The Parafaith War

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “No, thank you, Sister … I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”

  “I’m Sister Myra.”

  Trystin nodded. Married women used their first names. “No, I just had two loads.”

  “That’d be a lot to pay to send back to Nephi.”

  He laughed. “No, this is for here.”

  “Be visiting friends?”

  “Old and new. But aren’t all of us children and friends under the Lord and the Prophet?” The phrasing suggested another small step in implying that the current Revenant leadership wasn’t exactly infallible.

  “Children and friends … that’d be an odd way of putting it.”

  Trystin smiled instead of answering directly. “He is our Father. And all who share His bounty should be friends. So …” He spread his hands to continue the implication. So far, Trystin knew he was on sound theological ground, if feeling hypocritical, considering the uses he had for the equipment.

  “Perhaps you should take up a calling in communicating for the Lord, Brother Hyriss. You have the gift.” Sister Myra bobbed her gray head sagely.

  “I’m afraid that’s far above me. When you have seen the endless stars in His mansions, then you realize how mighty is all creation—” Trystin broke off and smiled sheepishly. Trying to straddle the line of the devout and the returned and not sounding overblown was hard, even with the brief ings. He sounded so pompous, so full of bullshit. “I guess I get carried away.”

  “Have you seen the … other peoples?”

  “The Ecofreaks?” Trystin had been told to expect the question. “Yes. At least, I have seen their ships and their bodies.”

  Sister Myra glanced over her shoulder. “Are they small and dark, with deep eyes and foul words?”

  Trystin pulled at his chin. “Some are. Some are tall and fair.”

  “They say some are golems, more machine than person.”

  “That I would not know. They looked like people, and they died like people.” Trystin paused, knowing he was treading on delicate ground. “Some fought bravely, and some did not.” He shrugged and turned to lift the second box.

  Sister Myra followed him. “You look like Colin, a little, except he is younger, and his Farewell was last year.”

  “I will pray for the success of his mission and his return.” Trystin set the box just inside the door to the room. Sister Myra remained outside, apparently cool in the heat of the blinding sun.

  Trystin wiped his forehead.

  “You’re like many from Nephi. It’s cooler there.”

  Trystin nodded.

  “He was my only boy.”

  What could he say? That it was damned unlikely young Colin would return? Trystin shifted his weight from one boot to the other. Finally, he said softly, “I wish I could see the future and tell you what might be, but, as we know, that remains to the Lord. We just have to persevere in doing His will.”

  “He was tall, like you, and his smile was a lot like yours.”

  “There isn’t anyone like your son, Sister Myra, and I share your prayer that the Lord will keep and preserve him.” Except even the old Christian god had only raised one son from the dead.

  “Do you think it will end?”

  “All things end.”

  “Soon, I meant.” Sister Myra paused and added, “The Prophet said that one day he would return, and we would all dwell in peace.”

  Everything he said was getting him in deeper water. He pursed his lips before answering. “I’m no tactician, and, as you can see, I am what I am. I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and I have seen people who should live, somehow, as brothers and sisters, killing each other.” Trystin paused, deciding he couldn’t quite be so blunt. “The fighting should end. The Lord has said to bring His word to those who do not believe, and, as a simple man, I cannot see how someone who is dead can hear the word of the Lord. Even the Prophet wrote ‘do not say, better my cousin than my neighbor, for all men and women are neighbors in the eyes of the Lord.’”

  “Will they stop if we stop? You say that it should end, but will it? In time for Colin and others to return?” asked Sister Myra.

  “I don’t know. That is something that the Lord will make known.” Trystin still hadn’t figured out how to make such a will of the Lord known, or how far he could go in planting the germs of his ideas without being denounced as a heretic. As he spoke he wondered why he insisted on opening his mouth, on going beyond the letter of his mission when he hadn’t even accomplished his assignment yet—or figured out how he was going to change it to do what he wanted. But so long as people like Sister Myra felt the way they did, completing his original mission would do nothing. Even a hundred missions like his would do nothing. So he added a few more damning words, hoping he could build on them. “All I can do is what I can, and what the Lord asks.”

