Heads. Part 9

'They're managers,' I said. 'They're Politicians, shepherds of their flock.'

'Cut the politics',' William said. 'Rho, you've stirred a snake pit.'

'Ice Pit. Frozen snakes. Heaven save us,' she said, and I think she meant it as a genuine request.

'A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country.' Matthew.' William seemed to surprise himself with his own erudition. 'Do you think Fiona Task-Felder wants Thierry disposed of'

'She may not even know,' I said. 'She's been given orders from Earth. All the puppets are dancing because somebody high in the Church of Logology knew all along where Thierry was, knew that he had had himself frozen by StarTime upon his death... That his cremation was a hoax, not to mention his joining the Ascended Masters as a galaxy roaming spirit.'

'Then why didn't they outbid me on Earth?' Rho asked. 'Why didn't the Logologists buy StarTime decades ago and bury dead meat?'

'You can't buy what somebody refuses to sell.' I took out my slate and scrolled through a list of names and biographies, from public records and old Triple Financial Disclosure files. Any individual or group on Earth who had invested in Triple enterprises in the late twenty-first and early twenty-second centuries had had to file extensive disclosures with suspicious and reluctant terrestrial authorities. Those had been the bad old days of embargoes and the Split.

StarTime Preservation Society had maintained a wide folio of investments, including investments in the Triple. 'Here's my prime suspect,' I said. 'His name was Frederick Jones. He was director of StarTime from 2097 until his death four years ago. He was a lapsed Logologist. In fact, he had sued the Church for thirty million dollars in 2090. He lost. Did StarTime select its bidders?'

'They could have,' Rho said.

'Jones probably knew that K. D. Thierry was a member of StarTime. He might not have known where he was, since he seemed at no particular pains to straighten out the records after the Logologist employees scrambled them. Think of what qualms Jones must have had, protecting the man he most hated from his own church ...

'To fulfil the contracts with Thierry, Jones's successors locked the Church out of the bidding, allowing only legitimate concerns. Jones had fought them off for decades. I'd say that eventually the Church just gave up. There didn't seem to be any scientific breakthroughs on the horizon. The heads were just frozen meat. No foreseeable threat. New church directors came into power. Memories lapsed. Then they discovered what had happened. It's all supposition, but it makes sense.'

'Pandora came along,' Rho said. 'Pandora of the tulips. What are we going to do, Mickey?'

'Obviously, we're legally required to defend the interests of these corpsicles - but I'm not sure under what law. Earth law and Triple law don't exactly mesh, let alone Earth law and lunar law.'

'What about Robert and Emilia?' Rho asked. 'If we're forced to divest, what happens to them?'

The QL thinker interrupted us with a gentle chiming. 'William, a comprehensible stability has returned. All cells are stable at ten to the minus twentieth Kelvin. No energy input is required to maintain stability.'

William stopped his ma.s.sage. 'Don't think me unconcerned,' he said, 'but this means I can get back to work.' 'I haven't even kept track of what you're doing,' Rho told him sorrowfully.

'No fear,' he said, bending over to kiss her on the forehead. I had never seen William more gentle, more sympathetic with Rho, and I was touched. 'So long as I'm left alone most of the time, I'll get my own work done. Save Robert and Emilia. This family is important to me, too.'

I told Thomas about our discovery ten minutes later. He hardly reacted at all - the family meeting was to be that evening, his job was in the balance and he was thinking.

'The family syndics voted full confidence,' Thomas told me over the phone early in the morning. 'They've left this matter entirely in my hands.' He had left his vid off. I interpreted this to mean that he looked too tired, too defeated, to be seen by an underling; his voice confirmed my suspicion. 'I wish to h.e.l.l they'd kicked me out and taken over, Mickey, but they've got their own work to do at a higher level.'

'That means they have confidence in you,' I said.

'No,' he said slowly. 'Not at all, Mickey. Think. What does it really mean?'

I considered for a moment. 'They think Sandoval BM, under your direction, can't do much more damage than we've already done, and the other family syndics will work behind the scenes with the BMs and the council to patch things up.'

'Give Mickey long enough, and he gets the answer,' Thomas said.

'But that doesn't make sense, not entirely,' I said, my voice rising at this sting. 'Why not tell us to just b.u.t.t out?'

Thomas suddenly switched on his vid. He looked ten years older and exhausted, but his eyes were twin points of fever brightness. 'I didn't tell them about Thierry, Mickey. We're going to try one more thing. You think the president doesn't know why she's been ordered to shut down our project. Well. why don't we tell her? Better yet, Mickey, why don't you play the c.o.c.ky little b.a.s.t.a.r.d and tell her yourself?'

If he had been in the room with me, I might have reached out and hit him. 'You're the b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' I said. 'You're a G.o.dd.a.m.ned sanctimonious and cruel old b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'That's what I want, Mickey: conviction,' he said. 'I'm putting a lot of faith in you. I think this will shock the lunar Logologists into a useful confusion. The leaders of the Church are counting on our not knowing; if we don't know, Fiona and the lunar branch won't know. Let's upset the balance of ignorance.'

