Chapter 1

 

August 11, 2367 (not that anyone still tells time that way)

Planet Bohrkk, Sector Rho Lambda: Punitorium L752

 

“You’re not very good, are you?”

“What?”

“Not a good Spectator,” Nataleah Latier said sourly. “When you turned on, your eyes twitched.”

Meryam Mayishimu shrugged. “I’m a documentarian. The virtuoso Spectators, the ones who, um, ‘turn on’ with no one noticing, they get the plum assignments – living among savages on Enclave worlds, that sort of thing. Me, I’m as good as I have to be.”

“But no better.” Nataleah frowned.

Meryam shrugged. “Shall we begin?”

“I thought we had.”

Meryam shifted her lean fanny on the worn cellblock bench, wishing it offered more padding. “The Parek affair,” she said crisply. “It changed your husband’s life.”

“And mine. If not for Parek, I’d never have met my husband.”

“If not for your husband, you wouldn’t be in here.”

Dense black curls trembled against Nataleah’s bizarrely chalky skin. “You know how it was.”

“I do, yes,” Meryam prodded. “But tell my experients.”

Nataleah paced, frowning. “More than twenty standard years ago, Alrue violated Enclave to instruct Arn Parek.”

“The false messiah.”

“You say that.” She spun to face Meryam. “Breaking Enclave is serious business. Alrue nearly got put away for it.”

“But he wasn’t. One of history’s more improbable escapes from justice, to be sure.”

“Ten standard years later, everything was different. It wasn’t fair! Sfelb, they’d needed Alrue’s ship to help save the Galaxy. They promised him a blanket pardon.”

Meryam shrugged. “But he didn’t cooperate.”

“Some say that.” Nataleah’s ashen fingers traced a filthy ledge. “Still, the way things ended was so forjeling wrong.” She pursed her lips. “Ooh, can a preacher’s wife say ‘forjeling’?”

Meryam spread her hands. “You just did.”

“I did not.”

“You said ‘sfelb,’ too.”

“No.”

“I can play you back the journal …”

“Never mind.” Nataleah scowled, elbows bent, balled fists clutching at her inmate tunic. “The point is, not only did Alrue end up doing time in spite of a blanket pardon, they threw his extended family in with him.”

“You mean yourself and the other plural wives.”

“Why jail us? We weren’t accomplices, we were just waiting in our, our …”

“Harem?” Meryam supplied.

“That’s no Mormon word. But we played no part in what Alrue was up to.”

Meryam leaned against a mottled wall. “You didn’t have to come in here with him.”

Nataleah bristled. “Sure, we had a choice. Divorce Alrue and lose our children, or serve time with him. And lose our children.”

“But this way you get your children back,” Meryam said.

“Eventually.”

“They’re being raised in Mormon homes,” Meryam noted. “They’ll be returned when your husband’s sentence ends.”

“And meanwhile?” Nataleah fought back tears. “They sealed our wombs.”

“First time I’ve heard reversible sterilization described that way. Look, children can’t grow up in detention.”

“Oh, really?” Nataleah raised an eyebrow. “All right, Abigayl’s a special case. As a general matter, no one wants inmates breeding ’torium tots. But do you know what it means to a woman of the New Restoration, not being able to give her husband more children?” Nataleah clasped her hands together. “And do you know, our sentence – being incarcerated for a husband’s crimes – has no precedent in Galactic law? Constance looked it up.”

Meryam cocked an eyebrow. “Nonetheless, you opted to stay with him. You, Constance, the three other wives.”

“Abigayl was too young for a divorce.” Nataleah collapsed into a decrepit formchair. It joggled uncertainly before flowing snug against her buttocks and back. “What happened to us wasn’t justice,” she said darkly. “It was a tantrum.”

Meryam spread her fingers. “I’ll admit, it was irregular.”

“My turn now, Fem Documentarian.” Nataleah leaned back; after an interval the chair followed her. “How did you meet my husband?”

Meryam chuckled. “It was almost twenty-five standard years ago, a bit before the Parek affair. Alrue was still on Terra, just starting to build a Galactic audience. I was a journalist. I gave him one of the toughest interviews he’d had to that time. It became terribly popular. I heard that after he got famous, some things he’d told me proved embarrassing for him.”

Nataleah nodded. “And then?”

“A decade later, a being claiming to be me came into Alrue’s circle. That … thing became a partner in the scheming that ultimately got Alrue – and you – incarcerated. But it wasn’t me.”

