by Jim Rudnick
So far, they’d walked the big rotunda with all of the corridors and hallways branching off. She had gone trooping down one after another, entering room after room to take a look around and making notes on the list on her tablet. Some, she realized, were rooms that were well past their “best-before date” and would need her attention to upgrade the décor. In some cases, the old windows that looked out on the palace grounds needed to be replaced. So far, by her reckoning, there were nineteen of these rooms, and she was aware they had not even completed ten percent of the total list of rooms.
She nodded at the one aide, the tall young man, who was pointing out that yes, once again, this room had the older window styles, and one of them even had some water staining way up at the top. “Needs repairs, I would think, Ma’am,” he said, his finger poised over his tablet.
She nodded and said, “Agreed, get this done up at the top of the list.”
He made some clicks on his keyboard, and they left the medium-sized salon to go back out to the hallway. Once again, they turned to their left to move to the next room.
It was room after room, and Helena wondered how long it would take to go through every room. Most didn’t need much. Some that were on the other side of the hallway, facing the front of the palace, had been refurbished in the past decade or so. Those rooms had new windows, paint, and carpets, and she noted a few—only a few—of those stuffed heads from hunting trips that the dukes had so enjoyed.
As she stepped on the escalator to go up to the second floor, she shook her head. Thank God, the new duke was not much into hunting. Never mind that he was on Anulet right now with some of his groomsmen doing exactly what she thought was a good thing to do—to bring them together—but surely there might have been something else rather than hunting?
She sighed. Probably not. Men—men from every walk of life, from every world—seemed to enjoy the hunt. Part of their genes, she thought. So, it was a good thing, maybe, and at the top of the escalator, the taller aide directed her to the left side first.
It, like the three-hundred-foot-long major corridor down one floor, stretched out for the same distance, and she could see doorway after doorway. She sighed. More rooms and more to come.
“Ma’am, this area ahead on the front side of the building, we—well the staff here at the palace—have taken to call this area the colored-world collection.”
And as they walked into the first room on the left, she learned why. Green. Everything in the room was green or a shade or tint of same. Carpet. Walls. Tapestry on the wall. Window frames. There were seven groupings of green upholstered couches and wing chairs, and the green wood was polished and very shiny for all of the tables as well. Lamps standing on some of the end tables had green shades, and she was sure, if they turned one on, the light would be green as well.
She looked at the other aide, the shorter woman, and said, “And the rationale behind doing this—tones of a single color were ...?”
She nodded first, and then she looked down at her own tablet, swiped a few pages to one side, and then looked up. “Ma’am, there is no reason that we have on file, as to why this was done—and there are twenty-nine of these rooms in a row, Ma’am—each with its own color,” she said.
Her voice, Helena could tell, was a bit apologetic but there was no blame as to why she didn’t have an answer. “Can you at least identify who did this?” she asked.
The aide nodded and pointed at her tablet screen. “Yes, Ma’am, that is recorded in the palace database. It was done by—they all were done, all of the twenty-nine rooms—by the Duchess d’Avigdor that preceded you. That is the late duke’s mother, Ma’am. She seemed to have entered no rationale, but the rooms were all done about the same time, Ma’am, about eighty years ago,” she finished off.
Helena nodded as they left the green room, and she only glanced in the rest of colored rooms. She couldn’t believe the orange room. The black room was a room she would never enter, and yet the lavender room looked so lovely.
“Fine, please note for me on the list that I will discuss the future of these ‘colored-world’ rooms with the palace designer. Please make that meeting, say, for the day after tomorrow. Colored-world collection indeed,” she said, her voice resonating with a confused tone.
As they went on, she made the hypothesis that the last duke, David, had done little about the palace. He’d lived in it for his whole life, and it had remained, as she was learning, just like his mom and dad had left it.
