Desert Planet (THE RIM CONFEDERACY Book 6)

by Jim Rudnick

  Uigoeri nodded, looked down at the Agenda in front of him, and half-smiled at the list. "We appear to be running a bit behind on our timeline—but we at least have one item fully considered and done. Next is the request from Resources for more workers from the reserves to handle the increase of the new younglings and their care. Ustepori, please?" he said and the Resources manager here in the Words Muse stood to present his report.

  The latest large increase in the younglings and their much-underestimated numbers meant that the staff down in the Resources incubator wards was overpowered. As everyone knew, care of an Enkian began as soon as the eggs were gathered and then put into the incubators. Monitoring of the year-class was a twenty-four-seven job, and when the eggs hatched, each youngling had to be enrolled into the Words Muse, IDs recorded, files created, and vitals taken every day. It was a long, tedious, and difficult job, and Resources needed more help. “Plain and simple," Ustepori said and he sat.

  Discussion ensued and they all agreed they would need to up their level of Resources to cover those new helpers and yes, increase their budgets accordingly. This was not a happy answer, Uigoeri knew, but it was something that happened every few years when the egg numbers increased for what appeared to be no known reason. “Younglings,” he said to himself, “were always an issue.” For a moment, he wondered if any might be his own and then shrugged it off ... what did it matter, they were just younglings.

  One day, one of them might sit here in my chair, but not today.

  #####

  Bram sat quietly on his bed—he usually referred to it as a bunk because on a frigate or cruiser, that's what it was. But on the Atlas, he had such a large private quarters apartment, that instead of this being a bunk, it was a full queen-sized bed with a headboard that held books and a nightlight he often used often to read by late at night. Beside him, on the bed covers, he had an opened copy of his latest read, something from a long, long time ago about beheadings of kings and the like in a place called France. Wonder where that planet even is? Gotta remember to Gallipedia that too later.

  But now, it's time to go to Eons—well so to speak.

  It no longer hit him as hard as it had years ago; instead, that cavernous black hole suddenly grew up around him like a fog.

  He knew as his hands suddenly grabbed at the edge of the bed just under his legs that they usually did just this, but again he couldn't even feel the bed.

  He could see nothing. He could hear nothing. He knew not to succumb to the nausea; while he no longer vomited when this happened, it was only because he was able to quell that reaction and response. He simply fell and waited.

  In front of his eyes, the pinpoint of light suddenly popped into being, and as that tiny spotlight grew to a brighter and brighter larger ball of light, it was to be expected. He used to be so scared when this happened but not any longer.

  He could hear the whispers too all of a sudden, as they intertwined and linked and built on each other until they were no longer whispers but shouts and shrieks, and again, as usual, one shout seemed to be louder and take over as the others faded. As it came to the forefront, its volume level was reduced and then it turned into a voice. A voice he knew and trusted. A voice that somehow seemed familiar ...

  The Master Adept appeared directly in front of him as the blackness around him snapped out of existence and his quarters appeared to his now working eyes.

  "Once again, Adept Sander, we are mind-linked and we welcome you.

  As she said that, more Adepts popped into view around him. Eight, nine, no, there were ten of them now including the Master who were also mind-linking with him. Here but not really here. Just here in his mind.

  He nodded to them and said out loud, “Welcome, Master ... welcome, all," as he looked from one face to another.

  On Eons, dozens of light years away, the Master straightened up in her chair, leaned forward to the linked Adepts, and spoke to them all.

  "You will know, of course, that Adept Sander is on Enki—the latest candidate planet to join our RIM Confederacy. While that is one thing that we are unconcerned with, normally, in this case it's the point of our mind-link today," she said and stopped.

  It was as if, Bram thought, she needed some time to frame the issue in her own mind maybe.

  Or maybe she just needed to burp, he also thought, and that brought a smile to his face, which he quickly wiped away.

