Rhythm of the Imperium

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “Tell the captain,” Sofus insisted, waving the fumes away from his scent receptors with his 100 hands. He was the largest and most solid of the Kail siblings traveling aboard the Wichu liner Whiskerchin. “They must fix the system again. We must bathe! I cannot function smelling like these creatures.”

  Phutes signed assent with a curt motion of his right forearm. This made complaint number 101001 since they had come on board. Satisfaction would be achieved, or he would find it difficult to restrain himself or his siblings from violence. He stamped out of the cabin and down the corridor toward the lift chute. The deck thundered under his heavy, solid feet. Soft, inefficient, filthy capsules, made for soft, inefficient, filthy beings. He hated being among them, but he had little choice.

  Only with the greatest possible reluctance had Phutes and his companions taken passage on a Wichu freighter from the Kail sector. Few native commanders wanted to pass out of their well-protected systems and into the realm of the slimy ones. Phutes disliked the necessity of interacting with the soft-fleshed beings. One could smell the decay coming from them. And what about the effluvia that issued from each? Every orifice emitted noxious compounds. And they could not be far from a repository of one kind or another, all of which had to be constructed with complicated mechanisms and the waste of good clean water or pure gaseous elements. Or both. They left trails of distasteful organic matter wherever they went. They even exhaled smelly organic particles. He had tried spraying the cabin with powerful mineral-based disinfectants, but the Wichu captain had taken his canisters away from him, using many words that the language chips in its system refused to translate. Phutes spoke no Wichu. He saw no reason to interact further with the crew and other passengers than the exchange of fare for transport. At the captain’s insistence, he and the siblings who spoke for the Kail on board wore a steel wristband embedded with an electronic chip that translated his speech into the uncouth sounds Wichu made.

  His demands for quarters to suit his party’s comfort had been met, but not without argument and many other untranslatable phrases. In the end, sanitized metal bins filled with purified silicate sands for them to burrow into during resting and excretory periods had been provided. It had taken more negotiation and arguments until they were satisfactory to the Kail. The Wichu did not seem to care. Phutes saw the way they cared for themselves, and was not surprised at their disregard for the comfort of others. They seemed unaware that they had risen even marginally from the unspeakable slime that had engendered them. The Kail refused to be ignored. Phutes shoved his way into the lift shaft, ignoring the annoyed looks and remarks of crew members of many species who had been waiting in line. Kail did not wait.

  He allowed the jets of force to carry him upward toward the bridge deck. He would only speak with the captain.

  Carbon-based life forms had become disgustingly prevalent on all planets with an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Even some methane worlds were infested. Wherever they went, the soft ephemerals soiled the pristine silicon landscape with excrescences that burgeoned and reproduced themselves until the beauty of the land could no longer be felt underfoot. The comfort of stone and metal were obscured. Only the squishiness of green plant life met the soles of his feet. Every step Phutes took on one of those planets made him seethe with hatred.

  The acid circulating through his internal organs bubbled vigorously at that memory, threatening to overflow out of his orifices. Phutes did his best to control himself. The Wichu had made it clear that if the Kail damaged the ship any more than the captain claimed they already had, they would be put off on the nearest asteroid large enough to hold them all. Phutes was unmoved by the threat. Marooning would not kill any of them. The Kail could survive on internal processes until they were retrieved, but it would slow down their cause. At least this vessel was free of humans.

  Humanity in particular was a horrifyingly nasty imposition visited on existence. If the Kail could rid themselves of humankind altogether, it would make the universe a cleaner place. The worlds that humanity infested could be cleansed back to a purely mineral-based state. The trouble was, they reproduced faster than the Kail could wipe them out, and they persisted in widening their sphere of influence until there was little hope of containing them. The Kail attacked when humanity intruded itself on Kail homes. The human governments sent undertakings to complain about aggression, ignoring the reality that they had been the aggressors.

  Because of this arrogance, Phutes was acting upon a plan to avenge his people and strike at the heart of the infestation.

