Anywhere he had ever been or ever seen, his pipe was the finest of its kind. Renner breathed deeply, pulling cool, opal fire through every pore, exhaled a chain of smoke rings, and smiled again. He smoked, and thought, and cleared his mind until the last pale flicker faded to white. High above him, blue, wispy swirls vented through the roof, into the starless night, as he slammed the door behind him and strode downstairs to meet Governor Jackson.
Jackson—now Sir Lawrence Jackson, and Governor of Maxroy’s Purchase, was momentarily flustered. “But Sally Fowler said—”
Renner, now playing Renner, knocked back the thimble of poisonous brew, smacked the table, leaned forward, and looked Jackson straight in the eyes.
“Governor, let me make one thing perfectly clear.” He held the pause for one heartbeat, then continued, earnest as a boy scout.
“Sally Fowler, Lady Blaine, is a dear, old friend; the wife of one of the damned few members of the inherited aristocracy who has outright earned his titles, a do-gooder extraordinaire, and the mother of my Godchildren.”
Renner leaned back a bit, and cocked his head.
“That makes her a wealthy, useful, well-intentioned dilettante. But her actual credentials? One year of so-called graduate education, most of it stuck in a prison camp, followed by a cloistered life surrounded by the Fleet, Fleet officers, and aristos while she decorated her husband’s arm and patronized her pet projects. That does not make her an expert on anything except how to wrest money from people who have more of it than sense. It sure as hell does not make her a geomorphologist, anthropologist, or ecumenist, nor does it make her conversant with any reasonably current list of people who are. You had better dodge her request, and put somebody on that accession expedition who is—both expert, and stupid enough to speak truth to power.”
Renner straightened completely, grinned, tossed back another shot, and grinned again.
“Preferably, somebody expendable. Because I would bet my pipe that you ain’t gonna like what you hear.”
Jackson toyed with his drink, calculating, resenting that charming grin. He wasn’t stupid. Renner had him in a triple bind. On the one hand, he needed Lord Blaine’s support if he was to succeed in reclaiming New Utah for the Empire. Absentmindedly, he slid the glass toward himself across the polished surface. On the other hand, the Mormon True Church Militant despised Renner, personally, and deeply. If the TCM dug in, there would be war, not trade, and he himself, Jackson, Governor of Maxroy’s Purchase, would be blamed for another failed mission to New Utah. Jackson slapped the glass from left to right, and caught it mid-glide toward the end of the table. On the gripping hand, Renner was Bury’s man; Renner was his inside to Imperial Autonetics; Renner was, so to speak, the man behind the Moties behind the—behind the what? He didn’t know. Nobody knew, yet. But in Jackson’s experience power followed wealth, and not the other way around.
“I suppose,” he said, lifting the glass to toasting level, “you have someone specific in mind?”
Renner smiled. He had the man’s tell. “Oh, yeah,” he replied. “I thought Quinn.”
“Quinn!”
“Uh huh.”
“Asach Quinn?”
“Uh huh.”
Jackson nodded, once, downed the drink, and looked preoccupied. Then, to no one in particular: “Asach. Quinn. Oh yes. Indeed. Asach Quinn will do just fine.”
He stood sharply, and donned his man-of-the-people face. “C’mon, Kev,” he said breezily, “we’d best get moving, before the Commissioners accuse us of plotting things we shouldn’t.”
Horvath’s face was literally purple. Spittle flew from his mouth as he ranted.
“Quinn?! Asach Quinn?! Asach Quinn is—” but his words were drowned out by the babble that ensued:
“the most dedicated servant of truth this Empire has ever…”
“living in a mucking hut on Makassar…”
“arguably the most brilliant ethnographer since…’
“a political hack unfit to…”
“utterly incorruptible...”
“not a team player…”
“a polymath genius…”
“used-up and overrated. Did you hear…”
“a deft negotiator, with an uncanny ability to fit in…”
“irascible, incorrigible, inscrutable, impossible to…”
“singularly persuasive. Writes like an angel…”
Among them, only Lord Blaine did not raise his voice. Nevertheless, all speech stopped when he spoke.
“The only social scientist Horace Bury personally designated as useful to the Empire of Man.”
All heads turned in shock.
Horvath regained control, barely, biting each word in half.
“Asach. Quinn. Is. Not. Morally. Suited—”
“I am well aware of your personal differences with Quinn’s—demeanor,” continued Blaine, unruffled. “But you must agree that what is here at issue is of rather more import than—attire, wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Horvath?”
“With all due respect My Lord Blaine, you know that I am not referring to attire. I am referring to—”
“My dear Dr. Horvath,” smiled Blaine. “You are not about to tell me that, after all we have been through, you are frightened of—hair? Are you?”
Despite themselves, most of the table chuckled, infuriating Horvath even further, were that possible. His hands were actually trembling. Little patches of foam had congealed at the corners of his mouth. “You know full well that I am not—”
“Excellent!” cheered Blaine, flashing his best old-school smile. “Glad that’s settled, then. We’ll have that vote, shall we? By acclamation, I think, don’t you? Shall I move that? Kevin, you’ll second? All in favor?”
Of course, the vote carried unanimously. At least, out loud.
2
Accrual Methods
Now it is unmistakable that even in the German word Beruf, and perhaps still more in the English calling, a religious conception, that of a task set by God, is at least suggested.
—Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Makassar, 3049
On Saturday afternoon, the eighteenth of August, Amari Selkirk Alidade Clarke Hathaway (Asach) Quinn sat down with a silk-smooth pen and a stack of creamy blank parchment, and commenced to write a novel. A book, in any case. A novel perhaps. It was a decision on the order of marriage or advanced degree-taking. It was not that the completion would mark an entirely new life. It was rather that the decision itself was life-ordering. On Saturday morning, Asach Quinn would not have made such a decision at all, but on Saturday afternoon did, and in so doing ended an era of waffling, and pondering, and unending waiting for some kind of unnecessary permission, and just got on with it.
It was unapparent why Asach had taken so long to arrive at this literary gate. Asach sported the requisite advanced degrees, the marriage, no end of supporters, and even talent. And the experience: that elusive life experience, intense, and intended to inform.
Asach had lived in the Americas. Not in the sense of an Old Earth America, the United States of, as opposed to some other land. The Americas, as in all of them. All of those planets that had taken their names, and tried to resurrect some version of their customs, from the cities and states of that ancient republic.