Divergence

CHAPTER 21

Darya arrived back in the silent chamber a little bit early, before the other three. In the past four hours she had become convinced that the search was going nowhere. She was also tired, and becoming hungry again.

Even so, she could not sit down until she had taken a look inside each of the big tanks. Logically she knew that the coffins would be empty. It made no sense for the Zardalu to have gone back into stasis, even assuming that they knew how the tanks worked.

But logic had nothing to do with it. She had to see for herself and make sure.

Atvar H’sial crept quietly into the room a few minutes later, right on time. She and Darya nodded to each other. That was about as far as they could go without Louis Nenda as interpreter, but Darya was sure that the Cecropian had also found nothing useful. She could read that much from body language, just as Atvar H’sial must be able to read her.

Rebka and Nenda came in together. They looked angry and worried.

“Nothing?” Darya asked.

They shook their heads simultaneously.

“Washout,” Nenda said. “No Builders, no Speaker-Between, no Zardalu. Bugger ’em all. From the look of it, we’d take ten thousand years searching this place properly. Screw it.” Just as Darya had done, he and Rebka went compulsively across to the tanks and peered inside to make sure that they were empty.

“It’s worse than I thought,” Nenda said when he came back. “At says she didn’t catch one whiff of them, nowhere. And she can smell a gnat’s armpit at a hundred kilometers. Stinkers like them ought to be a cinch. They’ve vanished, every one of them. What do we do now, boys and girls?”

It was smell that had persuaded Nenda, not any argument offered by Darya or Hans Rebka. When Atvar H’sial had risen high, poked her big white head inside one of the big tanks, pulled forth on one claw a trace of fatty smear, and assured them all that nothing smelled remotely like that anywhere in the spiral arm, Nenda had become an instant believer. The Cecropian knew scents better than any human knew sights. Darya had put her own head into one of the tanks and caught the faintest whiff of ammonia and rancid grease.

Rebka was sitting on top of one of the coffins, his chin cupped in his hands. “What do we do?” he repeated. “Well, I guess that we keep looking. Speaker-Between said the action would start when all three species were present. We didn’t know what he was talking about then, but now we do.”

“We’re all here,” Nenda said. “Humans, Cecropians, and Zardalu. Great — except we can’t find the Zardalu.”

“We can’t. But I’ll bet that Speaker-Between can. This is his home ground.”

“Yeah — and we can’t find Speaker-Between.” Nenda walked forward to stand in front of the tank and stare up insultingly at Rebka. “Great work, Captain. If you’re so convinced Speaker-Between will find us, I don’t know why we bothered looking.”

Rebka did not move. “Because I’d like to tell him about the Zardalu before they tell him,” he said quietly. “Just in case he doesn’t know their reputation. Got any ideas, smart guy? I’m ready to be amazed.”

“That shouldn’t take much.”

“All right.” Darya stepped between them. “That will do. Or I’ll set Atvar H’sial on both of you. I thought we agreed, we can’t afford to bicker and fight until we’re out of this mess.

“I said I’d cooperate. I never said I’d bow down in front of him, or that I’d agree with him when he said something really dumb—”

Nenda was interrupted by Atvar H’sial, who came gliding through the air to land by his side. She grabbed him by the arm with one clawed forepaw and pulled him backward so that his head was in contact with the front of her carapace.

“Hey, At,” he said. “Whose side are you on? Now just stop that!”

He had been drawn close to the Cecropian and turned bodily to face the chamber entrances. “What!” His chest nodules were pulsing. “Are you sure?”

He twisted and called back to Darya. “Behind the tanks. Get a move on! You, too, Captain.”

“What’s happening?” Rebka eased off the top of the stasis tank, but he came forward instead of moving into hiding.

“At says she’s getting a whiff of Zardalu. From out there.” Nenda nodded toward the entrance. “She’s hearing sounds, too, faint ones. Somethin’s coming this way.”

“Tell Atvar H’sial to get behind the tanks with Darya. You, too. I’ll stay here.”

