Braxi-Azea - In Conquest Born Part 53

She came through the doorway and saw him, and in a moment was by his side.

"What happened?" she asked breathlessly. "Are you all right?"

Her concern for him was too intense; he applied one of the many Disciplines that Feran had taught him, managed to lessen the sensation.

Think of the power! To have this special talent in his universe, which was not prepared to combat it. To be able to pick out the motives that prompted speech, to taste the plans of his enemies before they came to fruition. She had given him the ultimate tool and he, as a ruler, intended to use it. And if she thought that this would bring him suffering . . . well, she didn't know him as well as he'd thought.

He tried to rise again, managed to raise himself up on one elbow. L'resh reached to help him, placing a gloved hand beneath his shoulder- -and fire burned him through the contact, noxious emotions in painful profusion.

He pulled away from her, startled.

"What is it?" There was fear in her voice, in her foremind. "What happened?"

I don't know. "Nothing. I'll be all right."

Will I?

He struggled to his feet. Something fell from his chest to the floor as he did so, but it took all his concentration just to stand, so he let it be for the moment.

Then he swayed, and she moved to help him, and she was pressed against his side -and there was a female essence in her, but not like Anzha's: not something to savor, but an unwholesome, unclean sensation, tainted with dark and terrible emotions that threatened to contaminate him. Weakness, there was terrible weakness; her mind could not focus properly on 'self,' was more concerned with his welfare than her own. Madness! And what was this ugliness, this clinging darkness that had moved her to risk her own life time and time again, bearing him children? Not a hunger for pleasure, no, but something darker, something that reeked of bondage and destruction. Was this what the enemy called 'love'?

He shuddered to discover it in one of his own kind-and he began to be truly afraid.

"My Lord, what-"

"How did you get here?" he interrupted. He pulled away from her. Better to keep her talking, to give him time to sort out his thoughts.

"You asked me to come. You sent for me-here, see?" She pulled a keyplate from her sash, set it on the table. Black on the mirrored surface: a cancer, like her emotions. "You invited me to join you, don't you remember? What's wrong, Zatar? I want to help."

What's wrong? I'm beginning to guess.

He held out his hand to her, bracing himself for the contact. Distinction Discipline, Integration Discipline, Touch Discipline: he ran the patterns through his mind as she reached out for him, and clung .to them as she grasped his hand.

-And the world exploded in a burst of emotion too alien to contemplate. He drew back from her. His hand was trembling, and his mind . . . that was in turmoil, consumed now by fear as the full extent of the Starcommander's ven- geance became clear to him.

(. . . any contact we have will be tainted by my experience . . .) Anzha!

"I'll be all right." A lie. He knew his fate for what it was, recognized the terrible isolation that awaited him. "Just give me a minute." He had surrounded himself with women who would bond themselves to him; there was not one he could touch now, if touching them meant psychic contact. They were like a different race, even a different species, filled with disturbing emotions that had no counterpart in his own ident.i.ty. And he could not afford to give those emotions a chance to take root in his psyche.

He had taken it for granted that what he'd experienced with the Starcommander was typical of telepathic rapport; now he acknowledged, for the very first time, how wrong he had been. Now he knew that she was unique, and that he might search a lifetime for another soul so well suited to his own. If there was another-which he doubted.

Until then, he was alone. More alone than any man had ever been; more alone than any woman-save one-could have endured.

"I need air," he whispered. Outside, in the open s.p.a.ces surrounding the palace, he could perhaps come to terms with this; in the confines of this room, any room, the tangle of emotions seemed too overwhelming.

What would it do to Braxi, to have an involuntary psychic for a ruler? What would it mean to that nation of hedonists that their figurehead denied himself s.e.xual contact? And what would happen to his House, whose very structure was founded upon s.e.xual intimacy?

Ni'en . . . he thought, but she was lost to him. They all were lost to him.

Your choice, Pri'tiera.

"Zatar?"

He forced himself back to the present. L'resh was radiating fear and compa.s.sion, and the mirror of her emotions showed him just how strangely he'd been acting.

He calmed himself. Feigned composure. Glanced down at the floor where a small, black item lay, and picked it up. His hand, he was pleased to note, was steady.

"What is it?" L'resh asked him.

He turned the crusted object over in his hand. It was a glove, torn across the palm and stiffened with blood: his blood, long since dried. He nodded, understanding.

"It's nothing," he said at last. He dropped it. "Nothing that matters."

You have destroyed me, my enemy.

"Come," he said softly. As he walked across the floor his foot fell upon the glove, crus.h.i.+ng it.

He was careful not to touch her as they left the palace.

