Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (98 page)

BACK IN ORBIT around Pictoria, Arcan transported into the small spaceship which housed the visitor, and they began to prepare for the attempt to meld into the visitor’s small mind, in order to experience the Dessites in person. Although they had attempted an individual mindmerge several times since that first, rather disastrous trial on board the Variance, they had not really progressed to extending that link to Dessia. Arcan had been more aware of the Dessites as sentients, but he had never managed to achieve any direct contact with them. He felt that this whole exercise was pointless, but couldn’t see any better options.
 

They began the mindmerge, slowly at first, and then with more concentration. Firstly Arcan became aware of the sharp tendrils of thought which pressed against his own. They nudged at his subconscious, insistently trying to tell him something. The sense he got of the small alien visitor was that of deference and respect. It was almost as if the visitor were asking him tentatively to accept a contact, as if the tiny being were overawed by the immensity of Arcan.

Arcan darkened as the depth of the contact increased. Now he was at last able to feel what the visitor represented. He could see the colours surrounding it, and the shapes of its brain patterns and personality. It was like falling, falling directly into the well of someone else’s psyche, and very uncomfortable, because there was a strong feeling of letting go of his own personality, of abandoning some physical part of himself. Arcan found himself fighting the conviction that he may never find it again. It took quite a large effort on his part not to withdraw from the connection between the two minds.

But he didn’t. He knew that this was part of the visitor’s last chance at life, and this time he forced himself to continue past the strong sensation of self-immolation, to press forward on the barrier he was sensing behind the visitor. It was a thick, seething wall of consciousness which pressed down on the tiny creature he was joined with, almost crushing it with the weight. Arcan felt how puny the tiny being was against the massive inertia of the Dessites. The wall he was faced with was heaving, teeming with different beings, that much he knew. But he found it impossible to separate one from the other, like trying to devise the individual atoms which made up Grace, he found. He knew that they were there, but he was completely unable to make any intelligible contact with them – even through the visitor.

The seconds lengthened to minutes, and the minutes to hours. This time, Arcan was absolutely determined not to break the tenuous connection, determined not to give up on this small, but brave creature who had risked its own existence to help one of his friends. His mind continued to gently probe at the tumultuous wall he could sense, trying desperately to find some sort of way to contact them, insistently resolved to establish some way of communication with the species, of persuading them not to judge the visitor too harshly.

GRACE WATCHED THE planet shining underneath the Independence and sighed. The morning had already disappeared, and there was no news from either the planet’s surface or from the Visitor’s spaceship. She felt strangely oppressed.
 

She looked down at her hands, at last free of the bandages, and gave another sigh. It was hard to see the huge wounds where fingers had been before. Now she was on her own, she decided to take a look at her face. There hadn’t been time before to see exactly what that was looking like. Mirrors were not much in evidence on space traders, but she remembered that there was a full-length one in the detox chamber, so she made her way over there. Her toes were healing, but it still hurt to walk, and she moved with a gait which she felt more resembled a vaniven with overgrown hooves than a two-legged member of the Sellite race.

At last she reached the chamber, clinging a moment to the doorway to get her breath. It was nothing like the one on the Kwaide Orbital Platform, where she had been taken by Ledin after the battle on Kwaide. She thought back to that day. It seemed as if it were yesterday. Every detail was fixed in her memory in extraordinarily fine-grained detail. She could see the translucent pipes leading from the depot to the ships, could smell the fighting men, hear the sounds of the battle. Over and over again she had relived her suggestion to use the pipelines to get to the shuttles, wondering what would have happened if she hadn’t made that suggestion. And every day her imagination played back the moment when Solian was struck down. She hadn’t been able to see what had happened, had been concentrating on succeeding in her own mission, so the scenes she imagined were each time more and more grisly. What she could remember in faithful detail was his last battle cry. That had become a part of her, that ‘NEW KWAIIIIDE!”, which had percolated into her very bones, exhorting her but chilling her at the same time.

Grace blinked to make the past disappear from the present, and saw that there was, indeed, a full-length mirror. She walked up to it, rather tremulously, and forced herself to gaze at what she saw there.

Even so, she found that she wasn’t ready. The nose was not merely discoloured; it was still almost black. The rest of her face was lumpy and covered with blisters and scabs. She looked terrible, like some sort of witch that children on Coriolis – the only planet that went in for fairy stories – were terrified of. She took a very shaky breath. This was going to be harder than she thought. Then she caught sight of her hands reflected back at her, and although she already knew what they looked like, her heart seemed to plummet even further. They were blackened, withered stumps which reminded her of nothing so much as the remains of a camp fire. She shivered. She had almost reached up to kiss Ledin back at the hospital! But then she had remembered how she must look, the deformities that she would have to live with now, and it seemed to her that she couldn’t hope for any sort of a relationship. She would have to concentrate on other things; no man would find her the least bit attractive like this. It wouldn’t be fair to expect them not to be revolted when they looked at her.

