CHAPTER 1
After my sixteenth spin, during which I realized I was becoming intensely dizzy, I leaped into the air, with both heels arching toward my back, then sank upon my left knee to the ground. My right leg extended with toe pointed in the direction of the sunset. My arms were crossed upon my chest, my back bowed to show that all energy was spent. The recorded music rose around me in a splendid crescendo, and I let my chin fall to my breastbone.
I waited for a moment, but the expected applause failed to materialize. I glanced up at my audience.
My cousins sat or reclined upon the various sumptuously upholstered chairs and crash couches arranged about the elegant private entertainment center of the Imperium Jaunter. Though each of them was dressed in the height of fashion and styled within a millimeter of their lives in the latest of sartorial, tonsorial and aureate splendor, all of them wore a uniform expression of befuddlement.
“I’m sure that was very meaningful, Thomas,” my cousin Jil said, patting a bored yawn with a slender but heavily beringed hand, “but I have no idea whatsoever what it was you just did.”
“Oh, come now!” I said, rising to my feet. A squat, cubic LAI attendant trundled up to me and offered me a towel almost glowing in its pristine whiteness from the hatch on its top side. I mopped my forehead and the back of my neck. Such was the intensity of my training for my newest art form that I scarcely had to collect any droplets of exertive moisture. That did not stop my mechanical shadow from mopping up and down the skin-tight, plum-colored bodysuit that I wore on my long frame. “That was my tribute to the final sunset we just witnessed as we departed Keinolt!”
Jil fluttered a hand and tossed back her mane of caramel-colored hair.
“Why? What is wrong with simply saying that it was pretty? If it was. I didn’t notice. Did anyone else notice?”
Several of my relations shrugged their shoulders.
“But merely saying so is excruciatingly ordinary,” I said, coming over to throw myself upon the couch beside hers. “I wish to evoke the special energy of the moment, to give it the importance that it deserved. Are we all so jaded by our circumstances that we pay no heed to natural phenomena?”
“Not at all,” my cousin Xan insisted. He stretched his long feet out before him, admiring the toes of his polished bronze-colored boots, which were tinted to go with the tunic counterwoven with gold that fit his muscular torso like a glove. His entire ensemble was designed to point up his natural good looks. He had thick, dark, wavy hair and almond-shaped blue eyes startling in a golden-hued face. “But, Thomas, the sun sets every day. Why draw attention to a single sunset?”
“Because,” I said, infusing my voice with as much melodrama as it could absorb without creating a distressingly cloying precipitate, “it may be the last one we ever observe on our homeworld. Has no one thought of that?”
“To be honest, no,” Erita said, toying with her wine glass. Our cousin’s long blonde hair had been swept into an updo of ridiculous elaboration, with the inclusion of a bamboo cricket cage, a cluster of bright red pinpoint lights and a golden charm featuring her monogram. “Travel via jump points has been safe for several millennia. This is the best and newest of the Imperium leisure fleet, and we are accompanied by military vessels to ensure our well-being, as is fitting for scions of the noble houses. So, I assume that I will see many more sunsets over Keinolt that rival the one we just left behind.”
“True,” I said. It was hard to argue when faced with facts. I sighed.
“But don’t be upset, Thomas,” Jil said, encouragingly. Her lovely, golden-skinned face wreathed itself with smiles. “Just because we didn’t understand it doesn’t mean it wasn’t good.”
“Oh, I know it was good,” I said, dejectedly. “I wish you understood how meaningful it was.”
“I thought it was pretty amazing, my lord,” Ensign Nesbitt said, his voice hoarse with shyness at addressing me in the midst of my noble family. The big, dark-haired man seemed embarrassed to have spoken. He twisted his very large person into a series of uncomfortable postures that indicated in rapid succession abashment, discomfort, fear and admiration. I made a note of the sequence for later. It might come in handy in some of my future performances. “I never saw anyone make jumps like that outside of low-grav.”
Nesbitt and other members of the small but select crew that usually traveled with me on missions for the good of the Imperium had been assigned to accompany me to the Zang sector. The Rodrigo, my small naval scout ship, was bestowed in the belly of the Jaunter, but a full destroyer led us toward our second jump point. There would be five jumps in all, with long transits in between each. Zang space was difficult to reach, not unusual considering its inhabitants. Nesbitt and the other navy personnel sat in modestly upholstered chairs arranged at the side of the chamber as though afraid to touch the bubble of nobility for fear it might burst.
“Thank you,” I said, with a gracious inclination of my head. “But did it touch your soul?”
Nesbitt looked bemused, not an uncommon expression for him to wear. He glanced at our fellow naval personnel as if to gather wisdom from one of them. None seemed to be forthcoming.
“I think so,” he replied.
Oskelev, a white-furred Wichu and the best pilot in the Imperium Navy, shrugged her meaty shoulders. Unlike the rest of my crew, she wore only a harness to hold her viewpad and identifier patches. Her thick pelt was more protective than any clothing up to cold-weather gear, though brilliant pink nipples and other exterior genitalia protruded therefrom. All Wichu were unselfconscious about their bodies, so humanity had perforce to come to terms with their culture and customs.
