"I am here. Wait." The messenger molecules drifted in through the darkness. A few seconds later, Atvar H'sial's hard claw took Nenda's hand. "Follow. Tell me if the thermal source ahead is also for you a source of seeing radiation."
"Why'd you take off like that?" Nenda allowed himself to be led through the darkness, until he saw a glimmer of light ahead. "Why didn't you wait until they got Kallik out? She's my Hymenopt—she shouldn't be doin' work for them."
"Just as J'merlia is mine, and he should not be serving humans. But he is." The Cecropian led them into a long rectangular room, warmed and dimly lit by a uniform ruddy glow from the walls. "The failure to recover J'merlia and Kallik is, I agree, regrettable, but I judged it necessary. As soon as I became conscious I smelled danger to you and me. Councilor Graves was dominant in that group. He had a clear intention to restrict our freedom at once. I was not sure we could prevent that. With an imperfect understanding of events, it is always better to remain unimpeded in one's actions. Therefore, we had to escape."
"How'd you know I'd follow you?"
There was no explicit message of reply, but the chemical messengers of grim humor wafted to Nenda's chest receptors.
"All right, At. So I don't like the idea of being locked up, any more than you do. What now? We're not safe. Graves and the rest of them can come after us anytime. J'merlia can track you, easy as I could. We're still in deep stuff."
"I do not disagree." The Cecropian crouched in front of Nenda, lowering herself so that the blind white head was on a level with his. The open yellow trumpet horns quivered on either side of the eyeless face. "We must pool information, Louis Nenda, before we make a decision. I lack data items that you perhaps gained from Julius Graves. For example, where are we now? Why were we brought here? How much time did we spend unconscious? And where is our ship, the Have-It-All, and is it in working condition for our escape?"
"I can take a shot at answering some of those."
Nenda rubbed at his cheek and chin as he provided Atvar H'sial with a summary of his own experiences since waking from the Lotus field. There was a three-or four-day stubble there, but that did not tell him much; he had no idea how fast hair grew inside the field. Some of what he told Atvar H'sial had to be guesswork.
"So if you believe Graves," he concluded, "we're still inside a hollow planetoid, goin' round Gargantua. Same one as we were brought to after Summertide, for a bet. Graves says he's got no more idea than we have as to why we were dragged here, or why we were stuck in the middle of that room like two drugged flies. You can be damn sure it wasn't done for our benefit, though. I don't know how long we were held there. Enough for Graves and the rest of 'em to get their hands on a ship after Summertide and fly it out to Gargantua. Don't ask me where that computer with the strung-out brainbox came from. I never saw him before, or anything like him. Mebbe they brought him from Opal. I think they went back there before they started for here, because Birdie Kelly is with 'em, too."
"I registered Kelly's presence. Do not worry about him. Graves is the principal danger; also perhaps the embodied computer, but not Birdie Kelly."
"Yeah. And Graves told me he wants to take us back home and charge us with lethal assault. He'll do his best to keep us in one piece till then, otherwise he'd never have stopped me going back into the Lotus field for Kallik. Graves seems pretty sure he can take us back for trial, so there has to be at least one ship available—the one they came in, or the Have-It-All, or maybe both of 'em. We should be able to escape, if we can just find our way back to the surface."
The great blind head was nodding, a foot from Nenda's face. "Very good, Louis. So I have one more question: When should we choose to escape?"
"As soon as we can. It won't be more than a couple of hours before Graves is on our trail again. Why hang around?"
"For one excellent reason." Atvar H'sial swept a jointed forelimb in a long arc, covering the room they stood in. "Examine. I have not had time for a complete survey, but as I moved through the chambers of this planetoid I saw evidence of Builder technology unlike anything known to the spiral arm. This is a treasure house, a cornucopia of new equipment with a value too great to estimate. It can be ours, Louis."
Nenda reached out and patted the Cecropian's wrinkled proboscis. "Good old At. You never give up, do you? Ever. And people tell me I'm the greedy one. Got any ideas how we prevent interference from Graves?"
