In front of the cockpits on the right side was a large, thin table floating two feet from the floor. Three silver, metal-like costumes stood around it, their visors wide open. In each of them was a Grammian shot in the face, but strangely enough, they still stayed upright, only with their heads bent sideways or forward. Then Gill saw the fourth Grammian. His face could be seen—as much as the visor allowed—yet his body was invisible. Touching the air, he discovered that it must have been a mimetic costume like those of the other three, with the camouflage on.
No doubt the strange equipment was used not only for invisibility but as an exoskeleton to augment the movements of its wearer. Luckily, the visor of the Grammian was open—otherwise, Ugo might have missed him.
The Antyran researchers never managed to build cloaking suits—they could only cloak the Shindam’s chameleons, albeit not from up close and not for all wavelengths.
The Grammians undoubtedly enjoyed an advanced cloaking technology, yet their entire technological prowess was no match for the Sigian bracelet driven by the avatar of a dead Antyran. Gill pushed the invisible suit, but he couldn’t budge it from the spot. It was firmly anchored to the floor.
The dark green, polished surface of the floating table felt like water when he touched it, with small waves forming under his thumbs. Bright dots appeared on it, creating a 3D map of the sky. A galactic map! Here, too, the texts were translated into Antyran.
Suddenly, the green distortion grid disappeared for the first time since it had turned on in Alala’s dome. Another star map started to scroll inside his eyes, the names being written in unknown symbols—most likely Sigian, as they resembled the ones on the bracelet. The scrolling froze when the image on the table overlapped with the one in his eyes.
“Ugo, I have to reach the Federals. They’re somewhere at the outskirts. How do I get there?”
“We’re going to Mapu.”
Obviously, the abomination intended to find the destroyer hidden on the primitive planet, but Gill’s plan was a bit different. He had to meet the Six Stars and tell them about Sigia, about Antyra’s civil war, about the Grammian gods who hid Antyra in a distortion some 1,250 years ago.
“We’re not going to Mapu. Only the Federals can help us!”
“Don’t make me force you!”
“Ugo! If you dream that I’m going to let you—”
“Let me? Remember, I’m in your head! At your slightest foolishness, I’m taking over.”
“And for how long can you control me?” Gill exclaimed, feeling again pinched to fight him.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t try to find out. We shouldn’t go anywhere near the Federals.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t know their relationship with the Grammians. Don’t forget, they came to meet the Sigians in Antyra’s orbit.”
“But they didn’t meet.”
“Don’t be so sure. The Grammians closed Antyra in a space distortion to trap the Sigians and hide our world. Then, as the Six Stars reached the meeting place, the Grammian ships made contact with the Federals…”
“Did you see that in the bracelet’s memory?”
“Grammia’s fleet was already in Antyra’s sector before the arrival of the Federals. I believe, in fact, I’m pretty sure, that the Grammians pretended to be the Sigian envoys to hide their crime. Don’t forget that the Sigians didn’t tell the Rigulians much about them. It wouldn’t be unthinkable…”
“You’re saying that Grammia is allied with the Six Stars?” he asked incredulously.
“Do you see any other explanation? If the Grammians had attacked the Federals, too, they had enough time—more than a thousand years—to sort it out. It doesn’t matter what happened, but you risk landing in the jaws of a guval.”
Gill doubted that the recent arrival of the Grammian ships in the Antyran system was missed by the Rigulian fleet at the outskirts. Therefore, it was logical that the two worlds knew each other. After all, either Ugo was right that the Grammians made the contact instead of the Sigians or it happened otherwise—the point was that they had more than a thousand years to meet.
But his Guk training allowed him to smell the weakness in Ugo’s reasoning… The jure ignored what the Grammians hid from the Federals! When Gill had woken up in the Grammian neural probe, Baila had said that he was keeping the “visitors” on Antyra’s outskirts—the guests undoubtedly being the Federal messengers. And when the envoys from the Six Stars landed in the western Alixxoran fields, they revealed their astonishment at Antyra’s sudden appearance. They asked why the Antyrans had remained hidden for such a long time… and Baila’s answer was to run away like a coward. He ran from the meeting because he had expected someone else: the Grammian gods! Yes, the Grammians were hiding things from the Six Stars—the biggest secret being that they had closed Antyra behind a firewall some 1,250 years ago! That was why it was vital to reach the Rigulian Federals and divulge the betrayal of their so-called allies!
“We’re going to the Federals,” Gill said, trying again. “You heard what Baila said—that he keeps them at the outskirts. They’re not exactly Grammia’s allies. I’ll take the risk. The Six Stars know nothing about Sigia, and we have to tell them—”
“You may assume whatever you want; I will not. We’re going to Mapu.”
Ugo was Ropolis’s jure, their most skillful strategist—therefore, he should understand better than anyone that Grammia was deceiving the Federals. Then why did he ignore it? He had, of course, another reason to avoid the aliens: the abomination!
“You’re scared. You’re afraid they’ll discover your nature. No alien would accept the existence of a—”
“The little star on the right. Touch it.”
Seeing that Gill made no move, Ugo said, “All right, I’ll do it myself.”
Against Gill’s will, his hand pressed the little star. Immediately, the display wall focused on it, and the ship turned to move to the new course. Gill’s hand kept touching the table, chasing the strange symbols that ran on it. Although the signs alternated quickly, it was clear that they accelerated. Mapu’s little star was now shining right in the middle of the huge display wall.
CHAPTER 14.
“The spiky coldness is my nest! Woe to them, lovers of warmth!” Pixihe’s second threat to the Gondarran envoys; an apocryphal fragment from the “Mysteries of the Ussybayales,” carved in a pink granite slab, excavated by Tadeoibiisi from the ruins of a vitrified city whose name had been lost in the mist of time.
***
The hologuided magneto-tractors finished harvesting the last parcels of the acajaa crop on a small farm located at Antyra’s equator, under the worried eyes of the farmer who was watching them from a nearby mound. A cold mist creeping over the fields had forced Colva to wear an electrically heated tunic. Even in his greatest nightmares, he never thought to live such a day… but lo, the end of times had arrived!
Colva wasn’t the type of farmer who was loyal to the temples. The majority of them had migrated to Antyra II to colonize the fertile soil around the ocean crater as soon as the Antyrans built their first fusion spaceships. In time, they turned the planet into “Zhan’s farm of kyis”—their capital, Palidon, blessed by the prophet to host the violet triangle.
On Antyra I, the farmers left behind didn’t prove so fanatical like their brethren in the skies, but the disappearance of the firewall “miraculously” helped many of them to find the lost flame of faith.
Colva’s biggest problem was that the temples kept alarmingly accurate and detailed records about most of the mortals. He wasn’t one of the tarjis, and he had to pay for that.