by Scott Rhine
“Understand that they are the weakest of the races, unable to walk on land and reluctant to leave the safety of their own system. Their needs are very specific. Bound to a single point of failure, they fear everything. They seek to control others to protect themselves.”
“What about things they can’t control?”
“They have met other races, not in the Union.” Blythe bowed her head. “Those who did not accept the yoke of the ansible did not survive.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
“You have tapped the Magi race memory as well. We would ask you to avoid this in the future, but it is necessary for you to understand.”
Someone was trying to shake him awake. Escorts were shouting for medical assistance. One more minute.
He seized Blythe and squeezed. “Tell me. Fill me. Hurry!”
She kissed his forehead and a dozen war scenarios exploded, the most horrific of which began with the detonation of Nivaar’s star with the Xerxes device. Murder and starvation ran rampant through the crippled Union. None of the scenarios included the Magi.
Desperate, he researched one last option that involved the extensive Magi catalogue of stars. He swallowed the burning light whole and sorted through it for the grain of sand he needed. So much data, and it moved inside him.
He tasted blood in his mouth. His nerves recoiled under the foreign input. His mind didn’t have enough room. He had to borrow from other areas and experienced a disorientation that he could only guess was a small aneurism. He recited four sets of coordinates before he fell from the heavens.
Then he lay in Fiona’s lap on the grass. “How-how long was I out? Fifteen? Twenty?”
“Less than five.” Her face showed concern. “That was incredibly stupid.”
“Odin gave up an eye for the wisdom to lead his people.” He didn’t know what he had sacrificed.
“Wasn’t he a myth and an old drunk?”
Reuben nodded. “All the things I aspire to be, my temptress.” He wobbled to his feet and continued toward the auditorium.
“You can’t give your speech after this.”
“On the contrary, I must while I still remember.” He leaned on her heavily, hoping he hadn’t sacrificed too much of importance to pull this rabbit out of his fedora.
Chapter 34 – The Grand Tap Dance
The old Goat senator greeted them in the foyer. “Upstart, I expect great things from you. Confidentially, I did the worst thing I possibly could—exactly what you asked.”
“And I shall do the same for you some day, friend.”
Senator Wasserling laughed. “That’s the spirit.”
The front row held a ton of generals and a Turtle dignitary. In the second row from the stage, Daisy had saved both her Goat friends seats. She touched her headset. “Everything is a go for your speech. I’ll keep you updated while you speak, one finger for each phase we’ve completed. Keep them busy for at least five minutes. I’ve invited other committees like Product Safety and Interspecies Cooperation with the promise you’d share relevant information with them.”
Panicked, Reuben said, “You can’t just throw me to the wolves like this. If this is payback from Posy, I swear I will find a way for this whole thing to bite you on that shapely ass of yours.”
She blew a raspberry. “You’d never hurt a woman, but you’re king of blowing sunshine and tap dancing.”
Tellers filled the row to his left. Bats crowded in behind him, and Saurians chose the row to his right. The Magi were noticeably absent. Humans had moved to the back, probably at Trout’s warning. The odds of his successfully returning to his room dropped by the second. Only the Goats flooding the balconies and aisles gave him a fighting chance, but he didn’t want any more of his people throwing themselves between him and assassination. So now this speech could be my last words, too.
Silence descended on the crowded room. He stood at attention while the giant Turtle moderator, Judge Jeeconus, recited the Union creed in a slow cadence that gave her time to enunciate every word. The spotlight shone on her pebbled red-brown skin. The shell was segmented like an armadillo’s. Her wise eyes were golden jewels. She didn’t have to be nearly three meters tall, the design constraint for every majestic door in the tower, to make Reuben feel insignificant. The black sphere around her neck had more defensive power than Solemnity. This century-old bastion of prudence was the judge who had moved to revoke Phib sentience due to their crimes.
How can I possibly follow that act?
In a moment of transcendent absurdity, Reuben looked down at the belt of the general in front of him. The head of Lunar Defense had skipped one of his loops when putting on his belt that morning. Everyone here made mistakes. That fact comforted him when the speaker paused and a Saurian technician tapped him on the shoulder. “It is customary to provide text for a speech ahead of time to aid in translation.”
Reuben shook his head. “Pal, even I don’t know what’s going to come out of my mouth next. It’s part of the charm of my show.”
“No slides?”
“Hmm. If people have questions, I’ll link my wrist computer to the projector.”
The tech scanned Reuben’s wrist. “Done.”
His standard link reply appeared on the screen behind the esteemed Turtle Jeeconus. “You have reached the Black Ram. How may I service you?” In the photo, he posed in a group shot with every woman from Solemnity. A quarter of the audience giggled.
Jeeconus swiveled her head to puzzle over the meaning of the text. Clearing her throat, she announced, “Without further delay, I present to you the newest holder of the Black Ram title, a Goat who people alternately refer to as a visionary healer and a perverse troublemaker. I will let you draw your own conclusions from his words.”
This drew a bigger laugh and a smattering of applause.
Daisy held up one finger.
The Turtle handed Reuben a control wand for the lights. “Sir, you have the floor.”
