Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

He turned to go, deciding to speak to this priest next. She called him back: “Harker?”

“Yes?”

“You ever been in a combat situation without something on? Some armor?”

He thought about it. “Only in training exercises, and not recently, no.”

“We’ve all been training in the simulator here. Even though we’ll have a lot more stuff than those people on Helena probably have, we’ll still be pretty stripped down. Maybe before you start questioning the abilities of other people, you might want a crack at that simulation yourself. That’s if you decide to come with us, of course.”

He took a deep breath. “I’ll think about it,” he told her, and left.

He found Father Chicanis in the big lounge, which looked just the way it had on all those spy camera recordings. When not officiating in his priestly sense, Chicanis tended to dress informally in a black pullover shirt, and slacks, and slip-on sneakers. He looked very much like a middle-aged man in fairly decent condition who might well be a programmer or technician or even janitor.

“Ah, Mister Harker! Glad to have you with us,” the priest greeted him, sounding like he was just saying hello to somebody he had asked aboard.

“I’m not sure how much with you I am yet, Father,” he responded.

“Come! Sit down! I’m afraid this may be the only chance we’ll have to get to know each other. After sitting on our duffs forever, we’re now moving very fast, it seems.”

“We’re heading out?”

“The Dutchman is dispatching a corvette that’s now attached to his ship to get us. Ships this size, or even the size of his vessel, would trigger every alarm the Titans might have. It’s by using very small ships like the corvettes and then using small outer system genhole gates that they’re able to get in and out without the energy flare attracting attention.”

“I haven’t said whether I’m in or out on this, you know.”

“Come, come! You’ve come this far out of curiosity! I don’t think you’re the kind of man who can sit back and remain passive when things are going on. I assume you don’t have a family or you wouldn’t have volunteered for that courageous ride.”

“No, nobody.”

“Then, see? That’s really all of us, you know. In addition to the skills involved, everyone aboard, even Captain Stavros, has no close remaining family. The mercenaries and the science people—all orphaned by this point, no known living siblings.”

“Including you?”

Chicanis’s face darkened. “Everyone I held dear was still on Helena when it was overrun. They’re all most certainly dead now. Most probably died in the initial loss of power and the scouring. I see their faces, I hear their voices, every night in my dreams, but they are somewhere else now, in the arms of Jesus. I really believe that, you see. It’s why I can go on and not be consumed with grief. I fully expect to see them again someday.” He paused and stared at Harker. “What about you? Do you believe in God?”

Harker shrugged. “I’m not at all sure, and that’s an honest answer, Father. Sometimes, when I see a beautiful sunset on some distant world or stare into the heart of a spectacular stellar cloud, it’s easy. Other times, looking at starving people, twisted and broken children, blown-up bodies, shorted-out minds—then I can’t find God at all. Let’s just say that I reserve judgment on God, but that I very much believe in evil. I’ve seen evil.”

“Well, that’s more than most people. Half The Confederacy is still trying to figure out what the Titans want and why they do what they do, as if understanding a truly alien race would make the genocide go away. Most people stopped believing in evil centuries ago. In ancient times a majority of good churchgoing types believed in hell. Oh, now they believe in God and Jesus and love and all that, but when it comes to hell—no, not that.”

“I’ve already been to hell, Father,” Harker told him evenly. “ That I believe in.”

“You know, there’s some from the start who thought that the Titans were angels,” Chicanis commented. “The Jewish tradition has good angels and bad angels, and we Greeks took the bad and called them by a proper Greek label, daimon. I can’t help but wonder sometimes when I see the beauty of those Titan formations. Satan was always supposed to be the crowning cherub, the most beautiful of all the angels. Beauty and evil are not opposites.” He sighed. “But we’re not here to discuss theology, now, are we?”

“No, we’re not. I was just wondering, though, if you’d thought through what it’ll be like down there. Pardon me, Father, but it’s pretty clear that you’ve lived more real-time years than me, and you haven’t spent them all in situations where you had to be in peak physical condition. I’ve looked at the maps here. If we put in where we’re supposed to, we’re talking a good three hundred or more kilometers walking, both there and back. Running some of the time, I suspect, in a reworked primitive world like nothing any of us have ever experienced before. I’m not sure that Doctor Socolov can hack that, and I’m not sure you could, either.”

“You’re not saying anything I haven’t heard from Mogutu,” the priest admitted. “The fact is, though, from the Dutchman and from Navy files we have aerials of Helena and I can determine the old points from them. They’ve reworked a good deal of Atlantis, but Eden is pretty much left alone save for their replanting. Many of the natural landforms and just about all the distances are still correct. I feel confident I can get us wherever we need to get on the ground. I am not sure that anyone else could. That is, anyone not born and raised there. So, I go, and God will grant me whatever strength is necessary to get the job done. I feel certain of it. I am also prepared, if need be, to die there, or to remain there, if that is what God wants. But I simply cannot accept that He didn’t have a plan for me to be in this position. It explains why I wasn’t there when the Titans came, why I was in a certain company at a certain time when this came up, and why I am here. I believe this is a divine plan. You can dismiss it or not, but I believe it to be so, and faith will carry a person a very long way.”

“I hope you’re right, Father,” Gene Harker replied. “I really hope you’re right.” He stood there for a moment, trying to bring up his biggest concern diplomatically. Finally, he decided head-on was best.

“Tell me, Father. If you’re down there, and it’s the difference between one of our lives and one of the poor wretches down there, could you decide? Could you actually act to keep Socolov from death or rape or whatever, or even one of us from having our brains bashed in?”

“The truth? I don’t know, Harker. I don’t think I will know until and unless I face it, and I know I might. None of us truly knows what is within us until an action is forced, do we?”

“Well, at least it’s an honest answer,” the Navy man responded.

“Call it off, Colonel.”

The big man with the deep voice continued to look over terrain maps on the console in front of him but did say, “Hello, Harker. Glad to have you with us.”

“I’m not with you, or against you. I just think you’re going to do what you wouldn’t do before. You go in, and you’ll kill people—that’s part of the job. But Socolov and Chicanis are liabilities in any ground movement and you know it. Take them, and either they will die or the mission will fail as we keep saving their necks.”

“I note you now said `we,’ which makes me correct. And I can’t call it off. I couldn’t even call off the action that got me early retirement. Those people still went in, remember, and they still died. This is even clearer. They are going in with or without us. If they go in without us, they will surely die. If they go in with us, they will probably die, but something might come of the effort. Look on the bright side.”