The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter 11

Za-Hell could put the moment off no longer. He had been weeks at Zhed-Hai's compound on Lehon. He had the right of course to go home given how close that home was, but he had chosen to bunk in the guardhouse. His fellow guards had assumed, he knew, that he was trying to curry favor with Zhed-Hai, trying to make up for his mistake on Tatooine. There was certainly a benefit to that, but Za-Hell had not the least sense of where he stood with the Elder in the first place. To have been offered the flesh of another was usually an honor, though Za-Hell felt sure that Zhed-Hai knew before he made the offer that it would be declined. Za-Hell knew his transgression was sufficient to end his life, and he also knew it was hopeless to try to work out the reasoning of one as old and powerful as Zhed-Hai. Certainly there was no reason to think taking on extra work at the compound would even gain the Elder's attention. It was quite likely that Zhed-Hai had forgotten that Za-Hell existed.

The guards did not guess the real reason for Za-Hell's hesitancy to leave because they did not know Za-Hell. They did not know his family, their past or their position. They did not know how much they were counting on Za-Hell. Even now as he took the slowest route home he could think of, he knew they were there, counting on him still. When the door to his childhood home their hopes for him would evaporate, as would any chance at the life they had been imagining. Giving them an extra hour to live in what had become a fantasy world seemed a kindness, and so Za-Hell walked the long path home rather than taking the transport. Up hills and through jungle to the great city of Kwashang he walked. His family had moved to Kwashang, capitol of the Infinite Empire, generations before, seeking an opportunity to free themselves from the drudgery of their provincial existence. Every poor family made their attempt to move up in the world at some point, and there was no better place to try than Kwashang. It's just that most of them realized that the attempt was a failure more quickly than had Za-Hell's family. Since his grandfather was a boy they had been dreaming that some trivial position with some great warlord would somehow turn them from provincial trash to an established family of the city. His posting to Tatooine was the closest they had come. Zhed-Hai was the second oldest Elder in the empire, and the most important Elder living on Lehon. For the weeks before his departure for Tatooine, years before at this point, the talk had been of nothing except how Za-Hell would catch the Elder's eye. And today they would find that he had only lost one of his own.

His father would move his hopes quickly to one of his sisters, Za-Hell knew. Nothing could be permitted to break his confidence. What else did he have to get him through his days of tinkering with droids but that assurance that one day all would be different? Not for himself of course. Za-Hell's family had their illusions but even they knew that a change in status could not work that quickly. It would not be Za-Hell's father, or even Za-Hell or one of his siblings who would ascend. The best his father could hope for would be that one of his grandchildren would one day be the one sending a droid out for service, instead of living in a workshop, repairing for those too poor to order a new droid, but also too desperate to keep up appearances to actually do manual labor themselves. He would find a way to keep that assurance, perhaps through Za-Hell's younger sister, who was merely approaching the spinsterhood in which his older sister seemed safely ensconced.

But Za-Hell's mother would see his maiming for the catastrophe that Za-Hell knew it to be. To be punished in that way by Zhed-Hai meant that Za-Hell had no future in the Elder's service. But what other powerful lord would have him now, as he was? Za-Hell's life, his best possible life, was going to be as a minor servant to a master he had already displeased once. His best hope was to not bring Zhed-Hai's attention on himself in the future, for he wore the mark of his previous failure literally on his face. So it would not be Za-Hell who would pull the family up from the bottom of the society. But it would also not be his children. What woman would want him? And even if one took a sort of perverse interest, what family would allow their daughter to marry a deformed non-entity like him? Za-Hell would die childless, as his sisters likely would. In all probability it would be up to his cousins to carry the family name forward, which meant his immediate family line would, for as long as it still existed, have to accept a lesser position within the larger family. His father would talk himself into a future that could not happen and do so out loud for all to hear. His mother's silence would convey more. Today would be the day she would begin to adopt the subservient position she would understand would now be her lot in life. Za-Hell had waited as long as he could, but today was the day.

