Alien Chronicles 1 - The Golden One (27 page)

Israi left the Archives in haughty silence, her expression petulant. Ampris walked beside her, saying nothing. She wasn’t sure if Israi was annoyed with her specifically or just put out because she couldn’t keep the necklace.

Right then, Ampris hardly cared. She was too busy thinking about the things Bish had told her. All her life, she had believed that Aarouns were barely useful barbarians able to do manual labor and not much else, less-than-bright creatures tolerated for their strength and stamina alone.

For the first time she realized she didn’t have to feel ashamed of being Aaroun. Her people had once had their own culture, their own art, their own intelligence, and their own future, before the Viis had conquered them and robbed them of everything, even their memories.

Ampris glanced at Israi, bursting to tell her friend of what she had discovered. “Israi,” she said at last, her voice swelling with excitement, “I have so much to tell you about what I saw.”

Israi took the paper from her hands. “Hmm?” she said absently, unfolding it as they hurried through the construction zone without pausing. “The Aaroun exhibit? Poor Ampris, I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have let him put you in that room by yourself. Were you bored? Are you upset because you didn’t see the jewels?”

“No, I—”

“They were boring too,” Israi said, cutting off Ampris’s answer. “Old, uncleaned, and out-of-date.” She crumpled the paper in her hands and tossed it on the floor. “That was an inventory list of them, prepared especially for me.” She laughed with scorn. “How silly.”

Ampris refrained from mentioning the necklace Israi had wanted. “Why did you look at them so long?”

Israi flicked her tongue and changed the subject. “Could you believe that Myal? What a strange one! He actually thought we were interested in his ancient information. How useless to preserve such things. And you, sweet Ampris, you didn’t even complain about being stuck in there with bits of old grass and mud.”

Ampris blinked. “There wasn’t—”

“After all, there is nothing to learn from the ancient pasts of the abiru races,” Israi continued. “Nothing! The notion of the Archives is quaint, but I’m sure only my father and the Myals care anything about it. I certainly don’t.”

“Some of it was interesting,” Ampris said in a small voice.

“Was it?” Israi paused to stroke her rill and rearrange its folds above her collar. “Perhaps as a curiosity. Wasn’t the Aaroun homeworld ugly? I could barely stand to look at it. Now Mynchepop is reputed to be lovely. Fortunately we weren’t forced to destroy entire landmasses in order to gain their cooperation.” She laughed. “They are—”

“What do you mean?” Ampris asked, feeling the hair stand up along her spine. Bish’s words about the fate of her homeworld came back to her, and she felt suddenly desperate to silence her friend. “It isn’t so. Landmasses—continents—can’t be—they wouldn’t be—”

Pride filled Israi’s face. “Yes, of course it can be done. My father explained it to me only a few days past. Really, the procedure is a very simple matter, especially with our advanced technology.”

“Israi, I would rather not—”

“Don’t be squeamish,” Israi said, not heeding Ampris’s protest. “Why should it matter to you? That planet was destroyed centuries ago, and it was never your home. My father says that our fleet comes up to a world, surveys it to see if it has anything useful to offer us, then we request their surrender. If they refuse, we can attack them from space. You know, slag continents with such intense heat all the vegetation is burned off and nothing can grow or live there. We also decimate entire populations, although that isn’t cost-effective if the people can be used in some manner. We can poison the oceans, or even rip away their atmosphere. Usually they surrender when we threaten them. Only the stupid ones resist.”

“I understand,” Ampris said quickly, anxious to stop the explanation. She thought of the Aaroun portraits she had seen—intelligent, happy faces of purpose and vision—and felt sick to her stomach. How could the Viis be so arrogant, so dismissive of others? How could Israi be proud of it?

Israi squeezed her arm and gave a little skip. “I am glad we came down here. Ampris, I have a brilliant idea of what we can do to Lady Zureal. Listen . . .”

She pulled Ampris close and whispered plans in her ear. Ampris listened and smiled, but her heart was not in it. All she could think about were the proud faces in the pictures, faces that had been burned to dust and ashes.

