My friend Rydra has been shopping for a used starship. She comes over yelling excitedly "I found a great bargain! It's an old ship, it doesn't have a standard nav system... Instead it has a genuine used Pope!"

Oh, I've heard about that. The church these days is shrinking--and always broke. So when Popes die, they're flash-frozen and sold, factory-fresh, to discriminating buyers at high prices. Add sensors and a decoding system, and their brains become oracles. Papal infallibility at the push of a button--the ultimate starship navigation tool! Well worth the extra weight of the glass case with a frosty patriarch inside.

Since they're infallible, starship lines hang on to them. Popesicles never go out of style! So, used ones are vanishingly rare. Rydra's a genius to land such a deal. I have to applaud her.

Except deep in my heart I don't like it. Not this particular deal, the whole idea. Call me a Luddite, but personally, I don't trust infallibility. Or, for that matter, cryonics--what if the guy thaws? Uggh! When I go interstellar, give me a nice clean old-fashioned terahertz.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

Rydra Wong = the linguist-heroine of Samuel Delany's BABEL-17. At one point, trapped in a powerless windowless ship, she deduces its orbit--and tells you how. Almost miraculous!

The original Luddites smashed mechanical looms that were turning independent weavers into wage slaves; the dream hints at an analogy. Outside data can enhance decisions, but you should still steer yourself, not let some outside moral oracle (Pope or not) tell you what's what. Certainty--infallibility--can freeze you.

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