The Embassador

Thirty-six light-eos from Earth, a small blue-green world called Furla turned beneath an amber sun, and for the first time in all its history it was no longer alone. The Thiran Empire had come. As it had with world after world along the slow tide of its expansion, the Empire sent one of its Hermes ships ahead — scout and herald both — to weigh a planet's technology and to read its temper toward joining something vastly larger than itself.

When the Hermes first arrived, it hung shimmering in Furla's pale sky, its sleek hull catching the amber light. It came down onto an open plain at the edge of the capital, where the Furlans' towers climbed in slow spirals toward the clouds, and there it disembarked a landing party that moved with the crisp, practiced ceremony of those who had done this a hundred times before. The local tongue had already been fed into their systems, and so they greeted the gathered Furlan leaders in their own language, traded small and careful gestures of goodwill, and — after brief discussion — entered Furla into the Imperial ledger as a green world: peaceful, and cleared for further contact. It was the first small step on the long road to integration. Then the embassador appointed to Furla was named, and the Furlans were left to wait.

As the seasons turned, the Furlans grew ever more uneasy beneath the alien presence in their sky. Theirs had been a world untouched by the powers between the stars, and the knowledge that they were now watched, studied, weighed — by an empire that had swallowed civilizations far greater than their own — gnawed at them without pause. They waited almost a full circle of their world about its star for the embassador to come.

At last, a small vessel dropped from the orbiting Hermes, sleek and sharp-angled, of a make unlike anything Furla had ever built. The crowd gathered again upon the plain, holding its breath as the ramp lowered — and Embassador Prasi stepped down. She was tall by Furlan reckoning, her deep-purple skin stark against the soft, pale green of the natives, her silver uniform catching the sun and glinting with the intricate marks of her rank. The Furlans, whose jelly-like antennae rose stiff and upright in a shared reflex of dread, stared up at her in awe.

"In four days, we will meet at that building," Prasi said, her voice crisp and certain, and pointed toward the Capitolium — an ancient pile of stone that had once been a palace and now housed one of Furla's divided government. Then, without another word, she turned and vanished back into her ship, leaving the Furlans with far more questions than answers. And exactly four Furla-days later, precisely as she had promised, she returned.

The people of Furla were in shock. Every jelly-like antenna in the hall stood vertical, and their voices rolled and echoed through their bellies. A strange species, thought the Vice-captain, watching her cross the floor. They seem so soft. So fragile.

Embassador Prasi took the highest seat she could find and spoke, in their most common tongue: "Thira is the name of our empire. Alex is the name of our emperor. You will join us once you have reached equilibrium among yourselves. When you are united, we will return, and proceed with folding your world into Thira. Until then, we leave behind a data file, in every format, free for any of you to read. Its Called The first volume of the Imperial Codex. Within it lies the essential knowledge of our empire — a summary of the future that awaits Furla, once it is one of us and the values the empire holds to its core." And with those simple, direct words, she left.

Almost a generation passed under the shadow of that knowledge — the empire hanging always above their sky. In that time Furla's hundreds of factions, its countless languages and nations, ground and folded against one another until they had fused into two great powers: two mindsets, two opposed philosophies, each straining to prevail, and each certain it should be the one to stand before the empire and join it with pride.

On the one side rose a movement that would abolish all difference — one language, one people, one shape of life. Their ideal was peace through unity.

On the other stood those who prized difference above all — many tongues, many minds, all contending and adapting in a world where advancement was the only thing that mattered.

Then, for the first time, Furlan science reached far enough to capture and mimic the signals that the Empire's watching satellites used to speak among themselves. The Furlans sent a single phrase up into the dark: "We split the atom. We are about to vanish. Help." It went without the sanction of any leader. Some lone group of scientists, unknown to their superiors, had flung the plea skyward on their own. For their war had climbed to its peak. They had begun, in earnest, to mass-produce nuclear weapons, and spies had carried word of it to both sides at once — so that now Furla stood in the terrible calm before the storm.

Prasi was an old veteran. She had served as embassador to a great many species across that quarter of the galaxy, and always with remarkable results. But never before had she gone down to a world after a call like this one. By every rule, there should be no answer at all until a planet had found its equilibrium — and yet something within her would not be still.

"This is quite rare," said Captain Ert. "Why, exactly, are you going down there?"

"This is one of those rare times my feelings are screaming at me to go and speak," Prasi answered. "They are technologically just where my own people stood when the Empire first found us."

"Is that not a risk?" said Ert.

"I will be careful," Prasi answered.

Ert was plainly troubled by her decision, but it lay within her rights, and so he could not stop her.

Thira governed itself by strict law. Its embassadors were free to travel anywhere within their jurisdiction — but they were never, under any circumstance, to take a side in the politics, the faiths, the customs, or the ways of life of any world not yet its own.

