And right in such difficult times, he had to abandon Harut, he thought, annoyed. But he couldn’t let him get away with a mistake like that. The ratrap had to be an example; otherwise, the other initiates wouldn’t learn their lesson and progress on the path drawn for them.
I want to take a break, but I can’t give up right now. I can’t give up, no matter the costs. For I’m their father!”
“Our spaceport? He just walked into the base, and no one saw him?” exclaimed one of the initiates.
“Dartos, don’t make me send you all in the crevice. What are the reports saying?” Baila screamed. “Does he or does he not have evil powers? Abrian is doing Arghail’s bidding. What would have prevented him from jumping over a fence and sneaking onto a spaceship?”
“And the ships attacked Ropolis…”
“See? You finally smelled it.”
“But if he’s in the enemy city, how can we capture—”
“We’ll get him delivered by the rebels. Negotiations, my children, negotiations.”
“You’re as wise as light, Your Greatness,” exclaimed another initiate.
“Raghan, you’re the new ratrap,” Baila told him. “I hope you’ll be more inspired than your predecessor. We will offer them a truce in exchange for Abrian. We keep our promise for a couple of days—even evacuate several thousand from the city as a gesture of goodwill—of course, without architects—and then resume the battles. Find some good excuse.”
“We won’t get ambushed this time. I already ordered echo probes to map the caves. We’ll dig wells through the galleries and—”
“Test the new fusion bombs,” Baila interrupted, grinning. “I want you to collapse each and every cave. I don’t care how long it’ll take or what the losses will be. But only after Abrian gets here safely. Luckily, I smelled his tricks… It would have been a shame if one of the bombs had killed him before I got the chance to do it.”
“I don’t know if we can arm so many warheads in such a short time.”
“Raghan, you’ll make sure of that,” he said in the same icy tone. “Otherwise, you know what awaits you…”
“Yes, Your Greatness.”
“I can’t hold it much longer. Even so, it’s hard to hide all this from the… visitors,” he said. “We keep them at the system’s periphery for the moment, but who knows what they’re going to do in a month?”
“I see.”
“Good, then we are finished for today.”
“What do we do with the cold?”
“Cold? What cold?” Baila asked with a purposely indifferent tone.
“Your Greatness, your children are freezing!”
“Move the tarjis to the equator. Aren’t they moved yet?”
“In fifteen days, at most, they will be there. What about the others?”
“What others? The unbelievers?” Baila laughed coldly. “I prepared an edict for them. I declare five hundred years of ice to cleanse their sins, for the cold came because of them. They’re allowed to work till the end,” he barked. “Everything they produce will be stored in the nearby temples. They can’t move to the equator! And take their children. Another edict. Are you recording, Raghan? The children will be finally confiscated. Every child smaller than twelve,” he gesticulated wildly. “The others are already corrupted; we can’t teach them the right path. Take care to save the children in the temples and feed them properly.”
“You are too good, Your Greatness…”
“Go to work, Raghan,” Baila said. “Don’t waste the time that Zhan has left in your custody!”
***
Everything seemed set. Omal 13 made sure again that he had memorized the Zzrey-Uka protocol prepared by the expedition’s linguist and that none of the questions on the list were likely to offend the Antyran. They moved all the equipment from the room where the discussion was supposed to take place, the only remaining objects being his floating vat, the conference holotheater received from the natives, and of course, the indispensable Corbelian translation sphere.
Omal looked worried at his arms, still trembling despite his efforts to control the shivering. Hibernation was approaching fast, and he knew he couldn’t delay it with all the treatments in the galaxy. He had already delayed it for two months, and the effect of the hormones was growing more and more uncontrollable. He had to constantly keep an eye on the dispenser implanted under his skin.
The envoy hailed from the deep swamps of the Ecarizol crater, a place over a mile below sea level. This made him particularly sensitive to the winter breeze—a cold wind on his homeworld. In his species’ past, hibernation was once the only practical way of reaching the spring when his world approached the aphelion of the second star, Garima.
What a bad time Bantara 21, his mate, had found to sprout… True, they awaited the approvals for over two hundred years, but Omal was sure that if she had synchronized65 with him before doing it, she would have reached the just conclusion to delay it. But Bantara had rarely synchronized with him over the past century. Maybe she’s cheating on me? The worm of doubt speared him. Right now, when we are about to have children?
He had to chase away the destructive thoughts roaming inside his skull, if only to avoid triggering the voluptuous chills of hibernation. Couldn’t he find a better moment to think about things? As if the anxiety of his mate’s sprouting wasn’t enough…
The container in which he stored Bantara during her sleep had to be moved to Rigulia instead of staying with him as usual. He had no choice if he wanted her to live. For millions of years, sprouting had meant a grisly end for the mother, as the small creatures had the habit of eating the female’s flesh until they completely devoured her, in order to get the nutrients they needed to grow. Only after the “Great Transformation”66 they had managed to find a solution to the complicated problem of making offspring without dying, to keep the desired number of buds and burn the rest, and of course, to stop the decomposing enzymes inside the mother’s body.
Omal cared about Bantara; he had come to know her well, he hoped, despite the fact that they rarely managed to synchronize or see each other when they were both awake. The Rigulians, the inhabitants of the Six Stars, used to hibernate for almost half a year—therefore, at any time, about 50 percent of their population was immersed in the long sleep.67
Combining in similar pairs was a very convenient and logical step because it allowed them to share resources that otherwise would have been unused for so many months of the year. One of them was sleeping in the hibernation container while the other was awake and working—sometimes from home, which often was a segment of a spaceship. Of course, it goes without saying that both members had the same job; therefore, Bantara was also a negotiator. This way, the Rigulians avoided the chaos of traveling to other workplaces and the problem of replacing the ones fallen asleep.
Omal would have done anything to be at her side in Rigulia, the capital of the Six Stars, as well as the Galactic Federation, and not here at the periphery of a bizarre planetary system for which they had no tested protocol… Damned superstring talks in the sector—the reason why he was on Lacrilia when Antyra was discovered. He loathed them more than anything. The Sarkens were the road workers of the galactic highways, their planet-ships stretching perfectly balanced microscopic superstring rings between the Federation worlds to ease the space deformation in the spaceship’s compression front. On the space highways, the flight was much shorter and safer than the classic one. But if the resources allocated to the construction came from the abundant Federal pantry, establishing the routes was a totally different story. The madness of negotiations usually took months and drained the energy of even the youngest Rigulian offspring, let alone someone with his mass…