Pools of Yarah Page 6

  “I truly believe your father is right,” she answered. “Death walks close by each of us these days. People are afraid. Chu Li has so long railed against your father, blaming his delving into the past for our present troubles that people are beginning to listen. I hear them stop talking when I approach. They know of my love for you and of Kaffa’s deep respect for your father. Each day their prayers to Yarah grow longer and more fervent.”

  She looked deeply into Hramack’s eyes and spoke quietly, as if afraid that speaking the words aloud would make them true. “There has even been talk of sacrificing one of the herd animals.” She was horrified at the thought. It sounded barbaric. “Can you believe that? We will lose most of them soon enough if we do not get water.”

  She could see that Hramack, too, was aghast at this revelation. Like her, he had thought most of the villagers were too intelligent, too resilient, to revert to the old ways. Now, he had a clearer grasp of Kaffa’s concern. She knew things would not improve on their own, no matter how much they prayed to Yarah. Hramack saw this as well. Why couldn’t the rest of the village?

  She could understand Chu Li. His motivation was simple. He held a grudge against Kena and used him as a pawn to increase his control of power in the village. She did not know why Roagneau, Meelier, and Mitsu heeded him. They were, or had been, close friends and supporters of Kena in the past. Hramack knew their sons well, considered them close friends. Would they turn on him now when he needed their support most?

  Hramack reached out and pulled her to him, running his fingers through her long, silky hair. His touch thrilled her. She had feared for his life out there among the creatures that haunt the Burning Lands. She caught a whiff of Hramack’s pungent body odor and pulled back sharply. She could smell the feline muskiness of a nightstalker even above the flinty odor of the sand and the acrid dried sweat. What ordeals had he endured out there? She would probably never learn.

  When she pulled back, Hramack guessed the reason. He laughed.

  “Teela. I must wash this desert stink off me and sleep before the meeting tonight. Promise me that no matter what happens, you will not speak out against Chu Li.”

  Teela glared at him. “I will not be silent.”

  “Chu Li is a dangerous man. He desires power and will stop at nothing to gain it. His devotion to Yarah is second only to his lust for control. No matter what the Council decides, my father and I must leave Ningcha. We must find the source of the springs soon, or we will all die. If you speak too openly in my defense, Chu Li or the Council could take steps to punish you.”

  Teela’s eyes blazed with anger. “I am not afraid of Chu Li. Let them try to silence me.”

  Hramack shook his head. “I do not think you would like it if you were forced to marry one of Madras’ sons, perhaps Anseer?”

  Her heart skipped a beat. As High Priest, Chu Li could invoke an ancient rule that governed marriages by the needs of the village, a way to broaden the tiny gene pool. “He would never … I would never …” She trembled at the thought.

  Hramack touched her lips with his finger to silence her. “He would stop at nothing to consolidate power. He needs Madras as an ally. Just the threat would force Kaffa to keep silent about what he

  knows. He would do anything to protect you.”

  “Even Chu Li would not do such a despicable thing,” she said. “The people would not stand for it.” As she spoke, she wondered if it was true. Many things had changed lately. She looked at Hramack. He seemed poised to speak but uncertain whether he should.

  “What else?” she asked to prompt him.

  “My father suspects Chu Li in the death of Herat, the old High Priest. He has said nothing to the Council for lack of proof, but his reasoning seems sound. If Chu Li is capable of murder, or even of letting Herat die unaided, of what else might he be capable?”

  “Murder? No villager has ever murdered another, not in nearly 300 years. How …” The words would not form. “How do you know this?”

  “The medicine my father made for Herat was missing when he found the body. Herat needed it for his heart and kept it nearby at all times. Only Chu Li could have removed it.”

  “If what you say is true, you and your father are the ones in danger, not I. He could bind me to another, that is his right as High Priest, but no man would touch me against my will and live. You are a threat to Chu Li, and he would not hesitate to kill you.”

  She saw in his eyes that Hramack was just now grasping the real threat of Chu Li – not his attempt to control the village, but his ability to control Kena through his son.

