Galactic Empires (21 page)

"No," Perri said. "No."

Silence.

Quee Lee felt her husband's tension. Leaning forward, she told their companion, "There are no empires."

A long black silence held sway, and then came a sound not unlike the creak of a joint needing oil.

"Many, many species have tried to build empires," she continued, naming a few candidates to prove her knowledge of the subject. "The galaxy's first sentient races accomplished the most, but they didn't do much. The galaxy is enormous. Its planets are too diverse and far too numerous to be ruled by any one government. And starflight has always been a slow, dangerous business. When a species rises, it can gain control of only a very limited region. When you measure the history of empires against the life stories of suns and worlds, even the most enduring rule is a temporary, very tiny business."

Quee Lee concluded by saying, "No single authority has ever controlled any significant portion of the galaxy."

"I applaud your generous sense of doubt," the stranger replied. "May I ask, my dear? What are you?"

"What do you mean?"

"By blood, I think you must be Chinese. Am I right?"

"Mostly, yes," she admitted.

"And the city of your birth?"

"Hong Kong," she whispered.

"Hong Kong, yes. A place I know of, yes. Of course you understand that your China was a great empire, and more than once. And as I recall from my long-ago studies of Earth, there was a period-a brief but not unimportant time-when the port of Hong Kong belonged to the greatest empire ever to exist on your little world. There was a minor green island sitting in a cold distant sea. It called itself Great Britain, and, with its steam-driven fleets, it somehow managed to hang its flag above a fat fraction of the world's population."

"I know about Britain," she replied.

"Now tell me this," their companion continued. "There lives an old rickshaw driver who plies his trade on the narrow Hong Kong streets. Does that lowly man care who happens to serve as governor of his home city? Does it matter to him if the fellow on top happens to have yellow hair, or is a Mongol born on the plains of Asia, or even a Han Chinese who is a third cousin to him?"

"No," she admitted. "He probably didn't think much about those matters."

"And what about the peasant farmer struggling to feed himself and his family from a patch of land downstream from Everest… the ruler of a farm that has never even once fallen under the indifferent gaze of the pale northern man who works inside a distant government building? Does that farmer concern himself with the man who signs a long list of decrees and then dies quietly of malaria? And does he care at all about the gentleman who comes to replace that dead civil servant… another northern man who bravely signs more unread decrees before he dies of cholera?"

Quee Lee said nothing.

"Consider the Mayan woman nursing her daughter in Belize, or the Maasai cattle herder in Kenya who happens to be the tall strong lord to his herd. Do they learn the English language? Can they even recognize their rulers' alphabet? And then there is the Aboriginal hunter sucking the precious juice out of an emu egg. Is he even aware that fleets of enormous coal-fired ships are landing and then leaving from his coast each and every day?

"These souls are busy, embroiled in their rich and complex, if painfully brief, lives. Within the British Empire, hundreds of millions of citizens go about their daily adventures. The flavor of each existence is nearly changeless. Taxes and small blessings come from on high, but these trappings accomplish little, regardless of which power happens to be flying the flags. A peasant's story is usually the same as his forefathers' stories. And if the peasant's children survive, they will inherit that same stubborn, almost ageless narrative."

Neither human spoke.

"Do these little people ever think of that distant green island?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't," Quee Lee allowed.

"But if they did think of Britain," the stranger began.

"What?" Perri prompted.

"Would they love the Empire for its justice, order, and the rare peace that it brings to the human world?"

Neither responded.

"Of course, they do not. What you do not know, you cannot love. This is true of emperors as well as mates. So long as the peasants' lives remain small and steady, they won't be capable of hating the British.

"Which is not to say they are unsophisticated souls. They are far from simple, in fact. But their lives are
confined.
By necessity, the obvious and immediate are what matter to them. And the colors and shape of today's flag could not have less meaning."

"Suppose we agree," said Perri. "We accept your premise: For humans, empires tended to be big, distant machines."

