Post by Lorpius Prime on Apr 30, 2011 0:37:40 GMT -5
Toleranderites gave Archimedes the creeps. Their appearance was deeply unsettling to some deep instinctual part of the mind. Actually, Archimedes was pretty sure that the problem was they looked too much like humans. Most sentient aliens were sufficiently "monstrous" that, once one got over some initial discomfort, they were easy to accept as nothing more than people of a different shape.
Archimedes was not having such an easy time with the Toleranderites. It took a supreme effort of will not to flinch every time he caught a glimpse of one out of the corner of his eye.
There didn't seem to be much diversity to the species, at least among the adults. All of the ones around Archimedes had roughly the same body proportions. They all stood a bit over one and a half meters tall, which put them roughly even with the professor's chin. And they all seemed to be slightly slimmer than the human average, and significantly more than Archimedes.
They were covered from head to foot with dark, wiry bristles that poked straight up from their skin, each about a centimeter long. Archimedes was just as pleased that their social norms didn't involve much touching, or his skin would have been rubbed raw from the contact by now. The Toleranderites' own skin was thick and even darker than their fur, making them look almost like smoky shadows at a distance.
Their eyes were all a bright, bloody red, which glowed when they caught the light.
To Archimedes they looked like the denizens of Hell itself, and that was making it rather hard for him to relax in the middle of a ballroom full of them. Even if they were serving very strong drinks.
"Hello, alien."
Archimedes knew the Toleranderite meant him. There were a couple other non-Toleranderites in the spacious ballroom, but neither of them were within speaking distance. Archimedes wasn't positive they were fellow sentients, anyway; at least one was being kept on a leash.
The professor glanced down from his drink at the Toleranderite who had spoken. It wore a purple sash across its chest, and the same black skirt as about half the people in the room.
"Hello," Archimedes said politely. The Toleranderite's greeting might have sounded curt, but he wasn't confident in that judgment just yet.
"I'm not familiar with your species," said Purple Sash, craning its neck to examine Archimedes' face.
"I'm human," he said, not for the first time, "I'm from very far away."
"From outside the Hegemony?"
A small huddle of other Toleranderites was staring intently. Archimedes got the impression that Purple Sash was talking with him on a dare from its friends.
He nodded, "yes."
The Toleranderite was silent for a moment as it studied Archimedes.
"That's quite exotic," it said, then gave its own firm, single nod. "I hope you are finding us enlightening."
"It's… certainly been a learning experience," Archimedes said. How was he supposed to respond to that?
Perhaps not that way. The Toleranderite in the purple sash turned abruptly and rejoined its little crowd of friends, which immediately began chattering excitedly.
"Well that was weird," Archimedes muttered.
"She's just shy," said a tiny voice in his ear.
"You could tell she was female?" he asked softly.
"When you've been around for ten millennia, you learn a few things."
"How to identify the sex of individuals of an unfamiliar species from a few seconds of voice alone?"
"How to make shit up for a joke."
Archimedes closed his eyes and gave a pained sigh.
"Cute," he said. "Have you figured out who I should be looking for yet?"
Somewhere inside its cavernous starship off in high orbit, Archimedes could just imagine Newt spinning in mischievous glee.
"I have," the Nav Drone said. "There should be a high official lurking about by you somewhere. His name—and I'm sure he's a male this time—is Gorge."
"So I should look for the guy stuffing his face?" Archimedes wasn't quite whispering, but he was still careful to keep his voice low.
"Oh, good one," Newt said. "I was trying to think of something about canyon, but that's a much better angle."
Archimedes shook his head, "Does Mr. Gorge have a title?"
"Yes, but I get the impression that it would be unwise—or at least impolite—to mention it in public; so I don't think I'll share."
"Well that sounds… odd." Archimedes could feel his brow creasing.
"My impression is that talking to him could be hazardous to your health, if you were a Toleranderite yourself. As it is, I'm just worried about stepping on cultural toes. Strictly on your behalf, of course. Personally, I like stepping on toes."
Somehow Archimedes felt less than reassured.
"And this is the best guy to get us access?"
