Up Jim River

IV. ON RICKETY THISTLEWAITE

There is an ancient Terran word: rickety. It is not clear to scholars what this word meant exactly, but that it applied to Thistlewaite was undoubted. “Rickety Thistlewaite” had been its appellation from the beginning, from the days before even the First Ships set down. At least, if you can depend on their legends, which like everything else there, are shaky. The planet’s nature can be seen in its propensity to earthquakes. Somebody had forgotten to caulk the seams of her plates and they slip and slide with greasier abandon than they do on more gritty worlds. “As sturdy as a Thistlewaite skyscraper” is a proverb on half the planets of the South Central Periphery. The Thistles are not so mad as to build skyscrapers—and so the proverb does double-duty. What can be more sturdy than something left unbuilt, runs a Thistlean joke. A building never erected can never fall down. Ha, ha. But the Thistles have developed a keen sense of balance along with their mordant wit, and a fatalistic conviction that nothing can ever be done that will not eventually fail.

They have contrived no fewer than fourteen states in the tropic belt between the Mountains Acreeping and the River Everwinding, for their political structures are no more permanent than their architectural ones. There had once upon a time been a single state—an Empire, in a modest Thistlean fashion—but it, too, had collapsed.

“In the days of the gods, the seedships came,” begins an ancient story of theirs, the first of the Cautionary Books. Most of the Periphery takes the gods only half seriously, but on Thistlewaite they are taken wholly so. Of course, the gods are real—and they are absentminded and fumble-thumbed. How else to account for matters? Only the great sky gods—Einstein, Planck, Alfven—are steady and reliable. And who can blame them? The starry heavens above have alone not come crashing down upon them.

The harper and the scarred man disembarked the throughliner without exciting interest, and here the money that the Fudir had cast upon the steward—as well as a certain grip exchanged in the hand clasp—returned value a hundredfold. The steward had agreed to slip them into the exit queue as smoothly as the Fudir had slipped the buckshish into his palm; maintain otherwise the fiction that they were still aboard ship; and on arrival off Harpaloon see that their trunks were delivered to the Phundaugh Plough and Stars. Terrans would do anything for buck’ and sometimes even for Brotherhood.

It was three days down from Curling Dawn to Floating Hyacinth Platform in stationary station above Hifocal Big Town, the once-upon-a-time imperial capital. The bumboats and platform were operated by House of Chan, which contracted for port operations on any number of worlds. From Floating Hyacinth, ferries rose and fell to each of the Fourteen States.

Bridget ban had supervised the relief work from Jenlùshy, in Morning Dew sheen, where most of the devastation had occurred. “Sheens” were what the Thistles called their states, and Morning Dew was the literal translation of Jenlùshy. “Everything means something,” Méarana said, “if you dig deeply enough.”

Donovan believed that if you dug even more deeply, all meaning would vanish; but he did not share this thought with his companion, nor was he single-minded about it. The scarred man was said to be most disagreeable; but most of his disagreements were with himself.

They took the “high speed line” from the shuttle port into Jenlùshy. The train was slow when judged against those of less rickety worlds. There is a limit to the velocities one gambles when the land may ripple the monorail in surprising and undesired ways. On the other hand, there was a sense that the faster the trip, the less likely that a quake would catch the train along the way. Hence the motto of the Thistlewaite Bullet: “Hasten slowly.”

Jenlùshy had sat on the epicenter of the great thistlequake and two-thirds of the sheen had been knocked about like jackstraws and flinders. This in itself was no great thing. Many of the poorer buildings were routinely constructed of little more than paper reinforced by’ boo-poles. But the Palace had been made of sterner stuff, and the One Man, the Grand Secretary, and five of the Six Ministers had perished in its collapse. Across the countryside collapsing province-towns, mountain landslides, floods, and fires had swallowed two-thirds of the District Commissioners, along with half the dough-riders. In a state as highly centralized as the Jenlùshy sheen, that was the equivalent of a frontal lobotomy.

Some Administrative Commissions kicked like pithed frogs, but every decision a Jenlùshy official made required ratification by an official higher up—and most of the high-ups had been laid low. The praefect of the Eastern Marshes, on her own initiative, traveled to Hifocal Big Town in the next sheen over to ask for League help over the Ourobouros Circuit. She was publicly caned by the Eastern Marshes Surveillance Commission for this breach of filial subservience—it didn’t matter that there had been no superiors to be subservient to—but Bridget ban had arrived shortly after, took matters well in hand, and for nearly two years was, for all practical purposes, Empress of the Morning Dew.

She had overseen the restoration of sanitation, of water and utilities, of housing and roads, of public order, and did this primarily by providing in her own person an authority figure to whom the surviving Commissioners could give their devotion. The entire society was based on the Family writ large. The Eastern Marshes praefect had, in effect, gone looking for a mommy or daddy to kiss the hurt—and had been soundly spanked.

The late Emperor had clearly lost “the approval of the sky.” What more proof was needed beyond the descent of his replacement from that very sky? (Thistles knew that Bridget ban had arrived by ship in the normal fashion, but they read meaning into every concatenation.) A change of dynasty was called for, and Bridget ban chose Jimmy Barcelona, who had been Chief of Capital District Public Works Unit. At her suggestion, he selected the office name of Resilient Services and for his regnal theme, “a robust and reliable infrastructure.” It rang less glamorously than most regnal themes, but was surely apropos, all things considered.

The surviving Minister held a different opinion, but when he and three of the imperial censors opened debate by opening fire, he discovered that where a Hound was concerned the decorative could also be deadly. The vote was four to one against Jimmy, but Bridget ban had the one vote, and so he was installed and the others cremated.

No one could do business in Jenlùshy without the emperor’s permission. Certainly, no one could go about making a nosy nuisance of himself without what the Terrans called a “heads-up.” Normally, obtaining an audience with a Thistlewaite emperor was a long, laborious, and expensive affair. The recovery from the ‘quake was still in its final stages, and Resilient Services had better things to do than put on a show for Peripheral touristas. Donovan had counted on this as yet another delay to the harper’s journey, although he had by then given up on dissuading her entirely.

But if the visitor was the daughter of the very Hound who had placed the emperor on the Ivy Throne, doors swung open with disconcerting ease.

The Grand Secretary did insist that protocol be observed. A certain formality of dress was required, although the sumptuary details differed for folk from different worlds. Happily, the harper had brought with her several bolts of Megranomic anycloth, so the morning of the audience, she consulted Benet’s Sumptuary Guide to the Spiral Arm and programmed the material to assume the chosen color, cut, and texture.

The Fudir watched. “Technically,” he said, “we don’t need the One Man’s permission to enter the Corner.” There was a Terran Corner in most major cities across the Spiral Arm. Having been deprived of their home world, Terrans had found no home anywhere, and so could be found everywhere.

Méarana looked up from her ‘face. “We.’ Do you mean us, Terrans in general, or the mob inside your head?” Donovan’s use of the first-person plural was idiosyncratic.

“Oh, Terrans, memsahb.” The Fudir dropped into the patois that he sometimes affected. “Thistle see no many-folk-one-folk, but for Terries.”

She rolled her eyes. “Speak Gaelactic, Fudir. I can’t follow the jibber-jabber half the time.”

“You aren’t meant to, half the time. Corporate bodies, I mean. There are none here. No universities, no cities, no guilds, no medical societies.”

The harper inserted the datathread into the port and ran the program. The cloth began to ripple. “Dinna be silly. They have universities and doctors; and if this be nae a city we’re in, what is it?”

