Galactic Empires

by Neil Clarke

  Anders Nils is not on board, a woman’s voice spoke softly into his ear. Procedure is to query ship command first when there is an unscheduled breach of the cargo bay. Why did you fail to query ship command? Why did you shut off initial communications from ship command?

  Jacob didn’t answer. He didn’t know why he hadn’t followed procedure. Maybe he already knew Anders was gone, but didn’t want to hear command’s confirmation. Was that it? It made very little sense—despite their long service together on messaging and data collection ships he and Anders weren’t even friends, as far as he understood. Suddenly he wasn’t sure. Was that possible?

  How had they not become friends, enemies, something? Somehow he had avoided entanglement. He’d spent his long hours listening, the job they’d been trained to do, snatching the words out of space and trying to understand, and whenever possible delivering these stray messages to their intended destinations.

  Please respond to official queries. Command’s voice had lost some of its warmth, its naturalness. You have a duty to respond to these questions. Command was beginning to show its mechanical roots.

  He was a professional, a sensor for the emperor, or for who- or whatever passed for the emperor these days, capturing the nuances machinery was still incapable of. “You record every stray fart,” was the usual, vulgar summation of their duties. Such attention to detail discouraged both amity and enmity, as far as he was concerned.

  He would be finishing the assignment alone. Perhaps even the entire tour of duty. The realization left him cold, furious. How was he supposed to manage it? Besides recording local observations and handling messaging, the ship delivered statements of regulation, and proclamations to the outlying settlements. But a quick replacement was impossible, out here on the farthest reaches of the empire, where the dividing line between empire and not-empire wasn’t all that clear.

  Did Anders Nils speak to you before going to the cargo bay?

  Jacob gathered Anders’s spare clothing into a bag. He catalogued his former crewmate’s personal effects, his toiletries, his player, various small art objects.

  Please respond. Did Anders Nils speak to you of his intentions?

  Jacob ignored command’s transmissions. He separated out all written notes and recordings, checking the storage on Anders’s personal devices for data files and images. Anders’s diary files were extensive and detailed, and he only had time to go through a sampling. The entries surprised him, but he had no time or inclination to be surprised.

  Did Anders Nils show observable signs of depression?

  He’d never liked talking to ship command. The fact that it appeared to possess more charisma and compassion than he did . . . grated.

  He caught his first yawn while carefully placing Anders’s personal documents into a sealed container. Over the next brief interval the yawns multiplied rapidly. There was no way to fight ship command’s enforced sleep—he barely made it back to his bunk before oblivion wiped him away.

  After sleep, command brought him up to dialogue regarding the incident. The temperature in the recording room had dropped noticeably into the discomfort zone.

  “Please change your uniform to the appropriate formality.” The voice out of the speaker was soft again, lush. He considered how brittle his own voice was in comparison. He brushed two fingers over his cuff until the correct dark blue color swam beneath them. “Correct.” Pause. “The Emperor expresses his condolences for the loss of crewman reporter Anders Nils.” The voice sounded achingly sincere. It made Jacob ashamed of his own underdeveloped powers of empathy. Another, awkwardly long pause. “How long did you serve with Anders Nils?”

  “It would have been four years in a few sleeps.”

  “More precise, please.”

  “You have this information.” He didn’t bother to mask his annoyance,

  “Answer please. We understand this may be a difficult time.” Command rarely said “we.” Suddenly Jacob felt quite unsure whom he was talking to.

  Jacob ran his fingers over the table, accessing his personal diary. “Three years. Eleven months. Three weeks. Seventy-three hours. And four minutes, at least until the time of the hatch alarm.”

  Another long pause. Jacob knew this wasn’t processing inefficiency. Com could formulate appropriate questions instantly. It was giving him time to think and remember, and it was measuring and analyzing that process. But as far as he knew, he had nothing to remember. So he waited.

  “Did you know Anders had been depressed?”

  “Was he?”

  “Do you know why Anders would commit suicide?”

  “Is that what he did? What is your percentage of certitude on that?”

  “Forty-three percent.”

  “Then you don’t know to a certainty.”

  Quite a long pause, then, “We do not know to a certainty.”

  “Then you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  A red light glowed unsteadily on the panel. Jacob thought about Anders, concluded they’d never really been friends.

  “You have heard the personal diaries of Anders Nils.”

  It wasn’t a question. Wasn’t command supposed to be asking questions? He answered anyway, thinking that at least he was doing his part. “I listened to some of it. There wasn’t time for a full examination.”

  “What was your impression of the personal diaries of Anders Nils?”

  “I . . . well, that’s hard to say. He recorded a great deal. I suppose that surprised me. And they were well-composed, I think. Somewhat poetic, I suppose.”

  “Did any of the events described in the diaries of Anders Nils actually occur?”

  “No, none that I heard. They were pretty outlandish.”

  “Please define ‘outlandish,’ as you understand it.”

  “Oh, unusual. Crazy. Impossible. We never went to the locations he describes. You know that very well. We did not visit those places, or have those adventures.”

  “You did not have the kind of relationship with Anders Nils he describes?”

