A Lefrol (LEFF-rawl)

is a cigar.

Rhyti (WRY-tea)

is a tea-like beverage.

     Garol Aphon Vogel     Kazmer     Hilton

     Cousin Stanoczk    Agenis The Deep-Minded    Uncle Baritz

Author's Note:
This document was prepared as part of my pitch package for my October 2001 novel, Angel of Destruction. The detailed outline for this novel has been published in Mike Resnick's excellent book, I Have This Nifty Idea . . ..  (See amazon.com)

No, I don't usually build a background document in so much detail, but I was having a lot of fun with this. I am loading it here for you because I think that you may find some additional background on what's going on to be of interest: and, face it, I want you primed for next year's novel, in which Cousin Stanoczk and the Malcontent will have an increasingly important role to play.

Because this was part of the pitch package written before the book itself, some of the names and other details may have changed between this and the finished novel.

The Langsariks

The time is approximately a year and a half after the end of the action in "Prisoner of Conscience." During this time the Langsarik pirates, who were still at large in that novel, have accepted an amnesty engineered by Garol Vogel.

The Langsarik pirates were the planetary defense fleet of a world recently submitted to the yoke of Jurisdiction. Resisting assimilation, the Langsariks survived as commerce raiders for nearly ten years before finally being reduced to accepting terms with the Bench.

As part of the amnesty agreement the Langsariks, barred from returning to their home planet Pyrsalla because of their potential destabilizing influence on that recently assimilated system, must serve an eight year probationary period before they will be allowed to return to their home system. During their probationary period the Langsariks are to provide a labor pool for the port of Charid in Rikavie system.

There are about five thousand Langsariks in all settled at Port Charid. Of these, there are a few young children born to couples that formed within the Fleet after it elected piracy as a survival option, but the majority of the Langsariks are in their late twenties to middle forties. Few are over sixty.

Sex ratios are mildly skewed towards men, but mostly because men were surplus in the system of origin, not because the Langsariks discriminate on the basis of sex.

They have been permitted to send for their families: but not all of the Langsarik pirates' families are interested in coming. The long struggle of the Langsarik pirates embarrassed the Langsarik nations personally and economically, rendering their lives more difficult. The long period of separation between the Langsarik fleet and its system of origin weakened familial ties considerably, and the families of the pirates have in many cases found it expedient to deny any connection with the pirates.

With the issue finally put to rest and life on the Langsarik home planet of Prysalla finally beginning to improve, few people are willing to abandon hard-won consumer comforts for the company of long-absent family members in the austere environment of Charid.

The Langsariks, denied easy reconciliation with their system of origin and with ten years of raiding history behind them, have formed social and in some cases familial bonds with alien races.

One such friendship exists between Hilton, the nephew of the Flag Captain Agenis the Deep-Minded, and a Sarvaw commercial freighter or mercantile pilot who sometimes assisted the Langsariks during their final years as commerce raiders.

Hilton saved the freighter captain Kazmer's life during a particular engagement and the two men have been friends ever since. Kazmer has been courting Hilton's cousin Modice for years, undeterred by Agenis' resolute opposition to a match between them.

Other ties with non-Langsariks include members of freighter crews and Jurisdiction Fleet resources who remain impressed with the Langsariks' history of resistance and willing to let bygones be bygones. In particular, representatives of the Dolgorukij Combine, early users of the Silume vector, have cultivated the resettled Langsariks.

The local administrative representative for the Combine shipping interests at port Charid is a particular friend to the Langsariks, and has exerted himself on several occasions to obtain resources and good jobs for members of the "parole" population. A jovial and well-liked man, "Uncle" Baritz will prove during the course of the story to have a less attractive side to his personality.

Port Charid is situated between the Silume vector and an asteroid field -- the Shawl of Rikavie -- that is clustered in stable orbit around the system's star, Rikavie itself.

