Emperor of the Universe Page 5

  Two of Clave’s words caught Nicholas’s attention. “Scrap gold?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Dreadful stuff. And the rules for dumping it are ridiculous. If they catch you scattering it in space or burying it on an asteroid, there’s an enormous fine. And they always catch you. I found that out the hard way.” Clave fiddled with another of the controls. The ship accelerated. But the thrust was gentle. “Hang on. It won’t take us long to get there. The jump node we just left is pretty close to Menmar.”

  “Can I have it?” Nicholas asked.

  “Have what?”

  “The gold.”

  “Sure. If you wish. I just don’t want to get in trouble leaving it on your planet. Are you positive there aren’t any local laws against dumping gold?”

  “I’m absolutely positive. You won’t get into trouble.” Nicholas, who was already fantasizing about his mountain of gold and his first ten sports cars, got to his feet and checked the viewport. They were above a blue-green planet, but either they were a lot closer to Menmar than the Craborzi ship had been to Earth, or Menmar was a lot larger, because it overflowed the viewport. In the northern part of the hemisphere that was in view, a single continent, mostly brown and white, shaped like a crudely drawn otter clutching a tennis racket, stood out against the oceans. A second continent came into view, on the equator. It was shaped a little like a cloud.

  “I’m in outer space above a planet in another solar system,” Nicholas whispered as the immensity of this set in. “And I’ll be the first person from Earth to set foot on it.”

  He had no way of knowing he would also be the last.

  AND A WORD ABOUT NAMES

  This would be as good a time as any to deal with the thorny issue of nomenclature. Fear not. I’ll keep the discussion brief. When telling tales that span a universe, one has to make a decision about names. For example, Nicholas is a human being. Off planet, it is useful to refer to Nicholas as an Earthling. For the most part, we will use this home-planet method of designation for anyone we meet. Planet names, themselves, are a bit of a disorganized mess. A lot depends on whether they hosted intelligent life when first encountered or were uninhabited until colonized.

  And then, there’s the issue of what to call each individual. While names can often be traced back to their origin, they lose that connection over time. Nicholas’s name, though it comes from two words that are Greek for victory of the people, is a mere sound to his fellow students, and even to himself. Henrietta’s name also carries no meaning, though it can be understood to be based on Henry, and to imply, by way of the suffix, smallness and femininity. Jeef’s name, as we saw, has meaning, as do many names. All of this would be of no importance if our story spanned just Yelm, or the state of Washington, or even the entire West Coast.

  But let’s consider Clave. His name, like Nicholas’s, is now a mere sound, though it derived from an ancient Menmarian word that meant either hero or the guy who shows up right after you decide he’s never going to show. (Linguists are bitterly divided on this issue.) We could tell a story about Victory of the People, Little Female Henry, Grass Fed, and Hero, but the names by which we know ourselves are so much more personal. So we’ll stick with Nick.

  WHAT LIES BENEATH

  Nicholas had no idea where Earth lay among the scattered lights of the star field he could see beyond Menmar, or how far away it was. Something else tickled his mind. He thought about the images he’d seen from probes that had landed on the Martian surface.

  “Why wasn’t there a lag?” he asked.

  “Are you always this curious?” Clave asked.

  “Pretty much,” Nicholas said.

  “It’s a miracle your parents didn’t eat you once you started talking,” Clave said.

  “What?!” Nicholas tried to process this. “What did you just say?”

  “Nothing,” Clave said. “Forget it.”

  “Do you eat your kids?” Nicholas realized it wasn’t a big step from devouring your own child to dining on someone else’s offspring. And he was someone else’s kid. That led to the guilty realization that he’d eaten veal, which was a cow’s kid, more than a few times, and enjoyed it very much. He glanced over at Jeef, who was on the floor at his feet. Henrietta was curled up next to her, asleep. He hoped Jeef was asleep, too.

  “I don’t have any kids,” Clave said.

  “But you said—”

  “Forget it. I was joking.” Clave turned his head toward the navigation controls. “You barbarians take everything so literally. What was your question?”

