Beside him Hardcastle came to attention and snapped off a perfect salute. “Sirs, I greet you in peace on behalf of Great Britain, the European Union, the United Nations, and the free peoples of our Earth. I am Captain Edward Hardcastle, commanding the Heinlein, and I would like to introduce you to my colleagues - ”
The man who wore the red waistband waved his hand to cut him off. “Quite enough,” he said in accented but perfect English. “You appear in our skies without warning or explanation, with such a device - unknown to rational thought - certain to terrify our good citizens in these times of uncertainty and struggle. You claim to bring peace from countries I know have never existed. Why should I believe anything you say?”
Hardcastle paused mid-breath, visibly rattled, and glanced back at his Contact Specialists. “Ah…”
Le Roux slid smoothly between Mayfield and Hardcastle, an easy, unfazed smile on his cherubic face. One hand held the Contact Case; the other was stretched out, palm up, to show that he meant no harm. “Monsieur, please, let me apologise,” he said. “We have not meant to startle you at all, but unfortunately we have found it somewhat hard to lessen the impact of our arrivals - we just can’t make the ship any smaller right now.”
He bowed his head formally. “Might I have the honour of your name, monsieur?”
The older man scowled, his face set into hard lines and angles. For a moment Mayfield thought things would start to get ugly, but then the priest sniffed and gave a jerky nod. “I am Joseph Marilley, Bishop of Lausanne and Geneva by the grace of God. This is Monsignor Guillard, Calificador and Fiscal of this diocese; these others are his assistants.”
A surprised grunt in Mayfield’s ear from Cerner: “Calificador? What?”
Le Roux carried on as though he had heard nothing. “A pleasure to meet you all, sirs. Normally we would already have been in contact by radio or by video, but it does seem that we have hit some technical difficulties on this trip. As it is clear that our presence has unsettled you, I’ve already suggested to my Captain here that rather than overloading you with information it may be much more beneficial for all of us if we allow you to go through our project overview at your leisure.”
As Marilley and Guillard looked up at him with suspicion, Le Roux opened the Contact Case and turned it towards them so that they could see the contents. A ring-binder stamped with the Heinlein’s crest and the EU flag, with the proposals outlined in full; a small wallet of DVD-Rs that held hours of visual data; and a fully charged notebook PC preloaded with a selection of library data from the Heinlein’s trips. Enough to whet any appetite, Mayfield thought.
Clearly the Bishop thought differently. He gestured to Guillard, who reached in to take the ring-binder and flick through it for a moment, his hawk-like face betraying no emotion at all.
“I have news,” Cerner announced. “I believe you have just met the Inquisition.”
Mayfield struggled to keep a straight face. It was one of the most absurd statements he had ever heard. A furtive glance around at the rest of the team told him that they too were having problems with Cerner’s conclusions.
“This is for us?” Guillard asked. His voice was a lot softer than his demeanour suggested. When Le Roux nodded affirmative, the Calificador closed the case with care, lifted it from his hands, and passed it to one of the junior priests behind him. “Prenez-le au tribunal. Dites aux Enquêteurs que je les rejoindrai bientôt.”
The man hurried off with the Contact Case and Guillard turned back to them with a satisfied smile. “Thank you for your gift, Monsieur. I would advise you to return to your vessel now. We will signal for you should we wish to resume this conversation. One thing more, Captain: to avoid alarming our citizens any further than you already have done, please refrain from leaving your vessel until we signal for you. I trust that you and your crew will understand this necessity?”
Hardcastle nodded slowly. “Of course,” he said. “we are but visitors, after all. And the views from up there are stunning,” he added, with a poor attempt at humour.
Guillard exchanged an opaque look with his Bishop. “Yes,” he said at last. “They are.”
Without even a farewell, the priests turned and retreated quickly toward the terminal.
Hardcastle waited until they were out of earshot before he said anything. “Well, that was unexpected.”
Mayfield grunted nervously, but his mouth twitched in a barely suppressed smile. The captain glared at him.
“If you even start to say what I think you’re going to say, I’ll have you on chemicals duty for the next two weeks.”
Mayfield contrived to look innocent, a pained puppy-dog expression that didn’t suit his sharp, angular face at all. He was spared having to reply by an interjection over the coded frequency that fed into their headsets.
“Unexpected, yes,” Erik Cerner said, “but well within the bounds of probability. Historically speaking, and I know Kate agrees with me, this timeline appears to be logically sequential to our last stop. In fact, this is a perfect illustration of just how significant a single branching event can be.”
The Heinlein’s theoretical historian sounded more excited and energised than he had done in a while, Mayfield thought. Of course, Cerner counted Renaissance and late-mediaeval history amongst his passions - the elements of the field that he enjoyed outside his day job. He must be bouncing up and down in his seat right now, Mayfield decided with a smile.
He glanced over his shoulder: the welcoming party had already disappeared into the grandly-pillared buildings of the terminal. Black-garbed soldiers still lined the edges of the field; he had no doubt they were being closely watched with every step they took. Mayfield wasn’t so worried about these soldiers - at least he could see them, he thought. At that distance, and in such numbers, they had to be more for show and for containment than for anything else. What bothered him more were the closed hangars at the edge of the landing strip. The authorities had gone to great lengths to prevent the Heinlein’s contact party from seeing any kind of flight-capable technology.
“Pope Sixtus IV is generally considered - in our timeline anyway - to have held some of the worst excesses of the Spanish Inquisition in check. At the same time he was himself held back by Louis XI, who held a royal veto over any decrees that the papacy wanted to promulgate in France. Now, at our last stop the library data we retrieved indicated that Louis XI did not uphold that veto. The Sanction of Bourges was never put in place. Given this timeline’s proximity to that one, I would postulate that the same has happened here.”
Cerner paused to take a breath and Rhosyn Murphy, the other Contact Specialist in the small party, took the opportunity to break in.
“And the Inquisition? I thought that was a strictly mediaeval phenomenon.”
“And you’d be wrong,” Cerner corrected her. “The Inquisition was active in various guises until the early nineteenth century. What if, in this timeline, Sixtus encouraged the Inquisition rather than attempted to hold it back, and was also able to force Louis XI to introduce the same thing in France?”
Mayfield checked the field again, turning in a complete circle, letting the others theorise while he kept them safe. The more he heard from Cerner, the less he liked this set-up. It would have helped enormously - not to mention soothing his paranoia - had they been able to see any kind of historical data before they initiated the contact meeting, but this world didn’t appear to have any kind of open information network. Right now, after a tense few minutes spent introducing themselves to a small quorum of stiff-necked men who turned out to be senior members of the Inquisition, he wanted nothing more than to be back aboard the Heinlein, a good mile above the ground.
