Alien Chronicles 3 - The Crystal Eye (25 page)

Shaken, she froze the viewer for a moment and drew in several deep breaths. All her life she’d heard nothing but lies and half-truths. Now at last, it seemed she would be able to solve the mystery.

Finally, when she felt calm enough to proceed, she let the viewer play, and the Myal narrator’s voice filled the room:

“Many, many generations ago, the Aarouns lived free on their own world, Sargas III. They knew about the Viis empire far from their boundaries, but the empire scarcely touched their lives. Several times Viis agents came, requesting permission to establish agricultural colonies on their world. The Aaroun leaders refused these requests. They knew the Viis owned many worlds. They did not wish for the Viis empire to own theirs.

“The Viis requested that the Aarouns raise food commercially and sell it to the empire. Again the Aarouns refused. They did not wish to change their traditions, customs, and general way of life in order to work according to Viis rules.

“Every year for a decade the Viis came with these requests. Every year the requests became more insistent, until they were demands. Always the Aarouns refused.

“Then Viis armies arrived.

“The warrior-priestess Nithlived led Aaroun forces against the invaders. Although outgunned, the Aarouns proved to be fierce fighters and would not surrender.

“The Viis general was a male descended from the Fifth House, a general of proud lineage and great cunning. Having observed the Aarouns’ bulky size and powerful muscles, having seen their culture and arts, having witnessed their fairness and honesty, the general realized that the Aarouns themselves would be a greater asset to the empire than their small, undeveloped planet.

“With the permission of his Kaa, the general released a bacterial contaminant into the Sargas III ecosystem. Within days, plant life began to die; water grew undrinkable. The problems spread rapidly. Not possessing the technology to combat such a biodisaster, the Aarouns found themselves facing mass starvation.

“The Aaroun scholar Osoa, valued among his people for his wisdom and honor, feared that the Aarouns faced extinction. He sent forth an appeal to other planets, asking for help.

“But the Viis blocked outgoing communications from Sargas III, and only the Viis responded to Osoa’s call for help. Withdrawing their armies, the Viis leaders pretended great concern over the plague and offered to help the Aarouns save their world. Viis scientists came and consulted with Aaroun leaders, warning them that it would take at least one generation to restore the damaged ecosystem. Aarouns could not live on their world for that length of time. The Aarouns were afraid, for they had nowhere else to go. Yet the Viis leaders gave them a solution. If the Aarouns agreed to be deported en masse, and if they agreed to work for the Viis empire until the debt they owed was repaid, the Viis would save their world.

“Despite Nithlived the Third’s outspoken objections to this arrangement, a treaty was drawn up between Viis negotiators and Osoa. Fearful of Viis trickery, Osoa strove to create a document that would protect his people. Smooth-tongued and urbane, the Viis negotiators filled the clauses with vague wording. With people dying daily of hunger, Osoa simply ran out of time. The treaty that was forged stated the terms of the Aaroun obligation, specifying the Aarouns’ skills as builders, architects, sociologists, healers, and musicians. The treaty said the Aarouns would be permitted to leave their Viis employment when Aaroun lands grew verdant and lush and when Aaroun water flowed clear and pure.

“With great reluctance, the people left their dying homeworld. Many wept during the exodus, knowing they would never see Sargas III again. Their only hope was that their cubs would be able to return.

“Once the Aarouns had been deported, however, Viis spaceships blasted Sargas III into an uninhabitable piece of rubble. Thus did they trick the honest Aarouns into slavery, using them for the most menial jobs that often required great strength and physical endurance.

“A generation passed, and then another. Gradually the Aarouns forgot the great promise of the Osoa Treaty. They worked as slaves, downtrodden and without hope. It was forbidden to sing their prayer songs. It was forbidden to talk of their great leaders and warriors. Until at last, the Aarouns were truly a lost people, with no home and no memory of their own rights.”

Exhausted, Ampris switched off the viewer and sat there, staring into space with burning eyes. The narration appalled her, and she wanted to weep for what had been lost, yet she couldn’t. Her anger burned away her tears.