Viton: And then-say the Braxana-Taz'hein turned on his Creator, and war came into being. The G.o.ds turned their men into warriors, p.a.w.n against p.a.w.n, brother against brother, and blood was spilled on the surface of the planet. Thus was man baptized by the treachery of the G.o.ds, to know the rich variety of conflict. And when Taz'hein was supreme in the Void he saw what men had become, and he withheld the hand of destruction which he had meant for them.

"This is good," he said, "and since you have truly learned to live, I will not take that life from you. But if you must seek guidance, look to the Void-for it is as likely as I to answer, or to care."

Epilogue.

(The following doc.u.ment was destroyed in Dyle's landing, Year 1.) I shall describe it all chronologically, Beyl-my-brother, and perhaps the information may be of use to our people some day. As for the rest, that is for your eyes alone. You will see.

There is no need to describe to you the scene when civil authorities pulled me from church in the middle of services. I have always found it of some significance that at the time we were reciting the Litany of Blessed Abstinence, which I suppose I accepted as much as anyone. We were not the first people to venerate s.e.xual abstinence, although I do think we were the first to be encouraged to venerate it by another people. But these are things I recognize now, after Harkur; then I accepted it without question, as most of us did. What more bloodless genocide?

You were there, when they pulled me forcibly from my prayers and dragged me from the sanctuary. You all feared for me, but who dared act? Were we not all slaves in fact, though some of us were not so yet in name? Frenell life is cheap to the Mristi. Once in utmost secrecy, when I was a child, a playmate whispered to me that there had been only one race on Zeymour to start with. I didn't believe it then. Just look at the differences-their pale skin and sharp features, the dusky brown of our coloring and our distinctly curvilinear faces-and all the cultural disparities, as well. But I believe it now. I have seen the beginning of a cla.s.s system based on race, and I can now conceive of a planet where one race-or sub- race-gains such power that it becomes distinct from all other sub-races on the planet. But never have I seen, among the stars and the men that rule there, such a deliberate attempt to eradicate one particular racial type.

I was terrified at the time. I was not a rebel, as you were. I was, I see now, well- conditioned. You know I had nearly turned you in when you harbored pregnant Elise in our home, that she might bear her child to term. I had nightmares for months, fully believing that for indulging in the grosser instincts Elise was d.a.m.ned, and that for keeping her from punishment I would be, too. No, I never questioned that the Mristi could enjoy such things while we were d.a.m.ned for it.

They were different.

How many generations, I wonder, did it take them to perfect this training, geared toward our annihilation? What had we ever done to deserve such hostility-how long ago in history had we been merely a lesser caste, with a church under our control, a doctrine that allowed for the continuance of the species? No matter. They threw me in a s.h.i.+eldcar and drove me to the Discipline Center, nearly hitting two hotspots on the way. My terror was not lessened by the fact that there was a quakeling as I was pulled from the 'car. You can tell me all you like that there are an average of three quakelings a day in the City; it was a sign from G.o.d or I had never seen one.

I wondered if they knew of the conspiracy. Not from me, certainly, who only knew because I was your sister and you were involved. . . . I have never seen men frightened as they were when the quakeling struck. It was almost as if they knew to the number how many there would be before the destruction of Zeymour came at last, and were counting down.

I was taken to the office of the President of Disciplinary Action, Frenell Division. I was terrified; they had to half-carry me most of the way, my legs were so weak with fright. How many of our people had entered these halls, never to emerge again? There was a distant rumbling and my captors set themselves for another quakeling, but there was none.

The President was a large man, overweight and foul-smelling. The Mristi say that is because he deals so closely with the Frenell, while we have it that it is because he is a Mristi agent. But he was both Mristi officer and High Priest, and I trembled as I prostrated myself before him.

"What have we here?" he said. His voice was foul, everything about him was foul. If he was indeed G.o.d's agent then I was sorry for the unkindness of the observation-but it came to me nonetheless, and stuck.

"Frenell c.r.a.p," one of my captors said. The room was heavily guarded. "We have her name in connection with the child-43 conspiracy."

That was Elise's child, I realized with a sinking heart. But why had they taken me, and not you?

The President raised an eyebrow. "Yes? Well, that's over with, so there's no point in interrogation." Foul, foul, foul. He oozed it.

"What then for punishment, sir?"

The President went to a file and drew out a clipboard. It was of beaten gold and the clip was set with huge emeralds. He put the end of the garnet-tipped pen in his mouth and hemmed and hawed. "Awright," he muttered past the pen, without removing it. "We need a Frenell piece for this expedition. That'll settle the d.a.m.nation, which'll make a good example. Publicize it."

