderson led us straight to the cafeteria, where food was ready for us in covered pots.
“Do you remember rabbit stew?” said Jensen, with tilapia on her fork and a look of boredom slowing her down despite our hunger.
“I lived on a boat, mostly. We didn’t eat a lot of rabbit.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, we ate a lot of rabbit stew, when I was a kid. I think about it a lot. Like, am I remembering it better than it actually was? Some of the atheists are all about conspiracy theories. Like, we’re all just implanted with memories by the aliens that keep us as some sort of experiment or test case or something. Captin Obasanjo’s the worst.”
“I don’t believe in nonsense,” I said. “Memory is good enough to build a life here, and I never thought I would ever be defending the fabric of reality itself with an experienced soldier of humanity. The fish is good. We should see about getting some set up on the station, instead of just trading in powdered, dried flakes. I understand they aren’t hard to cultivate once the tanks are adjusted and there’s food for them.”
We tired quickly. The weight of the planet’s gravity, which was heavier than Earth enough to be uncomfortable to us, was exacerbated by our week in zero-gravity on the way down. Sergeant Anderson fell asleep at the table, with his head resting next to his soup. He snored a little.
“You should hear yourself,” said Jensen. “We’re lucky our sewage pipes work, at all, and you want to bring fish into the system.”
Jensen was talking to me as if I were her equal, and for a moment it occurred to me that this is probably the first time an enlisted had done that. I should have realized it was a sign of a problem. Instead, I interpreted that to mean that I was finally establishing myself as an officer.
“Nobody likes the food, Corporal,” I said. “Not even the monks who make it like it. I grew up with fresh fish. I wouldn’t mind more of it.”
“When is the next ice comet scheduled for the terraforming?”
Sergeant Anderson woke up with a start and went back to eating like nothing had happened.
“What was that?” he said. “Did you say something, Corporal?”
Jensen leaned over. “I was asking about the next ice comet, sir.”
Sergeant Anderson struggled with his spoon. I watched his hands shaking under the weight of soup in his weakened state and exhaustion. “Not too long,” he said.
“Are you all right, Sergeant?”
“I need some more bone supplements, but I’ll be fine in a week, sir.”
Jensen and I exchanged a look. We both knew he was lying. She wasn’t going to say anything, and neither was I. She looked out over the cramped little cafeteria built into the ground below the monastery. “Someday this will be a museum, and kids will visit it and shudder at the conditions we keep. We might as well be on a space station if we’re living without windows.”
Our rooms were on the second floor. These would have tiny windows, with the best view possible. The windows swept over the orchard, what there was of an orchard. A man in a brown smock and mask strolled across the scene, arms folded, and sweltering hot, measuring air temperature and moisture under the leaves. I assumed, correctly, that it was one of the monks.
Sergeant Anderson stood up and stretched just before our little quarantine ended.
“Ready to go on a tour, Ensign? Our hosts should be back from vespers shortly.”
“I can’t wait,” I said. “What are we touring?”
A knock on the door, and a smiling monk opened it for us without waiting to hear if we were ready for him. Brother Pleo was lean and tan, with scars along his hands and arms. His plain brown monk’s habit was woven from strips of reeds and old fish leather. It didn’t look comfortable. “Everybody well?”
“The fish was good,” said Jensen. “Thanks.”
He nodded and paused at me. “I don’t believe we’ve met before,” he said. “Brother Pleo. Welcome to our humble planet.”
We shook hands, briefly. “Ensign Ronaldo Aldo,” I said. “I am in my third year. This is my first time on the surface.”
“Welcome, brother, and may you find peace in our humble colony.” He led us into a changing area, where we put on masks and gloves over our uniforms. We were encouraged to stay completely covered, day and night, and follow the seminocturnal life of the colony. The days were too hot to work and live. Everyone lived in twilight hours if they could. Outside, around midmorning, it was very warm and getting warmer, with little shade to mitigate the oppressive weight of the star in the sky, blazing down on us. The wind blew sand up from the vast dunes that would cut tiny abrasions into exposed skin. The orchard had an artificial windbreak that helped to provide shelter from sun and sand, but even the trees looked defeated, battered, scraped down.
“The courtyard is the only place we can really keep sand clear long enough to get you down on the ground, but that will change in another few years. Our modeling tools indicate the next ice comet will give us a reasonable-sized lake nearby, not quite an ocean. Once the water’s in the system, there’s going to be a lot of changes here . . .”
I stopped listening, honestly, because the changes were years away, and modeling software of water systems postintroduction were always so incredibly unreliable. On other colonies, predicted lakes ended up being completely dry, while mountains that looked stable fell over from the sudden collapse of sensitive mineral deposits in the new groundwater. No one truly knows what happens when water comes and sloshes around, evaporates, rains, sinks in. On Mars, it took a century to resolve the air pressure issue, where water would simply evaporate exposed to air, and the natural magnetosphere had to be reinforced against the strong solar winds here, which makes everything stranger. Atmospherics was one of the greatest challenges to terraforming. By comparison, building up a healthy biome of single- and multicellular life was easy.
