Chapter Five
" 'Technology is at home in space', an educated citizen of the Neb would say, and it would be the truth: After disastrous early experimentation, the IES-Beam Engine was found to be totally impossible to use on the surface of a planet without serious consequences- such experimentation nearly devastated the surface of Ma'at itself. With such an efficient system of power generation, however, there was little to no impetus to develop systems that were safe to use within the confines of planetary gravity; these came much later in the form of hydroelectric and solar power systems (note: to this day no native Kemetic installation uses any form of thermal power generation, all systems instead being based on trans-kinetic energy, though metal smelting and other processes do use conventional furnaces. The idea to also use [them] to heat fluid and therefore move it, powering turbines, however, simply never occurred to anyone, perhaps due to limitations in one-way valve technology). While some outside observers may consider this to be a limitation, it should instead be noted that it simply required the transferal of much of the important activity of a thriving, energy-dependent civilization from the ground to space."
From the lecture notes of a course on the history of technology.
Nebukhafre stared dully at his drink, letting the noise and bustle pass by him in the heq'akit. His mind was drawing a blank after one thought: I didn't win. The shock from his loss in the trial had not worn off and was manifesting itself as a painful tightness in his biceps. He abruptly straightened his back in the high-crowned stool that sat at a modestly-expensive private table in the deeper part of the dimmed lounge, arms stuttering until one hand finally found his mostly-unquaffed full-strength red wine and brought it to his mouth for a rapid draining of the cup, bloodshot eyes wide, yet staring off into the distant ceiling of the compartment. He replayed the defining moment of his failure mentally, undisturbed by the music:
After initial setbacks, the engine had kicked in to efficiency: by one minute on I had reached 114% of norm, and by five over three hundred percent had been achieved. I had long surpassed the majority of the competitors and the ship was not at the limit of it's mechanical tolerances. The only other racers were the pair of Peh'reri ships and an unknown in dull black. Nebukhafre's knuckles grew white as they clamped around the thick ceramic ware, now devoid of wine as he remembered. By that time, I was well beyond the speed of light on climb, drawing together towards the Peh'reri, and my pace-mates were falling back. All that was up with me was that unknown craft, still too far away to be but a speck of light, distorted by relativistic effects from the speed. It was not close enough to let it's engines' gravity disrupt the gravitational fields of my own- although an amateur pilot at best, I kept enough of a distance from that speck of distorted light as I could, especially considering that I could not even see it as yet. Eventually I lost it.
His muscles grew even tenser (despite the fact that they'd been nearly locked and uncooperative for the last several hours in stress) as the event replayed itself in agonizing detail. I had passed the first Peh'reri ship easily and was putting distance between us when I noticed the mystery speck again, rapidly approaching from a rear quadrant as if to flank. Briefly it settled down enough for me to actually see it: Blocky and inadequate-looking, pylons at strange useless angles and thrusters pointing in no discernible direction, no obvious crew compartment. I will never forget that thing. It shadowed me for but a moment, letting me see it in as gross detail as is possible at those speeds and distances before it crossed behind me in a sudden arc. I could feel the gravity of it making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. And even now, in remembrance, the hair on the back of Nebukhafre's head shuddered and stood as a cold chill shook his body, the heq'akit erupting in subdued applause as the singer finished a song and began another.
Surely an accident, I thought of that cold, dull grey ship as my own pitched a perceptible amount on it's 'Z' axis, so I raised all of the rear-and-side pointing flaps and flashed a terse message to that mystery ships' pilot: near miss, stand down or around. And, in precaution, I raised Beam Transfer efficiency past my own specified tolerances. I could almost feel the IES-Beams spin around the converter as it extracted power at an efficiency of nearly eight hundred per cent! Gravity was pressing me into the seat and light was beginning to bend at the corners of my sight as I poured on at a speed that I could not comprehend! Surely that mystery ship with its' too-nonchalant pilot must be behind me by light-minutes by now, I thought as I reveled in the speed. Nothing was breaking, nothing was even straining as the final Peh'reri ship was behind me before I could notice that it was ever there. I was in front! I was winning! And I would restore my House to its' previous place in the Neb, no longer the over-reaching, over-ambitious failed Great House, but one of the many hundreds of accepted, normal Houses that have the respect and acceptance of their peers.
