by Yoss
In any case, it’s a good thing Quim Molá gave them a dictionary and a cat, and not his DNA, for those first twenty-five engines!
And what luck we also have our Countdowns. I wouldn’t like imagining a race of cloned mes surreptitiously created and enslaved by the Unworthy Pupils. Nobody’d better meddle with my DNA in particular, or human DNA in general.
But it isn’t their thriving fleet, their antiquity, their trading prowess, their pacifism, or their commitment to living as galactic nomads that makes the Qhigarians unique as a species, but rather two other considerably stranger characteristics.
The first is that each and every one of their gigantic, densely populated, chaotic worldships—veritable hyperengine-powered archologies that can measure dozens of kilometers in length and shelter several million individuals—is essentially a world apart. Onboard temperature, internal design, air composition, humidity, and even gravity vary considerably from one ship to the next. I should know, having visited several of them.
Exobiologists hypothesize that their diversity is the accumulated result of millions upon millions of years of separate evolution. Whatever. The fact is, the Qhigarians on any given ship are unlike those on any other. Unlike in culture, unlike in language, quite unlike in anatomy.
Many condomnauts doubt that evolutionary isolation has much to do with this. Perhaps because the Alien Drifters sometimes adopt morphologies that look fairly… well, whimsical would be the nice way of putting it.
The anatomical differences between the crews of any two Qhigarian worldships can be greater than those between us humans and the Kigran leviathans. And any two of their languages can have less in common than Chinese and Catalan. This makes Contact with each of their worldships a real guessing game, basically like making another First Contact.
Of the roughly twenty thousand known worldships, we humans have had dealings with no more than six hundred or so.
Some Contact Specialists are convinced that the thing Qhigarians find the greatest pleasure in (apart from cheating their trading partners, I mean) is messing with the minds of condomnauts from other races when they make Contact.
The second unique characteristic of the Alien Drifters is closely related to the former. It’s what makes them a species. In fact, if it weren’t for this, nobody would ever consider creatures with such highly divergent morphologies to be members of a single race. Though some recent theories refuse to accept them as such, insisting that they must instead be a conglomeration or coalition of species with different origins linked by shared interests.
Which would automatically raise the number of known Alien species in the galaxy by several thousand.
The deal is that, despite their Babel of varied languages—which some linguists think are just a hobby, while others deny their existence or consider them a pointless joke—all Qhigarians are intraspecies telepaths, able to maintain telepathic contact with one another at all times, yet without coming to form a single mental entity. Nothing too unusual about that for an Alien race, to tell the truth: nearly a thousand species have been found to have this fantastic ability so far.
This, of course, is the reason they need no leaders. If all are one and one is all, what for?
It’s curious, by the way, that while all pacifist species belong to their class of telepaths, it doesn’t work both ways: the great majority of species endowed with telepathy are not pacifists. A fact that incidentally negates the ancient notions some human science fiction writers had in the twentieth century, that knowing what your enemy is thinking will prevent you from considering him your enemy.
Interspecies telepathy, for example, which allows for mental contact with members of other species, turns out to be much more exotic. Kigrans have it, as does the Evita Entity with which I just made Contact. We know of barely thirty members of the Galactic Community blessed with this extremely useful gift, which saves so much time and, more important, avoids the bothersome misunderstandings constantly generated by our translation software, which is good but not magic.
And, while we’re on the subject: none of these species (well, we still don’t know enough about Evita to be absolutely certain, but I wouldn’t bet my life on the possibility) is what you might call exactly pacifist.
But while the telepathic abilities (intra- or interspecies) of all other races in the galaxy cease to function at a certain distance, usually no more than a couple of kilometers, the fact is that, through some mechanism that no human or Alien science has yet managed to explain, it seems that all Qhigarians on all the worldships in the galaxy, no matter how distinct their populations, no matter how far apart their worldships (and by far apart, I mean lightyears apart; the Milky Way is a massively huge galaxy) keep in constant mental contact with one another, in real time, thus forming a sort of single telepathic colonial supermind—and making an utter mockery of Einsteinian relativity.
