Maximum Ice (32 page)

“Forty and eleven,” sister murmured, noting the direction of Mother Superior’s gaze.

Solange pursed her lips. No need to ask which hall had forty visits, and which eleven. Sometimes she asked for the names of the sisters who viewed the Hall of Honors. But they would be names of those who curried favor with her. She took note of those capable of such manipulation, wary of them.

Crossing the rotunda, bowing nuns marked her course. She smiled at those she thought might be heartened by such attention. But when she reached the sanctuary, she left the bowing and the reports. At her bidding Sister Helena remained outside.

The sole occupant of the sanctuary, Solange took a seat in the pews. Sensors found her, and graced the chancel with a
hologram. Mother Superior Genevieve, this time. Badly complected. Young. Et cetera. Solange could have doused the laureate display, but that would look peevish, and perhaps worse.

Allowing her breath to settle her, Mother Superior began a meditation on Zoya Kundara, Ship Mother of
Star Road.
Her remarkable saga. Janos had sent her such interesting stories.

Based upon them, Solange had prepared to receive Zoya. She hoped that the woman appreciated the effort she’d gone to on her behalf in the Hall of Horrors.

Beyond the dramatic personal events of Zoya’s life, there was her role on the ship. An extraordinary concept, Ship Mother. Carrying forward a sense of mission amidst the extremities of the space journey; carrying the traditions, so intertwined with the religious imaginations of the crew. Solange detected something further, a tenuous association of the role of Ship Mother to the cult of the Virgin Mary, never made explicit, and more or less tolerated because of that.

Culturally, it was fascinating. The role embodied enormous moral authority. Solange recognized power when she saw it.

It would not be long before she granted this Zoya Kundara an audience. She was planning carefully how to manage it. Janos Bertak thought that Zoya was irrelevant. That was a mistake.

Mother Superior Genevieve smiled down on her from the nave. The robes she wore had not changed from her time until this day—a thousand-year span. It was a simple lapse for Solange to see herself in those robes, and in fact, she had done so many times before. Perhaps a comfort, perhaps a torment. She would be more optimistic if Swan would contact her. But it had only been a few days, and who knew what resources he commanded, for help and shelter on the barrens? She felt she would see him. And soon.

In her imagination, an elevated Solange Arnaud looked
down on her. It was a good likeness of the young Solange Arnaud, captured holographically when she was thirty years old. When the time came, her holo would be ready

Her time would be soon. The necessary events would knit together. Swan would come back. Zoya would arrive, and was even now on her way. Janos would command the ship—for a time.

Janos shouldn’t dismiss Zoya Kundara. It was always foolish to discount moral power. Religions once flourished because of it. It would be a great achievement to win Zoya to the order. As a Sister of Clarity, Zoya would smooth the transition of the crew from religion to philosophy, from error to salvation.

The order had long taught that to move past confusion to clarity one must resort to a higher authority. Since it could not be deity, it must come from a figure imbued with indisputable moral integrity

For some, Ship Mother. For others, Ice. It was a clear choice.

Zoya would have a chance to choose.

“Father,” Anatolly said, “I’m back.”

“I can see that, my son.”

“No, Father, I mean I’m really back. As Ship captain.” He’d been awake for twenty-four hours, wrestling with politics. At dawn he confronted Janos again, and they horse traded. It might not be pretty, but at last a peace—of sorts—prevailed.

Now he wanted the priest’s blessing.

He explained, “We were at the brink of an election. I pulled us back from that brink.”

“Maybe an election was just what we needed,” the priest said.

Anatolly brushed past this. No, it
wasn’t
what they needed. Tereza’s baby changed the odds. Anatolly knew there were more where that infant came from… and that the crew was desperate enough to be impressed by babies and not by the many crises facing them.

Janos had been brokering a conspiracy about orphans for days, all behind Anatolly’s back, and with full compliance from crew. It had taken all of Anatolly’s wits to salvage his captaincy

“I would have lost, Father. Then you’d have Janos Bertak in charge.”

“I presume, then, that Janos is now facing court-martial?”

Anatolly coughed to clear his throat, his head. Father was way behind in the news. “No, he’s not facing charges.” He wiped his hands on his slacks. “I promoted him.”

In the pause that followed, Father did not jump to fill it.

“Janos is now Commander and Chief Exec in charge of Debarkation and Deployment. As of this morning.” It was a long title that Janos seemed to savor, but it was a long way from
captain.
That rank was still Anatolly’s.

Finally, Donicetti managed a reply. “You promoted him.”

That part was perhaps a little hard for the priest to grasp. “It’ll keep the man content. In return, he won’t challenge me in an election. He was always interested in ground matters, starting the colony, dealing with the nuns, things like that. But Ship is still mine.”

“I see.” As though Donicetti
saw
, indeed.

Anatolly didn’t miss the tone. It was all very well for the priest to want Janos punished, but the priest was out of touch. He hadn’t dealt with such nasty politics since he left the Vatican.

“Father, if an election was held today, Janos Bertak would win. Do you want a man like that in charge of Ship?”

“It appears he already is.”

