The Parafaith War

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Dinner has been waiting for you, honored professor.”

  “Were you still working on that sewage project?” asked Nynca, stepping over to her husband and kissing him on the cheek.

  “Of course.”

  She shook her head. “Can you afford to?”

  “Not for money, but for Trystin and Salya.”

  “Always the idealist.”

  “How about dinner?” asked Trystin.

  “I’ll get dinner. You wash up,” suggested his father.

  By the time Trystin, still carrying his cup, entered the dining area that overlooked the middle garden, Elsin was setting the casserole on the ceramic and wood holder in the middle of the circular table. Greens and sliced fruits, topped with seasoned and crushed groundnuts, filled the big wooden bowl before Trystin’s plate. Across the table, by the empty fourth place, was a basket filled with steaming dark bread.

  Nynca opened the wood-framed sliding glass door, lifting the door frame slightly to ease it over a rough spot. “I can see I need to do some repair work here.”

  “Always the engineer.” Elsin seated himself and turned to Trystin. “Help yourself. It’s simple. Bread, salad, and casserole.”

  “It smells wonderful.” Trystin waited for his mother to seat herself before settling into his chair.

  “Isn’t it always?” she asked. “I’ve gotten spoiled over the years.”

  Trystin waited until she had served herself, then heaped several serving spoons full of the churkey and rice casserole on the wide brown stoneware plate, followed by an equally generous helping of the greenery.

  Elsin poured Nynca’s tea and then helped himself to the food.

  “Now … first things first. So I can get my worrying done. How did you get hurt?” asked Nynca. “Start from the beginning.”

  “That’s what she always says.” Elsin laughed.

  Trystin finished the last of the tea in his cup. “The revs have been stockpiling equipment in the Maran badlands for almost three years, covering the stockpiles with continual off-and-on attacks on perimeter stations … .”

  As Trystin outlined the background and the attack, Elsin refilled Trystin’s cup.

  “ … in the end, I really didn’t have much choice besides staying in the armor. Then, while I was in the med center, I was offered the orders for pilot training and decided to take them. Part of it was the business about extending everyone.”

  “But not all of it. I’m not surprised.” Nynca nodded. “Much as you love the house, it wouldn’t be enough for you. Not now.”

  Elsin cleared his throat.

  “Besides … we’ve talked about this … .” Nynca looked at Elsin.

  “Talked about what?” Then Trystin nodded. “You mean that Salya will come back someday, and she really does love it enough to be happy here?”

  His father nodded. “You, for years anyway, will be out there pushing the limits. You didn’t want to hide away even when you were wounded, did you?”

  “No,” Trystin admitted with a short laugh. “I guess not.”

  “You’ve always liked being in control.”

  “And you haven’t?” asked Nynca, looking at her husband. “Trystin will want to settle down sometime. You did.”

  “He might be ready in another half century.” Elsin grinned. “It’s a good thing we’ve got young people like you.” He took a mouthful of the churkey and chewed. “Turned out good this time.”

  “It always does,” Nynca said with a smile.

  Trystin frowned. “What did you mean about having people like me? So that not everyone stays home and …” Since he couldn’t figure out how to finish the sentence, he didn’t.

  “The situation with the Revenants.” His father took another mouthful of casserole.

  “What does that have to do with me? Or the house? Or Salya?”

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Trystin? We’re losing.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because I’m an integrator, and I don’t say much because there’s no point in it. Everyone’s doing everything they can. You don’t help matters by screaming in a smoldering building. You just try to find more water.” He shook his head. “I know. It’s a bad analogy.

  “On the surface, we’ve reached a stalemate. Our borders with the revs are stable, and we don’t attack their fully habitable planets, and they don’t attack ours—although we both could. Their population is growing—”

  “Fast enough for them to re-create the Die-off within a few centuries on Orum.”

