13

erizo Isozaki was not surprised when the Swiss Guard came for him.

The Corps Helvetica colonel and eight troopers in full orange-and-blue dress uniforms with energy lances and deathwands arrived at the Torus Mercantilus unannounced, demanded to see CEO Isozaki in his private office, and presented him with an encrypted diskey ordering him to dress formally and appear before His Holiness, Pope Urban XVI. Immediately.

The colonel stayed in sight of Isozaki as the CEO stepped into his personal apartment, quickly showered, and dressed in his most formal white shirt, gray vest, red cravat, the double-breasted black demisuit with the gold buttons on the side, and black velvet cape.

“May I phone my associates and issue business instructions in case I should miss meetings scheduled for later today?” he asked the colonel as they stepped out of the lift into the main reception hall where the troopers made a sort of gold and blue corridor between the workstations.

“No,” said the Swiss Guard officer.

A Pax Fleet ramscout was docked where Isozaki’s personal ship was usually berthed. The Pax crew gave the Mercantilus CEO the briefest of nods, instructed him to strap into his acceleration couch, and then they were boosting in-system with two torchships visible on the tactical holo display as they dropped into escort position.

They are treating me as a prisoner, not an honored guest, thought Isozaki. His face revealed nothing, of course, but a wave of something like relief followed the pulse of fear and dread in him. He had been expecting this since his illicit meeting with Councillor Albedo. And he had slept almost not at all since that painful and traumatic rendezvous. Isozaki knew that there was no reason for Albedo not to reveal the fact of the Mercantilus’s attempts to contact the TechnoCore, but he hoped that they would believe that it was his attempt and his alone. Silently, Isozaki gave thanks to whatever gods that wanted to listen that his friend and associate, Anna Pelli Cognani, was out of Pacem’s system, visiting Renaissance Vector for a major trade fair there.

From his couch between the Swiss Guard colonel and one of the troopers, Isozaki could see the tactical holo in front of the pilot’s position. The sphere of moving light and color with its solid bars of code was highly technical, but Isozaki had been a pilot before these boys were born. He could see that they were not accelerating toward the world of Pacem, but toward a destination near the trailing Trojan point, directly in the middle of the swarm of Pax Fleet asteroid bases and system-defense forts.

A Holy Office orbital prison, thought Isozaki. Worse than Castel Sant’Angelo where the virtual pain machines were said to run all hours of the day and night. In one of the orbital dungeons, no one could hear you scream. He was sure that the command to attend a papal audience was mere irony, a way to get him out of the Pax Mercantilus without protest. Isozaki would have bet anything that within days—perhaps hours—his formal suit and cape would be bloody, sweat-soaked rags.

He was wrong on all counts. The ramscout decelerated above the plane of the ecliptic and he realized their destination: Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s “summer retreat.”

The diskey viewer in the CEO’s couch worked and he called up an exterior view as the ramscout left its escorting torchships and dropped toward the massive, potato-shaped asteroid. More than forty klicks long and twenty-five across, Castel Gandolfo was a little world of its own, its sky blue, its oxygen-rich atmosphere held in by class-twenty containment fields wrapped with infinite redundancies, the hillsides and terraces green with grass and crops, the sculpted mountains forested and running with streams and small animals. Isozaki saw the ancient Italian village pass below and knew that the peaceful vision was deceptive: surrounding Pax bases could destroy any ship or fleet in existence, while the interior of asteroid Castel Gandolfo was honeycombed with garrisons holding more than ten thousand Swiss Guard and elite Pax troopers.

The ramscout morphed wings and flew the final ten kilometers on silent electric pulse jets. Isozaki saw the Swiss Guard troopers in full battle dress rise to escort the ship the final five klicks. Rich sunlight glinted off their dynamic-flow armor and transparent face shields as they encircled the ramscout and approached the castle at dead-slow speeds. Isozaki saw several of the troopers aim probes at the ship: confirming with deep radar and infrared what the encrypted manifest readouts had told them about the number and identity of passengers and crew.

A door opened in the side of one of the castle’s stone towers and the ramscout floated in, pulse jets cool, the Swiss Guard troopers tugging the aircraft into place with the blue glow of their liftpacs.

The air lock cycled. The eight Swiss Guard troopers went down the ramp first, taking up their two lines as the colonel escorted Kenzo Isozaki out and down. The CEO was looking for a lift door or stairway, but the entire berthing level of the tower began to descend. The motors and gears were silent. Only the passing stone walls of the tower told of their movement downward and then sideways into the subterranean guts of Castel Gandolfo.

They stopped. A door appeared in the wall of cold stone. Lights illuminated a corridor of polished steel with floating, fiberplastic lens pods keeping watch at ten-meter intervals. The colonel gestured and Isozaki led the procession down the echoing tunnel. At the end, blue light washed over them all as other probes and sensors searched them inside and out. A chime rang and another portal appeared and irised open. This was a more formal waiting room. Three people stood when Isozaki and his escort entered.

Damn, thought the Pax Mercantilus CEO. Anna Pelli Cognani was there, dressed in her finest fresilk robes, as were CEOs Helvig Aron and Kennet Hay-Modhino, Isozaki’s other counterparts on the Executive Council of the Pancapitalist League of Independent Catholic Transstellar Trade Organizations.

Damn, thought Kenzo Isozaki again, his face staying absolutely impassive while he nodded silently to his associates. They are going to hold all of us accountable for my actions. We will all be excommunicated and executed.

“This way,” said the Swiss Guard colonel and opened an elaborately carved door. The room beyond was darker. Isozaki smelled candles, incense, and sweating stone. He realized that the Swiss Guardsmen were not going with them through that door. Whatever waited there, waited for his party alone.

“Thank you, Colonel,” said CEO Isozaki in a pleasant voice. With firm strides, he led the way into the incense-filled darkness.

IT WAS A SMALL CHAPEL, DARK EXCEPT FOR RED VOTIVE candles flickering in a wrought-iron stand against one stone wall and two arched, stained-glass windows behind the simple altar at the far end. Six more candles burned on the bare altar while flames in braziers on the far side of the windows cast more ruddy light into the long, narrow room. There was only one chair, tall, straight-backed, velvet-cushioned, and placed to the left of the altar. In the back of the chair was embossed what at first appeared to be a cruciform, but what, upon second glance, was revealed to be the triple cross of the Pope. The altar and chair were set upon a low stone dais.

The rest of the chapel was without chairs or pews, but red velvet cushions had been set on the dark stone on either side of the aisle down which M.’s Isozaki, Cognani, Hay-Modhino, and Aron walked. There were four cushions—two on either side of the aisle—that were not in use. The Mercantilus CEOs dipped fingers in the stone font holding holy water, crossed themselves, genuflected toward the altar, and went to their knees on the cushions. Before lowering his head in prayer, Kenzo Isozaki glanced around the tiny chapel.

Nearest the altar dais knelt Vatican Secretary of State Simon Augustino Cardinal Lourdusamy—a mountain of red and black in the ruddy light, his jowls and chins hiding his clerical collar as he bowed his head in prayer—and behind him knelt the scarecrow figure of his aide, Monsignor Lucas Oddi. Across the aisle from Lourdusamy, the Holy Office’s Grand Inquisitor, John Domenico Cardinal Mustafa, knelt in prayer, his eyes closed. Next to him was the infamous intelligence agent and torturer, Father Farrell.

On Lourdusamy’s side of the aisle, three Pax Fleet officers were on their knees: Admiral Marusyn—his silver hair glinting in the red light—and his aide, Admiral Marget Wu, and someone whose face it took Isozaki a moment to recall—Admiral Aldikacti. On the Grand Inquisitor’s side of the aisle knelt Cardinal Du Noyer, prefect and president of Cor Unum. Du Noyer was a woman in her healthy seventies, standard, with a strong jaw and short-cropped gray hair. Her eyes were the color of flint. Isozaki did not recognize the middle-aged man in mon-signoral robes who knelt behind the Cardinal.

The final four kneeling figures were the Mercantilus CEOs—Aron and Hay-Modhino on the Grand Inquisitor’s side of the aisle, Isozaki and Pelli Cognani on the Secretary of State’s side. Isozaki counted a total of thirteen people in the chapel. Not an auspicious number, he thought.

