Starquest: Scourge of the Spaceways, page 27
His face had ended up on a landing. The landing was one pace square. He pried his face up from the landing grillwork and looked around. All was gloom, save for one jumping wedge of light issuing from a hand-lamp beyond a door in the distance. This was more than enough for a man in the deathmask of the Ancient Mariner to discern his surroundings.
A second ladder led down to a catwalk, which spanned the length of the land barge, running from the aft reactor bloc fore to the operator's cage. Below the catwalk was a large space, stacked three deep with massive shipping containers.
The door to the operator's cabin was open. Light-beams flooded out of the opening, sweeping nervously this way and that, and were lost in the vast vault.
Besieging this door, crouched in the shadows to either side, were spearmen swathed in arctic furs, faces masked. Three held spears lovingly handcrafted with flint-napped spearheads sharper than scalpels. The fourth held a spear of smart-metal alloy, mass produced, but sharper and stouter.
The beams of light from the door fell across a fifth man. He lay motionless in a pool of blood. Steam rose from the spreading pool into the cold air, and rivulets dripped through the grillwork of the catwalk, pitter-pattering on the gold-laden containers yards below. The bloodhound nose granted by the deathmask allowed Athos to identify the fallen man: Little Elk Soldier.
His real name was Hemo'eoxeso. He had been the youngest brave in Tisquantum's band. Athos had never spoken to the man even once; yet here he was, having given up his life in Athos' service.
The deathmask also allowed Athos to smell the fear of the convicts in the operator's cabin. There were ten of them. From their sounds and radar reflections, they were armed with crowbars, jack-handles, metal hooks from packing straps. Some held lengths of chain, once leg-irons, now weapons. The robots evidently had unlocked the convicts to aid in the defense.
These same robots also had evidently been seeking to outflank the attackers. This squad had come from the cab through the upper corridor in hopes of coming down this ladder where Athos now lay, to let them take the besiegers from behind. It might have gone badly for the savages, had Athos not interrupted the ploy.
The bisected wreckage of the last robot was clattering and bouncing from the catwalk and down to the tops of the containers far below, with swirls of spent sparks trailing after. Echo chased echo as metal clangor filled the enclosed vault.
The convict with the hand-lamp in the operator's cabin must have been overcome by curiosity, for he extended his head cautiously around the corner, and turned the beam on the landing where Athos was. The savages could have used the moment to rush the door, but their curiosity was no less great. Tisquantum and Midwinter Moon kept eyes and spears pointed at the door, while Haunted Eagle and Gutwound turned and looked down the catwalk behind them.
An oval of light leaped up the wall to the ceiling as the lamp beam turned toward Athos. Before the beam caught him, his accelerated reflexes put his elbow before his face, so a shadow fell across the iron-faced mask he wore. At the same moment, a mental command retracted the forcefields forming his illusionary coat and hat to be flush with his skin, hidden beneath fur hood and cloak. The claws were gone.
He had left the hatch open in the corridor above him. A passing blast of wind through the ice tunnel made a howling sound as it whistled across the hatch collar, and the arctic air picked up the hems of Athos' cloaked parka, lifting it like spread wings to either side of him. This was the sight seen by the men below when the beam lit him up.
He shut off the voice distorting circuit in the mask, so that his natural voice came out. "Get that light out of my face!"
The man obeyed. That was a good sign. Athos was now unlit, a mere voice in the gloom speaking from above. "You men! I am Blackjack Rackstraw, Commodore of Pirates. I've destroyed the robot guards. Surrender, and I will give you free passage to any nearby port of call. Join my crew, and you can have a share of this wealth you are hauling, as much as you can carry with both hands."
A voice from beyond the door shouted, "We could radio the Malignment Tower for help!"
The man's tone confirmed Athos' suspicions. "If your robot guards called for no help erenow, it was because their robot brains deduced no help would come. My guess is that standard protocol is to strafe any land-barges strayed or stalled with neutron beams, and just dig out the gold later. You think so, too, or you'd be calling now. Instead, I wager you radioed a false report that you had some minor repairs to make, and will soon be back on track."
