by Bodicea
“Ciel, First Advocate of the Inner Circle of the planet Bodicéa, a fine and compassionate leader, a credit to the wisdom of her people for choosing her.” Coronado stepped forward and embraced Ciel warmly. “It is an honor to finally meet you.” Ciel returned the embrace awkwardly. “You knew of me.”
“Of course. We have been studying your world from a distance for a very long time.”
“Do you come from Earth, or one of the former colonies of the Commonwealth?” Keeler asked.
“We come from Aurelia,” she answered him.
“I have never heard of that world.”
Ignoring him, Coronado laid a hand on Ciel’s shoulder. “Your people should be proud of what you have achieved. We have encountered many of the lost sisters of the human family, but none have achieved a world of social justice and equality to the degree yours has. Your world is a wonder, and you should be proud of it. Come, let me show you some of our world.” A kind of royal barge was docked behind her, all gold and silver. It hovered a few centimeters above the deck, and was large enough to accommodate all of them. Coronado swept her arm toward the barge, bidding them on board.
“There will be just enough room for all of you. Come, let us show you our Megasphere.” CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The walls and deck fell away, evaporating as though they were no more than mist given form. The barge floated in an immense space, a golden sky suffused with light. Above them, below them, and on every side, the inner surface of the sphere was covered with parklands and structures shielded by clear crystal domes. An inner sphere, thousands of meters below, was similarly covered. A thin, bright, yellow haze, like dust suspended in the summer sky, clung to each landscape.
“We live on spheres within spheres,” Coronado explained as the barge drifted downward.
Her voice was musical, and when she spoke, it was like listening to a choir. “We have freed ourselves of planetary existence, and travel free among the stars.”
“How many spheres are there?” Keeler asked.
“Sixty-six in all, many of them unfinished spheres used for structural support and not inhabited. Most of the interior spheres are utility levels. We seldom go there. The innermost sphere contains our power and propulsion system.”
“How many people live here,” Lear asked.
“Billions and billions,” Coronado said proudly.
Keeler, Lear, Alkema, and Partridge were beginning to feel the first low throb of what would come to be known as “the Aurelian Headache.” As though an enraged village of thoughts was pounding at their minds with a battering ram.
“I don’t know how to break this to you,” Keeler continued. “But your world-ship is surrounded by alien vessels.”
Coronado laughed with gusto. “Oh, Commander Keeler. You have a lot of spirit. The ships that surround us are also a part of the Aurelian Body. They contain the Swords.”
“The Swords.”
“The sphere is home to the Echelon, and to the Cups, and the Wands, and the Pentangles, but not the Swords. The Swords were created to protect us from any harm as we travel through space. We adapted their bodies to thrive in any environment, deep space, the ocean floor, fire, intense radiation. They are our Protectors.”
“Are they alive, or are they machines?”
Coronado answered in the voice of a schoolteacher, wearying of having to explain something that should have been obvious to children persisting in ignorance. “Both and neither. They are artificial constructs, but they have living minds. We afford them the full measure of Aurelian Rights, unlike your and/oroid servants.” A smug smile played at her lips.
Keeler sensed that this display of knowledge was intended to intimidate him.
The barge dipped and carried them inward, toward the next sphere down. There was a vast lake that aspired to be a sea, surrounded by landscaped meadows and flowering trees.
Nearby, a structure of blue-white domes laid out like flower petals nestled in some artificial hillocks. Coronado guided the Barge toward that structure. An iris opened in the top and they dove in.
The interior was faintly pink colored and scented with rose essence. Music filled the air, although not from any scale or instrument Keeler or Lear could recognize. There were pools of water of sizes ranging from a few meters across to large enough to host a Pan-Galactic Swimming Tournament. Hundreds of naked Aurelians strolled and floated about, and mixed among them were people they at first took for children, and then realized were ordinary humans.
“Who are they?” Keeler asked.
“They are humans who have been chosen to live among the Echelon. Eventually, they will be reborn as Aurelians.”
“What do they do until then?”
“They serve the Echelon.”
“Willingly?”
“Of course.”
Keeler felt his heart begin to beat hard, his skin went flush and he felt a powerful erection pressing against the front of his uniform pants. His skin tingled with arousal, as though he was in the throes of passion, but it was not him. He surveyed the Aurelians. “I do believe that many of these people are copulating,” Keeler said.
Corornado laughed, her eyes gleaming. “The Hanged Man warned me your ideas on sensuality were horribly provincial. Within the sphere, we enjoy sex almost continuously. We have entire art forms, sports, and fields of study devoted to sexuality. We do not reproduce sexually. However, in our enhanced stage of evolution, we do experience orgasms beyond anything you can imagine.” Stupid, primitive man, he heard her think.
“Enhanced stage of evolution?” Keeler persisted.
“We Aurelians have evolved beyond the stage of human progress you represent. We are more enlightened, of course. Our bodies are more powerful, and more beautiful. We live for hundreds of years. Far more intelligent, our minds contemplate ideas beyond your imagining.
Your most complex theories are like nursery rhymes to us. We cast off your primitive superstitions and religions long ago.”
