by Jim Rudnick
As he rose, and the rest of the room did likewise, he was about to say he’d need quarters for the evening, but then he realized that was exactly the kind of thing that an aide—an aide that was present perhaps—would be in charge of.
He smiled as he went over to shake the professor’s hand. The man beamed back at him and just about fell all over himself with plans for his trip to the wreck, which included how he’d personally look after showing him around.
Politeness, coupled with selective personal touch, worked too, Tanner had been told by the Baroness, and he smiled. He’d never seen her touch a non-Royal, but then again, that might be because others had never risen high enough to gain her public praise.
Maybe. Maybe not. Dunno, he thought.
Back on the Sword, he Ansibled his aide. She would be on her way shortly and would arrive on Ghayth in less than an hour, so he’d wait and she could accompany him on the trip to the wreck in the far southern hemisphere.
Until then, he sat and used Gallipedia to learn more about teleportation and why it hadn’t yet been discovered and developed here in the galaxy.
Yet was the active word, he thought, and he read on.
#####
The Caliph lolled on his comfortable chair, and with both feet up on the hassock in front of him, he almost rolled right off his chair. He grinned at that and slowly sat up to be only partially lying down, and his boots squeaked on the leather footstool.
“AI,” he said to the room’s artificial intelligence module, “is the vid all queued up and ready to play?”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” it replied.
It had taken more than four years to get his hands on that tape, and finally it would be used today. Costs had been astronomical, and if it hadn’t been for a Tillion administrative assistant who liked to play craps more than keeping secrets, it would have never come his way.
He smiled. He had the goods, and now to present them.
He hadn’t bothered to tell his servants that the guest he was waiting for deserved any kind of refreshments, but now he thought better of that.
“AI, find me a steward,” he said.
Across the room was an alcove that hid the doorway. Within a minute, the steward appeared. He quickly presented himself in front of the Caliph and said as sweetly as he was able to, “Yes, Your Excellency?”
The Caliph sat up a bit straighter and smiled at the young man, who at well more than six and a half feet in height was rail thin like most of the Caliphate citizens. He wore a modest plain brown uniform with the traditional arjak and its small icons of the Caliphate in indigo blue, and his blue boots shone like glass. As a non-Royal, his arjak could not be more than ten percent blue, but the young man looked like he was capable and a true Caliphate citizen.
“Your name,” the Caliph asked.
“Your Excellency, my name is Adnan Abdul-Rahim, of the tribe of Rahim from the southern continent,” he said proudly.
The Caliph nodded. The Rahim tribe was large, well respected, and owned many of the best casinos out on the RIM. “My guest today, Adnan, will be an Entiran from Tillion—about the same as an earl in our worlds. You will need to inquire as to what kind of refreshments a Tillion humanoid might like and serve them soon after he arrives. I leave it up to you to decide as to what and how many—you’re the steward, Adnan. Ensure, however, that all protocols are followed and observed. You know what is said about Tillions …” he instructed and then slouched back down as the steward bowed and left to hustle up some food and drink.
Tillions were different. Their single-planet realm lay only four lights off the southern border of the Caliphate. Caliphs going back at least four centuries, he knew, had courted them to join the Caliphate but had been rebuffed time and time again. Perhaps it was that as a humanoid race, the Tillions couldn’t see how becoming a planet in the Caliphate would be of much value to them? Perhaps it was because the Caliphate citizen was usually six plus feet tall and the Tillions were only five feet plus a couple of inches. He snorted at that one; looking down on a person was something he’d always done unless there was an Eran in the room, as they were always twice as tall.
“Not height. It must have to do with the gender issue,” he said to himself.
The Entiran visiting today was a male. No one—as far as he knew—had ever seen or met a female Tillion. He had visited the capital, Mancerat, only twice, but like all off-worlders, he had been barred from leaving the landing port. The city had only a few towers that stood above the landing port walls, and even studying the city itself when you came down was not instructional at all. There was no pedestrian traffic; all cars and flyers were totally closed, and like all off-worlders, he’d learned nothing about the planet.
