Death of a Starship (3 page)

The images on the virteo flickered
again, the two curves overlaying with a potentially meaningful
degree of fidelity. Menard found himself interested despite his
skepticism about the meeting.

Sister Pelias continued. “What is
significant is how these two map together. We’re seeing at least
five other indicators trending on similar curves. In other words,
gentlemen, the ghosts we’ve been tracking in our machines all these
years are lining up. I can’t tell you what it means. Quite probably
it signifies nothing whatsoever, but we must attend to the
possibility.”

Bishop Russe cleared his throat.
“Thank you, Sister Pelias.” His dry tones managed to make her name
into something insulting. “Chor Episcopos Menard has finally
arranged to join us.” Jonah winced at that. “Perhaps Father
Bainbridge would care to enlighten the Very Reverend Jonah as to
what his Signals Analysis team has uncovered.”

It went on for several hours like
that, elusive clues and strange possibilities which almost made
sense when you tried to match them up. Nothing as strong as Sister
Pelias’ data, tenuous as even that was. Nonetheless, Menard was
itching to talk privately to her, while the Bishop continued to
drag them through the whole formal protocol of the meeting. That
suggested something important was up, something that Russe wanted
to have his backside covered for in the Bureau’s records. This
whole lights-and-orbit show was for the future report-reading
benefit of someone higher up in the Grand Ekumenical Security
Directorate.

When the meeting finally broke up,
Menard managed to duck Russe and follow Sister Pelias out into the
hallway. “Magda,” he said, catching up to her.

“
Jonah,” she said. “Nice to see
you again.”

Sister Pelias was a slim woman worn
through by time. Menard had never seen her without her wimple, so
he had no idea about her hair, but her eyebrows were a pale gold
shot with silver. She wore no tattoo at all, unusual for someone
with any seniority in the hierarchy. But then, a woman anywhere in
the hierarchy outside the female orders was unusual.

“
What do you really think,” he
asked as they walked along, air dampers clicking and thumping above
them, pumping out a vaguely moldy breeze. “About your section’s
findings?”

“
I think I could correlate the
price of eggs in the local marketplace with the surface
temperatures on Jojoba if I wished to. Do these data sets mean
anything?” She shrugged, a sort of odd movement as she walked. “I
don’t know. It is our job to look for significance, and so we see
significance. Whether what we discover corresponds to reality,
well, that is someone else’s problem.”

“
My problem, I’m afraid,” said
Menard.

“
Well, yes. Pareidolia is wired
deep into human perception. We see what we want to see, everywhere
we look.” She walked for a moment in silence, her low heels sliding
against the floor. “Jonah...”

This was what he was waiting for.
She knew something. “Whatever it is,” he said softly, “I would very
much like to hear it.”

“
I’m...you know I’m not an
Externalist.”

“
Right.” Menard found Externalism
laughingly improbable. It was wish fulfillment from people who
looked beyond the margins of the Empire for something better. As if
xenics haunted human space in untraceable ships, ever on the verge
of revealing miracles and wonders if only poor man proved himself
worthy. A poor substitute for God’s hand in creation.
Unfortunately, about a third of Bishop Russe’s division heads were
Externalists. Including, perhaps, Russe himself.

“
Even so, something’s up.
Something’s moving out there.”

“
By the pricking of your
thumbs?”

She gave him a sharp-eyed look. “By
the pricking of my data, more like it. But no, if you must know, by
the pricking of Bishop Russe’s thumbs. I’m reasoning from effect,
not cause, in this case. There’s too much interest flowing down
from the upper reaches of the Security Directorate. For years,
we’ve been a joke, a line item in the budget. The rest of the
Church sees this Bureau as a collection of nutcases serving as some
kind of low-ball insurance policy against any of this being real.
The last couple of months you’ve been gone, we’ve become,
well...important.”

“
What do you believe, Sister?”
Menard trusted this woman’s intuition.

