by TS Hottle
As the Dimaj glided off the elevator, he said, “Your loss. See you after dinner.”
*****
The incursion capsules plowed into the earth as the ships provided by Laral fired them at the remaining farms. As predicted, the conscripted troops found a small population of confused colonists. Laral’s battle wagons, powered by oil-fueled engines that made a tremendous racket, chased them off their farms, the heat weapons mounted on the backs of the wagons exterminating a vast number of them.
Kai had no interest in any of it. It was a fairly new colony with only one large settlement. A day after the invasion, he stood in the charred remains. Rain had come through overnight and brought most of the fallout back to the ground. In some ways, Kai was disappointed. He had, after all, wanted to trade a rainy world for a drier one. However, some rain had to fall, or this planet would not have tempted Tianese renegades to violate their Compact.
The blackened rubble still smoldered despite the rain. While Kai and Tishla did not need radiation suits, Captain Berraa insisted they take breathing gear just the same. Even the previous night’s rain could not have purged all the soot and dust from the air.
“Did we do this?” asked Tishla, her voice slightly muffled behind the breathing mask. “I thought Ninth Charter forbade the use of such weapons against civilians.”
“Our civilians,” said Kai. “These were aliens illegally squatting on this planet.”
“Kai? Can I ask you something?”
“What’s that?”
“If that other world has an entire city on it, complete with factories, how can it be a rogue colony?”
“Maybe the Compact doesn’t know it exists.”
“Marq does. And he’s Tianese.”
Kai wandered into an intersection blasted flat by the fusion weapon. Ahead, with all the buildings knocked over, he could see that the center of town had become a sheet of blackened glass. His foot hit something as he walked through the intersection. Looking down, he could see it was a Tianese skull. It could just as easily have been one of Kai’s own people.
The resemblance made him shake.
*****
The food was actually quite good and convinced Best he might not be wasting his time after all. He even helped himself to a second glass of the local wine, surprised that they even made wine on the predominantly Muslim world. The server, a human rather than one of those short, wheeled contraptions that infested all the restaurants on Jefivah, explained that not everyone on The Caliphate was a Muslim. In fact, Islam was viewed as a mostly urban religion here.
“We’re not some backward factionalized place like Jefivah,” she said. “Where did you say you were from, sir?”
Best had not said but mumbled, “Mars.”
That made the server grin. “That is so cool. I always wanted to visit that place. Tell me, is it true there’s enough breathable air now to go outside without a tank?”
He did not know. Hell, he knew even less about Mars than he did Earth. Most people knew nothing about their ancestral homeworlds. Earth and Mars were no longer relevant. Well, neither was Jefivah, but most people ignored humanity’s first interstellar outpost anyway. “Not when I left. Anyway, it’s still too cold to breathe outside without searing your lungs. We’re getting there.”
That little tidbit of trivia made the server’s night, but the conversation made Best realize it might be time for a change. True, he was a cabinet member in the government of a founding world of the Compact. However, he was the cabinet member of a world that could barely feed itself, had a hodge-podge political system, and whose third largest religion was a cult to an actress who died centuries before the colony was founded. He paid his bill and left, mentally composing his resignation letter as he walked back to the hotel.
*****
They tackled Best halfway back to his suite. Someone shoved his jacket over his head. Then the beating began.
“You worship a whore,” one of them shouted.
“You’re ignorant,” said another.
“Go back to your mudhole, dust muncher,” said a third.
All the while, the blows, some from fists, some from feet, punished Best. By the end of the beating, his unseen attackers chanted, “Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore!”
When it ended, they ran off, their laughter echoing off the walls of some nearby alley.
Best, stiffened and bruised and possibly sporting two broken ribs, freed himself from his now-torn jacket and found a police drone standing over him. Naturally, with Best’s luck, it began to rain.
“Citizen,” the drone said in Caliphate-accented Humanic, “stay where you are. Help has been summoned.”
