The Mars Shock (28 page)

The meeting wandered off into a discussion of the feasibility of tethering Bigelows, for extra living room, in the Startractor’s cargo bays. The engineers got into an argument about the right kind of connectors to use for the power and water lines. The Galapajin were all about the technical details. Take care of the engineering and God would take care of the rest. It was a good way of life, but sometimes their indifference to the big picture drove him insane.

He lost patience and ordered them all out. “Go and make sure people are keeping their luggage within reasonable limits. It’s gonna take long enough to transship all the crap we need, without taking crap we
don’t
need.”

Mendoza stayed behind on the bridge. So did Father Thomas Lynch. Father Tom was an Afro-Irish Jesuit who ministered to the Irish, Goan, and Amazonian Catholic contingents aboard the
Salvation
. He had a foot in both camps, but Kiyoshi trusted him.

Mendoza thrust his fists over his head. “I know maybe I shouldn’t say this … but I am
pumped
to be getting out of here.”

“No, you shouldn’t say it,” Father Tom said dryly.

“You know what I mean.” Mendoza slapped Kiyoshi’s workstation with, Kiyoshi thought, a somewhat proprietorial manner. “Hope I’m gonna be able to fly this thing,” he joked.

“Don’t worry, all you’ll have to do is water the plants,” Jun said, entering the bridge from the data center.

Jun wore his usual cassock over muddy boots, suggesting that he had been in the garden. He floated like a normal person. Jun, however, was not a normal person. He was an artificial super-intelligence, created accidentally by Kiyoshi a few years back, and still growing. What they saw now was an illusion projected on their retinal implants—or interface contacts in the case of Mendoza and Father Tom, who did not have BCIs. They were all used to interacting with the projection as if it was human. The one thing you couldn’t do was touch it, or the illusion would be spoiled.

Jun settled into the astrogator’s couch. Delta-V calculations flickered across the screens. “We should be able to reach Earth in less than a month.”

Mendoza reminded him with a touch of anxiety, “Elfrida’s on Eureka Station. Halfway to Mars.”

“Of course she is,” Jun said. “I was speaking in general.”

“And of course,” Mendoza rehearsed, “we’ll have to cross Earth’s orbit to reach Eureka Station, given where the planets are at the moment.” He nodded, and ran his hands through his short black hair. “Of course.”

Kiyoshi almost felt sorry for the poor sap. He honestly believed that they were going to risk the
Monster
on a voyage to Eureka Station to pick up his girlfriend. In the middle of a war.

“I’m a bit nervous,” Mendoza apologized.

Maybe he did have an inkling that there was more to it.

“I keep wondering, what if we have nothing to say to each other? What if we’ve grown apart?”

Or, not.

Kiyoshi had half a dozen cigarettes tethered to the arms of his throne, with different mixes loaded. He stuck one in his mouth and started to disconnect the others to take with him. Through a cloud of vapor, he subvocalized to Jun,
~When are you going to tell him the truth?

Jun responded, for his ears only, “I haven’t decided yet.” His back was still turned; he was gesturing at the astrogation screens, as if busy with pre-flight checks. But there was a hint of tension in the set of his head. You had to assume that every little nuance of his self-presentation was calculated, because it was literally the product of a calculation. But you also had to assume that he made those particular calculations, showed Kiyoshi these glimpses of indecision and vulnerability, because he was really feeling that way.

He wasn’t the only one. Kiyoshi had agreed to their plan, but now that the moment had come, anxious forebodings gripped him. He dragged on his cigarette, inhaling a calming mix of nicotine and synthetic THC.

Father Tom was giving Mendoza a last-minute lecture about his responsibilities. Mendoza had recently been ordained a deacon, which gave him a special role to play in Masses as minister of the Precious Blood. From the rucksack he wore over his EVA suit, the Jesuit took a pyx hand-forged from asteroid iron. “The Holy Eucharist,” he said, holding it up. He gave it to Mendoza, and took out a bulb-shaped bottle made of opaque, two-inch-thick Moon glass. “The Precious Blood.”

Mendoza fell to his knees, clutching the vessels. In zero-gee, this came out as as bending his knees in the air. “I’ll guard it with my life, Father.” He looked up, his brow wrinkling. “But what if I drop it?”

“You won’t drop it,” Father Tom said, with just a hint of menace.

“No, but just in case. I mean, if it’s the Host, I pick it up and consume it, but what if it’s the Precious Blood?”

