Prophets

Mallory to respond that he had made an impression.

“You sabotaged the tach-comm.” It wasn’t a question, or an accusation, just a flat statement.

“Yes.”

“Do you know why?”

“I was paying a debt. Perhaps I owe too much.”

“But you don’t know why this Mr. Antonio wanted you to do this?”

“No. He told me many things, but never his own reasons.”

“What did he tell you?”

Nickolai told the priest what Mr. Antonio had told him, of how he knew that Nickolai would be selected for this mission, and what he knew of Mosasa’s nature and history. He told Mallory Mosasa’s story from the old pirate’s first life on the Nomad and his discovery of the AI cluster on the derelict Luxembourg to Mosasa’s final co-option by the AIs he kept. He told how Mosasa and the four other AIs were involved in the founding of Bakunin, and how their social engineering kept the anarchic planet stable in the face of the Confederacy, and how that same social engineering used Bakunin as a fulcrum to destabilize and ultimately destroy the old Terran Confederacy—the long deferred goal of the Race that had built the AIs, the last pyrrhic victory of the Genocide War.

He also told the priest how the single Race AI forming Mosasa’s brain was the only one of the five to survive to the present. Two had been lost during the Confederacy’s collapse, two more when Mosasa returned to the home planet of the Race.

Mallory shook his head. “This man who hired you knew all this?”

“This is what he told me.”

“Do you know if any of this is true?”

“I cannot say—” Nickolai was interrupted by static over the PA system.

Mosasa’s voice came from above. “I can.”

Mallory looked up at the ceiling even though the speakers were invisible. “Mosasa? How dare you!” Nickolai was sensitive to the scent of human emotion, and the room was suddenly ripe with the smell of rage. Mallory’s fists clenched so hard that his forearms vibrated.

“Father Mallory—”

“This was a confession, you mechanical atrocity. Do you have no respect—”

“Stop testing me, priest.”

“Mosasa!” Mallory yelled to the ceiling. Mosasa didn’t respond. “Mosasa!”

“Father Mallory?”

“Please forgive me, I didn’t realize—”

“I did,” Nickolai told him.

“You knew he would be watching?”

“He is a creature of Satan. He lives in wires, not in flesh. He sees though every camera on this ship, hears through every microphone. I knew he would hear this.”

“Why?”

“We will die soon, and I needed to make my final testimony.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE