Tili Three spoke up. “But Michael Poole didn’t wait for timelike infinity.”
“No.” Burden smiled. “Michael Poole went into the future. He sacrificed himself to save his children, all our children. He is with the Ultimate Observer — is, was, always will be…”
The listeners asked more softball questions. But Cohl asked a tougher one. “How do you know? Are we supposed to accept this on faith?”
Burden wasn’t perturbed. “Of course not. Past and future aren’t fixed; history can be changed — in fact, it changes all the time. You know that, Cohl. You lived through an action that got deleted from the timeline. So you know that contingency is real. It’s not much of a leap of faith to imagine that some day somebody will make a purposeful change — an intelligent change — and wipe away all our tears.”
Cohl’s expression was complex. She kept up her mask of skepticism. But she wanted to believe, Pirius realized with a shock; even Cohl, once an ultraorthodox Druzite. She might have her suspicions about the man, but she was listening to his words, and seemed to want to accept Burden’s strange and comforting faith.
A small Virtual drifted before Pirius’s eyes: it was Captain Marta’s face. “Come to my office, Private. We need to talk.”
With a mixture of regret and relief, Pirius slipped away from the little congregation. Nobody seemed to notice.
Marta’s office was unglamorous. It was just a partitioned-off corner of the barracks, the furniture no more than a bunk and a table where data desks were untidily heaped. The only luxury seemed to be a coffee machine. But in one corner there was a kind of cubicle, like a shower, with walls pocked with interface sockets. Pirius wondered if this equipment had something to do with Marta’s complex injuries.
Marta waved him to a chair. Pirius could hear the whir of motors as she sat down opposite him. “Sorry to drag you off from Quero’s lecture.” She eyed him. “And you can lower those eyebrows, private. Of course we know about Burden and his proselytizing.”
“Burden’s talk comforts them,” he said.
“Of course it does. That’s why it’s so successful in the first place, I suppose. And why we turn a blind eye.” She sipped her coffee, and Pirius saw that the metallic surface of her face extended through her lips to the roof of her mouth. “We allow them to stay in their cadre groups, or even their families if we have to, because it gives them something to fight for. And Burden’s waffle about the end of time comforts them when they fall. The ideologues at the center disapprove, of course, but out here we have a war to wage.”
Pirius wondered how to put his own doubts about Burden into words — or even if he should. “I don’t get Burden,” he admitted. “He is his own man. In combat he fights as hard as anybody—”
“Harder than most,” said Marta laconically.
“And he’s not afraid of being ostracized for his faith. But sometimes he seems — weak.”
Marta eyed him. “Burden has depths. And a past which he’s apparently not prepared to share with you. But, you know what? It doesn’t bother me. If Burden took a hit tomorrow, all his emotional complexity would disappear with him. In the meantime, he can think what he likes, feel what he likes, as long as he does such an effective job. As long as our soldiers fight, who cares what goes on in their heads?”
Pirius was silent.
“You’re judging me, Private,” Marta said more heavily.
“I’m having trouble with your contempt for us, sir.”
She nodded, apparently not offended. “Not contempt. But I have to manage you from birth to death, and send you into war. Not contempt, no. Distance, I suppose. This is the nature of command.”
“If you’re so tolerant about the Friends, why did you give Tuta such a hard time when we got here?”
“Tuta?… Oh. Enduring Hope. That had nothing to do with religion. Surely you see that. I was just trying to knock a cadet into shape. That’s my job,” she said neutrally. “So what do you think about the Factory Rock action now?”
“It was a screwup,” he said vehemently.
“You think so?”
“Of course it was. The barrage was mistimed and off target. Our line was broken before we even left the trench. Our flanks were exposed and we walked into fire. We didn’t have a chance.”
“I can see you’re a perfectionist, Pirius,” she said dryly. “There are always mistakes in war. But the important thing is that we won, despite the mistakes. We took back Factory Rock. You have to have the right perspective.”
“Perspective? Sir, I was the only survivor, of two platoons, to reach that monopole factory.”
“It doesn’t matter how many fall as long as one gets through. I told you that in the briefing. We plan for wastage. The losses were a little high this time, perhaps, but most of those who fell were wet behind the ears. The Coalition hadn’t invested much in them. They were cheap. Of course, Pirius, nobody would have got through, or still less got back, if not for the way you took the initiative.”
“I was just trying to stay alive.”
“Believe me, even that’s beyond the capabilities of most of your comrades out there.”
“Sir—”
“Tell me about the Tilis. How does what happened to them make you feel?”
He struggled to find the right words. “I was close to my crew in the greenships. You have to be if you’re to work together. But this time—”
“This time you weren’t flying around in the antiseptic comfort of a greenship; you were down in the dirt with the blood and the death.”
“I saw her sisters die, and I’ve seen Tili Three grieve. And it’s not worth it. Even if we win the Galaxy—”
“The cost of a single life is too high.” She seemed to suppress a sigh. “And so you don’t want to hear me talk about the cost of a private’s training. For you, right now, it isn’t about economics, is it, Pirius? Being one in a trillion doesn’t reduce the significance of that one person you know. War doesn’t scale that way.”
He said hesitantly, “So you feel like this?”
“No. But I know how you feel.” She gazed directly at him. “This is a stage you have to go through, Private.”
He said, “I don’t want to stop feeling like this, sir.”
“Tough. If you’re smart enough for responsibility, you’re smart enough to understand the situation we’re all in, and the choices we have to make.”
He thought that through. “Responsibility? Sir, are you offering me some kind of command?”
“You proved yourself out on that Rock, Private. You may be a wetback reject, and your service record is a piece of shit. You’ll always be Service Corps. But you could make corporal.”
“I don’t want it,” he said immediately.
“What you want has very little to do with it. Anyhow it’s academic.”
He couldn’t follow her. “It is?”
“Somebody has been asking for you. I believe you’ve met Commissary Nilis?”
Chapter 26
One minute left. Torec wriggled in her seat, trying to find a comfortable position among the equipment boxes that had been bolted into this greenship’s little cabin.
Commander Darc had made it clear he didn’t approve of countdowns. Torec’s cockpit, and the displays of the test controllers on Enceladus, were full of clocks, and you could follow the timings; there was no need for melodrama, said Darc. But Torec had always had an instinct for the flow of time, and she couldn’t help the voice in her head calling out each second with uncanny precision: Fifty-five, fifty-four, fifty-three…