Galactic Empires

by Neil Clarke

“Whatever plots were lurking about, I sensed he was not involved and almost certainly unaware.

  “I asked if I had been missed.

  “‘Always,’ he replied with a quick series of clicks.

  “‘Where is she now?’ I inquired.

  “‘In your quarters, lord.’

  “‘And has she been faithful to me?’

  “‘No,’ the creature replied, without hesitation. ‘I have seen her use her hands and several plastic devices. And once, the edge of a large pillow.’

  “‘Thank you for your honesty,’ I said. ‘And good evening to you.’

  “No shadow led the way now. Alone, I climbed a long flight of dimly-lit steps and entered a narrow hallway that only seemed endless . . . an illusion lined with tall doors meant to impress and confuse the rare visitor. I walked a short distance and opened what seemed to be a random door. There was only one bedroom inside the palace, and it never occupied the same position twice. I entered through a random wall, and my lover flinched in surprise, starting to pull the sheets over her naked body before realizing it was me, only me.

  “Together, we celebrated my return.

  “I had been absent even longer than I had anticipated. The young creature that I had left in this bed was noticeably older. A few white hairs and a hundred little erosions marked the natural decline of a creature not born immortal and never told to expect such blessings. But she was just as fierce a lover as always, maybe more so. She insisted on satisfying herself by various means, and whenever my attentions seemed to waver, she would offer encouragements or measured complaints.

  “‘What kind of god are you?’ she teased me once, in the dark. ‘Are you going to let this old lady beat you at your game?’

  “‘I am tempted to lose, yes,’ I confessed.

  “Perhaps she heard more than one message in those words, because she paused and pulled away from me. Then like a hundred times before, she settled on my chest, legs spread, the smell of her thick and close.

  “In a whisper, she mentioned, ‘Your journey must have been considerable.’

  “‘My task was difficult,’ I said.

  “‘We have continued with our work.’ She said, ‘Our work,’ to make certain that I would hear the loyalty in those words. Then after a pause, she added, ‘But of course you kept track of our progress.’”

  “‘Always,’ I said.

  “‘Have we missed any goals?’

  “‘Never.’

  “‘Are you proud of us?’

  “‘Along the narrowest tangents, yes. Yes, I am very proud.’

  “She refused to be surprised by my measured answer. And what worry she let show was small and easily controlled. The creature was exceptionally bright, after all. And she was wise in rare, precious ways. Extraordinary dangers were lurking, and she must have realized there was no way to keep me from seeing pieces of her scheme.

  “Silently, she dropped her face to my face and kissed me.

  “Then I placed my hand against her little throat, feeling her breath and the flinching of soft muscles, and I eased her back up into a sitting position. With a flat, cool tone, I said, ‘It was reasonable, holding to the work schedule. And I was most impressed by how you managed to fool my security systems.’

  “Perhaps her plan was to claim innocence. ‘I didn’t try to fool anything,’ she might have said. ‘I don’t know what you’re accusing me of.’ Denial might have given the plotters precious time. But it also might have angered me, which would have brought my wrath down on them even sooner than they had planned.

  “So instead of lying, my lover decided on poise. She shrugged her shoulders, asking, ‘What do you know?’

  “‘That the good machine being built inside our mountain is almost finished. But your lieutenants have surreptitiously slipped other devices into its workings. You devised some very clever, extremely powerful bombs that you hope won’t be noticed, and you will soon obliterate the purpose of my coming to this world.’

  “Most souls would have tensed, hearing those words. Many would have panicked. But for my lover, that moment brought relief. Her duplicity was laid bare, and the simple fact that she was alive meant that perhaps she still retained some little chance of success here.

  “I felt her throat relax against my hand.

  “Then with great seriousness, I added, ‘I also know you hope to murder me. Tonight, if possible. You have an array of weapons hiding here, and you have modified any piece of machinery that might injure me. I can even see dangers inside you, darling. Your body fat has been laced with acids that can be set free with a thought, turning you into a burning puddle that falls over my writhing, helpless body . . . ’

  “She stared down at me.

  “In her gaze, I could see her asking herself if this was the moment for suicide. But why would I lie beneath her if I felt at all at risk?

  “With a reasonable tone, she asked, ‘Can we kill you?’

  “‘If I was foolish and a little blind, perhaps. But I am not, and I am not.’

  “She nodded, accepting that verdict.

  “And then she tensed through the shoulders and along her back, and with a small furious voice, she asked, ‘But why shouldn’t we try to kill you? When your work is finished, you intend to murder all of us. Isn’t that so?’

  “I didn’t respond immediately.

  “‘You told me as much,’ she claimed. ‘When you sang about your secret Union and your need for nameless places . . . you practically confessed that when you were finished with this place, you wouldn’t leave witnesses behind.’

  “I waited for a moment. Then I warned her, ‘You don’t quite understand.’

  “Then I dropped my hand, the fingers and broad palm stroking her body down to the point where her legs joined together. ‘You are a special, special soul,’ I told her. ‘My work would have been finished in another few years, and my plan was to take you with me. Out to the stars, out into the rich cold darkness.’

  “The shock rolled across her features.

