The Murdered Sun - Christie Golden [51]
Viha Nata was silent, walking steadily with powerful movements of her clean, strong legs. At last, she asked, "What of the people who went with the Nunnehi?"
"They were never seen again. But we have no reason to think that they were unhappy."
"I think," said Nata slowly, putting the pieces together inside her large, complex brain, "that if what we are seeing now is your Trail of Tears, then what happened long, long ago was the other half of that tale. Then, we were not the Cherokee who stayed to suffer. Then, we were the Cherokee who escaped the terrible thing by the grace of the Nunnehi."
She stopped and regarded him. "What you are about to see is a thing of great holiness among my people. I do not show you this lightly."
He inclined his head. "I do not view it lightly," he said, his voice steady and serious.
"We call it the First Place. It is also the soul of our kind.
Long, long ago, it sheltered us, saved us, until it was safe to leave it and partake of the bounties granted to us by this once most fruitful of planets. I come here often and sit up on that peak to which I now take you, and I wonder..." The old Verunan twisted her long, thin neck, regarded the stone outcropping. "I wonder if, perhaps now that our sun is dying, if that is not a sign that we should return to this place. It saved my people before, or so the tales would have us believe--and Chakotay, I do believe the tales--and I wonder, perhaps it might save us again."
She turned her attention to him again, and he realized, not for the first time, the latent power that was in her body and her spirit.
Nata, as her people all seemed to be, was gentle. The Verunans fed on plants and roots, not flesh. There seemed to be no internal strife, no external strife, until the Akerians came to murder their sun and their entire system. But she was big and physically powerful, and the great and terrible beauty that manifested itself in her lambent eyes could not be denied.
"Ascend, Chakotay. Look upon the First Place, think on it, and tell me your thoughts."
Chakotay realized he hadn't felt this nervous since the early days of his youth, when he had gone with his father to the tropical rain forests of Earth in search of his tribe's origins.
That world, those people, had been alien to him, the "contrary," who wanted to embrace the more orderly and contemporary universe offered by Starfleet. How ironic--or perhaps, how fitting--that that decision had brought him here, to that precipice up ahead which represented another step into another world; another challenge.
Challenge.
You are a teacher. You are also a student. You teach the ways of your people. That is easy to do. What is harder to do is to be wise and teach the ways of people you do not know.
But how do I teach what I do not know?
That is the challenge, is it not?
He could almost feel her, there, just out of reach, inside his mind as she always was, accessible at any moment but uncommendable. Chakotay's heart thudded inside his chest and not just from exertion.
At last he ascended and gazed down in the valley of the First Place.
The First Place was enormous. It was several kilometers long, stretching out its slim white arms in four directions. At each compass point sat a large bulge, each one easily twice the size of Nata's village. Its white metal gleamed in the sun, Teach the ways of people you do not know.
Now he knew what she had meant. He could almost see the sleek animal spirit nodding her head as suddenly the pieces clicked together.
Although he had never seen this structure before, he knew what it was, knew even better than Viha Nata, to whom it was a daily sight.
"Viha,", he said softly, "it's a colony ship."
CHAPTER 10
They had refueled, repaired the Victory, commissioned a second