Nataleah nodded darkly. “It was really that self-aware monstrosity and his human handler … what was his name?”

“Gram Enoda.”

Nataleah half-smiled. “Ever wonder where he is today?”

“Not if I can help it.” Meryam fingered a twist of her chocolate-red hair, immediately realizing she shouldn’t do that while recording. A field Spectator would know that without thinking. “Anyway, the impostor’s antics put my name back in the public eye. I’d always dreamed of being a Spectator. Starting so late, the best I could hope for was to be a documentarian.” Meryam caught herself short. How did this boorish woman cajole me into being her interview subject?

In the middle distance a chime clanged. “Time to pray,” Nataleah said, rolling her eyes.

***

The Galaxy’s only fully (to say nothing of multiply) conjugal incarceration had demanded some concessions in design; Alrue Latier’s “cellblock” was actually a warren of apartments. Nataleah and Meryam followed its jagging central corridor, emerging into what might have been called a great room, were there anything great about it. The clumsy chamber was irregularly proportioned, with five sides. Its ceiling, a single, sharply canted glasteel plate, had never been cleaned. In late afternoon only a ruddy glow penetrated its layers of grime.

Clad in electric-blue tunics like Nataleah’s, the other wives huddled around a beefy man with thinning grey-brown hair. He wore a tunic like theirs, but over it an ill-fitting off-white muslin union suit that ended at his forearms and his knees. A woven collar was joined at his neck with a cloth tie. Into the fabric over his left breast had been snipped a V-shaped symbol, meant to symbolize an old-fashioned geometer’s compass. Over his right breast, an inverted-L marking could be recognized with effort as an ancient architect’s square – or an artist’s, or a mason’s. Between the two symbols, another fabric tie held the garment together. A hole the width of two fingers opened over his navel, a smaller one over his right knee.

He was Alrue Latier, President of the High Priesthood of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of the New Restoration, and Seer, Revelator, and Prophet unto the church whose appointment belonged to him by blessing and also by right. Come to think of it, the whole church belonged to him, less by blessing or by right than because he owned all the common stock.

Alrue kissed Nataleah full on the mouth.

The last of his wives having been properly greeted, it was time for the ritual. The women formed a loose circle around their husband and began to sing their faith’s oldest hymn:

 

“The Spirit of God like a fire is burning;

The latter-day glory begins to come forth.”

 

Alrue abruptly left his spot, stepping through the circle toward Meryam. The wives exchanged puzzled glances but kept singing. “Fem Mayishimu,” Alrue said in a whisper.

“First Elder?”

“I know about you.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Me?”

 

“The visions and blessings of old are returning;

The angels are coming to visit the earth.”

 

“Your kind,” Alrue said coldly. “Spectators. You don’t just rely on your own body’s enhanced capacities, impressive as those are. You plant bugs. You hide remote sensors. You gain situational awareness far beyond what your senses could acquire.”

“Field Spectators do that. I’m just a documentarian.”

Alrue shook his head. “You’ve been all over this punitorium. You’ve interviewed me, my wives, Warden Eiloxayn, senior guards. You must have placed bugs.”

 

“We’ll sing and we’ll shout with the armies of heaven;

Hosanna, Hosanna to God and the Lamb!”

 

Abigayl (the youngest wife) mouthed silently, “What’s a hosanna?”

Lupida (the second eldest wife) mouthed back, “What’s a lamb?”

“When that riot broke out in Delta Quad, from in here you knew about it before the guards did,” Alrue continued. “Admit it, you’ve constructed a god’s-eye view of this whole punitorium. You see it like a beehive behind glass.”

“An aptly Mormon image.”

“Thanks for noticing.” Alrue frowned. “You know how the guards arrange their patrols. Who pays attention and who doesn’t.”

“You want me to tell you?”

“Miracles are where one finds them.” He grinned. “If God chooses not to free me in miraculous ways, then I, Alrue, may yet hope that the Heavenly Father will aid me through means that seem … more ordinary.”

“Really, First Elder. I’ve seen you fail at calling down this miracle, what, nine times before?”

“Seven, pray don’t exaggerate.” Alrue backed toward the circle of his still-singing wives, pitching his voice so only Meryam would hear it. “Turn yourself on, Fem Spectator. It’s show time.”

