“With Blind Justess circling overhead? Or standing off?”
That took a long moment of consideration. Aerial force was not a strength of the Thalassojustity, especially not in this place. “Overhead. Awaiting my signal.”
Valdoux reached down to the bottom of his wheel column and unclipped a fat-barreled pistol. “Fire this. I’ll come down hot and fast, guns at the ready.”
Quinx looked in wonder at the weapon in his hand. He’d never held a firearm before, any more than he’d ever held a viper.
Brother Kurts reached around and took it from him. “A flare gun,” he explained. “But you can still harm yourself with it.”
“Or someone else,” Valdoux offered cheerfully. “A shot to the chest from that won’t likely kill nobody, but the other fellow might wish it had.”
“Give me back that flare, Brother Kurts,” Quinx said, suddenly tired all over again. “Only I can decide when to use it.”
The monk looked unhappy, but he returned the weapon.
It fit awkwardly within Quinx’ robes. “Take me down,” he told Valdoux.
“I can’t land here. You got to go down by rope. I’ll send Ninety Nine along to look after your safety.”
Quinx’ fatigue shifted to a sense of nausea, or perhaps outright illness. He would be confronting heresy under the protection of a female Machinist. Any priest who came before the Consistitory Office with such a story would spend long months under the Question, or at the very least in quiet confinement to pray over his errors of judgment and resultant sins.
The expression on Valdoux’ face made it clear the captain was testing Quinx. And Quinx knew that here and now, he held no leverage.
“Let us do this thing,” he gasped, forcing out the words before the last tatters of his certainty vanished.
Holy Mother Church was infinitely patient. There was always a later. Even for a man such as Captain Valdoux.
Especially for a man such as Captain Valdoux.
The Thalassojustity has served for centuries as a check upon the powers of the Lateran. Church history documents a much earlier era when the Gatekeepers asserted economic, political, and even military dominance over many of the societies of the Earth. The aggressively secular founders of the Thalassojustity held no patience for the divine right that many of the kings and princes of Earth claimed for their power, and less patience for the generations-long schemes of the Lateran to convert or subvert them. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that the establishment of the secret societies of the Thalassocretes was precisely a countermove against Lateran infiltrations as well as more overt cozenings of their rivals. For make no mistake: this tension between lords spiritual and the lords of the sea is two thousand years in the making, but neither of them has ever misunderstood who their true competition is. Should a significant number of the land-based states around the world ever achieve meaningful confederacy, the power of Thalassojustity and Church alike would be undermined much more deeply than anything either rival could do the other.
There was a great deal of excitement aboard Clear Mountain as they approached Thera. Morgan was not sure what the fuss was, as no one had paid him much attention since he’d finished explaining his thesis the night before, but he eventually padded out to the foredeck to find a number of the Thalassocretes staring at the clouds above the island.
Goins wordlessly handed him a set of field glasses. “See for yourself,” the Presiding Judge growled. “Watch the cloud formation that rather resembles a camel.”
Morgan scanned the sky, not seeing anything he would consider a camel, but pointing his instrument in the direction everyone else was looking. He caught a glint and sense of motion.
“Bastard’s hiding in the cloud bank,” someone else said, then cursed in a language Morgan did not speak, though the intent of the words was clear enough from the tone.
“Airship?” he asked.
“Anyone care enough about you to chase you out here?” Goins made the question sound casual, but the rapid silence around them told Morgan quite clearly what was at stake.
“Not even my own mother,” he said. “Not this place.”
“Hmm.” Goins sounded unconvinced. “The area is under absolute prohibition.”
“Can you not force them down?”
“We don’t even allow our own airships here.”
“Mistake.” That was someone behind Morgan.
“The question will be re-opened, you may be sure,” Goins said loudly. “Unless it has been rendered irrelevant in the mean time.”
“Why are we here?” asked Morgan. “Why do we care about an airship?”
Goins reached up to grab Morgan’s shoulders. His fingers were vises, his eyes drills. “I am about to show you the deepest, darkest secret known to mankind.”
“Me?”
“It is a puzzle, to which you may have found the key.”
Morgan only knew one secret of his own, and he’d already shared it. “My photographic plates. The aetheric vessel at the libration point.”
“Precisely.”
“Precisely what?”
Another senior Thalassocrete snatched Morgan’s arm even as Goins released him. “Precisely shut your yap and see what is to come,” growled the other man.
It took Morgan only a moment to realize these very powerful men were all frightened.
Clear Mountain approached the dock at Thera at dead slow. Waves slapped her hull, while mewling gulls circled overhead. Someone waited at the end of the pier, but beyond them was a puzzling scene. Several people sprawled at the head of the pier, while two more stood guard, their backs to the sea. A smaller crowd clustered inland, at the village, in a standoff with the guardians.
A fight had taken place, though Morgan could not imagine who would fight here, or over what. Not in this place. Presumably anyone here was in on Goins’ great secret.
A great racket arose around him. Crewmen rushed to the teakwood foredeck with rifles. Two set up a Maxim gun on a pintle at the bow. Several relatively junior Thalassocretes were directing preparations for a possible offense.
Morgan debated going below, or at least retreating to the lounge where he could fortify himself with alcohol and be out of the line of fire. But Goins was at his side again. “This is your fault,” the Presiding Judge said with a growl.
“Mine?” Morgan was astonished. “What does this have to do with me?”
“Everything.” Goins gave him another of those long, hard stares. “What did you think would happen when you presented your evidence?”
“I dreamt that my reputation would have been made,” Morgan said sadly. “The spirit of scientific inquiry is one of the most powerful forces known to man. With a bit of luck, I could have launched a generation of research.”
“Fear is one of the most powerful forces known to man,” retorted Goins. “And nothing inspires fear like attacking people’s faith. Doesn’t matter what kind of faith—faith in the order of the world, faith in themselves, faith in the Increate. And you, Dr. Morgan Abutti, are attacking all of those faiths.”
Amid a swash of saltwater, Clear Mountain growled to a slow, rolling halt by the pier without any gunfire being exchanged. Goins didn’t look to shore, just kept staring down Morgan.