Convergence

Chapter Nineteen

By the end of the second day trapped in the hiatus, three of the four travelers on board the Gravitas were not at all happy.

The absence of ship’s lights was an inconvenience, but it was the lack of power that would eventually be fatal. Louis Nenda had already done the calculation. The air circulators were not working, but natural thermal currents plus the ship’s own steady rotation would provide enough convection to keep a breathable atmosphere in the ship. However, after about six days the lack of air generators and purifiers would become noticeable. Carbon dioxide levels would be perceptibly higher. Five days after that, the humans on board would become lethargic. Four days more, and they would die of asphyxiation. Atvar H’sial would survive maybe a week longer.

Quintus Bloom was not afraid of dying. He had a different set of worries. He was convinced that Darya Lang was far ahead of him, scooping discoveries that should rightfully be his. A dozen times a day, he pestered Nenda to do something, to get them moving. Twice he had hinted that Louis had arranged all this on purpose, deliberately slowing their progress as part of a conspiracy to aid Darya Lang. Nenda wondered if somehow Atvar H’sial had managed to communicate her own paranoia about Darya to Quintus Bloom.

The blind Cecropian was in some ways the least affected by their plunge into the hiatus. She could tolerate carbon dioxide levels that would kill a human, and her own seeing, by echolocation, was independent of the interior lights on the Gravitas. But the loss of power meant that communication with Glenna Omar through the terminals was no longer possible. Atvar H’sial had again become completely dependent on Louis Nenda and his pheromonal augment for anything that she wished to say to or hear from the others.

The exception in all this was Glenna. Logically she, pampered by a life on Sentinel Gate where every wish and whim could be satisfied, should have been most affected by the drastic change to life aboard the Gravitas. But it was a continuing oddity of the spiral arm that the inhabitants of the richest worlds played the most at primitivism. So about once a year, the fortunate dwellers on Sentinel Gate would deliberately head out to their forests and prairies, equipped with sleeping bags, primitive fire-lighting equipment, barbaric cooking tools, and raw food. After a few days in the wilds (but never more than three or four), they would return to abundant hot water, robotchef meals, and insect-free lodging. There they assured each other that they could “rough it” as well as anyone, if ever they had to.

Glenna had played that game a dozen times. She was trying a new variation of it now. The luxurious passenger suites of the Gravitas were equipped for cozy and candle-lit evenings, where dining tête-à-tête was often a tasteful prelude to romance. Glenna went from suite to suite and took the candles from every one. She used them all to provide subdued lighting for her own suite only, and invited the others to attend the soirée. Atvar H’sial’s invitation had to be transmitted through Louis Nenda. The Cecropian received it, and replied with a pungent pheromonal combination that Nenda had never before encountered. It felt like the Cecropian equivalent of a Bronx cheer. He took it to be a rejection of the offer.

Louis Nenda arrived first, wondering if it was a mistake to show up at all. He did so only from a long-held principle: that he needed to know everything that happened on any ship he was piloting. And if he were absent, who knew what Quintus Bloom and Glenna Omar might plot between them?

Nenda stared gloomily at fifteen candles, arranged strategically around the boudoir. The oxygen used in their burning would shave several hours off their lives, but in the circumstances that didn’t seem like a big deal.

Glenna obviously thought this was going to be one swell party. She had her blond hair piled high on her head, to show off to advantage her long, graceful neck. The clinging cotton dress that she was wearing, cut hair-raisingly low at front and back and with a split from ankle to hip, showed a good deal more than that. She pirouetted in front of Louis, revealing what appeared to be several yards of leg.

“How do I look?”

“Astonishing.” That at least was the truth. He heard with relief the sound of footsteps behind him. Quintus Bloom appeared, wearing an expression that Louis could interpret exactly. I’d rather be some place else, but there is nowhere else. And anyway, I can’t afford to miss something important.

Wafting in with Quintus Bloom came something else. A hint of pheromones, too weak to be caught by anyone but Nenda.

“At. I know you’re there, waiting outside. I thought you decided not to come.”

“I have no desire to attend what I suspect to be designed as a human multiple mating ritual. However, I wish to know what is said about other matters. Like you, I am opposed to any conspiracy of which I am not a part.”

“What I thought we would do is this.” Glenna, unaware of the exchange of pheromonal messages going on around her, was playing hostess. “Since we’re here, in such primitive conditions, I thought we ought to tell stories to each other the way our ancestors did, thousands and thousands of years ago, sitting terrified around their camp fires.”

Dead silence. Louis didn’t know about Quintus Bloom, but he had sat terrified around a camp fire a lot more recently than that.

