Prison Pit

Manxolio Orin (Gordon Brooks)

Manxolio was born on Methusulah, a democratic independent world with a population of a mere nine hundred and a truly fierce gravitational field. A duller place was harder to imagine, and young Manxolio grew up strangely dissatisfied. The only relief from boredom was the massive starport, for Methusulah lay on the fringes of Imperial space and part of the price for its' freedom was the acceptance of both an Imperial Naval Base and a Scout Base in the system. As a result, the starport was fully up to the RCSS specification of an A class facility, and traffic of all sorts was brisk.

Many of Manxolio's peers shipped out with the Imperial or Ramalux forces, but being a soldier had never appealed to him. For all his solid, heavy frame, normal for a high-G childhood, his approach ran more to the improvisational than the confrontational. Day after day he watched the port, not quite sure what he was waiting for, and finally it came. A boldly-decorated starship, gold from nose to fins landed one day, and advertisements appeared on the planetary 'net and on walls, proclaiming that the First Church of Nawheen would proclaim the True Word to the faithful and the curious, tonight and every night this week.

Nothing like this had ever happened before. Hard-bitten mercenaries and shrewd traders were common, but blazing showmanship was rare on Methusulah. Nearly half the community gathered at the landing pad that night to find out what it all meant, Manxolio among them. The domed dock was dark and silent as they waited, but just as the tension reached fever pitch a voice spoke.

"Let there be Light!"

Instantly, dazzling lights and flares fired, revealing a wide stage filled with dancing, singing figures dressed in choristers' robes and filled with swirling holographic projections hinting at religious significance. Music pounded, an insistent heartrate beat that sang in the blood, and with a flourish a larger-than-life figure all in gold whirled onto the stage, arms spread as if to welcome the audience instead of the other way around. The Really Reverend Asher Goldheart had come to bring redemption to the people of Methusulah.

The show that followed was mind-blowing. Adroitly mixing stirring preaching that plunged the hearers in an abyss of self-contempt with words that flowed like balm over burns to rebuild their self-image and leave them feeling reborn, leading them on until all were singing their hearts out, strumming their souls in a paroxysm of tears and joy, Goldheart dominated the stage and his audience with the adept power of a Messiah... or a master psychologist. At the end, when Goldheart appealed with tears in his eyes for donations for the aid of the poor and needy, coin and plasticreds showered into the buckets held ready by the smiling acolytes flanking the stage.

Of all the crowd, only one young man reacted differently. Manxolio was not unaffected by Goldheart's perfomance; he was fascinated. How was it done? His eyes, the only clear in the crowd, picked out what they missed; the cunning way the stage unpacked from the large side doors of the golden starship ... A2 Trader, he thought ... and the timing of the visuals, the shaping of the music around the performance, its' effect on people - yes, that was how it worked. Not only did he see how it was done; he knew he could do it - and that he wanted to.

When the final hymn had washed the last emotionally-drained member of the congregation out, all the fancy lights died and the plain white ones came on, transforming the mystical temple of enlightenment to a stage of painted and gilded folding panels tacked onto the side of an ordinary starship. Asher Goldheart came and sat on the edge of the stage, doffing his golden mitre and wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, shrunken from a commanding High Priest to a balding man of slightly above average height, grinning like a rascal as the first bucket of cash was brought to him. At that moment he noticed the youth quietly leaning on the wall at the back and watching him. His eyes narrowed, and he beckoned the boy over.

"Not many see through the razzamatazz, my young friend. You have keen eyes or a cool head. What can I do for you that I couldn't do for them?" he gestured at the doors. Manxolio grinned. "You can teach me how to get away with this," he said boldly. Goldheart looked at him for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed his wild, arresting laugh. "Can you sing, my boy?" he asked.

And so Manxolio Orin joined the crew of the Absolution. Most of his family and neighbors would have been horrified to discover that the First Church of Nawheen didn't exist outside of Asher Goldheart's fertile imagination, but for Manxolio it was just confirmation of what he'd already guessed. What continued to fascinate and delight him was the unique and beautiful balance of the process. "I don't deceive people," Goldheart said, "I sell them hopes and dreams, help them find something inside them to lead them to better themselves, allow them to forgive themselves. Nawheen doesn't need to redeem them; they do it for themselves; I just show them how.... for a donation, of course." The audience came away uplifted, invigorated, positive, happy; and Goldheart came away richer. Everybody won!

