“I know who she is,” Che’ri interrupted. “We saw her on the bridge when we were down in secondary command.”
“That’s right, we did,” Thalias said, nodding. “You remember we went to her world, and it was pretty badly wrecked.”
“By a war,” Che’ri said, her exuberance fading a little.
“Right,” Thalias said. “Well. The way the Magys’s people do things is that if they think there’s no hope for them—no hope at all—they … they make a decision to do something called touching the Beyond. It’s supposed to let them join with something—people in Lesser Space call it the Force—that will let them start healing their planet.”
“Okay,” Che’ri said, frowning. “So that’s why she’s in there?”
“Not exactly.” Thalias braced herself. “You see, what they have to do to touch the Beyond is … die.”
Che’ri drew back. “You mean they kill themselves?”
Thalias nodded. “Yes.”
“But …” The girl waved a hand helplessly.
“No, that’s not how the Chiss do things,” Thalias said. “But different peoples and different cultures … people sometimes do things in different ways.”
“But what if they make a mistake?” Che’ri asked. “Or change their minds?”
Thalias felt her throat tighten. “They can’t change their minds,” she said. “Once it’s done, it’s done.”
Che’ri inhaled sharply. “Is that why Thrawn locked her up? Because she was going to … do that?”
“Yes,” Thalias said. “We put her in my sleeping room because it would be out of the way, and no one but me would see it.” She felt her lip twitch. “No one but us. So you need to keep this a secret from everyone except—”
“Wait a second,” Che’ri interrupted, frowning. “You said the Magys is in there? Just the Magys? But there were two of them—” She broke off, her expression going rigid. “Did he …?”
For a moment Thalias was tempted to lie. It would be so much easier, and Che’ri didn’t need to carry the additional burden.
But as she gazed into the girl’s stricken eyes, she knew it would be useless. Truth always came out in the end, and hiding it now would only make it worse later. “Yes,” she said gently, reaching over and taking Che’ri’s hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you stop him?” Che’ri asked, her eyes going wet with tears.
“It happened too fast,” Thalias said. “There was no way anyone could stop it.”
“Not even Senior Captain Thrawn?”
“He was given incorrect information,” Thalias said. “On top of that, he probably assumed they would need weapons or tools to do it. I know I would have thought that. But the Magys’s companion didn’t. He didn’t need anything.”
“How did he do it?”
Thalias shook her head. “We still don’t know. Anyway, like I was saying, the only ones aboard who know about this are Senior Captain Thrawn, Mid Captain Samakro, you, and me. You need to promise you won’t say anything to anyone else. All right?”
“All right.” Che’ri looked down at the deck. “Can I have breakfast now?”
“Of course,” Thalias said, squeezing her hand once and letting go. “Meat-striped fruit squares all right?”
“Sure,” Che’ri said, still staring at the deck.
Silently, Thalias stood up and headed to the food prep area. The girl had her answers now, or at least she had the facts. Hopefully, she wouldn’t think to ask any of the deeper questions.
The Magys had ordered her companion to die. She’d taken that decision from him—that last, final decision anyone could make. The aliens clearly considered that an acceptable thing to do. Thalias, coming from Chiss culture, didn’t.
But wasn’t that exactly what she and Thrawn had done to the Magys herself? Hadn’t they taken the right of decision away from her by forcibly sedating her and locking her into hibernation? From her point of view, hadn’t they violated her rights? It was a troubling question.
Especially since it was Thalias who’d first come up with the idea.
She felt her stomach tighten around the emptiness there. What if the Magys was right, that her people were gone and that the two hundred still on Rapacc faced nothing but loneliness, solitude, and lingering death? If the Beyond truly was an alternative, didn’t she have a right to make the decision that her Chiss captors had now taken from her?
Still …
What if they change their minds? Che’ri had asked. It was a question Thalias had wrestled with, and presumably Thrawn had as well. Because, really, all they’d done was postpone the Magys’s decision until they could gather more evidence, one way or another, as to her world’s fate.
And if it turned out to be as the Magys herself already believed, Thalias and Thrawn would have to stand by and watch her make the decision to die.
Thalias wasn’t ready for that. She could only hope that, somehow, they could find a reason for the Magys and her people to live.
Really, Shimkif had said with all of her boundless self-confidence. How could our Chiss lovebirds resist the humble requests of two newly happily marrieds?
They could resist, all right. They could resist just fine.
Not that Shimkif hadn’t come through on the wedding ceremony. On the contrary, it was probably the finest make-believe, cobbled-together fruit basket of a fraudulent ritual Haplif had ever seen. All fifty Agbui aboard had played a part, from the pilot all the way down to the engine room mechanics, and all of them had joined in with willing enthusiasm.
Even better, no one had snickered or joked or even smiled at the wrong moment, any of which might have broken the spell of reality they were trying to weave around their naïve Chiss guests. When it was over, everyone crowded around to congratulate the happy couple, and Haplif thought he even saw Yomie get a little misty-eyed.
All of which counted for exactly nothing … because when Shimkif talked longingly about the glorious multiple waterfalls on Celwis, and how she’d always wanted to honeymoon amid that kind of awesome spectacle, the implied plea fell on indifferent ears.
Come hell or high winds—come friends, foes, famine, or frostbite—Yomie was going to that monthlong Grand Migration on Shihon. Every single thrice-damned minute of it.
Which must have put her right on the edge of tearing her face off when, as they passed through the Avidich system, the ship’s hyperdrive failed.
Haplif had to knock four times before he finally got a response from inside Yomie’s room. “Who is it?”
“It’s Haplif, Yomie,” Haplif called through the door. “May I speak with you?”
There was another pause. Then the door slid open, to reveal Yomie standing squarely in the opening. “Yes?” she said, her voice and expression almost painfully neutral.
“I have an update on the repairs.” He gestured over her shoulder. “May I come in?”
She studied him a moment. Then, silently, she stepped aside.
“Thank you,” Haplif said. Gingerly, he eased past her, mindful of her resistance to being touched. “The mechanics have finished the repairs and are putting the hyperdrive back together,” he said, giving the room a quick scan. She’d pulled down the foldout table, he saw, and there were several pages of drawings scattered across it. “We should be ready to resume our journey within the next hour or so.”
“Thank you,” Yomie said, her tone still giving no hint as to the current state of her emotions.
“I also wanted to tell you,” Haplif went on, drifting toward the table for a closer look, “that I’ve spoken to the pilot, and she assures me we can make up some of this time. At worst, you’ll only miss the first day of the migration.”