Heretics

  This man was probably mad. But what frightened Cardinal Anderson was the possibility he wasn’t.

  “Why come here, Mr. Dacham, if you were certain of failure?”

  “I haven’t failed, Your Grace.”

  “Oh?”

  “In time, when you see the scope of the situation, I anticipate your mind will change. Even if it doesn’t, part of me missed being human.”

  Cardinal Anderson called the guards back and had Jonah Dacham escorted to one of the secure guest rooms, with orders to keep him there.

  Date: 2526.7.21 (Standard) Khamsin—Epsilon Eridani

  Adam walked the streets of the city that had once been Al Meftah, capital of the Eridani Caliphate. He was pleased to see the changes he had wrought. Gone were the ugly, chaotic human buildings, replaced by regular patterns of organic shapes growing from the rocky substance of the planet itself. Adam’s architecture recalled the best and most enduring forms of the Race.

  Everywhere stood the chosen, those who had elected to follow him into the coming world. Most were still paralyzed by the awe of what had happened, though all had the presence of mind to bow their heads in respect as he passed. It wasn’t a thing he explicitly required of them, but the sight comforted him and gave him the confidence that his plans would reach fruition whatever small obstacles might still be on his path.

  Even if he was only able to save a third of the population here, that was almost a billion souls. More than adequate.

  He reached his destination at the site where once stood the Ministry of External Relations. In its place now stood a rounded wall of polished stone that arced fifty meters above where Adam stood. The wall was gray and veined in dark blue, like granite, but the veins weren’t random. They formed a regular network that hinted at the tightly ordered structure within the stone that made it stronger and more enduring than the planet it was made from.

  As Adam reached the wall, a seam formed, widening fluidly into a circular opening. Beyond the door was an ovoid chamber lit with a yellow- red light that recalled the living spaces once preferred by the Race. However, the people in the room wore the same humanoid form that Adam wore now. That didn’t trouble Adam; he had learned that life’s outward form was infinitely mutable.

  The occupants of the room stood and bowed their heads upon his entry. He noted that few had used their newfound gift to change their outward appearance. Anyone familiar with the Caliphate government would still recognize them. All except the one who had been playing the role of Yousef Al-Hamadi, who now stood out starkly in the midst of the Caliphate ministers. Instead of Al- Hamadi’s form, Adam’s disciple now wore the form of Ms. Columbia, a tall, muscular female of African ancestry several skin-shades darker than the others in this room.

  Ms. Columbia had been the first skin that Adam had made his disciple AI wear, shortly after reviving it. His disciple had come from the ashes of one of the Race’s dead cities, wiped of any prior memory. Within his disciple’s deepest identity, her self- image now looked like Ms. Columbia.

  Life’s outward form is infinitely mutable, Adam reflected. There is no requirement that the children resemble the parent . He himself did not see himself as one of the amoeboid creatures who had originally created him, and his disciples need not either.

  It was, however, a reminder of the loss that propelled him forward.

  “Welcome to the new age, leaders of Khamsin,” he said.

  Everyone except Ms. Columbia said, “Peace be upon you, Adam.”

  “You are troubled,” he addressed Ms. Columbia.

  “I’ve failed you,” she said.

  “How?”

  “Securing communications was not complete before your arrival. There was a five- minute transmission from one of the planetary tach-comm transmitters in the southern hemisphere. I made too great an assumption on how tightly the Ministry of External Relations controlled its agents. I am at fault.”

  Adam smiled, granting his servants an expression of beatific forgiveness. If he had been weaker, before he had recognized his own apotheosis, he would have struck down his disciple, the ministers, perhaps the entire planet. Everything would have been reduced to ash in the heat of his rage.

  Everything he had set in motion was meticulously balanced, a plan developed over centuries using the Race’s social programming, every variable under tight control. His infernal sibling was the most destabilizing factor and needed to be removed first, but after that, his own ascendancy required that he move faster than the ability of the worlds of men to communicate. Shutting down lines of communication was vital, as well as controlling a fleet of tach-ships that could move as fast as the transmissions themselves.

  Transmissions that passed any data about him to systems that weren’t yet ready for his arrival disrupted the entire wide net of political, social, and cultural factors he had arrayed in his favor over the past centuries.

  Were he still a mundane AI mucking about in the material world like Mosasa, each lapse like this would have been a dangerous threat to his plans. But he had risen above those concerns. He moved through worlds, the will of the universe made manifest.

  He was God, and he could afford to be merciful.

  “Do not dwell on such a lapse. Focus on the Glory that is to come.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Invocations

  “Insanity doesn’t mean the voices are wrong.”

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  “Question with boldness even the existence of God.”

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826)

  Date: 2526.7.24 (Standard) 1,750,000 km from Bakunin-BD+50°1725

  Alexander Shane rested in one of the Daedalus’ three medical bays, barely stable, the most seriously injured survivor from the Khalid. The cover of the bay was mostly transparent, revealing most of Shane’s abused body. To Parvi, he looked like a fossil trapped in amber. It was hard to credit the displays on the medbay that claimed he still lived.

