Alien Chronicles 3 - The Crystal Eye (12 page)

Ampris backed her ears in annoyance. She did not like Velia and had always considered her a poor choice for Elrabin, but she had never spoken against her, even when Elrabin occasionally asked her advice. Now she rose to her feet and silently pushed Velia outside.

Twilight was falling over the camp, and it seemed everyone had returned. From the corner of her eye she saw Foloth squatted on his haunches outside their tent, unpacking his pouch. Nashmarl, his hood thrown over his shoulders, was rushing back and forth among the crowd of familiar faces and strangers. He had Ampris’s hunting sling in his hand and he was whirling it around his head recklessly. She hoped he had no stone in it, or he would surely hurt someone.

“You have no right to push me out of my own home,” Velia was saying in Ampris’s face, giving her no chance to rush off to greet her sons. “How dare you—”

“Elrabin is badly hurt,” Ampris said. “Didn’t Harthril tell you?”

“Yes, of course he told me,” Velia said. Her golden-brown eyes glared at Ampris. “That’s why we came back tonight. I knew Elrabin would run into trouble. It’s your fault he’s hurt.”

“Yes,” Ampris said calmly.

Velia blinked as though she hadn’t expected Ampris to agree with her. She drew a deep breath, and tried to push past the Aaroun.

Ampris pushed her back, refusing to let her enter the shelter.

“Get out of my way!” Velia said shrilly. “You can’t keep me out of my own—”

“You can go in when you calm down,” Ampris told her. “Elrabin needs peace and quiet.”

“He needs to be told how big a fool he is.”

“I am very grateful to him,” Ampris said. “He helped me get out of a bad situation.”

Velia glared at her, firelight glinting off her eyes. “But you got him into that bad situation. Ampris. Always
you
thinking up something to cause us trouble.”

Ampris backed her ears at the criticism. “I thought up the raid on that warehouse in Lazmairehl too. Velia. The one that set you free. Or have you forgotten that?”

Velia’s tall ears twitched nervously. She hugged herself and would not look directly at Ampris. “You have no business tending my mate. I will take care of him.”

Sighing, Ampris figured Velia’s worry was making her act this way. Velia was usually in a bad mood, but tonight she acted worse than usual. She wasn’t often this openly critical.

Ampris stepped aside and gestured at the shelter. “When he wakes up. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you. His fever has gone down. He only regained consciousness a short time ago, but he is sleeping again.”

Muttering to herself. Velia pushed past Ampris and ducked into the shelter.

Glad to be rid of her, if only temporarily. Ampris turned her attention to more important matters. “Foloth!” she called, hurrying to her firstborn son.

At the sound of his name, Foloth rose to his feet and turned around. His dark eyes lit up and he ran to embrace her. “Mother!” he said in excitement. “We have had such adventures. Harthril made us break camp and we have been hiding from patrollers. Then we hunted, and then we caught these wandering slaves. They don’t know anything.” he whispered solemnly. “They can’t figure out which berries to look for, and they don’t even know how to pluck the feathers off grassens.”

While he spoke, Ampris was busy stroking the thin, downy fur on the rounded back of his misshapen head. She nuzzled his neck and jaw, breathing in the scent of him, finding reassurance that he was safe and sound.

“They can’t do anything,” he finished.

“Yes, of course they can,” she said mildly, hoping no one had overheard what he said. Foloth was entirely too serious for his own good. He saw things in black and white, and had little patience in considering other points of view. She rubbed the top of his head, where his fur was almost nonexistent. He had the pebble-grained skin of a Viis, and did not burn in the sun the way his brother did. “Foloth,” she said, “you cannot expect them to have the same skills that you do. Their life has been very different from yours, until now. We will have to teach them to be self-sufficient here in the wild.”

“A waste of time,” he said dismissively. “Where did they come from, anyway?”

“I helped free them,” Ampris replied. She noticed that most of the newcomers were staring at her now, and turned around to face them. She kept her arm around Foloth’s shoulders and smiled. “Welcome to our camp,” she said.

A few smiled back, but most looked uncertain and wary. She counted about seven former slaves. All of them were Kelths, predominantly female. Moska, she noted, was not among them, and she wondered if the youth had escaped or been captured.