At that moment, a hidden door in the wall to the right of the altar opened silently and the Pope entered with four men in attendance. The thirteen people in the chapel rose quickly from their knees and stood with their heads bowed. Kenzo Isozaki had time to recognize two of the men with the Pope as aides and the third as head of papal security—faceless functionaries—but the fourth man, the man in gray, was Councillor Albedo. Only Albedo stayed with the Pope as His Holiness walked into the room, allowing the kissing of his ring and touching the heads of the gathered men and women as they knelt again. Finally His Holiness, Pope Urban XVI, took his seat in the straight-backed throne with Albedo standing behind him. The thirteen dignitaries in the room immediately stood.

Isozaki lowered his eyes, his face remaining a study in calm, but his heart pounded at his ribs. Will Albedo expose us all? Have all these groups attempted secret contact with the Core? Are we to be confronted by His Holiness and then taken from here, our cruciforms removed, and then executed? Isozaki thought it likely.

“Brothers and sisterts in Christ,” began His Holiness, “we are pleased that you have agreed to join us here this day. What we must say in this secret and silent place has remained a secret for centuries and must remain within this circle until formal permission to share it with others is granted from the Holy See. We so abjure and command you, upon the pain of excommunication and the loss of your souls to the light of Christ.”

The thirteen men and women murmured prayers and acquiescence.

“In the recent months and years,” continued His Holiness, “there have occurred events both strange and terrible. We have witnessed these from afar—some of these we have foreseen with the help of Our Lord, Jesus Christ—and many we have prayed would pass from us, sparing our people, our Pax, and our Church from a test of wills, faith, and fortitude. But events occur as the Lord wills them to occur. It is not possible for even His most faithful servant to understand all events and portents, only to trust in His mercy when those events seem most threatening and perplexing.”

The thirteen dignitaries kept their eyes carefully downcast.

“Rather than relate these events from our perspective,” His Holiness said softly, “we shall ask some of those who participated in them to report in full. Then we shall endeavor to explain the connections between such seemingly disparate occurrences. Admiral Marusyn?”

The silver-haired Admiral shifted slightly to face the others as well as His Holiness. He cleared his throat. “Reports from a world called Vitus-Gray-Balianus B suggest that we came close to capturing the Hyperion-born man named Raul Endymion who eluded us—with our primary subject, the girl named Aenea—almost five standard years ago. Elements of a special force of the Noble Guard …” The Admiral nodded toward Pope Urban XVI, who lowered his gaze in agreement. “Elements of this special force,” continued Marusyn, “tipped our commander on Vitus-Gray-Balianus B to the possible presence of this person. Although he escaped before our search of the area was completed, we did turn up definite DNA and microntag evidence that this was the same Raul Endymion who had been briefly incarcerated on the world of Mare Infinitus more than four years ago.”

Cardinal Lourdusamy cleared his throat. “It might be helpful, Admiral, if you described how the suspect, Raul Endymion, escaped from this world of Vitus-Gray-Balianus B.”

Kenzo Isozaki did not blink, but he registered the fact that Lourdusamy was speaking for His Holiness in this conference.

“Thank you, Your Excellency,” said Admiral Marusyn. “Yes, it appears that this Endymion both appeared on and escaped the planet via one of the ancient farcasters.”

There was no audible buzz in the room, but Isozaki sensed the psychic hum of interest and shock. There had been rumors for the past four years centering on Pax Fleet forces chasing some heretic who had managed to activate the dormant farcasters.

“And was this farcaster active when your men inspected it?” questioned Lourdusamy.

“Negative, Your Excellency,” said Admiral Marusyn. “There was no sign of activity on either farcaster … the one upriver which must have granted the fugitive access to Vitus-Gray-Balianus B … nor the one downriver from the settlements.”

“But you are certain that this … Endymion … had not arrived on planet by some more conventional means? And equally certain that he is not hiding there now?”

“Yes, Your Excellency. This Pax world has excellent traffic control and orbital defenses. Any spacecraft approaching Vitus-Gray-Balianus B would have been detected light-hours from the planet. And we have turned the world upside down searching … administered Truthtell to tens of thousands of the inhabitants. The man named Endymion is not there. Witnesses did describe, however, a flash of light at the downstream farcaster at the precise moment that our sensors in and above that hemisphere registered a major energy surge consistent with old records of farcaster displacement fields.”

His Holiness raised his face and made a subtle gesture to Cardinal Lourdusamy.

“And I believe you have one other bit of unsettling news, Admiral Marusyn,” rumbled Lourdusamy.

The Admiral’s countenance grew grimmer as he nodded. “Aye, Your Excellency … Your Holiness. This involves the first mutiny in the history of Pax Fleet.”

Isozaki again sensed the unspoken murmur of shock. He showed no emotion or reaction, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Anna Pelli Cognani glancing at him.

“I will have Admiral Aldikacti brief us on this matter,” said Marusyn. He stepped back and folded his hands in front of him.

Isozaki noted that Aldikacti was one of those stocky Lusian women who seemed almost too androgynous to label with gender. She was as solid and blocky as a brick in a dress uniform.

Aldikacti did not waste time clearing her throat. She launched into an immediate briefing involving Task Force GIDEON, its mission to attack Ouster strongholds in seven systems far in the Outback, the successful outcome of that mission in all seven systems, and then the surprise in the final system, code-named Lucifer.

“To this point, the task force had performed beyond expectations and simulations,” barked Admiral Aldikacti. “As a result, while completing operations in Ouster System Lucifer, I authorized a Gideon-drive drone to carry a message to Pacem … to His Holiness and Admiral Marusyn … requesting permission to refuel and refit in Tau Ceti System and then extend Task Force GIDEON’s mission—attacking new Ouster systems before the alarm of our attack spread through the Outback. I received Gideon-drone permission to do this, and proceeded to take the bulk of my task force to Tau Ceti System for refueling, rearming, and rendezvous with five additional archangel star-ships which had come on-line since our task force had left Pax space.”

“You took the bulk of your task force?” queried Cardinal Lourdusamy in his soft rumble.

“Yes, Your Excellency.” There was no apology or quavering in Aldikacti’s flat Lusian voice. “Five Ouster torchships had escaped our detection and were accelerating toward a Hawking-drive translation point which would have presumably brought them out in another Ouster system. They would have spread the alarm of our task force’s presence and lethality. Rather than divert the entire Task Force GIDEON, which was approaching our own translation point to Tau Ceti System, I authorized H.H.S. Gabriel and H.H.S. Raphael to remain in Lucifer System just long enough to intercept and destroy the Ouster torchships.”

Lourdusamy folded his pudgy hands in his robe. His voice was a deep purr. “And you then translated your flagship, the Uriel, and four other archangels to Tau Ceti System?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Leaving the Gabriel and Raphael in Lucifer System?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“And you were aware, Admiral, that the Raphael was commanded by Father Captain de Soya … the same captain who had been reprimanded some years earlier for not succeeding in his mission of finding and detaining the child, Aenea?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“And you were aware, Admiral, that Pax Fleet and the Holy See were concerned enough about Father Captain de Soya’s … ah … stability, that the Holy Office had assigned an undercover agent aboard the Raphael to observe and transmit observations on Father Captain de Soya’s behavior and reliability?”

“A spy,” said Admiral Aldikacti. “Commander Liebler. Yes, Your Excellency. I was aware that Holy Office agents aboard my flagship were receiving encoded tightbeam broadcasts from Commander Liebler aboard the Raphael.”

“And did these agents share any concerns or data from these broadcasts, Admiral Aldikacti?”

“Negative, Your Excellency. I was not made aware of the nature of the Holy Office’s concerns related to Father Captain de Soya’s loyalty or sanity.”

Cardinal Mustafa cleared his throat and raised one finger.

Lourdusamy, who had been in charge of what Isozaki and the others had quickly recognized as an inquisition, glanced at the Pope.

His Holiness nodded in the direction of the Grand Inquisitor.

“I feel it necessary to point out to His Holiness and the other worthies in this room that observation of Father Captain de Soya had been approved … directed … from the Office of the Holy See, with verbal authorization from the Secretary of State and Pax Fleet Command … specifically from Admiral Marusyn.”