A vector is a point of entry into an alternate space in which the fabric of the space-time continuum is warped, permitted the traverse of huge interstellar distances within relatively small periods of time.

Warehouses and docking facilities are located on individual asteroids in the Shawl, separately developed by planetary shipping interests and therefore more or less completely appointed depending upon the resources of the using group.

Port Charid is governed by a consortium of shipping interests as a commercial transport facility.

Port Charid provides dock support for transport ships that are using the Silume vector, a developing space-lane that provides access to several systems -- including one that lies outside the reach of the Jurisdiction's Bench, in the lawless sector known as Gonebeyond space.

Bulk cargo is stored on the individual warehouse asteroids, typically manned with a small staff of eight to ten at a time that live on station and rotate to Port Charid for rest and recreation. Port Charid has temporary storage for high-value, small items such as payrolls; administrative centers that maintain the inventory records for the asteroid warehouses; and the support services typically required by freighter crews arriving from a long transit in need of relaxation and entertainment.

Autoshuttle or drone transport is available between Port Charid and the asteroid warehouses. Large freighters infrequently visit the surface itself, but there is a certain amount of such traffic.

Charid is a recently developed port planet, and conditions remain relatively austere. The Langsariks provide an essentially captive labor pool for the governing economic consortium's continuing development of Port Charid.

The Bench's interest in port Charid is multi-faceted. The Silume vector offers access to several developing systems; the Bench means to ensure that the Silume vector be fully exploited for (taxable) commerce and fully supports Charid's efforts to establish a secure economic base. Significant tax-and-tariff revenues are hoped for as the port develops.

Though there is not enough traffic through Charid at this time to create a concern, the Bench is looking to the future and may in time annex Charid in order to control potential access to Gonebeyond space -- access which is becoming a sensitive issue for the Bench.

Sensational evidence was leaked throughout the investigation and trials in port Rudistal that took place in connection with Andrej Koscuisko's declaration of failure of Writ at the Domitt Prison. Public sympathies have been engaged on behalf of the Nurail refugees; and frequently even Fleet or Bench resources can be discovered to have looked the other way while small parties of Nurail flee Jurisdiction for Gonebeyond space -- disquieting evidence of deep-seated passive resistance throughout the Jurisdiction.

There are not enough Nurail refugees to form a genuine threat of any sort, and life in Gonebeyond space is difficult -- certainly not the sort of situation conducive to any actual threat. However, public sentiment in favor of Nurail refugees escaping into Gonebeyond is a reproach against the Bench, and the existence of an escape valve is in and of itself contrary to the maintenance of good order and the rule of Law.

After many decades of controlling all of known Space, the Bench is faced for the first time with the novel challenge of having a meaningful border to secure against free passage out from its Jurisdiction -- and being unable to secure it.

These issues: the Bench's control over its civilian population; its growing uneasiness about the existence of Gonebeyond space, a refuge from its government; public opinion in favor of the Nurail versus against the Bench in general -- and the Second Judge in particular; and increasing pressure on the Bench to justify the rule of Law, all form the background for this story.

Saint Andrej Malcontent is the patron saint of the perverts of the Dolgorukij Combine.

In his life the Malcontent -- a petty princeling, and one of Andrej Koscuisko's ancestors -- was a chronic drunk, and a thoroughly dissolute person who resisted the efforts of the Autocrat to increase central government control of -- and influence over -- the lives of the peasants he owned or for whom he was responsible (the difference is difficult to detect, amongst Dolgorukij).

One of the many perverse acts committed by the Malcontent was a famous incident in which two farmers were brought before him to be punished by fire for homosexual behavior. Sitting in judgment over them, required by canon law to have the sinners burned alive for their blatant disrespect of the Holy Mother, the Malcontent refused to execute his lawful duty.

"The Holy Mother herself has loved bodies such as these," he is supposed to have said. "How then dare I damage so cruelly what has been found beautiful in Her eyes?" Releasing the farmers, he kept them in his own household, permitting them to live under the same roof as his own family and protecting them from reprisals -- to the immense disgust of the Church.

