The Chaplain’s Legacy (7 page)

“You’ll have to forgive me,” I said, clearing my throat.

“For what?” She said. And then, because of the impossibly close quarters of the bag, she said, “Oh. I get it.”

I felt a rush of blood to my face.

“It’s okay, Chief,” she said, sensing my mortal embarrassment.

“I hope you’re not married,” I said. “Explaining to your husband how you spent the night naked in a sleeping bag with another man who was unable to contain his…ahhh, 
excitement
, could be problematic.”

“No, I am not married,” she said, laughing a bit. Then began to cough.

I suddenly realized that pneumonia could kill as easily as low temperatures, and held her tighter. She squirmed in my grasp and was suddenly face to face with me, her nose like a cold, damp button in the nape of my neck. She coughed a few more times, snuffling, and clung tightly to me. I rubbed my hands vigorously along her bare back to try and accelerate the process of warming. Gradually, her body relaxed. I then heard a small, quiet snore.

I shifted and repositioned my rolled-up smock so that her head rested on it, not mine, crooked an elbow up to my ear, kept my other arm wrapped tightly around her, and let myself drift off.

Chapter 10

I woke early.

The captain was still snoring softly, so I slid out of the bag as slowly and as stealthily as I could, letting my superior curl the fabric around herself and bury her face deeper into my jumper. The sun wasn’t yet up, but I could see well enough. Being both naked and cold, now seemed as good a time as any to go see if my uniform had dried. But first, business. I spied a low mound of split rock not too far off, and headed directly for it.

The Professor caught me halfway back.

I felt a bit awkward over my nudity, then decided it was silly to be modest in front of the alien. Though I also thought this is how the Queen Mother must have felt when she was forced to disengage from her disc.

“Good morning,” the Professor said.

“Hello,” I replied.

“The female still sleeps?”

“For the moment.”

“Did you mate with her?”

I sputtered a quietly exclamatory denial. Then asked, “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“On Purgatory you once told me that when male and female humans wish to copulate, they will share the same bed.”

“On Purgatory, sure, and then only if the male and the female know each other well enough and have agreed to have that kind of relationship.”

“It is not an automatic biological function?”

“No,” I said firmly. “Is it for you mantes?”

The Professor considered, a forelimb gently running along the edge of his disc.

“In some ways, yes. The egg-laying females—like the Queen Mother—when they enter what you would call estrus, they exude a pheromone that is both sexually rapturous and psychologically debilitating for males. Any male within reach of the pheromone becomes somewhat mindless in his pursuit of intercourse. The only way to avoid it is to avoid being where the pheromone can get to you.”

“But once you get a whiff—”

“Then the male is in for a delightfully stupid time of physical pleasure, followed by a lengthy period of slumber.”

“Well,” I said, smiling, “at least 
one
 thing is shared between human males and mantis males.”

“Still,” said the Professor, “with Adanaho, if she is available to you and there is the possibility of sex, are you not…tempted?”

“Of course I’m tempted,” I snapped. Then apologized for being harsh. “It’s been at least a dozen or more years since I had a woman in my arms like that. But when a human male gets excited, he’s still in full command of his faculties. He can still choose. Or at least he’s expected to behave as if he has a choice. Personally, I think it’s one of the few things that actually makes us different from mere animals. We can deny our lusts, even during moments of opportunity.”

“So you chose to abstain.”

“Yes.”

“Is she not attractive?”

“Yes, she’s attractive.”

“Forgive me Harry, I am still struggling to understand.”

“Look,” I said, my hands on my hips as I walked slowly over to the rocks where my uniform and boots were spread out, “attraction is only part of it. There’s other factors too. Like, she’s too young. Much younger than I am. I’d feel like I was taking advantage of her. Plus, she’s my superior officer in the Fleet. It’s against the rules for a superior and a subordinate to engage in sexual congress.”

“Why?”

“Bad for discipline in the chain-of-command, among other things.”

“And that’s all?”

