Rhythm of the Imperium - eARC Page 11

  “And remember, my lord,” Parsons cautioned, as Lord Thomas made for the door, “no dancing!”

  Thomas wrinkled his nose.

  “You absorb all the fun in the room, Parsons, like a veritable black hole. Have I ever mentioned that?”

  Parsons allowed himself a minor sigh.

  “Frequently, my lord.”

  The door slid shut behind the young man, and the red lights circled the portal to reinstate security protocols. Wold lowered xir thin brows and stared at Parsons.

  “Are you sure this is the best way to make contact with the Zang?”

  Parsons allowed his shoulders to rise and fall no more than a millimeter.

  “What better camouflage than a collection of profligate nobles on the loose across the world? If the Kail have not been able to pinpoint the Zang by themselves, then we have a negotiating point to free the Wichu. It is worth a try.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “Thomas, you have saved the day!” Nell said, giving me another fierce hug as we sailed down in a spiraling orbit toward Counterweight’s surface. She and my cousins had accepted the presence of the bodyguards without a second thought.

  “Well done,” Xan admitted. “I’m perfectly happy to add this lovely lady to my dinner party. We shall have a wonderful time.” He bowed to Plet, who looked nervous and wary. My cousin had a reputation with women, and Plet knew it, but he was also no fool. An unwilling partner was an unwelcome one. If she had shown interest, he might have pursued her. As it was, he would not even exude innuendo in her direction, not that she trusted his reticence. Knowing Xan, I didn’t blame her. He had only left his three current inamoratas at home because one of them had to return to her job as chief broadcaster on one of Taino’s popular news networks, and the others had to return to their master’s degree studies. Two of the others had come along, though they had been forced to remain aboard the Jaunter during this excursion.

  Nell eyed Lieutenant Dorr Stover, who was to be her second throughout the jungle expedition. Since the guards were to wear mufti, she had insisted he don riding clothes and a wide-brimmed hat. He looked awkward in both.

  “You’re sure you can ride an elephant?” she asked.

  “I’ll hang on as best I can, my lady,” he promised.

  “Hmph,” Nell snorted, clearly unconvinced. “We’ll see.”

  Jil took the offer of an escort better than most of the others. After all, she had flown with my crew all the way to the Uctu Autocracy and back. During that time, she had struck up a friendship with Oskelev, the pilot of the Rodrigo and the finest helmsWichu in the Imperium. Oskelev had on her finest off-duty harness. I knew that hidden within her thick white fur was an analog-powered arsenal. I need fear nothing for the safety of Jil or the others in her coterie. Besides Sinim, Jil had brought along a naturalist from Taino’s top wildlife preserve, which occupied an entire small continent at the equator; a musical trio, and a reflexologist. They wore beach attire. Quite some persuasion had been required in order for her to bring them to the surface with her. The rest of my cousins had security personnel from the Jaunter’s crew as their seconds. I could tell that Nalney’s escort was going to have to keep track of all his many garments and accessories on the go. He was absentminded about property to the point of absurdity, capable of returning home wrapped in a towel because he had forgotten where he had placed his outerwear when he went swimming. His pocket secretary was programmed to remind him whenever he put something down. He was clad in his favorite emerald green.

  My party of three was dressed for hot weather. Contact had been opened over secure channels with Dr. Derrida, changing frequencies again and again whenever a breach was detected. She informed Parsons that she and Proton Zang would meet me in the complex of whistling sandstone caves complex three hundred kilometers south of the main city, Nerk. Redius wore a desert robe that he had obtained during our sojourn to the Autocracy and looked suitably mysterious with the hood pulled almost down to his short, blunt muzzle. I wore light, loose-fitting stone-gray clothes of natural fabric that provided ease of movement, and a broadbrimmed hat. Because my mission was unofficial in nature, I had to suggest to my relatives that I was looking for inspiration among the remains of humanity’s ancient history on Counterweight. My promised pub crawl and other activities would follow, once I had gained sufficient enlightenment. In a way, that part was true. I would return to the ship knowing what it was like to meet a Zang. Madame Deirdre wore thin, moss-green leggings under a knee-length caftan. Her long silver hair was knotted up on the top of her head underneath a wide sun hat.