Eight hundred and fifty percent and I was settled into my place. But out of the corner of my eye was that distant point of distorted light, that dull grey thing that had shadowed me. Could it be that whatever House had sponsored that could have made the same discoveries as I had? Could that inelegant thing be as fast as this ship? Keep standard distance, I flashed at it. Fairness, I reiterated. And even then, I assumed, it was a fluke that the thing rapidly approached. Almost for a minute, though a real second at those speeds, it held my speed and relative position and I spared it a look out the canopy. And there was the glowing orange cats' iris of a lens, and I knew that someone, a real person, not an abstract ship, was staring right back at me.
I increased efficiency, passing all of my built-in safeties and going to beyond one thousand percent with a dull, almost wet vibration building throughout the ship. A black circle had formed behind me and had moved forward to dominate my vision- all of the Neb condensed there- what was behind me shone on the edges, and what was directly in front was in the middle as well as in front. But that thing kept up with seeming ease, and as I sweated there with my finger on the strobe switch firing off, begging that other pilot or crew or whoever to not disrupt, watching the light pulsate behind me, unable to keep up. The grey block of a thing that had no business flying swept right over me and sent the ship into a spin. I was lost.
Nebukhafre had not even noticed that his cup of wine had been replenished by a passing vendor, and he looked at it with an almost-shocked expression before greedily downing yet another full cup in one gulping drink. the feeling of his inebriation matched the dizzying sensation of feeling gravity wince as his racer had sped out of control. First the converter, then the stream died. The shock as I abruptly dropped out of light-speed nearly killed me on the spot. As it was I only vomited about the compartment, the rancid matter floating and spattering against everything as I squeezed my eyes shut against the terrifying sight of all of creation spinning around me.
Sefekhnebs stood silently in a recess of a huge pillar that was part of the atmospheric processing equipment of the Meh, shrouded in shadows about six tables away from Nebukhafre, loyal yet unable to help for now. After several days, his mouth no longer ached, but there was a dull void of a feeling where the tooth should have been. What heart he had was long ago gone, a consequence of his vocation: but where Nebukhafre felt confusion and sorrow over the recent loss, Sefekhnebs felt a burning, listless rage: Someone had hurt his friend, and someone was going to pay. He had a respect for this man, Nebukhafre, that he had never felt for another member of the Family that had been his only real legitimate employer. Nebukhafre was not the insane result of degeneration, the byproduct of devastating loss like his grandmother had been, nor the pitiful, shabby wreck of a man his father had become- though a well- paying wreck of a man he had been…
Sefekhnebs felt a foreign emotion- a loss for what might have been, a pity for Nebukhafre and his most resilient of beliefs that he could make everything better, for his Family and for the confined people who they still lead. But to Sefekhnebs it was just a variation of hate: Narrowing his eyes, he thought, I have a very short list of suspects.
Suddenly his eyes narrowed, training like arrows away from the singer he had been watching, instantly appraising a girl who had just glided into the heq'akit: She moves like she's never been here before- but this is no different from any of thousands of Mehiu. And I've seen nearly as many. Thin, nearly flat, but with hips, strange, no Nomarchial affiliation by wardrobe, which is almost a bizarre combination of color, to say the least. Unconventional wig with deviant adornment, almost Northern, yet with the wrong face… Where have I seen her before? He shrunk back against the pillar, until only the whites of his eyes were visible in the darkness, and watched her move, more curiosity than habit.
Nebukhafre rose his ceramic cup to take another drink, but found it empty: his routine broken, he finally relaxed, coming out of his slouch and looking about for the vendor. But he stopped, even the room coming into sharp relief as his eyes locked onto a woman who had just entered the heq'akit. Amazing, he thought, shaking his head a bit, forehead rising as he squinted and blinked to clear his mind, surely a dream. Yet when he looked back, the girl was slowly walking into the noisy heq'akit, as yet unnoticed by the majority of the patrons, a real woman and not an apparition. Nebukhafre suddenly stood as the drink vendor passed him, knocking his stool into another patron in his inebriation. But Nebukhafre had eyes only for the woman, and only made a half-hearted attempt to right the stool as he obtained a pair of light, sweet drinks from the vendor.