No one confessed aloud, but changes in scent and heat patterns he could sense through the wall were as plain as a young girl's blush.
"Come now! No one bluffs Blackjack! Will you get a better deal from the men who put you in chains?"
Thanks to the deathmask, Athos could hear the whispered debate that began between the desperate men. He interrupted. "Join me! Keep your weapons in your hands! You think escape impossible? You think the game is lost? We hold an ace! We just drive this barge back to Death Row. Everyone is in curfew. No Quod Lamps in the sky. No eyes to see. I have a freighter roomy enough to haul this wealth, two warships fit enough to blow through any rude boys who bar the way. Which none will, for I have the passkey for space traffic control. Then we are away and free, and you with us. Why not risk it?"
The effort of speaking made his vision swim. He would not be awake long enough to hear the answer. So he called, "Tisquantum! Spare their lives if they agree. Will be topside, taking a nap while they talk!"
He had just enough strength left to mount the ladder. He could pull shut the upper hatch, but not seal it, as his entry had broken the magnetic lock. Then he ordered the deathmask to drop from his face, and hide itself somewhere close enough to be called.
Vision went dark the moment the deathmask disengaged its crableg clamps, and he was unconscious before his body slumped limply to the deck.
Lights out.
Chapter 12: The Imperfection of the Incorruptible
Galactic Year 12821, Septentrion
1. The Black Pebble
Napoleon often pretended to be besotted with drink when he was perfectly sharp witted. Now, sinking in misery, submerged in a sense of mounting failure, he sagged in his ivory-limbed curule seat and wished for drink, strong drink, drink enough to put him out of his wits, out of his misery.
He wished for something strong enough to drown his sense of failure, before his sense of failure drowned him.
As Nightshadow, he knew how to spy and to elude spies. He knew how to suborn the weak and how to terrify the superstitious. He knew how to cast his spirit-self abroad, unseen, undetected. He knew how to sense and how to avoid dark and immaterial entities, creatures from an earlier cycle of creation, born before the stars shed light, who lurked in the ghastly gloom of interstellar night.
But as a Senator, he had failed. Twice now, he had won a promise for a vote. Twice he had been cheated.
Not all committee members were present for today's session, which was short, only a few hours. The session including a briefing about the loss of ansible contact with planet Erakis, the gem-coated world in the Algol Sector; and a review of the budget request from the Chief of Naval Operations Staff. The Navy wanted to fund more assets in the Nihal and the Janah sector, to find the shipyard and base of operations for a pirate gang using old Imperial warships for their raids.
The Director of Information Warfare happened to be his great uncle from his grandmother's side of the family, Valentinus of Coma Berenices, who regarded Napoleon with a gimlet eye throughout. He was a dignified old lion with a magnificent mane, and he hid his contempt for Napoleon's inattention under a face of courtesy very successfully. Napoleon doubted anyone else detected the expression.
Senator Evro the Fox was present, and spent the time fiddling with pen and paper, as if writing droll rhymes to himself. His bright black eyes twinkled to see Napoleon's grief. He grinned his sharp-toothed fox grin and swished his bushy red fox tail, but pretended to be amused at what he wrote not what he saw.
But Napoleon could not concentrate on the stares of Valentinus nor the grin of Evro, nor the reports from Algol, nor any of the other business occupying the Committee.
He was preoccupied with the rack of transparent cases stacked like glass bricks, whose lids were inscribed with Y-shaped slots displaying ongoing votes for the various motions before the committee. Front row and center of the stacks was the plate recording the vote for the report on the Hvalens Sector.
The vote from Celarent of Alpherat had not been registered yesterday. Now it was. A black marble held in one arm of a glass slot affixed to its case displayed it to all with eyes to see.
Celarent's vote was nay.
The report of the Intelligence Committee would not be released to the War Committee. The Consuls would therefore not declare war. The fleet would not sail. Hvalens Hode would burn. The Odobenine would be abandoned. The Commonwealth would fracture.
And it was all Napoleon's fault.
He did not know where he had gone wrong. But his duty had been to prevent this. He had failed.
2. The Voting Fork
Napoleon could not sag as much as he wished, for a curule seat had no backrest. A slouch too headstrong would merely deposit him on the floor in a heap.