The drone’s voice likely came from a bored police officer sitting in a control room miles away, sipping coffee and keeping one eye on the local football match. Before Best passed out, he idly wondered why Jefivah did not have any form of football – soccer or gridiron – like other worlds. They already had the hooligans and bleacher crowds…
The night, lit up by street lamps and the glow of the city, faded to pitch black and went silent.
11
The colony transports, large saucer like craft with sophisticated antigrav lifters, soon arrived at Hanar. Kai’s troops and Berraa’s crew were given first choice for land claims. Kai himself took only enough to put together a crude capital, the one the Tianese had built now a black wound on the coastline.
Kai chose Palak to administer the planet for him. “You’re a better man than most High Borns in the Warrior Caste. And you know the Realm is just giving us more criminals for transportation.”
“Have to start somewhere, Sire,” said Palak. “We interrogated one of the survivors. We can’t eat their grain, but it’s close enough to ours that we know it will grow here, too.” He reached into his pocket and produced a familiar-looking root. “And apparently, these things grow like weeds here. Famine is not going to be a problem for you.”
“Or you,” said Kai. “Play your cards right, and you can call yourself ‘Governor’ here soon enough.”
Palak bowed his head. “Thank you, Sire.”
Kai looked past Palak at where a shuttle had landed in the distance. A Tianese man strode down the ramp with Laral. “Our friend is back.”
Palak turned to see Marq approach with Laral a few steps behind, following him like a lost pet. “I do not trust that man. And his companion is a monster.”
“Who’s the monster? Laral? Or Marq?”
Palak turned back to Kai. “You know? I think they’re interchangeable.”
******
It took two hours to fuse Best’s broken ribs and laser down his bruises. The police talked to him while he received treatment at the hospital, informing him there was a small enclave of Jefivans in this part of the Secular Quarter, many of them resentful of the Marilynists. The local temple, really a storefront operation, had been vandalized several times over the past three months. How, he asked, did they know he as a Marilynist even though he wasn’t? One of the officers fiddled with her wrist chip and held out her palm. The nanotat displayed a news video of Best and the Dimaj getting off the orbital shuttle, the reporter announcing them as the Grand Dimaj of the Goddess Marilyn and the faith’s newest prophet.
Best wanted to find a rock to crawl under. Instead, the second officer who questioned him drove him back to the hotel. He desperately wanted a shower, only the senior nurse had warned that the nanoseals on his cuts required twelve hours to set before he could get them wet.
Stumbling from fatigue, he made his way across the suite and into his room. Without turning on the lights, he stripped down and crawled into bed. A pair of arms slipped around him.
He screamed. “Lights.”
The lights came up to reveal a naked clone of the Marilynists’ ancient goddess, curvy and blonde with pouty lips. Upon closer examination, Best could see evidence of rejuvenation and of cosmetic reconstruction. This woman took her religion seriously.
“Who are you?” he asked.
> The clone of Marilyn smiled. “The Grand Dimaj suggested I initiate you into our faith as our new prophet. I am the High Normaj of The Caliphate.”
Best slid out of the bed pulling the comforter around him. Unfortunately, it also pulled the comforter off the Normaj, revealing her in all her milky white glory. “I’m married.”
“Marilyn” smiled. “In our faith, that does not matter. All those who prefer women sleep with a Normaj upon their indoctrination. Unless you prefer…”
“I am not your prophet.”
The Normaj pouted. “The Grand Dimaj said you were a little uptight. Don’t worry. If it makes you feel better, I’ll pretend to be your wife.”
Best scooped up his clothes and marched into the bathroom. Before he could finish dressing, the Dimaj appeared. “After your ordeal, I thought you could use some relaxation. She is quite good, actually. I indoctrinated her myself. I even trained her when I taught seminary.”
Best spun on him. “If you wanted to help, you could have answered my call. You could have picked me up at the hospital. You could have… I don’t know, maybe talked to the goddamned police?”
