CHAPTER 6
"Yeerk!"
Two of the simians reached for Sel Clemen's arms, but he slashed with his elbows, effectively removing their hands. "Yeerk!" he yelled again.
The Hork-Bajir were all panicking; that made us Bayetai more than uneasy. "What is it?" I demanded.
"Enemy!" a Hork-Bajir screamed. "Yeerk!"
"Brain-stealers!" another shouted.
"Don't sound like a friendly folk," Sevelde said, gritting her teeth. Her dark lavender mane fell over her shoulders as she jerked backwards, away from one of the giant insects. "Get away!" she shouted, slashing upward with her longer, female talons. The creature ripped open from the three parallel gouges, spilling its organs everywhere. "Ugh!" Sevelde groaned in disgust. "The stench of it!"
The Hork-Bajir were slowly being captured, I saw, but one thing was
obvious; these enemies didn't know what to do about Bayetai, we being bigger than the insects and the little simians combined. Gritting my teeth, I did something I'd never done before; reaching down, I unsheathed my hand-held Dracon shredder. Turning it to a low frequency, I fired off a shot at one of the simians. It let out a little yelp as it fell, but I couldn't tell if it was dead. Then I scorched one of the insects; it merely bruised. "Setting fifteen for the apes!" I shouted. "Thirteen for the bugs!"
Sevelde grinned as she, too, pulled out a blaster. "Go for the clean kill!" she added, taking down three apes and two bugs in rapid succession without bothering to check her power setting. Fyvwiu pulled out his own blaster, but an ape leaped, grabbed it from his hand, and turned it on him. It, too, did not check the power setting.
It was setting four.
I screamed in sheer agony, completely oblivious to the fact that I really had been injured from the peripheral wavebands of the blaster; I could hear five other cries join my own, but barely. I could feel the pain that I had not felt since my father had died, as a glass-maned and brittle-tailed old man; I could feel it burning through me, as if I had inhaled a lungful of Z-space emissions, as if I had swallowed fire; I could feel it leave me hollow and unable to focus. As if through eyes of someone else, I saw the others freeze, the Bayetai and Hork-Bajir and aliens in equal terror - the former from the obvious agony in our joined voices, the Hork-Bajir and others simply from the sound of it. I did not have to look beside me to the smoldering mass that was all that remained of my eldest; I did not have to see the anguish that blinded my daughters, mate, and remaining son; I did not want to know.
Fyvwiu.
The name that means "order".
"No...." I forced my thoughts into clarity, forced myself to open my eyes, forced the pain to channel itself into rage-filled energy. "No. Fyvwiu." I bared my teeth, grabbing the mortally burned ape by the throat, still completely unaware of my own burns. "That...was... my...son!" I threw the creature as hard as I could, watching dispassionately as it hit the bulkhead with a cracking of a hundred bones all at once, and crumpled, formless, to the deck. "That...was...my...son!" I slashed with my elbow, decapitating the ape that stood there. "My son!"
Then, before me, was Klindas. I don't know, to this day, where she had come from; I had thought she had been put on one of the other, smaller vessels, and was safely on her way home. She wrapped her arms around me, burying her face in my stomach plates. "Father!" she sobbed. "Father, they killed him! They killed Fyvwiu!"
It was then that another creature stepped through the airlock. The remaining Hork-Bajir snapped out their trance, ready to attack, but stopped.
It was Sel Clemen.
He smiled a crooked smile, a smile I would not have thought fit the serious demeanor the Hork-Bajir had shown.
"No harm," he said. The aatojuik, Nia, rushed to him, and he picked her up, nuzzling her snout with his own. "No harm, mean. No fight. Safe."
"Safe?" a Hork-Bajir asked, looking doubtful. "Yeerk?"
Sel Clemen shook his head. "No Yeerk. Safe. Only Gedd. Only Taxxon. No Yeerk."
"No Yeerk?" another Hork-Bajir asked, also sounding less than convinced. "Gedd, no Yeerk?"
Sel Clemen shrugged. "No Yeerk. No pool."
"What are you talking about?" a Bayetajin asked.
"Yeerks, that's what they're talking about," another, a scientist by the name of Gregruh, said. "A race of parasitic worms that is able to take over the bodies of other creatures. Another race, known as Andalites, gave them the power of interplanetary travel, and from there they've been steadily taking over the universe." Gregruh snarled at Sel Clemen. "How could there be Gedds without Yeerks? They're one in the same."
Sel Clemen shook his head. "No. Gedd free. Yeerk die. Kandrona broke. Pool gone. No Yeerk now."
"Now," a trahdarhk echoed, nodding. "Oh." Obviously, they had no clue what the Hork-Bajir was talking about, but had enough energy left for sarcasm. It seemed lost on the Hork-Bajir, however, who nodded quite seriously at Sel Clemen's assurances.
"Go." Sel Clemen looked around, then met my gaze as best he could. "Z-space good. Go home, you."
I frowned at that, but looked down at Klindas, bawling uncontrollably, still wrapped around my waist. I looked around myself; the Hork-Bajir had been let go by their captors, while the Bayetai all looked unhealthily exhausted. Sevelde was shaking; Brenjuum looked faint, and his jaw was clamped shut; Vreren was nearly as pale as her hair; Lingrii was howling louder than Klindas. I suddenly became aware of the fact that some of my skin had been burned off by the closeness of the setting-four blast; my left arm throbbed mind-numbingly. I heaved a shuddering sigh. "Fine," I muttered, defeated. "Fine."
Sel Clemen smiled crookedly again, and walked out of the ship followed closely by two simians. Many of the Hork-Bajir followed, but some still looked worried. The Bayetai were all staring at me.
