Emperor of the Universe Page 7

  “Have you tried diplomacy?” he asked.

  The Menmarians exchanged puzzled glances among themselves. Nicholas wondered whether the physics behind his ability to communicate with aliens had suddenly failed.

  “Say that word again?” the president asked.

  “Diplomacy,” Nicholas said, isolating each syllable like he was competing in the final round of a spelling championship.

  “Diplomacy…?” President Nixon said, as if cautiously tasting a strange new fruit. Or licking a miniature bear trap. He frowned and shook his head. So did the other Menmarians.

  “This word is unknown to us,” Clave said.

  Henrietta crawled right up to Nicholas’s ear and whispered, “That figures.”

  “Please explain what you mean,” President Nixon said. “Is it some sort of weapon available only on Earth? We have planet torchers, but they are too slow-moving and large to use against any world that is expecting an attack. We’d never be able to land one on Zefinora. They’d blow it out of the sky before it could touch down and burrow to a secure position.”

  “It’s not a weapon. It’s an approach to peace.” Nicholas patiently explained diplomacy. He had to go over the concept several times, giving numerous examples he vaguely remembered from his social studies class, before President Nixon seemed to grasp the basic concept.

  “So, if I understand you, the idea is that we offer to meet face-to-ugly-face with these wretched low-life Zefinoran dung dwellers and explain why it would be a bad idea for them to attempt to enslave us, and a wonderful idea for them to drop their whole idiotic plan?” he said.

  “Exactly. Though you might want to work on your word choices,” Nicholas said. “You can point out that more war will bring more destruction to both your worlds. There’s plenty of evidence of that already. You can tell them that all the expense and effort spent on weapons can be used for better purposes. And you can point out the benefits of cooperation.”

  Nicholas paused to dredge up more social studies facts he’d never thought he’d need again after the final exam. “You can have trade agreements. Tourism. And even a mutual defense treaty, in case someone else attacks either of you. I’ll bet there are some wonderful Zefinoran foods you just can’t get here.”

  “Slime-gibbon sweat-gland stew,” Vice President Sofacushion said. He closed his eyes and sighed. A small trickle of saliva seeped from the corner of his mouth and rolled down his triple chins. “It’s magnificent.”

  Clave shuddered and whispered to Nicholas, “That stuff is dreadful. It tastes like the seat of a pair of unwashed pants.”

  “I think you showed us the right path,” the president said. “You will be a hero to all of Menmar.”

  “I’m glad I could help,” Nicholas said. He realized that stopping an interplanetary war might make up, in some way, for murdering the Craborzi. It really was a noble achievement. Possibly even a Nobel one, though nobody from Earth would ever know of it or award him a peace prize.

  Vice President Sofacushion captured Nicholas in a squishy embrace. “You smell…” he said as he buried his mushy face against Nicholas’s neck.

  Nicholas realized he hadn’t taken a shower that day, or the day before, or possibly for several additional days. As he was forming a halfway sincere apology for his body odor, the vice president said, “… delicious.”

  “Oh. Uh, thanks.” Nicholas felt his shoulders rise in an effort to guard his neck. He wriggled free and moved toward the door.

  “So,” Clave said, “the package has been delivered.”

  Nobody responded. Clave raised his voice a bit. “About my payment…”

  “We’ll start processing it,” the vice president said.

  “They take forever to pay me,” Clave muttered as he led Nicholas out the door.

  “Package?” Nicholas asked. “I’m a package?”

  “Technically, yes,” Clave said.

  During the walk back along the corridor, after grumbling a bit more about money, he explained the relationship between Menmar and Zefinora. In his version, everything was far superior on Menmar. Stripping out the bias, leaving the facts intact, and adding a few details Clave wouldn’t know, the basic story is that Menmar and Zefinora formed an inhabited binary planetary system. These are extremely rare in the universe, which means that even though they are countless in number, you have to look really hard to find one. And half the time, even when you think you found one, you’ve actually just found a planet with a very large moon. Or lost track of your count somewhere between one and two. (This happened so often to an amateur astronomer named Forgon Eldermitch from Holst II that he was eventually banned from the local astronomy club.)

