Tradan

The frozen grounds of St. Leibowitz sparkled as if seeded with diamonds in the bruised predawn hours. Single malt Kentucky whiskey would freeze instantly if spilled, Tradan wrily observed. And he even knew where to get some: Leonin's cabin back aboard the ship. The soles of his winterworn boots crunched rhythmically over the thick permafrost, echoing up a symphony between the stone buildings he mazed through. Two men trailed him, both heavily armed, both exactly five steps behind him at every point of the journey, both in perfect step with him. Tradan seized his goal as it first came in to view: a single window, alit by candle, the uppermost chamber of a hunnerd-foot tower, near the southernmost gate of the monastery, the gate that led out to the desert.

Half his mind, the part that always reviewed, always analyzed, studying, reflecting, planning, and doing all those things a second and a third time, that part of his mind rehashed the events up to this very moment. Some were of his making, deliberate. And some events were done by him with a completely different purpose in mind. He thought about the books he studied; the scrolls; the endless hours in numerous libraries in countless cities on several planets in a score of systems. The languages he had to master, going all the way back to Old Earth Latinate. The conversations he'd had with priests and holy men, medicine men and shamans, mystics and trash collectors - at least a certain trash collector. Tradan smiled as his thoughts gravitated to his friend Piersall, also a career military man, running, ever running, born and die running, until he nearly bought it, and then soon left the Clean Up. To clean up his old life, he said. Anyway, Tradan never believed it, until he heard rumor of Piersall in the seminary, renouncing All and taking up the cloth. The man - no, his best friend, drinking buddy, fellow soldier-of-war mercenary thug killer, chick magnet - Piersall now doing the work of ... the work of ....

He still had trouble formulating it. So his left-brain grandmaster skipped it, went down on his next line of thought as his thick insulated blackskin boots mashed down the frost as the tower loomed closer. His journey, well-documented. But what of his acts he did of his own free will that had the opposite effect of what he wanted? Immediately the image of Lyra swelled in his mind, causing other parts of his body to swell correspondingly. She was heart-stopping gorgeous, if a little coarse. His first, perhaps only, true love. Well, whatever that word "love" meant. But he couldn't deny he fell for her hard. The plans they'd made, mostly in his mind, all fell to pieces six years ago when he came back from a short tour in Eridani and found her in an alley spreading her wares for a medic with a thick black beard. Jeff, his name was, left-brain grandmaster constantly reminded him. And for all his balls he could only spit on them and run. Coward that he was. Was. Was, or Is?

Solace in drink. Companionship with the old Piersall and the scores of floozies they scored. A different sort of smile ghosted across his face. Then the murder. He murdered a man, Tom Callanhall. Sure, sure, Piersy said it was a "crime of passion." Passion? he argued. Wasn't that what a man did to the other man putting the stones to his girl? What he should have done to Jeff? Well, well, best not to travel those roads, my friend. But Piersall was persuasive in his argumentation. Callanhall was a bitch. He had targeted Corpsmen from Clean Up, and that couldn't be tolerated. And in a fit of drunkeness, with more than a batted eye towards promotion, Tradan did the deed, and iced the bitch. Several things were learned that early morning, a morning similar in mood to this one save for the fact it wasn't cold enought to freeze piss. On the contrary, he murdered the man on Septimor Ivo, a moon so humid and nasty hot that more than a few minutes topside would leave the fittest Olympian thirsting for cool air like a goldfish thirsts for its overturned bowl water. What he found out: First, a man takes an incredibly long, long time to die. And secondly, when a dying man looks in to your eyes, he doesn't accuse you. You accuse yourself. Tradan really kicked up his drinking a few notches. Ironically, it was the single malt Kentucky whiskey that helped stop his vomitting.

Things he done to bring him here to the monastery; things he had no idea would bring him here to see the cleric. But then, possibly most eerie of all, were the things that just happened to bring him here. His acquittal, despite all his bungling at the murder sight and his guilty remorse-riddled pleas. Piersall giving up the running life. His boss, Mr. Grey, assigning him to the Great Alien Case, which took him and his team from the molten lead pools of Mercury (where the first saucer was found) to the glaciers of Triton (where he found the corpses embedded in the hydrocarbon slush) to the race to get the bodies-on-ice back to High Earth Command after his whole crew was betrayed and murdered, and he a barely-functioning alcoholic. Ah, the adventure! But who cares about aliens now. During the investigation, he interrogated a trash collector slash potential witness who had given him that slim little handwritten book, which now set him to The Library. And finally, his assignment to Leonin's crew, which brought him here, to Kempis-off-Beta-Centauri, and to the monastery.

Coincidence, or chessmen on a chessboard? You decide!