There was more too. She was a bit surprised at one doorway that had a triple set of doors going into same. The last set opened, and all she could smell was some kind of irritating odor. Inside the huge room was a wall of some fine fencing. Birds lived behind the fencing. Birds of all colors and kinds. What must have been a hundred birds lived in the palace on the second floor in an indoor aviary.
Some came over at their entrance by flying—but then she looked down at the edge of the enclosure in the room. Some had, well, rolled over. “Unusual gait,” she said to herself as another one came out of the well-pruned set of shrubs. It was a bird, or at least she thought it was. It had a feathered body and head—bright yellow in color mostly though there was some green there too. But the feet—or what should have been feet—were the interesting thing. Instead of two gripping feet on legs, a scaled ball that was wider than it was tall with the legs on each side acted somewhat like axles. As the yellow bird leaned forward, that movement made the ball of scaled skin or hide rotate to move the bird ahead. As she watched, she noted that the birds could control the movement of their ball so closely that they were able to jockey for position and move about quite easily.
She looked at the aides. “And that’s one hell of an unusual-looking bird,” she said, her voice wondering.
“They’re called ball birds—at least that’s what the database calls them ... they’re from a world in Pentyaan space, and there are more than a dozen in there,” the tall aide said.
She looked back at the aides, and she pointed at the tall one this time but said not a word.
“Umm ... yes, Ma’am. Perhaps we should have warned you, but again, the mother of the late duke liked birds. So this room was built, and they imported birds from around the RIM Confederacy. They live and reproduce, and we’re told that she used to love going into the aviary and sitting with them, and she’d feed them and pet them. At least that’s what the palace database says, Ma’am.”
He looked a bit pained at this. Surely, she thought, this is perhaps a bit embarrassing, but then again Royals will be Royals.
“What other rooms lying ahead do you think I’ll be surprised at? Can you tell me that?” she said calmly.
He swiped on his own tablet a few times and tilted it so the other aide could see. She nodded at something as she pointed at the screen, and then he looked up at her.
“Ma’am, yes, there are a couple of what we might call as oddball items. One is the trophy room up on the third floor—more than three hundred mounted trophies—all from previous dukes and their hunts. Some of the duchesses, who have come to be same, have tried to get rid of that room—but it’s always been kept, Ma’am. Then, there’s the realm rooms—each is totally designed and decorated for each of the duchy realm planets ... Dover and Waterloo, et cetera, Ma’am. Some are ... well, some are a real head shake, Ma’am, but they are probably needed as each head of state of each of our realm planets visits his own each time they come to the duchy palace, Ma’am.”
At least there’s no room with snakes or Jaels or even Tanalorgs ... and how bad can the realm world rooms be anyways? She nodded and then they left the aviary room.
“Any idea how many of the six hundred or so rooms in the palace have more than one door?” Helena asked.
He clicked some on-screen buttons, paused, and then clicked the same buttons she noted. “There are seven rooms that have more than a single door, Ma’am.”
She nodded. Seven rooms with more than one door meant that these seven rooms had to keep odor
s captured. She groaned. I can’t wait. She wished Tanner could have been with her to see some of this, but then he was off hunting. She hoped he was safe.
#####
Off Ghayth, the Exeter lay in orbit within a hundred miles of the alien ship that still was dormant. “But dormancy does not mean non-threatening,” Captain Magnusson said to himself, and he nodded to the helm.
They, too, had been greeted by the usual ultra-bright teal ray, which had flicked into existence to shine on the Exeter and then went out.
“Take us in closer, Helm ... but keep us at least twice as far away from the ship as their force field extends. No sense in causing any kind of upset feelings,” he said.
The Exeter had moved to Ghayth at his command. He had wanted to see the ship himself, and when they’d popped out of subspace, they had been recognized by the Wilson, the Ghayth space station, and had acknowledged they were just there on a fact finding mission, as the Ansible officer had been coached to say.