"As they are for most other species," was the reply.

In the dark, Quee Lee and her husband nodded.

"But I don't agree with that word 'big,' " the stranger continued. "I believe that even the greatest empire, at the height of its powers, remains vanishingly small. Nearly invisible, even."

"I don't understand," confessed Quee Lee.

"Let me remind you of this: Several million whales swam in your world's little ocean. They were great beasts possessing language and old cultures. But did even one species of cetaceans bow to the British flag? And what about the tiger eating venison on the Punjab? Did he dream of the homely human queen? And what role did the ants and beetles, termites and butterflies, play in the world? They did nothing for Britannia, I would argue… except for what they would have done anyway if left to their own marvelous devices."

Perri tried to laugh.

Quee Lee could think of nothing useful to say.

"The trouble," the voice began. Then it paused, perhaps reconsidering its choice of words. "Your mistake," it continued, "is both inevitable and comforting, and it is very difficult to escape. What you assume is that the
names
in history are important. Because you have smart, educated minds, you have taught yourselves much about your own past. But even the most famous name is lost among the trillions of nameless souls. And every empire that you think of when the subject arises… well, that political entity, no matter how impermanent and trivial, was visible only because it wasted its limited energies making certain that its name would outlive both its accomplishments and its crimes."

"Maybe so," Quee Lee allowed.

"Names," the voice repeated. "The worlds you know share that unifying trait. A name brings with it a sense of purpose and a handle for its recorded history. Attached to one or a thousand words waits some center of trade, a nucleus of science, and you mistakenly believe that the most famous names mark the hubs of your great cosmopolitan galaxy."

Perri squeezed his wife's hand, fighting the temptation to speak.

"But the bulk of the galaxy… its asteroids and dust motes, sunless bodies and dark corners without number… those are the features that truly matter."

"To whom?" Quee Lee asked.

"To the ants, of course. And the lowly fish. The beetles and singing whales, and our rickshaw driver who knows the twisting streets of Hong Kong better than any Chinese emperor or British civil servant. The nameless citizens are those who matter, my dear." Their companion shifted its weight. Perhaps. Something creaked, and the voice drifted slightly to one side. "And I will confess that my empire is like all those others, if not more so. The Union that I love… that I have served selflessly for eons… is vast and ancient. But where England made maps and gave every corner its own label, my Union has wisely built itself upon places unknown."

Husband and wife contemplated that peculiar boast.

Then Quee Lee remembered an earlier thread. "You have visited Earth, you claimed."

"I did once, yes."

"Before or after your invisible warehouse?"

"After, as it happens. Soon after."

"You mentioned receiving a new mission then," Perri coaxed.

"Which leads directly to an interesting story, I believe." The next sound was soft, contented. "My new orders came by a most usual route. Whispered and deeply coded. Instructions from my superiors that were designed to resemble nothing but a smeared flicker of light thrown out from a distant laser array." The words were strung together with what felt like a grin. "Alone, I left my previous post. Alone, I rode inside a tiny vehicle meant to resemble a shard of old comet, using a simple ion motor to boost my velocity to where my voyage took slightly less than forty centuries—"

"By our arbitrary and self-centered count," Perri interjected.

"Which is not a very long time." Those words were ordinary and matter-of-fact, yet somehow with the sound of them-in their clarity and decidedly slow pace—the voice conveyed long reaches of time and unbounded patience. "I traveled until I came to a nameless world. There was one ocean and several continents. The forests were green, the skies blue with white watery clouds. To fulfill the demands of my new mission, I selected an island not far from the world's main continent: a young volcanic island where the local inhabitants built boats driven by oars and square sails, and they put up houses of wood and stone, and they planted half-wild crops in the fertile black soil. And their moments of free time were filled with the heartfelt worship of their moon and sun-the two bodies that ruled a sky that they would never truly understand."

"Was this Earth?" Quee Lee asked.

There was a pause.

In the darkness, motion.

