Perry Rhodan Lemuria 1: Ark of the Stars (28 page)

Then Mesdaq died. They buried her in the catacomb beneath the house where all members of the family found their final rest, and when Solina came back up, she expected that her father, who had complained the loudest about the altar, would take it apart and throw it into the ocean. But the altar remained untouched where it stood, and a fresh glowfish lay in the offering bowl.

Solina hadn't been home in several years now, but she was convinced that the altar still existed, perhaps by this time taking up the entire hallway.

And now she stood before an altar once more. Solina looked past Perry Rhodan, who stood leaning on the guide bar of the vehicle he called a bicycle, at the small clearing between the bushes. The Akonian had the feeling it was a hiding place, as though the cult served by the altar was only reluctantly tolerated.

As in her family's house on Shaghomin, the altar was improvised. Instead of driftwood, the builders had used branches from the bushes and other nearby plants and assembled them into a larger structure woven together with plastic parts. The inconsistency of the materials that had been used as well as the differing methods for putting them together—Solina was mentally tempted to call them "styles"—suggested to her trained historian's eye that she was looking at a construction that may already have existed for generations, and many hands had been at work on it.

The result was an oval pedestal that Solina estimated to be about two meters long with a width of roughly one and a half meters. At the foot of the pedestal was a row of securely fastened offering bowls, most of them filled.

"I don't believe it!" Robol von Sarwar moaned when he saw the figured enthroned on the altar. "I simply don't believe it! That can't be, Solina—can it?"

The historian didn't reply. Nothing was impossible. "History" was always just a construct of what was known and what a society considered worth noticing. The average citizen's reflex was to dismiss as impossible everything that didn't fit the known picture. Therefore it was the historian's duty to evaluate new facts with as little prejudice as possible and weave them into the picture so that it came a tiny bit closer to the facts. That is, to the extent anyone even believed in such a naive concept as "facts," as did only a few historians in the fourteenth century NGE ... .

From the corner of her eye, Solina saw that Pearl Laneaux and Hayden Norwell had taken up watch positions with their beamers drawn. That gave her the opportunity to take a closer look at this place of worship.

The Akonian stepped up close to the altar, knelt down in front of the statue and examined the offering bowls. Two of them contained food: a long pod that reminded Solina of the fruit of the nhemud tree of her homeland, while the second offering seemed to be a piece of bread. In the other bowls she found a primitive handmade chain, a wreath of flowers and a piece of grease-smeared metal. Solina picked up the last item and turned it between her fingers.

"Maybe it's a tool for their bicycles?" said Rhodan, who had knelt down beside her. "It would represent something very valuable—exactly what someone would offer to a god!"

"Sounds convincing." Solina picked up a folded piece of paper that had laid under the tool.

"For the Protector," she read, deciphering the Lemurian handwriting. She unfolded the sheet and on it was written a wish. "Mighty Protector, let me win the race tonight!"

Solina and Rhodan looked up at the statue of the being that the inhabitants of the ark apparently called the "Protector," then at each other in amazement. Solina was sorely tempted to follow Robol's lead and exclaim, "It can't be!"

But that was out of the question; she was a historian. Together with Rhodan she examined the other offerings. Under each one was a sheet of paper with a request for the Protector. "Let me be transferred to another Me—!" Solina couldn't make out the final word. "Let my toothache be healed at last!" "Let her yield to me!"

Solina and Rhodan stood up. The statue of the Protector was about a meter high, but because of the altar on which the being stood, they looked directly into its three eyes. They were bright red. The statue had been made out of a kind of clay that was nearly black and mostly unpainted. The being was naked. It stood on two massive pillarlike legs and had four arms that it held half reaching out, posed as though holding its arms protectively over its worshippers. The head sat on the shoulders without any neck.

"No doubt about it," Rhodan said, expressing the thoughts of everyone else. "It's a Halutian!"

"Or a Beast," Hevror ta Gosz put in, having joined the other two.

"Improbable," Solina contradicted him without taking her eyes off the Protector's statue. She had never seen a Halutian with her own eyes, but the statue was startlingly similar to images she was familiar with from pictures and recordings. "This ship set out long before the Beasts attacked. The distance from its starting point proves that. Its inhabitants couldn't know anything about the existence of the Beasts."