CHAPTER
•FIFTEEN

That night, while Israi slept soundly in her nest of cushions, Ampris crept from her cot and left the bedchamber. On silent feet she moved past the dozing attendants and slipped into the narrow study alcove where Israi usually worked on her lessons. Pulling the door shut silently, Ampris felt her way through the shadows, taking care not to stumble over the chairs, and opened the tall window by the desk.

Moonlight streamed in, bathing the alcove in its pearly luminescence. In the distance Ampris could see the fat, pale orb shimmering its reflection on the river’s surface, but she was not interested in the view.

Instead, she turned on the data screen and called up Information. At night she often used Israi’s study tools to privately supplement her own education. As long as no one caught her, she could study what she liked, as thoroughly as she wished, without being interrupted and directed by Israi’s whims.

Her favorite subject was Architecture, with Mathematics and Natronics running a close second and third. But tonight she called up History and sought the entry for Aaroun.

The screen shimmered a moment, then displayed in vivid graphics a male of her species. Impatiently skipping this subentry, Ampris cross-indexed her request to Aaroun homeworld. As she entered the request, it occurred to her that she did not know the planet’s name. She felt ashamed of her ignorance.

An astronomy map shimmered onto the screen with an arrow pointing to where the planet should have been, /
ARROUN HOMEWORLD,
\ read the caption across the bottom of the screen, /
LOCATION IN SARGAS SOLAR SYSTEM, GALACTIC CENTER SEVEN POINT NINE NINE BY SEVEN. THIRD WORLD IN SYSTEM. INCAPABLE OF SUPPORTING LIFE.
\

Anger slithered through her heart, but she ignored the emotion and asked for a cross-reference to Sargas III.

No response registered from the equipment for a long time. Then finally, a new caption crawled across the screen. /
INFORMATION DELETED BY ORDER OF HIGH COUNCIL.
\

Frustrated, Ampris glared at it, but she knew an information deletion could not be countermanded. Trying to dig further might even alert Security, although she doubted they would dare to shut down any activity requests that came from the sri-Kaa’s data screen.

Instead, she requested information on Zimbarl. Again there was a long pause. Again the answer came: /
INFORMATION DELETED BY ORDER OF HIGH COUNCIL.
\

She requested information on Nithlived, and received the same reply. Snarling to herself, she asked about the Heva clan.

This time, she received a split screen of captions and new graphics of a fawn-colored Aaroun female with brown spots and a light brown mask across her eyes. The female was mature, well into her middle years by the heavy bulk and musculature of her neck and shoulders. Her eyes were keen and far-seeing.

/
HEVA CLAN,
\ read the caption on the right side of the screen, /
TRIBAL DESIGNATION FOR THE SPECIES ARROUN, CARNIVORES ORIGINATING IN SARGAS SYSTEM, TECHNOLOGY GRADE THREE. SOCIOLOGICAL PATTERN INDICATES THIRTY CLANS WITHIN FIVE PRIMARY TRIBES. HEVA CLAN IS
\

Ampris frowned when the screen failed to automatically scroll. She touched it with her fingertip, but it did not respond. She touched it again. The screen went blank, except for one blinking message:

/
INFORMATION DELETED BY ORDER OF HIGH COUNCIL.
\

Growling to herself, Ampris tried every cross-reference in the index she could think of, and came up with nothing else. Then she heard a faint sound outside the door.

Swift as thought, she shut off the screen and closed the window. Blanketed by the resulting darkness, she crouched on the floor with her back against a cabinet.

The door swung open.

Ampris drew in a swift breath and held it, feeling her heart thump harder. The shadows were thick. She could not see who stood at the doorway. No light shone for either of them. Neither breathing nor moving, Ampris let her nostrils widen to take scent.

She smelled skin oil, a special blend of cynribal, koi-kai, and ohl favored by Lady Lenith. But the chief lady in waiting usually retired to her own apartments at night, leaving lesser attendants to guard the sri-Kaa’s sleep. That meant someone else had been dipping into Lady Lenith’s perfume pots.

Who would dare?

No one, save Israi herself.

Relieved, Ampris caught the sri-Kaa’s true skin scent beneath the cloying perfume and started to speak.

But an instinctive sense of caution held her silent. She realized that as long as the lights stayed off, she could not be seen in the thick pool of shadows where she was hiding. And although Israi probably would not punish her for using the data screen without permission, Ampris did not want to explain what she had been looking up or why. And so she stayed silent on her haunches, while the memory of Israi’s carelessly cruel words in the Archives throbbed through her mind.

