Chapter 5
Another week passed. Then two weeks. Temperatures in the valley began to drop. Purgatory’s axial tilt wasn’t as pronounced as Earth’s, so the seasons weren’t so well defined. There was no spring, summer, winter, or fall, just a warmer season and a colder season, with reflective growth and decay of alpine vegetation.
My little garden needed work as a result. I spent time carefully picking through the rows, saving every little root, bulb, and leaf that could be dried or stored for the cool months. Then I razed the rest of the plants to the ground, tilled them under, and set about sowing seeds for the stuff which would be able to survive and grow with the lower temperatures. A trick I’d learned from one of the parishioners who’d grown up on a farm on one of Earth’s interstellar colonies.
A winter crop, he’d called it. Something I’d not even thought possible, having grown up on Earth, where almost everything anybody ate merely came from the store, three hundred sixty-five days a year.
One afternoon, when I’d just come inside from working in the soil, Hoff and his boys reappeared in my doorway.
“You didn’t follow orders,” he said to me as I wiped my hands on my overalls—the pair I saved for outside chores.
The sharpness in Hoff’s tone caused the four worshippers sitting in my pews to become uncomfortable. They quickly got up and left, brushing past the indignant officer while avoiding his gaze. Which was directly upon me as I stood up from my stool and began to walk up the central aisle.
“Sir,” I said, feeling a bit more conciliatory since the last time he’d visited, “you asked me to bring you any relevant information. If I had something remarkable to report, I’d have done it already.”
“You’re a bad liar,” Hoff said. “We’ve been from one end of the valley to the other. We’ve talked to the other religious folk. We know the mantis is some kind of researcher, asking lots of questions about church stuff. Supposedly he’s bringing more mantes—to study us. I’d call that pretty important information. Or are you just a dumbass who doesn’t realize what he’s stumbled into?”
A hot flush flowed up my neck and into my face.
“It just didn’t seem relevant,” I said, opening my arms wide and throwing out my hands. “How is this one mantis bringing more mantes to talk to us about our religion going to solve our mutual problem of captivity? Is it going to get us off this planet? Take us back home?”
Hoff didn’t appear to have a good answer to these questions. I suspected that if he knew the full truth, it might make him more annoying than he already was. Perhaps even dangerous. I was glad I hadn’t revealed a thing to any of the other congregational leaders—though I knew most of them by name. If Hoff had been curious enough to go cross-examine them, he’d have ferreted out the fact of our impending demise one way or another.
“It doesn’t matter what you think,” Hoff spat. “That’s what officers are for. We do the thinking around here. You just do as you’re told.”
“Sir,” I said, working hard to remain calm in the face of Hoff’s belligerence, “since you clearly found out as much as I know from talking to the other denominations, what point would there have been in me confirming redundant information? Yes, the mantis says he’s bringing more of his kind to study us. But have you seen hide or hair of that mantis since he made that promise? Neither have I. I suspect maybe we’ve been dealing with an eccentric. He’s the first civilian mantis any of us have ever seen. Maybe he’s serious, and maybe he’s just a quack. I don’t see how it makes a difference since he clearly can’t get us off this world any more quickly than we ourselves can. Frankly, I’m glad he’s gone.”
Hoff walked up the aisle and met me halfway. I had him by a couple of centimeters, so he actually had to look up into my face. His jaw was clenched and I sensed from him the urge for violence. Much as the Professor had once sensed it from me. With the odds being three to one, I figured I’d get my ass handed to me if the major really wanted to pick a fight. I felt sweat springing out across my skin as we stood there in the middle of the chapel glaring at each other.
“You’ve been warned,” he finally said. “Screw with me again, and I will make you sorry for it. Understood?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes, sir?”
“Yessir.”
Hoff pivoted quickly on a heel and stalked out, his henchman following.
I braced myself on the backs of two pews, breathing deeply and heavily while the adrenaline of the moment slowly wore off.
God, I hated pricks like that.
