Then he sat down in the room's only chair to think. Once again, he wondered if any other examples of this artifact still functioned, somewhere on the Earth. It was a pity the Ancients had never understood this technology well enough to write manuals. From the stories he had heard, you could in theory link any of the mirrors with any other. He could be looking out of a mirror in China, or Germany, or Italy. Even in the original Vatican, maybe!
But no, the pair that had come into the Church's possession decades ago were linked to each other. They made for a secure communications link...and an emergency escape hatch.
They could probably be so much more if he could find someone to understand the alien tech. But the only person he knew who even had a chance was Xander, Kristana's pet wizard in Denver.
Upon seeing the mirror-portal in action, Xander would, in all likelihood
[a] recognize it as a Gift from the Tourists, then either
[b] not be able to learn how to control it, in which case he would be no help at all, or else
[c] learn how to control it, in which case he might very well unravel the secret of how to make them as well.
So if he involved the wizard, it would either not help at all, or help the wizard enormously – which was too high a price for the Church to pay. A Rado agent could smuggle small mirrors all over Dallas and Kristana would be literally watch Texas.
Ah, the price of loyalty to one's government! Enrique could do the same to both Rado and Dallas, of course...if he got his Reconditorium Prohibitum monks to learn the spell.
It was probably wiser to leave things as they were.
He remembered his astonishment when, after he had become the new Pope, brother Marcus had come to him and revealed the secret portal. The stab of guilt: here we are condemning the alien artifacts while using them ourselves! But it had only been a short step from rationalizing the use of the swizzle gun to include this also, in the compromises he was willing to make for God.
Chapter 32
Rainsong: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
“When you wait for tomorrow it never comes. When you don't wait for it tomorrow still comes.”
– Guinean Proverb
She was near the end of her cycle when she finally saw Carver again. She knew that out here, among the stars, with the Ship racing against light, her life span was stretched hugely by the relativistic time dilation. Still it was never enough. Why do we have to do this, wear out in less than a hundred orbits of Homeworld? But Homeworld was lost behind them in the vastness of the sparkly black.. Her instructors had tried to avoid her questions, but the conclusion seemed inescapable: we will never go home.
At times like this she tried to remind herself of the importance of the Mission. The Meddlers must be stopped! But it seemed so far away, as she lay here on an Aratus branch remembering her life. If it weren't for the Meddlers, she would have had an ordinary life. But she had to volunteer, and rather than enjoying her family and the gardens and forests of Homeworld, her life had been spent in this little world of the Ship, pursuing ghosts from the past they might never find.
Her limbs ached. Even with the tissue regenerators and the freedom from life-shortening diseases, the self-renewing ability of her body had its own limits. She supposed she out to be thankful for the regenerators. Without them, her cycle would have been much shorter.
But it was still never enough. A crunchie hummed by and she flicked her tongue out at and missed. She never used to miss.
Her eyes closed. It was getting harder to think. Not even the physicians of her kind had mapped all the myriad molecules that sang the chorus of her body. The regenerator could stimulate the processes of healing and so on, but the basic ingredients had to be there.
Idly she wondered if someday they would catalog all of the chemistry needed to make life unending. In theory it was possible. But it was hard to hold onto the thought and she let it go, as she had many other thoughts.
The branched jolted and vibrated, as if another body had landed on it. She opened her eyes in mild curiosity and there he was.
Carver seemed younger than she remembered. Then she remembered that he had been older than her. He must have cycled already. “You look well.”
“You don't. You must be getting close to your cycle. When was your last upload?"
She tried to think and care about that. “I think it was about ten thousand spins ago, maybe twenty.”
He whistled in alarm. “You need to do another upload right now. The closer you get to the end, the more important your thoughts and conclusions will be. Don't you know that?”
She just looked at him and tried to care. “What difference will it make? I'm tired, Carver. Leave me alone.”
In a move that surprised her, he seized her and carried her back to the main trunk. “Listen!” he said. “Just listen.”
She closed her eyes again and obeyed to shut him up.
The sounds began immediately. Pyong-yong. A double echo. Then another: pyongyongyomng. A triple?
“Did you hear that?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “I remember you telling me that is means we are slowing down.”
“More than that. We've reversed the thrustfield! I guess you didn't feel the change in acceleration. It was pretty subtle. But don't the impacts sound more distant?”
Pyong-yong-yong They did sound more distant. But what of it? She was nearing the end of her cycle. This body would not live to see if they'd found the Meddlers.
“That's because we're pulling in matter from the other end of the Ship now. We must be deep into the Oort cloud. Things are going to get pretty exciting soon!”
“Oh?” The enthusiasm of the young. She wished he would just shut up and let her doze. “So what?"
“So you'll be seeing the inner system in your next body.”
“Someone will, but not me,”
He eyed her. “Don't talk like that. We could be about to complete the Mission! Aren't you excited about that?”
