Hidden Empire (30 page)
On schedule, Otema entered, moving with silent footsteps, and Sarein rose to greet her. The woman looked so old! Her skin
was a deep green like night at the bottom of the forest, and it had a dry hardness about it, like wood. She wore only the
most minimal garb of a green priest and no ornamentation.
Noting the ambassadorial robe Sarein wore, Otema appeared troubled. The status lines and achievement marks stained into her
face furrowed, like dotted lines indicating where wrinkles would go. Sarein wondered if the former ambassador already missed
the amenities and culture on Earth.
Sarein pretended not to notice her predecessor’s pensive mood. “You have been gone for so many years, Otema, that we never
got to know each other well.” She poured clee for the old woman, who accepted the cup. “Before I depart for my new duties
on Earth, I thought we should have a brief talk.” Sarein smiled, not meaning her words but required to say them nevertheless.
“With all your experience, you must have much advice for me in dealing with the Hansa?”
“I will share my thoughts with you,” Otema said stiffly and slowly, “though I am not convinced you are willing to hear.”
Sarein tried not to frown at the rebuff, drinking her hot beverage. “Surely you are not disappointed to return to the worldforest,
Otema? You have earned it after your years of service.”
“The worldforest is always a balm to human weariness, regardless of what brewing troubles the trees may see that we do not.
No, I am not disappointed to be back on Theroc. I am disappointed in
you
, Ambassador Sarein.” She used the title like an insult, and finally sat down with great reluctance. “And I am afraid of what
damage you will cause.”
Sarein chuckled lightly, treating it as a joke. “You should give me a chance to prove myself, Otema. I have studied on Earth,
and I am familiar with their cultures and practices. In fact, I probably understand the politics and commerce of the Hansa
as well as you.”
If not better
, she thought to herself.
Otema scowled. “You are an intelligent girl, Sarein, and I would never doubt your ability to understand.” She took a long
sip of her drink and paused, eyes closed, visibly absorbing the energy the ground worldtree seeds gave her. The green in her
skin seemed to grow more vibrant.
“However, I hope your understanding extends to the delicacy of the Theron position. It is easy to be contemptuous or forgetful
of where you have spent your life. An impatient child might consider our ways uninteresting or dull, but do not let the lure
of gaudy treasures distract you from what is truly important. Such flowers are bright and colorful, but they bloom only briefly.
Roots, on the other hand, go deep and provide stability for a long time.”
Sarein wanted to make a rude noise, but restrained herself. Instead, she nodded sagely. “A very important point, Otema. I
thank you for your insight.”
Basil had talked with her about how frustrating Otema could be. Without emotion or rancor, the old ambassador had deflected
all Hansa attempts to achieve even the slightest control over the green priests. Basil knew not to cross the “Iron Lady,”
because Otema would not budge.
Under Sarein, though, many things would change.
Outside in the jungle, two mating birds flew about squawking, rustling the leaves and disturbing a cloud of jewel-shelled
insects. Otema seemed distracted, as if worried about deeper problems than an ambitious young ambassador to Earth. “The trees
have much knowledge—and some of it they do not share, even with us.”
Sarein steeled herself, tried a different tack. “Since I am not a green priest, I realize that my understanding of the worldforest
is not as deep as yours. However, I will strive to do my best, and I will always have access to other members of the priesthood
for their advice and communication abilities. The worldforest will know everything I do.”
“I doubt, young woman, that you intend to let any green priest sit in on your… shall we say,
private
consultations with Chairman Wenceslas.” Her suggestiveness so shocked Sarein that the young woman could barely cover her
reaction. “You believe that your intimate connection with the Chairman grants you some sort of power over him, but I warn
you that Basil Wenceslas is not so easily manipulated. He runs far deeper than a simple girl can comprehend.”
Sarein’s face darkened. “Now that you have been stripped of your ambassadorial cloak, Otema, you have forgotten tact and diplomacy.”
“I have not forgotten the truth, Sarein,” she said. “One doesn’t need a link with the worldtrees to see something so obvious.”
Leaving her beverage unfinished, the ancient woman stood and gave a formal bow. “I believe that is more advice than you truly
wanted to hear, so I will take my leave.” She backed toward the arched door in the soft-walled room.
“Play your games, Sarein, but never forget who you are and where you were born. The trees sense a tremendously difficult time
ahead, though they will not tell even green priests what is in store. A day will come when you will be glad of your allies
on Theroc.”
O
ncier blazed brightly, an infant sun engulfed by the nuclear fires of its newly dense core. Though much smaller than the system’s
primary star, this burning gas giant melted the hearts of the formerly frozen moons.
Media reports of the successful Klikiss Torch continued to spread throughout the Hanseatic colony worlds and into the Ildiran
Empire, delivered by fast vessels on trade routes. Serizawa’s recorded interviews had intrigued listeners on a hundred worlds.
He’d had his glory and his fame—enough of it, in fact. Now the real work began.
Though the newborn star was small and relatively cool, Serizawa could not look at the roiling plasma without filters across
the viewing windows. Projection screens on the consoles displayed magnetic maps viewed through specific portions of the spectrum.
It was a marvel and an oddity.
He had studied the strange ephemeral images taken shortly after the gas planet’s ignition—crystalline ejecta shaped like perfect
spheres, glittering globes that seemed to fly away from the flaming new sun. Margaret Colicos had seen the same thing. Serizawa
had tried to explain it simply and easily; with so many media scanners around, he did not want to alarm anyone, or make it
appear that
he
didn’t know what was going on. Still, the unusual phenomenon had defied explanation, even after repeated analysis.
He was thankful that the incident had not occurred again.
