Heretics (36 page)

“And you think something can be done about that?” someone muttered within the militia.

“It is clear that this extraordinary exercise of resources only makes sense if Adam intends to move into the core systems.” Mallory looked at a sea of faces ranging in expression from incredulous to hostile. “Adam intends to come here.”

“Okay,” Dr. Brody said. “But aren't you making an assumption? We know next to nothing about this Adam. Couldn't he be so powerful that consuming a star isn't such a great effort?”

“As if he were God?” Mallory asked.

“He seems to want to give that impression.”

Mallory shook his head. “If that is the case, why isn't he here yet? Why didn't he appear simultaneously across the whole of human space? Xi Virginis was the site of a massive project. It took decades to execute.”

“So it takes him some time to complete incomprehensibly vast engineering projects,” Parvi said. “In human terms that's pretty indistinguishable from omnipotence.”

“And we still slipped from his grasp. Are you such a good pilot to fly through God's fingers?” Mallory asked her. “Adam is not omnipotent or omniscient.”

“Still more powerful than anything we could hope to fight,” Parvi said.

“No,” Mallory said. “Adam is clearly vulnerable.”

“To what?” snapped Stefan, the young man from the
Daedalus.
“Prayer?”

“I suspect that Adam is concerned about a more conventional defense.” Mallory looked around and saw that he at least had their attention. He described what they knew about Adam, from what he had been able to gather in discussions with Nickolai, Parvi, Captain Valentine, and the one Caliphate technician who was willing to talk to him at length.

As unconventional as the attack had been, Adam's targets were almost textbook SOP for an invading force: communications and transportation. It disrupted the defender's mobility within their system and clouded their view of the larger picture. Next, if the target was accessible, would be the defender's command and control.

They knew that Adam had the use of at least two of the massive Caliphate carriers with a next-generation tach-drive, which meant that all the core capital planets were within his reach. Khamsin, Cynos, Occisis . . .

Earth . . .

Beyond choosing conventional targets, he also used covert agents and spies. Captain Valentine had told him of her CO, a man obviously working for Adam. There was also the Mr. Antonio who had hired Nickolai.

Adam was not above using sabotage and assassination, somewhat base methods for a being that aspired to divinity. And, most important, Adam sometimes failed. Despite everything, Adam did not prevent Mallory's tach-comm. Adam did not prevent the
Khalid
from leaving the
Prophet's Voice,
nor did he prevent it from leaving Salmagundi.

Most important, Adam anticipated defense, and that meant a defense was possible.

“A defense against
that
?” came from the militia.

“The Confederacy wiped out the Proteans,” Flynn said, his first words in a long time. “Cleaning out a nanotechnology infection—it's just a matter of putting large enough amounts of energy in a small enough space.”

Parvi whispered something that Mallory didn't quite catch, something about escaping the
Voice.

There was a pause, and it was filled by Stefan's voice. “What the hell is this? I can't believe anyone is seriously listening to this crap.” He pushed from the wall and deftly caught himself just in front of Mallory. “Even if everything you say about this Adam is accurate, which I have a hard time swallowing, what the fuck does it have to do with us? Me and my dad just had our whole lives swiped from us. You think I'm about to let you assholes take over and throw what's left away?”

“I'm not asking for anything, just a consensus.”

“This isn't your fucking ship!”

From the fringes, Karl said, “Calm down, Son.”

“No, I've had enough. Fine, make a deal with the pirate sisterhood. Fine, render assistance to some random bit of wreckage that's carrying refugees from hell. But I am not going to sit back when some priest starts talking about going to war with God.”

“Adam is not God.”

“The Devil then. All of you, you have a tach- drive that can take you to the other side of human space. Use it. Get the hell away from all of this.”

“Get back here, Stefan.” Karl said.

“Why?” Stefan stared into Mallory's face. “The priest here is talking about consensus. You think all these people want to sacrifice themselves? For what?”

Again, like the time he first met Mosasa, he felt the feeling of a spiritual eclipse. Not just the bulk of the planet Bakunin eclipsing God's light, but the whole of the material universe. He was alone. As he had said, he was cut off from those whom he served. The only light he had was his own.

He silently prayed that it would be enough.

“I cannot speak for anyone but myself and what I believe.” He looked at his audience. How many of them could be even counted as Christian? The Valentines, probably; they were from Styx. Dr. Dörner—at least she had been comfortable giving talks at Jesuit universities. Karl and Stefan. Very possibly Dr. Brody. He didn't know about Parvi or Kugara's beliefs, but it would be unusual for them to be Christian, given either's history.

Of course, none of the Caliphate techs would be. Nickolai had his own strange faith. The natives from Salmagundi had evolved something of their own outside any traditional religious practices.

Less than half, he suspected, would share his beliefs.

“So what do you believe?” Stefan asked.

Should that hold my tongue?
If this was a test of his faith, should he be anything other than honest with everyone here?

“I believe we face the Antichrist.”

The room was silent for several moments. Even Stefan seemed at a loss for words. It was Kugara who broke the silence. “Oh come on. You had me, up until you tell me that we're facing the boogeyman out of some twenty-five-hundred-year-old book. You're trying to tell us we face some supernatural devil?”

“Not supernatural. God works through the universe he presents to us. I believe there is good and evil, and I believe that my faith gives both a message of redemption, and a warning. Take it as metaphor if you will, but Adam, as he has presented himself, is cast into the role of bringer of the end of times.”

“Then,” Kugara said, “why does he have to be the Antichrist? Why isn't he the Messiah he makes himself out to be? Isn't that just as likely?”