Instead of listening, I looked over at Sergeant Anderson, who looked terribly sick.
“Are you sure you want the tour, Sergeant?” I whispered. “You’ve seen it all before, right?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I just need to sit down for a while and get some more iron and B vitamins.”
“You shouldn’t spend so much time in flight,” I whispered. “Seriously, Sergeant. It’s foolish.”
“I don’t really have a choice,” he said. “The admiral has it out for me.”
“The admiral has it out for everyone. That’s no excuse.”
He shrugged. He pointed at the tour guide, Brother Pleo, who had pretended not to notice us ignoring him.
The tour, of course. We were turning the corner to an underground hydroponic farm where all the amaranth we ate was grown in isolation from the world, seed pods fat and hanging off large, spindly plants bred for productivity and self-fertility, not vigor or flavor.
“We hope to develop corn and rye farms on a small scale in the next four years,” said Brother Pleo. He reached out and touched the green leaves. “After the amaranth seed is harvested, we will plant our first, experimental seed crop of both, with many different strains to see which is best for our conditions.”
Past the hydroponic room, which seemed to break the symmetry of the building and lean out off the side like a clumsy addition, we reached a common area with storage along the walls where two brothers were sorting and folding cloth. I understand they were also engaged in the great debate of the Baha’i heresy. Brothers Mohamed and Dimwu continue to engage in this eternal theological debate. They stopped long enough to shake my hand, and ask after the sergeant’s health.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Probably get early release soon, at the rate they’re flying me in zero-g. Hell, look at me, right?”
Brother Dimwu raised an eyebrow at Jensen. “Where are they putting you, young lady?”
“Wherever you put me. I promise not to seduce
the Brotherhood with my womanly wiles.”
Brother Mohamed smacked his dour companion. “Pardon my brother. He is a tactless fool and stubborn. You are most welcome, soldier.”
“Sara Jensen,” she said. “I get called soldier enough.”
“There are seventeen brothers in the monastery,” said Dimwu. “I need all seventeen. We do not attract as many new members to our life of celibacy and contemplation. It is not your gender that concerns me, Sara Jensen, but your atheism. You have had heated discussions with Brother Pleo in the past. You are just as bad as that annoying officer . . . What is his name, Pleo?”
“Obasanjo, Brother Dimwu. Oyede Obasanjo.”
“Yes, the foolish philosopher. Yes. Jensen, you agree with his foolish nihilism. I call you to repent, but I know you will not. At least, please don’t start confusing the children of the village with your impossible theories during your stay, and don’t bother the brothers during their duties.”
“I will say what I like, where I like, Brother. I will say none of it to you.”
“Can we cut the tour short, Brother Pleo?” I said. “Just show us beds and food. We have been in low-g for a while and we need to get our strength back slowly before we go on a grand tour of the whole monastery.”
“Of course,” said Pleo. “It is a grand monastery. The mosque alone is a careful reproduction of a World Heritage Site, and the trees are a thrill on the dunes. I had hardly imagined I’d ever see a tree when I was a boy, and here they are.”
Sergeant Anderson looked like he was going to fall over, and Jensen looked like she wanted to hit something. We were tired, and Pleo was not. I suspect he was wearing us out on purpose to keep us out of trouble, later, when the trap sprung.
“I don’t care if they don’t like me,” said Jensen, out of nowhere. “I don’t care if you two don’t, either.”
“We like you just fine,” said Sergeant Anderson. “They’re a bunch of crusty old fools. They don’t even let us download what we like.”
“I’m a woman. There are so few of us. Someone will take me in, even if I am hated.”
“No one hates you,” said Sergeant Anderson. “Ensign Aldo, here? Everyone hates this asshole. Nobody hates you, Sara.”
“Hey,” I said. “Who hates me?”
She looked up at me with surprise. “You didn’t notice? How could you not notice? They hate us all. There is nothing but hate and disgust and shouting and protocol. Everyone hates everything, and nobody is happy, and that’s why we average two suicides a year.”
“We are colonists on the edge of a galaxy so far from the center of humanity that time itself has slowed down around us,” I said. “The future will be green and our grandchildren will plant forests here, and everything is going to be fine. We’re tired. We’re all tired. We need to rest in a bed for a very long time. We are on vacation, downcycle, and we don’t have to do anything but show up when Sergeant Anderson calls us. Obasanjo says he knows where we can get some booze.”
