Space Rocks!
Page 3
“But what’s to stop the humans from returning?” asked Glyac, the fifth member of the Council. Up to this point, the casual observer would be forgiven for wondering whether Glyac was awake or not.
“What will stop them,” said Kalac, “is themselves. If we attack the humans directly, even if we win, they are certain to come back in force. We’ve observed them enough to understand that retaliation is in their nature.” Sheln grumbled and shook its head.
Kalac continued, “But if a ‘natural disaster’ destroys their settlement, well, the humans will conclude that asteroid mining is too unsafe to pursue any further. And even if they return, they will pick a different asteroid to mine. After all, there are millions of others in the solar system. Presumably with just as much iridium.”
I could tell the crowd was coming around to Kalac’s way of thinking. Hudka still wasn’t convinced, though.
“Doing nothing is not an option,” said Kalac. “The humans show no sign of leaving. Starting an open war with them is not an option either. We’ll lose. Using the Q-sik to create an asteroid-quake is the only way to avert disaster.”
Kalac had made its case. It was done. And maybe it was right? Maybe the humans would declare their invasion a bust and go back to their little blue dot. I felt a sudden pang at the thought of the four laughing humans leaving our asteroid forever.
No, I told myself, they’re just a bunch of gross two-eyed space invaders who don’t even belong here! Good riddance. Right?
“Does the Council,” said Loghoz, “wish to propose any other—”
“Yup! Over here, kid!” cried Hudka. Loghoz sank when it realized who was speaking.
All eyes were now on us. I shrank from the attention. My grand-originator is a remarkable Xotonian, but it can also be an embarrassing one.
Most believe that Hudka is the oldest living member of our race, though there is some debate on this point. Gatas always claimed that it was three days older, but Hudka disagreed. Strongly. Gatas had effectively lost the argument a while back, when it went completely deaf and could no longer hold its own in shouting matches with my grand-originator.
Xotonians generally give Hudka a bit of respect for its advanced age. Hudka calls this the “not-dead-yet factor.” But it has never been in Hudka’s nature to tell others what they want to hear. And when you’ve been that outspoken for that long in a community as small as ours, you’ve already given everyone you’ve ever met several doses of opinion. In many ways, Hudka was now just a small, wrinkled vessel for opinions. And the older Hudka got, the louder those opinions became.
“Hudka, please,” said Loghoz, sighing.
“Don’t you try to get high-thol’grazed with me, Loghoz. I was on the Council when you were still an egg sac!” said Hudka. Loghoz blinked.
I looked to Kalac. My originator was straining to keep calm.
“Hudka, you are no longer a Council member,” said Kalac in an overly measured tone. “We cannot have every—”
“Aw, not this one again,” said Hudka to the crowd. “Kalac, didn’t you just blather on for an hour? I wouldn’t know. I think I fell asleep right after you started talking!”
Nervous laughter from the crowd. They were torn. A lot of them thought Hudka was a nutty old crank, but the spirit of a Conclave is democratic. Anyone who has an idea should be able to share it.
“If the Council agrees, Hudka may address the Conclave,” said Loghoz at last. “All in favor?”
Four thol’grazes went up—three grudgingly. Only Sheln seemed particularly eager to hear Hudka out. It clearly just wanted Kalac to be publicly embarrassed by its own originator.
“All opposed?”
Only one thol’graz. Kalac’s, of course.
“By a vote of four to one, the Council resolves to allow Hudka to address the Conclave,” said Loghoz. “But please, Hudka, try to keep it brief and to the point.”
“Thank you, Loghoz. You’re smarter than you look, and don’t ever let anybody tell you different,” said Hudka. Loghoz blinked again.
“First off,” said Hudka, enjoying the attention, “iridium.” Suddenly Sheln was the one who looked nervous.
“This mushroom-head had the cergs to stand up here in front of all of you and say that the humans are going to take all of our iridium and leave us poor Xotonians without power,” said Hudka, pointing right at Sheln. “Guano!
