“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.
I did notice that her lower limbs—which had seemed almost useless when the Professor had first removed her from her disc—appeared to be getting stronger. She was balanced on them now, with just a hand’s width of space between her belly and the stone on which she perched.
“How is she doing?” I asked the Professor.
“I do not know,” he said. “She has not spoken to me since the storm passed. I am suspecting that she is manifesting an instinctual behavior of our species, from the time before we had carriages to provide for our needs.”
“What about food?” I said.
“The carriage provides that too, though we can ingest nourishment with our mouths for the pleasure of it.”
I shuddered a bit, remembering mantis warriors devouring human flesh during the initial fighting on Purgatory.
“Can the Queen Mother eat
our food?” the captain asked.
“I do not think it wise,” the Professor said. “Our nutritional requirements are not the same as yours. Besides, we have the ability to store a reserve—naturally—which should suffice for the Queen Mother’s needs for some time yet. Assuming she gets water.”
“She should go drink while the drinking’s good,” I said, pointing back to the creek bed, the water in which had begun to wane as the sun gradually began to drop towards the western horizon.
“I have already purified a supply for her,” the Professor said. “For now, I simply watch, and wait. The Queen Mother’s behavior is unusual and fascinating. I have never seen any of my people forced to live without a carriage. The Queen Mother’s actions speak to me of how my people must have lived, eons ago in the distant past, before we ourselves even had fire, or tools. Before we took to the stars.”
As the angle of the sun’s light shifted, so did the Queen Mother. Like a solar panel, she made sure her wings caught the maximum amount of direct light.
Occasionally the captain or I would get up to go check on our clothes, flapping them vigorously to try and get out every drop of remaining moisture. When evening came and the sun began to dip into the far horizon, we pulled out our emergency sleeping bags and prepared to make do on the hard stone.
“I’ll be back,” Adanaho said.
“Nature calls?” I replied.
“No.”
“Oh…well, find privacy and peace then.”
To my surprise, she went to join the Queen Mother, who’d folded up her wings, but remained staring in the direction of the setting sun.
Adanaho sat cross legged and appeared to hold something in her hands as she bowed her head. The Queen Mother’s own head tilted just a little, her antennae moving ever so slowly, as if entranced by the captain’s soft, slow words of supplication. The Professor was listening too—I could see him alert. Like before, I was too far away to make out what was being said. And, I suddenly realized, I was a little bit jealous that the captain felt perfectly fine sharing her prayer with the mantes, but not with me. A tiny spark of anger flared, and quickly died as I realized that maybe she was just doing what I’d done with the Professor many times: giving the mantes a demonstration, so that maybe the Queen Mother might enjoy a degree of understanding.
Though I couldn’t be sure what progress Adanaho hoped to make, which I hadn’t been able to make with the Professor or his students in all the years of trying back on Purgatory.
Eventually the sky faded from blue to purple, and from purple to black. Adanaho returned, and I was already in my bag, my one-piece rolled up under my head for a pillow. I averted my eyes as the captain stripped, rolled her one-piece up for a pillow, then slipped into her own bag.
I didn’t stay awake long enough to see what arrangements the Professor and the Queen Mother had made between them.
Sometime in the night I felt a hand nudging my shoulder.
“What’s happening?” I said. “Is something wrong?”
“I can’t sleep, Chief,” Adanaho said. “There’s a hole in my bag and it got damp inside, and I am freezing.”
My eyes popped open. I could barely make out the black silhouette of her shoulders and head against the perfect expanse of stars that stretched across the night sky. Clear sky meant frigid temperatures, and I could feel the cold night air on my face. I reached out and felt Adanaho’s hand in mine. Her fingers were icy.
Not even thinking about it, I unzipped my bag and beckoned her in. She slid down beside me and zipped the bag up to our chins. Not designed for comfort, as an emergency bag it could hold two in a pinch—and I certainly was glad for it, as the captain felt dangerously cold, her body shuddering next to me.
“Ma’am,” I said, “why didn’t you come earlier? You’re a popsicle.”
“I feel like a popsicle,” she said, her nose stuffed.
“Here,” I said, and closed my arms around her. Despite the frigidity of her skin, it was smooth, and womanly, and all of a sudden I realized I hadn’t lain in bed with a girl since before I’d joined the Fleet, and that had been a long, long time ago.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” I said, clearing my throat.
“For what?” She said. And then, because of the impossibly close quarters of the bag, she said, “Oh. I get it.”
I felt a rush of blood to my face.
“It’s okay, Chief,” she said, sensing my mortal embarrassment.