There was a brief silence.

Finally Lourdusamy said, “And can you tell us, Cardinal Mustafa, what the source of this shared concern had been?”

Mustafa licked his lips. “Yes, Your Excellency. Our … ah … intelligence reports indicated that there might have been some chance of contamination during Father Captain de Soya’s chase and rare contact with the subject named Aenea.”

“Contamination?” queried Lourdusamy.

“Yes, Your Excellency. It was our assessment that the girl named Aenea had the power to affect both the physical and psychological makeup of those Pax citizens with whom she came in contact. Our concern in this instance was for the absolute loyalty and obedience of one of Pax Fleet’s starship commanders.”

“And how was this intelligence assessment made, Cardinal Mustafa?” continued Lourdusamy.

The Grand Inquisitor paused. “A variety of intelligence sources and methods were used, Your Excellency.”

Lourdusamy did not pause. “Among these were the fact that you have detained and … ah … interrogated one of Father Captain de Soya’s fellow shipmen from the aforementioned abortive chase of subject Aenea, is that not correct, Cardinal Mustafa? A … ah … Corporal Kee, I believe?”

Mustafa blinked. “That is correct, Your Excellency.” The Grand Inquisitor turned slightly so as to speak to the others in the room as well as the Pope and the Secretary of State. “Such detention is unusual, but called for in a situation which appears to affect the security of the Church and the Pax.”

“Of course, Your Excellency,” murmured Cardinal Lourdusamy. “Admiral Aldikacti, you may continue with the briefing.”

“Some hours after my five archangels jumped to Tau Ceti System,” said Aldikacti, “and before any of us had completed our two-day resurrection cycle, a Gideon drone translated into Tau Ceti space. It had been launched by Mother Captain Stone …”

“Captain of the H.H.S. Gabriel,” said Lourdusamy.

“Affirmative, Your Excellency. The drone’s encrypted message … encrypted in a code for my eyes only … said that the Ouster torchships had been destroyed, but that the Raphael had gone rogue, was accelerating toward an unauthorized translation point, and would not respond to Mother Captain Stone’s orders to stop.”

“in other words,” purred Lourdusamy, “one of His Holiness’s Pax Fleet ships had suffered a mutiny”

“It appeared so, Your Excellency. Although in this case, the mutiny seemed to have been led by the ship’s captain.”

“Father Captain de Soya.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“And were there attempts made to contact the Holy Office agent aboard the Raphael?”

“Yes, Your Excellency. Father Captain de Soya said that Commander Liebler was attending to duties. Mother Captain Stone thought this unlikely.”

“And when challenged about the changed translation point?” queried Lourdusamy.

“Father Captain de Soya answered that I had tightbeamed changed orders to the Raphael prior to our task force’s translation,” said Admiral Aldikacti.

“Did Mother Captain Stone accept this explanation?”

“Negative, Your Excellency. Mother Captain Stone closed the distance between the two archangels and engaged the Raphael.”

“What was the outcome of that engagement, Admiral?”

Aldikacti hesitated only a heartbeat. “Your Excellency … Your Holiness … because Mother Captain Stone had used an eyes-only encryption for her drone message, it was a full day in Tau Ceti System—the time it took for my emergency resurrection —before I read the message and authorized an immediate return to Lucifer System.”

“How many ships did you take with you, Admiral?”

“Three, Your Excellency. My own flagship, the Uriel, with a fresh crew, and two of the archangels that had rendezvoused with us in Tau Ceti System … the Mikal and the Izrail I felt that the risk of accelerating resurrection of the Task Force GIDEON crews was too great.”

“Although you accepted that risk yourself, Admiral,” said Lourdusamy.

Aldikacti said nothing.

“What happened then, Admiral?”

“We jumped immediately to Lucifer System, Your Excellency. There we recycled under twelve-hour automated resurrection. Many of the resurrections were unsuccessful. By combining the successfully resurrected crew members from all three ships, I was able to crew the Uriel I left the other two starships in passive but automated defensive trajectories while I commenced searching for the Gabriel and the Raphael I found neither. But a final beacon drone was soon discovered on the far side of Lucifer’s yellow sun.”

“And the beacon was from …” prompted Lourdusamy.

“Mother Captain Stone. The beacon held the downloaded history of the Gabriel’s combat recorder. It showed the battle that had taken place less than two days before. Stone had attempted to destroy the Raphael by plasma and fusion weapons. The attempts failed. The Gabriel then engaged Father Captain de Soya’s ship by deathbeam.”

There was silence in the tiny chapel. Isozaki watched the red light of the flickering votive candles painting the pained face of His Holiness, Pope Urban XVI.

“The outcome of that engagement?” said Lourdusamy.

“Both crews died,” said Aldikacti. “According to automated instruments aboard the Gabriel, the Raphael completed automated translation. Mother Captain Stone had ordered her crew to resurrection crèche battle stations. She had programmed the Gabriel’s ship computers to resurrect her and several of the essential crew members on an emergency, eight-hour cycle. Only she and one of her officers survived the resurrection. Mother Captain Stone encoded the beacon and accelerated to the Raphael’s former translation point. She was determined to seek out and destroy the ship, preferably before de Soya and his crew completed resurrection … if they were in their crèches at the time of the deathbeaming.”

“Did Mother Captain Stone know which system this translation point would open upon, Admiral?”

“Negative, Your Excellency. There were too many variables involved.”

“And what was your response to the beacon’s data, Admiral?”

“I waited twelve hours for a working complement of the crews on the Mikal and the Izrail to complete resurrection, Your Excellency. I then translated all three of my ships through the jump point indicated by the Raphael and Gabriel. I left a second beacon for the archangels I was sure would be following from Tau Ceti System within hours.”

“You did not find it necessary to wait for these ships?”

“No, Your Excellency. I thought it important to translate as soon as all three of my ships were combat-ready.”

“But you did find it expedient to wait for the crews of these two ships, Admiral. Why did you not give chase immediately with only the Uriel?”

Aldikacti did not hesitate. “It was a command combat decision, Your Excellency. I felt that the probabilities were very high that Father Captain de Soya had taken the Raphael to an Ouster system … quite possibly one more heavily armed than any Task Force GIDEON had encountered. I also felt it probable that Mother Captain Stone’s ship, the Gabriel, had been destroyed by either the Raphael or Ouster ships within the unknown system. I felt that three ships of the line were the minimum force I could take into this unknown situation.”

“And was it an Ouster system, Admiral?”

“Negative, Your Excellency. Or at least, no sign of Ousters were discovered in the two weeks of investigation following this incident.”

“Where did the translation point take you, Admiral?”

“Into the outer shell of a red giant star,” said Admiral Aldikacti. “Our containment fields were, of course, activated, but it was a very close thing.”

“Did all three of your ships make it, Admiral?”

“Negative, Your Excellency. The Uriel and Izrail survived exit from the star and containment field cooling procedures. The Mikal was lost with all hands.”

“And did you find the Gabriel and the Raphael, Admiral?”

“Only the Gabriel, Your Excellency. It was discovered floating free some two AUs from the red giant. All systems were inoperative. There had been a breach of the containment field and the interior of the ship had melted into a single molten mass.”

“Were Mother Captain Stone and the other crew members found and resurrected, Admiral?”

“Unfortunately, no, Your Excellency. There was not enough discrete organic material remaining to pursue resurrection.”

“Was the slagging due to emergence in the red giant or attack from the Raphael or Ouster unknowns, Admiral?”

“It is still being determined by our materials experts, Your Excellency, but the preliminary report suggests an overload due to both natural and combat causes. The weapons used would have been consistent with the Raphael’s armament.”

“So you are saying that the Gabriel fought an automated engagement near this red giant sun, Admiral?”

“Within the star, Your Excellency. It seems that the Raphael turned about, reentered the star, and attacked the Gabriel within seconds of its emergence from Hawking space.”

“And is there a chance that the Raphael was also destroyed in this second engagement? The ship incinerated deep in the star?”

“A chance, Your Excellency, but we are not operating upon that assumption. It is our best guess that Father Captain de Soya then translated out of system to an unknown destination in the Outback.”

Lourdusamy nodded, his heavy jowls quivering slightly. “Admiral Marusyn,” he rumbled, “could you give us an assessment of this threat if the Raphael did indeed survive?”

