Rhythm of the Imperium

by Jody Lynn Nye

  Uncle Laurence watched with interest, then gave a wicked laugh.

  “Very good! In that case, you would probably be interested in a few humorous digitavids I found,” he said. “You’ll wonder why the females ever allowed the males to propagate. Wait a moment, I have something better. I want you to see this. Gaia, up!”

  “Yes, Lord Laurence.”

  The screen tank receded out of the way of his feet. Uncle Laurence’s chair rose until it reached a hatch in the ceiling. He touched a control, and the hatch slid aside. Sparkling bits of metal shimmered and danced, catching the light from the screen. They piled up on one another until they formed a blob. I could not help thinking that the mass reminded me of a Kail. I tried not to take against it based upon that impression.

  “Find me MGM051,” he ordered. The mass disintegrated and disappeared into the shadows of the storage compartment. I heard hissing and thumping overhead. Uncle Laurence smiled down at me. “Don’t mind them. Micronbots. They’re virtually indestructible, so they think everything else is, too.”

  “I’ve recently had some experience with nanobots,” I said. “They are not quite as self-directed, but very efficient.”

  “I heard! You must tell me all about it. But wait!” Clicking erupted from above, then the screen on the wall went black. Laurence arranged himself in his seat and gestured toward the main screen. “Watch this!”

  Because of my interest in ancient forms of entertainment, including the early seasons of Ya!, it was less disruptive to my senses to watch two-dee vids than it was for some of my cousins. The sound had a tinny quality to it, as many recordings made in the distant past had, and the video perceptibly jerky, but one soon forgot about the limitations when swept up in the wonder of the contents recorded thereon. The male protagonist of this vid did little abstract interpretation in his dance, but was compelling to watch nonetheless because of his athleticism and ability to convey emotion. The segment that Uncle Laurence was eager for me to see involved the man dancing on all parts of the room, including the ceiling.

  “I didn’t know that they created these vids in space,” I said, delighted. “He manages anti-gravity very well.”

  “This predates the first space age,” Uncle Laurence explained, as the man concluded his marvelous performance and gazed at a flat image in a rectangular frame. “Such things were done through mechanical means and illusion. Our ancestors still have so much to teach us.”

  “I only wish we had access to more of their wisdom,” I said.

  “What would we do with it?” Laurence asked, with a laugh. “We barely pay attention to the wisdom of our own age.”

  “Do you have more of these two-dee digitavids?” I asked, eagerly.

  “Movies,” Laurence said. “I have thousands of them. They have been an enthusiasm of mine for a long while.” He signed to the micronbots, who responded with yet more clattering and thumping above. “Would you like some popcorn?”

  In the midst of what I recall being an intensely interesting discussion of the immutability of good taste and the ephemeral nature of fashion, I dropped off to sleep. During dreams in which I appeared at various venues in the height of current haute couture, only to discover that I had been superseded within moments of my arrival, I suffered the shame of having catcalls and hoots aimed in my direction.

  I was not only glad but relieved to discover that my humiliation was only in my dream, and that the hooting was literal. For a split second, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, I wondered exactly where I was, then delight overspread my concern. I was on a trip with Uncle Laurence.

  “Well, there you are,” my elder relative called over the din, grinning at me from his pilot’s chair. He looked fresh, having changed clothing and shaved during my nap. “Need a warming cup to help drive away the cobwebs?”

  “That would be most welcome,” I shouted back. “Why is the klaxon sounding?”

  “Oh, that,” Laurence said. “Gaia, turn it off! It’s a proximity alarm,” he added, as relative silence fell in the cabin. He adjusted a control that tightened up the view to be seen in the navigational screentank. It had shown the sparse scattering of stars visible since the single jump we had made after leaving the platform. Now he focused in on a yellow star. At the speed we were traveling, we would pass through the Oort haze and the radiation belt in a matter of seconds. I heard a crackle over the audio system as we entered the star’s protective sphere.