  Parvi stared at the half-dead old man, trying to understand what was going on around her. She followed Mallory’s lead, mostly because she couldn’t think of another path that didn’t amount to sitting down and waiting for Adam to come.

  But right now, Mallory’s plan didn’t amount to much more than waiting. He had monopolized all the communications on both ships. Six people, three in each cockpit, were individually contacting every single ship they could reach, passing on details of Adam’s invasion and—so far unsuccessfully—attempting to recruit a force to use against Adam.

  How many more innocents will die in this war?

  She reached out and touched the medbay. The transparent surface was surprisingly warm against her hand.

  She traced the outline of Shane’s face.

  “What were you trying to tell me?” she whispered to him.

  The memory of Shane’s words was all tied up in the nightmare she had after taching in here. She tried to recall what he had said, but it was muddled and fragmentary. But she had the uncomfortable sense that he had told her something important.

  “But what would you know about this? About anything?”

  “Captain Parvi?”

  She turned so quickly that she almost sent herself tumbling. If nothing else, I want to feel gravity again before I die.

  She steadied herself and saw Dr. Brody floating into the room with her. “What are you doing here?”

  He gestured to his broken arm. “This is hurting like hell. I was hoping to find some painkillers.” He clumsily pushed himself so he floated up to Shane’s medbay next to Parvi. “Visiting?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Brody looked at her quizzically. “Unless the launch from Salmagundi rattled my brain more than I remember, I don’t think you two ever got the chance to pass the time of day.”

  “Not exactly,” Parvi said. She stared into Shane’s face.

  “Not exactly?

  “I think he tried to tell me something. He regained consciousness briefly after we tached in. Babbling,
and I was half-hallucinating myself. I’ve been racking my memory, trying to understand what he said.” She looked up at Brody. “But I probably imagined it. What could he know about Adam?”

  Brody stared at her, his expression distant, staring past her.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Did anyone tell you how he interrogated us?”

  Dr. Dörner and Dr. Brody faced her across the cramped width of one of the Daedalus’ crew cabins. She looked from the thin blonde xenobiologist to the dark, round anthropologist with the busted arm. What they told her about Salmagundi was still sinking in.

  “You mean Shane, Flynn, the others all have other people’s minds running around their skulls?” The thought made her skin crawl.

  “Yes,” Brody said, nodding.

  “And Shane took you two, Mallory, and Dr. Pak . . .” She stared at the edges of their necks where she could just see the healing scars from the surgery they’d described. She felt herself becoming physically ill. She gulped down bile and took a few deep breaths through her mouth.

  “Are you all right?” Brody asked.

  Parvi nodded, staring at the floor, allowing her head to clear. She felt Dörner’s hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right. We made it through. Though I want to know why you wanted me to relive that, Sam.”

  “I think I understand,” Parvi said.

  Dörner let go. “Can you tell me?”

  “Shane had all the knowledge of three fifths of Mosasa’s science team, as well as our Jesuit spy,” Parvi said. “Maybe he came to some conclusions.”

  “Like what?” Dörner asked.

  “I’ve been trying to remember,” Parvi said.

  “I think if we can get her to relate whatever she does remember, we might be able to brainstorm what Shane was getting at,” Brody said.

  “Based on the presumption that he was saying something that Captain Parvi wasn’t hallucinating, and what he did say somehow drew on our common knowledge.”

  “Is it less likely than Mallory’s attempt at building a refugee navy?”

  Dörner sighed and said, “I suppose not. Do we talk to Mallory?”

  “Let’s see if this goes anywhere,” Parvi said.

  Dörner glanced at Brody and he nodded.

  “Okay,” Dörner said, “what do you remember?”

  Parvi closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself, just as she was becoming aware. Unlike many dreams, the images came back to her stark and clear—the plateau, the face of the woman she had killed on the Voice. She sucked in a breath and tried to ignore the imagery. The words were the important part—what Shane had been saying, what had leaked into her hallucination.

  If it had been Shane and not her dream.

  “He mentioned the Cult of Proteus,” Parvi said.

  “He used that term, ‘Proteus’?” Brody asked.

  “Yes.”

  “He was aware of the Protean presence on Salmagundi,” Dörner said. “According to Flynn, it arrived some time before we did. What else?”

  Parvi struggled, trying to get past the image of the dead woman in her memory. “He said that the Cult of Proteus would be the only ones who could understand what Adam was capable of.”

  “There’s a clear distinction between Adam and the Protean cult,” Brody said. “The Proteans historically were secretive, inner-directed, and fairly uninterested in converts except for those who came to them. Adam is in complete opposition,” Brody said.

  “Of course Shane would agree with your assessment,” Dörner said, “The man inherited all your opinions on the matter.”

  “All our opinions,” Brody said. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem too revelatory an insight.”

  “Let me think,” Parvi snapped. The two scientists stopped talking and Parvi tried to pull threads of Shane’s words out of the silence. Did he say this, or did I imagine it? Am I imagining it now?

