The Parafaith War (55 page)

Great to be so popular, reflected Trystin. Still … maybe-Just maybe-his plan had worked. There were only two scouts on his tail, and that was standard for an unidentified commercial ship. Then again, they didn’t need more than two for an unarmed ship, although they wouldn’t have known that the shields were military strength.

His body burned almost continually now-clearly the result of overuse of his implant and high reflex and metabolic rates.

The EDI traces showed the steady closure of the scouts. Trystin checked the dust density. Still too high for translation, but thinning rapidly.

Another ten minutes passed, and the two Revenant ships were closing, even as the Paquawrat had begun to warp the time envelope, ever so slightly.

There were no further transmissions from the Revenants, just the steady closure of the two scouts.

Trystin’s thoughts seemed crystal clear beyond the pain, yet he knew he wasn’t thinking clearly. What would happen when he returned? If he returned? He recalculated the closure rates and plotted them against the dust density. Close-it would be close.

Too close. He upped the fusactor to one hundred ten percent and clicked off the time. Basically, he had five minutes at that level before he started to degrade the system, and he should have applied the additional acceleration earlier. The apparent clarity of his thoughts was a definite illusion. The scouts inched closer on the representational screen; the dust density edged downward; and the minutes passed.

After four minutes and fifty standard seconds of one-hundred-ten-percent power, Trystin dropped the fusactor output to one-hundred-percent normal rated maximum output.

The rate of closure had grown smaller. Had the Revenants strained their systems too much in the beginning?

If he did make it back, to what could he look forward? Would it be a suicide command in the Parvati system? Or a quiet disappearance? The subject of riots in Cambria every time he stepped outside? Would the Revenants launch some sort of all-out attack? Would he be the scapegoat for it? Had he jabbed at their religion too hard? Or would anyone care? His lips tightened as he thought about the key to the Temple. …

The dust density dropped to the point of allowing emergency translation. Trystin checked the ranges. The Revenants were still out of max torp range.

He kept calculating-range versus dust; dust versus range.

“Initiate translation sequence.” Trystin pulsed the order to the system. “Sequence initiating.”

As he monitored the power buildup, another thought - struck him. There had to be holos of him in the Temple, and the Service would want to know how he’d gotten there. He swallowed, and another spear of pain lanced through his skull. What could he do? Surprisingly, words flashed through his mind, old words. “There’s a rumor. If you slew the ship and apply power just as you translate-it increases the translation error severalfold, maybe more.”

Trystin applied full power to the thrusters, and thanked Ulteena, knowing he probably wouldn’t see her again, or perhaps anyone he had known in the Coalition, and regretting that. He hadn’t realized how much he would miss her, how very much. There was a lot he hadn’t realized.

His fingers were shaking, and each computation seemed to take longer, and longer. Strings of equations danced along his fingers, and rings of light surrounded everything his eyes rested upon. Every movement of his head burned, and if he turned quickly his booted feet twitched.

Just before he pushed the translation stud, Trystin remembered to touch the false stud and flick the thruster tuning switch. He hoped it wouldn’t be that critical with the translation error he was piling up. Then again, he was headed to Farhka, and who knew how they felt about time?

He slewed the Paquawrat and triggered translation … … and black became white, and white black … and for that endless moment the ship was in translation, he was bathed in ecstasy, the pain gone, pleasure running through him with the black light. Thud!

With the drop into real time, the haze of burning red pain returned-intensified-as the Paquawrat thrust through normal space outside Farhka …somewhere .-. . somewhen.

With the blurriness of his vision, and the stabbing in his skull, focusing on even the representational screen was difficult, but necessary since the Paquawrat was high above the ecliptic and on an angled course away from Farhka that he had to correct, without dropping inside the orbit of the sixth planet.

“There …” There…there… there… His own words echoed inside his skull and ears, and his eyes watered. He closed them and felt as though he were twirling upside down. He opened his eyes, and knives of light stabbed through them..

Silently, slowly, he refocused his attention on the approach course to the outer Farhkan station. The briefing profile had cautioned against going inside the orbit of the sixth planet. At least the outer orbit station showed on the screens, almost like an energy beacon, and he aimed the Paquawrat toward that beacon.

