Daughter of Time 1: Reader (17 page)

“And if I don’t?” I rebelliously replied.

“Then, they will end.” It signaled to other officers who came in and began to wheel my bed out of the room.

“No, wait,” I interrupted, pushing myself up and swinging my legs over the side. “I am well enough to walk.”

The officer signaled to them to release the bed, and I walked of my own accord. The trance had weakened me, and my muscles had not been used for weeks while I was in the deep coma. But I had not been ill or injured, and I found the walk, while stiff and shaky, very much within my powers. Down several hallways and to an adjoining building filled with prison cells, I finally was stopped in front of a cell similar to the one I had been held in on the Dram warship. The force field was deactivated, and the Dram soldiers pushed me inside, reactivating the screen.

The officer stared across the barrier at me. “This health, it is good therefore to be maintained. That we being expected from directly, makes that trial is begun possible. The tomorrow supporter, the Advocate, is to be allotted. That it cooperates to investigation, is best your, with of everything where you are required is made clear.”

Yes, best that I make
everything
clear to them, I’m sure. With that hardly veiled threat, it turned and hustled out of the corridor, leaving me to my thoughts and the silence of the Dram prison ward. I shook my head, wondering what this trial would be like, and what an Advocate could be in this system of justice with the Dram.

I was not left alone for long. Within a few hours, a group of four or five Dram that I now easily identified as members of the Technologists—as I liked to think of them—came tramping into my cell. The guards felt to me less than pleased to allow the entrance, clearly far preferring to obey the military wing in the Dram power structure, whatever it might be.

The Techies positioned themselves in a semicircle around me. Already, I had probed enough of the immediate future to anticipate their first actions, and I spoke to prevent any unpleasant scans of my brain.

“Before you pull out your scanners and fry my brain, please turn them down to the lowest setting. I am very sensitive, and can easily respond to your weakest signals.”

The Techies nervously twitched and exchanged glances. Finally, one in the middle of the semi-circle revealed itself to be the leader and spoke.

“You expect our energies well.”

I decided just to unload on them early. “I
read
your actions. I saw it in my immediate future.”

“You are so much powerful Reader?” it asked.

“I can do this and many more things.”

“You have then the open of the Orbs,” it said, even the lousy translator somehow getting across in tone the awe behind the question.

“Yes.”

“This possible with from Ancient Ones?”

“It comes from me!”

This elicited a lot of excited clicking between them.

“It should they are sharing these informations with us, that we can present to the Emperor!”

“I will not do that.”

“It should! They will suffer in the hands of Emperor if there is not! And they will be in the danger of partisans that will seek death before they attend to what is known or can made be. For them, you gestate the Heresy, that contaminating the Holy Orbs. They will not allow in it in order to they will live. Only death given with them. It should there is saving and it say to us how this thing is made!”

Decoding their longer translations was always a headache. “The
partisans
? Oh, I see. The Priests.” I didn’t care if the term was appropriate; getting tangled in the petty politics of this murderous society was the least of my worries. I had seen too much. I decided not to break the news to this thing gently.

“Let me tell you something, insect. In exactly thirty seconds, an angry group of your priestly friends is going to show up here. You will have a screaming fight with them, and their guards will shout at the guards here, and you will be promptly thrown out on your exo-skeletoned asses. I doubt after that you’ll get the chance to be alone with me again. So, there won’t be a chance for me to tell you anything.” I leaned forward, so angry I nearly spit in his eyestalks. “But even if there were, I wouldn’t tell you a thing, you murderous piece of Dram vermin. You have enslaved my species. It is because of you that my parents were gunned down in cold blood and thrown into the sea. Because of your power-hungry rule, the galaxy is in bondage. I’ve watched Dram soldiers murder the innocent and brave. I will die before giving you the key to more power than you already have. And you might as well calm down. Here are your priest friends.”

The anger radiating from the group was so great, I feared that they might harm me. But I had vision they did not, and as I spoke my last sentence, the priestly delegation stormed into the cell area, and the shouting (or clicking) match began. Soon, the guards forcibly removed the Techies to great waves of gloating from the Priests. They exchanged angry clicks all the way down the hallway until they were out of earshot. Finally, for the night, I was offered some peace.

But peace would not come. I began to shift through the visions of the future that had nearly consumed me, and that, at a moment’s notice, if I did not hold them back, could flood over me again, blocking out consciousness. To stay within the Now, I had to exert enormous control, letting only small streams of information through, holding back the flood with willpower like a dam. Slowly, I was mapping out the near future, and more and more, what lay beyond. This conscious sifting through the events to come was controlled, logical, progressive, and exhausting.

The parade of visions loomed in my consciousness, so many to consider, too many to count, but I was beginning to separate the meaningless, the inconsequential, from those that were important to my life and to the lives of those I might one day affect. Imagine being blind, and then granted sight, opening your eyes at the top of a high peak, staring down over lower peaks, valleys, rivers, cities with bustling people and, in the distance, the glint of a great sea. Then imagine that you had never processed visual information, so that even the details of a falling leaf or the drops from melting snow could grab your mind’s attention for hours if you were not careful to focus. Finally, mix in the fact that, down there below you, people you care for were in danger, and you had to find out where and how. This was something like my problem – so much vision, so little experience, and nearly no time.

