In the Mouth of the Whale by Paul McAuley Page B

as the Church asserted, the centre of the cosmos. Galileo, headstrong and unskilled in diplomacy, had angered the Church by publishing his ideas after explicit warnings to abandon them; he’d been forced to recant, but had been vindicated after his death, Father Caetano said, and the Church had long ago accommodated itself to his discovery, and to the discoveries of many other scientists.
    This was a point he returned to over and again, one the Child had disputed before. The Church invoked absolute truths encoded in texts which could not be questioned because they proceeded from divine revelation, while all scientific theories were provisional and subject to modification and dispute as more data was gathered: absolute scientific truth was like the speed of light, a value which could be approached but never reached. And so Father Caetano’s so-called reconciliation was entirely on the terms of the Church, which cut and adjusted the truth of the world to fit into the frame of its own proclaimed truth.
    But the Child was beginning to learn something about diplomacy and strategy, about when it was worth arguing a point and when it was not. So this time she kept her silence, the moment passed, and Father Caetano went on to talk about the properties of the four moons – fiery Io; Europa, with its ocean locked under a thin crust of ice; Ganymede, largest of all the moons in the Solar System, with a smaller ocean beneath a thicker crust of ice and rock; deep-frozen, battered Callisto – and the people who lived on Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, and on the moons of Saturn.
    They were Outers, descendants of rich and powerful families who had fled to the Moon to escape the ecological and political disaster of the Overturn. When Earth’s three major power blocs had turned their attention towards the Moon, the settlers had moved on, some to Mars, the rest to the moons of Jupiter, and then Saturn. The Martians had been destroyed after they’d declared war on Earth; the Outers living on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn were more peaceable, and quarantined besides by distance. They’d been living there for more than a century. Now, according to Father Caetano, there was talk of reconciliation.
    ‘Not because our leaders want to welcome them back to the rest of the human race, from which they exiled themselves in a selfish act of self-preservation. But because they have developed technologies that would be very useful to us in very many ways, and could make a great deal of money for people who already have too much money.’
    Father Caetano talked on, explaining that many of the Outers had lost their belief in God, and thought of themselves as gods (‘with a small “g”’) because their antecedents had meddled with their genomes.
    ‘They claim to be smarter and kinder than we are. To be more moral. I cannot say if it is true. Certainly, they are vainer than us, to think such things of themselves. Such vanity is always a sin and an affront to God.’
    ‘Even if it’s true?’
    Father Caetano and the Child were sitting side by side, faces lit by the slate on the table before them, with its faintly restless telescopic image of Jupiter. A bright quarter-moon was cocked above the shadows of the trees at the far end of the garden.
    ‘Especially if it’s true,’ Father Caetano said. ‘If you are clever and kind, you would not boast about it to those not as gifted as you. Because it would not be clever, and it certainly wouldn’t be kind. Many people don’t like the Outers for exactly that reason.’
    ‘But if they are cleverer, they could help us,’ the Child said.
    ‘Cleverness isn’t everything. Without a proper moral compass, without proper restraint, scientific enquiry can too easily lead to the creation of monsters.’
    ‘Have any of them ever visited Earth?’
    It gave the Child a funny feeling to think that people like her were right now walking around on small icy moons in space suits, living in domed cities,