“We should not discuss the matter at all, and give our dates in the sacerdotal reckoning.”
“Most correct of all! But the Starfaring Guild does not like wars, revolutions, or reformations, because they disrupt the Launch Schedule. That means loudmouthed men, even men of the cloth, who discuss the calendar reform too openly must, for the good of the Guild, be silenced, because there is no Vindication for Man if the starships sail not.”
Norbert leaned back, waiting to see if the other man would say anything. The other man stood at ease with no expression on his face, and said nothing. Norbert took that as a good sign.
“How do you feel about killing priests, Able Starman End Ragon? They are notoriously Unrevised.”
“Actually, sir, if I may?”
“Mm?”
“It would be Squire, not Able Starman, since I am affixed to the Marine Family and Clan avowed to this base, practiced in the gentlemanly arts of blade, speaking whip, mudra, and shorepistol”—Norbert congratulated himself. He knew a bravo when he saw one.—“and assigned to you in your role as Special Airlock Operations Agent, not in your role as Praetor.” Special Airlock Operations was the archaic euphemism for Ship’s Assassin.
“What? Dangle it! I have no role as Praetor. I am a Quaestor.” Norbert held up his glove again, and performed the salute to send the data flow across his palm.
The new man held up his palm and saluted, this time more slowly, pausing the playback as his final orders appeared. “Actually, sir, if I may, I have been ordered to report to an officer named Norbert of ideal-type Brash of line, phylum and family Noesis Mynyddrhodian mab Nwyfre of Dee Parish, North Polar Continent, planet Rosycross, venerable of a.d. 51550, and the rank is Praetor. It seems you have been given a brevet increase in rank, at least temporarily, for this mission. Did the Noösphere not inform you?”
“Zznah?!” The Brash were supposed to be coolheaded, and take startling news nonchalantly, or with an airy jest, but this was so unexpected that Norbert emitted the shrill nasal noise of a true hillcountry Rosicrucian before the archetype habituation cells in his cortex could react. “I-im-imp-impossible! No one becomes a Praetor straight from Aedile! The rank of Quaestor interposes! And even for a Quaestor, there is supposed to be a board of review! A midnight vigil! An augury and—by all the Bachelors!—and I am not qualified! I don’t have the years lost or the years served! Unwed it! Un-WED!”
“Is that a swearword among your people, sir? It sounds stoop— Ah—it sounds mildly unusual.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to curl your virgin ears. We are married before we are born on my planet, so we don’t have anyone not helping to swell the underpopulation numbers. Since the first marriage is nonconsensual and never consummated, our sacerdotes permit an annulment of the first wife after you’ve been married to a second wife for a year. It is not so bad, since we are a Torch World, no more than a hundred thousand miles from our sun, so a year is about a week long.”
Norbert realized he was rambling, and snapped his mouth shut. But talking—especially talking about his home—had given him the moment he needed to deploy his Brash archetype structures in his cortex. The artificial nerve cells sent messages to his organic cells, released chemicals in his bloodstream, and so on. He could feel the change in his posture and body language like an actor settling into a character role. He was calm. He was unmoved and immovable, yet eager for action, equally willing to live for a laugh as die spitting in the executioner’s eye. He was brash!
“I get it,” said Norbert. “The ghosts of the old captains and shipmasters used their right of intervention for the sake of the Guild. No time for the proper ceremonies. So I get picked because I am a nobody. I kill the damned unwed Vindicator Breastbeater and shut his big mouth, for I have no family name here on Earth for anyone to retaliate against, right? What can the Summer Kings do, make it snow on me alone? And if I don’t kill him, or something gets flared up, I can be decommissioned for having exceeded my authority, and turned over to the currents. Jettisoned. Dropped out the waste lock.”
With no further word, he doffed the dark spectacles he wore at all times, buckled on a shoulder belt holding his weapons, and donned his full face mask of black smartfabric, and drew up his hood. The weapons were matched antiques like stilettoes with blades of blue glass and scorpion-tail grips; the weapons emitted a dour, mordant aura on the emotion channel, but never spoke. The entire surface of the mask and cloak, not just the area over his eyes, was light sensitive, and fed the images directly into his cortex, so he did not need to don his black spectacles again: but he liked the way they looked, for they gave his facelessness a memorable accent.
Impishly, he flexed his shoulders to trigger the silent billow and hem-floating of his cape. The New Guy did not flinch in instinctive decompression-fear as a spacer would have seeing the black cape a-billow, but he did not react as an earthman either, who would have noticed the glaring exception to the sumptuary laws with a raised eyebrow, or a studied attempt at nonchalance.
This squire fellow instead looked at the cape lining, and his eye motions did the typical posthuman jitter of rapid information absorption. What was going on? The guy was studying how a normal cape-circuit worked? He did not know about living thread?
Norbert could not even remember how long ago living thread had been invented. Was it before the rise of the Fourth Humans, or after? It was a Fox Maiden technology, something they spun from special glands their vixanthropic powers allowed them to control, wasn’t it?
The first Fox, Cazi, had been perfected somewhere near the year Minus 30000. The current year was Minus 17444. One hundred twenty-five centuries later.
How old was this squire? The most distant world in the Empyrean Polity of Man was Uttaranchal of 83 Leonis at fifty-eight lightyears hence. A voyage there and back would only let Einstein steal a century. Had this man made the long faring across the Vasty Deep one hundred twenty-five times? Then he would have been the most famed figure in history, not a squire of marines with some odd name.
Norbert grit his teeth. No. This year was not Minus 17444. Nor was it Minus 18944. The Guild was strictly neutral, which meant that all dates were adding up from some past salvation recalled by the sacerdotes, not counting down to the future salvation anticipated by cliohistorians. He dared not make a gaffe like that, showing favor to one side or the other, even in his thinking, lest he say or send something in an unnoticed moment damaging to the Guild. Killing men was excusable; slips of the tongue were not.
The other option was that this squire was not old, but young. He had been hatched out of some Fox Maiden’s cloning egg an hour ago. If he were too young to have seen clothing before, that explained his staring at the cloak. Also, if he were too young to have permanent structures in his brain, that explained his too-quick adjustment to his vertigo. This was a man with no family and no past, loaded with the earthman equivalent of brashness, the magnetic personality of a bravo. Another expendable. And that meant only one thing. Failure did not mean anything so sweet as being turned over to the seculars.
“So, Squire End Ragon! Is the plan that you kill me if I fail?”
Norbert, who thought he had this man pegged, was astounded. The man’s startled look, the change in his eye, in his stance, was so honest, spontaneous, and unprepared, that nothing could have convinced Norbert more deeply.
The squire was not just angry, he was offended. His sense of honor was wounded.
The man drew his sidearm and presented it to Norbert butt first, and at the same time sunk to one knee. “Many a cruel and untoward thing have I done in my life, and slain men both guilty and innocent as need required, but never in any underhanded way. I do not shoot foes in the back, nor without warning, nor without affording them time to pack their pistol, nor without witnesses! Do I shoot men like dogs? That would make me less than a dog! Shoot me with my own piece, drive a stake through my corpse and bury it at the crossroad, far from sacred ground, if that is the opinion my commanding officer has formed of me within the first few moments of my duty. Shoot me now, or never doubt me again, my lord!”