The Red King - Michael A. Martin [38]
He was surprised, however, when the guards returned within a few hours to escort him away yet again. At least they had let him recover and don his pilgrim’s robe. And they had made no attempt to take the story bracelet from him again. Still apprehensive that the guards might change their minds about that, he kept the bracelet out of sight, tucked into the front pocket of his robe where he could feel its stones and shells and beads whenever he felt the need. For some reason, it reassured him, as though its very presence could somehow keep him safe. Of course, that notion hadn’t worked very well for his father.
Soon Frane was even more nonplussed to discover himself being escorted into what could only be the main control room of this vast ship of war. Commander Donatra was seated in the raised, thronelike chair at the brightly lit room’s center, while at least half a dozen dark-haired, pale-skinned elves—Romulans, he corrected himself—busied themselves at various duty stations. The wide viewer that dominated the front of the chamber displayed a broad, brilliant image of the energy tendrils that made up the mysterious substance of the Sleeper.
Donatra turned her seat toward him, perhaps alerted to his entrance by her sensitive-looking pointed ears. “Ah, Mr. Frane. Welcome to my bridge.”
He nodded to her, hoping she would regard the gesture as a courteous one. “Thank you. It’s very impressive.” His tail switched behind him involuntarily, until he forced it to remain still.
“Yes, it is that. And thanks to the cooperation of our Klingon…friends, our propulsion system and tractor beam are once again operational.”
“Klingon?” Frane asked, as unfamiliar with the word as he had been with the term ‘Romulan’ until very recently.
“Our…other guests, Mr. Frane. You must have seen their ship from your escape pod. You’ll likely meet them soon enough. By working in tandem with the Klingons we should have both of our ships under way and clear of the disturbances created by the spatial rift.”
“Again, impressive. But why have you brought me up here?”
Donatra smiled, though the expression looked more predatory than amicable on her saturnine features. “You’re very direct, Mr. Frane.”
“There’s little time to waste,” he said, nodding toward the image on the viewer.
Frane noticed that the Romulan woman’s mien had darkened. “Why? Do you know something we don’t about the Great B1—about the phenomenon out there?”
“We call it the Sleeper.”
“Why?”
Frane squeezed the bracelet between his fingers, imagining that he could draw strength from it. “Because its dreams mold reality itself, at least here in Neyel space. And its infrequent awakenings end those dreams, causing whole worlds to vanish as though they were nothing but errant thoughts to begin with. Or so say the ancient stories of the Indigenous Races.”
“Ah. I see.” She appeared to relax then, obviously having dismissed the wisdom of the ancients as mere myth and folklore.
And perhaps that is all it ever really was. After all, very few modern Neyel—and certainly no Neyel ancestor of which Frane was aware—had ever taken such tales seriously. The Oh-Neyel People whose earliest struggles and conquests had built the Neyel Hegemony had had time for aught but survival.
But the native peoples the Neyel had conquered over the centuries had known the truth, perhaps from the time that intelligent life had first emerged here, billions of Oghenturns before the Neyel or the human species that sired them had come into being. The long-vanished His’lant, among other races, had understood the true nature of the Sleeper, and may even have been tied to it somehow, perhaps more intimately than any species dreamed by it.
If the His’lant legends are merely stories, then why did Newaerth and its entire system vanish when the Sleeper first began to stir? Frane thought. Why