  “Proximity to what?” I asked, as a steaming cup lowered itself to me from a hatch in that very ceiling.

  For answer, he elbowed a control in the arm of his chair. “This is Gaia. Titan, is that you?”

  A woman’s voice answered.

  “Titan. Good to hear you, Gaia.”

  “Thanks for babysitting. Any worries?”

  “None. Enceladus, Gaia’s home.”

  A deep male voice came on. “Happy spring, Gaia!”

  Uncle Laurence laughed. “Thank you, but it’s your vernal equinox, too.”

  “At least you get flowers,” came another voice, this one lighter, without any trace of gender. “Welcome back.”

  “Thank you, Ares. I’d like you to meet my nephew.” He grinned at me. “Let’s just call you Nataraja, after the dancing god.”

  In all, nine voices called out their greetings.

  “Welcome, Nataraja,” said a female whom Uncle Laurence called Ourania, and added mysteriously, “I hope you’re good at keeping secrets.”

  “I am,” I said. I looked to my uncle with questions in my eyes. I’d have acted out my confusion if I had not been buckled into a crash couch. He closed the communication circuit. “What secret?”

  “This one, Thomas,” he said. He waved a hand over his screentank, and the wall screen zoomed in toward the distant yellow dot. At the angle we approached the star, I could see a scatter of spheres within a few hundred million kilometers of it. I glimpsed one magnificent planet with a series of brilliant rings that had to be half again as large as the gas giant Vijay Six, but the focus did not stop there. Instead, it passed by an asteroid belt, a small rocky planet with two moons, and came to rest upon a brilliant blue globe. I peered at it.

  “Quite a beautiful planet,” I said, “but I can’t put a name to it.”

  “It’s home, Thomas.”

  “Your home?”

  “No, our home. That’s somewhere we all live, where you and I were born.”

  I looked again. The continents weren’t in the configuration I expected to see. Perhaps they were inverted. I tilted my head, but came up certain. I peered at him with suspicion writ large on my features. “This isn’t Keinolt.”

  “It is home to all humankind, Thomas,” Uncle Laurence said, with a smile. “Welcome to Earth.”

  “Earth?” I favored him with my patented laugh, which boomed around the room like a disapproving studio audience. He had played many jokes on me in the past. I was determined not to let this be one of them. “How can it be Earth?” I demanded, disbelief writ large in both my mien and vocal tones. “Earth is lost! No one knows where Earth is!”

  Uncle Laurence saw my skepticism and raised me exasperation.

  “Well, if you took a poll, you would find your statement to be the correct one, within plus or minus three degrees of accuracy. In point of fact, though, a few, a select and very carefully vetted few, do know. We have known all along. It is here.” He gestured protectively toward the blue dot, looming larger in the scope all the time. “Its anonymity is what protects it from incursion, destruction, or tourism.”

  I waited to see if he was trying to stretch the tale, but his face told me that for once he was deadly serious, more serious than I knew he could be. I swallowed hard.

  “How can that be? You can’t hide a star system.”

  Uncle Laurence turned a hand over. “It was … mislaid. Very carefully mislaid by the galactic cartographers, many centuries ago.”

  “I had heard that,” I said, “but in practice? This star must be on the charts.”r />
  “And it is,” my uncle said, with a wry grin. “But this one unremarkable yellow dwarf star lies in traditional Zang space, which protects it from casual attention. No one dares to intrude upon this sector, knowing what the Zang are capable of doing.”

  “I thought they only amused themselves,” I said. “At this moment, they are striving to blast an innocent rock into energy.”

  Uncle Laurence shook his head. “Everything they do has a purpose, although we may never understand what it is. Since what they do includes protecting this corner of the galaxy, I welcome their actions, whatever they may be.”

  I stared at the blue globe. The sight, and my uncle’s words, made me feel smaller and more humble than I ever had in my life.

  “Who are the other people who greeted us? Your staff?”

