by M. K. Wren
PAGE: An Elite boy between the ages of ten and fifteen, usually the son of a House VisLord or the scion of a Cognate House, granted the privilege of being educated in the Home Estate of a First Lord.
PANTERRAN CONFEDERATION: A planet-wide union of Houses analogous to the Concord, its political offspring. It was founded at the culmination of the Wars of Confederation in 2903 and flourished until the onset of the Mankeen Revolt in 3105.
PEDWAY: A moving walkway for pedestrian travel.
PELADEEN REPUBLIC: A monarchal republic established in the Centauri System in 3135 under the titular leadership of Lord Quintin Peladeen, terminated in 3210 upon its defeat by the Concord in the War of the Twin Planets.
PELISSE: A light outdoor garment worn by Elite women, typically ankle length, with long, wide sleeves; usually hooded and often made of fur, or fur trimmed.
PLANETARY TRANSYSTEMS: The transportation systems, operated under franchise by the House of Hild Robek, which include any kind of surface transport. (“Surface transport” is interpreted in Robek franchises as any form of non-marine, mechanical conveyance operated at an altitude of less than four thousand meters.) Public transportation systems and metropolitan Trafficon grid systems are included in Robek franchises as well as the manufacture of all equipment necessary to these systems and all vehicles used for surface travel.
PLASEAL: A thin, non-elastic, plasex film that adheres to itself upon the application of heat.
PLASEX: A general term for various synthetic, nonmetallic compounds produced by polymerization of organic compounds. These can be molded or cast into a variety of forms, or rolled into sheets or films.
PLASIFOAM: A packing or insulating material made of air-infused plasex.
PLASKIN: A thin, highly elastic plasex film.
PLASMENT: A cement mixed with certain types of plasex giving it resilience and durability, as well as excellent insulating capacity. It is used architecturally to coat walls, floors, and ceilings, both interior and exterior.
PLASTEEL: A structural plasex reinforced with lattices of steel rods.
PLATTNADE: A platinum-titanium alloy generally used for fine tableware or for jewelry mountings.
POCKETCOM: Pocket communicator. A device used for personal communication equipped with a two-way vidicom screen (usually less than ten centimeters in diameter), a radio transceiver, and frequency control.
POINT OF HONOR: A personal challenge to be answered in a formal fencing match. Like fencing, “the Sport of Lords,” the point of honor is a custom practiced exclusively by Elite males.
PORCELEEN: An extremely high-fired, nearly translucent ceramic used for tableware or small art objects.
PRESSYRINGE: (Medical) A disposable syringe equipped with a compressed-air capsule.
PRINTLOCK: A lock operated by the reading and identification of thumbprints of programmed persons.
PRIORITY RATINGS: Access ratings given to publications or information by the Board of Censors. Information given a Priority-One (or Pri-One) rating is accessible only to the Chairman, Directorate Lords, and with Directorate approval to certain Fesh, such as First Commanders of Conpol, the SSB, and Confleet. Pri-Two information is accessible generally to any Elite and to Fesh granted specific access permits by a Lord. Pri-Three information is available to any Elite, to ranking Fesh scholars and scientists, or to upper echelon House, Concord, or Church personnel with a blanket access permit, rather than the limited specific access permit necessary for Pri-Two memfiles. Pri-Four information is open to all Elite and Fesh without restriction.
The term “Pri-One” is also used informally to indicate anything regarded as important or vital.
PROX SCANNER: Proximity scanner. A radar system employed for surveillance within a limited area.
PSYCHOCONTROLLER: In Conpol and the SSB, personnel trained in psychoscience and specializing in interrogation procedures.
PSYCHOMAXIC DRUGS: A popular term for hallucinogenic and euphoric drugs.
PUBLICOM SYSTEM: Public Vidicom System. The vidicom broadcasting system operated by the House of DeKoven Woolf under its commutronics franchises.
PULSED LASER: A laser used as a strategic weapon in which emissions are pulsed, creating shock waves within the target. This augments the laser’s effectiveness and avoids the tendency of unpulsed emissions to create a plasma in massive, metallic targets, which prevents full penetration of the beam.
RECOGNITION CONDITIONING: (Phoenix) A type of conditioning that enables the subject to recognize things or persons at a preconscious level on the basis of sensory clues—such as the sound of a particular voice—implanted by conditioning.
