Chapter 9

There was a famous artist when Pyotr was growing up who made art out of colored glass. A holobook of her work had sat on his parent’s family room table. The main entrance of the Galactic Government building where he had worked had one of her huge hanging sculptures in the lobby. The rest of building was built around the glass piece of soaring angels riding a swath of the Milky Way. Each view of the sculpture was different because the details were so intricate. Glass beads shone like individual stars twinkling in the millions through frosted wreaths of astral clouds of dust and gas. Even though he did not use that entrance to come inside the building because he was not allowed, every week he made it a priority to glimpse that ever turning, always fresh work of art.

As Porter stared up at the Palace, he had to reject everything about art that he had ever learned. The artist of his youth was an amateur. The wall that separated the palace from the rest of city was like the frame of a painting, making a clear delineation where the art stopped and the rest of the world began. The walls shined like glass but were obviously something more durable; they sparkled without a pattern from light that seemed to come from within.

The only word that came to mind was “geometry.” The palace was not a building but a collection of many buildings, each in a different shape. Porter identified cubes and globes to be sure, but also spheres, domes, pyramids and cylinders. There were walls in the shapes of pentagons, hexagons, parallelograms, and other sophisticated shapes that he knew had names, but he did not remember them, that is to say if he had ever known them. The colors flowed across the palate and changed when the clouds strayed into the path of the sun. Surely the palace was alive, or so it seemed.

The clanking of boots on the plascrete floor was a bit jarring but no one else seemed to take note of the noise. He looked down and noticed that the Palace Guard wore metal on their boots, which made the racket echoing off the walls.

Kanji, walking on the other side of him, growled with discomfort. Whenever the hallway narrowed, the noise was that much more cacophonous. Porter was mildly impressed that the cat was still following him deep into human country. He marveled more at the lack of reaction from these soldiers to this vicious cat that had already killed two humans, albeit priests. Despite their first sighting of a wastecat, they did not break their statue-like posture in the hallways. The guards in the palace were well trained, he decided.

The commander was giving a running commentary as they proceeded through the buildings, “After our ancestors landed here about 650 years ago, they began building a central facility very quickly, which is the core of the palace. After 20 years, they realized any technology they had brought with them was going to be useless very soon, and they went into a building frenzy. The center of the palace is a rather plain, utilitarian set of rooms, which reflects the agrarian priorities of the first colonists as they attempted to secure a foothold on Anshar. However, when the Blue Hand asserted itself and the machines began to fail, the fusion of the threat of losing every machine and the promise of a new power brought forth the creation of Timisoara as a final will and testament of the first generation.

Porter found the story intriguing but lacking many details. Marching down a series of long hallways was not conducive to further inquiry nor did the commander seem to want to add to his historical summary. Returning to the task at hand Porter asked, “What is the role of the priesthood within these walls?”

Commander Galtiel gave a sardonic smile. “They will not attack you directly as in the square, if that is what you are asking. This bold strike was the first seen Timisoara.”

The lack of skill of those protecting him struck Porter as absurd. He had been trained not to ask questions nor to follow up with inquiries. In school, he learned to regurgitate; any question that added new information to the test was an unforgivable crime among his peers. College – the right thinking was mimicry of the official thinking. Civil Service taught him not to think, at least out loud. Even as an accountant, they followed protocols. What was the appropriate follow up?

“I was wondering what roles they play in the palace? When or where am I most likely to run into them, perhaps?”

“You propose interesting questions,” the commander pursed his lips as if searching his thoughts for an answer. “They stay to themselves and answer to the king. Many of the palace denizens assume that if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone. I assume you will not make the same naïve mistake.”

The commander was unsettled, and he took time to explain his concerns to Porter. Never had the priests been so bold as to attack openly in the city, especially when the target was an immediate celebrity. They used a fire arrow, not even attempting to hide their identity in the ambush. Where was the city guard? Besides not anticipating an assassination attempt, his worst mistake had been relying on the city guard to maintain order for the brief trek through the streets. Indeed, they were not present, even after the danger passed. Galtiel prophesied that he would be a busy man after dark and that more corpses would be found in the morning; this time, he hoped by his choosing.

The commander gave the spaceman another once over. Porter assumed the man noted that he wore his weapons in the manner of the Border Patrol and carried himself with the same wilderness caution. While the sword was of priestly manufacture which would usually warrant further investigation, the bow was a rare treasure of ironwood along with its arrows. The knife had the look of technology about it, but the workmanship was not any better than Anshar forges. Porter wore nella breeches and a woven tunic with comfortable ease. There was nothing that spoke of the galactic empire on the man.

As they strode down hallways, Galtiel briefed Porter that the king had been informed of his adventures but King Ciprian would not pursue any questions of origin or intent of the spaceman and his journey. He gave the spaceman a brief lesson on presentation before the king, including when and how to bow. He also mentioned in passing that the High Priest Iosif would be standing close to the king.

Porter learned that a State Dinner had not been scheduled. The king had shown no inclination to call for one even though the spaceman was the first contact with the outside empire in almost 700 years. Porter knew that bosses liked fanfare and the fawning of their serfs. A spaceman was fanfare which meant that something was amiss.

Porter caught the hand signal Galtiel gave to the guards that was passed ahead of the procession. Since the Palace Guard alone could carry weapons in the presence of the king, everyone else had to be disarmed. Porter looked to the Border Patrol for cues, but they were already unstrapping their weapons in a side room. He followed.

