He was able to meet Vigil’s piercing look without a flush of shame, nor did his eyes ever waver from their clear emerald-green serenity, no matter how many internals Vigils compiled into his brainspace to increase force, influence, and terror of his gaze.
Vigil stopped short of casting a mudra from his eyes, but his eyeballs ached with the unspent emotion. The perfection of the armor of tranquility radiating from the Theosophist made Vigil wonder if perhaps this man had recaptured the legendary ascetic practices of his ancestors on Aesculapius. The green man also had adopted a Pilgrim name, and called himself Oeoen Orison.
But whether or not a man was asked
To mar the love of two
By harboring woe in the bridal house,
The bridegroom wished he knew.
When the music sank away, the Lords and Attendants and Companions seated themselves.
An ostiarius wearing an absurd atef crown with a coincidence rangefinder issuing from it to the left and right by a cubit, announced Vigil, reported his name and lineage and rank to the Archaeomnemonicist, ending the long list of titles and dignities with, “Senior member of the Landing Party, and Starman Most Recently Returned from the Vasty Deep.”
The ostiarius then raised his hand and the long lenses of his headgear and swiveled his palm left and right, crossed his arms on his chest, and gripped his right wrist with his left hand, which meant, Is there any who challenges this man’s right to enter?
One of the three men acting as Vigil’s honor guard stepped forward, took off a gauntlet, and dashed it, ringing, to the crystal panels of the floor. Whoso would bar my lord from entry must speak now or hold his peace forever.
The ugly man who had been a janitor, valet, watchman, bailiff, and was now his counsel murmured on a private channel, “Who is trying to prevent you from being recognized and taking your seat has to pick up the gauntlet, or he cannot lodge a point of order to protest your being recognized.”
Vigil sent back, “Why do we bind ourselves with so many laws, so intricate, so absurd? For a man to step across a room and sit down and talk, we have to wrestle with this rigmarole! The Great Ship and all her generations, and our world’s honor and eventual fate, and the stability of the Stability itself, hang in the balance—and we must pause to see who stoops to pick up a trifle of hand clothing?”
The ugly man sent quietly, “You live in a day when a rich man can rent more brains than you, or carry an Archangel in his poxing pocket. So don’t scoff at having rules fixed and clear! Whenever men gather like vultures to decide their futures, no matter what they call themselves, they eventually become a good old boys’ club. The mood of a club always favors the richest member. The rules of a club occasionally favor the poor one. Let us see if the rules favor us now. If someone picks up that gauntlet, the guys set against you are desperate.”
The Powerman in a uniform of black and red, one of the Companions whose seat was behind the siege of the Lighthousekeeper rose to his feet, raised his finger lamp for permission to speak, and was recognized. His name was Seppel Phosphoros, and he was the cousin of the Lighthousekeeper. “I object! This is not the Landing Party Senior. That office is vested in Waiting Starmanson, Lord Hermeticist, who yet is alive and breathes the air of Torment, not in this person. He cannot be recognized by the Table.”
The Powerman sent a handservant to retrieve the gauntlet. The handservant, a leonine Argive of the Sinner race returned and knelt and proffered the gauntlet to Seppel Phosphoros, Lord Powerhouse.
Vigil said impatiently, “Waiting Starmanson, Lord Hermeticist, is legally dead, and his privileges and rank vested in me, properly and according to the forms. Yonder sits the Archivist, Companion of the Second Speaker and Lord Chronometrician: as a point of order, I pray the Table subpoena the records of the World Memory to confirm my account.”
The Powerman smiled an unkind smile, saying, “Irregular! I ask the Chamber scribe and memory officer to erase the interruption both from electronic and living memory herewith, since the person speaking them is not recognized to speak, nor may Commensals address the Table without being recognized!”
The Archivist, a man with the sharp, smiling features, red hair, and eerie beauty of a Meanderer, signaled with his finger lamp and said, “I will raise the same point of order. If the right of the presentment to be seated is in question, a prayer to the archives to confirm the record and memory of the world is not lawful.”
The Powerman said to the Aedile, “First Speaker, I move that, rather than trifling with records whose veracity cannot be determined, we appoint a legate to travel to the Bitter Waters Parish in the Northwestern Hemisphere and inspect the body and mind-relics of Waiting Starmanson, our beloved friend and boon companion, and that examination commission of theosophists and physicians be empaneled to make a formal report to this body of the status of Waiting Starmanson and his fitness to serve. And I further move that this legate receive his commission with dispatch, at the end of this fiscal quarter, one-fourth of an Edenyear from now by the Sacerdotal calendar, or by the Vulgate Calendar two and a half Torment-years about Wormwood, which is two degrees of the great year about Eldsich, in the Forty-First Lesser Spring of the Great Autumn.”
Before anyone else reacted, the Theosophist Orison focused his finger lamp, quick as a darting ray, at the Aedile and said with unctuous serenity, “I second the motion.”
Vigil shouted, “Absurdity! The Emancipation will be pastfallen and unrecoverable by such time!”
The Aedile said, “The matter has been moved and seconded, and persons not yet recognized by this Chamber may not speak. We must decide by poll whether the challenge of your honor guard is met and defeated.” And this twinkle in his eyes, the ripple in the scaly cheeks of gold, told Vigil this was a meaningless formality. The decision to exclude Vigil had been discussed and made privately, long before the meeting had been called to order.
4. Canvassing
Vigil opened other channels of perception through cameras in his robes and the antique amulet on his wrist (which was surprisingly responsive and tense, considering from which remote millennium the design originated) and examined the Speakers of the Stability.
The Theosophist in white and the dark-eyed Lighthousekeeper in blue and silver were of one mind with the Aedile and would vote against seating Vigil.
That left three others:
The Chrematist was so thickly dressed in his richly patterned hood and stole of crimson velvet that Vigil did not realize until then that the man was dead, his face white with the icy paleness of an unrecoverable hibernation failure: a slumberer who would never thaw. He was, in fact, a death-manikin. Servomotors at each joint beneath the robes and fibers in his gloves had permitted him to stand and hail the anthem or do whatever polite gesture ritual required: but the Board of Stockholders who sold of the speakership to their wealthiest member would never meet to replace him, not until he was declared legally incompetent. Vigil wondered darkly who had been empaneled years ago or decades ago to make that determination, suspecting it was the Theosophists.
His name in life had been Aruji, but, swearing fealty to the Pilgrims, he joined himself to one of their families under the Festal name Eosphoros.