“Douglas,” he said, “you’re upset. I understand.”
“Upset? Because I got mugged for belonging to that joke of a religion of yours? Because I spent the afternoon watching a very rich man swim very nude while you sat around admiring his pool?” He grabbed the Dimaj’s robe in his fists. “Maybe I’m upset because the man who sold us a bunch of potatoes so your people could have a home of their own lost seven weapons of mass destruction and left me holding the bag.” He shoved the Dimaj backwards. “I’m leaving tomorrow for Metis.”
“Douglas,” said the Dimaj, his voice a little shaky now, “you’re still in my custody.”
“Really?” said Best. “Try to enforce it here. Do you think these people give a damn about our little backwater world?”
He marched back out into his room where he grabbed his suitcase. The Normaj watched him as he stuffed his belongings into the bag, but said nothing.
“Where are you going now, Douglas?” asked the Dimaj.
“My own room,” said Best. “Hopefully my credit isn’t shot. Yet.” He slammed the door on his way out the door.
*****
The prisoner squirmed in his bindings. At least Kai thought it was a he. These Tianese kept their genitals elsewhere, and neither Kai nor his interrogation team felt like looking for them.
“Has anyone extrapolated their language yet?” Kai asked the lead interrogator, a grizzled old enlistee from the Warrior Caste who clearly didn’t care much for Kai or Laral. Never mind that he served both at the moment. His name was Rork, and Kai never did learn if that was his family or personal name.
“It took some time,” said Rork. “Most of what he said translates as ‘Please don’t kill me. Let me go.’ Have you considered asking the General’s little alien friend? He’s of the same species.”
“He only speaks the Mother Tongue in our presence. Anyway, I don’t trust that man. As alien as they are, I trust our friend here more. Pity we’ll have to kill him.”
“Do we not do that to our own renegades?”
The similarities between primate species overwhelmed the differences. Kai could recognize fear on the alien’s face. He had seen Zaras, truly the most ape-like of the known sentient primates, bare their teeth and knew whether they were smiling or threatening. Laputans, for all their bluster, cried easily. The Qorori, those pale nocturnal beings with six fingers instead of the usual five, had a reputation for the most sensual expressions of ecstasy among all the known primate races. Something else unsettled Kai. Like these hairless apes called the Tianese, the Qorori kept their genitals elsewhere. Actually, Kai realized his own people were the odd ones. Being born into this skin, however, instead of the paler, darker-haired Tianese, made the rest of the primate universe utterly alien to him.
“Can you translate for me and make it sound reasonable?”
Rork smiled, revealing several missing teeth. Most had been taken out in combat, and a man like Rork would leave the gaps as trophies. “I’ve done this before. Once I pick up a few words and speak them back at him, he gets really talkative. I probably know half their idioms now, at least the common ones.”
“Translate for me.” To the alien, he said, “I am Kai, Governor of this world. One of your people tells me you are squatting on this planet.”
Rork translated for the alien. The alien responded back in a language that sounded like gargling. Through Rork, he said, “We are here legally. This world is a Compact world, chartered by Metis.”
“Who is Metis?”
“Metis is a…” Rork struggled with the word the alien used. “He calls it a ‘kunstichewentasorty.’ The word does not extrapolate well.”
“So it’s a group?” said Kai. “Like Juno?”
“I know of no Juno,” the alien said via Rork. “Metis is the homeworld of most of the settlers here.”
“But not yours.”
“I am from Belsham.”
Kai turned to Rork. “We are recording this. Right? So far, we know only of Tian and Etrusca in this Compact. And Juno is a commercial entity.”
“If that little alien is to be believed.”
Kai began to think Marq may not be Tianese after all. He may even be a Gray in disguise. The Grays were nasty little creatures, considered the most alien of alien primates, prone to terrorizing pre-spacefaring races for sport. The Warrior Caste, Kai knew, made sport of them in return. Maybe Marq was their way of getting even with both the Tianese and Kai’s people. “Juno claims they own this planet and gave it to us to develop.”
