Endymion

35

Father Captain de Soya uses the power of the papal diskey in ways he has never before attempted.

Mare Infinitus Station Three-twenty-six Mid-littoral, where the hawking mat was discovered, is declared a crime zone and put under martial law. De Soya brings in Pax troops and ships from the floating city of St. Therese and places all of the former Pax garrison and the fishing guests under house arrest. When St. Therese’s governing prelate, Bishop Melandriano, protests this highhandedness and argues the limits of the papal diskey, de Soya goes to the planetary Governor, Archbishop Jane Kelley. The archbishop bows to the papal diskey and silences Melandriano under threat of excommunication.

Appointing young Lieutenant Sproul as his adjutant and liaison during the investigation, de Soya brings in Pax forensic experts and top investigators from St. Therese and the other large city platforms to carry out the crime-scene studies. Truthtell and other drugs are administered to Captain C. Dobbs Fowl—who is being held under arrest in the station’s brig—the other members of the former Pax garrison there, and all the fishermen who had been present.

Within a few days it becomes obvious that Captain Fowl, the late Lieutenant Belius, and many of the other officers and men of this remote platform had been conspiring with area poachers to allow illegal catches of local game fish, to steal Pax equipment—including one submersible that had been reported as sunk by rebel fire—and to extort money from fishing guests. None of this interests Father Captain de Soya. He wants to know precisely what happened on that evening two standard months earlier.

Forensic evidence mounts. The blood and tissue on the hawking mat are DNA tested and transmitted back to the Pax records section in St. Therese and at the orbital Pax base. Two distinct strains of blood are found: the majority is positively identified as the DNA pattern of Lieutenant Belius; the second is unidentified in Mare Infinitus Pax records, despite the fact that every Pax citizen on the sea world has been typed and recorded.

“So how did Belius’s blood end up on the flying carpet?” asks Sergeant Gregorius. “According to everyone’s testimony under Truthtell, Belius was knocked in the drink long before the fellow they captured tried to escape on the mat.”

De Soya nods and steeples his fingers. He has turned the former director’s office into his command center, and the platform is very crowded with three times its former population now aboard. Three large Pax Sea Navy frigates are at sea anchor off the platform, and two of them are combat submersibles. The former skimmer deck is full of Pax aircraft, and engineers have been brought in to repair and extend the thopter deck. Just this morning de Soya has ordered another three ships to the area. Bishop Melandriano transmits his written protests at the mounting costs at least twice a day; Father Captain de Soya ignores them.

“I think our unknown stopped to pull the lieutenant out of the… how did you call it, Sergeant?… out of the drink. They struggled. The unknown was injured or killed. Belius tried to make it back to the station. Fowl and the others killed him by mistake.”

“Aye,” says Gregorius, “that’s the best scenario I’ve heard.” In the hours since the DNA results were transmitted back from St. Therese, they had woven many others—plots with poachers, conspiracies between the unknown and Lieutenant Belius, Captain Fowl murdering former coconspirators. This theory is the simplest.

“It means that our unknown is one of those traveling with the girl,” says de Soya. “And he has a merciful—if stupid—side to him.”

“Or he could have been a poacher,” says Gregorius. “We’ll never know.”

De Soya taps his fingertips together and looks up. “Why not, Sergeant?”

“Well, Captain, the evidence is all down there, ain’t it, sir?” he says, jerking a thumb toward the surging violet sea outside the windows. “The navy boys here say its ten thousand fathoms deep or more—that’s almost twenty thousand meters of water, sir. Any bodies there have been eaten by the fishes, sir. And if he was a poacher who got away… well, we’ll never know. And if he was an offworlder… well, there aren’t any central Pax DNA records… We’d have to search the files on several hundred worlds. We’ll never find him.”

Father Captain de Soya drops his hands and smiles thinly. “This is one of those rare times where you are wrong, Sergeant. Watch.”

In the next week de Soya has every poacher within a thousand-kilometer radius rounded up and questioned under Truthtell. The rounding up involves two dozen sea-naval ships and over eight thousand Pax personnel. The cost is enormous. Bishop Melandriano becomes apoplectic and flies to Station Three-twenty-six Mid-littoral to stop the madness. Father Captain de Soya places the cleric under arrest and has him flown to a remote monastery nine thousand kilometers away, near the polar ice caps.

De Soya also decides to search the ocean bottom.

“You won’t find anything, sir,” says Lieutenant Sproul. “There are so many predators down there that nothing organic makes it a hundred fathoms deep, much less to the bottom… and according to our soundings this week, that’s twelve thousand fathoms. Besides, there are only two submersibles on Mare Infinitus that can operate at that depth.”

“I know,” says de Soya. “I’ve ordered them here. They will arrive tomorrow with the frigate Passion of Christ.”

