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SOLDIERS OFP ARADISE
Copyright © 1987 by Paul Park. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1-930815-40-9

Published by ElectricStory.com, Inc.
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This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations, and locales are either the product of
the author’s imagination or used fictitiously to convey a sense of realism.

Cover art by and copyright © 2000 Cory and Catska Ench

eBook conversion by Karen and Robert Kruger

eBook edition ofSoldiers of Paradise copyright © 2000 by ElectricStory.com

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Soldiers of Paradise
The Starbridge Chronicles: Book I
By Paul Park


ElectricStory.com, Inc.
 For my sisters

Prologue
To those who remember starlight, the spring sky over Charn is one of the most desolate sights in all the
universe, for by the second hour after sunset there is not one star in all the sky. During the first few
thousand days of the new season, the canopy of heaven dwindles and grows dark, until by midspring the
night sky is so black it almost glows, and the eye plays tricks, seeing color where there is
none—iridescent clouds of indigo and mauve.
On winter nights the sky is full of stars. But as the season changes, a stain of darkness overtakes them
from the east, a microsecond earlier each night. There at the galaxy’s edge, staring out over the brink of
space, the citizens seem grateful for any clouds or mist, which might cast a veil between themselves and
their own loneliness. Twice each season Paradise fills up the sky for a few dozen rotations, and then the
people crowd into the temples, praying for clear weather. But otherwise they hate it, and they line the
streets with bonfires, for comfort’s sake. On clear nights the city burns like a candle far out over the hills,
and to refugees and pilgrims coming down out of the country, it shines like a beacon under the black sky.
At waystops and lodges high up along the trail they swing their bundles to the ground; and on benches set
into the rock they sit and hug their knees as evening falls, and watch the temples and the domes of Charn
light up against the dark, each one outlined in neon or electric bulbs.

And as they watch, the whole river valley seems to fill up with fire, for at dusk the lamplighters come out
in Charn, and with long prehensile hooks they pull down the corners of a web of ropes slung between the
roofs. Acetylene lanterns hang suspended from long pulleys, and they sway slightly in the evening wind as
the lamplighters hoist them back into a firmament of nets.

The lamplighters are small and semihuman, with soft blobby faces and bright eyes. They stand barefoot in
the muddy street, dressed in the green overalls of their caste, listening to the temple bells, to the cadence