The bot peeled from the wall. Tikko spread her fingers across its dome and opened her mind. “So, another candidate for our tribe of popes?” The day’s instructions seemed to fizz behind her eyes.
Clin pushed the core of his pear into his mouth and nodded. He spat seeds into her trash.
Tikko vaulted onto her desk and squatted on its screen. “Give me a minute, then bring him in.” She gave an absent-minded hoo as she scanned the file that the bot had brought up.
“What if he’s dangerous?” Clin asked. Her sister Lola’s son, Clin was ten years old and not good for much of anything as far as she could tell. Still, he was an adult now and the community had to find work for him somewhere. Tikko didn’t know why it had to be with her team.
“He won’t be.” She tapped at the screen with her knuckle, trying to ignore him as she drilled deeper into the file. “From what I see here, he’s probably too crazy to walk straight, much less hurt anyone.”
“I’ll stay anyway.” Clin rose onto his hind legs. “In case you need help.” He thrust his arms above his head in full aggression posture so that she could see his pink armpits. “You never can tell with humans.” For a moment Tikko thought he might break a chair and start banging pieces against the wall. Instead he dropped back onto all fours and loped out of her office.
Males. Why did they always try to make everything into an adventure?
According to the bot, this human actually did think he was the Pope, and not a imam, senator, saint, prince or Nobel prize winner like the others under her care. Tikko’s first patient ever had announced that he was Pope Joe, which was why the chimps called her sad and deluded tribe of humans the popes. This newest pope claimed he was Innocent XIV; no one had been able to coax a real name out of him. He had been discovered by loggers from a frontier community in the Great Northern Forest, one of the remnants of humanity who either had refused to join the gathered or had been left back. He had slept through the gathering in a cryovault; the chimp loggers had found him wandering near a hidden bunker with a compromised generator.
Tikko heard Clin’s muffled voice just outside. “You go in here, quick, quick.” She never understood why her nephew acted as if their humans barely had command of English. She cleared the screen, scooted her rump to the edge of the desk and faced the door with her legs dangling.
The new pope entered her room as if he owned it; Clin trailed close enough to grab him if he posed a threat. He appeared to be in good health and in his late thirties, although all the humans she had ever met had been juved into near immortality. She was impressed by his vestments. He seemed absolutely at ease in a white cassock, a purple chasuble that appeared to be made of silk, red slippers and purple skullcap. Very realistic—in her experience, newly-retrieved popes tended to be at once eclectic and outlandish. She had seen them wearing keffiyehs made of tablecloths, masks of aluminum foil and tape, capes and top hats and medals the size of dinner plates.
The pope puttered about her room as if it were unoccupied. She recognized this behavior as aggression but let him have his moment. He surveyed her perches and the nest that Kulki had knitted for her using broom handles, reached up and jiggled the low swing. He lingered at one of the tall windows, shielding his eyes against the sun as he took in the view of the ski slope. He leaned over her desktop and ran a finger along its edge, nodding when the screen displayed a prompt. At last he stopped and stared at her with the bad manners typical of humans. “You are in charge here?”
She held his gaze. “I’m Tikko, of the minders.” She nodded toward her nephew. “He’s Clin.”
“Minders?”
“We study human psychology.” She thought it best not to tell her patients that they were in therapy, at least until they adjusted to their new circumstances. “May I ask who you are, sir?”
The pope nodded. “Your English is excellent, Tikko Minder.” He drew himself to his full height. “We are as you see.” When he extended his right hand to her, Clin crouched, ready to spring to her defense. “Pope Innocent XIV. You may kiss our ring.”
Tikko had been expecting this. “As you say, Innocent, I am in charge.” She hunched forward and extended her hand, caution palm up toward her nephew, to show that she would greet the new pope on his terms. “You have no authority here.” She slid off the desk and stood before him, her head just above his waist. “But I will offer you a sign of respect.” She bent quickly and brushed her lips against his ring, then caught his hand in hers to examine it. He seemed surprised.
The ring was exactly as it should be: gold, no jewels. She rubbed her thumb across it, feeling the bas relief of St. Peter fishing from his boat. “You wear the Ring of the Fisherman, Innocent.” She let him go.
“Cast at my coronation.” Then he blessed her using the correct gesture: three fingers held up, thumb and forefinger touching. “And you may call me Your Holiness.” This one might be delusional but he had done his research. “You are of the faith, Tikko?”
Mistake. She showed him her wide-open mouth, top teeth covered. “I am a chimpanzee, Innocent. According to your religion, I don’t have a soul.”
“Ah, but that doctrine was never pronounced ex cathedra.” He dismissed her objection with a casual wave. “Set forth by my predecessors, yes, but never infallibly. If the institution of men errs, God always sets us right. The Church now welcomes you and your kind.”
“There is no Church,” Clin said, his lips tight with rage. “And your god is the god of nothing.”
How many times had Tikko told Clin not to taunt new arrivals? He was scarcely fit for guard duty, much less to assist in therapy. Still, she was interested to see how the pope would react.
“The Church exists as long as there are those who believe.” He raised both hands to his shoulders and glanced up. “God exists whether you believe in Him or not.” He smiled, as if his god had confirmed that he existed, then strode to the tall windows, rubbing his hands together. “But surely I’m not the last?” The converted condominiums perched at the edge of the Snowdancer trail. Even though it was late summer, the pope eyed the chairlift carrying chimps up the mountain as if he expected to spot human skiers. “I can’t believe that all have been gathered.”
“There are just under nine hundred humans that we know of.” Tikko resisted the impulse to call them your kind. “We have twenty-nine staying here with us.” She vaulted to her swing, caught the bar with one hand and hung. Now she was looking down on him. “That’s why we’ve brought you to this place. We mind those who are left.”
“We were not left.” The pope wheeled, showing a spark of anger. “We chose not to join the gathered.” Then he realized that she was studying him. “I don’t mean to offend, Tikko, but I’m not used to talking this much.” He steepled his hands and touched them to his lips. “I think it would be best if I met with the other dissenters now.”
Dissenters? She had never heard that one before. “I’m afraid that isn’t possible.” She wasn’t about to tell him that their humans were all broken, deranged or bereft. “At least not yet.”
“Not yet?” He folded his arms. “Suppose I insist?”
“Perhaps you didn’t understand, Innocent.” She slapped her other hand onto the bar of the swing and kicked her legs, swaying back and forth. “You don’t give orders here.”
“Ah. Would you at least tell me why I can’t see them, Tikko Minder.”
She gave him nothing. The only sounds in the room were the creak of the swing and Clin’s delighted panting at the human’s irritation at being ignored.
“Another time then, my child.” He bowed. “Is there a place where I might be alone?”
“Mount Washington,” said her daughter Kulki. “A foolish human name.” She slung herself onto a branch beneath Tikko and nestled her rump onto the collar where it joined the trunk of the beech tree. “Who was this Washington and why should geography be named after him? We should call it Mount Tikko.”
