Hidden Empire (70 page)
“Tell him we’re considering the request,” Frederick said, stalling, and the message was relayed. He felt desperate for someone
to lean on. “And find my old Teacher compy OX. I might need to tap into his information.”
The alien’s liaison tank reminded King Frederick of a diving bell. Recalling that these—what had they called themselves,
hydrogues?
—lived at incredible pressures deep within gas giants, he realized the crystalline sphere must be an environment chamber.
Any alien emissary would have had to enclose himself like that, just to survive in Earth’s atmosphere. He couldn’t imagine
the pressure it must contain.
“That small tank could be filled with weapons, Sire,” said one of the court guards.
“Probably.” King Frederick heaved a deep breath. “We’ve seen that those large warglobes can obliterate entire moons. If the
aliens wanted to, they could have launched an outright attack on Earth. Instead, their emissary decided to knock on our door.
I think… I think we should hear what he has to say.”
“I still don’t trust them, Sire,” said another adviser. King Frederick kept forgetting all their names, since the people changed
so often.
His stomach in knots, Frederick shifted uncomfortably on his large throne. Now of all times, Basil was not there to whisper
words into his ear. Frederick would have to play this on his own terms. After decades of acting experience mouthing the niceties
of diplomacy, today he would have to be a real King. He steeled himself, sat up straight, and raised his right hand. “Very
well. I command you to let the alien emissary enter my Throne Hall.”
The court guards and advisers muttered disapproval, but the old King glowered at them. “I must hear him out. Perhaps he wishes
to sue for peace! For months we have begged them to communicate with us. We have repeatedly requested negotiations or peace
talks, and until now the aliens remained silent. How can I refuse to see this emissary simply because he has not arrived at
my convenience?” He clenched his ringed fist and slammed it down on the arm of his throne. “No! If we hope to put an end to
this conflict, I must have words with this creature.” He raised his chin. “Let the aliens explain themselves and their actions.”
The arched outer doors, which had been hastily barricaded upon the arrival of the emissary’s tank, were unbarred. Royal guards
sweated and strained to pull the massive barriers open again. Finally, they swung wide enough that the delegate’s spherical
environment chamber could pass through.
Mustering all his dignity, the King stared at the strange, perfectly round container. The chamber contained milky vapor, probably
a thick high-pressure concentration of gases that the hydrogue creature breathed. A burst of steam emitted loudly from the
diving-bell sphere, startling the royal guards.
Finally, one of the court green priests came in from a back alcove, stumbling under the weight of a potted treeling, much
larger than was meant to be conveniently moved. Frederick belatedly realized that it was foolish not to have several worldtrees
waiting in the Throne Hall at all times, though Basil had feared the Therons could use them to eavesdrop on the activity at
court.
“Have you gotten through to the Chairman?” he said harshly out of the corner of his mouth. He could not tear his eyes from
the fearsome environment sphere that glided toward him on some sort of levitating mechanism.
“Not yet,” said the green priest, setting the heavy pot down on the step beside the ornate throne. He crouched next to the
treeling and wrapped his hands around the scaly bark. “Other green priests in your connecting chambers have been trying to
track him down. They spoke with our counterparts in Mijistra. But from there, locating the Chairman in his private meeting
with the Mage-Imperator is more difficult.”
“Keep trying,” the King said, attempting to be strong and noble, not wanting to show how much he relied on Basil.
The hydrogue emissary approached, his pressure vessel looming large and ominous. A handful of court bureaucrats sent in musicians
to play a bold fanfare, as if the deep-core alien might enjoy such a reception. Protocol ministers raced in with colorful
banners and flags, presuming that their symbols and pennants would be recognizable to an alien species. King Frederick thought
them ridiculous.
Thrumming with power, the translucent sphere came to a halt, overwhelmingly large even in the giant Throne Hall. Murky clouds
inside churned like a living opal.
King Frederick thought of a child’s snow globe and desperately struggled to stop himself from giggling at the mental picture.
He had to appear brave and resolute. He would make Basil proud by demonstrating that he had learned true diplomacy after so
many years in the Whisper Palace.
In his dread-filled heart, Frederick knew that this was the most important meeting of his long reign. He stood, not out of
deference to the hydrogue emissary, but to keep himself from feeling so small and insignificant in front of the hovering crystal
sphere.
He waited in silence, but the pressure vessel had emitted no words since the initial demands for an audience. Finally, in
an effort to maintain a semblance of control over the situation, Frederick decided to speak first. While the green priests
kept trying to contact Basil, the King would draw out this encounter, make no rash decisions—and, above all, do nothing to
provoke the aliens. The gigantic hydrogue warglobe in orbit no doubt had its weapons fully charged, ready to level all the
cities on Earth.
“I am King Frederick of the Terran Hanseatic League.” He squared his shoulders and spoke with pride, though he doubted the
hydrogues had any sense of human expressions. “I represent all humans throughout the Spiral Arm, on Earth, on our colony worlds,
and also on the space stations and skymines that you have destroyed.”
Frederick waited, certain that his words would spark some sort of reaction from the alien emissary.
Finally, a shadow congealed in the center of the globe’s compressed gases. The mists thinned, as if solidifying into a form,
and a quicksilver silhouette became a shimmering humanoid shape—a perfectly formed man, complete down to every eyelash, every
hair on his head, and a uniform of clothes with many pockets, clan emblems embroidered on a flowing cape, every wrinkle preserved.
