Rhythm of the Imperium (37 page)

“That is not necessary, as long as no trace of life remains.”

“If there ever was any,” Oskelev said. “I took a run around it myself to make sure. Dead as stale beer.”

“We’re not spotting even much in the way of ancient watercourses,” Plet added. “The white traces around the poles are antimony, not frost.”

“Curious,” Parsons remarked. He glanced up. The platform maintained its orientation that kept the doomed planetoid centered at the top of the dome. “The single moon is an anomaly.”

Plet frowned, as if trying to capture a thought.

“That’s what Anstruther said. It’s surprisingly regular in shape, almost as though it was the original planet before the damaged one was pushed into that orbit.”

“One might speculate whether the Zang know its origins,” Parsons said. “It’s possible that they observed it, though why they have chosen this moment to correct that error is also a matter of speculation.”

“Commander … are they really that old?” Plet asked. Parsons could have smiled, but she would have been wounded by his amusement.

“They are. For the moment you are off duty. I suggest you enjoy the moment. Dr. Derrida will send notice when the spectacle is about to begin.”

“I hope Lord Thomas gets back soon,” Oskelev said. “He’s been pretty excited about seeing the spectacle.”

“I trust he will,” Parsons said. “You are dismissed, but expected to remain on call.”

“Yes, commander,” the two officers said. They slipped away into the milling crowd. Parsons resumed his vigil. Two more concerns had been dismissed. Now only four remained.

CHAPTER 37

Gaia
’s exit from the edge of Zang space was so rapid that the platform disappeared in the aft screen tank before I had time to react to it. The high seat in which I was perched gave me an excellent view of all the sensor readings.

“The platform authority didn’t acknowledge you,” I observed. “They gave us quite a multiple choice quiz when we arrived, checking our bona fides. I almost expected them to demand an essay from each of us on why we wanted to watch the destruction of a planet, using examples and footnotes.”

“Oh, well, they don’t care, since I’m leaving,” Laurence said, with a casual wave. He lounged back in his chair and stretched out his legs. The footrests extended. The small screentank beside him rose on its brackets and tilted so he didn’t have to move his head to see it. “Make yourself comfortable, Thomas! We have a way to go.”

I emulated his example. The chair seemed to have second sight, moving into a configuration that accommodated me without having to execute a single wiggle for comfort. I vowed to save up money to visit his shipbuilder in the Trade Union. None of my skimmers ever had a seat that fit me as well, for all that I had spent on custom construction. As Uncle Laurence and I were very much of a size and shape, what worked for him would surely work for me.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” I said. “Jil said you had been visiting Father about the same time that we left Taino.”

He cocked his head.

“Well, I
was
there for a while. I never stay long. The place has gotten so stodgy! I heard you would be here to watch the Zang, so I thought I’d drop by,” Laurence said, with a mischievous smile. “I seldom get a chance these days to see much of you. It was easier when you were in school. Now, heaven knows where I’ll find you. The Castaway Cluster? I read your Infogrid file. That was quite an undertaking! Well done on helping to reintegrate it into the Imperium. That’s been a disaster in the making, or so I was told.”

I preened quietly for a moment. “It was a reasonable success,” I admitted. “Parsons seemed pleased.”

“Pleased?” Laurence echoed. “He almost broke a smile when he told me about it. You
are
doing well. My esteemed sister-in-law has stopped despairing of you—well, nearly. You are definitely more a Kinago than a Loche, for all your genetics. Tariana finds you a trifle unmanageable, but what do you expect? Go back and look at the last hundred generations, and our family was always doing the unexpected.”

“That’s very true,” I said. I had done a good deal of research on our family, tracing it back all the way to its origins as pre-salvage cargo retrievers or, as the history books would tiresomely persist in calling them, pirates. Our next most distant ancestors had made their real fortune, though, by anticipating the need for rare raw materials and supplying it, at a markup that factored in the costs and risk involved, to individual systems that lacked them. Since the Kinagos had built up a tremendous fleet of ships over the centuries for both activities, they were available to rescue large populations of settlers from potentially fatal catastrophes, thereby keeping humanity from rendering itself prematurely extinct. From then on, we shone as heroes instead of rogues. Admiral Doctor Shahia Kinago, for example, was famous for developing a vaccine that she delivered to a small world that was suffering from a zoonosis they caught from local flora, and fighting off the space navy of the Wichu. Her grandson was a diplomat who helped make allies of the Wichu fifty years later.

“What do you do for Mr. Frank?” I asked.

“Right to the point, eh?” Uncle Laurence asked. He stretched, extending his long arms over his head and sighing. “This and that. Let’s not talk about me. There’s plenty of time to go over my dreary life. I’m more interested in what you have been doing. What in heaven’s name was all that frippery packed into every cubic centimeter of your cabin?”

