Chapter 3
The Map of the Heavens
There was no way I could keep this from Brusjin. You don't start an interplanetary conflict without at least telling your husband that that's what you're going to do first. It would, however, wait until morning. One of us deserved a full night's rest.
The next morning, he and I were enjoying one of our favorite pastimes, trying out alien foods. We'd eaten something different for every meal in the three weeks we'd been on planet. This morning was, yet again, something new. The menu referred to it as
Falini over toast
. Falini is some sort of animal, as the primary ingredient to the thick red sauce that smothered the Ralinti traditional round bread was some sort of meat. The reoccurring theme in Ralinti breakfasts was waking up the taste buds. They believed in strong spices for their first meal, saving the mild, tantalizing flavors for the last meal of the day. We'd been making a list of foods to stock up on for our return trip.
"Brusjin, we have a problem."
"Is this the same problem we usually have, or have you found something new?"
"New, I'm afraid. Remember when Coldrin described the Jewel of Peace?" He nodded and I continued. "I thought the description sounded familiar and asked Crystal to search my memory."
"He found something?"
"Yes, the inner, pulsing glow; I saw something very much like it in Crystal just before It was implanted."
My husband put his fork down. I could see his mind working. "We can't free it, you know that."
"Brusjin, it's a slave to another world's religion."
"If, and it's a big if, it really is a Voratex Crystal, stealing it to free it would end our mission, condemn this world to colony status, and probably get us killed. Is that what you want?"
Sometimes I get so mad at Brusjin. He can be so logical and uncaring. He's never been a slave, I have. I know what it feels like to be at the mercy of any number of people; to have one's own destiny out of one's own hands.
"How can we just ignore what's happening?"
"Susan! Our mission is
not
to free every slave one by one. Our mission is to create the conditions that will end slavery as an institution on every world. The only way to free it would be to have it implanted in someone. What if its base has already been joined with someone?"
I sat back, defeated. If the base had been joined, we'd be condemning some poor creature to life as a crystal slave. This too, had been my fate once. I couldn't do that to anyone, not and live with myself.
[Crystal?]
[YOUR MATE IS CORRECT. UNTIL STATUS OF BUD IS KNOWN, ANY ACTION COULD WORSEN LATTICE STRUCTURE. CRACKED LATTICE IS SUPERIOR TO BROKEN LATTICE.]
[How could it be unjoined? I thought bud separation was always for the purpose of joining.]
[UNKNOWN. POSSIBILITIES TOO NUMEROUS. BUD MUST BE QUESTIONED.]
"Are we at least going to determine if it's a bud or not?"
"That I have no problem with. In all likelihood, we wouldn't be able to free it anyway. A religious artifact like this will, no doubt, be under heavy security. We don't have the means to steal it."
"I understand. I don't like it, but I do understand."
The remaining air trip passed uneventfully. We arrived at Yelti at mid-afternoon, local time, and booked a spot at a local hotel. Like any hotel where we would feel safe, they had house slaves, one of which we were provided with. Contrary to our personal experience, the hotels on the planet didn't provide slaves for every guest, just the ones who didn't own their own slaves, or who hadn't brought the slaves they did own with them.
Slavery on Ralint was pervasive. It was incredibly easy to become a slave, but very hard to earn your freedom. The laws were stacked against females as well. The major reason Ralinti found themselves slaves was debt. In Earth's past, there were institutions known as debtor's prisons. People could be jailed for being unable to pay a debt. On Ralint, there were no debtor's prisons; debtors who were unable to make their payments became slaves of those they owed money to.
What was especially insidious for females were the laws limiting female education. It was illegal for a male to teach a female to read (and vice versa). Apparently, most males could read as literacy was seen as a male prerogative in their distant past. That meant that unless there was a woman somewhere who learned to read on her own, or a male who flaunted the law, a woman wasn't going to be able to read.
However, they could sign contracts and incur debt. That meant that women were frequently put in the position of signing a document they couldn't read. The law held them responsible for what the contract actually said, not what they'd been told it said. Now, you'd think that no sane female would sign any contract unless a trusted male read it for them. This is where the irony comes in. There's also a budding female liberation movement on the planet. The movement is pushing for the repeal of laws limiting a female's rights. Its partial success is the reason for the rapid increase in female slaves in the last decade.
While literacy for females remains effectively illegal, their rights to participate in the marketplace have been greatly expanded. Two key laws have had this perverse effect. First, females can enter into contracts without a male cosigning the contract. This would seem to be a great boon, and it would be but for the second law. To keep females from being controlled by males with no stake in the contract, a male is forbidden to be part of the negotiations unless he's a cosigner. The result is females able to sign documents alone while being unable to have a male on their side.
Fortunately, based on Brusjin's data, this type of enslavement is fading rapidly. A key import on the black market is literacy lessons. They aren't even illegal, technically, because the tapes (old style magnetic recordings) are neither male nor female. No one imports them openly, but someone has been spreading them about the planet. Soon there would be, I hoped, enough literate females to teach females in general how to read. Once that happened, only crime and sale by one's family could land one in slavery on Ralint.
Our slave was Savin, a pretty young female Ralinti who seemed awed by our appearance. Brusjin made sure that the management of the hotel knew that we insisted in giving all discipline for our slave ourselves. It was too late to visit the museum where the Map was displayed, so we visited the other attraction Yelti had, the Submerged Garden.
At the bottom of Yeltin Bay there's a labyrinth of glass tunnels. These tunnels wind through an undersea garden of incredible beauty. It's somewhat incredible that they're able to maintain such a system of enclosed passages with their tech level. The water is deep enough that very little light reaches the garden itself. It's the plants in the garden that provide the lighting. The multicolored phosphorescent glow from the native plants is stunningly beautiful.
