Chapter 9

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That's how Olga missed the Vigil. There were no particular consequences. Only the Priest read prayers with her in two voices for almost an hour, and Bertha forced her to undress and examined every inch of Olga's body. In other circumstances, this would have looked insulting, but both the counselor and the shepherd looked concerned, and they approached the matter with absolute seriousness. But eventually, things calmed down.

As the late dawn flooded the tundra and the warehouse complex with dim light, the train set off again, ringing the snow-covered landscape with siren cries and the hymn 'Rejoice in worship'. Nothing happened for a couple of hours. The only noteworthy events were the picturesque grimaces of Flagellant Sinner, who was visibly suffering after his vigil. Olga even plucked up courage by offering to help the sufferer. She did not count on consent, but Sinner suddenly nodded with gratitude, and Driver brought a jar of smelly ointment. Kryp looked at it all obliquely, but no one asked him.

Rubbing the white grease into Sinner's bruised back, Olga looked curiously around his compartment. The atmosphere here, like that of the other detachments, was strictly Spartan, with plenty of religious symbolism. It gave the impression that every square inch of it was devoted to the worship of a cult. Small engravings, figurines, aquiles, collected, it seemed, on a hundred planets, so different was their style. Sacred texts are printed on single sheets and simply torn from books. Where there was empty space, there were again the aquiles, but they were hand-drawn, inaccurately but painstakingly, with the traces of numerous erasures and corrections.

From the intermediate level came the Madman's loud prayers. He seemed to have been screaming all night and had lost his voice, so the words combined into an indistinct stream, with 'Emperor' and 'Evil' breaking through like stones in a stormy river. No one interrupted the poor man, and that was most distressing as if everyone in the carriage sincerely believed that the indecipherable grumbling was really helping.

Having finished the procedure, Olga covered the sick man with a towel similar to a bath towel. The decrepit fabric was hidden under a lot of awkwardly and crookedly embroidered words. Something like 'Empirator vin' and so on. Returning to her room, the girl reflected and took note - no one was chasing the squad away for another drill and chores. In other circumstances, the whole squad would have long ago been jumping on the icy wind-blown roof and scrubbing the tank for the thousandth time. But now every squadron member was left to their own devices.

The rings creaked and the tarp pulled aside.

"Don't close," the Holy Man sternly pointed out. "Open all the curtains! And so until morning."

Olga shrugged her shoulders perplexedly. At the same time, she glanced askance at Kryptman's place. Fidus furnished the compartment about the same as she did. That is, almost nothing, in the style of beggarly laconicism. The only thing that somehow diversified the meager furnishings was a portrait in a beautiful metal frame, either a black and white photograph or a good stylization of a photograph. It showed Fidus, only obviously older, with his military 'hedgehog' haircut, and the edges of his lips curled down in a grouchy and discontented manner. Probably his father. Or an older brother.

The servitor sat silently on a shelf, next to a large box of riveted strips of metal. It must have held the parts and other gear necessary to maintain a living machine. Hidden in the flesh were mechanisms that buzzed and clicked quietly and generally contrasted with the stillness of the living machine. Kryp shaved the mechanical dead man's head with the utmost care, and then, armed with a rag and a spray bottle like deodorant, began carefully cleaning and polishing the contacts that went straight into the grayish-yellow skin. Servitor was left without his monstrous shotgun. Bertha had taken it away and locked it in the armory - anything more dangerous than a knife on board was strictly forbidden.

Olga was tempted to ask if there was any semblance of intelligence left in the metal stuffed head, but after some deliberation, the girl changed her mind. The hell with it. Instead of asking, she unscrewed the thumbscrews of the locks and looked out the window again.

The clouds seemed very low, surprisingly heavy, it seemed - stand on the roof of the 'Radial' and you could touch it with outstretched fingers. It was strange that the flagpole with the Squad's banner did not scratch the sky. On the left hand, there was a view of the ocean, unremarkable except for its scale. Otherwise, the Arctic is the Arctic, everything is dull and cold, encased in a solid ice shell. Olga already knew that the surface of the ocean is hardly used, but underwater farms are well developed. As a result, despite the eternal winter and stunted agriculture, the Ice Port was self-sufficient in food, processing algae biomass into dozens of types of food concentrates.

To the right was a vast expanse of identical squat buildings, as if they had been buried deep, with only the roofs protruding above the frozen ground. Pillars of thick smoke rose from long chimneys, revealing strenuous underground activity. In the distance, near the horizon line, there was a dark strip of what looked like dense construction, probably a city, maybe a huge factory.

