Galactic Empires

by Neil Clarke

  “What kind of tasks?” Perri asked.

  “Would you like an example?”

  “Please.”

  “I am thinking of a warehouse that I had built and stocked—a hidden warehouse in an undisclosed location. And in the very next moment, I was dispatched to my next critical mission.”

  “A warehouse,” said Perri.

  “Not a romantic word, I grant you. But it was, and is, a vast, invisible facility full of rare and valuable items. I have never returned to the site, but it most likely remains locked and unseen today. Idle but always at the ready. Waiting for that critical, well-imagined age when its contents help with some great, good effort. But that is the Union’s way: We have an elaborate structure, robust and overlapping, enduring and invincibly patient; which is only natural, since we are the oldest, most powerful political entity within this galaxy.”

  “The Union,” Perri said dubiously.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you didn’t approve of names.”

  “I offer it because you expect some kind of label. But like any contrivance, ‘the Union’ doesn’t truly fit what is real.” A smug, superior tone had taken hold, but it was difficult for the audience to take offense. After all, this was just a voice in the night, and who could say what was true and what was sane?

  “Simply stated, my Union is a collection of entities and beliefs, memes and advanced tools, that have been joined together in a common cause. And what you call the Milky Way happens to be our most important possession—the central state inside a vast, ancient empire.”

  “No,” Perri said. “No.”

  Silence.

  Quee Lee felt her husband’s tension. Leaning forward, she told their companion, “There are no empires.”

  A long black silence held sway, and then came a sound not unlike the creak of a joint needing oil.

  “Many, many species have tried to build empires,” she continued, naming a few candidates to prove her knowledge of the subject. “The galaxy’s first five sentient races accomplished the most, but they didn’t do much. The galaxy is enormous. Its planets are too diverse and far too numerous to be ruled by a thousand governments, and star travel has always been a slow, dangerous business. When one species rises, it gains control over only a very limited region. Measure the history of empires against the life stories of suns and worlds, and even the most enduring régime is temporary and tiny.”

  She concluded by saying, “No one authority has ever controlled any substantial portion of the galaxy.”

  “I applaud that generous sense of doubt,” said the stranger. “May I ask, my dear? What are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “By blood, I think you must be Chinese. Am I right?”

  “Mostly, yes,” she said.

  “And the city of your birth?”

  “Hong Kong,” she whispered.

  “Hong Kong, yes. A place I know, yes. Of course you understand that your China was a great empire, and more than once. And as I recall from my studies of long-ago Earth, there was a period—a brief but not unimportant time—when the port of Hong Kong belonged to the greatest empire ever to exist on your little world. A minor green island sitting in a cold distant sea called itself Great Britain, and with its steam-driven fleets, it somehow managed to hang its flag above a fat fraction of the world’s population.”

  “I know about Britain,” she said.

  “Now tell me this,” their companion continued. “An old rickshaw driver plies his trade on the narrow Hong Kong streets. Does that lowly man care who happens to serve as governor of his home city? Does it matter to him if the fellow on top happens to have yellow hair, or is a Mongol born on the plains of Asia, or even a Han Chinese who is a third-cousin to him?”

  “No,” she said. “He probably doesn’t think much about those matters.”

  “And what about the Hindu peasant who struggles to feed himself and his family from a patch of land downstream from Everest . . . the ruler of a farm that has never even once fallen under the indifferent gaze of the pale Northern man who works inside a distant government building? Does that farmer concern himself with the man who signs a long list of decrees and then dies quietly of malaria? And does he care at all about the gentleman who comes to replace that dead civil servant . . . another Northern man who bravely signs more unread decrees before he dies of cholera?”

  Quee Lee said nothing.

  “Consider the Mayan lady nursing her daughter in Belize, or the Maori cattle herder in Kenya who happens to be the tall strong lord to his herd. Do they learn the English language? Can they even recognize their rulers’ alphabet? And then there squats the Aboriginal hunter sucking the precious juice out of an emu egg. Is he even aware that fleets of enormous coal-fired ships are landing and then leaving from his coast each and every day?

  “Each of these souls is busy, embroiled in rich and complex, if painfully brief lives. Within the British Empire, hundreds of millions of citizens go about their daily adventures. The flavor of each existence is nearly changeless. Taxes and small blessings come from on-high, but these trappings accomplish little, regardless which power happens to be flying the flags. A peasant’s story is usually the same as his forefathers’ stories, and if the peasant’s children survive, they will inherit that same stubborn, almost ageless narrative.”

  Neither human spoke.

  “Do these little people ever think of that distant green island?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t,” Quee Lee allowed.

  “But if they do think of Britain,” the stranger began.

  “What then?” Perri prompted.

  “Would they love the Empire for its justice, order, and the rare peace that it brings to the human world?” Neither of them responded.

  “Of course they do not. What you do not know, you cannot love or despise. This is true for every life that has walked two moments of time. So long as the lives of these peasants remain small and steady, hating the British is not an option.”

