“What do you think?”
“I’m ignorant of science. At any rate, I’m more concerned with their souls than their world.” The Otto part of him shuddered inwardly. “Wasn’t some sort of consensus published?”
“It sure was—widely published. And I’m glad; otherwise, we’d never have gotten funding. But all it really said was that most of the S’kang, most of the time, claim that they moved the planet in to improve the weather. Sometimes they say the planet did it by itself; sometimes that they moved it outwards, because it was too warm; sometimes they don’t even understand the question.
“Face it. As likable as the creatures are, they’re total incompetents in dealing with physical reality. They can’t put two and two together and come up with the same answer twice. They’ll hold a screwdriver the wrong way, if it amuses them. And they’re mad as hatters.
“Take Prescott: he absorbed all of Roger Bacon in a week—photographically. He could recite page after page. But ask him about the scientific method, and all he can come up with is an outrageous pun. In Latin.”
“Can you be sure there’s not a larger joke involved? That he does really understand it, and is hiding his understanding from you?”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Just a feeling I have sometimes. You should hear their catechism responses.”
She leaned forward. “That might be interesting. In an anthropological sense, I mean.”
“Well, we do have cubes… of some of them. I wouldn’t see any harm in your making copies. Liturgical responses, too; anything but the confession.”
“Confessions? How can they sin?”
“They can theoretically break eight of the ten—”
Somebody was scratching on the tent flap. “Avedon. Digger’s beeping.”
“Oh, hell.” She stood up. “Come on in, Theo.”
A young man, shirtless, slipped through the flap. He was wearing a small silver cross on a chain around his neck. “Theo Kutcher, Bishop Joshua Immanuel.” Kutcher stiffened.
“Good afternoon, brother,” Joshua said.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.” she said. To Theo: “Don’t start any arguments till I get back.”
Joshua watched Avedon depart and sat back, hands folded benevolently. “What sort of argument should I expect, Theo?”
Theo sat down in the chair she had vacated and put his feet up on the table between them, rattling the glasses. “Oh, I don’t think we really have any basic differences of opinion.” He smiled sardonically. “Colonel.”
5.
“Pardon?” Otto twisted the catch that converted his heavy crucifix to a three-pointed razor on the end of a chain.
Theo raised a hand, palm up, cautioning: “Now don’t do anything. I’m one of us.”
“And who would we be?” He was just the right distance. Throat or eyes?
“The TBII; I’m a Class 2 operator, Meade Johanssen. You’re—”
“I know who I am. PO?”
“No, just forcelearn and identity switch. I’ve been here since the beginning; too long for PO.”
“They didn’t tell me there was another operative on this planet.”
“Well… that’s probably bureaucracy. You’re from Charter Violations; I’m routine surveillance.”
“You knew I was coming?”
“Yes. They said—”
“You’re to write a report on my performance.”
“Oh no.” Too fast; liar. “Just offer assistance if it’s needed. And information, since the TBII can contact me more or less directly. That’s what I’m here for now—very convenient, your coming over. I would’ve had a hard time getting you alone, over at the monastery tonight.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Tonight was the meeting with those “aware of the totality” of the Magdalenists’ mission on Cinder.
“I have bad news. The real Joshua Immanuel escaped from Earth the day after you left.”
“What? Impossible.”
“That’s what I would’ve thought. But he evidently broke the conditioning and just walked out. They assume he had at least six hours’ head start… six hours before they’d discovered he was gone, the Earth bishop made a massive personal credit transfer from the Magdalenists’ account. Seventy-five Kays.”
Otto whistled. “They’ll never find him. He could get the best body sculptor on Earth for a tenth of that.
“Are they sure he left Earth?”
“They interrogated the bishop. Joshua told him about the PO and substitution—”
“Not smart.”
“—and said he was coming here to kill you.”
“That’s absurd.” Otto/Johsua smiled. “Does he think he can sneak up on me?”
