Exodus, page 5
“Perhaps I should replant some mekas in the palace gardens when I’m empress next, to remind people of their heritage.”
“An excellent idea, Majesty.”
Helena-Chione gave up. Even her fellow queens probably didn’t recall the mountain from the time of the Imperial Accord seven thousand years ago, when they formally agreed to a shared rule of the dominion. Of course, more than half the city had been in ruin that day, and Kelowan’s Grand Families had all fled—at least, those that survived the Alliance invasion that had killed Queen Zuberi-Dulcina and every member of her tainted family.
“Funny what memories remain,” she mused. In the epoch since, she’d maintained her mindline through countless congregant daughters, yet her personality remained steadfast. But memories…Even an Imperial Celestial brain could only retain about two or three hundred years’ worth. Choosing what to pass on to the next host was always a difficult decision. Long ago she’d decided it was imperative not to lose the founding of the Accord—if nothing else, to simply prevent anything like Zuberi-Dulcina’s horrific neural weapons and deranged evolution dogma from ever rising again. Also always retained was Helena’s knowledge of the other queens, and how little she trusted them. Presumably they held her in equal disregard. Not that the five of them needed trust, just balance.
“Girls,” she beckoned.
The five Princess Congregants accompanying her to the Coronation hurried forward from the rank of courtiers filling the back of the observation deck. They were aged between eleven and fifteen, all of them clearly her daughters from their height and long limbs. Other than sharing the same intense green eyes, however, they had a variety of hair and skin colors. Each sporting quiescent bloodstone buds on their temple, they weren’t old enough to instigate their growth yet. That wouldn’t happen until she replaced them with younger princesses, or (unlikely, given her current body’s age) took one as her mind’s new host.
“Behold the center of our rule.” One by one, she touched her palm induction pad to theirs and conferred a simple linear memory gift of the Kelowan palace—from her earliest diplomatic state visits with Queen Zuberi to the missile-shattered wreckage with smoke pouring out, then its regrowth over the seven millennia since. All of the girls cooed excitedly at the gift and pressed themselves against the carriage window, trying to match current reality with the personal glimpses into a past dating back eleven thousand years. “And what is it, do you think?” Helena-Chione queried.
“Big!” Heba said excitedly, looking around urgently for approval.
At just eleven, she was the youngest of the Princess Congregants, and lacking all the mental self-control the others had been gifted.
Although all of Helena’s daughters had her basic neural personality, bestowed upon spawning, the time between that private ceremony and the final succession allowed them to develop a distinct personality that would be an influence over the decades when Helena remained in that body. Chione, whose body was the current host of Helena’s mindline, had been imposingly stoic. A trait Helena-Chione favored—possibly too often.
“An office for the dullest bureaucrats in the whole Centauri Cluster,” Princess Bennu answered derisively.
“No,” Jomana said evenly. “It’s a symbol, Mother Queen, that’s all. A focus for the empress. If you wiped it off the face of Kelowan, nothing would change. The center would simply shift to wherever the empress sits.”
“Very good, dear,” Helena-Chione said.
Jomana kept her face impassive, but she couldn’t hide her satisfaction from Helena-Chione; after all, she was her.
“If that were to happen, where would the empress sit next?” Heba asked.
“In her dreadnaught flagship at the middle of a very big Imperial navy fleet,” Helena-Chione replied wryly. “With the fleets of the other queens on her flanks. If there is one thing that keeps our Accord, it is that it cannot be challenged. A threat would unite us as nothing else. And the possibility of threat to our rule is what keeps us in agreement, no matter our petty quarrels.”
“I hate them,” Bennu declared.
“Imagine how they feel about us,” Helena-Chione told her princesses sardonically.
The capsule’s deceleration reached maximum as they entered the stratosphere. Although the vista of the land and the sky was comprehensive, the position of the observation deck didn’t allow Helena-Chione to see the orbital tower itself. “Are the others on time?” she asked.
“Yes, Majesty,” Lord Stethos-Therry replied. “Their capsules are keeping to schedule.”