Meryam subvocalized a nonsense syllable, triggering the cascade of electronic, vibrionic, and bio­log­ical events that would put her online. It began with tingling in her cheeks as biotech implants recorded the faint­est movements of her eye, head, and neck mus­cles for later resynchroni­zation to her visual field. Deep in her skull, a transceiver implant opened a channel to an OmNet satellite orbiting over­head. An in­stant later, she knew the bird was receiving her. The sync in­for­ma­tion it beamed back to her trig­gered alternate cortical pathways.

Meryam changed. Normally-dormant areas of her cortex sparked into orderly action. In micro­seconds the largest part of her cerebral capacity was devoted to fine-grained con­trol of the mus­cles in her head, face, and neck. Nerve shunts routed potentially dis­tract­ing somesthetic informa­tion beneath her conscious aware­ness. Blood flow to her sense organs increased. In moments the entirety of her preternat­ur­ally optimized sensory field – sight, sound, touch, tastes and odors, heat or cold, even the sensations of her body just being itself – would be recorded for anyone with a senso player to experience (more properly, to pov).

Subvocalizing one more nonsense syllable, Meryam Mayishimu went fully into Mode.

Suck, rush, wrench!

“‘And it shall come to pass,’” Alrue bellowed, “‘that I, the Lord God, will send one mighty and strong, holding the scepter of power in his hand, clothed with light for a covering, whose mouth shall utter words, eternal words; while his bowels shall be a fountain of truth, to set in order the house of the Lord.’” Alrue made magical gestures, waggling fingers thick as sausages. “O great God, deliver me from mine internment. Make bare Thy holy arm.”

Alrue directed a fierce gaze up into the filth-streaked glasteel ceiling. “Deliver us your saints from that awful monster, our captivity!” he shouted. “Send forth also the power of Thine other mighty arm. Visit these walls with destruction!” He spread his arms. “O Heavenly Father, stretch forth yet one more mighty arm!”

Zuzenah, his eldest wife, stepped to the center of the circle. “No arms left,” she breathed.

“Pardon?”

“You've already asked God to bare one mighty arm, then stretch forth the second. Is that not all of them?”

Alrue frowned. “God is God, He can have as many arms as He wants. Now be quiet, woman, I'm supplicating.”

Which was as far as that afternoon’s supplicating would get.

Of course, the Spectator heard it first.

A tinny whine, tuneless, yet rapidly rising in pitch. At first it was subliminal.

“Do you hear that?” Meryam blurted.

Then they all heard it. The whine became a shriek. Alrue and his wives doubled over, clutching their heads.

Meryam registered a burst of pressure – or was it vacuum? For a vertiginous instant she thought she felt gravity twist back on itself.

A sucking roar drew her gaze. She formed a split-second impression of one cellblock wall leaping outward. Tumbling away on the air, collapsing into powder.

Then blackness.

***

Meryam’s awareness re-formed. The ruddy light of Bohrkkian afternoon shone through a startling three-by-five-meter wound in the northeast wall. Chips and dust sifted down past the opening.

Meryam rose unsteadily to one knee. Residue caked her, tasting metallic under her tongue. Hurriedly she scanned herself. No serious injuries, all internal systems three-by-three greens.

She stood, slowly pivoted. All about the angular chamber, deep cracks fissured the floor and walls. Three large chunks of the ceiling had collapsed. Furnishings and equipment had tumbled down from upper stories. Lengths of conduit, twisted fixtures, and less identifiable debris lay everywhere.

Alrue and his wives stirred. They seemed unhurt; at least, none of the heavy wreckage had struck them. One by one they rose.

Alrue stared incredulously at his hands.

One of the dust-coated wives – Constance? Yes – knelt, praying unintelligibly but at the top of her lungs. Another drew up behind her husband. “This time I have to hand it to you, Alrue,” breathed Lupida. “My dear Harold never called down a smiting from heaven like this.”

Meryam hurried across the room to confront Alrue. “First Elder!”

He stared at her like a sleeper waking.

“What do you hear?” she demanded.

Alrue blinked. “Nothing.”

“Shouldn’t there be sirens? People shouting? There’s just silence.” Meryam seized the trideevangelist’s wrists. “You were right about my Spectator bugs and sensors. I had them all over the punitorium complex. Most are still working, but they read no power, no comm, no vibrionics. Nolife signs.”

Alrue bowed his head. “Mighty is the Lord God of Hosts. Fearful is the glory of His majesty.”

“Hosanna and hosanna,” chorused Lupida.