For once Lieutenant Sproul is speechless.

De Soya smiles. “You’re aware, aren’t you, son, that Lieutenant Belius was a born-again Christian? And his cruciform was not recovered?”

Sproul’s mouth hangs open for a moment. “Yessir… I mean… yes, but… sir, to be resurrected, I mean… don’t they need to find the body intact, sir?”

“Not at all, Lieutenant,” says Father Captain de Soya. “Merely a good-sized segment of the cross we all bear. Many a good Catholic has been resurrected from a few centimeters of intact cruciform and a bit of flesh that can be DNA typed and grown to order.”

Sproul shakes his head. “But, sir… it’s been over nine Big Tides, sir. There’s not a square millimeter of Lieutenant Belius or his cruciform left, sir. That’s a giant feeding tank out there, sir.”

De Soya walks to the window. “Perhaps, Lieutenant. Perhaps. But we owe it to our fellow Christian to make every attempt, do we not? Besides, if Lieutenant Belius were to be granted the miracle of resurrection, he has to stand charges for theft, treason, and attempted murder, doesn’t he?”

Using the most advanced techniques available to them, the local forensic experts are available to lift unidentified fingerprints from a mess-hall coffee cup in spite of the many washings the cup has undergone over the past two months. Of the thousands of latent prints, all are laboriously identified as belonging to garrison troops or visiting fisherman except for this one reconstructed print. It is set aside with unidentified DNA evidence.

“During the Web days,” says Dr. Holmer Ryum, the chief forensic effort, “the megadatasphere would have put us in touch with central Hegemony files within seconds via the fatline. We could get a match almost instantly.”

“If we had some cheese, we could have a ham-and-cheese sandwich,” replies Father Captain de Soya, “if we had some ham.”

“What?” says Dr. Ryum.

“Never mind,” says de Soya. “I expect to have a match within days.”

Dr. Ryum is puzzled. “How, Father Captain? We’ve checked the planetary data banks. Run checks against every poacher you’ve captured… and I have to say, there’s never been a mass arrest like this on Mare Infinitus before. You’re upsetting a delicate balance of corruption that has existed here for centuries.”

De Soya rubs the bridge of his nose. He has not slept much in the past weeks. “I am not interested in delicate balances of corruption, Doctor.”

“I understand,” says Ryum. “But I fail to understand how you can expect a match within days. Neither the Church nor Pax Central has files of all the citizens on various Pax worlds, much less of the Outback and Ouster areas…”

“All Pax worlds keep their own records,” de Soya says quietly. “Of baptisms and cross sacraments. Of marriages and deaths. Military and police records.”

Dr. Ryum opens his hands in helplessness. “But where would you start?”

“Where the odds are the best in finding him,” answers Father Captain de Soya.

Meanwhile, nothing is found of the hapless Lieutenant Belius within the six-hundred-fathom depths to which the two deep-sea submersibles agree to descend. Hundreds of rainbow sharks are stunned to the surface and the contents of their stomachs analyzed. Still no Belius, neither remnants of him nor of his cruciform. Thousands of other sea scavengers are harvested within a two-hundred-klick radius, and bits of two poachers are identified in gullets, but no sign of Belius or the stranger. A funeral mass is held on Station Three-twenty-six Mid-littoral for the lieutenant, who is said to have died the true death and found true immortality.

De Soya orders the deep-sea submersible captains to go deeper, looking for artifacts. The captains refuse.

“Why?” demands the priest-captain. “I brought you here because your machines can go to the bottom. Why won’t you?”

“The Lamp Mouths,” says the senior of the two captains. “To search, we’ll have to use lights. To six hundred fathoms, our sonar and deep radar can detect them rising and we could beat them to the surface. Below that, and we wouldn’t have a chance. We won’t go deeper.”

“You will go deeper,” says Father Captain de Soya, the papal diskey glowing against the black of his cassock.

The senior captain takes a step closer. “You can arrest me, shoot me, excommunicate me… I won’t take my men and machine down to certain death. You haven’t seen a Lamp Mouth, Father.”

De Soya sets a friendly hand on the captain’s shoulder. “I will not arrest, shoot, or excommunicate you, Captain. And I will see a Lamp Mouth soon. Perhaps more than one.”

The captain does not understand.

“I’ve ordered in three more of the Ocean Fleet’s attack submarines,” says de Soya. “We are going to find, flush, and kill every Lamp Mouth and any other threatening ’canth within five hundred klicks. When you dive, the area will be completely safe.”

The senior captain looks at the other deep-sea submersible captain and then back to de Soya. Both of the captains appear to be in shock. “Father… Captain… sir… do you know how much a Lamp Mouth is worth? To the offworld sport fishermen and the big factories at Therese… sir.”

