They seemed to treat him as a big, clumsy pet. He put up with it. Maybe it was because the Tilis so obviously had each other that he felt a bit more secure with them.

There were a couple of times, though, when they tried to entice him into their crowded bed. As they ran their little fingers over his belly and calves, no offer could have seemed more tempting. But he drew back, again fearing he might somehow lose himself. He was also worried about how old the triplets were; like the other cadets they seemed very small, very unformed, very young.

But when one of them came alone to his bed — it may have been Tili Two, or possibly Three — he found it impossible to resist. And when he let himself fall among her skin and lips and soft limbs, he found an immense, consoling relief.

He tried to discuss his feelings with This Burden Must Pass.

“I felt like you once,” Burden said. He was lying on his bunk, propped up on his elbow, bare to the waist, facing Pirius. The usual meaningless clamor of the barracks washed over them. Burden said, “I was Navy, too. At first there is just a torrent of faces here. But after a time, you start to understand.”

“You do?”

“Pirius, you feel these little cadets are somehow different from you, don’t you? Not just in experience, in background — something more fundamental. And you know why? Because it’s true.”

The stock of embryos hatched out of Quin’s birthing tanks were developed from the genetic stock of the soldiers themselves. Of course: where else was it to come from? Not only that, the military planners tried to ensure that only successful soldiers got to breed. This was meant to be an incentive to make you get through your training, to fight, to survive. There were no families in this world, no parental bonds. But something deep in every human being responded even to the abstract knowledge that something of herself would survive this brief life.

Pirius knew about this, of course; it was the same on Arches. But he had never before thought through the implications.

It was selective breeding. And it had been going on, right across the Galaxy, long before the war with the Xeelee had come to full fruition. For nearly twenty thousand years mankind had been breeding itself into a race of child soldiers.

“Look at the Tilis,” murmured Burden. “They could probably crossbreed with anybody in the Galaxy, if they had the chance; we haven’t speciated yet. But their bodies are adapted to low gravity, or no gravity at all. Their bones don’t wash away in a flood of imbalanced fluids, the way our earthworm ancestors’ did when they first ventured into space. Their minds have adjusted too; they can think and work in three dimensions. The triplets don’t suffer stress from vertigo, or claustrophobia. They are even immune to radiation, relatively.

“There’s more. Here on Quin, if you survive combat, you breed, but for the genes it’s better yet not to wait, not to take that chance. So the cadets become fertile earlier and earlier, until they are producing eggs and sperm long before their bodies are developed enough to fight. Pirius, the Tilis are about sixteen, I think. But they’ve been fertile since they were ten. Infantry are an extreme case. The attrition rate is horrific; generations are very short here. But the same subtle sculpting has shaped you, Pirius. And me. Neither of us is an earthworm.”

Pirius was shocked. “Burden, I know you don’t care about the Doctrines. But why do the officers let this genetic drift go on?”

Burden shook his head. “You still don’t see it? Because it’s useful, Pirius. If you just remember that one thing, many puzzling things about life here fall into place.”

Burden spoke about himself. The boy called Quero had been born on a base inside yet another Galaxy-center cluster. He had once flown the greenships: he had been a pilot himself, in fact, and had come through one action.

But all the while his faith had been developing, he said.

The seed of the faith of the Friends of Wigner had come here in legends from old Earth, legends of Michael Poole and the rebellion against the Qax. Its supremely consoling message had quickly taken root among the soldiers of the Galaxy core. By now you could find Friends right around the Front, around the whole of the center of the Galaxy.

“I actually grew up with it. I heard kids’ stories about Michael Poole and the Ultimate Observer. I didn’t take any of it seriously, not really; it was just there in the background. And when I started going through my training and learned that it was officially all taboo, I shut up about it.”

At first none of this had made any difference to Quero’s successful career. But as he experienced conflict, he found himself deeply troubled.

“It was seeing death,” he said now, smiling. “It was bad enough from a greenship blister. It’s a lot worse here, on the Rocks. Every death is the termination of a life, of a mind, a unique thread of experience and memory. Maybe death has to come to us all. But like this? I found it hard to accept my place in this unending war.”

Seeking answers, he had turned to the faith of his childhood. He went beyond the simple personalized stories of Michael Poole and other heroes he had grown up with, and he began to reexamine its deeper philosophy for himself. And he had begun to speak out. “My officers respected Quero, I think. But they had no time for This Burden Must Pass.”

He had been here a while, Pirius gathered. Naturally smart, flexible, and courageous, Burden had already survived five combat actions. Once, he said, he had done well enough to be offered a way out, to retrain as an infantry officer. But he would have had to recant his faith, and he had refused, and so he had been cast down yet again.

Pirius asked, “You don’t regret any of it?”

“Why should I?”

“Oh. ’This Burden Must Pass.’ “

“You got it,” Burden said. “All of this suffering will ultimately be deleted. So what’s to regret?”

Cohl had listened to this. She drew Pirius aside. “And you believe all that?”

He was surprised she’d asked. “Why would he lie about something like that?”

“Then why is it so vague? Why was he sent to Quin in the first place — because of his faith? Or because of something that happened on his base, or even during combat?” Her small eyes gleamed. “See? It’s just like his preaching. He talks a lot, but it’s all mist and shadows.”

“You don’t like him.”

“I don’t care enough not to like him. I don’t trust him, for sure.”

Pirius turned back to Burden, who had heard none of this. Burden was looking at him with a kind of eagerness, Pirius thought, as if it was important to Burden that he somehow got Pirius’s approval. Sometimes he thought he saw weakness in Burden, somewhere under the surface of composure, command, and humor. Weakness and need.

“Burden — you said the officers will tolerate genetic drift if the product is useful. But why do they put up with you?”

“Because I’m useful too.” Burden lay back on his bunk. “I told you that’s the key. Of course I am useful! Why else?”

When he saw his first death on the Rock, Pirius learned the truth of this.