Crumley once again questioned access to this much power, if the gods they’d become were any less susceptible to Lord Acton’s dictum: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
“Get this intel to Leon, Mother,” Crumley communicated from his currently digitized state, existing only as a virtual lifeform, waiting for his physical body to take form again. “Like with all the other breaking intel, he’ll have to figure out where and when to place this puzzle piece on the board. Hopefully another hundred years won’t have passed before he gets the opportunity.” Even if Leon accepted the intel as valid, acted on it today, did everything he could to reduce tensions between galaxies in The Collectors’ Menagerie…How long would that take against an enemy far better evolved at doing just the opposite?
Something told Crumley there would be a number of other dolls in the toy chest of the Nautilus taken out of the box and set into play long before that goal was achieved.
With Mother having to evolve the humanoids in her charge by both playing to their egos and building their confidence, and assigning them tasks that would continue to turn them in a series of developmental steps into the gods she needed to wage war at this level, progress against The Collectors would be anything but linear, moreover. More so when you consider that to make an omelet you had to break some eggs. She might well have to break her people first in order to make them better. And even she couldn’t account for what any of them would do under pressure to thwart or advance her agenda.
SEVENTY-SIX
THE LUCKY STREAK
SONNY’S PREMIER CASINO/ENTERTAINMENT CENTER
Leon, holding his glass mug of smart ale, walked up to Sonny, and stared at a space station full of people who could pass for carnival revelers. Between the alien humanoid makeovers and the robes of royalty befitting this or that civilization…
Sonny was sipping absinthe, his eyes very much on the dignitaries beaming in. Leon figured on the tally of who was who, Sonny would not be far off the count. Many of his guests, whose armies fought and died for them, kept their hands far enough away from the trigger for Sonny’s people to be far better briefed than Leon on who to worry about.
“Sonny,” Leon said by way of a greeting. It was their shorthand code for reaffirming their friendship. Most people who dared to call Sonny “Sonny” were either not long for this world, or likely soon to be wishing they were dead. “The dignitaries still arriving?”
“Probably for the next hundred years,” Sonny said. “These are oligarchs who pull the strings on galactic-scale civilizations. You’d think it’d be a short-list. But The Collectors have been busy. Any number of galaxy overlords has yet to show.”
“That might be because their leaders are currently at war with me.”
“Oh, trust me, many of those are already here. They wouldn’t have gotten where they were if they couldn’t shake your hand and promise you the world while simultaneously doing everything they could to dismantle your entire civilization.” They were both chatting while keeping their eyes to the crowd, each man making assessments based on their particular expertise, reading the slightest gesture, a shifting of eyes, and the thousand and one other tells…as to which dignitaries were ingratiating themselves with others. “The real question is why are you here? I’d feel better if I knew you were on the front lines putting some teeth in my diplomacy.”
“Mother made this clone of me so I could help reassure the leaders of these galactic civilizations, which profit largely from war, or the reconstruction that comes in its aftermath, that nobody makes war better than the Gypsy Galaxy.”
“Isn’t that my job?”
“No, that would be to tell them what they know I never will, and to reassure them of things they know I can never reassure them. At least not directly. They’ll bleed me for military advice on how to help settle squabbles with their neighbors who have resisted their diplomatic efforts, as proof of my competence. Once they’re convinced the shark does indeed have teeth, they’ll come to talk to the shark himself, you, Sonny.”
Sonny smiled.
“If you’re worried that I might catch you in dirty dealings that will sour our relationship, I assure you these people have already reached depths of evil not even you can imagine, painting you as one of the good guys. Techa, help us both.”
Sonny snickered. “You got that right.”
Leon was about to break off to go mingle, when an oligarch and his wife approached them. Leon didn’t recognize the one shaking his hand, evidently already well-briefed on human customs, but he did recognize the wife. Like the Blues, she was of Solo’s species, the Umbrage, even if her skin color was cream. She had features close enough to the Blue’s by Sonny’s side to pass for a sister. Though her genetics may have been watered down a bit.
The Cream bowed to the Blue. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the company of an original. I’m honored.”
Gerlari regarded her with distaste. The husband flushed the look of unease from his face, which could well be explained being this close up to a Blue. But Leon sensed more.
He sipped some more of his smart ale. The nanite-enriched ale possessed any number of hive-mind-arrayed nanites, each keyed to neutralizing different threats. But they needed time to identify the nature of the threat, which is why he had to sip his drink, as opposed to downing it all at once. The hive mind rushing into his body now by way of his mouth would be looking to hack what Leon was convinced was mindchip to mindchip communication between the oligarch and his wife, or, being related to a Blue, she might well be able to psychically reach out to her husband, even if he wasn’t upgraded or had the least psychic ability.
Sonny’s establishment had anti-surveillance tech on display to reassure his dignitaries that this was a safe haven. But no one in their right mind would believe that was anything but a sham. Sonny, had his own people, his canine-gene-enhanced humanoids that could smell entire conversations by way of pheromones, or see and interpret brainwave patterns, just for starters, running somewhat more covert spy missions.
