by Wren, M. K.
AUTONAV SYSTEM: Automatic computerized navigation and guidance system for ships or vehicles.
AUTOSPENSER: Generally called a “ ’spenser.” An automatic dispenser, usually for food or beverages.
BACTERIOSTATIC GAUZE: (Medical) A porous fabric, chemically treated to inhibit bacterial growth, used for bandaging wounds or incisions.
BARRENGORSE: A spiny-lobed, photosynthetic organism, generally classified as a plant, native to the Barrens of Castor and one of the predominant species in the Marching, or Pygmy, Forests. It is a hydrotropic “migrator,” moving by a process of rapid growth in low-lying, branching tendrils on the surface, and in deep-probing roots below the surface, both of which are abandoned as quickly as new shoots and roots grow, allowing the plant to follow its underground water sources.
BARRENS: The minimally fertile temperate zone of Castor between the icecaps and the equatorial desert, or Midhar.
BASIC SCHOOL: The educational system for Fesh; specifically, a ten-year mandatory program administered by the Houses (or the Concord or Church), generally following guidelines established by the University System’s Department of Education. Additional one- to three-year vocational training programs are also provided by House Basic School systems, although specialized training is often a prerogative of professional Guilds.
BEAMED POWER: Solar energy collected on orbiting satellites (or on surface power-receptor stations on the Centauran Inner Planets), then transmitted to planetside receptors in the form of microwave beams, which power the high-gain kinetic (HGK) generators that produce electrical current.
BELNONG: A vertebrate triped native to Castor, a symbiont with various photosynthetic organisms of the Marching Forests. It is most notable for its capacity to regenerate itself from as little as ten percent of its body, a process that provides one means of species reproduction, although it is also trisexual and reproduces oviparously. The eggs are incubated by certain species of photosynthetic symbionts.
BEYOND: (Bond Religion) The “Realm Beyond the Farthest Star.” The Bond equivalent of the Heavenly Realm, residence of the All-God and Holy Mezion and the saints, and place of reward after death for the souls of persons deemed worthy.
BEYOND SOUL: (Bond Religion) A manifestation of a dead person assumed to reside in the Beyond; a ghost.
BIOMONITOR: (Medical) A device for monitoring vital signs generally fitted in a “biomonitor cuff,” which is attached to the patient’s wrist. Its signals can also be displayed on a “biomonitor screen.”
BLESSED: (Bond Religion) n. Living persons regarded as especially favored or in some way singled out by the All-God and Holy Mezion.
BOARD OF CENSORS: A committee made up of ten members of the Court of Lords, each of whom serves a five-year term. Its function is to designate Priority ratings for any material published, exhibited, performed, etc. in the Concord. Its prerogatives include destroying or prohibiting the publication, exhibition, or performance of material it judges subversive or immoral and prosecuting persons or even Houses guilty of publishing, etc., or in any way disseminating condemned material. Penalties range from fines to execution.
BOARD OF FRANCHISES: A committee made up of ten members of the Court of Lords, each of whom serves a five-year term. Its function is to distribute and allot House franchises, and to mediate disputes involving franchises. Its judgments are legally binding, and a Lord found guilty of franchise infringement is subject to fines or even imprisonment and forfeiture of First Lordship.
BOARD OF SUCCESSION: A committee made up of ten members of the Court of Lords, each of whom serves a five-year term. Its function is to oversee House successions and to determine whether they are consistent with the successional restrictions delineated in the Concord Charter. Lords judged guilty of perpetrating illegal succession are subject to imprisonment and removal, with their heirs, from their House’s succession.
BOND: The term refers to the class or to individuals within it. Bonds are the lowest class in the Concord, an illiterate, slave/serf class comprising approximately seventy percent of the population and functioning as an unskilled labor pool.
BOOKTAPE: A lengthy literary work encoded on tape, from which the text and/or illustrations are displayed on a reading screen.
BORASIL: Boron, silicon, and oxygen glass; in spun form, it is used as a protective and insulating coating.
