While at seminary Claire studied a paper that analyzed the Haxadis religion and tried to tie it more directly to Christianity. The author equated Justice with aspects of the Old Testament God, which was a far more persuasive argument than early missionaries had made in equating the Haxadis trinity to the Christian Trinity. Regardless, Claire had found the comparison grossly flawed, largely because it ignored the superstitious trappings that attended all other aspects of Lyshara. Her deconstruction and demolition of that paper had earned her high marks and even a kind word from Cardinal Winters.
The corridors of the Haxadis pod were roughly triangular in shape, being broader at the floor to accommodate their physiology. This actually made it easier for Claire to move through, since she could steady herself with her hands on the narrowed upper walls. She reached the lounge and found it unoccupied, which she did not mind. Crossing the open floor, she perched herself on a padded cylinder jutting from the wall, hooking her knees around it, and watched out the viewport as reversion melted reality.
Reversion communicated many things to many people, imparting to some visions, to others nightmares. Psychologists had suggested it was because the transition from extra-dimensional existence back into the real universe was so beyond the ability of minds to comprehend, that people instinctively sought reassuring or fundamental images. For Claire, a black cylinder streaked with rainbow stripes both narrow and thick simply melted into a greater darkness stippled with light and grandly splashed with color where the system’s planets orbited. The fundamental vision she sought was neither ecstatic nor terrifying, just reality.
“Thank you, God, for the safety of our journey.”
Though she had kept her prayer a whisper, a hiss from the doorway suggested she had been overheard. She turned slowly, doing her best to stifle a shiver. To shiver would have been quite rude, and might have even toppled her from her Haxadis version of a chair.
But for a Terran, stifling a shiver would take superhuman effort.
The Haxadis ambassador, her abdomen swollen with child, slithered her way into the lounge. Light glistened golden from her scaled flesh, highlighting the bands of yellow, red, and black marking her from head to toe. The pattern continued on her arms and fingers, the narrow band of yellow contrasting with the thicker bands of red and black.
The scales of her abdomen were similarly colored, though slightly bleached over her breasts and belly. Her face did jut into a muzzle, complete with a lipless mouth. Claire saw no hint of fangs, though she knew enough to know they were retractable and seldom seen.
Claire slowly stood, then bowed her head. “Peace be with you, Ambassador Soluvinum.”
The female Haxadis spared her only the slightest of glances. Her dark eyes had no warmth in them at all, and her manner remained quite cool. She slithered off to the lounge’s far corner and her consort, a male, moved with her. Seated, the Haxadissi were as tall as Claire, but their serpentine tails easily measured three times the length of her legs. As they sat, they wrapped their tails around the cylindrical post from which jutted the branch where they sat.
A smaller Haxadis undulated over to Claire. It had black scales with two red stripes running down the length of its body and ivory abdominal scales. It massed three quarters of what the ambassador or her consort did, and Claire knew it to be of a caste below that of the nobility. When the Haxadissi had interacted directly with Claire, it had been this creature that had been saddled with the task of buffering its masters from her.
“My mistress bids you welcome, Priest.”
Claire smiled. At the start, the creature had referred to her as “priestess,” which had annoyed her because of its inaccuracy. “I appreciate being shown your hospitality on the last leg of this journey. I am certain the station will be dull in comparison to this pod.”
The little Haxadis cocked its head to the right. “You have not been here before?”
“No.”
“We have, on our outbound journey. This system is positioned such that it allows for a swifter, more direct route to our home than picking our way from star to star.” The little creature clasped dark stubby-fingered hands across its ivory abdomen. “The station was very nice…”
A sharp hiss by the ambassador snapped the aide’s head around, narrowing its nostril slits. The aide bowed its head without looking back again at Claire. “My mistress…”
“Of course.” Claire smiled, again suppressing a shudder as the Haxadis sinuously sped off. She turned and looked out the viewport as the Qian station came into view. It had an official designation, but to all humans sent out here, it was known as Purgatory Station.
Purgatory Station existed out at the fringes of the Qian Commonwealth. A little over a century and a half previous the Qian had come to Terra and told mankind that while humans had not yet expanded beyond their own solar system, they were close to discovering the secret of hyperspace travel. The Qian offered to make Terra a protected world and integrate it into the Commonwealth, and humanity had accepted the offer.
Qian technology, as it turned out, surpassed human invention on many fronts, and the station had been built using it to its utmost. Massive gravity generators had been focused on an asteroid and had compressed it until it became molten rock, perhaps even plasma.
Computers then manipulated the gravity to shape it, tunnel it, and recreate it into the shell they wanted. Factory ships arrived and began producing the parts needed to build it out. Before long—an eye blink in Qian terms, and less than a decade in human reckoned time—the station had come on-line and the Catholic Church had assigned chaplains to it.
Another warning tone sounded as the ship slipped into orbit around the rocky station.
The Haxadis pod shook, then lifted away from the Ghoqomak. This surprised Claire.
She’d been told that she’d have to transfer to one of the cargo pods to make her way to the station, since the starship was set for the quick resumption of the long run to Haxad once it had dropped the pods meant for Purgatory Station.
The Haxadissi hissed in surprise, then a viewscreen against an interior bulkhead flashed to life. A dark-eyed Qian female, petite and serene, appeared and bowed her head. She began to speak in Haxadissi. The ambassador hissed angrily, then slithered out, followed by her consort and the aide.
The viewscreen went blank before Claire could ask what had happened, but this did not discomfort her. She had been destined to travel to the station on a pod, and one was as good as another. She had long since packed her personal belongings and had stowed them in a cargo pod. Aside from one small bag still in her cabin, she was ready to quit the ship.
Returning to her cabin, she did catch a hint of the cinnamon scent of angry Haxadissi.
She’d actually smelled it fairly often, and caught herself remembering warm toasted cinnamon-raisin bread at breakfast with her family. She did her best to banish that memory ruthlessly, because homesickness so far from Terra would be impossible to cure.
The journey had taken her two months and she was truly ready for it to end. She had spent most of the time alone, which she didn’t mind. Being a cleric meant folks didn’t always invite her to join them for pleasurable pursuits, which was just as well because her refusal of same always seemed to suggest a moral superiority on her part. She didn’t feel morally superior, just more focused on the spiritual than the physical, and few were the contemplative and spiritual distractions on starships.
She gathered her leather attachh and frowned at the designer label. Owning such a thing went against her sense of propriety, and buying it would have run counter to her vow of poverty. Her parents had given it to her as a going away present, so she allowed herself to value it for being a gift. This far from Terra, the label will be meaningless anyway.