Ma-tek
04-02-2005, 01:38
She paced uncertainly, her footsteps annoyingly sharp against the marble floor. Her long white robe swished around her ankles, tickling her skin; skin that was more used to being bare than covered. Still, despite her preference for no clothes over clothes, she had no tan. None of her species were tanned, despite the tropical climes of their homeland, Iluvauromen.
They had come here many many centuries ago, now, and through blood and toil had built an Empire – and lost it to a single moment of infinite evitability. And then they had risen again – not like the cliché Phoenix from the ashes, but more along the lines of a nuclear submarine: slowly revealing their true strength, adversitity washing over them but not harming, might gathered carefully and focused throughout their body until they were honed and ready.
And the Humans had been so very important to that rise; unlike the initial leap to ascendancy, which had been fired by Nenyar hearts alone, the second rise had been fired by Humanity and the Nenyar together – each and all Iluvauromeni rather than merely one species or the other.
She had been born into the old rather than the new; she still felt that her kind were superior, stronger, better than the Humans. The Humans, she suspected, were more apt to the yoke than the reins; but she was, among many things, open-minded. She could accept that times were changing; indeed, she did not need to accept so much as merely watch – for it was that apparent.
Oddly enough she was a sociologist; born over seventeen decades ago. She was approaching middle-age, but was none the worse for it, physically; she could still run like the wind and dance like the harp, and her singing voice was much-loved amongst her colleagues. But she had seen so many deaths, so many losses. Once a poet, an author, a singer, she was now a sociologist. In addition, she was an old one in terms of career length, for she had abandoned her initial loves very quickly, once the Long Night had descended.
It was almost as if the fall of the now long-dead Empire of the Eternal Flame had cleared shadows from her mind, with the infinite clarity that only darkness can bring. Those shadows had served only to blind her to her true path: the study of the society, and the pursuit of mathematical understanding of that society. The latter eluded her, and eluded every sociologist still – it would do so for ever, she was sure – but the former was her heart and soul. Her poetry and fictional writings were mere horseplay, simple games with which to test theories in simulation; the reviews were often good indications of the level of reality achieved, and in this she could see many things.
She was, moreover, a member of the most prestigious institute in the Commonality today: the Imperial Guild of Sociology – although it was known by several names, this one she preferred. It was austere, somehow direct and honest in a way that the other names did not quite achieve.
Here, in the garden – or, rather, underneath a tunnel-like pathway that was adjacent to the garden itself – she was at ease. This was the Guild building, with its pretty gardens – all of which were planned by the great mathematicians of the Imperial Garderners Guild – and high arches, its vaunted steps and its masterpieces gleaming on hallowed walls. Of course it was all for show – anyone could see that, know that, feel that… just with a single glance, in fact. That was rather the point. One could not help feeling both in awe and somewhat superior – so long as one were from this society, from Iluvauromen. The Guild knew this society inside out, backwards and forwards – in fact, it manipulated every facet of the Commonality in some way or another; committees were made up of prominent Guild members, the leaders of the main voting blocs on certain issues were invariably Guild members, and three Commonality Executive Council members were high ranking Guild members – one of whom was exceedingly high in the hierarchy of the Guild. And she was indeed here to meet just one of those members; the highest of them. She was clothed in his honour, for he was marrieed and taken – and also because she simply respected him. To be disrobed would not imply that to the fullest degree; somehow, clothes had more impact than nudity…
At least in this society.
He approached, and her heart quickened; she had always felt that way when he was near, but there was nothing to be done – he was utterly taken, smitten, and out of reach besides. His wife was the Empress; she had no wish to die, even if these were enlightened times in which the Empress did not wield life or death at whim. She was no fool: the Empress was wealthy enough to kill her ten times over and make every time seem a perfect accident. Nontheless, she doubted that would happen. Worse: she knew it would not – for he had no interest in her beyond the professional.
She obscured her deepest thoughts carefully – knew he saw past the useless gesture – as she shook his hand, and bowed her head appropriately to the Twelfth Inclination of Honour, and murmoured her greetings amidst the cool breeze. It would rain soon, as it always did at this time of day. The rain would pour from the sky in great sheets, and she would run through it despite the lashing it could very easily give her if she did not wear adequate clothing; the raindrops were so huge, and fell so fast – she had been in temperate climes, and knew that the rain there could cut you, it was so small and thin and spindly. At least, she imagined it could.
