by Sarah Zettel
Ross considered this. “Strictly speaking, no. But I’m not a xenophobe, Sar Born. I don’t think that the creation of the Human Family means we should become isolated from the other sapient beings who share our galaxy, especially those we have created. Dorias is dedicated to the idea of a stable Human Family and I welcome him into the Alliance.”
Well, she certainly speaks dogma fluently, and she knows how to talk without saying much.
He tried another tack. “I got a message from Dorias telling me to contact you.”
“Part of a message, you mean,” Ross’s mouth twitched. “He told me the transmission didn’t arrive intact. Yes, I asked him to get in touch with you. We wanted to offer you a contract for your services as a systems handler. Dorias says you’re even better than he is.” She lowered her eyebrows. “It’s difficult to believe anyone could be better than a living piece of netware.”
What do you want to hear, Madame Chairman? Eric wondered.
“Dorias has some limitations I don’t,” he said, watching her face closely. “Then again, I have some limitations he doesn’t. Who’s better depends on the job you have in mind.”
“That will come when I present the formal contract.” She pulled her gaze away from his and set her jaw at a different angle.
“Dorias also said it was the Unifiers who originally removed Stone in the Wall from the Realm.”
“Stone in the Wall?” Ross repeated the syllables awkwardly. “Is that her name?”
“One of them.” Eric ran his hands down his thighs. His palms were itching where his sun tattoos had once been.
Ross turned her bland face toward him. “Yes, we asked her to come to us as an emissary. The Vitae kidnapped her en route.”
You’ve had that line ready for hours, haven’t you, Madame Chairman? The itch in his palms intensified and in the back of his mind an outraged voice demanded to know where she had the gall to interfere with the life of one who had been named by the Nameless?
“Here we are.” Ross pointed toward a domed, green glass complex behind a wall of milk-and-coffee stone. “I should warn you, Sar Born. There’s going to be a bit of a scene when the car stops.”
The car turned a corner smoothly and rolled through the slated, iron gates into a walled courtyard. The car stopped and the door opened itself.
The “bit of a scene” turned out to be a small army of assistants and security personnel that swarmed out of the grandiose buildings that fenced the yard.
“Madame Chairman, I’ve got the report on the…”
“Madame Chairman, you have an appointment with the…”
“Madame Chairman…”
“Madame Chairman…”
Ross stood like a statue in the middle of the zoo and let a big man in a grey uniform peel off her security patches and replace them with fresh ones. She seemed to drink in everything at once, occasionally rapping out a monosyllabic reply. “Yes.” “No.” “Go.”
“Sar Born, if you please?” One of the security men stood at his elbow with a set of patches in his hands. Eric nodded briefly and let the man press one patch against his translator disk and the other against his temple. The wires tickled briefly as they adhered to his flesh.
Ross’s mouth bent in what might have been a smile of approval or smug satisfaction. The expression passed too quickly for Eric to read.
“With me, if you please, Sar Born,” she said. The crowd parted quickly as Ross strode toward the nearest door.
Eric gathered his wits. He followed Ross through the arched doorway flanked by a contingent of administrators and guards who had been selected from the army either by prior arrangement or telepathy.
The halls inside the complex were a combination of history lesson, bureaucrat’s nest, and academic monument. On this side, the green glass was stained with a myriad of colors to depict the cities of a hundred different branches of the Human Family. Guides in black-and-blue coveralls pointed out individual scenes for gaggles of onlookers, lecturing them on the derivation and significance of each. The public access terminals were as much sculpture as they were information sources, each one done up as a different style of architecture. The Unifier administrators hurried around these obstructions without giving them a glance.
Security herded family tour groups to the side as Madame Chairman and her entourage breezed past. The professionals stepped aside, occasionally remembering to give some kind of salute in acknowledgment of their leader.