"Some. But first things first." Atvar H'sial unfolded her legs and rose to her full height. "If profit is to be maximized, this must be treated as a multistage endeavor. We will need great capital to exploit this planetoid, and we must plan to return here when we have suitable financing. To obtain that, before we leave we must select a few items of machinery and equipment, small and light enough to take with us for trade to the richest worlds of the spiral arm. I could do that, but you are more experienced. And as soon as we have decided what to take, we must evade Julius Graves and his group, and leave."
"Then we'd better get a move on, before they come looking." Nenda reached out to grasp one of the Cecropian's forelimbs, hoisting himself to his feet. "You're right, I do like to price goodies. 'Specially when I know I won't be paying for 'em. Let's go to it, At, and pick 'em out."
After the first few minutes Louis Nenda was willing to admit Cecropian superiority for the exploration of Glister. He could see dead ends easily enough, when the light level permitted. But Atvar H'sial, with her sensitive sonar and echolocation, could "see" around bends in corridors, and know ahead of time when she was approaching a large open area. And she did so just as well in total darkness.
Nenda did not bother after a while to peer ahead. He focused on what he was best at, walking behind Atvar H'sial and making a mental catalog of novel equipment and artifacts as they came to them. There was plenty of choice. In less than half an hour he reached forward and tapped her carapace.
"I think we're done. I've tagged a dozen portable items, an' I don't think we can handle more than that."
Atvar H'sial halted and the white head turned. "You are the expert on salable commodities; but I would like to hear your list."
"All right. I'll give 'em in order, top choice first. That little water-maker in the second room we looked at. Remember it? No sign of a power source, no sign of a supply. But five hundred cubic meters a minute of clean water production. You could name your own price for a few of them on Xerarchos or Siccity, or any of the dust worlds."
"I agree. It was also a leading item on my own list. Do you know its mass?"
"I can lift it, that's all I care about. Then for number-two choice, I liked that cubical box on gimbals three chambers back, the one with the open top and a blue haze over it."
"Indeed? I observed that object. But I found nothing remarkable about it."
"That's because you don't see using light. When I looked down into the open top I could see stars. But when I turned the box on the gimbals, I was looking at Gargantua, right through the planetoid. It's an all-direction see-through—let's you look at distant objects and not be bothered by near ones. It'd be marvelous for ship navigation in dust clouds.
"My number-three choice is harder to justify. The sphere, the one that was floating, not attached to anything, in the room we just left."
"To my viewing it appeared entirely featureless."
"To me, too. But it was a lot cooler than everything around it."
"Which should be physically impossible."
"That's why we want it. Impossible gadgets are always the most valuable. I've no idea how it works, an' I don't care. But I can tell you a dozen places that would pay a lot for it, looking to maybe find a closed infinite heat sink. Number four—"
"Enough. I am persuaded. I accept your list. but there is one more thing that I would like to do, before we collect the items of choice and seek egress from the planetoid." Atvar H'sial motioned in front of her with one forelimb. The yellow horns faced ahead, open as wide as they would go and scanning slowly from side to side. "There is a
nother chamber ahead; a huge, open one, possessing anomalous acoustical properties. At certain frequencies, it appears completely empty. At others, I detect a spherical object at its center."
"You think we might find something specially valuable? No point taking risks, just to be nosy."
"I cannot estimate the value. I will only say that an object transparent at certain acoustic frequencies is as potentially valuable to Cecropian society as glass, transparent to certain frequencies of light, is to humans. I know exactly where we could sell such a discovery. To me, it might be the most precious thing on this world."
Atvar H'sial was advancing slowly as she spoke, to a place where the tunnel ended in a blind drop. Nenda moved to her side and took a look down. After one startled glance he swore and stepped back. She had an indifference to heights that came from her remote flying ancestors, but he did not share it. They were on the brink of a twenty-meter drop, slowly curving away below to a bowl-shaped floor.
Atvar H'sial was pointing to the middle of the chamber. "There. Do you sense anything with your eyes?"
"Yeah. It's a silver sphere." Nenda took another step back. "I don't like this, At. We oughta get out of here."