The room swam drunkenly around Nebukhafre as he negotiated the crowded twenty cubits that separated him from the woman, who stood, listening to the singer on the outskirts of the heq'akit. Sober up, man! screamed Nebukhafres' internal dialogue, and he made great strides: by the time he was handing one of the drinks to the girl he was no longer swaying and had convinced himself that he was nearly sober.
Sefekhnebs had not moved a muscle, keeping his eyes locked onto the scene. Nebukhafre was approaching the girl with drinks in hand, probably not realizing how drunk he is, Mose thought. Nebukhafre was giving one of the drinks to the girl, swishing some over the brim of the cup and onto his sleeve, bowing unusually low, but neither of them noticed: she is smiling up at him as he says something to her, now giggling, squeezing her upper arms against her torso as she demurely holds the cup, takes a sip: seems shocked at the beverage- what has Nebukhafre ordered? He's too drunk, I need to get him back to his rented room. The Ba'at Shemau had departed before the beginning of the race and the rest of his Families' fleet shortly after that, so until funds to book passage back to Ammunma'atkare presented themselves Nebukhafre was going to be confined to the Meh, refusing my help. But Sefekhnebs did not move, waited: She's either a trollop or is as drunk as he is: he should be making a right fool of himself by now. If something goes wrong, I'll get him out of here… One of his hands rested on the hilt of a knife, dangling in his armpit from his collar, under his robe. The other increased its' grip on another, less savory tool of his profession, the man ready to move instantly should it be required-- but he stood back and watched.
"What is your name?" Nebukhafre said, too loudly, over the din of the singer and her accompaniment, handing the drink to the woman before him. She turned, eyes wide, gorgeous, towards him, the ornate streaks of the wig above her ears glimmering as she moved as artificial night set behind her. She looked down with curiosity at the drink, then they narrowed as she laughed, accepting, and said something that Nebukhafre couldn't hear over the noise. He bent down to put his ear more at level with her, inhaling deeply as the world suddenly tilted and swayed, but only briefly. She smelled foreign, different, but strangely familiar, and her voice-- what he could hear of it-- was smooth and melodious.
He straightened back up, watching with a rapt fascination as she sipped the drink, enchanted as her eyes grew wide, looked up at him. "Ituai, you said?" She almost seemed to try to say something, but held it back as her voice was drowned out by more applause. Nebukhafre took a sip of his own drink, shocked at how sweet it was, and she laughed again as a puckering look shot across his face and he couldn't help but to join her. "I'm Nebukhafre," he said, and caught himself-- I think that I will keep the rest of my name to myself… In case our reputation has preceded me.
The world was passing them by in a dimly-colorful splash that he ignored, straining to hear Ituai as she twisted her torso back and forth, looking towards the stage and expressively moved her entire face when she spoke, eyes wide as he finally caught something that she said clearly: "She really can sing, can't she? I've never heard anything like it!"
Ituai sipped her drink again, face reacting with such force that Nebukhafre laughed, her sudden cross look at him only increasing his mirth until she joined him. Lightly placing his hand on her arm, he said, "I've a table, would you care to join me?"
An instrumental cadenza swallowed most of her reply, but Ituai smiled a charming, thin-lipped smile and walked with him towards the table, where he returned his stool to it's normal location and ordered two more drinks.
Sefekhnebs silently cursed Nebukhafre for sitting with his back to him, blocking most of the view of the girl. I don't think that he knows what he's doing, he thought, watching the girl bob in and out of his field of view. How Nebukhafre just avoided having the Sau'ii en Ma'at arrest him, swaying drunkenly like that and dragging some young girl off to his table in plain sight, I can't understand. Almost on cue, two of those enforcers skirted the heq'akit, the lights reflecting crazily off the facets of their armor, faces obscured under the tinted visors as they passed unnoticed by most of the patrons. The girl had, in the meantime, started speaking animatedly, moving with swaying gestures. He tried to read her lips, but failed: She is certainly a drunk, slurring like that. I can't understand a bit of what she's saying. But she either has no dangerous ambition here or she's damn good… Where have I seen her likes before?