Tillion was the only realm that lay between the Caliphate and the Duchy d’Avigdor, which were about ten lights apart; Tillion sat in the near center of that expanse. The duke, he’d learned years ago, had an open invitation to join the duchy sent to Tillion, but again it had been refused. They stood alone. “Until today, perhaps,” he said to himself, as a Caliphate guard, a Ramat officer with polished boots, strode in and half turned to present the Tillion Entiran.
“Your Excellency, may I present the Entiran of Teuku, your visitor today,” he said.
Must remind the Ramat that there is a protocol for introducing aliens. He smiled as he rose and went over to the short Tillion noble. Teuku was the major country on Tillion and a large nationalistic force.
He’s maybe about five feet one inch tall. I wonder if he minds looking up to me? The Caliph thought. Tillion males were very fashionable, and the Entiran was no exception. The broad wide-brimmed hat on the alien’s head was wider than the alien was. Polished metal scales of red and white made up a large part of his jacket, and his legs were encased in tight leather legs that tucked down into plain black boots. The Tillion’s face was normal looking—if three eyebrows were normal, he thought. The alien appeared to be smiling at him. No teeth showed, but the corners of its wide mouth arched up, and the alien dipped his head to the Caliph as the head of state.
Sort of like a duke meeting a king, he thought and smiled. A duke for how much longer is the question.
He made his own small talk, led the Tillion over to the side seating area, and got him ensconced onto a divan that was very luxurious yet still had some support.
“Entiran, I greet you on behalf of the Caliphate and welcome you to my home, here on Neria,” he said, and he studied the alien closely.
There was no movement to remove his hat, and he sat with his head tilted back a bit so that he could see the Caliph. Must be a part of the Tillion protocols, he thought. Should make for an interesting conversation.
The Tillion nodded, and small talk continued for a bit while each talked about how nice it was to meet once again. Three years ago, they had been a part of a larger task force that had been called together to help fight the alien reaper ships that had appeared over Memories and had been successfully sent packing.
The Tillion ship, the TN Fendi, had been a part of the overall Tillion Navy, but in fact, the Caliph now learned, it belonged to the Teuku state. It had, he remembered, played a vital role in destroying one of the alien reaper ships. Good to know, he thought, that the planet, while presenting a unified front to the RIM Confederacy, was still broken up at home into countries or states.
He smiled at that bit of news and filed it away under pride, realizing that like humans, the Tillions too had some similar characteristics. And he knew how to work on pride …
“Entiran, yes, it is good that we meet again.I need to ask that the rest of our conversation be kept private—between you and me only. Could we agree to that simple start for today?” he asked.
The Tillion nodded, the large brim of his hat flopping a bit as he noted that confidentiality was to follow.
“Then let’s get to it, shall we? You know that the Duchy d’Avigdor has recently lost its duke and that the Temporary Provisional Government has a short list of ‘cand
idates’ that they are considering to merge with to continue their existence, correct?”
The Tillion nodded and his hat brim did too.
“Then what you might not know is that while there are a few others on the list, the ones that count are the Caliphate and the Barony. And what I need from you is to help ensure that the Caliphate wins the Duchy d’Avigdor,” he said quietly.
The hat brim tilted to one side as the Tillion took that in. “Caliph, you do know that I am not the head of state of Tillion. That is the Narrisol, and while there is no love lost between us, I doubt that Teuku can be of much assistance. Surely the head of state is the one you should be talking to, Caliph?”
The Caliph smiled and went on. “And what you say, while true, is exactly why I’m coming to you, Entiran. What I propose is not only to take over the duchy with your help but also to unseat the current Narrisol and make you the new head of state,” he said, putting a bit of excitement into his voice. He’d done more persuading than most, and he knew how to use his voice to gain an advantage, and now was certainly just such a time.
