Transcendence

Chapter Nineteen

Hans Rebka sat on a rounded pyramid never designed for contact with the human posterior, and thought about luck.

There was good luck, which mostly happened to other people. And there was bad luck, which usually happened to you. Sometimes, through observation, guile, and hard work, you could avoid bad luck — even make it look like good luck, to others. But you would know the difference, even if no one else did.

Well, suppose that for a change good luck came your way. How should you greet that stranger to your house? You could argue that its arrival was inevitable, that the laws of probability insisted that good and bad must average out over long enough times and large enough samples. Then you could welcome luck in, and feel pleased that your turn had come round at last.

Or you could hear what Hans Rebka was hearing: the small, still voice breathing in his ear, telling him that this good luck was an impostor, not to be trusted.

The seedship had been dragged down to the surface of Genizee and damaged. Bad luck, if you liked to think of it that way. Lack of adequate precautions, if you thought like Hans Rebka. Then they had been trapped by the Zardalu and forced to retreat to the interior of the planet. More bad luck? Maybe.

But then, against all odds, they had managed to escape the Zardalu by plunging deep inside the planet. They had encountered World-Keeper. And the Builder construct had agreed through J’merlia, without an argument, to return them to a safe spot on the surface of Genizee, a place from which they could easily make it back to the waiting seedship. If they preferred, they could even be transmitted all the way to friendly and familiar Alliance territory.

Good luck. Too much good luck. A little voice in Rebka’s ear had been muttering ever since it happened. Now it was louder, asserting its own worries.

He stared around the square chamber, which was lit by the flicker of a column of blue plasma that flared upward through its center. World-Keeper had advised them not to approach that roaring, meter-wide pillar, but the warning was unnecessary. Even from twenty meters Rebka could feel fierce heat.

They had been told to wait here — but for how long? They were still without food, and this room had no water supply. The Builder constructs had waited for millions of years; they had no sense of human time. One hour had already passed. How many more?

J’merlia, Kallik, and Atvar H’sial were crouched in three separate corners of the chamber — odd, now that Rebka thought about it, since when J’merlia was not sitting in adoring silence under Atvar H’sial’s carapace, he was usually engaged in companionable conversation with the Hymenopt. Louis Nenda was the only one active. He was delicately prying the top off a transparent sealed octahedron filled with wriggling black filaments. It floated unsupported a couple of feet above the floor as Nenda peered in at the contents.

Rebka walked across to him. “Busy?”

“Middlin’. Passes the time. I think they’re alive in there.” Nenda stood up straight and stared at Rebka questioningly. “Well?”

Rebka did not resent the chilly tone. Neither man was one for casual conversation. “I need your help.”

“Do you now. Well, that’ll be a first.” Nenda scratched at his arm, where droplets of corrosive liquid had raised a fine crop of blisters. “Don’t see how I can give it. You know as much about this place as I do.”

“I’m not talking about that. I need something different.” Rebka gestured to Louis Nenda to follow him, and did not speak again until they were out of the room and far away along the corridor. Finally he halted and turned. “I want you to act as interpreter for me.”

“All this way to tell me that? Sorry. I can’t speak to silver teapots any better than you can.”

“I don’t mean World-Keeper. I want you as interpreter to Atvar H’sial.”

“Use J’merlia, then, not me. Even with my augment, he speaks Cecropian a sight better than I do.”

“I know. But I don’t want J’merlia as interpreter. I don’t want to use him for anything. You’ve seen him. He’s been our main interface with the construct, but don’t you think he’s been acting strange?”

“Strange ain’t the word for it. You heard Kallik, when J’merlia first rolled up an’ joined us? She said she thought her buddy J’merlia might have been Zardalu brainwashed. Is that where you’re coming from?”

“Somewhere like that.” Rebka did not see it as a Zardalu brainwash, but he would have been hard put to produce an explanation of his own. All he knew was that something felt wrong, impossible to explain to anyone who did not already feel it for himself. “I want to know what Atvar H’sial thinks about J’merlia. He’s been her slave and interpreter for years. I don’t know if anyone can lie using pheromonal speech, but I’d like to know if J’merlia said anything to Atvar H’sial that sounded bizarrely different from usual.”