“We playing heroes, Captain?” Nenda rubbed at his bare and pitted chest. “That’s fine with me.” He turned his body. “Come on, At, let go of me.”

The Cecropian did not move. She was crouched forward, her long antennas unfurled and extended as far as they would go. She pulled Nenda closer to her lower carapace.

“Go on,” Rebka said. “What are you both waiting for?”

But Nenda had stopped pushing at Atvar H’sial’s encircling forelimbs and was peering at the entrance. “I changed my mind. I got to stay here.”

“Why, man?” Rebka advanced to stand at his side. “We shouldn’t all wait here if there’s Zardalu on the way.”

“Agreed. So you get back in there with the professor.” Nenda turned his head and gave Rebka a curiously distant glance. “At says she smells Hymenopt. Not just any old Hymenopt, either — she smells Kallik. I stay.”

The next minute was filled with tense inactivity. Nothing emerged from the chamber entrance. Atvar H’sial offered no further information or comment via Louis Nenda. No one else could hear, see, or smell anything unusual. Darya, feeling both foolish and cowardly, came from behind the tanks and moved forward to join the other three. Hans Rebka gave her a sharp look, but he did not suggest that she go back.

The smell came first, a faint and alien whiff that drifted in on the currents of air circulation. Darya did not recognize it. The sudden lump in her chest had to be pure nerves. But she craned forward, straining to see into the gloom beyond the tunnel’s mouth, looking for something that loomed three times the height of a human.

“Almost here, according to At.” Nenda’s gruff voice was reduced to a whisper. “Coupla’ seconds more. Hold your hats on.”

A shape was moving out of the darkness, slowly, with an odd sideways motion. One moment it could hardly be seen, the next it was fully visible.

Darya heard a bark of laughter from Louis Nenda, standing to her left. She felt like echoing it. The menace had arrived. It was no seven-meter land-cephalopod, supporting itself on a massive sprawl of tentacled limbs. Instead she was looking at a human male, slightly below average height. He wore a bloody bandage around his head, and from his awkward movement he had something badly wrong with his legs or his central nervous system.

He shuffled forward to within a couple of paces of the group. “Some of you do not know me,” he said. His voice was quite matter-of-fact. “But I know all of you. You are Darya Lang, Hans Rebka, Louis Nenda, and the Cecropian, Atvar H’sial. My name is E. C. Tally. I am here to deliver a message, and to ask a question. But first, tell me who is the leader of this group.”

Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda glared at each other until Nenda shrugged. “Go ahead. Be my guest.”

Rebka turned to E. C. Tally. “I am. What’s your question?”

“First, I must make a statement. I am here only as a messenger. The rest of the group that came here with me consists of the humans Julius Graves and Birdie Kelly, the Lo’tfian, J’merlia, and the Hymenopt, Kallik. They are now prisoners of that species known in the spiral arm as Zardalu. The others will be executed at once should you seek to free them by violence. I should add that my cooperation was forced by their threat to execute Councilor Graves on the spot if I did not function as requested. And now, the question. Are there members here of other intelligences of the spiral arm, or are you the only ones? Please give the answer loudly and clearly.”

“I can’t give a definite answer. All I can say is that we are the only ones here that we know of.”

“Logic demands that no fuller answer can be justified. I am sure that will be satisfactory. In fact—”

Rebka and the others in the group were no longer listening. Moving out behind the embodied computer and overshadowing him completely came three huge forms. The one in the middle was carrying Kallik, holding her upside down with two tentacles wrapped firmly around the abdomen, so that the gleaming yellow sting could not be employed. That alone was enough to leave Rebka gasping. No organism in the spiral arm should have been able to restrain an adult Hymenopt, one-on-one. But Kallik was not struggling. Her eyes were open, and one of her hind limbs was twisted at a peculiar angle. The cruel blue beak hovered close to the back of Kallik’s neck, ready to bite.

