The View from the Imperium (21 page)

“You know, every Emperor has so much on his or her mind . . .”

“But this hotel is a jewel to be used and cherished,” Parsons said smoothly. “You have reason to be proud of it.”

“Magnificent,” murmured Plet, her eyes wide. The locals clearly agreed.

It wasn’t bad, at that.

Fine chandeliers of perfect crystal were spaced around the clear ceiling, looking like fallen stars. The walls were covered with a soft, almost velvet matte substance in a deep, midnight blue. The bronze sconces added to their richness. In the middle was a cluster of tables, dwarfed as our group had been by the sheer size of the regal chamber.

“We could have a wonderful tri-tennis tournament in here, couldn’t we, Parsons?” I asked.

“No, sir,” Parsons said.

“It’s pretty big for just us,” Oskelev said, shyly.

“Rather,” I agreed. “I expected an intimate room. This is too much. You shouldn’t have, really.”

“We left it open in your honor,” the blond woman said, looking a trifle put out. “I can make the room smaller if you choose.”

“Only if it would be more convenient for you,” I said.

“It is easy to arrange,” Ms. Lutsen said. “This controls the configurations.”

She led me to a panel in the middle of the left side wall and began to fiddle with the touch pads beside a small screen. The smooth walls divided into panels. Between those panels, crystal platforms shot out and met in the middle. From the floor, others grew up, meeting and intersecting until we were looking into a honeycomb of fifteen chambers, all with identical dark blue side walls and crystal ceilings. Our proposed dinner room had been reduced to a more reasonable size. I was enchanted.

“Marvelous!” I said. “May I try?”

Ms. Lutsen considered for a moment then reluctantly made way for me at the console. I approached it avidly. The screen, about half a meter square, displayed two views of the room: as seen from eye level and from above. I had seen her touch her finger and draw it along to coax the floor sections out of the wall, so I emulated her action. I dragged the levels away one by one and put them back whence they had come. The gigantic room opened up again, leaving the new wall sections that had risen out of the floor standing.

“Ha ha!” I chortled. “This is genius!”

I tapped the uprights down all at once then coaxed them up again partway in an inverted bell curve. A red light went on on the panel and a genteel beep sounded.

“What is that?” I asked, jumping away. I feared I had activated some control by accident.

“If you overrode the failsafe, our grand staircase would ascend in the center of the room where the tables are placed,” the manageress explained. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

I observed that our banquet tables did remain serenely untouched. A pity. I would have enjoyed seeing the grand staircase. I went back to my explorations.

When I activated the floor units, they only grew out as far as the wall sections. The innermost rose only a quarter of the way, to chest-high on an average upright being, so that anyone standing in one of the rooms facing the canyon I had constructed had a view across it.

“A parapet!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, sir. Some conferences like an open plan arrangement.”

But walls and floors were not all the hidden beauties of the system. For each columnar unit at a remove from the main walls, spiral staircases corkscrewed up out of the floor up to the highest level. Light fibers concealed in the wall sections could be programmed to emulate the bronze sconces or a spiderweb-light network of illumination. A panel of open slots showed where data chips could be inserted to customize. I was enchanted.

I attacked the control panel with eager fingers. I made corridors, designed mazes, opened up atria and closed them again like a large fish snapping its mouth shut on prey. I discovered that the wise architects who had designed the system prevented me from creating a room that would endanger its inhabitants—for example, I could not raise a floor four stories up to the glowing ceiling without safety rails at least a meter high springing up all around its edge without an override (which Ms. Lutsen very wisely refused to give me). Nor would walls or ceilings interrupt any location where the system sensed living beings (shown as tiny glowing dots on the panel).

I slung walls and floors around at random, until the whole resembled a stage set of a traveling theatrical group, then with glee, smacked my open palm on the panel, activating all the controls at once, splitting the ballroom into the maximum number of chambers possible. We ducked as a piece of ceiling shot out of the wall. I felt above me to discover that our head space had been capped at half the height I thought was possible, just above my head. We found ourselves in a small box without doors or staircase. The light shining through from the ceiling panel only served to emphasize the lack of size.

