/// Whoa.
This is something I need to know more about,
yes? ///
/I suppose so. Help yourself to the records. Ask me if you have questions./ He didn't want to think about it right now. He especially didn't want to think about it while he was a couple of miles underwater and as vulnerable to claustrophobia as he was ever likely to be in his life. He shivered in the dark, trying not to look beyond the little pool of light projected by the sub's headlight. The things that could come out of the dark . . .
The thought faded, probably with help. He thought a quiet thanks, and said to L'Kell, "Can you tell me anything about how your factory works? I have a reason for asking."
L'Kell was occupied for a moment with the controls. "I don't know how it works, really. It takes the raw materials, and the heat. And in—" klaa "—tanks filled with liquids, the machines that we need just . . . appear. Or they did." He brought the sub around to a new heading. "Perhaps it is—" kraff "—magic, and the magic is gone. Or perhaps the—" kraafff "—Maw has done something, has decided that it should not be allowed to continue."
"Or perhaps," Bandicut mused, "the nano-constructors have quit working because they have broken down. Or because their programming has gone wrong. I wonder—" And he suddenly realized that he was speaking aloud, and wished that he'd kept silent until he knew more.
But L'Kell had heard him. "You wonder what? Do you have the power to heal machines, as well as people?"
Bandicut shivered, and shook his head. Ik was staring at him in puzzlement. Charlie was waiting for him to voice his thoughts, too.
The sub's headlight crawled over a rising mechanical structure, and within the pool of light the broken docking frame and the star-spanner bubble suddenly appeared. The sub slowed as it approached the bubble. In its shelter, clearly visible, were the robots Napoleon and Copernicus.
"I can't heal machines," Bandicut said finally. "But maybe they can."
*
Li-Jared and Antares stood fidgeting on the dock of the sub hangar, waiting for Kailan to join them. The water surface, inches from their feet, was jiggling with vibrations from the current outside, and perhaps fading aftershocks from the quake. Li-Jared hated looking down into the water, so he tried to distract himself by talking to Antares. "Has it stopped yet?" he murmured, turning sideways to inspect the walls.
"It's not going to stop until we leave this planet," Antares mused, and he was startled to realize that there was a hint of humor in her voice. He felt Antares brush the under-layers of his mind, and knew that she was trying to help him. But she seemed pretty edgy herself.
"I meant the quake," he said.
"I know." The Thespi's hand touched his arm for a moment. He closed his eyes, regaining his center, grateful for her calming presence. "Actually," she said, "I think it is abating. But there's a lot of movement of silt out there. A strong current. I hope we don't go out in that."
Li-Jared bonged softly to himself. "I'm sure they know what they're doing. But why do they need us to decide what to do about this—" he took a hissing breath "—Maw of Darkness?"
"I suspect it is no coincidence that we are here to assist with this problem," Antares said. But if she had other thoughts on that, she did not voice them.
It seemed as if they had been waiting forever. But by the time Kailan arrived, Li-Jared was feeling better. Still, he was surprised to see the obliq carrying something about the size of a briefcase-satchel, and two of her assistants carrying similar cases. "May I ask," he said, "what we're about to do?"
"We are going to see if we can convince the ahktah that we would be better served worrying about what lies below us than worrying about what lies above," Kailan said. "I do not know if we will succeed. But you two . . ."
Li-Jared waited. "We two what?"
Kailan's black, huge-eyed face was unreadable. "You two come from the stars beyond. So, I believe, does this demon, this Maw of the Abyss. Therefore, if anyone can help us to understand and control it, you can. Would you not say so?"
Li-Jared felt Antares' surprise and dismay before he even turned to meet her eyes.
*
Using the sub's external manipulators, L'Kell worked for some time rigging attachment lines onto the docking frame. He had already called for assistance, and by the time he had his lines on the frame, another submarine had joined them. This one attached lines on the other side of the docking frame. Inside the star-spanner bubble, at least until the silt swirl obscured it from sight, the robots could be seen watching the proceedings with apparent interest. There had been no communication with them, and it seemed unlikely that they would have been able to see Bandicut's face through the glare. He wondered what they thought was happening.
