Alien Chronicles 3 - The Crystal Eye (47 page)

They had no choice but to leave. Alone with Nalsk, Israi rose to her feet and began to pace back and forth behind her desk. “This was insidious,” she said angrily. “To panic an entire city, to make us run like fools. Oh, Ampris has more tricks in her than we expected.”

“She is clever, this Aaroun,” Nalsk said coolly. “She knows exactly how much we all fear the plague. She’s playing on that.”

“Yes, and she will regret it,” Israi vowed. “The abiru will never be released.
Never!
Have you attacked the ghetto as we commanded?”

“Not yet, majesty,” Nalsk replied. “The patrollers have been too busy trying to keep order. The traffic is—”

“Get things straightened out quickly,” Israi ordered. He bowed to her. “As soon as order is restored, we will see that the abiru get the punishment you commanded.”

“Well, be quick about it! We want her caught,” Israi said. “Increase the rewards. Persuade someone to betray her.”

Within a few days the initial panic faded. The gates remained closed, refusing to allow citizens to exit. Patrollers escorted nervous aristocrats back to their villas. Because the Kaa’s flag continued to fly over the palace, and Israi was even seen in public, riding in her litter to the temple to pray for her dead sri-Kaa, people began to believe the public announcements about the abiru fever. With great pomp and ceremony, the sri-Kaa’s funeral went on as planned, the processional passing through nearly empty streets. Cams floated alongside Israi, sitting veiled and alone in her litter. They broadcast images of her, riding in the open air through the city and along the Avenue of Triumph, to all of Viisymel and across the entire empire. The Imperial Mother was clearly not afraid of contracting the plague. The ancient musical instruments wailed songs of mourning, and the priestesses sang and threw flower petals into the air as a symbol of the passage of Cheliharad’s small soul. The patriarchs of all Twelve Houses marched in solemn lines behind the litter that carried Cheliharad’s tiny body. Clearly these aristocrats did not fear the plague either.

In the ghetto, afflicted abiru of all races staggered with fever. Some of them fell in the streets, convulsing to death. But on the whole, these victims were scattered and few in proportion to the size of the general population.

Israi herself recorded a rare vidcast to her subjects, stating that there was no epidemic. She blamed the abiru fever on poor hygiene and overcrowding.

Then a call came over the link from Ampris. This time, the operators in the palace had all been carefully instructed by Nalsk’s agents. Ampris’s call was put through immediately to the Kaa, and tracers started running fast.

Israi had no desire to talk to the traitor. She wanted to scream at her, to see her marched into prison and tortured until she sobbed for mercy. But Nalsk had had long discussions with her. Israi took the call.

“Ampris, you are a fool to think we would believe such tricks,” she said without preamble. “Better that you turn yourself in before you cause more damage to your fellow slaves. They are dying because of you.”

Ampris faced her, clear-eyed and unremorseful. The screen was focused tightly on the Aaroun’s face, showing nothing of her surroundings.

“I ask the Kaa to release the abiru,” she said.

“Already we have given you our answer,” Israi replied, tired of dealing with her. “Never.”

“There are empty spaceships in orbit around Viisymel, unused ships,” Ampris said. Her dark, expressive eyes, so intelligent and compelling, stared at Israi from the screen. “We could take them and leave your planet. We would cause you no more trouble.”

“You, Ampris,
you
cause us trouble,” Israi muttered. She was finding it harder than she expected to hold her temper. “You will be arrested soon. You will be—”

“I have already been arrested once and tortured,” Ampris said coldly, showing no fear. “I escaped.”

“You won’t escape a second time.”

“Let us discuss the plague in my remaining seconds of airtime,” Ampris said. “The disease is spreading with greater rapidity.”

“It kills only abiru,” Israi said, flicking out her tongue. “We say good riddance to you all.”

“Would you rather see us die than be free?” Ampris asked sadly.

