Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy)

by Gillian Andrews

  “He puts on that patient, long-suffering face, and I want to kick his virtual teeth down his virtual throat.”

  “Virtually impossible!”

  “Ha! I fell on the D2 square the other day. Atheron was most displeased. No commontime for two months.”

  “I failed relativity basics. No commontime for three months.”

  “That false smile of his makes me want to puke!”

  “Know just what you mean. If he had been one of my father’s subjects we would have had him set in a wall.”

  “Set in a wall?”

  “Common people who break the law are set into special rexelene blocks which are transparent. Then we use the blocks to build museums, and charge people to look at all the dead criminals.”

  “And I thought Kwaide was diabolic! Even they haven’t thought of charging to look at dead people. Yet.”

  “Very profitable.”

  “I can imagine. Bit gruesome though, don’t you think?”

  “It’s a good deterrent.”

  Six shivered. “I can see it would be. It sure deters me from going to Coriolis!”

  “It’s only for common people.”

  “You can’t get much more common than me!”

  “Very true. Never mind, no-name, if we ever go to Coriolis I will make sure they don’t set you into a rexelene block.”

  “How generous! It doesn’t seem very likely we ever will.”

  “No, . . . I wish,” Diva admitted. It was the closest she had ever come to showing debility.

  “Homesick?” he asked.

  “Certainly not,” she signed back. “That would be weak.”

  “And you never show weakness.”

  “Only ordinary people show weakness.”

  “Like me?”

  “Exactly. Though now I come to think about it, you don’t show weakness either.”

  “Is that a compliment from the great Diva?”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “I am flattered.”

  “Don’t be, I didn’t mean it.”

  “Goodnight, Diva.”

  “Goodnight.”

  The following day Six found himself facing Atheron again for another long school day. He had made up his mind to become proactive in his education. He was going to slant things towards the subjects he thought might be useful to him, as far as he could. It was one way to make sure he was ready when the opportunity came.

  “I’d like to study Sell,” he said.

  “The history?”

  Six nodded. “And the language.”

  Atheron frowned, which was surprising because his permanent school expression was a smile. “No foreigner may speak Sell.”

  “Why not?”

  “It is not permitted. It carries the death penalty for the foreigner, and also for the Sellite who taught him the language.”

  “Seems a bit drastic?”

  Atheron stiffened. “It was so decided at the First Valhai Votation. No Sellite would think to question the Votation.”

  “Really? So you use a language only . . . a few hundred people speak?”

  “Quite so. There are five hundred Sell skyrises and about four to five live members in each on average, so there must be about two thousand two hundred Sells in total.”

  “And you all have to learn the other Almagest languages?”

  “Of course. At least, the males do. It is considered unnecessary for the females.”

  “So you will teach me Xianthan and Cesan, but never Sell?”

  Atheron nodded. “And Coriolan, if you wish.”

  “I’d like that.” If he had to learn something all day, he’d rather it was something that might come in useful one day. It would be impressive to be able to surprise Diva by speaking to her in her own language. That would show her what a Kwaidian no-name could do! Pity about the Sell, though. They might need it if they were ever to escape from Valhai. He would just have to make do with Sell history. He settled down to his classes in a more positive frame of mind than he had had previously. If he was going to have to spend all day every day swotting, he might as well make good use of it. Not that he had a lot of choice in the matter. Six gave a sigh. And he’d complained about his lot before coming here. If ever there had been a kid who knew nothing! Nothing. He scratched his head and turned his attention back to Atheron.

  Diva found herself falling over her own feet in the musical squares. “You people do this for pleasure?” she panted.

  “It is considered a great art.” Atheron said. “But all Sells are taught the basics, and must be at the least competent on the squares.”

  “I get my legs all tangled up.”

  “Yes. You are, of course, slightly taller than the Sellites, which makes the process rather more difficult for you. Nevertheless, all candidates are expected to master the squares, since the Sellites brought them over from their original world, Cesis. Any Cesan investor would expect you to be moderately proficient in the art of square music.”

  “I still don’t know what it is they are going to invest in?” She made it a question.

  Atheron seemed to hesitate.

  “I think I have a right to know,” she said.

  “They invest in . . . you.”

  “Me?” She moved her head back in surprise.

  “If there is an investor who is sufficiently impressed by you, they will come to an agreement with us for your . . . genetic material.”

  Diva opened her eyes wide. “My genetic material?”

  “Exactly. Some time ago there were a series of flares on Almagest, and both the Cian moons were irradiated. Most people survived, but the damage became clear in further generations. So it is in their interests to combine genetic material from Sacras, which was not affected by the flares, and help to palliate the effects of the radiation damage.”

  “And the Sellites?” Diva asked

  “We were not affected. At least, those of us on Valhai were not affected. The vast majority have been cleared, and we have a large enough gene pool for the small damage sustained to be eliminated.”

  “So I am for sale, is that it?”

  “Not exactly. We sell all your oocytes. All you girls are born with about five hundred thousand egg cells. We simply remove them, and process them to be merged with other races. Most beneficial.”