The other two Zardalu were carrying nothing but improvised clubs fashioned from the twisted exteriors of food containers. They were almost identical in appearance, except for the necklaces of round-mouthed pouches running around the body below the slitted mouths. In the Zardalu standing on the right, the pale-blue ovals within those pouches were far more prominent, bulging out far from the tight flesh.

The beak of the Zardalu in the center moved, to produce a high-pitched chittering sound. Kallik replied. There was another brief exchange of clicks and whistles.

“Hey, Kallik,” Nenda called.

The Hymenopt did not look at him. “E. C. Tally’s function as a messenger is now over,” she said woodenly. “He cannot communicate with the Zardalu, and he is regarded as expendable. He was sent here first as a decoy, in case a killing trap had been set up around this chamber. I can communicate with you, and also with the Zardalu. I will therefore be the interpreter for all subsequent messages. The leader of the Zardalu is the one who is holding me. She is to be identified for message purposes as Holder.”

“Son of a bitch,” Nenda whispered, just loud enough for Rebka to hear. “What have they done to her? That’s not my Kallik, the real Kallik.”

“They came here prepared for a fight,” Rebka said, just as softly. “Ten thousand years in stasis, and still they wake up ready to take on the universe. Watch what you do and say. We can’t afford to make one wrong move.”

“Tell me about it.”

The Zardalu on the left stretched out two of the pale-blue midbody tentacles and pulled E. C. Tally effortlessly back toward it. At the same moment, Kallik was turned in midair by the Zardalu that held her and placed on the ground in front of Louis Nenda. She stood favoring her twisted hind limb. The ring of bright black eyes in the Hymenopt’s round head stared up at him unblinking. Nenda nodded slowly. He did not speak.

“Holder knows that you are my former master,” Kallik said. “She orders me to tell you that I now serve Holder and Holder alone.”

Louis Nenda swallowed. Darya could see his jaw muscles clenching and unclenching. “I hear you,” he said at last. “Tell Holder that I received the message, and I understand it.”

“And ask Holder,” Rebka added, “what they want from us. Tell her that we are recent arrivals. We do not know our way around here. We do not know how to reach Speaker-Between, or any other inhabitant of this artifact.”

“Holder is aware of many of these things,” Kallik said, after another brief exchange with the Zardalu who stood behind her. The Hymenopt’s eyes flickered shut, one by one, in a curious pattern, before she continued. “She does not know Speaker-Between’s wishes, and she does not care. She and her companions have a single objective. If you help them to achieve it, you and the hostage group will be allowed to live. If you do not cooperate, or if you attempt opposition or treachery, you and all your offspring will die.”

“Nice terms. All right, we understand. What’s their objective?”

“It is to be released from this place and given a ship for their use. They must be allowed to leave here, without pursuit, and go wherever they choose. For that to happen, Holder and the others know that they will need the cooperation of the beings, whoever they may be, who rule this place. She knows that you are not the rulers.”

“That’s all got nothing to do with us. What are we supposed to do?”

“Something very simple. Holder also knows that the rulers of this place wish to perform their own experiments using Zardalu, Humans, and Cecropians. Holder is willing to leave one Zardalu here for that purpose. She has already made the selection of that individual. When the ruler beings of this world come to meet with you again, you are to state that you will cooperate with them only after one condition has been fulfilled: namely, all the Zardalu, save one, must have been permitted to leave here in a fully equipped interstellar ship, to go to a destination of their choosing. After that event you Humans and Cecropians will be free to act as you choose, to cooperate with the rulers here or to resist them.”

“Tell Holder, wait for one minute.” Rebka turned to the other two humans. “You heard all that. I don’t think we can do anything except agree, or say we do. But we ought to tell Atvar H’sial what’s going on.”

“She knows already,” Nenda said. “Look at her.” The Cecropian’s blind white head was nodding. “I’ve been giving her pheromonal translations as we went. She agrees, we have no choice but to cooperate.”

“Darya?”

“What else can we do, if we don’t want Birdie Kelly or Councilor Graves killed?”

