Empire

by Michael R. Hicks

  “What is the name of this place?” he whispered.

  “This is Keel-A’ar,” she told him. “It is the place of the First Empress’s birth.”

  He wanted to ask her more questions, but he could tell from her tone that she was not inclined to explain the history of the place now, although he knew that she would later, if he asked.

  The trees suddenly thinned away until he found himself standing on the crest of a hill overlooking the city. The spires were tremendous, rising from stout bases to soar hundreds of meters into the air, thinning to nearly invisible points in the sky. Each was translucent, each a different color than the others, shimmering in the sunlight. Among the great spires were huge domes of gold and crystal, with streets and boulevards running like sinuous rivers between the buildings. The city’s layout held no apparent pattern, yet it seemed in perfect harmony, each structure complimenting the next. On the city’s far side ran a river, whose last bend took it directly through the city, and the Kreelan engineers had made the river an integral part of the overall design, buildings and bridges gracefully spanning the water.

  “It’s beautiful,” he breathed, his eyes drinking in the city’s magnificence.

  Esah-Zhurah, in what he thought an uncharacteristically thoughtful gesture, let him gaze about for another minute before ushering him onward.

  Walking for over an hour without seeming to get any closer to the surrounding wall, Reza began to appreciate just how large the city was. He could now see Kreelans moving through a huge gate in the wall. He imagined there must be several such gates around the city, but this was the only one he could see. Most of the Kreelans wore armor, while some wore robes of various colors: white, deep purple, cyan, and others that he did not even have a name for. Some carried satchels of various sizes and types, while others carried nothing that he could see and had their hands folded inside the billowing sleeves of their robes. None but the warriors had ever been seen by humans in a century of warfare.

  At last, in what he guessed was three or four Standard hours of fast walking from the tree line, they reached the great gate. It was embedded in the city wall, which stood at least twelve meters high and must have been at least five meters thick. He could not understand how it had been built, as there were no visible seams or cracks, not even the scratches and other slight damage that must come with time. It was smooth as a polished stone, its mottled gray exterior, like the scales of a sleek reptile, stretching off to his right and left until they curved away from sight.

  There were many Kreelans here, and Reza felt distinctly uncomfortable under their unabashed stares. He recognized the tla’a-kane, the ritual salute, as the aliens passed one another, crossing their left arm, fist clenched, over their right breast and bowing their head. It was one of the aspects of their etiquette that he found baffling. An older Kreelan would salute a much younger one, even younger than Esah-Zhurah, and nearly every passerby might salute a particular individual of indeterminate age and social standing, regardless of whether they wore armor or the flowing robes. Their nearly instantaneous grasp of all the factors that made up an individual’s standing within the caste system that determined their rank from the Empress on down astounded him the more he watched. It was only with the greatest of effort that he held his eyes downcast, for his curiosity to look at everything was overpowering.

  But no matter where he looked, of all the people they passed or could see at any distance, all he saw were females. Reza had read that humans had never encountered any males, and it was a subject of endless speculation among xenobiologists. Kreelan females did not have any particularly exotic sexual traits, and were in fact quite similar to human females, which strongly suggested that there should also be a male of the species. Otherwise, how could they reproduce?

  So where are the males? Reza wondered as he surreptitiously glanced around. There certainly aren’t any here.

  The palatial structures became ever taller the closer they moved toward the city’s center, as if they were ascending a mountain made by Kreelan hands. All had intricate carvings and runes adorning their superstructures, written in a dialect of their language that he couldn’t read, but that didn’t keep him from trying.

  Lost as he was in gawking at the world around him, he nearly ran into Esah-Zhurah when she stopped. She had been watching him and the citizens that passed by, most of whom were exhibiting more than a casual curiosity in the human, and had decided that a reminder was in order.

  “Remember,” she whispered, taking him by the neck with her free hand and whispering into his ear. Her mouth was so close that he felt one of her upper fangs brush against his skin, sending a chill down his spine. Her hand gave a firm squeeze around his neck to emphasize the single word. She looked him in the eye for a moment, and then turned to lead him further into her world.

  Except for an occasional glance at the spires that towered above them, Reza now kept his field of vision limited to the ground, with only an occasional peek to see where they were going and what was happening around them. He noticed with growing concern that an increasing number of the city’s inhabitants were stopping to stare at him. A few very young ones had even begun to trail along, as if they had never even seen an image of a human, let alone a real one. As he walked he began to feel the feathery pressure of small hands reaching out to touch him as if he were an animal in a petting zoo.

  Many of the older ones, the full adults, stopped and stared for a moment, sometimes speaking quietly to one another before moving on. Others simply gawked, continuing to do so until Reza and Esah-Zhurah had disappeared from their sight. But none made a move to interfere or harass him or his young keeper, and they passed their way into the heart of the city unmolested.

  The population seemed to rapidly increase in density as they moved inward, and soon they were passing through a very large but orderly throng moving about a gigantic central plaza. The plaza had several levels, and was bounded by four of the largest spires in the city. Despite having four corners, it was hardly a rectangle: the plaza flowed from one spire to the next in elegant curves. Everywhere, it seemed, the Kreelans had forsaken the angularity and symmetry so treasured by humans.