He walked, absorbed in these thoughts, and was surprised when he found himself at the door to his home. He turned to look behind him, as though to prove to himself that he really had walked so far without realizing it. In the distance stood the Great Temple of the Ancients, large as a mountain and dark as the night that was slowly setting in around it. The city radiated out from it in circles, like ripples in the water. Here on the outskirts of the city the two stories of his family home did not stand out from those around it, but it was hard to ignore the mockery made of it by the Temple towering above it. That was, of course, the point. No one would forget. The richest and strongest Elders all raised their own great towers in the sectors of the city immediate adjacent to the Temple, but they looked no less silly in comparison. No one could escape the fact of their insignificance. In the end, before the power the Temple represented there was no greatness. The gods themselves had fled before it, or stood their ground and died. And if we are all just insects before the might of the Empire, perhaps there was no reason to regret the lost chance to ascend. There was no height which you could reach that would matter anyway. So Za-Hell told himself, partly to place his failure in perspective, partly to indulge in despondency, when the thought occurred to him that Zhed-Hai had no ridiculous tower, just the research station by the sea with its single floor. Single floor above ground anyway. Who knows how deep it went? Za-Hell certainly didn't.

Za-Hell had been standing by his front door for several minutes musing on these trivialities when he realized he was just trying to avoid going in. Disgusted by his own cowardice he moved his hand to pad, and as he was about to type in the entrance code a sound to his left, rendered invisible to him by his missing eye, caught his attention. There in the window of the second floor, looking down on him, was his mother. The sound had been a sharp inhale. Za-Hell looked up at her. There was nothing to say and so he didn't say anything. She looked at him in matching silence. It was better this way, he thought. She could absorb what she saw without having to pretend to agree with his father's rationalizations. She stared at where his missing eye should have been, never looking once at the eye that remained, which was fixed on her. Yes, this is how it would be. From now on the only important fact about him was what he lacked. He turned his head back to the pad, punched in the code and walked through the doorway as the door slide open.

He stepped into a hallway that led towards the kitchen, in the rear of the house. On either side of him were bedrooms. There were no common rooms in a Rakatan household like theirs, with the exception of the kitchen, where all took their meals. As Za-Hell walked towards the kitchen he could hear his mother's steps on the floor above him, heading towards the stairs. As he passed the stairwell on his left he did not look at her, despite knowing she was there on the landing as it turned towards the hallway. She wanted him to present himself to the others first, and she deserved to get something she wanted, so in he walked.

The reaction was not as he expected, at least not initially. When his sisters saw him they began to yell, but not in horror or shock. The excitement did not last long of course, for they saw his eye, or the absence of it. His father had been sitting down facing the windows in the rear of the house, and had, upon hearing his sister's boisterous greeting, sprung from his chair, and whirled around, moving with an alacrity he had not shown in years. He stopped in his tracks upon seeing him just as the screams had died in his sisters' mouths. This all left Za-Hell quite puzzled. Certainly his family could have been expected to be happy to see him after almost a year away, but they hadn't been this excited on his last return, and that had been after a longer absence.

"What…what happened to you son?" his father asked.

"I was punished. I…I lied to an Elder and this was the price." Za-Hell pointed to the small stump of scar tissue on the side of his conical head.

"You lied to an Elder?" His father seemed completely flabbergasted at this explanation.

"What about?" his younger sister asked.

"What?" Za-Hell responded.

"What did you lie to him about?" his older sister clarified.

"I had killed one of the Tatooine natives, and then tried to hide it from him." Za-Hell admitted.

"Why…why would that matter?" his father asked. "Who cares about the natives?"

"Zhed-Hai does. The natives are the reason he was there for so long. They were the mission." As Za-Hell said this he moved to one of the chairs. Only after beginning the conversation with his family did he realize how tired the long walk had left him.

"What does he want with them?" his younger sister asked.

