Rusa was an excellent research tool. She held within her the assimilated entire knowledge of humans across the galaxy updated every twenty minutes. And she was fully capable of piloting the cruiser from Centrum Kath. In fact, after monitoring Koven’s vital signs during their exit from planetary orbit, she volunteered to pilot the craft. Koven agreed immediately.
Every time Koven left planetary orbit, he muttered the same phrase three times. “Lowest bidder” was an homage to a long-forgotten hero, someone that is now found more than known.
As they motored across the galaxy at a speed that would have made Einstein piss his pants with glee, Koven dealt with the latest emergency in his life. In his cabin he looked at the message from Tanit. She was wearing blue. She was predictable in her colors. They reflected her mood. A blue mood was not a good thing for her.
She looked pretty to him. She was wearing a low-cut blouse. He liked it when she wore low-cut blouses. It reminded him that as a baby he had not been breastfed by his mother, and he always felt that deficit deep in his core. She looked like she had a prepared text.
“I understand your caution. But know that I’m not that delicate a girl. I can handle almost anything you’ve got to give. But honey, you’ve got to give it to me.”
Koven sighed as he watched her. He felt disappointed. In her and in himself.
“It’s been too long, baby,” she continued. “Some of the happiest revs of my life. I think I’ve found the right person to spend the rest of my life with. And I do mean this. More than anything.”
He watched as Tanit took a sip from a glass filled with slightly brown liquid. She took a small sip at first, then finished the contents in one large gulp then carefully put down the small glass. She looked up and into the camera again.
“But baby, enough. I need all of you and I need it often and I need it everywhere,” she said with a naughty tone of voice. Then she straightened her posture again.
“But I’m not going to be sentimental about this. You are historian, you understand and appreciate things that are obvious. So I will leave you with this. Koven Modi, if you want this relationship to continue, you will provide the level of commitment I need.”
And the message ended abruptly.
It had none of the usual things Tanit was known for, like her incredibly meandering goodbyes. OK. See you later. Oh, I miss you. Better go now. Wish you were here. I can’t wait to see you again. So long, lover. Kisses for my lover, long deep kisses. For example. They were some of the nice things only known to be so upon their absence.
Koven understood. She was demanding the full trip to IKEA and may have also demanded occasional entry into the store via the back door.
Koven returned to the helm and Rusa. He sent a message to his mother as he walked down the corridor. Within seconds he got a reply: Teaching a class, catch you in a bit. Love, Mom. He was worried that it may be time to break it off with Tanit. Same outcome as last time. More disappointment.
“Rusa, let’s begin the brief, if you please,” he said as he walked into the bridge.
Koven always liked the sleek look of the bridge. The designer realized that with holocasting there was no need for a room full of controls, switches, and lights. Control was possible completely via the interface. So the designer went for clean stainless metals and glass. In front of the helmstation stood four clear transparent thick glass slabs upon which the flight control systems were operating: life support, propulsion, navigation, communications. The information scrolled up slowly. Sometimes one of the items would jump out from the glass as if put under a magnifying glass. And beside the factoid would be the prioritization. Yes, the usual red, yellow, green. No, we never accepted the mauve revolution. We’ve always felt it was not distinct enough of a color. It’s like Orange. Is it red? Is it brown? Is it yellow? No, it’s orange and it’s disappointing. The interface had P 2 C (point to click) menus.
Rusa projected her own holocast and moved her replica like an assistant.
“Life Expectancy: eighteen point two kilorevs,” she said. “But the Cult of Allor is skewing those results. They actually have an average life expectancy of twenty-three point forty-five kilorevs.” (Yes, that’s sixty-seven years, but I did the math for you again). “But that’s mostly near the capital city.”
“Level of Numeracy: low. Commerce numeracy only. Except again for the regions of Allor. They have advanced geometry, calculus, and trigonometry.”
“Do I detect a pattern?” Koven asked her.