“A department of the imperial court. It takes more than a lot of people living close together to make a ‘city.’ Jenlùshy Town doesn’t govern itself. It isn’t recognized at law as an entity. The same goes for Imperial College: it’s a Department of the Grand Secretariat under the Third Minister. And doctors are employees of the Second Minister. It’s the Minister who sets rules and regulations, not a ‘medical society.’ The Terran Corners are the only places on the planet recognized as self-governing corporate bodies.”

“You sound proud of that.” She detached her clothing from the’ face and made way for the Fudir to sit down. “You want me to do your clothing for this afternoon?”

“You don’t think I can achieve ‘the appropriate level of formality’? Of course, I’m proud of it. It means that when I go to the Palace as a Terran, I have certain rights and liberties. So does a citizen-rancher from Dangchao.”

“I don’t get it, then. If we’re legally outside the imperial system, why the fancy getups for—what did they call the audience? High Tea?”

The Fudir grunted. “There’s law and there’s custom, and custom is the stronger. They may lack legal recourse if we dress uncouthly—but that doesn’t mean they have no recourse at all.”

The harper wore a leine of pure white linen with fitted sleeves, and intricate red geometric embroidery at the neck, cuffs, and hem. It was pulled up and Housed though a leather crios at the waist, in the pouches of which were placed the tools of the harper’s trade. Over this she had thrown a woolen brat in bright green with gold borders. She wore it like a shawl fastened at the right shoulder by a large golden brooch showing a snake entwining a rose. She walked unshod and the nails of her feet and hands matched the color of the embroidery of her leine. Her red hair fell free, to indicate her unwed status, but she wore a silver ollamh’s circlet at her brow.

The scarred man wore Terran garb, and if fewer eyes caressed him than caressed the harper, it was because he was a moon to her sun. He dressed in a dark yellow sherwani over embroidered jutti and matching kurta paijamas. His sandals were plain and of brown leather with golden crescents on the straps. The scars on his head were decently covered by a skullcap, and across his shoulder he had thrown a gharchola stole. Gold lac-bangles adorned his wrists and ankles, and rouge had reddened his cheeks. When he wanted to, the Fudir could cut a figure.

In the anteroom to the audience chamber, the Fudir bowed to the Grand Secretary, and said, in a croak resembling Thistletalk, “This miserable worm prays that these poor rags do not find disfavor in the eyes of noble Grand Secretary.”

That worthy went by the name of Morgan Cheng-li and was known therefore among the backroom staff as “Jingly” in a play on both his name and the sound of the coins that so often crossed his palm. He had that air of self-importance often found among underlings. His frog-like mien—pigeon-chested, eyes bulged, cheeks blown out—gave the impression that he had been holding his breath for a very long time.

The Fudir had learned from the Terrans in palace maintenance that Jingly fancied himself a calligrapher, and so he produced a Gladiola Bill of significant denomination. “Perhaps,” he said, ducking his head by an appropriate amount, “most-accomplished-one might give this humble servant educated opinion on engraving of this wretched bill?”

The Grand Secretary made a motion with his hands, and an underling’s underling scurried over, took the bill between her fingertips, and held it before Jingly’s eyes. “Barbarian work,” the latter said after a moment, using the local term for off-worlders. He placed a loupe in his right eye. “Not without merit, but lacking…” A wave of the hand. “…panache. Perhaps,” he added distastefully, “designed on computer.”

“Your eminence is wise.”

“Pfaugh. Child see such flaws. Observe portrait visage. Where serenity? Where balance?”

“Perhaps expert hand may attempt improvement. Perhaps, use this bill as model.”

“Pfaugh, again. Work for apprentice draftsman. No great skill. But one may essay task as étude.” A nod to the underling caused the bill to disappear into a fold of her gown before she scuttled back to her station.

At the appointed time, the Grand Secretary directed the Assistant Palace Undersecretary of Off-World Affairs to escort them into the throne room. “Rags?” the harper whispered in Gaelactic as they proceeded down the hallway. “After all the work I put into this wardrobe?”

“Self-deprecation is mandatory here,” Donovan answered curtly. The Fudir added, “You should see officials defer for places at a banquet table.”

“Och. Mother and I hold to a faith that values humility, but that sort of servility smacks of unseemly pride. And I thought off-worlders were exempt from the rules on bribes…”

“Do you tip service workers? A bribe is simply a tip offered before the service. Besides, I only asked his opinion on the calligraphy of a Gladiola Bill.” Donovan interrupted and said, “Hush, both of you. And remember what we told you. Don’t mention that your mother has vanished. She came from the sky; and if she’s vanished into the sky—”

“Then she’s lost the Approval of the Sky,” the harper returned wearily. “I know. I know.”

Donovan turned to her. “And through her, the emperor she appointed. Tell them your mother’s gone missing and it’s tantamount to a call for revolution. And don’t think old Frog-Face back there won’t lead it, either.”

At the Assistant Undersecretary’s nod, White Rod knocked on the Golden Doors with the head of a mace. These doors ran floor-to-ceiling and were made of intricately carved rosewood displaying in each panel scenes from the life of Morning Dew. The whole was painted over with a golden lacquer. Méarana admired the attention to fine detail: the studied indifference of the scholar at his terminal, the boredom on the face of a bhisti shuttle-pilot. There would not be the like of these doors anywhere in the Spiral Arm.

The doors swung open on a broad room. The throne on which Resilient Services perched was fashioned of solid gold. The stiles had been molded in the form of climbing ivy and from them on threadlike wires hung leaves of artfully tarnished copper. This gave them a greenish cast and, when movement caused them to sway, they tinkled like wind chimes. Under the throne, for some age-long and forgotten reason, rested a large stone. The high back rearing above the yellow-robed emperor, bore four ideograms: the motto of the sheen. “Behold the August Presence,” the Voice of the Sheen cried out. “Behold the Resilient Services Reign, who provides the sheen with robust and reliable infrastructure!”

Now there’s a battle cry to rally the troops, said the Brute.

It works for them. The earthquake destroyed so much. Why not make its restoration a quasi-sacred duty?

The Fudir scolded them. “Quiet. We’re not here to mock their customs.”

“Who,” the Voice demanded, “approaches the August Presence?”

The Fudir bowed, sweeping his arm to the right and holding his left over his heart. “I hight Donovan buigh of Jehovah, special emissary of the Particular Service to the Court of the Morning Dew. My companion is the ollamh Méarana of Dangchao, master of the clairseach.”

The emperor had gone, first pale, then flushed. “Ah. So,” he said. “You much resemble my illustrious predecessor, and I had thought… Ah, I had thought she had returned to resume her duties.” He clapped his hands and a flunky struck a hanging gong. “Bring forth the crumpets and scones!”

Underlings and flunkies scurried about in what appeared to be absolute confusion, but from which in short order emerged a table in the center of the hall, dressed with cloth, napkins, and fine bone-china cups. Three soft-backed chairs were arranged around it, and a silver tea service wheeled into place. A tray of biscuits, ceremoniously escorted, was placed on the table, and the visitors were shown to their seats. The emperor stood and descended from the Ivy Throne, unhooking his yellow robes of state and handing them to the Assistant Deputy Undersecretary, Count Wardrobe, who bundled, folded, and scurried off with an economy of motion.

Beneath his robes, the emperor had been wearing a simple day suit: a cutaway cloth coat of dark blue possessed of brass buttons over a plain buff waistcoat and matching pantaloons. His feet were shod in riding boots with golden spurs; and at his throat was gathered a stiffly starched cravat. He took the seat at the head of the table and, with a flick of his wrist, dismissed his ministers and staff. These scurried to the walls, where they stood in various poses pretending to converse with one another, but watching always for a summons from the Presence.

“Tea?” the Presence said, holding a cup under the samovar.

He proceeded through the ceremony with meticulous detail. One lump or two? Cream? Scone? Jam? Each motion practiced; each stir a precise radius and number of revolutions.

