"astory2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sullivan Jonathon)

THE RAPTURE THE RAPTURE
by Jonathon M. Sullivan
© 1998 - All Rights Reserved

As he watched the biomes pass by, stacked one atop the other, Thomas Ferrel, a short, squat, homely man with patchy red hair and a pot belly, fumed inwardly. He felt anger splashing red all over his cheeks, but his superior, Vince Sherrick, was oblivious. Sherrick absently watched the array of ecosystems that paraded past the port of the elevator, as if they were just so many more floors of the Complex. It made Ferrel even angrier, and he despised himself for not having the courage to vent his ire, to spit venom at the man who had blithely betrayed him. Instead, Ferrel's voice quavered with submission. "You really caught me off guard, Vince. I thought we agreed that I'd be given time to..." Sherrick sighed. He was tall, thin, and handsome, the cut of his gown accentuating the length of his limbs. "Tom, it was too important to keep under wraps. Besides, it couldn't have stayed a secret much longer. Everybody in your lab knows, everybody on level 12 knows, hell, the custodial staff knows. Better to go to the Ecumen than have them come to us, asking questions." "But you could have given me some warning, Vince." Sherrick looked at him sideways, frowning. Ferrel backed off, quickly, detesting his own cowardice. "I understand your problems, of course, Vince. Obviously you did the right thing!" He could hear the groveling in his voice, despised himself for it. "But if I had had more time to prepare a proper presentation, I could have made you look that much better!" "I didn't want the Deacon hearing about this through other channels," Sherrick said, turning his gaze back to the window. Now New Guinea rainforest. Now Canadian tundra. Now a rich African savanna. Ferrel watched the unchanging expression on Sherrick's face as these wonders filed past, hating him for the total lack of appreciation that was there, plain to see. To Sherrick, these fragments of what had been were mere custodial accounts, booty captured from the enemy, museum pieces under his charge, to be pigeonholed and maintained within the constraints of the budget. Nothing more. He turned to face the window himself, caught the last three specimens in the broad, curving window: Caribbean reef, an aquarium teeming with colorful fish and coral and simulated filtered sunlight; Florida marsh; Sonoran desert. Each one a wonder, a revelation, perfectly preserved in vaults as large as a hundred cathedrals, complete with sky and sun and weather. Then the view changed radically, as the lift ascended through more orderly, regulated environs: one of the myriad maintenance levels, the main processing floors, shipping and delivery docks, and office levels. It was at one of the latter that the lift deposited its two occupants. Ferrel followed Sherrick through pristine hallways to one of the plush executive conference rooms at the uppermost level of the complex. Whenever he came up here, Ferrel always trembled to think that he was only a few feet beneath the surface. Today, that thought had taken on a whole new significance. Now, instead of imagining what the surface had been like, he could imagine what it could be like. Sherrick opened the door to the conference, and Ferrel almost stumbled when he saw that the Deacon had already arrived, seated at the far end of a magnificent table of polished oak. His two aides, cowled and brooding, stood at either side of the distinguished visitor. In an instant, Ferrel realized that he was coming in at the middle of the meeting, not the beginning. Sherrick had already had a long conversation with the Deacon, and had then been sent to retrieve the subject of that conversation: Ferrel. The Deacon's eyes seized Ferrel as he entered, and never let him go. The Deacon was a powerfully built man; one could see it, even beneath the flowing robes of red and white. The broad black cap, a symbol of his exalted rank in the Ecumen, perched over sullen gray eyes and heavy brows. The Deacon's chin was manly, the lips thin and humorless. The Deacon's eyes were gray, and not without a hint of kindness, but they were intelligent and piercing, and when they saw Ferrel he was immediately intimidated. "Ho-Ho-Holiness," Ferrel stammered, and bowed clumsily. The Deacon smiled thinly, not moving. "That term is properly reserved for the Chairman," he said in a voice that was strangely kind. "‘Your Grace' will suffice." "Yes. Yes, Your Grace." "Please be seated," the Deacon said, and Ferrel and Sherrick took chairs near his. The Deacon turned to Ferrel, and he felt himself wither under those fine gray eyes. He looked away, to the rich grain of the table. No doubt this wood had been taken from one of his forests, many floors below—either directly, or through the Fabricator. "Brother Sherrick, your supervisor, has given you a glowing report," the Deacon said. Ferrel nodded stupidly. "But we didn't need his report to be aware of the fine work you're doing here." The Deacon smiled. "Food production is as consistent and as excellent as I can recall, since you assumed your duties." Sherrick frowned at Ferrel, made an almost imperceptible gesture, a command to respond. "It's—its the preserves, your Holi—your Grace. With the preserves, I have a vast viable database from which to prepare a large variety of new foodstuffs—or perhaps I should say old foodstuffs....I mean..." "Ah, yes, the preserves," the Deacon said, squinting. "The biome conservatories. How fortunate that they were discovered intact, and how clever of you to exploit them for the purposes of feeding your brothers." "Thank you, your Grace." Inside, Ferrel flailed like a landed fish. The biome conservatories had been captured a year ago, and Sherrick had already collected the accolades for Ferrel's work in fabricating the fruits, nuts, and meats that had long since disappeared from the surface—and the human diet. None of this was news. This had nothing to do with the Deacon's visit. "Brother Sherrick tells us you have found another way to...exploit the preserves." There it was. Ferrel cleared his throat, knowing that he had just been commanded to launch into an ad lib presentation. "That's...that's correct your Grace. Not long after the preserves were first captured—" "Revealed!" Sherrick corrected him. "Revealed," Ferrel said instantly, turning red . "Shortly after they were revealed, and after we had succeeded in using them to put a little variety back into our diet, I got to thinking about other ways in which we might use the Fabricator to exploit the conservatories." "Brother Sherrick has intimated as much. We would like a demonstration." Ferrel felt his face drain dry. He turned to Sherrick in a panic, saw nothing but a cold smile. He turned back to the Deacon. "Your Grace, this is such...such short notice. I don't have a suitable—" "Loading dock six has been sealed off and