All My Sins Remembered (21 page)

She could have his balls on a platter.

Amused, a little bit charitable, she rescued him from his temporary aphasia. “Let’s go on down to my tent; it’s air-conditioned.” She spoke to Balaam’s: “Is that you, Prescott?”

“Ay-firmative.”

“Thought so. What’s the square root of the Talmud?”

“Guilt.” Thump.

She laughed. “You’re insane. Want to come with us?”

“Rather go to the library.” It craned an eyestalk at Joshua. “Where should I put the wine?”

“Prescott?” he said.

“Sure, I have seventeen names. Don’t different people call you different names?”

“Well…”

“The best name for any given person. ‘A good name is better than precious ointment,’ Eccle—”

“Stop! Please. Uh, Miss, Doctor, Jones, the wine is a gift from our monastery. Where should it go?”

“Oh, how nice! Take it to the mess tent, Prescott—but first to my place. We’ll sample it.”

“He’s an Immanuel, Dr. Avedon, not a Borgia.”

She gave the creature’s carapace a playful kick. “Can’t be too careful, Prescott.”

They walked across the dirt to her tent, Balaam’s ambling sideways alongside Dr. Jones. She brought out a graduated cylinder and tapped a liter of the wine, then sent the S’kang on to the mess tent. It remarked that the place was well named.

Inside her tent, a large cube furnished with lightweight field furniture, it was cool and rather dim. Avedon led Joshua to a chair, set the wine and two glasses on a table beside him. “Only be a minute,” she said, and stepped behind a transluscent screen.

Two scraps of clothing sailed across the room into a basket. “Dust and sweat,” she said over the hum of an ultrasonic shower. “Gives me the creepies.” Joshua watched the diffuse outline of her body, turning, and considered the possibility that she didn’t know what effect she was having on his poor glands, and rejected it.

She turned off the shower and peeked around the barrier. “Say, you don’t have a skin taboo, do you?”

“No, I was raised on Terra. Besides, the body is the temple of the…” She stepped lightly across the room to a free-standing wardrobe. “Lord,” he said, not too reverently.

“It’s not too cool in here for you, is it?” She selected a white shift and slipped it over her head.

“No, indeed.” Joshua ran a finger under his collar. “Can I serve you some wine?”

“Sure.” She attacked her short hair with a brush, peering into a mirror. Gave it up after a few seconds, pulled a chair over, and sat across from Joshua, legs crossed. Picked up a glass:

“To our separate successes, Bishop.”

He nodded and sipped. “Separate but not antagonistic, one hopes. Doctor.”

“Oh, call me Avedon. Every other creature on this planet does.”

“Thank you, Avedon. You may call me Joshua.”

“Ambitious name for a religious leader, isn’t it? Related to ‘Jesus’?”

“Indeed. I was born with it, though. If they’d named me Prescott, I might have become an anthropologist” She laughed. “Down to business. You came here to pick my brain.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it that—”

“Baldly? Don’t worry, I’ll pick your brain, too. We haven’t had much contact with your people. I’m curious.”

Joshua studied her face and said, “You knew enough about us to write the ‘John Avedon’ article.”

She laughed, a hearty bark. “I wondered if that would get back to you.”

“Oh, it did.” There was no point in telling her how much damage the article had done. “If it were about some other order, perhaps I’d be more receptive to the humor.”

“Well, you have to admit…” She took a drink. “Nothing personal, Bishop. But to an outsider, your order seems, um, strange. Not very Catholic.”

“I know.”

She leaned forward, idly scratching an ankle; a posture calculated to expose. “Celebrating the flesh—I’m surprised the Holy See gave its approval.”

“They are not so hidebound.” Joshua carefully looked away. “In fairness, though, our tenets were more conservative when they gave their approval. We have evolved over the years.”

(In feet, the Congregation of Mary Magdalene had been invented by Joshua twenty-seven years before. He and two accomplices, cynical hedonists all, had mapped out the order’s “slow evolution” away from poverty, chastity, and obedience well ahead of time. It had taken eight months and forty light years.)

(Until the TBII had kidnapped Joshua and put him into personality overlay, he had been the only living person who knew the true story of the Magdalenists’ maculate conception. The two other “founding fathers” were dead; one of natural causes, the other because he had had the imprudence to be convicted of the forcible rape of a minor on a planet too primitive to have brainwipe.)

“I was told you were under vows of another, stricter order,” she said. “I’m a little surprised that you… seem so human.” She nodded at his glass of wine.

“Not really.” Who had she been talking to? “I went to seminary under temporary Trainist vows. I’m no longer bound by them. Except out of habit.”

She smiled but resisted the obvious pun.

“Tell me about your work,” Joshua said. “Have you learned much about the S’kang?”

“Not much. Only what you can infer from a lack of data.” She looked thoughtful, then suddenly tired. “Fourteen other stations like this one, all around the planet. Digging holes.

“They don’t use tools; evidently, never
have
used them. Therefore, no permanent artifacts.”

“Except the stones they talk to?”

“Negatron.” Balaam’s must have picked up that annoying mannerism from her. “We’ve never found one, except on the surface. Prescott says they don’t ever get buried.”

“That’s helpful.” He sipped his wine. “No artifacts at all? It looked like the digger had found a few things.”

“You know how a digger works?” Raised eyebrow.

“Uh, saw one in a museum. A model.”

She nodded. “Well, those were just rocks. We’re going to send a few back for the geologists.” She got up suddenly, went over to the closet, and rummaged through a box. “Here, this is the best one.” She tossed a fist-sized white rock at him.

He managed to catch it without spilling his wine. “Seems rather light.”

“Too light.” She sat down. “Chemically, it’s dolomite. Physically, it’s like no rock we have records of. Too porous; its specific gravity is around 2. Dolomite’s 2.85.

