He paused and fought for breath. “I thought I lost you,” he added simply.
“I’m sorry,” said Morminiu.
“Me too,” Plabos wheezed, every word draining him of energy. “I need you to prepare yourself for the Death Ritual. We need to do it tomorrow, or I won’t make it.
“After my death, take The Essential Book and go to the Royal Carami. Enter Hitissh Leomi’ service, as we discussed. Our plans stay the same.”
“Yes, Master.”
“I have great expectations for you, my son.”
Morminiu lowered his head. His mother had died far from him. Tathes’ life had ended in the swamps. Now Plabos would be dead by midnight, and he’d have to perform the terrible ritual alone.
And yet, he realized what Plabos had just said: my son. For the first time! He bent and kissed his father’s forehead.
* * * * *
Costi Gurgu was born in Constanta, the 2600-year-old city on the Black Sea shore, and lives in Toronto with his wife, on the Ontario Lake shore. It is suspected that large bodies of water help Costi glimpse into other realms. That and some Dacian magic. His fiction has been published in Canada, the United States, England, Denmark, Hungary and Romania. He has sold three books and fifty-eight stories for which he has won twenty-four awards. He is currently working on two novels and his first screenplay.
Star Severer
Ben Godby
Mueller opened a channel and observed the star system before him. Kateli was a hot yellow star circled by dark, rocky planets. Still groggy from stasis, he watched the orbits of these bodies as his warp-pod decelerated, and thought about how, in less than ten standard Earth days, he would have killed this system and everyone in it.
“This is a very impressive piece of machinery, Mr. Mueller.”
“The investors wouldn’t have it any other way, Commander.”
Commander Odashi’s avatar — bright-eyed and big-moustached, wearing Terran Loyalist greens — smiled. “There has been no Terran speculation in Kateli for hundreds of years, Mr. Mueller. We remain loyal, of course, and vigilant for any signs of Terretic hersey; but you must understand that this is very sudden for us. We are a simple people, now.”
Mueller nodded. The Commander’s avatar strolled easily about the cabin of Mueller’s warp-pod, which microbots were already converting into a stationary craft; while Mueller, in physical form, floated aimlessly in the low gravity. “The war against the Terretics hasn’t changed,” said Mueller. “And there are many fresh material sources in Kateli that might fuel the war effort.”
“We are humbled by your interest,” said Odashi. He laughed. “Maybe with the new enterprise, my superiors can see fit to provide a new battle fleet for me. My capital ships are a millennium old.”
Mueller smiled weakly. “Ten thousand years of war, Commander.”
Odashi’s laughter was cut short. He saluted. “Against the threat of ten thousand more.”
“I am transmitting the requested orbit for my operations,” said Mueller.
“You’ll have it,” said Odashi. “Our mining orgs can reroute their drones if necessary.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
“One last thing. I hope you’ll come visit Kateli Prime. It’s not much, but we can offer more than you might expect.” He smiled with one half of his mouth. “At least, no one has ever thermo-nuked Kateli Prime.”
“That must be why you have so much ice.”
Odashi laughed. “Yes! Sometimes, I think we could do with an induced climate change or two.”
“Goodbye, Commander.”
“Let me know if you need anything.”
Odashi’s avatar disappeared. Mueller called up the view-channel again and stared at the system. Odashi didn’t realize he was wishing for change in vain. The components of a terminally revolutionary process were stored within Mueller’s warp-pod, and, by his very being here, they had already begun the inexorable procession towards activation.
Mueller only wished he knew what had started the entire affair. Odashi had an aging fleet of poor vessels not fit for planetary defence, let alone interstellar warfare. What had the Katelians done to deserve their fate?
Mueller scoured his memory but could find no instance of ever knowing why anyone deserved the fates he delivered.
Kateli Prime was uninhabited but for the equatorial belt, which was mountainous and surrounded by crunching seas of ice. The valleys sprouted vegetables that thrived in the cold radiation of the distant star. A single megalopolis, occupied by more drones than humans, spread its mechanical arms along the northern shoreline for four hundred kilometers: Moscow 11. A name nearly as old as Earth itself.
Mueller walked the city’s streets with unhurried steps. Odashi had loaned him an inter-orbital craft after earning the promise that Mueller would use it to visit the Commander’s palace, which was on the other side of the planet from the megalopolis, high in the mountains. Mueller had descended from the warp-pod’s orbit with the intention of visiting the Commander, but he had immediately abandoned that pretence: it wasn’t right, or fair, or morally equable to fraternize with the enemy. Instead, he’d come here, to Moscow 11, to smell air not reconstituted, to eat food not auto-fabricated, to imprint on his memory the last record of a culture about to be destroyed.
No matter that his handlers would, once their hands were on his memories, raze every vestige of it.
Kateli Prime had a rapid rotation, and its inhabitants existed in a constant twilight state, sleeping three or four hours before waking for a longer stretch, watching the sun set and rise and set again before their next sleep cycle. Markets and businesses operated on odd schedules, and the weeks and months were Byzantine confabulations of special holidays and exceptional work-marathons that seemed destined never to repeat. Was this why Kateli had been marked for eradication: deviation from Earth-standard time, the canon laws of the fourth dimension? Mueller ignored the local customs and ordered his sleep according to Terran standards. Terresy — as the Katelians were, with Mueller’s weaponized help, soon to demonstrate — never paid.