He waited for the slow Jeeconus to clear the stage. Security gave him no choice in this matter. When Reuben reached the black podium, he fiddled with the microphone height for a while. At last, he synced the voice amplifier to his ball. Then he wandered to the edge of the stage as he brought up the house lights. “I don’t like being put in any box or on a pedestal.”
Two fingers. I can do this standing on my head. “If you had to put a title on my keynote, it would be ‘We’re All Family.’ In the Union, all of us need each other and rely on the other species. Whether I like it or not, even the Phib are still a part of our family drama and have valuable things to contribute.” This caused a buzz coming from a ram whose family had been eaten by the Cullers. He let the hubbub play out before continuing. “We are all intertwined like the crew of the spaceship I’ve been on for three years.”
He snagged a bottle of water from an Anodyne woman in the front and winked at her. Daisy held up three fingers and glared at him for the flirtation. “I learned a lot from the interspecies think tank known as Far Traveler Unlimited. They trained me to become the leader I am today. I realized quickly that a society is defined as much by it opponents as it is the nominal leadership. We are judged not by our greatest accomplishments but by how we treat our weakest members. Worst of all, I discovered that the things we extol as virtues as a Union—intelligence, kindness, and conformity—are not necessarily survival traits.”
Four fingers.
Reuben displayed the montage of Blythe. “The person who convinced me to serve our great society was crushed to death under its wheels.”
Daisy paled and made a sign for stretching.
Problem with the final phase?
“But she wasn’t the only one. On our mission, we had representatives from every species except the Turtles aboard, and Beloved Sanderjee gave us all the technical support she could. Since Jotunheim, we’ve lost seventeen crew members.” Most of whom we killed ourselves. “Only seven of us remain, led by the mighty Kesh, the last child of General Keshmandar, th
e heroic strategist who saved countless lives in the Gigaparsec War.” Reuben gestured for his friend to stand, and more applause followed.
Now the tightrope walk between truth and appeasement began. “Our dream was to double the speed of the current star drive.” This piqued everyone’s attention. “Unfortunately, the product isn’t going to hit the market any time soon. The tech is too unstable and deadly. In the wrong hands, it can actually eradicate a star, something my ancestor Xerxes discovered. For that reason, all the research in our team’s possession has been handed over to the Magi academy of sages. We expect them to proceed with the deliberate caution for which they are famous.”
The Tellers in the audience relaxed visibly.
“The most sensitive Magi died during the first test. Kesh lost his entire Saurian crew. The most recent losses were two Bankers who provided our communication. The people who fared the best were nulls, the folks rejected by our collective-based society.”
Daisy did an even broader stretching motion.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Reuben blurted. He took a moment to recover. “Is what you might say if you examined the economic impact like we did. Because no current jump can be accomplished in less than eleven days, Bankers save bandwidth by doing complete balance updates only once a week, every eight days. Unless we want our current economic structures to fall apart, we need to help the Bankers cut that limit by at least half in our lifetime.”
The idea of Goats helping Bankers created another stir, allowing him to delay with ease.
Three fingers. She was going backwards. Is Max trying to escape?
“The primary reasons given for the high cost of FTL communications are the growing distances the devices have to travel from Nivaar and the exponential population growth of Union population. To alleviate this bottleneck in our common civilization infrastructure, I propose giving the Bankers four new planets scattered around Union space in order to produce more ansibles near where we need them.” The roar of the crowd gossip was deafening. Each time the noise abated, he posted another planet candidate on the star chart on his wrist computer.
Two fingers. Roz appeared at the back of the auditorium with the members of the Sentience Committee. Since Max was unable to reach the mountain, she had brought the mountain to him.
“We should all contribute to this venture because in the first decade alone, the increased bandwidth and corresponding boost to our economies will pay for any planetary debt. I suggest we each do what we do best, starting with Llewellyn terraforming and Magi planetary catalogs.” Hah. That’ll teach Ivy’s family to mess with me. “Collaboration will lead to increased commerce and innovation, not to mention a healthier sense of family. In your children’s lifetimes, imagine five times the ansible bandwidth at one-fifth the cost in a world where every species could meet on a single world.”
The head of security jerked upright at something on his headset and ran from the auditorium using the right-hand stage door. Daisy followed soon after. This could be it. He needed to stir up more controversy to pull the guards in. If security captured Max, his whole crew would be rounded up as accomplices. He couldn’t hold back anything.
“During our travels on the frontier, we witnessed many heinous crimes but couldn’t report them due to a lack of an independent Union legal presence. Ansibles broadcast false criminal charges routinely. Phibs still mine asteroids without permission in Banker space and sell to Saurians who transport the metal to pirates. Slavery is still practiced within our borders and ignored because it’s not murder.”
The Saurian and Banker delegations were on their feet demanding retractions. Guards poured in from the wings to suppress the outrage.
Reuben turned up the volume to shout over them. “We created a charity to mitigate the second-worst crime in the galaxy until we could reach you with the news.” He projected the montage of Bat children in the mines.