They themselves explain it as an ability inherited from the Taraplins. Which is like not explaining anything.
An old condomnaut joke says that “ansible” may secretly be the Qhigarians’ real name, or perhaps the name of their planet of origin.
If any two Qhigarian individuals could establish that sort of faster-than-light telepathic link between themselves, the other races in the Galactic Community probably would have forgotten all their scruples and gotten together many thousands of years ago to fall eagerly on the Alien Drifters, pacifists or not, Unworthy Pupils or not, even if their ships were the fastest in the universe.
A communication method that can erase relativistic distances just like that would be too valuable to allow a single species to monopolize it in such an egotistical fashion.
Fortunately for the Qhigarians, one of the few things that is well known about their telepathic colonial supermind is that the faster-than-light link only works when large populations are involved. That is probably why, exobiologist speculate, so many millions of them travel on each of their worldships. In order to maintain their unity as a race or supermind even at interstellar distances, they must need to have dense concentrations of individuals join their telepathic powers.
What’s paradoxical and positive about this whole business is that if there’s any Alien species that shouldn’t be particularly interested in having a hyperjump engine capable of intergalactic leaps, it’s the Qhigarians. Why would they want to travel beyond the Milky Way, at the risk of losing the integrity of their telepathic colonial supermind, if that is what already allows them to be, in a sense, present everywhere in this galaxy at the same time? Not to mention that, if they suddenly had to deal with competitors for Taraplin hyperjump technology, over which they hold a de facto monopoly, their business model could collapse. No matter how cheap they tried selling their inherited jump engines.
The thing is, they know that other races would bet their futures on contacting those extragalactics. So even if the Qhigarians don’t have any personal interest in the information themselves, owning that information puts them in the perfect position to auction off the trajectory coordinates of the extragalactic visitors to the highest bidder.
Shrewd negotiators, the Qhigarians are compulsive traders. They seem to get extraordinary pleasure from buying or selling anything, even their own shadows. The Quim Molá affair was no isolated case: on more than a few occasions, human crews who have made Contact with their worldships with nothing new or valuable to offer them (aside from our precious DNA or our jealously guarded translation software, things that are simply not for trade) have ended up exchanging some useless trinket or doodad for another working Taraplin hyperengine.
Some condomnauts even suspect that the Qhigarian religion not only calls on them to honor and worship their vanished mentors, but also forbids them to let any group of other sentient creatures pass by one of their worldships without trying their hardest to trade with them.
So not all is lost yet. They’re tough negotiators, but it’s just a matter of combing the galaxy until we locate the first worldship full of Qhigarians, then
immediately buying all the information about those extragalactic Aliens that they have (or wish to sell us). At whatever price they set. Which I’m afraid will be truly and terribly high.
After a brief pause to let us all reach these conclusions, Miquel Llul resumes speaking.
“The news of the Qhigarians’ recent Contact with extragalactics was brought to us by the hyperjump cruiser Salvador Dalí. Unfortunately, in spite of the magnificent Contact that their Specialist made with the Alien Drifters, the three thousand tons of nickel-titanium thermal memory alloy in the ship’s hold, which we gave them down to the last gram, wasn’t enough to purchase their exact trajectory coordinates. The Alien condomnaut did hint, however, that we might be in for an unpleasant surprise when we found the aliens from beyond the Milky Way.”
Wouldn’t you know, those greedy Unworthy Pupils. If they were private detectives and you hired them to find somebody, they’d probably charge you separately for first and last names. An article made from nickel-titanium alloy recovers its original shape when it’s heated, no matter how dinged up it gets. It’s useful, valuable stuff. And three thousand tons! That’s quite a fortune.
That hint about an “unpleasant surprise” smells too much like “don’t bother yourselves, leave this to us” to be taken seriously.
