A photo of the old king showed on the screen. “He is called V’ming. There is much news on the other files on the disk, but here is his talk, with the translation, a special one he addressed to us.” A new, more grainy image appeared, pulled off a TV broadcast, no doubt.
The scene showed an obviously elderly native, and somewhat ill, from the mannerisms displayed, speaking with a slow and steady, and quite strong, voice as a narration overrode the sound of its words. Lori and the rest of the group listened, absolute silence in the room now. Everyone seemed to perk up when the voice rose, reflected in more upright posture of the speaker, and said, “To you, our visitors from beyond the system, for you, the travelers in your marvelous machines that cross the bounds of the distant universe in a twinkling, to you, I offer, on behalf of my people, and all the people of the planet Magadana, my deep regrets, profound apology, and heartfelt plea for forgiveness for our many insults to you and your kind. The actions of my...of all of us, is callous, cruel, without honor, un-called for, inappropriate, immature, and indeed unforgivable, yet we beg your forgiveness. We did not know what we were doing, nor how we hurt you, and thereby hurt ourselves as much or more by our stupid acts. They are the action of an uninformed and ignorant people, and of a despot blind to all save his own ambition. We are truly sorry.” And he bowed his head, and seemed to shrink and diminish in size and power.
Looking up again, the king went on. “And to the one most grievously abused, I offer my personal apology, and will do all and any in my power, to atone for such insults to a great and patient leader of your people.” And a grainy and poorly focused picture of Lorelei appeared on the TV.
“Now, to you all, if you can hear this, I offer amends of any size and amount you wish. If you will return, I will promise you safe passage, on my life, and restoration of all damages and claims for damage to you. We cannot return the lives we so callously took, but we can promise you the hospitality, generosity, and servitude, of a repentant people.” A cheer rose in the room, stopped.
“And if you will, in time and in the generosity of your wisdom, share with us the secrets and powers of your technology, not so we may battle one another, but so that we may travel with you, as friends and companions, in the wondrous realm of the stars about us.”
He looked down, then back up again. “If it is not too late, I beg you to return for my people’s benefit, and pledge to you the friendship of my heart, for so long as it will beat.”
The image faded, and abruptly shifted to the first speaker, the illi-illi, but one of the travelers said, “He is sick, that king one, dying, maybe, not alive much longer.”
The image said the same thing, and then ran a few more clips, as proof of a Teutonic change on the surface below. Military groups meeting at fortified positions with friendly greeting ceremonies, blockades on roads being removed, and people surging across borders to join together, and a lengthy shot of a congress of some sort, adopting resolutions or something, peace treaties, maybe, the translation differed in the words used.
More reports followed, from the first appearance of the king before the multitudes, his personal address to the aliens, then more news from later in the bright, more of the great changes seen below, and it all looked genuine. The scouts had sent down several cambots, and none had been attacked. Those sent to the palace had been welcomed, with much waving of hands, and flags, and constant recording from TV and other devices.
The screen showed another illi-illi, who said, “My judgment says they are quite genuine, My Lady. You and the members of the expedition might return, should you wish. Already, we receive many offers for trade goods, some quite interesting. Fine art, liquors, purified minerals, wonderful woods and fibers, jewels and such, and anything manufactured on the surface that might appeal to us. If not too late, or at a later time, I will recommend to my people, with your kind permission, that they return with a ship, and see what we might trade for here. But I would welcome better the presence of others, to ease the transition to trade with all.”
Lori sighed at the self-depreciation of the illi-illi, a forever trait, apparently, shaking her head. They alone could do what they just did, well, maybe the bigboys could too, but they never would have the patience to stick around and wait as the illi-illi did.
A catalog of offerings followed, people in the audience shouting at several displays, and loud calls for “Trade! Trade!”, and “Turn around, what are we waiting for?”
The captain brought some order, saying, “Look, we can’t just turn around at this point, be better to wait a few days until we swap ends if that’s what we want to do anyway. And we sure can’t change course or velocity without the other ships nearby knowing what we’re doing. We need to coordinate exactly what we’ll do, and that’ll take some time. I suggest we ask the illi-illi to visit each of the other ships, take a delegation from this one with them and copies of the news, and get each to decide on what they want to do. And someone has to go back to Uta to tell the rest of the fleet, too, you know, in any case.”
A great hubbub arose, everyone talking at once, or trying to. Lori and the captain let it swirl around them, reach a crescendo, and crash to a group consensus.
“Yes, send the illi-ill to the other ships, then turn around and go back.”
“OK, we’ll do it one step at a time,” and he called the illi-illi off to a conference room, as people began to replay the disk again, and look at the other reports, too.
Captain George joined Lori and Hunter in their suite after dinner that evening. Hunter motioned to a seat, and brought him a small glass of liquor. They raised glasses in a silent toast. After a sip, George said to Lori, “Do you want to go back to the planet?”
“No,” she answered, quickly, without hesitation. George nodded. “But you do, don’t you?”
George nodded again. “But no matter. I am under charter to you, and will follow your direction.”
