Nothing Sacred: Book Two of the Messiah Trilogy

By Tom Flynn

This sequel to Flynn’s acclaimed Messiah Games continues in a future civilization that’s obsessed with religion, yet furious at Terra (Earth) for giving rise to the most popular creeds of all.

Terra may be the planet where humanity originated, but sophisticated Galactics treat it like a dismal step-child. “On the planet where humanity rose,” a popular saying goes, “it hasn’t risen far.”

Few Terrans seek their fortunes among the stars. Those who try face patronizing discrimination. Into this Galactic crucible leaps Earth-boy Gram Enoda alongside an impossibly intelligent vibrionic sidekick: his secret weapon and the bane of his existence. Enoda just wants to get rich. Instead he stumbles into a top-secret, half-baked plan to (yes, literally) save the Galaxy. Along the way he must confront a crackpot Mormon trideevangelist and a seductive preacher of nihilism.

Like Messiah Games, Nothing Sacred brims with complex plotting, searing black humor, colorful characters, and penetrating examination of religious and philosophical issues—all woven into a can’t-put-it-down techno-thriller.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fiction4All
• Release date: Jan 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9780463405314

Tom Flynn

Tom Flynn is a visiting lecturer in the history of art and the history and professional practices of the international art market at a number of UK and European universities. He is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Prologue

So you want to know how the universe got saved. I mean the Galaxy. Then, who’s quibbling?

People always clamor for my story. Usually they know what they want: a hearty tale peppered with heroes, glorious sacrifices, harrowing risks overcome by bold gambits. If my tale-telling approaches the classical, perhaps there’ll be characters whose tragic flaws exact hideous costs even as they ransom us all.

Since the first hunter danced beneath a savanna moon telling his fellows a whopper about his exploits, humans have anticipated that pattern in their narratives. If a story’s worth telling, most people presume it merits pouring into the distorting mold of classical myth.

That’s not the way I mean to tell this story.

Not this time.

You see, the way things really worked out, there were no heroes. The protagonists were so ordinary that you’d never send them on such critical business if you could avoid it. Sacrifices? They occurred, but never attained to glory. You want harrowing risks? Bold gambits? The risk was real enough; all 42,000 inhabited worlds might be cinders had things broken differently. But neither gambit nor strategy played much role. The players improvised blindly, never imagining where their dangerous choices might lead.

Of the standard mythic elements, only one was in generous supply.

There was no shortage of central characters with tragic flaws.

I was one of them.

If you can characterize what I’ve done since as a career, I spent most of it rehashing my story. Over the standard years, many listeners expressed surprise that I settled down so quietly. Some tell me I should have grabbed for more. Others wish I’d seized less. To all of them I say, forjel off! I was there when the Galaxy got saved; I played a role. That’s enough for one life. And don’t forget about sacrifices. I made one of my own. Two, if you think about it.

Anyway, I tell the tale often. Usually I recite the predictable legend, making each story point peal like a familiar carillon. But that’s warmed-over plorg, and I’m tired of shoveling it along like that.

So today I’ll break with tradition and give you unadorned truth.

When you hear what really happened, you’ll learn how laughably accidental it all was that the Galaxy got saved. You’ll realize how lucky we all are still to exist. Your readers, or your experients, or whatever the sfelb you call your clients, will recognize how it’s only by absurd happenstance that any of us are still here.

Some people say that precisely because of that, everything that happened must reflect God’s plan for us. They think the very unlikeliness of it all, the vacant arbitrary quality that makes the story real, merely underscores what a shrewd creative fellow their deity must be. I’m unconvinced. No god worth worshipping could have planned for things to shake out the way they did. Conversely, any god who did plan things that way merits not our worship but our terror. I’d gladly embrace a purposeless universe rather than declare myself the subject of a god like that. (Come to think of it, I have.)

Enough disclaimers! On with the story. Though I should precede the narrative proper with a little background …

It’s been a century-and-three-quarters since the vast, sophisticated Galactic Confetory stumbled onto Terra—or Earth, as the retros are calling it again. Terra’s so-called Galactic Encounter occurred late in its twenty-second century local, 2181 c. e. for you sticklers. Even at that late date, the little blue world was nearly judged too backward to join the Galactic community. But Galactics found Terran religions quaint. Christianity and its variants, rich in tradition, fertile with contradiction, took the Galaxy by storm. Terra got whisked into the Confetory as a full Memberworld, an honor for which the planet was by any standard ill-prepared.

It should tell you how strange things got that Roman Catholicism became Terra’s premier cultural export, the first native institution able to buy a planet of its own. Restyling itself the Universal Catholic Church, it dubbed its new headquarters world the Planet Vatican. But more on that later.

Galactic civilization offered Terrans no end of surprises. They learned that humans inhabited 42,000 worlds among the stars—bona fide human beings, H. sapiens sapiens from Terra. That’s right, earthlings, right down to their mitochondria, all over the forjeling Galaxy. Genetic evidence suggested that hundreds of centuries before, unknown visitors had come to Terra, plucked up proto-humans and some edible plant species, and strewn them among the stars. (For some reason the Harvesters, as they’re called, failed to poach any proto-Caucasians. White people, now but a twelfth of Terra’s population, appear nowhere else in space.)

Terrans got another surprise. Who would think that the elegant, powerful Galactics lived in fear? Yet they’d spent millennia dreading the Tuezi (the word rhymes with floozy). The Tuezi: vast robot war platforms scattered through time and space by some other vanished super-race—or maybe by the Harvesters themselves; no one knows. Several times each century, a Tuezi would just appear somewhere. Protected by invulnerable shields, the sinister machine would enter the nearest star system, ravage its planets, then self-destruct. Decades before this story begins, a math prodigy named Fram Galbior figured out how to predict where and when each Tuezi would appear. Guided by Galbior’s equilibrational calculus, battle fleets would surround its entry point. They’d destroy the Tuezi just as it materialized, an instant before it could raise its shields. The greatest terror of Galactic life had been – well, not defeated, but neutralized.

For their part, Galactic scientists would be astonished by one thing they’d find on Terra. They’d known for millennia that all humans shared a common origin – DNA and all that – but they’d never known just where all this originating took place. Terra, it turned out, was the elusive Cradleworld. Only there had the lineage to which humans belong arisen from nonliving matter.

Religion and human origins: together, they explain why Terra became a Memberworld. What the Galactics never anticipated was how they'd then combine, generating social institutions of unforeseen corrosive power.

Christianity came at the Galaxy like bacteria colonizing a Petri dish with no antibiotics in sight. Only after the Universal Catholic Church became powerful did Galactics understand what a serpent they’d invited to their hearthsides.

Universal Catholicism’s power lay in its new doctrine of serial incarnation, the teaching that God gives His Son flesh repeatedly. On world after world, the Cosmic Christ works out the salvation of each globe’s peoples. In one of those flights of hubris the popes carry off so well, Vatican claimed sole authority to sift through other planets’ religious histories and decide which, if any, native messiahs were true Incarnations of the Cosmic Christ.

