The Hierophant's Daughter

by M F Sullivan

  Cicero looked askance, his eyes flat with what was, to the General, a sorry attempt at emotion, then shook his head and crossed himself. “She will be missed.”

  As El Sacerdote claimed Lavinia’s seat, she took his place at the pulpit. Dominia was forced to turn up the volume to combat the emergency alert that filled every room of the ship with panicked Japanese. In Elsinore, the youngest of the Hierophant’s daughters looked over the crowd, her golden hair pinned in place with a brass tiara, her features warped in sorrow. The Duchess of Florence, Princess of Europa, and Merciful Miracle of the Holy Father lifted her gloved hand to wipe away the only tears Dominia trusted. She, like everyone else, loved Lavinia. In the Princess’s case, the official word was that she had been martyred as an infant, most likely by tainted breast milk, and left to die; unlike all other martyrs, the infant did not rise but remained clinically dead, as was to be expected—an additional reason martyrdom was held off until prepubescence. The body seemed best equipped to adapt to the change then, but Dominia knew the primary reason the Hierophant martyred the young came down to psychological malleability. Martyred adults had too many emotions, were too often hampered by human taboos. Children could be more readily indoctrinated in the busy comings and goings of society. Simple as flipping a switch. Most basic preparation for human society was applicable to martyr society; it was a small matter of reorienting the moral and mental compass of the child so that, when they came out the other side, they saw themselves as a species distinct from humankind. Oh, he had tried the occasional experiment, slipping violent or depraved content into otherwise wholesome children’s programs as a form of conditioning humans to accept the martyr way of life, for instance. But there was no replication for the change in a child when they were liberated from petty things like human morals. Nothing could prepare them for it.

  Lavinia, however, had never had that problem. Lavinia was a miracle because her body grew while she was dead, her cells manipulated by the undead protein inside, each mimicking, say, the antibodies of a living martyr; no human cells muddied the waters. It was not so much that the Princess was being edited as were all the other martyrs. Rather, one could argue her body was the sacred protein.

  Lavinia had never not been a martyr, because when she gained consciousness in 1930 Anno Lucis, it was the first time since infancy that she had been alive at all. Everyone had expected her to be dead, but the Hierophant had hidden her away to grow, and up she sprang one day, a beautiful golden flower: his Miracle. Proof of faith. Faith in him, faith in martyrdom, all represented by one sweet, innocent girl who now watched the people with sadness. Somehow, at sixty-six, she had lost none of her girlish charm, though she usually composed herself with the grace of her station.

  “I intended to read today from the Gospel of Elijah, but I can’t. Oh, I can’t. I’m so sorry, I—” Her fingers fluttered across her lips, and Dominia fought not to internalize Lavinia’s genuine pain at losing her sister. For those long seconds, she wished to send a message: “I’m here! I’m alive! Don’t cry.” Instead, she had to watch her sister collect herself as Cicero rushed to support her arm. When a look into his stoic face emboldened her, she returned to the microphone.

  “This might be wrong of me, but I don’t care what she did, or what she tried to do. Of all the people in the world, nobody treated me better than Dominia. I wasn’t a curiosity to her, or strange, or even a miracle. I was her little sister. ‘Was.’” Lavinia half laughed through her pain. “‘Is.’ Dead or no, she’s still my sister. Please—please don’t think of her as dead. She lives on with God, and with her wife. Oh, Dominia—I hope you’re happy.”

  Squeezing shut her good eye, the General pounded back the contents of her bowl, then rose to turn the television off before Lavinia began her reading. There was no time to sit around listening to Bible verses.

  “Stay,” she told the dog as she rose. It wagged its tail to communicate that it had never possessed any intention of leaving this room for the foreseeable future.

  Outside the mess, the ship was eerily quiet. Her focus narrowed for the lightest sound, she crept through the corridor and back to her room. Inside, Tenchi released a squeal of terror before René silenced him with a penknife poked near his face.

  “What did I tell you!”