“We’ve been finding these at all of the digger stations, all over the planet, the past couple of months. Never found them in higher layers.”

“That’s interesting.”

“You bet it is. But we’re just a bunch of archeologists and xeno-anthropologists. Together we know about as much geology and planetology as a bright undergraduate.”

“I’d have thought you would bring at least one—”

“That would be logical.” She made a face. “Re-search-funding committees aren’t… especially when twenty different universities are involved. Nobody could send more than two field people, and nobody wanted to supply the token planetologist.”

“I thought you were here on a Confederacion grant.”

“Partly. They matched funds with the Sagan Consortium, and provided transportation.”

“Their interest is not primarily archeological, I take it.”

She smiled. “Negatron.” Laughed. “Some people will believe anything.”

“You don’t think that the S’kang actually moved their planet in closer?”

“What do you think?”

“I’m ignorant of science. At any rate, I’m more concerned with their souls than their world.” The Otto part of him shuddered inwardly. “Wasn’t some sort of consensus published?”

“It sure was—widely published. And I’m glad; otherwise, we’d never have gotten funding. But all it really said was that
most
of the S’kang,
most
of the time, claim that they moved the planet in to improve the weather. Sometimes they say the planet did it by itself; sometimes that they moved it outwards, because it was too warm; sometimes they don’t even understand the question.

“Face it. As likable as the creatures are, they’re total incompetents in dealing with physical reality. They can’t put two and two together and come up with the same answer twice. They’ll hold a screwdriver the wrong way, if it amuses them. And they’re mad as hatters.

“Take Prescott: he absorbed all of Roger Bacon in a week—photographically. He could recite page after page. But ask him about the scientific method, and all he can come up with is an outrageous pun. In Latin.”

“Can you be sure there’s not a larger joke involved? That he does really understand it, and is hiding his understanding from you?”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. Just a feeling I have sometimes. You should hear their catechism responses.”

She leaned forward. “That might be interesting. In an anthropological sense, I mean.”

“Well, we do have cubes… of some of them. I wouldn’t see any harm in your making copies. Liturgical responses, too; anything but the confession.”

“Confessions? How can they sin?”

“They can theoretically break eight of the ten—”

Somebody was scratching on the tent flap. “Avedon. Digger’s beeping.”

“Oh, hell.” She stood up. “Come on in, Theo.”

A young man, shirtless, slipped through the flap. He was wearing a small silver cross on a chain around his neck. “Theo Kutcher, Bishop Joshua Immanuel.” Kutcher stiffened.

“Good afternoon, brother,” Joshua said.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes.” she said. To Theo: “Don’t start any arguments till I get back.”

Joshua watched Avedon depart and sat back, hands folded benevolently. “What sort of argument should I expect, Theo?”

Theo sat down in the chair she had vacated and put his feet up on the table between them, rattling the glasses. “Oh, I don’t think we really have any basic differences of opinion.” He smiled sardonically. “Colonel.”

5.

“Pardon?” Otto twisted the catch that converted his heavy crucifix to a three-pointed razor on the end of a chain.

Theo raised a hand, palm up, cautioning: “Now don’t do anything. I’m one of us.”

“And who would we be?” He was just the right distance. Throat or eyes?

“The TBII; I’m a Class 2 operator, Meade Johanssen. You’re—”

“I know who I am. PO?”

“No, just forcelearn and identity switch. I’ve been here since the beginning; too long for PO.”

“They didn’t tell me there was another operative on this planet.”

“Well… that’s probably bureaucracy. You’re from Charter Violations; I’m routine surveillance.”

“You knew I was coming?”

“Yes. They said—”

“You’re to write a report on my performance.”

“Oh no.”
Too fast; liar
. “Just offer assistance if it’s needed. And information, since the TBII can contact me more or less directly. That’s what I’m here for now—very convenient, your coming over. I would’ve had a hard time getting you alone, over at the monastery tonight.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Tonight was the meeting with those “aware of the totality” of the Magdalenists’ mission on Cinder.

“I have bad news. The real Joshua Immanuel escaped from Earth the day after you left.”

“What? Impossible.”

“That’s what I would’ve thought. But he evidently broke the conditioning and just walked out. They assume he had at least six hours’ head start… six hours before they’d discovered he was gone, the Earth bishop made a massive personal credit transfer from the Magdalenists’ account. Seventy-five Kays.”

Otto whistled. “They’ll never find him. He could get the best body sculptor on Earth for a tenth of that.

“Are they sure he left Earth?”

“They interrogated the bishop. Joshua told him about the PO and substitution—”

“Not smart.”

“—and said he was coming here to kill you.”

“That’s absurd.” Otto/Johsua smiled. “Does he think he can sneak up on me?”

“Well, he doesn’t have to come in legally.” Nobody was allowed on the planet without a Confederación pass. “He has enough money to charter a private yacht. Does he know how to fly?”

“Yes, but only genteel stuff.” He drummed fingers on his knee, thinking. “If you or I were doing it, we’d… I guess charter a small craft at Epsilon Indii. Time it so we’d come out of nospace on the day side, while this part of the planet was dark. Bring it in low and land sometime before dawn, in a wilderness area—”

“And there aren’t any, not within a thousand kilometers.”

“Hm. And he’d probably crack up if he tried it. If he even thought of it.

“More likely he’s going to come in as a ringer. Are you expecting any—” Footsteps. “Within the overall fellowship of Christ our Lord. You have to understand—”

Avedon came through the flap. “I don’t know what’s wrong with that machine. Six times in four days—what, you aren’t at each other’s throats yet? I’d think a Skinner Baptist and a Catholic wouldn’t have much to agree on.”