prepared for you," Sherrick interjected. "But the material—" "The material allocations have been made," Sherrick said. "The Deacon is a busy man, Tom." It was back to the elevator, then, and down to the loading dock. The Deacon and his two taciturn aides were led through sterile hallways and noisy packaging stations, to a monitoring bridge with a broad glass port. This tiny room looked over an expansive chamber with floor dimensions as large as the greatest of the Cathedrals of the Ecumen. The ruined dock had once housed a pair of subterranean shipping shuttles, destroyed during the battle for the Conservatory. The rails had been ripped out, and the open end had been walled in with seamless sheets of steel plate courtesy of the Fabricator. The ceiling was a hundred feet high, and Ferrel saw that Sherrick had arranged to have it fitted with one of the huge SolarSim lamps that illuminated the conservatories. The steel walls and concrete floor waited silently, clean, smooth and empty, save for the stacked drums in the center of the room. Ferrel wondered what they contained: food? ore? medical waste? It was an idle rumination: the Fabricator would convert this dead matter into an ecosystem, just as easily as it turned gravel into steel. He saw the unit: egg- shaped, gleaming white, set casually atop one of the drums. "Uh, well..." Ferrel began. "What would you like, your Grace?" "I would like a demonstration," the Deacon said, his impatience beginning to simmer visibly. "Yes, your Grace. But would you like to see any particular ecosystem?" "The Deacon doesn't know anything about ecosystems!" Sherrick blurted, and immediately flushed as the impropriety of his statement blossomed in his mind. "I see," the Deacon hummed, his expression curious, inscrutable. After pinning Sherrick with silent eyes for a second, he turned back to Ferrel. "Do you have a personal favorite, Thomas?" Ferrel gulped. There were two danger signals in the Deacon's question: the implication that Ferrel had any affection for the contents of the conservatories thriving in the floors below, and the use of his first name. His brain stumbled frantically from one response to another, desperately seeking the safest option. "We-e-e-ell, your Grace, some of the conservatories are more...diverse and complex than others. Perhaps one of these would make the most suitable demonstration." The Deacon nodded. "Proceed." Ferrel switched on the console, and stepped into the cylindrical holographic interface field. It surrounded him with shimmering menus and command options. Suddenly he occupied a more familiar element, one in which he was firmly in control. He downloaded the molecular configuration of the biome he had chosen, a million terabytes of data for the Fabricator to chew, and set the spatial parameters. His hands flashed from one icon to the next, while Sherrick fidgeted and the Deacon yawned. "What's taking so long?" Ferrel started as he heard one of the Deacon's attendants (or both of them?) snap the question in his direction. He looked up. The twin hoods yawned darkly in his direction. "I—I'm sorry," he said. "But I must set the spatial parameters very closely. The effect must be carefully contained. It must not be allowed to spread to the surrounding structure." "A necessary safety precaution, your Grace," Sherrick added, patronizing. "I understand," the Deacon muttered. After a few more minutes of fussing, Ferrel shrugged, and turned to the others. "It's ready," he said. "Proceed, proceed," the Deacon commanded. In the holographic cylinder, there was a command bar prominently labeled "EXECUTE." With a trembling finger, Ferrel reached out and pressed it. It blinked from red to blue, and they all directed their view to the storage bay. Nothing was visible for a full minute. Then, suddenly, the canisters melted into an irregular dark brown splotch that spread explosively across the floor of the bay, quickly spreading to every corner, and filling itself in to a depth of thirty feet with soil and stone. A central depression filled rapidly with water, and after that it became difficult for the eye to follow the entirety of what occurred. A carpet of green expanded across the newly-created earth; trees of a dozen types, fully developed, shimmered into existence; the pond filled with fish and algae and lilies; insects appeared in the air; birds materialized on the spreading branches. Ferrel and Sherrick had both witnessed this miracle twice before, but they were no less spellbound by the neogenesis of an entire biome. Even the Deacon gasped with astonishment, but his two attendants, whom Ferrel had begun to suspect were Carbons, remained stock-still. "That's not the best of it, your Grace," Ferrel whispered, his caution temporarily overwhelmed by the glory of his handiwork. They watched silently for a moment before it emerged from the treeline: a large whitetail buck, his antlers spreading over his head, a resplendent crown of keratin. His dark eyes blinked once in their direction, before he turned his attention to grazing on the rich carpet of green that stretched from one unseen wall to the other. "Even animal life?" The Deacon's question was a croaked expression of wonder. He, too, had forgotten himself. "No more difficult than the recent medical applications," Ferrel said. "The new Fabricator upgrades are very sophisticated, your Grace. And, as you know, the conservatories contain a wealth of animal species. In addition, we have the Gaian DNA databases to work with. More than three million species on file." "Yes," Sherrick said. "The Gaians were very determined, and very resourceful." "And very misguided," the Deacon intoned, having recovered some of his equilibrium. His eyes bored into Ferrel, an imperative to respond. "Yes, your Grace," he said, wanting to believe himself. "Very misguided." The Deacon's gaze did not waver, and Ferrel felt himself shrivel. Presently, the Deacon's face cracked into its thin smile. "Do you understand, Brother Ferrel, the full significance of what you have done?" Ferrel's mouth dropped open. Significance! He looked over at Sherrick, who smiled coldly. No help there. He was trapped. "Your Grace," he began, keeping submission in his voice, "the implications are enormous. Below us, in the conservatories, are monumental living libraries, no less than eighty-four communities, preserved in nearly perfect condition. With the new generation of Fabricators, we can transplant this information back to the surface. We could start slowly, with the most stable and durable biomes." Ferrel's face betrayed excitement as his presentation gained momentum. "My calculations are that within twenty years the individual biomes would begin to interlock, and we would see the evolution of contiguous environments. After a time, the process would require only maintenance interventions on our part—eventually, no interventions at all. But, your Grace, I believe that we have a