Endymion

43

In the middle of his explanation of the real reason for de Soya’s mission, Cardinal Lourdusamy leans back in his throne and waves his plump hand toward the distant ceiling. “What do you think of this room, Federico?”

Father Captain de Soya, poised to hear something vitally important, can only blink and lift his face. This great hall is as ornate as the others in the Borgia Apartment—more ornate, he realizes, for the colors are livelier, more vibrant—and then he sees the difference: these tapestries and frescoes are more current, depicting Pope Julius VI receiving the cruciform from an angel of the Lord, another showing God reaching down—in an echo of Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel—to confer the Sacrament of Resurrection on Julius. He sees the evil antipope, Teilhard I, being banished by an archangel with a flaming sword. Other ceiling images and wall tapestries proclaim the glory of the first great century of the Church’s own resurrection and Pax expansion.

“The original ceiling in here collapsed in A.D. 1500,” rumbles Cardinal Lourdusamy, “almost killing Pope Alexander. Most of the original decoration was destroyed. Leo the Tenth had it replaced after the death of Julius the Second, but the work was inferior to the original. His Holiness commissioned the new work one hundred thirty standard years ago. Notice the central fresco—it is by Halaman Ghena of Renaissance Vector. The Pax Ascending Tapestry—there—is by Shiroku. The architectural restoration was by the cream of Pacem’s own artisans, including Peter Baines Cort-Bilgruth.”

De Soya nods politely, having no clue as to how this relates to what they were discussing. Perhaps the Cardinal, as is true of many men and women of power, has become used to digressing at will because his underlings never protest the loss of focus.

As if reading the priest-captain’s mind, Lourdusamy chuckles and sets his soft hand on the leather surface of the table. “I mention this for a reason, Federico. Would you agree that the Church and Pax have brought an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity to humanity?”

De Soya pauses. He has read history but is not sure if this era has been unprecedented. And as for “peace”… memories of burning orbital forests and ravaged worlds still haunt his dreams, “The Church and its Pax allies have certainly improved the situation for most of the former Web worlds I have visited, Your Excellency,” he says. “And no one can deny the unprecedented gift of resurrection.”

Lourdusamy’s throat rumbles with amusement. “The saints save us… a diplomat!” The Cardinal rubs his thin upper lip. “Yes, yes, you are perfectly correct, Federico. Every age has its shortcomings, and ours includes a constant struggle against the Ousters and an even more urgent struggle to establish the Reign of Our Lord and Savior in the hearts of all men and women. But, as you see”—his hand gestures once again toward the frescoes and tapestries—“we are in the midst of a Renaissance every bit as real as that imbued with the spirit of the early Renaissance, which gave us the Chapel of Nicholas the Fifth and the other wonders you saw on the way in. And this Renaissance is truly one of the spirit, Federico…”

De Soya waits.

“This… abomination… will destroy all that,” says Lourdusamy, his voice deadly serious now. “As I said to you one year ago, this is not a child we seek, it is a virus. And we know now whence that virus comes.”

De Soya listens.

“His Holiness has had one of his visions,” the Cardinal says in a voice so soft, it is just above a whisper. “You are aware, Federico, that the Holy Father is often visited by dreams granted by God?”

“I have heard rumors, Your Excellency.” This magical aspect of the Church has always had the least appeal to de Soya. He waits.

Lourdusamy waves his hand as if brushing away the sillier rumors. “It is true that His Holiness has received vital revelations after much prayer, much fasting, and exhibiting the utmost humility. Such a revelation was the source of our knowledge on when and where the child would appear on Hyperion. His Holiness was correct to the moment, was he not?”

De Soya bows his head.

“And it was one of these sacred revelations which prompted the Holy Father to ask for you in this service, Federico. He saw that your fate and the salvation of our Church and society were inextricably entwined.”

Father Captain de Soya can only stare without blinking.

“And now,” rumbles Cardinal Lourdusamy, “the threat to the future of humankind has been revealed in much greater detail.” The Cardinal rises to his feet, but when de Soya and Monsignor Oddi hurry to stand, the huge man waves them back to their chairs. De Soya sits and watches the giant mass of red and white move through the pools of light in the dark room, the flesh of the Cardinal’s cheeks gleaming, his small eyes lost in shadows from the overhead spots.

“This is, indeed, the AI TechnoCore’s great attempt at our destruction, Federico. The same mechanical evil which destroyed Old Earth, which preyed upon humanity’s minds and souls through their parasitic farcasters, and which prompted the Ouster attack that presaged the Fall… the same Evil is at work here. The cybrid offspring, this… Aenea… is their instrument. That is why the farcasters have worked for her when they admit no one else. That is why the Shrike demon slayed thousands of our people and soon may slay millions—perhaps billions. Unless stopped, this… succubus… will succeed in returning us to the Rule of the Machine.”