And then the voice told them, "When these particular events occurred, my dear, there was no world called 'Earth.' "

Quee Lee wrapped both hands around her husband's arm.

"Remember this," the voice continued. "The Union is the only power that truly matters. And the Union is interested only in those dark realms that appear on no worthwhile map."

VI

"A king happened to rule that warm, sun-washed island. He was simple and rather old, and I was tempted to kill him in some grand public fashion before taking his throne for myself. Yet my study of his species and its superstitions showed me a less bloody avenue. The king's youngest wife was pregnant, but the child would be stillborn. It was a simple matter to replace that failed infant and then bury what was Me inside its healthy native flesh. Once born, I proved to the kingdom that their new prince was special. I was a lanky boy, physically beautiful, endowed with an unnatural strength and the gentle grace of wild birds. I didn't merely walk at an early age, I danced. And with a bold musical voice, I spoke endlessly on every possible subject, people fighting to kneel close to me, desperate to hear whatever marvel I offered next.

"The wise old women of my kingdom decided that I must be a god's child as much as a man's.

"On a daily basis, I predicted the weather and the little quakes that often rattled the island. I boasted that I could see far into the skies and over the horizon, and to prove my brave words, I promised that a boat full of strangers would soon drift past our island.

"I made my prediction in the morning, and by evening I was proved right. The lost trireme was filled with traders or pirates. On a world such as that, what is the difference between those two professions? Whatever their intentions, my people were waiting for them, and after suitable introductions, I ordered the strangers murdered and their possessions divided equally among the general populace."

The voice paused.

In the darkness, Quee Lee leaned hard against her husband.

Then, without comment, the story continued. "I was almost grown when that little old king stood before his people and named his heir. Two of my brothers were insulted, but I had anticipated their clumsy attempts at revenge. In a duel with bronze swords, I removed the head of the more popular son. Then I turned my back, allowing my second brother to run his spear through my chest—a moment used to prove that I was, as my people had always suspected, immortal.

"With my own hands, I yanked the spear from my heart.

"In anguish, my foe flung himself off one of our island's high cliffs.

" 'Someday I will follow my brothers into the Afterlife,' I promised the citizens. 'But for the rest of your days, I will remain with you, and together we shall do the work of the gods.'

"And that was the moment, at long last, when the heart of my mission finally began."

Their companion paused.

Finally Perri asked, "Are you going to explain your mission?"

"Hints and teases. I will share exactly what is necessary to explain myself, or at least I will give you the illusion of insights, placing you where your imaginations can fill in the unnamed reaches."

"About these natives," Quee Lee began. "Your people… what did they look like?"

Quietly and perhaps with a touch of affection, the voice explained, "They were bipedal, as you are. And they had your general height and mass, hands and glands. Like you, they presented hairless flesh to the world, except upon their faces and scalps and in their private corners. As a rule, most were dirty and drab, and on that particular island, their narrow culture reached back only a few generations. But their species had potential. Following ordinary pathways, natural selection had given them graceful fingers and an evolving language, busy minds and a compelling sense of tribe. In those following years, I showed my people how to increase the yields and quality of their crops. I taught them how to purify their water, how to carve and lift gigantic stones, and I helped them build superior ships that could chase the fat fish and slow leviathans that could never hide from my godly eyes. Then, in the shadow of their smoldering volcano, I laid out a spacious palace surrounded by a solid home and wide avenues, and for three generations, my devoted followers built the finest city that their species had ever known."

Once again, the voice ceased. But the silence was neither empty nor unimportant, accenting a sense of time crossed with clear purpose. Then came a smooth laugh, and their companion remarked, "If the two of you were dropped into similar circumstances, you would accomplish most if not all of my tricks. You are borderline immortals. Spears through your hearts would be nuisances at day's end. Armed with the knowledge common to your happy lives, you could visit some nameless world and convince its residents that you were divine, and in the next breath you could call for whatever riches and little pleasures that your worshippers might scratch together for you.