We stepped out of Sir’s spaceship on the edge of an enormous city. Towering buildings rose all around us and all of them were a brilliant, spotless white. The roads seemed to be paved with gold, making me think of Heaven. People of all kinds—some Korrigon like Sir but many more of different alien races—were bustling all around.
There was a tall Korrigon warrior with full-black eyes and a fierce face waiting for Sir. His gray skin had a bluish tinge to it, unlike Sir’s purplish undertones, and his horns were slightly curlier. His candalla was completely covered from tip to root in silver rings. I wondered if it was some kind of armor for his tail.
“Overlord,” he said, bowing deeply as we stepped off the ship’s gangplank and down onto the golden street. “We are deeply relieved to have you home again.”
“And I am glad to be home, Captain Tau’rex,” Sir said, nodding his head. “How fares the Northern Continent in my absence?”
“Very well indeed, my Lord—you made certain everything was in order before you left and we have maintained it that way,” the Korrigon warrior said. “We had a few brief skirmishes with battalions from the South—Southern warriors dressed as mercenaries, mostly—but we repelled them easily enough and liberated them of their Mind-Control chips. They are living peacefully in the Northern Continent now and have no wish to return to their former mindless servitude.”
“Mind-Control chips?” I asked, frowning.
The warrior looked down at me.
“Is this the pet you sought, Overlord?”
“She is. This is little one,” Sir looked at me gravely. “I will answer all your questions as we make our way to the throne room, little one,” he told me. “For now, be patient—I must know if there is any news that Captain Tau’rex can tell me before we see the Sovereign, Splendara the Third and Thirtieth.”
“Yes, Sir,” I said, frowning a little at being dismissed. But we were in his home world now—of course he was going to treat me as a pet and not as an equal, as he had been mostly doing on the ship.
“What news of Court?” Sir asked, turning back to the Captain.
“Nothing good, I’m afraid.” The other man grimaced. “Sir Gra’multh has been buzzing in the Sovereign’s ear day and night about taking possession of the Goddess’s Cloak galaxy for as long as you’ve been gone.”
“Gods damn him!” Sir growled. “He’s already subjugated every free world in our own galaxy—the male has no shame and nothing but greed in his black heart.”
“I fear you’re right, Overlord,” Captain Tau’rex said grimly. “But I further fear that he may be swaying the Sovereign to his point of view. He has offered to tithe fifty percent of his profits to the crown and he talks constantly of how grand it would be for her to be the ruler of not one but two galaxies.”
Sir gritted his teeth.
“As if ruling one is not taxing enough! The Sovereign is too young and impressionable to be left alone with a snake like Gra’multh. Our last Sovereign, her older sister, would never have listened to his lies and enticements.”
“Be that as it may, Overlord, I fear she is close to agreeing with Sir Gra’multh that the Goddess’s Cloak galaxy should be subjugated. You will have to make a powerful argument to sway her to your side.”
“I believe I have just such an argument,” Sir said. “I have spent the last two solar months collecting data about the Twelve Peoples of the Goddess’s Cloak and the worlds they live on. They may not be as advanced as we are, but they are sentient beings who should be allowed to live as they choose, unmolested by a greedy bastard like Gra’multh.”
“Then I pray to the Goddess Eternal the Sovereign will listen to you.” Captain Tau’rex bowed his head briefly. “I have brought your royal chariot to carry you to the throne room,” he added and nodded at a strange looking contraption I hadn’t seen before.
It really did look a little like a chariot made of pure gold but there were no horses pulling it. Instead, it hovered in midair as though waiting patiently for us to board it.
“Thank you, Captain Tau’rex,” Sir said, nodding his head to the warrior. “I shall make my ascent to the throne room. Come along, little one,” he added, tugging lightly on my leash.
“Yes, Sir,” I murmured and followed him to the golden chariot.
Sir lifted me into it, since it was hovering about three feet off the ground, and instructed me to stand beside him on the left.
“Why isn’t there a place to sit?” I asked, as he climbed in beside me and put the golden control circlet that would doubtless help him drive the chariot, over his horns and around his temples.
“One does not sit in the presence of the Sovereign,” he said shortly. “We must arrive standing on our feet, with our heads bowed to acknowledge her glory.”
“Oh, uh, okay.” I nodded and tugged at the diaphanous white robe I was wearing, trying to make sure it was straight. After so many days of not wearing clothes—except on O’nagga Nine—it felt strange to have them on now.
Not that the robe I was wearing could really be said to hide anything. It was a diaphanous, translucent white which clearly showed my body beneath. The fabric was softer than silk and studded with diamonds as big as my thumbnail—it would have been priceless back on Earth but Sir had whipped it up for me in the Matter Synthesizer as though making diamonds was just a matter of course. Which, for the Korrigons, I supposed it was.