  “Try a millennium,” suggested Elsin. “I’ve run the numbers. Planets are big. But your basic point is valid. We’ve opted to populate based on an integrated, sustained, ecologically and technologically sound basis—and a lot smaller population.” He paused and looked at Trystin. “When will Mara be ready for initial air-breathing colonization?”

  “Somewhere in sixty to eighty years, or, if the Newsin bugs or your treatments work,” grinned Trystin, “a whole lot sooner.”

  “When will we really need it?”

  Trystin shrugged.

  “How about never?” injected Nynca with a laugh. “I’ve heard the sermon.”

  “When could the revs use it?” Elsin pursued.

  “Probably now. That has to be why they’re stepping up their attacks.”

  “Exactly. We’re using everything we have.” Elsin held up his hand and took a swallow of tea. “At some point, Trystin, advanced technology becomes meaningless. Does it really matter for most people in system-to-system transit if we’ve reduced translation lag from eight weeks to four days? In military terms, yes, we need that edge. But do the revs? What impact does that have on a troid ship loaded with enthusiastic young missionaries armed to fight for the Prophet? They don’t have anyone to go back to, and if they survive, they’ll become patriarchs and want for nothing.”

  “But … ?” Trystin tried to get a word in.

  “You’re designed as the ultimate military and killing machine possible. I don’t even want to know how many revs you’ve destroyed. Has it stopped them? We have perhaps ten thousand young people like you, and maybe a quarter of those have the physiological strength to take full modifications. With our population, and the resources sunk in you, unless each of you kills thousands of revs, we lose every time a single Service member dies.” Elsin broke off a chunk of warm bread, as though he wanted to tear someone’s arm off.

  “You think we should black-glass Orum and every other rev planet?”

  “No. That’s the problem. What kind of people do we become if we do that? We become our enemies. That’s something that goes through the entire Eco-Tech Dialogues, and yet each generation wants to forget it.”

  “I don’t see that.” Trystin bristled inside at the gentle rebuke. He’d read every page of the Dialogues. “They haven’t nuked us, and we’re not considering that kind of barbarism.”

  “They won’t. They need the real estate. But what about a nice four cubic kays of rock spiraling through Perdya’s atmosphere? Then how civilized will we be?”

  “Eventually, if I accept your argument, that would make sense.”

  Elsin laughed. “You shouldn’t accept my argument. Find a better one. Or a way to refute it. Except that’s why more time in the Service will be good for you.”

  “Can we talk about a few things besides the end of civilization?” asked Nynca. “We did see Salya last month, when she came in from Helconya.”

  “That’s worse than old Venus, but they say it can be as green as Earth once was.” Elsin sipped from the goblet. “Of course, it’ll take a good millennium and the output of half a system. Intellectual lemmings, that’s us.”

  “How is she?” asked Trystin.

  “She’s found someone—he’s a major, I think, or a commander.”

  “He found her,” suggested Nynca. “She wasn’t looking.”

  “That’s always the way it is. I found you, dear. You weren’t looking, either.” Elsin beamed.

/>   “I’m still not, even when you bury yourself in the garden. You do have your undeniable charms, more so than ever.”

  “He seems to have mellowed,” conceded Trystin.

  “Mellowed? He’s positively melted.” Nynca laughed. “Do you remember the time that you and Salya undermined the little rock bridge and he went right down into the carp pond?”

  “I didn’t know he knew so many obscenities.” Trystin grinned at his father. “What about the time that Salya put the fluorescent carp in the lower pond and told him that it had a carp-specific ichthyologic virus that had contaminated the old carp from Grandfather? Or the time that …”

  17

  Trystin took a last sip of the green tea from the heavy earthenware cup, the solid green one his grandfather had made and given him on his tenth birthday. “Ahhhh … you miss these things … .”

  “I think you’ve said that before.” Elsin set his own smaller and more delicate cup beside the plate that had been filled with fruit slices.

  “I probably have. I may have even said it more than once.”

  Elsin chuckled. “Do you want any more? You certainly huffed and puffed through that workout—”

  “No. Not until later. You’re working on the sewage thing this morning?”