Such defiance of the power of the Church could not long be tolerated. The Malcontent soon added defiance of the secular authority to his list of crimes. He refused to permit his people to be pressed for taxes to support the Autocrat's court, and instigated a tax revolt that was ultimately resolved only by concessions from the Autocrat -- which concessions are claimed by some as the Malcontent's first miracle.

How, where, why, and if he died are subjects hotly debated in ecclesiastical circles even today, more than eight hundred years after the disputed fact.

Some say he was killed during the fighting associated with the tax revolt.

Some say he died of natural causes as a result of an excess of wine and cold weather.

Some say that he was murdered in his bed by the homosexual lovers he had refused to kill, who took the sin upon themselves to prevent his capture and execution by burning -- the fate from which he had saved them.

And some say he was lifted bodily into Heaven by the hand of the Holy Mother Herself, who never stopped loving him for his unquestioned devotion to her worship, proven by the jealous care he took of her children -- regardless of his unfilial behavior toward the Autocrat and the Church.

Whatever the cause of death, it was not long before miracles began to occur at the crypt in which he either was or was not buried; and the Malcontent's miracles were of a peculiar nature from the first.

In his life he had been characterized by a blatant disregard for peoples' politics or religious opinions; he was notoriously interested only in whether they had enough to eat and were warm and dry.

In his death he wrought miracles of reconciliation: societal misfits of every sort came to the tomb of the Malcontent to seek relief from the suffering their deviance brought upon them.

The Malcontent delivered.

People who were tormented by inappropriate desires, by passions that were outside the careful limits established by a loving Church -- these people could seek the Malcontent; and be no longer tormented by such desires or passions.

It would be disrespectful in the extreme to hint that the Malcontent relieved the suffering of such persons by providing a desired outlet, since such outlets would themselves naturally be obscene and intolerable.

Nevertheless the Malcontent soon gathered a grateful congregation of passionately devoted servants who were uniquely qualified to obtain information about any person, any where, any place, any time. The Autocrat's Court and the Church recognized the usefulness of such devotion almost immediately; and for the past seven hundred years and more the Malcontent has been the secret service of the Dolgorukij Combine.

Pledged devotees of the Malcontent are "slaves" of the Malcontent, and have no legal existence.

On the one hand this removes them from legal inheritance of any kind, so that to elect the Malcontent means to lose all material possessions including any claim to material possessions. On the other hand, before slavery was outlawed under Jurisdiction, the actions of the slave were the responsibility of the master.

The slaves of the Malcontent therefore possess a limited legal immunity from negative impacts of their actions -- if you have a problem with any individual Malcontent, you must take the issue up with their master; who is a saint. And who is also dead. Difficult to call into court, one way or the other.

In the present day the Malcontent is the most rigorous religious discipline within the Dolgorukij Combine. Malcontents are considered to have severed every connection between them and the rest of the world; they have no legal rights of kinship or inheritance of any sort.

The dissolution of kinship ties is of particular severity to Dolgorukij, who grant kinship ties and filial piety an importance that exceeds almost all other values.

Malcontents are honor-bound in religious duty to offer Reconciliation to any soul in pain, which naturally means that they are very filthy people (since sexual aberration is very painful to decent people). In return the slaves of the Malcontent get only one thing: whatever it is that they need.

All the children of the Holy Mother have the unalienable right to alienate all their rights and elect the Malcontent. The Combine has negotiated this right with the Bench as part of the "religious exceptions" that the Bench makes as reasonable accommodation for the unique requirements of individual cultures.

The Bench is also satisfied that the internal discipline of the Malcontent, the Spartan lifestyle of the slaves of the Malcontent and the unique social position it holds within the Combine makes electing the Malcontent an acceptable substitute for a sentence of life imprisonment at hard labor.