“I don’t know if we have souls to touch,” she said.
“Of course you do!” I declared. “Even the least amoeba, the merest slip of grass, the most distant star has a soul.”
Oskelev put her candy-pink tongue between her lips and blew a derisive sound.
“Okay. What use do stars have for souls?”
“How do we know they don’t?” Lieutenant Anstruther piped up.
I smiled at her. The slender, quiet brunette often championed me in arguments with the others. I thought it was rather sweet of her, though I could wax loquacious on my own behalf. I prepared to launch a philosophical argument, based upon my theories of the movements of the stars through the observable galaxy.
“I’m sorry, Thomas,” said my sister Lionelle, drawing my attention away. She curled her slim legs up under the skirt of her cerulean-blue gown. Of my mother’s three children, Nell, the youngest, was the one who most resembled her: petite, small-boned, waves of soft hair framing a heart-shaped face, though her vivid brunette coloring and sapphire-blue eyes came from our father. By contrast, I had acquired our father’s physiognomy and our mother’s sea-blue eyes and sandy hair. “I’m afraid that symbolism has never been an open book, as far as I am concerned.”
“That’s not true at all,” I argued. “Language is a purely symbolic form of communication. Nothing that we say is concrete. Every word is a concept. Every phrase is a collection of action and meaning. Interpretive dance merely turns such symbolism into meaningful movement.”
“So it’s one step further removed from actually doing something,” Xan, said, looking amused.
“You have it exactly,” I said, very pleased. I knew I could count upon Xan to catch the somewhat wayward drift of my discourse. “It both obscures and reveals meaning. In this case, I am telling the story of the regret that we experience for leaving our home planet, coupled with the excitement for the upcoming spectacle we will witness at our destination.”
“Not all gathered,” said Kolchut Redius, an Uctu who was a member of my crew and possibly my best friend in the galaxy. His people rather resembled the Earth lizards called geckos, though they were human size, and their skin was coral pink with some blue scales here and there instead of green. He turned up a hand and wiggled his spatulate fingertips. “Some symbols lacking.”
“Really?” I asked, feeling my eyebrows climb high upon my brow. “What did I fail to include?”
“Deeper meaning,” Redius replied, dropping his narrow mandible in a humorous grin. “Mere description too simplistic.”
“Well, what I did present seems to be too much for the audience I have at the moment,” I said, with a pointed look at my cousins.
“Perhaps we can look at it as a game of charades,” Xan said, lying back lazily and signaling for a refill. “Look, you do another one, and we’ll try to guess what it is you are trying to get across.”
“Later,” I said. I swallowed. My throat was dry and scratchy from my exertions. “I’m parched.” I waved to a different rude mechanical, which trundled toward me with its drinks tray elevated. “Alas,” I bemoaned, as I settled back in the chaise longue with a cup of wine, “no one appreciates art these days.”
“We all admire art,” said my cousin Nalney, his broad, swarthy face widened still further with a grin. “Too bad my brother Nole isn’t here! He loves to go to all the museums and stare at dusty displays. At least you move about a bit.”
A bit was rather insulting, as I had flung myself hither and yon in my attempts to share the dying light over the continent that cradled the Imperium Compound, our palatial home. Still, Nalney was right. Nole would have had some interesting if not intelligent musings upon my skill. It was a pity he hadn’t joined us, but he had been busy furnishing his new residence ship, a project that had taken up all his attention and disposable income for the last two years. In spite of hints and downright espionage on the part of me and my cousins, no details about the vessel had been forthcoming.
“Is there any mystical significance to your motions?” Erita asked, with a meaningful lift of her eyebrows.
I waved a dismissive hand.
“That’s so three weeks ago,” I said. “I had debunked so many superstitions by the time we returned from Nacer that there weren’t enough fun ones left to examine. Another time.”
Which, functionally, to me meant never. When I took up an enthusiasm, I embraced it with my whole person, all my time and attention and not a small amount of money. When I ceased to be enthusiastic, I tended to put away all the trappings. I always meant to go back to them, but there was always something newer and more fascinating with which I could become involved.
“Oh, I meant to mention, Thomas,” Jil began, leaning toward me. “I went to visit Uncle Rodrigo yesterday. I think he knew who I was, but perhaps he thought I was my mother. He was very sweet. He gave me this pendant.” She displayed an exquisitely wrought teardrop-shaped jewel of platinum and gold with a scattering of brilliant green gems fixed here and there that hung on a chain around her slender neck. “He sounded fine until he mentioned having just visited with Uncle Laurence. Is he getting worse?”
I hesitated before I answered. My father, for whom I had named my scout ship, was a decorated war hero whose health had been catastrophically affected by his experiences. He frequently spoke to people who were not there, especially his younger brother, who was off on some nebulous expedition or other. In any case, I know Uncle Laurence wasn’t on Keinolt, though Father frequently hallucinated that he was.
