The Fall of the Infinite Empire

by dentedpat

Many thousands of years before the events of KOTOR the Rakatan Infinite Empire dominates the galaxy, with no enemies on the horizon. But an uprising on the world of Korriban and the capture of a family on the world of Tatooine will set the stage for the Fall of the Infinite Empire and the rise of the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic

6. Chapter 6: The Star Map

The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter Six

It was the day following Myra and her family being deposited in their room. They had not seen a Rakatan since the colorful aide had left them there. Droids had brought water and food. The food was something none of them had eaten or even seen before. Myra's people ate mostly animals that lived in the caves, and various kinds of mosses and fungi that grew there. This was different. It was not meat, but it was much harder than moss. It had a hard exterior, but the inside was soft and a bit stringy. They would learn later that it was called bread. When its nature had been explained to them Myra could recognize it from stories. Food had grown from the ground, because water had fallen from the sky. People gathered the food and cooked it so it would last. Before the rebellion. Before the water which fell from the sky was replaced with fire.

Myra and Tytus had talked after the children went to sleep about what was going on. For some reason Tytus was sure that the Rakatans were planning to eat them. He insisted they start to plan their escape, and that if escape was not possible to figure out a way to spare the children any suffering. Myra lacked his confidence in what was ahead. She held fast to the idea that the old man had been angry that Brun had been hurt. Tytus pointed out that if someone had started cutting on the rat you had caught and were saving to cook later, you would be mad too. Myra pointed out that the Rakatans clearly had enough food without eating them. Despite this Tytus could not get beyond the idea that escape was necessary, and immediately so. He wanted to go home, Myra realized, back where things made sense. Myra felt the pull of home as well, and said as much to Tytus. But she felt as well something she did not talk about, an excitement and curiosity which pulled her away from home. She had never thought to see the great city, and now that her son was recovered, and miraculously so, a part of her longed for more new sights. Myra had always been an explorer, but one always restricted to caves.

The few other remaining members of Myra's family spoke little. They included Tytus' parents, Myra's younger sister and her mate, who had no children. The cousin who had died had been the child of Myra's uncle, who had died some years ago himself. The fear and uncertainty had prevented anyone from grieving him properly. Perhaps there would be time to say the words, to perform the rites. Myra had no idea when that time would come. Perhaps it wouldn't come, but there was no point to assuming that as far as she was concerned.

When the door opened revealing the one-eyed Rakatan different thoughts went through their head. Tytus prepared to fight and Myra prepared to stop him. The Rakatan had merely pointed at Myra and then gestured outside the room. Myra had turned to gather her family together when she heard the guard hiss. She turned back to him. He was pointing resolutely at her, and her alone. Myra could feel Tytus, standing behind her and to her left, tensing. It was as if she could hear him talking himself into being ready to die. She moved her left hand back to take hold of his clenched fist. He had to calm himself. He was not usually like this. Usually he was the steady one, even tempered and averse to risk. Only when she or the children were threatened, as they had been unceasingly for the past two days, did this impetuous rage reveal itself. But this was not the right time for it. He had to be calm, to be himself. He could not stop the beasts from taking her, he could only get himself killed and leave their children alone. She said these words to herself, as if willing them to travel from her mind through her arm and into him. And whether it was that or her firm grasp he seemed to get the message. He opened his fist to take hold of her hand and give it a squeeze. Everything good in his life had come through following her lead, he knew. He would follow again.

Myra turned and smiled at her children. She knelt down so that she was on level with her smallest, Corus as she said "I will be back. Everything is going to be alright. Papa will stay with you." She touched each of them briefly in turn. Make this moment a good one, in case it was the last, she thought. A gentle touch, a smile, and a calm voice. If this was their last memory of her, it should not be of her afraid.

She stood and slowly pulled her gaze away from her children, back to the one-eyed murderer. To her surprise it had not hissed, screeched or made any other sound of displeasure at being made to wait. It simply waited in the doorway, spear in hand, staring at her with the one eye the old man had left to it.

"The Old Man?" she thought to herself. She kept wanting to call the master of this place that. Why? Because of what she had guessed some aliens were saying to each other. Myra had always trusted her hunches. That was how she had always found the water. But the times they were correct had, she realized, given her too much confidence in what were, in essence, just guesses.