Although she was almost full-grown - or as grown as she would ever be, although she was truly no larger than a Hork-Bajir and not half as solid - I swept Klindas up in my arms. I sighed again, trying without success to get my breathing right. I closed my eyes, forcing the pain to recede. Right now, I had more to deal with. Fyvwiu would be mourned. But not now. Those that are alive must come before those that are dead. That is a Bayetajin saying I always felt was hollow, but never as hollow as it was then. "Let's go," I murmured, and followed the Hork-Bajir out. The others followed me.
As I stepped through the airlock, there was a flash of light, an immense pain, and.... nothing.
CHAPTER 7
I awoke to pain.
"I am sorry about your daughters, Jirrell."
I was shaking; I couldn't focus my mind on anything. I couldn't even push myself out of my reclining position; my arms refused to cooperate. My lungs barely remembered how to breathe.
"I'm afraid your youngers were too fragile for the measures necessary to stun the rest of you all at once; the older.... let me only say that she was... uncooperative."
It took a great deal of effort to focus my eyes. To my right, nothing; to my left, light that was much too bright. Of course - my right eye saw the floor, the left the ceiling. I willed my arms to obey me, but they refused to. I felt impossibly hollow, from my skull to my toe-talons to my tail-tip, as if someone had just taken a talon and dug everything out of me. My wings and left arm were absolutely numb.
"They say you're a pilot and an engineer, Jirrell. And that you're in charge. They respect you very much."
I was starting to regain feeling in my right arm; I managed to move both arms into a position to push myself up, but that drained me of what energy I had. I stayed that way, panting with the sheer anguish that tore at every part of my being.
"Oh, don't tire yourself needlessly. Strange how you feel the deaths of your blood relatives. Is it the same for mates, I wonder?"
Terror lent me strength; I pushed myself so hard that I was standing before I realized it. I set my weight on my tail blade, using it as a third leg. The universe spun around me, but still I was able to see the horror.
Sel Clemen wore a smile I thought only befitted a seenifteki, one of many beasts on my planet that ate aatoju; behind him, Vreren hung by her broken arms on a single chain, her body shuddering, her shredded wings on the ground beneath her feet rather than on her back, and on another chain, Lingrii hung by her broken neck, her young eyes staring forever in terror. "Vreren..." I whispered.
She looked up; pale green eyes that had for so many years brought pride and love welling up within me, in spite of our plentiful differences, now only knew pain. She was blinder than the Hork-Bajir; she couldn't see past her pain. "Malashii....?" She breathed raggedly; her lungs were punctured, she had to have extensive internal bleeding. My mate was dying, she deserved a healing valley, comfort, painkillers, sedatives....
Not this. Not this! What was happening? No! What was going on?!
"Vreren!" It was unreal. This couldn't be Vreren, not my Vreren! No, it was a trick!
"Malashii.... Jirrell...." Her broken body shook with a heaving sob. "Malashii.... jur nrok trell... prok... prok dreel'l." She shuddered again, then howled out in agony. "Jur prok dreel'l aatoju!!"
Mate...Jirrell...mate... they killed them... murder... murdered ours. They murdered our children!
"No!" I lunged forward, snarling, only to find the pain renewed and quadrupled. I backed away quickly, seething. A force field! Of course - they had put me in a force field. This enemy was smarter than the Hork-Bajir. Smarter, perhaps, than Bayetai, but that remained to be seen.
Still, something within me kept telling me, It isn't real. It isn't real.
Shut up, I told that thing. Stop trying to mislead me! My people have no word for "lie" or "lying".
Sel Clemen smiled even more and shook his head. "Pity - I thought you - 'Bayetai', wasn't it - might be less primitive than these Hork-Bajir have proven to be. Relatives of yours, aren't they?" His smile turned more chilling. "Where have you been hiding, you beautiful beast, you?"
I bared my teeth. "We don't need to hide from the likes of you."
Sel Clemen shook his head, making a sound of disappointment. "Don't toy with us, Jirrell, or we'll toy with you." He nodded to the simians, and one pulled out something dark and rather short, an almost semi-circular piece of what looked like bone. He slashed Vreren across the snout; she didn't cry out even as blood gushed from the wound. Sel Clemen turned back to me and raised one eye ridge. "This host has no idea where you are from, but your DNA matches the Hork-Bajir too closely; you're from the same planet, and the same ancestor race. I ask again - where are the rest of you?"
I set my jaw, slowly understanding what was being asked of me. The mass murder was nothing; this was my true punishment. "I can't tell you."
"A pity." He nodded to the simians again, and this time the slash was below the knee. The severed appendage fell on top of the already severed wings. Again, Vreren was silent. "This can go on for quite some time, friend. And we've still the younger boy to go."
"Why?" I snarled.
Sel Clemen - who wasn't Sel Clemen; it couldn't be - shrugged. "Well, the younger girls were accidents. They were both unsalvageable from when we stunned them. It seems you Bayetai are less resilient to Dracon beams than Hork-Bajir. The elder girl proved too... uncooperative to even attempt interrogation, so we tried to simply infest her, along with a few other, equally vicious ones..." Sel Clemen shook his head and grimaced, then offered me an empty, cold smile. "It seems you Bayetai don't accept infestation very well. Your elder daughter was quite resilient, you might be proud to know. The others died along with their Yeerks. It took three before she was too brain-dead to fight anymore. We put her out of her misery for you."
Sevelde... Klindas... I looked up blindly. Fyvwiu... My eyes settled on the small corpse that hung from its snapped neck. Lingrii.... They then shifted to the almost-corpse that hung beside it. Vreren.... I shuddered, lowering my head. Though it tore me apart, I knew what had to be done. What was the only way. The good of the many... I thought, my hearts aching at the unfinished rule that had to lead me here.
