Rhythm of the Imperium Read online

  Special Envoy Garricka Wu Melarides, seated at the side of the table beside her charge d’affaires, cleared her throat. A motherly-looking woman with thick steel-gray hair tied in a figure-eight bun at the back of her head, she had a prosperous, plump figure and a serene, oblong face that exuded calm. The calf-length gray tunic she wore over white trousers that was the consular services’ uniform looked casual and comfortable, rather than formal and off-putting.

  “I believe I have a solution,” Melarides said. Wold turned to her, albeit with a skeptical expression.

  “What is it?”

  “We have already arranged for custody of the Zang, thereby ensuring that we control access to it. I will prepare a statement to the Kail, outlining our conditions for contact. One of them will be that they are not permitted access to any of the ship’s electronic or communication systems, and no access to any LAIs or AIs except for the assistive personnel that will be assigned to them. I can easily order the translatorbots and other staff who will have ongoing contact with them to shut down other functions until further notice. That way, we can bring the Kail on board the Jaunter, removing them from the Whiskerchin altogether. They will be able to meet with the Zang as they wish, the Wichu ship will be back in the control of the crew, and we can oversee the Kail.”

  “No!” Captain Wold said, xir face turning red. Xe slammed a fist onto the ready room table. “Endanger the lives of His Highness’s relations by taking those things on board? No. I don’t want a crowd of Kail on my ship! The nobles are enough trouble all by themselves.”

  “But, captain,” Melarides said, with a pleasant smile, “this only advances the hour at which we would have had to allow the Kail access to the ship anyhow. This is a marvelous opportunity. My staff and I would jump at the chance to study them further. We know so little about them. The Imperium’s xenobiologists have little data. We can add to that. The fact that they agreed to a meeting with the Imperium while we are on the platform is unprecedented. I look at this as a chance to begin our negotiations early. We’ll have weeks instead of hours to get to know them.”

  “What if it tries to do to the Jaunter what it has already done to the Whiskerchin?” xe asked. “We have no guarantee they won’t try to take over.”

  “Captain Wold, I beg of you to consider,” Melarides said, leaning forward over her clasped hands. “Captain Bedelev said that the Kail changed the ship’s course in order to communicate with a Zang ahead of time. I would love to take that same opportunity to advance our cause with the Kail before the spectacle, when they might be too absorbed in the Zang’s activity to pay close attention to our negotiations. I remind you that the Emperor himself is deeply interested in our success.”

  Wold sat down. Xe seemed ready to reach for another nic-tube, but instead folded xir hands in the same manner as the envoy.

  “Ambassador Melarides, I know His Highness is concerned about the meeting, but it was expected that the Kail would make their own way to the platform. This ship is not prepared to take on board a potential enemy who have already proven that they can disrupt vital functions. They did whatever they pleased to the Whiskerchin. What assurance do we have that they will not do it to us?”

  “We’ll keep them under control,” Melarides said, with confidence. She sat upright. “With the help of Commander Parsons and my staff, we’ll keep them happy. They won’t need to cause trouble. They’ll get what they want.”

  “Are we sure that meeting the Zang is all they want?”

  “I don’t know. We must trust them to a certain extent, or we will never achieve peace between our peoples,” Melarides said. “Let us make the offer. We will make it clear that we need assurances in order to make this meeting as positive an experience for all parties as we can. That will require some give and take. They made demands, true. That means that they cannot accomplish what they wish on their own. They made compromises to take passage on the Whiskerchin. We will let them know what we need, and see what they say.”

  Parsons held himself erect, even though his healing bruises and cuts thudded in pain with each beat of his heart. “The fact that they changed course to arrive here at the same time as Proton means they must have intended all along to meet with the Zang. Whether or not their main aim was to witness the spectacle is open to question. This might be the aim of their journey. Unless my studies have given me a false impression, they do not travel out of their space very often.”