  While he and his fellow offspring were still small enough to lie upon his mother’s bosom, Yesa told him of the time humans and Wichus had visited her. They had not requested permission before setting down their ships. She was still angry about the offense, even though it had been nearly two thousand revolutions of the sun since it had happened. The Wichus shed their horrible protein filaments over everything, and they treated the Kail with open disrespect, but it was humanity that drew the most hatred. They assumed that the Kail would be grateful for their invasion. Once the people had managed to translate the humans’ endless babbling, it was found to include infinitely annoying assumptions that they were welcome to analyze and collect samples from wherever they might be. In fact, they had removed a twelve-kiloton block of accreted minerals from less than a kilometer from where Phutes had been born. Many offspring of that time had attempted to retrieve it, suffering grievous wounds and insults in the process.

  Not that the human invaders had left nothing in exchange. Oh, no. In their wake was a swathe of waste material of every kind, from organic compounds to unreusable alloys that still stood where they had left them. In the hold of the Wichu ship, Phutes had those items stored. The humans who had committed the violation were long since dead, or so said their cluttered faster-than-light communication system, but he intended to find their descendants. They should get their garbage back before they were blasted back into their formative atoms.

  The soft ones just seemed to emit noxiousness of every kind. They could not go for even a tenth-rotation without needing to ingest volatile or decaying organic matter. Liquids taken in only remained for a sixteenth-rotation before the absurdly fragile systems expelled them again, this time infused with waste matter. They did not even retain useful salts for more than a rotation or two. But Phutes’s progenitor had an idea. She wanted Phutes to ask the Zang for help, in a move that would strike at humankind’s very existence. She had outlined the plan very carefully, making certain that not only Phutes, but at least 1100111 of his siblings knew every detail as well. Based on what they knew of humankind, they believed that one cunning strike would, if not destroy the enemy, then cripple it beyond relief. The plot hinged, however, upon convincing the Zang to assist them.

  No one had ever tried such a bold move before. Phutes had seen a Zang only once, who had come to visit Yesa for a brief moment many revolutions ago. It had flickered out of existence almost as soon as he had become aware of it.

  All Kail were in awe of the Zang. The Elder Race had power over the spheres. Though the mysterious beings did not appear to be silicon-based, they didn’t smell, nor did they dirty their surroundings. They seemed to float effortlessly between star systems, rarely interacting, never demanding. If they chose, they could destroy with a thought. They were … perfect. And powerful. They held the means that the Kail did not to defeat their enemies.

  The metal door to the bridge responded to Phutes’s impression upon it, and slid aside. He stepped into the chamber. 1100 round black eyes turned resentfully in his direction.

  “Hey, kitty litter!” A throaty growl was revised by her harness-mounted translation device into a comprehensible Kail rasp like stone on stone.

  Phutes dropped abruptly out of the worshipful thoughts that had enveloped him. The object of his momentary quest was before him: Captain Bedelev. The Wichu was a hand’s thickness less than his height. Her entire body, like those of her bridge crew, was covered with white filaments except wh
ere facial features, digits and genitalia, most of them a shocking pink in color, protruded. A small device with intelligence circuitry buzzed around the floor, gathering up the filaments that the Wichu constantly shed. Phutes shook his foot to dislodge one that had floated onto it. It felt disgusting.

  “Wichu leader!” he growled. The translator piped out a phrase that sounded far too conciliatory, but he had not been the one who programmed it.

  The Wichu captain stalked over and glared at him, black, bulbous eyes to efficient, flat optical receptors.

  “I thought I told you to stay off my bridge!”

  “My siblings and are unsatisfied with the cleanliness of the water piped into our quarters,” Phutes said.

  “What do they want?” Captain Bedelev demanded. Her raucous shout emerged in Kail from the circuitry sounding like a polite and diffident query. “I know what you Kail like. I have one of you working for me, you know. The filtration system takes out everything to particles less than an angstrom across. That water is purer than primeval snow.”

  “It stinks!” Phutes said. “It may be free of particulate matter, but gases pass through the conduits and pollute our quarters. They are noxious! No softskin would endure it. Why should we? Are we not valued as customers?”

