The Chaplain's War - eARC

by Brad R Torgersen

  I tried to remember my military history from Earth. Traditionally, military prisoners were kept for three reasons: extraction of military information, collateral for prisoner exchange, or in accordance with treaties and rules of war. In our case almost none of these situations applied. So what value were we—if any—to the mantes? Beyond objects of curiosity?

  During one of Earth’s worst world wars, one of the European armies had put people into extermination camps based on religious or ethnic affiliation. Many of these poor prisoners had become subjects for horrific medical experimentation. I shuddered at the thought of all of us being used as the human equivalent of lab rats or dissection frogs.

  “Who knows how the mantes think,” I said. “They’re as different from us as we are from them. Maybe they have some kind of ethic about total annihilation being wrong?”

  “Being stuck here forever doesn’t seem much better than being dead,” she said.

  “I guess that’s why Chaplain Thomas wanted me to build this,” I replied, motioning with my hands to the walls I was constructing.

  She pulled her knees to her chin and returned to staring at the dirt.

  In the two local years that followed, the walls of the chapel got higher, and higher, until finally I was forced to contemplate a roof. Several enterprising people in the valley had built kilns, and were firing bricks as well as tiles. I bartered work for materials, and had to put in several stone-and-mortar pillars to hold the ceiling up. With rainstorms occasionally blowing through, I found out very quickly where the leaks and holes were. I also found out that my tile-laying technique needed work, such that by the warm season of the third year I’d replaced the roof almost entirely with a much more durable, long-lasting patchwork.

  This had not deterred attendance. Even before the roof was on, I was getting people coming in the door. Or rather, the frame where I eventually built a door. They sat on the floor until I bartered for some roughly-quarried benches.

  If ever the attendees expected any kind of sermonizing from me, they didn’t show it. And I didn’t offer. Chaplain Thomas had been very specific: build it, keep it clean, and welcome all who wish to enter. Which was precisely what I did. Including the collection of several religious symbols and statuary from people who offered to make donations—which I then arrayed on a stone table at the front of the chapel. The table eventually began to serve more or less as a multidenominational altar.

  For light, we had to get creative. Without electricity we couldn’t use or recharge our flashlights. One of the native plants had inedible roots that, when their pulp was crushed and pressed , yielded a thick sweet-smelling oil. All of us began using it in small clay lamps, so that the chapel remained open sometimes long after sundown.

  For myself, I had just one small room in the rear with a clumsy door made of salvaged native wood. My cot was actually the same stretcher Chaplain Thomas had been carried on—now with clay blocks at the feet and the head to hold it knee high above the ground.

  Life in the valley assumed a kind of surreal normalcy.

  With the rigidity of military regimen practically dissolved down to a small core of stalwart officers and older NCOs, people formed their own small communities and townships. Roads sprang into being where feet crossed between the villages. A civilian constabulary of former MPs and several volunteers formed up to take care of the few actual crimes anyone might recognize as being worth policing—namely, theft and murder. Which was extremely rare. With so much room in the valley and only a few thousand of us to go around, anyone who didn’t much like his neighbors could easily move away.

  Farms sprang up wherever there was water to be had. People with green thumbs quickly began to figure out how to coax some of the native plants and even a few of the smallish animals into domestic capacity. There was talk of formalizing plans for an elaborate series of canals and ditches that would divert water from the streams and small ponds in the foothills, down to the thirsty valley floor.

  It wasn’t an easy existence, but it was an existence all the same.

  And since the mantes had practically vanished—save for the occasional patrol that passed through now and again, just to remind us who was in charge—we could almost forget ourselves.

  Almost.

  Fulbright surprised me when she went into the preaching business. In addition to my chapel, there had been at least a dozen other structures built in the valley that were dedicated to some religious purpose. And people who’d never given religion much thought during their whole lives on Earth suddenly began picking and choosing which churches or religions suited them best.

  While I went with a soft hand, some others were pounding the pulpit. Which was fine. Whatever people needed to hear to get them through the to the end of each day, and to the tail of every week.

  And while I was still technically only the Chaplain’s Assistant, people had begun to more or less treat me as if I was Chaplain Thomas’s surrogate: rendering me the same deference and respect that they might have rendered him. I’d have objected to such treatment if I’d not realized that the behavior had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the fact that many people simply needed to revere someone or something other than themselves. Who I was was not as important as what I represented—as the personification of the chapel itself.

  I never got the big crowds that Fulbright—Deacon Fulbright—sometimes got. But the regulars were friendly, and of all manner of belief. From the hesitant agnostics to the devoutly theistic. Mine was the building that became known as the quietest space in the valley.

  To come and hear with your heart, not with your ears.

  Until that morning almost five years after the invasion, when my chapel door yielded a surprising and unlikely inquirer…

  Chapter 51

  “I was told what happened,” said the Queen Mother.

