by Tony Daniel
“You’ll pardon me, sir,” said Monitor, “but that’s bullshit.”
“I’m aware of that, Major Monitor.”
“Just so you’re aware, sir,” said Monitor. “Sometimes your new steel-eyed gaze and square-jawed visage disconcert me.”
“Fuck that shit, Major Monitor.”
A red beacon materialized in the air of the command room, blinked twice, then disappeared.
“More nails have gotten through,” Monitor said. “The Mercius made the drop.”
Theory looked at the reports from mines and surveillance drones. The incoming nail cloud was thicker than the last. But it was aimed wrong. It wasn’t going to strike New Miranda full on. Somebody had made a targeting error.
Unless.
“That cloud of nails, Major…it’s three-dimensional, isn’t it? What is its presentation?” said Theory.
Monitor answered immediately. “Roughly icosahedron.”
“It’s concealing a paratroop drop,” Theory said. “Put ground forces on high alert. Inform Captain Residence that he now has full operational command of the eastern bunkers.”
“Yes, sir.”
So there would be a ground fight. He hoped he could keep the invaders on the outskirts of the city. If the fighting moved building to building, there were bound to be enormous civilian casualties.
“Sir, Cloudship Cervantes reports the remainder of the Aztec Sacrifice battle group has moved inside Nereid’s orbit. They are projected in standard triad radials.”
“Tell Cervantes to rejoin McCarthy and Homer at full speed,” said Theory. “It’s time to make our stand.”
Monitor conveyed the orders.
They’d done well, but they hadn’t scared off the Met forces. Nobody was going to run away, and nobody was going to back down.
It was going to be a hell of a fight.
He’d done everything he could to avoid it, but now it had come. This was what he was trained for. Maybe he was the right man in the right place at the right time after all. Maybe not.
He would soon find out.
Twenty-eight
NEPTUNE SYSTEM
E-STANDARD MID-APRIL, 3017
THE TRITON HOME FRONT
The only good thing about living in the catacombs of the Greentree Way meeting hall on Triton, thought Father Andre Sud, was spending time in the verdant garden where he had done some of his best rock balancing. Throughout his sabbatical before, then through all the crises over the past years when other matters might have claimed their attention, his parishioners had kept the garden tended, kept it ready for their rock-balancing priest’s return.
They had a lot more faith in me than I did, Andre thought. It was faith that had not, apparently, been misplaced.
But the garden was a mess. The foliage was getting trampled, and the central meadow was turned to mud. That couldn’t be helped. The garden was located deep underground, with a slow-fusion plant providing heat and light between the garden and the surface. Over this complex was the Greentree meeting hall on the surface—a meeting hall that, because of its low profile, was less of a target for DIED ordnance. Not that the nail rains particularly cared where they fell, but smart weapons, at least, might well choose a more prominent target. And so the garden had become the best choice for a neighborhood bomb shelter. Andre had not done a count, but there must be a thousand or more people jammed into the space. Even more free converts had stored backup copies in the rich grist under the garden’s topsoil. If the garden and meeting hall took a direct hit, the loss of life would be enormous.
The siege of Triton was entering its third e-week. People were coming to Andre for advice, for comfort, with questions about the ultimate meaning of life. All the typical things you might ask a shaman-priest when your world had been turned upside down.
And he found that his doubts—his inward doubts about God’s existence, about the possibility of even a sophisticated notion of the moral good—those doubts had become irrelevant. It was the strangest thing. He still had the doubts. He still felt like a wavering reed inside. Yet when confronted with a frightened young man or a despairing older woman, he found the fortitude within him to give them what they needed. He even found that admitting his own doubts and fears proved no obstacle to his work as a shaman-priest.
He simply did his job.
People wanted to be comforted and reassured. Above all, they wanted to be able to tell somebody how they felt without fear of social humiliation or appearing to be weak. They used him as they would use a highway to get from one place to another. So long as he listened and attempted to answer their questions, however inadequate intellectually his answers were, the people went away spiritually satisfied. And this satisfaction did not appear hollow or misplaced. It wasn’t an intellectual matter at all.
As for himself, and to his immense relief, Andre found his own consolation in the person of Molly Index. They had been friends for many years, and lovers at the beginning of their relationship. Now they were again, here at the end.
At what might be the end.
Here, with the bombs raining down and the local virtuality isolated by the DIED jamming device, they had finally found the love that that had eluded them for decades. Andre had even “moved in” with Molly—if you could call sleeping in the next bunk over in a fallout shelter living together as a couple.
In Andre’s mind, it was. When this was over— if it was ever over—the thought of going back to living alone without Molly was impossible. The only problem was, he wasn’t sure if Molly felt the same way. Since their seminary days together, Molly had changed in many ways—she hadn’t just become a different person, she’d become a different type of person, a LAP. Even though she’d been shut down to a single individual instantiation at the onset of the war, in her heart she would always be an array of many copies of herself, leading many different lives. All of those “others” were gone for the moment, and maybe forever.
