Heads. Part 4

Thierry had been an actor in his youth. He had played small roles in bad chemstock films, one or two tiny appearances in good ones. He was known to film buffs but not to many others. In time he found his real strength lay in putting together deals, and so he began to produce and even direct films.

By the late 1980s he had made a reputation as the director of a series of bizarre mystery films in which a peculiar flavour, half lunacy, half ironic humour, attracted a faithful following. He began to lecture at colleges and universities. He allegedly once told a screenwriter in New York that 'Movies are a weak shadow. Religion is where we ought to go.'

And so he went. Not an uneducated man, he joined the chorus then intent on knocking the last crumbling chunks of Freudian doctrine from its pedestal. He tried to add all the rest of psychology to the sc.r.a.ps; his first wife had been a psychotherapist, and the parting had been memorably cruel to both.

Then, when he was forty-three years old, came a night of revelation. Sitting on a beach near the California city of Newport, he was confronted - so he claimed - by a ma.s.sive figure, tall as a skysc.r.a.per, who gave him a piece of rock crystal the size of his fist. The figure was female in shape, but masculine in strength, and it said to him, 'I don't have much time. I've been dead too long to stay here and talk to you in person. This crystal tells the entire story.'

Thierry surmised that the huge figure was a hologram - which seemed to me to be primitive technology for a G.o.d to use when manifesting herself, but then, Thierry's imagination was limited by his times, and to reach his presumed audience of scientific naives he used the jargon and concepts of the 1990s.

He stared into the crystal, wrote down what he saw in a series of secret books not published in his lifetime, and then produced an epitome for public consumption. That epitome was called The Old and the New Human Race, and in it he revealed the cosmic science of Chromopsychology.

The enormous hologram had been the last of the True Hunians, and the crystal she had given him had helped him unlock the power of his mind.

He published and promoted the book personally. It sold ten thousand copies the first year, and five hundred thousand copies the next. Later editions revised the name and some of the doctrines of the cosmic science: it became Logology, his final break with even the word psychology.

The Old and the New Human Race was soon available not just in paper, but in cube text, LitVid, Vid and five interactive media.

Through a series of seminars, he converted a few disciples at first, then mult.i.tudes, to the belief that humanity had once been G.o.dlike in its powers, and was now shackled by ancient chains which made us small, dependent on our bodies, and stupid. Thierry said that all humans were capable of transforming themselves into free-roving, very powerful spirits. The crystal told him how to break these chains through a series of mental exercises, and how to realize that humanity's ancient enemies - all but one, whom he called Shaytana - were dead, powerless to stop our self-liberation. All one's personal liberation required was concentration, education and discipline - and a lifetime members.h.i.+p in the Church of Logology.

Shaytana was Loki and a watered-down Satan combined, too weak to destroy us or even stop strong individuals from breaking free of the chains, wily enough and persistent enough to convince the great majority of humans that death was our destiny and weakness our lot.

Those who opposed Thierry were dupes of Shaytana, or willing cohorts (as Freud, Jung, Adler and all other psychiatrists and psychologists had been). There were many dupes of Shaytana, including presidents, priests, and fellow prophets.

In 1997, Thierry tried to purchase a small South Pacific island to create a community of Unchained. He was rebuffed by the island's inhabitants and forced to move his seedling colony to Idaho, where he started his own small town, Ouranos, named after the progenitor of human consciousness. Ouranos became a major political centre in Idaho. Thierry was in part responsible for the separation of the' state into two sections in 2012, the northern calling itself Green Idaho.

He wrote ma.s.sively, still made movies occasionally. His later books covered all aspects of a Logologist's life, from pre-natal care to funeral rites and design of grave site. He packaged LitVid on such topics as world economics and politics. Slowly, he became a recluse; by 2031, two years before his death, he saw no one but his mistress and three personal secretaries. later books covered all aspects of a Logologist's life, from pre-natal care to funeral rites and design of grave site. He packaged LitVid on such topics as world economics and politics. Slowly, he became a recluse; by 2031, two years before his death, he saw no one but his mistress and three personal secretaries.

