“The Church.” I should have realized sooner. “Rudi, what is the probability that the chapel would have arrived in Dojima System at this precise time, just by accident or happenstance or coincidence?”
“Nonsense, it’s just a—” His jaws shut with an audible snap.
“We are very close to the two thousandth anniversary of the Atlantis blackout,” I pointed out. “Here is the Church. Here am I. I was steered into this vocation about a century ago, while working for my mater’s systembank. Here is Dojima, which is a remarkably rich and pleasant colony system, founded in the wake of the post-Atlantis colonization bubble. Rudi, none of this is a coincidence. Except, I think, possibly your presence—how old is the Permanent Assurance?”
“Oh, very old! We were incorporated four hundred and seventy standard years ago, from the merger of—”
“A newcomer and a bystander, in other words. Rudi, the Atlantis fraud was so big that the perpetrators had to wait for the ripples to die down before they could liquidate the proceeds. In the meantime, most of the stolen money was invested under the cover of a wave of new colonization—including the foundation of Dojima’s beacon station and subcolonies. I suspect the core of the conspirators arranged in advance to meet here, after two thousand years, to split the remaining slow money cash pile. But in the meantime, some of them—my mother, whoever is working inside the Church of the Fragile, possibly others—decided to thin the pool of rival beneficiaries. I think you need to assume that anyone who threatens or cajoles us from now on is a mass murderer—”
BOOOOM.
A concussive thud ripples through the water around me, and my body: The acoustic positional sense I get from my lateral lines tells me it’s a very long way away, and above us. It’s followed by a hissing, sizzling sound, a distant, eerie shriek of bubbles imploding under extreme pressure.
“—is that?” Rudi demanded: “Did you hear that?”
“It’s a long way away.” My voice sounded flat and distant to me. “Overhead, kilometers away . . .” I tried to remember the direction, but I was too rattled by it. “Someone’s making a point. Medea, probably. You mentioned depth charges? If it’s overhead, she’s not serious about attacking Hades-4 yet—”
“I’m worried about the support barge.” A pause. “We can’t hurry this along, can we? Grow you a new body up top?”
“I wasn’t bluffing about leaving my backups behind,” I reminded him. A risky tactic, but a necessary one: I wanted my living body to be indispensable, the only store of the value I held in my memory.
“Well, we shall just have to string Medea along with some artfully composed lies. Hrrr . . . Krina, how well can you act?”
Permanent Crimson
In a secure control room deep in the heart of the royal fortress under Nova Ploetsk, three militant instances of Queen Medea reclined in an outward-facing horseshoe pool, at the focus of a room-sized retina displaying a real-time fish-eye map of the hemisphere of Shin-Tethys. They were not alone: Her Grace Cybelle, Priestess-Missionary of the Church of the Fragile, waited patiently on a poolside recliner, while around them the executive officer corps of the Kingdom of Argos’s orbital defense command attended to their workstations.
“I’m going to strangle him,” one of the Queens announced, absentmindedly flexing her hands.
“Get in line,” said another. Turning to Cybelle, she added: “We don’t like thieves. Especially the rent-seeking kind.”
Cybelle watched the triumvirate with no discernible emotion visible on her face. “We trust you will only do so once you have obtained that which is required.”
“Bankers,” spat the third queen-instance. “Theft with interest.”
“He’s an insurance underwriter, not a banker,” said the first. “Just as bad, really.”
“We can agree that he is thoroughly wicked,” Cybelle interrupted. “But discussion of his eventual disposal is perhaps premature . . .”
A signal light flashed on above the console of one of the officers in the outer circle. “Your Majesties, Your Grace . . . ?”
“Report!” snapped the third Queen.
“Incoming call from Permanent Crimson Five Zero. They are relaying. Do you want to accept?”
“Send it to the main retina,” said the first Queen. “Pause it on my signal.” Heads turned to face the middle of the situation display as a black rectangle appeared, then slowly brightened to reveal a distorted fox face, huge dark eyes and protuberant fangs filling the viewport.
“Good day. Hrrrr . . .” Rudi grinned, revealing a fang-filled maw. “Greetings from nowhere in particular. I believe we have a commodity to discuss?”
“We do not negotiate with—” began the third Queen, before her co-instances spoke over her. “What’s your price?” demanded the first. “Our valiant sailors have a firing solution on your vehicle: Think hard before you try our patience!” erupted the second. They fell silent simultaneously.
Behind them, the priestess spoke: “If I may intercede?” she asked.
The first queen-instance recovered first: “Please do so.” She extended her hands toward her sisters, both palms pulsing red: “We shall confer meanwhile.”
The trio of Queens linked hands and fell silent as they attempted to synchronize their emotional states. Cybelle walked around the royal pool and positioned herself in front of the viewport. “May the peace of the Fragile be upon you, branch manager. I gather you have found what you came here for. Is that so?”
There was a brief pause as the carrier signal clawed its way laboriously up to orbit, then back down to wherever the branch manager was hiding—possibly including some additional delay, just to obscure his location further. Then Rudi replied, “Good day to you, too, Your Grace, and may I take this opportunity to apologize for the circumstances of our previous meeting? Yes, I am indeed in possession of a most interesting financial instrument. I take it you are familiar with the saying that possession is nine-tenths of the law? The other tenth being the last argument of kings—or Queens—a-ha, ha. Ha. And it is that tenth that I should like to discuss with you, assuming your presence in Her Majesty’s command and control suite indicates that you have her confidence.”
“I can speak for the Church but not the state.” Cybelle glanced at the triumvirate. “You have grievously offended Her Majesty.”
“Yes, well, the relationship between interstellar capital and the temporal powers has always been somewhat fraught, has it not? They create bottomless pits of debt, we help them dig their way out, and what do we get for it? But I digress. Does the Church declare an interest in this business?”
“Yes, we do.” Cybelle’s smile was wintry. “The disposition of an inheritance that was stolen by a corrupt banker is at stake. The inheritor has assigned their entire estate to the Mother Church, and we thus inherit an interest in their—”
“Bullshit.” Rudi lolled. “You would have us believe that your mission turned up in Dojima System just in time to assert an interest in an instrument retrieved at this very moment by skilled forensic technicians who were not even born, much less old enough to have commenced their training, until after your chapel departed from its parent cathedral?” The Queens, still locked hand to hand in high-bandwidth communion, startled and glared at Cybelle as one. “Or that the banker with whom this instrument originated might just happen to be setting up headquarters in one of Taj Beacon’s most expensive hostelries right now, purely by coincidence? This train of random happenstance defies logic, not to mention causality, Your Grace. You might as well drop the pretense: We know about Atlantis, we know all about money laundering. A gathering of thieves at a preordained location a fixed period after the deed was done, there to divide up the remaining spoils, is hardly unexpected.”