  It was the next day, following my near-miss with death at the hands of the mantes onboard the Queen Mother’s flagship.

  She was in my quarters, alone. Though I could tell by looking at it that she’d already begun the process of dismantling her disc. Several compartments appeared to have been evacuated, leaving nothing but gaping holes. Though this hadn’t affected the disc’s impellers, which allowed it to float and travel freely.

  “I was stupid,” I said, “And it almost cost me. If I’d been thinking more clearly I’d have stayed put until you or someone I knew came back for me. I should not having been wandering through the ship alone.”

  “And my people should not have been seeking to harm you in direct violation of my orders,” she said. Her speaker grill mechanism was still working too—I thought I detected anger in the mechanical tone.

  “They will be dealt with,” she said.

  “Not too harshly I hope,” I said.

  “They would have killed you,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” I said. “It definitely seemed like it in the moment. But that lead trooper—the one around whom the others seemed to have rallied—he hesitated in the end. I got the sense from him that even though he didn’t like me, he wasn’t quite prepared to do cold-blooded murder. Had I been an armed human on the field of battle, I have little doubt he’d have tried to cut me down. He wasn’t prepared for me to offer no defense, save a challenge to his conviction.”

  “Boldly played,” she said.

  “Or stupidly,” I said. “Sometimes the dumbest move is the move that gets the best results.”

  “Just so,” she said. “I am currently engaged in some dumb moves of my own. As you can see, I have begun the process of deconstructing my carriage. It is an uncomfortable and not altogether orthodox process. I have had to reassure my flag officers several times that I am not ill—either in body, or in mind. I tell them it is an experiment, nothing more.”

  “And if they decide you are compromised to the point they can’t trust your authority?”

  “No mantis has ever usurped the Queen Mother,” she said. “We have had quarrels. Even on very rare occasion
s, violent ones. But nobody has ever removed a Queen Mother without her consent. As long as I live, my word is law on this vessel, and throughout mantis space. Rest assured. And any who transgress my word…as I said, they will be dealt with.”

  I cringed, imagining what that could possibly mean for the dozen or so aggressive and aggravated mantes who’d molested me in the corridor the day before.

  “But aren’t we basically usurping the new Queen Mother’s authority?” I asked. “So far as we know, this is the only ship on which you have any actual control. What if when we get to this staging area you’ve spoken of before, the new Queen Mother orders you stripped of your power? Or even killed?”

  “As I said,” she said, “there have been quarrels. I am hopeful that because of my successor’s relative youth in her new role, and because of the unexpectedness of my return, that both she and the Quorum will acquiesce.”

  “But will they let you actually halt the war, when you were the one who was pushing for it in the first place?”

  “My newfound position on the matter of the war will take some explaining. Of that there can be no question. I have been trying to formulate my plan. For when I must ultimately stand before the Quorum of the Select itself, and make my argument. Where once the mantis you call the Professor came to me, and persuaded me to halt the Fourth Expansion, now I must do the same. But not for the sake of mere research or curiosity. I must convince the Quorum that a permanent peace with humans is not only the most pragmatic course of action, but also the most moral course too.”

  “Moral,” I said, testing the word on my tongue. “I’ve never heard either you or the Professor use it like that before. Do mantes even have morals?”

  “We have what you humans understand to be ethics, and we pride ourselves on our logic. But yes, underneath it all, there are rules by which our society operates. We need them to function, much as you do. We believe in…I think you humans call it, right and wrong? Though there is no spiritual component to these decisions. We do not fear for the future of our souls should we make wrong choices. Or…we didn’t used to.”

  I looked at her, and saw the flush returning to the soft places on her body. Her shame was welling up again, just like it had before.

  “I’d like to be able to lock my door,” I said, trying to distract her.

  “I…Yes. Yes, your technical assistants have already been told, and I have authorized it. It will be done.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “No need to thank me. It was my fault I exposed you to potential harm in the first place. Here again I have caused hurt. In fact, everywhere I look lately—my choices, my own actions—I cause hurt. This hurt does not seem to be connected to any physiological problem of any sort. I have researched this phrase you used—absolution—according to the Professor’s own notes. I am afraid I do not see much use in any of the Earthly rituals he was aware of, as a result of his lengthy study on Purgatory. Save one. Confession—talking about my wrongdoings with someone else. That does seem to make a difference.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yes. After we had our conversation in the observation bubble yesterday, I felt reenergized. Not relieved, per se, but I felt as if I had discovered a possible direction. There was work to be done. And I was determined to do it. So much so that I am afraid I took leave of my senses and left you to fend for yourself.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “My technical helpers came to the rescue. And it’s not like turnabout isn’t fair play. When we were onboard the Calysta it was you who became surrounded by hostile enemies. So let us consider the debt evened, and the fault resolved. Done?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  I got up out of my chair and began to walk around the room.

