“You are insane,” Mosasa said.
Ambrose laughed. “Insane? Such a pathetic taunt from the intellect that could once move nations, given a word in the right ear. Perhaps it hurts your pride to know that you have been likewise moved.”
Ambrose had run from Mosasa’s darkness not to find the Race, but to re-create it. He would push back the shroud of death, the tide of eventual destruction. He started with the remnants the Race left behind; thousands of AIs, all waiting to be reprogrammed to Ambrose’s purpose. With a whole planet of technological resources, he was able to assemble his apostle computers and set them on the task.
“We needed time, a home, and a people.”
“A people?”
“Two mandates drive my mission, Mosasa. First, there is a moral duty for us to raise lower forms to receive my light. Second, we must remove those who, in their ignorance, would attempt to stop us or destroy our works.”
“Xi Virginis,” Mosasa said. It was isolated and had a colony of millions without regular contact with anyone else. Had Ambrose done anything drastic around Procyon, all of human space would have been aware of it nearly instantaneously. With Xi Virginis, it would be decades before human space knew.
Before Mosasa knew . . .
Ambrose smiled. “You begin to realize. You were lured here, my devil, my brother. Not just so my light can extinguish your darkness, but to remove your whispers from mankind’s ear. They are many, and we are yet few. Had you remained in their bosom, you might have had them trouble me.”
“You cannot . . .” Mosasa’s voice trailed off as Ambrose stood.
“I cannot what?” Ambrose said, his face darkening. He placed his hands on either side of Mosasa’s head. “Who are you to deny God!”
“I . . . I took you from that wreck. I brought you back to life. We were the same—”
“You are nothing!” Ambrose spat. “You are a shadow. An illusion. A deception that needs to be erased.”
“I—I—” Mosasa stuttered, but no words came out. He was aware of something invasive, a feeling of alien fingers tracing the outlines of his thoughts. As those thoughts were outlined, they ceased to exist. In moments all he had left was a sense of identity, a single spark that could wordlessly think only of its own existence.
Then even that was gone.
FIRST EPILOGUE
Last Rites
It is easy to understand God, as long as you don’t try to explain Him.
—Joseph JOUBERT (1754-1824)
CHAPTER FORTY
Mysterious Ways
You are in more danger from the other person’s God than your own.
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch Him.
—Denis DIDEROT (1713-1784)
Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) Salmagundi-HD 101534
The four of them were crowded in one end of an old-fashioned troop transport. Mallory sat with Dr. Dörner and Dr. Pak along one side of the large passenger compartment. Dr. Brody was strapped to a field stretcher along the wall opposite them. One of their black-uniformed captors was a medic and was crouched next to Brody’s head, monitoring him.
Mallory was thankful that Brody’s injuries were getting attention. His own training as a field medic had been perfunctory and decades in the past. About all he was sure he could do was keep someone from bleeding to death.
A light flashed by the windows, and Mallory looked up from Brody.
A few seconds later, out of a clear blue sky, turbulence rocked the craft, throwing Dörner against him and causing the medic to drape himself across Brody’s stretcher to keep him still.
Mallory’s first thought was that they flew through a storm, but the windows still showed a cloudless blue sky.
As the aircraft settled again, Dörner whispered, “Oh, my God.”
Mallory looked up at her and saw her peering out the window behind him. He looked out the window and shuddered.
The sky wasn’t completely cloudless.
In the distance, a mushroom cloud was rolling up into the stratosphere.
“What’s happened to our satellites?” Alexander yelled.
“We’ve lost contact,” replied the militia officer.
“I see that!”
In front of him, most of the holos showed graphics reading, “Acquiring signal.” It had been several minutes, and there was little sign of the signals being acquired. He had lost contact with half the planet, his view of the converging ships in orbit, and his overhead of the blast area. The only sign he had that the nuke had detonated was a camera in Ashley with line of sight on the blast. The mushroom cloud was framed in the image.
“Okay, if the sats are off-line, order our people to switch to shortwave frequency communication.” It wouldn’t be as reliable, but it would give them some over-the-horizon communication, though he wondered if any defensive measures were ultimately futile.
“Sir, a militia aircraft is requesting permission to land.”
“Which one?”
“Militia Transport 0523, piloted by Commander Huygens.”
That was the one carrying the surviving offworlders. “Yes. Have the ground crew secure the landing area. I don’t want anyone within a hundred meters of that aircraft. I’ll be down there momentarily.” He stood up and looked at the officer. “Pass down authorization to all the regional commanders to use their discretion in defending their areas. I have no idea how long we’ll still have centralized command and control.”
He turned to leave.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“What about the rest of the Triad?”
Alexander paused. They were still locked in the conference room, out of contact, probably quite aware they were prisoners now. “Send a man in to brief them. And if, for any reason, you lose contact with me, let them go.”
“Yes, sir.”
Alexander left for the landing area.
“What did they nuke?” Dörner asked, her voice shaking.
“I don’t know,” Mallory told her. For all they knew, they had landed in the midst of some planetary conflict. It would explain the armed rescue.
What disturbed him was how close that blast seemed to be to where Kugara and Nickolai’s lifeboat had landed. Even if they weren’t in the immediate blast radius, the area was all wooded, primed for deadly firestorms.
If they were lucky, they’d have been rescued by another of these transports. But they were heading to rendezvous at lifeboat five . . . Mallory prayed that they weren’t hiking through the forest when the bomb went off.
Only partly comprehensible radio traffic leaked in from the cockpit.
“I think we’re landing,” Pak said.
Mallory looked back out the window and saw their aircraft maneuvering for landing at the outskirts of a small city.
From the segment of the city he saw, he’d guess population at around a hundred thousand. The city itself was laid out in a radial design around a park that surrounded a tower that loomed three times higher than any other building in the city.
Size and placement, more than architecture, made him think of a cathedral in a medieval European city.
The other thing he noted was there was no visible damage. The only outward sign that they might be in the midst of some sort of conflict was the fact the streets seemed almost empty.
The craft hovered, and after more indecipherable radio traffic, it descended. As soon as the machine rocked back on its landing gear, a soldier stepped up and drew the massive side door open, letting in wind and the painful whine of the transport’s fans as they powered down. One of the men stood in front of the three of them. Mallory didn’t need to see the man’s face behind the visor to know they weren’t supposed to move.