The Parafaith War

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Trystin looked to the faded blue sky and the clouds scudding eastward to the Palien Sea. He took a deep breath of air filled with the scent of rain, of flowers he could not see.

  The electrotrain, sliding silently above buried guides, did not arrive at the surtrans station for nearly fifteen minutes, but Trystin stood silently, drinking in the gardens, the green-winged heliobirds sipping from the tulip-tree blossoms, and the feel of moist air on his face.

  He had the automated. train to himself until the first stop, when two older schoolgirls got on, both slender and dark-haired. The thinner-faced girl, wearing a silver medallion over a pale blue shirt, looked at Trystin. Her eyes fixed on his uniform; then she looked away. The other girl put her arm around her friend, and both hurried from the train at the next stop. Trystin looked back as both girls dropped onto the bench by the surtrans garden. The girl who had looked away sobbed almost uncontrollably.

  Trystin took a deep breath. Had she lost a brother, a boyfriend, someone dear? How many girls like that, or boys, was the war affecting? Except that it wasn’t really even a war. The revs sent their military missions, and the system control ships and the planetary perimeter officers did their best to destroy them, no one said very much, not in public anyway.

  He hoped it had been the uniform and not his fair skin and sandy hair.

  At the next stop, an older woman, white-haired and trim, climbed aboard briskly. “Greetings, Lieutenant. Going to enjoy your leave? I assume it’s leave.”

  “It is, and I hope so. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. Glad you’re out there. Someone has to be. Did my turn back in’thirty. That was when Safrya was really wild. Didn’t have to worry that much about the revs then. Don’t mind me, young fellow. Takes me back, though. Where have you been stationed, if I could ask?”

  “Mara.”

  “That’ll take some time. Then someday, you’ll be telling some young officer about when Mara was really wild, and you’ll wonder where the time went.” She grinned. “As I said, don’t mind me.”

  “You’re probably right.” Trystin offered her a smile, relieved at the diversion her sprightliness offered.

  “Oh, I’m right, and someday you’ll be right, too.”

  They sat in silence until the next stop where, after running his card through the reader, Trystin slipped off the surtrans with a wave to the white-haired woman.

  The house was nearly half a kay from the surtrans stop, but Trystin walked up the lane slowly, flexing and stretching his leg when he thought about it, looking at the greenery, even the few native bluestalk trees that had thrived under the integrated ecology. The ornate and heavy wrought-iron gates at the bottom of the garden were open, as always, and he walked up the curving stone path laid by his great-great-grandfather.

  He rapped on the front door, but no one answered. That wasn’t a surprise, not if his father were working and his mother still at the university. He eased open the door and called, “Hello!”

  No answer. So he set the kit and shoulder bag on the polished agate of the hall floor and closed the door behind him. His forehead was damp, and he wiped it on his sleeve, then tucked the beret into his belt. The kitchen was empty, except for the smell of some sort of dish from the ancient convection oven, and he stepped down the hallway to his father’s office.

  Trystin rapped gently on the side of the open doorway, then waited a moment, watching the screens before his father.

  From what he could tell, the screens displayed diagrams or schematics, but diagrams or schematics with which Trystin was unfamiliar, although he gathered a general impression that one screen dealt with waste disposal of some sort. Even before he could really read the data, the screens all blanked into restful views of the eastern coast beyond Cambria.

  The older man, the reddish-blond hair shot with silver and cut short, touched the keyboard and removed the headset. “Trystin! I’m glad you could get home.” He stood slowly, then deliberatively moved toward his son to give Trystin a firm hug.

  Trystin hugged him back.

  “More muscle yet, I think.” Elsin Desoll released his son. “Are you working out a lot?”

  “Some.”

  “Good thing to keep up. You’re still young enough it doesn’t matter. Me, I’ve got to be faithful about it, or I’d turn to flab.”

  Trystin couldn’t imagine his father turning to flab, not with the carefully managed diet, the gardening, and the daily workouts, both physical and martial arts.

  “There are times when I think it would be easier to work with implants, rather than the headset, and see the screens in my mind, but that technology’s for the Service, and this array is as far as I can strain my tired old brain.”

  “Your tired old brain? Is this the same tired old brain that designs obscure system keys for fun? Or theoretical encryption systems?”

  “Those are just puzzles. The older I get … the more I cherish the obscure.” Elsin’s brow crinkled for a moment. “Have a seat. I whipped up a casserole, but it’s still simmering, and Nynca won’t be home for a bit.”

  “Is she still teaching at the university?”

  “Still? Your mother will never give it up, and she’s even managed to persuade the provost that since music enhances mathematical conceptualization, basic musical theory should be one of the required perspectives.”

  “She was working on that years ago.” Trystin took one of the wooden captain’s chairs by the chess table, leaving the one with the frayed purple cushion for his father.

  “You’ll recall that your mother isn’t exactly one to quit on something she believes in. Of course, both of our offspring are so pliable and amenable to whatever their parents have suggested.”

  Trystin opened his mouth and then shut it. His father still could prod him into reacting without thinking.

  “Better.” Elsin nodded. “Snap-juice or tea?” He paused. “Something wrong with the leg?”

