To Storm Heaven - Esther Friesner [90]
“Bilik oberyin! Attend us!” Nish ha’am spoke sharply. “Your inattention robs us all of our present advantage.” The graybeard turned a piercing look on Captain Picard. “You are the one who rules here? Are you starlord or Child of Yaro?” “I am Jean-Luc Picard, captain of this ship,” Picard replied evenly. “And that is all.” His response left the na’am somewhat puzzled. He made another try. “Do you side with the Balance or against it?” “We side with a peaceful resolution of differences.” “Differences,” the graybeard repeated. “And atrocities? Are these, too, merely differences to you? Bilik oberyin came before us to speak of many secrets, long buried. Injustice has been done to our people. What do you know of this? Much? Little? Nothing?” “We know as much and more than you about the situation that has developed between Ashkaar and Ne’elat, Nish ha’am,” Picard said. “We would rejoice to see things made right between the two worlds.” “And our dead? The loved ones we have lost so needlessly for so long. Where is their rejoicing?” Counsellot Troi spoke up, her voice soft and persuasive. “We cannot hope to undo the past, Nish na’am. Act for the sake of the living, not the dead, and look to the future.” “The future will be no different from the past, can be no different, unless these deceivers admit their offenses against us,” the ha’am said coldly.
“When the sun falls,” Udar Kishrit snarled.
“Udar Kishrit, think about what you’re saying,” Picard said. “I have walked in the sacred precincts of Bovridash and heard your bovereem expound the teachings. If you worship the holy beauty of the Balance, how can you leave a debt unpaid?” “What debt? I pay all my debts, Captain Picard.
You insult me,” Udar Kishrit replied, his mouth hard.
“Not this debt. For centuries the spiritual health of your people has flourished at the expense of the physical well-being of the Ashkaarians, your kindred.
For ages you’ve chosen to take from them, but now you face a glorious opportunity, the chance to give, to pay back some small measure of all that you’vere” “Enough!” Udar Kishrit’s face was livid. “What is this talk of debts to be repaid? Debts are contracted between equals! Hear me now and hear me well Captain Picard: If we have taken the teachings of these savages for our own, it is because the gods gave us that power. Will you challenge the wisdom of the gods? If we had not done so, Ne’elat might have become like the old homeworld, lost because its people could worship nothing that was not the work of their hands.” “Do you hear your own words, Udar Kishrit?” Counsellor Troi asked softly. “If you think of the Ashkaarians as savages, why do you come to them for spiritual guidance?” Udar Kishrit made an impatient sound. “You twist my words. I know only one truth, that if we have saved and preserved the advances of Ne’elat at the price of a dozen Ashkaars, we have done well.” “Saved the advances of Ne’elat, but for whom?” Troi murmured.
“Not for such as they, if that is what you mean.” Udar Kishrit lifted his head proudly.
“You are such as they, you fool!” Ambassador Lelys shouted. “One stem, many flowers, but all sprung from the same seed.” “I might say the same of your people and mine as well,” the head of the Masra’et returned coldly. “Yet you would turn your back on us too, without a second thought. You would deny us the stars.” Lelys’s gesture embraced the Ashkaarians. “You would deny these people, your brothers, life itselfl” “And you, shiplord?” Nish na’am studied Captain Picard’s face. “In your eyes, that have seen much, are we savages?” “No,” Picard replied. “By no means.” “Why do you say so when this… illspeaker”—he nodded at Udar Kishrit—”seems so convinced that we are? What makes a savage, shiplord? Blind selfishness? Casual brutality? Indifference to anyone