Divergence

CHAPTER 25

Birdie Kelly had never thought of himself as a hero. Quite the opposite. When other men went looking for trouble, Birdie was already looking for cover.

But this time it was different. He was the target, and there was no cover. He had to do something.

Birdie’s minor shift toward bravery began as a horrified inspection of the Zardalu, particularly their hungry young. They seemed to be forever peeking out from under the protective umbrellas of tentacles, begging for food. They light-orange beaks were small, only half an inch across, but there was no doubt about their sharpness. They cut easily through any food fragment, even the hardest shells or rinds, and they made the adult Zardalu jump when the infants, dissatisfied with what was offered to them, nicked the tough flesh at the base of their parents’ bodies.

After the first morbid fascination of that sight wore off, Birdie shuffled quietly over to Julius Graves. “Councilor, what are we going to do? You heard Kallik — another hour and we’re done for. Me first, then all of us.”

Graves was nodding, the great bald head furrowed with worry. “I know, I know. We won’t let them take you, Commissioner. They’ll have to fight all of us before that happens. But what can we do? They refuse to listen to me, or allow me to act as an intermediary with the others. If only they would sit down, and talk…”

Talk was not what Birdie had in mind. In his experience, people who wanted to sit down and talk were the ones who were going to lose the argument. What he would have preferred was more along the lines of a nice 88-gauge automatic cannon.

He nodded and crawled back to his place. Julius Graves was full of talk, but he was not going to do one damned thing. Certainly he would not be able to stop the Zardalu from using Birdie as baby-chow any time they felt like it.

Birdie stared again at their captors. His inspection moved from a horrified stare at the young ones to a general survey of all the land-cephalopods.

They certainly had that look of invulnerability. But he knew it was an illusion. Eleven thousand years earlier, species who had been trained from birth to believe in Zardalu superiority had risen to fight their tyrant masters — and won. They had exterminated the Zardalu, except for these last few remaining specimens.

There had to be some chink in the armor, some flaw that had been exploited at the time of the Great Rising…

It was certainly not easy to see one. Birdie had watched earlier, when two of the Zardalu picked up empty food containers and squeezed them to form rough clubs. Now he wandered over to a food container himself, and put all his weight on it. It did not budge a millimeter. Birdie sat down again with a new respect for the power of those three-meter ropy tentacles. They could pulverize him without putting one of their nonexistent hairs out of place.

So. They were as strong as they looked.

How well did they see and hear? None of the Zardalu was turned his way at the moment. Birdie drummed lightly on the side of the empty food box with his fingertips, producing a light pa-pa-pa-pam. No result. A few harder blows with the flat of his hand produced no reaction from the Zardalu.

Birdie stood up, slowly and quietly, went across to the side of the chamber, and began to edge his way around it. The Zardalu were close to the single exit, but on one side there was space for a human to slide along the wall without coming within tentacle range of any of them.

Birdie sidled along until he was no more than a few paces from the nearest Zardalu. He soon reached a point where he could see out of the chamber. The exit led to an open corridor. One mad dash would take him out there and on his way through the unknown interior. He rose onto the balls of his feet. At that very moment the biggest one, the one identified as Holder, fluted a few liquid sounds to where Graves, Kallik, and J’merlia were lying.

“With respect, Commissioner Kelly,” Kallik called. “The Zardalu do not want you in your present location. You are commanded to return at once to join the rest of us. And when you do so, the Zardalu order you to refrain from hammering on the food containers. The noise creates unrest in the young.”

Birdie nodded. The scariest thing of all was that the Zardalu did not bother to threaten him with consequences if he did not obey. They knew he knew. He was turning to inch his way back along the same smooth gray wall when he caught sight of movement in the outside corridor. He forced himself to keep turning, resisting the urge to stop and stare. His split-second glance had not been enough to identify the individual person. But it was a person, and not a Zardalu, Cecropian, or other alien. Someone human was out there, crouched low in the angle of the corridor, peeping out now and again to observe what was going on inside the chamber. And far behind, almost indistinguishable from the darker shadows, Birdie thought he had caught a glimpse of another, less familiar form.

Birdie slid steadily back along the wall and returned to sit by Julius Graves. A few minutes earlier he had been convinced that the Zardalu were hard of hearing; now he was not so sure. For all he knew they could hear the slightest whisper. And even if they could not, certainly Kallik could, and the traitorous Hymenopt would tell the Zardalu anything that she heard.

He leaned forward to put his mouth right next to Graves’s ear. “Don’t say anything or do anything,” he breathed. “But help may be on the way.”

“What?” Graves said, loud enough to be heard twenty yards off. “You’ll have to speak up, Commissioner. My hearing isn’t too good.”

“Nothing,” Birdie said hurriedly. “I didn’t say a thing.”

Several of the Zardalu turned to stare at them with those huge, heavy-lidded eyes of cerulean blue. Before Birdie had time to feel guilty at rousing them to attention, another land-cephalopod, closer to the door, started up onto his powerful splayed tentacles. There was a pipe-organ whistle from the ingestion organ, and the Zardalu headed out of the chamber.

