Priekahm laughed again. “This is what comes of following logic too rigorously.” It was good to hear the old ones just talking, now that there were so few Seteposians really watching us anymore. If there had been anywhere to go—or if we hadn’t wanted to see what was about to happen right here—for the first time I could remember, it would have been easy to run away.
“Well, so they won’t be pleased,” I said, “I’m not entirely pleased either. Perhaps—”
“Diehrenn?” my mother called softly from inside the little hut. I went in silently; she was lucid so rarely now that we tried not to waste an instant of it.
The hut was small and very dark. “I’m here, Mother.”
“Has the new ship arrived?” she asked. Her voice was very soft and weak.
“It’s still up there, but they haven’t come down,” I said, sitting close to her and taking her hand. I could barely make out her shape by the dim firelight coming through the door. “How did you know—”
“Zahmekoses has been telling me about it whenever I’m awake. He’s so excited about it, says they must have developed better technology.” Her breath hissed in her slack throat as she spoke; I leaned in close to her mouth to hear better. “He adds up the time and says they must have ... I think he’s being optimistic ... I wanted to see you tonight because . . . oh, look, the water’s all pink again.” She began to sing in a low, tuneless moan, with occasional words, as she always did after a lucid moment. I pressed my face to hers, and then went back out to Father and Aunt Priekahm. “She’s the same,” I said, before they could ask. “Clear but weak for a little while, and then nothing.”
“I wish Soikenn had lived this long—or that I had paid more attention to my medical studies,” Father said glumly. “It’s got to be something to do with the modified protein processing, toxins that build up and slowly cause brain damage and muscular atrophy, perhaps a by-product of the process that allows us to eat their food. If only Soikenn hadn’t been the first, or pneumonia hadn’t come so quickly after, or even if she’d just thought of—”
Aunt Priekahm interrupted to point out that without the equipment of Wahkopem Zomos or the Gurix, Soikenn’s knowledge would probably have been useless anyway. Since Soikenn had died a year and a half ago, they had argued exactly this question in exactly this way many times. What made me shudder was that when the argument had started, Mother and Uncle Mejox had been part of it.
On occasion I had gotten to talk about it with Prirox and Weruz, the Nisuans who had been born in the same year I was (especially Prirox, because every few months the Seteposians tried to breed me to him again; they couldn’t seem to believe that apparently the birth of my sixth child had left me sterile). We all saw it the same way: either you got the disease from getting old on Setepos, or you got it from living on Setepos a long time. Since Osepok was so much older than either my mother or Uncle Mejox, that argued all too well that you got it from living on Setepos for a long time—and that meant that all of us were likely candidates, too.
Aside from that, those of us with any knowledge of Nisu at all were dying pretty fast—three in less than two years, plus of course the occasional ones who ran away, were killed by cruel masters, or suffered accidents. There were probably fewer than ten of us who could really speak Nisuan, surely fewer than twenty who knew any Nisuan at all, all of us more than thirty-five. Only the generation that had come in Wahkopem Zomos had managed to pass on anything of Nisuan culture to their children; of my own four living, not one spoke the language.
I had drifted quietly into that gloomy stream of thoughts, letting my mind wander away from the new hope from the sky, when suddenly shouting pierced the air.
I looked up and cocked my ears, trying to make out the direction; in a moment we all agreed it was coming from the Palace Square, the blasted area in front of the palace where the Gurix had landed, where because the ground had been baked into stone it was impossible to dig a foundation, grow a tree, or indeed do anything much except leave it bare. Beside me, Priekahm and Father were also standing. He looked in for a moment to make sure that Mother was all right and, since there was little enough we could do for her and the Palace Square was a short distance away, hurried there.
What had attracted the attention in the first place was becoming plainer by the moment: there was a light descending from the sky. At first it was just a blue glow; then we heard a low rumble, like thunder, as it got larger and brighter.
The light became several lights: a great blue one on the underside, and many more floating above it. The thunder grew deafening, and still the lander—that was what it had to be, though I had never seen one—came closer and closer. Now we could see, dimly, the sides of the ship, a gray-white smear illuminated by the lights it carried; it resolved itself into a great cone, resting on its base, and as it drew nearer I could see lettering on its side.
We had kept the secret of reading and writing from the Seteposians, but at the cost of very little practice for those of us who did learn, so my skills were very rusty. While I was still spelling it out, Father read out loud, “Ship’s Launch of the People’s Space Exploration Foundation Vessel Number One: Egalitarian Republic.’ So that’s just one of its landers. Amazing—it’s got to be bigger than the whole Wahkopem Zomos was. The ship must be huge. And if it’s named Egalitarian Republic, then—”
“Then there’ve been a lot of changes back home,” Aunt Priekahm said. “Which I think we’re about to learn about. Maybe even some good changes.”
