Page 29 of Taken to Heimo
Reaching for my nagoom-cross, I turn back to the screen before me and quickly return to the translations I’ve pulled up next to the original text.
Decades of history transcribed in all manner of methods leaves a lot of work for me and my team. Some of it we were able to decode from ancient hard drives, some of it still sits within ancient electronic storage boxes that we have no way of opening, some of it is even handwritten on paper, parchment and papyrus, and all of it spans dozens — if not hundreds — of different languages no longer known.
I am fortunate to have the assistance of three talented young Voraxian scribes helping me with this specific undertaking, but I feltoddasking them to help me with this particular file. I had a strange feeling about it. I still do.
Not strange,bad. A bad feeling. Downright dreadful.
I might have mistaken the half-torn page as a piece of scrap paper miscellaneously filed in this storage unit markedGrain: Rotation Eleven to Thirteenhad it not been for the distinct repetition of some marks. Like ink blots all dropped to be exactly identical. Impossibly perfect, I recognized it for what it was after closer inspection.
A script.Meero.
I’ve been studying Meero for some time now, determined to have something to arm myself with the next time I cross the Niahhorru.
I’m not like Kiki — I can’t wield a spear.
And I’m not Miari — I can’t build one.
But I can learn and my father always said that knowledge is power. And when my mother went through the Hunt, she proved it. She wasn’t injured by the male who claimed her. She was able to speak with him and though she won’t ever tell us what happened to her during the Hunt, she says it wasn’t bad.
I pull out a stick of charcoal and the actual piece of paper I’d been working my translation out on since I uncovered this strange file.
To you — Fifty mornar treyxna. Three fereranin. Twelve geeran.
To his highest — One oud.
The Hunt. First light.
My amended translation reads right next to it:
To you — Fifty sacks of Ebo nut (nuts that can be ground to flour, pressed for milk, creamed and made into paste — rich in nutrients and the primary staple of the common populace of quadrant six). Three tuns of fereranin (hooved creature that is easily bred and farmed and whose meat is a common staple of the people in quadrant one). Nine tuns of geeran (hooved creature that is revered by worshippers of the Tri-God, like me).
To his highest — One oud (??).
The Hunt. First light.
I circle the wordoud.Somehow, it sounds familiar. But where have I heard it before? And, more importantly, what is this paper for? What is Mathilda doing with it?
Mathilda has not been forthcoming with information since I was named human advisor to the Rakukanna. I’ve uncovered a lot that she never shared — information Kiki would say that she kept hidden — though I don’t like to believe her capable of such deception.
I learned that there were two additional satellites launched from the home world: One calledIsfahanthat took humans to the planet called Sasor. Located outside of the eight known quadrants, it is too far to reach. The second satellite, Balesilha,carried humans to Quadrant Five. Theyarewithin reach and, since discovery of the coordinates to Balesilha, I’ve begun plotting with Ixria and the xub’Ixira to voyage to the satellite, recover the humans and fold them into the Voraxian Federation.
Strange that Mathilda would have kept these coordinates a secret. Strange that she and the Council never told us that there were other living humans left in the cosmos.
She maintains that it would have been bad for morale, knowing that there were other humans out there that we couldn’t reach, but I still don’t know that I agree with her. It would have given us power to know we weren’t the only ones. Something to hope for when the suns were at their brightest and the soil was too dry to yield crops. At the very least, I believe in truth.
I do not like to think it, but I believe that Mathilda, more than truth, believes in power.
This is clearly a trade. A treaty. A bargain. A pact. But as I stare at the words and run my fingers over my nagoom-cross over and over again, I cannot figure out who signed either end of the transaction. It cannot be Mathilda, because the colony neither saw the product of any part of this trade and certainly could not have been expected to give the items listed in the first section.
What is an oud?
What does this have to do with The Hunt?
And if this is written in Meero, what did the Niahhorru know of the Hunt and what goes on in the colony? Whatdothey know?
“What do you have a Meero document for?”
I scream. Krisxox is standing right over my shoulder staring at the holoscreen with a look of pure menace. It radiates off of him like stellar coronas from the sun, exploding and lashing everything in their path.