“About fifteen thousand Mare-Eye seidons,” says de Soya. “That’s about thirty-five thousand Pax florins. Almost fifty thousand Mercantilus marks. Each.” De Soya smiles. “And since you two will receive thirty percent finders’ fees for locating the Mouths for the navy, I wish you good hunting.”

The two deep-submersible captains hurry out the door.

For the first time De Soya sends someone else off in the Raphael to run his errands. Sergeant Gregorius travels alone in the archangel, carrying the DNA and fingerprint information, as well as threads from the hawking mat.

“Remember,” says de Soya over tightbeam from the platform a few minutes before Raphael spins up to total quantum state, “there’s still a heavy Pax presence on Hyperion and at least two torchships in-system at all times. They will bring you to the capital of St. Joseph’s for a proper resurrection.”

Lashed into his acceleration couch, Sergeant Gregorius only grunts. His face looks relaxed and calm on camera, despite his imminent death.

“Three days there, of course,” continues de Soya, “and—I would think—no more than one day to go through the files. And then you return.”

“Got it, Captain,” says Gregorius. “I won’t waste any time in any Jacktown bars.”

“Jacktown?” says de Soya. “Oh, yes… the old nickname for the capital. Well, Sergeant, if you want to spend your one real evening on Hyperion in a bar, be my guest. It’s been a dry few months with me.”

Gregorius grins. The clock says thirty seconds before quantum leap and his painful extinction. “I ain’t complainin’, Captain.”

“Very good,” says de Soya. “Have a good trip. Oh… and Sergeant?”

“Yessir?” Ten seconds.

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

There is no response. Suddenly there is nothing on the other end of the coherent tachyon tightbeam. Raphael has made its quantum leap.

Five lamp mouths are tracked and killed by the navy. De Soya flies to each carcass in his command thopter.

“Good Lord, they’re larger than I could have imagined,” he says to Lieutenant Sproul when they arrive above the spot where the first one floats.

The grub-white beast is easily three times the size of the station platform: a mass of eyestalks, gaping maws, fibrillating gill slits each the size of the thopter, pulsating tendrils extending hundreds of meters, dangling antennae each carrying a cold-light “lantern” of great brilliance—even out here in the daylight—and mouths, many mouths, each large enough to swallow a fleet submarine. As de Soya watches, the harvesting crews are already flocking over the pressure-exploded carcass, sawing off tendrils and eyestalks and cutting the white meat to portable cubes before the hot sun spoils it all.

Satisfied that the area is cleared of Mouths and other deadly ’canths, the two deep-dive captains take their submersibles twelve, thousand fathoms down. There, amid forests of tube worms the size of Old Earth redwood trees, they find an amazing array of old wrecks-poacher submersibles crushed to the size of small suitcases by the pressure, one naval frigate that has been missing for more than a century. They also find boots—dozens of boots.

“It’s the tanning process,” says Lieutenant Sproul to de Soya as the two watch the monitors. “It’s an oddity, but it was true on Old Earth as well. Some of the oldest deep-sea salvage operations—a surface ship called the Titanic, for instance—never turned up bodies, the sea’s too hungry for that, but lots of boots. Something in the tanning process of leather discourages sea critters there… and here.”

“Bring them up,” commands de Soya over the umbilical link.

“The boots?” comes back the submersible captain’s voice. “All of them?”

“All of them,” says de Soya.

The monitors show a profusion of junk on the seabed: things lost by the platform station crew over almost two centuries of carelessness, personal belongings of the drowned poachers and sailors, metal and plastic garbage tossed by the fishermen and others. Most items are corroded and misshapen by deep-sea crustaceans and unimaginable pressure, but a few are new enough and tough enough to be identified.

“Bag those and send them up,” says de Soya as they encounter shiny objects that might be a knife, a fork, a belt buckle, a…

“What’s that?” demands de Soya.

“What?” says the captain of the deepest submersible. He is watching the remote handlers rather than his monitors.

“That shiny thing… It looks like a handgun.”

The monitor shifts its view as the submersible turns. The powerful searchlights track, return, and illuminate the object as the camera zooms in. “It is a handgun,” comes the captain’s voice. “Still clean. Damaged some by pressure, but basically intact.” De Soya can hear the click of the single-frame imager capturing this from the monitor. “I’ll collect it,” says the captain.

De Soya has the urge to add “carefully”—but does not speak. His years as torchship captain have taught him to let his people do their jobs. He watches as the grapple arm appears on the monitor and the remote handler gently lifts the shiny object.

“It could be Lieutenant Belius’s flechette pistol,” says Sproul. “It went over with him and hasn’t been recovered yet.”

“This is quite a bit farther out,” muses de Soya, watching the image shift and change on the monitor.

