He waited. And while he waited he thought, as Philosophers are wont to do. Except he did not think of matters Philosophers normally thought about; he thought about what his heresy might be.
Never, that he could remember, had he publicly—or privately, for that matter—denied any of the gods. Indeed, he paid them no more heed than anyone else did! Nor had he ever in the slightest way challenged the primacy of the High Priest in matters of Religious Philosophy, which was not his field. He claimed no particular knowledge of it whatsoever and never had occasion to speak on it.
It was true he did not make much public obeisance to any of the gods. Few Philosophers did; as most artisans, merchants, soldiers, and high princes paid little public obeisance to the gods—unless a particular god had granted some great favor. Nor did he make public display of honoring the High Priest or his collegium. He knew of few Philosophers who did.
So what was his heresy?
That small stickle.
It had to be. Someone—he did not think the High Priest read the stickle himself—misinterpreted what he said in the stickle and reported it as heresy! Well, if that was the case, a simple explanation should suffice to clear matters with the High Priest. He had said nothing that contradicted any tenet of Religious Philosophy, he was sure of that.
Waakakaa the Philosopher waited with calm mind—and senses alert for carapaced or multilegged scavengers seeking trophies from his person—for the soldiers to come back.
After a time he got first thirsty, then hungry. After another time the torch that provided his only lumination guttered and went out. A third time passed before flickering light and clacking feet announced the approach of someone.
Waakakaa hopped off the perch and stood in front of the barred door. Momentarily, a minion of some sort—not a soldier, he had neither the garb nor the weapons of a soldier—came along the corridor. The minion bore a torch in one hand and a lamp in the other. He removed the burned-out butt of the torch across from the rough chamber in which Waakakaa was imprisoned and affixed a new one in the niche.
"I hunger, I thirst," Waakakaa told the minion. "When will the High Priest see me?" he asked.
The minion did not reply, or even look at the Philosopher, but went away and left Waakakaa alone again.
Yet more time passed, during which Waakakaa tucked his head below his arm, whispered a prayer to keep the vermin off him, and slept. Finally, soldiers came. He did not know whether they were the same ones who had arrested him, for they wore helmets and he could not see their faces. The soldiers did not speak, but ordered him with imperious gestures to exit his chamber and precede them along the corridor.
"I thirst," Waakakaa croaked, "I hunger."
A soldier, more ornately garbed than the others, assumed threat posture and pointed the way.
Waakakaa the Philosopher, hungry and more thirsty than he'd ever been in his life, shambled along the corridor. The soldiers used rough pokes and prods to guide him from one corridor to another, up a stair here, along another corridor there, each more finished than the one before, until he found himself in a vaulted hall, rich with tapestries and finely polished furniture. Narrow windows glazed with colored glass set high on the walls let in little light. At the end of the hall was a raised platform. The soldiers prodded Waakakaa to its foot and poked him into full height, neck upstretched, face pointed toward the peaked ceiling.
"Waakakaa the Philosopher," a powerful voice cawed from the platform, "you stand accused of heresy. How do you plead?"
Waakakaa started to look at who had spoken, but the soldiers struck him until he resumed proper submission posture.
"I have committed no heresy," he said, his voice cracked and weak in his dry throat.
"Are you not the author of A Speculation on the Nature of the New Glitterer?"
"I am the author." He wasn't sure his voice could be heard in the immensity of the hall.
"Do you deny that your ‘speculation’ is heresy?"
"It is but a postu... a postu... a pos..."
Overcome by thirst and hunger, his brain insufficiently oxygenated in his head's uplifted position, Waakakaa the Philosopher fell unconscious in a most undignified manner.
The soldiers picked him up and took him away to a physician who treated him with drink and food. Not enough to sate his hunger and thirst, merely enough to revive him. Then the soldiers poked and prodded him back to a submission posture before the platform in the vaulted hall.
"Do you deny that your ‘speculation’ is heresy?" the voice again demanded.
