Laura Jo Phillips (11 page)

Aisling opened her eyes and shook her head as she sat up and reached for the bottle of body wash.  This was ridiculous.  She had no room in her life for such things as men, or romance.  She admitted to herself that she longed for the kind of relationship that Hope had with the Bearens, or Summer with the Katres, but even if she were blessed with such a thing, it could not be now.  Not yet.  She wasn’t ready for that.  She had promises to fulfill first.

An hour later she stepped into the dining room, her hair still damp, but feeling refreshed and hungry.  “Hi everyone,” she said as she crossed to the chair she had used the night before.  “I hope I’m not too late.”

Olaf, Rand and Rudy all stood politely, and Karma smiled.  “Thanks for the gift,” she said to all of them.  “It was very generous, and perfectly lovely.”

“We are glad you enjoyed it,” Rand said as he and his brothers sat back down.  “And you are not late.  We were just getting ready to ask Karma to see if you were ready for dinner, so you are just in time.”

“Great,” Aisling said.  “I’m very hungry tonight.  Which reminds me, I’m really sorry for conking out on all of you today.”

“
Conking out
?” Olaf asked as he picked up a platter of steaks, carefully selected the one that looked the most perfect to him and put it on Aisling’s plate.

“She means she’s sorry that she overworked herself today, nearly caused herself a brain hemorrhage, and passed out from exhaustion,” Karma said with an arched brow as she accepted a steaming dish from Rudy.

“
Brain hemorrhage?
” Rand asked.  “I don’t know what that is, but it does not sound good at all.”

“She’s exaggerating,” Aisling said.  “A lot.”

“Not by that much,” Karma argued.  “You need to be more careful, Ash, and I mean it.  It’s not going to do anyone any good if you can’t finish the translations because you’ve hurt yourself by listening to that noise too much.”

“She is correct,” Olaf said, choosing his words carefully.  He did not want to offend Aisling by telling her what to do, as he had earlier, but at the same time, he did not want her to cause herself harm.  “We would ask you, with all respect, to please use care while doing the translations.”

Aisling gave him a startled look.  “I did not mean to hurt myself,” she said.  “I had no idea that would happen.  Now I know, so I will be more careful.”

“Thank you,” Olaf said solemnly. 

It seemed strange to Aisling that someone would thank her for not being careless with her own well being.  But at the same time, she sensed that Olaf was completely sincere. 

 “May I ask what you translated today?” Olaf said as he reached for the pitcher of iced juice and silently offered to pour some for Aisling.

Aisling nodded, and Olaf filled her glass.  “Nobody said I couldn’t talk about what I translated, so I see no reason not to discuss it.”

“We are the Consuls of Clan Gryphon, and have our world’s highest possible-security clearance,” Olaf said as he poured a glass of juice for himself.  “We could call Elder Vulpiran and ask, but we’d prefer to hear it from you, if you do not mind.”

“Nope, don’t mind at all,” Aisling said.  “What I listened to today was all recorded by the same person, someone named Za-Linq.  It had the feel of a diary, or a log.”

“Yes, that is what Arima Katre said his name was,” Olaf said. 

“The first entry was about him having witnessed a woman kill someone.  He referred to the woman as a
berezi
, and an
it
, and the person she killed as her owner.  He said he was going to acquire the female, and resell her.”

“It did not work out quite that way,” Olaf said with a tight smile.

“No?” Aisling asked.

“No,” Olaf replied.  “Summer Katre was the
berezi
, and she killed the Brethren, William Winicke, the
owner
Za-Linq mentioned.  Decapitated him with her sword, in fact.  After that, the Katres killed Za-Linq.

Aisling gasped in surprise and looked at Karma across the table, who was smiling a very satisfied smile.  “Berta told us that the Brethren leader, Stalnek, was off-planet when we were abducted because he went looking for his son, William,” Karma explained.  “We’re just happy to know that he was not successful in that quest.  I suppose you could say that we are not big fans of the Brethren.”

“I suppose not,” Olaf said with a chuckle. 

“The first thing that I translated must have been the last thing Za-Linq recorded,” Aisling guessed. 

“Sounds like it to me,” Olaf agreed.  “Was there anything else?”

“A lot of it sounded crazy,” Aisling said.  “He was going on and on about someone by the name of Lio.  He was convinced that this Lio person had betrayed him, and was a traitor to the Xanti.  He was determined to find the guy and, as he said over and over again,
make him pay
.”

“Lio was a Xanti agent, that’s true,” Olaf said.  “I don’t know whether he betrayed the Xanti or not, but it doesn’t really matter.  Za-Linq succeeded in killing him before he died himself.”

“There were also what I would describe as memos concerning a new slave compound on Jasan,” Aisling said.  “I told Elder Vulpiran about that right away, and he told me that it was the same compound that had already been discovered.”  Aisling picked up her glass and sipped her juice.  “I think that’s about it,” she said.  “There was more, but nothing of any great import.”

“What you are doing for us is very important, and we are very grateful to you for doing it,” Rand said.  “Even so, your health is more important.  Please do not risk it.”

Aisling put her fork down and reached for her glass, turning it in her hands as she tried to decide whether or not to say what she wanted to say.  After a few moments, she made her decision.  She took a sip of her juice and set the glass back down.

“My father was a scientist,” she said without preamble.  “He specialized in Xenoanthropology.  My mother was a doctor.  When they were very young they volunteered their services on the welfare ships.  They went to a lot of backwater planets, saw a lot of people who were destitute, sick, starving.  They also saw something else.”

“What?” Olaf asked, gentling his voice, feeling as though Aisling was revealing something very private, and very important.

