Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

usual
sense of one’s self - controlled by the left side of this region -
from the sense of space and time, controlled by the right. And
perhaps a sense of awe and significance came from a malfunction of
the limbic system, a deep and ancient system keyed to the emotions.
And so on. If a mystical experience was simply a symptom of a
malfunctioning brain - like, say, an epileptic fit - then that
malfunction could be fixed, the symptoms abolished. And with a little
judicious tinkering with the genome, such flaws could be banished
from all subsequent generations.
    ’A future without gods,’ said Luca. ’How marvellous that would
be.’
    Dolo nodded. ’But if you had had such an excision - and you had
stood under the arch of names - could you have appreciated its
significance? Could you have understood, have felt it as you did? Oh,
yes, I watched you. Perhaps those aspects of our brains, our minds,
have evolved for a purpose. Why would they exist otherwise?’
    Luca had no answer. Again he was shocked.
    ’Anyhow,’ said Dolo, reverting to orthodoxy, ’tampering with human
evolution - or even passively allow it to happen - is itself against
the Druz Doctrines. We win this war as humans or not at all - and we
bend that rule at our peril. We have stayed united, across tens of
thousands of light years and unthinkably huge populations, because we
are all the same. Although that’s not to say that evolution isn’t
itself taking mankind away from the norm that Hama Druz himself might
have recognised.’
    ’Commissary?’
    ’Well, look around you. Most of these soldiers are the children of
soldiers - obviously, how could it be otherwise? And the relentless
selection of war is working to shape a new kind of human, better
equipped for the fight. Combat survivors are the ones who get to
breed, after all. Already their descendants are wiry, lithe,
confident in the three-dimensional arena of low or zero gravity. Some
studies even suggest that their eyes are adapting to the pressure of
three-dimensional combat - that some of them can see velocity, for
example, by perceiving subtle Doppler shifts in the colours of
approaching or receding objects. Think what an advantage that would
be in the battlefield! Another few thousand years of this and perhaps
we will not recognise the soldiers who fight for the rest of us.’
    ’I think I’m losing my bearings,’ said Luca truthfully.
    Dolo patted his shoulder. ’No. You’re just learning, is all.’
    ’And what have you learned about my troopers?’ Teel had joined
them on the small stage, and the troopers began to line up in rows
before them.
    Luca had learned to be honest with her. ’I find them -
strange.’
    ’Strange?’
    ’They have all ridden the Rock, yes?’
    ’Most of them.’
    ’Then they have seen comrades fall. They know they will be sent
out again to a place where they must face the same horror. And yet,
here and now, they laugh.’
    Teel thought about that and answered carefully. ’Away from the
Front you don’t talk about what happens out there. It’s like - a
secret. You’ve seen something beyond normal human experience. If you
show your fear, or even admit it to yourself, then you’re allowing a
leak between this, normal human life, and what lies out there. You’re
letting it in. And if that happens there will be nowhere safe. Do you
understand?’
    He watched her face; there was sweat on her brow, traces of
asteroid grime. ’Is that how you feel?’
    ’I try not to feel anything,’ she said.
    Luca looked around the dome. ’And this place is so shabby.’ He
felt a kind of self-righteous anger, and he encouraged it in himself,
hoping to impress Teel. ’If these people are willing to die for the
Expansion, they should have some comfort.’
    Dolo shook his head. ’Again you don’t understand, Novice. Think
about the life of a soldier. It is a limited existence: moments of
birth and growth, comradeship, determination, isolation - and
finally, after the briefness of the light, an almost inevitable
conclusion in pain and death. They have to know they are fighting for
something better. And so they have to see that the present is
imperfect. The soldiers must live in an eternal now of shabbiness and
toil, so that they can be made to believe that we will progress from
such places until a glorious victory is won, and everything will be
made perfect - even if no such progress is ever actually made.’
    ’Then everything here is designed for a