The Spheres of Heaven

17: SAY HELLO TO AN ANGEL

Bony had known about Tinker Composites since he was a small child. He had studied the aliens, watched educational programs, asked a thousand (unanswered) questions of other humans, and read everything that he could lay his hands on. The Tinkers fascinated him. Pipe-Rillas fascinated him. All the Stellar Group aliens fascinated him. That was one reason he had been so eager to go to the stars, ever since he was a child in the basement warrens of Earth. And now …

As the inner hatch swung open and he took the first step forward into the ship’s interior, Bony found that he was trembling.

His first thought — I hope Liddy can’t see how nervous I am — vanished as a carpet of dark purple rose from the floor in front of him. He heard a whirring of many wings and flinched as a cloud of purple-black components, all apparently identical and each about as big as his finger, buzzed around his head.

As Liddy gasped and clutched Bony’s arm, the Tinker components flew to the other side of the cabin and settled around a tall pole. Fluttering their wings in a blur of motion they hovered by the column, then grasped it with small claws on the front of shiny leather-like wings. Thin, whip-like antennas reached out and connected heads to neighboring tails. Each body possessed a ring of pale green eyes, all of which seemed to be staring at Bony. That lasted only a few seconds. Then a second wave with its own myriad of eyes was settling on top of the first, and a third over that. It was no longer possible to make out individual components, and Bony could see no way to count them. He knew that a Tinker Composite could form at many different sizes, but he did not know if this one was big or small.

The Composite was taking on a particular shape, a crude approximation to a human form. Within two minutes the main body was complete, a rough “head” above it, while “legs” extended outward and downward to make contact with and derive support from the cabin floor. To Bony’s surprise — this was something he had not seen mentioned in the Tinker descriptions — many of the individual components remained unattached. Of the total in the cabin, only about four-fifths were connected to form a compact mass; the others stood tail-first on the cabin floor or hung singly from walls and ceiling.

The mass of the Tinker Composite began to form a funnel-like opening in its head-like extremity. From that aperture came a hollow wheezing moan. “Ohhh-ahhh-ggghh. Hharr-ehh-looo,” it said. Then, in a crude approximation to solar speech, “Har-e-loo. Hal-lo.”

Bony, feeling like a fool, said tentatively, “Hello.” He was reassured when Liddy echoed him, “Hello,” and added, “I am Liddy Morse.”

She was still wearing the translator at her belt, although for Tinkers it should be unnecessary. That idea was confirmed when a whistling voice said, “Hello, Liddy Morse,” and, after a pause, “You may call us, Eager Seeker.”

Did you shake hands with a Tinker Composite? If so, with what? Bony said, “I am Bonifant Rombelle. You can call me Bony.”

The other occupant of the cabin had been crouching in a corner, telescoping thin limbs and narrow body into a small space. Now the Pipe-Rilla unfolded, taller and taller, until she brushed against the four-meter cabin ceiling. Her rear legs were still partly bent.

“So it is true.” The head bobbed in greeting. “Eager Seeker was right and I, Vow-of-Silence, was wrong. It is as the Sea-wanderers told us, there is a third ship.”

“Sea-wanderers? Third ship?” Bony had so many questions he hardly knew where to begin. He opened his helmet. The air smelled of peppermint, overlain with a faint odor of ripe peaches, but it was perfectly breathable. He began to remove his suit.

“The natives of this planet,” the Pipe-Rilla said. She and the Tinker Composite were watching with interest, as though the removal of Bony’s suit represented some molting action unique to humans. “Sea-wanderers is what they call themselves, as you surely know.”

“We didn’t know. We have been calling this planet Limbo, and these natives, Limbics.”

“Hm.” Vow-of-Silence bent her head to one side. “Limbo. Not bad, not bad at all. I think we may adopt it also. But since you are here, you must have been talking to your Limbics.”

“We have.” Bony didn’t want the aliens to think that humans were total fools, but honesty made him add, “We had trouble with the language at first.”

“That is understandable. It is unusually high in liquid consonants.” Vow-of-Silence tittered.

