by Jim Rudnick
The room was abuzz when the chairman strode in, his six arms holding bags, folders, and even a stack of books too. Being from Elbo, the home planet of the Alex’n hegemony, Chairman Gramsci came alone; he needed no help, he often said, to run the Confederacy, so he carried everything himself. The rest of the Council rolled their eyes, or what passed for eyes, at the table when he said that, but the Baroness had to agree that the Alex’n Chairman ran the Council as he saw fit.
And finally, the stragglers came in last. The caliph of the Nerian Caliphate came in with a group behind him. And yes, she swore to herself, one of those stragglers was an Enkian—at least as they'd been described to her. Small, about five and a half feet in height, with a huge flowing crest of colored feathers on their head, body dressed in a single shift of some kind with a sash that had the same colors as the feathers did, blue and red. She snorted as those were the same colors as the Barony used on their own flags and icons. She snorted again and busied herself with the Agenda in front of her and yes, there it was, “Item 1(3)” on the report on the Enki diplomatic mission.
As she looked around, it appeared that just about everyone was here, almost on time, she noted, but a couple of member chairs were still empty. One of which she could see was the chair for the Master Adept from the Issians out on Eons. “An empty chair instead of a usual friend, that was bothersome too,” she said to herself, as beside her, a gavel was slapped against the table a few times, which got everyone's attention.
"Okay, shall we get this one started?" Chairman Gramsci said as one hand put the gavel back down as another was holding the Agenda up for him to look over. Two others were in the process of sorting a folder and its papers, and the final two lay palms down on the table. “Having six arms meant the chairman ran a meeting like no other,” she said to herself, “if only he would listen more.”
Nodding to the Council clerk who sat in the middle of the huge horseshoe-shaped table, the clerk rose to get the meeting started.
"Members of the RIM Confederacy Council, this meeting is called to order. We have some regrets," she said as she read out a few names, and yes, the Master Adept had sent in that she would be missing the meeting this time, due to personal issues, which made one wonder what issue a mind reader might face. But that was for another day.
The clerk went on and the Council accepted a few items under the received part of the Agenda. The Council all signaled with a simple raised hand that yes, the Quarans had made a request for more funding of their trade tariffs, and that was tabled for further investigation by staff. The Faraway trade war with Leudies was ongoing—everyone at the table knew this—but what was sent to the Council was the query as to when a group of monitors could come to Faraway for inspections. The member from Faraway rose and began to interrupt, but the banging of that gavel over and over drowned him out and he sat, his face red with anger.
The clerk went on and more than a dozen more items were marked as received and tabled for future discussion or work by staff or acknowledgments by the Council. The chairman made some notes with a spare hand and then looked over at the caliph who sat off to his left and about halfway down the table.
"First up today is the matter of our members—and I understand we have some new information on the planet Olbia, is that true, Clerk?" he asked dryly. Everyone at the table knew about the referendum, but this was the official report, and the Council had to receive it as such.
"Chairman, yes, we have the results of the Olbia Referendum, Sir. With over eighty-two percent of the voting public on Olbia responding to the Referendum, I can report that they have voted for full independence and acceptance as a new member in the Confederacy. Which, of course, would mean that they would leave the protection of the Caliphate and strike out on their own. We have their pro tem citizen here to speak to the Council too—if needed?" she asked.
The chairman looked around the table and then focused on the caliph himself. But all he got back was a simple stare, so he made a decision.
"Yes, I'm sure we'd all like to hear from the Olbian citizen, bring him in please" he said.
At the door, a Provost guard opened one side of the big double doors and moved out only to come right back in, followed by a tall alien.
As the alien walked toward the table, everyone could see he was at least six and a half feet tall, had jet-black hair, and wore a plain beige shirt and some kind of slacks. He had no decoration on his shirt, so it was obviously not a uniform, but then as Olbia had been a free world for only a few weeks, no one at the table knew very much about them.
He nodded to the chairman and then the whole table before he spoke. "My name is Anwar al-Fatwah. I am the pro tem spokesperson for the new free world of Olbia. As you all know, the Referendum showed us—and the rest of the RIM too—that we wished to be free of the Caliphate and become our own realm. We thank the Council for allowing that Referendum to happen and for the close monitoring of the whole voting process. We ask now, officially, for full membership to the RIM Confederacy." He finished his short speech and then half-bowed to the chairman.
"While I thank you for the sign of respect, a bow is not necessary. We have, in front of the Council, a request for full membership that we have already both vetted and verified as well. I ask for a full standing vote, please," he said as he rose to be the first Council member to vote.
The Baroness also rose as did each and every member at the horseshoe table except for one—the caliph did not rise.
The clerk simply said, "Recorded," and they all sat.
"And against, please rise," the chairman said.
No one rose at all for more than a minute.
"And finally, all abstentions, please rise," he finished and at that point, the caliph stood for a moment, nodded to the clerk, and then sat down.