“Not a thing.” Rebka turned again to Kallik. “You probably followed that, but here is our official response. Tell Holder that we agree to her terms. Tell her we have no idea when we will be contacted by Speaker-Between, or by any other of the beings who control this artifact. But when they do get in touch with us, we will tell them that the price for our cooperation is the release of all the Zardalu, except one. And we will refuse to cooperate until that has been done.”

Kallik nodded and again began a clicking and whistling conversation with the Zardalu. A tentacle reached out, seized Kallik around the midsection, and drew her back.

“Holder orders me to tell you that you have made a wise decision,” the Hymenopt said. “Naturally, the hostages will continue to be held. However, one of them is close to a terminal condition and is not worth keeping. Holder will use that being, and one other small thing, as examples. She wishes to prove to you the seriousness of Zardalu intention, and to point out to all of you the folly of possible treachery. Holder says, do not try to follow. She will return, at a time of her choosing.”

As Kallik finished speaking, the Zardalu reached out with another tentacle and grabbed the Hymenopt’s injured hind limb. Kallik gave a whistling scream of pain as her leg was twisted off at the upper joint and pulled free of her body. The leg was carried at once to the slitted mouth and swallowed whole.

At the same moment, the Zardalu who had been holding E. C. Tally pushed him forward. The rough, sharp-edged club that it was holding swung sideways with frightful force, to contact Tally’s head just above ear level. The whole top of the skull sheared off and flew away across the chamber.

The Zardalu retreated into the tunnel with Kallik. The body of E. C. Tally sprawled motionless in front of Darya Lang. Blood dribbled from the topless head.

The three humans did not move at once to pick up E. C. Tally. It was left to Atvar H’sial, less knowledgeable about human physiology and human survival needs, to move across to him and lift the ruined body to an upright position. She carried it to where the battered top of the skull was lying on the floor.

“What’s she doing?” Darya Lang asked. Her voice was shaking. “He’s dead.”

Louis had been sitting slumped on the ground, muttering to himself. At Darya’s words he looked up and hurried to his feet.

“She’s doing what I should have been doing, if I had any sense. Tally looks like a human, but he isn’t one. Graves says he’s an embodied computer. Back on the planetoid he had his brain popped right out of his head, and it didn’t worry him a bit. Come on. Maybe there’s some way to get him functioning again.”

At first sight it seemed a forlorn hope. The body was limp and lifeless, and the top of the skull had been ripped away to reveal the stark white of broken bone.

“First thing,” Nenda said. “Gotta stop the bleeding.”

“No.” Hans Rebka was reaching into the brain cavity. “That looks bad, but it’s not the worst problem. We’ve got to get his brain back in charge of his body, quickly, or he’s done for. Tell Atvar H’sial to hold him. Tightly.” The arms and legs were beginning to jerk as Rebka felt under the brain. “See, here’s the problem. That blow jarred the neural connection loose. I’m trying to reseat it. Anything happening?”

“Ye-e-s. Yes, indeed.” It was E. C. Tally who answered, in a slurred and gurgling voice. “Thank — you. It was apparent to me… at once, that the blow had severed the brain-body interface, but without… sensory inputs I had no idea what happened next. Nor could I… communicate the problem.” The bright blue eyes opened and blinked away blood. Tally glanced around him. “I am now functional. Relatively speaking. I am operating with backup-mode interfaces, but for the time being they appear to be adequate. Where are the Zardalu?”

“Gone. For the moment.” Darya had taken the loose top of the skull from Atvar H’sial and was gazing at it hopelessly. It was a mass of bloody, matted hair and sharp-edged bone. “They took Kallik with them.”

“They will surely be back. Allow me.” Tally reached out and removed the cap of skin, hair, and bone from Darya’s hands. He studied it, his blue eyes intent. “The front hinges are gone, completely sheared away. But the rear pins appear intact. They may hold it in position, provided that I do not make sudden movements or allow my head to move far from the vertical.”

He became silent again.

“Are you all right?” Rebka asked.

