The Nemisin Star (58 page)

Dalrish
sighed. “Xen never saw it that way.”

“Xen is not
unique in that, my friend. We hope Valaris will be.”

“Yes, and it
is worthy. Do you know anything of what I can do here?”

“I have not a
clue, but I trust in prophecies and Lowen’s vision was specific.
She knows not how you can help, but is adamant her vision did not
pander to her desire to see you again.”

Dalrish shook
his head, bemused. “My daughter, the seer.”

“Lowen is
extraordinarily gifted; she astonishes me,” Quilla remarked. “Was
her mother gifted also?”

Dall Mossen’s
expression closed. “I do not wish to speak of her.”

“Forgive
me.”

The Xenian’s
shoulders lifted and fell. “I ask your apology instead. Yes, her
mother was gifted, but everything she was, was brutally subjugated,
until she was a shadow of herself.” Dalrish stared at Quilla. “My
father did that and he nearly did it to our daughter. He has paid,
dearly.”

He lifted his
gaze to the valley. He would tell nobody, especially not Lowen, not
even Matt who would understand better than most, what he did to
Dall Reni, his father, the murdering Peacekeeper of Xen III.

“It is not
easy when a father is the enemy.”

“Did Torrullin
get along with his?”

“Taranis?
Those two were ever at loggerheads and then they were the best of
friends. They had their problems, to be sure, but there could not
have been a greater love between a father and a son.” Unless one
counted the love Torrullin bore Tristamil.

“He is a lucky
man.”

“No, he makes
his own fate.”

“As have I,”
Dalrish muttered.

Quilla shook
his head. This Dall Mossen was too like Torrullin; thank the gods
he was a mortal. This man had blood on his hands and conscience
and, like the Enchanter, he would not regret it, but he would
always live with it.

“Perhaps here
you can find acceptance,” Quilla remarked, and Dalrish stared at
him. “I am well accustomed to complicated men with dark pasts,
Xenian, and I know for a fact that the sun on your back will go a
long way to ease the dark of life. Perhaps, one day, you could
allow me to chase the monsters away.” He did not await a response,
simply steamrolled on. “However, right now we need concern
ourselves with yon valley.”

The stare had
altered into a faraway gaze and returned to the land. “Yes.”
Dalrish was saying yes to all of it, not merely the task on
hand.

The man had
not yet reached the point where redemption would eternally escape
him. Quilla wondered if Torrullin had. He cleared the thought away.
“Lowen saw you as integral to the restoration. You know something
valuable.”

Blue eyes
stared unseeingly over the vistas far and near as Dall Mossen
delved back into a previous way of life.

“The tale of
the domes is one of corruption and greed, from before their
inception. You know the history; Xen became a world polluted by
over-exploitation of natural resources, over-production of
unnecessary goods, and an ozone break that could not be mended, for
we woke to the disasters - manifold - too late. Then there was
warfare. Nation fighting nation and it was about money and power,
not the so-called ideals touted by our illustrious fathers. The
weaponry used would make the Darak Or seem an angel, Quilla, and
among those weapons were the anti-matter devices you call nuclear.
We set a fair few of those beasts off. It’s the main reason we
cannot go outside. The Immortal Guardians came to our aid and
erected the domes. It was achieved in the space of two lunar
cycles, a hurried harried job, but essential, for people died by
the billion … and still wars raged.”

“How many
domes?” Quilla interrupted with interest.

“Two hundred
in the first building. There are now over two thousand, and the
most recent ones are truly massive. The Guardians, despite the
pressures of time, worked a miracle, and trained others to take
over the work once the initial rescue was achieved. That was
approximately nine hundred years ago.”

“Why was the
Lady not called?”

“The legendary
Lady of Life? What could she do, if she even exists? We bombed each
other by the hour. Anything she achieved in the one hour would have
been undone in the next.”

“Taranis
realised that. Yes, Dalrish, the same Taranis. And, by the way, the
Lady is real - our Saska is the current Lady of Life.”

“That is why
Torrullin spoke of Saska and me working together.”

“Precisely.”

“Real?”