She stepped out of the quarters her family was staying in and began to follow the one-eyed Rakatan who had come to fetch her. It walked as though it were in no hurry to get where it was going. Perhaps it was to the one she thought of as the Old Man to whom they were going. If someone had cut out Myra's eye the day before she would have been hesitant to go meet him too. As they made their way through the facility Myra tried harder to keep track of the turns, and to find differences between the hallways which she could remember later. She had been so tired, and so scared before that it had seemed hopeless, but she wasn't tired now, and there was no point to simply giving in to the idea that they could not escape. There hadn't been many Rakatans outside the buildings when they had been marched here. Perhaps if she could figure out how the doors appeared in the walls she could get them out of the city. And then maybe, with a little luck they could find a cave, any cave. The thought occurred to her that they were safer here, but again, she did not know that. She had no reason to think it. It was just another guess.

They emerged into the large room that contained the garden, and when Myra looked up she could see the sun through the ceiling. She did not think it had been possible to see the stars through it the night before, but perhaps she hadn't been paying enough attention to her surroundings. Also in the sky she could see the red planet, sometimes called the red dragon in stories. She thought she saw a small but bright flash of light come from the planet while she stood there. And there she stayed for several minutes, until, in a blow to Myra's attempts to be develop some rational skepticism about trusting her hunches, the Old Man walked in. He saw her looking up through the ceiling at the red giant in the sky but said nothing about it. Myra took notice of him and turned towards him, but tried not to stare so impudently at him as she had back in the glass desert. It had been tempting fate to be so bold then, but fate had seemed, at that point, intent on her dying face down in the glass shards. Now that fate seemed to hold out the possibility of living a while longer Myra tried not to anger the being that was clearly in charge.

The two Rakatans exchanged no words. The one-eyed guard simply began to walk, as did Myra at a gesture from the other, seemingly older Rakatan. As they made their way through the winding halls, halls in which Myra had quickly lost her way again, he took up position in the rear. Myra felt as though every step she took was being watched and evaluated, which did nothing for her anxiety. If judging was happening Myra preferred to know the basis for the judgments and their consequences.

They emerged from the building at what Myra assumed was the same spot her family had entered it the night before, though there was no way to tell. The hallways were almost impossible to tell apart from each other, and the exterior of the building was just as featureless. The sun was warm on Myra's shoulders, and she decided to take a moment to appreciate the wonderful oddness of that feeling. The day before had been the first day she had ever felt sunshine on her skin, and the fear of death had gotten in the way of focusing on just how delightful it was at the time. Maybe she would die today, but she would take this one chance to feel this thing her ancestors had felt, and to love it as she assumed they must have.

Waiting for them outside the building was a vehicle, but not of the kind she and her family had been placed for their travel to the city. This one had an open top, and comfortable looking seats at the rear. The one-eyed guard took one of the seats in the front of the vehicle where there were all sorts of buttons and lights. Myra felt a gentle push on her back and jumped a bit with surprise. The other Rakatan was pushing her in the direction of the comfortable rear seats, which took the shape of a half circle facing the front seats. Myra sat down and the Rakatan chose a spot opposite her, so that they were looking at each other.

The craft smoothly began to move. It hovered above the ground and moved at around the speed Myra could jog. She wondered whether this was magic or something else? She knew the stories of crafts like this from her own people's past. Her people did not have the aliens' magic, so clearly there were other ways to accomplish such things.

Myra was not prepared when she heard the Rakatan say "So how are you feeling today?" Strictly speaking she supposed later that she hadn't heard him say that. The sounds had been the same kinds of sounds that always came from the Rakatans' mouths when they spoke, but she felt absolutely sure about what they meant this time.

Her shock at having understood him must have been obvious, because when he spoke again he said, "There is only so much you can do on your own, at this point anyway. But it takes only a little effort on my part, and we can understand one another."

"I…I don't understand," came Myra's reply.

"Yes you do." The Rakatan's response seemed as though he was amused. "You just don't understand how it could be that you understand. You know, but you don't know how you know. A frustrating position to be in. But you are in luck, because I can relieve your frustration. You, young one, have the Gift."

"The Gift?" Myra replied softly, so softly she could barely be heard over the quite quiet sounds of the vehicle's engines.