  “It’s stiff. It got torn up in an assault, and they had to rebuild it. I don’t have the flexibility back, but the doctors say it’s fine, just a matter of time. I keep exercising, and it’s getting better every day.”

  “You can tell us about it at dinner. No need to bother now. Your mother will ask for all the details. Tea or snap-juice? You didn’t say.”

  “Tea, with lime, if you have it.”

  “Limes I have. More like liters of limes, now that I’ve got the balance in the upper garden right.” The older man headed through the doorway and back toward the kitchen and wide eating area that overlooked the side garden, and the eastern side of Cambria.

  Trystin turned in the chair to look at the garden, pleased to see sky without looking through a portal or a screen, or filtered through sensors and scanners. His eyes dropped back to the inlaid chess table beside him and the stone figures on it. The tabletop dated back eight centuries, and had supposedly been crafted by an ancestor on old Earth. Trystin smiled. It was old, but that old? The transit costs would have been prohibitive. If it were that old, it would be literally priceless, but only an immortal or DNA dating could verify the date, and neither of those was really feasible. The stone chess figures had been the contribution of his grandfather in his last years.

  “Here.” Elsin extended the heavy mug to his son, then sat and set his own mug on his knee.

  “Thank you.” Trystin let the steam waft around his face for a moment, savoring the scent and warmth of the tea and the fresh lime—far better than the translation-faded tea that had been so exorbitant on Mara.

  Elsin sank onto the cushion with a sigh. “Let’s see. How much translation distortion this time?”

  “It wasn’t bad. A little over one week. Transports have more distortion, they say.” Trystin took a sip of tea, which tasted as good as it had smelled. “I miss things like this.”

  “I did. I’m not surprised that you do, too. No matter what people say, we do have an affinity for the land and its products.”

  Trystin nodded, thinking about the limes,
the tea, and the garden—and the more than five generations the house and gardens had passed through, if greatly changed by each.

  “You look a little thoughtful … even disturbed.”

  “Well … a woman I know said I was an idealist who didn’t care much for people. She said I was just like the revs. She was really upset, too.”

  “It bothered you.”

  “I guess so.” Trystin shrugged. “In some ways … well … you just wonder.”

  “Do you know why she upset you?”

  “The people bit. I mean, I rode the surtrans from the tube station, and two girls rode one station with me, and one of them looked at my uniform, and she got off the train and broke down. I wondered who she’d lost. That was what I was thinking. And I think about Quentar. He was concerned when I had to make a run to his station because mine had been totaled. At the same time, he was talking about how he wished he could kill more revs, as if they weren’t people. He’s dead now. Instead of him killing them, they killed him. I don’t know. I’ve always assumed that the revs were people, but that they weren’t in a way. Quentar was honest about it. To him they weren’t. I was. But I had to interrogate some revs, and most acted like machines, but one didn’t. He said something like, while he believed, nothing I could say would shake him, as if faith were a choice.” Trystin shrugged.

  “You think that faith is something blindly imposed on people?” asked Elsin.

  “I just hadn’t thought about it. And I guess I was reminded of it because Ezildya accused me of blind faith, in a way. She said that if I put any sort of duty above human feelings I wasn’t any better than the revs. In fact, she blamed my nonexistent rev heritage. If I look like one, I must be one. Does it mean I’m not human if I don’t wear my heart on my tunic? Does it mean I’m a machine because ideals are important?”

  Elsin laughed. “No. It means you’re young and human. The young are cruel, and allowing others to see what you feel makes you vulnerable, and the young hate to be vulnerable. That’s a luxury of age.”

  “Thanks … I think.”

  “I won’t dwell on it. First, if I did, you wouldn’t believe me, yet. And second, you’ll see. Beware of women who want you to parade your emotions, and be equally careful with those who shy away from your feelings.”

  “That sounds like I should avoid them all.” Trystin took another sip of tea. “I’ll try to remember your sage advice.”

  “You won’t. I didn’t listen to my parents until I was older. No … that’s not quite right. I listened to their words, and I could recognize their wisdom, but that wisdom didn’t seem really applicable to me. I suspect that’s true with every generation, but none of us live long enough to confirm that—not beyond our children’s children, anyway.”

  Trystin nodded. There didn’t seem to be much to add to his father’s words, even as they seemed to slip away, for all their trite truth.

  “Your message said that you’d been offered orders and training as a pilot officer, and that you’d decided to take it.” Elsin took a sip from his own mug. “If you do much deep spacing, maybe you will live long enough to see the patterns in life.”

  “The translation effect is getting less.” Trystin pursed his lips and shifted his weight in the chair, for some reason thinking about Ezildya’s mother’s work with the Farhkans. “I got the impression that the Farhkans were giving some help to our translation engineers.”

  “Occasionally, that has happened. You might ask your mother. I don’t know much about it.”

  “What do you know about the Farhkans?”

  “They’re dangerous.”

  “Why?”

  “Trystin, you’re in the Service. So was I. You know everything I did, plus a lot more. Why don’t you tell me? Besides, why do you want to know? Do you think I know something you don’t?”

  “You usually do,” pointed out Trystin.

