Alien Chronicles 3 - The Crystal Eye (54 page)

She grabbed him around the throat. “What will make us go forward?”

Still laughing and choking, he reached ahead, and she released him. The Zrhel hit the controls, fending off the helmsman’s attempt to stop him, and they lurched toward the rings. The ship plunged inside just as the implosion caught them.

Thrown off her feet, Israi heard the klaxons wailing and voices shouting in panic. The first gravitational flux hit them, rippling through metal not designed to endure such stress. Rolling on the deck, Israi heard a tremendous crack of sound. The ship shuddered in another flux, and Israi was suddenly hurled upward, her body spinning around and around in the air. Around her she glimpsed a blinding explosion as the instrumentation blew. Then she was being crushed and pulled apart by forces her body could not withstand. She screamed into infinity, until there was nothing at all.

CHAPTER
•TWENTY-THREE

In orbit around the green and blue globe that was Ruu-113, Ampris would not allow herself to be moved from the port screen. She constantly marveled at the planet’s beauty. Transfixed, she studied the shape of the continents beneath shifting clouds. The oceans looked vast. Scans reported that the air was breathable. The water was clean and pure. Ampris barely listened to the data. The beauty of this planet alone was enough to exhilarate her. Yet now that her dream had finally come true, she found herself exhausted and spent, unable to do anything except lie by the port screen and gaze at their new world.

Foloth and Nashmarl came to sit beside her. “We’ll be going down soon, Mother,” Foloth said excitedly. “The pilots have all talked on the link. They think it’s safe. The atmosphere and water seem to check out.”

“Tomorrow,” Nashmarl said. “Tomorrow we go.”

Ampris smiled at him and reached for his hand, but he pulled away. They still had not talked, still had not reconciled their quarrel. There was so much she needed to say to him, and yet she couldn’t reach through his stubborn barriers.

Foloth pushed his way closer to the port screen. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Mother?”

“Very,” she said quietly, resting her head against the pillow.

Her concentration wandered a moment, coming back only when Foloth announced, “Someday I will rule this world.”

“Kaa Foloth,” Nashmarl jeered. “When I grow another leg.”

“You don’t know anything,” Foloth said dismissively. “I can be Kaa if I want to be. Mother said we have unlimited possibilities now.”

“We don’t want a Kaa,” Nashmarl said, his green eyes flashing with anger. “And even if we did, we wouldn’t choose you.”

“Cubs, please,” Ampris said. They were making her head hurt. “Don’t quarrel.”

“I’m not quarreling,” Foloth told her. “He is. Nashmarl is so immature. He doesn’t—”

“I’m just as mature as you are!” Nashmarl declared, jumping up. He jostled Ampris’s seat with his leg, and she winced in pain.

Foloth shoved him back. “Look what you’ve done! You hurt her. Get away.” He shoved Nashmarl again, knocking him against the wall, and bent over Ampris. “Mother,” he said in concern. “I’m sorry. Let me help you.”

Although she locked her jaw to keep from crying out, a tiny whimper escaped her. The pain faded at last, leaving deep exhaustion in its wake. She opened her eyes, hearing Foloth and Nashmarl quarreling bitterly. Foloth was berating Nashmarl, blaming him, making it sound like he’d hurt her on purpose.

“Stop,” she whispered, upset to see them becoming such bitter enemies. “You need each other to survive. Please, don’t fight.”

But they were too busy arguing to hear her. Moments later, Jobul burst in, with Elrabin on his heels.

Elrabin swore at the cubs and hustled them away while Jobul bent over Ampris in concern.

“The monitor went off, and we could hear them fighting down the corridor,” he said. “Those cubs of yours—”

“Don’t blame them,” she said weakly, wincing as his probing touch found the pain. “So excited about planetfall.”

“You’re the one who’s too excited,” he said, applying a patch.

She tried to pull it off. “Don’t want to sleep. Have to see everything.”

He put the patch back on and held it in place until the drugs began to make her groggy. “Sleep now, Ampris. Tomorrow will be a big day for everyone.”

Elrabin came back, panting audibly. With her eyes shut, swirling through the mists of semiconsciousness, Ampris listened to Elrabin complain bitterly about her cubs’ lack of consideration.

“She’s still defending them,” Jobul said with a sigh. “She never changes.”

“No. There ain’t nothing more stubborn than an Aaroun mother.” Elrabin paused, then said worriedly, “She ain’t getting better, is she?”

