True, the number of servants on the home world meant there was no need for a master to perform menial tasks. Those were best left to the unlimited supply of willing hands, claws, and tentacles. But being freed from mundane tasks brought with it a higher duty. There were few enough masters, and the shirkers caused Sar-Ganth additional work.
The power that Sar-Ganth wielded was beyond the imagining of his remote ancestors. He could destroy worlds with a word, although to do so would be a criminal waste of resources. Yet, even his power was not infinite. There were only so many periods in a day or cycles in a lifetime. They must be carefully rationed lest they evaporate before the task was done.
Which was why he was flying to Valar this morning.
His assistant, a Transian named Fos, had been very cryptic over the televisor, merely saying that his presence was required. That his communications were not secure was an article of faith with Sar-Ganth. Very few comm channels were.
“How long?” Sar-Ganth asked as a particularly blue lake passed beneath the aircar. As they banked to make a sweeping right turn, sunlight reflected skyward, turning the lake’s surface into golden fire.
“We will be there in eight beats,” came the reply from his Danian pilot. Dania’s feathered inhabitants possessed the keenest eyesight and quickest reflexes of any species of which Sar-Ganth was familiar. As a result, its denizens were much prized as pilots.
#
The city of Valar appeared on the schedule his pilot predicted. The capital had begun life as a walled city more than twelve-gross cycles past. The walls had protected the inhabitants from the wild clans that roamed the North Plain, one of which had been predecessor to the current Sar-Dva Clan. The old wall was still maintained, having been restored in the previous century. Its usefulness long past, it served as a reminder of how far they had come since some long-forgotten scientific team developed the stargate.
There were rumors that the gates had not been the only means of star travel invented by the ancient Broa. Some legends spoke of ships that could move between stars as easily as their sea-going counterparts moved between harbors.
Sar-Ganth did not know whether he believed the legends. If true, then some leader among his ancestors had been wise to suppress such knowledge. The current social order rested on control of the gates. Any method so disorganized that a ship’s captain could voyage wherever he wanted would destroy that order. Why, two subservient worlds might actually trade with one another without the knowledge of their masters!
Surrounding the Old City was a wall of a different kind. For a full
fel
, the ancient battlements were ringed by tall towers. These were built in many different styles, to comply with the individual tastes of the clans that erected them. There were glass and steel constructs; towers where antique wood or stone hid modern iron or titanium endoskeletons; towers of ancient brick erected in the traditional manner. The Inner Ring was where the true power of the Broa resided. It was the base from which Sar-Ganth and his compatriots oversaw the interests of their clans. The Old City within the wall was reserved for ceremonial occasions and for meetings of Those Who Rule.
Surrounding the ring of towers was another concentric wall, this one half the height of the old battlements. Beyond this lay a park-like swath of red and gold vegetation that served both as an esthetic and psychic barrier to what lay beyond the park.
The final concentric ring of Valar was a collection of low structures packed closely together, separated only by twisting footpaths and a few true roads. If there had ever been a plan for this outer ring, it had long since been abandoned to the entropy of urban sprawl.
The buildings in the Outer Ring were as varied in style as the towers of the Inner Ring. Beehive shapes predominated, but there were many twelves of variations. This sprawling outer belt represented Valar’s workers’ quarters, the part of the city where the subservients lived. No one knew how many of them there were, or from how many star systems they came. Only one thing was certain. Each being residing in the great slum served some Broan master.
Sar-Ganth barely noticed the workers’ dwellings as his aircar passed over it. As the car descended like a swooping
avtar
in pursuit of prey, his eyes were fastened on the Sar-Dva Tower. At the last moment, his pilot brought the car to a quick hover, then lowered it to a wide landing stage high up the gold-and-silver structure. The engines barely quieted when the door slid back into its enclosure and Sar-Ganth stepped out into the brisk morning air. He caught a whiff of the city’s odor before crossing to a drop shaft into the heart of the building.