After an awkward moment — was it a joke, and was he supposed to laugh? — Bony went on, “In fact it was Liddy who made the language breakthrough.”

The Pipe-Rilla followed his gesture. Liddy was removing her suit also, and Vow-of-Silence stared at her breasts with enormous interest.

“Why, you are a human female. This is wonderful. I have never before met one. I would very much like the opportunity of extended conversation with you.”

“Sure. Although this isn’t the best time for it. We have more questions.” Liddy glanced at Bony. “Right?”

“We sure do. And we have some answers, too, that you may find useful. This is not just a water-world. There’s land here, too — and there may be great dangers.”

The Pipe-Rilla leaned far forward, looking not into Bony’s face but into Liddy’s. “Would you please inform your mate, with as much respect as I am capable of offering, that we came to this world well before he did, have done more exploration, had more conversations with the natives, and may be well aware of what he seeks to inform us. We will exchange information gladly, but we suggest it may save time if we speak first.”

“Exploration.” Bony seized that one word. “But until we built the extension to your airlock, you could not leave your ship.”

“Not true. Certain of us did leave it. Now, the rest of us choose not to leave it.” Vow-of-Silence crouched low in front of the two humans, her vestigial forelimbs clasped across her narrow chest in a misleading gesture of supplication. The pleasant peppermint odor strengthened. “Listen, please, to our tale. The crew of this ship, the Finder , originally comprised myself and an extra-large Tinker Composite, Eager Seeker. We entered a Link point located in the Fomalhaut system and expected to arrive in the region of empty space within the Geyser Swirl. Instead, we found our ship under water. However, we learned from the Sea-wanderers here that there exists a nearby land mass. We decided to explore it.”

Bony, wanting to ask how you explored a place when you couldn’t leave the ship, bit his tongue.

Vow-of-Silence went on: “My colleague, Eager Seeker, detached a sizeable collective, to whom we gave a temporary name, Blessed Union. The components of Blessed Union would leave this ship and travel to the surface, from which they would fly to the land. They did not need a suit. The waters of — Limbo, you call it? — are high in oxygen, enough for individual Tinker components to survive without artificial assistance. Preparations for the journey were made with great care. Blessed Union would re-assemble when ashore, except when a few components were needed to fly ahead as scouts. Is this clear?”

Bony nodded. His self-image as smart savior of the Pipe-Rilla ship was steadily declining. It nose-dived when Vow-of-Silence continued, “We had been told that this could be a perilous undertaking. We had spoken extensively to the Sea-wanderers, and they said that death had come recently to many of their companions near the shore. However, we were confident. We did not believe that we were in danger, since we have ways unknown to the Sea-wanderers to protect ourselves against attack from native life-forms.

“The new collective of Blessed Union left, promising to return no later than nightfall. After components of the collective had departed we pumped the airlock dry, slowly and laboriously; and we waited. That was days ago. We are waiting still, though our time of hope is ending.”

The Pipe-Rilla began to rock slowly up and down, half-extending her hind limbs. Finally Bony asked, “Do you think that Blessed Union has been killed?”

At the question, the Pipe-Rilla covered her eyes with her forelimbs. Bony wondered if he had committed some dreadful inter-species violation of protocol.

Finally Vow-of-Silence said, “This is a matter of some delicacy. It is possible, yes, that Blessed Union was destroyed. However, it is rather more likely that Blessed Union swarmed . You see” — the narrow head bowed low and the sibilant voice dropped in volume — “we knew at the outset that there was a risk. Eager Seeker was, by intention, an unusually abundant Composite. Once on land, the urge of Blessed Union to swarm and breed and form a second independent Composite may have been irresistible. This possibility is, of course, a matter of great potential embarrassment to Eager-Seeker. A Tinker never admits to such unsanctioned breeding. And still we do not know what lies ashore. The Sea-wanderers cannot tell us. Are you able to answer the question?”

“Not completely. But how do you talk to the Sea-wanderers, if you can’t leave the ship?”

“Through the translator, of course, on the hull. Did you not see it?”