“You can lie in Cecropian pheromonal speech, but only if you speak it really well. You know what the Decantil Myrmecons say about Cecropians? ‘All that matters to Cecropians are honesty, sincerity, and integrity. Once a Cecropian learns to fake those, she is ready to take her place in Federation society.’ Sure you can lie in Cecropian. I just wish I were fluent enough to do it.”

“Well, if anyone understands the change in J’merlia, I’m betting it’s Atvar H’sial. That’s what I want to ask her about.”

“Hang on. I’ll get her.” Nenda headed for the other chamber, but he added over his shoulder, “I think I know what she’ll tell you, though. She’ll say she can’t talk sensibly to J’merlia any more. But you should hear it for yourself. Wait here.”

When the massive Cecropian arrived Nenda was already asking Rebka’s question. She nodded at Hans Rebka.

“It is true, Captain,” Nenda translated, “and yet it is more subtle than that. I can talk to J’merlia, and he speaks to me and for me in return. He speaks truth, also — at least, I do not feel that he is lying. And yet there is a feeling of incompleteness in his presence, as though it is not J’merlia who stands before me, but some unfamiliar simulacrum who has learned to mimic every action of the real J’merlia. And yet I know that must also be false. My echolocation might be fooled, but my sense of smell, never. This is indeed the authentic J’merlia.”

“Ask Atvar H’sial why she did not tell her thoughts before, to you or me,” Rebka said.

The blind white head nodded again. Wing cases lifted and lowered as the question was relayed. “Tell what thoughts?” Nenda translated. “Atvar H’sial says that she disdains to encourage anxiety in others, on the basis of such vague and subjective discomforts.”

Rebka knew the feeling. “Tell her that I appreciate her difficulty. And also say that I want to ask Atvar H’sial’s further cooperation.”

“Ask.” The open yellow horns focused on Rebka’s mouth. He had the impression, not for the first time, that the Cecropian understood more than she would admit of human speech. The fact that she saw by echolocation did not rule out the possibility that she could also interpret some of the one-dimensional sonic patterns issued by human vocal cords.

“When World-Keeper returns, I do not want communication to proceed through J’merlia, as it did last time. Ask Atvar H’sial if she will command or persuade him, whatever it takes to get J’merlia out of the way.”

Nenda held up his hand. “I’m tellin’ her, but this one’s from me. You expect At to trust you more than she trusts J’merlia? Why should she?”

“She doesn’t have to. You’ll be there, too. She trusts you, doesn’t she?”

That earned Rebka an odd sideways glance from Nenda’s bloodshot eyes. “Yeah. Sure she does. For most things. Hold on, though, At’s talkin’ again.” He was silent for a moment, nodding at the Cecropian. “At says she’ll do it. But she has another suggestion, too. We’ll go back in, an’ you ask any questions you like of J’merlia. Meanwhile At monitors his response an’ looks for giveaways. I think she’s on to somethin’. It’s real tough to track your own pheromones while you’re talking human. J’merlia won’t find it any easier than I do.”

“Let’s go.” Rebka led the way back into the flare-lit chamber. It might be days before World-Keeper returned — but it might be only minutes, and they needed to find out what they could about the new and strange J’merlia before anything else happened.

There had been one significant change since they left the chamber. J’merlia had moved from his corner to crouch by Kallik. He was speaking rapidly to her in her own language, which Rebka did not understand, and gesturing with four of his limbs. Atvar H’sial was close behind when Rebka walked up to the pair. J’merlia’s eyes swiveled, first to the human, then on to his Cecropian dominatrix.

“J’merlia.” Hans Rebka had been wondering what question might yield the quickest information. He made his decision. “J’merlia, have you been lying to us in any statement that you have made?”

If anything could produce an unplanned outpouring of emotional response, that should do it. Lo’tfians did not lie, especially with a dominatrix present. Any response but a surprised and immediate denial would be shocking.

“I have not.” The words were addressed to Rebka, but the pale-lemon eyes remained fixed on Atvar H’sial. “I have not told lies.”

The words were definite enough. But why was the tone so hesitant? “Then have you concealed anything from us, anything that we perhaps ought to know?”

J’merlia straightened his eight spindly legs and stood rigid. Louis Nenda, on instinct, moved to place himself between the Lo’tfian and the exit to the chamber. But J’merlia did not move in that direction. Instead he held out one claw toward Atvar H’sial and moaned, high in his thin throat.