The train rolled leisurely past a large building that resembled a traffic guard's booth, only many times larger. On the second floor, there was a tram-like carriage, and behind the windows, you could see some kind of movement, as if the carriage were an observation booth. And behind the booth was a factory complex, but strange-looking, like some gray concrete boxes after the war. The windows scintillated with broken glass, a dark brick chimney sticking out like the stump of a broken pencil. Outside were thrown bridges, scaffolding, and metal ladders that looked temporary and unreliable as hell. Figures of workers scurried about like ants, seemingly clearing and repairing things.

The outside light changed, the dim afternoon light filled with pinkish-burgundy hues as if the clouds themselves glowed grimly and menacingly. Olga blinked and rubbed her eyes, but the illusion did not disappear. The world around her seemed like a photograph, taken through a pink filter. The train began to climb up, climbing a high embankment. Here 'Radial' passed a continuous series of low hills, and Olga could not refrain from a silent exclamation of surprise.

Everything the girl had seen before at the 'Beacon' seemed well-maintained. Not too friendly, but quite settled. And now the armored train was rolling amidst an area of immense destruction. It was as if the whole coast had been massively bombed. There was nothing left here above human height, and it seemed that some force was stubbornly trying to turn the landscape inside out, burying the high and vice versa. The already low trees were jutting out in broken stumps, and numerous buildings had only foundations left among the piles of rubble and debris. Farms, towers, power trunks, and all the metal elements had become jagged, twisted sculptures of a mad installer. The eye clung to a few flying machines that were lying around as if they had fallen to the ground in mid-flight and were rusted through.

'Radial' was moving in a wide arc, giving a good opportunity to see everything in detail. The only thing that looked relatively new and intact here was a large bridge, running on high pylons parallel to the railroad track. It looked like a temporary, erected structure and crossed a wide barrier that looked like the dried-up bed of a deep river. Looking closely and correlating the giant 'scour' with the destruction, Olga realized that it was not a riverbed. It was as if something gigantic had crawled out of the ocean and moved inland through the coastal development, accompanied by a brutal bombardment.

"Who did that...?" She asked quietly.

"This, my child, is the work of the Evil," said a deep, familiar voice behind me, clearly marking 'Evil' with a capital letter.

"Six months ago, when the Squad was downsized by almost half."

The Priest pushed back the tarpaulin barrier and, anticipating Olga, explained:

"It is true, in such places and at such times one cannot be alone, unattended. But pastoral communion requires solitude when the troubled soul is calmed by coming face to face with the light of truth"

The bulky man sat on a creaking shelf and opened a bible, which was a brief extract of the social and political structure of the Imperium mixed with excerpts from various saints. A very convenient tool for enlightenment, all the knowledge at one's fingertips.

"Let's pray."

It certainly didn't sound like a suggestion. With her head bowed and her thumbs crossed, Olga diligently repeated after the monk the words of the prayer on duty. She already understood the meaning, but her knowledge of Gothic did not allow her to pronounce it fluently yet.

"So, let's go on," the Priest said as they finished.

"Yeah," Olga agreed as if she had a choice. She sat down, straightening her back and folding her hands respectfully in her lap.

"Have you thought well about our last lesson?" the shepherd sternly questioned.

"Yes," said the girl in a disciplined manner.

"Great. Then a question."

The Priest was quiet, still looking sternly and attentively at Olga.

"What is the weirdest thing about the Imperium? The most wrong?"

"The Imperium is the abode of humanity!" the girl said at once and without a stammer. "A well-appointed house, guarded by gatekeepers with a number of..."

She lost her way and, embarrassed, began to count by curling her fingers.

"The Emperor and His Light, that is, the soul and guiding beacon of humanity. Ecclesiarchy, the heart of humanity. Arbiters, the bone of humanity. The Inquisition, the conscience of humanity. The Guard, the slashing hand."

"Smashing hand." The Priest, in whose eyes there were sparks of benevolent irony, hinted.

"Yes, yes, the smashing hand... and shield. The Munistorum, the mind of humanity. Together they form a harmonious, perfect body. There."

Olga looked at the Priest in triumph. He nodded, paying tribute to his student's memory.

"That's right," he said, squinting a little, like a well-fed but attentive cat. "That's the way it is. But... So, what's the weirdest, the wrongest thing about the Imperium?

"So it's perfect," the girl glanced suspiciously at the shepherd.

"The Imperium is perfect, as an extension of the Emperor, of course," Shepherd agreed. "But it exists in the senses and understanding of a multitude of people. Because if there were no people, there would be no Imperium, right?"

"Uh... Yes," the student agreed cautiously.

