Heaven's Reach (17 page)

“Said? It is said by whom? In which medium? With what veracity?”

“With no veracity at all!”
This came from an oulomin diplomat whose tentacle fringes bore colored caps to prevent inadvertent pollen emission. Slithering just behind Harry, the oulomin expressed disdain toward the stooped tourmuj with sprays of orange saliva that barely missed Harry's arm.

“I have it on good authority that the eminent and much respected pargi intend to withdraw from the League—and from Galactic affairs entirely—out of disgust with the present state of chaos. That noble race will shortly move on to blessed retirement, joining their ancestral patrons in the fortunate realm of tides. Only a regressed fool would believe otherwise.”

It was hardly the sort of speech that Harry would associate with “diplomacy.” The tourmuj reacted by irately unfolding its long legs and both sets of arms so swiftly that its knobby head bumped the ceiling. Wincing in pain, the trader stomped off, sacrificing its place in line.

Oh, I get it
, Harry thought, glancing once more at the being behind him, whose grasp of other-species psychology was evident.

Just don't try the same on me
, he thought.
I'm not budging, even if you call me a dolphin's uncle.

The diplomat seemed to recognize this and merely waved two tendrils in a universal gesture of placid goodwill, as they both moved forward.

Harry took out his portable data plaque and stroked its command knobs, swiftly accessing the planetoid's Galactic Library unit for news. It was an excellent branch, since Kazzkark housed local headquarters for several important institutes. Yet, the master index claimed to know nothing about an Abdicator schism. Moreover, according to official sources, the influential pargi were still active in Galactic councils, calling for
peace and restraint, urging all militant alliances to withdraw their armadas and settle the present crisis through mediation, not war.

Were both rumormongers wrong, then? During normal times, Harry would scarcely doubt the master index. In the Civilization of Five Galaxies, it was commonly said that nothing ever
really
happened until it was logged by the Great Library. A planet might explode before your eyes, but it wasn't a certified fact without the rayed spiral glyph, flashing in a corner of a readout screen.

Clearly these weren't “normal times.”

While taking his turn at the customs kiosk, Harry overheard a talpu'ur seed merchant complain to a guldingar pilgrim about how many nauseating thread changes she had had to endure during the crossing from Galaxy Three. Harry found it hard to follow the talpu'ur's dialect—a syncopated ratchet-rubbing of her vestigial wing cases—but it seemed that several traditional transfer points had shifted their oscillation patterns, either losing coherence or going off-line completely.

The slight, spiderlike guldingar answered in the same rhythmic idiom, speaking through a mechanical device strapped to one leg.

“Those explanations seem dubious. In fact, they are excuses given by great powers, as each attempts to seize and monopolize valuable hyperspatial links for its own strategic purposes.”

Harry frowned. Worry made the fur itch beneath his uniform. If something was happening to the viability of t-points, the matter was of vital interest to the Navigation Institute. Once again, he referred to the Branch Library but found little information—just routine travel advisories and warnings of detours along some routes.

I'm sure Wer'Q'quinn will fill me in. The old serpent oughta know what's goin' on, if anybody does.

One topic Harry wanted to hear about, but none
of
the gossipers mentioned, was the Siege of Terra. Weeks ago, when he departed to patrol E Space, the noose around Earth and the Canaan Colonies had been
drawing gradually tighter. Despite welcome assistance from the Tymbrimi and Thennanin, battle fleets from a dozen fanatical alliances had ceased their mutual bickering for a time, joining cause and pressing the blockade ever closer, choking off trade and communication to Harry's ancestral world.

Though tempted, he refrained from querying the Library about that. Given the present political situation—while his status was still probationary—it wouldn't be wise to make too many inquiries about his old clan.
I'm not supposed to care about that anymore. Navigation is my home now.

After clearing customs, his next obstacle was all-too-unpleasantly familiar—a tall sour-faced hoon wearing the glossy robe of a senior patron. With a magisterial badge of the Migration Institute on one shoulder, Inspector Twaphu-anuph gripped a plaque flowing with data while scanners probed Harry's vessel. Every time Harry returned from a mission, he had to endure the big male biped's humorless black eyes scrutinizing his ship's bio-manifest for any sign of illicit genetic cargo, while that prodigious hoonish throat sac throbbed low rumblings of pompous scorn.