"But what if there had been an encounter with Beasts along the way?" Hevror demanded.

"Then the ship wouldn't exist any more," Rhodan replied. "The Beasts never asked questions, not even after shooting. They would have destroyed the ark the second they found out there were Lemurians or the descendants of Lemurians on board."

"That leaves the Halutians," Solina said. "The ark must have met up with Halutians."

"That seems to me the only possible explanation," Rhodan agreed. "But to be honest, it doesn't satisfy me, either. For thousands of years, only one hundred thousand Halutians have existed in the galaxy, a vanishingly small number. And hardly any of that little group ever leaves Halute. The odds that Halutians happened to stumble on the ark by chance are right at zero."

"Perhaps it wasn't by chance?" Hevror suggested. "Perhaps the Halutians learned about the ark somehow?"

"Also extremely improbable," Solina said. "As far as I know, no one up to now has ever found any hint of the existence of a ship like this. If the Halutians had found one, they would have informed us. And besides, they actually would have helped the inhabitants during their visit instead of taking off again after a quick stop. Isn't that right, Rhodan? You know Halutians personally."

She was referring to Icho Tolot, who had been allied with the Terrans in a friendship that had lasted more than twenty-five hundred years. The Immortal nodded. "The Halutians are very concerned about atoning for the sins of their ancestors. They would have—" He didn't have a chance to finish his sentence.

"Perry!" Pearl exclaimed. "There's a na ... a female Lemurian on one of those wheel-things!"

"Can you catch up with her?" Rhodan asked.

"Not necessary.
She's coming straight toward us!
"

A moment later, she had reached them. She sped on her bicycle into the midst of the team, brought it to a grinding halt and gasped in ancient Lemurian, "Please, strangers, you must help me!"

Rhodan was the first to recover from the surprise. "How can we help you?" he asked, also in Lemurian.

"Please help me, or they will kill me!"

For what seemed like an endlessly long time, the troll led Eniva ta Drorar through the corridors and decks of the
Palenque.
On the one hand, the Akonian was grateful for the opportunity to look around the foreign starship, and on the other she was amazed by the Terrans' technological backwardness. It was common practice on Akonian ships to use teleporters for even short distances. No one would have conceived of the idea of using an antigrav shaft to traverse more than two decks. Or did the Terrans have some sort of cult about physical activity and rejected teleporters for ideological reasons? She could believe almost anything of the Terrans, and she would have liked to think about it some more ... would have, if Alemaheyu Kossa had kept his mouth shut for even a second.

The
Palenque
's comm officer talked as though his life depended on it. He talked about the weather on Terra ... asked if the weather control on Sphinx—the oaf used that ugly Terran name for Drorah!—messed things up as regularly as it did on Terra ... didn't give her a chance to answer ... complained about the shift assignment on the
Palenque,
which was rigged from the start to his disadvantage ... asked if it was the same way on the
Las-Toór
... didn't give her a chance to answer ... informed her of his concern about the galacto-political situation ... and didn't she think the Ako ... Excuse me! the Arkonides were behind everything bad, maybe even the incompetent weather control ... didn't give her a chance to answer ... asked her if she had ever met Perry Rhodan ... didn't give her a chance to answer ... and then launched into a long and certainly far-fetched story of what good buddies he and Perry were ... .

Alemaheyu's torrent of words was like a tidal wave. Eniva wished she were back in the shelter of her cabin, small and malodorous though it might be. Or better yet, back on the
Las-Toór,
which she should have never left in order to get to know the barbarians better from up close. Because that was what the Terrans were, no doubt about it: barbarians. No Akonian of position would behave so badly as to refuse to let a conversation partner get a word in edgewise, and certainly it never would have occurred to anyone to do what that supreme barbarian Sharita Coho had cooked up. She had rid herself of a comm officer who was probably insufferable when he had nothing to do, and at the same time neutralized her Akonian hostage in a way that was unassailable. Hadn't she taken care of her guest at great sacrifice and assigned Eniva one of her most important men as a personal adjutant?

