This is a fan translation of Captain French, or the Quest for Paradise (Капитан Френч, или Поиски рая) by Mikhail Akhmanov and Christopher Nicholas Gilmore.

Chapter 2

Two weeks had passed, and I set out to depart Murphy for other worlds, more suitable for relaxation and private enterprise. I decided that, perhaps, the people of Excalibur or Malacandra would give the exotic clothing from Secundus and the playful Punjab figurines their due, while Barsoom was a suitable place to rid myself of the shabns and the pterogeckos. Archon Geoffrey knew that as well as I. And he was obviously thinking of ways of getting me to part with at least a pound of platinum.

He turned out to be a decent psychologist and spoke in a roundabout manner.

"By the grace of the Almighty Lord, the world is wisely arranged," he said during one of our meetings, forming a smile on his long, lean face. "First, God created the universe, then He gave life to man and the wonder of CR, meaning not just life, but an immeasurably long life… And there is a place and time for everything: a time to sin and a time to repent, a time for earthly affairs and a time for prayers, a time for pleasures of the flesh and a time for thinking of the big questions…"

These thoughts seemed trivial to me, and I merely nodded politely in reply, my gaze looking over Geoffrey's dormitory. It was a long dark room with a big crucifix on the wall; next to it was a very uncomfortable chair, which was occupied by Archon Geoffrey. There was also a desk, made from dull gray plastic, and a hard stool under my suffering butt cheeks; these were all the furnishings, not counting an ancient computer, which had survived the comet strike. The computer must not have had any serious sins, so the Lord spared it, giving it to Geoffrey as an assistant.

"I think you must have a lot of time," the Archon continued, still stretching his thin, dry lips in a smile. "After all, you, Captain French, must travel in complete solitude, and solitude helps with reflections; not very pleasant ones, I presume. Especially for a man like you… No doubt, you often experience… how would you say?.. a need for communication, for a companion, with whom you could exchange a few words… and not just words… You must be lacking in female companionship, correct?" Now he pierced me with a hard gaze and wondered. "Or am I mistaken?"

A meaningful speech! And that remark about "a man like you"… What did he mean by that? Naturally, that I'm a godless infidel and a bachelor, at least for the moment.

I chuckled and looked at him with a certain degree of superiority, as an older man might look at a young man yet to reach his second millennium. I was looking at a fairly tall broad-shouldered gentleman, with blond hair and gray eyes, with a long, stretched face. If one used old terrestrial measurements, then he looked about twenty-eight, thirty at most. Just a boy! A snot-nosed fisherman, dreaming of hooking a wizened old pike! Under my gaze, his smile grew a little nervous.

"I won't deny my solitude, even though the Circe's computer provides good company," I spoke. "But, as you noted, a long life has room for earthly affairs and for pleasures of the flesh. At times, I'm not lonely at all. I've been married to several lovely women… And I don't lack for female companionship when I reach yet another world, a normal world, I mean, one not as pious as Murphy. Finally, if I want companionship, I can sign a contract with a small group of settlers who wish to find an unsettled planet somewhere in the Periphery. Some of them are women with a romantic mindset and good looks… Or am I mistaken?"

Geoffrey swallowed and glanced sideways at the crucifix, as if fighting a diabolical temptation. His life was likely had more prayers and thoughts on the big questions than pleasures of the flesh.

"But currently," he countered, "you are not married and are not transporting romantically-minded female colonists to the Periphery. And if you were offered a woman… Would you really not know what to do with her?"

This rhetorical question bordered on a direct insult, and I, straightening on my hard seat, answered dryly, "You are too young, my friend, and overestimate the power of emotions. As a person matures, memories of the past and anticipation of the future joys become no less important and significant than the present reality. As such, the flight time between two worlds doesn't seem long to me. I have plenty to remember, I assure you…" I shrugged and added. "Venerable Archon, can you actually imagine my age?"

Geoffrey effaced himself.