“Have you discussed the matter?” Semir-randil I, High King of all the Nenyar, excepting those in Tumnore, was asking in that soft, hypnotic voice.
“No. We haven’t had the chance as yet. Look, Semir, I don’t think this will work. We’ve been pushing it for years now – the public will get rather suspicious. More than they already are. You know as well as I do that these predictions we’ve been making aren’t airtight. By all that’s holy, they’re not even watertight – there’s no way we can keep this up for ever. The population are due a disturbance. They’ve been held down for too long; the dampening measures are failing everywhere. Just this week I heard of an incident at the water pumping facilities out in Shelbattanu-Rhea; the workers there are considering a strike. You know why, I’m sure: they aren’t being given long enough breaks to use the facilities.” ‘Facilities’ was the polite word for the water closet amongst the Nobility and the Imperial Family.
“I heard. It’s preposterous. And I know that we can’t really take action on these predictions; I argued against any such course of action, if you recall. I was voted down. Of course, if we voted now, we might win out – but there’s no point. It’s already decided. The dampeners were put in place. The Coronation was supposed to provide the catalyst for the final mechanisms to be set in place, but it appears that the Humans are less psi-active than we’d even imagined them to be: most of them weren’t…penetrated…by the thought-waves at all. Oh, they all experienced the crowd response, but I could do that alone, if the crowd gathered were large enough. No, Timur, we need a new way forward. This Commonality might be too stable already to survive the century; discontent is multiplying. People are wanting more than is ever going to be feasible, and there’s no way to stop them wanting. We can’t just change them!”
“But we could,” Timur ventured quietly, blinking her eyes slowly. Semir stared at her. She saw that he thought she was insane even for thinking it; she saw disgust flicker in his eyes – worse, she felt both wash over her, gentle though the sensation was. It hurt to be thought of that way; she found her own little damping mechanism right there – shame flared up. “Of course we couldn’t,” she admitted.
“It’s the weakness we never talk about,” Semir agreed, “but there are other ways. Look, it’s all just balance, right? So we kick out a chair leg. Minimize the damage to people, naturally. In fact, zero damage would be preferable, but you know, that’s not always possible. And we have to consider the whole, right? So kick out the chair leg. If it’s the right one, we introduce the instability required. That should give us back the vitality we appear to have lost – have you noticed that it’s harder for the Council to push any action through the Government? It’s pitiful. They’re bickering and bickering, and while they do, the people outside the Commonality are spreading and spreading and we aren’t involved. The world is spinning on while we contemplate what speed it might be moving at, and whether it’s safe or not to get on just yet.”
“We need a meeting,” Timur agreed with Semir’s underlying thought, the one he hadn’t spoken out loud but had kept inside – albeit still on show. “We need to discuss all of this. There are measures that have been talked over before…something regarding the tendency to spiral to chaos springs to mind, but that’s not entirely my field. I’m more the stability freak, as you know.”
She actually said the last with remorse; there was so much she would change if she could. But the past was so long gone that any such thoughts were ridiculous; she had long since found that thinking on them only left her feeling hollow, as if her skin carried all her weight and her internal organs were just gone… leaving her with nothing but empty fears and dreams for a world long lost. It scared her to realize the length of her life thus far, truth be told, and she did not like to be scared. Yet facing the Doom was quite, quite frightening; for she did not know what would come, although she knew it was not the Doom of Men which her kin would face. That was Eru’s gift for Men alone. And one of the greater curses bestowed on her kind in exchange for their lofty nature in other ways was that they were some reborn into new bodies, as the Elves were; so it was believed more and more, and more and more believed that Elves were now being born into Nenyar bodies, too. There was a pattern there that none could quite perceive – but it wasn’t her field, and distracting as it was, it served only to reinforce her fear; for the Nenyar were still Elves in spirit, and Elves were not intended to die so young as did her species.
“I know,” Semir returned softly, turning his amber eyes skyward. The sky was blue up there; the clouds had not yet gathered. They would do so very quickly, and probably with thunder and lightning. The sky liked to be showy – even the stars showed off here, she mused with a smile inside.
The smile in turn caused an amused glance from Semir – he always found amusement even in the bleakest circumstances – and she could not help but smile outwardly as well as in; although darkness still wreathed her heart, for she could not solve this great difficulty ahead.
