“No, I didn’t notice. They do it themselves?”
“Yes—they say it’s just a matter of concentration.”
Joshua shook his head. “Henry. Flow do you know they can’t undo it at will? Switch around, send in a—”
“Oh no, no. You don’t know them like I do, Josh. They have definite personalities. It’s easy to tell one from another.”
“Let it pass, for the time being. I’ll look into it. Any progress?”
“Well, yes. We’re getting data, cubes upon cubes of it. Confessions, catechism responses—”
“No real progress, then.”
“Not, uh, not in the sense of… no. Not until we can get the machine.” They needed a large self-directing semantic computer, which meant they needed a great deal of money. “Did you make any progress?”
“Some.” He took a long drink of wine. “None at the Vatican. Couldn’t even get an appointment with a chamberlain.”
“As expected.”
“Worse. As far as they’re concerned, we’re apostates. Ex-communicated.”
“Ex… how did that happen?”
“One of your bugs,” he said evenly, “said a little too much to one of the Confederación scientists. He wrote it up as a humorous article in an archeology journal. Flexibility of Ritual Among the Priests of Sol 111. It’s very amusing.”
“Oh. Sweet Jesus.”
“Somebody. We had better luck with Nuovo Vaticano.”
“Them?”
“We apostates have to stick together.”
He stood up and paced to the mural. “I don’t know, Josh.”
“Precisely. That’s why you’re not in charge.”
“You don’t have to—”
“We don’t have forever, Henry. I’d take support from the devil.”
Henry winced. “Please, Joshua.”
“Oh, ‘please’ yourself. Or have you played the role so long you—”
“Forgive me.” His soft features stiffened. “I was never as strong in my unbelief as you. Nor as good an actor.”
“You do well enough. At any rate, Nuovo Vaticano offered us a grant. With strings, unfortunately.”
“I’m sure you made the best arrangement possible. How much?”
“Quarter of a million—but,” he cut off Henry’s exclamation, “it’s going to cost us. Externally, the grant is a simple gift, to help our missionary work. I have an ecclesiastical document to that effect. There’s no document for the actual agreement: ten per cent of net profits from any patents that result from our researches here. With a bookkeeper breathing down—”
“You told them?”
“Just enough to get the money.”
A light tapping at the door. “Mail, sire.” Applegate got the mail and locked the door again.
“Don’t worry,” Joshua said, “I only had to tell a half dozen. And they’re bigger criminals than we are.”
“We are not criminals.” He flipped through the flimsy printouts. “There’s ample historic precedent—”
“Spare me, Henry.”
“One from Earth, marked ‘urgent.’” He broke the seal and scanned it. “Josh, what were you doing at Confederación headquarters?”
“What?” Otto said.
“Bishop Salazar says one of his priests saw you leaving the United Mankind Building, November fifth. That must have been right before you left.”
“Yes, I was getting to that.” Careful. “The Vatican isn’t the only outfit that reads archeology journals. I got an invitation to talk to a Dr. Ellis. He’s on a watchdog committee that looks for violations of the third article of the Charter.”
“You’re full of good news today.”
“He was friendly; didn’t make any direct accusations. But of course they suspect. Is that news?”
“Should we expect trouble?”
“I don’t know. Inspectors, maybe: spies. We ought to be very careful around new people. New archeologists as well as novitiates.”
“We haven’t been having much to do with the archeologists.”
“Which is a mistake. They’re learning from us, and hurting us with what they learn. At the very least, we ought to pick their brains.
“I’ll tell you what. Have the clerk set me up an appointment with whoever’s in charge over there—”
“Dr. Jones.”
“Good, and I’ll take along a small barrel of this wine as a peace offering. One thing’s improved in four years, anyhow.
“Also, I’ll want to talk with everybody who’s… aware of the totality of our involvement here. Anyone I don’t know?”
“No. Several prospects, but I wanted to wait for your approval.”
“Good. Set up a meeting for just after I visit the enemy camp.”
“All right.” Henry took Joshua’s goblet and refilled both. “That quarter million is a blessing. We can use it.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s not enough. I invested it.”
Henry’s expression passed from sudden anger through exasperation to resignation. He set the goblet down gently on the desk. “Half that would buy us all the machine time we could ever use.”
“On somebody else’s machine.”
“Josh, you aren’t an authority on these things. We don’t have to buy our own; users have absolute security—”
“I’m not an authority on computers but I am an authority on power. Its use and abuse. If the Confederación wants something badly enough, it will have it. No need for us to make it easy for them.”
“You’re just as paranoid as ever. If you don’t mind my saying so.”
“When did I ever mind what you said?”
He sighed and sat down. “That’s true. It was a good investment, I trust.”
“A very good one. Half interest in a new courtesans’ union on Lamarr.”
“Lamarr? That’s nowhere.”
“Used to be. They found out its primary’s a tachyon nexus, though. Closest one to Deneb by several decaparsecs.
Within a year, there’ll be people crawling all over the planet. Looking for things to spend their money on while the ships refuel.”
Henry nodded. “Are they any good?”