  “I have a list of some of the most interesting ruins,” I said. “I have arranged for a guide to take us around to some of the best, including the Temple of Sport, the Government Labyrinth, the Corporate Citadels, a number of enclosed marketplaces, and a few castles. We’ll end at a magnificent wilderness site that I long to see. All of those ought to inform my understanding of my ancestors and provide marvelous material for new performances. And I look forward to seeing what inspiration Madame Deirdre will gain from the same places. I anticipate that they will have little in common but the source, but that is the joy of interpretation. To each one’s own.”

  Deirdre’s eyes shone. “I can’t tell you how delighted I am!” she gushed. “I couldn’t have afforded a trip to Counterweight on my own. The grandchildren are going to be so excited! I have to find them something special as mementos.”

  “We shall,” I promised her, “if I have to commission something from a local craftsman to make them.”

  “Stand up, please, my lord.” I rose to my feet and held my arms out from my sides so Lieutenant Plet could scan me. She took her duties seriously. She checked with each of the guards one at a time to ensure that no one was carrying any devices that could be detected or corrupted by Kail transmissions. Nearly all my relatives complained about the lack of cameras and other recording devices with which to take pictures or videos of our sojourn that could be uploaded to the Infogrid, but as I pointed out, Infogrid booths and freelance photographers abounded across the planet. They would not lack appropriate documentation for bragging rights among our relatives who had not made the journey. And, no limits had been placed upon souvenirs they might choose to bring back with them. Parsons had also provided us with mechanical cameras that made passive images, which would have to do.

  “Many of the merchants below make their living selling digitavids of the sights,” he had pointed out. “It would be courteous to peruse their offerings and enrich the locals.”

  “Well, we can afford it,” Nalney had said, heartily. “Why not? As long as I can get my picture taken in the giant waterfall up in the Fanbrel Mountains, I’ll be happy. It’ll make Nole as green as an emerald that he didn’t come, too.”

  “If you don’t lose the pictures on the way home,” Xan said, with a mischievous grin.

  “I won’t! Not with this responsible fellow to look after me!” Nalney tapped his security guard in the chest with the back of his hand.

  I smiled to myself, knowing that his brother could not be too far behind us, and might even have drawn ahead. I would keep my promise to Nole in any case, but it was rather fun to know something that no one else did. On the other hand, Parsons probably had a trace on Nole’s new ship and could tell me where it was to the microparsec. In fact, I would have wagered a large portion of my next quarter’s income that he had seen it, explored it, and installed listening devices throughout. I glanced toward the rear of the shuttle, where Parsons sat alone, black-clad and black-haired, monolithic, like an obsidian statue of a benevolent deity watching over us. His dark eyes met mine for a brief instant, then shifted a few degrees upward, disconnecting from my gaze. The man was uncanny. It felt almost as though he had switched off and become inert like the statue of my fancy.

  Nell stared dreamily out of the port at the planet, which grew nearer and nearer with every pass. Eight continents, two large and the rest small, were arrayed in a rough pattern that approximat
ed an infinity symbol set in an ascending angle that wrapped from well below the equator to well above. The rest of the planet was winking blue ocean studded with green and brown archipelagoes, and topped and tailed by white ice caps that stretched out 15 degress from each pole. Glaciers straddled the heights on the most northern and southern reaches of the continents. We would be landing on the third-largest continent, which featured active volcanoes, vast jungles and the longest river on Counterweight.

  “It’s absolutely beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “I wonder how much like Earth it is.”

  “We’ll have to take our ancestors’ word for it,” Xan said. He leaned toward us confidentially. “Some people say this is Earth itself, but terraformed after a cataclysm of some kind.”

