H. C. Turk, page 1
ALONG THE LAY OF SPACE
By H. C. Turk
Book I
Victory
Chapter 1
Prime Time In Her Bath
The suicide planet resembled Earth except for its killing machines. In this fine, flat landscape of handsome forests, the semi-organic chambers only seemed out of place because of their function. The six humans preparing to remain seemed out of place because they would be the only living people on the planet.
The Prime Minister of the surveying staff felt no remorse for abandoning certain of her fellows on this world of death.
“Dears, I’ll understand if anyone wants to change its mind,” Prime in her sweet voice told her colleagues. “You won’t have to feel bad, because everyone in the boat volunteered regardless. President Hervieux didn’t order you to stay, after all, only suggested it. I don’t think it’s such a bad idea.”
“I find it a tremendous suggestion,” Science Intensive added. “Even though our resources will be limited, surely we will learn a great deal about these sentients while waiting for your return. We will learn much about the Victorians’ knowledge.”
No person changed his, her, or its mind. Not the survey boat’s science executive, the administrator–Prime’s second–the spare empath, the paired nongens, nor the documenter. Only Security had qualms, and he was leaving. Secure had qualms because he was leaving his lover behind. Empath would not begin her good-byes with him.
The nine Canadians stood on sandy soil between the suicide chamber and the boat’s lift. The latter resembled a rectangular metal mushroom, the riders being suspended about the stem. The former seemed the reconstituted stump of a huge tree. A residue on the chambers’ exhaust described a humanlike organism whose members had turned to soot. Ritual suicide was the strong implication. Due to their victory in discovering a sentient race, the surveyors called these aliens “Victorians”.
“The only sentients we’ve ever found, and they had to kill themselves,” Con moaned.
Being the boat’s integrating empath, Controller’s emotional involvement was understandable. A greater emotion was his connection to his friend and protege.
“You know I feel bad about leaving you here,” he told Empath quietly.
“Yes, I know,” she smiled in return, and clasped Controller’s hand, “but you’re needed to guide the boat home. I love it here already,” she smiled brilliantly, then moved closer, turning so that only her superior could hear. “I love the responsibility, Con. On the boat, I’m only a spare.”
“The key to ultimate empathy is having a family as wonderful as mine,” Control smiled to his friend. “It’s a little more important to me because I had no family as a youth, but I have one now. So will you one day,” Con told her with an especially warm expression as he looked to Secure. “Then you’ll have enough Manifestic empathy to guide your own surveying boat.”
The lift chirped. Turning, Prime listened to a message that only she could hear. Raising her eyebrows was a virtually extravagant expression for this reserved professional.
“Time to go, dears,” she told the staff of sentience surveyors. “The sooner we leave, the sooner we can return with Sec’s dad and a research population.”
“I don’t know if Analyst will leave Earth for a mere, immortal discovery,” droll Security returned, and Intensive proudly stated:
“I am so looking forward to working with our analytic head, one of the hemisphere’s finest theoretical–”
“Why hemisphere?” Secure interrupted. “You don’t think he’s good enough to rank in the whole world?”
Science Intensive only opened and closed his mouth before Secure concluded.
“Quit running for office, Intensive,” he grumbled with no anger, “Canada already has a president.”
Tall Secure then looked down to find two bodies against him.
“Good-bye our colleague and”
“Most excellent friend,” Non began and Gen concluded.
“Hey, we’re talking a few weeks,” Secure told them as he squeezed a shoulder with each hand, then firmly smacked their backs.
The twin people, middle-aged but appearing as bright youths, stepped away with pleased expressions and bid good-bye to Con and Prime with equal embraces. Though melancholy at the separation, nongens were never passionate.
Brief handshakes were exchanged by Prime, Sec, and Con, who were leaving, and Administer, Intensive, and Register–the documenter–who would remain. To his surprise, Secure received a quick embrace from Register. This older artist was usually so moderate in his emotion. Secure did not know that when Empath bid adieu to her friends, then turned to take her fiance’s hand, Register felt cheated. Sec did not know that only Register could not look when the lovers kissed.
