The Parafaith War

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Sitting at the green round plastic table in a green plastic chair, he sipped the tea and watched people walking, or riding, along the tunnel outside, separated from the cafe proper by the row of waist-high planters filled with the mixed flowers.

  He still got curious glances from passersby, occasioned by his sandy hair, blue eyes, and broad shoulders, but once the eyes took in the Service uniform, especially the officers’ bars, they tended to glaze over with the reassurance of the familiar.

  Trystin took his time with the eggs, and enjoyed sipping the tea and studying the people who walked by—the Service officers and technicians in their pale green uniforms, the contract technicians in whatever they wished to wear, and a handful of dark-haired and dark-eyed children, usually in school tunics and trousers.

  Children—he hadn’t seen many since he’d left Cambria, not that most Eco-Tech families had more than two, if that.

  He pursed his lips and finished the toast, then took another sip of the tea. Ulteena—somehow she fit his mental picture, and somehow she didn’t. Certainly, she wasn’t as openly warm as Ezildya, but her nose wasn’t the beak he’d somehow visualized. And she was certainly competent.

  He laughed. Ulteena was on the fast track, and before long, she’d be a major. She certainly had made that clear, but why had she mentioned that ranks were temporary? He took another sip of tea, sniffed the marigolds, and sat back to watch the pedestrians. He had time, more than enough time.

  At 0820, he finally left the Marigold, walking quickly toward the pedestrian tunnel interconnecting Residence one to Service two.

  At 0830, Trystin was entering Service two, the support dome of the Service. At 0840, he passed the exit for the botanical garden. He wished he’d left the Marigold earlier and had given himself enough time for the garden. Perhaps later. He missed the greenery. He kept walking.

  At 0855, Trystin stepped through the front slider in the underground medical center, and walked to the console.

  “Lieutenant Trystin Desoll—”

  “Follow-up physicals are in corridor three B, Lieutenant. Follow the orange stripe to the blue. Make a right where the blue starts, and follow it to the next reception area.” The dark-haired tech gave him a polite smile, then returned to his console.

  Trystin shrugged and followed the orange stripe on the wall for nearly a hundred meters before turning right. Another hundred meters of turns led him to a waiting area. He stepped up to the tech at the console.

  “Lieutenant Desoll …”

  “Take a seat, Lieutenant. A med tech or Dr. Ihara will call you.”

  Trystin tried not to shake his head and turned. In the front row of the hard plastic chairs sat Ulteena Freyer. She smiled and motioned to the empty seat beside her.

  “They don’t care much for rank here,” she observed.

  “I noticed.” Trystin settled into the seat. “How long have you been waiting?”

  “About five minutes longer than you.” She gave him a quick smile, and a sense of the warmth flashed over him and was gone. “I don’t cut it quite as closely as you do. Women can’t afford that kind of reputation, even today.”

  “I didn’t plan on cutting it that closely. The med center is bigger than I’d realized.”

  “Your first time here?”

  Trystin nodded. “My annual physical isn’t due for another month. You think they’ll combine it with this?”

  “Not a chance. Regs say you have an annual Service physical, and you will.” Ulteena brushed back a strand of hair scarcely longer than Trystin’s.

  “Desoll!” The med tech in greens by the console glanced around the room where the dozen young officers waited.

  “Here.” Trystin stood.

  “Please follow me, ser.” The “ser” was definitely a formality, without respect.

  Trystin smiled at Ulteena. She offered a faint smile in return.

  “See you later, at least on the net.”

  She nodded politely.

  Trystin followed the med tech around the corner and to a line of curtained booths where the tech pointed at a booth with an open curtain. “Strip down to your underwear. Then stand in front of the console and let it wrap around you. Put your arms in the restrainers, and tap the stud under your little finger. There’s one under either hand. Hold still. The console will take blood, skin, and a few other samples. When the tone sounds and the restraints lift, dress and walk up the corridor to delta four. Take a seat there, and wait for Dr. Ihara.” The med tech looked at Trystin. “Is that clear, ser?”

  “Clear.”

  The technician nodded and was gone.

  Trystin closed the curtain and began to strip, beginning with his boots, setting them in the corner of the cubicle. With a deep breath, he stepped up and let the console embrace him, the plastic and metal cool against his bare skin. His hip twinged at the chill.

  The implant flickered, indicating energy flows, in response to the brief sprays and energy probes that invaded him.

  In less than five minutes, according to the implant, the process was complete, and the restraints lifted away. In spots, Trystin’s skin tingled, and he wondered if he might have a few small bruises later.

  He shook his head. Nothing to compare with the one he’d received from falling down the station’s emergency ladder. He dressed quickly, opened the curtain, and walked up the corridor and around the comer. Another waiting area contained four chairs. Three were full, with a major and two senior lieutenants. One of the lieutenants was a woman with sandy-blond hair, not so fair as Trystin or his sister, but the first other blond Trystin had seen in the Service.

  She looked up and grinned. He grinned back.

  At that moment, a Service officer Trystin had never seen, also a lieutenant, stepped out of the room, shaking his head.