RELIQUARY RITE: (Bond Religion) A ceremony centered on a relic—usually part of the ashes of the cremated body—of a new saint, marking his or her acceptance into the Bond pantheon of saints.
RIGHTNESS: (Bond Religion) An event deemed ordained by the All-God.
RITES OF PASSING: (Bond Religion) Funeral service preceding the cremation of the dead.
ROCKWOOD: A photosynthetic organism native to Pollux and very similar to Terran conifers in appearance, although its divided, lobed leaves resemble Terran ferns or Castorian barrengorse rather than coniferous needles, and its smooth, cylindrical trunks are invariably double or triple. The trunk tissue is highly siliceous, its structure supporting growth to heights of 125 meters. Rockwood reproduces by means of wind-disseminated spores formed in spore buds on the upper parts of the trunks.
SANNA: (Bond Religion) A traditional chant or song of glorification, reverence, etc.; a hymn.
SANSERET SILK: Ornamental silk brocade from the House of Sanseren, patterned on Second Dark Age brocades found in Ceylonia, and characterized by stylized floral and animal designs.
SCANNER: Any type of system, such as radar, employed in nonvisual observation; specifically, the screens displaying their signals.
SCOUT: A small, short-range Confleet ship generally used for reconnaissance; it is hangared offplanet in TC Corsairs, can be piloted by one person, and will accommodate three.
SCRIBER: A small (usually Fifteen by twenty centimeters), flat, photosensitive screen on which a lightpen is used as a writing instrument. The images created are impermanent and can be negated instantly by switching off the screen.
SEANOVA: An invertebrate marine organism native to Pollux, approximately twenty centimeters in diameter, with ten to twenty tentacles radiating from an ovoid body, the epidermis covered with minute spines that are also sensory organs. During its annual mating period, the seanova becomes luminescent and changes color from its usual blue-gray to a reddish orange. Populations estimated at up to five million congregate in the surf off protected, sandy beaches where they link tentacles to form glowing, undulating masses. Seanova “rafts” remain intact for two to three Polluxian days, while both males and females eject quantities of germ plasm, some of which finds its way into the open brood sacs of asexual “mothers,” where the young develop.
SEC-CON: (Phoenix) Security conditioning. A form of conditioning that prevents voluntary revelation to any nonmember of information pertaining to the Phoenix.
SECOND GEN: (Phoenix) Second generation. Any person born to Phoenix members after its founding.
SEC-SYSTEM: Security system. A system of locks, alarms, monitors, etc. designed to protect an area from intrusion and/or to identify, disable, or in some cases even kill intruders.
SEMELE: The largest city on Dionysus, the second of the Inner Planets of the Centauri System.
SER, SERRA: Masculine, feminine forms of address used for Elite under Age of Rights.
SHANIDEL: A furniture design characterized by the use of exotic woods carved in strongly curvilinear forms; the original designs were created by the Thirty-first Century sculptor, Orman Shanidel.
SHEPHERD: (Bond Religion) A minister/priest of the Bond Church. He not only conducts religious ceremonies in the church but acts as arbiter of all moral and religious questions for his ‘flocks.’ Shephe
rds also preserve and perpetuate the Holy Words by rote memory, and many serve their flocks as practitioners of herbal medicine.
Only men are chosen to be Shepherds although the Bond Church recognizes many women as saints. The Shepherds choose their successors, who begin their training as acolytes at ten to twelve years of age. A Shepherd may choose several acolytes but designate only one to succeed him upon his death. The others continue in the role of acolytes if they remain in the same compound and choose not to marry. Both Shepherds and acolytes take vows of celibacy.
Shepherds and acolytes in most Houses are excused from other work and allowed to live in or near the chapels, and the Shepherds’s choices of acolytes are accepted without question by compound overseen. However, in Houses with more restrictive policies, the Shepherds’s choices must be approved by the overseen, who may revoke an acolyte’s, or even in some cases a Shepherd’s, status at any time.
In most House compounds there are ten Bond chapels and Shepherds, one of whom is designated the Elder Shepherd, a title of respect conferred by concensus of all the Shepherds in a compound. All the Bonds in a compound are considered to be in the Elder Shepherd’s flock.
