Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy)

by Gillian Andrews

  “She doesn’t talk about it,” Grace assured him. “I don’t know if she is over it or not.”

  Six shook his head. “It won’t be easy for her. Girls of her class are brought up on Coriolis to be selected as future consorts of the very highest Elders. They are expected to provide the next generation of leaders. A girl who can’t have children has no value on Coriolis. She knows that. If she goes back to Coriolis, to Mesteta, she runs the risk of being repudiated by the rest.”

  “Just because she can’t have children? That’s ridiculous!” exclaimed Grace. “I am beginning to think that all the planets in the system are flawed.”

  Six nodded. “I can’t talk about Cesis and Xiantha,” he said, “but Kwaide isn’t the best place in the Ammonite Galaxy to grow up in, that’s for sure.”

  Grace leaned forward and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I am glad you are free, Six. And I think the people on Kwaide made a big, big mistake when they threw you out into the badlands without a name.”

  He flushed. “Thank you, Grace. Don’t expect good manners though, I missed out that part of my training.”

  “I like you just the way you are. You don’t have to change. Diva is often rude, and I like her too.”

  “Diva is always rude,” he agreed. “And so do I.”

  “Good. Sleep well.”

  “You too, Grace. Thank you.”

  Grace left him in the vantage point and went back to the other apprentices. They stared at her in a rather hostile fashion, so she picked up her own mattress, and took it into the tanato chamber, to keep her mother company.

  Chapter 23

  GRACE WAS SHAKEN awake by Diva the next morning. The Coriolan girl was clutching the interscreen.

  “You had better take this. It’s Vion. He sounds totally distracted.”

  Grace rubbed her eyes, and then sat up. She took the interscreen from Diva, and, still blinking from sleep, pushed the silver button.

  “Grace! Where are you? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Listen, all Sell is on an alert. The candidates have escaped, you are missing, and your mother can’t be found either. There is a bulletin out on you both. What in Lumina are you doing?” Vion’s voice was taut.

  “We are all right, Vion.” Honesty compelled her to add to that statement. “. . . At the moment.”

  “All right? I like your definition of all right!”

  “I can’t involve you in all this Vion. I don’t know where it is going,” she said gently.

  “Grace. You seem to be in the middle of the biggest outrage on Sell in the last two thousand years. It isn’t going anywhere good, that much even I can tell you.”

  “I am sorry Vion. You deserve more than this for giving me your trust. The thing is, it wasn’t my secret to share.”

  He closed his eyes. “May Cian turn white! Don’t tell me you are harbouring all those apprentices.”

  “I can’t tell you that, Vion.”

  “You are!”

  “I said, I can’t tell you that.”

  “Grace, a meeting in the voting room has been called. The motion is for all due force to be used in recuperating the candidates. You know what that means, if it is passed. And it will be. Men like my father are howling for justice.”

  “Justice?” Grace gave a hollow laugh. “They were killing them, Vion. Murdering them as soon as they had no further use for them. That is the Sellite sense of justice.”

  “You have got them. I knew it!” Abstractly, he tried to tug several strands of his hair out. “Where are you?”

  “I can’t tell you that, either,” she said, sadly.

  “The voting is beginning. I’ll have to go. Take care, Grace. Be careful.”

  “You too, Vion. Thanks for caring about us.”

  He shook his head. “You are one intrepid lady, Grace. Cutting the connexion.”

  Lady? He had called her a lady? Grace gave a little skip, and went to stare at herself in the mirror. No, she looked just the way she had the day before. Pity. She would rather like to be a lady.

  Six had by this time found Diva’s hideaway, and walked in without knocking.

  “What in Sacras do you think you are doing?” she snapped. “What if I had been dressing?”

  “Never crossed my mind.” Six looked virtuous.

  Diva wasn’t convinced. “Just forgot to knock?”

  “Nobody ever taught me any manners,” Six said sorrowfully. “How was I supposed to know?”

