Daughter of Time 1: Reader (19 page)

Waythrel and I were marched in front of the bench, allowed a small but still claustrophobic space by the Dram guard. Everything was taller than me – the seven-foot-high Dram guards, the elevated Inquisitor, and even my Advocate. What did it matter? I had my own strengths.

Waythrel and the Inquisitor clicked back and forth for at least ten minutes. The Xix had told me that it would try to have the Tribunal abolished but had little faith that this could be achieved. There was clear documentation of my manipulation of the Orbs, and this made me a center of questions for power and religion in the Hegemony. After the discussion swayed back and forth between them, the High Inquisitor waved off Waythrel and addressed me.

“You have been informed of the charges?” The translator was of Xixian manufacture, an unusual choice for the Dram who were so suspicious of foreign devices that they most often chose to use their own, far inferior machines. Unless they were dying and needed Xixian medics, of course. Or, in this case, when a member was less intimidated. Waythrel had told me this mentally early on in the assessment.

Whatever it pretends to be, this one is a Naturalist. Only one very comfortable with technology would wear one of our translators. He will seek to make a deal with you to reveal your powers over the Orbs.

“Yes,” I responded to the Dram above me.

“Would you repeat them for the Inquisitor.”

“I am charged with High Sacrilege in the contamination of the Holy Orbs by an impure species.”

“And do you know the penalty for such a crime.”

“Purification, and then death.” Meaning torture and then death if the torture didn’t kill me first.

“There are other ways, human.”

Ambra, here comes the offer. Please hear my thoughts on this before you answer.

The giant insect pressed a button, and lights dimmed as a cone of energy came around the three of us, leaving the guards and others outside of it.

A cloaking shield, Ambra. No one can overhear or record what happens inside. The Inquisitor is protecting itself from what it is about to say.

“The Emperor is very keen that the Hegemony possess the power you have revealed. I and the Emperor share a more enlightened view of your deeds than others on our world. While they may prevail in the Tribunal, we would have it otherwise. And if you will agree to the Emperor’s terms, the Holy Office of the Emperor has the authority to annul the Tribunal.”

“And if I refuse?”

Ambra! Wait, I said!

“Then you will find yourself at the mercy of the Tribunal,” said the insect, an anger radiating from its consciousness. “And should the Naturalists prevail, you will find less kindness in your service to them.”

The stupid fool. Already I could sense all the lies in it. I would suffer no matter what they said or promised. They would enslave me and recoil from no indecency to my person in attempting to extract the knowledge they desired.

Ambra, this is an important political turning point. If we can bypass the Tribunal, it will buy us considerable time and likely the momentary facade of better treatment. I suggest that you accept its offer. Let me express this to the Dram.

No!
I shouted into its mind, and I saw my Advocate momentarily disoriented from the impact of my thoughts. I stepped forward and spoke angrily to the Inquisitor.

“Should I accept your offer, so that you will place me in better conditions for a time before ripping my mind apart? Turning me into an experimental subject on which you will work and likely fail to extract the secret you desire? No! I will risk a better death in torture before that! I will not work with the galaxy’s fiends and murderers! Tell your Emperor that a lowly creature from Earth spits in his face!”

Waythrel had recovered by that point, and I sensed the overwhelming shock and panic in its mind. The anxious Xix thought the High Inquisitor would have me executed on the spot for this. That was nearly right, so much anger boiled out of the Inquisitor from my outburst. But I had seen the bright path to safety, and it did not end here. Poor Waythrel, it would be so hard to explain.
Soon, Waythrel, soon you’ll understand.

The High Inquisitor clicked angrily and soon the guards were ushering us back to my cell. Even as it spoke those commands, I had begun to withdraw. Seeing the bright path, I understood more and more what was required. Waythrel was speaking animatedly to me on the return trip. Little of it entered my consciousness, and surprising even myself, I began speaking out loud in the relative safety of the noisy ground car, a stream of consciousness as my mind’s eye stopped seeing things around me but glimpsed the coming futures.

“They will fight over me, Waythrel, and the Naturalists will prevail.”

“Ambra, what are you talking about?” it asked incredulously.

“Not even religious dogma can win over the chance for new power. I see them, conniving, backbiting fools. Scheming and drunk on power. But it will only be a prelude to a greater movement; and then, a crescendo of joy and sadness.”

“Ambra, please, what…”

I turned my face toward my Advocate, tears trickling softly down my face. I didn’t see the alien next to me. My mind was overflowing with the vast horror before my unique sense in time. “I can’t
look
, Waythrel, I can’t let myself look at the sadness, even though I know what I will see!”

We sat in silence for the rest of the trip to my cell. Just as well—I was somewhere else anyway.

28

In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play, and here have I caught sight of him that is formless. 
—Rabindranath Tagore

When Waythrel next visited, it was a while before I could be roused. I lay on my bed shelf with open eyes and a slack-jawed expression. At first Waythrel misunderstood, as the tender skin where the laser had sealed the surgical incision had leaked some blood, staining my clothes quite visibly from the outside.