Lori smiled. “I appreciate that. Tell you what. Get me back to Uta, and you are free to return to Magadana, stay and trade as long as you like, and then come back and get me when you’re done. OK?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go back too? You’ll be treated better this time, I bet.”
“Captain, I have no desire to return to that hell-hole of a planet. I do want to spend some more time on Uta, and will be quite content there, with much to do.”
“I understand,” George said, sipping his glass again.
“What do you think the other ships will want to do?” Hunter said.
“My guess is they’ll all turn around and go back, get a head start on the trading–looting, really, I’ll bet.”
“Not looting, surely. All of them?”
“Yes.”
“The illi-illi are talking to them now?”
“Yes, left an hour ago. Took the UN observers, and a few people from the ship, too, against my better judgement. Should be back in a couple of days.”
“Just before turn-around.”
“Yes, good timing, actually.”
“How do they ever do it, maneuver around out there in this?” Hunter said, waving at the wall with the window, closed and blocked off by the travel shields.
“Different...greymatter, I guess,” George said, swirling the remaining liquor in his glass. “Me, personally, I wouldn’t want to be flitting around out there in a scout ship, but they don’t seem to mind.” He shrugged.
Lori said, “We each have our strengths.”
Actually, only four of the other five ships decided immediately they wanted to return, and planned to do so at turn-around in a couple of days. Captain Bemaraha of the bigboy ship, Mandara, the big one, needed to see Lori before she’d decide, needed some assurance of some sort. She asked Lori to visit her.
“What, she afraid to travel in Williams Space in the scout ship?” Hunter said, upon hearing the news with the return of the illi-illi. “A bigboy?”
“Guess so.” Lori sighed. “How long, do you think,” she said, turning to the il
li-illi scout ship’s captain, “there and back?”
The illi-illi answered in a series of clicks, which Lori recognized and remembered, units of their time. Not long. Less than two hours, if she could believe it. “They are the closest ship,” the translator said, turning more bug-talk clicks into English.
“Lori, you can’t be thinking...of going out there,” Hunter said, jerking a thumb at the nearest wall.
Lori grimaced. “Guess I have to.”
“No, let me go,” Hunter said.
Lori shook her head. “No. My duty...”
“Will you be safe?” Hunter said, annoyance in his voice.
Lori looked at the illi-illi and said, “As long as the illi-illi will pilot for me, I’m sure I will be safe.”
“Great Lady,” the translator said, “It will be our honor to serve you.”
“Good. OK.” She looked around. “Let’s go now, then. The baby’s asleep, I’ll be back before he’s awake. OK?”
Hunter said nothing, just nodded his head. But he looked worried as hell.
Ten minutes later, the scout ship undocked. Lori sat in the small control area, fascinated, looking outward into the black square of chaos that appeared past the open airlock door on the docking bay of the Koya. The small ship moved toward it, and the chaos grew. The ship slipped through the opening, the engines came up, faint acceleration pushed on her, and the Koya seemed to blur and then meld into a long, silver-gray smear that began to shrink and vanish off to the side and ease behind them.
“How do you know where to go?” she asked the pilot, looking at screens that were full of dashes and dots, in rainbows of color. The translator machine clicked her words at him.
“We see where the ships were, not where they are. The computers know, and show us the positions. We go there, then look forward, and can find them that way,” the navigator said, pointing to one of the screens before it. Since they’d done that for the convoy ships, leaving essentially blind from the planet, she knew they could. But it all looked like chaos to her.
“Also, we can find the exhaust trail, and measure the heat when we get close enough.”
Lori looked outside again, ahead, through the small windows. Forward, intense specks of many shades of ice blue appeared, ranging in size from globs to tiny points. The colors changed and elongated as she looked sideways. They appeared to be flying into a cylinder of strands of white light, quite bright nearby, then fading to gray and tan in the distance. But she could hardly tell what was distant, what was close. Further on, trending behind them, the white turned to yellow, then amber, then pink, and red and finally to a ruddy glow, dim stars being left behind. That one side, the side with the bulk of the cluster, dominated the view and the colors, a nearly solid looking curtain of light, did not help ease the feeling of being in the midst of a totally alien, hostile, dangerous and chaotic environment. Lori looked at it all, trying to comprehend what she saw, and shivered with the fear of danger and unknown.
But the illi-illi piloted on, the soft thrust of their engines giving a modicum of gravity, flying toward unseen objectives, the specks somewhere on the screen. What if they missed them, became lost and un-orientated here in Williams Space?
Soon, the navigator pointed with a bony appendage. “Ah, there is where it was not long ago.”
Lori looked at the real-time screen. A tiny, long gray computer generated shape shimmered there, trailing a vermillion dagger far off the screen. Outside, nothing, just more chaos, more streaks of light and dark could be seen, nothing else. The schematic screen showed the relative positions, tiny dots marking the presumed places of the ships around them, small notations giving the names and arrows the vectors.