Grace sighed again. Maybe the blackness would disappear? Maybe in a few months it would look a bit better? She didn’t know how she would feel by then. Perhaps it would help to do the exercises which the man who talked to canths had given her? It certainly couldn’t do any harm, because her self-esteem was at rock bottom.

She made her way back to the control panel, and sat down again at the console. If she had still had all her fingers, she thought, she would have tapped them against the rexelene, impatiently waiting for news from somebody.

DO YOU KNOW how to abseil?” asked Six.

Diva shook her head.

“Don’t worry, I’ll teach you. You’ll love it!”

Diva raised one eloquent eyebrow.

Six, completely misinterpreting her silence, went on, “We can leave the ropes in place so that it will be an easier and safer climb back up.” He smiled happily. “Lucky we thought to bring that extra rope down from the Independence!”

Diva saw a couple of Pictorian spiders the size of dinner plates scuttling around the top of the chimney, and muttered a pithy comment under her breath about Kwaidian ideas of fun. Luckily, Six didn’t hear it. He went on with his plans.

“Let’s see, we will need one rope to get up the first stage from the bottom of the cavern, two will be enough for the middle section – there were really only two difficult parts there – which leaves us two for this section. That is great. We can go down together, so I will be able to keep an eye on you.”

It took Six quite some time to tether the ropes adequately before they began the descent, even though he had also brought some tethering clamps from the space trader. He tested the hold over and over again, Diva saw. Then he gave her a lesson which seemed to her to involve more brute strength than technique, and signed for her to begin her descent.

“Ladles first!” he said, with his usual insouciant grin.

She peered down into the black depths beneath her, and her head swam. She drew back hastily. “This rope seems awfully thin,” she grumbled.

He looked surprised. “Don’t you want to come? I can go by myself if you prefer – there is really no reason for both of us to go, after all.”

Diva stiffened. There was no way – absolutely no way under Sacras – that she was going to stay sitting back up here like an old woman and miss all the action, while Six swarmed up and down these ropes as if he were a Coriolan monkey.

“We would use better tools on Coriolis,” she told him.

“Oh, so sorry, your highness, of course you would have better ropes on Coriolis. Perhaps you would like your humble servant to hike 30,000 light years back and get some?”

She tossed her head. “I suppose these will have to do. Are you sure they aren’t going to break?”

“Nearly.”

“Terrific!” She stomped over to the head of the chimney, twined the rope around her body in the way he had shown her, and let herself over the edge, going rather pale as her whole body became suspended on the rope. “Well – are you coming, nomus, or are you going to stand there all day staring?”

Six gave another broad grin and seemed to fling himself over the edge, enjoying every minute. Diva could have throttled him.

ALL WENT WELL for the first thirty metres or so. Diva found herself sweating as her nerves protested that this was a very stupid thing to be doing, but was actually rather pleased with herself. She was progressing, she thought. She had certainly had one or two nasty bumps against the rock face, but they were becoming fewer and farther between now. She thought that she was getting the hang of the thing.

“Uh-oh!” Six’s voice came from a few metres above her, and to one side.

She looked around wildly. “What? What have you seen? What’s the matter?”

“Err … we are going to have company.”

“Company?” Her voice terminated in a shriek. “What sort of company?”

Six, who was peering down into the gloom below them, sounded wary. “There seem to be a few bats flying towards us.”

“Bats?” Diva tried her new-found confidence by risking a glance downwards. Apart from making her dizzy to her stomach, it was enough to confirm another fact.

“A few? A
few
? There are hundreds!”

“Yes, that’s what I thought too.”

“What should I do? They won’t attack will they?”

“Just stay flattened against the wall. I imagine they will simply fly past us.”
 

There was a small pause and then the air around them was filled with a high-pitched sound which was like hearing about a million insects on a summer night. Diva and Six lay splayed against the vertical wall, waiting for the sound to go past. Unfortunately this didn’t happen. The shrill keening suddenly became interspersed with harsh, mewling squeals. These were from directly behind Diva, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end as she clutched frantically at the smooth rock, digging her fingers into the thin crevices which enabled her to hang there without moving. She found herself holding her breath.

All of a sudden the squeals became more staccato, and she felt one after another of the furry bodies landing on her back, where they clung on desperately and began to bite her through the bodywrap she was wearing. She froze, and a shiver of panic went right down her spine and then traveled all the way up it again. The weight of the creatures on her back was terrifying, and even Diva found it hard to take.

“Diva? DIVA! Are you all right?” Six’s voice came through the nightmare, but she was too petrified to answer. She closed her eyes, and concentrated on hanging on to the rope.

