Divergence

CHAPTER 16

After Atvar H’sial had knocked Julius Graves headlong into Birdie Kelly, broken the connection between E. C. Tally’s brain and body, and sent J’merlia rolling and spinning into the pattern of concentric rings, Louis Nenda did not hesitate.

As the Cecropian went scuttling out of the chamber, wing cases wide open, Nenda followed at once.

Let the mess back there sort itself out!

He was cursing — silently. It was no use shouting. Atvar H’sial had astonishing hearing, but she did not understand human speech. And his own pheromonal augment was worthless when she was in full flight, because the necessary molecules had no chance to diffuse into her receptors.

The near-darkness of Glister’s interior made no difference to Atvar H’sial. Her echolocation vision worked as well in pitch blackness as in bright sunlight; but it made things hellishly difficult for Louis Nenda. A Cecropian did not care where she moved, into chambers light or dark, just so long as there was air to carry sound waves. But he sure cared. He was bouncing off dark walls, tangling in nets, tripping over loose cables, diving down steep slopes without any idea what he would meet at the bottom. And all the time he had not the slightest idea where she was heading. He doubted that she knew it herself.

Enough of this, he thought.

He slowed down after a particularly bruising collision with an invisible partition. It would be too easy to knock himself out, and he could not afford that.

The good news was that he could track her, infallibly. The Zardalu augment had been designed for pheromonal speech, with all its subtleties, so simply following another’s scent through Glister’s sterile interior was ridiculously easy. Even if she crossed and recrossed her own path, the strength of the trail would show him exactly where she had gone.

The corridors of Glister turned and twisted, apparently at random. He patiently followed the unmistakable airborne molecules of Cecropian physiology, turn by turn, wherever they led. The only thing he could be sure of was that they were descending, following a gravity gradient to regions of steadily increasing field. But the stronger field increased the danger of injury from a fall. He slowed his pace still further, confident that Atvar H’sial could not get away from him. As he walked he began to make plans.

One word with Graves had been enough to convince him that telling the truth to the councilor would be a terrible idea. He had fought back his own initial urge on awakening — violent flight — because Atvar H’sial was still trapped in the Lotus field. At that point it made sense to blame the field itself and “forget” anything that had happened back on Quake.

Of course, he remembered it all perfectly: the wild ascent from the planet’s surface, the capture of the Have-It-All by the dark sphere, the giddy plunge through space, their arrival at Gargantua and the little planetoid that orbited it — and, finally, the release of the ship onto the surface, while the sphere that had captured and held them moved inside. He had been aware of events right up to the moment on the planetoid’s surface when the orange cloud surged up around them. He even had a vague memory after that, of being carried down, down, down through multiple levels of the interior. Then came a blank, until he had wakened to find Julius Graves crouched over him.

Graves’s mention of the Lotus field allowed him to piece together most of the rest. He and Atvar H’sial had been locked in the field — but why, when it would have made more sense just to kill them — until the others had come along. And finally that crazy robot with the human body and the pop-top skull case had dredged them out.

Pity that Atvar H’sial had run wild before E. C. Tally had been able to get Kallik, too. Nenda missed his Hymenopt servant. No matter. There was plenty of time for Tally to pull Kallik free now — if ever they could stick Tally’s popout brain back in his dumb head and connect it so it worked.

Louis Nenda paused. He was standing in an unlit passageway, but the pheromonal scent was increasing in strength. He concentrated and generated his own message, sending it diffusing out from his chest nodules. “Atvar H’sial? Where are you? I can’t see you — you gotta steer me in.”

As usual, he found it easiest to speak his message at the same time as it was generated chemically. It was not necessary to identify himself. If the Cecropian received any message at all, Nenda’s individual molecular signature would be built into it.

“I am here. Wait.” The messenger molecules drifted in through the darkness. A few seconds later, Atvar H’sial’s hard claw took Nenda’s hand. “Follow. Tell me if the thermal source ahead is also for you a source of seeing radiation.”

“Why’d you take off like that?” Nenda allowed himself to be led through the darkness, until he saw a glimmer of light ahead. “Why didn’t you wait until they got Kallik out? She’s my Hymenopt — she shouldn’t be doin’ work for them.”

“Just as J’merlia is mine, and he should not be serving humans. But he is.” The Cecropian led them into a long rectangular room, warmed and dimly lit by a uniform ruddy glow from the walls. “The failure to recover J’merlia and Kallik is, I agree, regrettable, but I judged it necessary. As soon as I became conscious I smelled danger to you and me. Councilor Graves was dominant in that group. He had a clear intention to restrict our freedom at once. I was not sure we could prevent that. With an imperfect understanding of events, it is always better to remain unimpeded in one’s actions. Therefore, we had to escape.”

“How’d you know I’d follow you?”

There was no explicit message of reply, but the chemical messengers of grim humor wafted to Nenda’s chest receptors.

