The Parafaith War (26 page)

“Don’t they give you detachment physicals?” Salya frowned.

“I volunteered for a follow-up study on young officers.” Trystin offered a grin. “There was a pay bonus involved.”

“Trust Trystin to follow the easy credits.” Salya shook her head.

“It’s not that bad. Just an additional physical every two years or so with a follow-up interview. Besides, Dad said I’d need all those credits if I were to become a pilot officer.”

“The psychology people.” Salya snorted. “I told them, ‘No, thank you.’ I didn’t want any of their notes in my files, not even for their money. Just be careful what you. tell them.”

Trystin thought about his struggles with the ethical issues of theft. “I’ve tried to be careful.” He picked up another cake.

“They’re sneaky.” Salya looked at the tray, then finally took another lemon square. “This is the last one for me.”

“Who’s counting?” Trystin grinned at his sister. “Feeling guilty? Or worried that someone might see a bulge in the midsection?” He watched Salya blush. She’d always blushed easily.

“She doesn’t need to worry,” said Nynca. “What about this major?” asked Trystin. “Morn and Dad had mentioned-“

“Oh, you mean Shinji? He’s just a friend. He’d like it to be more.”

“Shinji?” asked Nynca. “As in the legend of Shinji Takayama?”

“How did you know his last name?” “Just a guess.”

Trystin could sense the sadness his mother masked with a quick smile, although he had no idea why a mere name would cause it. “What about him?”

“He’s tail, but not so tall as you. Dark hair, of course, parashinto heritage, but he does have blue eyes.” “They must be very blue,” opined Nynca. Salya blushed again.

“And he’s just a friend,” said Trystin with a grin. “Trystin …” Salya cleared her throat and looked down at the table, then up, brushing back the short blond hair away from her face. “He’s the head of the atmospheric transport section-they do the upper-atmosphere sampling, run the drones, and occasionally they provide shuttle pilots. They’re not deep-space pilots, though.” “Where’s he from?”

“Perdya, but he’s from Kaneohe, and he went to the Service Academy.” Salya turned to Trystin. “What about your romantic life?”

“It’s nonexistent. Has been since I left Mara.” “I can’t believe you haven’t found someone-or they haven’t found you.”

“The only one who’s found me is a major who gives me advice, and grief in equal doses, with an occasional smile.” “You’re intrigued, aren’t you?”

Trystin frowned. “I think so. But she’s also scary. Anticipates everything … way in advance.”

“And like a typical man,” laughed Salya, “you’re worried about losing control.” “I doubt I’d ever have it,” Trystin admitted. “For men, that’s even worse.” Salya shook her head. “She probably even makes you think the deep thoughts, the ones you’ve always avoided. Like why you’re even in the Service.” “That’s unfair,” Trystin protested. “Probably, younger brother.” Salya grinned. “Unfair… but true.”

“Salya - . . I could start on how you devour men… .” “I’d rather you didn’t. Let’s talk about your major and why you refuse to be intrigued by her.”

Elsin rose. “I think dinner’s ready. Bring your tea with you.” He picked up both pots and carried them toward the long black table in the dining area. Nynca stood and followed him.

Trystin took a last sip from his mug and looked at Salya, who had raised her eyebrows. “It’s simple enough. She’ll be running a corvette somewhere, and I don’t even know where the Willis operates. With my luck, I won’t see her again until I’m old and gray.”

“I have my doubts about that. I can’t imagine you being old and gray. And life is never simple.” “Pilots often don’t-“

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even hinted at it. You don’t have to say it. We all know.” Salya touched his arm, and he could see the dampness in the comer of her eyes. “Let’s go eat.” Trystin swallowed and followed his sister.

Trystin recovered his card from the surtrans reader, readjusted his beret, and stepped from the surtrans.

After crossing the covered stones of the platform, he walked up the wide stone steps to the main Service medical center on Perdya, just off radial three on the east side of Cambria. Beside the steps were stone flower boxes filled with rysya and trefils, each species about to bloom. Once inside, he headed for the information console. “Lieutenant Desoll, reporting for a follow-up physical.” The civilian technician at the front console nodded politely. “What kind of physical. Major?”

“The Farhkan study.” He laughed politely. “And while I wish to be a major. I’m still a lieutenant.”