  “Next. Lieutenant Berrie?” A heavyset doctor in dress greens stood in the open door.

  The sandy blonde stood and followed the doctor. Trystin settled into the chair and closed his eyes, realizing how tired he really was.

  “Next. Lieutenant Desoll?” A heavyset doctor in dress greens stood in the open door.

  Trystin tried not to jerk awake, and rose as smoothly as he could.

  “Don’t worry about it. By the way, I’m Dr. Ihara. None of you perimeter types ever get enough rest.”

  Trystin followed him into the large office, where a halo of the western badlands filled the wall space on the right side of the room. The combination desk/console was bare, as was the credenza on the wall behind the console.

  Trystin’s eyes slipped past the panorama of fast-moving clouds to the third figure in the office—a not-quite human figure in what looked to be shimmering gray fatigues. The iron-gray hair and square face were the most human features of the Farhkan. Trystin tried to ignore the red eyes and wide single-nostril nose that seemed to flap with each breath. The crystalline teeth were not quite fangs or tusks, and seemed blunt.

  Ihara shut the door behind Trystin. “This is Rhule Ghere, Lieutenant Desoll. He is roughly my equivalent with the Farhkan … hegemony.”

  Trystin nodded. The term “hegemony” was the closest description that matched any human term, although the Farhkans seemed to employ what really seemed to Trystin something like an ultrahigh-tech, self-policing, consensus-based, anarchistic democracy based on environmental understandings and an overall technology that the Eco-Tech Coalition could only drool over from a distance.

  “Pleased to meet you, ser.” Trystin offered a slight bow, feeling that some sign of respect was in order.

  “It is interesting to meet you, Lieutenant.” Ghere’s voice floated through Trystin’s thoughts, almost as though unrolling on his mental screen, but more completely and more quickly.

  “How?”

  “I—we—have the ability to communicate, at short distances only, through your military communications implant. That makes communications easier—or possible.”

  “Dr. Ghere is here to interview those of you who volunteered to parti
cipate in the Farhkan project. I doubt you remember much, beyond the small annual bonus, about the project … .”

  Trystin did remember, but not as much as he would have liked. Supposedly, in return for certain basic technology transfers, the Farhkans were following a small cohort of Service officers for a ten-year period—or longer—with periodic physical examinations, interviews, and some forms of mental tests. This was Trystin’s second physical for the Farhkan project, but there had been no interview after the first.

  “I recall the basic details, although I don’t remember anything about interviews.” He inhaled slowly, taking in an unfamiliar odor, a combination of an unfamiliar flower, a muskiness, and … cleanliness.

  “You’ll be getting an interview with each subsequent physical, unless, for some reason, the Farhkans find you unsuitable.” Ihara offered a grimace. “We hope they don’t. Please have a seat.”

  Trystin took the only seat in front of the console, opposite the Farhkan.

  Rhule Ghere turned his red eyes on Ihara.

  “The other aspect of the interview is that it is confidential,” added Ihara.

  Trystin repressed a snort. How confidential was an interview with a Service doctor present?

  Ihara stepped to the second door and opened it. “Believe me. It’s confidential. You’ll see.” He stepped out of the room and closed the door.

  “We do have our ways,” offered the silent voice of Ghere. “If you wish to speak aloud or use your implant, it does not matter.”

  Idly, Trystin tried to access any net that might be in the structure, but found a blankness. He raised his eyebrows. “Won’t they try to break it?”

  “Of course. They have been trying for several years. That is one reason why they agreed to the bargain.”

  “Advanced technology?”

  “They like the opportunity to steal technology. All humans do.”

  “So we’re thieves?” As the words popped out, Trystin couldn’t believe he’d said them.

  “You do not like being a member of a species of thieves?”

  “The thought doesn’t please me much.” Trystin shifted his weight in the chair.

  “You find the idea of theft repulsive?”

  Trystin paused. “I don’t like being thought of as a thief.”

  “What about the theft of life?”

  Again, Trystin paused. Was the alien a real alien, or was this just some fantastic screening device? But why would the Service go to such lengths? Would he know a real Farhkan from a phony one? “Do you have a spoken language? What does it sound like?”

  “Yes.”

  A string of noise followed, except that the sounds twisted around each other almost poetically. Trystin felt a vague sense of longing and asked when Ghere had finished, “Is that poetry?”

  “Of a type. It is the opening to what you would call my testament. But I could be lying. I could be a fraud.”

  “You could,” Trystin admitted. “You act too human.”

  “Too human, or too intelligent?”

  Trystin wanted to shake his head.

  “You never answered my inquiry about the theft of life.” The red eyes turned directly on him.

  Trystin felt that the alien was looking beyond him, and that the alien was alien. Why, he couldn’t say. He wet his lips. “War involves the theft of life. What are we supposed to do? Let the revs kill us off and take everything over in the name of their Prophet?”

  “So you admit you are a thief?”

  “You’re twisting words.”

  “Am I?” A harsh sound issued from the Farhkan. “Am I?”

  “If I’m a thief, so are you.”

  “I am a thief. I admit it. Are you?” asked Ghere.