“The ensign is right. Calm the fuck down, Corporal. So one monk wants to shut you up, so what? All they do is argue with each other over pointless shit. They’re afraid you’ll say something sensible. You needed a vacation. Wong was right.” He winced. “God, I hate saying that.”
She laughed. “Wong is the worst. He will rob you blind and smile, like it’s a favor. What did he do to let you downcycle early, Ensign?”
“He never really hit me up for anything,” I said. “I don’t know what I did to get down here early. Obasanjo thought I needed a break.”
“Obasanjo likes you. You haven’t slept with him, have you?”
“Of course not. It’s against regulations.” Also, I prefer women. Beautiful, strong women, with dark hair and dark eyes, sometimes married to someone else, but I would never tell him that.
“Right. Wait until your pay increases, Ensign, and see what Wong says about regulations. He’s the admiral’s lapdog. When is the next review?”
“The plague slowed it down. As soon as the admiral is cleared for duty, the reviews will start. They’ll be going while we’re down here, I’m sure.”
We reached the first bedroom. “Hell,” said Jensen. “I am going to bed.” She didn’t ask whose room it was. She just took it.
The next one was Sergeant Anderson’s, and at the last, Brother Pleo took my hand. “Morale is very low,” he said. “Suicide is a great sin.”
“Brother Pleo, I’m not suicidal. No one here is.”
“Do you have the power to do anything to make it better?”
“No,” I said. I shook my head. “I have no power, Brother Pleo. I have no authority at all.”
He assented, sadly, and wished me a good night.
When we woke up, it was evening twilight, and we were still running late from the monk’s strict schedule. Food was left for us on the table—three plates with three blobs of nutritional gruel.
Jensen pushed it around with her fork. “I swear to God it wouldn’t be so bad if the food wasn’t so awful all the time. It’s some kind of torture to remember apple pie and chocolate cake and rabbit stew and eat this bland, nutritional goo all the time.”
Sergeant Anderson chuckled. “Our wedding cake was awful. Just awful. Remember the cake? Nobody could even eat it. Corporal Miswa was so embarrassed. He just kept pretending it was fine.”
Jensen started laughing, then. She laughed and Anderson laughed with her and I sat, apart from them. I kept eating, and remembering Shui Mien and my best friend, and the world they shared just under my nose. People remain a mystery to me, oh confessor. I simply do not understand how people connect and disconnect and see transparently on the surface what is happening in human hearts.
After dinner, I sought out Brother Pleo. He was in one of the daily masses, with all the brothers, chanting and praying. It reminded me of whale songs. I sat in the back, listening and observing. After service, the muzzein climbed the tower to sing the city to evening prayers.
The brothers walked past in their contemplation. I did not know why so few spoke to me, but I am sure I will learn more of the traditions in the years to come. Many did not even look up, so lost in meditation.
Brother Pleo did look up, and I gestured to him politely to speak in private. He sat down next to me, in the back pew.
“I am concerned for Sergeant Anderson’s health. Is there a medical technician or emergency medical terminal available to examine him?”
“We have a technician available in the village. It is probably better to wait until you return to the station. Your facilities are much better than ours. Your technicians have the latest training. Our tech is just a retired soldier, with training forty years out of date and challenges with his equipment. With difficult cases, in the recent past, we sent our sick man up to the station for medical care.”
“I have my reasons not to desire that at this time, Brother,” I said. “A second opinion is never a bad idea in traditional medicine.”
“I can arrange an appointment,” said Brother Pleo. “Is he amenable to seeing the doctor?”
“Probably not. I outrank him, though. I will tell him. Can the doctor come here?”
“He is not a full doctor, only a technician nurse, like your man up above. Yes, he can come up here.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Does he need anything right away?”
“I don’t know. I don’t believe so. Thank you for your consideration, Brother Pleo.”
“We do not lock the doors after dark. It is much more enjoyable to walk the orchard at night. There are flashlights and GPS devices charging near the door, if you would like to see the jujube and acacia fields, where we will be cultivating honey bees soon . . . ?”
“Perhaps another time,” I said. “I am not on the proper diurnal schedule for my stay. I need to force it a little bit. How long is the day, the night? I recall a twenty-nine- hour cycle?”
“Twenty-nine point seven three hours. We are negotiating with the city elders to create ou
r own time system. They don’t like our muzzein, Brother Mohamed. Or the bells.”
“How long until daybreak?”
“About seven hours, give or take. This is summer. The days are very long, and can get very hot. You’ve woken up to the hottest part of the day. Don’t overexert yourself until you are accustomed to it, Ensign. Make yourself at home here, and wait until nightfall.”
“Thank you, Brother,” I said.
He shook my hand to tell me that the conversation was over. He had other duties, and I was keeping him from them, of course. Officers are always an inconvenience to the people who actually do the work.
The Fortress at the End of Time Page 11