Tales from Kalgachia - 1

People had quietly noted how miraculous it was that the marauding Laqi horsemen of the territory once known as Novodolor had remained loyal to this little scheme. Through the centuries, their kind had never been slow to reject their nominal masters at the first hint of unreliable payment. Added to that, there were those who doubtless retained an affection for the very reliable gravy train they had enjoyed from the Empire of Minarboria, and might have considered a unilateral secession from that gutted-out spectre of a polity to be an act of moral treason. But in the end, all it took to bring them around was a few theologically-gymnastic deserters from the old Church, granting reassuring blessings to what amounted to the systematic sacking of the territories previously known as the Imperial Shrublands. The Shrub-God Minarbor was dead, they had said, grubbed from the ground and burned to ashes. But the spirit of the Garden Ketheric that had animated Him was still a force in the world, lending its siren call to those droves of simple souls whose corruption was not entirely complete in this world of bloated empires. Just as it had inspired the Premier of Darkness and the Elemental Mages of prehistory, so now it exhorted those who felt its pull to make a new stand in its name. The Shrubbery was gone, and the greater part of its territory with it - soon to be scrambled over by the proud, globe-spanning realms of Micras for whom the conversion of thriving societies into homogenous cultural desert appeared less distinguishable from the ideology of the cancer cell with each passing year. For all the shakiness of the plans now being executed in the Octavian mountains of central Benacia, the avoidance of such a fate was a desire common to all participants, whether explicit or subconscious.

This, with the generous view of the new priesthood with regard to the redistribution of acquired loot, kept the Laqis on side for long enough to be promised a certain dividend from the many gold mining concerns of these mountains, an eternal stake in a historically reliable commodity - if, of course, they could defend the territory. Nor were they they only ones attracted by the prospect; from the west, Ashkenatzi Kossars with their traditional nose for oppurtunity were streaming in to offer their services. They, with their quick wits, fully understood the importance of appropriating technological artifacts and academically-gifted refugees from the collapsing Shrublands. Their new homeland would be landlocked and enclaved, relying on its own cerebral spunk to function as a state. With the Kossars' vigorous assistance, many a cautious scientist and engineer found themselves flushed from the basement ruins of &zeter city and 'incentivised' to join the endless convoys of pack horses ferrying liberated goods into the mountains.

Deep beneath these busy little mountain tracks, in a complex of tunnels and chambers hewn out of the granite, sat the architects of the whole grand plan - those who were known as the Council of Perfecti. Mainly composed of priests from the old Minarborian church who had seen the writing on the wall at an early point and made quiet preparations accordingly. Bodily irregularities abounded; although they no longer considered themselves bound by the regulated breeding customs of their genetically-modified ancestors, the Deep Singers, the guided evolution of that race of beings had left its mark on them all. Their descendants in these mountains preferred to call themselves the Nezeni, a mere ethnic distinction. The Shirekeep massacre hung heavily on the folk memory, offering a warning against breeding themselves into the Uncanny Valley of humanoid biology and simultaneously providing a reason to establish a new Benacian state at all; Shireroth, for all the lofty rhetoric of tolerance from its title-saturated elite, could no longer by relied upon to raise more than a desultory eyebrow in defence of those ethnic groups originating in the southern half of the Benacian continent. It was up to the Nezeni to see to their own affairs, and to look after those Laqis and Ashkenatzim and Tellians and Lywallers and all the other scraps of benighted Benacia that rocked up in these mountains in search of sanctuary.

The Perfecti met in a circular, domed chamber resembling the interior of an egg, its walls cut from the native granite and smoothed to a matte finish with a few modest recesses for light fixtures. It was built deep enough to withstand a hydrogen bomb delivered by a kinetic penetrator from orbit, so they said, and the journey to the surface took so long that the Perfecti rarely bothered to leave. It was sufficiently deep that Micras' inner heat would have made living conditions intolerable, were it not for that same heat being utilised through a geothermal power unit to drive a powerful air conditioning system. Plans for the complex had been more ambitious, but construction to its current extent had been such a draw on manpower and resources that it had been halted as soon as the place was vaguely liveable, with the project's construction crews reassigned to projects nearer or upon the surface. Eventually the Perfecti, having been forced into monastically simple lifestyles by the modesty of their accomodation and appreciating its spiritual cleansing effects, cancelled the expansion of the complex outright.

On this particular day - or night, there was no way of telling under thousands of metres of granite - the meeting chamber was mostly full, its members seated around a table which was essentially an unquarried part of the floor. Unlike the diffuse finish of the walls the surface of this great slab was polished to a glass shine, the faces of the Perfecti casting dark reflections off it like a scrying mirror. One of these figures, a pale individual with a wide face like a hammerhead shark and a responsibility for Public Works, spoke above the gentle muttering which went on around him.

"I suppose there is no hazard in beginning our session now," he said. "Our brother Chairman may be late from his chambers, but I have never known him to be gravely late."

"Quite," came the terse response of a white-coated figure in the corner - a doctor who had adopted the attire of the profession as business wear, in case anybody was in danger of forgetting his responsibility for health and public welfare. "I don't know why we have a chairman at all. Our brother himself said he was reluctant to pull rank on us. Prefers to work in the shadows, he said. And he observed that we work well among ourselves."

"The shareholders demanded a chairman," said the member responsible for Labour and Economic Planning. "By the way, we're having our AGM next week..." His lame attempt at a joke fell flat as it always did.