Back to Fram Galbior – remember him, the mathematician who solved the mystery of the Tuezi as a youth? Late in life, Galbior took up Catholicism. He found the doctrine of serial incarnation fascinating. To his commanding intellect, the mystery of Christ’s successive Incarnations and that of the Tuezi emergences seemed tractably alike. Obtaining a secret papal audience, Galbior announced that he’d developed another new mathematics that accounted for most of the church-verified Incarnations. More important, Galbior declared, his equations predicted when and where the Cosmic Christ would take flesh next.

What followed was sufficiently byzantine and perverse to justify a book of its own [and it got one, Messiah Games]. Galbior forecast that the next Incarnation would take place on Jaremi Four, a Tuezi-blasted world so primitive it was off limits to everyone but social scientists and undercover documentarians. On that world, a bumpkin religious leader named Arn Parek emerged amid a brutal messianic cult. Parek was an obvious fraud, which never stopped his native followers from launching a feral jihad in his name.

Thanks to the aforesaid undercover documentarians on Jaremi Four—human cameras called Spectators, employed by the infotainment conglomerate OmNet—trillions of Galactics followed Parek’s story. Willingly they overlooked his rough edges and pledged their faith. In what seemed an eyeblink, much of Galactic society had convinced itself that vile, fraudulent Arn Parek was the current Incarnation of the Cosmic Christ.

Various Galactic factions established illegal contacts with Parek, his disciples, or his enemies. One such cabal was led by two Universal Catholic cardinals operating under personal command of the pope. Another was controlled by Alrue Latier, a Latter-day Saint trideevangelist who’s quirky back-to-the-roots Mormonism drove what was already Terra’s second-biggest export church.

The Parek affair became a slow-motion disaster that befouled all it touched. When it finally ended, Catholicism lay disgraced.

Alrue kept his freedom by adroit media manipulation, but his reputation and his ministry’s finances suffered grievously.

Shamed at the terrible error into which faith had seduced his reason, the mathematician Fram Galbior hanged himself in the pope’s private library.

Arn Parek, the false messiah, died by his own hand as well, mere hours after he learned that Galactic civilization exists.

Well, maybe.

Parek’s death occurred amid frenzied upheaval as the native armies his offworld friends and enemies had so illicitly raised lurched into their final combat. Parek’s body was never found. Across the Galaxy, hard-core Parekists refused to accept their messiah’s passing. Splinter sects erupted teaching that Parek had resurrected, that he’d never died, that he’d never existed, that he was a pansexual robot from the future—no theology was too eccentric to command at least a few adherents.

Since Vatican intrigues had triggered the final conflict in which Arn Parek vanished, those who thought Parek the next Christ–by then, a majority of Christians–declared the pope and his minions to be the new Judases. Chastened, the Universal Catholic Church abandoned planet Vatican and limped back to its Terran birthplace.

As for Parekism, a scandalized Galaxy had at last beheld Terran-style religion at its most toxic: a squalling creed in all the intolerance of youth, hurling aside its moorings in historical reality. But by then it was too late for Galactics to force this genie back into its Terran bottle.

Not that they wouldn’t try.

Chapter 2

Terra—Near the Former Independence, Missouri, Usasector

Every chronicle starts somewhere. I begin by introducing the principal buffoons. First, our Terran tourhost—a fine guy, if laughably naïve. For him, destiny held greater things in store. Sure, it did.

Something about a Missouri sky stopped Galactic tourists in their tracks, especially the teens. Stay together! hectored their guide, Gram Enoda. Medals from wars he’d never fought in clinked on his hammered pewter breastplate. It’s time to go inside.

Oh, plorg, blustered one Galactic nymphet.

Remember where we are, Nuli, commanded Jorl CzyPlen, the group’s middle-aged leader. "And remember who you are."

Yes, Hom Jorl, the girl murmured. Sullenly she joined the others in the entrance line.

CzyPlen nodded toward Enoda. His cape was iridescent; his breath smelled of cloves. He glanced upward. "She is right, guidehom. The sky … it just feels … correct."

"It has the color and depth that evolution has disposed human brains to presume the sky should have, gentlehom, Enoda said deferentially. Seeing it for the first time can be … profound."

As it was for me, long ago, CzyPlen sighed. Ah, the Visitor’s Center.

The orientation building was gigantic. In its heyday, the Great Auditorium of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had seated sixteen hundred. Now it was merely an entrance lobby. Glowing lattices yoked it to the main structure, a two-kilometer cube strewn with luminous towers and crystal domes.

CzyPlen smiled distantly as his twenty perfect charges glided inside. He was the teacher; they were, for lack of a better word, his class. One by one they passed into the Visitor’s Center. Their flawless skins gleamed bronze, tawny, umber, ebony. Organdy, lamé, and fabrics still without Terran names cohered to implausibly taut frames. By Galactic standards, this group from Frensa Six was neither exceptionally elegant nor strikingly wealthy. But this was Terra, and they were Galactics.

Will this be our last stop at Primus? CzyPlen asked.

Yes, gentlehom. As you know, the Visitor’s Center documents the first Galactic contact with Terra and offers varied activities.

Including ... CzyPlen made a slithery movement with one hand. You know.

Enoda nodded. One could scarcely leave that out.

Especially now.

Enoda mounted a platform in an empty amphitheater. His lustrous motorcycle boots were incongruously rimmed with snarled rabbit fur. Above the boots, blousy black ninja leggings ascended into a tartan kilt. He tried not to think how he looked. Tourists love this getup—they think it exemplifies Terra’s barbaric past, he thought, scanning the faces of the teens below him. I feel like an asshole. Primus! he cried. Cued by his voice, a harsh light transfixed him. Primus was once Independence, Missouri. That was before the momentous day one hundred seventy-three years ago when Galactic civilization first revealed itself to Terra, just two hundred meters from this spot. A black patent leather sporran over his groin completed the Scottish portion of his ensemble. From knees to waist, Enoda was solid Highlander kitsch, aside from the self-luminous scimitar he wore on one hip.

Enoda gazed upward; the perfect youths did too. Wan pearl light collapsed into a projected image from one hundred seventy-three years ago. The tridee clip showed the PeaceForce cruiser Admiration descending through puffy clouds, a crenelated tower rotating on kaleidoscopic shafts of light. The effects of this landfall remain a living force on Terra, Enoda thought. But for how much longer? Months?

The image wrinkled; the dome overhead went dark. The display playback had failed. Sorry, Enoda muttered, this happens sometimes. The teens giggled.

Allowances must be made, ventured CzyPlen.

Yes, they must, Enoda said quietly, gathering his cape. Because we’re Terrans, you mean. Above his kilt, Enoda wore a khaki safari jacket. Button-flapped pockets festooned it everywhere, even down the sleeves. I’ll recite the historical narrative myself while we view the displays. Draping an arm across his World War I reproduction gas mask, Enoda strode forward. The twenty young gods and goddesses followed, their courtly warden bringing up the rear.

The group entered another open chamber. An arched stone wall suggested an ancient aqueduct. Enoda mounted another platform. b. g. e.—that is, Before the Galactic Encounter—Independence already had a rich history. The gas mask hose passed over his left shoulder to disappear beneath a flowing foulard-print cape whose exact prototype he’d never determined. Starting in 1825 local, Independence was the launch point for pioneers moving west on the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon Trails.