  “You’re right. My father must be warned.” Hramack stood. “Go now, before others see you here. My father and I must prepare for tonight.”

  He pulled her to him and kissed her as if it were the last time he would taste her lips. She prayed that it would not be so. He pulled away and strode quickly into the back of the house. She stood silently for a moment, wiping the tears forming in her eyes with her hand, and followed Kaffa.

  *

  Kaffa walked slowly to allow his granddaughter to catch up with him. He read her disappointment in her eyes. “Hramack cares deeply for you. He is torn between loyalty to his father and his love for you.”

  “He doesn’t show it,” she replied.

  “He faces choices his young heart does not wish to make. Sometimes, the most difficult choice is the right one.”

  “You agree that he should leave with his father?”

  A flash of light high in the night sky caught Kaffa’s eye. A second and a third followed, long flashes of brilliant white light that streaked across the sky. Kaffa had seen meteors before, but these were not the streaks caused by a meteor’s incineration in the atmosphere. The angle was wrong. The flashes seemed brighter: more intense, almost like the beam of a powerful flashlight. He continued to watch as he walked, but the event did not repeat itself. The image stirred the memory of his recent dreams.

  “The decision is beyond his control,” he replied.

  6

  Long John Baldry

  Long John Baldry slid silently out of the emptiness of Skip space and into the complex gravity fields of the moons, moonlets, and swirls of dust just outside the orbit of the fifth planet of the star system. A momentary flash of light and a burst of gravity waves accompanied the ship’s transition into real space. Lieutenant Cathi Lorst hurriedly shook off the disorienting effects of Skipping, looked out the bridge view screen at the planet below with its faint rings of ice and dust, and saw beauty. If the ancient navigation charts were correct, the planet, a colorful gas giant, was Jupiter, and the star beyond it was Sol, Homeworld’s sun. After an absence of nearly a thousand years, mankind had at last come home. Tightness formed in her chest at the enormity of their accomplishment.

  She compared the spectrometer readings with those provided by the crumbling old star chart. They matched within tolerable limits – mass: 1.9x1027 kg. The distance was good – just over 778 million kilometers from the primary. The bands of gases surrounding the planet still swirled with gigantic storms, though the Great Red Spot was no longer there. According to the records, it had lasted at least five hundred years. She wondered why it had finally disappeared.

  Next, she focused the ship’s powerful imager on the third planet. It was not as blue as the ancient charts had indicated, but that was understandable. Planets change and humans had pretty much used up Homeworld’s resources before abandoning it a millennium earlier. She detected no electromagnetic emissions on any frequency other than those of natural origin. Earth appeared to be a dead world. Closer inspection revealed signs of massive geologic upheavals and areas devastated by what must have been weapons of mass destruction. She saw only small, shallow seas where once waters had reached depths of nearly eleven kilometers. She found no trace of the legendary domed cities, but she could see only one side of the planet.

  Cathi was not certain what she felt. She had hoped that there would be some sign of life: some proof that those le
ft behind had survived the long centuries of massive solar flares and deadly bursts of radiation, had survived the dense cloud cover and incessant storms caused by evaporation of the seas. To think that after all this time and their long journey here, there would be no welcoming committee, was a bitter disappointment. She sighed. Such a valiant effort to survive the threats from the unstable sun wasted because the worst threat had ultimately come from Man himself. A deep sense of loss now tempered her thrill at finally locating Homeworld.

  Growing up a dirt grubber on a tiny agricultural world frequented often by ships of the Traders Guild, Cathi had heard all the tales about Homeworld. Every bar in a hundred worlds had one old spacer, who for the price of a drink, would spin yarns filled with halftruths, lies, and fantasies. Her favorite was the great domed cities filled with great riches and technologies far beyond anything one could imagine. Legends of Homeworld had merged with the Tales of the Arabian Nights and the myth of El Dorado rolled into one to hundreds of millions of poor working-class citizens in the remnants of the old empires. She had vowed to find Homeworld, to walk the streets of her ancestors, and to bring home the treasures left lying about – precious jewels, ancient statues, and priceless paintings: things deemed unessential to a race reaching for the stars, the things that connected the human race to its roots.