diminishing window of opportunity. We aren't as skilled in caring for the preserves as the Gaians were, and there are indications that the stability of the ecosystems in the conservatories is degrading—probably a result of declining genetic variability, among other things. The sooner it's done, the better." Silence. The Deacon's face was as unreadable as a stone. "It's not really my area of expertise, your Grace, but I'm sure that—I'm sure that, as part of their redemption, some of the Gaians remaining in custody could, uh, be persuaded into guiding our efforts. With the conservatories, your Grace, and our new Fabricators, we could bring life back to the surface of the planet." Slowly, a smile crept across the Deacon's face. Sherrick, standing behind him, mirrored it with a smile of his own. "As I concluded, your Grace," Sherrick said. "It's what the Gaians had in mind all along." "Indeed." The Deacon nodded. "We could have searched for years and never found this conservatory. Praise God! Only by His good grace did we crush the Gaian heresy, and only by His blessing and guidance did we find this den of corruption." "Of course," Sherrick observed, "They would have needed the new Fabricators." "They had only to wait," the Deacon said, smiling. Ferrel had been discarded from the conversation. "Their spies were everywhere—many may remain among us, may God have mercy on them. They would have had the Fabricators. And then—too horrible to think. We always suspected that they might someday attempt to slowly replant the surface. But this..." The Deacon trailed off, clucking, shaking his head. Ferrel squinted with confusion. "I don't understand," he said, directing his question to Sherrick, rather than be so impertinent as to address the Deacon himself. "That much is clear," the Deacon said. "It is fortunate for you, Brother Ferrel, that your Soul Scan reveals that your ideas spring from a benevolent confusion, rather than hidden heresy." "My—my Soul Scan?" "Of course it was imperative that we ascertain your spiritual status," Sherrick said, "once you performed this remarkable experiment. The Scan was conducted without your knowledge." Ferrel was shocked: his loyalty and faith had never been called into question. Again, he felt his ears flush with fury, and damned himself for being too weak, too subservient, to vent his outrage. "Don't you understand, Brother Ferrel, that we can never go back to Eden?" The Deacon's face was compassionate, kindly. He stepped forward and put his hand on Ferrel's shoulder. "The Gaian heresy, like that of the Hindu, the Shaman, the Astronaut, the Buddhist—like all heresy—is based on the illusion that time is a circle, that creation floats in a sea of eternity. Such an illusion relieves man of the imperative of redemption, and denigrates the sanctity of Industry. It promotes a deep physical and spiritual sloth." Ferrel blinked. Suddenly he was in the middle of a sermon. "But time is not a circle, Brother Ferrel. It is a line. Time begins with the Creation, and ends in the Rapture. And man is the arrow that traverses that path." The Deacon lifted his face, smiled his joy, extended his arms to include all in the room. "Each day brings the Rapture closer, my Brothers! It might already have come, save for this Gaian abomination. Mankind, by his industry, by the sweat of his brow, has depleted the world God gave him, just as surely as each man, day by day, depletes the hidden number of heartbeats that separate him from Paradise. With the defeat of all heretics, we have come closer to that glorious day. And with the discovery of this abomination, we are given the opportunity to draw even nearer to the Rapture." "But, your Grace!" Ferrel forgot himself. "Your Grace, He created it all, did he not? All creatures great and small? How could—how could such beauty impede the Rapture? You see beauty in that room, your Grace! I saw it on your face!" "How dare you!" the two faceless attendants flared in unison, a single musical voice emerging from within their cowls. It confirmed Ferrel's suspicion: they were Carbons, the most faithful of the faithful, the most loyal and obedient of companions. But the Deacon's face remained kind. "You have worked very hard, Brother Thomas," he said. "Neglect your spirit and your salvation no longer. When you are done here, retire to your chambers." Ferrel frowned. "Done?" The Deacon nodded. "Brother Sherrick's report indicates that—this," the Deacon waved his hand at the garden below, not looking out the glass, "this thing you have made, can be just as easily unmade." Ferrel looked through the port, his horror growing. "Let your redemption begin here," the Deacon said. Ferrel stared at him, then at Sherrick. Sherrick virtually glowed with excitement. He had made big points with the Ecumen today, having uncovered the full breadth of the Gaian abomination below. All his encouragement, his support of Ferrel's experiments, his vows of secrecy—they had all been a deception. Ferrel wanted to shout at him, to strike him, to do unspeakable things. But a lifetime of obedience shackled him. He sickened at the mere thought of turning on his betters. He swallowed his self-loathing, and conjured the holographic interface. He entered the commands, unable to tear his eyes from the steel-encased green, his creation. The parameters were set. The holographic key floated red before him. Ferrel stared out the port, his eyes fixed on the magnificent buck, tracing the sublime, majestic branching of the antlers. "Your Grace," he croaked. "Your Soul Scan discloses that you possess the great virtue of Obedience," the Deacon said. His face was still kind, but there was a growing firmness in his voice. "Begin your redemption there, Brother." Ferrel's hand hovered over the key. He stifled a cry as he pressed it, and forced himself to watch. When it was done, tears streamed down his face. The Deacon put his hands on both of Ferrel's shoulders, and nodded. "The first step of your exorcism," he said. "You are blessed, Brother. Your work brought you face to face with corruption and heresy, and you did not flinch. Go now, and wash yourself clean. Brother Sherrick and the others will take care of the rest. Go to your cloister. I task you with twenty readings of Revelations. Yes. I think that would be most appropriate." Ferrel looked from the Deacon's gray eyes to the gray storage bay, returned to pristine sterility by the Fabricator. The vats stood again in the center of floor. The corruption of nature had been redeemed into product. He looked around the room, helplessly. The two synthetic acolytes hovered at the Deacon's side. Ferrel saw himself there: faceless, mindlessly obedient, not real, dead inside. The empty hoods glared back at him like twin mirrors. He nodded at Brother Sherrick, kissed the Deacon's ring, and fled from the room. He took an unauthorized detour, to the floors below, where he visited the world in storage. He gazed