  “If you’re feeling claustrophobic,” she said, “I could arrange for an escorted tour.”

  “It’s not the ship that interests me. It’s the goings-on outside the ship. The battles still being fought while we race to begin the recall process. I fear a great deal, and hope against the odds.”

  “Myself as well,” she said. “The vessel is moving at maximum possible velocity now. We will arrive at the first staging base very soon. Then it can be seen whether or not my words can pull us back from the heart of the storm I’ve created.”

  The door opened and my technician friends arrived. They almost bowed in the Queen Mother’s direction—not speaking a word, but seemingly transmitting their greetings and deference carriage-to-carriage.

  “We would like to know more about children,” they said.

  The Queen Mother looked at me. “Do you mind if I stay for this?”

  “No,” I said. “Though I can’t say I’ll be able to give good answers. I am not a parent.”

  “When human children are hatched,” said one of the three, “are they afforded no assistance at all?”

  “What do you mean by ‘assistance’?” I asked.

  “Technological,” said another. “For the mantis, his or her first thoughts are in conjunction with the carriage-joining process.”

  “You mean,” I said, “the newborn’s first thoughts are as a result of the carriage-mantis mental interface?”

  “Yes,” they said. “The newborn begins learning almost immediately. It is a process that takes many of your weeks—as the fundamental skills and knowledge are slowly integrated into the young adult’s mind.”

  “Almost like loading an operating system onto a blank computer,” I theorized.

  “Very much like that, yes,” said the one who’d not spoken up yet.

  “For humans it’s not that easy,” I said. “We have no machine-mind interface. Nothing to download or upload. The baby—what we call our version of a pupa—is totally helpless and dependent on its mother and father for food, protection, cleaning, you name it. The mother and father do it all.”

  “When does learning begin?”

  “Immediately,” I said. “But for us it’s purely experiential. And it takes a long time. Most of us don’t even know how to walk until we’re many Earth months old. Talking takes longer still. In fact language skills are a primary emphasis right up until true adulthood, and even then it’s never a totally complete process. So you might say, our journey from infancy to adulthood never really finishes. At least not for most of us.”

  The three technicians drifted away to converse amongst themselves while I sat at my desk and sipped at a cup of cool water. I’d have loved a soft drink or something with a little zing to it. But at least my water didn’t have dirt in it.

  “You receive no template?” the Queen Mother asked me.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Our young adults are given a basic set of what you might call ‘operating instructions’ which prepares them properly to interact with adults and the mantis way of life. This happens through the carriage interface, and the template is the same for all of us. Regardless of our station. It’s part of what allows us to begin individuated training so early, and also what keeps our society cohesive and rooted in mantes laws and traditions. It is what makes us who we are.”

  “For us, all of that comes in time,” I said. “But everything depends on the parents.”

  “No two parents give the same template?”

  “Hardly. Though many try. A great deal hinges on traditions and communities, national original, ethnic identity, among many other things.”

  “Then the templates of one parent or group of parents could be totally different from the templates of another,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “No wonder humans are divided against humans,” she said.

  I could hardly disagree with her.

  “But it’s not all bad,” I said. “For most of us, childhood is a wonderful time of discovery and exploration. Barring a few bumps and bruises.”

  “You liked your childhood?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Mantes young adults are raised in collective training,” said the Queen Mother. “Depen
ding on who mates with whom—the female, and the male—their eggs will be destined to form new generations of farmers, factory workers, warriors, technicians, computer experts, and also researchers like the Professor.”

  “Can mantes ever change jobs?” I asked.

  “What does that mean?” asked one of the technicians; they’d jointly floated back over to listen to the conversation.

  “Can a mantis decide for him or herself that, say, he or she no longer wants to be a farmer and instead wants to be an architect?”

  “Why would we do that?” asked one of the technicians.

  I looked at the Queen Mother. This was a bit unsettling.

  “Secondary templates,” she said. “Once the basics have been disseminated into the young adult consciousness, then comes the preparation for productive application in mantes industrial society.”

  “So what was your secondary template?” I asked her.

  She thought about it for a moment.

  “I was female, so this of course put me on track for the Quorum of the Select at an early age. We have far more males than females among us. I suppose my template was decided accordingly.”

  “And these technicians,” I said, tipping he head in their direction, “they must have been secondarily templated for starship maintenance.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Does that bother you?” I asked the technicians.

  “Does what bother us?” they said in unison.

  “Does it bother you that before you were even hatched—or pupated—that all three of you had your roles in mantis culture selected for you without your knowledge or consent? That you were in fact programmed for this specific work?”

  They stared at me.

  “We are what we are,” they said. “How could it be otherwise? Each mantis does his part for the whole. We do not worry about how each of the different pieces of the machine feels about its function, simply that our specific piece works as well as it can, so that the machine as a whole works as well as it can. If we started doubting ourselves…it would lead to chaos.”