  She looked at the group once again and again leaned forward. "What the problem is—and I know a few of you here with long-standing skills already know—is that we are facing an issue here on the RIM that is perilous for our continued longevity. I mean that while we few cannot as yet identify the exact cause, what we see is a major crux approaching. One that we want, of course, to go our own way—to prevent what we also see as war on the RIM."

  That got a gasp from some on the mind-link and from Bram too.

  "We know little. But what we do know is that the Enki candidacy is important to this, but we do not know how. So I now invite you to contribute—to see what we can as a group come up with consensus-wise to help. And Adept Bram will be the Adept on the spot too ..."

  Bram listened as some of the Adepts asked more questions, but it was apparent there was little more factual evidence that the Master had for them. Some of the other Adepts offered that if Enki became a RIM Confederacy member, that might be the cause of this unknown war—and perhaps that should be addressed. But a few others said nonsense to that and the group as a whole was divided.

  The Master looked at them and waited, and no one offered up anything more, so Bram decided now was his time.

  "Master and Adepts, I have something to add to this too, if I may?"

  The Master simply nodded.

  Bram leaned forward too and tried to explain what he had found out about the Enkians as a race and how he had tried his abilities out with them. They were all surprised at how easy he claimed they were to read—and even more surprised that as a young Adept officer, he was able to even see their futures to a lesser degree. Some had questions and more than one liked his metaphor of the walls of filing cabinets, each with a little card on the drawer telling what was inside. They asked more questions, and he had to admit that he really didn't know if the males were easier than the females or the mature easier than the younglings. In fact, he had to offer that he saw them as all the same—there was no difference that he could tell. One, the Adept who was from the moon of Eons, Tavira was the city there, offered up one more thing, and that was interesting, Bram thought.

  "Have you tried our input test, Bram?" she asked and they all sat to hear the answer.

  The input test was a difficult thing to attempt, Bram knew from his years on Eons, but one that he'd never tried before. Basically, it was the test where an Adept Issian would try to input into a subject's brain—sort of opening up a filing cabinet door, replacing whatever was there with a thought of your own, and then writing the idea down on the little card for that drawer. It was said that this took years—decades perhaps—of effort to increase their skills for the Adepts who attempted this with success. And the thought to even try this was a new one for him.

  "Yes, good point, Adept Octavia—Bram you are hereby charged with that duty. Please pick an easy item—nothing that would be against the Enkian sense of morality or religious or political issues. Make it small. Make it easy for you to tell the difference and report back via EYES ONLY soonest. I want to know if that might be a possibility for us too. Best of luck, Bram," she said as the room full of the rest of Adepts all faded and he was alone with the Master

  She nodded to him. "Bram, you are the Adept on the Enkian scene, so you need to rise to this occasion. You can EYES ONLY me any time on this matter, but we need to know the results of the input test soonest, Bram," she said and then she smiled at him.

  As she faded out, her mind said to his mind, "And Bram, if I need to burp, I just do that on its own ..." and she was gone.

  He smiled. If I can do this, that might ac
tually help us, and that's a good thing, and if not, then back to the drawing board ...

  #####

  Tanner and Bram, his Adept officer who obviously didn't see this coming, were stopped at the fringe of the huge Words Muse pyramid ground floor rotunda and taken aside by a Militia officer. Tanner studied the man in the camouflage uniform. While the nametag was there, there were some service stripes he thought on one arm and a badge he didn't recognize in the uniform collar.

  "Sir," he said politely, "I do not know your rank—could you enlighten me, please?" he said as he half-pointed at what looked like some kind of an armadillo-type armored animal.

  "Yes, it's a stonecraw—a desert animal that we have all over the planet. The rank is about equal to what would be a lieutenant, and I'm a first class stonecraw—Stonecraw Qew, Sir, an enlisted NCO rank, that is, Sir," he said, and he smiled at Tanner.

  "Pleased to meet you, StoneCraw Qew—is that the correct usage?" Bram asked and that got a nod back to him.