"I heard," he muttered uncertainly, "that you are one of the first astronauts of Old Earth to reach the stars… And that means that you, by the grace of the Almighty, are over twenty thousand years old. What of it? Are sinful desires not eternal?"

I was not about to deny that and, smiling, touched my hair.

"As they say, my friend, 'a gray beard, but a lusty heart.'"

He must not have understood me. His confused gaze stopped on my hair, his eyes widened, and his eyebrows rose. Now I would not have put him at anything over twenty-five, despite the lean, pious face. Truly, CR and biosculpture worked miracles in our time!

"And what is strange about your hair?" Geoffrey furrowed his brow. "Ah, I understand! The color! A fashion on one of the exotically minded worlds… Is it dyed or an artificial genetic modification?"

"Neither. A result of my age, my friend. I have lived for a good fifty years before I received CR."

Now I had frightened him: jerking, Geoffrey stared at the crucifix and started to mutter a prayer. When this godly deed was done, he spoke without looking at me.

"I've heard… heard of such practices on some worlds… But we on Murphy… we've never employed that… for longevity is the Lord's will… and it's a great sin to refuse it to someone…" He fell silent, then his lips moved again. "Forgive me, Captain… you don't have to answer my question… but what crime caused you to be punished in such a way?.."

He looked so embarrassed that I burst out laughing.

"Nothing horrible, worthy Archon, nothing that my and your ancestors were not guilty of! It's just that, in the days when the first Ramsden interstellar drive was built, medicine had been in its infancy. Cellular regeneration was discovered later, much later! In the twenty-fourth century, if I'm not mistaken… But I spent my early years in the twenty-first. This is also where I left my first wife, whom I had to divorce, and my daughter, little Penny… I had just turned forty, I was considered the luckiest of the in-system pilots, and I was completely free, so I did not object to a long-term expedition. I was offered to test the Ramsden drive on a flight to Triton, and I agreed. It's not the same Triton you must have heard of, venerable Archon, not the planet where crystalsilk was invented and where people change their sex like oysters. My Triton is a tiny world that orbits Neptune in Old Earth's system."

Geoffrey nodded. Pausing, I was trying to determine what he knew of such ancient times. Probably less than an archon, one of the nine pillars of Murphian enlightenment, ought to know! At the very least, he should have known that, in the past, people used to grow old, their hair turned gray and fell out, and their faces became wrinkled. Maybe he'd read about it in books, but what was read was remembered worse than what was seen, and ancient video recordings were fairly rare and unsophisticated… It was entirely possible that Archon Geoffrey had not seen a single image of an old man in all five hundred, eight hundred, or a thousand years of his life.

Choosing to forgive him, I continued, "The tests had been successful, and then a race began; a dozen countries started to convert their shuttles and install Ramsden drives. As you can understand, each of them wanted to be the first to reach the stars and plant his nation's flag in the galaxy. My ship had already been converted, so the choice was obvious… The United States Government wanted to send her to one of the closest stars, to Alpha Centauri, under my command, of course. After all, I had been the only astronaut with experience in performing Ramsden field jumps! And so, I went off on my journey and found a fairly attractive planet in the Centauri system, which I named Penelope after my daughter. After that, I was supposed to return and report my findings, but, instead, I sent a brief message to Earth. My ship was completely autonomous, I had plenty of supplies, and I had absolutely no desire to come back. So why not wander the galaxy, I thought. Besides, there were stars in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri with planets similar to Old Earth… I headed towards them, and that first journey took a hundred and eighty standard years. Then—"

"Then you did come back," Geoffrey interrupted the stretching pause.

I nodded, wondering why I was telling him all this. I didn't like him enough to spill out my biography and speak so openly, on the contrary! On the other hand, though, my life had become overgrown with so many myths, speculation, and incredible legends, that, at times, I felt the need to speak the truth, even to such an unpleasant person as Archon Geoffrey. Besides, he seemed to be exhibiting a genuine interest in my story, or, at least, he looked like he was. Both were probably reasonable conclusions; he wanted to know more about me and find a way to hook me. After all, there must have been a reason he had started the conversation about loneliness and women!..

