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EARLY, GETTING ready to light the altar lamps in the pre-dawn darkness, when I heard Diane shriek from the foyer.
    Jumping over a few people who had curled up asleep in the central aisle, I found the Deacon leaning against the doorway and pointing into the distance. I peered out and saw nothing. Just the black shapes of the mountains, and the almost imperceptible lightening of the sky in the east.
    “What?” I said, tired and puzzled.
    “Look,” was all she could say, her eyes bugging out at me as if I’d gone mad or blind.
    Then, like a physical thunderclap, it hit me.
    I was seeing nothing but mountains!
    Other shouts from inside the chapel had roused my flock to their feet.
    Diane and I stumbled out onto the packed earth in front of the chapel and looked to the scattering of other nearby buildings where others had also come out to see.
    The Wall. It was . . . gone.

CHAPTER 10
    THE PROFESSOR AND HIS STUDENTS SHOWED UP LATER THAT day. Eighty young mantes, each riding an unarmored and unarmed disc, their carapaces green whereas the Professor’s was a dingier brown. Each of them very young—and eager. They congregated at the chapel, observing the mass of hundreds of humans who had come to crowd the inside and the outside of my little church, each of them giving thanks to various versions of the Lord for their salvation.
    Diane was leading a particularly raucous bunch of gospel singers who were harmonizing at the top of their lungs. I’d literally never seen her so happy before.
    I squeezed my way out of the building and went out to greet the Professor, waving my arms and smiling genuinely for probably the first time in almost two years.
    “You were successful,” I said matter-of-factly.
    “For the moment,” said the Professor, wings fluttering slightly. “It took a great deal of argument and debate through the university system, but together we pressed the Quorum of the Select, and they agreed to stay your communal execution.”
    “What of the Fourth Expansion?”
    “That too has been stayed, until my students and I can complete our research here. We are to observe and learn all we can about humans: religion, culture, all of it in as natural an environment as possible.”
    “Is that why The Wall is gone?” I asked.
    “Yes. I had to fight hardest to get that done, but my colleagues and I believe it is impossible to conduct accurate research so long as humans are trapped in a test tube. You’re free to travel as far as you wish, though I would warn you that not all the mantes in this hemisphere will take kindly to seeing humans roaming freely. I would advise caution.”
    “And when your research is complete?”
    “That will be several of your years from now, assistant-to-the-chaplain. Many things can happen in that time. Many minds can be changed.”
    “Mantis minds?” I said.
    “Perhaps human too,” said the Professor.
    His wings fluttered again. And that’s when I felt it start to bubble out of me. Laughter. Clean, pealing, exuberant laughter. So much that I had to bend over and drop to all fours, gasping. I finally recovered and, wiping my eyes, got back to my feet.
    “Come on,” I told him. “You kept your part of the bargain. I have to keep mine. You should come watch this.”

PART TWO
    THE CHAPLAIN’S LEGACY

CHAPTER 11
    “CHIEF BARLOW,” SAID THE FEMALE VOICE THROUGH THE WOODEN door.
    Lost in thought, I didn’t answer right away.
    She cleared her throat, and tried again. “Warrant Officer Harrison Barlow?”
    I sighed, and slowly got up from my seat at my desk in the tiny pastor’s quarters of my chapel.
    She’d called me chief. I wasn’t used to the new rank. There had been a time when I’d happily watched my military days fade into memory. But the recent return of Earth ships to Purgatory orbit meant that many of us former prisoners of war had again been pressed into service—whether we wanted our old jobs back, or not.
    I was a prior enlisted man. They could have just slapped my