But he sought something among these Terretics nonetheless: something tangible, something he could carry with him, no matter the fact that nothing — not even, once his mind was downloaded and communicated to his handlers, his disposable body — would leave the system. Everything on Kateli Prime was as mundane as everything on every other planet in human space, though idiosyncratic with small local touches: plastic pillows filled with gel that was the byproduct of some wheat substitute’s reproductive process; a child’s game of rigid wires and flexible stones that fit neatly in a case that had once been the ossiferous lung of some mountain creature. Pointless objects that would never be reproduced elsewhere. He bought a mixing device that was actually some sort of local cephalopod, and the counter-sized aquarium he could store it in if only he had a kitchen, if only he wasn’t living out of a space vessel— if only he had a planet that he called home.
In the middle of the second night cycle, as he was making his circuitous way back to the spaceport through a city he could never see the whole of, on a planet that would never exist again, he came across a square in which a crowd of people were standing silently, looking at the sky. Mueller opened a channel and found what they were looking at: a distant supernova, hundreds of years old and all the brighter for its already-death.
“Hello, Offworlder.”
Mueller turned to find a woman in a long yellow robe and a square hat looking up at him. He bowed. “Priestess.”
“You’ll have to excuse my forwardness. There are not many visitors to our planet. To what do we owe the honour, Mister…?”
“Mueller,” he said. “John Mueller. I work for a Terran materials development speculation outfit. I’m a technician.”
“Are you interested in novae, Mr. Mueller?”
“Some.”
The priestess’s eyes glazed as she re-opened her channel to the image of the nova. “The one you are looking at used to be a star called Vercingetorix. The name is taken from a historical freedom fighter on old Earth, Mr. Mueller. It is sad that this Vercingetorix — one that contained far more than a single soul — must share the same fate as that historical Earthling. The system was nebulized for Terresy.”
Mueller looked at the cloud of colorful debris again, then shut the channel. “It is sad.”
“Two things tell us we are still human, Mr. Mueller. The more important one is that we mourn the dead.” She smiled. “I hope I will see you again, Mr. Mueller.”
When he returned to his warp-pod, now swinging in a gentle orbit around Kateli, Mueller composed a message to his handlers and synchronized it to them via the quantum encoder. I would like for this to be my last one, he wrote.
Accepted, came the reply. Upon completion of your contract you will upload as usual. You will be downloaded with a scraped memory and your file marked for time served. If this is acceptable please indicate your desired system for re-settlement.
He stared at the message for some time, then called up a star chart and looked at it from many different angles. He knew too much to make a considered decision.
Your terms are acceptable, he wrote back. I will resettle wherever Mother Earth sees fit.
Mueller issued the commands for his warp-pod to unfold, forming a ring of rare metals topped by a command cockpit. It resembled nothing so much as an engagement ring. Once the star severer was calibrated, its subtle vibrations tuned to the sensitive orientations passed to it through the quantum encoder, it would make a small rip in the local space-time — in the very centre of the ring — and open a white hole there. On the other side of the white hole would open a black one, located in a long-dead system his superiors had weaponized with a piece of iron-56 the size of several gas giants. The iron would be sucked through the rift at near-lightspeed, spat out the white hole, and thrust towards Kateli on the strength of the resulting momentum. When the iron reached the core of Kateli, it would begin to shut down the burning life-force of the star, a process that would end with it exploding, and the system nebulized.
Once the hardware was in place, it was only a matter of waiting for the correct time, which was for Mueller waiting for the requisite courage to be born in him. In the waiting period, he went down to Kateli Prime again. Normally he never visited a planet this much, but he wanted to remember this one — his last one — particularly, so that he might never do something so terrible again. And yet at the end of it, he would be wiped clean and forget— even his sincerest resolution lost to the careful depredations of his handlers. What was he, anyway, if he couldn’t even keep himself from monstrosity? Something had stayed with him, through all the uploads and downloads of his consciousness, that had gradually transformed into revulsion; but he had no idea what it was. In the end, he tried to console himself that people had been forgetting for a long time; but he would have to forget it all — even the act of forgetting itself — to be happy again.
He went into a café and sat down at the counter, opening a channel to the menu and trying to decide what to eat. He didn’t need to eat; the pod could supply him with nutrients if needed, but his body was designed to feed off itself. He never needed a body for longer than a few standard Earth weeks. He had already noticed fat coming off his stomach, fuel to propel him onwards. But he wanted to put something in his mouth, he wanted to taste. It was superstition, he knew, but maybe what thoughts his mind forgot could be gathered into sensations his soul would keep.
“Can I suggest the olargus?”
Mueller turned and saw a young man sitting next to him. The man had a sharp face and bright eyes. His skin was the brilliant gold of Katelians, a pigment that might never be reproduced on any other planet.
“What is that?” Mueller asked, calling back the menu and scanning it.