“It made no difference,” the Baroness said to herself, “as to whether or not the caliph voted for or against or abstained on the Olbia vote.” The simple fact was that Olbia had left the Caliphate via a revolt, which then turned to a planet-wide strike and shutdown, which was followed by a planet-wide Referendum. And now, the Olbians were free and a full member.
She too slapped the table like most of the rest of the members as they showed their applause in their usual fashion.
Moments later, the clerk moved on to an issue with Bacu and their interest in looking at the application process for their own independence. The clerk made mention of the status of that application as well as where they were at this point. The duke rose on a simple point of order, made a small correction to that application, and then added that he and the rest of the duchy would, of course, miss Bacu as a member planet but would be happy to see them able to go out on their own.
“Makes sense,” the Baroness said to herself, “for him to be behind their application.” Bacu, as everyone knew, was a problem child and a money pit that ate well into the duchy treasury. So yes, if you can get rid of a revenue loss, that's always a good thing. The duke sat and there were only a very few of those table knocks and slaps.
“Item number three,” she said to herself, as the caliph rose when the clerk called on him to present next.
The caliph smiled at the whole table, which was unusual she thought, but then maybe not.
He spoke quietly in a solid bit of prose. "We, the Caliphate, would like to announce that we have assumed a new member of our realm—Enki, planet number three in the UrPoPo system. With great pride, we announce that they have already become full members of the Caliphate, and as you can see here," he said as he half-turned and pointed at the raised seating behind him, "we have their Head Juror here to introduce, one Eecesoe Qig."
The Enkian rose and again half-bowed to the whole table. Then, the feathered crest on his head, those blue and red long feathers, all stood up and rippled back and forth. He half-waved at the table and then sat back down.
She knew it. Her minions had heard this news and that was bothersome, so she'd come with a hope they were wrong. They had not been wrong.
Enki was a Caliphate world now.
This meant that that probe metal—Xithricite, they called it—now belonged to the Caliphate.
It meant the Caliphate would control the access to that unknown metal here on the RIM. The metal that if was used as a skin on a spaceship would make the ship invulnerable to lasers and energy pulse weapons and even plasma cannons.
It meant the Caliphate would have ships that were going to be supreme on the RIM. Anywhere, actually, and that thought made her even madder.
Nothing. There was nothing she could do.
Her man on the scene, Captain Scott, had failed her.
She would see to that tomorrow as she'd ordered him to come to the palace.
“We shall see what we shall see ...” she said to herself as the member from Faraway rose once more to complain about their issues with the Leudies, and she turned off her brain for a bit as this was pretty much a normal item on the Council agenda.
#####
One thing had surprised him on this trip to the Barony palace—that damn vase. Well within the main building that was the official palace, it branched off to one side—where the actual residence was located. Room after room, he walked with his EliteGuard escort, on carpets that were softer he believed than duck down. The walls were hung with big, colorful tapestries that featured both normal RIM wonders like the waterfalls of Randi yet also were tableaus of nebulae and star fields that surrounded the RIM. Every so often, a fine art piece graced the walls of the corridors they marched through; beautiful paintings of old masters, colorful still life, or small pedestals with sculptures populated the side walls too. I’ve seen it all before, he thought, assuming there was really only one way into the residence areas. Course, that might be wrong too, Tanner thought as they went by a triptych of some kind of undersea fish near a reef that looked like it came from DenKoss. The bright beautiful blues and oranges of the fish shimmered over the matte colors of the anemones and corals below them.
Beautiful art, he thought, and for a moment he wondered if back on Enki the Fine Arts Muse citizens could produce art like this, and while he had no real idea, he thought maybe they could.
That made him smile. “Maybe they couldn't too, that was what art was all about, wasn't it?” he said to himself as they went through a small set of French doors off to the left.
In this room, he was sure he'd been here before, sat that damn vase. It was a huge vase of some kind of ancient glazed magentas and teal blues. But then he stopped cold, and the EliteGuard walked on a few steps until he realized he was walking alone. He turned back to Tanner and said, "Sir?"
Tanner stared at the vase. The last time he was there, in this room, the vase had been sitting on a table made from a single slice of a giant tree bole more than thirty feet across. Now, it floated in mid-air about five feet off the floor. He stared at it and then smiled.
Moving closer, he looked carefully at the bottom of the vase and noted a copper-colored metal plate was directly underneath the vase itself. On the floor below it was a small mat, and he bent over to peel back an edge, and yes, there was a blue metal plate there too. This meant, he surmised, that the vase was probably filled with some of the purple gel, the final one of the three needed items to create anti-grav. The vase was suspended in the room, and Tanner was sure many visitors were surprised to see it.
The EliteGuard grunted. "Sir, the table's been gone for about a month or so," he said.
It was obvious he had no further opinions on why the vase just hung there.
Being a member of the Barony EliteGuards was obviously not going to require a sense of curiosity, and Tanner grinned. He nodded and then began to walk by the vase, and the EliteGuard joined him one more time.
They made their way in farther, room by room, hallway by hallway, until they ended up walking through the last door.
Ahead of him sat the Baroness on a loveseat covered with Jael hide with matching footstools with blue piping and layers of blue tanned Jael skins in front of it. “No fire this time,” he said to himself as he approached his Baroness, came to full attention, and snapped off a salute with precision.