“I see. You’re one of those. Let me check. What was your name?” “Desoll. D-E-S-O-L-L.”

“Here we are. Go to the second floor, all the way to the rear on the south wing to Dr. Kynkara’s office. Someone there will tell you where to go from there.” “Thank you.” “You’re welcome. Major.”

Trystin repressed the urge to correct her again and turned toward the wide ramp. On the way up, he passed two lieutenants, one walking stiffly with the measured gait of someone rehabbed from spine damage. Another casualty from Mara? Or somewhere else? Before Trystin got to the far end of the south wing, he reached another technician at another console.

“Ser?” The dark-haired woman looked up at him, waiting, her slightly slanted eyes skeptical.

“Lieutenant Desoll. I’m here for the Farhkan follow-up study.”

“Follow me, ser.” Without another word, she took off down a side corridor and around two corners until they reached four cubicles. Three had open doors. Inside each was a diagnostic console. “I’m sure you’re familiar with these.” She looked at him. “Your ID, ser?” Trystin handed it over.

She swiped it through the scanner, and the console ready light winked green. Then she handed it back.

“Just disrobe to your underwear, and let the console take its measurements and samples. When the restraints loosen, you can get dressed. Go to gamma three-that’s at the end of the corridor-and take a seat outside Dr. Kynkara’s office. They’ll find you there.”

“Thank you.” Trystin nodded, but the technician was gone. He disrobed, winced as the cold console enfolded him, and waited as the equipment measured and probed. When he could, he dressed and walked to the end of the corridor, where four plastic chairs lined the wall outside a closed door with the name Kynkara on it.

Somehow, the directions he’d received in the lobby didn’t match where the doctor’s office was, but he’d managed. He sat in the gray plastic chair and waited … and waited … and stood and walked around … and waited.

According to his implant, he waited nearly an hour before the doctor, a gray-haired woman, arrived with a Farhkan in tow. This Farhkan-as had the first one he had met-wore shimmering gray fatigues. Red eyes were set in the iron-gray hair of the square face, with longer and darker hair covering the top of the skull. Was this one the same, or did they all look alike?

“Lieutenant Desoll? We apologize, but Dr. Ghere was delayed. Oh, I’m Isabel Kynkara.”

“I understand.” Trystin nodded, inhaling slowly and taking in the vaguely familiar odor, the mixed scents of an unfamiliar flower, a muskiness, and cleanliness. “I believe I have met Dr. Ghere once before.” “That is correct.”

Again, Trystin was surprised by the feeling of the words scrolling through his mental screen.

Isabel Kynkara fiddled with the entry plate on her door, then stood back. “I’m just here to facilitate things. I’ll be in the next office, the one that says ‘Staff,’ waiting for Major Gresham and Lieutenant Ohiri.”

“Thank you.” Trystin wondered why he was thanking her, but gestured for the Farhkan to enter the office.

Ghere entered without speaking, and Trystin flicked on the interior lights, although the window-overlooking the med center gardens-really supplied enough light.

As Trystin closed the door, he had the feeling of the same silence as the last time he had met with the Farhkan, but with his enhanced implant he could sense more clearly the total block on communications that settled upon the room. How did the Farhkans manage it? And why did it matter, if they only wished to talk philosophy?

Ghere settled into the chair behind the desk; Trystin took the plastic seat before it.

“You thanked the doctor because you would like to make her comfortable, even if it was a form of a lie.” “Don’t you engage in such niceties?” “Not if the niceties involve untruths. I admit to being a thief, but not a liar.” A hint of amusement followed the words.

Trystin nodded, not exactly surprised that the conversation had gone back to theft. The Farhkan appeared persistent, and that bothered Trystin. “Have you thought about theft recently, Lieutenant?” “Not until I realized I would be speaking to you. At least, not recently. I did think about it after our last conversation.” “What did you conclude?”

Trystin pursed his lips. “I suspect theft, in the broadest sense, must occur in all intelligent species, at least if the species is to survive.”

“An interesting speculation. Perhaps … I would have to consider that at greater length. What about you? Are you a thief?”

Trystin did not answer. Ghere bothered him. In some ways, the doctor felt alien, in others, all too human. “I have upset you. Why is this so?” “You’re both alien and too familiar.” “That is true. You do not like to lie, do you?” “No,” Trystin admitted. “Do you know why you dislike lying?” “Not really, except it feels wrong.” “So … you live in a society that requires theft, and you refuse to admit you are a thief. You live in a society that encourages lying and avoid it. Is not living in a society where theft is necessary but refusing to admit it not a lie? Are you not a liar?” “I try not to be.” “Are you a thief?”

