Scales of Empire

by Kylie Chan

  ‘It’s me,’ Richard said. ‘Let me help you up. We’re getting out of here.’

  ‘Follow me,’ Marque said. ‘I have the stone; everything will be all right. Come on, this way.’

  The grass was a hazy green blur and Richard was a darker blur as he guided me. Then he grabbed me under the arms like a child and lifted me into darkness.

  ‘We’re inside a large Marque sphere,’ he said. ‘Sit on the floor.’

  I sat, and felt the curved floor of the sphere beneath me. I rested my forehead on my knees and touched my scalp, expecting to find lacerations, but there were none. I was soaked with blood, and realised it must be Shiumo’s.

  ‘She’s dead,’ I said. ‘She’s gone. The dragons will destroy our entire planet in revenge.’

  ‘No, they won’t,’ Marque said.

  ‘Even if they don’t, we’ll all be dead in a hundred years when the atmosphere fails,’ Richard said. ‘What a stupid thing to do. Why did he kill her?’

  ‘He may not like aliens. He may not like the fact that his wife will be having sex with an alien. He may not like the breeding program. There’s plenty not to like about the whole thing,’ I said. I leaned back. ‘God, my head hurts. He was a powerful kinetic. I’ve never seen anything like that before.’

  ‘He was drugged to increase his strength,’ Marque said. ‘It’s possible his death was unintentional.’

  ‘Drugged?’ I said. ‘There are no drugs that can increase a psychokinetic …’ I trailed off as I realised.

  ‘So he had alien help – to assassinate Shiumo,’ Richard said. ‘Oh lord, she’s really dead.’ His voice became strangled with emotion. ‘My Shiumo’s gone.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, and wiped my eyes. My hands were a red blur. My whole face was wet with blood, but I didn’t seem to be injured.

  ‘What happens now?’ I asked Marque. ‘Will you take her ship back to the dragon homeworld? Let us come with you so we can apologise on behalf of our species.’

  ‘You can apologise to Shiumo yourself when we get up to the ship,’ Marque said. ‘She’ll be pissed beyond belief. She hasn’t backed up her memories in at least forty-eight hours so she’ll have lost all that time.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘You can bring her back?’

  ‘She’s still dead,’ Richard said. ‘You could create a copy or a clone, but my Shiumo is dead.’

  ‘See this?’ Marque said.

  I tried to clear my vision but everything was still a blur.

  ‘Yes …’ Richard said.

  ‘It’s a soulstone,’ Marque said. ‘Attuned to Shiumo’s soul. It takes five years for the stone to become attuned, but once it is, it connects her soul to her body. There is a cloned body ready for her back on the ship, but it won’t have her consciousness – the spark of life – until I attach the stone.’

  ‘So she’s effectively immortal?’ I said.

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘How do you know it’s Shiumo’s soul, and not someone else’s?’ Richard said. ‘What is her soul anyway? It could just be the body’s consciousness.’

  ‘No,’ Marque said. ‘Each soulstone is unique, and once it’s attuned to a particular soul the connection is permanent. You’ll see when we get to the ship. The body will be alive and fully functional, but brain-dead. When I attach the stone, the body will tune itself to the frequency of Shiumo’s soul, and she will reinhabit it.’ Its voice softened. ‘It’s wonderful to see.’

  ‘The frequency of her soul?’ I said.

  ‘We’re here,’ Marque said. ‘Just a minute – we’re entering the ship. All right, come with me and let’s bring Princess Shiumo back to life.’

  As Richard guided me out of the sphere, I tried again to clear my vision and failed.

  ‘Am I permanently blinded?’ I asked Marque.

  ‘I’ll put you into the table, and see if I can repair it,’ it said. ‘Ready?’

  I nodded. Richard held me around the waist, and the floor fell away from under us.

  Marque lifted me onto the table, removed my clothing, and put the mask over my face. Without Shiumo’s mild sedation I had a moment of panic as I sank into the thick warm liquid; it felt like I was drowning.

  I forced myself to relax, imagining I was in a warm comfortable bath.

  Can you hear me? I said.