Did they ride in starcruisers? brayed one of the teens.

In wagons, you plorg-warmer, laughed another. Contraptions you wouldn’t make a house pet ride in—and they’re barely twelve generations past that.

Yeah, laughed a third. In another generation, they’re going back to it.

Enoda gritted his teeth. If I want good tips, I must pretend I didn’t hear that. Adorning his head were a full Navajo headdress and a pair of the brightly mirrored sunglasses Galactics insisted on calling bufordpussers. Has anyone studied the great westward migration in North America of Terra?

Guidehom, CzyPlen said tiredly, can we return to the first contact? He all but leered. "Didn’t this community’s history possess, um, a religious aspect?"

Enoda sighed inwardly and, for what seemed the hundredth time, told the story of just how the Galactic Confetory had revealed itself to Terra. A story every Terran knows, but which one can scarcely expect visiting Galactics to keep straight. Here is the story of the first contact. Once the contact fleet completed its final assessments from orbit, all that remained was to decide where the first landing would occur. By Galactic tradition that decision belonged to the officer in command of the contact fleet.

Who was that? a youth asked.

Admiral Carjeel Y’Venna.

Y’Venna? the questioner asked. "She did important things!"

That came later, cracked another boy. This is just how she made first contact with Terra.

If I may continue— Enoda wheedled. Admiral Y’Venna ordered a scan of thousands of Terran place names, with translations of what each place name meant in the local language or dialect.

Are we coming to the religion part? CzyPlen asked pointedly.

Absolutely. The aqueduct split open. Behind it loomed a dark exhibit hall. Its smoky air pulsed with the lights of emergency vehicles and roiling fires. The group ahead of us has finished in the Old Terra exhibit. I’ll continue to narrate as we pass through.

Enoda and CzyPlen guided the youthful exemplars among the historical displays. Realized in tridee, backed up with added channels for odor, air temperature, wind, and radiant heat, the elaborate sim dioramas delivered the most complete sensory experience Galactic technology could convey to a group this large. To their left raged a late-21st-century air-land battle. To the right, a somewhat older scene: drug gangs dueled with howitzers and shoulder-launched missiles. Babies tumbled unmourned from blazing tenement windows. Stay together, everyone, and keep moving, Enoda called. We don’t have much time. Bryleen, please don’t taunt the Nazis.

Galactics liked their Terran history presented in reverse. Enoda led his group through eight centuries of sim so painfully noisy that he couldn’t possibly shout over it: bombs ravaging Guernica, tanks firing across No Man’s Land, mortars, dynamite, carronades, black-powder cannon spewing grapeshot, muskets erupting across a ruler-straight battle line. In all those years, Enoda inwardly grated, you’d think something happened on Terra that didn’t involve explosives!

At last, the party reached tableaux whose subjects predated the Western discovery of gunpowder. They filed across a windblown heath under fat grey skies. Mounted knights slaughtered foot soldiers wholesale. But they did so quietly, and Enoda could resume his lecture. "Admiral Y’Venna decided she liked the American state of Missouri. Terran folklore said Missourians were skeptical. Y’Venna thought a bow toward critical thinking would be appropriate. After all, she would soon be asking eighteen billion Terrans to believe an awful lot. And independence is a concept as esteemed in the Galaxy as it was in the old United States."

He steered the teens to one side. A phalanx of fifth-century monks bustled past, waving the oyster shells with which they’d just stripped the bones of Hypatia, librarian of Alexandria and last defender of the ancient knowledge. Independence was a small place, so it didn’t take Y’Venna long to select the most dramatic spot to touch down. Careful, Tarbril! Don’t fall in the ooze.

Still stepping back along the exhibition’s timeline, the group entered a hushed primordial landscape. Distant volcanoes fouled the sky. At their feet greasy water bubbled. In those fetid puddles, they all knew, human biology had begun. Whatever their planet of origin, they all clung to the same single limb of the tree of life. They were all Terrans in their genes.

And that, Enoda resumed, is how Admiral Y’Venna chose to set down her kilometer-tall cruiser in Independence, Missouri—right between the old Reorganized Church Auditorium, the entryway to this Visitor’s Center, and the white marble-towered temple where members of that church believed Jesus Christ would come again.

Reorganized Church of— one of the teens said uncertainly.

—Latter-day Saints, the girl Nuli supplied with assurance. "Now they call themselves the Community of Christ, whoever he is. They trace their roots to the Mormons who stayed loyal to the son of the prophet Joseph Smith, the ones who didn’t follow Brigham Young to Utah after Smith was killed in Carthage, Illinois."

Galactic children, Enoda grumbled to himself. They don’t remember how their own government made contact with us, but they know minute details of Mormon history.

The entourage entered a sim rain forest. Enoda knew CzyPlen cared nothing for the Hall of Snakes, but for many of the youngsters it was the most eagerly anticipated destination on Terra.

I have taught you all to recognize the dangerous serpents, CzyPlen called. Do not disappoint me.

The immaculate teens strode into the swamp, heedless of their designer finery. They made too much noise entering the water; they won’t see anything for more than a minute, Enoda realized.

CzyPlen turned to him and ordered, Continue, guidehom.

Enoda hoped CzyPlen couldn’t sense his growing annoyance. "The Community of Christ had been about to bury the hatchet and reunite with the Salt Lake City Mormons. It was also poised to merge with several other dissident congregations, including the Church of Christ Temple Lot, the tiny sect that actually owned the empty field where Admiration touched down."

A boy let out a frightened yelp. A granular-scaled serpent slipped from his grasp. Please, Tarbril, called CzyPlen. It’s only a file snake. It eats fish.

When Y’Venna landed, all those negotiations ended, Enoda continued. Not only did the Mormon reunification talks collapse, the Community of Christ itself promptly schismed.

Schismed, squealed one of the golden youths. What a lovely word!

So aboriginal! cried another, plunging a russet arm into the water after a yellow-bellied sea snake.

Enoda shrugged. One faction maintains to this day that Y’Venna was a true incarnation of the Cosmic Christ.

That’s the group that riots every year, Tarbril shouted.

Yes, hooted Cruneil, on the anniversary of the day Independence was reconstituted as Primus, first Galactic Zone on Terra.

When Galactic consumer prices went into effect, added Nuli, and Terrans couldn’t afford to live there anymore.

They have briefed themselves so thoroughly, CzyPlen said. His smile was magisterial.

Seething inside, Enoda made himself nod.

Some of the youths had made it to the other side of the swamp. They climbed onto a small muddy island. Identify the snake before you pick it up, Enoda called. Crazy Galactics! He thought. For millennia they innately feared long slender objects and didn’t know why. Now that they’ve discovered the source of that instinct, they bring their adolescents to Terra to confront their fears by gamboling with our plorg-warming snakes.

The other schismatic group, guidehom, CzyPlen demanded. Everyone is riveted.

All they know about Terra is our religious misadventures! "As I said, one group within the Community of Christ thought Y’Venna was Jesus come again. Another, larger group recognized that the Galactics could not be gods in the traditional sense. They interpreted the Galactic Encounter as the coming of Zion, the holy city whose appearance they had long anticipated. They decided the Galactics were humans who had spiritually evolved to become gods in the old Mormon sense. Enoda noticed CzyPlen raising an eyebrow. Yes, he went on, early Mormons believed Terran humans would be rewarded after death with a literal afterlife in the cosmos, where each who had lived uprightly would become a god over a planet of his own."