Not all Fleet officers were as bad as Hoff. But enough of them had rubbed me wrong to make me understand that I had not been, nor would I ever be, a great soldier. Taking orders from people I judged to be idiots just wasn’t my thing.
With no one in the chapel, I began to wander up and down the rows of stone benches, collecting bits of detritus that had been swept in on the feet of visitors. When noon arrived and I still had no one, I made myself a modest meal and propped a stick-built chair at the front door so that I could get a little fresh air while afternoon wore on into evening.
Purgatory’s sky was dappled with clouds.
I suspected there might be rain in our future.
Heaven knew we needed it. The sparse cold-season snows on the peaks didn’t last long into the warm season. The handful of valley lakes usually began to run dry just a little after the midpoint of the warm months. Thus drought was almost a perpetual state for us, making the rare thunderstorm a welcome thing.
The chapel had a catchment system which I’d engineered into the roof.
It would be nice to have fresh, relatively clean water instead of the silty stuff I was always pulling out of the distant creek.
A figure wearing a poncho and a wide grass hat walked up. The brim of the hat was pulled low so that I couldn’t see the person’s face.
“Did that major come to bother you?” said a woman’s voice.
“Hoff?” I asked, recognizing Deacon Fulbright.
“Yeah, that’s the cocksucker.”
I chuckled. The Deacon had been a noncommissioned officer—and a gunner—before turning her attention to Christ. She still had her salty mouth. Whether or not she had any actual pastoral bona fides from her previous civilian life was a mystery to me. Not that anyone gave a damn here.
So much of the valley’s religious fabric was like that. Once the mantes had us beaten and it was obvious we weren’t going anywhere, dozens of would-be congregational leaders sprang up from the ranks.
Deacon Fulbright and I had been on good terms since the beginning.
“Come take a load off,” I said to her, going inside and bringing out another stick-built chair.
She sat, and together we leaned against the wall of the chapel while the sun set.
“Hoff’s trying to rally as much of the former officer corps as he can,” she said.
“Is he having much success?”
“Yes and no,” she said. “There are some colonels who aren’t taking kindly to Hoff’s attitude. I think if he keeps this up there’s liable to be an ass-whippin’ at his expense.”
“Couldn’t happen to a more deserving man,” I said.
The Deacon snickered at my sarcastic comment.
I stared at the sky as the clouds continued to thicken.
A low rumble, almost so far off we couldn’t hear it, told me my earlier suspicion of rain would turn out to be correct.
“Harry,” she said—we only used first names when things got candid.
“Yeah?”
“Are you sure you don’t know anything more than I know?”
“What do you know?”
“What Hoff said I know.”
“And that’s all I know too,” I replied flatly.
She stared at me.
“You’re a bad liar.”
“And you’re not the first one to tell me that today.”
“Look, fuck the major, this is between you and me. What’s really going on with this mantis and the ‘students’ he says he’s bringing back? I talked to the Mormon Bishop two days ago and he’s all excited about it. Though he said he’d expected the mantes to be here by now. That they’re not here yet has him a little worried.”
“You seem to think this mantis scholar tells me more than he tells you, or anyone else around here. Why?”
“Because he came to you first,” she answered.
“Diane,” I said, “believe me when I tell you that if I had any knowledge I thought would be good for you to know, then you’d be the first to know it. Okay? There’s nothing for me to say. We’re friends. I respect you.”
“And I respect you,” she said.
“Then let me be,” I replied gently.
After a long silence, she whooshed out a frustrated breath.
“Suit yourself, Harry. I can’t make you say what you don’t want to say. But I trust you. Just please promise me that if you change your mind, my door will be the first one you knock on.”
“I promise,” I said.
“Good. Now I’d better get back before the storm hits.”
“I think it’s just minutes away,” I said.
The Deacon stood and we exchanged farewells, before she walked away.
More rumbling in the sky, and a smattering of tiny drops on the parched soil, told me it was time to go in and close all the shutters.