The Scarecrow tracked the modifications of the Middle Kingdom signal all the way back, reconstructing its routing. The Puppet was still flush-faced, breathing heavily with a panic for her divine humans. Only five seconds had passed. The Scarecrow backed away.
“I am done with my investigation,” he said.
He turned and strode back toward the crude port. He had a point of origin. It was in the embargoed Puppet Free City. An art gallery.
Chapter Twenty-Six
FROM THE INTRODUCTION to Defining Faith in a World of Cut Strings: An Exegesis of the Puppet Bible, by Elizabeth Creston-12, Bishop of Port Stubbs, 2490 CE:
The study of theology and the exegesis of the Puppet Bible is remarkably complex, given the essentially polytheistic context of the Numen. The richness of Numenarchy source material covers so broad a range of topics—sometimes in such contradictory or ambiguous terms—that its sheer volume constitutes an obstacle to spiritual understanding. And the corpus continues to grow. Scholars continue to reflect on the records of the Numen of the Edenic Period, as well as on interviews with the last surviving Puppets who had direct contact with the pre-Fall Numen.
The unending growth of the scripture has not—and should not—slow the process of exegesis. Contextualizing and balancing contradictions is too important a task to wait.
Natural scriptural oppositions like “Get the fuck out!” (The Book of the Angry Things, Chapter 6, Verse 4) and “Get the fuck over here!” (Chapter 4, Verse 20) and “Look at me, you little pisshead!” (The Book of How to Behave, Chapter 2, Verse 12) and “Don’t you dare raise your eyes to me!” (Chapter 14, Verse 4) are amenable to some analysis based on the contextual and moral differences in each situation, and even, to some extent, the status of the different Numen.
Far more complex are the verses concerning Mooney-4’s Dilemma. Scriptural quotes such as “Do you want money? I can give you money. Just let me go. I’ll leave my wife and children. Just let me go. Please let me go.” (The Book of Pleas and Threats, Chapter 3, Verse 3) and “If you don’t let us go, I’m going to flay the skin off you, Puppet.” (Chapter 3, Verse 17).
A holistic approach to theology highlights the multidimensionality of the spiritual world with verses such as “Good boy.” and “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” (The Book of the Good Boy, Chapter 1, Verses 1 and 9) and “You missed a spot here.” (The Book of Assessments and Punishments, Chapter 3, Verse 8), which invite a banal interpretation, without sacrificing moral insight.
Some of the most profound Fallen Age theologians have demonstrated the value of parsing apparently banal scripture for symbolic meaning. Who among us has not missed a spot? Is any Puppet capable of not missing a spot, or are all Puppets flawed, imperfect?
If the flaw is intentional, what was the Numenarchy’s intent for this flaw? Some theorize that the creation of flawed Puppets imposes an arrow of time onto the cosmos, from imperfect creation to the eventual attainment of moral perfection. Further questioning of the last Numen who were alive during the Fall may reveal something of the intentions of the first generations of the Numen of the Edenic Period.
But if the imperfect nature of Puppethood is unintentional, then parallels with Judeo-Christian theology are less useful, while the arguments of classical Greek philosophers, who had to systematize an ethic balancing layers of gods and Titans and men, are perhaps more meaningful for the Puppet ethicists of today.
Recent scholarship has brought novel questions to theology...
William tossed the reader on the bed in disgust.
“You don’t like it?” Gates-15 asked.
William stared at him. “Puppets are crazy.”
“I made heavy use of the writings of Bishop Creston-12 in my doctoral work.”
Gates-15 sat in a chair, his feet dangling off the floor. Sticky sensors clung to his chest, neck and forehead.
“The Puppets are very different,” Belisarius said from where he leaned against the wall.
“You defend them a lot,” William said.
A plastic curtain divided the room in two, pressing slightly toward the low-pressure space where William sat in bed. Some of Saint Matthew’s early generation automata scuttled around him, taking air and sweat samples every ninety seconds. Others did the same on the near side of the plastic, skittering for sweat samples on Gates-15.
