AldSanni stood to attention, in the odd, half backward-bending way of subordinates in the Imperial Navy, and handed SarSanni a message. SarSanni had tried to relax the normal levels of discipline with the others – after all this was a private mission – but they had felt more comfortable treating him as a senior officer.
He pressed the message disc to the underside of his wrist. It identified him as the designated recipient of the message, and he heard a soft click as it opened. He was a little surprised. This level of security was normally only reserved for senior personnel in the Imperial Navy.
He opened it impatiently.
It was from ParapSanni! He had come to the attention of the leader of the Par’Sanni revolutionary Reform Party, the one voice for change in Sumerian society that had some political clout. Flickering words scrolled across the disc in response to his eye movements.
“ . . . and in recognition of your service to your people,” it said, “I would be pleased to discuss certain matters with you . . ,” and ended with a time and place.
So, this was his big chance. SarSanni straightened himself. This was going to be an historic meeting. For himself, for ParapSanni, but most of all for the survival of the Sumerian race. If he was given a chance, he would make it a moment to reverberate down through the ages!
The meeting place seemed an odd choice. ParapSanni had asked to meet him at a commercial eating house, and after hours. SarSanni had assumed that if they did meet it would be at some sort of political office. Still, that was a minor detail.
Later that day he walked around to a side entrance of the eating house with AldSanni and ErSanni. They were ushered in through a large open room – a careful reconstruction of a sea cave – and taken to a room at the back.
“Safe harbour, safe harbour!” enthused ParapSanni as he came in to greet them. This was the formal greeting of a senior Sumerian, and the safe harbour reference was all too appropriate considering the narrow escape they had recently endured.
ParapSanni told them he had heard about SarSanni’s ideas and had some idea of what he was proposing, but he would like to hear the full story from the Par’Sanni himself. This was very encouraging. For the first time, SarSanni had the opportunity to outline his overall plan.
ParapSanni listened intently as SarSanni spoke about better, faster, and more efficient warships. He emphasised the advantages of smaller crews, and faster, more independent operations. He suggested the unthinkable, that warships should be captained by Par’Sanni Seconds, so the decision making would be quicker.
He hastened to add that senior officers could still be Par’Brahmad, but they couldn’t be allowed to interfere with operational matters. He ended with the harrowing testimony from Ragnaroth that had started him on the path toward these new ideas.
When he had finished speaking there was a silence that hung in the air. This was a substantial breaking of tradition, and that weighed on all of them, but it could not be denied that the Reaper ships were unstoppable by anything in the Imperial Navy at the moment.
ParapSanni said something to one of his aides, and the aide left the room to carry out the Reform Party leader’s instructions.
“Do you wonder why I asked you to meet me in this place?” asked ParapSanni suddenly.
SarSanni was a little startled by the question. But yes, he had asked himself the same question, and he said so to his host.
“Sumerians have always been an open people,” said ParapSanni, “but there are new tensions in our society, tensions that were there before this new threat of Reaper ships.
“There are those who are more, shall we say ‘interested’ these days in what a group like ours is saying, and what they are planning. So it is a mark of our times that we need to take care we are not overheard, and that is why I am meeting you here. I know this place is secure.”
SarSanni sat indignantly upright. He could not imagine that any Sumerian would deliberately break the rules of privacy that existed in Sumerian society. They had existed for as long as he could remember, and there were no exceptions to them. Such an action would be unthinkable to himself as a Sumerian.
“Times are changing,” continued ParapSanni. “Credits now change hands for information that someone may ‘overhear’. I worry that some of our people, driven to extremes, may use listening equipment to find out such things.”
SarSanni listened in shocked silence.
“I fear our Par’Sanni movement may have contributed to this,” continued ParapSanni. “Not to mention the realisation in the Imperial Navy that Human technology has advanced enormously in the 110 years we’ve known them, while we have progressed very little.”
He looked at the three of them. “We are entering a period of very uncertain times, par’duk, and we have to think about everything we say, and everything we do. Can you remember this and act accordingly, if the Par’Sanni revolutionary Reform Party takes your proposals to the next Ceremonial Council?”
Par’duk had no direct translation to any other word in the Sumerian language. At best it meant ‘fellow travellers’, but at heart it meant those who would die an honourable death for what they believed in.
It meant that ParapSanni thought they might be worthy of including in his closest circles. Still, hiding the truth and watching everything they said was not normally the Sumerian way. Could the three Par’Sanni live with that?
“Why would you take your proposals to the Ceremonial Council?” asked AldSanni. “Wouldn’t addressing the next meeting of the Para’Par’Brahmad have more effect?”
Junior Par’Sanni would not normally speak in a meeting of senior officers, but ParapSanni merely smiled thinly, and seemed impressed by his revolutionary zeal. Perhaps such increased openness was part of the reforms ParapSanni had in mind.
“We do not have the political power, yet, to have much influence at a Para’Par’Brahmad meeting. This is one reason why we intend to address the Ceremonial Council. If we can get overwhelming support there, the Para’Par’Brahmad will have to take us seriously.”