  When a Traders Guild Merchant ship arrived the day of her eighteenth birthday, she had considered it a sign, a portent of things to come. She so impressed the captain with her resourcefulness and willingness to learn that he had agreed to allow her to work her way to their next port of call. Two years later, she had won a permanent berth aboard the Baldry, moving from land grubber to gypsy. Now, eight years later, she was an officer.

  Reluctant to take her gaze from Earth, she turned her instruments on the fourth planet. This world did show signs of human habitation. Oxygen and greenhouse gases were abundant in the atmosphere. It was no longer the cold, dead world of old as indicated by the charts. Lakes and rivers dotted its surface. She detected small cities and an impressive network of roads. She also picked up radio signals. Her heart beat faster. Someone lived there. Perhaps a remnant of Earthers had survived after all.

  She turned to her captain, Angus Cyril Moore, as he quietly stared out the view screen at the nearby gas giant, watching the bands of clouds swirl around the planet. His long, red beard ended in three jewel-tipped braids, and his prominent gold bicuspid gleamed brightly when he smiled, lending him the aspect of a modern day pirate, a façade he cultivated to its maximum effect. Instead of his captain’s uniform, he wore a pair of brightly colored shorts, an equally flamboyant pullover, and sandals. He sipped coffee from a large mug. A smile broke across his ruddy face as she handed him her report.

  “Captain, it looks like we did it. Sol. I would not have given us a chance in a million of finding it with that outdated chart you picked up at Tau Ceti Delta. Hell, I thought Homeworld was just a myth. But there it is, less than four hours away.”

  Captain Moore looked mildly amused by her excited outburst, but she guessed what he was thinking. If they came away from Homeworld with a hold full of trade goods, he could refit the old Baldry and maybe buy another ship. He quickly scanned Lorst’s report.

  “Good job, lieutenant. Set a course for the fourth planet. Mars is its name, if I remember my history correctly, named after a god of war. I see that it is inhabited. Well, good and better. We’ll need supplies and fresh vegetables.” He jerked his thumb aft toward the rear of the ship and the cargo holds. “Maybe we can trade some of this gol-fricking mining equipment we’ve been hauling across half the galaxy. Hmm,” he added. “Mars. Let’s hope the name isn’t a bad omen.”

  He turned to the rear of the bridge and yelled, “Helmsman, make for the fourth planet at one half speed. Comm, see if you can raise anyone. Sweep all frequencies.” He turned back to Cathi. “We’ll announce our presence. We don’t want to alarm them. They probably haven’t had visitors in quite some time.”

  “Yes, a thousand years,” she replied. “A thousand years – ten centuries.”

  The centuries of expansion by the colonists from Earth had been both haphazard and, in many cases, undocumented. Freed from the confining central governments of Earth during the Scattering, new colonists felt no ties to old political bodies or religious philosophies. Some simply vanished into the Void, concealing their passage from those who might follow. Others moved from world to world and from sun to sun, blithely stripping them of their resources as they had done to Earth.

  Homeworld! Names changed and legends grew, eventually shrouding Earth’s exact location in mystery. Many planets laid claim to the title and profited from its memory, but none could produce proof to substantiate the validity of such a claim. Gradually, as planets became embroiled in wars and the fight for survival, old records were lost or destroyed. Memories became legends and legends fairy tales. Slowly, over the centuries, humankind had expanded across the galaxy until all ties with the past, and each other, were lost. Some remained isolated either by desire or by distance. Empires, kingdoms, democratic hegemonies, republics, and religious empires – all came and went with little or no effect on the galaxy as a whole. Warlords, despots, and religious zealots rose and fell in the hundreds. Finally, small groups of worlds developed trade agreements among themselves and financed a fleet of ships to seek out new partners, the beginnings of the Traders Guild. Slowly, the scattered remnants of worlds began to meld once more into some semblance of order.

