In a picosecond, Koan made up his mind. If death was his aim, he would attempt to make it worth something to the people who had been his nation, his family. For a second time, he chose, at random, a pod containing a human, this one so tiny its fingers and toes had not yet fully formed. A brain so small couldn’t begin to hold the unique consciousness that was Koan, but perhaps, if fate favored them both, something of the artificial would survive within the biological.
* * *
2
Symeon’s fingers flowed over the 3-D interface like those of a conductor leading an orchestra. The sounds of hover tractors, farm hands joshing one another about the day’s chores, and animals braying outside the community barn never entered his virtual world.
“Hah! Sym, I said you couldn’t do it, but damned if you didn’t make a liar out of me.” Ologav Brashniev slapped his thigh. The aging farmer’s smile, brown and somewhat snaggletoothed from so many years of chewing tobacco, signaled both his pride and his chagrin.
“You’ll get a higher yield out of the cotton if you let the bots harvest in this pattern.” Symeon zoomed in on the hovering machines as they spun the raw plant fiber onto whirling rollers. With his adjustments, they were already showing a three percent higher reaping rate.
“I, for one, never doubted you, dear heart.” Varvara Oskenskya, Ologav’s wife and the only mother Symeon had ever known, squeezed his shoulder, her smile so deep, her eyes disappeared behind her heavy epicanthic folds.
“Thank you, Varvara Oskenskya,” Symeon said and squeezed her hand.
That shouldn’t be her name.
The old, familiar voice rose in Symeon’s head like a long-dead geyser suddenly jetting sulfurous water. He tightened his jaw, but otherwise ignored it, just as Ologav and Varvara had taught him to do as a child. Thinking of it sent him back to his younger days, to the taunts of the other space-born of his generation who had called him ghost boy and ostracized him from their play. Back then, only the nannie bots would play with him, until Ologav and Varvara had taken him in.
Why had the voice returned, now, of all times? Besides the rare twinge of déjà vu, Symeon had been free of it for years. Odd that it should come now, with him on the verge of his first trip to space.
Or perhaps, not so odd. His life was about to change in ways he could hardly fathom. Trepidation was to be expected, so why not a return of his childhood affliction? It was only his life’s work on the line if he failed his patron.
“You remembered your formal attire, yes?” Varvara lifted her dark eyebrows.
“Of course.” At twenty-two, Symeon didn’t need his adoptive mother to go over his packing list, but he knew better than to argue. He had returned to the District Two farm to say his goodbyes, after all. He had been gone for two years, already, during his training, but his new appointment would likely see him away for many more to come.
“Ignore her,” Ologav said, rolling his eyes at his wife. “She’s worse than an old hen.”
“Old hen, am I?” Varvara slapped at Ologav’s shoulder playfully. No amount of ribbing could dampen her mood today. Her eyes sparkled with merriment as a sly smile split her lips. “Better than an old cock!”
Ologav’s braying laugh echoed through the cavernous barn, but cut off abruptly, and his brows lifted in surprise. He whipped off his fur hat and clasped it to his chest, bowing.
Symeon followed Ologav’s gaze and immediately bowed in turn, his heart suddenly beating in his throat. “Mistress Rurikid, Seneschal Ivan rab Rurikid, you honor us with your presence.”
Mistress Kavya Rurikid, daughter of Grand Duke Alexei Rurikid, was a tall, strikingly beautiful woman. She wore her platinum tresses in a set of long, intricate braids that ended in wispy curls at her elbows. Her scarlet dress, reflective in the light streaming through the barn door, hugged her alluring curves in ways Symeon tried in vain to ignore. The dress shone in counterpoint to her silver-blue skin. She was the epitome of Shorvex beauty, a peak no Luxing woman could ever hope to match.
Ivan rab Rurikid, Symeon’s tutor in the ways of councilorship these past two years, strode arm-in-arm with the reverend lady. He beamed with pride, as well he should, his black hair and dark skin a striking contrast to hers. Dressed in the formal attire of a high born slave, his navy blue suit with its red piping and gleaming golden star of office emblazoned on the left breast gave him a regal air almost as rarefied as that of the lady Kavya.