Yet the emissary was fashioned out of a flexible liquid crystal that looked like thick mercury. The creature moved toward
the transparent curved wall of the environment chamber. The eerie molten features moved, the lips formed words. “I bear a
message from the hydrogues to you, Frederick, king of the rock dwellers.”
“He’s dressed like a Roamer,” said one of the awestruck protocol ministers. Some of the royal guards and court attendees crowded
into the Throne Hall now murmured with anger, wondering what that might mean.
The deep-core aliens could not simply have chosen a generic approximation of a human form. This image included too many exact
details, too many precise contours. It was an identity stolen or copied from somewhere. Since the hydrogues had destroyed
at least five Roamer skymine installations, perhaps they had duplicated one of their victims, absorbed or mimicked his body
and clothing in every detail.
King Frederick calmed himself, knowing how much was at stake. “You call yourselves hydrogues?” He tried to keep the quaver
from his voice. “We know nothing about your civilization or your species. We did not even know of your existence. From such
ignorance, mistakes are made.”
Always be careful. Choose your words. Be vague. Do not assign blame
. He had learned the tenets of diplomacy, but such techniques had been developed for humans to deal with humans. Who could
tell how a liquid-crystal alien from a gasgiant planet would interpret them?
The Teacher compy OX entered the Throne Hall, unnoticed in the tension, and stood patiently near the green priest and his
potted treeling. OX took in all the details, but remained silent until the King should ask him for advice.
“Hydrogue civilization has existed longer than any rockdwelling settlement,” the alien emissary said, its expressions shifting
sluggishly, like solder melting into a pool and then hardening again. “Within our worlds, mobile cities are encased in diamond.
Our people move from planet to planet in our empire through transgates, only rarely traveling across space in self-contained
vessels.” The emissary paused.
King Frederick asked the expected question. “What are transgates? We are unfamiliar with your technology.”
“Dimensional doorways that allow instantaneous journeys from world to world. Though our warglobes and some of our cities are
capable of space travel, we find it an inefficient method of making a journey from point to point.”
Frederick tried to grasp the information. Beside him, the green priest droned quietly into the tree, speaking through telink
like a stenographer repeating everything he saw and heard. Other green priests across the Spiral Arm would pass on the new
information.
These deep-core aliens, these hydrogues, had an entire hidden network of civilization that spanned at least as much area as
the Hansa or the Ildiran Empire. But since they lived deep within “uninhabitable” gas giants, traveling through dimensional
gates rather than across open space, no human had ever suspected their existence. The depths of his ignorance astonished him.
Frederick decided it was time to press for more vital information. “If you have inhabited and colonized so many gas giants,
why are our rocky worlds significant to you? What do we have that you could possibly want?”
The alien emissary shifted inside his vessel. “You have nothing we want.”
The King ignored the buzz of conversation around him. “Then why do you attack us? Why do the hydrogues provoke a war with
the humans and Ildirans? Thousands of innocent people have already died because of your aggression.”
“The hydrogues started no war,” said the emissary. “All was at peace for millennia. We had no interest in insignificant outsiders.
We had no needs in common with rock dwellers, no overlap of interests or territory.”
The King was so frustrated he wanted to scream. Then
why?
He felt the weight of all those deaths upon him, even the Roamer and Ildiran casualties, every victim slaughtered by these
hydrogues.
The alien emissary’s features shifted as if replaying a sequence of images it had captured from observing the terror and death
of the human model it had used as the basis for its appearance. “In an unspeakable act of destruction, you set fire to one
of our finest worlds. You ignited a heavily populated planet. Hundreds of cities and tens of millions of hydrogues were destroyed
when you turned our world into a star. Very few of us escaped.”
The liquid-crystal envoy pressed close to the thick wall of the high-pressure environment chamber. “It was
you
, King of all rock dwellers, who declared war on us.”
B
asking in the half-slumbering presence of the all-connected worldforest, Otema sat at her writing desk within the Prism Palace.
She wrapped a gnarled hand around the flexible trunk of the potted treeling and recited aloud the beautiful cadences of the
Saga of Seven Suns
.
She told the frightening tale of a horrific wildfire that had swept across the conifer forests of Comptor, and how the Comptor
Designate, the youngest and most beloved son of a former Mage-Imperator, was trapped in his rustic private dacha. As the ravenous
fire surrounded the dwelling, the young Designate had brought his family together, to stare out at the bright flames. The
Designate told his children that they must never be afraid of the light, that the brilliant glare reminded him of the seven
suns that shone down upon Ildira. Then, through the
thism
, he had communed with his father during the last awful moments, telling the Mage-Imperator how much he loved and worshiped
the godlike leader. And then the
thism
had snapped.
The legend deeply moved Otema, and she read stanza after stanza to the worldforest, which had its own innate fear of fire.
The sentient interlinked trees brooded with terrible half-hidden memories of another ancient conflagration, a sweeping conflict
that had engulfed many worlds—long, long ago. She tried to tap into the history, but the trees would not share it with her.
The unexpected mental shout that broke through via direct telink startled Otema out of her prayerful reverie. The insistent
contact had been sent by one of her colleague priests at the Whisper Palace, calling for her.
With a surge of comprehension, the old ambassador suddenly grasped the situation: the arrival of the hydrogue emissary on
Earth, his demand to speak with King Frederick, and the King’s urgent need to communicate with Chairman Wenceslas, who had
come to Mijistra. Otema knew full well from her time spent on Earth that the aged monarch made no decisions for himself, could
not even legitimately speak for the Hansa unless the Chairman gave him permission to do so.