  Nicholas figured he might as well see if he could get an answer from Clave for a change. “Why wasn’t there a lag? I mean, how could the news about me have reached you? Or whoever hired you? When we send probes to other planets, there’s a lag in communication. It takes time for signals to travel that far, and it takes just as long for the reply to travel back. Even between Earth and the moon, you can notice the lag. Wherever we are right now, it has to be thousands of light years away from Earth. Or maybe even—”

  Nicholas shut his mouth and grabbed the back of a seat as the ship decelerated. He held on tighter as everything tilted.

  “Initiating descent to Capital City in Central Klizmick,” the ship said, as if to reinforce the intergalactic nature of the moment.

  Clave looked up from the piloting controls, where his hands were now immersed in an image made of squiggly symbols. The ship leveled off and resumed its smooth flight, except for the occasional minor jolt, once again reminding Nicholas of a subway ride.

  “Sure, there’s a lag if you’re using something ridiculous like radio waves,” Clave said. “But who’d be that foolish? You might as well just shout at each other. The electromagnetic spectrum is about as sluggish as a Gynorian syrup sloth on the north pole of an ice planet. It would be stupid to depend on that sort of primitive technology for communication, except maybe for children’s toys. Right?”

  Nicholas didn’t respond. He hadn’t totally understood what Clave was talking about, but he caught enough of the meaning to realize that, in the eyes of the universe, he was a pathetic barbarian.

  “Oh dear,” Clave said. “I’m sorry. My mistake. Radio waves are perfectly fine. Brilliant, actually. Very clever of you Earthlings to discover them as they crawled by you and put them to use. That long lag gives you plenty of time to think up your response. Only a fool would rely on anything instantaneous for important communications, or even casual conversations, right?”

  “I guess so,” Nicholas said. He felt like a caveman who’d been transported to modern times and was marveling over lightbulbs and dental floss.

  “Oh, don’t be so glum,” Clave said. “It’s not your fault where you were born. Or when. And it’s not beyond repair. Do you have a device like that?”

  “Of course not,” Nicholas said, tapping his pocket to assure himself he had his phone.

  “Oh, come on,” Clave said, holding out his hand. “Let me see the little gadget.”

  Nicholas remembered when one of his classmates in fourth grade had brought in his grandfather’s flip phone for show-and-tell. The whole class had roared at the sight of it. “Don’t laugh at me. Okay?” Nicholas held out his phone.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Clave took the phone and studied it for a moment, turned it around at various angles, choked back a laugh, then glanced at the navigation display. “We’ve got time. Hang on while I fix this thing.”

  He put the phone on a workbench that ran perpendicular to the left end of the navigation console, then pulled open a drawer and lifted out a box full of parts. “Let’s see. Tachyons … ultrasonics … theta pulses … incongruent pseudo gravity ripples … psionic reverberators … Mansferd-Brevitch reversion beams … I really need to clean this drawer out. Ah, here we go. Radio waves!” He opened the pop-up lid of a small jar, fished out what looked like a tiny radar antenna, and screwed it to the top of the phone. “Give it a try.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s complicated
,” Clave said. “Just try it.”

  Nicholas took the phone. He realized he’d never listened to the latest message from his parents, though he’d heard the ping of its arrival before this whole adventure began. No way I can get it now, he thought. But, according to the display, he was receiving a strong signal.

  Can’t happen. He tapped the screen.

  “You have one new voice message.”

  Impossible.

  “First voice message…”

  It can’t be …

  “Hey, kiddo. It’s Mom. Things are good. We’re rocking the Aussie toddlers. We’re really having a g’die. That’s how they say good day. We saw a kangaroo! They really do have pouches. I petted a koala. Your dad came up with a new arrangement for ‘Help!’ He’s calling it ‘Yelp!’ Lots of howling. Can’t believe we never thought of that before. Hope you and Uncle Bruce are having a good time. Don’t forget to eat your vegetables. Got to run. Love you bunches, my little Nickywicky. Bye.”