The good of the many outweighs the good of the one. The live must come before the dead. He who uses evil to save is worth more than he who allows what is right to lead to death. Some evil is necessary for the existence of good. To mislead others may be necessary to be true to one's self. The old laws came to me, lending me no strength, only more pain, more weight on my sunken shoulders.
From the same planet? I sighed shakily, my course clear even though every grain of me warred against it. Bayetai - and, as it turned out, Hork-Bajir as well - do not have a word for "lie". It is against our nature to lie. True, we sometimes mislead each other for jest or surprises, but not in a way to hurt others. Not in a way that puts others in danger. Not to outright lie. "We're all that's left," I whispered. "Us and those that were on the smaller vessels. The Hork-Bajir hated us because we were smarter and larger and in all ways superior. They killed us off, ate us and our young. So we had to leave."
"Arrogant as an Andalite!" the creature laughed. "And you wished to take some Hork-Bajir with you? After all they'd done?" Sel Clemen asked sarcastically.
I nodded. Anything, anything to spare Vreren and Brenjuum and the homeworld. "There were... too few of us. We thought... there might be a way... to cross-breed... save what was left of us."
A dark look settled on Sel Clemen's face, and my hearts stopped.
This... this creature... could it be that it... it believed this? Did it think that even desperation wasn't enough for a naturally honest creature to lie for? Perhaps Hork-Bajir were too simple to even know it was possible to speak something untrue, and this... this creature... thought we were far more alike than I believed us to be. "You couldn't have without genetic equipment," he said. "Surely you already knew that."
"It was on the third ship," I told him. I didn't care if I was caught lying, or if what truths I said - such as the existence of the equipment - proved my undoing; I only had to keep everyone else safe, especially Vreren and Brenjuum. That was all that mattered. If I lost them, there was no way I could hold on; if I failed my world.... well, then there'd be even bigger troubles to attend to. I couldn't hang on, if I was all that was left. "Not mine. Not the first."
Sel Clemen sort of sighed then. "My name is Visser Sixty-eight, Jirrell," he said. "Sixty-eighth Visser of the Yeerk Empire. I've need of a pilot of your reputed skill. And your vessel, though damaged, seems most... curious. And exquisite, given certain... improvements."
"I'm glad you like it," I snapped.
Sel Clemen shook his head, smiling an unpleasant, chilling smile. "Oh, we can't have that, now can we? We can't have you talking back to me like that, Jirrell. You and your Bayetai can't be made into Controllers, it seems, but I think we've better ways to deal with you." With that, he jerked his hand.
The simian slashed; it was not a wing or limb that fell this time, but a pale pink-maned head. The other ape lowered the force field that had shocked me, keeping Visser Sixty-Eight safe from harm, and the first threw the dark thing in with me; the second put the force field back up.
There was no pain this time; I and Vreren had no blood relation. But as I stared numbly, there was nothing to feel; my hearts were gone. My hearts and everything that made me myself with them.
Sel Clemen smiled again. "I'll give you a standard hour to grieve." He tapped his chest and grinned an ironic grin I longed to slash from his head. "I'm not without hearts." He chuckled before his expression turned dark. "Make sure he doesn't use what remains of that bastard daughter of his to kill himself. He's much too much of use to us alive. And clean up that mess." He then exited quickly.
I bent down, picking up the dark thing. It was a bone, still warm from the body it had come from. A finger talon, broken short so to be only a few inches from the knuckle. I didn't need to sniff it to know whose scent it would carry thanks to Visser Sixty-Eight's statement. I closed my eyes, and felt the pain renew.
Sevelde....
It was unbearable, the pain.
Fyvwiu... Klindas... Lingrii... Sevelde... Vreren.
I shuddered, then stopped breathing; my hearts slowed and, one by one, shut off.
And still I stood, balanced on my feet and tail, open and staring eyes mirroring the hollowness that was within.
Jirrell... the dead one.
I considered keeping my hearts still. Letting my lungs atrophy. There would be nothing the Yeerks could do; I'd be brain dead in less than an hour. Useless.
But still, I closed, then opened, my eyes; my breathing began again; my hearts began to beat once more.
There was still Brenjuum. I could not leave him alone in the universe. He was only a boy. He needed someone.
How stupid I was, then. Whoever I was.
After all, Jirrell was dead.
All those without hope are as good as dead.
CHAPTER 8
It took me two standard years to learn a good, working form of Galard, the standard language the Gedds and Taxxons had spoken in; it took me only a fraction of one to figure out the controls of the mothership. The primitiveness of them was an insult to my expertise: there was nothing even remotely resembling slipdrive, or even approaching anything that could enable them to reach it - therefore, I never bothered mentioning its existence. The Visser kept Sel Clemen as a host until he didn't need to use the language I understood, then returned to a strange host that looked somewhat like an thirty-armed, bluish-skinned octopus with three globular eyes and two mouths, feeling very accomplished to have earned a rank of Sixty-two. I'd been allowed to see Brenjuum, a hollow-eyed smaller version of myself with a mane of brassy gray. The words we'd traded were brief and emotionless. Then Brenjuum was gone; although I'd see another of our small party once or twice, either Hork-Bajir or Bayetai, I never saw Brenjuum again. I wish I had not seen him in the first place.
The years passed monotonously, how many I never bothered to count. I learned of more races than I ever had wanted to know - Andalites, Bre'Tak, Corrts, Kondrots, Jyruu, Leerians, Humans... - of which I came to see too many. The humans were new, though. Tiny creatures of about a third my size with a surprisingly similar, bi-symmetrical build as Bayetai had, but tailless, wingless, and utterly without any form of natural protection - no horns, no talons, no fangs, nothing. I wondered blandly how any race could evolve into the dominant species without any natural weapons. I learned from a Human-Controller that it was because humankind was the only race on their planet to use constructed tools and develop the slightest bit of acknowledgeable sentience. That didn't sound very fair, but then, I was all too familiar with how fair life really was. After all, my daughters were never allowed to grow up. Lingrii would have been so pretty.... and Klindas had always been so sweet... and darling Sevelde, second-born but so much closer to my heart than Fyvwiu had been... and steadfast Fyvwiu himself... and beloved, oh-so-brilliant and beloved Vreren.....
