The Fall of the Infinite Empire

Chapter 19

Several days had gone by since Zhed-Hai had told Myra that he would be taking Tytus with him, and it had yet to happen. Myra had informed Tytus that something was coming. He was understandably even more frustrated with how little information she had to share than she was, and the conversation did nothing to reduce the tension between them. Their days since had been spent mostly engaged in household activities. Perhaps realizing that eventually they would get stir-crazy if they were given nothing to do, Zhed-Hai had arranged his little human preserve within his larger compound so that, while they had all they needed, they had to use up a fair amount of time each day getting it. There was a watering hole that seemed never to run low, and it was found as far from the locations where the food would be delivered as could be. The food was basically blocks of vitamin infused protein. Different colored blocks had different flavors, but all of them needed to be cooked to soften them up enough to actually eat. That required fuel for fires, which appeared at different places throughout their living space. Myra had heard that the ground itself opened up and the fuel, which was a synthetic material that burned slow and clean, was pushed up mechanically, though she had not seen this herself, because it happened while she was asleep, and she didn't find the process interesting enough to stay up. Which place the fuel would appear each day was something of a surprise.

Halvor had told her that the point of this was to cause conflict. Different people would find the fuel each day and try to hoard it, so as to give themselves power over one of the few things everyone needed but was not readily provided. The water was inexhaustible while the food was brought in by droids that would not give out more than the daily ration amount to anyone. Technically you didn't need the food to be cooked. It could be eaten raw, but it was incredibly tough to chew, and one usually didn't feel good after doing it. Or, again, so Myra had been told. Halvor claimed that before he had arrived there would be fights between people over fuel, and that a kind of hierarchy had grown up around it. The strongest hoarded it, while the weaker did what the strongest wanted in order to get access to it. He had, Halvor said, put a stop to that after he took control of the group of northerners. He was not against the hierarchy itself, but he would not allow the enemy to set the people against one another. So he had instituted a rule amongst his group against hoarding, and then led them against the hoarders. He had killed a few before the rest got the message. Everyone would get enough fuel to make a fire for themselves for the day, and the northerners took the excess, to use in their nightly gatherings. Myra did not know if she believed him.

So while the enclosure itself was not that large, it took around an hour for Myra to walk the diameter of the circle, most people spent a good portion of their waking day moving from place to place to get what they needed. Your daily food ration was delivered in two parts, and the containers for the water meant you had to make several trips each day. The fuel would be collected each morning and stacked up, with each person taking what they needed, but everyone was expected to contribute to tracking it all down. The prisoners, as Myra refused to stop thinking of them despite Zhed-Hai's encouragement, would, in between the work to acquire the daily essentials would play games, and share their traditional songs and stories. For most of the people living under the dome this was the first time they had ever met someone new, and so had a chance to hear their stories and songs. Recently, at Myra's request, the guards had started making available material that could be used for the weaving of robes.

In the cave culture in which Myra had grown up the weaving of robes was a sacred tradition. The passage of robes from a mother to her children was part of the coming-of-age process, and all mothers were expected to teach their daughters the art of it. While Myra did not know it, this practice actually predated their life in the caves. It had been an element in the culture of the people of her region on Tatooine from before it was renamed Tatooine, when it bore that name that no one but Zhed-Hai seemed to remember. After the arrival of the Rakatans it had fallen out of style with most families, especially in the equatorial regions, where the major cities were found. What was the point of old customs when something like gods descended from the stars to tell you that your gods did not exist, that all gods were tyrants, but also that somehow you were primitives who needed to be ruled? The importance of the ceremonial cloth had been among the cultural traditions that had been reclaimed as part of the resistance to Rakatan domination. Or at least that is how resistance had gone where Myra's ancestors lived. The northerners had taken a different route of course, one that led to the breaking of the world.

After they had retreated to the caves Myra's people had been forced to change the custom, but they had held on to it. There was a fungus that grew in great stalks in the underwater lakes they found in the caves. It was partly edible, but most of it was too hard for that. Those parts could be, if beaten out dried, and separated, used to form a kind of long, tough yarn. Myra had been taught, like other girls her age, to strip the dried stalks of their rough exterior, to tie them around each other tightly, and then to craft a set of robes from them. In time she would have given each of her daughters not a full robe but enough of the cloth made from the fungus that they could make their own, for themselves and their mate. The robes they made were not comfortable, not at first anyway. They were stiff and rough, but over time they would soften from use.