“If you know anything about science—which I’ll grant that most of you folks don’t—you’d understand that this much iridium”—Hudka held two brips the barest width apart—“is enough to power our entire city for a whole year! Such was the genius of the technology our great ancestors created. I personally have enough iridium in my closet to keep us in power for ten million years. Even I’ll be dead by then!
“Fact is, there’s ample iridium for Xotonian and human both. Iridium’s not the issue,” said Hudka definitively. At this point Sheln had turned nearly plaid with anger.
From what I understood, Hudka was right. The ancient reactor that powered all of Core-of-Rock was incredibly efficient. It only required a tiny amount of iridium to keep running.
“Second: attacking the humans,” said Hudka. “Both of these so-called plans the Council has presented are just attacking the humans. One’s a direct attack. The other’s a sneak attack. Same difference. Folks will get hurt, maybe even die. I ask all of you why we would attack before we’ve been attacked? Is this the Xotonian way? To strike first and ask questions later? That’s not what we tell our younglings to do. That’s not what we should do. All of you who want to rush to violence should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Sheln sure didn’t look ashamed. Kalac didn’t either.
“Now I’ll grant you that these humans could turn out to be tough customers. They sure are ugly, so they might be mean too. Point is: We don’t know! And we can’t attack them without at least talking to them first. Yes, fighting is necessary sometimes. But we owe it to ourselves to try to settle our differences peacefully first. At least we’d be acting like civilized Xotonians and not a pack of bloodthirsty thyss-cats!”
Sheln hissed. Kalac shook its head.
“Third, and last of all: the Q-sik,” said Hudka. “We’re supposed to guard the Q-sik, not use it! Most have forgotten, but we tried using it once before, and that brought disaster upon our people.”
Everyone knew that Great Jalasu Jhuk had tasked us with protecting the Q-sik. That was its first commandment. I didn’t understand what Hudka meant when it said we’d already used the weapon, but I saw some of the older Xotonians nod knowingly.
“The Q-sik is a weapon so powerful, the legends say it can tear a hole in the very fabric of the universe!” continued Hudka. “That’s not something I take lightly. So I’ll say it again, loud enough for even old Gatas to hear: We shouldn’t use it on the humans!
“Our enemy isn’t a pack of humans who can barely shuttle between their home planet and this little asteroid. The real enemy is out there. Watching. Waiting for us to do something stupid.”
“Oh, please,” said Sheln, “you can’t seriously mean—”
“The Vorem,” said Hudka ominously.
CHAPTER THREE
The crowd exploded at the mention of the Vorem. Most were laughing, although I thought I could hear a nervous pitch in it.
Every Xotonian youngling was told frightening tales of the evil Vorem Dominion, an ancient empire that supposedly ruled the stars and all the black spaces between. In our legends, the Vorem had chased Jalasu Jhuk all over the galaxy. Our Great Progenitor always used its wits and courage to stay one step ahead of them.
If you didn’t finish your chores, the elders chided us, a Vorem centurion might just come and get you. If you misbehaved, the Vorem imperator would leave you a lump of black tourmaline instead of a present for the Feast of Zhavend.
Past a certain age, few truly believed these stories
. But it was hard to completely shed the fear they inspired.
“Order! Order, please!” cried Loghoz over the ruckus. “Order while the Conclave is in session!”
“Go on. Waste our time,” cried Sheln to Hudka, “and by the end of this Conclave, we’ll all be your age.” By Sheln standards, the joke was a pretty decent one.
“If you were my age, I’d knock your ish’kuts in!” cried Hudka. Sheln lunged forward, and Dyves strained to hold it back.
“Hudka! We all know about the Vorem,” said Kalac. “But we can’t worry about old stories when we have a real threat, right here on the surface of our asteroid.”
“They’re not stories,” said Hudka. “The Vorem are real. And they still want to destroy us!”
“Hudka, the Observers search the skies continually with their telescopes and scanners,” sneered Dyves. “If the Vorem actually existed—if there were any Vorem nearby, we would have seen them.”
“No!” cried Hudka. “They don’t have to be nearby. Their ships can travel faster than the speed of light. Just like we used to be able to do! That means they can cross an entire galaxy in a matter of hours.”