CAFFAY: A beverage brewed by various methods, most of them involving steam, from the roasted beans of the coffee plant. (“Coffee” has come to refer to a beverage made with synthesized flavoring. Like the original, it also contains caffeine.)
CANTAS: Also “High Cantas.” Religious ceremonies celebrated in both Orthodox and Bond Churches commemorating various sacred events or seasons.
CARRAMINX: An organism native to Castor classified in popular terminology as a “plant-animal.” It is photosynthetic and reproduces by seeding, but is rootless and mobile, has a rudimentary nervous system, and five compound eyes responsive to both light and color.
CENTAURI SYSTEM: The planetary system of the star Alpha Centauri A. The seven planets in the system are: Perseus, Dionysus, and Pan, the Inner Planets; Pollux and Castor, the Twin Planets; and Tityus and Hercules, the Outer Planets.
The Inner Planets are all small (Perseus, the largest, has a diameter of approximately 4,000 km), rocky, geologically inactive bodies devoid of atmosphere. The distance between their orbits is relatively small, making them markedly erratic.
The Twin Planets, Castor and Pollux, were so named because they are similar in size (approximately 9,000 and 13,500 km in diameter respectively) and revolve around a common center of gravity in a single orbit. Pollux has an atmosphere similar to Terra’s and is even more an oceanic planet. On Castor liquid water is found under the surface, depending on the season and latitude, but above the surface it is either vaporized or frozen in the large icecaps. Castor’s thin atmosphere is predominantly nitrogen and carbon dioxide with less than 5.3 percent oxygen.
The Outer Planets, Tityus and Hercules, are gaseous giants comparable to the Solar System’s three ringed giants, and the main constituents of their atmospheres are hydrogen, helium, methane, and ammonia. The diameter of Hercules, the seventh and largest Centauran planet, is only a thousand kilometers less than Jupiter’s. Tityus, Centauri’s only ringed planet, rivals Saturn in the extent and complexity of its ring system. Hercules has ten small, icy satellites; Tityus only five.
CHAIRMAN OF THE DIRECTORATE: The Lord elected by the Directorate (although the position is in practice hereditary) as the presiding officer of the Directorate of the Concord of the Loyal Houses.
CHAN D’AMOR: A legendary love story, sometimes in the form of a poem or song.
CHRONO-SPATIAL EVERSION: A principle of the Drakonian Theory applying to time/space modification.
CIRCLE: In fencing, the area to which combatants are confined in a formal fencing match. The established dimension is a diameter of five meters, the perimeter of which is usually marked with a luminescent, photosensitive line; a bell sounds if a combatant steps on or over the line, and a point is awarded his opponent.
CLARIPIPES: (Musical) A small wind instrument made up of twelve metallic tubes of graduated lengths.
CLAVALIER: (Musical) A large percussion stringed instrument played by manipulating a keyboard. The true clavalier employs no electronic amplification.
COGNATE HOUSE: A House related to another by common ancestry.
COMARIS: An herb used as a seasoning, derived from the leaves of a plant (the comara) native to Castor.
COMCENTER: Communications center. A central terminal through which all communications and information pertinent to a particular type of operation are channeled.
COMCONSOLE: A desk-sized unit equipped with various communication devices, such as vidicom, intercom, lettape screen and recorder, reading screen, memfile inputs, and holojector.
COMMUTRONICS: A term encompassing all aspects of the communications industry.
COMPSYSTEM: Computer system.
‘COM SEQ: Pocketcom sequence. The number sequence denoting the microfrequency assigned to an individual’s personal pocketcom.
COMSYSTEM: Communications system.
CON-CONDITIONING: (Phoenix) Contingency conditioning. After an initial “set,” and with the consent of the subject, the operator can make a conditioned command without going through the usual process of establishing a receptivity state for conditioning.
CONCORD OF THE LOYAL HOUSES: An alliance of Houses founded in 3105, “Loyal” indicating their opposition to the rebellious Houses of the Mankeen League. It is generally referred to as “the Concord,” which designates both the alliance itself and the administrative institution created by and governing it. The latter is to a great degree independent of the member Houses and wields some authority over them, although its power is ultimately derived from common consent of the Houses.