  “That is a great deal, Brother Hyriss.” Sister Myra nodded. “I wish you well.” Her heavy shoes clicked on the concrete as she walked back to the office.

  Trystin stepped into the room and closed the door. He wiped his forehead. He had more than a little work to do, both in constructing the laser and in trying to figure out how to complete his own plans for using the blind faith of the Revenants, damned fool that he was getting to be. But, damn it, the Revenants were people, too. Ulteena would have understood. So would his parents. He shrugged. Then there were people like the Park policeman at the Cliffs and the fanatical revvie officer who would have fought forever—the kind of people who refused to look beyond their narrow prejudices. And there were all too many of those on both sides.

  He looked at the Book of Toren on the table, hoping he could find answers between the lines of the scriptures. He wasn’t going to find answers in the words themselves.

  He smiled. Or was he? Another prophet … a son and a temple raised in three days … and who would kill someone who was already dead? If he could put those together correctly with the Service-required assassination … then maybe he could shake the Revenants’ faith.

  He lifted the Book of Toren and began to flip through the pages. The laser could wait a few minutes.

  63

  Trystin’s eyes drifted from the thin sheaf of papers on the side table to the three sections of equipment on the bed—essentially a handgunlike laser projector, a cable, and a flat powerpak that could be worn under his clothes. He could have assembled the components into a relatively standard laser far more quickly, but his tentative plan required a laser with a wider focus, something that would create what amounted to a pillar of flame rather than a large surgical hole through a body. After all, hadn’t every deity in existence used a pillar of fire at some point or another?

  After three days of driving around Wystuh and studying the general layout of the city—in between building the device on the bed and assembling the scriptural background represented by the slim stack of papers on the table, he still had to complete his planning. He was operating backward, figuring the theological support and the necessary weapons configuration before establishing whether he could even pull his own plan off, if he could even call it a plan.

  Making Jynckla a victim of the Lord—or a sacrifice—laughable, except it was better than a meaningless assassination linked to the Coalition, better than the meaningless death of another soldier. Somehow … in some way, it had to be tied more closely to the faith of the Revenants, but he wasn’t making that much headway.

  After a last look at the equipment, he split the pieces apart, putting the handgun section in the printed paper catalog he’d picked up and hollowed out, the cable in one pocket of the clothing bag, and the powerpak in the bottom of the main section. The catalog itself went under the Book of Toren on the side table.

  Then he picked up the single remaining large box, into which he had packed all the leftovers, and carted it out to the car, where he placed it in the rear seat.

  With a deep breath, he got in and started the car, pulling it out of the lot and heading in toward the Temple. The Temple was the center of the f
aith, and maybe seeing it up close would help his scattered thoughts. Maybe that was why he’d avoided it, because he was afraid seeing it would show him how stupid his half-formed plan was.

  Wystuh was a city based on an octagonal grid—that had been the vision of the cities of the Promised Lands since the first prophets of the Lord had settled the Jerush system.

  Trystin parked the car just inside the First Octagon and walked up East Temple Avenue. Across the avenue was a long building constructed of large white stones. The darkframed marquee bore the words “Tonight! Ballem Michel—the Seer of Music.” Wondering what a seer of music might be, Trystin walked slowly toward the Temple Square, the center of Wystuh.

  The faint breeze that whispered around him was not enough to cool him, and he took out the handkerchief and blotted his forehead quickly as he walked, hoping no one saw. Beside him were low buildings, none more than four stories, containing shops. Several storefronts were empty, but even the empty ones looked immaculately clean.

  The wide avenue carried what seemed to be light traf fic—occasional trucks, regular electrobuses, and personal cars. Trystin sniffed. The faint odor of burned hydrocarbons permeated the atmosphere, along with something that smelled like popcorn.