“The world is big.” Tikko lifted an arm as if to grasp the entire mountain range before them. “Nobody wants to rename everything in it.”
“Why? Because we don’t have the right? Because we don’t have the time?” She slapped the trunk with a hoot. “I’ll tell you why, maa. Because it’s too much trouble. That pile of rocks is ours now, but we’re too timid to claim it.” She spat toward the Snowcrest Hotel where the retrieved humans were kept. The gob was thick and well placed, arching high into the air and falling some ten meters away. “Or too lazy.”
Tikko accepted the game and spat in the same direction, but didn’t get the distance her daughter had. “So, maybe we have better things to do.”
“What? Mind these pathetic humans? Feed them and wipe their asses and tuck them in at night?” She spat again but the gob deflected off a branch. “The ones who were too dumb or crazy to upload?”
Tikko knew that this was about the new pope. She wrinkled her brow in frustration. Getting a new human was an honor, but it was also traumatic for the community. Even though the world belonged to the chimps now, humans had given it to them. Some still worried that they might want it back someday. Younger chimps often responded to new arrivals with belligerence displays while elders tended to hunch in submission. Tikko felt pulled in both directions but knew she had to stay centered.
“He’s not crazy, dear.” Tikko bent and tugged Kulki’s ear. “He’s the Pope.”
Kulki shrieked in derision and Tikko let go. “How do you keep from laughing at them?”
“Sometimes I can’t,” she said. “But most don’t realize that they’re being laughed at.” Tikko spat again, easily besting her daughter’s second attempt but not quite equaling her first.
“Crazy,” said Kulki . “But you like the challenge.”
“Clever though, this one. He’s done the research. His costume is the best I’ve ever seen. He must actually have belonged to a christian cult.” She scratched her belly. “He used a term even I had never heard before. Ex cathedra.”
“What’s it mean?”
“I had a bot look it up. The popes, the real ones, claimed they were never wrong. Only new popes kept having to contradict their predecessors. I mean, in the old days they thought that the sun went around the earth and that it was a sin to upload yourself.”
“Sin,” said Kulki. “More foolishness.”
Tikko ignored her. “So the popes decided that they should only be infallible on special occasions, when they made a declaration called ex cathedra. It comes from Latin. Means ‘from the chair.’ ”
“Chair? What chair?”
“The chair they were sitting on, silly.” She slapped the top of Kulki’s head, shrieked and scampered on all fours down the branch. “Chase!” she called and dropped down two branches. She caught herself and twirled away from Kulki so that the trunk was between them. By the time her daughter gathered herself to pursue, Tikko had a good ten meter lead.
They dropped around and down the tree all the way to the ground. Tikko, seeing that Kulki would soon catch up, sat abruptly in the middle of the slope and plucked at a blade of grass. She seemed not to notice anyone charging her. Just before her daughter was about the slam into her, Kulki did a sideways somersault, tumbled to rest beside her maa and gazed nonchalantly up at the sky, as if they had been idling there for hours. Tikko had changed the game and her daughter accepted it. Maybe the romp had worn the edge off Kulki’s mood?
Kulki yawned. “When are you going to introduce him to the others?”
“I haven’t decided yet. He’ll be fine; he’s so deep into his delusion that they won’t be able to shake him. But I’m worried about the others. Last week Helen Calabrese told me that her lab was probably closed, so there’s progress. But Ferd Mallory still thinks he’s dying and has begun pestering Saint Bruce about the succession, so there’s trouble. And of course, as soon as the new one announces that he’s the pope, Chioma Melky will insist that she is too.”
A flying grasshopper whirred between them. “Is she the tall one?”
“No, that’s Uma Bhattacharjee who thinks she’s the Great Mother. Chioma Melky is the one with the cross tattooed on her forehead.”
“I wish my humans talked.” Kulki swiped the grasshopper out of the air. “Or even grunted.” She offered it to her maa to eat.
Tikko peeped a polite refusal. “Your humans are just as important as mine.” She didn’t actually believe this, but she had to say it. Kulki was on Lola’s team minding stiffs, humans who were even more damaged than the popes. Their spirits seemed to have left their bodies; they never spoke, moved only when pushed and had to be fed by hand.
Her daughter brought the struggling grasshopper to her face but did not pop it into her mouth. “This bug has more personality than my humans.” She released it and watched it zigzag back across the slope.
Tikko cooed in sympathy. She had minded stiffs when she was young. At least with her popes, there was a chance for improvement. “It isn’t forever,” she said. “Someday you’ll have my job.”
“You’re a long way from an elders’ nest.” Kulki combed fingers down her mother’s shoulder. “What will we do when they’re gone? These humans?”
“Probably never go.” Almost all of the surviving humans were functionally immortal; barring accidents, they might live for centuries.
“They will if we make them.”
Tikko’s ears twitched. “What are you saying? We were put on earth to mind the humans. Give them the chance to join the gathered someday.”
Her daughter grabbed an imaginary human by the neck with both hands and barked. “What if I don’t believe in the gathered?”
“Don’t,” said Tikko. “Kulki.”
Her daughter’s grip tightened and then her hands twisted sharply. She showed Tikko all of her teeth.
Tikko slept badly that night. Her nest swayed whenever she wriggled to get comfortable. Its weave caught at the hair on her back. Dreams troubled her: shrieking dreams, falling dreams, dreams of the gathered. In the middle of the night she thought she heard someone whisper my child. But she was Bixa’s child and her mother was dead. Nobody should be calling her a child.
The next morning she forced herself to nibble breakfast with her offspring, Kulki, Arfur, Soeq, and Little Bixa. She was worried about Kulki. Should she report what her favorite daughter had said? The elders all knew that the younger chimps resented minding humans, but no one in this community had ever talked about killing them. That was something that happened elsewhere. She had heard suspicious tales of accidents at the reservation town in Alabama where most of the humans who weren’t crazy lived. And of course the notorious Simon Minder had let three stiffs freeze to death in Minnesota. If Tikko mentioned Kulki’s threat—had it been a threat?—then her entire family would come under suspicion of human endangerment. They might be forced from the minder community to some backward frontier town.
Every morning the elders of Tikko’s community met in the dark basement of the ski lodge at the center of their summer quarters. They had decorated the walls of what had once been a sports store with skis and snowshoes and skates and coats and mittens to remind themselves of winter and human folly. With the doors closed, the chimps’ natural claustrophobia helped keep the meetings brief. There were five elders altogether: Tikko and Pacito led teams that minded popes, while Lola and her team cared for a dozen stiffs. Moss’s chimps maintained quarters with the help of the bots, and managed the summer and winter migrations. Gamba and her team foraged, cooked the food that the farmbots grew, doctored members of the chimp community when necessary and made sure everyone got enough play.
Moss was the last to join the circle of chimps who squatted on the meeting rug. The bot peeled from the wall and she opened her mind to it and took instruction.