Birdie had never seen anything that big move so fast and so silently. The Zardalu flashed out of the room like a silent specter of midnight blue, one moment there, the next vanished. Birdie heard the sound of rapid movement outside and a startled cry. He knew that the sound had not come from the vanished Zardalu. Those were human vocal cords, the same ones that now produced a hoarse roar of pain.

“What was that?” Graves asked. “What happened?”

Birdie did not need to answer. The vanished Zardalu was coming back into the room. It was not alone. Dangling two meters from the ground, suspended by one brawny tentacle wrapped around his neck to carry his weight and cut off his breathing, hung the kicking, purple-faced figure of Louis Nenda.

“Not to spy.” Louis Nenda rubbed at his bruised throat. Released from the killing grip of the tentacle but with another sinewy extensor wrapped snugly about his chest and arms, he was reluctant to meet the gaze of either humans or aliens. He kept his eyes downcast, and he spoke in a low voice.

“Not to spy,” he said again. “Or to turn against my fellow humans. I came here to — to try to — negotiate.”

Kallik was crouched in front of him, half her ring of eyes fixed on his expression, the others attentive to her masters. The leader of the Zardalu whistled and fluted, and its companion’s grip on Nenda tightened.

“You were told in the last meeting that you were not to take the initiative,” Kallik translated. “You were told to stay and arrange with the being called Speaker-Between for the Zardalu’s immediate departure from this place. Are humans too stupid to understand direct command?”

“No.” Nenda was struggling for breath. The ropy arm around his chest was gradually tightening. “We held that meeting, just like we said we would. But it was no good! Speaker-Between wouldn’t agree they could leave. We can’t control him!”

There was a louder series of clicks from Holder as those words were passed on.

“But you suggested that you could. You must be taught a lesson,” Kallik translated.

Another tentacle came forward and wrapped its ropy end section around Nenda’s left leg. It began to pull. As the limb was slowly twisted and stretched downward, Nenda roared in agony.

“Let him go! Right now.” Julius Graves rashly ran forward to stretch up and beat at the Zardalu’s lower body. Another tentacle came up and batted him contemptuously away. At the same time, Kallik produced a rapid series of chirps and whistles.

The twisting and pulling ended, and Nenda sagged in the Zardalu’s grasp.

“I have explained,” Kallik said to Graves, lying winded on the floor, “that humans are quite different from Hymenopts. The removal of any limb would be far more serious in Louis Nenda’s case than in mine. It would probably result in death.”

Graves nodded. But as Nenda’s leg was released, Holder spoke again to Kallik.

“Holder asks,” the Hymenopt said to Nenda, “why should your death matter? You were once my master, and perhaps I am trying to serve you, even now. I said that is not so. But Holder points out that the young ones are in need of proper food, and the value of your continued existence is not clear. Holder is sure that you were attempting to spy, even though you deny it. and Finder, the Zardalu who captured you, thought that it saw another stranger, far along the corridor, one that fled when you were taken. Another spy, perhaps, who escaped when you could not? But that is not the issue here. Can you suggest one reason why you should be allowed to live? If so, give it quickly.”

Nenda glanced at Julius Graves and Birdie Kelly, then looked away. His face and neck were covered in sweat. “I can give Holder a reason,” he said huskily. “That is why I came here. I can be very valuable to you, if you will promise that my life will be spared. And if you don’t hurt me any more. I am not able to — to stand more pain.”

“Holder is amused by your ignorance and presumption,” Kallik replied after another brief exchange with the Zardalu leader. “A Zardalu makes no promise. But it will listen to you, rather than killing you at once. What do you possibly have that is of value?”

Nenda licked his lips. “Tell Holder this. They want to escape from here and get back to a planet in the old Zardalu Communion. Well, I can show them how to do it. Right now.”

Another whistled exchange. “Holder does not believe you.”

“Tell Holder that I can prove it. In her travels through this artifact, one of our party found the entry point to a Builder transportation system. She told the rest of us about it — explained exactly where it is, how to use it. It’s in working order. Tell Holder I can take her there, and they can be on their way to where they want to go. They’ll be gone before Speaker-Between even knows they found the entry point.”

“Nenda! You can’t do this.” Julius Graves had dragged himself back to his feet. “God knows, I don’t want you or anyone else killed. But think of what you’ll be doing if you show them how to make a transition. You’ll be putting Zardalu back into the spiral arm, letting them run free to start their—”

A muscular tentacle reached out and swatted Graves across his upper arm and shoulder. Graves cried out in pain and collapsed to the floor.

Birdie Kelly hurried across to his side. While the Zardalu held a longer conversation among themselves, he examined Graves.

“Not broken,” he said softly. “A deep bruise. Maybe a cracked collarbone, though I don’t think so. Hold still. Don’t try to move your arm. I’ll tie it against your chest.” He glared across at Louis Nenda and raised his voice. “And you, you bag of slime. You’re worse than Kallik. You’d better hope we don’t get out of this alive. Or your name and Kallik’s will be a curse everywhere in the spiral arm.”

