Survivor's Quest

CHAPTER 15

"This is the main school area," Uliar said, pointing across the corridor toward a room with a small plaque beside the door identifying it as AA-7 FIRE CONTROL ROOM. A neatly printed sign had been fastened to the wall above the plaque that read PRELIMINARY TIERS. "All the lower tiers are in the complex of rooms back there," he went on. "There's also a university of sorts two decks above us, up where the main scientific and technical sections of the ship were."

"Interesting," Jinzler said, looking at the door and wondering if he dared ask to go in and take a look. "What courses do you teach?"

"Everything we can, of course," Uliar said, half turning to look at Evlyn and her mother, walking silently behind Formbi. "This is actually Instructor Tabory's field of expertise. Instructor, would you care to elaborate?"

"Many of the records were lost in the Devastation, of course," Rosemari said. "Either destroyed or buried in the wreckage of D-One where we couldn't get to them."

She waved at the schoolroom door. "But the Survivors had fair amounts of skills and knowledge among them, so as soon as they could they set up a school to teach the children what they would need to know. In the lower tiers we teach history, science, reading, galactic languages, political science, and a few others—the usual curriculum of a Republic school back home. At the university level—though of course it's not a real university—we teach mechanics and electronics, higher mathematics, basic astrogation and starship operation, plus the sorts of things we'll need when we finally get out of here and settle down on a real world again."

"Ah," Jinzler said. "And you were trained as an instructor?"

She shrugged. "That's what I do now, but my actual training is in meteorology and music. I'm not very good at the latter, though." She smiled down at the girl beside her. "Evlyn's much better than I am. And of course, there are a lot of advanced maintenance classes."

"That being particularly important to our survival," Councilor Tarkosa added gruffly, glaring briefly at Rosemari. Apparently, her comment about leaving Outbound Flight wasn't sitting well with him. "Even with many of the old droids still functional, this ship still chews up a huge number of worker-hours in repairs and maintenance. And the droids need constant maintenance of their own."

Jinzler nodded. "What about basic life necessities?" he asked. "Food, water, and energy?"

"Fortunately, we have all of that in abundance," Uliar said. "The central storage core suffered only minor damage in the Devastation, and we were able to bring the D-Five and D-Six fusion generators back online before the emergency power supplies were exhausted."

"You speak as if you were there," Formbi suggested.

Uliar favored him with a somewhat brittle smile. "Yes, I was," he said. "I was twenty-two, in fact, when your people viciously attacked and destroyed us."

It took every bit of Jinzler's strength to keep his face from reacting. With all of Uliar's politeness and hospitality, and the almost homey atmosphere of the place as the inhabitants had fixed it up, he'd nearly forgotten what had actually happened here. Hearing Uliar's straightforward reminder had hit him harder than he would have expected. "Yes," Formbi murmured. "Though it was not the will of either the Nine Ruling Families or of the Chiss people that that happen."

"Well, it was the will of someone with blue skin and red eyes," Uliar said bluntly. "And I'm constrained to point out that even after all that, knowing that it had happened, you waited until now to come see what had become of us."

He peered closely at Formbi. "Or is this your first time here? Have you actually been watching us all along, just for your own amusement?"

"Not at all," Formbi said, his voice even. "We didn't even know this vessel had survived until a few handfuls of days ago. Even then, we had no reason to assume anyone had survived."

"Then why did you come?" Uliar countered. "Was it the ship itself you wanted? Secrets from the Republic you hoped to plunder?"

He turned his unblinking stare on Jinzler. "Or was it you and this so-called New Republic of yours? Were you the ones who wanted it?"

Jinzler shook his head. "We came solely from a desire to see the place where so many of our people had died," he said, trying to match Formbi's calm diplomatic tone.

"And to honor those who gave their lives defending our people," Bearsh spoke up from the rear.

"That's correct," Jinzler said. "No one here wants to take anything away from you."

Uliar smiled coldly. "No. Of course not."

The smile vanished. "At the very least I'm sure you didn't expect to find anyone aboard who still remembered," he said. "You see, Ambassador Jinzler, I recognize your name. I knew that other Jinzler, too, the one who deserted us at our time of greatest need. Who was she, a relative? Sister? Cousin?"

"She was my sister," Jinzler said, staring at him in disbelief. Lorana, desert these people in the middle of trouble? No—that had to be a mistake.

"Your sister," Uliar repeated, the darkness in his voice deepening. "Deeply beloved, of course, which is why you've come all this way to honor her memory." He crossed his arms across his chest defiantly. "Well, we don't honor her memory here, Ambassador. Are you still so eager to help us?"

Jinzler took a careful breath. "She wasn't beloved," he said, fighting to control the trembling of emotion flowing into his voice. "At least, not by me."

Uliar lifted his eyebrows with polite skepticism. "No?"

"No." Jinzler looked the other man straight in the eye. "As a matter of fact, I hated her."

The statement seemed to throw Uliar completely off his stride. He blinked, then frowned; opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Of course you did," he said at last, clearly just to have something to say. He eyed Jinzler another moment, then turned resolutely back to Formbi. "The fact remains that it was your people who attacked us," he said, apparently trying to get back on course with his earlier tirade. "What do you and these Nine Ruling Families of yours intend to do about that?"

Formbi opened his mouth— "I'd like to see the school," Jinzler put in, suddenly tired of hearing Uliar talk. "As long as we're here anyway."

Again, Uliar seemed to falter. He looked at Jinzler, hesitated, then nodded. "Certainly," he said. "Instructor Tabory, perhaps you'd be kind enough to show the ambassador around?"

"Uh... sure," Rosemari said, her face puckering uncertainly. Jinzler's comment about his sister had apparently thrown her for a loop, too. "This way, Ambassador."

She turned and headed toward the door at a quick walk, her daughter beside her. Jinzler followed, fighting his way through the images and memories swirling around him...

"This is the second-tier classroom."

Jinzler blinked the images away, to find himself standing in a low-ceilinged room equipped with perhaps a dozen small desks arranged in a circle. In the center of the circle was a holoprojector showing a tree with three animals of various species standing beneath it. The children at the desks, four- and five-year-olds by the look of them, were busily scribbling away on their datapads while a young woman wandered around the outside of the circle silently inspecting their work.

"I see," Jinzler said, trying to generate some genuine interest in the proceedings "Art class?"

"Art, plus elementary zoology and botany," she told him. "We combine disciplines and lessons as much as possible. The third-tier classroom is through here."

She led the way through an archway into another room with larger desks and no students or teachers. "Run out of thirders?" Jinzler asked.