by John Ringo
And worse, I can't even go to our fellows to denounce this abomination. Finba'anaga looked down at the Artificial Sentience hang about his neck and against his chest. If I so much as utter a disloyal syllable this spy-in-a-box will denounce me. And the penalty for that, spacing without possibility of harvesting, is too much to be borne. We're not even allowed to take the blasted things off, either.
This had happened once, when a newcomer kessentai, and not necessarily one of the stupidest, had approached another with the prospect of seizing the ship. Within moments, a party of four of Tulo'stenaloor's closest had descended upon that kessentai, slashed off his limbs, then dragged the corpse to an airlock and shoved it out. Finba'anaga had seen the whole, frightening thing.
In despair, the God-king hung his head.
"More attention to your duties, kessentai," said one of this Tulo'stenaloor's sycophants. Finba'anaga recognized him as the tinkerer, Goloswin.
Bastard eater of other's thresh, thought the junior. Unworthy toymaker. Kessenalt by another name.
Kessenalt were those who, like Binastarion and indeed much of Tulo'stenaloor's key staff, had thrown their sticks and given up their places on the Path of Fury.
Finba'anaga thought these things yet still dared not utter them. The traditional rough equality among the kessentai, at least among those of a certain rank, did not carry over here. The tyrant would have his way; tradition and law be damned.
Golo tapped Finba'anaga across his nose with his stick, hard; hard enough to hurt. "If we're to get out of here, we need the repair work done with precision. Here"—and Goloswin pointed at one edge of the repair plate—"you have spread the nanopaste unevenly, badly, unworthily. Fix it. Do not fail again."
"No, Lord. I'm sorry, Lord." Abat shit.
After the Tinkerer had left, another new kessentai came up to Finba and offered his hand. "I'm Borasmena," the newcomer said. His head inclined toward Goloswin's departing hindquarters. "He's a right bastard isn't he?"
Finba paled. His yellow eyes grew wide and one claw pointed frantically at the AS on his chest.
"Relax, friend," said Borasmena. "Yes, the things can get you chopped if you talk mutiny. But simply calling a thing by its name; a bastard, a bastard? No problem."
"How do you know?" Finba'anaga asked, dubiously.
"Because I had personally referred to Tulo, and Golo, and Binastarion, and the rest as 'feces-eating, ovipositor-licking, addled-egg refugees from the nestling grinder-and-encaser,' before that one kessentai talked mutiny, and no one ever said a word to me about it."
Which caused Finba to have a thoughts. Either this Borasmena is very brave . . . or somewhat stupid.
"Nice jacket you're wearing, Indowy," Argzal said to Aelool. The Indowy almost suspected the two headed alien was smiling.
The Indowy looked down at his tunic, a sort of multicolored Nehru jacket, all dots and lines and oddly shaped splotches. "This old thing? Nothing."
"Oh, really," the Himmit said. "Funny; Indowy wear plain old grey or blue or green or black. I've seen a lot of your people and I've never seen a one of them wear anything remotely like that monstrosity."
"So you're a fashion critic now, are you, Himmit?"
"I don't need to be a fashion critic to know that that's a very non-Indowy article of clothing."
Yes, Aelool thought, there is a definite tone of amusement to this one's voice. What does he know that I do not?
Aelool sighed and asked, "Do you remember that human cruiser that intercepted us as we left Earth?"
"Sure."
"Well . . . do you recall also the diagram I showed its computer?"
"I do."
"Think of this jacket as being something like that diagram."
The Himmit asked, still with that half-amused tone, "You're going to have the Posleen recover orders from their computer?"
"Not exactly," Aelool answered.
Before he could say any more, and before the Himmit could ask, the speaker on the bridge announced, "Posleen shuttlecraft approaching. Arrival is imminent."
"And on that note," Aelool said, "I'll be back after I've said our goodbyes to the People of Tulo'stenaloor."
The Indowy walked off the bridge whistling a human tune. Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home . . .
Unseen, Argzal smiled at the departing Aelool's back.
The ship was essentially silent for a change. Repairs were complete. Most of the People—over a thousand kessentai, three times that in cosslain, and about as many normals with unusual skill sets—were already put under in the hibernation decks.
On the bridge were Aelool, Tulo, and the group Aelool thought of as Tulo'stenaloor's "apostles." The Indowy walked around the bridge in no pattern discernable to the Posleen, even had they tried to discern one.
Must give the bridge cameras every possible chance to see my jacket, the Indowy mentally smirked.
"I think you are ready, Tulo," the Indowy said. "Or as ready as you're going to be. Besides, Argzal and I need to get back. Have you decided on a destination?"
"Indowy, you are beholden to the humans and as such could not be trusted with our destination . . . at least until we can trust the humans not to exterminate us on sight. That said, since I don't know what it is yet, I'll just tell you that our destination is not a place. Instead, I intend for us to seek knowledge. I seek to discover what went wrong with my People, and why."