Then he leaned back in the couch and tried not to see anything, nor to hear anything. Nor to think-not about the images of Soldiers of the Lord, nor an archbishop whose fault had been to be in the wrong place with the wrong name, nor Quentar who’d thought the only safe Revenant was a dead one, nor James who’d saved his neck more than once with his knowledge and never asked for acknowledgment, nor Ulteena, who’d taught him the value of anticipation and never asked… .

The accumulators hiccuped, and the hiccup jolted down his spine. Both feet twitched, and his boots thumped the cockpit floor.

He sighed, and his, breath sounded like a hurricane whistling through his body. He tried to tamp down his sensitivity, but nothing happened. His breath still rumbled and whistled, and his feet twitched.

Slowly, he studied the system readouts. He had another two hours of torture before he reached the outer Farhkan station.

The time passed slowly, the red haze swelling and ebbing, his feet occasionally twitching, and each sound slashing at him. With his eyes open, the cockpit light as low as he dared leave it, his eyes burned. If he closed them, he seemed to whirl in space.

Periodically, he checked the ship, his position, and his progress. How much translation error he’d piled up he had no idea, because Farhkan systems didn’t provide human-style comparators. He supposed the Farhkans could tell him.

Finally, after almost two hours, he straightened and transmitted. “Farhka Station one, this is Coalition ship Paquawrat, code name Holy Roller.” Trystin took another deep breath. “Request approach clearance and lock assignment.”

“Human ship, this is Farhka. Reason for your porting ‘ is what?”

“Request assistance… Coalition ship Paquawrat, code name Holy Roller, requesting refueling and assistance.”

“Have you a patron? Please state the name of your patron.”

Patron? What the hell was a patron? Patron… patron … patron…

Trystin closed his eyes and wished he had not as the cockpit seemed to whirl around him. Patron?

Ghere! He’d said “patron” twice, emphasizing it. Trystin opened his eyes and said the name slowly. “Rhule Ghere. Dr. Rhule Ghere.”

A hissing sound carried through him, a sound with knife edges. Then there was silence. Trystin began to decelerate, calculating his own approach. Five minutes passed … then ten. “Human pilot, please state your name. Please state your name.”

“Trystin Desoll. Trystin Desoll. Major, Coalition Service.”

Another hissing rushed through him, knife-edged, and he stepped up the deceleration. His feet twitched, and his jaw developed a tic.

He slowed the ship more, noting the two Farhkan craft that bracketed him, unable to do more than watch, half wondering if even the return flight profile had been a setup to ensure he never got back. Escaped assassins were embarrassments, he suspected, again, too late.

“Human pilot Desoll, you are cleared to dock. Follow the energy beacon. Follow the visual green light. Follow the long audio signal on your emergency frequency.”

“Thank you, Farhka. I have the green light… .” Trystin winced as the sounds overpowered him, and he waited for them to pass. “I have the beacon.”

Edging the ship up to the small lock was agony. Even the signals from the magnetic holdtights slammed through his implant as they locked the ship to the Farhkan station’s hull.

Holding on to the edge of the couch, then bracing himself on the bulkhead, he shuffled toward the lock. His fingers trembled, and his arms shivered as he opened the lock.

In the locking port stood four Farhkans. Two trained some sort of heavy weapons on Trystin.

Trystin stepped from the ship, and the heavier gravity clawed at him. He tottered there for a moment, the strange clean and musky smell of Farhkans around him, the strange weapons they did not need pointed at him, when he could scarcely even walk. He wavered for only a long moment before the darkness reached out of his brain and smote him down.

“Without a deity the universe is uncertain. But, once the deistic faiths have been analyzed, they provide no greater certainty, nor is there any verified evidence that deities per se have improved humanity or its institutions. Certainly, improvements have occurred, but those improvements have been accomplished in purely human fashion. These accomplishments have proved that people can bring greater certainty, greater goodness, greater understanding into the universe, and, while they may have been inspired by faith, those good people have done so without the physical help of a deity.