My grand-originator may have had the crowd earlier, but now, faster than the speed of light, Hudka was veering into nutty old coot territory. What it was saying sounded ridiculous, even to me.
“And for your information,” said Hudka, “when I was a kid, I did see a Vorem battle cruiser! Saw it. Plain as the sun, blinking right there on a scanner screen in the Observatory. It was searching this sector, I tell you. Looking for us!”
I doubted that a single one of the assembled Xotonians had not already heard this story. Almost all of them had discounted it as pure nonsense. The crowd started to chatter loudly now, in a tone that was less than respectful. My grand-originator had lost them.
“When you were a kid, T’utzuxe had running water!” someone cried out to much laughter.
“When Hudka was a kid,” yelled another, “the sun hadn’t formed yet!” An even bigger laugh.
It was one thing for me to tease my own grand-originator about its age. It was quite another for a mob of strangers to do it. I was furious but powerless to do anything.
“Hey, when Hudka was a kid,” said Sheln, never content to let a joke die a quiet, dignified death, “it was so long ago that everyone, uh, wore rocks instead of clothes!”
The crowd was silent.
“Because . . . Hudka . . . very old . . .” Sheln trailed off.
“Let the record show,” said Loghoz, “there was never any official confirmation of the incident that Hudka describes. Hudka was the only one who actually saw this supposed Vorem battle cruiser.”
“I take it back, Loghoz,” said Hudka. “You are as dumb as you look.”
“Hudka, I have had just about enough of your disrespect!” cried Loghoz, bursting into tears once more. “The Custodian of the Council is an honored and ancient title! For thousands of years, the most punctual and literal-minded member of the Council has held . . .”
Loghoz lectured on, but Hudka was no longer paying attention. “I can see which way this Conclave is headed, kid. Don’t need to watch it play out,” it said quietly to me. “See you back at home. I’ll make us some dinner.”
“But Hudka, wait—”
Too late. It had already hobbled off, disappearing into the crowd.
“Thank you, Loghoz. Highly informative,” said Kalac, gently cutting off Loghoz’s blubbery diatribe midway through a biography of Enuz the Rigid, the third to hold the title of Custodian. “If no one else wishes to make any more motions, I suggest we bring both of the Council’s proposals to a vote.”
“Wait, wait,” said Sheln. “Hudka is so old . . . wait . . . Hudka was a kid so long ago . . . but . . . hold on . . .”
“Oh, give it a rest, Sheln,” said Kalac.
The Council called a vote on the two proposals about how our race would deal with the humans: a direct attack or an artificial asteroid-quake. A Grand Conclave is only called to decide matters of great importance, and everyone, young and old, may vote.
The Xotonian people chose the asteroid-quake plan by a vote of 4,217 to 1,871. As far as I could see, there was only one abstention. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to choose either option.
CHAPTER FOUR
The meeting broke up, and the assembled Xotonians drifted back toward their separate lives. They were still filled with the excitement of a Grand Conclave in which great matters were decided, but now they faced the prospect of going home and making dinner.
I walked across the plaza toward our dwelling, vaguely worrying whether I’d hid the human holographic device well enough, vaguely worrying about the asteroid-quake. Up close, the statue of Jalasu Jhuk looked no less inscrutable.
“Chork-a-zoid!”
“Linod-tron!” I called back on instinct. There came my friend Linod, bounding through the crowd toward me. Linod was small and awkward, with spindly thol’grazes and nervous, bulging eyes.
We had a lot in common. Both of us were shy. Both of us tended toward daydreaming and obsessing. Both of us hated playing oog-ball. Linod was like an even weirder version of myself, and I therefore felt strongly protective of it.
“Chorkle, you’ve got to check out this slime mold!” Linod held out a thol’graz dripping with bright purple ooze. “What do you think? And be honest.”
“Wow, that’s uh . . .” I said. “Wait. Why did you bring a slime mold to the Grand Conclave?” I asked.
“Dunno. Figured I’d teach it about the democratic process. What’d you do today?”