Nebukhafre's face was a curious mask: intent, his eyes only found focus on Ituai, taking in her wild gestures and exclamations in amazement. She is the most beautiful woman that I have ever seen, he thought. What an amazing face! Long, with such a narrow nose over renpet-red lips that move with a magic that can only captivate me. Such thin arms, like those of a fragile vase. He nodded enthusiastically as she reached the end of some line of commentary. Being this much closer to the stage, Nebukhafre had heard probably only seven or eight words that Ituai had said since they took a seat, but just the melodic rise and fall of her voice had him mesmerized. She folded her fingers together over her third empty cup and flashed a beatific, squinting grin at him. "I adore you," he said, but it was totally drowned out by the rousing noise around him and he followed her eyes to the stage. He had totally forgotten the earlier events; the reason that he was so drunk to begin with: enrapture had replaced the hangover of fear, mystification had absorbed sullen disappointment.
The singer was bowing, her provocative grey and blue outfit shimmering around her as she drank in the accolades of the crowd, feeding off the attention-- turning so abruptly had thrown Nebukhafre back into an inebriated discombobulation and he flew off his stool, landing unceremoniously on the floor.
Now move! Mose shouted at himself, coming out of the shadow like the last drop of water from a depleted vessel as he saw Nebukhafre fall from his seat. The man had drank eight more cups of something that steamed since he had returned to the table with the girl, and Sefekhnebs knew that the drinks that did that were not easily tolerated by most inexperienced drinkers. But the crowd was pressing the stage, and Mose only had split-second flashes of Nebukhafre as he was caught up in the inundation of people that thronged around the singer as she left the stage. Nebukhafre was back on his feet, his arm around the girls' narrow waist in one brief vision, then the two of them were stumbling out of the heq'akit while Mose was being pushed the other way. His hand was on his dagger, which had nearly left its' concealed location, when he noticed the slow-moving Sau'ii en Ma'at patrol returning to the area. He dropped his hand in frustration, eyes following Nebukhafre and the girl as they rounded a distant corner and left sight.
Ituai had somewhere found another cup of that strange, steamy beverage that they'd been drinking, and she handed it to Nebukhafre as they laughingly stumbled down a random abandoned corridor, no destination in mind. Dramatically, he summoned the most solemn expression that he could, mockingly bowing to her before shooting back a large gulp of the drink and blowing the steam out of his nose.
Ituai's eyes became huge as her hands shot to cover her mouth in shock, but it broke and left her laughing. "You have no idea who you just looked like!" she almost squealed, jabbing him in the arm as he handed her the drink. The steam was all gone and she looked disappointedly at it, then drained the cup and tossed it away with a laugh, the cheap earthenware shattering in a corner.
"Whoever it was," Nebukhafre slurred, "could they be quite like me?" He stumbled, then regained his posture, eyes crinkled in drunken happiness.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "he's nothing like you." She twirled, her white, red and purple gown spinning with a fluttering noise around her. "We're nothing alike, you see," she snickered, "all proper and formal." Ituai squared her shoulders and stood at a mocking attention, then crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, making Nebukhafre explode in laughter.
Nebukhafre reached out to snatch her up, most incredible woman to have been born of the stars, he thought, but she spun away from his clumsy reach and posed in a doorway, laughing at him. "Competition, do I have?" he got out, mincing words left and right, stumbling off after her.
Her sudden look of disdain made Nebukhafre pause. "Competition?" the girl spat, like it was a curse. She stood, swaying, thoughtful, drunk in the doorway, glancing sidelong at Nebukhafre as he came through the door after her, trying to regain composure, Suddenly she flushed, face turning almost a bright red as she looked away, and then back: a serious expression. But the one that he returned to her was not serious at all- whimsically, he stopped in the door, then pantomimed a backwards walk through the portal, then fore again with such a ridiculous look on his face that she could do nothing but keep herself from falling over in laughter.