“You do,” she said with a giggle and a flirt. Koven realized he could, like most people, get very tired of a flirting android very quickly.
“They exceed on all of the health measurements and developmental criteria.”
“But no evidence of the capability of creating the comms devices?” he asked.
“No. Not a damned chance in a million,” said Rusa with a strange accented voice which she accented by shrugging her shoulders while she spoke.
Koven stood there stunned. “For Hydrogen’s sake, who programmed you?”
“Venkat mostly,” she replied. “This part, anyway.”
“Who is Venkat?” Koven demanded to know.
“Venkat Tiwari,” she replied.
“Who is Venkat Tiwari?”
“He is the man that programmed me. He had significant help from Pinga Sane. Venkat was born in Bangalore Earth 5 before he escaped quarantine. He has received degrees and honors in system design. He has received four significant awards for his work, including a Calc Speed seven award for creating the fastest calculator in history with his 2-2 = 0 processor, a machine that was so fast that it gave the answer before the question was even asked of it. It was considered a remarkable achievement,” Rusa said.
“Oh, is there anything else I should know about Venkat Tiwari?” Koven asked.
“Perhaps. Venkat, or ‘Kat’ as he is known, has the fourth largest private collection of media on Earth 5. And since he left Earth 5 his collection has quadrupled.”
“Why is this relevant?” Koven asked.
“Because he has programmed my functions to study the entire contents of his library and use them as communication models.”
“And the result is?”
“I might break into song at times. Definitely more likely under precipitation.”
“And Venkat thought this would be a good idea why?”
“Oh, he didn’t think that. He was laughing too much while programming it for it to be a good idea.”
“I see,” replied Koven.
“I will occasionally exhibit communications that are a reflection of Venkat’s media collection. It is tied to my random number generator, so I never know when it will happen, or ‘go off,’ as Venkat described it to me. But I report on audience acceptance or disapproval every ten revs.”
“Please register one disapproval,” Koven said coldly.
“Don’t be like that.”
“Just complete the briefing, please,” he insisted. He sat down in the copilot chair.
“Level of Literacy: low to medium. Allor territories have mandatory school for the young.” Rusa was pouting overtly while she spoke. Koven crossed his arms across his chest. “But there is a man named Ip. He seems to have particularly good skills at literacy. His stories are translated into many different languages.”
“Skip him,” said Koven with an annoyed tone.
“Reprioritizing,” said Rusa for a moment, then she continued. “The Niddler Metropol—capital of The Cult of Niddler. Population 697,327. They are divided up by position in religious hierarchy.”
“Tell me about the religious hierarchy, please,” requested Koven.
“Their leader is named Hundil. He is considered their high priest. His official title is The Highest Unconsciousness. It is said he can reach unconsciousness at will, instantly. But he may just have an advanced form of permissive narcolepsy,” Rusa said. She smiled at Koven again then made a frown when he didn’t smile back.
“There is a leadership council. These are the twenty men and twenty women that run the administration of the religion and the country. There is also a formal military command consisting of a group of five soldiers that counsel The Highest Unconsciousness on strategies, all unsurprisingly defensive in nature. The Cult of Niddler won’t attack another area until they are provoked. But then revenge will be paid many times over. The Cult of Niddler has been known to provoke a violent response in a border area in order to justify taking land. The Niddler military is not very formidable, and recent attempts at ocean-based assaults failed horribly with significant loss of life.”
“What else?” said Koven in an almost bored tone of voice.
“The Wonder—that’s what they call their priests—there are approximately fifty thousand of them. Women make up just over half of the priesthood, and it is a well-run organization. They have the highest ratings for on-time start of services and had the highest overall earliest finishes. Prior to the Cult of Allor, Niddler had the highest worshipper satisfaction ratings for three years in a row. But of course, Allor has rewritten all the rules.
“But there isn’t just The Wonder. There is also The Wonderful, as their rank-and-file believers are known. Niddler is strong on daily affirmations of wonderfulness among their followers. But within The Wonderful there are two distinct groups.