Her naivete amazed Israi. “Yes!” she shouted. “A thousand times, yes! You belong to us, Ampris. Freedom for the abiru will never happen. Never!”

“The infection will soon reach the household servants of even the best Viis families,” Ampris said. “It is transmitted through the sharing of bodily fluids. A sneeze, a cough . . . the contagion spreads. We can’t stop it.”

“Are you asking for medical assistance?” Israi asked coldly. “The less of you, the better.”

“If you value us so little, why not let us go?”

“Principle,” Israi said.

Ampris backed her ears. “You mean stubbornness and pride. Is that all? Because we want our freedom, you will not give it?”

“Death will apparently be your freedom,” Israi said.

“But this fever can reach the Viis,” Ampris said. “Why not work together and save us all?”

“It cannot reach us,” Israi said with a laugh. “The abiru fever cannot cross species to harm any Viis. Ehssk, our authority on the Dancing Death, has assured us—”

“I know Ehssk very well,” Ampris said, growling. Her eyes were suddenly hostile and ferocious. “He is lying to you.”

“He has no reason to lie.”

“Doesn’t he? I lived in Vess Vaas before it was destroyed,” Ampris said. “I was part of his experiments. In all the years he has been working to find a cure, what has he actually accomplished? What are his results?”

Israi opened her mouth to reply, then closed it. An icy finger of doubt slid into her heart. It was true: Ehssk had never found a cure.

“This is how he has been spending your government’s money,” Ampris said. She reached offscreen and pulled someone next to her.

Israi stared at the hideous, misshapen face now looking back at her. It was the same creature she had seen and tried to kill in the forest, or if not the same, then one almost identical. That odd, flattened face. The eyes, intelligent and dark, so much like Ampris’s; the rounded forehead and those vestigial nubs for ears.

“My son Foloth.” Ampris said from the screen. “He and my other son, Nashmarl”—she pulled a second hideous creature over to stand next to her—“are half Aaroun and half Viis. Ehssk created them, plus a female, my daughter, whom he dissected at birth.” She growled, while Israi stared at her in horror. “My cubs are genetic impossibilities, yet they live,” Ampris said harshly. As she spoke, she caressed the back of the creatures’ heads. The dark-eyed one smiled at Israi, and she gasped in affront. The green-eyed one never moved. Rigid and expressionless, he stared at Israi with eyes that seemed to bore right through her.

“Ehssk told you only part of the truth,” Ampris said. “His secret experiments have succeeded in creating strains of the virus that
can
cross species. Or did he admit that to you?”

Stunned and repulsed, Israi still could not speak. She found herself unable to tear her gaze away from the creatures’ faces, so ugly, so horrible.

Backing away, she cut off the link and stood there, staring at nothing, shuddering violently.

A Bureau agent came running into her study. “Majesty, what happened to the transmission? I almost had her in—”

“We could not look at those—those
things,”
Israi said, still shuddering.

“But, majesty—”

“Leave us!” she cried, burying her face in her hands.

The agent backed out and closed the door. Israi hurried to it and locked it. Only then was she free to give way to her shock. The sight of those two monsters spawned by Ampris . . . How could she admit having them? How could she stand to touch them, to keep them with her?

As for Ehssk, had he created more of these creatures? She knew him too well to suppose Foloth and Nashmarl were the only living results of his work. What other hideous surprises had crept from his laboratory? For years there had been rumors and whispers about Ehssk and his work, but Israi and the government had turned a blind eye to such stories. Officially he was supported, and she had not bothered to change that status.

Another of her father’s wretched mistakes, she thought bitterly.

As for Ehssk, she could no longer believe anything he said. His entire field of study was nothing but a sham, she told herself with horror; he probably knew no more about how to stop the Dancing Death than she did. And if Ampris was telling the truth about genetic engineering and species combination, then no doubt the plague
could
cross from abiru to Viis.