  It was popcorn. As he passed the next cross street, he could see a cart and a vendor selling bags of the stuff. A mother handed her daughter a bag, and the two walked hand in hand down the glitter-white sidewalk away from Trystin.

  After walking another block, he stopped opposite the square, studying the white walls and eight spires of the Temple that rose over a hundred meters into the blue-pink sky. The Temple’s northwest spire bore the laser-imposed image of the Angel of the Prophet.

  Surrounding the Temple were the eight Arks of the Revealed—each over fifty meters tall. Each Ark was really a building sacred to some divine aspect of the Prophet—the Ark of Teaching, the Ark of Healing, the Ark of Technology, the Ark of Ministry, the Ark of Music, the Ark of the Family, the Ark of the Producing Land, and the Ark of the Producing Waters.

  At the corner, with a casual look at the Fountain of Life, its eight jets forming a single column of water over thirty meters high, Trystin crossed the street and entered the octagonal section of land that held the Temple and the eight Arks.

  Even before he neared the Temple gates, he could sense the energies and the hidden systems that most Revenants would have denied ever existed. As he stepped within meters of the closed gates, he reached out with his implant, ever so gently, to scan the systems—and almost froze where he stood.

  His false identity, superficial memories, and basic Revenant gene patterns would not be enough. The data net and systems that lay behind the shimmering white walls, while not as powerful as most Coalition systems, were certainly powerful enough to hold the absolute identity of every true Revenant admitted to the Temple, and the energies held there were certainly enough to incinerate him. But the system was an open-weave operation—that he could tell, and he might be able to tap it from outside.

  His lips pursed, he let his eyes flick to the schedule board. “11:00 A.M., Thursday. Ceremony of Remembrance.” Underneath the board was a screen, and Trystin stepped up to view the information scrolling there.

  After a time, he nodded. Certainly, all the high Revenant military mission officials would be there, since the ceremony was to honor the missionaries sent to remove the abominations of the Lord. If he could enter the Temple … he thought about the warnings and the force of the systems less than meters away and repressed a shiver.

  Instead he stepped toward the Temple walls, not close enough to touch them, but close enough to see what more he could sense with his implant.

  The system was in standdown, or partial standdown. Somehow, he needed a key to the Temple’s systems. A key to the Temple? He swallowed. Did he have the actual protocol? Had the Farhkans stolen it, just to give it to him? And why? Because no Farhkan could ever approach the Temples?

  The key raised a few other questions—like why he’d never told the Service. Was it just his stubbornness? Or some subconscious suggestion by the Farhkans? Trystin shivered.

  Did the Service know? They couldn’t. They would have taken him apart like a broken timepiece to get something they thought was a key to the Revenant Temples. Had he repressed the key—and letting anyone besides his father know—because he unconsciously knew what the Service would have done?

  Was there any doubt? Was deep space cold?

  Slowly, after swallowing and taking a deep breath, he called up the protocol that the Farhkan had given him, as well as the override command line his father had designed. He concentrated, trying to match them, but, while they seemed at least vaguely similar, there was no real way to tell unless the systems were in full use. The open-weave receptors were shut down, and the main Temple doors were closed at the moment.

  Trystin stood there for a time, but without either success or failure.

  Did he have enough faith to walk through those gates when they were operational? This time he did shudder. He had two days to decide. Were they enough? Were they too much?

  Faith? What did the Revenants know about faith?

  “Brother? Are you all right?” A young sister stood in front of Trystin, wearing the blue sash of a Temple Guide.

  He shook his head. “Yes, I mean, Sister.”

  “It is overwhelming sometimes. Even I look up there and get the chills.” She smiled, only a friendly smile, and Trystin momentarily wanted to hug her. “You haven’t been here before, have you?”

  “No. This is my first visit to the Temple.”

  “I hope it won’t be the last.”