But Hom Enoda! called Bryleen, still standing in the swamp, brown water lapping at a gown of indefinable fabric that did far too little to conceal her emerging breasts. Didn’t the Community of Christ deny that Joseph Smith ever taught humans could become gods?

True, Enoda said. "The Community of Christ denied many things, including the well-known fact that its founder practiced polygamy. Their insistence that Joseph’s first wife Emma was his only spouse caused no end of embarrassment when it came out that Admiral Y’Venna herself had several plural husbands."

But then, that is part of the wonder of Terran religions, CzyPlen lectured. They redefine their truths so obstinately—defending their doctrines as inviolate even while remaking them.

Vacuum preserve us, Enoda thought.

He whirled toward the sound of a piercing scream.

Cruneil! CzyPlen cried, rushing down the bank.

Cruneil sat on a mucky boulder on the other side, clutching her left ankle; two small punctures oozed blood. Another girl held the offending snake behind its head as she’d been taught. Enoda surged through muddy water. Frowning, he inspected the snake. Grey scales, white mouth lining: water moccasin. He nodded; the other girl released the snake. Hemotoxin, he barked into his medimech. He bent over Cruneil to press the healing device against her ankle.

No! Cruneil jerked her leg away. Please, guidehom, do it the Terran way.

Enoda waved the medimech. This is clean and painless.

Clean and painless are not what we came here for. Theatrically Cruneil thrust her shoulders back. Act fast, guidehom! I think I’m dying.

Oh, for ... Enoda shot a sharp, imploring glance toward CzyPlen.

CzyPlen shrugged. Do as she wants.

With a muttered curse, Enoda drew his glowing scimitar. A longitudinal twist of the jeweled handle ejected a smaller blade. Enoda gripped Cruneil’s left leg above the ankle, bracing her foot against his thigh. He motioned for someone to hold her upper leg. This will hurt, he warned her.

The small dagger cut into Cruneil’s ankle. She groaned approvingly. Enoda dragged the blade along, making a four-centimeter incision in her chalky black skin. Doe-eyed, the teens gathered in a tight circle, awestruck at the primitive Terran spectacle. Oh, plorg, they wanted this, he thought. Enoda cut again, creating an X-shaped incision. Throwing the gas mask over his shoulder, he bent down. They all wanted this.

Enoda pressed his lips to the X and began to suck.

He drained the venom mechanically, focusing his inward attention on the remainder of the group’s itinerary. Before long they’d visit Old Rome, where the discredited Universal Catholic Church was penitently re-establishing its headquarters. Security would be heavy; both Galactic tourism and attempted violence had intensified at Catholic sites since the rumors began that Terra might soon be expelled from Galactic society. Next the group would view the glassy craters of the Negev. Enoda hoped there’d be no mix-up with the radiation-hardened tour shuttles, as he’d experienced leading a previous excursion. Timing would be everything. If the group didn’t surrender the shuttles and arrive in Jerusalem precisely at sunset on Shabbat, they’d miss the Neo-Orthodox cohanim stoning visitors who’d been so insensitive as to appear at the Wailing Wall accompanied by robotic assistants.

Having spat out his last mouthful of blood and venom, Enoda eyed Cruneil harshly. I must use the medimech now to neutralize residual toxin. The traditional method is imperfect.

But so real, Cruneil breathed, closing her eyes again. Oh, go ahead.

Enoda pressed the medimech to the incision. When he pulled it away, Cruneil’s skin was as preternaturally clear as before the water moccasin had struck.

The other teens regarded her with something approaching worship. Oh, Cruneil, cooed Arak. You had the experience we all dreamed of.

So primal, agreed Bryleen.

Nuli shivered with the exquisiteness of it all. "So ... so Terran!"

Not even CzyPlen could maintain a disapproving air. You had quite an adventure, Cruneil, he said evenly. It is fitting that you decide where the group goes next.

Oh, plorg on a stick, Enoda thought. There goes the itinerary.

Cruneil sat up, drew a muddy hand through her hair and said, Sweden!

Sweden? Enoda croaked. He and CzyPlen exchanged blank looks.

Yes, I want us to go to Sweden, Cruneil gushed.

Why? CzyPlen demanded.

To see Swedes. From the other teens came scattered laughter mixed with murmurs of approval. If some of the youths did not share Cruneil’s interest in Scandinavia, others clearly did.

Very well, Enoda said resignedly. There’s a tube terminal elsewhere in this building.

We came in search of the picturesque, objected CzyPlen.

There’s no picturesque way to get from Primus to Sweden that’s at all efficient. The intrageodesic tube is best.

CzyPlen’s face lit up. No tube. We shall go by air.

"To Sweden?" Enoda blurted. But the suborbital shuttle will take two hours. Only claustrophobes use it for long trips anymore. By tube, it’s fifteen minutes—

Not the shuttle either, CzyPlen said sternly. "When I say, ‘we will go by air’—at least, when I say that on Terra—I can only mean in an airplane. Enoda stared at him blankly. Reaching into one of those pockets that could never be seen in Galactic clothing, CzyPlen produced a token and pressed it into Enoda’s hand. I presume this is enough for our passage."

Enoda gulped. That token would fund two standard years of gracious living in any Terran Zone—even after chartering a reproduction Boeing 1297 at Galactic tariffs for a round trip to, say, Sweden.

If anything is left over, CzyPlen said grandly, consider it yours in appreciation for our most amusing encounter with the snakes.

Enoda whistled inwardly. Still, he felt compelled to preserve some shred of the schedule he’d spent two weeks constructing. Speaking of snakes, he said brightly, before we cross a third of the planet by air, perhaps we could work in one of the last attractions on this continent that remains on our original itinerary?

I would not wish to disappoint Cruneil, said CzyPlen.

I think you’ll both like this, Enoda said, whirling to aim his best salesman-puppy face at Cruneil. How about a restored church—

Cruneil began to groan. Architecture was not among her passions.

Not any church, Enoda blurted. A church where they handle snakes!

Cruneil hooted approval, followed by an eager uproar from the other youths. With an aristocratic nod CzyPlen added his blessing to the plan.

Next stop, the former West Virginia, thought Enoda. Then it’s—oh, sfelb—off to Sweden.

Chapter 3

The Galactic Confetory Heavy Cruiser Forthright

Meet more buffoons. Here’s a shipful of them … two shipfuls, in fact.

Forthright’s forward scoutship bay was a sepulchral glasteel womb a full kilometer long by half a klick high. Its curved walls bristled with platforms and catwalks and control pods. Where such superstructure was absent, short-haul flitters and scouts and utility tugs lay herringboned in recessed berths, sweeping away overhead and beneath. Two guards stepped across an empty reception pad. Seen Myokker lately? the tall one asked.

The short one frowned. Off duty, sure.

"Ever see him on duty?"

No, now that you mention it.

He’s not trusted anymore, Tall said conspiratorially. A Parekist, you know.