"You came back," Geoffrey repeated, looking at me with undisguised curiosity. "But why? What forced you to make that decision?"

"Two reasons, I don't recall anymore which of them was more important… First, I'd remembered that my ex-wife was long dead and that a hundred and eighty years was a solid guarantee against any family squabbles and unpleasantness. And second… You see, I love comfort, and the supplies of eggs, coffee, and spices had run out on the Star Conqueror—that was the name of my ship. My hydroponic sections had plenty of biomass, but the plant fibers had grown hard and tasteless… So I sent my final report, of the beautiful Eden in the Cassiopeia constellation, and turned to follow it to Earth."

I fell silent again, thinking of those distant times. My memories were full of terrible stories, like the tragedy that had struck Phil Regos, one of my colleagues, or the nuclear war on Brunnershabn, but now I was thinking of other things. Of Eden, for example, and my quest for Paradise… After all, I was not just looking for my nebulous Paradise, I was trying to create it, maybe not with my own hands, but by giving others the preconditions to make it. I had discovered a great number of beautiful virgin planets, I'd given them names, traded with them, helped them, and hoped that at least one of those worlds would, by growing and becoming more sophisticated, become Paradise in time. I had been sadly mistaken. Even the best of them, and Murphy was far from that, were merely a disguised version of Purgatory.

Geoffrey shifted in his chair and coughed, bringing me back to reality.

"And so, you came back," he repeated a third time. "I assume Earth greeted you with open arms?"

"In general, yes. I earned undying fame and a place in the history books, but it all seemed a little forced… I was what they called a black sheep. My ex-wife, my daughter, my grandchildren had died long before that, while my great-grandchildren, who were already in their seventies, looked unnaturally young. Cellular regeneration had not yet been invented, but genetic programming, rejuvenating treatments, and cloned organ transplants were already commonplace. Old age had passed into history, and I, with my gray hair and crow's feet, was an anachronism. Naturally, I was a heroic and popular anachronism: I was being given doctorates in fields I'd never heard of, I was being invited to banquets, women wanted to sleep with me, men wanted to befriend and have a drink with me… But my fame seemed ephemeral and unreal. No one was offering me a job, and it seemed I would have to read lectures to boy scouts and regale ladies' clubs with my memories until the end of my days!"

Geoffrey shook his head.

"Yes, old age and death… God's punishment… I have heard about that… The people of your era met such horrors that one sometimes wonders how they kept their sanity."

"Well, it was natural and common, so it wasn't as scary," I countered. "And, after the discovery of CR, many refused eternal life; either for religious reasons or out of fear of turning into senile youths in a century who did not remember their own names. But all these fears turned out to be faulty, and the opponents of CR simply died out."

"Obviously, you are not among them?"

"Of course not! I'm a pragmatist, and I prefer to see things as they are. During my first visit to Earth, I underwent liver and heart transplants, I had my blood vessels cleansed, protecting them from atherosclerosis for the next hundred years. After that, and after enjoying the bright light of glory, I got down to business. I had plenty of money, as my bank account had been growing for a few centuries, but there was a problem with the ship, the Star Conqueror, which I had since renamed Circe. It had once belonged to NASA, the US space agency, which was shut down in the twenty-second century, when private corporations took over humanity's expansion into the galaxy. All NASA property, both down on the ground and up in space, had been either decommissioned or sold off. As for the Conqueror, I mean my Circe, I think she had been decommissioned due to age or maybe sold, and not just once, as I found out that it was being claimed by three different owners: the Maine Space Museum, the Japanese Asahi Bank, and some shadowy Indonesian spice and drink export company, which was exhibiting the highest level of activity. The lawyers had already been greedily anticipating me rushing into this pile of bidders, but things went a little differently."