Mallory shook his head. “Christ asks you to follow him. He doesn't demand it at sword point.”

“There's a couple of millennia of Church history at odds with that interpretation,” she said.

“That is the history of men, not of God. But you are right, Adam is more Cortez than Christ. He holds up his own divinity, asking for worship and nothing else. The only moral law within Adam's world is his own will.”

“And this is different from any other religion, how?” Kugara asked.

“Sin.” The word was a throaty growl that reverberated through the cargo bay. Nickolai stared across the room at Kugara, as if in reproach. “If there is Good and Evil, and there is free will, there must be sin. If there are moral choices, there must be wrong moral choices.”

“Is that more of your self-destructive theology, Nickolai?” Kugara asked.

“He's right,” Mallory said. “If the whole of Adam's faith is to worship him, give glory unto him, then his followers by definition cannot do wrong. That means either an absence of any moral constraint, or the absence of free will. Or both. And giving up your right, your
ability
to choose, is tantamount to losing your soul.”

Someone from the Caliphate said, “You know this to be true?”

“I know what I've seen and what I've heard. Aside from any taboos we have upon the technology he utilizes, what defines his evil is his absolutism. He offers a choice to follow him that is no choice at all. He wishes to destroy all who do not follow him, and remake those who do into his own image.”

“Not that I disagree with you,” Kugara said. “But you just described most Bakuninites' feeling toward any organized religion.”

The young Caliphate technician who had the best English said, “Then this is the best place to fight this evil.”

Mallory looked at the young man, surprised at where his support was coming from, then finding himself humbled at his own surprise. For all the theological differences between Islam and Christianity, Adam would be an abomination to both. And there were enough similarities in eschatology that a Muslim could easily reach the same conclusions Mallory had.

“I believe you speak the truth,” the young man said. “This is an evil that must be fought.” Several of his peers nodded in agreement or said phrases in Arabic.

“That thing took apart our planet,” Flynn said. “I don't need a theological dissertation on the nature of Evil to fight this thing.”

Stefan glanced around, an incredulous look on his face. “I don't believe you people—”

“You didn't see it,” said one of the militiamen. The others with him nodded in an eerily similar manner.

Stefan turned to the two Valentines and said, “What about you? Are you buying into this crap?”

“We
are
under attack,” one of them responded. “We're not here because we wanted to abandon our duty.”

“Oh, good lord!” Stefan grabbed his head. “The universe has gone insane.” He turned around and pointed at Parvi. “What about you, you look like you might have a clue. Do you buy into this apocalypse scenario?”

Parvi looked at him with red-rimmed eyes that looked glassy and dull. Her voice was flat. “Have you seen how many ships are out there stranded? Have you listened to them?”

“It's not some spiritual battle. It's just a fucking war. Haven't you seen one of those before?”

Something in Parvi's voice snapped. “Yes, I have, you arrogant little prick. I've seen people die, I've killed them myself. And I see what's sitting out there around Bakunin and I can tell you categorically that it's more than ‘just a fucking war.'”

“We're not talking about devils, or the antichrists, or—”

“You don't even know what you're talking about. At least Mallory has seen this thing, heard it.”

“Damn it! This is our fucking ship. It's all we have left, and I don't want it commandeered for some crusade—”

“Keep it then!” Nickolai said.

Stefan turned, as if to say something, but froze as the color leaked from his face. Mallory turned as well, and on seeing the tiger, felt the same primal fear boiling up from the prehuman part of his brain.

Nickolai had unfolded from himself, enough to let Mallory know that, huge as he was, he had never stood completely upright in his presence. Straightening himself he floated nearly a meter taller than the doorway that had admitted him. He dwarfed every other person in this room. His face was contorted in a snarl that was distressingly like a smile.

“Everyone here is damned in the eyes of God. We are all Fallen. But we choose to do what we will. Those here will either choose to find redemption in fighting evil or in fleeing it. Those who do not choose flight can depart in the
Khalid.
”

Stefan sputtered. “We're treating your wounded. You can't just abandon—”

“Enough!” Nickolai snapped. “We all know what we face. Who here chooses to run from it?”

Stefan looked around for someone to support him, but no one argued for flight. Not Dörner, Brody . . . not even Karl. The look of betrayal in the young man's face when he looked at his father was painful for Mallory to see.

“Father?” Stephan whispered.

“Son,” Karl said quietly, “I never make important decisions in haste. I want to hear what plans this priest has to battle the Antichrist.”

Stefan's shoulders sagged, and he looked like a beaten child. Mallory wished he had some comfort to grant the young man, but Stefan had already pushed himself away from him, silently back toward his father.

“I'm interested as well,” Kugara added. “I don't agree with your theology, but I agree this thing is worth fighting. But I'm not backing sending a squad of twenty people in a half-working dropship up against a force with more firepower than every single human navy in existence.”

“We
have
the largest human navy in existence,” Mallory said.

“What?”

“There are over fifteen thousand ships stranded here,” Mallory said.

“You think you can convince them to fight this thing?” Parvi asked.

“I think we can try.”

“Imaginary friends are better than imaginary enemies.”

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.”

—JOHN MILTON (1608-1674)

“Welcome to the
Luxembourg,
” Mosasa said.

Rebecca Tsoravitch stared at the apparition before her. She had summoned Mosasa, somehow, from the data that formed her own mind. “You aren't Mosasa. You can't be.”

“Why is that?” he said, giving her a grin that seemed very unlike the AI that she had briefly known. Briefly worked for.