by Дэн Симмонс
She folded it atop her jacket on the back of the chair. Isozaki rose and came around his desk, standing only a meter from her. “Your underthings as well,” he said, slipping off his own jacket and unbuttoning his own old-fashioned shirt. His chest was healthy, muscled, but hairless.
Cognani slipped off her chemise. Her breasts were small but perfectly formed, rosy at the tips.
Kenzo Isozaki lifted one hand as if he were going to touch her, pointed, and then returned the hand to his own chest and touched the double-barred cruciform that ran from his sternum to just above his navel. “This,” he said, “is power.” He turned away and began dressing. After a moment, Anna Pelli Cognani hugged her shoulders and then also began dressing.
When they were both dressed, Isozaki sat behind his desk again and gestured toward the other chair. To his quiet astonishment, M. Anna Pelli Cognani sat in it.
“What you are saying,” began Cognani, “is that no matter how successful we are in making ourselves indispensable to the new Pope—if there ever is a new pope—the Church will always have the ultimate leverage of resurrection.”
“Not quite,” said Isozaki, steepling his fingers again as if the previous interlude had not happened. “I am saying that the power controlling the cruciform controls the human universe.”
“The Church…” began Cognani and stopped. “Of course, the cruciform is just part of the power equation. The TechnoCore provides the Church with the secret of successful resurrection. But they’ve been in league with the Church for two hundred and eighty years…”
“For their own purposes,” said Isozaki softly. “What are those purposes, Anna?”
The office rotated into night. Stars exploded into existence. Cognani raised her face to the Milky Way to gain a moment to think. “No one knows,” she said at last. “Ohm’s Law.”
Isozaki smiled. “Very good. Following the path of least resistance here may not lead us through the Church, but via the Core.”
“But Councillor Albedo meets with no one except His Holiness and Lourdusamy.”
“No one that we know of,” amended Isozaki.
“But that is a matter of the Core coming to the human universe.” Cognani nodded. She understood the implicit suggestion: the illicit, Core-class AI’s that the Mercantilus was developing could find the datum-plane avenue and follow it to the Core.
For almost three hundred years, the prime commandment enforced by the Church and Pax had been—Thou shalt not build a thinking machine equal or superior to humankind. “AI’s” in use within the Pax were more “All-purpose Instruments” than “Artificial Intelligences” of the kind that had evolved away from humanity almost a millennium earlier: idiot thinking machines like Isozaki’s office AI or the cretinous ship computer on de Soya’s old ship, the Raphael. But in the past dozen years, secret research departments of the Pax Mercantilus had recreated the autonomous AI’s equal to or surpassing those in common use during the days of the Hegemony. The risk and benefits of this project were almost beyond measure—absolute domination of Pax trade and a breaking of the old balance of power stand-off between Pax Fleet and Pax Mercantilus if successful, excommunication, torture in the dungeons of the Holy Office, and execution if discovered by the Church. And now this prospect.
Anna Pelli Cognani stood. “My God,” she said softly, “that would be the ultimate end run.”
Isozaki nodded and smiled again. “Do you know where that term originated, Anna?”
“End run? No… some sport, I imagine.”
“A very ancient warfare-surrogate sport called football,” said Isozaki.
Cognani knew that this irrelevancy was anything but irrelevant. Sooner or later her master would explain why this datum was important.
She waited.
“The Church had something that the Core wanted… needed,” said Isozaki. “The taming of the cruciform was their part of the deal. The Church had to barter something of equal worth.”
Cognani thought, Equal in worth to the immortality of a trillion human beings? She said, “I had always assumed that when Lenar Hoyt and Lourdusamy contacted the surviving Core elements more than two centuries ago, that the Church’s bartering point was in secretly reestablishing the TechnoCore in human space.” Isozaki opened his hands. “To what ends, Anna? Where is the benefit to the Core?”
“When the Core was an integral part of the Hegemony,” she said, “running the WorldWeb and the fatline, they were using the neurons in the billions of human brains transiting the farcasters as a sort of neural net, part of their Ultimate Intelligence project.”