  “Of course you are!” she said. Bedelev brushed at her furry nose with an impatient paw. She reached out for his arm, but he recoiled. “All right, all right. I’ll see about venting the pipes before they hit your part of the ship. It might get colder in there, though. The ambient air helps keep the water warm.”

  “We will endure,” Phutes said. “As long as the water arrives devoid of the smell of …” He paused. He was getting what he wanted. No sense in escalating until the captain’s promise was proved worthless. “… Of internal processes.”

  “And your shit don’t stink?” she asked. She waved a paw. “No, I guess it doesn’t. It’s practically pure sand. Fine. Now, get off my bridge. No more visits without notice, from now on. Got that?”

  Phutes lifted his face slightly. It was as close as his kind would come to imitating a soft-body’s smile. He wouldn’t have to offer empty pleasantries for very long.

  “I follow instructions.”

  He turned and departed. Behind him, Bedelev made a noise that the circuit did not translate.

  The door closed behind him, making a conciliatory sound. Phutes returned to the open lift shaft. To one side, the stream reached its apex. Phutes ignored the Wichu jumping off to fulfill duties on this, the uppermost deck of the ship. He shoved aside a Croctoid in a Maintenance collar. It snapped at him. Phutes let it close its jaws on his lower forearm. It recoiled at once, spitting out jagged oral calcifications.

  “Dammit, buddy, watch where you’re going!” it said.

  Phutes paid no attention. He was too offended by the creature’s saliva on his arm. He would have to scrub it vigorously to rid himself of the unhealthy touch. He pushed into the descending stream. Time to pay a visit to a long-lost relative and sibling in the cause.

  Phutes felt the charge of electrical power surging through the walls and into the banks and emplacements of equipment throughout the engineering section. Tiny charges erupted on his exoderm, exciting the accretion impulse. He questioned whether he should add to his substance on such an unsanitary vessel. Phutes and his siblings were resigned to the natural minor depletion they would suffer on a long journey. He decided he could cleanse organic material from his system once he was on rocky ground once again, preferably within 11100111 kilometers from a black hole. The air in this section was saturated with electricity and floating molecules of minerals that had been expelled by the explosive process that drove the ship. He stopped in the midst of a flow that had the greatest concentration and absorbed it. Phutes realized why he had been so peevish with the Wichu captain! He had been hungry.

  It did not take long to sate his impulse to feed, but his hesitation was long enough to annoy the Wichu that worked in this section. They passed around him, close enough to glare into his face. Some of them bumped him deliberately. Phutes felt anger rising within his core. Bilious acid threatened to spill out through his orifices. He clenched down on his vessels to prevent it. He should not care what they thought. The pulse of the vessel was calm. It supported and contained him and his siblings safely against the cold vacuum of space. That was all that mattered.

  A female—the Wichu claimed to be of 10 different genders, as did most of the carbon-based races—tried to block him as he made his way toward the area that the circuitry told him was Fovrates’s abode.

  “Sorry, sir, you can’t go back there. That’s a restricted area. You’re not authorized.” The translator blurted out apologetic-sounding phrases as she ran along beside him. She grabbed his arm. Despite moving much more slowly than the Wichu, he managed to avoid her touch. It enraged her into another shrill tirade. Phutes tried to ignore the disharmony.

  He reached the correct doorway and laid a hand on its surface. It took a while for the programming to recognize him and announce him to the one behind it, as much as 101 seconds. In that short time, the Wichu female drew a weapon and leveled it at him. Phutes turned his body and eyed the pistol. Its purpose was to excite the flesh of the victim at whom it was fired, at a range that could stun or kill. At his imperturbable stare, she swallowed audibly and moved the side control up to the maximum on the dial. The tiny whine told Phutes all he needed to know about the weapon’s programming. He reached out to touch the barrel and emitted a thin hum, matching the frequency within 110 seconds. Within 101 more, the weapon began to smoke.

  “Drop it,” he said. “When it explodes it will injure you.”