“Silence.” Kallik gestured to J’merlia, who had all the time been crouched close to the floor, his pale-lemon eyes jittering nervously on their stalks from one speaker to the next. The Lo’tfian crept forward to stand next to Julius Graves.

“Help him to walk, J’merlia, if he needs it,” Kallik said. “Holder has decided. We are going with Nenda — all of us. The Zardalu will inspect the transportation system. And it had better function as Nenda promises, or you will all suffer.” She pointed one wiry limb at the Zardalu standing next to her, where a pale-orange oval was just visible behind the fringe of tentacles. “Holder says we should not try to escape as we travel. The young ones are hungry. They do not mind how their food is provided to them — dead, or alive.”

The journey through the darker tunnels of the Builder artifact took a long time. The Zardalu were willing to investigate Louis Nenda’s claim, but they were not naive enough to believe that there was no trickery or traps. They went slowly, using hostages to probe suspect areas and inspecting every corridor closely before they went into it.

Julius Graves and J’merlia were made to walk in front, as triggers for possible booby traps. They were closely followed by six Zardalu. Birdie Kelly, next in line, was amazed to see that the newly born were still emerging, even while the blue towers in front of him were gliding forward. As he watched, the bright apricot of two more miniature Zardalu emerged from their birth sacs in the necklace of pouches. As soon as they were completely born they slithered down the rubbery, oil-coated trunk to take refuge beneath the main body, sheltered by surrounding tentacles. Minutes later the little beaks appeared, begging for food. The parents fed them as they walked with scraps taken from the broad webbing satchels circling the base of their torsos.

Louis Nenda was at Kelly’s side. Birdie rebuffed the other man’s attempt to talk to him. After a couple of tries Nenda turned around to Kallik, who walked at the rear in the middle of the remaining eight Zardalu.

“Ask Holder somethin’, will you?” he said. “Ask what happens when we get to the transportation system. Remind her how much I’m doing to help ’em. Say it’s only fair that I should be set free.”

There was a fluting whistle from the giant Zardalu as the message was translated.

“Holder agrees, at least in part,” Kallik said. “If everything is as you promised, you will not be killed. If everything is not as you say, you should be trembling.”

Birdie turned his head. “You ought to be eaten, Nenda, you lousy traitor. That’d save the rest of us — because your stinking carcass would poison every Zardalu that touched it. If there’s any justice, you’ll be the first to go.”

“Justice? Ah, but there ain’t no justice, Commissioner.” Nenda was staring all around him, eyes bloodshot and intense. “Not here, and not anywhere in the spiral arm. You’ve been around long enough to know that. There’s only people like you and me, and blue bastards like the Zardalu.”

Birdie glared at him. The damnable thing was that Nenda was right. There was no justice. There never had been, and there never would be. If there were, he would not be here at all. He would be back home on Opal, safe in bed.

Birdie made his own gloomy inspection of their surroundings as they walked on through dark corridors and big, open chambers. Even this tiny piece of the artifact was huge and eerily alien. Since arriving here and being captured by the Zardalu, he had been dragged from one place to the next, never having an opportunity to know quite where he was going or why. Now, examining the objects that they passed, Birdie realized that he could not guess the purpose of any of them. Something certainly kept the place ticking; there was fresh air in the corridors, food in the lockers, and functioning waste disposal units for beings with needs as different as those of humans and Lo’tfians and Zardalu. But it was a wholly hidden something. There was no sign of mechanisms, no pumps or supply lines or ducting. Birdie had no idea how the artifact functioned. It was depressing to reflect that he was never likely to know.

He was pulled out of his musings when he bumped into the massive back of one of the Zardalu. Ahead of them, J’merlia and Julius Graves had suddenly stopped and turned around. They had reached the edge of a slope that spiraled gently down into darkness.

“What is wrong?” Kallik called from behind.

“It gets really steep down there,” Graves said. “The tunnel is narrowing, and past this point it’s no more than three or four meters wide. The gravity field is increasing, too. Once I take another ten steps I’m not sure I’ll be able to pull back.”

“That’s all right.” Nenda pushed forward through the solid rank of the Zardalu. “Stop where you are. Feel that stronger air current? It comes from the vortex itself. We’re nearly there, at the ramp that leads to the transportation system.”

He moved forward again, to stand at the very brink of the descending spiral. The breeze from the rotating singularity at the end of the tunnel blew his perspiration-drenched dark hair back from his face. “Kallik, tell Holder we are here. Explain that using the system is easy. All they have to do is walk down and enter the vortex itself.”

He turned, trying to move back to join Birdie Kelly. But the Zardalu would not let him through. Instead, Birdie and Kallik were pushed forward, so that within a few seconds all the Zardalu stood to the rear of the group.

Holder fluted and whistled.

“They say we must go first,” Kallik said. “All of us. Before they enter the system, we must do so. We re going with them, back to the spiral arm.”

