Galactic Empires

by Neil Clarke

  Jemmi tried to say something, but her grief and rage were like a solid mass that seared through her throat and chest. She had no words to express the depth of his sin and blasphemy. She knew that to strike at Yee would be suicide, so instead, she forced herself to turn from him and raced down the darkened street. When her legs tired, she walked through Port-Town as she had on her first night, staying to the shadows and peeking in windows.

  It was hours before she got bored with wandering and returned home. Yee was out.

  “Roycer!” Jemmi said. “Where’s the jar, then?”

  “Which jar, Jemmi?” he asked.

  “The one he brought with him off Albiorix. Where does he hide it?”

  He paused, and she flicked the boy’s mind to give him just a bit of encouragement. “In the tub room. Underneath the floor stones.”

  “Show me.”

  Roycer led her to the room with the tub and lifted a flat stone away. In the space beneath was the gray canister Yee had carried when they had first seen him. Jemmi pulled it out. It was obviously very old, because it was made of a single piece of something very smooth and very strong. She grasped the cap, but it would not turn. It had an indentation the shape of a palm on top, but nothing happened when she pressed her hand against it. She handed it back to Roycer and told him to return it just as they found it. He could demonstrate astounding attention to detail when prompted.

  As he moved the stone back into place, Sarasvati stirred herself to remember her duty, and her sky sullenly flickered and kindled with morning light, half a day late.

  Jemmi and Yee and Roycer continued to live together over the next dozen or so days, but Jemmi saw Yee as little as possible. She also began to avoid looking directly at Roycer. The boy seemed brittle and stretched thin, and he was getting weak and clumsy. He was no longer pretty. Jemmi suspected he would be replaced shortly.

  The laborer in the floppy hat returned after a few days, limping and exhausted as if he had run all the way up to the old shuttle port and back. It had been picked clean, he reported, and nothing bigger than a wagon-wheel was left. Several nights after that, the searcher that had been sent to the far end of Sarasvati crawled across the veranda and scratched weakly at the door. He could not speak, but he had just enough strength left to convey that he had also found nothing. Roycer dragged the body inside before the neighbors noticed.

  Jemmi approached Yee the next morning. “Neh, Yee, how long will the other searchers be gone?”

  Yee snorted. “Were you expecting them back? The task you gave them was to return only when they could report something of value, and to continue searching until then. I’d be surprised if many of them are still standing. Your old Sarasvati is worthless to us, as I expected.” He seated himself and picked up his book.

  “You and I should begin planning our departure. One of the younger orbitals further rimward is more likely to have what we need.”

  Jemmi slipped outside and sat in a corner of the veranda. She stretched her mind out across the emptiness, and touched Sara.

  All of Sara that was not dedicated to the physics of regulating her inner environment was still in mourning for Albiorix, and she was in no mood to notice Jemmi.

  Please, Sara! I’m going to have to leave if you don’t . . . We’re all going to have to leave! She visualized Sarasvati’s interior deserted and bare, and prodded her with the image. Resentful, Sara turned part of her attention to Jemmi, and sluggishly recognized her as one marked as her own.

  You have to help us find a shuttle, or else he’s going to take me far away. There was no reaction to the words, of course. Jemmi tried to make an image of a shuttle, but she had no idea what a spacecraft would look like. Instead, she imagined people flying in and out of Sarasvati.

  Sara responded with a picture of a flawless white fish, smoother than an egg and shaped like a teardrop, with stubby fins. The fish dove out of a hole in the side of Sarasvati’s asteroid and swam across empty space.

  That must be it, then! Where?

  But Sara did not have a mind that could answer a question like that.

  Jemmi leapt onto the veranda railing and caught hold of the edge of the roof, then scrambled on top of the house. From its peak she could look down along Sarasvati’s entire inner length as it curved over her head in lieu of a sky.

  Is it there? she asked, looking at a spot directly across, and kept the interrogative at the front of her mind as she moved her eyes across Saras-vati’s interior. When Jemmi reached a point that was far off—90° around and two-thirds of the way towards her other end—Sara stirred, and Jem-mi’s vision of the spot came into clear focus. She had a sudden image of the white shuttle in a smooth white cavern, clasped by metal arms that held it suspended over the floor.

