Vale of Stars (34 page)

Sirra caught Khadre looking at her and offered the scientist a faint smile. She looked past her at Yallia. She screwed her face up in a question and asked, “Grandonly? Is there a God?”

The question begat stunned silence. The Family had a few members who adhered to a sort of Unitarian religion, but by and large the Family was truly agnostic. The overriding belief was that the question of the existence or nonexistence of God was an inherently unanswerable one. Yallia had encouraged this “belief,” thinking that escapism and abdication of responsibility to a god (or a God) were unacceptable by-products of religion.

Yallia cocked her head slightly and said, “Why do you ask that?”

“Because the fish think there is.” She looked down at the water and said, sadly, “They think it’s me.” 

Khadre and Yalli were spared the necessity of a response by the faint but unmistakable sound of an air horn in the distance. They whirled around towards the direction of the sound. Khadre saw it first.

“There. One of the fishing fleet,” she said, pointing at the ship’s mast.

“Good.” Yallia said and reached for her paddle.

Khadre did not object, although the speed of the fishing boat was at least twenty times the speed they could make with their pathetic makeshift oars.

The two paddled for a few minutes, then Yallia spoke suddenly. “Khadre, why is that boat coming towards us?”

“What do you mean?”

“How did it know to investigate us? Did you turn the beacon off as I ordered?”

“Yes, Madame Prime. I don’t know why it’s here.”

“Could it simply be fishing?”

Khadre shook her head between strokes. “Not out this far. I’ll ask Del, the dockmaster, what’s going on when we get in. But I’m more interested in the sea creatures’ behavior.”

“Why?”

Khadre took a breath and spoke rapidly. “Why did they investigate Nimmo’s sonar, and is there a way to use sonar to establish communication? Why did the lone animal surface, or nearly surface, towards us?”

“Towards Sirra,” Yallia corrected her. And her correction sent a chill through her. Why had the animals been so fascinated with Sirra, and what had the little girl meant about God? What was different about her?

“Could the animals have sent scouts to warn the fishing boat to pick us up?”

Khadre hesitated only a moment. “I don’t see how, or why. Even if they could understand what had happened, and for some reason sent one of their own to help, there is no way the fishing crew could understand any message.”

 Yallia sighed and cast her gaze downward. She caught sight of Viktur on the raft and her thoughts immediately grew darker. The death would hit Khadre sooner or later, even as it now hit Yallia, though on a different level.

Yallia paddled mechanically, with one thought growing stronger and stronger in her mind, crowding out all others. The Domers had pinpointed their location and sent one of their few assault flyers to kill all aboard. There could be only one explanation: there was a traitor in the Family, and with a shock that almost caused her to cry out in alarm and rage, Yallia knew who it was.

The trip back on board the fishing vessel
Lady Gwenevere
was uneventful and blessedly short. Khadre had learned surprisingly little from the captain and her three-person crew. They had received word about two hours ago that the
Beagle
had “come to distress” and needed assistance. The
Lady Gwen
had been dispatched at full speed to investigate. Khadre called Del at the harbormaster’s office, and the mystery had deepened.

“You called us,” Del said indignantly. “You sent a general distress message.”

Khadre assured Del she had done no such thing. She could almost hear Del shrugging on the other side.

“Whatever you say. You want us to throw you overboard and leave you to paddle back?” Del was nothing if not a thoroughly practical man.

Khadre switched off. Had Viktur managed to send a distress message before he died? She shook her head. No, he had not even been up on the conning platform. But it was the only solution that made sense.

The mystery nagged at her nevertheless. The pieces didn’t fit.

Khadre watched Sirra as the girl continued to stare out to sea. Land was in sight off the bow, but Sirra was still at the stern, looking almost wistful.

“How are you, Sirra?” Khadre asked, putting her arms around the girl’s shoulders.

“I’m sad.”

“Me, too. It’s all right to be sad, Sirra. It’s even all right to cry. Viktur was a nice man,” she said and choked up. Despite her words to Sirra about grief, she found herself trying to deny her own emotions.

“I’m sad about the fish, too,” Sirra said.