Both subs applied gentle power. The lines tightened, and the subs began lifting from opposite sides of the bubble. Huge clouds of fresh silt swirled up from the bottom, largely obscuring the view. The motors groaned, and so did the lines and the hull, as they lifted the docking frame and bubble. Bandicut glanced around nervously.
Something clanged, and a jar reverberated through the hull. One of the lines had caught somehow, and was causing the sub to yaw to the right. L'Kell called to the other Neri pilot and touched a control to subdue the movement. Everything settled back to the bottom. "Something's hanging up when we lift."
"Would it help," Bandicut asked, "if we could talk to the robots? Convey instructions to them?"
The Neri's round eye peered at him for a moment.
"Is there any way to amplify our voices out there?"
"You mean really talk to them? Oh. Sure." L'Kell touched a switch on the console. "Go ahead."
"CAN I JUST TALK?"
Bandicut started at the sound of his voice ringing outside the hull. He blinked as he heard a distant, scratchy voice in reply. "Hello? Is that you, John?"
His heart raced. "NAPOLEON! COPERNICUS! CAN YOU HEAR ME? IT'S BANDICUT!" His cry seemed to reverberate along the ocean bottom. L'Kell adjusted the control to reduce the volume.
"We hear you, Cap'n. Can you advise us what is happening?" It sounded like Napoleon.
"We're trying to rescue you! But you're snagged on something." Bandicut glanced at L'Kell. "How can they help?"
L'Kell peered out into the silt-obscured sea. "Ask if they can see anything, like the docking frame and that structure they're lodged against. Maybe they can tell us where they're caught."
"Nappy? Coppy?" he called. "Can your scanners penetrate the water at all? Our vision is obscured. We can't tell where you're hung up."
"Aye, Cap'n. It's this overhang above us, and half a meter aft of center. Can you see it?"
Bandicut peered, but the water was too turbid. L'Kell spoke on his comm to the Neri in the other sub, then said, "Can they say which way we need to move?"
Bandicut relayed the question, and the robots replied that they needed to drop slightly, then move forward until they were clear of the obstruction.
L'Kell made a rasping sound. "Difficult, difficult." He spoke to the other sub. They started their motors again, and the lines tightened. He applied sideways thrust as he lowered the sub until it was so close to the bottom that it was scraping up silt.
"Napoleon?"
"Forward thrust, please. Wait! Wait!"
The sub suddenly slewed, and there was a thump as the docking frame jarred into a new obstruction. L'Kell muttered as he cut the motors. The sub veered, then slammed into a boulder buried in the silt. L'Kell fought to regain control of the sub, while Bandicut struggled to catch his breath.
"The lines are catching—too low," Napoleon reported. "Hold on. We're going to try to get the star-spanner bubble to help us with buoyancy control." Napoleon fell silent, then, while Bandicut and Ik looked at each other in puzzlement, and L'Kell worked to keep the sub steady.
"Okay," said the robot finally. As they peered out in amazement, the bubble slowly sank about one-half meter. "You can take us out now. Straight and level."
Bandicut blinked
and relayed the instruction. With great care, L'Kell and the other pilot guided their subs forward, with the load slung between them. They moved in near-blindness at first; then the remaining current carried away enough of the suspended silt to reveal most of the docking frame and star-spanner bubble.
"You're lifting us again," called the robot.
They eased back and allowed some slack in the lines.
"That's good. Forward again."
A minute later, they were clear of the obstruction. "Well done!" Bandicut cried. He was answered by a series of clicking, rasping whoops from the robots.
The two pilots increased power and carried the frame-and-bubble, suspended between them, to a point of safety, well away from the edge of the abyss. Then they set it down to rearrange their lines for proper, long-distance towing. As L'Kell brought them close to the bubble, Bandicut waved joyfully to the robots, who flashed their lights in reply. The two pilots spent some time changing the rigging, and at last began the laborious climb back toward the city—the bubble and its frame floating well above the bottom, slung between the subs.
It was going to be a long trip back—but a better trip, Bandicut thought, than the journey down.
