Prophets

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Mixed Blessings

Sometimes victory is simply deciding to act.

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.

—John STUART Mill (1806-1873)

Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) Salmagundi-HD 101534

Mallory had already made four kilometers toward lifeboat number five by the time dawn broke. He kept trying to radio the others, and the yellow point of the sun had begun poking through the canopy at him before he finally got a response.

“Father Mallory?” came Dr. Dörner’s voice.

“Yes, what’s your situation?”

“Dr. Brody is still unconscious, but Dr. Pak and I are both all right.”

Mallory thanked God that they had made it through reentry in one piece. “Good, that’s good. Have you heard anything from the Eclipse or Kugara?”

“No. But it took a while to get to the comm unit. We have a little problem.”

Mallory’s breath caught. “What?”

“We seem to be stuck in a tree.”

Mallory picked up his pace through the woods as he got the details from Dr. Dörner. Their lifeboat had made a softer landing than anyone had a right to expect. The unfortunate side of this was that, unlike Mallory’s lifeboat, lifeboat number five didn’t hit with quite enough force to break the trees it landed on. Dr. Dörner had managed to open the door and discovered that they were at least fifty meters up. There was rope in the emergency kit somewhere, but their perch was precarious enough that Dr. Dörner didn’t want to risk the movement that would be required to find it in the jumble of debris that filled the lifeboat. Even if they had the rope at hand, they had no way to safely get Brody to the ground.

“Can you see how the lifeboat is supported?”

“N-no.” Her voice was thick with fear.

“We need to get all of you out of that lifeboat,” Mallory said.

“I don’t know how we can.”

Mallory heard creaking wood over the open link. They had to get out of there before the support gave way. “Look, don’t worry about getting down. The immediate problem is getting Brody to a stable location. Look out the door. You must see other branches big enough to support you.”

He heard her suck in a breath, then the comm followed with rustling movement and more creaking. “I’m here.” Now her voice was cut with the sound of wind. More creaking, followed by a snap, and she gasped.

“Are you all right?”

“The lifeboat shifted,” she whispered.

“Do you see anything within reach?”

“I’m looking . . . There’s a branch below the door. It’s about a meter in diameter.”

“Perfect, can one of you get to it?”

“I don’t know if I—” Her voice was cut off by more rustling and creaking, and Mallory heard muffled voices he couldn’t make out.

“Dr. Dörner?”

“Leon said he can try.”

“Okay,” Mallory sucked in a breath. “What kind of shape is Dr. Brody in? Is he conscious?”

“No. We’ve tried waking him.”

Mallory sucked in a breath. None of the options were particularly good, but they couldn’t stay in the lifeboat. “Can you move him yourself?”

“I-I don’t think so.”

“Then you and Dr. Pak need to move him to the doorway. Then Dr. Pak can go outside and help you pass Dr. Brody through the doorway.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“I know it isn’t,” Mallory said. “Slow and careful. You can’t stay in that lifeboat.”

“Father Mallory?”

“Yes?”

“Why did you pretend to be someone else? Isn’t that a sin?”

Mallory paused and then said, “I’ve only done what the Church asked of me. We’re all sinners looking for God’s forgiveness. Now, please, get yourself and Dr. Brody out of there.”

“I’ll need two hands,” she said. He heard her set down the comm unit. He started walking again, hearing only the protesting tree, grunts, and soft, inarticulate speech. Every passing minute, the groaning wood seemed to get louder, and occasionally something would pop.

He felt his chest tighten when he heard static blare over the comm followed by a horribly loud crashing sound.

“Dr. Dörner!” he shouted into the unit, breaking into a run even though he was still at least nine kilometers away from them. “Dr. Dörner!”

After nearly thirty seconds of panic, the comm came alive again. “We’re fine. The comm fell from my belt while we were moving Dr. Brody.”

Mallory stopped running, the relief almost a physical blow. “Is everyone out?”

“Not me, not yet.”

“Can you make it?”

“Yes. But can I ask you something, Father Mallory?”

“What?”

“Do you know what happened to Xi Virginis?”

“No, Dr. Dörner. But I think God led me here to find out.”

“God or Mosasa?”

“God is free to choose any instrument to work His will.”

She hesitated before asking, “Did you sabotage our communications?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I’m going out the door now.” She added, almost in a whisper, “Pray for me.”

Mallory did as she asked.

Alexander had never seen the Grand Triad gripped by such chaos. Progress of the Salmagundi government was always slow and deliberative, filled as it was by minds self-selected for their caution and traditional nature. It was always annoying, but now it had verged on the dangerous.