Thierry claimed that a time of crisis would come after his own 'liberation', and that within a century he would return, 'freed of the chains of flesh', to put the Church of Logology into a position of 'temporal power over the nations of the Earth'. 'Our enemies will be cinderized,' he promised, 'and the faithful will see an aeon of spiritual ecstasy.'

At his death, he weighed one hundred and seventy-five kilograms and had to move with the aid of a ma.s.sive armature, part wheelchair, part robot. Press releases, and reports to his hundreds of thousands of disciples in Ouranos and around the world, described his death as voluntary release. He was accompanying the spirit who had first appeared to him on the beach in California on a tour of the galaxy.

His personal physician - a devoted disciple - claimed that despite his bulk, he was in perfect health, and that his body had changed its internal const.i.tution in such a way as to build up ma.s.sive amounts of energy necessary to power him in the first few years of his spiritual voyage.

Thierry himself they called the Ascended Master. Allegedly he had made weekly reports to his mistress on his adventures. She lived to a ripe old age, eschewed rejuvenation legal or otherwise, grew ma.s.sive in bulk and, so the story went, joined her former lover on his pilgrimage.

A year after his death, one of his secretaries was arrested in Green Idaho on charges of child p.o.r.nography. There was no evidence that Thierry had ever partic.i.p.ated in such activities; but the ensuing scandal nearly wrecked the Church of Logology.

The Church recovered with remarkable speed when it sponsored a programme of supporting young LitVid artists. Using the programme as a stepping stone to acceptance among politicians and the general public, Logology's past was soon forgotten, and its current directors - anonymous, efficient and relatively colourless - finished the job that Thierry had begun. They made Logology a legitimate alternative religion, for those who continued to seek such solace.

The Church prospered and made its beginning moves on Puerto Rico. Logologists established a free hospital and 'psychiatric' training centre on the island in 2046, four years before Puerto Rico became the fifty-first state. The island was soon controlled by a solid sixty per cent majority population of Logologists, the greatest concentration of the religion on Earth. Every Puerto Rican representative in the United States Congress since statehood had been a Logologist.

The rest was more or less familiar, including an in-depth history of the lo purchase and expedition.

When I finished poring over the ma.s.sive amounts of material, I was drained and incredulous. I felt that I understood human nature from a somewhat ' superior perspective as someone who was not a Logologist, who had not been taken in by Thierry's falsehoods and fantasies.

I dreamed that night of walking along an irrigation ca.n.a.l in Egypt. Dawn came intensely blue in the east, stars still out overhead. The ca.n.a.l had frozen during the night, which pleased me; it lay in jumbled cubes of ice, clear as gla.s.s, and the cubes were rearranging themselves like living things into perfect flat sheets. Order, I thought. 7he Pharaoh will be pleased. But as I looked into the depths of the ca.n.a.l, I saw fish pinned in by the layers of cubes, unable to move, gills flexing frantically, and I realized that I had sinned. I looked up to the stars, blaming them, but they refused to accept responsibility; then I looked to the sides of the ca.n.a.l, among the reeds, and saw copper double toruses on each side, sucking soundlessly. All my dream-muscles twitched and I came awake.

It was eight hundred hours and my personal line was blinking politely. I answered; there were two messages, one from, Rho, left three hours earlier, and one from Thomas Sandoval-Rice, an hour after hers.

Rho's message was voice only, and brief 'Mickey, the director wants to meet with both of us today in Port Yin. He's sending an executive shuttle for us at ten hundred.'

The director's message was extensive text and a vocal from his secretary. 'Mickey, Thomas Sandoval-Rice would like you to meet with him in Port Yin as soon as possible. We'd like Rhosalind to be there as well.' Accompanying the message was text and LitVid on Logology, much of the same material I'd already studied.

