Luca frowned. ‘But why dig by hand? Surely it would be much more efficient to leave it to the machines.’
Dolo said carefully, ‘The soldiers seem to believe that a shelter constructed by a machine will never be as safe as one you have dug out yourself.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Luca said. ‘All that matters is a shelter’s depth, its structural qualities—’
‘We aren’t talking about sense,’ Dolo said. ‘We are touching here on the problem we have come to study. Come, Novice; recall your studies on compensatory belief systems.’
Luca had to dredge up the word from memory. ‘Oh. Superstition. The troopers are superstitious.’
Dolo said, ‘It’s a common enough reaction. The troopers have little control of their lives, even of their deaths. So they seek to control what they can – like the ground they dig, the walls that shelter them – and they come to believe that such actions in turn might placate greater forces. All utterly non-Doctrinal, of course.’
Luca snorted. ‘It is a sign of weakness.’
Teel said without emotion, ‘Imagine this Rock cracking like an egg. Sometimes that happens, in combat. Imagine humans expelled, sent wriggling defenceless into space. Imagine huddling in the dark, waiting for that to happen at any moment. Now tell me how weak we are.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Luca said, flustered.
Dolo was irritated. ‘You’re sorry, you’re sorry. Child, open your eyes and close your mouth. That way we’ll all get along a lot better.’
They walked on.
The horizon was close and new land ahead hove constantly into view, revealing more pits, more toiling soldiers. Luca had the disconcerting sensation that he was indeed walking around the equator of a giant hall of rock, and his vertigo threatened to return.
It was because he was so busy trying to master his queasiness that he didn’t notice the arch until they had almost walked under it. It was a neat parabola, perhaps twenty metres tall. A single trooper was standing beneath it, hands behind her back, stiffening to attention as Teel approached.
‘Ah,’ said Dolo, breathing a little heavily with the exertion of the suited walk. ‘So this is what we have come so far to see.’
Luca stood under the arch. Its fine span narrowed above him, making a black stripe across the complex sky. The arch was so smoothly executed that he thought at first it must have been erected by machine, perhaps from blown rock. But when he bent closer he saw that the arch was constructed from small blocks, each no larger than his fist, stone that had been cut and polished. On each block writing was etched: names, he saw, two or three on each stone.
Teel stood at one side of the arch, picked up a pebble of conglomerate, and with care lobbed it upwards. It followed a smooth airless arc that almost matched the arch’s span. ‘Geometrically the arch is almost perfect,’ she said.
Dolo bent to inspect the masonry. ‘Remarkable,’ he murmured. ‘There is no mortar here, no pinning.’
‘It was built by hand,’ Teel said. ‘The troopers started with the keystone and built it up side by side, lifting what was already completed over the new sections. Easy in microgravity.’
‘And the stone?’
‘Taken from deep within the asteroid – kilometres deep. The material further up has been gardened by impacts, shattered and conglomerated. They had to dig special mines to get to it.’
‘And all done covertly, all kept from the eyes of their commanders.’
‘Yes.’
Dolo turned to Luca. ‘What do you make of it, boy?’
Luca would have had to dredge for the word if he hadn’t been studying this specific area of deviancy. ‘It is a chapel,’ he said. A chapel of the dead, he thought, whose names are inscribed here. He glanced up at the arch’s span. There was writing up to the limits of his vision. Hundreds of names, then.
‘Yes, a chapel.’ Dolo walked up to the single trooper standing under the arch. She held her place, but returned the Commissary’s scrutiny apprehensively.
Teel said, ‘This is Bayla.’
‘The one on the charge.’
‘She faces a specimen charge of anti-Doctrinal behaviour. Similar charges will be applied to others of the unit here depending on the outcome of the hearing – on your decision, gentlemen.’
Dolo looked the trooper up and down, as if he could read her mind by studying her suited body. ‘Trooper. You understand the charge against you. Are you guilty?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Tell me about Michael Poole.’
Bayla was silent for a moment, visibly frightened; the visor of her skinsuit was misted. She glanced at Teel, who nodded.
And so Bayla stammered a tale of how the great engineer of ancient times, Michael Poole, had ridden one last wormhole to Timelike Infinity, the end of time itself. There he waited, watching all the events of the universe unfolding – and there he was ready to welcome those who remembered his name, and honour those who had fallen – and from there his great strength would reach out to save those who followed his example.
Dolo listened to this dispassionately. ‘How many times have you ridden the Rock?’
‘Twice, sir.’
‘And what are you most afraid of, trooper?’
Again Bayla glanced at Teel. ‘That you won’t let me back.’
‘Back where?’
‘To ride the Rock again.’
‘Why does that frighten you?’
Because she does not want to abandon her comrades, Luca thought, watching her. Because she is guilty to be alive where others have fallen around her. Because she fears they will die, leaving her to live on alone.
But Bayla said only, ‘It is my duty, Commissary. A brief life burns brightly.’
Teel said, ‘Simply say what you believe, trooper; it won’t help you to mouth slogans.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Luca walked back to the arch, for now Teel was standing under it, running her gloved hand over its surface. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he essayed.
She shrugged. ‘It’s a tribute, not a work of art. But yes, it is beautiful.’
After his foolish remark about weakness he wanted to rebuild his connection with her. ‘The names.’ He glanced up at the arrayed letters over his head. He said boldly, ‘To record the fallen may be non-Doctrinal, but here it seems – appropriate. If I had time I would climb this arch and count all the names.’
‘It might take you longer than you think.’
‘I don’t understand.’
She pointed to a name, inscribed in the surface before his face. ‘What do you see?’
‘“Etta Maris”,’ he read. ‘A name.’
‘Now look at the first letter. Your suit visor has a magnification option; just tell it what you want to do.’
It took a couple of tries before he got it right. A Virtual flickered into existence before his face, the magnified letter. Even on this scale the carving was all but flawless – a labour of devotion, he saw, moved. But now he looked more closely, and he saw there were more names, inscribed within the carved-out grooves of the letter.
He stepped back, shocked. ‘Why, there must be as many names here, in this single letter, as are inscribed on the whole of the arch.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Teel said coolly. ‘Pick a name and look again.’
Again he magnified a single letter from one inscribed name – and again he found more names, thousands of them, crowded in far beneath the level of human visibility.