“I hope you’re not married,” I said. “Explaining to your husband how you spent the night naked in a sleeping bag with another man who was unable to contain his…ahhh, excitement, could be problematic.”
“No, I am not married,” she said, laughing a bit. Then began to cough.
I suddenly realized that pneumonia could kill as easily as low temperatures, and held her tighter. She squirmed in my grasp and was suddenly face to face with me, her nose like a cold, damp button in the nape of my neck. She coughed a few more times, snuffling, and clung tightly to me. I rubbed my hands vigorously along her bare back to try and accelerate the process of warming. Gradually, her body relaxed. I then heard a small, quiet snore.
I shifted and repositioned my rolled-up smock so that her head rested on it, not mine, crooked an elbow up to my ear, kept my other arm wrapped tightly around her, and let myself drift off.
Chapter 10
I woke early.
The captain was still snoring softly, so I slid out of the bag as slowly and as stealthily as I could, letting my superior curl the fabric around herself and bury her face deeper into my jumper. The sun wasn’t yet up, but I could see well enough. Being both naked and cold, now seemed as good a time as any to go see if my uniform had dried. But first, business. I spied a low mound of split rock not too far off, and headed directly for it.
The Professor caught me halfway back.
I felt a bit awkward over my nudity, then decided it was silly to be modest in front of the alien. Though I also thought this is how the Queen Mother must have felt when she was forced to disengage from her disc.
“Good morning,” the Professor said.
“Hello,” I replied.
“The female still sleeps?”
“For the moment.”
“Did you mate with her?”
I sputtered a quietly exclamatory denial. Then asked, “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“On Purgatory you once told me that when male and female humans wish to copulate, they will share the same bed.”
“On Purgatory, sure, and then only if the male and the female know each other well enough and have agreed to have that kind of relationship.”
“It is not an automatic biological function?”
“No,” I said firmly. “Is it for you mantes?”
The Professor considered, a forelimb gently running along the edge of his disc.
“In some ways, yes. The egg-laying females—like the Queen Mother—when they enter what you would call estrus, they exude a pheromone that is both sexually rapturous and psychologically debilitating for males. Any male within reach of the pheromone becomes somewhat mindless in his pursuit of intercourse. The only way to avoid it is to avoid being where the pheromone can get to you.”
“But once you get a whiff—”
“Then the male is in for a delightfully stupid time of physical pleasure, followed by a lengthy period of slumber.”
“Well,” I said, smiling, “at least one thing is shared between human males and mantis males.”
“Still,” said the Professor, “with Adanaho, if she is available to you and there is the possibility of sex, are you not…tempted?”
“Of course I’m tempted,” I snapped. Then apologized for being harsh. “It’s been at least a dozen or more years since I had a woman in my arms like that. But when a human male gets excited, he’s still in full command of his faculties. He can still choose. Or at least he’s expected to behave as if he has a choice. Personally, I think it’s one of the few things that a
ctually makes us different from mere animals. We can deny our lusts, even during moments of opportunity.”
“So you chose to abstain.”
“Yes.”
“Is she not attractive?”
“Yes, she’s attractive.”
“Forgive me Harry, I am still struggling to understand.”
“Look,” I said, my hands on my hips as I walked slowly over to the rocks where my uniform and boots were spread out, “attraction is only part of it. There’s other factors too. Like, she’s too young. Much younger than I am. I’d feel like I was taking advantage of her. Plus, she’s my superior officer in the Fleet. It’s against the rules for a superior and a subordinate to engage in sexual congress.”
“Why?”
“Bad for discipline in the chain-of-command, among other things.”
“And that’s all?”
“No,” I said, testing the fabric between my fingers. It felt dry enough. I started to put my undergarments on. “The male and the female should really love each other first, before they have sex. When sex happens before love, or without love, it gets…complicated.”
“Also immoral,” said the Professor.
“If the man and the woman subscribe to certain ‘flavors’ of religious or moral tradition, yes. That too. Though most religious proscriptions surrounding intercourse simply involve matrimony, not love. A few centuries ago, before humanity went into space, it was quite common for young men and women to be married off by their families. For political and social reasons, among other things. Love didn’t really enter into it.”
“Fascinating,” said the Professor. “Among my people we mate for genetic enhancement and advantage. Many, many males. A few females. In the far distant past males engaged in mortal combat to determine which ones would mate during a given cycle of estrus. Now we select for genetic traits we consider positive and bar those who don’t meet the standards. Those of us who meet the standards are then chosen via lottery to attend to the females when they are ready. I have copulated six times in my life. I am considered somewhat fortunate in this regard.”
Lights in the Deep Page 24