“Ah, yes,” said her mentor. “But there are no farcasters now. If they are using human beings… how? And where?”
Without meaning to, Anna Pelli Cognani raised one hand to her breastbone.
Isozaki smiled. “Irritating, isn’t it? Like a word that is on the tip of one’s tongue but will not come to mind. A puzzle with a missing piece. But there is one piece that was missing which has just been found.”
Cognani raised an eyebrow. “The girl?”
“Back in Pax space,” said the older CEO. “Our agents close to Lourdusamy have confirmed that the Core has revealed this. It happened after the death of His Holiness… only the Secretary of State, the Grand Inquisitor, and the top people in Pax Fleet know.”
“Where is she?”
Isozaki shook his head. “If the Core knows, they haven’t revealed it to the Church or any other human agency. But Pax Fleet has called up that ship’s captain—de Soya—because of the news.”
“The Core had predicted that he would be involved in the girl’s capture,” said Cognani. The beginnings of a smile were working at the corners of her mouth.
“Yes?” said Isozaki, proud of his student.
“Ohm’s Law,” said Cognani.
“Precisely.”
The woman stood and again touched her chest without being aware of doing so. “If we find the girl first, we have the leverage to open discussions with the Core. And the means—with the new abilities we will have on-line.” None of the CEO’s who knew of the secret AI project ever said the words or phrases aloud, despite their bugproof offices.
“If we have the girl and the means of negotiating,” continued Cognani, “we may have the leverage we need to supplant the Church in the Core’s arrangement with humanity.”
“If we can discover what the Core is getting from the Church in return for control of the cruciform,” murmured Isozaki. “And offer the same or better.”
Cognani nodded in a distracted manner. She was seeing how all of this related to her goals and efforts as CEO of Opus Dei. In every way, she realized at once. “In the meantime, we have to find the girl before the others do… Pax Fleet must be utilizing resources they would never reveal to the Vatican.”
“And vice versa,” said Isozaki. This kind of contest pleased him very much.
“And we will have to do the same,” said Cognani, turning toward the lift tube. “Every resource.”
She smiled at her mentor. “It’s the ultimate three-way, zero-sum game, isn’t it, Kenzosan?”
“Just so,” said Isozaki. “Everything to the winner—power, immortality, and wealth beyond human imagining. To the loser—destruction, the true death, and eternal slavery for one’s descendants.” He held up one finger. “But not a three-way game, Anna. Six.”
Cognani paused by the lift door. “I see the fourth,” she said. “The Core has its own imperative to find the girl first. But…”
Isozaki lowered his hand. “We must presume that the child has her own goals in this game, mustn’t we? And whoever or whatever has introduced her as a playing piece… well, that must be our sixth player.”
“Or one of the other five,” said Cognani, smiling. She also enjoyed a high-stakes game. Isozaki nodded and turned his chair to watch the next sunrise above the curving-away band of the Torus Mercantilus. He did not turn back when the lift door closed and Anna Pelli Cognani departed. Above the altar, Jesus Christ, his
face stern and unrelenting, divided men into camps of the good and the bad—the rewarded and the damned. There was no third group.
Cardinal Lourdusamy sat in his canopied stall inside the Sistine Chapel and looked at Michelangelo’s fresco of the Last Judgment. Lourdusamy had always thought that this Christ was a bullying, authoritarian, merciless figure—perhaps an icon perfectly suited to oversee this choice of a new Vicar of Christ.
The little chapel was crowded with the eighty-three canopied stalls seating the eighty-three cardinals present in the flesh. An empty space allowed for activation of the holos representing the missing thirty-seven cardinals—one holo of a canopied stall at a time.
This was the first morning after the cardinals had been “nailed up” in the Vatican Palace.
