Free Worlds Away by Valmore Daniels Page B

torture; but the alien had
already told her he would kill her once he was done with her. The Kulsat would
then, most likely, plan their invasion of Earth.
    Alternatively, she could defy him. That would mean torture
until he decided she was of no use to him. Then he would ‘expire’ her, and
still plan the invasion … but her resistance might delay those plans. Space was
big; without more information, the Kulsat could conceivably spend years trying
to find Sol System.
    If Alex and the others had managed to escape the Kulsat
attack, they might be able to return to Earth and warn them about the invasion.
Justine had no idea how they would accomplish that, since Alex was not a fully
transformed Kinemat; but any chance she could afford them, she would take.
    She got to her feet. Though she was still unsteady from the
sonic attack, she stepped closer to the glass wall and put both hands on it.
    “Do your worst,” she said, and braced for another blast.
    The alien twitched, and his entire body rippled. Justine had
no basis on which to interpret Kulsat body language, but she thought she’d
managed to annoy the creature.
    It typed something on the computer, and the machine voice
spoke. “Comprehension difficulty. Risen being is superior to others. You chose
discomfort to protect unGifted and Deficients. You are unit-defective in your
eyes. Are you unit-defective in comprehension?”
    “I’m not crazy,” Justine said. “I value the lives of all of
my kind, even if they aren’t ‘Risen’.”
    The alien typed. “Units not Risen do not contain true value.
Demonstration.”
    Turning fluidly, the Kulsat made a rippling gesture with one
of his arms. At the other end of the room, another Kulsat, smaller than the
first, swam into the area of Justine’s sight . The newcomer, she sensed,
was irradiated with Kinemet.
    The scientist made several motions with his arms, and after
a few moments, Justine realized he was using a form of sign language to
communicate with the other Kulsat. That made sense. If they were
physiologically comparable to cephalopods, then they had limited hearing
capabilities, and most likely had not developed vocal cords.
    When the leader finished signing, the smaller alien swam
over to a table and retrieved a long, thin object. On one end, there was a
loop, which the alien wrapped a tentacle around to carry it. The other end of
the device came to a point, like a needle.
    The smaller alien gave the tool to the science leader, who
typed for quite some time on his computer.
    He waited while the mechanical voice spoke to Justine.
    “This unit was offered the Gift, but failed to become Risen.
He is of limited use. This Deficient serves me, but should he expire, there are
millions of Deficients to replace him.”
    Then, to Justine’s horror, the science leader plunged the
spike directly into the other alien’s head.
    “No!” Justine cried, but it was too late. The smaller Kulsat’s
body twitched, his arms flailing about for several seconds. Then he went still,
floating away with the spike lodged in his head.
    The science leader made another motion toward the entranceway,
and three other small aliens swam in quickly. They grabbed the dead Kulsat and
dragged him away.
    “Without the Gift of Light, that unit would be expired soon.
Deficients are having little value. There is no loss.”
    Justine couldn’t believe what she was seeing and hearing.
The Kulsat had been the favored of the Grace? From what she’d taken from Alex’s
story, the Grace was a benevolent race. Either someone had been sorely mistaken
about the Kulsat, or the cephalopod race had undergone a radical societal
change in the past thousand years.
    Justine knew she couldn’t impose her own system of values on
another culture, but she couldn’t condone murder under any circumstance.
    The Kulsat typed. “If you are unit-defective, then you are
to be expiring. There are several more of your kind in this system. They are
not Risen, but they are