He also told them that he carried an EYES ONLY from the Baroness to Commander Williams, the head Barony Navy man on the planet. Magnusson nodded to his Ansible officer and the message—printed out—was sealed in a diplomatic pouch and sent off via shuttle to the Wilson for them to relay down to the planet.
That got silence from the station, and then a “Roger” back to them.
As the Exeter was in the same navy as the Wilson, there was no reason for any kind of worries, the administrator on the space station must have thought, and the Exeter was free to move about wherever it needed to.
Up here in orbit, the captain noted, there were only two other ships currently.
The Atlas, the huge supra-destroyer, the largest ship in the Barony Navy—in any navy on the RIM—lay off to port. He knew that the captain, Karl Sheldon, had recently been appointed as the latest captain, Kondo Lazaro, had followed the same path as his predecessor, Tanner Scott, and had moved up to bigger and greater things.
Don’t know about the real sense in having a science officer take over the captain’s chair, Magnusson thought, but one thing was for sure—the Atlas would never make any science mistakes out here.
The only other ship was a Faraway trader, which was in the process of off-loading some cargo to a small cargo shuttle. The job was just about over, and sure enough, as the Exeter moved slowly past, the shuttle blasted off and dove around the Exeter and headed down toward Ghayth.
Mel watched the shuttle as it zoomed by and then noted the flares from the starboard side of their engines as the ship veered south—way south to point well beyond the equator.
“Helm,” he said, “trace that shuttle, and let me know where it ends up, will you?”
The affirmative response back to him was quick, and still, he wondered why the shuttle would be aiming so far south when all the Ghayth civilization lay in the northern continent. Only way to know is to see where this shuttle goes. Cargo, he thought. Must ask what that was in a way that won’t matter to anyone else.
He grinned. “Things are already full of fact finding fun,” he said to himself, and he watched up on the big view-screen as the Exeter slowly moved in a large circle a few miles wide of the alien ship.
Big, he thought. Long—least a mile long—with that huge disk in the middle. The disk holds the aliens. I have no idea what the long tapering top and bottom tubular areas are for. At least not yet.
“Vids running?” he inquired, and the reply from his science office behind him affirmed that was a fact too.
So, the aliens lie here and wait. Force field keeps all of us at bay. Even the nuke he’d heard about via RIM scuttlebutt not only had not done a thing to the alien ship, but it had made the drone ship disappear. No explosion. No metal dripping from lasers, energy pulse weapons, or plasma cannons. Nothing but a simple blink, and the drone ship was gone.
That technology proved to him that these aliens were superior—at least in the weapons area.
As the Exeter slowly finished the circle around the alien ship, he was satisfied; he’d seen enough.
There was nothing to be done about the alien ship. They’d talk when they were ready.
His console beeped and a map of the southern continent, the big one to the west, showed up on his screen, and it appeared that the cargo shuttle had made landfall. On the edge of the big southern sea and the continent, it had set down. He had no idea why and for what purpose that cargo was needed.
“For tomorrow,” he said to himself, and then he told his helmsman to take her out of orbit and back to Neres City to the navy base. “More than enough time for that ...”
He smiled as he got the EYES ONLY received message from Commander Williams directly on his own captain’s console. He knew what was on the message—from today, all ships coming to Ghayth would be required to land directly on the planet itself down at the landing port on Base-1. This, he had pointed out to the Baroness, would keep that alien intruder ship alone up in space with the Wilson space station and the three other ships there—the Atlas, the Newton, and the Connecticut.
All Barony Navy ships were on guard, flanking the intruder ship.
All three were on alert status, watching and never blinking away from the aliens.
#####
“Caliph, may I present the Enkian ambassador, Eecesoe Qig,” his aide said as the Caliph was lounging in his study. Normally, he’d have taken the meeting in one of the offices areas of the palace tents, but today, he’d decided he needed to show the Enkian that he was trivial in the grand scheme of things. What better way to do that than by lounging on a couch while the ambassador stood in front of him.