It was a fairly obvious political move, and AldSanni was showing his lack of experience in these matters. The Ceremonial Council had no direct power, but it was a meeting of all the guilds of Sumerian society, as equals.
Leaders, Seconds, commanders, officials, technicians, engineers, and a host of less important others. The Para’Par’Brahmad, the leaders of leaders, could not ignore a groundswell of opinion that came from Sumerian society at large.
In the end, the three Par’Sanni gave Parapsanni an assurance that they would not speak about what they saw and heard while they worked with him, and they would continue over the coming days and weeks to see if a stronger common ground was possible.
Over the next few days SarSanni accompanied ParapSanni as he began to build up support for the coming Ceremonial Council. While he did not at this stage say what his proposal was, SarSanni reminded certain Sumerians of favours they owed him, and tantalised others with hints of what he had in mind.
The rejuvenated Par’Sanni threw himself into this with all his energy. It felt good to be doing something that might bring his ideas to fruition at last. ParapSanni had set AldSanni and ErSanni to work with his own aides, to get some idea of how political manoeuvring took place at this level.
And then one day ParapSanni took SarSanni aside.
“You have convinced me of your commitment to your ideas,” he said. “You have also shown me you have the leadership qualities to see them through.”
He looked at SarSanni gravely.
“I have a task for you, and you will be in charge of every part of the operation. You will have the experience of others to call on when you need it, but there will be no Par’Brahmad present. Do you understand?”
SarSanni understood. This was to be an operation outside the normal command structure of Sumerian society. That meant it would have to be hidden from others.
It felt like an immoral thing to do. It felt like cheating on the great extended family
of all Sumerians. It would mean withholding the truth. It would mean at times prevaricating, dissembling, avoiding some questions and not answering others.
But if he was to make a difference, if he was to help in some way to prepare the Sumerian people better for a savage encounter with the Invardii war machine, he would have to do what ParapSanni asked him to do.
“I am ready,” was all he said. ParapSanni nodded slowly in acceptance.
CHAPTER 18
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SarSanni found that ParapSanni wanted him to develop a prototype of the warship he had in mind. He would be given an engineering crew to help him achieve this, and a large industrial facility.
ParapSanni did not go into the details, and SarSanni understood that he didn’t want to give such details when they might be ‘overheard’.
The next day the three Par’Sanni who had survived the destruction of Ragnaroth paraded publicly in a show of support for the Par’Sanni revolutionary Reform Party. Their reports on the giant space station were made available as part of the Reform Party build up to the Council meeting. Then they were taken, in the middle of the night, to a water ship at the docks.
“OrLock will take care of you,” said ParapSanni, as he farewelled them there. “Trust him with your life.”
SarSanni was surprised. While Par’Lock and Par’Sanni had a close working association on warships as engineers and Seconds, he had not thought ParapSanni would enlist the help of the Par’Lock engineers to make changes to the political system.
The water ship left the dock running normal pleasure craft lights, but once it was out of sight of land OrLock shut down the external lights and activated the craft’s submersible capabilities. Moments later it slid smoothly under the surface of the sea.
SarSanni heard the hiss of compressed air and felt the cabin pressurise. This was more than a submersible, this water ship had been adapted for deep sea work.
With a sudden flash of insight he worked out where they were going. The ocean deeps were honeycombed with the ruins of Sumerian cities from thousands of years before. It would be a simple matter to restore one of the buildings, and make it into a hiding place on the ocean floor.
Within a short time they had descended below the levels that ever saw sunlight, and were running in a realm of perpetual inky blackness. Strange apparitions with ghostly lighting came up at them from out of the depths, and swirled aside as the craft pushed its way through the water.
The oceans of Uruk retained all of their abundance of life, and all their aquatic glory. While the Sumerians had genetically changed themselves to become air breathers, more than eight thousand years ago, they still retained a great love for this their first home.
SarSanni could see the bottom of the sea well before they reached it. Trailing vegetative growths floated as vertical streamers in the still waters, anchored to rocks or spreading their mats of griptight fingers deep into the ooze.
Some of the vegetation glowed gently as internal chemistry converted the organic debris from the waters above them into cell growth. But they were nothing compared to the fish life that swam among them, dazzling the eye with its brightness, variety and range of colours.
The water ship was soon coming in over a plain that ended in a low cliff some distance ahead. The panorama of lights on the sea floor flickered and dimmed as they approached the bottom. The multi-hued life that swam among the streamers turned off its extravagant show as the water ship levelled off, mistaking the water ship for a predator.
Orlock increased the power to the docking lights, and SarSanni noticed an old docking hatch, covered in years of plant growth, in the cliff ahead.
“That looks a little, er, unsound,” he said to Orlock, who was at the controls next to him. Orlock smiled a small Sumerian engineer’s smile.
“It should do the job, I built it myself.”
SarSanni turned to him, very surprised.
“It is a ‘not quite truth,’ is it not?” said the engineer.