  “To repeat this message, press one. To delete this message, press seven. For other options, press nine.”

  Nicholas, feeling hugely relieved he hadn’t put the phone on speaker, pressed one, and listened to the message again. Then he sent a text.

  I’m good

  “No way,” he said as he hit the SEND icon. Even though he’d heard the voice message, he couldn’t see how his text could reach Earth. But if it worked, it would be great, because his parents wouldn’t get all worried, or try to get in touch with his uncle, who was probably in some unreachable mountain cabin by now. And they’d never know about him being alone, so he wouldn’t get in trouble for that lie, either.

  There was just one problem. The battery was low. Nicholas did something he’d almost never do under normal circumstances. He turned off the phone. He figured if he only used it to check voice mail and send texts, he should be okay for several more days. He was sure he’d be home before that.

  As Nicholas put the phone back in his pocket, the ship jolted to a stop, sending him to his knees. “Ouch.”

  “We’re down,” Clave said.

  “No kidding.” Nicholas had been so busy listening to the message and responding, he hadn’t realized the ship was landing.

  “There used to be a docking station, and shuttles,” Clave said. “That’s much more efficient. But the last of those got blown to bits ages ago. Anyhow, welcome to Menmar.”

  Nicholas checked the viewport, eager for his first look at an alien city. He pictured skyscrapers and hover cars. Instead, the landscape resembled a boulder field. Most of the boulders appeared to be charred. He scanned the horizon for an active volcano, but the terrain was fairly level, and totally devoid of anything that spewed lava. That was too bad. He thought it would be cool to see a volcano close-up.

  Clave touched a screen on the panel in front of him. “Right before I picked you up, I matched the cabin atmosphere to what you breathe on Earth. I wanted to make the transition less startling. Though why anyone would want to inhale this stench for a lifetime is a mystery to me.”

  Nicholas sniffed, and detected nothing but fresh air with a scent of pine.

  “Once we leave the ship,” Clave said, “the air will be wonderfully spicy.”

  A hatch on one side of the bridge dropped down to form a ramp. Nicholas picked up Henrietta and Jeef, then followed Clave out into the spicy air of Menmar.

  “We come in peace,” Nicholas said, pulling an appropriate cliché from his storehouse of science-fiction film dialogue. He was going to add the classic Take me to your leader line, but his throat, lungs, and sinus passages showed him that spicy, in this case, was a painfully accurate description of the air. To Nicholas, the atmosphere smelled the way habanero hot sauce tasted.

  “It burns,” he said.

  “We’ll set you up in an isolated filtered environment in the city,” Clave said.

  “Set me up for what?” Nicholas asked, between coughs.

  “To lead our battle,” Clave said. “Your bold actions against the Craborzi inspired our whole continent. Efficient, cold-blooded killers are remarkably difficult to find. Our leaders have selected you to head our military operation from the capitol.”

  Nicholas chewed on this information. He knew he needed to explain to Clave that he wasn’t a military genius or warlord. At best, he was a half-decent chess player and a better-than-average video gamer, who had the misfortune to react violently when he’d stumbled across a cluster of giant caterpillars that were trying to hurt his gerbil. But he figured he could hold off disappointing his host until he was at least somewhere that didn’t smell like the center of an enormous enchilada.

  He turned back toward the ship to see whether it looked any more interesting than the Craborzi vessel. “Wow. Now that’s a spaceship.”

  Clave’s nameless ship was sleek and shiny. It had the sort of curves Nicholas associated with a Ferrari or Lamborghini, though it was the size of a tractor trailer.

  “Yeah, she’s yar,” Clave said.

  “Yar?”

  “Pirate talk,” Clave said.

  “Stop it,” Nicholas said.

  He looked around, hoping they’d have some amazing form of transportation like a hovercraft. Or even some fabulous beast of burden. He didn’t see anything except rocks. He turned in a full circle, searching for a city. No sign of that, either. This wasn’t a total surprise. His parents had taken him to Chicago one summer, and the airport was amazingly far from downtown. “Where’s the capitol?”

