Hernandez nodded, favoring Reza with a smile that was sincere, if not entirely trusting. “So true,” he said. The priest was more inclined to believe in Reza now, because he was sure that a demon under Satan’s power would have tried to deceive the priest with an answer, be it yes or no, because Hernandez wanted so badly to hear it.
Somewhat relieved, he would be content to wait for the Truth to be revealed.
As evening turned to night, the trio began to tire under Reza’s unflinching gaze. It was not long after four bedrolls were brought from the village and a fire started that all of them were ready for sleep.
All, that is, except Reza. Eschewing the bedroll and the fire’s warmth for the lonely chill of the nearby darkness, he knelt on the ground at the edge of the grove and stared into the star-filled sky.
“Do you suppose he is praying?” Father Hernandez asked. The possibility that this strange man knew of the existence of God was quickly becoming an obsession with him. Hernandez was aware that he was falling into that spider’s web, but he was powerless against the force that propelled him into it.
“He might,” Braddock said. “But it looks more to me like he’s homesick as hell… ah, sorry padre.”
Hernandez waved it off “I am used to it by now,” he sighed, gesturing at Jodi, who rolled her eyes. “But what makes you think he is homesick and not simply praying, perhaps confessing for killing those on the bridge this morning?”
Jodi frowned, not so much at Hernandez’s curiosity at Reza’s beliefs, but that he automatically seemed to equate the killing of anyone or anything – regardless of the circumstances – to some form of murder. She was not happy to have to kill anyone, either, but there were circumstances that justified, even necessitated, the taking of another being’s life. In the war against the Empire, the Kreelans had laid the ground rules: fight and have a chance or die. Even among humankind, the score was often the same. Jodi had been forced to kill a man once as he brutally assaulted and then tried to rape a woman in a suburban park on Old Terra. Jodi had not known either of them, she had only been a casual stroller-by, but her duty then had been every bit as clear as the duties she had sworn in her commissioning oath to undertake on the part of her race. She had felt terrible after the fact, was sickened by the knowledge that one human being could do something like that to another when the survival of their entire race was in jeopardy in a much larger war. But she had never, not once in all the years that had passed, regretted shooting the man when he turned with a knife to fight her off. He had been an enemy to everything Jodi believed in, perhaps even more so than the Kreelans were. To Jodi, not having tried to help the woman would have left nothing inside her but intolerable guilt. Perhaps if Father Hernandez underwent a similar experience, he might gain an appreciation for what lay beyond the idealistic cloak of his pacifism.
“Before I joined the Corps,” Braddock told them quietly, not noticing the momentary glare Jodi leveled at the priest, “I spent my whole life in a little town on Timor. I worked as a mechanic after I got out of secondary school. I did all right, but I never would have gotten rich at it.” He smiled wistfully, suddenly remembering how awful it had been, how wonderful it had been. The long hours, the hard work, the ribbing he had taken from his friends because he studied in his free time instead of playing pool at the local bar. The loves he had had, had lost. It had been his home, and he knew it always would be. “I never saw anywhere else on that whole planet, just that little town. Doing or seeing other things was something I didn’t think about much, because I didn’t really have time for it, not when you have to do all you can just to get food on the family’s table.
“But then my draft notice was posted, and I decided to join the Marines. I figured it was a better shot than the Navy. No offense, ma’am.” Jodi shook her head. The two of them had shared times that had long since dissolved any seriousness in jibes about their rival services. “After the papers were signed, I felt good about it. My folks and little sister would have money to make ends meet, and I’d get to see something of the outside, which really began to appeal to me after a while. And fighting, that was something I’d always been good at, since I was a little kid. And if I was going to be fighting the Blues, so much the better.”
He looked at Reza. “It wasn’t like I thought it would be, though. Boot camp went by in a flash, all of us so busy we didn’t have time to think about anything but making it through the next day.