"Yes the Gift. It is…too much to explain at all once now, but a demonstration can go a long way." The Rakatan looked at the roadway on either side of their vehicle. The roads were fairly empty. Myra had seen a few Rakatans, but at a distance, on other roads. There seemed to be many roads in this city, forming a grid pattern, and their road had been entirely empty of other vehicles or anyone walking. But there were, here and there, little piles of glass shards, which had blown in during one of the windstorms. The larger pieces would be gathered up by the street cleaners, but the smaller shards would get blown about until they settled into corners. One of these pieces flew from its pile and into the vehicle with them. It flew towards the Rakatan's hand but stopped in the air just before it got to him.

"The Gift grants those who have it control. You may move objects without touching them. You can channel energy through yourself and into other things. You can, and this is the point that is relevant just now, see into the minds of others. Even if they speak a language you do not know, their meaning is, unless they choose to hide it, open to you. With practice one can learn to converse with any living being in the galaxy. You have not had that practice of course, but it is only a little effort on my part to meet you halfway."
Myra listened as she stared at the glass shard. It rotated slowly in the air, catching the sunlight, and sending it back out, causing little rainbows to dance across her rough, homespun clothes. The glass troubled her. She had seen the great glass mounds that night long ago, as she and her family had made their way across the open ground. The stories had just been stories until then. Stories of a green world, rich and abundant. Stories of that world incinerated as punishment. She had believed them, as a child. As an adult she had not thought about them too much. But it was only upon seeing the glass dunes, walking among them, that she really felt what had happened to her world. Seeing a single piece held up by the same power that had created it, created them all, absorbed her attention, and so she said nothing in response to the explanation she was given. The Rakatan considered her silence for a moment and then took his opportunity to go on.

"It is all that is left. All that remains. The forests, the soil, your cities, most of your people. All that is left is this," the Rakatan said, nodding at the glass shard. "Did you know that we had to invent how to do this? How to reduce all the materials of the surface of your world into this crystalline form. Someone was given the task to figure it out. Several someones in fact. Because it was decided that you needed to be made an example of it. That this world needed to be made an example of."

Myra looked at the Rakatan's face, trying to determine what the point was of this. Did he take joy in the destruction of her world? Was he trying to make her angry? His face, like all Rakatan faces, was a mystery to her. She could make nothing of the expressions they wore, or how those expressions changed. But something about him made her feel as though he was not reveling or mocking. Perhaps this gift he spoke of, their magic, was responsible for this feeling. Certainly she did not believe for a moment she had it herself. What reason did she have to think so, when the example of her power that he gave her was of her failing to understand him without his help? It was a lie. They could tell somehow that she had been guessing at what they meant, and they had decided to try to dupe her with a story that flattered her. There was no reason to play along. No reason to speak at all. The Rakatan tried again.

"Let's start with a simpler topic. This world we destroyed. What do you call it?"

Myra was taken aback. She was sure she was being toyed with, but she couldn't figure out the game, and so she answered, "Tatooine."

The Rakatan smiled, an expression Myra could not distinguish from a grimace or a threatening baring of his teeth.

"It is odd that you call it that. That is not what your people used to call it. Did you know that?"

Myra shook her head.

"I did not think so," the Rakatan said softly. He paused for a moment while looking at the floor of the vehicle before saying, "Tatooine is our name for this world. It is our way to give worlds the name of the navigator who found it. This world was found by a navigator name Tato-Heen. So we called it Tato-Heen's world. Over the years some of your people picked it up. The name changed a bit in the caves, as did your people. I used to wonder what you called it, but none of your people have remembered. What else has been lost with that one word? What songs did you sing about your world? Songs that must have been forgotten if you no longer remember the words within them. What stories had to be lost for you to forget that word? We didn't just destroy your cities and land, we killed the stories you told each other, the way you thought about yourself and the world. The people you used to be."

At this the Rakatan closed the hand he had been holding in the air, and the glass shard was crushed into a small ball. As the Rakatan opened his hand, the sand into which the glass had been turned drifted gently up and over them, depositing itself on the road behind them.

"The name your people gave it is gone. Tatooine is all that is left. Tatooine is your people's future. But it is not yours Myra."

All the other words he had spoken had been in their language, but in saying her name the Rakatan had actually said her name. As certain as she was that this was all for effect, that this whole conversation, this whole ride in this bizarre floating contraption was all a kind of manipulation, she could not help but be shocked. How did he know her name? Tytus had said her name in the room of course, maybe that was it. Maybe they heard everything Myra and her family said in that building?