Sfelb, Myokker worships that false messiah?

You got that three-by-three.

"And just because he’s a Parekist, they restrict him to assignments where they can watch him keep watch? Short shook his head. The higher-ups are getting so paranoid about religion."

Tall nodded.

Remember Vonell Gundertak? Short asked.

Sure.

Ever wonder why he doesn’t draw duty like this anymore?

Another Parekist?

Plorg, no. Gundertak’s Universal Catholic.

Then the rumors are true. Tall raised an eyebrow. They’re even holding Catholics off sensitive duty.

Short jerked a thumb at the emptiness. You call this sensitive?

Tall wrapped her arms about herself. Forjeler, some of my best friends are Catholic.

Overhead, lights flickered up to daylike brilliance.

Look alive, Tall told Short, fingering her ear. A VIP’s docking here.

Who? Shorter asked.

No idea, but most of the command crew’s coming to greet him.

That startled him. Physically?

"Ten-hutt!"

An entry hatch dilated. The first shift command crew strode onto the reception pad, resplendent in parade dress uniforms. Command crew members seldom came together in the flesh. While on duty they berthed their bodies all over the ship to interact in the virtual environment of the Mark VII battle bridge. Yet here they all were—all except the captain.

As usual, they were arguing about religion.

Forjel this new faith profiling policy, grumbled Seneka Willesgar, the Executive Officer. He had the air of a retired full-contact athlete beginning to go soft. Graying hair stood out against his obsidian skin. Willesgar’s homeworld was Ordh, an influential world whose people were noted for the depth and promiscuity of their religious infatuations. His thick fingers worried at a small jade statuette. With every sect added to the ‘no’ list, I lose valuable specialists.

You’re not losing them. Detex officer Ada Rancor embodied spare efficiency. She was from Gwilya, a grey world whose geology, weather, and night skies were famously featureless. She was tall, whip-thin, with golden skin and straight black hair. The believers on the list are alive and well.

But I can’t assign them as needed, Willesgar objected. "Parekists can’t be given these duties, Catholics are barred from those, Mormons are off-limits for half-a-dozen others. Why all the excitement?"

Surely Hom Willesgar hasn’t forgotten the Parek affair, mocked Wydom Hinsin, Forthright’s ops officer. He hailed from Arkhetil, the laissez-faire planet where religion was derided, no contract was ever broken, and social welfare was unknown. A classic example of faith at its most damaging.

The Parek thing was bad, Willesgar allowed. But too much has been made of it.

So Ordhian of you to think so.

It’s not nice to stereotype. Willesgar rotated the statuette between his thumb and forefinger. The tiny jade carving resembled a half-human fetus.

Rancor nodded toward it. What is that, anyway?

"A hei-tiki," said Willesgar, a protective amulet from Polynesia of Terra. He smiled at Grice. You Terrans have all the best stuff.

Gunnery officer Pamela Grice made a point of not responding. The command crew’s only Terran, her contours might be called womanly. But that wasn’t what Galactics noticed about her; Grice’s unreconstructed peach skin, her arresting pale blue eyes, and her almost-translucent straw-colored hair seemed almost shockingly pale in the reception pad’s harsh light.

Mumbling a chant, Willesgar replaced the object in a small reed bag. All this fuss about religions—it’s so needless. They all pursue the same truth.

Yet so many claim to be the only truth, Rancor objected. Ironic, when there’s so little evidence that any of them got it right. Rancor turned to Grice. What’s your read? You have a lock on these faith things.

Grice frowned slightly and shifted her weight.

Rancor did not look away.

Who told you that? Grice asked coldly.

If Rancor knew she had offended, she gave no sign. Everyday wisdom. People say Terrans are more in touch. You know, spiritually.

Now who’s stereotyping?

Some stereotypes are true.

Grice said nothing.

Sorry, Rancor said hurriedly. "But look, sometimes they are true. I’m Gwilyan, and I certainly conform to the stereotype folks have about my people. I’m oblivious when it comes to religion. I can never grasp what the arguments are about."

Then I’ll try to answer you, Grice replied. Many humans have … well, an underlying need to think that there’s something more than just chance and causality.

Like what? Rancor said with bewilderment. I mean, chance and causality, together they account for everything there is. When you say, ‘something more’ … what can that even mean?

It’s hard to describe, Grice admitted. But even when people can’t articulate it, they feel they need that ‘something more’—whatever it is—to exist.

Rancor turned up her palms. They may need it, or think they need it. But that doesn’t mean that the thing they need exists.

Grice pursed her lips. If not, what are they left with?

A need that’s doomed to go unmet. Life’s full of them.

Pretty cold cosmos.

So it is, Hinsin chimed in. And what right have we to expect anything more?

Grice went silent again. Willesgar stepped into the gap. The cosmos is greater than we imagine. Who’s to say whether space itself might not be contained in … something else?

Hinsin chuckled. "What the sfelb does that mean?"

As Fem Grice said, it’s hard to describe. But I think there is something else, and I think that something has a purpose of its own, Willesgar insisted. A purpose for us.

Evidence, please, Rancor said warily.

Willesgar drew a cord-wrapped bundle of twigs from his tunic. Leaning against a dormant control panel, he rolled the bundle between his palms. Rancor and Hinsin exchanged weary glances.

All right, Hinsin said after a moment. What’s that?

Willesgar smiled gently. "A barsom, a sacred clutch of pomegranate twigs. Terran again—ancient Persia, I think."

Rancor smiled. I’m sorry, I thought you were about to defend the dubious proposition that something Out There has a plan for us.

Plant life, Willesgar mused, eyeing the barsom. "Do you know that on every world with indigenous flora—every one, without exception—the chlorophyll, or whatever the plants use for photosynthesis, is precisely optimized to the radiation spectrum of the dominant star? On world after world, plants produce photosynthetic agents that convert light to energy most efficiently at exactly the wavelength where the sunlight’s energy peaks. On forty-two thousand life-bearing worlds, that correspondence holds within eight decimal places. Willesgar smirked at Hinsin, then Rancor. Now what are the odds that would occur by chance?"

Hinsin snorted. "How could it not happen naturally? Of course evolution would favor the development of photosynthetic compounds whose sensitivity peaked at the wavelength where the most energy was available."

And that’s enough for you? Willesgar raised the barsom to his lips, tucked it back into his tunic. "Isn’t it obvious that the laws of physics were … sublimely adjusted? It would require an intentional act to guarantee that each star would radiate at just the wavelength that would best nourish the photosynthetic plants that one day would arise on its life-bearing worlds. His face was a mask of contentment. Anthropism teaches that always it is consciousness and awareness, intention and design, that move matter. Never the other way around."

Hinsin shrugged, locking eyes with Rancor and Grice. "Hom Willesgar believes the oddest things. Yet he’s a capable executive officer. If there were such things as miracles, surely that would be one."

X.O. Willesgar, this is the dockmaster, a voice crackled. Our VIP’s in range.

Duty stations, Willesgar ordered. Stand ready for use of auxiliary controls. The officers strode to panels that came alight as they approached. All hint of banter vanished as they scanned their readouts. Looking up, Willesgar spotted the guards, standing stiff-backed by a dormant thingmover. Who are you?