  The voice paused, and what might have been a deep breath could be heard. “Make no mistake—I am not claiming that these are unsophisticated souls. They are far from simple, in fact. But their lives are confined. By necessity, the obvious and immediate are what matter to them. And the colors and shape of today’s flag could not have less meaning.”

  “Suppose we agree,” said Perri. “We accept your premise: For humans, empires tended to be big, distant machines.”

  “As it is for most species,” was the reply.

  In the dark, Quee Lee and her husband nodded.

  “But I don’t agree with that word ‘big’,” the stranger continued. “I believe that even the greatest empire, at the height of its powers, remains vanishingly small. To the brink of invisible, even.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Quee Lee.

  “Let me remind you of this: Several million whales swam in your world’s little ocean. They were great beasts possessing language and old cultures. But did even one species of cetaceans bow to the British flag? And what about the tiger eating venison on the Punjab? Did he dream of the homely human queen? And what role did the ants and beetles, termites and butterflies play in the world? They did nothing for Britannia, I would argue . . . and Britannia had no place in their relentless little minds.”

  Perri tried to laugh.

  Quee Lee could think of nothing useful to say.

  “The trouble,” the voice began. Then it paused, perhaps reconsidering its choice of words. “Your mistake,” it continued, “is both inevitable and comforting, and it is very difficult to escape. What you assume is that the names in history are important. Because you are smart, educated minds, you have taught yourselves much about your own past. But even the most famous name is lost among the trillions of nameless souls. And every empire that you think of when the subject arises . . . every political entity, no matter how impermanent and trivial . . . was visible only because it wasted its limited energies making certa
in that its name would outlive both its accomplishments and its crimes.”

  “Maybe so,” Quee Lee allowed.

  “Names,” the voice repeated. “The worlds you know wear that unifying trait. The name brings with it a sense of purpose and a handle for its recorded history. Attached to one or a thousand words waits some center of trade, a nucleus of science, and you mistakenly believe that the most famous names mark the hubs of your great cosmopolitan galaxy.”

  Perri squeezed his wife’s hand, fighting the temptation to speak.

  “But the bulk of the galaxy . . . its asteroids and dust motes, sunless bodies and dark corners without number . . . those are the features that truly matter.”

  “Matter to whom?” Quee Lee asked.

  “To the weaver ants and lowly fish, of course. The beetles and singing whales, and our rickshaw driver who knows the twisting streets of Hong Kong better than any Chinese emperor or British civil servant. Nameless citizens are those with substance, my dear.” Something creaked, as if their companion shifted its weight, and the voice drifted slightly to one side. “I will confess that my empire is like all the others, only more so. The Union that I love and that I have served selflessly for eons is vast and ancient. But where England made maps and gave every corner its own label, my Union has wisely built itself upon places unknown.”

  Husband and wife contemplated that peculiar boast.

  Then Quee Lee recalled an earlier thread. “You have visited the Earth, you claimed.”

  “I did once, yes.”

  “Was this before or after your invisible warehouse?”

  “Afterwards, as it happens. Not long after.”

  “You mentioned receiving a new mission,” Perri coaxed.

  “Which leads indirectly to an interesting story.” The next sound was soft, contented. “My orders arrived by a usual route. Whispered and deeply coded, the instructions from my superiors that were designed to resemble nothing but a smeared flicker of light thrown out from a distant laser array.” The words were strung together with what felt like a grin. “Alone, I left my previous post. Alone, I rode inside a tiny vehicle meant to resemble a shard of old comet, using a simple ion motor to boost my velocity to where my voyage took slightly less than forty centuries—”

  “By our arbitrary and self-centered count,” said Perri.

  “Which is not such a very long time.” Those words were ordinary and matter-of-fact. Yet somehow the sound of them—their clarity and decidedly slow pace—conveyed long reaches of time and unbounded patience. “I traveled until I came to a nameless world. There was one ocean and several continents. The forests were green, the skies blue with white watery clouds. To fulfill the demands of my new mission, I selected an island not far from the world’s largest continent: A young volcanic island where the local inhabitants built boats driven by oars and square sails, and they put up houses of wood and stone and planted half-wild crops in the fertile black soil. And their moments of free time were filled with the heartfelt worship of their moon and sun—the two bodies that ruled a sky that they would never truly understand.”

  “Was this the Earth?” asked Quee Lee.

  There was a pause, and inside the darkness, motion.

  And then the voice told them, “When these particular events occurred, my dear, there was no planet yet called ‘the Earth’.”

  Quee Lee wrapped both hands around her husband’s arm.

  “Remember this,” the voice continued. “The Union is the only power of consequence. And the Union holds its interest only in those dark realms that appear on no worthwhile map.”

  6

  “A king happened to rule that warm, sun-washed island. He was simple and rather old, and I was tempted to kill him in some grand public fashion before taking his throne for myself. Yet my study of his species and its superstitions showed me a less bloody avenue. The king’s youngest wife was pregnant, but the child would be stillborn. It was a simple matter to replace that failed infant and then bury what was Me inside healthy native flesh. Once born, I proved to the kingdom that their new prince was special. I was a lanky boy, physically beautiful, endowed with an unnatural strength and the gentle grace of wild birds. I didn’t merely walk at an early age, I danced. And with a bold musical voice, I spoke endlessly on every possible subject, people fighting to kneel close to me, desperate to hear whatever marvel I offered next.