“Well, he doesn’t have to come in legally.” Nobody was allowed on the planet without a Confederación pass. “He has enough money to charter a private yacht. Does he know how to fly?”
“Yes, but only genteel stuff.” He drummed fingers on his knee, thinking. “If you or I were doing it, we’d… I guess charter a small craft at Epsilon Indii. Time it so we’d come out of nospace on the day side, while this part of the planet was dark. Bring it in low and land sometime before dawn, in a wilderness area—”
“And there aren’t any, not within a thousand kilometers.”
“Hm. And he’d probably crack up if he tried it. If he even thought of it.
“More likely he’s going to come in as a ringer. Are you expecting any—” Footsteps. “Within the overall fellowship of Christ our Lord. You have to understand—”
Avedon came through the flap. “I don’t know what’s wrong with that machine. Six times in four days—what, you aren’t at each other’s throats yet? I’d think a Skinner Baptist and a Catholic wouldn’t have much to agree on.”
Theo stood up. “I’ve forgiven him his conditioning, and he’s forgiven me my parents. Same thing.”
“Only God can forgive, brother. But I can understand.”
Theo started to leave but Avedon put a hand on his shoulder. “Hold on, Theo. We’ve got to go take that machine apart, right now.
“Joshua, I’m sorry I have to run. We’d love to see those cubes. And of course you can copy any of our data that look interesting.”
“Most gracious of you.”
“Want to try again tomorrow, same time?”
“Certainly… and Theo, drop by the monastery any time. We can give each other food for thought.”
“You won’t convert me, you know.”
“We aren’t here to convert humans.” Joshua walked out with them.
“What makes you think that they won’t benefit more from the trade than we will?” Applegate was fuming. “There’s nothing stopping them from renting time on a semantic computer.”
Joshua shook his head. “Do I have to do all of your thinking for you? The data we give them will be worse than useless.” He picked up a cube and turned it around in his fingers. “The catechism is just question, response; question, response. As often as not, the responses don’t make any sense, correct?”
Applegate nodded, his lips a thin line.
“But we assume there is some sense behind their illogic. So subtle or so complicated that an unaided human brain can’t see it.”
“This is not exactly news to me.”
“But no matter what that logic is, we can destroy it. It’s simply a matter of—”
“Of course. Randomize the responses. We keep the real cubes and—”
“Right. Mixing in some of the questions where the answers make sense… maybe all of those.” He nodded at the small gray box in the corner. “Your machine can be set up to do that, can’t it? By tomorrow?”
Applegate rubbed his chin. “I suppose. Ill have Sister Caarla help me.” He looked at his watch. “She should be here any time.”
“Good.” Joshua got up and paced, pretending to study the wall mural. “Say, we don’t have any new people comin
g in soon, do we?”
“Not with the cold period coming on. Why?”
“Just curious.” So when the real Joshua arrived, it would be as an archeologist. “We have plenty of people for the work ahead?”
“Too many by a large factor. But the ones not involved do give us protective coloration, I guess.”
Two soft knocks. “Come in,” Joshua said.
Four women and three men, the rest of the inner circle. The last one locked the door.
“Fine. Let’s adjourn to the winter room.” At the other end of the office was a windowless steel door. Applegate unlocked it.
It was a warm, bright room full of flowers, about twenty meters square. The illumination duplicated that of Ember at its brightest; heating elements above the frost line would keep the ground warm through the half-century of winter. Not that they expected to wait that long.
There was a row of comfortable chairs along one wall. They all sat except Joshua.
“Caarla,” he said, “you’re still in charge of selection?”
“Yes. We have it boiled down to five: Matthew, Peter, Heli, Joseph 2, and the one the archeologists call Prescott.”
“Prescott? He’s an unbeliever.”
“Yes, but he’s the easiest to communicate with.”
The others must be real prizes, Joshua/Otto thought. “How do you propose to lure him in here?”
