The priests who play the organ in the Praxis' basilica work by shifts and watches; each one in turn plugs themselves in and becomes part of the instrument, performing praise to and through and with the ship. The pipes are always thrumming meditatively, providing extra tunefulness to the propulsion sounds of the ship, rising into hymns to mark the canonical hours and also the watch-changes, expanding into ecstasies of glory every time the great cathedral ship safely reemerges from the chaos of a warp-jump.
When the Inquisitor calls a meeting, rather more in either the tent-revival or quaker sense than the business one, all assemble in the pews to the organ's soft stately welcome, gathering on their way in a handful of Whiteshields cookies from the open boxes carefully arrayed around the font at the entry end of the aisle. (Roger's plan to also provide coffee ran into several logistics problems, including the Facilities priests' absolute refusal to let them use the font itself as a coffee urn.)
Simon likes his carefully-timed entrances; all of the acolytes have plenty of time to pick through the assortment of cookies, assemble their favorites, choose their seats in the far-too-big room, chat with their friends, reseat themselves to be closer to somebody else, hear Roger holler "Last call on these thin mints, eh," and respond by flocking back to argue over who gets the last of them, then start to settle down again before suddenly there's an Inquisitor coming down the stairs from the choir loft whence no one had noticed him climbing up in the first place. (Not even J, who habitually arrives early enough to take the first cookies out of Konway's hands and then go hide in the shadows of the loft himself to take in the performance.)
"Hail and well-met, my hearties! I pray you're well-filled and quite comfortable, as the bishop is rumoured to have once enjoined the actress;" the great glittering cloak of dignity all around him and then he slides down the bannister part of the way, and then slides easily back off it before he hits the sculptured finial and lightly leaps the last two steps, landing perfectly into stride to walk toward the pulpit, the weight of the gems at the hem of his cloak weighing it down into the perfect dramatic swirl of motion, it's sickening. Roger Konway in the first row of pews has big blown pupils like a cat on nip, a-watching.
