Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

green
uniforms looked strikingly out of place, the shapes and colours all
wrong, as if they had been cut out of some other reality and inserted
into this sunlit scene.
    There is a whole world here, Luca thought, a society which has
followed its own path for twenty thousand years, with all the
subtlety and individuality that that implies. I know nothing about
it, had never even heard of it before coming here into the Core. And
the Galaxy, which I as a Commissary will presume to govern, must be
full of such places, such worlds, shards of humanity scattered over
the stars.
    A woman came to the door - the little girl’s mother? -
strong-faced, about forty, with hands grimy from work in a field, or
garden. She looked resigned, Luca thought on first impression. Her
gaze ran indifferently over the Commissaries, and she turned to the
lead trooper.
    She spoke a language he didn’t recognise. The artificial voice of
the trooper’s translating desk was small and tinny.
    Luca said, ’They must have brought their language with them. This
woman speaks a relic of a pre-Extirpation tongue.’ He felt excited,
intellectually. ’Perhaps that aboriginal tongue could be
reconstructed. Populations are scattered on this island world,
isolated. Their languages must have diverged. By comparing the
dialects of different groups - ’
    ’Of course that would be possible,’ said Dolo, sounded vaguely
irritated. ’But why would you want to do such a thing?’
    Now the woman pressed her hand against the trooper’s data desk, a
simple signature, and she called a name. The little girl came back to
the door. She was a thin child with an open, pretty face; she looked
bewildered, not scared, Luca thought. The mother reached down and
gave the girl a small valise. She placed her hand on the girl’s back,
as if to push her to the troopers.
    Luca understood what was happening a moment before the girl
herself. ’We are here to take her away, aren’t we?’
    Dolo held up a finger, silencing him.
    The girl looked at the tall armour-clad figures. Her face twisted
with fear. She threw down the valise and turned to bury her face in
her mother’s belly, yelling and jabbering. The mother was weeping
herself, but she tried to pull the child away from her legs.
    ’She’s just a child,’ Luca said. ’She doesn’t want to leave her
mother.’
    Dolo shrugged. ’Child or not, she should know her duty.’
    At first the troopers seemed tolerant. They stood in the sun,
watching impassively as the mother gently cajoled the child. But
after a couple of minutes the lead trooper stepped forward and put
his gloved hand on the girl’s shoulder. The girl squirmed away. The
trooper seemed to have misjudged the mother’s mood, for she jabbered
angrily at him, pulled the child inside the house and slammed the
door. The troopers glanced at each other, shrugged wearily, and
fingered the weapons at their belts.
    Dolo tugged Luca’s sleeve. ’We don’t need to see the resolution of
this little unpleasantness. Come. Let me show you what will happen to
that child.’
     
    The lead trooper agreed that Dolo could take the skimmer if a
replacement was sent out. So Luca climbed back into the skimmer
alongside Dolo, leaving the harbour village behind them. It did not
take long before they were back within the enclosing wall of the Navy
compound, with the complex disorderly local world of sea and rock and
light shut out. Luca felt a huge relief, as if he had come home.
    Dolo directed the skimmer to a cluster of buildings huddled within
the wall. These blocky huts had been set around a rectangle of
cleared ground, and fenced off from the rest of the Navy base. Once
inside this compound within a compound, Dolo and Luca got out of the
skimmer and walked across obsessively swept dirt.
    Everywhere Luca could see children. They were of varying ages from
ten or so through to perhaps sixteen. One group marched in formation,
another was lined up in rows, a third was undergoing some kind of
physical training over a crude obstacle course, a fourth was standing
in a rough square, watching something at the centre. Luca imagined
this place must be big enough to hold a thousand children, perhaps
more.
    ’What is this place?’
    ’Call it a school,’ Dolo said. ’Keep your eyes open; listen and
learn. And remember - ’
    ’I know. I am the Commission. I mustn’t show what I feel.’
    ’Better yet that you should feel nothing inappropriate in the
first place. But not showing it