House of Midas

by Chloe Garner

  “You’re a worse soldier than me,” Cassie said.

  “You’re a great soldier,” Troy said. Cassie grinned without looking at him.

  “Thank you, Troy, but I’m not anymore.”

  “Just saying,” he said.

  “You aren’t helping,” Olivia said.

  “You really aren’t,” Cassie agreed. Olivia looked livid at this, but she didn’t reply. Cassie sighed. “Look, they’re hiding something. Aren’t you even the slightest bit curious what it might be?”

  “No,” Olivia said.

  “Liar,” Cassie told her.

  Olivia opened her mouth and closed it. Cassie smiled.

  “You’re a scientist,” she said. “I get scientists. And I get that you don’t really want to be out in the field where things bite and sting and kill you unexpectedly. I get that. But that’s where you are. And no one is ever going to get to see what you’re about to see, or do what you’re about to do. It means that you have a responsibility to do it, in the name of knowledge and discovery. Even if you can’t ever tell anyone about it, you need to know. I know you do.”

  “There has to be another way,” Olivia said. Troy was pretty sure there wasn’t, if this was how Cassie was planning on doing it.

  “There might be,” Cassie said. Troy jerked his head back, surprised. “But this is the way that I see. It’s the fastest and it’s the way that gets us answers before the Gana destroy them, whatever they might be. Life is about calculated risks, and this is the one I’m choosing.”

  “Even though it means that you’re gambling our lives,” Olivia said.

  “I’m not heartless,” Cassie said, the last word slowing down suspiciously. “But, yeah. Even if it means gambling your lives.”

  “So you admit that it’s Troy and me taking all the risk here.”

  Cassie licked her lips.

  “No,” she said. “But I can see how you would rationally conclude that.”

  “And why do you think that I’m wrong?” Olivia asked defiantly. Cassie grinned.

  “Because I’m Palta,” she said. “It’s our nature to believe we’re always in control.”

  “That’s certainly true,” Troy said.

  “Which part?” Olivia asked sarcastically. “The control or the believing part?”

  He grinned.

  “I plead the fifth.”

  Cassie winked at him, then tipped her head toward Olivia.

  “I can take you back to the hotel if you want. It’s still available. You can sit and watch the city from up there, order room service when it suits you, and we’ll come find you when we’re ready to go home.”

  Olivia appeared to consider it for a minute, and Troy could tell that the humored expression on Cassie’s face wasn’t helping anything, but she finally nodded.

  “Fine. I’ll come. But if I die, you’d better feel bad for a really long time.”

  Cassie laughed.

  “Deal.”

  She helped Olivia into the blue clothes, and for a moment Troy felt self-conscious that he was standing there in a red dress, but then they were moving again.

  “There’s a servant’s village near the palace,” Cassie said as they walked. “We are going to go cross-country until we get there, and then we’ll go into the palace through their entrance.”

  “Aren’t you going to stand out?” Olivia asked. Cassie glanced back at her.

  “No,” she said, but she didn’t go into any more detail than that. Olivia looked at Troy for more explanation, but he shrugged. It was Cassie. He didn’t have any clue what to expect, but he was more eager than he could ever remember to get there.

  She bought them small trinkets and a meal to eat on the way as they reached the edge of the city, and then they started off through the trees.

  Troy had thought that the undergrowth would pose a problem to them, in their flowing clothes, but the fabric was more rugged than he had anticipated, and it fought off shrubbery like Kevlar. He could push through the thickest bushes and vines and slide through like he was greased.

  Olivia wasn’t quite as bold, and she took her time picking through the wild growth as they made their way up the mountainside.

  “I can see how they figured an army would never make it through this,” Troy observed.

  “I expect they used to keep guards throughout here, keeping watch,” Cassie answered. “There just aren’t enough of them anymore.”

  “Why are they dying off?” Olivia asked.

  “Prosperity,” Cassie said. There was a confused silence that Cassie picked up on, and she continued. “It’s a simple enough thing. We’ve seen it, ourselves. Once you reach the point of being comfortable, you stop worrying about whether you have enough kids to protect you and feed you in your old age, and you start worrying about the resources you’re pouring into them and whether you’d rather pour those into yourself. Kids become a treat, rather than a retirement plan. You budget for them, and you prioritize for them, but there aren’t many species, that I’ve met at least, that really think that the sixth kid is worth the sacrifice to their lifestyle. That’s a special kind of genetics, and most of us just aren’t programmed like that.”

  “So how does the civilized universe keep on going?” Troy asked. Cassie laughed.

  “Most species enjoy sex.”

  Olivia looked embarrassed, so Troy didn’t answer that. After a minute, Olivia spoke again.

  “The king has six children,” she said.

  “And no wife,” Cassie followed up. “None of them spoke about her all night. Do you find that odd?”

  “Maybe they think everyone already knows what happened to her,” Troy offered, thinking of royal families in general. Everyone always knows everything of consequence about them as it happens.

  “Good thought,” Cassie said. “And it’s possible you’re right. But when you’re so proud of your big, royal family, it just seems curious to not have some kind of tribute to the woman who brought them into the world. Ceremonial and obligatory as it might be.”

