A pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, with three black spots and two little red spots put in the appropriate places to bring out the face that was almost there!
“So, since my gentlemanly uncle and husband aren't going to ask, Dr. iMaru, who was that beautiful princess who was kind enough to bring those beautiful Eyes of the Uppaaimar in glass, but unkind enough not to let us get to know her?”
Dr. Shaaka iMaru, the Milky Way's leading authority on Uppaaimarn archaeology no least because he was the crown prince of the Ninth Majestical House of the Uppaaimar on a mission to humanity, rolled laughing, just like my husband and uncle did.
I was glad to be a starship captain, sitting in the room with my commercial captain husband Capt. Rufus Dixon, my uncle Admiral Banneker, and a bonafide surviving prince from a civilization thought long dead in the Milky Way. I've always kept quality company!
“Look, I already know I couldn't ask!” my husband said.
“And I've made a lifetime of not asking as a chaste bachelor!” my uncle said.
Dr. iMaru finished his laughter in a huge smile, his silver-white teeth standing out like lightning in his violet-black face.
“That was Dr. iMaru – my sister, Her Highness Shaain iMaru, princess of the Ninth Majestical House of the Uppaaimar. I knew she was coming by our beloved homeworld at some point last week, and then found out she was coming at almost the same time you were. In our traditions, we do not introduce as a matter of course: she was not desirous of interrupting or being centered in what was important between us even for a moment.”
“I will say it because I am the bachelor: she doesn't need to do anything but walk in to not have at least the momentary attention of half of the humanoid adults of the galaxy,” Uncle Benjamin said.
“Which is why she doesn't,” the prince said. “She could do what I am doing in the archaeology as well as I can, but human males in particular do not take well to rejection, and would quickly find that Uppaaimarn women are the only thing in the galaxy less tolerant of tampering than our technology!”
“Oh yikes,” my husband said.
“Exactly,” the prince said with a smile. “Remember, Capt. Dixon: we let you find the key to the Uppaaimar Warp-Canal to be a blessing to humanity. Only a certain type of human man would not be accursed by his own foolery with some casual, cheeky approach to an Uppaaimarn woman!”
“That sounds like Admiral Triefield's general attitude,” I said, “along with all of the women she has mentored in the fleet!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my uncle's eyes light up, just a little.
“Admiral Triefield reminds me very much of my sister,” the prince said. “Beautiful, virtuous, brilliant, generous of spirit, and utterly ruthless in defense of her people. Now, among the Uppaaimar this is not uncommon in women: we have a long lifespan and so there is time to explore all of our personhood, and it also is understood as it has been among honest people on Earth that all science can be turned to warlike purposes as well as peace, and all scientists are expected to master both.”
Dr. iMaru pulled out his tablet.
“May I borrow your big screen, Admiral?” he said to my uncle.
“Of course!” my uncle said, and we went from the porch of my uncle's home to the kitchen.
“Since the iMaru in ancient times were deeply involved in astronomy and meteorology, it is expected that we will take primary responsibility for those things for the people now as the ninth of the royal houses of the Uppaaimar,” Dr. iMaru said. “So, generally, we are not the admirals and the builders and the politicians: we help all of them make decisions based on the stellar situations we find ourselves in.
“But, we also do not have rigid human ideas about command, either. Although I am my father's firstborn son and therefore in human terms the crown prince, he or I may look at the situation and decide one of my siblings may make a better successor because the work I am doing now requires me not to have his present responsibilities. He or she who is most ready rules: that is the watchword on all such matters among us.
“So, although my sister was 'merely' the lead scientist at the time the creature emerged that I am about to show you, her answer when consulted by the commodore of the exploratory flotilla caused him immediately demote himself back to captain and make her provisional commodore for the duration of the emergency meeting this thing immediately caused.”
Dr. iMaru showed us the image you saw at the top of the page, and all of us jumped.
“It's a Beamerling gone mad!” my husband cried.
“Definitely plasma-based,” my uncle said, “and probably infinitely more dangerous than that shockingly recognizable feature of a face can even suggest.”
“You are both right,” the good doctor said. “The Milky Way has several species of plasma-based life, including the peaceful, adorably huge Beamerlings, who are sort of what you get in human terms if you cross a teddy bear of the highest morals with a small star like Sol, Earth's Sun. A big deal – a very big deal if forced to defend itself, but otherwise, perfectly harmless.”
“There was that element of adorability to the one Mark and I rescued,” my husband said. “I think of him fondly, even though he still nearly destroyed our ship, growing so fast and so hot like that.”
“They grow on photons, so any kind of steady light, and they are off to the races – you got him home just in time, in your terms,” the prince purred. “Now, imagine him fully grown and tired of just protons and so wanting to break down some whole atoms – those are the ravening planet-eaters, cousins to the Beamerlings as a species, in some segments of M31. We call them Sorutinamirfhir – The Hunger of Fire, for they embody that better than any creature we have yet encountered.”
“Oh my,” Uncle Benjamin said.
“That shot does look like a humanoid face, but it's worse than that,” Dr. iMaru said. “That is its mouth – that big opening there, but the red areas are the ends of the digestive tract, about to release the not-as-hot gaseous remains of five gas giant planets it just ate.”
“Oh my,” I said, and felt sick to my stomach.