“Absolutely,
friend. With mine own eyes have I seen her bring a man back from
the dead.”

“God Almighty
- and Dall Reni thought he had power, the idiot.”

Quilla
inclined his head and Dalrish grew intent.

“I tell you
now, Quilla, that the Lady wasn’t necessary for Xen to recover, and
the domes were not required. We had the means to nullify the
effects of anti-matter, including radiation, a process that would
have restored sufficient equilibrium to the planet for us to
commence true recovery and reclamation. But it meant the warmongers
in charge had to relinquish their power bases; it meant permanent
ceasefire.”

“Once folk
dying on the ground tasted peace and smelled fresh air again, they
would refuse to take up arms,” observed Quilla.

“The crux,
yes. Ceasefire would have become absolute choice and no one would
hark to the aggressors. Greed won the day, and the scientists
celebrating their unique and life-changing discoveries were
silenced. I need not paint a picture.”

“You found
those discoveries?”

“I was a
scientist before I became what I am, and I lived a life of luxury
in the most affluent dome. I had time on my hands once I completed
my studies and was restless, dissatisfied, and as First Son and
scientist had access to the other domes and used it. My rich boy
altruism quickly gave way to a fervent desire to make it better.
Better, at the time meaning more efficient programming of the domes
mechanisms.

“In dome
hopping I found an old woman in one of the smaller habitats and
when she heard I was a scientist, she told me she harboured a
profound secret, one passed generation to generation. She was the
spokesperson for that dome’s health and she sounded me out well
before she said anything. I liked her, but thought she was batty,
and to her I became a surrogate son.’

He drew
breath. “She sounded even crazier when she began talking of
conspiracies and murders to protect certain scientific material.
Murder over science? Insane, I judged, and yet it nagged, drove
me
crazy, and later I went to see her, prepared to be
open-minded. She gave me a computer disc, of a type we no longer
used. It went out of vogue eight hundred years back and for good
reason, as I saw later. Nobody could access residual
information.”

Dalrish smiled
at Quilla’s inquisitive expression. Quilla was a storyteller and
was agog.

“It was
against Peacekeeper law to possess old discs, but my father was the
Peacekeeper - what could be simpler? Big mistake, but I was prudent
enough to couch my request in terms he could accept. I knew my life
would be worthless if I stated the real reason. Reni was
Peacekeeper before he was a father, and ever looked after number
one before the folk in his care. I needed access to the original
dome computers, I said, to iron out present day difficulties. He
said they no longer existed and when I insisted he grew
suspicious.

“I flew into a
tirade of note, such as only a young man can sustain, and told him
in no uncertain terms that the integrity of the domes was at stake.
To keep it short, after many confrontations he eventually acceded -
others had admitted there were problems of integrity - and a
computer was brought to me. Always tell enough truth in a lie, hmm?
I was placed under guard and allowed access only with my nursemaids
present. There it was, suspicion, a computer that shouldn’t exist,
guards … I began to believe the old woman’s story.”

“What did you
do?”

Dalrish
grinned. “I bored the idiots out of their skulls! They grew tired
of watching scientific jargon - they weren’t fools and neither was
my father, for they knew their science - but it was old stuff …
I
was bored. Finally they decided to trust me and began
bringing in their own work, and while they haggled and discussed in
their fields of expertise I was able to slip the disc in.

“It was
mind-boggling. I devised a way to copy the information onto a new
chip. To cut it short again, I did find enough inconsistencies
between the old and new methods of running the domes to satisfy my
father, the first praise I ever received from him, and then only
because my colleagues were impressed. More importantly, I could
then study the data in the privacy of my chambers. The old disc I
was forced to destroy.”

“It was
workable?”

“It was more
than workable; it had been tested successfully before the domes
were erected. If it was implemented even as late as after the final
strike that saw Xen irradiated, our world could have recovered.
Brilliant minds were dead, the world was poison, and everything was
swept under the proverbial rug. The data went underground, and then
the computers were changed.”

Dalrish paused
to shake his head. “We no longer fight with weapons of mass
destruction, but we fight every day for supremacy; one dome outwits
another, corruption, murder - the wars continue.”