Leon’s latest nanite hive mind was already online, transmitting the Cream and her husband’s internal conversation for him.
“What is a Blue? And what can she do that you can’t?” The oligarch’s internal voice sounded completely panicked.
“The Blues are the lions. We Creams are the domesticated house cats, watered down from their bloodline, to retain our sense of loyalty to our masters, but no longer a military weapon.”
“That’s okay. My security detail will take care of her, if it comes to that.”
“If it comes to that, the Blue will cut down your entire detail before the impulses have time to travel from their brains to direct their bodies to do something.”
“Shit!” The man’s internal voice once again was a geyser spurting emotions behind an implacable, unreadable face, which held its false smile, as he bowed in turn, paying the Blue his respects.
“What else separates the two of you?” the husband barked in the wife’s head.
“My kind whispers in the ears of kings and the most high, delivering intel to them that no one else can, not even the most advanced supersentiences. We see the actions that lead to the futures you want to live in, steering you away from the alternative timelines that would otherwise ensnare you.”
“How does this attribute present in the Blue?”
“They are most deadly in this timeline because they can rapidly assess which actions have the most lethal impact, both short and long-term from amid all the timelines.”
“Sacrin,” the oligarch said, shaking Leon’s hand, “and this is my wife, Farsi.” Leon had to be impressed with the quality and quantity of intel husband and wife could exchange in a heartbeat. Without his smart ale, Leon simply couldn’t keep up. Sacrin was starting to breathe easier, no doubt thinking, Leon was certain, that so long as Sacrin had the diplomatic intel he needed from the Cream, what did he need of a Blue’s fighting capacity? That was an advantage more useful to his u
nderlings.
“We will have to get some of these Blues to come work for us,” Sacrin’s inner voice said to his mate, “to tip the scales back in our favor.”
“Impossible. They are loyal to a fault. If you want them on your side, you will have to join the Gypsy Galaxy Grouping.”
Sacrin’s next breath was quite labored. “The Blues may be a queen on a chessboard many levels down from me, but the chessboard I play on is multidimensional.”
“You are shaking the hands of the two people who play at the highest level of the multidimensional chessboard,” Farsi informed her husband, as he’d moved from shaking Leon’s hand, to shaking Sonny’s.
“Is that so?” Sacrin actually smiled.
“Excuse me,” Leon said to Sacrin. “I’ll leave the two master strategists in intergalactic affairs to talk shop while I go mingle.”
“Might I point you to my supreme commander of our military fleets, Grator Klash,” Sacrin replied. “We have some ongoing issues that have stymied him. I bet he’d love to talk shop with you.”
“Of course,” Leon said. “Anything I can do to assist an ally.”
He ambled slowly toward his target, giving himself time to confer with the Cream. “You can read my mind?” Leon asked.
“Yes,” the Cream replied without delay.
She must have calculated the advantages of coming clean versus playing dumb and perhaps decided it was more intimidating if her adversary knew he couldn’t make a move that the other side wouldn’t know about.
“Our Nautilus is captained by a male original, a green, with rainbow eyes.”
Leon heard her gasp inside his head.
“The Blues are on assignment for him. I’m guessing, like the Blues, your loyalty goes where Solo assigns it.”
“Solo!”
“I’m guessing Solo wouldn’t have attached himself to me if he felt my ascension through the ranks in the cosmos was destined to be anything short of meteoric. I’m further guessing that that is still one thing you share with him, ‘watered’ down bloodline or not. Otherwise you wouldn’t be with Sacrin. Those of us who are shooting stars… you are here to enable us, one and all. Perhaps it is an indirect path to power for you. Perhaps your motives are nobler. If you are the oldest species in the multiverse, or one of them, in the event there are other originals, you may well see parts of the big picture we can’t. Either way, I want anyone married to a Cream in my Gypsy Galaxy Grouping. Will you help me? I don’t believe it will involve split loyalties for you. I suspect what Solo would want for you is in keeping with what Sacrin would want from you.”
Leon expected there to be a time lapse before she replied, to give her time to consider. There wasn’t any. Again, that amazing mind and its ability to cut through timelines and assess alternative futures in the bat of an eye…
“I’ve been doing what I can to steer my husband in your direction for some time now. I foresaw all of this, the mobilization of your Gypsy Galaxy, even before you did. Though I must admit, finding Solo goes beyond my wildest dreams, perhaps why I didn’t see it. Perhaps I couldn’t allow myself to hope like that… But my husband is stubborn, and even if he knows I’m right, he will fight you with everything he’s got before he submits. And when he submits, it will only be to bide time to figure out how to get the better of you. And I cannot sabotage his plans by giving you a heads-up on what he intends.”
“Of course not. I respect your loyalty. If I didn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. And I wouldn’t expect any less from him, either. You leave the more ticklish dance of warfare between our galaxies to me. I will get him to accept my lead in the dance.”
“Out of curiosity, how did you know I could read your mind?”
“Your analogy of a lion being domesticated down to a cat. That’s not one that someone from Sacrin’s world could possibly have understood. So tell me, how long ago did you buy the lion and the house cat both for him, just to set up that one coded line of communications?”