  Life had evolved in a similar fashion on both planets, though the Menmarians explained this by claiming that their ancient ancestors had colonized Zefinora before the dawn of recorded history. Skeptics like to point out that, in most societies, the recording of history generally begins before the invention of spaceflight.

  The Zefinorans, having a slightly more developed sense of whimsy and a much better imagination, tell their children that a gigantic space-traveling creature resembling a goose had plucked evil Zefinorans from their home planet, swallowed them, and then excreted the still-living, still-evil, far stinkier creatures on Menmar, thus populating that planet with goose droppings.

  However entertaining the two explanations are, the truth is much simpler. Menmarians and Zefinorans resembled each other because sometimes nature makes the same mistake twice.

  While not very imaginative in areas of literature and art, or mythology, the Menmarians were better engineers than the Zefinorans, and had thus managed to be the first of the two to visit their nearest neighboring planet. They also lived on a planet with 10 percent higher gravity, making them naturally stronger than the Zefinorans. The Menmarians were more than willing to exploit these advantages.

  By the time Clave finished his account, he and Nicholas had reached the guest quarters.

  You came back! Jeef said when the door opened. Mercy and truth are met together.

  “Of course I came back,” Nicholas said.

  For, in this universe, that’s what happened. Nicholas came right back.

  This time, at least.

  SFUMBLES

  Clave was one of a huge gaggle of aspiring sfumblers. Sfumbles are loosely defined as brief, entertaining tidbits tossed out for the enjoyment of all, in the hopes of gaining an audience, fame, and ad revenue. Basically, it was a Short-Form Ubiquitous-Matrix Blast Loop (or blather, as far as those who were not sfumble fans were concerned). There were also long-form Ubiquitous-Matrix blasts, but nobody had come up with a satisfactory name for them, and they were popular only among a handful of smug intellectuals who were fond of creating movie reviews that were longer then the films themselves, and who couldn’t even stand each other’s company, or each other’s posts. The universe, in general, has a short attention span and a preference for effortless entertainment that can be absorbed while doing other things.

  Clave’s audience was small, but his ambition was large. He knew he just hadn’t discovered the right topic yet to strike a spark with a massive audience. Though he’d grown up on Menmar, he was actually a Frezlunkian who’d been adopted shortly after birth.

  Menmarians were very enthusiastic about adoption and child swapping because they loved children but also suffered from a compulsive and at times irresistible urge to eat their own young. Scientists remain puzzled how this seemingly counterproductive trait fits into the evolutionary scheme. But let’s not dwell on that.

  AN END TO ALL WARS

  After giving a curious Jeef a brief description of what she’d missed out on in the war room, Nicholas slept the long, deep sleep that only an exhausted seventh grader (plus or minus three or four years) can pull off. His sleep was undisturbed until Clave shook him awake.

  “Whuh…?” Nicholas said, wondering why his bed wasn’t his bed and his room wasn’t his room. And why his clothing smelled faintl
y like tacos.

  “Come!” Clave said. “Our diplomatic mission is about to reach Zefinora. You need to see our triumphant arrival.”

  Nicholas snatched up Henrietta. “This is great. I’m so glad they listened to me. Peace is always better than war. I’m not just a murderer anymore.”

  What about me? Jeef said.

  “I’ll be back for you,” Nicholas said.

  Once again, this was true in some universes, and false in others.

  No, you won’t, Jeef said, which was also true or false, though in exactly the opposite universes as the statement Nicholas had made. It should be noted that the universe is even fussier about balancing true and false than it is about powers of two. Except when it isn’t.

  Nicholas found a flurry of activity in the war room. But all heads turned toward him the instant he entered. He sensed an air of expectation. Along with an air of enchiladas.