De Soya watches the great red form of the .Cardinal move from light to dark. None of this is new.

Lourdusamy stops his pacing. “But His Holiness now knows that this cybrid spawn is not only the agent of the Core, Federico… she is the instrument of the Machine God.”

De Soya understands. When the Inquisition had queried him about the Cantos, his insides had turned to jelly at the thought of punishment for having read the banned poem. But even this book on the Index admitted that the elements of the AI Core had been working for centuries to produce an Ultimate Intelligence—a cybernetic deity that would spread its power back through time to dominate the universe. Indeed, both the Cantos and official Church history acknowledged the battle across time between this false god and Our Lord. The Keats cybrid—cybrids, actually, since there had been a replacement after one sect of the Core destroyed the first one in the megasphere—had been falsely represented as a candidate for the messiah of the “human UI”—that blasphemous Teilhardian concept of an evolved human god—in the prohibited Cantos. That poem had talked about empathy being the key to human spiritual evolution. The Church had corrected that, pointing out that obeying God’s Will was the source of revelation and salvation.

“Through revelation,” Lourdusamy says, “His Holiness knows where the cybrid spawn and her dupes are at this very moment.”

De Soya sits forward. “Where, Your Excellency?”

“On the abandoned ice world of Sol Draconi Septem,” rumbles the Cardinal. “His Holiness is quite clear on that. And he is quite clear on the consequences if she is not stopped.” Lourdusamy walks around the long desk and stands next to the priest-captain. De Soya looks up to see gleaming red, brilliant white, the tiny eyes boring into him. “She runs now to find allies,” comes the Cardinal’s sincere growl. “Allies to help in the destruction of the Pax and the desecration of the Church. To this moment she has been like a deadly virus in an empty region—a potential danger, but containable. Soon, if she escapes us now, she shall grow to maturity and full power… the full power of the Evil One.”

Above the Cardinal’s gleaming shoulder, de Soya can see the writhing figures of the ceiling fresco.

“Every one of the old farcaster portals will open simultaneously,” rumbles the red form. “The Shrike demon… in a million iterations… will step through to slaughter Christians. The Ousters will be empowered by TechnoCore weapons and terrible AI technologies. Already they have used subcellular machinery to make themselves something more and less than human. Already they have traded their immortal souls for the machinery to adapt to space, to eat sunlight, to exist like… like plants in darkness. Their war-making abilities will be augmented a thousandfold by the Core’s secret engines. That hideous strength will not be denied, even by the Church. Billions will die the true death, their cruciforms torn from them, their souls ripped out of their bodies like beating hearts from living chests. Tens of billions will die. The Ousters will burn their way across the Pax, laying waste like the Vandals and Visigoths, destroying Pacem, the Vatican, and everything we know. They will kill peace. They will deny life and desecrate our principle of the dignity of the individual.”

De Soya sits and waits.

“This does not have to happen,” says Secretariat Cardinal Lourdusamy. “His Holiness prays every day that it will not happen. But these are perilous times, Federico… for the Church, for the Pax, for the future of the race of man. He has seen what may be and has dedicated all our lives and sacred honors as Princes of the Church to preventing the birth of such a terrible reality.”

De Soya looks up as the Cardinal leans closer.

“I must reveal something to you at this moment, Federico, which billions of the Faithful will not learn for months… Today, this hour, at the Interstellar Synod of Bishops… His Holiness is announcing a Crusade.”

“A Crusade?” repeats de Soya. Even the unflappable Monsignor Oddi makes a low noise in his throat.

“A Crusade against the Ouster menace,” rumbles Cardinal Lourdusamy. “For centuries we have defended ourselves—the Great Wall is a defensive strategem, putting Christian bodies and ships and lives in the way of the Ouster aggression—but as of this day, by the grace of God, the Church and Pax will go on the offensive.”

“How?” says de Soya. He knows that the battles already rage in the no-man’s-land of gray space between the Pax and Ouster regions, filling thousands of parsecs with fleet lunge and parry, thrust and retreat. But with the time-debt—the maximum voyage from Pacem to the farthest reaches of the Great Wall is two years of shiptime, more than twenty years of time-debt—there can be little or no coordination of either offense or defense.

Lourdusamy smiles grimly and answers. “Even as we speak, every world in the Pax and Protectorate is being asked… commanded… to devote planetary resources to build one great ship… one ship for each world.”

“We have thousands of ships…” begins the priest-captain and stops.

