by Jane Palmer
CHAPTER 3
‘If the ancient races were so advanced, they wouldn’t have left us with the prospect of slow extinction,’ growled the representative of the most dangerous species in the dwindling galaxy. ‘My empire proposes to the other races here that we colonise what fertile planets are left. It’s hardly fair that one planet creature should be able to keep a world all to itself.’
Murmurs of approval from the compliant audience ascended to greet the Mott’s huge ears. They so flattered his oratory that for a brief second he actually wondered what democracy could be like. That concept had disappeared with the old races though, and only rumours of what the strange process involved remained.
The dull green sun loured down gloomily on the clusters of high-ranking dignitaries from every part of the wispy barred galaxy. As the sun sank rapidly below the horizon, they could see the bleakness of their isolation in the pitch-black sky. Beyond the disorganised collection of blasted supernovae remnants and small dense stars lay nothing, not so much as a gas cloud or remote galaxy. Their part of the Universe indeed appeared to be going out like so many pinpricks of light retreating into infinity.
With the stars had fled the Old Ones. They had been so advanced that the others had never been able to make contact with them when they were there, let alone understand what they said. Not being able to plead with the Old Ones to save them, the remaining civilisations were like foundering ships in a time-extinguishing whirlpool. Their suns had made nearly one circuit of their galaxy since then, but traditions about the benevolence of those ancient people still echoed uncomfortably from recordings. Lately though, as the habitable planets disappeared through natural ageing and the warlike policies of the Mott, most species had begun to wonder just how charitable the Old Ones had been to leave them in such a predicament. The Mott were aggressive, not particularly bright, and so committed to building their empire that the races not represented at the gathering were the races they had virtually wiped out. Who else could the survivors turn to? Even the Torrans, reputedly the most intelligent species, had managed to disappear en masse. Compared with the others, they were believed to be too delicate to survive anyway.
There was little to recommend detailed description of most members of the gathering. Many of them at some time or other had resorted to genetic engineering to preserve their species from extinction, and their efforts had produced far less pleasing results than Nature’s. She had been relegated to trimming whatever fringes of the galaxy the Mott had so far not found any use for. Needless to say, there were many greys, dingy greens and several shades of puce rubbing fin with scale that night.
Apart from the shudderingly abrupt sunset and ascent of the artificial green moon, the other entertainment came from a slimy chorus who had managed to ease themselves from their shells for the occasion. Even the Mott representative had come as a welcome relief from their painfully drawn-out dirge in memory of some obscure warrior.
‘As we are in agreement, we must work out a course of action,’ he told them. ‘The Mott will implement it.’ They always did. The Mott were the only ones with the firepower, energy resources and vested interest. Naturally the course of action taken would turn out to be the one they suggested. Had they been able to spell “democracy”, they would have put that stamp on the “agreement” as well.
But sometimes small flies would insist on sacrificing themselves to the glutinous Mott ointment.
A thin voice piped up from the audience, ‘But what about the Jaulta Code?’
It was all the Mott could do to stop himself pulling out his blaster and vaporising everyone within the questioner’s vicinity.
A huge space rapidly appeared on the crowded floor and the owner of the thin piping voice stood alone like a soapsud in a puddle of oil.
‘What about the Code?’ growled the Mott. We’ve been trying to decipher it for thousands of years. Why should we be successful now? It was left by the Old Ones to keep us hoping, not because it would show us how to escape this galaxy. The only ones who can save us now are ourselves. We will take what we have a right to! These planet dwellers are not like us. They live at our expense.’
A rumble of approval rippled through the crowd to drown out any more thin piping voices that might have tried to make constructive comments.
When their meeting on the subject of self-preservation at any cost came to an end, agreement about how to tackle their expansion in a dwindling galaxy had been decided. The Mott would drive out the creatures who inhabited the planets they wished to expand to. Far easier than training clever people to sit, or stoop - depending on their anatomies - for the best part of their lives in trying to translate the impossible Jaulta Code. Anyone who wanted part of the action would have to bring along their own battle fleet.
In the depths of a well-furnished bunker that protected its occupants from the radiation of their own failed experiments, three creatures sat viewing each other with stern green expressions of disapproval. An onlooker might have been excused for thinking they didn’t like each other, but it wasn’t personal. It was in the nature of their particular species, the Olmuke, to like nothing, not even themselves. Self-dislike being the most potent motivator, next to fear, for engineering the despicable, these three had the highest qualifications for carrying out the work of assassinating a planet.
Before them stood the three-dimensional map of their first quarry. It was a pale, lush world without any great oceans, and just enough water to rain on the vegetation. It revolved at a comfortable distance around a stable yellow sun, and would only need slight adjustments in its atmosphere to ideally suit the Mott. Being the most powerful and dangerous species, they got first pick from the fruits of the green trio’s endeavours.
