A Printer's Choice

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A Printer's Choice Page 7

by W. L. Patenaude


  It has been reported that Solorzano watched the news of his public excommunication in his compound in Morelos, just a kilometer from the site of his first vision. He rose from the sofa on which he had been sleeping, went into his small kitchen, poured a shot of mescal, and gave the order to round up and shoot every man, woman, and child in thirty-nine workers’ camps run by the Catholic Church—one in every Mexican state.

  The soldiers of Solorzano’s army mobilized to follow this order, save one, whose fear of God exceeded even his fear of Solorzano. This soldier sent word to his brother, a parish priest, who informed his bishop, who informed the army of the nation of Mexico.

  Mexican Special Forces intercepted most of Solorzano’s armies. Only three hundred people in two workers’ camps were killed that day—camps that held seventy thousand.

  Later that afternoon, after the usual statements of outrage from the usual outspoken Mexican clergy, explosive drones targeted the churches and cathedrals of those clerics. The Mexican army intercepted these, too—except for one, which sought out the Cathedral of St. Joseph of Nazareth in Toluca. The device slipped past counterterrorism defenses, then pierced the grand old church with convulsions of fire and rubble, burying eighty-three children who had been rehearsing for their First Communion, as well as six army reservists who had rushed in to evacuate them.

  The people who were the heart of Mexico had long sought justice, and many that day turned against Solorzano and his armies. The descendants of those who had fought for freedom from Spain, and later against the owners of the sugarcane fields, rose up against the evil that had spawned from their poverty—and they vowed to the world that they would crush it.

  MCCLELLAN FOLLOWED ZHÈNG INTO a room beyond the bronze doors. It was wider and longer than the outer foyer, and in its center stood a baptismal font, about half McClellan’s height, printed out of the same gray-and-white material as the room’s molding. Its base swirled with cherubs and vines that lifted up a wide bowl. Water, awaiting McClellan’s blessing, bubbled playfully up from the center.

  On the wall ahead were five entryways. There were two plain doors on each side, and taller, double doors in the center, just past the baptismal font, printed with marble moldings and adorned with wood and glass.

  The robbers followed and carried the luggage to the closer door on the left. Zhèng explained that that led to McClellan’s quarters, with the farther door leading to his office.

  “Going forward, we’re basing the investigation in this regional station house—which is now your office. We had your quarters and the chapel printed next to it for your convenience.”

  Zhèng pointed to the two entrances to the right of the baptismal font, which he said led to the apartments of a young couple who would assist the priest with his ministries and domestic needs. “I’ll introduce them after we return from Red Delta. I know you’ll like them. But for now . . .”

  Zhèng went to the double doors in the center. They were narrower than all the others, taller, and surrounded by elaborate moldings of both green and warm-hued marble. They were of an uncharacteristically old style, and the priest found them somehow familiar but couldn’t place them.

  Zhèng nodded toward them. McClellan, holding Veronica’s daisies in his left hand, reached with his right and felt a square of lattice insets in their centers. It seemed to be worn wood, and inside the latticework was rough window glass, the kind you’d expect before industrial glass making. Decorative oval pairs of the same glass were above and below the lattices. McClellan studied them with his eyes and fingers. No light came from beyond the glass inserts, but they reminded him . . . no, it couldn’t be that.

  Zhèng stepped in and pushed open the doors. “As you will soon see, Father, someone spared no effort on your behalf.”

  McClellan followed the commissioner. They entered the shadows of his chapel—the first parish church in New Athens and the first structure in the orbits built for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—at least, McClellan thought, a public one.

  The only light came through small windows set in the ceiling far overhead. It was the simulated moonlight of the Sun Crane, which came and went as clouds sent shadows along the core. Out of habit McClellan wet his finger in a baroque holy water font he found inside the entrance, and made the sign of the cross. Even in the dim lighting, which his eyes were growing accustomed to, he could tell that the chapel was not the small and efficient one he’d been promised.

  Zhèng accessed controls on a small panel near the entrance. Lighting flickered and went steady, and McClellan, squinting, beheld the grand chapel, radiant with light and color. He swallowed, stretching his throat so he could breathe. And he whispered the only words that seemed right—“My Lord and my God.”

  The structure rose to the lower skylights of the core. He looked ahead to face the altar, then to his sides, with their grand frescoes by Michelangelo, then up again, taking in the entire reproduction of the sixteenth-century Pauline Chapel in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace—the chapel used exclusively by the pope.

  Zhèng stood next to him in silence as they took in every exquisite detail.

  Eventually the commissioner began to convey what he had learned about the actual chapel. He explained that, while the Pauline Chapel was smaller and less known than its neighbor the Sistine, it was equally impressive in its art, history, and significance.

  McClellan knew all this. He had been to the Pauline just after his ordination to the priesthood, when he had given talks on programming ethics at the Pontifical Gregorian University. His mind turned over all he remembered of the tour, searching for data, connections, anything that could explain why a reproduction of it was on New Athens.

