Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5 (78 page)

But, even so, the 50th generation were unwilling to lose their privileges. When the impassionate metallic voice asked for a vote on the motion the result was, to Grace’s great disappointment, very clear. “Denied.”

Even Mandalon seemed surprised that the motion had not been passed, but he rallied quickly, and managed to propose the next motion to be discussed and voted upon.

Six woke up again. “Anything important?”

“Yes,” hissed Diva. “They are not going to withdraw genetic manipulation!”

“Never thought they would.” He stretched. “I’m hungry. Is this nearly over yet?”

“I shall still be the only Sellite not to be genetically modified,” said Grace sadly.

“The whole lot of them will disappear. I give them a couple of hundred years. The Sellite race is inbred, anyway.”

Grace found her hackles rising, and she was about to hotly deny this, when she realized that it was probably true. “But if they can marry foreigners?”

He shrugged. “Come on, Grace! How many of them are going to marry foreigners if they are still genetically manipulated? It is a false victory. Never going to happen. No, Sell will be lightly progressive while Mandalon 50 is in power, and then will revert to its old ways.”

“That is horrid!” But his words had a nasty ring of truth.

“You know I am right, Grace. Just remember what sort of characters have come out of the great Sellite gene manipulation pool! Xenon, Atheron, Gorgamon, Volgorion, Zorion, Amanita ... and the list doesn’t stop there.”

Grace looked over at Mandalon, who had sat back down in the meantime. He looked slightly queasy. She wondered if he was in agreement with Six. Then she saw how pale the young leader had gone, and realized that he did. She felt very sorry for him. It was going to be a long, long wait until his 51st generation could take over from him.

Grace felt a wave of exhilaration at that moment, and realized how lucky she was. She had escaped the domination of her mind by genetic engineering, and now she was free. Free of them all: Xenon, Atheron, Amanita, and all the other Sellites with their petty rules and conditions. She grabbed Ledin’s hand, and squeezed it so tight that he looked surprised.

“Can we go to Xiantha when we get back from Enara?” she whispered fiercely. “I don’t want to live on Valhai any longer. I want to live by the Emerald Lake, with you.”

Ledin grinned. “You won’t find any argument from me. In any case – I was going to tell you, but there simply hasn’t been time. Arcan has come up with the idea that the planets should set up diplomatic relations, and I have been offered the position of New Kwaidian Ambassador to whichever of the planets I choose. I am not quite sure whether it would be a good idea or not. I was waiting to see what you thought, and I want to mull it over for a while. I thought you might choose Valhai – after all, this is where Arcan is.”

She shook her head so definitely that several people nearby turned to stare at her. “Let’s make our home on Xiantha,” she said in an undertone. “I can come over to Valhai to help Arcan with the foundation for a few days each week, but Aracely is doing a great job, and he doesn’t need me to be here full time.” They found themselves smiling at each other. Grace hadn’t thought it possible to feel so happy. Her mind went back to the uncertain girl she used to be; the realization of everything that had happened since made her dizzy.

Then she turned her attention back to the events going on in the Valhai Voting Dome. The next vote passed the motion to convert the 256th house to Exterior relations, which made her pleased for her niece and nephew. Xenon 50 would have the chance to resurrect the fallen house, and create something better for his children. It was a relief to know that her actions had not completely ended a house with over a thousand years of history.

It was the last motion which most surprised all of them. As the motion was read, Diva prodded Six so fiercely in the back that he gave a jump and a sort of half-snort, which made them laugh. He glared around at her, his eyes demanding to know why she had disturbed his sleep. She pointed to the central plinth, where Mandalon was still explaining the last motion.

“... Because of this, the head of Sell needs an independent body of guards. The proposal is that the Namuri tribe of Coriolis become the bodyguards of the leader of Sell. Their characteristics make them incomparable for the position, and – as has been proved only recently – their oath of allegiance requires them to die for their emptors.” There was a long pause, and Mandalon looked in Tallen’s direction, slightly inclining his head in recognition of Petra’s sacrifice. The Namuri, whose eyes had widened at the proposal, gave a slight nod himself, but his face didn’t smile. He was uncomfortable in the company of so many of what he regarded as the enemy.