"So far he's the only guy I've found so far. I'll keep up the investigation, but in the meantime, Doc, how about you track down this lead? Be a team player and all that."
"Right," Archimedes said, rather than any of the abusive comments running through his mind, "tracking."
The planet they were on was named Screwbolt. Archimedes' expedition had come here because, despite its remoteness within the Hegemony, it was home to one of the Toleranderites' tier-one Archives. No one except Newt had been eager to risk going near one of the Hegemony's central planets after their misadventure on Spike. But Archimedes wanted data which could only be found in the most secure databases, which meant they needed a tier-one Archive. Screwbolt had been the obvious choice.
After much fussing, Molly and Reginald had finally proclaimed the computer they'd recovered from the Spiker temple operational after all. Unfortunately, "operational" had not meant the same as "usable". They could plug in, but couldn't access any data. At first, Archimedes and the kids had assumed it was just a matter of getting the right security authorization, which should have been simple enough for Newt to bypass.
Newt, however, had squashed that hope within in seconds of plugging in. According to it, the whole system was protected by what he called a "lobotomized intelligence"—though Archimedes doubted that was a technical term. Newt had difficulty explaining the concept, but the consequences were simple enough. There would be no "bypassing" the computer's security lockout. They would either need to get proper clearance, or use a brute force hack of the system. And Newt wasn't willing to run the hack itself, claiming it would have less than a 1% chance of succeeding within a century even if it gave the task all its attention.
Which only left the option of somehow acquiring a genuine authorization. Despite the marking, it was ostensibly a Toleranderite computer; so Archimedes had asked Newt to drop the ship into the nearest system with a Hegemony public data network. He and Molly had then spent the next two days scouring the network, looking for information about how the Hegemony controlled its automated "wildlife preserve" systems. That had been a wash at first; but after Archimedes began investigating possible links between the Toleranderites and the first Empire of Man or humanity in general, the search had become a little more interesting. The local network had nothing immediately useful, but Archimedes did find tantalizing hints that there might be more in the Hegemony's high security records, the most sensitive of which could only be found in tier-one Archives. It was only the tiniest thread of a lead, but it was all they had to go on. So after a brief consultation of the Hegemony's maps, Newt had set course for Screwbolt.
The planet was actually another one of those "preserves"—or zoos—that the Hegemony was fond of; although this one wasn't housing any native sentient life, unlike Spike. According to the tourist's summary, most of Screwbolt's landmasses were covered by tropical rainforests whose exotic flora was truly stunning to behold. The only exception was one tiny island where a single, towering arcology called Screwbolt City had been drilled into the ground. One might have thought that the planet had been named after the striking appearance of the arcology tower, but apparently the name had been chosen several centuries before settlement was even conceived.
Screwbolt City was only a few decades old itself, and the whole thing was essentially the work of a madman. Reginald had picked up on the oddities much faster than his uncle, who wasn't so practiced at reading between the lines of official histories. The difference between archaeologists and historians often struck Archimedes as much like the difference between detectives and conspiracy theorists. For the most part, Archimedes was happy to believe that his own field was the superior science. When it came to the Toleranderite Hegemony, however, an overly suspicious mind could be an advantage.
The son of the previous Hegemon had considered himself a shoo-in to succeed his father into the job. The rest of the Hegemony's unofficial aristocracy had considered him dangerously impulsive and not a little unhinged. When the old Hegemon died, they blocked the young man's ascension by nearly unanimous consent and selected a much more stable, if unimaginative, replacement.
Unwilling to risk driving the jilted heir into outright rebellion, however, the oligarchs had encouraged him to pursue one of his more "exotic" schemes… one which would keep him sufficiently distant and distracted from real government. Screwbolt City was the result of that scheme, the personal playground of a now-aging dynast. The fact that the Hegemony even now subsidized the place—which couldn't hope to sustain its own economy—told just how much they still feared the old man's influence. He had near absolute power over the entire system, despite an official Mayor for the city and the superficially liberal society of the Hegemony as a whole. He had his own private (though very small) fleet of warships. And he had a tier-one Archive which let him keep up to date with all the most sensitive goings-on of Hegemony politics. Everything he needed to pretend he was still the man in charge, even in effective exile.