Instead of increasing the chaos, the audience fell mute at the mistreatment and poverty of its people. “Niisham comes from the Bat name for Hell, and it was well named. It’s a system from which conventional star drives cannot escape. Frozen sleep or Magi stasis is required to leave. A handful of people were sent to this place of hopelessness by the Bat royals and church, and now my crewmates tell me their numbers exceed the civilian population of New Hawaii.”
A Bat delegate with a royal uniform shouted, “Traitors lose the right of sentience.”
“These thousands of offspring were never criminals, and under the charter, they deserve the same rights and protections as you and me. Some of the prisoners were sent for the most minor of crimes, like winning a horticulture contest against the dowager. Most were stripped of rights based on rumors in a kangaroo court behind closed doors.”
The screen identified the royal standing in the audience as Ambassador Salimdagen. “Like every other species, we maintain our own independent justice system.”
“Yes. But once people are in Niisham, you have no authority over them.”
“Absurd.”
“You refused to send troops to them when they were in need. When informed at the outbreak of the war that Phibs were running that prison, the Crown refused to waste men to save them. You ceded your rights the moment the heads of your church shipped more people and proclaimed that the Bats in Niisham deserved the worst treatment you could give them.”
“Well, perhaps he was a little harsh.”
“Ambassador, does a child ever deserve to be eaten?”
All eyes in the room moved to Ambassador Salimdagen. “No.”
“Because of this injustice, your own Prince Feeveerkahn, third in line for the throne, wrote this decree granting them independence.” Reuben projected the document seven meters high.
“Feeveerkahn was a traitor.” The ambassador now stood immediately below Reuben.
Only the cordon of nervous guards kept Reuben from being pulled into the churning crowd. “No. The democracy of Niisham, which includes the guard population you tried to starve to death, voted to elect him leader. He was condemned in your courts solely on the word of a Niisham prisoner interrogation whose results were reported by ansible—which can be fabricated.”
The crowd went wild again when the Bankers were accused. Reuben said, “I move that the Colonization Committee recognize Niisham as an independent planet and force Saurian traders to negotiate payments with the residents, not the Crown.”
“Lies!” several delegates insisted.
Max appeared on stage to the right, cuffed and surrounded by Yellow Slash Guards. According to plan, Max wore the mimic like a military jacket that caused him to blend in with the blue cement and shadows. The situation might have been hopeless, but Reuben still had the floor and Jeeves could move freely.
Reuben shouted, “The worst crime we witnessed was genocide.”
“Point of Order!” Ambassador Salimdagen squeaked, and the ball translated to the common Banker tongue for all to hear. The roar of the crowd subsided. “By your own admission you were never on Niisham, and hearsay is not admissible in this august assembly.”
Reuben pointed toward Max, but the furry jacket was missing now, lying a meter away at the base of the podium. “I have a witness to present.”
The Ambassador overrode him. “Motion to make this a closed session of the Sentient Rights Committee so this careless slander doesn’t damage any other reputations. All the delegates are here. We just need to move out the unwanted disruptions.”
“I yield the floor to Jeeves Ellison,” Reuben said in a rush when the ambassador paused.
“Seconded,” said the Saurian ambassador next to Salimdagen.
“Point of order,” declared the massive Turtle judge, returning to the stage. “The floor has been yielded to another speaker. No vote may be taken unless that speaker calls it.”
Salimdagen said, “The Goat yielded, and the man to whom he passed control is not cleared to speak to the assembly. The coordinator for the Humans must approve his proposal a day in advance.
”
“Unless the Human coordinator wishes to invoke security concerns to waive the delay.” The judge was trying to be fair.
The ill-belted general shook his head. “We do not.”
Reuben smiled. “Sir, I never said the witness was Human.”
By now, the mimic was hiding inside the podium. Reuben pressed a button on the room’s control wand to reestablish the spotlight. “I beg you to listen to her for a few minutes.”
Confused, the Turtle agreed. “On a charge as serious as genocide, I shall permit three minutes. We will discuss your lack of decorum after.”
Reuben bowed and stepped to the podium. He placed the urban-camouflaged mimic on top and left his media drone to translate. Fuzzy, pointed ears and wide, black eyes filled the screen. A terrified creature that hid from anything with an aura, Jeeves shifted colors to the black of the furniture.
People in the audience were too confused to object.
Roz was already at Max’s side when Reuben reached the wings. He whispered, “You let yourself get caught on purpose, you sly dog.”
“I was captured yesterday night. The judge is hard to fool but has a sense of humor. She bet you couldn’t discuss topics of galactic importance for ten straight minutes with no preparation. You did, and I won the right to see your conclusion.”
Everything came down to a three-minute speech from a frightened four-year-old alien. Roz’s lips moved in a prayer to someone named Mary.
Chapter 35 – Out of the Mouths of Babes
The Bat Ambassador recovered enough to ask, “What is this creature?”
Captain Kesh, from the heart of the Saurian cluster, said, “I certify that this mimic is a meal mammal from my ship’s larder.” He added the source planet’s designation.
In perfect Bat, converted to Banker over the PA system, the shy mimic said, “Jeeves not food.”
Delegates took their seats. A Saurian passed close to the podium, causing Jeeves to shriek and dive under the podium.