  “Well, no. No, I did not. I didn’t know him all that well, actually.”

  “You were not friends?”

  “Well, not close, not like that. We were acquaintances. We worked together. We had a working relationship.” “Why were you not friends?”

  Jacob never would have expected command to ask such a thing. “I really don’t know how to answer that,” he finally replied.

  “Why did you not know Anders was thinking of committing suicide?”

  Jacob would not answer. He sat there silently, staring into the red eye lens mounted in the panel, until the countdown for landing preparations began.

  The planet’s surface was that light-trapping coating they’d used for official installations and supporting structures back before his grandfather was born. The fact that here and there it glistened and flowed with bits of color only emphasized how basically drab it all was. But it was durable and resistant to the attempts of most planetary ecologies to reclaim it.

  “Welcome to Joy,” the officer said, with what appeared to be a genuinely warm smile.

  Jacob blinked. This wasn’t the official designation. “From the looks of things, someone had a sense of humor.”

  “It would appear so,” she said, still smiling. “Nine six oh gee four dash thirty-two.”

  “Then I’m in the correct place.”

  The com link in his ear murmured, You may inform her that her uniform color has shifted out of sequence, but he ignored that. True, her outfit appeared slightly on the purplish side, but it was probably the best she could do. It was no doubt decades old and difficult to calibrate.

  “I’m pleased. We don’t get many visitors.”

  Protocols were loose here, he observed. Not that he really cared. “I’m only scheduled for two sleeps,” he said, not really wanting to discourage her friendly manner, although he was sure it came across that way.

  “Well, we’ll see what we can show you during that time. I
know that the reporter ships like to record as much as possible during their limited visits.”

  Com buzzed his ear. There are currently 432 undelivered regulatory messages due for 960G4-32. Too many for practical application. Please select at your discretion. He had no intention of passing along any of these messages. In any case, how could they be enforced?

  He nodded, thinking she probably hadn’t even been born yet when the last such ship arrived. She’d probably briefed herself from some aging manual. The truth was the system didn’t care that much about the outlying bases—just some basic facts on population and armaments for the statistical grids. He’d heard that the assumption had always been that such far-flung installations would fade in and out of participation in the empire over time. Otherwise their construction would have been made more pleasing.

  “Anya, you should have called me.” The man’s voice was somewhat frail, but commanding as he trotted into the room. He raised a palm. Jacob returned the gesture tentatively, no longer accustomed to the act.

  “I believe I did, Colonel,” she said softly, stepping back from her post as the man stepped onto the platform.

  “Terrible bother, this scan business,” he said, face slightly red. “But required. Looking for tentacles, I suppose.”

  It was an old joke. Jacob waited for the inefficient sensors to grind to a halt. “Have you ever turned up any?”

  “Certainly not with this device. There were Strangers about in the old days, and I might have run into a few during the sweeps. But hard to say. Back then they had these tag lines attached to every communication, ‘If they’re not a Friend, they might be a Stranger.’ Remember those? Of course not—you’re far too young. In any case, we were told they were all about. Problem is they were, are, so hard to identify. Has the process gotten any easier? Surely, with all the advances.”

  Jacob wondered what advances the old man could have been talking about. People could be so gullible out on the reaches. “Not that I know of. I’ve never seen a Stranger myself. Friends all, I suppose.”

  The aging officer stared at him. “You shouldn’t make light of such things. I’m surprised that you haven’t seen one of the enemy, as much as you travel. Do you have word, official of course, on the progress of the war?”

  Jacob had the uneasy feeling that the man might keep him quarantined and under scan if he didn’t provide a satisfactory answer. He wished he had Anders’s ability at complete fabrication. His ear buzzed. The war ebbs and flows, but remains constant. The empire continues to maintain. Ashamed of himself, Jacob repeated command’s answer word for word.

  “Very well then.” The officer motioned and Jacob was propelled forward up the ramp. The man’s hand thrust forward, gripping his arm. “Welcome to our humble landing. Anya—Officer Bolduan—is preparing the statistical feed. Any specific observations you’d like to make?”

  “Not really, as I was explaining to the other officer I’m only here two sleeps.”

  “Very well. You do realize your sleep regulation isn’t enforced here. If you’d like to continue your accustomed sleep cycle you can return to your vessel at the appropriate intervals—”

  “I’d like to give it a try.”

  “Certainly. Some have a difficult time transitioning.” The officer looked down suddenly, as if intent on something on the instrument panel. “Do you have messages to deliver?” he asked without looking up.

  Buzz. 432 undelivered regulatory messages. Jacob shook his head in annoyance. “There are a few, probably obsolete, regulatory messages.”

  The officer laughed to himself. “Well, we hardly need more of those.” He wetted his lips. “Anything for specific persons?”

  Buzz. Specific name is required for an adequate search. Misdirects now at over 62% due to addressing and time-delimiting malfunctions.

  “I’m not sure. I will certainly—”

  “My father is retiring tomorrow,” Anya spoke up, entering from the hall. “He’s been waiting for his letter from the emperor.”

