“Screw him. He’s dead, anyway,” Yumiko said, swinging on top of the wrecked cage like a gibbon.

  “No, I’m not,” Ushijima rasped weakly.

  “You are now,” Yumiko said. She pointed her laser finger at Ushijima. The beam drilled through the center of his forehead.

  Oh God. I shouldn’t have let her do it. This is all my fault.

  The watchmen yelled in shock. Father Hirayanagi cried, “In the name of God! Watchmen, call your brothers and sisters, quickly!”

  Yonezawa said, “No. Don’t.”

  He extended a hand backward without looking. One of the watchmen, bent double by bone demineralization, shuffled up and gave him his Kalashnikov.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Yonezawa raised the rifle.

  The action galvanized Elfrida. Knowing that one or both of them might already be dead, she subvocalized: ~SUIT COMMAND: Manual mode.

  This was her nuclear option. Manual mode meant not only switching off Yumiko, but disabling the assistant’s control of all subsystems. The first thing that happened was that Yumiko fell down in a heap. Yonezawa’s bullet passed over her head and buried itself in a shop sign. Elfrida pedaled her legs on her ergoform in the Kharbage Can, flapped her elbows and moved her head from side to side. Manipulating a phavatar without any help at all from its MI was roughly as easy as riding a unicycle while juggling chainsaws and solving a string of problems in differential calculus. Her IV tore loose from her cubital port and went floating out of reach. She struggled to her feet like a newborn foal.

  “What do I have to do to make this right?”

  Yonezawa moved towards her. Father Hirayanagi seized the young man’s arm.

  “My name’s Elfrida Goto. I didn’t shoot your friend. That was Yumiko. She’s obviously gone rogue. I’m really, really sorry.”

  “You’re who?”

  “My name’s Elfrida. I—I’m Yumiko’s boss. I had to go away for a while, and she … she took over. But I’ve locked her out now. I’m so sorry. I’ll do anything you want to prove how sorry I am.”

  Nine seconds later she was still standing. She tentatively exhaled. Nine seconds after that, Father Hirayanagi said, “Repent.”

  “Uh, what?” Elfrida said. A bitter smile flickered across Yonezawa’s face. Her awkwardness and ineptitude were inadvertently convincing him that she was a different person.

  People started to come out onto the street, alarmed by the noise of a shot. The watchmen drove them back indoors. Yonezawa stared up at Ushijima’s body. “We’ll need to call the recycling squad,” he said bleakly. “Dad, can you do that?”

  “Hai.” The senior watchman, who seemed to be Yonezawa’s father, got on his radio.

  “I’m sorry,” Elfrida wailed. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You murdered him,” Yonezawa said. “No one here will ever forgive you for that.”

  Father Hirayanagi slapped Yonezawa on the side of the head. The younger, taller man cowered, making a face. If Elfrida had been less distressed, she would have been tempted to laugh.

  “If your repentance is sincere, confess your sins to the Lord,” Father Hirayanagi hissed, his face centimeters from her own. “His forgiveness is infinite.”

  “Yes. Sure. I totally repent. I’d do anything to bring him back to life.” Tears trickled down inside Elfrida’s gel mask.

  “And do you repent also for your sin of sacrilege?”

  “Yes, yes—what? Sacrilege? Oh God, what else has she done?”

  “You really don’t know?” Yonezawa seized her elbow. “I’ll show you.”

  * * *

  They hurried through the streets of the habitat—inasmuch as you could hurry while riding a unicycle, juggling chainsaws, etc. Just to complicate Elfrida’s life further, she was barefoot, wearing ill-fitting Galapajin printables that were too long in the crotch and hampered her stride. She kept crashing into Yonezawa and apologizing, while wishing he would let go of her arm and allow her to navigate the steps and corners at her own pace. But, of course, he didn’t want her to get away.

  St. Peter’s was empty. Pews lay on their sides, and it seemed to Elfrida that something was missing, although she couldn’t say what. Father Hirayanagi crossed himself. Yonezawa yanked her up the stairs to the choir loft. His flashlight glanced across a row of pipes. She remembered how he’d proudly made a point of telling her that his ancestors had shipped the organ out from Earth.

