The Carpet Makers

by Andreas Eschbach

  “Immediately?” the operator asked.

  “Yes, immediately.”

  When he leaned back, he felt defiant and headstrong, and it felt good, like cold fire in his veins. Tomorrow he would send the Reeducation Team swarming throughout the city to tell everyone they could find what was going on in the galaxy. And that the Emperor was dead. Heavens, he could hardly wait to land on the next one of these hair-carpet planets to hurl the truth into the people’s faces.

  He noticed Stribat watching him from the corner of his eye with a smile that slowly spread across his lips. Maybe this Nillian really would show up someday, who could know for sure? But what counted right now was that Karswant would finally head back to the Central World to make his report to the Council—and that would finally get things moving. If someday they demoted him from the rank of captain, that would not change the fact that he had done what he thought was right.

  Wasra smiled; it was the smile of a free man.

  XVII

  Vengeance Is Eternal

  THERE WERE SEVEN MOONS in the sky. The night was clear and cloudless, and looking like a deep blue crystal, the heavens arched above a surreal landscape.

  It was hard to imagine that this entire world once had served no other purpose than to provide for the pleasure and entertainment of one single man! With the exception, of course, of the vast underground dungeons and defenses. Lamita often stood here on the small balcony of her room in the evening and tried to comprehend it.

  Beyond the palace walls stretched the sea, calm and silvery in the moonlight. On the horizon rose gentle, forested hills, so distant that the line separating water and land was impossible to see at night. The entire planet was a single, artfully designed park. She knew that there were countless smaller castles and other country estates, in addition to the Palace, where the Emperor had indulged his pleasures.

  All that was long in the past, of course. Now, the Council of Rebels met in the great throne room, and innumerable aides to the Provisional Government inhabited the gigantic Star Palace. Having the government located here on the former Central World of the Empire was not without controversy. In these paradisiacal surroundings, it was argued, the members would be too distant from the real problems of people on other worlds to make sensible decisions. However, basing the Provisional Council here for the time being had come about for practical reasons: all communications systems intersected here in an incomparable way.

  A pleasant bell-tone sounded. That was the long-distance connection she was expecting. Lamita hurried in from the balcony and went to the multipurpose unit by her bed. The intergalactic network glyph was illuminated on the visual monitor.

  “Speech connection established to Itkatan,” a mellifluous but obviously artificial voice informed her. “Your communication partner is Pheera Dor Terget.”

  She pressed the appropriate button. “Hello, Mother. It’s your daughter Lamita.”

  The screen remained dark. No video connection again. Recently, video seemed to function only for calls to other galaxies.

  “Lamita, darling!” The voice of her mother had an unpleasant metallic overtone. “How are you doing?”

  “Well, how would you expect things to be here? I’m doing fine, of course.”

  “Oh, yes, you people on your island of happiness. Here we’re just relieved that the water system’s functioning again and that the battles have died down in the North Sector. Maybe they’ve finally done one another in there; nobody would really regret that.”

  “Anything new about father?”

  “He’s doing fine. We got some medication again, and his condition has stabilized. If he were five years younger, they could operate, the doctor said. But now things just have to run their course.…” She sighed. A sigh from thirty thousand light-years away. “Tell me about yourself, child. What’s new?”

  Lamita shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve been invited to take part in a general session of the Council tomorrow. As an observer. The commander of the Gheera expedition has returned and will present his report.”

  “Gheera? Isn’t that the Imperial province no one even knew existed?”

  “Yes. It disappeared for eighty thousand years, and the people there apparently did nothing for that entire time but produce carpets out of women’s hair,” Lamita said, and added sarcastically, “and whatever new oddities the expedition may have discovered, they’ll expect me to find out what they mean.”

  “Aren’t you still working with Rhuna?”

  “Rhuna is being made the new governor of Lukdaria. She flew out yesterday. Now I’m in charge of the Imperial Archive by myself.”

  “Governor?” There was an obvious undertone of jealousy in her mother’s voice. “Unbelievable. Back when we stormed the Imperial Palace, she was just learning to walk, I think. And now she’s already made a big career for herself.”

  Lamita took a deep breath. “Mother, you could say the same about me. I was only four then.” The old rebels seemed to have a hard time getting used to the idea that a new generation would constantly replace the old one, now that the immortal Emperor’s reign had been ended.

  Interstellar silence. Every second cost a small fortune. “Yes, I guess that’s the way things go,” her mother finally sighed. “So now you’re all alone in your museum.”

  “It’s not a museum. It’s an archive,” Lamita corrected. She sensed the unstated condescension in her mother’s words and felt annoyed, even though she had promised herself not to be provoked. “But it really is a ridiculous situation. A quarter million years of Imperial history, and I’m all alone in the middle of it … and it would be possible to find answers in the Archive to questions we haven’t even asked yet, if only…”

  Why could her mother make her livid by hearing just half of what she said? “And outside work? You’re still alone outside work, too?”

  “Mother!” This same old tune again. A million years from now, parents would probably still patronize their children.