Chapter 12
Aftermath
"IF WE HAD allowed the habitat to breach," Kailan snapped, "not only would it have killed everyone on board, instead of just three, it would have destroyed part of the solar array, too."
Antares ducked out of the way to avoid being hit by webbed hands as the two angry Neri strode around one another, gesturing. She and Li-Jared moved farther to one side.
"And that, Obliq, is how you justify firing upon one of my submarines?" Askelanda stretched his hands wide. "How can you dismiss the deaths of three people so casually?"
"I am not dismissing their deaths," Kailan said with rising indignation. "They were my friends and I'm as sorry to send them on their spirit-journeys as you."
Askelanda made a gesture of apparent supplication, from his breast toward her, as though to acknowledge her grief. But what Antares felt coming from him was disbelief. "So, then," he said, "please explain why you—"
"Nor did I fire upon your submarine!" Kailan interrupted. "Our submarine. I gave warning, I begged you to move the sub. But you did not get it clear in time. There were lives at stake—and not just in the habitat and the sub."
Askelanda turned, arms crossed. Explain.
Kailan strode a few paces, then glanced at Antares and Li-Jared, perhaps to make sure they were listening. "Askelanda, imagine a habitat bubble bursting into the air—probably exploding from decompression. How much clearer a signal could you send to the landers: Here we are, if you want to find us!"
Askelanda stopped his pacing and peered at her. For the first time, he seemed to take her point seriously. "Perhaps, Obliq. If landers had been on the water, watching. But really—what were the chances of that?"
Kailan gazed at him with palpable annoyance. "Ahktah, if we know they have been working at the new salvage site, is it not possible that they might be found elsewhere on the sea, as well? Isn't it possible that they might have scanning equipment for searching above the sea, as we have it for searching within— which could enable them to detect an explosion?" She paused for his reaction. "No? You didn't believe in my instruments, either, Ahktah."
Askelanda turned away with a low, grumbling sound.
Antares listened in fascination to the verbal sparring. There was clearly more at stake here than whether or not Kailan did the right thing in destroying the broken habitat. Askelanda the ahktah—the male leader—was struggling, not just with the obliq's actions, but with the power that she wielded in her use of a technology he did not understand. How, Antares wondered, could that be? Were Askelanda and the male Neri so preoccupied with their explorations and their sea-farming and their search for salvageable equipment that they could not comprehend the value of the obliq's knowledge? It seemed a peculiar kind of blindness. But not one that she couldn't have witnessed on her own world, in one form or another.
Li-Jared spoke up, with a bonging apology. "Excuse me—very sorry—but just so I can understand, don't the landers already know where to find you?"
Both Neri leaders paused to gaze at the Karellian. "If they knew where to find us, they would have been here by now," said Askelanda. "It may be the only thing that has kept us from open warfare—instead of these skirmishes by night, where we barely even see each other."
Kailan drew her shawl close around her, the golden threads glittering. "I doubt," she said, "that they think much about us, or care where we live."
"They care enough to poison the sea," Askelanda said softly.
"Or," said Kailan, "they don't care enough, and so they poison the sea."
Li-Jared was clearly confused. "Then your conflict—"
"Is not an open battle, no," said Kailan. "In my opinion, they don't regard us as much worth troubling about. Nevertheless—" and she turned to Askelanda to complete her point "—if we continue to probe a salvage site which clearly interests them, and which my technicians have not found a way to make use of anyway—"
"I was not aware you had given up," Askelanda said.
"We have not given up. But why risk this—when we have a larger enemy to worry about, and a factory that no longer functions?"
"If the factory functioned, we wouldn't have to risk it," Askelanda said, with exasperation.
Li-Jared interrupted again. "By larger enemy, you mean—"
"Of course," said Kailan. "The Creature of Darkness. The Maw of the Abyss. Perhaps you can tell us how to stop it. But if not, and without the factory—" She turned her gaze to Askelanda. "Why remain here, facing disaster?"
"Why move, and risk losing everything that way, Obliq? The Maw has been sleeping for many years."
"Sleeping fitfully, Askelanda. Very fitfully. And now it has awakened."