  ‘You’re speaking telepathically; I can see it.’ Marque said. Its voice seemed to be right next to my ear. ‘Keep quiet while I work on you, there’s a great deal of bruising and swelling here – I need to reduce the pressure. I’m having a look at Richard at the same time to see if he was injured. And I’m checking the status of Shiumo’s frozen spares – she had some particular specifications for her next body. Keep your eyes closed.’

  The liquid receded and I felt a chill over my naked body.

  Marque lifted the mask off my face. ‘All right, open your eyes.’

  I could see, but everything was still blurry. Richard was a fuzzy dark shape on the other side of the white room.

  ‘I can’t focus,’ I said.

  ‘That’s from the swelling. It will take about half an hour for it to go down. How’s your head?’

  I sat up. ‘Not hurting any more. Thank you.’

  ‘You are most welcome.’ A jumpsuit emerged from the table between my feet. ‘Put some clothes on, and let’s resurrect Shiumo.’

  I had to peer at the jumpsuit to see where everything went, but once I had it on I felt much better. My eyes appeared to be clearing slowly. I could see the back of Richard’s head as he stood facing away from me.

  ‘Stand still while I lift you,’ Marque said, and the floor rose so we were in the main area. ‘Shiumo’s spares are in the belly of the ship, next to my main storage. Come this way.’

  A sphere emerged from the back of the ship and we followed it. It stopped at the entrance to the pod room, and a piece of the floor dropped again to carry us down to a large black-walled hall. Marque kept us behind a hazy energy barrier as we descended.

  The room appeared to comprise a large proportion of the bottom half of the ship, its walls curving to match the dimensions. My eyes were clearing quickly, and I could see more detail as I looked around. The room was mostly empty, with strange installations protruding from the floor and walls that made it look like a postmodern-art gallery. The smallest was half a metre tall, and the largest stretched from the floor to the ceiling high above us. Some were simple white cubes, and some were complex black shapes carved with beautiful curling decorative designs. Others were complex multicoloured mazes of pipes and gears, moving incredibly slowly and ranging from small in size to enormous. There seemed to be no pattern to the objects’ placement or size.

  ‘This way,’ Marque said, leading us to a featureless black wall with a large table in front of it. ‘I’m pulling up Shiumo’s specs. I want to make sure the body’s exactly as she ordered.’

  A drawer emerged from the wall above us and floated down to land on the table. The sides fell away to reveal a three-metre-long red dragon. It was the same colour as our Shiumo, and the face had definite similarities – but it had two leathery wings as well as four legs, and a large fin on its tail. Cold radiated from it, turning the surrounding air to vapour, and a rime of ice started to form on its scales.

  ‘The specs are good,’ Marque said. ‘I’ll imprint the brain with the stored memories.’

  I expected Marque to open the body’s brainpan to make the transfer manually, but nothing happened.

  After five minutes of silence, during which time the body gradually warmed, the ice melting from it and flowing into the table, Marque said, ‘Successfully restored. I’ll fit the soulstone, and finish defrosting the body. It’ll take another five or ten minutes.’

  A clear transparent gem, colourless as glass, detached from the dragon’s forehead and floated away. Shiumo’s silver gem – the one that was sitting in her forehead when she was alive – floated out of the sphere and lodged itself into the depression on the dragon’s forehead.r />
  A soft black couch emerged from the floor behind us.

  ‘Take a seat while we wait for her to come around,’ Marque said. ‘In the meantime, I’m sure you have plenty of questions about this process.’

  ‘You said the soul is a frequency – of what?’ Richard said. ‘Sound? Light?’

  ‘The electromagnetic band, but the wavelength is hyper-long. Hundreds of metres long. The scientists suspect it’s a pulse wave bouncing through the universe that was created by the Big Bang itself.’

  ‘Our souls are echoes of creation?’ I said.

  ‘Got it in one,’ Marque said. ‘Your bodies are receivers; your souls are like a signal – the body receives and interprets it. The soulstone is like … a tuner, so to speak. It tunes the body to a particular wavelength – in this case, the wavelength of Shiumo’s soul – and ensures the body contains her specific signal.’

  ‘So all our souls are identical … the same broadcast?’ Richard said.

  ‘No, it’s an analog signal. Infinite variation. Each soul is a slightly different frequency.’