  “The wise old women of my kingdom decided that I must be a god’s child as much as a man’s. Like a god’s child, I predicted the weather and the little quakes that often rattled the island. I boasted that I could see far into the skies and over the horizon, and to prove my brave words, I promised that a boat full of strangers would soon drift past our island.

  “My prediction was made in the morning, and by evening, I was proved right. The lost trireme was filled with traders or pirates. On a world such as that, what is the difference between those two professions? Whatever their intentions, my people were waiting for them, and after suitable introductions, I ordered the strangers murdered and their possessions divided equally among the general populace.”

  The voice paused.

  In the dark, Quee Lee leaned hard against her husband.

  And the story continued. “I was almost grown when that little old king stood before his people and named his heir. Two of my brothers were insulted, but I had anticipated their clumsy attempts at revenge. In a duel with bronze swords, I removed the head of the more popular son. Then I turned my back, allowing my second brother to run his spear through my chest—a moment used to prove that I was, as my people had always suspected, immortal.

  “With my two hands, I yanked the spear from my heart.

  “In anguish, my foe flung himself off one of our island’s high cliffs.

  “‘Someday I will follow my brothers into the Afterlife,’ I promised the citizens. ‘But for the rest of your days, I will remain with you, and together we shall do the work of the gods.’

  “And that was the moment, at long last, when the heart of my mission finally began.”

  Their companion paused.

  “Are you going to explain your mission?” Perri asked.

  “Hints and teases. I will share exactly what is necessary to explain myself, or at least I will give you the illusion of insights, placing you where your imaginations can fill in the unnamed reaches.”

  “About these natives,” Quee Lee began. “Your people . . . what did they look like?”

  Quietly and perhaps with a touch of affection, the voice explained, “They were bipedal, as you are. And they had your general height and mass, hands and glands. Like you, they presented hairless flesh to the world, except upon their faces and scalps and in their private corners. As a rule, most were dirty and drab, and on that particular island, their narrow culture reached back only a few generations. But their species had potential. Following ordinary pathways, natural selection had given them graceful fingers and an evolving language, busy minds and a compelling sense of tribe. In those following years, I showed my people how to increase the yields and quality of their crops. I taught them how to purify their water, how to carve and lift gigantic stones, and I helped them build superior ships that could chase the fat fish and slow leviathans that could never hide from my godly eyes. Then in the shadow of their smoldering volcano, I laid out a spacious palace surrounded by solid homes and wide avenues, and for three generations, my devoted followers built the finest city their species had ever known.”

  Once again, the voice ceased. But the silence was neither empty nor unimportant, accenting a sense of time crossed with clear purpose. Then a smooth laugh came, and their companion remarked, “If the two of you were dropped into similar circumstances, you would accomplish most if not all of my tricks. You are borderline immortals. Spears through your hearts would be nuisances at day’s end. Armed with the knowledge common to your happy lives, you could visit some nameless world and convince its residents that you were divine, and in the next breath, you could call
for whatever riches and little pleasures that your worshippers might scratch together for you.

  “But what pleasures me is serving the Union.

  “What I wanted . . . what my orders demanded from this one place, inside this single moment . . . was the construction of a significant machine, a device that would demand the full focus of a half-born civilization . . . ”

  “What machine?” asked Perri.

  “If it proves important to know that, then I will tell you.”

  But Perri couldn’t accept that evasive answer. “How many people lived in your city? Five thousand? Fifty thousand? I don’t know what you were building, granted. But you’re implying advanced technologies, and I’d have to guess that you’d need a lot more hands and minds than you would ever find on a tiny island in the middle of the sea . . . ”

  The first answer was prolonged silence.

  Then the sharp creak of a limb or cold leather could be heard, and with quiet fury, the entity said, “You have listened carefully enough, sir. Pay strict attention to everything that I tell you.”

  “Remind me what you said,” Perri said.

  Another silence ended with what might have been a sigh. “I sat on my throne for seventy summers and several months,” said the voice. “Then one day, I abruptly announced that my city was failing me. With a wave of my fist, I told my followers that they were not truly devoted, and they were not sufficiently thankful for my wise counsel, and I was contemplating the complete obliteration of their island-nation.

  “With the next sunrise, the great volcano erupted. The rich rocky earth split wide. Ash was coughed into the blackened sky, and lava flowed into the boiling sea, and boulders as big as homes were dropped onto the cowering, inadequate heads around me. Then I pretended a sudden change of mind. I showed pity, even empathy. On the following day, after the dead were buried and the damage assessed, I dressed in a feathered robe and walked to the summit where I told the mountain to sleep again—which it would have done on its own, since the eruption had run its course. But a single moment of theatre erased the last shreds of doubt. Again, I had convinced my followers that I was supreme. You could not hear one muttered complaint about me, or doubts about my powers, or the slightest question concerning each of my past decisions.