Meryam half-steered, half-dragged Alrue toward the gash in the northeast wall. Zuzenah caught up with them. The trio leaned outward and stared down.

The wall breach opened onto a sheer drop of at least five meters. At its bottom, a deep sandy ravine ran parallel to the punctured wall.

“The Lord of Hosts does toy with us, dear husband,” Zuzenah lamented. “After all this noise and spectacle, still we cannot get out.”

From above sounded a gathering roar. Meryam pulled Alrue and Zuzenah back from the opening. New debris curtained past outside. Half a bodylength below their feet, the exterior wall split with an immense cracking sound. A meter-wide jet of whitewater spewed outward. Foam arched, then hammered into the ravine below.

The three edged forward, staring down through the hole in the wall at the gushing stream.

Their shattered cellblock was fast acquiring a moat.

More debris cascaded past outside: clattering metal strips, unfurling coils of cable, and finally a battered window-washing platform. One end of the platform caught on the hole in the wall; the opposite end thumped onto the far bank, across the fast-rising moat. At its center, the jet of rushing water surged across its deck.

Lupida grabbed Meryam by one elbow. “It is a miracle! They never washed the windows here.”

Meryam crept forward and tried to jostle the platform. It felt secure where it had fallen. She rushed back to Alrue. “First Elder!”

“Call me Alrue, it’s a Mormon thing.”

“Fine, Alrue. The walkway seems safe. That water washing over the center of it is only half a meter deep. There’ll be a swift current, but if you hang on tight you should be able to just walk out of here.”

“Me?” Alrue seemed startled at the idea. He thought for a moment, then strode toward his senior wife.

“Me?” Zuzenah protested.

“You needn’t go alone,” Alrue said equably. “Take all the wives.”

Terrified, Zuzenah stared toward the lacerated wall. Alrue clasped her hands and spoke to her urgently. “What transports of joy swelled my bosom, when I first took by the hand my beloved Zuzenah –the wife of my youth, the choice of my heart.” He guided her closer to the jagged opening. “Again she is here, even in the seventh trouble — undaunted, firm, and unwavering – unchangeable, affectionate Zuzenah!”

Zuzenah’s eyes filmed with emotion. At that moment anyone could see the black-eyed beauty she had once been. “O my husband, there is nothing I will not do at your command.”

Alrue nodded almost imperceptibly. “Then go. The Spectator and I will follow.”

“Sister wives!” Zuzenah cried with sudden determination. “We’re leaving. Aunt Constance, pray get us organized.”

For lanky Constance, taking charge of logistical matters was clearly nothing new. She strode about, sizing things up, barking commands. “Aunt Lupida, Aunt Abigayl, extract the concentrate cylinders out of that shattered food synthesizer. Aunt Zuzenah, grab those fire-safety backpacks the wardens never taught us how to use. Pour out whatever’s in them and fill them up with the blankets from our floatpads. Aunt Nataleah, look for vessels we can use to carry water – see if any of the stuff that fell from upstairs has slings on it. Fem Mayishimu,” she called, indicating a length of severed cable with her foot. “Pray use your expanded senses. Is this safe to handle?”

***

Ten minutes later the wives mustered, facing the cavity in the cellblock wall. Constance had used the length of cable to lash them all together. She placed herself in front and Nataleah at the back, so the youngest and fittest adults would bookend the party. The youngest wife, Abigayl, stood in the middle, stuffing a strip of personal floatcells she’d found into her backpack. Zuzenah had considered ordering Abigayl to stay behind while the elder wives tested the escape route – she was only seven, after all – but with everything else that was going on no one wanted one of those “You’re not my mother!” confrontations.

“Time to go,” Zuzenah called from her spot second in line.

Still recording, Meryam sidestepped across the shattered chamber, seeking a more dramatic angle as the wives stepped through the punctured cellblock wall. They started across the fallen platform, toward the jet of froth still surging across its midpoint. Alrue breathed a passage from Mormon scripture: “They went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters.”

Choosing their steps carefully, clinging tightly to the platform’s buckled railings, the wives pushed through knee-high whitewater. The surge tugged at them, but they contrived to counter it. Even little Abigayl, for whom the seething foam was more like thigh-high, managed to hold her own.

Shifting their grips, blinking away showers of spray, the plural wives splattered through the torrent toward freedom.

Beaming, Alrue Latier watched it all.

He turned toward Meryam. “Behold,” he said. “My wives splash before my eyes.”