Memory Prime by Judith Reeves-Stevens

Author:Judith Reeves-Stevens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2000-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

THE KLINGONS LOVED to tell the story of al Fred ber'nhard Nob'l, the tera'ngan inventor who, as had happened so many times on so many worlds, once felt he had gone too far and had created the ultimate weapon.

Faced with nightmares of a world ruined by the destructive forces he had called into being, Nob'l attempted to salve his conscience and bring forth the best in humans by using the profits from his inventions to award prizes in honor of the most outstanding achievements in science and peace. Of course, in typical tera'ngan fashion, as the Klingons were quick to point out, those profits were not set aside for that purpose until after the inventor's death.

As the long Terran years passed, Nob'l's inventions served the warlords of Earth well. Despite his fears, other ultimate weapons came and went with predictable regularity—mustard gas, fusion bombs, particle curtains, and smart bacteria—until his devices lay beside the rocks and sharpened sticks in museums. In fact, and this invariably had the Klingons brushing the tears of laughter from their eyes no matter how many times they heard the story, the only real casualty of the great Terran wars fueled by Nob'l's inventions over the century in which his prizes were awarded, were the prizes themselves. Three times they were suspended because of hostilities between nations. The third time, as Earth shuddered beneath the multiple onslaughts of its warriors Klingons admired most—k'Han and g'Reen—the suspended prizes were not resurrected, and lay buried amid the ashes of so much of the Earth that the Klingons considered foul and weak and better lost.

For the events a few light-years removed from Earth, the Klingons had a bit more respect. Two centuries before Nob'l lay awake in foolish terror over destroying his world with a few tonnes of C 3H5(NO 3)3, the warlord Zalar Mag'nees, ruler of her planet's greatest city state, realized that the nature of combat in her world was changing and that ideas as well as strength and armaments must be brought to battle.

Mag'nees established an elaborate educational system designed to attract the greatest intellects among her citizens to the problems of war. Those who contributed the best new work achieved the highest honor: a commission in the warlord's personal corps of scientists.

Under her rule, with the brilliant work of her honored scientists and engineers, the whole of the planet was soon united, or conquered, as the Klingons told it, under one ruler. Though the warlord's commissions were discontinued after almost two centuries of global peace and their war-born heritage forgotten, the philosophy of subterfuge and protective concealment that had proved so useful in establishing the undisputed rule of Mag'nees, still pervaded all levels of her planet's society. Thus, when electromagnetic communication systems were discovered, it went without question that the signals would travel by wire instead of by atmospheric transmissions open to any unsuspected enemy's receivers. Power plants were buried as a matter of course and fiberoptic transmission of all signals was enthusiastically adopted as soon as the technology became available.

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