by Wil McCarthy
Well damn the Youth Coalition.
A bell chimed. “Jafre?” said the voice from his desk.
“Yes, Martin?”
“Your wife is on the line.”
Jafre put a hand to his brow. “Tell her I'm dead,” he said, and then sighed, because he knew Martin would do no such thing.
Indeed, on Jafre's telkom screen, the eighteen demands of the Youth Coalition vanished, and the image of Asia Gill replaced them.
“Why aren't you here?” she demanded without preamble.
“Because I haven't left yet,” Jafre said reasonably. The matching reasonable expression had found its way onto his face, and he made the extra effort to keep his hands relaxed in his lap. It would not do to let Asia know she'd annoyed him, to let her know she had affected him at all. Such knowledge was never of positive benefit to their relationship, or to Jafre's end of it, at least. “Just some small affairs to attend to. Did you get my suit fluffed?”
“Have you tried on your new boots?” she countered, unwilling to answer his question directly.
“My new boots?” Jafre said, not questioning her but musing privately, as if he couldn't quite remember the answer but would in a moment or two. In fact, he had tried the boots on several times, and was quite satisfied with their fit. But Asia's eyes had that shifty look that said she was in the middle of something, that she was hurrying through this call as part of grander schedules, and Jafre simply couldn't resist dragging things out a bit for her. Never mind that he should be hurrying himself.
But Asia knew this game as well as he did, and she was ahead of him this time; she just rolled her eyes and clucked. “Get your ass up on the next shuttle, my dearest. I expect you on Chrysanthemum in four hours.”
“Yes, dear,” Jafre said, and smiled thinly, acknowledging both his defeat and his grudging admiration. It never ceased to amaze him that for all her power, for all her burdens and responsibilities, the Director of Port Chrysanthemum and the Fleets of Malhela still had the time to call him up nag like any other wife.
Before she vanished from his screen, light played momentarily across her necklace as she reached for the cutoff switch. The necklace sparkled with a dozen examples of that most beautiful of stones. Centrokrist.
We'll have some trouble on account of that, he realized, and at that his smile split into a wide, unself-conscious grin. The thought displeased him not at all.
Chapter Six
The gangway had an actual red carpet on it, some soft, bright fabric that it seemed a crime to walk upon. And yet, ahead of Tom and Yezu a few dozen people had already done that, and some of their shoe-prints were clearly visible in the pile of the carpet. Tom stepped out onto it.
“You did lose it in the endgame, sir,” Yezu said for the third time that morning, as he matched pace and they strode on down the gangway. A man and a woman waited near the bottom.
“Yezu, will you leave it alone? I failed to establish control of the center. I failed to develop my pieces effectively.”
“Nonsense. Your queen bored through my ranks like a rock drill, and I couldn't dig her out until you fed me that bishop. That destroyed your entire defensive structure.”
He slowed a bit, nudged Tom in the ribs and nodded toward the couple at the base of the ramp. “And who have we here?” he asked in a much lower voice. “The red king and queen?”
The man wore a jacket of bright crimson, with puffy white lace bursting out at the cuffs and neck. Lights in the corridor were white and harsh, and the buttons of the man's jacket seemed to catch the glow and sparkle peculiarly with it. Shiny orange boots laced up toward his knees.
The woman's face peered out between the hugely billowed shoulders of an elaborate, floor-length dress of shocking scarlet. She wore a necklace of gold woven around bright, faceted stones. Blonde highlights streaked the woman's hair, which piled high above her in a sculpture of curls and pins. Both she and the man displayed broad, professional smiles, and they touched and spoke with the men and women debarking from Introspectia, each in turn.
And presently, it was Tom's turn.
“Jafre Shem,” said the man, commanding Tom's attention back to him, holding crossed fists out in front of him, flat. His smile seemed entirely too broad. “President of Unua.”
“Uh...” Tom gripped the man's hands and shook them briefly, not quite sure what was expected. “Tomus Kreider, Doctor of Planetology. I'm, uh, pleased to meet you.”