“Who are you?” said the alien, again translated by Rork.
“We are the Gelt.”
“I’ve never heard of you.”
“We barely know who you are.” Kai knelt next to the alien and said, “Tell me, do your people have slavery? Even indentured servitude?”
The alien’s expression went from frightened to angry. “We are not savages. The only slaves we have are convicted identity thieves and stowaways. And their terms are limited by our Declaration of Rights.”
“And what happens if one of your kind comes into possession of an alien slave, indentured or otherwise?”
“What else? They’d have to free the person.”
“And this is the law on all of your worlds?”
“On pain of expulsion from the Compact. We have had civil wars over it, sometimes between factions on the same kunstichewentasorty.”
“That’s a planet. Right?”
“Usually. Sometimes a whole star system. Three or four are merely continents.”
Planet would do for Kai’s purposes. “One more question. Did your people destroy your own main settlement?”
“We thought you did.”
“We did not.” Kai rose and said to Rork, “Find whatever you can in their food stores, give him and his family the best possible meal you can make from that. Make them comfortable.”
“Sire?”
“Have your cook lace the food with sleep potion. Tishla will give you the proper dosages. Make sure there’s enough to stop their hearts after they lose consciousness.”
Rork gave Kai a knowing smile. “General Laral will not like that.”
“General Laral will soon be Governor of Essenar. He can deal with whatever aliens he finds there however he sees fit. I am Governor of this world, and it is my decision.”
Rork gave Kai a formal salute, fists crossing his chest, bowing. Kai doubted he ever gave Laral that kind of respect.
“And Rork.”
“Yes?”
“Bring their bodies to my lander so we may burn them properly.”
“They’re not Gelt, Sire.”
“No. But I want their people to know we are not savages either. We will ceremonially burn them. Tishla will record the ritual and take it to the Tianese.”
“You think Laral is starting a war.”
“I think Marq is
playing us against his own people for his own ends.”
*****
Tishla could not understand it. Sent to a Tianese world so soon after they had slaughtered thousands of those creatures? It was the blast. Kai had been nervous since the blast. They still did not know who detonated the fusion device.
“Go with that alien to his homeworld,” said Kai. “Stay there until I call for you. You’ll know what to do when you get there.”
She hoped so. Leaving Kai behind at the mercy of Laral Jorl, the most devious man she had ever met, scared her. What would become of an unclaimed indentured in alien space?
Worse, he sent her to Metis via Ramcat. With Marq, no less. When Kai delivered her to the awaiting transport, Marq standing there with his stupid little smile waiting for her, she felt real fear, wondering if she would ever see Kai again. Now she found herself waiting for hypergate transit to this…
Metis?
What was Metis? Marq had told her it was named for an ancient Tianese goddess of wisdom. When Tishla pressed him for details, Marq added that the king of that particular tribe’s gods feared that Metis would bear a son who would overthrow him. So he swallowed her, only to end up giving birth to her daughter.
“Your people are sick,” she said when Marq finished the tale of Zeus, Metis, and Athena.
Marq laughed, and it sounded off now that Tishla could hear other Tianese around them. “You have to understand. The tribe that originally created the Metis myth was a matriarchal society. Metis was their goddess. When the Sea Peoples…”
“The what?”
“A warrior tribe that overran that part of our homeworld before the historical record there truly began. Anyway, they were patriarchal and worshipped a thunder god named Zeus. When the cult of Metis would not die off, the conquering people made up a story that Zeus had married Metis. As the story goes, someone told Zeus that his son by Metis would overthrow him. So when Metis got pregnant, he tricked her into becoming tiny and swallowed her. Only she gave birth anyway, and a new goddess of wisdom, Athena, sprang from his head.”