So it rocked Harry back a bit when the brawny bureaucrat spoke up this time, using rolling undertones that seemed positively affable!

“I note that you have just returned from E Space,” the inspector murmured in GalSeven, the spacer dialect most favored by Earthlings. “Hr-rm. Welcome home. I trust you had a pleasant, interesting voyage?”

Harry blinked, startled by the tone of informal friendliness.
What happened to the usual snub?
he wondered.

It was normal for Migrationists to act high and mighty. After all, their institute supervised matters of cosmic importance, such as where oxygen-breathing starfarers might colonize, and which oxy-worlds must lay fallow for a time, untouched by sapient hands. In contrast, Harry's organization was a “little cousin,” with duties resembling the old-time coastal guardians of Earth's oceans—surveying hyperlink routes, monitoring
spacetime conditions, and safeguarding lanes of travel for Galactic commerce.

“E Space is a realm of surprises,” Harry responded cautiously. “But my mission went as well as can be expected. Thank you for asking.”

A small, furry
rousit
—a servant-client of the hoon—moved alongside its master, aiming a recorder unit at Harry, making him increasingly nervous. The inspector meanwhile towered closer, pressing his inquiry.

“Of course I am asking purely out of personal curiosity, but would you mind enlightening me on one matter? Would you happen to have noticed any especially large memoid beings while you patrolled E Space? Hrrrm. Perchance a conceptual entity capable of extending beyond its native continuum, into … hrr-rr … other levels of reality?”

Almost instinctively, Harry grew guarded. Like many oxy-races, hoons could not bear the ambiguous conditions of E Space or the thronging allaphors inhabiting that weird realm. Small surprise, given their notorious lack of humor or imagination.

But then why this sudden interest?

Clearly, the awkward situation called for a mix of formal flattery and evasion. Harry fell back on the old
yes bwana
tactic.

“It is well known that meme organisms throng E Space like vacuum barnacles infesting a slow freighter,”
he said, switching to GalSix.
“But alas I saw only those creatures that my poor, half-uplifted brain allowed me subjectively to perceive. No doubt those impressions were too crude to interest an exalted being like yourself”

Harry hoped the warden would miss his sarcasm. In theory, all those who swore fealty to the Great Institutes were supposed to leave behind their old loyalties and prejudices. But ever since the disaster at NuDawn, everyone knew how hoons felt toward the upstarts of Earthclan. As a neo-chimpanzee—from a barely fledged client race, indentured to humans—Harry expected only snobbery from Twaphu-anuph.

“You are probably right about that
”
came the noon's response.
“Still, I remain interested in your observations. Might you have sighted any memoids traveling in company with transcendent life-forms?”

The inspector's data plaque was turned away, but its glow reflected off a patch of glossy chest scales, flashing familiar blue shades of approval. All checks on Harry and his vessel were complete. There was no legal excuse to hold him anymore.

He switched languages again, this time to Anglic, the tongue of wolflings.

“I'll tell you what, Twaphu-anuph. I'll do you a favor and make an official inquiry about that … in your name, of course.”

Harry aimed his own plaque and pointedly took an ident-print before the warden could object.

“That is not necessary! I only asked informally, in order
—”

Harry enjoyed interrupting.

“Oh, you needn't thank me. We are all sworn to mutual cooperation, after all. So shall I arrange for the usual inter-institute discount and forward the report to you in care of Migration HQ? Will that do?”

Before the flustered hoon could respond, Harry continued.

“Good! Then according to the protocols of entry, and by your exalted leave, I guess I'll be going.”

The little rousit scurried out of the way as Harry moved forward, silently daring the barrier to prevent him.

It swished aside, opening his path onto the avenues of Kazzkark.

Perhaps perversely, Harry found it exciting to live in a time of danger and change.