Tall and Short identified themselves. We were patrolling this reception pad when the VIP’s docking was announced, Tall reported.

Everyone present when the VIP arrives is to be in dress uniform. Continue your patrol. Dismissed. Willesgar turned back to his displays. Outside comm, he told the console. A faint click meant his voice was being beamed to the approaching craft. "Caravel Stormrider, this is Forthright. Surrender your helm to our dockmaster."

Rancor adjusted a Detex display to project a visual of the approaching craft. It was an absurdly ornamented space yacht, but no amount of gold and sapphire trim could disguise the lines of a fast attack speedster.

"So that’s Stormrider," Hinsin said.

Willesgar flicked his gaze onto an adjacent tactical display. The caravel had crossed the point where it should have relinquished its controls.

"Stormrider’s retaining its helm, Rancor reported. Its inverter’s still hot, weapons systems still operational. Are we sure they intend to dock?"

Absolutely, Willesgar grated. Subvocalizing the commpath open, he cried, "I say again, Stormrider. This is Executive Officer Seneka Willesgar. Surrender control to the dockmaster."

No need. A hard-edged voice cut through the hushed air of the scoutship bay. I’ll bring us in myself.

Willesgar frowned. "Stormrider, standard procedure requires that incoming craft dock under remote control, with inverters cold and weapons inert."

Doesn’t apply, was the clipped answer. I will dock under my own helm, make ready for me.

Flashident the pilot, Willesgar hissed to Rancor. I don’t care how important the passenger is, the pilot’s out of line.

Rancor’s display lit up like a Calluron Five lightning storm: security seals, Confetory shields with arcane markings, screaming red warnings in a dozen battle codes. This pilot has the thickest security clearances I’ve ever seen, Rancor said.

"The pilot is the passenger, Willesgar deduced. Crazy bastard is flying his own ship."

"Forthright, this is Stormrider," came the peremptory voice. Now that you know who’s at the helm, I say again: Make ready for my docking.

"Understood, Hom Ambassador-at-Large. Forthright out." Disgusted, Willesgar tabbed controls.

Hom Willesgar, Hinsin said wryly. Do I gather that none of the runes you cast this morning predicted this development?

That is correct. Willesgar frowned. Perhaps tomorrow, I shall practice cephalomancy.

Cephalo-what?

A method of divination that involves boiling the head of a donkey. Willesgar arched an eyebrow. Hom Hinsin, are you busy tomorrow morning?

How do I look? asked Captain Arleen Singleton.

Like a robot with fur. Sergeant-at-Arms Wik Foster tilted his head. Actually like two robots with fur, rammed together.

Don’t you believe in toadying up your commanding officer?

Dreadful vice, the sergeant deadpanned. He was dark-haired, sallow, slightly built. His movements suggested commando conditioning. From the dressing table Foster picked up a meter-long curved stick covered with scales, a leather strap hanging from its ends. So, do you wear this or hurt people with it?

Plucking the contraption away, Singleton slung it over one hugely padded shoulder. The Ambassador-at-Large will be here in minutes, Wik. Did you run that search I asked for?

Foster slid a wafer into a secure viewer. If I had to meet with him, Captain, I think I’d wear tripled shields, not hairy armor.

Singleton read, exhaling through pursed lips. An interesting passenger.

Career poison, I’d say.

Most honored diplomat in human history, Singleton breathed, tucking kinky salt-and-pepper hair under a filigreed headdress.

Foster whirled and looked at his captain with real concern. Over the standard years this ambassador’s had twenty-eight capital ships placed at his ‘temporary disposal.’ Four of the captains wound up relieved of command. Six were demoted. Eight received reprimands severe enough to retard future advancement. That’s a sixty-four percent chance he’ll damage your career, Captain.

Sweet Wik, Singleton japed. Always ready to tell me what you think—or to do what must be done. She pulled a clanking chain carefully over one shoulder. Each link glistened with razor-edged barbs. Now it’s my turn to do what must be done.

Foster scowled. You’re sure this is the way?

She gestured toward the viewer that displayed Foster’s census of shattered careers. Those captains tried everything else. You know what Terrans say?

The world was created in seven days by a kilometer-high blue woman with six arms.

Some Terrans say that. They also say the best defense is a good offense.

Willesgar stood motionless as caravel Stormrider bled off the last of its momentum relative to the reception pad. Waldoes lumbered forward and clanked against the caravel’s hull. Music, Willesgar said crisply. The ultimate affectation—a twenty-member live band Grice had cobbled together from among crewmembers who made a hobby of music—struck up the High Honorific March. Its swaggering rhythm and stentorian chords struck Willesgar with a chest-tightening gestalt of the grandeur of humanity’s presence in space. He wondered which of his deities he should offer this sensation up to. Unable to decide, he forgot about it.

Lights flashed on around Stormrider’s debarkation port. He glanced upward, where the Ambassador-at-Large’s hangers-on crowded the largest hyperglasteel viewport Willesgar had ever seen on a civilian craft. A bay window the size of a two-person flitter, he wondered, trimmed in genuine sapphire and gold. Caparisoned in metal fabrics and skin sculptures and field-swirled cloaks, the diplomat’s courtiers seemed more robotic than human. One wore solid emerald—not the color, but rather a gown assembled from woven plates of the gem substance. Another glittered in metal silks; a third, a vest of cobalt mail accented with the costliest biotextiles. Hoisting goblets, they applauded their master’s panache in docking the caravel so perfectly.

The debarkation port irised open. Eight courtiers strode out, each wearing the traditional military dress uniform of a different Confetory world. Forming two lines of four, their bodies defined an aisle. A semi-organic red carpet unrolled itself. The squad leader, an Ordhian woman whose tropical parade uniform revealed astonishing abdominal musculature, slammed a tall staff onto the platform. In an enormous voice she cried, Attend! Pray encounter His Excellency, Proxy Extraordinary of the Privy High Council, Lord Propounder to the College of Diplomats, Eminent Ambassador-at-Large of the Galactic Confetory—Lajse Gohnwald!

Lajse Gohnwald was tall and small-boned, wearing jodhpurs of some ornate jacquard material topped with a black synsilk shirt with sleeves of faux chain mail. His skin was so richly black it seemed buffed. His steps had a dancer’s mincing precision. He looked every one of his ninety standard years, yet conveyed greater vigor and authority than most youths could communicate with a ranging stride. He regarded the reception party with a look whose exact position between contempt and abhorrence was difficult to gauge.

Hinsin, too, clutched a formal staff. As Gohnwald approached, he slammed it on the platform. "Pray meet Executive Officer Seneka Willesgar, second in command of the Galactic Confetory PeaceForce Heavy Cruiser Forthright!"

Gohnwald had reached the end of the red carpet. Willesgar bowed deeply. At your service, esteemed hom.

Having followed the protocols important to him, Gohnwald was not inclined to return niceties. You will change course for Pholandis Nine in Sector Rho. I shall wish a dinner tomorrow for all the ship’s— He stopped dead. "Second in command? she roared. I address the executive officer?"

Willesgar swallowed. Yes, gentlehom.

His voice dropped to a threatening rumble. Where is your captain?