And then he was off, darting straight at the flaming column in the middle of the room.

The humans and the Cecropian were far too slow. Before they could move an inch J’merlia was halfway to the wide pillar of flaring blue-white. Kallik alone was fast enough to follow. She raced after J’merlia and caught up with him just as he came to the column. As he threw himself at its blazing heart she reached out one wiry arm and grabbed a limb. He kept moving into the roaring pillar. Kallik’s arm was dragged in with him. There was a flash of violet-blue. And then the Hymenopt had leaped backward fifteen meters. She was hissing in pain and shock. Half of one forelimb had been seared off in that momentary indigo flash.

Rebka was shocked, too. Not with concern for Kallik — he knew the Hymenopt’s physical resilience and regeneration power. But for one second, as J’merlia leaped for the bright column, Rebka had thought that the pillar must be part of a Builder transportation system. Now Kallik, nursing her partial limb, banished any such idea. Louis Nenda was already crouched on the ground next to her, helping to cover the cauterized wound with a piece ripped off his own shirt. He was clucking and whistling to Kallik as he worked.

“I shoulda known.” He straightened. “I should’ve realized somethin’ was up when we came back an’ saw J’merlia talkin’ a blue streak. Kallik says he was tellin’ her a whole bunch of twists an’ turns an’ corridors, a route up through the tunnels, an’ he wouldn’t say where he got it. She figures he must have learned it before, when he was with World-Keeper or even earlier. She says she’s all right, she’ll be good as new in a few days — but what now? J’merlia said before he killed himself that World-Keeper wouldn’t be comin’ back here. If that’s right, we’re on our own. So what do we do?”

It was phrased as a question, but Hans Rebka knew Nenda too well to treat it as one. The Karelian might be a crook, but he was as tough and smart as they came. He knew they had no options. There was nothing down here humans could eat. If World-Keeper was not coming back, they had to try for the surface.

“You remember everything that J’merlia said to you?” At Kallik’s nod, Rebka did not hesitate. “Okay. As soon as you can walk, lead the way. We’re going — up.”

Kallik raised herself at once onto her remaining seven legs.

“To the surface,” Nenda said. He laughed. “Zardalu an’ all, eh? Time to get tough.”

Hans Rebka nodded. He fell in behind the Hymenopt as she stood up and started for the exit to the great square room with its flaring funeral pyre. Louis Nenda was behind him. Last of all came Atvar H’sial. Her wing cases drooped, and her proboscis was tucked tight into its chin pleat. She did not speak to Hans Rebka — she could not — but he had the conviction that she was, in her own strange way, mourning the passage of J’merlia, her devoted follower and sometime slave.

Going up, perhaps; but it was not obvious. Kallik led them down, through rooms connected by massive doors that slid closed behind them and sealed with a clunk of finality. Rebka hung back and tried one after Atvar H’sial had scrambled through. He could not budge it. He could not even see the line of the seal. Wherever this route led them, there would be no going back. He hurried after the others. After ten minutes they came to another column of blue plasma, a flow of liquid light that ran vertically away into the darkness. Kallik pointed to it. “We must ride that. Upwards. To its end.”

To whose end? Rebka, remembering J’merlia’s fate, was hesitant. But he felt no radiated heat from the flaming pillar, and Louis Nenda was already moving forward.

“Git away, Kallik,” he muttered. “Somebody else’s turn.”

He fumbled a pen from his pocket, reached out at arm’s length, and extended it carefully to touch the surface of the column. The pen was at once snatched out of his hand. It shot upward, so fast that the eye was not sure what it had seen.

“Lotsa drag,” Nenda said. “Don’t feel hot, though.” This time he touched the blue pillar with his finger, and his whole arm was jerked upward. He pulled his finger back and stuck the tip in his mouth. “ ‘Sall right. Not hot — just a big tug. I’ll tell you one thing, though, it’s all or nothin’. No way you’re gonna ease yourself into that. You’d get pulled in half.”

He turned, but before he could move, Kallik was past him. One leap took her into the heart of the blue pillar, and she was gone. Atvar H’sial followed, her wing cases tight to her body to keep them within the width of the column of light.