Askelanda started to reply, but instead turned to stare out into the sea, where scores of Neri swimmers were hard at work repairing damage from the quake, and where the last of the returning rescue subs were gliding into the city toward their docks.
*
"If you don't mind," L'Kell said, as he assisted the others out of the sub and onto the dock, "I would like to take your plan directly to Askelanda."
"Of course," said Bandicut. "But first—"
"After you check on your robots," L'Kell said, with a husky hiss that Bandicut was beginning to recognize as laughter.
They waited at the edge of the hangar while a crew of Neri maneuvered the star-spanner bubble into a makeshift docking collar. A floating platform was tied into place, and at last Bandicut was able to step over to the bubble and crouch alongside it, peering down through its curved top. The two robots blinked at him, their sensor-arrays turning this way and that.
"Would you like to use this?" Ik said, handing him his rope.
"Thanks." Bandicut held the coiled rope close to the bubble. A glow blossomed from around his hand through the closest portion of the bubble membrane. He reached through without difficulty, shook the coil out and dangled one end of the rope toward the robots. The other end he passed back to Ik, who ran it over an overhead brace on the docking collar, then dropped it onto the floating platform, where it secured itself.
After a moment, there was a tug, and the rope began contracting, lifting the first robot. Copernicus emerged from the bubble, dangling from the rope like an oversized puppy, and Bandicut hauled awkwardly to pull him over onto the floating dock. "Coppy! Am I glad to see you! Are you all right?"
The robot ticked and whirred, his wheels rotating slightly before he touched down. "Cap'n, we are now. We did not think we would survive, once we were carried away in that downdraft."
"Well, you can thank L'Kell here for getting us to you—"
"Thank you," said the robot.
"—later, I mean. First, can you help me get Napoleon out?"
"Of course." Copernicus's sensor-array spun. "Ik! How good to see you unharmed. Ma
y I ask where Antares and Li-Jared are?"
"Hrrrm, well, we don't actually know—"
"Guys, let's get Napoleon out first," Bandicut interrupted.
"Of course." Copernicus turned and extended a metal arm to help pull on the rope.
"Hold on. Let me drop it to him." Bandicut fed the rope back into the bubble, and soon Napoleon emerged. As they hauled Napoleon onto the dock, Copernicus backed his rear wheels dangerously close to the edge. "Whoa, Coppy—watch it! You can't swim!"
The monkeylike Napoleon hooked a metal hand onto Copernicus and leaned back, holding him. "I have you," he said, staggering a little.
Ik hrrm'd. "Let's try not to lose both of you. Are you robots waterproof?"
"I think I once was," Copernicus answered. "But my seals and bushings have suffered the effects of wear."
"Let's get away from the open water," Bandicut urged. He was trying to think how they could possibly put the robots back down at that crushing depth and have them do any useful work.
"I've just been told," L'Kell said, helping them onto the encircling walkway, "that a farewell—" kresshh "—service is about to begin for those who recently died."
"Thorek?" Bandicut asked, suddenly sober.
"And those killed in the quake. One by rockslide, and three in the habitat that broke away."
"Rakh—it breached, then?" asked Ik.
"No." L'Kell explained how it had been brought down. "A controversial action. But five others were able to swim out as the habitat fell back down."
Another Neri called to L'Kell from across the hangar, and he answered, "In a moment." To the others: "I must go join the parting swim. You may watch from inside, if you wish."
With the help of two of the other Neri, Bandicut and Ik saw to it that the robots were safely parked in a room just a short ramp up from this level; then they hurried up a companionway to one of the domed rooms next door.
*
The farewell swim began in the open-water space between two large clusters of habitat bubbles, a sort of plaza in front of the artificial reef they had passed on their trip into the city the first time. Ik and Bandicut peered out the dome window at fifty or so Neri swimmers gathered around the seven fallen—two more than L'Kell had evidently been aware of. The dead were floating on narrow litters, their bodies garlanded with long coils of sea-fronds. Each litter was kept steady by four Neri, and as they began to swim, all the others began a procession, surrounding the dead on all sides. At the head of the procession was a Neri dressed with long trailers of sea-frond, similar to the dead.
The Chaos Chronicles Page 77