The lander was now low enough so that the pale blue flame that boiled from its underside touched the ground, right in the center of the black, hardened area that the Gurix had burned out forty years before. Abruptly, brilliant white light blazed from the lander’s underside, a hideous hooting scream emerged over the roar of the engines, and the blue flame went out. The lander descended, still hooting loudly.
“Well, they don’t have to ride the jet all the way in—some kind of internal aerostat?” Priekahm suggested.
“Probably,” Father said, “especially when you look at how huge that thing is. And if they can carry that inside their ship—well, things have changed a lot.”
“Wonder how long it took them to get here?” Priekahm said.
“Well, if they can take a straight line—unlike us—the minimum is around four years, at light speed. I don’t guess modern physics has repealed the speed of light limitation. But we got up to forty percent of light speed with a laser that couldn’t do a thousandth of what theirs can. They might easily have come here at just barely below light speed—”
“I have an idea, Zahmekoses,” Aunt Priekahm said. “Let’s walk over and ask them.”
Father and I both laughed; as long as I could remember, he had been willing to talk theory endlessly—and that was always when she got most practical.
“All right, let’s go. With luck Osepok will already be there to do the official representing, and we can just gawk.”
As we neared Palace Square, most of the crowd were freeborn Real People, who normally would have shoved us aside. But now they parted around us, and though they were outside to see what would happen, they didn’t seem very eager to get any closer. Already the arrival of the lander was changing life beyond recognition.
Aunt Priekahm had noticed, too. “You know, I think they don’t want any of us to be angry with them anymore. What a refreshing change.”
“I think so, too,” Father said, “but let’s not get our hopes too high just yet. It sounds very much like there was a revolution, and Nisu is now a republic. It also sounds like the Egalitarians won. And if you look at it one way, we would seem to be employees of the evil previous regime. So we might just find all we’ve done is gone from Slaves of the Real People to Enemies of the State.”
“Diehrenn, have you ever thought that your father might be a pessimist?”
“Constantly,” I said.
We came into the Palace Square itself, with the palace on our right and the temple to our
left. The palace, I knew, had been the house that my parents and the other Nisuans had built for themselves, taken over by the Nim after he killed Kekox. Nowadays Seteposian children were told that we had built it in a single night under the magic compulsion of Rar, after he captured our souls with his powerful magic. I had never seen it, though that was often a dozen times in a day, without resenting our stolen birthright.
Now it was occurring to me that even though the Nisuans had come for us, that didn’t mean, necessarily, that we would be getting the palace back.
Our banter dropped away as we finally saw how huge the lander really was. The temple was two full stories with a roof tall enough to be a third story, and the burned-out hulk of the Rumaz towered a story over it. This was three times as tall as the Rumaz, at least. Its immense feet were settling very softly onto the hard ground. It seemed to drift for a moment in the light evening breeze, as if its whole bulk were all but weightless. The hooting and screeching stopped abruptly, and we heard a loud hiss; the Lander sank onto its legs, compressing them, and settled firmly onto the ground.
Palace Square was almost empty—around its outer edge there was a crush of Seteposians, who probably wanted to see, but not that closely, and in the middle there was a small group of Nisuans. We hurried to join them. “Prirox!” I shouted, seeing him.
He turned. “Diehrenn. So, are you ready for the whole world to change?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Preferably for the better.”
Osepok was in the group, and Weruz as well, along with several other older Nisuans. It looked like it was about the older half of us. “The rest of the Nisuans are either in the nursery, or the Real People families that own them are keeping them for some reason or other,” Weruz explained. “And I can think of one or two who are probably just as frightened as the Seteposians. I think we probably have everyone who can speak Nisuan here, anyway.”
“Ha, look at the palace,” Father said. “This means getting down to business quickly.”
A group of about twenty-five Seteposians came from behind the palace at a dead run. They were the Nim’s personal guard, except for their leader—
“Set!” I said, in some shock.
Aunt Priekahm said, “Yes, of course. I’d say the old Nim is as sharp as ever. Well, bad luck and an ugly death to the lot of them.”
I must have looked shocked, for Father turned to me and said emphatically, “Now, no sentiment. Rar is going to try to storm the door on that lander as soon as it opens. He remembers what modern weapons can do, so his only hope is to try for surprise. He’s no fool. I’m sure right now he’s more afraid than he’s been in a long time. But there might be a chance, and he’s taking it. The only way to beat steam rifles—or whatever it is they carry nowadays—with spears is to not let the steam rifles get into action. So he’s going to try to get in before they even know they’re attacked. Mother Sea knows it worked once.”
“But Set—”
“Is up there because he’ll attack like a mad dog till they kill him or he wins,” Priekahm said. “And you of all people should know you can’t possibly talk him out of it. Before you get terribly sentimental about all of this, just remember that if Nim Rar and Set triumph, we stay slaves. I’m sorry your favorite Seteposian is in line to die, but if it would get me my freedom, I’d be delighted to kill him myself.”
