“Indeed it is, old boy. Have whatever you please.”
Raoul rested his receding chin on his open palm. “You seem in a good mood.”
“Oh, I am,” I said. “I got paid this week.”
The man the world now accepted as Joshua Wilkins had returned to NewYou, where he’d gotten his face finished and his artificial body upgraded. After that, he told people it was too painful to continue to work there, given what had happened with his wife. So he sold the NewYou franchise to his associate, Horatio Fernandez. The money from the sale gave him plenty to live on, especially now that he didn’t need food and didn’t have to pay the life-support tax anymore. He gave me all the fees his dear departed wife should have—plus a very healthy bonus.
I’d asked him what he was going to do now. “Well,” he said, “even if you’re the only one who knows it, I’m still a paleontologist—and now I can spend days on end out on the surface. I’m going to look for new fossil beds.”
And what about the other Pickover—the official one? It took some doing, but I managed to convince him that it had actually been the late Cassandra, not Joshua, who had stolen a copy of his mind, and that she was the one who had installed it in an artificial body. I told Dr. Pickover that when Joshua discovered what his wife had done, he destroyed the bootleg and dumped the ruined body that had housed it in the basement of the NewYou building.
Not too shabby, eh? Still, I wanted more. I rented a surface suit and a Mars buggy and headed out to 16.4 kilometers south-southwest of Nili Patera. I figured I’d pick myself up a lovely rhizomorph or a nifty pentaped, and never have to work again.
Well, I looked and looked and looked, but I guess the duplicate Pickover had lied about where the alpha deposit was; even under torture, he hadn’t betrayed his beloved fossils. I’m sure Weingarten and O’Reilly’s source is out there somewhere, though, and the legal Pickover is doubtless hard at work thinking of ways to protect it from looters.
I hope he succeeds. I really do.
But for now, I’m content just to enjoy this lovely scotch.
“How about a toast?” suggested Raoul, once Diana had brought him his booze.
“I’m game,” I said. “To what?”
Raoul frowned, considering. Then his eyebrows climbed his broad forehead, and he said, “To being true to your innermost self.”
We clinked glasses. “I’ll drink to that.”
Come All Ye Faithful
Sometimes, quite unintentionally, a writer develops a schtick: something that identifies himself or herself to the reading public.
Early in my caj-eer, there was no doubt that dinosaurs were my schtick. Four of my first five novels dealt with them: the Quintaglio trilogy (Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, and Foreigner), and the standalone End of an Era. The great beasts are also all over my first short-story collection, Iterations, published in 2002.
But starting with my fifth novel, The Terminal Experiment (winner of the 1995 Nebula Award), my schtick, it seems, has been the conflict between faith and rationality. That theme also runs through such later books as Calculating God and my Neanderthal Parallax trilogy (the Hugo-winning Hominids, plus Humans and Hybrids).
And it’s here again, in this short story, which was written for my dear friend Julie E. Czerneda’s Space Inc., an anthology about off-Earth jobs.
“Damned social engineers,” said Boothby, frowning his freckled face. He looked at me, as if expecting an objection to the profanity, and seemed disappointed that I didn’t rise to the bait.
“As you said earlier,” I replied calmly, “it doesn’t make any practical difference.”
He tried to get me again: “Damn straight. Whether Jody and I just live together or are legally married shouldn’t matter one whit to anyone but us.”
I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of telling him it mattered to God; I just let him go on. “Anyway,” he said, spreading hands that were also freckled, “since we have to be married before the Company will give us a license to have a baby, Jody’s decided she wants the whole shebang: the cake, the fancy reception, the big service.”
I nodded. “And that’s where I come in.”
“That’s right, Padre.” It seemed to tickle him to call me that. “Only you and Judge Hiromi can perform ceremonies here, and, well …”
“Her honor’s office doesn’t have room for a real ceremony, with a lot of attendees,” I offered.
“That’s it!” crowed Boothby, as if I’d put my finger on a heinous conspiracy. “That’s exactly it. So, you see my predicament, Padre.”
I nodded. “You’re an atheist. You don’t hold with any religious mumbo-jumbo. But, to please your bride-to-be, you’re willing to have the ceremony here at Saint Teresa’s.”
“Right. But don’t get the wrong idea about Jody. She’s not …”
He trailed off. Anywhere else on Mars, declaring someone wasn’t religious, wasn’t a practicing Christian or Muslim or Jew, would be perfectly acceptable—indeed, would be the expected thing. Scientists, after all, looked askance at anyone who professed religion; it was as socially unacceptable as farting in an airlock.
But now Boothby was unsure about giving voice to what in all other circumstances would have been an easy disclaimer. He’d stopped in here at Saint Teresa’s over his lunch hour to see if I would perform the service, but was afraid now that I’d turn him down if he revealed that I was being asked to unite two nonbelievers in the most holy of institutions.
He didn’t understand why I was here—why the Archdiocese of New York had put up the money to bring a priest to Mars, despite the worldwide shortage of Catholic clergy. The Roman Catholic Church would always rather see two people married by clergy than living in sin—and so, since touching down at Utopia Planitia, I’d united putative Protestants, secular Jews, and more. And I’d gladly marry Boothby and his fiancee. “Not to worry,” I said. “I’d be honored if you had your ceremony here.”
Boothby looked relieved. “Thank you,” he replied. “Just, you know, not too many prayers.”
I forced a smile. “Only the bare minimum.”
Boothby wasn’t alone. Almost everyone here thought having me on Mars was a waste of oxygen. But the New York Diocese was rich, and they knew that if the church didn’t have a presence early on in Bradbury Colony, room would never be made for it.
There had been several priests who had wanted this job, many with much better theological credentials than I had. But two things were in my favor. First, I had low food requirements, doing fine on just 1200 calories a day. And second, I have a Ph.D. in astronomy, and had spent four years with the Vatican observatory.
The stars had been my first love; it was only later that I’d wondered who put them there. Ironically, taking the priest job here on Mars had meant giving up my celestial research, although being an astronomer meant that I could double for one of the “more important” colonists, if he or she happened to get sick. That fact appeased some of those who had tried to prevent my traveling here.
It had been a no-brainer for me: studying space from the ground, or actually going into space. Still, it seemed as though I was the only person on all of Mars who was really happy that I was here.