  “No, they don’t,” Melarides said, with a world-weary smile. “They’re not comfortable among us or any of the other carbon-based species. I have to keep in mind that they may only have agreed to meet with the Emperor’s representatives in order to enter Imperium space. We can still make use of this moment. We want them to feel that we are friendly. His Highness would prefer to have peace on every border. My team means to try.”

  Wold’s narrow face went through a number of expressions, none of them happy. Finally, xe turned to Parsons.

  “Commander, what do you say? Can we trust the Kail?”

  “In a simple answer,” Parsons said, “no.”

  “Commander!” Melarides chided him.

  He turned to her, keeping his countenance grave. “As you will no doubt have discovered during your long and distinguished career, Ambassador, the greatest force in the galaxy is self-interest.”

  “What about love or loyalty?” Lopez asked, looking shocked.

  He regarded the other captain. “Those emotions evolve from the same basis as fear and greed. I realize that it sounds cynical, but objectivity leads me to say it. We can’t trust the Kail, but we can trust their self-interest. They want access to the Zang. They could be made to wait until we reach the platform, but who knows what havoc they will have wreaked on the Whiskerchin before then? We can hope to forestall that behavior against the Wichu by giving them that access. It is a matter for Ambassador Melarides to determine if we can prevent them from doing damage to this ship while they are on board. There is a risk that they will take over the ship even if they gain what they seek, but that would be counterproductive. It would only result in their being confined once again, but this time without flaws that allow them access to electrical contact.”

  “What if they’ve already infiltrated the system?” Captain Colwege demanded.

  Parsons drew up a diagram from the table and set it running. Bar graphs of somber colors extended up toward the ceiling, bobbing up and down as the data streams registered from the computer system.

  “That’s a possibility. The detection and anti-viral software has only just been installed. Ormalus and her staff are exploring the root directories and data libraries for intrusion beyond the scan that the ship experienced this morning. You can see nothing has yet been detected, but that does not mean that there is nothing to find.”

  “We still don’t know what they’re looking for,” Atwell said, smacking one hand into the other. “You said your contact suggested that they’re using our data as comparison. But comparison with what?”

  “We don’t know that yet,” Parsons said. “Perhaps Ambassador Melarides and her staff can discern the subject of their search in their conversations to come.”

  “We will certainly try,” Melarides said, with a smile.

  “I don’t like it,” Wold said. “If the Kail mean us no harm, why not inform us as to what they want from the Zang?”

  “They may feel that it’s none of our business,” Melarides said, turning a plump hand palm upward. “We don’t tell the Wichu everything we discuss with the Trade Union, and so on. It’s not a matter of secrecy, but efficiency. Not every point is of interest to every party. The Zang are mysterious creatures. I look forward to meeting our guest.”

  “I have read through the transcript that my late colleague downloaded for us from its colleague on board,” Parsons said. “The Kail behaved themselves when their needs were met. When they were thwarted, they reacted.”

  “They’re not innocent if they had a crewmember on the ship ready to take over
at a moment’s notice,” Wold said. Xe put xir face into xir hands and stirred up xir hair with xir fingers.

  “They are long thinkers,” Melarides said. “That is something that we have learned during our communications with them. Fovrates may never have activated his control. We don’t know. Yet.”

  “Is this evident in their daily life?” Lopez asked. “I haven’t seen any images or digitavids of the Kail’s interaction with one another except for the ones Commander Parsons just showed us.”

  “No human has been welcomed onto any of the Kail homeworlds,” the ambassador said, with a smile. “They consider any physical contact from organic beings to be an imposition. My counterpart in outreach, Ambassador Basiliu, spent five months orbiting a Kail planet. Communication was sporadic. He did, however, manage to secure their promise to meet with us on the platform.”

  “If they have no technology of their own, how did you talk with them?” Wold asked.

  Melarides chuckled and tented her fingers. “We sent a trio of LAI negotiatorbots down. They were our intermediaries. The Kail consider them closer to kin than any of us ‘slime.’ The ’bots are still on Yesa, doing outreach, trying to convince them that humans aren’t the evil they believe we are.”

