Prophets

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Destiny

Nothing is so destructive as what we believe to be true.

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

—EDMUND Burke (1729-1797)

Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) Salmagundi-HD 101534

Nickolai stared at the man with the shotgun and tried to understand what was happening. Something—Mosasa, fate, or divine will—was conspiring to draw these threads around them. If what this man said was true, Mosasa knew of these colonies long ago. He would have known when they had been founded.

All of this, everything that was happening, could be the result of a centuries-old AI attempting to manipulate events.

He admitted as much, Nickolai thought, remembering the dialogue between Mosasa and Wahid when the Eclipse had just gotten underway.

“High levels of the Caliphate have known of them for quite some time, thus their interest in stopping this expedition. As to Dr. Dörner’s original question; the necessity of violence was required to draw out and neutralize the Caliphate’s somewhat limited resources on Bakunin. By doing so, we’ve ensured the safety of the expedition.”

“What’s to stop the Caliphate from just pouncing on us now?”

“We’re no longer their problem.Their public attacks, combined with my public advertisements for mercenaries to travel toward Xi Virginis, has alerted every intelligence agency with an asset on Bakunin that the Caliphate is hiding something in that region of space. There’s no secret for them to protect anymore. My small expedition means nothing when they need to rally whole fleets to lay claim to this sector of space before a rival does.”

At the time, Nickolai had been too preoccupied with his own ill-fated duty to Mr. Antonio to think deeply on the human politics involved. In retrospect, Mosasa had offhandedly taken credit for possibly starting a war.

It also raised the question of exactly what Mr. Antonio was trying to accomplish. At first, it was simply an internecine battle between the Fallen. Even when Mr. Antonio told him of Mosasa’s artificial nature, Nickolai never thought of the implications.

Mosasa was designed to anticipate, to see the forces of society arrayed around him. See them and manipulate them. He maneuvered the Caliphate into moving entire fleets . . .

How did he not anticipate what Nickolai did? How did he not know until Nickolai made his testament to the human priest? How did he not know about Mr. Antonio or his employers?

Who was Mr. Antonio?

Nicolai forced himself to pay attention to more immediate concerns, like the man with the gun. Fortunately, he had lowered the weapon. The way the man talked, Nickolai wondered if it was because he finally trusted they weren’t a threat, or because he was overcome with some sort of contagious fatalism.

The man talked of the founding of this colony, named Salmagundi, by refugees from a war on Bakunin 175 years ago. The colonists came from destroyed communes and bankrupt corporations and planets in upheaval during the Confederacy’s long, slow collapse. Apparently, they were talking to one of the founders of that exodus, a woman named Kari Tetsami, who should be over a century dead. The man in front of them was also a man named Flynn Jorgenson, who was born on this planet.

He explained the Hall of Minds.

The concept was beyond appalling. It left Nickolai shaken and numb. To strip someone’s mind? On some level it was worse than constructing an AI. Not only was it the arrogance of imitating life, it was imitating a specific life. And to accept that heretical copy into yourself—it was a sin so intimate and profound that Nickolai had trouble conceiving it.

The priests see the world of Men as Hell only because they haven’t come here.

Kugara asked what was going on here, with the scars of battle, the abandoned structures, and the crystal edifice in front of them.

Nickolai had thought the revelations could not become worse. Then he heard the man who was a 175-year-old woman answer Kugara.

They stood mere meters from the ultimate sin of the Fallen, the most dangerous and vile presumption of God’s power. The geometric crystals glinting in the light hid a hive of self-replicating machines whose sole purpose was to consume matter and remake it in its own image. This was the demon that tempted man into his final fall, that spoke the seductive whispers that a man could equal God Himself, symbol of the hubris that had cost a billion souls.

It was a sin that the Fallen could never erase, even with centuries of turning away from such heresies. Even the colonists here—who gave themselves over to a hideously intimate evil—even they had seen the wisdom of trying to destroy this.

Kugara stared at the crystal forms, and Nickolai felt her shudder against his arm. “What is that doing here?”

“It came from Xi Virginis.”

“What?”

“It ran into something en route to the other end of the galaxy and was severely damaged,” Flynn/Tetsami said. “It can’t hold much of a conversation, but it is worried that whatever damaged it is coming here.”

“What damaged it?” Kugara asked.

Flynn/Tetsami shook his head. “It isn’t quite clear on what it is. It called it ‘The Other,’ and it seems afraid of it—”

Nickolai found his voice. “How is it that you speak to it?” The words were almost a growl.

“It can form a—robot? cyborg?—something the size and shape of a human being. It talked to us a while, then it reabsorbed itself. I think it’s trying to fix some sort of damage. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, or anyone else for that matter.”

“It should be destroyed,” Nickolai whispered. He spoke in a register so low that the others didn’t seem to hear him.

“What did it say about this ‘Other’?” Kugara asked.

Flynn/Tetsami shook his head. “It described it as a cloud, sometimes as a virus, sometimes as a complete abstraction: ‘the change without consent.’ What I could understand is that what I talked to was the remains of the autopilot for the Protean probe. The probe actually changed course to investigate some spectral anomalies happening to Xi Virginis. By the time it got within a light-year or so, the whole solar system was gone.”

“It knows what happened?”

“The Other,” Flynn/Tetsami said. “The Other somehow consumed—”

Nickolai heard the aircraft first. He raised his head to look at the sky. In a few moments, the two others followed his lead, looking up.

“One aircraft,” Nickolai said.

“Mr. Shane? We need confirmation to detonate the nuke.”

Alexander looked at the security footage. Flynn and the offworlders were looking up.

“Mr. Shane, sir?”

The Confederacy, or what was left of it, was about to take Salmagundi. He saw no hope of resistance. Seventy-five ships now.

They sent that many this far. He looked at the security camera feed of the crystalline invader. He wondered if it was the invader they pursued. He knew human history before the founding of Salmagundi. He knew the taboos against heretical technologies that would condemn the Hall of Minds. He also knew that Flynn’s discovery would be an order of magnitude worse in the eyes of the fleet descending upon them.

The two offworlders he saw in the security footage, they were clearly an advance team. Diplomats or spies, it didn’t matter—they belonged to the fleet entering orbit. How would the newcomers accept their loss? Could he afford to provoke them?

“Sir?”

In the past, the Confederacy had blown the crust off of planets infected by the kind of nanotechnology that lived in the egg Flynn Jorgenson had found. Just its presence here was a provocation.

The Hall of Minds was taboo to them and might be destroyed by an invasion. But intelligent, self-replicating nanotech? That was an abomination that might cost the lives of everyone on this planet.

It wasn’t really a choice.

“Sir?”

Alexander rubbed his fingers across the tattoos on his brow and said, “Detonate the nuke.”