“We need more meat,” said Gamba. “I’m calling a hunt.”
“For what?”
“Rabbits. Squirrels. Turkeys, if we can find them. The humans need meat.”
“Can’t you just trap them?”
“Hunting will be more fun. You need fun, Pacito.” Gamba reached over and tickled him.
“I’ll tell you what’s fun. Fun is watching Tikko’s new pope change clothes.”
“Vestments,” Tikko said.
“Did you see? He came with three suitcases.”
“How do we know what’s in them?”
“Maybe he has weapons.” Lola put both hands on her head in mock alarm. “He’s human.”
“And crazy.”
“The loggers checked it out.” Moss took everything too seriously. “The bots told them what to look for.”
“Besides, when was the last time a crazy hurt a chimp?”
“They hurt my feelings all the time.”
The room filled with breathy laughter. Only Moss and Tikko remained silent.
“So Veejay wants to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“To join another community. Someplace where there aren’t any humans.”
“That’s most places.”
“What does he have against humans?”
“Nothing. He wants to be a digger. Explore the cities.”
“Moss? He’s your son.”
Lola draped her arms around Moss. “Let him go, dear. He hates minding stiffs.” Veejay was on her team and was one of Kulki’s best friends.
Although her gaze filled with sadness, Moss didn’t object.
“They’re digging in Montreal,” Lola said. “He could go there.”
“Just shipped eight bushels of peaches to Montreal and got two bushels of figs back.”
“Figs? From who?”
“Diggers. Visiting from France.”
“Veejay is not going to France.
“Walt Camlin isn’t eating again.”
“That’s because he needs meat, dear.”
“All right then.” Pacito glanced around the room. “Anything else?”
Tikko knew that now was her chance to report what Kulki had said. The bots already knew because she had opened her mind, but once she spoke here there would be no taking it back. If Moss could let her offspring leave, shouldn’t Tikko alert the community to the potential threat from hers? But she knew it wasn’t only her offspring who were sick of the humans. It was their entire generation. This was bigger than Tikko’s family, bigger than the minders, even. It was about the duty that chimps owed humans. The debt that could never be paid.
“I’ve got something.” Gamba, ever the clown, bowled into Pacito, knocked him onto his back and began to tickle him mercilessly. When Lola and Moss began to caper around them, hooting encouragement, Tikko knew that the moment had passed.
Tikko brought her entire team to observe the introduction of the new pope to their tribe. Chatta and Ash had served night duty but had agreed to stay past their shift. Tikko and the others—Clin, Peppa and Charlie—had to wait before entering the Snowcrest Hotel, while Pacito’s team led her tribe of popes out for their daily hike. Today Pacito was taking his charges down the East Branch of the Pemigewasett River for a picnic near the fluxway. He claimed that they liked to watch the chains of cargo bots hurtling up and down the Northeast Main. Whether or not that was true, minder protocols called for getting the humans as much northern sun and fresh air as they could stand before the community packed up for winter quarters in Dixie. The regimen of travel and exercise and medication seemed to help keep the popes from degenerating into stiffs. Occasionally one improved enough to leave the community, either to live with the sane humans in the reservation town or make the pilgrimage to the Argonne Science Shrine to join the gathered.
There were seven popes in the tribe Tikko minded. They met each morning in the Maple Suite and stayed together until things got too chaotic. Chatta and Ash had the tribe assembled on time—a good sign. They were eager to meet their new comrade. The bots still hadn’t identified him, so Tikko planned to introduce him as Innocent. She wasn’t looking forward to the reactions from Chioma Melky and Saint Bruce at his claim to be the real Pope.
Chioma Melky could be either the Prophet Ezekiel or the Panchen Lama or the Matriarch of Constantinople, depending on the day of the week. The bots had never been able to identify Saint Bruce, who claimed to have worked miracles that no one else had ever witnessed. Ferd Mallory thought he was the Prince of Morocco. He often quarreled with Henrik Diesen, who spoke to the dead and the Norse gods. Uma Bhattacharjee maintained that she was the twenty-first reincarnation of Prajnaparamita, the Great Mother. Ben Brown had served one term as senator and since the rest of the Augmented Union had long since dissolved, had proclaimed himself acting Prime Minister. Helen Calabrese, their one success story, had worked on the team at the Argonne Science Shrine that had grown the cognisphere. She used to believe that she alone was to blame for the gathering of the human race and would beg Tikko to be allowed to return to her lab so that she could set them free. Now, at least, she was acknowledging that there was no lab to return to.
After opening her mind to the Maple Suite’s bot, Tikko surveyed her charges, trying to take the temperature of the tribe. Some of the popes lounged in their seats around the conference table. Saint Bruce sat cross-legged on the floor; today Uma Bhattacharjee had joined him. All had dressed for the August heat in shorts and tee shirts. Prince Ferd wore his crown of fluted oak.
“Good morning,” Tikko said.
“Good morning,” replied Helen Calabrese, Henrik Diesen, Uma Bhattacharjee and Ben Brown with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Prince Ferd nodded regally at Tikko and Saint Bruce blessed her.
“If he’s the Pope,” said Chioma Melky, “then so am I.”
“Really?” Helen Calabrese called the bot to her side and kept a hand in contact with the glossy surface of its dome, as if she could open her mind. “Which one are you?”
“Pope Chioma.”
“You have to change your name,” said Henrik Dissen. “They change their names.”
“He’s late,” said Prince Ferd. “Do we think that’s rude?”
“He’s not late. I thought we’d talk among ourselves first.” Tikko hopped onto the table. “So, he claims to be Pope Innocent XIV. He may ask you to call him Your Holiness but we—” she gestured at the chimps lounging along the walls “—are calling him Innocent.” She noticed Clin puffing up himself into an aggression posture. “We’d like you to do the same.” She stretched a caution palm toward him.
“Then call me Pope Holiness,” said Chioma Melky. “No, Pope Fourteen.”
“He’s a miracle, this one,” said Saint Bruce. “I saw him in a vision.”
For weeks Tikko had been trying to get Saint Bruce to sit at the table so she could keep an eye on him. When she walked on her knuckles to the edge of the table, he gave her an enlightened smile. She had expected resistance; maybe this was going to be easier than she had expected.
“Holy, holy, holy, holiness.” Chioma Melky began to chant. “Fourteen times holy, holy fourteen.” She squirmed in her chair. “Fourteen o’clock, he’s late, Tikko, late, holy damn late.” Seeing that she was getting upset, Ash stepped forward and whispered into her ear. She shook her head but subsided.
“Tikko,” said Helen Calabrese, “do I really have to be here for this?”
Ben Brown raised his index finger, as if he expected everyone to fall silent. Ignore him and he would speak anyway, raising his voice until people listened. “I had the honor of meeting the last pope.” His orator’s rumble carried the room. “We discussed the uploading problem for almost half an hour. It was very much on his mind.”
“There is nothing wrong with uploading per se,” said Helen Calabrese. “It’s only wrong if everyone does it.”