Nenda glanced over his shoulder, down the curved slope that led to the vortex, then looked back to Kallik. “But I’m the one who brought them here! Tell ’em that, Kallik. Tell ’em they promised I’d have my freedom.”

Julius Graves laughed, wincing at the pain it produced in his injured arm and shoulder. “No, Louis Nenda, they didn’t promise. No Zardalu said anything like that. You heard what you wanted to hear. They never intended to allow any of us to go free. When we arrive at their destination, and they have no more use for us, you’ll learn what their plans for us really are. I am not a vindictive man — a councilor cannot afford to be — but in this case I agree with Birdie Kelly. If there is justice in the universe, you will be the first to go.”

“And if there is risk,” Kallik said, “then Holder says you will share it. If there is danger down at the vortex, speak of it now. For perhaps with that warning your life will be spared.”

Nenda turned to face the Hymenopt. He opened his mouth as though to reply, but instead he placed two fingers between his teeth and produced a high-pitched whistle followed by a loud cry: “Close your eyes! Cover them with your hands.”

As he shouted, a small black ellipsoid came curving up in a smooth arc from the dark depths of the tunnel.

Nenda shot a glance at the others. He cursed. Kallik and J’merlia had at once obeyed his shouted command and tucked their heads down toward the protection of their multiple legs. But Julius Graves and Birdie Kelly were doing the worst thing possible: they were staring straight at the ovoid as it passed over their heads.

He could do nothing about Graves, but Birdie Kelly was within reach. Nenda thrust his arm out, a fraction of an inch from Birdie’s face, so that the other man reflexively blinked. Nenda held his arm there and at the same moment squeezed his own eyes tight shut. He threw his other arm up to shield his face. The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was a Zardalu tentacle, reaching up toward the oval shape to smash it back where it had come.

The Zardalu was a split second too late. With his eyes closed and one forearm jammed hard across them, Louis Nenda saw the world turn bright red.

He felt his skin tingling in the flood of radiation. He stood and waited, for what felt like forever and could have been no more than half a second. The light level in the tunnel had to be just incredible if so much could bleed its way in past his arm and through his eyelids.

When everything went black he uncovered his eyes. He grabbed Birdie Kelly in both arms and pushed him over to drop to the floor of the tunnel. He landed on top of Birdie, curling into a ball as he did so.

His precautions were unnecessary. The Starburst must have triggered just a meter or two in front of the assembled Zardalu. When the brightness of a supernova flashed into being, they had all been staring at it. Now every Zardalu eye was covered by tentacles, and fluid was beginning to seep past the fine tendrils at the ends. Disorganized whistles, clicks, and moans filled the tunnel.

Nenda’s own world was a maze of flickering images, with the red network of veins in his eyelids superimposed on them. But he could see. Well enough to know that their problems were just beginning.

Sightless Zardalu blocked the way out of the tunnel. They were thrashing around with their tentacles, grabbing blindly at anything above waist height. The way back along the tunnel was closed by a mass of writhing, muscular snakes.

For the moment Nenda was far enough away to be safe. Birdie Kelly had pulled free and was crawling toward a niche where the wall met the floor. Nenda was tempted to follow, but there was barely room for one person. If Birdie could remain tucked into the narrow space and survive the groping tentacles, fine. If not…

Nenda turned to the others. J’merlia and Kallik had dropped instinctively to the ground in a splay of thin limbs. The big problem was Julius Graves. The Councilor had been blinded. He was groping his way farther along the tunnel, to the place where it steepened rapidly. A couple more steps and he would fall forward, pulled by the increasing gravity field past the point of no return and into the vortex.

Nenda dared not shout a warning. The Zardalu would home in on his call. He launched himself toward the councilor, grabbed him around the knees, and heaved backward.

Graves was caught with one leg in the air, ready to take another blind step. He fell sideways and to the left, crying out with pain as he landed on his injured arm.

That was all the clue that the Zardalu needed. Half a dozen long tentacles converged at once on the place. They reached for Graves. But they found Louis Nenda.

Before he saw them he felt their touch on his leg, like oiled silk over solid rubber. He tried to escape by crawling farther down the tunnel, toward the vortex. He was too late. One sinewy arm circled his legs; another coiled around his waist. They tightened and lifted him high in the air. His head hit the tunnel roof. Then he was being dragged toward the Zardalu. Even before the pain began, he knew what was going to happen. The tentacles around his body and his legs belonged to two different aliens. One of Holder’s long arms had him at the waist, but another Zardalu at the front of the group held his knees. They were both blinded, unaware of what the other was doing. And each was intent on pulling Louis Nenda within reach of its own beak.

Held high above the heads of the Zardalu, Nenda saw Darya Lang, Hans Rebka, and E. C. Tally appear in the tunnel behind them. They each held a flashburn unit. They began using them to sting and burn the Zardalu from the rear, forcing them to spin around so that they would lose their sense of direction, then driving them forward along the corridor in reflexive jerks.

But that would not help Nenda. The two holding him were in the front of the group, shielded from the humans by the Zardalu behind them.