“Asia Gill,” said the woman beside Jafre Shem. She offered Tom the same crossed hands, but with the backs turned down toward the floor. “Director of Port Chrysanthemum and the Fleets of Malhela.”
Tom gripped her hands as well, shaking them in what seemed an appropriate manner. “Tomus Kreider, utterly charmed.”
“What goes on here?” Yezu said behind him, his voice at once polite and impatient. “Where are those people going?”
Ahead, the line of debarked passengers, moving rapidly once past the constriction of the Red King and Queen, snaked around a corner and vanished.
“Why, to the reception of course,” said Jafre Shem. “If you'll just, ah, follow them...”
Yezu cleared his throat in the way Tom had learned meant he was displeased. “We have come a long way, sir, and sacrificed much. Have you some sort of briefing for us? Can we see a sample of the material you've discovered?”
Jafre Shem's smile stretched to an improbable width. “You already have, Earthman.”
“I don't understa—” Tom watched Yezu's eyes lock on the buttons, the elaborate, sparkling buttons on Jafre Shem's jacket. “Oh no. Oh, you haven't...”
Tom shot a look at Asia Gill, at the jeweled necklace dangling down into the upper reaches of her bosom, draping upward between her shoulder-puffs. Pea-sized polyhedrons, the stones reminded him vaguely of opals, of cut and polished pearls, of peizoluminescent quartz under megabar pressure. But really, they resembled nothing Tom had seen. And Tom had seen much.
Above the necklace, the woman's smile faltered, and her eyes flashed a signal of... guilt?
“You haven't...” Yezu repeated dully.
“Please move along,” Jafre Shem said in a low voice. “We'll talk at the reception, ah?”
“Tomus, they have—”
Tom grabbed Yezu's arm and pulled him away from the two, down the corridor where the other passengers all had gone. Toward the reception. “Yes, my friend, apparently they have.”
“But... But we've come so far. Do they mock us? Do they regard this as some kind of joke? Very poor taste, I should say. Would you wear a piece of the pyramids around your neck? Or a piece of the first lunar lander?”
Ahead, the corridor curved up and away in classic spin-gee architectural style, but Tom followed the crowd, turning left onto a corridor that ran long and straight, parallel to the station's spin axis. Faint music carried on the air, flutes or bagpipes or violins, with an eerie voice crooning in the background.
“Will you relax?” Tom said quietly. “I think you need a good party right now.”
“Precious stones.” Yezu's voice was distant. “Back when Earth was the frontier, rare minerals were the only form of hard currency.”
“Yes? Yezu, what are you getting at?”
“I don't know. I don't know. Let's wait for those damn painted bureaucrats at the party.”
The music seemed much louder now.
~~~
More cocktails, of peculiar color and flavor. Slender women, wrapped in pink and bright green fabrics and with little stones sparkling on their fingers and wrists and earlobes, held out little silver trays with little bits of food on them. Conversation rumbled low and loud as Terran visitors tried to coax or bully information from the servants of their absent hosts.
Tom and Yezu tried to pounce on the Red King and Queen as soon as they entered, but many others tried as well, and Malhelan security officers, clad in garish yellow costumes, had to push the crowd back so that the two could pass. And pass they did, up toward the dais at the head of th
e chamber. Tom heard a few shouted questions he couldn't quite make out, and then Jafre Shem was up and facing the crowd, hands raised, his gemstones sparkling in the harsh light.
“Welcome to all!” He shouted, projecting his voice without amplification. “We are pleased to welcome these honored guests to our system, humble though it be. For four centuries now, we have labored alone to build world for ourselves in the darkness, with only the distant voices of our friends to keep us company. And now, our friends have arrived in person!”
There came a smattering of applause from, Tom thought, the smattering of Malhelans in the crowd. But Jafre held his palms out just as if he were silencing a throng of millions. “Malhela is no longer alone; our friends have come, across the great emptiness of space, to study the substance we call 'centrokrist,' the substance which we believe to have originated with an ancient, nonhuman intelligence in this system. Such profound discovery! Humanity is no longer alone! Humanity now has friends from the great emptiness, even if those friends are absent. It is in joy that we share this knowledge with you, the scientists from our mother world.”