  “If this was Earth, wouldn’t they have found a billion tons of artifacts?” Nalney said, scornfully. “I’ve heard too many tales of the plastic continent in the Ocean of Serenity and the Cities of Rust.”

  “It probably is Earth,” Jil said, with a toss of her magnificent waves of caramel-toned hair. “I would like to think so. All those artifacts were probably sold to tourists and museums thousands of years ago! Otherwise, it’s just pure carelessness that our ancestors mislaid our homeworld like that. If you ask me, they only want us to think it’s somewhere else so we won’t flock here like vultures and ruin the place.”

  “It’s too hard to get to,” Rillion said, yawning. His long red hair was braided into a queue under his sun hat. “Actually, you make a good case, Jil. Thomas, doesn’t your father say that his brother lives on Earth?”

  “Uncle Laurence?” I asked. I laughed, perhaps a little too loudly. Nell joined me. “He loves to travel. Perhaps he said once that he was looking for Earth, and Father likes to keep up the joke.”

  “That’s it, surely,” Rillion said, looking ashamed of himself. I was defensive about my father’s mental fragility, and the others usually refrained from making comments that would point at it. “If you find Uncle Laurence here, be sure and introduce us.”

  “I certainly will,” I said. After all, this lovely blue world was as good a place for him to be. I reached for my viewpad to send him a message, then remembered that it was back in my cabin. Ah, well, there were public portals I could use on the surface. “What if it is Earth, after all?”

  The idea began to percolate through my mind. Before I knew it, I was starting to believe it. It resembled the ancient three-dee images that had survived from the ancient times. If Earth had not been destroyed in the cataclysm that drove humankind into space, it might look like this now. History had become such a muddle in the last ten millennia. What, after all, was the truth?

  “Look out, all!” Xan called, bracing himself against the port to watch. “We’re landing!”

  We all cheered as the shuttle hissed onto its landing strip.

  Parsons left the ship unobtrusively while officials hustled the young nobles and their escorts into the VIP area of Customs and Immigration. There had been a few small complaints about the lack of personal technology, but there was simply no need for any. Their identities were easily verified through biometric matching and DNA scan. Payments for purchases would be carried out in the same way. Plet was fully briefed on every process that any of the Imperium family might need while on Counterweight.

  From a pocket in the back of his tunic, he shook out a bright green caftan and slipped it on. The massive hood concealed his face from onlookers, though the fabric was woven so he had perfect visibility through it in all directions. The thread also distorted biometric scanners. No one would recognize him, nor, he reflected as he left the building by a side door and slipped out into the street and joined the brightly-clad mass on the move under the warm summer sun, notice him at all.

  CHAPTER 10

  When we emerged from the shadow of bureaucracy into the streets of South Town, I took a deep breath. Though it had not been many days since we visited Taruandula, and not that long since we had left Keinolt, I felt as though I had finally reached a source of oxygen. I couldn’t gulp in enough of the moist, fresh, clean air. It seemed to me to be flavored with subtle perfumes like lilacs, spices and a smack of sea breeze. I spread out my hands and let them ride the gentle wind flowing around me, letting them symbolize the pleasure I felt and the nourishment I took from the atmosphere.

  “Fragrant air,” Redius said. Uctus sounded abrupt and terse in Human Standard, but I spoke his native language fluently, so I realized how many-layered was that simple phrase in his tongue.

  “All of those things,” I said. I threw my head back and turned, letting the welcome warmth of the sun caress my face.

  “Absorb these sensations,” Madame Deirdre said. “Remember then for later. You will want to add them to your vocabulary of movement. Assign a symbolic stance to each one that expresses it clearly to your audience.”

  I nodded and tried to fix the impression in my mind of each scent in the air. Did they make me feel happy, exhilarated, excited, nostalgic?

  “Can you feel nostalgia for something you have never known?” I asked. “How could I express that?”

