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

by Gardner Dozois

  “And . . . ? There is always an ‘and’ at the end of such sentences.”

  “More of a ‘but’, I reckon.” This time Valdoux smirked, while Quinx pretended to misunderstand the jest. “But I got to know why you want to chase after the Thalassojustity’s biggest brass. All hot up and ready to fight, at that. This ain’t something a thoughtful priest would be doing. Or even a thoughtless priest.”

  “I fear a great heresy is about to be unleashed. Tonight. Or perhaps tomorrow. And it may sweep the world. If I can reach one man aboard Clear Mountain and stop him, I may be able to halt a rising tide before the damage is done.”

  “Ain’t no one stops the tide,” Valdoux observed. “That’s why I fly over the waters. Let the Thalassocretes argue with the waves. Storms don’t trouble the top of the sky.” He stuck his hand out. “I’ll take you for a single silver shekel. That seals a contract. Learning what comes next will pay your balance. You’re a mighty strange man, Revered, on a mighty strange errand.”

  “A shekel it is.” Despite the process. Quinx was afraid he’d somehow got the wrong end of the bargain nonetheless.

  “Look at it from my bridge.” Valdoux grinned again. “Either I’ll get to see the beginning of tide that floods the world, or I’ll get to see a lone man stop the tide. History before my eyes either way, no matter how the play lands. Or maybe you’re a madman. Even so, I reckon you’re mad with the entire power of the Lateran behind you. Watching that should be good sport, likewise.”

  Ninety Nine loomed out of the darkness at those words. Quinx was startled again—from the name he’d expected another Machinist, but not a female. She was clad immodestly in a tunic and sailor’s dungarees.

  Valdoux bowed her wordlessly up the tower. She favored Quinx with one cold, incurious glance, then clattered upward.

  He stared after her a long moment, trying to sort his feelings from his fatigue, then surrendered the effort and began the slow, aching climb himself.

  As Quinx mounted the stairs, Valdoux called after him. “We sail under Manju rules now, Revered. Be sure you really want what you’re asking after.”

  Quinx slept the remainder of the night away while Blind Justess set her course and left Highpassage ahead of the impending storm. He awoke to a pearlescent pink dawn gleaming through the tiny porthole of his tiny cabin. Most of the available space not occupied by his bunk was filled with Brother Kurts, who snored gently while sprawled upon the deck.

  He could not remember ever having seen the monk asleep.

  There was no getting up without disturbing the other man, so Quinx lay still a while and watched the sky shift tone from pink to blue. They would be heading very nearly into the sun, he realized, and surely not so far from Thera now unless the winds had been notably unfavorable.

  Tiny though the cabin was, it had been appointed with the same odd combination of frugality and luxury as the rest of the airship. The paneling was some wood he did not recognize, doubtless a rare tree from the waist of the world. Brightwork and electricks ran across the walls like veins. Even the sheets were silk, which seemed a bit perverse.

  Soon he realized he must be awake and about. Valdoux was mercurial, likely to take any number of strange actions in the absence of his direction. “Brother Kurts,” Quinx whispered.

  The monk’s head snapped forward with a gust of garlicky breath. “Revered,” he said, his hand falling away again from something beneath his robes.

  A weapon, of course, though such was forbidden by the Galiciate Treaty. Kurts worked for Quinx, not the Thalassojustity. The Consistitory Office had its own requirements, for all that he must at times pretend to a long lost innocence as to means and methods.

  “Everything is well, Brother Kurts. I must have some coffee, and mount to the bridge to consult with our fair captain.”

  “Six others aboard, sir,” Kurts replied. “Two of them Machinists. The captain, his ship’s boy from before. An engineer and his boy as well. The heretics serve as gunners and artificers, best as I can tell.”

  “I met one of them last night. He styled himself Three Eighty Seven.”

  “The master gunner.” The monk nodded slowly. “Gunner’s mate is a female name of Ninety Nine.”

  “I briefly saw her yesterday evening.” Somehow Ninety Nine’s dubious femininity seemed doubly blasphemous by the late of day, though in truth, Quinx was rapidly losing his capacity for surprise at what might transpire aboard Blind Justess.

  “I doubt she will challenge anyone’s virtue. She is both offensive and unlovely.”

  “And what do you know of a woman’s loveliness, Brother Kurts?” Quinx asked with a small smile.

  The monk was not amused. “As little and all as the Increate allows a man of my vows.”

  “Fair enough. I apologize for troubling you. But I must find my way to coffee before I become more trouble.”

  They slipped into the short companionway on this upper deck. Brother Kurts led Quinx the half dozen steps to the tiny galley. This was indeed a racing yacht, not intended for full meal service. Or really, any other full service. The coffee machine, however, was an elegant marvel of brass and copper, festooned with a maze of pipes and valves and small, decorative metal eagles screaming for their freedom.

  It smelled like a slice of heaven.

  “Truly the Increate did bless mankind when They caused the coffee bean to grow,” said Quinx.