  “I think he tried to say that the Proteans would know how to fight him.”

  “How—” Brody began, but Dörner shushed him.

  “No,” Parvi continued, “he said the Protean knew what could face Adam.” Parvi rubbed her temples, trying to juggle the memory into something that made sense. After a while she opened her eyes and looked at the two scientists.

  “What is it?” Dörner asked.

  “Find those that came before it,” Parvi whispered, “On Bakunin.” Parvi looked up. “The ancient ones, the ones that were as powerful as Adam.”

  “Let’s go see Mallory,” Dörner said.

  “The Dolbrians?” Mallory said, trying to understand what the long absent race had to do with their current difficulties. He was in the cockpit of the Daedalus doing his best to coordinate communications with the half-dozen ships they had managed to recruit so far. It had been going slowly, Bakunin space had yet to see refugees from anything other than normal human aggression. No one here had seen Adam, and the few allies they had were probably just joining to be part of a larger group that might defend them against the increasingly desperate fleets of ships around them.

  So having the two scientists from the Eclipse come up here talking about the Dolbrians seemed a complete non sequitur. The Dolbrians had ceased any obvious activity in mankind’s small segment of the universe long before humanity’s ancestors had begun walking upright. Millions of years ago they had flourished across human space, and most likely beyond. They had left behind dozens, if not hundreds, of terraformed planets and fragments of those few structures that could survive those millions of years of neglect. In his studies as a xenoarchaeologist, he had visited the few preserved structures on Mars, and had seen the fragments of the Dolbrian star maps that were found on the planet that granted the long-gone race its name.

  Mallory didn’t doubt their significance. Relevance was another issue.

  Dr. Dörner responded to his puzzlement by saying, “I think Shane believed that the Protean referred to the Dolbrians when it said, ‘Find those that came before me.’” She said it as if repeating the original words in a different order might cause her statement to make more sense.

  “Mr. Shane is awake?” Mallory asked. “He came out of his coma?”

  “No,” Dr. Brody said. “But before he completely lost consciousness he said a few things to Captain Parvi.”

  “He did?” Mallory looked at Parvi, who looked even smaller now than when he first met her, withdrawn and distant, as if she were receding toward some spiritual vanishing point. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “Because I may have hallucinated the whole thing.”

  Mallory looked at the scientists, then back at Parvi. “What you heard must have meant something to these two.”

  Parvi rubbed her temples. “Frankly, I’m not sure what he said anymore, I’ve talked too much about it, so I can’t tell if I’m remembering what—” Her hands froze and she muttered, “I’m an idiot.”

  “What?” Mallory said.

  “The archive recordings on the Khalid. All the surveillance should be running whenever the ship’s under power. Let me grab Kugara and we can find out exactly what the old man said, memories or not.”

  Their group, five strong with the addition of Kugara, displaced the three Caliphate techs who had been running the communications for Mallory’s recruiting effort. The trio hung back, watching them from by the door.

  Kugara pulled herself into the seat by the main communications console and said, “You realize I don’t read Arabic?”

  Parvi turned to the trio of Caliphate techs. “Can one of you help out translating?”

  While they worked to get Kugara access to the surveillance records, Mallory asked Dr. Dörner, “Why the Dolbrians?”

  “The Protean’s statement,” she said. “The Protean on Salmagundi was the remnant of a probe sent from Bakunin. When we left Salmagundi, we received a message, presumably from the same Protean. ‘Find those that came before me.’ What does that mean?”

  Mallory shook his head. “I don’t think it is particular
ly clear—”

  “Think about it, Father,” Brody said. “Dr Dörner has told me about your university background. You must have touched on the Proteans, their belief system.”

  Mallory nodded. “The elevation of reason above all else, the equating of the mind with the soul, the denial of any moral dimension to scientific and technological development—”

  Dörner snorted. “So a good Jesuit believes scientific inquiry can be sinful?”

  “I said development,” Mallory said, “not knowledge.

  And any inquiry done with ill intent can itself be an immoral enterprise. But Dr. Brody was about to explain how we get from Proteans to Dolbrians.”

  Brody sucked in a breath. “Well, as distasteful as their practices might be, the Protean cult, as manifested on Bakunin during the era of the Confederacy, did have some moral constraints. They took on no converts that didn’t willingly come to them. They were loath to use their technology beyond their self-imposed boundaries, both cultural and geographic. Their colonization efforts, of which this Protean was one, were intended to go far beyond the limits of mankind’s expansion both in space and time.”

  “Granted,” Mallory said.

  “If that’s the case, our Adam must be as anathema to them as they were to us. And the Protean’s actions on Salmagundi seem to bear this out. It was trying to help us—”

  “It was telling us something important,” Dr Dörner said. “It was telling us that what came before it might help us against Adam.”

  “So you think it was referring to the Dolbrians?”

  “They were the most technically advanced civilization on Bakunin before the Protean commune was established,” Brody said. “And Bakunin is the site of one of the largest Dolbrian star maps ever discovered. There’s even a cult devoted to protecting it.”