Oblivious to the lack of response, Glenna went on. “Sit down, both of you.” She waited until the two men were in place on the divan, half a yard of space between them. “Now, I’ll be the judge, and the one of you who tells the best story will get a special prize.”

She squeezed into the space between them and placed a warm hand on each man’s thigh. “Since we’re almost in the dark, we ought to talk about scary or romantic things. Who wants to start?”

Blank silence.

“Did I not warn you?” The message drifted into the room with an overtone of satisfied humor. “If I may offer advice, Louis, I say: Beware the special prize.”

Nenda glared at the door. As if things weren’t bad enough, Atvar H’sial was laughing at him.

“Oh, come on, Louis!” Glenna squeezed his leg to bring his attention back to her. “Don’t play hard to get. I know from what Atvar H’sial told me that the two of you actually met live Zardalu, when everybody else thinks they’ve been extinct for eleven thousand years. That must have been frightening, even for you. What are they like?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Oh yes I do!” She slid her hand along the inside of his thigh, and added breathily, “You know, I find this sort of thing just makes me tingle.”

That, and everything else. Nenda admitted defeat. Glenna was as single-minded in her own way as Quintus Bloom.

“We said we wouldn’t talk about the Zardalu, At, but I’m going to. Maybe a touch of them will slow her down.”

Nenda turned to Glenna. “You wouldn’t find a Zardalu exciting if you ran into one. You won’t, of course, because they live only on Genizee, here inside the Anfract. But they’re enough to make anybody jump. For starters, they’re huge. Seven meters long when they’re at full stretch. The head of a full-grown Zardalu is as wide across as this divan. They are land-cephalopods, so they stand or slither along on half a dozen thick tentacles. Fast, too, faster than a human can run. The tentacles are pale blue, strong enough to snap a steel cable. The head is a deep, deep blue, as blue as midnight on Pelican’s Wake. A Zardalu has two big blue eyes, each one as wide across as my outstretched hand. And under that is a big beak.”

Glenna’s hand had stopped moving on his thigh. Nenda glanced across to see her expression. She was staring at him with wide, avid eyes, mopping it up. So much for his theory that she would be frightened. The surprise came from the other side of her. Quintus Bloom was also staring at Nenda. He looked puzzled. His hand reached out to form a shape in the half-light.

“A beak with a hook on it,” he said slowly. “Like this.” His hand turned to curve downward. “Hard and blue, and big enough to seize and crack a human skull. And under it a long slit of a mouth, vertical. The head runs straight down to the torso, same width, but separating the two is a thing like a necklace of round openings, each one a bit bigger than your fist and running all around the body.”

“Breeding pouches.” Nenda stared across at Quintus Bloom, his annoyance with Glenna forgotten. “How the devil do you know all this? Have you been reading reports about the Zardalu that we took to Miranda?”

“Not a word. I’d never in my whole life read or heard any physical description of one.”

“You mean you’ve actually seen a live Zardalu?”

“No. A dead one. But I had no idea what it was.” Quintus Bloom’s eyes were wider than Glenna’s. “When I was exploring Labyrinth, I came across an interior chamber with five creatures in it. Each one had started out huge, but when I got to them they were shrunken and wizened. They had been vacuum-dried, and they looked like enormous desiccated plant bulbs. I didn’t even realize they were animals, until I came close and saw those eyes. That’s when I decided to hydrate one — pump warm water into each cell, until it came back to its original size and shape and color.” His gaze moved to Nenda. “Seven meters long, head and torso of midnight blue. Eyes with lids, like human eyes but a hundred times the size. Tentacles pale blue, ending in fine, ropy tips. Right?”

“Exactly right. That’s a Zardalu to the life. Or to the death.” Nenda caught a quick question from Atvar H’sial, who was following the conversation as best she could from Nenda’s scraps of pheromonal translation. He passed it on to Bloom. “What’s your interest in the Zardalu?”

“I care nothing for Zardalu — living or dead.” Bloom’s beaky nose jutted superciliously at Nenda. “My interest is in the Builders, and only the Builders. But you have raised a question that I cannot answer.”

“An unforgivable sin.” But Louis sent that remark only to Atvar H’sial, along with his translation of Bloom’s arrogant comments.

“You assert that the Zardalu live only in one place,” Bloom went on. “On Genizee. What makes you think that your statement is true?”

“I don’t think it, I know it. At the time of the Great Rising, the Zardalu were just about exterminated from the spiral arm. Only fourteen specimens were saved, and they were held in stasis until a year ago. They went straight from there to Genizee. I know all that, because I was there when it happened. The only one not on Genizee today is a baby, brought back to Miranda by Darya Lang and her party. Why does that get you so upset?”