The eight-sided chamber of the Naval Intelligence Committee was in the War Committee wing, which was one of the four (along with the Judiciary, Commerce, and Science Committee) privileged to sit beneath the Main Dome of the Senate. Hence this chamber was warded by the same abundant if antique precautions as the Senate itself. The walls were proof against spy-rays, microphones, and microscopic instruments, guarding against a myriad of wavelengths and waveforms of penetrating energy.
This chamber had been added by Ralline masons in the age when that race ruled Septentrion. The architecture displayed their characteristic austerity. The walls were unadorned slabs of marmoreal ivory, divided by struts of black adamantium. Eight inextinguishable lamps lit the chamber, dancing with soft golden light which never faded nor failed. What fuel fed them was unknown, for the secret of their making was lost.
The upper half of the octagonal chamber was an unrestricted vault below a high roof, for the convenience of winged men. The lower half was a cistern, for the convenience of water-breathers. A window above, a door at floor level, and a water gate below granted egress into the chamber for senators winged, or walking, or swimming.
A glass floor, open in the middle, formed the cistern roof. Surrounding this opening were the curule seats of the senators arranged in a circle. These seats, in keeping with Ralline philosophy, were of luxurious appearance, but uncomfortable, meant to remind officials to do their work efficiently and promptly; and that their power, held in the name of the Republic, was meant to be temporary, not permanent.
At the right hand of each seat was a side-table able to project a surface of translucent force at any height convenient to him where a senator could rest a cup or quill, scroll or codex.
As chairman, Napoleon's side-table also held a miniature wooden hammer called a gavel to rap, when calling and adjourning meetings. Why and when the tradition began to use a toy war-hammer rather than a Vulpino scepter, Hibagon flail or Iss battle-axe to keep order in the chamber, Napoleon did not know.
The toy hammer was also used to call an end to voting.
The ritual for casting votes was older than recorded history. Each bill, resolution, or motion put up for a vote was locked in a transparent Scrollcase . Originally written in the tactile dot-writing of the blind Amaurot, and, later, in Iss Hieroglyphs, the official documents were now inscribed in Equine Sexagesimal logograms on scrolls of imperishable gold fabric, immune to rust or age. Electronic text had not been used for official documents since the Machine Wars in the Third Age.
In keeping with Equine philosophy, the scrollcase was of a fixed size to prevent the introduction of overly long or complex lawscrolls: one span wide by one cubit long.
Each case was locked from the inside, so the wording could not be amended once voting began. The case latch was at the center of a Y-shaped slot called the Pythagorean Letter or Voting Fork. Within the slot were the psephids, or voting marbles, of the senators. To vote, the senator touched his finger or fin or tendril to the outside of the case and concentrated.
The voting marble would then turn black or white, depending on the senator's intention, and roll up into the left or right arm of the fork. Unidirectional friction in the slot prevented the voting marble from moving backward once set in motion. Polarization prevented the voting marble from entering the wrong arm. A vote, once cast, could not be retracted.
The Scrollcase itself was ray-proof, bomb-proof, beam-proof, tamper-proof. Breaching the scrollcase destroyed the scroll within. The transparent material was opaque to tractor beams or other forms of manipulator energy, kinetic or gravitic.
What made the voting particularly safe was the simplicity, visibility, verifiability of it all. All parts of the latch and lock were visible. The fork and the latch mechanism were inside the case, which could not be opened before a positive vote unlocked it. Only the pin that prevented the latch from turning peeped out through the latchhole.
The psephids, or voting marbles, were of Iss construction, concocted by the same secret Kirlian alchemy as the Spiral Argent police-badge of a Vindicator. Each voting marble was attuned to the life-energy wavelength of one and only one senator.
When the voting was closed, the chairman broke the latch-pin with his gavel. This allowed the latch to turn.
If there was more weight in the white arm of the voting fork, the latch would unlock the case, and the scroll with great ceremony would be carried by the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod to the floor of the Senate, whose president would read it into the record. The prime copy would be placed in the dry and airless mineshafts beneath the senate dome that reached to the core of the world. This globe was old, very old, and volcanic activity and earthquakes were unknown. How many cubic miles of legislative acts, resolutions, treaties, and laws, were inscribed on ageless metal, was also unknown, but it was more than ten thousand years of archive.