  Diva treated him to a slow handclap. “Just so as you know,” she added with glittering eyes, “next time I’ll knock those overlong canines clean down that lying throat!”

  The Kwaidian took two hasty steps back. “What’s wrong with my teeth?” he said plaintively. “They’re all there and they don’t overlap. I’ve always been rather proud of them myself.”

  “Huh! All right for a meat-eater, I guess,” she said. “Not something I’d want myself, of course.” And she displayed her own perfectly even teeth in Six’s direction.

  Six put up one hand, pretending to be dazzled. “Cian! What on earth did you treat those with? Do they provide free sunglasses? What on Sacras do you do if you’re hunting at night?”

  “Very funny!” Diva snapped.

  “No, seriously, do they come with a dim button?”

  “No, but you certainly do! And it’s permanently on.”

  “Now that’s really uncalled for.” Six was hurt.

  “So what do you want?” Diva demanded.

  Six sat down on her bed.

  “Do sit down,” she muttered sarcastically.

  “Thanks,” he said. Then he turned to look her full in the face. “I’ve had an idea.”

  “Wow! That must have been a first.”

  “It would have been, for you,” he explained kindly, “but don’t worry about that, this is serious.”

  “Go on then.” She made a gesture of invitation with her hand.

  “I get the impression things are about to get decidedly nasty,” he said. “So I thought you and I – as the best representatives of ‘nasty’ here – might as well go on a hunt to see what we can find in the way of defensive weapons and possible necessary provisions.”

  Diva seeemed much struck by this. “You’re right,” she said. “We haven’t got much time before we are going to be completely cut off on this floor. We might as well reconnoiter the other floors to see what we can find.” She explained about the artifact chambers. “If there is anything useful, that is where it will be.”

  “Let’s go then. We don’t want to be caught out on other floors when this heats up.”

  Diva got to her feet. “Shall we take Grace?”

  “Better not. She has enough on her plate already.”

  Grace was in the kitchen, doing her best to get rid of the remains of breakfast when she heard her mother give a startled cry. It seemed to be coming from the back corridor, so she raced in that direction.

  Cimma was standing in front of the lift with her Xianthan dagger. She was holding the point against the stomach of a tall man who was attempting to get out of the lift.

  “Vion!” gasped Grace.

  “Cimma doesn’t seem to want my help.” He had assumed a long-suffering face, but managed to flash one of his large smiles in Grace’s direction. “Put that down, Cimma,” he said calmly. “I have come to join forces with you, and I have brought all my medical supplies with me, so I hope I am welcome?”

  “Of course you are,” Grace said. “Matri, put the knife down, please. Vion is here to help us.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe he is part of the Commission?” Cimma muttered darkly.

  Vion laughed. “I think you have rather more serious worries than the Commission just now,” he said. “They have already authorized ‘all due force’ and they won’t administer that through the Commission.”

  “You are risking your life coming here,” Grace told him.

  “I know,” he admitted. “Thing is, I was sitting in my chair in the voting room, list
ening to everything being said, and all of a sudden I felt I was in the wrong place. So I started to wonder where the right place was, and I got an image of the twenty-first floor of the 256th skyrise.” He shrugged. “The rest was just one foot after another.”

  Grace gave him a hug. “You may not be able to go back.”

  “Don’t want to.” He returned the hug briefly. “You should have seen Atheron, though. He was almost apoplectic. The ubiquitous smile finally got wiped off his face. He just sat there turning from side to side, and disclaiming over and over again. The only thing he could do was to keep repeating that it was nothing to do with him, that he knew nothing about it. It was the only good part of the whole fiasco.”

  “Oh, I wish I had seen that! Just think, Atheron got his come-uppance! How I wish they would blame him for the whole thing. He deserves it!”

  “Not going to happen, unfortunately.” Vion turned back to the lift, full of medical supplies. “Now, where are we going to put all this?”