“Entiran, a few things to consider? That Tillion lies between the Caliphate and the Duchy d’Avigdor. If we take over same, there might be a call to also take over Tillion. You would stand against that, of course. You would also know that you’re POV would win the day no matter what things looked like to the rest of the RIM,” he said as he held out one finger on a hand.
“Next,” he said as the second finger was stuck out, “you would need to launch a Tillion-wide push on your planet to unseat the Narrisol and take his place because of his stance on the female problem, Entiran.”
The wide-brimmed hat snapped backward as the alien jolted upright on the divan. “We do not have—we cannot even talk about—any ‘female’ problem. There is none,” he said.
He looked like he was going to get up and quit the meeting. But he didn’t, the Caliph thought, because of my offer to make him the new Narrisol.
The Caliph nodded and then held out a third finger. “The female problem is that Tillion has no females. Your race is uni-gendered and while that is unknown by anyone outside of Tillion, I know it,” he said as he waved a hand.
The room AI turned on a vid screen on the wall beside them, and the black screen suddenly came alive. There was a tour of a medical facility—a birthing facility was what some of the Caliph’s Ramat staff had called it. Thousands of tanks holding embryos at all stages of maturity stretched out as far as one could see. While the vid was only a minute or so in length, it captured the workers at the facility quite clearly. They were Tillions, even wearing their hats in the labs, but it was Tillion nonetheless.
The Entiran almost choked. “You know that this is … this is espionage, Caliph,” he said.
“Aye, I do. But should this make its way out into the RIM, the Tillion membership might come into question as well as force at least a change in the head of state,” he said carefully, now making his pitch. “What I will do, is to make this public at exactly the right time to the RIM.
“What you need to do is to begin a grassroots campaign on Tillion, to open up about this to the RIM. You need to position yourself against the Narrisol—and let the sudden publication of this vid speak for you. We know the Narrisol we know controls those facilities and makes his own state billions of credits based on the fact that Tillion is uni-gendered. You stand against that, and at the right time, you will become the new Narrisol as he falls.”
“And how will that win you the Duchy d’Avigdor,” the Entiran asked.
Got him, the Caliph thought. He wants the crown.
“We will make the vid appear to be a release of the duchy. That will cause them much anguish as well as loss of their superior reputation on the RIM, and then when they’re at their lowest, we will offer to stand in their place and add the might of the Caliphate to their own support with the proviso that they join us. The bane of the RIM opposed to the strength of the Caliphate—their choice is an easy one to foretell. We will get the duchy, you the Narrisol crown …” he said as his voice trailed off, and he nodded to the alcove.
A group of stewards and their helpers entered the room with refreshments. The conversation stopped and the Caliph and the Entiran rose to look over the various items. The Caliph noted there were items he liked—the dates wrapped in that smoked beef and the hummus to dip into too. He took a small plate and then sat on the opposite divan as the Entiran chose carefully from other dishes and rejoined him.
They ate quietly and both accepted an iced tea too, and the room emptied back out.
“Good to see that your choices for us included only male-gendered species,” the Tillion said.
The Caliph nodded and guessed he’d been correct when he’d glanced at the platters and noted the bright yellow male sardines and the Garnuthian ram stew as well. It was known that a Tillion—all Tillions—ate only male-gendered animal meats and fish; it was good to see that the steward had chosen well.
He finished his plate with a large spear of some kind of cheese and washed it down with a gulp of iced tea. As he straightened up, he spoke again. “Entiran. Do we understand each other?”
The Tillion nodded in agreement. “I will start a grassroots planet-wide movement to ‘come clean’ to the RIM on our gender issue. Incidentally, we did have women up until about three hundred years ago—a vicious virus came and took them all in less than a year. So we adapted and closed off our society, and using technology, we now breed all our young in tanks until their birth. I have four sons myself—our female young never are born successfully,” he said, his voice almost catching, but he shook it off.
