people came and went, I longed to share the burden of what I knew, for it crushed me inside. But I also couldn’t bear to see it crush anyone else. There was nothing to be done. No defense could be raised. That part of my conscience which told me I had no right to keep the others in ignorance was in constant struggle with the other part of my conscience which couldn’t bear to see what my news would surely do to the valley—assuming anyone even believed me. It was entirely possible I’d be declared mentally ill, and ignored. Hell, lots of people had already done so anyway. Not everyone in the valley thought religion was a good thing. I’d heard through the grapevine—more than once—that there were prisoners who regarded the chapel and my service as a stupid waste of time.
So I focused on my work as best I could.
Sweeping through the pews one day I knocked over a little clay figurine that one of the parishioners had left behind. I picked it up to discover that it was a crude, but recognizable, rendition of a mantis—including the requisite disc.
I stared at the figurine for a long time—the straw-and-twigs broom in my other hand momentarily forgotten. There had been occasional rumors in the valley. About a small cult of people whose beliefs centered around the idea that the mantes themselves were God’s true children. Humans were merely a lower form of spiritual life whom the mantes had been sent to punish. For our weakness, decadence, and apostasy.
I’d always doubted the existence of such a group, if only because subscribing to such a belief—and speaking it openly to anyone—would have invited violence.
Still, what to make of the figurine?
I tucked it into a shirt pocket and kept sweeping. When I’d finished my job, and brushed all the sand and dirt out the back door, I went to the altar and considered. Bringing out the figurine, I compared it in my line of sight to the other objects on the altar. My hand began to tremble as I felt a hot rush of anger sweep through me. I could have crushed the little clay symbol in my fist.
But then the anger drained away as quickly as it had come. Whoever had brought the figurine had obviously not intended to leave it. In their carelessness, they’d exposed themselves to more potential harm than they knew. Besides, maybe the cult was right? All evidence since the failed invasion said the mantes really were superior. And now they intended to prove it once and for all.
I sighed and went back to the exact spot where the figurine had been abandoned, and put it back on the floor. In the shadow of the pew. Where nobody not deliberately looking for it would find it.
Within a day, it quietly disappeared again.
* * *
A week after the Professor’s last visit, a trio of former officers appeared at my chapel door.
“Barlow,” the leader said to me. He still wore his duty jacket with the name tape over the breast pocket, and the clusters of a major on his collar.
“What can I do for you?” I said, standing up from the small stool to the left of the altar where I ordinarily sat and observed the comings and goings of the parishioners.
“Sir,” he said firmly.
“Beg pardon?” I said, not quite getting him.
“What can I do for you, sir. ”
Ah. I resisted the urge to tell him to go fuck himself. While most of us had gradually relaxed out of our former rank and position, there were still a handful of stalwarts who kept their bearing. In another time and place, the major’s approach might have worked. But not now. Not here. So far as we knew, we were cut off. Permanent residents. And almost nobody wanted to be under martial authority for life. Least of all me.
I waited silently. Just looking at him.
He looked back, his face getting pink.
“Is there a problem?” I finally asked, keeping my tone deliberate and even.
“Maybe,” one of the other men said.
“People tell us there’s been a mantis coming in here,” the major said.
I walked towards him a few