He realized that Mandalon must have spoken to the leader of the clan after the funeral, and that the motion would be important for the Namuri clan if it were passed. But the whole thing felt as if it were happening to somebody else. From the black despair and emptiness in his heart, it was hard to be pleased. All he could think of was the crushed and lifeless body of his sister.

“Voting will now commence,” said a metallic voice. “50th generation Sellites, please cast your votes on my mark. First point: Appointing the Namuri clan from Coriolis as bodyguards to the leader of the 1st house. Mark!” There was a slight pause, and then, “Passed.”

Even Six was pleased to hear that. It might enable the Namuri to progress from their desperately hard lives living on the marshes near Mesteta, although he suspected they would rather stay where they were than live in the opulence of Sell. He examined Tallen out of the corner of his eye. The boy was standing as straight as a die, but he didn’t look particularly happy at the votation. He looked as if he despised the congregated Sellites, and would have liked to set a match to the whole lot of them. Six sympathized. Even after all this time, and even when the Sellites present were young, he still couldn’t forget the years he had passed as a donor apprentice. And now, now that they had refused to pass the one reform which would enable them to move forwards, he felt as if the loose ties he still had with the planet had been cut. He had a feeling that he wouldn’t be spending much more of his time here. He had been approached to set up the first university on Xiantha. He would like to think that some of their children would be able to study there. It was time to move on.

Diva was also looking sideways at Tallen. On the spot, she made up her mind to travel to see the Namuri tribe next time she went to Coriolis. She couldn’t get the picture of that ancient old woman out of her mind. She could still see her, doing homage to the body of the girl in the Namuri way, by forcing her gnarled and stiff fingers to support the corpse’s weight. She had been impressed by the simple significance of the ceremony, and had realized that she would, in fact, much rather have been born to the Namuri than to the meritocrats. She wanted to find out more about them; she wanted to sit down and talk to that old woman. She felt she would come to some sort of closure if she did.

Mandalon 50 concluded the session with the pomp and ceremony due to such a solemn event, and then sighed. He had hoped to achieve more. They had only voted down five of his many proposals, but some of those five had been very dear to his own heart. He wondered if the Namuri girl had died in vain. Her life had been exacted so that these new laws might go through. It now seemed that there had not been enough of them.

As he thought of her, he seemed to feel a sudden shaft of vivid blue light traverse the dome. He blinked, but he could still see it. It was the exact colour of the namura stones. Mandalon looked quickly in Tallen’s direction, and saw that the Namuri had stiffened to attention, and was staring in exactly the place where Mandalon could see the ray.

Both the Namuri and the Sellite took one involuntary step forwards, to where the shaft of brilliant blue kissed the magmite floor of the dome. They stood silently for a moment, as the light dimpled and then faded. As it vanished again, it momentarily took with it Tallen’s misery, and all of Mandalon’s lack of hope lifted. They stared at each other, and then around at the watching crowd. Nobody else had moved. They both stepped back again.

Mandalon cleared his throat. “There is just one more thing. As a codicil to the votation on genetic manipulation, I would like to propose a further motion that such manipulation should, over the next thousand years, be of a voluntary nature, and that in the future nobody should be questioned as to whether they have or have not been genetically modified.”

There was some debate as to the validity of an additional votation at this late time, but it was generally agreed that addenda to proposals must be accepted. By the time this had been approved, a further half hour had passed, and all of the participants were becoming very hungry.

The metallic voice cut in. “Voting will now commence, 50th generation Sellites, please cast your votes on my mark. First point: Making genetic manipulation voluntary and confidential. Mark!” There was a slight pause, and then, “Passed.”

Mandalon’s face cleared. It was not what he had wanted for his planet, but it did allow him some room to manoeuvre. He smiled at Tallen, who was still standing in front of him, and lifted his hands in the binary system salute.

“I heard your sister’s voice,” he said, as their fingers touched.

Tallen nodded slowly. “So did I. She told me to move forwards, to follow the stone. She said I should forget her.” Then his eyes clouded over. “But I never shall!”