Molly had the possibility of reexpanding herself here on Triton, but she hadn’t taken it. She had been a LAP of the Met, an artist whose awareness had once spread around the sun. Even though she didn’t put it in those terms, Andre knew that until Molly could reclaim the glory of her former existence, she would not settle for half measures. She would remain a mere mortal.
This resolution only made him fall in love with her more.
Andre was a far different person than he had been as well. And like Molly, he was different physically as well as mentally. He’d died on the Moon that day long ago—then been reinstantiated in this, his current body. He inhabited a replica of his destroyed body, a clone. That day was twenty-five years ago. He’d now lived longer in his cloned body than he ever had in the original.
Molly was herself busy with the administration of the shelter. There were not many LAPs on Triton, former or otherwise, and the locals tended to look to them for leadership, whether social or political.
Andre had always thought this ludicrous. Two, three, or fifty heads were not better than one when all of those heads were filled with the same dull thought. But there was a definite caste system, and Molly—an outsider, only resident on Triton for the past two e-years—had found herself appointed to the triumvirate of other LAPs who oversaw the workings of the shelter. With a thousand people crammed into a space that was meant to accommodate, at a pinch, no more than three hundred, the leadership had their work cut out for them.
After a week, Andre and Molly decided to make specific appointments with each other. It was the only way they could steal a little time together. Strange as it might seem, they were always within three hundred yards of one another, but often didn’t see each other for hours on end.
They usually met in the rock clearing, Andre’s special area for creating his balanced-rock sculptures. Everyone else respectfully cleared away and gave them a good twenty-foot radius of privacy. Andre did his best to forget about the press of bodies around him. Going back to his old task of rock balancing helped. It also helped that Molly
loved to watch him at the task. She considered his rock sculptures an art form. For Andre, balancing rocks was an end in itself. You found a rock-shaped crack in nothingness, in empty air, and filled it with something. Why? Because the crack was there. Because the rocks were lying about. Because you were there.
Finding a place to make love was a more difficult proposition, but they had managed to do that, too, on a couple of occasions. It helped that Andre knew the garden intimately—and he knew exactly how many bodies might fit into the storage areas where he kept the gardening tools: two, standing up. It was another kind of balancing, less spiritual and artistic, perhaps, but just as pleasant.
After their second time there, the two of them sat outside—on a rock, of course. Even though it was large, in Triton’s light gravity, Andre was able to move it about as if it were a park bench of medium weight on Earth. As with every other rock in the garden, Andre knew the provenance of this one. He’d brought it down from the monastery. It had been used by Father Capability, the monk who had taught him the art in the first place (and in the process saved him from another bout of despair). Andre knew he owed the man his life. He certainly owed his calling as a rock balancer, priest, and gardener to Father Capability.
The ground rumbled. Flecks of ceiling rained down, as they had continually for days. Outside, the bombardment continued.
“Feels stronger up there,” Molly said. “Either the fighting is closer to us, or they’ve stepped up the nail drops.” She was sipping a cup of water that Andre had drawn from a spigot on the wall beside the storage closet. The cup itself was an unused starter pot for seedlings. He’d plugged up the drain hole on the bottom with a bit of cork. It was a far cry from the grist-created wineglass he’d sipped from at Molly’s artist loft back in the Diaphany.
But that time and place was a hundred million miles and half a decade away.
“We can check the merci,” Andre answered. “Local 9 is getting a lot better at their war coverage now that the blocking has made them the only game in town.”
Molly shook her head. “We’ll know soon enough,” she said. “Let’s stay away from the news a little longer.” She took a sip from the cup, then passed it to Andre, who also took a swallow. Right then, this pure water was better than the finest Dedo burgundy.
“How are your plans for the show coming?”
“Everyone is pitching in,” Molly replied. “It’s going to be…interesting, to say the least. There’s a play.”
“I heard,” said Andre. “One of my parishioners, John Substrate, is playing Alcibiades Morgan.”
“I thought a Mueller farce would be the best thing we could do. And Kwan wanted to direct that one, anyway. So we decided on Can the Chatter, Mr. Rabbi.”
“It’s a good choice,” Andre said. “How’s the real problem coming along?”
“We’ve got more space in the grist, but if we store any more free-convert copies down there, basic services are going to be compromised. We’re barely making enough food to feed everyone. It’s really energy-intensive, and with the Mill only working at half strength, we’ve got a major, major problem.”
“I’m sure you and the other managers will figure it all out,” Andre said, and passed the water back to Molly.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” she replied. “And if we don’t, then you’re going to have to decide who gets to stay in this lifeboat, and who has to go.”
“Me?”
“People are going to look to you to make the call on that one.”
Andre sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Let’s pray it doesn’t come to that.” Another rumble passed through the structure, and another bit of ceiling fell nearby. He pointed upward. “I can’t imagine sending anyone back out there. What about the other shelters?”
“First thing I did was call everybody up,” Molly replied. “Everybody is now officially full up.”
“Oh dear.”
“Well, we’re hanging on for the moment. That’s something.”
“And I’ve got you, babe.”
