“I swear and I remember.” Vigil’s heart thundered with pride. His father had taught him the several variations of this ceremony, and he knew the next words before they were spoken: Then assume the duties and perquisites, and take lawful place prepared.

“Then assume the duties and perquisites, and take your arms and lawful place prepared.”

Vigil hesitated, fearing some legalism hiding a trap. But the demeanor of the Aedile was too desperate and crestfallen to be inauthentic. He knew his treason was discovered, his plans were ruined, his rank and perhaps his life were soon to be taken from him. Why had the words take your arms been added?

The steward stepped forward and bowed, extending his hands. Vigil assumed that if he made a mistake of protocol now, he would again be expelled from the Table.

The man Cricket came to his rescue, leaning his head close and whispering, “Hand him your toy sword, and go take the real sword from the lap of Tellus.”

Vigil surrendered his blade to the steward and stepped over toward the statue representing the Potentate of Mother Earth. He saw now that there was indeed a sword in a white scabbard there, long and straight and cross-hilted.

The dazzle of the jacinth and chrysoberyl adorning the tasseled hilts for a moment almost blinded him, until he realized that tears had entered his eyes, both of mourning for his father and of solemnity for the duty he was about to perform, the greatest mass execution in history. He commanded a lesser internal to reabsorb the tears quickly and to force his mind to maintain an unwavering emotional deportment. He felt an almost physical jolt of clarity, as potent as uncut wine, but with the effect of clearing rather than clouding his wits.

Details he had overlooked were now pellucid. He had not seen it move, but the stone hand of the Mother Earth figure, which a moment before had been clasping the scabbard, was open and the fingers held in a gesture representing a prayer for wisdom. Her watchful eyes were bent on him, and all the massy weight of Earthly history was behind them, a history of blood and suffering. The statue was telling him to fear the power of the sword and draw it prudently and with discretion.

Only then did he understand what this sword really was.

It explained why the words had been added: for his father must have foreseen his own fate at the hands of Torment and trusted not to take this great sword out into the world where she ruled. Only in here, the Palace of Future History, did the laws of the universe, and not of any one planet, hold sway.

Vigil picked it up but did not put it to his belt. The weight of the thing was no greater than that of a normal sword, but at the same time, the weight was terrible, and in his hand he thought he could feel the sheathed blade trembling as if with an unspent mudra of world-eclipsing magnitude.

He heard a noise behind him. The siege of the Lord Hermeticist had pulled itself back from the table and welcomed him.

He stepped over the dead body of the man he had slain and past the body of the next, fully aware of the countless numbers of all races so soon to follow, and he sat.

His counselor, Cricket, stepped behind him and spoke, “I yield the balance of my time to the Lord Hermeticist for his comment on the meaning of these events.”

Vigil turned his eyes left and right. He saw nothing but fear on the faces there, a paralysis.

6

Lords of the Stability

1. The Portreeve

Vigil spoke, “My Lords and Commensals! I have no vote at this table, nor may my voice be heard unless I am called upon to advise. There is one privilege and duty given to my office, however, which is shared by no other. Should the Table itself betray the Table, it is the duty of the Lord Hermeticist to initiate the self-destruct sequence.

“There is one and only one act of treason which triggers this duty, only one crime, for this is the execution of final judgment. Nausicide, the deliberate murder of a world-ship filled the millions of deracinated souls, or the breech of the Great Schedule.

“It is known to me that the deceleration laser is misdirected, avoiding the sails, and this was done deliberately, willfully, and maliciously as part of an orchestrated conspiracy to prevent starfall of the Emancipation.

“I call upon the Portreeve to tell the name and orbital elements of the ship into the record so that whatever race of man occupies this dead world in times to come will be reassured that the vengeance which fell upon all was no error.”

The Portreeve said, “My Lord, by your leave, the ship is the Emancipation, the oldest ship in service and the one with the longest route. She comes from Sol, across an abyss of one hundred lightyears.” And he recited the current declination and right ascension of the vessel, as well as her velocity in Doppler shift.

“I call upon the Lighthousekeeper to report whether the deceleration laser is properly presented to that epoch?”

The Lighthousekeeper could not bring himself to answer, but kept his eyes and ghostly antennae pointed at the floor.

“Let the record show that the deceleration laser is not properly presented as our primary duty as Lords of this Chamber compel, ordain, and require. I call upon the Chronometrician to speak to the history of this vessel, and confirm it matches all records, and that there has been no mistake of identity, nor is this a centaur nor plutino nor asteroid or other stray body.”

The Archivist answered for the Chronometrician. “My Lord and Commensals: this is her second return. The first starfall of the Emancipation occurred in the First Century of the Sixty-Seventh Millennium as the Sacerdotes count time, long before our world was self-aware. Upon starfall, the Emancipates, who are the remotest ancestors of the Chimerae, called Esne, killed the Argives in a series of bloody genocides. The attempts to preserve and restore the lost Argives by the shocked and saddened machines of Torment account for the curse which has haunted the world from that day to this. The spectrographic analysis of sail reflections and signal sets confirm the heraldry, call signs, and identity of the vessel.”

“I call upon the Aedile to confirm there is sufficient funding to power the deceleration laser as the Schedule has directed? I call upon the Chrematist to confirm that there is no other loss of supplies, services, or needs which would prevent the discharge?”

The Aedile did not, and the Chrematist could not answer, but the three Companion Officers seated behind the Chrematist were the Purveyor in his ceremonial gloves of spotless white, the Recruiter with a silver horn slung on an ornamented baldric, and the Impressment Officer with his scourge and manacles of office. The Purveyor confirmed that there was no lack of microscopic or nanoscopic elixirs required for medical adaptation of the newcomers, the Recruiter that there were ghosts and spiritware enough, and the Impressment Officer that there were dogs enough gathered by the pressgangs, with the brainspace to hold the training and control downloads, to crew the stations and houses needed. Each one spoke slowly, reluctantly, with as many hesitations and pauses as possible.

But none mentioned any reason to prevent the starfall.

Vigil stood. He was breathing heavily and released oxygen into his lung from his implanted air-cell to calm himself.

With no further word, he drew the blade.

He stood with it upraised, his eyes also turned upward. He was paralyzed at the beauty of the thing, the elegance of its line, the mirror brightness of the blade. There was writing on the blade in an ancient language, the one used only by Sacerdotes, and the letters were gold: Ultima Ratio Regum. In and about the letters twined the figures of a red dragon and a white.