M. Planck - The Kassa Gambit

While she was still justifying the expense, the other clerk brought Jorgun back.

The uniform would have looked silly on a smaller man. On Jorgun, the tangles of braid were tamed by his blond hair and massive frame. White and gold were not normally what Prudence thought of as a match, but the cloth of the uniform had a pearly, holographic sheen that reflected subtle colors as the light shifted. It wasn’t an official Fleet uniform, of course. It was much too flashy for that. With his glasses on, Jorgun didn’t quite look like an admiral. He looked like a vid star pretending to be an admiral.

On Altair, that was probably better than being a real admiral.

The clerk let go of him, reluctantly, and handed Prudence a bill. “We hope you enjoyed your shopping experience at Cinderella’s, but we know you’ll enjoy your party experience tonight! Come back soon.”

Prudence touched her credit stick to the bill, handed it back to the girl. Then she put her arm through Jorgun’s and led him away. The clerk watched them go, wistfully.

Was that part of the act? Any normal man would have been puffed up by so much attention. Maybe the girls did it on purpose.

Except that plenty of girls were watching Jorgun now. Teenagers, she thought, until she looked more closely. Most of the girls weren’t really much younger than Prudence. They just acted like children.

Jorgun, who really was a child, didn’t notice them at all.

“I wanted to be a Space-Wolf, but she said you would like this one better.”

“It’s wonderful, Jor. You look great.” She hadn’t expected to be able to say that so truthfully.

The cabbie pounced on them, his mouth and hands full of an aromatic treat from one of the vendor carts that dotted the pathway. “You see? You see, yes?”

“Yes, I see. But we’re going to be late now.”

He shrugged. “All the best people are late to parties. You will see.”

Standing outside Jandi’s door, she tried not to be nervous. The house was dark and quiet.

The little green man still guarded the door. Perversely, when Jorgun reached out to press the animated button on the little box he held, the cartoon figure didn’t move it out of the way. A doorbell chimed in the house. Eventually the door creaked open.

“Angels!” Jandi cried in mock horror, staring at them. “Am I already that far gone? But I haven’t even tasted the fish yet. Come in, come in, my glorious friends.”

He led them to the dining room, the smell of fine cooking growing stronger with every step. The room was gently lit by candles hanging from a chandelier. Real candles, burning with the pleasant scent of sandalwood.

Silver dishes sat on the table, maintaining the temperature of the food. Jandi began whipping off covers, revealing a feast of real fruits and vegetables, steamed to a perfect consistency. The biggest dish contained an entire salmon, missing only the head and tail.

“You shouldn’t have,” she admonished him. “Especially for only three people.” There were no other guests.

“But I wanted to. Even my doctors admit it no longer makes any difference. Their only complaint is that I’m spending my money on something besides them.”

“Is that rice?” she asked. Real rice, in tiny, fluffy grains, not cultured rice-protein. You could tell the difference because the fake stuff melted into a gluey mess when you cooked it.

“It’s imported. Real broth, too, from an animal.”

Prudence frowned.

“Indulge an old man. Decadence is all I have left. You can nurture your morals when I’m gone.”

She could hardly object while she was wearing those ridiculous shoes. “Don’t explain it to Jor.”

Jandi took the lid off of another dish. Formed, pressed protein cakes, fried in synthetic oil, still in the instamatic wrapper. Junk food for kids.

“I thought he might prefer this.”

He did. There was something comical about an admiral eating star-shaped crunchies with his fingers. No, Prudence decided, not comical. Sweet.

A strange family gathering, between the old man and the boy. Prudence wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to be mother, daughter, or sister. But she had learned to take her family where she found it.

“Ah, that we could eat like this every day.” Jandi was immensely satisfied with his feast.

“On Kassa, they did.” Kassa grew their grain outside. Prudence had always been confused by that. Surely washing the contaminants off had to be harder than just growing food in a vat. “I didn’t notice that they were any happier.”

“Altair grows happiness in vats, too. Not as enjoyable as the real thing, but cheap enough for everyone. It’s the secret of our success.”

She cut into her fish, waiting for him to satiate his love of being cryptic.

“Seriously, my dear. Though I’ve not been to as many planets as you, I’ve been to many, and Altair is the blandest of the bland. That blandness is the source of our wealth. Nothing particularly succeeds on Altair, but nothing ever fails. On this blank canvas we can project whatever we want. We might as well grow people in vats. Altair is like one giant people-vat.”

Jorgun laughed.

“Most would say that’s a good thing,” Prudence commented.

“And so do I. So do I, my dear. Still, I enjoy the fish. How do you find it?”

“Marvelous.” It melted in her mouth, leaving an exotic tang she could not identify. So many times today she had said nice things that were true.

“It’s a rare planet that does not force man to adapt to it in some way. And we all struggle against that current. Like salmon, we refuse to spawn in any other stream than our own. Change is universally recognized as bad, and so evolution is dead, killed by our technological prowess and cultural stubbornness. On Altair, we didn’t have to fight that battle, because there’s nothing here to fight against. Instead, we built a society that mimicked our fantasies of home. People flocked to it, and here we are. An empire of nondescription.”

“An empire under attack.”

“Indeed,” he said. “Kassa is a muddy little world. If our spidery friends wanted it, they could have bought it for less than the cost of their bombs. No, they must have a larger goal, and that goal is Altair. For the same reason we chose it: its blandness will support the spider’s dreams as easily as it supports the monkey’s.”

“So you accept that the alien threat is real?”

“Not at all,” he said, and stuffed his mouth with salmon.

She had to wait until he was finished.

“The aliens are real, yes. The blood you gave me does not match any genotype in our catalogs. Of course, we can’t unwrap the genetic code and reconstruct the creature, despite what the popular vids would have you think. Genes express over time and through environment, and we have no clue what gene does what. Or, for that matter, which bits are actually genes. The blood sample could be from a brainless mite or a philosophically inclined walrus. All we can say for sure at this point is that it is verifiably alien, which tells us nothing new.”

“But…” because she knew there was one coming.

“But the alien threat is not.” He grinned, at this moment happier than she had imagined that tired old face was capable of. This must have been what he looked like when he was tearing poor Mauree to shreds, or when he was thrashing out some scientific conundrum in a hall full of academics. He had found an anomaly and battled it, man to mystery, in mortal combat. Now he was as proud as a warrior who had killed the enemy captain with his bare hands.

“They always screw up the little things. It’s hard making a really good fake, because it’s hard making anything good. To be fair, they could not have expected you to bring me that little sliver. Nor would they have expected me to test the glass. But I did, because I am an obsessive. I want to know everything. What I found out in this case is that anti-radiation materials work off a common physical principle. Salts are impregnated in the substance. The energetic particles strike these heavy molecules, transforming themselves into harmless heat instead of deadly penetration. A necessary technology to a star-faring race, naturally.”