Even after that, his austere habits remained. He spoke to no one save by voice, appeared on no bulletin board or staging boards, purchased nothing on credit, visited no calamity houses. And he never once used the Fox arts to turn himself into a dolphin during mating season, even though apparently every lunatic Earthling male in heat took to the seas in the spring, leaving the beaches empty save for hastily shed clothing. As far as the Noösphere of Earth was concerned, he was practically invisible.
So it was not surprising when the Proconsul for the Starfaring Guild approached him and asked if he wanted to be assigned to special operations, and kill men and exorcise ghosts. The duty was even more dangerous and despicable than being a longshoreman on the Sky Island, and so he accepted eagerly.
A decade later, when the verdict of the Interdict was announced, and communion with the Noösphere was denied to him, he had been living so austerely for so long that he should not have noticed it. It was like a Franciscan under a vow of poverty being sued at law for his possessions.
But the solitude still ached. Alone in his own mind, he was still surprised at how small and lonely a mind it was.
4. Fugitives of Interdiction
Such was his life, contented in small things, discontented in large. Norbert the Assassin was sitting in the sill of his huge round wide-open window-port staring at the lights of the Forever Village, and half dozing while half heeding a report being sung to him in plaintive tones, when a notice extruded itself from an anonymous slot on his desk, and a chime of tone and period whose meaning he did not recognize rang out.
Encoded as eerie Monument music, the report was of an extraordinary discharge detected between Sol and the star 20 Arietis. The chime interrupted the song and marred it, whereupon the singer (being as sensitive and fickle as abstract musician constructs tend to be) grew sullen and would not continue.
An icy plutino, a small body in interstellar space, had wandered into the line between Sol and 20 Arietis, and ignited, betraying the presence of an energy path. The star 20 Arietis was speculated to be a major nexus of Hyades internal communication. But who of Sol was sending communication there and why? The song had been about to reach the speculative conclusions of the report when the interruption came.
So Norbert glanced down in annoyance. He whistled for his desk. On its six stumpy legs, it lumbered over to the window where he sat. He had never before known that this slot was built into the desk. A query search returned a blank: the slot had no name or history in the local infosphere of the tower. (The tower ghosts were legally denizens of outer space, not part of the Tellurian Noösphere, and therefore open to him.) A wider search to a ship’s boat passing overhead like a shooting star was equally barren of results. One property of antiques was that their instruction manuals had vanished in earlier eons, and this was especially true on Senile Earth, where it was not unusual to come across loud public houses or snarky drinking vessels older than every man-made object on Rosycross.
The notice was printed on a sheet of fine onionskin. By tradition, everything of the Starfarers had to be of low mass, and have no electronic failure points: as if monstrous modern vessels made of invulnerable argent materials accelerated by beams of planet-obliterating strength fretted about acceleration costs, or worried about electromagnetic pulses from hull collisions.
A tradition equally as old but far more annoying held that such notes had to be sticky, so that in zero gee they would adhere to the nearest surface. Consequently it was many minutes before Norbert managed to untangle the tiny, delicate sheet without ripping it.
ZOLASTO ZO, an entrepreneur of many fortuitous licenses
Member in Good Standing of the Entertainment and Procurers Guild
Avers he will Astound! Delight! Astonish!
With Many and Varied displays and representations
THE WONDERS OF EARTH
Your long lost Mother!
Who does not adore the Home World?
PRIMAL ABODE OF MAN!!—NEVER BEEN TERRAFORMED!!!
——
SEE the dancing nymphs of ancient Arcadia!
HEAR mellifluous sonograms from extinct man-eating Whales!
THRILL to a military display of ancient weapon forms
by Feroccio our Master-At-Arms!
Including the discharge of an authentic black-powder caterpillar-gun!
——
BEHOLD Fruits, nuts and berries FIT FOR HUMAN MASTICATION
grown without intervention from the NATIVE SOIL OF MANKIND!
(Certificate on file to confirm that these are UNMODIFIED by any process,
exactly as savage hunter-gatherers of primordial agribusinesses
found them in the WILD!)
——
TOUCH the parchments of the Bible written by
King James, an avatar of divine Crishna!
WRITTEN IN THE ORIGINAL ENGLISH!
(The Quill Pen and Inkstand used by Mr. King to indite his famous work
is available for view for an extra charge of one grote.)
——
ADMIRE as the delicate and nubile Mademoiselle Pelisse Roquelaure
performs the traditional native dance of long-submerged New Orleans,
city famed in myth! The dance forms have been reconstructed
With Painstaking Archeological Accuracy from postures and displays
found in LURID advertisements of the Anteposthuman period!
CERTAIN TO BE OF INTEREST TO THE GENTLEMEN
——
As an added courtesy to those of sober and scholarly attainments,
ZOLASTO ZO
Welcomes the curious Hieronymus to our noble troupe;
and this Most Interesting and Convivial Sacerdote is available to
REMOVE CURSES, and perform MIRACLE CURES,
while making a series of interesting remarks on the mysteries of the
calendar system, or other matters CURRENTLY FASCINATING
the Attention of the Public
of All Ranks and Species of Humanity.
——
Subject matters not fitting for ladies of elevation or gentle birth are so noted;
scholars and antiquarians are acknowledged as equals!
——
(Concubinage Contracts available for Negotiation by Certified Eugenicists.
Guaranteed Clean and Bio-compatible bloodlines. Fit for Breeding.)
5. The Best Interest of the Guild
Norbert smiled grimly. The effrontery of offering to earthmen to taste or see the fruits or views of the Earth seemed noteworthy only in its absurdity.
The purpose of such spectacles was to give gentlemen an opportunity to see nymphs and breeding girls posing and gyrating before purchasing their contracts; then as if by some accident, the slavegirls would be sent, drunk on aphrodisiacs, to the gentleman’s privy suite instead of to his kennels. No one older than a child ever stopped to gape at the pasteboard and tinfoil and holograms of the sideshows.
Rectifiers and other local magistrates could not easily shut down any wandering showman who pretended to act under the academic latitude guaranteed by ancient right to lectures, reenactments, and edifying displays. For just such a reason, no doubt, Zolasto Zo tolerated this oddly named Hieronymus to travel with his band.