There was a lot of plain ordinary work involved in moving the show from world to world. Starting at the bottom meant doing a lot of that, but Manxolio didn't mind; every night he watched the master perform, soaking up the moves, the tricks, the patter, the cues. The much abused word "genius" was certainly applicable here; Goldheart dominated the stage by sheer presence without appearing to do so. Around this, though, was wrapped the logistics of shifting the whole thing around, the process of responding to the many, many messages and prayers that chased them though the x-mail system, and the purely commercial business of securing bookings. Some years they would return to well-known worlds, worlds where they had performed before, where the 'faithful' waited patiently and where the authorities were comfortably settled with what hosting the 'ceremony' meant. Every so often, though, Goldheart would take them out into the unknown, to worlds they'd never played before, and try to break a new market - as he had on Methusulah. The impact of the show on an unprepared audience was infinitely greater than that on those accustomed to them, and the combination of novelty and impact produced much higher returns. Of course, it wasn't as safe, either. Occasionally, a local taboo would be broken, and sometimes the crew had to beat a hasty retreat to the Absolution and high-tail it off-planet to avoid being lynched. This made Goldheart laugh rather than frown; the gamble and the ever-present danger of it all going wrong made him feel alive.

Manxolio steadily worked his way up the structure as his strong body and lively mind made him a useful man to have aboard. Gradually, he took larger and larger roles in the perfomances, under the stage name of Deacon Brodie Roadie. For all his charisma and energy on stage, Goldheart wasn't getting any younger, and slowly it became accepted that Manxolio would one day take over the primary role in the show.

The Absolution had a third type of gig, the most dangerous of all, something Goldheart referred to as 'Poaching'. This was visiting and performing on a world nominally claimed as the 'territory' of another show in the same business - for there were several. These could be the most lucrative of all, because they combined a prepared and accepting community with the impact of novelty in the form of a different show. Naturally, this practice led to bad blood between the traveling churches, and of all those operating in the Urnian and Five Sisters subsectors, the one bearing the First Church of Nawheen the most malice was the Cerebral Unification Church. The planet Mirriam in Five Sisters was one of their major stops. When the two shows arrived within a day of each other, early in 1096, trouble was inevitable.

Mirriam is a mildly hazardous place in any event, ruled by an eccentric dictator, and once running fights broke out between the personnel of the two shows, the police moved in in force. The resulting three-way fight was especially deadly, and the Absolution fled back into space with a third of its' crew dead, Manxolio nursing a belly-wound, and Asher Goldheart dead with an ACR bullet between his eyes.

Close to despair, the crew limped back to safer territory and took stock. Some were for winding up the show and splitting its' assets, but others - Manxolio among them - wanted to carry on. Exerting all the powers of persuasion he'd need to fill Goldheart's shoes, Manxolio convinced the crew to try one booking. He knew it would take a resounding success to convince them, so he picked a system they'd never visited before - Egypt in the Glisten Subsector, replanned the performance to work around the casualties, strapped on the red-diode-trimmed zoot suit of Bishop Brodie Roadie, and hit the stage for one last show.

Their perfomance that night was never forgotten by those who saw it - or those who took part. The boy who was intrigued by the man in the gold suit stepped into his role and held a thousand people in the palm of his hand. Conversions, revalations and spontaneous healings happened in abundance, and the money flooded in. Night after night it went on, and by the time they broke orbit from Egypt for New Rome, the show was well and truly his.

Before they jumped from Egypt, they spaced the remains of Asher Goldheart, dressed in his golden finery, in a coffin of such gaudy showiness that he would have laughed to see it. Manxolio rested his hand on the box in farewell, and as he did so, it occurred to him; he'd never known the man's real name...

For five years, the reborn First Church of Nawheen roamed the edges of Imperial space across the Spinward Marches, reaping the rewards of their showmanship, until the fateful day they jumped into the Mongo/Jewell system and found the Cerebral Unification Church heading towards the jump point on the way out.

Nobody could quite remember who opened fire first, but before long the turrets both ships carried as defence against pirates were lobbing laser bolts backwards and forwards, blasting bits off both ships. A lucky hit carried away the Absolution's jump drive and most of her attitude thrusters and the Unification closed in for the kill. At this point Thomar Weng, port gunner on the Absolution, opened the secret locker and loaded the Last Ditch - the single illegal nuclear missile Goldheart had always carried and never used. The Unification, strolling arrogantly up to finish her crippled opponent, flew straight into the path of the deadly missile, and a nuclear fireball vaporized the entire vessel.

Use of atomic or nuclear weapons is a High Justice crime; the Imperium reserves such measures to itself. The helpless ship couldn't get away, and was boarded by a cutter from the Naval base on Mongo. Sensor records made the trial an open and shut case, and the crew were sentenced to various sentences of imprisonment. As captain, Manxolio was held ultimately responsible, and was condemned to life on Odegra.