  “Don’t terrorize him.” Dominia waved René away, then took his cousin’s pudgy face in her hands. After brief scrutiny in which she found pinpoint pupils of terror and the moist scent of adrenaline but no sign of treachery, she asked, “Can you sail this ship?”

  “What?”

  “Can you sail this ship? Think hard, Tenchi, because your life depends on the answer, and so does mine, and so does your cousin’s. If everyone else on this trawler ends up dead, can you sail the ship?”

  “I— Yes. It would be hard with just one person but—maybe.”

  “‘Maybe,’ or ‘yes’?”

  “Yes,” he decided, nodding his face out of her hands, then bowing. “Yes! I will sail, I’ll do it, anything you ask. Just please, don’t kill me. Don’t eat me!”

  “I don’t think I’m at risk of running out of food anytime soon.” She turned away and took a deep breath. “What was that announcement before? What’s the plan in this scenario?”

  “The men have gone below, to the processing areas. Where the fish are gutted and…prepared for freezing.” He turned a queasy artichoke shade. “You’re not going to— I mean—”

  “It’s not as if they’ll be interested in talking.”

  Ah, the brief spark of hope in his eyes. “Maybe I could come with you? I could translate!”

  René laughed at that, rather cruelly; Dominia pitied Tenchi while his cousin, in routine chastisement, said, “Yes—and slow her down, assuming you don’t get killed by one of your own crew members.”

  “Just stay here, and be quiet.” She tried to be gentle as she patted Tenchi’s hand but nonetheless elicited a wince. “I’ll be back soon; then we can get through the next five nights as painlessly as possible. All right?”

  “All right.” The first mate looked as reluctant as he surely felt.

  As she began for the door, René asked, “Do you have a weapon?”

  “It’s the processing floor, isn’t it?” Somehow, she restrained a spate of dark laughter. “I’m not sure I’ll need one.”

  V

  El Sacerdote

  TERROR AT SEA!

  Fishing ship Jun’yō docks with crew dead, security footage destroyed

  KYOTO—Terror and tragedy struck more than twenty families Thursday when the fishing trawler Jun’yō docked in the Port of Kyoto with its entire crew dead, save for its first mate and its doctor. First Mate Ichigawa Tenchi was uninjured aside from psychological damage, but was unable to explain what happened. Police have refused to share Dr. Miku’s testimony and have no details to add, except to say that the original security footage seems to have been destroyed in the attack along with all its backups. The men appear to have been dead five days prior to docking. No further facts have been released to the media at this time. Those with information are encouraged to contact their local police.

  For such a horrible event, the article was a footnote in a neglected corner of the Morning Sun’s third page. More so the better: the less the people knew, the less the Pontifex knew.

  “Soon”—finished reading the article to her, René slapped the paper upon the table of her Kyoto hospital bed—“you’ll be able to read this yourself. Damn robot eyes keep us from having to challenge our brains. Why learn any languages when machines will translate our grunts and gestures?”

  “Have to learn something to understand the machines, won’t we? Anyway, however lazy it makes me: I’m lucky. Thank you, René.”

  “Don’t thank me! Thank the hospital.”

  “But you called them. Set it up before we’d even left.”

  “I knew you’d need a checkup; I didn’t know you’d need a new eye. As many refugees as they get, it’s a miracle they’ll be able to
perform the operation so soon.”

  No kidding; but, then, cyborgans were as commonplace and easy to acquire as contact lenses. Easier, when the hospital in question was run by DIOX, the corporation responsible for most of the artificial components on the market. Sure, there was customization to be done—everything had to be built or printed for the individual when you talked body parts, especially for bigger items like hands or limbs—but that was easy as tolerating a couple of doctors who probed and measured and muttered in Japanese before flipping to English to ask what color she wanted. The same as her other eye?

  In retrospect, the question had begun to disturb her. “The same, of course,” had been her answer at the time. However, it now occurred to her that she could have picked any color. Indigo, chrome, rainbow, cat’s. That was a weird fashion among humans: ocular replacements designed to mimic animal or cartoon eyes. The idea had bothered her when she’d read about it years ago in some magazine, but now, having decided “the same color as before,” she was forced to live with the decision and ponder what that said about her. She had to talk about something else.