interminably at the aquarium, strolled through a mountain woodland, and, finally, sat for a time in a chattering, dripping, crawling rainforest—his favorite. He lingered for many hours among the last remnants of the dead earth before returning to his quarters. He knew they wouldn't be here tomorrow. Then, he retired to his cloister, to do as he was told. * * * It was a grotesque object, a disarticulated human digit mounted seamlessly on a white plastic handle, which Ferrel had designed to be long enough to provide ample separation from his own hand. Sin upon sin, he thought, pressing the fabricated replica of the security guard's thumb into the identification slot of the hatch access panel. He pushed the thought aside as the hatch slid open, and prayed that the hold was temporarily unmonitored. Not that it was a high security area. Who would want to go out on the surface? Still, he thought, as he pressed the unnatural object into the panel of the next hatch, it was a question of disobedience to one authority, so that he might obey another. He could not recall ever having confronted such an elaborate ethical dilemma. In fact, he could not remember having faced any ethical dilemmas at all. As the hatch slid aside, he set down the heavy pack containing the fabricator, took the piece of paper from the folds of his robe, looked at it, felt calmer. He stepped into the airlock foyer, saw the racks of environment suits hanging there. He selected one that appeared compatible with his pudgy form, pulled it down, and donned it. It began to make him sweat, instantly, and several uncomfortable minutes passed before he apprehended the proper operation of the heavy garment of plastic, rubber and steel. Cool sweet ether streamed over him at last. As he took his first deep breath of the fresh air, the alarm began to sound. A flashing red light strobed the interior of the room, a frequency that harmonized with his panic. Quickly, he hefted the heavy pack, stuffed the torn page into one of the suit's outer pockets, and used his counterfeit thumb to access the airlock proper. It took time to traverse the outer chamber, while his heart raced and his thoughts roiled. He thought he had successfully disabled the security safeguards for the outer ports in this sector of the Complex. If they were still operational, what about the outer hatch? How long before they locked it down? His suit was working fine, but Ferrel was sweating again. He pressed the thumb into the last access port, and waited an eternity before it rolled aside. "Unauthorized departure, Quadrant 4, Sector C." The pleasant female voice followed him out onto the surface. The suit was clumsy, his steps heavy and difficult, but his hurry overwhelmed him. He moved quickly away from the portal that jutted from the rocky terrain like a thumb, one of two hundred such projections that formed the surface perimeter of the Complex, a circle seven miles in diameter. How long had it taken the Gaians to build it? Ferrel wondered. Industry and construction, building and excavating, had never been a Gaian strength. But somehow they had built it, the ultimate nature conservatory, a subterranean repository of God's handiwork, a monumental feat of engineering, And after they had built it, they had hidden it and kept it safe from the Industrial Jihad for nearly two centuries. Not for nothing, Ferrel thought. Not for nothing. He hurried. It would not take long for them to catch up. He searched the sterile terrain with difficulty, peering through sworls of orange-green gas, the exhaust of six centuries of wild human Industry. The atmosphere would have to be repaired first, of course. But that would be easy for the Fabricator—child's play. A flaming wave of consuming transformation would sweep through the skies, as the Fabricator catalyzed the rearrangement of chemical bonds. Simultaneously, the soil—and all those who lived beneath it—would be burned clean, then restructured, enriched with nutrients, with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, with fungi and legumes and grasses. From these humble beginnings, the effect would spread rapidly, as the Fabricator completed its work, pushing each biome through an accelerated ecological succession, sere after sere, to flowering stability. He selected a spot: no more or less suitable than any other. Here the earth was loose and sandy. He pulled it from the pack, a heavy ovoid of tough composite, a seed of destruction and creation. It had taken him three days to download every pattern in the conservatory into the Fabricator's quantum memory. It awed him to think about it: all the glory of what had been, distilled into this little egg. He set it down in the sand, and unscrewed one end to expose the tiny control panel. It was difficult to punch in commands; his gloved fingers were twice their normal size, clumsy and stupid. He looked over his shoulder, peered through orange clouds, and saw distant figures approaching from the direction of the Complex. Breathing hard, his skin itching, he tried again, saw a red lamp flash on the panel. In his helmet he heard the voice of the Fabricator's computer. "Warning! You have not set spatial parameters." "Override," he said, and gave it the default code. "Warning! Failure to set spatial parameters will permit fabrication effects to proceed as long as energy is available!" Ferrel nodded, and looked up at the sun, filtered through clouds of poison. Energy enough. "Override confirmed." That shut up the computer. The "Enable" button glowed red. Ferrel looked again. They were definitely there, a cluster of pursuers, less than fifty yards away. He pulled out the paper, a page ripped from his Bible, to read it for the hundredth time: "And God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over very living thing that moveth upon the earth." He shook his head. He knew that he had taken it out of context, to fool himself into believing that he was obeying the higher authority. But the time for self-deception had passed. He had disobeyed the Deacon, by going to Genesis instead of Revelations, by going to the beginning. He had read into the passage what he wanted, not what was meant. The Deacon was right: the Gaian heresy, the corruption of nature, had polluted him. There could be no denying it now, no appeal to the scripture, no plea to higher authority—and no redemption. His sin was complete. This was disobedience, plain and simple. He crumpled up the page and tossed it aside, onto the sterile earth. His heart pounded as it occurred to him that, in disobedience, he had found his salvation. It was blasphemy, counter to the pattern of his entire life, but somehow he felt it to be true. He wanted to meditate on it further, but time was up. They were nearly upon him, and judgment was imminent. He looked up at the yellow-green sky that, very soon, would be blue again. He took a deep breath, actuated the Fabricator, and waited for the Rapture.