The Fudir supposed this was the Thistlean equivalent to the Terran ceremony of bread and salt. More elaborate, of course, in that mad and fussy Thistlean fashion.

When all had been served by the emperor’s own hand, Resilient Services intoned formally, “We shall now make small talk.”

The harper was uncertain how to begin; but the Fudir said easily, “How do matters stand since the great thistlequake, your imperial majesty? Recovery proceeding apace, I hope?”

“Oh, yes. Quite, thank you,” the emperor responded. “And for duration of Tea, you call me ‘Jimmy.’ Port Tsienchester not yet fully operational; but perhaps by end of sixmonth. You.” He pointed at the harper. “I mistake you for another. She, too, from Kennel. She give mandate to rule. How I curse that day.”

“Bridget ban can be very persuasive,” said the Fudir.

“Ah. You know her.”

“She is my mother,” said the harper.

“And I have been charged to escort the daughter to her.”

The emperor cocked his head. “And where that?”

“I regret, ah, Jimmy, that the information is privileged. You know the ways of the Kennel.”

“Why do you curse the day my mother made you emperor?” the harper interjected. “She made you emperor of one of the Fourteen States.”

“That curse.” Jimmy turned a little in his seat. “See sigils over throne? Love-heaven. Person. Protect. Heaven-below. In ancient tongue: Low tyen chay, pow tyen-sha. It say that man who love heaven-sky will protect empire. But heaven perfect. Never fail, never fall. Heaven-below, Sheen Jenlùshy should be imitate that perfection. Never does. But if emperor love heaven good enough, everything fine below, too. Never fail, never fall. One Man must be regular as sky, must be never-changing. I move in orbit, like planet. Go here, go there. All same ceremony, all same word. All pest black-fly ministers buzz round me. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Do this, do that. All ‘veddy propah.’ No mistake. Mistake in heaven-below cause mistake in heaven-above. Very bad. Calf stillborn. My fault. Did not recite sunrise prayer proper. Bandit rob exchequer in Bristol-fu. My fault. Did not make proper ablution. All universe connected through dough. Everything affect everything. Mountainslide in Northumberchow Shan…”

“Your fault,” said the Fudir. “We get it. I can see cosmic oneness has its drawbacks. If you forget to clip your toenails, who knows what horrors might be unleashed? I can see why none of the Fourteen States wants to conquer the others. Considering what can go wrong in one day in any one sheen, being emperor of the whole kit and kaboodle must have been hell on wheels.”

Jimmy frowned. “Please?”

“Never mind him,” said the harper. “He’s a Terran.”

The emperor shook his head. “Only here in tea ceremony, two three other times, is emperor become Jimmy again.” He turned abruptly to the harper. “Tell me of home world, Mistress Harp.”

“Dangchao Waypoint? It’s a small world, a dependency of Die Bold. Mostly open prairies on Great Stretch continent, where we raise Nolan’s Beasts. A few big towns. When we go to Die Bold, we say we’re going to ‘The City.’ May I have one of those finger sandwiches? What is the spread?”

“Pimento and Devonchao cream. Made in Praefecture of Wild Violets. I hear of planet in Wild, out in the Burnt-Over District. They talk of ‘The City’” He waved an imperial wrist. “Out past Ampayam and Gatmander. Somewhere.”

“The ‘Burnt-Over District,’” the harper suggested.

“Traveler tales. Suns go nova now and then. Burn up cities.”

“If their suns went nova periodically,” the Fudir said, “it would burn up more than their cities. There’d be no one left to spread travelers’ tales.”

“The Wild,” said the harper, “is a region of romance. Anything can happen there.”

“Even romance,” the Fudir replied. “But what usually happens out there is death or bankruptcy. Or both. Most of the worlds are uncivilized. A few have spaceflight; none have rediscovered sliding. Their cities are smelly and dirty, and you’d be lucky not to come away diseased. Romance,” he concluded, “is best considered from a distance.”

“You have harp with you, mistress? Of course. Ollamh never far from instrument. You bring with tomorrow. Play songs of your Dangchao, so far away.”

Méarana put her cup carefully on its saucer. “Well… Donovan and I have some business to conduct…”

“Oh, no,” said Resilient Services. “I must insist.”

And there was something hard in the way he said it that caused the harper to hesitate and glance at her companion.

“I had planned to visit the Corner,” the Fudir said. “You can entertain the emperor while I do that.”

“Yes,” agreed the emperor of the Morning Dew. “You do that.”

The next morning, as Méarana prepared for her command performance at the palace, the Fudir prepared to enter the Corner of Jenlùshy For this, he did not dress as he had for the palace. Indeed, he barely dressed at all. Around his waist he tied a simple blue-and-white checkered dhoti. On his feet, sandals. His upper body he oiled.

“Easier to slip out of someone’s grip,” he said with a leer. Save for secreting various weapons in unlikely places, that completed his toilet.

The harper looked him over before he departed. “That’s no more than a long towel wrapped around you,” she said, pointing to the dhoti. “How do you bend over in that thing?”

“Very carefully. Be sure to keep the emperor happy. I think he’s a little taken with you. But remember: no hint of anything wrong ‘up in the skies.’”

“How many times will you tell me that, old man? Just be careful in the Corner. The concierge told me it’s a dangerous place.”

“Full of Terrans. You be careful, too. There aren’t any Terrans in the palace, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous.”

He slipped out the service entrance of the hotel and followed the Street of the Tin Smiths to the Street of the Plastic Injection Molders, where he turned left and entered the Corner.

He had never been to the Corner of Jenlùshy, but he knew it when he was in it. Thistlewaite buildings tended toward the ramshackle, even without the help of a ‘quake, but as he proceeded farther along Beggars’ Lane they grew positively sketchy. Many did not bother with such vanities as walls. What could a wall ever do except collapse? If curtains and tapestries did not exactly bar entry to the burglar, neither did they hurt as much when they fell on you. And what might be within such hovels as to tempt a burglar?

Granted, this was no more than an accommodation to the geophysical realities, but by Alfven! A Terran ought not care if walls came down on him! Compared to the expulsion of their ancestors from Olde Earth, what harm could a few bricks and beams do? Nor ought they ape the dress of the Thistles quite so closely, nor speak that unadorned dialect of Gaelactic favored here. On Jehovah, the Terrans of the Corner spoke the old patois among themselves, and spoke it proudly.

The directions he had obtained from the Assistant Underwasherman in the hotel’s laundry brought him as far as the Tibbly Fountain, which formed the social center of the Corner, and there he found the women filling their water jugs. The Great’ Quake had wrecked the water distribution and one of the prices of independence was that you went to the end of the line when it came to restoration of services. The more he had seen of the Morning Dew, the more he had realized how unfinished Bridget ban had left things. What had she learned here that had sent her off elsewhere?

The Fudir found himself an overhang sheltering an outdoor moka shop and he leaned against the pole while he admired the sight and studied the crowd.

His home Corner on Jehovah was larger than this and its folk more bustling. There was a kind of unhurry to the crowd around him, leaving time for a bit of sport among the younger water-women, who splashed one another and laughed. This dampened their colorful sorries in often delightful ways.

He also noted the mama-sans watching from doorways and balconies, and the gonifs and grifters lounging about. Not one of them had failed to mark his presence.

Well, it was a small Corner as these things went, and a stranger stood out. The Fudir considered whom he might approach, and finally decided on a small, rat-faced man who squatted on his heels on the other side of the square, engaged in no apparent vocation. In any crowd of this sort, the Committee of Seven would have its eyes and ears, and the savvy man learned to recognize them.