"You speak in jest, brother," said the Perfect of the Church of Kalgachia, "but our enterprise does indeed have shareholders... beyond the material realm, true, but we know they are there. Or else we would not have succeeded in getting this far."

"So would you say the chairmanship of this council has divine sanction?" said the hammerhead.

"In the Garden Ketheric," said the Church Perfect, "I do not think it is considered to matter either way. In an atemporal realm, which the Garden Ketheric surely is, very few things matter. While the few things that do matter surely matter a lot, I am ninety-nine percent confident that the existence of a hierarchy in this Council is not one of them. All that matters is that the Council exists, and exists for the purpose that it does."

"And that remaining one percent of your confidence?" said the wisecracking economist.

"A sense of humour is a multi-dimensional phenomenon," said the Church Perfect. "It exists in the Garden Ketheric as well as here. It could be that we're led to discuss such a minor point by... subtle quantum cues, for the amusement of some entity that just wants to mess with us."

"So you're saying that gods get bored?" said the doctor.

"They're capable of every other impulse," said the Church Perfect. "Benevolent grace, powerful prescience, furious wrath... so why not boredom?"

"I do recall reading a study," said the member responsible for education and outreach, "by one of the undeads from the old Shrubbery. A Doctor Sakharov. He dabbled in transdimensional affairs, coming at it from the material side of the spectrum rather then the theological, but before the necropause he reported that some of the entities he encountered in his work were indeed capable of humour. A great shame it was, to lose so many liches of his kind when the geonecromantic field went down."

Murmurs of solemn agreement filled the chamber, followed by a period of reflective silence which brought a natural end to the subject. The full and final demise of lichdom in Western Benacia had indeed been sorely felt, not least by those who were accustomed to the services of zombots and now had to perform manual labour again.

"Still no brother Chairman," said the hammerhead civil engineer, looking nervously at the chamber entrance. "He's not usually this late. Still, I suppose we can discuss matters arising from the last meeting. If anyone remembers..."

"There was the matter of the night soil," said the Church Perfect.

"Ah yes," said the hammerhead. "If I remember rightly, it concerned an offer by our brother economist here regarding my request for more rock blasting material. Provided our brother-in-arms is still unwilling to..."

"Absolutely unwilling," came the iron voice of the member responsible for defence, still wearing his old Minarborian general staff uniform from which that Empire's insignia has been stripped. "I have said before that military ordnance will be very difficult to procure once we are fully enclaved, and our current stockpiles must be preserved for defensive purposes. Besides, it would be a waste to use such things for demolitions. Low-grade explosives can do the job just as well, and I cannot think of any grade lower than that refined from human excrement."

"Hence my suggestion," said the economist. "If we compromise the military defence of our territory, all other efforts are for nothing. In the circumstances, it seems to me that we should not overlook our... personal effluent... as an exploitable resource."

"But must we stoop so low so quickly?" said the member responsible for foreign affairs, or the Tumultuous Wastes as the Council had come to call it. "We could establish a trade relationship with any number of foreign..." he was forced to pause by howls of protest which erupted all around him.

"As a first recourse!?" said the member responsible for internal security. "Absolutely not! Where the trade envoys come, the priesthood and propagandists are never far behind. And after that, their homeland's army. It's one of the three Jingdaoese curses, it is not? 'May you come to the attention of powerful people...' and we cannot afford that attention at this stage, not while our borders are as porous as they are."

The Perfect of the Tumultuous Wastes shifted in his seat. "As much as I am impressed by your knowledge of Jingdaoese proverbs, brother," he said. "I think you do our brother-in-arms an injustice to suggest that our territory cannot be defended..."

"That's for him to judge, not you!" snapped the spook, turning to the member responsible for defence. "Brother, do you find my characterisation of our border security an insult to your efforts?"

The chamber erupted in squabbling as the member responsible for defence offered a non-committal answer and the other members tried to calm down the spook and the plaintive diplomat. Amid the hubbub, nobody noticed a figure in green robes appear in the entrance of the chamber and stop to survey the scene. His face was of a stark yellow complexion, as if jaundiced, and his hair was a mop of translucent gold combed back across his head. Eventually, the Church Perfect noticed the new presence and jumped to his feet.

"Brother Chairman!" he yelped with a genuine smile. The chamber was instantly silenced.

"Greetings all," said the Chairman, motioning to the Church Perfect. "Be seated, be seated." He circled the table, followed by the eyes of all present, but instead of sitting down he passed his seat and continued circling.

"While I am encouraged by the... spirited nature of this discussion," he said, "I trust there will be no further question of the need for this Council to be chaired, whether by me or someone else. We can advance our own little ideas forever, but above our heads is an army of displaced souls who are relying on us - and only us - to save them from submission to the Kalirions or the Jing. Every minute we waste in defence of our personal pride is a minute wasted in building a future for them. And we do not have an infinite supply of these minutes."

He circled around to his seat again, and finally sat down.

"Now, regarding the project of our brother in the economic field, I think it has some merit. I don't know about all of you, but I'm doing nothing special with my poop at the moment and I recognise the potential for this to change. So please, brother, tell this Council how your little project is coming along..."

As the economist coughed out a shaky update, the other Perfecti averted their gaze from the Chairman, each absorbing the revelation behind his words: he had been just outside, listening all along.