“Yes!” He stretched out his hands as though to grab her by the arms, but she flinched back. “That is what I have been trying to show you, Ellisne! How can a person grow if he does not take risks? The Sedkethran have shut themselves off into a stagnant culture for centuries. It is a crime against all that they are and could be.”
“We have evolved to precisely the point where we wish to be,” she said, shutting off the doubt he raised within her. “Why should we go farther?”
“Why shouldn’t we?”
She frowned, averting her head. “Our civilization is advanced to the point that our citizens suffer no discomfort. We fill a useful place within the society of the Held, and—” she stopped his protest with a sharp look—“I am sure we shall also find our niche within the Imish Collective. We are peaceful. We have no crime. What will you replace these things with? Would you have us all evolve into magstrusi?”
There, it was said. She was breathless at her own daring, but the arrested look in his eyes made her glad she had used boldness. She had been sent to control him, and this might be her only opportunity to succeed. She pressed further:
“They are noncorporeal. And your avid desire to increase your mental powers suggests you also wish to join this state. Will you be happier thus? You say you want all Sedkethrans to change. Will they be happier as pure mental energy? Will they be more useful to society?”
He was looking confused and uncertain. He hesitated before answering, and she was filled with a sense of triumph.
“I am not a magstrusi,” he said slowly. “Therefore I do not have an absolute with which to answer your questions. I am not so limited.”
She frowned. “You—”
“Why must there always be answers?” His eyes held hers, boring in with a fierceness she could not evade. “All I know is that we could be much more than we are. When I discover another ability, I must use it. Otherwise, it is as though I spurn the gift and the responsibility of having it. Am I so arrogant? Are you?”
She opened her mouth, but his words seemed to impale her. She hunted a response in vain. “I do not understand,” she said at last, hating the weakness of her own selfevasion. “I am not certain I want to understand. There are grave dangers in what you do. Multiple timestreams are a trap from which it becomes impossible to escape. The ability to flick incredible distances is another trap. One desires to travel farther and farther, until one never emerges from interstitial time at all. The indulgence of emotions creates mental instability under which the Disciplines are fragmented and rendered ineffective. You are dangerous. You delude yourself with these quests.”
He stared at her oddly. “Do you know what I have learned to do from using the transender? I have learned to blank myself. Scan me. Go ahead. Try.”
She frowned, annoyed by his foolishness. “But I do not have to search. You are right in front of me. I can sense you easily—” She broke off, bewildered. Between telepaths there always existed a faint stasis field of mental energy, usually ignored as one ignored one’s own heartbeat and respiratory functions. Mental pattern emissions, even from shielded minds, were always existent. It was how one recognized telepaths, even of unknown species. No one could shield their mind so completely that they vanished. Only death could achieve that.
But…he was gone! She stared at his handsome, scarred face, her eyes wide with concentration as she scanned and probed, seeking to break his concentration. But it was not even the same as reflecting off a shield. He was simply not there! He was sitting less than a meter from her. She had only to reach out her hand and touch his flesh, but if she closed her eyes she could not have detected even the faintest glimmer of his existence.
The ship rumbled around them, and she was jolted by a sudden acceleration. Brock threw out a hand to grab onto something, and his patterns returned. She loosed her breath, unconsciously relaxing from the tension which had knotted her. The ship jolted again, almost flattening her to the deck. She gasped, robbed of breath by the g-forces, then apparently Rho found whatever boosted the internal compensation field, and the heavy pressure eased.
Brock was counting audibly in rapid double digits. Then he broke off with a lifted fist which she recognized as the Chaimu gesture of victory. “Past initial detector range! Luck must ride on Rho’s shoulder. We should have been blown to bits by now, or at least recaptured.”
“How do you—”
“Wait,” he said, concentrating.
She felt a shudder in the ship.
“Ah,” said Brock knowledgably. “Warming up to jump point now. We’ll shift into implosion drive at any second.”
