The Regent flung the adviser aside in a carelessly non-lethal way, and began talking excitedly to his attendant Scientists. "Are my wife's Genesis Pits here on Optera still functional? Well, find out! And if they're not, make them ready for a project of monumental proportions! Divert workers and technicians and Scientists from other projects; bring them here by starship if need be!
"Oh, what a joke on the cursed Humans!" the Regent hooted. So, the Regis thinks I lost my sense of humor when I decided to devolve, eh?
Burak sealed the hatch and slipped into place, seated before Tesla's cage. There were a few Karbarrans on guard outside in the passageway, but they had been joined by friends for a kind of victory feast, and nobody was being very…very "strac," as the humans called it.
Tesla said nothing, only sat looking like an immense Buddha. Burak reached inside his robes, eyes averted, his horns dipping.
He came up with three luminous perfect spheres, as green as a breaking wave, as green as molten bottle glass. Seeing them, Tesla almost broke his guru pose and reached, but knew that he would only receive a shock charge from the bars of his cage for his troubles.
"The Fruit of the Rower of Life, as grown on Karbarra," Burak said.
"So." Tesla sat, looking down at the three.
There was legend among the Invid, and among many other cultures as well, about consuming the Fruit of the Flower. The implication was that the consumption of Fruit from all the worlds Especially Touched by Haydon-all the worlds, it happened, from which the Sentinels came-would bring forth some larger, more magnificent manifestation of the one who consumed it.
Tesla had spent a lifetime steeped in this occultish lore; he was convinced that there was a scientific basis to it. "Give those to me," he said, "and give me Fruit from the rest of Haydon's Worlds, the other worlds of the Sentinels."
"I don't trust you," Burak said.
"I don't expect you to," Tesla shot back. "Why do you think peace is so difficult to achieve?"
Burak slammed his fist on the deck. "Stop talking around it! Can you take the curse off Peryton or not?"
Tesla saw a bulge in the waist rope of Burak's robes and knew a pistol was there, knew what his fate would be if he couldn't sway Burak right here and now.
"I can. But you're going to have to help me. Trust me. And I'll help you win back your family, Burak, and your planet, and everything you've lost. Because you're the one fated to be Peryton's messiah."
Burak sat trembling for a long time, looking at the deck. Then he dipped his head once, horns swaying, nodding in agreement.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Why did Jonathan leave me? How come Lisa's bouquet came right into my hands after the wedding and yet everything's gone wrong?
It all started off so beautifully.
The diary of Lynn-Minmei
The Karbarrans threw themselves into the effort to get the Sentinels ready for the next step in their war with the same energy the ursinoids had shown in destroying the Invid garrison.
Unfortunately, a good deal of the capital's industrial area had been razed. There were shops capable of repairing most of the damaged VTs and tanks, and spaceship yards where Farrago could be put back in full battle-worthiness, but no new mecha could be built anytime soon.
Some Sentinels argued that it would be better to wait, to build new war machines and perhaps even construct more ships, but Rick and Lisa, among others, argued that lives would probably be lost on Praxis in the meantime, and the decision to continue on to the amazon homeworld became unanimous-except for Burak's stubborn abstention.
The vote was one of the few things Rick and Lisa did agree on. Though the mecha were being repaired, there were gaps in the ranks of the Human fighters, casualties who had left unmanned machines behind. The two were silent on the subject until the night, in their private quarters, when he admitted, "I'm going back on combat duty with the Skulls, Lisa. They need me. And we still won't be able to get every VT manned."
She rolled over and looked at him for a long moment. "I wish there was something I could say that would stop you. But there isn't, is there?"
He shook his head. She lay back down and they both stared at the ceiling for a time. "You're just so damned cavalier with a life that's important to me," she said at last, and he could hear the tears in her voice. "It hurts, Rick."
He reached over to take her hand, but she moved it away. She wanted to lie there and see if she could think of some way that she could change things so that she wouldn't be hurt ever again.
Jonathan Wolff returned to his quarters after twenty-one straight hours of meetings, briefings, consultation, training, and planning sessions. He had forgotten what a bed felt like.
But as he lay down, his eye caught something-a small locket lying on his night table. That type of locket was popular among REF personnel; many carried such a keepsake. He picked it up and activated it; the little heart-shaped face opened like a triptych.
A tiny hologram of Minmei hung in the empty air. "I hope this makes you feel near to me, Jonathan, because I feel very near to you, and I always will. Come back to me safe and soon, darling. I'll be waiting for you, however long it takes."
"It's very kind of you to act as our guide," Cabell said, as the Karbarran skywain sailed through the afternoon sunlight.
"Oh, we love going out to the monument," Crysta gushed, and at the controls, Lron nodded agreement. Off to one side, Rem and Dardo paused in the pattycakelike game Lron's son was trying to teach. "And how old is the monument?" Rem asked.
"Centuries, ages," Lron rumbled. "No one's exactly sure. History says it was erected right after Haydon visited Karbarra, and that was long, long ago."
The skywain began its descent, alighting on the top of one of the higher mountains overlooking the city. Rem asked again if Cabell would be warm enough; the old sage reassured him.
Lron and Crysta led the way, up to an open pavilion carved from the living rock of the mountaintop. There, in the middle of an acres-wide floor, stood a statue that reared up and up-a colossus a thousand feet high.
It was of Haydon. It had been carved by Karbarrans, and time and weather had eroded it, but the figure appeared to be a humanoid male, wearing flowing robes and poised with an air of nobility and wisdom.
"It was Haydon who taught our ancestors the secrets of Sekiton," Crysta said. "Just as he breathed life into the crystals of Spheris and created Baldan's people, and decreed that the Praxians'
should be an all-female planet."
"And Haydon taught the Gerudans how to think," Dardo said, reciting his school lessons. "And some people even say he gave the Flower of Life to the Invid!"
Cabell already knew all that, of course, but he tried to look impressed by Dardo's erudition-Crysta and Lron were so proud of the cub, after all.
Rem stood staring up at the stone face now worn to anonymity. Haydon, certainly one of the galaxies' great enigmas, fascinated him just as Haydon fascinated so many others. Where had the bringer-of-miracles come from? What had prompted him to spend a Golden Age in this sector of space, traveling among local worlds and working his magic?
Rem had always vowed that if he got to travel among the stars, he would do his best to find out. And now that time had come. Rem stared up at the smooth visage, wishing it could speak to him. He swore to himself at that moment that before his travels were done, he would know what face belonged on the monument.
"Red alert," whispered one Ghost Squadron yeoman to another. "Stay out of the Old Man's way!"
The second yeoman nodded and did his best to look busy as Edwards marched from his office with a murderous look on his face.