The older Admiral stepped forward. “Your Excellency, we have to assume that Father Captain de Soya and the other mutineers are hostile to the Pax and that this theft of a Pax archangel-class starship was premeditated. We also have to assume the worst-case scenario that this theft of our most secret and lethal weapons system was carried out in coordination with the Ousters.” The Admiral took a breath. “Your Excellencies … Your Holiness … with the Gideon drive, any point in this arm of the galaxy is only an instant away from any other. The Raphael could translate into any Pax system—even Pacem’s—without the Hawking-drive wake warnings of the earlier, and current, Ouster spacecraft. The Raphael could ravage our Mercantilus transport lanes, attack undefended worlds and colonies, and generally wreak havoc before a Pax task force could respond.”

The Pope raised one finger. “Admiral Marusyn, are we to understand that this most prized of Gideon-drive technologies may fall into the hands of the Ousters … be duplicated … and thus power many of the Enemy’s ships?”

Marusyn’s already florid face and neck flushed more deeply. “Your Holiness … that is unlikely, Your Holiness … extemely unlikely. The steps of manufacture of a Gideon archangel are so complex, the cost so prohibitive, the secret elements so guarded …”

“But it is possible,” interrupted the Pope.

“Yes, Your Holiness.”

The Pope raised his hand like a blade cutting through the air. “We believe that we have heard all we need to hear from our friends in Pax Fleet. You are excused, Admiral Marusyn, Admiral Aldikacti, Admiral Wu.”

The three officers genuflected, bowed their heads, stood, and backed away from His Holiness. The door whispered shut behind them.

There were now ten dignitaries present, in addition to the silent papal aides and Councillor Albedo.

The Pope inclined his head toward Secretary of State Cardinal Lourdusamy. “Disposition, Simon Augustino?”

“Admiral Marusyn is to receive a letter of rebuke and will be transferred to general staff,” said Lourdusamy softly. “Admiral Wu will take his place as temporary Pax Fleet commander in chief until a suitable replacement is found. Admiral Aldikacti has been recommended for excommunication and execution by firing squad.”

The Pope nodded sadly. “We shall now hear from Cardinal Mustafa, Cardinal Du Noyer, CEO Isozaki, and Councillor Albedo before concluding this business.”

“… AND THUS ENDED THE OFFICIAL INQUIRY BY the Holy Office pertaining to the events on the Pax world of Mars,” concluded Cardinal Mustafa. He glanced at Cardinal Lourdusamy. “It was at this time that Captain Wolmak suggested that it was imperative that my entourage and I return to the archangel Jibril still in orbit around that planet.”

“Please continue, Excellency,” murmured Cardinal Lourdusamy. “Can you tell us the nature of the emergency which Captain Wolmak felt required your imperative return?”

“Yes,” said Mustafa, rubbing his lower lip. “Captain Wolmak had found the interstellar freighter that had uploaded cargo from the unlisted base near the Martian city of Arafat-kaffiyeh. The ship had been discovered floating powerless in Old Earth System’s asteroid belt.”

“Can you tell us the name of that ship, Excellency?” prompted Lourdusamy.

“The H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru.”

CEO Kenzo Isozaki’s lips twitched despite his iron control. He remembered the ship. His oldest son had crewed on it during the early years of the boy’s apprenticeship. The Saigon Maru had been an ancient ore and bulk freighter … about a three-million-ton ion sledge carrier, as he recalled.

“CEO Isozaki?” snapped Lourdusamy.

“Yes, Your Excellency?” Isozaki’s voice was smooth and emotionless.

“The ship’s designation suggests that it is of Mercantilus registry. Is this correct, M. Isozaki?”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” said the CEO. “But it is my recollection that the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru was sold for scrap along with sixty-some other obsolete freighters about … eight standard years ago, if memory serves.”

“Your Excellencies?” said Anna Pelli Cognani. “Your Holiness? If I might?” The other CEO had whispered to her wafer-thin comlog and now touched her hearring.

“CEO Pelli Cognani,” said Cardinal Lourdusamy.

“Our records show that the Saigon Maru was indeed sold to independent scrap contractors some eight years, three months, and two days ago, standard. Later transmissions confirmed that the ships had been scrapped and recycled at the Armaghast orbital automated foundries.”

“Thank you, CEO Pelli Cognani,” said Lourdusamy. “Cardinal Mustafa, you may continue.”

The Grand Inquisitor nodded and continued his briefing, covering only the most necessary details. And while he spoke he thought of the images he was not describing in detail:

The Jibril and its accompanying torchships slowing to silent, synchronized tumbling, matching velocities with the dark freighter. Cardinal Mustafa had always imagined asteroid belts as tightly packed clusters of moonlets, but despite the multiple images on the tactical plot, there were no rocks in sight: just the matte-black freighter, as ugly and functional as a rusted mass of pipes and cylinders, half a klick long. Matched as they were in velocity and trajectory, hanging only three klicks away with the yellow sun of humankind’s birth burning beyond their sterns, Jibril and the Saigon Maru appeared motionless with only the stars wheeling slowly around them.

Mustafa remembered—and regretted—his decision to inspect the ship with the troopers who were going aboard. The indignities of suiting up in Swiss Guard combat armor: a monomol-D skinsuit layer, followed by an AI neural mesh, then the spacesuit itself—bulkier than civilian skinsuits with its polymered sheath of impact armor—and finally the web belts of gear and the morphable reaction pak. The Jibril had deep-radared the hulk a dozen times and was certain that nothing moved or breathed on board, but the archangel still backed off to thirty klicks’ attack distance as soon as the Grand Inquisitor, Security Commander Browning, Marine Sergeant Nell Kasner, former groundforce commander Major Piet, and ten Swiss Guard/Marine commandos had jumped from the sally port.

Mustafa remembered his pounding pulse as they jetted closer to the dead freighter, two commandos ferrying him across the abyss as if he were another parcel to carry. He remembered the sunlight glinting off gold blast visors as the troopers communicated with tightbeam squirts and hand signals, taking up positions on either side of the open air lock. Two troopers went in first, their reaction paks throbbing silently, assault weapons raised. Then Commander Browning and Sergeant Kasner went in fast behind them. A minute later there was a coded squirt on the tactical channel and Mustafa’s handlers guided him into the waiting black hole of the air lock.

Corpses floating in the beams of flashlight lasers. Meat-locker images. Frozen carcasses, red-striped ribs, gutted abdominal cavities. Jaws locked open in eternally silent screams. Frozen streamers of blood from the gaping jaws and hemorrhaged, protruding eyes. Viscera drifting in tumbling trajectories amid the stabbing beams of light.

“Crew,” tightbeamed Commander Browning.

“Shrike?” queried Cardinal Mustafa. He was mentally saying the rosary in rapid monotone, not for spiritual reassurance but to keep his mind away from the images floating in hellish light before him. He had been warned not to vomit in his helmet. Filters and scrubbers would clean the mess before he strangled on it, but they were not foolproof.

“Probably the Shrike,” answered Major Piet, extending his gauntlet into the shattered chest cavity of one of the drifting corpses. “See how the cruciform has been ripped out. Just as in Arafat-kaffiyeh.”

“Commander!” came a tightbeamed voice of one of the troopers who had moved aft from the air lock. “Sergeant! Here! in the first cargo hold!”

Browning and Piet had gone ahead of the Grand Inquisitor into the long, cylindrical space. Flashlight lasers were lost in this huge space.

These corpses had not been slashed and shattered. They were stacked neatly on carbon slabs extruding from the hull on each side, held in place by nylon mesh bands. The slabs came out from all sides of the hull, leaving only a zero-g corridor down the center. Mustafa and his guides and keepers floated the length of this black space, flashlight lasers stabbing left, right, down, and up. Frozen flesh, pale flesh, bar codes on the soles of their feet, pubic hair, closed eyes, hands pale against black carbon by hipbones, flaccid penises, breasts frozen in zero-g weightlessness, hair tight on pale skulls or floating in frozen nimbuses. Children with smooth, cold skin, extended bellies, and translucent eyelids. Infants with bar coded soles.