  “Did you get our tickets for the Light Rail?”

  “So anxious! Don’t you trust me?”

  “If I’m honest?”

  “And after you just thanked me for this appointment! Dominia. You’d better get to the root of that problem. Trust is all we have, you and I. Without it, there’s nothing to bind us together, alive, until we complete our task.” After stretching to his feet, René moseyed to the window, which he cranked open with a glance for security cameras, holo or otherwise. For the sake of legal liability, the hospital, which primarily serviced refugees, shied away from them. The professor removed from his breast pocket a pack of cigarettes, illegal in Europa and the UF, and Dominia rolled her eye.

  Through the cracked window and the inch to which he’d pushed aside the curtain yawned the international orange lightning bolt of Kyoto Tower, a structure built in honor of the Tokyo forebear ruined in a battle, which, centuries ago, had made Dominia’s bloody name. Its peaked shape, like an alien mountain, recalled the Eiffel Tower, and how Cassandra couldn’t stop eating croissants. How cute she’d looked with crumbs on her cheeks and her eyes brighter than all the lamps of those fair streets! Two weeks they’d been dating, and already, the General had whisked her off to Paris in a jet. A hopeless case from the start.

  “This city is so beautiful,” her lover had marveled. “Like nothing else.”

  “Most humans are very afraid to be here.” They did get a strange look now and then, but Cassandra’s new wardrobe, furnished by Dominia, helped her pass in the chic, shimmering dresses her lover keened to strip; and if that was not enough to shield the human from the occasional bit of unwelcome attention, the identity of Cassandra’s companion most certainly did. If anything, since their arrival to Europa a week before, bubbling rumor transformed Cassandra into a whispered extension of the Bitch of Europa. That evening, when the odd daring passerby stopped to beg her (less-sought) Family blessing and she told them the usual “pax vobis,” one in particular stood out. A little old woman, some mother martyred by a sentimental child when faced with their former parent’s death by age. She had not wanted the blessing of the General, which was regarded in some circles as an ill omen to the self and, in others, a powerful curse upon one’s enemies. Instead, this woman had studied Cassandra with difficulty, then, deciding she was a member of the Holy Family, took the human’s hand and kissed its back thrice. The shriveled martyr held this soft hand to her forehead, and said in poor English, “This is how you will give blessings, when you are a Mother of the Church,” in a way which made Dominia laugh but which touched (or in retrospect, rattled) gentle Cassandra, who smiled in awkward thanks.

  Dominia, moved, said to Cassandra, “See? Everybody already likes you.” As if the human had been one-quarter as concerned as Dominia. What a fool she was! She never should have doubted that he would let her have Cassandra, human or no. She never should have doubted that he would let her love, just so he’d have something with which to crush her down the line. Easy as plucking an eye from her socket—or putting one back in.

  The primary reason for her hospital stay, the doctors had explained in crisply practiced English, was mental: to her refugee status, and her missing eye. Her refusal to open windows or go outside was seen as evidence of depression, not at all uncommon with her sort of trauma; as for food, René would sneak in packaged rations of human jerky made far too long ago, during the hottest years of the Pacific War. Where he got them, she didn’t know, and didn’t ask, but it kept her from going hungry. It didn’t keep her active, and her lethargy was attributed to grief over her physical condition. Every time the cutest of the nurses came by, her round cheeks glowing with the light of compassion, she would pat the General’s hand and say “Ganbatte, ganbatte,” before helping clean her eye. Three days, this had gone on, and twice in René’s presence; the nurse, taking him for Dominia’s spouse, would nod and say in Japanese what a brave wife he had.

  It wasn’t so much that Dominia was brave. It was that she had long since realized she had no choice in where she found herself at any given moment. If she didn’t like it, she had the options of waiting for it to change, or changing it herself; and if neither option were possible, there was no point in wasting emotional energy over it. Most patients in her situation were still absorbing the traumatic loss of their eye, but, numb even five months after Cassandra’s death, the diamond of ashes cool against her breast, it seemed nothing.