The man was faster. “Our specialty. It is rocks, Offworlder. Rich in minerals. We serve it in a sauce of enzymes that allow your body to digest it. It is exquisite.”
Mueller looked back at the young man. “You look familiar.”
“Oh?” His eyes sparkled.
Mueller cast away the menu. “I’ll try the olargus, then.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you are beautiful?”
Mueller smiled. “Not tonight.”
Mueller awoke in Adil’s bed with a slow consciousness that reminded him of coming out of stasis, but without the attendant confusion and regret. His companion from the night before was still asleep between sheets of gossamer white, beneath a stone ceiling and between stone walls. Mueller forgot how he had gotten here, or where he was, or how he had learned the man’s name. He wondered what name he had given to Adil, if this man he’d loved thought he was Mueller, or Kirby, or Capac, or someone else; Mueller had used as many names as days he had lived. He reached over and touched Adil’s forehead gently, then rose and dressed and went out into the street and returned to the spaceport. He never even looked back at the building he left the boy in; that one he didn’t want to remember.
When he reached his warp-pod he found that someone had mounted an attack on his systems: a little worm looking for codes or hidden capabilities. The attack had been rebuffed automatically, but even that was a sort of defeat: whoever had attacked him probably knew he wasn’t just a materials speculator, or if he was, that he was a very good one.
He dictated into the quantum encoder that night.
I would like to request that I not be the trigger-man, he sent.
Impossible, came the reply. You will be relinquished of your duties when they are complete. You will remember nothing. Is the device complete?
Mueller looked around the command cockpit, felt his body’s looseness as he floated in its hollow bay. The star severer was ready, but he was not.
Odashi pinged him and Mueller snapped out of the trance. Mueller let the avatar into the pod.
“Hello again, Mr. Mueller. I see you’ve changed the décor. How are things?”
Mueller tried to smile. “I’m all right. The pod has to reconfigure itself this way to maximize the area of the sensor array. And how are you, Commander?”
The soldier tapped at something not visible in the hologram. “Concerned. Some of my officers are worried that you are not really an intergalactic materials speculator, Mr. Mueller. They think you are a spy. Or an inquisitor.”
Mueller frowned and thought of the attack. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I don’t want to believe them, obviously. Mr. Mueller, I want you to know: I’ve never been to Earth, but I am a loyal Terran. If you are military… rest assured, you can tell me anything in confidence.”
Mueller shook his head. “I am not a spy, Commander.”
“Then why aren’t you scanning the system? Sending out drones?”
Mueller turned his attention to a channel that looked on Kateli. The yellow star, soon to be torn to shreds; the little planets that would go along with it. The Katelian mining drones, busily devouring insignificant orbitals, would, eventually be replaced; nebulae were a perfect harvest for the war effort. “This career is draining on me, Commander. I have decided I will soon retire.”
“Ah. But you do not look old, Mr. Mueller.”
“The benefits of relativity.”
“Also the curse, I am sure. But then, you must think that we who are planet-bound are even more doomed. We live by the revolutions of celestial bodies.”
“We all do, Commander.”
“That is true. Remember, Mr. Mueller, you can tell me anything. Please, the next time you are on Kateli Prime, come visit the palace.”
The avatar disappeared. Mueller turned to the quantum encoder. He decided not to answer his superior’s question about
the star severer. Relatively speaking, his answer was as good delivered now as later.
The priestess was only one of many, and her chambers were very plain, but she was very accommodating. She made tea with wet brown leaves. It tasted like the wholesome soil of some distant undiscovered planet.
Mueller looked around her chambers and fought with his own recollections. He had been here before, though maybe he had only been in some other convent on some other planet; or maybe he had only dreamed it.
Besides, he had more important things on his mind.
“Have you ever been to Earth, Priestess?”
“Heavens, no. Earth is very far, and we are very poor. Besides, I have been told there is a war on.” She smiled without showing her teeth. “And you?”
“I was born there.”
“A true Green. That must be nice.”
Mueller shrugged. “I barely remember it.”
“Oh? Then it must not have mattered much to you.”
“I don’t think I ever felt at home, there.”
“That’s nearly Terresy, isn’t it?” The priestess’s smile slowly dissipated. “Where do you feel at home, then?”
Mueller shook his head. “I’m not sure yet. I’m trying to decide where to retire.”
The priestess laughed. “Kateli is very nice, Mr. Mueller. I know it is cold and dreary, but people are happy here on this limb of the galaxy.”
Mueller tapped his fingers against the side of his teacup. “How many people live here?”
“About seven hundred million in the city,” said the priestess, “and another hundred million in settlements in the high valleys. We can’t support any more than that, and we are too far to receive remittances from richer planets.” She squinted. “Of course, if your corporation brings new business to Kateli…”
“I can’t promise anything,” said Mueller. He looked at the priestess and then out the window. The window simply faced onto the street, asphalt wet from recent rain and nearby shop fronts steaming. At one time, the monastery might have been secluded, a seaside retreat; but civilization intruded on everything. “But I’ll try.”
Tesseracts Seventeen Page 15