“I tell you the Judge of Ages will never die, and he stands and hears what you say, even in secret, and he weighs your words in his judgment! Shall he not condemn this generation and this age in which we live if we betray the oaths we serve?”
The Aedile said, “Speak not to me of oaths! You were ready enough to promise whatever was needed to arrange the ship would fall past and be lost forever in the night! You merely seek to save yourself.”
“As do you, cousin,” said the Castigator coldly.
“Would you put yourself before our clan and class? We are Pilgrims! You are an Eventide! We share a grandfather! We lose everything if that ship makes port!”
“Sir, with respect, since the very same minute just before the Lord Hermeticist entered, we all busily agreeing to put our clan and class before our world and our duty, and pelting dire threats against anyone here who opposed us or threatened to tell the multitudes, you have no right to speak to me this way!”
“I’ll speak as I like, jackanape!”
“Then speak quickly: if you can think of a way I can avoid calling up the Angels of Retribution, I will serve you. But I will not sacrifice my soul for you.”
“You are afraid.”
“With good reason. The Order of Ktenological Castigation and Reprimand is not a weak and pleasant order like that of the Aediles, you who sit on cushions of velvet, counting coins of gold. Do you know what the penalty is if I, as the head of the order, were to betray my oath? Do you remember what it is those who dwell, undying, the House of Most Silent Excruciation, once were allowed—and on this world—to do with their arts? Can you imagine what would be done to every thought and memory in the mind? The Infliction would start with the memories of my children. Seat the Lord Hermeticist, or I call the Angel!”
The signal ended at that moment.
8. An Outside Power
The ugly man put his mask near Vigil and spoke aloud, but softly, “That was not a good sign. Some outside mind cut me off, something smarter than an Archangel and more cunning than a Fox.”
Vigil whispered back, “It is the Potentate. Torment slew my father and seeks to have the ship fail.”
“The hell you say.”
“I do not know what that means.”
“It means why didn’t you say this before?”
“I could not share my danger with you. My death will be glorious in memory should the Potentate break her oaths and trifle with human affairs! But you are not a—”
Vigil paused, astonished. He had been about to say that the affairs of the Stability of Man were no concern of this janitor, but then it burst upon him that the man, despite his humble station, was indeed a member of the Order. Even the lowest-ranked servant or prentice must have taken the same oath as the Aedile himself.
Vigil said, “I am proud to share my fate with you.”
Oddly enough, the man called Cricket was not listening. He was speaking softly and quickly to himself. “Torment wants the ship dead? Well, that makes a whole bunch of fog clouds up and blew away. Here I thought it was Blackie behind all this. He is not in the picture? For once? That is a change. I must be getting paranoid, losing my mind like everyone always says. Is Torment pulling the strings and yanking my chain? Hey! Quick! What did she say? She talk to you herself?”
“Who is Blah Key?”
“You first. What does Torment want? All this time, I thought—”
But at that moment, trumpets blared. It was the Docking Fanfare. The Aedile Eventide raised his hands in the ancient gesture, tapping his ear and pointing his thumb toward the ceiling with one hand. The other he extended toward Vigil, palm turned inward, fingers curled, beckoning. Signal good. Approach.
In a voice dead, defeated, and dispirited, Eligius Eventide, Lord Aedile and First Speaker, addressed him with the needed words, “If the Commensal Spacefarer most recently revenant from heaven will be pleased when called upon to give aid, advice, and comfort to the best of your knowledge and ability, and to do all other lawful things requested for the welfare of the futurity we plan and guide and guard, this Table will take cognizance of you. Will you hear, and will you remember to act for the good of the Loyal and Self-Correctional Order of Prognostic Actuarial Cliometric Stability to the exclusion of all other interests, oaths, and loyalties, to do all in your power to ensure and confirm the Launching and the Arrivals of the Starfaring Vessels, according as the Great Schedule commands and foretells, never to betray the principles on which the Table rests?”
“I swear and I remember.” Vigil’s heart thundered with pride. His father had taught him the several variations of this ceremony, and he knew the next words before they were spoken: Then assume the duties and perquisites, and take lawful place prepared.
“Then assume the duties and perquisites, and take your arms and lawful place prepared.”
Vigil hesitated, fearing some legalism hiding a trap. But the demeanor of the Aedile was too desperate and crestfallen to be inauthentic. He knew his treason was discovered, his plans were ruined, his rank and perhaps his life were soon to be taken from him. Why had the words take your arms been added?
The steward stepped forward and bowed, extending his hands. Vigil assumed that if he made a mistake of protocol now, he would again be expelled from the Table.
The man Cricket came to his rescue, leaning his head close and whispering, “Hand him your toy sword, and go take the real sword from the lap of Tellus.”
Vigil surrendered his blade to the steward and stepped over toward the statue representing the Potentate of Mother Earth. He saw now that there was indeed a sword in a white scabbard there, long and straight and cross-hilted.
The dazzle of the jacinth and chrysoberyl adorning the tasseled hilts for a moment almost blinded him, until he realized that tears had entered his eyes, both of mourning for his father and of solemnity for the duty he was about to perform, the greatest mass execution in history. He commanded a lesser internal to reabsorb the tears quickly and to force his mind to maintain an unwavering emotional deportment. He felt an almost physical jolt of clarity, as potent as uncut wine, but with the effect of clearing rather than clouding his wits.
Details he had overlooked were now pellucid. He had not seen it move, but the stone hand of the Mother Earth figure, which a moment before had been clasping the scabbard, was open and the fingers held in a gesture representing a prayer for wisdom. Her watchful eyes were bent on him, and all the massy weight of Earthly history was behind them, a history of blood and suffering. The statue was telling him to fear the power of the sword and draw it prudently and with discretion.
Only then did he understand what this sword really was.
It explained why the words had been added: for his father must have foreseen his own fate at the hands of Torment and trusted not to take this great sword out into the world where she ruled. Only in here, the Palace of Future History, did the laws of the universe, and not of any one planet, hold sway.
Vigil picked it up but did not put it to his belt. The weight of the thing was no greater than that of a normal sword, but at the same time, the weight was terrible, and in his hand he thought he could feel the sheathed blade trembling as if with an unspent mudra of world-eclipsing magnitude.
He heard a noise behind him. The siege of the Lord Hermeticist had pulled itself back from the table and welcomed him.
He stepped over the dead body of the man he had slain and past the body of the next, fully aware of the countless numbers of all races so soon to follow, and he sat.
His counselor, Cricket, stepped behind him and spoke, “I yield the balance of my time to the Lord Hermeticist for his comment on the meaning of these events.”