Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (93 page)

“Cover, cool, watch,” the ticket collector enumerated. “It is clear, many-coloured one.”

“If you do this well you may find your own colours enhanced.”

The ticket collector gazed down at his ample stomach, which was encased in nine unchanging shades, for one moment fantasizing about what it would be like to have more colour. Then he was galvanized into action. Hoisting his not inconsiderable weight out of the chair, he hurried to the back room of the office. Moments later he reappeared, to the dismay of those waiting in line for the next cage up the newly reopened Xianthe, with a chair and a parasol. These he carried over to the shiny ship, and placed at a strategically safe distance of about ten metres. Then he hurried back into his office, and re-emerged pushing a large roll of unused carpet with some difficulty in front of him.
 

He eyed the waiting visitors and picked out two of the burliest. These he coerced into helping him to manoeuvre the carpet in place over the shining hull. It was quite a complicated procedure, and took many minutes. When one of the cages arrived during this time, the ticket collector exhorted those at the head of the queue to serve themselves the necessary tickets. He then scolded his helpers, who seemed to think that their turn on the ride had come, explaining to them at some length that they were essential cogs in a process of vital importance to Xiantha, and that he would allow them to take the following cage to arrive if they had the ship swathed in carpet by then.
 

This argument having acted powerfully upon his impromptu helpers, the alien ship was as protected as the ticket collector could make it with his limited resources. He then freed his two helpers, provided himself with a flagon of cold water, and walked with some pomp to the chair and the sunshade, disposing himself in the chair and fixing his gaze upon the machine.

As the cages entered and left the base station he instructed his clients on the price of the ticket, but took his eyes not off the ship. Whatever was about to happen, he wasn’t about to miss it. It was the first time in his life that he had been an essential part of anything interesting, and he was determined not to fail in his appointed task. Those in the queue for the Xianthe looked on in amazement.

BACK AT THE farm, they had already found the canths of Cimma, Diva, Six and Ledin. The canth keeper explained that the black canth would not come to them. Since Arcan was absent, there would be no reason for his canth to move from the pastures.

“But he will be in contact with the other canths,” assured the Xianthan, “Just as Grace’s canth was available to the visitor through the ones here. All we have to do is concentrate on the picture we are trying to transmit. Show the visitor becoming hotter and hotter in his space ship, with the position on Xiantha. Show Arcan as the only solution. And we will have to concentrate even more than before – this time we have to convince the canths to somehow transmit to another planet!”

They formed a circle and sat down in the dust, with the canths standing docilely behind them. Then they each closed their eyes and began to visualize the visitor, sweltering inside an overheated canister, dying an agonizing death as the nutrient tank surrounding it heated up to a higher and higher temperature. They tried to see Arcan arriving, and translating the alien ship to a stable orbit way above the planet, tried to imagine how the visitor would gradually revive as the temperature of the nutrient tank came down.

And then they imagined the whole thing again.

And again,

And again,

And again—

—Until their eyes seemed to be part of the universe outside, and the flickering lights behind their closed lids seemed to be galaxies wheeling in deep space. Until their minds seemed to disappear into the background noise of the rest of the cosmos.

At last, they felt a whisper of contact with some far being. This time they all felt it, including Six and Diva. Six gasped as he became aware of the tendril of touch in his mind, and Diva smiled slowly.
 

“Keep your concentration,” instructed the canth keeper sternly, in a low voice. “Repeat and repeat the message.”

They obeyed, trying to find that isolated whisper of contact again, trying to concentrate on that one tendril and make it bigger, thicker. At last they felt sure that the black canth was linked to them. There was something indefinable about the connection which felt unique to him. They could almost sense it when he tried to relay their worries, to somewhere so far … so very far away that it was timeless. The thoughts sparked across the vast distance, until at last they were heard by a mind full of colour and depth, awake but different, heavy with age.

The mind seemed to question the pulse. Where are you? Who are you? What are you? And then, all of a sudden, there was a sharp flash of interest so strong that it burnt back along all the connections, fulminating the tentative link in a blaze of understanding. The canths plunged, frightened, and called out urgently to each other, unable to find the cause of their panic. The group in the circle opened their eyes, amazed, sure that something really transcendent had happened.