  His schedule for these early few hours had been agreed to before the launch of the Aesir. The timeline called for a brief tour of McClellan’s “simple” chapel, as well as his residence and office, and then an initial briefing from Zhèng’s team on the investigation of Father Tanglao’s death. After time for rest and prayer, as well as a quick conversation with his archbishop and more preflight safety training, they would head back through the Wheel to board a security transport to Red Delta, the newly built relay station where Tanglao had been found dead. But now in his chapel, there were new considerations.

  “Is Jansen responsible for this?” McClellan asked, turning to Zhèng. “Any of the engineers?”

  Zhèng shrugged and stepped closer. He turned to his right, facing the vaulted sanctuary that surrounded the altar and, behind it, the replica of the seventeenth-century painting by Simone Cantarini of the Transfiguration of Christ.

  “I suppose it’s possible,” he said.

  “But you doubt it.”

  “Yes. Even with all charity, I can’t see why the engineers would have done this.”

  “You and me both,” McClellan said. “What has Jansen said?”

  “Very little. She maintains that this was printed as a courtesy to you and the Catholic Church. But I don’t believe her.”

  McClellan nodded and walked down the center aisle. He bent his head back for a full view of the ornate white, gold, and green expanses of vaulted ceilings and stuccos, which framed the Zuccari murals depicting the miracles of Sts. Peter and Paul. They looked exactly as McClellan remembered, when he had lingered long after his tour to lose himself in the ceiling’s artwork. He had been especially moved by the mural at the chapel’s peak, The Vision of St. Paul, with its swirling firmament of heaven, stretching forever above with divine light.

  And this image would shine down upon anyone from New Athens who might wander in. It seemed impossible that an engineer would have programmed this. But if not an engineer, who? Someone could have hacked the printers that built it, he supposed. But even then—even more so than the flag outside—why did the engineers allow it to stay, let alone allow McClellan to use it?

  “No idea who did this?” McClellan said.

  Zhèng shook his head. “A few general ones—the builders, for instance, come to mind, which is mos
t everyone you met outside. As you may know, the Builders Guild and the engineers don’t always get along. Some of them may have wanted to embarrass the engineers, or have some say about what happens in Troas City.”

  McClellan shook his head in disagreement. “A builder hacking the printers? Only the engineers are programmers—and the people they grant permission to, who as far as I know have been only Earth military, such as me. And most of those relationships were suspended years ago.”

  “All true, Father. But I’m learning not to discount possibilities. We’re still poring through the available information—limited as it is. You heard Madame Jansen herself. My team isn’t granted access to printers. And so I was hoping you could shed some light on this.”

  McClellan looked away. “It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten inside the head of a printer,” he said.

  “Well, I’ve never investigated a murder. And yet here we are.”

  McClellan stepped backward into the main aisle, turned, and busied himself studying the great frescoes dominating the chapel’s sidewalls: The Martyrdom of St. Peter, and across from it The Conversion of St. Paul. Both were the last frescoes of Michelangelo, completed not long after the Sistine Chapel. The master had taken full advantage of his subjects to depict men at the mercy of the forces around them, much like many believe the artist himself felt as his old age advanced, his health declined, and the world around him grew rife with anger and division.

  The chapel’s tour guide—a seminarian from Boston studying in Rome—had told McClellan that when the Pauline was restored about eighty years earlier, the discovery of the frescoes’ original colors gave new insights into what Michelangelo was thinking when he painted them. It seems the old master finished his career using many of the methods and colors of his youth. McClellan found comfort in that.

  From the foyer outside came the clip-clop of simulated feet departing. The decommissioned robbers, having discharged their duties with the luggage, were passing through the foyer on their way back out to the boulevard. When McClellan heard the doors shut, he made his way forward, bowed, and stepped into the sanctuary surrounding the altar. He looked up to a plaque high above with a Latin inscription. As in Rome, it quoted St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

  MIHI VIVERE

  CHRISTVS EST

  ET MORI LVCRVM

  “For to me life is Christ, and death is gain,” he whispered.

  Two small steps took him to the marble altar. He moved behind it, and placed Veronica’s daisies at the bases of candlesticks at either side of the grand tabernacle, which rested with its gold doors open wide, waiting for a priest to say Mass.

  After a moment, McClellan sighed and returned to the front of the altar and faced it, as if he were saying Mass. He needed a moment to think, to stand in that holy and intermediary space between the world of men and the presence of God—to see things for a moment as a priest, not simply as an investigator or a programmer.

  He stared at the crucifix and, behind it, the painting of the Transfiguration—the moment in the Gospels when Christ revealed to his closest disciples the glory that would follow after the coming turmoil. McClellan ran his fingers along the altar’s marble, asking for some sign.

  The marble was hard and cold, as it should be. Imperfect.

  He turned. Zhèng was standing just outside the sanctuary. McClellan quickly descended the altar’s steps and walked toward him. “Tell me none of this is real,” McClellan said. “The materials, I mean. This is all printed synthetics, right?”

  Zhèng shrugged. “You would know better than I. See for yourself.”

  McClellan pushed past the commissioner and ran his fingers along the wooden pews, then lowered himself to one knee and picked at joints in the gray-and-white marble flooring.