  “Is that how they reproduce?” Olivia asked.

  “Is according to the story of Ka,” Cassie said. “And we’ve seen their females. I assume you’ve identified the classic gender cases going on there.”

  Troy had. He wasn’t sure Olivia had the right training.

  “Is that how they all are?” Olivia asked, sounding a bit deflated. Cassie turned to face her, stopping dead for the first time since they’d paused in the unidentified house off the park.

  “The universe is full of winners and losers,” she said, watching Olivia sharply. “There are many ways that species behave, among themselves, and there is always conflict. Everywhere. People are always trying to prove that the way things are is wrong, and that someone should do something about it, to make the world better. Often it’s under the guise of ‘fairness’. People die because someone else thinks their theory of the world is more fair.”

  Troy thought Olivia would melt, like she always did, but she stood straighter.

  “What if they’re right?” she asked.

  The expression she drew from Cassie was nothing short of respect.

  “The fight for justice is something that I would never want to die,” she said. “But I’ll caution you that disappointment in finding that human normal isn’t uncommon, elsewhere, is a symptom of delusion. Earth has a beautiful diversity to it, and there are so many ways that the species that you already know interact among themselves. Sometimes things are starkly different from human normal. It doesn’t make it good or bad. It just is. And so it is in the rest of the universe. Justice is…” she pressed her lips and nodded, turning to continue forward. “Justice is something I’m willing to fight for. I think I’m willing to die for it. But you have to separate the idea of justice from the idea of normal being right or wrong. They have nothing to do with each other, and if you’re judging justice on a scale that includes normal on it, you’re just a tyrant waiting for power.”

  Olivia looked at Troy
and he shook his head.

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

  “I know I’m quiet and shy and maybe that I’m even frightened,” she said back, clearly trying to keep her voice low enough that Cassie couldn’t hear it. “But… Is that what women have to be like, everywhere?”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. He hadn’t realized she thought about it like that. And he didn’t feel like he had the right to even give an opinion. He, of all people, should just keep his mouth shut. And yet. She was watching him, waiting for an answer.

  “There are women in the portal program,” he said finally. “Look at Cassie.”

  “But they get cut early,” Olivia said. “It’s simple biology. We all know it.”

  He shrugged helplessly.

  It was the way things were. Sure, he won the lottery by being a guy. Except that he lost because he didn’t have perfect vision recovery out of darkness. Ignoring that, though, he’d had an opportunity that was more significant because he was male, and he hadn’t picked it, and he hadn’t wished for it, and he didn’t think that he would have chosen it, if it came at the cost of someone else’s disadvantage. But it was the way things were. He’d never thought to worry over it, because it wasn’t something he could change.

  If it was the way things were, here, too? If it was the way things were a lot of places?

  He felt helpless to feel anything about it. He couldn’t change it. Particularly in the specific case of the Gana, it wasn’t even his place to have an opinion about it. Human-normative thinking was strongly discouraged in his classes; passing judgment on how a culture worked based on his human perception of it was dangerous. He was trained to see how the culture worked, to understand it and be able to function with in it.

  He wondered briefly how that fit with justice as he ducked under a low-hanging tree limb, but he wanted to evade. He was a scientist. He was concerned with what was, and what could be, not what should be. Which wasn’t entirely true. He spent three weeks a year in ethics training. He was responsible for having a good grasp of what should be and what should not be, but it was usually from a much more pragmatic perspective. Things that should not be were the ones that were going to encourage corruption or get people killed. Things that should be had positive outcomes and were not disruptive to the point that the corruption and death stuff happened by accident. It was tricky, but it wasn’t as murky as this idea that Olivia was still watching him for a reaction to.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said. He knew he could go back to his biology theory. That smaller, quieter members of a species tended to be more likely to hide from predators and keep offspring safe, while bolder, stronger, larger members fought off those predators, sacrificing their own lives to protect their families. No one seemed to take that idea badly, except that, looking back over his shoulder at the beautiful city whose skyline was getting close to eye level at this point, it was an idea that was past its prime.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know. It’s complicated. I’d just hoped that the most evolved civilization in the universe would have solved it by now.”

  “Have you ever known a royal family to evolve toward rationality?” he asked playfully and she grinned.

  “Maybe one or two places,” she said. He wiggled an eyebrow at her.

  “Then their odds were never very good, were they?” he asked. She laughed again.

  “How did we get to this?” she asked. Troy retraced the conversation.

  “Kron’s wife,” he said finally. Her eyes widened.

  “Oh yeah. Family size. But Kron has six kids,” she said, loud enough for Cassie this time.

  “He does,” Cassie answered from up ahead. “Which he said is because royalty should have big families. Which is credible.”

  “But you don’t believe him,” Troy said.

  “I don’t believe anything I’m told at a banquet that was designed to keep me from finding things they don’t want me to find,” Cassie said. “Can you blame me?”

  “I guess not,” Olivia said, just for Troy’s benefit this time. “You really don’t think she’s going to get us killed, do you?”

