A Printer's Choice

by W. L. Patenaude

  “Both mysteries are new realities for this world. Life in the orbits has been designed to thrive without them—without murder, or any crime, really, or without faith in Jesus Christ. And yet, here we are. We may all be in this chapel for different reasons, but I’m certain that, in our own ways, each of us is wondering about all that has happened these past few weeks. About all that is happening. And I’m also certain that both deaths—Raphael Tanglao’s and Christ’s—are calling us to truths that we may never have expected.

  “Of course, there are vast and important differences between these two calls—these two mysteries. Importantly, one is meant to be solved. The other is not.

  “The first mystery—the mystery of a murder—isn’t intended to remain a matter of shadows and questions—of unknown motives and methods. We’re meant to solve it—to shine the light of truth on it. To gather facts and expose it. And I assure you: in the matter of Raphael Tanglao’s death, we will do just that.

  “But what of the mystery of God coming among us? What of his call? What of the Word of God becoming flesh—of his death and resurrection? These are mysteries that we can never solve. I say this not because God wishes to hide from us—far from it. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever more shall be, God continually reveals himself to us.

  “With God, the word ‘mystery’ doesn’t mean ‘something forever hidden,’ but rather ‘a relationship that grows, and can never stop growing—for this mystery is a relationship with the very source of love, everlasting life, and truth.’

  “Don’t we know that from our own lives—from our own loves, our own friendships? Are not our encounters with each other mysteries? After all, when we allow someone into our lives—as so many have done for me these recent days—we can never stop learning about each other. We can never stop discovering. We can never stop appreciating something new about the other.

  “In a few moments, the mystery of encountering God—of encountering truth—will take a most remarkable form for believers. It will begin with the simplicity of bread and wine—gifts that have been made from the crushing of wheat and grapes, which have been grown here on the farms of New Athens. In other words, made with the noble work of human hands. This bread and wine, this work, will become, through God’s grace, the very presence of Jesus Christ—his body, blood, soul, and divinity. This is the promise that Christ made to us at the Last Supper, it is one he has been fulfilling ever since, and it is a promise he will fulfill to us here, now.

  “And so I will end with a beginning—a promise: at this Mass, Christ will come in a unique way to this world—a world that needs his healing as much as the old one below. He will come to all, and he will come for all, no matter which guild we belong to, or which belief we profess, or if—as I once did—we profess none at all. He will come, he will call, he will heal, and he will shine his light of truth onto all our questions—onto all those mysteries that you and I are faced with every day, both in life and, yes, even in the presence of death.”

  “YOU’RE QUITE THE CELEBRITY,” Okayo said to McClellan after they stepped off the streetcar onto O’Neill Boulevard in the City of Corinthia.

  The Saturday evening crowd stole glances at the man who had helped bring about justice in the matter of that unfortunate death. But the smiles were tempered. A closer look at the hero showed that McClellan had taken advantage of his popularity to wear his black clerical cassock.

  He had wanted his first dinner on New Athens to be with the locals at the Spinside pub, just down the boulevard from his residence in Troas City, but an invitation to the home of the chief engineer was one he neither could, nor wanted to, refuse.

  “I won’t be joining in the meal,” Okayo had explained. “By treaty, security agents do not enter the homes of the engineers. But as a courtesy, Jansen insisted that I nonetheless be given the same dinner in an outer parlor.”

  “How magnanimous,” McClellan said.

  “That alone is unprecedented. I’m sure that I’ll make the news feeds, along with you.”

  The Sun Crane was going dim for the evening, but Corinthia’s own lighting brought a festive array of colors to the coming darkness. The city’s young people were gathered in cheery groups along the stylish O’Neill Boulevard. They were especially merry as they came into and went out of restaurants and bistros, and to and from the cocktail parties held in geometric gardens decorated with waterfalls and Greek-style monolithic columns.