Mandalon looked sadly at the boy in front of him. “Will you be able to forgive me? She died for me.”

Tallen was suddenly aware of the tremendous pain that the Sellite leader in front of him was feeling because of Petra’s sacrifice. The Namuri eyes looked inwards, and his expression became more thoughtful.

“She died for you. She made you special. I will never forget that, and neither should you. You are both joined by the bond of the blue stone.”

Mandalon closed his eyes. “It will be hard to remember. She took the stone with her.”

Tallen smiled, and shook his head. “No, she didn’t. She kissed the stone when she gave it to you, didn’t she?”

Mandalon’s eyes widened. “She did. How did you know?”

“Because she was bringing you into its circle. She brought you inside the power of the namura stone. You will always feel it, at crucial moments in your life.”

Mandalon sensed his heart lift. “I felt it just now.”

“Yes. I saw the shaft of blue light. The stone helped you to change a bad decision.”

“It did.” Mandalon bent his head, amazed.

“It always will.” Tallen bowed to the Sellite leader. “She will never abandon you now. You are fortunate.” His throat worked for a few moments, and then he stepped away. “But I shall never see her again. I must leave her behind.”

“Will you not be one of the Namuri bodyguards, here?”

Tallen shook his head firmly. “I am not sure, yet, but I believe she was telling me to go on, to follow the Valhais. I think my duty is inextricably linked to their future, somehow. I can’t see it clearly yet, but I know that my place is not here.”

The Namuri stepped back, leaving Mandalon 50 facing the row upon row of 50th generation Sellites, all of whom had risen to their feet, and were applauding him.

Mandalon smiled back at them, aware that he now had something to work with, that he now had a chance to put in motion the changes his people would need if they were to survive the next millennium. He waved to them, and relaxed. The laws were passed, and he would have Namuri guards at his side. He could feel safe, at last.

TWO DAYS AFTER the Second Valhai Votation they were ready to take the boxes over to the planet which was to be the new home of the Kintaran animas. And for once Arcan was going to be able to travel directly onto the surface of a planet; the morphics had confirmed that there was neither carbon nanographite nor ortholiquid anywhere within the system. The orthogel entity felt an unusual surge in energy as he prepared the transport; finally he would be physically present on the surface of an alien world.

“Stop lighting up like that, Arcan,” said Six, who was the only one of them under the impression he could tell the orthogel entity off. “All that flashing about is hurting my eyes.”

“They seem very poor eyes if a little light hurts them,” pointed out the orthogel entity, who was still leaking light all over, and so looked as if he were backed by an immense, radiant aura. “I thought eyes were there to capture light, not to shrink from it. They don’t seem to work very well. Or are yours sub-standard?”

“Sub-standard yourself, you shining lump of jelly!” Six was offended. “You haven’t even got any eyes! You’re a fine one to talk.”

“I capture all electromagnetic radiation perfectly well without them. And I don’t need those silly shutter things you have which require so much effort all the time.”

“They are called eyelids!” Six told him.

“What is the point of them?”

“They ...” Six stopped. What
was
the point of eyelids? Now he came to think about it, he wasn’t too sure. “They ... err ... they protect the eyes from too much sunlight and help to keep them moist.”

Arcan shimmered. “Then, if these shutters that you have are so useful, why are you complaining about the light I am giving out? They can’t be very efficient.”

“They work perfectly well!”

“Then why do you need to shade your face with your hand like that?”

Six looked at the offending hand as if he were meeting it for the first time. “This?” He dropped it hastily to his side. “—That’s not the point. In any case, we need eyelids when we sleep. We have to close our eyes then.”

“You have to protect them from the darkness, as well as the light? They must be very fragile.”

“Of course we don’t have to protect them from the darkness. It’s just that we ... well, hang it all, how should I know? You just don’t sleep with your eyes open, now do you?”

“I certainly don’t, but then, I don’t need to sleep and I don’t have eyes. I am a quantum entity.” Arcan puffed out slightly.

