Six and Diva turned back to the wall, and moved their mental strength to press harder on it. It seemed, this time, to cede slightly, to give way before the pure light of the canths. The rippling effect on the surface was more apparent now, and they could feel tremors running through the wall of Dessite thought. The canths pushed home the advantage; the aura reached out even further, engulfing more and more of the avifauna and the amorphs, liberating them from the control of the Dessites.
The other members of the group were now beside them, adding their own weight to the canths. Beside the aura of the canths they were only puny thoughts, but they wanted to help, wanted the canths to know that they were there, that they were part of the offensive.
At last the Dessite wall splintered in one place. They poured their thoughts from the mindmerge at that very spot. The wall cracked, and the crack began to widen. Six thought for a second that he could smell the ocean, seaweed on a shore, and smoke. Then the wall had become two walls, and was breaking again.
The diamond shape was as big as the planet now. All the creatures under Dessite domination were free, and the minds that had determined their movements were falling back into the wall, into their place in the Dessite consciousness.
The aura now stopped, and the diamond remained where it was for a few moments. Then it began to shrink again, turning into a shaft of dazzling light that illuminated all the cracks in the wall. A solid flash of light seemed to spring out of the facets of the aura as it shrank, transferring the effect to the wall. It began to crumble around the cracks and crevices. As it crumbled and disintegrated, the dislodged fragments simply shrank and then disappeared. Six could feel that these were small groups of individual Dessite minds, which, when unable to maintain themselves in the wall, simply vanished back into their own bodies – all those light years away back on Dessia.
The wall teetered, still immensely packed with consciousness, but now unable to harm anything else. The relentless diamond brilliance applied more pressure. Slowly, painfully, the wall showered loose mental debris down on them, but this evaporated before coming into contact with the aura; none of the Dessites dared to touch the aura individually. They dissolved as they fell, melting back to where they had come from.
It took pressure. It must have taken time, too, but Six had no idea of that, because from inside the mindmerge time seemed not to pass at all. Everything happened now, or then, or all at the same time, or never, or always. What mattered inside the mindmerge was the pressure; the persuasion applied to the wall to break it down, to destroy the collective will and render it docile in its component parts. It took far more pressure than the canths had originally thought, and Six knew that they were tiring. He also felt that they were concealing that fact most successfully from the Dessites.
At last the efforts of the canths began to conquer the Dessites. The wall shuddered, and rocked from side to side. The breaches were vast, gaping areas where there were no Dessite minds left in place. In one ultimate attack, the diamond aura spread out along the whole length of the wall and exerted a final pressure, finding every crack in the structure, and undermining its strength.
And then everything became confused. Thunder, flashes of light leaping across the mindmerge, pain and agony, the inability to breathe, loss and sorrow. The wall shimmered in front of them, then toppled in majestic splendor in a scream of colours. Before it had reached the mental floor, it had vanished, and so had the canths. The mindmerge disintegrated, leaving the eight people who had been defending the entrance to the tunnel lying inert on the stone floor.
Chapter 19
DIVA WAS THE first to come to. She clutched at her head, which felt as though a hammer was pounding away at her skull, drilling into her mind with an intensity that ran right across her temples, and then down behind her eyes. She opened them with a grimace. The corridor which opened out from the tunnel entrance was dark again; the lights they had brought were no longer illuminating it. She wondered how long she had been unconscious.
She was lying on the cold stone floor, so she felt around her to see if there was anybody else there.
“I hope you’re not a booby bird,” said a peeved voice.
“Six? Are you all right?”
“My eyes feel as if they want to exit through the back of my head.”
“Yes, that mindmerge was pretty drastic, wasn’t it? But, Six, they did it! The canths sent the Dessites back to Dessia!”
Six tried to sit up, and then decided against it. “Ouch!” A wave of sickness passed through him and he hastily let his head lie back for a bit longer. “Is anybody else awake?” he asked.
A moan came from his right. “I am,” said Ledin, “but I have the most awful headache. I feel like I was kicked in the head by a vaniven. Grace? Grace! Are you there?” He started to feel around the stone close by. “I can’t find Grace.”
They all fumbled around, until at last Ledin found her. She was still breathing, but unconscious. They checked her vital signs, and then started to look for the others.
Cimma was the one that worried them. Although all the others were senseless, their vital constants were strong; she was still breathing, but her pulse was very erratic.
Six sat back on his heels. “She needs to be put on a drip,” he said. “I will go over to the shuttle to find the medical supplies. We all need water and some nutripacks, too.”
“I’ll come with you,” Diva got to her feet. “Will you be all right here, Ledin?”
The Kwaidian nodded. “I felt the canth keeper in the mindmerge. Is he here?”
“Up on the Independence. The New Independence.”
She seemed to feel both Six and Ledin staring at her through the dark, as if they had question marks over their heads.
“Long story. Tell you later. You are right, Ledin. One of us should go up in the shuttle to make sure that he and the canths are all right.”