  “I don’t have staff, Thomas,” Uncle Laurence said, with a smile. “Not human, at any rate. Titan and the others are the guardians of the other planets in the system, as well as acting as early-warning monitors for me. They are named for the orbs they occupy, just as I am. Gaia is one of the old titles for Earth.”

  As deeply as my common sense told me not to believe, after the disappointments I had suffered on the way to the Trade Union’s viewing platform, I wanted to. Four major land masses and countless small ones lay in gleaming oceans. I eyed the largest, a tri-lobed monstrosity that must have occupied a quarter of the planet’s surface. On the other side of the ocean, an irregular ribbonlike mass, squeezed tight in the middle, undulated down from one brilliant polar icecap nearly all the way down to the comma-shaped continent heaving with blue-white glaciers. A small, independent circumflex of land hovered in the same latitude as their junction in the midst of the other broad ocean. My breath caught in my chest.

  I couldn’t speak. There was too much to absorb. My uncle passed the time of day with his colleagues, remarking upon comets passing through the heliopause and seasonal meteor showers hailing down on one or another of the planets. Each of them had storied names that I, like most humans of our day, had consigned to legend: Saturn, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Ceres … and Earth.

  CHAPTER 38

  “We must stay with the Zang,” Phutes protested. He had hoped never to have to speak again with any of the humans. Special Envoy Melarides waited in the corridor, with every appearance of patience. The rest of their siblings removed themselves as far from the humans as possible. Phutes was reminded once again of their terrible smell as well as the disgusting way their flesh quivered.

  “We promised,” Sofus said. “Ignore the aesthetics. Remember. It is a matter of honor. We swore that when we reached this place, we would allow this one and her staff to speak with us. If we can obtain our ends by speaking, it would be all the better. Remember, we have not yet made Low Zang promise to help us.”

  Phutes eyed the humans.

  “It is an unpleasant prospect.”

  “Yesa would not have sent us if she didn’t believe we were capable of putting aside our own feelings in the greater cause,” Sofus said. Mrdus only nodded. He was too wary of the bright-colored guns carried by the uniformed humans behind the diplomatic staff. None of them wanted to be sprayed again. Phutes was certain that some of the horrible organic matter was still lodged in his tissues.

  “I don’t like it,” Phutes said. He kicked NR-111. “Tell her that we don’t like being locked up only to be allowed out at the humans’ pleasure.”

  The hoots and burps that the translator emitted were received by the envoy with a bow.

  “We regret that concerns for your siblings’ safety and comfort demanded that we place the Kail in this environment, Phutes,” Melarides said. “But you three have been granted a signal honor. Except for Dr. Derrida, no other beings have been singled out by the Zang for personal interaction. Your wristbands,” she pointed to the metal hoops that encircled their wrists, “have been encoded so you can pass wherever it goes.”

  “That is true,” Sofus said.

  The envoy held out her hand, careful not to come within range of actually touching Phutes.

  “Please, come with me now. We would like to get to know you better, and to discuss matters of mutual interest to our peoples.”

  “I don’t know whether I trust her,” Phutes said.

  “Yesa wants it,” Sofus reminded him. “Melarides speaks for humankind. If she agrees to what Yesa demands, we have won, without having to convince Low Zang. Melarides wants to give humankind and all those other carbon-based beings a chance to survive.”

  “Plan 10 is to get the Zang to listen to our plea and accede to it,” Mrdus pointed out. “Plan 01 was always to try and convince the humans directly.”

  Phutes relented. The envoy, showing the calcium-based ridge most of them concealed behind rotting fleshy flaps, directed them out of the main chamber and into one of a series of smaller rooms. This one had opaque walls, a fact that worried Phutes.

  “We cannot see the others.”

  “They are safe,” Melarides said. She held a square of silicon and metal toward him. “You can watch them on my viewpad, if you like.” She touched the glass sheet, and an image of the Kail rose from it. All but Fovrates wandered aimlessly through their chamber. Some bathed. Some stared up at the dome. Some communed by leaning against one another in the broad container of silicon powder provided for their use. “Please, come sit down.”

