View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
While Sigyn is looking for a planet for him, Findekáno tries to unravel the local mess. This country's political boundaries were set stupidly a hundred years ago and it probably should be split, but if it splits now the northern section will be absorbed by its neighbor, whose ruler is - he notices it in people very quickly - pretty evil, and they could prevent this assimilation with some showy magic but that'll compromise the neutral status they're using to ship recently-developed vaccines for this planet's various maladies.
Maitimo could hold the country together or break it into neater pieces. Findekáno has a very good model of Maitimo in his head but it doesn't quite extend to 'how to take over countries'. Maybe it's just that Maitimo'd be operating on more information, would have watched one speech by the evil northern leader and walked away knowing his wildest dreams and deepest insecurities and how best to distract him for a decade.
He should really stop dwelling on Maitimo.
No one can make him, though, so he doesn't. He figures out instead how to bribe the country into temporarily staying together, shove the trouble a decade down the road. He feels guilty, doing it; he's meticulous with the notes, and he's sure it's clear that if one of the Maitimos wants to come over and do better they can. But they don't; there are a thousand planets like this, and even the space Elves don't want to fork that far.
He's glad. A galaxy run by a thousand copies of Maitimo sounds like a disaster in the making, no matter how insistent everyone is that all the other Maitimos are nice. Nice with Maitimos just means 'better at getting what they wanted, or had your good regard higher on the list of things they wanted'.
So it's weird that he keeps wishing his was here.
Sigyn finds him a planet two hops out where no one can find them. He is vaguely curious what Sigyn plans to do once he's talked Findekáno two hops away and once everyone's been told not to expect him, but Sigyn's cute, it's not as if it'll be a problem.
He tells Maedhros he's leaving and spends the day a wreck.
Fingon stops by when it's locally evening. "Thanks," he says. "I don't know what you said but it cheered him up a lot."
"I said I was fleeing several dimensions over."
Fingon smiles. "That explains it. Take care, good skill -"
"I know I'm needed here, I'm sorry -"
"There's so much need it's a little hard not to drown in it, sometimes. Take a century. Get your head above water. In the long run it'll be better for everyone."
"I'm not actually sure I'm more effective when I'm happy."
"As a class we definitely aren't." He hesitates.
Findekáno can guess. "Maitimo's more effective when we're happy."
"Yeah."
"I can tell myself to stop taking that into account but that won't actually make lives stop depending on it."
"Which is why I think hopping two dimensions away is a fantastic idea."
Findekáno nods. "Am I going to come back to find you've - erased him, or something worse -"
"We'll probably have done something about him inside a century."
He nods jerkily. "He could be really useful, you know. He'd be better at unravelling this mess than your ones, even if you had him sworn not to do anything he thinks they'd disapprove of -"
"I'm sure we'll run across ones who grew up in a dangerous, assassination-happy, slaveowning, profoundly monstrous society, who were themselves still not evil."
"Are you sure of that."
Fingon sighs. "Less sure than I was? But still - mostly."
"And my family?"
"I'll look after them."
"Does Maedhros want to talk to me before I leave."
"I doubt it. Do you want to talk to him?"
"Is there anything I can say to talk him out of killing mine -"
"You can hop two dimensions away and go figure out how to be happy."
So he does that.