Finally they reached a lobby fenced by walls of translucent silicate. Half the entourage stayed respectfully outside while Madame Chairman and her most select group funneled themselves through the doors. The lobby was filled with worktables and around them clustered Unifiers and petitioners gabbling away in a dozen languages.
And unmistakably waiting for Madame Chairman stood two Rhudolant Vitae.
Eric froze. The Vitae leveled their attention on him like a lead weight. They marked him. No question. Ross did too. She was watching him.
She had known. She had known they were going to be here and she’d paraded him right up to them.
“You’re with me, Sar Born,” she reminded him as her security men opened up the doors to what Eric assumed was her inner office. One of her nameless assistants stepped up to the Vitae, explaining in cool, polite tones Madame Chairman would be with them as soon as possible.
The doors swung shut behind them, leaving Eric and Ross alone together in an airy, comfortable office. It had two walls’ worth of windows and a third full of monitor screens that showed scenes from the City of Alliances, maybe real-time, maybe historical. Eric wasn’t sure.
“Please, sit down.” Ross gestured toward a stuffed, stationary chair and took her own seat behind a desk that looked as though it had taken a half acre of forest to build.
Eric ignored her invitation. “What do you want from me?”
“Your help,” she said simply.
“And you had to show me the Vitae to make sure you’d get it?”
She didn’t even miss a beat. “I had to show the Vitae you had come to meet with me. I’m hoping it will help slow them down.” She ran her hands across the desk top. “Have you seen this yet?” She pressed a silicate key inlaid in the natural wood.
The video on the center monitor blurred until there was nothing left but a mottled grey background. Eric’s spine stiffened. The greyness shifted and stretched until it became a pair of Vitae, one about ten centimeters and four kilograms heavier than the other.
The shorter one dipped his, if it was a him, chin in acknowledgment toward whatever camera had made this recording. Eric’s brow furrowed. The Vitae did not use gestures like that, in public anyway.
What is this?
The taller Vitae spoke. “I am Ambassador Ivale of the Rhudolant Vitae. With me stands Ambassador Asgaut. We have been authorized by our representative assembly to make this recording and see to its distribution across the Quarter Galaxy.
“We are asking any and all individuals who hear this in their official or private capacities to respect the Rhudolant Vitae’s claim of the world designated MG49 sub 1 by the Meridian system of Coordinates.”
Eric felt the lids on his eyes pull themselves back as far as they would go. He was vaguely aware that the harsh, ragged sound under the sudden ringing in his ears was his own breath.
Ambassador Asgaut spoke. “We do not ask for any group’s approval. We are not requesting permission for this endeavor. We are publicizing our intentions so that, in future, the system may be treated as Vitae territory subject to our laws and governance.”
“We thank you for your attention,” said Ivale.
The image faded to black.
Eric’s knees shook. His eyes couldn’t focus properly on the still, dark screen in front of him, and he had to fight to even keep them open.
“They’ve never done anything like this,” said Ross coolly. “The Vitae don’t claim worlds. They buy or trade for what they want until a culture’s under their thumb, in case they
need its resources for something.
“I was hoping you could tell me what’s so fascinating about a place that is so old and decrepit it doesn’t even have a proper atmosphere on three-quarters of its surface?”
Eric turned around as quickly as his weakened legs would let him and raised his eyes so he could see her.
“What is being done about this?” he asked hoarsely.
“Not much.” Ross leaned back, resting just the tips of her fingers on the edge of her desk. “I wonder, Sar Born, if you have any idea exactly how powerful the Vitae are? They do a significant percentage of the building, maintaining, and managing for the known members of the human race. Most of their clients are willing to simply let them have MG49 because they can’t afford to upset them. Some of them are even eager for them to get it, because they think whatever it is the Vitae found there will eventually be up for sale.” She eyed him carefully. “They don’t even care whether it’s contraband or not.”
Eric’s gaze drifted toward the blank screen again. Faces flashed in front of his mind’s eye. Lady Fire. Heart of the Seablade. Aria.