Now, did Miquel say it was the Salvador Dalí? I’ve heard the name. I don’t mean just the ship’s namesake, the great twentieth-century surrealist. Let me wrack my brains… Of course: that’s the latest, largest, best-armored cruiser in Nu Barsa’s booming space fleet. And its condomnaut is… who else, Jürgen Schmodt. And here he is, still smirking at me with his blue eyes, full of what I now know is pure, contemptuous self-satisfaction. So he’s the one who handled the “magnificent Contact” that Miquel mentioned.
Score a point for you, Kraut. But the race ain’t over yet. Not by half.
“The Department of Contacts, under pressure from the Ministry of Space Trade and the full Govern of Nu Barsa, has therefore decided that, beginning immediately, as a matter of top urgency that shall take priority over any other previously assigned trade or exploratory mission, all available ships and all available condomnauts operating out of this enclave shall actively search for any Qhigarian ships out there. All Nu Barsa ships shall fill their holds with the most valuable minerals and manufactures in the habitat, to be used as bargaining chips in order to obtain from the Qhigarians the specific coordinates of the extragalactic Alien ship’s trajectory through our Milky Way, and any other related data that may be of use, at any price. And, if possible, to carry out our First Contact with the extragalactics at once.
“That is all. All condomnauts: report to your respective ships as expeditiously as possible. Goodbye, and good luck.”
The uproar that followed Miquel Llul’s solemn declaration wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the Roman Coliseum.
But Plain-Spoken Miquel refuses to answer any questions, turns his back on our protests, and ignores whatever curses are hurled his way. He leaves the restive hall with the same long strides as when he entered, and no one dares get in his way.
One reason my colleagues have started shouting and complaining is that, after long weeks on deep space missions, many (such as myself) were hoping for a little R&R in the tourism and recreation zones of the great orbital archology.
Another is the sheer thrill of the hunt. We’ve always known that some condomnauts are better than others: more imaginative, more capable at making Contact, more skilled at “sleeping together,” better at negotiating, better at languages, more empathetic—or at any rate, luckier.
And whoever can manage now not only to get the trajectory coordinates for the extragalactic Aliens through skilled negotiations with the first Qhigarian worldship they find, but to make Contact with the visitors from beyond the Milky Way themselves…
Well, there’s a street in Nu Barsa named after Joaquim Molá, but it’s short, narrow, and very hard to find. The condomnaut who makes our First Intergalactic Contact, on the other hand, could seriously expect to have not only the greatest avenue in Nu Barsa, now known simply as the Grand Diagonal, named in their honor, but a whole section of moving walkways as well. (How does “Josué Valdés Avenue” or “Rambla Josué Valdés” sound?) Or even an entire city district.
Maybe they’ll even put their name on the first habitable planet discovered in another galaxy that Catalan ships find. Why not?
“It isn’t fair, Josué!” Nerys growls into my ear after slipping gracefully up to me on her antigrav platform. Thankfully she seems to have forgotten how upset she’d been about the Evita Entity, because if there’s anything I dislike in a woman, it’s retrospective regret. “I just got back from my mission two days ago! I’d been gone for three weeks! Like I’m going to want to go right back out and start traipsing around space looking for a bunch of Aliens from some other galaxy!”
I give her a hug to console her (and to squeeze her a little while I’m at it, mucus or no, now that things are better between us). And then I hear a voice with a certain unmistakable accent.
“Nein obligation to respect order of Llul, meine Fräulein.” Just as I feared. Gloating over his minor partial victory, Herr Schmodt can’t resist the temptation to twist the knife. “Also no point there is. Ich find Qhigarians, then Extragalaktischen find ich, und then… ”
“And then you’d better find a Catalan dictionary, or Spanish at least, and learn how to fucking speak a little, ass. You’re an insult to Cervantes and Marsé!” This from my friend Narcís Puigcorbé, butting in from behind my back.
Wow, did that ever hit the German where it hurt. His nanobot-ridden body might be the perfect instrument of his steely will, but the truth is that his brain still hasn’t found its way around the Spanish language, much less Catalan.