“We will all die of the agony of our own insularity if we cannot find a way to avert the pitfalls of an entirely stabile society,” Semir noted, very softly; finally speaking the fearful truth.
“I know,” Timur whispered.
They had come here many many centuries ago, now, and through blood and toil had built an Empire – and lost it to a single moment of infinite evitability. And then they had risen again – not like the cliché Phoenix from the ashes, but more along the lines of a nuclear submarine: slowly revealing their true strength, adversitity washing over them but not harming, might gathered carefully and focused throughout their body until they were honed and ready.
And the Humans had been so very important to that rise; unlike the initial leap to ascendancy, which had been fired by Nenyar hearts alone, the second rise had been fired by Humanity and the Nenyar together – each and all Iluvauromeni rather than merely one species or the other.
She had been born into the old rather than the new; she still felt that her kind were superior, stronger, better than the Humans. The Humans, she suspected, were more apt to the yoke than the reins; but she was, among many things, open-minded. She could accept that times were changing; indeed, she did not need to accept so much as merely watch – for it was that apparent.
Oddly enough she was a sociologist; born over seventeen decades ago. She was approaching middle-age, but was none the worse for it, physically; she could still run like the wind and dance like the harp, and her singing voice was much-loved amongst her colleagues. But she had seen so many deaths, so many losses. Once a poet, an author, a singer, she was now a sociologist. In addition, she was an old one in terms of career length, for she had abandoned her initial loves very quickly, once the Long Night had descended.
It was almost as if the fall of the now long-dead Empire of the Eternal Flame had cleared shadows from her mind, with the infinite clarity that only darkness can bring. Those shadows had served only to blind her to her true path: the study of the society, and the pursuit of mathematical understanding of that society. The latter eluded her, and eluded every sociologist still – it would do so for ever, she was sure – but the former was her heart and soul. Her poetry and fictional writings were mere horseplay, simple games with which to test theories in simulation; the reviews were often good indications of the level of reality achieved, and in this she could see many things.
She was, moreover, a member of the most prestigious institute in the Commonality today: the Imperial Guild of Sociology – although it was known by several names, this one she preferred. It was austere, somehow direct and honest in a way that the other names did not quite achieve.
Here, in the garden – or, rather, underneath a tunnel-like pathway that was adjacent to the garden itself – she was at ease. This was the Guild building, with its pretty gardens – all of which were planned by the great mathematicians of the Imperial Garderners Guild – and high arches, its vaunted steps and its masterpieces gleaming on hallowed walls. Of course it was all for show – anyone could see that, know that, feel that… just with a single glance, in fact. That was rather the point. One could not help feeling both in awe and somewhat superior – so long as one were from this society, from Iluvauromen. The Guild knew this society inside out, backwards and forwards – in fact, it manipulated every facet of the Commonality in some way or another; committees were made up of prominent Guild members, the leaders of the main voting blocs on certain issues were invariably Guild members, and three Commonality Executive Council members were high ranking Guild members – one of whom was exceedingly high in the hierarchy of the Guild. And she was indeed here to meet just one of those members; the highest of them. She was clothed in his honour, for he was marrieed and taken – and also because she simply respected him. To be disrobed would not imply that to the fullest degree; somehow, clothes had more impact than nudity…
At least in this society.
He approached, and her heart quickened; she had always felt that way when he was near, but there was nothing to be done – he was utterly taken, smitten, and out of reach besides. His wife was the Empress; she had no wish to die, even if these were enlightened times in which the Empress did not wield life or death at whim. She was no fool: the Empress was wealthy enough to kill her ten times over and make every time seem a perfect accident. Nontheless, she doubted that would happen. Worse: she knew it would not – for he had no interest in her beyond the professional.
She obscured her deepest thoughts carefully – knew he saw past the useless gesture – as she shook his hand, and bowed her head appropriately to the Twelfth Inclination of Honour, and murmoured her greetings amidst the cool breeze. It would rain soon, as it always did at this time of day. The rain would pour from the sky in great sheets, and she would run through it despite the lashing it could very easily give her if she did not wear adequate clothing; the raindrops were so huge, and fell so fast – she had been in temperate climes, and knew that the rain there could cut you, it was so small and thin and spindly. At least, she imagined it could.
“Have you discussed the matter?” Semir-randil I, High King of all the Nenyar, excepting those in Tumnore, was asking in that soft, hypnotic voice.
