Asimov's Science Fiction: June 2013 (14 page)

"I see."

We waved our pincers in mimicry of the human gesture of helplessness. "It wasn't as clear as it is in this case; there were negotiations, deceptions, minor conflicts, and then a crisis. We had to act. The propaganda your xenophobes found was left over from that encounter."

We sat silent for what seemed several minutes.

"And still you roam the Galaxy?"

"Some must. Most roamers are cybernetic beings, of course. So, we are a bit old fashioned. It helps in contacts with young races. But, we, too can be replaced by robots."

Then Empress Marie laughed and said, "By Chaos, we can feel sorry for ourselves! I should be doing a better sales job on Ann, or I'm looking for number thirty-eight and number fifty-seven. If I can. Or maybe Hans will just change the constitution and make himself president, chancellor, or dictator, or something."

"We are new here, of course, but would think that in this crisis, your people, and the Oriona, and the Galaxy, and perhaps even the Canids, are much better off with you leading your hive."

Empress Marie sat down, no, she fell into the chair as if exhausted, as if weighed down by a mass that even the low gravity of our quarters could not ameliorate. We pulled our stool over to her side and sat with her.

"I'm really just a figurehead," she said, "a romantic, royal, ceremonial prop. We never went as far down the road of collectivity as your species has, but we still have our own hierarchical instincts. So, someone needs to look like they're at the top. People are more comfortable that way, regardless of reality. I have no real authority. Hans can do whatever he gets the votes for and I have to go along with it unless it becomes an Earthmind issue, in which case I have to go along with what Earthmind wants. Oh, of course, when nobody knows what to do, I'm the royal executive flip-ping decision-maker. Throw me up in the air and see if I land flat on my face or my butt."

We gave that the clicks that would be expected, though she didn't sound humorous at all.

"You've had to go to war before," we noted.

"I have. Over three thousand people died because of it. That fountain outside is their memorial. Queen Anathor, that was three thousand individual, unique consciousnesses. Imagine three thousand hive-queens."

There had never, to the best of our knowledge, been as many as three thousand hive-queens in our species at one time. We, of course, knew of the war she had then felt she had to support. Parliaments and politicians aside, if she had chosen to publicly oppose it, that fleet would not have gone.

"I have done this before, and now I've hung around so long I get to do it again." She held up her hands and looked at them. "They don't come clean, do they? So what's another sanguinary bath?"

"You would not tolerate evil done by your own species, even at so great a sacrifice. You did not know it then, but you have gained the respect of all the dozens of civilizations that are in the light cone of that event. It was part of why we have turned to you in hope."

"Have you? I'm not the woman I once was."

We sat silent. So much hinged on the hope that she was still that woman. But somewhere inside, she had to realize it.

"She came to the meeting, didn't she?"

She meant the princess, of course, conjured in her mind by the hope of laying her burdens down.

"She did." Ann's presence, her interest, premolting behavior aside, was the hope that sustained her.

Empress Marie nodded and took a deep breath. "A long day tomorrow. I shall call my escort."

We accompanied her out to the great stone square and felt the mist blown from the great fountain again. A car came and whisked her away. We looked up and saw maybe a handful of stars. Our eyes, like human eyes, limit the amount of light they admit, and the courtyard was well lit. A woman came toward us; the crown princess, our children told the hive-queen.

"You want to see the stars, Queen Anathor?" she asked.

"We do. But the lighting is too..."

Princess Ann raised a hand to her head. "Zwicky will take care of it."

The lights vanished and a million stars burst forth. The high gravity of Earth needed only a thin layer of air for its atmospheric pressure, and the stars shone down with almost the clarity of space. Our ancestral soup of an atmosphere was almost three times as thick overhead and hardly ever cloudless.

The princess produced a light that shined up into the sky as if to infinity. "The three bright stars in a row are the belt of Orion."