Anatolly’s stomach streamed acid. After all he’d been through, and still he had to suffer the priest’s derision. He rubbed his eyes, trying to moisten them, trying to push back a thundering headache. The priest didn’t need to tell him it wasn’t a perfect arrangement. He’d love to have Janos up on charges instead of commander of transition activities. The man was a snake. But this wasn’t the time to challenge him. The time would come when Janos would answer for Sandor’s death, and much else. There’d be a comeuppance, if there was any justice left in his beleaguered crew

The priest’s voice hovered just beyond the grate: “Why did you come here today, Anatolly?”

Prepared to defend himself, Anatolly had trouble shifting gears. He stared at his shoes in the twilight of the confessional booth.

“I want your blessing, Father.” In truth, he needed his faith more than ever. The view of earth grew worse each day. They had made no progress on encryption. He wanted to believe that God was with them, that He hadn’t died along with every other vestige of the Church. But Ice was on the move, like a cancer in the gut. It was hard to believe God had any mercy in store.

“My blessing.”

Anatolly frowned. Had it just been given, or not? His patience broke. “God’s Blood, Father, are you against me too?”

No shadow flinched behind the grate. But of course Father wasn’t sitting there. He was sitting in the hard drive. Still, Father was implacable, and wouldn’t have flinched in any case.

Donicetti’s voice came more sympathetically: “My son, I am more for you than you are for yourself.”

“Then act like it, Father! I need your counsel and blessing, not a lecture!” Anatolly had never spoke thus to the priest. Truth to tell, he had always been a little uncomfortable with

Donicetti; the priest wasn’t of their blood, for one thing. He was Vatican-bred, used to absolute hierarchy, with no sense of what it really took to govern the Rom….

The priest’s voice sounded harsh: “Tell me, my son, where did Tereza’s baby come from?”

So Donicetti had heard about that after all. “An orphan, Father. The first. More are on the way.”

“Where did the baby come from?”

“From the—sisters.”

Father Donicetti snorted. “Yes,
them.”

It was a delicate matter, Father and the Sisters of Clarity Naturally, Father was concerned that…

Donicetti spat out,
“These people have usurped the mantle of the Church. These people
have styled themselves a holy order, but they spurn God.”

“As you say, Father, but…”

“As though the
trappings
have meaning without God. Without principles. Without love.”

It was true what the priest was saying, but in the real world of people and emotions there must be compromise, persuasion, negotiation. The high-wire act.

“Make no mistake, Anatolly Razo. They mock the Church and our Lord.”

“Well, you know, Father,” he said, “it’s actually a bit of a compliment, that they try to copy us. It fails, of course, but…”

“Compliment?” By the escalating tone, Anatolly saw he had misspoken. “Compliment? I know these Sisters of Clarity. They were a heresy long ago. You should study your history, Anatolly. They were denounced by Pope Innocent XIV as the devil’s mirror. A monstrous parody, seducing souls away from our Lord to the hollow realm of philosophy. And now, here you are, in bed with them.”

The image was alarming, coming from the priest. Anatolly wasn’t in bed with the nuns, he was well aware that Mother Superior had dealt behind his back. He wouldn’t forget that little piece of treachery. And yet, even if Solange made a slippery ally, he had to admit her order was all there was of civilization. Was it better to isolate her or engage her?

Anatolly mumbled, “We can’t always choose our allies, Father.”

“No?” The rumbling voice might have issued from the Vicar of Christ himself.

All Anatolly could say was, “You don’t understand, Father. We’re fighting for our lives.”

Father Donicetti pounced. “Ah. But I’m fighting for your souls.”

Anatolly could bear it no longer. He rose, shaking. “What’s
soul got to do with it?” Sandor was dead. More would die. And religion, instead of supporting him in his time of need, was removing its blessing. Of course it did sound bad, he realized, that business about soul.

“I’m sorry, Father.” He sat back down, vowing to control his emotions. The Church was all that was left of his heart. Years of dulling administration had made him a man even he no longer liked. Only the Church could uplift him. He had made some ugly compromises, with Janos, with the nuns, but it was temporary. For a little while, Anatolly might dislike himself. But when Ship’s crises were past, he would find his soul again… The priest was saying, “As penance, twenty Hail Zoyas.”

Anatolly shook himself more alert. “Pardon?”

“Twenty Hail Mary’s,” Father Donicetti snapped. A flicker of light indicated that the priest had turned himself off.

Damn the man, anyway. Ship’s priest should have been a gypsy

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“
I got through, Ship Mother,” Jozsef Mirran said, on radio link. “I’m surprised you can’t.”
He was referring to Ship communications. He had spoken to Ship.

Zoya was surprised that the radio worked, there at the foot of Error’s Rock. Mirran’s voice came sporadically, shredded by the electromagnetic surges.

Several meters off, Wolf was scanning the crest of the monolith, using Zoya’s field scope. She doubted he could see anyone up there, in the brilliant furnace, a full-spectrum incandescence. In the surge and fade of light, colors occasionally bloomed and retreated. Up close, the plateau wasn’t entirely sheer and uniform. Studding the sides were protruding facets of crystals. Furthermore, there were deep fissures into the massif, some of which appeared to harbor trails. Wolf said that pilgrims used them to ascend, carving pointers for their fellow-believers along the way

“…
Bertak… Commander now.” Mirran continued over the radio. “… a promotion.”

Zoya squinted at the radio pack, as though trying to catch it in a lie. “Commander of what?”

The monolith bloomed slowly from deep within, a swelling of violet, that subsided after a short reign.

“Transition… the surface…”
came the sputtered response.