Khadre suddenly remembered Sirra’s enigmatic comment before the
Lady Gwen
had picked them up. “Sirra? What did you mean that the fish think you are God?”

“When I petted the one fish, I could sort of hear what he said. It wasn’t like hearing people talk. But I could still understand what the fish said.”

“What did he say?”

“
She
.” Sirra said with quiet emphasis. “She said…I don’t know the words. But she was….” Sirra stopped and looked at Khadre slyly. “She was like you are with my Grandonly, sort of. But more.”

“Like I am with your Grandonly?” Khadre considered that. “You mean, like how I am nice to her? Respectful?”

“What’s ‘respectful?’”

“Respectful is when you think someone else is very important and smart,” Khadre answered, thinking that the definition would suffice for the young girl.

“That’s what the fish were doing. Respectful. But….”

“What?”

“It was more. They wanted to do things for me, I think. Like they wanted to make me happy.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. They thought I could make things happen to them, and they wanted to make me happy so I would make only good things happen to them.”

Khadre felt a chill as she realized that Sirra was right when she said the ‘fish’ thought she was God. The chill passed when rationality took hold—there was no way Sirra could have learned all this from the sea creatures. Her overly fertile imagination, distorted by the violence that preceded it, must be creating all this. She decided to test her theory.

“Sirra? Did the fish say anything about Viktur?”

“Viktur?” Sirra thought. “No.”

“Did they say that he would be all right?” Khadre knew she was leading Sirra, but she had to dispel the effects of the girl’s experience.

“No.” Sirra said plainly.

“You know the fish can’t make him alive again.”

“I know.” Sirra spoke so clearly, so plainly, that Khadre began again to doubt her carefully constructed analysis of the girl’s psyche. This problem was beyond her—Sirra would have to see Doctor Jakielies when they returned.

“Did you hear the one fish sing to me?” Sirra said suddenly.

“No, dear, I didn’t,” Khadre said, then added, mostly to herself, “unless that was the one who broadcast the high-frequency whine.”

“She wasn’t whining. She was singing. It kinda hurt my head, but it was still nice.”

“How did you know she was singing?”

Sirra spread her hands. “I just know.”

Khadre stared at her for a moment, then shook her head slightly. The girl was in need of help. And yet….

Khadre did not complete the thought.

Yallia stepped off the boat when it docked and saw Kahlman and Lawson waiting for her on the pier. She waved once to them and helped Sirra off, then waited as Khadre disembarked. The three watched reverently as Viktur’s body, covered with one of the spare sails from the
Lady Gwen
, was removed by two of the crewmembers. Yallia strode purposefully to Kahlman and said quietly, “I want this man’s body taken care of, Franc. Harvest what can be saved, especially sperm. We’ll have a burial after that.”

“A burial?” Kahlman said, his eyebrows rising.

“Yes.” Yallia knew what she had requested. Family corpses were not buried—they were harvested for cell types and gametes, which were stored in the vast central genebank for later use. The corpses themselves were ground into a fine loam and spread in fields as fertilizer. Ritual played no part in the disposal of corpses—Yallia had frequently spoken against “death-worship,” as she called the Dome practice of funeral rites. She looked significantly at Kahlman. “He was killed by the Domers. We need to use his murder to galvanize the Family.”

Kahlman did not answer, but his expression indicated his extreme displeasure at Yallia’s disposition. He understood what she was trying to do, and although he saw the wisdom in her approach, it nevertheless unsettled him.

Yallia did not wait for Kahlman to respond but instead turned to Lawson. A tiny smile crept onto her face as she saw the control Lawson was enforcing on himself to keep from wrapping her in a loving, relieved embrace.

“Madame Prime. I am glad to see you,” he said with excessive formality.

“And I you, Mr. Lawson.”

The two stared at each other for a while before Yallia said to Kahlman, her eyes still on Lawson, “Arrange a Grand Session, Mr. Kahlman. I intend to hold a vote. You had also better prepare our forces for an immediate attack.”

She continued to stare at Lawson, while out of the corner of her eye she saw Kalhman move off with the two crewmembers carrying Viktur’s body. Khadre touched Yallia lightly on the shoulder.