Seeing alien star maps is vastly different from having their stars shown to us in their natural depth. Our eyes now traced the imaginary lines in the sky and saw the figure humans saw at the dawn of their civilization.

"They sort of point to that very bright blue-white star, Sirius."

We nodded. "So, our fate lies between those stars."

"Hard to tell who all you mean to include with that 'our,' Queen Anathor."

A grammatical ambiguity that worked in our favor! We clicked softly.

"We are surprised to find you still awake, Your Highness."

"Oh no you don't. Ann. Just Ann."

We said nothing.

"I couldn't sleep. Too much to think about. I think better walking around."

"Your mother thought well of you, this evening. We did too."

She shrugged. "I haven't abdicated yet. Until I do, I should keep up with things. You never know. At any moment..."

"Your mother's inner strength is greater than she knows."

Another long period of silence followed, filled with the tastes of flowers, the mist of the fountain, and the hard bright stars above.

"Why does she do it?" Ann asked.

"Have you ever read the stories of Robert Heinlein," we asked, "from the days when your species first dreamed of leaving their planet, and then, finally, haltingly, did?"

"The story
Double Star
is given to anybody with royal blood.
Glory Road
as well. Not necessarily by our parents, or the palace staff, however."

"Then you know about paying it forward."

"Yes. Mom has a debt she wishes to pay forward? It must be some debt."

We nodded. "Twenty thousand years ago, your species might well have perished in the ice ages. It was not us, but some other wanderers. It is all in the library."

"If you ask the right question! Chaos!"

"Your mother has spent a lot of time with the library records. Only a few of each species choose to lift their kind. Only a few are such heroes."

"Mom?"

"You know she is. And you know what it costs her."

"Yeah, well the reason I'm going to abdicate is that I'm not up to that kind of thing."

We didn't answer.

"Well, I'm not. Sorry to disappoint."

We touched a claw to her shoulder.

"I'm twenty-two years old. You and Mother are trying to get me to think in terms of centuries, millennia, eons. It's too much. I have no reference. I'm just not..." She looked up at the stars.

"You're not, perhaps, getting the sleep your species needs." We knew all about protesting too much.

She laughed. "You've got that right, Queen Anathor. I'd better get in now. It's getting chilly." She gave us a wan smile and left.

The temperature seemed just fine to us, of course.

When the next day's conference started, Princess Ann was last in again, but only because the prime minister, somewhat late himself, bulled his way past her as if she weren't there. She was dressed differently today, in severe gray pants and a tunic with a high collar and a small blue gem at its clasp. Her hair was back and tight.

We went over everything again, and the prime minister still resisted doing anything.

James, who had said almost nothing yesterday, finally turned to Eisen. "Is there anything that the Children of Light have presented that you question in any way?"

Eisen sighed. "Omata, what
I
question, or do not, depends on what the voters believe, and that changes daily."

"Facts mean nothing, then?" James asked.

"In terms of what decisions I make, what I decide to do, to put it bluntly, no, they themselves are not important. I must work with what voters
believe
are the facts. Though I must say we have here not facts as much as probabilities and judgments. Most are very disputable and are so disputed."

"One," James said, "the Canids exist, sterilize worlds, and are expanding. Two, the rest of the galactic civilization cannot get here before they do in another inhabited world. Three, we can meet them half way, or wait until they get here."

The prime minister shook his head. "Or we can meet them two-thirds of their way here. Or they may self-destruct before they reach anything else. They may already have self-destructed. Or they may not come here and expand in some other direction. If, and I say 'if ' advisedly, we must do something to antagonize them, we can do that when the public is fully on board with it."

"What if that's too late, Hans?" Princess Ann said, speaking for the first time.

"What if, what if, what if. The what ifs can be someone else's problem."

Empress Marie spoke. "Queen Anathor, if we do nothing, what will you do?"

"Head for the Oriona system."

"With one ship?" Admiral Sun asked.