Jannu flicked the image off with the middle toe of his splayed foot. He leant back and rubbed the top of his flat head with a six-fingered nail less hand. ‘If this one goes right, we shouldn’t have much trouble with the others.’
‘If this one doesn’t go right, we’ll have more than just trouble with the Mott,’ Kulp reminded his partner in crime. ‘I have this peculiar attachment to my own skin and am determined nothing will go wrong.’
As neither of the others were as attached to Kulp’s skin as he was, Tolt said, ‘Your space-distort net, remember. You take the blame if it doesn’t work.’
‘I take the reward if it does,’ Kulp snarled.
‘We take twenty per cent each,’ the others promptly reminded him, unwilling to be browbeaten by the arrogant engineer. After all, they had provided space freighters for the enterprise and had raised the battalion of robots to transport the beacons for the net.
‘Have you noticed that if the Mott occupy this planet they’ll have surrounded the most densely populated cluster?’ asked Jannu.
‘So?’ Kulp wasn’t interested. ‘We’ll be their friends.’
Tolt glanced accusingly at Kulp. ‘It can’t have escaped your attention. Least of all someone with your massive intellect.’
Kulp made no apology. ‘I’m a pragmatist. Our own species didn’t appreciate my talent. The Mott do. If it so happens that I land on the winning side, it’ll be because they recognised my potential.’
‘Well,’ said Tolt, ‘what you were putting your talent to on our planet would hardly have endeared you to anyone there.’
‘Are you complaining?’
‘Not yet. But I might reserve that right.’
‘You’re in too deep to have rights,’ Kulp reminded them. ‘Squirming like hooked sea serpents when things start getting tough won’t help you. Besides, what is there to worry about? What sort of opposition can we expect from the planet? These creatures have always been pacifists. They wouldn’t even let anyone fight on their behalf.’
‘I wonder why?’ murmured Jannu thoughtfully. ‘There‘s something definitely unnatural about that.’
‘Just because most of the galaxy are warriors doesn’t mean there can’t be exceptions,’ laughed Tolt in a guttural splutter. ‘What’s the point in having so many fig
hters if there aren’t a few victims?’
Jannu sneered with self-disgust. ‘Aren’t we advanced. I wonder if this is really progress?’
Kulp shrugged. ‘Why worry? It’s now that matters. Now and how much you can make out of it. So let’s survey the system for any possible distort factors.’
In a chamber below the room where they had sat, the three-dimensional image of the planet they had been watching was projected into a large sphere. The planet became smaller and smaller until the entire solar system and sun were revolving before them in reduced splendour.
Kulp activated a grid over each section of the projection and carefully checked out every flaw, comet, and piece of space debris that inhabited the system. Eventually he came to something odd. He flicked the grid on and off once or twice as though not believing his findings.
‘What’s the matter?’ Jannu demanded.
Kulp didn’t reply. He left the grid encircling the planet, to operate the scanner that could isolate the smallest space distortion. His suspicions confirmed, he rocked back on his heels to announce, ‘There’s a compressed black body circling that planet.’
‘Can’t be!’ Tolt immediately protested, though he knew Kulp would never have made such a statement without being sure.
Kulp’s ego would never let him make mistakes. ‘It’s causing a space distortion equivalent to a small collapsar,’ he insisted.
‘The planet would have been torn apart by now if that was the case,’ protested Jannu.
‘Nevertheless,’ Kulp pondered, ‘it obviously hasn’t been, so we must assume either that it’s artificial, or that the planet has some control over it.’
‘Will it affect the space-distort net?’ asked Tolt.
‘Not when I’ve finished adjusting it. If it doesn’t act on the planet, I’m pretty sure I can do something to prevent it counteracting the net.’
If any of them had possessed any intuition in place of their limitless confidence, they might have stopped to wonder what had caused the planet’s unlikely companion, sinister in both presence and motion. It defied every law of physics known to Kulp’s logical mind. He just knew that it would have to be dealt with. Because someone or something had managed to place it there without it sucking in the surrounding solar systems, didn’t mean they were more super-intelligent than he was. The mathematics that held it inert could probably be unravelled with time. Kulp didn’t have time and decided to simply isolate the anomaly so it didn’t interfere with his distorting net.
Once on board the service freighter, Tolt sent a jolt of power through the thousand robots that were to carry explosive beacons and unkindly woke them from their dreamless lethargy.
He fed the first of Kulp’s revised instructions through their obedient circuits. ‘Work, you idle junk piles!’
As the beacons had to be adjusted to surround the collapsar, the Mott’s budget for the distorting net would be doubled. The Mott had the reputation of being the touchiest species ever to bumble part way up the evolutionary spiral, and, above all, they were touchiest about parting with their wealth. As far as Kulp was concerned, they were just roadkill on the highway to engineering achievement. He was more interested in the procedure for wringing the planet dweller from her cosy shell.
With the beacons adjusted, the robots were put to sleep until they were needed again.