"I know your name Myra, but you do not know mine, and that is hardly fair. My name is Zhed-Hai. I am the oldest of my people on your world and I have been here, on and off, for many years, since you were a child. And today I am leaving. And you are coming with me."

Myra could not help herself and yelled, "No!"

"Your family is coming too, though you will not be travelling together. They will arrive on Lehon, my home-world, the place we are going, a little after we do. It will only be a short time that you will be without them. I know it is difficult, but you must trust me that this is for the best. Do you understand?"

Myra paused for a moment to master her breathing, then answered, "Let us go home. That would be best."

"You mean the caves? Where you eat moss and rats? Where you stumble around in the dark? That is not your home. Your people were not meant to live that way, though that will change before too long. But not until long after you have died. Is that the life you want for your children? One lived day to day, hoping your water doesn't run out? Fighting for the scraps necessary to just stay alive? I can offer more. On Lehon you will never lack for food, or water. If your children grow sick or are injured we can cure them. What would have happened had we not been here to save your son?"

"If you had not been here my son would not have needed saving."

Zhed-Hai smiled again, and once again Myra was not sure that was what he was doing. "Of course that is true. But he could have suffered a similar injury climbing, or if he had the bad luck to come across one of the bigger rats, or one of those, what do you call them? Cave dragons? Could you have saved him? I can guarantee you that your children will live long, full lives if you come with me."

Myra thought about this for a moment, then set her jaw and replied, "We are going with you no matter what I think."

Zhed-Hai leaned back before answering, "Yes that is true. I am moving all I have acquired in my long years on this world back to Lehon. I have found and learned what I came here to find and to learn. And this place is going to become even more difficult to tolerate in the years to come."

"What do you mean?" Myra asked quickly.

"Look up," he told her. When she did he continued, "You see that large red planet? The one you call the red dragon?"

"Yes"

"The same ones that decided we needed to incinerate your world decided also that this was not enough. When these crystals break down the water contained within them will be released. In fact it is the moisture contained within them that makes them so unstable. And then, in a few thousand years, things will be back, well not to normal exactly, but something not so different than what came before. Your people, were they to come out from the caves, would be able to plant crops, raise animals. Start again. And maybe one day, thousands of years after that, you would once again reach out to the stars. And who knows, maybe that time you wouldn't find us waiting for you. But it would not do to think too much about what would happen in that case, because that is not how things will be. It was decided that you could not be allowed to go back. It was decided that your sin of fighting us so hard for so long required a more exemplary punishment. And so we set out to turn your planet into a desert. To burn the water away. Some inventive soul figured out that the great gas giant in this system is not so far from being a star itself. And so we have set out to make it one. It will be small, but it will also be quite close to your world."

"You can't do that."

Zhed-Hai did not smile as he responded to this statement of faith, he simply looked up at the red planet, and the periodic explosions that could just barely be seen on it.

"Yes we can. We are doing it right now. Asteroids at the edge of this solar system are being shot into the gas giant. The calculations were made and there are more than enough. Sometime long ago there must have been several very large rocky planets on the outskirts of this system to create so many asteroids. When enough of them end up in the core of that red planet there, it will have what it needs. The fires of creation will be lit. It will die far younger than normal stars, after only a few million years. But that will be sufficient. This world is dead Myra. Most of even the small number of your people who remain will die. The rest will adapt and become something…else."

Myra looked at Zhed-Hai with horror on her face. She didn't want to believe it of course, she could barely understand what was being said about planets and asteroids and stars, but the idea that these creatures would find a way to crush her people forever was eminently believable. She could not tell why he was sharing this with her. Was he gloating? Was he trying to scare her? The best she could muster in response was to say, "The gods will not permit it," which of course she did not really believe.

Zhed-Hai did not smile but sighed.

"If your gods existed, if they had any power, would they have let us do what we have already done to you?"

Myra thought about her home, in the caves. Her small family stuck mostly to itself, but they encountered others in the normal course of hunting and gathering and trading. The sources of water in the cave were usually not so far away from each other, and it was normal to talk to those from other families. Eventually her own children would have been expected to find mates in those other families. And of course there was the larger tribe of which they had once been a part, the tribe that Myra and Tytus had grown up in. She thought about all those people dying, about their children dying, or their grandchildren. She thought about them having no future on this world, their home. She did not cry often, Myra. She usually didn't have a great deal of patience for those who did. Life was about getting on with things that were hard. But she could not stop herself now. Her eyes welled with tears.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked, as much to have something to do besides cry as to get an answer.