My captor smiled his pleasure at the thought.

"Here are the papers." The President handed him a folder. "Have her disinfected and indoctrinated at the s.p.a.ce Center. I'm sure our astronauts will take care of the rest."

"Sterilized, sir?"

He laughed. It was an ugly sound.

"Naw. She wouldn't dare get pregnant."

They snickered as they pulled me from the room. I felt faint, not quite understanding the specifics of my fate but having a good grasp on the general idea. I was to serve my slaveterm on the Explorer, that experimental stellar s.h.i.+p about to be launched from Aringvil Hotspot. How ironic, I thought, that with you obsessed with the intra-stellar s.h.i.+ps, I should be on the first inter-stellar ever launched. But it was with sinking heart that I knew it. For my fate was to endure rape by the astronauts waiting in the unknown dark of uncharted s.p.a.ce, and through that to be d.a.m.ned beyond redemption forever.

I chanted the Litany of Abstention all night in my cell; it only depressed me more.

In the morning I was taken to the s.p.a.ce Center in Aringvil where I met the four astronauts. They stripped me and I had to stand motionless while the Mristini men subjected me to inspection. The shame of being naked was unbearable; the other shame, that of being touched, was something so alien that I could not even deal with it emotionally. G.o.d, forgive me, I had no way of stopping it. . . .

They approved of me and I was enrolled in a haphazard program designed to prepare me to survive the long months- years?-ahead. Often as I underwent tests and exercised I was aware of one of the four leering at me through the one- way visipanes which surrounded my quarters. I couldn't sleep. Whenever I dozed, h.e.l.l rose up to meet me, reminding me in tones of demonic laughter that soon, very soon I would be commited to the radioactive flames for the rest of eternity.

By the end of a half-month I was a wreck, physically and emotionally.

They strapped me into a small section right by the cargo and off we went. No one had prepared me for the pain, the gut-wrenching agony of the special drive that would theoretically allow us to get from star to star in less than a generation.

I heard one of the men crying out, but he had friends to comfort him. I had no escape and no comfort. I never even saw the astronauts until the third day, when we had completed the first acceleration-series and one of them freed himself from his mechanical life-support system to use the facilities-me. I fought him, but it was hard. They had companions.h.i.+p and pain-killers, and I had only fear; I was not fully recovered yet from the trip out. Still I fought, fought not only him but the d.a.m.nation of my soul. I lost. I would have died then if mere self-neglect could have killed me, but they left me strapped in with the wires and hoses and the coldly efficient machines that kept me alive, despite my prayers. If h.e.l.l there was, then h.e.l.l I saw. My dreams were full of it and my waking hours also, for the men not only used me, but reveled in my pain and shame in other ways as well, having little other source of amus.e.m.e.nt in the small and sterile stars.h.i.+p.

But enough of this, my brother. You see the point.

We had spent more than a month like this, and five times we endured that pain which permitted us to conquer the reaches of s.p.a.ce that once man only dreamed of. It was a long journey and a wearing one, and they were lost in drunken oblivion when it happened. Evidently the navigational instruments had gone out of alignment sometime during our journey, and pinned senseless under their drunken stupor they failed to notice the error until it was too late. We came back into normal, painless s.p.a.ce, and for a few minutes I heard their cries of fear and I knew, as they did, of their helplessness. I struggled to be free, but my bonds were too strong; to that I owe my life. We had come back into instrumented s.p.a.ce too close to a planet to ignore its gravitic demands, and as we cut through the atmosphere they tried desperately to kill the momentum, to save themselves.

They failed. And I ... I only survived because the section that I was in, filled with instruments of more worth to the Mristi than the men of their own race, broke free of the doomed s.h.i.+p and managed a violent but infinitely more successful landing.

We crashed. Whether on land or in water I do not know. There was a jarring pain and the sound of tearing metal, and fire filled the air and scorched my lungs from the inside out. At last death came to embrace me and I welcomed the darkness that closed my smoke-injured eyes. Lastly there was the sensation of being lifted, but I knew that for death-sp.a.w.ned delusion and gladly accepted the black nonexistence that had finally come to free me.

I awoke in a panic, struggling to free myself from my bondage. Kind hands held me down, and voices called in a strange and musical language very close to me. I opened my eyes and saw with bleary sight men and women who were like us, but not so. At first I thought I was home, for where else would one find human life?

And then, as I watched them, as I noted the differences, I knew the truth.

They nursed me to health, Beyl-my-brother, kindly and carefully. Although I saw more and more how alien they were in sound, form, and action, I never ceased to wonder at their perfectly human form.

