Chan knew that both Angel and S’greela could hear frequencies well outside the human range. He would have to let them work in peace now, and receive his briefing when the initial communication attempt was finished. He stepped away from the others and stared around him at the tunnel walls.
They were close to a branch point where the descending shaft split and continued down as two separate paths. He had not seen that before, nor heard of it in any of the records left by Team Alpha. It suggested a possible system of pathways through Travancore’s jungle more complicated than they had realized.
Chan glanced back at Shikari and S’greela. He was tempted to call to them, but they were both engrossed in Angel’s efforts at talking with the giant native animal. He walked a little farther down the sloping tunnel, and shone his light along each branch in turn.
They were obviously quite different. One continued steadily down toward the distant surface of Travancore, five kilometers below. The other was narrower and less steep. It curved off slowly to the left with hardly any gradient at all. If it went on like that, it would form a horizontal road through the high forest.
Chan went that way and took a few paces along it. He had no intention of losing sight or sound of the other team members.
After only three steps he paused. It was very confusing. There seemed to be something like a dark mist obscuring the more distant parts of the corridor. When he shone his light that way there was no answering reflection.
He hesitated, but after a moment or two he turned to start back the way that he had come. Whatever that might be in front of him, he was not going to face it alone. He had weapons on him, but more than that he wanted the support of the other team members—S’greela’s strength, Shikari’s mobility, and Angel’s cool reasoning.
As he was turning he heard a whisper behind him.
“Chan!”
He looked back. Something had stepped forward from the dark mist, and was standing now in the middle of the narrow pathway.
It had the shape of a human. Chan took another step back toward the other team members as he shone his light at the figure in the tunnel.
And then he could not move at all.
It was Leah.
Chan was ready to call out to her when he remembered Mondrian’s warning. Leah was dead, and what Chan had to be seeing was an illusion—something created in his mind by the Morgan Construct.
As though to confirm his fear, the figure of Leah drifted upward like a pale ghost. It hung unsupported, a couple of feet above the floor of the tunnel. The shape raised one pale arm and waved in greeting. “Chan!”
“Leah?” He fought back the urge to run forward and embrace the form hovering in front of him.
“No, Chan.” The dark head moved from side to side. “Not now. It would be too dangerous now. Say goodbye to me. But don’t stop loving me, Chan. Love is the secret.”
Ignoring all the warnings of common sense, Chan found that he was taking another step along the tunnel towards her. He paused, dizzy and shaking.
The figure held her arms palms-out toward him, as though pushing him away. “Go back, Chan. Not now. It would be dangerous.”
She waved farewell. The slim figure stepped sharply backward and was swallowed up in the dark cloud. The apparition was gone.
Chan was too stunned to move, until suddenly a sense of his own danger overcame inertia. He turned and staggered back along the tunnel.
Nimrod. The Construct cannot be far away from here. It can produce delusions within organic brains, change what you hear and see. Are the others safe?
Chan was running. In just a second or two he was back to the place where he had left the team members.
The tunnel was deserted. He paused, and stared along it in both directions. There was no sign of S’greela, Shikari, or Angel. No sign of the great caterpillar-snake that they had been holding.
Where was the team?
Chan began to run again, back up the spiraling tunnel, back to the sunlight, back to the doubtful safety of the tent in the upper layers. As he ran the face and form of dead Leah hovered always in front of his eyes.
* * *
Chan arrived at the tent convinced of every form of disaster. Nimrod had destroyed the others, and somehow overlooked him. Or the others had known that Nimrod was present, and they had retreated, leaving Chan to fend for himself. At the very least, if they had managed to make it back to the tent they would be frantic with alarm at his absence. They would be terrified and disorganized, not sure how to organize themselves to go off again and search for him in the tunnels.
The atmosphere in the tent was certainly tense. But no one was worrying about Chan—they hardly seemed to notice his arrival! He grabbed S’greela by one of her forelimbs. She turned and gave him a little nod of acknowledgement.
“It is good that you have returned. We are not sure what to do next. There has been a bad—a bad misunderstanding—”
“Misunderstanding!” growled Angel’s communications box.
“—a misunderstanding with the Coromar.” S’greela motioned toward the side of the tent, where the great caterpillar creature was stretching its length along the flexible wall. “That seems to be the group name that these beings give to themselves.”
The animal did not react to its name, but it seemed quite at home in the tent. It was free to move, but making no attempt to escape. Instead, the long mouth was chomping contentedly on a great bale of vegetation.
Chan was totally confused. The scene was so peaceful, the very opposite of what he had imagined. “A misunderstanding?”
“I am afraid so. The animal is not very smart. As soon as Angel was able to speak with it, it agreed to come along with us provided that we would feed it when we got here.” The Pipe-Rilla shook her head testily. “Really, food seems to be the only thing it cares about at all. Naturally we agreed, since we have ample provisions with us.”
“So what’s the problem?” Chan took a closer look at the Coromar, contentedly browsing. “You gave it plenty of food, didn’t you?”
“Well, now it has all it wants. But when we first arrived here, Vayvay—that is the name of this Coromar—did not seem to understand that we would have to bring food to it from storage. It did not want to wait.”