I arranged my affairs for the day and cancelled a meeting with family engineers on generator maintenance.

Rho was uncharacteristically sombre as we waited in the Pad Four lounge. Outside, it was lunar night, the brilliant glow of field lights blanking out the stars. Earth was at full above us, a thumbnail-sized spot of bluish light through the overhead ports. All we could see through the lounge windows was a few hectares of ashen churned lunar soil, a pile of rubble dug out from the Ice Pit warrens decades before, the featureless grey concrete of the field itself.

'I feel like they're pus.h.i.+ng my nose in the dust,' Rho said. The fights of the executive bus became visible above the horizon. 'This is pretty fancy treatment. The director has never paid us so much attention before.'

I tried to rea.s.sure her. 'You've never reeled in Great-Grandma and Grandpa before,' I said.

She shook her head. 'That isn't it. He sent a stack of research on Logologists.'

I nodded. 'Me, too. You've read it?'

'Of course.'

'What did you think?'

'They're odd people, but I can't find anything that would make them object to this project. They say death isn't liberation unless you're enlightened - so frozen heads could just be more potential converts ..

'Maybe Thomas knows something more,' I said.

The bus landed, sleek and bright red, an expensive full pressure, full-cabin late-model Lunar Rover. I had never ridden on the Sandoval limo before. The interior was very impressive; automatic adjustment seats, restaurant unit - I regretted I'd already eaten breakfast, but nibbled on Rho's eggs and mock ham - and complete communications centre. We could have called Earth or Mars or any of the asteroids using Lunar Cooperative stat.i.tes or even the Triple satellites if we'd wished.

'Makes you realize how far out of the Sandoval mainstream we are at the Ice Pit,' I said as Rho slipped her plate into the return.

'I haven't missed it,' she said. 'We get what we need.'

'William might not agree.'

Rho smiled. 'It's not luxury he's after.' Port Yin was Procellarum's main interplanetary commerce field and largest city, hub for all the stations in the ocean. Procellarum was the main territory of Sandoval BM, though we had some twenty stations and two smaller ports in the Earthside highlands. Besides being a transportation hub, Port Yin was surrounded by farms; it fed much of the Earthside Moon south and west of the ocean. For lunar citizens, a farm station of sufficient size also acts as a resort - a chance to admire forests and fields.

We pa.s.sed over the now opaqued rows of farm domes, thousands of hectares s.p.a.ced along the southeast edge of the port, and came in at the private Sandoval field half an hour before our appointment. That gave us little time to cross by rail and walkway through Yin City's crowds to Centre Port.

The director's secretary led us down the short hall to his small personal office, centrally located among the Sandoval syndic warrens. Thomas Sandoval-Rice was trim, resolutely grey-haired, with a thin nose and ample lips, a middling seventy-five years old, and he wore a formal black suit with red sash and mooncalf slippers. He stood to greet us. There was barely room for three chairs and a desk; this was his inner sanctum, not the show office for Sandoval clients or other BM reps. Rho looked at me forlornly as we entered; this did indeed seem like the occasion for a dressing-down.

'I'm pleased to see both of you again,' Thomas said as he offered us chairs. 'You're looking well. Mickey, it's been three years, hasn't it, since we approved your position at the Ice Pit?' 'Yes, Sir, ' I said.

Thomas looked at Rho's wary face and smiled rea.s.surance. 'This is not a visit to a dental mechanic, he said. 'Rho, I smell a storm coming, and I'd like to have you tell me what kind of storm it might be, and why we're sailing into it., 'I don't know, Sir,' Rho said steadily.

'Mickey?'

'I've read your text, Sir. I'm puzzled, as well.' 'The Task-Felder BM is behind all this, everybody's a.s.sured me of that. I have friends in the United States of the Western Hemisphere Senate. Friends who are in touch with California Logology, the parent church, as it were. Task-Felder BM is less independent than they want to appear; if California Logology nods its h.o.a.ry head, Task-Felder jumps. Now, you know that no lunar BM is supposed to operate as either a terrestrial representative or to promote purely religious principles ... That's in the Lunar Binding Multiples Agreements. The const.i.tution of the Moon.'