I was all too happy to discuss my newest enthusiasm.

“Those are my costumes. I have taken up interpretive dance, uncle,” I said, happily. Once again, I reached for the viewpad that wasn’t there. Never mind; I didn’t need it. I had my skills. “I saw in a marvelous historical documentary that dance is one of the very oldest art forms that humankind evolved. I don’t know whether our primitive prototypes learned from watching animals performing mating dances or bees describing to their hive mates where to find nectar, but we began to express ourselves through body movement in a similar fashion. From the beginning, it was a means of storytelling, reproducing events, or expressing concepts. Why resort to mere spoken poetry, when the poetry of motion is more compelling?” I extended my own arms, and allowed my hands to perform some of the smaller movements over which Madame Deirdre and I had been conferring. One sequence of which I was rather proud was a love story, in which a male pursues a female, who very shortly turns to snare him, as she had been paying attention all along.

Uncle Laurence watched with interest, then gave a wicked laugh.

“Very good! In that case, you would probably be interested in a few humorous digitavids I found,” he said. “You’ll wonder why the females ever allowed the males to propagate. Wait a moment, I have something better. I want you to see this.
Gaia
, up!”

“Yes, Lord Laurence.”

The screen tank receded out of the way of his feet. Uncle Laurence’s chair rose until it reached a hatch in the ceiling. He touched a control, and the hatch slid aside. Sparkling bits of metal shimmered and danced, catching the light from the screen. They piled up on one another until they formed a blob. I could not help thinking that the mass reminded me of a Kail. I tried not to take against it based upon that impression.

“Find me MGM051,” he ordered. The mass disintegrated and disappeared into the shadows of the storage compartment. I heard hissing and thumping overhead. Uncle Laurence smiled down at me. “Don’t mind them. Micronbots. They’re virtually indestructible, so they think everything else is, too.”

“I’ve recently had some experience with nanobots,” I said. “They are not quite as self-directed, but very efficient.”

“I heard! You must tell me all about it. But wait!” Clicking erupted from above, then the screen on the wall went black. Laurence arranged himself in his seat and gestured toward the main screen. “Watch this!”

Because of my interest in ancient forms of entertainment, including the early seasons of
Ya!
, it was less disruptive to my senses to watch two-dee vids than it was for some of my cousins. The sound had a tinny quality to it, as many recordings made in the distant past had, and the video perceptibly jerky, but one soon forgot about the limitations when swept up in the wonder of the contents recorded thereon. The male protagonist of this vid did little abstract interpretation in his dance, but was compelling to watch nonetheless because of his athleticism and ability to convey emotion. The segment that Uncle Laurence was eager for me to see involved the man dancing on all parts of the room, including the ceiling.

“I didn’t know that they created these vids in space,” I said, delighted. “He manages anti-gravity very well.”

“This predates the first space age,” Uncle Laurence explained, as the man concluded his marvelous performance and gazed at a flat image in a rectangular frame. “Such things were done through mechanical means and illusion. Our ancestors still have so much to teach us.”

“I only wish we had access to more of their wisdom,” I said.

“What would we do with it?” Laurence asked, with a laugh. “We barely pay attention to the wisdom of our own age.”

“Do you have more of these two-dee digitavids?” I asked, eagerly.

“Movies,” Laurence said. “I have thousands of them. They have been an enthusiasm of mine for a long while.” He signed to the micronbots, who responded with yet more clattering and thumping above. “Would you like some popcorn?”

In the midst of what I recall being an intensely interesting discussion of the immutability of good taste and the ephemeral nature of fashion, I dropped off to sleep. During dreams in which I appeared at various venues in the height of current haute couture, only to discover that I had been superseded within moments of my arrival, I suffered the shame of having catcalls and hoots aimed in my direction.

I was not only glad but relieved to discover that my humiliation was only in my dream, and that the hooting was literal. For a split second, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, I wondered exactly where I was, then delight overspread my concern. I was on a trip with Uncle Laurence.

“Well, there you are,” my elder relative called over the din, grinning at me from his pilot’s chair. He looked fresh, having changed clothing and shaved during my nap. “Need a warming cup to help drive away the cobwebs?”

“That would be most welcome,” I shouted back. “Why is the klaxon sounding?”

“Oh, that,” Laurence said. “
Gaia
, turn it off! It’s a proximity alarm,” he added, as relative silence fell in the cabin. He adjusted a control that tightened up the view to be seen in the navigational screentank. It had shown the sparse scattering of stars visible since the single jump we had made after leaving the platform. Now he focused in on a yellow star. At the speed we were traveling, we would pass through the Oort haze and the radiation belt in a matter of seconds. I heard a crackle over the audio system as we entered the star’s protective sphere.