“The currents here are powerful, weird,” says the young officer. “But I have to admit that it didn’t look like a flechette pistol. Too… I don’t know… squarish.”

“Yes,” says de Soya. The underwater searchlights are flickering over the encrusted hull of a submersible that has been buried down there for decades. De Soya is thinking of his years in space and how empty that different unknown is from any ocean on any world, teeming with life and history. The priest-captain is thinking about the Ousters and their strange attempt to adapt themselves to space the way these tube worms and ’canths and bottom-hugging species have adapted themselves to eternal darkness and terrible pressures. Perhaps, he is thinking, the Ousters understand something about humanity’s future that we in the Pax have only denied.

Heresy. De Soya shakes away the thoughts and looks at his young liaison officer. “We’ll know what it is soon enough,” he says. “They’re bringing this load up within the hour.”

Gregorius returns four days after his departure. He is dead. Raphael sends out its sad beacon, a torchship rendezvouses with it twenty light-minutes out, and the sergeant’s body is removed and brought to the resurrection chapel at St. Therese. De Soya does not wait for the man’s revival. He orders the courier pouch brought to him at once.

Pax records on Hyperion have positively identified the DNA taken from the hawking mat, and have also matched the partial fingerprint on the cup. Both belong to the same man: Raul Endymion, born A.D. 3099 on planet Hyperion, not baptized; enlisted in the Hyperion Home Guard in Thomas-month of the year A.D. 3115, fought with the 23rd Mechanized Infantry Regiment during Ursus Uprising—three commendations for bravery, including one for rescuing a squadmate while under fire—stationed at Fort Benjing in the South Talon region of the continent of Aquila for eight standard months, served out the remainder of his time at Kans River Station 9 on Aquila, patrolling the jungle there, guarding against rebel terrorist activity near the fiberplastic plantations. Final rank, sergeant. Mustered out (honorable discharge) on Lentmonth 15, A.D. 3119, whereabouts unknown until less than ten standard months ago, Ascensionmonth 23, A.D. 3126, when he was arrested, tried, and convicted in Port Romance (continent of Aquila) for the murder of one M. Dabil Herrig, a born-again Christian from Renaissance Vector. Records showed that Raul Endymion refused offers to accept the cross and was executed by deathwand one week after the arrest, on the 30th of Ascensionmonth, A.D. 3126. His body was disposed of at sea. The death certificate and autopsy reports were notarized by the local Pax Inspector General.

The next day latent prints on the crushed, ancient .45-caliber automatic pistol brought up from the ocean floor are matched: Raul Endymion and Lieutenant Belius.

Bits of thread from the hawking mat are not so easily identified by Hyperion Pax records, but the human clerk doing the search included a handwritten note that such a mat figures prominently in the legendary Cantos composed by a poet who had lived on Hyperion until a century or so ago.

After Sergeant Gregorius is resurrected, rests a few hours, and flies to Station Three-twenty-six Mid-littoral to report, de Soya tells him the various findings. He also informs the sergeant that the two dozen Pax engineers who have been swarming over the farcaster portal for three weeks report only that there is no sign that the ancient arch had been activated, despite sightings of a bright flash by several fishermen on the platform that night. The engineers also report that there is no way to get inside the ancient Core-constructed arch, nor to tell where—if anywhere—someone might have been transported through it.

“Same as Renaissance V…” says Gregorius. “But at least you have some idea of who helped the girl escape.”

“Possibly,” says de Soya.

“He came a long way to die here,” says the sergeant.

Father Captain de Soya leans back in his chair. “Did he die here, Sergeant?”

Gregorius has no answer.

Finally de Soya says, “I think we’re finished on Mare Infinitus. Or will be in a day or two.”

The sergeant nods. Through the long bank of windows here in the director’s office, he can see the bright glow that precedes the moonrise. “Where to next, Captain? Back on the old search pattern?”

De Soya is also watching the east, waiting for the giant orange disk to appear above the darkened horizon. “I’m not sure, Sergeant. Let’s get things tidied up here, Captain Fowl handed over to Pax Justice in Orbit Seven, and soothe Bishop Melandriano’s feathers…”

“If we can,” says Sergeant Gregorius.

“If we can,” agrees de Soya. “Then we’ll pay our respects to Archbishop Kelley, get back to Raphael, and decide where to jump next. It may be time for us to come up with some theories on where this child is headed and try to get there first, not just follow Raphael’s shortest-line pattern.”

“Yes, sir,” says Gregorius. He salutes, goes to the door, and hesitates there a moment. “And do you have a theory, sir? Based on just the few things we’ve found here?”

De Soya is watching the three moons rise. He does not turn his chair around to face his sergeant as he says, “Perhaps. Just perhaps.”