It's overtime on the holiday weekend, again. Once again, all I have to show for it is another Space Guys installment that's more worldbuilding, only this time, it's not even that long. By the way, I already know exactly what really happened to the communities discussed here; don't look it up if you don't want to be depressed. As usual, the table of contents is at the end.
As the Janus approached Jupiter, Alek and Jason finally married. To Jason’s surprise, Alek insisted on a religious service. Old Yuri offered to perform an Orthodox service, revealing that he was a deacon of the Church, but a hasty consultation confirmed that his authority stopped short of performing a marriage. While the pair were debating what to do, the captain summoned them. They came, to find Moxon waiting. Raeder said matter-of-factly, “Commander Moxon has offered to perform the ceremony. I have confirmed, he has the authority.”
Jason
looked uncertainly at Moxon. “So you’re really a priest?” he said, not quite
incredulous.
“I
said I was a Brahmin,” the officer answered with evident modesty. “I studied at
the Temple of Karachi for 6 years, all told, when I wasn’t on duty. At the end
of it, the Brahmins voted to recognize me as one of their own. It’s a title of
respect more than anything else. It wouldn’t mean any more than Yuri’s title. Still,
we can perform marriage rites, and outsiders never argue. All you need me for
is to witness your vows. Yuri can still handle the rest.”
Jason looked at Alek. She smiled. “Of course, it will be fine,” she said. “I am an enlightened woman.”
The ceremony ended up being performed mostly by Yuri. The reporter Lin recorded their vows. Anastasia was in view as a bridesmaid, and Harrison and Jax stood with Jason. Moxon opened with a speech on the principle of ahimsa and the value of all life, and closed by affirming the marriage as valid. It was excuse enough for as wild a revel as could be had in the confines of the life support ring. As the celebration commenced, the Americans Yates and Smith sang the Major Maxon theme song, a clear plagiarization of the Marine Corps hymn, drawing an evidently sincere smile from Moxon. In the midst of it, Jason found the officer talking with Donald and Jax.
“I
thought Jainism was pacifist,” the engineer said, almost argumentatively.
The officer smiled at that. “People who’ve heard of Jains usually think that, if they never met one,” he said. “The holy texts teach peace, when possible. But we also teach freedom of conscience. Nobody is told what they can or can’t do, only what the principles are. The Brahmin I learned from used to say, non-violence is ideal. Non-interference is practical. It mostly comes down to, don’t start anything, and you won’t have to finish it.”
Jax
spoke up. “So how do you decide when to get involved?”
Moxon looked at him thoughtfully. Jason could tell that it unsettled Jax. “It’s up to everyone to decide,” the officer said. “But there is a saying: If life is taken for naught; if the good are persecuted for their goodness; if evil is done for evil’s sake; then the righteous man may join the fight.” In his peripheral vision, Jason saw Alek frown.
Donald persisted on another track. “So what god do you pray to?” he said. “Or do you have a bunch of them like the Hindis and the islanders?”
“We don’t need one,” Moxon said, still smiling. “Now, that’s not like it sounds. The holy texts teach that the universe is forever. No Creator, no beginning and no end, leastways none that people will ever see. There’s just us, the world and Karma. You could say that’s our idea of God. It’s not like a judge punishing sinners, more like the laws of physics. Everything is interconnected. Nobody can just stand by and watch. If you do harm to another being, what you do or don’t do affects the whole world. Then, sooner or later, the world will affect you back. So what we mostly teach is non-interference.”
Jax
patiently cut in again. “Then how does non-intervention work?” he said. “If you
stand by and do nothing while people are hurt, how are you any better than the
people doing it?”
