The Red King - Michael A. Martin [3]
So that the Neyel, Frane’s own people, might atone for the many crimes they had committed against virtually every sentient species they’d met in M’jallanish space—at least before Aidan Burgess had come all the way from Auld Aerth and tried to show the Neyel the gross error of their ways.
The Seekers After Penance revered Federation Ambassador Burgess, and it was their devoir to complete what she had begun: to continue teaching the entire Neyel race the lessons of peace to which the long-dead, martyred diplomat had introduced them. Even if the aim of those lessons—atonement—cost the lives of everyone who had participated in the Neyel Conquests. Even if their heirs who perpetuated those injustices even now, knowingly or not, had to suffer—along with native peoples too weak-willed to have even tried to oppose their conquerors.
“Is it true, Frane?” Fasaryl asked. “Is it true that every world in the M’jallan Cloud will vanish when the Sleeper finally comes fully awake?”
Frane nodded. “So say the legends of the His’lant. And those of the Sturr. And the tales of your ancient Oghen forebears as well.”
“The His’lant Taletellers say that the Sleeper dreams all the worlds in the Cloud,” said Nozomi. “And when the Sleeper awakens—”
“The dream ends,” Frane said, finishing her thought. Along with every evil act our people have ever perpetrated against those worlds.
Fasaryl shrugged his thick, bovine shoulders. “Or so say the stories. We won’t know until and unless it happens.”
“We already know that the Sleeper stirs,” said g’Ishea, nodding toward the colorful energy pinwheel that now lay just a few hundred thousand klomters before them. “And that stirring has already wiped out at least one whole world. After Newaerth’s disappearance, I need no further convincing.”
Frane nodded grimly. The truth of g’Ishea’s words was undeniable. Newaerth was no more, having vanished cataclysmically along with its entire planetary system, within days of the initial appearance of the colorful spatial distortions—a beautiful blue world, settled only a century after the arrival of the ancestral Neyel in the Lesser M’jallan Cloud, extinguished by the stirrings of the Sleeper.
“Perhaps the Sleeper will spare us if we conduct the propitiation rituals,” Nozomi said in a quiet, frightened voice.
Unlike Nozomi, Frane had no realistic expectations of being spared whatever divine wrath was about to engulf the entire region. Nor did he believe himself particularly worthy of any such mercies. But he was ready and willing to undertake the meditative ritual, if only on behalf of his companions, whose faith in the efficacy of the ancient native rites clearly exceeded his own. After all, why should his fellow travelers face summary death when it was his forebears, not theirs, who had truly earned the ire of the cosmos?
While still tending to the ship’s instruments, Lofi detached one of her scaly, rainbow-colored thoracic segments. Its multijointed arms and sensory clusters immediately set about arranging the ritual materials on the deck before the viewer. Scuttling to and fro with purposeful deftness, she covered about a square metrik with a precise arrangement of colorful soils from the Sturr homeworld, mixing them with several large droplets of her own viscous body fluids, secreted directly from glands hidden beneath the arms of her independently operating body segment.
Frane lowered his head, his eyeshutters closing out the vaguely disturbing ritual as Fasaryl began to make a gentle lowing sound. His song chilled the base of Frane’s spine; he knew that the archaic words Fasaryl sang were far older than the Neyel’s most ancient ancestors from Auld Aerth.
Fasaryl reached the end of the ritual utterances within the space of a few dozen heartbeats, as though in anticipation of something momentous. Frane glanced upward, opening his eyeshutters enough to see the