"In one moment. To my senses, that sphere is changing. Do you observe it, also?"
Nenda, set to retreat, stood and stared in spite of himself.
Atvar H'sial was right. The sphere was changing while he watched. And in a way that tricked the eye. The whole surface began to ripple, like oscillations on a ball of mercury. Those vibrations became a pattern of standing waves, growing in amplitude until they changed the whole shape. A five-sided flowerlike head was sprouting above, while a slender barbed tail extended down toward the floor of the chamber.
Ahh. A sighing voice echoed through the whole chamber. Ahhh. At last.
A green light flickered from an aperture in the deformed sphere's center. It shone on Atvar H'sial, lighting up the crouched, insectile form and the great blind head. Louis hid away behind her.
At last, the voice said again. It sounded as old as time itself. A strange, pungent aroma came drifting across the room. At last . . . we can begin. You are here. The testing is complete. The duties of The-One-Who-Waits are ending, and the selection process can begin. Are you ready?
The creature poised in the center of the chamber was unlike anything that Louis Nenda had met in thirty years of travel around the spiral arm. But what was Atvar H'sial seeing? The Cecropian seemed frozen, her long antennas unfurled and bristling. The being in the middle of the chamber had been partially invisible to her sonar. Did she see it at all now, and recognize the danger?
"At!" Nenda sent the pheromonal signal with maximum urgency. "I don't know if you're getting the same message as I am from that thing, but believe me, we're in trouble. It wants us. Don't reply to me, just back up."
You are the form, the voice was saying, and the green light had focused on the Cecropian. The third awaited form. Do not move—Atvar H'sial had finally taken a step backward, bumping into Louis Nenda—the transition is ready to begin.
Louis Nenda reached forward, grabbing one of the Cecropian's forelimbs. "At! No messing about. Let's get out of here!" He turned and took one step.
Too late.
Before his second step the floor vanished. He was falling freely, plummeting down a vertical shaft. He looked down. Nothing, only darkness that baffled the eye. He looked up. Above him was Atvar H'sial, wing cases fully extended, vestigial wings wide open, all six legs tensed. She was poised for a hard landing—on top of Louis Nenda.
He looked down again, seeking the bottom of the shaft. He could not see a thing, but given the small size of the planetoid, the end of the fall had to be no more than a second or two away.
And then what? Nothing pleasant, that was for sure.
Nenda fell and swore. Hindsight was wonderful. They had been a little bit too greedy. He and Atvar H'sial should have left when they could, as soon as they had picked out all they needed.
He stared down into a rolling, viscous blackness and had time for a final thought: They would have been better off staying with Julius Graves. At the moment, a formal trial for lethal assault seemed positively inviting.
CHAPTER 17
When Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial went scurrying into the darkness, Birdie Kelly was not at all sorry to see the back of them. Graves might want to arrest the pair, but the Karelian human Nenda had always struck Birdie as crude and violent, and the silent, winged Cecropian gave him the creeps.
Good riddance to both. Birdie pushed Julius Graves off him, struggled to his feet, and looked around.
Things were a mess. He was not sure where to begin.
Graves was winded and gasping for breath, but otherwise he seemed all right. Birdie ignored him. Kallik was unconscious, lying on the floor halfway to the center of the room, and Birdie could do nothing for her.
The body of E. C. Tally, a little closer, was in the worst shape. It lay motionless, with the cable trailing from the bleeding head and ending in a bare plug a few feet from where Birdie stood. There was nothing to be done for Tally, either, because his body was deep in the Lotus field.
Birdie looked for J'merlia. The Lo'tfian was lying on the curved floor, just inside the pattern of concentric rings, and he was still holding E. C. Tally's disconnected brain firmly in two of his forelimbs. If he had been knocked out, too, or affected by the Lotus field . . .
But as Birdie watched, J'merlia began to move, crawling out toward the perimeter of the outer circle. Birdie took the loose end of the neural connect cable and went around to meet him.
"Where is Atvar H'sial?" J'merlia asked as soon as he crossed the boundary of the yellow ring.