The dress was cinched in the middle with a golden belt that Sir had told me sternly it was necessary for me to wear at all times while I was here on Korrigon four.
Now he looked down at me, one eyebrow raised.
“Is your gravity belt bothering you?”
“It’s fine,” I assured him. “I’m just not used to wearing clothes anymore—that’s all.”
I touched the dial on the belt, making myself a little lighter so that I rose up onto my tiptoes—I almost felt like I could float if I adjusted it just right. The gravity belt was necessary, according to Sir, because the gravity on Korrigon Four was much higher than it was back on Earth—which made sense, since it was a planet about five times as big and massive as my own home world.
Sir had been living in what he considered a “low-G atmosphere” all this time just for me, so I would feel comfortable. But now that we were here on his home world, I would have to wear the belt in order to walk upright and not feel like I was being crushed.
He was dressed rather splendidly himself today. He had on his usual tight black trousers and tall black boots and a crisp white shirt with a rounded collar. But over all this he was wearing a deep purple robe edged in gold. I thought he looked like an alien version of a Roman emperor, riding in a triumph.
“Little one,” he murmured warningly, as I played with the dial some more. “Don’t touch the belt controls, please—I don’t need you either floating off into the atmosphere or being weighed down to the ground with crushing amounts of gravity.”
“All right.” I took my fingers away from the belt and curled them over the scrolled, golden side of the chariot instead. “Um, how far do we have to go to reach the palace?” I asked.
Sir looked down at me in apparent surprise.
“I thought you knew—we are already inside the royal palace. This entire city is the palace.”
“It is?” I looked around me in wonder. We were whizzing soundlessly down the vast, gold-paved street with tall, spotlessly white buildings flashing by on either side. “And where is it located? In the Northern Continent or the Southern Continent?” I asked.
“On the equator,” Sir said promptly. “So that neither continent may claim it—though Gra’multh has long lobbied to have the royal residence moved to the South, no doubt thinking he would have greater influence that way,” he added grimly.
“If we’re on the equator, why isn’t it hot?” I asked, looking around. “Back on Earth the equator is where all the jungles and rain forests are located.”
“We’re inside a vast atmosphere bubble,” Sir told me. “It keeps the temperature comfortable year-round. If you look up at the sky at just the right angle, you can sometimes catch the shimmer of the bubble.”
I did as he said, looking up into the pale green sky. (Did I mention the sky was green? Because it was.) And sure enough, after a moment of tilting my head back and forth, I caught a kind of subtle twinkling or sparkling in the corner of my eye.
“Oh, I see it!” I exclaimed, pointing.
“Yes.” Sir gave me his one-sided smile. “The skies of my home world.”
“So how far does the bubble go?” I asked. “Or maybe I should ask how far the city that is also the palace goes?”
“Oh, it extends around the entire equator of Korrigon Four,” Sir said casually.
“What? It’s that big?” I exclaimed. “But that’s enormous!”
Sir nodded.
“It is indeed. But you must consider, little one, that a vast bureaucracy is needed to run the entire galaxy. Some say that the palace should be moved to one of Korrigon Four’s many moons in order to grow even larger, but the Sovereign dislikes the idea of leaving the planet entirely—even for the sake of more room.”
“Wow, that would be one hell of a big move,” I muttered, looking around. It wasn’t like the vast city we were in was one narrow strip—I literally couldn’t see the end of it in any direction I turned. Though I did see something that made me look twice.
One of the tall buildings we were passing by seemed to be only half finished. It was being worked on by a lot of aliens that didn’t look too different from humans, except they all had bright pink skin and four arms apiece. They were all working steadily and methodically on the building but the way they were working looked odd to me. They all seemed to be doing the exact same thing at the exact same time—it was almost like all of them were puppets and the same puppet-master was pulling all their strings.
“What people are those and why are they acting like that?” I asked Sir, pointing as we passed by.
Sir glanced to where I was pointing and, to my surprise, the golden chariot stopped its forward motion and floated backwards instead. He studied the pink-skinned people through narrowed eyes, watching their perfectly coordinated movements suspiciously.
I was about to ask my questions again when a big Korrigon (well, they were all big, but this one had kind of a pot-belly) slouched around the side of the half-finished building, yawning and scratching his gut.
“You there!” Sir called to him.
“Yeah, what?” the Korrigon responded in Low Korgish, which was the language Sir had told me the Lower Caste of his people used. Then he saw who was talking to him and amended his tone. “I mean, yes, Your Honor?” he asked anxiously, looking up at Sir.