She opened her eyes again. “I suppose I should be. But I'm not myself, and neither are you. We're both just echoes of the memories of two young volunteers who climbed about a shuttle thousands of orbits ago. We're ghosts seeking ghosts.”
“You're not a ghost. There are no such things as ghosts. You're just saying that because your body is old and tired and sinking into depression.”
She did the head wiggle that meant no. “Carver, there's more to life than memories. We should have let the Meddlers go. We all could have had more meaningful lives back on the Homeworld, instead of zooming through the void in a spinning cylinder bent on revenge.”
His tongue flicked out and back in. “Not revenge. We're just going to stop them from crashing civilizations.”
“And how do you suppose we're going to do that? I still remember what Captain said. 'Argue forcefully.' Do you realize what that means? Have you spent any time thinking about it? Because I have.”
“Whatever they are,” he said, “the Meddlers must have logic. You can't have science without it. When we tell them what their Gifts have been doing to cultures like ours, they'll see the logic in stopping.”
She just stared at him. “Do you really think that's what she meant? Wake up, Carver. If they don't agree to stop, we're going to attack them. We're going to try to kill beings we've never met.”
He was silent for a moment. “Our cause is just. If we do nothing, they'll just go on ruining civilizations. And it'll be our fault – because we didn't stop them.”
Rainsong grunted, too tired to laugh. “Now you're the one speaking like a priest. The universe is a big place. Civilizations die all the time, from asteroid impacts, nuclear wars, and so on. In the grand scheme of things, the Meddlers are just another force of nature.”
“Yes,” he said, “the force that brought us a thousand orbits of barbarism. You can't have forgotten that. It's a required inclusion in the memories.”
“Unless they have solved the problem of immortality,” she told him
, “the beings we are pursuing aren't the ones that did that, just their descendants.”
“Makes no difference, if they're following in their ancestor's footsteps. They'll wreck more worlds like they did ours, if they're not stopped.”
She closed her eyes. “Have you never considered that maybe they helped us?”
He blinked and his tongue snapped out to nail a crunchie and haul it into his mouth. After he chewed and swallowed, he answered. “Sure. They helped us into a Dark age. Some help!”
She exhaled. “Yes, the Gifts caused a dark age. But we survived it and we are stronger than before – now we have the same technology as them. Could anything else have survived this journey? But they didn't attack us, Carver. And now we'll be getting ready to destroy them, if they don't change their ways and do what we want.”
He regarded her. “If you're sure you're right about that,” he said, “then we need to get you to a memsphere immediately.”
“Why?"
“So you can remember what you believe.” He grabbed her again and toted her down the trunk. Rainsong sighed, what difference did it make what she remembered? But she did not resist and allowed him to carry her to the nearest upload chamber.
Chapter 33
Esteban: The Message
“Who is like a wise man? And who knows the interpretation of a thing?”
– Ecclesiastes 8:1
Sitting there on his bed, he tried to read his Bible by the growing light of a new day, but he knew he was just avoiding the letter.
When Lester passed it to him last night he had shown no suspicion, congratulating Esteban on having someone back home who cared to write to him.
“Don't your parents write to you?”
Something had come over Lester's eyes when Esteban asked him that. “No,” he said. “My father died long ago. My mom's just struggling to get by. I'm sure she'll write when there's time, if she has anything she needs to tell me.”
Now he set the Bible down and contemplated the rectangle of paper. In the old days, he knew, the Ancients used to use paper letters, before the machines and global communications networks had rendered all prior methods obsolete. They had even had something called an envelope whose sole purpose was to be the container for a message.
Well, the old ways were not obsolete any more. But no one bothered to make envelopes any more. The letter was both container and message, folded up and sealed with wax to keep its secrets, if secrets they were. The paper was triple thickness, because people used these letters over and over again, erasing prior words and inscribing new ones.
He hadn't had the nerve to open it yet.
With the discoveries they had been making at the School lately, he'd almost forgotten that he wasn't here by accident, but by design. And now the letter had come to remind him that he had been sent, against his will, to infiltrate the people he had come to regard as his friends.
He thought about talking to Father Andrews about it, but no, it would only add another burden on the back of the old priest. This was his own cross to bear. The time was coming when he would have to either betray either his friends or his Church. How could he do either? How could anyone ask him to?
He reached for the letter, but could not make himself pick it up. I will not be a tool for others, he thought, remembering Kaleb. Lobsang, rather. But what had His Holiness said about the school, if it survived its growing pains? “In that case, Brother Esteban, We shall have to take...other steps.”
That sentence haunted him now. The letter on the table might be the start of those “other steps.” But if he didn't open it, if he didn't respond, then he felt certain the Pope would activate some other plan, one he would know nothing about.
Which would be worse? Knowing his Pope expected him to betray his new friends? Or knowing someone else would act, and not knowing who they were...or how to stop them?