The tentacles began to tighten on his body, pulling in opposite directions. He could not breathe. His lower back felt as if it were breaking. He was stretched, pulled apart by terrible forces. He knew what was going to happen. In another second he would be torn in two. He could do nothing to prevent it.

In his agony Nenda could not see clearly. When something black flashed past him, flying through the air toward the Zardalu, he did not know what it was. He made a great effort and turned his head.

As he did so, the tearing forces on him slackened for a moment. He realized that the flying object he had seen was Kallik.

The Hymenopt had leapt straight out of a crouched position with all the power of her wiry legs. Her spring carried her high in the air, to the top of the head of one of Zardalu holding Nenda. Kallik’s clawed paws dug into the Zardalu’s tough hide and held there. She clutched the rounded head above the blinded eyes and the wicked beak.

The Zardalu was reaching up with two of its tentacles, but Kallik did not flinch. The yellow sting appeared from its sheath at the bottom of her stubby abdomen. The furred Hymenopt body moved sideways an inch or two, seeking an exact position. The abdomen tilted. The sting sank with surgical precision into the Zardalu’s head, at a point exactly between the great lidded eyes. The abdomen pulsed with a full poison discharge. The sting withdrew. A moment later Kallik dropped free and scuttled back, away from the forest of threshing arms.

The stung Zardalu made no noise, but the killing pressure around Nenda’s legs slackened at once. The uplifted tentacles wilted. the great body shuddered, then froze into position. A moment later, the paralyzed Zardalu convulsed and toppled forward. It narrowly missed J’merlia and Julius Graves and lay motionless, poised on the very brink of the steep tunnel that led to the vortex.

And crawling above it, clinging upside down to the ceiling of the tunnel, came the great winged form of Atvar H’sial.

The Cecropian remained hanging on the ceiling until she was past the recumbent body of the Zardalu. Then she dropped down, clear of the still-motionless tentacles, and pushed with all her strength at the hulking body. The Zardalu hung poised for a moment at the edge, then started away down the slope. Nenda heard it rolling and slithering toward the vortex at the bottom. It made no sound.

He was glad to see it go, but that did not solve his own problem. Although he was no longer being pulled apart, Holder’s tentacle still crushed his midsection and he was being drawn steadily toward the gaping sharp-edged beak.

He lacked the breath to cry out for help. Kallik, her sting sac temporarily emptied, had leapt at the second Zardalu, but she found herself gripped by a pair of tentacles. Then she and Nenda were being pulled together toward Holder’s beak.

Atvar H’sial had turned from the vanished Zardalu and was watching the wild confusion in the tunnel. The yellow trumpet horns on each side of her head pointed toward Louis Nenda and Kallik as the two were pulled closer and closer to the Zardalu beak.

Atvar H’sial crouched silent, apparently inactive.

Only at the last moment, when Nenda was close enough to reach out and touch Holder’s blinded eyes and opening maw, did the Cecropian act.

She took a glassy ovoid from within her wing cases. As Nenda was moved into position and the Zardalu’s maw gaped at its widest, Atvar H’sial jumped.

Two hind limbs stabbed at Holder’s blinded eyes. That was merely a distraction, while a forelimb thrust the oval object deep into Holder’s ingestion slit. A split second after the Cecropian withdrew her arm, the maw snapped shut.

The Zardalu emitted a strange, quivering scream. The great body jerked full upright. The tentacles holding Nenda and Kallik went limp. And as he dropped to the tunnel floor, Louis Nenda saw what no sighted organism in the universe had ever seen before: a Zardalu interior, as it must appear to a Cecropian’s ultrasonic imaging.

The Starburst had triggered deep inside Holder. The light it provided was so intense that the body of the Zardalu became translucent, lit from within to reveal the interior organs. A diffuse blue glow shone from the maw, from the beak, from the eyes, even from the lower part of the canopy of tentacles. Nenda could see the dark ellipsoid of the brain, nestled in the center above the long cord of the central nerve conduit. Above that he could make out the shape of the eight-chambered heart, pumping its copper-based blood through the massive body. The Starburst itself was at the back of the maw, a dazzling point of blue.

As Nenda watched, that point of light vanished. Holder became again a tall cylinder of midnight blue, supported on powerful tentacles.

Except that those tentacles would no longer support the body. They splayed wider and wider, to spread across the whole width of the corridor. The torso slumped down at their center, lower and lower, until Holder stretched full-length along the floor, head toward her companions.

Louis Nenda moved out of reach. Atvar H’sial had insisted that the Starburst was not really a weapon. It would not explode inside a Zardalu, and it would not kill one. But even without that, the strength of the internal illumination was enough to put the Zardalu out of action, at least in the short term.

Nenda intended to handle the longer term himself. He had promised to take care of Holder personally, at the moment when the Zardalu had pulled Kallik’s leg off.

He drew the long knife from its holder on his calf. Maybe he could not stab the Zardalu’s heart, because it sat too deep; but he could sure as hell carve a way down to it. And now he knew exactly where it lay in the body.