“Me? Oh, nothing. Just went on a special reconnaissance mission. Saw some humans. That’s all. No big deal.”
“Seriously?” cried Linod. “You have to tell me: Did they have any cool molds or yeasts from their own mysterious planet?”
“What? No,” I said. “They had personal rockets!”
“Yeah, right,” said Zenyk. The voice came from behind me, but I recognized it instantly. Linod now looked terrified, trying in vain to conceal the purple ooze behind its back.
I turned to face Zenyk: big, dumb, and, of course, Sheln’s offspring. Four lackeys stood behind it: Chrow, Skubb, Slal, and Polth.
The crowd had mostly thinned now. We stood alone in a deserted corner of the plaza.
“Say, Chorkle, isn’t Hudka your grand-originator?” asked Zenyk, already knowing the answer to the question.
“Why, yes, Zenyk, so Hudka is. I had no idea you were interested in genealogy,” I said. “I’m very excited to learn about all your hobbies!”
“You say the hoo-mins have ‘personal rockets’? I guess Hudka passed the lying gene down to you, huh?” Zenyk turned to its minions. They laughed on command.
“Wow. And you seem to have inherited Sheln’s crowd-pleasing sense of humor, yourself,” I said.
“Don’t you talk about my originator!” it said, cracking the fribs on all four of its thick thol’grazes. Zenyk was just looking for any excuse.
“Look, you’re a bully, and I’m smaller than you,” I said. “So why don’t you just flatten me and get it over with? It’d be a real time-saver.” Linod gaped at me as if to say, What in the name of Morool are you thinking?
But the direct approach seemed to throw Zenyk off its game. “Don’t you tell me what to do!” it said at last. Admittedly, throwing Zenyk off its game wasn’t the hardest thing to do.
“Fine. Don’t flatten me,” I said, shrugging. “In that case, I’ve really got to go. It’s been fun, though. We should do this more often.”
“Wait. Give me that slime mold,” said Zenyk. Linod sank. Partly, I was sure, because it wanted to add the mold to its highly disorganized collection of “fascinating fungi.” And partly because it had briefly seemed like we might escape this situation without a pummeling. Linod held out the mold weakly.
&nb
sp; “Now why would you want a slime mold?” I asked. “Are you hoping it can tutor you in math?”
Zenyk pulled back to flatten me. Instinctively, I folded in on myself to limit the damage. But the blow never landed.
“That’s enough!” said Kalac. Zenyk and I turned. Zenyk put its thol’graz down.
My originator stood glaring at me. Not glaring at the dim-witted brute about to pound its own offspring, but at me!
“We have plenty of trouble with the humans,” said Kalac. “But now Xotonian is fighting Xotonian? Unacceptable. You should all know better.”
“Sorry, Respected One,” said Zenyk, slipping into what it considered a fawning, elder-pleasing tone of voice. “We were just roughhousing. Like good friends do.”
Yeah. Zenyk roughhousing my face.
“Don’t worry. It’s fine,” I said. I was torn. Part of me was happy to be rescued from a Zenyk beating. The bigger part of me felt ashamed that my originator had intervened.
“Go home, Zenyk. You too, Linod,” said Kalac. It didn’t mention the others by name. They were just extensions of Zenyk. “All of your originators will hear about this.”
I was sure that Sheln would be very angry with Zenyk. Angry that Zenyk hadn’t even gotten to hit me once.
“Bye, Chorkle,” said Linod as it darted off. It was probably terrified of being caught again—this time alone—by Zenyk and friends.
“Bye, Chorkle, old buddy,” said Zenyk, cuffing me a little too hard on the back and slowly sauntering off toward its own dwelling. Chrow, Skubb, Slal, and Polth followed a few paces behind, affecting the same exact saunter.
I was alone in the plaza with Kalac. In some ways, I found that more frightening than any bully.
“Honestly, Chorkle,” said Kalac. “You disappoint me. A Grand Conclave is no place for fighting. And especially with the progeny of my main opponent on the Council. What your grand-originator did was bad enough. I don’t need you compounding my troubles as well.”