Sergei Lukyanenko - The Genome

Their greatest passion was hunting.

Along a swift mountain brook, a person was running. The optics, even computer enhanced, didn’t let Alex see the person’s face—light clouds above the valley were blocking his view. It was either a youth or a young girl. Pursuing her were three riders dressed in bright, flapping robes, the unmistakable attributes of the ruling class—all petty princelings adored luxury. The animals they straddled could have been anything. But they weren’t horses… unless it had been some geneticists’ prank to have horses equipped with fancy antlers.

The chase didn’t last very long. The pursuers caught up with their prey. Blue sparks flashed… the aristocrats didn’t reject all technology, after all. The three men dismounted and walked over to the motionless body. With a mixture of confusion and revulsion, Alex watched the aristocrats rape their helpless victim. An entourage of about twenty men had caught up with them by then and now stood a little ways off, patiently awaiting their turn.

Finally the hunters got tired of this entertainment. They walked back to the entourage. There was a short discussion, accompanied by some imperious gestures, and then another little figure rushed out running along the river. The hunters bided their time. Some drinks were served, and now it looked like they just stood around talking.

To his mild relief, Alex saw that the victim was still alive. A girl—at least the gender was clear now—got up and, awkwardly shuffling her feet, started to limp back towards the town. No one was pursing her anymore. Quite the opposite—some even waved her on.

“Despicable!” said Janet loudly.

“You mean the hunt?” Alex asked.

“What hunt? No, I’m talking about that yacht party.”

“Aristocracy!” rang out the voice of Morrison. “Blue blood… god damn it. It’s really blue, right?”

“I’ve heard it is,” said Alex, watching the fun begin anew. “Of course, they wouldn’t have switched from hemoglobin iron to copper. That would violate the Imperial laws. They only changed the color… I can’t even imagine how that’s possible… and they haven’t lost their genetic unity with ordinary people. But their blood is blue.”

“No one would have allowed this back in the old Empire,” declared Morrison. “A decent emperor…”

“Heraldica flourished even under the previous emperors,” rejoined Alex. “And the boy now formally on the throne has probably never even heard of this planet.”

“Or maybe he has heard of it,” remarked Janet. “Who knows, he might even admire it. Real kings, dukes, and sheiks. He might be very pleased about that.”

Alex finally switched off the zoom-in optics. He had not the slightest wish to study Heraldica anymore. Sixty-four small dynasties, all-powerful within the borders of their realms. Sixty-four genetic lines that had utterly degenerated.

Absolute power corrupts and depraves, even if it is limited to the space of a single mountain valley, a single little town. Human history had known many a tyranny, but never had the tyrants been free from the threat of revolution. Never, until the moment when servant-speshes first appeared.

How were they recruited? After all, everyone who had flown over to Heraldica went there voluntarily. The Imperial observers had watched the streams of colonists closely, making sure no one was being taken against their will. So there had been volunteers for this. And not just a handful of them, not even dozens or hundreds. Hundreds of thousands of people had moved to Heraldica with their masters. It was very unlikely that Earth would have had so many insane masochists.

More likely, everything had looked really nice at first. A small country on a peaceful and abundant world. Wise, aristocratic rulers. A bit of medieval exotic charm— that always had a fantastic power over the human heart. And people, in good faith, would order servant-specializations for their children. After all, what harm could possibly come to them at the hand of a wise elderly lady of a royal bloodline or a sage, poetically-inclined sheik who cared so much about the welfare of his people? Except that generations kept succeeding each other, raising a new crop of rulers who were now used to having only servants around them…

There should be, after all, more limits to specialization, other than the considerations of social utility and genetic compatibility with the naturals. It should be forbidden to encroach on a person’s free will… at least, to this extent.

“Crewmembers, prepare for entry into the channel. Estimated time to entry—plus six minutes, twelve seconds. Set the jump vector for Zodiac. Estimated time to destination—eighteen hours, twenty-nine minutes, eight seconds. I am the first one on bridge duty. Morrison takes over in nine hours, fifteen minutes.”

No one had any objections. No one asked any questions. Alex was also a ruler on his ship, like the people with blue blood in their veins down on Heraldica. Except that his power had different roots… so far, they had been different.

So where was that boundary? Where lay the borderline between a spesh’s readiness to obey those in charge and the slavish submission of a servant? What was the difference between power and tyranny? Why had the very thing that was the basis of life in the Empire degenerated into brutal nastiness on Heraldica?

Here Alex couldn’t suppress a crooked grin. If one took a look at the Empire from the outside, might it look just as nasty? Fighter-speshes, hetaera-speshes, street-sweeper-speshes…

He tossed the threads of control over to Morrison. Watched Xang for a few seconds, as the co-pilot took the ship closer to the mouth of the channel, then switched over once again to the optical scanners.

This time, having received the command to search for people, the computer opened a completely different part of the planet, a part already sinking into night shadows. A river delta dotted with a multitude of small islands. Large houses—here, a truly big city was sprawling. Even the nearby spaceport looked rather up-to-date. In the streets, cars dashed by, pedestrians scurried about, and here and there billboards flashed.

An ordinary city. No dirty fun or mad princelings.

At least at first glance.

Yet this city also lived by the laws of Heraldica. Complete and unlimited power. Non-acceptance of Imperial laws… which, in turn, cut tourists’ access to the planet, except for the most reckless.

What is better—overt or covert coercion?

Mirror entered the hyper-channel, and Heraldica’s world disappeared.

There was something mystical about piloting while the ship was gliding through the inner side of the universe. The gray corridor—the walls, made of the great nothing, rushing towards you—and a complete, absolute, unfathomable detachment from the outside world. Multi-dimensional physics asserted that there was only one hyper-channel, and its existence lasted a mere quantum of time. Therefore, in that one brief moment, all the ships of all times and civilizations would be superimposed—incorporeal shadows, rushing by in all directions at once.

The universe was full of paradoxes. Most of the races had come to use the hyper-channels as the most convenient and inexpensive method of interstellar travel. And now, right at that moment, countless Tai’i fleets were on their way to meet their unknown, utterly obliterated enemies in the decisive battle for the fate of the galaxy… the battle that brought the winners to no good at all. And here also, rushing into the unknown, was Son Hye, Earth’s first interstellar explorer, whose bright fame eclipsed both Magellan’s and Gagarin’s. And here was the strangest bit—the ships of the future were also already here. The last cruisers of humanity, the race that would also fade away someday. The first fragile little spacecraft of alien races that hadn’t even broken the bounds of gravity yet but were destined to rule the universe. And here also was Mirror itself, in all its future flights, with Alex and the others aboard.