Nenda started forward. And then he hesitated.

Twelve Zardalu were still active. The burns that Hans Rebka, Darya Lang, and E. C. Tally had inflicted from behind were having the desired effect, spinning the Zardalu round and round, driving the pain-maddened aliens steadily forward toward the steep ramp that led down to the transportation vortex.

But that created a new problem. Birdie Kelly lay immobile in his narrow niche by the tunnel wall. Either he knew that his only hope was in remaining still, or he had fainted. But Nenda, Kallik, Graves, J’merlia and Atvar H’sial were all in front of the Zardalu. And even though their adversaries were blinded, those tentacles and beaks had undiminished killing power. There was no way to drive them down the ramp, without the whole group being forced along with them.

And the Zardalu were adapting to their blindness. Even as Nenda watched, E. C. Tally came within inches of being swept up by a thrashing, powerful arm.

The embodied computer was in awful physical shape, and he should not have been in the battle at all. He was weaving and staggering, one leg dragging useless as he moved. He stepped close to one of the Zardalu, giving it a maximum intensity burn and forcing it to move, then tottering backwards. But a sweeping arm missed him by only a split-second.

Nenda swore and put away his knife.

Pleasure deferred, not pleasure denied. He’d get Holder later.

It was not safe to speak, but he stood up, braving the forest of waving tentacles. He gestured to Hans Rebka. When the other finally noticed him, he pointed at Graves and the others in his group, and then to the tunnel behind them.

Rebka nodded. He understood the problem. Nenda and the rest were penned in by the Zardalu. He patted the flashburn unit he was holding. Should they stop driving the Zardalu forward?

But they might begin to recover their sight at any time. Rebka and the others had to keep harassing them, to drive them over the brink before they knew of the danger.

Nenda shook his head. He made the gesture of firing a flashburn unit, and shrugged. Keep on burning them. We’ll have to find the solution here for ourselves.

Rebka nodded again. He raised a clenched fist in encouragement, stepped closer to one of the turning Zardalu, and burned its eye.

Sound thinking. Make sure they stay blind. But Nenda did not have time to watch.

He made a split-second inventory of the rest of his group. Atvar H’sial could take care of herself, better than anyone. Kallik was missing a limb, but the wound was already sealed. To a Hymenopt it was no more than a minor inconvenience. She’d be all right. No time to worry about J’merlia, either, he’d follow Atvar H’sial’s lead. Birdie Kelly was as safe as anyone, provided that he did not move.

Which left Julius Graves: blinded, battered, and bloody useless.

Nenda cursed. Typical of a councilor, to jump in and do something stupid when he did not know what was really going on. And to hand out orders into the bargain. Nenda had felt like kicking him for sticking his nose in, back in the other chamber when he was trying to lure the Zardalu to the transportation vortex and Graves had insisted on becoming involved.

He resisted the urge to roll the feebly moving Graves down the steep tunnel and be rid of him. There was always the chance that Rebka or Darya Lang might see him do it.

What was the answer?

Nenda felt the touch of a tentacle on his back. He jumped clear and looked around. In the moment he had been wondering what to do, the Zardalu had been driven a foot closer by Rebka and the others. Four feet more, and escape from those killing arms would be impossible.

He ran to J’merlia and Kallik’s side, pointing up to the tunnel ceiling and waving them on. Without waiting to see the results he moved to Atvar H’sial, placing himself right under the dark-red carapace.

“Graves.” He pointed, though it was unnecessary with a pheromonal message. “The ceiling. Can you?”

Atvar H’sial nodded. “I can. If he is unconscious.”

Which he was not. Not yet. Nenda moved over to Julius Graves and delivered a rabbit punch to the back of the councilor’s neck, knocking him cold.

Atvar H’sial picked up the body easily in two mid-limbs and began to climb up the wall to the corridor ceiling. Nenda saw that J’merlia and Kallik were already there. They were hanging upside down, waiting for a good moment to hurry over the heads of the maddened Zardalu.

Which left only one problem. How was he going to get away? The Zardalu completely blocked the corridor, higher than his head. Crawling along ceilings was easy enough for bugs, impossible for him.

He could see only one answer. It was one that did not appeal at all.

Better do it now before you decide you can’t face it, he told himself.

Nenda moved to the prostrate body of Holder. As the other Zardalu groped for him he forced his way headfirst into the thick tangle of Holder’s limbs. The space between the base of the tentacles was scarcely as wide as his body. There was a throat-clutching smell of musk and ammonia. Nenda shivered at the greasy touch of Zardalu flesh on his face. He could not do it this way; he would choke before he was halfway. He clumsily turned around to move in feet first.

Push. A bit farther. Do it. Don’t think of where you’re going.

He forced himself on until he was completely hidden.

His legs were cramped against the bottom of Holder’s torso. The lower body sac felt soft and unprotected. Maybe that was the point of vulnerability for the Zardalu, something that had been known in the Great Rising and then forgotten.