THE TICKET COLLECTOR had been struggling not to nod off, under the shade of what was turning out to be one of the hottest days of the year. It was soporific to sit so still in the chair and watch the ship. The queue to visit the Xianthes had thinned out now. He could tell from the muttered comments behind him that there would be nobody left after the next cage arrived to take on its tally of visitors. That meant, he thought, that it was nearly midday. Ascending visitors were only accepted until midday, since the journey took so long. The rest of his time was spent waiting for them to descend again to ground level, tidying the area for the following day, and balancing the accounts he was required to provide to his superiors in the main office. He did not look around. He would not take his eyes off the ship. But his experience told him how to interpret each noise, he found. Yes, it was certainly nearly midday – the hottest time of the day at these coordinates.

He heard the last of the payload cages arrive behind him, and shouted his instructions over his shoulder to those waiting. From now on, the cages going up would be empty, and each load of disembarking passengers would signal that he was one step nearer to the end of his working day.

He blinked, quickly and nervously. Whatever was about to happen would not catch him out. He wanted more colour. Who knew? Perhaps his action here today would give him two, or even three new colours. It was for a pauper to dream, he thought.

Then, for a split second, he saw something. A shiver ran through the carpet covering the alien ship. A ripple of something definitely touched it. He peered at the sight in front of him with even more concentration. The carpets rippled again, and then – with no warning – fell to the ground. The ship was gone!
 

The ticket collector rubbed his eyes, and then climbed ponderously to his feet, almost running to his cabin and the tridiscreen. He found his fingers trembling as he pressed the predis button. He was a happy man. At last a moment of fame had found him.
 

ARCAN WAS SUDDENLY aware of a cry for help. He didn’t know where he was, but he did know immediately that the call was from Xiantha, and that the visitor needed him. He also found that he knew who was calling, and that the canths were relaying the message. He could feel the black canth, stronger by far than the rest, at the spearhead of the knowledge which had flowed into his mind. 

And at the same time he remembered everything that had happened on Valhai. He had clearly been in some sort of stasis, but now he could detect nothing wrong. He flexed his mental muscles, and reached out to the position he had seen in that brief moment of illumination, taking hold of the Dessite ship and transporting it effortlessly into orbit, far above the planet.

His mind reached inside the ship, and saw that the visitor was still alive, but barely. The nutrient tank was cloudy and grey. With nothing more to be done to help the small entity, Arcan traveled to the place he sensed had been the origin of the plea for help.

SIX GRINNED BROADLY as the orthogel entity appeared in front of them. “Arcan! Arcan! Have you saved the visitor?”

The shape scintillated. “I have tried, Six. I have put his ship in orbit above the planet. But he is severely damaged. I do not know if he will survive.”

“He can’t stay there, in any case,” Six explained. “Once the Dessites find out what he has done they will exterminate him!”

Arcan’s shape shimmered a moment. “I think I need help with the last few days,” he said. “My memory seems very patchy about everything, and I have the sensation I might have missed out on some important events.”

“You could say that,” said Diva, going on to tell him all that had happened since the orange compound had been used on Xiantha. “—And they had already used the compound on Valhai, which I suppose is why you didn’t come to help?”

Arcan nodded. “I can’t remember anything. It is as if I were in a deep sleep, distantly aware that things were occurring in the world, but unable to move. It wasn’t until that vision I received from the canth that I woke up.” He looked around, and saw that the man who kept canths had already moved to one of the gates, where the black canth had appeared, so stealthily that the Xianthan had been the only person to notice its arrival. It walked in a stately manner through the gate, and straight up to Arcan.

The orthogel paused for a moment, and then seemed to flow over and into the canth. The two entities were intermingled for a few seconds, and then Arcan separated, his shape ablaze with colour.
 

“I knew it!” he boomed, hurting their heads with the intensity of his spoken thought. “I knew there had to be a link!”