Louis Nenda moved forward, but paused on the brink. “How many gravities you think that thing pulls? Acceleration kills as good as fire.”

“No idea.” Rebka moved to stand next to him. “I guess we’re going to find out, though. Or stay here till we die.” He gestured to the column, palm up. “After you.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” And Nenda was gone, swallowed up in a flash of blue.

Rebka took a last look around — was this his last sight of the deep interior of Genizee? his last sight of anything? — and jumped forward. There was a moment of dislocation, too brief and alien to be called pain, and then he was standing on a flat surface. He swayed, struggling to hold his balance. He was in total darkness.

He reached out, groping all around him, and felt nothing.

“Anyone there?”

“We’re all here,” said Louis Nenda’s voice.

“Where’s here? Can you see?”

“Not a thing. Black as a politician’s heart. But At’s echolocation’s workin’ fine. She says we’re outside. On the surface.”

As they spoke, Hans Rebka was revising his own first impression. The brilliance of the light column as he entered it had overloaded his retinas, but now they were slowly regaining their sensitivity. He looked straight up and saw the first flicker of light, a faded, shimmering pink and ghostly electric blue.

“Give it a minute,” he said to Nenda. “And look up. I’m getting a glimmer from there. If it’s the surface, it has to be night. All we’ll see is the aurora of the nested singularities.”

“Good enough. I’m gettin’ it, too. At can’t detect that, ’cause it’s way outside the atmosphere. But she can see our surroundings. She says don’t move, or else step real careful. There’s rocks an’ rubble an’ all that crap, easy to break a leg or three.”

Rebka’s eyes were still adjusting, but he was seeing about as much as he was likely to see. And it was not enough. The faint glow of the singularities revealed little of the ground at his feet, just sufficient to be sure that there was no sign of the blue pillar that had carried them here. Like the doors, it had closed behind them. There would be no going back. And Rebka felt oddly isolated. Atvar H’sial could see as well by night as by day, and Kallik also had eyes far more sensitive than a human’s. Both aliens could sense their environment and talk of it in their own languages to Louis Nenda. The Karelian understood both Cecropian and Hymenopt speech. If they choose, the three of them could leave Rebka out of the conversations completely.

It was ironic. The first time Hans Rebka had seen Nenda’s augment for Cecropian speech, he had been revolted by the ugly pits and black molelike nodules on the other man’s chest. Now he would not mind having one himself.

“Any sign of Zardalu?” he said.

“At says she can’t see ’em. But she can smell ’em. They’re somewhere around, not more than a mile or two from here.”

“If only we knew where here is.”

At says “hold tight. She’s climbin’ a big rock, takin’ a peek all round. Kallik’s goin’ up behind her.”

Rebka strained his eyes into the darkness. No sign of Atvar H’sial or of Kallik, although he could hear the muted click of unpadded claws on hard rock. It added to the soft rustle of wind through dry vegetation and something like a distant, low-pitched murmur, oddly familiar, that came from Rebka’s right. Both sounds were obliterated by a sudden grunt from Louis Nenda.

“We made it. At says we’re right near where we landed — she can see the green moss an’ shoreline, right down to the water.”

“The ship?” That was the only real question. Without a ship they would become Zardalu meat and might as well have stayed in Genizee’s deep interior. According to J’merlia’s original account, he had repaired the seedship and flown it closer to the Zardalu buildings. But then he had become totally vague and random, and everything he had said after that, to the moment of his immolation suicide, had to be questioned.

“The seedship,” Rebka repeated. “Can Atvar H’sial see it?”

“No sign of it.”

Rebka’s heart sank.

“But the weird thing is,” Nenda continued, “she says she can see another ship, bigger than the seedship, sittin’ in about the same place it was.” He added a string of clicks and whistles in the Hymenopt language.

“Zardalu vessel?” Rebka asked.

“Dunno. We don’t know what one looks like.”

“With respect.” It was Kallik, speaking for the first time since they had emerged on the surface. Her soft voice came from somewhere above Hans Rebka’s head. “I have also looked, and listened with care to Atvar H’sial’s description as it was relayed to me by Master Nenda. The ship resembles one on which I have never flown, but which I had the opportunity to examine closely on our journey to the Anfract.”

“What?” That was Louis Nenda. It was nice to know that he did not understand any better than Rebka.

