The Flowery War

by Tim Andersen

  The Abbot led us back into the Cathedral. Crispin was gone. There was a spiral staircase near the altar that led up to a balcony. From there a passageway led to a door. The Abbot touched the knob, and it opened. He let us inside and closed the door.

  The room was an office, probably the Abbot’s and contained a desk and some oil lamps, quills and parchment. A few religious books and scrolls were set on a bookcase. On one wall was a simple wooden crucifix with the suffering Christ nailed to it. There were some high windows letting in the fading sunlight.

  “The vespers bell will ring shortly,” he said, sitting behind the desk and motioning to two velvet padded, carved chairs. We sat. “I have time to describe to you a few things, not everything, you understand. What we tell you is only what is necessary to accomplish what must be done. All else, you must discover for yourselves.”

  We nodded.

  “What about Lars? Aren’t you going to do anything about him?” asked Lika.

  The Abbot shook his head. “He has made his choice, Lika. We will not stand in his way. To do so would violate our very deepest principles of personal discretion.”

  “But he could endanger everything if he returns to Earth. He’ll brand us all traitors.”

  “If that is his will, so be it. He will suffer the consequences of his actions in just measure, as we all do.”

  There was a knock at the door and one of the Brothers came in carrying a tray. “Ah, Brother Amor,” said the Abbot, “thank you. Set the tray down. I will pour.” Brother Amor set the tray on the desk and left. The Abbot picked up what looked like a teapot. “Undoubtedly,” he said, pouring the tea into small stone cups, “you will see this as an anachronism, as tea was not available in your Europe till the Renaissance. However, I think you will find that it will restore you better than an intoxicant and take the chill out better than water.”

  I sipped the tea and found it sweet and fragrant. I immediately felt better. “I’m still confused about what’s going on,” I said.

  “Ah, yes,” said the Abbot, “Goshan Fenn, son of Peter and Silvana Fenn, grandson of your great Vanchar Fenn. To you I must apologize. When we requested that you be brought on this mission, we also insisted that you not be told of its import. We trusted Lika and Tolan would carry out our wishes, and they did, most satisfactorily.”

  “Wait. You requested me, Abbot?”

  “Call me Fidelis,” he said, setting down his cup again. “Yes, the communications we sent in secret to Tolan Smith requested you specifically. You are essential.”

  “But why?”

  The Abbot shook his head. “I cannot tell you exactly why. It might influence your future actions unsatisfactorily.”

  “Unsatisfactory for you,” I said.

  The Abbot smiled. “Yes, I am afraid that we are playing the puppet masters here but with good reason. Still, each is given a choice. You could be on your way back to Earth right now, we would not have stopped you, but you chose to remain, as we expected you would. You were skillful enough to determine right from wrong at that crucial moment.”

  “Right from wrong?” I said. “I still don’t know if I made the right choice. If we get back to Earth, we could all end up in prison.”

  “Better a prison of concrete than a prison of the conscience.”

  This just made me angry. “But you still haven’t told me what’s so important! We’ve risked everything for you, and you haven’t told us anything!” I slammed my hand on his desk, but the Abbot did not as much as flinch.

  He turned to Lika. “Lika, perhaps you would like to describe the contents of the messages we sent you.”

  “I have them,” she said, and, reaching into the inner pocket of her coat, she pulled out the brown package I had seen Smith pick up at the spaceport. “Tolan gave them to me to carry. He didn’t want to leave them in the ship.”

  She unwrapped the paper, and inside I saw was a mini-projector with a memory chip. She inserted the memory chip and turned on the projector. It projected an image on a side wall. It was of a page of symbols in black on white. “This is the Amidan codetext,” she said. “The Amidans encrypted everything with an easily breakable cipher and one of their unbreakable codes. This message here, Goshan, is in perfect Amidan but makes no sense.” She folded a small keypad out from the projector and entered a code. The view changed and two pages, another page of Amidan and a page of English, appeared side-by-side. “This is the actual message and our translation. Although,” she said, glaring at the Abbot, “if we had known that the Amidans could communicate in English, we would not have needed a translation.”

  The Abbot said, “another unfortunate deception on our part. As we said before, we needed to be sure that the four of you would come.”

  “If only we’d had a different pilot, maybe we’d still have a ship though,” I said. “It’s a pity that you didn’t request Crispin not be assigned to the mission.”

  “Do not underestimate Lars Crispin, Goshan. He too is essential in this project.”

  I chose not to argue, and Lika continued, “if I blow up the English translation, you can read it.” She manipulated the projector, and the English page on the right side filled the wall.

  It was actually a dialog of messages:

  Message 1:

  Tolan Smith, establish contact by secret means, tell no one.

  Reply 1:

  Formal diplomatic procedure calls for open contact. I do not have authorization.

  Message 2:

  Authorization is irrelevant. Establish secret contact or relations will cease.

  Reply 2:

  Specify reason for secret contact.

  Message 3:

  Information concerning the welfare of the human species in our possession. Elements in human governance structure are not to be informed.

  Reply 3:

  Specify nature of information. Specify identity of elements.

