“You are from above?” said A’yujae’Tak at last. “From another of Erykon’s creations?”
“In a way,” said Vale. It was obvious this creature believed that the universe and everything in it had been created by its god. “We travel from creation to creation, seeking understanding.”
“Travel, how?” said A’yujae’Tak. “My seekers found you in the Shattered Place using this device to direct waves at Erykon’s Mirror.”
The device was obviously Ra-Havreii’s tricorder, but Erykon’s Mirror? Did she mean the warp reactor? These creatures had moved fast, naming both the crash site and the wreckage and folding them into their mythology in only a few days.
That didn’t stack up in Vale’s mind somehow, but she couldn’t say why. “We were only examining it,” she said.
“How did you come there?” said the Mater. “The Shattered Place is [possible meaning: taboo] except to those the Mater allows.”
Vale was thinking that maybe telling her about the battle with the watchdog ship wasn’t the best idea when it struck her that A’yujae’Tak should have already known about that. She should at least have known about the watchdog’s destruction. Why didn’t she? Why didn’t she already know about the shuttle crash and about her own people being obliterated along with Titan?
“It’s complicated,” she said finally.
“You have wave devices that we do not know,” said A’yujae’Tak, holding up the tricorder in one talon and the phasers in two of her others. “Weapons that do not kill.”
“We are peaceful explorers,” said Vale. “We try our best not to kill anything if we can avoid it.”
This seemed to please A’yujae’Tak. Vale wasn’t sure how she knew that, only that an air of approval seemed to radiate briefly from the alien and wash over her. Maybe it was something pheromonal.
“What do you know of the Eye?” said A’yujae’Tak after a little. When Vale didn’t answer right away, she took another sharp nudge to the sternum.
“Answer, creature,” said the soldier. “Do as told.”
“Less than you, I think,” said Vale. They were in dangerous territory, she felt, wandering close to the religious construct that informed this whole society.
She missed Troi’s presence even more acutely then. Vale was no diplomat, and this genial conversation could become lethal in seconds if she didn’t handle it exactly right.
“We know so little,” said A’yujae’Tak almost wistfully. “We try to please Erykon, to let the Eye sleep, but so many times we have failed and it has [possible meaning: destroyed] us.”
“You seem to be doing fine now,” said Vale.
“Since the time of the [possible meaning: Oracle], yes,” said A’yujae’Tak. “We have grown and we have hidden ourselves. The Eye sleeps and all is well.”
A’yujae’Tak sailed into a rambling account of Orishan history, describing how, at intervals, the Eye had opened, looked down on whatever the Orishans had built and, not liking the view, had destroyed it utterly. According to her the Eye had split the earth, burned the sky, and generally wreaked apocalyptic havoc on the poor Orishans below. After each apocalypse the survivors would rebuild, believing themselves to have learned from the recent punishment how to modify themselves to suit their god’s desire.
Only, nothing worked. It sometimes took a hundred years, sometimes four or five, but, no matter what sort of society the Orishans created, when the Eye looked down upon it, that society was doomed.
The cycle continued for millennia until-and this was fuzzy to Vale-some sort of supernatural presence appeared and spoke to one of A’yujae’Tak’s ancestors. This Oracle guided the birth of current Orishan society, giving them the concepts of castes-Dreamers who did the planning, Hunters who did the fighting, Weavers who did the building, and the Guardians whose job it was to protect the world and its people.
When, after a century of guidance, their Oracle fell silent, it was the Guardians who had led the Orishan people underground, where they could continue to live and thrive without fear of displeasing the Eye.
“The others go about their lives,” she said. “They breed and weave. They toil and build. But we must protect them.”
“It seems you’ve done well with that too,” said Vale.
“The [Oracle] has not spoken in many cycles, Commanderchristinevale,” said A’yujae’Tak. “So much time without word to say if we have pleased Erykon. We have done so much. We have come too far this time to have it all destroyed.”
In that moment Vale thought she understood. These beings weren’t hostile or malevolent. They were terrified. Whatever the Eye really was, whatever the truth of her religious stories really was, one thing was clear. Something had happened to Orisha, over and over, to the point that the entire civilization was little more than a whipped dog, fearing even the hint of its master’s displeasure. Having been on the wrong side of terror more than once in her life, she knew very well the lengths to which someone might go to find peace of mind.
They had been on their own, in a permanent state of fear for centuries, without even this Oracle of theirs to help them. They were smart, inventive, and increasingly skilled at hiding themselves from the thing they feared most.
“We must protect Orisha,” said A’yujae’Tak. “We must never suffer that way again. Erykon must see this. You come from above. You were in the Shattered Place. Do you know Erykon’s will, Commanderchristinevale?”
They were all staring at her. Every Orishan in the room, from the Mater down to the lowliest drone, had focused all their attention on Vale and whatever tiny hope she might give. They had lived with the fear of their imminent destruction for so long, so constantly, that it now permeated everything they did, everything they thought. What could she possibly tell them that could take that away?
“I don’t know Erykon’s will,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you know Erykon’s nature?” said A’yujae’Tak. “Is Erykon [possible meaning: God]? Or merely some [possible meaning: mundane] celestial phenomenon?”
“I-” Easy, Chris, she told herself. These people are desperate and terrified. You don’t want to shake their paradigm more than you have to. “I can’t answer that.”
Something like regret rippled through the entire company, and Vale was sure she had disappointed them all in some fundamental, even primal way.
“All right, Commanderchristinevale,” said the Mater. “Then perhaps we can learn the true nature of Erykon together.”
A’yujae’Tak made a clicking noise in her thorax, and several of the smaller Orishans began frantically inputting codes into their various stations. The great central viewing monitor rippled, losing the image it had been displaying of one of the other Spires in favor of, well, Vale wasn’t exactly sure what it was she was looking at.
There was a sort of undulating rainbow effect rolling across the screen, peppered all over with tiny black dots that seemed fixed in their positions.
It took her only a second to realize she was looking at deep space via means developed by these beings. The black dots were clearly stars and, she guessed, the rainbow effect must correspond to the weird energy patterns in this system.
Presently the image shifted again and other shapes became visible, ones that Vale found distressingly familiar. The first was a massive swirling orb of chaos. Was that Erykon? She couldn’t get a sense of its size without a reference point when that reference point presented itself in the form of a heavy-class Starfleet shuttle dropping out of warp distressingly close to the thing.
All the blood rushed out of her face when she realized what she was seeing, what had obviously happened. That’s us, she thought. Before we fired the probe.
It occurred to her also that there had to be something up there watching all this and relaying the signal back to the Spire, and she realized that she was watching her own actions of two days ago from the point of view of the watchdog vessel.