“
I don’t often admit to what I’m
about to say, but I believe you need to consider it. If I have a
position, I suppose you’d say I was an Internalist. It doesn’t
affect my work, I have come to that position from a perspective of
intellectual consistency more than anything. Nonetheless, here I
am, wondering if that thought exercise of mine has the ring of
truth somewhere inside it.”

That was a fascinating position for
someone as hard-headed as Sister Pelias. “Internalism is difficult
to demonstrate logically. How do you explain the supposed presence
of xenics in the halls of government and commerce?”

“
No explanation. Insufficient
data, and too much speculation in the literature.”

“
I...don’t take either position,
Sister. As you probably know.” Menard’s specialty was physical
evidence of xenic presence. Of which there was remarkably little,
and none of that incontrovertible. In practice, that meant he spent
a lot of time looking at oddly-shaped asteroids or wandering
through overgrown jungle sites. He’d made a sideline in profiling
xenic methods and motives. It was something to do during the long
periods of travel. “But you believe something’s up.”

“
I believe something’s
up.”

After all the centuries, was
it possible? Was the human race finally about to meet someone else?
Angels might well have once walked the earth, in Biblical times,
but
Homo sapiens
had been alone in space since Gagarin first went to
Mars.

The thought chilled Menard’s bones,
a mixture of thrill and fear. Maybe it was real. He thanked God
that this possibility had come in his lifetime, and prayed that he
might have a role.

‡

Bishop Russe walked into Menard’s
office as Menard was checking the timestamps and action receipts on
his filings. Menard had sent his mission report in from system
transit, as soon as the Church courier he’d hitched a ride with had
dropped in from c-space to decelerate toward Nouvelle
Avignon.

“
What did you find on Ancira?”
Russe asked.

Menard sighed. Russe had already
receipt-and-acknowledged the reports. “What do I ever find?
Enormous stone blocks deep in a jungle more green than death,
snakes thicker than your waist. Proof? If I wanted to wish hard
enough, I could have convinced myself they’d been carved by
xenics.”

Russe laughed. “We might be on to a
change.”

I’ll bet
, thought Menard.
I was in the same
meeting you were in
. “Your
Grace?”

A thin, spidery arm slid across
Menard’s shoulders. “This could make all our reputations. All the
way into the Grand Basilica. If we uncover evidence of a threat to
the Empire, a threat to the Church, a threat to our very souls, if
we expose the serpents that walk freely among us already...we will
be heroes, Jonah. Saints someday, perhaps.”

Menard didn’t particularly
want to be a saint. And the Bishop wasn’t inspiring his confidence.
But this was his moment, a potential tipping point in history.
Perhaps God had set Russe’s obsessions into motion as a sign to
Menard. Though he hated the politics of office and hierarchy, he
tried to play the games when they needed to be played. He
had
to secure leave to
pursue this. “Indeed, sir?”

“
Think, Chor Episcopos. Our own
people say the data indicates it’s happening in the Front Royal
sector. Halfsummer seems likely. The xenics are gathering at
Halfsummer, looking for something. Will you go there and lend your
expertise?”

Menard almost shivered once more
from the chill in his bones. He could feel the prickle of
inspiration. “It would be an honor, Your Grace. A calling,
perhaps.”

Russe smiled. “I knew you could be
counted on, Jonah. Go there and find me a xenic.”

“
Oh, believe me,
I shall.”
With God as my
witness
. Menard knew he suffered from the
sin of pride, but sometimes pride was necessary to drive a man to
new heights.

‡

Golliwog: Powell Station, Leukine
Solar Space

Golliwog was strapped in on his
back in the question chair in one of the exam rooms, at the bottom
of a step-sided funnel. This resulted in his looking up into a
rounded, widening space as the examiners leaned over their
individual podiums and looked down upon him. A bank of lights at
the far end of the room glared too-brightly, while the metal and
carbonmesh tiers rising above him looked like something on the
verge of collapsing downward.