“It tried to leave?”
“No. It tried to eat Angel.”
Chan stared at Angel, sitting motionless at the other side of the tent, as far away as possible from the Coromar. The side fronds were all lying limp against the barrel body, and the head fronds were tightly closed. Angel was sulking.
“Surely the rest of you tried to stop it?”
“We did stop it. All that happened was that Vayvay took a bite at Angel’s middle section—one little bite.”
“It was quite understandable,” added Shikari. The Tinker, its parts reunited, sounded in excellent spirits. It came rustling across to Chan’s side. “After all, even Angel will not deny that the Chassel-Rose is a vegetable. And the real confusion was the fault of the communicator that Angel wears. As S’greela says, Vayvay is not very smart. It apparently assumed that the communicator was the intelligent being, since that was the part that did all the talking. Vayvay thought that the rest of Angel must be some sort of mobile food supply.”
“A perfectly natural assumption, actually,” said S’greela.
“To put it as Angel might have put it,” concluded Shikari, “one man’s meat is another man’s mid-section.”
There was an outraged crackle from Angel’s communicator. “We are not amused. This is no matter for joking. If we had not moved quickly, it would have been far more than one bite.”
“All right, that’s enough.” Chan went across to sit down wearily next to Angel. “Cut out the bickering. We have far more important things to worry about.” Chan ignored the cry of protest. “We are supposed to be a pursuit team. Remember? We are tackling the most dangerous creature in the universe. When you looked around the tunnel and found that I was gone, didn’t it occur to
you that I might be in trouble? Didn’t one of you think, wait a minute, now, maybe we ought to take a look and see what has happened to Chan. No. Instead, you just headed back here without giving me a thought.”
There was an embarrassed silence. “We were preoccupied with the Coromar,” said Shikari at last. “The tunnel was quite safe, and the part of me that had remained here was reporting no trouble anywhere on the surface. There was no cause for worry about you.”
“And you did return unharmed,” added S’greela. “Why are you so upset? Were you afraid?”
“Not as much as I ought to have been.” Chan was beginning to have second thoughts about what he was going to tell the others. Suppose everything was part of his own mental instability? Suppose that he had imagined the whole thing? “I encountered Nimrod down there. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. Now I’m not so sure. But I’m amazed that I’m here to tell you about it.”
He summarized his experiences in the horizontal tunnel, keeping his account as matter-of-fact as possible. When he finished there was a strange and non-committal silence. It ended when Angel exchanged a long sequence of shrill squeaks with the Coromar.
“Leah Rainbow was your friend, and she is dead,” said Angel at last. The topmost fronds waved towards Chan. “But Vayvay has never heard of Nimrod. Of course, although the Coromar exist planet-wide, they are not very intelligent. Perhaps they do not travel far from their usual haunts, and perhaps they do not speak much one to another.”
“Don’t spare my feelings. If you don’t believe me, you might as well say so.”
“The human mind has processes that we cannot begin to emulate.” Angel turned to Vayvay, as the Coromar produced another series of squeaks. “Ah, and not before time! Vayvay says that it is most sorry that it tried to eat us. But it points out that we look delicious.”
Chan glanced at Shikari and S’greela. It was not just Angel. They were all too diplomatic to say so, but not one of them believed his story. The worst thing was that Chan now doubted it himself.
“Can you ask the Coromar general questions?” he said to Angel.
“That depends on the subject. It is not a complex language, but over half the words seem to concern only eating, or looking for food.”
“Can you ask what Vayvay knows about the other species—say, the agile ones that live in the deep forest? See if they, or any others, sometimes generate a sort of dark mist. Also, see if we are likely to be able to get any help from them when we go deeper towards the forest floor.”
Chan waited impatiently, through an exchange that went on and on. Angel seemed less sure of the replies this time, and many strings of sounds had to be repeated. At last Angel turned again to Chan.
“According to Vayvay, we will obtain no help from the agile creatures. They are named the Maricore. I am sorry that we spoke for so long, but Vayvay was very confused by my questions. You see, both the Coromar and the Maricore are the same species. The Coromar are the feeding, intelligent—just—stage of the life cycle. They live for twelve to fifteen earth years, after which they encyst and undergo a complete metamorphosis. Before the change a Coromar is asexual, and therefore naturally has no sex drives. After metamorphosis a Coromar becomes a Maricore and thinks of little else. In this stage they live only one year. They mate, eat very little, and during this part of life they actually shrink in size. According to Vayvay they never exhibit the least sign of intelligence. They also have poor survival skills. For safety they dwell in the deep forest, and never approach the surface layers. It is one duty of the young Coromar to descend, guard the mature Maricore, and assure their survival until they can give birth to another litter of Coromar. Without that aid, most Maricore would not live long enough to breed.” Angel paused. “An inversion of the familiar theme. The child is father to the man—but in this case the expression proves to be literally true.”
“What about the mist?” Chan didn’t want to hear philosophy. He was suddenly absolutely exhausted, with a return of the dizziness that he had felt in the tunnels. He wanted Shikari warm about him, and then sleep. “Do the Coromar know anything about that?”