She was not afraid. In several very helpful lectures-sermons, she had already understood that the Priest was not going to throw her into the atomic furnace for a wrong answer. The servant of the Ecclesiarchy was quite genuinely concerned about the new novice's soul and faith, and he was doing what no one else in the world had bothered to do. Telling her how the gigantic empire of a million planets was organized, who the local god was, and so on. But the girl tried not to forget that she was dealing with religion, and she could get burned for it. Probably.

"You're human, aren't you?" The Priest looked sternly at Olga. She nodded quickly.

"And you have your own opinion about the Imperium!"

Olga looked longingly at the Priest's collar. She felt like a schoolgirl with an unlearned lesson when she could not dodge it and had to answer something.

"Don't try to guess what I want to hear. Tell me what you think."

"Well... so... you know," the girl mumbled.

"Yes?" the minister of the cult encouraged her.

"It's... wrong," she just whispered the last word.

"Great!" the monk raised his index finger.

"What?"

"I told you before, child," the Priest sternly reminded her. "You can't be faithless in our work. It's not just dangerous, it's a path to death, and it's a path to far worse things."

Olga wanted to ask what could be scarier than death, but she bit her tongue.

"But faith itself is only a shield," the Priest continued. "We must be able to repel the blows that the enemies of humanity inflict on us. You are in doubt, and that is good. It means that we see a weakness that must be strengthened with good reasoning. So what seems wrong to you?"

"Well... It's huge," Olga spread her hands as if to emphasize the immensity of the empire of all people. "And everyone gets burned. Everyone believes..."

She fell silent, feeling confused, unable to express in words the feeling of general impropriety, the inconsistency of the idea of a grand cosmic empire with the slumbering fanaticism.

"Spaceships fly, but the machinery is repairing with prayers... Damn!" she bumped her fist on her knee, angered by the realization of her limited vocabulary.

"Where are you from?" Shepherd asked very seriously. "What planet are you from?"

"From Earth," the girl answered honestly.

"It must be a very heretical planet," the Priest stretched out thoughtfully, and Olga felt herself grow cold.

"And, apparently, not badly developed. Enough to assemble household machines, cogitators, simple machines, voxes... You're not intimidated by technology, you might even have a general idea of what electricity or a nuclear reactor are, so you think theocracy is wrong. Right?"

Fuck.

"Well, at least it's clear why you're here," said the Priest as if nothing had happened. "It makes the task all the more interesting."

Olga remained silent, looking at the chain the monk was girded with. She wanted to cry, to crawl under the bench, and for the damned lesson to be over as soon as possible.

"Let's pretend that you..." Shepherd thought about it. "Well, let's say, the Emperor's chosen daughter. In the spiritual sense, of course. And he has called you to order his legacy. Have you imagined it?"

Olga nodded silently and sniffled, trying not to drop a tear.

Shepherd looked thoughtfully at the metal wall, in which there was a viewing slit.

"And there's a million planets in front of you. In reality, of course, there are many more. No one really knows how many."

"Really?" Olga was amazed, even forgetting from surprise that she was almost ready to burst into tears.

"Yes," the Priest nodded. "Try to imagine a million of something. Grains of sand, coins, people. It's an unbelievable amount."

"Aha... Olga imagined a thousand of thousand buttons. Or rather, she tried to imagine it, and it turned out rather badly."

"But for simplicity's sake, let's assume that there are exactly a million of them and none more," the Priest returned to the introduction. "And all are different. Among that million, no two are the same. Somewhere after the Dark Ages, they still walk with clubs, and somewhere they build spaceships. On one planet, a man and a woman marry, on another, a person marries to all the members of the spouse's family, as in my homeland."

"How's that?" Olga's eyes widened like saucers.

"It's not easy," the Priest smiled faintly. "But I think you get the point. Well, you have a million planets in front of you, and they must all live as one organism. Otherwise, the Empire will collapse and the era of decay and death will come again, as it has already happened before. And what will you do?"

"Well..." Olga wrinkled her forehead. "We have to set the same rules for everyone."

"And which ones?" The monk immediately answered a question with a question. "Here are two planets, one has culture and civilization, and the other gets married by first breaking the skulls of all their rivals. How do you equalize them?"

"By force," said the girl firmly. "We need the less civilized to live by the rules. Good, cultural rules. Because cracking skulls isn't good."

"So you're going to impose laws on people that are foreign to them, right?" the monk clarified. "They have to forget all the traditions their fathers and grandmothers lived by for tens or hundreds of generations. And since resistance is inevitable, you have to force them, don't you?"

"Yes..." This time there was less confidence in Olga's voice. The Priest's description did not sound as correct as she would have liked, but she could not accuse the pastor of unfair interpretation either.