  It was almost an honest question, disguised as humor.

  “No,” he said. “No, I think we may be the only safe people on the whole mountain.”

  *********

  Cassie led them to the edge of a small village, which Troy absently wondered how she’d known where it was, then stopped.

  “This is it,” she said.

  “What do we do now?” Olivia asked.

  “You blend in,” Cassie said.

  “We what?” Troy asked. “Where are you going?”

  “This is basically the final test they should have given coming out of jump school,” Cassie said, looking out at the several-dozen single story structures hidden among the trees. “You have the training for this.”

  “Wait,” Troy said, but she was gone. He looked at Olivia.

  “Did she just sell us out as slaves?” Olivia asked. He looked back, catching the quick figures of colorfully-clad people moving between buildings, and then shrugged.

  “Hell if I know,” he said. “If they catch us here, they’re going to know we don’t belong here.”

  “You’re suggesting we actually go in there,” she said.

  “I think I am,” he agreed.

  “And do what?” she asked. He shrugged, standing taller and beginning the walk from the thicker treeline to the edge of the buildings.

  “Blend.”

  She snorted, but she followed, the blue of her covering catching the light here and there like an exotic bird.

  They made their way into the village, Troy putting together the psychology as he walked.

  He was a servant. That’s what they called him, anyway. From the look of things, they were barely elevated above slaves. Kept segregated away from the Gana royalty, even the Gana house staff, they were probably here to do the things that the Gana considered below themselves as a race. Considering that they didn’t habitually eat, Troy had a hard time enumerating exactly what that would be, but certainly there had to be a list.

  They were here because they chose to stay, clearly, but they were treated like outsiders. There would be individuals who were broken and stayed out of a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, but others…

  Others would be powerful. Strong. Defiant, even, privately. They would take charge of the camp, form it into a community despite the passive wishes of the others. There would be no one to stop them.

  Pride was hard to kill without constant supervision, constant degradation. Their clothing was quite fine, by Troy’s standards, durable and colorful, and while that was undoubtedly superficially because of the Gana preoccupation of collecting colors, it was hardly the rags one would give to slaves to prove they were valueless. They had nice clothes and adequate lodgings.

  He stood straighter.

  There would be strong individuals here, and while he was supposed to blend in, he had to make a call, right now, before his first engagement, whether he was going to blend in by hoping no one noticed him or by assuring himself safe space within the community.

  A tall, orange-skinned foreign terrestrial with large, lizard-slitted eyes noticed them first. Troy put out his arm to stop Olivia, who had her head down.

  “Who are you?” the man asked.

  “We’re new,” Troy said. The man approached, his feet hidden below the cloaks so that Troy couldn’t see how he moved, but it was a strange motion, swaying and smooth with odd mechanical jolts at intervals that didn’t make sense. It was rhythmic enough that Troy concluded he wasn’t lame, but it was something like it.

  “You don’t belong here,” the man said. Troy kept his eye.

  “I didn’t think so either.”

  There was a flicker, a thought that Troy couldn’t decipher, then the orange foreign terrestrial turned away.

  “Glenni will know what to do,” he murmured. He began to walk away, but Troy didn’t f
ollow. After a moment, the man turned his head to see that Troy hadn’t moved and he pushed air through one of the orifices on his face, emitting a wheezing whistle.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  “Rather not,” Troy answered.

  “Troy,” Olivia said. The foreign terrestrial turned his head just past sideways.

  “Your companion…” he said, something about his tone changed.

  “She’s mine,” Troy said flatly, then smiled. It felt right. He wasn’t sure why. The lizardlike eyes snapped away and the man resumed walking.

  “You’re here, now, boy. No use fighting with us.”

  “Who are you?” Troy asked, taking Olivia’s hand and holding it behind his back as he moved to follow.

  “You don’t know?” the man asked.

  “They didn’t tell us anything.”

  There was the motion of a tongue in a pocket of space under his eye as the foreign terrestrial regarded them in profile.

  “Why are you here?” he asked. Troy didn’t answer. There was the same strange wheeze, and they were walking again.

  “You’re going to bring us trouble, I can tell,” the orange man said. Troy shrugged for no one’s benefit but his own. There was a cough, maybe a bark, and they turned, pushing through a heavy curtain that Troy might have mistaken for a wall and went into the relative dim of a hut.

  The inside was reasonably furnished with chairs and fixtures on the wall that held things of varying degrees of utility. There was art, there were devices of metal and glass, and there were things whose function was abstract enough that they might have been art.

  The ceiling was made of glass, letting in enough light to make fire or artificial light superfluous for now, and a group of foreign terrestrials were sitting at a table. Their conversation stopped as Troy, Olivia, and the orange foreign terrestrial entered.

  “What is this?” one of them asked. He appeared to be made almost entirely of stone, deep red in color, and his shape changed as black eyes slid across the surface of his body to look at them.

  “I don’t know,” the orange foreign terrestrial said. Troy checked his posture. It was perfect. Olivia appeared to be standing almost directly behind him. He could work with that.