by T S Hottle
“What are they doing here?” said Best.
“We have to have colonists to run this place Best,” said Luxhomme. “You have a religious faction you want to keep happy if you want peace on Jefivah. So I recruited some Marilynists to be the vanguard settlers. All you have to do is sign off on making this planet their own, and you’ll be their hero.”
Great. Luxhomme had just made Best a hero in the tackiest religion in the Compact.
* **
The humorless men in their dark suits showed up at Best’s office on Jefivah six months after he witnessed the missiles’ removal. They made no appointment, nor did any of Best’s staff announce them. They simply strode into his office as if they owned the place.
“Agent Rostov,” said the first one, a light-skinned Euro like Best. “Compact Security. This is a Major Liu of Naval Intelligence.”
“How did you get in here?” asked Best. “And who is that behind you?” He pointed to a short, mousy woman standing behind Rostov and Liu making little effort to be seen. “Interstellar Revenue? Where’s my refund?”
“We’ll be asking the questions,” said Liu, a stocky Asian whose accent betrayed an Earth upbringing. “Where are our warheads, Minister?”
“I’m sorry?” said Best. “What warheads?”
Rostov leaned on his fists over Best’s desk. “The last seven warheads you had removed from the planet now known as Marilyn so that full colonization could proceed.”
“Oh,” said Best. “Forgot all about them. JunoCorp, the company that’s customizing grain for our new colonies, contracted a firm to transport them to…” Best had assumed the warheads had gone to Tian, humanity’s largest world and the real hub of the Compact. “I assumed Naval Command took custody of them.”
“We did not,” said Liu, an edge creeping into his voice. He circled the desk so that, despite his short stature, he towered over the sitting Best. “In fact, the Zeus Arsenal has no record of any warheads scheduled to be transported from Marilyn, much less any receipt of them.”
“They tend to notice things like that,” said Rostov. “It’s their job.”
“What we do know is that there was some sort of mishap with the last torpedo to be extracted from the planet then called 978-0765309402d.” Liu leaned in, crowding Best. “And now that world has been renamed ‘Marilyn’, in honor of the goddess of a Jefivan cult.”
“You knew the Marilynists are on Compact Security’s watch list,” said Rostov. “And now you’re giving them an entire colony.”
Best laughed. “Can you think of a better way to get rid of a nuisance faction?”
“I can’t think of a better way to give a terrorist group a base away from the supervision of their world’s constituent authority,” said Liu. “And with those warheads missing, I have to question whether they even left Marilyn.”
Best stood, forcing Liu to back away. “Gentlemen, JunoCorp arranged to disarm Marilyn. And Gallifrey, which makes a much better colony in my opinion.” Turning to Liu, he realized he could now look down on the man in black for a change. “The Navy never responded to our requests for the disarmament of the three worlds we accepted. Not until our delegates to the Compact demanded it during a Security Council meeting. Mr. Luxhomme, JunoCorp’s agent, arranged for a private company to transport the weapons. Please tell me you received all the other warheads we shipped you.”
“We did,” said Rostov.
“Then I suggest you ask the shipping company about the remaining seven,” said Best.
Rostov turned to the woman who had entered with him and Liu. “We did, Minister. This is Magna Piori of Dasarius Interstellar.”
The mousy woman finally stepped forward and offered her hand. She looked like an accountant, which made her livelier than Rostov and Liu in Best’s mind. “I’m the asset loss investigator for Dasarius’s colonial operations. Mr. Best, your last warheads were scheduled to leave… You really called the planet ‘Marilyn’?”
Best smiled. “The colonists did. We wanted to call it ‘Sahara,’ but we don’t live there, do we?”
“Sounds like someone’s aunt,” said Piori. “Anyway, we sent the ship Etrusca Explorer to transport the warheads to a location to be determined later. Tian we assume, from what you told us.”
“Great,” said Best. “So question the captain and find out what he did with his cargo.”
“They can’t, Best,” said Rostov.
