Galactic Library unit for news. It was an excellent branch, since Kazzkark housed local headquarters for several important institutes. Yet, the master index claimed to know nothing about an Abdicator schism. Moreover, according to official sources, the influential pargi were still active in Galactic councils, calling for peace and restraint, urging all militant alliances to withdraw their armadas and settle the present crisis through mediation, not war.
Were both rumormongers wrong, then? During normal times, Harry would scarcely doubt the master index. In the Civilization of Five Galaxies, it was commonly said that nothing ever really happened until it was logged by the Great Library. A planet might explode before your eyes, but it wasn’t a certified fact without the rayed spiral glyph, flashing in a corner of a readout screen.
Clearly these weren’t “normal times.”
While taking his turn at the customs kiosk, Harry overheard a talpu’ur seed merchant complain to a guldingar pilgrim about how many nauseating thread changes she had had to endure during the crossing from Galaxy Three. Harry found it hard to follow the talpu’ur’s dialect — a syncopated ratchet-rubbing of her vestigial wing cases — but it seemed that several traditional transfer points had shifted their oscillation patterns, either losing coherence or going off-line completely.
The slight, spiderlike guldingar answered in the same rhythmic idiom, speaking through a mechanical device strapped to one leg.
“Those explanations seem dubious. In fact, they are excuses given by great powers, as each attempts to seize and monopolize valuable hyperspatial links for its own strategic purposes.”
Harry frowned. Worry made the fur itch beneath his uniform. If something was happening to the viability of t-points, the matter was of vital interest to the Navigation Institute. Once again, he referred to the Branch Library but found little information — just routine travel advisories and warnings of detours along some routes.
I’m sure Wer’Q’quinn will fill me in. The old serpent oughta know what’s goin’ on, if anybody does.
One topic Harry wanted to hear about, but none of the gossipers mentioned, was the Siege of Terra. Weeks ago, when he departed to patrol E Space, the noose around Earth and the Canaan Colonies had been drawing gradually tighter. Despite welcome assistance from the Tymbrimi and Thennanin, battle fleets from a dozen fanatical alliances had ceased their mutual bickering for a time, joining cause and pressing the blockade ever closer, choking off trade and communication to Harry’s ancestral world.
Though tempted, he refrained from querying the Library about that. Given the present political situation — while his status was still probationary — it wouldn’t be wise to make too many inquiries about his old clan. I’m not supposed to care about that anymore. Navigation is my home now.
After clearing customs, his next obstacle was all-too-unpleasantly familiar — a tall sour-faced hoon wearing the glossy robe of a senior patron. With a magisterial badge of the Migration Institute on one shoulder, Inspector Twaphu-anuph gripped a plaque flowing with data while scanners probed Harry’s vessel. Every time Harry returned from a mission, he had to endure the big male biped’s humorless black eyes scrutinizing his ship’s bio-manifest for any sign of illicit genetic cargo, while that prodigious hoonish throat sac throbbed low rumblings of pompous scorn.
So it rocked Harry back a bit when the brawny bureaucrat spoke up this time, using rolling undertones that seemed positively affable!
“I note that you have just returned from E Space,” the inspector murmured in GalSeven, the spacer dialect most favored by Earthlings. “Hr-rm. Welcome home. I trust you had a pleasant, interesting voyage?”
Harry blinked, startled by the tone of informal friendliness. What happened to the usual snub? he wondered.
It was normal for Migrationists to act high and mighty. After all, their institute supervised matters of cosmic importance, such as where oxygen-breathing starfarers might colonize, and which oxy-worlds must lay fallow for a time, untouched by sapient hands. In contrast, Harry’s organization was a “little cousin,” with duties resembling the old-time coastal guardians of Earth’s oceans — surveying hyperlink routes, monitoring spacetime conditions, and safeguarding lanes of travel for Galactic commerce.
“E Space is a realm of surprises,” Harry responded cautiously. “But my mission went as well as can be expected. Thank you for asking.”
A small, furry rousit — a servant-client of the hoon — moved alongside its master, aiming a recorder unit at Harry, making him increasingly nervous. The inspector meanwhile towered closer, pressing his inquiry.
“Of course I am asking purely out of personal curiosity, but would you mind enlightening me on one matter? Would you happen to have noticed any especially large memoid beings while you patrolled E Space? Hrrrm. Perchance a conceptual entity capable of extending beyond its native continuum, into … hrr-rr … other levels of reality?”
Almost instinctively, Harry grew guarded. Like many oxy-races, hoons could not bear the ambiguous conditions of E Space or the thronging allaphors inhabiting that weird realm. Small surprise, given their notorious lack of humor or imagination.
But then why this sudden interest?
Clearly, the awkward situation called for a mix of formal flattery and evasion. Harry fell back on the old yes bwana tactic.
“It is well known that meme organisms throng E Space like vacuum barnacles infesting a slow freighter,” he said, switching to GalSix. “But alas <oh senior-patron-level entity> I saw only those creatures that my poor, half-uplifted brain allowed me subjectively to perceive. No doubt those impressions were too crude to interest an exalted being like yourself”
Harry hoped the warden would miss his sarcasm. In theory, all those who swore fealty to the Great Institutes were supposed to leave behind their old loyalties and prejudices. But ever since the disaster at NuDawn, everyone knew how hoons felt toward the upstarts of Earthclan. As a neo-chimpanzee — from a barely fledged client race, indentured to humans — Harry expected only snobbery from Twaphu-anuph.
“You are probably right about that<oh-precocious-but-promising infant>” came the noon’s response. “Still, I remain <casually> interested in your observations. Might you have sighted any <exceptionally large or complex> memoids traveling in <close> company with transcendent life-forms?”
The inspector’s data plaque was turned away, but its glow reflected off a patch of glossy chest scales, flashing familiar blue shades of approval. All checks on Harry and his vessel were complete. There was no legal excuse to hold him anymore.
He switched languages again, this time to Anglic, the tongue of wolflings.
“I’ll tell you what, Twaphu-anuph. I’ll do you a favor and make an official inquiry about that … in your name, of course.”
Harry aimed his own plaque and pointedly took an ident-print before the warden could object.
“That is not necessary! I only asked informally, in order—”
Harry enjoyed interrupting.
“Oh, you needn’t thank me. We are all sworn to mutual cooperation, after all. So shall I arrange for the usual inter-institute discount and forward the report to you in care of Migration HQ? Will that do?”
Before the flustered hoon could respond, Harry continued.
“Good! Then according to the protocols of entry, and by your exalted leave, I guess I’ll be going.”
The little rousit scurried out of the way as Harry moved forward, silently daring the barrier to prevent him.
It swished aside, opening his path onto the avenues of Kazzkark.
Perhaps perversely, Harry found it exciting to live in a time of danger and change.
For almost half a galactic rotation — millions of years — this drifting, hollowed-out stone had been little more than a sleepy outpost for Galactic civil servants, utilizing but a fraction of the prehistoric shafts that some extinct race once tunneled through a hundred miles of spongy rock. Then, in just the fifteen kaduras since Harry was assigned here, the planetoid transformed. Catacombs that had lain silent since the Ch ’th ’turn Epoch hummed again as more newcomers arrived every day. Over the course of a couple of Earth years, a cosmopolitan city came to life where each cavity and corridor offered a melange for the senses — a random sampling of the full range of oxy-life culture.
Some coincidence, Harry thought sardonically. It’s almost as if all this was waiting to happen, until I came to