But the Fudir hesitated. The rat-faced man was surely armed, and just as surely unfriendly to strangers. And who knew how the Seven would receive him after all these years? Did the Corner of Jenlùshy have anything like those Dunkle Street ghats that made the Corner of Jehovah so perilous for intruders? His own skills with knife and tongue must had rusted during his long inaction. If he failed here, what would become of Méarana?

What sort of piss-ant cowardice is this, the Brute demanded. One of the Fudir’s legs twitched, as if trying to step forth on its own.

He who hesitates is lost. And never more so than he who hesitates in a Terran Corner.

Comrades? I suggest we get off the pot, said the Sleuth.

«No,» said Inner Child. «No no no no no…»

“Donovan?” the Fudir whispered. “Help me out here.”

“All in favor of remaining a sitting duck,” said Donovan, “say aye.”

Well, a moving target is harder to hit…

The Fudir crossed to the fountain with only a slight hesitancy in his step. It could have been a limp. The chatter and gaiety continued, but he was tracked by two dozen pairs of eyes.

The die is cast, the Sleuth announced. Or as Caesar said, alea iacta est.

Actually, Caesar said it in Greek. It was a quote from a play by Menander: ’Avερρíφθω κμβς. That was the Pedant. It could not possibly be anyone else.

«Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up…»

At the fountain, the Fudir stared into the waters. The rat-faced man affected not to notice him and continued to do nothing with great concentration. When the Fudir had once more gotten a hold of himself, he stretched and, in doing so, made a sign with his right hand.

The rat-faced man had been twirling a stick with one hand. Now he dropped it and, in picking it up, made the answering gesture.

The Terran Brotherhood was not outlawed within the League of the Periphery, as it was within the Confederation, but neither did it like to draw attention to itself. For one thing, Confederate agents were ofttimes about, and willing to freelance an assassination or two, and some Terrans were genuinely sympathetic to the Confederation, if for no better reason than that Olde Earth was their hostage. For another, League governments would sometimes decide that détente was the order of the day and move to suppress the Brotherhood to curry favor with the’ Feds.

Two others in the square had noticed the by-play and one of the water-women pursed her lips in disapproval. There was a third faction among the Terrans, and by no means a small one, that believed that what was lost was lost. They still believed in Terra—else they would cease to be Terrans at all—but they believed in the Ideal Terra, Terra-of-the-Dream, the “City-on-the-Hill” toward which one must always strive, and to which one would be transported after death. The idea of one day returning en masse and in the flesh to a physical Terra struck them as somehow sinful. To them, the Confederation was neither friend nor foe, but an irrelevancy.

The rat-faced man stood and walked toward the southern end of the square, where he ducked between a one-story wattle hut selling hand-phones and an open shed where a naked man with a welding mask was repairing a truck. After a decent interval, the Fudir followed him.

But as he turned into the alley behind the phone shop, rough arms grabbed him and a canvas hood was pulled down over his head.

The Silky Voice whimpered and Inner Child cried out in alarm. The Brute, for just a moment, seized control of the scarred man’s limbs and began to struggle; but the Fudir took them back and relaxed. If they had meant him harm, the darkness would have been permanent and not a mere hoodwink. They intended to take him somewhere and did not wish him to know where. He was still in grave danger; but the danger would come when the hoodwink was removed and he was in a comfortable room with smiling people.

“I long to see fruited plains of your home world,” the emperor said after Méarana had played a set of Dangchao songs from the Eastern Plains. “To ride like wind chasing Nolan’s Beasts with lasso and bolo. To drive herd to market in—how you say? Port Qis-i-nao? No, Port Kitch-e-ner.” He pronounced the alien sounds with great care. “Oh, life of Beastie boys, live free under stars.”

Sometimes Méarana wanted to slap the emperor of the Morning Dew. He confused song with life. You didn’t chase Nolan’s Beasts. That would run the meat off them. And life on the plains, under the stars, driving the herd to the knocking plants for shipment to Die Bold, was dirty, tiring, bone-breaking labor that stole sleep and health and even life itself. Beastie boys fared better in song than on the plains.

“Play again song of Dusty Shiv Sharma,” said the emperor over cups of Peacock’s Rose tea; and he warbled with a bad accent, “‘Best Beastie boy o’er alla High Plain.’”

Dusty Sharma had been a real “beast-puncher” a hundred and fifty metric years ago; but he had been called “Shiv” because he carried a hideout knife in his knee boot. Historians said he would not have been a pleasant man to meet, even when sober; but he had been so encrusted with legend that the real man was unrecognizable.

And so she played a geantraí, a jaunty tune that evoked what the Dangchao beast-punchers called the Out-in-back. Of “the splendor o’ the mountains, a-rearin’ toward the sky, cloud-shaker, avalanche maker, cool an’ dry an’ high.” Of such things as these at least there could be no musty historians’ doubts.

When they pulled the hoodwink from him, the Fudir blinked at the light and found himself facing seven men and women sitting on cushions behind a broad, low “kaffé” table, and not one smile to share among the lot of them. The Fudir was puzzled at first, since at every meeting of the Seven of Jehovah that he had ever attended there would be at least one or two that were “in the wind” due to misunderstandings with the Jehovan rectors. But then Terrans on Jehovah lived an edgier life than here, where a certain amount of segregation kept the Terrans more to themselves. He did not doubt that Jenlùshy Terrans ran their share of scrambles, but fewer of them seemed to intersect with the folk of the sheen.

The man in the center—pale-skinned, tow-haired, beak-nosed—was the one they called Bwana. He was bare-chested and wore buckskin pantaloons with fringed seams. His cushions were larger and done up in elaborate green, black, and red patterns. To the extent the Corner had a government and had a president, these were them and he was it.

“Ah, Bwana,” the Fudir said, bowing over his folded hands. “May I introduce my humble self.”

But the Bwana replied in the patois, so thick that it seemed almost the old Tantamiž lingua franca itself. Even the Fudir had to call upon his earwig to thin it out.

“Thou art known to us, o Fudir, as a man of promise. Thou promised Memsahb Jehovah, thou promised Fendy Die Bold, thou promised to give us back the Earth. Those wert thy words. This promise, he run jildy from corner to corner, in whispers. Hutt, hutt, ‘from Gatmander to the Lesser Hanse.’ But many years die since and…” He spread his hands in entreaty. “…no Earth.”

The Fudir marveled that, the farther from the promise the rumor had run, the more fervently it seemed to have been embraced. The Memsahb and the Fendy had not taken either his promise or his failure to heart. The key to success was low expectations.

“The tool I had hoped to use,” he suggested, “proved too dangerous to employ. Big dhik, sahbs. A dagger with two blades may be showed back on the one who holds it. So my hope was false all along, and none wept greater tears than I to learn so.”

“And there are more stories still,” Bwana continued. “That thou art an agent of our enemy, the Great Shittin, the Confederation that oppresses Olde Earth. Deny this.”

“Bwana, I do not, save that that was past and no longer true. Many a Terran has worked for Those of Name—because they hold Olde Earth hostage. A man named Donovan ‘took their nickel’ long ago; and I was once that man. He passed on to them certain information regarding the League—and what do you or I owe the League? We are in it, but not of it—but never did he inform on the Brotherhood, or harm the interests of Terrans. And then, after a time, the Names put him to sleep, to be called upon as needed. And in that time he forgot them; though not they him.”

Donovan intervened then and prevented the Fudir from saying any more. The Fudir agreed that this was not for the ears of others, but resented Donovan’s high handedness. A bit of trust was not uncalled for. But Donovan laughed, for he had not lasted this long by over much trusting, even of himself.

To Bwana, it appeared as if the Fudir had choked for a moment. He drummed the table with his fingertips, looked left and right at his committee, gathered in their verdicts, bobbed his head side-to-side. Then he clapped his hands, twice.