“Good heavens, look at that,” I said, peering at the elevation map beside the controls. “I’ve seen dormitories with larger cubicles. And I don’t see a way out of here.”

“This is the maximum division possible,” Ms. Lutsen said. She started feeling the walls with her palms. “I . . . I’ve never seen it on full like that. We should have an emergency exit at least. That is a design flaw.”

“Well, now that you know about it, you can have it repaired,” I said, grandly. I consigned the extraneous walls, ceilings and staircases to their places of concealment, restoring the room to its glory. The candlelit tables beckoned invitingly. Servers in hotel livery, a mix of biological and mechanical, glided smoothly in the room alongside a flotilla of mobile trays. “What a fantastic arrangement.”

“Fit for the Emperor!” proclaimed Chan.

“Oh, well, I wouldn’t go that far,” I began, but Parsons cut me off.

“Champagne, Captain?” he said, as an eager young server with a well-scrubbed face appeared at our side. He helped Chan to a flute of sparkling golden liquid. “Sir?”

I recovered my good manners. “That’s amazing fun,” I told the manageress. “I’d never stop playing with those controls.”

“If you wish, Lord Thomas,” she said, a trifle reluctantly. “We only wish to make you feel welcome.”

I felt Parsons’s eyes upon me, but I knew perfectly well when to put down someone else’s toy and step away. With regret, I bowed low, my hands at my sides.

“No, thank you so very much. I have enjoyed myself. Thank you so much for the chance to try them. I will tell everyone at home all about the Smithereen Prime Hotel. They will be fascinated, and perhaps wish to come and see it for themselves.” Unlikely, I thought, as Smithereen was not an amusing place to anyone who was not on assignment, but it was the polite thing to say. The manageress looked infinitely relieved. She closed the panel and minced hastily from the room, perhaps lest I change my mind.

“
Lord
Thomas,” sighed Margolies, his eyes dreamy as he downed a glass of bubbling wine. He belched. “I never met a nobby before. You folks seem as imaginary as video stars.”

“Then you should get to know me better. Ask me anything!” I offered expansively, throwing my arms wide, though it splashed a milliliter of my drink on the plush carpet, which drank it up without a trace. Marvelous room. It would be worth its weight in memory crystals to half the hosts in the Imperium compound. “I’ve fulfilled my duty to the Navy; let us all have a good chat.”

My lighthearted offer opened unexpected floodgates. Eager faces swarmed in around me, shouting to be heard.

“Are you a duke or a prince?”

“Do you people really eat lark’s tongues and trifle? What do they taste like?”

“Do you have to sleep in a bubble to keep from breathing everyone else’s air?”

“What’s the Emperor like? Do you talk to him much?”

Most of their questions were ones I had answered before, at the table with my fellow ensigns. I noticed Oskelev peering between the shoulders of some of the miners, nodding her furry head. I expected that I’d been the subject of some gossip on shipboard. She was undoubtedly recording my new replies for upload to her own friends later on. No matter. I had nothing to hide. Thanks to my friends and cousins, all of my most embarrassing peccadilloes were easily found on Infogrid, in living color, three dimensions and with accompanying soundtrack.

“Well, I am too far down the family tree for an exalted title like duke,” I began, “and one has to be a son or brother of the monarch to qualify as a prince,
but
. . .”

I prattled cheerfully about my family, my life at home, my mother, my friends and education, my likes, dislikes, turn-ons and turn-offs, favorite colors and foods, hopes, dreams, aspirations and hobbies. I told them all about life in the Imperium compound. With little urging, I told a mild story or two about diplomatic visitors, official rituals and ceremonies, and what I could recall of the coronation of my cousin that had not been aired on galaxy-wide video. The militia and their families listened, agog.

It was a thrill for me to be among real people like this. The only currency I had to repay them for their kindness was a glimpse into my world. The group around me shifted as the querents were satisfied and moved to make room for others. I answered hundreds of questions with all the detail I could recall, aided in part by my collection of images stored in the personal file of my communications unit.

Now and again I caught glimpses of roboservers trundling in with loads of crockery and crystal, and the unmistakable savory but invariably bitter aroma of banquet food began to waft about my nostrils. The thought of food, however, was swirled away in the eddy of adulation and interest from my audience, though it struggled to the surface now and again, buoyed by my growing awareness of hunger. Canapés only reminded me of the gap left by my long-digested breakfast.

