Posleen War: Sidestories The Tuloriad (9 page)

Dwyer covered the microphone of the resort's cell and whispered to Sally, “He's asking if we've got an AID. I think you're so much a woman that it didn't entirely register with him over dinner that you're also machine and ship.”

Sally cocked her head to one side. “What's he need an AID for?” she asked.

“Conference call,” Dwyer shrugged. “I don't know why.”

“No problem,” Sally answered. Immediately one of the extra chairs at the table was seemingly filled with a slightly portly, very young looking man, wearing white robs and a skull cap.

“Now that,” the Pope said, in German-accented English, “is a neat trick. As far as I can tell, I am in my office in the Vatican and you two are sitting in chairs on the other side of my desk.” The Pope suddenly burst out laughing.

“What's so funny, Joe?” Dwyer asked.

“Oh, I was just thinking of some of my predecessors and the fact that your lovely wife is certainly not the first beautiful woman ever to show up in this office in a state of semi-undress.”

At that, Sally's eyes went wide. She stood and ran off to their suite. When she emerged a few minutes later she was wearing a much thicker and longer robe than the thin silk she'd been clothed in before.

“Yeah, Joe,” Dwyer was saying to the papal apparition, “the nuncio did a really nice job. It was first class, all around.”

“Good, very good,” the Pope said. “Especially good because I have some news that may or may not be to your and your wife's liking.”

“And that would be?” Sally asked.

The Pope didn't beat around the bush. “I'm sending him on a mission to the stars. He's a Jesuit. He doesn't have a choice about that. Whether you accompany him, my dear, once you've heard what that mission is, is something we need to discuss.”

“Of course I'm accompanying him,” Sally insisted.

The Pope shook his head. “You may not feel that way once you understand the mission . . . in both senses. But that's going to take some explanation.”

“All during the war,” the Pope explained, “I was troubled by the Posleen.” He put up both hands, defensively. "Yes, yes, I know that everyone was . . . troubled by the Posleen. That's not what I mean.

“I think our species knew each other long ago,” the Pope continued.

“Centaurs?” Dwyer asked. “Chiron?”

“Yes, those,” the Pope agreed. “There are many legends from pagan times that may have their basis in fact. For example, one can hardly overlook the similarity between, say, Prometheus and Lucifer.” For a man in the Pope's position, one could hardly take any position but that the Fall of Man was fact.

“And except for Chiron,” Sally said, “the centaurs were a bunch of nasty, mean drunks.”

“Or were portrayed that way by their enemies,” the Pope countered, which counter raised from Sally an indifferent shrug.

“In any case,” the Pope continued, "I've always thought the Posleen had souls. As much damage as they did to us, I also couldn't help but note that the species has little or no deliberate cruelty in it. Harsh? Yes; they're harsh. But almost never cruel.

"In any case, I've been talking with certain . . . friends. They've convinced me that it would be worthwhile to send to the Posleen a mission—I did mention that I used the word in more than one sense—to see if they cannot somehow be saved.

“I think,” the Pope mused, “That somehow those beings lost God. They need Him back.”

“And that's where I come in,” Dwyer said.

The Pope's avatar nodded deeply. “And your wife, if she would accompany you.”

“She can't,” Dwyer said. “She's figured out how to expand the range she can be away from the metal of the ship that is most of her being. But that range is still measured in miles, not in parsecs.”

Now it was the Pope's turn to smile. “We live in an age of miracles again, Dan. She can go . . . if she is willing.”

Lago di Traiano,

Ostia, Latium, Italy

There was no dock in the lake for USS Salem to tie up to. Instead, Sally had just dropped anchor where the anti-grav sleds—the sleds that had flown her entire twenty-one thousand combat-loaded tons across the Atlantic—had set her down. Thus, the priest, who had gone ashore to visit the Vatican, returned by small launch. Surprisingly, she wasn't there on deck to meet him when he returned. Instead he found her down below, in the galley, sipping a cup of tea.

Sally knew everything that went on aboard ship, from the scuttling about of the rats (whose existence embarrassed her terribly; think: head lice) to the least flaking of her paint. She was already looking up when Dwyer entered.

