The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter 14

Brun had never felt so tired, and had never felt the weariness less. All his life had been spent in caves, until the day they had been taken. Then they had been stuck for a few days in the cell, which was its own cave in away. The lights had never fully turned off, and that had been hard to adjust to, except for the first night. He had slept fine that night while recovering from having his guts ripped out. His mother said the Rakatan who did that to him was dead, and that made him feel happy. The cell on the ship had been much the same, though smaller. He had learned to sleep in more light than he ever got in the caves.

But now, in the darkness under the dome, he could not sleep at all. In his life, Brun's glimpses of the outside had been the day they had been captured, the day they had been transferred to the ship, and the day they had arrived on the alien planet. His parents, he knew, had been outside before. They had traveled across the open ground to find the cave where he was born when his parents weren't much older than he was now. While foraging they had both risked going high up enough in the caves to be able to see the night sky through the rare hole in the rocks, but they never let any of the children get so close. The other adults had shown no desire to go. Brun had seen the stars that night under Rakatan guard, but he had been too afraid to really look at them. His first night under the dome was the first time he had ever been able to just lie back and look at the stars.

It wasn't as though they were safe, he realized. He could tell from the way his mother acted that she didn't think they were safe. Something had happened to his grandparents, and his aunt and uncle. They had been on the ship with Brun, his father, and his sisters, but not with them. He had seen them during the trip from the ship to the dome, but they weren't with them now. Some guards had come shortly after they arrived under the dome to take them away. The guards had explained what was happening to his mother, who could somehow understand the Rakatans now, which was odd. It was also odd to be without his grandparents, aunt, and uncle. The various chambers they had stayed in while living in the caves had always been large enough that they weren't right on top of each other, but he had never gone a day without seeing them. Now it was just his parents and his sisters.

And his mother was acting like they needed to be constantly on guard. Brun couldn't quite understand it. There seemed to be no danger. The Rakatan guards did not interfere with them, didn't even come out into the enclosed area beneath the dome. The transparent dome covered the enormous, to Brun, green area where the people from Tatooine lived. Or at least some of them lived there, since members of his own family were missing. There were rocky outcroppings, like the one his mother had apparently claimed during her weeks here alone, but other than that the ground was covered by soft green plants that grew straight up out of the ground. His father told him that this was called grass. He remembered the word from old stories. Grass had once upon a time covered much of Tatooine. It felt pleasant on his feet, and Brun liked to squeeze little clumps of it between his toes. When no one was looking that is.

There were also much larger, taller plants called trees. Some were strong enough that their limbs could hold his weight. All children born in the caves were natural climbers, but no previous climb had ever been quite so much fun for Brun as his first into a tree. But beyond their green circle, which everyone just called 'the enclosure' was the rest of the facility. Several stories of floors could be seen through the glass separating the Rakatan guards from the people. Every second of every day the people were watched, by the Rakatans standing silently with their spears. Or perhaps they weren't silent, Brun thought, but the glass kept the noise from him. Perhaps the guards spent time talking to each other when Brun wasn't watching them, which was most of the time.

He liked the sunshine that came down through the dome, but the stars were his favorite. The sun was giant and brilliant, but it was just one great big thing. Other than the little dot that moved slowly across the bottom of it there really wasn't much to look at. And the strange little dot made him uncomfortable when he thought about it, though he could not tell why. And you couldn't look at the sun long anyway without your eyes hurting. His father had made sure to tell him that the dome itself made it easier to look at the sun, and that if he ever found himself outside, he couldn't look at it half so long as he did inside.

But the stars, the stars you could look at all night. Brun knew, because he had. There were so many of them. Some twinkled and some didn't. Some were brighter than others. He had even seen one shoot across the night sky. He could draw lines connecting them in his mind, making different shapes. Brun's mother said that there were far more stars than this, that she had seen them on the ship which had brought her to this world so quickly. She said the lights of the city near them hid the smallest of the stars from his view. Brun envied his mother for her journey to this world, and not only for the stars she had seen while the rest of her family was stuck in cells. She had been here weeks longer than him. Long enough to stake out their little patch of land, to get to know the place, and to spend her nights looking up at the stars.

