Vale of Stars (56 page)

She did not take her eyes off him, but she could nevertheless feel Kiv’s and Khadre’s on her.

“Vogel doesn’t know this, not really.” She paused, summoning the strength to utter the words she knew would send her world into a new age. In the back of her mind, deep inside where her ancestral memory dwelt, she felt other women. She felt her grandonly Yallia there, who had secured the dominance of the Family against the Domers (a dominance, Sirra noted with newfound respect, that men like Kiv had tempered into compassionate rule of the remaining Domers) and whose power and rage were held in check by her sense of justice; she found her great-grandmother Kuarta there, who had made a great sacrifice for the goodwill of her race and whose calm strength pulsed quietly in Sirra; and she felt her great-great-grandmother, Jene Halfner, who had acted while others had merely watched. These women were in her; their genes were in Sirra’s tissues and brain matter. Sirra knew, as they had known, that nothing would come from ignoring truth. Fozzoli had known it too, in his way—he had given Sirra the last necessary push to reveal what she knew.

“The vix are not experiments, or colonists, or freaks. They are outcasts. Written into their genetic code, or as my ha’lyaunt might say, their very souls, is a constant reminder of their sin. Their anscestors committed the greatest sin their race had ever conceived: they had wanted peace. Peace through cooperation rather than competition, peace through communal life rather than hierarchical struggle. And because of their philosophy, they were…changed. The ancient land-vix were masters of biology, though they had not yet achieved even rudimentary space flight. They sent their heathen brothers and sisters to the sea with adaptations that would allow them to live near naturally occurring oxygen vents to pursue their heretical ideas of social equality.”

“So all of them are being punished?” Khadre asked.

“Yes. The sea is their exile.”

Fozzoli shook his head. “That still doesn’t answer my question. It just makes it more important. Sirra,
how do you know this?
” he pounded his fist into his thigh to emphasize his question.

“Every vix has the knowledge of their transgression written into their minds. I suppose it was part of the punishment. No vix grows up without massive guilt for a crime they are only vaguely aware of, and vix like Bishop and her descendants created a religion to try to cope with it. You were much closer to the answer than you thought, Foz. When I said I would not have discovered this, despite my…talent, I meant it. You translated their language in such a way as to be very, very close to their past. It was through your efforts that I was finally able to understand their….” Sirra paused, searching for the words. When they came, they were the most perfect descriptors of her meaning she could have hoped for: “…Original sin.”

Khadre stepped to her son and placed a hand on his shoulder. Kiv did not seem to notice at first, then leaned towards her. Sirra looked back at Fozzoli. He was crying.

“They’re just like us,” he said.

Months passed before Sirra saw Iede again. She had tried to convince herself that the pressures of working on Vixian studies (the name for the natives had undergone a silent but overwhelming change from lowercase to capital initial letter on all official paperwork) kept her from visiting, but the simple truth was that she did not want to see her ha’lyaunt. She did not want to thank her.

Iede had aged alarmingly in the months after the trip to the ruins. Sirra had never been struck with her youthful appearance until it was gone. The two stared at each other for a brief moment when Sirra arrived at Iede’s residence, then Iede’s characteristic smile appeared.

“Have you come to bask in the glory of your…victory?” she said, and Sirra frowned. Not at the barb, but at the sentiment behind it. Iede had not only grown old, she had become bitter.

“No. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh? About what?” Iede’s tone indicated that she was not curious. She turned away from Sirra and retreated further into her residence.

Sirra stepped into her house and shut the door behind her. “About religion.”

Iede straightened perceptibly and snorted in a manner remarkably like Sirra. “Now you want to talk religion. Now that my whole world has quite literally fallen on me. Now that the religion I have built has collapsed utterly.” She whirled to face Sirra. “And you say you are not here to gloat?”

“I’m not. I just wanted to ask you—”

“No!” Iede exploded. Sirra was shocked into silence. “You won’t do this to me! You have everything you want. Why do you come here and do this to me? Go away, Sirra. Let me live out the rest of my miserable days in relative peace.”

“Iede….” Sirra began, then took a step closer to her. “You taught me something.”

The words had their intended effect. Iede softened and became a bit more like her former self. Sirra continued before the moment died. “I did something that I am not proud of. Something that only you would understand.”

Iede looked at her in anticipation.

“I had to abandon the Vix. One particular Vix. His name is Vogel. I had to…deceive him. The same way you were deceived.”

“What?” Iede’s face narrowed.

“Maybe ‘deceived’ is the wrong word for you. Hurt. I had to hurt him, in the same way you were hurt. Or the opposite way.”

“I don’t understand.” Iede paused, but Sirra made no answer. “How could you know what I am suffering? How can you compare what happened to me, to my movement, with what happened to a Vix? Sirra, our connection with our home has been severed. Ship represented not just a guardian force looking out for us but a link to a past none of us have ever known directly. We’ve lost both now.”