“The configuration is that of the Indulgence — Dulcimer’s ship. And it is an uncommon design. I would like to suggest a theory, consistent with all the facts. Those of our party left behind on the Erebus must have received the message drone describing a safe path through the singularities, and decided to follow us here. They located the seedship by a remote scan of the planetary surface, and sent the Indulgence to land near it. But there was no sign of us, and no indication of where we had gone or when we might come back. Therefore they kept one or two individuals on Dulcimer’s ship, with its heavy weapons, waiting for our possible return, and the rest returned to space in the unarmed seedship, safe from the Zardalu. If this analysis is correct, one or two members of our party now wait for us in the Indulgence. And the Erebus itself waits in orbit about Genizee.”

Kallik’s explanation was neat, logical, and complete. Like most such explanations, it was, in Hans Rebka’s view, almost certainly wrong. That was not the way the real world operated.

But at that point theory had little role to play in what they had to do next. That would be decided by facts, and certain facts were undeniable. Day was approaching — the first hint of light was already in the sky. They dared not remain on the surface of Genizee, at least not close to the shoreline, once the sun rose and the Zardalu became active. And the most important fact of all: there was a ship just a few hundred yards away. How it got there, or who was on it, was of much less importance than its existence.

“We can all compare theories — once we’re safe in space.” Rebka peered around him. He could at last distinguish rock outcrops from lightening sky. In a few minutes he and Louis Nenda would be able to walk or run without killing themselves. But by that time he wanted to be close to the ship. “I know it will be rough going across the rocks, but we have to try it even while it’s still dark. I want Atvar H’sial and Kallik to guide Nenda and me. Tell us where to put our feet — set them down for us if you have to. Remember, we have to be as quiet as we can, so don’t take us through any patches of rubble, or places where we might knock stones loose. But we have to get to where the moss and mud begins before it’s really light.”

The predawn wind was dying, and the sound of waves on the shore had vanished. Hans Rebka moved through an absolute silence, where every tiny clink of a pebble sounded like thunder and a dislodged handful of earth was like an avalanche. He had to remind himself that human ears, at least, would not detect him more than a few feet away.

And finally they were at a point where the amount of noise they made did not matter. The gray-green moss lay level before them, soft and fuzzy against the brightening sky. All that remained was a dash across it to the ship, a couple of hundred yards away.

Rebka turned to the Hymenopt, who, even with one injured leg, was four times as fast as any human. “Kallik, when you reach the hatch, you go right in, leave it open, and ready the ship for takeoff. Don’t get into a discussion or an argument with anyone on board — we’ll have time for that later. By the time I’m there, I want us ready to lift. All right?” The Hymenopt nodded. “Then go.”

Kallik was a dark moving streak against the flat mossy surface, her legs an invisible blur. Atvar H’sial, surprisingly fast for her bulk, was not far behind. The Cecropian covered the ground in a series of long, gliding leaps that took her smoothly up to and inside the hatch. Louis Nenda was third, his stocky body capable of real speed over short distances. Rebka was catching up with him on the final forty meters, but Nenda was through the hatch a couple of yards ahead.

Rebka jumped after him, turned as his foot skidded across the threshold, and slammed the hatch closed. “All in,” he shouted. “Kallik, take us up.”

He swung around to see what was happening. It had occurred to him, in the final seconds of the dash across the moss, that there was one real possibility that he had refused to consider because it had final and fatal implications. What if the Indulgence had somehow been captured by the Zardalu, and they were waiting inside?

Breathe again. There were no signs of Zardalu — the cabin was empty except for the four new arrivals. “Kallik, bring us to a hover at three hundred meters. I want to look for Zardalu.”

But the little Hymenopt was pointing at the control display where multiple lights were flashing. “Emergency signal, Captain Rebka. Not for this ship.”

Rebka was across to the console in a couple of steps, scanning the panel. “It’s the Erebus! In synchronous orbit. Take us right up there, Kallik. Graves should have stayed outside the singularities. What sort of trouble is he in now?”

The hover command was aborted and the rapid ascent began. All eyes were on the display of the dark bulk of the Erebus, orbiting high above them. No one took any notice of the downward scope. No one saw the dwarfed image of Darya Lang, capering and screaming on the sunlit surface far below.