These memories warmed my heart, and I told Geoffrey about them with well-deserved pride. Actually, it had been the first and only time in all the millennia of my career when I engaged in piracy. Of course, it had been necessary, and, besides, I acted not under the influence of an impulse, but following serious deliberation. But who would risk casting a stone at me? I couldn't really allow the Circe to fall into the hands of the fans of old equipment from the state of Maine or the Indonesian lemonade traders!

I'd called for a press conference on my ship of about three hundred people, which allowed the holds of the Circe to be filled with delicacies and beverages, maybe even from those same Indonesian crooks. The press conference had met the expectations of the media; from atop my two hundred and twenty-four years, I spoke of the changes in the world, of the continuous expansion into space, of the problems of the ecology and the population explosion, basically, of cabbages and kings. After the fairly decent banquet, I made sure that all of my guests were loaded up into shuttles, engaged the main ion engine, and headed for the edge of the Solar System at full thrust. Simultaneously, I made my final announcement over radio. I said that I was giving up all of my pensions and any property on Earth; that my assets could be split up between the Japanese bankers, the Indonesian lemonade sellers, and the museum rats from Maine; finally, that I was giving up my Earth citizenship. I also said that I was expropriating the Conqueror, from then on known as the Circe, for only I, her pilot and captain, could find the ship her true purpose.

Then, after reaching the orbit of Mars, I switched from ion propulsion to the Ramsden drive, jumping twelve parsecs. I was heading to Logres, one of the Five Worlds, which had been settled during the first wave of emigration along with Iss, Lyoness, Penelope, and Camelot. In those days, Logres had been the most prosperous colony in human space, and I was hoping to sell, or maybe buy, something these. I arrived several days after the lightspeed dispatch from Earth and discovered that I was the subject of heavy discussion. Half of the population was demanding that I, in accordance with the instructions from the homeworld, be arrested and put in prison and my ship confiscated, although they had no idea how to do that, since I was in orbit, and Logres had no space shuttles in those days. As for the other half, those do-gooders wanted to accept me as an honorary colonist, then appropriate the Circe and take her apart to the last bolt and use the parts for their burgeoning industry. I made the Logresians a counteroffer: I declared that I was prepared to take the goods and raw materials, which Logres had plenty of, aboard, export this cargo to any other colonized world, and return with the raw materials and products their colony needed. After much argument (fortunately, they'd managed to avoid bloodshed), they agreed to sign a contract. That had been my first trade agreement, and I still shuddered when remembering it: all those convoluted clauses, obligatory conditions, and other crap. During all this, my former opponents still thought me a thief and a highway robber, while my allies considered me a trickster, a sly dog, or, at the very least least, a madman. I was watching Geoffrey as I regaled him with this part. Without a doubt, he also wanted to see me as a con artist and a madman, although for other reasons than the ancient Logresians. He did not interrupt me, did not comment on my story, only listened with tense attention, either to throw the hook at the right moment or mentally comparing my tale with the historical chronicles which may have been preserved on Murphy. By the way, that first contract of mine was being studied in all business courses; it had become the prototype of agreements of this kind and was even partially included in the Space Trader's Oath.

And so, after three months of bickering, the agreement with Logres had been signed, signifying the birth of interstellar commerce; I accepted the cargo and departed in the direction of Iss, located five and a half light years away. I'd been gone for about fifteen years, but I came back with a decent profit, which I split fifty-fifty with the Logresians. I took my share in fuel and goods and departed to travel the Five Worlds. On Iss and Penelope, I was greeted with joy, on Camelot I was met with restrained enthusiasm, while the people of Lyoness had, at first, attempted to rob me, but then I threatened to drop a third of my ion fuel and a lit match on their capital. As for Logres, my first partner, by that point we had excellent diplomatic ties. After entering Logres's orbit for the fifth time, I declared a rest stop. I already had enough assets to purchase my own goods, and I had intended to depart with a full cargo for the faraway Armorica, distant in the days when the Periphery Systems were only thirty or thirty-five parsecs away from Earth. After Armorica, I visited several dozen more planets, trading and accumulating information in the Circe's memory banks, carefully selecting cargo, locating the works of art sitting in the hold of my ship. Such things always had a price; and the older they were, the higher the price.