Bony hadn’t. Among the thousand devices that festooned the outside of the Finder , it was easy to miss any particular one. But Bony also had the feeling that he had seen too little overall, and understood even less.

“We did go ashore,” he said. “Once. But we found no sign of your companions. Of course, we were there for only a little while, and it would have been very easy to miss them.”

He described his and Liddy’s experience, including the brief glimpse of a great trifoliate flying vehicle. He offered his impression of what the land interior looked like. Finally he told of the foaming circle in the sea, a place that might form part of a Link entry point.

That grabbed the attention of his audience. Vow-of-Silence said at once, “Aha! Where was this anomaly located?”

“It’s hard to describe in words. If only we had a map …”

“One moment.” Vow-of-Silence picked up a flat plate and a marker and began to draw. She did it without looking, and her movements were so fast it seemed impossible for them to be accurate. In less than thirty seconds she was showing the result to Bony and Liddy. She said diffidently, “This is based on conversations with the Sea-wanderers and our own observations. It is, of course, no more than a tiny region of the whole of Limbo, but it represents our current knowledge. Here is where we are.”

She touched the plate, where she had drawn a tiny but recognizable picture of the Finder . “And here is the shoreline. Now, where was the steaming circle in the water?”

“About here.” Bony stabbed at the drawing with an index finger. “I think that’s right. Liddy?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t put it any closer. When we went ashore we travelled as far as here .” She touched a point on the upper right of the plate, and Vow-of-Silence instantly added a notation there and a dotted line leading from the shore. Liddy nodded, frowned, and said, “But what’s this ?”

Bony had not noticed it when he examined the plate, but a small circle toward the top left contained another small and stylized drawing. He stared at it. His eyes were not acute enough to make out the fine detail.

“It looks like—” Liddy turned to Vow-of-Silence. “I’ve never seen one, but I’ve seen drawings of Angels that look like that.”

“Of course.” The narrow head bobbed. “When I said at the beginning of this meeting that there was a third ship, I was referring to your vessel. The second ship, the one that the Sea-wanderers told us about and which apparently arrived soon after we did, is an Angel ship. And there is — not surprisingly — an Angel on board.”

The Angel ship sat about five kilometers away from the original position of the Mood Indigo , on a narrow part of the same off-shore shelf. Looking at the map drawn by Vow-of-Silence, Bony realized for the first time how lucky they had been. Only a couple of hundred yards seaward of where the Mood Indigo had landed, the map showed the seabed dropping off steeply to a region marked “Deep Water.” Too deep, apparently, for the Sea-wanderers, and more than deep enough to cave in the hull of any ship unfortunate enough to descend there.

The Angel ship had been even luckier than the Mood Indigo . According to the drawing it sat on the very brink of the shelf, which was unusually narrow at that point. Twenty meters in one direction would plunge the ship into the abyss. Fifty meters the other way would bring it onto the rocky beach. Eager Seeker and Vow-of-Silence had been considering a visit to the Angel when Bony and Liddy arrived, but they were reluctant to leave the Finder while there was any chance at all that Blessed Union might return.

There had seemed no great urgency in a visit to the Angel ship. That idea changed as Vow-of-Silence was pointing out a river on the map, used in the past by the Sea-wanderers to penetrate a little way inland while remaining under water.

“Here is the farthest point of their progress.” The Pipe-Rilla tapped it with a black claw. “They call it Bad Things Fork, and also Death Fork. Any Sea-wanderer who went beyond it never returned.”

She was interrupted when a unit in the control desk of the Finder suddenly beeped for attention, and a bubbling voice that seemed to speak without consonants said, “It darkens. Violence comes in the above the world. We will feel it in the world. We go to seek safeness in down.”

“The Sea-wanderers.” Vow-of-Silence leaned across to the sound unit and said clearly, “We hear you, and we thank you for the warning.”

Liddy added, “I hear them, but what do they mean?”