Father’s condition was a sore spot with me, as my cousins knew and were solicitous of. I had been the subject of some badinage during my school days over a visit he made during which he accused my mathematics professor of being some kind of nefarious criminal. While I agreed with him to an extent, particularly regarding the heinous character of that teacher’s pop quizzes, some of my fellow students, not my cousins but some rich incomers who thought that their fortunes elevated them to an equal rank with us nobles and who were sadly mistaken, found an impaired parent to be a figure of fun. It was that day that I discovered the school had a policy of punishing those students who challenged other students to a duel to the death on matters of honor. Ah, well, one day I would find those harassers and make such cutting remarks to them that they would drop dead on the spot from mortification, without needing to resort to physical weaponry. It was not so much a matter of my own honor, but my father’s, for which I would willingly die.
“What compelled you to learn to fling yourself about?” Erita asked. “Your dance, if I may term it such, looks absolutely exhausting. Why exert yourself in such a fashion?”
“Interpretive dance,” I said, warming to my topic with practiced ease, “is a marvelous art form. I saw a fascinating documentary on primitive cultures that tell stories through the movement of their bodies. Language, choices, symbolism. Since we are going to see a Zang demonstration, and their form of communication is notoriously difficult for younger races to comprehend, I thought I would gain insight into them with the use of body language. I undertook a study of numerous cultures, including many of our ancestral tribes, as well as those of other races, like our Uctu friends.” Here I nodded to Redius, who wrinkled his nose in his people’s substitute for sticking out one’s tongue or making a ruder gesture. “You see? Gestures and motions have profound meaning that it would serve us well to learn and possibly emulate. I rest my case.”
Lieutenant Carissa Plet rose from her place and set her glass aside. The tall, thin blonde human was the nominal head of the Rodrigo’s crew, though I was its actual commander, owing to my noble rank.
“Thank you for allowing us to be present, sir,” she said, fixing me with the keen gaze I had come to know and respect, if not love. “It was most educational. We must return to our other duties now.”
“Must you go?” I asked. I glanced back at my cousins, all of whom had abandoned any further interest in my performance. I offered her a hopeful look. “Do you require my presence for any of these duties?”
“No, sir.” Did I detect a hint of relief in that flat statement? Her countenance, which was nearly as capable of a stony expressionlessness as my aide-de-camp Parsons, gave me no clue. I tried to read her posture, based upon my new studies, and found little nourishment to my hunger for knowledge.
I sighed.
“Very well, then. We will meet again for the evening meal.”
“No, sir,” Plet said again, this time with open finality. “We’ll take mess in the crew’s wardroom from here on out with the other adjunct personnel. The First Space Lord’s orders.”
For that I had no answer, since the official in question was my own cherished maternal unit. Challenging Mother’s authority had landed me in trouble all of my life. She ruled our family as she did the Imperium’s space navy, with wisdom, discipline and remarkable affection. There was no need for me to court further opprobrium. Added to that was the fact that no matter how much I wheedled, Plet was unlikely to give in to my importunings. She was remarkably tone deaf to them.
“Oh, very well,” I said, disappointed. “You won’t take it amiss if I visit with you during off-shifts?”
“No, sir,” Plet replied, albeit not with any enthusiasm. “Crew, dismiss.”
“Aye, sir!” the others chorused. They saluted her, and me, and left the entertainment center. Plet hesitated, Her full lips pressed together, and she gave me what I could only classify as a speculative look. She seemed about to impart some further information to me, but thought better of it, and departed. I wished I could read the meaning of her gestures, but had to remain unsatisfied.
“Oh, Thomas,” Erita said petulantly, as I sat down and raised my wine glass to my family members. “I thought you would have grown tired of playing soldier by now.”
“Not yet,” I said, with a cheerful wave of my hand. “There’s still a bit more fun to be gleaned from it. After all, I do have my own ship. That’s a novelty that will take a while to wear off.”
“But it’s so dowdy,” Jil said. “The Rodrigo is still furnished as a purely military vessel, and that is so tedious. We all had to do the mandatory two years in academy. I wanted to put mine as far into my forgotten memories as possible. You seem to revel in all the trappings!”
“It is occasionally useful,” I said, choosing my words carefully so as not to arouse suspicions that I indeed remained an integral part of the crew of the Rodrigo and its occasional official missions, “to interact with the plebeian majority. One should retain the means of communicating with them, even if one doesn’t associate with them at other times.”
Jil made a face.
“Oh, I suppose so! To be honest, Thomas, I had my fill of rules and regulations on our way to and from the Autocracy. I almost felt as though I was under orders again!”
“Jil, you never followed a single order, within or without the academy,” I pointed out. “Suggestions, pleas, begging, even wailing at your heels was scarcely sufficient to persuade you to undertake anything but at your own whim.”
“Yes,” Jil said, pleased at the recollection. “That is true.”
An ache arising in my muscles reminded me then that I had been exercising more than my vocal chords, and my keen nose informed me that I might be giving inadvertent offense to my nearest and dearest. Not only that, but I had promised Parsons I would communicate with him in the hours before dinner.
I rose.
“Do excuse me for a time, won’t you?” I asked. “I think I will freshen up.”
I removed myself from the day room.