Ross sighed. “Sar Born, whether or not you understand that it’s in your interests to cooperate with the Human Family, I can’t say, can I? But you should see that both our kind have an enemy in the Vitae.”
Eric’s eyes widened again. “What do you mean, both our kind?” he croaked.
Ross kept her gaze focused on him. “When we discovered what seemed to be a culture of the Family on MG49 sub 1, the Alliance sent a delegation to begin the process of reunification. We were extremely startled to discover for all the superficial matches, your people aren’t really Family. Telekinesis, for example, is not something that has ever evolved naturally for any branch of the Family, although several have managed to induce very weak forms of it through genetic engineering.” She paused. “Whoever worked with your ancestors was rather more successful, I gather.”
Eric jerked backward half a step. “How did you…”
Ross waved dismissively. “It was one of the first things our observation team noticed. Everybody’s got legends about telekinesis, or telepathy, or any of a whole host of extrasensory perception and skills. But nowhere, except on MG49 sub 1, can they be performed on a macroscopic level, on command, by a significant portion of the population. There’re other proofs, too, if you want them. Your people were not born, Sar Born. They were made .”
No! shouted a voice in the back of his mind. We were named by the Nameless! “The Nameless spoke of the People then. They named Royal, Noble, Bondless, Bonded, and Notouch. Each life they named became Truth and took up its place in their Realm…” He silenced the voice harshly.
When he could finally speak again, he said, “If we’re not Family, what are you doing there? Why don’t you leave us…them in peace?”
Ross leaned across her desk. “Because while you yourselves are not Family, you are part of the family legacy, like Dorias. We need to understand you so we can welcome you properly.” She looked at him and her eyes were intense. “And you can be sure we will welcome you, where the Vitae will only enslave you.”
“You really are a believer, aren’t you?” His voice was heavy with exhaustion. This was too much all at once. Far too much.
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
“Even though you know you’ve started a war?”
“I didn’t start the war. Isolation from the Human Family started that war.” Ice glittered in her eyes. “Reunion will end it.”
Eric’s head drooped. “I’m going to ask you one more time, Madame Chairman,” he said toward the carpet. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to speak for the Realm. I want you to say you do not want the Vitae there and that you protest the invasion. I want you to repeat it for broadcast to the Family members and attendant governments. I want you to make life difficult for the Vitae.” She paused. “You know you can see it from here.”
“See what?” asked Eric, confused.
“MG49 sub 1. The Realm of the Nameless Powers. Your sun and its companion are one of the stars in our sky.”
“And?”
“And it’s a crashing funny-looking place, isn’t it?” She touched the inlay on her desk again and Eric, almost involuntarily, looked toward the central screen. The monitor showed an extremely out-of-scale representation of a binary system; a golden primary star looming over a white dwarf. Eric watched their gentle motion. He could remember his father’s stories of his father’s delight at the discovery of that companion. It confirmed the Teacher’s assertion that the sun, the suns, were Garismit’s Eyes watching the Realm, as the stars were the eyes of the Nameless, watching from afar.
At the edge of the screen hovered a lopsided planet, rotating gently to display a surface of bare, radiation-burned rock. If he watched long enough, Eric knew, it would eventually display a blur of cloud cover held in place by a ragged circle of mountain. The Realm of the Nameless Powers.
“Just sits there, doesn’t it?” said Ross, resting her elbows on the desk. “All on its own, in a steady orbit around a binary star. No moon, no other planets, not even a gas giant or two for company.”
“Madame Chairman, what are you getting at?” Eric said in a strangled tone.
“I mean the Unifiers make it their business to hunt down unknown worlds. We’re very good at it…but your world…this arrangement is so manifestly unlikely for the production or support of human life that we didn’t even bother to look at it. It was an accident that we found your people at all. One of our spotters calibrated a probe incorrectly.”
Her voice was steady but her eyes practically glowed with eagerness. “You know, there’s only one world we’ve searched for that we couldn’t find.”