I was still angry enough to keep my finger on the cut-off. But his words and his plan started to become clear to me. 'You want me to play the upstart again,' I said.

'You got it, Mickey. Angry. Insulted. I've just fired you. Tell Fiona Task-Felder that we know we have Thierry, and that we're going to debrief his head unless they back off., 'Thomas, that's ... a little scary.'

'I think it will knock Fiona into a stupor and give us some much-needed time. You know what the next step is, Mickey?'

'We announce it to the solar system.'

Thomas laughed out loud. 'd.a.m.n you to h.e.l.l, my boy, you're getting the hang of it now. We could set the Logologists back fifty years. 'Church seeks to destroy remains of prophet and founder.'' His hands ascribed lit headlines. 'I think Sandoval's directors are correct to leave this to us, don't you?'

I felt like a rat in a hole. 'If you say so, Thomas.'

'We have our orders. Sic her, Mickey.'

I waited thirty hours, just to give myself time to think, to feel my way through to some independence from Thomas. I was not at all sure he hadn't broken under this strain. The thought of calling the president, after my last defeat at her hands, was nauseating. I thought of all the poor idiots throughout human history who had been caught in political traps, logistical traps, traps of any kind; all rats in a common hole.

I felt myself growing older. I didn't see it as an improvement.

And who was behind it all? Whom could I blame?

Ultimately, one man who had started a strangely secular church, attracting people good and bad, faithful and cynical, starting an organization too large and too well financed and organized to simply fade: promulgating a series of lies become sacred truths. How often had that happened in human history, and how many had suffered and died?

I had dipped into records of past prophets during my Earth research. Zarathustra. Jesus. Mohammed. Shabbetai Tzevi, the seventeenth-century Turkish Jew who had claimed to be Messiah, and who in the end had apostatized and become a Moslem. Al Mahdi, who had defeated the British at Khartoum. Joseph Smith, who had read the Word of G.o.d from golden tablets with special gla.s.ses, and Brigham Young. Dozens of nineteenth and twentieth century founders of radical branches of Christianity and Islam. The nameless, faceless prophet of the Binary Millennium. And all the little ones since, the pretenders whose religions had eventually foundered, the charlatans of small talent, of skewed messages too foul even for human ma.s.s consumption. To which rank did Thierry belong?

I swung back from this dark vision, asking myself how much such humans had contributed to human philosophy and order, to civilization. Judaism, Christianity and Islam had ordered and divided the Western world. I myself admired Jesus.

But what I had learned about Thierry made it impossible for me to give him top rank. He had been petty, a philanderer, a malicious prosecutor of those who had fallen from his grace. He had written ridiculous laws to govern the lives of his followers. He had been cruel and intemperate. Eventually, instead of going on a galactic cruise and joining the Ascended Masters, as he had claimed he would do upon 'discorporation', Thierry had been frozen by StarTime Preservation. He had donated his head to the ages, in the hopes of a purely secular immortality.

I visited the Ice Pit and rode the elevator to the chamber. s...o...b..rt and Cailetet-Davis had been recalled, finally, but they had left their equipment in place, since the recall was tentative, pending final disposition of the project.

Rho had been instructed in some of the fundamentals of the instruments. She could play back the recordings already made, and with some effort make crude translations of other patterns.

We sat in the near-silence, squatting on the steel decking. Rho cursed and fumbled her way through the equipment settings.

'I'm going to have to interpret some of this,' Rho said.

'The translations aren't perfect.'

We listened to Kimon Thierry's last few minutes of conscious memory. There were, as yet, no visual translations. The sound that came from the equipment was distorted, human voices barely recognizable.

Mr Thierry, a ... [crackling whicker] longtime friend of Mrs Winston...'

'We think he's talking on the phone,' Rho explained.

'Yes, I know her. What's she want?'

That was Thierry himself, speaking aloud, heard from within his own head: voice deeper and more resonant.

'She's asked about the [something] logos point meeting in January. Is there going to be an XYZ mind discourse?'

'I don't see why not. Who is she? Not another b.i.t.c.h from the Staten Island instrumentality, is she?'

'No, sir She's a platinum contributor. She brought her five children to the Taos Campus Logos in September ...'

'Just day-to-day business,' Rho suggested. She rested her chin in her hands, squatting lotus on the floor, elbows on knees, as I remembered her sitting when she was a young girl. She looked at me with a be-patient expression; more coming.

'Tell her the mind discourse takes a lot of my mental energy. If I'm going to hold an XYZ, we'll need ten new contributors, each at the Platinum level Takes a lot of energy to contact the lost G.o.ds. ' Even through his own filter, Thierry sounded more than just physically tired; he sounded like a man trapped in boredom, mouthing the words with no hope for relief 'Can you guarantee contact with them?, ''at in h.e.l.l kind of question is that?'

'Sir, I mean, do you have the wherewithal? Your health hasn't been that good recently. The last logos point... '

'Tell Mrs What's-her-name I'll have her swimming in Delta Wisdom, I'll have the G.o.ds evacuate her mental sinuses back to her conception. Tell her whatever she needs to be convinced to work for us- We need ten new Platinums. What the h.e.l.l else have you got? I 'I'm sorry to upset you, Mr Thierry, but Id like this to go well-'

'I appreciate your concern, but I know what my strength is now, I rest ... on my own theos charge. What else? Ahhh ..