He should talk to Xander. Surely the Founder would know how to handle this. But the old wizard had become more reclusive of late. Esteban wasn't sure, but he had a growing fear that this change in the old man had something to do with the coughing. Everyone whispered about it.
How would they go on if anything happened to Xander?No. He could not think about that now.
The letter sat there mocking his efforts to ignore it. It was not going to go away.
He growled in despair and picked it up, turning it over in his hands. The flaps were sealed against the back. It didn't appear that anyone had opened it before him. Of course not. As far as Lester and whoever passed it up the stairs to him knew, it was just news from his family. But it wouldn't go away. Maybe he could just dispose of it. Pretend he never received it. But he knew better than that. For a letter to come this far, whoever delivered it would naturally have asked for a receipt. They knew he had it, or would when the courier returned to Dallas.
Esteban closed his eyes. If you're listening, he thought, then guide me. Help me find the strength to do the right thing.
No answer came, of course. He knew better to expect one, but still, what was the harm in trying? He sighed and softened the wax seal with a touch of tonespace. You sent me to become a wizard, and now I am one. Does that make me the Church's enemy?
He pulled back the flaps and unfolded the letter. Then he swallowed. It was worse than he thought. Instead of sentences and paragraphs, the message consisted of a huge square of letters. He counted the rows. There were 64 of them. Which meant there were 64 columns too.
During his time at the Reconditorium Prohibitum brother Esteban had been introduced to some of the codes the Order used to keep its communications secure. They generally followed the same outer form, in that the first stage was always a square grid of letters.
The size of the square was correlated with one thing: the identity of the sender. Thirty-two rows and columns would mean it was from the head of a Chapterhouse.
Sixty-four rows meant it came from the Pope himself.
Chapter 34
Carver: Temporary Farewell
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
– Benjamin Franklin
It was a good thing his young body was strong. Rainsong was heavier than he had expected. It would have been a little harder carrying her forward if the Ship were still accelerating forward, but the thrustfield was now reversed.
The Ship really couldn't suck particles of dust and gas into its aft opening because it was, in effect, retreating at nearly lightspeed from the matter it was trying to inhale. Fortunately, as the Ship flew forward, matter entering the front end could be pushed on by the thrustfield. In other words matter still entered the front and went out the back, except it left a little slower than it came in, and with higher density.
As time went by this would ease in a nonlinear way: as the Ship slowed, the aft intake efficiency would increase.
“Just drop me anywhere,” she muttered.
“Shut up,” he said cheerfully. “And you're welcome.”
The upload/download chambers had been placed forward, so that both the general crew and the isolated Nav Section in the bow of the Ship could both reach them. Carver lugged her into the nearest blue door and laid her down on the deck in front of one of the waiting technicians, who eyed him curiously. “She needs to do an upload,” he said. “But she's feeling the effects of senility depression so I brought her to make sure she follows through..”
The technician cocked her head at him. “This late in the lifespan, the accumulated damage tends to muddy the transmission,” she said. “Are you sure she needs to do this? From the look of her, she'll be dead soon anyway.”
“Yes,” said Rainsong. “I'll be dead anyway. So it doesn't matter. We're sorry to have bothered you.”
Carver put his front graspers on either side of her face and stared into her eyes. “Do you still believe what you told me a few spins ago?”
“About the Mission? Yes.”
“Then you have to do this. Don't you see? If you don't, you have to retrace all your tho
ughts again, and there's no guarantee you'll do that. You have to remember.”
She tried to pull his graspers off her face but she was too weak to lift her own arms. “But you disagreed with me. You think we'll just negotiate and that will settle it. So why is this important to you?”
“Because I could be wrong,” he said, as the technician laid her in a sling bed and slipped a fresh memsphere into the sewn-in pocket near Rainsong's head. “And because of something I know that you don't know.”
“And what's that?” she said, as her eyes closed again.
“I'm not supposed to know this,” he said. “But I trade favors, and someone owed me one, so I collected. And it was worth it, believe me. You have to remember!”
“What could you possible know that would make a difference?”
“Your next body will be assigned to Nav Section.”
Chapter 35
Lobsang: Night Vision
“Good traveling does not leave tracks”
– The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tse
He held the wheel with one hand and rubbed his eyes with the other. The sun was not quite over the horizon yet but he had enough light to drive.
If only he could come up with a way to see at night. He'd tried the first night. A single candle on the dashboard, however, did not do enough. He'd brought several, of course, but the idea of a half-dozen candles wax-stuck to the top of the dashboard while he rolled on, hoping a jolt or a jostle didn't knock one of them into his lap had seemed less desirable than stopping for the night.
Now, however, he thought about it again. The problem with the candle wasn't all due to its inadequate light emission. The problem was it emitted its light in all directions, which was fine for things near the candle but lousy for distant objects.
Tonespace: The Space of Energy (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 3) Page 13