All her life she had seen evidence of how much deceit and trickery the Viis people were capable of, but this was appalling. The Viis had no honor at all. They never had.

And the Aarouns of today had no idea of what they’d had, or of what they once were. Ampris realized the prayer songs she had gradually learned in bits and pieces over the years were snippets of the forbidden history and vestigial memories of the promise of the great return. No one understood the old songs anymore. Those that had been preserved were garbled and misused. And they were all that was left.

Except for this.

Taking the crystal from the viewer, Ampris turned it over and over in her hand. The Myals knew the truth, yet they were forbidden to share it. Even the Viis no longer knew the difference between their lies and what had really happened, not just to the Aarouns but to many other races and cultures as well.

“You have much to answer for,” Ampris said, growling in her throat.

A knock came on the door. Backing her ears, she glared at Quiesl as he came inside.

He saw the crystal in her hand, saw her flattened ears, and sighed. “You are finished, then.”

“Yes.”

“It is very late. Time for you to sleep.”

She snarled. “No, Quiesl, it is time for me to think.”

“Tomorrow.”

“No, now.”

He took the crystal from her hand and put the viewer aside. “Bish left this sealed for you. He believed you would return to learn more.”

“And now I know the truth,” she said bleakly. “It is worse than I imagined.”

“It happened long, long ago,” he replied. “Such a great wrong cannot be righted immediately. There is time enough—”

“No,” she said sharply, striking the blanket with her fist. “For every whip laid across an abiru back, there is not enough time. For every ration of food withheld from a starving cub, there is not enough time. For every Viis injustice—”

“Perhaps I should be recording this speech as the first new message of the revived Freedom Network,” Quiesl broke in gently.

Despite her outrage, she gave him a reluctant smile and sank back against her pillows. “Perhaps,” she agreed. “You said you had them recorded. Can you persuade someone at the station to broadcast them?”

“Yes.”

Ampris blinked in surprise. She hadn’t expected him to answer so readily.

“Do I have your permission?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes, of course. The Viis have no legal right to keep us enslaved, Quiesl.”

“No, Ampris,” he agreed. “No legal right at all. The Myals, however, sold themselves into bondage in their greed for knowledge. We have been better treated than your people, but we were fools just the same.”

“They can’t hold us if we resist,” Ampris said. “We are stronger. There are more of us. Do you realize how foolish and lazy the Viis are? They can’t fix anything, and yet I have seen manuals and technical diagrams here that would solve so many problems. Why do they—”

“Later,” he said, smiling at her while his tail rose behind his head and waved gently back and forth. “You’ve had enough excitement. Time to sleep.”

She lay down and let him change her medication patches. He turned off the lamp and went out, closing the door. But Ampris did not sleep. Her mind kept turning busily.

The Aaroun homeworld had been destroyed, but according to the account she’d read the treaty’s wording had been vague and open. It didn’t actually mention Sargas III by name. That meant the Aarouns could substitute another planet for their homeworld, and “return” to that planet, without violating the terms of the treaty.

But even as the thought crossed her mind, she was laughing grimly at herself. Oh, yes, honesty must be a genetic trait of the Aaroun blood, she thought. For centuries the Viis had oppressed and enslaved them, for centuries the terms of the Osoa Treaty had been broken, yet here she lay, trying to think of a way to meet its terms.

Snorting, she turned her thoughts instead to Ruu-113, a fabled planet that upon its discovery had been hailed as a promised land for the Viis. Ruu-113 was to said to be almost identical to what Viisymel itself once was, before its inhabitants exploited and ruined it. But Ruu-113 could not save the Viis from their poisoned, dying homeworld, for it was unreachable except through a failed jump gate. How ironic that the Viis had first poisoned the Aaroun homeworld. and had now poisoned their own.

Ampris felt no sympathy for the Viis plight. She remembered that the Zrheli engineers on the space station Shrazhak Ohr were rumored to have sabotaged the jump gate to Ruu-113. They guarded that secret still, and the Viis could not repair the damage themselves.