Inspiration was found only in the world of dreams. Finally, completely drained, I would find sleep overtaking me, and in dreams I would make imaginative leaps to future events of more significance. And dominating everything, over and over again the next few weeks, was my vision of the melting Earth. It hung in my psyche like some bomb waiting to explode.
What was its meaning?
To know, I could not rely on the imagery of dreams. I would have to find my way to that point in the future consciously, and that would likely require a great effort to forge ahead, skipping careful deliberation, risking the dam breaking over me again.

The time was coming, I knew, when I would have to take this risk. But not tonight! I would have to face a lot tomorrow, and I had to face it sane and controlled. The dream would come.

Yes, I remembered, very soon, it would come.

26

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
—George Bernard Shaw

A day lasts thirty-six hours on the Dram home world, which throws the human biological clock pretty out of whack. We can reset at different start points on a twenty-four-hour clock, but we don’t do very well when the duration moves far beyond twenty-four hours in either direction. Here you remain in a constant state of surreal suspension, your body never able to adjust. Never completely awake, never restful in sleep.

The star in this system is a hideous red. Not the blending and warm red before nightfall of a sunset on Earth, but a constant, powerful red that bled into everything, washed out all other colors of human perception, even in my reconstructed memories of color. A giant star, already having burned through its store of hydrogen, ballooned up upon fusing the heavier helium. The Dram had evolved fairly rapidly from simple organisms that had made little headway in the cold, pre-red giant phase of this solar system. With the expansion of the star, their more distant planet had warmed dramatically, becoming a hothouse jungle for many hundreds of millions of years, and then, slowly, a desert world. The Dram were tough, harsh and unforgiving like the desert, capable of flowering at times, but all too often bringing death to those they encountered.

When the door opened the next morning, it was hard for me to know how long it had truly been since I lay down. In many ways, it didn’t matter. I hadn’t slept—like some feverish convalescent, I had bobbed up and down the entire night on an ocean of visions. The hard reality of my prison was a bracing contrast.

In walked a small guard of Dram, few in numbers, armored and towering insectoidal forms. I loathed them. Behind them entered a Xix with its absurd elegance. A captain of the guard clicked to the Xix, and its troop strode menacingly out of the room. The Xix paused a moment as the shield was reactivated, then bowed to me politely and seated itself on the ground across from my bed shelf.

I had slowly detached from the vision processing as the guards entered and raised my head slightly as the Xixian creature had entered. Now I pulled myself up and sat on the bed shelf with my feet on the floor, half in a trance still, waiting patiently for the Xix to speak.

“Greetings, Ambra Dawn! I am Waythrel of Xix, your Advocate for the Tribunal.”

My
Advocate
. Well, this was exciting and unexpected. A Xix! “I am very honored and pleased to find that you are here on my behalf, Waythrel,” I began formally, yet brimming with joy. “I feared one of these hideous bugs would be charged with the half-hearted attempt at defending me.”

“The Dram often use Xix in official roles. We are masters of their language and laws, and are constantly updated with new tools from Xix itself. We are granted many privileges for our loyal and useful service. Your tone with the Dram shows that you are reckless and do not fully understand your hosts.”

It’s warning me. These Xix, always teaching!
My mind raced, remembering the riddle games I played with Thel. “Updated from Xix” – it knows about me like Thel said! “Privileges for loyalty” – its position as my Advocate will be compromised if becomes clear to the Dram that the Xix are in a conspiracy to help me. “Reckless and not understanding”….what did it matter what I said? Unless here confidentiality meant nothing. Yes, that was it. The Dram were listening to everything! We had to be very careful.

“My teacher was Thel of Xix before my journey here,” I began, hoping to convey that I was still a student and would do my best to learn. “I am ignorant of many things. Please be patient with me.”

Waythrel removed strange devices from pockets in its robe. As these were activated, several opened to project visual information in discrete planes in the room, as if invisible screens had been lowered from the ceiling. Others opened like semicircular keyboards, one for each upper arm, with hundreds of keys for their many digits, and Waythrel began to type at what seemed like the speed of light.

“Good, then we may begin. You have much to learn before the Tribunal, and now only two Dramian days, or four of your Earth days, to prepare. Your very life is at stake, Ambra. I hope everything I have learned of you is true, because you will need all of your talents before the Tribunal.”

Was it saying that I would need to forecast? As a Xix, it must know that I could not see myself clearly in any future.

“Not for points of law and theology – I will handle those myself, as much as that is allowed. But for your own questioning, you will need to understand the context in which you are being examined, Ambra. I will need to communicate this and much more with you, and you will need to understand me very thoroughly.” It paused. “Sometimes, I think that these translators we make, however powerful, are almost useless. If only there were more direct ways to communicate these difficult things without the errors of language conversion.”

Telepathy
. It was telling me to use telepathy! Of course! How else to talk openly about important yet dangerous topics when the Dram were listening in? Somehow Thel had communicated this power to Xix. And somehow, I had to make this work. I had now read minds and feelings on several occasions, but had never tried to read details or send information. Could that be done? Or would I have to speak in this coded way Waythrel did? Could I do that without revealing to the Dram what I was doing? I doubted
that
very much.

“Yes, Waythrel, I think I understand what you mean. I am only an Earth creature, please, put these concepts to me simply, strongly, focusing on the key elements so that I might understand.” If this was going to work, Waythrel would have to concentrate on the ideas intensely, and not in a complicated Xixian way, so that hopefully I could grasp them. I closed my eyes and focused inwardly again, breathing deeply. Slowly, sensing the glow of its awareness in front of me, I reached out to the mind of my Advocate.