  Thank you, Sara! Thank you! Now I’ll never have to leave you.

  Jemmi gently withdrew and left Sara to her grief. She remained on the veranda until she had collected herself, and went inside.

  “Neh, Yee,” she said as if she was discussing the weather. “I’ve found a shuttle.”

  Yee looked up from his book, as cold as ice. “Do not even think of toying with me, child—you would die before you hit the ground. Run along.”

  “It’s smooth and white, in a big white room. One of my searchers made it back.”

  Yee was out of his seat and gripping her collar as if propelled by lightning. “Where?” he demanded. “Let me talk to him!”

  She shook her head. “Can’t. He’s dead now. But I know where it is.” She took him to the mullioned window and pointed out the spot to him.

  “There? Where the river makes the bend around the tip of the cloud forest?” He calculated. “That’s a three-day journey. Roycer—the packs!” Jemmi heard heavy footsteps running frenetically through the house, and Roycer burst into the room carrying two loaded rucksacks and an enormous backpack.

  “We leave now,” said Yee said to her. “Prepare anything you need to take.”

  He left the room. Jemmi could think of nothing, so she sat and waited. When Yee passed through again, he had the gray canister slung over his shoulder, and he didn’t pause to see if they followed him.

  Three days later, Jemmi was farther from home than she had ever been. They had had men pull them in carts day and night for most of the way, but the last one had dropped from exhaustion just as they decided to leave the road, and they had hiked through the brush on their own.

  They stood in a clearing in a jungle. Humid air, blown erratically out of an obstructed duct from one of Sarasvati’s lungs, met the cool currents overhead and sent a thick perpetual cloud rolling through the trees. Moisture dripped from the leaves like rain. In front of them was a symmetrical grassy mound, like a small hill standing alone.

  “This is assuredly an evacuation portal,” said Yee, pacing around it. “That’s the entrance, and it is overgrown and partially buried, so the space beyond certainly could have remained intact. But how did your source know what was inside?”

  He shot Jemmi a glance. She shrugged.

  “No matter. We are very close, and our day is at hand.” He removed two packets from his rucksack and tucked them in the tumbled stones that filled a door-shaped indentation. “Roycer, light this string here and here, please, then join me quickly.” He strode away. “Jemmi, you might care to accompany me.”

  She followed Yee back into the trees. Roycer came running up, and then there was an explosion that sent earth and spinning shards of timber flying past them. The cloud amongst them jumped, and Sarasvati flinched violently under their feet.

  A third of the mound was blasted away. The explosion had removed the layer of soil and stone covering it, and laid bare several yards of a deep purple-pink gash that oozed and glistened wetly. Jemmi wondered if the wound was as bad for Sara as it looked, or if on her miles-long body it was less than a scratch. Of the doorway only smoke and rubble remained, but beyond it was a steep shaft that led down through Sarasvati.

  Yee tossed aside his pack and hurried
in. Roycer and then Jemmi followed him down a long spiral staircase, smooth flowing steps formed by Sarasvati’s living body. When daylight could no longer reach them, the steps above and below them glowed to light their way. They descended so far that Jemmi could feel herself becoming heavier.

  A chitinous membrane blocked the passage and drew them up short. Yee placed his hand in its center, and it dilated open. They stepped through, and it silently closed behind them. Another blocked their way, and the air pressure changed and Jemmi’s ears popped before it opened for them.

  The stairs here were no longer alive. They were mathematically perfect, with precise lines and right angles that had never existed in Jemmi’s world. They were a sterile white, against which Yee and Roycer seemed both more vivid and less whole. Jemmi had left Sarasvati, and was standing in the bare asteroid that protected her soft flesh from the harsh vacuum.

  The white staircase was short, and it opened up into a cavernous chamber walled and floored in featureless white. The vaulted ceiling was a warm silky gray, chased with flickers of colored lights—Sarasvati’s outer surface, pressed tight across the top of the space. At the center, as big as a house, a pristine fish-shaped shuttle was suspended over the floor by a set of jointed steel arms.

