To Storm Heaven - Esther Friesner [51]
Even if we were seeking to intervene in the name. maintaining peace for… would still be wrong. I refuse. Let another of our agents tell… he is ascending to Evramur in the flesh! I… no longer. ! would choke on the lie. Better… save what is left of your souls! Do you…—lieve that we can keep them ignorant forever? That we… stop progress by stealing away any… scientific minds among them?” The recording crackled with a scornful noise. “Why don’t we bring them to Bovridash and breed them for religion… way we breed beasts for meat? But I would be afraid that you… the Masra’et would take my… seriously.” Riker touched the unit again, silencing it. “Now do you see?” he asked Data.
“I believe so. It would seem that the Ne’elatians have done the Ashkaarians significant harm after all.” “First they steal what they please of the Ashkaarians’ beliefs, then they steal their brightest minds.” Ambassador Lelys held herself stiff, fighting for selfcontrol over rage. “They think that if the Ashkaarians make any technological progress, they will lose their faith, simply because that was how it happened on Ne’elat.” “Isata Kish was obviously one of the agents in place stationed here to be on the lookout for any natives who might turn out to be this world’s answer to da Vinci, Pasteur, Galileo,” Riker said. “Once a Ne’elatian agent spotted someone like that, it wasn’t hard to whisk them away, and no one here would get suspicious. The first agents were probably the ones who planted all the stories about how these living saints were carried off to Evramur. Who’d ever question it?” “None,” Lelys said. “That would be blasphemy, and none would want to. The village that produces a saint gains fame, prestige, and attracts many pilp~rims.” Troi sighed. “We can at least be thankful that the Ne’elatians did not simply kill the Ashkaarians they carried off. To someone born and raised here, Ne’elat must indeed look like paradise.” “I am unfamiliar with everything that the term paradise implies,” Data said. “However I would suggest that a situation based on deliberate lies could not be a true paradise. A very attractive and comfortable prison, perhaps, but not a paradise.” Ambassador Lelys stood up, a dangerous light in her eyes. “This situation is an atrocity, an injustice that has gone on for far too long. It is intolerable. I will endure it no more.” Her glance swept their faces.
“I am well aware that as Starfleet officers you are restrained from direct intervention here as well as on Ne’elat. I am not. As soon as it has been determined whether or not these worlds have preserved the plant our colonists need so desperately, I will make all this public. More, I will lay the case before a Federation tribunal! I will—” A commotion from the hallway reached them, the sound of lumbering feet followed by a wild pounding at the door across the hall, Riker and Data’s room.
“Help, oh help us!” It was Sekol, the innkeeper, and he sounded like a man without hope.
Riker rushed to the door of the women’s room and threw it open. “We’re here. What is it?” If the vistors had transgressed against any local custom by having both sexes closeted in one room, Sekol was past caring about such things. His pallor was one step removed from a dead man’s. Sweat spangled his brow and his eyes were dark with terror.
“There are more deaths,” he gasped. “Old Maskan, who told the stories, he’s gone, and his poor wife with him! B’ist the tanner, he and his two sons, all of them strong and healthy this morning, dead, and his wife sounds three breaths away from the grave herselfl Not a house in all Kare’al but someone’s fallen ill of this curse. Oh, honored guests, flee) Save yourselves! You did not make a pilgrimage to find your deaths.” He leaned against the