The pair finished stumbling through the open portal onto a long steel causeway that extended towards one of the other main platforms of the Meh. Wide and flat, the edges were lost in darkness, but the stars were clearly visible above and around them. Off in the distance, rising like a mountain from the blackness of space, the next platform of the Meh stood enshrouded in thousands of twinkling, glistening lights that were windows. Neither had any idea where they were anymore, and Nebukhafre said as much, slumping against one of the monolithic pylons that held a distant shielding generator up over their heads.
"I don't care where I am!" shouted Ituai, holding her arms out and leaning back, spinning in lazy drunken circles like the lazy drunken circles that Nebukhafre was floating in now, barely sitting upright. "Competition!" she shouted, angrily at the stars, who patiently paid her no real attention. Her long black hair had somewhere lost it's ornamentation, and the hair was now spinning free, uncoiffured, swishing around her face like a halo. She stopped abruptly, feet planted widely, looking down at Nebukhafre, glowering like she'd seen someone else do so many times: "Tell me who I am," she demanded, swaying slightly in her intoxication, voice not loud, but with a presence, like someone else had used so many times. But a long strand of her straight hair dropped down over one eye, ruining the aggressive image. She crossed her eyes at it and blew it out of the way, then again as it disobediently bounced back off the side of her nose but the viciousness was gone: she looked back at Nebukhafre, trying to stand up against the shield generator pylon, one of the moons of whatever planet the Meh orbited rising behind him, but distorted by the shield to be a swirling, psychedelic ball of color.
"You are the most amazing woman that I've ever met, terrifyingly beautiful." Nebukhafre tried to say, but his back slid off of the pylon, and all that came out was "you… amazing… woman…" as he fell with a thump to the steel decking. Suddenly she was beside him, holding him up, small muscles in her arms straining, helping him stand. But they were both too drunk for that kind of thing and found that the ground was much friendlier to their distorted sense of balance as they half-fell, half-sat back down beside the pylon on that stark steel landscape.
They sat hip-to-hip, but opposite, their faces nearly touching, nearly embracing as the Neb swam around them and that moon rose higher. She smelled the alcohol on his breath, but she also smelled… engines… But it didn't bother her on Nebukhafre. She ran her fingers through his hair, feeling the sensations, barely treading water in inebriation. "Say it again," she whispered to him, pressing her forehead against his as he wrapped his arms around her, feeling things that she'd never felt before.
Nebukhafres' analytical mind attributed this to the alcohol, but he knew better: he had already drown in Ituai. He gave up and took a deep breath of the smothering water. "You are the most…" he swallowed, never so solemn in his life, "most amazing woman that I have ever met." And he meant every word of it.
Ituai could not help it when she brushed her lips against his, could not stop when she kissed him, and took a deep breath of her own when he kissed her back. But her eyes were open, while his were closed as the kiss became many, their breathing becoming fast and hard as they experimented with this, hesitatingly, then aggressively. They rolled onto the deck, no longer even pretending to sit. His words kept booming in her mind… Woman… Amazing… but still part of Ituai made her keep her eyes open, though the whole universe swirled around her like a rock thrown in water and that moon looked like it was bleeding bright pink blood as it shimmered in the prismatic effects of the shield.
As she fell against him and they began to move as one, she thought that she saw something in the portal, something that stood wrong- someone who seemed to pour out of the shadowy doorway. She gasped and started above him, but Nebukhafre tenderly brushed her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear, she is not wearing a wig, he thought with some amazement, but the thought was so completely removed from his mind as he lightly brushed his fingers against her cheek, down her neck and along her body that it was as never bidden.
The world was moving too much: bleeding skies, smearing moons, the universe positively percolating around her. Ituai finally closed her eyes, mouth slightly agape as they began to move again, all thoughts gone from her mind, a deep, shuddering gasp escaping her lips almost convulsively.
Might do him some good, Mose thought as he took one last look at the girl, almost enviously, but that kind of appreciation had all the wrong connotations to the man. The dagger went back into its' sheath, and he turned away to wait.
KFL by Allen P Gresham is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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