  “I’m just asking.…”

  “And you know my answer. You’ll be told if I have a child someday. Until then, my relationships with men are nobody’s business but mine—okay?”

  “Child, of course I don’t want to interfere in your life; it would just make me worry less to know that you aren’t alone.”

  “Mother? Can we change the subject?”

  * * *

  The Provisional Council had invited an unusually large group of observers to this session. That had been expected—after all, it would be the first report of the findings of a sensational mission to a rediscovered province of the Empire. And it presented no real problem, because the Council met in the former throne room, a hall whose size and appointment were breathtaking, as had befitted the ceremonial center of the Empire.

  Lamita slipped between two old councilors into the hall in search of her assigned seat. Surely in one of the back rows. Fragments of sentences reached her and gave her a feel for the mood around her.

  “… really have more pressing worries at the moment than an obscure cult in a lost galaxy.”

  “I think it’s a maneuver by Jubad and Karswant, so that their influence in the Council…”

  There was no seat for her in the back rows. She clasped her invitation tightly and was annoyed at her insecurity among all these old heroes of the Rebellion.

  To her dismay, she found her nameplate at the very front, directly behind the semicircle of tables for the councilors. Apparently, they really did expect her to form an opinion. She took her seat discreetly and looked around. In the middle of the semicircle stood a large table in front of the projector. Diagonally across from her, she discovered Borlid Ewo Kenneken, with whom she had been working on Gheera matters for some time. He was a member of the Administrative Committee for the Imperial Estate, and therefore, in some matters relating to the Archive, he was her superior. He nodded at her with a smile, and Lamita noticed once again how his gaze lingered on her figure.

  The imminent start of the ses
sion was announced by the sound of a gong. The luxuriously decorated instrument, taller than a man, fascinated Lamita. Someday, the seat of government would be someplace else, and the old Imperial Palace would be a museum, the most fascinating museum in the universe.

  She spotted the thickset figure of a general in full uniform accompanied by several officers, just entering the hall. He gave the appearance of a gruff, bullish man with unshakable self-confidence. That must be Jerom Karswant, who had commanded the Gheera expedition. He placed a handful of data-units on the small table next to the projector, organized them carefully, and took his seat.

  The second gong. Lamita noticed that Borlid was looking at her again. Now she regretted wearing a dress that emphasized her breasts. Fortunately, the chairman of the Provisional Council rose to open the session and to give the floor to General Karswant, so Borlid’s gaze shifted to the center of attention in the room.

  Karswant stood up. Within the grim set of his face, his eyes sparkled with alertness.

  “First I want to show you what we’re talking about,” he began, and signaled to two of his aides. They lifted a roll, as long as a man, from the floor to the table and spread it out carefully.

  “Honored councilors, ladies and gentlemen—a hair carpet!”

  All heads jerked forward.

  “Maybe it’s best if each of you simply comes to the table for a moment for a close look at this astonishing work of art. The whole carpet is knotted entirely of human hair, and the knotwork is so incredibly dense and tight, that producing it requires the labor of an entire human lifetime.”

  Hesitantly, a few of the session participants stood up and headed up the aisles to inspect the carpet and, finally, to touch it gently. A general shuffling of chairs followed, as everyone else followed their lead, and in no time at all the session had dissolved into an excited jumble.

  Lamita was awestruck when she managed to run her hand across the surface of the hair carpet. At first glance, it appeared to be fur, but a touch revealed that the hair was more closely spaced, far denser. Black, blond, brown, and red hairs were worked in this carpet into a complex geometric pattern. She had seen photos of hair carpets in expedition reports, but having such a carpet right in front of her was an overwhelming experience. One could almost feel the profound devotion and effort expended on this unimaginable work of art.

  In the general press of the crowd, Borlid was suddenly standing next to her, as though by chance. He seemed to have little interest in the hair carpet.

  “When all this is over,” he whispered to her, “may I invite you to dinner?”

  Lamita breathed in once and then out again. “Borlid, I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood to talk with you about that at the moment.”

  “And after the session? Will you be in the mood then?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not. Besides, I’m sure I would have a guilty conscience if I accepted an invitation from you, because I know it would give you false hopes.”

  “Oh?” he responded with mock surprise. “Did I express myself unclearly? I wasn’t proposing marriage, just a simple dinner—”

  “Borlid, not now, please!” she admonished him, and returned to her seat.

  How could he be so cocksure? She had found him pleasant as a coworker up to now, but when he thought he was being irresistible, he was just silly and boorish. He couldn’t seem to accept the fact that she wasn’t interested in him. His behavior seemed so immature to her that she would have felt like a child molester.

  Gradually the auditorium calmed down again. After everyone had again taken a seat, the general continued with his presentation. Lamita was not paying close attention. She already knew most of what he was explaining—how the hair carpets had been discovered, details about the carpet cult on the planets of Gheera, about the trade routes, and about the spaceships that took the carpets on board to transport them to an initially unknown destination.