When she got her children back Myra had wanted to hold on to their traditions. Tytus had been less certain of the value of doing that. By tradition a man would give his sons their gaderrfi stick. As with the robes Myra did not know the source of this tradition, but she did know that the northerners shared that tradition with their southern cousins, and they took it very seriously. The gaderrfi stick Tytus had been given by his father was little more than a walking stick with a pointed end. It was mostly useful in climbing inside the caves and spearing fish. That was lost somewhere back on Tatooine. The northerners had also had their gaderrfi taken from them, for reasons that were not at all unclear to Myra. After arriving among the first things that a northerner did was fashion a new gaderrfi from one of the trees that grew in the enclosure. So there must have been a lot more trees once, Myra thought to herself. And the fact that Zhed-Hai allowed the practice showed how little value he placed on the lives of this prisoners. Tytus' gaderrfi, every gaderrfi Myra had ever seen in fact, had been a tool. The northerners crafted cruel instruments of death; weapons designed to crush bone and tear flesh. Luckily they seemed to only use them when in the nightly circle, and even then usually only for decorative or ceremonial purposes.

But Tytus would have none of it. He was a practical man, and had carried his own gaderrfi mostly as a sign of respect for his own father. But with the gaderrfi given to him by his father lost, Tytus did not see the point of making another. Their world had changed, he had told Myra, and they needed to change with it. The gaderrfi, the robes, these were, as far as Tytus was concerned, symbols that had already lost their meaning back on Tatooine. They were remnants of a way of life that had been destroyed. Here on Lehon they had for him even less of a point.

To Myra it seemed rather that the symbols had even more importance now. When their people had fled into the caves they had brought everything they could with them. Food, clothing, tools, machines, art, furniture. All of it useless within a few months. Her childhood had been spent in one of the first cave systems in which her people had lived, and Myra had seen the refuse. Machines whose functions no one knew any longer. The rotten and decayed paintings and fancy clothing. None of it made sense anymore. But the traditions they brought with them into the caves, it was those traditions which kept them the same people. Beneath all the empty wealth generated by their subservience to the Rakatans there were the things that had predated the enemy's arrival. Without them, who would they be? If they survived, but forgot the ways of their past, what would it be that survived? Everyone had to have something to pass on, to those who came after, and Myra felt she owed it, to those who had passed on what they had to her, to preserve what she could.

So she spent part of each day showing Corus and Sani how to weave. She had not liked going to Zhed-Hai with a request, and liked it even less when he made her explain why she wanted the material, rather than new robes, or at least finished fabric. But it had been worth it. She watched Corus' little hands slowly go through the motions Myra had taught her. She watched as Corus silently mouthed the order of actions to herself. Sani had already done some of the work with Myra back in the caves, but that had been with the very difficult to work fungus. These new fibers they were given to work with here was something else entirely. The winding was easier and it could be wound tighter, to make a finer string that was more pliable. They were still just making string, but both had taken to the task quickly, and Myra knew that the fabric they created from this material would make for a softer, more comfortable set of robes than any she had ever worn. And they would be their own, not these clothes the Rakatans had put them in, which were at best satisfactory. They covered them, although they were essentially skintight and left less to modesty than Myra would have liked. The temperature in the compound did not vary. It was warmer than the air of the deep caves and significantly cooler than the air nearer to the surface back home. They did not need the robes for warmth certainly, but Myra wanted her children to wear something of their own creation. She did not know whether she would get Tytus to agree, but she would not let that stop her. The hours spent with her girls were hours of speaking and laughter without fear. Or at least the girls were not afraid, and Myra let her own fears retreat to the back of her mind while with them.

Sani, who had been a quiet and serious child since she was old enough to have any characteristics of her own, was a good older sister for Corus, who had been given silliness and exuberance to equal her sister's reserve. Sani and Brun were close enough in age that they had always treated each other as basically the same age, something made easier by Sani's peaceful disposition. But Corus had arrived years later, and Sani had always watched over her like a little mother. Myra could have done her weaving work much more quickly, but she spent a great deal of her time surreptitiously watching her daughters interact. Corus would be able to keep her attention on what she was doing for only a minute, and would spend the entire time talking. But the longer her running monologue went without someone or something stopping her, the more energy she built up. She would eventually have to release it, which usually took the form of running, jumping, or playing some silly game. Sani would play along and try to redirect her sister, copying what she had seen Myra do. Corus would constantly show everything she did to her mother or sister, which also slowed them down in a very welcome way.