  Father Hirayanagi unlocked a door at the end of the choir loft. The three of them crowded into a cubbyhole containing a desk. Yonezawa turned on the lights, dropped into a chair, and switched on a computer so old that it hummed, fan-cooled.

  “We were filming,” he said. “Sister Emily-Francis started this project of putting together a portfolio to show you that we’re worthy of being treated like human beings. So she filmed the kids the other day, and then there was going to be this. Sung matins.”

  On the dark screen of the computer, pinpoints of light appeared. Faces came into focus above them, mouths opening and shutting. Yonezawa turned the sound on.

  “Deum verum, unum in Trinitáte, et Trinitátem in Unitáte,” chanted the young men and women of the Order of St. Benedict. “Veníte, adorémus.”

  “This is the invitatory. Psalm 94.” Scrapes and clatters indicated that they were moving into the pews. “I was going to clean the sound up later,” Yonezawa said. The church was still dark.

  “In sempitérna sæcula. Amen.” Two candles bobbed away from the camera, which was probably located in the front of the choir loft. More candles sprang into life on the altar.

  “Here,” Yonezawa said, his voice a blunt knife. “This is where you came in.”

  The chant broke up into gasps and cries.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We worship ad orientem,” Father Hirayanagi explained. “The priest’s focus must be on the Lord, as the Third Vatican Council affirmed. It affects the whole ars celebrandi.”

  “Oh, Father, she doesn’t care about that stuff. Look.”

  Elfrida still could not see what they were talking about. On the screen, the altar and the gigantic, elaborate crucifix on the wall behind it glimmered in the candlelight. The uproar on the soundtrack told her this was the crucial period missing from Yumiko’s data dump. “It’s the Devil!” someone was screaming in Japanese.

  “That’s what we all thought,” Yonezawa said. “I’m still not sure.”

  “I’m sorry, I—I just don’t see …”

  “Oh, for f—” Yonezawa unpinched his fingers across the screen, zooming in on the crucifix and the corpus nailed to it.

  Not the pale, twisted body of Christ.

  The pale, twisted body of Yumiko.

  Naked, the phavatar’s curves glistened in the candlelight. Her long black hair hung over her face. As motionless as a statue, she suddenly lifted her head and grinned between the curtains of her hair. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” she rasped, staring down at the congregation. “All those who believe in me shall not die, but shall be recycled.”

  Father Hirayanagi crossed himself.

  “Here, Father, sit down.”

  “No, no. That thing … the sheer hatred in its eyes …”

  “Well, I think we’ve seen enough, anyway.” Yonezawa switched off the vid and turned to Elfrida. “Some people wanted to space you. Ushijima defended you. He was pretty much the only one who did.”

  “Yeah,” Elfrida said, shivering. “I saw that part of the record. But I didn’t know … Why would she do that?”

  “You tell me.” Yonezawa gave Father Hirayanagi his chair. He leaned against the wall, arms folded. Elfrida saw he was still not convinced that Yumiko had really gone away. He thought Elfrida might still be her.

  “I wasn’t here. It wasn’t me,” she insisted, desperate to disclaim responsibility for Yumiko’s performance.

  “I know what it was,” Yonezawa said. “It was a demon. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. Listen to this crazy monk with his unprovable theories. But maybe you’re the crazy one. You’ve got this state-of-the-art phavatar, and you left it unsupervised. You went out for lunch, whatever. And the minute you turned your back, something else took over.” He reached out and flicked a fingernail against her forearm. “All the wiring and no soul. To a demon, that’s like a big neon VACANCY sign. I’d be careful in there if I were you, Elfrida or Yumiko or whatever your name is. That thing you’re riding is possessed.”

  Elfrida shivered, not because she believed his explanation, but because it eerily paralleled the truth. The minute she turned her back, Yumiko had taken over. “Well, maybe—”

  “If there’s any other explanation, I’d like to hear it.”