Finally, after visiting Logres for the twentieth or even twenty-second time, I set a course for Earth. I hadn't been there for an entire century, but it was only six years for me, from the Circe's relative timeframe, of course. Over that time, I'd turned from a pirate and a fugitive into a respected space trader, the founder of galactic commerce. Such success needed to be celebrated, and I wanted to do it on Old Earth.

Our conversation was long, and I told Geoffrey almost everything, without going into detailed descriptions of my visits to each world, of course. We made only one break, when I demanded and received tea and a fruitcake, as well as a shot of local brandy, which turned out to be pretty good, on par with Punjab. The treat was delivered by a guy with a hard gaze, one of the two who were standing on guard in the hallway, under the door to the dormitory of the venerable Archon.

When I was done with the tea, fruitcake, and alcohol, Geoffrey asked, "And how did Earth receive you? After all, if I'm not mistaken, you were a wanted man?"

"The statute of limitations had expired," I replied with a smile.

The reception had indeed been enthusiastic. Few in the new worlds like Murphy could picture the Solar planetary system. Besides Old Earth, there were also Venus and Mars, Luna and the gas giant moons, the Asteroid Belt, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, and most of these celestial bodies had been colonized back during the age of interplanetary travel. Besides that, there were also hundreds of cities and stations in outer space, and some of them were more populated than the colonies on Titan, Ganymede, and Callisto. In other words, there were plenty of people both on Old Earth and around it.

I had exited the Ramsden field halfway between Jupiter and Saturn, in the so-called dark and cold emptiness. But as soon as I had sent my identification signal, my radio nearly exploded; the emptiness around me suddenly came alive, and a hail of greetings, invitations, and congratulations in both verse and prose. This torrent continued for the next several days, while the main ion engines were carrying me to Earth. And so, the opinion of my old homeworld about me had radically changed, purely due to sentimentality, I assume. A curious metamorphosis: the last time, I had been an insubordinate pilot, and I was greeted as a hero; this time I had been a thief, but the reception I got was fit for a king. Most likely, the truth was that, for an entire century, Earth had been receiving news of my activity in the Five Worlds. The colonial administration had been favorable to me, and, as a result, all the reports from Logres, Penelope, and other planets had taken on a gentle pink hue and that barely noticeable aftertaste of legend that people loved so much. The colonies were saying that I had been supplying them with vital materials and equipment, that I'd prevented an economic disaster in one place and founded a whole new branch of industry in another, that I had saved someone and helped someone else with a word of advice. As the colonists had claimed, wherever I came, I started an era of progress and prosperity, a renaissance in the arts, and a clear rise in the morale. I wasn't too sure about the latter; that claim smelled of Periphery sentimentality, just as the nicknames I had received: Trader from the Stars, Friend of the Border, Old Cap Frenchie… And so on and so forth.

In other words, all these reports and dispatches had been pouring water on my mill, and, as the saying went, little strokes fell great oaks. Now my unauthorized expropriation of the Circe was being interpreted as an act of a Man of Destiny, who had decided to serve humankind, as an act of supreme humanism or as a farsighted prediction of a titan of mind and spirit, who'd cut through the bureaucratic tape. In reality, it had been nothing of the sort! In those years, I was not yet yearning to find my Paradise or create it by supporting colonists on some pleasant world; I was merely looking for something to do and to make a little profit. But, to be perfectly honest, I had enjoyed the flattery. Naturally, I hadn't imagined myself to be an angel from heaven, but who knew, maybe it was the tales of Old Cap Frenchie's nobility that inspired me to look for Paradise. But that had still been many thousands of years and many thousands of parsecs away…