In much the same way in which it was once an occasional practice in wartime for violent offenders to be excused prosecution if they joined the Marines, children of the Holy Mother who have fallen under Jurisdiction may call upon the Malcontent for their salvation; and be released to the Malcontent's permanent custody, contingent upon negotiation of an acceptable contract.

There have been no instances recorded under Jurisdiction of a slave of the Malcontent being returned to Jurisdiction custody. The Malcontent takes care of its own housekeeping.

Dirty linen is washed in private; but it is washed without fail, and washed thoroughly enough to satisfy the Bench that the Malcontent's laundry serves as a genuinely effective deterrent (detergent?).

GAROL APHON VOGEL is a Bench intelligence specialist, a sort of a Texas ranger in space with Bench-sanctioned powers of "extraordinary discretion." Five foot ten and prematurely balding, Garol has a round face and narrow eyes; he could mimic Jack Nicholson convincingly.

His almost completely suppressed artistic streak is expressed in the sketch-work he does to keep his hands busy while he is thinking about problems.

Garol believes in the Bench and the rule of Law, but is not blind to the abuses of power of which the Bench is capable. His job exposes him to hidden corruption and abuse at all levels of Jurisdiction authority. A reasonable and thoughtful man, he is increasingly disillusioned and depressed by the Bench's continued tactic of responding to unrest by increasing the repressive measures that generated the unrest in the first place.

Garol trusts no one and nothing, and feels his isolation from every basic human entitlement of trust and confidence deeply. He keeps very much to himself and considers any spontaneous emotional gesture to be an error that he is sure to regret.

At the same time, however, he is an honorable man who is capable of gaining the trust of desperate people, and the settlement of the Langsariks was due in large part to his ability to make meaningful personal contact with Flag Captain AGENIS the Deep-Minded. He strenuously resists making commitments, but once he makes a contract he considers himself honor-bound to fully execute it.

Part of his hostility to the Malcontent lies in his jealous resentment of the bonds of mutual respect and affection that he sees at the core of Dolgorukij society.

Bench Intelligence Specialists have no leisure activities. Bench Intelligence Specialists have no lives that anybody has ever been able to detect. This makes Garol's suspicion of the Malcontent mildly ironic, since the Malcontent is a lot like a Bench Intelligence Specialist of a sort in many ways.

JILS IVERS is the closest thing to a genuine friend that Garol Aphon VOGEL has in the world. A Bench intelligence specialist like Garol, they differ in psychology and value systems.

Jils is five foot five with jet-black hair and eyes to match. Her round and well-shaped eyes are unfortunately set a fraction more closely together than usual, giving her a mildly squinty-eyed expression that Andrej Koscuisko will find oddly attractive in another place at another time.

Superlatively athletic, a born campaigner with a genuine warrior's ethic, Jils' life is Jurisdiction. Duty and honor are her highest and only values. While regretting the occasional excess committed in the name of the rule of Law, Jils firmly declines to question whether the cause to which she has devoted her life may ultimately prove the wrong one.

Jils and Garol have teamed together on some of the most difficult issues to have faced the Jurisdiction in recent years. Her partnership with him in cracking the case of the Langsarik pirates is a career highlight.

At the time of this novel she has spent the past several months in port Rudistal monitoring the course of the trials and the execution of once-Administrator Geltoi at the hands of Andrej Koscuisko, who has been returned to Rudistal to execute the sentence of the Bench and now awaits transport to his next ship of assignment.

Her absolute devotion to the principle of the rule of Law does not stop her from challenging the First Secretary over the issue of Koscuisko's assignment, which she considers to be very ill advised. She will not, however, take any steps to raise her concerns to a higher level if the First Secretary is not receptive, since she has not been asked by the Bench to address the issue.

As mentioned before, Bench Intelligence Specialists have no leisure activities. However, Jils Ivers is particularly fond of having her spine adjusted by the Jurisdiction equivalent of a chiropractor; and has a peculiar interest in the history of certain obscure world-families that have become extinct.