"As I said there was a vote. It was decided that for the Empire to stay together, we couldn't allow rebellions like yours."

"Empire?"

"The Infinite Empire. Our Empire. We control thousands of systems, with hundreds of habitable worlds, most of them already inhabited when we found them, just like yours."

Myra thought about it, the empire spread across the stars, the empire of the Rakatans. It filled her with bitterness. To have so much and yet still to take her people's world from them. What did it gain them, to take from her people? What could beings who ruled thousands of worlds need from them? Consumed with these questions, Myra simply asked, "Why?"

Zhed-Hai looked at her a moment, as though trying to understand the question.

"Most of my people would think you a savage, barely better than the rats you share your cave with. They would look on your questioning any Rakatan as an insult, and to question someone like me, this would shock them speechless. But you have asked a question so many of them have forgotten to ask. Why do we have an Empire? What is the point of it? What its point is now I cannot say, nor can anyone else it seems. As for what it was for in the beginning, to answer that you must be shown some things first. And that will start today."

"Where are you taking me?" Myra asked quickly. She had been curious throughout the ride, but now that he brought it up, and after she had pressed far bolder questions, it seemed worth asking.

"We are almost there. You can see it," Zhed-Hai said as he pointed in the direction the vehicle was traveling.

Myra looked down the road ahead of them. They must have traveled a long way without her realizing it, because they were approaching what appeared to be a large sandstone hill, once she could not see on the horizon at the beginning of their journey, but which loomed large now. It stood in marked contrast to the other buildings, with their smooth metallic sheen. It was the only natural looking structure Myra had seen since entering the city. And a structure it was. That was becoming clear as they moved closer. Perhaps it had once been a hill, but if so it had clearly been shaped to form some kind of building. It was terraced and it narrowed considerably as it rose.

Myra stood up to get a better view of it, and Zhed-Hai rose behind her. For a moment he watched her look at the structure before saying, "It is the Temple of the Star Map, and it is our destination this day."

Myra stared at the building and thought of the words, 'Star Map.' A map was something you drew so you wouldn't get lost, Myra knew that. She had never used a map, or even seen one. The caves were usually too dark for that. When they could her people would choose to live near an area of the caves through which shafts of light came. But normally such places were too close to the surface, and when they weren't too close, they were often too far from water. They could and did light fires to use for cooking, but they could not do so for long. Even as a girl, living in the larger tribe, Myra would go most of the day without light. After her family set out on their own they would spend days without it. Maps of the caves would have been useless anyway, when you were moving up and down as often as you were moving across. But still the word had survived.

Their vehicle gently slowed to a stop before the large building. The one-eyed guard stepped out first and came around the vehicle to stand at attention, his spear pointed in the air, as Myra and Zhed-Hai stepped down. Myra was not sure what to do at first, but Zhed-Hai quickly stepped forward toward the sandstone temple. He walked toward what looked like a solid wall. Myra was prepared for it to slide out of the way, just as walls invariably did when Rakatans walked determinedly toward them in the other building, but this one did not. Zhed-Hai stopped just short of the wall, which, Myra could now see, was moving, but in parts. Different sections of it were moving, some up, some down, some side to side. Some were retreating into the temple and some were popping out. Myra felt as though there were far more moving pieces she could not see. She tried to concentrate on the feeling, and on the door, for she was now sure it was a door of some kind, but just within a few seconds the movement had stopped, and now the door moved up and out of sight. What was revealed was a long walkway with a low ceiling, angled downward towards an open doorway to a dimly lit room. The three of them walked in silence down this path, Zhed-Hai in the lead, Myra just behind him. The one-eyed guard held back at first, seeming hesitant to enter the building, but followed once it became clear that they were to go in.

Zhed-Hai reached the open doorway and walked into the room. When Myra entered she was surprised at how high the ceiling was. It had to extend all the way to the top of the building. On each of the four walls stood a large statue of a Rakatan, both hands holding a spear out in front of them. In the center of the room was a large, roughly pyramidal, black object. It consisted of three arms, themselves roughly triangular, reaching up from the base and meeting at their tops. Zhed-Hai walked right up to the black object and turned around to speak to Myra.

