“I never said the people were all destroyed,” Thalias said, feeling a touch of annoyance creeping into the sense of helplessness. People who fell back on pedantic nitpicking always irritated her. “I said the world was destroyed. Our sun’s output suddenly changed, and the temperature dropped until the entire surface was frozen beyond anyone’s ability to survive.”
Almost unwillingly, Thalias thought, the Magys raised her eyes again. “What did you do?”
“What we had to,” Thalias told her. “A few of the bigger cities were left in place, with heavy insulation added to the buildings and transport structures to protect the inhabitants. Many live there still. The rest were moved deep underground, where heat from the planet’s core could balance the cold from the surface.”
“Are you mole creatures, that you could thus burrow into the ground?”
“You can see that our hands are not built for such digging,” Thalias said, holding out her hands with the palms upward. “A few were housed in existing caverns, modified to create homes for them. But most were moved to places created especially for the crisis, vast chambers torn from the rock and fitted with homes, power supplies, and systems for growing food and creating clean air.”
“A massive undertaking for such small return,” the Magys said, flicking her tongues out again. “How many can possibly live in such squalor? A thousand? Ten thousand?”
Thalias felt her back straighten with pride. “It’s not squalor. And it’s not just a thousand, or ten thousand. It’s eight billion.”
Until that point in the conversation, the rest of the nearby aliens had made no sound and showed no reaction. But now a soft ripple of surprise or disbelief ran through them. “You lie,” the Magys said accusingly. “Or you speak the wrong word.”
“I speak the correct word,” Thalias said firmly. “And for what reason would I lie? Whether eight billion survived or eight thousand, that is still a victory when measured against the death of all. If we can bring our world back from the brink, you can do the same with yours.”
“That is indeed the hope,” the Magys said. “That is why we must die.”
Thalias frowned. Had she mistranslated something in her mind? Or had the Magys completely missed the whole point she’d been making? “The hope for your world is why you must live,” she said.
The Magys’s tongues flicked out again. “You do not understand,” she said. “Tell me, how long has it been since you touched the Beyond?”
Another mistranslation? “I don’t know what that means,” she said. “I don’t know what the Beyond is.”
“Certainly you have touched it,” the Magys insisted. “I can see it in you. That was why I wished to speak only to you. Only you would truly understand. I ask again: How long since you touched it?”
And then, suddenly, Thalias understood. “You’re talking about my time as a sky-walker,” she said. “Many years ago, when I used Third Sight.”
“Third Sight,” the Magys said thoughtfully, as if listening to the sound of the words. “You speak strangely of the Beyond. But that is correct. You have touched the Beyond, as we, too, will soon rest in it. Do you now understand?”
“No,” Thalias said. “Will you please explain?”
The Magys did a sort of double twitch of her tongues. Impatience? Resignation? “Our time is ended,” she said. “The people are gone. But we may perhaps still bring healing to our world.”
“You said that before, that your time is ended,” Thalias said. “What does that mean?”
“That there is no reason to go back,” the Magys said. “No hope that others of the people still live. So we will therefore die and rest in the Beyond, and through the Beyond bring healing to our world.”
“How can you bring healing when the people are gone?”
Another double tongue flick. “Do you not even listen to your own words?” the Magys said scornfully. “You said it yourself: The world is not the people. Our world has been torn and scarred, but perhaps it can be healed. We will join the Beyond and make the attempt.”
Thalias frowned, trying to make sense of it all. So the Magys believed that by dying she and the rest of her group could join with some greater cosmic system and through it work to heal the damage caused by their civil war? “But what’s the point of healing the world if there’s no one left to live there?” she asked.
“There are others in the universe,” the Magys said. “Many others. Some of them may one day come to live on the world we leave to them. Why should we not strive to properly prepare it?”
“Because those others may or may not come,” Thalias said. “You and your people, on the other hand, are already here. Shouldn’t you be trying instead to return and rebuild your world and culture for yourselves? We did. Why not you?”
“No,” the Magys said. “We are not you. It cannot be done.” She lowered her eyes again. “All that can be done is death, and the Beyond.”
Thalias took a deep breath. So much for trying optimism and real-life positive examples. Arguing wasn’t going to get her anywhere, either. What she needed was an idea, something positive to present.
Or maybe just something that could delay the Magys’s decision until she could come up with that better idea. “You say redemption of your people can’t be done,” she said. “You say they are lost. Here’s what I say: Prove it.”
The Magys looked up again, both tongues sticking out of her slightly opened jaw. “What do you say?”
“Let us travel to your world and see what has become of it,” Thalias said, feeling her stomach tighten as she belatedly realized that she had no authority whatsoever to make this offer. If Thrawn decided a long side trip wasn’t within their mission parameters, he could simply say no, and that would be the end of it. In that case, the Magys would almost certainly proclaim death, and the rest of the aliens would meekly go along with it.
But then that was the end that had faced them before the Springhawk arrived anyway. She might as well give this a try and see if she could talk Thrawn into it. “By your own statements to the Paccosh, you admit the battles hadn’t yet ended when you left. The situation there may not be as bad as you think.”
“The time is close at hand,” the Magys said quietly. “The situation is without hope.”
“Then let us prove it,” Thalias said. “If it is—if your people truly can’t be saved—then we’ll bring you back here and you can do as you wish.”
“And if you are right?”
For the first time since the conversation started, Thalias felt a stirring of hope. Was that actually a crack in the Magys’s steadfast belief that her people were gone? “Then we’ll figure out together what needs to be done,” she said. “Will you come with me to your world?”
For a long moment, the Magys stared at her. Then her tongues flicked out again. “I will,” she said. “One other will join us as witness to all that occurs.”
“Of course,” Thalias said, her newfound hope fading a little. Getting Thrawn to let a single alien aboard his ship was already problematic. Adding a second to the mix was going to strain her persuasive abilities to the limit.
But she could hardly tell the Magys that she couldn’t bring along someone else, whether as witness or protector. At least she hadn’t asked to bring all two hundred of them.
“I’ll make the arrangements,” she said, uncrossing her legs and standing up. A small jolt of pain shot through her knees as the joints complained about their mistreatment. Nodding to the Magys, she turned and made her way back between the pairs of silent aliens.