Jonathon Sullivan MD is Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Wayne State University/Detroit Receiving Hospital. He is the recipient of an NIH research grant, to investigate molecular mechanisms of brain death after cardiac arrest. Dr. Sullivan lives in Farmington Hills, MI.

As he watched the biomes pass by, stacked one atop the other, Thomas Ferrel, a short, squat, homely man with patchy red hair and a pot belly, fumed inwardly. He felt anger splashing red all over his cheeks, but his superior, Vince Sherrick, was oblivious. Sherrick absently watched the array of ecosystems that paraded past the port of the elevator, as if they were just so many more floors of the Complex. It made Ferrel even angrier, and he despised himself for not having the courage to vent his ire, to spit venom at the man who had blithely betrayed him. Instead, Ferrel's voice quavered with submission. "You really caught me off guard, Vince. I thought we agreed that I'd be given time to..." Sherrick sighed. He was tall, thin, and handsome, the cut of his gown accentuating the length of his limbs. "Tom, it was too important to keep under wraps. Besides, it couldn't have stayed a secret much longer. Everybody in your lab knows, everybody on level 12 knows, hell, the custodial staff knows. Better to go to the Ecumen than have them come to us, asking questions." "But you could have given me some warning, Vince." Sherrick looked at him sideways, frowning. Ferrel backed off, quickly, detesting his own cowardice. "I understand your problems, of course, Vince. Obviously you did the right thing!" He could hear the groveling in his voice, despised himself for it. "But if I had had more time to prepare a proper presentation, I could have made you look that much better!" "I didn't want the Deacon hearing about this through other channels," Sherrick said, turning his gaze back to the window. Now New Guinea rainforest. Now Canadian tundra. Now a rich African savanna. Ferrel watched the unchanging expression on Sherrick's face as these wonders filed past, hating him for the total lack of appreciation that was there, plain to see. To Sherrick, these fragments of what had been were mere custodial accounts, booty captured from the enemy, museum pieces under his charge, to be pigeonholed and maintained within the constraints of the budget. Nothing more. He turned to face the window himself, caught the last three specimens in the broad, curving window: Caribbean reef, an aquarium teeming with colorful fish and coral and simulated filtered sunlight; Florida marsh; Sonoran desert. Each one a wonder, a revelation, perfectly preserved in vaults as large as a hundred cathedrals, complete with sky and sun and weather. Then the view changed radically, as the lift ascended through more orderly, regulated environs: one of the myriad maintenance levels, the main processing floors, shipping and delivery docks, and office levels. It was at one of the latter that the lift deposited its two occupants. Ferrel followed Sherrick through pristine hallways to one of the plush executive conference rooms at the uppermost level of the complex. Whenever he came up here, Ferrel always trembled to think that he was only a few feet beneath the surface. Today, that thought had taken on a whole new significance. Now, instead of imagining what the surface had been like, he could imagine what it could be like. Sherrick opened the door to the conference, and Ferrel almost stumbled when he saw that the Deacon had already arrived, seated at the far end of a magnificent table of polished oak. His two aides, cowled and brooding, stood at either side of the distinguished visitor. In an instant, Ferrel realized that he was coming in at the middle of the meeting, not the beginning. Sherrick had already had a long conversation with the Deacon, and had then been sent to retrieve the subject of that conversation: Ferrel. The Deacon's eyes seized Ferrel as he entered, and never let him go. The Deacon was a powerfully built man; one could see it, even beneath the flowing robes of red and white. The broad black cap, a symbol of his exalted rank in the Ecumen, perched over sullen gray eyes and heavy brows. The Deacon's chin was manly, the lips thin and humorless. The Deacon's eyes were gray, and not without a hint of kindness, but they were intelligent and piercing, and when they saw Ferrel he was immediately intimidated. "Ho-Ho-Holiness," Ferrel stammered, and bowed clumsily. The Deacon smiled thinly, not moving. "That term is properly reserved for the Chairman," he said in a voice that was strangely kind. "‘Your Grace' will suffice." "Yes. Yes, Your Grace." "Please be seated," the Deacon said, and Ferrel and Sherrick took chairs near his. The Deacon turned to Ferrel, and he felt himself wither under those fine gray eyes. He looked away, to the rich grain of the table. No doubt this wood had been taken from one of his forests, many floors below—either directly, or through the Fabricator. "Brother Sherrick, your supervisor, has given you a glowing report," the Deacon said. Ferrel nodded stupidly. "But we didn't need his report to be aware of the fine work you're doing here." The Deacon smiled. "Food production is as consistent and as excellent as I can recall, since you assumed your duties." Sherrick frowned at Ferrel, made an almost imperceptible gesture, a command to respond. "It's—its the preserves, your Holi—your Grace. With the preserves, I have a vast viable database from which to prepare a large variety of new foodstuffs—or perhaps I should say old foodstuffs....I mean..." "Ah, yes, the preserves," the Deacon said, squinting. "The biome conservatories. How fortunate that they were discovered intact, and how clever of you to exploit them for the purposes of feeding your brothers." "Thank you, your Grace." Inside, Ferrel flailed like a landed fish. The biome conservatories had been captured a year ago, and Sherrick had already collected the accolades for Ferrel's work in fabricating the fruits, nuts, and meats that had long since disappeared from the surface—and the human diet. None of this was news. This had nothing to do with the Deacon's visit. "Brother Sherrick tells us you have found another way to...exploit the preserves." There it was. Ferrel cleared his throat, knowing that he had just been commanded to launch into an ad lib presentation. "That's...that's correct your Grace. Not long after the preserves were first captured—" "Revealed!" Sherrick corrected him. "Revealed," Ferrel said instantly, turning red . "Shortly after they were revealed, and after we had succeeded in using them to put a little variety back into our diet, I got to thinking about other ways in which we might use the Fabricator to exploit the conservatories." "Brother Sherrick has intimated as much. We would like a demonstration." Ferrel felt his face drain dry. He turned to Sherrick in a panic, saw nothing but a cold smile. He turned back to the Deacon. "Your Grace, this