  “Thank you, sir,” a large woman said as she broke from a well-dressed group. She presented herself with erect posture, a magnificent smile, and an outstretched hand that came from somewhere within her loose, fiery red gown. “You’ve made us all happy to know justice is being done. I say again, thank you.”

  She clasped McClellan’s hand and shook it, then closed in and said, “How unfortunate for you that you won’t be able to enjoy a longer visit.”

  Okayo intervened. “We wouldn’t want Father McClellan late for his dinner with Madame Jansen,” she said.

  “Oh, no,” the woman said. “That wouldn’t do.”

  They stepped out of the path of an oncoming streetcar, its bell clanging. A team of young engineering students pushed their heads through the car’s windows to hail McClellan. They shouted something about the timing of an execution.

  “Poor Tucker,” McClellan said, as he watched the departing streetcar. “Don’t these people know that being detained for questioning isn’t the same as being found guilty of murder?”

  Okayo shook her head. “What eats you is in your clothing,” she said. “It’s a saying from back home in Kenya. The troubles we have are often the things and the people that are closest to us. We are our own worst enemies at times.”

  McClellan thought about that as they came to the home of Elaina Jansen. The structure rose to one of the intermediary levels of protective skylights. Its ornate façade of columns and pediments stretched some two hundred meters along the boulevard. Okayo had told him it was the largest private home in New Athens. But then, Jansen was one of the three surviving engineers who had designed and overseen the construction of New Athens, and she was its chief engineer. She was also on the Engineering Council, which oversaw the engineering necessary for peace and prosperity in the orbits.

  An attractive young woman opened the doors. Her blond hair was braided, and she wore a neat blue-and-white pinstriped dress with a crisp white collar. She held up a silver tray with white towels and spoke in French, to which Okayo responded fluently. The young lady blushed.

  “My apologies, Father McClellan,” the woman said in English, but with difficulty. “Welcome to the Jansen home. Your hand towel, sir.”

  “Hand towel?”

  Okayo motioned to the tray. “Engineer etiquette. You’ll need to wipe your hands before you step in and touch anything. It’s their version of ritual.”

  McClellan performed his duty, and smiled as he followed the young woman. He asked her name, and she told him it was Claudette.

  Okayo stepped into a small seating area off the entrance foyer. It was white and grand with a dome of blue-and-green skylighting. “Did you bring any toys to occupy you?” McClellan asked.

  “I did,” she said, holding up an ordinary-looking tablet and waving him down the hallway. “You go, enjoy your conversation. Best not keep your hosts waiting.”

  McClellan turned to wave a farewell, holding up both hands to show her they were clean. He followed Claudette through a wide, simulated marble hallway to join the other guests.

  “John Francis McClellan,” Claudette announced when she reached the small gathering of engineers.

  Elaina Jansen stepped quickly to greet her guest. Dressed in a black gown with a strand of pearls, she walked confidently in shiny black heels. She spoke in French to Claudette, who blushed again and hurried off on some important errand.

  McClellan thanked the young girl with a smile as Jansen shook the priest’s hand and brimmed with delight as she welcomed him in.

  “Come in and meet the
other guests,” Jansen said. “And to drink, Father? What may I get you?”

  McClellan kept up with Jansen to greet the other engineers—two men and two women stood holding cocktails, displaying varying degrees of enthusiasm. The men, one Japanese and one European, wore plain open-collar suits. One of the women, who looked to be the twin of the Japanese man, wore a gray dress and offered no smile. The other woman, who smiled in abundance, wore a festive display of reds and oranges that were all the more brilliant against her brown skin.

  McClellan had taken only a few steps when he saw the dimensions and the appointments of the room. Its ceiling rose some six stories. It was relatively narrow, but it was longer in the circumferential direction of New Athens. One wall was made of windows overlooking multilevel gardens. The others were paneled with fine wood, with the occasional balcony or window looking into the room from upper levels. Two walls had bookcases with what looked like real books—some quite old. The other held fine cabinets for liquor and crystal glassware on either side of a fireplace, which crackled with holographic fire. The fireplace was flanked with two tall white statues, one of Aristotle and the other of Galileo. On the mantel was a ticking clock, and above were paintings of New Athens under construction—the largest reminding McClellan of that final image in the video Zhèng shared, the image of New Athens near completion, its unfinished sidewall resembling a vast stained glass window looking into the core. The paintings, like the bookcases, rose almost to the skylights capping the room.

