“What is this Concordat?”

“The social covenant. The Princess has ordained peace throughout the world.” The old man’s face softened into a mass of wrinkles when he smiled. “We have no external enemies, and hence no wars. Peace has smiled on the human race at last!”

There was a light in his eyes when he said the Princess.

Montrose did not want to spoil the mood by pointing out that the Roman Empire and the Chinese had no significant external enemies, but were racked by horrific civil wars everytime a dynasty lost its grip on power, or someone thought it should.

“What’s your name, Doc?”

“Kyi.”

“Family name or Christian name?”

The doctor inclined his head respectfully. “That is my Medicine-Buddha name, which more fully is Sgra-dbyangs kyi rgyal-po, whom I emulate. My refuge name is Bhlogrochosnyi, Intellect Cosmic Order Sun, obtained when I took refuge in the three jewels of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. I am of Tashilhupo, who follow the Yellow Hat sect.”

“Uh … that’s right nice. Doctor Key…”

“Kyi.”

“Doctor Kyi … if I can ask. Who is this Princess of yours?”

The doctor looked amused. “So you are infatuated just from her picture?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“I am a doctor: I know the signs of neural imbalance. She is Her Serene Highness the Sovereign Princess Rania of Monaco, daughter of Rainier. Her mother bore her aboard the Hermetic, making the princess the first born beneath the light of another sun: Her phylum is classed as Exosolar. Place your dreams elsewhere. She is above your rank.”

“Impossible.”

The old man shook his head wearily. “Resign yourself. The effort the Noble Master expended in recovering your sanity has placed you in a debt beyond recovery. And I do not mean a monetary debt—only the lower orders concern themselves with such things. I mean the honor code that governs the arms-bearing class. By any rational calculation of debt, you are a client, a dependent, of the Nobilissimus, a retainer, even if you take no oath—and therefore you cannot impose yourself on his fiancée.”

Montrose forced a smile onto his face, and uttered a bitter laugh. “Why would I care about that? I never met the girl! Seems a little, ah, on the young side for him, though, don’t she? Where did you say she was born?—and anyhow, I meant it was impossible that she was birthed aboard ship.”

Dr. Kyi said coolly, “She was aboard the great ship when the Hermetic received the capitulation from the Old Order.”

“Which old order is that?”

“The Purity Order: Azania, the Coptic Union, and Greater Manchuria. Superceded, now. They were absorbed peacefully into the Concordat.”

“How did they win? The Hermeticists, I mean. The ship was an antique. She was not a warship, wasn’t carrying missiles or linears or nothing.”

“I am no soldier. I can only say what I have heard.”

“Then tell me.”

“Let me hook your suit to my bag first, that I may do a complete scan and checkup. May we proceed?”

Montrose submitted with ill grace.

The way the doctor told it, the weapons of the Hermetic were her sails and magnetic umbra. The ship enjoyed several incomparable advantages: Because contraterrene is ultralightweight, hard to detect, and impossible to deflect, once the vessels closed to engagement distances, even a microscopic fleck flung at an incoming vessel, striking any part of it, would emit a pulse of radiation hot enough to blind or cripple it.

With her immensely more powerful drives, the Hermetic was able to outmaneuver her foes, and she had no supply lines to protect. The Old Order vessels were overextended; they tried to re-supply by using unmanned high-acceleration canisters, but the Hermetic jinxed their radio-controls, and sent the supplies off-target. Her radio-emitters were more powerful than any Earthly emitter, even at interplanetary ranges. Her attacks were handled with a precision the finest computers on Earth could not match.

From beyond Mars, the Hermetic used her sail to focus (with impossible accuracy) solar beams onto navigation satellites orbiting the Earth, burning them like ants beneath a magnifying glass, and the captains of the scattered vehicles of the Old Order suddenly were blind and lost without Earth-based navigation.

“Perhaps,” the old doctor said, “had they been truly devout to their cause, the Copts could have calculated their positions with sextants and almanacs, and plotted their orbits with their onboard equipment, but then the voice of the Princess came across their radio-sets, calling them each by name, and offering them the Concordat. Their choice was to become the military backbone of the New Order, with land, dignities, and honors long denied to them, or to perish of exhaustion in the vacuum. Her voice none could deny: she is not of this Earth.”

Montrose sat up so quickly that the doctor’s black bag, connected to him by half a dozen sensitive lines, bleeped in annoyance. “Wait—What? Are you saying the Hermetic picked her up on some other planet? That she is an alien? But there are no planets like that, and even if there were, no star systems are between here and V 866 Centauri…”

“I said she was born aboard ship.”

“And I said that was impossible. Who was the mother? There were no women aboard.”

“Three women were smuggled aboard, disguised as crewmen who had washed out of the program, but were too ashamed to allow the public to know.”

“Oh, come on. Smuggled how? When? Why?”

“They were comfort women. It is thought best in polite circles not to inquiry too closely into the matter, in case face be lost. You see that the matter is delicate.”

“You mean whores?” Montrose uttered a laugh and slapped his knee. “Hee-howdie! That would have been a hoot. Playing belly-thumper all the way to Centauri and back. If’n I were a jane, I’d’a gone for it. Wait … you’re serious? You’re not serious.”

The doctor certainly looked serious. Of course, he probably looked that way most times.

Montrose guffawed. “Who told you we had strumpets aboard? Where was they stowed? Every square half-centimeter of space was accounted for. Or were the hussies just clinging to the outside of the hull like a remora fish on a submarine? That’d be quite a bit of clinging, considering that the ship’s carousel was spun for gravity. Hanging by your hands with the stars under your toes for fifty years, and the boys would have to be pretty lonely for you, cause you’d be older than grandma by the time the johns thawed out. Pee-shaw. Who came up with that stretch of baloney?”

“These women, arrested for breaches of public decorum laws in Argentina, were given the opportunity to escape the Decency Inquisition the newly-reconstituted Spanish Crown had initiated, by doing community service. Essentially they were volunteering for permanent exile. The women were smuggled aboard because one of the high-level expedition organizers thought it would be a good idea, necessary for the sanity and well-being of the all-male crew, to send along…”

Menelaus just shook his head, smirking in disbelief.

The doctor looked offended. “Would you accuse the Nobilissimus Lord Regent Del Azarchel himself of perpetrating a lie? Be warned!”

“Would you accuse Captain Grimaldi of being so jackass loco yack-stupid as to lock up three warm-blooded señoritas in a canful of two hundred ten lusty young men and lonely old professors? Be warned yourself, Doc. Be warned not to believe any tin-plate panner-junk they try to palm off on you. Del Azarchel should’ve asked me. I would’ve come up with a better whopper than that one. Space whores!” He shook his head, unable to suppress a smile. “That’s cracked.”

Dr. Kyi favored him with a cold look. “You were in a coffin the whole time. You have no knowledge of what occurred.”

“Impossible. Im—poss—see—bull. And the emphasis is on the bull.”