“ParapSanni sometimes has difficulty with what he calls the ‘morality’ of what needs to be done. To me it is just an engineering problem. How to make a door that is not a door? The answer is to make it look like an old, unsafe door. What was the word you said – unsound?”
OrLock paused for a moment, trying to think of the right words.
“This is why Par’Sanni and Par’Lock are a good team,” he said at last.
SarSanni was stunned. He had never thought how such an arrangement might work, yet Orlock had just shown him how it might, at least on first hearing.
But then, what was in it for the Par’Lock engineers? SarSanni looked up as the hatch swung open, and OrLock guided them skilfully through it. The water ship paused inside a large chamber as they left the damaging pressures of the deep sea behind them, and prepared to emerge into a more normal atmosphere.
“May I ask,” he said softly, and made a small nod of deference, “why Par’Lock would take such risks, courting danger to future work opportunities, or family position in society, to support Par’Sanni ideas of reform?”
OrLock brought them out of the chamber and into a large cave, and they surfaced into a pressurised atmosphere the same as on the surface of the planet. He powered down the water ship’s engines, and opened the aft hatches so they could disembark. Then he looked at SarSanni for a moment, and seemed to come to a decision.
“Every guild looks at its own area of operations,” he said quietly. “Par’Brahmad at leadership, Par’Sanni at operational matters, Par’Durn at records and liaison. We think that is a weakness in Sumerian ways.
“We think Sumerians would be more powerful with fresh ideas from other guilds, with new minds looking at old problems in new ways.” He looked away.
“But only the Par’Lock seem to think like this. We are the main students at the Lyceum, the ones prepared to learn about things outside our ‘proper’ area of study.
“From the very first Par’Lock recorded in the Imperial Navy archives – my predecessor OrLock, who correctly saw that Human culture was progressing at many times our own rate – we have wanted to understand more of the overall picture of our culture.”
SarSanni nodded. He knew of the Lyceum, where all guilds could study together. Very few ever did, and he knew the feelings of resentment the Lyceum caused in most Sumerians. It seemed un-Sumerian in some way, but logically it wasn’t. Feelings of loyalty were strange that way.
SarSanni began to understood how the two guilds might work together. Par’Sanni wanted greater efficiency and less ceremony. Par’Lock wanted to combine ways of looking at things to find better, and more innovative, engineering solutions. They both wanted the same thing, substantial changes in the way Sumerian culture worked.
SarSanni thanked OrLock for his explanation. With a new feeling of equality for all Sumerians, he went to help AldSanni and ErSanni move equipment out of the water ship hold.
A number of Par’Lock and Par’Sanni came to help them with the equipment too. SarSanni noticed with interest how well they worked together, at least down here. There was a different feeling in the air, as if the work they were doing was the important thing, and not the layers of command.
He looked around. There was plenty of room in this cave to set up construction bays, and large doors at the back must lead into another cave. He counted at least ten Par’Lock and Par’Sanni who had come to help, all very capable at what they did no doubt, as well as the four of them who had arrived in the water ship.
There was probably another shift off duty at the moment, and that would tally perhaps twenty who would be working on his little project. He followed OrLock through the doors in the back wall, and stopped dead in his tracks.
The cavern was huge, and the doors opened halfway up an end wall. On the floor far below him he could see a number of assembly lines. Overhead lifting equipment buzzed with the combined power of numerous electromagnets. There must be – he scanned the cavern from left to right – over a hundred worker
s setting up equipment and running diagnostics.
OrLock seemed to be enjoying his astonishment.
“Do you see what working together can do?” the engineer asked.
SarSanni had thought the Par’Sanni Reform Party was mainly concerned with getting their ideas out in front of all Sumerians for discussion, with political change in mind. But this, this suggested some real power lay behind the scenes.
He turned to OrLock, who turned his head away to forestall his question. A Sumerian would not address a question to someone who was not looking at them.
OrLock spoke to an empty corner of the room, as if there was no one there. This was a Sumerian way of saying ‘you did not hear this from me’.
“ParapSanni has family connections on Rokar.”
Of course, the Sumerian mining planet. Still, the family must own a huge operation out there to put all this in place, and they were taking a huge risk that they would be discovered during the process.
For the first time, SarSanni began to realise how much others believed in his message, and how much ParapSanni believed in him. He felt the enormous weight of responsibility settle around his body. He would make them proud, he decided. He would deliver on his promise of a prototype warship.
He stood for a moment, thinking of what he should do first. OrLock waited patiently.
“Have we got production teams organised?” he said. OrLock flicked his hands up, signifying yes.
“The best and the most experienced members of the teams are acting as liaison?” Another flick of the hands.
“Then the design team will meet as soon as we’ve settled into our quarters,” he said. “I’ll be checking everything with you, OrLock. ParapSanni would do the same. It will mean working every moment we aren’t asleep. Do you understand?”
There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation.
“Understood,” said the engineer.
SarSanni beckoned AldSanni and ErSanni to follow him. As soon as the three of them were settled in their quarters he intended to get some rough sketches drawn up.
Invardii Series Boxset Page 29