  Yee rushed forward with a sound that was part gasp and part sob. He circled the shuttle, reaching out a hand and pulling it back to his mouth as if he were afraid to touch it. Jemmi ran her palm along its side. It was smoother than an egg, and cool.

  “It’s whole, and perfect!” Yee crowed. “At long last, I’ve done it!”

  Jemmi nudged at it. “But, neh, Yee,” she said. “It’s dead. It doesn’t go.”

  “Ah, but it will now.” He caressed the canister he carried.

  “What’s in that thing, then?”

  “Today, it is the greatest treasure in all the galaxy. I have carried it with me since before the Fall, when I first began to suspect that my enemies might take extreme measures to divest humanity of my direction.”

  “I thought you said they were the enemies of Cosmopolis.”

  “I may have—did you think there was any difference?”

  Near the tail of the shuttle, Yee gingerly pried open a tiny drawer in the craft’s skin and inspected its interior with one eye. Then he placed his palm on the lid of the canister and twisted. It came off with a chuff of air. He handed the lid to Roycer, and reverently held the container out towards Jemmi.

  “Behold—one and a half liters of breeder nanos, sealed away long prior to the Fall.” Inside was a gritty paste. It smelled like hot sand and rising bread dough. “This is quite possibly the last batch in existence untouched by the machine plague. Each speck can replicate thousands of the same nanomachines that built and ran the technology of the Cosmopolis. What I hold here is enough to raise an entire planet from the dark ages back to enlightenment. It is the key to our next empire.”

  He lifted the canister to the intake panel. “It would not do to waste it—would half a spoonful be too much?” He tilted a drop in. “The nanos will find the diagnostic system, and it will activate them to begin whatever repairs it needs.”

  He pushed the little drawer closed and bore those eyes of his into the surface of the spacecraft as if willing it to let him see its inner workings. Nothing happened for as long as Jemmi could hold her breath, and then a faint ticking and hissing sound emerged. Yee cackled with delight. “It will be no time at all now,” he told Jemmi. “In a few hours you’ll have had your first taste of fresh air. You will have seen your first sunset.”

  “But then we’ll come back to Sara, neh?”

  Still preoccupied, he answered, “What’s that? Don’t be absurd. Once you’re on a real planet, you won’t spare another thought for this rat-hole.”

  Jemmi turned her back on him. Near the entrance stood a heavy hand crank and a podium topped with switches and levers. She ran her hands over the alien textures and idly toyed with the switches to hear them click.

  She closed a simple circuit that had remained alive across the centuries, and the floor beneath them disappeared, phasing into transparency. Her heart lurched and she groped for balance. She stood atop a star-spattered bottomless void, and looked between her feet far out into nothing. Suddenly, an edge of the emptiness was occluded by a shape that swung past her. For a moment, staring up into the chamber was a golden-green, slit-pupilled, lidless eye—flat, dead, and far broader than the entire launch bay. It was Albiorix.

  Sara was unable to bring herself to release him, and he wafted like marsh-grass in her embrace.

  Jemmi stood transfixed until he swept beyond her range of vision, and said carefully, “Neh, Yee. I don’t think I want to go with you.”

  Yee faced her, and his voice was cold with threat. “That is unacceptable, Jemmi. You have a great responsibility to humanity, and I need you by my side for the great works I will do. You will be my empress. One way or another you will accompany me, and I assure you that you will rejoice in the opportunity.”

  Jemmi averted her eyes from his. She reached out and placed a thought in Roycer’s mind: Roycer, kill Yee. It’s important.

  Roycer sized up Yee with a stony glance, and quietly shucked his heavy pack. He took a few wary steps, and then rushed him. Suddenly startled, Yee snapped his head around, and Roycer froze in mid-stride. His muscles shuddered horribly as Jemmi leaned the force of her mind against Yee’s. Blood trickled down Roycer’s chin from where his jaw had clenched on his tongue.

  “Is this the best you can do, child?” Yee sneered. “Use the last gasp of an exhausted puppet against me? Countless others with real weapons have made the attempt, and they have all failed.” His stoop disappeared, and he became a towering presence in the white chamber. “I am the immortal Andrew Constantin Fujiwara Borsanyi, founder of the Cosmopolis, eternal First Lord of the League of Man, and architect of all mankind’s history. Who are you?”