“Bread and salt!” he cried out. “Bread and salt for our guest!”

The Fudir let out the breath he had been holding. Deep within, Inner Child wept for joy, while the Brute felt keen disappointment at the lost prospect of danger and combat. Donovan and the Sleuth were amused by their reaction, and the others grew angry. Relief, joy, disappointment, amusement, anger. Enzymes and hormones warred and the contending emotions sent a wave of dizziness through the scarred man that nearly overcame him. Bwana frowned and asked if he were ill, but the Fudir waved him off.

The servants came then with silver salvers of steaming flatbreads fresh from the tandoors and small bowls with ground sea salt. A pot of kaffé accompanied them, and Bwana gravely served the scarred man with his own hands.

When all had eaten and the Fudir was once more closeted with the Seven, Bwana relaxed in his cushions and said, “Tell us then, Fudir, why thou hast sought the Brotherhood out. By what right doest thou call upon Terra?”

“I seek very little, Bwana. As little as this: the readiness of lips to speak of matters that befell here on Thistlewaite. As you know the ears of Terrans are large, but their mouths are small.”

“As befitteth folk in our station. And thou swearest this toucheth not on Holy Terra?”

“Save only that some have said it may discomfit the Confederation; but this is nothing more than the whisper of a supposition.”

“And we all know what is worth a suppository! Haha! What matters are these?”

“They are matters that touch upon the Kennel, Bwana, and are not to be spoken of.”

The Bwana’s face hardened and his cheeks grew red. “There is the small matter of trust, Fudir. If the Kennel be neither foe nor friend, neither are they Terrans. Doest thou value them more than thou valuest your own blood?”

Danger had once more raised its red-rimmed eyes. The Brotherhood would not harm him, not after offering bread and salt; but there were more Terrans in the Corner than belonged to the Brotherhood, and a disingenuous word spoken here or there could make his departure problematical. “I will tell ye so much as is safe for ye to know, brothers. But ye must swear a mighty oath to contain these words only within these walls. I wish to know of the doings of the Hound, Bridget ban, during her sojourn here. The Folk must speak to me with open hearts.”

Bwana studied him, and the Fudir could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. Then he clapped his hands again and cried out. “The Book!”

The others of the Seven looked uncomfortably at one another. One rose and murmured, “Perhaps I would not hear this.” Bwana flicked his fingers at her and she and two others rose, bowed over their folded hands to both the Bwana and the Fudir, and departed swiftly.

Shortly, a book was brought in. It was a thick volume, bound in the ancient style and inscribed on its binding with the curlicues of the old Tantamiž script. The printing was badly worn and a dull brown stain covered some of it. Of its title, the Fudir could make out only Guest is God, but on the reading of those words his heart went hollow. It was in the old script and its spelling was antique. Athtithi Dhevo Bhava, instead of Adidi Dyefo Vapha. The author’s name was not visible, but he wondered. Could this volume be that written by Saint Shanthanand Saraswathi himself? How old was it? It was encased in a plastic block—destroyed and preserved in one act—and so its age had ceased. It might have come from Lost Terra herself, lovingly cradled and carried from the Home World to the Old Planets and from there to come to rest finally on rickety Thistlewaite.

The Fudir, who fancied himself an unsentimental man, was surprised to find himself on his knees before the book, his cheeks hot with tears; but whether for the ancient, half-legendary swami-ji, or for everything lost that had once been, he did not know. He placed his hand on the block along with the Bwana and the others of the Committee who had stayed, their fingertips touching one another: pallid, ebony, dun, and sallow. The colors of Olde Earth.

After the words were spoken, the Fudir rocked back on his heels. His fingers lingered on the Book, maintaining contact, as if he could feel the binding and the covers and the pages preserved forever unreadable within the plastic. He had spoken many oaths in his lifetime, and some he had even kept. This was the first he had ever taken that he had felt was holy.

And so he told them that the harper’s mother had vanished and that the daughter had set forth on a hopeless quest to find her, and that he had come with her as her guide and protector. As Terrans, his hosts knew all about hopeless quests, and so were inclined to sympathy. They gave their leave to make inquiries in the Corner.

Nor did it hurt that the Fudir would pay for information from the deep pockets of the Kennel.

“And this,” he said, pulling from his scrip the necklace he had borrowed from Méarana. “It may mean nothing; it may mean everything. The Hound bought it here on Thistlewaite, or received it as a gift. Somewhere there is a merchant or a dealer in curiosities who remembers it, and perhaps remembers whence it came.”

Bwana and his councilors studied it in turn. “It is unfamiliar to me,” said the chairman. “If it be thistlework, it must be of a far-off sheen. Yet, we see imports in our bazaars from even Fire Over Water, which is the farthest of the Fourteen States, and I have never seen its like. See thou Mwere Ng as thou departest, and she will prepare whole-grams of it. I will have its likeness circulated among jewelcrafters and importers and may fortune reward thy curiosity.”

And so matters ran for several days. Méarana would play songs of the Periphery and engage in “small-talk” with the emperor, and the Fudir would nose around the Terran Corner and other eddies of the city asking after the activities of Bridget ban and the provenance of the medallion. The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step, but it seemed to the harper that neither she nor Donovan were advancing the search for her mother by so much as even that single step. The sense of being stuck in a dreamland crept over her. The days were distinguished only by the particular songs she sang, and the precise lack of information with which the Fudir returned each evening.

Now and then, simply to remind them where they were, the world shrugged his shoulders and the land trembled. Once, Méarana was shaken awake in the night and she lay awake a long time thereafter before sleep reclaimed her, and in the morning she found that a great tree had come down on Great Heaven Street.

Because Resilient Services had discovered the relaxing properties of her harp, he had bid her remain for his afternoon Council and play gentle suantraís while he reviewed the reports the dough-riders had brought in from the distant shau, prefecture, and county officials. And so her day at the palace expanded from command performances at High Tea, to “muzaq” at staff meetings.

No decision in Sheen Jenlùshy was ever final until ratified by the emperor: not the death sentence to a murderer meted out in Wustershau, not the mei-pol festival to be held in Xampstedshau, not the list of candidates proposed from the 7th Dough for the imperial examinations. Each must be reviewed with the Six Ministers, a decision rendered, and the triplicate copies apportioned.

The suantraí was supposed to induce drowsiness in its hearers. Méarana wondered why the emperor thought it necessary. The subject matter alone should induce coma.

While her fingers plucked long-mastered melodies from the strings, she learned that for each official there was a quota of decisions to be overturned. This number could be exceeded in the case of an especially inept official, but never shorted. “If all decisions stand,” Morgan Cheng-li explained as he escorted her from the palace later, “official think above station, fixed by birth and examination. So, if no other cause, council overrule random cases, as lesson in humility.”

Resilient Services himself overruled the Council on a few occasions, and Méarana supposed that this was for the same reason. In one case, the emperor denied “yin privilege” to the daughter of the Minister for All Things Natural Within the Realm. “Yin” was the privilege of bypassing the examination system to secure a place in the hierarchy. Apparently, this was sufficiently pro forma for the children of officials that the Minister’s face twitched in irritation. The Grand Secretary noted this and snapped, “Five blows! Filial impiety!” The sergeant-at-arms, who stood by the wall with a long cane of slapstick, stood to attention; but Resilient Services, looking up from perusal of yet another report, said, “Belay that, please. Imperial grace.”

“I was frightened,” the harper later admitted to the Fudir, when that worthy had emerged from the Terran Corner slightly scathed and greatly enlightened. “At least, a little,” she added. They had met in the Fudir’s room at the Hotel Mountain Glowering. Méarana sat in the comfortable sofa while the scarred man examined his face in the mirror.

