Warlord

stupid.'

'I missed,' Suzette mumbled, fatigue-poisons blurring her eyes.

'What was that?' Anne looked up sharply.

'I said, he won't be missed,' she replied more clearly. A thought made her blink at Anne's mourning clothes. 'Someone's died?' she asked.

'Someone's going to, my dear. Someone's going to.'

* * *

Raj felt himself toppling forward off the bench and jerked himself upright again. He was attracting a few glances, here in the Star Chamber, but less than might be expected; theological controversy was the city's pride and sport, and there was plenty of it here. The great round chamber was filled to capacity with Hierarchs, Sysups, Analysts, Grammers, Church dignitaries of every type and variety from all over the Civil Government; there were even representatives of the Central and Western Territories Sysuprics, in old-fashioned vestments and talking with Spajol accents. Many of them looked a little uneasy, since the Spirit of Man of This Earth was the state cult in the areas ruled by the Military Governments, and the Orthodox from those lands were not used to operating so openly.

Barholm sat behind him, on a throne that had risen soundlessly to head-height on a hydraulic column; he was in full vestments as Supreme Pontiff, strictly speaking the Governor's prerogative, resting his chin on one fist. The light through the Star-shaped skylight in the domed ceiling cast a hard glitter on the jewels and metallic thread in his robes, the gold and ebony of the chair.

'And it says clearly in the Canonical Handbook,' the speaker at the podium in the center of the room was droning, 'that the greater set subsumes the lesser, the metaphysical implications of this being, firstly, that all subroutines are necessary but not sufficient to the operation of the code, and secondly, that an operational subroutine may therefore be treated as a virtual entity in, though not obviously for or by, itself. Thus if-as I hold Orthodox doctrine to state-the Spirit of Man of the Stars is the Spirit governing all stars, and since the Star of This Earth is unquestionably a Star, and since This Earth is unquestionably in orbit around that Star and therefore under the celestial influence and governance of that Star, then the Spirit of Man of This Earth-' there was an audible gasp at the mention of the deity of the western heretics who ruled in the barbaricum and lost territories '-is actually no more than a facet of the Spirit of Man of the Stars!'

'Heresy!' Shouts of outrage from the sloping tiers of seats. The speaker was a Regional Sysup from Ayzof, a town on the northeastern shore of Pierson's Sea; she was in full cannonicals, silver jumpsuit and overrobe, and headdress with wire-rimmed glasses and Starburst over her head. 'Heresy!' A claque of Renunciate Nun abbesses in the upper tiers tried to start a chant: Dig up her bones! Dig up her bones!

'Silence!' Barholm thundered. 'This is a meeting of the rulers of Holy Federation Church, not a street riot!' Monastic guards trotted around the pathway behind the upper seats and pushed or clubbed the white-suited abbesses back into their seats. It was a minute before the buzz of conversation died down; Barholm's own aides on the bench beside Raj were engaged in a heated if whispered debate, arguing the use of the archaic plural in the Cannonical Handbook's terminology for 'Star.'

'— and therefore,' the Regional Sysup was continuing doggedly, reading from the notes on the lectern before her, 'the This Earth Spiritists are, though they know it not, neither heretics nor pagans such as Christos or Jews or Muslims, but rather children of Holy Federation Church in schism from ecclesiastical authority only, and therefore ripe for reunion.' She touched her amulet, a commo unit of venerable age, the cracks in its synthetic housing inlaid with precious metals. 'Endfile.'

'Endfile,' the assembled clergy murmured.

'The Chair logson the Honorable Sysup-Representative of the Priest of the Residential parish,' Barholm intoned. The man who took the podium next was tall and lanky, with a nasal Western accent to his archaic book- learned Sponglish; the representative of the Priest of the old Residence, second only to the Governor in the formal hierarchy of the Church, but under the political control of the Earth Spiritist barbarians of the Brigade.

'Waaal,' he drawled. 'Thissehere argument is interestin', but I cain't rightly say it means much. Because whether or not we think the Brigaders is heretics, they surely does think we is heretics, and won't nohow reenter communion with Holy Federation Church. Unless you planning to whup them.' Barholm tensed, then relaxed fractionally. 'Endfile.'

'Endfile,' the crowd murmured, sounding disappointed at the pithy brevity.

Raj remembered an ancient chronicle he had read, of a previous synod: a Sysup from the provinces had said, In East Residence, if you ask a baker for bread he will tell you that the Spirit proceeds from the Stars; if you inquire of the bath attendant whether the water is hot, she will reply that the Spirit proceeds from the Man of the Stars.

since you are in communion with me, and i am representative of the federation, does this not make you the avatar of the spirit?

Raj clutched at his amulet, imagining himself rising and speaking to the assembled hierarchs. He shuddered, feeling a nausea-panic almost as great as the one he had felt when Tewfik's squadrons charged home into the Valley of Death. Bad enough to be the Sword of the Spirit, and a piss-poor job I've been doing of that-

A page pressed through the crowd and handed a message up to the Vice-Governor; Barholm held up his hand for silence.

'Your pardon, Users of the Spirit of Man of the Stars,' he said flatly. 'Urgent secular business calls me away. The Sysup-Patriarch of East Residence will preside in my place.'

'Captain Whitehall!' he continued, in a loud carrying voice.

'Your Exaltedness!' Raj said, crisply enough, but the dust and stubble made him feel as out of place here as a cootch-dancer in a Renunciate's cell. And the dried blood that spattered him had had more than enough time and heat to become very noticeable.

'You have your men with you?'

'Ah, that is, yes, Your Exaltedness; in the antechamber.' Where they had refused all orders to stand down, and had their guns ready. For what, Raj did not like to think; by rights, they should want Barholm to have him sent to the frying pole.

'Here.' The Vice-Governor's chair slid down with noiseless smoothness. He reached out and picked up a page of notes from an ArchSysup on the tier behind him, scribbled on the back of it and handed the paper to Raj. A simple Pass Captain Whitehall and escort to any section of the Palace. Barholm Clerett, Vice- Governor.

'And take this.' He pulled at a ring on his finger; Raj felt a prickle of awe as it dropped into his hand. A diamond the size of his thumbnail, somehow shaped into the likeness of a Starburst, with white fire glowing within. The Vice-Governor's signet, a smaller twin to the one in the Governor's diadem, a relic from before the Fall and as holy as any computer. 'Nobody will dispute your passage with this, I think.'

Raj nodded stiffly and went to one knee as Barholm continued, 'Report to the Governor's personal quarters, with dispatch, Captain Whitehall.'

'The, ah, your quarters, Exaltedness?'

'No. My uncle's.' Barholm's eyes met Raj's, as dispassionately flat as his tone. 'He's about to officially designate me as his heir.'

* * *

'But you can't go in there,' the chamberlain said, wringing his hands.

'Orders of the Vice-Governor,' Raj said. There was a ghostlike quality to the whole affair; it reminded him of the endless ride along the north flanks of the Oxheads. After a few days memory and sleep and waking had blurred, until he was unsure of when and where he was, of whether what he saw was reality or dream or the endless holographic scenarios that Center painted on the canvas of his eyes.

'Governor Vernier is sick,' the man continued, as if Raj had not spoken. He ignored the signet ring as well, although the men of Vernier's Own had passed the armed scarecrows who were Raj's Companions at the sight of it. And they were recruited mostly from the Clerett home