  The bottom level was an enormous garden park that stretched several kilometers across, and at its center was a huge obelisk that towered to nearly a third the height of the surrounding spires. It had a crystal at its peak that looked like an enormous sapphire of deep blue that blazed in the sun. Reza could see a number of people strolling about or sitting on the intermittent grassy areas near the base of the obelisk. It was orderly, peaceful.

  The edge of each higher level was set further back from the center than the one below, so that all of them were open to the magenta-tinged sky above, and every level was well adorned with trees and bright flowering plants. Reza could not see anything that looked like shops or businesses along the periphery; rather, it seemed like the entire plaza had been constructed simply because it formed an attractive and peaceful core for the populace, a gathering place for their people.

  They wound their way down a curving avenue of inlaid stone into what looked like a marketplace. There seemed to be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of vendors selling their wares from stores set into the buildings or from small wheeled carts scattered about the square (which, of course, was in the shape of anything but a square). Many of the items that were being offered were completely unfathomable, but others were readily identifiable. Food, much of which did not appear very appetizing, was in great abundance here, and in a much wider selection than he had experienced in his meager diet. Weapons of various intriguing shapes and functions – knives, swords, and others that he could only guess at – were the subject of discussion and what he assumed to be bargaining.

  But again, even here, he saw no real evidence of a high level of technology. There were no vid-screens or their equivalent, no appliances of any type, nothing even so innocuous as a hand-held computer. Even among the weapons, there were no projectile or energy weapons, only weapon
s that would have been recognizable on Earth during the Middle Ages. Everything he saw here was probably the same as it must have been centuries, or even millennia, before.

  And as he looked at the people around him, he saw Kreelans that seemed to come from different places, groups, or maybe professions (if they had any other than slaughtering humans). But no matter the details of their outward appearance, they still broke down into two general groups: those with robes and those with armor. He did not see a single warrior type vending, the Kreelans in robes of several colors fulfilling that task. Nor did he see any robed ones with weapons.

  As he passed the shops and stalls on his way to wherever the girl was taking him, he also noticed that there was not really any buying going on. He never saw any kind of money (so far as he could tell) exchanged, even when the would-be buyer walked off with the goods. Nor did he see anything like credit discs that were the standard in the Confederation, and he could not understand the process at work here. A Kreelan would walk up to a vendor, apparently choose whatever they wanted, chat with the vendor a moment and then walk away with the goods, the vendor turning to whomever was next in line.

  While the buying process was a mystery, the order in which people were served was not: it was clearly defined by the rank protocols. What he took to be lowly individuals, usually girls about his keeper’s age, but often older, sometimes stood a considerable time while others stepped up in front of them to do business. But he saw no sign of frustration or anxiety on the part of those who had to wait, only seemingly endless patience.

  His observations were interrupted when he felt Esah-Zhurah’s hand suddenly clamp down on the back of his neck. She forced his head down so far that his chin practically touched his chest, the cartilage in his neck popping in protest.

  Out of the comer of his eye, he caught sight of a warrior’s black talons. He remembered Esah-Zhurah’s repeated warnings to avert his eyes, but his curiosity nearly overpowered his sense of self-preservation. The warrior’s claws were jet black and shiny, like razor sharp obsidian, and were considerably longer and more lethal looking than Esah-Zhurah’s. The owner’s hand, arm, and lower body – that was all he could see – were all tremendously developed and obviously much more powerful than all the other warriors he had glimpsed. Her leather armor bulged with muscle, giving the impression of a champion bodybuilder and athlete.

  But they moved on, the great warrior passing into the throng behind them.

  Finally, they arrived at their destination. It was, at least compared to some of the other places they had passed, a nondescript aperture into a building adorned with the usual indecipherable runes.

  Before mounting the steps, Esah-Zhurah stopped and hailed a much younger warrior, apparently chosen at random from among a group of similar minors. The young girl, maybe all of six human years old, saluted and bowed her head.

  “See that the animal remains here,” Esah-Zhurah commanded, handing the young girl his leash.

  “Yes, Esah-Zhurah,” the tiny warrior replied, bowing her head again.

  Reza was not sure which was more shocking: that she would leave him under the care of such a young girl, or that they all seemed to know each other’s names.

  “Stay here,” she told him, pointing at the ground where he stood. Without another glance, she turned and went up the steps, disappearing into the arched doorway.

  As he watched her go, he idly noticed that this was one of the few buildings he had seen that had real windows. Many of the others just had what looked like slits randomly disposed about their exterior, shutters opened to the side.

  He looked at the girl holding his leash. She seemed terribly young, but her face radiated a sense of authority and determination that few human children would ever boast, even as adults. She stood at a kind of attention, her cat’s eyes never straying from him, her hand securely locked in the loop of the leather thong at the end of his leash.

  “What is your name?” he asked her quietly, hoping his voice would not carry to the passing adults and arouse their attention any further than did the simple fact of his being there.