“All right, At. So I don’t like the idea of being locked up, any more than you do. What now? We’re not safe. Graves and the rest of them can come after us anytime. J’merlia can track you, easy as I could. We’re still in deep stuff.”

“I do not disagree.” The Cecropian crouched in front of Nenda, lowering herself so that the blind white head was on a level with his. The open yellow trumpet horns quivered on either side of the eyeless face. “We must pool information, Louis Nenda, before we make a decision. I lack data items that you perhaps gained from Julius Graves. For example, where are we now? Why were we brought here? How much time did we spend unconscious? And where is our ship, the Have-It-All, and is it in working condition for our escape?”

“I can take a shot at answering some of those.”

Nenda rubbed at his cheek and chin as he provided Atvar H’sial with a summary of his own experiences since waking from the Lotus field. There was a three-or four-day stubble there, but that did not tell him much; he had no idea how fast hair grew inside the field. Some of what he told Atvar H’sial had to be guesswork.

“So if you believe Graves,” he concluded, “we’re still inside a hollow planetoid, goin’ round Gargantua. Same one as we were brought to after Summertide, for a bet. Graves says he’s got no more idea than we have as to why we were dragged here, or why we were stuck in the middle of that room like two drugged flies. You can be damn sure it wasn’t done for our benefit, though. I don’t know how long we were held there. Enough for Graves and the rest of ’em to get their hands on a ship after Summertide and fly it out to Gargantua. Don’t ask me where that computer with the strung-out brainbox came from. I never saw him before, or anything like him. Mebbe they brought him from Opal. I think they went back there before they started for here, because Birdie Kelly is with ’em, too.”

“I registered Kelly’s presence. Do not worry about him. Graves is the principal danger; also perhaps the embodied computer, but not Birdie Kelly.”

“Yeah. And Graves told me he wants to take us back home and charge us with lethal assault. He’ll do his best to keep us in one piece till then, otherwise he’d never have stopped me going back into the Lotus field for Kallik. Graves seems pretty sure he can take us back for trial, so there has to be at least one ship available — the one they came in, or the Have-It-All, or maybe both of ’em. We should be able to escape, if we can just find our way back to the surface.”

The great blind head was nodding, a foot from Nenda’s face. “Very good, Louis. So I have one more question: When should we choose to escape?”

“As soon as we can. It won’t be more than a couple of hours before Graves is on our trail again. Why hang around?”

“For one excellent reason.” Atvar H’sial swept a jointed forelimb in a long arc, covering the room they stood in. “Examine. I have not had time for a complete survey, but as I moved through the chambers of this planetoid I saw evidence of Builder technology unlike anything known to the spiral arm. This is a treasure house, a cornucopia of new equipment with a value too great to estimate. It can be ours, Louis.”

Nenda reached out and patted the Cecropian’s wrinkled proboscis. “Good old At. You never give up, do you? Ever. And people tell me I’m the greedy one. Got any ideas how we prevent interference from Graves?”

“Some. But first things first.” Atvar H’sial unfolded her legs and rose to her full height. “If profit is to be maximized, this must be treated as a multistage endeavor. We will need great capital to exploit this planetoid, and we must plan to return here when we have suitable financing. To obtain that, before we leave we must select a few items of machinery and equipment, small and light enough to take with us for trade to the richest worlds of the spiral arm. I could do that, but you are more experienced. And as soon as we have decided what to take, we must evade Julius Graves and his group, and leave.”

“Then we’d better get a move on, before they come looking.” Nenda reached out to grasp one of the Cecropian’s forelimbs, hoisting himself to his feet. “You’re right, I do like to price goodies. ’Specially when I know I won’t be paying for ’em. Let’s go to it, At, and pick ’em out.”

After the first few minutes Louis Nenda was willing to admit Cecropian superiority for the exploration of Glister. He could see dead ends easily enough, when the light level permitted. But Atvar H’sial, with her sensitive sonar and echolocation, could “see” around bends in corridors, and know ahead of time when she was approaching a large open area. And she did so just as well in total darkness.

Nenda did not bother after a while to peer ahead. He focused on what he was best at, walking behind Atvar H’sial and making a mental catalog of novel equipment and artifacts as they came to them. There was plenty of choice. In less than half an hour he reached forward and tapped her carapace.

“I think we’re done. I’ve tagged a dozen portable items, an’ I don’t think we can handle more than that.”

Atvar H’sial halted and the white head turned. “You are the expert on salable commodities; but I would like to hear your list.”

“All right. I’ll give ’em in order, top choice first. That little water-maker in the second room we looked at. Remember it? No sign of a power source, no sign of a supply. But five hundred cubic meters a minute of clean water production. You could name your own price for a few of them on Xerarchos or Siccity, or any of the dust worlds.”

“I agree. It was also a leading item on my own list. Do you know its mass?”

“I can lift it, that’s all I care about. Then for number-two choice, I liked that cubical box on gimbals three chambers back, the one with the open top and a blue haze over it.”