  Then McClellan looked down. Most of the room’s floor was a section of the transparent hull, which he had seen in the center of the world during his arrival. Because the outer hull in such a rotating cylindrical world is the floor when standing inside, the construction technique offered an unobstructed view below them. The scene at the moment was the southern edge of Earth, which moved away as New Athens rotated about its axis. At one end of the windowed floor nearest the fireplace was a seating area of overstuffed sofas, armchairs, and side tables. McClellan decided that walking on transparent hulls would take some getting used to.

  He captured his bearings and remembered the people around him. “I’m being rude,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”

  Jansen introduced her colleagues.

  The first to shake McClellan’s hand was the woman in the fiery dress. Her name was Hannah Ward, and she was the chief designer for South America’s electric grid upgrades. She was also the oldest person in the room. To her left was Mizuki Sasaki and her brother Yoshiharu. They were young, shared the same rounded faces and black hair, and were principal structural engineers for New World Construction. Last was Andrew Pavić, who had just been promoted to second engineer for data control. Jansen said that it was also his thirtieth birthday, which prompted a smile that scrunched Pavić’s freckled nose and narrowed his already narrow blue eyes.

  Jansen made her way to the glassware. “Well, Father, your drink? Wait, allow me. I have a surprise for you.”

  Jansen hummed as she sought and grasped a bottle that looked unexpectedly familiar. “Grand Traverse Distillery from your home state of Michigan,” she said, reading the bottle. “When the papal secretary and I were discussing your needs, I inquired about only the most important details.” She collected ice cubes with silver tongs and dropped them into a carved crystal rocks glass. “I have several bottles of their straight rye, from before the famines. This is from 2033. I’m sure it will be to your taste.”

  McClellan accepted the drink happily. He sipped and followed his hostess and the other guests to a seating area with stuffed armchairs and sofas and side tables made of wood carved with geometric patterns. On a central glass table, a vase holding white roses was surrounded by platters of various meats and fruits. The elegance of the scene was inviting, save the transparent floor, which still jarred McClellan every time he looked down at it.

  As the group took turns offering each other the most comfortable-looking chairs, the crescent Earth again rolled into view beneath them. McClellan stood a moment to watch as the Atlantic Ocean swept under his feet, its waters enveloped by night and covered with two spiraling storms. Even from the distance of New Athens’s geostationary orbit, he could see clouds flaring with lightning.

  “To Earth,” Andrew Pavić toasted, smiling and holding up his glass of Bordeaux red wine. “And its electrical grids,” added Hannah Ward, raising her glass of gin. The three other engineers took turns offering birthday and welcoming toasts, and then they all sat laughing as the cosmos rolled beneath them.

  “Tell me, Father McClellan,” Hannah Ward said, as she studied the platter of cheese and smoked salmon offered by Claudette, “I imagine you’ll have a busy day tomorrow. Will there be preparations for a trial? I assume there will be one soon.”

  “I am sure the priest first has to attend to the funeral of Father Tanglao,” Andrew Pavić said.

  “And let’s not forget that tomorrow is Sunday,” McClellan said. “The first Sunday of Lent. It’s one of my favorite Gospels. Christ in the desert tempted by Satan.”

  Hannah Ward scowled. “But the important matter is putting this murder behind us.”

  “And getting Red Delta flying,” Mizuki Sasaki said. “This additional delay will severely impact the Progress buildout.”

  “It could also impact my work on Earth,” Ward said. “The matter of a dead body shouldn’t take precedence. We have incinerators for that.”