“No,” I said, testing the fabric between my fingers. It felt dry enough. I started to put my undergarments on. “The male and the female should really love each other first, before they have sex. When sex happens before love, or without love, it gets…complicated.”

“Also immoral,” said the Professor.

“If the man and the woman subscribe to certain ‘flavors’ of religious or moral tradition, yes. That too. Though most religious proscriptions surrounding intercourse simply involve matrimony, not love. A few centuries ago, before humanity went into space, it was quite common for young men and women to be married off by their families. For political and social reasons, among other things. Love didn’t really enter into it.”

“Fascinating,” said the Professor. “Among my people we mate for genetic enhancement and advantage. Many, many males. A few females. In the far distant past males engaged in mortal combat to determine which ones would mate during a given cycle of estrus. Now we select for genetic traits we consider positive and bar those who don’t meet the standards. Those of us who meet the standards are then chosen via lottery to attend to the females when they are ready. I have copulated six times in my life. I am considered somewhat fortunate in this regard.”

“Because you’re smart, or because you simply got lucky?” I said, sliding on pants, then socks, then boots.

“Intelligence is key,” he said. “But luck rules the final selection process, yes.”

“Assuming you win the lottery,” I asked while buttoning up my topcoat, “do you choose the females or do the females choose you?”

“The females choose us,” he said. “In descending order of matriarchal seniority.”

“Did you ever mate with the Queen Mother?”

The Professor paused. A small flush of color along the semi-soft portions of his chitin told me I had embarrassed him.

“No.”

“I’m sorry if I intruded into a private area where I should not have,” I said honestly.

“No, Harry, it is I who began this conversation. The discomfort comes from knowing that no female of the Queen Mother’s stature has ever selected a scholar for mating. They prefer warriors to thinkers.”

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nevermind,” I said.

The sun’s first rays peaked over the horizon.

I observed the Queen Mother’s silhouette in the distance. Just like the day before. She was immobile, faced directly into the growing light as it slowly bathed the landscape. The Professor and I watched her for a time, then I asked, “Penny for her thoughts.”

“If by that you mean to say you wonder what’s in her mind at this time, I wish I knew. I have inquired, and she will not tell me. I sense in conversation with her that the Queen Mother is both fascinated and troubled by her experience living without the disc.”

A rustling to our left told me the captain was arising.

“Clothes are dry,” I called, deliberately loud.

“Roger that,” she said, her nose sounding stuffed up.

I walked away from the rocks where her uniform still lay, and kept my back turned while she shuffled up and slowly put on her uniform in silence.

“Okay,” she said.

I turned around.

“You look like shit, ma’am,” I said.

“I feel sick,” she admitted. Wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“We should have checked your bag sooner. We’ll have to let it dry out before nightfall if we don’t want a repeat of last night. Meanwhile, perhaps the Professor can spare room on the back of his disc for you while we travel today.”

“I’d be grateful for that,” she said, eyes drawn and puffy-looking.

“It could be managed,” the Professor said, after looking down at the captain—his antennae moving thoughtfully.

The captain and I did what we could with the ration bars still in our packs, chewing because we needed the fuel, not because it tasted good. I’d never been a heavy chap. I realized that too much time on this nameless world would thin me down even more.

When we’d collected our gear and re-secured our packs, I helped Adanaho climb onto the back of the Professor’s disc—following his having helped the Queen Mother climb onto the front. The Queen Mother and Adanaho both seemed unusually quiet this morning, and I shouldered my burden wondering what the day would bring. The captain had taken some pills from her pack’s emergency medical kit, and wrapped her sleeping bag around herself inside-out so as to let the liner properly dry. Her belt had been looped into a small cleat on the back of the disc so that she wouldn’t slide off.

A cool breeze started up.

We moved out, due southwest in the direction of the hinted-at mantis signals the Professor had previously detected.

