The harper and the scarred man disembarked the throughliner without exciting interest, and here the money that the Fudir had cast upon the steward—as well as a certain grip exchanged in the hand clasp—returned value a hundredfold. The steward had agreed to slip them into the exit queue as smoothly as the Fudir had slipped the buckshish into his palm; maintain otherwise the fiction that they were still aboard ship; and on arrival off Harpaloon see that their trunks were delivered to the Phundaugh Plough and Stars. Terrans would do anything for buck’ and sometimes even for Brotherhood.
It was three days down from Curling Dawn to Floating Hyacinth Platform in stationary station above Hifocal Big Town, the once-upon-a-time imperial capital. The bumboats and platform were operated by House of Chan, which contracted for port operations on any number of worlds. From Floating Hyacinth, ferries rose and fell to each of the Fourteen States.
Bridget ban had supervised the relief work from Jenlùshy, in Morning Dew sheen, where most of the devastation had occurred. “Sheens” were what the Thistles called their states, and Morning Dew was the literal translation of Jenlùshy. “Everything means something,” Méarana said, “if you dig deeply enough.”
Donovan believed that if you dug even more deeply, all meaning would vanish; but he did not share this thought with his companion, nor was he single-minded about it. The scarred man was said to be most disagreeable; but most of his disagreements were with himself.
They took the “high speed line” from the shuttle port into Jenlùshy. The train was slow when judged against those of less rickety worlds. There is a limit to the velocities one gambles when the land may ripple the monorail in surprising and undesired ways. On the other hand, there was a sense that the faster the trip, the less likely that a quake would catch the train along the way. Hence the motto of the Thistlewaite Bullet: “Hasten slowly.”
Jenlùshy had sat on the epicenter of the great thistlequake and two-thirds of the sheen had been knocked about like jackstraws and flinders. This in itself was no great thing. Many of the poorer buildings were routinely constructed of little more than paper reinforced by’ boo-poles. But the Palace had been made of sterner stuff, and the One Man, the Grand Secretary, and five of the Six Ministers had perished in its collapse. Across the countryside collapsing province-towns, mountain landslides, floods, and fires had swallowed two-thirds of the District Commissioners, along with half the dough-riders. In a state as highly centralized as the Jenlùshy sheen, that was the equivalent of a frontal lobotomy.
Some Administrative Commissions kicked like pithed frogs, but every decision a Jenlùshy official made required ratification by an official higher up—and most of the high-ups had been laid low. The praefect of the Eastern Marshes, on her own initiative, traveled to Hifocal Big Town in the next sheen over to ask for League help over the Ourobouros Circuit. She was publicly caned by the Eastern Marshes Surveillance Commission for this breach of filial subservience—it didn’t matter that there had been no superiors to be subservient to—but Bridget ban had arrived shortly after, took matters well in hand, and for nearly two years was, for all practical purposes, Empress of the Morning Dew.
She had overseen the restoration of sanitation, of water and utilities, of housing and roads, of public order, and did this primarily by providing in her own person an authority figure to whom the surviving Commissioners could give their devotion. The entire society was based on the Family writ large. The Eastern Marshes praefect had, in effect, gone looking for a mommy or daddy to kiss the hurt—and had been soundly spanked.
The late Emperor had clearly lost “the approval of the sky.” What more proof was needed beyond the descent of his replacement from that very sky? (Thistles knew that Bridget ban had arrived by ship in the normal fashion, but they read meaning into every concatenation.) A change of dynasty was called for, and Bridget ban chose Jimmy Barcelona, who had been Chief of Capital District Public Works Unit. At her suggestion, he selected the office name of Resilient Services and for his regnal theme, “a robust and reliable infrastructure.” It rang less glamorously than most regnal themes, but was surely apropos, all things considered.
The surviving Minister held a different opinion, but when he and three of the imperial censors opened debate by opening fire, he discovered that where a Hound was concerned the decorative could also be deadly. The vote was four to one against Jimmy, but Bridget ban had the one vote, and so he was installed and the others cremated.
No one could do business in Jenlùshy without the emperor’s permission. Certainly, no one could go about making a nosy nuisance of himself without what the Terrans called a “heads-up.” Normally, obtaining an audience with a Thistlewaite emperor was a long, laborious, and expensive affair. The recovery from the ‘quake was still in its final stages, and Resilient Services had better things to do than put on a show for Peripheral touristas. Donovan had counted on this as yet another delay to the harper’s journey, although he had by then given up on dissuading her entirely.
But if the visitor was the daughter of the very Hound who had placed the emperor on the Ivy Throne, doors swung open with disconcerting ease.
The Grand Secretary did insist that protocol be observed. A certain formality of dress was required, although the sumptuary details differed for folk from different worlds. Happily, the harper had brought with her several bolts of Megranomic anycloth, so the morning of the audience, she consulted Benet’s Sumptuary Guide to the Spiral Arm and programmed the material to assume the chosen color, cut, and texture.
The Fudir watched. “Technically,” he said, “we don’t need the One Man’s permission to enter the Corner.” There was a Terran Corner in most major cities across the Spiral Arm. Having been deprived of their home world, Terrans had found no home anywhere, and so could be found everywhere.
Méarana looked up from her ‘face. “We.’ Do you mean us, Terrans in general, or the mob inside your head?” Donovan’s use of the first-person plural was idiosyncratic.
“Oh, Terrans, memsahb.” The Fudir dropped into the patois that he sometimes affected. “Thistle see no many-folk-one-folk, but for Terries.”
She rolled her eyes. “Speak Gaelactic, Fudir. I can’t follow the jibber-jabber half the time.”
“You aren’t meant to, half the time. Corporate bodies, I mean. There are none here. No universities, no cities, no guilds, no medical societies.”
The harper inserted the datathread into the port and ran the program. The cloth began to ripple. “Dinna be silly. They have universities and doctors; and if this be nae a city we’re in, what is it?”
“A department of the imperial court. It takes more than a lot of people living close together to make a ‘city.’ Jenlùshy Town doesn’t govern itself. It isn’t recognized at law as an entity. The same goes for Imperial College: it’s a Department of the Grand Secretariat under the Third Minister. And doctors are employees of the Second Minister. It’s the Minister who sets rules and regulations, not a ‘medical society.’ The Terran Corners are the only places on the planet recognized as self-governing corporate bodies.”
“You sound proud of that.” She detached her clothing from the’ face and made way for the Fudir to sit down. “You want me to do your clothing for this afternoon?”