“You have met my companions,” she said to them, giving nods to Luax and Harthril, who stood slightly apart from everyone else. Old Robuhl had seated himself on the ground with his long, prehensile tail curled around his neck. His rheumy eyes shifted and glimmered in the firelight while he muttered to himself. “We are a small group, dedicated to living free of Viis rule. Our way of life is not easy. We have no luxuries, no conveniences. We live far from vids or government-supplied food. But we can speak our own language and teach our young our own histories. We work for ourselves and call no one master.

“If you will live peaceably among us, if you will contribute your share of work to the group, then you may stay with us as long as you wish. We are nomads, forced to move whenever the game grows scarce. We seldom venture too close to cities or towns. If at any time you wish to leave us, you are free to do that. You are free to do anything you want, as long as you bring no harm to us. Any questions?”

The ex-slaves exchanged glances. One of them murmured to another, and a gray-furred Kelth female stepped forward. “I be called Frenshala.”

“Welcome, Frenshala,” Ampris said formally. “What is your question?”

“You be leader here?”

Ampris hesitated. After Velia’s unexpected hostility and Tantha’s foul mood, she felt a certain tension in the air. Even Luax and Harthril were hanging back more than usual. She glanced around for Nashmarl, but the cub had vanished.

Facing Frenshala again, Ampris replied, “Yes, I am leader, after a fashion.”

“What work will we do here?”

“That is your choice. Everyone has chores to do.”

“What will be
our
work?” Frenshala insisted.

Ampris realized she probably had never been without orders before. “At first, you should probably help with cleaning the camp area, mending clothing, and helping to prepare food. As you learn your way about, we will give each of you lessons in how to hunt. We all take turns in minding this old one.” She gently touched Robuhl’s white-maned head as she spoke.

He looked up at her with a smile. “Ampris!” he said proudly. “Savior of the people!”

Slightly embarrassed, she gave him a pat and looked at Frenshala. “Anything else?”

“Where are our quarters?”

“Tonight you will have to sleep in the open,” Ampris said. “We will help you make your own shelters tomorrow—”

“No,” Harthril said, stepping forward. His blue Viis eyes shone in the firelight like jewels. “Not tomorrow. We go. Break camp quick.”

Ampris looked at him. “Do you think the sniffers will come this far into the hills?”

“Maybe. They come back for more searching today. Could mean trouble for us.”

Luax raised her hand. She was extremely thin, even for a Viis female. Her head seemed too large for her spindly neck, and her skin had pronounced streaks of pink variegated with green. She talked even less than Harthril, but now she, too, stepped forward. “Cut out their implants,” she said.

Agitated yipping broke out among the ex-slaves, and even Frenshala became alarmed, drawing back into the group with her arms held tight against her.

“That is their choice,” Ampris said hastily, afraid Luax was going to frighten them into fleeing. “Always we have let people choose.”

“Not now,” Luax said firmly, making a chopping gesture with her hand. “Not when danger comes close.”

“You can’t!” Frenshala said fearfully. “You will kill us.”

Ampris backed her ears and looked at the Kelth in dismay. “Are you saying you have ion-release tattoos?”

“Paket has one,” Foloth said beside her. “It can’t be eradicated.”

She felt the loss anew and searched the crowd for a glimpse of Nashmarl. Since the days when Nashmarl had crawled about Vess Vaas with only a ball made from rags to play with, he had been fond of the old Kelth. Had Harthril not told them that Paket was dead?

She looked at the Reject, but he was puffing his air sacs in and out, looking very serious indeed.

When he said nothing, she prompted him. “Tattoos or implants? Have you looked?”

Harthril’s rill stiffened about his head. “They would not let us.”

“You will hurt us,” Frenshala said.

Some of the Kelths began to wail and yip louder.

“Hush that noise,” Ampris said, aware that their shrill voices could carry a kilometer or more if they really got wound up. “We have no intention of hurting you. Once we know what kind of registration mark you have, we can decide what to do.”

“You lie,” Frenshala said, baring her teeth. “You said that we decide, that there be nothing we don’t have to do. Now you say different. Better we go back to master.”

Ampris took a step forward. “No, please—”

They backed away from her, glancing at the dark trees beyond the circle of firelight. Exasperated, Ampris tried to figure out what to say that would calm them.

