punitive expeditions.”
“If a robber steals your money because he’s got a deadly weapon and you haven’t, does that make him your social equal?” Orsini looked tired and harried. “Anyway, the emperor and his courtiers and officials don’t have to face the facts. They’re isolated from the world in that enormous palace complex in Shandu, living in a world of the lies their bureaucratic sycophants tell them, never talking to anyone else, out of touch with reality. You simply have no idea of their blind, self-satisfied complacency!”
“I think I might,” said Jason, chuckling inwardly as he recalled the Council.
They passed through the terminal, walking with a springy step in Zirankhu’s 0.72 G gravity but growing slightly out of breath, not having had time to adjust to air that was thinner and less oxygen-rich than Earth’s though within the limits of human breathability. Outside, their car waited. A solidly built Eurasian man leaning against it stood up straight as they approached.
“Captain Janos Chang, Major,” he greeted Rojas. Both were in civilian clothes, so no salutes were exchanged. Instead, Rojas extended her hand first, as was proper. Chang showed no sign of resentment at being relieved of command of the local IDRF team; if anything, he seemed relieved.
Rojas introduced the Authority people while their luggage was loaded into the trunk by half a dozen native Zirankh’shi workers—considerably more than was necessary, even though this was not a physically strong species. Another Zirankh’shi did nothing more than supervise . . . and “supervision” seemed to consist of nothing more than standing there and lending the presence of an extremely low-ranking member of the all-pervasive bureaucracy, without which practically no act in the Manziru Empire was supposed to be performed. Afterwards, he would write a report which would vanish, unread by anyone, into the cavernous storehouses that held the suffocating weight of millions and billions of such reports.
Jason watched curiously, never having seen Zirankh’shi in the flesh before. They were bilaterally symmetrical, as was almost invariably the case with tool-using species; an active animal profits from having a definite front end. Almost as typically, they had four limbs and had liberated the forward pair for tool-using by evolving a more or less erect posture. The result was an upright biped a little less than five feet tall, gracile by human standards, covered with fur ranging from cream-colored to deep yellow. The stature was mostly flexible torso and long neck, for the legs were short—considerably shorter than the arms. Both pairs of limbs ended in appendages of six digits, in sets of three. These had evolved into mutually opposable sets of three fingers in the case of the hands, allowing a manual dexterity in some ways superior to that of humanity’s four fingers and one opposable thumb. The face was dominated by enormous greenish or amber eyes that seemed ill-adapted to the light of a Sol-like G0v star until one noticed the nictitating membranes that protected them. The jaw was delicate, tapering to a narrow snout which made the guttural sounds of their language seem incongruous, for irrelevant anthropocentric reasons. And while convention dictated the use of masculine pronouns for them, they were in fact fully functional hermaphrodites. (Which, Jason had read, contributed to the empire’s stability by simplifying the succession.)
Given their fur covering, and the lack of seasonal variations on a planet with very little axial tilt, they had no need for clothing, especially in these near-equatorial latitudes. Whatever they wore, hung from a kind of harness, was purely ornamental, and minimal in the case of the workers. The “supervisor” had a tiny medallion which meant much in the equally tiny but all-important gradations of Manziru officialdom.
The loading took several times as long as it had to, but Jason noted that Orsini
“If a robber steals your money because he’s got a deadly weapon and you haven’t, does that make him your social equal?” Orsini looked tired and harried. “Anyway, the emperor and his courtiers and officials don’t have to face the facts. They’re isolated from the world in that enormous palace complex in Shandu, living in a world of the lies their bureaucratic sycophants tell them, never talking to anyone else, out of touch with reality. You simply have no idea of their blind, self-satisfied complacency!”
“I think I might,” said Jason, chuckling inwardly as he recalled the Council.
They passed through the terminal, walking with a springy step in Zirankhu’s 0.72 G gravity but growing slightly out of breath, not having had time to adjust to air that was thinner and less oxygen-rich than Earth’s though within the limits of human breathability. Outside, their car waited. A solidly built Eurasian man leaning against it stood up straight as they approached.
“Captain Janos Chang, Major,” he greeted Rojas. Both were in civilian clothes, so no salutes were exchanged. Instead, Rojas extended her hand first, as was proper. Chang showed no sign of resentment at being relieved of command of the local IDRF team; if anything, he seemed relieved.
Rojas introduced the Authority people while their luggage was loaded into the trunk by half a dozen native Zirankh’shi workers—considerably more than was necessary, even though this was not a physically strong species. Another Zirankh’shi did nothing more than supervise . . . and “supervision” seemed to consist of nothing more than standing there and lending the presence of an extremely low-ranking member of the all-pervasive bureaucracy, without which practically no act in the Manziru Empire was supposed to be performed. Afterwards, he would write a report which would vanish, unread by anyone, into the cavernous storehouses that held the suffocating weight of millions and billions of such reports.
Jason watched curiously, never having seen Zirankh’shi in the flesh before. They were bilaterally symmetrical, as was almost invariably the case with tool-using species; an active animal profits from having a definite front end. Almost as typically, they had four limbs and had liberated the forward pair for tool-using by evolving a more or less erect posture. The result was an upright biped a little less than five feet tall, gracile by human standards, covered with fur ranging from cream-colored to deep yellow. The stature was mostly flexible torso and long neck, for the legs were short—considerably shorter than the arms. Both pairs of limbs ended in appendages of six digits, in sets of three. These had evolved into mutually opposable sets of three fingers in the case of the hands, allowing a manual dexterity in some ways superior to that of humanity’s four fingers and one opposable thumb. The face was dominated by enormous greenish or amber eyes that seemed ill-adapted to the light of a Sol-like G0v star until one noticed the nictitating membranes that protected them. The jaw was delicate, tapering to a narrow snout which made the guttural sounds of their language seem incongruous, for irrelevant anthropocentric reasons. And while convention dictated the use of masculine pronouns for them, they were in fact fully functional hermaphrodites. (Which, Jason had read, contributed to the empire’s stability by simplifying the succession.)
Given their fur covering, and the lack of seasonal variations on a planet with very little axial tilt, they had no need for clothing, especially in these near-equatorial latitudes. Whatever they wore, hung from a kind of harness, was purely ornamental, and minimal in the case of the workers. The “supervisor” had a tiny medallion which meant much in the equally tiny but all-important gradations of Manziru officialdom.
The loading took several times as long as it had to, but Jason noted that Orsini
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