  “It was here, once.” Clave swept his hand across the boulders in front of them. “But we rebuilt everything in tunnels and chambers below the surface. It’s much safer there. All our cities are underground. As well as our farms and forests.”

  “All the cities on all the continents?” Nicholas took a closer look at the rock field, and realized he was standing among crumbled pieces of stone buildings that had been blasted apart. He couldn’t even imagine the enormous number of bombs that must have fallen.

  “Just Central Klizmick. There’s no life left on the rest of the continents. War takes its toll,” Clave said. “Come on. It’s not far.” He picked his way among the debris for about fifty yards, to a cleared area of ground containing a metal plate. As they approached, the plate rose, revealing that it was actually the top of an elevator.

  Something exploded off in the distance. Nicholas flinched. Clave didn’t even blink. “Idiots,” he said. “They’ll never give up. I’m glad we’ll be rid of them soon.”

  They entered the elevator, descended for a brief period, and then stepped into an underground city that appeared to contain nothing but rows of windowless structures. A vehicle resembling a curved couch riding on hundreds of tiny wheels rolled up to them silently enough that Nicholas figured it was powered by electricity. They took their seats and traveled three blocks to a larger building that had a fancier entrance than the others. The entrance opened as they approached, revealing a long hallway lined with doors.

  “I’ll give you a chance to rest up before we meet with the president,” Clave said as he stepped up to the first door and pushed it open. “The war council meets right down the hall from here.”

  “Okay…” Nicholas’s brain was now officially overloaded. He followed Clave inside, to a room filled with the sort of furniture that was nearly inevitable for bipedal creatures with backbones. The air, though not totally Earthlike, became less spicy once the door had closed. Dropping into what he assumed was a chair, Nicholas tried to wrap his brain around at least a portion of what he’d been through. After a moment, he emitted a small, sad sigh. That was followed by a much larger exhalation straddling the border between sigh and sob, along with a tiny shiver, followed by a full-blown wail, as the enormity of what he’d done finally sank in.

  UNDERSTANDING

  Forgive yet another short intrusion, but it would probably be good for you to understand understanding. Not that anybody really can. But it’s worthwhile to make an effort.

  The universe s
hapes thoughts.

  Thoughts shape the universe.

  One or both of these is possibly true. Though it’s possible both are false.

  No matter. What we do know is that thoughts, unlike light, don’t travel through space at a fixed speed. In one sense, thoughts don’t travel at all. The instant a thought exists, it exists everywhere in the universe (with one exception noted below). All objects composed of more than one type of molecule produce thoughts. Though relatively few clusters of molecules achieve self-awareness on their own.

  Once enough thoughts had been thought, soon after the birth of the universe (probably no more than one or two billion years, at most), they wove a fabric called the Ubiquitous Matrix.

  The more common a thought, the denser its concentration in the Matrix. For example, a language spoken by billions is easily accessible, while the details of baking mountain pigeon pie under low-gravity conditions or the seventy-five steps required to repair a jammed tusk buffer are much more elusive.

  The Matrix allows sentient beings to understand each other, no matter what language they speak. It also allows for the common understanding of symbols, alphabets, and variable units of measure. Thus, when a Glixnarian complains about waiting twelve weeks for Buffer Tech International to come repair his defective tusk buffer, an Oxwulper would perceive the Oxwulperian equivalent period of eight and a half weeks.

  As for the exception, the Ubiquitous Matrix is dampened in regions surrounding those planets unfortunate enough to have a crust contaminated with complex hydrocarbons such as petroleum. Thanks to an abundance of oil fields, Earth was doomed to be populated with nations that didn’t understand one another’s languages. This inability to communicate has led to endless misunderstandings, wars, grudges, feuds, snits, and pouty faces. As has the ability to communicate. (It will come as no surprise that the two planets engaged in the Sagittarius war that began with a disagreement over the length of a year are also shielded from the Ubiquitous Matrix. Tragically, the inhabitants were too fragile for space travel, and therefore unable to escape the shielding, but intelligent enough to develop sophisticated interplanetary missiles.)