The island to the north, however, was simply a black hunk of basalt, rising out of the blue waters. Its stark, uncompromising lines made it look bigger than it actually was, and the top—the only portion formed into anything resembling a traditional cone—trailed a gentle plume of ash and steam.
"I could tell you," Julian replied with a grimace. "But you'd have to believe me rather than your religion."
Fain thought about that. So far, he'd found nothing that directly contradicted the doctrines of the Lord of Water. On the other hand, the dozens of belief systems he and the other infantry had encountered since leaving Diaspra had already indicated to him that the gospel of the priests of Water was not, perhaps, fundamentally correct. While there was no question that the priests understood the science of hydraulics, it might be that their overall understanding of the world was less precise.
"Go ahead," he said with a handclap of resignation. Then he chuckled. "Do your worst!"
Julian smiled in response and gestured at the vast expanse of water stretched out around the flotilla.
"The first thing you have to accept is that the priests' description of the world as a rock floating in eternal, endless waters isn't correct."
"Since we're intending to sail to the far side, I'd already come to the conclusion that 'endless water' might not be exactly accurate," Fain admitted with another handclap.
"What the world really is, is a ball floating in nothingness," Julian said, and raised both hands as Fain started to protest. "I know. How is that possible? Well, you're going to have to trust me for now, and check it out later. But what matters right now is that the center of the ball—the world—is very, very hot. Hot enough to melt rock. And it stays that way."
"That I have a hard time with," Fain said, shaking his head. "Why is it hot? And if it is, when will it cool?"
"It's hot because there's... stuff in there that's something like what makes our plasma cannon work," Julian said, waving his hands with a sort of vague frustration as he looked for an explanation capable of crossing the technological gulf yawning between his worldview and Fain's. "Like I said," he said finally. "You'll just have to trust me on some of this. But it is—hot, I mean—and somewhere under that mountain, there's a channel that connects to that hot part. That's why it smokes. Think of it as a really, really big chimney. As for when the inside of the world will cool, that won't happen for longer than I can explain. There will no longer be humans—or Mardukans—when it starts to cool."
"This is too strange," Fain said. "And how do I explain it to my soldiers? 'It's that way because Sergeant Julian said so'?"
"I dunno," Julian replied. "Maybe the sergeant major can help you out. On the other hand..."
Roger watched Bebi's team begin the entry. The team had already worked on open area techniques. Now they were working on closed... and they looked like total dorks.
There was nowhere to create a real shooting environment on the flotilla's ships, so the troopers were using the virtual reality software built into their helmet combat systems and their toots. The "shoot house" was nothing more than the open deck of a schooner, but with the advanced systems and the toots' ability to massage sensory input, it would be as authentic to the participants as if there were real enemies.
But since their audience could see that they were standing on nothing more than an unobstructed stretch of deck planks, the "entry team" looked like a group of warrior-mimes.
The virtual reality software built into the troops' helmets would have been a potent training device all by itself, and its ability to interface with the Marines' toots was sufficient to make the illusion perfect. Now Macek smoothed thin air as he emplaced a "breaching charge" on the fictitious door he could both "see" and "feel" with total fidelity, then stepped to the side and back. As far as he could tell, he was squatting, nearly in contact with a wall; to everyone else, he looked as if he were getting ready to go to the bathroom on the deck.
The sergeant major next to Roger snorted softly.
"You know, Your Highness, when you're doing this, one part of you knows how stupid you look. But if you don't ignore it, you're screwed. I think this is one of His Wickedness' little jokes on Marines."
Roger smoothed his ponytail and opened his mouth to say something, then closed it.
"Yes, Your Highness?" Kosutic said softly. "I take it there's something about that statement that bothers you?"
"Not about your observation," Roger said as Bebi triggered the notional charge and rushed through the resulting imaginary hole. The prince had set his helmet to project the "shoot house" in see-through mode, and the team seemed to be fighting phantoms in a ghost building as he watched. Combined with his question, the... otherworldly nature of their opponents sent something very much like a shiver down his spine.
"It was that last comment," he said. "I've been wondering... . Why is Satanism the primary religion of Armagh? I mean, a planet settled by Irish and other Roman Catholic groups. That seems a bit... strange," he finished, and the sergeant major let out a chuckle that turned into a liquid laugh Roger had never heard from her before.
"Oh, Satan, is that all? The reason is because the winners write the history books, Your Highness."
"That doesn't explain things," Roger protested, pulling at a strand of hair. "You're a High Priestess, right? That would be the equivalent of—an Episcopal bishop, I guess."
"Oh, not a bishop!" Kosutic laughed again. "Not one of those evil creatures! Angels of the Heavens, they are!" Roger felt his eyes trying to cross, and she smiled at his expression and took pity on him.
"Okay, if you insist, Your Highness, here's the deal.
"Armagh was a slow-boat colony, as you know. The original colonists were primarily from Ireland, on Old Earth, with a smattering from the Balkans. Now, Ireland had a bloody history long before Christianity, but the whole Protestant/Catholic thing eventually got out of hand."
"We studied the nuking of Belfast at the Academy as an example of internal terrorism taken to a specific high," Roger agreed.
"Yes, and what was so screwed up about those Constables was that they killed as many—or more—of their own supporters as they did Catholics." She shrugged. "Religious wars are... bad. But Armagh was arguably worse, even in comparison to the Belfast Bomb.
"The original colonists were Eire who wanted to escape the religious bickering that was still going on in Ireland but keep their religion. They didn't want freedom from religion, only freedom from argument about it. So they took only Catholics.
"Shortly after landing, though, there was an attempted religious schism. It was still, at that time, a purely Catholic colony, and the schismatic movement was more on the order of fundamentalism rather than any sort of outright heresy. The schismatics wanted the mass in Latin, that sort of thing. But that, of course, threatened to start the arguments all over. So, as a result, to prevent religious warfare from breaking out again, they instituted a local version of the Papal College for the express purpose of defining what was religiously acceptable."
"Oh, shit," Roger said quietly. "That's... a bad idea. Hadn't any of them studied history?"
"Yes," she said sadly, "they had. But they also thought they could do things 'right' this time. The Inquisition, the Great Jihad of the early twenty-first century, the Fellowship Extinction, and all the rest of the Jihads, Crusades, and Likuds were beside the point. The worst of it was that those who founded the Tellers were good people. Misguided, but good. The road to Heaven is paved with good intentions, after all. Like most ardent believers, they thought God would make sure they got it right. That their cause was just, and that the other people who'd screwed up exactly the same idea before them had suffered—unlike them—from some fundamental flaw in their vision or approach."