“What? Of our young emperor?” The Fudir applied a healing stick to the cut over his left eye, wincing slightly at the sting.

“Not so much of him as for him. His slightest whim is instantly obeyed. What does that do to a man’s soul? And the others grovel before him. It can’t be good for a man to have others grovel to him.”

“Better perhaps,” said Donovan, “than for the ones who must grovel.”

“There was one set of reports… Did you know there is a second, independent hierarchy whose only purpose is to monitor the behavior of the regular officials and report any ‘nonharmonious words or acts’?”

The Fudir dabbed at the other cuts he had suffered. “The Bureau of Shadows,” he said. “It could be worse.”

“Worse, how?”

“They could be shadowing the common people. If a government is going to snoop, they may as well restrict their snooping to one another. The system could be brought to perfection if the first set of officials were then restricted to monitoring the second. How soon can you break off these afternoon tête-à-têtes?”

Méarana sat up. Something in the Fudir’s voice…” What did you discover?”

“Two things. First, the jewelmonger Hennessi fu-lin remembers your necklace. He bought it in pawn from a man of Harpaloon. The man never came back for it, so he sold it to your mother.”

“Harpaloon. Mother’s next stop. Was she following the necklace? What was the second thing?”

“The Terrans remember that she met several times with a man from Kàuntusulfalughy who had been stranded here by the thistlequake. It isn’t much, but it’s the only activity of hers that I’ve heard about that wasn’t tied directly to disaster relief.”

“Who was it? What did he and Mother talk about?”

The Fudir held up a hand. “It may mean nothing at all. The Sleuth is always too eager to see patterns. The rest of us pointed that out and the Sleuth got huffy and left…”

“Fudir… The Sleuth is inside your head. Where could he go?”

“He’s sulking; not communicating. That makes it hard for the rest of us to put things together. The Terrans claim that when your mother returned she asked after this Kauntling. Debly Jean Sofwari. He was a science-wallah, or impersonating one, because he wore the white robes they favor. The Terrans say that he was flitting all around the sheen swabbing people’s mouths.”

“He was what?”

The Fudir spread his hands, palms up. “Could I make up something like that?”

“That must be why Mother met with him. She wanted to learn if he was a madman.”

“I bribed the log-keeper at Dewport Field, but Sofwari must have had his own ship. There’s no record of him in the departure logs. The automatic system was wrecked in the ‘quake and they were doing everything the hard way. I’ll spend another day snooping after Sofwari, but if the Terrans had known anything more, I’d have some inkling. We don’t know why your mother found him so interesting. He was too young for her bed.”

Méarana stiffened. “Dinnae speak of Mother in such ways.”

“Méarana… You must know that your mother’s bed was not a restricted area. Little Hugh was there; I was there. Even Greystroke was there. So was a Die Bold businessman, the Peacock STC director, a—.”

“Stop it!”

“And that was in the short time she and I were ‘associated.’ It’s no use clapping your ears like that. You can hear the truth from your inner voice.”

Méarana took her hands from her ears. “You didn’t know her the way I did.”

“I should hope not.”

“She’s not like that any more.”

The scarred man forbore to answer. Proverbs about leopards and spots came to mind. But the argument continued despite Méarana’s silence, with himself taking all sides. Shut up! he told himself. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Turning away from the harper, doubling over his clenched arms, he fell to his knees on the thick carpet of the sitting room and…

… suddenly, everything around him was unfamiliar, as if he had stepped off-stage. What was he doing here, in this comfortless room, so far from the consolations of Port Jehovah? He cursed Zorba de la Susa. He cursed Méarana Swiftfingers. Most of all, he cursed Bridget ban.

But that was in another country, a part of him said, And beside, the wench is dead.

Tears squeezed from his eyes. Though why should he mourn the death of Bridget ban? She had been dead to him for years.

Something subterranean rumbled with gigantic laughter, sending Inner Child scurrying in flight, silencing even the silent Donovan (for there is a silence more deep than mere quiet).

Each of him regarded himself to the extent that things unreal can regard anything. A fragment of an ancient poem brushed his mind too lightly for the words to alight; and a terrible foreboding took hold of him. An image of a shadow, slouching, at a distance, like a stranger seen under a lamppost on a foggy night. Dead, he thought; or a part of him thought. All tears are dust.

And the word—dust, dust, dust—echoed down the drainpipe of his mind like a man falling into an endless cavern. He saw a party of people, small, as if viewed by an eagle from a distance, circling along a narrow ledge above an immense abyss. One of them pointed with a walking staff into the darkness below them. There is something down there, he said, that cannot speak.

When he came to himself once more, it was night. The room was dark, save for a reading lamp in the corner. He lay curled up upon the bed and, in the corner, the harper slept upright in a padded chair. Slowly, he straightened, careful lest he make a noise, but Méarana’s eyes opened.

“You had a seizure,” she said. “Worse than before.”

The scarred man lay still for a while, then pushed himself erect and sat on the edge of the bed. He leaned his hands on his knees. “It was easier,” he said, “when I thought I had forgotten.”

The harper didn’t ask him what he had thought forgotten. She said, “I brought a doctor in. He prescribed rest, and some herbs.”

He laughed softly and without humor. “The famous herbalists of Thistlewaite. Did he stick pins in me? I’ve heard they do that here. Chicken soup?” He remembered being haunted by thoughts of death. But whose death? And whose thoughts?

There was something very wrong inside his head.

That elicited a second humorless laugh. It was more pertinent to wonder if there was anything very right in that vandalized ruin.

How could such a kaleidoscope keep Méarana safe from harm? De la Susa had not known what he was asking of him.

The Thistles divided their daylight into twelve hours starting from the sunrise ceremony, but unlike folk on other worlds they did not number their hours. Instead, each had a name. Thus, the third hour after equatorial sunrise was Bravely Working Hour, presumably because by that time most people were at their jobs. The other hours were named in like manner after the rhythms of life, and in this wise the Thistles synchronized their activities. When at the Mid-day Snacking Hour one sat to a light meal of biscuits and cheeses, one experienced the harmony of knowing that everyone in the sheen was doing the very same. There might be some dissonance with other sheens, or even with those districts in the Eastern Marshes where dawn arrived before its appointed hour, but it was generally acknowledged that the Eastern Marshes were out of synch in more than their sunrise, and the folk of other sheens were odd beyond all credit.

There were no public clocks. The right of proclaiming the Hours was reserved to the emperor. Within the palace complex stood a single cesium clock of unimaginably ancient vintage. It did not match the Thistlean hours, having been calibrated long ago to the tock of a different world, but the Sages of the Clock would note the time displayed and perform a ritual called the Transposition of Times, and determine when each new local hour began. Uncounted people on uncounted worlds spent their workday “watching the clock,” but on Thistlewaite there were workers actually paid to do so. The Voice of the Sheen would then, to trumpet blast and gongs, announce the Hour from the parapet of the imperial palace, and the cable channels would carry her word throughout the sheen.

Méarana heard the trumpets as she made her way down Poultry Street, a narrow lane whose coops and butchers had long given way to mobi stores and shopping arcades, leaving only subtle aromatic reminders of its original inhabitants. Méarana said a word equally pungent and quickened her pace, for the trumpet meant that she would be late for her command performance. She tolerated Donovan’s eccentricities on most things, but the packing of her clothing was not among them and that had delayed her.

White Rod was as pale as his wand of office when Méarana finally appeared. Trembling, he led her into the throne room, where Resilient Services sat alone at High Tea, to all appearances sorely vexed. Méarana thought she would need a suantraí to sooth the man’s palpable anxiety. She waited for White Rod’s underling to pull her chair out for her. Instead, underlings hesitated, emperors rose, and guests sat in fits and starts. Apparently, custom required that He Who Serves the Tea was to sit last of all; but because the tea had already been poured before Méarana’s entrance, harmony was now broken. She did not see why this mattered at all, least of all that it mattered so terribly, but she supposed that now there would be a two-headed calf born somewhere for which her lateness could be blamed. She was a Die Bolder, born and bred, and a devotee of causality. Concatenation struck her as absurd.