She smelled magnificent. No applied scents, but Empath’s individual fragrance displayed her personality to Secure, as though a delicate, unique mark in the air. They held one another, Sec looking down to green eyes that with his poor color vision seemed brown. He loved her breathing, that pulsed inhalation whenever she was near; for whenever she stepped to him, her lips parted and her respiration changed, improved, Em now scanning Security but seeing even less than he, for she was the empath, and felt more than she saw. With Secure, she felt a love no less satisfying for being conventional, the duration implied a lifetime, not an affair. As the two prepared to separate, their emotional expertise seemed exchanged, for Secure was the one who felt dread at leaving his fiancee behind. He feared not danger, but loneliness. Empath forced herself to be ensconced by her duty, and felt as sure of her time ahead as a working empath did when guiding an ether boat across the stars via impure instantaneity.
He would not remember her kiss, the application of lips and proximate tongues. In Security’s recollection, this embrace would exist as a sense of singularity with Em, a continuity of character ended by their improperly being separated into a pair of individuals. Security left his love behind. Feeling fine about the separation because of its brevity, Empath set her lover aside for the future.
“I love you, Matilda.”
“I love you, Ernie.”
Apart from restrained sorrow, the two commingling groups felt the pride of their accomplishment: having discovered another sentient race. But the surveyors’ pride was akin to their parting, tinged with melancholy, for the sentient people they found were dead.
Administer had the final say. “Don’t worry, folks. It’s a safe place unless you want to commit suicide. We have too much to live for.” Then he waved good-bye.
The departing surveyors attached themselves to the orbit lift via hip grips, appearing to stand against the stem attached only by thin belts. In moments, the lift had absorbed enough gravity to return the force to the planet in the form of rejection, the lift and its cargo pressed with increasing rapidity out of sight.
As the atmosphere thinned, the orbit’s lift wrapped the occupants in sealed air. After docking with the ether boat–which resembled a small, flat-roofed building–Prime moved quickly to the control office to begin the process of interstellar translation. Con was the key here, for he guided the Manifestic exchange of vacuum volumes via a bias current of emotion, that most subtle of human controls. He prepared himself by greeting his wife and daughter. Con then connected his lymphatic and nervous systems to the boat.
A two-week voyage would return the sentience surveyors forty parsecs to Earth. During that time, Earth’s sole surveying boat would sort through the ether. In denouement, a segment of the galaxy would bypass the boat at zero interval, several days as humans fly along the lay of the space.
The surveyors were embarrassed at the president’s flashing skin. In the Maple Office, Madeleine Hervieux sat on an antique 21st-century complas chair with her legs crossed. She wore a dress. At the garment’s hem, the president’s left knee was visible. Again, the surveyors felt some remorse that Canada’s president, though their leader in all major decisions, was not among them in being a New Prudist. At least she didn’t wear tight pants.
Security’s father, Analyst, thought she had nice legs.
“I have not had such a satisfying news conference in years,” Hervieux told her guests. “Not the first question did I suffer regarding Quebec’s being sold to France. Not a single accusation did I bear about the funds from that transaction being wasted on space surveillance. You and your fellows, Miss Prime, have vindicated me and my career. You and your staff, Mr. Analyst, will refute the foolish notion that Quebec was abandoned in order to fund screwing around in space. I actually heard that. ‘Screwing around in space.’”
Becoming in pleated linen, Hervieux sat with an erect, elegant pose, small hands folded on her lap, facing a sofa full of sentience surveyors. Despite the president’s leggy revelation, her mien was formal. Few people in Canada shared the surveyors’ religious beliefs, the majority not offended by one sleek, mature knee. Most of the populace would find Hervieux sufficiently demure. Secure’s father found her figure pleasant. He liked her terminology in describing the possibility of speciousness in extrasolar expeditions. He liked her small hands, her sleek lap.