CONCORD: Also “ ’Cord.” Monetary unit printed on six by ten centimeter vellam sheets in denominations of one-tenth, one-half, one, ten, one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, etc., up to one million.
CONCORDIA: Capital city of the Concord, located on the southern coast of Conta Austrail, Terra.
CONDITIONING: (Phoenix) A method of controlling another person’s behavior and memory by means of hypnotic techniques augmented by electronic manipulation of brainwave patterns.
CONFLEET: The military branch of the Concord.
CONFLEET WING: A major Confleet tactical division made up of a Command Unit consisting of one TC Corsair flagship with a complement of ten Corvets and eighty-nine Falcons, plus five units, each of which consists of nine subunits of nineteen Falcons under the command of one Corvet.
CON-LEVELS: (Phoenix) Conditioning levels. Four recognized levels indicating degrees of mental control over another person achieved through conditioning techniques.
CONMED: A branch of the Concord providing medical services and research and training facilities.
CONPOL: The police branch of the Concord.
CON-RAD: (Phoenix) A small transceiver worn in the ear and used for identifying fellow agents; it sets up a signal tone increasing in volume in ratio to its proximity to another con-rad on the same frequency.
CONSCRIPTS: Fesh given compulsory allegiance shifts from Houses to the Concord to fulfill tax levies.
CONTACT ALARM: (Phoenix) A warning sensor worn next to the skin; it produces a vibration that can be felt as a “buzzing” sensation.
CORSAIR: Usually designated Troop Carrier (or TC) Corsair, these are the largest of the three classifications of Confleet ships and serve as flagships of Confleet wings. Corsairs are staffed at optimum with a crew of seventy-five, act as battleline supply and medical stations, and can carry up to two hundred troops in excess of the crew.
CORVET: Second largest of the three classifications of Confleet ships, three times the size and weight of a Falcon, a tenth that of a TC Corsair, at optimum staffed with a crew of thirty. A Corvet and a complement of nineteen Falcons makes up a subunit, the Corvet serving as command ship.
COTILONNA: A formal dance traditionally celebrating the betrothal of Elite couples in which the Promised couple and their parents join hands in a small circle within the larger circle(s) formed by guests attending the betrothal ball.
COURT OF LORDS: A governmental body, primarily advisory in capacity, consisting of the First Lords of the Houses of the Concord.
CP-ONE: (Phoenix) The highest Critical Potential rating given an individual, designating an extremely high potential as a socially disruptive factor.
CREST RING: A ring worn by a First Lord; the stone is always the House stone incised with the House crest. It is a symbol of authority passed down from one generation to the next, from each First Lord to his first born upon the former’s death.
DAGGER OF WILL: A symbol sacred to the Order of Gamaliel. Actual daggers are usually made of jade, sometimes of other minerals, but never of wood or metal. They are always exactly twenty-one centimeters in length with the symbol of the Wheel of Destiny carved into the cruciform intersection of hilt and guard.
DANAE: Largest city on Perseus, one of the three Centauran Inner Planets, and site of the Home Estate of the House of Drakonis.
DARK SOUL: (Bond Religion) An evil spirit, escaped from Nether Dark, that infests living persons.
DEATH PLEDGE: Also “Death Boon.” A promise made to a dying person, generally considered an irrevocable pledge with deep moral and religious connotations.
DECADES OF DISASTER: A historical period, usually dated 2030 to 2060, marked by the dissolution and destruction of the Twentieth-Century civilization, culminating in the onset of the Second Dark Age.
DETENTION CENTER (DC): A Conpol or SSB prison.
DICTUM: (Bond Religion) A pronouncement attributed to a saint or holy man or woman. Dictums become part of the moral and religious code of adherents, and defiance of them is considered heresy.
DIPNOPTERA: An oviparous vertebrate native to southern equatorial areas of the Selamin Sea on Pollux. In its marine stage, it grows to a maximum length of thirty centimeters over a period of two Polluxian years. At maturity it undergoes a rapid metamorphosis, developing breathing sacs and membranous wings, after which it migrates in flocks numbering as many as half a million to breeding grounds in the forests of the Himalya, Comargian, or western Caucasias Mountains. After breeding, only gravid “females”—dipnoptera are actually androgynous—return to the sea, where they die after depositing their eggs to float and incubate in warm equatorial currents.
