Galactic Empires

by Gardner R. Dozois

  " 'They speak of us,' the young man reported. 'The rest of our world believes that we are gods or the angels of gods, or that we have descended from the stars. They have convinced themselves that if they defeat the sea monsters and outsmart the currents, they can row 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 you're telling us about… were they human?"

  There was a sound, soft but disgusted.

  "Atlantis?" Quee Lee whispered. "Is that what this story is?"

  "My thought exactly," Perri confessed, hugging her until her ribs ached. Then he said the ancient word for himself, pronouncing, "Atlantis," in the appropriate dead language.

  "Once again," the voice replied, "you have forgotten: The galaxy had no name for that world, much less for that long-ago island. But I cannot 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, "It must be," with relish.

  They had decided, together.

  Atlantis, yes.

  "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 serves as a source of information, and oftentimes a tool for good methodical management. Bedding those who are most beautiful and intriguing is just 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's just as likely that she could have been a man.

  "By the standards of her species, she was 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 perfectly natural. That she retained her virginity until that night only enhanced her reputation with her own 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 to me. 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 be discussed with her people. 'You will not repeat any 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 occasions when I mentioned the Union and my small, critical role within it.

  "Then, because she seemed so very interested in the subject of Me, I confessed my true age and delivered a brief but 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 and gave a sharp dry crack.

  "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," the voice offered. "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.

  " 'I am curious,' my lover confessed, her voice sleepy and slow. '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.'

  "For a moment, she seemed to drop into sleep.

  "But then she roused herself with a gasp, straightening her little body and asking, 'Why come here? Why visit our little world, my lord?'

  " 'It suits my present mission,' I conceded. 'Your volcano and the seawater are rich with rare elements and useful minerals-'

  " 'But you have told me before this… on 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 a temporary life to those unnamed realms.'

  "I listened, 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 shame 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, that she could be ever be 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, as it happened, moving at a small fraction of lightspeed. 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 to 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 with 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 seemed to 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!' "

  * * *

  IX

  Within the silence lay emotions rich and fresh, 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 lay 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. Just 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 close 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.

  "Soon the danger was finished. The probe turned its attentions to the little red world coming up next, and, with my chore accomplished, I happened to glance backward, examining my home with my own considerable eyes.

  "The rebellion was well under way.

  "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 to build 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 a 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 out the probe's view 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. If the probe happened to glance back at my world, it could have noticed an island exploding, a dark cloud spreading, and a deep bubbling caldera left in the island's place. But I resisted that instinctive violence. Destroying my own work would have been an unacceptable cost, and worse, it would have been graceless.

  "And I could have remotely shut down the entire operation, protecting my investment from malicious hands. But that meant new risks as well as long 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 knowing what the stakes were."

  "I'd like to know," Quee Lee voted.

  "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 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 competing forms of government. The Chinese had the most enduring civil services ever seen on your world. Romans were possessed of their engineering and their 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 just 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 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?"

  "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 that there was any threat to my enduring Union."

  * * *

  X

  Until that moment, the voice had been just so much noise. It was interesting and entertaining noise, the words intriguing if not completely believable. The narrative was compelling enough, the humans feeling empathy and hope for the creatures that could well have been their own ancestors. They listened carefully to every portion of the disjointed tale, trying to guess what would happen next and then next after that; but there was no moment when they stopped wondering what kind of body was connected to the voice. Until then, that was the central question that kept begging to be answered.

  Then they heard the words "To protect the Union," and that simple utterance changed everything.

  Wrapped around a bald statement was stiff, unyielding emotion. Quee Lee and Perri heard the threat, the promise, the conviction and purpose-and they instantly believed what they heard. Now both of them were considering what it would mean if this story, as unlikely as it seemed, was in some fashion or another true. And that was when the formless entity beside them-mysterious and unknowable, bristly and proud-became markedly less interesting than the grim bit of history it was sharing with them now.

  Human hands grabbed one another.

  Each lover felt the other's body bracing for whatever came next.

  Another silence was what the voice decided to offer. And then, from the perfect darkness, came a sound not unlike a tongue or two licking against lips threatening to grow dry.

  Quee Lee and Perri had been married for tens of thousands of years. But as long as that might seem to be, marriage was infinitely older than their single relationship. And there were species that took intimacy to higher levels t
han humans could manage. The Janusians, for instance: Their little husbands rooted into the body of female hosts, literally joining into One. But among human animals, Quee Lee and Perri were famous. Their relationship had evolved gradually, becoming something complex and robust, enduring and very nearly impossible to define. There were a few humans who spent more time together than the two of them. Unlikely as it seemed, some married souls enjoyed their physical lives even more than these two managed to. But no one could believe that any other human pair, on the Ship and perhaps anywhere else in the universe, was emotionally closer than that ancient Earth-born lady and her boyish life-mate.

  At some point, everybody tried to tease them.

  The happy couple generally welcomed good-natured barbs and admiring glances. But when asked to explain their success-when some friend of a friend insisted on advice for less perfect relationships-they grew testy and impatient, and even a little defensive. The truth was that they were helpless to define their relationship. A marriage was always larger than its participants, and what they possessed here was as mysterious and unlikely to them as it seemed to distant eyes. They couldn't understand why they had drawn so closely together. They didn't see why life had not yet found the means to yank them apart. But they were undeniably intimate and deeply dependent, up to the point where Quee Lee and Perri could never imagine being separated from each other in any lasting, meaningful way.

  "Can you read each other's thoughts?" people wanted to know.

  Not at all, no.

  "But it seems like you can," some maintained. "The way you each know what the other wants, what they're about to say and do."

  Did they do that?

  "There's a trick at work," a few declared. "Dedicated nexuses that do nothing but let your minds share thoughts and feelings. Is that what you're doing right now?"