Dark Matters_ Ghost Dance (Book 2) - Christie Golden [52]
'Tell me more about this interceptor bit," said Harry.
"Well, as I told you earlier, sometimes alien races don't contact us, they contact the Culilann. We have interceptors who try to catch these poor aliens who fall through the cracks before they reach the Culilann. Once they have made contact, though, it becomes the field team's responsibility. They have to conduct a recovery-go out and find and bring back the aliens."
"So that's what your brother Ezbai does? He leads these missions?"
She threw back her head and laughed at that. "Oh, no, not Ezbai. You'd never see anyone more out of
his element than Ezbai three meters into the jungle. No, he is well suited to the job of interceptor, which means he monitors things and tells other people to go out into the rain forest and recover the aliens and the infants."
"Infants? You lost me."
She wrinkled her adorable little nose, and Harry knew he was in for another diatribe against the Culilann. "They are so primitive," she sighed. "Any child who is born deformed is exposed-left at their so-called sacred mountain for their fictitious gods to rescue."
"They abandon their children to die in the elements?" Harry was truly horrified at this. His imaginative mind raced with all the dreadful possibilities.
"They would if it weren't for us," declared Khala. "We have a spy planted in each village who notifies us when this happens, and we send out the emergency recovery teams at once. We can get to the infant within an hour at the outside. We take them in, cure whatever it was that so offended the Culilann about them, and raise them as Alilann children."
Kim found this admirable. "That's awfully nice of you."
"Well, we couldn't just let them die, could we? We'd be just like the Culilann then."
"But the Culilann don't think they're leaving them to die, and honestly, you're playing right into their false thinking. The children are always taken away by some benevolent being. It's just that instead of the Grafters, it's their own kind."
"We are not the same kind!" exclaimed Khala., "Haven't you heard a word I've said?"
This was not the way Harry had wanted the evening to go. "I understand they're a different caste, but you're the same race. You even raise their children to be Alilann."
Khala sighed, calming somewhat. "I'm sorry I snapped at you, Harry. It must be so hard for you to understand this, coming from a different culture. Infants are one thing. We raise them Alilann, and Alilann they are. But older children, adults-they are Culilann to their bones. And I understand you better than I understand them."
Harry was silent. "Let me tell you about my family," he said. He told her of being raised as the golden child, the only offspring of elderly parents. He spoke of his love for them, the closeness he felt, and how awful it was, even after all this time in the Delta Quadrant, to be separated from them. And finally, his heart racing and his palms wet, he told her about the clarinet.
"Clarinet? What is that?"
"It's a musical instrument," he said. Rising, he went to retrieve it "I replicated it early on in the voyage, so that I could stay in practice."
Still she did not understand. "Instrument? Is it then a diagnostic tool of some sort?"
He licked dry lips. "No, it makes music."
"You are using all kinds of words that are unfamiliar to me," she said, laughing. "Show me what this does."
Harry stared. She didn't even know what music
was. He had imagined that there was at least some kind of corollary in her regimented, precisely controlled world, perhaps tunes composed by computer. But apparently there was nothing.
He swallowed hard. Lifting the clarinet to his lips, he began to play.
Khala started at the sound. Her lovely face registered puzzlement, then confusion, then something akin to panic.
"Stop it," she said.
He ceased playing.