“Yes,” the canth keeper said. “The bond with the canths. I have told you all about it.”

“NO! This is far more than a mere death connection, this is a far more familiar feeling. This is what I was looking for! Six! Diva! This is the missing link! These equines are my … ancestors, I think you would call it. Or at least some distant relation!”

“But how can that be? You are more highly evolved than they are.” The canth keeper was shaking his head. “As a matter of fact, I believe that there may even be more colour in the universe than we were aware of. Both you and the visitor may be able to reach higher levels of colour than panchrome. I am giving a paper about it to my fellow Xianthans at the Eletheia auditorium next month. We are postulating some further level of colour which we are not developed enough to sense. I have tentatively called it exachromatic …”

Arcan did not seem particularly interested in the Xianthan people’s preoccupation with colour. “You said that these animals are thought to be related to the lost animas of Xiantha?”

The Xianthan nodded his ample head. “I did.”

“Tell me about the lost animas.”

“They are semi-mythical beings. It is said that they were incorporeal entities who came here when their own planet crashed into Xiantha and formed the Xianthes. They were trapped here after the impact, and stranded when the planet moved on, losing their real habitat. So they made their home here on Xiantha, always staying near the place their planet ripped through ours, always needing to be close to the deposits which the planet had left.

“They showed themselves to very few of the primitive people who lived here at that time, and it is said that that they could hear a man’s thoughts. But they died out – history says that they were not able to support the climate here. So they made a pact with the canths, before they became extinct. It is said that they told the men living at that time that the canths were their descendents. The canths would immortalize the lost animas of Xiantha.”

Arcan flashed his delight with a vivid shiver of colour that was so bright it made those watching close their eyes. “They are my relations. So I am the lost animas of Xiantha. Or they are me. Grace! Grace! I have found—” He stopped and all the colour turned instantly and menacingly black. “—You did not tell me she is hurt!” He enlarged, pulsing with angry energy. “Grace is hurt!”

Diva nodded. “But she will be all right,” she hastened to add. She needn’t have bothered – she was speaking to empty air.

GRACE WAS LOOKING forlornly at the small globe of the video camera when Arcan materialized in front of her. Her thin face lit up with pure joy at the sight of him.

“The visitor?” she demanded.

“In orbit. It is too soon to tell whether he will recover completely, though. He was very, very sick.”

Grace nodded. “I knew he must be. Arcan, we have to save him. He risked everything to save me!”

“So I understand. I am very sorry that I was not there. You have been injured.”

She nodded. “They say I will lose several fingers, but at least I am still alive. And you – what happened to you?”

“The orange compound they released on Valhai left me unconscious. They used a different version to the first one, and my antidote didn’t work completely. It was just enough to save my life, but not enough to stop the compound from paralyzing my brain and leaving me in some kind of stasis. I don’t know what would have happened if the black canth hadn’t got through. That was the catalyst which made me wake up, come to myself.”

Grace found her eyes brimming over with tears. “It worked then. It was a bit of a last-minute patch, but nobody could think of anything else to do!”

“Atheron threw you out of a cage 20 miles high?”

She nodded. “Xenon helped him. But they were the ones who died, and I was the one who lived. Funny, isn’t it?”

Arcan nodded. “They were faulty individuals. Yet the way they died confuses me. Atheron was a most intelligent specimen. How could he not have thought of the possibility of a lightning strike once the metal cage were breached? It is elemental physics.”

“I don’t know. I think he was so carried away with the whole plan that all his expertise went out of his mind. Or perhaps he thought that throwing me out of the cage would be faster, that there wouldn’t be time for anything to happen.”

“You must have broken the sound barrier on your way down.”

“I suppose I might. But I was unconscious for the first miles, so I can’t tell you what it felt like if I did!”

“If Atheron and Xenon are dead, we have nothing further to worry about.”

“Oh – about that. Atheron told me that he was manufacturing an improved version of the orange compound here … on Xiantha. So even though he is dead, we still have to find out where his installation is, and remove all traces of the orange compound.”

“Yes, and I need a more complete antidote to this product. I don’t want to be vulnerable if somebody re-invents it in a few hundred years’ time!”