  “Can the ship be made secure against interference from the Kail’s ability?” Wold asked Parsons.

  “Never completely. We will, as Ambassador Melarides said, have to trust them to a certain extent. All computer systems will need to be subject to constant checks and balances. Communication with other ships and the Imperium base will need to be in the simplest possible encoding so that any viruses or worms can be detected at once. But the easiest way to prevent an incursion should be to let them have what they want. Give them access to the Zang. Provide them with clean water and purified mineral dust. Don’t touch them.”

  Wold stared fiercely at Parsons, the pupils of xir light eyes boring into Parsons’s.

  “If I approve this, it will be your responsibility to keep them from interfering with my ship, Commander. You’ll have the resources you need, but you must not fail!”

  Parsons bowed, feeling every rib protest. “I will do my best, captain.”

  “What about the potential of a system breach?”

  “The possibility that it has already occurred is a lower risk than finding out what happens if the Kail manage to achieve it,” Parsons said. “In the best case scenario, we can convince them to allow their hold on the Wichu and Counterweight systems to lapse. By reverse engineering, we can discover how they did it, so we can block access should they ever make another such attempt.”

  “And in the worst case?” Captain Wold asked, xir narrow jaw set.

  “In the worst,” Parsons said, feeling every bruise on his body, “we will have hostages of our own.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Phutes held himself rigid as the flimsy shuttle detached from the side of the Whiskerchin. It seemed an insufficiently strong vessel to convey him and his siblings to the place where the Zang waited. He hated being in the small shells. He longed for the day when he could return to his motherworld and forget he had ever seen a Wichu, or a human, or a shuttle.

  “Bad enough that we have to move onto a human ship,” Sofus complained, shifting the flexible, flat pieces of rock that lined the cabin in order to make himself a more comfortable seat. “But they are here.”

  Sofus pointed at the black-topped human and the red-orange Uctu that sat at the front of the cabin, the soft excrescences that served them for manipulative digits resting on brightly-colored weapons. The others murmured their unhappiness.

  “It doesn’t matter now, and soon, it will not matter at all,” Phutes reassured them. “Their species are ephemeral and will pass.”

  “Not soon enough!”

  “We can hear you, you know,” the black-topped human said. He had identified himself as “Nesbitt,” not that Phutes cared for the buzz and glottal stop. His words were translated into good Kail by the bronze-colored translatorbot at his side. The LAI was tall, nearly as tall as Mrdus, but almost as thin as one of Phutes’s wrists. At the top of the silicon and metal being, a cluster of round glass disks served as ocular receptors. She went by the name of NR-111, a very sensible-sounding name for a machine made by humans. Phutes almost felt when he spoke to her that he was talking with one of his own kind, perhaps an older one. She was very wise and patient.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Phutes said to Sofus, ignoring the interruption. “What noises come from them make no difference to us.”

  The translator emitted some of the human-sounding nonsense. Nesbitt turned to the Uctu and made the black stripes on its face move up and down. The Uctu’s mouth dropped open, though no sound emerged from it.

  “There are a lot of humans on our ship,” Nesbitt said, leaning toward them, his wobbly face stretching in an unnatural fashion. “Lots and lots of them.”

  “I think I am going to be sick,” said Mrdus. He was the smallest of the Kail, a small, lumpy individual with 101 short legs and 11 arms. Phutes had wondered often why he had permitted the weakling to accompany them, but their mother had insisted. Mrdus had a mind that absorbed new processes more swiftly than the rest of them. He had picked up on Fovrates’s lessons before any of the others, but he seemed to forget everything when Wichu were around.

  “You withstood the Wichu. You will bear the humans,” Sofus said firmly.

  Mrdus made grinding noises, but nothing else. Phutes didn’t want him to embarrass them in front of the disgusting squishy ones.