“There’s not a single Puppet ever born who asked to be turned into a Puppet,” Belisarius said. “Humanity made them.”
“I never made them,” William said.
“No one alive today did,” Belisarius said, “but we play the hand we’ve been dealt.”
Del Casal took one of the automata scuttling on Gates-15’s arm, regarded its sweat swabs, assay vents and thermal sensors, and set it back.
“Gates-15 has all the chromosomal genes to experience the religious awe effect in the presence of a Numen,” Del Casal said. “From what I understand from him, his problem is in the microbiome around his synapses. In normal Puppets, an array of symbiotic bacteria located at the nerve endings modify the environment to strengthen and coordinate certain kinds of signal cascades. I do not know which bacteria are supposed to be there, and neither does Gates-15, so I have engineered tiny ecosystems of bacteria to colonize the synapses between his smell and taste receptors and his main and accessory olfactory systems.”
“It works?” Belisarius asked.
“It should, for a while,” Del Casal said. “These bacteria are not invisible to his immune system, like the ones that would have grown up in him from the fetal stage. But I have engineered them to express some immunosuppressors that will prevent his immune system from clearing them. That should keep them stable for perhaps six or seven weeks.”
“I don’t feel anything now,” Gates-15 said.
“You haven’t tested it?” Belisarius asked.
“We are about to,” Del Casal replied.
“Too bad we don’t have any canned Numen smell,” Belisarius said.
“That is the genius of the early molecular biologists who engineered the Puppets and the Numen,” Del Casal said, with some admiration. “They designed their biochemical control system to be hack-proof. The Numen signal is a complex of dozens of smells produced by hundreds of nuclear genes that are modified after secretion by specific bacteria unique to the Numen microbiome. The successful reception of the signal is in the combinations and proportions of the scent molecules. It is ingenious. We will test the changes in Manfred against what I have built into William, but the live test will only come once he makes his way into the Forbidden City.”
“I can’t believe I might be fixed,” Gates-15 said. His cheeks flushed pink to the edges of his beard. His hands clutched nervously between his knees, and his feet dangled between the chair legs.
“This is a temporary fix,” Del Casal said. “It will wear off. But if it works, I have some thoughts on how to make it permanent.”
“And what about the main job?” Belisarius asked.
“I have taken the multi-walled carbon nanotubule systems in the Homo quantus as a model, and engineered a similar mechanism into Manfred’s fingers,” Del Casal said.
Gates-15 pulled his shaking hands from between his knees and held them palms-up. The miniature adult hands had their stories written in small wrinkles and scars. Gates-15 pressed sideways against the fleshy pad under the second knuckle of his index finger. Near-invisible dark hairs emerged from his finger-tip. Dozens of them.
Del Casal produced a magnifying glass that projected a close-up hologram. “I have stacked thousands of multi-walled nanotubules together to make tubes that will not shear from air movements or accidental pressure,” he said. “These can be pressed into the port of any computer.”
“The computer virus is in there?” Belisarius asked.
“Stored in the carbon lattices,” Del Casal said. “Manfred’s movements will store a charge between some layers of the lattices, enough to power the upload.”
“It won’t show up in any
scan?”
“The lattices are tiny and will not show up in X-rays, ultrasound, or anything routine. If anyone thinks to look for anomalous neuronal tissue or carbon structures in Manfred’s hands, your plan has larger problems.”
“Saint Matthew’s virus ought to do the job,” Belisarius said to the exiled Puppet, “if you can get it in.”
Gates-15 pressed at his finger in the other direction and the tiny hairs sank back into his skin. “I haven’t been back to the Puppet Free City, much less the Forbidden City, since puberty.”
“You’ll be home,” Belisarius said. “The center of attention for a while, but you’ll be home with a new identity, one that could become permanent after the job, when you’ll be one of the richest Puppets alive.”