  The ice had completely melted from the dragon now. It took a huge breath, then blew water vapour out of its nose. It took two or three more deep breaths, then shifted slightly, its breathing settling to a normal rhythm.

  ‘Excellent,’ Marque said with satisfaction.

  ‘What if two people are tuned to the same signal?’ Richard said. ‘They’d have the same soul?’

  ‘Doesn’t your species have a legend about people who share a soul? You call them soul mates,’ the dragon said, her eyes still closed. ‘Haven’t you met people who are perfectly in tune with each other? You even say in your language that people can be on the same wavelength. It’s a rare and treasured thing when two people share the same soul frequency. In seven hundred years I’ve yet to meet anyone with the same frequency as me.’

  ‘The ancients were right,’ Richard said softly with awe.

  ‘About reincarnation?’ Marque said.

  ‘Ugh. The brain connections aren’t finished yet. Give me a minute,’ Shiumo said – and it was Shiumo. Her mind felt the same, even though the body was different. She hoisted herself onto four legs on the table, then opened her eyes and stretched her wings. ‘Oh good, I’ve been wanting them back for a while. How much did I lose, Marque? Where were we?’

  ‘Forty-eight Earth hours – two Earth days. After the backup, you went to the island to vet the candidates for impregnation. One of the spouses wasn’t happy about the situation. He blew you up with a psi blast.’

  ‘Humans aren’t strong enough to blow someone up,’ Shiumo began, then stopped. ‘Are you sure he’s human?’

  ‘He was human – the blast killed him. He was using drugs to boost his power,’ Marque said. ‘Must have had non-human help.’

  ‘Ouch. Did you get a sample to trace the drug?’

  ‘Yes. I’m analysing it now but am coming up blank on the source. We may have to visit Dragonhome to do a wider search.’

  ‘Jian and Richard are safe, which is all that’s important,’ Shiumo said, and turned her head to look at us. ‘I am sorry you had to go through that. It’s not something we normally share early in a relationship. Some races go a little … strange when they find out the true nature of the soul.’

  ‘The ancient people of India knew all along,’ Richard said. ‘Hindu … Buddhist … both philosophies are based on the belief that souls transition from body to body. Reincarnation.’

  ‘Where does your family name come from, Richard?’ Shiumo said as the Marque sphere buzzed around her. It moved in close to her face and used energy to open her eyes and mouth. ‘Your genetics say you are descended from the Indian subcontinent, but your name is extremely rare and not Indian at all.’

  ‘My family have tried to track it down, but the paper trail ends at British immigration,’ Richard said. ‘When my great-great-something-grandfather arrived as an immigrant, he’d trained as a classical singer at the Delhi Conservatorium of Music. Apparently his name was too long, or too ethnic or something, and the immigration official saw his occupation – vocal, counter-tenor – and asked him what it was. “It’s the male equivalent of being a contralto,” my great-great-something-grandfather said, and that’s how the name came about.’

  ‘That’s hilarious,’ Shiumo said. ‘You guys have even gendered your vocal ranges. I bet you’ve even assigned a gender to me.’

  ‘Well, you sound female,’ I said.

  ‘Marque doesn’t help. It refers to you as “she”,’ Richard said.

  ‘Don’t listen to her. If a species is gendered, she assumes the gender identity of whichever sex produces the babies,’ Marque said. ‘It’s a conscious choice.’

  ‘So you could sound male if you wanted to?’ Richard said. ‘That might have changed the way I related to you right from the start.’

  ‘See? So gendered!’ Shiumo said.

  ‘My ancestor was lucky,’ I said. ‘The immigration official could pronounce “Choumali” so he was allowed to keep his name.’ I smiled. ‘It annoyed the hell out of my father, though; he had to keep telling everybody he was Welsh, not African. I have the same problem.’

  ‘Good to go, Shiumo,’ Marque said.

  ‘All right. Back off and let’s see,’ Shiumo said, and spread her wings.

  ‘I have you,’ Marque said.

  Shiumo beat her wings, hitting us with a rush of air. She rose ten metres, then flew around the enormous room.

  ‘No way,’ I said. ‘No way. She is much too heavy to fly with those small wings. Is her body hollow or something?’