"It is but a postulation. I am a Philosopher, and I seek to know the nature of the New Glitterer. I put forth a position seeking for others to reply with answers or questions or information that will help me gain the knowledge which I seek."
"Did you ask the Church? Did you take your ‘postulation’ to a priest?"
Waakakaa looked dumbly at the ceiling. The New Glitterer wasn't a matter of Religious Philosophy, something for priests to teach about. Such an approach to the question had never occurred to him. "No," was all he said.
"The gods put the New Glitterer in the sky."
"They did?"
"Indeed."
"But why?"
"You deny this truth?" the voice boomed.
The voice had the quality of a knell of doom, and Waakakaa quaked.
"I deny no truth. I merely want to know, so I ask why."
"The New Glitterer is an eye. The gods put it in the sky so we will know they watch over us even when Aaaah sleeps."
"How is this known?" And Waakakaa knew the instant he spoke those words he should not have said them.
The soldiers poked and prodded him back along steadily less finished corridors and stairways until they reached the rough-hewn chamber once more and thrust him into it. This time he knew what to expect and did not stumble and fall. He settled uncomfortably on the perch to wait again. The wait this time was longer and more painful than before. Carapaced and multilegged scavengers dined on flaking bits of his skin while he slept. When the soldiers returned for him they had to take him to the physician for revival before he could stand in submission posture.
"What is the New Glitterer?" the unseen voice demanded.
"I seek to know," Waakakaa replied.
The interview ended abruptly and the soldiers poked and prodded him back to his prison. This time they left him alone without food or drink for so long they had to carry him straightaway to the physician when they came back. The physician stripped him naked and used tweezers and sharpened probes to remove insectoid scavengers and their eggs from his flesh before reviving him with small amounts of drink and food. Someone gave Waakakaa a simple robe, the kind worn by the most menial of servants, to drape himself with. At least the simple robe was clean and vermin-free. The soldiers poked and prodded him back to submission in the vaulted hall.
"What is the New Glitterer?" the voice demanded again.
"It is the eye of the gods, telling us they watch over us even when Aaaah sleeps." Waakakaa the Philosopher had no desire to return to the rough-hewn chamber.
"Then why did you publish that stickle?"
"Because I wished to know the nature of the New Glitterer."
"And now you know?"
"And now I know."
"You repent of heresy?"
Waakakaa opened his mouth to deny heresy, but thought better of it and answered simply, "Yes."
"It is the order of this court that you shall immediately return to your home. You will not return to the University of Rhaachtown. When you reach your home you will not leave it again until such time as you die. You will never again publish a stickle on any subject or in any wise.
"Is that clear?"
Imprisoned in his own home for the rest of his life? Never again publish a postulation, a speculation, or any other work? Waakakaa the Philosopher shivered almost in despair. His voice wavered as he answered, "Yes."
"Go now."
The soldiers guided him using pointing a
rms and hands rather than pokes and prods. They took him to the physician, who gave him food and drink enough to return his strength. Then they took him out of the Palace of the High Priest via a different door from which he first entered. There awaited a cart laden with all his property from his quarters at the University of Rhaachtown, and a quartet of soldiers mounted on eeookks.
Thusly Waakakaa the Philosopher was returned to his home.
The High Priest's court had forbidden him to leave his home, but he was not barred from looking at the night sky. Neither was his eyestretcher taken from him, nor the tools and equipment he used to make new eyestretchers. He could not publish, but he still had writing materials with which to keep notes on what he saw. So he looked and he noted.
Waakakaa the Philosopher puzzled for the rest of his days over what he saw in the night sky during those first several days after his return to his prison-home. He took copious notes during those nights, and elaborated and speculated on them over the many years that followed.