  The rest of the day passed in a whirl. For some reason Grace couldn’t fathom Six and Diva kept appearing and disappearing on some secret mission, Vion was attending the Sacrans they had liberated the day before, Cimma was standing guard by the back lift, convinced that an attack was about to come. Grace had managed to contact Arcan briefly.

  “What is happening?” she asked.

  “It is most amusing,” he said. “I have never seen the Sellites move so fast. Your brother was . . .” The walls of the lift undulated softly. “. . . was speechless. He just sat there, swaying in his seat, and looking as if he had been horned by a vaniven.”

  Grace told him about recent developments, and that Vion had joined them.

  “The tall man with all the little boxes? So. That is good.”

  “He is a doctor.”

  “From what you have told me you may need a doctor.”

  Grace nodded. “Things are happening pretty fast, Arcan. They have already authorized all due force.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” Grace answered, “that they can kill some or all of us without having to give any explanations.”

  The lift darkened. “It is all they know, these Sellites, then? To kill?”

  Grace shrugged. “I thought we were perfectly peaceable. I had never heard of us killing anybody, ever. I feel ashamed of belonging to such a race.”

  “You are not guilty, Grace.”

  “I feel it. I’m a Sellite. I inherited part of the blame.”

  “No. You have stopped it. That is the correct thing to do.”

  “Then why does it feel as if I have put everybody I care about at great risk?”

  “I am too new at this to understand your Sellites and the other races who live in this system. But I think that, whatever happens now, you would have been wrong to ignore what they were doing to the candidates.”

  “Yes. That’s true.”

  “Nobody knows where this will end, Grace,” signed Arcan slowly. “But we had no choice. If we hadn’t acted we would have become like them. We had to be the beginning.”

  Grace nodded. “I understand.”

  “I will try to help. When I can.”

  “I know you will, Arcan. Thank you.”

  It was late afternoon when the interscreen buzzed. It was Xenon and Amanita, from the 49th floor.

  “It is not too late to rectify, Grace,” her brother told her. “I have been given a dispensation for you provided that you give yourselves up now.”

  “What about the candidates?” They obviously knew she had them, there was no point in dissembling.

  “They must go back into the bubbles.” Xenon made a gesture. “What else can we do with them?”

  “Kill them?” Grace’s chin came up.

  “Grace,” Amanita broke in. “You have shamed this house. I will never forgive you. Never!”

  “Quiet!” Her husband told her in a curt voice, causing a look of stupefaction on his wife’s sharp face. “Do not interrupt me again!” Amanita’s mouth dropped open, and Grace knew that Xenon would pay later for his tenacity. “The security of Sell is at stake here, Grace. These Sacrans must not be let loose. They would be a threat to our position.”

  “Yes,” said Grace. “They would tell their governments how to do all the things that we sell to them at a huge price.”

  “Exactly!”

  “Then, why did you teach them all that in the first place?”

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “It has everything to do with it. If—” But Grace broke off. There was a commotion coming from the back lift area. She could make out muffled shouts and what sounded like a cry of pain. She glanced at her brother’s face, on the interscreen. For a second, he was a little boy again, ashamed of breaking something. In a flash, she understood.

  “You were to keep me busy. Shame on you, Xenon!” And then she pushed the button to turn the machine off completely and made her way at a run to the lift area.

  Vion was crouched beside Cimma, but there was no sign of anybody else. A lethargic trail of blood led from a cut on her mother’s neck down to the floor. A medical bag was open on the floor, and he was working on her mother. Grace felt her heart stutter and pause. Her throat tightened. She swallowed, but it didn’t get rid of the constriction.

  “She was defending us,” Vion told Grace. “There were about fifteen of them, all armed to the teeth, but she was ready to take them on anyway, just Cimma with her Xianthan dagger!” He shook his head in admiration. “Sacras! That was something to see. I just wish I had been close enough to take a hand in it myself.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I have no idea. One minute the lift was overflowing with Sellites about to pour out and invade us, and the next the lift doors thickened on them and they disappeared. They only had time to throw a couple of knives at Cimma.”