  She went to the slab of stone propped on metal legs. Soft, squishy chairs, like the flesh of humans themselves, were arranged on one side. A broad bench of black stone lay on the other.

  “That is acceptable,” Sofus said. He strode over and arranged his abdomen over the backless block. Mrdus huddled next to him, as though for protection. Phutes chose to take his place opposite the envoy.

  “May we offer you refreshments?” she asked. She gestured to her aide, the male human. He brought metal bowls forward and placed them in front of the Kail. “Pure water and refined gold dust. Very conductive. We understand that you prize such things.”

  “We do,” Sofus said, placing one of his fists in the bowl nearest him. “You have known this already.”

  “Yes,” Melarides said, settling her hands on the table as refreshments suitable for humans were set out. “I just want to get to know you. The spectacle will begin shortly, so I thought this was an opportune time.”

  She burbled and squeaked along for a while. Phutes sat only half listening. He sampled the containers himself. The minerals in the bowls were as pure as anything that he had ever experienced. The particles worked their way into his system in a pleasurable fashion. He wondered if Yesa herself had ever had accreted as much gold as this.

  “Is any of what she is saying important?” he asked NR-111 when the envoy paused for breath.

  “Most of it is common courtesies,” the translator said. “I have been replying on your behalf with facts that you have stated in the past.”

  “Good.”

  “… Wait,” NR-111 said. “This is a new question. Melarides is good at asking questions.”

  “Tell me about your family,” the envoy said, with a smile. She leaned forward, thrusting her soft face closer to Phutes. He had the stone table between them, so he only recoiled a little.

  “My siblings and I rest on our mother’s bosom,” Phutes said.

  “How many siblings have you got?” she pressed. “I see that there are nearly forty of you here. It must be a large family! How many are there?”

  Phutes had that figure at his fist’s end, and expressed it in good binary. Properly, the number took a long time to say. The translator shortened it into the uncouth combination that humans were capable of understanding. Melarides listened patiently.

  “That sounds like the entire population of a planet,” she said, with a noise that the translator rendered as a friendly laugh. “I have 1101 cousins, and 11 brothers.” Her command of the proper tongue was not as atrocious as most, though still somewhat nauseating.

  “I prefer if you tra
nslate her words from the human, instead of letting her destroy our language,” Phutes said. NR-111 conveyed the meaning to Melarides.

  She approved that. The others moved their flabby hands over the silicon and metal sheets. The sheets must have cringed to have so much organic matter slimed over them. Phutes said so.

  One of the envoy’s staff, a pale-skinned male, emitted a harsh noise. He stood up. “You are offensive. Anyone can tell that you have no experience in complex negotiations.”

  Phutes bristled. “You wished this meeting. Listen to my words or leave.”

  “How dare you speak to me that way?”

  The guards took a few steps nearer, leveling their weapons on the Kail.

  “And, those!” Phutes said, pointing at the guards. “Are we equals or enemies?”

  “You are equals,” Melarides said, soothingly. “I was wrong to include them. They should not be in here while we converse.” She turned to the uniformed humans. “Please step outside. We will call you if you are needed, but you won’t be.”

  “Are you sure, ma’am?”

  Melarides showed her oral calcium ridge again. “Yes, I am. We are having a peaceful discussion. We want to come to an agreement between equals. Thank you.”

  With open reluctance, the guards departed, taking with them the angry human. Phutes approved. The envoy was biddable. Maybe a warning would not have to be sent to humankind.

  “You are interested in our tablets and pocket secretaries,” she said, offering the glass slab again. Phutes showed assent. He slid it toward him and regarded it with approval. The conductive qualities allowed him to manipulate the image without possessing fingers.

  “They are like us, proper mineral beings. Like 111.”

  “Like seven? Oh, you mean your translator. Yes. She is a good employee. We appreciate her service. Please, let us continue our discussion. Tell me about your family. Have you parents?”