David Weber - How firm a foundation

“I hope you won’t be offended by this, Father, but at this particular moment you remind me rather strongly of Prince Nahrmahn,” Merlin said.

“Yes, I’m sure it would’ve occurred to the Prince, as well,” Wylsynn said thoughtfully.

“And to his wife, too,” Cayleb said. “I think she’s just as smart as he is, and she hasn’t lived with him that long without recognizing necessity when she sees it.”

“All I can tell you is that at this moment I feel no inclination to betray your confidence, Your Majesty.” Wylsynn shrugged. “Obviously, I’m still in something of a state of shock. I don’t know how I’m going to feel about it tomorrow, or the next day. I will promise this, however. Archbishop Maikel’s always extended me his trust, and I won’t abuse that now. With your permission, Your Eminence, I request permission to withdraw to Saint Zherneau’s again for the next five-day or so. I truly do need to spend some time in meditation and thought, for obvious reasons.” He grimaced. “But I’d also like the opportunity to examine Saint Zherneau’s journal for myself, and to spend some additional time speaking with Father Zhon and the rest of the Brethren who’ve grappled with the same issues rather longer than I have. That should keep me out of the public eye while I do some grappling of my own, which will also spare you the necessity of returning me to the genteel confinement I enjoyed immediately after Archbishop Erayk’s departure for the Temple.”

“It was never my intention to lock you up while you considered all the implications, Father,” Staynair said.

“With all due respect, Your Eminence, it should have been,” Wylsynn said bluntly. “You’ve taken chances enough letting a convinced and believing Schuelerite so close to you and to the levers of power here in the Empire. Until you know-until we all know, including myself-which direction the disillusioned Schuelerite is going to go, you really can’t afford to take any more chances. The amount of damage I could do to your cause with a few careless words, far less if I choose to lash out in my anger-and I am angry, Your Eminence; never doubt it-would be incalculable.”

“I’m afraid he has a point, Maikel,” Cayleb said. “I have to admit I’m a lot happier with the notion of a voluntary… let’s call it ‘seclusion’ instead of ‘confinement’ on his part than I’d be with the notion of clapping him into a cell somewhere, but he does have a point.”

“Very well, my son,” Staynair said heavily.

“And I’m sure those ‘remotes’ of yours will keep an eye on me as well, Seijin Merlin,” Wylsynn said wryly.

“But not when you’re closeted with Father Zhon or any of the others, Father,” Merlin murmured, and the young priest laughed.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” he said. Then his expression sobered once more.

“You asked whether there might be another Key, or its equivalent, and I said I thought not. I still think that’s probably the case. And if it is, then presumably you don’t have to worry about someone deliberately awakening whatever might lie under the Temple. But there’s a reason I said your comment about having been dead for ‘almost a thousand years’ was ironic, Merlin.”

“And that reason was?” Merlin asked slowly.

“Because according to the ‘Vision of Schueler,’” Wylsynn said softly, “the Archangels themselves will return a thousand years after the Creation to be sure Mother Church continues to serve the true plan of God.”

Merlin blinked as his memory finished replaying the conversation, and the same chill ran through him once again.

He’d always been afraid of those power sources under the Temple. He’d thought he wanted nothing more than to discover the truth about them. Now he realized the reality might be even worse than he’d allowed himself to imagine.

The Archangels will return, he thought. What the hell does that mean? Were those lunatics crazy enough to put a batch of “Archangels” into cryo under there? Were they actually willing to trust the cryo systems to keep them going that long? And even if they were, could the systems stand up for that many years?

So far as he knew, no one had ever used the cryo suspension systems for a period greater than thirty or forty years. Theoretically, they were supposed to be good for up to a century and a half. But nine centuries?

But maybe that’s not what it is after all. Maybe it is an AI. It could be that they didn’t trust an AI to run continuously but were willing to let it come up periodically. Only if that’s the case, why wait a thousand years before it makes its first check? Unless the “Vision of Schueler” is lying and whatever it is has actually been popping up for a look every fifty or sixty years, I suppose. Except that it’s pretty evident the vicarate’s been departing from the image of the Church laid down in the Holy Writ for at least two or three hundred y ears, so if there’s an AI down there that’s supposed to be making midcourse adjustments, why’s it kept its mouth shut? Unless it’s broken, and that doesn’t seem likely, given how many of the Temple’s other systems still seem to be up and running. I can’t imagine they’d’ve built the place without making certain something as critical as a monitoring AI would be the last thing to go down, not the first!

He grimaced, then froze as another thought struck him.

I’m the only PICA Commodore Pei and the others had access to, an icy mental voice said. But what if I’m not the only PICA that came to Safehold after all? What if that’s what’s down there? The only reason I’m capable of long-term operation is because Doctor Proctor hacked my basic software. It’s possible they could have brought along-hell, even built after they got here, despite Langhorne’s anti-technology lunacy!-a PICA or two of their own. And if they didn’t have Proctor’s fine touch on the software, their PICAs could be limited to the “legal” ten days of autonomous operation before their personalities and memories automatically dump. So maybe, if that’s the case, it would make sense for them to only spin up once every thousand years or so. They get up, spend a day or two looking around, and if everything’s humming along, they go back into shutdown immediately. For that matter, they could have multiple PICAs stashed down there in the cellar. One of them wakes up and looks around, and if there’s a problem, he’s got reinforcements he can call up. Hell, for that matter if they did have more than one PICA down there and it was keyed to the same person, could he bootstrap himself back and forth between them to get around the ten-day limit?!

He didn’t know the answer to his own question. Under the Federation’s restrictions on Personality Integrated Cybernetic Avatars, each PICA had been unique to the human being who owned it. It had been physically impossible for anyone else to operate it, and just as it had been illegal for a PICA to operate for more than ten days in autonomous mode, it had been illegal for an individual even to operate , far less own, more than a single PICA, except under strenuously controlled circumstances which usually had to do with high-risk industrial processes or something similar. So far as he was aware, no one had ever attempted to simply shuttle someone’s memories and personality back and forth between a pair of identical PICAs keyed to the same owner/operator. He had no idea how the software’s built-in restrictions would react to that, but it was certainly possible it would represent a lower-risk solution than Proctor’s hack of his own software. Assuming one had access to multiple PICAs, of course.

And didn’t that lead to an interesting speculation?

“Owl?”

“Yes, Lieutenant Commander Alban?” the distant AI replied.