As always, I forced the thoughts from my mind. I had been taken off the bridge in the middle of my shift by direct order of the Visser. I turned into the medical bay, to be confronted by the abomination that was all tentacles and rounded head and giant, globby eyes and fanged, slobbery mouths. "Visser," I greeted it.
The mouths turned upward. "Greetings, pilot. Good of you to be so prompt. You've served me well these years, and I thought I might reward you."
I frowned. "I want for nothing."
The Visser waved a tentacle at that. "Oh, rubbish. You want for so much. You want for your past, but at least you've been smart enough to put it behind you. You want for your family as well, and, alas, that cannot be returned to you." Two tentacles bent toward the balloon-like head. "Then again...."
A door opened, and behind it stood - barely - a Hork-Bajir female. She raised her head painfully, and her eyes widened. "Grift!" she gasped, pulling back into her little hidden alcove. Her claws and blades were gone; her horns had been rubbed to near-nothingness. One knee was askew, both elbows fused, and there was a pair of kinks in her spikeless tail. "Bayet," she growled low in her throat. My nostrils flared a little; she was of the original group. I almost smiled; it was the one I'd thrown out of my chair, in that past life. The irony tasted bitter in my mouth, but not poisonous. It was a pleasant thing to think of, rather than to dwell on, the past reality.
The Visser chuckled. "Jirrell, I'd like you to meet your new mate."
I did not speak right away. Instead I glared at the Visser. "What is the point to this, Visser?"
"Point? Very direct, Jirrell. Of course, you've never been one to waste time." The two mouths grinned. "The point is, I have my orders. And they might interest you. The fact is, that I am to figure out the secret to your orba."
I stiffened. "What?"
The Visser chuckled. "It's quite simple, really. Your race, our Controllers have found, believe that you descended from a race called the orba. Fascinating myth, really. But it seems that the Council of Thirteen want to find how much truth is in it. And they've come up with a compromise among themselves - we combine the DNA of a Bayetajin and a Hork-Bajir two hundred times, two hundred random combinations. We see what viable embryos we get from it. And we see, from there, what we get from them."
My eyes narrowed. "You're forgetting something, Visser." I glanced at the half-forgotten broken Hork-Bajir, who glared spitefully back, before returning my gaze to the Visser. "Hork-Bajir and Bayetai are sub-species. Incompatible."
"Oh, hardly. You don't understand, Jirrell - this is already done. Congratulations, Jirrell." The Visser waved a tentacle at an opaque cylinder that rested on one of the tables. It was about two feet high and half one in diameter. "You're about to become a father." I inhaled sharply as the cylinder began to rise, fluids spilling from beneath it into a drain built into the table. "This is only the first viable combination we've come upon, of course. Number twenty-three. Perhaps you can come up with a better name?"
There were groans from the medical scientists looking on; the creature that hid beneath the canister had three toes per foot and talons. Its skin was almost black in color, but as I watched, its thick stomach plates were revealed; its tail ended in a long, skinless blade; it bore wings on its wide shoulders; its hands held two fingers and a thumb; its head bore four horns of appropriate length; its skull was plastered with thick strands of grayish hair. Only its skin color, an almost black-green, and its eye color, a cloudy, almost bluish green, gave away that this thing... this aatojuik... was not Bayetai.
This aatojuik... this child... was mine.
The Visser made a sound of disgust, then swore. "Oh, kill it. It's not what we need."
The little thing looked about, and its strange gaze fell on the Hork-Bajir. She made a cooing sound, entranced by the little aatojuik, but the thing made no sound in return as it wobbled on its oversized feet, then fell over with a thud. Instead it turned its gaze on its sire... on me... and slowly... uncertainly... it smiled.
"No."
The Visser looked at me in surprise. "You dare-"
"It might make a good Controller, Visser." I inwardly shuddered at my own words. "You've told me how much more useful Bayetai would be if they could be made into Controllers. Here's a very good chance to try it. Even if you don't, he doesn't know what you are - he's yours, no matter what you do to him." With that I turned my back to the aatojuik. "And name him whatever you will. It matters not to me."
"Hmm." I could feel the Visser's smiles. "Him, you say? A son? Perhaps it is its scent - my sense of it isn't all too well - but I must say, I do
not know how you know it is male, Jirrell."
I glared behind myself. "We tend to know our own," I replied sharply. "Do with it what you want. It matters not to me." I walked out the door, not stopping until I turned the first corner on my way back to the bridge. I then leaned against the wall, shuddering.
Arctesch.
The name echoed through my head, chilling me to my marrow. Arctesch.
Traitor.
"Jirrell?"
The name was spoken in a whisper; I glanced over my shoulder, and was shocked, speechless, to see a familiar face. My voice was shaking as I whispered, "Lydyiuh?"
"We all look alike to them, don't we?" The limping doctor smiled grimly. His knee was fused; his horn still broken; his mane, though glassier, still long and thick, if not more so than the last time I'd seen him, but noticeably shorter in many places; his arm set but the elbow slightly askew. He was the most beautiful mirage I'd ever seen. "No one's even questioned my being here. How fare you, dearest?" He touched my arm gently, and I jerked in surprise.
He was real.
"Get out of here."
Lydyiuh's smile eased into something more sincere. "I must say, it is good to see you alive."
