The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances (14 page)

27

THARA WEN

It was a sad and tragic day on Earth.

At daybreak, the news rippled like a brewing storm through the corridors of the Whisper Palace, reaching the sunny visitors’ quarters of the three Theron ambassadors. First, servants and functionaries spread rumors, and then an official crier strode down the halls calling out in a loud voice heavy with grief, “The King is dead! King Ben is dead!”

Thara and her companions were already unsettled from the strange experience of Earth, awestruck by the giant Whisper Palace built of stone and glass and steel, larger even than an overarching worldtree. After living in close quarters aboard the
Caillié
generation ship, then building the forest village with prefab structures and new homes in the gigantic trees, Thara Wen had been unprepared for the vastness of Earth’s cities—the buildings, the people, the wide-open spaces far from any dense concentrations of trees. It had been dizzying.

Inside the Whisper Palace, the tiled floors were cold beneath her bare feet, hard and lifeless. She could stand in front of the stained-glass windows and feel the magnified warmth of sunlight on her green skin, but it wasn’t the same as sitting on the high canopy among the sun-dappled fronds, reading or telling stories to the worldforest mind.

On their second day after arriving, Thara and her two companions had been taken to see one of Earth’s forests. Their tourguide was proud to show them the natural wonders on Earth, although Thara found the forest lacking, the trees so small and silent without the connection of the worldforest mind she had come to expect from Theroc.

And now King Ben, the benevolent old leader who had shown such kindness to the people of Theroc, had perished in his sleep.

Malcolm Stannis, the Chairman of the Terran Hanseatic League, made a courtesy visit to the Theron guest quarters. He wore a dark and presumably stylish business suit that covered so much of him—the people on Earth wore so many clothes that they all seemed to be hiding something. Previously, Stannis had spoken little to her, and now he seemed rushed and harried, with other business to attend to.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the criers already,” Stannis said. “King Ben died peacefully in his sleep last night. The doctors found him this morning with a calm expression on his face. He did good work for Earth and for the Hansa. We’re glad you had a chance to speak with him before his passing.”

Thara nodded. “He did a great thing by reaffirming Theroc’s independence for all time. We cannot say how much we appreciate this.”

A shadow crossed the Chairman’s face, and his lips pressed together. She sensed he was suppressing more anger than grief, and she couldn’t understand why.

Ignoring her words of thanks, Stannis said in a preoccupied voice, “Again, we are saddened by this unexpected tragedy. When you return to Theroc, please bear the message that the Hansa wishes to cooperate with your colony. With our common background, we should have very close ties.”

“It will be several weeks before we arrive back home, Mr. Chairman,” Thara said. “But we will share all that we have seen and learned.”

Stannis was impatient to be about his business. He had spent all the time he intended to give them, and so after a brief, courteous farewell he hurried away into the Whisper Palace.

By noon, palace technicians and decorators had erected a formal bier surrounded by colored, prismatic panels, an enclosure where the old monarch lay in state in the middle of the Throne Hall. In repose, his long beard combed, his gray locks arranged around his face, King Ben wore deep purple robes. Large crowds were already filing into the Throne Hall of the Whisper Palace to bid farewell to their beloved monarch.

Feeling lonely and very far from the worldforest, Thara carried the potted treeling, which she had retrieved from the Whisper Palace conservatory. She took comfort in being close to even this small trace of the great trees.

She and her two companions were among the first to walk up the stone steps and pay their final respects to King Ben. She saw the old man’s peaceful, benevolent face. “For a powerful leader of so many worlds,” she said to the other two green priests, “he had a gentle heart and he did good things for us.”

When they returned to Theroc, Thara would tell the story to all of her people, but the Ildiran ship ferrying them was not due to return for several weeks, and normal signal transmissions would take decades to cross the light years to the Theron system. They had no faster way to send the message.

Leader Brovnik would learn the news when it was time. Their independence was secure. Although Thara longed to share the information, she longed even more to be back in touch with the worldforest mind, where her thoughts could drift through the wealth of information inside the interconnected branches and roots. If she had been among the trees, she could have shared everything she had experienced, could have told the other green priests all she had seen and learned on Earth. Such things could not be changed.

As she and her companions walked past the body of King Ben, Thara absently stroked the delicate fronds in the potted treeling she held in her arms. One day, this little sprig would become a towering worldtree. . . .

As her fingers touched the fronds and she concentrated deeply, thinking of the vast worldforest, she suddenly felt a jolt in her mind, the same connection she always experienced when she touched one of the great trees back on Theroc. Even though she was many light years away on an entirely different planet, the simple fact of touching this tiny treeling somehow connected her with the whole worldforest, just as if she were right there, surrounded by the gigantic trunks!

In an instant, she sensed the forest and the trees, vivid images inside her head. With her eyes closed, Thara could
smell
the scents of the underbrush, the sun-warmed canopy. She could hear numerous green priests reading poetry or singing to the trees . . . light years away, and yet so close.

And when she spoke aloud from the Throne Hall of the Whisper Palace, her words were carried through the connection among the trees, instantly emerging so that any green priest on the forest planet heard her immediately and clearly.

“King Ben is dead on Earth,” she said.

Through her internal eyes and the senses of the trees, Thara touched dozens of other priests who perked up, hearing her news as clearly as if she had spoken across a room. “But before he died, the King granted Theroc its independence forever.”

The green priests received her message and raced to tell Leader Brovnik down in the forest village. Thara was amazed to see the effect her distant but instantaneous message had. She was far away, but still connected, still part of the forest.

Leaving the somber wake, she and her companions retreated to a private, sunlit alcove at the edge of the Throne Hall. Thara could barely contain her excitement, and the others sensed it. They sat together, huddled as if in grief, resting the potted treeling on a bench in front of them. Breathless and eager to share the secret, she had them each touch the fronds.

“It’s as if the tree’s mind is in both places at once,” she said. “By touching the treeling, my thoughts were there . . . and everywhere the trees were.”

In her mind, she listened to one of the green priests talking to Norris Brovnik. “I could hear Thara Wen directly through the worldtree! Her message came instantly to me, even though she’s far away on Earth.”

Thara looked at her companions in the alcove, and their eyes shone as they understood the enormous implications of what they had just discovered.

“The gulf of space no longer has any meaning. The trees are like mental relays. No matter where we go, no matter on which planet or star system we happen to visit, we can communicate through the worldforest to other green priests, wherever they may be—as long as we have a treeling.”

She looked across the vast Throne Hall and saw Chairman Stannis take his place beside the body of the King lying in state. He hung his head and spoke to the mourning crowds in a firm, serious voice, “We are here to bid farewell to our beloved King Ben.” Through media imagers, his words were transmitted all across Earth, much the way Thara’s thoughts were dispersed among the distant worldtrees.

The more she thought about it the more she grasped the significance of what she had discovered. Such instantaneous communication might change everything in a network of human colonies across incredible distances—but only green priests could communicate with the worldforest.

“If the Hansa plans to expand their operations and travel to many planets across the Spiral Arm, they would very much want to have such an ability,” Thara said.

Yes, the Therons had their independence, but Thara wasn’t sure what that meant. “Do I dare tell the Hansa?” she asked, looking at her companions. “With something so important, can we trust Chairman Stannis?”

She decided they would keep the news private, for now.