“He didn’t tell me where it was, but I gathered that it was somewhere way off the beaten track, on the southern continent. If the visitor gets well soon, this—” she indicated the broken video camera with her head, “—could find it for you.”

“Let us hope that he will.”

“The thing is, Arcan, that even if the visitor does get over this, it will still be in danger. As soon as the Dessites know that it risked the ship for a 3b entity, it says that they will terminate its contract immediately, without waiting for this mission to end.”

“Then we shall stop them,” said Arcan grandiloquently.

“That might be easier said than done.”

“True. I will put my mind to it now. Grace … I have to tell you. I have found some relations!”

“Arcan! That is terrific! You are no longer on your own then. Where are they?”

“The canths. I think that they are somehow descended from Pictoria too.” He paused for a moment, and then examined Grace carefully. “I have something to tell you about that.” He paused again, and then decided that she was well enough to hear about it. “When the black canth contacted me, I sensed something else too. It was very far away – almost an echo of a sigh – but I am absolutely certain that it came from the amorphs, on Pictoria.”

“They were trying again to contact you?”

“Not exactly. There was no physical presence this time, but I felt … I felt that they were trying to tell me something important. That I really needed to listen to them.”

“Perhaps we should go back to the Pictoris system?”

Arcan scintillated. “Yes, I think we will have to. But, Grace …”

“Yes?”

“I think I felt something about them this time. This … well, this is going to sound rather silly, but I think they were me!”

Grace gave a puzzled frown. “Surely you must be wrong? I don’t see how that could be possible, unless—”

“What?”

“—Unless somehow the three orthogel bracelets which disappeared were turned into amorphs!”

Arcan darkened. “Do you think that is possible?”

Grace shrugged. “You are the quantum entity,” she told him. “If you don’t know what is possible and what isn’t then I don’t see how I am supposed to!”

“No-o. You do have a point there.” He thought long and carefully. “I don’t see how it is possible, but the feeling I had was very strong. I think we will have to go back to Pictoria. How long will it take you to recuperate?”

Grace gave a small shrug. “I am not sure. I think they are going to operate tomorrow or the next day, and that I will have to stay in here for a week or so after. But don’t worry, I will help you. We can look into it all together.”

“Thank you Grace. I missed you.”

“I missed you too, Arcan. Drop in at any time. My diary is not too full at this point.”

“I do not understand you.”

“I will be here.”

“Well of course you will be here – you just said that.”

Grace gave a small sigh. How to tell the most intelligent being in the galaxy that he could sometimes seem dumb? She crossed her fingers and then shouted out loud with pain as she remembered that she couldn’t. The visitor simply had to get well. He had to! She wondered if sending him mental good luck would do any good, and decided that it couldn’t hurt. Then she giggled to herself – she was going crazy shut up in this place. It would be good when she had some visitors again. Perhaps after her operation, tomorrow. She would be awake by the afternoon, she hoped. Then she would know how many fingers they had finally decided to remove, and whether her nose had escaped amputation. She shivered. She thought that she could, one day, come to terms with having fewer working fingers, but the idea of walking around with a hole where her nose was supposed to go made her feel slightly nauseous. Grace made herself breathe slowly. She would just have to accept her lot, whatever happened. There were many worse things in the universe than having a slightly shorter nose than everybody else, after all.

WHEN SHE CAME round – back in her room again after the operation – there were several people hovering anxiously around her bed. Grace opened her eyes cautiously, and winced a little as the strong sunlight in the room poured into her pupils. She closed them again, and left them shut. She wasn’t at all sure she was ready to hear the news they would have to give her.

“Grace.” Her mother’s voice was serene. “Grace! You can open your eyes. It is all right. They have managed to save your nose!”
 

One stone of the pile lodged over her heart seemed to shift slightly. She opened one eye again.

“And the fingers?” she croaked.

“You have lost two on one hand and one and a half on the other; the ring and middle fingers on your left hand; and the middle finger of your right hand, together with the first two joints of the index finger on that hand.” Cimma’s own hand stroked Grace’s hair back gently.