Finding myself back on Earth, I made a nice profit off my colonial goods and also discovered that I had managed to cheat death. CR, cellular regeneration, was still a new thing, but few doubted that the procedure was harmless. The lines to undergo it stretched for dozens of miles, but who deserved to get immortality more the great Trader from the Stars, the famous Friend of the Border, Old Cap Frenchie?.. I mentioned my wish at a party in my honor, and, for the next several days, three of the best clinics offered to take care of my mortal body. Following nostalgic memories, I chose the one where I had received my heart and liver transplants, and, a week later, I became Methuselah. During that visit, besides immortality, I also purchased a spacious boat to avoid being dependent on my clients' shuttles and upgraded the Circe's reactor. Before that, my power plant had operated on uranium and plutonium, but these elements had a bad reputation since medieval times, as they had been used to make bombs. I had it replaced with a thorium reactor that used slow neutrons, which I, not counting some small modifications, continued to use to this day.

Here, Archon Geoffrey interrupted me with a hand gesture. He wanted to know why a thorium reactor was preferable to a uranium one. I explained that uranium had long ago become synonymous with nuclear danger, and that people still reacted to it as a threat. It had probably become a subconscious reflex; I had been to worlds, where a ship with a uranium reactor was perceived as a source of potential aggression. That was partly true, if one recalled Captain Phil Regos and Summerland.

Geoffrey nodded and made a sign of the cross.

"Yes, I have read about that… A frightening story! But the ruler of that world usurped power and was doing unrighteous deeds, so Regos became the vengeful hand of God, just like the comet that fell on us."

I found myself agreeing with that claim, even though the Archon and I were coming from two completely different backgrounds. But he wasn't finished.

"If we get back to nuclear war… That must be something terrible! More terrible than the fall of the Hammer! For the Hammer embodied the will of the Creator, whereas wars between people are, without a doubt, provoked by the Devil!" Geoffrey suddenly gave me a suspicious look and asked, "Have you participated in them, Captain French?"

Despite being a staunch atheist, I was also tempted to make the sign of the cross.

"The Lord has spared me from that, venerable Archon! But I've been to Brunnershabn thirty years after a nuclear war, I've seen all the consequences and helped to re-colonize the planet. There had been not a soul, not a single living creature left there… Everything needed to be restored: the soil, the plant life, the seas, and the rivers… The colonists renamed this world Transformation, and this is its name to this day."

The Archon shuddered, as if just now realizing my age.

"That happened ten thousand years ago…" His lips were moving like two tiny pale snakes. "Ten thousand years ago… And seven thousand years later, the people of Transformation launched a colony ship to Murphy, to settle this world in the Lord's glory… So you must have met my distant ancestors, Captain French?"

"Undoubtedly, my friend."

"And this tragedy on Brunnershabn… and on the other warring worlds… What do you think caused it? The Devil's trickery?"

I didn't want to ruin his illusions, but I honestly believed that Old Nick had nothing to do with it.

"Why would the Devil destroy an entire world, worthy Archon? It's far too crude a method for the Great Soul Catcher… He's an avid gambler and would have, in time, received a lot more than two or twenty-two million charred corpses… No, don't blame the Devil, for all this was done by people! Someone's fear… someone's vanity… literal and stupid following of orders… unwillingness to ask for advice or listen to it… finally, bloodlust… Pick any reason! But I'm sure that it happened only due to human stupidity and immorality."

"Or sinfulness…"

"Just another word to indicate immorality, my dear Archon."

Silence fell; then the Archon muttered, "Murphy is also guilty of a sin… Our world was punished—"

"By God or Providence, if you will. But Brunnershabn died because of people."

Geoffrey didn't seem to be listening to me. He continued to whisper, occasionally making the sign of the cross.

"Punishment fell on Murphy for the people's sins… For they walked through the darkness, engaging in money-grubbing and adultery, cherishing pride and ambition, mocking the Lord's servants, who only wanted to turn them to the light… But the light that comes from our Creator shines for all who wish to see it… But they did not wish… they did not… Could it be because we, servants of the all-merciful God and the conductors of light did not apply sufficient effort?.. And God punished us along with the wicked… But now… now!.."