"Silence girl!" his father snapped. "What does it matter why the Elder does what he does? Why did you kill them if they are so important to the Elder? Was it a threat to you? Did it try to kill you?"

"I thought it was attacking, but that wasn't it." Za-Hell had not spoken of his reasons to anyone before this. Zhed-Hai had not seemed to care about the reasons, just the act itself. "He was no threat. He was young, full grown but barely so. Even fully matured the natives don't really pose a threat."

"What…?" His younger sister stopped her question after a swift look from their father. This rankled Za-Hell. His father had a habit of trying to impose his will for no reason beyond showing he could. And answering his sister's questions, no matter how inane they might be, was a welcome distraction from discussing his maiming. "What did you want to know Za-Fack?"

His father turned back to him, clearly angry at having been undermined, but also clearly trying to hold his anger in check. This was odd. Had a year made so much a difference to his father's bluster?

"What are they like? What are they called?" came his sister's question. She asked quickly, fearing her father would interrupt her again.

"They are short. The natives I saw most had soft brown skin. Their bodies look like ours except for their heads, which are absurd shrunken things. Round like a ball."

"I heard they are hairy, like the beasts on the last world you were sent to," his older sister said.

"Not like that. Not hairy all over. But they are still mammals, like those tree-dwellers," was Za-Hell's reply. He was silent for a moment before remembering the other half of Za-Fack's question. "They are called the Hu-man sister. Or something like that."

"And the Elder did that to you," Za-Fack pointed at where his eye ought to have been, "because you killed one of these Hu-man?"

"I don't know. I tried to hide it, maybe that angered him more. Or maybe it was the loss of the native. He studies them," Za-Hell replied.

"It is not that. He sells these Hu-man," his father replied confidently. "All the rich families have them as slaves."

"How do you know what the rich families have father?" Za-Hell asked.

His father screwed up his face, once again uncharacteristically holding back his anger. "Many of the great families send their droids to me! I know what goes on in those houses!"

No great family had droids repaired. They just threw them out and sent for another. The Star Forge pumped out droids at a prodigious enough rate to make doing so practical. His father's primary source of parts were the trash piles that showed what the great families really did with malfunctioning droids. But Za-Hell knew it was pointless to debate his father when he was defending his sense of his own importance, so he let it go. The four of them sat in silence in the kitchen until his mother stepped into the room. She must have heard the entire exchange, but she had not interjected. But now, standing behind where Za-Hell was sitting, she asked him, in her husky voice, "The Elder himself did this to you?"

"Yes mother," Za-Hell said.

"You angered him?" his mother inquired.

"Obviously," Za-Hell replied softly.

"Then why did he do this?" his mother demanded.

Za-Hell turned towards his mother to see her holding a small rectangular banner. It was made of soft purple cloth and extended about an arm's length. In the middle of it he saw a symbol, the symbol of the Zhed clan; a sword in front of a sunburst. It was a sign of protection. It was a sign that his family, members of the numerous yet weak Za clan, could lay claim to the protection of the much smaller, and indescribably more powerful clan of Zhed. The Zhed's had been a powerful family for several generations, though even so they were still a relatively new entrant into the great families, like all the families of Navigators. But certainly they were most known for Zhed-Hai, who had been among the most powerful Elders for hundreds of years, longer by far than the standard Rakatan life span. To have their protection was to have his protection. And to have his protection meant that any who assaulted a member of Za-Hell's family could expect death, as would anyone who stole from them. To insult Za-Hell's family would be to declare yourself the enemy of the Zhed clan. And to be an enemy of the Zhed clan was something no one wanted to be.

"I was going to hang it from the window when I saw you coming up the street," his mother explained. "I wanted you to see what you had done for your family."

"I didn't do anything. I don't understand," Za-Hell responded.

This was what they had wanted from him. Since he was a child this had been their dream, to have one of their children attach themselves to one of the great clans. Now his family had what it wanted, and none of it made any sense.