There were tens of thousands of bodies in the four long cargo holds. All were human, All were naked. All were lifeless.

“AND DID YOU COMPLETE YOUR INSPECTION OF THE H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru, Grand Inquisitor?” prompted Cardinal Lourdusamy.

Mustafa realized that he had fallen silent for a long moment, possessed by the demon of that terrible memory. “We did complete it, Your Excellency,” he answered, his voice thick.

“And your conclusions?”

“There were sixty-seven thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven human beings aboard the bulk freighter H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru,” said the Grand Inquisitor. “Fifty-one of them were crew members. All of the crew members’ bodies were accounted for. All had been slashed and rent in the same fashion as the victims at Arafat-kaffiyeh.”

“There were no survivors? None could be resurrected?”

“None.”

“In your opinion, Cardinal Mustafa, was the demon-creature called the Shrike responsible for the death of the crew members of the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru?”

“In my opinion, it was, Your Excellency.”

“And in your opinion, Cardinal Mustafa, was the Shrike responsible for the deaths of the sixty-seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-six other bodies discovered on the Saigon Maru?”

Mustafa hesitated only a second. “In my opinion, Your Excellency”—he turned his head and bowed in the direction of the man in the chair—“Your Holiness … the cause of death of the sixty-seven thousand-some men, women, and children found on the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru was not consistent with the wounds discovered on Mars’s victims, or consistent with prior tales of Shrike attack.”

Cardinal Lourdusamy took a rustling step forward. “And, according to your Holy Office forensic experts, Cardinal Mustafa, what was the cause of death for the human beings found aboard this freighter?”

Cardinal Mustafa’s eyes were lowered as he spoke. “Your Excellency, neither the Holy Office nor Pax Fleet forensic specialists could specify any cause of death for these people. In fact …” Mustafa stopped.

“In fact,” Lourdusamy continued for him, “the bodies found aboard the Saigon Maru … exclusive of the crew … showed neither clear cause of death nor the attributes of death, is that not correct?”

“That is correct, Your Excellency.” Mustafa’s eyes roamed to the faces of the other dignitaries in the chapel. “They were not living, but they … showed no signs of decomposition, postmortem lividity, brain decay … none of the usual signs of physical death.”

“Yet they were not alive?” prompted Lourdusamy.

Cardinal Mustafa rubbed his cheek. “Not within our capacity to revive, Your Excellency. Nor within our ability to detect signs of brain or cellular activity. They were … stopped.”

“And what was the disposition of the bulk freighter, H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru, Cardinal Mustafa?”

“Captain Wolmak put a prize crew aboard from the Jibril,” said the Grand Inquisitor. “We returned immediately to Pacem to report the matter. The Saigon Maru was traveling via traditional Hawking drive, escorted by four Hawking-drive torchships, and is scheduled to arrive in the nearest Pax system with a Pax Fleet base … Barnard’s System, I believe … in … ah … three standard weeks.”

Lourdusamy nodded slowly. “Thank you, Grand Inquisitor.” The Secretary of State walked to a place near the Pope’s chair, genuflected toward the altar, and crossed himself as he crossed the aisle. “Your Holiness, I would ask that we hear from Her Excellency, Cardinal Du Noyer.”

Pope Urban raised one hand as if in benediction. “We would be pleased to listen to Cardinal Du Noyer.”

KENZO ISOZAKI’S MIND WAS REELING. WHY WERE they being told these things? What possible purpose could it serve for the CEOs of the Pax Mercantilus to hear these things? Isozaki’s blood had chilled at the summary death sentence of Admiral Aldikacti. Was that to be the fate of all of them?

No, he realized. Aldikacti had received a sentence of excommunication and execution for simple incompetence. If Mustafa, Pelli Cognani, himself, and the others were to be charged with some variety of treason … quick, simple execution would be the furthest thing from their fates. The pain machines in Castel Sant’Angelo would be humming and grating for centuries.

CARDINAL DU NOYER OBVIOUSLY HAD CHOSEN TO be resurrected as an old woman. As with most older people, she looked in perfect health—all of her teeth, wrinkles at a minimum, dark eyes clear and bright—but she also preferred to be seen with her white hair—cut almost to the scalp—and skin tight across her sharp cheekbones. She began without preliminaries.

“Your Holiness, Excellencies, other worthies … I appear here today as prefect and president of Cor Unum and de facto spokesperson for the private agency known as Opus Dei. For reasons which shall become apparent, the administrators of Opus Dei could not and should not be present here this day.”

“Continue, Your Excellency,” said Cardinal Lourdusamy.

“The bulk freighter the H.H.M.S. Saigon Maru was purchased by Cor Unum for Opus Dei, diverted from scrap recycling, and delivered to that agency seven years ago.”

“For what purpose, Your Excellency?” queried Lourdusamy.

Cardinal Du Noyer’s gaze moved from face to face in the small chapel, ending at His Holiness and looking down in respect. “For the purpose of transporting the lifeless bodies of millions of people such as were found on this interrupted voyage, Excellencies, Your Holiness.”

The four Mercantilus CEOs made a noise somewhere short of a gasp, but louder than a mere intake of breath.

“Lifeless bodies …” repeated Cardinal Lourdusamy, but with the calm tone of a prosecuting attorney who knows in advance what the answers to all questions will be. “Lifeless bodies from where, Cardinal Du Noyer?”

“From whatever world Opus Dei designates, Your Excellency,” said Du Noyer. “In the past five years, these worlds have included Hebron, Qom-Riyadh, Fuji, Nevermore, Sol Draconi Septem, Parvati, Tsingtao-Hsishuang Panna, New Mecca, Mao Four, Ixion, the Lambert Ring Territories, Sibiatu’s Bitterness, Mare Infinitus North Littoral, Renaissance Minor’s terraformed moon, New Harmony, New Earth, and Mars.”

All non-Pax worlds, thought Kenzo Isozaki. Or worlds where the Pax has only a foothold.

“And how many bodies have these Opus Dei and Cor Unum freighters transported, Cardinal Du Noyer?” Lourdusamy asked in his low rumble.

“Approximately seven billion, Your Excellency,” said the old woman.

Kenzo Isozaki concentrated on keeping his balance. Seven billion bodies. A bulk freighter like the Saigon Maru could haul perhaps a hundred thousand corpses if they were stacked like cordwood. It would take the Saigon Maru some seventy thousand trips to haul seven billion people from star system to star system. Absurd. Unless there were scores of bulk freighters … many of them the newer nova class … on hundreds pr thousands of shuttle trips. Each of the worlds that Du Noyer had mentioned had been closed to the Pax Mercantilus for all or some of the past four years—quarantined because of trade or diplomatic disputes with the Pax.

“These are all non-Christian worlds.” Isozaki realized that he had spoken aloud. It was the greatest breach of discipline he had ever suffered. The men and women in the chapel turned their heads in his direction.

“All non-Christian worlds,” Isozaki said again, omitting even the honorifics in addressing the others. “Or Christian worlds with large populations of non-Christians, such as Mars or Fuji or Nevermore. Cor Unum and Opus Dei have been exterminating non-Christians. But why transport their bodies? Why not just leave them to rot on their homeworlds and then bring in the Pax colonists?”

His Holiness held up one hand. Isozaki fell silent. The Pope nodded in the direction of Cardinal Lourdusamy.

“Cardinal Du Noyer,” said the Secretary of State, as if Isozaki had not spoken, “what is the destination of these freighters?”

“I do not know, Your Excellency.”

Lourdusamy nodded. “And who authorized this project, Cardinal Du Noyer?”

“The Peace and Justice Commission, Your Excellency.”

Isozaki’s head snapped around. The Cardinal had just laid the blame for this atrocity … this unprecedented mass murder … directly at the feet of one man. The Peace and Justice Commission had one prefect and only one prefect … Pope Urban XVI, formerly Pope Julius XIV. Isozaki lowered his gaze to the shoes of the fisherman and contemplated rushing the fiend, attempting to get his fingers around the Pope’s scrawny throat. He knew that the silent guards in the corner would cut him down halfway there. He was still tempted to try.

“And do you know, Cardinal Du Noyer,” continued Lourdusamy as if nothing terrible had been revealed, nothing unspeakable had been spoken, “how these people … these non-Christians … are rendered … lifeless?”

