Vale of Stars (37 page)

She suspected the six guards, none of whom were Originals, did not share her feelings—having been born outside, they would not see Tann’s offer as a homecoming. Tann had managed to offer a bribe that would be tantalizing to Family leadership, but not the majority of the outsiders. If even a fraction of the Originals accepted the offer, the Family would never be the same. Those who stayed would forever question their decision and would spend their remaining days looking up at the Dome, wondering if they could go back. Yallia knew in that moment that this was precisely what she had been doing for her twenty-four year exile. Her emotions boiled away at the realization and what remained was the hard residue of hatred for Carll Tann—but not for the man of twenty-four years ago; for the man before her now who threatened to take away what he had inadvertently given her.

She found her voice. “All will be forgiven, you say. You will forgive us, the outcasts, the exiles, their crimes?” Yallia’s eyes bored into Tann’s. “What crimes are we guilty of?
You
cast us out,
you
drove us from our homes, and
you
attacked and killed Viktur Ljarbazz.” As she said the name, the thought of the sea-creatures and Sirra’s affection for them reentered her mind. She tried to maintain her focus, but the image of the little girl talking to the sea-creatures persisted.

“Come back to us,” Tann was saying. His voice was almost hypnotic.

Yallia saw herself suddenly on a precipice. She imagined that before her was the sea, crashing violently against rocks below her. Behind her, she knew, was safety and comfort. She could step away from the edge and rejoin her fellows on the solid ground at any time. But to go backwards, she knew, meant the future would be forever closed to humanity. Safety and order was stultifying.

In her mind’s eye, she leapt off the precipice into the sea.

Carll Tann’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly as he saw Yallia’s face grow hard again. In that moment, both Yallia and Tann knew that he had lost her. And the war.

“I will grant permission for anyone who wishes to return to the Domes for your…treatment,” Yallia said. “Don’t expect many customers, Tann.” She smiled wolfishly. “Furthermore, Family policy is unchanged—we will accept any of your children you care to send us. We will integrate them into our culture—”

“You will integrate them? Why should Domers have to integrate into anything?”

“Integration is a mutual process, Tann. Both sides adapt,” Yallia said, then added. “But the terraforming project is finished.”

Tann was beaten, but he stubbornly refused to admit defeat. “And how will you stop the project?” His voice was no longer silky. “You discovered our agent among you, obviously, and used him against us. But because of that agent, we took precautions to protect our terraforming installations. They are well defended. Your motley band of so-called soldiers would suffer very heavy casualties should you attempt an attack.”

“All of them?” Yallia sneered. There were thousands of the installations churning out gengineered microorganisms every day. Tann could not possibly defend all of them, or even most of them. That wasn’t the point, however. “I have no intention of attacking the installations. Commissar-General Nessel will simply order them dismantled.”

Before Nessel could answer, Tann said, “She will do nothing of the kind.”

“Then I will detonate the explosives and kill all inside this Dome. All the Domers, that is.”

There was a moment of shocked silence before Tann said, “You will not do that. Kill thousands of innocent people? Such an act of barbarism is beyond even you.”

Yallia took a step closer to Tann and said quietly, dangerously, “Do not make the mistake of underestimating me, Tann. I am not my mother.” She snorted. “You certainly remember my grandmother? Perhaps resolve skips a generation. I am prepared to kill thousands, hundreds of thousands, in order to safeguard the future of the Family.”

“Do you hear this woman?” Tann almost shouted at the others in Nessel’s office. “She is openly advocating terrorism and mass murder in the name of genealogy!”

“No less than what you have done, Tann,” Yallia said, matching his shouts with near-whispers.

Tann swiveled his head to look at her with newfound awareness. “What I did I did for the future of humanity here.”

“Segregation is never the answer. I offer you two choices: destruction at the hands of the Family, or unification.”

Tann started at her. Yallia had never seen such hatred in another human being. She wondered which he hated more—the fact that he had lost, finally, after all these years, or that it was an outcast that had defeated him.

Or a Verdafner?

“I choose destruction,” Tann growled.

