Zilia tried to read his face. “What was in the temples wasn’t the God?”
Jep shook his head. “What’s in temples was never the God. What’s in the temples were just mouths, to talk to us. Birribat Shum isn’t dead. Horgy Endure isn’t dead. The damned Baidee have killed some of us, but they had no idea where to find the Gods.”
He spoke with complete authority. He would not have needed to speak at all. Once they thought of it, each of them realized that nothing had truly been destroyed. Even those who had died were part of what grew on Hobbs Land. A way. A convenience. A kindness.
They went on doing what had to be done, comforting one another as best they could. None of them recalled what Sam had told them upon the escarpment. In their grief and immediate pain, none of them remembered that the prophets had taken a Door with them to Ninfadel.
• Twelve of the troopers of The Arm of the Prophetess were dead, though their bodies had been carried back to Thyker. One trooper had been inadvertently left behind on Hobbs Land, and Churry hoped he too was dead so he couldn’t talk. Churry was angrier than he could ever remember being. Though he didn’t quite realize it yet, he was angry at himself. He had always delighted in the fact that he had never found it necessary to raise his voice. He had always told himself his zealotry was a different kind than that of other folk. He did not rant. He thought of himself as quiet and quite deadly. He told himself he would not hesitate to use force, when necessary, but would never stoop to it when it was not. His self-assessment had never been tested, but he had believed it implicitly, believed it as an article of faith, as he believed in the Overmind.
Now he writhed in a fury of self-hatred. He had never anticipated a time when he would accuse himself of having been a fool. Who would have thought it necessary to train soldiers not to kill? There was nothing about that in the manuals. Who would have thought it necessary to carry weapons which didn’t kill? There were no such things in the armory.
As for Mordy Trust, she was shocked into virtual immobility. She sat with her face blank, not speaking, while the others gathered around her, murmuring incoherently.
“So far as we are concerned,” Churry snarled at his remaining one hundred seven men and women, coming very close to raising his voice, “the twelve men who died today died right here on Thyker during an unfortunate training exercise. They went out and didn’t come back.”
The troops, who had never given any thought to killing unarmed children and elderly women, and who certainly hadn’t given much thought to dying themselves, were now finding themselves unable to think of anything else.
“How about Nonginansaree?” whined Nonginansaree’s brother. “He didn’t get back.”
“Let things cool down, we’ll go back and find him,” said Churry. “But let things cool down. You get out of those kits. Put them in a pile out behind the barracks.” He ticked off the three worst foul-ups he had personally observed and told them, “You three dig a pit. Put the bodies and the combat kits in the pit, cover it up, pack it down, smooth it out, and park a truck on top of it. The rest of you, get your ordinary clothing on, and get back to daily life. When you hear about the training fatalities, be properly surprised.”
“Shouldn’t we …” said someone tentatively. “Shouldn’t we … reparations. Those kids …”
“What kids?” demanded Churry. “I know nothing about any kids.”
This came frighteningly close to fooling with their heads. They all knew there had been kids, and women, and men, mostly unarmed, hundreds of them. Baidee did not lie, not usually. Certainly they did not assert conditions contrary to those which could be observed. They had observed people, not monsters, being killed.
Churry saw the doubt on their faces. “We don’t officially know about any kids,” said Churry, more gently. “What happened was unfortunate, but none of us planned it. All we can do now is remember why we went there in the first place, which is still important to us, and give things a few days to settle down.”
Still murmuring incoherently, the others obeyed him, though they did so with backward glances and a few peculiar looks, which Churry did not relish. When all had gone, Mordy remarked in a dead calm voice, “All we can do now, Churry, is see that all future training includes learning when not to shoot.”
Churry, who had over and over again visualized the raid into Hobbs Land as a militant but orderly progress of his people, while the farmers ran shrieking in the opposite direction, was by now fairly sure all two or three hundred of the Hobbs Land corpses would eventually be laid on his shoulders. He had been responsible for training the Arm. He had been responsible for commanding the exercise. Now he nodded somberly at Mordy’s comment, thinking that now was a less than perfect time for her to have given him such excellent counsel, thinking that though she might not realize it, there would be no future training at all for either of them to be involved in.
• • •
• Shallow under the soil, behind the barracks of The Arm of the Prophetess, in the desert outside Chowdari, lay the bodies of twelve troopers and the combat uniforms of one hundred nineteen, including those covered with the fine
