“Nice costume,” said Vigil.
“I didn’t reckon you’d spy through it so right quick as all that. I keep forgetting every Jack and Harry is as bright as whatever he needs to be, these days. So what is it going to be?”
The tall man spread his hands and moved his shoulders up. It was a gesture Vigil did not recognize; it did not seem to be a mudra, nor was it in the list for recognized military command gestures.
Vigil’s father would have known everyone in the Palace of Future History on sight and should have shared all his memories with his son. Was the janitor expecting Vigil to call him by name, despite his uncosmetic surgery?
The janitor then plucked his headscarf off, pushed it into a pocket of his smock, drew the smock over his head, and threw it in a corner. Then he dropped the mop handle. The mop stared up sullenly, slithered over to the dropped smock, and picked it up.
Vigil, without moving his eyes, looked down through a nearby camera spot at where the seneschal was crouching on all fours. Vigil certainly did not want to admit in the seneschal’s hearing that he had no idea what was going on here.
Vigil said, “I am summoned to the Table. Ruffians attempted to impede me, and the sentries and this man here to delay me. The lighthouse beam is misaligned and the Emancipation will not be landed, and all the Stability is in vain. I am not easily halted, and I weary of these delays. So? What now? What do you think it is going to be?”
The janitor shifted his cylinder of smoldering leaf from one corner of his mouth to the other with a twist of his lips.
“You being bushwhacked, that weren’t none of my doing, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Vigil said quite honestly, “I was not thinking that, no.”
“I’m retired,” the tall man said.
Vigil looked at where the sad mop was holding the smock and headscarf. “Yes, I see that. I have need of someone who knows the details of procedure here. Are you familiar with them?”
The other said, “The standard procedures ain’t changed since the days when the Starfarer’s Guild was founded, for obvious reasons, even if some younger folk forget what they are for.”
Vigil’s antiquarian interests were provoked. “You have traveled far and slumbered long?”
He meant it as a question, but the man obviously took it as a statement, because the man nodded. “Obviously I know all the old procedures. You know who I am.”
Vigil was sure, now, that the man was an Esne of the Errant line. No one else was so proud and crude. “I know who you are,” he said graciously, “but let not our difference in station be a difficulty!”
The man nodded. “Won’t bug me if it don’t bug you.”
“There are things my father did not tell me. I do not wish to shame his name. You may join my retinue if you need employment. You can serve as my valet and help me negotiate these difficulties. I have no one else.”
The ex-janitor looked so surprised that his mouth sagged, and his smoking cylinder fell from his lips, but he managed to catch it nimbly in his hand and juggle it, swearing strange oaths, between his two hands, not quite burning himself.
The man eventually got the smoldering tube back in his mouth. “My aunt Bertholda’s sagging pestilential putrefic paps, is you offering me a job? A job? Like for pay?”
The man must be of a very low caste indeed, if the offer of such a humble post so astonished him.
“I do not think any difference in rank or race matters,” said Vigil, trying not to sound condescending. “The Sacerdotes say all races are equal in the eyes of Providence, despite the inequalities in the Hermeticists who created them placed in them.”
The fellow laughed. “A man after my own heart! I ain’t heard talk like that in a long time. But what makes you think I will help you land the ship? I don’t need anything on her. What’s she carrying for me? ’Cept a big headache.”
Vigil blinked at the fellow in astonishment. Was he mad? Many folk departed from normal psychological states during festivities or added some humorously psychotic subpersonality to their psychic architecture.
Vigil said, “My dear valet, I was not expecting you to help me land the ship, but I would appreciate any advice concerning protocols as I confront the Table, or the personalities of the men involved. They have betrayed their oaths and forgotten them. Are you of their party or of mine?”
The man said, “I could ask you the same question. I don’t want you to blow up the planet if she don’t land. Why not let her fall on by?”
Vigil did not understand the question. It seemed a matter too obvious and too large to fit into words. It was like asking why civilization was better than savagery. The only thing he could think to say was: “The ship must land.”
“Why?”
“So that the Schedule be kept, the inviolate Schedule, to which countless men of ages past and yet to come on many worlds devote our lives. So that we may prove that we recall our oaths.”
“Why?”
“I am loyal to Rania. Surely every loyal subject loves his princess. Don’t you?”
Again, the reaction was odd. Surely the man had been drinking spirits, or his spirits had been drinking alcohol, for he grew suddenly melancholy. “I reckon I still love her, too. So, sure, come on. Maybe I can buffalo whatever else is sniffing for me. Call me your Yes Man, then.”
Vigil was not sure what half these words meant, and the local subsystems could not provide him a lexicon either. Perhaps the man’s name was Yesman, or perhaps he came from a race or sept which called itself by such an odd title.
5
The Chamber of the Black Hexagon
1. Valet, Watchman, Bailiff, Counsel
The valet, Yesman, or whatever his name was, said heavily, “Well, let’s tart you up, or else the pox-riddled cross-grained curs will toss you out on your ear for trifling with their laws.” He took Vigil over to the vestry booth and adorned him in additional regalia.
Black leg sheathes with silver studs were buckled to his legs, symbols of the magnetic greaves once used for extravehicular activity; a war belt with sword and prong pistol, weapons carefully calculated not to breach the hull or damage the engineering, the valet slung over one shoulder and buckled around his waist.
The valet took the prong pistol, broke it open, snorted in disgust at the design of the cartridges, said, “This is a poxing toy for kids!” He threw the weapon in the trash can. “Take this.” He slipped a glass pistol of antique design out from his own jacket and into the holster.
When the valet made as if to place the mask back on Vigil, Vigil shied back, saying, “I am convinced ancient man was designed by the Hermeticists not to itch in their faces. There is no explanation otherwise for the uncouth garb the ancients wore.”
“Heh. This uniform is as old as I am, sonny, so don’t mock it. But I think the rules allow you to go unmasked. Not throwing this thing away. Lemme see.” The valet adjusted the mask fittings and thrust his huge nose into it, followed by the rest of his face. Rummaging around in the vestry, he slung a spare cloak of ribbed silver over his own shoulders and found a deep hood in which to hide the bristles of his short-cropped red hair.