“Who told you it was acceptable to use Mind-Controlled slaves here in the palace?” Sir demanded of him. “You know it is forbidden!”
“Begging your pardon, Your Honor, not no more it ain’t,” the Korrigon foreman said, shaking his head. “By order of His Lordship, Sir Gra’multh, we began importing these Torvians just a few solar werns ago.”
Sir swore under his breath.
“Yes, I can see their mind chip scars are fresh,” he said shortly.
I wasn’t sure what he was talking about until all the Torvian workers turned their heads at the same time. Then I saw a fresh, white scar under each of their left ears—it looked like a little x that showed up quite well on their bright pink skin.
“I’m just doing as I was ordered, Your Honor,” the Korrigon foreman said, lifting his arms in a “what can you do?” gesture.
“Well don’t get too used to it,” Sir growled, scowling at the other male. Then with an angry lurch, the golden chariot drove on, leaving the workmen and the foreman behind.
“What was going on back there?” I asked uncertainly.
“By tradition only free men and women work in the palace.” Sir spoke tersely, looking straight ahead and I could see by the tightness of his jaw how angry he was.
“So…those guys, those Torvians, weren’t free? They all had Mind-Control chips?” I asked.
He nodded—a sharp jerk of his chin.
“This is Gra’multh’s doing—he’s letting the poisonous practice of Mind-Controlled slavery infect the palace.”
“Do you think he’s doing it with the Sovereign’s permission?” I asked.
“I certainly hope not,” Sir growled. “If Splendara the Third and Thirtieth is allowing this practice right under her very nose, I don’t have much hope for her judgment in the matter of your galaxy.”
“Really?” I looked up at him with wide eyes. “So…we’ve lost before you even make your presentation?”
“No, little one.” Sir looked briefly down at me and stroked my hair and shoulders comfortingly. “Don’t think like that—we have more than enough evidence that the people of your galaxy should be left unmolested.”
“Why were the peoples of your galaxy allowed to be subjugated and Mind-Controlled, though?” I asked. “Those Torvians didn’t look that different from humans—well, except for the extra arms and the bright pink skin.”
Sir looked grim.
“Unfortunately, much of the subjugation was done before my lifetime. By the time I grew old enough to inherit my title and position from my father, our whole galaxy was already completely under Korrigon dominion. Though I and my councilors from the Northern Continent have been fighting to set many of the Mind-Controlled free,” he added. “It is an uphill battle—the Sovereign and many of the Nobles who serve her derive much of their wealth from the labor of the Mind-Controlled.”
“But why do you need chips to control people?” I asked. “I thought you were strong enough to do it just with the power of your mind.”
“I and others of the Higher Caste are,” Sir told me. “If I wished, I could have controlled you from the start, little one. But I didn’t want an unwilling pet—I wanted the chance to convince you to be mine.”
I felt a shiver go down my spine as I thought of all the Torvian workers, doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. To think that Sir could have done that to me—that he could simply have taken over my mind and used me like a puppet—was almost scarier than knowing he could use his Mental Powers to crumple me up like a piece of paper if he wanted to.
“Of course,” he went on, apparently not seeing my shiver. “When one is Mind-Controlling someone, it takes a good deal of concentration and power, which is where the chips come in.”
“Do they make it easier to control someone?” I asked, almost in a whisper.
Sir nodded shortly.
“They also allow those of the Lower Caste, with hardly any Mental Abilities, to control a great many creatures at once.”
“So that guy—that foreman—probably wouldn’t be able to control anybody if they didn’t have chips implanted?” I asked.
Sir nodded again.
“They were invented by one of Gra’multh’s scientists, of course—before I was born,” he said, biting off the words. “Up until then, we Korrigons had only conquered a few of the worlds in our galaxy—those closest to us. But after the invention of the chip and, shortly after that, the invention of the Folding Drive which allows us to move from one part of the universe to another instantaneously, the Great Conquest began. My people went to every corner of our galaxy, ravaging every world that had even the least bit of natural resources and taking any sentient creatures we found to use on our own world as free labor.”
“You mean as slaves,” I said flatly. This was beginning to sound like the conquests of the New World by the East India Company back in my own world’s past, I thought.
Sir nodded yet again.
“Slaves and pets,” he admitted and I heard shame in his voice. “Since I gained my seat and took the title of ‘Overlord,’ I have been striving to reverse the process, but without much success. As I said, the Nobles and the Higher Caste are making too much profit to want to quit subjugating the creatures who are mentally inferior to us.”
“Maybe that’s part of your problem,” I pointed out. “Thinking that you’re all superior just because you have these crazy Mental Powers. The idea that might makes right.”
Sir frowned down at me.