“Yes,” purrs the Cardinal. “These ships will use the new archangel technology. But they will not be like your Raphael—a lightly armed courier—but the deadliest battle cruisers this spiral arm has ever seen. Capable of translating anywhere in the galaxy in less time than it takes a dropship to rise to orbit. Each ship named after its homeworld, each staffed by devoted Pax officers such as yourself—men and women willing to suffer death and receive resurrection—and each capable of destroying entire Swarms.”

De Soya nods. “Is this the Holy Father’s answer to his revelation of the child’s threat, Your Excellency?”

Lourdusamy moves back around the desk and settles into his high-backed throne as if exhausted. “In part, Federico. In part. These new craft will begin to be built within the next standard decade. The technology is difficult… very difficult. Meanwhile, the cybrid succubus continues to circulate disease like a spreading virus. That part depends upon you—you and your enhanced crew of virus seekers.”

“Enhanced?” repeats de Soya. “May Sergeant Gregorius and Corporal Kee still travel with me?”

“Yes,” rumbles the Cardinal. “They have already been assigned.”

“Where does the enhancement come in?” asks de Soya, dreading the possibility that a Cardinal from the Holy Office will be assigned to his mission.

Cardinal Lourdusamy opens his fat fingers as if lifting the lid of a treasure box. “Just one addition to your crew, Federico.”

“An officer of the Church?” asks the priest-captain, wondering if the papal diskey is to be passed to a different Commander.

Lourdusamy shakes his head. His great jowls flow with the movement. “A simple warrior, Father Captain de Soya. A new breed of warrior, bred for the renewed Army of Christ.”

De Soya does not understand. It sounds as if the Church is answering Ouster nanotechnology with biomodifications of its own. That would defy all of the Church doctrine de Soya has been taught.

Once again, the Cardinal seems to read the priest-captain’s thoughts. “Nothing like that, Federico. Some… augmentations… and much unique training from a new branch of the Pax military, but still totally human… and Christian.”

“One trooper?” says de Soya, mystified.

“One warrior,” says Lourdusamy. “Not within the Pax Fleet chain of command. The first member of the elite Legions which shall spearhead the Crusade that His Holiness will announce today.”

De Soya rubs his chin. “And will he be under my direct command, as Gregorius and Kee have been?”

“Of course, of course,” rumbles Lourdusamy, sitting back and folding his hands on his ample stomach. “There will be just one change, as was deemed necessary by His Holiness in council with the Holy Office. She will have her own papal diskey, for separate authority on military decisions and those actions deemed necessary for the preservation of the Church.”

“She,” repeats de Soya, trying hard to understand this. If both he and this mystery “warrior” have equal papal authority, how can they make decisions at all? Every aspect of their quest for the child so far has had military facets and implications. Every decision he has made has been dedicated to the preservation of the Church. It would be better if he were simply dismissed and replaced rather than this false sharing of power.

Before he can articulate this, Cardinal Lourdusamy leans forward and speaks as softly as the bass rumble will allow. “Federico, His Holiness still sees you involved in this… and primarily responsible. But Our Lord has revealed a terrible necessity which the Holy Father seeks to take from your hands, knowing you as the ultimate man of conscience you are.”

“Terrible necessity?” says de Soya, knowing with an immediate and total sinking feeling exactly what it is.

Lourdusamy’s features are all bright light and deep shadow as he leans across the desk. “The cybrid-spawned succubus must be terminated. Destroyed. The virus eradicated from the Body of Christ as the first step toward the corrective surgery which is to come.”

De Soya counts to eight before speaking. “I find the child,” he says. “This… warrior… kills her.”

“Yes,” says Lourdusamy. There is no discussion of whether Father Captain de Soya will accept this modified mission. Born-again Christians, priests, Jesuits in particular, and Pax Fleet officers do not quibble when the Holy Father and the Holy Mother Church assign them duties.

“When do I meet this warrior, Your Excellency?” asks de Soya.

“The Raphael will translate to Sol Draconi System this very afternoon,” pipes up Monsignor Oddi from his place behind and to the left of de Soya. “Your new crew member is already aboard.”

“May I ask her name and rank?” says de Soya, turning to look at the tall Monsignor.

Secretary Cardinal Simon Augustino Lourdusamy answers. “She has no formal rank as of yet, Father Captain de Soya. Eventually she will be an officer in the newly formed Legions of the Crusade. As of now, you and your troopers may refer to her by her name.”

De Soya waits.

“Which is Nemes,” rumbles the Cardinal. “Rhadamanth Nemes.” His small eyes flick to Lucas Oddi. The Monsignor stands. De Soya hurries to his feet. The audience is obviously at an end.

Lourdusamy’s pudgy hand rises in a three-fingered benediction. De Soya bows his head.

“May Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, keep you and preserve you and give you success on this most important of voyages. In the name of Jesus we ask this.”

“Amen,” murmurs Monsignor Lucas Oddi.

“Amen,” says de Soya.