“Huh?” Dar glanced at Sam, who was moving a little more quickly than the rest of them, gaze fixed on Horatio, eyes shining. He turned back to Whitey. “Just spellbound. Money has that effect, sometimes.”

But Whitey shook his head. “Not so, or she’d have gone after me. Would you say Sam’s the impulsive sort?”

“Well … in a way.” Dar frowned at Sam, seeing her anew. “Controls it well, though.”

“And Horatio doesn’t have to.” Whitey nodded. “That explains a lot.”

Dar was glad it did, because he didn’t understand a bit of it. On the other hand, he hadn’t had much exposure to women who spoke his own language.

Horatio stormed up a flight of limestone steps and wheeled through French doors into his palace. By the time the crew caught up with him, he was leaning across a Louis XIV desk, glaring into a phone screen at an image of a bulky, black-haired man with a flowing beard. “Ship?” he was saying. “Of course you can buy a ship, Horatio! The Navy has surplus dreadnoughts it would love to be rid of—but why?”

“To issue from a sty of stenches!” Horatio snapped. “What do you mean, they have ships they’d love to be rid of?”

“Always more on hand than they have buyers for. After all, who’d want a retired battleship—without its cannon?”

“We would! To bear a crew of colonists to a brave new world, where we may purify ourselves of this crass materialism, and rise above the suspiciousness and greed of this technological monster of a world!”

“Horatio.” Blackbeard eyed him warily. “Do you speak of founding a society based on the Society?”

“Indeed I do, Markone!”

“I was afraid that this might come,” Markone sighed. “You must not confuse the pleasant fantasy of our Society tournaments and moots with the reality of the real world, Horatio. That way lies madness.”

“I do not confuse them—I wish to make the fantasy become real! Think of it, Markone—your barony become a reality, your vassals and serfs forever at your call!”

Markone’s eyes lost focus. “A pleasant dream, Horatio—yet nothing but a dream.”

“It need not be!” Horatio insisted. “Think, man! What need would we have for all our fortunes? Each could lay the half of them away for his heirs here, and take the other half to pool, to buy a ship and equip an expedition! What could it cost? Certainly no more than a hundred billion—and we must have a dozen barons in the Society who are worth more than half of that apiece!”

Markone gazed off into space. “It might be possible, at that … as though we were holding an extended festival abroad… And ‘twould be possible to return…”

“Meditate upon it,” Horatio urged. “Yet if ‘twere done, ‘twere well ‘twere done quickly, Markone. You know the uncertainty of the political situation.”

You could almost hear Markone’s eyes click back into focus. “Uncertainty? What’s doubtful about it, Bocello? Nothing but time—and that might be as short as a few days, before these petit-bourgeois politicians in the Assembly elect the Executive Secretary to the noble post of Dictator!”

“Oh, come now,” Horatio purred. “I scarcely think they’d be so blatant as to give him the title.”

“No, but they’ll give him the power! They’re primed and ready; all they need is a trigger, some threat to all of them, and they’ll cheerfully sell all their freedoms for security—and ours with theirs!”

“True, true—and we know how sensitive these lowborns are to anything that threatens their positions. When all’s said and done, money is secondary to them. But give them one sign that there may be someone more powerful than they, who might usurp their powers, and they panic!”

“They do indeed—which brings to mind the latest news, Horatio.” Markone glowered up at him out of the screen. “What think you of this Interstellar Telepathic Conspiracy?”

“Who could better recognize a fantasy than we? But there is a man of almost supernatural gifts there, as the grain of truth that rumor’s wrapped around, Markone.”

“Indeed?” Markone’s scowl deepened. “What manner of man is that?”

“One you’ve met—the greatest bard of the Terran Sphere, Tod Tambourin. Government officials have been chasing him in here from the marches—secretly at first, but now openly, claiming that he and his band are telepaths.”

“Chased Tod Tambourin?” Markone bawled. “This is too much, Bocello! They exceed excess in this!”

“They do indeed.” Horatio nodded slowly, eyes gleaming.

“If they will harry such a man out of pettiness and spite, what might they not attempt? By all the stars, Bocello—do you realize that they might come a-hunting us?”

“We are logical targets for envious men,” Horatio purred, “the more so since we have wealth to confiscate.”

“Does it begin again, then? Must we watch the bloody flag arise, and ride on tumbrels to the guillotine?”

That, Dar thought, was overdoing it a bit—though he had to agree that there did seem to be some danger in staying on Terra just now, for anyone with large amounts of money or a taste for eccentric hobbies.

“I, for one, do not intend to learn the answer,” Horatio informed his phone-screen, “at least, not from personal experience. I’ll buy a ship alone, if I have to, and recruit my party guests. What say you, Markone? Will you join me?”

“That I will, and see the Baronetcy of Ruddigore established in reality! Go buy your ship, Bocello—and don’t lift off without me!”

The screen blanked. Horatio turned to his guests with a wolfish grin. “So it begins, and they’ll fall into line quickly, I assure you; the twelve great barons of the Central Kingdom. Oh, we’ll have that ship bought and outfitted within a day, and be loading passengers in two!”

Whitey spread his hands. “It was just an idea.”

“You can’t find enough people that fast,” Dar stated flatly. “Oh, maybe you twelve rich men might be ready to jump at a moment—you know you can come back any time you choose. But it’s different for the ordinary people. They’ll need a long time to decide.”

“They will, eh?” Horatio seized a stylus and tablet from his desk and strode to the French doors. He came out onto the terrace, hands high, bellowing, “Now I cry HOLD!”

The shouting chaos of laughing and singing ceased in an instant.

“They’re loyal,” Horatio explained over his shoulder. Then, to the multitude: “The Baronet of Ruddigore and I have decided to take ship, and ride out to the stars, to discover a world never before seen by Terrans, there to found the Central Kingdom in reality, and live as men ought, by faith and sweat and steel. We shall need villeins and yeomen, gentlemen and knights! We shall leave in two days time; any who are not with us then, will never be! Who wishes to ride? Sign here!”

He threw the tablet down into the multitude. With a roar, they pounced on it, and the whole crowd instantly re-formed into a line, each one fairly panting in his eagerness to emigrate. Food-sellers and jugglers began to work up and down the queue.

Horatio turned back to Dar with a grin. “That is the mettle of my people!”

“They’ll change their minds by the time they get to the front of the line,” Dar predicted.

Horatio nodded. “Some of them, no doubt—but most will sign. They’ve wished for nothing half so much as to live in a world where folk are true, and the rulers worthy of trust. How say you, brave ones? Will you join us?”

“Instantly.” Sam beamed up at him.

Horatio looked down at her, surprised. Then, slowly, he began to smile, almost shyly.

“I admit I’m tempted,” Father Marco mused. “For a priest, the Middle Ages had definite advantages.”

“For gleemen, too.” Whitey grinned from ear to ear. “I think it’s a great idea, Horatio, and I’ll cheer you on every A.U. of the way—but I never was much of a joiner.”

“Nor I.” Lona shook her head firmly. “Stuck in a society that’s never even heard of electrons? Horrible!”