DIRECTORATE: The Directorate of the Concord of the Loyal Houses, a panel of ten First Lords by law elected by the Court of Lords or by the Directors themselves, although the positions are in practice hereditary. The Directorate is the ultimate governing body of the Concord.
DOC LOC #: Document locator number. A sequence of numbers used to call or locate a particular piece of information from a computer memfile system.
DOLCHETTA: (Music) A hollow-reed wind instrument with a range of three quarter-tone octaves characterized by a “straight” (without vibrato), slightly woody tone.
DOORCON: Door control. A small panel inset, beside a door, that controls its opening and closing, and may include voice-, print-, or lectrilock, and sec-system controls.
DOUBLE IDENT: (Phoenix) A member working outside Fina under an assumed identity.
DOUBLET: An Elite men’s sleeveless inner coat, close-fitting, sometimes belted at the waist, and usually decorated with brocade, which is often reinforced with strands of flexsteel to serve as light protective “armor”.
DRAKONIAN THEORY: A body of theory, formulated by the physicist Orabu Drakon (the first Lord Drakonis) and published in 3060, dealing with interrelationships of space and time, including principles Drakon called “chrono-spatial eversion” and “synchronal metathesis,” the applied principles in SynchShift and SynchCom.
DRENALINE: (Medical) A stimulant chemically similar to naturally produced adrenaline.
ELADANE: (Medical) A strong hallucinogenic drug listed as dangerous by Conpol, which makes its use and possession illegal. It can cause permanent psychosis and occasionally death by hyperallergenic reactions.
ELECTROHARP: (Music) A small, wood or plasteel, oval instrument, sixty centimeters in length, with twenty-four electronically amplified strings, played by plucking with the fingers.
ELITE: The term refers to the class or to individuals within it. The ruling class of the Concord. All Elite are related by blood to the First Lords of the Houses.
ENKEPHALINE: (Medical) An analgesic that functions by stimulating the production of enkephalin in the brain.
ENZYMATIC SOLUTIONS: (Medical) Solutions containing enzymes used in the treatment of injuries to dispose o
f necrotic tissue.
EPIGRA: A philosophical and/or moral thesis usually expressed in poetic form. The term is associated primarily with adherents of the Order of Gamaliel in reference to a body of Epigra attributed to Saint Gamaliel.
ESTRE: A religious holiday celebrating the Mezionic resurrection.
EX SEQ: Extrapolation sequence. A computer sequence extrapolating results of event interactions based on absolute data.
FACE-SCREEN: A small energy field screen that obscures the face by means of a light-diffusing field projected from a narrow, metallic ring worn around the neck.
FALCON: The smallest of the three classifications of Confleet ships, highly maneuverable even in planetary atmospheres. It is staffed at optimum with a crew of ten.
FER, FERRA: General masculine, feminine forms of address for Fesh, used when other titles—Master or Mistra, doctor, lector, etc.—are not applicable.
FESH: A term derived from the word “professional” applying to the middle class, which comprises approximately twenty-nine percent of the Concord’s population. Fesh provide the Concord’s skilled labor and technicians, as well as its scientists, scholars, and artists. It is the only one of the three officially recognized classes in which there is opportunity for professional and social advancement within the class.
FIRST LORD: The hereditary ruler of a House.
FIX: (Phoenix) A homing device used to accurately pinpoint transmission points for a matter transmitter.
’FLEETER: A popular term for a Confleet officer or enlistee.
FLEET OPERATIONS (FO): (Phoenix) The military branch of the Phoenix.
FLEXSTEEL: A steel alloy capable of being drawn into fine, flexible threads ranging in diameter from one to one-tenth of a millimeter.
FLOROPTERA: A photosynthetic organism native to Pollux, in general form strikingly similar to many Terran shrubs; notable for the ability of its large (up to twenty centimeters in diameter) blossoms to “fly.”