“Vayvay has never heard of any such thing.” Angel began to extend its adventitious base stems and crept toward the Chassel-Rose’s preferred rooting spot near the exit to the tent. The top fronds were slowly tightening in on themselves. Shikari and S’greela were already silent. The only sound was Vayvay’s steady and single-minded munching.
“The Coromar will help,” said Angel. “Vayvay will stay with us and go anywhere in exchange for plentiful food. But we fear that every real responsibility for decision and action must remain with us.”
The roots of the Chassel-Rose began to settle, probing down into the patch of dark, rich earth that had been brought all the way from the home planet of Sellora. Angel sighed in dreamy pleasure. “Chan, we do not know if your encounter with Nimrod was reality, or, as Shikari and S’greela believe, pure delusion. But this we do know: together, we form as good a pursuit team as the Stellar Group will ever find.
“Together, we will defeat the Morgan Construct . . . or no group ever will.”
Chapter 31
The Mattin Link blurs the definition of the word “simultaneous,” so much so that the Angels have become the ultimate arbiters of time disputes. According to their standards, at the moment when Chan was staring incredulous at the apparition of Leah Rainbow in Travancore’s abyssal tunnels, Esro Mondrian stood in a corridor deep in the Earth warrens. He was at the door of Tatiana Snipes’ apartment. Three times he had lifted his hand to insert a key in the coded lock, and thrice he had hesitated and pulled back.
Tatty watched through the hidden screen. A mystery. What was wrong with Mondrian? Thoughtful and brooding, yes; indecisive, never.
At the fourth attempt he completed the sequence and the door opened. Mondrian stepped inside and stared around him. Less than a year ago this had been his favorite haven. He knew he could come here, shut out the cares of the whole of deep space from the Dry Tortugas to the Perimeter, and do his deepest thinking and planning.
Tatty had respected that need for privacy, for inner space. She knew when he was working, knew when he needed relaxation. She never intruded at the wrong time. She had been hooked on Paradox, its barbs set deep in her soul, but Mondrian would never see her take a shot. Tatty was infinitely discreet.
And now?
Mondrian, who made a god of accurate information, did not know. The apartment was no longer a place of peace and sanctuary. He stared around again, seeking the changes. Tatty was far more independent, he knew that. She had broken the Paradox habit, as far as anyone ever did. The scars of those barbs would still be within her, but no longer did the arrays of little purple ampoules decorate every room. And no longer was Mondrian’s every wish her command.
She had lived through Chan’s transformation in the Tolkov Stimulator. Was it that searing experience, affecting everything about her, that had made the difference? She refused to talk about it then. But would she change her mind, and talk about it now?
Mondrian did not know. That was the worst thing of all, Tatty had become unpredictable. He was no longer sure how she would react to his words, what she would say or do.
He knew the right solution. What cannot be controlled or destroyed must be banished. He had to make a complete break with Tatty. But he was not able to do it.
Mondrian stood at the threshold, thought of weakness, and felt an emotion he could not name.
“I have them.” Tatty approached to lock the door behind him. “Are you ready to begin?”
Mondrian nodded. “Any time you want to.” It was there again, the change in her. No word of affection, or even of greeting. No tenderness, no loving touch. He pushed his own feeling of disappointment into the background. What had to be done was too important.
“It won’t all be bad, Esro.” She had sensed but misunderstood his black mood. “Just think of it as Earth sightseeing.”
“Most of it wil
l be. But if Skrynol is right, one of those scenes is likely to jump out and murder me.”
“How will it affect you?”
“Skrynol cannot say. And if a Fropper doesn’t know, I won’t even try to guess.” Mondrian gestured to the phial of anesthetic spray that Tatty had tucked into the waistband of her black trousered suit. “Keep that close to you, but don’t let me get my hands on it. I hope I won’t even try, but Skrynol says what we are after goes so deep that I may try murder or suicide before I’ll let it come up to the surface.” He sat down on the long reclining chair and leaned back in it. “No point in waiting. Go ahead as soon as you like.”
Tatty taped his wrists tight to the chair’s arm-rests. She attached electrodes to palms, fingertips, and temples, and microphones to his throat and chest. Finally she sat down where she could see the camera displays and Mondrian’s face.
Tatty turned on the recordings. Since he had given her no preferred order for the list of sites, she had made her own. The scenes of his early childhood were covered systematically, linking around the planet in a cross-cross pattern that spanned Earth from pole to pole. As the fancy struck her, at each location she had made her own voiceover on the three-D recordings, and added characteristic local sounds and smells.
She began with an area that sat firmly at the center of her own personal nightmares. Maybe Mondrian would share her horror of it. The Virgin lay in what had once been the American West. It formed a dumbbell of total devastation, a thousand miles long and three hundred wide. The Virgin’s Breasts were located at Twin Strikes, in the north. Matching ten-mile craters at the two points of ground zero defined the nipples. The broad hips to the south were formed by the fused circular plain of Malcolm’s Mistake. Tatty had flown over both areas, then set the car down midway between the two. “The Virgin’s Navel,” said her calm commentary. That was all. The place spoke for itself. The Navel was the most scarred and desolate spot on Earth’s surface.
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