is such...such short notice. I don't have a suitable—" "Loading dock six has been sealed off and prepared for you," Sherrick interjected. "But the material—" "The material allocations have been made," Sherrick said. "The Deacon is a busy man, Tom." It was back to the elevator, then, and down to the loading dock. The Deacon and his two taciturn aides were led through sterile hallways and noisy packaging stations, to a monitoring bridge with a broad glass port. This tiny room looked over an expansive chamber with floor dimensions as large as the greatest of the Cathedrals of the Ecumen. The ruined dock had once housed a pair of subterranean shipping shuttles, destroyed during the battle for the Conservatory. The rails had been ripped out, and the open end had been walled in with seamless sheets of steel plate courtesy of the Fabricator. The ceiling was a hundred feet high, and Ferrel saw that Sherrick had arranged to have it fitted with one of the huge SolarSim lamps that illuminated the conservatories. The steel walls and concrete floor waited silently, clean, smooth and empty, save for the stacked drums in the center of the room. Ferrel wondered what they contained: food? ore? medical waste? It was an idle rumination: the Fabricator would convert this dead matter into an ecosystem, just as easily as it turned gravel into steel. He saw the unit: egg- shaped, gleaming white, set casually atop one of the drums. "Uh, well..." Ferrel began. "What would you like, your Grace?" "I would like a demonstration," the Deacon said, his impatience beginning to simmer visibly. "Yes, your Grace. But would you like to see any particular ecosystem?" "The Deacon doesn't know anything about ecosystems!" Sherrick blurted, and immediately flushed as the impropriety of his statement blossomed in his mind. "I see," the Deacon hummed, his expression curious, inscrutable. After pinning Sherrick with silent eyes for a second, he turned back to Ferrel. "Do you have a personal favorite, Thomas?" Ferrel gulped. There were two danger signals in the Deacon's question: the implication that Ferrel had any affection for the contents of the conservatories thriving in the floors below, and the use of his first name. His brain stumbled frantically from one response to another, desperately seeking the safest option. "We-e-e-ell, your Grace, some of the conservatories are more...diverse and complex than others. Perhaps one of these would make the most suitable demonstration." The Deacon nodded. "Proceed." Ferrel switched on the console, and stepped into the cylindrical holographic interface field. It surrounded him with shimmering menus and command options. Suddenly he occupied a more familiar element, one in which he was firmly in control. He downloaded the molecular configuration of the biome he had chosen, a million terabytes of data for the Fabricator to chew, and set the spatial parameters. His hands flashed from one icon to the next, while Sherrick fidgeted and the Deacon yawned. "What's taking so long?" Ferrel started as he heard one of the Deacon's attendants (or both of them?) snap the question in his direction. He looked up. The twin hoods yawned darkly in his direction. "I—I'm sorry," he said. "But I must set the spatial parameters very closely. The effect must be carefully contained. It must not be allowed to spread to the surrounding structure." "A necessary safety precaution, your Grace," Sherrick added, patronizing. "I understand," the Deacon muttered. After a few more minutes of fussing, Ferrel shrugged, and turned to the others. "It's ready," he said. "Proceed, proceed," the Deacon commanded. In the holographic cylinder, there was a command bar prominently labeled "EXECUTE." With a trembling finger, Ferrel reached out and pressed it. It blinked from red to blue, and they all directed their view to the storage bay. Nothing was visible for a full minute. Then, suddenly, the canisters melted into an irregular dark brown splotch that spread explosively across the floor of the bay, quickly spreading to every corner, and filling itself in to a depth of thirty feet with soil and stone. A central depression filled rapidly with water, and after that it became difficult for the eye to follow the entirety of what occurred. A carpet of green expanded across the newly-created earth; trees of a dozen types, fully developed, shimmered into existence; the pond filled with fish and algae and lilies; insects appeared in the air; birds materialized on the spreading branches. Ferrel and Sherrick had both witnessed this miracle twice before, but they were no less spellbound by the neogenesis of an entire biome. Even the Deacon gasped with astonishment, but his two attendants, whom Ferrel had begun to suspect were Carbons, remained stock-still. "That's not the best of it, your Grace," Ferrel whispered, his caution temporarily overwhelmed by the glory of his handiwork. They watched silently for a moment before it emerged from the treeline: a large whitetail buck, his antlers spreading over his head, a resplendent crown of keratin. His dark eyes blinked once in their direction, before he turned his attention to grazing on the rich carpet of green that stretched from one unseen wall to the other. "Even animal life?" The Deacon's question was a croaked expression of wonder. He, too, had forgotten himself. "No more difficult than the recent medical applications," Ferrel said. "The new Fabricator upgrades are very sophisticated, your Grace. And, as you know, the conservatories contain a wealth of animal species. In addition, we have the Gaian DNA databases to work with. More than three million species on file." "Yes," Sherrick said. "The Gaians were very determined, and very resourceful." "And very misguided," the Deacon intoned, having recovered some of his equilibrium. His eyes bored into Ferrel, an imperative to respond. "Yes, your Grace," he said, wanting to believe himself. "Very misguided." The Deacon's gaze did not waver, and Ferrel felt himself shrivel. Presently, the Deacon's face cracked into its thin smile. "Do you understand, Brother Ferrel, the full significance of what you have done?" Ferrel's mouth dropped open. Significance! He looked over at Sherrick, who smiled coldly. No help there. He was trapped. "Your Grace," he began, keeping submission in his voice, "the implications are enormous. Below us, in the conservatories, are monumental living libraries, no less than eighty-four communities, preserved in nearly perfect condition. With the new generation of Fabricators, we can transplant this information back to the surface. We could start slowly, with the most stable and durable biomes." Ferrel's face betrayed excitement as his presentation gained momentum. "My calculations are that within twenty years the individual biomes would begin to interlock, and we would see the evolution of contiguous environments. After a time, the process would require only maintenance interventions on our part—eventually, no