  McClellan realized that the tray of cheese and salmon was waiting at his side. He smiled at Claudette and declined the offer.

  “One can attend to both the living and the dead,” he said. “If Tucker is charged, then yes, he’ll be held under arrest until a trial. But at this point, Security hasn’t made that decision. And until we know more, Red Delta will remain idle.”

  Mizuki Sasaki shifted in her armchair and looked quizzically at her brother Yoshiharu, who sat slouched, eye-typing on a tablet in one hand and swirling the scotch in his rocks glass with the other. She gave him a look of displeasure, which he did not notice, and turned back to McClellan. “But this man Maximillian Tucker is the murderer, is he not?”

  “My dear Mizuki,” Jansen said, “you are speaking to a soldier and an investigator, but he is also a man of faith. I have read that this faith has a propensity for offering suspects all benefit of the doubt.”

  Sunlight swept up from the floor along one side of the room. Their crystal glasses flickered in stray reflections as McClellan savored more of the Michigan whiskey.

  “Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “But I’m not in charge of what happens next. That’s up to Commissioner Zhèng. And he hasn’t charged Tucker. That can happen only after we formally question him, and that can happen only when he has access to an attorney. And from the sounds of it that won’t be for another week or so. The Builders Guild is supplying Tucker with legal counsel from Earth, so everything is on hold until then.”

  The five engineers expressed five different versions of displeasure.

  “A week?” Pavić said. “Unacceptably inefficient. Really. We’ve printed these people enough transports that they should be able to come up any time they are granted permission. Elaina, can’t we do something to help shorten the wait?”

  “I’ve tried,” Jansen said, “but the builders insist on this lawyer. Unfortunately he’s finishing a case, and won’t leave the planet until that’s completed.”

  “It’s the way of things down there,” Yoshiharu said, still eye-typing and swirling his scotch. “And the way of the builders. Inefficiencies and more inefficiencies. Sentiment and poor choices.”

  His sister nodded, and frowned at McClellan. “This means you will be staying here for some time. Is that right?”

  “I suppose so,” McClellan said. “At least until we’re sure of who killed Father Tanglao. So yes. It could last until Easter.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah Ward said, “and when would that be?”

  “Easter? That’s in six weeks.”


  “That long?”

  McClellan shrugged. “Forty days in the desert.”

  “But certainly Red Delta won’t be idle that long,” Jansen said. “If so, we’d miss yet another orbital transfer window.”

  “Could be,” McClellan said. “Security will be boarding for another sweep sometime in the next few hours. They’ll go about the forensics as quickly as they can—but you’ve printed a big relay, so yes, it could take weeks. And then Zhèng and the Security Council have to assess the evidence and determine if they’re charging anyone.”

  Mizuki Sasaki ran a finger through her black hair. “Here is my other concern about this delay,” she said. “Your chapel was built much bigger and more massive than we had anticipated. Its weight is posing a slight structural imbalance in the Troas district, which of course affects everything, like dominoes. Over the course of many rotations this imbalance will impact hull alignment and perhaps even our orbital positioning. We will have to calculate a fix if the chapel is to remain for more than a month.”

  Jansen looked displeased. “Mizuki, our guest is not interested in the nuances of station structural balance.”

  “If I may, Elaina,” McClellan said. “I was asked to come here, Ms. Sasaki. And to stay as long as necessary. As for the chapel, I didn’t design it—but I’d like to thank whoever did. It should stay as it has been built.”

  Pavić chuckled. “He has a point,” he said to Jansen. “We did invite him. But as for the chapel, we should listen to Mizuki. It’s too heavy. And it’s a little over the top for public access, isn’t it?”

  Jansen hid her displeasure with a sip of her martini. “Let us just say, Andrew, that now that it is built, the chapel makes for a nice gesture.”

  Mizuki Sasaki sighed and turned again to her brother. “Yoshiharu, you and I will need to speak with the operations office in the morning about mass distribution. We’ll need to deal with this imbalance.”