The Wizard

Chapter 14 part 1

"The supreme art of war is to defeat the enemy without fighting."

Sun Tzu.

The entrance hall looked comfortable and there was a person at a desk, perhaps a receptionist. Along the opposite wall, there were waiting armchairs and, at the back, wells of elevators powered by artificial gravity. Mia made a sloppy sign to the receptionist and took Igor to an entrance that was next to the elevators, but at the other end of the room where it was not visible at first. The wide corridor did not seem long and ended in a kind of semicircular auditorium of large dimensions. Along the way, the wizard noticed that she was nervous and found it strange in someone who had always been calm. Asked, the scientist gave a yellow smile.

"Don't trust them," she said, laconic and then shut up.

Igor was forced to give a discreet smile, concluding that she was as apprehensive to see the rulers as a simple mortal on Earth would be before the authorities. Although he had been the Supreme Guardian for such a short time and there was not the same relationship of governor to governed that the common peoples had, he already felt this behavior in some of his subjects. The curious thing is that Igor noticed that this happened even with people of clear conscience.

They reached the goal and he stopped to observe the place. It was a room in a half moon and quite large, where more than two hundred people would fit comfortably, although there were no chairs to sit on. The floor was light and made of an unknown material, but it resembled some kind of ceramic. The white walls emitted a diffuse light and the ceiling had an acoustic treatment that seemed to be perfect. Igor was sure that a word spoken in a normal voice was heard effortlessly in every corner of the hall. Amused, he wondered what the reason for that was, if they communicated by telepathy, but concluded that it must also have been done to receive foreign peoples.

At the bottom, on a stage that was perhaps a meter and a half above the ground, seven beings of that people were sitting, also in a semicircle. Igor already knew enough of their appearance to see that they were not friendly as the scientist had been, not at all, except for one who even smiled. Igor stopped in the middle of the room, watching and being watched. The ruler in the center of the group signaled for Mia to leave.

"I'll come back to get you when they authorize me," she said. With a murmur, she continued. "Be careful with them."

"Thank you, Mia." Igor said goodbye and turned to the seven subjects, silent and advancing a little more until he was about five meters away from the stage. He thought it was their obligation to manifest themselves first and, therefore, remained silent.

"Are you not going to say anything, sir?" asked the same subject who dismissed Mia and who was the most grumpy.

"Well, excellence," he began, shrugging his shoulders and giving a small courteous smile, "you called me. So, I assumed I should wait quietly not to break any rules of good manners. I ask you to forgive me if I offended you with that."

"We are from different peoples," said the one on the left, a person who appeared calm and kind, "so we have to be understanding of both sides. Your name is Igor, isn't it correct?"

"Exactly, sir, and I agree with you." The wizard liked him very much. "I believe I am before the rulers of this world."

"Yes, we are the government conclave," said another, now from the extreme right. "You are a contradiction, Igor, and you have already generated, just with your presence, some discord among us."

The young man was surprised by this observation because he did not understand where they wanted to go with that, since he did nothing that could have created any kind of antagonism. For a few seconds he stopped to review all the steps taken since he opened the passage to that planet and concluded that there was no apparent reason. Following this premise, he said: