Yue

 22nd January

04:13 GMT

Ms Parker glares at the gormlessly grinning man inside the interrogation room. "Who is he?"

Once the commander was convinced that my brand worked as I claimed, he contacted Mr Pul and received a sealed list of questions to pass on to his interrogators. Having reviewed his soldiers' records of events in the temple he didn't feel quite right about throwing me out, so I returned the courtesy by only staying for the parts which related to my own interests. Wouldn't want them to think I was reporting everything to Hyathis, and I hope that voluntarily keeping myself ignorant will engender a little more cooperation.

"His name is Kartez. He's Thasaro's senior.. 'field priest'. Head of operations. The Blessed One was new, but it was the only one they've been able to.. make?" She nods distractedly. "They use a cell structure. He only knows a few names and faces, but he believes that there are small communities of Seven Devil worshippers throughout Thanagar Empire space. I didn't stay for the details; I'm sure that Imperial Intelligence would rather deal with the Empire's messes in private."

"This trip-." She shakes her head again, then turns to face me. "It's left me more disconnected and confused than I was on Earth."

"The memories?"

"Thanagar… In my day, this sort of… Deceit…" She takes a breath. "We risked everything to rise up against the Seven Devils. Wide scale deceit, enslaving.. aliens…"

"Didn't happen in your day?"

"The priests lied to us, so we were honest with one another. The Devils used us as weapons in their wars, so we only fought if we had to. I -Chay-ara- fought in two wars against species who still saw us as the servants of the Seven Devils. We didn't fight aggressive wars at all."

"Do you really think being honest about the existence of the Seven Devils is a good idea? It would only take a small disaffected group of citizens-."

"They shouldn't be letting our people live in conditions like that. Why would anyone build a city like that?"

"It wasn't there in your day?"

"There was.. probably a town there. Thanagarians have always liked mountaintops. We didn't.. bury our underclass. We didn't even really.. have one."

"How did that work?"

"We were a theocracy. Everyone served the Devils." She snorts quietly. "And that ethos of service lasted longer than the beings we served. And they didn't care enough about us as individuals to bother differentiating." She turns away, looking around the prisoner holding area. "I've been an American for three lifetimes. I want to blame the military take-over that happened after the Equality Plague for the stratification, but Bleez told me that it's actually gotten less bad since then. Anyone can join the military now, and that used to be class-restricted." She slumps. "We used to be so hopeful."

"Now that you have full access to Chay-ara's memories, have you considered writing a biography?"

"Charlie's been on at me about doing that. I said that we should prioritise the lives we lived in places on Earth no one else wrote about. Now I think I should write about Thanagar." She shakes her head. "Not that I think their government would let a book like that be published."

"Heh, yeah, the government banning it would totally stop people reading it." I shake my head. "Seven thousand years after Seven Devil worship was banned people are still doing it. I wouldn't overestimate the Thanagarian government's ability to enforce that sort of ban. Particularly if.. someone who could move around without a ship was doing the distribution."

"That could work. It'll still take me a couple of years to write it… And I can't reference anything. If there were any other records from that era, Thanagar's government would have destroyed them."

"Ex.. cept the records of the Green Lantern Corps."

Her eyes widen slightly. "That.. isn't a bad idea. If I could convince them to share them."

"There aren't any general rules against sharing unclassified historical records. In fact, there are examples of Green Lanterns sharing accurate historical data with researchers which have been ruled 'appropriate' when governments complained to the Guardians about it. We can stop off on Staphis on the way back if you're interested."

She nods distractedly.

Okay, it's a little hard to work out what effect this will have on Thanagarian foreign policy. Even if they take the temples apart for their metal content that won't add that much raw material to their building effort. How will it affect their military campaign? They must know that there's no Nth metal to be found on the worlds neighbouring theirs. They've already got more systems than they know what to do with. Certainly more habitable worlds than they've been able to fully settle. The only external threat is Hyathis and she's not exactly imminent, there's no casus belli…

Internally? Ordinarily I'd say that the opportunity to suppress one group of internal dissenters might spill over onto others not associated with the original justification. But the High Council already rules without external checks on their power. They only really need to justify things…

The old colonies. The High Council controls Thanagar, anything with 'Imperial' in the name and the new colonies. They don't control the old colonies in the same way. If you were building a cult, you'd want to set it up in a place that wasn't a police state. Somewhere that prided itself on not having military rule. And if.. there are significant cult communities on any of those worlds…

"Excuse me."

I stride across the detention area and into the attached briefing room. Bleez turns away from the muted live feed as she hears me walk in.

"Is now a good time for me to ask for a ride home?"

"Possibly. I'll have to talk to Mister Pul, but I doubt they're going to want external observers for the next bit. What religions do the old colonies practise?"

"None, really? I think the biggest religion is the Church of the One. And that got unbanned, like, thirty years ago. And all the native religions." She frowns as she tries to work out what my angle is. "We don't worship the Seven Devils, if that's what you're talking about."

"I'm a little concerned that the High Council might try and use this as an excuse to reduce colonial autonomy. It might be a good idea for you to encourage your mother to start taking action ahead of a government purge."

"Oh. Ah, yeah, they.. might. Any idea what to look for?"

"Isolationist communities. Places with little external contact. Anywhere with this symbol." I generate a construct image of the image tattooed onto the bodies of all of the cultists: a triangle on a circle with seven points radiating from it. "If no one's heard anything and you haven't seen any mutants then they're keeping things quiet. The majority of members might not even realise what they're part of."

"Right… Yeah…"

"What's the Religious Education component of your school curriculum like?"

"There isn't one, really. Education is controlled by individual principalities, there isn't any sort of general rule."

"You might want to get on that as well."

"Yeah." She walks past me and out of the briefing room. I follow her. "But I'm not exactly looking forward to living with Mother again."

"Noblesse oblige." I look around as several interrogators leave the cells. "Do you know what they're going to do with the-?"

There are flashes of light from the cells as the prisoners are shot dead.