'Sir?' [Distorted.]

A long groan, followed by sharp clatters, other voices in his immediate vicinity, one female voice coming to the fore, 'Kimon, Kimon, what's wrong?'

No answer from Thierry, just another groan; something like plumbing rattling, fireworks exploding in a m.u.f.fled room. The same female voice barely audible over Thierry's final memories of a drastically failing body: 'Kimon, what is this-'

And Thierry's final words, issued in a whispered moan, 'Get Peter.'

The translation ended and Rho shut off the tape.

We stared at each other without speaking for a moment. 'I can see ... why some people think this is wrong,' I said quietly. 'I can see maybe why the Logologists on Earth wouldn't want this.'

'It's a real intrusion, not like just opening a diary,' Rho admitted.

'We should seal them off until they can be resurrected,' I said. Rho looked away, at the neat tiers of steel boxes stretching around the curve of the chamber, at the Cailetet and Onnes equipment stacked beside us.

'We have to have courage,' she said. 'And if we're allowed to continue, we have to work out our own ethics. We're the first to do this. It isn't wrong, I think, but it is dangerous.'

'Rho, I'm exhausted by this whole thing. We could call Task-Felder and offer to give them Thierry. Let them have what they want.'

'What do you think they'd do?' Rho asked.

I bit my lower lip and shrugged. 'They'd send him back to Earth, probably. Let the directors decide whether he should be ...'

'Released,' Rho suggested. 'To join the Ascended Masters.'

'He doesn't have any descendants, any family I could discover ... Just the Logologists.'

'And they don't want him,' Rho said.

'They don't want anybody else to have him,' I said.

She unwound from her lotus and got to her knees, turning off the power on the translator. 'Do you agree with Thomas's plan?'

I didn't move or speak for a moment, not wanting to commit myself 'We need the time.' 'Mickey, Sandoval has signed for the whole lot, a binding agreement. We have to protect them, keep them, all of them ... and if there's a way to revive them, we have to do that, too.'

'All right,' I said. 'I don't think I was being serious, anyway.'

'I wish Robert and Emilia had chosen another preservation society,' she said. 'h.e.l.l, I wish I'd never heard about StarTime.'

'Amen,' I said.

I hate duplicity. Thomas's plan was the best; at least, I could think of no better. We were being forced to the wall, and desperate measures were necessary, but I didn't like what I was about to do: play the clumsy innocent with Fiona Task-Felder. Smell like meat before the wolf.

Again, I took the shuttle to Port Yin. I did not visit Thomas's offices, however; we had planned things in advance by phone two hours before I left, with contingencies, prevarications, fallbacks.

The first part of the plan was for me to arrive at the office of the president unannounced; defeated and out of a job, straying from the established course of the elders in my family. I mussed my hair, put on a strained look and entered the president's reception area, asking in a halting voice for an audience with Fiona Task-Felder.

The receptionist knew who I was and asked me to take a seat. He did not appear to speak to Fiona or to type anything; I a.s.sume she was simply notified there was someone interesting out front and that I was being scanned by hidden camera. I acted my part with some flair, appearing ill-at-ease.

The receptionist turned to me after a moment and said, 'The president will have time to meet with you later this afternoon. Could you be back here by fifteen?'

I said that I could. I lost three hours and returned. This round of the dance was going well; the preliminary steps, the shufflings and determinations of who would lead, who would follow.

I walked the long corridor to the president's inner sanctum. The young women were still shifting files. The replay was hauntingly exact. They smiled at me. I half-heartedly returned their smiles.

The door to the president's office opened, and there sat the fit, blue-eyed Madam President behind her desk, hands folded, prepared to accept surrender and nothing else.

'Please sit,' she said. 'What can I do for you, Mr Sandoval?' 'I'm taking a big risk,' I said. 'You must know that I've been rea.s.signed ... Fired. But I feel there's still some room for negotiation ...'

'Negotiation between who?'

'Myself ... and you,' I said.

'Whom are you representing, Mr Sandoval? Whom do you think I represent? The council, or my binding multiple?' I smiled weakly. 'That doesn't matter to me, now.' 'It matters to me. If you wish to speak to the president of the council, I'm all ears. If you wish to speak to the Task-Felder BM-'

'I want to talk to you. I need to tell you something..

She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. 'You've screwed up before, Mr Sandoval. Apparently it's cost you dearly. Family BMs are dens of nepotism and incompetence. Do you have your syndics' authorization?'

'No, I don't.'

'It does neither of us any good for you to be here, then.' 'You used me before ...' I began. Real anger and nervousness added a conviction to my act I could not have faked. 'I'm trying to redeem myself before our syndics, our director, and to give you a chance, some information you might want to know...'

She looked me over shrewdly, not unkindly, wolf surveying a highly suspect meal. 'Would you be willing to testify before the council? Tell them whatever you're about to tell me?' Thomas was right.

'I'd prefer not to ..'