“Proximity to what?” I asked, as a steaming cup lowered itself to me from a hatch in that very ceiling.

For answer, he elbowed a control in the arm of his chair. “This is
Gaia
.
Titan
, is that you?”

A woman’s voice answered.

“
Titan
. Good to hear you,
Gaia
.”

“Thanks for babysitting. Any worries?”

“None. Enceladus,
Gaia
’s home.”

A deep male voice came on. “Happy spring,
Gaia
!”

Uncle Laurence laughed. “Thank you, but it’s your vernal equinox, too.”

“At least you get flowers,” came another voice, this one lighter, without any trace of gender. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you, Ares. I’d like you to meet my nephew.” He grinned at me. “Let’s just call you Nataraja, after the dancing god.”

In all, nine voices called out their greetings.

“Welcome, Nataraja,” said a female whom Uncle Laurence called Ourania, and added mysteriously, “I hope you’re good at keeping secrets.”

“I am,” I said. I looked to my uncle with questions in my eyes. I’d have acted out my confusion if I had not been buckled into a crash couch. He closed the communication circuit. “What secret?”

“This one, Thomas,” he said. He waved a hand over his screentank, and the wall screen zoomed in toward the distant yellow dot. At the angle we approached the star, I could see a scatter of spheres within a few hundred million kilometers of it. I glimpsed one magnificent planet with a series of brilliant rings that had to be half again as large as the gas giant Vijay Six, but the focus did not stop there. Instead, it passed by an asteroid belt, a small rocky planet with two moons, and came to rest upon a brilliant blue globe. I peered at it.

“Quite a beautiful planet,” I said, “but I can’t put a name to it.”

“It’s home, Thomas.”

“Your home?”

“No, our home. That’s somewhere we all live, where you and I were born.”

I looked again. The continents weren’t in the configuration I expected to see. Perhaps they were inverted. I tilted my head, but came up certain. I peered at him with suspicion writ large on my features. “This isn’t Keinolt.”

“It is home to all humankind, Thomas,” Uncle Laurence said, with a smile. “Welcome to Earth.”

“Earth?” I favored him with my patented laugh, which boomed around the room like a disapproving studio audience. He had played many jokes on me in the past. I was determined not to let this be one of them. “How can it be Earth?” I demanded, disbelief writ large in both my mien and vocal tones. “Earth is lost! No one knows where Earth is!”

Uncle Laurence saw my skepticism and raised me exasperation.

“Well, if you took a poll, you would find your statement to be the correct one, within plus or minus three degrees of accuracy. In point of fact, though, a few, a select and very carefully vetted few, do know. We have known all along. It is here.” He gestured protectively toward the blue dot, looming larger in the scope all the time. “Its anonymity is what protects it from incursion, destruction, or tourism.”

I waited to see if he was trying to stretch the tale, but his face told me that for once he was deadly serious, more serious than I knew he could be. I swallowed hard.

“How can that be? You can’t hide a star system.”

Uncle Laurence turned a hand over. “It was … mislaid. Very carefully mislaid by the galactic cartographers, many centuries ago.”

“I had heard that,” I said, “but in practice? This star must be on the charts.”

“And it is,” my uncle said, with a wry grin. “But this one unremarkable yellow dwarf star lies in traditional Zang space, which protects it from casual attention. No one dares to intrude upon this sector, knowing what the Zang are capable of doing.”

“I thought they only amused themselves,” I said. “At this moment, they are striving to blast an innocent rock into energy.”

Uncle Laurence shook his head. “Everything they do has a purpose, although we may never understand what it is. Since what they do includes protecting this corner of the galaxy, I welcome their actions, whatever they may be.”

I stared at the blue globe. The sight, and my uncle’s words, made me feel smaller and more humble than I ever had in my life.

“Who are the other people who greeted us? Your staff?”

“I don’t have staff, Thomas,” Uncle Laurence said, with a smile. “Not human, at any rate. Titan and the others are the guardians of the other planets in the system, as well as acting as early-warning monitors for me. They are named for the orbs they occupy, just as I am. Gaia is one of the old titles for Earth.”

As deeply as my common sense told me not to believe, after the disappointments I had suffered on the way to the Trade Union’s viewing platform, I wanted to. Four major land masses and countless small ones lay in gleaming oceans. I eyed the largest, a tri-lobed monstrosity that must have occupied a quarter of the planet’s surface. On the other side of the ocean, an irregular ribbonlike mass, squeezed tight in the middle, undulated down from one brilliant polar icecap nearly all the way down to the comma-shaped continent heaving with blue-white glaciers. A small, independent circumflex of land hovered in the same latitude as their junction in the midst of the other broad ocean. My breath caught in my chest.