Of course, all Archimedes really cared about at the moment was the Archive. Screwbolt's remoteness meant it should take time for reports of the attack on Spike to arrive than on a more central world, insulating Archimedes and the others from immediate suspicion. Unfortunately, it also meant there were far fewer people with high-level access to the Archives who might be convinced to share. In fact, Newt had so far identified fewer than a dozen candidates in the entire system.
And only the one at this particular party. Archimedes had hoped that a high-society party would be the best opportunity to attract the attention of the sort of privileged elite he needed. Toleranderites certainly enjoyed their parties as extravagant displays of status and power, one more thing they had in common with humans. Archimedes himself had enjoyed the occasional faculty and donor ball at the University, even if he felt like he'd never quite learned to schmooze properly.
Fortunately, it seemed like there was always a society party somewhere in Screwbolt City. That made a certain amount of sense; the aristocrats here were basically all just part of the atmosphere for the planet's ruler, his pretend-court. They didn't have much in the way of real responsibilities, which left little to do except to attend endless fabulous galas in their fellows' apartments, sub-mansions, and on private yachts, both waterborne and hovering.
Archimedes was here on the referral of one of those aristocrats, Derid. He called himself "Warden" Derid, but apparently was merely the primary shareholder of a moderately successful trading enterprise. Archimedes had plied the Warden with some "wondrous artifacts of far-away cultures" that the archaeologist had acquired over the course of his travels. Most significant of Archimedes' "gifts" had been a Velosian Roach Spear—essentially a halberd with a meter-long, serrated, and razor-sharp blade. Newt had not been happy to see it go, which was largely the point. Archimedes had been trying to get rid of the thing since the Drone almost decapitated him in a corridor. He had been unmoved by claims that Newt thought he sounded like a real Velosian Roach coming around the corner. The spear was now safely on display somewhere in Warden Derid's apartments.
Derid himself was not attending this particular party. But he'd been happy to give Archimedes an introduction to the sponsor when the professor mentioned he was looking for some entertainment during his brief stay on Screwbolt. Invitation in hand, Archimedes arrived confident that he'd be able to use his smooth talking and exotic nature to win at least a peek into the Archive… at which point, Newt could suck it dry.
Archimedes was not having such an easy time with the Toleranderites. It took a supreme effort of will not to flinch every time he caught a glimpse of one out of the corner of his eye.
There didn't seem to be much diversity to the species, at least among the adults. All of the ones around Archimedes had roughly the same body proportions. They all stood a bit over one and a half meters tall, which put them roughly even with the professor's chin. And they all seemed to be slightly slimmer than the human average, and significantly more than Archimedes.
They were covered from head to foot with dark, wiry bristles that poked straight up from their skin, each about a centimeter long. Archimedes was just as pleased that their social norms didn't involve much touching, or his skin would have been rubbed raw from the contact by now. The Toleranderites' own skin was thick and even darker than their fur, making them look almost like smoky shadows at a distance.
Their eyes were all a bright, bloody red, which glowed when they caught the light.
To Archimedes they looked like the denizens of Hell itself, and that was making it rather hard for him to relax in the middle of a ballroom full of them. Even if they were serving very strong drinks.
"Hello, alien."
Archimedes knew the Toleranderite meant him. There were a couple other non-Toleranderites in the spacious ballroom, but neither of them were within speaking distance. Archimedes wasn't positive they were fellow sentients, anyway; at least one was being kept on a leash.
The professor glanced down from his drink at the Toleranderite who had spoken. It wore a purple sash across its chest, and the same black skirt as about half the people in the room.
"Hello," Archimedes said politely. The Toleranderite's greeting might have sounded curt, but he wasn't confident in that judgment just yet.
"I'm not familiar with your species," said Purple Sash, craning its neck to examine Archimedes' face.
"I'm human," he said, not for the first time, "I'm from very far away."
"From outside the Hegemony?"
A small huddle of other Toleranderites was staring intently. Archimedes got the impression that Purple Sash was talking with him on a dare from its friends.
He nodded, "yes."