"Their Sun has an asteroid belt. With fortune, there would be many more than one
ship before the Canids arrive. As the prime minister has pointed out, there are many what-ifs in this situation. Some of those would allow for our success."

"Most would not," Admiral Sun said.

"To guard against that, we would create an Oriona ark and send it outward toward the converging galactic forces. Even if the defense fails, their escape would be success of a sort."

"Your Highnesses," Admiral Sun said. "There would be at least two ships headed toward Orion. Whatever is written of the history of my kind, it will not be said that I was a coward or turned away from such duty."

"You will not act against the orders of the minister of conflict resolution," Eisen said.

Admiral Sun smiled and bowed slightly toward him. "I would not then be part of the ministry, of course, your Excellency." Then he turned to us. "At
least
two ships."

"A suicidal fools' errand," Eisen said.

"I'll go with them," the crown princess said with a shrug.

That stunned all of us into a silence.

"Nonsense, overblown nonsense," Eisen blustered. "Consider your duties."

"I am. I need to see more of this Galaxy while Mother's still around."

"Your Highness," James said, great worry on his face.

Empress Marie reached over to touch James. We marveled at the complexity of the interactions between the humans compared to the simplicity of our own.

Empress Marie turned to the prime minister. "Hans, your problem is perceived political backing. Very well, I will make a speech."

"Your Majesty, the government has not yet decided that there should be a public airing of this, nor what the form would be, nor that it should have any advocacy, and particularly not from the head of state."

"I will make a speech, and then you will have new political realities to deal with."

"That is not your role as a constitutional monarch."

"Then fire me. It appears I have a successor."

The prime minister sat silent for a moment, and then said, "There are bills for constitutional change presented at every session."

"Hans," Princess Ann said, "the sessions have been an average of ten years apart."

"I could call one."

"It would be a vote of no confidence," Princess Ann said. "Touch the net, do the numbers. You won't beat Mom."

James laughed, "Of course, your Excellency, then it
would
be someone else's problem."

"Do not patronize me, Omata. At least, Your Royal Highness, allow the government to draft the address."

The way he said 'Your Royal Highness' tasted of contempt, and the resulting smile on the empress' face reminded us of the baring of fangs by one of this planets carnivores.

"I will draft it, with James' assistance."

"One of your former consorts?"

A quick check showed that James had been consort number twenty-five, but had never totally left the empress' life, and this was rumored to have been a factor in the departure of number thirty-seven, who, we now suspected, may not have been Ann's biological father. With human leadership there are often two stories, the official and the real. We struggle to keep up.

"... and that of Earthmind, of course," Empress Marie continued with ice in her voice. "We will give you an advance copy."

"Earthmind," Eisen spat the word out. "The dead cannot rule the affairs of the living."

"Your Excellency, the survival of the human race, and the survival of Earthmind, is their business as well," James said.

The prime minister sat silent, bent over with his face in his hands. Nobody said anything.

"If it matters," we said, "even the first ones tell us the greatest lesson is that what the universe lays on us pays little heed to the wills of minds within it."

"Not my will but thine be done," James whispered. It was a quote from a human religion that lived on in their culture. Wisdom is wisdom, wherever found.

"Hans," said Empress Marie, in a softer voice, "we will make no mention of what has happened here. For those outside, it will be as it always has been."

He sat up and shook his head. "No. I am no war leader, and I have clearly lost the confidence of your Majesty. I must consult the others of my party first, but you shall have my resignation within days." He stood up. "We haven't had elections in over a hundred years. Perhaps it is time. At any rate, you will do what you will do and my presence here serves no further useful purpose. By your leave, your Majesty."

Empress Marie nodded and he left. We never saw him again.

"The casualties have begun," she said into the silence that followed the prime minister's departure. "I have a speech to write."

With all the others gone, we walked out into the gravity with James and Ann, into the great plaza to watch the droplets of the great fountain ascend to the stars and fall back in their endless cycle. There was not much more to say.