Feeling naked after removing his weapons, Porter took a moment to readjust his clothes. He glanced back at his bow thinking, ‘whoever says that the pen is mightier than the sword, hasn’t felt the power of a blade slicing through the air.’ He felt naked and vulnerable, even though he had fought his attackers with his Blue and his cat in the square. He found comfort in his hard, sharp killing devices even if he had used his Blue just minutes before.

Kanji looked demonstrably unimpressed. She gave a yawn, showing her teeth to the standing guards, which indicated her lack of enthusiasm for human pageantry. A wisp of a cooking smell wafted on the air and she took a moment to locate it with her nose. While her nose was raised, Leeza who had her back to the cat, took one step too many backwards and stood a little too close, so Kanji head butted the female Border Guard to let the woman know. The woman let out a little yelp of surprise, which pleased the cat to no end as all could see. Kanji looked on with practiced nonchalance as the offended guard shook her finger at her. There were sniggers around the room.

The physical comedy was enough of a diversion for Porter to regain control over his nerves. In his years as a bureaucrat, a summons to the supervisor’s office would coincide with an outbreak of hives over the length and breadth of his body. Today he felt more solid, less rolly-polly about the middle and less thick in the head. He recognized the difference and he liked it. A few of his companions caught his slight smile and had looks of puzzlement on their faces.

“Are we ready?” Commander Galtiel asked.

Porter gave one last pull on his tunic, “Out of the pan and into the fire, commander.”

Galtiel gave him a queer look. He motioned for the doors to open and the procession to continue. Porter walked with Kanji at his side into a large room whose first impression was white light. The room was a tall glass cylinder topped with a clear dome. The walls were opaque, or the windows were clear, and both were the same thing as they twisted and turned back into each other. The effect on the polished wood floor was a play of shadows that were always in motion. The dance of light and shadow was hypnotic.

Porter automatically began counting the number of shadows on the floor by dividing the circular room into a grid and dispensing with all the truncated squares on the edge, which weren’t important because that was where the people tended to stand. In the largish squares of the grid, he counted an average of three and half shadows in five randomly chosen points. He was about to extrapolate the number of included squares and multiply by 3.5 when he remembered to pay attention to the people in the room.

Large entourages were in some sort of order on either side of the room, their groupings punctuated by the black uniforms of the Palace Guard placed at intervals. Unlike the drab clothes that Porter wore and had seen across the land, these people were dressed in swirling colors of orange, red, yellow, and a few in blue. Now he understood with his own eyes why Zeb was so secretive about his source of blue dye; it was a rare commodity reserved for the big purses of the royalty.

The throne was a big, cumbersome thing that stood out as less than elegant amid living art. The wooden chair looked more blocky than ornate and featured a rather large pillow with a mature man who sat upon it. Standing on one side of the sitting king was a priest wearing one of their trademark deep brown robes which was tied in the middle with a thick rope. On the other side stood another man, in a full robe of blue tied with a sash. The priest was bald and pale while the other man was bursting with white hair down his back and his chest.

King Ciprian rolled onto one side and broke wind loudly. While his rudeness drew Porter’s attention, everyone else in the room acted as if nothing had happened. Porter was perplexed. The king had a rough complexion capped with black hair along with a beard that was more silver than black. He had a good paunch and a bored look on his face.

Porter took the step forward as he had been instructed and bowed low, waiting to be acknowledged by the king. He stared at the ground much longer than he expected until he heard someone clear his throat in front of him.

“Ah, you are the spaceman,” the king finally spoke.

Porter straightened up and looked at the man. “Yes, I am, your majesty. I am Porter,” he responded according to the memorized script.

“Do you have a leash for that beast?” the king asked.

Porter panicked momentarily as the king left the prepared script that Porter had been told to memorize. He did not like flying by the seat of his pants more than necessary but Leeza had warned him that this man might be at bit off.

“I know of no man or woman who would dare to attempt to leash a wastecat, your majesty,” Porter said. He saw a few smirks on the periphery of his vision and feared he had overstepped a boundary.

“He isn’t going to pee on the floor, is he?” the king looked a bit upset.

Porter was confounded and now confused. Most people reacted with fright and curiosity when meeting Kanji for the first time. She was a fearsome legend in the flesh; maybe only a handful had seen one in their lifetimes and lived to tell of it. Yet, this man was worried about pissing on the wood.

Porter went for ambiguity. “She has impeccable manners thus far, your majesty.”

Kanji had finished her survey of the room and its inhabitants at about the same time Porter spoke. The cat took a bead on the priest next to the king and went stiff, her tail stretched out taut behind her. The growl was menacing, clear as a bell and echoing off the walls.

King Ciprian stirred in his chair, “Your creature seems a bit disturbed.”

Porter bit his tongue, holding back the Zeb-like retort that just burned on the tip of his tongue. Despite his own admonition, the words tumbled out. “Kanji has an immense dislike of priests, King Ciprian, but she has developed a certain taste for them.”

Porter blanched as he spoke without thinking. He should not have been counting shadows; he should have been paying attention. These bastards cannot understand the pressure he was under, an alien on an alien world. Forget the cat, he wanted to rip their throats out. No, he wanted to melt into the shadows and just die for a while until the stupidity faded.