“Well, bully for you. Why don’t you just shimmy off somewhere and quantamize something, then?”

A rainbow of colours spiraled through the orthogel entity in a complacent sort of way.

“It must be hard for you transients to manage with only mechanical bodies.”

“We are very useful!” Six glared at him.

Arcan seemed to find this funny. He flashed again, causing the Kwaidian to wince.

“I said, don’t DO that!”

“You have traveled the wrong way down the selection road,” said the visitor, who had just joined them, together with the trimorph twins. “You’re at an evolutionary standstill.”

Six took a menacing stride towards the bimorph, who dematerialized, and then appeared again, just in front of his nose.

“Can’t even catch a morphic?” The small globe crowed, puffing out in victory.

Six snatched at the bimorph in the air, but the visitor simply blinked out of existence for a second, so that he was forced to remove an empty hand.

“Hah!” said the visitor, tumbling over himself in amusement. “Those eagle eyes of yours can’t spot where I am?
What
a surprise! Perhaps you should open those shutters of yours wider.”

Six narrowed the said shutters. “At least I am flesh and blood, not just a pickled neuron!”

“Pickled? Pickled? Who are you call—”

Diva sighed. “
Will
the two of you stop squabbling about nothing?”

Six looked at her, and then at the visitor. They both seemed equally taken-aback.

“We were just having a conversation,” Six sounded aggrieved.

The visitor spun. “We were merely discussing evolution – or the lack of it, in some cases.”

Six’s face suddenly took on the expression which reminded Diva of a Cesan mule. “Yes, well, seeing you originally came from a race that has membranes instead of hands, you are hardly—”

“Membranes are much stronger, and
much
more adaptable than hands.”

“No wonder your lot don’t have any ears. Stops them having to listen to a load of rubb—” At that point Six broke off, having become aware that his wife was treating him to an extremely eloquent stare. He looked indignant. “—What? It’s true!”

Diva shook her head and raised her own eyes heavenwards. “I think we should be leaving. Arcan, are we going without the New Independence, then?”

Arcan paused to consider. “No. I think we might need the ship; I will put us in orbit around the planet first. It might be advantageous to let the computer do a preliminary analysis before we take the animas down to their possible new home. Just in case the morphics have missed something.”

“Which they probably have,” agreed Six.

The morphics all began to spin angrily.

“—Judging from previous experience,” added Six. “Such as when the visitor inadvertently dropped us inside a gas giant.
If
you remember.” He sat back, looking very pleased with himself.

“At least I don’t have a huge body that eats up enormous amounts of fuel to get anywhere at all!” snapped the bimorph. “Any self-respecting organism would have developed quantum travel, don’t you think?”

Six stopped. “No, I don’t,” he said sharply, and then turned to get some support from the others. “We don’t need quantum travel. We have legs to get us around!”

“Yours look pretty inefficient things, if you ask me.”

“Well, we didn’t! And I have great legs! Diva, tell him I’m right!”

But Diva was laughing so much she couldn’t catch her breath. The sight of Six ardently defending his legs had been too much for her. Even Tallen was grinning from ear to ear.

“What’s the matter with you lot?” Six looked around at them all with a fierce expression. “What are you all giggling at?”

Ledin moved forwards to take him by the arm. “Take no notice, First Six. They are just jealous. The morphics would love to have legs like ours.”

This caused Diva to make a muttered comment about dwarves which led to much hilarity, and such a spate of chatter between Arcan and the three morphics that Six and Ledin had time to make their escape.

Diva shook her head, and grinned. “Honestly!”

THE NEW INDEPENDENCE dropped into orbit around the unfamiliar planet, and they all crushed together in front of the rexelene visor for a first glimpse of the planet’s surface.

“Look!” Tallen pointed a finger down at the terrain below them. “What in Sacras is that?”

They stared. They could see the curve of the planet’s horizon beneath them against a night sky full of stars, rimmed by the circle of blue, which was the haze of its atmosphere. The terrain below seemed to be sandy, but interspersed with darker brown mountains, with patches of white.

Six wrinkled his brow. “That can’t be snow, surely? The temperature is much too warm for that.”