'Yes, Sir,' I said.

'But Task-Felder BM has managed to avoid or ignore a great many of those provisions, and n.o.body's called them on it, because no BM likes the image of making a council challenge of another fully chartered BM, even one with terrestrial connections. Bad for business, in brief. We all like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists, family first, Moon second, Triple third ... and to h.e.l.l with the Triple if push comes to shove. Understood?'

'Yes, Sir,' I said.

'I've served as chief syndic and director of Sandoval BM for twenty-nine years, and in that time, I've seen Task-Felder grow powerful despite the distaste of the older, family-based binding multiples. They're sharp, they're quick learners, they have impressive financial backing, and they have a sincerity and a drive that can be disconcerting.' 'I've noticed that, Sir,' I said.

Thomas pursed his lips. 'Your conversation with Janis Granger was not pleasant?'

'No, Sir.'

'We've done something to offend them, and my sources on Earth tell me they're willing to take off their gloves, get down in the dust and spit up a volcano if they have to. Mud, mud, mud, crazier than.'

'I don't understand why, Sir,' Rho said.

'I was hoping one or both of you could enlighten me. You've gone through the brief on their history and beliefs. You don't find anything suggestive?

'I certainly don't,' Rho said.

'Our frozen Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa never did anything to upset them?'

'Not that we know of.'

'Rho, we've got some two-facing from our fellow family BMs, haven't we? Nernst and Cailetet are willing to design something for us and take our cash, but they may not stand up for us in the council.' He rubbed his chin for a moment with his finger, making a wry face. 'Is there anybody else interesting in the list of heads, besides Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa?'

'I've brought along my files, including the list of individuals Preserved by StarTime. There's a lacuna I was not aware of, Sir - three viable individuals - and I've asked StarTime's advocate in New York for an accounting, but I haven't gotten an answer yet.

'You've correlated the list?'

'Pardon?' Rho asked.

'You've run cross-checks between Logology connections and the list? In history?'

'No.'

'Mickey?'

'No, sir.'

Thomas glanced at me reproachfully. 'Let me do it now, then,' he said. He took Rho's slate and plugged it into his desktop thinker. With a start, I realized this small green cube was Ellen C, the Sandoval thinker, advisor to all the syndics. Ellen C was one of the oldest thinkers on the, Moon, somewhat obsolete now, but definitely part of the family. 'Ellen, what do we have here?'

'No interesting strikes or correlations in the first or second degree,' the thinker reported. 'Completed.'

Thomas raised his eyebrows. 'Perhaps a dead end.' 'I'll look into the unnamed three,' Rho said.

'Do that. Now, I'd like to rehea.r.s.e a few things with you folks. Do you know our weaknesses - your own weaknesses? And the weaknesses of the lunar BM system?'

I could not, in my naivety, come up with any immediate response to this question. Rho was equally blank.

'Allow an older fool to lecture you a bit, then. Grandpa Ian Reiker-Sandoval favoured Rho, doted on her. Gave her anything she wanted. So Rho has the man she wanted, someone from outside who doesn't meet the usual Sandoval criteria for eligible matches. Still, William has done his work admirably, and we all look forward to a breakthrough. However-'

'I'm spofled,' Rho antic.i.p.ated him.

'Let's say ... that you've had a rich girl's leeway, without the corruption of free access to fabulous wealth,' Thomas said. 'Nevertheless, you have substantial BM resources at your disposal, and you have a way of getting us into trouble without really seeing it coming.'

'I'm not sure that's fair,' I said.

'As judgments go, it's extremely fair,' Thomas said, staring at me sharply. 'This is not the first time ... or are memories short in the younger Sandovals?'