  Diva was horrified. “You mean you are going to use my . . . egg cells to found a race?”

  “Hardly that. At most, to genetically improve one.”

  But Diva was revolted. “And if I don’t want any of this?” It came out before she could remember to measure her words.

  “You signed the apprenticeship agreement. It isn’t actually up to you to decide your future, you know.”

  “So you deal in people. You are slavers.”

  The grey-haired man narrowed his eyes. “I will try to forget you said that. But there might not be commontime this month.” He gave a thin smile, and looked pleased with himself.

  “And if nobody picks me?” Diva demanded, unimpressed by the threat. “What happens then?”

  “I’m sure you needn’t worry about that,” he said, looking away evasively.

  Great! She nodded to herself. She knew none of the candidates had ever made it back to Coriolis, so it wasn’t looking too good for the candidates who were rejected by the “buyers”. She didn’t think the Sellites would be too pleased with them. It didn’t seem likely that they would become new citizens of Sell. So what did happen to them? And if she were accepted they would rip her open, remove all possibility of ever having children of her choice with a husband, and use her to found some sort of hybrid race.

  “Why don’t you just clone them?” she asked.

  “Because cloning techniques wouldn’t work in this case. Genetic damage would replicate more readily in a limited gene pool. And our technology has not advanced enough for us to be able to remove the impaired genes artificially.”

  “I see.” Diva felt sick. She had thought the Sellites were hugely more advance
d than the Coriolans and yet . . . the whole process she was being submitted to seemed coldly manipulative. She couldn’t see where their great “wisdom” was, where they showed their superior knowledge, superior morality and advancement along the evolutionary scale of things.

  “If the egg cells are present at birth why do I have to learn all this stuff for so many years?” she wanted to know.

  Atheron gave one of his smiles to indicate he thought it was a good question to ask. “You are quite right. Clearly none of this extra knowledge will affect the egg cells at all. But it does affect the investor, we have found. People are far more likely to invest, and invest more, in your genetic material if they perceive you to be an exceptional student with wide knowledge.” He lifted up one finger. “Although as you know we do not forgo physical development, which is also of great importance to a possible investor.”

  Diva felt hot anger run right through her. If only she could fry Atheron with a look. She visualized him disappearing in a puff of smoke. It was a pleasurable thought.

  “So you see how important it is for you to really excel at your studies.” Atheron slapped his hands to sides of his chair and looked satisfied.

  She tried not to shudder. “I do.” This man was convinced he was doing her some kind of favour! He could see only good in shutting someone up in a bubble for two years. And at the end of it all they were planning to slice her up and sell off body parts. Privately she thought their own genetic structure might need a makeover.

  That night she signed Six about it, explaining in painstaking length what she had found out. His fingers faltered as the import of her words sank in.

  “So what happens to us? Do they give us away with the genetic material? As some sort of . . . back up? Buy five hundred thousand, get one free?”

  “I don’t know! He just said they take all the egg cells. At least in the girls’ case; I didn’t ask about the boys.”

  “Fine. That makes me feel very secure. They probably put us on display steeped in formaldehyde!”

  “Probably. And don’t forget, that prospect is only for the lucky ones, the ones who are chosen as Valhai. Atheron didn’t even want to tell me what would happen to the others, the ones who weren’t chosen.”

  Their hands were quiet for a few minutes as they thought about that. In her own room Diva covered her eyes with her hands and rubbed them. It made no difference at all, she still felt totally drained of emotion.

  “I wish we could escape,” she muttered to herself.

  “We’ll just have to break out.” Six’s words came almost at the same time as her wish. “No point hanging around here for the next twelve months if the best thing that can happen to us after all that is being sliced up like a temaris tree.”

  “We couldn’t. We made an oath. We can’t . . .” Diva replied. “Think about the people back on Kwaide and Coriolis. Oh, but I wish we could . . .”

  “We’ll find a way. And the Elders can come over here and take our places. By Lumina, I’d enjoy seeing that!”

  Diva smiled. She knew how he felt, but she also knew that she shouldn’t let her family down. No. Their future depended on her behaviour. She would never be able to escape.

  Six seemed to sense what she was thinking, for he finished the conversation tersely. “Just wait and see!”

  Chapter 8

  GRACE FOUND IT hard to sleep, finally fell into a deep dream just when the rest of Sell would be waking up, and then woke up feeling awful some scant three hours later. Even breakfast did nothing to improve the day, so she moved to her school area to figure out if whoever had been talking to her the previous night had been using some kind of code.

  It took her a while, but then one of the combinations of letters she tried gave her a word which made sense. They were using each finger to represent three letters, and perhaps one number, starting with the little finger. So the word they had been transmitting was ‘hello!’ Interestingly, it was in Kwaidian, so it turned out that her studies had come in useful, after all.

  She practiced the code for an hour or two, until she felt confident enough to be able transmit and receive messages with a reasonable degree of accuracy, and then decided to see if a couple of hours on the music squares would help drive the sensation of fuzziness away.