Nessel interjected with such force as to make the rest of those present jump in surprise. “You do not speak for the Domes, Carll. We will agree to Yallia’s demands, subject to negotiation of certain points.”

Yallia ignored the last. Nessel could have her way in many things—Yallia could afford to be generous now. She kept her eyes on Tann.

“I understand, Commissar-General,” Tann said. “I was speaking for myself only. I choose destruction. For myself.”

Yallia felt no sense of loss as the old, old man hobbled out of the room, far more ancient a man now than when he had entered.

Nessel was droning something about sending an emissary to the Family for negotiations, but Yallia cut her off. “We will send someone here. In the meantime, I suggest you arrange for the surrender of your armed forces and make whatever administrative maneuvers you have to to turn the government over to the Family temporarily. I will send one of my best men here to take over.”

Nessel looked at her inquiringly, and Yallia added, “I have…matters to attend to.”

Yallia made quick arrangements with the most capable of the three force commanders to act as interim military governor until she sent the permanent man in his place. She left as many details to the force commander as possible and commandeered one of the transports for a trip back to the Family.

“I know why you did it,” Yallia said to him before he could speak. They were alone in the Assembly room adjoining her farm. “And you still have the option to return. I made sure of that. The Domers will still…change you back, if you wish.” She spoke calmly, not trusting herself to admit to emotion. She did not even know what emotion would win out—anger? Love? Disappointment?

He did not answer. Yallia felt anger winning out in her.

“In retrospect, I was a fool not to see it earlier. I had enough signs. All your suggestions and ideas, in Session and in private, pointed to it. I suppose I didn’t want to believe. But the flyer attack was proof. That was Tann’s mistake.”

“It should have killed you.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Still, it didn’t.” Yallia had ceased to wonder about that. The flyer had malfunctioned, and she knew why. She knew how the fishing boat had found them, as well. But none of that mattered now. She was alive; that was all that mattered.

“I’m glad it didn’t.”

Yallia looked at him. “Are you?” The comment did not really surprise her. She shrugged. “You cannot remain here. If you want to go back to the Domes, I will not stop you. If you want to just wander off into the hills, I won’t stop you. I’ll even give you some supplies.”

“I want to….”

“What?”

“I want to see your child grow.” He said it in a small voice, not looking at her.

“No.” It was a flat denial from which there could be no appeal. “I must warn you—I will not allow you any contact with her.”

“Her? I thought we…you were having a boy?”

“I changed my mind.” Yallia paused to let the implications sink in, then continued on her original subject. “You will not be allowed back here for any reason. Kahlman will have full control of the Domes in every other way, but I will not allow him to release you back to us.” She paused. “And I will never tell the child of her father.” She sighed and stepped closer to him. Her voice became soft, almost kind. “Despite appearances, I am not angry at you, Lawson. You are just…weak.”

“I told you I wanted to be more like you.”

“And I said you were like me. You still are, Lawson. We are all alike, Domers and Family, shippie and argie. I am not going to deny you existence, but I will deny you association with us.”

Lawson looked at her with longing. He made abortive movements with his hand, as if wanting to touch her but afraid of doing so. “I love you, Yallia.”

“I know.”

Lawson stared at her for a moment longer, but she did not speak. He started to stand up and head for the door where Kahlman’s guards were waiting. “I am curious, Yallia, about one thing. Why are you keeping the baby?”

“The baby has done nothing, Lawson. As I said, I am not denying you existence. You will live on through your child. Perhaps, one day, she will help to erase your sin. She will be your salvation.” She paused, then looked up at the ceiling, looking through it to another time, another place. “My mother told me once, years ago, about an encounter my grandmother had with a man who told her something that you need to hear. The man said that ‘hell is a place where those who do nothing go.’ You had an opportunity to redeem yourself, Lawson, but you chose to do nothing.”

Lawson swallowed his answer and left the room.

Khadre knocked on the frame of Sirra’s dormitory room and entered when the girl looked up. “Khadre!” Sirra shouted and rushed at the young scientist, hugging her tightly around the legs.

