The Chaplain's War Read Online Free PDF Page B

chasing religion, after all, and I had nothing to corroborate what he’d said. Perhaps he’d been the mantis version of a millennial—someone attracted to and fascinated by “end times” myth. Enough to spin me a story?
    The first sign of the inevitable came when the hill farmers reported that The Wall was beginning to close in.
    Deacon Fulbright and I rushed out to the valley rim, hiking for hours up to the peaks so that we could take a look for ourselves.
    Seeing was believing.
    “Christ in Heaven,” she said under her breath. We were less than a meter away from The Wall—silent, shimmering, and deadly. I kicked a couple of stones up to it, one in front of the other. Perhaps three centimeters apart. As we watched, The Wall gradually and inexorably drifted over the top of the first stone, then over the top of the second. Not terribly fast. Maybe a millimeter per minute. But given the fact there was nowhere for anyone to go, it didn’t matter.
    The Deacon stared at me.
    “You knew,” she said. “You knew this would happen.”
    “No,” I said. Which was the technical truth. The Professor had never told me the precise nature of our doom, should it come.
    “You knew!”
    This time she’d yelled it at me.
    My cheeks reddened with shame.
    “Well, okay, dammit, so maybe I did. What was I supposed to do? Go blabbing to every man, woman, and child in the valley? Who would that have helped? Would it have solved anything? It would have caused panic, that’s what it would have caused. And half of them would not have wanted to believe me in any case. I’d have been cast out as a crazy and the chapel would have been shut down.”
    Tears stained the Deacon’s face.
    “I’m sorry, Diane,” I said. “I really am. But I didn’t dare tell anyone. Not even you. How could I?”
    She spun away from me and began marching back down the mountainside.
    “Wait!” I called after her, practically running to catch up.
    When I grabbed her shoulders she threw off my hands with a violent twist of her body.
    “Don’t touch me,” she snarled.
    “I said I was sorry.”
    “Like it matters?”
    “To me it does. Diane, think about it. We’ve all been trapped here for how many years now? With no sign that there will ever be any escape? People have begun families. It’s not much of a life, but it’s something. People have found ways to get by. And you and I and the rest of the religious leadership, we’ve been part of that. You know we have. Prematurely telling people what I knew about the mantes’ plans would have been a gross betrayal of our service. My job—your job too—is to give everyone a mode for hope. Not all of them use it, but enough of them do that I couldn’t in good conscience let them down by becoming a prophet of death.”
    She’d stopped in her tracks. From the side I could tell that fresh tears continued to leak from her eyes. The shuddering of her back told me all I needed to know about the anguish she must be feeling. I myself merely felt a hollowness in my chest where emotion should have been. If the news had just hit Diane like a baseball bat between the eyes, I’d had to live with it on my heart like a slow corrosive. Insidious and malignant.
    “Well you can’t hide the truth now,” she finally said, her voice cracking. “Word’s already getting around. Even the hardcore doubters will eventually come up here and confirm things for themselves. Just like we did. What’s going to happen, Harry? Are we going to keep blowing sunshine up their asses, or are we going to be straight with them?”
    “Didn’t you once tell me you thought our incarceration was God’s way of testing us?” I asked.
    “Yeah,” she said, snuffling. “It was easy to talk, then. The war was more or less over. The mantes seemed to have left us alone. Now? I guess this means God’s passed judgment.”
    “Maybe,” I said. “Is that what you’re going to say on Sunday?”
    “I don’t know yet. All I know is I want to