For almost half a galactic rotation—millions of years—this drifting, hollowed-out stone had been little more than a sleepy outpost for Galactic civil servants, utilizing but a fraction of the prehistoric shafts that some extinct
race once tunneled through a hundred miles of spongy rock. Then, in just the fifteen kaduras since Harry was assigned here, the planetoid transformed. Catacombs that had lain silent since the
Ch 'th 'turn
Epoch hummed again as more newcomers arrived every day. Over the course of a couple of Earth years, a cosmopolitan city came to life where each cavity and corridor offered a melange for the senses—a random sampling of the full range of oxy-life culture.

Some coincidence
, Harry thought sardonically.
It's almost as if all this was waiting to happen, until I came to Kazzkark.

Of course, the truth was a little different. In fact, he was one of the least important free sapients walking around these ancient halls.

Walking … and scooting, slithering, creeping, ambling … name a form of locomotion and you could see it being used. Those too frail to stand in half an Earth gravity rolled everywhere on graceful carts, some with the sophistication of miniature spaceships. Harry even saw a dozen or so members of a long-armed species that looked something like gibbons—with purple, upside-down faces—leaping and brachiating from convenient bars and handholds set in the high ceiling. He wanted to laugh and hoot at their antics, but their race had probably been piloting starcraft back when humans lived in caves. Galactics seldom had what he would call a
sense
of humor.

Not long ago, a majority of those living on Kazzkark wore uniforms of MigrInst, NavInst, WarInst, or the Great Library. But now those dressed in livery made a small minority, lost amid a throng. The rest sported wildly varied costumes, from full body enviro suits and formal robes carrying runes describing their race genealogy and patronymics, all the way to beings who strode unabashedly naked—or with just an excretory-restraint cloth—revealing a maximum of skin, scale, feather, or torg.

When he first entered service, most Galactics seemed unable to tell a neo-chimpanzee from a plush recliner, so obscure and unimportant was the small family of
Terra. But that had changed lately. Quite a few faces turned and stared as Harry walked by. Beings nudged each other to point, sharing muted utterances—a sure sign that the
Streaker
crisis hadn't been solved while he was away. Clearly Earthclan was still gaining a renown it never sought.

A venerable Galactic expression summed up the problem.

“Look ye to peril—in attracting unplanned notice from the mighty.”

Still, for the most part it was easy enough to feel lost in the crowd as he took a long route back to headquarters, entranced by how much busier things had become since he left on patrol.

Using his plaque to scan immigration profiles, Harry knew that many of these sophonts were emissaries and commercial delegates, sent by their race, alliance, or corporation to seek some advantage as the staid routines of civilization dissolved in an age of rising misgivings. There were opportunities to be gained from chaos, so agents and proxies maneuvered, playing venerable games of espionage. Compacts were made and broken. Bribes were offered and loyalties compromised in double-cross gambits so ornate that the court intrigues of the Medicis might have occurred in a sandbox. Small clans, without any stake in galacto-politics or the outcome of fleet engagements, nevertheless swarmed about, endeavoring to make themselves useful to great powers like the Klesh, Soro, or Jophur, who in turn spent lavishly, seeking an edge over their foes.

With so much portable wealth being passed around, an economy flourished serving the needs of each deputy or spy. Almost a million free sophonts and servitor machines saw to the visitors' biotic needs, from distinct atmospheric preferences to exotic foodstuffs and intoxicants.

It's a good thing we chims had to give up some of our sense of smell, trading the brain tissue for use in sapience
, Harry thought as he sauntered along the Great Way—a mercantile avenue near the surface of Kazzkark, stretching from pole to pole, where bubble domes
interrupted the rocky ceiling every few kilometers to show dazzling views of an inner spiral arm of Galaxy Five. This passage had been a ghostly corridor when he first came from training at Navigation Central. Now shops and restaurants filled every niche, casting an organic redolence so thick that any species would surely find something toxic in the air. Most visitors underwent thorough antiallergic treatments to prepare their immune systems before leaving quarantine. And even so, many walked the Great Way wearing respirators.