The Greatship (51 page)

The humans felt chastened and a little angry, powerless to respond yet nonetheless intrigued by the stark implications.  They held one another in ways that spoke—the touch of fingers, the pressure of a fat-clad knee, and the shared tastes of expelled air carrying odors that could only come from Perri, and only come from Quee Lee.

The voice returned, quietly mentioning, “My mission to the blue world had begun so easily, with much promise.  Yet now its nature changed.  In relatively quick succession, three problems emerged, each capable of threatening the project and my sterling reputation.”

A thoughtful pause ended with a brief, disgusted sound.

“Remember the pirates mentioned before?  The seafarers whom I let my people kill?  They had floated out from the main continent, and with another hundred years of experience, their descendants were eager to return.  That rocky green wilderness still lay over the horizon, but now it was speckled with dirty cities and fledging nations.  Unlike my little island, those far places had always enjoyed culture and a deep history, every corner of their rich landscape adorned with some important little name.

“Bronze-and-brick technology was at work.  Kings and educated minds were beginning to piece together the first, most obvious meanings of the universe.  The largest triremes could wander far from land, and their captains knew how to navigate by the stars and moon.  That those captains would try to visit my island was inevitable, which is why I took precautions.  The leviathans patrolling my bright waters were instructed to scare off every explorer, and should fear not work, they were entitled to crush the wooden hulls and drown those stubborn crews.

“A few ships were sunk off our coast.

“The occasional corpse washed up on shore, swollen by rot and chewed upon by curious or vengeful mouths.

“One of the dead had been a scientist and scholar, and even as he drowned, he managed to grab hold of his life’s work—a long roll of skin covered with dense writing and delicate sketches.

“The body was looted, and the book eventually found its way into the appreciative hands of one of my grandchildren.

“The island’s original natives could never have understood the intense black scribbling, but my grandchild was more than intelligent and highly creative, he was also curious and unabashedly loyal to me.  Using code-breaking algorithms, he taught himself the dead man’s language.  In his spare moments, he managed to translate the text in full.  His purpose, it seems, was to make me proud of his genius.  He was certainly thrilled of his own accomplishment, which was why he shared what he had learned with close friends and lovers.  Then he walked to the palace and kneeled before my throne, presenting both the artifact and his translation for my honest appraisal.

“‘They speak of us,’ the young man reported.  ‘The rest of our world believes we are gods or the angels of gods or we have descended from the stars.  They have convinced themselves that if they defeat the sea monsters and outsmart the currents, they can row themselves into our harbor and stand among us, and they will be heroes in the gods’ eyes.  And for their extraordinary bravery, we will award them with the secrets of All…’”

A brief pause.

“I’ll ask this question again,” said Perri.  “This species…were they human…?”

A sound came, soft but perhaps disgusted.

“Atlantis,” Quee Lee whispered.  “Is that this story?”

“My guess exactly,” said Perri, hugging her until her ribs ached.  Then he said the ancient name for himself, in the appropriate dead language.

“Once again, you have forgotten:  The galaxy had no name for that world, much less for that long-ago island.  But I won’t stop you from imagining your Earth and its legendary lands, and I won’t fight the labels that help you follow what I happen to say.”

In the darkness, Perri squeezed his wife again, and she pushed her mouth into his ear, saying with relish, “It must be.”

They had decided, together.

It was Atlantis.

“My grandchildren,” the voice continued.  “Several generations had passed since the first of them were born, and I should confess to one inevitable event.  I have always taken lovers from the locals.  A lover supplies information and oftentimes can be a tool for good methodical management.  Bedding those who are most beautiful and intriguing is a natural consequence of my station.  But one of those grandchildren proved more irresistible than usual.  She was a young woman, as it happened.  Though it just as likely could have been a man…

“By the standards of her species, she was physical small and exceptionally lovely.

“Among her gifted peers, she was considered brilliant and singularly blessed.  The finest of the fine…

“That I took her into my bed was natural.  That she retained her virginity until that night only enhanced her reputation with her people, and to a degree, with me.  The bloodied sheet was hung from the palace wall for a full day, and when she appeared again in public, cheers made her stand tall as a queen—the center of attention smiling at her appreciative world.

“I was very fond of that little creature.

“As a lover, she was fearless and caring, bold and yet compliant too.  And when we were not making love, she would ask me smart little questions about all matters of science and engineering.  Her particular expertise involved the heart of the device that we were building together.  There were puzzles to work through, matters that I didn’t understand fully myself.  I had never built such an object, you see.  That’s why the brilliant grandchildren were critical.  But even though she understood many of the ideas behind our work, she always wanted to know more, and if possible, hold what she knew more deeply.

“Charming and crafty, she was, and I let myself be fooled.  I confessed that there were subjects that could never, ever to be discussed with her people.  ‘You will repeat none of this again,’ I warned.  ‘Not even to the wind.’