Plodding through the gravel and sand I thought about the one time I’d been to the Mojave, back on Earth. At least there, I’d had some mountains to look at in the distance, along with a few Joshua trees, and the occasional rattlesnake. On this world, everything had been worn flat and made unremarkable. Without the Professor’s telemetry to guide us, I suspected it would have been supremely easy to wind up meandering in circles. One dune or low bluff looked like the next.

After a while I noticed that the captain’s eyes had closed. She was slumped against the Professor’s back. If either she or he were bothered by such close contact, neither of them showed it.

“Military is as military does,” I said under my breath. Sleep anywhere you can, when you can.

Good for her.

I kept walking.

Chapter 11

Afternoon brought us to the edge of a narrow, deep canyon. A small river wound its way across the bottom headed northwest to southeast. The water tumbled and rushed against the rocks below, and a rumbling echo drifted out of the canyon as the Professor and I considered our options. I reluctantly woke the captain, helping her down off the back of the Professor’s disc, while he helped the Queen Mother down too. The two aliens spoke briefly in their insect language, then she scurried off to the Canyon’s edge, peering out over it while the captain and I counseled with the Professor.

“Have you detected any further signs of mantis signals or technology?” Adanaho asked. She didn’t sound as stuffed up as she had in the morning, and her eyes looked somewhat better too. I was encouraged by this. Maybe the extra sleep had done her good.

“No,” said the Professor. “But, given our new geographical impediment, I do not think it would matter even if I had.”

“Can’t your disc take us over?” I asked.

“The carriage is not an aircraft,” the professor said. “Its impellers operate according to proximity with solid and semi-solid mass, not gravity per se. I would sink like a stone until I’d reached within just a few of your meters above the canyon floor.”

“If we can find a way down,” I said, “maybe we can rig up a way of traveling on the river current. Plus, we’d have fresh water any time we wanted it. I bet that flood creek we filled our canteens in is a tributary to this drainage. If we follow it far enough, we might reach a lake or something larger. What’s your hunch, Professor? Would your people prefer such a location for setting up a temporary base of operations?”

“I believe that is a logical assumption,” said the Professor.

“How about it, ma’am?” I asked, looking at my superior.

“It’s as good a plan as any we’ve had so far,” she said. “We’ll have to make sure and get the Queen Mother’s opin—OH MY GOD!”

I froze, watching the captain’s arm shoot out with an index finger pointed behind me to the canyon’s edge.

I turned just in time to see the Queen Mother’s body drop over the side. The Professor nearly bowled me over as his disc shot after her, then he too was over the side. The captain and I rushed to the edge and flopped onto our bellies, sliding across the last few inches of sand before putting our chins at the lip, hands clawed across the precipice.

What we saw was the most improbably beautiful thing I’d witnessed since going to space with the Fleet as an older teenager.

The Queen Mother circled lazily around and around in the air, slowly spiraling with her wings spread to their maximum width, each beating in concert with the others, and together making a low rhythm that sounded not too dissimilar from a helicopter. She obviously weighed too much and her wings were too small for sustained flight, but while she flew—her body extended and piercing the air like a javelin, her beak aimed directly forward and her legs and forelimbs folded up tightly against her body—she was magnificent.

The Professor’s disc fell straight down the wall of the Canyon.

The speaker grill on the disc’s front was blaring amplified mantis speech. Which the Queen Mother appeared to happily ignore.

“She’s beautiful,” the captain whispered.

“I didn’t know they could fly,” I said, still astonished.

After a couple of seconds, Adanaho’s lips peeled back from her teeth in a wide, genuine smile. “I don’t think the Queen Mother knew either. Until now.”

We watched as the Queen Mother continued her slow descent, until at last she lightly touched down on a wide sand bar in the middle of the river. Walking to the edge, she lowered he mouth to the water and began taking in copious amounts of fluid.

The Professor zoomed up to her, his disc’s motors making funny shapes in the surface of the water as he moved across it. The Queen Mother appeared to ignore him for a few more moments as he hovered directly next to her, animatedly talking with his mandibles.

Finally she looked up at him.

She said something.

The Professor backed away from her and went across the water to the canyon wall directly beneath us.