“It has happened before, probably before your arrival on this world.” Vow-of-Silence bent to a remote viewer and called for a new display. “So far as these natives are concerned, the sea is the world. The atmosphere of the planet is the above-the-world. The Sea-wanderers can tell when a surface storm is on the way, and when that is the case they refuse to go near the shore. There are huge breakers, and strong currents. Look at the sky thirty kilometers west of here, and you will see what is coming our way.”

If the ship could receive a distant view from above the surface, why had it not been able to learn the fate of the Tinkers who went ashore? Bony postponed the question. It was less important at the moment than what filled the display. The time was close to the middle of Limbo’s day, but the blue sun’s disk shone only intermittently. The clear sky had filled with clots and streaks of gray and black clouds, torn by wind and driving along furiously. The same force that propelled them across the sky lashed the sea surface into monstrous surges, broken at their peaks and flecked with white foam.

“Can it hurt us?” Liddy asked.

“Not us.” Vow-of-Silence was reaching out at full length to pluck a set of linked tubes from a cabinet. “The Finder is safe at this depth and in this location. So is your ship, providing that it remains more than twenty meters down. I am sending a signal to it, warning of the storm. But the Angel ship will be in peril. It lies on the narrowest part of the shelf. When the storm arrives, shifts of sediment might send it over the edge into deep water. Waves could pick it up and smash it on the shore. The ship must be moved, or at the very least the Angel taken to safety. Let me see, three kilometers across the seabed, that would take …”

Bony wondered how Friday Indigo was doing, up there on the surface. Also what he was doing. The captain had been very secretive. The Mood Indigo could always descend again and sit the storm out safely on the bed of the sea — provided that Indigo had the sense to listen to the warning message, and act on it. On the other hand, this was a situation where the Mood Indigo would have been invaluable. The ship could fly three kilometers far quicker than anyone could walk.

Eager Seeker was already in motion, Tinker components rapidly removing themselves from the main body. The process appeared totally random. Bony began to put his suit back on, but he could not hide his curiosity.

While he was waiting for his suit to climb back up his body, he asked, “How does a Tinker Composite decide what size to be?”

The Pipe-Rilla said at once, “It is all a question of necessary function. If there are—”

“Vow-of-Silence, do you mind? After all, this is our own self that is being discussed.” There was a definite testiness to Eager Seeker’s tone. Bony, recalling that the Tinker Composite had not said one word after their initial greeting, decided that Vow-of-Silence might represent not so much a name as a desire on the part of others.

The blunt head-like upper part of the Composite turned toward Bony, even as components sped away from it. Eager Seeker was taking on a distinctly ragged appearance as the Tinker Composite went on, “A full answer would require much time. But there are certain simple rules. First, if we wish to we can join every component together. When we do so, we have increased thinking power. But we are also less nimble mentally. We are slower , with a longer integration time. Thus, we are not so quick to complete a thought or to reach a decision. The integration time grows very quickly — exponentially — with the number of components. When the problem is large, we combine all units. This, of course, is why we came here as a Composite of unusual size, with the expectation of problems of unusual difficulty. Normally, we choose a compromise between speed of thought and depth of thought. In a possible emergency — as now — smaller is better. And since we must soon leave the ship” — more and more dark-winged bodies flew away from the main bulk of the Composite — “we will take that action not as an entity, but as a non-entity. As individual components …”

The voice faded to nothing, the speaking funnel closed, and a blizzard of purple-black swirled about the cabin before vanishing up a narrow tube in the ceiling.

“Eager Seeker leaves through an airlock too small for me or you.” Vow-of-Silence was wriggling her body and legs into the odd array of tubes, which mysteriously transformed into a suit. “We will use the exit method you so kindly provided. Come now. The Angel’s ship waits for us, but the storm declines to do so.”

She led the way back out through the airlock. Bony and Liddy followed. Under the sea there was no sign of the coming storm, although all the bubble people had vanished. Eager Seeker, in the form of its thousands of separate parts, was already outside. The components seemed as much at home in water as in air, turning and tumbling around each other with easy flaps of tiny wings. And then, in a moment, all of them darted off at great speed in the same direction.