  But, ah, how deluded she sometimes felt. Would Dominia see her wife again? She had to believe, had to hang on to hope. After her wealth and station and Family had been taken from her—after she had chosen to take them from herself to better pursue an impossible dream—hope was all she had left. Hope, and a weasel who tossed his cigarette butt out the window while he asked, “Did they prep you on the procedure?”

  From the eerie blind spot to her right bloomed occasional sheets of phantom color: blotches of phosphorescent viridian, or a trailing speck of light that quivered around as if consciousness sought for a pupil no longer there and thus perceived itself. Out of this hallucinatory cavern, Dominia’s right hand produced a folder from her invisible bedside table, and René strode over to take it. Though it did contain paperwork, the most immediate feature on its opening was the hologram that it projected from its upper edge: upon the folder there stood a convincingly three-dimensional, turquoise-haired cartoon nurse who stood six inches high and spoke in over-enunciated robot English. Its accent was indistinguishable from a human’s English, save for a tone best described as “dreamy.” While René laughed, the petite hologram clapped, produced a party cracker, and pulled its string with a hop of delight for the excited bang.

  “Congratulations, patient, on your ocular replacement surgery! We are so happy to have you with us, and to give you the opportunity to see anew. My name is Mimi Shin, and I am here to explain your procedure! Regardless of whether you will receive a full pair, we will install”—both snorted at the choice of verb—“one eye at a time: the process of receiving an ocular replacement can be traumatic for the body, and though our patented Install Tech is designed to intelligently combat rejection, studies have indicated that receiving two implants at once increases the odds of a problem.”

  From nowhere, Mimi produced a blackboard and telescoping pointer; she tapped the dark surface as it chalked itself with a drawing of an eye. “The precise nature of the procedure will depend on your condition. Your file tells me you have already experienced a surgical removal!” It was close enough to the truth, anyway; while René pulled paperwork out of the file to skim along, the artificial nurse adjusted her slipping cap in a programmed show of thoughtless habit designed to humanize her. Dominia found this effect alarming as the chalk eye was erased in its illustrative socket while Mimi continued, “This means the procedure will be shorter, and easier!

  “Because of the discomfort experienced during the procedure, a
s well as the psychological trauma experienced by some patients, you will be lightly anesthetized. Just like being at the dentist’s office! You will be put under by our caring team of experts, and while you are unconscious, the area around your eye socket will receive topical anesthetic, which helps the muscles to relax. Then”—Mimi stepped “out of camera,” and the chalkboard blew to the size of the whole projection, then turned into a cartoony, three-dimensional rendering of a face and the muscles of an empty socket with lid held open—“our on-staff surgeon will place the implant so its connective nerve can find its new home.”

  Then came the horrible part, played out in holographic cartoons: gloved fingers dangled a vine of wire “nerves” and the realistic eye down into the empty socket. The skin of the face became translucent so viewers might observe that, as the surgeon pressed a tiny button inset in the side of the eye, the cyborgan came to life. First it quivered; then it stretched; then it jammed its tendrils into the brain of the cartoon patient. René grimaced at cheerful Mimi’s disembodied voice explaining, “Our artificially intelligent body parts not only consciously soothe the tissues during the post-surgery adjustment phase, but, in most cases, install themselves! This is true of your ocular implant. The procedure is so simple, it could be outpatient! However, as explained, some patients find the process—and the recovery—challenging. For reasons of mental health and emotional adjustment, we at DIOX insist patients remain in the hospital for at least three days to learn all the exciting features of their new implant!”

  Again, Mimi reappeared. “Some patients may experience physical discomfort while adapting to their new eye, which is normal. Prolonged swelling may be sign of an infection, in which case—”

  “I can’t take it.” With a heavy sigh, René shut the folder and dissipated the peppy mirage. “She goes on and on.”