When all had been prepared, Chan nudged my elbow and we moved toward the tables. I responded with alacrity, but the questioning never ceased. Our small group had grown to hundreds as other Smithereenians joined the throng. Chan and Chee were the only members of the militia who remained at my table with me, Parsons and Plet. The newcomers, whom I judged to be local officials, were friendly, with their own curiosity to satisfy. I gulped my food as quickly as I could, babbling in between bites. I felt like the groom at a wedding reception. Now and again I looked for Parsons to ensure that I was not embarrassing my family or the Emperor, but every time I met his eyes, he gave me a bland-faced nod.

“Oh, no, we’re not supposed to promote products or candidates, but I know of several instances where it’s occurred. I never did it myself,” I added self-deprecatingly, “but perhaps the right offer hasn’t come along. I’m only human, after all.”

“Thanks, my lord,” said Bendrum Halubi, an engineer from Mining Ship Number Four. “Thought it that video was a mashup.”

“ ’Scuse me, my lordship,” Chee Rubin-Sign asked, raising a finger shyly. I smiled at her encouragingly. I was rather getting used to the host of admiring eyes. In fact, I liked it. Pity my charm seemed to be lost on my fellow shipmates aboard the
Wedjet
. “Can the Emperor order you to marry your sister?”

“Actually, by law, he can,” I said, feeling my cheeks turning as red as the roasted lily bulb on my salad plate. It was the sort of question I had been rather dreading, but I suppose it was inevitable, as I had offered freely to lay out the details of my life, and this was a fact of it. “It’s been espoused in the ancient laws for as long as there has been an Imperium. The Emperor has the right to oversee the genetic wellbeing of his people, and that includes giving rise to a combination of DNA that is felt to be lacking in the population, even if it means an unnatural relationship between, as you suggest, immediate siblings.”

Her eyes gleamed avidly. “And you would obey, if you were ordered?”

“I would have to,” I said. “My oath of fealty to the emperor means he has domain over my person, my possessions and my fate, as he sees fit. But modern technology means there doesn’t have to be a
personal
encounter,” I hastened to add. “I mean, it’s sickening, even if my sister is an attractive woman. I feel most strongly that she should be attached to some other person. Firmly. Of her choice. As I hope she will allow me.”

To cover my discomfort, I took a large bite of the pungent bulb. My eyes watered a little, blurring the mix of expressions on the faces of my listeners. We all felt a little uncomfortable, except for the Uctus, whose recombinant genetic material was far more stable than humans or Wichus and did not cause idiocy or mutation when bred closely even for generations. Hence, the tendencies for Uctus to look very much alike.

“Does your sister try to match you up with girls?” Plet asked, in a friendly attempt to change the topic. Could that be a crack in her armor of diffidence? I turned my most grateful gaze upon her.

“All the time!” I exclaimed. “And my aunts, too! I do not know where they find these ladies, but believe me, none of them has been even remotely compatible. Not that I am reluctant to fall in love . . .”

Parsons took the napkin off his lap and folded it neatly to one side of his plate. He rose.

“If you will excuse me, Captain and sir?” he asked, nodding to Chan and me.

I gawked at him. “Is something wrong?” By which, I meant, had
I
done something wrong. I did not want to have to endure another verbal drubbing from the admiral. Parsons’s head moved almost imperceptibly from side to side.

“No, indeed, sir,” he said. “I have an errand to run in the main shopping district. If I may depart . . . ?”

As if I dared refuse him. Parsons had his mysterious ways, and only the foolhardy deterred him from them.

“Of course,” I said, loftily. “A new town, new sights. If any of the crew wish to join you, they have my permission to go as well.” I scanned for my crew. They were keeping watch on me out of the corners of their eye but otherwise enjoying themselves. Bailly rose to his feet.

“No, sir,” Parsons said, firmly. “It would be well if they remained here with you and enjoyed the offered hospitality. In fact, I recommend strongly that none of you depart from this chamber until I return.” That had the authority of an order. Bailly looked crestfallen. I frowned.