"In this quest, Tulo, Lord of Clan Sten, I wish you well," the Indowy replied. "And now, if you can delegate someone to escort me so that none of the maintenance crew decide I look good enough to eat . . . ?"
"It shall be done . . . friend. Brasingala?"
"Lord?"
"Escort this one in safety to the Himmit ship."
"It shall be done, Lord."
The ship—renamed now the Arganaza'al, or the Holy Rescuer, in High Posleen, Run For Your Lives, in Low—thrummed again with life, as matter and anti-matter destroyed themselves deep below to bring it power. The view on the bridge changed, too, as the ship began to cruise a safe distance from the local world for a jump.
Essthree, serving as the defensive officer for the nonce, announced, "Better jump fast. They've spotted us below and have dispatched a trio of cruisers to intercept."
"Make it so," ordered Tulo'stenaloor. Almost immediately the thrumming from below picked up, even as the stars in the view screen began to distort.
Along with Tulo and the Esstwo also stood on the bridge the still awakened kessentai, in total "Tulo's dozen," each with its arms and head raised.
The Remember began the chant, or perhaps it was a song. Certainly it was called a song, the Song of Leave-taking.
"Time now, and past time.
The others joined in:
"The People in flight
Seek a new life
Far, far from the last orna'adar
Through the vast ocean of stars . . ."
"It's an odd thing, Binastarion," that kessentai's AS said.
"What's odd, O bucket of bolts?"
"Before my resurrection I doubt I would have thought of it; but it seems my program did not transfer perfectly. Some things I should remember I seem to have forgotten. Other things, once forgotten, I remember.
"In any case, the People do not make new music. Ever. And yet that is a song of the People, and of the People's flight and plight, in the People's language. Oh, yes, the words are old. Some are obsolete. Yet it is the language of the People of the Ships. And there are other songs, also all old, old. Who wrote it, do you suppose? Who wrote those others. And why? And why, having created music, did the People lose it . . . abandon creating it? Or, on the other claw, why was it taken from them?"
Binastarion didn't know. He shrugged his one arm and kept to the song with the others:
"Farewell, to our world.
With hearts weighted down,
Fleeing again . . ."
Chapter Eight
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power
is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
—Matthew 28:18–20, King James Version
Anno Domini 2020
Ostia, Italy
It had taken more strings being pulled than the Pope had ever let on. For one thing, the United State Navy still had an interest in Salem, the ship. Since Sally, unlike Daisy, had never been sunk and presumed lost, the Navy had only turned over to Boyd a degree of control, which control was limited by the ship's being subject to recall.
For his part, Boyd had signed off on turning his interest over to the Vatican, no problem. The Pope had had to hint at excommunication to the Chief of Naval Operations to get him to agree to the detachment and conversion. Then the church had had to go into hock to buy a moderately high level nanochit to get the permissions to create the requisite number of nanites for the conversion. And then there'd been the very involved process of cutting a deal with the Indowy to use, perhaps better said, "exhaust," a fairly large number of Sohon masters. If it hadn't been for some substantial support from the Himmit, the whole thing might have proven impossible.
After conversion, Sally's ship body floated in the Lago di Traiano. She didn't look much like a heavy cruiser anymore. And she was just as unhappy about it as she'd expected to be.
The process of change hadn't been as painful as she had expected it to be, at least. Physically, it had not been painful at all. Yet when the Indowy Sohon masters had moved her to space and thought at her, when she'd seen and felt her beautiful turrets disappear into her hull, that hull grow fat as her rakish prow shrank to nothing, her superstructure melt away, the warship in a woman's body had wept bitterly. Even the addition of a fixed centerline KE cannon and missile tubes hadn't mollified her.
"So I have a gun," she'd shrieked. "So what? I'm a fat freak with no turrets and a gun. And it's not even in the right place!" Then she'd retired to the cabin she shared with Dwyer, dogged the hatch, disconnected the power override, and wept hysterically for days.
The Jesuit had been unable to console her. And at some level he'd understood. How would I like to wake up with a featureless face, and not even a good bender to account for it?
And I could use a good bender now, the priest thought, as he listened to half a thousand religious scholars squabbling about everything from doctrine to dogma, preordination to prejudice, and killing to karma.
There were priests and ministers, rabbis and imams. The Buddhists had their representatives, as did the Shintoists, the Confucians (only arguably a religion, Confucianism), the Hindu, the Taoists, the Zoroastrians and the Yezidis; all were there. There were Christian Animists from Africa and Vudun followers from Haiti. Kirpan-carrying, bearded, and turbaned Sikhs were in the company, as were violence-abjuring Jain.