Not “Minister.” Just “Best.” Best felt his guts begin to turn.
“We can’t find the Etrusca Explorer,” said Piori. “It’s missing.”
Best went numb as Liu cuffed him and Rostov explained his rights under the Compact.
* **
The riots began the moment Best’s suspension became news. They began slowly, Marilynists all over Jefivah gathering outside their temples to sing hymns to the Blessed Diva, praying for Best’s release. In the capital Tyson, however, the prayer vigils turned to marches within half an hour. The marches then converged on the primitive jail that, after centuries, still served as Tyson’s central holding facility. They began throwing rocks at police and any civilian employees stepping out of the building. There were shouts, barricades, eventually stun gas.
Things came to a head when police shot two protestors. The First Minister might have called out the Planetary Guard for Tyson, only Marilynists made up the bulk of troops in the Federal Province, which meant that the two-thirds of the soldiers activated to pacify the rioters would be rioters themselves.
That was when the Grand Dimaj stepped in.
Among Marilynists, male priests represented the one true love of the Blessed Mother’s life and derived their title, Dimaj, from his name. The female priests represented the Blessed Mother herself and derived their title, Normaj, from her temporal birth name. So when a thin, gaunt man in a white robe carrying a pocket amplifier called for his faithful to calm down and stop attacking the police, they listened.
So did the police. After all, troops from other regions had been called out, and those troops, be they Abrahamists, atheists or the more common “don’t-give-a-shitters,” tended to be overwhelmingly secular in most matters. For both sides, listening to the strange man in the long white robe would end better than black-armored Planetary Guards stomping Tyson into submission.
The Dimaj managed to calm the crowd and asked the authorities to see Minister Best in his cell. After all, the man was a prophet of the Blessed Mother, whether he knew it or not.
Best watched warily as the Dimaj approached the archaic jail cell where he was being held – a three-sided alcove measuring no more than three by four meters, with a metal toilet and two thin bunks, all walled off by plexiglass. The Dimaj frowned when he ran a hand over the plexiglass. Modern cells used force fields and afforded inmates some degree of privacy.
“No wonder our world is a backwater,” he said without preamble as he was escorted to the clear walls of Best’s cell. “They treat child molesters better on other worlds.”
“Child molesters,” said Best, not bothering to rise from the bottom bunk where he lay, “are considered mentally deficient and assigned nano-therapy to cure their urges.” He sat up and glared at the Dimaj. “And isn’t it a bit hypocritical that a man whose duties include relieving young Marilynists of their virginity is talking about child molesters in prison?”
“The young faithful are of legal age when they make love to the Blessed Mother through me and my brother and sister acolytes. It is a rite of passage in our faith.”
Best lay back down and closed his eyes. “Yeah, well, the sooner you lead your faithful to their new colony, the sooner Jefivah can modernize.”
“If you mean that dust ball 402d,” said the Dimaj, referring to the planet now called Marilyn by its shortened catalog name, “bear in mind that your government picked out two more temperate worlds as colonies. Giving us the least desirable planet of the three is hardly incentive to leave.”
“At least we didn’t name them after an ancient actres
s some cult employs as a sexbot.”
“No, you named one after the home of a time travelling crackpot and another after a literary prank.”
“Gallifrey and Baritaria,” said Best. “The last one was my idea.”
“Why?”
“Because, Your Holiness, over the course of my career, I’ve come to believe that Jefivah was originally settled as a prank. Even Earth is more forward-thinking and modern than this mudhole, and Jefivah has more resources.”
The Dimaj smiled. “If the general populace would only accept the love of the Blessed Mother, we would be unified, and this world would take its place among the other founding worlds of the Compact.”
“Well, until then, I’m going to simply plead guilty and ask for exile to someplace like Metis or Belsham. Maybe I can get a teaching position.”
“No one wants to learn law and government from an exiled hick.” The Dimaj stepped closer to the partition. “Besides, Minister Best, your arraignment and trial have been postponed.”
