Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [124]
"So the Mage-Imperator agrees to this?" Daro'h, too, seemed disbelieving.
Udru'h was gruff. "It is the only way he can save the Empire. It is what Osira'h helped him to achieve." When her uncle smiled at her, she felt nauseated.
"Why did my father want me to hear this?" she asked.
Udru'h said, "I assume the Mage-Imperator felt you would be overjoyed to know that you have succeeded, that your work had a true purpose, and that our breeding program was not a waste." She forced herself not to glare at him.
Osira'h felt a thread inside her mind, knowing that she still had the potential to touch the hydrogues. But she walled it off, refusing to let the deep-core aliens glean this information from her. She hoped never to touch those appallingly disturbing minds again. If Udru'h could keep secrets from the Mage-Imperator, then she could keep secrets from the hydrogues.
She turned to Daro'h. "And now that you've torn down the fences, Designate, now that you've let these people free, are you going to tell them that the rest of their race is doomed? Or will you just let them keep happily working until the hydrogues come here to wipe them out?"
Daro'h spread his hands. "I cannot control what the hydrogues do!"
"There is no purpose in telling the humans a truth that would only make them unruly." Udru'h turned to the courier. "Your ship will depart soon for Ildira, and I wish to be aboard it. My work here is done, and the Mage-Imperator needs my assistance. He requires advice when it comes to difficult matters."
When Dobro's darkness drove the Ildirans into their well-lit dwellings, the former breeding subjects gathered in private. The Burton descendants spoke in hushed voices.
The communal buildings were scrubbed clean and had new beds and new furnishings. All the men, women, and their purebred children now had the option to construct dwellings outside the settlement perimeter. They could also have real families with whomever they chose, instead of the best genetic matches as determined by medical kithmen. But just because Daro'h had torn down the fences did not mean they were free.
Osira'h now knew their hopeful future was nothing more than a cruel illusion. She had tried to hold a thread of belief, but her father had failed her as badly as she'd feared. The courier's revelations were the final straw for her. Though their race might soon be extinct, these captives should at least know the truth. Finally.
The new Designate had never shown them the secret records, images of the enormous generation ship that had carried their ancestors from Earth, how Ildirans had introduced human bloodlines to the gene pool for hybrid vigor, hoping to achieve their long-sought telepathic intermediary. All those generations held captive . . . all unnecessary.
My parents accomplished with love what no amount of forced breeding and genetic slavery could achieve.
And for what? So she could facilitate the extermination of the human race?
Now even Nira listened in horror as Osira'h told the whole story and recounted the recent decision Jora'h had made. The Burton descendants had been abused for many years, but now they understood they'd been deceived as well. They were pawns, used to bring about the end of their own civilization.
"The big question is what do we do now?" Stoner said.
"We should be grateful to the new Dobro Designate," said an older woman. "Look how things have gotten better. This other matter is out of our hands."
Osira'h replied angrily, "Is that enough?" She looked at the others, trying to incite them. Raised in captivity, they had never known anything other than fences, their women taken away and raped, their men harvested for sperm. "You will never be allowed to leave Dobro. In fact, you will probably be killed--along with all humans everywhere."
"But we're free now," a balding man said. "We all heard what the Designate promised."
Nira turned from the darkness outside the barracks window, miserable. "Can we trust what a Dobro Designate says? Think of what Udru'h did to