Prophets (4 page)

It was very early in the morning in Rome, the sky just purpling with dawn, and there were no crowds as he walked across the square toward the Apostolic Palace. No one challenged him as he entered the palace; most of the Swiss Guard knew him on sight and, more important, the wide-spectrum biometric surveillance that covered St. Peter's Square and the area around the palace would have alerted security if he was anyone other than who he appeared to be.

He made his way through the ancient palace, from the public areas by the Sistine Chapel and the library, into the heavily secured private areas close to the papal apartments.

His Holiness was waiting for him.

Despite the palatial Renaissance décor, and frescoes that appeared as if they could have been contemporary with Michelangelo, the office where the pope received him was one of the more recent additions to the huge complex of the Apostolic Palace. Despite the fifteen-meter-tall windows giving a panoramic view of St. Peter's Square, this room was wrapped in layers of the most sophisticated physical and technological security that had ever been gathered into a single location. Behind the frescoes were walls that were impregnable to fire, explosion, EM radiation, and sound. The grand windows were not even visible from the outside; any observer would see just the blank wall of the palace.

When the ornate gilded doors shut behind him, Cardinal Anderson could hear a slight sucking sound as the portal sealed tight and the office switched to using its own isolated environmental controls. Even the air was screened by several layers of security here.

His Holiness stood in front of the windows, hands clasped behind his back, staring at the dome of the cathedral across the square.

“I trust you had a fruitful journey to Occisis?”

“Yes, Your Holiness. Father Mallory proved to be good choice.”

“So was Kennedy, I fear.” The pope shook his head. “Does Mallory know?”

“We briefed him with the absolute minimum information,” Cardinal Anderson said. “While he saw Kennedy's transmission, he believes it was just another random intercept from the Virginis colonies.”

“That is probably for the best.” The pope turned around. He was shorter than Cardinal Anderson, and younger. Physically, he reminded Anderson of Father Mallory, though Pope Stephen XII had been born on Earth and was short and stocky through genetics rather than high gravity. “If the Caliphate should uncover Mallory or his mission, better they presume he is the first envoy we've sent to the Virginis colonies.”

“Yes,” Anderson said. “But the Caliphate will eventually move, regardless of their knowledge of the Church's actions.”

The pope nodded. “Eventually. It is certain they know these colonies are out there and as long as they believe those worlds are their own secret, they'll be inclined toward caution.”

The exchange couldn't be called an argument, or even a disagreement, except by someone who had access to the decade of subtext behind the words. Cardinal Anderson had never completely approved of the cautious route they took toward these far-flung colonies. He had long debates with the pope about the strategic implications of each move they made.

To Pope Stephen, the longer they went without the Caliphate making any overt move toward these colonies, the better information they had and the better they could react. Even when the Caliphate moved, it would take years to build a substantive connection between the Caliphate and the Virginis colonies. Tach-ships had effective jump ranges of twenty light-years, and while ships could be built that could take the multiple jumps that would be needed to cross the seventy-five light-years between the Caliphate and the nearest of the Virginis colonies, to build a permanent connection, the Caliphate would need to build at least a nominal colony at each jump point to accommodate refueling and repairs if they expected to move trade goods or troops. Building such a corridor took too many resources to remain secret.

To Cardinal Anderson, it didn't matter if the Caliphate had not made such moves as of yet. In his mind, this particular standoff would favor the side that made the first move.

He believed that was true even before they had received Kennedy's transmission. The first envoy they had received any word back from. Kennedy's only words back to them repeated a cryptic message, “Tached into the 89 Leonis system and have lost all visual contact with Xi Virginis,” then, overlaid on the transmission, another voice quoting the Book of Revelation.

However, His Holiness still believed they should move clandestinely with low profile assets. So Mallory would be the fourth man sent to the Virginis colonies, and the first one sent to Xi Virginis.

Cardinal Anderson prayed that God would guide him.

Twenty million people, human and nonhuman, swarmed the sprawling metropolis of Godwin, the largest city on the planet Bakunin. On any other world, it would have been the capital city, but on Bakunin, where any form of State was anathema, the only thing that distinguished Godwin was sheer unwieldy size.

Late in the evening, an elderly gentleman who currently called himself Mr. Antonio walked on the street under the crumbling multilayered walkways of East Godwin. There were no outward signs that distinguished him from the other twenty million residents of the city, or for that matter, any of the five hundred million other inhabitants of Bakunin. Even the most sophisticated medical imaging technology could scan him without registering anything out of place.

Not that he would ever give anyone reason to look for something.

Mr. Antonio walked into the cheap hotel where he had been living for the past six months. The place was a dark, modular hive of windowless rooms that barely fit together. Parts of the composite skin had crumbled with age and had sloughed off, and half the rooms were permanently sealed because of problems with the environmental systems.

Mr. Antonio's room was unremarkable; a single nine-square-meter room that had amenities more appropriate to a tach-ship than a hotel, including the fold-down toilet. The room smelled faintly of mildew.

He sat down on the cot that attached to the wall and checked his watch. At exactly 28:00 local time the comm in his room rang. He picked it up without saying anything.

“It is time,” the voice on the comm said. Mr. Antonio did not respond because he knew that this call was one-way. The speaker was light-years away, and had sent a tach-comm to a receiver Mr. Antonio had left in orbit amid all the less distinguished debris that littered Bakunin's sky. That receiver then placed a simpler encrypted transmission to Mr. Antonio that bounced though so many nodes in the patchwork net of Bakunin's communications infrastructure so as to be effectively untraceable.