  "Sir, yes, Sir. And might I add that we are very up-to-date with your background, Captain—we received the full dossier on all the members of the RIM group as a matter of course. They were supplied by your own RIM Confederacy Executive Council, we were told—and reading about your past was the most interesting read in the whole package. Sir," he said, and he snapped to attention and saluted as the Militia did on Enki. Both hands, heart high and palms facing down, were slapped against his chest and held for about five seconds or so, and then he relaxed.

  Tanner nodded. There was nothing else to say.

  Tanner and Bram had been intercepted so they could be seated away from the rest of the RIM group of visitors. StoneCraw Qew, escorted them off to one side, and they climbed about a dozen of the rows of seats, took their reserved seats, and smiled at all the camouflaged Enkians who surrounded them.

  "Seems like we're with the Enki Militia, Sir," Bram said and that got a nod of agreement.

  Below on the floor in a large floor seating area, the RIM ambassador and most of the rest of the group were already seated. Tanner noted that Captain Templeton didn't appear to be there, and he scoured the rest of the bleacher seats across from them first, then beside them, and yes, there they were. They, like Bram and he, were seated with more Militia rows, and that seemed odd for a moment. But there were many more present, Tanner could see. More than a few thousand, Tanner thought, and yet for that many Enkians, the overall noise level was not too much to bear.

  "Maybe, they just thought that we soldiers need to sit with soldiers—rather than with the ... the ... politicians, I'd say," Bram said, and Tanner snickered.

  “Here I am,” he said to himself, “turning forty years of age in a few short weeks. I've been a military man—navy man that is, since I went to the Earldom of Kinross Academy more than twenty years ago. Black hair except for a hint of some gray at the temples. Blue eyes, but they have seen much and some of that had been plainly life changing. I have never been truly—completely—in love with a woman except maybe for the Lady St. August, but that is still too new to know.” His fingers tapped on his knee, one, two ... one, two, and then there had been Tibah, but that was over. One, two ... one, two ...

  "Sir", Bram said as he nudged his elbow into Tanners side a bit more abruptly than needed, "looks like the jurors are coming in ..."

  That interruption took Tanner's attention away from Tibah and the prison riot, and his fingers gripped his knee as he turned to his left to watch the procession.

  Jurors, they'd been told, were the uppermost judicial body on Enki. It was their job—similar to the Supreme Court on any planet, he thought—to decide major cases and call them the way they saw them for all Enkians. While the basics were perhaps similar on all planets, he doubted they were the same on all. My own Barony had, yes, the Appellate Court—who took their marching orders from the Baroness. He smiled and wondered if it was the same on all planets with Royals.

  From the left side of the rotunda, there was a slow procession of about a dozen Militia, but it was too far away for Tanner to see their ranks, and if the stonecraws came in first. Moving like a drill, the two columns marched all in step, their heels loudly clicking on the stone floor. The first few mounted the steps, and then they all came to a halt, turned to face the other column, and came to attention. Moments later at a command from the drill leader, they saluted and that too was different. Instead of using one hand to point to their head using the eyebrow as a guide—the Enkian Militia used something different. Both hands moved to the chest and both hands were palm down toward the floor. The men held that pose and then Tanner noted another thing. Instead of their feathered crests standing up tall or ruffling, they laid down those feathers as flat as possible and held them immobile.

  From the same entrance below and to the left, five Enkians now walked out in single file. Each was a juror, Tanner knew, as they were dressed like all Enkians in that white robe—but their feathers were the green and yellow of jurors only. No other Enkians had that coloration and that made Tanner think about how that was done, but that'd be for a later conversation. The jurors walked along between the twin rows of saluting Militia, mounted the stage, and took their seats at the table. The twin rows of Militia fell out of formation and took seats in the front row in front of the bleachers Tanner was seated in.

  Iavoesi Qax, the head juror, rose after a moment and that quieted the huge area quickly.

  He looked around the room and then down at the RIM group who were seated close to the stage.