The smear on the screen grew, the color of the exhaust intensified as they approached, but they took care not enter the plume. Soon they traveled along parallel to the exhaust, unseen outside, only visible to the instruments, and shown on the screen. And still, nothing ahead. Lori felt more and more like screaming, yelling at the endlessness of it all, a panic growing in her mind, they getting more and more lost in this place.
The pilot said, “Not much longer now, Great Lady, we are very close. It looms ahead.”
Lori swallowed, still could see nothing but bright lights through the windows. And suddenly, one materialized from the glow, long bright specks of giant engines, pushing a mammoth, greatly elongated ship along at impossible gravities.
They moved up, and alongside, and still nothing could be discerned, nothing identifiable, not a rivet, a joint, a seam, an instrument cluster, a bay door, nothing. And as they moved toward the amorphous cloud, Lori wanted to scream some more. Why, oh why, had she ever agree to this stupid trip? But she had, she was stuck, and all she could do now was sit and wait, heart pounding, while her hands held on tightly to the arms of the small seat, and her stomach ached. Others from the Koya had just made the trip, but inside the cramped passenger area, not up front like her, and all survived. Man, she missed her air car, wished it could have come along. But no room in the small scout ship.
Minutes passed, the grey blob seemed unchanged. And they moved closer still, and matched speed, stopped moving relative to it, and everything leaped out at her. Portholes, closed against the emptiness of Williams Space. And indentations, and instrument clusters, even bay doors, which they passed as they slowly rotated laterally around the ship, everything looking stretched out, peculiar. And a black square appeared, or a long rectangle, actually, which grew larger, blackness inside, and only changed as they approached the threshold, and it suddenly glowed brightly as they moved inside. The scout ship flew along, following a short line on the floor, and stopped in a narrow bay, and doors closed behind it as it settled down. They were inside the bigboy ship. Safe at last.
Lori found herself damp with sweat. Probably stinking, too, no wonder the illi-illi recognized her discomfort. She breathed in and out slowly, trying to regain some composure.
Inside the ship, she quickly conferred with Captain Bemaraha, a pleasant, if nervous woman Lori met several times, and liked. The Captain waited for her in an elaborate and luxurious conference room, offering coffee and cookies. Lori accepted the offerings, sitting across a low table from the bigboy.
After a few pleasantries, Capt Bemaraha said she was torn between returning to Magadana, or continuing back to Uta. Magadana seemed to hold little interest for her, low tech, primitive things, nothing much of value to them, and teeming with natives, all greedy and warlike, and without honor. And with scant gravity, to boot.
“Yet what then does Uta hold? Much more primitive...”
“Ah, yes, but opportunity to explore, to set foot on untrammeled ground, and see what’s there.”
Lori understood. “What do you look for?”
Captain Bemaraha said, “Like you, we seek the yellow gold. Here is my dilemma. If we return to Magadana, we can get art, jewelry, all such sort of manufactured things. At substantial cost. Little profit, I fear, less demand on Seram Laut than the other planets, I know. But the raw gold–ah, a fortune awaits those who find it. Especially from off world, out of the galaxy itself.”
“Is that what happened the last time we visited?”
“Yes. Did you not know?”
In truth, Lori had heard a little about that, but paid scant attention. She said, “Yes, some, but why ask me?”
“You lead the expedition. If we return with you to Uta, will you grant your leave to explore, to seek minerals, even dig for them, wherever we might?”
The request amazed, and surprised Lori. How could she prevent it, anyway? They hardly needed permission to do whatever the hell they wanted anywhere on Uta, Lori had little military, or any other authority to forbid it, let alone stop it. But she was in charge, and obviously, the bigboys, to their credit, sought the honorable way, of official sanction for what they wished to do. In truth, she feared the Koyaanisqatsi would wind up being the only ship to return, and that bothered her. She’d welcome the company of even just this one other ship
. And it would be great to get the nuclear missiles away from Magadana.
“Captain Bemaraha, if you wish to return with me to Uta, the right to explore and prospect is granted. Provided only, if minerals, or other things of worth are found in inhabited lands, you must deal with those who dwell there, to remove the discoveries.” And Lori knew damn well, they would do so with honor, and fairly.
Captain Bermaraha seemed to relax, quite pleased with the answer.
Lori went on, “But you know, there is no assurance that more minerals of any sort will be found. The first discovery was quite by accident. And we looked some more, and found little there.”
“That is a risk acceptable to us. Our scanners will help. We already know some promising areas. And we have portable sluices, to aid recovery, at the Gold Island strike. We will use them now. So we will accompany you back, and do so upon arrival. More coffee?”
Lori accepted, a little annoyed that such a trivial matter needed her personal presence, couldn’t the question, and answer, have been delivered by the illi-illi? Yet it pleased her, too, to have been asked, to have been sought out for permission, and been able to grant it. She thought it sounded, in fact, that the bigboys already had ideas of where to find gold, and had been pulled away by the rapid call to go to the new planet. No matter. And the fact that she, not the bigboy, traveled in Williams Space–who, then is the most courageous?
T-47 Book II (Saxon Saga 6) Page 42