S. Swann - Prophets

However, on Cardinal Anderson’s map, there were blue-outlined stars flung out beyond Helminth in a pattern that had never appeared in any publicly available chart or catalog; a pattern of half a dozen stars over a hundred light-years from Sol and over seventy light-years beyond the edge of human space.

“A decade ago, a Jesuit observatory discovered those colonies you see there in blue.” He adjusted the display and the view zoomed in on the blue systems so names on the stars were visible.

89 Leonis, HD 98354, HD 101534, Xi Virginis . . .

Mallory stared at the cluster of blue-outlined systems.

It was bizarre. Lost colonies were the stuff of tabloid holocasts. Too much time, resources, and people went into establishing a colony—especially one so distant—for the history of it to be lost in the short time that man had been traveling among the stars.

Father Mallory looked up at Cardinal Anderson. “These are alien outposts, some new species?”

“No,” Cardinal Anderson said quietly. “These are human colonies, at least six of them, founded as the Confederacy was collapsing. A hundred and seventy-five years ago.”

“Six? Why hasn’t this been made public? Six established colonies . . .”

“Possibly more,” the cardinal said. “These colonies were founded in secret. We believe by people escaping the rise of the Eridani Caliphate. Can you see why we would keep this secret?”

Father Mallory nodded. The Eridani Caliphate, successor to something more than half of the old SEEC, had never had good relations with the Vatican. Often open warfare was only avoided by the fact that the Roman Catholic Church wasn’t a nation, as such. However, the pope had many allies in the secular world as the only part of the body of Christ with an interstellar reach. There had been dozens of proxy battles over the past century, fighting the reach of the Caliphate into the remains of the SEEC.

However, the Caliphate currently controlled the area between the rest of human space and these newly discovered colonies. The Caliphate’s official position on the ascension of the Islamic government was that it was the rise of an oppressed people into power. The revelation of secular—or worse, Christian or Jewish—refugees from that ascension forming breakaway colonies would be a diplomatic embarrassment to the Caliphate.

Both the location of these colonies, and their possible historical ties to the planets of the Caliphate, made it almost inevitable that the Eridani Caliphate would claim them as part of their sphere of influence, growing by 50 percent almost instantly; expanding into a space that would, given the limits of current tach-drives, have very limited access to the rest of human space. From the point of view of Mother Church, that would be unacceptable.

Father Mallory shook his head. “Forgive me, Your Eminence. I understand the Church’s interest in these worlds. What is the interest in me?”

“These worlds were discovered by accident,” said the cardinal. “A chance interception of a tach-comm transmission. We’ve been secretly monitoring ever since. Unfortunately, these are low power signals. Over such distances they degrade. We can only obtain a few hours’ worth of comprehensible intelligence over the course of a year. And, of course, a listening post by Helminth, or anywhere near there, risks alerting the Caliphate. We’ve been using Vatican property on Cynos.”

“You said ‘disturbing’ transmissions, Your Eminence.”

Cardinal Anderson thumbed a control on his holoprojector, and the air was filled with an awful static whine.

The holo’s picture became fluid and refused to stabilize. It seemed to be the view out of a tach-ship. Stars spun and blurred, and a blue orb filled the display.

“. . . with Xi Virginis . . . bzzt . . . have lost visual contact . . .”

Something blurred the view. The planet pixilated and reformed, and something clouded the space between the camera and the planet. At first the black specks seemed to be some digital artifact.

Suddenly, a very different voice was speaking. “. . . bzzt . . . coming toward . . . bzzt . . . behold a great . . . bzzt . . .”

It wasn’t an artifact. The cloud was real, the specks moving purposefully toward the planet.

“. . . seven heads . . . bzzt . . . crowns upon . . . bzzt . . . the third part of the stars . . . cast . . . bzzt . . .”

The transmission died.

“The last part?” Father Mallory asked.

“Behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth,” quoted Cardinal Anderson, “Revelation, Chapter Twelve.” He switched off the holo projection. “We need someone to investigate.”

“What does it mean?”

“We do not know,” Cardinal Anderson said. “Analysis of the star field places that planet close to, if not in orbit around, Xi Virginis, on the far side of these colonies.”

“Why me?”

“The Church cannot move without attracting attention,” he said. “But one man can.”

Father Mallory nodded. “How am I to travel there without attracting the Caliphate’s attention?”

“Are you familiar with the planet Bakunin?” Cardinal Anderson asked.

CHAPTER THREE

Audience

Power is not the same as knowledge.

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

To know all things is not permitted.

—HORACE (65-8 Bce)

Date: 2525.09.22 (Standard) Earth-Sol

Cardinal Anderson returned to Vatican City within hours after his transport tached in from Alpha Centauri. Even after the fall of the Confederacy, man’s last attempt at an empire spanning all of human space, Earth was still the center of human existence. Certainly that was the case with the Mother Church, which had endured on this spot for over two thousand years, through even the worst years of the Terran Council three hundred years ago.

After those dark days, when the inward-looking Council had been succeeded by the outward-looking Confederacy, St. Peter’s had been restored. Today, it was impossible for Cardinal Anderson to tell what parts of the structure had burned down in the twenty-third century, and which had been standing since the sixteenth.

It was very early in the morning in Rome, the sky just purpling with dawn, and there were no crowds as he walked across the square toward the Apostolic Palace. No one challenged him as he entered the palace; most of the Swiss Guard knew him on sight and, more important, the wide-spectrum biometric surveillance that covered St. Peter’s Square and the area around the palace would have alerted security if he was anyone other than who he appeared to be.

He made his way through the ancient palace, from the public areas by the Sistine Chapel and the library, into the heavily secured private areas close to the papal apartments.

His Holiness was waiting for him.

Despite the palatial Renaissance décor, and frescoes that appeared as if they could have been contemporary with Michelangelo, the office where the pope received him was one of the more recent additions to the huge complex of the Apostolic Palace. Despite the fifteen-meter-tall windows giving a panoramic view of St. Peter’s Square, this room was wrapped in layers of the most sophisticated physical and technological security that had ever been gathered into a single location. Behind the frescoes were walls that were impregnable to fire, explosion, EM radiation, and sound. The grand windows were not even visible from the outside; any observer would see just the blank wall of the palace.

When the ornate gilded doors shut behind him, Cardinal Anderson could hear a slight sucking sound as the portal sealed tight and the office switched to using its own isolated environmental controls. Even the air was screened by several layers of security here.