“Yes. And I know you think this is a curse. But—” Sirra continued through Iede’s rising objection, “—it is a blessing. It’s the best gift your gods could ever have given us. They have released us.”

Iede did not answer. She looked at a spot on the wall past Sirra’s shoulder. “What aren’t you proud of?”

“What?”

“You said before that—”

“Oh. I did the opposite of what your gods did. They sacrificed themselves to free us and allow us to finally grow and make this planet our home. I cursed the Vix in such a way….”

“What happened?”

“Their chief scientist, or heretic, had a notion that the guilt built into their race by the engineers of eight thousand years ago was not real. He was beginning to transcend his own limitations, a feat of no small order. He was beginning to defeat his programmed religion. And I set him back. Perhaps for the rest of his life. I confirmed his religion and crushed his curiosity.”

“Is that so bad? You yourself said religion was programmed into the Vix. Why should you change that?”

“You didn’t see what I saw. Iede, you know how I felt about your religion.”

“You made your feelings plain enough.”

“It was a crutch, Iede. You’ll see that soon enough. Your own gods believed that. Why else sacrifice themselves? But even your religion was based on something—you made a choice to create and follow it. I might disagree with your choice, but I can accept that you were in control, at least a little. Vogel wasn’t.”

“Vogel?”

“The curious Vix.”

“Leave them alone. Their gods will—”

“We’re their gods, Iede!” Sirra seized her halfonlyaunt by her upper arms. “Everything you told me about what Groundwatcher Aywon told you is true for us. I understand what he was saying, perhaps even better than you do. I don’t want to be a god. Especially to a race with such a history as the Vix.” Sirra released Iede’s arms.

“Then go back and fix it. Like you were before. But you may find that religion is not easy to shake.” Iede looked at her with hollow eyes. “You seem to think that religion is just an opiate to the masses. But it is real, as real as any chart or graph you scientists can create. You know my religion was based on something, and you know the Vix’s is also.” 

“It’s based on a misinterpretation and, in the case of the Vix, a genetic disposition that is not their natural makeup.”

“Who is to say what the Vix were destined to be? You?”

“Yes. Domeit, yes!” Sirra turned away. “It is up to me to fix it. In such a way that it will never happen again.”

“How? How do you determine the future of a race without becoming the God you wish to deny?”

Sirra did not face her. But she knew the answer.

Eelywhee swam toward the rock again. She knew her mother didn’t much like it when she spent so much time in the water, but Eelywhee was a strong swimmer, even by humix standards. Besides, she would not get a chance to swim like this for many months if the mission went according to plan.

She reached the rock and glided up on its smooth surface. Night had fallen some time ago, and Eelywhee wanted to see the stars. She hoisted herself onto the rock and looked up. There was something eerie but exhilarating in simply seeing the stars. Her sonar was obviously no use, and the stars burned quietly above her like little else did on her world.

What would it be like up there? The
Iede’s Odyssey
was orbiting above her, barely visible to the naked eye, and Eelywhee knew a crew was even now on board her, making final preparations for the voyage to the neighboring planet, nominally designated EE4 but affectionately known as “the Iceball” to those preparing to explore it.

Much had been made of the voyage, and many historians compared the trip to the one four hundred and twenty years earlier, made by the simple humans. One of her shipmates told her that those who had made the crossing reckoned time differently; to them, almost seven hundred years had passed since their arrival. Eelywhee had been interested enough to investigate this oddity and was surprised to learn that one of the second colonists, a woman named Jene Halfner, (an appropriate name for a mere human, Eelywhee had thought) had been a distant ancestor of hers.

Eelywhee knew her mother would be getting angrier and angrier as she stayed on the rock, looking up at the stars, but she was a grown fullwoman, ten years of age. Her mothher no longer had any legal sway over her. Still, she owed her respect. She reluctantly slid into the water and swam speedily back to shore, savoring the flow of water over her back.

What must it have been like three hundred years ago, before there were any humix? Eelywhee wondered if she could have lived exclusively on land, like the humans (although she knew some of them made brief forays into the water if only for minutes at a time) or dwelled underwater and never known wind, or soil, or any of the many pleasures land offered. To be a half person—the thought was almost inconceivable, yet there were many millions who lived such a life. Their numbers were dwindling, to be sure—she had heard that only about one in ten was still simple human now, as compared to one in five not sixty years ago. They were respected, protected, and given full citizenship, of course, but Eelywhee was not the only humix to pity them.

And what would they find on Iceball? Would it be a rock in space, inhospitable to human and humix alike? Would there be life on it? Eelywhee thrilled at the prospect of discovery, even as she felt apprehension at leaving her home, though only for a few months.

But, she knew, it was the next step.

The End