“Please.” Kavya motioned for the slaves to rise from their bows. “You were laughing when we came in. I didn’t mean to stop that. What was so funny?”
“Just the foolish words of a slave, Mistress,” Varvara said. Though she had lifted from her bow as ordered, the farmer’s wife would not meet Kavya’s gaze. She looked horror-struck.
“Have you come to collect Symeon?” Ologav met Kavya’s gaze. He was, after all, the District Two Administrator of Farms. He had counseled with Kavya’s father face-to-face in the past and many times via video conference.
“I’m afraid we have.” Kavya’s genuine smile could sometimes disarm a slave. They had no experience with such earnestness showered on them by a royal—it could be a trick, after all. Ologav knew her of old, and therefore didn’t shrink, but returned it in kind.
“Did you enjoy your trip home, Symeon rab Rurikid?” Ivan asked, kindly applying the rab Rurikid to his student’s name. As seneschal in training to the Lady Kavya, Symeon rated the appellation, though he had never used it on the farm.
Varvara and Ologav shared a smile to hear their adopted son so named, their dark cheeks glowing with pride.
It is the mark of a slave, a bought man. Chattel! No sentient should own another!
“I had a lovely time.” As a child, Symeon had prided himself on showing no emotion when the voice inside his head got chatty or showed him images he could neither comprehend nor enjoy. He gave his tutor a formal dip of his chin. “Pardon me, though, did I misjudge the time? I thought I was to meet you at the landing pad in an hour. If my idiocy brought you here, Lady, I do apologize.”
“No, no.” Kavya made a tsking sound. “I wanted to see the farms. I haven’t been here since I was a girl, and Father always finds something else for me to do whenever I ask. This time, I got my way.”
“Oh, but you took a chance wearing that lovely dress here, my lady,” Varvara said. By the look in her eyes, it took all her resolve to keep from brushing at Kavya’s garments. “I do hope none of the farm leaves here with you.”
Kavya’s tinkling laughter echoed through the barn. “What’s in a dress, Varvara Oskenskya? It is our farms that feed the district. Let the fat ladies at the emperor’s palace turn up their piggy snouts at dirt on my dress. I’ll poke them in their bellies to remind them where all that extra fat came from.”
Varvara covered her mouth in a failed attempt to keep from laughing, which made Kavya giggle all the more. Varvara turned her smile on Symeon and pulled him into a hug. Ologav placed a hand on his shoulder and nodded.
“We will miss you all over again.” Varvara drew back to look up at him. In a rush, as if caught up by inspiration, she untied the ends of the yellow babushka at her chin and shoved it into Symeon’s hands. “In case we never meet again, eh? You will remember me.”
Tears stung Symeon’s eyes, and he hugged his mother again. “Forgetting you would be like forgetting myself.”
“Work for the lady the way you worked on this farm, and you’ll go far, son.” Ologav squeezed Symeon’s shoulder, the closest he ever came to hugging anyone but Varvara.
“I will.”
“Let us away then.” Ivan turned to usher Kavya and Symeon toward the barn’s double doors.
“Shall I change before we leave?” Symeon asked.
“We rode down on the lady’s yacht.” Ivan kept his voice just this side of chiding, as if to ask how else a young woman of Kavya’s station would travel. “You may wash and change there. We do have a schedule to keep.”
“Of course, sir.”
Ivan had never been short with Symeon before. In fact, the man seemed out of sorts today. Symeon considered addressing the matter but held his tongue. Whatever was bothering the senior seneschal wasn’t Symeon’s concern.
* * *
3
Eight hours later, Symeon, the lady Kavya, and Seneschal Ivan descended the ramp from her ship to the surface of the moon Bastrayavich, the capital of the Phoenix system. Symeon wore a suit to match Ivan’s, though his lacked the blazing sun emblem and the number of achievement medals worn by the older man. And it was damned stiff, especially the high collar. Symeon had donned it only three times before, during estate dinners hosted by Lady Kavya, and hadn’t yet broken in the fabric. He resisted the urge to tug at it.