She avoided trying to peer down. It would be pointless, and lack dignity. Carolien-Amaia’s carriage would be on another facet of the tower, which was pentagonal, in honor of the number of queens. Carolien-Amaia would be the first to reach the ground to be greeted by Luus-Kinza, the current empress. Helena-Chione herself would be next, followed by Ramona-Ursule, then finally Inessa-Pierinaierina. It was the same order in which they shared the role of empress.
“To tradition,” she said quietly. “Not to schedule.”
“Yes, Majesty.”
For tradition was the absolute ruler of the Crown Dominion. Tradition was stability. And stability was the basic requirement of every Imperial Celestial. Stability meant their mindlines could endure, allowing an uninterrupted personality continuation: effective immortality.
Helena-Chione turned away from the window. “Come along now, girls,” she said. “We must get ready and look our formal best for the procession.”
The courtiers parted silently, bowing as the queen led her Princess Congregants across the observation deck to her suite of private staterooms. Major Siskala-Ingrid of the Royal Tiger Guard led the way, resplendent in her silver-and-crystal armor, the breastplate embossed with the teal griffin of her Grand House. The curving black glass rectangle of her helmet visor concealed her eyes, but Helena-Chione knew she would be studying every member of the court as she approached them, eternally alert for treachery. Siskala-Ingrid was one of her own daughters, spawned sixty years ago, back when she was Helena-Idunn. Siskala had been a Princess Congregant, then when Helena had chosen another daughter to host herself in, she’d sought a military career.
The officers of the Tiger Guard were always from Helena’s bloodline. Family as well as tradition helps provide the dominion’s grail of stability.
Inside the suite, the Princess Congregants were quickly shooed away into the care of her waiting equerry. Helena-Chione carried on to her resting room. Lord Valdier-Mímir, her father and therefore Master of the Court, was waiting for her beside the double doors. “Lord Gahiji-Calder has requested an audience, ma’am,” he said as she approached. “He’s inside.”
“Of course he is,” Helena-Chione replied stoically. “Thank you, Daddy. Please make sure we’re not disturbed.” She straightened her back, making sure her modest gold-and-turquoise bloodstone ornamentations were level as she entered the room.
Lord Gahiji-Calder waited beside the desk, his gray-and-silver robes of state hanging like badly fitting curtains. Helena-Chione suppressed a smile at that. His bloodstone headdress spur was little more than a cap of black and green curlicues that concealed his spine connection patch. Her chief archon had always paid minimal observance to court decorum; he was one of the very few members of her Privy Council who could get away with such behavior.
“My Lord, welcome,” she said as she sat behind the desk. “Is this to be a formal audience?”
“I’m afraid so, Majesty.”
“We disembark in twenty minutes. I need to berobe accordingly for my Procession to the Imperial Palace.”
“Yes, Majesty. I do consider the information I bring to be of value. I believe you should hear it before you sit in the Council of the Empress.”
“All right. Let’s make it snappy, please.”
“Your archon, Lord Makaio-Yalbo, has recently returned to the Kelowan system. He sent a diplomatic communiqué as soon as he passed through the Gate of Heaven, which the fleet picked up as we docked at High Vaxjo. We’ve only just decrypted it.”
“Returned? I thought the Kelowan system is his brief.”
“It is his main brief. He does undertake additional minor roles for us on occasion.”
“I see. And on this particular occasion?”
“An unobserved meeting with the Archon Olomo.”
Helena-Chione raised an eyebrow. “The Heresy archon? What did that little rat want?”
Lord Gahiji-Calder cleared his throat. “It would seem, Majesty, there is a rogue gas giant heading for the Kelowan system.”
Helena-Chione listened with growing surprise as Lord Gahiji-Calder explained the situation. “So it was heading for the Gomatu Dominion then changed course? That seems unusual.”
