Dark Matters_ Ghost Dance (Book 2) - Christie Golden [18]
But her scorn for the arts and spirituality of the
Culilann disturbed Harry. He'd woken and slept to the haunting music of his mother's various instruments and her singing. He'd mastered dozens of instruments in his childhood. He loved reading good books and tending flowers simply for their scent and loveliness. Art of every sort was in Harry's blood, and it pained him to realize that this lovely woman walking beside him not only did not share his love for art, she scorned it and anyone who valued it.
"Do the Alilann have no art at all? Nothing to adorn their walls, or tables?" he asked, hoping he didn't sound as small and sad as he felt.
"Of course we do," she said, laughing at him. "We have designers. They program images and colors on the computer, and every family has at least one or two."
Harry brightened a little. Even that was something. He briefly recalled a sunny afternoon when he was a toddler. The sun streamed into his room as he messed happily with wet, sloppy, vibrant dollops of color on white paper. Khala had never done that.
He decided to change the subject, though he was still curious about her customs. "I'm surprised you're so friendly to us, actually, since your race has a deep history of being abused by alien races."
"That was a long time ago," Khala replied, smiling sincerely at him. "We think hatred or fear based simply on race, rather than how that race interacts with us, is foolish."
"Boy, I agree with you there," said Harry, almost too heartily. He was so pleased that they'd found some common ground.
"Thanks to our technology, we have extensive communications systems, weapons to defend ourselves if necessary, and interceptors to prevent any aliens we've missed in the conventional manner from falling into the hands of the Culilann."
"What do the Culilann do?" Harry sobered at once.
"They have almost a cultural memory of the Strangers who made war on us and infected us," said Khala. "Without instruments to ascertain if a race poses a threat, then every strange person they encounter has to be viewed as a threat. They have something they call the Ordeal. It's positively barbaric."
Khala shuddered, then continued. "They put them in a pit in the center of the village square, dug especially for that singular purpose. A wooden grate keeps them trapped. They are doused with water in a so-called 'ritual bath,' then the Culilann do nothing for these poor interlopers other than pray for them for a certain amount of time. If they survive the Ordeal, they are considered harmless."
Harry couldn't believe it. For the first time, he shared Khala's dislike of the Culilann.
"And it doesn't even work!" exclaimed Khala, as if this were the final straw. "Simply because someone is strong enough to endure a physical ordeal doesn't mean they aren't carriers of a disease that might be harmless to them but fatal to us. That's why we have interceptors, Harry. To find and rescue aliens before they are subjected to the Ordeal."
They stepped into the turbolift. "Engineering," said Kim. There was a slight whirring sound as the turbolift moved smoothly into action.
"I wouldn't want to be stranded in a Culilann village," said Kim honestly. It was the one thing he could find to wholeheartedly agree with Khala about.
The light from the sphere glinted on the metal of Seven's facial implants, turning the silver hue to shiny purple. It was kind of pretty.
"You look good in purple," said Torres... Seven did not react. Torres guessed she was uncertain as to how to reply, and smothered a grin. One of these days, Seven was going to catch on to something known as "teasing."
In the meantime, their new way of looking at That Damned Ball was starting to yield results, although they had not, as Torres had sarcastically predicted, gotten everything wrapped up by lunchtime.