All in all, a masterpiece of
psychological architecture. The view was profoundly disconcerting.
As was the persistent rumor that particularly unlucky examinees
were dropped out of the bottom of the funnel and into somewhere
terminally unpleasant deep within the convoluted bowels of Powell
Station.

He looked up at Froggie, Admiral
Penrose and Dr. Yee. Old Anatid wasn’t in the room, which worried
Golliwog. Old Anatid was the only one who would have approved of
his solution. Froggie he trusted, Admiral Penrose was just doing
her job, and Dr. Yee was...Dr. Yee. To be avoided whenever
possible.

But by vacuum, he’d succeeded.
Golliwog smiled. For some reason, the three above him
shifted.

“
Golliwog,” said Froggie in his
sternest mentor voice. The teacher was the oldest human Golliwog
had ever met, but also one of the strongest. “We are here to score
your exercise performance. That score, and the opinions of this
Examining Board, will weigh into your next duty detail.”

Golliwog’s smile slipped away at
that statement. Training, training, training. He had been training,
yes he had, since he could remember. Once there had been so many of
him he couldn’t count them all. Then there were fewer, and fewer.
He’d first killed himself at the age of seven. Now, well, there was
only one of him left. Though Golliwog knew with a cold, sometimes
comforting certainty, that there were other classes of biones in
Powell Station going through the surgeries, the training, the
bone-grinding pain – other clutches of same-faced killers
committing serial murder-suicide. Others unlike him, striving to
reach...something.

“
I am ready, sir and
ma’ams.”

Froggie glanced at Admiral Penrose.
The Admiral, who was an apparently unremarkable woman except for
her rank, nodded. “GLW 317,” she said slowly, “in the matter of the
recent exercise, this Board deems that you have passed by right of
survival.” She leaned a little further over. “This is known
informally as the last man standing clause. While some of us may
not endorse your methods, the results make their own case.” She
glanced briefly back at Froggie. “Speaking personally, I found your
conduct of the exercise refreshing and even somewhat original. It
is the judgment of this Board that you are to be granted a passing
grade, without censure or demerit.”

Golliwog had never doubted that he
had passed. The fact that he was still breathing was proof of that.
But they could have bounced him back down the training
cycle.

Dr. Yee took up a paper in her
hand. She was a tiny woman, skin almost space-black, with huge
round eyes. She was also one of the few people who frightened
Golliwog. “It is further the recommendation of this Board that you
be released to an operational mission. Your assignment will be on a
brevet basis, working under a senior agent of the Office of Naval
Oversight. That agent will have complete authority over you as an
asset, including the right to order your termination. Do you accept
this assignment?”

An assignment. To be free of
training after almost two decades. In spite of himself, Golliwog
smiled once more. He would finally be out of Powell Station. “Yes,
ma’am. I accept.”

“
You will report to me at 06:00
hours tomorrow. You are free to go.”

Froggie shook his head.

The restraints unsnapped. The
Examining Board filed out of an exit on their tier. Golliwog sat
alone at the bottom of the room, which seemed filled with ghosts
and echoes. All of him, at all different ages. He’d reached
something they’d all been straining for since before memory
began.

He just wasn’t sure what it
was.

No proctors came for him. After a
while, Golliwog pulled himself up out of the chair and stood on the
rim of the lowest level of the exam room.

Free to go where, Golliwog
wondered. He’d never been free to do anything.

‡

Golliwog sat in a study carrel in
the research library. The room was high-ceilinged, three decks, one
of the few decorative spaces he’d ever seen. Most compartments on
Powell Station were functional. Sometimes that function was behind
the eyes of the beholder. He thought that might be the case here,
but Golliwog didn’t have many semiotic associations for the idea of
“library.” It was just a quiet place, trimmed with wood pillars and
long falls of fabric, featuring many terminals and a few hardbooks.
And sometimes people who helped you learn to ask better questions
of the systems.