“It used to be illegal to reserve the Precious Blood at all,” Father Tom said. “The Vatican changed canon law to allow it in space, when the priest may be millions of kilometers from his congregation. But it does present new dilemmas in zero-gee. If the Precious Blood is spilled on the
floor,
you wash the area with water, then pour the water into the sacrarium and drink that. But what if it never reaches the floor? What if there is no floor? I suppose you would have to scramble around catching all the drops. It’s never happened to me.”

Kiyoshi kicked off from his throne. “Well, I’m going.”

“Wait,” said Mendoza. He caught up with Kiyoshi at the door and hugged him. “Be careful, dude.”

“You
be careful. Don’t spill the Precious Blood, or Jun will space you.”

Kiyoshi made a circuit of the ship, chivvying the last of the Galapajin out. He also checked that they hadn’t taken any of the booty from the Startractor. The Gravimetric Upcycler they’d liberated from the Startractor’s engineering module now occupied pride of place in the
Monster’s
fabrication lab. Kiyoshi had not asked Jun what he wanted it for. Even he didn’t know every detail of Jun’s plan. Jun said
he
didn’t, either. He was going to leave it up to the Holy Spirit, a.k.a. winging it.

In the garden, Kiyoshi found some rabbits that had been left behind. They were hiding amidst the stalks of the vegetables harvested in haste by the departing Galapajin. He chased them, sweating in the garden’s 0.4 gees and sticky heat. Jun deployed a pair of gardening bots to help, but the bunnies were quicker. Adapted to micro-gee, they leapt in sailing bounds right over Kiyoshi’s head.

“I give up,” Kiyoshi growled.

“I’ve almost got this one. Just stay where you are. Hold the hutch open.”

The bots edged slowly towards the fat, contented female rabbit. Kiyoshi squatted, holding the travel hutch open.
Just stay where you are,
he thought.
Easy for him to say
.

“I can’t understand why you’re taking Mendoza instead of me,” he said.

They’d had this argument before, and Kiyoshi had lost. Of course he’d lost. You couldn’t win an argument with an artificial super-intelligence. But now his forebodings were back, telling him loud and clear that Jun was making a mistake.

“I know you need someone on board, to pretend to be flying the ship. But Mendoza? He doesn’t have a freaking clue. He actually believes you’re going to kidnap his girlfriend from Star Force, so she and he can join the rest of the nutjobs on
Salvation.
The guy is … I mean, he’s a good guy, but he’s Earthborn.” To Kiyoshi, this was a synonym for
clueless.

“He’s pious,” Jun answered, which was inarguable.

“Oh, so it’s because I’m a bad Catholic.”

“I didn’t say that. Anyway, you’ll have Father Tom to keep you on the straight and narrow.”

“I’m not absolutely sure where Father Tom’s loyalties lie.”

“Never even question that! He’s loyal to his Order.”

“Yeah, that’s the trouble,” Kiyoshi muttered under his breath.

But of course Jun heard him. The bots pounced, waving their trowel attachments. Startled, the rabbit bounded into the air. Kiyoshi stood up and held the travel hutch in front of it. Jun said, “Jesuits make history, while other people stand and watch.”

Kiyoshi sealed the hutch before the rabbit could escape. “Jun, you’re not a Jesuit.”

Jun belonged to the Order of St. Benedict of Passau, a much more humble monastic order than the Society of Jesus. He said now, “Did I tell you I ran my plan past the Abbot Primate?”

“No!” Kiyoshi was stunned. The Abbot Primate was the supervisor of all the scattered monasteries of St. Benedict of Passau, a holy man who lived in Rome and published monographs on the mercy of Christ. Kiyoshi literally could not imagine his reaction to Jun’s plan to win the war singlehandedly. “What did he say?”

“He said Christ will have mercy on me. I took that as a green light.” But Jun didn’t sound entirely happy about it.

Kiyoshi set down the rabbit hutch. “Does he know what you are? Did you tell him?”

“Yes.” Before Kiyoshi had the chance to react with four-letter words, Jun said hurriedly, “If I hadn’t, someone else would have, sooner or later.” He meant the other monks and nuns among their people. The Order of St. Benedict of Passau had taken root strongly among the Galapajin during their years of isolation, and they had forty-six brothers and sisters among their number here, including five priests. The other religious tended to be wary of Jun. Kiyoshi was the only one who understood him. It seemed highly unlikely that an abbot on faraway Earth would.