  “Oh, yes,” Madame Deirdre said. “As thus.” She lifted her chin slightly, tentatively. She extended her hand, fingers out, then drew it toward her, the percussion side of her palm in the lead, as if scooping something toward her. I felt a magnetic pull in the gesture, as if she was willing it to come to her. Suddenly, as if of its own will, the hand retreated. The stricken look on Deirdre’s face as it flitted away wrenched my heart.

  “Good!” Redius said, appreciatively. “Crushing.”

  “That’s it exactly,” I said, full of admiration as always for her skill. “Madame, it will take a lifetime to equal what you do so casually. I must practice that.”

  The hand ceased to retreat, and instead fluttered lightly downward in a circular acknowledgement of my compliment. Deirdre bowed after it, her hand brushing her shoe.

  “I am flattered, my lord, but you’re learning. Keep at it. Your movements should be your own, not merely copied from me. Although bodies are limited by their structure to a given number of motions, there are myriad ways into which those can be combined.”

  I had ordered a vehicle from a service there in Nerk that had promised spaciousness and elegance as well as an expert and knowledgeable driver. All comforts were to be laid on, including refreshments and some of the best wines from a local vineyard. Although Nell and several of my cousins had arranged outings that would last several days, I had scuppered my own plans to accommodate my assignment from Parsons. Instead, I intended to return every evening to the Jaunter.

  As we waited for our transport, I attempted to imitate Madame Deirdre’s expression of longing. I had always thought of Keinolt as my home, but Counterweight resonated with me. What if humankind had been living in the wrong place all these centuries? I tried to evince my sense of seeking belonging in a place I had never been before. My shoulders collapsed inward as my hands drew toward my heart, trying to place Counterweight into my soul. I bowed my head over it. I almost wept from the longing. This could be our long-lost home!

  Some passersby glanced at me uncomfortably, and hurried their steps to get away from me as quickly as they could, but others, overcome by curiosity, stopped to watch.

  I ran around the circle, absorbing their expressions. Some were sympathetic, others impatient, a few scornful. All of those were valid impressions of this stranger in their midst. With my movements, I implored them to take me in, to allow me to stay, to become one of their own. If this was Earth, I could not leave without feeling I would be permitted to return and lay my bones in the birthplace of my ancestors. For this last thought, I pretended to delve into the soil, digging my own far-future grave, and threw my heart into the void that yawned at my feet.

  Redius watched me as long as he could, but he started hissing uncontrollably. A few of my audience tittered. Some wore uncomfortable looks, as if wondering how they should respond. Redius’s jaw dropped open, and his hisses
became louder. I ceased my gyrating and set my hands on my hips.

  “I’m not moving you at all, am I?” I inquired, allowing my peevish mood to overcome my feelings of longing.

  “Nowhere!” he exclaimed, and burst out in another fit of hisses. The circle of humans caught it, and laughed out loud.

  My pride was hurt, but it retreated against the tide of an upwelling of humor at my own situation. I began to move my hand in imitation of Deirdre’s motion of nostalgia, and caught a glimpse of myself in a nearby window. I saw how ridiculous I must have appeared. After that, I couldn’t hold back the merriment. Everything struck me as funny. My movements made me laugh. The expressions on the faces of the passersby only tickled me further. Redius’s reactions fed into the flames and left me shaking helplessly. I repeated the movement, but every time, it got funnier and funnier. By the time the car arrived, we were leaning on one another’s shoulders, erupting like raucous volcanoes.

  Madame Deirdre grabbed us each by an arm as she would any unruly junior pupils. My circle of onlookers broke into spontaneous applause and cheers. I bowed to them gratefully as my teacher shoved us both toward the huge open-topped vehicle, shaking her head. I assisted the lady up the very tall steps against the side, though she was so limber that she seemed to extend her legs an extra half-meter each to ascend the vertical escarpment.

  “It’s the atmosphere,” she said, making me and Redius sit down on upholstered bench seats at opposite sides of the wide car, away from one another. “Very high oxygen levels. It can make one giddy.”

  “I think it was rather a success,” I said, waving out of the carriage to the few who were still looking my way.