I looked back at the lander, not wanting to hear more, hopelessly confused, my eyes filling with tears and my mind with no emotion I could name. From far above the ground—as high as the roof of the temple—a door opened, and a long flight of steps extended down to the ground. A Nisuan stepped onto the steps, his face obscured by a huge mask.
Set lunged forward out of the group of guards and hurled a spear with all his might at the figure. He shouted for his men to follow, and they all rushed toward the flight of steps that led up into the lander.
But the Nisuan, several bodylengths above Set, had plenty of time to see the spear coming. He stepped slightly to the side and slapped hard, and the spear thudded against the wall of the lander, then fell to the ground below.
The Palace Guard, with Set in the lead, had almost gained the foot of the stairs when the Nisuan in the huge mask turned to someone inside, who handed him a heavy object that looked like a cylinder with two protruding stubby bars. Grasping a bar in each hand, he pointed the cylinder down at Set, who was now rushing up the steps with the Nim’s guards behind him.
It made a strange whirring scream. Set’s body burst apart from his neck to his waist, spraying back onto the men behind him. What remained of him fell sideways off the ladder.
I breathed “no” just once. Then the small insectoid figure took one step forward and looked over the whole Palace Guard, which seemed to have frozen in their tracks. He pointed the cylinder again, this time to one side. Again it made the whirring scream, this time for much longer. The Nisuan swung it back and forth.
All the guards seemed to shriek and fall at once, clutching faces, chests, or bellies. Most lay still. A few still moved, but if they did, the Nisuan pointed the cylinder, it whirred briefly, a body would dance and flop on the ground spraying blood—and then they would lie still. In a few moments they were all dead, or near enough.
The whole thing had taken the time of a couple of long breaths. It took a little longer, perhaps one breath more, before the Seteposians began to scream and flee Palace Square.
Raising their hands above their heads, Father and Priekahm walked slowly toward the Nisuan lander. In a moment they were joined by Osepok, still walking proudly erect despite her enormous age.
I might not have followed, but then Weruz and Prirox raised their hands and walked forward, so I followed them with my hands up and then all of the Nisuans in the group did the same.
Now that the fighting was over, Nisuans, all wearing the same enormous masks, were coming down the steps swiftly. The one with the cylinder pushed the mask up off his face and looked around. There was something about the cool, calm way he looked around—He has never had a master, I said to myself. Then I noticed that he was of mixed parentage, so at least Father’s worry that we might all be executed for miscegenation seemed to be unfounded.
He was also strikingly handsome, but I’m not sure whether I noticed that then or a little later.
He gestured our way and called out in Nisuan, “Please do come closer.”
We all sped up a little to get closer to him; even those who didn’t understand Nisuan understood how warm and friendly his tone was.
As the first of us drew closer, he peered for a moment and then said, “You must be Captain Osepok Tarov, late of the Imperial Expedition to Setepos?”
“Never heard of her,” Osepok said dryly, and everyone in both groups laughed. “Yes, of course, I am. And allow me to present Zahmekoses and Priekahm, of the same expedition. I’m afraid our other survivor, Otuz Kimnabex, is not well enough to come out and greet you. And you are—”
“Thetakisus Gereg, assistant to the captain of Egalitarian Republic. As soon as our forces secure a perimeter here, we’ll introduce you to our captain and our political officer. A preliminary announcement, however—” He lifted a small black cube to his mouth, and suddenly his voice boomed across the square, louder than he could have shouted. “Political Officer Streeyeptin sends his greetings and announces that there will be a complete amnesty for every person of Nisuan descent, for any act in violation of the laws of the Republic committed up to this time, whether knowingly or not, including crimes against the Intrinsic Laws.”
There was a long pause. Then Thetakisus said, “Ah, it would be customary if you all said you accepted the amnesty.”
“I think that since our new friends are presumed rational, we will consider the amnesty accepted.” The voice that came from the doorway above was cool and dry, and sounded mildly amused. “We can always let them rescind it,” he added. A slender but very muscular Shulathian male emerged from the doorway and walked down the steps toward us. “And I would imagine
that slaves have had little opportunity to pass their language on to their children, so probably most of them did not understand you. So though protocol has been served, and everyone has received amnesty, I’m afraid we can’t quite expect them to thank us for it just yet.” His words sounded carefully calculated to be friendly, but he seemed to put nothing behind them.
Thetakisus seemed a little embarrassed. “Political Officer Streeyeptin, may I present . . .”I thought it was amazing that he remembered all the names correctly.
“I am Streeyeptin,” he said, when Thetakisus had finished. “No family name, as I’m an orphan like Priekahm or Zahmekoses. Since you didn’t have political officers in your day, no doubt you are wondering what I do. I think explanations should wait until we’ve made you more comfortable.”
He looked around. “Captain Osepok, would you be willing to translate something for me into the local language? We need to announce it to everyone, Nisuan and Seteposian, as soon as possible.”
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