On this day, while her girls sat humming to themselves as they wound fibers, Myra felt as though she should be grateful but had no one to be grateful to. No matter what happened her daughters would remember these hours, with sunshine on their faces and the blue sky above them. They would have these moments with their mother, and they would think of her when they wore the robes they were making together. Myra swayed gently from side to side in time with the music, a song their father had taught them in the caves, and then suddenly she stopped. The girls noticed and looked up, but at first could not get Myra's attention, which was locked firmly on the man walking towards them; a great hulking brute of a man with hair the color of bloody sand and skin like a fish pulled from the deep. He was looking at the ground as he walked directly towards their little house. Myra rose and, without looking at them, told the girls to carry on, and set off at a brisk pace to intercept the man before he reached them.

This led him to stop short with a bit of surprise, and perhaps some fear. Myra had, after all, nearly killed him. Was it revenge he wanted, wondered Myra? How could he think he could get it, with her here? But not knowing whether Usment, as he was called, was stupid or foolhardy or whatever, she wanted to make sure they were well clear of Corus and Sani when whatever was going to happen happened.

"Hullo der Myra," he said with his thick accent. Halvor's voice still retained a bit of that northern accent, though he had clearly tried to get rid of it. Usment also clearly had not.

"What do you want of me Usment?"

Usment looked at her blankly before asking, "How you doing?"

"Well enough…I see you are feeling better."

Usment smiled while answering, "Dey fix me goot, da lizards. Walking fine now. Took a bit o'time."

Myra looked at him not sure whether to believe that he was so sanguine about his injuries as he appeared. She said, "I am sorry, Usment. I didn't mean to hurt you like that. I didn't know I would."

Usment nodded and replied, "Well, I didn't know you could do dat eider, or else, I would not a come at you dat way."

Myra gave Usment a puzzled look. "You don't seem angry with me."

"Oh I am angry. Wit you. But not because you beat me. Twas a fair fight. Dat is what happens in da Circle. You fight, maybe you win, maybe not. Maybe you die. But you don't complain after." Usment looked at her and smiled before saying "Especially if you die."

"So what are you angry at me about then Usment?"

"I hear you have not fought since dat day. You got to fight again."

Myra shook her head. She had thought Usment had come to express his rage at having been injured during the fight, but this was just another one of Halvor's little attempts to pull her back.

"I am done fighting. I think I proved enough."

"Not about you or what you can do," Usment said. "We all see now you tough. We know dat. But you give no one a chance to prove dem self against you. If you da best, you stay in da circle, give the young pups a chance to test dem self. Let dem know who is best, let dem show what dey can do. Even if you beat dem, dey can take pride. But now, you fight one night and leave? Now we know you strong, strongest maybe, but no one can test. No one can show dey brave by standing in circle wit you. You break my bones. Ok. Fine. I get better. Da people, they go on. Get stronger maybe. But you kill der pride? You starve it? No one gets better."

Myra snapped back, "No one told me I was signing up to beat people up every night for the rest of my life."

"Is not for whole life," Usment rolled his eyes. "Halvor on top before me. He spend some time fighting, step aside. Gets old having same top spot forever. Give everyone a few chances. Everyone who wants a go. Let dem try new tricks. They fight each udder harder when dey know dey on der way to fight the strongest. They get harder, sharper, stronger! Is why we do it."

"If he isn't fighting, why is he still in charge? Why weren't you?"

Usment rubbed his red beard while thinking the question over. "I could ah challenged him. Maybe I win. Maybe not. Halvor's strong. No muscles," Usment smiled and flexed his own large arm muscles, "but strong all the same. Anyway, what's da point? If I win, if I lose, the people get weaker. Halvor make us stronger. He was that way back home too."

This comment caught Myra's interest. "You knew him? Back on Tatooine?"

"Well not like we was friends. He had his tribe. I had mine. Used to fight. Not much, but sometimes. His people step on our sand, we push dem back on ders. Dat stop when Halvor take over."

"Took over?"

"Yeah, his tribe. He was chief der. Young chief. I older dan him, and I never chief. When he took over, his tribe, they don't fight us no more. Only fight the lizards."

Myra looked back towards her girls, who were sneaking peaks at her while they continued their work. While looking she asked, "How?"

"We never stop really. They burn da land, we find water under it, like you do. But we don't live in caves. We walk da land as soon as the burning end. Lizards not so thick on da ground as down south. No cities, just little camps. Sometimes a couple end up on der own. We find em, we kill em."

Myra turned back towards Usment and asked, "Why? What did it accomplish? You were free enough to walk on the surface, to see the sun and stars. What was the point of it?"

