“Did you consider waiting to receive recent directives?”
“Of course,” Qad said. “But the danger was rising. I offered mercy if they destroyed their weapons and submitted to me. They refused. They attacked. Glory and I responded.”
“We understand your destroying the weapons. We understand your destroying the intelligences. We question destroying the second level of evolution.”
“The danger was rising,” Qad said again. “Several species stood in the second rank to take over from the intelligences, though they had nearly been exterminated. In thousand time, in million time...” He paused, expecting the Executives to understand and accept.
“In million time,” said the Chief Executive, “they might have become fit to succumb to our will, as subordinate populations.”
“Or to become enemies,” Qad said, forcing himself to keep his tone mild.
“We will confer,” the Chief Executive said.
Leaving Qad to stand silent and obedient, his hand clenched around the grip of his sword, the Executives sat still while a privacy shield formed around them. Qad wondered what they would decide, who might speak for him, who might decline his argument.
By the time they reappeared, his feet hurt and his legs trembled with fatigue. He would have to recalibrate Glory’s sleep therapy, and perhaps even punish his ship’s intelligence for causing him discomfort bordering on embarrassment.
The Chief Executive rose. His legs were as thin and insectoid as his arms. His belly sagged beneath his modesty apron.
“Here is the decision.”
One of the other Executives looked pleased, the other annoyed. Qad had hoped for a unanimous decision in his favor. Whatever the decision, unanimous was beyond his reach.
“You are awarded the discovery medal.”
An Artificial Normal moved forward and attached the medal in first place above the row of previous medals. The pin scratched Qad’s chest. This error could only be deliberate. He slowed his anxious, angry heartbeat, hoping to prevent blood from showing behind the medal’s gleam. He kept himself from glaring at the Normal, for the Executive would take it, properly, as a sign of discontent toward authority. A glare at a Normal meant nothing, left the Artificial unaffected, and opened Qad to criticism.
Qad waited for his reward, which was standard for discovering a world suitable for unopposed colonization. They should give him at the very least license for another little sister.
But the Chief Executive continued.
“The second claim is declined.”
Qad paled. He locked his knees to keep from falling.
I’ll appeal, he thought. Appeal was allowed if the decision failed to be unanimous. Expensive, but allowed.
“Had you eliminated the first level of evolution,” the Chief Executive said, “your claim would have been approved. Had you waited for most recent instructions, your claim will have been approved.”
In a millennium, or many, Qad thought resentfully. He had made the decision to act rather than wait, and he still believed his decision correct. The intelligence he had destroyed was dangerous – at least the Executives agreed – and the upcoming intelligence held the potential to be even more of a threat, refined and honed by the enmity of its predecessors. He thought them well gone. He also thought the Executives desperately short-sighted, but they would deny any such accusation.
“You are fined the reward of your first discovery,” the Chief said.
The Artificial Normal pulled the medal from Qad’s shirt, ripping the shipsilk. The blotch of blood spread.
“You are dismissed,” said the Chief.
Qad stared at him, amazed, appalled. The leader light appeared at his feet, oscillating from before him to behind him, sensing the tension, anxious for him to follow.
He tried to turn on his heel, as insulted characters did in novels. The unnatural action nearly pitched him to the floor. He caught himself and departed without another word.
As he passed through the doorway, another Artificial Normal hurried after him and handed over an official paper. Supposing it was a report of the meeting, he stuffed it into his pocket.
In the comforting center of Glory, Qad dropped his sword belt with a clatter, then pulled off his new coat, popping most of the buttons, and threw it to the floor. He let the Artificial Stupids serve him porridge and wine, usually a comforting combination, though this time rather tasteless. The wine took the edge off the pain in his legs. He ripped the stained shipsilk shirt from beneath his apron. Ignoring the hungry complaints of the little sisters, he flung the shirt to the floor, then flung himself with equal ferocity into his transit pod. He slept.
He awoke baffled and sluggish, expecting the glow of stars beyond the sweeping port, but seeing only darkness. Silence surrounded him.
Was it all a dream? he asked himself. A nightmare? One nightmare to another? Is Glory drifting, wounded, in space?
“Glory?”
For the first time in his life, Glory remained silent in response to his question. Artificials failed to respond to his voice.
A thunderous pounding brought him to his feet in a rush of fear and pain. His legs nearly went out from under him. Space was vast and empty, with only a few tales of ships hit by drifting matter in all the millennia of civilization.
“Qad! Open!”
Having someone demand entry into his ship was even more startling. It was unique to his experience.
He left Glory’s center, feeling his way in the darkness. Desperate, he scratched Glory’s bulkheads, releasing lines of luminescent ship’s fluid on the walls. In the faint light he found his way to the access tube. He slid his hands across the slick bulkhead until he found the entrance. Leaving a scrabble of shining fingerprints, he pulled the sphincter open.
Light poured in from the shipyard.
“About time,” said the Chief Executive, pushing his way into Glory. Qad backed up, manners taught but seldom used drawing him away from touching the Executive’s protruding stomach. Without meaning to, Qad gazed at the moving bulges beneath the Executive’s modesty apron, imagining he could see the made-up eyes and orifices of the little sisters beneath it. No – not his imagination. Fashions had changed, and not, in Qad’s opinion, for the better. The apron’s elaborate embroidery cunningly concealed small holes through which the little sisters could stare, or blink, or offer a kiss.
He lost count at a dozen. There were more.
“I am here,” the Executive said.
Qad thought he meant he had come into Glory, then realized the Executive meant he had noticed that Qad’s gaze focused on the partly-concealed little sisters.
Qad raised his head to make eye contact with the Executive. His face blazed with embarrassment.
“Have you made a decision?” The Chief Executive’s gaze raked Qad. “Given your improper dress, perhaps not.”
Stupefied by lack of sleep, hangover, and pain, set off-balance by being half-clothed and unarmed, Qad blinked. “About an appeal? Not yet.”
“Fool. Did you receive my proposal?” He snatched at Qad’s trousers. Qad jumped, startled, offended, but the Executive had grabbed the crumpled report rather than Qad’s person.
The paper rattled as the Executive shook it in Qad’s face. He broke the seal – Is it a rudeness, Qad wondered, to break the seal of another man’s letter, if the seal is one’s own? I should have looked at it.
Qad took back the paper and read it, lips moving, sounding out the words that in an ordinary communication Glory’s voice would have spoken to him.