“Everyone didn’t do it.” Henrik Diesen pointed at each of the popes in turn. “One, two, three, four, five, six.” He thumped his own chest. “And seven. Still are we here.”
“Not to mention the stiffs.” Chioma Melky giggled like a naughty little girl. “Do they count?”
“I never met the last pope,” called Uma Bhattacharjee from her place on the floor, “but I saw him when he spoke at the Rose Bowl.”
“But he wasn’t the last, if this stranger is the Pope.”
“If he’s here with us,” said Saint Bruce, “He’s not a stranger anymore.”
“Tikko.” Helen Calabrese’s face was flushed. “I thought we had an understanding.”
“We do, Helen. Bear with me a moment.” Tikko gave a warning scream and slapped the table three times to get the popes’ attention. “Humans, do you want to meet him or not?”
“Yes,” said Prince Ferd. “Bring him hence.”
Tikko nodded to Chatta who slipped out of the room.
“So, he might want to say something to you.” Tikko strode the length of the table. She did not meet anyone’s gaze directly, but rather looked at them aslant—at an ear or a neck or at the cross tattooed on Chioma Melky’s forehead. “I think we should give him that chance.”
“But we reserve the right to speak as well,” said Ben Brown. “To have a frank and honest dialogue.”
“We had another pope once, didn’t we, Tikko?” Chioma Melky was twisting locks of her hair into greasy corkscrews. “Joey Ekeinde. He was the first one here, first even before me. Pope Joe.”
“What happened to him?” asked Henrik Diesen.
“He died.” Ash had not moved from Chioma Melky’s side. “He lost track of himself and had an accident and he died.” He rested a hand on her shoulder. “That’s all that happened.”
“And that’s how we got our name, isn’t it?” Chioma Melky shook him off. “Isn’t it, Tikko? He said he was Pope, and I said I was Pope and you started calling us the popes. It was just the two of us, then. We were the first, the first, the first of the last.”
Tikko gave his softest hoo and Charlie edged to Chioma Melky’s other side.
“Before Ferd, before Uma and Bruce and the Senator here.” Her eyes were big and there was a crackle in her voice like dry leaves. “Before Lauren What’s-her-name. Before all these chimps.” She cocked her head, first toward Charlie and then at Ash. “It was just Chioma and Joey and Tikko. And you named us the popes, the popes, the . . . ”
She broke off. Everyone was so intent on her rant that they didn’t realize that the new popes had arrived.
“You.” Chioma Melky pointed at him. “Why are you dressed like furniture?”
Surprise flickered across Innocent’s face. If anything he looked even more impressive than the first time Tikko had met him. His vestments were white trimmed with gold brocade. A golden cross hung on a chain around his neck. “I beg your pardon?” he said.
“Humans,” said Tikko, “this is Innocent, whom I’ve been telling you about. What he’s wearing is called a cassock, Chioma.”
“It’s summer,” Chioma Melky said. “Aren’t you hot, Your Holiness?”
“Actually, Tikko, it’s called a simar, and no, I am perfectly comfortable, thank you.” Innocent composed himself. “I’m sorry if my vestments seem strange to you . . . ” He bowed to Chioma Melky. “I’m afraid I don’t know your name, ma’am.”
She had no chance to introduce herself because the others were already pressing around the newcomer.
“Prince Ferd of Morocco.” The prince grasped the pope by the shoulders and gave him a double kiss.
Henrik Diesen shook Innocent’s hand and also patted his back. “Welcome, Your Holiness.”
“Ben Brown, Prime Minister of the Union. I knew your predecessor, Holiness.”
“You mean Pope Robert?” Innocent touched his arm. “Unfortunately, I never had that privilege. You must share your impressions of him with me.”
“Later.” Ben Brown preened. “I look forward to it.”
“I’m Bruce,” called a voice from behind the crowd. The popes parted so that Innocent could see Saint Bruce, still cross-legged on the floor. “I had a vision of your coming.”
“He’s a saint, don’t you know?” said Uma Bhattacharjee. “He does miracles.”
“Really?” Innocent kept his expression neutral, but Tikko thought that he must realize by now that he was among the truly delusional. As she glanced around the room, she noticed Helen Calabrese leaning back in her chair, watching the commotion around Innocent with a puzzled expression.
“Friends,” Innocent raised his hands to quiet the group. “I am honored to meet you, one and all. But I am astonished to find myself in such distinguished company. Tikko, my child, I wish you had given me some warning.”
“You didn’t know?” said Henrik Diesen. “They didn’t tell you about us?”
“Tell me what?”
“We’re the popes,” grumbled Chioma Melky.
“I don’t understand,” said Innocent. “The popes?”
Chioma Melky began to clap.
“It’s the name the chimps have given us.” Uma Bhattacharjee struggled to her feet beside Saint Bruce. “Because of who we were.”
“Are.” Ben Brown’s voice crackled. “Who we are.”
Innocent glanced at Tikko. She gave him nothing.
“Ah,” he said, “I see.” Then he chuckled. The sound slipped from him as if he were telling a secret. “If you are popes, then I must be in the right place.” The chuckle took on a sardonic music that swelled into an open-mouthed laugh. Tikko could see crinkles at the corners of his eyes. The new pope’s face went red as he fell back into one of the chairs. His laughter was infectious. Some of the others joined in. The chimps glanced at one another nervously.
Humans. Tikko bit at the air in disbelief. Now all of them were laughing, even Chioma Melky. No, that wasn’t right. Helen Calabrese was frozen as if she were sitting for one of the humans’ foolish paintings.
“Let us pray,” said Innocent. “In the name of the Lord, His Shepherd and Their Blessed Thought, lift your hearts to God.” He bowed his head.
Tikko’s popes knelt in a circle around Innocent on the deck of the base lodge. They were joined for the noon worship by most of Pacito’s popes. The three holdouts loitered nearby; two sat at picnic tables finishing their lunches, the last was pinned in the shadows cast by the overhang of the lodge’s roof. All watched the prayer group, as did the minders from Tikko’s and Pacito’s teams. The deck baked under the August sun and Tikko could see a glisten of sweat at Innocent’s skullcap.
Pacito leaned close and spoke into her ear. “What do you suppose they are thinking?”
The humans prayed in silence for the most part, although Saint Bruce, Uma Bhattacharjee and Pacito’s Lawrence Ketchem hummed aum and Chima Melky emitted a breathy whistle from time to time.
“Prayer isn’t thinking.” Tikko picked a peach from her lunch basket and rubbed her thumb across the fuzz. “At least, that’s what they claim.”
“If it’s in their heads, it’s thought.” He waited for Tikko to agree; when she was silent his lips curled. “What else could it be?”
“Maybe someone is thinking for them.” She bit into the peach. “Like when we open our minds.”
“Who’s thinking for them? Your pope of popes?” He reached with his foot and picked up a discarded snack box with his toes. “The bots?”