  “All right.” Elsin sighed. “They manage translation with virtually no time lag. Second, no one or thing invades their systems. We don’t say anything, and the revs don’t say anything, and the Farhkans don’t say anything, but while the official line is that we lost one ship, we lost more than that. The difference is that we stopped trying. The revs didn’t, not for a long, long time, and I’m not convinced that they ever have.”

  “What else?”

  “The Farhkans are probably a lot better at integrating biotech and hardtech than we are.” Elsin grinned and looked at his son. “You have that look on your face that says you know something, but I won’t ask.”

  “Thank you.” Trystin tried not to squirm in his seat. How had his father caught his thoughts about the Farhkans’ ability to tap into his military implant? Had the Farhkan mental images been technology or an unknown physical ability?

  “They have an agenda, and I’m not convinced that any alien agenda is necessarily for our benefit.” Elsin rose.

  “Who could say? It probably isn’t.”

  “Since they’re alien, I’d have to agree.” Elsin cleared his throat. “This pilot business brings up something else.”

  “I know … the separation …”

  “There’s that. I know you must have thought about it, and I’m not one to try and bring up anything to make you feel guilty. That’s not what I meant. I am an integrator, and I want you to consider how to protect yourself from the downsides. I mean in cold, hard financial terms.”

  “What?” Trystin shook his head.

  “You’re young, and you’re healthy, but what happens if your translation engine cooks its mainboard, and throws you forty years into the future? The Service will, of course, pension you off with the standard retirement, or let you stay on for another few objective years and do the same thing. You need to be prepared for that.”

  “Oh …”

  “It may not happen, but the chances are about one in ten that you’ll have at least one translation error of more than two standard years if you stay for a career. If it doesn’t … good. But … if it does …”

  “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “The Service will gladly hold your back pay, and provide it in a lump sum, which, after taxes and inflation, will make it worth little enough.”

  Trystin spread his hands. “What do I do?”

  “We set up a ‘translation trust,’ except we make it more general than that. Your pay goes directly into an institution where the funds are split into several accounts—an immediate credit account against which you can draw just like your regular credit account—but you specify a cap on it. Any funds received in excess of that level go into a diversified program. That way, if you’re on extended duty, or not around, you can set up the program to pay any obligations and have the principal grow. It’s more complicated than that, but fairly simple.”

  “How did you know this?”

  “I didn’t.” Elsin shrugged. “When I got your message and thought about it, I started doing research.”

  Trystin took another sip of tea. He hadn’t even considered what his father had seen nearly instantly.

  “Hold on a minute. I need to check that casserole.” Elsin slipped from the room.

  Trystin looked back out the half-open window, letting the spring breeze flutter through his regulation-short hair. A few clouds were piled up to the east, above the Palien Sea, but not enough for a storm, not anytime soon.

  A moment later, his father returned. “Things should be ready about the time Nynca gets here.”

  “She is regular,” laughed Trystin.

  “Someone around here has to be.”

  “You know, Dad. I’ve had some time to think. I still don’t know what you do. You’re a free-lance systems integrator. I understand every one of the words, and then I come home, and you pull something else up, like this translation trust, or I look at those screens, and they still look like Greek, or revvie gibberish.”

  “Sometimes they do to me, too.” Elsin nodded. “I was working on waste-nutrient integration—”

  “For Safry
a?” Trystin’s eyes strayed to the window, caught by the green flash of a passing heliobird.

  “Slowships, no! It’s a system for a place called Verintka, out your way, on Mara.”

  “That’s on the south continent—but it will be another century before the atmosphere’s really breathable.”

  Elsin grinned. “Maybe not. We’re trying to do some tinkering. Newsin has a new bug that they think can use hydrocarbons and CO2 and fix oxygen in the process.”

  Trystin nodded.

  “It creates a gummy awful green sludge, plus a lot of water and oxygen. I’m trying to find a way to use the green, sludge. I just might have it—but that’s going to take more work.”

  Trystin heard a faint footstep and stood. “I think Mother’s home. Someone just came in.”

  “Even without all that biohardware, you still had ears like a hawk. Now nothing can move without your hearing it.”

  “A hawk?”

  “Predator of ancient earth. Supposedly could hear small rodents from kays away.”

  The woman who slipped into the office was stocky, but not heavy, with short hair half blond, half silver. Her green eyes smiled as she took in Trystin. “You look good.”

  Trystin stood quickly, stepping toward her, but his leg dragged ever so slightly. “It’s good to be home,” he admitted, hugging her tightly.

  After a time, she stepped back. “Careful. I’m a fragile woman.”

  “Ha!” snorted Elsin. “Not very.”

  “Compared to your son, I am.”

  “My son? He’s yours too, last time I heard.”

  “Poor man, he’s starving. Can’t you see that?” Nynca winked at her son. Then her expression turned serious. “What’s wrong with your leg?”

  “Projectile injury. The doctors say it’s fine, just stiff. I need to keep exercising it.”

  “You didn’t mention that in the message.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “So I have to worry now?” Nynca shook her head. “You and your father.” She turned to Elsin. “He still needs to be fed. He’s too thin.”