Tally waved a hand at him. “I have been running diagnostic programs. I had hoped that the only major problem would be the inevitable necrosis of the skull, deprived of its blood supply. But now I know that there are other more serious difficulties. This body is close to end-point failure. It cannot function for more than another few hours; twenty at the outside, in continuous operation. Perhaps twice that long if it is given adequate rest. After that I will become unable to move; then I will lose all sensory inputs. It is important that I transfer potentially useful information to you at once, before any of this happens.”

As Tally spoke he was trying to maneuver the loose skull into position. It would not seat cleanly. After a few seconds he gave up the effort. “There is also more structural damage than I thought. We may as well bandage it as best we can and forget it. This is as good a result as I am able to achieve.” He sat on the floor with his hands to his head, while Hans Rebka carefully wound the bandage again around the bloodied hair and skin.

“Now,” Tally went on. “May I speak? Prepare yourselves to receive information from me. It would be a tragedy if facts that I have already collected could not be passed to you because of my own motor systems malfunctions.”

“You can start anytime. I’m listening.” The episode with the Zardalu had left Louis Nenda pale, but not from fear. He was scowling, and his nostrils were dilated. “Any information you can give about those blue bastards, I want.”

“There is one factor that Julius Graves says is of overwhelming importance. He instructed me to tell it to you, if any possible opportunity arose. Did you see the ring of pouches on each of the Zardalu?”

“Like a bead necklace, all the way around their bodies? Sure. Hard to miss ’em.”

“But you probably do not know what they are. They are reproductive pouches. Young are developing within each of the swollen beads. The Zardalu appear to be hermaphroditic, and any one of them will produce multiple live offspring. We saw young ones, actually appearing. And they eat ravenously, as soon as they are born.”

“There’s plenty of food available around here.”

“Adequate for us, and for the adult Zardalu forms. But the immature Zardalu are mainly meat-eaters. According to what Kallik heard, the Zardalu consider that inferior young will develop if feeding is restricted to what is available from the food suppliers here.”

“What do you mean, inferior?” Nenda asked. “We’re all eating it. Inferior how?

“I do not know. But Julius Graves is convinced that unless the Zardalu are allowed to leave soon and go where they wish, you and the hostages will be seen as a necessary food supply for their young. Compliance with their demands is most urgent.”

Darya was nauseated. But Rebka just shrugged, and Nenda said, “So we’re all gonna be kiddie munchies. Great. I don’t see knowin’ that does much for us. What else do you have?”

“I can take you at once to the chamber where the Zardalu are located, if that is your wish.”

Rebka glanced at the others. “Not quite the top item on our agenda, is it? We don’t know what we’d do with it if we had it. Maybe we’d like that later. What else?”

“Something whose value cannot be determined, though Steven Graves argues that it is significant. Kallik is the only one who can communicate with them. The Hymenopts were the slaves of the Zardalu in the distant past, and the Hymenopt language has not changed. Kallik said—”

“Hold on a minute, Tally,” Hans Rebka interrupted. “You keep on telling us Kallik said this, Kallik said that. I don’t think we can trust a single thing that Kallik tells us. The Zardalu have taken her over completely.”

“Uh-uh.” Nenda shook his head. “It looked that way, but it ain’t so. Kallik and me, we’ve got codes we use when we can’t speak. You couldn’t read that flickering pattern of her eyes, when she was down groveling in front of the middle Zardalu. But I could. She was saying to me, over and over, ‘Wait. Not yet.’ She knew I was ready to bust out, an’ she was telling me it wasn’t the time.”

“Did she say anything else to you?” Rebka asked. “Any details of their weapons, or maybe their weak spots?”

“Hey, be reasonable. Those eye codes aren’t a real language. But I’ll tell you one thing Kallik told me, indirectly. The Zardalu are strong. Nothing should be able to hold an adult Hymenopt. We couldn’t do it, if we all tried at once. That Zardalu did it easy. We’ll need something special if we’re gonna fight ’em.”

“But Kallik was weakened,” Darya said. “Even before they tore her leg off, she was injured. She might be dead by now.”