Israi unlocked her door. To the guards standing on the other side, she said, “Notify your commander that I want my personal slaves thrown out of the palace immediately. All abiru are to be removed at once.”

The guards stared at her in astonishment. “It shall be done, majesty, but—”

She withdrew, slamming the door on their questions.

That evening, Israi reclined on her banquet couch, fingering food which looked terrible and tasted worse. The courtiers eating with her grumbled and picked at their food.

Her impetuous order had deprived them all of anyone to cook, anyone to serve, and anyone to clean up. The attendants, bumbling and ineffectual, many of them looking insulted, were trying to serve. Nothing was edible, except the cheese—cut raggedly—and the fruit—unchilled. Israi finally took a tray of what was supposed to be kaloups, delicacies of tiny pastries filled with minced vegetables and seeds simmered in a fine sauce, and hurled it onto the floor. The tray crashed, echoing through the banqueting hall.

Israi left her couch, and everyone else had to rise. “The meal is over,” she declared and marched out.

When she returned to her quarters, her ladies in waiting were distraught. There was no one to draw the bathwater for the Imperial Mother, no one to press the sleeping robe, no one to turn down the coverlet and arrange the sleeping cushions the way the Imperial Mother liked them. As for the nursery, Lady Lorea informed her, word had come that the chunen were in chaos. They had not been bathed. They would not eat their food. They had thrown toys everywhere, and one of their attendants had slipped and fallen, spraining her ankle.

“Do we wish to hear this?” Israi shouted. “Go! Leave us now!”

“But how will the Imperial Mother retire without—”

“Go!”

Fearing her temper, they went out. Israi was left alone in the disorder. Her ladies had pulled out a selection of sleeping robes and tossed several of them on the floor. No slave was here to pick them up. No slave was here to pour her wine. Israi looked about, but she had no idea of where the wine and her jeweled cups were kept.

She understood, for the first time in her life, how dependent she was. It frightened and angered her. “Damn Ampris!” she said aloud. The abiru had no business wanting their freedom. They belonged here, serving their Viis masters as they had done for centuries. It was the only way to live an ordered and civilized life.

Fuming a moment, she activated her linkup and called Nalsk. Within seconds he answered. “Ah, majesty, I was just about to call you.”

“We want this stopped,” she said coldly. “Bring us the head of Ampris, without more delay.”

“When she is found, I’ll be happy to obey.”

“Then find her!” Israi screamed. “She is destroying us! Eliminate her and the others will crumble. There is no resistance movement without her.”

“She’s well-hidden and well-guarded,” Nalsk said.

“It’s all a lie, tricks and lies,” Israi muttered. “She frightens us, panics us, convinces us to throw out our own servants. We need our slaves. Who will work if they are gone?”

“That problem has occurred to many in your majesty’s government,” Nalsk said.

Israi fumed. “Find our slaves and return them,” she said.

His expression grew guarded and he flicked out his tongue. “That is perhaps unwise, majesty. I have someone running background checks on several common Viis citizens who will be put to work in your majesty’s service until more skilled and uninfected abiru can be imported from offworld.”

“But it’s just another of her tricks,” Israi said. “The plague cannot infect us.”

Nalsk looked grave. “I believed not, majesty, until an hour ago. But another report has come to me, one so disturbing that I had to examine the situation personally.”

Israi closed her eyes. More bad news. She was ready to scream. “What now?”

“A Reject corpse has been found in the street.”

Israi opened her eyes and stared at him. Her blood froze in her veins and she felt fear shoot to the tip of her tail. “No,” she whispered.

“I am afraid so. Dead of the plague. There is no mistake. I saw the corpse myself. I have a recording of it if your majesty wishes to see—”

“No,” she said hastily, stepping back from the screen as though the contamination could reach through it to her. She was starting to shake, starting to absorb the true impact of this shattering news. The end had come at last to her people. They could not escape the Dancing Death. Ehssk was a fool. He had no cure for them. They would die, and for what?