At least the Sikhs and Jain aren't desperately eager to kill each other, Dwyer thought. I wish the same could be said for Sunni and Shiites, let alone any Moslems and the Baha'i. And both Sally and I could live without the hair-splitting, holier-than-thou Hasidim.
I need a drink. I also need to have a long, long talk with Boyd, Joe and the Father General. Dwyer mentally sighed. But I'll do without the former if I can just have the latter.
Sally could handle setting up the conference call with the three of them—shipping magnate, Pope and the Father-General of the Jesuit order—without leaving her quarters. Dwyer simply went to the ship, asked for the call to be set up aloud, and waited until Sally said all was in readiness. The big hold up, time-wise, had been Boyd, simply because he had taken off on his small boat for a day's restful fishing.
"Make it quick," Boyd said. "They're biting and my friend and I want to get back to sea."
I've got the Pope, the Black Pope, and you, all in one room, to discuss something of terrible complexity, and you think I can make it quick? That's absurd.
"Well," he said, even so, "I'll try."
Trying to ignore Boyd's impatient glare, Dwyer began, "Holy Father, Father General, Dictator, let me, with your permission, restate what I think my mission is. I, and my wife, Sally, taking in company sundry religious missionaries, are to seek out whatever remnants of the Posleen we may be able to find, and, having found them, persuade them to one or another of the various human faiths. We are going as religious missionaries because there is a fair chance that persuading the Posleen must be a two step process, the first step being to convert them to beings we can deal with, on both a practical and a moral plain, and religion being likely to be an effective way to do this."
"Long winded," the Father General said, "and somewhat redundant, but accurate."
"Not a chance, then," Dwyer said, resignedly, shoulders slumping. "Simply none. If I go with the full company of religious 'scholars' you have inflicted upon me, I can perhaps set the Posleen to a religious civil war, but that will make it most unlikely that they'll then be of any use to us for about five hundred years or, if Moslem-Christian relations are any guide, three or four times that and without any resolution even then.
"And then there's the other problem," Dwyer continued. "We are trying to convince the Posleen of something that requires faith far more than reason. How can we do that if we are at the same time giving them several versions of faith, few of which are compatible and none of which are particularly susceptible to reason, to decide among them?
"Lastly, I'm a Catholic priest. My business is saving souls. You simply can't ask me to be a part of something that, rather than saving souls, condemns them. Sure, I can accept—with reservations—that other Abrahamic denominations can save souls, too. But Voodoo? Confucianism? Shinto? I can possibly admire the faith of their adherents without for a minute believing that there's a shred of legitimacy behind that faith. And I cannot be a part of spreading false faith. Arguable faith? Maybe. False faith? No."
"He's right, of course," the Pope said. "And yet it seems to me that he's also wrong."
"How's that, Your Holiness?" the Father-General asked.
"Well . . . we simply don't know which of Earth's religions has even a chance of suiting the Posleen," the Pope answered. "Moreover, they didn't, so far as we know, suffer anything like the Fall of Adam. How then can we assume original sin or the need for baptism? The Moslems would grant them five wives. How do we explain to a Posleen God-king that he has to dump the three hundred and ninety-four normals and five cosslain that make up the rest of his harem? How does a Catholic say that a Posleen can only have one mate, or four under the new—temporary—rules, when their breeding pattern is such as to almost guarantee that one or four mates would be insufficient to breed even a single sentient soul?
The Pope mused, "We need someone with considerable insight into the deeper nature of the Posleen and their suitability for religion."
Boyd's head turned to face someone off view, presumably his fishing partner. "Guano," The ex-dictator asked, "you up for a trip?"
Turning back to the others, Boyd asked, "Where are you people, anyway?" he asked.
"Ostia," Dwyer answered.
"Tell you what; let us finish up our fishing today. Tomorrow I'll fly him over to you. I don't know about you, but I've never gotten used to this kind of teleconferencing. And Guano doesn't have an AID."
The Holy Father, who shared two things with Boyd, Catholicism and the fact that they were both in the armed forces in World War Two (albeit on different sides), agreed immediately. So, too, did the Father-General. Dwyer, too, thought that face to face would be a better way to interact.
"Any chance you'll want to keep him?" Boyd asked, adding, "Yes, I know about your mission. Guano's an ordained minister . . . what's that? . . . Oh. Correction: He's been ordained by two different churches. And he has a family. If you're going to need to keep him, I'm going to need to send his wife and son to Ostia, to
o."
Sally's avatar, unseen since her transformation, popped up and said, "With all due respect to our guests, no fucking way."
Somehow I just knew she was going to be difficult about this, Dwyer thought.
On the plus side, Dwyer thought, later, when he was finally readmitted to the cabin he shared with Sally, at least since she has something to fight about she's forgotten about the body change to the ship.