  "We were asked by the Words Muse to hold this presentation on behalf of the whole Enkian planet, and we have agreed to represent the judiciary here as asked. To speak today to the RIM ambassador, may I present Uigoeri Qor, leader of the Words Muse here on Enki," he said, and from the left side, a single Enkian walked out and toward the stage. Moments later, he mounted the dais and turned his back on the jurors to face the seated RIM group just in front of him.

  He seemed to gather himself and looked around at the seated crowd around him first.

  And then, he faced the RIM group.

  "We, first, would like to thank the RIM Confederacy for their quick response to our offer made and sent to them, almost sixty years ago. And that is what we should address first. We do not have the technology that exists here in the RIM or, for that matter, probably all across the galaxy. We do not have FTL—as you all know, it took one of our speediest probes more than fifty-five years for it to go from Enki to Juno. And the RIM came here in less than a month. We also understand that there is something called the Ansible—a device that can let someone communicate with anyone anywhere in real time. We wonder what it might be like to have those kinds of technology devices here in Enki, and yet they are not so important to us. We are a very closed-off society; we value the muses too much, we feel, to ever need such devices or what they might bring to us. We enjoy our solitude, and yet, we know that we should face change as it occurs. It is the way of progress, and we have learned to accept that change but at our own speed," he said and that comment got a thousand beaks clacking.

  Must be what we call applause, Tanner thought, and he waited for it to slow.

  The head of the Words Muse waited too, and finally with a ripple of his feathered crest, the clacking stopped.

  "We want you, Mr. Ambassador, to understand what happened here on Enki when your initial request for us to join the RIM Confederacy was received. It—as I'm sure you now understand—prompted a trial between us—Words Muse and the Performance Muse. They argued that as the offer to join the RIM came as a video, it was a performance; hence the offer was made to them. We argued, more successfully it appears, that the performance—the video—was a simple reading of the words that were on the single document delivered to Enki. We won," he said and that got the beaks clacking a bit, but they died down quickly. "And so the decision to join the RIM Confederacy will be ours alone to weigh and consider and then make our decision."

  With that, he half-turned and held out a hand to the
jurors behind him.

  The clacking started once again, and it lasted for a few minutes.

  Rising from his seat, the head juror, Iavoesi Qax, nodded, and then his feathered crest ripple stopped the clacking.

  "I wanted to let you—the RIM Ambassador and all of your group—know that yes, the decision for our planet is in the hands of the Words Muse, as they were the ones that you approached. The decision will be theirs, and it will occur soon, we are told," he finished off.

  Tanner thought he sounded like he had no idea. Figures that the politicians and administrators and the whole civil service would have no idea at all.

  He smiled and the RIM ambassador rose in the crowd. Qor noticed and his rippled feathered crest stopped the crowd's noise immediately.

  "We would just like to thank the jurors and the Words Muse too, their leaders and their citizens, for their consideration of our offer. As soon as we have a chance to work out the details and come to a working deal, we will Ansible back our deal to the RIM Confederacy for their final decision."

  There was neither a single clack nor a rippled feathered crest in the room.

  Oh-oh, Tanner thought, what's up with that?

  Uigoeri Qor, the head of the Words Muse, took a step back, and his beak was wide open. All the jurors behind him looked the same and that, as far as Tanner could tell, was Enkian for "what the hell?"

  A moment later, Qor took another step forward and nodded.

  "Then I take it, Mr. Ambassador, that you are not a decision maker—but simply a messenger. You cannot speak on behalf of the RIM at all—and if that is true, then it appears that we were under the wrong impression. Is that true, Ambassador?" he said, and again there was no noise at all in the huge rotunda.

  Ambassador Harmon nodded at first. Then he looked beyond the Words Muse leader to the head juror seated behind him.

  "Just as in your society, where a muse can do as it pleases and then the jurors have to carefully measure and decide—we too in the RIM Confederacy do the same thing. It is our job to make the best deal we can for the RIM—and then it goes back to our own 'jurors' for their confirmation. We are very similar, Qor, and that is the plain truth of the matter," Harmon said, and Tanner knew he'd just heard a master spin on this.