  Arcan! thought Grace. Thank you.

  “Is it very bad?”

  Vion nodded.

  “Will she . . .?”

  “She has a knife buried in her, Grace.” His voice was rough.

  “Matri!” Grace dropped down and took her mother in her arms.Cimma’s eyes were open, and they moved to look at her daughter. There was no chance she could speak. An ornate knife protruded from her stomach, slightly to the right side. “Magestra!” Grace whispered brokenly. Hot tears fled down her cheeks and onto her mother’s face. Grace brushed them away softly. “Matri! I am so sorry! You were right all the time. We were going to be attacked. But you did it! They have gone.” She rocked her mother slightly and tried to cradle her closer without causing any more damage.

  Her mother’s eyes never left her daughter’s. She drew a thin breath with a strain which was audible, and then with an immense effort she managed to close her hand about her daughter’s arm. She gave a squeeze. It was a meant to be a goodbye.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Vion said, through clenched teeth. He held her with one arm, while the other hand searched his open medical case. He came up with a syringe, and tore open the paper seal with his teeth. With one swift movement, he plunged the syringe into the side of her neck, and then looked urgently at Grace.

  “I have to get her to hospital,” he said. “Now!”

  Grace stared at him as if she hadn’t heard.

  “Come on Grace!” he raised his voice. “If we don’t get immediate medical attention she won’t make it.”

  Grace focused on him, and then her brow cleared. “The lift,” she shouted. “Get her into the lift.” Grace ran to push the call button, and then between them they picked Cimma up gently and edged with great care to the doors. As soon as the lift arrived and the doors thinned, they carried Cimma inside. Once there, Grace laid Cimma’s feet down, and to Vion’s amazement began to push her fingers against the walls of the lift.

  “What are you doing?” he asked her, thinking she had gone completely mad.

  “Shh! I can’t concentrate. Oh, come on, Arcan!”

  Sudden
ly Grace paused as if to listen to someone, and then she turned to Vion. “Where does she have to go?”

  He sighed. “The hospital on the ground floor of our skyrise. It is her only hope.”

  Grace paused again. Then she nodded and turned to Vion. “Will you go with her?”

  “I will have to,” the doctor said. “I’m not sure my father would agree to treat her, under the circumstances, and she is going to need immediate surgery. I will have to operate on her myself.”

  “Did they see you?”

  He was disorientated for a moment. “Did who see me?”

  “The Sellites, the ones who came in the lift.”

  His face cleared. “Oh, sorry. No, I am sure they didn’t. I was quite a distance away, and the corridor was unlit. You know what your mother was like about that! So although I could see them, they wouldn’t have seen me. That’s why Cimma is still alive, if the lights had been on in the corridor she would be dead by now. And the doors never really thinned out completely either.”

  “Then you can go back.” Grace nodded. “You can say you were somewhere else for the day, and that you found Cimma in the ortholift. It will be true, after all. You don’t have to say you were with her at the time! Thank you Vion.”

  “Will you be all right? I had been going to stay,” he said.

  “I know. But I think it is better this way.” Grace got out of the lift. “Hold on Vion, the lift is going to express you to the hospital. Matri, good luck. I will be thinking of you!”

  “What do you mean, express—” But he was cut short and Grace was left to give a wan smile to thin air. She closed her eyes for a moment.

  Grace looked up. Diva and Six were standing a short distance away, staring down at the patch of blood left by Cimma, and the rest of the candidates were huddled behind them. There was a dreadful silence.

  Chapter 24

  GRACE WOKE UP from a short, drug-induced sleep and thought she was in her own bed. She turned over, and felt for the familiar table. Then a black memory inched its way into her waking state, and in a second had flooded all her mind with its grim reminder. Cimma! Was she still alive? Had Vion managed to save her? Even though her mother had been acting so strangely recently she still loved her. Grace closed her eyes again, and made a conscious decision to stay where she was. Forever.