She laughed inside his head.
“I can’t imagine you get invited to too many parties of this kind with a mind-reading ability like that,” Leon said.
“Those who play at our level seldom have but a small piece of the puzzle with regards to the bigger game unfolding at any time. It owes to how many independent thinkers we must rely on to sustain a galactic civilization. So the damage I can do with my mind-reading is far more limited than what I can do with my ability to comb timelines.”
“An ability that even Mother struggles with. She’s an infant next to you.”
“Your flattery is appreciated, but as you know, in the end, has zero effect on my loyalties.”
“No flattery is intended. Anyone who could stand in the presence of such a beautiful mind and not feel overwhelmed is simply not human.”
She laughed inside his head. “For a military commander you’re not a total wreck as a diplomat.”
“A pleasure communing with you. As much as I hate to break it off, my somewhat less evolved mind will not permit me to sustain several conversations at once.” Leon broke off communications with her as he shook Grator Klash’s hand.
Out of the corner of Leon’s eyes, he saw three more Creams arriving, arm in arm with their oligarch husbands. This was going to be a long night for him and Sonny both. Before it was over they would have that many more allies and that many more enemies.
No wonder The Collectors took such a hands-off approach. Why waste energy keeping their prisoners in line within their Menagerie of galaxies when those galactic civilizations would happily feed their frustrations being held captive by The Collectors by preying on one another? And by doing so, they would evolve The Collectors’ grip on their prisoners further for them. The brilliance of the strategy was starting to sink in. And Leon was damned if he could yet see a way of cutting through The Collectors’ lackadaisical attitude. If he couldn’t get a rise out of The Collectors, pressure them to make a false move, everything he’d achieved so far had merely ensured and cemented their ongoing incarceration.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
THE LUCKY STREAK
Farsi, the oligarch Sacrin’s wife, was approaching Sonny, without her husband. Interesting, he thought. Scarcely a night had passed since she visited Sonny’s establishment with Sacrin in tow.
She bowed to him. That designer-looking, figure-revealing dress she was in—something told Sonny it was anything but decorative.
“Always a pleasure to meet a Cream Umbrage,” Sonny said.
She smiled at him, reading his innuendo just fine. “My husband would like you to owe him a favor.”
“I bet he would.”
“You’re looking for a world ship?”
Sonny’s ears pricked; they literally stood on end as only his dog genes would allow. He might be feeling livid right now that she was one step ahead of him—and no one was supposed to be one step ahead of him—but the Creams were never known to lie; at best they might hold their tongue.
Sonny stifled his consternation by clamping down on his jaw. “I never considered that a Cream might be able to check my entire network of spies. Clearly, I should have.”
“They will find a world ship. The Ethereals were quite the artificial habitat builders in their day. They were known as the For-Sak-En then, born to a world too harsh to ever accommodate to, but nonetheless with enough resources to spur the creation of their first habitat in space. And one habitat led to another, and before they knew it, it was in their blood. An entire race genetically bred to hate natural worlds, by no more than fate. Their space habitats became a matter of pride and commerce. Most galactic federations seeking the best money could buy sought them out.”
Sonny was growing impatient waiting for the punch line, but he knew better than to interrupt a data dump from a Cream Umbrage. You never knew when a diamond would flow out amid the bits of coal.
“But the world ship your Shadow Warriors have their eyes on now,” Farsi continued, “is not the one you want to go w
ith.”
“Is that so?” So, his people had already found such a remarkable habitat.
“The Saran require a natural world. You only have to look at them to know they need trees and savannas, much like the leopards of Earth. Their people evolved upwards from such a creature. But of the big game cats it was the weakest and so their people had to learn to develop their minds to compensate. Their unique solution to an age-old problem is what makes them so valuable. They cannot be put into a tin can floating in space, no matter how big it is. Unless…”
“I’m all ears.” Sonny’s dog-like ears were indeed raised to full attention.
“Though they didn’t care to build these kinds of habitats, the For-Sak-En did build them for customers who demanded them. One such artificial world remains among their ruins. Outside, the planet looks like any other. But it is hollow, because it is actually a spaceship. One that can teleport that planet wherever you like. Your Blue will have to fix the teleportation device. It can also amplify the psychic fields the Saran create naturally. Gerlari will have to repair this device as well, but it was built to keep the animals happy on what was meant to be a nature preserve, or living museum if you like, for a solar system grown too populous to do anything but put creatures in a zoo well away from humanoid predation.”
Sonny filled in the blanks for himself. “The mind massager meant to keep the animals happy and content with their artificial world… And no doubt this will work equally well on the Saran.”
The Cream nodded. “You will find the Saran will work for treats, much like any creature. Provide their favorite prey animals, allow them to breed and flourish, and you will be able to ask whatever favors you like in return. But they will likely need to sense the fear the adversary poses to fire up their abilities, for that was the original trigger.”
Sonny nodded again, pleased. “The race they were helping to attack the Lucky Streak…”
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