Nenda dismissed the thought. He could not use the information, while if Holder were to become conscious now…

Don’t think of that, either. There was plenty else to worry about. The pain of his twisted limbs and bruised middle made him gasp when he moved — although ten seconds earlier he had been too busy to notice it.

Think positive. Think we’re winning.

Maybe they were. The sounds of the fight above and about him continued. He heard the sizzle of flashburn units on Zardalu flesh, whistles and clicks of pain, the pounding of enraged tentacles against walls and floor. Powerful tentacles slapped against Holder’s body.

And then he heard a new sound. It was a human being in final agony.

He risked pressing his face to the space between two tentacles and peered out.

E. C. Tally’s failing body had been too slow. A Zardalu had him in four of its python arms. Hans Rebka and Darya were there, running in dangerously close to burn the eyes and the maw.

To no effect. The Zardalu was filled with its own rage and blood lust. It was slowly pulling Tally apart. As Nenda watched both arms were plucked free, then the legs, one by one. They went into the body pouch — even in the middle of battle, food for ravenous Zardalu young would not be wasted. Finally the bloody stump of torso was hurled away, to smash against the corridor wall. The top of the skull flew loose, to be cracked like an eggshell a moment later by a threshing Zardalu tentacle.

Nenda pulled his head back. There was nothing to be done for Tally. At least Atvar H’sial and the others must have made it across the ceiling to the relative safety of the higher corridor level, for there was no sign of them. He had to lie low a while longer, as Lang and Rebka tried to push the disoriented Zardalu the final few meters. He looked out along the line of Holder’s tentacles. Just three steps more, and they would be on the ramp to the vortex, right on the point of no return.

The stab of agony in his right thumb was so unexpected that for a moment Nenda had no idea what was happening. The half-muffled cry squeezed out of him was shock more than pain.

He lifted his hand. Clinging to it, its beak firmly set in the bleeding flesh, was a young Zardalu. As Nenda watched it swallowed a piece from the base of his thumb. In the same motion it snapped for another bite.

He smacked the creature away with his other hand and stared around him. Now that he could see better in the shade of the sheltering tentacles, he could make out four small rounded shapes, pale apricot against the blue of the unconscious parent.

The Starburst had been enough to knock out Holder, but the offspring were far from quiet. All the other infants were crawling single-mindedly toward him.

“Not today, Junior. Try a bit of this.” Nenda grabbed them as they came and held them one after another to the underside of the adult Zardalu’s tentacles. After a moment’s hesitation they attacked the tough flesh with their sharp beaks. Holder’s body began to twitch.

Nenda cursed his own stupidity. How dumb could you get? He ought to have let them keep on at him, rather than risk waking the unconscious adult.

He groped for the black satchel at his side, opened it, and pulled out random bits of food. It was his reserve supply, but if Holder woke up now Louis Nenda would never need food again.

The young Zardalu grabbed the fragments eagerly. Cannibalism was not apparently their first preference.

Holder’s body rolled suddenly to the left. Nenda froze in horror. Then he realized that none of the tentacles was moving. Something was rolling the great body from outside, pushing it closer to the ramp. The sizzle of flashburn units was louder.

He took another look along the line of Holder’s tentacles. The Zardalu were past him! He could see a confusion of stumbling bodies. While he had been preoccupied with the young ones, the adults had been herded forward. He watched them stagger one by one onto the beginning of the ramp, then overbalance and start away down the incline. Once they were on the steepest section the blind Zardalu were unable to stop. They could have no idea what was happening to them.

Going, going… gone.

The last Zardalu vanished, to cries of triumph from Rebka and the others. Nenda joined in, then realized that Holder’s body was still moving toward the tunnel that led to the vortex. A couple more meters and it, too, would be rolling on its way.

“Hey!” He forced himself up from the sheltering tentacles, pushing with his legs and not worrying about arousing Holder. As his head poked free he found he was staring at the startled face of Darya Lang. She was leaning her weight against Holder’s body. Birdie Kelly was by her side.

“Nenda!” she said. “You’re alive.”

“You’ve got a talent for the obvious, Professor.”

“You disappeared. We felt sure they’d got you — torn you to bits, or one of them took you in whole.”

“Yeah. Ass first. I just took a rest in there.”

“No time to chat, Nenda.” That was Hans Rebka, straining on the upper part of Holder’s torso. “It’s starting to come round — eyes opening. Get out here and help.”

Nenda forced his way free to add his weight to the others. Everyone was there except Julius Graves and E. C. Tally. Nenda put his shoulder to the Zardalu body, standing between Atvar H’sial and Birdie Kelly. Kelly nodded at him in an embarrassed way. Nenda nodded back and put his weight into the effort to move Holder.

Four strong pushes from everyone, then Rebka was shouting: “Stand back! She’s going.”

Nenda had one glimpse of a bleary eye, huge and heavy-lidded, opening less than a foot from his face. Then the last Zardalu was rolling and sliding and skidding its way faster and faster toward the dark whirlpool of the vortex. Holder vanished, the great body twisting around on itself as it entered the spinning singularity.