“You know humans can’t open their minds.”
“Do I?”
Tikko licked juice off her chin. “The bots say so.”
“Because the gathered told them to.” He crushed the box into his lunch basket, saving Moss’s team some cleanup. “Doesn’t mean it’s true, dear.”
“You sound like my daughter.”
Pacito laughed. “Ever since that one arrived—“ he cut his eyes toward Innocent “—I’ve been having strange thoughts.”
“Maybe crazy is catching.” Tikko sidearmed the peach pit and watched it skitter across the deck. “Look at them,” she said. “They just kneel there.” She dropped to all fours and began to pace. “At peace.”
“That’s good, no?”
“I’ve been minding Chioma Melky eight years. No, nine.” She sauntered all the way to the end of the deck, pinched Clin who was snoozing in the swelter and then came back to Pacito. “They never sat still for me. Never once.”
“You’re saying they’re not as crazy as they were?”
“Last week he got a stiff to talk.”
Pacito scratched his belly. “Moss says Ed Gluck wasn’t all that stiff.”
“And look at yours.” She rested her hand on his chin and turned him toward his charges in the circle. “They’re different after they pray. Maybe even happy.”
“They’re humans.” He yawned. “Humans are never happy.”
She rocked back and forth, thoughts tumbling over one another.
“Where’s Helen Calabrese?” asked Pacito. “I never see her on her knees.”
“She’s been hiding from him, won’t say why.”
Pacito threw his arm around her shoulder. “Well dear, if you’re worried then I’m worried.” He dragged her to him and kissed the side of her face three times. “We’re worried, they’re happy. The world is turning inside out.”
Innocent was standing now; prayers were over. He preached to the assembled popes and even those who had not prayed with him seemed to devour his words. He spoke briefly of hope and going forward. He said humans must rise to a new challenge. God wanted them to spread the Blessed Thought to all.
“Even to our minders.” He wasn’t large for a human but at that moment his voice made him seem huge. He caught Tikko’s eye with his usual rudeness and nodded. “For although they may not yet know it, they are as much God’s children as are we.”
God’s children. One of the popes at the picnic table got up and knelt with the rest of Innocent’s congregation. Those on either side held out their hands to receive him. One was Saint Bruce. Tikko shivered. There was a shadow passing over their community. She reminded herself that these popes were not the ones who had reinvented chimps and given them the world. Those humans were gone, gathered into the cognisphere. So Innocent was wrong, had to be.
If the gathered had wanted chimps to know God, they would have taught them to pray.
Tikko lunged off her high swing toward the perch three meters above her desk. She grabbed the edge, polished from a thousand such catches, and let her momentum carry her toward the wall from which she bounced upwards. Twisting in midair, she landed on the perch’s deck on all fours, coiled and sprang for the rope sleeping nest. She scuttled hand over hand across its length and then along the rigging to the iron bar attached to the wall of her room. Hanging from the bar with one hand, breathtaken from her scramble, she could hear her heart drum, feel the blood sing in her veins. It was a relief to fly about her room and not fret about Innocent or the other popes. She dropped to the floor and threw a couple of backwards somersaults just to make the world spin.
“Tikko?”
She bounded onto her desk and saw Helen Calabrese in the doorway. “What?” The lightness of the moment before left her. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” She held the door open, hesitating. “Yes.” She cleared her throat. “May I speak with you?”
“Yes, yes, come. Sit.”
She was surprised when Helen Calabrese closed the door behind her. Tikko knew that she should have opened her mind then. The bots would want to monitor such an unusual conversation. Instead she turned around once on the desktop and squatted, facing the human. “So?”
Helen Calabrese dragged a chair from its place along the wall to face the desk. “I’ve always wondered,” she said, “whether you chimps ever sit in chairs yourselves. You know, when we’re not around.”
“They’re not very comfortable.” Tikko’s lips thinned enough to show pink gums. “For us at least.”
She settled herself. “Right.” Helen Calabrese seemed in no hurry to continue the conversation, so Tikko waited. This was the human way; they were creatures of false starts and long pauses. At last Helen slapped both hands to her thighs and seemed to come to a decision. “I want to make the pilgrimage.”
Tikko yipped in astonishment. “To Argonne?”
Helen Calabrese nodded.
There was no stilling the buzz in Tikko’s head. A breakthrough. A few popes had left them for the human reservation in Alabama, but only Lauren Colotta had asked to join the gathered. “You’re sure? I know you’ve been seeing things more clearly, but I never expected anything like . . . ” She could hear herself babbling and didn’t care. “I mean, that’s wonderful. Amazing.”
Helen Calabrese stared at her hands as if she were surprised to find them on her lap. “I understand that I can choose a witness to go with me.” She looked directly at Tikko then, a breach of manners that she had never committed before. “A chimp. Would you do me the honor?”
The honor. “Yes, yes, of course.” Tikko realized that she was nervously pulling the hair on her wrist. With a word—pilgrimage—this human had transformed herself. She had no need of minders; she was one of the gathered, or soon would be. Tikko’s mother Bixa would have been awestruck. And submissive. And scared enough to hide under the desk. Bixa used to spin incredible tales of the humans who had given up their bodies, even though she herself had never even seen one. Tikko shivered at the memory but then quickly sought her center. She was not some fearful elder . . .
“Tikko, are you all right?”
“Fine.” She leaned forward onto all fours; that steadied her. “When do you want this? Can you wait until the move to winter quarters?”
“Sooner would be better. I don’t feel as if I belong here anymore.”
“So something is wrong?” Tikko had been minding Helen Calabrese for six years and could still read her, even if she was soon to be gathered. “Something about Innocent?”
She pushed out of the chair.
“Is he harassing you?”
“He wants to save me, Tikko.” Now that she was standing up, she seemed at a loss. “He’s got most of the popes now but that’s not enough. Before long, he’ll have everyone here but the stiffs.” Her smile twisted. “Maybe even them.”
“You could go to another minder community. Or Alabama—the reservation.”
“Why?” Helen Calabrese combed fingers through her hair in frustration. “You don’t understand, Tikko. This is God’s plan, according to him. Next will be missionaries—to the minder communities, Alabama, wherever there are humans. He’s thinks he’s been chosen to rally us. Believe me, I’ve seen what religion can do. I know his kind.” She raised both hands to her shoulders as if to surrender. “I knew him, sort of.”
“What?” Tikko felt a prickle of heat on back of her neck.
Helen Calabrese explained that she had thought all along that Innocent looked familiar, but hadn’t been able to place him. Now she remembered. His last name was Velasco; she wasn’t sure about his first name. Julio, or maybe Javier. Before the gathering, he had produced a series of feeds which argued that scientists were acting in accordance with God’s will when they had grown the cognisphere. He declared that they had created the Biblical heaven promised from the time of the Old Testament. When the newsfeeds started to notice him, the team at Argonne had delegated her to quash his extravagant claims. Velasco had asked for a face-to-face debate, but she had finessed him into a written Q and A format that stretched over several weeks. “So we never actually met. He was just a graduate student at some divinity school and . . . well . . . I suppose I embarrassed him. I think he ended up dropping out of his program.” She snickered. “And then, apparently, getting elected Pope.”