Usment sat down, pulled some grass from the ground and played with it. Grass was for all the prisoners from Tatooine a wondrous thing when they first arrived, and it retained its wonder, for adults and children alike. Usment wrapped some blades of grass around his big fingers while he thought.

"We fight so somebody fightin. Dey burn our land. They change da sky. Da life we had, we lost dat. Our people chose to fight, and dey lost so much. If we stop da fight, den dey lose it all for nuttin. We fight so it not over."

Myra shook her head. "Our people died, so they have to go on dying? To make those earlier deaths worth it? Nothing will make it worth it. Our world is dead."

"Aye," Usment said, nodding, "but no slaves live on it."

"Soon no one will."

They stood staring at each other for a while. Then a sound came from the little hut. Corus was squealing in delight and Sani was cheering her on. Myra turned back to look towards the hut and Usment used that chance to answer her.

"Well our people live here now, among da stars. And we need da circle. The boys need it. Your boy one day maybe." At this Myra turned sharply around, an expression of fierce anger on her face. Usment held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

"If he wants! No one gonna make him. But all dee uder boys are der. You really gonna have him be de only one not?"

Myra turned back around and started walking back towards the house without answering. Usment watched her walk away but before she entered the house called out, "Myra! Halvor says you water-finder. Dat true?

Myra yelled back, as she entered the house, "Once."

Usment looked at the house for a while before turning to walk away. Myra sat back down with her girls and guided them through the weaving. Corus had gotten a nice tight string wound and she was jumping around cheering herself, while Sani laughed softly. Myra, Sani, and Corus returned to their work, if work you could call it. It was the happiest moment Myra had experienced since before they were captured, and for a moment she felt like she was home. But this was a home of sunshine and starlight, open air, and many voices. In so many ways it was better than what they had left behind.

But in the back of her mind she could feel them. She could feel the hatred of the Rakatan guards who patrolled the compound. When she closed her eyes she could picture the compound, not just the part she lived in, or the floors she could see through the glass walls above her, but also the floors below the ground, where the others from Tatooine were kept. The Rakatans each appeared in her mental vision as something like little balls of light, moving around outside of the vast area in which she and her fellow humans were contained. The humans too appeared as lights, most of them dimmer than the Rakatans. A few stood out. Halvor shone brightly, Usment somewhat less. When she focused on them it was as though she could feel as they felt. With Halvor it was that restrained anger, like a string pulled tight. Usment, who was slowly moving away from her home, felt wary. She found Tytus with some effort, as his Gift was so much less than the others. He was more like those below, faint little lights it was hard to distinguish between. Tytus felt uncertain and anxious. Brun, who walked with him, and shone, as his sisters did as well, far more brightly in Myra's mental vision than his father. He was like a little ball of energy, his thoughts and emotions constantly going hard in all manner of directions. When Myra turned her mind to try to find Zhed-Hai things were different. She could find him. He appeared in her mind's eye, but she felt nothing. When she tried to concentrate on him she could feel herself being pushed away. His light was brighter than any's, but there were walls around it. No matter how much she tried she made no headway. What was in the Old Man's mind was clearly meant for no one to see.

But below, far below is where things became truly strange. The farther away she cast her mind the harder it got to sense things distinctly and clearly. But below there was something, a crouching malevolence, like a howl in the dark of a cave. Her mind had reached out to that malevolent thing before, but as with Zhed-Hai she could not make contact. It was different than Zhed-Hai though. With the Rakatan when Myra reached out with her mind it felt as though she was hitting a wall, and the harder she pushed on that wall the firmer the wall became. But with the thing she sensed below her it was a more active resistance. Zhed-Hai's defense against her was passive and constant. The thing below, the thing full of hate and anger and violence seemed to react to her. When she tried to touch its mind with hers it was like she was being hit.

But the more she engaged in this exercise of spreading her awareness out through the compound to touch lightly all its residents, the clearer her vision became, and the more certain she became that there was something else, something very deep below the ground. She could feel two creatures below, but just barely. It was something like the experience of seeing something but only out of the corner of your eye. You knew it was there, but you couldn't make out at all what it was. When she tried to focus on them she kept getting the image in her mind of two still pools of water, as you would sometimes find in a cave. They were not keeping her out, or at least Myra didn't think so, but they also weren't leaving their minds open the way so many of the Rakatans and the other humans did. They put up no barriers, as Zhed-Hai did, but rather were simply self-contained. She cast her mind down, as far as she could, pushing to make her view clearer. She felt as though there was something important about the two things in the deeps, that it was important to make them aware of her.