“Just don’t get caught up in the winds.”
“No. We won’t. You had better keep them all where they are. Even though it is dark inside the corridor, you are protected. Wait until one of us comes back.”
“We will be here. Try to make it as fast as you can. Cimma doesn’t look too good, and I’m not very happy about Petra either. Her breathing seems very shallow.”
Diva nodded in the dark, although she knew that the others couldn’t see her. Then she and Six negotiated the prone bodies, and made their way to the tunnel entrance.
“You don’t think the avifauna will come back?” she asked.
“Nah.” Six spoke with certainty. “They won’t come near any of us again unless they have to. They are bound to associate us with the Dessites. I don’t think they will ever let us near them again.”
“Now I come to think about it, where are the twins, and the visitor?” she said. “They seem to have vanished into thin air.”
“Don’t worry about them, they will be fine. They are endemic to Pictoria now – this is their home.” Six grabbed her hand, and pulled her towards the hole in the rock. “Come on, ladles first!”
“I wish you would stop using that word!”
“I know.” Six sounded pleased with himself.
THEY WRIGGLED THROUGH the tunnel in the rock, and into the sunlight outside. Six looked up at the sun. He wasn’t an expert on Pictorian days, but he thought, from the height of the rays of light, that they must have at least four hours before dusk, and the famous hurricane-force winds. He smiled at Diva, “Plenty of time!” Then he set the pace across the red terrain in the direction of the shuttle.
They ran lightly across the tiered ridges, both euphoric now that the battle was over, both feeling heady at the fact of still being alive. Six led the way, but Diva was never more than a couple of paces behind him.
Diva was looking up at the sky, never more glad to see open air. The gas giant was hanging overhead, clearly visible in the daylight, but looking much more purple from this position. Behind the gas giant, the huge orange-red sun was taking up much of the bac
kground, and the green flecks of cloud against the yellowish sky were hardly visible. She felt suddenly, intensely glad to be alive, and gave a leap of joy that carried her from one side of one of the ridges clean over the top and half-way down the other side.
Six caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye, and whooped. He did the same, the low gravity letting him sail up into the air and travel about 10 metres along the gulley before landing. Immediately it became a race, and they ran as fast as they were able, giving giant leaps into the air whenever they could.
A couple of avifauna were visible, gliding overhead, but it seemed that Six had been right; as soon as they saw the two-legged people, they curved away from them steeply, even flapping their wings slightly in an effort to put as much air as possible between them. Six pointed at the fleeing avians, and put on his I-told-you-so expression. Diva found this intensely irritating; she chose to nudge at him with all her weight in mid-leap.
Six felt his centre of gravity shift, and grabbed hold of her quickly with one hand. They toppled together towards the next gulley, landed badly, and tumbled over and over in a tangle of limbs.
Six found himself staring into two irate but magnificent eyes. He was lying with his back to the floor, and Diva was stretched out on top of him. An inner voice of warning stopped him from speaking just in time. He lay silently, very aware that this was an important moment in their relationship.
Diva seemed reluctant to move, too. The glare he was being subjected to gradually faded, and she gazed into his eyes with something like surprise. “I missed you,” she said.
He nodded slowly, rather warily. “I missed you too,” he said, “but what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. It is a strange feeling, to miss somebody.”
“I agree. It is a sort of emptiness inside you – nothing you can quite put your finger on, but an ache of loneliness somewhere deep inside your heart. You function all right from the outside, but inside you are only running on automatic.”
“That is exactly it. You do know!”
“Well, of course I know! What? You think only Divina Senate Magmus of Coriolis might have that feeling?”
“I … I hadn’t thought about it.”
There was a long pause, and Six waited, wondering if now was the moment when the last walls Diva had around her spirit would crumble like the Dessite mindwall had done. He felt an almost unbearable urge to kiss the mouth in front of him, but closed his own eyes, and waited. It had to come from her, he repeated over and over to himself. It had to come from her.
But she wasn’t quite ready yet. He opened his eyes again to see that she was still staring at him, and had gone slightly pink. He found himself grinning. “Blushing, Diva? I didn’t think you had it in you!”
“I am NOT blushing. It is very hot here, is all.”
“The temperature does seem to have risen,” he agreed politely. “Though it seems a localized phenomenon.”
Diva scrambled to her feet, the cross look back on her face. “It is hot,” she mumbled.
Six got to his feet too, and began to dust himself down. “Didn’t I just say that it was?” he said innocently.
“Well, come on! Stop hanging about! There are people depending on us!”
Six stared at her back as she broke into a run again in the direction of the shuttle. A sudden flash of elation shot right through him, bolting him to the ground. He had sensed her doubt, felt in his bones that she was beginning to waver.
“Can’t you go any faster than that?” he taunted, flinging himself after her. He knew he would beat her to the shuttle; the way he felt at that moment he could have beaten Arcan to the centre of the galaxy.