Bastrayavich’s mother planet, Prahbog, hung in the otherwise blue-green sky like a painted hot air balloon, its striped face drawn in bands of orange, yellow, and black made hazy by the moon’s thick atmosphere. The air smelled of rich earth and growing things that reminded Symeon of his home, back on Phoenix. Though the emperor’s hall stood in the middle of a bustling city, the land for six kilometers in every direction bore no signs of human activity beyond the occasional security drone meandering overhead. Birds and other wild animals called from the surrounding forest, while small mammals scuttled across the palace’s many-tiered roofs and onion-shaped domes.
A contingent of eight royal guards armed with rifles had gathered to meet their party. They stood on a scarlet-colored carpet, their stiff backs to the capital building’s southern entrance, their silver-blue skin bright in the sunlight. Dressed in formal uniforms of red on black accented with mirror-polished boots and chests heavy with ribbons, they looked particularly smart to Symeon who had seldom encountered the Emperor’s Doormen—the royal guard detail tasked with protecting the system’s leader and his family.
“The Lady Kavya Rurikid, daughter of the venerable Grand Duke Alexei Rurikid,” Ivan announced, striding ahead to address the guard captain.
“Very good.” The Shorvexan captain made way for them and even bowed slightly as Kavya passed.
They entered a luxuriously appointed hall with a polished parquet floor, inlaid wooden walls meticulously carved with depictions of the moon’s wildlife and fauna, and a mosaic-covered ceiling that rose twenty feet overhead. A second set of guards eyed them as they passed inside but made no move to delay their progress.
Dozens of the most famous royals in the system stood about the place in gaggles, chatting with their peers while their Luxing attendants waited upon them for food, information, or whatever other needs might arise. A handful of robots walked, wheeled, or hovered through the crowd, but on the whole, the Shorvex peerage preferred human servants, and it showed.
Grand Duke Rurikid caught sight of Kavya and excused himself from a conversation with three of the system’s princes of the blood royal to head her way. A fit man in his middle fifties, the grand duke stood a head taller than most people in the room. Dressed in a resplendent pearl white uniform matched with supple black boots and a matching beret, he looked like a general on campaign.
“Father.” Kavya curtseyed, dipping her chin low while Ivan and Symeon bowed.
“Kavya. You were told not to come here.” The grand duke turned his gaze on Ivan. “I take it there was no stopping her?”
“I did try, sir.”
“I have no doubt.”
Kavya cast about as if checking for eavesdroppers. Satisfied, she bent toward her father’s shoulder. “Stubbornness runs in the blood, Father. If you won’t be diverted from your course, then neither shall I.”
“This is the young phenom you’ve chosen to serve my daughter?” The duke turned away from Kavya as if to dismiss her and lifted an eyebrow at Ivan.
“Yes, sir.”
Symeon kept his mouth shut while the duke looked him up and down. He might have shivered under the man’s gaze—Grand Duke Rurikid had a reputation as a harsh and unforgiving judge of character—but Ivan had long prepared him for this meeting.
Judge? Why should any man have the right to judge you? What merits his station? What work, beyond the chance of birth, makes him better than you?
“Ivan tells me you possess a genius for organization and sound reasoning the likes of which he has rarely seen.”
Symeon cleared his throat. “Ivan rab Rurikid oversells my abilities, I’m afraid. I wish only to serve Lady Kavya to the best of my ability, Your Highness.”
The grand duke sniffed, though the hint of a smile touched his lips. “Spoken like a true Luxing. Never let a Shorvex hear you boast, eh? You were born from my space stock?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How old are you then?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Not counting a thousand years of stasis,” said the grand duke. “You’re nearly the last of our space born. We have only...” Grand Duke Rurikid turned to Ivan.
“Two hundred thirty-one.”
“Two hundred thirty-one of your like remaining in orbit. I’m glad to see so much time in a pod did nothing to dampen your intelligence.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The grand duke cocked his head to one side, a shrewd look in his eye. “Can you tell me, young man, why all of these people have gathered here today?”
A test then. Symeon knew the answer, though it wasn’t the one he spoke. “The emperor has called for a gathering of the two divors, the upper and the lower, to discuss the gate, sir.”
More than a year ago, long-range radio telescopes had registered space craft approaching the Phoenix system. That news had come as a shock to the general public, who had always considered space outside Phoenix uninhabited. Of course, there were the ancient myths that told of Shorvexan cosmonauts plumbing the depths to travel between stars, but such tales had long ago fallen out of favor.