Contents

KAZMER is a young man of about twenty-seven years old. A Sarvaw mercantile captain or pilot for hire, he is five foot eleven with blond hair and brown eyes, long legs, high waist, big hands, and a big nose.

Kazmer and HILTON have been friends for several years, ever since Hilton saved Kazmer's life in an incident surrounding a raid by Langsarik pirates on an isolated port prior to their amnesty and settlement. He has been courting Hilton's cousin Modice on and off for as long; however, Hilton's aunt, the Flag Captain AGENIS the Deep-Minded, opposes any match between a Langsarik and an "outsider" on principle.

Kazmer's attitude toward authority is resentful, suspicious, and contemptuous -- reflections of the stormy relations between Sarvaw, emphatically low world on the totem pole, and the rest of the Dolgorukij Combine (with Azanry at its apex).

It has been less than two hundred years since the Aznir Dolgorukij made Sarvaw a vassal state, the Combine's last act of military aggression prior to its pacification by the Jurisdiction. Sarvaw still shudder at the memory of the atrocities committed by the savage Chuvishka Kospodar and by the terrorist "Angel of Destruction" that he sponsored and encouraged during that campaign.

As a result of Kazmer's Sarvaw attitude he sees nothing wrong with helping his Langsarik friends turn a dishonest profit, so long as nobody suffers physical harm. When Kazmer himself is faced with the immediate prospect of suffering torture at the hands of the Bench, however, it is his loyalty to Hilton, not a failure in personal courage, that leads Kazmer to make his dreadful choice.

Kazmer is loyal and true, brave and skillful. His biggest faults are his inability to really believe that Hilton's cousin is just not interested in him; his reflexive resentment of authority; and his tendency to assume that his conclusions in any given instance are reflective of absolute reality -- which is what creates his initial misperception about Hilton's involvement in the proposed "Langsarik" raid, as the story opens.

He flies off the handle, uses intemperate language, and is constantly on the defensive. But he's a good guy and his heart is in the right place. In the course of time he will probably convince Hilton's cousin Modice to give him a chance, and he will be a terrific father when he gets to that point in his life.

Kazmer's idea of an ideal leisure activity is socializing with a group of friends. He is probably a tenor.

Contents

HILTON is the nephew of the Flag Captain of the Langsariks, AGENIS the Deep-Minded, and a battle captain in his own right at the ripe old age of nearly thirty. He is six foot one with big bones, long hands, and big ears, and wears a little patch of beard precisely centered on his chin below his lower lip. Brown-haired and blue-eyed, Hilton has an agreeably raspy baritone.

Sensible and even-tempered, Hilton is doing his best to adjust to his emphatically reduced circumstances in the Langsarik settlement. While he has been involved in one or two pranks just to relieve excess antagonism and anxiety, he is sincere about honoring the Langsarik agreement with the Bench.

He is quiet and mildly humorous in his address, slow to anger and quick to forgive. He and KAZMER compensate for each others' deficiencies in a sense: he is calm where Kazmer is intemperate; Kazmer is passionate where Hilton may tend to an excess of diffidence.

He likes speed, and misses the "good old days" of interstellar travel. He compensates by cultivating the Jurisdiction equivalent of a motorcycle, of which he has wrecked several (one reason he needs a job).

Hilton's idea of an ideal leisure activity is driving very fast (when he has a machine) and mechanical tinkering (to fix the machine he wrecked, or to get the machine to go faster, so that he can wreck it at the highest possible rate of speed).

Taking after his aunt Agenis the Deep-Minded in his methodical and reflective approach to life, Hilton will become a powerful community leader in time, if he doesn't kill himself with high-speed personal transport first.

Contents

COUSIN STANOCZK is a slave of the Malcontent; technically speaking, he is a Reconciler, meaning that he is responsible for the health, welfare, and activities of the several Malcontents/agents he directs. Five foot eight, blond and brown-eyed, Cousin Stanoczk has been accused of looking a good deal like his third cousin twice removed Andrej Ulexeievitch Koscuisko; on the other hand many Dolgorukij look similar to non-Dolgorukij. Cousin Stanoczk has a very deep speaking voice, but does not sing (he croaks).