  The Wichu closed its hands around the stock. The whine increased in volume.

  “I’m not dropping it! You back away, now!”

  By then, numerous Wichus had gathered from all sides. Some of them took hold of Phutes’s limbs. Angrily, he shook them off. Others pointed weapons, which Phutes was forced to set on overload. The Wichu had courage. Knowing the risk to their fragile flesh, they still maintained a grip on their weapons.

  “I warn you, you have 1010 seconds before detonation.”

  “Stop threatening me! And use base 10, like a civilized being!”

  Phutes felt his inner acids roiling at the insult.

  “You accuse me of being uncivilized? Shedding hazard!”

  “Stone face!”

  A booming tone came from the other side of the wall.

  “Stop harassment now!” The door slid open. “All will suffer!”

  Reluctantly, the white-haired crewmembers shifted away from Phutes. He sensed the terrible stench of contact with their skin and fur. He required a bath, but now he would have to wait in line behind all of his kin. And that was providing that the technicians had corrected the fault in the water line.

  The newcomer lifted a massive fist toward Phutes. He had 110, 100 on his right side and 10 on his left, but only 10 legs. He towered over the much younger Kail.

  “Welcome, cousin,” he said. His words in pure, unaccented Kail were echoed through not only Phutes’s translation device but his own. Phutes heard the overload tone die away, as the other disabled the devices with a supersonic tone of his own. “Come in. We will leave this uncouth slime outside.”

  “Watch who you’re calling uncouth, Fovrates!” shouted the security officer. Phutes spared her one pitying glance as he followed the other into his office.

  Once the door closed with an obsequious swish, Fovrates touched limbs with him.

  “I regret the unnecessary contact with the crew,” he said, bumping the translator to switch it off. Phutes followed suit. There was no need for the devices among distant kin. “Will you recline?”

  Phutes surveyed the chamber. It contained numerous primitive technical devices and scopes, most of them fixed to the walls within reach of a standing Kail. Though there were two chairs and a table suitable for use by the slime crew, most of the floor was given over to a broad (plastic) box
filled with sparkling silver sands heaped and swirled like windswept dunes, dotted with a few larger rocks almost the size of his head. At the sight, Phutes felt a deep longing come over him.

  “It looks like home,” he said.

  “It reminds me of Mother,” Fovrates agreed. His optical receptors showed amusement. “Come. Let us talk.”

  Phutes waited until Fovrates chose his place in the box. The bigger Kail lay down at the far end and pulled piles of translucent gray minerals over himself until only his face was visible. He propped one of his enormous feet on the largest rock. Phutes burrowed into the dunes, sending an unspoken apology that he was so tainted by organics. The sand didn’t seem to be troubled. It enveloped him hospitably, cradling his limbs and torso as though it were his birthplace. Phutes felt so comfortable, he almost missed it when Fovrates’s voice vibrated as a mild electrical charge through the fragmented stone.

  “It has been 101 days since you came on board, but you did not come to pay your respects at once.”

  “Apologies, cousin,” Phutes said, sending his voice back in the same manner. “I bring you greetings from Yesa. She asks for your assistance.”

  “I have waited for this summons for many revolutions. My mother, Nefra, sent me word long ago through vibrations in the normal stellar shock waves that you would be coming. The ship is ready. I could take command of every system in a fraction of 1. Give the word, and it will obey us.”

  “But is that necessary? Yesa’s plan should cause a collapse in the humans’ civilization without the need of open warfare. They will so demoralized they can be easily removed from the motherworlds that they have invaded once the Zang act.”

  He sensed rather than heard the shrug. “Better to have a secondary plan in place. You do not know how randomly the carbon-based ones act. I experience it every day. Even if you succeed in avenging the insult to our motherworlds and destroying the center of human culture, they may rally. For organic slime, they are amazingly resilient. Life persists, even in their terrible, disgusting, odiferous manner. I will give you all my data. I have it in here, where the Wichu never suspect its existence. Like the humans, they long ago gave up on silicon-based storage in favor of quantum. More fools they.”