“I thought we had agreed that intelligence, by nature, requires a form of theft.”

“I do not recall agreeing exactly to that concept. Are you a thief?”

“In your terms. I’m not sure what you mean by theft,” Trystin said slowly.

“Let us lay that aside for a moment. There is an old saying. Force creates good.”

“I don’t recall that.” Trystin paused, licked his lips. “Might makes right?”

“Is there a difference between good and right?” “I’m not convinced that what people think is good is always right.” “Would you explain?” “Many people feel that what they believe in is good. A poor man would say that all people should be rich, but the Great Die-off showed that any world has a limit. It is right not to destroy a world’s ecology-” Trystin stopped, realizing that he was uncomfortable talking about destroying ecologies when, in effect, planoforming was destroying one ecology to replace it with another-and even in his terms, that was theft. “You are upset again.”

Trystin said nothing. Anything he said would get him in deeper.

“I think that is enough. Lieutenant. I would request you think some more about theft. And about whether any good is absolute.” Ghere stood. “Of course it’s not.”

“Then why do you humans persist in trying to impose such absolutes on others, even using force to do so? And why do you persist in refusing to identify yourself in terms of absolutes while trying to persuade others to accept those absolutes?” “We’re human.” “Is that good?” Ghere stood.

Trystin could feel the comm screen-or whatever it was-vanish. Ghere nodded.

Finally, Trystin turned to open the door and to get Dr. Kynkara, wanting to leave, but knowing that the questions the Farhkan raised wouldn’t vanish, not for a time, if ever, and that bothered him, too.

Later, as he walked out of the medical center, he tried not to shake his head. He still didn’t understand what the Farhkans wanted. Maybe he never would. They might be roughly human-looking, but that didn’t mean that they thought like human beings.

They clearly wanted something. The question was what, and Trystin didn’t even know where to begin to seek the answer-or whether he should, or would have the time. He had the feeling that before long surviving was going to become difficult again. Ulteena had said something about living in the present, and perhaps he should, at least while Salya and his parents and he were all together.

He kept walking toward the surtrans station, his thoughts swirling together.

Trystin stood at the chest-high barrier, leaning forward, his arms resting on the golden logs polished

smooth by craft, time, weather, and other arms. The wind whipped through his regulation-short hair, swooping up off the water and past the lockout on the edge of the Cliffs. Behind Trystin the Cliffs rose even higher, to nearly three thousand meters, but the jagged tops were lost in the clouds created by the moist air coming off the dark green waters of the Palien Sea.

Five hundred meters below the sheer drop-off, the waves crashed against the basalt walls, sending fine spray halfway up the Cliffs. In regular lines, the waves marched in and shattered themselves against the jagged rocks.

While cultivation and home-building and gardens had softened much of the land over more than eight centuries, nearly a thousand years of young and rough waters had not blunted the sharp edges of the Cliffs, although trees did poke from odd crevasses above the reach of the slightly salty sea.

“I never get tired of watching the sea.” Trystin’s words barely carried over the rushing of the wind and the crashing of the waves below. “It’s always relaxing.”

“It must be something in the blood.” Salya brushed her hair, not that much longer than Trystin’s, off her forehead. “Not from Mother.” They both laughed.

“Does Shinji like the ocean?” Trystin paused. “He must, if he’s from Kaneohe.”

“He does talk about the time when there will be oceans on Helconya.” “That’s going to be a long time.” “You have to have dreams.”

Trystin nodded. “I suppose so. You’re lucky to have the same ones.”

“They’re not quite the same,” she said wryly. “Oh. That’s why he’s still mostly a friend?” “Something like that.” Salya straightened. “If you want to have time before dinner to stop by the market and see if they have carnot nuts, we’d better get back to the car.”

“All right.” Trystin watched one more line of waves crest, white running along the tips, then break over the jagged needles at the base of the Cliffs. He straightened and turned, almost running into a Park officer, who stood in the middle of the stone walkway that led back up to the parking area. The dark-eyed officer’s right hand rested on the butt of the holstered shocker.