"Touch it."

Myra hesitated and looked at Zhed-Hai. She could not read the look on his face, and had no hunches or even guesses to make about what was going to happen. She reached her hand out slowly and as her hand came closer the smooth black material, she felt a chill. It did not seem particularly significant at first, no colder than a draft of cold air from a deep cave. But within a few seconds that chill had pervaded every part of her, stripping the warmth from her. She turned to look at Zhed-Hai, whose expression and bearing remained inscrutable. She peeked behind her to see the guard, and his mood at least was clear. He looked anxious and scared.

Myra turned back to look at the cold black object. Her fingers were only an inch or so from touching it. She wondered what would happen to her if she refused to do as she had been ordered to do. It was just a stone, she thought to herself, then she pushed forward and touched it. Everything went black. She could see nothing; the hall, the Star Map, the Rakatans, all of them had vanished. It was as though she were in one of the deep caves, with the difference that she could see herself perfectly well. But all else was empty darkness. Her heart raced and for a moment she thought that she had been killed, and that the afterlife was not as the old tales had promised. Then she thought that she had somehow been imprisoned, transported far away when she touched the Star Map. She closed her eyes, despite the fact that there was nothing in this place to distract her, and focused on her breathing, slowing it down as best she could.

She had mostly calmed herself when she heard it. A voice. Her eyes shot open, but of course there was nothing to see. She could still hear it. The voice was speaking to her but she could not make out what it was saying. It sounded like someone calling from far away, though it was impossible to make out any distances in the darkness. As she focused more on the voice she could feel it becoming clearer. It wasn't actually saying anything. There were no words. There was no message. Just a voice, in the darkness. It was screaming. It was not screaming for help. It was not screaming for anything. It was the sound of aimless terror and hopeless rage, and it was getting louder. It felt to Myra as if the scream had found her and was coming towards her. Though she realized at some level that it made no sense to do so, she began to run. She did not know whether she was running away from whatever the scream was coming from, but could not stop herself from fleeing. Still the scream grew in strength. Her recently reclaimed calm was gone, her breaths were shallow and quick as her heartbeat. It would be on her soon. She was sure of that even as she wasn't sure what that meant. How could a scream be on her? What would happen when it found her? The scream was growing wilder as it grew louder, as if becoming aware of Myra's presence made whatever was happening to it worse. She had the awful thought that if the scream ever reached her it would get inside her. It would become her.

Whatever would have happened, whatever it would have meant if the scream had found her, Myra did not find out. Zhed-Hai reached out, not with his hand but with his power, and pulled Myra away from the black object. As soon as her hand left the object she was pulled from the darkness and found herself back in her body as she fell backwards onto the ground.

Zhed-Hai, standing above her and looking down, said, "I should have introduced you first. Myra, you have just met Tato-Heen."

For a moment Myra could not remember the name. She was still trying to master herself. The conversation in the vehicle on their way to this horrible place took a moment to come back to her mind. When it did she replied, "The one who found us?"

Zhed-Hai nodded.

Myra shook her head, saying "I don't understand. That voice…that was…we were inside that thing?"

"Yes, it was. It has been in there a long time. Since that day when Tato-Heen fulfilled his purpose, and found for the Empire a new world. This world. Your world."

For a moment Myra thought that they had recorded Tato-Heen screaming and put that in the object somehow. But she knew that was not what happened. She knew that was not a recording. That scream was not some dead thing from the past. It was alive. And it was inside the cold black object in front of her. Tato-Heen was in there, screaming.

"Why?"

"So we could find our way back home. So those who went home could find their way back here."

Myra looked at him, uncomprehending.

"It was Tato-Heen's Gift that found this place, this one system amongst all the millions of systems his ship could reach. It was his Gift that gave him the vision of which path through the stars would lead here. It was only that vision that could take his shipmates home again. And if they wanted to come back here, it was only his mind that could serve as a beacon. But one Rakatan would not be strong enough to call out across the galaxy to his people. His strength needed to be amplified. And it needed to last. So a home was found for his mind. For 30 generations of your people he has been here, the path home and the path here kept alive in this, a Star Map."

Myra looked horrified. "He is screaming."

Zhed-Hai's voice showed no sign of any similar horror as he responded to her. "This is the fate of every successful Navigator. On every world in the Empire there is a Star Map. In every Star Map the Navigator who discovered that world, made immortal."