  Jemmi had no answer to that.

  She released her pressure on Roycer, and he fell backwards towards her across the invisible floor. Instead, she reached out to Sara. She had to grope because she no longer knew where to find her, but at last they touched, and Jemmi’s urgency roused Sara’s attention. Jemmi concentrated all her awareness on the launch bay, dead Albiorix, and Yee standing next to the shuttle.

  He’s the one! She flung the rage and fear towards Sara. He killed Albiorix! And now he’ll do worse—

  The thought suddenly bloomed in Jemmi’s mind that the most clever and crucial thing she could do was get down on her knees and bow her head. She welcomed the idea as an inspired stroke of brilliance, and rushed to kneel in submission. She heard Yee’s footsteps snap against the crystal floor as he sauntered towards her, and it did not trouble her.

  They felt the rumbling through the walls and the floor then. It started hushed and far off, a sustained roll of thunder that rushed up and overtook them.

  Yee cocked his head and frowned, and then his eyes widened as he identified the sound: Sara had spasmed her entire boneless body in a long rolling wave, like a rope snapped across miles of ground. It was the roar of an earthquake, focused and aimed right at him.

  Jemmi grabbed Roycer and spurred him with an intensity that sent him scrabbling maniacally past her into the cover of the stairwell. She dove in after him.

  Yee dropped the canister and extended his arms overhead, not to fend off Sara’s body, but to reach into her mind. He stood there for the space of a heartbeat, but there was no time to learn to contact her, and he abruptly broke and fled for the stairwell, all gangly arms and legs.

  He snatched at Jemmi’s ankle, and from somewhere she found the wherewithal to shout, “Your nanos!” throwing all the weight and urgency she could into the thought. Yee stared at her and hesitated a moment— perhaps it was the power of her suggestion, or perhaps it was the age-old habit of cherishing his burden—and then spun back into the launch bay.

  At that moment the living ceiling of the chamber lurched high up with a great solid h
eave that pulled the air screaming past their ears and whip-lashed back down into the launch bay. It hammered against the invisible floor in an paroxysm of violence that obliterated Jemmi’s scream. The shuttle and its equipment, which could bear the forces of vacuum, fire and ice and had stood unmarked for centuries, were instantly pulverized into a thin stratum of wreckage. Yee, standing among them, was mashed into nothing.

  The wave rolled off again just as quickly, trailed by the sound of receding thunder. A stunning silence stretched for several minutes, punctuated as bits of unrecognizable debris rained down towards the stars from where they were embedded in Sarasvati’s side, clattering or splatting to a stop against the crystal.

  Jemmi pressed her face hard against the stairwell wall and waited until the world had stopped reverberating. It took a long time before she judged it was safe to move.

  “Let’s go, then,” she said to Roycer—no compulsion, just an order. “Ah, wait.”

  She threaded her way into the launch bay and picked through the ankle-high detritus until she found Yee’s canister. It was dented and scraped, but almost none of the paste had been spilled. She took it.

  “Now we can go.” She led Roycer back into Sarasvati, and up the long stairs. She was careful not to touch his thoughts again. Near the top of the climb, he stumbled to his knees, and clear-minded for the first time in weeks, sobbed with horror and loss. Jemmi sat several steps above him with her arms wrapped around her shins and waited patiently, mindful of all the things Roycer had seen and done, allowed no feeling but solicitude for Yee’s needs. He doubled over and retched. When he began glaring at her during his pauses for breath, Jemmi picked herself up and continued climbing. He hurried to follow.

  Jemmi stepped out through the ragged hole at the surface and climbed to the top of the mound. The air tasted to her as if it were filled with pain and righteous fury. A raw pink line now ran from the end of Sarasvati, crossing over the stairwell, and continuing deep into her interior. A strip of ground more than a hundred paces wide had wrenched itself clear, exposing the bare flesh beneath it. Trees, stones, earth and bits of homes lay tossed and scattered to either side for as far as she could see. In the hazy distance, a series of aftershocks or convulsions raised dust clouds and sent ripples running back towards them. Jemmi’s own body burned in aggrieved empathy. She would never let anyone hurt Sara again.