"You don't understand. You have to go. Now!"
He seemed oblivious to my vicious, snarling tone. "Jirrell, some of us managed to get home and went to return, but the Hork-Bajir refused to cooperate. We found the z-space trail of this monstrosity and my ship followed it. Listen to me - we're coming for you."
"No. You can't."
"We can't leave you here!"
"Lydyiuh!" The other Bayetajin's mouth snapped shut at the snarl
that was my voice. "You will leave, now. Don't wait for any others you took with you. You will leave, and tell any following you that we are all dead. Is that clear?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Leave!" I hissed. "We are dead, or as good as it!"
"But your deaths-"
"Blame it on the distance, anything, but we are dead!" I slashed the air before me, barely missing Lydyiuh's throat. "We have nothing now! Haven't you seen any of the others, Lydyiuh?" I shuddered. "I'm the only one left with wings! Most of us don't have a single talon left, much less souls! If I weren't in such a shock right now... it's taking everything I have
not to turn on you!"
"Jirrell, we need you."
"What you need is to get your miserable corpse out of this Hell, Lydyiuh. We are dead." I turned away. "Lydyiuh, they've killed them. Everyone but Brenjuum. They need him to keep me sane so I can fly this miserable armageddon from one end of the forsaken universe to another. All that's left of us are whatever they... the Yeerks... haven't cut off. That's how they keep us in line - they tear us apart, piece by piece. First any relations we have, then they go after us. Lydyiuh... they've killed Sevelde."
"Sevelde is dead?" Lydyiuh had always had the utmost respect for the short-tempered young female traditional artist with the dark lavender mane, more than nearly anyone else. For her part, Sevelde had always looked to him as an unrelated uncle. Even Lydyiuh's mate, grim as she was, had ungrudgingly liked her. "How could they kill Sevelde?"
"They killed her mind, trying to take it over. From there, she was useless to them, so they killed her husk."
"Not Sevelde...."
"No, not just Sevelde. They've killed us all, Lydyiuh. Now get out of here."
"I'm not leaving you to this."
"Get out!" I howled. Then, lowering my voice, I grabbed the Bayetajin and shook him until his neck was ready to snap. "I can't go. Grab any you can when you leave, but I can't go, Lydyiuh. You don't understand...." A violent tremor ran through me. "The ship. You have to destroy the ship." But even as I said it, I knew it was stupidity. There was no way it could be done with the entire fleet of Bayetai warships, much less a single small vessel.
"What?" Lydyiuh shook his head. "I can't do that!"
"You have to. You don't understand...." My jaw trembled so violently, it was near impossible to speak; I knew my old friend couldn't do what I asked. He could only return with the horror only I, Jirrell, could tell him. "Lydyiuh, they're trying to make orba."
"What are you talking about?"
"I have another son now, friend." The color drained from Lydyiuh's
face. "They... they combined my DNA with that of a Hork-Bajir. They will, two hundred times... they want an orba out of it, but so far all they have is a nearly-black Bayetajin that I don't know what they're going to do with. His name... it's Arctesch."
Lydyiuh bared his teeth. "Traitor?"
I nodded. "Arctesch," I affirmed. "Who knows what they'll get if it continues? You have to go, friend. Find who you can and leave. But..." I shuddered again. "As long as they have Brenjuum, and now Arctesch... I can't go."
"I understand, Jirrell." Lydyiuh gripped my arm. "But understand - we will be back." A dark look crossed his face. "Some of us can't kill our own."
"You can't kill us," I snarled in response. "We're already dead. Is that clear? Now get out of here, and listen to me - please - do not come back. They've modified our own weapons for their use. They'd have no effect on their ships. You'd be coming in for a massacre. Save yourself, Lydyiuh, and any you can, destroy the ship if you can. But go."
"You'll not be forgotten, friend."
"I won't forget you if I can help it, dearest." I tried to smile, but my
mouth refused to reach anything more than a grimace, if that. "Go."
Lydyiuh nodded. "Four shek are remaining behind," he whispered. "They were all that came with me, besides our pilot, still on the ship. You have no say in that. We had already agreed on that, back home. Good luck, dearest. May we meet again, someday." With that, he turned and limped off down the corridor, not looking back.
I waited until he disappeared from view, and headed back for the bridge.
To this day, I can only hope he escaped. Like Brenjuum, I never saw him again.
But, unlike Brenjuum, I never heard anything of him again either....
CHAPTER 9
Arctesch grew less quickly than I expected, or perhaps the years passed slower than I gave them credit; either way, when the next embryo, number forty-four, came to term, he was still considered too young to join me in overseeing its "birth", but I really didn't care. To keep me in line, Visser Sixty-Two had chosen a very effective, if unreasonably cruel, way of doing it - I was in charge of overseeing the "birth" of each viable embryo. Under their supervision, of course - as a pilot, such matters were not deemed as part of my "expertise".
"Forty-four", as far as I knew it, was female. I sighed, more out of sadness than anything else; nothing could compare to Sevelde. "Begin," I said.
The canister began to raise; there were moans as the two-toed feet were revealed. What was strange about the very Hork-Bajir feet, however, was their pale green color, paler even than my own. As more of the body was revealed, it showed no tail blade, no stomach plates, two horns on her head like a Hork-Bajir female, three fingers and a thumb, and small, curved talons everywhere. The blades at the joints were correct; only the pale color of her skin and pale, greenish-blue eyes, almost indistinguishable from her skin but for their blue tone, and fragile build, like I had never seen in a Hork-Bajir, showed her to be peculiar.
Showed.
Nrintai, that's what I knew her to be. Gentle talon. My expression softened at the sight of the fragile-looking Hork-Bajir, whose name was just another word for mother.