“Very, Majesty. There hasn’t really been planetary engineering on this level since the Remnant Era. But momentum transfers are basic physics, no matter what scale it occurs at. Given that, I’d expect the Archimedes Engine to initiate a small course refinement when Dolod passed the brown dwarf, not a massive change of vector like this. I mean, it makes no sense.”
“Dolod will have a significant impact on Kelowan’s economic structure if our enterprises harvest the iron rain,” Helena-Chione said. “Why would they do that? There simply is no precedent for the Elohim to meddle in dominion economics.”
Lord Gahiji shifted uncomfortably. “Dolod has been on its way to JK67b since the start of the Remnant Era, and the Gomatu megastructure is a phenomenal undertaking. I can almost understand if the Elohim wished to assist that. If they do succeed in building a Dyson sphere, it will be a godlike accomplishment. That is something the Elohim might indulge.”
“Speculation, my Lord.”
“Perhaps. But now there is the course change to consider. It was huge. If the Elohim wanted Kelowan to be Dolod’s ultimate destination, why not fly along a vector to us from the start?”
“You believe Olomo’s theory that the Talloch-Te are behind this, then?”
“I believe somebody other than the Elohim changed its course. Anything more than that is truly speculation.”
“Which makes me ask, can someone other than the Elohim change its course?”
“It would be a difficult undertaking, but Celestials should be capable of such a feat, yes. There are many factors, but for a start you’d need to understand how an Archimedes Engine operates. A dominion with sufficient resources and determination should be able to achieve that.”
“But to what end?”
“Change, Majesty. The one thing the Crown Dominion fights against the most.”
“The Talloch-Te!” she said in tight-lipped disapproval.
“That’s conjecture, Majesty. But I would give that prospect a high probability.”
“The Heresy will know more than they are telling us. But…it is the Talloch-Te that the Heresy worry about? They certainly don’t care about our internal politics. Wynid’s alignment with them is practically in name only.”
“Of course.”
“But Olomo is right about the economic consequences. The Verak Grand Families will suffer if Anoosha’s economy declines, forcing Carolien-Amaia into the Goddess knows what action. She’s always too impetuous. I don’t need that kind of uncertainty, because it’ll be my time as empress when it all comes to a head, damnit!”
“The human economy on Anoosha will likely take a downturn, too. It is based around mining, after all. That might become an issue.”
She waved an irritated hand. “No one cares about humans. And anyway, the Anoosha ones are Carolien’s problem.” She gave the chief archon a questioning glance. “Do you think she already knows about this?”
“The Verak Royal Family has an alliance with the Talloch-Te, ma’am. Even I don’t know the full details.”
“This is starting to look like a play in the Talloch-Te’s Great Game to me,” Helena-Chione said. “They’re trying to manipulate their way to access the Helium Sea. That cannot come to pass.”
“You can point that out at the Council of the Empress after Carolien ascends to the throne. The other queens will back you.”
Helena-Chione drummed her fingers on the desk, considering the implications. “No.”
“Majesty?”
“My advantage here is that the other queens do not yet know about Dolod. You and I will have to see if this can be turned to Wynid’s economic gain, although it won’t be long before the navy monitoring satellites spot an incoming gas giant. Once it does become common knowledge, then all of my dear sister queens will maneuver for their own benefit. Besides, we need a united front after her Coronation today. You saw the fleet intelligence report on the Mara Yama?”
“Yes, Majesty. Admiral Naeem-Folmir was quite clear about their movements. The fleet we’re tracking seems to be heading for Capo Frois, although it will pass uncomfortably close to Hoa Quinzu in a few years.”
“And he’ll have quietly briefed the other admirals in our glorious Accord. We’ll all be under pressure from our navies at the Council.”
“The military always has a reason why their budget should be increased.”
“Yes, but this time it might be genuine. The Mara Yama have never ventured close to the Crown Dominion before.”
“Their presence could be a unifying factor for the Accord. It has grown lax of late.”
“Urgh—and while Carolien’s on the throne, too. She’ll never let us forget it.”
“You know how to deal with her, Majesty. You’ve had thousands of years’ experience.”