“He might do it out of curiosity. Or we could wait until he starts to go dormant; carry him in.”
“I’d veto that.” Brother Judson, the closest they had to an exobiologist. “We don’t have any evidence that the process is reversible. Being in the wrong environment might kill him.”
“It might kill all of them,” Applegate said. “We have to be a little cold-blooded. There’s a lot at stake.” Nobody knew whether the S’kang change-of-state was triggered by climactic change or by some biological “clock.” But one thing was certain: with its vastly slower wintertime metabolic rate, a S’kang couldn’t survive for long in a warm, humid environment.
“Yes,” Joshua said. “We ought to stick with Caarla’s recommendations. Brother Colin?” He was the group’s semanticist.
“I’ve completed my list,” he said. “Over three thousand questions, nearly a thousand of them repeated at least once, under some non-Aristotelian transformation. The early ones are catechistic, or even strictly liturgical. They evolve into questions that deal entirely with the creatures’ perceptions of the objective universe.”
“Well…” Joshua began. Someone was pounding on the door in the other room. “I’ll get it. Hold until I get back.”
He shut the steel door and opened the wooden one a crack. “Yes?”
Brother Desmond. “Sire, you’d better come to the communications room. There’s a petitioner in orbit, asking permission to land.”
“Without a permit?”
“No, sire, she was issued a permit on Epsilon Indii. She claims to be fleeing religious persecution on Dakon.”
He slipped through the door. “I’ll speak with her.” If it was Joshua, he had just cemented his fate. Complete sex-change surgery, including skeletal modification, takes weeks. Otto knew too much about overlay techniques to be fooled by a superficial job.
The communications room was a rustic stuccoed cell like all of the others, except for the far wall, which was dominated by a large flat screen and a horizontal bank of slide-out modules of electronic gimcrackery.
The old woman’s face didn’t resemble Joshua’s at all, but the shoulders were a fatal giveaway. Otto/Joshua was in that body, and he knew where the bones were.
When “she” spoke, Otto was certain. You can shorten or lengthen a person’s vocal cords to change the voice’s pitch, but you can’t do much about sentence rhythm and word choice without repatterning the brain’s speech center, which can’t be done quickly.
“Brother Desmond was telling me,” she said, “that the missionary work is almost complete for another fifty years. This is all right with me. I only want a place where I can spend my last years in peace.”
“What was your trouble on Dakon?” Joshua asked.
“They were trying to have me committed—brainwiped, actually—because they claimed I was teaching antisocial principles to their children. In a private Sunday school.
“Actually, they just wanted to seize my money. I brought it with me.” She held up a draft. “Fifty Kays in Confederación pesos. I’ll give it to your order in exchange for sanctuary.”
Joshua suppressed a smile. How does it feel to bribe yourself? “The money is welcome, of course, but not necessary. We wouldn’t refuse a soul in distress.”
She was calling from the shuttle station. “Do you have your own flyer?”
“No. I rented one at Epsilon Indii.”
“Well, send it back and take the morning shuttle down. I believe it breaks orbit at seven.”
They exchanged courtesies and the screen went blank.
“I suppose I should bunk her with Brother Follett,” Desmond said. “They seem to be about the same age.”
“That sounds all right. And wake me at seven; I’ll go down alone to meet her.”
“As you wish, sire.” Probably thinking unbrotherly thoughts. “I’ll have Paul and two others saddled.”
“No… I think that might not be a good idea. Surely she’s never seen a S’kang before. They can be quite a shock if you aren’t prepared.
“If she has luggage, we’ll send a S’kang back for it. The walk up will give me time to accustom her to the idea.” Of course, a S’kang might not even recognize murder, if it were done properly. But no need to take chances.
He already knew how he would do it. It would be absurdly simple.
He went back to the winter room and told the others about this latest development.
“It seems suspicious,” Applegate said. He explained to the others: “Bishop Immanuel was questioned by a Confederación official on Earth. He thinks they may suspect us of a Charter violation and send in a spy.”
