Tesla could barely keep himself from dissolving in laughter. What blather! What transparent ego-stroking! Surely, the very Regent, end-all of egotism, would have struck Tesla down for saying such things.
But Burak was an untried youth whose planet was near disaster, and to him it was something of a miracle that he hadn't been swallowed up by it already.
He sat down, cross-legged like Tesla but safely out of the Invid's reach, on the other side of the bars. "Teach me what I need to know, and I'll free you."
Tesla had already anticipated that, and knew that he had to up the ante. Besides, the robes and the gemstones and the turn of events had him thinking along new pathways now.
He tried to think up something suitably muddled and nebulous, something appropriate for a hazy Sentinel mind. "Free? All beings are free. It is only distorted awareness that imprisons them."
Tesla was beginning to enjoy this. "But there are specific things, things like the process for reversing the damage that has been done to Peryton, and freeing all your people from their terrible curse."
Tesla leaned toward the bars with what he calculated to be the correct fervor. "And these things are not so difficult! I shall help you accomplish them. And you will deliver up your people."
Tesla assumed what he hoped looked like a prayerful attitude. "I don't ask you to free me.
Nor even to trust me. I only ask you, Burak, to listen to me."
Burak stayed back out of range, but he leaned closer.
Rick Hunter had been thinking about taking some disciplinary action against Jack Baker until he found him gathered with most of the rest of the scouting party, sitting there on the rump of the dead Hellcat overlooking the Teddy Bears' Picnic.
Lron was still down among the cubs, and transports were on the way to lift the Karbarran youngsters out now that Lisa and the others in Tracialle had gotten the dome open and the last of the Inorganics were dead.
Rick moved toward them, just in time to hear Bela avow, "He's got the guts of a Praxian! Jack Baker's just like a daughter to me!"
She didn't seem to understand why several people were guffawing and Jack was turning pinker than usual. Maybe he's been punished enough, Rick thought; it was a line that would pursue Baker for the rest of his military career. Sackcloth and ashes could be no worse.
Bela spit in her palm and held it out. Jack spit on his and clasped with her, arm-wrestling style, then winced a bit when she inadvertently crunched his fingers together.
Kami was there, too, and cubs kept running up to him with every sort of minor update on what was going on, or simply to hold onto a tuft of his fur. He had freed them, and his pelt was a lot more familiar to them than all the armor and uniforms they saw around them. Several had found their way up into his lap, even though Karbarran cubs were big for a Gerudan to hold.
Rick forgot all about his official duty and just stood to one side, watching. If he went over to join them, things would change. The issue of rank would appear.
So he leaned against the corner of the bunker and watched. Gnea put a well muscled arm around Rem and gave him a kiss on the cheek, yelling something about Hellcats. Halidarre, like something from the Arabian Nights, reared a bit every now and then, beating her wings slowly.
He left them to their moment and went off to get a lift back to the capital. He just didn't feel like it was a win yet; he had to hear it from Lisa, see it on her face.
Things about love you hadn't quite anticipated: lesson 207, he thought wryly.
Lightning like this would shake any Human's faith in God, Breetai thought as a passing observation, while one of the rolling, rainless storms of Fantoma lit the sky, exciting the chancy tectonics of the planet and resounding against the hard sides of the mining machines and armored workers.
Here in the thicker medium of the unbreathable Fantoman atmosphere, great Breetai gazed down on a place out of memory.
Zarkopolis!
The history of a people, a race, all stemming from the first awakenings there; the things that had been blanked from neuron altogether but somehow, stubbornly, remained in marrow and soul-the past was washing in on him and he could no more sort it out than pick a handful from a wave.
With the mining operation safely established, Breetai had flown back for a look at Zarkopolis, the city where the Zentraedi had begun. A haunted world, he thought yet again, for the latest of times past counting.
Breetai took a step forward, to go down and look at the Zentraedi past. The officers who accompanied him made that same step, like shadows.
"Stay back," he bade them. "You may return to the camp; I wish to be alone." They hesitated, men obeyed.
There were only two Zentraedi from those days still alive, the ultimate survivors, and Exedore was now a happily diminutive little Human. The thought was unkind, but he couldn't help it; only Breetai was left.
With his vast strides, it didn't take him long to make his way down into the deserted city. He saw the high, fluted spires that had been erected by his people in defiance of the terrible gravity, not to announce their greatness so much as to affirm the Zentraedi ability to endure, to overcome, through sheer stubbornness and backbreaking hard work. How different a legacy from what the Robotech Masters had given them!
As a memory-wiped warrior for the Masters, he had always felt contempt for the scurrying, insect-colony industriousness of subject races-of workers. But now he looked upon Zarkopolis, remembering the pain and striving in each chisel mark, each laboriously-raised slab.
And memories began returning to him, recollections of what his people had been at the outset: builders and strivers, who had more in common with the Micronians of Earth, and Macross, and SDF-1, than the Robotech Masters had dared let the Zentraedi know.
It is no wonder to me, now, that we were moved so deeply by Minmei's songs, he thought. At last, at last, I understand!
With that there came a measure of peace within him.
Now he plodded down-the soil falling so fast, and abrading his boots with its weight-toward the stand of cream-colored bunkers and low domes and hunkering complexes that had been the center of all Zentraedi life so long ago.
He stopped. Why return to the source of so much pain and regret and resentment? But-he couldn't hold himself back, despite his iron will.
He had to go down yet again into the weathered, haunted precincts of the Zentraedi workers, and the multitude of voices that spoke to him across the ages. He didn't know why, knew only that he must stand there again, in the center of it all.
"My lord?"
He turned more slowly than he would have under lesser gravity; sudden moves could injure even the mightiest Zentraedi here. Kazianna Hesh was catching up with him, moving with unwise haste in her modified Quadrono suit.
She was again wearing those cosmetics the Human females favored. It confused him, seeing her features behind the tinted facebowl of her helmet. He said, "What do you want here? You should be at your work."
She was a little out of breath. Kazianna panted, looking at him earnestly. "My work is done and I am off shift, my lord. I–I had hoped that you would tell me why Zarkopolis obsesses you so, and show me the city where once the Zentraedi dwelt."
He looked down at her and wondered how old she was. In the heyday of the Robotech Masters' empire, the life expectancy of a clone warrior was less than three years, and it was virtually certain that she was one of the hordes brought forth to fill the empty spots in the ranks.