The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (80 page)

D
EAR JESÚS SON
of Jesús!

I’ve been reading the letter you left on my omni. Yes, I knew your father well, and yes, he died far too soon. And I’ll be happy to tell you my memories of him, provided you’re ready to get an earful.

Looking at the hologram you sent along with the text, so many things come back to me. I see the guy I used to square off with in martial arts training at the Academy, when we were both ridiculously young. Also the guy I went into space with, on my first voyage out of our customary world and universe.

Well, I’m in my anecdotage now, and for the moment all alone and ready to talk. My wife Anna’s in China, seeing to some ancient relatives who need assistance. I’m left here at Manypalms Oasis in the Great American Desert – generally a good place to live, but not in August! 48 bloody degrees outside, enough to fry a scorpion. Makes me think of Planet Bela in its summertime, though fortunately ours doesn’t last for half a century. When the house bot serves me a cool drink made with pears and mangoes, I say politely, “This is excellent, Tycho,” because it’s programmed to repeat actions it gets compliments on, and I need all the liquid intake it can provide.

So I’ll sip quietly and remember bygone adventures and talk into my omni, and you can read the result whenever you’re not too busy helping to govern Luna. I hear rumors that one day you’ll be a Councilor of State and a maker of history. Well, tuck this away in your memory, as a warning of how hard history can be on the innocent.

The story really began before your Papa and I were born.

A cult had been launched by an Italian mystic who called himself Innocente, under the name Scala d’Amore, or Ladder of Love. Innocente taught that love can rise from the gross and carnal to the sublime and universal. That made his doctrine a good vehicle for everything from orgies to sainthood, and brought in a nice wide spectrum of believers. For a little while the cult flourished like mushrooms after rain.

Its symbol was the DNA molecule (which does look a bit like a ladder, or maybe a double spiral staircase) inside a crystal sphere. All parts of the icon had prodigious meanings, if you chose to see them. The sphere meant unity, the crystal meant clarity, the molecule was the ladder of life and consequently of love. For a while, women wore them on charm bracelets and men hung them around their necks on chains. Temples sprouted in every city with the icon on top lighted up at night. Like God it was ubiquitous – or else omnipresent, I forget which.

Its popularity made it a lightning rod for controversy and even violence. Established religions did not fail to notice that it was taking believers away from them, and persecution followed in various parts of the world. The government (as its habit is) decided to blame the victims, and show trials followed, with some cult members accused of outlandish sexual practices and plotting sedition. Pontius Pilate would have grasped the situation in a flash.

That was when Innocente announced that he and a select group of followers called the Seven Hundred were leaving Earth to prepare a refuge for all true believers in the depths of space. Like other mystics he claimed paranormal powers – prevision and clairvoyance – and he foresaw wonderful things for his colony. Skeptics said he was taking his followers someplace where he could control them better. Not an unknown ploy for cult leaders, by the way!

Well, at that time the Council of State was promoting emigration for a number of reasons, one of which was to rid the Earth of potential troublemakers, including religious fanatics. (The kings of England had the same idea when they invited the Puritans to go the hell to America and stay there.) Innocente and his 700 disciples – actually 642; some had second thoughts and dropped out – were quickly granted visas and transported to a system identified as H2223 in the New Catalog. They were deposited on the third or gamma planet, which Innocente hopefully renamed Paradiso, there to live or die by their own resources and a pile of supplies that were dumped with them.

The planet was not prime real estate. Prime real estate was reserved for mining and military colonies. Paradiso had no moon, and the system was meager – closer to the sun were two cinders called alpha and beta, and farther away two remote gasballs named delta and epsilon. Plus the usual ash and trash, some interesting comets that visited at intervals of centuries, and leftovers of unconsolidated or destroyed planets that gave periodic meteor showers of uncommon brilliance.

The planet had almost the mass of Neptune, though as a solid body it was much smaller. The high gravity must have required some serious adaptations by local life forms, and cartoonists had a field day showing colonists shaped like bowlegged gnomes trying unsuccessfully to climb the Ladder of Love. While the believers were settling down, Innocente died of coronary artery disease (maybe related to the increase in gravity?) and was succeeded by his son, who also claimed to possess paranormal powers.

Then Earth lost contact, as a series of skirmishes began in the same general neighborhood with unknown but well-equipped assailants. Dignified by the title of the First Alien War, the fighting went on and off (mostly off) for forty-four standard years. You may recall from history classes that we didn’t do too well, although we did manage to smash one of their ships with a faster-than-light missile, or FTLM. A boarding party spent enough time poking through the wreckage to bring back tissue samples which showed that the aliens weren’t one species, they were at least five, and – unlike the so-called Cousins of Planet Bela – not even closely related.

Maybe they were all living in symbiotic harmony (the nice theory) or maybe four of them had been enslaved by the fifth (the nasty theory). Anyway, for lack of any idea what they might call themselves, hostile journalists called them collectively the Zoo, and cartoonists showed them as a cageful of bizarre monsters.