  Trystin didn’t want to admit anything, even philosophically, especially since he wasn’t sure what the Service might find out. He paused.

  “Are you a thief?” asked Ghere again.

  “Since any intelligent species must take from other living things, even if limited to food, in order to survive,” Trystin temporized, “I would say that intelligence requires theft in the general sense.”

  “Is all taking a form of theft?”

  Trystin shrugged. “I suppose taking implies possession, and, therefore, without ownership, taking would not be theft.”

  “But what is possession? Can any living form be said to possess something?”

  “Temporarily, I suppose.” Trystin felt warm, ready to burst into sweat.

  “That is a careful answer, and it is true. Yet you will acknowledge that you eat. So why do you refuse to admit you are a thief?” Ghere shifted his weight in his chair, but so gracefully and silently that he made no sound.

  Trystin sat silently for a few moments, suddenly conscious of the low-grade throbbing in his hip, and conscious of the absurdity of sweating through a moral argument with an alien—assuming Ghere was a real Farhkan.

  The silence extended, so much that Trystin could hear the faint hiss of the ventilators.

  “You have admitted that intelligent life must take from other life to survive. You know this is true. I have admitted I am a thief. You will not. Why not?”

  “The word itself is unpleasant.” Trystin felt the words being dragged out of him.

  “Why?”

  “Why? I don’t know.”

  Ghere stood and pressed a stud on the console. “You need to think about that, Lieutenant Desoll. Thank you for your time.” His mouth opened.

  Trystin tried not to stare at the long, sharp, crystalline teeth.

  Click. In the silence, the opening door sounded like a thunderbolt, and the Service doctor entered.

  Trystin turned to Dr. Ihara.

  “I will take a rest now, for a few moments,” announced Ghere in the same mental “voice,” even as he headed for the rear door, moving silently and closing it behind him—assuming Ghere was male, or the Farhkan equivalent.

  Ihara looked at Trystin. “That was long—for him.”

  Trystin shrugged, wondering if he had failed some sort of test.

  “Would you care to comment on the interview?” asked Ihara.

  “Not really.”

  “No one ever does. No one.” The Service doctor sighed. “All right, what about Ghere himself?”

  “He seems real enough.” Trystin shivered. “And alien.”

  “He’s both,” said Ihara wryly.

  “Why do they want an interview?” Trystin asked.

  “It’s a game.” Ihara glanced through the half-open door toward the empty waiting area. “The techs on the next level try to break his barriers, and he tries to get whatever he wants from you.”

  “He just asked general questions,” Trystin said cautiously. “Nothing military at all.”

  “We’ve gathered that.” Ihara pursed his lips. “They want something. They’ve got some sort of plan, but no one seems to know what.”

  “No one?”

  Ihara lowered his voice. “The med higher-ups drugprobed one of the first interview subjects. Within days, we got a message telling us that all trade and information transfers would be canceled if it ever happened again.” He laughed. “So no one can make you say a thing.”

  Trystin wasn’t sure he believed Ihara, but he nodded.

  “By the way, you’re in good shape physically,” the doctor added. “Upper ten percent. You work out regularly, don’t you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “It shows. But there’s some minor nasal irritation. Probably a little too much local atmosphere in your station.”

  “Is that all?” asked Trystin, looking at the closed door.

  “That’s all. But if you ever want to talk about it … or let us know …”

  “I know where to find you.”

  As he walked from the med center, Trystin wondered exactly what it was that the Farhkans had provided that was so valuable that the Coalition would allow private interviews with promising young officers. It had to be valuable. No one, not even aliens, gave away technolog
y for free.

  Ghere, like everyone else, wanted something. But what? Certainly, probing the moral values of a junior Service officer didn’t justify whatever technology the Coalition had received. Did it? Or was the whole thing a complicated charade? Trystin thought about Ihara. The doctor hadn’t been lying. So what did the Farhkans want? Was it some type of information about a lot of officers? Or were they screening for something? What could it be? And why?

  Trystin took a deep breath and kept walking.

  10

  From the carved wooden bench, Trystin glanced across the five meters of grass separating him from the bushes and trees. A small red maple rose from the ivy. He didn’t recognize the small brown bird with the red-shaded head, but watched as it cocked its head, then dropped from the branch and flew toward the south corner of the dome garden and a tree he didn’t recognize.

  Supposedly, the one-hundred-meter-square garden only contained flora and fauna that would fit the ecology of Mara when the planoforming was completed. And supposedly the purpose of the garden was to test the balance on a small scale. In reality, the garden was a reminder of what Mara could be, a reminder the Eco-Techs needed.

  A green lizard wound its way up the trunk of a hybrid yuccalike plant with pale yellow flowers and spike-tipped leaves. The lizard’s tongue flickered, but Trystin couldn’t see the prey, or if there had been prey.

  He shifted his weight on the bench, enjoying the smells of living things, the respite from the endless odor of plastic, ozone, and machine oil, and the silence from his implant. There were no net repeaters, at any frequency, within the garden dome where all his implant was good for was regulating his physical output—primarily sight, metabolic and muscular contractive speed, and reflexes—and for keeping time.