His position as a reconciler requires him to display a high degree of empathy and sensitivity to the suffering of others. His training as a Malcontent has qualified him to offer sexual reconciliation in many forms, but that is not an issue with Kazmer (and it is probably just as well).

An Aznir Dolgorukij, Stanoczk is -- like his cousin Andrej -- related to the monstrous Chuvishka Kospodar of Sarvaw atrocity fame. Part of the conflict he has with Kazmer is undoubtedly founded in the ancestral tensions between Sarvaw and Aznir Dolgorukij.

Stanoczk was sent to the Malcontent by his family at an early age, though he made the contract himself (no one is permitted to make that decision for another). I have no idea what the Malcontent offers Stanoczk by way of Reconciliation and I don't want to know.

He could be seen as a sad or tragic figure, having been condemned by his family to be the scapegoat punished for their collective complicity in their ancestor's crimes; but Stanoczk doesn't see himself as particularly tragic.

(Since his family, like Andrej's, continues to enjoy resources inherited from Chuvishka Kospodar, the family considers itself to bear collective guilt for Kospodar's crimes. A child is sent to the Malcontent in every generation, and once a year everyone gets together in church and talks about how guilty and bad they are to be enjoying the fruits of crime.

Then they get over themselves and return to their normal lives until the "day of remorse" comes around again in the following year. Instances in which remorse for enjoying the fruits of unjust acts actually result in returning resources to their original owners are few and far in between, and rather frowned upon as an excess of hypocritical self-righteousness that is fundamentally unfilial in its implied reproach of the previous generations.)

In his personal character Stanoczk is rather cynical, a self-defense mechanism he has developed to protect his sentimental nature. He is utterly dedicated to his role as a Malcontent and has been a fairly successful agent over the years.

He has a strong sense of the ridiculous but lacks any particular sense of moral outrage. (Malcontents have their sense of moral outrage surgically removed at an early stage of their orientation. It is an important part of their training.)

At the same time he is deeply and genuinely horrified at the evidence that the Angel of Destruction may have risen from the dead. The Angel is an abomination beneath the Canopy of Heaven, and Stanoczk has no difficulty in fully committing to the idea that the Angel must be destroyed by any means necessary.

Stanoczk rather likes beer and women, neither of which are necessarily beyond his reach as a Malcontent. If he had a private life or leisure activities (which Malcontents don't) he would probably either go bowling or go to the opera to boo the tenor.

Contents

AGENIS THE DEEP-MINDED is the Flag Captain or war-leader of the (former) Langsarik fleet. She is an older woman of nearly sixty and has several children and a few nieces and nephews, of whom HILTON is one of her favorites (he takes after her in temperament).

Agenis the Deep-Minded is so named for her long-term strategic thinking. She is five foot four, white-haired, with the blue-gray variety of hazel eyes. Though the inactivity of life within the Langsarik settlement rather bores her she is not unhappy with the bargain she made with Garol VOGEL when the Langsariks accepted settlement.

Always thinking for the long term, Agenis focuses on the problems and promises of the future rather than the frustrations of the present, and considers a sixteen year probationary period to be a small price to pay for the survival of the Langsarik Fleet's people and peace with the Bench -- so long as the Bench will honor its side of the agreement.

Her driving instinct is to maintain her options, which accounts for the particularly keen edge to her concern when the Bench begins to barricade her escape routes one by one.

Agenis has a deep appreciation for Garol Vogel but doesn't quite like Jils. She and Garol share an almost instinctual rapport bounded on irrational but absolute trust, and even when Garol must report that the Bench is about to descend on their settlement to destroy them Agenis remains serenely confident that Garol is on her side -- to the maximum extent appropriate for his job.