  “Do not tease the Kail,” the Uctu said to the human. It had been named as “Redius.” The translator picked up its sparse noises and translated them into good language. “You promised Commander Parsons that you would behave with decorum.”

  “Just telling him the truth, right?” the human replied. He hefted the jewel-colored weapon from his lap. “But we’re all going to get along just fine.”

  Phutes was not so certain, for all the assurances the human called “Melarides” had offered via the communications system. He had not yet caught her in an outright lie. Fovrates and his scanners had confirmed that the Zang had indeed arrived, and was in the humans’ ship. That was something that the Kail had not known. Fovrates had assumed it was only on its way toward the platform, as they were. If the Zang was in league with humans, their cause might be lost. But Yesa had assured him that the Zang served only their own interests. The Kail could appeal to them for help against the humans.

  Yesa, Nefra and the other motherworlds had borne the invasion of their territory by organic species for numerous revolutions, but the last few had been too much. The humans had come into Kail space and remained even after it was made clear to them they weren’t welcome. Sending silicon-based objects like NR-111 to Yesa only served to prove that humanity and others did not belong there. The humans, though, did not take either “no” or “go away” for answers. From the beginning they had harangued the Kail to meet with them. They wanted to be “better neighbors.” Whatever that meant. The motherworlds were certain that it couldn’t be good. The humans had no notion of privacy. They were filthy, and spread their sticky cells everywhere. They tried to remove portions of the motherworlds without permission. The smell of them offended every Kail who came into contact with them.

  In the end, partly out of curiosity and partly out of frustration, Yesa had agreed to send envoys to a meeting. Phutes had been primed by Yesa with the answers she wanted the humans to hear. They were not to come to Kail space ever again for any reason. The Kail wished to be left in peace. If they wanted contact with the rotting species, they would go to their worlds. Left unspoken was the thought that no such thing would ever happen. He had listened to her well-rehearsed reasoning for rotations on end, until he could repeat them back to her in the same cadences she used.

  She also drilled him on that which she wanted him to say to the Zang once they met. That was more difficult, as the celestial beings spoke in such a different way, not through sound
alone.

  This expedition was a test of his ability to cope. Every day brought experiences that he had not expected, and was forced to rely upon his own wits to handle. At no time in his life had he ever been the final authority on anything. He had never been out of the sound of Yesa’s voice. He had found it difficult not to cede control to Fovrates. It was one of the reasons that he had let so much time lapse between boarding the Wichu ship and paying his first visit. The elder Kail was worthy of respect. Phutes felt he ought to do what Fovrates said. The engineer thought that his submission and that of his siblings was hilarious. Phutes was offended, but it had given him a lot to think about. Unless Nefra ran her family differently than Yesa did, leaving home must have a strong influence on one’s sense of independence. He had to contemplate that notion. At first he didn’t really like being the one to whom the others looked up. He was too young and inexperienced! The trouble was that more senior Kail were too unwieldy to go. It was up to the young ones who were sufficiently mobile, no matter that they were less wise. From those Yesa had chosen Phutes as her envoy.

  The responsibility weighed on him far more than the low gravity of the slime creatures’ ship. He wished he could hear Yesa and get the benefit of her wisdom. In truth, she was likely to tell him to pull himself together and do what he was told.

  He glanced at the human and Uctu at the end of the chamber. They kept their strange ocular receptors fixed on him and his siblings, even while they spoke in undertones to one another. He didn’t care what they said about him, only how they acted. So far, they had been as benign as the Wichu had when they first boarded the Whiskerchin. The Wichu had betrayed them, locking them up and trying to keep them isolated. Since that moment, Phutes did not trust any of them. He would not trust any organism he could not control. Fovrates had found it all very amusing, blaming Phutes for overreacting, causing the notoriously volatile Wichu to overreact in their turn. It didn’t matter what they thought or did now, since the Kail controlled the ship. The trouble was that the Whiskerchin only conveyed them to the Zang. In order to get what he wanted, Phutes had to deal with humans.