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runsforcelery
First Space Lord
Posts: 2425
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2009 11:39 am
Location: South Carolina
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While I'm up and posting snippets . . . .
_________________________________________
.III.
Long grass blows on the banks of Despair,
Guarding the graves of the dead.
Mountain storms weep for the sleeping,
And the God of the vanished
Walks through the hills
Calling the names of the gone.
— The Dark Fall Saga.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Madame President.”
The tall, silver haired man stood and walked around his desk to offer Eloise Pritchart his hand. Like most Sanctuarians, he was dark-skinned and that silver hair had once been dark brown, but his eyes were a light, startling blue. And like far too many Sanctuarians, he’d been too old for Prolong when the People’s Republic discovered Refuge.
At least that’s one damned thing the Legislaturalists got right, Pritchart thought as she crossed the spacious office to meet him. They even offered it universally, not restricted solely to people working for them, the way they did the advanced degree programs.
“Shirkahna Ambart,” she responded taking his hand in the three-fingered grip that was the Sanctuarian version of a handshake.
Shirkahna was her host’s title, which the protocolists told her translated literally as “shepherd” but could also be translated as both “warlord” or “sentinel.” Apparently, Sanctuarian was a . . . flexible language. However it translated, however, Shirkahna Ambart VIII was the hereditary ruler of Ankhassar, Sanctuary’s most ancient and powerful pre-rediscovery empire. That had simplified things when the Legislaturalists went looking for someone to run the native side of the planet for them.
Like all Sanctuarians, the shirkahna used only one name publicly. Legally, Sanctuary usage attached both a patronymic and a matronymic, so technically, he was Ambart Ambartson-Melynyson, although no one would ever address him as such.
“Please, be seated,” he invited, escorting her across the sunny chamber towards a conversational nook below the windows overlooking the paved courtyard below. Sheila Thiessen, the head of Pritchart’s personal security detail, drifted silently and unobtrusively along behind. Aside from bodyguards and high ranking military offiers, no armed Sanctuarian was ever allowed in the shirkahana’s presence, yet Ambart took no notice at all of Thiessen’s presence.
He waved Pritchart into a comfortable armchair, looking out through the tower window at a deep blue sky. Anvil-headed cumulonimbus clouds swept towards Mountain Fort, crowned in the flicker of distant lightning, and the temperature had been dropping steadily when she arrived. In fact, her shuttle flight crew had clearly been relieved to get her safely on the ground before the looming thunderstorms arrived.
She hoped the weather wasn’t some sort of metaphor for her visit.
Below the fourth-floor window, the city of Mountain Fort sprawled out about the looming castle which had given its name to the entire city. Mountain Fort had been Ankhassa’s imperial city for the past six hundred local years. Its population would scarcely have qualified as a moderate-sized town on Nouveau Paris, but its quarter-million people made it the largest city on Sanctuary and the low-lying architecture of a pre-counter-grav civilization made it look even larger.
“Thank you for making an opportunity for me to meet with you,” she said as Thiessen settled behind her shoulder.
“Under the circumstances, it seemed the thing to do.” Ambart’s Standard English carried a slight accent — he’d been in his mid-thirties before he learned to speak it — but the edge of dry amusement came through clearly and he tilted his head to one side. “In fact, I was rather surprised that you requested a meeting. I believe the highest ranking member of Haven’s government ever to visit Refuge — civilian member, I mean — was Foreign Secretary Bergen when he signed our intial treaty with my father. And I fear the People’s Republic’s — I mean, the Republic’s — representatives’ contacts since have been a bit more . . . peremptory, shall we say?”
“I don’t doubt it.” Pritchart shook her own head. “My . . . predecessors weren’t noted for ‘wasting’ courtesy when they didn’t need to.”
“I’m afraid that’s been my own observation,” the shirkahna said. “Which, I trust you’ll forgive me for pointing out, seemed to just a bit . . . ironic for such an egalitarian regime.”
Pritchart hid a wince, although his point was well taken. Especially coming from a man whose family had ruled almost a third of his homeworld for the last several centuries.
“You’re right,” she said. “In fact, having waded through the last thirty or forty T-years of reports, memos, and correspondence, I’d have to say that I detect a certain . . . imperious note in all of the previous regime’s conversations with you.”
“I’m sure you do. Although, to be fair, I doubt many Sanctuarians would find that out of place. The average lifespan here on Sanctuary, even for those without Prolong, has increased by thirty percent since the Republic discovered us. The standard of living has probably risen by no more than, oh, ten or twenty thousand percent, and it’s continued to follow a steadily rising trajectory for over half my lifetime.” He smiled almost whimsically. “Against that backdrop, a certain degree of what I suppose one might call proprietary authority is probably understandable.”
“Understandable but not exactly commendable,” Pritchart said. He arched an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged with less than complete happiness.
“Shirkahna Ambart,” she said then, “I’ve come to see you not simply because some sort of courtesy visit from the Republic’s chief executive is so long overdue, but also because I find myself in a quandary. A deep and, to be honest, very difficult one.”
"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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