It was all true, Ampris thought. Everything Bish had told her was true. The Viis had captured, plundered, enslaved, and conquered the Aarouns. They had destroyed everything they did not take, leaving nothing for the Aarouns to go home to. They had even taken the planet’s name.

Israi did not care.

No Viis cared.

For the first time in her life, Ampris felt a gulf widening between her and her friend. For no matter how true and wonderful a friend Israi was, she would always be Viis, a descendant of atrocity and conquest. And no matter how long Ampris lived in the palace, favored, and pampered, and loved, she would always be Aaroun, descendant of slaves.

“Your heritage is here,” Bish had told her in the Archives. “It belongs to you, Ampris.”

She crouched in the shadows, waiting for Israi to speak her name and demand she come forth. But although Israi’s scent altered slightly with heat, indicating she sensed that Ampris was in there hiding from her, Israi said nothing. After a long, long moment, she softly closed the door and went away.

Ampris let out her breath, but felt no relief. Something was happening between them. She did not know what it was. She did not want to know what it meant. Perhaps Israi had always known she sneaked in here to use the data screen at night. Perhaps not. Ampris realized, however, that she would never dare slip in here again. Israi’s very silence was a warning.

But I will know the answers to my questions
, Ampris thought.
I must learn more about my people.

The next day, when Israi joined the Kaa for a private lesson, Ampris stole away to the Archives. She found Bish bent over a table of dirt-encrusted artifacts, carefully cleaning an object with a tiny brush.

“Teach me,” she said without even a greeting, making him start and whirl around. “I want to learn more about my people. When did we come to be slaves? Two hundred years ago? What did we do before then? Did we have our own space travel, our own technology? What happened to—”

“Gently, young cub,” Bish said, holding up his hands. “Gently. So many questions. So much impatience. Let us deal with one subject at a time.”

“I don’t have much time,” Ampris said impatiently. “I must go back soon or I will be missed. Almost every entry in the data screen has been deleted. I can find out
nothing
about—”

Bish’s lips parted in a broad smile. He drew a small object from his pocket and handed it to her.

It was a sivo data crystal. Ampris hefted it on her palm, then curled her fingers around it. She felt as though she had been handed a treasure trove. “How much information does it contain?” she asked.

“The crystal is full,” he replied, shaking back his mane. “You have many days’ worth of learning in your hand, golden one. Learn it well—”

“I’ll listen to it tonight—”

“Slowly,” he said in warning, his tail whipping out behind him in alarm. “Listen to it slowly, in small bits. Do not rush your lessons.”

“But!—”

“Honor your people’s history,” he said, his voice suddenly stern. “Treat this with care. Do not tell anyone I have given this to you. Do you understand?”

His tone and the fierce look in his eyes alarmed her. She blinked at him, clutching the crystal in her hand. “Is it forbidden for me to have this?” she asked in a small voice.

“It is.”

Her mouth went dry, and she found herself panting. She wished she had never come back, had never let her curiosity carry her past common sense. She tried to return it to him. “I will commit no treason.”

“But you already have,” Bish said, very softly. He looked at her with compassion, seeing the fear that dawned in her eyes. “When you sought deleted information on the data screen. When you came here just now, asking questions. Even when you listened to me uttering forbidden names yesterday.”

She gasped and turned her back to him. “I didn’t know they were forbidden. I didn’t—”

“Ampris,” he said. “Fear is not for one such as you. Look at me.”

She froze, her heart hammering hard. She would be arrested, dragged from Israi’s side, and thrown into the Pit of Questioning. She would be slaughtered, her head and hands cut off, and—

“Ampris,” Bish said more forcefully, “turn around.”

She complied with great reluctance, tempted to dash the sivo crystal on the floor and break it into pieces. Already Israi knew. She had to know. She had come to the alcove door, but she had not spoken. Yet if she had not spoken, what did that mean? Was it a warning, as Ampris had first thought? Or did it mean she gave her permission for Ampris to learn?

Relief swept Ampris with such intensity it was almost painful. She met Bish’s eyes and saw open concern in his gentle gaze.