“Tomorrow,” Joshua said, “I’ll take Desmond with me when I go over to the archeologists—say I need help with the cube transcriptions. While he’s gone, Caarla, you get on the subspace and check both Epsilon Indii and Dakon. Try to get a picture of her.”
None of which would happen, of course, after the tragic accident.
With the promise of action coming in the morning, Joshua found it hard to concentrate on the routine details of the planning session.
Two new members were proposed: Brother Anzio and Sister Krim. Anzio had a background in computer repair and maintenance—and he seemed to have joined the order under false pretences. Applegate had discovered that he was a felon, having embezzled a small fortune from a credit union on Macrobastia. He was evidently hiding out, waiting for the statute of limitations (ten years for this crime and planet) to make him a free man.
Sister Krim might be equally useful. She was a natural polyglot, knowing a dozen human languages. Though not an academic, she was an enthusiastic amateur scientist, and didn’t hide the fact that the main reason she had joined the order was to study the S’kang. Unfortunately, she seemed a little soft-hearted about them.
They decided to go with Anzio and keep Krim under observation. If the creatures seemed to thrive in their artificially maintained summer, maybe they would let her in on the game—or at least enough of it to take advantage of her experience.
Brother Judson gave Joshua a guided tour of the winter room. It was a pleasant, perfumey place; thousands of flowers transplanted into the same patterns that the S’kang used. Breezes, bugs—if you didn’t look up, you might think you were actually outside. The “sky,” though, wouldn’t fool anybody: sprinkler system and greased track for the artificial sun.
After the meeting, Joshua made sure that Caarla and Applegate could do the answer-switching job. Then he went outside.
No stars. Ten steps away from the monastery, where an outside light marked the door, it was total blacknes
s. The dense, cold mist sucked warmth from his body. In a few days, Ember would black out completely. The flowers would die, snow would fall, the creatures would slow down. All but a few.
Suddenly depressed, Otto went back inside. He went to the kitchen; it was deserted and not warm.
He took a candle to his cell, sat on his bunk, and with slow deliberation assembled a weapon for tomorrow, hid the weapon under clothing, took a pill, and slept.
6.
Joshua stood restlessly by the gravel landing strip, watching Ember rise, its dull glow further attenuated by morning mist. It looked like a diseased fruit, red mottled with black and orange.
The flowers rustled behind him in the slight breeze. For the hundredth time he turned around and checked. No one there.
In the folds of his voluminous sleeves, a long-barrelled ultraviolet laser. He looked like he was standing with his hands clasped, contemplating the sky.
He saw the shuttle before he heard it, wingtip lights flashing red and green.
(The shuttle would land on skis, sliding down two kilometers of gravel, airscoops reversed for ramjet braking. Its Achilles’ heel was the “live” strut that connected the ski to the fuselage: it contained a rather delicate real-time thinker that compensated for the bone-grinding vibration. A megawatt burst would scramble it.)
The flight recorder would be a problem. He’d have to send a message, through “Theo,” to make sure Confederación officials on Epsilon Indii would cover it up. A malfunction in the thinker.
Now it was gliding fast, a couple of meters off the ground; now it touched down, sweeping toward him, continuous loud scrape of metal against gravel, roar of the ramjets’ suck and whine.
Two-handed grip on the laser, deep-breath-let-half-out, good image through the fat scope, hold fire until it’s even with you. If Joshua was sitting on the right side of the shuttle, the last thing he would see would be his black-robed double killing him.
Fire. Track and fire again. The snap-snap-snap of the laser lost in the thunder of the massive craft’s braking. Live strut gives way: ski squirts out behind. Wing dips and catches the ground.
The shuttle spun twice and then leaped cartwheeling into the air. It hit nose-first and disintegrated with a rending crash; hundreds of separate pieces, large and small, skittering along the gravel, continuing to break up.