Diva examined the console. “Just about ten miles to the south of our orbit there seems to be an area of intense hydrothermal activity. There are surface geysers of warm and hot water, running into connected pools, which cascade down in terraces towards the sea. And the white you are seeing is a result of deposits of carbonates of calcium, not snow.”

“What about flora and fauna? What indigenous lifeforms are there?”

Diva bent down to the console. “Birds, small reptiles, and a species of bat which lives in the instellite caves the mountain areas are dotted with.” She searched the screen in front of her. “There don’t seem to be many more mammals. They are all pretty small. But the air is oxygenized, and there are many trees growing out of the sand and the rock.”

“How can trees grow out of rock?” asked Bennel curiously. “I thought they needed soil.”

Diva examined the console again. “Not these, apparently. The readings say that there are various species which grow directly out of the rock itself.” Suddenly she gave a gasp of surprise, and then pointed. “Look! Over there! Down to the right!”

They twisted their necks. There was a huge, natural structure set into the ground, way below them. It was a crater which must have been around 20 kilometres across, and was formed by rings of concentric greenish rock, interspersed with purplish ridges. Each ring was bigger than the previous one, until the final circles melted into the surrounding mountains.

Six whistled. “What in Lumina caused that?”

Grace shook her head. “I don’t know, but it is stunning. It is as if the planet is staring at us. Look at that blue rock! It looks like an eye.”

The visitor buzzed. “No lids, apparently,” he observed in a serene voice, causing Six to look at him sharply. When Diva added her own accusing stare, he went on hurriedly. “It is only a few miles from the coast, I see. All that expanse of yellow must be beach. The sea is an incredible blue colour too, have you noticed?”

“Blue-green,” corrected Six. “Turquoise, actually.”

Diva gave him a warning glance. “It is a very beautiful place.” She checked out the console, which was now giving a summary of the data it had already gathered from the surface. “According to this, that circular thing, the one that looks like an eye, was formed by the collapse of a volcanic dome, and then by erosion down to the layers of igneous rock underneath. The green and purple hues come from a mixture of quartzite and instellite.”

“The Eye of Enara,” said Grace, quietly.

Diva gave her wide smile, showing all of her beautifully matched teeth. “
Yes!
The Eye of Enara. Perhaps it is a sign that this really is the planet of the lost animas.”

“That eye thingy would be worth going to see, once we have released the animas at the hydrothermal pools. I think we should go on down,” suggested Six, who was moving his arms unconsciously to and fro, he was so eager to set foot on this new planet.

“Watch out for Tarbolean sharks!” Ledin told him, coming up suddenly from behind and bumping into him deliberately, pushing him off balance whilst making what he clearly thought were shark-like noises.

Six turned on him eagerly, and there was a friendly tussle for a few moments.

Diva wasn’t amused. “Stop it, both of you!”

The two Kwaidians rolled their eyes, and turned sheepishly towards her. “This is another first contact,” she told them severely. “You should be taking it much more seriously.”

“Oh, first contact!” said Six, in a dismissive tone. “You know what I think about that!”

Ledin grinned. “Yeah, you were bowled over by the shark.”

They immediately fell back into a scuffle and had to be separated by a resigned Diva, who was shaking her head and wearing a pitying expression. Both Kwaidians began to chuckle at her face.

“We were just having a bit of fun,” complained Six. “No need to get shirty about it.”

She silenced him with a look, and gave a nod to Arcan. They were ready to go down to this new planet, glad that they wouldn’t have to wear mask packs.

ARCAN DEPOSITED THEM near the hydrothermal pools, and Grace couldn’t help opening her eyes wide in wonder. These pools were something else. One beneath the other, they led down the mountain, each one running into the next, until at the bottom they emptied on the wide beach, and had formed a thin river draining out into the ocean.

But it was the colour of the rock which amazed them at first sight. The rocks had been stained white by the constant action of mineralized water, and dazzled in the hot sunlight.

Grace ran up to one of the pools, and put her hand into it. “It’s hot! Really hot – like a Mesteta wine bath.”