“Can it be
implemented now?”

“If enough
come together to do so. Xen is in extreme distress and has been for
a long time; it would take more than a single mind to make a
difference and it would take support, such as survival suits, fast
transport, food, water, the right to exit and enter,
decontamination facilities, and volunteers to brave the outside
until the levels attain acceptable parameters.”

“You tried.”
Quilla offered it as a statement.

“I did,
quietly. I sounded out a few like minds, but rumours reached my
illustrious father. They were killed, those I spoke to, and Matt’s
father sent me into the dome known as Hell - to spy. He did it to
prevent my father doing - who knows? Would he have killed me also?
As it was, the information I sent back was of paramount importance
to the Peacekeeper and thus I lived. I could return home after a
time, a back and forth of spying and lying low, and that was when I
fell for my father’s wife, Lowen’s mother.”

Dalrish
cleared his throat and moved on. “He alluded to what I discovered
once, telling me some knowledge couldn’t bear the light of day and
that a keeper of such knowledge was suspect, no better than a
traitor. I think, in the end, my relationship with his wife was as
much revenge as it was an excuse to get rid of me. The man never
knew the meaning of love.”

Dall Reni
is dead,
Quilla thought,
by this man’s hand.
“You left
it there?”

“I had to
settle for a basement experiment, but I wasn’t about to let go. I
built a tank, put in the necessary simulations of conditions
outside: sterile sand, petrified plants, poisoned air, and so
forth. Quilla, you will be surprised how easy it is to get hold of
radioactive material on Xen. I was thorough in setting up; I needed
accurate results. And it worked.

“The plants
didn’t suddenly come to life, but the radiation dropped to within
acceptable levels and when I tested the sand after, it was ready to
receive water and restart the cycle of growth. I put in seeds, gave
water, and they sprouted normally. Lord, it was an awesome sight! I
still feel the wonder every time I think about it …” His face
twisted. “Alas, that is as far as I was able to go.”

Quilla nodded
and leaned on the wall. “Soon you will have this to experiment
with.”

Silence.

“Something
wrong?”

“I am an
outlaw now, Quilla, and Xen could send a unit to collect me. Know
that from the outset, for I may be more trouble than I am
worth.”

“The skies are
closed to offworlders as a safety precaution. By the time they are
opened you will either have completed your task here or matters
will have changed on Xen. I say we cross that bridge when we get to
it …
if
we even get to it.”

“You would
offer me sanctuary?”

“Yes.”

“Your people
retrieved me just in time.”

Quilla
grinned. “I heard there was a bit of a scuffle and, even so, you
did not come willingly.”

“When someone
mentioned Lowen I gave up the fight. I am afraid your Valleur
friends were forced to leave a few peacekeepers … hurt.”

“As I said,
the bridge is not in sight.”

Dalrish gave a
delighted laugh and then was serious. “There is another problem I
foresee here.”

“Oh?”

“As I
understand it, briefly explained by Vannis, there will be no
radiation after the event, which, by the way, I don’t understand.
What causes nuclear impact without radiation? What weapon does
Valaris harbour?”

“The Valleur
Throne. An unholy weapon, if used as one.”

Dalrish’s
eyebrows shot up, but he did not ask the birdman to elaborate. “I
am not sure whether the formula will work under these
conditions.”

“Everything
else will be the same.”

“I have to
simulate fission, with a few subtle changes, and to do so I require
carnotite. That is …”

“It is the ore
uranium is extracted from … ah, I see. Your process reverses
radiation poisoning and if there is no radiation … and Valaris has
no ready stocks of carnotite. We cannot poison the air first,
Dalrish.”

“Of course
not.” The man held a finger up. “It can be adapted, I think.”

“I hear
another
but
.”

“Perhaps not
carnotite … something else …”

Quilla
intoned, “I want you to tell me in excruciating detail what you
know, even the most obvious scientific snippet. I have been around
a long, long time, and while I cannot claim science as my forte, I
have learned a thing or two and much is stored in this brain of
mine. I am certain, with our minds working together, we shall find
the answers.”