  “That’s not my decision, but the Lord’s.” Trystin offered a smile. After what he’d just been through, that was about how he felt.

  “It makes you feel that way, but you’ll get over it.”

  “Thank you, Sister. May your faith always so comfort you.” He hoped he could find enough faith to do what looked to be necessary. Still, there might be a way out. He needed to check the Ministry of Missions, more closely than he’d been able to do from the car.

  “May yours be of comfort also,” she answered before turning to another visitor to the Temple Square.

  Trystin slowly walked around the Square, taking in the eight Arks that surrounded the Temple, studying their apparent exits and entrances, and using his implant and his hearing to trace what seemed to be underground passages from the Arks to the Temple itself.

  Finally, after walking around the Temple for over an hour, he started down East Kingdom Avenue, toward the Ministry of Missions, where Jynckla had his office. Even East Kingdom Avenue, while almost dust-free, had patches in the bright white pavement.

  He walked by the Ministry of Missions, neither hurrying nor dawdling. The entrance to the heavy-walled, four-story Ministry building was definitely, if unobtrusively, guarded and the heavy lasers concealed there were even more obvious than those hidden in the Temple gates. The two doormen were also heavily armed, although Trystin could have taken care of them. He just couldn’t have taken care of the lasers.

  That almost mandated an effort to enter the Temple.

  He walked back to the car without retracing his steps past the Ministry. He still needed to find a place to dump the leftover electronics. He needed to think some more, a lot more, about the application and conversion and uses of faith. And about his faith in the Farhkans and his father.

  He tried not to shiver as he started the internal-combustion engine, repressing thoughts about how to counterfeit a prophet without becoming a martyr—or a statistic.

  64

  The crowds hurried toward the Temple, flooding past the eight Arks and the Fountain of Life, and Trystin tried to remain inconspicuous as he walked toward the Temple, equipment strapped in place under the white coat.

  Following two young women in long white outfits, he stepped toward the gate, ignoring the glance of the uniformed Soldier of the Lord standing in the alcove.

  “Abom
ination! Abomination of the Lord!” The words rang out through the entire Square. Revenants of all ages turned toward the Temple gates.

  Trystin looked around with the others, although his heart was pounding and his body was cloaked in instant cold sweat.

  “Abomination of the Lord!”

  The Soldier of the Lord, hard-eyed, turned toward Trystin, but before he could act, a lance of light flared from the Temple gates toward Trystin—burning, BURNING, BURNING!!!!

  Trystin sat bolt upright in bed. His arms twitched, and a faint burning ran through his whole body. He forced himself to take a deep breath, then another, and a third, but he kept shuddering.

  He wiped his forehead on the counterpane.

  Finally, he got up, and soft light flooded the room. It was only slightly after midnight, and he walked into the fresher, where he splashed cold water on his face.

  He shivered again.

  Clearly, his subconscious was telling him that trying to walk into the Temple was suicidal, not to mention foolish, ill-considered, and just plain stupid.

  But the problem he faced was that turning Jynckla into an example of the Lord for perpetuating slaughter wouldn’t have the impact he needed if it didn’t happen in the Temple itself. And he couldn’t “disappear” in the streets the way he could behind a flash of light in the Temple.

  His other problem was that he didn’t know how open the Temple’s net really was. Still …

  He splashed his face again, trying to cool his flushed skin.

  He could just try to enter the Temple, not too obviously, and feel out the systems. If his efforts didn’t work, he could just slip away and try something else. No one knew him, not really.

  He took a deep breath and used a towel to blot away the water.

  Why nightmares? He didn’t recall having had many nightmares until the last few years. He hadn’t even had nightmares when he’d been on the Maran perimeter. He’d only had nightmares when he’d started to think about the war, really think, and to understand that he could die, that he could be killed. Was that why those who ran societies liked their soldiers young? So they didn’t have the age or the experience to think about the stupidities of the wars they fought—or might fight? He tried to laugh, but couldn’t.