The Toleranderite was silent for a moment as it studied Archimedes.
"That's quite exotic," it said, then gave its own firm, single nod. "I hope you are finding us enlightening."
"It's… certainly been a learning experience," Archimedes said. How was he supposed to respond to that?
Perhaps not that way. The Toleranderite in the purple sash turned abruptly and rejoined its little crowd of friends, which immediately began chattering excitedly.
"Well that was weird," Archimedes muttered.
"She's just shy," said a tiny voice in his ear.
"You could tell she was female?" he asked softly.
"When you've been around for ten millennia, you learn a few things."
"How to identify the sex of individuals of an unfamiliar species from a few seconds of voice alone?"
"How to make shit up for a joke."
Archimedes closed his eyes and gave a pained sigh.
"Cute," he said. "Have you figured out who I should be looking for yet?"
Somewhere inside its cavernous starship off in high orbit, Archimedes could just imagine Newt spinning in mischievous glee.
"I have," the Nav Drone said. "There should be a high official lurking about by you somewhere. His name—and I'm sure he's a male this time—is Gorge."
"So I should look for the guy stuffing his face?" Archimedes wasn't quite whispering, but he was still careful to keep his voice low.
"Oh, good one," Newt said. "I was trying to think of something about canyon, but that's a much better angle."
Archimedes shook his head, "Does Mr. Gorge have a title?"
"Yes, but I get the impression that it would be unwise—or at least impolite—to mention it in public; so I don't think I'll share."
"Well that sounds… odd." Archimedes could feel his brow creasing.
"My impression is that talking to him could be hazardous to your health, if you were a Toleranderite yourself. As it is, I'm just worried about stepping on cultural toes. Strictly on your behalf, of course. Personally, I like stepping on toes."
Somehow Archimedes felt less than reassured.
"And this is the best guy to get us access?"
"So far he's the only guy I've found so far. I'll keep up the investigation, but in the meantime, Doc, how about you track down this lead? Be a team player and all that."
"Right," Archimedes said, rather than any of the abusive comments running through his mind, "tracking."
The planet they were on was named Screwbolt. Archimedes' expedition had come here because, despite its remoteness within the Hegemony, it was home to one of the Toleranderites' tier-one Archives. No one except Newt had been eager to risk going near one of the Hegemony's central planets after their misadventure on Spike. But Archimedes wanted data which could only be found in the most secure databases, which meant they needed a tier-one Archive. Screwbolt had been the obvious choice.
After much fussing, Molly and Reginald had finally proclaimed the computer they'd recovered from the Spiker temple operational after all. Unfortunately, "operational" had not meant the same as "usable". They could plug in, but couldn't access any data. At first, Archimedes and the kids had assumed it was just a matter of getting the right security authorization, which should have been simple enough for Newt to bypass.
Newt, however, had squashed that hope within in seconds of plugging in. According to it, the whole system was protected by what he called a "lobotomized intelligence"—though Archimedes doubted that was a technical term. Newt had difficulty explaining the concept, but the consequences were simple enough. There would be no "bypassing" the computer's security lockout. They would either need to get proper clearance, or use a brute force hack of the system. And Newt wasn't willing to run the hack itself, claiming it would have less than a 1% chance of succeeding within a century even if it gave the task all its attention.
Which only left the option of somehow acquiring a genuine authorization. Despite the marking, it was ostensibly a Toleranderite computer; so Archimedes had asked Newt to drop the ship into the nearest system with a Hegemony public data network. He and Molly had then spent the next two days scouring the network, looking for information about how the Hegemony controlled its automated "wildlife preserve" systems. That had been a wash at first; but after Archimedes began investigating possible links between the Toleranderites and the first Empire of Man or humanity in general, the search had become a little more interesting. The local network had nothing immediately useful, but Archimedes did find tantalizing hints that there might be more in the Hegemony's high security records, the most sensitive of which could only be found in tier-one Archives. It was only the tiniest thread of a lead, but it was all they had to go on. So after a brief consultation of the Hegemony's maps, Newt had set course for Screwbolt.