Of course mother insisted this place was dangerous, so perhaps her weeks here alone hadn't been so pleasant. Father had quickly adopted mother's position on the matter, but that was no surprise. People usually adopted mother's position, he thought to himself, with some annoyance. But, Brun had to admit, the most prominent example of people not listening to her mother was when the family went to the surface and got caught. That had cost Brun's cousin his life, and nearly cost Brun his own. So maybe mother knew what she was talking about. Brun couldn't figure out the danger though. If it wasn't the Rakatans, who mostly left them alone, it had to be the other people. But they mostly left them alone too. The first day some of the people who traveled along with Brun and his family approached them, trying to figure out what was going on. But before long everyone settled into some group or other, and it seemed like every group was avoiding them. Brun didn't know why. It was just the four of them, and there were dozens of people in some of the little tribes that were forming. The largest was that tribe of white people of the north.

His father had told Brun about them during the long trip to this new world. He claimed that Brun and his sisters had already heard about them in the stories they had been told in the caves, but Brun couldn't remember them. It was hard to remember anything from that time now. And what was there to remember, Brun thought bitterly? Just darkness and wasted days scrounging for moss and maybe, if they were lucky, a recently deceased rat. Brun remembered that he had enjoyed story time and song time, but that didn't make remembering the stories and songs any easier now. But if his parents said he had heard of these people before then Brun supposed he must have. They were the ones who started the war. The war that brought down the fire, and forced the people into the caves. Brun knew that he was supposed to be angry about that, but he couldn't help but be excited about it. After all, mother and father agreed that the Rakatans were monsters who had enslaved the people, so what was wrong with fighting them? Brun knew his mother's answer. What was wrong with fighting them was what it brought, most of the people dead and the rest driven underground, at least in the part of Tatooine where his family lived. And Brun certainly didn't like caves, not anymore. But still, he didn't feel like fights were bad ideas just because you lost. At least in the caves the people weren't slaves anymore, and there were no Rakatans.

The white people of the north had several dozen members in their group, almost a third of all the people living under the dome, though not all of them were white skinned. The group seemed to accept anyone, but it was clearly the northerners who were in charge. Each day, starting shortly before nightfall, they would hold an odd little event. The group would gather together in a circle, around a large fire, and members of the group would fight. Brun had trouble seeing the fight over the heads of the spectators, as even the little rock his family had claimed did not go more than a few feet off the ground. But he could hear what was going on. There would never be many fights, sometimes just one, and they did not last long. He had wanted to go watch but mother had forbidden it. She had actually been quite insistent on that point. He was not to go near those fights, and he was to stay away from the people who took part in them.

This was not exactly an easy thing to do. The area beneath the dome was easily the largest, most spacious chamber he had ever seen, and there were more than a hundred people living there. The whites of the north and their groupmates had spread out over more than half that area, despite being less than half the population. The rock Brun's mother had claimed was as far from their area as possible, something that Brun could tell was intentional. But even so it wasn't as though the members of that forbidden group stayed in the space they had claimed. That was just where they slept and prepared their food. During the day there was not much to do but walk around. Not for them anyway. For Brun and his family there was much to do. After they had arrived the Rakatan guards had brought them materials to construct a dwelling. Brun did not understand why they should want a dwelling. Why, after a lifetime spent in the caves, would you want to make a false cave to sleep in? But mother insisted, and so father insisted, and so they had spent some of their time each day since arriving on trying to work out how to get the long boards of…whatever they were made out of…to lock together properly. It was almost done now, Brun's father just wanted to tighten more and get it better situated on the rock, so that it was level. He said it would give them privacy. Brun thought it was just another cell for them to squeeze into. He wanted nothing above him but the dome. Really he wanted to be outside, but since that wasn't going to happen, he would make do with the dome, which didn't block out the stars.

