“Only the outer worlds?”
“So far, yes. It’s very difficult for us to get reliable data.”
“Are you saying that they’ve closed the frontier to the Order?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. There’s still free transit to every colony, and chapels everywhere. But the reports from the outer worlds are growing increasingly mysterious and bizarre. What we’ve decided is that we’re going to have to send an Emissary Plenipotentiary to some of the rebel worlds to get the real story.”
“A spy, you mean?”
“A spy? No. Not a spy. A teacher. A guide. A prophet, if you will. One who can bring them back to the true path.” Guardiano shakes his head. “I have to tell you that all this disturbs me profoundly, this repudiation of Darklaw, these apparent breaches of the plan. It begins to occur to me—though I know the Master would have me strung up for saying any such thing—that we may have been in error from the beginning.” He gives me a conspiratorial look. I smile encouragingly. He goes on, “I mean, this whole elitist approach of ours, the Order maintaining its monopoly over the mechanism of matter transmission, the Order deciding who will go to the stars and who will not, the Order attempting to create new worlds in our own image—” He seems to be talking half to himself. “Well, apparently it hasn’t worked, has it? Do I dare say it? They’re living just as they please, out there. We can’t control them at long range. Your own personal tragedy is testimony to that. And yet, and yet—to think that we would be in such a shambles, and that a Lord Magistrate would be compelled to resign, and go into exile—exile, yes, that’s what it is!—”
“Please,” I say. His ramblings are embarrassing; and painful, too, for there may be seeds of truth in them. “What’s over is over. All I want now is to live out my years quietly among the people of the Order on this world. Just tell me how I can be of use. Any work at all, even the simplest—”
“A waste, your grace. An absolute shameful waste.”
“Please.”
He fills my glass for the fourth or fifth time. A crafty look has come into his eyes. “You would accept any assignment I give you?”
“Yes. Anything.”
“Anything?” he says.
I see myself sweeping the chapel house stairs, polishing sinks and tables, working in the garden on my knees.
“Even if there is risk?” he says. “Discomfort?”
“Anything.”
He says, “You will be our Plenipotentiary, then.”
There are two suns in the sky here, but they are not at all like Cuchulain’s two, and the frosty air has a sharp sweet sting to it that is like nothing I have ever tasted before, and everything I see is haloed by a double shadow, a rim of pale red shading into deep, mysterious azure. It is very cold in this place. I am fourteen light-years from Earth.
A woman is watching me from just a few meters away. She says something I am unable to understand.
“Can you speak Anglic?” I reply.
“Anglic. All right.” She gives me a chilly, appraising look. “What are you? Some kind of priest?”
“I was Lord Magistrate of the House of Senders, yes.”
“Where?”
“Earth.”
“On Earth? Really?”
I nod. “What is the name of this world?”
“Let me ask the questions,” she says. Her speech is odd, not so much a foreign accent as a foreign intonation, a curious singsong, vaguely menacing. Standing face to face just outside the Velde station, we look each other over. She is thick-shouldered, deep-chested, with a flat-featured face, close-cropped yellow hair, green eyes, a dusting of light red freckles across her heavy cheekbones. She wears a heavy blue jacket, fringed brown leggings, blue leather boots, and she is armed. Behind her I see a muddy road cut through a flat snowy field, some low rambling metal buildings with snow piled high on their roofs, and a landscape of distant jagged towering mountains whose sharp black spires are festooned with double-shadowed glaciers. An icy wind rips across the flat land. We are a long way from those two suns, the fierce blue-white one and its cooler crimson companion. Her eyes narrow and she says, “Lord Magistrate, eh? The House of Senders. Really?”
“This was my cloak of office. This medallion signified my rank in the Order.”
“I don’t see them.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“You have no rank here. You hold no office here.”
“Of course,” I say. “I realize that. Except such power as Darklaw confers on me.”
“Darklaw?”
I stare at her in some dismay. “Am I beyond the reach of Darklaw so soon?”
“It’s not a word I hear very often. Shivering, are you? You come from a warmer place?”
“Earth,” I say. “South Australia. It’s warm there, yes.”
“Earth. South Australia.” She repeats the words as though they are mere noises to her. “We have some Earthborn here, still. Not many. They’ll be glad to see you, I suppose. The name of this world is Zima.”
“Zima.” A good strong sound. “What does that mean?”
“Mean?”
“The name must mean something. This planet wasn’t named Zima just because someone liked the way it sounded.”
“Can’t you see why?” she asks, gesturing toward the far-off ice-shrouded mountains.
“I don’t understand.”
“Anglic is the only language you speak?”
“I know some Espanol and some Deutsch.”
She shrugs. “Zima is Russkiye. It means Winter.”
“And this is wintertime on Winter?”
“It is like this all the year round. And so we call the world Zima.”
“Zima,” I say. “Yes.”
“We speak Russkiye here, mostly, though we know Anglic too. Everybody knows Anglic, everywhere in the Dark. It is necessary. You really speak no Russkiye?”
“Sorry.”
“Ty shto, s pizdy sarvalsa?” she says, staring at me.
I shrug and am silent.
“Bros’ dumat’ zhopay!”
I shake my head sadly.
“Idi v zhopu!”
“No,” I say. “Not a word.”
She smiles, for the first time. “I believe you.”
“What were you saying to me in Russkiye?”
“Very abusive things. I will not tell you what they were. If you understood, you would have become very angry. They were filthy things, mockery. At least you would have laughed, hearing such vile words. I am named Marfa Ivanovna. You must talk with the boyars. If they think you are a spy, they will kill you.”
I try to hide my astonishment, but I doubt that I succeed. Kill? What sort of world have we built here? Have these Zimans reinvented the middle ages?
“You are frightened?” she asks.
“Surprised,” I say.”
“You should lie to them, if you are a spy. Tell them you come to bring the Word of God, only. Or something else that is harmless. I like you. I would not want them to kill you.”
A spy? No. As Guardiano would say, I am a teacher, a guide, a prophet, if you will. Or as I myself would say, I am a pilgrim, one who seeks atonement, one who seeks forgiveness.
“I’m not a spy, Marfa Ivanovna,” I say.
“Good. Good. Tell them that.” She puts her fingers in her mouth and whistles piercingly, and three burly bearded men in fur jackets appear as though rising out of the snowbanks. She speaks with them a long while in Russkiye. Then she turns to me. “These are the boyars Ivan Dimitrovich, Pyotr Pyotrovich, and Ivan Pyotrovich. They will conduct you to the voivode Ilya Alexandrovich, who will examine you. You should tell the voivode the truth.”
“Yes,” I say. “What else is there to tell?”
Guardiano had told me before I left Cuchulain, of course, that the world I was going to had been settled by emigrants from Russia. It was one of the first to be colonized, in the early years of the Mission. One would expect our Earthly ways to begin dropping away, and something like an indigenous culture to have begun evolving, in that much time. But I am startled, all the same, by how far they have drifted. At least Marfa Ivanova—who is, I imagine, a third-generation Ziman—knows what Darklaw is. But is it observed? They have named their world Winter, at any rate, and not New Russia or New Moscow or something like that, which Darklaw would have forbidden. The new worlds in the stars must not carry such Earthly baggage with them. But whether they follow any of the other laws, I cannot say. They have reverted to their ancient language here, but they know Anglic as well, as they should. The robe of the Order means something to her, but not, it would seem, a great deal. She speaks of spies, of killing. Here at the outset of my journey I can see already that there will be many surprises for me as I make my way through the Dark.