#
Fos was waiting for him when he reached his office. The little Transian’s exoskeleton was polished to an ebon sheen and inlayed in an intricate pattern with sparkling jewels and colored stones that showed their possessor to be of a high caste. Sar-Ganth had once asked Fos about his decorations, but had long since forgotten the answer. The body decorations of a subservient, even one as useful as Fos, were beneath the ken of a Broa. He had more important matters with which to fill his mind.
It was enough to know that Fos was loyal to him. That was the strength of the Transians, a result of their pack-like social structure. Each member of the pack gave its loyalty to their leader, and if that leader happened to be of another species, the ingrained instinct did not seem to notice.
Sar-Ganth knuckle-walked to his work station and clambered up onto the resting frame. Arranging his arms and legs comfortably on the bars, he leaned forward and asked Fos, “So what is important enough to bring me in on a fine morning like this one?”
“My apologies, Clan Master. The news seemed urgent and confidential. Do you remember the auditor who went missing five cycles ago?”
Sar-Ganth scratched at himself with one long arm as he thought about it. “Vaguely. The Kas-Dor were accused of ambushing him at the Nala Stargate, but nothing was ever proven. What have you learned to make this ancient mystery a pressing matter?”
“Apparently, Sar-Say has been located.”
“That was the auditor’s name?”
“Yes. He was traveling from Vith to Persilin onboard a Vithian ship when lost.”
“But he has now been located? Where?”
“Perhaps I should have said that we have discovered he escaped the assassination attempt. He is being held prisoner.”
“By whom?”
“A race of bipeds. They call themselves Vulcans. They may be holding Sar-Say on their planet of Shangri La.”
A quick search by Sar-Ganth of his memory revealed no species, nor planet, by those names.”
“Perhaps you should begin at the beginning,” he said. His assistant recognized the sarcasm of his tone, but said nothing. Sarcasm was the least of a master’s prerogatives.
Fos recounted his receipt of the information packet from Ssor-Fel, the Hunt Master of the Salefar sector. The packet spoke of an alien ship in the system of a species of tripeds known as the Voldar’ik. He quickly detailed the fact that these strange Vulcan creatures provided their hosts a number of sample Vithian power units, one of which had been heavily doused in danger pheromone.
Sar-Ganth signaled his understanding. “And this pheromone was traced to Sar-Say!”
“Yes, Clan Master,” Fos replied, making the gesture of ascent peculiar to his species.
“So our accountant is being held by Vulcans! I assume you ran their biometrics through the Central Records.”
“I did,” Fos replied. “I could not find a match.”
Sar-Ganth ‘frowned.’ That was impossible. Each subservient race had detailed records of their physiologies, psychologies, and cultures stored in the Ssasfal databases going back two-twelve generations. That Fos had been unable to identify these Vulcans was disturbing in the extreme. There could only be one explanation.
“So someone has discovered a planet and kept it a secret from Central Records?” he asked.
“That is what I surmised,” Fos replied.
“You were correct in summoning me. Someone, it seems, has broken one of our most ancient covenants. Until we know who, this news is too sensitive to trust to the communications nets. How are we going to track these Vulcans down if they aren’t in the database?”
“They visited this Klys’kra’t on a trading mission. There must be other systems where they trade. A search program should uncover some trace of them.”
“Excellent. Once we have discovered their trading partners, we can trap these elusive creatures. What makes their world valuable enough to take such a risk? Have the specialists get to work immediately and give me periodic reports as to our progress.”
“Your orders will be followed, Clan Master.”
#
Chapter Fourteen
Professor Jean-Pierre Landrieu enjoyed the late morning sun as he strolled down the Champs-Elysées toward the Eiffel Tower. A native Parisian, he saw the monument virtually every day of his life. Yet, he had only been to the top of the tower twice… once as a public school student, and again when he was courting his wife. Like a native New Yorker and the Statue of Liberty, the opportunity to visit his nation’s most famous symbol just never seemed to arise. Not for the first time, he made a mental note to take his grandchildren up the monument, and having made it, let it slip from his consciousness as it had so many times before.