Best sat up. “I beg your pardon?”
“You are being given a reprieve of sorts,” said the Dimaj. “As you are a prophet of our faith, the First Minister has agreed to release you into my custody.”
Best jumped to his feet and came up to the partition. “I’m not a Marilynist. I’m secular. And how does taking your faith help me?”
“It doesn’t. And I don’t expect you to accept the Blessed Mother. But because it was your initiative that allowed the new colony Marilyn to come into existence, my people see you as a prophet.”
“What exactly does that mean, anyway?”
“Well, since we are a relatively new faith, anything you want. I suggest you take advantage of it while you can.” The Dimaj favored Best with a thin smile. “But among other things, it means you are the best man, no pun intended, to search for the one person who threatens to shut down our new world and strand us among you on this Mother-forsaken rock.”
“And who would that be?”
“I believe you know him as ‘Luxhomme’?”
* **
Best spent the last half of the trip throwing up into his flight bag. Traveling to and from the hypergates did not bother him. Most of the time, he had no clue the spacecraft was even moving. That brief interval when the ship would enter a wormhole, however…
The human mind was not designed to deal with more than four directions. In fact, time was, for all the physicists’ talk of it being intertwined with three-dimensional space, simply why everything didn’t happen at once. Inside wormholes, however, a ship moved in directions the human brain lacked the wiring to perceive. For a small number of people, this meant sudden, often violent nausea. If a world’s hypergates were not calibrated properly, the number of affected people grew.
Jefivah’s hypergates dated back two centuries. Often times, the planet had to wait months to find a contractor to recalibrate their network, the knowledge required for technology that old becoming rarer and rarer.
“Are you all right?” asked the Dimaj when Best’s vomiting had turned to dry heaves.
Best looked up at the Dimaj and nodded, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Now that the ship was in transit to The Caliphate, his nausea was starting to subside. “Glad we didn’t take a projection drive ship,” he said, referring to the class of vessels that could create their own wormholes. He had taken half a dozen of those ships in his lifetime. After his first trip on one, he made it a point to be sedated the entire flight.
“Are you sure it’s safe for you to be in your… priestly garb here?” he asked.
The Dimaj sat impassively in his seat, his eyes fixed on the human flight attendant, a Nordic female who looked very much like his goddess. “We will stay in the Secular Quarter of Rashidun. I may not be one of the People of the Book, but in that part of the city, it doesn’t matter.”
Best leaned back in his seat to wait for the ill effects of the wormhole transit to subside. “That’s good. Last thing I need is to get thrown in jail for ordering a ham sandwich.”
“Almost all ham is vat grown these days,” said the Dimaj. “Therefore, Jews and Muslims can eat it.”
Best sat up and looked over at his benefactor. “It was a joke.”
“I never joke about faith. Or even someone’s lack of it.”
Everyone jokes about yours, thought Best. Before he could say anything else, the captain came over the ship’s speakers and announced that reentry would begin in five minutes.
* **
JunoCorp had its headquarters on the 110th floor of the Burj Rashidun, a gaudy, monstrous replica of the Burj Khalifa that once towered over Dubai on old Earth. Actually, the building stood roughly five hundred meters taller than the original. Best expected a spectacular view of Rashidun, capital of The Caliphate, and the surrounding plains.
JunoCorp’s offices were tucked into a corner of the building that allowed an impressive, but not breathtaking, view of the city’s so-called Recycling Quarter and a dull conglomeration of suburbs to the southeast of town. Best could get that standing on a mountainside outside of Tyson on Jefivah.
He and the Dimaj barely had time to take in the view as they were escorted to the center of the floor. Instead of an executive suite, the concierge drone led them to a large room dominated by a swimming pool. Best wondered how so much water could be contained on the one hundred and tenth floor of a building. Even with smart structures, nano-polymer framing, and wind compensators, a pool would have been something to keep below the fiftieth floor.
Or were skyscrapers yet another technology where Jefivah was a century or two behind the rest of the Compact?