  Message 4:

  Information: human species is in grave danger from both internal and external elements.

  Identity of elements: unknown

  Reply 4:

  Specify source of information.

  Message 5:

  Source is not givable. Require physical meeting.

  Reply 5:

  Specify nature of danger.

  Message 6:

  Nature of danger is not givable. Require physical meeting.

  Reply 6:

  Physical meeting not arrangeable without further information.

  Message 7:

  Further information not givable. Require physical meeting or relations will cease. Considerable technology transfer available upon acceptance.

  Reply 7:

  Acceptance given. Physical meeting arranged.

  Lika pointed to the Reply 7, the last one on the page. “This was the last contact for a few months. Then we received this message.” She pressed a button and a new page appeared.

  Message 8:

  Tolan Smith, vital instructions to follow. Establish secret contact.

  Reply 8:

  Contact established.

  Message 9:

  Elements in human governance structure moving more quickly than anticipated. Will request earlier date for physical meeting. Also, bring Goshan Fenn to physical meeting. Repeat: bring Goshan Fenn to physical meeting.

  Reply 9:

  Earlier date, acknowledged. Goshan Fenn will be obtained.

  Lika turned off the projector once I had finished reading. “That, Goshan, was all we knew.”

  “And that was all we were willing to put into our communications,” said the Abbot. “Of course, we knew that Mr. Smith would not let us down, and here you are, exactly as we had planned.”

  “But the first message said that Smith was supposed to tell no one. How did you find out?” I asked Lika.

  “He asked me to do the translations of course,” she said.

  “As we knew he would,” said the Abbot. “You, too, are essential to our plan even though we did not ask fo
r you by name. Already you have helped us by keeping Goshan here.”

  Lika looked surprised, and I reddened. “Did I Goshan?” she said.

  “Indeed,” said the Abbot, “there is much that you both can do for us while Mr. Smith is . . . indisposed.”

  “Where is Tolan anyway?” asked Lika.

  “He is studying at the moment. Time is essential, and he cannot be disturbed. I’m afraid that he will not be able to attend vespers or the evening meal.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking disappointed, then continued: “Well, before we start doing things for you, now that Goshan is up to date, I would like to know the source this danger you keep talking about. You’ve kept Tolan and me in stew for months.”

  “Yes,” said the Abbot, “perhaps it would be best to show you.” As he finished saying the word “you”, the room disappeared, and we were floating in space with stars all around. I could no longer feel the chair under me or any gravity. It was as if I had been teleported into the middle of deep space. Oddly enough though, I could breath and felt perfectly warm as if I were in a zero-g sim.

  I could see a star that was much brighter than the others, about half the size of Earth’s sun. I held my hand out to it, but felt no warmth at all.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “This is a sort of simulation, and I am going to use it to teach you some of what we know about the danger to your species,” said the Abbot. “This,” he said pointing to the bright star, “is New Sol. You are familiar with this star system?”

  “Of course,” said Lika, “it’s our oldest colony star.”

  “There are three habitable planets here,” said the Abbot, holding up three fingers against the starfield. “They have been collectively a point of contention I think between you and the people you call the Trolls. You are familiar with the history?” he asked.

  “The Trolls colonized them, but their colonists died out,” I said. “We colonized them before we knew about the Trolls.”

  “Yes, and your treaty, as you call it, with the Trolls stipulated that the Trolls would give up any claim to this system.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the Trolls honored that agreement?”

  “Yes, so far,” I said.

  “And all of these colonies are part of the Republic?” said the Abbot.

  “Yes, they all tried to separate from Earth twenty years ago, but the rebellion was stopped,” I said, wondering what all this question and answer was leading to.

  “What are the planets in this star system?” he said.

  “Well, there’s Atlantis,” I said.

  “Yes, Atlantis, named after your fabled lost city,” said the Abbot. Now the base disappeared, and we were orbiting another world, this one had greenish oceans and brown, dead continents. “As I recall it got its name for a reason.”

  “It was the home of an extinct alien civilization,” I said. “They were supposed to have destroyed themselves.”

  “This planet has ocean temperatures of forty to fifty degrees Celsius due to a severe greenhouse effect and virtually no remaining vegetation save in the oceans, which are covered in toxic algae,” said the Abbot. “No doubt the previous inhabitants would have colonized Sylvania if they had managed to achieve spaceflight before the end. You spent the better part of a century transporting all the refined metals off the surface before your workers decided to colonize the few remaining habitable shores around the poles. Good, another planet?”

  “Polaris,” I said, “they make luxuries.”

  The view changed again. Atlantis vanished and a new world appeared, this one had massive glaciers covering three quarters of its surface. A thin band of green around the equator showed that this planet was habitable too. “Polaris,” said the Abbot, “the third habitable planet in this system and the furthest from New Sol but also the wealthiest. Cold but home to a host of plants and animals, some in high demand on Earth for medicines and cosmetics.”

  “I bought some face cream made from the secretion of Polaran eels once, in high school,” said Lika. “Cost me a couple of months' allowance.”

  “Really?” I said. Lika did not wear make-up and had a no nonsense approach to personal grooming. I could not imagine her using face cream.

