Ascending - James Alan Gardner [112]
Now those same containers held corpses, many in advanced states of decomposition.
I could not identify any of the species. Some were clearly alien—things with eight legs, or with shells shaped like flat orange octagons. Others might have been creatures I knew, but were too dried and withered to recognize anymore. Skeletons covered with shriveled skin. Mounds of decaying fur still pressed desperately against the wire of the cages where they had died.
All these animals perished from neglect: unfed, unwatered, uncleaned. I suppose they had been brought to the prophets as pious offerings, then simply ignored. They might have been nice pretty creatures—fluffy and gentle, or scaly and playful—but the Cashlings apparently could not be bothered to fill up food and water dishes. These “holy sacrifices” had suffered most horrible deaths from sheer lack of attention…and the sight made me sad and angry, both at the same time.
Had Lady Bell and Lord Rye been the ones responsible for such starvation and thirst? Or were these creatures left over from previous prophets—prophets who accepted live offerings from their followers, then left the animals to rot? I did not know. I strongly hoped the two current prophets were not the guilty parties; but even if Rye and Bell were innocent of these animals’ deaths, they were obviously not much different from their predecessors. Whatever awfulness they had inherited, they had simply allowed it to continue: a dirty, messy, stinky ship that made one want to cry.
The most tragic part was that Unfettered Destiny was made of glass—beautiful, beautiful glass, so grimy and grubby it broke one’s heart.
The floor tiles were see-through: if you looked past the crusty smudges and mounds of rubbish, you could stare at the next level below (chockfull of machinery that might have been the ship’s engines, its computers, or its entertainment systems). Through the walls, one could see more machines—some with screens that flashed pictures, some with screwlike attachments that spun at high speeds, some that just brooded silently over their dour lack of ornamentation. As for the view through the glass ceiling…the entire length of Royal Hemlock rose straight above us, like a great white tower jutting into black space.
It made me dizzy to look at—as if the giant white ship might topple onto my head at any second. I could barely stare up at it without going woozy. Perhaps it might have been easier if I had lain down flat on my back, but I was not about to lie on this floor.
Therefore, I closed my eyes, steeled myself, and looked again. This time, I scanned up the Hemlock’s length, beginning at the bottom, moving carefully toward the top…until far far away, near the ship’s nose, my gaze fell on a dark object attached to the Hemlock like a leech on a trout.
It was a stick; or perhaps I should call it a twig compared to the much bigger sticks of the Shaddill ship. Even so, I could see it was the same type of thing: a flexible tube that had embedded itself in the Hemlock’s forward hull. As I watched, it waved back and forth in lazy patterns, like seaweed in a gentle current.
How long had the twig been attached there…and what was it meant to accomplish? Had it perhaps injected Dangerous Substances through the Hemlock’s outer skin, horrible gases or diseases that would soon incapacitate those aboard? Or could it have contained horrid alien warriors who were even now creeping through the ship’s pitch-black corridors, ambushing crew members in the darkness? Perhaps the alien invaders could transform their persons into a semblance of those they ambushed, and the entity who appeared to be Sergeant Aarhus was actually a loathsome jelly-thing waiting for a chance to implant me with its gibbering spawn.
But I did not think so. All the aliens I had met since leaving Melaquin were stodgy disappointments who did not shapeshift or anything…and what is the point of being an alien if you do not have Uncanny Abilities with which to incite terror in other species? If you cannot disrupt the lives and sanity of other