Prophets

“You chose to be here.”

“That doesn’t mean that Mosasa didn’t plan for me to be here.”

“His AIs aren’t magic.”

Mallory shook his head. “You aren’t going to answer me, are you?”

“What’s the point? What if I told you that he had every intention of luring you here, hiring you, and taking you off toward Xi Virginis? Would that make any difference at all? Would you quit and go hire off to fight some corporation’s brushfire war?”

Mallory got the strong feeling that Mosasa and Parvi knew quite well why he was here and were exploiting it for some reason. Unfortunately, Parvi’s assessment of the situation was accurate. Confirming that knowledge probably wouldn’t change what he was doing.

“I still would like to know why.”

“Asking that question would presuppose that Mosasa is in the habit of telling me the reasons he does things. I assure you, he doesn’t.” There was an edge to her voice, and it was hard to tell if the displeasure she felt was directed at him or Mosasa.

“Perhaps I should bring this up with him,” he said.

“Perhaps you should.” When Mallory turned to go, Parvi added, “For what it’s worth, he has me recruit a lot of people.”

“What?” He turned around again.

She looked off toward the tach-ship back in the hangar. The displeasure hadn’t left her face or her voice, but he began to feel that it wasn’t directed at him. “He has me recruit a lot of people.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that for the past five years I’ve been paid very well to make sure certain people signed with the BMU. You’re one of many, like I said. Nothing special.”

“Do you have any idea why?”

She turned and glared at him. “Because the pay is damn good for negligible risk,” she snapped at him. “This conversation is over.”

The anger was directed at him now, but Mallory got the sense that it was only because he was convenient. He thought back to how she acted around Nickolai and Kugara, and even before that, when he’d pointed out the tiger that almost had to have been Nickolai at ProMex.

“Get used to it. If you stick around Bakunin, you’ll see more.”

“You sound like you don’t approve.”

If she didn’t approve, Mallory wondered how she felt about Mosasa. Working for a Race AI was several steps beyond working with Nickolai. The Church certainly placed machines outside the sphere of God’s grace.

She walked to the door, and he asked a last question even though he didn’t expect and answer. Not here.

“Why do you work for him?”

She stopped and without turning around she repeated, “Because the pay is damn good for negligible risk.”

Mosasa sat in his office lit only by the holos surrounding him. One showed the interior of the hangar and Sergeant Fitzpatrick watching Parvi leave. He barely paid attention; it was just a small drop in the ocean of information that enveloped him, part of a current caused by the mass of the Vatican trailing its massive slow-moving fingers in the human information stream. A necessary data point that would keep him connected to human space after his ship passed into the information desert between here and Xi Virginis.

Do I have to go?

It was a very odd question. It had been literally a century since he had doubted himself. He had built himself so many layers of decisions, so many preplanned branch-points, so many models of so many outcomes, that he never had cause to be uncertain . . .