“Naw.” Nenda was turning back to Tally. “You lot just don’t know your Hymenopts. Takes a lot more than that to worry Kallik — she’s regrowing that leg right now, won’t think twice about it. But it makes the point even stronger, and it’s not such a nice one. See, if a Zardalu could hold her, and do that to her, it’d turn any of us into mincemeat. And talking of mincemeat, let’s hear the rest from Tally before the baby Zardalu start squeakin’ for dinner. What else did Kallik say?”

The embodied computer had sunk down to a sitting position and was holding the sides of his head. “She was listening to them when we were first captured, before they realized that she could understand Zardalu speech. By the way, Kallik does not hold a high opinion of their intelligence. They did not worry themselves with what they had already said in front of her, even after they learned that she could understand them. She heard much of their conversation. Apparently they were captured by The-One-Who-Waits, or something like him, during the very last days of the Great Rising. They were transported here already in stasis. At that time, planet after planet ruled by the Zardalu Communion had joined the revolution. Zardalu were being systematically exterminated, and their last few outposts overrun and wiped out. These fourteen individuals had fled to space to escape. They were the last ones left. Kallik says they think that they are the only surviving members of their species.”

“I hope they’re right,” Rebka said. “Be thankful if they are.”

“But that’s why they are so absolutely determined to escape from here, and to lie low while they recuperate. Their strength has always been their breeding powers. Given a quiet planet and a century or two, there will be hundreds of millions of Zardalu. They will again be organized, and ready to start over.”

The tall form of Atvar H’sial had crouched silent through all the talk. Now she stirred and turned the open yellow trumpets on each side of her head toward Louis Nenda.

“I agree with that,” he said. He turned back to the others. “I’ve been filling At in as we went along on what Tally’s been saying. She makes a good point. If the Zardalu were captured and put in stasis back near one of their home planets, and they only just came out of it, it’s possible they don’t have any idea where they are now. Me and At never spoke to Speaker-Between, but I get the idea he’s a bit obscure. And the Zardalu must be confused as hell, just coming out of stasis. Maybe they think they can jump into a ship and take off, and find a place to hide within a few light-years. That ain’t’ so, but let’s make sure that we’re not the ones who tell ’em. At says the smart thing to do is let ’em have ship, help ’em take off out of here — and then let the blue bastards find they’re thirty thousand light-years from anywhere, and screw ’em six ways from Tuesday.”

“That’s fine,” Rebka said. “Assuming that Speaker-Between goes along with it. But I don’t see why he would. If he hasn’t told them already where they are, he’ll probably tell them next time he meets them.”

“We can’t stop that. But we can make sure it doesn’t come from us. And maybe steer the conversation in other directions if we get the chance. Might not be hard, if these Zardalu aren’t the brightest specimens.” Louis Nenda stared at E. C. Tally, whose head was drooping forward onto his chest. “Go on. What else?”

Tally did not speak.

“Leave him alone,” Darya said. “He’s on his last legs.”

“How do you know?”

“Just look at him. He’s swaying.”

“He may be worse later.” Nenda bent down and peered at Tally’s drooping eyelids. “The body’s resting, but he’s not asleep. And this could be our last chance. Give him a jab, Professor, get him going.”

“No.” This time it was Hans Rebka who spoke. “You’re not an expert on embodied computers, Nenda. Neither am I. Tally knows the condition of that body better than any human ever could. If he thinks he has to have rest, he rests. We don’t argue.”

“So what are the rest of us supposed to do? Sit around here, and wait till the Zardalu ring the dinner bell?”

“More or less.” Rebka moved forward and dragged E. C. Tally along the smooth floor, until he could prop him up against a wall.

“We’ve been on the go for days. Every one of us looks ready to drop. We need rest. I’m going to follow Tally’s example and take a short nap. If you have any sense you’ll do the same. We can take turns to keep watch. And if you all want to be ready for action when the Zardalu come back, better make sure you’re not exhausted.”

He sat down by Tally’s side. “Otherwise… Well, otherwise when that bell rings, you may find you’re the first course on the menu.”