  She glared at him, and he instantly realized his mistake. There was some key or trick to their names that Esah-Zhurah had not described, some way they immediately recognized one another, and to ask this girl her name must have been an insult.

  He sighed in frustration and turned away from the glowering blue-skinned imp.

  After a few minutes, Reza saw that more of the children, as well as adults, had taken time out from their alien day to get a closer look at him. None made threatening gestures – at least from what he could tell; they all seemed threatening enough as it was – but the circle about him was rapidly growing in size and diminishing in distance.

  His fear of being torn to pieces by an alien mob brought home the importance of his relationship with Esah-Zhurah. While he could hardly consider her an ally, much less a friend, she was the only link he had to life. Without her, he stood no chance at all of survival on this world, among these people, and he frantically wished she would come out of the building and lead him away from the overly inquisitive group forming around him.

  At last, she emerged with a black tube about the length of her forearm clutched firmly in one hand. Taking the leash from the young girl, she started off again, Reza in tow. Flowing with the increasingly thick crowd of people, he occasionally bumped against warriors whose shoulders were above his head.

  “What is that?” he asked Esah-Zhurah quietly, discretely pointing at the tube she carried.

  “It is the priestess’s correspondence,” she answered. “It is a task certain of us undertake for her each day.” She looked askance at him. “Consider yourself honored, human.”

  Reza raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had never been on a planet or known anyone who communicated by hard copy means, “the post” always having had an electronic connotation. But letters written by hand were akin to the books he had so treasured, and he began to believe that maybe the Kreelans were not complete savages after all.

  “We will go to the bath,” she told him as she led him around a tight knot of warriors arguing heatedly over something that he could not quite make out. “What is your saying?” She thought a moment. “Nature calls? Yes?”

  “Yes,” he replied earnestly. Although he had not had anything to drink for hours, he suddenly felt like his bladder was going to explode. Of course, he had been so preoccupied with gawking at the city that he hadn’t noticed until Esah-Zhurah mentioned it.

  She led him to a doorway along a street that looked no more or less unusual than the others cutting through the metropolis. Through the doorway was a large softly lit anteroom. Kreelans in dark blue robes, barely contrasting with their skin, were in attendance, and Reza was shocked to see that everyone else – Esah-Zhurah included – was stripping off their clothing.

  She turned to him, naked now except for her neckband and the ubiquitous baton, and snagged his skins with one of her claws. “Off,” she commanded tersely, wrinkling her nose in a sign of disgust. She gestured toward the robed attendant who already was holding Esah-Zhurah’s armor.

  Reluctantly following Esah-Zhurah’s command, he stripped and gave his motley skins to the attendant, who took them as unwillingly as he parted with them before carrying everything away through another door.

  Reza heard a growl behind him. Turning around, he found himself toe to toe with a warrior, her taut breasts – the left one carrying a terrible scar running from the left armpit to her stomach – a hair’s breadth from his nose, so tall was she. Even though they were aliens, they still had more basic things in common with human females than not, and he felt his face flush with embarrassment. He also noted that Esah-Zhurah was observing his predicament with keen interest.

  The other Kreelans in the anteroom stopped what they were doing and stared, as well. Most probably had never seen a human other than himself (or had only seen one long enough to kill him or her, he thought), and by their reaction they certai
nly had never seen a naked human, least of all a very young male. Most of their eyes were focused below his waist.

  Determined to show some courage, he raised his gaze from the warrior’s chest to her eyes and held her stare. From somewhere behind him, drops of water splashed, and he began to count them to mark what probably would be the last few moments of his life. He reached a count of eleven before he heard Esah-Zhurah’s voice behind him.

  “Enough, animal,” she said, tugging him by his leash away from the still-staring warrior. “Combat is not permitted in the bath.”

  Without another word, she led him through another archway and past the staring patrons in the anteroom. They went down a corridor lined with some kind of mosaic scenes of swirling rune-like shapes before entering the next room.

  Reza stopped in his tracks, just inside the archway. This is too much, he thought. It was a public bath, all right, as in bathroom. As in bodily functions. He sighed heavily and followed along behind Esah-Zhurah, who had stopped when she noticed the resistance on the end of the leash. His stomach churned.

  This is really disgusting, he thought. He had never liked the open bathrooms of House 48. But at least there, even in an open bay bathroom, everyone had to endure the same level of public humiliation, and so it generally was not that big of a deal. And, if nothing else, everyone in the room had been human. And of the same sex.

  After a moment’s pause he followed after Esah-Zhurah, who took her place on a strangely shaped throne of dark green. He took the seat next to her and tried to keep his mind on what he was supposed to be doing, rather than what was going on around him.

  Esah-Zhurah finally stood up (he had already finished, such was his eagerness to get out of this place) and took him through the next archway, where a cleansing waterfall cascaded over them from the ceiling. The water itself smelled different, as if something – a detergent or antibiotic agent, perhaps – had been added, but he noticed nothing different about the taste as it poured over his head. The water ran down through sculpted drains in the sides of the chamber to disappear below.