A little more applause this time. Again, Jafre held his hands up to silence the invisible millions.
“Let's move up next to the dais,” Tom murmured to Yezu. “I want to be right in front of him when he comes down from there.”
Together, they pushed through the crowd. Three hundred people, maybe more, in this small chamber that might serve as a dining hall for fifty or sixty. Room to move, yes, room for the elbows and the trays of food and drink. But not a lot of room. Already the air had grown warm and humid, and did not promise to improve over the course of the reception.
Pale gems glittered here and there in the crowd.
“There will be time later for lectures and meetings and laboratory sessions,” Jafre boomed. “In fact, large block of space has been cleared out here in Port Chrysanthemum for your use. Just let our people know your power and datastream needs and we will accommodate you as best we can. Right now, though, we encourage you to relax, to get to know us as people. Certainly we are very eager to know you! For—”
The applause came again, still sparse but much more vigorous this time, and evidently unexpected. Jafre seemed a little flustered and a tiny bit irritated. He paused for a moment, then bulled through. “For your enjoyment, we have beer, and yogurt, and delicious chokeberry wine fermented—very carefully!—from the fruit of the toxic choker tree. If you're hungry, please try the sausages and the butter wheat crackers. There's plenty here, and it will all go bad if you don't eat it, and that would hurt our feelings.”
He laughed. “Now, Asia Gill and I will step down from here and mingle. We're happy to answer your questions, but please, do try not to smother us. There are others in this room now, and more arriving soon, who may be better able to help you. Thank you all for your patience!”
He leaned over slightly, waving his hands as if brushing dust away. Tom, who had just stepped up level with the podium, stepped back again, and Jafre Shem hopped down into the space he had occupied.
“Ah, Mister President?” Tom said as carefully and as formally as he could. “Could we have a word with you?”
“When can we visit the discovery site?” Yezu blurted out, leaning over Tom's shoulder. “Once we've enjoyed your hospitality I'd like to get right to work, and I must see the material, the 'centrokrist,' in its original matrix to properly—”
“I'm afraid I can't help you,” Jafre said, his voice quietly slicing through the crowd noise. “Fleet scheduling is Asia Gill's sphere, not mine. And, ah,” he nodded sideways, to the place, five meters and a score of people distant, where the Red Queen smilingly attempted to push through a knot of anxious, question-sniping scientists. “She seems to be rather occupied. Anyway, there's not much to see anymore, I mean at the excavation site. The veins, really, are mostly played out.”
Yezu Manaka leaned forward, his hand gripping Tom's shoulder tightly. “I knew it! Those buttons, those necklaces! You've plundered it all, haven't you? The very thing we've come here to study!”
Looking nonplused, Jafre Shem leaned backward a little and came up against the dais. “I can assure you, we have set aside significant amount of the centrokrist for your study. More than enough, I should think. If you will excuse me?”
Yezu shook his head. “Don't brush me aside, sir. I've come here to study the lay of the centrokrist as much as the substance itself.”
Jafre tried on a half smile, then dropped it and scowled. “It's been long time since I was out there. I really can't help you. If you ask around, I'm sure you'll find somebody who remembers those things. Now if you don't mind, I really do need to circulate.”
With that, the Red King puffed himself up and strode past Tom and Yezu and into the crowd, into the teeth of other people's anxious questions.
The music started up again, raining down from a set of primitive, ceiling-mounted sound generators. Guitar music this time, the sound of a glass rod picking and sliding at the strings while a drum rapped slowly in accompaniment. Light sounds, perhaps friendly ones. But the tune rolled out with slow turgidity, like a funeral dirge.
“There you fellows are!” A voice called out, and behind it Jhoe Freetz elbowed his way through the masses. And behind him, a tall, white-haired man.
Jhoe stopped, half turned. “If you please, allow me to present—”
The white-haired man, still moving forward, spread his arms. Like a kind of trap, Tom had time to think, and then Jhoe, grunting in surprise, was shoved against him, and he against Yezu. The long arms came together, encircling and squeezing.
