Abruptly the lights snuffed out. At one end of the arena loomed a twelve-foot statue of a bloated Term, limned in a soft pale glow. The Queen-Mother.
The hush. Then the radiance.
Slowly the Terms filed into the arena, rank upon rank of living flame. First the fighters, their antennae shining crimson and splendid against the tall night. Then the twins glows of blue that denoted the spinners, the weavers. The golden blaze of the harvesters. The lambent colors crept through the air like a mood, like a dream, and deepened into a shimmering cataract of rainbow fire, a paean of light and glory that whirled and spun in a joyous rhythm as old as the race itself.
Then—chaos.
A blinding flare cascaded from the six-foot antennae of the statue. The radiance grew, brighter than an atomic flare, more terrible than the sun. The Terms stood frozen. Beside me, Starza swore.
This wasn't in the script.
That colossal voice.
Ear-snapping clicks, and liquid vowels. Terminese. The forbidden tongue. The voice blared. I caught most of it.
"Children, you have sinned. You are defiled with the taint of alien monsters. You have failed the Queen-Mother. Return, my children, return to your tribes. Return to the tabernacle of unity, the one-in-all, the Queen-Mother! For in death there is life, and there is joy in immolation. Return!"
Lastly, the climax. That last shattering hunk of propaganda that would have been so tritely amusing if it hadn't been so terrifying.