“Indeed? I observed that object. But I found nothing remarkable about it.”

“That’s because you don’t see using light. When I looked down into the open top I could see stars. But when I turned the box on the gimbals, I was looking at Gargantua, right through the planetoid. It’s an all-direction see-through — let’s you look at distant objects and not be bothered by near ones. It’d be marvelous for ship navigation in dust clouds.

“My number-three choice is harder to justify. The sphere, the one that was floating, not attached to anything, in the room we just left.”

“To my viewing it appeared entirely featureless.”

“To me, too. But it was a lot cooler than everything around it.”

“Which should be physically impossible.”

“That’s why we want it. Impossible gadgets are always the most valuable. I’ve no idea how it works, an’ I don’t care. But I can tell you a dozen places that would pay a lot for it, looking to maybe find a closed infinite heat sink. Number four—”

“Enough. I am persuaded. I accept your list. but there is one more thing that I would like to do, before we collect the items of choice and seek egress from the planetoid.” Atvar H’sial motioned in front of her with one forelimb. The yellow horns faced ahead, open as wide as they would go and scanning slowly from side to side. “There is another chamber ahead; a huge, open one, possessing anomalous acoustical properties. At certain frequencies, it appears completely empty. At others, I detect a spherical object at its center.”

“You think we might find something specially valuable? No point taking risks, just to be nosy.”

“I cannot estimate the value. I will only say that an object transparent at certain acoustic frequencies is as potentially valuable to Cecropian society as glass, transparent to certain frequencies of light, is to humans. I know exactly where we could sell such a discovery. To me, it might be the most precious thing on this world.”

Atvar H’sial was advancing slowly as she spoke, to a place where the tunnel ended in a blind drop. Nenda moved to her side and took a look down. After one startled glance he swore and stepped back. She had an indifference to heights that came from her remote flying ancestors, but he did not share it. They were on the brink of a twenty-meter drop, slowly curving away below to a bowl-shaped floor.

Atvar H’sial was pointing to the middle of the chamber. “There. Do you sense anything with your eyes?”

“Yeah. It’s a silver sphere.” Nenda took another step back. “I don’t like this, At. We oughta get out of here.”

“In one moment. To my senses, that sphere is changing. Do you observe it, also?”

Nenda, set to retreat, stood and stared in spite of himself.

Atvar H’sial was right. The sphere was changing while he watched. And in a way that tricked the eye. The whole surface began to ripple, like oscillations on a ball of mercury. Those vibrations became a pattern of standing waves, growing in amplitude until they changed the whole shape. A five-sided flowerlike head was sprouting above, while a slender barbed tail extended down toward the floor of the chamber.

Ahh. A sighing voice echoed through the whole chamber. Ahhh. At last.

A green light flickered from an aperture in the deformed sphere’s center. It shone on Atvar H’sial, lighting up the crouched, insectile form and the great blind head. Louis hid away behind her.

At last, the voice said again. It sounded as old as time itself. A strange, pungent aroma came drifting across the room. At last… we can begin. You are here. The testing is complete. The duties of The-One-Who-Waits are ending, and the selection process can begin. Are you ready?

The creature poised in the center of the chamber was unlike anything that Louis Nenda had met in thirty years of travel around the spiral arm. But what was Atvar H’sial seeing? The Cecropian seemed frozen, her long antennas unfurled and bristling. The being in the middle of the chamber had been partially invisible to her sonar. Did she see it at all now, and recognize the danger?

“At!” Nenda sent the pheromonal signal with maximum urgency. “I don’t know if you’re getting the same message as I am from that thing, but believe me, we’re in trouble. It wants us. Don’t reply to me, just back up.”

You are the form, the voice was saying, and the green light had focused on the Cecropian. The third awaited form. Do not move — Atvar H’sial had finally taken a step backward, bumping into Louis Nenda — the transition is ready to begin.

Louis Nenda reached forward, grabbing one of the Cecropian’s forelimbs. “At! No messing about. Let’s get out of here!” He turned and took one step.

Too late.

Before his second step the floor vanished. He was falling freely, plummeting down a vertical shaft. He looked down. Nothing, only darkness that baffled the eye. He looked up. Above him was Atvar H’sial, wing cases fully extended, vestigial wings wide open, all six legs tensed. She was poised for a hard landing — on top of Louis Nenda.

He looked down again, seeking the bottom of the shaft. He could not see a thing, but given the small size of the planetoid, the end of the fall had to be no more than a second or two away.

And then what? Nothing pleasant, that was for sure.

Nenda fell and swore. Hindsight was wonderful. They had been a little bit too greedy. He and Atvar H’sial should have left when they could, as soon as they had picked out all they needed.

He stared down into a rolling, viscous blackness and had time for a final thought: They would have been better off staying with Julius Graves. At the moment, a formal trial for lethal assault seemed positively inviting.