He was sweating now, his gut knotted. This had always been the crux of the matter. The world was so true, so logical. Until it wasn’t. His newly summoned courage deserted Morgan, apparently to be followed by a fading sense of self-preservation. “A mistake, sire. I intended to present a mistake.”
“Hmmm.” Goins took Morgan’s attaché case from his unresisting hands, tugged open the flap. “A mistake. That’s better. You still haven’t answered my question, however.” The presiding judge leaned close. “What was the mistake?”
Morgan opened his mouth, to have his lips stopped by the single tap of his inquisitor’s finger.
“Heed me carefully, Dr. Morgan Abutti. We have no copyist present. No autonomic locugraphitor hums nearby. No clerks of the court labor at my elbow to give later inconvenient testimony. I do not ask you this from my seat of responsibility at the head of the Pirate’s Steps. I do not wear my robe and chain of office. No oaths have been sworn beyond those we both live under every day of our lives.” Goins leaned close. “At this moment, I am merely a man, asking a simple question of another mere man. Both of us stand before the Increate now as always clad only in our honor. After you have answered, we may make other decisions. Other testimonies may be required, each suitable to their intended audiences. For now, I only listen. To the truth entire as you understand it.
“So tell me. What was the mistake?”
“I believed something I saw of significance in the heavens,” Morgan said simply. “Though what I found runs against the word and the will of the Increate, and everything that has been taught to us in the six thousand years since They first placed man in the Eight Gardens and awoke us to Their world.”
“Mmm.” Goins stepped away from Morgan, paced briefly back and forth before turning to face him again. “I trust we are not so lucky that this mistake in the heavens was presented to you by an eight-winged angel with glowing eyes? Or perhaps the voice of the Increate Themself whispering in your sleeping ear? I am going to assume that your … mistake … arrived borne on the back of evidence derived from the latest and most pleasing artefacts of Dame Progress, objective and empirical in the hand.”
Morgan stared at Goins, appalled. “Had an angel told me what I have learned, you could call me both blest and crazed. Almost all would smile behind their hands and carry on.”
“Precisely.”
“’Twas no angel, sir. No miracle at all, except that of optics, patience, and an emulsion of silver salts painted onto a glass plate to be exposed to the night sky before moonrise could flood the world with pallid light.”
“Mmm.” This time Goins did not pace, but stared instead at Morgan. “And what do you think this photographic truth signifies? Speaking in your professional capacity, of course.”
Morgan’s heart sank further. He was close to tears, torn. “I c-cannot deny the Increate.”
“Why not? You were prepared to do so in front of seven hundred people in the Plenary Hall not two hours past.”
“Forgive me. I … I did not understand what it was I was about.” He wanted to groan, cry, shriek. It was as if he were being torn apart. “Is not truth part of Their creation?”
Goins leaned close. “What you did was take some photographs of the night sky, study them, and draw conclusions. You did this being the good scientist that you are, trained at the University of Highpassage and the New Garaden Institute. One of our New Men, concerned with the evidence of the world before them rather than the testimony of tradition. I don’t want to know what the innocent boy who prayed to the Increate every night believes. I want to know what the educated man peering into the telescope thinks.”
The words poured out of Morgan Abutti with the strength of confession. “There is something artificial at the Earth’s trailing solar libration point. A small body, similar to one of the asteroids. I believe it to be a vessel for traveling the aether. I speculate it to be the true home and origin of mankind. Whatever I believe does not matter, for all will be revealed in due time. This artificial world has begun to move, and will soon be visiting us here in our own skies.”
Goins’ response shocked Morgan. “It has begun to move?” he asked in a voice of awed surprise.
Morgan’s heart froze. The presiding judge’s words implied that he’d known of this. He fell back on the most basic refuge of his profession. “The stars do not lie, sir. We may misunderstand their evidence, but the stars do not lie.”
Goins sat heavily, his face working as if he too sought to avoid tears. Or terror. “You have the right of that, my son. But we may yet be forced to lie on their behalf.”
The racing aeroyacht Blind Justess was so new that Quinx could smell the sealants used to finish the teakwood trim of the forward observation cabin. Her appointments were an odd combination of luxurious and sparse. Like the airship’s rakish exterior form, the interior of fine craftwork minimally applied stood in strong contrast with the lumbering, gilded monsters of the Lateran’s small aerial fleet. Those wallowing aerial palaces served as ecclesiastical transports and courts-of-the-air for peregrinations to distant sees where the dignified estate of the Gatekeeper might not be so well honored.
Quinx had claimed the forward observation chair by sheer presence. The captain-owner of Blind Justess, one young gallant by the name of Irion Valdoux, was a scion of the Massalian aristocracy, and very much a traditionalist when it came to handling his own weapons and equipage.
And doubtless his women, too, Quinx thought with a distinct lack of charity.
Valdoux was as dark-skinned as any comely lass might hope for in a suitor, with a smile unbecoming a man of serious parts. He had bowed Quinx into the button-tucked seat, upholstery so well-stuffed that a horse could likely have taken its ease there. A glass-walled pit opened between Quinx’ feet. At the time of boarding this curious portal revealed a view of dawn over the Attik Main, the ocean opaque with night’s last shadows as they plucked at the tumbled ruins along the shoreline beneath the Lateran’s airfield masts. Though his head for heights was excellent—Quinx had lived in a tower for some decades now—he found the open space beneath him a trifle unnerving.
“When we’re racing for pips under Manju rules,” Valdoux explained, “I keep a spotter here with the grips for the electrick harpoons.” He cleared his throat. “Open class, no restrictions. ’Justity hates it, they does.”
“I do not suppose the Lateran entirely approves either,” Quinx replied.
Valdoux, who knew perfectly well that the word of the Consistitory Office was quite literally ecclesiastical law, and that the word of Quinx was quite literally the word of the Consistitory Office, fell silent.
“Long explanations wear on the soul,” Quinx supplied a few moments later. “I shall oversee our progress from here.” He favored Valdoux with the sort of smile that reminded some men of small bones breaking. “It would please me to examine your harpoon grips, however.”
“N-not running under Manju rules here over the Attik Main, sir,” Valdoux managed. “But I’ll send the boy for’ard with ’em, sir. Will that be all?”
“No.” Quinx withdrew his smile. “I expect you to break airspeed records bringing me to Highpassage. The Lateran will be most … grateful. As will my office. Brother Kurts shall assist you as necessary.”
Valdoux wisely withdrew to the bridge, which was a deck below the observation cabin.