La-di-da, thought Keeler, now becoming aware of why the emotions and thoughts that he had been sensing from Coronado and the other Aurelians were so strong and clear. Perhaps their evolution had made the bio-electrical signatures of their brains stronger, strong enough to intrude in his thoughts. Could she read his mind? he wondered..
“The Domes of Joy are available to all, and you are welcome to partake of their pleasures at the end of our tour, but first, there is more to see.” If she knew what he was thinking, then she would know that he knew what she thinking.
If she knew that he knew what she was thinking, then he would know she knew what his thinking. He could read her thoughts pretty clearly, so he would know if she knew that he knew what she was thinking, and as far as he could tell, there was no sign that she knew that he knew what she was thinking.
Keeler decided to drop that line of thinking before he gave himself another headache.
“Am I to understand that you have no religion?” Lear asked.
Coronado’s aura of self-satisfaction fairly glowed. “We have passed beyond the need for metaphorical relationships to describe our relationship to the cosmos. We accept that we are all that is, and this has enabled us to become like gods ourselves, better in fact.”
“Better than gods?”
“The old gods of myth reserved knowledge and power for themselves, but our belief is that we must share our enlightenment with the other worlds of the galaxy. To those whom much is given, much is expected, as your philosophers put it. Pay attention, you will wish to see this.” They make it sound so nice, Keeler thought. Another iris opened in front of the barge and it slid through. They passed quickly along a flower-lined path and picked up speed as they headed toward a towering structure that mated the sphere below to the one above. The barge picked up speed, and the structure before them, grew larger and larger. The ground flew by beneath, a maze of crystalline structures and exotic plant-life. He saw other barges flitting by, containing happy naked Aurelians.
“What is the ener
gy-source of your world?” Alkema asked. He had been doing some rough calculations in his head. How much power would it take to move this world-ship through space and produce enough light and heat to sustain it? He could not scale up a fusion reaction or a quantum perpetuity large enough to provide the necessary power.
“Do you know what a white hole is?” Coronado asked.
“Za.”
“It is something like that. That is all I can say. That is all you could understand.” In her mind, she pictured them as apes, contemplating a computer. Alkema felt a strange urge to grunt and scratch his private parts. Keeler pictured himself throwing dung at her, but he had already been thinking about that before the ape at the computer image came into their heads.
The barge entered the structure through a large aperture in the side. Coronado dipped the barge to direct their attention downward. From this vantage point, it was possible to look down into a huge shaft running for hundreds of kilometers into the very depths of the sphere.
They saw levels upon levels stretching below, whole communities, and ecosystems. At the bottom was a small sun, burning with fierce blue light.
“A ship like this must take centuries to build,” Alkema said.
“Not quite so long as that, but the point remains,” Coronado said in a voice dripping with import. “Your fears about us conquering your world are not justified. We do not need to conquer worlds. We build our own.”
“Then why have you come here?” Lear asked.
“We realize it is impossible for you to imagine, but in our state of advancement, we have no need of conquest. We only seek to raise other people to our level.” Keeler then said something he would forever wish he had not. “Have you encountered a human world known as Medea?”
“Medea?” said Coronado, an inscrutable expression creasing her features. “Medea? I don’t recall ever encountering a world called Medea.”
“You would remember it, I think. Lavender skies, seas the color of clotted blood, land the color of moldering cheese, and one other detail might have stood out … every single living thing on Medea had been exterminated.”
Coronado’s lower lip trembled. “How terrible. What a tragic waste of life.” Now, Keeler could sense her discomfort, though she hid it well on her surface, resentment, hostility were in her mind, radiating a mental flavor like burning wire. “Indeed. Medea lies 43
light years from here, in the direction your fleet is coming from. At your rate of speed, you would have been there around the same time we think the catastrophe took place.”
“Assuming we traveled in a straight line,” Coronado answered seriously. “No, the last system we visited was twenty-seven light years from here. There was no colony there. There was no life on any of its worlds.”
They passed throught the great pillar and emerged from the other side, making way toward what looked almost like a city, with a great towering structure in the center.
“What do you want of Bodicéa?” Ciel asked.
“She speaks at last,” Coronado said. “For a moment, I had been concerned that you had fallen under the sway of Keeler and Lear and their frightening little fables. Not that I fault them, the Aurelian Way is far beyond their comprehension. Humans often fear that which they do not understand. We live a world of beauty, of enlightenment, of endless pleasures. We think Bodicéa is ready to join us.”
“Apparently Medea was not,” Keeler interjected.
“Look around you, Commander,” Coronado said, but with a little anger beginning to flare, like a flame at the edge of a piece of paper. “We build worlds, we have no need to conquer them.”
In his mind, Keeler could feel the emotions behind Coronado’s words. Contempt and disgust were effete cousins to what she was feeling. She wished him dead. She wished him ground in the gears of a horrible machine. She wished him smothered in hot plasma.
“How can we humble mortals ever hope to join your enlightened perfection,” Solay asked cynically.