  Traders were a group unto their own, owing allegiance only to the tenants of the Guild, seeking trade wherever and whenever possible. Their homes were their ships, and their crews were their families. They seldom stayed in one place very long, preferring the vast emptiness between worlds. They were the peddlers and tinkers of the modern era. All worlds, even those ruled by right of force, recognized the sanctity of the Traders Guild and abided by its tenets. All worlds granted Guild vessels safe passage and the right of free trade wherever they went.

  Over time, the Traders Guild, through shrewd trade agreements, often coerced worlds to grant new rights and freedoms to its citizens, thereby becoming a political force in the galaxy. In the nearly half a millennium since its inception, over a hundred worlds had opened to free trade.

  Long John Baldry slowly turned away from Jupiter and toward Mars. A C-Class Merchant Freighter of the Traders Guild, she carried a crew of twenty-six, including seven children. The long trip out from Tau Ceti had been difficult for the crew and hard on the ship. The twenty-Skip voyage required weeks of idle time to retune the engines, and the side effects of Skip technology, the harnessing of gravity from micro black holes to Skip along the edges of curved space-time, played havoc with the human body. If not for the suppression drugs, long Skips would be almost unbearable. Everyone now looked forward to some well-deserved shore leave, especially the children.

  Kal Anderson, the ship’s communications officer, called out to the captain from his console. His voice was, as always, even and precise. Cathi had never heard him excited or flustered in the eight years she had known him. “Sir, I’m picking up a request for identification and destination, at least I think it’s a request for ID and D. The language seems to be Standard English, but the dialect’s a little strange. I’m having trouble translating some of the words.”

  “I’m sure they haven’t heard your thick Brosnian accent before either, Anderson,” Cathi quipped with a smile.

  “Answer their request, Mr. Anderson,” Captain Moore replied.

  Anderson spoke into his microphone. “This is the Traders Guild Merchant ship Long John Baldry. Our port of call is Epsilon III, outbound from Tau Ceti Delta. We come to trade as representatives of the Traders Guild. We wish coordinates for landing, please.” He listened as a bemused voice on the other end answered. By the odd look on Anderson’s face, Cathi perceived there was a problem.

  “Sir, they don’t believe us. They think it’s some kind of joke.”

  Captain Moore laughe
d at Anderson’s confusion. “We’ve been gone a thousand years, man. Of course, they don’t believe you.” He grabbed the microphone from the startled Anderson’s hand. “Listen, you micro-brained, desk-bound, hollow-eyed, thumb-sucking cretin, this is the captain of the Long John Baldry, Angus Moore of the Traders Guild. We’re here for trade. Find us a place to land, or I’ll drop my ship in your lap.”

  They either understood the words or correctly interpreted his tone, for landing coordinates quickly followed. Minutes later, another voice came on the radio. The speaker spoke very slowly, as if carefully choosing his words.

  “Captain Moore, this is President Anjiro. This is a moment of historical significance. We welcome you to our planet. I am most certain that a mutually satisfying agreement for free trade can be …”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Moore said, interrupting the president’s speech. “We can deal with that later. I’m busy landing my ship now.” He switched off the microphone. To Cathi’s look of astonishment, he said, “Bureaucrats! They love the sound of their own voice. Let him squirm a while.”

  After a few minutes had passed, he spoke into the mic again. “Mr. President, we are eager to visit Homeworld, Earth. Can you arrange this?” Cathi and Captain Moore stared at one another as the silence lengthened. “Must be having a quick confab,” he said.

  Finally, President Anjiro returned. His voice was no longer jubilant, but petulant, as if reprimanding a child. “I advise you, captain, do not visit Earth. None of our ships that have ventured there have returned. Earth is a dead and dangerous world. Very bad. All that remains of humankind in this system is here on Mars and the asteroid mining colonies in the Belt. We welcome you and your crew to our planet with open arms and greatly desire to trade with you. Please, land and meet with us. We will celebrate this auspicious occasion with a state banquet.”