John C. Wright - Guest Law

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GUEST LAW

by John C. Wright

____________________________

Reprinted in Year's Best SF 3

HarperPrism

ISBN 0-06-105901-3

eBook scanned & proofed by binwiped 11-10-02 [v1.0]

The night of deep space is endless and empty and dark. There is nothing behind

which to hide. But ships can be silent, if they are slow.

The noble ship Procrustes was silent as a ghost. She was black-hulled, and ran

without beacons or lights. She was made of anti-radar alloys and smooth

ceramics, shark-finned with panels meant to diffuse waste-heat slowly, and

tiger-striped with electronic webs meant to guide certain frequen-cies around

the hull without rebounding.

If she ever were seen, a glance would show that she was meant to be slow. Her

drive was fitted with baffle upon baf-fle, cooling the exhaust before it was

expelled, a dark drive, non-radioactive, silent as sprayed mist. Low energy in

the drive implied low thrust. Further, she had no centrifuge sec-tion, nor did

she spin. This meant that her crew were lightweights, their blood and bones

degenerated or adapted to microgravity, not the sort who could tolerate high

boosts.

This did not mean Procrustes was not a noble ship. Warships can be slow; only

their missiles need speed.

And so it was silently, slowly, that Procrustes ap-proached the stranger's

cold vessel.

"We are gathered, my gentlemen, to debate whether this new ship here viewed is

noble, or whether she is unarmed; and, if so, whether and how the guest law

applies. It pleases us to hear you employ the second level of speech; for this

is a semi-informal occasion, and briefer honorifics we permit."

The captain, as beautiful and terrifying as something from a children's

Earth-story, floated nude before the viewing well. The bridge was a cylinder

of gloom, with only control-lights winking like constellations, the viewing

well shining like a full moon.

The captain made a gesture with her fan toward Smith and spoke: "Engineer, you

do filth-work . . ." (by which she meant manual labor) "... which makes you

familiar with machines." (She used the term "familiar" because it simply was

not done to say a lowlife had "knowledge" or "exper-tise.") "It would amuse us

to hear your conclusions touching and concerning the stranger's ship."

Smith was never allowed high and fore to the bridge, except when he was

compelled to go, as he was now. His hands had been turned off at the wrists,

since lowlifes should not touch controls.

Smith was in terror of the captain, but loved her too, since she was the only

highlife who called smiths by their old title. The captain was always polite,

even to tinkers or drifters or bondsman.

She had not even seemed to notice when Smith had hooked one elbow around one

of the many guy-wires that webbed the dark long cylinder of the bridge. Some

of the offi-cers and knights who floated near the captain had turned away or

snorted with disgust when he had clasped that rope. It was a foot-rope, meant

for toes, not a hand rope. But Smith's toes were not well formed, not

coordinated. He had not been born a lightweight.

Smith was as drab as a hairless monkey next to the cap-tain's vavasors and

carls, splendid in their head-to-toe tattoos which displayed heraldries and

victory-emblems. These nobles all kept their heads pointed along the captain's

axis (an old saying ran: "the captain's head is always up!"), whereas Smith

was offset 90 degrees clockwise, legs straight, present-ing a broad target.

(This he did for the same reason a man under acceleration would bow or kneel;

a posture where one could not move well to defend oneself showed submission.)

Smith could see the stranger's ship in the viewing well. She was a slim and

handsome craft, built along classical lines, an old, a very old design, of

such craftsmanship as was rarely seen today. She was sturdy: built for high

accelerations, and proudly bearing long thin structures forward of antennae of

a type that indicated fearlessly loud and long-range radar. The engine block

was far aft on a very long and graceful insulation shaft. The craft had

evidently been made in days when the safety of the engine serfs still was a

concern.

Her lines were sleek. (Not, Smith thought secretly, like Procrustes, whose low

speed and lack of spin allowed her to grow many modules, ugly extrusions, and

asymmetric protu-berances.)

But the stranger's ship was old. Rust, and ice from frozen oxygen, stained the

hull where seals had failed.

Yet she still emitted, on radio, the cheerful welcome-code. Merry

green-and-red running lights were still lit. Microwave detectors showed

radiations from the aft section of her hull, which might still be inhabited,

even though the fore sections were cold and silent. Numbers and pictoglyphs

flickered on a small screen to one side of the main image, showing telemetry

and specific readings.

Smith studied the cylinder's radius and rate of spin. He calculated, and then

he said, "Glorious Captain, the lowest deck of the stranger ship has

centrifugal acceleration of exactly 32 feet per second per second."

The officers looked eye to eye, hissing with surprise.

The chancellor nodded the gaudy plume that grew from his hair and eyebrows.

"This number has ancient significance! Some of the older orders of eremites

still use it. They claim that it provides the best weight for our bones.

Perhaps this is a religious ship."

One of the younger knights, a thin, dapple-bellied piebald wearing silk

speed-wings running from his wrists to ankles, now spoke up: "Great Captain,

perhaps she is an Earth ship, inhabited by machine intelligences ... or

ghosts!"

The other nobles opened their fans, and held them in front of their faces. If

no derisive smiles were seen, then there was no legal cause for duel. The

young knight might be illiter-ate, true, most young knights were, but the long

kick-talons he wore on his calves had famous names.

The captain said, "We are more concerned for the stranger's nobility, than her

... ah ... origin." There were a few smirks at that. A ship from Earth,

indeed! All the old horror-tales made it clear that nothing properly called

human was left on Earth, except, perhaps, as pets or specimens of the

machines. The Earthmind had never had much interest in space.

The chancellor said, "Those racks forward ..." (he pointed at what were

obviously antennae) "... may house weaponry, great Captain, or particle beam

weapons, if the stranger has force enough in her drive core to sustain a

weapon-grade power flow."

The captain looked toward Smith, "Concerning this ship's energy architecture,

Engineer, have you any feelings or intuitions?" She would not ask him for

"deductions" or "con-clusions," of course.

Smith felt grateful that she had not asked him directly to answer the

question; he was not obligated to contradict the chancellor's idiotic

assertions. Panicle beam indeed! The man had been pointing at a radio dish.

Very polite, the captain, very proper. Politeness was crit-ically important

aboard a crowded ship.

The captain was an hermaphrodite. An ancient law for-bade captains to marry

(or to take lowlife concubines) from crew aboard. The Captain's Wife must be

from off-ship, either as gift or conquest or to cement a friendly alliance.

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