Sharita Coho was a devil. If she ever had the chance, she would—

"Here we are, Eniva."

The Akonian had difficulty bringing herself back to the here and now. The Terran troll had stopped talking. What was going on?

"We're where?"

"This is my cabin."

"Cabin? You said you wanted to guide me through the ship!" She wasn't afraid of Alemaheyu Kossa. If the Terran dwarf tried physical force on her, she would demonstrate the close anatomical similarities between Akonians and Terrans with one kick between his legs.

"And that's just what I did! We went through the entire ship twice."

"What? Why didn't you say anything?"

Alemaheyu's eyes went wide with indignation. "But that's what I was doing the whole time! Weren't you listening?"

"Oh, of course." Eniva remembered that she was on board the
Palenque
as something of an official representative of her people. There was no excuse for being infected by the Terran's impoliteness.

"If you say so, I believe it. We Terrans are polite people, after all." Alemaheyu pointed invitingly to the door of his cabin. "And that's why it's customary for us to offer our guests something to drink."

Eniva looked at the door to Alemaheyu's cabin. It wasn't different in any way from the hundred others that the Terran had led her past. With one exception: Someone, presumably Alemaheyu himself, had stuck a hand-lettered cardboard sign on it at eye-level with primitive adhesive strips.

"ALEMAHEYU KOSSA," Eniva read. "AIR GUITAR MAIL ORDER SERVICE."

She was rather proud of her Intercosmo and understood each of the words on the sign. Yes, she even had some idea what a guitar was, but still, the words didn't make any sense when taken together.

Alemaheyu smiled at her with his perfect teeth, as though he expected her to ask about the sign.

For that,
she thought,
you can wait a few dozen centuries!

"Very well," the Akonian said. "Let's get it over with.
One
drink."

"One drink."

Alemaheyu led her into his cabin. "I've been on the
Palenque
for quite a while now," he said apologetically as he noticed that she was mentally comparing his cabin with her own, "and my function on the ship makes me irreplaceable. That's why Sharita assigned me a more generous cabin. The extra maintenance costs are deducted from my shares."

"Generous" was stretching the facts. On the
Las-Toór,
a cabin of this size would have been allotted to a member of one of the lower crew ranks. But the
Palenque
was certainly not the
Las-Toór,
and Eniva thanked the spirits of her ancestors that at least she didn't have to sit together with Alemaheyu on a couch.

The Terran leaped to a chair, cleared a pile of papers and empty food packages from the seat, and motioned for her to sit down. "Sorry. I wasn't expecting company, or I would have cleaned the place up a little."

A poor excuse. What were housekeeping robots for? Eniva reminded herself once more of the Akonian politeness that was justifiably famous throughout the galaxy, thanked him, and took a seat.

"You'll love it!" Alemaheyu announced as he opened a large refrigerator, which looked about as orderly inside as his cabin—in other words, it looked as though a transform bomb had gone off inside.

Finally Alemaheyu found what he was looking for. He held up two brown bottles, made himself comfortable on the chair opposite without any concern for the papers piled on the seat, and placed the bottles on the small table between him and Eniva. "Perfect temperature: 8.4 degrees." Alemaheyu pulled a tool from his pants pocket and used it to open the bottles. They hissed and some droplets of foam sprayed on the table. "Brace yourself, Eniva. You're about to experience an exquisite pleasure that the entire galaxy is crazy about—genuine Terran beer!" He clinked his bottle against Eniva's and raised it to his mouth. "Cheers!"

When Eniva didn't follow suit, he quickly murmured: "No, no glasses. You drink beer out of the bottle!" Then he took a fast swallow, as though to prove to her that it wasn't poisonous.

Eniva gathered all of her courage and drank as well. She was prepared for the worst. She had heard that the Terrans went so far as to fill bottles with animal milk and drink it.

The cold fluid washed across her gums and over her tongue. Then the flavor exploded on her tastebuds along with a thought in her mind: Kavla! They drank kavla! Much too cold—the temperature bordered on blasphemy—and too much carbonation, but Eniva's certainty grew as the liquid warmed in her mouth and the taste became more familiar.