Valence (Confluence Book 4)

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  Her mantle fluttered and she flashed her chromatophores disjointedly. Patches of her skin went dark in a riot of random sequences. Her emotions were all over the spectrum, and that was severely uncomfortable for both of them. Neither of them had any practice at controlling these kinds of raw feelings.

  He knew he was making her experience pain by refusing her request, but that wasn’t enough to change his mind. It couldn’t be. He had to think of all of the repercussions. Even if he could entertain the idea, selfishly, he couldn’t help but lament that they could easily be separated by circumstance. Life was unpredictable. What if he agreed and then never had the opportunity to meet his own children?

  She pleaded, “Our offspring could be born free. We may not have an opportunity like this again. We should take it.”

  He didn’t answer.

  The only way he could agree to this experiment would be if he could be sure they’d have many opportunities like this again. Couldn’t she see that?

  They’d descended to the continental shelf. It supported a reef biome, full of diverse life. Small fish darted in and among strands of spindly things that might have been plants or another type of animal. Tiny horny creatures burrowed in the sand with only their eyes sticking out. Long, slender fish found cracks and crevices to hide in, darting out when a tasty morsel swam by. The last time they’d been here he’d eaten a bellyful. The thought of killing an innocent animal now was repulsive. He stared at the wildlife, tracking movement, counting individuals in some kind of instinctive way while he tried to formulate something soothing to say to her that he hadn’t already said.

  She was disappointed. They were both nervous and excited about the changes to come, and the journey to Terac, but reluctant to give up their paradise. That made things seem more immediate. It was surely natural to want what she wanted, though wild kuboderans didn’t raise their own children like humans or sectilians or even pligans did. His own mother had merely been a presence that was gone from his life moments after the fleeting act of breaking free of his egg sac. But wasn’t procreation one of the strongest driving forces behind all biological life?

  He turned, hoping that seeing her would inspire some words that would help them resolve this issue. Maybe there was a compromise they could both be happy with. If he consulted with someone… Not Schlewan, no. But Ajaya… Perhaps something a bit more sterile could be done. An extraction of some kind. A procedure that didn’t involve savagely driving squirming foreign matter into Pio’s delicate limbs like a crazed animal.

  Pio was drifting near the edge of the shelf, lost in her own thoughts.

  He saw the flash of movement before she did.

  A pale shape, outlined against the black. It was enormous.

  And it was rising to the level of the surface of the shelf, moving swiftly.

  He knew instantly it was not the lumbering, plankton-feeding behemoth they’d seen before. It wasn’t round or slow-moving.

  It was sleek. It was fast.

  It was a predator.

  8

  THEY WAITED FOR HOURS.

  After about twenty minutes Jane and the others sat down in the car to rest. There was a low curb made of a spongy, corky material around the interior perimeter to serve as seating for pligans. That was where Gili was napping. Jane had seen this kind of furniture within the Tree structures before, often with pligans sleeping on them. It was almost like camouflage for them.

  Schlewan offered everyone some of the food cubes she’d brought. Jane was glad Schlewan had planned ahead for a longer stay and she plucked a couple from the green plastic container to nibble on.

  Alan was restless. He examined every detail of the car minutely, though there wasn’t much to see. The most interesting aspect was a biopanel which he was unable to activate. The rest of the car was made up of the same translucent material as the overall architecture. Overhead they could see that the car was attached to a cable that led down a gently sloping shaft.

  “I think it might be using gravity,” Alan said. “Maybe we have to wait until there’s enough weight inside the car to pull us down?”

  “Maybe after a shift change? Do they have shift changes?” Ron ventured.

  “Mm. I don’t think so,” Alan replied.

  “I think we’re waiting for a person,” Ryliuk said.

  People did begin to arrive. They looked at the humans and sectilians curiously, but then settled down to nap, just like Gili.

  Eventually the sectilians put themselves in a state of torpor to pass the time. Ajaya nodded off in Ron’s embrace.