But like they say, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. I really ought to take up Catalan classes again—it wouldn’t surprise me if my near-total ignorance of the language of Juan Marsé (whom I’ve only read in Spanish, though to be fair he won the Cervantes Prize for Spanish literature in the early 2000s) is one reason why they still haven’t given me my citizenship.
And while I’m at it, I could also get myself a red-and-blue Barsa t-shirt and pretend I haven’t always hated soccer in every form. And learn to dance the pasodoble, or even better, the sardana! And let myself be seen in public eating fuet all year round, and coca catalana at Christmas, and generally make myself over as the perfect Catalanized immigrant brown-noser.
Oh, forget it. I made up my mind from the beginning that I’d either gain citizenship on the basis of professional merit or else take my talents to another enclave. This old Cuban don’t speak no Catalan, never have and never will, okay? I may be an opportunist, but everybody has their limits.
Right now, a very upset Jürgen is muttering something unintelligible, in the language of Goethe would be my guess, and turning about-face to confront the kibitzer. Apparently he didn’t recognize Narcís’s voice and doesn’t have the slightest idea who said it.
Because, as soon as he sees—his mouth slams shut.
Today Schmodt has gone for the typical Aryan look: blond, blue-eyed, and a muscular six foot three. Even so he has to look up to face the gigantic Puigcorbé, at nearly seven foot four and just under a third of a ton in body weight.
Suck on that, fucking nanoborg. How does it feel to be the short one?
I imagine that with enough metamorphosis and a significant expenditure of energy, the Teuton’s sophisticated nanocomponents would let him grow taller than my friend—but obviously he’d be even thinner then. The bodily transformations his nanotech produces in him look miraculous, but they can’t violate the law of the conservation of mass or create extra kilos out of thin air.
Narcís gazes down upon him with his characteristically beatific smile. Though the smile on his shaven round head, atop his colossal bulk, doesn’t look quite so beatific now.
Nerys gives my arm a hard squeeze with her damp webbe
d hand. The tension was so thick, I could have made bricks if I’d had a mold. The mysterious young mestizo in the Afro and the white outfit who’d been standing with Jürgen earlier has also come over, evidently to back up his German buddy if any blows happen to be thrown—and now he looks me in the eye with an expression that can only be hate. A two-on-two fight? I’m sure we’ll win it hands-down. Poor consolation if it means being forced out of Nu Barsa, even if the German gets kicked out, too. So I’m not going to start anything. I’ll wait for him to take the initiative. That way, at least I’ll be able to plead self-defense.
But the minute passes—and nothing happens.
“Haha, only because Miquel say expel,” Jürgen growls in his horrid Teutonic Spanish, and he grudgingly leaves Nerys and me, proving that even he is capable of thinking about the possible consequences of his actions.
As for his sidekick, it takes him a few more seconds to drop the belligerent attitude. Meanwhile, he hisses at me in a hoarse undertone, “Today you got off. But we’ll see you again soon, Zero.”
¡Ay, por Shangó y la Virgen de Montserrat!
Now I know where I remember him from. Cuba. CH. Rubble City.
How did I miss it—those eyes, that obsession with white clothes and cleanliness. I thought he’d be dead by now, but no. I can’t even imagine how, but he and his hatred have followed me to Nu Barsa and now, I guess, he wants to “avenge” his fallen idol.
It’s Yamil’s little brother. Yotuel Fullmouth Valdés.
Life sure is full of little surprises. So now he’s a Contact Specialist, too?
Not only that, but the asshole has sided with none other than my worst enemy, Jürgen Schmodt.
“Devils of a feather flock together,” Diosdado used to say back in Rubble City.
Does he show his appreciation for Jürgen’s mentoring with the oral skills that made him so popular among the old pederasts on the highway near Rubble City? Wouldn’t surprise me.
I think of Taraplins and Qhigarians. “Wise Creator” and “Unworthy Pupil.” What a coincidence.