“The first are known as The Higher Unconsciousness. They are approximately thirty thousand followers that can hold their breath until they achieve unconsciousness. Then there is the rest. They are called The Aspiring and are all those that can’t hold their breath until they pass out but try to do it anyway. Every day. Three times a day.
“Then there are The Interpreters, a group of two thousand men and women who spend their entire lives studying the quatrains of Niddler. But his words are so incredibly vague and can be interpreted to mean any damned thing you want.”
“What do you mean?” asked Koven.
“Oh, let me give you just one of thousands of examples. Let’s see, here’s a good one.
‘He descended from the bottom and moved with the sureness of inevitability in dubitable times.’
“Interpreters of complete gobbley gook. How can you descend from the bottom? Does the bottom itself have a bottom now? Every five hundred revs they present their findings over a three-day festival of food and drink—mostly drink, since their findings are considered elaborate and boring.”
“What about the Disciples of Earth?” Koven asked.
“They are a pagan cult that worships the planet and the processes that make it work. They forego large cities and live in villages across the center belt of the planet. They are planet-worshiping ecologists.”
“This is an advanced outlook for a primitive people,” Koven replied.
What Rusa neglected to tell Koven was how ineffectual the Disciples of the Earth were. They question each other at every moment of resource usage and often don’t get much else done. But they are very lovely people with a remarkable herb that makes something very similar to a nice cup of tea. They have a goddess called Phelopes that gave birth to the Earth. They worship her every day. Disciples of Earth try to always watch sunrise and sunset and pray at those times. It is a prayer that contains a flaw, since it assumes that all the human are originally from Earth 7. They don’t know they were the new Australia.
“What about the other two regions, the nonreligious ones?” asked Koven.
“The Rom Empire is run by Rom II and his sister, Ova. In Rom, all religions are respected and protected. This means there are periodic riots caused by the followers of Ceros and Allor. Rom Jr. is planning on separating the various religious groups in his kingdom into their own areas. But he has significant opposition to his ethnic cleansing, as both Ceros and Allor followers believe that they should be able to convert everyone to their beliefs. Militarily, they are significant, with the best-trained army. But economically they are not such a powerhouse.
“Then there is the Confederated Union. The Confederation is a small but growing area where religion is forbidden. All of the religions hate the Confederation and want to destroy it. But the fighters from the confederation are legendary for refusing to submit. They will die before they submit.”
“When told they will be forced to accept domination by others or a belief, they attack the speaker and won’t stop until one of them is dead. They believe that submission is the same as life is over. Because of this, no Confederation member has ever been converted to a religion. But they get refugees from the other areas. They accept them without question. But this also means that they get spies from the other groups and suffer from nearly constant terrorism. Bombings are daily in their towns.”
“And no evidence of them having advanced technology?”
“None whatsoever,” she replied.
The briefing continued until they were in orbit and ready to go down to the planet. She finished it as they suited up and gathered their equipment.
When they were done, she took him by the hand. She looked at him.
“Let’s go jump,” she said with a big smile.
Jumping was another part of being an agent that Koven wasn’t fond of. Most agents thought it was great fun. Not Koven. She pulled him hand in hand as she ran down the corridor to the air lock. As soon as she slammed the button for the door to open the outer airlock, she activated her personal transport device and ran towards the open door to the open skies above the planet. She jumped out like a small child would jump into a pool of water, not knowing if there were leeches in the water or not. She sailed out into the space over Earth 7 and the PTD began to take her down to the planet. A few tix and she was accelerating away. Then she was gone.
Koven stood inside of the now still and silent airlock. He checked his weapons and his tech one last time before walking over to the door. He stood at the edge of the door, slapped the CLOSE button just inside of the door, then closed his eyes and took his one small step for man. His acceleration settings were on low, the only way he could use the PTD without getting sick.