  Alan crouched down facing Jane, looked like he was going to say something, then changed his mind, turned, and just sat down next to her. His hands were clenching and unclenching. He said quietly, “I really would have liked to look at that stuff longer, Jane. And there’s no reason why we couldn’t have. Someone who could have explained it to us might have come along in all this time. The technology, the materials science they have going on there… I wonder if they even realize how unique it is.”

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell. I had no way of knowing he was going to sleep this long. Usually when he sleeps I wander off and find someone else to talk to nearby.”

  “No chance of that here,” he said, his hands opening suddenly to indicate the other sleeping pligans.

  Jane nodded. “I understand your frustration, but they do not mark time the way we do. They’re not in a hurry to do anything. There’s no deadline for them. They seem happy to wait for things as long as it takes.”

  It was clear that he knew that and knew it well. He made a general sound of displeasure.

  “Maybe try to nap?”

  He side-eyed her then rolled his eyes away. “If I could go exploring the area without being afraid that the tram would just take off the second I got six feet away—”

  “Ryliuk or Brai could—”

  “No. Too risky.”

  He probably thought it was risky because he might be caught too far away to get back in time, but she thought it was risky because he might get lost in the maze of the pligan Tree structures. And even though he and Brai had made a lot of strides, he was still reluctant to use anipraxia unless absolutely necessary. She felt a surge of affection for him and impulsively grabbed his head and smashed her lips against his cheek.

  He threw his arms up in the air at first, startled, then turned toward her, grinning. “Oh, is this how we’re going to pass the time? Snorgeling?”

  Jane snorted softly. “Snorgeling?”

  He nodded solemnly. “I should probably speak in gerunds just to keep your attention.”

  She grinned until he leaned down and planted his lips on hers, catching her so off guard that he was actually kissing her teeth for a second there. It was completely indecorous, totally inappropriate, and thoroughly Alan. He certainly kept her on her toes.

  She pulled back and looked around, flustered. It wasn’t that she didn’t like public displays of affection. She actually did. But circumstances were different now. She tried to keep things professional so no one was uncomfortable. He knew that, but didn’t always cooperate. She chalked that up to spontaneity, and since it didn’t happen often, she let it go.

  The kiss seemed to mollify him enough to allow him to relax a little. He let his legs sprawl out and he leaned back. He would probably fall asleep too. He’d been so tired lately because of the erratic work schedules on the hull. Jane put her head on his shoulder and gazed up into the dark overhead mass of black leaves. They blocked a significant amount of daylight, but the transparent walls made up for it, allowing a comfortable amount of ambient light, something like deep shade on a bright summer day on a trail in a deciduous forest. The branches above them seemed to simply be swaying in gentle breezes, though she knew that was far from the case. Jane wondered how these trees differed from trees on Earth, structurally. They had to be strong and resilient to cope with the never-ending gale without breaking up.

  The ship’s sensors had shown that the trees we
re usually between three hundred and fifty to four hundred feet in height, but most of the pligan architecture existed in the range of one hundred to two hundred feet, well below the foliage line. The branches that supported and buttressed the pligan habitat were still alive, but generally didn’t have leaves. Instead they were harnessed to do the kind of work they’d seen today.

  As she watched, the sky that peeked through the occasional parting of leaves overhead darkened from pale gray, like a Midwestern winter sky, to a leaden color, and a few large drops of rain spattered against the outside walls, whipped sideways by the wind after dripping out of the canopy.

  The weather here was tempestuous because they were in the zone of the planet called the terminator—the only part of Pliga that could support land-based life. It was a habitable zone in a ring around the side of the planet that faced the sun, at the edge between the dark and light sides, a temperate zone between the extremes of constant, direct sun and unending night.

  In the terminator, the cold air from the frozen night side and the hot air rising off the superheated ocean surface collided to form stormy conditions. That caused the constant high winds and lots of rain, but also consistently comfortable temperatures that were accommodating to life. The central part of the light side was much too hot—the few small islands there were barren rocks. Not much lived near the surface there aside from thermophilic microbes, but deeper it was dark and cool and teeming with diverse life.