Sec wondered who cleaned this impeccable, expensive room. Perhaps those peripheral men. Just within sight, in every corner, stood a suited, dour man who seemed to be looking nowhere. Secure knew they were looking everywhere. Security recognized his own kind.
“We are so very pleased, dear president, that our results are satisfying to you and our fellow Canadians,” Prime returned after sipping her vegjuice.
The president
“Are we on?” he asked Hervieux
He had filled a developing silence by nodding to the walls and speaking to the President of United Canada for the first time since their initial greetings that afternoon.
The walls. Cursed with nothing so simple as a camera crew, the president had photon receptors in her walls, for she was a television show. For three hours every weekday, the president at work and play was displayed across the nation. It was said that she held the secret meetings required of a great executive in her bath.
“No, Mr. Analyst, this is Gorbachev Day. Know The President is not shown on holidays.”
“Do you really hold secret meetings in the sandbox?” Analyst asked Hervieux. His son, not the president, quickly answered.
“Thanks, Dad, for the tact.”
They had the same slump. Apart from lax shoulders, Analyst and son visually differed. Analyst was thick, average height; Secure tall, with bones just beneath the skin. But Analyst was not fat and Secure not skinny, both having a physical presence sourced from the sure moves of their every muscle. Prime was demure except for eyes that would fit a despot’s face. The President could have been a queen. She continued speaking after Analyst shrugged.
“So, you, sir, will head the research staff on the planet.”
Analyst looked to Secure at his left, at Prime on his right. His son shook his head, as though annoyed.
“Yes,” Analyst replied to the president.
“And your specialty is…everything.”
Analyst looked to Secure at his left, at Prime on his right–and she answered for him.
“Analyst will head the research population on Victory, Miss President, because of his career in generalist applications.”
“Are you one of those nongens, Mr. Analyst?” Hervieux wondered. “They as well are generalists, are they not?”
“Gosh, I don’t look sexless, do I?” Analyst asked as though innocent.
Secure wanted to slap him. He wasn’t speaking with a peer, but The President.
“Many people,” the president continued, “fail to understand how a person can be both sexless and human, the former being an intrinsic part of the latter. They believe these people should be in a monastery, not an ether boat.”
“Their lack of lust makes them marvelously versatile,” Prime answered pleasantly. “Analyst is not short of lust.”
“I take it that nongens don’t look up one’s dress,” Hervieux returned with a false smile, and Analyst looked away from the president’s knee.
All but one of the New Prudists blushed.
“And ‘empaths’,” the president continued. “Miss Prime, you are certainly aware that some people still fail to believe that such a profession is genuine.”
“Whenever a species approaches sentience,” Prime explained, “emotion becomes a burden. Empaths are wonderfully expert in emotion.”
“Don’t hard scientists consider them nebulous?” Hervieux returned. “What of yourself, Mr. Analyst? Will there be a conflict of theoretics on the only planet besides Earth with a sentient race?”
“Em is going to be my daughter,” Analyst replied to Hervieux. “Forget the in-law part. That girl is family already. Con is my buddy, way deeper than theory.”
They were not called mister and miss and missus. Sentience surveyors were known only by their appellation of task. Analyst refrained from mentioning this to Hervieux. The president then became political.
“I have invited you here today because you three will be included in the permanent research expedition on Victory. I must begin by stating the magnificence of your accomplishment. As long as mankind has understood the stars to be versions of our own sun, we have longed to find other mentalities to help us share the universe. You have found those friends, that people. The unparalleled outpouring of joy from virtually every person on Earth is the best explanation of your great success. Now I will explain your failure.”
“We didn’t find dead people on purpose,” Secure suddenly declared.
“I can see whose son you are,” Hervieux replied with a glare that cut to the back of Security’s skull. “My reference is to our mutual safety. Residing on a planet whose temporary populace killed themselves seems risky, to say the least. If something goes wrong for you, it goes wrong for me. I do not want to be removed from office. If I am, the next president will not be allowed to sell a disruptive province in order to fund your project. No one loved Quebec more than I did, and still do–I was born there. What I’m saying is that if you go down, I go down, and I have never accepted defeat easily. So, let’s not be delicate about this–if you ruin my career, I will ruin your asses.”