Lourdusamy had slept and eaten well—his bedroom a cot in his Vatican office, his repast a simple meal cooked by the nuns of the Vatican guest house: simple food and a cheap white wine served in the glorious Borgia Apartments. Now all were gathered in the Sistine Chapel, their stall-thrones in place, their canopies raised. Lourdusamy knew that this splendid sight had been missing from the Conclave for many centuries—ever since the number of cardinals had grown too large to accommodate the stalls in the small chapel, sometime pre-Hegira, the nineteenth or twentieth century A.D… he thought—but the Church had grown so small by the end of the Fall of the Farcasters that the forty-some cardinals could once again easily fit. Pope Julius had kept the number small—never more than 120 cardinals, despite the growth of the Pax. And with almost forty of them unable to travel in time to the Conclave, the Sistine Chapel could hold the stalls of those cardinals permanently based on Pacem.
The moment had come. All of the cardinal-electors in the chapel stood as one.
In the empty space near the Scrutineers’ table near the altar, the holos of the thirty-seven absent cardinal-electors shimmered into existence.
Because the space was small, the holos were small—little more than doll-sized human figures in doll-sized wooden stalls—all of them floating in midair like ghosts of Conclave-electors past. Lourdusamy smiled, as he always did, at how appropriate the reduced size of these absent electors seemed. Pope Julius had always been elected by acclamation. One of the three cardinals acting as Scrutineers raised his hand: the Holy Spirit may have been prepared to move these men and women, but some coordination was required. When the Scrutineer’s hand dropped, the eighty-three cardinals and thirty-seven holos were to speak as one.
“Eligo Father Lenar Hoyt!” cried Cardinal Lourdusamy and saw Cardinal Mustafa shouting the same words from beneath the canopy of his stall.
The Scrutineer in front of the altar paused.
The acclamation had been loud and clear, but obviously not unanimous. This was a new wrinkle. For 270 years, the acclamation had been immediate.
Lourdusamy was careful not to smile or look around. He knew which of the newer cardinals had not cried out Pope Julius’s name for reelection.
He knew the wealth it had taken to bribe these men and women. He knew the terrible risk they were running and would almost certainly suffer for.
Lourdusamy knew all this because he had helped to orchestrate it.
After a moment of consultation among the Scrutineers, the one who had called for acclamation now said, “We shall proceed by Scrutiny.”
There was excited talk among the cardinals as the ballots were prepared and handed out. This had never happened before in the lifetime of most of these princes of the Church. Immediately the acclamation holos of the missing cardinal-electors had become irrelevant. Although a few of the absent cardinals had prepared their interactive chips for scrutiny, most had not bothered.
The Masters of Ceremonies moved among the stalls, distributing voting cards—three to each cardinal-elector. The Scrutineers moved among the forest of stalls to make sure that each of the cardinals had a pen. When all was in readiness, the Cardinal Deacon among the Scrutineers raised his hand again, this time to signify the moment of voting.
Lourdusamy looked at his ballot. On the upper left, the words “Eligo in Summum Pontificem” appeared in print. There was room for one name beneath it. Simon Augustino Cardinal Lourdusamy wrote in Lenar Hoyt and folded the card and held it up so that it could be seen. Within a minute, all eighty-three of the cardinals were holding a card aloft, as were half a dozen of the interactive holos.
The Scrutineer began calling the cardinals forward in order of precedence. Cardinal Lourdusamy went first, leaving his stall and walking to the Scrutineers’ table next to the altar beneath the gaze of the terrible Christ of the fresco. Genuflecting and then kneeling at the altar, Lourdusamy bowed his head in silent prayer. Rising, he said aloud, “I call to witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I consider should be elected.” Lourdusamy solemnly set his folded card on the silver plate that sat atop the vote receptacle.
Lifting the plate, he dropped his vote into the receptacle. The Cardinal Deacon among the Scrutineers nodded; Lourdusamy bowed toward the altar and returned to his stall.
Cardinal Mustafa, the Grand Inquisitor, moved majestically toward the altar to cast the second vote.
It was more than an hour later that the votes were tallied. The first Scrutineer shook the receptacle to mix the votes. The second Scrutineer counted them—including the six votes copied from the interactive holos—depositing each in a second receptacle. The count equaled the number of voting cardinals in the Conclave. The Scrutiny proceeded.