They wore slick synthetic clothing which hid little of them, and the women dyed their hair bright blues and greens and purples, to match their garments. The hospital I was in was decorated in the same colors, and the men who tended to me wore heavy jewelry in complimentary hues. They tried to teach me their language, and I tried to learn it. I got the basic vocabulary down in a few weeks- they kept me in the hospital even after I had healed, studying me-but the concepts of their tongue were completely beyond me, filled with star-symbolism that I couldn't begin to grasp. After much discussion among themselves they decided to try another language, one more suited to Zeymourian thought- patterns and my native phonetics. This one was called Braxin and I found it much easier, although objectively it was far more complicated.

The planet we had struck was called Lugast, and its inhabitants were good to me. They were an ancient people who had long been among the stars, for they were at the edge of a cl.u.s.ter so crowded that even their earliest s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps were able to explore the stellar neighborhood and come home in less than a generation. Lugast was the capital planet of a multistellar Union of Planets. I learned a small bit of their culture and liked what I learned. They meant to unite the human-dominant galaxy, and from there reach out to more alien forms and establish cultural interchange.

Now-I will try to explain this, but I don't really understand all of it, Beyl-my- brother, so you must bear with me if I'm unclear on some point. They told me that life is the rule rather than the exception, and that most solar systems with suitable planetary environments give birth to some kind of life-form. They explained a theory called parallel evolution, which says that similar environments tend to give rise to similar patterns of evolution, and ultimately similar life-forms.

Does that explain our own likeness? I asked, still skeptical of the perfection of the imitation. No, they said, humans are different. They-and five other life-forms- have been found in numerous systems where they clearly did not evolve, and even more mysteriously have been found dead on planets where man had failed to survive, a small buried indication that someone meant to test the possibility of their adapting to that place. The first explorers discovering this gave credit to the G.o.ds (the Lugastines recognize more than one) but current thought tends to accept that some ancient starfaring nation was experimenting with the adaptability and endurance of certain species. There is even a school of thought, I am told, to the effect that the great Experimenters were themselves human, and that they scattered their own aboriginal remnants among the stars to see how much of human nature was biologically determined, and how much would change in response to alien environmental stimuli. They call this the Seeding, and the resulting human types the Scattered Races, and support their theories with scientific deduction. (On many of these planets, for instance, there is no evolutionary branch that could possibly have given birth to the human form; even where there is a similar type evolving, the true human form often appears so suddenly that part of the story is missing, a link between similar but distinct forms that is never discovered; certain myths are common to mankind from the most primitive tribes-those whose environments kept them limited to a slow rate of progress-and the most advanced interstellar nations: those of the Great Flood, for instance, and legends of shapechangers who take human form to drain true humans of strength.) The list of wondrous things goes on and on, Beyl-my- brother, but if I attempt to write it all I will never reach the end, and I don't know how much time I have left. So forgive me, please, if I hurry on from here-there is so much more to tell!

They were a peaceful people, the Lugastines, utterly devoted to the reunification of humankind and successful interaction with the non-humans who also filled the galaxy with life. They had few enemies, and only one of consequence. That was the planet Braxi, the source of the language they chose for me, a recent interstellar upstart who had entered the galactic community suddenly and with vehemently martial intent. Although Braxi was almost as primive as Zeymour in terms of interstellar competence, it was far enough away from Lugastine s.p.a.ce that it had managed to repulse Lugast's advances, military and diplomatic, and was carving out a block of unclaimed s.p.a.ce for its own military domination.

When I was well, and when my surroundings were a little more familiar and I had learned to communicate, they showed me starmaps. It took me a long time to find our sun in those three-dimensional displays, for I had to search through sec- tion after section of two-dimensional renderings at all angles until constellations which were familiar began to appear. At last I found Zeymour-and oh, the pain of it, for when I realized the truth I dared not reveal it to my hosts! We were pitifully close to Lugast, and had that people not been guided by the cl.u.s.tering of stars in another direction we would long ago have been discovered and absorbed by them.

Wonderful, you say? Welcome them? We are slaves, my brother, and must remember that rulers side with rulers, and that the coming of the Lugastines to Zeymour, for all their good intentions, would have given such strength to the Mristi that we could never have dreamed of breaking free of them. And so I said nothing. I scanned the renderings day after day and said no, I saw no stars that were familiar, the heavens were an unknown code. At last they resigned themselves to that, and let me be.

