Opening Wonders by Rajnar Vajra

Author:Rajnar Vajra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press

A break in this stressful monotony occurred on Tuesday, when Rider ferried me to Blenntown. We used an ultra-fast “Super-Safe-road” to reach Triangle Fourteen near Crossroad’s equator.

Blenntown: an ultra-alien Venice with liquid streets and briny odors. Colored mists lofted Blenn-kind up the walls of geodesic domes, into doorways hundreds of feet up. In the canals, the Blenn became torpedoes leaving v-shaped wakes. Amphibians plus, said Rider. Vestigial wings rattling beneath chitin produced their buzzing voices.

Nemes cruised around on silent boats but, oddly, I saw more Vyre.

Two Blenn towed our raft to the dome-shaped residence of a Least, the local queen. Even the huge, fierce-looking Blenn warriors guarding the entrance were self-deprecating as they let us in. We were expected. Rider warned me not to say “your Highness.”

The dome, from inside, proved to be a symphony in stained glass accompanied by smokes rising from golden censors. Couldn’t smell a thing, so evidently my microdocs vetoed the smoke. Ribbons of pink mist suspended the faceted censors in midair. Lovely, but my mind was elsewhere.

I’d been on Crossroad a week, had achieved nothing, and my time here was running out. I had to find the human games today.

In a wide and shallow pool, a Blenn-shaped giant with a grotesquely distended abdomen floated on her back. I know a queen when I see one. After Rider introduced me, she greeted me via a permanently mounted speechstaff and offered her regrets if I found the environment uncomfortably ostentatious.

In my distraction, I blurted out, “It’s beautiful. But I’m surprised someone with your title would live in a palace.”

She responded as if my words hadn’t set a new benchmark for the concept “ill-considered.”

“Perhaps I can clarify, Professor. We Leasts are servants of servants. And since our planets are crowded, we require much soothing water.”

Social lubricant?

The Queen paused for a time, perhaps offering me the floor, before continuing. “For a great depth of time, competition among ourselves has been hazardous to us, while cooperation has encouraged our survival. It has become our nature to defer to others.”

Another pause, which I filled with a lame, “I’ve noticed.”

“You are a clear observer, Professor. You are probably aware that deference itself can become competitive.”

“Oh?”

“Imagine two of us arriving together at a doorway wide enough for only one.”

Right. Two Blenn could make Alphonse and Gaston look like amateurs. “How do you work it out?”

“Our solution involves a form of sacrifice. After ages of overcrowding, we have learned to … taste pride’s pressure in members of our own species. When the pair reach the door, the humblest one walks through, putting herself first to allow the other the humility of putting herself last. I hope I have spoken plainly for I have already wasted too much of your precious time and energy.”

Reading between the lines, the Queen had more important business and the audience was over. Rider and I thanked her, she thanked us twice as hard, and then a Blenn “wet-nurse”—surely a term meaning something different to amphibians—led us from the throne-less throne room.

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