SIGMOD CIRCUITS: Signal modification circuits. Electronic devices that automatically encode and decode radio or vidicom transmissions.
SLACSUTT: An informal, two-piece garment worn by both sexes in the Fesh class and consisting of pants and pullover shirt of the same material. Some variation in style, material, and accessories is available, especially to wealthier Fesh, with more variation offered in women’s styles.
SPIRIT WEFT: (Bond Religion) A bond between individuals, or their souls, that cannot be broken, even by death, and extends into the Beyond, or afterlife.
SPOROWHALE: An invertebrate, marine organism native to Pollux. Its name is a misnomer, although it does reproduce by means of spore-like bodies, but its only relationship to the Terran whale is that both are large marine organisms. The adult sporowhale may be up to ten meters in length, six in breadth. It is a colonial organism more closely related to Terran marine plants than animals in all its diverse stages of development, particularly in the tertiary stage. In the quinuary, or adult, stage, it acquires, along with its solid, ovoid form, the typical lateral ridge fins, or megacilia, that enable it to embark on its long migration from the northern Selarnin Sea, through the Comargian Straits, to its breeding grounds in the southern Polluxian Ocean, then back to its starting point, two Polluxian years later, for sporing.
SSB: The Special Services Branch of Conpol, a police agency authorized to investigate and prosecute cases of subversion, treason, or other crimes against the Concord.
STARENZA: A furniture design characterized by severe lines and geometric decoration produced by the House of Starenza (now merged with Mays Fedoric) in the Thirtieth Century.
STUN DART, OR STUNNER: A device used defensively to inject a drug into another person. Stunners may be fired from a gun or similar device utilizing a compressed air charge, or when direct contact is possible a device similar to a miniature pressyringe is employed. Drugs used vary in effect, some causing only brief muscular paralysis and/or unconsciousness, while others are immediately fatal.
SUBTUG: A small (maximum length, five meters), powerful subsea vessel generally used for underwater construction, marine farming, anchoring tidal seines, towing fish corrals, etc. Most models can be piloted by one person.
SURCOAT: An article of Elite masculine apparel worn over a doublet or vest; a coat-like garment with long, flared sleeves, usually belted or sashed at the waist. In length it varies from mid-thigh to floor length. The longer styles are generally worn by older men.
S/V SCREEN: Sound/vision screen. (Sound and vision screens are also used separately.) Energy fields that prevent penetration of sound and/or light waves, usually used in windows, doorways—sometimes as doors—or as partitions.
SYNCHCOM: Ultra-lightspeed radio or vidicom communication.
SYNCHRONAL METATHESIS: A principle of the Drakonian Theory, also referred to as the time/space transposition or interchange effect.
SYNCHSHIFT (SS): Transition into the ultra-lightspeed “state”; the applied principle of synchronal metathesis, which “makes possible navigation in time as well as in space; that is, the synchronization of one’s temporal destination with one’s spatial destination.” (From SynchShift Explained, Laramy Joneson, Archives doc loc #1210/ 17–1919–2153235–PR–4.)
SYNTEGRATOR: A refuse disposal mechanism that reduces refuse to a fine ash by subjecting it to extremely high temperatures in a shielded laser chamber.
TAB: (Phoenix) Total Amnesia Block. A type of conditioning designed to prevent forced revelation of information pertaining to the Phoenix. The TAB usually goes into effect upon the arrest of a Phoenix member by Conpol or the SSB and induces a selective amnesia that blocks out all personal memory.
TABARD: A garment worn by both male and female Bonds, a short, loose jacket with long sleeves, boldly patterned in the two colors of the Bond’s House—or for Concord Bonds, in black and gold; for Church Bonds, in white and gold.
TACCOMM: Tactics Command. In both Confleet and Phoenix Fleet Operations, a department whose function is strategic planning.
TEA BREW: A metal or ceramic pot, equipped with a self-contained heating unit, used for brewing tea.
TECH: The term is exclusive to Fesh and is derived from the word “technologist,” although it also refers to trained practitioners of skills outside the applied sciences. It is generally used as a combining form, as in econotech (economist), medtech (medical technician or assistant), stattech (statistician), etc.