Alexander had, through debate, reason, cajoling, and very subtle threats, brought the Triad around to his position both on eliminating the Protean threat and allowing the Eclipse to land. For a few hours, things had gone smoothly, the Eclipse making no objections to their traffic control directions, maneuvering to approach and limiting their radio traffic as requested.

And, despite the objections of the Ashley Triad and the area lumber interests, Alexander had gotten consensus around the idea of using their limited nuclear arsenal to eliminate the threat from the invader. Once the Eclipse was on the surface and under guard, a single attack would wipe the alien object from the face of the planet. The crew of the Eclipse, whoever they were, would have no need to know that the Proteans ever existed.

Then the Eclipse had exploded.

Alexander had watched the observatory footage as the engines of the ship had blown themselves into space, carrying a good part of the ship with them. Then the lifeboats burst from the skin of the craft, and suddenly their contact with the rest of the universe was less direct and controlled.

Worse, the Eclipse was not alone.

The display above the meeting room showed a schematic view of the space in orbit around Salmagundi. The location of the Eclipse highlighted in red, two other ships showing up blue, one of the two attached parasitically to the wreckage of the Eclipse. An inset showed a map of the area to the west of Ashley covering about a hundred thousand square kilometers. The inset was from a weather satellite, and if Alexander stared at it hard enough, he could see the scar from the alien’s impact about two hundred kilometers into the woods southwest of Ashley. The site was highlighted by a red circle.

Six other circles now dotted the woods southwest of Ashley. One of the Eclipse’s lifeboats had made landfall within a dozen klicks of the city, and would have been in full view of the population if it had landed in daylight.

“We need to secure these landing sites now; it’s been nearly six hours.”

“Calling up a larger security detail will make it impossible to contain this news. There are already unacceptable rumors surrounding the existing incident—”

“And when we detonate a nuclear weapon? Are you going to contain those rumors?”

“We have a limited supply of militarily capable units. We should not risk them—”

“If not on this, what? We’re being invaded. We need to focus on the craft approaching us. Did they see the damage to the Eclipse as an attack?”

Alexander glanced up at the schematic. At the edge of the view, maybe a million kilometers from the planet, a spreading line of blue contacts were edging into view. He counted twelve. Fifteen minutes ago, there had been six.

The Grand Triad had been debating for hours, and for once Alexander could see no hint of consensus coming. We will collapse under the weight of our own arguments. . . .

With the eyes of his ancestors, he watched the room and saw the shape of the coming disaster. If the civilization they’d built on Salmagundi had a weakness, it was this hesitation in the face of the unknown. He knew that it was only going to worsen as the stakes increased. He had seen it growing as they debated the nuclear option, but even then it hadn’t reached the crisis point. Then, the Grand Triad had reached a conclusion.

This was different.

There was no way they could defend themselves if they vested power in the disparate parts of the Triad. As much as they wanted to, there was no way they could emulate the merger of minds and souls exemplified by the Hall of Minds outside of a single skull.

Even knowing all this, the internal debate Alexander Shane underwent in coming to his own personal consensus was almost as long in coming as the nonexistent decision of the Triad. But when his own decision came, he welcomed it and started it into motion.

He checked the chronometer on his comm and it showed 10:00, a third of the way into Salmagundi’s thirty-hour day. He stood up and formally excused himself. The debate around him barely rippled, acknowledging his departure. Harrison took over the chair and did less to rein in the chaos than Alexander had.

Like Alexander, he had the experience of enough lives to know how pointless it was to attempt to force the Triad toward action at a time like this. Unlike Alexander, he was satisfied with the traditional inaction.

Alexander stepped outside the meeting room and was met by a dozen men in full militia gear. Each of the men had been handpicked by Alexander. Every single one had two or three glyphs matching some of the fifteen across Alexander’s brow. So each one shared several lifetimes with him. Each one thought enough like Alexander that they could be trusted with what was about to happen.

They all saluted him.

Alexander saluted back.

“It is time,” he told them. “Secure the building.”

Several ran to seal the various entrances to the Hall of Minds. Others ran to take over the security control center.

He picked up his handheld comm and transmitted a prerecorded message to the security chiefs of every city on Salmagundi.

“This is Alexander Shane, Chairman of the Great Triad. Acting on behalf of the Triad, all security and militia members, active and reserve, are now under my command. All available personnel are to report for duty immediately and await further instructions.”

Alexander suspected that it might be another hour or two before the rest of the Grand Triad realized that the doors to the meeting room were sealed and all external communication was cut.