"Are you ready to ignite a war on a humanity-wide scale?" the monk raised an eyebrow. "For everyone to marry, be born, live, and die by the same rules? By the rules of just a few planets that you think are worthy of the standard?"

"I... probably... I'll have to think about it."

"Think about it. But I'll give you the answer right away if you can - contradict it."

The Priest placed his hands on the book and touched the cover with wide palms with reverence and without an inch of pretentiousness.

"It makes no sense to reshape everyone to a single standard because if people in some world live this way, it means that this charter is the best for them. There is no way to make everyone live according to the same canon without causing genocide on hundreds of thousands of worlds. But there is no need to. The greatness of the Emperor is that he gave us the Faith as a single core, a common beginning for all and everything. The measure of all things, good and evil. One who lives on top of the hive world and one who adorns himself with the teeth of slain enemies are infinitely distant, will never understand each other. But they are united by a Faith that is simple, clear, and just. In radioactive deserts and on dead snow-covered worlds, in cosmic settlements and deepest dungeons, the Emperor is one for all and unites all."

Shepherd sighed, took a breath.

"Theocracy is the only way to unite a million worlds. And when you worship the Emperor, you are not merely entrusting your soul to the best of the excellent, who is greater than any mortal. You are serving the greatest design and plan in the universe, you are laying a brick in the foundation of a common and safe home for all people in all worlds. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't this a destiny worthy of pride?"

"But... I haven't been very long... here... Well, in civilized places," Olga quickly clarified. "But I have already seen various... injustices. For example, I have been caught, judged, sentenced. Nothing was explained to me!"

She was slowly turning on the attentive Priest, taking out her long-cherished resentment.

"I saved him," the girl almost shouted. "Just because I felt sorry for him! There was so much going on, so..."

She sniffed again, experiencing a sharp attack of self-pity. Olga was no longer worried about what Kryp might hear.

"A lot was going on... and I risked everything, I almost got killed there... more than once. And they punished me! I didn't even know about the emperor, I didn't speak Gothic. And they beat me because I didn't pray right!"

She did cry, softly, hopelessly. And then the shepherd's broad palms rested on her shoulders. The monk pulled the girl strongly, but gently, and patted her back. And Olga finally burst into real tears on his broad chest, covered by the hard links of plastic chainmail. She mumbled something intermittently, confused words, pouring out long-accumulated anger and a sense of universal injustice.

"Here," the Priest handed her a wide handkerchief, or rather, judging by its appearance, a piece of an old sheet.

"Thank you," Olga muttered, wiping her swollen nose. She felt better, though she felt awkward and wary. Who the hell knew how this cultist would take her breakdown?

"As I said before, idiots are the greatest misfortune of a good shepherd of men," the monk said, as it seemed to the girl, with undisguised sadness. But, by the way...

He raised two fingers significantly to the ceiling again.

"This is just in line with what I was just saying. Humans are imperfect. Alas, even the best of us, those who are supposed to carry His word into the universe, are imperfect. How do we correct this imperfection without killing everyone?"

"Faith," Olga sighed.

"Yes," the Priest smiled. "Now you've made another step in understanding."

He sighed.

"Sometimes I think how lucky we are," the monk said softly. "How lucky all people are, former, living, and unborn. He came to us. He gave us the goal and the means to achieve it. Without Him, what would have become of humanity? Life without faith, without purpose, without a sense of unity in a world where enemies are innumerable, where hell can break loose at arm's length... Such a world is scary to even imagine, not to mention living in it. It is not without reason that many have tried to destroy the Emperor's house, but there have always been many more who have defended it."

"It's all complicated," Olga tried to blur the subject somehow. "I have to think about it."

"Think," the Priest approved very seriously. "If you have any doubts or misunderstandings, come to me. I don't want your prayers to be filled with fear, but with hope and gratitude to Him. And it's time for you to confess. And now..."

He clapped his hands softly.

"Now, I think it's time to talk about..."

The Priest was interrupted by Bertha's loud voice:

"Gathering! Gather round, everybody! Three minutes!"

Strangely, the siren did not sound before the alarm was always announced by a special signal.

"Three minutes to go!" shouted the Mentor. "Eat, drink, finish and go to the briefing! Real alarm, real alarm!!!"

The Priest shook his head, hung the book on his waist chain, stood up, and with a fatherly gesture ran his palm over Olga's head. The short lock of blond hair had grown back a little and was prickling funny.

"I thought we were going to talk about Hell today," the monk said. "And why our Faith isn't just a collection of rituals. But I guess you'll see before you hear."

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