Running a palm across his perfectly smooth scalp, Serizawa shivered. He felt perpetually cold aboard the metal-walled observation
platform. Though he stared at the glowing ember of the tiny star, none of the warmth penetrated his pale skin to his bones.
He always walked around the station with goose bumps on his arms, no matter how he adjusted the environmental controls.
Because the density gradient was so steep, the nuclear combustion zone in Oncier’s core was only a thin shell, but sufficient
to light the hydrogen fuel. The small sun was a hurricane still settling down, but nothing much had changed in weeks.
There were dramatic shifts, however, on the four moons.
A week from now, the first Hansa ships would arrive bearing planetary engineers, terraforming specialists, and geologists.
With special shelters and massive equipment, they would drop down to the warming moons and begin long-term plans for converting
them into habitable worlds. Exciting times lay ahead.
Serizawa’s thin lips curled in a smile. “Hmm, what do you suppose the colonists will call themselves?” He often pondered inane
questions and struck up conversations with his technicians. The largest moon, Jack, orbited closest to the ignited planet
and would likely be the first moon suitable for colonization. “Do you think they’ll call themselves Jackians? Or Jackites?”
One of the techs enjoyed the game. “Jacklings sounds more appropriate.”
Serizawa looked at screens showing the restless surfaces of the other moons, George, Ben, and Christopher. Pockets of thawed
gases spewed like cometary tails, the noisy and messy birth of an atmosphere from volatilizing ice. The initial gases would
boil off into space, too light to be held by the moons’ gravity. Eventually, after the frozen lakes sublimated and glaciers
crumbled into either liquid water or gaseous carbon dioxide, there should be enough air to maintain a blanket around the moons.
Eventually.
The names of these moons—in honor of the first four Great Kings of the Terran Hanseatic League—gave Serizawa a sense of history.
But humans looked upon a few centuries as a great span of time, while to the Ildirans and especially their Mage-Imperator,
so many years was barely a moment. During most of Earth’s civilization, people had failed to participate in longterm planning,
neglecting to look farther than their own life spans.
Serizawa went to the station’s thermostat and raised the internal temperature. Heat would radiate upward from the decks and
warm them all. Rubbing his hands briskly together, he returned to the monitoring screens.
He toggled between close-up images of Ben and Christopher orbiting near each other and those of George and Jack on the other
side of Oncier. He played time-lapse images of the cratered landscapes as they smoothed out and cracked in the throes of rapid
thawing. Because the topology of each moon changed daily, it was still far too early to assess any permanent land features.
“Large tectonic upheaval on Christopher,” said one of the techs, switching an image of the mist-enshrouded moon to the large
display screen. Clouds of newly released gases roared upward like geysers. “Look, a crevasse is opening up, a large piece
of the ice sheet shifting.”
Serizawa hurried over to observe, still rubbing his arms to get warm. “The geology is still so unstable that maybe the arrival
of the terraforming crews is a bit premature. We wouldn’t want an exploration team going through a quake like that.”
“The terraformers are bringing in large-scale machinery, Dr. Serizawa. Designed to withstand the end of the world.”
“Or the beginning of one.” The ten technicians and astrophysicists gathered around the high-resolution viewers, riveted to
the tectonic event.
Serizawa looked up just in time to see a cluster of bright, glittering globes streak into the system and converge upon the
restless new sun from high above the orbital plane. “Look at that!”
They were just like the ones he had seen on the images of the Klikiss Torch experiment, apparitions he had dismissed as irrelevant
anomalies. Margaret Colicos, though, had been absolutely correct in her first assessment.
Ships
. He suddenly experienced a deeper chill than any he had felt aboard the station.
The fleet of bristling diamond-hulled spheres approached with dizzying speed, like moths drawn to Oncier’s new flame. Fourteen
glassy spheres the size of asteroids dropped toward the former gas giant and its thawing moons. They looked like transparent
planets, perfectly round but studded with sharp protrusions; the clear hulls showed murky mists inside, hinted at complex
geometrical machinery. Like hungry insects the alien globes surrounded the smallest moon, Ben.
All of his crew rushed to the observation windows. Dazzling light from nearby Oncier reflected from the crystal-curved balls.
Triangular pyramids like perfect mountains thrust through the bubble-skin; their pointed tips crackled with blue lightning.
“Are we getting all this on permanent record?” Serizawa said. “This is amazing! What are they?”
“They seem to be interested in Ben. Maybe they’re scanning—”
The alien ships opened fire on the moon.
Blue lightning from the pyramidal protrusions of all fourteen alien ships converged, then shot downward in a single beam,
slamming into Ben’s already unstable surface. Heat glowed, land masses vibrated as acoustic waves transmitted powerful energy
throughout the rocky body.
Serizawa shouted into the communications systems, as if the aliens might understand his outcry or even respond to him. “What
are you doing? Please stop! This is human territory. This is—” He looked at his companions, but no one offered any suggestions.
The weapons fire continued. Gases erupted from the moon, the rocky continent broke apart, and orange heat boiled upward from
the now-exposed core. Ben began to shudder, splitting under the onslaught.
It took the silent aliens twenty minutes to demolish the moon and break it into glowing coals that drifted apart in space.
“My God! Why?” The techs and astrophysicists were wildeyed.
The crystalline globes moved smoothly away from the hot rubble of Ben and headed straight for George. Serizawa’s face glistened
with sweat. Though his skin seemed as cold as ice, he felt as though he were burning with anger.
The fourteen diamond spheres hovered over the second moon. Analyzing? Mapping continental flaws, fractures in the core structure?
Then the lightning hammers blazed downward again.
Serizawa’s anger turned to terror. “Transmit these images! Call for help, a general distress in all directions.” He cursed
the fact that their poorly staffed observation platform had no green priest aboard to provide instant telink communication.