“Hey!”
The man chuckled in deep, gravelly tones. “Ho, what beautiful children. And from Earth!”
“Sir,” said Yezu, his voice rising in alarm. His face was squished up very close to Tom's. “What do you intend here?”
“Oof,” Jhoe Freetz added, his breath warm against Tom's cheek.
The arm-trap loosened a little, and the white-haired man chuckled again. “What beautiful children. I was once a child from Earth, did you know that?”
Yezu grimaced politely. “Perhaps you've mistaken us—”
“Uh... Tomus, Yezu,” Jhoe said. “Allow me to present Jack-Jack Snyder.”
“I'm the oldest man in the world!” The man said brightly. He let go with his arms and stepped back. Tom, suddenly leaning too far forward, fought to unhook his thumbs from his belt so he could flail properly for balance.
Jhoe looked earnest, excited. “I'd read so much about Jack-Jack Snyder in the early histories, just imagine my surprise at finding him still alive. Well, actually he found me, when I was practically still on the boarding ramp. At any rate, I'm very pleased.”
“A social scientist to study my planet,” Jack-Jack beamed. “Of course I came to fetch you. Who better to share the vaulted troves of my memory?” He laughed again.
Tom believed instantly this man's claim to great age, to an Earthly origin that must, by definition, predate the colony on Unua. The man's hair, not gray but white, tied back in a heavy bun that nestled behind a palm-sized bald spot. His skin looked deeply lined and saggy, pale even against the cream color of his suit. No puffs or ruffles or lace there, either, just a smooth and conservative cut of minimalist elegance. A single, thumbnail-sized jewel dangled sparklingly from one of his earlobes. Centrokrist? Yes, surely.
Behind his smile, the man's teeth gleamed white and perfect, like new laces on a raggy old pair of slippers.
“Um...” Tom said.
Yezu came sharply erect as someone bumped him from behind. He cast a look of annoyance over his shoulder, then turned and pointed it at the old man. “Quite a grand entrance. What have you got there, hanging from your ear?”
“What do you think it is?” Jack-Jack asked with mock innocence. “A piece of history? An object, perhaps, slightly older than myself?”
Yezu reddened. “What have you people done?”
“You are a very angry young man.�
�
“Don't insult me. I was born a hundred and eighty-four years ago, and that does not include relativity.”
“Really? How wonderful. The stone, as you've guessed, is a centrokrist, the wearing of which marks me as a man of refinement. Something you aspire to, I trust, and I wish you well in the endeavor.”
Yezu looked a little puzzled at that, not sure if he was being placated or insulted.
“Oh come on,” said Jack-Jack. “Should we have frozen ourselves until your arrival? Should we have held our collective breath and nailed our collective feet to the floor? Please understand, we were as interested as you. But eventually the novelty wears off. Let an old man tell you something, hey? The novelty always wears off.”
“You seem like a very peculiar person,” Yezu grumbled unhappily.
Jack-Jack's smile was warm. “My boy, you see to the heart of things. It makes me proud.”
“Uh,” Jhoe Freetz cut in, uneasily. “Mr. Snyder has kindly arranged for my transport down to the surface. I have to go and pack my things.”
“Right now?” said Tom. “Why not stay for the party, and pack later?”
“Well, I'd like to, but—”
“These people are mostly idiots,” said Jack-Jack, waving his arms to indicate the crowd around them. “They won't tell you anything you really need to hear. I, on the other hand, am the oldest man in the world, and my flight leaves in two hours. Come now, I won't take no for an answer.” He laughed. “Really, I actually won't!”
“I've already agreed,” Jhoe said, a little tersely.
Tom shook his head, letting his disapproval show. “If you really feel you must hurry, then I won't try to dissuade you. I've never been to an interstellar reception before, though, and I intend to enjoy myself. Should we say goodbye now? I guess we won't be seeing you.”
“Not for a while, no. As I said, I'm going back to the ship to get my things together, and then...” He shuffled a little. “I'll try to contact you when I'm settled. Um, best of luck to you both. In your research, I mean.”
