It wasn’t Mawhrin-Skel or Loash the verbose; it wasn’t even the same type. It was a little larger and fatter and it had no aura at all. It stopped just below the tree and said in a pleasant voice, “Mr Gurgeh?”
He jumped out of the tree. The herd of feyl started and disappeared, leaping into the forest in a confusion of green shapes. “Yes?” he said.
“Good afternoon. My name’s Worthil; I’m from Contact. Pleased to meet you.”
“Hello.”
“What a lovely place. Did you have the house built?”
“Yes,” Gurgeh said. Irrelevant small-talk; a nano-second interrogation of Hub’s memories would have told the machine exactly when Ikroh was built, and by whom.
“Quite beautiful. I couldn’t help noticing the roofs all slope at more or less the same mean angle as the surrounding mountain slopes. Your idea?”
“A private aesthetic theory,” Gurgeh admitted, a little more impressed; he’d never mentioned that to anybody. The fieldless machine made a show of looking around.
“Hmm. Yes, a fine house and an impressive setting. But now: may I come to the reason for my visit?”
Gurgeh sat down cross-legged by the tree. “Please do.”
The drone lowered itself to keep level with his face. “First of all, let me apologise if we put you off earlier. I think the drone who visited you previously may have taken its instructions a little too literally, though, to give it its due, time is rather limited… Anyway; I’m here to tell you all you want to know. We have, as you probably suspected, found something we think might interest you. However…” The drone turned away from the man, to look at the house and its garden again. “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to leave your beautiful home.”
“So it does involve travelling?”
“Yes. For some time.”
“How long?” Gurgeh asked.
The drone seemed to hesitate. “May I tell you what it is we’ve found, first?”
“All right.”
“It must be in confidence, I’m afraid,” the drone said apologetically. “What I’ve come to tell you has to remain restricted for the time being. You’ll understand why once I’ve explained. Can you give me your word you won’t let this go any further?”
“What would happen if I say No?”
“I leave. That’s all.”
Gurgeh shrugged, brushed a little bark from the hem of the gathered-up robe he was wearing. “All right. In secret, then.”
Worthil floated upwards a little, turning its front briefly towards Ikroh. “It’ll take a little time to explain. Might we retire to your house?”
“Of course.” Gurgeh rose to his feet.
Gurgeh sat in the main screen-room of Ikroh. The windows were blanked out and the wall holoscreen was on; the Contact drone was controlling the room systems. It put the lights out. The screen went blank, then showed the main galaxy, in 2-D, from a considerable distance. The two Clouds were nearest Gurgeh’s point of view, the larger Cloud a semi-spiral with a long tail leading away from the galaxy, and the smaller Cloud vaguely Y-shaped.
“The Greater and Lesser Clouds,” the drone Worthil said. “Each about one hundred thousand light years away from where we are now. No doubt you’ve admired them from Ikroh in the past; they’re quite visible, though you’re on the under-edge of the main galaxy relative to them, and so looking at them through it. We’ve found what you might consider a rather interesting game… here.” A green dot appeared near the centre of the smaller Cloud.
Gurgeh looked at the drone. “Isn’t that,” he said, “rather far away? I take it you’re suggesting I go there.”
“It is a long way away, and we do suggest just that. The journey will take nearly two years on the fastest ships, due to the nature of the energy grid; it’s more tenuous out there, between the star-clumps. Inside the galaxy such a journey would take less than a year.”
“But that means I’d be away four years,” Gurgeh said, staring at the screen. His mouth had gone dry.
“More like five,” the drone said matter-of-factly.
“That’s… a long time.”
“It is, and I’ll certainly understand if you decline our invitation. Though we do think you’ll find the game itself interesting. First of all, however, I have to explain a little about the setting, which is what makes the game unique.” The green dot expanded, became a rough circle. The screen went suddenly out-holo, filling the room with stars. The rough green circle of suns became an even rougher sphere. Gurgeh experienced the momentary swimming sensation he sometimes felt when surrounded by space or its impression.
“These stars,” Worthil said — the green-coloured stars, at least a couple of thousand suns, flashed once — “are under the control of what one can only describe as an empire. Now…” The drone turned to look at him. The little machine lay in space like some impossibly large ship, stars in front of it as well as behind it. “It is unusual for us to discover an imperial power-system in space. As a rule, such archaic forms of authority wither long before the relevant species drags itself off the home planet, let alone cracks the lightspeed problem, which of course one has to do, to rule effectively over any worthwhile volume.
“Every now and again, however, Contact disturbs some particular ball of rock and discovers something nasty underneath. On every occasion, there is a specific and singular reason, some special circumstance which allows the general rule to go by the board. In the case of the conglomerate you see before you — apart from the obvious factors, such as the fact that we didn’t get out there until fairly recently, and the lack of any other powerful influence in the Lesser Cloud — that special circumstance is a game.”
It took a while to sink in. Gurgeh looked at the machine. “A game?” he said to it.
“That game is called ‘Azad’ by the natives. It is important enough for the empire itself to take its name from the game. You are looking at the Empire of Azad.”
Gurgeh did just that. The drone went on. “The dominant species is humanoid, but, very unusually — and certain analyses claim that this too has been a factor in the survival of the empire as a social system — it is composed of three sexes.” Three figures appeared in the centre of Gurgeh’s field of vision, as though standing in the middle of the ragged sphere of stars. They were rather shorter than Gurgeh if the scale was right. Each of them looked odd in different ways, but they shared what looked to Gurgeh to be rather short legs and slightly bloated, flat and very pale faces. “The one on the left,” Worthil said, “is a male, carrying the testes and penis. The middle one is equipped with a kind of reversible vagina, and ovaries. The vagina turns inside-out to implant the fertilised egg in the third sex, on the right, which has a womb. The one in the middle is the dominant sex.”
Gurgeh had to think about this. “The what?” he said.
“The dominant sex,” Worthil repeated. “Empires are synonymous with centralised — if occasionally schismatised — hierarchical power structures in which influence is restricted to an economically privileged class retaining its advantages through — usually — a judicious use of oppression and skilled manipulation of both the society’s information dissemination systems and its lesser — as a rule nominally independent — power systems. In short, it’s all about dominance. The intermediate — or apex — sex you see standing in the middle there controls the society and the empire. Generally, the males are used as soldiers and the females as possessions. Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea?”
“Well.” Gurgeh shook his head. “I don’t understand how it works, but if you say it does… all right.” He rubbed his beard. “I take it this means these people can’t change sex.”