  “Well done, Earthling,” President Nixon said. He slapped Nicholas on the nose, that being the Menmarian equivalent of a pat on the back. Menmarian noses are far sturdier than human snouts, and Menmarian hands are far softer. Nicholas bit back pain and blinked back tears as he turned his attention to an image projected on the wall in front of him. A stubby cylindrical spaceship was descending toward a brown planet. It was hard to tell for sure, but the ship seemed to be enormous. It also seemed to be moving at the sort of crawling pace one associates with oil tankers and overly cautious drivers.

  “We have a documentary ship following it,” Clave said. “We want to record the moment our struggle with the dreadful Zefinorans comes to a dazzling end.”

  “Wonderful,” Nicholas said, totally failing to pick up on the use of dazzling. This was not surprising, given that he had just been awakened from a deep sleep and was really not a morning person. Or an early afternoon person, for that matter. Still, he was pleased and amazed that the Menmarian leaders had listened to his suggestions and embraced diplomacy.

  “Nicely done,” Henrietta said. She gave Nicholas a fond nuzzle with her snout.

  “Thank you.” He stroked her stomach, and she wriggled in delight.

  “The documentary crew will stay in high orbit to avoid the heat and the magma spew,” Clave said. “I wish I could be there to record our triumph in person and share it with my fans.”

  “Heat?” Nicholas asked. “Magma spew?” That did not sound like a let’s-be-friends situation.

  “Of course,” President Nixon said. “This whole diplomacy scheme was the perfect way to slip a planet torcher past their defenses. Those Zefinorans are such idiots. We told them we needed an enormous ship to bring them all the glorious gifts they deserved.”

  “You’re blowing up their planet?” Nicholas screamed. “That’s…” His brain failed to find any word capable of adequately describing how hideously wrong this act of treachery was.

  “That’s the plan. Though, to be more accurate, we’re burning and melting it. Either way, it’s the end of them, and of the war. There won’t be a single Zefinoran left after this.” The president pointed to another screen, which also showed an enormous, slow-moving cylindrical spaceship. This ship was virtually identical to the one approaching Zefinora. But the scene was shot from below as the ship descended toward Menmar. “Except, of course, for the stupid diplomats they sent here. What a pack of turd heads. They even brought us gifts. Hundreds of gifts in that enormous ship. Imagine that. How stupid can they be? We’ll enjoy their gifts in the glow of their burning planet.”

  “Yes,” Vice President Sofacushion said. “We’re destroying them, and they’re sending us a huge ship full of gifts. They have to be the stupidest people in the universe. They deserve to be destroyed.”

  “Wait.” Nicholas grabbed Clave’s arm, a gesture that was the Menmarian equivalent of spitting in one’s eye. “What if the Zefinorans had the same idea?”

  “What same idea?” Clave asked as he yanked his arm free.

  “Planet torcher,” Nicholas said. As a survivor of sixth grade, and a good part of seventh, he knew all about treachery, both from history lessons and from playground alliances.

  “They wouldn’t…” Clave’s face grew slack as his heritage came into play. It’s generally the case that Frezlunkians are somewhat faster and deeper thinkers than Menmarians, which isn’t saying a whole lot. But they are therefore slightly better suited to cope with changing plans and to make logical deductions. “Oh dear. Do you think…?”

  Nicholas couldn’t believe he had to explain something so obvious. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure the Zefinorans pulled the same trick, and that’s a planet torcher heading our way.”

  “But it has tail fins,” Clave said. “Planet scorchers don’t have those.”

  “Um, fake ones, maybe?” Nicholas pointed to the image of the Menmarian planet torcher, which also sported what looked like the hastily slapped-on trappings of a spaceship as it approached a landing on Zefinora.

  “Oh, dear…” Clave said.

  “Can you shoot it down?” Nicholas asked.

  “Our missiles aren’t designed for that,” Clave said. “It’s too low. And there’s not enough time to send ground forces. It’s just about to land. Once it’s on solid ground, things will start to heat up pretty quickly.”

