The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 26 (Mammoth Books)

by Gardner Dozois

  The sounds of the room were similar: a faint buzz from the lights, the creak and sigh of old wood, the footfalls of someone approaching.

  Morgan’s eyes shot open and he stiffened.

  The newcomer—no door had opened, had it?—was gloriously darkskinned as any king of old, gray eyes almost silver in a cragged and noble face. His hair was worked back in prince-rows, each set with tiny turquoise and silver beads so that he seemed almost to be wearing a net upon his head. A silver hoop hung from his left ear, the conciscrux of the Thalassojustity tiny in his right. Barefoot, he wore a laborer’s canvas trousers and shirt, though dyed a deep maroon rather than the usual blue or grubby tan. Despite the attire, this one would not have fooled any thinking observer for more than a moment, not with his bearing.

  After a moment, Morgan finally registered how small the man was. Barely shoulder high, four foot nine at the most. That was when he knew who he faced—Eraster Goins, presiding judge of the Lesser Benches. The Thalassocrete.

  “Pardon my state of undress,” Goins said politely. “I was attending to some physical matters when I was informed of the requirement for my presence.”

  “I . . . Sir . . .” Morgan made the hand-sign of his lodge.

  A crinkling smile emerged that was entirely at odds with the power at this man’s word. Goins could summon fleets, lay waste to cities, claim the life of almost anyone, at his mere whim. “Of course I know that, Dr. Abutti. You do not need to demonstrate your loyalty or training at this time.”

  At this time.

  “Wh-what, then, sir?”

  “Well . . .” Goins cracked his knuckles, took a moment to find great interest in the beds of his nails. Morgan did not think this was a man ordinarily at a loss for words. “So far as anyone in the city of Highpassage is concerned, you are in here being thrashed within an inch of your now-worthless life. This matter will be of specific interest to certain Lateran observers.”

  Morgan was moved to briefly study his own hands. He was under threat, certainly. No one talked to Goins or his ilk without placing themselves at great risk. A single false word could misplace an entire career, or a lifetime’s work. Or freedom.

  “This is about my speech at the Planetary Society, isn’t it?”

  “Your perspicacity shall soon be legendary.” Goins’ tone managed to be simultaneously ironically airy and edged with a whiff of fatality. “Perhaps you would care to explain to me what you thought you were about?”

  “Am I on trial?” Morgan regretted the words the instant he’d blurted them out.

  “No, but you certainly could be.” Goins eyes narrowed, his smile now gone to some faraway place. “You would enjoy the process far less than you’re enjoying this discussion, I shall be pleased to assure you.”

  “No, I didn’t mean . . .” Morgan stopped stumbling through reflexive excuses and instead summoned both his courage and his words. Proof was proof, by the stars. He couldn’t explain everything, but he could explain a great deal more than was comfortable. “I have new evidence concerning the Eight Gardens, and the origins of man.”

  “I do not believe that is considered an open question. Are you a Lateran theologian, to revisit Dispersionism? That is a matter for our contemplative competitor on the southern verge of the Attik Main.”

  Morgan made the sign of the Increate across his chest. “I do not presume to challenge faith, I just—”

  “No?” Goins voice rose. “What precisely did you intend to present to the Planetary Society, then?”

  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 t
oo 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.

  Quinx had managed a decent view of Blind Justess on the way up the airship’s mooring tower. Her envelope was of very unusual design, more of a flattened vee shape than the usual billowing sausage of an airship. Though he was no engineer, he could appreciate the effort at linestreaming in a racing vessel. Some of the fastest water yachts shared that look. Likewise the high-speed locomotive that ran the express routes between the Lateran and Pharopolis far to the east, the largest city on the south shore of the Attik Main.

  The gondola below the envelope was just as unusual, resembling nothing so much as a sleek wooden knife. She boasted a sharp keel that split the air, a fine array of viewing ports in smoked glass, and very few of the usual utilitarian protrusions so common on airships. Just before boarding, he’d noted a profusion of small hatches and ports along the outside of the gondola’s hull—clearly this vessel kept many of her secrets from prying eyes.

  Within was that odd combination of wealth and efficiency. The carpets felt thick and cool, of the finest wool and not yet showing any signs of wear. Grab rails and spittoons were brass polished to a painful brightness. Most furniture was gimbaled and latched away against violent manoeuvres, or possibly just to save space. Her most salient characteristic was narrowness.

  He wondered what to make of that.

  Narrow or not, the great diesels encapsulated into nacelles along the lower curve of the gas bag coughed swiftly to life before growling deep in their throats. Blind Justess cast off from the tower smoothly enough, but within minutes she was moving faster than Quinx ever had done while airborne, nearly to railroad speeds.