  ·

  They skittered across the dull-sealed surface of the world in a shallow vehicle looking somewhat like a huge sandal. An old geo-magnetic skimmer, as far as he could tell, although it had a home-made, jerry-built feel. Regulation replacement parts were unheard of out here (or in most of the empire, if the full truth were known). Now and then they’d pass over a deteriorated portion of the coating and the skimmer would fishtail with a twittering sound.

  “It’s really more stable than it seems.” She was obviously amused by his discomfort. “I’m sorry about my father back there.”

  “He didn’t do anything wrong. You embarrassed him.”

  She sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid I did. It’s just that he’s been waiting for that stupid letter for so long, and I knew he’d never ask about it directly.”

  “Well, yes, I surmised that. The way he began immediately apologizing for your uniform, and his, obviously to change the subject. ‘My uniform is currently twenty-two points out of color phase. Officer Anya Bolduan’s is currently thirty-six points out of color phase.’ “

  “The sad thing is he tracks those figures every day, and at the end of the month he graphs the progress. He worries about that sort of thing. It’s like he expects my uniform will turn transparent in another year.”

  Jacob thought he might actually blush. The notion filled him with self-loathing. He couldn’t look at her. “They’re old uniforms. It can’t be helped. I don’t suppose it even matters.”

  “It matters very much to my father. And he only has another day for it to matter. So, is there a letter, Crewman Reporter Jacob Westman? Do you know anything, or is it all in that thing in your ear?”

  She might not have seen his kind before, but she read manuals. “Patience, please. My ear is attempting to tell me what it knows.”

  Letters from the emperor were given at one time to higher officers, including provisional officers in charge of outposts and settlements, upon the occasion of their retirement. The practice has been largely discontinued, declining rapidly as chains of command have become increasingly ambivalent. Rarely did such letters receive the emperor’s personal attention. Last recorded incident of such a letter . . . records here are incomplete.

  “He knew the emperor at one time,” she said. “They were friends. He served with him when they were both young. I think that’s why he has his hopes so high.”

  Monitoring this statement due to its high probability of fabrication. Positing truthfulness, such a relationship might possibly make a difference. Is it a friendship? Please note the lower case “f.” Probabilities difficult to determine, high inaccuracy due to questions as to whether a singular figure known as the “emperor” in fact now exists. Parameters classified.

  “Does your ear need more time?”

  “Apparently. I’m sorry.”

  “So how does it feel, having that voice in your head all the time? I can’t manage even the low volume of communications we deal with on Joy. Don’t tell my father, but sometimes I unplug.”

  “Truthfully it becomes annoying at times. But it is,” he stopped, watched her eyes, “company.”

  She nodded. “It does get lonely here, you know. Even after all this time, the older staff will be talking to you, and it feels like a genuine conversation, then suddenly they’re treating you like you were a Stranger.”

  “From my observations in these outlying posts, that isn’t unusual behavior.”

  “So are they still out there?”

  . . . speculations here are ill-advised. . .

  “Honestly, I really have no idea. Possibly.”

  “Is the emperor even still alive? We never hear anything out here.”

  . . . lack of complete information is no excuse for misleading statements by crew-members acting in their official capacity. . .

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you there, either. Some things work, I know that. We receive communications, including new regulations and orders. Although infrequently, supply shi
ps arrive at destinations.” Com buzzed his ear aggressively, but he ignored it. “Other military ships are encountered. The empire runs, although its borders apparently continue to change. And from my observation, most of the settlements appear to be running themselves. Maybe there’s still an emperor, maybe there’s a committee. People talk about the Strangers, but no one I know has ever seen one. Some people say there are no Strangers, and no emperor either.”

  “Well, there was an emperor. My father knew him. He says in the old days before he took command the emperor was expected to serve just like everyone else.”

  “He must have some interesting stories from that time.”

  The world’s surface coating stopped abruptly, and the skimmer almost as quickly. The unsettled portion of Joy rolled out in front of them, its multicolored layers of stone swirling into cones, peaks, and shallow valleys. The late-afternoon light emphasized its strangeness, and its random highlighting of geologic features gave the landscape an appearance of constant movement.

  “Very pretty,” he said, feeling inadequate to the task of responding to such an exotic vision.

  “Yes, but I’m afraid that ends the tour. Bad enough I go out there by myself without orders, but if you were to be injured—you can imagine, I’m sure. But it has such beauty and strangeness—I’m not sure I could handle so much Joy without it.” She laughed. “That was a silly thing to say, I guess.”

  He wanted to tell her how much he enjoyed hearing her laughter, but of course did not. “You stay because of your father?”

  “He retires tomorrow and I’m supposed to take over. Maybe then we can stretch things a bit, and I can find excuses to go out there more. Besides, he needs me for now. There are so many things he’s unsure of.”

  “I can’t promise any particular results, but I’ll keep searching for some sort of message, at least some official recognition of his retirement.”

  “He knew the emperor, I’m sure of it. My father isn’t the sort of person to fabricate things.”

  . . . fabrication is always a potential hazard when inadequate information is present . . .