By the hatch ladder, Ellisne saw a panel suddenly flash red with warning. She was not used to deep space travel, and her few trips had always been accomplished by comfortable passenger liner where such things as warp jump and implosion points were unnoticed. She was grateful for Brock’s warning, for the lurch into faster than light speed left her momentarily dizzy as though she had suddenly been dropped down a dark chute too fast.
Brock laughed as though enjoying the unpleasant sensation. The sound of his amusement was totally foreign to her ears. No Sedkethran laughed. She wondered from what species he had imitated the sound. Human perhaps? She could not exactly remember the Chaimu manner of showing mirth. Ah, but what did it matter? He distracted her too easily.
“At last we’re on our way,” said Brock, getting to his feet. “I’m starving. Would you like some food? That is, providing this ship has any. If it was stored in internal dock, it may have been thoroughly cleaned out.”
She dropped her eyes to hide her shock and disapproval as he began opening the lockers at one end of the tiny hold. Sedkethrans regarded all bodily functions as strictly private and never to be shared. To eat in someone’s presence constituted the greatest rudeness. Even to mention it bordered on direct insult.
“I…no,” she managed to say as he began pulling packets out of one of the lockers. “I require nothing at this time.”
He looked sharply at her over his shoulder, then his eyes softened.
“I understand,” he said quietly. “It was the hardest taboo to overcome when I first left Felca. I’ll take some rations up to Rho and leave you alone for a while.”
The kindness and sympathy were unexpected after his deliberate attempts to shock and annoy her. She rose to her feet, uncertain of what to say. Just when she thought she understood her position against him, he did something unexpected.
He smiled slightly at her, looking tired as he passed her to go to the ladder. He paused with one foot on the bottom rung.
“When I blanked out a moment ago, what did you feel?”
She frowned, not wanting to be reminded of it. “Alone. I felt alone, as though I were the only Sedkethran alive. That’s how I couldn’t detect you when you were in the container. I thought you were dead.” She paused, then something in his expression prompted her to add, “There are no other Sedkethrans near Darjahl Imperial, are there?”
“None.”
“I had never been cut off before. It’s terrible, frightening.” She rubbed her arms, wondering how he had stood it. “So alone. To be so very alone.”
He held out a palm to signify his understanding. “It is what exile feels like all the time, Ellisne. I have been alone a long time.”
She lifted her head quickly. “By your choice, promadi.”
“Yes.” His eyes were dark with memories. “I had a choice, Ellisne. To be whipped almost constantly by the magstrusi for thoughts that violated the Forbiddens, or to live in exile away from Felca.”
“You did not have to think such thoughts,” she retorted.
His mouth tightened, and suddenly his eyes were hard as though she had been unforgivably stupid. “You are a healer. If a sick child were lying at your feet and you were told you must not touch it, what would you do?”
“Impossible,” she said, impatient with such a ridiculous question. “The situation would not arise. It would be illogical to deny me—”
“But if there were such a situation. Ellisne, whether you blind yourself or not, it could arise under the Imish. What would you do?”
“There could be no hesitation,” she answered, trying to imagine his postulation. “I must assist those who are injured. I am a healer.”
“Yes, precisely. And when a thought comes into your mind, how do you chase it away?”
“The Disciplines are designed to—”
“Ellisne,” he said reproachfully. “Don’t evade. You forget that we have shared a little. Your desire to heal has not always kept you from taking risks with your own health, has it?”
Sharp grief caught in her throat. She remembered the child she had been assigned to monitor during Change. She had been only partially through her training as a healer at that time, but already her abilities had earned her commendation and the notice of the magstrusi. The child Pretka was a frail little thing, never very strong, and unsuitable for training in the usual occupations. But she had had such an avid desire to learn that Ellisne could not resist teaching her whatever she asked for. Death was an understood future, but Ellisne had not expected it to come so soon. She had permitted her emotions to override her experienced judgment, and she had nearly died herself by trying to save the child even after it was too late. To hold someone into death was dangerous, but she had risked it foolishly. How had Brock read that memory? It was hidden.
