Choices | Page 8

the seat, eyeing my host somewhat warily. For
a moment we merely sat staring at one another. Or perhaps it was I who
just stared at her, for I couldn't get over how beautiful she was.
Beautiful, because her features weren't the stony, unrealistic perfection
of the bioscultor. There were flaws and imperfections, which only
seemed to make the face all that much more attractive. It had a
character that so many sculpted ones like my own didn't.
The first thing she said was: "Foreigners are forbidden within the walls
of the Sentai." And then she laughed, clearly amused by the way my
face seemed to lose all color.
"Do not fret, Captain Morrisohn," Kieara 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