"Why would they do that? Why would you do that to them?"

"There is no other way. It is the highest honor a Rakatan can receive, a sacrifice for the Empire that goes beyond all others. The Navigators give more than their lives. The rewards are considerable. The families of Navigators are raised up, beyond others. No matter how lowly their origins, a Navigator who finds a world of use to his people will grant to his posterity all that the Empire can give. All the great families of the Empire are descended from Navigators by now. My own family is. Long ago, an ancestor of mine found a world. And she was turned into…a thing. She was one of the first Navigators to be so honored. And since that day my family has never known want. To speak against us was treason. To try to hurt us was suicide. This my ancestor bought for us."

Zhed-Hai looked up from Myra's face to look at the guard before he continued. "To those from whom great sacrifices are demanded, great rewards will be given."

"He is…" Myra could not find the words for what she had felt. Zhed-Hai had no such problems.

"Madness. Anguish. Terror. Hatred. That is all that remains of Tato-Heen, except the path home, the path to Lehon. It is not like that at first, or so they say. For the first few years it is said the Navigators keep their sanity. You can even have conversations with them. But as time goes on, and the realization sets in that they will never do anything again, never be anything again but a voice trapped in stone, they lose their minds. They struggle to get out, but there is no out. They are not so much trapped in the Map as they have become the Map. They all become what Tato-Heen has become. In my youth I tried to find my Great-Grandmother, by whose sacrifice my family's fortune was made. I suppose I wanted to tell her all that had come about by her sacrifice, but all I found was that howl of misery, like the one you just found. They say that in time even that goes away, and all that is left is the Map itself, the information."

Myra thought about what he said for a moment. It did not make sense. The stories said that her people had traveled the stars. They had not needed to do…this.

"There is no other way?"

Zhed-Hai smiled.

"You feel a great deal of empathy for Tato-Heen, considering it was he who brought us to your world. To answer your question, there are other ways of travelling. If one travels slowly one can use a very simple computer to plot a course. Your people tried that. They sent out ships full of sleeping people, watched over by computers," Zhed-Hai stopped speaking when he saw Myra's look of incomprehension. "A computer is a machine that thinks. Like the machines that brought you food and water, only it doesn't need to move around, it just figures out the answers to questions. Your people had their own, if not very sophisticated, computers. If we had allowed them to continue those ships your people sent out would still be out there, centuries later. They would not have reached the closest of the systems you set out to explore. Our ships are, of course, much faster, and for short trips a computer will do. But to travel across the galaxy, as you must if you are to rule a thousand worlds, no computer yet invented will suffice. This was the method we created. A ship that sets out to find a new world will leave behind them a Star Map, and all future ships will use that to find their way. There are other species, lesser species, that use great computers, far in advance of anything your people developed, to find their way through hyperspace, but their ships cannot travel nearly as far as ours. And then there are those species that do not need ships at all, but I think I shall save that story for another time."

Myra did not understand why she had been brought here. Was he showing off? And what was she supposed to take away from this? Was this supposed to impress upon her the power of the Rakatans? All Myra took away from it was another example of their brutality. What would a people who did this to their heroes not do to those they considered lesser species? She stood up and did her best to collect herself. She assumed that the demonstration, whatever it had been for, was done. It was not.

Zhed-Hai took her by the hand and quickly placed it back on the black stone surface. Once again she was pulled into that darkness, and once again she heard that voice again. She could feel it to, feel the mental presence of Tato-Heen, or what remained of him, as he moved about in the darkness, searching for something. Searching for a way out Myra thought to herself. But there was a second presence in the darkness. It made no sound but she could feel it. It was the feeling you had when someone you cannot see was behind you. In the caves Myra, like all her people, had to rely on senses other than sight. What you could hear, and smell and taste on the air often gave more information in the darkness. But there was that other feeling, the feeling of where you were and what was around you. Myra trusted that feeling. She knew she had it stronger than others. That is how she found her way through the caves so well, so much better than the rest.

And that feeling told her now that something was there. It felt like a wall was behind her. A great stone wall, silent and strong. What did it mean for something to be behind her in this darkness? It was not her body in the darkness. That stood in the hall, touching the Star Map. In the darkness was only her mind, and she knew her mind could not face any direction. But still it seemed the strength was behind her.

