“Who commanded you to delay me?” Vigil said softly.

The man used a Fox-trick to change the cellular composition of his own face. The man’s countenance stiffened, changed color, and the skin cells locked in place, becoming as a mask of silver metal. “I am uncertain what milord intends to imply, sir. This humble servant of the Order merely abides by the ancient precepts and protocols.”

Vigil said, “Then stand aside, Pilgrim lackey; for, look closely! The doors are not shut.” And he nodded at the narrow crack where the doors were resting very lightly around the peace wand, by a hair’s breadth not touching it.

The doorkeep said stiffly, “Even the Lords must abide by the conventions and protocols of the Stability. Once the doors are shut—”

“I say they are not shut and that the protocol is therefore intact. Step away, or you hinder a Lord of the Stability in the performance of his duties.”

But the doorkeep said, “The protocol clearly states that in times of dispute or accusation of irregular injunction or detainment, the Office of the Watch has discretion. Therefore, we must summon him to answer whether you may pass or no. He is within. I will send a page once the conclave is disbanded.”

Vigil was affronted by the transparency of the ploy. “This means I will miss the conclave to which I am summoned!”

The doorkeep quirked his eyebrows nonchalantly. “My concern is that protocol is maintained. It is no fault of mine that milord amused himself to wander the back avenues erratically, or beguiled the time away taking baths or molesting statues.”

“Send the page now!”

“While the doors are shut? I humbly regret to inform milord that this is impossible, sir.”

“Impossible?”

“Highly unlikely, let us say, milord…”

Vigil dropped the wand and grabbed door panels in both hands, as if he were challenging the oblong slab to a wrestling match. The sentries were too surprised to remember their face control, and they laughed, knowing the door leaves were made a spaceworthy transparent metal. They did not know, however, that Vigil’s bones were made of a material just as strong, or slightly more, and his muscles had been engineered to the peak of what was permitted to human beings, or slightly beyond; and they did not remember that no matter how hard the doors, the hinges were antiques.

Their laughter died as one of the door leaves twisted in a hideous groaning at an odd angle, awkward as a tooth pried from a jaw, and fell with seeming slowness grandly to the flagstones in a gonglike clang of noise, loud as a thunderclap.

2. The Seneschal

Emergency lamps, no doubt startled at the noise, lit up with red flares, and trumpets sounded, and a siren sang out. (He could see her in the distance. The siren was seated in a rotunda where six corridors met, the basin of a silver fountain with a conch shell in her white hands, no doubt an adjutant to one of the lake-dwelling versions of mankind, a Melusine or related order.)

Vigil stepped over the fallen door panel into the Palace of Future History and whistled for the peace wand. The peace wand hesitated, no doubt wondering whether it should return to the empty-handed sentry staring sadly from afar. But seeing the unhappy fate of the hinges, who were moaning and calling for repair, the wand no doubt thought it wiser to comply. It flexed like a snake, issued a magnetic pulse, and leaped smoothly into Vigil’s hand.

A seneschal, perhaps in response to the siren’s singing, the flashing of the lanterns, and the lamentation from the sobbing and broken hinges, came scurrying forward.

He was wearing kothornoi of wood from a sacred tree from a world of Proxima to give him extra height, and a towering kamilavka on his head. From the roundness of his features and the almost triangular squint of his eyes, he was not of the Pilgrim lineage but an Itinerant, one of the most neglected races on Torment. The Itinerant were as baseline First Men in all ways with this one oddity which they inherited from the Flocculents of 44 Boötis, that they could survive without water almost indefinitely, and, even nude, withstand any degree of cold. Their water-retaining and recycling tissues unfortunately gathered at their bellies and buttocks, giving them a portly and comical appearance. Successive generations of meddling with the aesthetic perceptual complexes and midbrains of the other races of man so far had not succeeded in making the Itinerants appear comely in the eyes of Nomads, Strangers, or Pilgrims.

“What commotion is this?” he demanded portentously.

The doorkeep shouted, “Lock-breaking and intrusion! Felonies have been committed!”

Vigil knelt and touched the golden floor of the corridor, using the mudra of bhumisparsha, which indicates Faithful Witness. “No locks were broken!”

The hinges groaned but dared not contradict him.

The doorkeep said, “Does the Strangerman deny that he stove in the ancient and honest doors which it is my charge to keep? I am reduced to absurdity! That, at least, is a misdemeanor!” The delicate pangolin scales of his face now rippled and flexed, which revealed a pink flush in the cracks between them, a sign of anger.

Vigil said to the seneschal, “Hear me: I am summoned to the Table by the Loyal and Self-Correctional Order of Prognostic Actuarial Cliometric Stability, whose charge it is to deter chaos and unpredicted anomalies in the smooth evolution of future history. The approach of an Interstellar Sailing Vessel introduces the unknowns of other worlds into our prediction matrix and heralds enormous events. Hence it is the protocol, once the Lighthouse is lit, to call the last starman aloft to report of signs and wonders seen in other spheres and heavens. I am the descendent and representative of that starman, have inherited his internal creatures and memory chains, and therefore speak with his voice.”

The seneschal said, “Yet clearly the doors are marred; this is desecration and violence against the integrity of the palace walls.”

“If someone standing on the portico committed so outrageous and uncouth an act, clearly the civic authorities of the Landing City of Torment have cause to apprehend him and demand recompense. However, that crime, if it were a crime, ceased to be of concern once I stepped across the threshold, for I have passed from the jurisdiction of the local planetary law and into the laws of the universe.”

The seneschal made a long face, stroking his chin. “The door is property of the Order and is wounded.”

Vigil said, “Admittedly the inside panels of the door are within the palace, and hence are part of interstellar law, under control of the Order. But the force was applied to the outside panels of the door, and if this was a crime, you must apply to the Sergeants of the Mayor of Landing City: to do otherwise affronts on his authority.”

“Pettifoggery!” cried the doorkeep. “Equivocation! The portico is manned by Officers of the Order. By courtesy of the law, any acts committed before the threshold impinge on our jurisdiction!”

Vigil said, “While the point is a significant one, its resolution must await until after I have presented myself. Which is higher in priority, Seneschal, according to standing command and protocols: to officiate a jurisdictional dispute, or to prevent all hindrance to a Lord of the Order when the summons looms? The resolution one way or the other of a criminal charge of lock-breaking cannot have a cliometric influence beyond a life span or two; whereas the Table of Stability determines the fate of millennia.”

The seneschal nodded warily, his unhappiness clearly visible on his face. “I do not have the competence to make a rash decision. The matter has various aspects.”

“Master Seneschal, do not be swayed!” cried out the doorkeep in frustrated rage. “You cannot admit this trespasser!”