"A pale Hork-Bajir," the Visser sneered. "And a weak-looking one at that."
"The first seems to be proving himself rather well," I pointed out in as bored a voice as I could manage. "Perhaps this one will be of some use."
"Looks like a breeder to me," one of the doctors muttered to another. I ignored the comment.
"If you insist, Jirrell," the Visser said, shrugging many of its shoulders as if it didn't matter. "Oh, before you go, I thought you might want to know - embryo sixty-eight is ready in the next room."
"And seventy-three in a year or so," one of the doctors said. "The Council wants us spreading them out for now, because of the strange disunities. Until we start getting things that actually look like cross-breeds, we're in no rush."
"Very well," I said, sounding disinterested, but my gaze stayed on the little creature before me. Nrintai, I thought with an inward smile. She looked up with near-blind eyes and smiled the blank smile of a newborn, giving it to any that would look. The Visser made a sound of disgust and started toward the next room. I followed. "Proceed," I said as I entered the room.
The new set of doctors began, the canister rising slowly. I was too busy listening for a name that it took the horrified gasps of the others to bring me about. I roared in disgust.
Whatever it was, it was black as tar with wings twice the size of its limp body. Toes with enormous talons raked up its feet, in a vertical rather than horizontal row. It had three legs, with bones that might have been blades jutting out of each joint, but that it had no joints to speak of, only limp places where the bones should have been. Its insanely long neck was twisted in the most grotesque manner. Its eyes were dead white, its pupils gray, and oversized, its horns jagged like Bayetai blades and ringing its head; there must have been twenty of them. It had its extra leg in place of its right arm; the left was all thumbs rather than fingers, with talons longer than the length of its body. Its tail looked almost like a comb, with a double row of spines raking from it, and ending in a thin tail blade. It had no snout at all, just a gash across its face.
"Kill it!" the Visser screamed.
I shook my head. "You can't."
The Visser glared at me, outraged. "It's an abomination!"
"It's already dead," I snarled in return. "You can't kill a corpse, Visser. At least, not so far as I've seen. Even you Yeerks haven't discovered a way to do that yet." I left the room, too disgusted by the sight of the creature to ever go back into that room again - at least, not until I was forced to. I ignored the horrible sound of a name that echoed in my head like a dying wail. Seen'tife'ck. Unnatural.
Literally, "helpless abomination".
I swore something then. I swore that, whenever "seventy-three" was begun, I would find out and I would kill it. I wouldn't let there be any more abominations.
I of course knew how useless swearing anything was. What I didn't know, however, was that I was too late... that a worse abomination already existed....
CHAPTER 10
The doctor must have been psychic; Nrintai was too weak to become a soldier like a normal Hork-Bajir. Her hearts weren't in it. She was made a breeder quite early. But that was still awhile in my future.
Needless to say, I couldn't keep my promise to myself about "seventy- three". Too soon I found myself back in place over a canister. "Proceed," I said. "It had better not be another abomination, or someone will pay for it."
"It's alive, at least, Grer 072," one of the doctors, a Bre'Tak, assured me. It was a little curious to see that all four of the doctors were Bre'Tak this time around. "Other than that, I can't tell you much. Not even the sex of the little beast."
The canister started to rise; there were groans at the sight of a pair of medium-green feet with three toes, like a Hork-Bajir with the skin of a Bayetajin who had spent too much time in the sun. "Quiet!" I snapped, annoyed. "Act a little less like aatoju and more like grown beasts!" The Visser chuckled. The canister continued its journey; long, thin legs revealed semi-short pairs of jagged blades at the knees, like Hork-Bajir ones, but chipped. I frowned; there was no tail yet, and no wings. Where were they?
There was a scraping sound, and the tail fell from where it had gotten wedged between the canister and the aatojuik. My eyes widened.
The blade on the end of the tail was incredibly long, at least half as long as the tail itself, which was without sharp, Hork-Bajir spines. However, it wasn't like a Bayetajin tailblade; for one thing, it was not correctly proportioned, being ridiculously long. For another, it had a thorn-like growth that was so sharp it glittered, like a Hork-Bajir spine had fused into the tail blade.
The hands were revealed, and my expression darkened even farther; there were two fingers and a thumb, like a Bayetajin, even though their feet were like those of a Hork-Bajir. Then I noticed that what I had mistook for ankle blades were opposable, like my own third toes. And the talons.... they were long, though not as long as a Bayetajin would have, and curved, but not nearly as curved as a Hork-Bajir's. The creature had stomach plates that looked of the usual sort, but yellower than the normal tawny color. The ones that should have extended down the tail thinned to nothing more than discolored skin. The body was delicately thin, not like Nrintai but like a Bayetajin, until the canister reached the shoulders, which were surprisingly wide. Spines like that of a Bayetajin extended down its back, but they, like the blades I realized were under-serrated, not chipped, that appeared at the knees and elbows, were too long; they shrunk until they ended just before the base of the tail. Smaller blades raked from the wrists; the wrist ones looked like afterthoughts. The neck was as long and graceful as either race could hope for; the head-
The snout was vaguely beak-like, but not nearly as so as a Hork-Bajir's, with the length of a Bayetajin but a lot of the Hork-Bajir curve, giving the creature a very concentrated, cunning look thanks to its yellow-tinted snout. It had three horns, but not like a Hork-Bajir male - one was in the correct place for a Hork-Bajir's foremost horn, but it turned backward, with a split on the end like that of a Bayetajin midridge, with two others over its ear-holes, like a Bayetajin's side pair but a little too straight and far, far too short. And between the horns-
A mane. A mane that was too short, one that would be forever stunted. One that would never be what a Bayetajin should have. One that would never hold the gentle, pale color natural to a Bayetajin.
A mane that was the brilliant red of human blood.