“Thus, it can be argued that the invention of a deity only serves as a pretext for human beings to believe in a set of values beyond those rooted merely in self. Yet, most societies in history have chastised those individuals who have attempted to acknowledge publicly that need for a set of values beyond those rooted merely in the individual’s needs, or that a ‘mere’ human being could consider and develop such values. Thus, great truths have always been presented in the guise of divinely inspired guidance.

“Yet theologies exist which claim that men and women will be as gods, or equal with god, upon their physical death, and they have proved immensely popular and successful, despite the inherent contradiction. How, logically, can death transfigure a man or woman into a being that much superior to the one who lived on earth? Such a theology avoids the need to admit that individuals can develop and live by a moral code with ‘higher’ values, as well as the need to admit the effort required in doing so, by providing a deity with the wherewithal to accomplish a theological transmutation almost magically… .

“That is the greatest danger in theology and deities-that they create the impression that goodness cannot be created or maintained by mere humans without divine help. This allows all measure of excuses . - . and strange contortions to explain perfectly logical occurrences… .”

The Eco-Tech Dialogues Prologue

In the darkness, angels with knives of fire seared his flesh, peeled back his skull, and flayed him with

whips of raw pain. Then they laid him upon an altar under a blazing sun and chuckled … chuckled… chuckled…

In the light, lashes of darkness froze his skin, stabbed through his thoughts, and … burned … burned … burned…

In the icy wastes of an unknown storm, he shivered as he burned, trying to explain without words while his words drifted unheard.

In the depths of an unknown ocean, he floated, not breathing, not drowning-just floating-while green-tusked whales hovered around his corpse. …

Trystin groaned, amazed that he could speak, and that the sound did not deafen him. Finally, hoping that the cockpit was not too much of a mess-or had he actually reached the Farhkan station?-he opened his eyes.

Nothing spectacular. He half lay, half reclined, in something that looked like a cross between a bed and a long reclining chair. He wore nothing, but a loose sheet was draped over him. The reclining chair/bed rested in a cubicle perhaps three meters on a side.

“Do not be alarmed. Someone will be with you soon.” The words scrolled through his head.

Trystin grinned, despite the strange surroundings. For the first time in years, there was no underlying static, no buzzing, no pain associated with the implant. And he felt good. He sat up and let the silky sheet slide back to his waist. He looked thinner, with some loss of muscle mass, but not a lot. That had to be expected from lying around whatever it was that passed for a Farhkan hospital. He hoped it was a Farhkan hospital.

The door irised open, and two Farhkans in shimmering gray fatigues stepped into the room. One carried a square satchellike bag. “Major Desoll?” “Yes? You’re Rhule Ghere, aren’t you?” “That is correct. This is Ruyalt Dhale. He is … a specialist.” “In aliens like me?” “Yes.” There was no humor in the response. “I’d like to thank you both. I was in pretty bad shape.” “Yes.” Ghere looked at Dhale. “You died. Neurosensory breakdown. It is said to be painful.” “I died? I don’t feel dead.”

“You are very alive.” The second Farhkan’s “voice” carried a tinge of what Trystin could only have termed humor. “You will be alive for a long time. Please be still for a moment.”

Trystin remained still as Dhale opened the satchel and focused an odd-shaped instrument on him, then another, and another.

Finally, Dhale straightened, packed his instruments back into the satchel, looked at Ghere, and departed.

“You may wish to wash before you resume your normal coverings, although I can assure you that you have been kept scrupulously clean.” Ghere pointed to a standard-looking door. “Those are human facilities, built for your use.” “Where are we?”

“You have remained on station one. That was more … expedient. I will wait outside. The main door will open as you near it.” “My clothes?”

“In the facilities room.” Ghere walked out as silently and stolidly as he had walked in.

Trystin eased off the hospital recliner and padded to the facilities room. Hanging on oblong hangers on the wall were undergarments and the gray shipsuit and accessories-all spotlessly clean. There was also a huge gray towel next to a narrow shower.

After using the facilities, Trystin felt his face-cleanshaven. He showered and dressed quickly. Then he went to find Rhule Ghere.