Two Discoverers Have Their Chat

The discovery of the Piksee, the third sentient species on Sultruviam, put Benjamin Banneker -- admiral, acting ambassador, and scientist extraordinaire -- put back on the galactic map again, and he handled it with his usual humble, noble grace.

"Why not?" he said. "It makes it harder for my haters to have anything real to say!"

While those poor unfortunate souls existed and were mad, the congratulations also came thick and fast ... and one stood out in particular for the depth of the conversation.

To my uncle, for most of his life, there had been one woman, and because he could not have her, he chose not to make any other woman suffer for not being her ... he had fallen in love while a captain with his first officer, but never breached the professional line, instead pouring his love into being a mighty mentor to the only science officer he mentored who would eclipse him at times: Vlarian Triefield, my mentor, and now full fleet admiral. All that love he had poured into her in a righteous way had paid off ... she could rank no higher as the most powerful science officer in the galaxy. Upon his return to the fleet after a twenty-year retirement, she made him chief science officer for her fleet since she was fleet commander, and all of us had been doing what we had to do after an incident that was poised to cost humanity its access to the Milky Way...

... but there was always a deep connection between the two officers, only seven years differing in age, for the love between them was now grown old, and still as it should be, deep in admiration and respect and honor while permitting them to make their own love matches. My uncle had taken his time finding the second great love of his life, but Capt. Almira Jackson had showed up in the fullness of time, and indeed, she was the right match for him, just as Capt. M.A. Kirk (younger cousin to the famous admiral by that name) was the right match for Adm. Triefield.

So, my uncle stopped what he was doing when Adm. Triefield called to congratulate him both on his engagement -- I noted as I brought my uncle some tea that both seemed relieved about that, as if everything had at last worked out the way it was supposed to -- and also his discovery of the Piksee.

"I must say, Benjamin, if I were to allow myself to envy you, I would ... in your long mentorship of me, what I did not pick up from you was the ability to discover decent creatures."

Uncle Benjamin laughed.

"I would have envied you the gift from your Vulcan grandmother of telepathy," he said, "except I would not have lived to do so! A man's challenges are sized to his scope -- and you see I find Piksees!"

Adm. Triefield laughed until she cried.

"Your scope is to make it so that people discover there is no point in envy or jealousy or hard feelings, so the creatures you meet and discover are drawn to that about you!" she said at the end. "Me? I grew up on Spica 5 -- a hard-scrabble world full of hard-scrabble people, so I'm built for discovering creatures that think they want a fight, but they really don't!"

"Some of those poor creatures were human," my uncle said, and again, she was laughing.

"Many -- and humans are the most challenging!" she said.

"I never have had a chance to ask you which of your discoveries amazes you the most," Uncle Benjamin said.

"Only you would think to ask that," she said. "Almost 40 years, pulling the best out of me."

"It is safe for me to say now, Vlarian, that I love you still, and always. I will always do my best for you -- however it is that you may grow through some perspective I may give you, you shall have it."

"I know," she said. "I love you also, my mentor, and my friend."

Finally, once for all, stated aloud, and never necessary again.

"The way you framed the question really does change my perspective on things," she said after a few moments. "There have been plenty of times that I have been amazed to still be alive after a discovery ... too many times when I discovered a being only to make it go extinct to save ships and crew ... but the most amazing creature I have discovered ... that had to be Qomolangma."

"Ah, the Queen of the Night," Uncle Benjamin said. "We know today she is in the Ring Admiral class of plasma-based being ... but the temperament ... just a little different ... ."

"Just a little," Adm. Triefield said. "Just a little less hospitable in her fiftieth of the quadrant than a Ring Admiral might be, and a little less sociable, reigning alone."

"Really a sad story, when you think about it," Uncle Benjamin said.

"It was," Adm. Triefield said, "and because I thought about it, I was able to help her think about it."

"Kind of a happy ending," Uncle Benjamin said.

"I still pray she made it to her real home," Adm. Triefield said.

"She is a much more powerful telepath than you are, and she and you imprinted," Uncle Benjamin said. "I imagine you can know, if you want to, because the mind does not truly know distance."

"You know I am as good a telepath as I am because of you," Adm. Triefield said, "because of this way that you have encouraged me to think. Many people wonder if you have developed your own telepathy!"

"I am not of the opinion that telepathy is entirely off limits to human beings," he said, "accounting for the amount of information our sub-conscious mind processes in the world that the conscious mind can become more and more adept at accessing, and also because it is possible to hear from the spirit world. True telepathy is not any of those things, of course, but what I describe is the setting of the mind to be conscious of other minds -- if I say to you that I felt the minds of the Piksees in the room and that helped me realize they were indeed physically in the room, you will understand me."

"I would," she said, "and ... Qomolangma made it home. All I feel now, from her, is gratitude, and connection, and home -- maybe a bit of surprise, too, that I thought to ask ... but connection ... she appreciates my concern."

"Which means, at last, that it is time for you to be truly congratulated," Uncle Benjamin said, "for years before me, you achieved peace with a sentient creature in a manner no one thought possible, for no one else knew she was there although they were paying for the consequences of not admitting to the possibility. The only thing different is the scale ... for again, Vlarian, a discovery fits the scope of its discoverer. There is a reason you are a full fleet admiral."

"You have to be the most self-deprecating admiral ever to make a lateral move to ambassador I've ever met, Benjamin."

"Well, you know that sort of thing only happens because of personnel problems!"

"It would be funny if it wasn't true, Benjamin -- but let's laugh about it anyway!"

And they did, long and loud and merrily.

My Process as Author and Artist

As it happens, I design book covers for my own published works from time to time, but rarely do I work backwards ... this was a challenge ... but then the queen of the night just recently came out of Apophysis 2.09 in this way ...

... and then on black ...

... so then I worked in BookBolt, the cover designer I actually use, and applied the Polaroid filter to amp up the contrast in the figure for the front cover. On the back I used the original fractal and made it 60 percent transparent so the queen could "haunt" the background of the back cover while lending her silver-violet to the color of most of the text.

Now, about that back cover story ... I actually wrote backwards there too ... I wrote that before Admiral Benjamin Banneker discovered the Piksee species, and his discovery is the bright foil for this darker discovery. For those who have been reading me for a LONG TIME, you know that Admiral Benjamin Banneker is the mentor of Admiral Vlarian Triefield, but he was gravely injured and she leap-frogged him in rank because of it ... he taught her how to use everything she had, including her quarter-Vulcan heritage, to discover all that she could. But as we have seen, the younger admiral's discoveries have generally not been as pleasant, and in today's story, one of them is highlighted.

Qomolangma is Tibetan for Holy Mother, and is one of two true native names of the mountain we know as Everest ... so I imagined a mighty creature, enraged with all those who reminded her of the ones that had cut her off from her people and culture, and so completely intolerant of colonizing forces. But, that also left open the possibility that if she could connect with a being who was on a different mission, and really understand, then perhaps a galactic misunderstanding could be righted. I am always visiting, in some way, my main theme of re-connection and redemption!