The Murdered Sun - Christie Golden [38]
He'd give a lot for a tall, cool glass of iced tea right now.
The skies grew grayer, and he heard thunder rumble in the distance.
"We have lived in the open for thousands of years," the Viha was saying. "There was no reason not to. The shelters that you saw, we built from the mud pits. Our bodies can withstand the heat sufficiently for us to hand-make any structures, even purely decorative ones, from the mud."
So, the canopies and the huts were mud, not stone. "How do you get the mud to harden?" asked Paris, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
Nata shrugged and brushed aside a huge branch with little visible effort. Courteously, she held it and permitted the others to walk through before she let it spring back with a whoosh and a tremor of foul scent. "We treat it with various oils from the plants. It hardens in the sunlight." A few more steps, then she brightened. "Ah, here we are."
They emerged from the jungle into a flat, open space. Paris blinked in slight surprise. Here in the middle of nowhere, seemingly growing from the soil as the vines grew on the trees, was a small island of gleaming metal. It, too, was protected from the elements by an overarching building of the hardened mud.
But inside, Paris glimpsed colored lights blinking on and off, heard the familiar sounds of electronic equipment hard at work.
Withdrawing his tricorder, he began to take readings.
This is more like it, he thought to himself as he heard thunder rumbling again, closer this time. Even as he opened his mouth to ask the question, Anahu answered it for him.
"This is not our technology. This was put here many turns ago by the Akerians." The engineer's usually pleasantly modulated voice grew hard. "They wished to be able to communicate to us, keep us firmly under their command by knowing exactly what was transpiring here on Veruna Four. This is where Viha Nata first contacted you."
Paris's mind flashed back to the next to last contact they had had with the Viha. He remembered screams of pain, images of blood and agony and carnage. Glancing around quickly, he saw that blood still stained the hard-packed earth around the site.
Chakotay beat him to it by asking, "Where are your injured, Viha?
Perhaps we can help them."
Nata straightened slightly, and her eyes narrowed. But her voice when she spoke was not unfriendly, merely firm. "Our dead and our injured are our business, Commander. Your desire to help shows you to be a compassionate person. But our pain, our suffering--that is not for the eyes of strangers, however well-meaning they may be." She cocked her head to one side in an almost birdlike gesture. "I hope you do not take offense?"
The first officer shook his head. "Of course not. We are not familiar with your people, as I have said. You must forgive us if we do anything that seems rude or offensive. I assure you, our only desire is to help." He caught Kaavi's eye and grinned a slow, understanding grin. "And learn," he added.
Paris hit his comm badge. "Paris to Kim."
"Kim here."
"Hey, pal, you sound beat." Kim's voice was heavy, and Paris had no doubt but that the young ensign was exhausted, physically and mentally.
"I've been better. What's up, Tom?"
Paris blinked, trying to clear his vision. Breathing the heavy, hot, moist air was tiring. "There's a structure here that Viha Nata tells us was erected by the Akerians, not the Verunans. I thought you might be interested."
"You bet I am!" Paris smothered a grin at how the simple statement had perked Kim up so completely. "Record everything you can. I'll factor it into what we're already learning about them."
"Any answers yet?" Paris asked.
"Well... nothing concrete. I'm still trying to make heads or tails of a lot of it."
Sweat dribbled into Paris's eye. It stung, and he wiped at it, succeeding only in getting more sweat and dust from his fingers into his eye. He blinked, trying to clear it, aware that he was attracting concerned looks from Chakotay