Orick growled, “With all of mankind’s weaknesses? You say they crave honor and power? Won’t this lead to jealousies and corruption? You want to rid us of the compassionate Tharrin and put these in their place?”
“We are at war! We are at war!” Felph shouted.
Gallen was disappointed by this. Felph was just another crackpot out to create a race of supermen. It seemed that everywhere he went, someone was trying to define what mankind ought to become. Perhaps it was merely the age he lived in. With the dronon threatening the very existence of mankind, every aberlain in the galaxy was concocting some scheme to overcome the threat. As a species, mankind would have to grow or die.
“I don’t think that either my wife or I will work for you, sir,” Gallen said, finally. He turned away, began walking toward the stairs that led up out of the darkened cavern. He expected the others to follow. Orick hurried after him, and Tallea followed.
But Maggie hesitated, as if still lost in thought.
“Wait!” Felph shouted. “Where are you going? I didn’t give you permission to leave yet! You haven’t given my offer proper consideration! At least think about it!”
Maggie turned to Gallen. “Wait a minute.”
Gallen looked down the stairs at her. She gazed up at him, confusion showing in her face.
“Gallen, he’s right.”
“Right?” Gallen asked. “To be manipulating his children this way?”
“No, he’s right … to be fighting. Maybe his work won’t do any good. Maybe it will come to nothing. But at least he is trying, and if we stayed here to work with him, we would be fighting the dronon. You’re the one who always wants to fight.”
She let the words hang in the air. For weeks they had been arguing this point. Gallen was tired of running. He wanted to fight the dronon. But he couldn’t challenge them without Maggie at his side. If such a fight would risk only their own lives against the dronon, Gallen suspected that Maggie would stand beside him in such a battle, and they’d live free-or die together. But Maggie had a child in her belly. They couldn’t jeopardize the babe. So Gallen had agreed to run with her, to hide, until after the child was born.
But now she was telling him that they could make a stand here. They could fight the dronon from here. She wanted to accept Felph’s offer.
She touched her own belly, feeling the heaviness of the child growing in her. From the top of the stone stairway, Gallen looked down into the dark hole, the ancient stone Qualeewooh ruins, where Felph stood in the darkness holding a glow globe, the light faintly playing upon the gloriously beautiful faces of his children.
Maggie said softly, “I have one more question before we decide whether to accept employment. Lord Felph, why do your children all wear Guides? Why do you keep them enslaved?”
Felph stammered, “Freedom is such an important thing, a tool that is used for ill as often as good. I want them to value it, to learn to use it correctly. So I give them only as much as I am certain they can handle. In time, when I trust them, I will remove all restraints.”
Gallen considered this. Maggie abhorred the Guides. She’d lived with their restraints under Lord Karthenor.
“Freedom is such an important. thing,” she said, “that I fear even you should not be its arbiter. How can they learn to use a tool they do not hold? Give your children their freedom, and perhaps they will learn as much from its misuse as they will from its proper use.”
Her words seemed to stun Felph, for he stood gaping at her, considering her proposal. Maggie continued, “You told Gallen that he could name any price for his labor. Here is the coin I desire: I can persuade Gallen to stay and work for you on one condition. So long as we choose to remain here, you will remove the Guides from your children.”
“In time-in a hundred years or so they may be ready-” Felph stammered, “We don’t have a hundred years for them to learn!”
Maggie said. “You imagine that the dronon will be here in five hundred years, but the dronon have built keys for the world gates. They’re here in the Carina Galaxy now.”
Lord Felph, master of Ruin, gave a strangled little cry of astonishment, then dropped his glow globe so that it clattered on the stones as its light grew dim.
Chapter 6
Dooring never got much respect from Lord Felph. Ignored half the time, worked like a slave the rest. But today … today had been a nightmare-organizing a sumptuous dinner for the entire planet, one that Lord Felph promptly sabotaged, followed by a trip to chauffeur the new employees via florafeem, followed by a late night of minor surgeries to remove Felph’s children’s Guides. Afterward he’d had to clean the dining halls, and, last of all, he now stood before Gallen’s ship, the Nightswift, which only moments before had been flown to Felph’s hangars on autopilot.
It wasn’t enough to be Felph’s personal valet; Dooring had the misfortune of being the planet’s official dockmaster. As such, his obligations were simple. He had to verify that the ship didn’t carry any contraband, and that it was properly registered.
The job only took a few minutes.
Using a keycard, he verified to the ship’s Al that he was the dockmaster, then entered the ship. The Nightswift was a fast little personnel ship. The kind of thing that only the very wealthiest people could afford.
The inside was plush-plump couches, a fashionable flower arrangement on a small table, large staterooms. No one on Ruin lived in such luxury. Indeed, most folks on planet couldn’t dream of ever buying passage off-world. Dooring wondered. Gallen and Maggie were seeking jobs with old mad Felph when, if they had half the brains of a wetland mudsucker, they’d hop in their ship and fly off.
Dooring nosed around through the staterooms for a few minutes, studying the few possessions Gallen and the others had brought. He checked the cargo hold; it was nearly empty.
He went to the ship’s registry terminal and requested information on the ship’s registration and passenger logs.
He discovered that the ship was registered as a government-owned vehicle. Not a private ship at all. That was odd.
The news sent a little flutter in Dooring’s stomach. For a long moment, he wondered what to do. Gallen hadn’t identified himself as a government agent. As a Lord Protector, it was quite possible that he would be a government agent, but then he would be assigned a post.
Was he traveling undercover?
Yet he seemed to have no destination in mind, not if he were willing to stay here and work for Felph.
No, there was something curious about Gallen. Dooring had seen the fear in Maggie’s face earlier in the evening, when Rame had asked what brought them all to Ruin. She’d been terrified to the core of her soul.
She’s running from something, Dooring decided. Perhaps they were all running from something. Maybe this Gallen wasn’t even a Lord Protector, but only wore the stolen mantle of some dead man.
Dooring wondered: could the ship be stolen?
There was no ansible available on planet, but this ship had one. Dooring went to the ansible, requested a “security priority one” transmission, so that the ship’s Al would automatically delete any record of his call after it was made, then sent a broadband message across the cosmos, alerting authorities in the Milky Way that here on Ruin, a world in the Carina Galaxy, he had discovered a certain Lord Protector named Gallen O’Day flying what appeared to be a stolen spaceship. He sent the ship’s registration numbers along with the planetary coordinates, and sat back. Even at speeds much faster than light, the message would take a couple hours to reach the Milky Way.
Dooring didn’t want to wait for a reply. It was late, late, and his sweet wife Keri waited in bed.
Still, Dooring felt satisfied. If Gallen was hiding from someone, for whatever reason, Dooring had just blown the lad’s cover.