Doubtless, my present companion and his colleagues were now building their own version of Paradise, but it did not suit me. In my Paradise, people won't need to walk around in gray cloaks, whispering prayers and casting their eyes downward. And they would not, naturally, be carrying around neurowhips to spur their neglectful fellow citizens into piousness.

When I was tired of Geoffrey's muttering, I smiled and coughed.

"Forgive me, venerable Archon, but the voice of faith is drowning out the voice of reason in your soul."

He bared his teeth.

"And you don't like that, Captain? Are you among those who find the voice of faith unpleasant? But which voice can I speak with then?.. When the Hammer fell, I'd been an archon for a century and a half, and before that I held the rank of archolyte for two hundred years… For all those centuries, I have watched the torch of faith dying in the hearts of men, watched the Devil's triumph! My church was empty, I was preaching to oak pews until my citizenship was revoked… And not just me! Even the Archimandrite of the Holy Basilica himself… even he… He was listed in all computer files as a manager of a small charity! He, who had been teaching and inspiring us for centuries!.." Geoffrey choked from the outrage and finished, "You can imagine what has been done to us, the Lord's servants! But now God has granted us power and strength, and we will lead this world out of the abyss of sin. The Hammer has struck down the wicked, sinners consumed one another, as written in our holy texts, and then the Archonate has led all the survivors to the light and a new life. Faith has saved our world, only faith! And it may yet save all the other godless savages who walk in the darkness like you."

I was looking at him with bitterness and barely concealed distaste. This fanatic was the antithesis to all my notions of justice, of the purpose of man, and of human dignity. He had lived twenty or fifty times less than me, but it was a significant number of years nonetheless; enough time to learn something useful, besides the blind faith in his own infallibility. He was horrified by nuclear war, but everything that was happening on Murphy was no less destructive and sad. War mutilated the body, while ideology did that to the soul, and that couldn't be corrected by any biosculptor… Only by time, time! How much time? A hundred years? Two hundred? A thousand? Archon Geoffrey currently held great authority, and, for each young creature on Murphy, for each child born after the catastrophe, his voice was the voice of God. And no one argued with God… At the very least, it took many years, or even centuries, to build up enough courage to do so.

I also had no intension of arguing with Geoffrey or lecturing him, even though the Devil—or was it God?—was tempting me to answer this obscurant. But then I recalled that I was merely a key, a living key, with which the Archon wanted to open the Circe's holds with the supply of precious metals. This brought me back to reality, and I decided to change the subject.

"We have wasted a lot of time, venerable Archon," I said, "and I wish to thank you for the interest you have expressed towards such a wretched sinner. I assume you wish to make me an offer of some sort, but, at the moment, I am too agitated by my recollections and do not wish to get back to practical matters, which require a clear head. I am willing to delay my departure by ten or fifteen days, as long as I will be permitted to entertain myself a little in your capital, under the supervision of the Holy Archonate, of course. Perhaps, a harmless spectacle of some sort… A performance… that would satisfy me. I am even prepared to purchase the rights to the holographic recording, if you don't try to rob me blind."

Upon hearing this request, Archon Geoffrey gave a majestic nod. After that, I was escorted to my shuttle in the courtyard of the Holy Basilica by the two fellows with hard gazes. I sealed the hatch, got into the seat, and spent several minutes pondering the Archon's hints about my loneliness. There was something hiding in all that! As well as behind his interest in my biography. He was likely trying to estimate how much he would be able to get from me, which meant that I would be offered a very unusual commodity. There were such things, after all, the price of which depended on the buyer: one person might not even give a wooden nickel for them, while another would give his life.

Having decided to keep my eyes peeled with Geoffrey, I hit the autopilot button and rose into the sky, to my dear Circe.