  “It can’t be,” he said, allowing himself a laugh. “They printed all this to be the real materials—marble, wood, glass—atoms on up, we used to say in the Corps. The doors out front—I knew they were authentic. That’s common for small jobs. But everything here? I’d give anything to see all this under a tracer scope.”

  “We’ve already brought one in. The reports are in your office.”

  McClellan stood and again studied the height of the ceiling. “This must weigh quite a bit.”

  “Yes,” Zhèng said. “The engineers make it known to anyone who cares to listen.”

  “I suppose they’re not happy about that.”

  “That’s an understatement,” said Zhèng. He gave a laugh, which McClellan was glad to hear. “Most of the engineers don’t know what to be more displeased with—the fact that there is a chapel at all, or its weight. You know that in space the engineers design everything to be lightweight. This,” he said with a nod, “is not what they expected.”

  McClellan watched Zhèng again become restless. “I take it you’ve spent a lot of time here,” McClellan said.

  “Quite a bit,” Zhèng said. “I keep thinking there’s some clue here, but as far as I can tell, this is an exact replica of the Vatican chapel. There’s no deviation—other than some environmental controls and two vacuum-rated doors off to the side, which lead directly to your quarters and offices. There’s nothing that indicates a message, a sign. A reason. But how can there be no connection between Father Tanglao’s death and this? There must be. And we need to find it.”

  “We will,” McClellan said. “As always, with God’s grace, we’ll get to the truth.”

  Zhèng looked at the time on his wrist display. It was almost midnight.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “I know you have questions. But before we meet with the others, I’d like to deal with a matter that’s important to me.”

  Zhèng motioned to one of the two small side doors that had been added to the chapel’s actual layout, this one just in front of the altar railing. Its seams were mostly undetectable in the marble of the chapel’s walls below Sabbatini’s fresco The Baptism of Saul.

  McClellan followed the commissioner through a small sacristy to his new residence. The apartments were a simple series of rooms running along the length of the chapel to the foyer with the baptismal font. As the priest had requested, there were only the basics—kitchen, bedroom, toilet, sink, and shower—and a sitting room for prayer. There were appropriately few furnishings—a plain bed, some chairs, bookshelves—but the rooms were larger than he thought necessary. There was also a small gym, which McClellan had not requested but was happy to see.

  Zhèng moved past the priest’s luggage, which had been arranged neatly by the robbers. He gave a quick wave to another door, an entrance to the offices that McClellan and Zhèng’s team would share. The main working area was a large, square room—efficient, gray, and lined with displays of images and data showing life throughout New Athens. An oval central table could seat more than a dozen. Over it were more displays and a holoprojection of New Athens as seen from the outside, with symbols for ship traffic and telemetry moving about it. McClellan noticed that one of the displays showed the itinerary and orbital maneuvers for their security transport ship to Red Delta. Three hours, forty minutes, and counting.

  Zhèng motioned for the door to close. Without light from the apartments, the offices were dim, lit mostly from the displays. He looked McClellan directly in the eyes.

  “Before I begin, you should know that this room, your office, is secure,” Zhèng said, holding the priest’s gaze. “At the moment I can’t promise such privacy in your residence or your chapel, and certainly anywhere else, but in this room my people have made sure that you will not be monitored by the engineers, or anyone else.”

  “But I assume I will be monitored by you.”

  “Yes, most of the time.”

  The commissioner reached into his breast pocket and removed a black rectangular tablet. “Although, so that we can speak freely without even my people monitoring us, I’ll add this dampening block for . . . I suppose a six-meter diameter should work.”

  McClellan recognized the device from his final d
ays in the Marines Corps, when GU engineers had miniaturized the new dampening technology developed by the printers. The investigators in the Military Police called it the box. But for all the promises made by the engineers, the new toy had fewer applications for law enforcement than it did for criminals.

  “Do you know what this is?” Zhèng asked.

  McClellan nodded. “I do. I had the privilege of being one of the first test subjects for that technology.”

  The commissioner inserted the box into controls on the central table. The device activated, and a blue haze fluctuated over it. A series of harmless pulses flashed outward—one, then another—forming a spherical electronic wall around them. Unlike the initial pulses, nothing alive could walk through that wall.

  McClellan recognized the smell of a live box. The odor had always reminded him of the old bottles of acids in his high school chemistry classroom back in Union City. Soon McClellan’s and Zhèng’s tablets gave a no-signal warning. The displays closest to them registered electronic chaos, and then the words Signal Loss appeared in crisp white lettering. A chirp notified them that the barrier was secure, and was scrambling physical vibrations, sound, and electromagnetic information—whether light or electrical frequencies—so that anyone or anything outside the field could detect nothing of what was happening inside.

  McClellan waited to ask the purpose of all the precautions.

  Zhèng dropped to a chair at the table and motioned for the priest to join him. McClellan complied and the commissioner leaned forward, alternately locking his fingers between his knees. Zhèng touched his forehead with his right forefinger, then below on his chest, then his left shoulder, then his right. As he did, he said the words of the sign of the cross.

 

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