“But when I reached the regiment and saw what the war really meant to a grunt like me, to all of us, I suddenly realized that I’d probably never see home again, except maybe in a box. It hit me just like that. That night, while we were waiting to ship out to the fleet, I went off by myself a little ways and knelt on the ground, just like Reza there. I looked up at the sky, but damned if I could figure out which star was home, where Mom and Dad and Lucille were. All I wanted then, more than anything in the world, was to be at home, sitting in the kitchen and having dinner with my folks, or maybe having a beer with Dad out on the porch, a thousand other little things. I wanted to be home so bad that I just started bawling like a baby.” Braddock was silent for a moment, taking the time to look at the stars himself. “Since then, Father, I’ve seen a thousand other guys and gals do the exact same thing. He might be praying all right, but if he is, my money says that it’s not inspired by guilt from his work this morning. If he’s praying, it’s a wish to wake up from all this and be at home, wherever his home might be, tucked into a nice warm bed.”
The three of them were silent with their own thoughts for a while.
“Well, folks,” Braddock said, finally breaking the spell and stretching out with obvious pleasure on the heavily padded bedroll, the first real chance to sleep that he could claim to have had for the better part of a month or more, “I think I’m going to shut down for the night. I don’t know about you, but this Marine needs his beauty sleep real, real bad. ‘Night, all.”
“Goodnight, my son,” Hernandez replied. He, too, was tired from the ordeals of the last weeks, and today especially. His mind was wound tight as a clock spring, but his body needed rest. “I think I will avail myself of sleep, as well. Goodnight, Jodi.”
“Goodnight, Father, gunny.” Jodi sat at the fire by herself for a while, still thinking about what Braddock had said. That Reza might be homesick had not occurred to her. She had naively assumed that Reza would be happy to be back in the Confederation, among his own people. She saw how precious the old letter from Colonel Hickock was to him and the respect he had shown Braddock after Reza understood that Braddock was a Marine.
But believing that Reza should be happy to be “home” again had been silly, she understood now. Whatever Reza was thinking, it could hardly be from a perspective akin to hers. After all, how long had he been under the Empire’s influence? Since early childhood? Since birth? And what – if anything – was left inside him that someone could point to and say, “That is human”? What did he really have in common with anyone in the human sphere, other than his genetic origins?
It was these questions that brought on a sudden wave of compassion for the dark, silent figure kneeling a few meters away. In the short time since he had been among them, he had demonstrated powers that made Jodi wonder if her disbelief in the supernatural, benign or otherwise, might be unjustified, and she wondered with uneasy curiosity at what other secrets might yet lay cloaked behind his green eyes. But for all that, he still boasted at least some of the frailties of his kind. He could shed tears of sadness, although she did not know exactly why he might be sad. Looking at him now, she knew that he could feel loneliness, too, just as Braddock had thought. Severed from the culture he had grown up in and whomever he might have been close to, how could it be any other way?
Quietly, so as not to disturb Braddock or the snoring priest, Jodi got up from her bedroll and went to sit beside Reza.
“Listen,” she said softly as he turned to her, the pendants on the collar around his neck glittering brightly in the glow of the fire, “I know you can’t understand what I’m saying, but I want you to know that you don’t have to be alone.” She reached out and found one of his hands. With the armored gauntlet and its rapier claws, it seemed huge and menacing against her tender flesh, but she held it anyway. “I don’t know why you’re here, or what or who you left behind. I hope that maybe you’ll tell me those things someday, when we can speak in a language we both understand, because I really would like to know. Because I care. And there will be others who will care about you, too, and will be your friends.” She touched his face with her other hand. There were no tears there now, just his glowing eyes. “I’m sure life won’t be easy for you,” she went on. “It never is for people who are different from the others around them, and you’re different from every other human being who has ever lived. But you’re still human, and that’s what counts most. It’ll be enough. I know it will.”
She heard a tiny click, the same strange noise as when he had been holding her in the rectory, as he took off one of his gauntlets and clipped it to his waist. He took her hand in his, flesh against flesh, and did what Jodi thought was the most extraordinary thing.
Shyly, like a bewildered teenage boy on his first date, he smiled.