"What is it?" I whispered, too awed to say anything else.
All I could think it was... was... was beautiful. The Bayetai word for it would have been Aetaialaine. Beyond imagine. It did not matter that I could hear no name from it - that was my name for it. Aetaialaine.
It stumbled a little on its slim, bird-like feet, but managed to remain standing, which was as much a shock as the strange creature itself; aatoju can sometimes stand for a few moments at birth, but never for extended periods of time - not for a couple days, at the very least. For balance it flared... its wings. Or what little wings it had. They were tiny, at least as stunted as the mane, without a doubt a lot more so. They were ridiculous, in the opposite way as the cruel-looking tail blade - they were useless flaps of skin, nothing more.
"Kill that.... creature," the Visser snarled. "What is that thing?"
"An othyb," one of the doctors said, baring its teeth in disgust. "Look at that thing!"
The... thing...the Aetaialaine... glared around it with yellow eyes that held the faintest hint of green. It wasn't as blind as a Hork-Bajir, from the focused way it looked around, but it didn't appear able to focus on much of anything in particular with its odd, green-tinted gold eyes, which greatly resembled, I realized with a sharp pain in each of my hearts, the ones that helped to make Sevelde so beautiful. Like the other aatoju it looked at me, knowing by my scent what I was. It didn't smile like the others. Instead, I jerked as it spoke.
«Jrikvelh,» it said in a voice that resembled the cooing sound Lingrii made when she awoke, a gentle, semi-feminine sound that wasn't a sound at all; it couldn't be, since I seemed to be the only one who heard it. Never had the names of the others been spoken to me in this way; I hadn't even heard a name from this one; it was too strange. «Jirrell? Jrikvelh.» It looked around, its scarlet mane plastered to its skull as it stumbled around on its oversized feet, trying to stay upright, as if walking on stilts. It rested its enormous tail blade on the tabletop, and stopped stumbling, supported by its weight.
I felt as if my hearts had been torn from me, my empty hearts that beat to keep an empty husk functioning.
Jrikvelh. Not Aetaialaine, but Jrikvelh.
A word I had nearly forgotten, because after all the years as the heartless creature I had become, the Yeerkless Controller I passed my corpse as being, it had become nothing more than a cruel memory. Jrikvelh; the thing I had lost between Vreren's death and meeting the empty shell that remained of my Brenjuum.
Jrikvelh.
Hope.
There was only one way the little thing could know that word at birth.
"Belay that," I said calmly. "Bring it to its mother, like the others."
The Visser glared at me. "That othyb is nothing," it snarled. "What use could it be?"
"It's closer than we've been so far," I snapped in reply. "Look at it! Three horns of the correct formation, small wings, thin tail, the facial shape."
"That... thing... is worthless. Too much is wrong to outweigh what is right." The Visser regarded the creature with the most extreme disgust. "Kill that thing before it can kill itself."
"No." The Visser turned its glare on me, but I was beyond flinching. Jrikvelh. Hope. After all those years, I could not allow hope to die again. "What it lacks in orba traits it more than makes up for in the best traits of Hork-Bajir and Bayetai... but for its wings. Besides, open your eyes - it's still standing. Whatever it is, it's stronger than the others. Stronger, even, than a Bayetajin. Anything so strong at birth is not to be destroyed simply because it isn't pretty. Such strength should be harnessed, encouraged."
The Visser glowered at the creature, but there was something I had learned long ago - this silly slug was desperate for promotion. It believed nearly anything it was told, to save itself the trouble of sorting anything out. Of course, anyone suspected of giving it misinformation was immediately executed. "Very well, if that is your belief. If it fails me, then I'll just throw it in the incinerator as punishment. Perhaps you should keep your foolish soft-heartedness to yourself, Jirrell - it would have been nicer to simply put it out of its misery here and now." A tentacle waved to the doctors. "Remove those flaps of skin it tries to pass off as wings. They'll never function. Then get it out of my sight."
A Bre'Tak approached the little thing, looking revolted. The tiny hybrid looked to me with Sevelde's eyes, and I felt... a brushing at my mind. «Jirrell?» the little thing asked me in its faintly feminine voice-that-wasn't-a-voice. A look of confusion appeared on its intelligent face.
I'm sorry, I thought. I can't save you.
«Save? No? Jirrell?» The creature looked at the approaching Bre'Tak, its pupils visibly focusing on the alien. «No?» Then it bared its tiny, soft teeth. «No!» The Bre'Tak reached for it, laser in hand, when the little thing suddenly spun around. «No!»
In less than a heart cycle, it was over; the creature, without a sound, fell on all fours as it completed its rotation, its fragile balance gone; the tail blade, so sharp it was utterly clean in spite of its first use, banged against the tabletop loud enough to vibrate the walls. But it wasn't over for the little thing; it was over for the surgeon.
He looked at his handless wrist at the end of his arm, then his finger-less hand on the table, then his fingers, still wrapped around the laser, on the floor, before starting to scream. I felt a surge of pride in the little thing; it had known, instinctively, how to use its queer tail blade, as much as any Bayetai aatojuik does, even though it wasn't really the same. In a single move it had sealed the fate of a full-grown Bre'Tak.
"Kill him!" the Visser shouted over the cries of the others. "A handless surgeon is as useless as a headless host. Restrain that thing, then sever its wings!" The Visser's voice turned cold. "Come with me, Grer 072." I followed the oozing creature from the room, forcing my eyes away from the sight of two of the Bre'Tak fighting to restrain flailing limbs and tail as the third finished off the first. The aatojuik's cries followed us both into the corridor; the shut door only muffled the sounds.