“He isn’t the Pope,” said Tikko.
“No? If he isn’t the Pope, he’s still their Pope.”
“You’re not doing this just to get away from him?”
She picked up her chair as if it were made of glass and set it back against the wall. “You chimps have this myth that the gathered were all wise and pure and rational.” Her crooked smile scared him. “Six billion people stepped into the cognisphere and they had six billion reasons. Not all of them were good reasons.”
After Helen Calabrese closed the door behind her, Tikko slumped onto her back and gazed up at the ceiling of her room. She thought about climbing to her nest but was too exhausted. Being astonished was hard work. Then she remembered that she needed to open her mind and give the bots access to her interview. She rolled off her desk, drooped across the floor to the bot.
It had been years since she consciously opened her mind. She had mastered the technique when she was five—and in just two weeks. Bixa had told her that meant she would probably lead a team when she grew up. Since then Tikko needed only to see her hand on the dome of a bot and her mind opened immediately. She no more noticed the bots’ presence in her head than she would notice the whirr of air conditioning in Maple Suite or the chirp of crickets when she was riding a chairlift.
This time, however, she went deliberately through the routine that her mother had taught her. She began by picturing a tree and then climbed it, leaving her thoughts on the ground below her. The higher she climbed the further away they were. At last she stopped and covered her ears with her hands, closed the eyes of her imagination, held her breath. When she was utterly empty she experienced the familiar whispering wind that was not thought, not sensation. She had forgotten that this wind was not one thing but many and that the whispers came from all directions at once. For a dizzying instant she knew everything that anyone had ever known, then the moment passed and she was grounded again and knew only what she did know.
And one thing more. Innocent was a threat.
“No, he is not coming with us,” said Tikko. “He stays right here.”
The other elders were startled by her outburst. Their silence was as cold as the concrete walls of the basement meeting room.
“That’s all?” Lola spoke at last. “Can you give us a reason?”
“Yes, because we decided this already. Now things change because popes are upset? Who’s in charge here?”
“We’re considering what’s best for this community.”
“Helen Calabrese doesn’t want him to come.”
Lola’s lower lip went all floppy. Tikko hated it when her sister made a show of being patient with her. “And her reason is?”
“Because he wants to convert her to some foolish church that doesn’t exist. Because he’ll try to keep her to from joining the gathered.”
“We don’t know that.”
“That’s what she thinks, Pacito. It’s her pilgrimage, not Julio Velasco’s.”
“He changed his name. It’s Innocent now.”
“He’s a crazy pope.” Tikko heard herself snarl. “Next he’ll have us calling him Your Holiness.”
“Be calm, Tikko.”
Both Gamba and Moss sidled across the meeting rug to her. Moss began grooming her back. Gamba picked both of her hands up in hers. “Easy, dear,” she said.
When Pacito spoke again, he used his gentlest voice. “It’s happening very fast, I know. So many new things to understand. Innocent. Helen Calabrese. The way the popes are changing. But the humans want this, Tikko. They have never wanted anything before.”
“Only because he’s stirring them up.”
Gamba squeezed her hands, panting in sympathy.
“Whatever their reason, wanting is good,” said Lola. “Wanting is healthy.”
Tikko knew she had lost. The other elders were scared of what Innocent might do if he didn’t get his way. “Do I have a choice?”
Silence was their answer.
“Let him come then.” The words were ashes in her mouth. “But only him.”
Moss said, “But he’s asking to bring . . . ”
Tikko screamed and shot her arms into the air into full aggression posture. “No.” Shocked, the other chimps tumbled into submission crouches. They probably thought she was out of control. Maybe she was.
“I’m leaving tomorrow.” Tikko bared her teeth and pointed at her sister. “And I’m taking Kulki with me. She’s on my team from now on, sister dear. You can have your idiot son Clin back.”
The entire chimp community turned out to see them off, as well as all the popes and even some stiffs. Innocent had gotten three more of them walking in the last week, although they still needed helping hands.
Tikko, Helen Calabrese, Kulki and Ash passed a crowd of humans on their knees as they climbed the steps to the station. Innocent lingered to bless them. “They’re praying for us,” he called to Tikko. She ignored him.
The transbot was divided into thirty sleeper compartments; it could accommodate one hundred and eighty chimps or one hundred and twenty humans. Tikko put Innocent, Ash and Kulki in the rearmost two compartments and showed Helen Calabrese to the front, determined to keep the humans separated. When everyone was settled, Tikko opened her mind: her only instruction was to ride. At nine-thirty the transbot floated off its dock and eased into the flux of the Northeast Main.
They hurtled through the Great Northern Forest. Tikko stayed with Helen Calabrese. Had she wanted to talk, Tikko was ready to listen. But she was subdued and seemed content to look out the window at the vast sameness of trees and hills and streams which now stretched south. Eventually Helen Calabrese dozed off and Tikko decided to check on her other charge.
Innocent had crossed over from his compartment to chat with his minders. Ash did not seem pleased with the company but Kulki was indulging the pope. She had been thrilled to be rescued from tending stiffs and was busy trying to impress with her team spirit.
“Ash, why don’t you go up front?” said Tikko. “Helen Calabrese is asleep; keep watch on her. We should be eating before too much longer.”
He slid off the bench where he had been squatting and hugged Tikko. “Pray for lunch,” he whispered. “It’s the only way he’ll shut up.” He let his hand slide down her arm.
She gave a barking laugh, then prodded her daughter’s shoulder. “You, go stretch. I’ll watch this one.”
“I’ll stay, maa.” Kulki blew a burst of air between her lips. “I’m fine.”
“Fine indeed,” said Innocent. He was wearing the purple chasuble and plain white cassock she’d seen when she first met him. “You have one smart pup here, Tikko. I look forward to having her on the team.”
Pup. She settled on the bench opposite Innocent. Kulki was bristling and Tikko rested a hand on her knee to center her. She was grateful that Ash had left the slider into the compartment open. In close quarters the meaty smell of human skin was a little sickening.
“We’ve slowed down,” said Innocent.
“We’re coming to the York yards.” Tikko tapped a knuckle against the window. A cargo chain had pulled over next to them: container bots, hopper bots, tank bots, and flat bots bobbed in their wake as they passed. “We switch soon to the Lakes Main and then head for Chicago, wherever that is. On a lake, I guess.”
“You’ve never been?”
“The middle of the country is nothing but botscape. When we go to winter quarters we stay on the Northeast Main all the way to Chesapeake and then switch to the Dixie Loop.”
Ash slapped the doorsill. “The bot must have heard you. Lunch is ready.”
