And the bullet-life was not long enough to disrupt the geological integrity of the mantle, or to disturb the irritable and nervous Archangel called Demeter, which had established herself across the inner plates of the crust, with structures extending to the core, as the nursemaid and life support and repair crew for the renascent version of Tellus.

There were no earthquakes, and only a few storms: the disturbance to the Weather Control predictions was below intervention threshold. The Retaliation Mechanism established by Jupiter crouching at Mount Erebus in Antarctica trembled and stirred uneasily, and fearful gams and teams of watchful Melusine beneath the Ross Ice Shelf noted the energy systems all along the volcano cone tick over from their fifth standby awareness-level to their fourth, but the nightmarish Retaliator did not wake.

By all accounts, it was a fine shot, expertly executed.

So it was that when the traveling mountebank Zolasto Zo announced his troupe would add the apostate pontiff Hieronymus to their entourage, to give a series of lectures on calendar reform, the Ship Yard Assassin for the Starfarer’s Guild assigned to the Stratospheric Tower in Spanish Guinea, where the Forever Village slept, was much disturbed in his mind.

2. A Reluctant Starfarer

The assassin’s name and style was The Glorified and Refined Quaestor Norbert Brash Noesis Mynyddrhodian mab Nwyfre of Rosycross. He had crossed the Vasty Deep but once, starfaring to Senile Grandfather Earth from the one satellite of Proxima Centauri.

Less than four home-years had been compressed into a few ship-months’ journey during his faring. Technically speaking, regulation permitted him to affix the praenomen Venerable to his name, as if he were from an older time; but he could not have sat at mess and met the eyes of Starfarers from the Third Sweep Worlds, Chrysoar circling 51 Pegasi or Nightspore of Alpha Boötis, men who lost one-third or one-half a century of home-years in passage. And some had five or ten cruises under their belts: what was four years of time-exile compared to four centuries? Some were from aeons so long forgotten that they did not use the term, but put Lorentzed before their name, in the archaic style.

The only praenomens he insisted be observed were those he had earned. When still a youth, unexpectedly and inexplicably, the Noösphere of Rosycross had offered him full immortal honors, a record made of his brain down to the subatomic level. His thoughts would endure as long as civilization had power.

Afterward, despite the normal savant precautions of hypnocoding and chemical intervention, a divarication had struck, and Norbert was torn in two. The flesh-and-blood version of Norbert suffered a painful infatuation with a girl half his age, the sloe-eyed and red-lipped eroticist Svartvestra. His ideal was Stoic, archetype called Traditional Brash, of the Fiercely Individualistic Nonconformist phyle. It was not a type known for romantic weaknesses, so Norbert was ashamed at how he failed to fit in when others of his Fiercely Individualistic Nonconformist gathered for the soul-sharing rituals. He wanted to be exactly like all the other Fiercely Individualistic Nonconformists. But he wanted Svartvestra more.

Her ideal was Hedonist of the Meretricious Revelry Artiste archetype, the precise mismatch of his. On her part, she was delighted to toy with his affections, always promising and implying more than she meant, since it outraged her clan and delighted her fans, and brought her an intoxicating notoriety.

The xypotech version of Norbert disliked the girl, then despised. They fell out of synchronization, and suffered a sharp divarication. From Norbert’s point of view, Exorbert’s behavior became odd, then erratic, then grotesque: Exobert developed interests in esoteric cults, chaos mathematics, theosophy, imaginary energies, and the claims of those who said they could speak with the dead or deleted, or could find lost colony ships.

Exorbert began making calls to Norbert’s friends both natural and assigned, first by phone and then by dreamscape; tweaking Norbert’s subpersonalities on the flimsiest excuses; making unauthorized sales, manipulating apple genetics; altering work schedules; and sending strange training drugs into the foodstock of the farm Moreaus, or Norbert’s show-winning near-hound, Chymical Wedding.

Norbert fought unsuccessfully to undo all the strangeness and madness his ghostly twin was bringing into his life, and he vowed to fight forever. But when Norbert returned one winter Sunday to the family farm, and found all the farmhands celebrating the Wednesday Ciderfest, and his beloved near-hound giddy with stimulant and dancing on his hind legs on the baking table, crushing apple pies beneath his paws, Norbert’s resolve broke.

He could not struggle against the invisible superior twin. He had to forswear the girl. When the Noösphere offered to edit the memory chains related to his infatuation to drive Norbert’s personality closer to his archetype, and perhaps form a reconciliation between Norbert and Exobert, Norbert accepted the dangerous honor.

Against the wishes of the Noösphere and his father Yngbert, however, Norbert refused to have the process remove any sense of guilt or regret which might haunt him in later years.

And the alteration in his mind, even if done awkwardly, counted as Refinement. It elevated him from a mere Rustic to a Gentleman-Farmer.

But not only was no reunification forthcoming, his family and his ghost became ever more strangers to him.

Svartvestra was so stung by the cruel rejection, she recorded a fornication performance just in mockery of his love-style. He could no longer go into public houses or pink sections of the dreamscape without encountering jeers and sneers from her subscribers, or hearing trained near-dogs whistle the theme song from her base sound track.

It drove him into his archetype indeed. His soul became iron: he turned off his emotions so often the parish peace officer Maier twice served him a writ for renouncing his humanity, and asked him sarcastically why he did not use Foxcrafty to become a Myrmidon entirely. Each time Norbert restored his emotion, bitter anger overcame him.

But the technique for assuming an aspect of that ideal stoicism was still open to Norbert. Brash thought patterns were permanently imprinted, and could not fade with time. He used to amuse himself by falling into that allegedly higher state of mind, and putting his ungloved hand above a candle flame until he smelled flesh burning.

The unremoved regret hardened into resolve, and he ate a dream-apple, opening his nervous system to strange influences, and fell in love again, this time with a hamadryad bound by land-marriage to a fertile valley near the North Pole, where the gentle shadows were always long and the sun never reached zenith, even at noon.

Her name was Rose, the most common name on the planet. She was in every way the opposite of the frivolous and glamorous Svartvestra, but the end was the same. He was too artificial for her, too willing to alter himself, yet, ironically, too unwilling to drink the mind-altering love potion that would make their emotion for each other permanent structures, buttressed by neuro-circuitry, in all their personalities. Exorbert objected to the love potion, and Norbert feared to overrule the objection, not knowing, if he fought in his thoughts with Exorbert, which meant fighting the entire Noösphere of Rosycross, who or what he might end up evolving into.

He was brash, was he not? To remain himself, he fled the world, joined the Guild, took their coin, and signed the articles on the first vessel from Promixa.

Had he known how mad Tellus was, he would have waited longer, slumbered longer, and fled farther.