The surveyors left with salutations much less touching than those of Victory. They were removed from the presidential palace not by a sparse gravity lift, but a luxurious limo floater flanked by air superiority autos of Hervieux’s personal guard. As the surveyors rose from the Mount Royal Palace grounds, exterior mikes supplied them with the sound of the city’s celebration, as though the entire populace had gathered in the streets to shout their joy to the skies, to space.
The surveyors’ own joy was not dampened by a sound unheard, that of the president facing the photon walls after her guests left to shout, “Vive le QuŽbec libre!” then schedule a secret meeting with the opposition party during prime time in her bath.
Chapter 2
Pain Described Their Future
“Any volunteers?” Administer quipped as he stood near the death device and looked to Empath.
They all looked to her, all but Science Intensive. He did not have to look. The remaining sentience surveyors knew that Intensive wanted the useless empath to enter the alien chamber and exit as vapor.
“This race had to be sophisticated–why would they want to kill themselves?” Ad quickly pronounced, attempting to draw his group away from an uncomfortable area, one of his own, inadvertent creation.
Intensive cooperated. Since the administrator had stated Science’s tacit idea, why blatantly demean the inferior staff member himself?
“Of course, they did not all kill themselves,” Intensive mildly replied, “only those who journeyed to this planet.”
“The ones on vacation,” the first nongen volunteered.
“Or sabbatical, or leave,” the second added.
“We may have achieved victory as surveyors by finding them,”
“But we never expected this.”
Intensive looked to the nongens with disappointment. Empath understood their sin to be speaking while Science still had breath in his body. She, at least, was saying nothing, being uncomfortable in Intensive’s presence. But Em did not feel the guilt that Science desired from her, the inferiority from her specialty’s being insufficiently objective for the chief scientist. After Intensive’s next speaking, however, Empath found that she had to reply.
“Having verified via Register that the aliens’ deaths were self-applied, I will soon determine the reason for their suicide, if I continue to receive the proper assistance. Now, let’s have no more foolish talk about my wanting to throw the empath in because she’s useless. Feely could be helpful if only she worked harder.”
She hated that word. Though accepting one’s profession as a name was honorable in the society of sentience surveyors, in calling her “Feely”, Intensive was not attempting warmth, but unkindness.
“I work hard enough, Science,” Em insisted. “You have everyone slaving along like livestock, as though there’s some rush. As though you’ll learn all about the aliens before the vacuum boat returns.”
“Oh, I am learning,” Intensive announced, his smile as kind and warm as a curse, a smile that to Empath defined his personality.
Science then began a pep talk, noting their accomplishments in the brief time since the boat had departed. Em ignored him. This was no flatball team–they were cultural surveyors, preliminary surveyors. Empath only wanted to do her reasonable best, and attempting to match the vast resources even then being assembled in Canada was not reasonable. Neither was Science Intensive.
Em tried to ignore him, but failed. She was hurt. As expected, the empath was feeling, perhaps too much in this instance. She did not want to be considered useless, but could sense Intensive’s disapproval as though an odor from overstressed pores. Somehow worse, she could sense the remaining surveyors understanding Intensive’s view. Empath wanted to be accepted as their equal, not a subordinate. She also wanted to be accepted personally, as though all the surveying staff were a family. In the Victory family, Administer was the kindly uncle, alternately assuring and reasonable. Science Intensive seemed the prominent grandfather, a warrior-politician known to emphasize his relatives’ imperfections. Empath was the lovely daughter, more the budding adult than the hardened professional, the group’s emotional center. The two nongens were the beloved pets, having the best qualities of people, but lacking certain average traits. Not present was Register, the artist, an admired but somewhat distant cousin. But this family had no parents, had too much business and not enough love. This surveying staff, Em understood, was no family.