  Kurts had reported a promised velocity of over fifty miles per hour through the air. Quinx had considered his man to be mistaken or misinformed, but as the Attik Main slipped by beneath his feet, his mind was changing.

  How much progress had taken place in the factories and laboratories of Highpassage, Massalia, and the other great cities of the world while he’d spent his life laboring among books and sweating priests and accusations of error? A ship like this, any airship in truth, had been inconceivable when he and Ion were boys. That he could now fly with the speed of storms was . . .

  A miracle?

  Perhaps the Increate had always intended this for Their creation. Another generation would have to answer that question, Quinx knew. His was growing old and become too tired to look much further ahead.

  Externalism.

  His mind had avoided the point of this journey, dwelling on the mysteries of a machine in which Quinx in truth had no interest.

  Heresies were for the most part quite boring, even mundane. And the Lateran of these later days was nothing like the Lateran of centuries past. His own predecessors in office had routed out sin and error with a vigor at which Quinx could only marvel. And sometimes shudder at.

  Not that he hadn’t broken more than a few men, some of them quite literally. But peculation and sins of the flesh seemed to be the flaws in his generation. Not the bonfires of the heart that had sent armies marching across entire continents in ages past, not to mention setting the Lateran time and again in opposition to the Thalassojustity.

  No one cared so much any more. The role of the Increate in man’s tenure on Earth was undeniable—even the poor, deluded atheists were little more than dissenters against a preponderance of evidence from scriptural to archaeological. The rise of science had only reinforced what the Lateran had always taught.

  Except for the damned Externalists.

  Every time that heresy had arisen, it had been viciously suppressed. Somewhat to Quinx’ continued surprise, even the Thalassojustity had cooperated in the panicked months over the winter of L.5964 and L.5965, when he was new in his place as head of the Consistitory Office and Brother Lupan had grown regrettably public in his insane claims of having found the Increate’s Chariot on an island in the Sea of Sind.

  There were a dozen theological problems with Brother Lupan’s theory, but the most practical problem was that he’d had such a vivid, imaginative presentation of his claims that the human race, already birthed elsewhere, had descended from the skies in the hand of the Increate. People listened, at least at first.

  Quinx still believed that the Thalassojustity had intervened in what was logically a Lateran internal dispute simply to protect their Insular Mandate. Trade flowed over the world’s oceans under their protection. In return, unless otherwise ceded by treaty, islands belonged to the Thalassojustity. All of them, from the smallest harbor rock to the great, jungled insulae scattered across the eastern verges of the Sea of Sind.

  Brother Lupan had been trespassing not only on theology, but also on the private property of the greatest military and economic power on Earth.

  Quinx examined the electrick grips the boy had brought forward. Huge things, built into oversized rubber gloves lined with some felted mesh. He wondered where the harpoons were, how one aimed. Was there a reticule to be used here?

  It was a silly, juvenile fantasy, and beneath him as a servant of the Increate. No Lateran vessel had sailed armed since the Galiciate Treaty of L.5782, over two centuries ago. In that document
the Thalassojustity had guaranteed the safety of all Lateran traffic, as well as the persons of the Increate’s servants here on Earth. Blind Justess, not being a Lateran vessel, and practically papered over with the money required to build her, doubtless carried a somewhat more robust defensive proposition to accompany her rakish lines and inhuman speed.

  Quinx let his thoughts go and stared into the wave-tossed sea swiftly passing far below his feet. Externalism was the worst sort of heresy, because it denied the very basis of the relationship between man and the Increate. That Lucan Matroit had seen it openly declared was frightening. From where did such evil arise, and how so swiftly?

  Ever was that the nature of his office. To seek out evil and lay it to rest.

  Still, he wondered what Ion had known. Now was not the time for a crisis, not with a new Gatekeeper to be elected and elevated and begin setting his own mark upon the church of their fathers.

  It is the considered opinion of this subcommittee that the study of astronomy and the related arts be placed under much closer supervision than has heretofore been believed advisable. The impressionable minds and irresponsible imaginations of some of our younger researchers may be influenced towards paths of thought not consonant with this institution’s devotion to the spirit of scientific inquiry. A Review Committee is proposed as an adjunct to the Board of Governors, consisting of senior faculty, a representative of the Planetary Society, and by invitation if they so desire to accept, representatives from both the Thalassojustity and the Lateran. We may thus guide the research and observations of our more impetuous young faculty and students along lines fit for men of good social standing, character, and faith.

  —Undated memorandum, University of Highpassage faculty senate

  “Show me,” Goins said quietly.

  “Show you what?” A surge of recklessness overtook Morgan. “I thought you were forcing me to silence.”

  The judge grimaced. “Show me what you found. Because if you can find it, anyone can find it.”

  Morgan paused, attempting to sort out if he’d just been insulted. “I hardly think that just anyone could—”