Rho looked up at the ceiling, then at me, then at Thomas. 'The tulips,' she said.

'Sandoval BM lost half a million Triple dollars. Fortunately, we were able to convert the farms to tailored pharmaceuticals. But that was before marriage to William, and it was minor ... although typical of your early adventures. You've matured considerably since then, as I'm sure you'll both agree. Still, Rho has never been caught up in a freefall scuffle. She has always had Sandoval BM firmly behind her. To her credit, she's never brought in the kind of trouble that could reflect badly on the BM. Until now, and I can't pin the blame on her for this, except to say she's not terribly prescient.'

'You blame her for any aspect of this?' I asked, still defensive before Thomas's relaxed gaze.

'No,' Thomas said after a pregnant pause. 'I blame you. You, my dear lad, are a focused dilettante, very good in your area, which is the Ice Pit, but not widely experienced. You don't have Rho's ambition, and you haven't shown many signs of her innovative spark ... You've never even taken advantage of your Earth sabbatical. Micko, if I may be familiar, you've done the job of managing the Ice Pit well enough, certainly nothing for us to complain about, but you've had very little experience in the bigger arena of the Triple, and you've grown a little soft sitting out there. You didn't check out Rho's scheme.'

I straightened in my chair. 'It had BM charter-'

'You should still have checked it out. You should have smelled something coming. There may be no such thing as prescience, but honed instincts are crucial in our game, Micko.

'You've cultivated fine literature - terrestrial literature fine music and a little history in the copious time you've had between your bursts of economic activity. You've become something of a lady's man in the barn dances. Fine; you're of an age where such things are natural. But now it's time that You put on some muscle. I'd like you to handle this matter as my accessory. You'll go to the council meetings - one is scheduled in a couple of days - and you'll study up on the c.h.i.n.ks in our system's armour.'

I settled back, suddenly more than just uneasy, and not about my impending debut in larger BM politics. 'You think we're approaching a singularity?'

Thomas nodded. 'Whatever your failings, Micko, you are sharp. That's exactly right. A time when all the rules could fail, and all our past oversights come back to haunt us. It's a good possibility. Care to lecture me for a minute?' I shrugged. 'Sir, I-'

'Stretch your wings, lad. You're not ignorant, else you wouldn't have made that last remark. What singularity faces the BMs now?'

'I can't really say, sir. I don't know which weakness you're referring to, specifically, but-'

'Go on.' Thomas smiled like a genial tiger.

'We've outgrown the lunar const.i.tution. Two million people in fifty-four BMs, that's ten times as many as lived on the Moon when the const.i.tution was written. And actually, it was never written by an individual. It was cobbled together by a committee intent on not stretching or voiding individual BM charters. I think that you think Task-Felder isn't above forcing a const.i.tutional crisis.'

'Yes?'

'If they are planning something like that, now's the time to do it. I've been studying the Triple's performance for the past few years. Lunar BMs have gotten increasingly conservative, sir. Compared with Mars, we've been...' I was on a nervous high; I waved my hands and smiled placatingly, hoping not to overwhelm or offend.

'Yes?'

'Well, a little like you accuse me of being, sir. Selfcontented, taking advantage of the lull. But the Triple is going through a major shake-up now, Earth's economy is suffering its expected forty-year cyclic decline, and the lunar BMs are vulnerable. If we stop cooperating, the Moon could be put into a financial crisis worse than the Split. So everybody's being very cautious, very - - conservative. The old rough-and-tumble has given way to don't-p.r.i.c.k-the-seal.'

'Good,' Thomas said.

'I haven't been a worm, sir,' I said with a pained expression.

'Glad to hear it. And if Task-Felder convinces a significant number of BMs that we're rocking the boat in a way that could lower the lunar rating in the Triple?'

'It could be bad. But why would they do that?' I asked, still puzzled.

Rho picked up my question. 'Tom, how could a few hundred heads bring this on? What's Task-Felder got against us?'