Free Spinspace: The Space of Spins (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 2) by Matthew Kennedy Page B

looked at her.  “Yes,” he said.  “Yes, I do have responsibilities.  To help the poor, to defend the weak, to settle arguments...and to serve my nation when called.”
    “Tell them to send someone else, then.”
    Isaac gazed at his wife and reached out to stroke her hair.  “It is part of my job,” he said.  “I have not been called for many years, because they knew I had a family.  But I cannot shirk my duty now, when I am needed. Yonatan has served his time, and my own turn has come.”
    “But why Denver?”
    “Things are stirring there.  Things that the brethren are concerned about.”
    “Well then, we're coming with you!”
    Isaac kissed her.  “I would like that,” he said.  “But you know that's not how it works.  I've taken an oath to fulfill my duties, and this is one of them.” 
    Rebekah was having none of it.  “Your duties to us – “
    “I know,” he sighed.  “This is one of those times when I cannot do both.  If I go, I will be failing you, and if I do not I will be failing our country.  There is no win here.  Either way I will be falling down.”
    She laid one of her hands on his.  “A righteous man may fall seven times, but he gets up again,” she quoted.”Husband, if you are serving God, you are not failing us.”
    “I haven't told you the worst of it,” he said, looking into her eyes.  “I can only take one family member with me...and it cannot be you, because one of us should be with the children.”
    While she digested that, he continued his confession.  “They recommended that I take Nathan, since he's the oldest.”
    She considered this.  “It will interrupt his schooling.  He's so close to graduating and picking a guild.”
    He sighed.  “That's true.  But I'm sure I can find tutors for him in Denver...and of course it will be good for him to know  more about other countries than he would learn here.”
    Rebekah knew when to accept a decision.  “When do you have to leave?”
    “As soon as possible.”
    “And when will you come back?”
    He grimaced.  “That depends on so many things that it's impossible to say yet.  With God's help, we will get through this.”
    “Forgive me for being a silly wife,” she said, “but you won't forget me and fall in with a Rado woman, will you?”
    Isaac smiled at her.  “You know I love you, but allow me to elaborate,” he said, and carried her to the bedroom.
     

Chapter 20
     
    Esteban : deportantem molientemque
     
    “All the rivers run into the sea, Yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again.”
    – Ecclesiastes 1:7
     
    It was hardly a surprise that they already knew.  When Brother Esteban returned to the Reconditorium Prohibitum , he found a group of his superiors in the Order waiting to brief him on the particulars of his mission.
    The Reconditorium Prohibitum wasn't a big building with a sign warning people away.   It was, in actual fact, the cellarium of the Monastery of St. Bruno, the Dallas Chapterhouse of the Carthusian order.  In ancient times the cellarium (whose resemblance to the English word cellar is not accidental) was simply a lower level where wine and food of the monastery was stored. In a secular building it probably would be called the wine cellar.
    Since he rarely left St. Ignatius for the outside world, returning to the place was an opportunity for Esteban to see it with fresh eyes.  Now that he had received the shocking disclosure from His Holiness that what it contained were not demonic snares but merely a collection of alien technology, it seemed (for the first time) to be a bizarre place.
    Bizarre and yet totally understandable.  If you wanted to hide alien technology, where would you put it?  You'd need somewhere close by, for convenience, but somewhere nobody visits. How about an old building with a lot of monks in it?
    He was so buried in his own thoughts that he nearly walked right into them in the