“Which is?” Eric tried to keep himself under control. Let Madame Chairman lead him along. Let her play her game out. When she was finished, he would still be standing here and she would have his answer in full.
“The Evolution Point for the Human Family,” she said. “We have been looking for three centuries now and we have come up empty, haven’t we? After three centuries.” She spread her hands. “I think I know why.”
Eric said nothing, he just let her go on.
“Dorias told me that your mythology is founded around the idea that a servant of the gods moved the world to a safe location.” She smiled so wide that he could see her teeth. They were white, clean, and as even as the lines of the Hangar Cliffs. “I think they didn’t just move it, I think they hid it.” She nodded toward the screen again.
“Madame Chairman"—Eric did not let himself look at the screen—"why would anybody want to hide the Evolution Point?”
“To keep it from the Rhudolant Vitae?” she said archly. “Or their ancestors. I can’t say for certain, can I? We haven’t got an overall history of the Quarter Galaxy for ten years ago, let alone three thousand. We do, however, know that engineering a planetary orbit was possible for someone, at some time.” She pointed meaningfully at the ground.
Eric could feel her assurance reaching out to him, as palpable as the touch of a hand.
“You see what it means, don’t you? No one even vaguely connected with the Family would willingly let the Vitae lay sole and whole claim to the Evolution Point and the people on it. Since the Shessel were discovered, safe and sound on their own Evolution Point, there has been a reemergence of interest in the Family for finding ours. Sar Born, speak for your people, the Guardians of the Evolution Point, and you give us all a real fighting chance against the biggest stopping block to the reunion of Human Family. You could put the Vitae back in their place, just by speaking out.”
“And if I don’t,” said Eric, “then what?”
She spread her hands. “Then nothing, Sar Born. You have the use of the room and will have use of all the nets as soon as your IDs are cleared. You are my guest. I, on the other hand, am Chairman of the Unifiers and I will harry the Vitae in whatever way I can until I find out what it is they are trying to
do. Why, for instance, they are kidnapping natives from MG49 sub 1.”
Eric’s mind reeled and his sense of balance finally failed. Forgetting pride, he collapsed into the nearest chair. Ross didn’t take her attention off him. Despite that, he curled his fists around his palms and pressed his knuckles against his trouser legs. He remembered looking toward First City’s walls and thinking if you will break the law, I will break it more grandly and more permanently than you ever could, and wishing his father could hear him, and then he remembered the tears that mixed with the icy rain, because part of him still wanted to run home and find out that none of what he had seen had happened.
He stared at the smooth, unmarked backs of his hands and fought to remember it had been ten years since he had told the Realm to go drown itself. Ten years of making his own life unburdened by the laws of the Nameless and the conflicts they bred. It was a freedom he could not, would not, just toss aside.
“Madame Chairman, I don’t speak for anyone in the Realm. I left there and I have no intention of going back, or of getting myself caught up in whatever war you want to fight with the Vitae. I have business of my own to take care of that will use up my personal resources. I thank you for your hospitality and I hope I shall not have to impose on you for long. I shall pay for what I use, I assure you.” He stood and found his knees held steady.
Ross pressed both palms flat against her desk top. “There is one other thing of which you should be aware, Sar Born.”
Eric held himself still. “Which is?”
“Two unifiers, good people, friends of mine, died when the Vitae kidnapped your kinswoman.”
Eric almost said “she’s not my kin,” but he stopped himself in time.
“There are Trustees and Board members here who want to publicize what those two died for. Do you have any idea what will happen to you, and to your world, if I let them?”
“I am sure, Madame Chairman, you will do exactly as you see fit whenever you see fit,” said Eric. “And that there is nothing I could do or say to stop you.
“May I go now?”
He had to give her credit; she had obviously prepared herself for this possibility. She did nothing more than lean back in an attitude of resignation and wave toward the door.