They stretched a table between the benches and trooped out to the galley to pick up the lunch baskets. Gamba’s team had packed more than enough provisions for th trip. Tikko got an apricot, a slice of melon, a bunch of cherry tomatoes still on the vine and half a head of cabbage. Innocent lifted the lid of his basket, sniffed at the steaming tureen and frowned. “Another lentil stew.” He picked a strawberry from the basket and popped it into his mouth. “You know why our tribes are so listless?” he said. “It’s because you’re making vegetarians of them. Humans need meat.” He pounded a fist against his chest in what he probably thought was a clever imitation of chimp belligerence.
Kulki shook her snack box at him. “Termite?” she said with a deadpan expression.
“No, thank you.” He scowled. “I was saying to your daughter earlier how much this part of the country has changed. All the new forests.”
Tikko folded a cabbage leaf into her mouth. “It wasn’t like this when you were frozen?”
He shook his head.
“And when was that, exactly?”
“Ah, that would be telling.” He spooned up some stew.
“Julio Velasco was born on January 30, 2202 in Cartagena, Colombia,” said Kulki. “You are Julio Velasco?”
Innocent waved a finger at her. “Was.”
“Robert III died on September 22, 2257. He was the last known Pope.”
“You get that from the bots?” He seemed amused. “They’re so good at dates.”
“They estimate that the gathering was completed sometime between March and April of 2294. After that there would have been nobody to elect you Pope.”
“Why Kulki, you’re trying to trap me. She’s just like you, Tikko.” He leaned across the table and spoke in a low voice. “Of course, the bots are wrong about the end of the gathering.”
“Really?” Kulki said. “How do you know?”
“Because there is one still to join!” His booming laugh shook the compartment.
“Maybe you’d rather Helen Calabrese change her mind.”
“Oh, no. I insist that she go through with it.”
Kulki considered. “Then why are you here?”
“I need to witness an execution before I can preach against the death penalty.”
“This isn’t an execution.”
“Ah.” He gave her a sly smile. “I must be mistaken then.”
“There was a time when you claimed that the cognisphere was heaven,” said Tikko.
Innocent’s cheeks colored. “Did Helen tell you that?”
“She says she knew you when your name was Velasco.”
Kulki gave a yip of surprise.
“Knew me?” He stirred the stew with his spoon—once, twice—then pushed the bowl away abruptly. “Odd, since we never met in person.” He touched a napkin to his lips as he collected himself. “In any event, my thinking on the cognisphere has changed.” He stuffed the napkin into the bowl, set the bowl into the basket and closed the lid.
Tikko knew he wanted them to ask him to explain, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Kulki, however, couldn’t resist. “Do tell.”
He rubbed his hands together, as if to warm them. “If the cognisphere is as promised, my child, then it might be very much like heaven. But everyone knows that, in order to get to heaven, you have to die. Now the question is, how do we know that the gathered were actually uploaded? Their bodies are certainly dead. What if their information got erased as well? What if the cognisphere is a lie?”
“Six billion humans believed in it.”
“Yes they did. And how many of them have come back from the cognisphere to tell us just how heavenly it is?”
Kulki looked confused. “But why would they?”
“Ah, Kulki, I think your mother sees my point. To those of us left behind, joining the gathered and dying are the same thing.”
“But even so . . . ”
“The humans who are still alive, the dissenters, have fallen into error. They’ve made gods of the gathered. They’re convinced that the age of humanity has passed. And that’s what you chimps think too, isn’t it? That we humans need to be minded. Or else kept on a reservation. You believe that this is your world now. But what if it was the gathered who were deluded? You’ve been following their plan.” He leaned back and steepled his hands. “I believe that God has a different plan. For humans, and for chimps.”
Tikko had heard stories about the botscape, but they did not prepare her for its terrible geometries. Two hours out of Chicago, the dawn revealed a world turned all the colors of gray. The bots had waged war with nature, and in this conquered territory, had brutally exterminated their enemy. There were scattered patches of weed and scrub and some dusty fields but otherwise the land was everywhere paved and built over. It looked as if the innumerable batch plants had flooded concrete in every direction, channelizing rivers and streams, transforming lakes into sludgy clarifiers and settling basins. Skeletal transmission towers disappeared to the horizon, pipelines wound beneath them like steel snakes. Their transbot skirted an endless airport, its asphalt runways shimmering in the morning sun. The Chicago Yards were choked with kilometer long cargo chains. Flat bots passed under huge container cranes, hopper bots waited patiently to receive their burdens from storage elevators.
The transbot switched yet again for the Prairie Main, and then the siding which would take them to the Argonne Science Shrine.
Tikko kept checking but Helen Calabrese’s resolve did not falter. She acknowledged her minder’s attempts at conversation but did not encourage them. She drank from a water bottle, ate an apple and stared at the world the bots were making, often with her forehead pressed against the window. Innocent on the other hand was manic, bouncing back and forth between compartments, exclaiming and pointing and annoying Ash beyond all reason.
Tikko was pleased that her team seemed to be bearing up, considering how intimidated she felt by the botscape. The transbot kept popping words into her head that she had neither heard before nor cared to remember. There were foundries and mills and smelters and blast furnaces and kilns with smokestacks like black fingers ripping the sky. Radomes like giant white wasp galls scanned for storms, a coldbox tower mined the air for nitrogen and oxygen—how was that possible? There were farms where no plant grew, tank farms, data farms, wind farms. In the distance she saw the skyline of a refinery, a vast city for hydrocarbons. Bot excavators tore wounds in the concrete to recycle treasures lost in landfills, to quarry limestone and to dig gravel. Tikko tried closing her eyes but the naming of the bots’ countless works continued unabated.
As the transbot settled into its cradle at Argonne Station, Helen Calabrese emerged from her compartment. She had changed into a dress that was pale as the summer sky; a sash of darker blue bound her waist. Her shoes were blue too, with bizarre pointed heels. Tikko had never seen anything like this. Maybe it was some ceremonial outfit, like Innocent’s vestments. Helen Calabrese strode down the aisle, holding out an arm out as if to catch herself against a stumble but never quite touching the wall. Innocent, Ash and Kulki watched her approach. She did not break stride and might have run into Innocent had not the chimps dragged him out of her way. Tikko had forbidden the pope to speak to Helen Calabrese unless she spoke first. As she passed, Innocent reached as if to take her hand. She ignored him.
Tikko’s dread of traversing the forbidding botscape vanished as she stepped onto the platform. The grounds of the Argonne Science Shrine had lawns and trees and shrubs pruned with machine precision. Flowers nodded in trim gardens around low buildings, most of which appeared to be mothballed. There was still too much brick, concrete and glass for Tikko, but the scale of the place was comforting after the nightmare of Chicago and its environs. The campus was surrounded by a ring road swarming with bots of every description—more than she had ever seen. Come to witness a gathering?
