"Then we must hear of him!" Cordelia settled herself for a long listen.
"If it is absolutely necessary…"
"Why dost thou hesitate?" Magnus frowned, puzzled. "What harm is there in telling us of him?"
"Ought we not to know of all our ancestors?" Cordelia demanded.
"There are some aspects of family history that should perhaps wait until you are more mature."
"Oh, pooh," Cordelia retorted, and Magnus concurred. "An we are old enough to have witnessed lords who have broke faith with their king and rebelled, we are old enough to know the truth of our own family."
"There is some merit in that, I suppose…"
"What fun is there in hearing only good of our ancestors?" Cordelia demanded.
"She speaketh truly," Magnus averred. "Wouldst thou have us believe our forebears were wax figures?"
"Oh, they were all quite human, Magnus. It is only that in some cases…"
"Some were more human than others?"
"You might say so, yes."
"Yet accuracy is of the greatest import," Gregory pointed out."
"Aye!" Cordelia leaped on it. "Is not the truth thy prime criterion?"
"No, frankly, Cordelia—in my program, loyalty to my owners is primary."
"Thy current owner will not mind thy speaking the truth of thy former owners," Magnus pointed out.
"There is some validity to that," Fess said reluctantly. He was remembering how Rod had taken him to task when he had poked around in the family library and learned some of the facts about those ancestors that Fess hadn't told him.
"And there is the matter of loyalty to thy future owner," Magnus added.
"Which will be yourself, since you are the eldest."
Magnus blithely ignored Geoffrey's glare. "Thus, thy present owner careth not, and thy future owner doth desire thee to tell. Ought thou not to speak?"
Fess capitulated. "Very well, children. But remember, if you find your relationship with the subject of this tale distasteful, that you required me to tell it.
"We shall not reproach thee," Cordelia assured him.
"But an archway at the base of a tower cannot stand, Ruthven.''
" 'Milord,' Fess," Ruthven said sternly. "I am noble now."
"But the Assembly…"
"The Assembly will no doubt grant my request at its next meeting. After all, it raised Joshua Otis to Marquis, only last week; it surely can have no reason not to bestow a like title upon me."
Silently, Fess sighed and carefully did not point out that the Assembly had no particular reason to grant Ruthven's request, either. If the factory business department had not been automated, d'Armand Limited would have gone bankrupt from sheer neglect.
Not that the House of d'Armand would have fallen. Quite the opposite, in fact. Ruthven seemed to spend all his time building.
"Of course the tower will stand."
"How, milord?"
Ruthven waved the question away. "A minor detail. See to it, Fess."
The robot sighed within and focused its lenses on the blueprints. Perhaps a judicious use of gravity generators… On a low-gravity asteroid, there was no concern about the tower falling down… But if there was too little of it, it might fall apart from centripedal force.
"How dare they!" Ruthven stormed, jamming his helmet at Fess. "How can they have the effrontery to be so insolent!" He yanked at the seals of his pressure suit so hard that the fabric ripped. He saw the gaping rent, and cursed all the more loudly.
"Ruthven, please!" His wife came running with apprehensive glances. "The children…"
"They had damned well better be at lessons in their nursery, madame, or I shall bid Fess cane them!" Ruthven yanked his arms out of the pressure suit, relying on Fess to catch the sleeves in time, and pulled his feet out of the legs as he stepped forward. "The degraded peasants!"
"Ruthven!" his wife gasped. "Your own children?"
"Not the children, you goose! The Assembly!"
"What… Oh!" Matilda's eyes widened. "Did they refuse your patent of nobility?"
"No—much worse! They raised me to the rank of…" Ruthven's voice sank to a hiss. "… Viscount!"
"Viscount! Oh, how dare they! One cannot be lower, and still be a peer!"
"Precisely." Ruthven threw himself into a lounger and pushed the "medium massage" button. "I shall be revenged upon them! I shall humiliate them! How, I do not know—but the time will come, will come for each of them!"
"At least," Fess offered, "you are now legally a lord."
"But only barely a lord, you officious ingrate!" Ruthven shouted. "How dare you address me as 'you'? Do you not know a more respectful form of address?"
"But… my program indicates no flaw in etiquette…"
"Then it shall!" the new Viscount thundered. "You shall learn, sirrah, you shall be educated! I shall buy the module today!"
Castle Gallowglass rose far above its humble beginnings in a maze of towers joined in vaulting arches, a fairytale concoction of metallic traceries and onion domes and gargoyles.
It was a mess.
It was a hodgepodge of periods and styles of architecture, all jumbled together without rationale or critical standard. Somewhere beneath the festoons of rococo plasticrete, the original, classic simplicity of Lona's tranquil palace gathered in upon itself—but the casual passerby would never know it was there. What he would see was the most disgusting example of nouveau riche lack of taste Fess had ever seen—and after a hundred fifty years of contemplating the handiwork of the Maximans, that was saying quite a bit.
Not that he could say it, of course—not about his owner's masterpiece. His new programming had seen to that.
"How could they possibly have denied me!"
"I'm sorry, milord, I'm sorry." Fess's judgment circuits produced massive reluctance at the sound of his own words. "The College of Heralds of Europe says that another family's been using that coat of arms of three lions quartered with fleur-de-lis, for many generations."
"Then they may forfeit the device! How much do they want for it?"
Inwardly, Fess shriveled, but his vocoder said, "Oh, no, sorry, milord boss! Coats of arms simply can't be bought!"
"Don't say 'can't' to me!" Ruthven raged. "They have no right to that device, I tell you—because I want it!"
"Well, certainly, milord boss, but that doesn't mean there is any way we can get it."
"There must be a way! Confound it, find a way to gain a coat of arms!" Ruthven stalked away toward the bar.
Fess sighed and rolled off toward the library to plug himself into the data banks. He knew very well that no family would be willing to give up its coat of arms, and that the College of Heralds would not honor such a transaction even if it could be made. The answer, of course, lay in designing a device that Ruthven would accept, and that was not already in use.
"A wonderful design." Ruthven beamed at the drawing. "It says so much."
"Yes, milord boss." Fess knew quite well that the device said only what the viewer read into it. It was nothing but the silhouette of a man with girded loins, a cloak, and a staff in his hand, standing with one foot atop some nameless geological formation, facing toward the left, but with his back mostly toward the viewer. Nonetheless, it was silver on a field of blue, so he knew Ruthven would like it.
"A masterpiece! Am I not a genius?"
"Yes sir, boss milord. No, boss mi—uh, yes, milord!"
"Architecture, fine letters, now design—there are no limits to my talents! Surely the College of Heralds cannot deny me now!"
"No sir, boss milord." That, Fess could say with conviction—because he had examined the records of the College thoroughly, then sent off the sketch by fax as soon as it was finished. He hadn't shown it to Ruthven until the College had sent back preliminary approval.
"None must deny me anything." Ruthven patted his stomach, which had grown steadily with the years and was approaching critical mass. "There is none like me!"