Ampris wanted to speak to him, but she was too far away now, floating on the tide of drugs.

“She responded well at first, but there’s been too much abuse,” Jobul said. His voice sounded tired with resignation. “Her old wounds, the torture from the Bureau, that walk she took across the Plains of Filea to reach Vir—all of it has taken a tremendous toll on her strength. Her health is simply broken. She was in no condition to take that poison, but she wouldn’t listen to me.

“Wouldn’t listen to me either,” Elrabin said. “Ain’t—ain’t there nothing you can do?”

Jobul sighed. “I can make her comfortable. That’s all.”

Elrabin didn’t speak for so long that Ampris thought he’d left. She wanted to leave too. She wanted to go to Ruu-113. “Will she see it?” Elrabin asked, his voice choking up. “You got to make sure she gets to see it.”

“I’ll do all that I can,” Jobul promised.

They talked longer, but by then Ampris was asleep.

When she awakened, she was strapped in a bunk on board the shuttle, and they were shuddering violently through the atmosphere.

“Good morning, Mother,” Foloth said to her. Strapped in a safety harness, he grinned cheerfully at her. “Nashmarl’s been sick, but I haven’t.”

Ampris smiled back and curled her hand around her Eye of Clarity. They bumped on down, rolled and tossed about by turbulence no one had expected. But Ampris had no consciousness of the rough ride down. She was walking far away in another vision, walking across a rolling meadow of tall grass to a knoll overlooking a valley where a prosperous town nestled. She stopped there and looked down at the inhabitants, so tiny and far away. They seemed to be going about their business in contentment. She knew without being told that these were the descendents of the people who were landing with her today. Generations into the future. People who worked and thrived and knew joy. People who did not know the meaning of the word “slave.”

Standing in the clear, cool air, the sky arching over her without menace, Ampris longed to go down there and walk the streets. She wanted to see the faces and hear the voices of these people.

But when she tried to go down the hill, her feet would not move.

Sadness touched her heart, and she understood what the Eye was trying to show her. This was a future she would not live to see, except through this vision. Her work was finished, but the dream would go on. Her life had been full. She had traveled far and seen many wonders. She had known joy and she had known terror and grief. But best of all, she had lived to see this planet, and that was reward enough.

“Ampris,” said a voice. Someone shook her gently.

She opened her eyes, the vision fading from her mind. Disoriented, and not recognizing him at first, she looked up at Jobul.

“Ampris, we’ve landed,” he said.

His hand was on her wrist, and he was running a med-scanner over her.

She brushed his hand away. “I want to see.”

“Hey, Goldie!” Elrabin appeared and crouched beside her so they were at eye level. “We’re here. You ready to see some dirt and sky?”

“With all my heart.” She smiled at him, wishing she could tell him how precious he was to her. From the first day they’d met, frightened and jammed together in a holding pen at the slave auction, Elrabin had been trying to take care of her. He had brought her food that day, she remembered now, food she was too proud to eat. How angry he’d been with her for wasting it. And yet, through ups and downs, fortunes and many more misfortunes, they had remained friends. “Now, please,” she said.

Elrabin laughed, avoiding Jobul’s gaze, and unstrapped her.

“We’ll prop you up so you can look out the port,” Jobul said.

Ampris backed her ears. “Outside,” she said fiercely. That one sharp word seemed to rob her of all her breath. She closed her eyes, fighting off a wave of weakness, and was suddenly frightened that she would not make it. She looked at Elrabin, pleading with her eyes, and he understood.

“Okay, outside it is.”

“I don’t think she should,” Jobul said.

“Back off,” Elrabin snarled, and Jobul stopped protesting. Tenderly Elrabin gathered her in his arms.

She started to tell him that she was too heavy for him to carry, but he lifted her easily. In startlement she realized she must have lost weight. A lot of weight.

He ducked out through the hatch with her and carried her across a torn-up clearing, stumbling a little on the uneven ground where the shuttle’s landing had been less than neat. Ampris saw massive trees towering above her, their crowns impossibly high.

The air filled her lungs, and for a moment she felt strong and clear-headed. It was sweet, this air of the promised land. She smelled no pollution, no smoke, but only wood and growth and life.