"Ran for it. With Louis Nenda. We'll worry about them later. Here." Birdie held out the connector. "Turn Tally's brain around this way, and let's see if we can plug him in again."
The connection was supposed to be handled delicately, but it had been yanked free with great force. Now the neural bundles refused to mesh easily into position. The plug slipped out of the socket when it was released. Birdie knew nothing about the care and maintenance of embodied computers, but he said a prayer, placed the connector into position again, and pushed—this time a lot harder.
Down on the curved bowl of the floor, the body of E. C. Tally jerked and spasmed. There was a grunt and a whoosh of lungs violently expelling air.
"Tally!" J'merlia called. "Can you hear me?"
The battered figure with its bloody head was on hands and knees, struggling to stand up. It failed on half a dozen tries, supporting itself on its bruised forearms each time it fell forward. At last the body stayed upright.
"I hee-ar . . . poo-erly." The speech was garbled. "It is diffigult . . . to speag. Some of my gonnegtor interfaces were des-troyed when they were pulled out. Others are . . . degraded. I am seeging to gompensate. Do not worry, I was designed with high-cirguit redundancy. I am . . . improving. I will be all right. I will be fine."
Birdie was not so sure. As Tally said those last words, he had fallen flat on his face again.
"Take it slowly, E.C. We have plenty of time."
"Brr-err," E.C. Tally replied. "Grarr-erff." But he was making progress. He was standing again, shaky but upright. As Birdie and J'merlia watched, he took two tentative steps—in exactly the wrong direction.
"No. E.C.!" Birdie shouted. "Wrong way. Come toward the outside. You're heading for the middle of the room."
"I am well . . . aware of that." The head turned slowly, to look back at them. The voice was reproving. "Since it will be necessary at some point to retrieve the Hymenopt Gallig, surely it is more efficient to do so now, and thereby egonomize on both time and motion."
E. C. Tally was improving all right, Birdie thought—if a return to his usual wrongheadedness could be considered an improvement. But he carefully paid out neural cable while Tally limped forward until he reached Kallik. Blood streamed from the open skull as Tally bent down and laboriously cradled the little Hymenop
t in his arms.
"We are goming out now. Prepare to restore me . . . to the granial gavity, as soon as I reach you. Sensory inputs via the gonnegt gable are degenerating. Please geep talging, so that I gan sense your diregtion. I gan no longer see."
"This way—this way—this way—" J'merlia called, but he did not wait. When Tally was still inside the yellow ring the Lo'tfian rushed forward, took part of Kallik's weight, and led the way back to Birdie Kelly. As Kallik was released, E. C. Tally groaned and sank to the floor beside her.
"Quickly." Julius Graves had finally recovered his wind enough to be helpful. He was removing the bandage from Tally's skull. "Steven says that there will be permanent damage if an impaired neural connector is used for more than a minute or two. We are close to that limit already."
As the bandage came off Birdie turned the cranium on its hinged flap. "All right, E.C., here we go. We'll have you back online in a few seconds.
"Now!" he said to J'merlia, who stood ready. The connector came free of the disembodied brain, at the same moment as Birdie pulled the cable out of the hindbrain socket. Tally's body slumped against Birdie. The blue eyes closed.
Julius Graves took the short connecting spiral of the computer's hindbrain connection and set it carefully into its usual position. There was a brief spasm of Tally's limbs, but before anyone had time to worry the eyes had flickered open.
"Very good," E. C. Tally said. "We suffered a loss of interface for only two-point-four seconds. All sensory and motor functions appear to be normal. Now, the closing of the cranial cavity is something that I prefer to do for myself. So if you do not mind—"
He reached up, pushed away Graves's supporting hands, and grasped the open top of the skull. He turned it backward on its hinge. Birdie, standing behind him, had another quick view of a red network of blood vessels in the skull's lining; then the cranium tilted to fit snugly over the protective membranes of Tally's spherical brain. Tally exerted vertical pressure. There was a faint click. The skull was again a battered but seamless whole.
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