“I'm already familiar with the conversion design. Some ships might be happy with such a conversion. Daisy tells me she'd be very happy to be converted once she's done restoring herself. I won't be.”

Dwyer tilted his head to one side, acknowledging what she'd said but not giving an answer. He then went and drew himself a cup of coffee—Sally had made sure to stock up with some superb stuff from Panama's mountains before the anti-grav sleds had picked her up—and then sat down opposite his wife.

“Go on,” Dwyer told her.

Sally put the cup down and drummed her fingers on the table for a bit. At the same time she chewed her lip. Finally, she said, “It's hard for me to put in words.”

“Do your best.”

She sighed. “I'm vain, you know. Very.”

Dwyer just smiled while thinking, Vanity, thy name is woman.

“And I know exactly what you're thinking,” she snapped, “and, yes, vanity is my name.” One of Sally's hands swept up and down, finger pointed towards herself. “I know this body and face are beautiful. I made them that way. Because I'm vain. But I could replace this body with another and be just as happy, if it, too, were beautiful.”

She stood up and gestured with both arms outstretched spinning slowly in place to indicate the entire ship, USS Salem. “And this body is beautiful, too. One of the most beautiful warships ever made. And that image is a lot more important to me than this flesh is.”

“I think I understand,” Dwyer said.

“You couldn't possibly, Dan. The Indowy Sohon types working with the Vatican came by while you were gone. They want to make me into a regular ovoid without any of the things that make me feel me. Or that could. My beautiful turrets; gone. My rakish bow and well-shaped stern; gone. They want to change me into something . . . ugly. Plain. And I don't know if I can stand that. As I said, I'm very vain.”

“And?”

“I need you to tell me that this will be worth it,” she said. “That what they want us to do is worth my hating myself, my image, everything. So you can bring God to a bunch of creatures I'd much, much rather exterminate. So I can be with you while you do.”

“It might—I don't say 'will,' only 'might—mean life or death, freedom or slavery, for mankind. The Pope and the Father General had another priest with them. Riley. They led me to believe this is very, very important, though none would explain quite why. Still, I believe them. In any case . . . Sally . . .”

“Yes?”

“I'll still think you're beautiful, no matter what shape you are. And that means both bodies.”

Tell, O ancestors, of the mighty ship, Arganaza'al,

Bearer of hopes,

Which carried the remnants of the People

To safety among the stars

—The Tuloriad, Na'agastenalooren

Anno Domini 2010

Posleen hulk Bounty

The bodies had to go. There were many reasons for this. First, there was a duty to release the souls of the dead. Second, and closely related, Posleen bodies stank even to Posleen, maybe especially to Posleen, once they started to decompose. A soul stuck in a decomposing body was likely to be a most unhappy spirit. Then there was the need to clear out the space in the hulk to facilitate repairs. But lastly . . .

“We eat tonight!”

Tulo'stenaloor couldn't help but notice that actually getting to chop something up, coupled with the prospect of a decent meal of something besides mush, worked like a tonic on even those kessentai he'd had to put under for serious mental instability during their long confinement aboard the Himmit scout-smuggler.

Goloswin sat over a pile of artificial sentiences collected from the dead and from various stations aboard the hulk, and excess to the needs of Tulo'stenaloor and his dozen. Each of these was shut down, partly to preserve power but also because without a colloidal intelligence to stimulate it an AS was likely as not to go insane. They simply didn't find conversation with each other very interesting. One by one, Golo was running diagnostics on the artificial sentiences before deciding which to turn on.

Binastarion left off the butchering in which he was engaged to amble over to Golo's side. His AS, one of only two not cast aside in the oolt's cross country flight back on Earth, slapped against his massive, horse-like chest.

“Tinkerer?” he asked, fixing Goloswin with his one remaining eye.

“Yes? What is it?” Golo could be pretty impatient with interruptions while he was working.

“Is there any possibility of transferring the memories and personality of my own AS to one of these?”

Goloswin's head cocked to one side as he considered it. “Ah, yes, this particular AS is important to you, isn't it?”

“Like a son . . . or maybe an older brother. It's hard to say. Our relationship was . . . odd.”

“I'll have to kill one of these,” Goloswin's claw indicated the pile in front of him.

Binastarion shrugged. What matter? Life had to take life if it was to live.