“He’d soon learn who was boss here,” the Caliph said to himself, and he nodded to his aide to show in the Enkian.
Short—perhaps especially so from the Caliph’s point of view as he stood six feet, six inches—the Enkian was about five feet and maybe an inch or two tall as were all Enkians. He had a beak instead of lips and feathered tips on his toes above the big talons that perhaps had been used eons ago to kill prey. The ambassador wore a short brown jacket with the same red and blue coloration as a logo of the Enkian’s muse.
On top of his head, the feathered crest of mixed red and blue feathers signified this Enkian belonged to the Enkian group known as the Fine Arts Muse. It had been this Enkian’s job to negotiate the original agreement with the Caliphate—and to accept the position within the Caliphate realm as a subject planet—in exchange for FTL. That was a technology the Enkians had never discovered, and with the addition of the new Barony Drive, one could be anywhere on the RIM in seconds.
And part of being a subject planet of the Caliphate meant they would be a welcome partner in all things—and the thing the Caliph had bargained for the mining rights to the Xithricite, the red metal ores from the meteorite that was found on Enki. It was a small item and had been hidden among so many other items that both Enki and the Caliphate would share and also use for trading items too.
“Hidden. But most important,” the Caliph said to himself, knowing the recent shipment of new huge forges from Roor to Neria had enabled their own new foundries to be able to smelt and generate new Xithricite panels for their ships. ”What, four ships now?” he asked himself as the door closed behind the aide.
“Ambassador Qig, please do come in,” he said as he slid up a bit on the couch, keeping his legs still outstretched on the cushion beside him. Subtle, perhaps...but obviously, it shows that as I am this man’s Caliph, the respect he gets is at a minimum.
Ambassador Qig leaned over at the waist and gave a very formal bow. Good, Sharia thought, he knows protocol, and my show of no respect does not influence him at all.
“May I say, Caliph, that it is so nice that you could receive me at such short notice. I thank you for that—Enki, in fact, thanks you—for the quickness to grant our meeting request,” he said.
The Caliph nodded. Nothing to say means that he will keep on talking, and that’s what we want.
Ambassador Qig looked around, and t
he Caliph could see him taking in what was obviously not a meeting room. A couch and three chairs were spread out to one side braced by a huge cast bronze table that held a pile of magazines—real paper magazines, which were quite old—a tablet flashing some icon, a riding crop, and a helmet that one might wear on an open carrier or a motorcycle perhaps. A pair of gloves was wadded up beside those items too. In the far corner, a fireplace that had a very low flame on was gently wafting warmth across the tented room. There was no art on the walls, but he could see, the Caliph noticed, that there were view-screens posted in a whole bank of same along one canvas wall.
He still looked at the Enkian, one eyebrow now atilt.
“If it please the Caliph, I come to you today—after lengthy discussions with the other four Muse groups on Enki—and we have a request to make, if you’d consider same?”
Ah, so that is how he wishes this to go, the Caliph thought. Standing flat-footed—well, flat-taloned might be a better way to describe it—and ready for any kind of an answer. And so he will get one. “Ambassador—as a subject planet of the Caliphate—we do not discuss requests as you put it. Instead, one normally just makes same through your own channels to our Realm Subject Ministry, and they handle same. Follow me, Ambassador?”
The ambassador squirmed just a teensy bit—or maybe he was just shifting his weight on those long talons that were carefully being managed by the Enkian to not pierce the canvas floor. “Caliph, but this is a private item that we do not—did not think—it should be sent through our normal channels—good as they are, Caliph,” he said as he nodded vigorously.
Brown-nosing now, Sharia thought but he didn’t speak.
“Caliph, I have come to speak to you about the mining rights that the Caliphate has with us—and the red metal known as Xithricite,” he said.
There it is, the Caliph thought. Time to drill down on his issue. “And what, can we ask, is the problem? Are we taking too much, or are we not repaying for what we take with our own resources as payment,” he asked nicely.