  “Quietly, almost angrily, she said, ‘No, you’re lying.’

  “But I was speaking the truth.

  “With a fond, slightly paternal voice, I asked, ‘How do you think I was brought into the Union? No one is born into this noble service. The rank and responsibilities are earned only on exceptionally rare occasions. In my case, another servant visited my home world and built several marvels before retreating back into the darkness with his treasures, and one of the treasures was the man lying beneath you now.’

  “‘No,’ she whispered.

  “And then, in pain, she said, ‘Maybe. But this changes nothing. I wouldn’t abandon my world, and I certainly won’t let you blow up this volcano and make it as though this place never was.’

  “‘Is that what you think will happen?’ I asked. ‘That I would slaughter you and yours for no reason but my convenience?’

  “She hesitated. Then with a figurative acid on her tongue, she asked, ‘What do you mean?’

  “‘Unless provoked, I will not murder.’

  “By the light of the moon, my lover looked into my face, and the beginnings of an explanation occurred to her. ‘You won’t murder, but you might take back all of your gifts. Our minds. The genetic manipulations. Wipe clean the ideas and concepts you brought down here to serve your damned Union.’

  “I threw my palm across her mouth.

  “Then I yanked her close, saying, ‘Yes. That was my kind, responsible plan. You would come with me, and my magical device would come with us, and the other grandchildren would wake the following morning to discover . . . nothing. There would be a shared dream of a magical civilization, a public memory that would turn to legend in another day, and in another ten generations that would vanish into a muddled, impossible story.’

  “She lay against me, her heart beating against what passed for my ribs.

  “‘I am sorry,’ she told me.

  “Into my ear, she said, ‘Really, we haven’t done anything wro
ng. Not yet. I can give commands, and every weapon will be put away, and you won’t have to worry about any of us lifting so much as a lard-knife against you.’

  “‘That is not enough,’ I said.

  “‘And you can kill me,’ she promised. Then she repeated her offer, sounding as if she was begging. ‘Kill me, and maybe the other adults. But leave our children. They don’t know anything.’

  “‘Like the boy I spoke to? That child waiting between the plaza and the palace?’

  “She hesitated.

  “‘At this moment,’ I said, ‘that tiny fellow is sitting beside the water, bare toes in the surf. And do you know what he is watching with all of his interest, every shred of passion? He watches the sky.’

  “She did not move.

  “‘The sky,’ I repeated. ‘And in particular, he stares at this night’s brightest stars.’

  “The woman could not breathe.

  “‘You are a crafty soul, my dear. My darling.’ I told her, ‘I am extremely impressed by the thoroughness and audacity of your plan. Threatening the machine as well as my own immortal self . . . those are the tactics that anyone would expect. But you also dispatched a team of technicians to the mainland. You convinced the worshipful souls living there that they should help you. Since then, our people and theirs have been living in a distant valley, secretly fabricating an amazing machine of their own.

  “‘A radio beacon, as it happens.

  “‘To the best of your ability, you have been marking my passage across the heavens. You guessed that I was subverting a set of prying eyes, and you were correct. Your hope was to broadcast a huge, important signal. You wanted to be noticed. You wanted the probe to see you, perhaps. Or if you missed that mark, then at least one loud intelligent scream would race its way through the heart of our galaxy . . .

  “‘Your secret hope was to accomplish what I would never allow . . . you wanted to name your world, and to name it in exactly the manner that would make the universe take note of your presence.

  “‘And you were right, my sweet darling. That would have been your only hope of salvation.

  “‘But I visited that far valley and your secret beacon. Just this morning, I destroyed the dishes and power plant, and I slaughtered everyone in my reach, but I left the local communication system intact. During these last hours, every time you spoke to your fellow rebels, you were actually speaking to me.’”

  Finally, the voice paused.

  In the perfect darkness, a deep useless breath was taken.

  Then the entity was talking again, quietly admitting, “I gave my lover one last freedom. She could be the last to die, or first. She chose to be first, and she did that herself, releasing the acids inside her body. But I was already standing at a safe distance from our bed, my back to the carnage. Hearing the screams and smelling the blistered flesh, I kept my eyes averted, reminding myself that the worst of this awful night was finally finished.”

  12

  The two humans clung to one another.

  In the same moment, in a rough chorus, they asked, “What happened? What did you do? What about the other people? What?”

  A tight slow creak was audible, old leather or old bones moving.

  From a point markedly closer than before, a mouth opened and breathed and then breathed again.

  “I did precisely what I promised.” The voice seemed to be within arm’s reach. “However imperfectly, I have always strived to serve my cause, and that includes punishing those who dared rise up against me. I had no choice but to gather the worst of the offenders on the Sunset Plaza, and with the rest of the grandchildren watching, I removed them from the living world. Then I ordered the low-animals to clean the bricks of blood and pink tissues, and the dead bones were ground up and piled high on the nearest beach. And within five years, those who had survived my justice had managed to make up for lost time. Within ten years, my work was finished, and I carved away the gray summit of the volcano and pulled from the hot workroom a single machine encased in the finest hyperfiber—a wonder of genius and competence that made my stay on that world worth any cost.”

