He looked hatefully at the two initiates guarding his tractors from the roadside. Their orders were to collect the harvest. All of it. His family wasn’t entitled to a single stem of acajaa, nothing to feed them in the next months.
Before lunch, his female called him at the holophone to show him Baila’s new edict to confiscate the children.
“It’s going to be all right,” he whispered, holding her in his arms. “You’ll see; we’re going to make it somehow.”
But not even he believed what he said. They were living in awful times.
Everywhere on the continent, from one ocean shore to the other, the same scene was happening in the farms on the temples’ lists. The agents were taking care that all crops were harvested and handed over before the cold ruined them.
***
“How many ships do we have around Antyra I?” Baila asked a hologram of a thin Grammian, whose jelly nodules were trembling all over his body—visibly nervous to be addressed by the prophet.
Baila wasn’t on a gray ship, as the Antyrans believed. He was sitting, relaxed, on the throne in his secret underground lair. Lots of Grammians in the jelly version were swarming around him, setting strange devices and digging new galleries in the complex.
“Eight, but two are ready to fly to Ropolis,” the Grammian mumbled hastily.
“Let them all fly to the outskirts—and fast!”
“It will be done, Your Greatness. Any particular destination?”
“Surround the ships of the… Federals. Keep the distance, don’t let them suspect your intentions,” he ordered aloud. “Abrian will surely try to contact them. You have to stop him by all means!”
The Grammian god lowered his eyes, the jelly nodules of his cheeks swelling even larger, ready to burst. In the end, he managed to master his internal turmoil enough to be able to splutter, “They… they’re going to ask what we are we doing there.”
“Tell them I sent you to the outskirts, too.”
“Greatest Baila,” the Grammian dared to respond, “this will make the Federals believe we failed the negotiations with Antyra. They’ll call the kralls or the shadows of the Sernak…”
“Yes, you’re right,” muttered the prophet. “Tell the Federals you will pay them a visit to share your progress here. It’s a good excuse. And when you board Abrian’s ship, try to use subtlety.”
“Even if he fights back?”
“I very much doubt he knows how to use the ship’s weapons, although I don’t understand how he learned to drive it—curse his tail! I want him alive! And the Federals shouldn’t suspect anything!”
“What if he doesn’t show up?”
“He’ll appear, all right; don’t worry. Where else can he go? If Abrian reaches the Federals in the next few days, we’re in trouble. I don’t want to rush things.”
“Two ships are on their way,” said the Grammian after a few moments. “We are already scanning the outskirts.”
“Very good! We need five days to mobilize our sons. After that, the Federals won’t matter anymore. Finally, we’re going to put diplomacy aside,” he said with a grin, delighted by the prospect.
“We’ll do as you wish, Your Greatness!”
“Make sure to give me five days, all right?”
Without a word, the Grammian fell to the ground, his head resting on his right foot, covered by the flaccid skins of his arms.
***
Gill made another exhausting effort to push the last body through the airlock pointed out by Ugo, then sealed the opening by pressing the moist bump in the wall. With a loud whistle, the bodies were sucked in by the hungry space.
Although it was difficult to drag the huge number of bodies throughout the ship, he squeezed his spikes and worked stubbornly without complaining or asking for breaks; he had no shadow of intent to “enjoy” the company of the thoroughly dead shells, as he now felt was appropriate to call them. They were the first dead he produced since he learned about Kaura, and the rift opened by the secret of immortality forced him to accept the possibility of segregation-by-death, to think like a Ropolitan. What a waste to die unarchived like this, he thought, wasted like scores of generations before them, ancestors who had no clue what they were living for and why they were dying.
He felt more relieved now that he had gotten rid of them and didn’t have to glimpse their frozen expressions. Of course, he would have felt even better to throw Ugo out, too, if he could only find a way.
For the moment, he had to avoid the monster, to conceal his intentions as best as he could, in the hope that the abomination wasn’t reading his thoughts. He knew that the end was near; when they reached the Sigian destroyer, the waters of reality would trickle on another channel. A shapeless way for now, for it made no sense to estimate the keeper’s path by calling the Guk routine-aroma harmonics—not with an entity as unpredictable and corrupt as the jure’s avatar. After all, a seven-hundred-year technological abyss had opened between them, crushing even his faintest hope of estimating Ugo’s purposes. Gill could only smell that the jure had no intention of parasitizing him forever. Would he force him to commit suicide, like he did with the stocky Antyran?
And yet, he was meant to learn Ugo’s plans faster than he expected. Despite all the disgust caused by the jure’s hideousness, he made the mistake of trying to talk with him, hoping to understand why the Sigian-of-the-bracelet didn’t manage to win Ugo to his side.
“Ugo, I’d like to ask you something.”
“Go ahead,” Ugo mumbled grumpily, with the tone of someone forced to abandon some very important stuff to listen to Gill’s gibberish.
“You lived the Sigian’s memories. You saw how the Grammians destroyed Ariga’s beautiful cities, how they bombed Sigia. Don’t you think we should save their world? Only the Federals can help us,” he said, trying to persuade him. “I could—”
“You just don’t get it, do you?” the avatar answered in a glacial voice. “After the expansion, Sigia will become irrelevant. Gill, if you help me, I’ll make you an offer. I’ll give you the chance to become the first one assimilated in the singularity!”
“So… you didn’t abandon your plan to expand?” he exclaimed, stupefied by the disclosure. And he told it so easily, which could only mean that the abomination intended to kill him as soon as his services wouldn’t be needed anymore. “You want to betray the parhontes? You’re mad if you think—”
“Aaaargh!” the abomination shouted. “Don’t you dare to call me mad,” he yelled with the intensity of Belamia’s storm. “Ever!”
The atrocious pain knocked him to the floor. He felt his head squeezed in a grip of fire—each of his neurons thoroughly tortured in unexpected ways.
“If you kill me, nobody’s going to get you to Mapu,” he managed to mutter as soon as he recovered from Ugo’s deadly squeeze.
“I don’t care! I’ll turn you into dust,” he hissed, trembling in rage.
The jure squeezed him a bit more, to make sure Gill got the message.
“Don’t you understand?” Ugo told him. “When I woke up from Kaura’s sleep, I had a revelation: I’ll be Zhan’s new incarnation. When the parhontes gave me the codes of the world, they knew that the final decision would be mine. What they were hoping for, what plans they had for my tail, all became irrelevant when they set me free. And they killed themselves!” He laughed, suddenly amused.
It appeared that the abomination then calmed down; the mental claws withdrew from Gill’s ganglions.
“Don’t provoke me,” he said in a threatening voice. “I can hold you in my grip till we get there.”
“Don’t count on it,” Gill replied, boiling in anger.
He began to realize, horrified, who was worse between Ugo and Baila. For different reasons, both wanted to get to the destroyer, but after Ugo moved Uralia and himself to the ship’s memory, he would have plenty of time to expand—especially now that he had the access codes of the virtual world. And with the resources of the Sigian vessel, he’d be able to do it much faster than in Ropolis. Gill had to admit that stopping the abomination was more important than his life, more important than even the rebirth of the Sigians…