Tikko started toward the nearest bot for instruction but before she took two steps the entire assembly seemed to pry her mind wide open and point her down a path. A five minute stroll brought them to a shell that sat on its foundation like a quarter of a melon. The entrance was on the rounded side; the flat façade faced away from them. Clad in black marble, the building was about six meters tall and six meters wide at its base.
It was not what Tikko had expected.
The floor of the shell was a black and white checkerboard of squares of marble. The half dome of the ceiling was composed of square black coffers: five rows of fourteen. The shell opened onto a garden filled with sedum and butterfly bush, white begonias bedded around stands of burgundy calla lilies.
It was empty.
Tikko waited for instruction but the now bots were silent. Kulki gave an uncertain hoo. Ash dropped onto all fours.
“Except a man be born again,” murmured Innocent, “he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Tikko hissed at him to be quiet.
“It’s all right, he doesn’t understand.” Helen Calabrese pushed past him toward the garden. “He never did.”
They fell into step behind her. When they were about five meters from the far edge of the shell, its opening filled with a wash of pale light. They stopped, transfixed. The bright colors of the garden were now shimmery pastels. The light seemed so liquid that Tikko thought that she might be able to catch it in her cupped hands.
When Helen Calabrese went rigid, Tikko was certain that she had lost her nerve.
“Do you want to go back?”
The human put a hand on Tikko’s shoulder and tried to pet her. “No.” Her fingers were stiff and awkward. Or maybe she was just leaning one last time on her minder for support. “Don’t let him win. I’ll be watching from the other side.” Tikko thought she should reply, but what could a chimp say to one of the gathered?
Then Helen Calabrese started toward the light.
Innocent called, “Any last words, Helen?”
“You’re wrong, Velasco,” she said, without turning back.
Tikko chopped a hand toward Ash and Kulki and they caught the pope by the shoulders. “Don’t say another word.” Tikko snarled.
The metal on Helen’s heels clicked against the marble floor. That’s what Tikko remembered afterwards. Helen Calabrese called out a name. It sounded like Cass or Cassy. Then she started to run. Click, click, click. When she passed into the light, the clicking stopped. Helen Calabrese pitched forward, only it wasn’t her anymore. Her body sprawled in the garden behind the glimmering at the edge of the shell.
Tikko was still holding her breath when Innocent spoke.
“Awful.” His voice filled with pity. “A terrible, terrible waste.”
“Quiet!”
“Don’t you see? She’s gone. You can’t possibly scan a human mind in an instant.”
She felt a rage come over her. It had something to do with the light. She thought it ought to stop now, but it didn’t. Instead it continued to pour down, no longer a wash but a flood. She tried to open her mind for instruction but instead she seemed to hear Helen Calabrese screaming don’t let him win so she screamed back. Kulki and Ash answered, their mouths wide and their fangs glistening in the murderous light.
“What are you doing?” Innocent said. He began to struggle.
The screams of the chimps echoed off the half dome, echoed in Tikko’s head as she circled behind the pope. She charged on toes and knuckles, hurling herself into his back. The frantic human, still in the grasp of Kulki and Ash, lurched toward the light.
“No. Stop.”
They brought him stumbling, flailing, right to the edge. Tikko didn’t know if this was what the bots wanted but it was what she wanted most in all the world. Innocent was screaming louder than any human she had ever heard as Ash and Kulki—her daughter, her angry daughter—shoved him hard. As he staggered into the light, he tried to spin but his feet went out from under him and his body slumped through and onto the grass. Only his red slippers still remained in the shell.
There was no sound but their breathing. Tikko mind closed. The light at the opening of the shell faded.
Overwhelmed, she sat backwards on the cold marble. “What have we done?”
“S-Sent him to heaven.” Kulki turned around twice, and squatted facing away from the bodies.
Sin. For the first time in her life, Tikko understood why the word had plagued the humans so. She felt sick with shame, a stranger in her own mind. “But we have to go back now,” she said. “Home. How do we explain?”
“Explain?” Ash leaned over and took her hands in his. “Do you know what happened?” His hands shook as he pulled her to her feet. “We have to go, Tikko.”
Four bots entered the garden, walking on spider legs. When two of them rolled Innocent’s body over, Ash shrieked and Kulki spun around to watch. The bots rocked backwards, slipped their front legs under the body and picked it up. Like a fallen branch. Tikko put a hand on Kulki’s shoulder as the two other two lifted Helen Calabrese. Like a dead rabbit.
Ash screamed again and they ran.
Galloping on all fours, the chimps burst out of the shell and down the path toward the station. Tikko fell behind the younger chimps and was the last one to reach the transbot, still floating in its cradle. The rear door had opened to let them in. She found Ash scrabbling frantically up the center aisle, Kulki huddled under a table in one of the compartments. Tikko tried again to open her mind, but she was alone with her guilt. It was as if the bots had forsaken her.
The door slid shut and the transbot floated onto the fluxway.
The chimps hid in different compartments and did not come out until they were well out of the botscape. Tikko spent the time trying to understand what had happened in the shell, thinking what she hoped were her own thoughts about humans and chimps. Bots and the gathered.
In her moment of rage in the shell, she had wanted to kill Innocent, yes. But thrusting him into the cognisphere wasn’t murder, no. Helping humans join the gathered was the duty of all chimps. Tikko knew that she had teetered on the edge of sin, but she had not fallen. Eventually that realization lifted her out of her dread.
Ash and Kulki had brought lunch baskets into their compartment at the rear of the transbot. They also seemed recovered—at least enough to eat. Tikko sat on the bench next to her daughter and picked a pear from her basket.
“We have to get our stories straight,” Tikko said.
Kulki gave a hoo of approval. “We’ve just been talking about that.”
“He died,” said Ash. “He lost track of himself and had an accident and he died.” He thrust his arms above his head, as if challenging her to contradict him. “That’s all that happened.”
Tikko bit into the pear. It was past the season for pears and the white flesh was mealy. “That’s good enough for the others,” she said. “But what do we tell ourselves?”
Ash let his arms fall and stared at the table.
“Maa, I don’t know,” said Kulki.
“So, this is what I think happened. We opened our minds to one of the gathered.” She took another bite of the pear. “We did what she asked.”
“That makes no sense,” said Ash, his thick brow furrowed. “We take instruction from bots. The gathered left. They’re gone.”
“The bots are the gathered.” Tikko paused, reading her daughter’s expression. “Some of them, anyway.” She saw the idea taking hold and continued. “I think some of the gathered still watch us. That’s what Helen Calabrese was saying.”
“Yes.” Kulki wrapped her arms around Tikko and pulled her close. “And they can’t leave us alone.”
“Maybe,” said Tikko, “we should make them.”
hhe Kulki was laughing in Tikko’s ear. hhe hhe
Tikko thought it was funny too. hhe hhe Ash’s lips curled away from his teeth and his mouth fell open and then, as the transbot flew up the fluxway toward home, all three chimps were laughing, falling over, rolling on their backs. hhee hhee hhee hheep.
It was a sound no human would ever hear.