Gates-15 took a deep, shuddering breath and exhaled.
“Can we see if your modifications work, doctor?” Belisarius asked.
Del Casal rolled back in his chair and opened the seam of the plastic that separated William from them. Gates-15’s miniature face flushed deeply, ears and neck reddening in sympathy. His respiration became slow and unsteady. He stared at William in some terror. William stared back at him with the same look.
“What do you feel, Manfred?” Del Casal asked.
“It’s... vast,” Gates-15 said, without looking away from William. “I don’t know... if it’s the awe I’ve heard of...” The Puppet exhaled slow and long. “Something strong is here, in this room... something good.”
“It is not like what you have seen in others?” Del Casal asked, pulling his chair closer.
Gates-15 swallowed, getting less distracted, less glassy-eyed. “I don’t mean it’s not working,” he said distantly. “It’s hazy... wonderful.” He swallowed again. Looked away from William, and then looked back in astonishment. “I’ve seen extreme reactions, like falling-down worship, seizures... dervish frenzies. But I can handle this. I can feel. It feels wonderful,” he finished breathily, staring at William in anxious wonder.
Del Casal looked at the data coming in, changed the positioning of some of the pads on Gates-15, and rechecked his graphs. Finally, he closed the plastic, separating Puppet and man. He gently steered Gates-15.
“Go to your room,” he said softly. “Write down everything you feel. Then sleep.”
When the Puppet was gone, Belisarius and Del Casal shook hands and clapped each other on the shoulders.
“I have been awake for forty hours,” the geneticist said. “I am going to sleep as well.”
When Del Casal had left, Belisarius passed through the plastic flaps and pulled the chair close to William’s bed. William picked off the sensors and shooed away the little automata, but didn’t meet Belisarius’s eyes.
“How do you feel?” Belisarius asked.
“Are all the Puppets going to be like that?”
“If we’re lucky.”
“If I’m lucky.”
“If you’re lucky,” Belisarius said. “That’s not what I was asking, though.”
“I know.”
“Want a drink?”
“Yeah, but Del Casal says I can’t.”
Belisarius looked at his hands. A lump ached in his throat. “Are you going to be able to pull the trigger on this? You can bite the poison pill?”
“I’m not going to spend any more of my last days with the Puppets than I have to,” William said. “If I’m surrounded by those little sickos, I’ll bite the pill all right.”
Belisarius drew a small box from his pocket. Inside was a thumb-sized piece of carbon steel in a plastic bag, and one of Saint Matthew’s small automata.
“This is an implant that carries eight weeks of medication to treat the Trenholm virus,” Belisarius said. “The Puppets may take everything from you, including your medicine. This will make sure you’re able to function in the Free City.”
“You’re going to get Del Casal to implant it in me?”
Belisarius shook his head and briefly expanded his magnetic field. The doctor was gone, and no listening devices were active.
“Saint Matthew’s robot will do it,” Belisarius said, showing the tiny automaton. “There’s more than just medicine in here. If for some reason you can’t bite the poison pill, this thing carries not only anti-virals, but a fast-acting poison.”
William paled. “You think I can’t end it if I’m surrounded by Puppets?”
“Insurance.”
“In case I can’t handle it?”
“You’ve got this.”
William frowned, not buying what Belisarius was selling, but he reached for the little bag.
“How do I activate it?” he asked coldly.
“You can’t. Once the job is done, I can trigger it from anywhere. I’ve got a couple of entangled particles in there. One will signal me if you die. The other triggers the poison. I’ll only do that if you’re still alive, and the job was successful.”
“Is this insurance for me or insurance for you?” William asked.
Belisarius held William’s stare. “I don’t want to leave you in there any longer than I have to. If you’re positive that nothing in the Puppet Free City can scare you enough to give away the game, then we don’t need insurance.”
“Put it in,” William said.