“No. We haven’t had the chance as yet. Look, Semir, I don’t think this will work. We’ve been pushing it for years now – the public will get rather suspicious. More than they already are. You know as well as I do that these predictions we’ve been making aren’t airtight. By all that’s holy, they’re not even watertight – there’s no way we can keep this up for ever. The population are due a disturbance. They’ve been held down for too long; the dampening measures are failing everywhere. Just this week I heard of an incident at the water pumping facilities out in Shelbattanu-Rhea; the workers there are considering a strike. You know why, I’m sure: they aren’t being given long enough breaks to use the facilities.” ‘Facilities’ was the polite word for the water closet amongst the Nobility and the Imperial Family.
“I heard. It’s preposterous. And I know that we can’t really take action on these predictions; I argued against any such course of action, if you recall. I was voted down. Of course, if we voted now, we might win out – but there’s no point. It’s already decided. The dampeners were put in place. The Coronation was supposed to provide the catalyst for the final mechanisms to be set in place, but it appears that the Humans are less psi-active than we’d even imagined them to be: most of them weren’t…penetrated…by the thought-waves at all. Oh, they all experienced the crowd response, but I could do that alone, if the crowd gathered were large enough. No, Timur, we need a new way forward. This Commonality might be too stable already to survive the century; discontent is multiplying. People are wanting more than is ever going to be feasible, and there’s no way to stop them wanting. We can’t just change them!”
“But we could,” Timur ventured quietly, blinking her eyes slowly. Semir stared at her. She saw that he thought she was insane even for thinking it; she saw disgust flicker in his eyes – worse, she felt both wash over her, gentle though the sensation was. It hurt to be thought of that way; she found her own little damping mechanism right there – shame flared up. “Of course we couldn’t,” she admitted.
“It’s the weakness we never talk about,” Semir agreed, “but there are other ways. Look, it’s all just balance, right? So we kick out a chair leg. Minimize the damage to people, naturally. In fact, zero damage would be preferable, but you know, that’s not always possible. And we have to consider the whole, right? So kick out the chair leg. If it’s the right one, we introduce the instability required. That should give us back the vitality we appear to have lost – have you noticed that it’s harder for the Council to push any action through the Government? It’s pitiful. They’re bickering and bickering, and while they do, the people outside the Commonality are spreading and spreading and we aren’t involved. The world is spinning on while we contemplate what speed it might be moving at, and whether it’s safe or not to get on just yet.”
“We need a meeting,” Timur agreed with Semir’s underlying thought, the one he hadn’t spoken out loud but had kept inside – albeit still on show. “We need to discuss all of this. There are measures that have been talked over before…something regarding the tendency to spiral to chaos springs to mind, but that’s not entirely my field. I’m more the stability freak, as you know.”
She actually said the last with remorse; there was so much she would change if she could. But the past was so long gone that any such thoughts were ridiculous; she had long since found that thinking on them only left her feeling hollow, as if her skin carried all her weight and her internal organs were just gone… leaving her with nothing but empty fears and dreams for a world long lost. It scared her to realize the length of her life thus far, truth be told, and she did not like to be scared. Yet facing the Doom was quite, quite frightening; for she did not know what would come, although she knew it was not the Doom of Men which her kin would face. That was Eru’s gift for Men alone. And one of the greater curses bestowed on her kind in exchange for their lofty nature in other ways was that they were some reborn into new bodies, as the Elves were; so it was believed more and more, and more and more believed that Elves were now being born into Nenyar bodies, too. There was a pattern there that none could quite perceive – but it wasn’t her field, and distracting as it was, it served only to reinforce her fear; for the Nenyar were still Elves in spirit, and Elves were not intended to die so young as did her species.
“I know,” Semir returned softly, turning his amber eyes skyward. The sky was blue up there; the clouds had not yet gathered. They would do so very quickly, and probably with thunder and lightning. The sky liked to be showy – even the stars showed off here, she mused with a smile inside.
The smile in turn caused an amused glance from Semir – he always found amusement even in the bleakest circumstances – and she could not help but smile outwardly as well as in; although darkness still wreathed her heart, for she could not solve this great difficulty ahead.
“We will all die of the agony of our own insularity if we cannot find a way to avert the pitfalls of an entirely stabile society,” Semir noted, very softly; finally speaking the fearful truth.
“I know,” Timur whispered.