A vision today in what he'd call amber, she nodded and waved him to sit down, which he did but on the edge of the seat.
She had on a cape—a short small one around her shoulders—that she'd draped over the top of the loveseat for effect, he thought. But then with a Royal, one could never be sure of squat. She still had magnificent legs and with the heels she was wearing, was more than a desirable woman. Whoa, he thought, enough of the adoration. Her hair today was down, lying on the cape, its blonde strands thick with curls.
He looked right in her eyes and smiled. "Ma’am … Baroness St. August … Captain Scott, reporting for duty, Ma’am," he said.
"Captain, this is not so much a social visit—I am perturbed with your recent failings over on Enki—and I want an explanation, Captain." The way she said the rank of captain made him feel the rank itself was in the room for review too.
From the other side of the Baroness, a head popped up and stared at him. He knew the animal—rather the Baroness's pet—was from Throth wasn't a cat at all, even though it looked like one, and was a predator.
Glad it's not fifty pounds larger, he thought, and that almost leaked out onto his face in a smile, but he stifled it quickly.
As he gathered himself to respond, the Baroness held up a single perfectly manicure d finger to stop him."On Enki, you were the voice of the Barony. You even ended up being the right-hand man for the RIM Ambassador too, when the Marwick got called back to Faraway for those troubles. And yet, with a single mission to accomplish, you failed. Why would be the question of the day, Captain?" she said as she toyed with the fur of the un-cat beside her, gently scratching behind its ear.
He nodded and opened his mouth to speak again, but that finger came up from behind the ear and stopped him one more time.
"I made sure that you got my bona fides; you were empowered to use whatever you needed to get us the probe metal as a product we can use. You failed, as the Caliphate now has that power.
She went back to again play with her pet, and the un-cat stretched its head to one side to let her fingernail do a better job.
"You were also to gain us anything else you could, via the Ambassador’s diplomatic skills, for the Barony. And I see nothing at all, from what was a three-month mission of failure, Captain.”
She nodded to him at that point. "However, as we instructed you to use your Adept officer too, this Lieutenant Sander, to help—and while we understand you did that, it ended up again, in failure," she finished off and her tone was anything but congratulatory.
He nodded. He'd known this was coming. And he was ready. "Ma’am, you are absolutely correct—we did lose the probe metal—Xithricite, they call it to the Caliphate. He made an offer that we couldn't have matched, and as you know, he also gave the Enkians FTL as a part of the deal to join his realm."
He leaned forward a bit more to add some importance to what came next. "But I did salvage something, Ma’am—I have full video and audio of the Enkian Head Juror as he plots with us to rig the election. And it was from his own mouth that he even said that murder would work—the murder of his major competitor in the election."
She was looking down at her pet and still scratching the area behind the ear and then she slowed and stopped. "Full video and audio? And he suggested murdering his competitor? He says that right out loud?" she asked.
"In so many words, Ma’am," he said as he gently placed a thumb drive on the table between them.
She looked at it and nodded. "That is something, I suppose, in that we can use it to undermine his planet-wide authority at least," she said. "But that's not this Xithricite, now is it?"
"No, Ma’am, but then we do have two other cards to play, Ma’am. We have the longevity vaccine—something I would think that anyone, human or alien, would want. That, Ma’am, and the same new technology that is holding up that vase a few rooms back," he s
aid. He wanted her to know he'd seen that and it meant something to him at least.
She smiled, nodded, and clapped her hands together, which made her un-cat suddenly rise up and stretch on the loveseat. It stretched a big stretch and then moved with that odd gait it had of walking by going sideways and not the way it was facing. It one-stepped sideways, crossing one front foot in front of the other, and its rear legs matched that same odd gait.
"Yes, Captain, I had forgotten that you would know what was holding up that vase. The huge table was a nightmare they tell me to try to get out of that room, but they did manage it, I'd guess. And the gel, as you'd imagine, is inside the vase too. Pretty good conversation starter here when I get special guests, though," she said and then laughed loudly.
"So, Captain—let's call that Enki mission a draw. Are you ready for what's next?" she said, and her voice was not quite as abrupt as it had been earlier.
He nodded. He'd like some shore leave and so would the crew, but that could wait a bit he thought.
"My stepdaughter, the Lady St. August, is down on KappaD with some kind of a refugee problem. Last thing we want in the Barony is more freeloaders, and these appear to be the family and crew of some kind of a tramp freighter—a merchant marine from somewhere out of the RIM. Go down there, talk to them, and then report back to me EYES ONLY so that I can get a read on them from someone other than Helena.
"Offer them no refuge here until you talk to me, understood, Captain? And that goes double for Helena too. Oh, and I'm told you two are 'seeing each other'—is that true, Captain?"
He stuttered, leaned back on the love-seat, and then held out his hands in surrender. He nodded. That was better than anything else he could say at this point.
She nodded to him and smiled.
He got up and left the room with a degree of haste he felt was necessary.