“She promised to remain mute.

“Then I explained to her the true shape of the galaxy, and its great age, and I told the violent history of our glorious universe.

“And yes, there were moments when I mentioned the Union and my small, critical role within it.

“Then because she seemed so interested in the subject of Me, I confessed my age and gave a brief thorough accounting of past missions as well as some of the tricks that I was capable of.”

The voice fell away.

In the blackness, a body stretched until the bones or carapace creaked, a sharp dry crack coming at the end.

“That lover was my second challenge,” said the voice.  “Although at that particular moment, I didn’t appreciate the danger.”

Quee Lee leaned away from Perri, begging her dark-adapted eyes to find any trace of wayward light.  If she could just make out the creature that was sitting so close to them–

No.  Nothing.

“One of our shared nights never seemed to end,” said the voice.  “Normal fatigues don’t trouble me, but my lover, no matter how much improved genetically, needed sleep.  She lived for dreams.  Yet the girl somehow resisted every urge to close her lovely dark eyes.  Twice in the dark, she managed to surprise me with tricks she had never shown before.  I was appreciative.  How could I not be?  But then as the full moon set and the bright summer sun began to rise, she whispered, ‘I was wondering my lord…about something else…’

“‘What?’ I asked.

“‘But maybe I shouldn’t,’ she conceded.

“‘Ask me anything,’ I said, never voicing the obvious possibility that I wouldn’t reply, or that I might simply lie.

“With a sleepy slow voice, my lover confessed, ‘I am curious.  When you speak of old missions, you usually seem to be out between the stars, or huddled beside some dying star, or cloaked inside a storm cloud of interstellar dust…’

“I nodded, and for a moment, she seemed to drop into sleep.

“But then she roused herself with a gasp, straightening her little body before asking, ‘Why come here?  Why visit our little world, my lord?’

“‘It suits my present mission,’ I conceded.  ‘Your volcano and the sea water are rich with rare elements and useful minerals—’

“‘But you have told me this before…in other nights, you explained that in the baby days of any solar system, some if not most of the new worlds are flung out into the night.  Their oceans freeze.  Their atmospheres fall as snow.  But radiation keeps their iron cores molten, and volcanoes still bubble up beneath the bitter ice, and a god like you could surely bring temporary life to those unnamed realms…’

“I listened to her, perhaps not quite believing just how bright she was.

“Then very quietly, I reminded her, ‘Like those cold places, this world possesses no name.  As far as the universe is concerned, your home is a random lump of dust and still-simple life forms.’

“For a long while, she stared at me.

“Those beautiful dark eyes…I cannot mention those eyes and not feel shame…a burning disgrace that keeps me from describing to you just how deep their hold was on me…

“But then the eyes closed, and my lover drifted into a rich, much deserved sleep.  I thought the matter was finished.  I didn’t want to entertain any other possibility.  And really, what reason did I have to believe that this worshipful little creature was a threat, or even if she was a threat that she could be ever present a genuine danger to the likes of me?

“I covered her with a fine linen sheet.

“Then for the following days and months, and years, nothing changed.  No word or incident raised even the tiniest suspicion on my part.  My lover was the same to me as she had always been, and I was as pleasant and giving to her and to all of my people.

“And then my third challenge arrived.  This danger came from the sky, and even at a great distance, it brought the worst possible trouble.  Out on the edge of the solar system was an automated probe.  A harum-scarum probe was moving at a small fraction of light-speed.  The harum-scarums have always been aggressive in their explorations and colonizations, and now one of their sharp-eyed robots was plunging out of the darkness, threatening to fly past my world while taking note of everything that might bear interest.

“I couldn’t allow myself or my good work be seen.

“And sadly, the machines that I had left in orbit couldn’t protect me.  I needed to leave the island.  Wisely, I didn’t offer reasons or predict when I would return.  As far as my people knew, I would be back among them before the next sunset or the coming full moon.  But I begged them to continue our work—the delicate fabrication of a single machine that meant everything to me and to them.”

In the dark, the voice dropped into a long airy sigh.

Then quietly, but with an unhealed pain, their companion said, “This was the moment when the rebellion began.  And I think you can guess who stood on the silk cushions of my empty throne, whirling a titanium hammer above her head, shouting to the throng, ‘It is time to save our world, my friends!  To rescue our futures and gain control over our souls!’”

Emotions lay rich and fresh in the silence, born out of a sadness that could not be forgotten.  Or maybe there was only silence, black and seamless, and the misery and burning sense of loss were supplied entirely by the human audience.  It was impossible to tell which answer was correct, or if both were a little true.  But then the humans heard a limb flex, the invisible body creaking as it shifted, not once but three times in quick succession.  When the voice returned, it seemed slower.  Each word was delivered alone, and between one word and the next laid a tiny silence, like a cold black mortar pushed between warm red bricks.