  Most of Pliga’s land mass was on the dark side and covered with glacial ice, but some of it overlapped into the terminator zone. The pligans and their trees occupied all the arable space available. It was an interesting configuration, and the pligans seemed to have made the most of what the planet offered. Clearly Gili couldn’t imagine life being any better. He frequently mentioned that the pligans lived an optimal life. Their symbiosis with their sacred tree was fulfilling. They didn’t seem to want more.

  Jane heard a chirping sound and looked down from the sky. A pligan was standing in the tram’s door. Alan jerked and sat up. “Bigu?”

  The pligan’s throat jiggled and the low chirping sounded again, though her mouth only parted slightly. “Gili’s sleeping?” she asked. She canted her head a little. “To us, it doesn’t matter. We, to Escaping, will go.” She turned and pressed the panel. It polarized under her touch and Jane could discern that it showed non-Mensententic symbols, but not much more. The car began a smooth descent.

  Alan groaned. “Finally.” Then he turned to Jane, his eyes alight with mischief. “Eh? Eh? She’s totally speaking Yodish, isn’t she?”

  Jane pressed her lips together hard, because she wanted to smile and she was afraid that would hurt his feelings. “I’m not sure yet. I need more data.”

  He nodded. “Mark my words. It’s just like Yoda.”

  9

  ALAN LEANED BACK and gazed out the window. It was raining outside in big splats. He started thinking of some lines of dialogue he could recite to Jane to prove his point about the way Bigu spoke.

  Once the tram got going, the descent was gentle and, of course, slow, because what else would it be? It stopped a few times and the movement or lack thereof seemed enough to wake the pligans, who got on and off in small numbers.

  Except Gili. He kept sleeping.

  Alan wondered how old Gili actually was. Age was already hard enough to figure when you were talking about aliens, because every planet had a different orbital period. But time here was impossible to figure. He hadn’t thought of a way to communicate anything regarding time scale yet that made any sense to any pligan he’d spoken to. They just didn’t seem to understand the concept.

  No one was left except the Speroancora crew, Bigu, and Gili when the tram reached the last station. Bigu jiggled Gili and chirped at him. Gili sprang awake instantly and shuffled off the tram without a word.

  Gili led them to another skywalk that also sloped down at a gradual pitch. It was a little darker down here at the lower levels of the complex, with more objects casting shade from overhead. The storm wasn’t helping either.

  Alan strolled along with the group, just looky-looing around. Something reflective caught his eye below and to his left. He shifted his gaze one way and then another. There it was again. He looked harder, stopped and moved his head around. There was something down there on the ground. Something big.

  “What the hell is that?” he asked, pointing.

  Jane came over to stand next to him and looked too. She glanced over at Gili and Bigu and translated what he’d said, without the curse words, of course.

  Both of the pligans flapped their throats. “Escaping,” they said, almost in unison.

  Tinor plastered herself against the transparent wall. “That’s a spaceship, isn’t it?” she exclaimed.

  It was dark in color, just like the plates they were putting on the Speroancora. Probably the exact same stuff. It had a bunch of debris on and around it, tossed there by the winds and storms, but the rain had revealed enough shine to catch his eye.

  “Did the big guy know they had this?” Alan asked Jane.

  She shook her head, still staring at the ship. “No. Brai didn’t detect anything like this.”

  Jaross looked thoughtful. “This spaceship is called Escaping?”

  Bigu blinked his enormous eyes slowly. “Escaping, many ships, all ships, is what we call them. Now, we, each other, understand.”

  Jane turned. “So if the Swarm came, you would use these ships to escape? There’s enough room for everyone?”

  “Yes, but the Swarm, here, has arrived before. We, Escaping, didn’t need.”

  Jane shook her head, clearly perplexed. “Because of Hiding?” she asked. “What is Hiding?”