Though the whole band was playing in the outer chamber, Arleen Singleton could clearly hear Gohnwald raging out there. I am to be brought before your captain like some supplicant before one of superior rank? She trifles with me at her peril! I do not approve of such—

Singleton subvocalized a command. The entrance to her private conference room irised open.

Gohnwald stopped in mid-tirade.

Singleton stood like a mountain in the center of the room, arrayed in sculpted brass, bronze plate, and stinking hair. One hand clutched a saber, the other a gnarled pole festooned with animal pelts. At its tip danced a simtorch flame. Singleton peered from beneath a baroque metallic headdress that framed her face as though it were the tongue of a shrieking bird.

By naval tradition, a ship captain selected the protocol under which to receive a distinguished visitor. Singleton had chosen an ancient and obscure form—that of the Ghyrelian Order of the Druhel. To invoke the Order’s customs honestly, one had to have been inducted; few had been.

More important, from Singleton’s perspective, it was the only generally recognized protocol under which any visitor, even an Ambassador-at-Large Extraordinary, was properly brought before the captain in the captain’s quarters.

Gohnwald knew every protocol. He waved Hinsin closer and snatched back his ceremonial staff. Stiffly he walked toward Singleton. Stopping one pace from the captain, he recited the proper Druhel form. Noble captain, I crave haven aboard your ship.

Highness, said Singleton gravely. I welcome you beneath the mantle of my authority. At the same instant, the captain and the ambassador inclined their respective pikestaffs, tapping them together. Singleton bowed to Gohnwald. Going down on one knee, she formally clasped Gohnwald’s outstretched left hand in hers.

The ritual ended, Gohnwald contemplated Singleton suspiciously. You’re of Gwilya, Captain Singleton.

Indeed.

By what right do you claim a Ghyrelian protocol—the Order of the Druhel, no less?

It was earned, Singleton replied. You recall Lindley Wall?

Gohnwald nodded knowingly. Lindley Wall ... a now-famous skirmish in which the youthful Arleen Singleton had first attracted public notice by her daring rescue of a senior Ghyrelian official. And, yes, Gohnwald concluded after scanning his almost-encyclopedic memory, in gratitude for her having saved the Lord High Prolect, Singleton was named to the Order of the Druhel. Gohnwald’s features dropped into a smile. Throwing back his head, he laughed roundly. I know when I’ve been had, Captain. You did so flamboyantly. Laughing himself out, he regarded Singleton in a more threatening way. I suppose there is some message for me in all of this.

Hom Willesgar! Singleton said coldly. Did Hom Ambassador-at-Large issue any commands before he was presented here?

Yes, my Captain, Willesgar said formally. He ordered a course change.

"Hom Ambassador-at-Large, you must understand that Forthright is not your personal taxicab. To Willesgar: Course change? Where?"

Willesgar could barely suppress a smirk. To Pholandis Nine, Captain. In Sector Rho.

Genuinely shocked, Singleton snapped her gaze back to Gohnwald. "Sector Rho? Do you know how far away that is?"

Of course, Captain, Gohnwald said tartly. "Forthright is a fast ship."

Hom Ambassador-at-Large, Singleton rumbled. I take my orders from High Command, and they have directed only that we take you aboard.

I’m needed at an urgent summit meeting on Pholandis Nine, Gohnwald said haughtily. Its location at one extreme fringe of Confetory space obliges me to seek a fast ship and set out at once.

My orders were to take you aboard and billet you against the possibility that I might be ordered to whisk you to some destination High Command may select. So far, I have no order regarding your destination. My original orders remain in effect until further notice.

Gohnwald smirked. That notice may arrive suddenly.

I’m aware of your influence. Hinsin stepped forward pushing a desk-sized portable console, afloat on nulgrav. "This Mark Nineteen-A comm controller is equivalent to the system in Forthright’s bridge. I will have it installed aboard your caravel and give you direct secured access to our antenna arrays. You’ll have unrestricted contact with your friends in the command precincts."

Gohnwald nodded. Which will spare me the effort of suborning your transmitters to get your absurd orders changed.

Singleton drew up beneath the Ghyrelian costume, transfixing Gohnwald with her eyes. You’re free to exert whatever influence you choose to alter my orders. When they change, I’ll obey the new orders as diligently as I obey my present ones. But understand clearly, I obey only High Command. Singleton stepped pointedly between Gohnwald and Seneka Willesgar. "Meanwhile, my officers and crew obey me. You do not order course changes from my officers, Hom Ambassador-at-Large. You do not order my officers to arrange a diplomatic dinner in your honor—yes, I heard about that too. When you require something, present your needs to me."

Gohnwald bowed slightly. "Very well, Captain. It shall be as you say, and Forthright shall not be my personal taxicab."

Thank you.

At any rate, Gohnwald said, turning on his heel, "not yet." Following the Ghyrelian protocol, most of the ship’s officers and the band escorted Gohnwald out. They would accompany him all the way back to his caravel—another feature of the Druhel tradition I appreciate, Singleton thought.

The outer doors whisked shut. Singleton gratefully accepted a glass of crackling water from Sergeant-at-Arms Foster, who appeared as the confrontation ended. Singleton downed the glass in one draft. She turned to Willesgar, who had stayed behind. Well, X.O.?

Willesgar smiled. I doubt any captain has maintained so much authority in the face of Gohnwald’s bluster.

Singleton half-smiled. "The big question is, do you think he’ll just go back to Stormrider and accept the way things are?"

For about two hours, no more.

Agreed.

Willesgar’s fingers rolled a rounded stone dotted with mineral inclusions the color of drying blood.

Singleton’s eyes narrowed. I suppose I must ask what that is.

"A pontica," Willesgar answered. Tradition says it can fend off demons. Or force them to answer your questions.

I see. Then answer me a question, Seneka. Singleton began handing Foster the elements of her Druhel costume. What were the particulars of the dinner Hom Gohnwald wanted you to arrange?

Tomorrow, eighteen hundred hours, main reception hall. For all officers not on duty. Menu: seafood of many worlds; theme: peace through audacity.

"I see. Very well, Seneka, please arrange the dinner. Tomorrow, nineteen hundred hours. In Ready Room Two. For prime command crew and senior utility officers only. Menu: fowl and vegetable curries of many worlds; theme: self-abnegation in the face of just authority."

Nimble choices, Willesgar deadpanned. But why curries?

Singleton flashed her X.O. a mischievous smile. Gohnwald expects me to curry favor.

Willesgar chuckled. Instead, you favor curry.

Foster shrugged as he deposited the Druhel headdress into a storage cell. I hope it’s ‘peace through audacity’ you achieve, and not an early retirement.

Lajse Gohnwald settled into an overstuffed chair in his Stormrider stateroom. The gilded viewport framed a vista of the docking bay. A stocky Arkhetil woman stepped behind the Ambassador-at-Large and kneaded his shoulders. Ah, Patyhel, Gohnwald groaned. The flow of influences is always so complex. How shall I keep it all straight?

Patyhel knew a rhetorical question when she heard one. How was this captain? she asked in time with her massage. Singleton, is that her name?

A skilled jouster. She worked a protocol wrinkle I did not foresee—one I may employ myself someday.

