“You say the creature wishes to communicate?”
The Admiral-in-Chief of the flth Space
Naval Flotilla globbered back in his kedara and kuchkanod his brow ridges. “There’s
no doubt about it?”
“Absolutely none, Admiral-in-Chief.” The
messenger, a mere lowly Commodore, jhukod as close to the floor as she could. “Its
message has been translated, analysed, rechecked, and retranslated fifty times.
It wishes to communicate with you,
nothing more.”
“What would it wish to communicate about?”
The Admiral-in-Chief’s trunk wriggled irresolutely, and he quickly stilled it
before the Commodore noticed. “Did it say?”
“Only that the message is most urgent,
Admiral-in-Chief.” The Commodore hesitated. “And – it insinuated – to our benefit.”
“Our benefit.” The Admiral-in-Chief
stompled out of his kedara and scroobled back and forth. The Commodore, wary of
his vast bulk, cowered into the far corner.”You know as well as I do that when
one of these savage races say something is urgent, it’s always urgent to them, not to us.”
“It did
penetrate our shields to communicate with us, Admiral-in-Chief,” the Commodore pointed
out. “Nothing else has ever penetrated these shields. Nothing.”
“Are you saying it might be dangerous?” The
Admiral-in-Chief pondered. “Perhaps we should investigate its motives and
abilities further.”
“Then you’ll talk to it?” The Commodore asked.
“It says it wishes to communicate only with you.”
The Admiral-in-Chief inflated his trunk. “All
right,” he decided. “Fire up the grff generators and let’s have its mind
aboard. I’ll see it here.”
Relieved at not having been accidentally
squashed flat by the Admiral-in-Chief – she, after all, owed her promotion to
that precise fate having befallen her predecessor – the Commodore thoplaoed her
way out of the chamber to give the necessary orders. In only a few jhikmiks a
blue-white glow began to flow in the Admiral-in-Chief’s chamber, and condensed
and shaped itself eventually into a facsimile of the creature.
“Take me to your leader,” the thing said. “I
want to talk to your leader.”
The Admiral-in-Chief regarded the creature
with intense distaste. He’d met many savage races in his life, of course, and
knew enough to keep his feelings hidden, but even by those standards it was
probably the ugliest he’d ever seen. Small as a Baganer makorsha, it had only
four limbs, growing out of a short cylindrical torso – limbs which moved,
moreover, as though they were broken in the middle. On top was something round
which was probably meant to be a head, though it wasn’t like any head the
Admiral-in-Chief had ever seen. It didn’t even have facial polyps or cheek-plates.
Some thin, filamentous structures hung from the top; perhaps they were meant to
be poisonous. The Admiral-in-Chief could think of no other function for them.
“I asked you,” the creature repeated, “to
take me to your leader.” When it spoke, a lateral gash appeared in the lower
middle of its face and waggled. “I need to talk to him, her, or it.”
“I am the leader,” the Admiral-in-Chief
said. “What are you, and how did you find our Flotilla? It has the best shields
anywhere, against all forms of detection. Not even the most powerful electronic
or radiation-based equipment in the galaxy has managed to penetrate our shields
– so how did you?”
“Your shields don’t protect against dreams,
I suppose,” the thing replied.
“Dreams?” The Admiral-in-Chief folded his
brow ridges. “Explain what you mean by that.”
When the creature had finished, he inflated
and deflated his trunk in some confusion. “If what I understand is correct,” he
said, “these dreams, as you call them, are just illusions.”
“Hardly just illusions,” the creature
replied. “I got through your impenetrable shield in a dream.”
“But you can’t actually do anything during these times,” the
Admiral-in-Chief said with some relief. “So it’s really rather irrelevant. So,
what is this matter that you wanted to talk to me about?”
The thing swivelled two moist round objects
in the upper half of what the Admiral-in-Chief had reluctantly accepted was its
head, possibly vision organs of some kind. “Just this,” it said. “I need you to
invade my planet immediately.”
For the first time in all his megakirmirs
of life, the Admiral-in-Chief was stricken dumb with astonishment, if only for
a jhikmik or two. “Let me get this straight,” he said finally. “You said you
want me to invade your planet.”
“No,” the creature replied. “I need you to invade my planet. We all do.”
The Admiral-in-Chief inflated his trunk to
the maximum as he considered this. “Why?” he asked at last.
“It is vital to our survival.”
If the Admiral-in-Chief’s trunk had been
inflated any further it would have burst. It already obscured the rest of his
features. “Why,” he repeated, “would anyone want us to invade them? It does not
make sense, even for a race so alien that it...dreams.”
“It’s simple,” the thing said. “We need, my
world needs, an enemy to unite against.”
“Why?” the Admiral-in-Chief asked for the
third time.
“My world,” the creature said, “is divided
between alliances of nations. One is coloured red and white and blue, and the
other white and blue and red. Then there are others, coloured black and white,
and blue and yellow, for instance, and still others of different hues. All of
them are fighting each other, and will end up destroying us all.”