By the time Prasi set down on Furla, the scientists had already been tried for treason, found guilty, and put to death. When she took her place at the table, there were only the two leaders and herself. She asked to speak with those who had sent the message, and was told they were unavailable. The shape of the thing was perfectly clear in her mind.

"You are now united into two groups," she began — but before she could go further, a voice cut across her.

"What are you doing here?" demanded one of the two leaders at the table. His tone was aggressive, and there was no fear in it. "You told us you would not return until we had reached equilibrium." The hostility in his voice did not frighten Prasi in the least.

She only felt a quiet sadness. "Your tone, and your thinking," she said, "are not so different from what our own leaders showed when the Empire first appeared over my world."

"And what happened to your world?" asked the other leader. His voice was no warmer, no calmer than the first. It seemed the only thing the two of them could agree upon was that Prasi was not welcome here.

They are both afraid I will take a side, Prasi thought. "When the Empire came to my world — long before I was born — we too were afraid. We did not know whether it would make our lives better, or worse."

"And did it make life better?" asked one of the leaders, his antennae bent to a near right angle, his eyes fixed on her as though to catch any lie before it left her mouth.

"Without a shadow of a doubt, the Empire was the greatest thing ever to happen to my people — as it is to any world. You do not merely receive irrefutable proof that other minds exist among the stars; you learn that they have already built a functioning order, and that a place is waiting in it for you. The Empire is the answer to a thousand problems at once."

The leader on her left lifted his belly a little, as if to seem the braver for it — though the question beneath betrayed his worry. "And what would our place be, in an empire such as the Thiran?"

"That remains to be seen," Prasi answered calmly. "It depends greatly upon your abilities, and your desires, as a species."

The two leaders seemed to settle a little, their first fear easing — but a new thought had begun to shadow them both. Each could see it mirrored in the other, and each knew they were thinking the very same thing, though neither dared to give it voice.

"I wish you a swift resolution to your troubles, with as little harm to your people as can be managed," Prasi said, beginning to draw the meeting to a close.

"Which of us is right?" one of the leaders asked. The shock that broke across the other leader's face could not be hidden.

It was the question that had been hovering, unspoken, in both their minds. And with it came a second thought, alive in each of them: Even if this embassador takes a side — could I stand down, and convince my people that we must yield to the other?

"Neither of you is right," Prasi answered, to their surprise.

"Your views are archaic, and —" But before she could finish, Captain Ert, the sole listener to the exchange, paged her.

"What are you doing?" he said, in their shared language, through the communicator.

"I will explain later," Prasi answered, and switched the device off. It would go on recording and broadcasting everything she said — that was required, for security — but now, at least, Ert would not be heard.

The two leaders understood that she was doing something forbidden — and they wanted, badly, to hear more of it. "Tell us, then," one said, with a flicker of excitement. "Tell us why we are both wrong." Something new was about to happen.

"You are both wrong because you are laboring over the wrong problem. You have set yourselves the wrong goals, and you are utterly blind to the things that actually matter." Prasi caught herself on an edge, and paused a moment to steady her voice before going on. "I am not meant to intervene in any world before it joins the Empire. We hold ourselves neutral, and let you settle your own troubles first — it serves as a kind of test. I have watched many worlds drown themselves in war over it. You were once among the most peaceful species we know. Your history is a long record of kindness and compromise. You are gentle. You are not made for war. And now here you stand, on the brink of atomic fire — and, for some reason, the way you resemble our own infants makes me soft toward you."

The leaders could not order their own thoughts. Unable to answer a word of it, they sat in silence.

And Prasi, boldly now, as though she had let fall some curtain that had long held her back, spoke in a plainer, harder tone. "You have an empire to join. Your only concern should be the fastest way to reach it. Your systems — whichever of them wins — will bend and learn to move in harmony with the Empire once it comes. And as they are now, whichever prevails, they will not last a single Furla-year. Stop this madness. Unite." Then she buzzed the communicator to be carried back up to the Hermes, where Ert was waiting for her apology, and her reasons.

Back aboard the ship, Ert looked sad, and worried. It was clear he was fond of Prasi — and just as clear that he would not paper over what had happened.

"I could not help it," she said, boldly.

"There is nothing I can do to help you," Ert said, struggling to keep his emotions from his face.

"You don't need to do anything. I am certain that what I did will spare millions of Furlan lives. The punishment for breaking contact law is a small price for that."

By the time a new embassador had been appointed to Furla, Prasi had been transferred to a local space base to make her formal apology. Her actions had been debated far and wide, and Furla itself was kept under close watch, to see how its people would answer the words she had spoken.

Prasi found herself seated in a room much like a courtroom, under the weight of many eyes. "You were fully aware of what you were doing, were you not?" asked one of the speakers of the Cluster Council. The Cluster Council was a body drawn from the many worlds of the star-cluster they oversaw for the Thiran Empire — at least one voice from each species within it. They held the power to write law, and to steer their cluster toward becoming something of worth to the greater whole.

