“Well, that’s nothing new.” Horatio’s scowl deepened. “Still, I expect the honor’s being bestowed for the wrong reasons. What charge has he drummed up?”
“Now, we’re not sure, mind you,” Whitey said, frowning, “but we think he’s managed to convince the LORDS that we’re a bunch of telepaths, and that we’ve been aided and abetted by telepaths all along our route in from the marches.”
Horatio stared. “You’re the Interstellar Telepathic Conspiracy?”
“Well, that is kinda what we think they’ve got in their heads, yeah,” Whitey muttered.
Horatio glared down at him, his face slowly turning purple. Dar stood frozen, with his heart in his throat. If Whitey were just a little bit mistaken about his old buddy, they could all wind up in prison at the snap of a finger. He could fairly feel that restraining field pressing in on him from all sides already…
Then Horatio blew. “Foul!” he bellowed, fingers clawing into fists. “How foul, how fell! That the High Gleeman of scores of worlds should be hounded and harassed like a common felon! And all for the brain-sick nightmare of a diseased and petty mind! Nay, nay! I have stood and smiled, I have gnashed my teeth whiles I watched them play their petty games of plot and counterplot; I have schooled myself to patience while the reek of their corruption stank in my nostrils—but this I cannot bear! Nay, how can there be any gram of goodness biding in a sovereignty that’s so riddled with malice that it dreams up excuses to harry its bravest and best? Terra is become a stench-filled sty, a globe no longer fit for glee, a domain no longer fit for dwelling—nor can any planet be that falls within its sphere of influence!”
Whitey dug in his toes and braced himself against the gale. “Peace, now, peace, good fellow! Hope lives on yet! Even corruption has its day, and ceases, and the seeds of goodness sprout up from it, to flower again in virtue!”
“Aye, but in how many years?” Horatio glowered down at him. “Nay, centuries! I am not minded to hold my peace and bear myself in silence whiles I wait!”
Dar felt a surge of panic. Was this madman going to try a one-man rebellion, or something?
But Whitey suddenly became very casual. “Well then, if you truly feel so, flee! There be no dearth of G-type suns, nor of worlds like Terra. If you find all known worlds so swinishly unfit, go seek the unknown! Go sail into uncharted skies and find a world to make anew, after the fashion of your dreaming!”
Dar held his breath. What Whitey was saying was, in effect, put up or shut up.
But Horatio was staring at him as though he’d spoken an idea never thought of before. “Aye,” he breathed. “Aye, surely!”
He whirled away toward the house, crying, “Where are these hearts? Where are my comrades?”
The whole group stared at his retreating back.
“I, ah, think we might want to go along with him,” Whitey suggested. “He sometimes needs restraining when he gets into these moods.” He set off after Horatio.
The troupe followed, and caught up with him.
“What’s the matter with her?” Whitey muttered to Dar.
“Huh?” Dar glanced at Sam, who was moving a little more quickly than the rest of them, gaze fixed on Horatio, eyes shining. He turned back to Whitey. “Just spellbound. Money has that effect, sometimes.”
But Whitey shook his head. “Not so, or she’d have gone after me. Would you say Sam’s the impulsive sort?”
“Well … in a way.” Dar frowned at Sam, seeing her anew. “Controls it well, though.”
“And Horatio doesn’t have to.” Whitey nodded. “That explains a lot.”
Dar was glad it did, because he didn’t understand a bit of it. On the other hand, he hadn’t had much exposure to women who spoke his own language.
Horatio stormed up a flight of limestone steps and wheeled through French doors into his palace. By the time the crew caught up with him, he was leaning across a Louis XIV desk, glaring into a phone screen at an image of a bulky, black-haired man with a flowing beard. “Ship?” he was saying. “Of course you can buy a ship, Horatio! The Navy has surplus dreadnoughts it would love to be rid of—but why?”
“To issue from a sty of stenches!” Horatio snapped. “What do you mean, they have ships they’d love to be rid of?”
“Always more on hand than they have buyers for. After all, who’d want a retired battleship—without its cannon?”
“We would! To bear a crew of colonists to a brave new world, where we may purify ourselves of this crass materialism, and rise above the suspiciousness and greed of this technological monster of a world!”
“Horatio.” Blackbeard eyed him warily. “Do you speak of founding a society based on the Society?”
“Indeed I do, Markone!”
“I was afraid that this might come,” Markone sighed. “You must not confuse the pleasant fantasy of our Society tournaments and moots with the reality of the real world, Horatio. That way lies madness.”
“I do not confuse them—I wish to make the fantasy become real! Think of it, Markone—your barony become a reality, your vassals and serfs forever at your call!”
Markone’s eyes lost focus. “A pleasant dream, Horatio—yet nothing but a dream.”
“It need not be!” Horatio insisted. “Think, man! What need would we have for all our fortunes? Each could lay the half of them away for his heirs here, and take the other half to pool, to buy a ship and equip an expedition! What could it cost? Certainly no more than a hundred billion—and we must have a dozen barons in the Society who are worth more than half of that apiece!”
Markone gazed off into space. “It might be possible, at that … as though we were holding an extended festival abroad… And ‘twould be possible to return…”
“Meditate upon it,” Horatio urged. “Yet if ‘twere done, ‘twere well ‘twere done quickly, Markone. You know the uncertainty of the political situation.”
You could almost hear Markone’s eyes click back into focus. “Uncertainty? What’s doubtful about it, Bocello? Nothing but time—and that might be as short as a few days, before these petit-bourgeois politicians in the Assembly elect the Executive Secretary to the noble post of Dictator!”
“Oh, come now,” Horatio purred. “I scarcely think they’d be so blatant as to give him the title.”
“No, but they’ll give him the power! They’re primed and ready; all they need is a trigger, some threat to all of them, and they’ll cheerfully sell all their freedoms for security—and ours with theirs!”
“True, true—and we know how sensitive these lowborns are to anything that threatens their positions. When all’s said and done, money is secondary to them. But give them one sign that there may be someone more powerful than they, who might usurp their powers, and they panic!”
“They do indeed—which brings to mind the latest news, Horatio.” Markone glowered up at him out of the screen. “What think you of this Interstellar Telepathic Conspiracy?”
“Who could better recognize a fantasy than we? But there is a man of almost supernatural gifts there, as the grain of truth that rumor’s wrapped around, Markone.”
“Indeed?” Markone’s scowl deepened. “What manner of man is that?”
“One you’ve met—the greatest bard of the Terran Sphere, Tod Tambourin. Government officials have been chasing him in here from the marches—secretly at first, but now openly, claiming that he and his band are telepaths.”
“Chased Tod Tambourin?” Markone bawled. “This is too much, Bocello! They exceed excess in this!”
“They do indeed.” Horatio nodded slowly, eyes gleaming.
“If they will harry such a man out of pettiness and spite, what might they not attempt? By all the stars, Bocello—do you realize that they might come a-hunting us?”
“We are logical targets for envious men,” Horatio purred, “the more so since we have wealth to confiscate.”