  “Everyone! Get out of here, now!” Nicholas yelled. “Save yourselves.”

  “We’re not missing our moment of glory,” President Nixon said.

  “It’s a shame about the slime-gibbon sweat-gland soup,” Vice President Sofacushion said. “Still, I like watching things collapse into a molten mess.”

  “Then he’s in for a real treat, close-up,” Henrietta whispered.

  Nicholas and Clave exchanged glances that carried a universal message: Let’s get out of here.

  Clave ran out the door.

  Henrietta dived from Nicholas’s shoulder to his shirt pocket.

  Nicholas followed Clave out of the building and down the street to the elevator. As the elevator door opened and Clave rushed in, Nicholas looked back the way they’d come. “Oh, roach brains! Wait. We have to go back.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Clave said. “We have very little time before Menmar becomes a large lump of glowing charcoal. Planet torchers are frightfully efficient.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Nicholas said. He turned and raced for the building.

  “Are you crazy?” Henrietta said as she bounced in his pocket.

  “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  He stopped talking after that, until he got to the building and burst through the door of his room.

  You came back again! Jeef said.

  “Briefly,” Nicholas said as he snatched up Jeef. That was as much conversation as he could manage after running hard and breathing salsa.

  Nicholas paused long enough to suck in a deep breath of the filtered air, then ran out of the building and back down the street to the elevator. An agonizing moment later, after waiting for the elevator, he was on the surface of Menmar, racing over the rubble toward the ship.

  In his whole life, Nicholas had never run so fast and stumbled so little. Had this been gym class, he would have gotten an A+. And perhaps a trophy. When he was still one hundred yards away, he saw the hatch of Clave’s ship start to close.

  “Wait!” Nicholas screamed.

  “Hurry up!” Clave yelled from inside.

  Past the ship, not far from the ground, Nicholas saw the planet scorcher descending. It was far bigger than he’d thought, blotting out a good chunk of the horizon. It was close enough that he could see that the tail fins, bay doors, and landing struts had been hastily added, to make it look like a cargo ship.

  It touched down. Then, with a grinding shriek that sounded like a thousand dentist drills, it started to sink into the ground as a dust cloud rose to envelop it.

  Nicholas discovered he could run even faster. He reached the hatch with barely enough room to dive through. He chucked Jeef and Henrietta ahead of himself, as gently as possible, so they wouldn’t get hurt
when he belly-flopped to a landing. They hit the floor and slid across toward the opposite wall. Nicholas followed them into the ship, ending his heroic sprint with a truly spectacular leap.

  “Go!” Nicholas shouted, rather unnecessarily, to Clave, who was seated at the navcom and already in the process of going.

  The instant the hatch clanked shut, the ship lifted off. Nicholas’s body and the left side of his face became intimately familiar with the finest details of the floor as he was crushed by the force of acceleration.

  “Hang on,” Clave said. “I need to use full thrust to get off planet.”

  “Mrflgvmp,” Nicholas said, struggling unsuccessfully to lift his head high enough to take the pressure off his cheek.

  “It won’t be long,” Clave said. “We just need to get out beyond range of the magma splash from the torcher.”

  Nicholas looked around for his companions. Even moving his eyes took enormous effort, but he managed to spot Jeef, who was flattened almost to the point of bursting.

  Marike! Help me, Marike! Jeef yelled.

  Past Jeef, Henrietta looked so flat she seemed two-dimensional. Nicholas tried to crawl to her, using all his strength to push up from the floor.

  That, unfortunately, was the moment when the ship stopped accelerating, turning Nicholas’s attempt to rise into a powerful leap, which was brought to an abrupt stop by the low ceiling of the cabin. He saw stars—which were definitely not in short supply—as his head bounced off the panel, leaving an impressive dent. Just then, Clave activated the ship’s gravity, which sent Nicholas on a brief return journey from the ceiling to the floor. Fortunately, he landed next to Henrietta, and not on top of her. Unfortunately, his face was the first part of his body to arrive.