Or if the opposite arm of the voting fork were heavier, the latch would turn the other way, to opening a kiln capsule inside the locked case, to melt the scroll. The sealed scrollcase of molten liquid would be carried to the senatorial blacksmithy for reclamation.
For secret ballots, a neutronium cloth, which neither spy-rays nor the senses of Spiders could penetrate, would be draped over the case. For votes requiring a supermajority or unanimity, the latch could be weighted accordingly. Such was the august and ancient voting rite of the Senate. The rite was older than the advent of Man or Nemean amidst the stars of Andromeda, older than the Vulpino or Equine.
Napoleon scowled at the voting wall, examining the rows of glassy cases holding measures and bills whose voting was still open. Some had been standing for years, some for generations. There were many shelves reaching back into the alcove, which was deep as a short corridor, one whose far wall could not be seen.
It was cumbersome to cast votes across such wide intervals, rather than on a given day. But a galaxy-wide government was simply unable to gather all representatives from all sectors in one chamber at one time. Interstellar travel-times of weeks and months separated wide-spread colonies from which representatives took instructions. Holding representatives unaccountable to their homeworlds had been tried. Arranging votes by radio and ansible had been tried. Everything had been tried.
This system of staggered but unretractable voting was a trifle unfair and awkward. It favored tardy votes, which favored delay. Other systems were worse. But, at least, the system was perfectly trustworthy. That is, it should have been a perfectly trustworthy system. Napoleon should have been able to trust it. It should not have gone wrong.
Yet it had.
3. Lapse of Perfect Logic
During recess, Napoleon sent an intern to summon the Registrar. The Registrar was a dignified Ceti named Length-of-Days. He entered the cistern beneath the floor through a wide gate leading to one of the many canals running like veins throughout the Senate complex, behind chamber walls and under corridor floors. His sleek, massive whale-shaped form was over eighty feet long. Water sluiced from his prow-shaped mouth, rostrum, and baleen as he breached the surface of the cistern. He floated in the water like a buoy, his nose pointed at the roof, and rotated his massive body to bring his left eye, black as ink and larger than a grapefruit, to bear. Embedded into the slate-gray flesh behind his eye was a comdisc, to translate his songs into Empyrean.
"How may his servant serve His Excellency, milord? If the Noble Conscript Father Napoleon of Vindamiatrix wishes confirmation that the vote cast against the Report of the Naval Intelligence Committee to the War Committee favoring Declaration of War was indeed cast, in due process and form, by the Sagacious Conscript Father Celarent of Alpherat, at the hour of Matins, the second day of the week after Exaudi, within the Octave of the Feast of Casting Roses, let his heart be sated. The vote was cast."
The Imperium had abolished all the old feast days and fast days, replacing everything with a decimal-based calendar. This decimal calendar was still on use on Vindamiatrix, whose rustic folk were creatures of habit. So it took Napoleon a moment to realize that the date mentioned was today: Twenty-Twosday of Jackmoon. It had happened early this morning. Celarent had appeared in the chamber, cast his vote, and departed before the other committee members gathered for the session.
Napoleon straightened up in his chair. "How did you know, Master Registrar, that I was curious about Senator Celarent's vote?"
The huge, gray, blunt prow of the great sea-beast bobbed down and up, and rivulets of water spilled from the corners of his mouth. The audible tones of his whale-song echoed ringing from the high roof, and the comdisc translated the words. "None can know your heart but heaven alone, my lord. The stars fall not below the sea for counsel. And yet, truly, how shall your servant, not being blind, fail to see how far House Lone will fall in shame should high-flown hopes in the new constitution be dashed, and plummet? How shall your servant, not being deaf, fail to hear the drums of war? And how, not being absurd, shall your servant fail to know that rulers who allow misrule, are fated not to rule long length of days?" He closed and opened his great eyes, in a Ceti salute of respect, and then his huge gray head sank back down below the water.