"You had better be correct that this one can be trained," the Visser snarled at me. It couldn't kill me, or at least I knew it wouldn't; I was the best damned pilot in the whole fleet of mother ships, the stress being on damned before pilot. "If not, it will not be the only thing to lose its wings."
"I understand, Visser," I replied, showing my neck slightly in a show of humility. My own wings twitched at the thought of losing them. I didn't like that thought - even if they had become useless; I could not recall clearly the last time I had preened them, much less put them to their natural use.
A high-pitched squeal of pain, the first pain an aatojuik feels, came from the room we had left, stopped, then resumed for short duration, and stopped to be replaced by the whimpering of grown creatures. One of the Bre'Tak, a pair of deep gashes across his face and only one of his three eyes remaining, the others being mere a smears of fluid mixing with his blood, hurried out of the door, the aatojuik between two hands. She hung limply, with only short protrusions from her now bare shoulderblades. She glared at me, and I saw pain in those odd, beautiful, familiar eyes. «Jrikvelh,» the soundless whisper came it me. «Jrikvelh, Jirrell.»
They had restrained her, and now, like me, she would never be free, at least to fly. But I felt a glimmer of pride - she hadn't cried. She would - in this cursed way - live.
My Hope would live.
CHAPTER 11
What my second daughter was, was not labeled Aetaialaine, as I would have wished. She, and those like her, became known as othyb - a Galard word equivalent to monster. "Vile, malformed freak" is a closer translation.
And yes, there were more to come.
I entered the room, Arctesch at my heels, as he had been for nearly a year. It was impossible to deny that we looked much like father and son - I with my tall but haggard appearance, bent wings held high but almost lazily simply out of uselessness; the young creature with his already five foot tall height, three and a half times that of his birth. His skin had never lost its odd, black-green color. He stayed respectively quiet, but the interest of his sharp eyes, dull green in color, was plain. He held his leathery wings close to his body, out of the way. He looked at the table before him, right on his eye level. He was young yet, but often I found myself instructed to teach him to use his wings on my off-shifts. He was surprisingly bright, even at his young age.
I frowned immediately. "Why are there two canisters? I was informed that this was to be the emergence of number one hundred-twelve. What is the other one?"
One of the surgeons looked up. "Greetings, Grer 043. The formed
cell unexpectedly split in two before beginning its total formation. There are actually two 'one hundred-twelve's."
My hearts skipped. Clones! "Which is the first?" I asked, not knowing what else to say. The surgeon pointed to the left canister. Collecting myself, I nodded quickly and ordered, "Very well. Proceed."
The surgeon gave her affirmation, then began the process. The opaque containers began to rise, giving off the synthetic amniotic fluid. Yet again the surgeons were disappointed; like Nrintai, these only had two toes per foot. Would these - sons, I told myself; I had discovered that the embryo had been male - two be like her, or like the third, the one with the thought-voice I had never revealed?
The fluid continued to drain. The clone was on his feet, while the other knelt when there was too little to stand in any longer. Backward knees, as before, as it should be in any case - the original had no talons on his heels, while the clone did, albeit short ones. I frowned as the edges of wings came into view; these were like the third, like Jrikvelh, then. Tails whipped as balance became mandatory, single-bladed ones that were frighteningly short. Three fingers and a thumb per hand. Four horns - but they were wrong. Their faces were too smooth, lacking of angles, except for their very Hork-Bajiran, beak-like mouths. Their frontmost horns pointed to their backs, like Jrikvelh's, but they all did. All four horns, arranged unnaturally evenly around their heads in somewhat of a diamond formation, pointed backward. The fourth was short, curved, like hers, but they were from their necks, and the others were all straight and thinner. These two were as strange as the third, stranger even. Like the third, their vertebral spines were short, but not so much as hers, while the hair plastered to their heads as well as their singular thick skin-plates were an unnatural black. The original still did not stand, and the clone tottered before falling to the metal. He didn't cry at all - he'd expected it. I sought out their eyes - the clone was the stronger, with a sharp green-yellow-eyed gaze reminiscent of Brenjuum's original, dangerous gray-gold ones. The other glanced around constantly, then uttered a bleak, croaking cry, the kind that used to make creatures soften, take such an infant into their arms and ignore the differences from norm.
But now it was different. Such kindness was a weakness. Weakness meant death. Kindness could not be afforded anymore; it was too expensive now, made obsolete. I had never wished more that I didn't remember the times before, when kindness was given for no price at all but thanks, some-
times not even that.
The times before the Yeerks.
"Well?" the surgeon asked, waving disgustedly at the two aatoju, who were trying to force their feet to stay underneath them. They were nothing to my Jrikvelh. Arctesch growled uncertainly under his breath, obviously not pleased with his "brothers".
I heard her voice, soft, simplistic in her youth. She was not yet very old, after all. «They are, as I. Keep. Strong, they.» I received a sense of... of humor, of... of amusement. «Opposites. Liured, first. Ended to Deruil.»
I understood; Liured was the first. The clone, Deruil.
Opposites. Peace first, split into war.
"Give them to their mother," I said, scowling.
Arctesch looked up at me. "What of their wings?" For his young age he was bright. Too bright. "They won't work. Get rid of them."
«Like me? Do not!» Jrikvelh paused. «One. ONE!»
I understood. Somehow I always did. "Remove the wings from the.... the clone," I decided, waving in their general direction. Best they be taken from the stronger of the two.
Arctesch scowled. "Why?"
«Apart. Same - apart.»
"So that they might be told apart," I replied, not looking at my oldest. I wished Nrintai could have come instead, or better, Jrikvelh. Despite her youth I somehow always understood the strange little thing. But to be seen with one so young would be a curiosity to the other officers. I could not afford that.
Not if I wished to be there for her, when she was old enough to speak. Old enough to understand me as I did her.
Old enough.....