More than two hundred parsecs from Iryala, two figures stood on a high balcony of the Garthid imperial palace. Over the previous eighteen millennia, it had been built, damaged by internecine wars, rebuilt and expanded. All without basic change. It was far more than the imperial residence. It housed and officed the central executive function overseeing a loose khanate of fifty-three inhabited worlds. There was no compelling need for its centralization on a single site. Garthid electronics and cybernetics were highly advanced. But the palace suited the Garthid psyche.
The seven-sided wall enclosing it was more than six miles around, and tall beyond need, yet the structures it enclosed rose high above it, an intricately interconnecting complex of buildings, courtyards, jumbled roofs and high-vaulting towers, often irregularly stacked. There were arching walkways, some open, some enclosed. Turrets, landing platforms for floaters and shuttles, and innumerable and often unlikely balconies, large and small, partly in lieu of adequate windows. The architecture was more intricate and extreme than any Gothic cathedral, and far less orderly. Yet somehow stark, brooding, powerful. Nowhere was there a glint of silver, gleamstone, gilt, or even copper. The structures were black—hardsteel and poured blackstone—nonreflective as a military gunbarrel. The tall narrow windows were deep-set, of dark-tinted glass.
It was considered the most beautiful architecture in the Garthid Khanate.
The country surrounding it was a broad, tree-spotted grassland, broken by swales, shrubby knolls, and forested flood plains. Tradition called it the home of the species—a sort of racial shrine. Its local climate and ecology were as little changed over the millennia as Garthid science could keep them. The Garthids, even those whose families had dwelt for millennia on other worlds, felt a powerful, a compelling attachment to it. Garthid racial memory insisted that the species had evolved on that plain, lived and scavenged there. There or in a region and climate much like it. A savage Eden where predators large and predators fleet had struck down or pulled down hoofed prey. Often to be harassed and driven from their kill by robber scavengers, among which the foremost were the pack-roving protogarthids, and later the early Garthids themselves, tough, aggressive, relentless. Intelligent.
Now, after some two million years, the species looked not so different from its ancestors. Their crania were notably larger, their heavy fighting teeth a little smaller, their scaly skin less tough. But except for their crania, they were remarkably like their forebears—obligatory carnivores with powerful jaws and teeth. Their frames were still powerful, though their muscles seldom so sinewy and tough.
Two figures stood by the railing. The giant was the Surrogate of God, the smaller his chief counselor. The Surrogate was of the guardian gender, of course, seven feet tall and 440 pounds. His pantaloons were a sort of exaggerated plus fours, as wide as a Varangian's, their vividly colorful pattern at odds with the black motif of the city's architecture. His only other garb was a sort of vest, resembling a kabe-shima, its enormous padded shoulders ending in upcurved black horns. His counselor, a foot and a half shorter and only 40 percent of the Surrogate's mass, wore nothing below his plain blue-green vest. He was of the healer gender, and had risen through the bureaucracy.
The evening was a pleasant 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Their balcony, a thousand feet above the pavement, overlooked the traditional landscape, its genetically restored herds of prey vaguely visible in the dusk. To the west, a molten smear showed where the sun had set. To the east, stars already gleamed. It was on these the two Garthids gazed.
"The aliens may not have arrived with bad intentions," the Surrogate said. "But suppose for a moment they did."
His counselor answered diffidently. "It is possible of course, Your Potency. But the reports suggest they arrived innocently, lashed out in fear, then fled. I doubt we shall see them again."
The Surrogate's parietal hood flared slightly, its fringe of vestigial "horns" rigid. "There are passing encounters," he said. "Mere armed incidents. But there are also wars. The difference is vast. We must be prepared, which includes being informed."
The chief counselor recalled a proverb: He who snoops the canebrake may rouse the dragon. But he'd said enough.
The Surrogate continued: "We must develop a sentry system which can monitor a zone at least a parsec across. No such thing has ever been attempted, but I am assured it is technically and economically possible. I may also decide to scout the intruder's extrapolated course, and perhaps discover its system of origin or destination. Our success in that depends on their having followed a constant course over a very long distance. And we will begin preparation for possible hostilities. To start with, this will consist of preparing an infrastructure for a full war effort, in case one is needed. Meanwhile the expansion of existing forces can be moderate."
The two old friends continued to gaze starward. Finally the chief counselor spoke again: "We have not fought another species than ourselves since we destroyed the Chil-ness-pakth, in the time of the Ninth Khroknash, more than eighteen thousand years ago."
The Surrogate nodded. "In the pride of our youth. But perhaps it is time."
"I will pray on it."
The Surrogate grunted. "I have prayed. And it seems to me God had a hand in this. The probability that an intruder would emerge twice within reaction range of a patrol ship is extremely small." Laying a hand on the counselor's shoulder, he added: "We shall see. If God wills peace, we shall have peace. I do not intend to force war on anyone needlessly."