And then the scream changed and Myra knew it had sensed her again. It grew rapidly, getting closer much faster than last time. Myra tried to keep the fear in control, tried to keep it from taking over. But the scream was terrible, seeming to grow louder and higher with every moment. She pictured a crazed Rakatan running towards her out of the darkness, eyes wide, mouth agape, limbs flailing. But of course there was no mouth, there were no eyes or limbs. Tato-Heen had lost all of that long ago. What would Myra lose when the scream found her?

Again she did not find out. One moment the silent presence was behind her and the next it was in front her, and the scream seemed to break into pieces on it, like waves on a cave lake hitting a stone. A thousand little screams seeming to recede until they reformed and came closer again. This time when the scream hit the invisible wall it did not break. It stuck. It grew no louder and no closer. For a moment it was there, a scream suspended in the darkness. Then the scream changed. The rage melted away, leaving only the terror behind. Then Myra saw the mad Rakatan she had imagined, only now it was cowering, too overcome by fear to move. And above the wretch she saw Zhed-Hai standing. What had been her imagination had become real in this place. She had no time to marvel at that fact, for as she watched she saw Tato-Heen's imaginary body twist, and she could feel the pain in the scream all around her. The sound of the scream changed gradually into something that reminded Myra horribly of a child's scream. Now she pictured her own little ones, alone and afraid in the dark, as something terrible grabbed hold of them and twisted their poor little bodies. She thought to reach out to soothe that terrified voice, but it was as though she ran into a wall.

"There is nothing that will help," she heard Zhed-Hai's voice say. "This is the only way."

The tortured wails of the creature continued for a few more moments and then began to fade away. At the instant it finally went silent light exploded out of the darkness. A thousand bright, white lights. Ten thousand. More. Spread out in every direction. It took Myra a long time to realize they were stars, for she had not seen much of them before. One of them burned orange. She reached out to it, and as she did so it grew, revealing itself as a system of planets orbiting a bright yellow star. One of the planets was glowing an angry red, while one of them was blue green.

"He sees this world as it was. Before the war, when life was still found on its surface" Zhed-Hai said softly.

Myra wanted a closer look. She wanted to see what her home had been like. Then, as though he could see her thoughts, Zhed-Hai spoke.

"It is only a memory. He does not wish this image of the planet go. This is the planet he sacrificed for. Not the great heap of glass and sand that it is now."

Suddenly her planet and its star receded. As they grew smaller more stars appeared in her view, but they were spinning, and it was as though Myra was moving through the darkness between them at a great speed until a yellow star came into view. Myra felt herself hurtling towards it, and it grew in size. After a few moments she was redirected towards a planet, much like the image of her own that she had seen. Blue and green and white.

"Lehon. My home." Zhed-Hai sounded sad.

Myra's mind was drawn to the star Lehon orbited, and a small, at least compared to the star, object that floated above it. She could not quite make it out. She reached for it to see, and it grew larger steadily. It was smaller than the planet of Lehon. It looked at first like a long and narrow grey stone. But as it grew Myra could see the sharp edges and straight lines. Three spikes with a sphere at their center, and little lights all over it. She wanted to get a closer look and tried to move closer to it when she was suddenly stopped, as though a hand had caught her. And then she opened her eyes and she saw Zhed-Hai's clawed hand wrapped around her arm, pulling her away from the Star Map.

"Now is not the time for that," he said as he let go of her arm and turned to walk away from the Map towards the door. Myra was on the ground rubbing her arm where he had grabbed her. She thought for a moment about the thing she had seen, and how it had made her feel. Without taking her eyes off the Star Map she turned her head slightly towards Zhed-Hai and called out to him as he walked away.

"That thing, that place. It felt as though…it was screaming too," she said. "Quieter than the other one, than Tato-Heen. Muffled. But screaming."

Zhed-Hai stopped as she spoke and turned on his heel back to face her. He did not speak immediately but instead just stared at her. Myra wondered whether she had made a mistake saying what she did. The Rakatan had seemed so open to talking before, but perhaps there was some line she had crossed. Perhaps that place was something important to the Rakatans, something sacred. Myra had the horrible thought that he would kill her and leave her here, and her children would never know where she went. Instead, after several seconds of silence, Zhed-Hai answered her.

"Tato-Heen is our guide. His voice calls out. What you sensed, that is what he calls out to."