  Gili’s neck quivered so hard his whole body shook. He pointed behind them. “You should be looking!”

  They all snapped their heads around to gape down at the ship.

  “Holy fuck,” Alan breathed. He had his face pressed so close to the glass he was fogging it up. He rubbed his arm over it and looked again.

  “It is gone, gone, gone,” Schlewan murmured.

  Jaross looked up and met Alan’s eyes. “How is this possible?”

  Alan just stared back. “I don’t know but I think we need to find out.”

  Bigu crowed, “Existence, this effect, makes. You, this effect, enjoy very much, to my thinking.”

  Gili’s face cracked in another attempt at that maniacal smile. “Offworlders are always liking the Hiding.”

  Alan wanted to run the rest of the way down. It seemed to take forever for the pligans to shuffle their way to the hatch on that ship, though Bigu and Gili seemed just as excited as everyone else. Alan made an effort to stay in step with Bigu, who seemed to be something of an engineer.

  “How does it work?” he asked.

  “We, the crystalline structure of the hull, manipulate with the gene expression of Existence.”

  “The outer hull is connected to the Tree?” Alan asked, squinting.

  “Existence, everything we do, works together.”

  “Okay, but what are we seeing?” he asked.

  “Electromagnetic radiation of many kinds, around, it redirects. Also, we, special images, onto the metamaterials, project, to deceive.”

  That may be why Brai-thulhu hadn’t seen it. If they were generating this Hiding business all the time, it could be invisible to the Speroancora’s sensors.

  Jaross had caught up with them. “You said the Swarm has come here before and that you didn’t need the ships then. Why not?”

  Gili chirped and his neck jiggled. Alan was beginning to believe that indicated glee. “Existence can be producing the crystalline metamaterials as fine, fine dusts that we can be filling the upper atmosphere with. When Existence is expressing the gene, Pliga will be disappearing. We would be boarding Escaping for safety, but most likely not needing.”

  Jesus. These crazy talking little froggy guys were geniuses. They had to get their hands on this technology. Earth needed
it, badly. “I’d really like to take some samples, Bigu, see what we can learn from this, if that’s okay?”

  “Many people, to learn this, have tried. None, successful, have been, to our knowledge.”

  Alan frowned. Surely they could manufacture these particles, or graft the genes into Earth trees or something?

  “Walking down to see Escaping?” Gili asked.

  “Hells yeah!” Alan said.

  “Yes, we would enjoy seeing whatever you want to show us,” Jane said with a smile.

  As they walked down, Alan kept his eye on the place where the ship had been. It never reappeared. He stayed next to Jane, who gestured to Schlewan and Ajaya to come closer. Jane said, “You two know more about DNA than the rest of us. What do you make of this?”

  Ajaya glanced at Schlewan before speaking. Schlewan looked deep in thought. “Commander, human understanding of genetics is not even in its infancy compared to this. We’re not even a fetus. We’re not even a sperm or egg. We’re…free-floating atoms in space that may one day be part of a sperm or egg.” She shook her head as though in disbelief.

  Alan couldn’t keep from interjecting. “Come on, it’s just four nucleic acids, right? How hard could it be? We’re already sequencing stuff on Earth. We can learn how to do this too.”

  Schlewan looked sharply at Alan. “Oh, no. No, no, no. It’s not that simple. You may not be aware, Doctor Bergen, that I reported to Qua’dux Jane Holloway recently that the pligans have either artificially developed several additional nucleic acids or found them in nature and incorporated them into their system. It is extremely complex. When I tried replicating their DNA in a Speroancora lab, my experiments went nowhere, even when I supplied all the proper materials. They are using special substrates or processes that we know nothing about.”

  Ajaya nodded. “Yes, I looked over Schlewan’s work yesterday. It’s mind-boggling. I have no idea what they’re doing. It’s way beyond us.”

  “It’s well beyond sectilian science,” Schlewan agreed.