Until now.
The approaching aliens called themselves the Bith. They looked somewhat like a turtle to Symeon who had watched state-approved recordings of communications between them and Emperor Pyotr Mastronov. According to the Bith, they intended to build a type of transportation gate in the Phoenix system, one that would make instantaneous travel between stars possible. How such a thing might work—
Wormholes.
—Symeon couldn’t fathom, but the Bith claimed they had built similar devices throughout the galaxy, connecting thousands of civilizations.
All that had taken place months ago. Since then, the Bith ships, massive freight haulers ten kilometers long, had taken up station between the two outermost planets in the system and begun a construction project, despite calls from the emperor to halt while he and his councilors considered the idea.
Aliens and space gates, however, weren’t the sole reasons behind today’s meeting. The current emperor, Pyotr Mastronov, having assumed the throne four months ago after the death of former Emperor Vladimir Mikhailovich, had not yet secured his power base. Many amongst the peerage questioned young Pyotr’s right to the throne. A mere cousin to the Mikhailovich line, Pyotr had won the position by currying favor with the previous emperor. The more scurrilous rumors claimed he had shared the old man’s bed during his final years, though Symeon doubted such gossip. Either way, Emperor Mikhailovich had been impotent, and though some amongst the commoners were willing to use artificial means to sire children, such would never do for the peerage. That sort of depravity was for the likes of the Luxing, never a true Shorvex.
The threat of aliens entering the system, unbidden, to construct a gate made Pyotr look weak. It appeared he had no plan to deal with the incursion and had spent the last several months dithering about what he should do. Never mind the young emperor’s complete inability to do anything, even if he possessed the will. The Shorvexan Royal Fleet consisted of fewer than a hundred intra-system transport vehicles and a handful of armed frigates. As the old saying went: Perception and reality are twins of the tongue.
Thus, the two great houses of the ruling council, the High Divor and the Low, had come together outside t
heir normal session on the pretense of discussing the Bith and their gate. Symeon knew many had come for that reason alone, ignorant as they were of the tensions brewing amongst the leading men who ruled the Phoenix system.
His liege’s father was not among that innocent lot.
Grand Duke Rurikid nodded, his steely gaze pinning Symeon in place. “What is your assessment of the situation?”
You Shorvexan fool! You’ve buried your history, your treachery, so deep, you’ve forgotten it. You aspire to a pretend throne while the foundations of your society split asunder. You cannot fathom the implications this gate will bring to your doorstep.
“In all honesty, Your Highness, I’m not certain we can stop progress. Even from long range, it’s easy to see the Bith are in full control of construction. Unseating them might pose a greater problem than some in the news media forecast.” Symeon held the grand duke’s gaze and inclined his chin, a subtle tell to convey the meta meaning behind his words: he saw no reason to usurp the emperor with the Shorvexan government stable and the economy growing at a steady rate.
“I don’t know, perhaps we’re more powerful than you think, young man.” The grand duke looked as though he might say more, but an electronic trumpet sounded, and the gathered leaders fell silent. The meeting was about to begin.
* * *
4
Double doors at either end of hall opened on pneumatic hinges to reveal ushers and guards outfitted in royal red and black livery. The men of the Lower Divor split to the right to follow guides, while those of the Higher marched through the left set with august solemnity. Symeon followed Kavya who, in turn, followed her father into an expansive room, its high arches bedecked with gold and silver filigree, its walls constructed of rare timber from the south of Kholm in Phoenix’s warm temperate band.
Symeon, careful to remain two steps behind and to the right of Kavya, fought the urge to gawk at the room filled to the rafters with unique creations, precious treasures sculpted into works of exquisite art, and the many powerful men ignoring them to take their appointed places at an oval-shaped council table. Part of Symeon wondered at his own presence in this place at this time. Who was he, but a farmhand who had proven adept at problem solving? Even that, in this rarefied space, seemed little more than a trick of fate, perhaps even a fluke. Five years ago, his greatest concern had been regulating the air exchangers in the co-op’s chicken coops to maintain the proper temperature for high egg yields.
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