Agenis doesn't have a lot to do these days and spends much of her time replaying the battles of her past, writing alternate histories in her head in an attempt to deepen and broaden her strategic skills.

Contents

UNCLE BARITZ is the agent of the Angel of Destruction in port Charid. A big, genial man, his approachable demeanor and amiable manners disguise his basic fanaticism. His apparently genuine concern for the people he has befriended is completely compartmentalized, having no appreciable impact whatever on his core intent to use them ruthlessly -- and then destroy them.

The Angel of Destruction is a creature of monstrous hate that has taken as its mission the furtherance of Dolgorukij interests at the expense of any obstacle of whatever sort that might stand in its way. The Angel hates the Langsarik pirates for having once preyed on Combine shipping as much as the Angel hates the Langsarik pirates for being successful harriers whose war skills, if turned to economic ends, could all too easily develop into a genuine challenge to Combine interests.

Uncle Baritz enjoys the suffering of victims of the Angel as an endorsement of the natural order, in which the Dolgorukij are fore-ordained to be masters and the entire physical universe exists merely to serve them. To wrest information by force from a prisoner in agony is a genuinely enjoyable exercise in demonstrating Dolgorukij superiority.

Only inferior races hesitate to inflict suffering. It is evidence of misplaced compassion and a sense of justice -- concepts that are meaningful only when applied to Dolgorukij by Dolgorukij.

While the Angel is a monster with insanity at the foundation of its very being, its aims are coldly practical and its methods are calculated and methodical. During the reduction of Sarvaw to Combine rule the Angel's aim was to destroy Sarvaw resistance, and its methods were so efficient that it could be said that the Sarvaw have never recovered from the psychic shock of the Angel's atrocity.

During the course of this novel the Angel's aim is to punish the Langsariks for having ever preyed upon Combine shipping; to neutralize the possible future threat that a successful and proven fighting force might offer in the economic arena; and to place the Combine shipping interests in an advantageous position in port Charid by systematically destroying the warehouse facilities of competing shippers under the cover of "Langsarik" predation.

That the Angel will have to destroy its own property in order to present a convincing picture is merely part of the calculation. The Angel knows that the Combine has much deeper pockets than many of the other shippers trying to get a foothold in port Charid, and what is an inconvenience to the Combine -- an acceptable price to pay for obtaining priority at Charid -- is more than many shippers will be able to absorb, and still maintain their presence there.

In this novel several key concepts are put in place for future novels in the Koscuisko series.

The existence of Gonebeyond space and its relationship with the Bench and refugees is established. With the successful escape of the Langsariks to Gonebeyond space the idea of a military force forming outside Jurisdiction control may be safely expected to start to form in the reader's mind.

The fact of many Nurail refugees in particular finding their way into Gonebeyond is placed before the reader for use in The Devil and Deep Space, The Inquisitor's Cup, and the novels after that.

The Angel of Destruction is put in place for the major role it will play in The Inquisitor's Cup. The association between Andrej Koscuisko and the Angel of Destruction, a critical point in The Inquisitor's Cup, is made, if indirectly.

The Malcontent is introduced. While referred to in Hour of Judgment, the Malcontent is here explained and characterized. Cousin Stanoczk, who has a major role to play in The Devil and Deep Space, makes his debut. The details of Garol Vogel's association with the Malcontent prior to Hour of Judgment -- and his feelings about the whole thing -- are established here for background junkies (like me).

Garol Vogel's personal involvement and generally depressed state of mind bring out the Bench's increasing loss of control and the increase in unrest and resistance within Jurisdiction that will come to fruition in The Inquisitor's Cup and beyond.

Finally, what this book is about (among other things) is a population, unjustly threatened by the Bench, finding refuge in Gonebeyond space: audience preparation for the shocking events that will take place in The Devil and Deep Space.

Send me an email, Ask Susan, and let me know! We'll update the FAQ from time to time as issues come up.