Drawing her blanket up over her shoulders, Ampris smiled grimly to herself and felt a renewed sense of purpose. For too long she had let the cause of freedom slide, believing it to be hopeless.

Now she was ashamed of herself. The Aarouns had legality on their side. Freeing them from slavery was no longer about simple rebellion. It was about seeing justice done It was time to get to work doing just that.

The imperial lodge in the Kreige mal-Hahfra Mountains was old and quaint and boring. Israi had loved it as a chune, but as an adult she saw its flaws and structural problems. The place was showing its age rather badly, more so with each successive year. It needed repair, and one wing was no longer usable. There was no money in the treasury to repair it, even if Israi had been interested in doing so. She knew from watching her father’s efforts that restoration meant pouring vast amounts of money into a bottomless hole. Since she’d first come to rule a bankrupt empire and found even her personal fortune to be less than half of what she’d expected, she had refused to spend a ducat on fixing any building.

As a vacation, especially when she’d been looking forward to the very decadent delights of Mynchepop, her sojourn here in the old-fashioned lodge was less than satisfying. There was nothing to do. The season was wrong for hunting, and although the mountains were cooler than Vir, they were not cool enough. The courtiers were also bored and bickered among themselves in numerous petty feuds. She wished she’d banished each of them to their country estates.

The new sri-Kaa did not travel well. He cried almost incessantly and would not eat. Israi could not bear to have the hatchling near her.

Bad news from the war filtered in constantly with the arrival of every dispatch.

Israi was reclining on a low, gilded couch, her musicians plinking out a doleful tune, when the heralds stirred and the door was opened for the latest messenger from Vir.

He came striding in, a tall handsome male with a magnificent green rill and clear yellow eyes. The dispatch box, sealed behind a force shield, floated beside him on the security tether attached to his wrist.

“Majesty—”

Israi could stand no more of it. She stood up and gestured for silence. The murmuring of her courtiers stopped, and the musicians ceased to play. The messenger halted in his tracks, the dispatch box floating beside him.

“No,” Israi said firmly. “No more.”

Without another word, she turned and left the room, hearing the rising babble of consternation in her wake and taking no heed of it.

She strode through the corridors without benefit of her heralds or her guards. Startled servants sprang to open doors for her. Someone called out a question, but Israi did not pause.

Heedless of her afternoon gown of sky-blue silk embroidered with threads of real gold, she went outside and hurried around to the stables. There, she gestured impatiently and stamped her foot until startled servants shook themselves free of their lazy siestas or dice games and hurried to warm up the engines of a skimmer.

Across the courtyard, her guards were scurrying to her, their green cloaks billowing out behind them. “Majesty, wait!” one called.

Israi fumed. “Hurry,” she snapped at a servant, who finished tinkering with the skimmer controls. He stepped out of her way and she jumped aboard the little craft, feeling it bob and adjust to her weight.

Before the guards could reach her, Israi gunned the skimmer across the courtyard and out through the open gates. While she was glancing behind her to see if they were going to bother coming in pursuit, she nearly hit a tree.

The automatic warning systems on the skimmer blared, and she wrenched the controls over, scraping the trunk so closely that her heart pounded in exhilaration. For the first time all day, she smiled. Then she extended her rill and laughed, loud and long, letting the wind whistle around her.

She had been cooped up too long. She would go out of her mind if she had to lounge around one more hour in that dreary lodge. What she wanted was to wait until late at night when the capital city of Mynchepop was alive and thrumming with energy, then dress herself incognito and go dancing in the zavda clubs, feel the savage beat of the drums fill her blood with recklessness. She wanted to drink and gamble and laugh, forgetting for a time that she was Kaa, held a prisoner by her own power, little more than a glorified clerk endlessly attending to the stupid details of the empire.

But there were no dancing clubs or gambling halls here in the mountains—only rocks and sky and soaring narpines. She rocketed as high as a treetop, then plunged toward the ground with such speed a crash would have killed her instantly. At the last moment, she lifted the controls, forcing up the shuddering nose of the small skimmer.

She made the engines cry in protest, and the frame shake, and still it was not enough to settle her.