Vow-of-Silence set off after them, saying, “Of course, our presence may be quite unnecessary. Eager Seeker can probably ensure the Angel’s safety without us.” Her voice came, perfectly clear, into Bony’s suit. So much for the opacity of water to radio waves. He wondered what other technical tricks the aliens had up their sleeves, also what strange physiology the Pipe-Rilla possessed. Vow-of-Silence appeared thin and fragile, and she was strolling along at what appeared to be a moderate pace, but no human could travel so fast in water. Bony and Liddy had to rise off the sea floor and use their thrustor jets to keep up.

They had gone only a short distance when the Tinker components came winging back. A group of them formed a tight cluster about Vow-of-Silence’s suited figure, so that the Pipe-Rilla was obliged to stop moving and stand half-hidden on the seabed. After a few seconds the Tinker bodies lifted and again flew rapidly away.

Vow-of-Silence turned to Bony and Liddy. “Strange. Very strange. Eager Seeker went to the Angel ship, which is in exactly the position reported by the Sea-wanderers. It appears unharmed. However, the ship is open to the sea and the Angel is not on board.”

Liddy said, “Does that mean the Angel is dead?”

“Not necessarily. The actions of Angels are often impenetrable, but self-preservation is high on their list of priorities. If you will excuse me …” Vow-of-Silence ducked her head and the Pipe-Rilla took off with gigantic strides, stepping easily across waving sea-grass two meters tall. Her rate of progress was enormous. Even with thrustors set to maximum, Bony and Liddy fell steadily behind. The undersea light was fading, though nightfall on Limbo was many hours away. Bony took a quick swoop up toward the surface, close enough to feel turbulence in the water. A few meters above his head, the full storm was arriving. He looked up and saw dark and light patterns rippling across the surface, synchronized to the movement of pressure waves across his body.

He dove back down, peering into underwater gloom and suddenly afraid that he might lose contact with both Liddy and Vow-of-Silence. The Pipe-Rilla had vanished but he saw Liddy plowing steadily on, just far enough above the seabed to avoid the clinging sea-grasses. He flew after her, across a sea valley, over a ridge, descending steadily and trying to will the suit thrustors to produce more than their maximum possible power. Was it imagination, or was Liddy slowing down?

Yes. Not just slowing. She had stopped. And then he could see Vow-of-Silence. And the clustered components of Eager Seeker. And then, in the middle of the group, a stout and unfamiliar form shaped like a giant artichoke.

When he came up to them, the Angel was speaking. Bony detected an unmistakable petulance in the computer-generated tones. “Naturally we left our ship. It was impossible to predict whether we would be swept into the ocean abyss, or carried onto the rocky shore. Neither outcome was acceptable. The Bard of Terra spoke truth: Cowards die many times before their death . However, the superior coward prefers not to die at all.”

Vow-of-Silence said, “But are you all right, Angel? You seem helpless. Can you breathe under water?”

“You do not need to call us Angel. In Stellar Group company we answer to the name of Gressel. And we are certainly not helpless. In fact, we were heading for your ship when you found us. And although we cannot breathe under water, we can not breathe under water, which is what we are doing now.”

As the Angel spoke it was creeping along the sea floor. The roots of the Chassel-Rose that formed the Angel’s lower part retracted, pulled free of the bottom silt at a glacial rate, and quiveringly stretched forward to root themselves again. Bony’s guess was that the three-kilometer journey to the Finder could well be all over in a matter of weeks.

Vow-of-Silence must have reached the same conclusion. The giant pipe-stem figure bent over the Angel, said, “With your permission, Gressel,” and hoisted the bulky mass effortlessly up. “It is likely,” the Pipe-Rilla went on, “that no effects of the storm will be observed at this depth, but we cannot be sure of that. We would rather be in our ship than outside it.” Vow-of-Silence turned with the Angel in her arms and headed rapidly back the way that she had come.

“Perhaps you are right.” After one moment of resistance, Gressel allowed itself to be carried. The Angel gloomily added, “A long farewell to all our greatness. We perforce accept assistance, and admit the maxim: better safe than sorry .”