He met up with his own personal guard in the security office of the Ashley Hall of Minds. It wasn’t much space to run a whole government from but—outside the meeting room where the Grand Triad was imprisoned—it had the most bandwidth to handle the kind of multitiered communications he needed right now.

The normal security detail had been ushered out, and Alexander had to remove a half-eaten sandwich from the console as he sat down. Two other men, the highest-ranking militia members in Ashley, joined him by taking the other two available seats.

Alexander turned to one. “We’re going to need intel from everyone who’s got an eye on orbit. I’ll need to know anything coming into our space, and what it is. Coordinate that and get views up there.” He pointed to the ranks of security monitors. “And get the satellite imagery from around Ashley up on the main screen there.”

He turned in the chair to face the other man, “I want six militia units ready to go to secure the lifeboat landing sites within the next fifteen minutes. If anyone gives you any problems, route them to me.”

Both men began making calls. Alexander didn’t expect any problems. Authority was accepted on Salmagundi, and a challenge to his assumption of command would require as extraordinary a deviation from the norm as he had just committed. He was rather secure in the fact that kind of initiative was rare.

The small sun rose higher above the forest canopy as Mallory closed on the location of lifeboat five. The trees closed in, but not closer than a few meters. It didn’t slow his progress too much.

He was within two kilometers of them when he got a frantic voice on his comm unit.

“We have aircraft!”

“Dr. Dörner?”

“Two aircraft just flew over. Can you hear?”

“I—” Before he finished the statement, he heard them overhead. He looked up and saw two shadows shooting low over the forest canopy. The fans roared as they passed almost directly over him. The two craft were large cargo or personnel transports. Though their blocky forms and slow progress showed their lift to be from contragrav engines, their maneuvering fans were oversized, and still vectored enough thrust that the downdraft shredded foliage. Fragments of spiky green leaves rained down on Mallory as the blocky vehicles passed over him.

“Here! We’re over here!” He heard Dr. Dörner’s voice as the engine noise retreated with the aircraft. There was a pleading note in her voice.

“They’ve seen you,” Mallory said. “If they didn’t see the drag chute, they picked up on the beacon. They’re probably looking for a landing site.”

“We’re over here!” the comm continued.

Mallory wondered if she heard him at all. He could hear Dr. Pak shouting something in the background.

Mallory tried to raise them, but in their excitement over seeing the rescue craft, she must have set down their comm unit. He couldn’t really blame them. His own spirits had been raised just seeing it.

It felt miraculous. Enough so that Mallory wondered if it was literally miraculous. It felt as if the hand of God had helped them safely to ground. The only thing that tempered that thought was his inability to contact the Eclipse or Kugara. He knew better than to try to interpret his survival as divine favor and others’ fate as divine punishment. That kind of simplistic thinking was spiritually wrongheaded, shown by Job onward.

However, it was very human to wonder why God had spared them.

Mallory broke into a jog toward the lifeboat, trying to get there in time for the rescue party. As he ran through the woods, he heard the aircraft returning.

What? They need an LZ, don’t they?

They returned, moving much more slowly. They passed above him again, vector fans roaring, and came to a stop about five hundred meters away from him. Right above where the lifeboat had to be. He broke into a run, and he was able to resolve details on the craft. Mallory recognized the design.

It was two centuries out of date, but the design had been a popular version of an airborne troop carrier. It was the kind of ubiquitous vehicle that you’d find in the vehicle pool of every riot police force and planetary militia in the days of the Confederacy.

As Mallory closed on the lifeboat, he saw the side doors slide open to reveal ranks of soldiers in full armor, one of whom was bent over a large plasma cannon aiming out the door on a pintle mount.

Is this a rescue?

Mallory came to a stop as soldiers started dropping out of the aircraft on zip lines. He backed up and crouched for some cover as two dozen men dropped to the ground.

He knew enough tactics to realize that he was pinned. The aircraft would have the imaging gear to see if he ran. His only hope to avoid detection was to hug the base of this tree and hope they hadn’t bothered to sweep this area of the woods yet.

He waited, hearing nothing but the massive roar of the hovering aircraft. If they hadn’t picked up his transmissions, if they hadn’t seen his IR signature running through the woods, if they hadn’t caught sight of him any of the times he was in LOS.

Those were too many ifs.

It only took the soldiers five minutes to have a trio of armed men surround him. Mallory took some comfort in the fact they didn’t shoot him out of hand.

On some level then, it still counted as a rescue.