For a long time, Belisarius didn’t know what to say or do, and they both examined the weave of the hospital blanket.
“We have the makings of a solid Mexican Shell Game,” Belisarius offered half heartedly.
William pursed his lips and Belisarius deflated a bit inside. He missed the old William, the man who’d apprenticed him in confidence schemes, the one who’d taught him about human nature. Belisarius’s choice of apprenticeship had directed to some extent who he knew, and now made him an outsider wherever he went.
Ten years ago, there had been no place for an over-educated kid with overwhelmingly philosophical tastes in a bribable world of get-rich-quick schemes. William had guided him through a fast-moving, pragmatic, concrete world without political or spiritual or philosophical concerns. Now Belisarius was bringing the old con man trade into the world of politics and ideals.
“Thank you for everything you did for me when I was a stupid kid,” Belisarius said quietly.
“You’re still stupid.”
“Maybe.”
“You’ve got a good plan, Bel. It’s half-crazy, but it’s better than anything I would have come up with, even in my prime.”
“Thank you.”
“You never really needed me. You didn’t need to be a con man, either. You were always made for more.”
Belisarius shook his head. “I was built wrong, Will. If I hadn’t found cons, I would have died a long time ago. You saved me.”
William watched him for long moments, measuring, looking for lies. He nodded as if he was satisfied. Belisarius opened the bag and let the tiny surgical robot begin preparing William for anesthesia and surgery.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE TWO OLD freighters Belisarius had rented were called the Túnja and the Boyacá. They creaked in odd ways, even in freefall, but they could still induce wormholes. Marie piloted the Túnja, while Stills grumbled about the embarrassment of playing taxi driver to Belisarius and Cassandra on the Boyacá.
They’d distanced themselves from Ptolemy and its traffic for six hours before coming to a stop. Then, Marie finessed the old coils of the Túnja to induce a short wormhole in front of her freighter. She didn’t pass through it, but had the Túnja hold it.
Cassandra, from deep in the fugue, began giving orders for modifications to the coils on the Boyacá, as Belisarius had done months ago on the Jonglei, three hundred and twenty light years from here. Cassandra wore a mobile fugue suit to manage her heart rate and blood pressure and to try to keep down her temperature. Belisarius was spotting her, monitoring the suit and ready to intervene if she went too far. He hadn’t put his on. He wasn’t going into the fugue.
Belisarius and the objective quantum processor in Cassandra’s brain manipul
ated the holographic displays that extended before them, showing maps, graphs, charts, and dials. Above this was a work space where they could write equations, suggest parameter changes, and draw technical proposals. Belisarius did not need or want to induce savant. The alienness of the Homo pupa and the Homo eridanus felt increasingly like holding a mirror to himself, only to see three faces in the fractured surface.
And despite being only fifty centimeters away from Cassandra, loneliness clung to him. In the same way he could have played cards with even the most advanced computers and soon found the rules governing their choices, so he could have done with the living computer that Cassandra had become in the fugue. The objective intellect she became was not conscious in even the most rudimentary sense. She was a machine of flesh ridden by a web of algorithms that could in no way even be called a person. Cassandra did not presently exist, having been temporarily snuffed out by an electrical and biochemical lobotomy.
Four times, the quantum intellect in Cassandra modified the current, curvature and magnetic permeability of the coils to create an artificial wormhole. The Boyacá twisted space with its intense magnetic fields until the throat shaping itself in space-time had a free end, questing to return to ground state or to stabilize itself temporarily with another piece of space-time. Each time, the quantum intellect directed it to the wormhole Marie had created before the Túnja. Each time, the probing end of the wormhole briefly found the hyper-edges of the Túnja wormhole in eleven-dimensional space-time andcollapsed it.
“In theory,” Belisarius said in frustration to Stills, “it looks like we could collapse any induced wormhole we wanted, within the jump range of the coils.”
The Quantum Magician Page 17