2950-12-13 – Tales from the Service: The Socialite’s Ambush
As Grand Hierophant Toloni’s hulking groundcar finally lumbered out of the rapid-fabbed tenement complex erected for the Penderite refugees, Captain Sandra Ibsen turned in her seat to watch the crowd’s somber waving. The lack of hope on their faces haunted her; these people had lost their homes on MacNeil’s End, and now the good news that their greatest pontiff had arrived to help them find a new place to live seemed not to have registered with most.
“They have been promised much since their world was lost.” Toloni, as usual, seemed to read Sandra’s thoughts. “Promises which were not delivered. When we embark them aboard Tabernacle and De Angelis, they will begin to smile again.”
Sandra nodded, still watching the crowd. A thin cordon of guards from the Maribel planetary authority held them back, as if worried they might stampede after Toloni’s groundcar, but that seemed the least likely thing in the Reach. “It’s just… They’re Penderites. Why don’t they trust you to do what you say?”
Toloni chuckled. “Sister Ibsen, where in our doctrines is absolute faith in men commanded? It is no sin to be wary.”
Sandra shook her head and turned reluctantly toward the view ahead. As the groundcar crested a low rise, the distant spires of the financial district of Maribel’s sprawling spaceport metropolis rose into view; the land closer at hand was a haphazard, imperfect grid of streets dividing low-rise buildings of all kinds, built seemingly at random wherever space was available. Above it all, a swarm of lighters, aircars, airtrams, lifters, patrol craft, and other aircraft flitted across a city-scape thirty-five miles across on its narrowest axis. The Penderites were lucky; the administration had put them at the outskirts of this miserable warren of humanity’s worst excesses.
“It is almost time for our next appointment.” Toloni flicked down a meta-lens mirror from the overhead paneling and playfully checked the intricate folds of his robe of office. “I confess I have not yet told you what your part to play in it is.”
“No, Your Eminence.” Sandra frowned. “Again, I must protest-”
“We will be entirely safe.” Toloni waved his hand toward the door at the front of their bubble-canopied passenger compartment, which Sandra knew led to the lower level of the groundcar’s interior. The vehicle, nearly the size of an airtram, contained a galley, a lavatory, and ample stowage for cargo. The forward canopy housing the driver and co-driver, and the rear canopy housing the security command post, could also access the lower deck via steep ladders. “You aren’t dressed properly for our meeting with Miss Brahms-Walton. The steward has something more fitting.”
At first, Sandra wanted to protest that Toloni had practically designed the Holy Tabernacle officer’s dress uniform which she was now wearing, and that if this was not sufficient attire for high-class company, that he should see to replacing it, but that familiar sly twinkle in the old man’s eye made her think better of it. Toloni wasn’t referring to more formal clothes – he was talking about a disguise.
Sandra stood and bowed slightly to the pontiff. “This is still a bad idea.” Steadying herself against the vehicle’s rolling motion, she headed down below, where she indeed found the white-clad steward holding a long black garment bag.
“I know.” Sandra waved the man away before he could speak. “Give it to me.”
The man handed over the bag, then scuttled out of the way as Sandra dragged it into the groundcar’s onboard lavatory to change. Designed for Toloni’s broad-shouldered frame, the lavatory was more than large enough for her to open the garment bag and stand back to get a good look at what she was going to wear.
“Of course. Of course.” Sandra spun on her heel, but paused with her hand resting on the door-latch, fuming, but knowing that no amount of storming upstairs to protest would do any good. Where Toloni, a widower of more than twenty years whose staff was almost entirely men – Penderite men at that – had found an outfit like that would be a mystery for the ages. Certainly no Penderite woman would ever wear such a gaudy, tech-flouting monstrosity. Sandra, of course, wasn’t technically a Penderite. She’d been raised by faithful of the Order, true, but no career spacer could ever hope to keep the tenets of Penderite faith.
Scowling the whole time, Sandra stripped off her dress-uniform boots, tunic, breeches, and undergarments. Shivering slightly, she knew she would feel no less exposed once she donned Toloni’s ridiculous concept of a disguise.
Assembling the outfit around her frame, Sandra was doubly annoyed by the fact that everything fit perfectly. Of course it would – it was smart-fabric which had been programmed with the very same parameters as her onboard uniform. The shimmering beetle-blue skirt hugged her hips all the way down to her knees without a single crease. The ridiculously gaudy three-part top, no part of which adequately covered her on its own, flattered her figure when assembled, and did more hinting at the presence of skin below than showing any of it directly. The detached sleeves, a pointless accoutrement so loved by high fashion back in the Core Worlds, seated snugly against her forearms like an aquamarine-studded second skin, and the various bangles, which she hoped were only gold-plated, threw off showers of light whenever she moved. She could feel the presence of tiny holo-projectors sewn into the get-up at several places, but they remained, for the moment, blissfully inactive.
At least, Sandra grudgingly acknowledged, the outfit had been designed for the rich heiress with some sense. Well concealed pockets in the ruffles below both her arms were more than large enough for her sidearm, and when she put her gun into one, it disappeared entirely.
Picking up the shoes – fiendishly tall platform heels which Sandra didn’t dare wear while walking inside a moving vehicle – and leaving the lavatory, Sandra shot a dagger-sharp glare at the steward, who was waiting outside. His mouth, open to say something already, clamped shut, and his eyes dove to the deck, where they stayed until she was past him and climbing back to the huge bubble-canopy.
“This is your idea of a disguise, Your Eminence?” Sandra gestured down at herself. “I look like an overgrown Centauri wood-scarab.”
“You look nothing like a Penderite, and yet the disguise is not complete.” Toloni, concealing his mirth very badly, gestured to one of the storage cabinets along the sides of the compartment. “There is some sort of cosmetics device in there.”
Sandra found a rapid makeup applicator, already loaded and programmed, waiting in the cabinet. “Do you know how much I hate these things?”
“They do seem the tool of the vain and technologically dependant.” Toloni shrugged. “If you would prefer to do it manually, the steward might have-”
“No, no.” Sandra sighed, then closed her eyes and pressed the curved surface of the applicator to her face. There was a brief sensation of heat and bright light as the device misted its pre-programmed makeup pattern onto her features, then a bright, cheery all-clear beep when it was done.
Flipping down one of the metalens mirrors, Sandra was unsurprised to see a thick, gaudy, layer of makeup as well as metallic blue eye shadow and lip-color. “Why do I need to be a harlequin?”
Toloni shrugged. “I am told this is the pinnacle of fashion here.”
Sandra shuddered, remembering that Toloni was trying to bushwhack a datasphere fashionista who would generally try to avoid a direct confrontation with the pontiff or any of his subordinates. “There’s no way I can pretend to be stupid enough for this to work.”
Toloni leaned across from his seat and lowered his voice, clearly enjoying himself immensely. “We’ll let you out a block away. Here’s what you need to do…”
Captain Ibsen’s account will continue next week. Having been to several high-society parties on Maribel, I can verify that outfits like the one described would fit right in.
The more devious side of Grand Hierophant Toloni is quite interesting here; in particular, it seems that he might be a bit less technology averse than he would prefer people to believe. True, he has plenty of henchmen who could help him arrange such an elaborate disguise, but most of them, as Captain Ibsen pointed out, are Penderites too.
Perhaps since the Penderites, unlike the Roman Catholics, have no doctrine of the limited infallibility of their head pontiff, he feels free to be flexible with the order’s strictures. The existence of Tabernacle itself seems to suggest this as the most likely explanation.