“I could have destroyed the automated probe at a distance.  I could have used methods that would have made harum-scarum scientists believe that bad luck was responsible.  Some random rock, a cosmic hazard that slipped past the machine’s various armors.  Nothing would seem too unusual about that.  But erasing the danger was not the only problem.  Harum-scarum probes are relatively common in our galaxy, and if I blithely obliterated them whenever our paths crossed, somebody would eventually see the pattern in my clumsiness.

“No, what I did was rise up into the sky to meet the danger directly.

“Like you, I am the loyal subject to a variety of laws concerning motion and energy.  I had to race out into the solar system for a considerable distance, and then with methods that I cannot share, I invisibly changed my trajectory, racing back again, making certain that my momentum carried me close to the probe’s vector.

“Together, that machine and I dove into the hot glare of the sun.  I studied my opponent while it absorbed images of the two inner worlds.  Then we climbed away from the sun, and at a moment when I would escape notice, I drifted closer and touched the machine with a thousand fingers, allowing its giant eyes to do their work even as I changed a small portion of what it could see.

“Together, we passed between the gray moon and my blue-green world.

“And then the danger was finished.  The probe turned its attentions to the little red world coming next, and with my chore accomplished, I glanced backward, examining my home with my own considerable eyes.

“The rebellion was well underway.

“Twenty different security systems had been fooled, or by various means disabled.  And now my clever little grandchildren had full control over their land and the ocean around them.

“Feigning loyalty, they had continued building the machine.

“Pretending subservience, most of them moved through their lives in the expected ways.  But others openly prayed that I was dead, even while they planned my murder should I return.  And still others pretended to die, their names removed from the city’s rosters, freeing them to journey over to the mainland, taking with them tools and skills as well as a story that would inspire the primitive souls they would find waiting there.

“I was furious.

“In ways quite rare to me, I felt the powerful, consuming need for revenge.

“But motion and energy still held sway.  I could not roar home in the next instant, and if I didn’t wish to be noticed by the probe beside me, I would have to be patient enough to obey my original plan.

“Easing away from the probe consumed many days.

“I spent another month pushing against the universe, slowing myself to a near-halt before turning and plunging back into the brilliant sunshine.

“By then, the harum-scarum eyes were distant.  But if the probe happened to glance back at my world, it might have noticed an island exploding before its time, a dark cloud spreading while a deep bubbling caldera defined the island’s grave.  But I resisted that instinctive violence.  Destroying my own work would have been an unacceptable cost, and worse, it would have been graceless.

“And of course I could have remotely shut down the entire operation, protecting my investment from malicious hands.  But that meant new risks as well as long, embarrassing delays.

“Instead, I decided to dance with complete disaster, but aiming for total success.”

After those words, a long pause seemed necessary.

Finally, Perri said, “You won’t tell us.  I know.  But we would appreciate to know what the stakes were.”

“I would like to know,” Quee Lee said.

“What exactly you were building?” her husband pressed.

“Britannia,” the voice replied.  “Like any empire worth its salt…”  A weak laugh washed over them.  “How can you separate a true empire from all of the little pretenders?  What did the British possess that their vanquished opponents lacked?  Why were those Northern men superior to the tropical peasants in the field and the dogs in the street?

“Any good empire holds at least one skill that is its own.

“The Greeks had their highly-trained hoplites and several unique if contradictory forms of government.  The Chinese had the most enduring civil services ever seen on your world.  Romans were possessed by their engineering and brutal legions.  And so long as British boats owned the seas, their power was accepted by a world that saw no option but bow in their mighty presence.

“An empire is always smarter than its competition.

“And my Union is far, far smarter than the human species.  Or any other species you can name, for that matter.

“The device I was building…?  Well, I will tell you that it was a single component meant to be set inside a much larger machine.  And that it was extremely rare and very valuable, embodying sciences that you have never mastered.  Once assembled, the full apparatus can wield principles that your most brilliant minds might recognize as possible, but only that.  The apparatus is magic.  It is gorgeous.  It was, and is, worth every cost.”

A brief pause ended with Quee Lee’s voice.

“So you returned to the Earth,” she said.  “To Thera, or Atlantis.  Although it wore different names then, I suppose.”

“Whatever the world, whatever the island,” said the voice.  “Yes, I returned, yes.  To find my grandchildren engaged in an artful rebellion.”

There was a long, contemplative pause.

Finally Perri asked, “And what happened then?”

“Worth every cost,” the entity said once again.  “I speak without doubts, telling you what I did that day.  And for that matter, what I would do on this day, in an instant, if I saw any threat to my enduring Union.

“I would protect what I love.”