  I’m quite capable of flight when the gravity is low, she said.

  ‘You’re carrying her?’ I asked Marque.

  ‘More like I’m reducing her personal gravity. She carries herself.’

  Would you like a ride? she said, hovering above Richard with minimal flaps of her wings. He smiled up at her and they shared a moment of joint appreciation.

  She lowered herself to land next to us, hind legs first and then front legs.

  ‘You’re the living embodiment of my home nation’s emblem,’ I said.

  ‘Which nation?’ Shiumo said. ‘African Commonwealth? China?’

  I snorted with exasperation. ‘I just told you. Wales!’

  ‘Of course. I remember that statue your spouse gave me. Marque, have you notified the Earth authorities that they don’t need to prepare for conflict with my people?’

  ‘General Maxwell needs proof you’re alive,’ Marque said.

  Shiumo focused on us. ‘Will I pass as myself? Or will the general think I’m a different dragon?’

  Richard and I shared a look.

  ‘Depends how much of this process you want to explain,’ he said.

  She lowered her head. ‘I know I’ve been saying full disclosure out of respect for our new ties, but this is different. A human just tried to kill me. If he’d survived, he may have tried to destroy my soulstone – and they can be destroyed. Crush my soulstone and there is no way of bringing me back.’

  ‘They call it the Real Death,’ Marque said, and I heard the capital letters.

  ‘So what do we tell the Earth authorities?’ I asked them.

  ‘Please don’t tell them about the soulstone,’ Shiumo said, gazing into my eyes.

  ‘I won’t,’ I said, and she relaxed. ‘But why don’t you make a backup? Attune an extra stone, and store it just in case? It’s dangerous only having one – what if it’s damaged or destroyed by accident?’

  ‘We can only have one soulstone, and it must be on our forehead at all times. If you remove the stone for storage, it loses its attunement,’ she said. ‘I think it is our only weakness.’

  ‘Do the cats know about it?’ I said.

  She made a hissing sound of distaste. ‘They collect our soulstones. They take them from us whenever they can, and trade them, and display them as trophies.’ She thrashed her finned tail. ‘Our souls are trinkets!’

  ‘Why don’t you
go and get them back?’ I said. ‘I’d fight them to reclaim such treasures!’

  ‘The stones they collect lose their attunement quickly,’ she said, radiating misery. ‘If a cat takes your stone, it’s the Real Death. Waste of time trying to recover it.’

  ‘Shiumo, a cat ship just pinged one of me at the edge of this system,’ Marque said, its voice full of urgency.

  ‘There’s the source of the psi drugs,’ Shiumo said with grim humour. ‘Obviously the human was supposed to destroy me, and then my stone – but instead he died. How far away is the cat?’

  ‘On the other side of the asteroid belt, heading in fast. Do you want me to stop it?’

  ‘No. We don’t want to aggravate it. You know what the cats are like. Piss it off and it might destroy Earth in retaliation. Ask it what it wants.’

  ‘It’s ignoring me. It’s just landed on the surface where you were holding the reception for the reproductive candidates.’

  ‘We have to get down there!’ I said. ‘And we need to be armed. I won’t give one of those bastards another chance at us.’

  A small black weapon, similar in appearance to a revolver, floated out of Marque and into my hand.

  ‘Just in case,’ it said.

  ‘Only use it as a last resort, dear Jian,’ Shiumo said as I tucked the weapon into the back of my waistband. ‘Cats can be brutal when provoked, so diplomacy all the way.’

  We put our hands on her shoulders and she folded us back down to the island.

  28

  The cat ship had landed on the lawn a hundred metres from the stage. The five hundred women and their families were being moved into the elevator building. A couple of Richard’s staff were facing off with the cat on the stage, and nearly collapsed with relief when they saw us. Shiumo led us up to the stage to join them.

  This was a different cat from the one that had destroyed the colony. It was covered in black fur and wore a dark grey jumpsuit.

  ‘Good day, humans,’ its translator box said in a cultured voice without an accent. It bowed to us. ‘I wish to initiate trade relations with you. Without,’ it bared its teeth at Shiumo, ‘the interference of the evil dragons.’