TECH GRADE RATINGS: Techs are rated Grade 1 through 10, in that order, on the basis of examinations administered by the University Board of Standards. Salaries and other benefits are usually commensurate with grade ratings.
TENSTEEL: A steel alloy with exceptionally high tensile strength.
TESTING: (Bond Religion) A trial by ordeal regarded as divinely sanctioned.
THERMBLANKET: A bed cover with fine, heat-emitting wires woven into the fabric.
THERMCARPET: A floor covering that like the thermblanket has heat-emitting wires woven into the fabric, but the conductors are heavier and radiate more heat. Thermcarpets are often the principal heat source in residential rooms.
THERMOGENERATOR: A generator/storage system, usually employing beamed solar-powered exchangers to produce and store heat, which is circulated in a vented airflow system.
THRYMBIS: The largest city on Pan, third and smallest of the Inner Planets of the Centauri System.
TTTHE BONDS: Bonds given mandatory allegiance shifts to the Church by their Houses. The offering of Bonds, along with monetary donations, constitutes the Houses’ annual “tithe” offerings to the Church. Such offerings are usually less than a literal tithe, generally three to five percent of a House’s total yearly income. Fesh are rarely allieged to the Church involuntarily as tithe offerings, but in most Houses and in the Concord, they will be granted allegiance shifts to the Church on request if they wish to join a monastic order.
TORAMIL: The largest city on Mars, site of the home Estate of the House of Neeth Cameroodo.
TRAFFICON GRID SYSTEM: A computerized system of radio-transmitted grids controlling aircar traffic in urban areas, operated by the House of Hild Robek. All aircars, ‘taxis, ‘drays, etc. are equipped with remote guidance systems that permit control by the Trafficon system. Only Conpol, Confleet, and Conmed vehicles may legally operate outside grid control within Trafficon-served municipal areas without special clearance from Conpol. The six basic grid levels in order from the lowest to the highest in elevation are:
Entry-Exit grid
‘Dray grid (Freight transport only)
Five-kilometer destination range grid
Ten-kilometer destination range grid
Twenty-kilometer destination range grid
Express grid (High-speed vehicles or those with destinati
ons beyond twenty kilometers)
TRANS: (Phoenix) n. or v. Travel or transmission via matter transmitter.
TRANSIT PLAZA: A public area at a junction of major urban pedways offering parking for aircars, airtaxi stations, and access to subtrains or ’shuttle terminals; maintained and operated by the Robek Planetary Transystems.
TWO SYSTEMS: The two solar systems—the Sun’s and Alpha Centauri’s—occupied by extensive human habitation. The term is also synonymous with the Concord.
TYCHO: The largest city on Luna, site of the Home Estate of the House of Arment Ivanoi.
UNDER THE SHADOW: (Bond Religion) A person who is, or lives, under the Shadow is one whose life or soul is in jeopardy.
UNIVERSITY SYSTEM: A Concord agency established in 2903 by Lord Paul Adalay, first Chairman of the Directorate of the PanTerran Confederation. The University provides facilities for higher education (beyond the Basic School level), as well as for scholarly and scientific research, and for endeavors in all the arts. University campuses are found in all major cities in the Two Systems.
VACCUP: A drinking vessel, usually made of plasex, with double walls sealing an insulating vacuum that maintains liquids at hot or cold temperatures.
VACMOP: A cleaning implement with a suction hose, the mouth of which is surrounded by absorbent plasponge bristles.
VACUUM COLONY: Any human habitation (not necessarily a colony in a literal sense) that requires habitat systems in order to maintain conditions suitable for human existence.
VELLAM: A photosensitive laminate pressed into thin sheets and used primarily for printouts and for hand writing with a lightpen.
VF (VISUAL FREQUENCY) CAMOUFLAGE SCREEN: An energy-field screen used to shield an area from long-range visual observation, as from airborne vehicles or ships, by selective disruption of light waves.
VIDICAM: A vidicom image encoder or camera.
VIDICOM: Transmitted electromagnetic signals translated into three-dimensional, color images on vidicom screens, which range in size from a few centimeters in height and breadth to the typical home-use screen of 1.75 by 1.75 meters, to large wall screens up to six by six meters. The term may also refer to the screen receiver itself or to the PubliCom System and its broadcasts.