interventions at all. But, your Grace, I believe that we have a diminishing window of opportunity. We aren't as skilled in caring for the preserves as the Gaians were, and there are indications that the stability of the ecosystems in the conservatories is degrading—probably a result of declining genetic variability, among other things. The sooner it's done, the better." Silence. The Deacon's face was as unreadable as a stone. "It's not really my area of expertise, your Grace, but I'm sure that—I'm sure that, as part of their redemption, some of the Gaians remaining in custody could, uh, be persuaded into guiding our efforts. With the conservatories, your Grace, and our new Fabricators, we could bring life back to the surface of the planet." Slowly, a smile crept across the Deacon's face. Sherrick, standing behind him, mirrored it with a smile of his own. "As I concluded, your Grace," Sherrick said. "It's what the Gaians had in mind all along." "Indeed." The Deacon nodded. "We could have searched for years and never found this conservatory. Praise God! Only by His good grace did we crush the Gaian heresy, and only by His blessing and guidance did we find this den of corruption." "Of course," Sherrick observed, "They would have needed the new Fabricators." "They had only to wait," the Deacon said, smiling. Ferrel had been discarded from the conversation. "Their spies were everywhere—many may remain among us, may God have mercy on them. They would have had the Fabricators. And then—too horrible to think. We always suspected that they might someday attempt to slowly replant the surface. But this..." The Deacon trailed off, clucking, shaking his head. Ferrel squinted with confusion. "I don't understand," he said, directing his question to Sherrick, rather than be so impertinent as to address the Deacon himself. "That much is clear," the Deacon said. "It is fortunate for you, Brother Ferrel, that your Soul Scan reveals that your ideas spring from a benevolent confusion, rather than hidden heresy." "My—my Soul Scan?" "Of course it was imperative that we ascertain your spiritual status," Sherrick said, "once you performed this remarkable experiment. The Scan was conducted without your knowledge." Ferrel was shocked: his loyalty and faith had never been called into question. Again, he felt his ears flush with fury, and damned himself for being too weak, too subservient, to vent his outrage. "Don't you understand, Brother Ferrel, that we can never go back to Eden?" The Deacon's face was compassionate, kindly. He stepped forward and put his hand on Ferrel's shoulder. "The Gaian heresy, like that of the Hindu, the Shaman, the Astronaut, the Buddhist—like all heresy—is based on the illusion that time is a circle, that creation floats in a sea of eternity. Such an illusion relieves man of the imperative of redemption, and denigrates the sanctity of Industry. It promotes a deep physical and spiritual sloth." Ferrel blinked. Suddenly he was in the middle of a sermon. "But time is not a circle, Brother Ferrel. It is a line. Time begins with the Creation, and ends in the Rapture. And man is the arrow that traverses that path." The Deacon lifted his face, smiled his joy, extended his arms to include all in the room. "Each day brings the Rapture closer, my Brothers! It might already have come, save for this Gaian abomination. Mankind, by his industry, by the sweat of his brow, has depleted the world God gave him, just as surely as each man, day by day, depletes the hidden number of heartbeats that separate him from Paradise. With the defeat of all heretics, we have come closer to that glorious day. And with the discovery of this abomination, we are given the opportunity to draw even nearer to the Rapture." "But, your Grace!" Ferrel forgot himself. "Your Grace, He created it all, did he not? All creatures great and small? How could—how could such beauty impede the Rapture? You see beauty in that room, your Grace! I saw it on your face!" "How dare you!" the two faceless attendants flared in unison, a single musical voice emerging from within their cowls. It confirmed Ferrel's suspicion: they were Carbons, the most faithful of the faithful, the most loyal and obedient of companions. But the Deacon's face remained kind. "You have worked very hard, Brother Thomas," he said. "Neglect your spirit and your salvation no longer. When you are done here, retire to your chambers." Ferrel frowned. "Done?" The Deacon nodded. "Brother Sherrick's report indicates that—this," the Deacon waved his hand at the garden below, not looking out the glass, "this thing you have made, can be just as easily unmade." Ferrel looked through the port, his horror growing. "Let your redemption begin here," the Deacon said. Ferrel stared at him, then at Sherrick. Sherrick virtually glowed with excitement. He had made big points with the Ecumen today, having uncovered the full breadth of the Gaian abomination below. All his encouragement, his support of Ferrel's experiments, his vows of secrecy—they had all been a deception. Ferrel wanted to shout at him, to strike him, to do unspeakable things. But a lifetime of obedience shackled him. He sickened at the mere thought of turning on his betters. He swallowed his self-loathing, and conjured the holographic interface. He entered the commands, unable to tear his eyes from the steel-encased green, his creation. The parameters were set. The holographic key floated red before him. Ferrel stared out the port, his eyes fixed on the magnificent buck, tracing the sublime, majestic branching of the antlers. "Your Grace," he croaked. "Your Soul Scan discloses that you possess the great virtue of Obedience," the Deacon said. His face was still kind, but there was a growing firmness in his voice. "Begin your redemption there, Brother." Ferrel's hand hovered over the key. He stifled a cry as he pressed it, and forced himself to watch. When it was done, tears streamed down his face. The Deacon put his hands on both of Ferrel's shoulders, and nodded. "The first step of your exorcism," he said. "You are blessed, Brother. Your work brought you face to face with corruption and heresy, and you did not flinch. Go now, and wash yourself clean. Brother Sherrick and the others will take care of the rest. Go to your cloister. I task you with twenty readings of Revelations. Yes. I think that would be most appropriate." Ferrel looked from the Deacon's gray eyes to the gray storage bay, returned to pristine sterility by the Fabricator. The vats stood again in the center of floor. The corruption of nature had been redeemed into product. He looked around the room, helplessly. The two synthetic acolytes hovered at the Deacon's side. Ferrel saw himself there: faceless, mindlessly obedient, not real, dead inside. The empty hoods glared back at him like twin mirrors. He nodded at Brother Sherrick, kissed the Deacon's ring, and fled from the room. He took an unauthorized detour, to the floors below, where he visited