  “We were able to follow the trail of the hair carpets to a large space station orbiting a double star, which consisted of a red giant sun and a black hole. According to our observations—which were later confirmed—the space station was a kind of transfer point for the carpets. When we approached the station, however, we came under such fierce and unexpected attack that we had to withdraw for the time being.”

  Of course Borlid was attractive by the usual standards. And the rumors suggested he didn’t pass up many opportunities with the female members of the palace administration. Lamita carefully examined her motives. That was not really the reason she was turning him down, however. It was more … his immaturity. Yes—as a man, she found him shallow, immature, uninteresting.

  “You must remember that up to that time, we were only a small expedition fleet: one heavy and three light cruisers, along with twenty-five expedition boats. So we waited for the arrival of the battle units approved by the Council; we attacked the station and finally occupied it with relatively minor casualties. It turned out that the black hole was actually the portal field of an enormous transdimension tunnel, large enough to accommodate oversize transport ships. For tens of thousands of years, every one of the hair carpets produced in the Gheera galaxy had gone into that tunnel.”

  Lamita knew that she was good-looking; she was slender, with long, blond hair and incredibly long legs. There was not a man who didn’t turn his head when she walked by. Her appearance couldn’t be the reason she had been alone so long. She wondered what it was that was wrong with her.

  “We seized a transport ship returning from the tunnel. It was loaded with empty containers, apparently intended for hair carpets. After careful study and consideration, we decided to risk a flight through the dimension tunnel with a complete battle unit. And we discovered a solar system everyone believed no longer existed, because it couldn’t be found where the star maps indicated it should be. We found the planet Gheerh.”

  Borlid was completely forgotten. Now the story was riveting. Gheerh had presumably once been the center of a great realm, the Kingdom of Gheera, before the Emperor’s fleets attacked and conquered it … in order to incorporate it into the Empire … but then, inexplicably, to isolate it from the rest of the Empire and forget it again.

  “The solar system was located in an immense bubble, a dimension chamber, and the tunnel we used was the only access. That was why we didn’t find Gheerh at the location indicated on the star maps. We believed it had been destroyed, when, in fact, it had been removed from our universe into a bubble in another dimension. You could say that it had been encapsulated in its own little universe, in which there were no other stars but Gheerh’s own sun. This bubble was maintained by control stations on the planet closest to that sun; they tapped the sun itself as the source for their enormous energy requirements. These stations were guarded by heavily armed and extremely maneuverable battleships, which attacked us as soon as we entered the bubble. Since they cut off our retreat, we responded with attacks on the bubble stabilization units of the control stations and destroyed so many of them that the solar system tumbled back into our common universe. It returned to its original location, and when the rest of our battle units came to our aid, we finally succeeded in neutralizing the enemy forces and occupying the planet Gheerh.”

  Karswant paused. For the first time, he seemed to grasp about for the appropriate words.

  “I have seen many curious things in my life,” he continued haltingly, “and most people who know me say I am not easily rattled. But Gheerh…”

  The projector image showed a largely monochrome gray planet, on which there were almost no oceans. Only in the vicinity of the poles could slight color variations be detected.

  “We found several million aboriginal inhabitants eking out a primitive life under pitiful conditions. And we found several hundred thousand men, who believed they were Imperial Troops, waging a merciless genocidal war against those people. Step by step, they were working their way forward—killing, burning, and butchering—and inexorably extending their borderline. Somewhat
less than one fourth of the planet surface is still inhabited by the natives, and that area is mostly in the desolate inhospitable polar regions.”

  “We would hope you’ve put an end to this ruthless war!” one of the councilors thundered.

  “Of course,” the general replied. “We were able to halt an assault that had just begun.”

  One councilor raised her hand. “General, you stated that the native inhabitants had been driven together over the course of time onto one fourth of the planet’s surface. What about the other three quarters?”

  Karswant nodded. “The area emancipated from the troops, so to speak, amounts to approximately two thirds of the land mass of the planet, and…”

  He paused again and looked slowly around the hall, as though he were seeking help from some quarter. When he finally began to speak again, his voice had lost its usual military edge; it seemed as though Jerom Karswant, the man, was now speaking.

  “I admit that I have dreaded this moment. How in the world can I describe what we saw? How can I describe it so that you will believe me? I didn’t even believe my commanding officers, men to whom I would entrust my life without hesitation. Instead, I had to land there to see it for myself. And even then, I didn’t want to believe what my own eyes were witnessing.”

  He made a vague hand gesture. “During the entire return trip from Gheera, we sat together and went over every detail time and time again, but we were still unable to reach a conclusion. If the whole thing makes any sense, I beg to be initiated into the secret. That is all I really still desire in life—an explanation, a reason for the planet Gheerh.” With that he turned the projector back on, and a film presentation began.

  “Every foot of ground won through slaughter or expulsion of the native inhabitants was promptly leveled and paved over by the engineering personnel, which numbered nearly five hundred thousand men. After the fighting forces had moved on, the surface created in this manner was covered with hair carpets. In the course of many millennia, the Emperor’s men had covered two thirds of the entire planet’s surface with hair carpets.”