The Entiran took a deep breath and continued. “You will, yes, get some more vid from me with more about the breeding facilities for you to release. When you do that, the blame will fall on the Duchy d’Avigdor—and it will be seen as them against Tillion. The Narrisol will defend our position—and yes, I do think that war will be the solution that he will pick. And at the right time, I take it, you will offer to the duchy to help them out of their predicament. The Narrisol will be deposed—and I will rise to become the next Narrisol. Do I have that all correct, Caliph?”
He nodded.
He had it correct.
And almost right too, but that comeuppance would come later. Now the video needed to go to his IT team for final doctoring to make it look ten years old instead of a few months old.
#####
She sat quietly at the window, having dragged a chair over to it, and looked at the view before her. She wondered if all the previous Master Adepts had looked out this window at the much-changed landscape before her: the abandoned farm with its empty and broken-down buildings and barn; the fields now overgrown with weeds, moss, and fungus; and the corral with its wooden fences that had missing pieces and looked like a crooked smile from here.
Gloria raised her eyes to stare at the far horizon and saw more farms too, all with the same lack of farmers and crops. Climate change to Eons had done this, and only now, almost a full six hundred years after the change in their sun, were there signs that the radiation levels were beginning to drop.
Those reports, of course, had been kept under wraps so there would be no sudden interest by speculators in buying up the thousands of deserted farms that soon could be farmed again. She knew this was the right thing to do—her economic advisers had been drumming that into her weekly reports now for months. But she also knew that the planet’s population would soon learn that truth as the climate changed around them. Last winter had been less severe than the previous couple of dozen winters with less snowfall in the northern climes and less spring flooding. That had meant that the overgrowth of weeds and secondary plants had been able to successfully seed for new growth. And she’d heard, via those weekly updates, that there was some talk from the university of some professors claiming this could only be a result of a change in the sunlight itself.
Those leading-edge professors had been brought here to the walled city about
fifteen miles north of Dessau, the capital city of Eons, and she and some of her advisers has spoken to them. They had questioned the professors about why they’d argue in favor of their recent new views that something was up with the sunlight—and they’d been severely reprimanded by her. She had even been forced to threaten exile from Eons and the whole of the RIM Confederacy post-secondary education industry should they refuse to hide what it was they had guessed. Gloria had offered that they were right. The radiation was lessening—and by almost a full fourteen percent in the past year—but they had to plan for the changes that such a resurrection of their climate would cause before it was common knowledge.
She watched a hawk well above her rooms at the top of the walled city tower as he swung with the winds and soared with no wing strokes at all. Looking for his lunch, she thought, as he spun to the left and went on toward the fields ahead.
For a moment, she wondered what that kind of existence might be like, and then she shrugged and reached for the glass of water she’d balanced carefully on the window ledge. Taking a sip, she stood, went back to the facing loveseats in the room to sit, and put the glass on the table.
And she looked over at the wall facing her and noted the time; a clock was an old-fashioned way of telling time, she well knew, but one that worked easily. She wore no jewelry at all, like all Master Adepts, except for the necklace that held the icon of the Issian faith, a golden sphere representing a planet with rings around it. She fingered it and knew it was time. She closed her eyes as she began the traditional Issian mind linking.
She fell. She was not falling, she knew, but in her mind, she was falling, and falling into a blackness that was absolute. After a minute or so, a single point of light appeared ahead of her. It grew in size as she fell toward it, and after only a few more seconds, she joined the already linked minds of her inner circle.
She was seated—at least in this point of view—and in a circle around her were ten more Issians, one more than the normal complement. She nodded to them all, and a very small smile appeared on her face as she glanced at Bram Sander—the newest addition to the circle. She had made the choice with a bit of reservation, as adding him to the inner circle had been a suggestion, a request—almost a firm demand—from her predecessor. The previous Master Adept had been killed only some months back at the Royal wedding of Lord Scott and the Lady St. August. The previous Master Adept had known it was coming and allowed it to happen, which carried Gloria into complying with the request to add Bram to the circle. The old Master Adept had simply made the point that as Lord Scott was so much a foundation for all the changes coming to the RIM Confederacy, it made great sense to add his best friend Bram to the inner circle.