“There is hope for you, Ellisne,” Brock said softly. “In you there are also questions. If you will stop denying them and if you will learn not to be afraid, perhaps you will be able to reach out to another person as you once did to the child. Until all Sedkethrans learn to trust each other, we are a doomed people without a soul, without a future.”
“Displaying emotion, is that what you mean by trust?” she asked, unable to hide how deeply his words had struck.
“It is a step in that direction,” he replied, holding out his hand to her.
She stared at those long fingers and the flat palm marked by more than one scar. Old hurts and doubts emerged within her. She remembered the early days when she had wanted to encompass the universe in her eagerness for knowledge. What had she gradually become? A healer, who could not always save her patients? An acolyte of the magstrusi, who would never be granted the position of knowledge which they enjoyed? She knew a moment’s blind surge of resentment toward the mystics for holding themselves so tantalizingly out of reach. Even Brock, with his great talents, had been denied a share of what they had. Was that why he had turned elsewhere? Could she blame him?
Then shame dampened the anger and she hastened to conform herself back under the proper thoughts. Brock was dangerous. But she would not let him succeed. She would not forget what he intended to do.
Ignoring his outstretched hand, she lifted her eyes to his waiting ones.
“Is learning to kill the next step, Dire-lord?” she asked coldly and watched him flinch.
He withdrew his hand, fingers curling slightly like leaves of the brill herb when they are dried too rapidly. Without a word, he turned and climbed up the ladder out of sight.
10
Brock stumbled as he climbed out of the ladder well into the cockpit of the ship. He dropped several of the ration packets, and the brightly colored squares skidded across the deck behind Rho’s chair. Startled, the Slathese turned to glance at Brock over his shoulder, then that narrow ugly face of bone and sinew brightened with a wide grin. He lifted a fist.
“Victory to the Held! We are free, Dire-lord, and without pursuit.”
“Excellent.” Brock grinned back, and they saluted each other. “How did you do it?”
Rho whistled, ducking his head to one side. “Fitted ship to superstructure of out-going freighter. Merc, ch’t k! Also put our sensors on reverse jamming frequency and tied in functions to freighter’s autopilot. We split from it before going into warp drive. Their sensors picked up nothing.”
“You make it sound simple,” said Brock, not concealing his admiration. He glanced at the viewscreen, but Rho had it switched off according to proper procedure for solitary piloting. Without the distraction of other crewmembers, a pilot could become mesmerized by the panorama of space and fly himself right into a solid body. “Too simple,” he added, unable to help thinking it had been suspiciously easy. “But that was a very sharp piece of piloting, Rho.”
“All Slathese are good pilots.” Rho glanced at him as though reading his troubled thoughts. “The Colonids are careless perhaps, or I am clever, or perhaps they let us go. Do you think we are leading them to the godas?”
Brock frowned. “It’s a possibility we had better watch for.”
“Sic. I have sensors on long-range, but they are not very powerful. This is a non-military craft.”
“We’ll have to stay alert.” Brock switched on the viewscreen and stared at the pattern of stars against the infinite black reaches. He thought of the lovely Ellisne, who was so close to breaking free if only she could see it. And he thought of Felca with the aching beauty of its glaciers and polar walls, remembering the shine of moonlight over the ice with the aurorae playing across the night sky. He used to stand upon Moba Glacier, a solitary figure caught up in the splendors of the night, the wind cutting sharply through his body as he dreamed of what it must be like to visit each star twinkling above him and to see all the infinite varieties of the thousand cultures of the Held. The earth and the sky had seemed his friends when he had no other. They had provided refuge from the mind-numbing exercises of training. The cold wind had been an exhilarating bracer that took away the lingering sting of the whippings. How he hated those crackling bolts of energy, like miniature tongues of lightning, which the magstrusi used to punish and teach. But each night when he crawled stealthily out of the sleeping barracks and fled to the refuge of the glacier, the bare crags of the mountain passes and the low growls of the moving ice all spoke to his eyes and his ears, his mind and his soul. It was the Sedkethrans he hated, not Felca. How can I destroy it? he wondered in anguish.