It took them nearly an hour to get the shuttle in conditions to fly, and to pack enough provisions for Six to take back to the tunnel. He knew that he was leaving things a bit fine; it would take him several journeys pushing small bundles through the tunnel, and he had to get it done before the winds started up.
At last the shuttle was ready, and Diva seated at the pilot’s console. “I’ll come back down tomorrow,” she told him.
Six nodded his head. “We will get ourselves to the other shuttle, so try to land near that. I wish you didn’t have to come down again, but we won’t all fit into one shuttle.”
“I would like to make sure that the morphics are all right.”
“We’ll do that. Just take care of the man who speaks to canths, and the canths themselves. Let them know how much we appreciate their intervention. I hope none of them suffered any harm.”
She nodded. “All right. I’ll see you soon, tomorrow then.”
“Tomorrow.”
Diva waited as he carefully secured the outer hatch, and watched him shoulder a very bulky pack and walk as quickly as he could with such a burden away from the shuttle. Then she switched on all the systems, and initiated take-off.
Six, intent on reaching the butte well ahead of the wind, listened to the sound of the shuttle behind him. He wished he hadn’t had to ask Diva to come down again, but there was no way one shuttle could take off with seven people on board, even if he could find a way to fit them all in. His ears tracked the path of the shuttle up into the stratosphere, and then its sound blended into the distance and it disappeared into the background of wispy clouds. He accelerated as much as he could with the heavy pack on his back. It was no longer possible to leap into the air, as they had on the way out, but he still felt the remnants of that euphoria. Something had changed inside Diva; he could feel it in his bones.
BACK AT THE butte, Ledin had his work cut out. He had laid out the unconscious bodies in a line, pulling and tugging until he was able to monitor their progress with very little movement on his part.
Bennel was the first to come to. Then he shifted, lifted his head and was violently sick. Ledin explained to him what had happened, and cautioned him to lie absolutely still for the time being. There was nothing he could do to help the others yet. They introduced themselves formally, and Ledin pressed the man’s shoulder. “Good job,” he said.
Bennel tried to speak, but was forced to turn his head. He was sick again, and Ledin was glad he was on the end of the little row of patients.
Next to show signs of life was Grace. Ledin stroked her damp hair as she stirred, and then groaned.
“You are all right, Grace. The canths did it! They have driven off the Dessites!”
“M-my head hurts.”
“I know. But that will pass.”
“It feels as if somebody with a hammer and chisel is trying to dig a way out of my skull.”
Ledin massaged the back of her neck lightly. “That any help?”
She retched, but wasn’t sick. “Not really, but don’t stop.”
He smiled. “Six will be here soon with some nutripacks, and plenty of water.”
“Oh. Yes, of course. We didn’t eat anything yesterday, did we?”
“Or drink. That is something we have to remedy fast.”
“Is everybody else all right?”
The pause told her the answer. “Who?” she tried to struggle to lift her head, but the blackness threatened to take her back into unconsciousness, forcing her to rest it back onto the cold stone. “Who?” she repeated weakly.
“Six and Diva are fine. Bennel has just come to, and seems to have suffered no harm. Tallen and Petra are still unconscious, as is your mother. Her heartbeat is rather irregular, and I must admit I am a little worried about her.”
“Help me up! Oh, Damn this dizziness! Where is she?”
“Shh! Can you please just lie back and try to recover? You can’t do anything right now, but I will need you if and when the others come to, so just concentrate on not feeling nauseous, will you?”
Grace had to admit that his words made sense, so she allowed herself to lie back. The stone was digging into her body, but she hardly noticed. The main problem was the whirling black vortex of pain that had situated itself inside her head. If she closed her eyes the vortex t
hreatened to spiral her back into unconsciousness, but if she left them open she felt a hard, methodic thumping of intense pain, and a sensation of queasiness that was hard to overcome. She kept swallowing compulsively, and felt ridiculously weak.
There was a scuffling sound beside them, and Bennel spoke, his voice sounding rather shaky. “I am now able to sit upright. I believe I shall shortly be able to help out.”
A small moan from his left told them how opportune that was. Bennel shifted his position, and there was a small silence as he investigated. Then his voice came back through the darkness.
“It is Tallen. He is coming to. His pulse still seems stable.”
The youngster’s body suddenly erupted into a cough. He cried out in pain as the movement of his head caused a sharp flash of agony. “Wh-what happened?” he asked woozily.
Ledin explained, as Bennel tried to massage the boy’s neck.
“And Petra?”
When he heard that his sister was still unconscious he gave a jump.
“You would be better to lie still,” warned Ledin.
“What would you know about it, Kwaidian?” demanded Tallen. “She’s not your family, is she?”
Ledin blinked. He had only just met Tallen, and wasn’t expecting such antagonism.
“Where is the meritocrat? This is all her fault,” the boy went on.
“Diva has gone to the New Independence. Six went with her to the shuttle to bring us back some supplies.”
“Trust the meritocracy to get themselves out of the way and into safety as soon as possible!”
Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5 Page 24