Rendered lifeless, thought Isozaki, who had always hated euphemisms. Murdered, you motherfucker!

“No,” said Cardinal Du Noyer. “My job as prefect of Cor Unum is merely to provide Opus Dei with the transport necessary to carry out their duties. The destinations of the ships and what happened before my freighters are needed is not … has never been … my concern.”

Isozaki went to one knee on the stone floor, not to pray, but just because he could no longer stand. How many centuries, gods of my ancestors, have accomplices to mass murder answered in this way? Since Horace Glennon-Height. Since the legendary Hitler. Since … forever.

“Thank you, Cardinal Du Noyer,” said Lourdusamy.

The old woman stepped back.

Incredibly, it was the Pope who was rising, moving forward, his white slippers making soft sounds on the stone. His Holiness walked between the staring people—past Cardinal Mustafa and Father Farrell, past Cardinal Lourdusamy and Monsignor Oddi, past Cardinal Du Noyer and the unnamed monsignor behind her, past the empty pillows where the Pax Fleet officers had been, past CEO Aron and CEO Hay-Modhino and CEO Anna Pelli Cognani, to where Isozaki knelt, close to vomiting, black dots dancing in his vision.

His Holiness laid a hand on the head of the man who was even at that moment contemplating killing him.

“Rise, our son,” said the mass murderer of billions. “Stand and listen. We command you.”

Isozaki rose, legs apart, teetering. His arms and hands tingled as if someone had zapped him with a neural stunner, but he knew it was his own body betraying him. He could not have closed his fingers around anyone’s throat at that moment. It was difficult enough just to stand alone.

Pope Urban XVI extended a hand, set it on the CEO’s shoulder, and steadied him. “Listen, brother in Christ. Listen.”

His Holiness turned his head and dipped his miter forward.

Councillor Albedo stepped to the edge of the low dais and began to speak.

“YOUR HOLINESS, YOUR EXCELLENCIES, HONORABLE Chief Executive Officers,” said the man in gray. Albedo’s voice was as smooth as his hair, as smooth as his gray gaze, as smooth as the silk of his gray cape.

Kenzo Isozaki trembled at the sound of it. He remembered the agony and embarrassment of the moment when Albedo had turned the CEO’s cruciform into a crucible of pain.

“Tell us who you are, please,” rumbled Lourdusamy in his most congenial tone.

Personal advisor to His Holiness, Pope Urban XVI, Kenzo Isozaki was prepared to hear. Albedo’s gray presence had been glimpsed and rumored for decades and decades. He was never identified other than personal advisor to His Holiness.

“I am an artificial construct, a cybrid, created by elements of the AI TechnoCore,” said Councillor Albedo. “I am here as a representative of those elements of the Core.”

Everyone in the room except for His Holiness and Cardinal Lourdusamy took a step away from Albedo. No one spoke, no one gasped or cried out, but the animal scent of terror and revulsion in the little chapel could not have been stronger if the Shrike had suddenly materialized among them. Kenzo Isozaki felt the Pope’s fingers still tight on his shoulder. He wondered if His Holiness could feel the pounding of his pulse through flesh and bone.

“The human beings transported from the worlds listed by Cardinal Du Noyer were … rendered lifeless … by Core technology, using Core robot spacecraft, and are being stored using Core techniques,” continued Albedo. “As Cardinal Du Noyer reported, approximately seven billion non-Christians have been processed in this manner over the past seven years. Another forty to fifty billion must be similarly processed in the next standard decade. It is time to explain the reason for this project and to enlist your direct aid in it.”

Kenzo Isozaki was thinking—It is possible to wire the human skeletal structure with a powerful protein-based explosive so subtle that even the Swiss Guard sniffers would not have detected it Would to the gods I had done that before coming here.

The Pope released Isozaki’s shoulder and walked softly to the dais, touching the sleeve of Councillor Albedo’s robe as he passed. His Holiness sat in his straight-backed chair. His thin face was peaceful. “We wish you all to listen carefully,” said His Holiness. “Councillor Albedo speaks with our authorization and approval. Continue, please.”

Albedo bowed his head slightly and turned back toward the staring dignitaries. Even the Pope’s security guards had moved back to the wall.

“You have been told, largely through myth and legend, but also through Church history,” began Albedo, “that the TechnoCore was destroyed in the Fall of the Farcasters. That is not true.

“You have been told—primarily through the banned Hyperion Cantos—that the Core consisted of Three Elements—the Stables, who wished to preserve the status quo between humanity and the Core, the Volatiles, who viewed humanity as a threat and plotted to destroy it—primarily through the destruction of the Earth via the Big Mistake of ’08, and the Ultimates, who thought only of creating an AI-based Ultimate Intelligence, a sort of silicon God which could predict and rule over the universe … or at least this galaxy.

“All these truths are lies.”

Isozaki realized that Anna Pelli Cognani had gripped his wrist with her cool fingers and was squeezing very hard.

“The TechnoCore was never grouped into three warring elements,” said Albedo, pacing in front of the altar and dais. “From its evolution into consciousness a thousand years ago, the Core was made up of thousands of distinct elements and factions—often warring, more often cooperating, but always struggling to achieve a synthesis of agreement toward the direction autonomous intelligence and artificial life should evolve. That agreement has never crystallized.

“Almost at the same time that the TechnoCore was evolving into true autonomy, while most of humankind lived on the surface of and in near orbit around one world—Old Earth—humanity had developed the capacity to change its own genetic programming … that is, to determine its own evolution. This breakthrough came partially through developments in the early twenty-first century A.D. in genetic manipulation, but was made possible most directly through the refinement of advanced nano-technology. At first under the direction and control of early Core AIs working in conjunction with human researchers, na-notech life-forms … autonomous beings, some intelligent, much smaller than a cell, some molecular in size … soon developed their own raison d’être and raison d’état. Nanomachines, many in the form of viruses, invaded and reshaped humanity like a terrible viral plague. Luckily for both the human race and the race of autonomous intelligences now known as the Core, the primary vector for that plague was in the early seed-ships and other slower-than-light colony ships launched in the years just preceding the human Hegira.

“At that time, early elements of what would become the Human Hegemony and the forecasting elements of the TechnoCore realized that the goal of the evolving nanotech communities developed on those seedships was nothing less than the destruction of humankind and the creation of a new race of nanotech-controlled biologic adapts in a thousand distant star systems. The Hegemony and the Core responded by banning advanced nanotech research and by declaring war on the nanotech seedship colonies—the groups now known as the Ousters.

“But other events overshadowed this struggle.

“Elements of the emergent Core which favored alliance with the nanotech universes—and this was more than a small faction—discovered something that terrified all elements of the Core.

“As you know, our early research into Hawking-drive physics and faster-than-light communication led to the discovery of the Planck-space medium, what some have called the Void Which Binds. Evolving knowledge about this underlying and unifying substructure to the universe led to our creation of the FTL communication—the so-called fatline—as well as to the refined Hawking drive, the farcasters that united the Hegemonic WorldWeb, the planetary dataspheres evolving into mega-spheres of Core-directed data, today’s instantaneous Gideon drive, and even experiments into antientropic bubbles within this universe—what we believe will become the Time Tombs on Hyperion.

“But these gifts to humanity were not without price. It is true that certain Ultimate factions within the Core used the farcasters as a way to tap into human brains so as to create a neural net for their own purposes. This use was harmless … the neural nets were created in the nontime and nonspace of farcaster Planck-space transit and humans need never have learned of the experiments if other elements of the Core had not revealed this fact to the first John Keats cybrid persona four centuries ago—but I agree with those humans and those Core elements who consider this act as unethical, a violation of privacy.

“But those earliest neural net experiments revealed an amazing fact. There were other Cores in the universe … perhaps in our home galaxy. The discovery of this fact led to a civil war within our TechnoCore which still rages. Certain elements—not merely the Volatiles—decided that it was time to end the biological experiment that was the human race. Plans were made to ‘accidentally’ drop the ’08 Kiev black hole into the center of Old Earth before Hawking drives allowed for a general exodus. Other elements of the Core delayed these plans until the mechanisms for escape were given to the human race.