“Yes.” Molly finished off the water and set the cup down beside the rock they were sitting on. “It’s so odd. At the moment I can’t imagine ever living without you again for the rest of my life.”
“I feel the same way,” Andre replied without a moment of hesitation.
“Your creeping agnosticism toward romance hasn’t slunk into your heart in its stealthy way?”
“That was always your problem, not mine,” Andre replied.
“I suppose you’re right,” Molly answered. “Back when I was an ironic art curator and bohemian. It certainly seems like a long, long time ago. Another life.”
“How’s this for idealistic naïveté,” Andre said. “Now that I’ve found you again, I’m going to cling to you like a barnacle on a ship sailing toward the New World.”
Molly chuckled. “I’m not sailing anywhere at the moment,” she said. “And so neither are you, I guess.”
“Oh, we’re going somewhere, don’t worry. You’re stuck thinking in three dimensions,” said Andre. “This situation requires four-dimensional thinking. Or five.”
“Up, down, odd, strange,” said Molly. “And charm.”
“That’s right,” Andre said. He leaned over and kissed her. “Don’t forget charm.”
Another blast rumbled outside, this one almost knocking them off their perch on the rock. A warning Klaxon rang out in the shelter. There would be alerts in the merci, but the old-fashioned bullhorn siren was also in use just to make sure the message got across to everyone. There were different warning Klaxons; Andre had given up trying to remember which signified what.
Molly had them all down pat. She’d had a hand in devising the system, after all. “Structural integrity alert,” she said. “I’m on emergency response oversight today. I guess I have to go and see about that.”
Andre took his arms from around her waist and sat back. “If we happen to survive, do you want to set a time to meet back here? How about tomorrow at 1700?”
“Sounds good to me, Father Sud.” Molly smiled. “Shall we tryst among the implements again?”
“There’s nothing I’d rather do than tryst among the implements.”
“Then let’s.” Molly gave him a peck on the cheek and stood to go. She would be leading a team probably almost to surface to examine whatever damage the alarm was announcing.
“Be careful,” he said. “There’s bad stuff up there, and it wants to kill you.”
“I know,” Molly said. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“If I’m asleep, just pull my hand over and hold it,” Andre said. “That never wakes me up.”
“I will,” Molly said. “I love you.” She quickly squeezed his hand, then hurried away to oversee the response team.
Andre watched her go.
“I’ll be damned,” he whispered to himself. “I love you, too.”
Before Andre could reflect on this, a distraught young woman strode purposely up to him.
“Father Andre,” she said. “Could you spare a minute?”
Andre put on a smile. It wasn’t a fake smile. But it was a weary one. “Of course,” he replied.
“I’ve never really gone to shaman or priest or anything before,” the woman said. “I’m a little…embarrassed, I guess…”
Andre patted the rock beside him. “Don’t you worry about that at all,” he said. “Just sit down on this rock and talk to me like you would to anybody else.”
I am like anybody else, Andre thought. There was an immense relief in that knowledge. He didn’t have to know everything, or even anything, really. He just had to be somebody to talk to.
“What’s been on your mind?” he asked the woman.
The woman laughed nervously, but also with a hint of relief at finally being able to speak of her worry. “My husband is out there,” she said. “He’s outside the jamming zone, and I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive.” She brushed a strand of hair from her face. Twenty-fiv
e, Andre thought. Certainly not more than thirty e-years old.
“He’s in the Army?”
“He volunteered as soon as he could get his clearances.”
An émigré, Andre thought. From the Kuipers or beyond.
“I know I shouldn’t make a fuss about it,” the woman continued. “I mean, there’s lots of kids here with both parents in the fighting. And pregnant women with their men gone off, too. And fathers and mothers who haven’t heard from anybody, and all that. But I—”
“You’ve got a perfect right to do a little worrying, too,” Andre said gently. “You can’t help other people if you’re a mess yourself, you know.”
“I know that, but I’ve got such a minor thing. I just haven’t heard from him.” The woman wrung her hands while she was speaking. She then noticed she was doing it, and forcibly settled them on her lap.
“It’s really scary when we can’t reach somebody we’re used to talking with and being around all the time,” Andre said. “Their presence is something we take for granted. Then all of a sudden the silence reminds us of how much that person means to us.”
“Yes,” the woman said. Tears came to her eyes, but she managed a smile. “I wish I had told him before he left. We were both trying to be so happy and nonchalant, and now here I am, and I never told him…”
The tears really began to flow now. Andre pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He was careful to keep a supply of clean ones, no matter what other deprivations he must undergo. Clean handkerchiefs were an essential tool of his trade.
The woman took it and wiped her eyes, looking downward, once again a bit embarrassed.
Andre cocked his head and met her eyes. In the current situation, Andre had found that being able to maintain eye contact was more important than a dozen incontrovertible proofs of God’s existence.
“He knows you love him,” Andre said. “And he loves you. It’s obvious from the feeling you’re showing me right now.”
“But I didn’t show it to him! Not enough. I thought we’d have time! I thought…”
