At All Costs

"I'll have to think about that," Detweiler said, after a moment. "I felt your original arguments for restraint had considerable merit. But what you've just suggested also has merit. Keeping something like this in reserve, as a total surprise, is always tempting. But if you keep it in reserve too long, then you never use it at all."

He pursed his lips for several seconds, then shrugged.

"Jerome, you and I will have to discuss this. Give some thought to the pros and cons and sit down with Isabel before she leaves. Work out a list of potential targets-not a big one, I don't want to flash this capability around any more obviously then we have to, however unlikely it is that someone will figure out how it works. At the very least, though, we can put the groundwork in place and have Renzo's people begin looking for the best... vehicles."

"Of course, Albrecht."

"Good!" Detweiler smacked both palms on his desktop and stood. "And on that note, let's get out of here. Evelina's brought in a brand new chef, and I think all of you are going to be amazed at what he can do with Old Earth rock lobster!"

Chapter Three

The interior of Protector's Cathedral was like some huge, living jewel box.

Honor sat in the Stranger's Aisle to the left of the nave, immediately adjacent to the sanctuary. She, her parents and siblings, James MacGuiness, Nimitz, and Willard Neufsteiler, all of them in Harrington green, shared the Aisle's first pew with the Manticoran and Andermani ambassadors and consuls from each of the other members of the Manticoran Alliance. The two rows of pews behind them were solidly packed with officers in the uniform of the Protector's Own: Aldredo Yu, Warner Caslet, Cynthia Gonsalves, Harriet Benson-Dessouix and her husband Henri, Susan Phillips, and dozens of others who had escaped from the prison planet Hades with Honor. Their uniforms and the diplomats' off-world formal attire, in the styles of more than half a dozen different worlds, stood out sharply, but each of them also wore the dark, violet-black armbands or veils of Grayson-style mourning, as well.

That touch of darkness ran through the cathedral like a thread of sorrow, all the more obvious beside the rich, jewel-toned colors of formal Grayson attire, and Honor tasted its echo in the emotions surging about her. The emotional overtones of the Church of Humanity Unchained were always like some deep, satisfying well of renewal and faith, one she could physically experience thanks to her empathic link to Nimitz. But today there was that strand of sadness, flowing from every corner of the vast cathedral.

Brilliant pools of dense, colored sunlight poured down through the huge stained-glass windows of the eastern wall, and more spilled down like some chromatic waterfall through the enormous stained-glass skylight above the sanctuary. She tasted the grief reaching out from those deep, still pools of light and from the drifting, light-struck tendrils of incense on quiet feet of organ music. It came in different shapes and gradations, from people who had been personally touched by Howard Clinkscales to people who had known him only as a distant figure, yet it was also touched with a sense of celebration. A swelling faith that the man whose death they had come to mourn, and whose life they had come to celebrate, had met the Test of his life in triumph.

She gazed at the coffin, draped in both the planetary flag of Grayson and the steading flag of Harrington. The silver staff of Clinkscales' office as Harrington's regent and the sheathed sword he had carried as the commanding general of Planetary Security before the Mayhew Restoration lay crossed atop the flags, gleaming in the spill of light. So many years of service, she thought. So much capacity for growth and change. So much ability to give and so much kindness, hidden behind that crusty, curmudgeonly exterior he'd cultivated so assiduously. So much to miss.

The organ music swelled, then stopped, and a quiet stir ran through the cathedral as old-fashioned mechanical latches clacked loudly and its ancient, bas-relief doors swung ponderously open. For a moment there was complete and total silence, and then the organ reawoke in a surge of majestic power and the massed voices of the Protector's Cathedral Choir burst into soaring song.

The Cathedral Choir was universally regarded as the finest choir of the entire planet. That was saying quite a lot for a world which took its sacred music so seriously, but as its glorious voices rose in a hymn not of sorrow but of triumph, it demonstrated how amply it deserved its reputation. The torrent of music and trained voices poured over Honor in a magnificent tide which seemed to simultaneously focus and amplify the upwelling cyclone of the emotions all about her as the procession advanced down the cathedral's nave behind the crucifers and thurifers. The clergy and acolytes glittered in rich fabrics and embroidery, and Reverend Jeremiah Sullivan, resplendent in the embroidery and jewel-encrusted vestments of his high office, moved at the center of the procession, with the violet-black mourning stole around his neck like a slash of darkness.

They advanced steadily, majestically, through the storm of music and sunlight and the great, glowing dome of faith which Honor wished all of them could perceive as clearly as she herself did. It was at moments like this-vastly different though they were from the quieter, more introspective services of the faith in which she had been raised-that she felt closest to the heart and soul of Grayson. The people of her adopted planet were far from perfect, yet the bedrock strength of their thousand years of faith gave them a depth, a center, which very few other worlds could equal.

The procession reached the sanctuary, and its members dispersed with the solemn precision of an elite drill team. Reverend Sullivan stood motionless before the high altar, gazing at the mourning-draped cross, while the acolytes and assisting clergy flowed around him towards their places. He stood there until the hymn ended and the organ music faded once again to silence, then turned to face the filled Cathedral, lifted both hands in a gesture of benediction, and raised his voice.

"And his lord said unto him," he said into that silence, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord."

He stood for a long moment, hands still lifted, then lowered them and gazed out over the Cathedral's packed pews.

"Brothers and Sisters in God," he said then, quietly, and yet in a voice which carried clearly in the cathedral's magnificent acoustics, "we are gathered today in the sight of the Tester, the Intercessor, and the Comforter to celebrate the life of Howard Samson Jonathan Clinkscales, beloved husband of Bethany, Rebecca, and Constance, father of Howard, Jessica, Marjorie, John, Angela, Barbara, and Marian, servant of the Sword, Regent of Harrington Steading, and always and in all ways the faithful servant of the Lord our God. I ask you now to join me in prayer, not to mourn his death, but to commemorate his triumphant completion of the Great Test of life as today he enters indeed into the joy of his Lord."

For all its rich pageantry and centuries of tradition, the liturgy of the Church of Humanity Unchained was remarkably simple. The funeral mass flowed smoothly, naturally, until, after the lesson and the gospel, it was time for the Memory. Every Grayson funeral had the Memory-the time set aside for every mourner to recall the life of the person they had lost and for any who so chose to share that memory with all the others. No one was ever forced to share a memory, but anyone who wished to was welcome to do so.