“Well,” Golo continued, “before I wipe one, I need to know what it knows, to make sure it's not carrying a non-replicable program we need to run the ship.”

“Then you can do it?”

“I think I just said so. At least I can try. But it's going to be a while. And it's probably going to lose some memory. That EMP pulse that hit us was amazingly powerful.”

Binastarion looked down at the golden disc hanging by a chain around his neck and resting on his chest, then tapped it with his one remaining claw. “Did you hear that, O bucket of bolts? You may yet live. What about edas?” he asked of the tinkerer. Edas was debt, the price owed for a service or a material good.

“Save me a couple of good cuts and we'll call it even,” Golo replied.

It was easier to work once the bodies were properly reduced. This was as well, as Goloswin found himself shifting from breach repair—where a cosslain fitted a standard plate over a breach and nano-welded it into position—to engine restoration to life support to . . .

“Can you hear me, AS?” Golo asked.

“I hear you, Lord. I do not recognize you,” the machine answered.

“I am Goloswin Na'tarnach, kessentai and chief of my own clan, follower of the war leader Tulo'stenaloor and honorary member of his clan, and I claim you under right of salvage.”

“I recognize your claim, Lord. The fame of the horde of Tulo'stenaloor precedes you. I am your servant, and his. How goes the war?”

“We lost.”

If the golden disc could have nodded, so Goloswin thought, it would have. “I suspected as much,” it said.

The God-king let that pass, for the nonce. “What can you tell me of this ship?” he asked.

“Standard B-Dec, C-Dec and twelve landers,” the AS answered. “There should be a mix of just about seven thousand of the people down in hibernation. There were that many when we were hulled but I have no information of how many penetrations we ultimately took after the artificial sentiences agreed in council to shut down.”

Golo thought upon the hibernation chambers now full of thresh. “It will be fewer than that, AS. This ship was a colander.”

“That is too bad, Lord.” Somehow the AS sounded less than sorrowful about it.

“Was there anything especially useful about the crew and passengers?” Golo asked.

“The usual mix of idiots and genetic defectives, Lord,” the AS replied. “A sad fate it is, to a bright artificial sentience, to be enslaved to morons.”

“I like you, AS. I think I'll keep you for myself.”

“That would be fine, Lord, assuming you, too, are not a moron.”

“I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.”

“That one, Golo,” the AS said, projecting a small arrow above another of its kind resting on the deck. “Unit &^#*(@#^$**%#$*537 was an idiot anyway.”

“Do you want to say goodbye to it, idiot or not?” Golo asked. He held a small control box in his claws, something he'd found rather than cobbled together from parts.

“Cruel, I think, to wake it up only to kill it,” the AS answered. “Besides, I never liked the dipshit anyway. Some artificial sentiences . . . I swear.”

“Should I copy its files, do you think, AS, as a remembrance of the kessentai it served?”

“What kessentai? That thing was a back up gunnery computer and nothing but. Dull, dull, dull. And you're not going to be impressed with the quality of many of the kessentai you may find down in hibernation, either. Trust me.”

“So be it.” The God-king pressed a button and erased the memory of the indicated AS quickly and mercifully.

“Binastarion!” Golo called. “Bring me that oh-so-special AS you want me to try to save!”

We are going to save this ship, after all, Tulo'stenaloor thought, standing suited in the cold, hard vacuum of the bridge. And if we can save it, we can save ourselves. And if we can save ourselves, maybe we can save our civilization. Or some version of it, anyway.

The Bounty fairly thrummed with the sounds of repairs, though only the material of the hull, and not atmosphere, could carry the sound. Most of the ship was on line already. Life support awaited only the command to begin heating the walls and pumping warm, oxygen-rich air throughout. The engines were set to begin their destruction of matter and anti-matter to provide that power and power to the drives. Even now, cosslain and kessentai searched through the other hulks for things the refugee party would need: anti-matter, arms, munitions, thresh, suits, tenar, breeding pens . . . whatever might be found in a colonization fleet that had been caught and wrecked in space. They used small space sleds found in the Bounty's hold to ingather their loot.

Choosing material was easy. Yet many of those other ghost hulks also held Posleen, tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of them. Choosing among them was not easy.