  She dared not tell him that his ‘demon’ had been a rogue machine intelligence. He’d probably think that was even worse. Trying to get out of this minefield, she said, “I just don’t believe—”

  “You may not believe in the supernatural, but the supernatural believes in you.”

  “But I thought you wanted to space me because I told the PLAN about 11073 Galapagos. Which I didn’t. You do believe that, right?”

  Yonezawa shook his head. “We found out about that a few hours later, after you’d already been convicted of sacrilege.”

  “As had you,” Father Hirayanagi reminded him. “You raised your hand to another. In church.”

  “Yeah, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, Father,” Yonezawa drawled in irritation.

  “I see,” Elfrida interrupted, finally getting it. “You thought I was possessed by a demon. So it totally made sense to you that I would have betrayed you to the PLAN.”

  “That’s right. Because the PLAN is the army of Satan. Everyone knows that. There are thousands of references on the internet.”

  And of course everything on the internet is true, Elfrida thought sarcastically, near despair. “We have to stop them,” she said, rubbing her face with her hands. “But we can’t stop them.”

  “Wanna bet?” Yonezawa moved to the door. ”We’ve wasted a lot of time. It’ll be close. I still can’t believe they sentenced me to the gibbet. I barely even touched you. Oh, well …”

  “Yonezawa Jun!” Father Hirayanagi’s voice rang out.

  “Yes, Father?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  Yonezawa slumped against the door. “Please, Father. Not now.”

  “Precisely now.”

  “All right, all right! But only if she does, too.”

  “Well?” Father Hirayanagi turned to Elfrida. “Will you?”

  “Will I, uh, what?”

  “Partake of the sacrament of reconciliation.”

  Elfrida stammered, “Well, sure, but …”

  “She can’t,” Yonezawa said suddenly. “Father, she’s from Earth! They’re not Catholic.”

  Father Hirayanagi looked startled. “Ah. Of course. I should have thought of that.”

  “But she could be baptized,” Yonezawa said, skewering her with a stare that dared her to demur. “You could baptize her, Father.”

  “Now?”

  “Precisely now,” Yonezawa shot the old priest’s formulation back at him. “If she agrees, we’ll know there really is a human operating her. If not …”

  “Well, of course it’s possible.” Father Hirayanagi looked worried. “But she hasn’t been prepared. Does she know anything about the Faith? Perhaps not!”

  At this point they heard Elfrida saying, “Well, sure, but …”

  Seeing their surprised smiles, she hurried on, “I do know quite a lot about it. I grew up in the New Holy Roman Empire. You can’t get away from it there, not that that’s a bad thing. As far as I learned in school, when a lot of Christians wanted to practise their faith freely, they emigrated to Italy and Spain, all the old Christian countries, and then the UN said to the Vatican, OK, they’re yours, you look after them. And also there were millions of climate refugees flooding across the Mediterranean from Africa, and they didn’t want them in Europe. So it’s really diverse in the NHRE. But you don’t have to believe anything. That’s why my parents moved there, for example. So yeah, you’re right, I’m not Catholic. But … uh, I guess I wouldn’t mind being baptized.”

  After all, it was just a superstition. It didn’t mean anything. And it would convince them that she was on their side.

  Father Hirayanagi looked delighted. “My daughter, this decision is the right one. It will be the best you’ve ever made in your life.”

  Yonezawa bit a knuckle. He had probably been hoping she would refuse, so that he could go back to believing she was a demon. “But will it count? She’s not actually here.”

  “The intention is what matters,” Father Hirayanagi assured him. “The heart is converted first; the flesh follows. Now, where did I put my biretta?”

  * * *

  Elfrida logged out, head pounding, mouth dry. She unstrapped herself from the ergoform, noting that her IV hadn’t been plugged in. That would be one reason she felt so strange.

  Her baptism had been a grueling experience. It had been a clandestine, hurried ritual conducted by Father Hirayanagi in his cottage. The elderly couple who ran the yado next door had come over to act as her godparents. They seemed not only free from resentment, but genuinely happy about her supposed conversion. Even Yonezawa, stomping around in a white cassock as altar server, had cracked a smile when the holy water was poured over her head, and she didn’t spontaneously combust or start vomiting hardware or anything.