“The Church is acting on the transmission, and our friend will perceive this, if he hasn't already. I will need our mole ready when he makes the inevitable move to investigate.”

Mr. Antonio switched off the comm and smiled. The groundwork had already been laid. Nickolai would be ready when the time came.

I believe in the incomprehensibility of God.

—HonorÉ De BALZAC (1799-1850)

We serve most those beliefs that we first reject.

—
The Cynic's Book of Wisdom

[Animals] do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.

—WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

Nickolai Rajasthan slowly woke from a drugged slumber. For a few brief, precious moments, he didn't remember the past year. His subconscious still refused to accept his punishment, or his exile. For an instant he was ready to find himself in his own bed in the southern palace, to smell the scent of his siblings, his sisters . . .

Then he remembered.

He wasn't in the southern palace, and he wasn't on Grimalkin. The priests hadn't been able, politically, to have a member of the royal family put to death, but they had made sure that he would never set foot on his home planet again.

Nickolai groaned.

“Easy there, big boy.” The voice spoke a dialect of the Fallen. It burned in Nickolai's ears. Even after a year, the alien, almost squishy, tones of their languages were a constant reminder of his crime and his exile.

The priests had maimed him and had thrown him to the chaos of Bakunin to be little more than a beggar in hell. A lesser person might have spent his time finding an honorable way to die.

Nickolai always had a contrary nature.

“Are you awake?” the voice repeated.

“Yes,” Nickolai slurred.

“Good news. The implants took. I'm going to remove the bandages now. You may want to close your eyes.”

Nickolai couldn't bring himself to do so. After a year of blindness, he already could sense a fuzzy light source on the periphery of his vision. Then, suddenly, the bandages came away from his face, and the world was a bright white light that was too intense for his brain to process.

Surprisingly, his new eyes didn't hurt.

He blinked and the world changed, eyes adjusting to the brightness quicker than he had ever remembered. Shapes resolved for him, and he found himself looking at a too-small examination room. He lay in a chair that seemed barely able to hold him.

“Colors seem wrong,” Nickolai slurred.

A human face leaned into his field of vision, looking down at him. “Variable spectral sensitivity. Takes a while to get used to.” The man reached down and pulled up Nicolai's left eyelid. “Good. No sign of any inflammation.”

The man hit a switch, and the chair slowly tilted upright with a pneumatic hiss. The progress was slow, but Nickolai still felt a little dizzy.

“Standard military specs,” the human said. Now that he was awake enough to place the voice, Nickolai remembered his name was Dr. Yee.

The doctor took a double handful of bandages from an examination tray and tossed them in a disposal chute. “Once you get used to adjusting the settings, you'll be able to duplicate your natural range of vision. The hard part was scaling up the human design—and the pupil, of course . . .”

Nickolai nodded. It was sinking in. This wasn't just a dream vision, he could actually
see
. If Dr. Yee wasn't here to see the loss of dignity, Nickolai would have been jumping off the wall, and roaring an epic curse on the house of the priests who had burned his eyes.

Compared to that, his right arm was almost an afterthought.

He felt his shoulder itch, and he reached over to scratch it. He felt a new scar and looked down.

He had a new right arm. He touched his bicep, and even the yellow-and-black-striped fur felt real. He flexed his right hand, and his brain told him he could feel bones and tendons flexing even though he knew that the bones were metal and the tendons some sort of mechanical analog.

He extended the claws on his fingers and saw the only obvious sign that this was a prosthetic. The claws on his right hand weren't black, but a gray metallic alloy.

Dr. Yee noticed Nickolai looking and said, “I apologize for that. This was all custom work, and unfortunately the mechanical tolerances on that hand turned out to be too tight for me to apply any sort of finish to the claws.”

“You did it all in a single operation?”

“I decided it would be easier to hold your body in stasis until I completed all the work. It shortens the recovery and rehabilitation time not to have multiple surgeries. And your benefactor suggested it would be, uh,
better
if you recovered quickly.”

Nickolai shook his head. Could this actually be real? Could he be whole?
No, that is the wrong word . . .

“Intact” was better. He doubted he could be whole again, not after what happened. And now he was three times removed from his home. Once for his crime, twice for the blasphemous mechanical prosthetics now connected to his flesh, three times for the way he had chosen to pay for that blasphemy. His “benefactor,” as Dr. Yee put it.

The priests might have enjoyed the little shame Nickolai felt, until they realized that it was not for his crimes or for Dr. Yee's unclean attentions. Nickolai's shame was only for his own impatience.

He was strong enough. He could have waited another year, another five. To collect enough of his own resources to pay for his reconstruction without accepting the terms dictated by Mr. Antonio.

Perhaps.

As he pushed himself upright, he knew the reality. What value was his pride and the distant possibility of becoming himself again, when measured against the certainty of regaining his eyes, and his arm? If it required a pact with the Fallen, so be it; the priests had declared him damned already.

“Be cautious with that arm until you are used to it,” Dr. Yee said. “It is unlikely you can damage it, but it could cause you harm if you miscalculate any aggressive action.”

“It is stronger?”

“In some senses. The musculature is calibrated to match your natural limbs, but it has more tensile strength and can move faster—” Dr. Yee touched Nickolai's shoulder. “You do not want to stress where it is attached.”

Nickolai touched the scar on his bicep, where the amputation had been.

“Oh, yes, that's the biological skin, but I needed to excavate the remaining bone and much of the muscle that was left so we'd have a clean connection to the joint. Much less likely to have a failure that way.”

He looked at Dr. Yee, a full meter shorter than him now that he was standing. He wondered if Dr. Yee was short for a human. He was the first one he had actually seen in person.