S. Swann - Prophets

Why then destroy the tach-comm and not the whole ship? Mallory knew enough to realize that the same sabotage that neutralized their FTL communications could have easily wiped out their engines, stranding them or destroying the ship long before they reached Xi Virginis.

As unstable as he had appeared on the bridge, Mallory wondered if it was possible that Mosasa had done it.

He wasn’t prepared when the door to his cabin finally slid open.

He was expecting Wahid, or perhaps Mosasa himself. He wasn’t expecting Nickolai. It makes sense, doesn’t it? He’s the other half of the security detail.

The three-meter-tall tiger filled the doorway, a wall of muscle and fur. Mallory wondered what kind of interrogation techniques the tiger had been trained in.

“Your real name is Francis Xavier Mallory?” Nickolai asked.

Mallory decided that he had long passed the point where Sergeant Fitzpatrick served any use, and Mallory allowed his alias to die alone and unmourned. “Yes,” he said quietly.

“You are a priest.”

“Yes.” The next thing you’ll ask is why I blew up the tach-comm and stranded us here. The problem was, his alias made it hard to produce a credible denial. He wondered how deep the interrogation would have to go before his denials were credible—or he gave in and told them what they wanted to hear.

“May I speak with you?” Nickolai asked.

“I’m not in a position to refuse.”

Nickolai stepped into Mallory’s cabin and allowed the door to slide shut behind him. Nickolai loomed over Mallory, seeming to take up half the volume of the cabin. Mallory could feel the tiger’s breath on his face, and it took an effort of will to keep his body from reacting.

For several moments they stood on opposite sides of the cabin, Mallory staring at Nickolai, waiting for the questioning to begin. The questions, however, were not what Mallory had anticipated.

“Are you a servant of God, Father Mallory?” Nickolai asked.

The question was not rhetorical, and Nickolai used an earnest tone that was out of place in a voice that was a half-register away from a growl. Mallory nodded, “That is my calling, however weak an instrument I am. I’ve devoted my life to the service of God and the Church.”

“The Roman Catholic Church?”

“The Society of Jesus, to be precise.”

Nickolai looked away from him, as if he was considering something. After a moment he spoke. “Do you know of my faith, Father Mallory? The faith of St. Rajasthan?”

Mallory shook his head. “I studied many religions in my seminary training. But that isn’t familiar.”

“It is just as well. Rajasthan didn’t speak to the Fallen. I shouldn’t have come here.” He began an awkward turn to leave.

Something in his manner, something that came across as very human despite his origins, made Mallory reach out and touch the tiger’s shoulder. “What is troubling you?”

Nickolai pulled away and snarled at his touch. Mallory almost recoiled, but managed to restrain himself. Something serious was bothering Nickolai, and it was visible even through his predatory feline expression.

He faced Mallory, his cheeks wrinkled in apparent disgust. “Why should that concern you?”

“It’s part of my vocation.”

“I’m not human, nor part of your church.”

“My God preaches compassion,” Mallory said. “If you don’t wish to share your troubles, stay and tell me of St. Rajasthan.”

Nickolai’s expression softened slightly, and he lowered his gaze. “Do you wish to hear of your own damnation, Father Mallory? My God teaches that humanity has long ago left His grace.”

“My own faith tells me that I am a sinner in the eyes of the Lord. That we are all fallen, since the first man walked the Earth. And it is God’s mercy alone that allows us a chance at redemption.”

“God is not merciful, Father Mallory. He is cruel.”

“Is this what St. Rajasthan teaches?”

“No. This is what life teaches.”

Mallory listened to Nickolai as he began talking of his religion, and his life. He started slow, halting, obviously uncertain about speaking to a human. Something inside the tiger had broken down, and each sentence seemed to break down his restraint a little more. He needed to open up to someone, and obviously had needed to for a long, long time.

Apparently, it was Mallory’s identification as a priest that allowed Nickolai to permit himself to talk. He said, more than once, “Even the Fallen can be servants of God.”

Nickolai had been born to the House of Rajasthan on the planet Grimalkin. House Rajasthan, in addition to tracing its descent from the founder of the primary religion on Grimalkin, was the ruling clan in the theocratic monarchy that reigned over the planet. Nickolai had been a prince, which amounted to nearly unlimited wealth and power. Since childhood, he had been trained as a warrior as a form of devotion.

When Nickolai spoke of God and his religion, Mallory was fascinated. The nonhumans that founded Grimalkin originally had no religion of their own, though many identified as Catholic as it was one of the few human faiths that allowed for the fact that even nonhumans could have an immortal soul.

The faith of St. Rajasthan had taken the Abrahamic religions, Christianity in particular, as a starting point, just as Christianity had built upon Judaism, or Islam had built upon both. The religion of St. Rajasthan grew out of the beliefs of his contemporaries. And those beliefs were predominantly Roman Catholic.

What divided Nickolai’s faith from Mallory’s was the inescapable fact that his ancestors knew their creator, humanity; a creator that was less than divine, a creator that in some senses was less capable than its creation, and a creator that rejected them and subsequently declared the processes that created them a great heresy on the level of self-replicating nanomachines or artificial intelligence.

And, while Mallory was surprised to discover that many of the books of his Bible were part of the scriptures Nickolai knew, the interpretation was very different. In the scriptures of St. Rajasthan, the Christian Bible was a tale of mankind repeatedly being granted favor then falling from God’s grace, starting with Eden, the first fall and banishment from the garden, through the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Flood, and the Israelites and the golden calf. . . .

To St. Rajasthan, the story of Christ was not one of redemption, it was another temporary reprieve until humankind made its final wicked mistake, its attempt to take God’s mantle for itself. The scriptures of St. Rajasthan told of God finally turning away from mankind for the sin of arrogance and pride, and as He did with Lucifer, casting the whole of man from His kingdom.

In this new faith, mankind became the Fallen, a new Satan. It was little wonder why the Fifteen Worlds had little contact with human space.

It also made Nickolai’s presence in the midst of the Fallen all the more remarkable. He obviously held to these scriptures, so merely being in the presence of men would be threatening to his soul.

The only ones with any hope of God’s grace were those poor instruments mankind had imperfectly molded from the clay. Untainted by man’s sin, they still had some chance to attain the Kingdom of Heaven. But mixing with the Fallen threatened to taint Nickolai as well.

Nickolai explained to Mallory that he had been damned before he had ever set foot on Bakunin. He had been young and foolish, and had thought that his family was more powerful than the priests. He had thought that he could do what he wanted without fear of retribution.

He had been wrong, and in payment for his sins the priests had burned out his eyes and severed his right arm and left him to live as a beggar on Bakunin.