“It is done.” That was a jubilant pheromonal comment from Atvar H’sial, straightening up. “Exactly as we planned it. And yet you appear less than content.”

Nenda bent over, rubbing his sore hand at his sore legs, his sore back, sore midriff — sore everything. “We did all right. But I promised myself Holder’s guts — personally. Didn’t get the chance.”

“I think perhaps you saw as much of Holder as a wise being would wish to.” The Cecropian version of humor came flooding in on Nenda. Atvar H’sial was feeling extra good. “Upon consideration, we were very lucky. My respect for the Zardalu as fighting machines is considerable. If we had met them under other circumstances, when they were not disoriented by their stay in the stasis tanks and confused as to their location… I confess, I am happy to see the last of them. The tearing power of those tentacles is close to unbelievable.”

“Tearing power! They got Tally! Where is he?”

Atvar H’sial gestured. What was left of the body of E. C. Tally was slumped against a wall, twenty meters away. Darya Lang and Hans Rebka were hurrying back along the corridor toward it. Birdie Kelly was already there.

“He’s gone,” Kelly said.

But Darya Lang went down on her knees, lifting Tally’s shattered skull gently in her hands and saying, “Tally. Tally, can you hear me?”

The limbless torso shivered. The head nodded a millimeter, and one bruised eye slitted open to reveal a blue iris.

“I hear.” The words were a whisper from purple lips. “May I speak?”

“For God’s sake, yes.” Darya leaned close. “But Tally, listen. We did it. The Zardalu have gone, all of them, down the vortex. But we can’t help you. I’m sorry. We don’t have medical equipment.”

“I know. Don’t worry. Other body, back on Persephone. Waiting. Few more seconds, this body done.” The slitted eye opened wide, scanned. The stump of torso tried to sit up. “Darya Lang. Hans Rebka. Birdie Kelly. Last request. Turn me off. Understand? One week with no sensory input… like trillion years for human. Understand? Please. Turn me off.”

“I will.” Birdie Kelly knelt at his side. “How?”

“Switch. Base of brain.”

“I’ll find it. I promise. And when you’re turned back on it will be in your new body. I’ll see to it myself.”

A trace of a smile appeared on Tally’s guileless face. The first technicians had never gotten it right. The effect was ghastly.

“Thank you. Good-bye.” The battered head lifted. “It is a strange thought to me, but I will — miss you. Every one of you.”

The body of E. C. Tally shuddered, sighed, and died. Birdie Kelly reached down into the skull cavity, lifted the brain out, and unplugged it, then knelt with face downcast. It was illogical — this was only the temporary loss of a piece of computing equipment — but…

I will miss you.

The humans around Tally fell into a respectful silence.

That was broken by Julius Graves, staggering toward them from higher up the corridor where Atvar H’sial had put him down and abandoned him. For the past few minutes he had been blundering blindly into walls, futilely calling out the names of the others. They had been otherwise engaged. Now he was following the sounds of their voices. And just when he seemed to be getting close, they had all stopped talking.

Louis Nenda finally went over to him. “Come on, Councilor. The baddies are gone. It’s all over. You’re safe to join the party.”

Graves peered at him, seeing nothing. “Louis Nenda? I think I owe you an apology. We all do. You planned this, didn’t you?”

“Not just me. Me an’ At an’ Lang an’ Rebka. We were all in it.”

“But you had the most dangerous role — you had to lure them to the trap. That story you gave the Zardalu, about leading them to a safe escape. It was all nonsense, wasn’t it?”

Mention of the Zardalu made Nenda rub again at his sore back and middle. “I don’t know it was nonsense, exactly. Main thing is, they went into the vortex an’ the hell out of here. Mebbe they had a happy landing.”

“And maybe?”

“Mebbe they’re all frying in hell. Hope so. Hold still.” Nenda reached out and lifted Graves’s eyelids. He studied the misty blue eyes for a few seconds. “Don’t like the look of that. I tried to warn you about the Starburst. But I daren’t give too much warning, in case the Zardalu cottoned. You must have been staring straight at it when it popped. I don’t think you’ll get your sight back.”

Graves made an impatient gesture. “That is a detail. Back on Miranda, I’ll have a new pair of eyes in less than a day. Tell me important things. Was anyone of our party killed?”

“E. C. Tally. We’ve saved his brain. Nobody else is dead. We were lucky.”

“Good. That simplifies things. We won’t have to waste time on medical matters.” Graves gripped Nenda’s arm. “We must act quickly. We have an assignment of the highest priority. Since I cannot see, the rest of you must — as soon as possible — arrange a meeting for me.”

Nenda stared at him in irritation. The Zardalu were gone for two minutes, and Graves became as bossy as ever.

He felt a repeat of his earlier urge to roll the councilor down the slope and into the vortex. It would make life a lot simpler. “Meeting? With who?”

“Who else?” Graves tightened his grip and started walking Nenda forward, straight at one of the tunnel walls. “Who else, but Speaker-Between?”