The suprin would not have had patience with his inner conflict. Chaimu were accustomed to giving orders and carrying them out, secure in their trust of hierarchial tradition and rank. That simplicity had made it so easy to serve the suprin. Brock had no responsibility except to do his job well. Now, he felt as though he carried the fate of the entire galaxy in his hand. The responsibilities crushed him from all sides. How he longed for someone to share them with. But no one followed him except simple, faithful, loyal Rho. He wished Ellisne would not remain so closed. He had tried reaching past the crust of training to the soul he was certain she had, to the compassion and kindness he had seen at unguarded moments in her eyes. Why couldn’t she see that he needed someone to help him bear the horror of what he must do? But why should she help him? She thought he was a monster. Perhaps he was.
He sighed and glanced at Rho. “I’m lucky to have you.”
Rho looked surprised, but not displeased. “I lost all my family, all cross-siblings and side-siblings, to fighting Colonids on the out-worlds,” he said. His slanted eyes grew fierce. “I am descended from Kesmail the Mighty, who of my family was the first to serve the Held. I am the last. It is upon me to share in the Colonids’ defeat. I heard some of what she said to you, Dire-lord. I know she is against what we do. But she is wrong, merc? She does not understand that they wish only to destroy all that is Held, not to govern it. They do not understand the concept of mercy. They are afraid of all that is not of Im because they are afraid that toleration is weakness. Is that food which you have brought?”
“Yes.” Called back to his original purpose in coming up, Brock bent and scooped up the scattered packets he had dropped. His fingers still tingled numbly from aftereffects of the transender. Handing Rho a couple of packets, he tried to tear one open for himself and failed.
“Permit,” said Rho, reaching over to do it for him. Rho’s eyes studied him closely, but the Slathese made no comment other than, “What course do I set? Then I ca
n turn ship over to autopilot and sleep. You should sleep, too.”
Fitting himself into the seat at navigations, Brock nibbled hungrily on the compressed food bar. It contained few of the nutrients he required, but for the moment it would serve to fill his stomach. He studied the controls for a moment, wishing he had more than a rudimentary grasp of their operation. But a dire-lord’s function was to protect the life of the suprin, nothing more. He was not supposed to be distracted by any other interests.
Finally he asked Rho, “Will this control call up the star charts?”
“Sic.”
Brock nodded and after another slight hesitation began slowly keying in the goda codes to the astrogation computer for cross-matching. The process, once he had entered everything, took only seconds.
He stared at the chart blinking steadily in three places. Felca, he thought numbly. I loved you once. Was it to learn to destroy you that I entered the coliseums of the Chaimu and felt the hot splash of blood upon my hands?
An odd sound from Rho pulled him from his thoughts. He glanced at the Slathese, who was sitting rigidly, eyes locked on the chart, and fangs bared.
Rho panted. He seemed to find it difficult to speak. “Those are the godas?”
“Yes.” Brock’s gaze went back to the chart. He blinked, forcing himself to look at the other two besides Felca. The Dena Minor system…Slath was located there.
“Rho—”
The Slathese hissed. His hand, claws extended, clamped down hard upon Brock’s wrist. “There are five planets in my system, Dire-lord. Which?”
Brock swallowed with difficulty. He wanted to reassure the Slathese. He wanted to find words that would take away shock and disbelief. But what words existed?
“The fifth,” he said at last. His voice was hoarse. “The outermost.”
There was an imperceptible easing of the grip on Brock’s arm. Rho ducked his head. “Slath is the third. Could it survive the shocks if Amul left orbit? Could it retain its surface and its atmosphere?”
The Goda War Page 12