Bloom glared back at Nenda. He seemed quite unaware of the flicker of the ship’s lighting, or the tentative moan of electrical systems returning to power. “Because, you ignoramus, of the implication of your words. Think, if you are at all capable of such a thing, of these facts. First, every Zardalu except one infant is to be found on Genizee, and only on Genizee. Second, I discovered the dried corpses of five Zardalu floating in an interior chamber of Labyrinth. Third, Labyrinth is a new artifact. It did not exist eleven thousand years ago, or a century ago, or even a year ago. Put those items together, and what do you get?”

One thing you got, very clearly, was that Glenna’s romantic evening was not going quite according to plan. But that was unlikely to be what Quintus Bloom had in mind for a conclusion. In any case, Nenda’s thoughts were moving to other things. He knew what the flicker of light meant: the Gravitas was emerging from the hiatus.

“What do you get?” His question was automatic. Whatever it was, it was less important than regaining control of the ship.

But now, after all that build-up, Quintus Bloom had apparently decided not to supply an answer. He rose to his feet, brushed off Glenna’s hold on his sleeve, and strode out of the boudoir.

“Use your tiny mind, and work it out for yourself,” he snapped over his shoulder.

“Quintus!” Glenna wailed, and ran out after him.

“Most interesting.” The drift of Cecropian pheromones came in more strongly. “I assume that you made the same deduction as Quintus Bloom?”

Nenda did not move, not even when the pheromonal question was followed a moment later by the stately entry of Atvar H’sial’s crouched form. The Cecropian’s yellow horns turned to face him, then Atvar H’sial shook her head and just as slowly departed.

There was no need for words. She knew that Louis had made no deductions at all. He couldn’t see what there was to be deduced.

He remained brooding on the divan. Live Zardalu only on Genizee. Dead Zardalu discovered on Labyrinth. Labyrinth a new artifact. So what? All that might say something to Bloom and to Atvar H’sial, but it didn’t offer one syllable to Louis. Anyway, with power restored the ship needed his attention. So maybe he had his own question: When there were so many smart-asses around, why was he only one who knew how to fly the Gravitas?

He was still asking himself that when Glenna returned. Her chin was up and her manner jaunty as she circled the room blowing out the candles.

It didn’t fool Louis for a second. She was upset as hell. He felt unexpected sympathy. “Hey, take it easy. You’ll get another shot at him. You know Quintus. He’s too wrapped up in his godawful Builders to take notice of anything.”

“It’s not just that.” Glenna sat down next to Nenda. She lifted the hem of her dress and dabbed at her eyes with it. “I was hoping we’d have a really pleasant evening, something to make us feel good. It started so nicely. And then it all fell apart.”

“Yeah. It just wasn’t your night. But don’t let it get to you. I’ve had nights like that. Lots of ’em.” Louis patted her warm shoulder consolingly, and flinched when she leaned back into the crook of his arm.

Glenna snuggled closer. “You know, you were the only one who even tried to tell a scary story, the way I wanted.” She reached up to put her hand over his. “I think that was really nice of you.”

Louis edged away along the divan. “Yeah, well. I dunno. Not that nice. We were stuck in the hiatus, we all had nothing to do. Might as well tell stories to each other. Now we’re clear, though, and I have to get busy. Gotta start figurin’ out how we make it through the Anfract.”

He was pulling his hand free of hers when all the lights went out again. There was a dying groan from the ship’s electrical system.

“Damnation!” Louis sat through a long, waiting silence. Finally he heard a giggle from the darkness next to him.

“Back in the hiatus! Oh, dear. Not my night, Louis. And not your night either, it seems.” Glenna lowered her voice, changing its sad overtone to a more intimate one. “But you know, this could be our night.”

It didn’t need an augment to pick up the message of her pheromones. He heard a rustle of fabric falling to the floor. A warm bare foot rubbed along his calf, and he stood up abruptly.

“You’re not leaving, are you?” She had felt him jerk to his feet.

Leaving. He certainly was.

Wasn’t he?

Nenda made a sudden decision. The hell with it. In the middle of a hiatus, what else should he be doing?

“No, I’m not leaving. Definitely not leaving. I just thought it might be nice to make sure the door was closed. Tight.”

Atvar H’sial was an alien without the slightest interest in human sex. All the same, Louis didn’t want snide pheromonal comments as an accompaniment to what he was going to do. He didn’t have much faith in his skills as a lover in the best of circumstances.

It was a side benefit of staying, he decided, as he groped his way back toward Glenna. She was a very experienced woman. She would be used to sophistication. One night together, and chances were she would never come near him again.