The Chaplain's War Read Online Free PDF

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.

CHAPTER 6
    THE STORM HIT, AND HIT BIG.
    Flash flooding kept us all busy for a few days while we cleaned up the mess. Thankfully my chapel didn’t get damaged. This time. I’d not always been so lucky.
    During one particularly violent downpour, a runnel was cut under the northeast corner of the building, causing the wall to crumble. I wound up having to rebuild and repair not only that corner, but the roof above it as well. It took me the better part of two weeks, during which the interior of the chapel was both drafty, and prone to gathering more than its usual layer of noxious dust.
    But now, with our water supply somewhat renewed, the mood in the valley grew optimistic. Funny how our time in this place had simplified our expectations. Even something as mundane as an unusual abundance of water could be a cause for rejoicing.
    Me? I remained quietly anxious.
    Over the next ten days I had half a dozen repeats of the conversation I’d had with the Deacon, only with different people from different congregations around the valley. I told them all what I could—omitting the one big piece of information I dared not reveal—and life went on its merry way.
    The wait become a month.
    Then two months. Then three.
    No sign of the Professor.
    My dread of the inevitable began to deepen. The Professor had never specified when the end might come, so I had no way of knowing if this was a delay in the course of events as he’d described, or merely the running out of the proverbial sand into the bottom of the proverbial hourglass. Since he’d not come back I suspected that any hope I might kindle—and this happened more than once—was a false hope. So I stuffed it down inside and tried to be resigned to whatever fate awaited us.
    If nothing else, the Professor’s visits all over the valley sparked interest among the general population. My chapel’s average attendance grew substantially. I wasn’t sure what to think about that, other than being grateful for the increased donations of goods and food at my drop box by the front door.
    I still didn’t preach—would not have had the foggiest idea what to say to any of them—but I kept the chapel clean, I made sure the altar and all the objects on it were tidy and arranged according to pattern, and I welcomed in everyone who felt the need to come.
    When an entire Purgatorial year passed—perhaps one and a half Earth standard—I began to wonder if the Professor really had been an eccentric. A nutball. Such people existed among humans, why not the mantes? He had been