I was content, now seeing before me some hope of living at peace in this fascinating civilization. But before my dreams could hint at becoming reality my circ.u.mstances were torn from me and Lugast was lost forever. It happened swiftly; I was walking on the hospital grounds at the time and nothing would have caused me to suspect that here, of all places, there could be danger. There was a moment, then, when I was grabbed, and I was dragged backward under cover of bushes, and a strongly-scented cloth was pressed against my face. I did not have time to struggle, so stunned was I by the action. The face above mine was terrifying, skin without color, features sharp and merciless, eyes and hair as black as shadow. That was my last observation, and then I fell into darkness.

I awoke bound, in the small confines of some vessel which I quickly identified as a stars.h.i.+p. Screens all about me displayed the alien heavens. There were three men sitting not far from me: my captor, cleanshaven and hard of countenance, and two men of softer coloring, one bearded, who seemed to be operating the s.h.i.+p. One of them saw me as I moved and nudged his black-haired companion.

"The prize awakens, Sokuz."

"And the Lugastine patrol?" he demanded.

"We've lost it," the other a.s.sured him.

My kidnapper came over to where I lay and with certain hands released me from my bonds. "Stay calm, and all will be well. Do you speak Braxin?"

I nodded, still struck dumb from astonishment and fear.

"So they said. Don't bother struggling, we're out of Lugastine s.p.a.ce and it will get you nowhere. Just relax and enjoy the ride, and everything will be fine."

Again I nodded. I was trembling. These were Braxins-a people entirely without morals, loving warfare for its own sake, opposed to the very existence of the human society I had come to respect and-yes-love. But my terror could not keep me from eating when he offered me a bowl of food, for I was starving, and afterward, tired and weak, I drifted off to a more natural sleep.

They answered no questions, but otherwise they were pa.s.sably kind to me. We talked much; the endless silence of s.p.a.ce was as boring for them as it was becoming for me. They were very s.e.xually oriented, which I knew from studying their language, and they asked me many questions regarding the customs of my home planet, which I answered as well as I could. Unlike the Lugastines they either a.s.sumed that I could not spot my planet for them or didn't care to have me try. I was given no starmaps.

Their leader had ordered my kidnapping. He had heard news of me and had decided that he would see me with his own eyes, and simply ordered me taken, right out from under Lugastine surveillance. His planet consisted of twenty-three nations divided roughly by tribal background, and a wide expanse of frosty steppes as yet unclaimed by civilization. The two astrogators, the gentler men of the group, were from tribes known as the Hirinari and the Dambarre, and their nations had sworn loyalty to a man called Harkur the Great, who had come to unify the greatly diverse planet under one throne. Sokuz, the blackhaired man with the eyes of death, was a Braxana. A few of his tribe served the charismatic leader, but for the most part they were nomads on the Blood Steppes, a land ma.s.s they had successfully held secure against the encroachment of civilization for all of recent history. They were brutal, aggressive, and ruthless, and for this reason Harkur valued their service for errands such as this. Only a Braxana, Sokuz a.s.sured me, could have stolen me out from right under the noses of my guards across half a hostile Union. I listened, and I watched, and I saw no cause to doubt him.

But of their ruler they would tell me nothing. I would meet him myself, then I would know. Sokuz even laughed when I asked, which did little to allay my fears.

And I feared. No less so when I awoke to hear a bit of conversation they had imagined secure from my notice.

". . . ripe for his amus.e.m.e.nt, don't you think?"

"I think the Kaim'era will be more than pleased with her."

Ripe for his amus.e.m.e.nt . . . was that my fate, then? To be rescued from one enslavement only to be granted another? I trembled, but I said nothing. They would tell me nothing, and I would rather keep my fears to myself. Time would show me the truth.

How can I describe to you, Beyl-my-Brother, the wonder of that palace set among the stars? We did not go to Braxi directly but to Berros, a small planet rescued from a barren fate by Harkur's determination to settle there. A ruler of the stars, he felt, should have for his home an entire globe, and though they planned to adapt their own moon for his usage that was a project that would take years. Until then, the tiny Berros would have to do.

The palace and the planet were one, and I have no words which are sufficient to describe either. From all over the galaxy, from every corner of Braxi-controlled s.p.a.ce, riches had been brought for the glory of Harkur, the warrior and statesman who had united a war-divided people and given them the stars. But these were not the garish riches of the Mristi, which hurt the eye and pleased only the sense of greed in a man; these were tasteful treasures whose colors delighted the eye and whose softness cus.h.i.+oned the step, and pleased the touch. Incense burned heavy and aromatic in room after room of the Kaim'era's domain and thick carpets of wool and skins of exotic animals quieted the step to silence. The wealth of the galaxy was in art and Harkur had gathered it together, making the planet a cathedral to the glory of human accomplishment.