The first Scrutineer unfolded a card, wrote down the name on it, and passed the card to the second Scrutineer, who made a note and passed it to the third and final Scrutineer. This man—Cardinal Couesnongle as it turned out—said the name aloud before making a note of it.
In each of the stalls, a cardinal jotted the name on a ’scriber pad provided by the Scrutineers. At the end of the Conclave, the ’scribers would be scrambled, their files deleted so that no record of the voting would remain.
And so the voting proceeded. For Lourdusamy as for the rest of the living cardinals present, the only suspense was whether the dissident cardinal-electors from the Acclamation would actually put someone else’s name into play.
As each card was read, the last Scrutineer ran a threaded needle through the word “Eligo” and slid the card down the thread. When all of the ballots had been read aloud, knots were tied in each end of the thread. The winning candidate was admitted to the Chapel.
Standing before the altar in a simple black cassock, the man looked humble and a bit overwhelmed. Standing before him, the senior Deacon Cardinal said, “Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff?”
“I do so accept it,” said the priest.
At this point, a stall was brought out and set behind the priest. The Cardinal Deacon raised his hands and intoned, “Thus accepting your canonical election, this gathering does—in the sight of God Almighty—acknowledge you as Bishop of the Church of Rome, true Pope, and Head of the College of Bishops. May God advise you well as He grants you full and absolute power over the Church of Jesus Christ.”
“Amen,” said Cardinal Lourdusamy and pulled the cord that lowered the canopy over his stall. All eighty-three physical canopies and thirty-seven holographic ones lowered at the same time, until only the new Pope’s remained raised. The priest—now pontiff—sat back in the seat beneath the papal canopy. “What name do you choose as Supreme Pontiff?” asked the Deacon Cardinal.
“I choose the name Urban the Sixteenth,” said the seated priest.
There was a murmuring and hum from the cardinals’ stalls. The Cardinal Deacon held out his hand and he and the other Scrutineers led the priest from the Chapel. The murmuring and whispering rose in volume.
Cardinal Mustafa leaned out of his stall and said to Lourdusamy, “He must be thinking of Urban the Second. Urban the Fifteenth was a sniveling little coward in the twenty-ninth century who did little but read detective novels and write love letters
to his former mistress.”
“Urban the Second,” mused Lourdusamy. “Yes, of course.”
After several minutes, the Scrutineers returned with the priest—now the Pope dressed in pure white—a white-caped cassock, a white zuchetto or skullcap, a pectoral cross, and a white fascia sash. Cardinal Lourdusamy went to his knees on the stone floor of the Chapel, as did all the other cardinals real and holographic, as the new Pontiff gave his first benediction.
Then the Scrutineers and the attending cardinals went to the stove to burn the votes now tethered on black thread, adding enough bianco chemical to make sure that the fumata would indeed be white smoke.
The cardinals filed out of the Sistine Chapel and walked the ancient paths and corridors to St. Peter’s, where the senior Cardinal Deacon went alone onto the balcony to announce the name of the new Pontiff to the waiting multitudes.
Among the five hundred thousand waiting individuals in the multitude squeezed into, out of, and around St. Peter’s Square that morning was Father Captain Federico de Soya. He had been released from his de facto imprisonment at the Legionaries rectory only hours before.
He was to report to Pax Fleet’s spaceport later that afternoon for shuttle to his new command.
Walking through the Vatican, de Soya had followed the crowds—then had been engulfed by them—as men, women, and children had flowed like a great river toward the Square.
A great cheer had gone up when the puffs of white smoke first became visible from the stovepipe. The impossibly thick throng beneath the balcony of St. Peter’s somehow became thicker as tens of thousands more flowed around the colonnades and past the statuary. Hundreds of Swiss Guard troopers held the crowd back from the entrance to the Basilica and away from private areas.
When the Senior Deacon emerged and announced that the new Pope was to be called His Holiness Urban the XVI, a great gasp went up from the crowd. De Soya found himself gaping in surprise and shock. Everyone had expected Julius XV. The thought of anyone else as Pope was… well, unthinkable.