“And so you want us to attack you and
destroy you all instead,” the Admiral-in-Chief replied, faintly amused.
“No.
All you have to do is appear and fire a few shots and we’ll all cease our
fighting and unite against you. But because you’re so much stronger than my
planet, there’s no risk to you; we
can’t hurt you. You can then safely withdraw, and we’ll put aside our
differences, and our species will be saved.”
“Just why would this be to our benefit, as
you said?”
“Why wouldn’t it? You’d be our saviours,
and we’ll never forget you.”
“That’s true, you won’t forget us.” The
Admiral-in-Chief voogred in his kedara as he considered this. “All right,” he
said at last. “We will do this. You can go.”
“Thank you,” the creature said joyfully. “Thank
you ever so much! You won’t regret this, I promise you.”
“I’m sure I won’t,” the Admiral-in-Chief
murmured, deflating his trunk. He pressed a button to signal his staff to send
the creature back.
“I can just see them all looking up in
wonder and dismay when your battleships darken the skies,” the creature
burbled. “I can see them turning their weapons from each other, and rushing to
stand side by side, brothers and sisters against the threat from the stars. I
can...” It shrank to a bluish-white dot and disappeared.
The dorja slithered open and the Commodore
cautiously poked her front end into the chamber. Seeing no sign of danger, she
thoplaoed in. “Admiral-in-Chief,” she said, “please forgive me, but I really
must question the wisdom of what you’ve just decided.”
The Admiral-in-Chief wriggled his trunk in
amusement. “And on what basis do you question this?” he asked.
“These creatures...” the Commodore said. “You
know they already have this thing, this dream, that can detect us, even through
our shields. And even though they can’t harm us now...”
“...in future they might be able to,” the
Admiral-in-Chief completed for her. “I know.”
“But then –” the Commodore said, “why on
the seven moons of Groho did you agree to this ridiculous demand to attack
them? You know that this will only alert them to our existence and set them to
prepare themselves to fight us. Unless,” a horrible thought apparently struck
her, “unless you’re planning to break
your word and wipe them out?”
“Of course I’m not planning to break my
word.” The Admiral-in-Chief tapped a nokh on his trunk. “We aren’t savages. I
intend to do exactly as I promised, attack them and fire a few shots.”
“But then I don’t understand. Given the
risks, why did you ever agree? You let them know of our existence, and then you
get them to unite against us, then it’s only a matter of time that they come
out and...”
“Commodore,” the Admiral-in-Chief
interrupted, “I am now going to show you exactly why I am an Admiral and why
you’re only a Commodore, and lucky to get even that far. Don’t you think that
they already know of our existence, despite the impenetrable shields?”
“The dreams,” the Commodore hazarded.
“Precisely. The dreams. It’s only one
creature now, but when one has done it, sooner or later, others will follow. At
first they might be laughed at when they speak of us. But more and more will
tell of the same things; and when enough of them agree, these creatures will
get to know of us anyway. And perhaps by then they will already be strong
enough to do something about it. After all, they have an advantage – they can
penetrate our shields, the most impenetrable ones in the universe. But now...”
“But now?”
“But now, they’re still broken up into
their squabbling little tribes, and are weak and divided. When we turn up and
fire a few shots...” He paused and glanced at the Commodore expectantly. “What
do you imagine will happen?”
“Why, precisely as the creature suggested.
They’ll stop their fighting and unite against us.”
“You’ve never seen a tribal society, have
you?” The Admiral-in-Chief inflated and deflated his trunk so quickly that it
hissed. “What will actually happen, Commodore, is that they’ll fall over
themselves to woo us as allies against each other. With only a few shots, and
nothing more than that, we’ll become the arbiters. We’ll decide who wins, and
under what conditions. In other words, we’ll rule their world, and neutralise
the threat from them for all time to come.”
“And you think this can really happen?” the
Commodore asked doubtfully.
The Admiral-in-Chief turned in his kedara
and tapped a panel. “Let’s run everything we know through the ultracomputer and
see, shall we?”
After the computer had shown its
conclusions, the Commodore looked at the Admiral-in-Chief, and the
Admiral-in-Chief looked back at the Commodore. Neither spoke. There was no need
to speak.
They both knew the Admiral-in-Chief had
been right.
Copyright
B
Purkayastha 2015
[Image source] |
Cool. I thought it was just going to be like "A Clockwork Orange," the book where Anthony Burgess made up a ton of words that could sort of be interpreted via context.
ReplyDeleteBut the story behind this was great. Loved the dream thing, loved the revelation that it was a human, loved the plan.
Yes, that is exactly what would happen. At one point I thought that an alien invasion would unite the world. I think there is a novel, Arthur C. Clark's "Childhood's End" which is somewhat based on this idea. But you and the Admiral are right. We would try to curry favor with the "alien" species and each of us would try to have them do our bidding in our conflicts.
ReplyDeleteWell written!