There was the series of points of light that flashed into and out of being during all those first several days. They looked very like the random flashes of light-points that struck the heavens every night, except these always went from north-west to southeast. They came at regular intervals. They shifted slightly to the east with each reappearance. He puzzled over these flashes for a day or two until he divined the pattern of their appearance. Then he was able to predict the place and time of their comings. He could not help but notice that every third night the flashes intersected a spot near the New Glitterer. When he turned his eyestretcher on that place, he sometimes made out a dim form, almost as though a ghost-mirror near the New Glitterer was reflecting a distant light.
Once, while he was trying to bring that cloudy reflection into sharper focus with his eyestretcher, he saw a sharp point of light flash from it. He did not need the eyestretcher to watch that point of light flash across the sky and vanish over the southeastern horizon. Bemused, he watched the rest of the night for a reappearance of that light and was rewarded by seeing, before dawn, a flash streak from the southwest to the ghostly reflection where it vanished. He saw that phenomenon one more time. The night after that the patterned flashes failed to reappear after nearing the ghost-mirror. That same night the ghost-mirror briefly flashed into dazzling brilliance and grew steadily smaller as it drifted from its position near the New Glitterer. Over a period of nights it grew smaller and smaller, until Waakakaa's eyestretcher could no longer distinguish it.
Epilogue
"Corporal Doyle reporting as ordered, sir!" Corporal Doyle said as he snapped to attention in front of Captain Conorado's desk and fixed his eyes on a spot on the bulkhead above the company commander's head.
Captain Conorado didn't look up immediately from the paper he was reading. When he did, he picked up a stylus and tapped a slow beat on his desktop with it. The way his gaze bored into Doyle made the tapping sound ominous.
"Corporal Doyle, are you aware of the fact that the army and navy give medals for extraordinary achievement not involving combat?"
Doyle blinked. As much as he didn't want to see Top Myer, the first sergeant was clear in his peripheral vision. He thought he was called before the Skipper for whatever punishment the first sergeant had in mind for him. What did army and navy medals have to do with that? "I've heard that they give out—" He caught himself before he said "merit badges" and changed it to "such medals, sir."
Conorado dipped his head slightly in a nod. The tapping of the stylus stopped while he adjusted his position on his chair, then resumed its slow drumbeat. "Major General Cazombi, as commander of this mission, has the authority to award such medals to personnel assigned to this mission regardless of branch of service. Did you know that?"
"Nossir."
"Then you don't know that General Cazombi intends to give you the Army Special Achievement Commendation?"
"Sir?" Doyle jerked; he'd hardly expected this. He wasn't going to get court-martialed? He was going to get a medal? Maybe that's why Top Myer was glowering so much more than usual. He resisted the urge to grin.
"You figured out how to fix the Tweed Hull Breacher, and that allowed us to successfully complete our mission. Without what you did, the mission would have been only partly successful. Major General Cazombi thinks that merits a medal."
"Thank you, sir."
"Are you also aware that First Sergeant Myer wants you to be court-martialed for refusing to operate the THB cutter with anyone other than third platoon as the boarding party? The specific charges are violation of Articles Eight and Seventy-two of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: disobedience of a lawful order, and conduct unbecoming a noncommissioned officer. Considering the circumstances under which your actions took place and what was at stake, I don't think it would be possible to convene a court-martial board that wouldn't convict you and hand down the severest possible sentence."
Corporal Doyle tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. He imagined the tapping of Captain Conorado's stylus was a drum tattoo, the kind that was played in ancient days when a man was humiliated by being stripped of everything in front of the entire battalion and sent out in disgrace.
"And you realize that the injuries Lance Corporal Van Impe suffered were greater than those a man who wasn't recovering from injuries would have suffered, and that's because you usurped authority?"
"Yessir," Doyle squeaked.
"You understand what you did wrong, don't you, Corporal Doyle? By the way you forced the first sergeant to change our operation plans, not only did you disobey him, but you usurped my authority. That's pretty serious, don't you agree?"
"Yessir," Doyle croaked.
The tapping abruptly stopped and Conorado leaned back in his chair. "That would be rather embarrassing, wouldn't it, Corporal Doyle?"