The trees lining the world’s most famous avenue were budding with the first green of spring. That more than anything buoyed Landrieu’s spirit. It had been a terrible winter. Paris had been buffeted by both snow and ice storms. Because the city fathers stubbornly refused to put up a weather dome, stating that it would ruin the city’s historic skyline, Parisians had been exposed to the full fury of the elements for long, cold months.
There are just so many overcast days that a person can take, or so Pierre Landrieu believed. Of course, the misery of winter was what made the rebirth of spring so delightful.
As he walked, he scanned the famous names that lined the avenue. There was Fouquet's and the Copenhague Nordic restaurant, Charles Jourdan and Guerlain department stores. Some of the businesses on
Les Champs
went back to the 18
th
Century. Even those that were modern were hiding behind the ancient facades whose original owners had been dust for centuries.
Despite having lived there all is life, Landrieu often thought of Paris as an historical theme park, a city devoted to a past that never existed, whose inhabitants were all just little furry creatures who lived their lives for the benefit of the tourists. God knows, there had been little glory since France lost the contest for world cultural domination. The fact that a majority of French spoke Standard at home was bad enough. The fact that they spoke it with a British accent made Paris’s historical pretenses difficult to maintain. He was as patriotic as the next Frenchman, but would it kill the city fathers to put in a few unobtrusive slidewalks?
He was contemplating the dilemma when he reached his destination, the sidewalk café outside
Léon de Bruxelles’
restaurant. Sidling past a waiter who seemed to pay no attention to him, he spotted his quarry sitting at a table alone, watching the passersby. He threaded his way between tables and extended his hand.
“Mikhail, good to see you again!” he uttered in his own, near-perfect Standard.
“And you, Jean-Pierre,” the Russian replied, standing to greet him. The two shook hands and then took their places with a scraping of chairs against cement.
Mikhail Vasloff reached for the wine bottle that decorated his and every other table, and poured red liquid into an empty glass, as well as refilling his own. Landrieu lifted the glass to his lips, made a show of first sniffing and then tasting, and pronounced the wine passable. According to the label, it was a Côtes de Bourg Bordeaux, but an uninspired vintage.
After the initial sip, both men sat back and regarded one another with something more than friendly interest, but less than calculated cunning.
“What brings you to Paris, Mikhail?” Landrieu finally asked. “Are you ready to accept that appointment to the institute which bears your name?”
Vasloff shook his head. “No, that would put me on the government payroll and place too many constraints on my activities.”
“Which are?”
Vasloff laughed. “I’m here for a bit of mischief. You would do better not to know. I had some free time, so I thought I would check on progress. How goes the planning?”
“Very well,” Landrieu replied. “After a slow start, we are beginning to get real projections and have begun to PERT chart all of the steps required to pull back from the stars. Just this week, we completed our simulation of the resources required to evacuate the colonies.”
“What resources?” Vasloff asked. “You send the same colony ships that transported them to their God-forsaken worlds in the first place. You order them aboard, and you bring them home.”
“It will not be that easy. For one thing, many of the colonists will refuse the order. That means we will need troops to enforce the evacuation, which will require additional ships. Also, there is the matter of the cleanup.”
“Cleanup?”
“Surely you don’t think we can just leave these abandoned worlds dotted with empty human cities?
Mon Dieux!
That would give away the game as quickly as if the Broa found a teeming human population. We are going to have to tear down the cities, then reseed the land to erase every trace of our presence.”
“How many new ships do you estimate will be required to do the job right?” Vasloff asked.
“Several hundred, including some very large cargo haulers to handle the heavy machinery. The suggestion has been made that we pulverize every single manmade object on each world, including the bricks and mortar, and then dump the dust in the nearest ocean. You can imagine the size of the pulverizers needed.”
“Obviously, you have thought it through more clearly than I,” Vasloff replied. “Apparently, when the Coordinator staffed the Paris Institute, she knew what she was doing. What news of the Colorado Springs effort?”