“Ambra, wake up! What have they done to you? Are you drugged? Have they tampered with your mind? Ambra, answer me!” The distressed Xix shook me with its smaller arms, eyestalks darting about in a panic. Some detached part of my mind watched it speak into a communicator, and within what seemed like seconds, although it was much longer, Xixian medics were surrounding me.

“She is not drugged currently,” I understood one to say, but whether through a translator or through my telepathy, I don’t know. “Remnants of a human chemistry narcotic are present, but at such low levels, they cannot be affecting her now. Furthermore, there is no intervention anywhere else except the abdomen. Her brain is untouched.”

“Why is she like this then? She has to be at the Tribunal in four hours!”

“The visions,” I whispered hoarsely, “they have never opened up to me like this before, Waythrel.” I swallowed, my throat dry, my words croaking out. “Infinite layers and webs inside of membranes….I must learn to better control my exploration; it is too easy to be lost in it.”

“Ambra, what are you talking about? What have they done to you?”

I felt more tears in my eyes. For myself, for the others I had seen, for the history and future of pain and injustices that cannot possibly seem to be balanced even by all the love in the universe.

“My eggs, Waythrel,” I said, turning my head toward them. “You didn’t think that they would risk losing me if things go badly at the Tribunal or afterwards.”

“Your eggs.” A statement. I could
sense
the wheels turning in its mind.

“Last night, they came, threw me on a table, cut me open, and took them. My possible children, taken from me before they could ever be.” I felt a few sobs spasm through me. I had never thought that much about having children, especially with my deformity. I mean, really, what man would have this? But I had never thought I would be invaded and robbed like this. With this act, something primal in me had been violated by these monsters, and my soul cried out. My soul cried out to the heavens, wondering what else would be taken from me.

The Xixian medics scanned the areas where my ovaries were and confirmed the results.

“I am sorry, Ambra,” Waythrel began. “We did not anticipate this. Once again, we have been overly naïve in imagining what the Dram might conspire to. It is obvious upon reflection. They wanted more genetic material to breed out your powers again. They could not clone you – human chromosomal instability has yet to be solved by the Dram. But your eggs – they could inseminate them with diverse sperm from males similar to your father. They have been plotting far ahead.” Waythrel paused and only repeated, “I am very sorry.”

“Waythrel, there was nothing we could have done to stop it,” I moaned, trying to sit up comfortably. “Not now, not when larger things must be done.”

“What larger things, Ambra?”

“It’s all becoming clear to me now, Waythrel. A straight path home.” Suddenly, I laughed bitterly, almost a cry, really. “No! Oh,
God
, no. Not home. Never home. But escape.”

“Have you seen this? The Xixian Council is formulating a final escape plan. We suspect the worst for us, and are evacuating many of our kind as secretly as possible. But if you have seen our future, Ambra, you must tell us!”

I smiled toward the lanky alien. “It’s okay, Waythrel. It will be okay. I’m seeing to it.”

“You’re seeing to it? Ambra, please, these stakes are too high for such riddles!”

I was beginning to fade again. “Don’t rush me, Waythrel. Just a few loose strands left to tie up now, and the path is sure. Can’t…rush like …. before. Must see…..
all
the paths.” I floated in and out of a trance for the next few hours with Waythrel and the other Xix anxiously flitting about me.

Time marched slowly in my cell, yet danced maniacally before my consciousness as events rushed past me. I don’t know how it happened, but finally, at a single point, these two different melodies of time met, and out of the myriad strings of the
perhaps
emerged a single thread of
destiny
. I know it sounds absurd, but that is the best way I can describe it. I opened my eyes, seeing the future and my present, superimposed like counterpoint, just as the Dram guard entered. We were silently marched to the Holy Tribunal.

Along the way, I continued speaking in stream-of-consciousness manner. I’m sure it sounded like nonsense to Waythrel, and the poor Xix likely thought I had gone mad at the most inopportune time, minutes before trial, hours before the Xixian plan that might lead to their destruction was set in motion, both of us trapped on a hostile and ugly world at the center of the Hegemony.

“It will never be the same,” I spoke as the blasted landscape, cooked as if in a red furnace, devoid of greens, or blues, or even yellows, blurred by us in the ground vehicle. “A fetus as a single grain of sand; twenty billion souls burned, ruptured in a moment of time; all gravity; it was so simple; only
gravity
; space-time that bends thoughts, and kills; eons only it sat there, one long orbit after another; a stupid planet wannabe; but it would slay an entire world. These bastards, Waythrel—they will debate their creed while slitting a baby’s throat.”

Waythrel tried to have the Tribunal postponed, but the Dram would hear nothing of it. Of course, my mental state was not really of interest in these proceedings. It wasn’t about truth or fairness to me. It was about their power struggle, laws, and creeds. There would hardly be a part for me to play in the entire farce besides showing up. My poor Advocate would be reduced to listening to the blowhards debate.

“I’m ready, Waythrel. This toy Tribunal is a proud gasp in the face of the infinite. The only thing I dread is the awful waste of time it all is. I wish that I could replace one piece of time with another…”

Waythrel simply stared in my direction with its many eyes. I was too engrossed in thought to bother even trying to sense its state of mind. I’m sure it was pretty bad.

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