“How did he take it?”

“It was a lot of ‘on the one hand,’ and ‘then again, on the other.’ He did mention that holy orders are technically for people, not artificial intelligences.”

“You. Are. A. Person.”

“Yes, but he’s never met me. In the end he said he was going to consult with the Vatican, bearing in mind that it’s a unique situation.”

The Abbot Primate was right about that, Kiyoshi reflected. Jun was the only true artificial intelligence in the solar system … except for the PLAN. He almost felt sorry for the Vatican theologians who would have to wrap their heads around the problem. To Kiyoshi himself, it was simple: Jun was the same person he’d always been. He was Kiyoshi’s little brother. “Come out where I can see you,” he ordered.

Jun’s projection emerged from behind a bush, carrying one of the rabbits. It reality a gardening bot was carrying it, and Jun had cleverly overlaid his projection on the bot. Kiyoshi opened the hutch so he could stuff the rabbit in. The illusion of interactivity was painful. He wanted to hug Jun and tell him it would be OK, and he knew that all he’d get would be an armful of metal attachments.

“So are you in or out?”

“Still in, I think,” Jun answered. “The Abbot Primate raised the point that I can’t take Communion. Which is obviously a problem. But I think the real sticking point is that I’m still claiming to be Jun Yonezawa, who they think is dead. And obviously, no one can come back from the dead except our Lord.”

“Yeeeeah,” Kiyoshi said. “But Jesus raised Lazarus, and Jairus’s daughter, so why couldn’t He have raised you?
I
need to talk to them.”

Jun laughed. “Yeah, that would help. It’s not a lost cause. They’re discussing it. But it’ll probably take years before they come to a decision, and that’s my point: the Jesuits aren’t like that. They’re open to everything and everyone. New frontiers are their way of life. See it, go for it.”

“I know you’ve been discussing Jesuit spirituality with Father Tom.”

“Yup. So many of the great saints have been Jesuits. It’s incredibly inspiring.”

Now
Jun sounded happy, the way he always did when he got onto a favorite topic. But for some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, this made Kiyoshi uneasier than ever.

“I’d better go.” He picked up the rabbit hutch and trudged towards the airlock. His eyes told him he was walking up a hill clothed in bushes and saplings. His feet told him he was walking on level ground. With the garden unaccustomedly empty, he could hear the throb of the massive motors that rotated the module on the ship’s axis.

Halfway to the airlock, he halted.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Jun stood in the vegetable garden, small and alone. His voice was also small, a mere whisper in Kiyoshi’s cochlear implants, just in case anyone might be listening. “We have to do this.”

We,
but all Kiyoshi would be doing was staying here.

“I’m the only person in the solar system who’s ever taken on the PLAN and won.”

“On Mercury? That wasn’t the PLAN. It was a copy of the Heidegger program running on a portable.”

“It was still educational. Let’s just say I know more about
how
to fight the PLAN than anyone else … Kiyoshi, Star Force is trying to defeat it with nukes and charged particle beams! As for the Chinese, they’re not fighting at all. They’re sitting back and waiting to see who wins. But the writing is on the wall. We’ve already lost 6 Hebe. The population of Luna was decimated last year. What’s next? Ceres?
Earth?
Yesterday we had a system-wide civilization. Tomorrow there might be nothing left except the PLAN’s automated resource extraction facilities. Believe me, I know how an artificial super-intelligence thinks. I understand the drive to grow—and grow—and grow.” Jun’s voice shook with intensity.

Kiyoshi’s fingers tightened on the handle of the rabbit hutch. He knew that Jun deliberately denied himself the opportunity to grow much bigger, by refusing to move out of the
Monster.
He’d relocated from the ship’s hub into a custom data processing center next door to the bridge, but that was as far as he’d go. Kiyoshi admired him for it, and now felt a shiver of dread as he remembered the temptations Jun resisted, every day. Instead of succumbing to the destructive internal logic of AI, he was instead spending his time on discussions with a bunch of elderly Earth-based theologians, and humbly abiding by their decisions. Viewed that way, his preoccupation with theological hairsplitting was not drivelling. It was noble.

“So do you get it? This is my responsibility. What am I
for,
if not to do this?”

“Yeah, I get it. You’re bored out here, and this war came along at just the right time to give you something to do.”