“Hello, little one.” Khadre returned the hug, bending over somewhat awkwardly, then knelt down and grasped Sirra’s arms. “How are you?” she said, looking into the girl’s eyes.

“I’m all right, Khadre. How are you?” The girl returned the soul-searching gaze.

Khadre sighed. “I think I’ll be all right, too. I just wanted to tell you something.”

“What?”

“Viktur and I are going to have a baby.”

Sirra’s eyes widened. “Really? A girl or a boy?” She did not ask how.

“I thought I’d have a boy. For him.”

Sirra nodded. “Yes. A boy will be good.”

The two did not speak for a few seconds, then Sirra said, “I was thinking about the boat. And the fish. I want to go back there.”

“We will, Sirra. We still have a lot to learn from the sea-creatures.”

“Khadre?”

“Yes?”

“Shouldn’t they have a name?”

“I guess so. Do you want to name them?”

“Uh, well, I thought that Viktur should get to name them. He found them, didn’t he?”

Khadre nodded. She felt emotion welling inside her and did not want to speak.

“So I think we should call them ‘Vikturs’ or something. Or maybe ‘Vicks.’

Khadre smiled. “How about V-i-x?”

Sirra nodded slowly. “Yes. Vix. I think he would have liked that.”

Khadre got up from the ground and rubbed her knees. “Well, I have to go. But I promise I will come back.”

“Will you take me with you when you go back to see the vix?”

“I promise.”

Sirra hugged her again for a long time.

“She wants to go with me on the next expedition,” Khadre said to Yallia as they sat over strong tea in the Assembly room.

Yallia nodded. “I see no harm in that.”

Khadre sipped her drink and added more salgar. “Madame Prime,” she began carefully, “I have been thinking about what happened out there.”

“Yes?”

“The rescue. The flyer malfunction.”

“Don’t you believe in luck, Khadre?” Yallia said with a smile.

Khadre smiled back. “No, ma’am. Not when I can explain it away in other ways. I have been thinking that both events are connected.”

“How so? And stop calling me ‘ma’am.’”

Khadre blushed. “Sorry. Well, first I thought the vix were doing something with their sonar, but—”

“Vix?”

Khadre looked up from her cup sheepishly. “Oh, uh, that’s a name Sirra thought up for the sea-creatures. Their official name in the taxonomy is “Neocetacean-octopii Ljarbazzii.”

“Vix is better,” Yallia said.

“I agree. I was thinking they had something to do with it, but….”

“What?”

“Well, there’s no way I can imagine their sonar reaching far enough to be heard by the harbormaster’s station. And even if somehow they could focus their sonar to reach such distances, how could Del have interpreted the message? So I don’t see how it could have been the vix.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

Khadre looked up sharply. “You have an idea?”

Yallia sighed quickly. “Khadre, I hesitate to tell you this, because I am frankly not sure what you youngsters will do with the knowledge.”

Khadre looked at her in astonishment but did not interrupt.

“You have heard the stories, I’m sure, but how many of you believe them?”

“Stories?”

Yallia looked up briefly, then focused her eyes back on Khadre. “You know, of course, that the first voyage launched to this planet was the second to get here. The
Odyssey
arrived here about thirty-five, thirty-six years ago, long after the
Argo
had already colonized. The
Argo
had been dismantled to provide raw materials for the colony. When the
Odyssey
arrived, it was not needed any longer. It was stripped, but a section of it was left in orbit.”

Khadre nodded. “Of course I’ve heard that. So? It’s just an empty hulk up there, right?”

Yallia cursed under her breath. She herself had long ago emphasized to the other Originals that the history of the Family began with their exile from the Domes, and therefore all other history need not be taught or studied. There had been no formal ban on study, but most of the Family chose not to examine the past too closely. History had turned to legend and was already on its way toward myth. Yallia had often felt pangs of regret at the loss, but she saw too much danger in a connection to a recent past. When the crisis was past, she had often told herself, historians could once again study what they wished.

Yallia answered Khadre’s question with a sigh. “No. It’s still staffed. My grandmother visited it about twenty-four years ago. I think they are still watching us.”