Paul Di Filippo - WikiWorld

Centred in the plaza was the Palace of Continuity, an imposing old stone pile several stories in height that I had come to regard as my second home. (Or perhaps my true home.) Heterogeneous in the extreme, due to numerous faddish additions over the centuries, the thick-walled building and its brocade-curtained rooms offered the prospect of coolness. I hurried across the plaza, eager for relief.

I was not alone of course. Scores of supplicants in varying degrees of dress streamed toward the public entrances of the Palace, eager for adjudications, adjustments and arbitrations regarding their individual Templates. These petitioners would be dealt with efficiently by the vast bureaucracy, legions of clerks and counsellors trained in the logic and rigours and precedents of continuity.

It was only the rarest of extraordinary circumstances that would bring a case to my individual attention.

Close to the Palace, my course deviated from the masses, as I headed for my private entrance.

There I encountered one of the familiar doormen. I had never bothered to learn his name over the many years of our brief morning ritual, but his ruddy, sweaty, bulbous-nosed face was as well-known to me as my cousin Pim’s. In his elaborate braided uniform he was obviously sweltering.

“Welcome, Grand Consistor.”

“Don’t you have a cool drink handy?” I asked, as he nodded me inside.

“No, sir. Begging your pardon, the iced-tea cart is late this morning, Grand Consistor.”

“That certainly won’t do. I’ll attend to this matter immediately. Meanwhile, buck up!”

“Yes, sir! Very good, sir!”

Inside the private stairwell leading directly to my chambers, blessed coolth descended on my own glistening brow. I could feel the sweat in my thick beard begin to chill down.

Yards of shelved books, just a fraction of the extensive corpus of continuity studies, greeted me intimately as I entered my high-ceilinged office, as did the attractive, neat surface of my polished wood desk, the overstuffed ottoman and several leather chairs, and the paintings on the walls, including my favourite: Glassco’s classic Nymph Vaulting Auroch , depicting a bare-breasted young girl and her ceremonial bovine dance partner.

I went immediately to the annunciator on my desk and depressed a key. “Goolsby! Are you there?”

The voice of my assistant, Goolsby Roy, answered immediately. “Never far off, Grand Consistor. Welcome to the Palace this fine oven-like morning. How can I be of service?”

I explained about the guard and the delayed commissary cart. Goolsby promised to repair the lapse immediately, and administer the proper disciplinary actions as well.

With that task off my mind, I settled down to the day’s routine business.

First I pored over a dozen abstracts, prepared by Goolsby, of recent papers in continuity studies. I was disappointed to find the various theses rather shallow and myopic. And these emanated from major figures in the field!

Once more I was struck by the long interval since I had last been surprised by a truly intriguing paper. The savants who worked to explicate the laws of continuity had of late entered a period of mere refinement, I felt. Real discovery of new principles, or even of major extensions of old laws, had ground to a halt. I was forced to consider acknowledging that perhaps the science of continuity, after centuries of intense study, had reached its apex. Perhaps from here on out, it would be all trivial elaborations of the well-known.

Template Formation. Climacteric Deviance. Communal Cross-linkage. Societal Channeling. Isolate Invariance—

How boring! Necessary, yes, even essential to the daily maintenance of society—but no sense of mysteries being revealed.

But no—I could not yet bring myself to forecast a future of stasis for the discipline to which I had devoted my life.

My own talents lay not in original research, but rather in synthesis and application and interpretation of results obtained by others. The imposition of orthodoxy, the establishment of the canon. These were the skills of the Grand Consistor. Otherwise, I surely would have been labouring with all my wits to expand the core of our discipline.

My unrewarding studies occupied me till lunch. Mealtime creeped up to take me unawares. The first notion I had of the hour occurred with the entrance of Goolsby Roy. Dressed in his yellow livery, my rail-thin assistant, his pale complexion and sparse, straw-coloured hair making him resemble the protagonist of Nando Pfing’s The Poet’s Queer Quandry , carried a tray. Plates topped with metal domes from which issued hints of steam and fragrance suddenly demanded all my attention.

Goolsby set the tray down on my desk, a sardonic smirk on his saturnine face. “For once the cooks have managed not to render the veal into something resembling a child’s rubber teething ring. Enjoy, Grand Consistor.”

I fell to my meal heartily, listening all the while to music from the Palace’s orchestra piped in over the annunciator.

After Goolsby came to remove the disordered tray, I composed several letters in response to high-level queries from Lessor Consistors who oversaw regional branches of the Great Continuity, in every district and city of the Crossfoyle ekumen. Just as I was inditing the last one, Goolsby reentered my chambers. He looked unnaturally flushed and discomposed.

“Grand Consistor, I beg your pardon in advance. There is a most persistent woman with an incredible—”

He paused to gather his wits, and address the problem formally.

“A petitioner has been shunted up through all the proper channels until reaching your office. The first such instance this year, as you well know. Although her petition is incontestably invalid—more so than any other I have ever encountered—she has refused to accept any lower dispensations. She insists on seeing you. Today. Immediately.”

I pondered this development. Not completely unprecedented, this woman’s claim on my attention seemed to have disconcerted Goolsby inordinately.

“Is there any other detail you’d care to convey, relating to this petitioner?”

“I—I prefer that you examine her yourself, Grand Consistor.”

“Very well. By all means, send her in.”

Goolsby stepped out, and within moments my visitor was striding boldly in.

I apprehended a woman of nearly my own age. Plainly, she had been possessed of a striking beauty during her youth, a beauty which had not entirely fled her with the arrival of middle-age. Tall, dark-haired, her complexion darkened by sun and freckled, she wore an expensive outfit that betokened good taste but also a desire to stand out in a crowd. A short gold vest over a blouse coloured green as the sky; a calf-length skirt printed with geometrical tilings that formed confusing illusory patterns; and a pair of sandals that laced all the way up those otherwise bare calves. She carried a slim satchel of the finest lizardskin. Her violet eyes flashed like gemstones. Her painted lips were quirked in an expression of disdain.

Thus, my first encounter with Margali Gueths, the woman who was to destroy the Great Continuity.

Coming right up to my desk, the woman drew to a halt, almost quivering with the fervour of her errand.

“You are Jallow Yphantidies.”

This was no question, but rather an assertion I was being challenged to deny. Her usage of my personal name rather than my title was a shocking breach of decorum. But I chose to stifle my indignation and respond politely. From the first, something about this woman’s intensity intrigued me. Perhaps my exhibition of good manners could establish our intercourse on a more congenial plane.

I arose and extended my hand. “Indeed, you have found the man whose loving parents christened him thus. But more formally, I am known as the Grand Consistor.”