“They saw a lot of victims of the Xanti,” Aisling said.  “And they learned a lot of things that, because of the charter of the welfare ships, they were contractually obligated to keep to themselves.  More importantly, things they couldn’t reveal without risking the lives of the populations involved.”

“What sorts of things?” Olaf asked.

“The Xanti are parasitic.  They find a world that has something they want, and they take it.  All of it.  Food, metals, minerals, technology or even people, it doesn’t matter.  They strip what they want from the planet, and leave what’s left without another thought.  They enslave the scientists, inventors, whoever has invented or created something they want.  They force those people to work for them, then sell the technologies as Xanti creations.”

“That is new information,” Olaf said, reining in his excitement.  “Do you have proof of this?  Or rather, does your father?”

Aisling dropped her eyes to hide what she knew was an over reaction to the question.  Olaf did not know her father, or her for that matter, and had not meant his question to be insulting.

“I do not need proof to believe what my father told me,” she said without lifting her eyes from the plate before her.  “It is enough for me to know that the Xanti are evil.  That is why I have agreed to do the translations.  Not only because it will help the Jasani, but because it will harm the Xanti.”

 “We understand that you have personal reasons for wanting to aid in the war against the Xanti,” Olaf said, forcing his voice and manner to remain casual.  “Whatever your reasons, we are grateful to you for your assistance.”

Aisling glanced up at him, her eyes meeting his for a long moment.  She had expected him to begin pressing her for more information and was pleased and surprised to discover that he was not going to do that.  She sensed that he wanted to, very much, but he refrained.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

Olaf knew that she was thanking him for not pressing her.  As difficult as it was, he was glad he had kept his questions to himself.  It was obvious to him that Aisling was more relaxed than she had been just a day earlier, but there was more to it than that.  She seemed to be revealing more of herself, a little bit at a time.  He didn’t want to do or say anything to send her back into her shell.

Chapter
11

Thelba Ralink was very nervous, but she reminded herself of the importance of her task and swallowed her fear.  Moving very slowly, she raised her head and peeked over the edge of the boulder she was hiding behind. 

The encampment of the Brethren, the newcomers to Onddo, was not very large as there were not very many of them.  As she watched, a light breeze brought the scent of them to her and she wrinkled her nose.  It wasn’t that they smelled bad.  They just smelled...different. 

Thelba slowly counted the Brethren as they moved back and forth through the camp.  This was not an easy thing to do, but she had a rare gift for numbers, which was one reason she had been chosen for this task.  She was also a good runner, and had learned Standard in one of the classes the Xanti had offered. 

After several minutes she shook her head and sat back down.  It was no good.  She would have to try again. 

Taking a deep breath she raised her head and peeked into the encampment again, this time starting at one end and working her way to the other.  Before long she became confused by the constantly moving people and had to begin again.

After several more attempts, she nearly gave up.  It was impossible to count the number of people as they were continually coming and going from place to place.  She was going to have to return home and admit failure.

One more try, she decided.

This time, when she peeked over the boulder, she saw something unusual.  So unusual that she forgot entirely about counting.

As she watched, several of the Brethren walked together to a small clearing just outside of the circle of white habitats that the Xanti had given them to use as homes.  One of them, a large male that she had a difficult time taking her eyes off of, stood facing the group and spoke for a few minutes.  When he was finished, three smaller males, not children, but not yet men, knelt in the dirt, each of them placing a small container in a hole.  After they rose and backed away, three more men stepped forward and filled the holes in with soil.  When the holes were filled, they knelt down and placed small white markers over where the holes had been.  Then the large, handsome, male spoke again, more briefly this time, and they all turned around and returned to the camp.

There was something about the scene that tickled Thelba’s mind, but she couldn’t think what it was.  She remained motionless, staring at the small clearing with the tiny white markers for a long time.  Finally she sighed and lowered her head safely below the top of the boulder.  She sat down and tried to decide what to do next. 

She had meant to try counting the Brethren one more time, but the day was late and soon they would all hide in their habitats as they always did when the sun went away.  She might as well return home and admit her failure. 

She stood up and began making her way down the mountain of boulders when it suddenly occurred to her that the tickling in her mind was the beginning of a racial memory.  She went straight back to where she’d spent her day and sat down again.  She closed her eyes and imagined a flower with blue and white petals as her mother had taught her.  As everything fell away so that there was nothing but the flower, her body relaxed and she felt as though she were floating. 

Almost at once the flower faded and in its place she saw a group of people who looked as she did.  They were her own people, she realized.  Her ancestors, and not all that far into the past either.  They stood on Onddo, not that lost ancient world of the past that often appeared in her racial memories.

As she watched, a female stepped forward from the group and behind her came several males carrying a prone figure on a slab.  They set the slab on the ground, then rolled the figure into a hole and covered it over with soil. 

Then the female knelt beside the spot, her shoulders shaking with sobs.  Before she left, she placed a small marker over the hole.

Thelba had seen enough of the sad scene and deliberately broke her trance.

“So that’s it,” she thought.  They were disposing of their dead.  How odd.

Her people took their dead and dropped them off of a high cliff half a day’s walk to the east, near Magoa’s killing fields.  They did now, anyway.  Her memory had just revealed to her that they had once had a ritual for burying their own dead in the ground, as the Brethren did.  She wasn’t sure how they made their dead so small that they fit into tiny containers, but she had no doubt that was what they had done.

Now that she thought about it, burying the dead made sense.  Much more sense then throwing the bodies of their loved ones away as though they were so much waste.

Well, never mind all that.  She had a way of counting the Brethren without trying to follow them back and forth across the camp.  She stood up and peeked over the boulder once again, but this time she looked to the clearing and counted the markers.  She counted them twice to be sure, then sat back down.