“In the end, neither extreme faction triumphed … Old Earth was not destroyed. It was kidnapped—by means which our TechnoCore cannot understand to this day—by one or more of these alien Ultimate Intelligences.”

The CEOs began babbling among themselves. Cardinal Mustafa went to both knees on his cushion and began praying. Cardinal Du Noyer looked so ill that her aide, the monsignor, whispered concerned entreaties. Even Monsignor Lucas Oddi looked as if he might faint.

His Holiness, Pope Urban XVI, held up three fingers. The chapel became silent.

“This is, of course, only background,” continued Councillor Albedo. “What we wish to share with you today is the urgent reason for shared action.

“Three centuries ago, extreme factions of the Core—a society of autonomous intelligences ravaged and torn by eight centuries of violent debate and conflict—tried a new tack. They devised the cybrid creature known as John Keats—a human personality imbedded in an AI persona carried in a human body connected to the Core via Planck-space interface. The Keats persona had many purposes—as a sort of trap for what the UIs considered the ’empathy’ element of an emerging human species UI, as a prime mover to set the events in motion which eventually led to the last Hyperion pilgrimage and the opening of the Time Tombs there, to flush the Shrike out of hiding, and as a catalyst to the Fall of the Farcasters. To serve this final purpose, elements of the Core—elements to which I owe my creation and allegiance—leaked the information to CEO Meina Gladstone and others in the Hegemony that other Core elements were using the Farcasters to prey upon human neurons like some sort of neural vampires.

“Those elements of the Core, under the guise of an Ouster attack, launched a final, physical assault on the WorldWeb. Despairing of destroying the scattered human race in one stroke, these elements hoped to destroy the advanced WorldWeb society. By attacking the Core directly via destroying the farcaster medium, Gladstone and the other Hegemony leaders ended the neural-net experiments and caused a great setback to the so-called Volatiles and Ultimates in the Core civil war.

“Our elements of the Core—elements devoted to preserving not only the human race but some sort of alliance with your species—destroyed one iteration of the John Keats cybrid, but a second was created and succeeded in its primary mission.

“And that mission was—to reproduce with a specific human female and create a ‘messiah’ with connections to both the Core and humanity.

“That ‘messiah’ lives now in the form of the child named Aenea.

“Bom on Hyperion more than three centuries ago, that child fled through the Time Tombs to our age. She did so not put of fear—we would not have harmed her—but because her mission is to destroy the Church, destroy the Pax civilization, and to end the human race as you have known it.

“We believe that she is not aware of her true purpose or function.

“Three centuries ago, remnants of my element of the Core—a group you might think of as the Humanists—made contact with human survivors of the Fall of the Farcasters and the chaos which followed this fall.” Albedo nodded in the direction of His Holiness. The Pope lowered his head in acknowledgment.

“Father Lenar Hoyt was a survivor of the last Shrike Pilgrimage,” continued Councillor Albedo, pacing back and forth in front of the altar once again. Candle flames flickered slightly at his passing. “He had seen firsthand the manipulations of the Ultimate Intelligence Core elements and the depredations of their monster sent back through time, the Shrike. When we first made contact—the Humanists and Father Hoyt and a few other members of a dying Church—we resolved to protect the human race from further assaults while restoring civilization. The cruciform was our instrument of salvation—literally.

“You all know that the cruciform had been a failure. Prior to the Fall, humans resurrected by this symbiote’s actions were retarded and sexual neuters. The cruciform—a sort of organic computer in which is stored the neurological and physiological data of a living human being—restored the body but not the full intellect or personality. It resurrected the corpse but stole the soul.

“The origins of the cruciform lie shrouded in mystery, but we Humanist elements of the Core believe that it was developed in our future and brought back through time via the Hyperion Time Tombs. In a sense, it was sent to be discovered by young Father Lenar Hoyt.

“The failure of the symbiote was due to the simple demands of information storage and retrieval. In a human mind, there are neurons. In a human body, there are approximately 10²⁸ atoms. The cruciform, in order to restore the mind and body of a human being, must not only keep track of these atoms and neurons, but remember the precise configuration of the standing holistic, wave front which comprises the human memory and personality. It also must provide the energy to restructure these atoms, molecules, cells, bones, muscles, and memories so that the organism is reborn as the individual who lived in that shell before. The cruciform alone cannot do that successfully. At best, the biomachine can reproduce a crude copy of the original.

“But the Core had the computing capacity to store, retrieve, reshape, and re-form this information into a resurrected human being. And we have done so for three centuries.”

HERE KENZO ISOZAKI SAW THE PANIC IN THE EXCHANGED glances between Cardinal Du Noyer and Cardinal Mustafa, between Father Farrell and the monsignor who was Du Noyer’s aide. This was heresy. It was blasphemy. It was the end of the Sacrament of Resurrection and the beginning of the reign of the physical and mechanical once again. Isozaki himself felt sick. He glanced at Hay-Modhino and Pelli Cognani and saw that the CEOs were praying, CEO Aron looked as if he were in shock.

“BELOVED,” SAID HIS HOLINESS. “DO NOT DOUBT. Do not surrender faith. Your thoughts now are a betrayal of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and of His Church. The miracle of resurrection is no less a miracle because these friends in what was once known as the TechnoCore help us realize the miracle. It was the work of Jesus Christ Almighty who led these other children of God—these creations of Our Lord through His most unworthy instruments, the human race—to find their own souls and salvation. Continue, M. Albedo.”

ALBEDO LOOKED MILDLY AMUSED AT THE EXPRESSIONS of shock in the room. But his smooth features settled into quiet amiability as he began speaking again.

“We have given the human race immortality. In exchange, we have asked for nothing but a silent alliance with humanity. We want only peace with our creators.

“In the past three centuries, our quiet alliance has benefited both AI and humanity. We have, as His Holiness said, found our souls. Humanity has found a peace and stability missing from history for millennia … perhaps forever. And I admit, the alliance has been good for my element of the Core, the group known as the Humanists. We have gone from being one of the smaller, more despised factions to becoming the—not ruling party, for no element rules in the Core—the major element of consensus. Our philosophy is accepted by almost all former warring groups.

“But not by all.”

Here Councillor Albedo quit pacing and stood directly in front of the altar. He looked from face to face and his gray eyes were grim.

“The Core element which had hoped to dispose of humanity … the element composed of some former Ultimates and some pro-nanotech evolutionists—has played its trump card in the child named Aenea. She is, literally, the virus released into the body of humanity.”

CARDINAL LOURDUSAMY STEPPED FORWARD. THE huge man’s face was flushed and serious. His small eyes gleamed. His voice was sharp.

“Tell us, Councillor Albedo, what is the purpose of the child Aenea?”

“Her purpose,” said the man in gray, “is threefold.”

“What is the first purpose?”

“To destroy humanity’s chance at physical immortality.”

“And how can one child do that?” asked Lourdusamy.

“She is not a child, nor even human,” said Albedo. “She is the spawn of a tailored cybrid. The persona of her cybrid father interfaced with her when she was in her mother’s womb. Her mind and body have been interwoven with rogue elements of the Core since before birth.”

“But how can she steal humanity’s gift of immortality?” insisted Lourdusamy.

“Her blood,” said Albedo. “She can spread a virus that destroys the cruciform.”

“A literal virus?”

“Yes. But not a natural one. It was tailored by the rogue elements of the Core. The virus is a form of nanotech pestilence.”

“But there are hundreds of billions of born-again Christians in the Pax,” said Lourdusamy, his tone that of a lawyer leading his witness. “How could one child pose a threat to so many? Does the virus spread from victim to victim?”

Albedo sighed. “As far as we can tell, the virus becomes contagious once the cruciform has died. Those who have been denied resurrection through contact with Aenea will spread the virus to others. Also, those who have never carried a cruciform can be vectors for this virus.”

“Is there any cure? Any immunization?” queried Lourdusamy.

“None,” said Albedo. “The Humanists have attempted for three centuries to create countermeasures. But because the Aenea virus is a form of autonomous nanotech, it designs its own optimum mutation vector. Our defenses can never catch up to it. Perhaps with our own legions of nanotech colonies released within humanity we could someday catch up with the Aenea virus and defeat it, but we Humanists abhor nanotechnology. And the sad fact is that all nanotech life is out of our control—out of anyone’s control. The essence of nanotech life’s evolution is autonomy, self-will, and goals which have nothing to do with those of the harboring life-form.”