Grace tried to smile, although she felt her lips tremble slightly. “That’s ok then!” she said. “Just won’t be able to sign anybody a-ag-gain!”
 

Arcan’s voice boomed in her head. “We have no need to use sign language anymore, so that loss will not have any importance.”

“True.” Then why did it feel so painful?

“You will be fine, Grace,” said Six. “They say you can leave the hospital at the end of the week.”

Then Grace remembered the visitor and hot shame ran through her as she realized how preoccupied she had become with her own health. She asked about him hastily.

“He is still not responding to external stimuli,” Arcan told her, “but the colour of the nutrient tank is very much better, and he is alive. I will go up again shortly, but I believe he will recover.”

Grace let out a shaky breath which she hadn’t realized she had been holding. “Well. That is great news! And I am to keep all my nose! What more can a girl ask for!”

The others laughed, relieved to see she was taking it all so well. Only Ledin refrained from joining in. Grace saw that his face was set, and white. Diva caught the direction of her gaze, and smiled.

“We have
all
been very worried about you,” she said. “You were a long time coming round from the anesthetic, and we began to think you were so happy in a semi-coma that you wouldn’t come out of it again. Arcan even transported Vion over from Coriolis to check on you.”

“Vion came here? What did he say?”

“He said they were doing a better job than he could have done himself. He hasn’t had much experience with frostbite, though.”
 

Grace struggled to pull herself a little higher on the pillow. “Thank you all very much. I am f-fine, really. Ready to get out of this place! What is the plan?”

Cimma hesitated, checked with Six, who nodded and then answered. “The Sellites are going to take Atheron’s and Xenon’s remains back to Valhai. They hardly deserve it, but … well, when all is said and done, he was my son, and, whatever he did, I am glad he is to have sepulture on his home planet. The Xiantha investigation is nearly finished, and they will release the bodies to the Sellite Commission when it arrives.”
 

“Amanita will blame me for everything, I expect.”

“She is bound to. She already did. However, she is going to have to accept that things have changed for good, and she should dedicate herself to her children, to helping Xenon 50 prepare for his new future. In any case, it seems that Xiantha will no longer buy genetic material from Sell, and they say that they will lobby the Cesans to cease too. That means that there will no longer be any need for a donor apprentice house on Valhai.”

“Huh! Another thing for Amanita to hate me for.”

Six shrugged. “Let her – she was all for having you killed, you know. It might do her a bit of good to suffer now. She sure deserves it!”

“We all have to stay on Xiantha until after the Sellite party arrive here to claim the bodies. They are to hold some sort of on-site inquiry into what happened” said Cimma. “And that could be a problem – you know what the Sellites are like. Plus, the Commission of Ethical Correctness has never revoked its decision about me. I am not sure I can even give valid evidence now. They might try to have my evidence disqualified and have me thrown into that mental hospital on Cesis again.”

“You will be thrown nowhere,” promised Arcan. “I will make sure of that.”

“So what are you all going to do while the visitor and I try to get better?” asked Grace.

Diva gave a sigh. “The Xianthans are still trying to locate the place where Atheron and Xenon were fabricating the orange compound,” she said. “We know – from what you were able to tell us – that it is somewhere in the lowlands, but that area of Xiantha is very sparsely populated, and difficult to get to, because the magsleds can’t travel at those latitudes; the magnetic lines are parallel to the ground there, so there isn’t enough thrust.” She shrugged. “Or something like that. I can’t quite remember the details.”

Six chipped in, “We have to wait for them to find the facility, and then Arcan will take us all there, and we can discover just what he and Xenon were really up to. We have to make sure we demolish everything they built; the Xianthans are absolutely hopping that their land was used for anything so colour-removing. They are insisting that every single part of the installation be dismantled. It is all going to take a long time, so you needn’t be in a hurry to get out of this place!”

Grace pulled a face, and then winced as the pain ran through her. “If you think,” she said in a staccato voice, “that I am going to stay here for one second more than is absolutely necessary, you have got another think coming!”