  “Yeah,” she said, “I had to hide it from my mom, or she’d have bought me a whole cosmetics set. Mom always wore Polaran make-up. I just got it because it has an enzyme that eliminates acne.”

  “If I may interrupt,” said the Abbot, and we both looked at him, “I would like to ask a question that is of crucial importance.” He paused. “Do either Polaris or Atlantis have one of Earth’s military bases in orbit?”

  “No,” I said, “they both rely on the one at Sylvania.”

  “Sylvania is a forest world, the most habitable of the three, and the most heavily populated,” said the Abbot. The view changed, and we were hurtling inward, towards New Sol, stars streaking. We stopped in orbit about a planet covered with green continents and swirling clouds. It was much like Earth, perhaps greener even. “There is your base,” he said, pointing to a small station nearby where six warships of varying sizes were docked. I could see a Sylvanian ship approaching the base. “As you may know, your government wants to hand over protection to the Sylvanians, and about a dozen of them train on your warships each month. Something is about to happen that is critical to your mission. Let’s listen to the base communications for a moment:”

  I heard radio traffic:

  “—cleared for docking, over.”

  “Earth base, commencing docking procedure . . .”

  The ship approached the base and docked. Then the radio appeared to switch to an internal channel.

  “Commander, the Sylvanian ship has arrived,” said a woman’s voice.

  Another voice, presumably the Commander of the base said, “I’m on my way, Lieutenant. I hope these guys are better than the last ones.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Then, from the Commander, a barely audible, “damned useless, Sylvanians.” The radio cut off for a while.

  The first voice, the Lieutenant, blared, “all hands, all hands, we are under attack by rebel forces. This is not a drill. Repeat. This is not a drill!”

  We watched flashes the flash of plasma discharges through the base windows. Although we could hear nothing, I imagined the crackle of gun fire as the base crew attempted to repel the Sylvanian assault. Then an explosion occurred at the docking port, and the Sylvanian ship floated free. My stomach sickened as I saw a few bodies float out as well.

  The radio sounded, and a terrified voice said, “Lieutenant Richardson, the rebels have deactivated the launch computer with some sort of virus, we can’t launch ships. They haven’t reached Command yet.”

  “Where’s the Commander?” We heard, amid the sounds of shooting.

  “He went to meet them. They just opened fire.” There was a long pause. “He-he’s dead, sir . . . the airlock . . .”

  “Damn, send a distress—“

  The radio cut off.

  “We’ve got to help them!”

  The Abbot held up a hand. “There is nothing we can do. It has already happened.”

  We watched as the Sylvanian ship floated further and further away from the base, beginning a descent that would burn it up in the atmosphere.

  “We’ve got to do something,” I said. “Give us access to a transmitter.”

  “No, my friend, it is too late,” said the Abbot. “We are not prepared to do anything about this particular incident. It is not the first time an incident like this has happened.”

  “But why do this?” asked Lika. “We have hundreds of warships. What are they going to do with six? Are they going to use the crew as hostages?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said, “that wouldn’t work. Hostages would only delay things. Maybe it’s a terrorist attack. Maybe they don’t intend to survive.” The thought was chilling. “A rebellion would never succeed.”

  “Ordinarily no,” s
aid the Abbot, “but with collusion, perhaps.”

  “You said there were elements in our government who were a danger. Spies? Saboteurs?” said Lika.

  “Yes,” said the Abbot, “their bare existence we know from communications originating from Earth’s government complex and routing through numerous hubs to arrive at Sylvania. As you know, though, quantum encryption is physically unbreakable and so the contents of the messages are unknown.”

  “But the Amidans have the power to find these things out,” said Lika. “You can do more than monitor communications. You’ve done more than that already. You could stop all this before it started.”

  “Lika, we could not. Our interference in your affairs is stretched to the limit already. The unintended consequences of breaking this conspiracy ourselves would be catastrophic. We will give whatever help we feel appropriate, but we must take a passive stance.”

  “Forgive me, Abbot,” said Lika, “but that just sounds callous to me.”

  “You are entitled to your belief as we are entitled to ours,” he said without a trace of the frostiness you would expect from a human, “but we have confidence that you will prevail.” The stars dissolved, and I found myself sitting in my chair in the Abbot’s office again, a bell tolling nearby.

  The Abbot stood up from his own chair. “Your task can wait until morning my friends, when events have further unfolded. For now, we invite you to vespers.”

  The Abbot ushered us out of the room and down to the sanctuary where the contemplatives had gathered. As they sang the evening prayers in full harmony, my mind was buzzing with questions and doubts. I resolved to talk with Lika alone.

  I did not get a chance until after the evening meal, which, again, was eaten in silence. As promised, Smith was not there.

  Sister Equa showed Lika and me to separate cells in the dormitory, and I was careful to memorize where Lika’s was as there were no numbers, and the doors were all alike.

  As soon as I was sure that the hall was empty, I tiptoed to her room. I was standing in front of Lika’s door when it opened, and I shivered from head to foot in surprise. Lika was standing there, also surprised and then said, “come in quickly.”