  “I could put it off. You mentioned that you wanted to go out to the Cliffs. We could do that.”

  “They’re better in the afternoon. I just might take a walk this morning. I still want to stretch out the leg some more.”

  His father nodded. “If that’s what you want. I’ll finish this up then, and we can take the scooter out after lunch.”

  “That sounds good.” Trystin stood and walked over to the sink, where he rinsed the cup. “When will Mother be finished? I think she was gone before I even woke up.”

  “She mentioned some sort of auditions. She won’t be terribly late, but she didn’t think she’d get away early, either. She’s not the biggest fan of the Cliffs. So I think today would be a good day for that.”

  Trystin grinned. His father’s observation about his mother’s reaction to the Cliffs was an understatement, although how a former ships’ systems engineer had such an aversion to heights was another question. Then, again, there were more than a few contradictions in his mother. “I won’t be too long, but I did want to wander around some while it’s nice out.”

  “Whatever suits you. We can leave whenever you get back.” Elsin pushed back the heavy wooden chair, stood, and carried his cup and plate to the old-fashioned sink. After rinsing his own dishes, he reached for Trystin’s plate.

  “You don’t have to do mine.”

  “It’s no problem,” Elsin said. “Go take your walk, or whatever, and I’ll play with sewage, and then we’ll go visit the Cliffs. We could stop at Hyrin’s for lunch.”

  “That would be good. Do they still have that sautéed mushroom platter?”

  “Last time I was there they did.” Elsin racked the dishes, carefully moving the green cup to where it would not bang into anything.

  “It’s good. You can’t get food like that on Mara.”Trystin stood and looked toward the window and the clear greenish skies. “It’s nice out … I won’t be long.”

  “Just come and get me when you get back.” Elsin gave his son a smile, but did not head for his office.

  Trystin walked over and gave his father a quick hug. “I won’t be long, but I really want to stretch my legs before we take a ride anywhere.”

  Elsin nodded and watched as Trystin headed for the front door.

  Trystin closed the front door behind him, and paused there on the small porch, looking beyond the steps and down the winding walk, surveying the gardens, pausing to study the bonsai cedar in the circular planter where the stone walk split around it. The cedar didn’t look measurably different from the way it had when he had left for duty on Mara—or from the first time he had noticed it as a child. It couldn’t be quite the same, because bonsai required careful pruning and much more, but the differences were more subtle.

  A light breeze brushed across his face, bringing the combined scent of the low pines from the sides of the garden and the mixed fragrances of the early season flowers. Seasons—he had missed the changes in the temperature, in the foliage. While the botanical dome in Klyseen had helped, dome gardens weren’t the same.

  Sometimes he wondered. When he enjoyed plants and trees so much, why was he accepting pilot training? What did he really want from the Service? Or was he there because it was expected and because he hadn’t found what he wanted in life?

  He walked down the steps and stopped in front of the small cedar, letting his eyes run along the lines of the shaped limbs. His fingers touched the moss around the base of the tree—a shade dry. The clear skies promised little rain, but that could change within hours.

  The mid-morning sun warm on his face, Trystin walked down the walk from the house and then, his steps slow, down the lane to Sundance Boulevard, where he turned onto the narrower stone-paved walk that bordered Horodyski Lane as it curved back around the hill. Heliobirds flitted from the regularly spaced branches of the ancient Norfolk pines anchored in the middle stretches of the hill and that blocked his view of the hillside house. Below the trees, ten meters of turf stretched between the trees and the stone flower beds that separated the sidewalk from the grass.

  A young heliobird, identifiable as juvenile by the pale green feathers, perched on a branch tip. It hopped and fluttered awkwardly to clear its wing of the heavy spider-ant web stretched between the branches of a Norfolk pine. After a moment and another flurry, the juvenile freed its wing and streaked uphill and out of sight among the trees.

  Trystin smiled and resumed walking.