“I suppose it seems odd,” said an older gentleman named Pope as he watched his guests survey the room. Unlike the Dimaj and Best, Pope seemed to be perpetually frozen at thirty, the lines in his skin evidence more of repeated rejuvenation than actual age itself. For all Best knew, Pope was in his nineties. If so, it was a good thing Pope took rejuvenation. The man swam the pool completely nude. “An Etruscan company headquartered on The Caliphate.”
“The thought occurred to us,” said the Dimaj, “but it’s not relevant to our visit.” He sat at the edge of the water with his robe up around his knees, feet kicking idly in the water.
Pope stopped to tread water and studied his two guests over. “They don’t rejuve on… Gee… Gee… Gee…”
“Jefivah,” finished Best. “Not often. It’s expensive.”
“It’s only a week’s pay for the working poor,” said Pope. “And our taxes pay for the destitute to have it done. Cheaper than paying for elder medical care. Besides, who wants to spend the final fifty or sixty years of their life wearing diapers or rolling around on a hover scooter? It’s one of the reasons we domiciled here. The taxes and Medicomp tribute are the lowest in the Compact.”
“Mr. Pope. Could we please talk about Luxhomme?” asked Best. “I’d like to track him down.”
Pope lay back and started doing the back stroke, providing a view that was much more than Best wanted to see. “Ah, yes. Luxhomme. Ambitious man, that one. Claims to be Etruscan, but we know better. Uses one of two legal aliases to pass himself off as Etruscan – one Neo-Latin, the other Byzantinian. The fact is, the man’s from Metis. Seems to be ashamed of it.”
“May I?” asked the Dimaj, eyeing the water now.
“Please,” said Pope, pushing off the end of the pool and back toward Best.
The Dimaj stood, threw off his robe, and, to Best’s horror, revealed himself to be completely nude underneath. Best remained where he was, standing back from the water’s edge, arms folded. The Dimaj plunged in and began treading water.
“Mr. Luxhomme is somewhat responsible for our people getting a new homeland,” said the Dimaj.
“His people,” said Best. “The rest of us are glad to be rid of them.”
“Maybe your people can come up with a name for your homeworld that isn’t leftover from an old stellar catalog,” said Pope, now idly floating around t
he pool on his back, much to Best’s chagrin.
“It’s worked for us for four centuries,” said Best. “Anyway, you said this Luxhomme is from Metis. Does he live there? Or here on The Caliphate?”
Pope gave what sounded like a practiced chuckle. “Oh, he seldom comes to The Caliphate. Only long enough to meet with management and have his review. Seems a former Vizir’s daughter took a shine to our Mr. Luxhomme and found herself… How shall I put this…?”
“Luxhomme knocked her up?” said the Dimaj, now also on his back, which made Best squirm even more.
“So the former Vizir believes. As modern as the culture here is, there are certain things devout Muslims still won’t do.” Pope sank to an upright position and began treading water, much to Best’s relief. “Which makes booze here expensive as hell.”
“Mister Pope,” said Best. “I am trying to locate seven weapons of mass destruction that Luxhomme arranged to have removed from one of our new colonies.”
“Is that the one your people named ‘Marilyn’?”
“The same,” said the Dimaj, his reaction to the mention of the name making Best turn away from the pool.
“Luxhomme contracted with a company called Dasarius Interstellar to move the weapons,” said Best. “The ship never arrived at any naval facility.”
“And how do you know that, Mr. Best?” asked Pope.
Best made a conscious effort to study the patterns in the painted cinder block walls he now faced. “Because the Navy and Compact Security told me.”
“And how do they know?” said Pope. “Look, we don’t live in the Blue Water Age anymore. All communication is through hypergates. All transportation is via hypergate. When the Secretary General of the Compact was assassinated ten years ago, some worlds didn’t even know about it for six months. How do you know the Dasarius ship didn’t dock at some secluded place that seldom communicates with the rest of the Compact?”
