One team appeared to my right.
“Lao Xun, forward!”
Xun stepped forward. The Security specialists aimed scanners and analyzers at him.
The head analyst nodded. “To the right. Wait there.”
“ChoWang, forward!”
I stepped forward. The analyzers took minute samples from the backs of my wrists and cheeks and neck. The only weak points for my visible body parts were my eyes themselves, but the politics of scanning eyes had limited DNA sampling there and retinal scans.
“Clear. Step to the right.”
I formed up next to Lao Xun. Neither of us spoke.
For the next two hours, the Security specialists scanned everything and everyone. The scans were not only for DNA, but for internal weapons. The scans showed that I was ChoWang and that I had no internal weapons or anomalies. That was as it should have been.
All I had to do was to remain calm and carry out the duties of the Guard I had removed and replaced. To do itherwise would have called attention to who I was, and would have been as fatal to me as my nanodarts had been to the First Advocate.
Another two standard hours—and two more screenings—passed before we were dismissed and confined to quarters. This mission had been completed satisfactorily. Getting back to New Zion would be tedious, but not a real problem.
While the universe might suspect that the Council of Twelve had decreed the First Advocate’s death, no proof of my actions or identity could be traced to the Council. Even if I were caught, the automatics would ensure no evidence would remain, and that was another reason why I planned most carefully. If that fail-safe had not existed, the results would have been catastrophically embarrassing to the Council.
In some senses, an operative’s easiest tasks were the missions. In working for the Council, the members and their personal crusaders were more dangerous to you than the operatives of other governments.
As I waited for the opportunity to leave the barracks, I couldn’t help but wonder what the next assignment would be.
SEEKING
1
Fitzhugh
At times, every professor believes that his classroom represents the abnegation of intelligence, if not absolute abiosis. This feeling has been universewide since long before the Tellurian Diaspora. Lughday was no exception, especially not for my fourth-period class, Historical Trends 1001, the introductory course, one of the core requirements for undergraduates.
I walked through the door into the small amphitheatre classroom and toward the dais. Forty bodies sat waiting in four tiers, arrayed in a semicircle—all avoiding my scrutiny. At times such as the one before me, I could only wish that the university did not require all full professors to teach one introductory course every year, at a bare minimum. I’d drawn fourth period—right after lunch, and that made it even more of a challenge.
I stationed myself behind the podium, the representation of a practice significantly untransformed in almost ten thousand recorded years of human history—and for the last five, savants and pedants had prognosticated the decline of personal- and physical-presence classroom instruction. Yet in all instances where such ill-considered experimentation in technologically based pedagogical methodology had been attempted in an effort to replace what had worked, if imperfectly, the outcomes and the ramifications had ranged from social catastrophe to unmitigated disaster, even as my predecessors in pedagogy had predicted such eventualities.
Technology and implementation had never constituted the difficulty, but rather the genetic and physiological strengths and limitations of human cognitive and learning patterns. From a historical perspective, successful technological applications are those that enhance human capacities, not those that force humans into prestructured technological niches or functions.
As I cleared my throat and stepped to the podium, the murmurs died away. I glanced down at the shielded screen before picking a name, smiling politely, and speaking. “Scholar Finzel, please identify the single most critical aspect of the events leading to the Sunnite-Covenanter Conflagration of 3237.”
“Ser?” Finzel offered a blank look.
For the second class of the first semester, blank looks were not exactly infrequent, not for beginning students, especially for those from nonshielded continents or from the occasional off-planet scholar. “I realize neolatry precludes your interest in matters of past history, but since the Conflagration resulted in the devastation of Meath, extensive damage to the Celtic worlds of the Comity, and significant taxation increases for the entire Comity, and since bom the Covenanters and the Alliance have continued to rearm and rebuild their fleets, with a continued hostility exemplified most recently by the so-called pacification of the Mazarene systems and the forcible annexation of the Walden Libracracy…”
That not-so-gentle reminder did not remove the expression of incomprehension, but only added one of veiled hostility. I used the screen to check his background. As I’d vaguely recalled, he was from Ulster, where he could have netlinked and been provided the answer.
“Scholar Finzel,” I said politely, “Gregory is a shielded continent, and the university is a shielded institution. You are expected to read the texts before class. For some reason, you seem unable to comprehend this basic requirement. I suggest you remedy the situation before the next class.” I turned to a student with a modicum of interest in her eyes. “Scholar MacAfee?”
“According to Robertson Janes, ser, there were two linked causes of the Conflagration. The first was the malfunction of the communications linkages of the Covenanter fleet command, and the second was the widespread perception among the population of the Alliance worlds that the Covenanters intended to spread a nanogenevims that would transform all herbivores into hogs.” A hint of a smile crossed Scholar MacAfee’s lips.
“You’re in the general area,” I replied, “but I don’t believe that Janes said the Covenanter fleet’s command communications malfunctioned. Do you recall exactly what he wrote?”
MacAfee frowned.
“Anyone else?”
“Ser?” The tentative voice was that of Ariel Leanore, a dark-haired young woman who looked more like a girl barely into seminary, rather than at university.
“Yes?”
“I think… didn’t he write something… it was more like… the expectations of instantaneous response resulted in the ill-considered reprisal on Hajj Majora… and that reprisal made the Sunnis so angry that they passed the legislation funding the High Caliph’s declaration of Jihad. There were rumors about the Spear of Iblis, but those were noncausal…” Leanore paused, her voice trailing away.
“Very good, Scholar Leanore.” I stopped and surveyed the faces, seeing that most of them still hadn’t grasped the impact of Janes’s words. “The expectations of instantaneous response… what does that mean?”
All forty faces were blank with the impermeability of incomprehension. When I had been in the service, I had believed that such an expression was limited to those of less-than-advanced intelligence. The years in academia had convinced me that it appeared upon the visages of all too many individuals in the adolescent and postadolescent years, regardless of innate intelligence or the lack thereof.
“What it means…” I drew out the words. “… is that instantaneous communications and control preclude the opportunity for considered thought and reflection. The Covenanter command had the ability to order and carry out an immediate reprisal. They did so. They did not think about the fact that the Covenanter trading combines on Hajj Majora had, within the terms of their culture, acted responsibly against those Covenanters who had manipulated the terms of exchange in a manner that could be most charitably described as fraud.” I cleared my throat There are definite disadvantages to auditory lectures, especially without even sonic boosting, but my discomfort was irrelevant to those who had enacted the shielding compact “Now that you know that, why did I initially suggest that there was only one critical aspect to these events?”