The Parafaith War (15 page)

“These are the questions this colloquy has attempted to bring forth for discussion… .”

Findings of the Colloquy [Translated from the Farhkan] 1227E.N.P.

As he waited for Ezildya, Trystin stared out through the closed glasstic door at the courtyard below and the small gardens where pebbled paths separated the differing shades of green into quiltlike patterns. A mother and her daughter picked beans from a plot in the far corner and placed them in a large brown sack.

The light of the setting sun turned the courtyard dome into a translucent pink, the last light of Parvati reflecting through the red skies of Mara.

The whispering of slippers on the hard floor alerted Trystin, and he turned. “Even through the dome, it’s red.”

“Yes. Like blood. That’s fitting, these days, I suppose.” In loose exercise clothes, Ezildya stood with her hands on the quilted spread that lay folded across the back of the cushioned plastic love seat. “How long have you been out of the med center?” “A couple of hours.”

“You came to see me. That was nice.” Ezildya remained behind the chair, her faint golden skin somehow pale, her dark eyes fixed on Trystin. “You came to see me when I was laid up.” “Yes, I did. What will you do now? Go back to your station? Or are they sending you somewhere else as a reward?”

“I’ve been offered orders to Chevel Beta. The orders were cut right after this … latest mess.”

“Did they give you a reason?” Ezildya lifted her hands from the spread.

Trystin looked back at her, seeing both bleakness and relief in her eyes. “Just the standard wording. You know, the phrase that says, for the needs of the Service, and for further training before your next assignment?” “Your next assignment?” “Pilot training.”

She winced. “You’re willing to give up everyone, aren’t you?”

“It isn’t that way anymore. Translation error is down, generally only a couple of days, sometimes a few hours on the short jumps.”

“Tell that to the people on the Linnaeus. Twelve years, was it, just between Perdya and Kajarta?” “That was sabotage of the translation system.” “What about Lieutenant Akihito?” Trystin flinched. Akihito had been the second test pilot on the translation systems. He’d turned up all right, after everyone thought he’d died when the system had failed, and he had reappeared healthy and still young and enthusiastic-just seventy years out of time and place.

“It does happen, Trystin. My mother lost a year on a routine maintenance test, and she thought she knew what she was doing.” Ezildya’s voice was soft. “And the translation errors build so much … what will your family think?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to Perdya. My father’s always been behind me.” Trystin laughed. “Even when he was convinced I was wrong.” “What about your mother?”

“She and my father generally agree. She used to be a ship systems engineer. Then she took up music, said it was the closest thing to the music of the spheres. She teaches now.”

Ezildya nodded to herself. “Isn’t this early for another assignment? You’ve only been on the perimeter for ten stamos, not even a full year.”

“Eleven stamos when I leave. A year to fifteen stamos is the normal rotation. It’s just a little early, maybe because schedules don’t match. Besides, there’s no station to go back to, not yet. Saboli-he was here when I got here-he left in less than a year. He said that was because the translation gates are dangerous in Duodec.” Trystin laughed. “I think he was just trying to find a logical reason for an arbitrary decision.”

“Where did he go?” Ezildya’s tone was bland. “Helconya orbit station. I told him to say hello to Salya. I guess he got there. I got a message from Salya suggesting that he wasn’t her type.”

“What does your sister think about your orders?” Ezildya shook her head. “That’s stupid of me. She wouldn’t know. She couldn’t. What do you think she would say?”

Trystin chuckled. “I don’t know. But she’s the one who always wanted to be in on the Helconya project. She talked about it when she first studied biology.” He shrugged. “I’d have to say that she’d say something like do what you really think you should.”

“I see. You’re all so … messianic. Does that come with the rev heritage, too?”

Trystin took a deep breath, feeling as though he’d been gut-punched. Finally, he asked, “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You really don’t believe in people, Trystin. You’re just like the poor revs you killed, except you’re better at it. We’ve made you better. You’re an Eco-Tech with blind faith, supreme confidence, and great hardwired abilities. Just like the revs, nothing shakes your faith. Not rows of bodies, not almost losing your leg, not the real probability of your own death.” She put her lips together tightly and blinked.

Trystin watched, then, as her cheeks dampened, limped forward, his leg stiff. The hint of fleurisle drifted toward him, a scent somehow misplaced in the oil-and plastic-tinged air of the Maran domes.

“No.” She put out a hand. “I can’t take any more hope. Do you know what it’s like to lose someone twice? Of course you don’t. You won’t ever lose anyone, because you’ve never let anyone close to your heart.” “That’s not fair.”

“It’s more than fair. You believe in your ideals more than in people. What comfort will your ideals give you when you’re finally broken by time and age, or by the revs-not that that will ever happen. You’ll break yourself. No one else could.” “Ezildya…”

“The grand and great Coalition may need you, and your type, but I don’t.” Ezildya looked at Trystin. “What is that supposed to mean?” “Just go … please, Trystin. If you don’t know, then all my explaining won’t mean a thing. And if you do, then”- she took a deep breath-“I really don’t need to explain.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so emotional. Just go. Go report to your training. Go save the rest of us. You can’t save me, or yourself, but go save the Coalition.”

Trystin stood there, a Coldness seeping through him. He

wasn’t like the revs, not at all. Couldn’t she see? “Just go. You will anyway. Sooner or later. Just go.” Finally, he turned and walked slowly to the door. Nothing he could say would change her mind. That he knew.

The port tube-shuttle whispered to a stop at the EastBreak station. Trystin lifted his kit and shoulder bag and stepped out onto the green and gray tiles of the well-lit underground station. The glow-tubes overhead shed a soft light almost like that of the tunnels in Klyseen, but the air carried the faintest scents of the greenery that lay above and outside the station.

A mother and a small boy walked toward him across the clean and polished tiles of the station floor.

“He’s a lieutenant,” whispered the dark-haired boy, who dropped his mother’s hand to point. “Like Daddy.”

Trystin touched the edge of his beret briefly, then smiled at both the boy and his dark-haired mother. He walked quickly along the lighted tunnel to the steps up to the surtrans station, pausing to swipe his card through the reader to pay for the tube-shuttle-the same two creds it had always been. -

As he started up the stairs, he tried not to limp. His leg didn’t hurt, but it was still stiff, despite all the stretching exercises he’d done in rehab and even on the Adams on the way back to Perdya.

At the top, on each side of the wide staircase, framed in blue-stone, were miniature gardens, complete with the bonsai cedars that supposedly dated to the founding of Cambria. Behind them were the carved green marble slabs that bore representations of the evergreens of old Earth-old Earth before the Great Die-off, before the forests had been turned to instant charcoal.

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.