  Kurts grunted, studying the machine for several long moments before launching into a rapid set of seemingly random manipulations that shortly produced a steaming cup of coffee so deep brown Quinx thought he might be able to see the reflection of last year’s breakfasts in it.

  Five minutes later, fortified by caffeine and a rather stale sticky bun of dubious provenance, Quinx headed for the bridge on the deck below. He was trailed by a bleary-eyed Brother Kurts.

  “Good morning to you, Revered.” Valdoux seemed as chipper as if he’d just had a week at a Riveran resort. The ship’s boy was present, as well as another lad whom Quinx took to be the engineer’s boy. To his profound relief, neither Machinist was on the bridge.

  “Captain, the pleasure is all mine.” Quinx slipped up to the fore, where Valdoux piloted Blind Justess with a wheel and a set of levers. Gauges were arrayed to either side of him, but before and sweeping down to his feet was a wall of curved glass. The pale green of the Attic Main loomed vertiginously below, the ripples of waves like crumpled foil.

  An oblong island with a sharp-peaked central mountain lay before them. A small settlement nestled on one shore—the south?—dominated by its docks. The rest of the island was heavily forested. Clearly not settled, beyond whomever lived there to service the sea traffic.

  “Thalassojustity territory,” Quinx observed.

  Valdoux made a tsking noise. “Ain’t no airship masts. They’re behind the times, our naval friends.”

  Quinx glanced sideways. “You hold no brief for the Pax Maria?”

  “What do I care for the sea? The air is my place. They can’t make neither peace nor war in the skies. And they ain’t made no real effort to claim what power might be theirs up here.”

  “Where one grasp fails, another will reach,” muttered Brother Kurts behind them.

  “Exactly,” said Valdoux. “And here is Thera, Revered. We overflew a fast ship on the water late in the night. I reckon they’ll be here by midmorning.”

  “Clear Mountain?”

  “I didn’t figure on stopping to ask. But that does seem to be a sensible thing to assume.”

  How to proceed? Quinx badly wanted to confront this fool Morgan Abutti before more damage could be done, but the man had spent almost an entire day closeted with the senior Thalassocretes. A more focused assemblage of the powers in the world he had trouble imagining, short of another Congress of Cities and States being called.

  How much harm had already been levied? Was the Externalist heresy loose for good and all? Or had the Thalassojustity seen through the madman and contained him?

&n
bsp; Valdoux’s voice interrupted Quinx’ whirling thoughts. “No.”

  “No? No what?”

  “I can’t land you in force aboard Clear Mountain.”

  “That was not my . . .” Quinx let his voice trail off. He didn’t know what he should do next. He thought quickly. “I would meet them at the dock. Brother Kurts will guard my back.”

  “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.

  From the introduction to Common Interests,

  Uncommon Rivals, P.R. Frost, University of Massalia Press, M.2991, Th. 1994, L.6008

  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.

  “I . . .” Morgan’s voice faltered. “No. People are better than that.” His heart fell. “The Increate did not put us on this Earth so that we could pretend away the natural world.”

  “You, sir, have averred that the Increate did not put us
on this Earth at all,” Goins said. “And though everyone will cry you down for saying that, the damnedest thing is that you are correct.”

  He turned and looked over the rail, at the man on the pier. Abutti looked with him to see a priest waiting. Two-dozen rifles and the Maxim gun were trained down on the Revered, who seemed unperturbed. He stared back up at them, clearly identifying Goins as the authority aboard ship.

  “If it is not the Presiding Judge,” the priest called up.

  Goins appeared positively sour. “Revered Quinx.”

  “Quinx!?” hissed Morgan. “The Inquisitor?”

  “The Lateran refers to that as the Consistitory Office,” Goins told him quietly. “And I know what that oily little bastard is doing here. I just don’t know how or why.”

  Morgan nodded. “The airship your people were looking at.”

  “Do you have a Dr. Morgan Abutti aboard?” Quinx called up. “I am very much fain to speak with him if so.”

  “How—” Morgan began, but Goins cut him off. “Don’t be an ass, man.”

  “Ah, I see you have him with you,” Quinx said. “I would be much obliged if you’d set the doctor ashore for some private discussions with me.”

  “On whose authority?” Goins waved the riflemen to port arms.

  “I could claim the authority of the Lateran, but our writ does not run here.”

  “No.” This time Goins grinned. “Have a better offer?”

  “Remember your history, Judge. Brother Lupan died not so long ago.”

  Goins shook his head. “This tale does not fly on wings of madness, Revered. It creaks atop the edifice of science.”

  “Are they truly so different in the face of the Increate?” Quinx stared at Morgan. The man’s eyes were like steel, even from this distance. Morgan shuddered at the thought of being alone in a small room, under the Question.

  “I . . . I have never denied the Increate,” he shouted. “Nor did I intend to.” Goins jabbed Morgan in the ribs. “If you are so eager to treat with the Revered, I can put you ashore. Alone”