  Grace was no expert on the squares, although she enjoyed the combination of music and exercise that they gave her. It wasn’t until nearly an hour later that she realized that the squares were ten wide and eight deep, which meant that the code could be applied to music if she were to ‘repeat’ each finger on a square.

  She gave a huge leap, to try and recreate “hello” in sound. It was difficult, but not impossible. The sound resonated around the Squares chamber. Excited, she tried to make a whole sentence out of the squares. At last she managed ‘my name is Grace’ before collapsing on the floor, exhausted.

  “Keep.” She instructed the automated recorder. It would never be a popular dance in Sell, but it did give an extra dimension to the exercise.

  She decided to finish her workout by running twenty laps around the floor perimeter, the standard Sell distance for her category. Even that was nearly too much for her, and she found her chest was heaving and her heart beating frenetically when the sound of the front lift disturbed her.

  Dripping with sweat, and feeling anything but welcoming she went to the reception area. Vion was standing in front of the lift. As he saw the state she was in he raised one eyebrow, but said nothing.

  “Do you want the interscreen back? I’ll go and get it.” She turned in the direction of her office.

  Vion stopped her by holding up one hand. “Not the reason I came,” he said. “I think my skyrise will be able to manage with one interscreen less. I’d like you to keep it . . . you never know when it might come in handy.”

  “Thank you.” She looked at him questioningly.

  “Do I have to have a reason for the visit?” he asked plaintively.

  “Definitely.”

  Like a little boy caught out, he grinned. “Well, I had better own up then. I was curious to hear what you found out.”

  She smiled. “I got nowhere.” She explained all the digging she had done, and the questions that in the end she had had to ask her own brother. “—Who refused to answer me. Said he was too busy,” she finished up.

  Vion stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I can’t believe that we would have anybody killed,” he said slowly. “Can you?”

  “I have no idea. But why are there no records of the rest of them? Can you think of anything good to account for that?”

  His eyes rested on the black circles under hers. “You need more sleep, Grace. You mustn’t get obsessed about this.”

  “That is just what I think somebody should do! If we all sit around pretending stuff doesn’t happen . . . what do you mean, obsessed?”

  “We don’t know each other very well . . . yet,” he said. “and maybe I’m stepping out of line, but it seems to me that you have a bit of a stubborn streak right down your backbone.”

  She glared at him.

  He laughed. “Don’t bite me, Grace, I was just saying what I think. Don’t hold it against me please.”

  She relaxed. “All right, but I would like to know who gave you the right to insult me . . .”

  “You think I was insulting you? Not at all; it was, in fact, a compliment. I am so very tired of talking to people who never question anything about Sell or their own lives. It feels sometimes as if we have created a race of mindless robots. My fellow Sellites, present company excepted, have genetically modified themselves into unquestioning acceptance of their own excellence, and so have become rather less than the better examples of higher animals.”

  “Oh.”

  His mouth twitched. “Oh, indeed. How do you feel about it?”

  She tipped her head on one side, considering. “I haven’t really thought about it . . .” And then laughed at herself. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it? That we never pause to think about anythi
ng? Well, I could never put my finger on it, but I always felt that something was wrong somewhere, and now that you have mentioned it, yes. Yes, I think you are right. What a terrible thing to say, though.”

  He agreed, “It is. Don’t think it is a comment I throw out lightly. I have actually thought about this for a long time. It seems to me that as a society we have stagnated. Fifty generations have adhered to the First Valhai Votation, and that left no room for adaptation. It made our society infirm.”

  “You can’t have told anybody else?” It would be reason enough for an Investigative Commission of Ethical Correctness.

  He shook his head. “Now you see why I told you it was a compliment. It means that I have placed a great deal of trust in you.” And on that note he made his way back into the lift. Like the Cheshire cat, his grin seemed to stay in the air after he left, evaporating little by little. Grace felt ashamed. Perhaps she should have returned that trust, have told him about the sign language.

  She had certain household chores to do, it wasn’t until late afternoon that she found herself sneaking out again in the back lift. This was becoming a habit. She smiled. It still felt audacious to be sneaking out onto bare planet, and she knew that she would be in trouble if anyone else found out. They could call a tribune within a couple of days, and the least severe penalty would be to restrict her biosigns to interior locks only. As it was, she only used the terrace lock on the ground floor, and no-one was to know if she was simply sitting on that terrace for a few hours or actually on bare planet.

  She would take a few canvases down to the ground floor terrace, she decided. She had not lied to Amanita. If she had had to take up a hobby then painting the planet would have been her first choice. She would spend some time actually painting down there, and that would give her an alibi if anybody started to enquire about the lock being activated. That way she could justify the use of so many face masks. It would explain away everything. She would have to splash some paint onto the canvases, but since nobody would expect her to actually be good at painting, it wouldn’t really matter. They wouldn’t be able to tell if it had taken her one hour or one week. Nothing she could paint would even register on the cost-to-bulk ratio!