So far as Bony was concerned, safe was a debatable term. The deep sea remained calm enough, but something was happening above the surface. Dense clouds must have covered the blue sun, because the deeper waters had become so dark that Bony could no longer see the ocean floor. He grabbed Liddy by the hand and the two of them followed the faint suit lights of the Pipe-Rilla through abyssal gloom.

And then those suit lights, though not shrinking in size, began to fade in brightness. After a few baffled seconds Bony realized what was happening. The waves on the surface could not damage him at this depth, but they could stir bottom sediments. Their whole party was moving through a thickening cloud of gray silt.

In that moment of understanding, the scene ahead of Bony lit in brilliant blue-white. Everything — lank sea-grasses, Pipe-Rilla, Angel, darting Tinkers, and pale mud cloud — became etched in light. There was a moment of startling clarity, which was as suddenly gone.

A lightning bolt — a major one — had hit the surface of the sea. The thunder came at once, shatteringly loud. The strike must have been directly above them.

But now Bony, blinded by the flash, could see nothing at all. Holding on to Liddy he allowed himself to coast to a halt. He had lost all sense of direction. The only hope was to follow Vow-of-Silence and the other aliens back to the Finder . But he could not see them, unless another bolt of lightning came to his assistance.

How many people stood and waited, hoping for a close lightning strike? Bony felt Liddy’s arms around him. Even through the suits he could feel her trembling.

Come on, lightning bolt. Do your thing. Hit!

The response after five more seconds was a weak, far-off flicker, the puny glow of a lightning bolt several miles away. By its brief light Bony saw Vow-of-Silence, standing motionless with the Angel cradled in her forearms. Every Tinker component had vanished, he hoped to safety.

Once more it was too dark to see anything. Bony and Liddy stayed where they were, hoping that Vow-of-Silence was doing the same. Bony had a new worry. Suppose that the storm continued into the night and true darkness came to Limbo? He and Liddy would run out of air in eight more hours. He didn’t know how it would be for the Pipe-Rilla, but long before morning the humans had to be back on board a ship.

Another lightning bolt came, hardly brighter than the last one. But this time a curious afterglow replaced the return of stygian darkness. It continued and brightened, and by its light Bony could once more make out the figures of the Pipe-Rilla and the Angel. He was about to head toward them when he heard Liddy gasp, “Bony! Look there. Up to the right.”

His attention had been on the way ahead. Now he tilted his head back and followed Liddy’s pointing arm. At once he saw the source of the new light.

It came not from the syncopated stutter of lightning bolts, nor from the faded gleam of Limbo’s sun. The source of illumination was a ship. All lights blazing, it surged over them, about a hundred meters to their right. It was below the surface of the sea, and it must be gigantic because the forward surge of its great blunt hull produced a bow wave powerful enough to throw Bony helplessly backward and turn him upside down.

But it was not the pressure wave that made Bony gasp, nor was it fear of a war vessel alien and dangerous. He blinked in disbelief because he thought he knew that outline. That was no dinky space yacht, like the Mood Indigo , nor an alien flying machine like the one that he and Liddy had spotted on their trip ashore. Unless his eyes were deceiving him, that was a Class Five cruiser — a human design, symbol of former human military might, powerful and close to impregnable — driving its three-hundred-meter, eighty-plus-thousand-ton, thousand-crew bulk through the alien seas of Limbo.

And then, almost before Bony could bring himself back to an upright position, the monstrous ship was cruising on and vanishing into the fog of silt. The vessel was on a descending path. If it continued unchecked, ten more minutes would bring it to a halt on the seabed. A cruiser would surely survive that impact, and the little group on the seabed would be safer there than anywhere on Limbo.

Unless …

Bony could imagine a worse possibility. Suppose that the new ship’s course was to the south or west? The coastal shelf ended a few kilometers in that direction. The cruiser might then be destined for a different fate: a descent into an unknown and unplumbed ocean. At sufficient depth and pressure, even the cruiser’s solid hull would collapse like an imploding soap bubble.