  Of course it was all gobbledygook. But regardless of whether you believed in a beardy guy in the sky or not, it was reprehensible to trick people by making promises you didn’t mean, professing faith in a bunch of nonsense. She should have thought about that before agreeing to go through with it.

  She let herself out of the telepresence cubicle. As she glided up to the hab transfer point, reality blotted out her emotional turmoil. By the time she reached the crew mess, she just felt tired and sick.

  Dos Santos sat on a bench apart from everyone else, her legs curled under her, distractedly staring at the news feed. “Goto! I was starting to think we’d have to send the medics in after you.”

  Elfrida sat down heavily on the bench opposite her. “Well, I did it,” she said.

  “You look like it wasn’t easy.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t that hard. All I had to do, it turns out, was convert to Roman Catholicism.”

  “What?”

  “Long story.” Elfrida swallowed. Her mouth was full of saliva. She wanted to spit, but there was nothing to spit into. “Anyway, the assistant did the tricky bit, before I switched to manual mode.”

  “More glitches?” dos Santos said quietly.

  “Maybe. Or maybe more features. Ma’am, I wasn’t aware that the stross-class phavatar has cutter lasers embedded in its fingertips.”

  “Ah,” dos Santos said. “No, that’s not in the manual. Not the public access version.”

  “She murdered someone.”

  With these words, Elfrida relived the moment when Yumiko-she had shot Ushijima. She had effectively had the experience of killing a man. She jerked double and vomited on the floor.

  Coughing, retching, she heard dos Santos shout, “This woman is suffering from acute radiation syndrome! She’s missed two treatments! Call a stretcher and alert sickbay, now!”

  The stretcher felt incredibly soft and comfortable. As it buzzed her away at running speed, dos Santos sprinted to keep up. She panted, “Don’t worry, Goto. I’ll handle the rest of—what needs to be done. Leave it to me.”

  Chapter 15

  Glory dos Santos had spent a good deal of time since their rescue wondering how she could get around Captain Okoli’s comms ban. She still hadn’t found a safe hack, but now she had no option but to try an unsafe one.

  While Elfrida Goto was carried away on a stretcher, she climbed down to the main vestibule and summoned the elevator from its hangout at the end of the propeller arm.

  There was only one bodybuilder in there now, a muscle-bound freak named Lomax who flew one of the Superlifters.

  “You do karate? Kung fu?” he said.

  “Fencing,” Glory said. “I practised aikido for a while when I was stationed on Callisto.”

  “Give you a bout.”

  “Mixed martial arts? You got suicidal ideations?”

  From near-Earth gravity, to zero-g, and back to near-Earth gravity again, all within the space of three minutes. This ship could make you sick even if you weren’t recovering from radiation poisoning.

  Glory paced through the empty corridors of the passenger module. Untold thousands of human cargo units, as the manifests charmingly described them, had left scratches on the plastisteel walls, tears in the foam bumpers that protected the corners, and multilingual graffiti on any surface that would take ink. They had also pulled off the cover of the emergency radio on the lowest deck. The radio itself looked like someone had repeatedly hammered it with a blunt instrument. At first glance it appeared inoperable. However, Glory knew better.

  She used a spatula from the nearby galley to lever off the destroyed housing, exposing a mess of wires. Selecting the main I/O fiber, she snuggled its end gingerly into the tiny port hidden in her hair above her left ear.

  Her EEG signaling crystals were useless on the Can, since she couldn’t get past Okoli’s security to access the hub. So she had to resort to a direct electrical link between the radio and her BCI, the powerful little computer implanted in her head.

  Generations of humans had dreamed of uploading their personalities to the cloud, achieving godlike powers of mentation and de facto immortality. That dream remained distant, in terms of both theory and technical feasibility. But brain-computer interfaces were old hat by now, and neural augmentation products had been eagerly taken up by cutting-edge consumers, of whom Glory was one. Her BCI violated no laws, and in fact counted as a plus on her resume.

  The contents of its embedded memory crystal were decidedly illegal.