The captain knew better than to tell me what to do. Saint Germaine being a Catholic mission, I was the one who made the decisions. “Do you know what he is doing here?” I asked.
“He says he is on a pilgrimage.”
“You must be joking,” I said.
“No sh—er, no, Father. I am sorry about that, Father.”
“I understand, my son,” I said. The presence of a murderer on our little planet would put everyone on edge. A religious pilgrimage? I was skeptical to say the least. “He is on a pilgrimage?”
“That’s what he says.”
I asked the captain if he would detain the man in question until I could arrive. I thought that might be soon, but this was Friday and a holy day—the immaculate heart of Mother Mary. I needed to attend to Mass and then I had a full day of meetings. The Liberator would have to wait until tomorrow.
Entry: Earth Date June 5, 2483
I did not know how I would react to meeting a Liberator face-to-face. As a young priest, I served in the Albatross Island penal colony. I was there during the riot of 2472. A force of Liberators came to the planet to stop the rioting. They put down the riot, all right. They also killed the prisoners and the guards and almost everybody on the planet.
Before seeing Liberators in action, I believed that clones were human even if they had no immortal souls. I even questioned the ecumenical convention that decreed clones were created of man and not God. That changed for me on Albatross Island.
You cannot understand a lion until you have seen one devour its prey. I thought that all people were created in God’s own image until I saw the Liberators, demons who looked like men but who rejected all goodness. I saw them kill thousands of innocent, helpless men. Just thinking about that massacre is painful. Once I witnessed the way the Liberators fought and killed, I saw the wisdom of the ecumenical counsel’s judgment. These monsters could not have had souls.
I arrived at the spaceport before lunch and found an office in which I could interview this Liberator. His name was Tabor Shannon. I arranged for us to be alone. I was an old man now, and I had no time to fear devils, not even cloned ones.
Three soldiers walked the prisoner into the room. I dismissed them at the door. The leader of the soldiers did not want to leave. He said I would not be safe alone with a Liberator. I told him I would take my chances, and I dismissed him a second time. All the while the Liberator sat in one of the seats I had arranged in the middle of the room, watching us.
If I ever felt scared during my interview with the Liberator, it was when I turned and saw the way he watched us. I believed his expression was implacable. Now, as I think about it, I have changed my mind. I think that his expression was merely one of curiosity.
“I am Father Sanjines,” I said as I came to sit across from him. We were nearly knee-to-knee, just a foot or two separated us. I knew this man could easily spring from his chair and strangle me, but I sensed that he did not come to do violence. “You are Corporal Tabor Shannon?” I asked.
“That is correct, Father.”
I looked around the room. Maybe I was unconsciously looking for a door through which to escape. What I saw instead was a small wet bar with a crystal decanter. “I am an old man, Corporal Shannon. I took my vows nearly fifty years ago.”
He said nothing.
“Would you like some sherry? We don’t have many fine things on Saint Germaine, but we do have a superb distillery. I personally oversaw the building of it. I’ve been in this mission from its start.”
The clone did not accept my offer. Perhaps he was not much of a drinker or perhaps he wanted to leave a good impression, I could not tell.
“You’ll want to try it before you leave,” I told him.
“What is this about?” the Liberator asked, still trying to sound civil. “Why have you detained me?”
“Mr. Shannon, this mission is nearly twenty years old, and I have been the chief administrator and archbishop here for all of that time. Before coming here, I was a chaplain on a penal planet.”
“Was it Albatross Island?” he asked.
“It was,” I said. “You can imagine my feelings when I received a call alerting me that a Liberator had arrived in our spaceport.”
The Liberator said nothing.
“You claim that you have come on a pilgrimage. Is that correct?”
“It is, Father,” the clone said, sounding as determined as a young boy wanting to enter a seminary.
“You will forgive me if I find that hard to believe, Mr. Shannon, but you see, I watched three hundred of your kind butcher prisoners, both rioting and innocent. Perhaps you were not involved in that …that …”
“Action.”
The Liberator used the word action. I was offended.
“I was trying to decide whether to call it a slaughter or a massacre,” I told him. “I think a more appropriate word might be extermination. As best as I can remember it, one thousand five hundred inmates rioted and the marines sent a battalion of Liberator clones to restore order. That was five rioting inmates for each Liberator. I should have thought that would have been enough blood to satisfy them.”
“I wasn’t there,” the Liberator told me.
“When they finished killing the rioters, they slaughtered prisoners who did not riot. Then they turned on the guards and hostages. By that time, they weren’t even using bullets anymore. They beat men to death with their rifles. I helped reclaim the bodies of the victims, Mr. Shannon. It was the most terrible thing I have ever seen.
“That was the closest I ever came to renouncing my vows. When I saw what those Liberators had done, I did not believe that a just God would have allowed the creation of such monsters. A few weeks later, the Senate outlawed Liberators. Is that not so?”
“They outlawed the manufacture of Liberator clones,” Shannon said to me. His gaze still met mine. I did not know if I saw glee or defiance in his expression, but I did not like what I saw.
“We don’t, as a rule, receive many clones on this planet.” Having said this, I felt a tinge of guilt. This clone had been nothing but pleasant, and I had acted adversarial from the start. “Forgive me,” I said. “I have been too straightforward. Are you sure you will not have a sherry?”
I climbed from my seat and went to the bar to pour myself a glass.
“Are you refusing me entry?” the clone asked.
“We Catholics like to believe that our church runs this planet, but the Unified Authority maintains an embassy just down the street from the Archdiocese. The U.A. runs this spaceport facility, as a matter-of-fact. That is not a symbiotic relationship. We do not welcome government intervention on our planet.”
I shut my eyes and thought about Liberators as I sipped the sherry. Perhaps I was reliving those last hours of the siege on Albatross Island, those awful moments when our rescuers became predators. I thought about a cell block in which the blood and brains on the walls were so thick that I could no longer see the bricks and mortar.
We Catholics are anti-synthetic by our very nature. According to our doctrine, only God can create life. The use of clones in the military caused the Vatican to release a statement defining life as a being with an immortal soul. Science can clone sheep, snakes, and soldiers that breathe air and move of their own volition, but science cannot prove that its creations have souls.
“They were without compassion,” I said. “Ravenous dogs lusting for blood. You will forgive me if I have been impolite, Mr. Shannon, but I see nothing even remotely redeeming about your kind. I once questioned the doctrine that clones have no souls. Having seen the work of Liberators, I determined that the butchers who
