Free Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic by Phillip Mann Page A

Wilberfoss was watched closely especially as he took the sacred oath of the Gentle Order, vowing to protect Life.
    Wilberfoss went to the training school on Assisi Central and there trained as a pilot. He specialized also in land contact. This means that in the course of a Mercy Mission he was one of the pilots who physically went to the surface of a planet either to pick up or to deliver a sick or dying life-form. He was not a contact specialist, but he showed himself to have contact skills. That is rare and special. It was in this part of his training that he learned the stealth I mentioned when Miranda came a-calling.
    When Wilberfoss was convalescing in Lily’s Garden he would sometimes sit for hours talking about the days when he was a contact pilot. Extraordinary stories. Occasionally a colleague from those days would visit the Pacifico Monastery and the two of them would sit together, merry as thieves, swapping yams while the sun went down.
    Wilberfoss relished excitement and difference. He liked the glamour of being a pilot and he had the energy of two men when it came to confronting hardship. He must have found the simple life of Shuttle Pilot boring, despite the feet that he rationalized his experience as necessary servitude. The problem was that he saw himself (as he states) as someone special. That need not be a bad thing in itself for it seems to me that individual human beings should see themselves as special: they are unique lifeforms. But Wilberfoss believed he had a destiny to fulfill. Thus in his mind, the strange event when he was a child and was saved after falling near the shore, and the fact of his selection for the captaincy of the Nightingale, were linked. Destiny.
    We can say of his marriage to Medoc, the Talline woman, that it satisfied his lust for the curious and his desire to serve. He discovered the peaceful family man within the brave dare-devil. Medoc satisfied (say) ninety percent of him.
    This story concerns the remaining ten percent.

5  The Offer
    T ancredi paused and looked at Wilberfoss. It was a look which could have been envy or it could have been pity. “Assisi Central have sent me this,” he said, tapping the red-edged document. “They have invited you to become Captain of the Nightingale .”
    Wilberfoss sat back in his chair and stared at Magister Tancredi. His face was expressionless. Then he said, “I think there has been a mistake. I never put myself forward as a candidate.”
    “No mistake,” said Tancredi. “With the Nightingale you did not need to put yourself forward. No one did. The Magistri came looking. I flatter myself that even I, long in the tooth as I am, had a chance. But they needed a younger man. And they chose you.”
    “But there are—”
    “Out of all the available pilots, some of whom are undoubtedly better than you in matters mathematical and mechanical, they chose you. Or rather they invited you.
    For the final decision must be yours.”
    “Why was I not told? Why was I not interviewed?” “About two years ago, you may remember, we had a visit from the Magistri of Assisi. You were their guide. You brought them in, took them around to Kithaeron, Fum and Sesha and then saw them on their way. One of them even stayed at your house.”
    “But I thought they were just on a fact-finding mission.”
    “They were.”
    “But they told me—”
    “Accept it. They have chosen you. The honor is without parallel as far as I am concerned. Though I can see that in your case there are complications.”
    Silence between the two men. Then Wilberfoss.
    “Do you know how they reached their decision? Was it voted on?”
    “Well, I suppose voting came into it. It usually does. But they would have spent a long time in meditation. And remember, over half the committee concerned with the Nightingale are quaestors. They’ll have been in trance a great deal of the time, trying to read the future, examining you, seeing you in light and dark. Few men will have been