Patyhel rained the edges of her hands across Gohnwald’s shoulders. A good loser? Never you.

Surely not, Gohnwald agreed. Maintaining the Galactic peace consumes me. My sole pleasure is the sporadic opportunity to dismember some captain’s authority. An Iglonian brandy rose near his wrist. Swirling the snifter, Gohnwald watched gel filaments swirl in the viscous liquid. Captain Singleton has won this skirmish. Yet before our encounter ends, she shall regret her cleverness.

Chapter 4

Terra—Ile de la Cité, Paris

This way. Flourishing his cape, Gram Enoda motioned his charges toward the upchute. The oval glowed faintly on ancient flagstones. Two teens stepped on. They floated upward, forward, as though riding an invisible escalator. Their companions followed two by two, their elegant costumes concealing as little as artifice allowed.

By pairs they wafted into the gallery. How old did you say this building was? Nuli squealed.

The oldest parts, more than fourteen hundred years.

And they had upchutes?

Enoda smiled. "The upchutes came much later."

Courtly Jorl CzyPlen accompanied the boy Vargeth, completing the main group. Six steps behind, clad in a modest grey wrap that covered her from neck to ankles and masked her shape, Bryleen brought up the rear. Her eyes did not meet Enoda’s.

Twenty youths, plus CzyPlen, Enoda counted to himself. All accounted for. He hurried up the chute behind Bryleen.

They shuffled down a long gallery. The left wall was an unbroken expanse of stone. To their right circular openings gaped, framing vistas of the opposite wall and the crowded main floor below. This gallery is a triforium, Enoda explained. It tunnels through the exterior walls and passes over the arcaded side aisles below us. The circular windows are unique, restored to their original design only about seventy years ago.

Tarbril tapped the exterior wall. "How come the windows look inside?"

People are meant to concentrate on the altar, Enoda answered. Anyway, at this height the exterior walls had to be solid; the designers needed strength.

Tarbril peered upward. Everything’s so spindly above.

That’s the clerestory, explained Enoda. Mostly glass, with just enough stone tracery to hold it together. Above us and outside, thick stone braces absorb the outward thrust of the walls, so the walls themselves can be lightly built. You’ll see when we’re outdoors.

Oh, cried Tarbril with sudden understanding, the flying buttresses.

Ahead, a monk in a wool robe blocked their path. To your right, he droned.

The teens exited the gallery. The original builders would debase their own corpses if they saw this, Enoda clucked to himself. Of course, he always thought that when he led VIP tourgroups into Old Notre Dame.

Clinging to railings at either side, the youths walked up the back of a massive girder that arched over the nave, almost spanning its width. The girder bore the logos of several dozen tour firms, including the one that employed Enoda—which was why he could take CzyPlen and the teens out there. At the peak of the girder’s arch was perched a steeply-raked viewdeck. Promoters of Galactic tourism had fought for standard years to get this obscene grandstand into the upper reaches of Notre Dame, level with the bottom of the stained-glass sidelights. In time their money had overcome the objections of architectural purists.

From these dizzy bleachers one enjoyed a bird’s eye view of the altar, the cathedral’s elegant stonework, and the Terran worshipers huddling below in pews. Best of all, Enoda thought, when you’re aboard this viewdeck, you don’t have to look at it. Enoda pressed a thumb to the identiplate; the deck began billing time to his company’s account.

The youths took seats, all together. CzyPlen sat alone in a lower row; Bryleen hunkered in the opposite corner, also alone.

Notre Dame was the one place on Terra that CzyPlen himself cared about but had never seen. The youths knew how badly he wanted to see it today. Nobody will act up here, Enoda thought. Still, can’t be too careful. In response to Enoda’s coded request, a restrictor field whistled to life. The viewdeck was now cloaked; the Galactic tourists could be neither heard nor seen by those below. The teens could laugh and howl all they wanted.

Sighing with exhaustion, Enoda pulled the foulard cape out from under him. This tour has been one for the annals, he thought.

Cruneil, the snake-bitten girl who’d wanted to see Sweden, had tired of it quickly, as Enoda’d known she would. Once you’ve spent a few hours staring in awe at streets jammed curb to curb with blond hair and pink cheeks, there’s little else to do. But his charter of the reproduction Boeing 1297 had not ended there. No, then it was off to Iceland, where everyone had agreed the hot springs compared poorly to those on Ordh or Calluron Five. Then back into that forjeling airplane—hours crammed into that constricted metal cylinder, crawling through the sky like pioneers ... all the way to Olduvai! CzyPlen hadn’t intended to waste time there, but he was still indulging Cruneil and she’d wanted to go.

At Olduvai they’d trooped through yet another visitor’s center and picked at an overpriced lunch on the balcony of a Galactic Zone hotel overlooking the Serengeti. They’d walked Scooped Bluff, once the richest source of protohuman fossils on the planet, now a sterile formation of rills blasted smooth by the landing backwash of the second Galactic craft to land on Terra.

"Admiration was only the first contact ship, Enoda had explained. She was followed six hours later by the unhappily-named Adroit, whose touchdown in Olduvai Gorge inadvertently destroyed much of the evidence of human origins that had attracted Galactic attention to Terra in the first place. Pointing, gaping—but for once, not giggling—the teens had scrutinized museum displays of early fossils. There’s not much left, but enough remains that if Galactic civilization collapsed tomorrow, its successors would still be able to deduce that Terra had been the world where humanity began."

"Kaaa-a-chooo!"

Red-nosed, puffy-eyed, Vargeth had wiped mucus from his lip with a slender hand. Then he’d realized he didn’t know what to do with it.

Knowingly, Tarbril’d handed him a square of fabric. Handkerchief, he’d said as if passing on the wisdom of the ancients.

You too, Vargeth? Enoda’d said simply.

Vargeth had smiled uneasily at Bryleen and Tarbril. They’d had runny noses for more than a day now. Yes, Hom E’doda. I hab the code too.

Enoda reached into his sporran for the medimech. I can fix it.

No, no, Vargeth had said, shrinking back as Bryleen and Tarbril had before him.

"You like being part of the food chain?" Enoda demanded.

Pardo’d me?

You’re feeding viruses now, young man. You. Tarbril. Bryleen. Terran viruses are inside you all, gorging themselves. Your bodies are going crazy trying to repel the unwanted boarders. That’s what a common cold is. It remains one of the ironies of medical science that we still cannot prevent the common cold; but I can suppress your symptoms and end the discomfort if you’ll let me.

My brubber said if I we’dt to Terra and got a code I should sabor the experie’dce, Bryleen had objected.

Tarbril’d nodded vigorously. He’d scrunched up his face as though nodding had dislodged something in his head. It had. Uncertainly he’d filled the handkerchief. Only on the world of human origi’ds could so much of the biosphere debe’op the power to infect huma’ds.

I got my snake bite, they have their colds, Cruneil’d chimed in. It’s all part of the primitive experience. It’s why we go to Terra. CzyPlen flashed her a look of warning. You know, while we can. Even Cruneil realized she’d only made it worse. She flashed Enoda a big sham smile. I meant that in a good way, of course.

"Kaaewww-www-www!" Bryleen’s shoulders had hunched, one breast popping out of the filmy