Sunlight filtered through the swaying canopy above, casting dappled light across the blanket wrapped around her. Elrabin laid her gently on the mossy ground, propping her against the base of the largest tree she’d ever seen. She listened a moment, hearing the sigh of wind through the leaves. In the distance, water rushed swiftly along its course.

Relief and a feeling of well-being filled her. She smiled at Elrabin and gripped his hand. “A good place,” she said.

He nodded, his eyes bright with the sheen of tears. “Yes.”

“You will lead them now,” she said to him, while the others gathered silently around. “You will go on, my loyal Elrabin.”

“Hey, no!” he said in shock. “You can’t go talking that way, see? We’re depending on you—”

“Elrabin, your heart is good. You are more concerned with others than with yourself. You will lead them well.”

He backed his ears, looking more upset than she’d ever seen him. Bending down, he whispered, “I ain’t qualified, Goldie. You got to pick someone else. Harval, maybe.”

“A dust runner? Never.”

“But I never been any good at the big jobs,” he said in anguish. “I ain’t no fighter. Never could learn. I don’t have what it takes. I got to follow, Goldie. That’s what I know to do.”

Ampris smiled at him gently. “This is not a time for fighting, my friend. It is a time to create a new world and new ways. Your ideas will be good ones. Have confidence in yourself.”

“Mother!” Foloth said, coming over to her and kneeling at her side. He glared at Elrabin, who drew back slightly. “Jobul says that you’re dying.”

She looked at her firstborn cub, taking in his odd face and dark, arrogant eyes. “Yes, I am.”

He blinked, going wide-eyed at that. But although he gulped a moment, he did not back away. “Then I claim your Eye of Clarity as my inheritance.”

Nashmarl howled and slammed into him, knocking him away from her. “You leave her alone!” he shouted. “She isn’t dying! She isn’t!”

Elrabin snarled across her. “Both of you, shut up! This ain’t no way to act.”

Nashmarl gripped Ampris’s hand and bent over it, weeping uncontrollably. “No,” he sobbed. “You can’t! I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she said, stroking his arm. “It’s all right.”

Foloth eyed her, as composed as Nashmarl was distraught. He reached out to slip the necklace over her head.

With her last bit of strength, Ampris pulled her hands free from Nashmarl’s grip and stopped Foloth. She took the Eye of Clarity from his hands, although he resisted for a moment. Prying his fingers free, she handed the stone to Elrabin.

“No!” Foloth said.

Ampris ignored her son’s protests and curled Elrabin’s shaking fingers around the Eye. “You have always had great courage and inner strength, Elrabin,” she said. “This will help you to use those qualities, and to find new ones. It has great power. I know you will be wise enough to find it.”

Elrabin’s fingers tightened on hers. His ears swiveled, and his eyes spilled tears. He could not speak.

“No, Mother!” Foloth said angrily. “The Eye is my birthright. I am your son. How can you give it to this Kelth nobody? Are you trying to punish me for my Viis blood?”

Some of the onlookers gasped, but Ampris ignored Foloth. Instead she placed her hand on Nashmarl’s bowed head. Her heart grieved for his anguish, spilling out now at long last. She hoped his tears would heal him, and help him. He needed so much, and she had so little time left to give him.

“My dearest Nashmarl,” she said weakly, feeling very tired now. “Be strong. I have always loved you. Remember that you will always have my blessing. Whenever you need me, look inside yourself, inside your strong and tender heart, and I will be there.”

Nashmarl pressed his wet face against her hand, whimpering.

She looked up at Foloth, so tight-lipped, so furious. “Foloth, I do not hate your Viis blood,” she said. “How could I? It will only be a problem for you if you allow it to be. This whole world lies before you, but you must first learn how to walk in it. Becoming a Viis is not the answer for you. Viis ways cannot serve the people’s needs here.”

He frowned at her, puzzled and upset. Clearly he did not understand, but she had no strength left to explain. Exhausted, she leaned her head back, gazing one last time at Elrabin, her oldest and truest friend. Her eyes closed, and she entered peace.

Elrabin stared at her, lying there as though she had simply fallen asleep, and knew she was gone. He touched her hand and her face, and wept.

Behind him, one by one, the abiru people knelt also, grieving together in the sunlight of this world she had given them all.

At dawn, Elrabin carried Ampris’s body to the top of a high, silent mountain rising above the landing site. Allowing no one to help him, the Eye of Clarity swinging on its cord around his throat, he buried her in a quiet place where she could always watch over her people.