His sisters, however, seemed to feel the need his parents were responding to. Being out in the open made them nervous. The other people made them nervous. They had helped as much as they could with the construction of their one room dwelling. Well Sani had, because she was tall enough and strong enough to actually do things. Corus had just wandered around and brought things to mother and father when they asked for them. She was too small to realize they were inventing tasks for her to do, and when Brun had made a joke about this a sharp look from his father let him know the joke was quite unwelcome.

Brun wondered what they were supposed to do here once the dwelling was built. Many of the people spent their time staring at odd little tablets. The surface of the tablets changed color, creating different sequences of shapes. Mother said they would have to do this as well, that the Rakatans wanted them all to know how to read. Reading was something Brun did remember. He had asked stories about how people communicated across the whole of the planet, back when he heard about the great war against the Rakatans. Mother and father said they had sent messages, and messages were just shapes like these all lined up in a row. If you know the secret then you could tell what the shapes meant. Brun did, when looking over the shoulders of those who had the tablets, get the feeling that he could tell what the shapes meant. It was like hearing words that he said to himself in his head. Why did the people need to learn to read? No answers were forthcoming from his mother. Brun wondered whether she knew the answers or not.

"You boy! Waterfinder's son!" came a shout from behind him. Brun turned around to see one of the white men walking toward him. He was around as tall as Brun's father, with the same lean, well-muscled limbs. His brisk walk communicated his health, but the extreme paleness of his skin made him seem sickly to Brun nonetheless. The oddest thing about him was his hair, which to Brun looked like woman's hair. Brun's own hair grew in tight black corkscrews like his father's. His sisters took after their mother, whose hair was thicker and softer. His mother and sisters would take turns braiding each other's hair, something that could not be done with his own or his father's. But this white man's hair was far looking even than his mother's. It fell off his head like water spilling over the edge of a rock, and ran well past his shoulders. Even the hair of his beard, which he appeared to actually cut, unlike the hair on his head, looked wavy and soft. The combination of his skin and hair made him seem weak to Brun at first, despite his height, but after a few moments of watching the man walk Brun reconsidered his first impression. The man's eyes were locked onto Brun in a way that made Brun feel like backing off his rock. The confident strides that brought the man right up to that rock made it seem as though there was no question they were going to talk, as the man seemed to want to. Brun knew he was supposed to be keeping his distance from these people, but the thought of running away made him feel embarrassed, and he couldn't very well stay there and just not speak. He looked hurriedly for his family before remembering that they had gone to go get water, leaving him behind so he could rest.

"Did you hear me boy?" the man asked as he reached the rock upon which Brun sat. Brun nodded in response.

"What's wrong boy? Scared? No need for that. I just wanted to meet you," the man said with a smile.

"I'm not scared!" was Brun's terse response.

The man spread his arms out as his said "I meant no insult, waterfinder's son."

"Why are you calling me that?" Brun asked.

"Well because I don't know your name. Mine is Halvor," the man replied smoothly.

Brun ignored the implicit request for his name, asking "Why are you calling me 'waterfinder's son'?"

Halvor gave Brun a puzzled look. "Isn't your mother your waterfinder?"

Brun did not really understand the question. The man said 'waterfinder' in a way that made it sound momentous. "Yeah. I mean, she would find the water when we ran out."

Halvor's smile returned, "Then she is your waterfinder! Surely you celebrate her as such."

Brun did not know what to say. They had really only celebrated the anniversaries of the birth of the children in their group. Mother never really made a big deal of the fact that she was the one who would go exploring to find more water. It had just been a job she did.

"In the north, where my people live, there are few titles nobler than that of waterfinder. They keep the people alive, and for that they are given honor. But I suppose it is not surprising that your mother doesn't take credit," Halvor explained.

