The Callisto Gambit Read Free

didn’t sound entirely happy about it.
    Kiyoshi set down the pig cage. “Does he know what you are? Did you tell him?”
    “Yes.” Before Kiyoshi had the chance to react with four-letter words, Jun said hurriedly, “If I hadn’t, someone else would have, sooner or later.” He meant the other monks and nuns among their people. The Order of St. Benedict of Passau had taken root strongly among the Galapajin during their years of isolation, and they had forty-six brothers and sisters among their number here, including five priests. The other religious tended to be wary of Jun. Kiyoshi was the only one who understood him. It seemed highly unlikely that an abbot on faraway Earth would.
    “How did he take it?”
    “It was a lot of ‘on the one hand,’ and ‘then again, on the other.’ He did mention that holy orders are technically for people, not artificial intelligences.”
    “You. Are. A. Person.”
    “Yes, but he’s never met me. In the end he said he was going to consult with the Vatican, bearing in mind that it’s a unique situation.”
    The Abbot Primate was right about that, Kiyoshi reflected. Jun was the only true artificial intelligence in the solar system … except for the PLAN. He felt sorry for the Vatican theologians who would have to wrap their heads around the problem. To Kiyoshi himself, it was simple: Jun was the same person he’d always been. He was Kiyoshi’s little brother.
    “Come out where I can see you,” he ordered.
    Jun’s projection emerged from behind a bush, carrying one of the pigs. In reality a gardening bot was carrying it, and Jun had cleverly overlaid his projection on the bot. Kiyoshi opened the hutch so he could stuff the pig in. The illusion of interactivity was painful. He wanted to hug Jun and tell him it would be OK, and he knew that all he’d get would be an armful of metal attachments.
    “So are you in or out?”
    “Still in, I think,” Jun answered. “The Abbot Primate raised the point that I can’t take Communion. Which is obviously a problem. But I think the real sticking point is that I’m still claiming to be Jun Yonezawa, who they think is dead. And obviously, no one can come back from the dead except our Lord.”
    “Yeah,” Kiyoshi said. “But Jesus raised Lazarus, and Jairus’s daughter, so why couldn’t He have raised you? I need to talk to them.”
    Jun laughed. “Yeah, that would help. It’s not a lost cause. They’re discussing it. But it’ll probably take years before they come to a decision, and that’s my point: the Jesuits aren’t like that. They’re open to everything and everyone. New frontiers are their way of life. See it, go for it.”
    “I know you’ve been discussing Jesuit spirituality with Father Tom.”
    “Yup. So many of the great saints have been Jesuits. It’s incredibly inspiring.”
    Now Jun sounded happy, the way he always did when he got onto a favorite topic. But for some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, this made Kiyoshi uneasier than ever.
    “I’d better go.” He picked up the rabbit hutch and trudged towards the airlock. His eyes told him he was walking up a hill clothed in bushes and saplings. His feet told him he was walking on level ground. With the garden unaccustomedly empty, he could hear the throb of the massive motors that rotated the module on the ship’s axis.
    Halfway to the airlock, he halted.
    “Are you sure you want to do this?”
    Jun stood in the vegetable garden, small and alone. His voice was also small, a mere whisper in Kiyoshi’s cochlear implants. “We have to.”
    We, but all Kiyoshi would be doing was staying here.
    “I’m the only person in the solar system who’s ever taken on the PLAN and won.”
    “On Mercury? That wasn’t the PLAN. It was a copy of the Heidegger program running on a portable.”
    The Heidegger program had been a PLAN virus that targeted human BCIs (brain-computer interfaces).
    “It was still educational,” Jun said. “Let’s just say I know