You would think that a harper would know all about harmony, the emperor told her when that quality had been restored. It was an elliptical rebuke, with a great deal of opprobrium in the ellipsis. “It is a terrible discourtesy with which to end my visit,” she allowed.

The emperor of the Morning Dew sat back a little in his chair. Today he wore a dinner jacket of bright green, done up with contrasting red embroidery, with a ruffled cravat at his throat. On his head, he had placed a white powdered wig bearing a long pigtail down his back. “End visit,” he said, as if examining the phrase for possible alternative meanings.

“Yes. Donovan and I leave on the evening shuttle to rendezvous with the throughliner Srini Siddiqi. My mother awaits me.”

“Your mother. Yes. Play me,” he said as he poured a second cup of tea and, using a silver tongs, dropped a lump of sugar in it, “song of your mother.”

Hitherto, the emperor’s requests had been for songs of adventure, of faraway planets, of romance and distance. The harper played Mother as a geantraí: a jaunty tune that conjured her in the moment in which Bridget ban strode across the decks of Hot Gates like the queen of High Tara—tall, magnificent, purposeful. Somehow, though, as her fingers wandered across the strings, a goltraí crept in: a keening lament as heartbreaking as all the losses of the world. By then, she had been transported by her own music, as sometimes befell when the harp took charge and the strings played her fingers rather than the proper way round.

The emperor’s sob startled her from her trance and, realizing what she had done, she transformed the music once more into geantraí, pivoted by progressions out of the seventh mode and lessening his black bile with the eighth. It was intricate fingerwork, finding the right cadences so as to shift without dissonance. When she had finished, she laid her hand flat against the strings to still them; though it seemed to her that the strings still wanted plucking and vibrated softly even so.

“I did not mean to upset you, Jimmy,” she said.

“No, no, quite all right. Chin-chin. Emperor should be upset now and then. Tedious business, remaining always in balance—always in harmony.” A quick smile and with a nod toward the harp. “As you must know.”

“Perhaps I can play a song of your own world. Thistlewaite. Something pleasant and hopeful.”

“World hopeless. Keeps breaking.”

“And yet you persist. My mother always said courage was one of the Four Great Strengths.”

“You mother. Yes. What other three?”

“Prudence, justice, and moderation.”

The emperor nodded. “Those good strengths for ruler.”

“How does your First Cautionary Book begin? I could try to set it.” Méarana’s fingers poised ready to wrest a melody from her strings, and Jimmy began to recite in a singsong voice.

Afterward, Méarana said, “This worm trembles that she must leave so soon.” She did not sound much like a trembling worm, having had little practice in the art.

Jimmy laid a hand on her bare arm. “Do not go,” he said with eyes as wide as sorrow. “How else I hear such distant places? Duty pin me forever to Jenlùshy like butterfly to board. You stay here. Be empress. Bring songs of places I never see.”

Méarana slid her arm gently from his touch. She adjusted the green shawl around her shoulders. “I cannot. I would be a prisoner here.”

“In chains of gold,” he told her. “In velvet bands.”

“Ochone! Are chains of gold chains no less? I must go. It is a geasa upon me.”

The emperor of the Morning Dew slumped a little in his seat. “Obligation. Yes, I understand. You must find her.”

She said nothing for a time, stroking the strings of her harp, but without striking them, so that they only murmured but did not speak. “How did you know?”

The emperor gestured elegantly toward the harp. “What else? Such sorrow come only from death or loss. And death not drive you to cross whole Spiral Arm.”

Méarana closed her eyes. “No one has heard from her in three metric years. Many search, myself most of all.”

Jimmy Barcelona lifted his teacup to his lips and his eyes searched the courtiers who lined the walls out of earshot, engaged in faux conversations. “Then,” he said, dropping his voice, “I, too, search. I go with you…”

Méarana had expected the invitation to stay; but not the offer to go. “Ye… Ye cannae,” she said, falling into her native accents. “Jenlùshy needs you. Mother selected you because of your expertise in infrastructure. You must stay here and rebuild the Morning Dew so that it can survive the next thistlequake.”

But Jimmy dismissed that with a wave of the hand. “No build so strong but Thistlewaite stronger. This miserable worm, engineer. Lay pipe, calculate sewage by ancient rules. Estimate building loads and construction costs. Bridges… Was happy build bridges. Never ask for this.”

The harper touched the strings of her harp. “No one ever does,” she said quietly, running her fingers down the cords.

“I give orders. Modify systems; implement fault tolerancing and redundancy; increase reliability of infrastructure. Ministers… make up numbers to please me, and always build as always. Ancient rules. One day, all come down again. No. Better one seek Bridget ban across whole Spiral Arm. There, perhaps, success.”

To maintain the harmony of heaven-below by trying to impose the regularities of astronomy on the behavior of humans was very nearly the definition of madness. And yet mystics throughout the ages, from astrologers to computer modelers, had sought it. They forgot that even the heavens held surprises.

Jimmy Barcelona at least could see the futility of his efforts, even if he was not quite clear on why they were futile. Méarana almost told him that her quest was no less so, but that was something she had not yet told even herself.

And so she spoke truth to power. “Ye maun seek Bridget ban for her sake, not because you want to shuck your own responsibilities.”

Power didn’t like to hear that; or else he knew she spoke truth, which was much the same thing. “If purpose same,” whispered the emperor, “what matter, different motives? Keep smile. We pretend talk small nothings. Courtiers cannot hear. Listen. If Bridget ban now lost, approval of sky lost, too. So order in heaven-below, in Jenlùshy not maintain, and all become chaos above.”

“That’s absurd, Jimmy! What happens in the Spiral Arm does not depend on how well you maintain the Morning Dew!”

“This Thistlewaite. Nothing absurd. You know Garden of Seven Delights?”

“What? But…” Was this a shift back to “small talk”? “Yes. Donovan and I have eaten there several times. The food is…”

“Listen. Garden have back door. I come tonight, at Domestic Entertainment Hour. I come in front, lock door on entourage, run out back. You wait by back door with fast flitter. Rent most fast in whole sheen. I come out back door, jump in, and you ‘light a shuck for Texas,’ as your friend say. Go so fast as possible to Hifocal Big Town in next sheen. We take shuttle. Once buy ticket…” At this point he relaxed and sat back in his chair. “Port Authority protect. Then you, me, your Donovan, we fly across sky, go… maybe Texas, maybe find Bridget ban.”

The harper took her napkin and dabbed at her lips. High Tea was coming to an end and the servitors were gathering to take down the café table and set the throne room back to rights. “I must confer with my friend.”

The emperor, too, glanced at the approaching staff. “No time. No confer. Decide.”

Méarana took a deep breath, exhaled. “Second night hour. Behind the Garden of Seven Delights.”

“With most fast flivver. Now,” he rose from the table and raised his voice a bit so others could hear. “No need more play. Tomorrow, come back, sing of High Tara.”

Méarana rose, showed leg in a graceful bow, and swept up her harp case. “Your worship commands; this worthless one obeys.” And she slung the case across her shoulder and strode for the door.

She wondered what Donovan would say about this latest development; but she thought she could guess.

“Have you gone mad?” Donovan demanded.

The sleek Golden Eagle flivver floated up Double Moon Street on a cushion produced by the magnetic field in the paving. “You better hope not,” the harper said. “I’m driving.” To the west, the Kilworthy Hills had darkened, but their highest peaks still caught the un-set sun from over the horizon and flashed a brilliant white and gray.