"What do you know about my mother?" Brun shot back.

If Halvor was taken aback by Brun's hostility it did not show. He smiled confidently as he said, "Your mother was here with us for some time before you arrived. How do you think I knew she was your waterfinder? She told me."

Brun searched for something to say in return, but nothing came to mind. The thought of his mother spending time talking to this person Brun had never met was somehow disturbing to him. He had been with his mother every day of his life until the Rakatans had taken her away without him. He knew she had been here, and it stood to reason that she had interacted with the other people here. After all something must have made her decide the place was dangerous. But something about being confronted with the fact that his mother had done things he did not know about, especially in the form of this man who seemed strange and dangerous, but also exciting, was a very different thing than working it out in his head that something along those lines must have happened.

Brun was saved from having to figure out something to say by the arrival of the subject of the conversation he was having.

"Brun!"

His mother's tone was harsh. It reminded Brun of the times he and his family had gone walking through the caves to find food, and his mother had shouted out commands to stay away from the pits that sometimes opened up before them. Brun turned to see her running towards him. He turned back to Halvor, whose smile was still there but changed. If Brun had been made to say how it changed he would have said that it seemed like he was actually happy now.

"Go find your father Brun," Myra said as she reached her son.

"They are just coming back with the water," Brun complained.

"I know where they went. If you have enough energy to introduce yourself to strangers, you have enough energy to help out," she responded without looking at him, her eyes fixed on Halvor.

Brun did not want to leave. He wanted to stay and find out what else his mother had said to this man Halvor. He wanted to know what Halvor had wanted with him, what he wanted with his mother. But he knew arguing wouldn't do any good, so he walked away.

As he left, Brun heard Halvor begin to speak, "Hello Myra, I am very glad to speak with you again."

"Stop talking," Myra replied coolly and quietly.

She was waiting for him to get out of earshot, Brun knew. If she really didn't want to talk to this man, she wouldn't still be standing there. She would have turned around and walked away. So Brun walked towards the shelter his family had constructed, and stopped once he was on the other side of it. He waited a few seconds before, quietly as he could, starting back towards the rock. By the time he reached them his mother and Halvor were already into what sounded like an argument.

"…it doesn't matter what you wanted, leave my son alone," was what his mother was saying as he crept back within range to hear.

"Why? Why is it a problem for us to speak?" Halvor asked.

"Because I am his mother and I told you not to," Myra replied.

"I am asking why you forbid it," Halvor said in response.

"You are not entitled to my reasons," Myra snapped.

"Yes, I am," Halvor insisted.

At this Myra took a step towards Halvor, who stood his ground, though he looked nervously at her hands.

"Who do you think you are?" Myra asked angrily.

"I am one of your people. You are my sister, and I am your brother…," Halvor began before being interrupted.

"I met you a month ago!" Myra all but yelled.

"That doesn't matter!" Halvor did yell in response. "None of what divides us matter, because we are us, and they," Halvor exclaimed while pointing towards the glass dividing them from the Rakatans, "are not. We have to stand by one another…"

"You mean I have to do what you want, play along with your little games…" Myra interrupted.

"You have to give your people what they need, and they need your strength," Halvor insisted.

"I will give my family what they need, as I always have. You are not my family," was Myra's icy response.

Halvor considered Myra for a moment before responding, "Perhaps I have your answer then, would you deny your family the right to give their own answers?"

Myra stared, seething, at Halvor. It took her a second to master her own anger before she could answer with a calm tone that managed to hide none of her rage, "If you speak to any of my children again without my permission I will do to you what I did to your friend."

Halvor looked down and nodded gently before turning to walk away. As he did so he called back, "Another time then, waterfinder."

Brun was afraid the sound of his moving away would draw his mother's attention, now that she and Halvor were no longer yelling at each other. But then it seemed that his mother was lost in thought, or else oddly attentive to the sight of Halvor walking away, because she seemed to notice nothing as he did his best to quietly slink away.