As they had so many automated systems to crew their spaceships, Kulp, Jannu and Tolt were able to have one each, which suited their inborn anti-social natures a treat. Especially Kulp, who could be paranoid about letting any inferior being touch his preciously expensive craft. He regarded it with the nearest sentiment to affection that an Olmuke could have for anything.
Although Jannu and Tolt occasionally spoke ship-to-ship on their tedious journey, Kulp was left alone. By the time they reached the Mott monitoring station, Kulp had completed the revised mathematics for his web.
It was with his usual arrogant manner that he strode into the commander’s observation chamber.
‘We had to compensate for a dense anomaly,’ he announced to the Mott’s back without introduction or apology, knowing the warrior wouldn’t understand the mathematics and be able to contradict him.
The matted hair that reached down the Mott commander’s belt didn’t give any indication that their owner was alive let alone had heard what Kulp said. (The Mott regarded tripping over their ringlets in the heat of battle an honourable way to die.) Kulp knew the species well enough and stood in silence to wait for the acknowledgement of someone who rivalled him in arrogance.
Slowly the Mott turned to reveal his solitary bloodshot eye and trio of tusks. Having four wide short legs and an equally short pair of arms with immensely long fingers, Jannu and Tolt couldn’t help wondering if evolution had quite finished designing the species when the genetic engineers took over.
The commander switched his translator on and indicated that Kulp should repeat his message. Kulp switched his translator on and obliged, as though the Mott should have understood it the first time.
Not comprehending the best part of what Kulp explained in a deliberately confusing way, the Mott decided not to show his ignorance of the figures. He could feed them through a machine that would explain them for him later. Instead, he feigned the thoughtfulness of an intellectual, as most tyrants do at some time or other to justify their actions. He hoped this might confuse his uncompromising green visitor just as Kulp had confused him with sums.
‘I have been pondering on the fragile state of our galaxy, my friends,’ the Mott declared, as though they should have been profoundly interested in his findings, while knowing that all three of them would have felt more at ease with any one of the polished robots operating the station. ‘I have been wondering how the older species managed to construct the ships to take them from this galaxy. There were no other galaxies within range then either. Such a distance must have been impossible, even for them.’
‘Perhaps they didn’t make it,’ Kulp said. ‘It seems obvious to me that we were the ones to survive and they died somewhere out there on the edge of the Universe.’
This annoyed the Mott. ‘That’s what I thought!’ he snapped.
It had been difficult for the Mott to accept that the rest of the galaxy didn’t love their empire-building species. Especially as they had bestowed such benefits as pointless loans and bombs in exchange for their freedom, but having to listen to someone of greater genius was more than they could bear. And who were these green, flat-headed creatures anyway?
Then the Mott remembered the space-distort net and his temper sweetened. ‘Many theories have been put forward about the subject by those time-wasting thinkers who should be liberated from breathing. I doubt that the solution to it matters as much as they would have us believe.’
‘I understand my planet has discouraged such activities as well,’ Kulp agreed, ‘though I haven’t been back to confirm this for myself recently.’
The Mott sneered. ‘Of course not. One could hardly expect you to.’
‘How the Old Ones managed to escape is now irrelevant,’ Kulp went on. ‘Let’s just be thankful they didn’t decide to stay and make the galaxy more crowded than it is.’
The Mott sniggered through his wickedly curved tusks. ‘Their strange ideas about fairness and justice might have cramped our styles if the records are to be believed. What freedom would they have left us to operate in?’
‘I doubt that they would have even left us alive. I sometimes think those rebellious Torrans understand more about the Old Ones than they’re willing to admit and are trying to resurrect their old-fashioned ideas. The way they disappeared means they must be up to something.’
‘They don’t have the strength to cause much trouble. They’re ineffectual when it comes to fighting.’
‘Must be the only ones who are,’ Tolt observed, from what he thought to be the safety of the far side of the chamber, but he wasn’t out of the Mott’s translator range.
‘And where would you be wit
hout our wars and victories, my green-featured friend?’ the commander snapped. ‘Probably running some needlework class on your insignificant little world with all the other Olmuke defeatists secretly dreaming of becoming warriors.’
Tolt said nothing because he knew he could never win the argument, and Kulp said nothing because he agreed with the Mott. Jannu had long since lost interest in the conversation and was trying to engage a promising-looking robot in discussion.
Noting the lack of response to his challenge about the insignificance of their planet, the Mott grunted in disgust, ‘You green things are all spineless.’
‘As long as we’re paid, we’ll be almost anything your ego needs,’ promised Kulp insincerely.
The Mott knew that wealth was a matter Kulp took as seriously as the rest of his species. ‘You’ll be paid, technician Kulp. You make sure we have that planet in the time specified and you’ll be paid in full.’
‘I will complete my side of the bargain, Commander. Be assured that Moosevan will die.’