“The idea is, it needs a few extra stomachs like a cow or a horse, but, it doesn't have those, so, re-ingesting the plume is one option. The contents can also be used to prepare the next meal – a red dwarf-sized blast of gas is pretty good at close range of softening the next meal up.”
“Doctor, I'm sorry, but could you just cut to the part where your sister just blows the thing away – my wife is close to your sister's color and you see she's turning green!” my husband said.
“I keep forgetting that while there is no mystery to this story in Uppaaimarn terms,” the prince said, “in human terms the science of atmospheric tuning for resistance to stellar winds and stellar forming, like terraforming, are all new.”
“Say what now?” Uncle Benjamin said.
“Because one of our beloved Uppaai was shedding so early from Creation, the Uppaaimar learned to adjust Uppaaim's ionosphere and magnetosphere to help shield the planet better from strong sheds in the “regular” flow, and this bought us an extra few years of time as the second Uppaai, thousands of years later, began its transition to Wolf-Rayet form. Now, no instrumentation mortal hands will ever make will save any atmosphere from a binary with both stars fully shedding like that – we tried. Oh, how we tried. It cannot be done within the laws of physics, and we were assured of that.
“In the process, however, we also learned from the Ring Admirals, an even more powerful plasma-based species, that stars themselves can be tuned because, although it is on a vast scale, we are still talking about magnetic fields and flows around large masses of plasma – so, just scale up what we were doing in our own atmosphere.”
“Right, just scale it up,” my uncle said as he put his head in his hands. “I see why y'all have to take your time coming back to the Milky Way, because we humans wouldn't last two minutes trying to do anything you just described!”
“Oh come now,” the prince purred. “Humanity has you, Admiral, so I would give humanity a good five minutes, which is still three minutes better than the creature in question did when my sister had a whole magnetosphere-adjusting field thrown around it by the flotilla, and then an ion-disrupting field once she reversed the polarity of the first field. It was like blowing out a match.”
“Yep, that does sound like an Admiral Vlarian Triefield type of a move,” I said. “One minute some creature is out here about to eat up everything in sight, and the next minute, the creature is dust – in fact, that is how then-Captain Triefield became a commodore too – an acting commodore, then given the rank until her next promotion!”
“As I have said,” the prince said, “although the paths of the Uppaaimar and humanity seemingly diverged long ago, you sitting here with me is part of a resonance foreseen, the evidence of ties that bind.”
“When did all this happen?” my husband said.
“Last month,” the princely doctor said, and we all jumped. “She is taking some time off. It is never a light thing to meet new life and take it. Had there been any other option – and we all know how that is – but, she needs to be off the exploratory front for a little while, and so is rotating from my rooms in the Uppaaim underground to my rooms on Vulcan to my home here, as she sees fit. She is on Vulcan now, attending a lecture series on stellar flares.”
“That is a lot to process,” I said. “But I imagine Admiral Triefield would love to meet her, and maybe can give her some encouragement. We all can.”
The prince smiled gently.
“I will let her know of your gracious invitation, Capt. Biles-Dixon, and then it will be a question of coordinating the schedules, but, it will come together at the proper time.”
Watching dumb Earth science fiction was a fun thing to do with an Uppaaimarn prince – his incredulity at watching bad science being exalted as better for the screen was half the fun. Popcorn too was a revelation to him; while remaining in royal frame, his eyes would always light up like a child's from delight when the favorite Earth snack for movie watching was brought out in a princely bowl.
However, I noticed that my uncle was a less humorous mood than usual; something was on his mind, something that came to light as Dr. iMaru was lingering on his way out with Rufus and I, still in pleasant conversation. Uncle Benjamin had disappeared from the hallway, and had gone back into his study for several minutes before returning with a book: On Discovery's Griefs, by Capt. Benjamin Banneker.
“Please spell your sister's name for me, Your Highness,” my uncle said as he took out an antique fountain pen.
Dr. iMaru jumped slightly.
“Admiral …?”
“If it were Admiral Triefield recovering from such a situation, I would be doing what I can for her. You are my friend and Her Highness is your sister. I know a human perspective might not fully meet the Uppaaimarn situation, but, it's what I can do.”
“Admiral, no larger and kinder gift can be imagined. We like to think in the Ninth Majestical House that we are up on your writings now, but some of your books are out of print, and this is one of them.”
“Every wise author keeps an airlock of books and some print-on-demand setups on hand for just such an emergency,” my uncle said.
“You may safely address her as Her Highness Shaain iMaru – that's S-H-A-A-I-N, and then little i-M-A-R-U.”
Uncle Benjamin worked the little pen … and then worked it again, and then handed it to the prince, who jumped again.
“You also said the same thing in Uppaaimarn script!” he cried.
“Been practicing,” my uncle said. “Something told me I should.”
For a moment, the prince's violet eyes burned as he looked at my uncle, and then the script, and then my uncle again, and he looked as though he would say a whole lot, but then just gave my uncle a big hug.”
“Thank you,” he said. “This will bring much comfort to my sister, I am certain!”
Late that night, while he and I were snuggling in bed, Rufus had a wild thought.
“Your uncle figured out quick how not to get blown away by an Uppaaimarn woman at the first meeting – knowing Admiral Triefield all that time was preparation!”
I laughed … but, why did I feel like he was somehow right, too?