  The trifels overflowed the stone-walled flower bed beside the walk, their long green tendrils dropping almost to the grass as the tiny purple flowers offered their honeylavender perfume to the morning. A small electroscooter hummed down the lane carrying a dark-haired couple. The man offered a nod to Trystin; the woman stared.

  Trystin wanted to stare back, but only nodded. Was it his imagination or were the stares more frequent?

  He followed Horodyski Lane almost a half kay before he reached the vehicle gate and the edge of the Academy grounds. Outside the two stone pillars that framed the driveway up to the school, Trystin looked at the carved sign that proclaimed Cambrian Academy.

  “Knowledge … faith … power … and understanding.” He read the words on the four-pointed star logo under the name, recalling the words of the years-ago required readings from the original Eco-Tech Dialogues, not the more popular abridged versions.

  “Without power, knowledge is useless. Without knowledge, faith is tyranny. Without understanding, humanity is blind, and without all four, it is doomed.”

  Of course, he reflected, no one had wanted to use such a negative statement publicly. So the Academy had come up with the four words and the four-pointed star—knowl—edge, faith, power, and understanding.

  The polished blond wood of the sign looked the same as when Trystin had left the Academy almost a decade earlier, and probably no different from when his father had graduated. His mother had gone to the Science Academy.

  The low, square-trimmed hedges served as a barrier, channeling visitors toward the drive or the stone archway that covered the main pedestrian entrance.

  Trystin walked along the lane toward the main entrance, the spot where the surtrans still stopped, although, unlike many students, he had lived close enough to walk to school, even on the rainiest of days.

  The main gate was open, but Trystin did not go in. He sat on a stone bench under the pagoda-type roof where so many students had clustered to avoid the rain while they had waited for the surtrans.

  The athletic fields to the right of the classroom buildings were empty, and the whole complex seemed silent. Only a faint humming from open classroom windows gave any indication that the Academy was in session.

  As he watched, a student in the green blazer of a top f
ormer walked briskly from the physical science building toward the older brown-bricked main building. Then the student entered the building, and the illusion of stillness returned.

  Trystin stood and began to walk back toward the house, passing the sign and the four-pointed star again. Understanding—that was the hardest for him, and for most people, he thought. He looked uphill and continued walking, hoping that he saw no other electroscooters.

  18

  Carrying his kit and shoulder bag, Trystin stepped through the Perdya orbit station’s lock doors and onto the quarterdeck of the Roosveldt and into the faint smell of ozone and heated plastic. “Lieutenant Desoll, reporting for transport. Permission to come aboard?”

  “Granted, ser,” said the rating with the stunner in her watch belt. “Your orders?”

  Trystin handed across his orders and the Service ID card and placed his hand on the scanner.

  The green light flashed.

  “You’ll be sharing stateroom four with Lieutenant Yuraki.” The rating nodded and handed back the orders and the card. “He’s the supply officer. Two and four are on the left as you head aft. One is the captain’s. Five is the officers’ mess. We’ll be separating in less than an hour.”

  “Thank you.” Trystin eased down the narrow corridor, sensing the humming of the ship’s net through his implant. He turned sideways as he passed an officer with a major’s triple bars holoed on the breast of her shipsuit. Above the bars and the name “Laurentian,” she wore the antique wings.

  “Sorry, ser,” he said.

  “No problem, Lieutenant. You’re our passenger, the one who’s going to see if he can be a pilot?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Major Laurentian nodded. “This is a short hop—a nonduster. After you get settled, come on forward. You can watch and see if you know what you’re getting into.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You can thank me later.” She was gone, heading forward.

  Though bigger than most translation ships, the Roosveldt was still a small ship, tiny compared to the revvie troid ships, but then most translation ships were, given the limitations that Trystin didn’t fully understand, but suspected he would come to learn. The entire corridors extended no more than thirty meters, the last twenty comprising the section aft of the entry lock and minuscule quarterdeck.