“The Corbelian sphere learned your language from the holofluxes,” the creature said, pointing at the bony ball in front of him. “We want to know who you are, and why did you hide from us?”
Again, deafening silence. The gods rotated their vats to look inquisitively at the tarjis bowed in the dirt, waiting for a response.
No one rushed to return anything more than perplexed looks. Had the gods lost their memories, asking them, “why did you hide”? What about the ordeal of Zhan’s son, Beramis?
“The Federation had left some probes in this sector one thousand two hundred and fifty of your years ago. Two of them relayed your apparition from a… one-dimensional space distortion, ten days ago. How long have you been hidden?” the god asked, trying in vain to start a dialogue.
The situation had become weird, and the gods made no effort to hide their surprise. The tarjis began to whisper, their murmurs growing like the waves of a gray ocean before a frightful storm.
“Who’s your leader?” the smaller god finally asked.
The holotransmission focused on the prophet’s platform, and the reason why they got no answer became immediately apparent. The platform was empty!
In the next instant, something unimaginable happened: all the holofluxes on the three worlds became silent. The only hologram streamed was a plasma game, which the Antyrans used, in better times, for relaxation.
“The Rigulians are here!” exclaimed Gill, bursting into laughter, feeling that a huge rock was lifted from his chest. His death penalty had just been canceled! And if the idea of doing something to revive the Sigian world looked like a childish utopian dream a few hours ago, things had radically changed. Neither the wall of fire nor the sheer immensity of space separated him from the nearest Federal world. They came to his planet, not far from his hiding place, and he only needed to contact them to finish Deko’s mission!
From what the Rigulian said, Gill understood the circumstances that made them return to Antyra 1,250 years after the meeting date with the Sigians. The Six Stars must have arrived at the meeting place, but the Sigians didn’t appear at the promised date. Kirk’an and his crew were probably trapped by their enemies inside the firewall, along with the whole Antyran world—or maybe they were already dead and buried in the sandy bank that, over centuries, became the city of Sigarion. The Federals had arrived at the coordinates and found nobody, not even the Antyran stellar system. But before going home, they took the elementary precaution of seeding the sector with spies, hoping that one day, the Sigians would come. Amazingly, their marvelous devices worked to this day and called them50 when Antyra was released from its fire prison!
Gill would have loved to see Baila’s mug when the Rigulian ships appeared from the clouds—his moment of glory had turned into a nightmare! His Greatness was now in the unenviable position of handling the contact with another civilization that had nothing to do with Antyra’s gods. And to stick the tail in his eye even further, he began the mission admirably by running away from the meeting! The whole of Antyra saw the landing and could figure out that the aliens weren’t the gods prophesized by the temples!
But most Antyrans were probably unable to understand what they saw. Their conditioning wouldn’t allow them to accept a reality other than the official one. It would deny them the conclusion that the stars in the sky hosted other worlds similar to Antyra and that the universe was much bigger than the fire sphere in which they had been locked for the last 1,250 years. With the Shindam thoroughly destroyed, no one could take advantage of the temples’ confusion and change history.
The joy of seeing the Rigulians didn’t last long, though. Gill felt anger growing inside his kyi with each unrealistic plan he had to abandon, realizing all too well it would be suicide to stumble into the middle of the tarjis on the western field. He didn’t even have a clue how to get his tail on some darned tarji robes to mingle among the pilgrims. The clothes were made only in corias and were regarded as more important than the tarjis’ own lives.
Gill had just returned from the food store, having drank two juicy fruits of razog he had pierced with his fangs, when he saw a new hologram. Well, it was about time—but to his surprise, an intriguingly familiar face was frowning at him from the holotheater’s shell.
Here we go again! he thought, startled by the apparition. Although at first Gill refused to accept the resemblance, he had no choice but to conclude that what he was seeing in the holotheater was indeed his sorry mug, grinning foolishly while his hands rubbed his tail with obscene gestures in Alala’s relaxation dome!
“Gillabrian, the gods want to see you,” a voice could be heard in the background. “Surrender at the nearest temple, and we won’t hurt you!”
Now it was his turn to try the bitter taste of despair, the feeling of helplessness against a much stronger and more creative enemy than he could have imagined. The space-time fabric was crumbling around him like a putrid shroud fastened with shoddy buttons over a dolmec-infested belly. Baila had abandoned all subtleties, knowing all too well that if Gill managed to reach the visitors, everything ended. How important the Sigian cargo had to be if the prophet was willing to abandon the meeting with another civilization just to “direct” his humiliating display on holofluxes and block his chances of contacting the visitors!
“Antyrans! This is the enemy; watch him closely! He took part in the conspiracy to bring Arghail to Alixxor, and he has the seed of evil,” continued the voice. “The great prophet orders you: Get out of your domes! Leave everything you’re doing! Everyone—I repeat, everyone—has to hunt him. Sniff the mountains, drink the rivers, and crush the stones; don’t leave the smallest speck of dust unchecked! Tell the temples when you find his trail, and don’t kill him under any circumstances—otherwise, our fight is doomed. You’ll get your reward from Zhan’s hand, forever glory to His Sacred Scent. Good smell in your searches!”
Great, Gill thought. Baila had thrown into battle everything he had—namely, several billion Antyrans, who now had no greater purpose in life than smelling his tail! Repulsive. He joined the ranks of the repulsives, right in the top position.
After the Kids’ War, the temples had abandoned the practice of repulsiveness, even avoiding the word. But before that, and especially right after Raman’s fall, the Antyrans discovered worshipping the ice gods of Zagrada’s shrines were branded with the Seal of Arghail on their left cheeks. The only way out of the shame was suicide, which most of them chose after the first days. The impurity brought by the seal caused the Antyrans to become hysterical at the sight of the repulsives and chase them away with stones because any object touched by them became tainted. Moreover, they breathed the same air, and that was not good; everyone feared they would become repulsive if they didn’t drive them away or stop them from breathing altogether.
In the last centuries, the impurity madness took subtler forms; under the expert guidance of the initiates, the tarjis began to practice a maze of rituals and complicated methods to preserve purity when preparing seeds, dressing, drinking, eating, or even having sex. They couldn’t use, for example, the same bowls for cooking siclides and razog flour, no matter how well they were heated.
The purity rituals always amused Gill, but this time, he had to skip the fun part. Even though the repulsivity seals were no longer made with a hot serbak, he had just been branded over the holofluxes, and all the Antyrans had the dubious pleasure of watching him scratch his tail. It was far worse than a dark seal burned on his cheek.
Terrified by the prospect of an angry crowd crashing into his guest dome at any moment, he rushed to take the bracelet and activate it. Slowly, he opened the door and stepped out on the magneto-boulevard.