“I’m afraid you’re not going to shake the idea of Korrigon superiority any time soon, little one. The fact is that we are mentally superior, which makes it very difficult to see other creatures, even sentient ones, as our equals.”
“But—” I began, but Sir interrupted me.
“Behold—the throne room,” he said, pointing.
We were just rounding a corner and I looked to see what he was pointing at. What I saw made me gasp—there was an enormous, shining, golden mountain looming up ahead of us. Seriously, it was huge—hundreds if not thousands of feet high and the glare of the light off its golden sides was nearly blinding.
“Is the Sovereign up on top of that thing?” I asked, squinting to try and see the top—but as I said, the glare was blinding and I couldn’t make it out. I could see that it was shaped more like a pyramid than a mountain—though it was much larger even than the Great Pyramids in Egypt.
Sir shook his head.
“No, she is inside it. The entrance is much lower—down at street level. We’ll be there presently.”
“Oh, so she’s inside the mountain,” I murmured. “Okay, got it.”
“Her throne sits atop a golden dais of ten thousand steps,” Sir told me.
I looked at him, aghast.
“Are you expecting me to climb ten thousand steps today, Sir? Because I have to tell you, I don’t think I have that in me. Especially not after all the junk food I’ve been eating lately to gain my curves back!”
Sir frowned down at me, his full-black eyes narrowing.
“Junk food? You told me the foods you were synthesizing were what humans ate in order to maintain their caloric needs.”
“Oh, well, uh…they do,” I said, suddenly feeling caught out.
It was true I had been synthesizing a lot more cheeseburgers than salads for the past few weeks, but Sir had wanted me to gain weight. It wasn’t my fault that a glazed donut helped you gain more than a spinach smoothie, was it?
“Look, what I meant to say is, I would need to train a lot to climb that many steps,” I told him. “And I just don’t think I’m up to it.”
“You don’t need to worry, little one,” Sir said dryly. “We will be permitted to ride in my chariot until the last hundred steps. Thereafter, if you get too tired I can carry you.”
I thought of my Great Aunt Maizy tucking one of her “babies” under her arm when she went out to the grocery store and frowned as the thought of Sir toting me up the steps in a similar, undignified fashion.
“No, a hundred steps I can manage,” I told him. “Just not ten thousand.”
“You’ll be fine,” Sir assured me.
And then we were driving up to the massive side of the enormous golden pyramid. The entrance was surprisingly small—maybe for security reasons, I speculated—it was barely big enough for the chariot to enter and Sir had to duck his head, after the guards had waved us through. But once we were inside, it opened up into a kind of tunnel which was lit from the sides with rows and rows of floating golden lamps that looked a little like blooming white roses edged in gold.
“The Sacred Glow Blossoms of the Sovereign,” Sir told me, when I asked what they were. “Only she who sits upon the Golden Throne of Ten Thousand Steps may use them.”
“Is your Sovereign always a woman, then?” I asked, looking up at him as we raced along the golden tunnel.
Sir nodded.
“Males are too prone to conquest and war.” His face hardened. “Though I fear that having a female Sovereign hasn’t stopped my own galaxy from being completely conquered and overrun by greed.”
“No, I guess not,” I murmured, watching as the golden tunnel walls with their glowing roses whizzed by.
Then, suddenly, the tunnel ended and we were in the center of the pyramid, which looked like an enormous, golden cavern. Rising up above us was another, smaller pyramid with a tiny golden throne at its summit. Of course, I realized, the throne wasn’t really tiny—it was probably quite big. But it was so far away that it looked like a little Barbie throne sitting up there and the woman sitting in it also looked doll-like and small.
Running up the front of the pyramid were many, many, many golden steps. Ten thousand of them, apparently, I thought. I was really glad we weren’t going to have to climb all those! It literally would have taken me all day. Plus, they were really steep and there were no handrails to hold onto.
On either side of the steps were smooth, golden channels. At first I couldn’t understand what they might be for, but then I saw another chariot, very like the one we were riding in, rising smoothly up the left-hand channel. Oh—so they were roads or paths up the side of the pyramids, made especially for the floating chariots, I thought.
“I see that Gra’multh has already begun his ascent.” Sir’s voice was grim as he watched the other chariot climb.
“Is that bad?” I asked anxiously. I was really beginning to feel the pressure of the situation we were in now.
Sir shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll have to stop at the base of the topmost steps in order to dismount and climb the last hundred, and Gra’multh will have to stop as well. We should reach the summit at roughly the same time.”
Then he leaned forward as though urging the golden chariot onwards and we sped towards the golden steps and the Sovereign who sat at the top, who would determine the fate of my galaxy.