“Madame Prime,” she said softly, “I am sorry to interrupt, but I have…things to attend to. May I—”

“Of course.” Yallia turned and knelt down to Sirra. “Sirra, you’re going back home for a little. I’ll see you there soon, all right?”

Sirra nodded, but here eyes were elsewhere. Yallia looked at Khadre.

Khadre said, “I think she should see Jakielies.”

Yallia rose and nodded slightly, then thought better of it and shook her head. “No. She has to come to grips with this. This is the world she lives in. The sooner she understands that, the better off she will be.”

“But, Madame Prime! No one should have to—”

“—face the harshness of the world at such a young age? See what cruelty adults are capable of? I consider Sirra lucky to have seen all this at her age. She will be better able to form a true picture of humanity.”

“She will lose her childhood. She will die a worse death than Viktur did.”

Yallia stared at Khadre, whose face betrayed her considerable surprised at speaking out so forcefully against the Prime Original. Yallia wondered if Khadre realized, as she now did, that she had been speaking not about Sirra, but herself.

“Childhood.” Yallia said with disgust. “A period of time in which an organism is dependent, socially and to some extent physically, upon the charity of the community in which he or she lives. The sooner that period can be ended, the better for the organism and the community at large.”

Yallia had never spoken like this before, and she was sure Khadre had never heard such heresy from a Family member, least of all the Prime Original. Yallia had spent her life building up the belief that children represented all that was best in humanity and were the central focus of any civilization. As a result, Yallia knew, because she had founded a nation almost singlehandedly, she was in danger of being elevated to near-goddesshood herself. She was her own iconoclast.

“Come on, Yallia. We have an Assembly to run,” Lawson said, drawing his arm around Yallia and leading her away.

Sirra watched them go and reached her hand out to Khadre, who took it and led the girl slowly back to the Family.

“This Assembly has waited long enough. It is clear that the Domers have no compunctions about escalating a war—and make no mistake, this is a war we are in. Shall we wait for the Domes’ flyers to descend upon our city and surrounding farmland? We have no defense against the Domers should they decide to attack; our only weapon is aggression itself. We must destroy the atmosphere stations now!” Yallia fairly shouted the last word.

The Assembly had spent the previous few hours listening to and discussing the reports from Khadre and Yallia about the attack on the
Beagle
. The general consensus was that the Dome had tapped into the skiff’s locator beacon on its first trip and was waiting for the research vessel to return before destroying it. Yallia encouraged that view and took careful note of who had first advanced it—Franc Kahlman.

She stared out at them in the discussion pit below her. Presently, Kahlman stood up and waited to be recognized.

“Mr. Kahlman,” Yallia said, yielding the floor.

Kahlman nodded to her. “Thank you. I, too, am shocked at the behavior of the Domers. But I am also astounded by the discovery Doctor Seelith has made. Under ordinary circumstances, I would suggest suspending all other projects and devoting all our resources to investigating this potentially life-changing discovery.”

He paused gravely. “But these are not ordinary circumstances. I agree with Madame Prime. Attack.” He said it with such suddenness and force that, although quiet, his words had perhaps more effect than Yallia’s near-scream.

Yallia listened impassively, her face blank. Kahlman returned her level gaze with one of his own. “Any other discussion?” she asked the multitude. In the crowd, she could see Lawson fidgeting in his chair, but he did not stand.

“Then I shall call the vote. All in favor of—”

“Madame Prime!” Lawson called out. Yallia could hear the anguish in his voice. She turned and looked at him expectantly. He said, in a strangled voice, “I request a short recess before the vote is taken.”

Yallia lowered her eyes to find Kahlman shaking his head slightly. “Irregular procedure, Madame Prime,” he muttered.

Yallia was aware that Lawson’s suggestion was out of order, but she was inclined to follow it. She needed to speak with him. “So ordered. Fifteen minutes.” She stepped down from the speaker’s rostrum and intercepted Lawson, who was moving hastily in her direction.

He approached her, his face uncomfortably close to hers, and whispered, “I’ve got to talk to you. Now.”

“Yes. Outside,” she added. The two left the Session chamber. Yallia thought she saw Kahlman eyeing them suspiciously as they left, but she did not dare turn around to confirm her fears.