“Supposedly. I have no direct experience, of course.” Joshua hadn’t always been a Magdalenist; he claimed that earlier vows bound him to celibacy. Actually, his experience with the courtesans’ union was both direct and of a rather impressive variety, considering that he had only been there for a day and a night. “Traveling men and women I talked to recommended it highly.”
“Quite so,” Henry said with a little smile. His bishop never drank in public, either.
“This Dr. Jones. What kind of a man is he?”
“A female one. Young for her post. I’ve never really talked to her. I get the impression she doesn’t approve of us.”
“At least she’s not the one who wrote the article. That was by John Avedon.”
Henry laughed. “What a coincidence. Her full name is Avedon Jones.”
“Oh, Lord. Set it up anyhow.”
4.
“This isn’t too heavy for you, is it?” Joshua strapped the cask on the back of the S’kang’s saddle. “Negatron. The Second Testament says ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.’”
Joshua mumbled something and heaved himself aboard.
“Then three sentences later, it says ‘Every man shall bear his own burden.’ The geometry of this situation is very confusing.”
“You interpret the Word too literally. Are you comfortable, or would you rather have me walk?”
“Negatron. If you walk, I have to keep turning around to look at you.” One eyestalk peered over the carapace and sort of blinked; translucent iris membrane. They started down the path with a peculiar rippling gait.
The archeologists’ camp had a rough, unfinished look compared to the monastery’s comfortable solidity. Dusty off-white tents and domes scattered, seemingly at random, across a larg
e area of packed earth—a sterile anti-oasis in a sea of flowers.
“Do you know which tent belongs to Dr. Jones?” he asked Balaam’s.
“Ay-firmative. But she won’t be there this time of day. Either at the site or in the office.”
“I have an appointment with her. I suppose the office would be best.” He checked his watch; they were five minutes early. “No, take me to the site first. I’d like to see what they’re doing.”
Joshua nodded hello to various people as he headed toward the middle of the camp. No one seemed surprised at the sight of a priest in vestments riding a huge bug, of course, and they seemed friendly enough though nobody offered conversation. Some smiled when they saw the wine.
The site was a precisely circular hole some three meters deep by ten meters wide. At the bottom of the hole, next to one side, the automatic digger sat and hummed to itself. Otto/Joshua had seen them before. It looked motionless but he knew it was making progress, analyzing the patch of soil it sat on, munching away a few millimeters at a time, crawling forward imperceptibly on a programmed spiral. If it detected something that might be an artifact, it would drop a marker, back away cautiously, and signal its human operator. The bottom of the pit was glass smooth, except for a half dozen small depressions where artifacts had been removed.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Joshua jumped; he hadn’t noticed the woman come up behind him.
“Avedon Jones, Bishop.” She stuck out a hand that was surprisingly large for her small frame (and surprisingly clean for an archeologist, Joshua thought) and favored him with a grip that left most of his hand bones intact.
“My pleasure,” Joshua said, and it was a pleasure, aside from the throbbing in his hand. Dr. Jones had a severe face, complicated by lines of concentration and fatigue, but both Joshua and Otto, sad to say, were inclined to take the main measure of a woman from the chin down. In that arena, the cells of Dr. Jones’s body were arranged with the same elegance and precision as those behind her skull: flawlessly. And hidden by only a practical minimum of clothing.
The bone-crushing handshake was a trick she had learned as an undergraduate. A man’s pupils will contract with sudden, unexpected pain, then dilate according to both the ambient light intensity and degree of sexual interest. She had had a good deal of practice in this technique—having chosen a profession that was ninety per cent male and required long periods of isolated field work—and she carefully watched the dark eyes of this supposedly celibate man while he stared in turn and tried to get his tongue into gear… and took his measure.
She could have his balls on a platter.
Amused, a little bit charitable, she rescued him from his temporary aphasia. “Let’s go on down to my tent; it’s air-conditioned.” She spoke to Balaam’s: “Is that you, Prescott?”
“Ay-firmative.”
“Thought so. What’s the square root of the Talmud?”
“Guilt.” Thump.
She laughed. “You’re insane. Want to come with us?”
“Rather go to the library.” It craned an eyestalk at Joshua. “Where should I put the wine?”
“Prescott?” he said.
“Sure, I have seventeen names. Don’t different people call you different names?”
“Well…”
“The best name for any given person. ‘A good name is better than precious ointment,’ Eccle—”
“Stop! Please. Uh, Miss, Doctor, Jones, the wine is a gift from our monastery. Where should it go?”
“Oh, how nice! Take it to the mess tent, Prescott—but first to my place. We’ll sample it.”
“He’s an Immanuel, Dr. Avedon, not a Borgia.”
She gave the creature’s carapace a playful kick. “Can’t be too careful, Prescott.”
They walked across the dirt to her tent, Balaam’s ambling sideways alongside Dr. Jones. She brought out a graduated cylinder and tapped a liter of the wine, then sent the S’kang on to the mess tent. It remarked that the place was well named.
Inside her tent, a large cube furnished with lightweight field furniture, it was cool and rather dim. Avedon led Joshua to a chair, set the wine and two glasses on a table beside him. “Only be a minute,” she said, and stepped behind a transluscent screen.
