So, on this issue, the crew are on the same side as the ship generation.
The Destiny II virtualities became an arena of that conflict of interest. Remember I warned that we would get very frustrated without something to channel our energies and urge to explore? The virtualities were on the way to becoming just that: we were all slacking off on our projects and exploring Destiny II. It’s not just that the founders want us immersed in virtualities until the bat people are set on some kind of stable path. It’s not just cynical. By understanding the bat people and the planet in more depth, we’d be better prepared to contact them, communicate with them, and if necessary intervene when the time came to do so. Who knows how long that would be — years? decades? But until then, the founders want to avoid contact, and any too obvious activity in the system, at almost any cost.
Some well-placed people in the crew, I suspect, have done their best to rock this.
What I can’t understand is why they summoned Horrocks to the jury, unless they knew he’d leak the proceedings — the real ones — and wanted him to do so. They must want the founders and the Council to know. Why?
Send me your ideas.
14 365:05:26 00:00
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14 — The Extraordinary and Remarkable Ship
In the third outer-month after the turning of the year, in the early spring, a ship flying the golden lizard pennant of the Southern Rule sailed up the Broad Channel from the west. It made port first at Low Lassir, the great harbour of Gevork, linked by river to its inland capital; then after three days of lading and unlading tacked across the channel and — somewhat to the surprise of informed observers — made for the jetty at the mouth of Long Finger River at Five Ravines.
Among the low barges, grubby coalers, and gay sailboats that shared that backwater, the ship stood out like a lordly roost above stables. Its steam engine gave off little smoke, and its propulsion churned the sea at greater depth than any known propeller. Its sails rose bright and white in odd-angled but harmonious shapes, like pieces of a geometric puzzle. Though its hull and superstructure were wooden, and its paint gaudy, its lines displayed something of the elegance of a leaping fish and the camber of a well-poised wing. As soon as its topmast rose above the horizon it attracted attention; by the time its hull was in full view it was an indispensable sight for anyone with the least pretension to being abreast of events; and when it sailed in to the harbour it had almost as many adult sightseers circling its masts at a respectful and admiring distance as it had screaming kits chasing the sea flitters that followed in its wake.
Before it had hove to, an eager crowd lined the jetty. Every merchant of drugs and spices in town had sent at least a boy with a list and a line of scrip; ladies and gentlemen of fashion hastened to the quay in hope of fine ribbons, bright buckles, keen blades, and grotesque belts; reporters from the local press came in search of distant news and outlandish opinion; draughtsmen from the cheaper journals did not scruple to snatch the sheets of newsprint in which the wares were wrapped, and steal from their coloured woodcuts inspiration; students and scholars sought exotica and erotica. Few in that crowd were disappointed, and fewer still noticed a member of the ship’s company balance on the rail, peer this way and that, check a bearing with tilted eye and levelled compass and an investigative sniff at the air, then take deliberate wing to the university quarter.
Darvin watched the students who had attended his lecture swirl skyward, shuffled his notes together, and sighed. Most of the students might have understood his presentation of the method of estimating stellar distances by parallax, but he was certain that some would not. A few essays would come his way explaining that it was done by looking at stars through binoculars and closing one eye at a time. He switched off the projector, stuffed his notes in his belt pouch, and began clambering up the expanding concentric rings of the lecture tower. He didn’t have the energy to take a running jump into the air.
The winter months had been trying. Since the collapse of the contact he had not been called upon to do anything for Project Signal. Debarred from publicising his only-significant discovery, the Object, Darvin had lost enthusiasm for his search for the hypothetical outer planet. That research project falling fallow, he’d turned more of his time over to teaching. It was a measure of his avoidance of contention that he conducted, not advanced seminars with his peers who might have shown interest in his own work, but lectures to novice students. Their reminders of himself a few years earlier irritated and depressed him.
Orro, on the other wing, had spent half his time away on aeronautical research, at some distant strip in the desert. On his returns to the university he’d been too preoccupied with catching up with his teaching — about which he was conscientious — to say much, even of the little the project’s secrecy permitted. Once, after a second or third stumblefruit, he had confessed to feeling burdened by the deaths of two test pilots in flying machines of his design. He understood perfectly the moral logic of his innocence: he had given the designs his best, the pilots were enthusiastic volunteers who knew the risks, and they were all working at the limits of the known; but he could not shake off the sense of culpability. The lucid imperatives of civil and indeed military ethics warred in his conscience with the gallant, foolish ethos of the sabreur.
Halfway up the slope of circular rails Darvin clutched with his feet, leaned forward, and launched off. He swooped, then climbed, and flitted out between the lip of the pit and its canopy. As soon as he was out of the tower’s shadowy interior, with the sun on his face and the fresh wind rushing through his fur, he felt better. As he banked towards the Faculty of Impractical Sciences he spotted a new and tall ship down at the quay. He guessed from its lines that it was a Southern Rule ship, and then noted with satisfaction the long triangle of the banner that confirmed his guess: green, with a gold wavy line that he couldn’t make out in detail at this distance, but knew to represent a stylised lizard, symbolic of the Southern Rule’s vaunted antiquity. He made a mental note to visit it later, and dived to the department’s ledge.
Outside his office door a stranger waited. The man wore bright beads on the bristles of his ears and a belt made from the linked scales of some gigantic grazer around his hips. Within the belt was stuffed a curved scabbard, from which projected a chased handle. Around his neck hung a broad leather satchel, its lower corners secured by coloured tapes to the belt. Spider-silk ribbons were knotted below his knees. Silver sheathed his toe-claws. As Darvin approached he raised his arms and erected his wings in an excess of welcome.
“Do I have the honour,” he asked in flawless but accented Selohic, “of the presence of the renowned astronomer Darvin of Five Ravines?”
Darvin stopped before the stranger and spread his own hands. “You flatter my fame beyond all reason, sir, but I am Darvin.”
The stranger pressed his palm against Darvin’s. “My name is Lenoen, sky-watcher to the superlunary survey of the court of Narr, a province of the land you call the Southern Rule and we” — at this point he smiled — “call the Roost of Man.”