Coronado recovered her beneficence. “If you are thinking that challenges lay ahead, you are right. Not within your generation, nor the one after you, will you become like us. However, until that time, you and your people may walk among us, as we guide your people on the path toward the next stage of human evolution. Look below you.” They were passing over an immense city, with streets broad and narrow, and buildings rising high and low. There were thousands of people below them, not Aurelians, but simple humans. They dressed in simple robes or one-piece coveralls, all with numbers and symbols on them. Some wore nothing at all. They waved and blew kisses toward the passing barge.
“Do they not look happy?” Coronado asked. “We have set them free from infirmity, from uncertainty, from insecurity, from inhibition.”
“Do they provide you anything in return?” Keeler asked.
“We ask only that they strive towards enlightenment.”
That was a lie. Keeler sensed there was something else the humans provided the Aurelians, something so dark and awful Coronado would not let herself think of it. Slave labor? Food?
Whatever it was, Coronado did not want them to know about it.
“… but how would we become like you?” one of the Bodicéan women asked.
“We were once humans, like you. We raised ourselves up. We achieved the next level of human evolution.”
“Genetic engineering?” Partridge asked.
Coronado almost chuckled. “Please. Nothing quite so charmless and primitive. I could explain it to you, but it would take a century just to teach you the fundamentals.” Another lie, Keeler sensed.
Coronado turned to the Bodicéans. “We can raise some of you up to our level, and some among your people, but you must understand, the power we hold is great. We are selective in raising only the finest minds to join us in the Echelon.” Ciel looked downcast. “That feels unfair.”
Coronado spoke in a reassuring voice. “Even those that do not become Echelon will enjoy lives of comfort, pleasure, and enlightenment.”
The central structure loomed every larger. It was as though a great cathedral had mated with a suspension bridge. Flying buttresses took off on flights to nowhere. Great towers supported parabolas of cable, from which where suspended walls and arches large enough to accommodate a congregation of tens of thousands. A great set of doors unfolded like rose petals in the morning sun, and the barge entered into a great space decorated with water flowing upward and splashing on the ceiling in an immense pool.
The barge drew to a stop near another balcony. Some humans were waiting there for them.
Coronado smiled, radiant with magnanimity. “As proof of our friendship, I am going to reunite you with some friends of yours.”
She gestured skyward. A kind of disk emerged from the watery mist and descended. They could make out four people on-board as it drew closer.
“The crew from Hector,” Lear whispered, possibly to herself.
The disk drew near. Keeler would not have known if she were right or not. The four people on board were dressed in white robes. Alkema, naturally, had Hector’s flight manifest with him. He confirmed the four from the disk were Flight Lieutenant Adrian Lowell, Planetology Specialist Grace Jones, Astrophysics Specialist Ahmed Zoetrope, and Specialist Cree BladeRunner.
The disk pulled alongside, and finally settled onto the balcony next to them. For the party from Pegasus, joy leapt into their hearts. They knew the whole crew would rejoice at the safe return of their personnel.
Lear was first off, shaking hands with Flight Lieutenant Lowell and expressing effusively how glad she was to see them all alive and well.
Keeler wanted to speak with Cree BladeRunner, the young specialist who had first discovered the Aurelian fleet, sent off on his first away mission. “Glad to see you alive and well, Specialist BladeRunner,” he told the young man. “How have they been treating you?”
“We’ve been treated very, very well,” BladeRunner assured them. “They thought we were attacking their ships. They only wante
d to communicate with us.”
“Pegasus will rejoice at your return,” said Lear, and turning to Coronado, “Thank you.”
“You see, we are hardly the monsters you would make us out to be.”
“What about their ship?” Keeler asked.
“Damaged, but salavageable. You may tow it back to your ship, or use its auto-pilot.” He heard a couple of the Bodicéans making tsk tsk noises behind his back.
Untelepathically, he knew what they were thinking. How could you worry about a ship more than the people inside. Shame!
A group of humans, tanned, slim and naked, began filing onto the balcony, bearing robes and vessels filled with liquids. Two comely females arranged themselves on either side of Keeler, Alkema, and Partridge. Prime cuts of Aurelian slave-manhood interposed themselves next to Lear and each of the women.
“The Cups have prepared a feast for us,” Coronado told them. “You may wish to wash, change, and have sex before we eat. When all of you are ready, the meal shall convene.” Ciel spoke up, “Is it…”
“Vegetarian? Naturally.”
Lt. Commander Miller gathered the best of the ship’s Tactical and Flight Core into the large, secure briefing room on Deck 27; “The War Room.” The War Room, or “Primary Tactical Combat Command Center” as it was formally known, could take over all ship’s functions in an attack. It set the right mood for the meeting, Miller thought. Most of the command functions of PC-1 were duplicated on the stations around the periphery, but in an austere setting stripped of the bridge’s pleasing aesthetic refinements.
The forward part of the room, where he stood, contained holographic generators, which he was using to outline his plans. On his left, a one-meter sphere representing the planet Bodicéa glowed in the dim light. On his right, hundreds of alien (actually Aurelian Sword-ships, they would learn some days later) formed a spearhead directed at the planet. A tiny hologram of Pegasus stood between them, swinging leisurely around the larger and outermost of Bodicéa’s moons.