Two scraps of clothing sailed across the room into a basket. “Dust and sweat,” she said over the hum of an ultrasonic shower. “Gives me the creepies.” Joshua watched the diffuse outline of her body, turning, and considered the possibility that she didn’t know what effect she was having on his poor glands, and rejected it.
She turned off the shower and peeked around the barrier. “Say, you don’t have a skin taboo, do you?”
“No, I was raised on Terra. Besides, the body is the temple of the…” She stepped lightly across the room to a free-standing wardrobe. “Lord,” he said, not too reverently.
“It’s not too cool in here for you, is it?” She selected a white shift and slipped it over her head.
“No, indeed.” Joshua ran a finger under his collar. “Can I serve you some wine?”
“Sure.” She attacked her short hair with a brush, peering into a mirror. Gave it up after a few seconds, pulled a chair over, and sat across from Joshua, legs crossed. Picked up a glass:
“To our separate successes, Bishop.”
He nodded and sipped. “Separate but not antagonistic, one hopes. Doctor.”
“Oh, call me Avedon. Every other creature on this planet does.”
“Thank you, Avedon. You may call me Joshua.”
“Ambitious name for a religious leader, isn’t it? Related to ‘Jesus’?”
“Indeed. I was born with it, though. If they’d named me Prescott, I might have become an anthropologist” She laughed. “Down to business. You came here to pick my brain.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it that—”
“Baldly? Don’t worry, I’ll pick your brain, too. We haven’t had much contact with your people. I’m curious.”
Joshua studied her face and said, “You knew enough about us to write the ‘John Avedon’ article.”
She laughed, a hearty bark. “I wondered if that would get back to you.”
“Oh, it did.” There was no point in telling her how much damage the article had done. “If it were about some other order, perhaps I’d be more receptive to the humor.”
“Well, you have to admit…” She took a drink. “Nothing personal, Bishop. But to an outsider, your order seems, um, strange. Not very Catholic.”
“I know.”
She leaned forward, idly scratching an ankle; a posture calculated to expose. “Celebrating the flesh—I’m surprised the Holy See gave its approval.”
“They are not so hidebound.” Joshua carefully looked away. “In fairness, though, our tenets were more conservative when they gave their approval. We have evolved over the years.”
(In feet, the Congregation of Mary Magdalene had been invented by Joshua twenty-seven years before. He and two accomplices, cynical hedonists all, had mapped out the order’s “slow evolution” away from poverty, chastity, and obedience well ahead of time. It had taken eight months and forty light years.)
(Until the TBII had kidnapped Joshua and put him into personality overlay, he had been the only living person who knew the true story of the Magdalenists’ maculate conception. The two other “founding fathers” were dead; one of natural causes, the other because he had had the imprudence to be convicted of the forcible rape of a minor on a planet too primitive to have brainwipe.)
“I was told you were under vows of another, stricter order,” she said. “I’m a little surprised that you… seem so human.” She nodded at his glass of wine.
“Not really.” Who had she been talking to? “I went to seminary under temporary Trainist vows. I’m no longer bound by them. Except out of habit.”
She smiled but resisted the obvious pun.
“Tell me about your work,” Joshua said. “Have you learned much about the S’kang?”
“Not muc
h. Only what you can infer from a lack of data.” She looked thoughtful, then suddenly tired. “Fourteen other stations like this one, all around the planet. Digging holes.
“They don’t use tools; evidently, never have used them. Therefore, no permanent artifacts.”
“Except the stones they talk to?”
“Negatron.” Balaam’s must have picked up that annoying mannerism from her. “We’ve never found one, except on the surface. Prescott says they don’t ever get buried.”
“That’s helpful.” He sipped his wine. “No artifacts at all? It looked like the digger had found a few things.”
“You know how a digger works?” Raised eyebrow.
“Uh, saw one in a museum. A model.”
She nodded. “Well, those were just rocks. We’re going to send a few back for the geologists.” She got up suddenly, went over to the closet, and rummaged through a box. “Here, this is the best one.” She tossed a fist-sized white rock at him.
He managed to catch it without spilling his wine. “Seems rather light.”
“Too light.” She sat down. “Chemically, it’s dolomite. Physically, it’s like no rock we have records of. Too porous; its specific gravity is around 2. Dolomite’s 2.85.
“We’ve been finding these at all of the digger stations, all over the planet, the past couple of months. Never found them in higher layers.”
“That’s interesting.”
“You bet it is. But we’re just a bunch of archeologists and xeno-anthropologists. Together we know about as much geology and planetology as a bright undergraduate.”
“I’d have thought you would bring at least one—”
“That would be logical.” She made a face. “Re-search-funding committees aren’t… especially when twenty different universities are involved. Nobody could send more than two field people, and nobody wanted to supply the token planetologist.”
“I thought you were here on a Confederacion grant.”
“Partly. They matched funds with the Sagan Consortium, and provided transportation.”
“Their interest is not primarily archeological, I take it.”
She smiled. “Negatron.” Laughed. “Some people will believe anything.”
“You don’t think that the S’kang actually moved their planet in closer?”