"Yes. I was fully aware of my actions, and I will not try to hide or bend the truth. The Furlans were beloved to me. They were peaceful, and caring. It was the mere knowledge that Thira exists that drove them to war, and to the edge of nuclear ruin. I felt responsible for that — and I acted, within my own morals, to set it right."

"And what were the results of her actions?" asked another of the council.

"They have joined the Empire. Their war ended almost at once, and their people celebrated the union."

"If her actions prove a benefit to our cluster, then perhaps they are a benefit to the whole of the Empire," said the head of the Council, who had held his silence until that moment. "We will gather what we need, and reconvene in thirty-seven Kom."

As the time wore on, Prasi passed through cycle after cycle of feeling about what she had done. Whatever good she was sure had come of it, her position as embassador was surely lost — a post she had labored long and hard to earn. She did not fear some cruelly harsh punishment, but she scarcely let herself dream that things might simply return to what they had been. She followed every scrap of news out of Furla, read every proposal made to it and by it. And Furla, it seemed, was folding into the Empire as smoothly as any world ever had.

On the day of her final hearing, beyond the members of the council and a larger-than-usual gathering of observers, there sat Captain Ert — looking strangely untroubled — and, to the astonishment of everyone present, a high figure of the central government itself. One of the direct subsidiaries of Lawmaker Emile had taken the head of the hearing. It was a rare thing indeed; the central government and its subsidiaries were almost never seen in public.

Once the hearing had opened, and Prasi had once again laid out the same chain of reasoning that had led her to act, the results of her actions were placed before the room.

"We have never seen a swifter or more orderly entry into the Empire," one council member declared. "It ought to stand as proof that we should not treat every species alike."

The council spoke among themselves for a while, until the head of the Council raised his voice above them.

"Even when the fruits of an act are tremendously good, the law must not be broken," he said, sternly. "We understand that you acted for the good of the Empire. But we will move to strip you of your position, and to return you to your home-world — there to begin a life outside the Empire's direct service. Does anyone object?"

The subsidiary of Emile — who would remain, as all direct subsidiaries did, without a name — seemed faintly disappointed, and bored by the whole affair. Almost everyone in the room could see it; almost no one understood why he was there at all.

"We have a request from Captain Ert," said one of the council. "He states that, should Prasi be stripped of all Imperial contracts, his standing offer becomes active: that Prasi be reassigned to his ship — Hermes 312/1254 — to serve as interpreter and general personnel-and-resources assistant."

That made the nameless subsidiary look up, curious.

"And why do you feel she deserves such a place?" the head of the Council asked. "To be stripped of all Imperial contracts means she may not work for you, nor aboard any vessel the Empire owns."

Ert rose to speak. "I am Captain Ert. Many have served under my command, and many more yet will. I have a gift for reading the strengths and the weaknesses of those around me. I saw the danger closing on Prasi the moment she first asked me to carry her down to Furla — and the rest is history. I have work to do for the Empire, and I can do it better with someone like her at my side. She understands the feeling of the person before her before they have even understood it themselves. A mind like that should be put to good use, for the growth of our empire."

The head of the Council was on the point of answering when the anonymous subsidiary spoke. The sound of his voice stopped every other, and in the sudden hush it carried, clear and unhurried, across the room. "Why did you do it?" he asked Prasi.

Prasi, like almost everyone there, found she could not meet the subsidiary's eyes.

"I do not mean the same story again," he went on. "I want to know the truth of it. Did you calculate it beforehand? Did you invent your words there, on the spot? Were you guided by your logic — or by your feelings?"

"I was..." The first words were barely audible. Then Prasi lifted her head, and with a steadier voice said: "I saw a chance to save people from death. That is all. I believe that joining the Empire through the shedding of your own blood is archaic. I believe our systems — unchanged in hundreds of eos, tested and working though they are — are in need of reworking." Then her courage suddenly ran dry, as the subsidiary fixed on her a look faintly sharp at her tone. Her eyes widened, and she stared at the floor, unable to think.

The subsidiary rose, and with a single graceful motion said: "This trial is adjourned, until further notice. Prasi will accompany me back to my ship." And with that, he walked away.

Prasi was lost. This was nothing she had ever foreseen. What am I to do? she thought. What will become of me?

Her eyes found Ert's. He was watching her with a reassuring smile. He looks satisfied, she thought. What does he know that I do not?

"Would you like an escort, or would you rather go alone?" asked the security chief on hand.

Still lost in her confusion, she noticed that after the subsidiary's words, nothing had continued. The whole room had let the case fall, as though it had never been. "May I walk there with Ert?" she asked. "If he is willing — of course," the chief replied.

She crossed to Ert, who smiled at her. "May we walk together?" she asked.

"I don't have the heart to watch you go, Prasi. In truth, I may never see you again — but you... you may yet see Thira. I am proud of you." And those were the last words Ert spoke to his love, before he turned and walked away.

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