“Humanity, you mean,” said Lourdusamy.

“Precisely.”

“Aenea’s first goal,” said Cardinal Lourdusamy, “or to be more precise—the first goal of her Core rogue element creators—is to destroy all cruciforms and thus destroy human resurrection.”

“Yes.”

“You mentioned three goals. What are the other two?”

“The second goal is to destroy the Church and the Pax … that is, all current human civilization,” said Albedo. “When the Aenea virus spreads, when resurrection is denied … with farcasters still not functional and the Gideon drive impractical for single life-span humans … that second goal will be accomplished. Humanity will return to the balkanized tribalism which followed the Fall.”

“And the third goal?” said Lourdusamy.

“The final goal is actually this Core element’s original goal,” said Councillor Albedo. “The destruction of the human species.”

It was CEO Anna Pelli Cognani who shouted. “That’s impossible! Even the destruction … kidnapping … of Old Earth or the Fall of the Farcasters did not wipe out humanity. Our species is too far-flung for such extinction. Too many worlds. Too many cultures.”

Albedo was nodding, but sadly. “That was true. Was. But the Aenea Plague will spread almost everywhere. The cruciform-killing viruses will have mutated to new stages. Human DNA will have been invaded everywhere. With the fall of the Pax, the Ousters will invade again … this time successfully. They have long since succumbed to nanotech mutation. They are no longer human. With no Church or Pax or Pax Fleet to protect humanity, the Ousters will seek out those pockets of surviving human DNA and infect them with the nanotech plague. The human species … as we have known it and as the Church has sought to protect it … will cease to exist within a few standard years.”

“And what will succeed it?” asked Cardinal Lourdusamy in a low rumble.

“No one knows,” said Albedo softly. “Not even Aenea or the Ousters or the rogue elements of the Core who have released this final plague. The nanotech life-form colonies will evolve according to their own agenda, fashioning the human form to their own whims, and only they will be in control of their destiny. But that destiny will no longer be human.”

“My God, my God,” said Kenzo Isozaki, amazed that he was speaking aloud. “What can we do? What can I do?”

Amazingly, it was His Holiness who answered.

“WE HAVE DREADED AND FOUGHT THIS THREATENED plague for three hundred years,” His Holiness said softly, his sad eyes expressing more pain than his own. “Our first effort was to capture the child, Aenea, before she could spread the infection. We knew that she fled her era to ours not out of fear—we wished her no harm—but so that she could spread the virus across the Pax.

“Actually,” amended His Holiness, “we suspect that the child Aenea does not truly know the full effect her contagion will have on humanity. In some ways, she is the unknowing pawn of these rogue elements of the Core.”

It was CEO Hay-Modhino who suddenly spoke with vehemence. “We should have plasma-bombed Hyperion to cinders on the day she was scheduled to emerge from the Time Tombs. Sterilized the entire planet. Taken no chances.”

His Holiness took no umbrage at the unpardonable interruption. “Yes, our son, there are those who urged that. But the Church could no more be the cause of taking so many innocent lives than we could have authorized the death of the single girl. We conferred with the predictive elements of the Core … they saw that a Jesuit named Father Captain de Soya would be instrumental in her final capture … but none of our peaceful attempts to seize the child succeeded. Pax Fleet could have vaporized her ship four years ago, but it was under orders not to unless all else failed. So we continue to strive for containment of her viral invasion. What you must do, M. isozaki—what you must all do—is continue to support the Church’s efforts, even as we intensify those efforts. M. Albedo?”

The gray man spoke again.

“Imagine the coming plague as a forest fire on an oxygen-rich world. It will sweep everything before it unless we can contain it and then extinguish it. Our first effort is to remove the dead wood and brush—the inflammable elements—not necessary to the living forest.”

“The non-Christians,” murmured CEO Pelli Cognani.

“Precisely,” said Councillor Albedo.

“That is why they had to be terminated,” said the Grand Inquisitor. “All those thousands on the Saigon Maru. All those millions. All those billions.”

Pope Urban XVI raised his hand, in a command to silence rather than benediction this time. “Not terminated!” he said sternly. “Not a single life, not Christian, not non-Christian, has been taken.”

The dignitaries looked at one another in confusion.

“This is true,” said Councillor Albedo.

“But they were lifeless …” began the Grand Inquisitor and then stopped abruptly. “My profound apologies, Holy Father,” he said to the Pope.

His Holiness shook his mitered head. “No apology is required, John Domenico. These are emotional topics. Please explain, M. Albedo.”

“Yes, Your Holiness,” said the man in gray. “Those aboard the Saigon Maru were lifeless, Your Excellency, but not dead. The Core … the Humanist elements in the Core … have perfected a method of putting human beings in temporary stasis, neither alive nor dead …”

“Like cryogenic fugue?” said CEO Aron, who had traveled much by Hawking drive before his conversion.

Albedo shook his head. “Much more sophisticated. And less harmful.” He gestured with well-manicured fingers. “During the past seven years, we have processed seven billion human beings. In the next standard decade—or sooner—we must process more than forty-two billion more. There are many worlds in the Outback, and many even within Pax space, where non-Christians are in the majority.”

“Processed?” said CEO Pelli Cognani.

Albedo smiled grimly. “Pax Fleet declares a world quarantined without knowing the real reason for their actions. Core robot ships arrive in orbit and sweep the inhabited sections with our stasis equipment. Cor Unum provides the ships and funding and training. Opus Dei uses freighters to remove the bodies in stasis …”

“Why remove them?” asked the Grand Inquisitor. “Why not leave them on their homeworlds?”

His Holiness answered. “They must be hidden in a place where the Aenea Plague cannot find them, John Domenico. They must be carefully … lovingly … put out of harm’s way until the danger is past.”

The Grand Inquisitor bowed his head in understanding and compliance.

“There is more,” said Councillor Albedo. “My element of the Core has created a … breed of soldier … whose sole job is to find and capture this Aenea before she can spread the deadly contamination. The first one was activated four years ago and was called Rhadamanth Nemes. There are only a few others of these hunter/seekers, but they are equipped to deal with whatever obstacles the rogue elements of the Core throw at them … even the Shrike.”

“The Shrike is controlled by the Ultimates and other rogue elements of the Core?” asked Father Farrell. It was the first time the man had spoken.

“We think so,” answered Cardinal Lourdusamy. “The demon seems to be in league with the Aenea … helping her spread the contagion. In the same way, the Ultimates appear to have found a way to open certain farcaster portals for her. The Devil has found a name … and allies … in our age, I fear.”

Albedo held up one finger. “I should stress that even Nemes and our other hunter/seekers are dangerous … as are any constructs so terribly single-minded. Once the child is captured, these cybrid beings will be terminated. Only the terrible danger posed by the Aenea Plague justifies their existence.”

“Holy Father,” said Kenzo Isozaki, his hands pressed together in prayer, “what else can we do?”

“Pray,” said His Holiness. His dark eyes were wells of pain and responsibility. “Pray and support our Holy Mother Church in her effort to save humankind.”

“The Crusade against the Ousters will continue,” said Cardinal Lourdusamy. “We will hold them at bay as long as we can.”

“To that end,” said Councillor Albedo, “the Core has developed the Gideon drive and is working on new technologies for humanity’s defense.”

“We shall continue our search for the girl … young woman, now, I believe,” added Lourdusamy. “And if she is apprehended, she will be isolated.”

“And if she is not apprehended, Your Excellency?” asked Grand Inquisitor Cardinal Mustafa.

Lourdusamy did not answer.

“We must pray,” said His Holiness. “We must ask for Christ’s help at this time of maximum danger for our Church and our human race. We must each do everything we can and then ask more of ourselves. And we must pray for the souls of all of our brothers and sisters in Christ—even for, especially for, the soul of the child Aenea who unwittingly leads her species into such peril.”

“Amen,” said Monsignor Lucas Oddi.

Then, while all the others in the small chapel knelt and bowed their heads, His Holiness, Pope Urban XVI, stood, moved to the altar, and began to say a Mass of Thanksgiving.