"Sir?" Doyle rasped. A court-martial would certainly be embarrassing for him. Especially one that resulted in him being reduced in rank to private, forfeiting all pay and allowances and spending several years in the navy prison at New Portsmouth—but he didn't think that was what Captain Conorado meant.
"Here we court-martial and convict a man at the same time that the army gives him a medal. Yes, that would be very embarrassing. Don't you agree?"
"Yessir," Corporal Doyle squeaked through a too-tight throat.
"There is a solution to the problem, though." Conorado straightened in his chair. "I have spoken with both Major General Cazombi and First Sergeant Myer. They concur. You will not be awarded a medal, you will not be court-martialed. You are confined to the troop berthing areas until the Khe Sanh returns to Thorsfinni's World. You will only leave the troop berthing area for assigned meals or under the direct orders of the ship's surgeon. Upon arrival at Thorsfinni's World you will report to FIST headquarters until such time as you can be reassigned to another FIST or non-Fleet unit.
"Do you understand?"
Corporal Doyle did his best to swallow, but failed again to work up a trace of saliva. "Yessir," he said in a dispirited voice. Leave Company L under disgrace? He was due for rotation anyway, but to leave like that—the humiliation almost went beyond the embarrassment of being court-martialed and convicted.
"Then get out of my sight before I change my mind and request a court-martial board be convened after all."
"Aye aye, sir," Corporal Doyle forced himself to say. He pivoted about-face, almost tottered, caught himself, and marched out of Captain Conorado's office.
Conorado continued to look at the hatch long after Doyle disappeared from sight. Finally he turned to Top Myer. "It's a damn shame," he said softly. "Doyle could be a pain in the ass at times, but he was a good clerk and a good Marine." Doyle had clearly been in the wrong, but no harm was done except to the first sergeant's pride. Van Impe was almost fully recovered. And the argument could be made that he'd acted out of conscience. Just then Captain Conorado had his own problems arising out of acts of conscience.
Captain Conorado sat in his tiny state
room on board the Khe Sanh, sipping a mug of Kevorian coffee. He propped his feet up on his writing table and contemplated his future. It looked mighty grim. Hoxey was going to file a formal complaint against him with her superiors as soon as she returned to Earth, charging him with unauthorized interference in scientific matters of the utmost importance to the Confederation, blah blah blah. It would certainly result in an official inquiry, and possibly court-martial proceedings against him.
He thought of the bedraggled creatures they'd freed on the planet's surface after taking them out of Hoxey's laboratory. If only he could be sure that it had thanked him.
Someone knocked sharply on the door twice, the ancient signal among military men that a superior wished entry. "Come," Conorado said, putting his feet on the floor.
General Cazombi stepped in, the grimace that passed for a smile twisting up one side of his face. "May I join you for a few moments, Captain?"
"Yessir, but I'm afraid just now I'm not the best of company," Conorado said as he stood up and offered the general the only other chair in the compartment.
Cazombi sniffed at the coffee. "Smells good. What is it?" he asked.
"Kevorian coffee, sir. Care for a cup?"
"Don't mind if I do, thank you very much." The general took a sip. "Jesus!" he exclaimed. "Whew! What the hell did you put in there?"
Conorado smiled. "Bourbon whiskey, sir. I got it off that Herbloc guy."
"That was against the Rules of Engagement, Captain," Cazombi reminded him, taking another sip.
"I know, sir."
Cazombi just nodded. "Damned good stuff." Cazombi smacked his lips. "Isn't it against navy regulations to have alcohol aboard one of their vessels?"
"Yessir."
"Hmmm. Captain, you are becoming quite a scofflaw in your old age, aren't you?"
"I guess so, sir." Conorado sounded resigned. "Sir," he said suddenly, rushing on, "I wanted to thank you for briefing us on Society 437."
"Forget it. Have you seen Hoxey's complaint?" Conorado said he had not. "Well, I have," the general continued. "She accuses you of just about everything." Cazombi's face twitched in a grimace-grin.
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