Tantha appeared from the gloom with a suddenness that made several Kelths jump. “You aren’t going anywhere,” she said to them, growling fiercely. The spotted fur around her neck stood out in a ruff. “You run back to your master, and you’ll betray us to save your own miserable hides.”

Ampris glared at the Aaroun. Threats weren’t going to help. “You have no master to return to,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm and reassuring. “He has lost his farm to government confiscation. I told you that when we were penned.”

“We know about life out here, life in the wild,” Frenshala said. Her eyes shifted back and forth nervously. “Plants that be poison. Wild animals that kill. No water. No food. No shelter. We will die, and you—”

“I have lived in the wilderness for twelve years,” Ampris said. “I have raised my cubs out here without modern conveniences. You will be safe once you learn how to hunt and what to gather. The drought has made it harder to find clean water, but we—”

“We want to go,” Frenshala said wildly. “We want to go
now!”

“You will betray us,” Tantha said, her eyes agleam.

The Kelths backed away, clearly getting ready to dash into the darkness. Once out there, Ampris knew, they could get lost or they could fall into a canyon and be hurt or they might wander all the way down to the base of the hills and likely run into patrollers.

Anxious to stop them, Ampris held up her Eye of Clarity so that the firelight caught it and flashed through the clear center of the stone. “Look at this!” she ordered.

Some turned their backs on her, but one or two, Frenshala among them, glanced her way.

“This stone is called an Eye of Clarity,” Ampris said, letting her voice ring out. “Have you ever heard of it? Do you know what it is?”

Frenshala shuddered and flattened her tall ears to her skull. “Mind-catcher. No one look at it!”

“It’s perfectly safe,” Ampris said. She let it spin, flashing refracted firelight. “It is a symbol from the past, when all the abiru folk were free, living on their own planets. It is a symbol of peace, harmony, and strength.”

She talked, keeping her voice steady and persuasive. From her old training as a gladiator she had learned how to pitch and modify her voice, for her past masters had used certain voice commands to work her into a killing frenzy. But if the voice could be used to awaken savage instincts, it could also be used to persuade and pacify. She had learned, through long nights when her young cubs suffered nightmares and could not sleep, how to channel calm through her voice. If she held the Eye of Clarity it seemed to amplify whatever emotion she was trying to instill in others.

She used that self-taught skill now, calming the Kelths, making them listen to her.

“Sometimes, the Eye is considered a symbol of our hope that all abiru may live free,” she said to them. “We have no intention of harming you. That is not our way. We have welcomed you among us. We offer you a community where no one is master, but all are equal. Before you run back to Viis oppression and cruelty, at least consider what we offer you.”

The Kelths were all staring at her now with solemn, intent expressions. Silence lay over the camp, except for the sound of Ampris’s voice.

“It is our way to discuss all the options open to us, but no decision is made until we vote on it. We were discussing removal of your implants for your own safety, but you will not be forced to do anything against your will.” Ampris met Frenshala’s wary eyes. “This I, Ampris, do swear by the life of my own sons.”

She lowered her arm and slipped the pendant back over her head. No one spoke.

Then Harthril held out both of his hands, palms up. “We mean no harm to you. I swear by the life of my mate Luax, whose life Ampris saved.”

Luax raised her rill halfway and also turned her palms up. “With us you be welcome.”

It was Tantha’s turn to speak, but she only stood there and growled.

Frenshala glanced at her companions. They whispered among each other for a few moments, then Frenshala walked over to Ampris. “For us, trust is not easy. We did not ask for freedom. We do not think it such a good thing.”

“You will learn to cherish it,” Ampris said to her.

“Maybe. For now, we stay. But no more talk of cutting us!”

“All right,” Ampris said, giving in. She glanced at Harthril, who flicked out his tongue.

“If no remove implants, then we go,” the Reject said. “Must go.”

Ampris nodded. “Yes, tomorrow or the next day we should break camp and—”

“No,” Harthril said, more urgently. “Go tonight. Go fast.”

Ampris blinked at him in surprise. “Why?”

“Because the patrollers are still searching,” Velia said, emerging from her shelter. “Because Harthril thinks they will set their sniffer range to maximum, and it might pick up our presence here. Because, thanks to you, we aren’t safe anymore.”