the world in storage. He gazed interminably at the aquarium, strolled through a mountain woodland, and, finally, sat for a time in a chattering, dripping, crawling rainforest—his favorite. He lingered for many hours among the last remnants of the dead earth before returning to his quarters. He knew they wouldn't be here tomorrow. Then, he retired to his cloister, to do as he was told. * * * It was a grotesque object, a disarticulated human digit mounted seamlessly on a white plastic handle, which Ferrel had designed to be long enough to provide ample separation from his own hand. Sin upon sin, he thought, pressing the fabricated replica of the security guard's thumb into the identification slot of the hatch access panel. He pushed the thought aside as the hatch slid open, and prayed that the hold was temporarily unmonitored. Not that it was a high security area. Who would want to go out on the surface? Still, he thought, as he pressed the unnatural object into the panel of the next hatch, it was a question of disobedience to one authority, so that he might obey another. He could not recall ever having confronted such an elaborate ethical dilemma. In fact, he could not remember having faced any ethical dilemmas at all. As the hatch slid aside, he set down the heavy pack containing the fabricator, took the piece of paper from the folds of his robe, looked at it, felt calmer. He stepped into the airlock foyer, saw the racks of environment suits hanging there. He selected one that appeared compatible with his pudgy form, pulled it down, and donned it. It began to make him sweat, instantly, and several uncomfortable minutes passed before he apprehended the proper operation of the heavy garment of plastic, rubber and steel. Cool sweet ether streamed over him at last. As he took his first deep breath of the fresh air, the alarm began to sound. A flashing red light strobed the interior of the room, a frequency that harmonized with his panic. Quickly, he hefted the heavy pack, stuffed the torn page into one of the suit's outer pockets, and used his counterfeit thumb to access the airlock proper. It took time to traverse the outer chamber, while his heart raced and his thoughts roiled. He thought he had successfully disabled the security safeguards for the outer ports in this sector of the Complex. If they were still operational, what about the outer hatch? How long before they locked it down? His suit was working fine, but Ferrel was sweating again. He pressed the thumb into the last access port, and waited an eternity before it rolled aside. "Unauthorized departure, Quadrant 4, Sector C." The pleasant female voice followed him out onto the surface. The suit was clumsy, his steps heavy and difficult, but his hurry overwhelmed him. He moved quickly away from the portal that jutted from the rocky terrain like a thumb, one of two hundred such projections that formed the surface perimeter of the Complex, a circle seven miles in diameter. How long had it taken the Gaians to build it? Ferrel wondered. Industry and construction, building and excavating, had never been a Gaian strength. But somehow they had built it, the ultimate nature conservatory, a subterranean repository of God's handiwork, a monumental feat of engineering, And after they had built it, they had hidden it and kept it safe from the Industrial Jihad for nearly two centuries. Not for nothing, Ferrel thought. Not for nothing. He hurried. It would not take long for them to catch up. He searched the sterile terrain with difficulty, peering through sworls of orange-green gas, the exhaust of six centuries of wild human Industry. The atmosphere would have to be repaired first, of course. But that would be easy for the Fabricator—child's play. A flaming wave of consuming transformation would sweep through the skies, as the Fabricator catalyzed the rearrangement of chemical bonds. Simultaneously, the soil—and all those who lived beneath it—would be burned clean, then restructured, enriched with nutrients, with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, with fungi and legumes and grasses. From these humble beginnings, the effect would spread rapidly, as the Fabricator completed its work, pushing each biome through an accelerated ecological succession, sere after sere, to flowering stability. He selected a spot: no more or less suitable than any other. Here the earth was loose and sandy. He pulled it from the pack, a heavy ovoid of tough composite, a seed of destruction and creation. It had taken him three days to download every pattern in the conservatory into the Fabricator's quantum memory. It awed him to think about it: all the glory of what had been, distilled into this little egg. He set it down in the sand, and unscrewed one end to expose the tiny control panel. It was difficult to punch in commands; his gloved fingers were twice their normal size, clumsy and stupid. He looked over his shoulder, peered through orange clouds, and saw distant figures approaching from the direction of the Complex. Breathing hard, his skin itching, he tried again, saw a red lamp flash on the panel. In his helmet he heard the voice of the Fabricator's computer. "Warning! You have not set spatial parameters." "Override," he said, and gave it the default code. "Warning! Failure to set spatial parameters will permit fabrication effects to proceed as long as energy is available!" Ferrel nodded, and looked up at the sun, filtered through clouds of poison. Energy enough. "Override confirmed." That shut up the computer. The "Enable" button glowed red. Ferrel looked again. They were definitely there, a cluster of pursuers, less than fifty yards away. He pulled out the paper, a page ripped from his Bible, to read it for the hundredth time: "And God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over very living thing that moveth upon the earth." He shook his head. He knew that he had taken it out of context, to fool himself into believing that he was obeying the higher authority. But the time for self-deception had passed. He had disobeyed the Deacon, by going to Genesis instead of Revelations, by going to the beginning. He had read into the passage what he wanted, not what was meant. The Deacon was right: the Gaian heresy, the corruption of nature, had polluted him. There could be no denying it now, no appeal to the scripture, no plea to higher authority—and no redemption. His sin was complete. This was disobedience, plain and simple. He crumpled up the page and tossed it aside, onto the sterile earth. His heart pounded as it occurred to him that, in disobedience, he had found his salvation. It was blasphemy, counter to the pattern of his entire life, but somehow he felt it to be true. He wanted to meditate on it further, but time was up. They were nearly upon him, and judgment was imminent. He looked up at the yellow-green sky that, very soon, would be blue again. He took a deep breath, actuated the Fabricator, and waited for the Rapture.