The planet was actually another one of those "preserves"—or zoos—that the Hegemony was fond of; although this one wasn't housing any native sentient life, unlike Spike. According to the tourist's summary, most of Screwbolt's landmasses were covered by tropical rainforests whose exotic flora was truly stunning to behold. The only exception was one tiny island where a single, towering arcology called Screwbolt City had been drilled into the ground. One might have thought that the planet had been named after the striking appearance of the arcology tower, but apparently the name had been chosen several centuries before settlement was even conceived.
Screwbolt City was only a few decades old itself, and the whole thing was essentially the work of a madman. Reginald had picked up on the oddities much faster than his uncle, who wasn't so practiced at reading between the lines of official histories. The difference between archaeologists and historians often struck Archimedes as much like the difference between detectives and conspiracy theorists. For the most part, Archimedes was happy to believe that his own field was the superior science. When it came to the Toleranderite Hegemony, however, an overly suspicious mind could be an advantage.
The son of the previous Hegemon had considered himself a shoo-in to succeed his father into the job. The rest of the Hegemony's unofficial aristocracy had considered him dangerously impulsive and not a little unhinged. When the old Hegemon died, they blocked the young man's ascension by nearly unanimous consent and selected a much more stable, if unimaginative, replacement.
Unwilling to risk driving the jilted heir into outright rebellion, however, the oligarchs had encouraged him to pursue one of his more "exotic" schemes… one which would keep him sufficiently distant and distracted from real government. Screwbolt City was the result of that scheme, the personal playground of a now-aging dynast. The fact that the Hegemony even now subsidized the place—which couldn't hope to sustain its own economy—told just how much they still feared the old man's influence. He had near absolute power over the entire system, despite an official Mayor for the city and the superficially liberal society of the Hegemony as a whole. He had his own private (though very small) fleet of warships. And he had a tier-one Archive which let him keep up to date with all the most sensitive goings-on of Hegemony politics. Everything he needed to pretend he was still the man in charge, even in effective exile.
Of course, all Archimedes really cared about at the moment was the Archive. Screwbolt's remoteness meant it should take time for reports of the attack on Spike to arrive than on a more central world, insulating Archimedes and the others from immediate suspicion. Unfortunately, it also meant there were far fewer people with high-level access to the Archives who might be convinced to share. In fact, Newt had so far identified fewer than a dozen candidates in the entire system.
And only the one at this particular party. Archimedes had hoped that a high-society party would be the best opportunity to attract the attention of the sort of privileged elite he needed. Toleranderites certainly enjoyed their parties as extravagant displays of status and power, one more thing they had in common with humans. Archimedes himself had enjoyed the occasional faculty and donor ball at the University, even if he felt like he'd never quite learned to schmooze properly.
Fortunately, it seemed like there was always a society party somewhere in Screwbolt City. That made a certain amount of sense; the aristocrats here were basically all just part of the atmosphere for the planet's ruler, his pretend-court. They didn't have much in the way of real responsibilities, which left little to do except to attend endless fabulous galas in their fellows' apartments, sub-mansions, and on private yachts, both waterborne and hovering.
Archimedes was here on the referral of one of those aristocrats, Derid. He called himself "Warden" Derid, but apparently was merely the primary shareholder of a moderately successful trading enterprise. Archimedes had plied the Warden with some "wondrous artifacts of far-away cultures" that the archaeologist had acquired over the course of his travels. Most significant of Archimedes' "gifts" had been a Velosian Roach Spear—essentially a halberd with a meter-long, serrated, and razor-sharp blade. Newt had not been happy to see it go, which was largely the point. Archimedes had been trying to get rid of the thing since the Drone almost decapitated him in a corridor. He had been unmoved by claims that Newt thought he sounded like a real Velosian Roach coming around the corner. The spear was now safely on display somewhere in Warden Derid's apartments.
Derid himself was not attending this particular party. But he'd been happy to give Archimedes an introduction to the sponsor when the professor mentioned he was looking for some entertainment during his brief stay on Screwbolt. Invitation in hand, Archimedes arrived confident that he'd be able to use his smooth talking and exotic nature to win at least a peek into the Archive… at which point, Newt could suck it dry.