“Not a problem,” Martinez assured her at last. “Ming and I are sort of in the same business.” He turned, and Angel was startled to see a formally dressed and quite officious-looking maitre d’. “There will be three for dinner now,” he told the majordomo.
“Very well. Please come this way,” the maitre d’ said in a thin, upper-crust voice, and led them to a quiet table, pulling out the chairs for each of them and lighting the atmospheric period lamp. He then put down three old-fashioned printed menus. “Your waiter will be with you shortly,” he told them, and left.
Angel was startled. “People just to seat you in a restaurant? Am I showing how primitive I’ve been living, or is this truly unusual?”
Ming laughed. “Not really. There are a number of worlds where it’s still the norm, but most of the expensive and classy places, and pretend classy places, are more like this. It’s actually all holographic. You could walk right through him if you really wanted to. It’s kind of pretend service over the usual automation.”
“I see,” she responded, somewhat disappointed. Not that she hadn’t had a lot of human table service, but it had usually been in dumps and in backwater situations where automation of this level, when available, was usually five years out of whack and in bad need of repair. Well, much of what was fun in this life was in the imagination.
The menus certainly felt real, and looked real. Hers seemed tailor-made for her own likes, dislikes, prohibitions, and requirements. No animal matter of any kind, synthetic or not, and a wide variety of veggie, rice, and sauce-heavy dishes including curries, with juices and herbal teas. Ari Martinez’s menu, while apparently identical, appeared from his ruminations aloud to be heavy on steaks and fine wines, while Ming’s seemed to have a lot of egg and seafood dishes and elaborate salads. Out of curiosity, after all three had put down their menus, Angel reached over, picked up Ming’s menu and looked through it.
It listed the same dishes as her menu had.
“Caught them in their little trick, huh?” Ming chuckled.
So even the menus were careful illusions. “In this kind of controlled atmosphere, it’s going to be next to impossible to figure out just who and what’s really there,” she responded.
“But that’s the trick,” Ari commented. “Magic shows are far more fun when they are so well done you cannot catch them working the show. The best way is to simply take everything at face value in an environment like this and just enjoy it. We’ll be back in the real universe soon enough.”
A waiter out of a classic movie took their orders, almost certainly a hologram as well, but as Ari had said, it didn’t matter.
“I can’t help noticing the winged cross on the hexagon,” Ming said to her, curious. “I am not familiar with this symbol. Might I ask the order?”
“I am of the Tannonites,” she told them. “It is a very Old Order denomination but it is not well known. It does not go back like so many to old Earth times, but evolved on Katenea, one of the early colonies. It is basically Christian, but there are elements of many ancient faiths in it as well, including some that are from other races. Our goal is to synthesize the One Truth out of the Many, and to do that we no longer have a home, as it were.”
“Sounds like you travel as much as we do,” Ari replied. “We’re management consultants. Not, I might add, from the same company, but we do basically the same thing. We go to the various enterprises our companies run that are having problems, and we try and determine what the cause of those problems might be and to find fixes for them. Nine out of ten times it winds up that we have to discover and weed out an incompetent or nest of incompetents somewhere in management.”
“Ninety out of a hundred,” Ming added. “And all but a tiny speck of the rest turn out to be downright crookedness. It’s quite a fascinating business, really. Sort of like being a detective, only the solution may be far different than simply discovering that it was the butler with the knife in the living room.”
“I should think it would be fascinating,” Angel responded.
“And not nearly so dangerous as tracking down genuine nasties.”
“Oh, we’ve had our share of nasties,” Ari assured her. “I would say that someone’s tried to push me off a balcony or crack me up or some such, oh, maybe on the average of once a year since I started. I think Ming’s average is similar.”
“About that,” she agreed. “The thing that saves you most times is that it always has to look like the perfect accident. Otherwise you’ll just get the real cops plus a lot more people like us showing up, and they’ll find the same thing and generally run down the bad guys. But, it is true, the real challenge is that they are often quite clever and will try and lead you to the wrong person or group or around in circles. Still, it beats sitting in an office somewhere.”
Maybe it did, but they sounded to Angel like two private detectives doing their job for money and the good life rather than out of a sense of service. Still, she wasn’t going to judge them. At least what they did resulted in good; mercenaries could have their uses.
As the food started to come, the conversation turned back to her.
“You say that your denomination has no home?” Ari asked, curious.
“Not anymore,” she told them. “We grew inward on our home world over the years, and very insular, cut off from the rest of society. That was not why God caused us to exist, and it did us very little good except to breed a kind of local colony that was in danger of straying or atrophying. God had no other way to kick us in the backside and get us into action on our true mission, so He caused our sun to go nova.”
That was a meal stopper. “I beg your pardon?” Ming and Ari almost said as one.
“Oh, there were enough warning signs that we knew it was coming. The whole planet had to be evacuated. In a way, it was a shame, since it was quite rich and quite beautiful, but we would never have gone otherwise. This was long ago, you understand. Centuries. I have only seen the pictures, which are kept by the Elders. It was the Patriarch and Elders of that time who received from God the divine commission, and since then we have had no home. Wherever we are is our home, and we take with us that which we need. I was born on a far-off world inhabited by a race not unlike the Rithians, which is why I think I get along with them so well. When I was eight my birthmother sent me to the nearest convent for formal education. These are small affairs that are actually attached to space stations like the one we were just on. In fact, I just visited the Asswam sisterhood. That’s where I stayed until this ship arrived.”
“Funny. I’m in and out of space stations all the time, and I don’t remember ever seeing or hearing about one,” Ming commented.
“That is deliberate. We do not wish the convents to be known. They are primarily shut away from all other parts of the station, in strict seclusion. Only the Elder in charge and the Mother Supervisor deal with the station and maintain commerce and communication, as well as, of course, ones like me who pass through, and I cannot really interact with them, as anyone of the faith just visiting must take a vow of silence while inside to preserve the cloistered atmosphere for the students and permanent staff. I realize this must seem odd to you, but it is our way.”
“I hope you are not offended, but all religions seem odd to me,” Ming commented. “The more you see of the universe, the less you believe that there is anything but randomness out here.”