Chapter Eight
I wanna be president when I grow up. No! Not of Daddy’s company! I wanna be president of the solar system!
—Lutt Hanson, Jr., at age ten
The Elites are dispersing with your message.”
Jongleur spoke as he entered Habiba’s private quarters, adding: “Soon, your plan will be fait accompli.”
“I wish you’d stop these Earthisms!” Habiba snapped. “That place occupies entirely too much of our lives.”
Seeing that Habiba was emotionally disturbed, Jongleur felt at first guilty for upsetting her and then contrite.
Give her time to compose herself, he thought.
He focused on calming stories and glanced around Habiba’s quarters. These always surprised him—so small and plain, a three-room mud brick and stone building with many signs of wear. The building stood on the high vaulted lowest floor of her cone, hidden away among old storage jars and discarded seed husks.
Habiba clung to it out of sentiment, she said. It was her first dwelling, the one she had idmaged in a meadow of childseed flowers on her first Dreenor Day.
But now it was less than an hour after returning from her most recent Thoughtcon, and Habiba still displayed such emotional upset that her Chief Storyteller entertained fears for her.
“We will go outside,” Habiba said.
Jongleur blinked assent but waited. She often said this but until she led the way he never knew whether she meant actually out into the open air or just out into the artificial light of the cone’s main floor where soil had been spread over the lime slate to simulate a natural yard. It was not the same as a residential yard but Habiba said it gave her communion with her people, especially with the Elders who lived deep beneath the surface.
“Touching the dirt of Dreenor prevents me from taking on airs and behaving in the vain manner of lesser rulers in our universe,” Habiba said as she stopped in the vault-enclosed yard and stared around her in the greenish-yellow light.
Jongleur was familiar with these little homilies. They reinforced the belief that all Dreens should strive for a perfect existence and that watching the idmaged worlds evolve taught Dreens the frailties inherent in other sentient creatures.
Jongleur did not dare express his own fears about this—that the idmaged creatures and their worlds reflected a flaw in the Dreen character. He thought it, though, and thus Habiba knew his fear from her Thoughtcon Sharings.
“Have you noticed how Mugly smells when he’s angry?” she asked.
Jongleur shuddered. That smell! His first lessons had taught that rage produced a snout-twisting odor, a warning to prevent Dreens from inflicting violence on each other. Until Mugly, Jongleur had never experienced the natural odor.
“That smell tells me Mugly is a throwback to an earlier Dreen form,” Habiba said. “I have asked myself many times why such a phenomenon should occur at this time.”
Jongleur waited for her to expand on this interesting concept but Habiba changed the subject.
“The Excursion Ship your son took was created to go only to Earth. Do you think Mugly connived in its creation?”
Jongleur stared at her. What a question! Did not Thoughtcon open all minds to Habiba?
She increased his confusion by what she said next.
“I know about your occasional indiscretions with bazeel, Jongleur. I tolerate them because you are not excessive.”
“Many of us …”
“I know.”
Of course she knows. Then why the question about Mugly?
As though she read his mind outside of Thoughtcon, Habiba said: “We must ask ourselves if a throwback such as Mugly may not have other characteristics detrimental to Dreen serenity.”
Jongleur suppressed his defensive reflex with some difficulty and wished he had a small bit of bazeel right now, just enough to calm his nerves.
“Can you visualize what may happen if Earthers capture that ship intact?” Habiba asked. “They will come here with their terrible weapons!”
“But our shield …”
“… may not be enough to protect us indefinitely.”
Habiba glanced at the tall double doors leading to the outside corridor and only then did Jongleur hear a sound there. He marveled at Habiba’s acute senses. Someone coming.
The latches gave a loud click and the doors swung inward admitting a Junior Storyteller. He scurried in, holding his floppy yellow cap on his head as he ran.
Trouble! Jongleur thought.
No one would interrupt a meeting between Habiba and her Chief Storyteller without grave cause.
The Junior Storyteller stopped at the edge of Habiba’s yard and bowed low. “Your pardons begged,” he said. “I have an urgent message. The stolen ship has collided with an Earther ship and the wreckage is in the hands of the Zone Patrol.”
“Survivors?” Jongleur bleated.
“We are investigating as well as we can,” the Junior said. “There is a report on Earth saying Lutt Hanson, Jr. has been rescued from an experimental ship that exploded.”
“And my son?”
“No word yet but there was a fire.”
Jongleur moaned, “Ohhhhh …”
“Compose yourself, Jongleur!” Habiba ordered. “This is an emergency.”
“Yes … yes, of course.”
“How do you know it was a collision?” Habiba asked.
“Our sensors in the Spirals. An unfortunate delay in the reporting system is being investigated.”
“It happened in the … in the Spirals?” Jongleur demanded.
“At Phase One of entry,” the Junior said. “We do not know if the Earther could have completed Phases Two and Three.”
“Lutt Hanson, Jr.,” Habiba said. “That’s the dangerous Earther whose experiments led to this crisis.”
“My son …” Jongleur began.
“Forgive the cruelty of this, Jongleur,” Habiba said, “but death might be preferable to capture.”
The Junior Storyteller was not finished. “Mugly assures us the Excursion Ship was set to self-destruct rather than submit to Earther probes.”
“But it was a collision,” Jongleur said.
All three of them reflected on the unknown possibilities in such an accident. Habiba was first to recover.
“Jongleur! We must act quickly. Earther knowledge of our Spiral technology, whether developed independently or stolen from us, must be destroyed.”
Jongleur was shocked by the potential violence in her orders. “What are you saying?”
“Send our operatives immediately. That troublemaker, Hanson, will have to be dealt with. Abduction if necessary, but no killing.”
Jongleur was speechless. Of course no killing! A Dreen could not commit murder! Only some life forms evolving from primordial Dreen idmages could do that and, even then, only if they were granted Free Will.
“Free Will,” Habiba muttered, echoing Jongleur’s thought.
Jongleur agreed completely with the emotion he sensed in her. Free Will—that eminently bothersome concept Habiba warned them about so often. But she did not (could not?) put a stop to it, nor to bazeel.
“Well go at once and see to these matters!” Habiba ordered.
Deeply disturbed, Jongleur left the Supreme Tax Collector’s presence. His thoughts suggested limitations on Habiba’s powers—powers Jongleur and other Dreens had taken for granted over many generations.
Jongleur heard the quick, shuffling steps of the Junior Storyteller behind him as he left the cone’s vaulted room.
And I dreamed my Ryll would wear that yellow cap one day. Ohhh, what has happened to my son? Ohhh, why did I not take the advice of my Elders and fit him with a yellow Soother?
Shame had prevented him from taking the advice, Jongleur realized. Each small Soother, a living creature, soft and furry, faceless and without appendages, projected balancing thoughts into the mind of the one it soothed. But the things were always visible and people tended to avoid the presence of a person being soothed. Who wanted his thoughts read all the time? And Soothers certainly read the thoughts of anyone within their range.