  The voice drifted even closer, and feeling the intrusion, Quee Lee instinctively leaned away.

  Perri held her and spoke past her, asking, “When did the mountain erupt?”

  Nothing.

  “After you abandoned the world, did the island explode?”

  A sound of amusement, weary and cool, ended with the simple pronouncement, “Never, no.”

  They waited.

  “Your assumption has been that this was the Earth. And that is a reasonable, wrong assumption. But I let you believe what you wanted. As a rule, every species, no matter how open to odd notions and alien fancies, will find its own stories to be the most compelling.

  “No, this wasn’t your cradle world. And its people were perhaps not quite as human as I might have let on.”

  “What happened to them?” Quee Lee pressed.

  “As I promised my lover, I undid my fancy tinkering. I made her citizens simple again, just as I pulled back the engineering of the other species. The population scattered. The palace was abandoned. Without trained hands to make repairs, the city fell into ruins. Within a few years of my departure, the island was a mystery already famous across half of that world. But its mountain would never erupt. My work had stolen away too much heat, and the magma lake below had cooled and turned to stone.”

  The voice paused.

  Then with a matter-of-fact tone, it explained, “The Earth is blessed in many ways. It has a mature, very stable sun. Comets are rare beauties in the sky, not constant hazards. And it possesses a relatively thin crust, easily pierced and quick to bleed. But this world that I speak of is notably different. Its skin is much thicker than the Earth’s, and much more resilient. As its core generates heat, oceans of magma build up slowly, millions of years required to reach that critical point when a thousand eruptions come at once.

  “That harum-scarum probe surely recognized the inevitable—a world perched on the margins of a grand, yet thoroughly natural disaster.

  “I left that world and placed my magical machine in a secret place. A new mission called to me from the sky, and I was en route when that nameless world suddenly and violently attacked itself. The sulfurous gases and blistering lava flows achieved everything that I had counted upon. Every convincing trace of my visit was erased. The continents were wracked by quakes. Ten thousand volcanoes spat ash and fire, and they exploded, flinging their poisons into the stratosphere. Every forest burned. Every breath brought blisters and misery. The ocean floors were wrenched upwards, forcing saltwater over the coastlands. My little island was washed clean beneath a quick succession of tsunamis, erasing even the palace. The human-like creatures were reduced to a few scattered populations, ignorant and desperate. And after another thousand years of geologic horror—when the skies finally cleared and the lava cooled to glass—not a single example of that very promising species could be found in Creation.”

  Those deadly words were absorbed in silence.

  Then Quee Lee said, “How awful.”

  Softly, the voice asked, “In what way is this awful?”

  “You allowed that to happen,” she began.

  “But the people were doomed,” it said. “Long before I knew of their existence, they had a fate to face, and despite my considerable powers, there was little I could have done, except delaying the story’s end by one day, or at the very best, maybe two.”

  The humans said nothing.

  “If you need righteous anger,” it continued, “direct your emotions toward the harum-scarums. Their probe saw the same future that I saw. Three of their colonies were near enough and powerful enough to launch rescue missions. Better than me, they could have saved a worthy sampling of those people before they passed out of existence. But no missions were launched. Their costs and the benefits were too much and too little, respectively. The battered world remained nameless until a starship eased its way int
o orbit. That particular ship was bringing colonists, I should mention—people who didn’t care about the bones under their feet, people who wanted nothing but to start new lives on this rich empty place.”

  Quietly, Perri asked, “Is it a harum-scarum world?”

  “No,” the voice replied, “it is not.”

  “Then who has it?”

  “Who else would be a likely suspect, my friend? Remembering all that we have discussed by now . . . ”

  Humans had claimed the empty world. The colonists might even be humans that had come from the Great Ship . . . people whom Quee Lee and Perri had met and even known well at one time or another . . .

  Quee Lee was desperate to talk about anything else.

  And Perri was too. With a scornful, demanding tone, he said, “I still don’t believe in your Union.”

  “No? In what ways do you doubt it?”

  “When you describe this organization, it sounds like an exclusive club or somebody’s secret society. Not the imperial underpinnings of a powerful political machine.”

  A long pause ended when the voice said, “Power.” It said the word four times, each utterance employing a different emotion. Amusement was followed by disgust, and then came contempt, and finally, a different species of amusement—a joyful, almost giddy rendering of the word, “Power.” After that, there was a laugh that lingered until the voice decided to speak again.

  “As you must have guessed by now,” it told them, “I am embroiled in a new task in the service of my Union. A mission full of facets and difficult challenges, yes, and it is not something to be accomplished in an easy few centuries, either.”

  The humans held their breath.

  The voice pushed even closer, less than an arm’s length away, and from a mouth that they could only imagine came the reminder, “I did once visit your cradle world. Your Earth. Yes, I did.”

  Quee Lee nodded.

  “Before it was named,” Perri recalled.

  “Moments before,” the voice added. And then the bulk of an invisible body drifted even closer, hovering within a tongue’s length of Quee Lee’s ear, and an intimate whisper offered her a single date. A specific time. Then a place inside a city that she would never see again.