“That’s where things get complicated,” Moxon said. “Here’s how the Brahmin explained it to me. Suppose you’re in the woods with a gun, when you see a tiger chasing a deer. If you shoot the tiger, you save the deer. But you are responsible for everything that happens after. If it’s a tigress with cubs, her cubs will starve, and you will be to blame. If the deer is old or weak, it may starve too, or be eaten by another tiger, unless you are there to protect it every night. Then if you keep killing every tiger, all the deer will all starve when there are too many of them for the forest to feed. If you don’t involve yourself, then it is between the tiger and the deer. Maybe the tiger will feed, maybe the deer will save itself.”
“Then
how does that fit with what the Strato Corps does?” Jax said. “How is leaping
into other people’s wars anything but interference?”
“Our tactics are carefully developed on the principles of ahimsa,” he said. “We enter at the invitation of the lawful, local authorities. We secure an area with minimum loss of life. Then we hold until proper civil and diplomatic channels can be restored. The invitation is the important part. If there weren’t authorities, there wouldn’t be anything left to protect, would there?”
By
then, Anastasia was at Donald’s side, trying to lead him away. He continued
with what had clearly been on his mind all along. “So, where did that scar come
from?”
Moxon turned his head, smiling. A bright blue-white light overhead showed his face in sharp detail. For the first time, Jason saw the full extent of the scar. He had thought it was on his cheek, perhaps extending to his eyebrow. In fact, the ragged trail started well above his hair line and went down to his jaw, even his throat. For a moment, he tried to reconstruct what blade and what trajectory could have made the wound without simply cleaving his skull. He only shook his head.
“Here’s the thing,” Moxon said. “Lots of people ask about that scar. I assume you mean the big one. Too bad; I have others that are a lot more interesting.” He casually removed a glove from his right hand. Underneath were matching scars like stigmata on his palm and the back of his hand. He wiggled his fingers. Only then was it evident that his ring finger was a prosthesis. “Usually, they ask in private. In fact, you’re the first person to ask me with a real crowd around. Some of them have asked me themselves. Obviously, they haven’t talked, leastways to you. So, are you sure you really want to hear it?”
“No,
he doesn’t,” Anastasia said. She drew an arm possessively and perhaps
protectively around Donald’s waist. His eyes widened as she whispered in his
ear in Russian. Jason picked up the gist, which was what she would drag him out
by if he did not come with her. The engineer happily followed her out.
“I am ready to go, too,” Alek said. She took Jason’s arm. “Please.” Jason ignored the chorus of cheers as they left.
Alek led him through a less frequented cross passage as they made their way back to her lab, lined with plants, fish tanks, caged rodents and other creatures used to study microgravity. “I know what really happened,” she said. “It is in the file I got from the Corps. I demanded it as a condition of coming. I already knew of three people who insisted they had heard the story from him. I found four more on the ship. Every last one was completely different; all total kaka.”
“I
wondered about it,” Jason said. “There’s something else. Yuri showed me a pilot
of the Major Maxon show. It had an extra introduction before the theme song.
The whole bit about protecting good from evil was straight from it.
“I
know; I’m pretty sure Donald did to,” Alek said. “Tell me, did you ever ask?”
“No,”
Jason said. “I never cared.”
“That
is why you are a good man,” his bride said. “Now come with me.”
When they arrived at her quarters, a light dinner was waiting, evidently prepared by her robots. Scarecrow and the Patchwork Girl served them, while Nick Chopper and Tik Tok prepared a freeze-dried desert. When they had finished, Alek dismissed the robots. After months of sharing her bed, Jason still felt excitement and an undercurrent of tension as she closed the partitions.
“Now that we are married, I have something for you,” she said. She held up a vinyl video disc. “I get it to, how to say, spice things up. You know, give some new ideas. I had to ask around a little. They wouldn’t have let it in the data banks. But it wasn’t no hard to get, when I ask the right people.” She was still smiling as she put the disc in the player on top of her computer terminal.
Within bare minutes, Jason walked right out of the nacelle.
Alek was waiting for him when
he inevitably circled back around. “Too much?” she said. He returned her smile,
and they embraced.
Table of contents
Part 7: Alternate universe pop culture!
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