“Kidnapping the emperor? Tell me that’s sane.”

“It’s not a kidnapping. It’s his idea.”

“Then you don’t know Thistlewaite. He may be the emperor, but ‘custom is king of all.’”

“Donovan, listen to me. He may be subject to custom—that’s what he wants to escape—but he’s certainly capable of keeping the two of us here under lock and key and demanding I play escapist music for him every afternoon for the rest of my freaking life! And then how would I find my mother?”

“Uncle Zorba told me to keep you out of trouble. I guess he didn’t think you’d be the one starting it.”

“The emperor would let you go. You have no songs for him.”

A part of the scarred man’s mind flashed with anger and Donovan chuckled. Was that you, Fudir? Insulted that she expects you to abandon her? I’m shocked.

The Fudir told him what he could do with his shock.

«This is dangerous,» said Inner Child. «Kidnapping the emperor, even with his consent.»

We needn’t smuggle Jimmy off-world, the Silky Voice suggested. We need only spirit Méarana from the emperor’s clutches.

Ah, said the Brute. You take the fun outta everything, sweetie.

It would not need much, whispered another voice. A slight tap on the temple and she’ll wake up on the shuttle halfway to Harpaloon.

«The emperor wouldn’t like that,» Inner Child pointed out.

Donovan said nothing aloud. Brute, do you think you can do it without injuring her?

No problemo.

Yeah? Do you want to tell Uncle Zorba about it, or should I? said the Fudir. If we stiff the emperor, he’ll seal the borders. And even if we make it across somehow, Snowy Mountain would be happy to hand us back.

Somehow? said Donovan. Where was there ever a border you or I found un-crossable?

Alone, and not with a naïf of a harper in tow.

And not, said the Sleuth, who had been silent until then, with a pause for debate at every juncture.

Méarana shook his shoulder. “Fudir. We’re there.”

The scarred man gathered his thoughts and looked around the service alleyway. The paving here was not magnetized and Méarana had switched over to ground effect, which blew the litter about in swirls. Cans clattered; paper whipped. The narrow lane was unlit, and what illumination spilled across the roofs from Gayway Street did little to lift the shadows. On the right, dustbins stood by each door along the back walls of the Gayway shops. On the left, a stone wall enclosed the residential lots. The emperor had made a good choice for his abduction. Except for the Garden, the other shops were closed up for the night. Blocked from the Garden, his entourage would be forced to run to the far ends of the block to reach the alley, by which time the flivver would be long gone.

“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” said Donovan.

“Of course, I am,” said Méarana. “It’s our only way to get off this planet.” Then, realizing that the question was not meant for her, she favored him with a searching look. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said the Fudir. “I promised Zorba that I’d watch out for you.”

“I’m not without resources. Mother taught me a trick or two.”

“Actually, he said he’d hunt me down and kill me if anything happened to you.”

Méarana laughed. “Uncle Zorba is a great kidder.”

The Fudir said nothing. Zorba was not that great a kidder. He raised the flivver’s gull-wing, and hopped into the alley. The ground effect was just enough to keep the chassis above the paving. “Keep the turbines at hover.” Then he crossed to the utility door of the Garden of Seven Delights, ready to hustle the emperor into the waiting vehicle.

Where do you think they’ll be? asked the Sleuth.

“Shut up,” Donovan explained.

He heard the distant blast of the trumpets from the palace walls, and pole-speakers about the city carried the Voice of the Sheen’s announcement of Domestic Entertainment Hour. Clever timing, thought the Fudir. Most of Jenlùshy would be indoors with their visors active, watching the evening installments of their favorite shows.

Shortly after, he heard the whine of flivvers pulling into the restaurant’s parking lot on the Gayway side of the building, followed by the hiss and chunk of doors rising and closing. “Get ready,” he told Méarana.

He heard the front door slam, rapid footfalls approaching, then the utility door flew open and Jimmy Barcelona rushed out into the alley. The Fudir pushed a large dustbin in front of the door to impede pursuit and took the emperor by the elbow and hurried him toward the car.

At which point, a dozen men dressed in black rose from the surrounding shadows and leveled hand stingers at them.

Yes, said the Sleuth, that’s where I thought they’d be, too.

The Fudir cast about for an escape route, torn between Inner Child’s impulse to run and the Brute’s impulse to fight. Donovan, who had been stung more than once in his career, raised the scarred man’s hands. The Silky Voice wept over their failure. Pulled thus in half a dozen directions, the scarred man remained motionless at their average.

Inside the flivver, the harper sat with her hands clenched on the control yoke. Rage dueled with sudden relief in her features. Her hands moved a fraction and the turbine’s pitch subtly increased. Donovan, who knew the capabilities of man and machine, thought it a desperate ploy, but one with a hairsbreadth chance of success. Cut losses, abandon allies.

It’s what he would have done.

But the flivver’s whine dropped into silence. Méarana turned open-faced to the Fudir and the scarred man read her fears writ there.

Flivvers approached from either end of the alley and came to a rest, neatly boxing them in. The doors of the one facing them arched open and Morgan Cheng-li stepped forth, followed by White Rod bearing the Yellow Cope.

“Ah, Majesty,” said the Grand Secretary. “This worm abases himself for interruption of such clever evening entertainment, but Monthly Tattoo waits August Presence on parade ground.” He showed leg and, with a sweep of the arm, invited Resilient Services to enter the flivver.

Jimmy Barcelona slumped and he looked at Donovan, and then at Méarana. “What I say? This Thistlewaite. All plans fail.”

Two of the Shadows led Resilient Services to the flivver where White Rod waited.

By this time, the harper had come to stand beside the scarred man. “Are you all right?” she asked him in a whisper.

The Fudir did not know what to tell her. That he had frozen when fast and decisive action might have been most necessary? That it was just as well that they had not escaped because he would not be reliable in a pinch? The sum of his parts was less than the whole he had once been. Donovan answered for him. “No worries,” he said. “Hush, here comes Jingly.”

The Grand Secretary bestowed a slight nod and sweep of the arm. “You should not have indulged him,” he said in Gaelactic. “He is needed too much here.”

“He threatened to hold me captive if I didn’t,” the harper said.

A wave of a jeweled hand. “That contrary to Treaty of Amity and Common Purpose. Fourteen States all signatories to League Treaty. You think we want Hounds come here, tear down prison to free you?”

Donovan did not know if The Particular Service would go that far; at least not for his sake. Though they might for Bridget ban’s daughter.

“You spy on your own emperor?” he said.

Jingly looked surprised. “Of course! You know ‘Shadows’? Provincial Surveillance Commissions duplicate Provincial Administrative Commissions. Yang, yin. Each official, each prefect, each dough-rider has shadow. Shadows report piety and harmony to Imperial Censor.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“So. Who need harmony more than emperor? All balance depend on him. I say ‘balance,’ but no word in Gaelactic mean same.”

“I understand.”

“No,” said Jingly. “You not understand. Only Thistles understand. Our star, central star of whole universe. Microwave ‘walls,’ same distance, all direction. Heavy burden, balance whole universe on shoulders. No man have such strength. Often bend, sometimes break. Like today. No one man manage all. But all Morning Dew, all Thistlewaite unite in this. All share burden; all help emperor. Like today.”

Behind him, White Rod placed the Yellow Cope on the emperor’s shoulders and bowed him deferentially toward the waiting car.

“You go now,” said Jingly “You not come back Jenlùshy”

Méarana bowed and Donovan bowed and, rising, she saw behind the yellow-garbed August Presence, the trapped eyes of Jimmy Barcelona, who had wanted of all things only to build bridges.