“Indeed I have.”
* * *
—
Finn was vaguely aware of someone pressing a nozzle into his mouth. His groan of complaint became reflexive sucking, and a fluid that tasted utterly vile slithered into his throat. He half gagged, and his eyelids blinked open. The whole world was blurred.
“Drink it, please, Finn,” a woman’s voice said. “It’ll help.”
He couldn’t avoid swallowing the wretched stuff, and the nozzle remained in his mouth despite his feeble squirming. More blinking, and he could just make out the opening he’d force-sculpted into the livestone outcrop. A human shape slid across it. He tried to remember who it was. She belonged to his recent past, didn’t she?
The stream of fluid finally stopped, and he groaned at the memory that was erupting. The face above him was completely out of focus, but the nebula was as vibrant as it had been the day he met her in Zaita City.
It had been the most pathetic folly, he realized now, to leave his home on Gondiar and travel across the Kelowan system to Anoosha. At the time it had been sticking up an impudent finger of defiance to the suffocating traditionalism of his indecently languid family. The various Jalgori-Tobu marchionesses—of which his mother was the thirteenth to proudly carry that title—had run Santa Rosa, Gondiar’s capital prefecture, for the eight hundred years since its founding: a governance that had become as immutable as the bedrock on which the city sat. Every son and daughter born into the dynasty was destined to enjoy a life of wealth and privilege until the day they died; tradition and duty had formalized their entire existence.
It was a life that Finn had come to hate with a vehemence that tipped him into outright rebellion before he’d even finished adolescence. By the time the investitures to his hereditary duties came along, he knew he could never survive the unceasing monotony of responsibility that came with his meaningless titles: the endless formal parties, the empty ceremonies, and eventually an arranged marriage to a girl from a good uranic family. He despised the very thought of the golden days stretching out ahead of him, where every whim and aristocratic vice was anticipated and obliged, because every single one of those days would be utterly identical.
His first almost-escape had been with Graça, a musician and poet he’d met at university. She was a uranic, too, but her family had ordinary humans in their lineage; her ability wasn’t as strong as his. Besides, their other crime was far worse: they weren’t rich. Finn’s mother would never permit him to marry anyone with such a low pedigree. A girl who laughed at the strictures that shaped his life, who knew how to have fun, who was dedicated to her music, who hated the injustices in the city—injustices that he’d never known about. It was a glorious, passionate affair. She’d taught him how to dance properly and appreciate the wilder music that came out of the poorer districts. They reveled in the zest of the city’s nightlife culture. He got to meet people his own age who were free in a way he’d never grasped. She’d been his rock as they experimented with sprays, which took on a whole new expanse as they shared each other’s psychoactive voyages through neural contact.
But Graça always wanted to go further, immersing herself in achingly soulful music, stronger sprays, more ardent protests against City Hall for dubious causes. He began to worry about her determination, her desire for the thrill of a life on the edge. Vivacity made her feel properly alive, she explained earnestly, but his own ultraconservative outlook still managed to hold him back from the extremes that captivated her. Then one day he arrived at her accommodation block to find the paramedics treating her for a severe reaction to a spray.
After that, his family had come down hard on his meager freedoms. He spent two months incarcerated in an exclusive recovery clinic with other broken adolescents from wealthy, important families. Simply being there was the greatest motivator to get clean and get out.
Back home, the family responded by filling his every waking hour with events and duties. The marchioness even produced a list of nice young girls from good uranic families that would be an acceptable match. The one time he tried to call Graça, just to see if she was okay, her lnc code had been canceled. His overwhelming schedule gave him no time to rebel—a slow torture that ultimately broke him.
He actually left a turd on the middle of the three-hundred-year-old stalloak desk that was the traditional workstation of the Minsterialis of Hafnir—and pushed over the priceless six-hundred-year-old statue of Cardisious, his ancestor and the very first Minsterialis of Hafnir. Priceless presumably because nobody would ever want to buy the stupid thing.
