Choices | Page 8

went on. "I have taken precautions. Believe me, I have no desire to draw the wrath of my father. He would, in all his piety, find it necessary to make an example of me before the whole world. That is an experience the like of which I can guarantee no one would wish to endure."
"You called me Captain," I said, trying to ignore the sick feeling of apprehension that continued to gnaw at me.
"We are not without our sources, Captain." She smiled again, a smile that illuminated the entire room. "The Federation may well have won the war, but it has not rendered the Church entirely toothless. There are still many devoted followers of the faith throughout the Earth Empire. And not just in what was once known as the Unity," she added pointedly.
I nodded. "Of course," I conceded. She was merely confirming something Admiralty had long known. But to hear it from someone so well connected to the Church gave it a level of authenticity it had never quite held in my mind before.
"You are wondering why you are here," said Kieara.
"Curious, yes," I agreed. "You seem to have gone to a great deal of effort to arrange this encounter and ensure its privacy."
"It is amazing the things people will do for you when you are the daughter of the prelate, captain," she observed somewhat ruefully. "On this world people are governed much by their fears."
"Indeed." I regarded her directly. "And are you, too, governed by fear?"
She smiled wanly. "I am the daughter of a man who believes himself the vessel of God, Captain. He lives by a code, a set of standards by which we are all expected to set the course of our lives. He imagines himself the last bastion of the true faith. Chastity may well have been the center of the Red Catholic universe, but to my father it was always Tradur which paid greatest obeisance to the strictures of the faith."
"And you're your father's daughter," I said simply; but it was apparent by the fact that I was here, in a place that I shouldn't have been, that she wasn't.
"For many years I believed as he did," she conceded. She looked down at her hands, which she held together delicately in her lap, then raised her eyes to confront me once more with that bewitching liquid blue stare. "I had no reason not to. I was born and raised within the faith. It was the rule by which my life was measured."
"And now?"
"There were no offworlders on Tradur until the defeat of the Unity," she said, as though that were explanation enough.
I waited a moment before saying anything, then: "You saw a different way of life."
"I saw that the words of the faith had not run true. You were not the incarnations of all evil our leaders to us you were. The universe did not open up a great darkness and swallow us all for having looked upon your face."
"Whew! Glad to know that," I said, miming relief by wiping away imaginary sweat from my brow.
"You mock me," she said, looking hurt.
I sobered quickly, straightening up in my chair, and suddenly feeling apologetic. "Sorry," I said, suitably contrite. "I didn't mean to make light of what you're saying."
"I suppose we must seem rather primitive to you," she said.
"Different." I thought of the war, and of how they'd almost won it. No, they were hardly primitive, although Tradur might well have given one that impression. But then, Tradur wasn't like any of the other worlds of what had once been the Unity.
"This world has changed little since the first settlers arrived," Kieara continued. "There has always been a reluctance to embrace the new. And in the tenets of our faith we have strayed little from the original doctrines, save where it has been deemed necessary for survival."
"That must come at a cost."
"A far greater one than you can imagine, Captain," she said, her manner grave. "My father seeks only that which will ensure the survival of his faith. He will do whatever is necessary in his eyes to maintain it," she added. "When you are blinded by the unyielding light of a personal vision, Captain, it becomes a simple matter to find justification in any act. The leaders of our faith have done this for centuries, and many of us have paid a dear price because of it. The war with the Federation was but a small part of that."
"These are rather frank observations, coming from one who is said to be so devoted to the Church," I pointed out, somewhat cynically.
"Do not be deceived by all you see and here, Captain."
"And what is it I'm seeing and hearing now?"
"As with us all, you will see and hear what you wish to." Kieara smiled weakly.