And then she was shaken from her meditation by Sani, who told her "Mommy, you stopped weaving."

Myra opened her eyes. It still gave her joy to hear Sani say 'Mommy.' Brun had stopped, trying to seem older than his age, but Sani did not care for such things. Not yet anyway. Myra smiled at her daughter and said, "So I did. Luckily I have you two to help me." There would be time to cast her mind outward later Myra realized. She should appreciate this moment, this quiet warm moment with her girls. And so the three of them wove together. In time they would have enough string to start a garment, and Myra would have something new to show them. But for now they carried on together, humming little tunes to each other while their fingers deftly danced along the fibers.

Tytus and Brun arrived after a while, with fuel and food and water. They set to work starting the fire. That was done outside, as the smoke would collect inside the little house they had assembled. Where the smoke went when the cooking was done outdoors was something they could not tell. Their enclosure was certainly not open at the top, but there must be some way of getting the smoke out, because there were always more than a few fires going inside, and the smoke did not build up the way you would expect. After Tytus and Brun got the fire going they cooked the various proteins to soften them, and then brought them in, along with the water. Myra and the girls put the weaving to one side, and they ate as a family. Tytus and Myra shared stories with the children, the same ones they had heard before back in the caves on Tatooine. Sani and Corus seemed comforted by this little piece of home, while Brun seemed impatient for the stories to end. He had been asking more and more questions about Lehon and the compound and the Rakatans and the northerners, and both Tytus and Myra had been forced to tell him that they did not have the answers he wanted. Tytus had been telling the truth, or at least what he took to be the truth about the Rakatans and the northerners. Myra, on the other hand, was worried, especially about Brun's seeming attraction to the northerners and their ways. He watched the circle around the bonfire every night unless his parents forced him to come back inside to sleep, as they pre-emptively did during dinner.

Once all the children were asleep, or at least laying down, Myra and Tytus sat outside and looked at the large nightly bonfire. They could make out the fighting circle, which always formed near the fire, around which flocked most of the other residents of the human's enclosure. There was a fight going on, though Myra and Tytus were too far away to make out what was happening. Or rather, Tytus was too far away to make out what was happening, and Myra was simply uninterested in keeping track of the fight. She knew what happened there, and she preferred it staying far away. Halvor, who decided the locations of the bonfire each day had kept the circle away from Myra and Tytus' hut. Whether this was out of respect for Myra's wishes or fear of Myra and her relationship with Zhed-Hai was known only to Halvor. Certainly the other northerners did not question his decisions.

Myra turned to Tytus and said, "Another northerner came by today, while you were gone."

Tytus, still looking at the fire, responded, "Same as before, Halvor?"

Myra sat with her knees up to her chest and her arms on her knees. She shook her head in response to Tytus' question, but since he wasn't looking directly at her she added, "No. It was a man named Usment."

"You know him too?"

Myra nodded. "I told you I fought in the circle, before you and the children arrived. Well I actually fought more than one of them, and Usment was the last that I fought."

"How'd that go?"

Myra turned back to look at the fire, where she felt she could make out Usment's wild red hair in the front row of the circle surrounding the fighters. She said softly, "Until today I thought I had maybe killed him."

Tytus now looked at Myra and she turned back to look at him. Not knowing what else to say, Tytus said "How?"

Myra gave Tytus a slight smile as she said, "I threw him against the glass wall. Hard."

"Hard enough to kill him?"

Myra nodded.

"Was the fire set near the glass wall?"

Myra shook her head. "Not very close, no."

Tytus looked down. He was used to this, used to Myra just being better at things than him. She had always been quick, and strong, and lucky, even when they were children before their little tribe set out on its own. But always before she had just been better at things which he himself could do. That had been something he could be proud of in his mate. But this thing, this Force, which she said he had but he could not feel a bit of, this was something else. It made her something else, something altogether different than him. Something altogether higher. But, he supposed, in the end it was all the same thing. His mate could do things others couldn't, that he couldn't. He had gotten used to it about other things, and he could get used to it about this.

Myra broke the silence, "I think you were right."

Tytus looked back up and asked, "What about?"

Myra nodded in the direction of the circle. "I think you have to fight. It's the only way they will leave us alone. The only way they will leave Brun alone."

"You said you thought they would kill me. Still think so?"

Myra placed her hand gently around Tytus' and squeezed it softly. "No, because I will be with you."