That capture was our sole achievement. In return we lost some very expensive ships and several hundred highly trained members of the Space Service. More cautious Councils of State then adopted a policy of Retrenchment – pulling back colonists from the dangerous region in order to strengthen closer and more defensible worlds. (This time it was the Emperor Hadrian who would have nodded his wise old head and muttered Sic transit, or something.) Ill-feeling toward the Ladder of Love had declined because, in the absence of its leader, the cult itself had withered on both Terra and Luna, and was no longer seen as a threat. So the Council dedicated a single starship (the big old
Zhukov)
to the task of relocating the folks on Paradiso, and preparations for the expedition began.

While all this history was going on, your Papa and I got ourselves born and grew into the kind of strong, adventurous, and dumb youngsters for whom the Services always have an appeal. Then as now, the Security Forces had their own troops to suppress rebellions, plus a police side to attack crime – sort of like the old Russian Interior Ministry, only not quite as nasty. We chose the military side, and together completed basic and advanced officers’ training and received our shoulder straps and the right to be saluted by serfs of our own calling. I was senior to him by nine minutes or so, because the roster at graduation was alphabetical and K for Kohn, Robert came before M for Morales, Jesús. We’d become friends while knocking each other around in martial arts classes and chasing women on leave, and that was a comfort because our first assignment looked to be a tough one.

The running of the Zhukov was the business of the Space Service, but overall command of the expedition had been vested in a Security Forces general, Colonel-General Schlacht. He was supposed to corral and ride herd on the colonists who, it was felt, might be somewhat unhappy over being uprooted from a place they’d lived for several generations. Schlacht had a reputation for eating junior officers alive, preferably after first dipping them in hot sauce, so Morales and I were less than thrilled when we were assigned to command the two infantry platoons that were going along to police the repatriated colonists.

“So young to die,” sighed your Papa. Only of course he didn’t quite say that. In training we’d learned that words are merely loose gravel until glued together by the mortar of obscenity. You should imagine him actually saying, “*#%&!! So *#%& young to *#%& die!”

I couldn’t have agreed more.

We met the General on Orbital Station One, where many years later I had some interesting experiences. The Big Wheel, as everybody called it then, was in fine trim on that first visit, no monks as yet but lots of scientists – white lab coats instead of white habits – plus all sorts of people in transit from here to there. As usual, Basic English was everybody’s second language, and the place resounded with a Babel of accents, including ours. We saw military types sporting flashy uniforms and civilians wearing a variety of dumb getups (balloon pants and formal T-shirts and lacquered wigs were in that year, for both men and women). We had time to gaze down at the blue ball of the Earth while getting a bite in the military canteen, and at the remainder of our very large universe over coffee in the Darkside Lounge. Then our omnis started squealing, and we were invited to haul our butts to the General’s office soonest.

I didn’t have much time to get to know Schlacht, for reasons I’ll explain later, and I never developed any warmth of feeling for him. But I have to admit he was impressive – roughly 2 meters high and 80 centimeters wide, with a face resembling a water buffalo beset by biting flies, all frowns and snorts and bristling mustaches. His hair was white, untidy, and too abundant – totally unmilitary – and sent the message that while scum like Morales and me had to worry about regs, he didn’t. Same message from his shoulder straps. He was authorized seven stars but wore none, because he didn’t need little bits of shiny metal to tell people how godawful important he was.

For what seemed like half an hour he sat in silence, gazing at us with evident loathing, and then spoke in a kind of hoarse bellow. “So you characters are supposed to be my platoon leaders.”

While we were yelling, “Yes, sir!” in parade-ground style, he perused a printout and when quiet had been restored, grunted, “Morales and Kohn. Jesus and a Jew.”

“Sir, my name is pronounced Hayzoose,” said your Papa bravely.

“As far as I’m concerned, Mister, your name is pronounced Crap. That’s mierda, in case you have trouble with English.”

After that the interview went rapidly downhill. About an hour later, Jesús and I were having several stiff drinks in the Officers’ Lounge while waiting for our ears to stop burning.

“Well,” he said at last, “I guess we know where we stand with the *#%& General.”

I answered that it seemed we’d embarked on a rough voyage. Luckily, as yet neither of us had a clue just how rough.

Via a lighter, we boarded the
Zhukov
a couple of days later. It belonged to what was called the Alexander class of starships, which were almost round only not quite, oblate spheroid I think is the term. All the vehicles were named for famous generals and admirals, so there was a Sun Tzu and a Saladin and a Caesar and a Nelson and I don’t know who else. They were supposed to be virtually indestructible, with triple hulls of nuclear steel and all kinds of redundancies built in to make them “structurally impervious.” A piece of human chutzpah, I might add, properly punished when three of them were blown up by enemy FTLM’s during the First Alien War.