“Hold on! I’m coming!” But she felt one of the creatures land on her hand, and thought that it would be almost impossible to keep her grasp for very much longer. She closed her eyes, knowing that if she let go completely the rope would untwine itself after a few seconds, and she would fall to her death. Damn! she thought, what a stupid, stupid way to die.

With her eyes tight shut she could see nothing, but she became aware that the slight weight on her hand had vanished, and that a large, and reassuring body was now covering hers, pressing her even further into the wall of rock in front of her, and protecting her from the bats. Six had lowered himself down to her level, and then swung over to cover her with his own body. She felt his breath in her ear. “Hold on, Diva! Just hold on!”

She could still feel the bats, but now they were diving onto Six’s back, so she felt only slight shudder as they hit and landed, pulling him down, and trying to get their sharp little teeth through his bodywrap. He clung onto the rock, his arms covering hers, his legs covering hers, and he made no sound of discomfort. Diva could hear his breathing – it was faster than usual, but otherwise measured. She opened her eyes against the rock. She felt protected, safe, and warm. The feeling surprised her.

They must have hung there for about ten minutes, until slowly the sounds changed back to the insect-like hum, and then disappeared altogether. Six kept his position for a few moments more, and then pushed away from her and shifted to one side, surprising Diva, who experienced a short but sharp burst of regret, a sensation of being left cold and exposed again. It was the first time in years that she had felt truly vulnerable, and she didn’t like it much.

“Are you all right?” Six was looking at her with a worried expression.

“Of course!” She put her chin up, and her eyes flashed.

He examined her closed face, and his expression softened for a moment.
 

“Well then, we had better get on our way. If you are fit to travel, that is?” He left the words hanging, a challenge.

She glared at the rock in front of her. “I was just waiting for you to get your breath, nomus.”

Six smiled at that. He loved her indomitable spirit. “Then let’s go,” he said. “Let’s see how that abseiling style of yours has developed, shall we?”

WHEN THEY FINALLY reached the bottom of the climb, and set foot in the huge cavern where the ortholiquid lake was waiting for them, various hours had passed. They both stepped thankfully down onto the stone floor.
 

“Right,” said Six. “Now all we have to do is find the right amorphs.” He looked around the cavern, and then walked over to one of the dark corners, where he waited for a few minutes.

“There are plenty here,” he said quietly, after the wait. “They are coming out again now. Can you see any in the lake?”

Diva turned her head. “Yes, they have already lost their fear of us,” she confirmed. “But I don’t see how we will be able to tell which are the three we want.”

“We won’t have to.”
 

“Why not?”

“Because they are already here!”

Diva walked over to him. Sure enough, there were three amorphs sitting in front of him, in a line. As she came up they blinked in and out of existence for a moment, and then disappeared.

“Mission accomplished, I think,” said Six.

“Definitely!” she slapped him on the back in a friendly fashion. He winced.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

But she was already behind him, and was examining the bodywrap with one of the lanterns they had brought.
 

“Six! This thing is in tatters! Why didn’t you tell me the bats had hurt you this much?”

He shrugged. “We were in a hurry.”

“Those bites need antiseptic, and a dressing.” She peeled the bodywrap down to his waist, and set about cleaning up the small puncture wounds. There were bites all over the back of his head, his back, and his arms. He twitched as she ministered to them.

“Stand still! It will serve you right if you get rabies!”

Since Six assumed that this was her way of saying thank you he ignored it.

“Honestly, Six! You should have said something ages ago.”

He gave another shrug, and stood solidly still as she did what she could to help him. Then he pulled his bodywrap back in place, and cleansed the few bites on the back of his legs himself. “They seem to have gone more for my head, arms and shoulders. There! No need to make such a fuss!”

Diva looked rather dispiritedly at the wall of rock overhead. “I suppose we should get back up there now.”

Six looked at his watch and then shook his head. “It has taken us too long. By the time we got back to the top the winds would have started, and there is no way I want to take that climb with winds whistling into the top of the chimney. No, we will wait until tomorrow. We will have to spend the night here.”

Diva looked at the damp cold stone floor, and shivered. “Terrific!”

He looked around for the least damp spot, and indicated it. “My lady?”

She gazed at the stone again. “Tsskk!”, but sat down against the rock.

Six began to whistle through his teeth. They sat like that for about an hour or so. Diva found herself getting colder and colder.

“Why are you always warm? It is freezing down here.”

“I’m a Kwaidian. It’s our blood circulation. It is further from the surface than yours. Keeps us functioning when the temperatures are too low for comfort on Kwaide.” He paused for a moment. “I could always put my arm around you … if you insist.”

“NO!” Diva edged a few milimetres away from him.

“Good!”

Diva stared at him. “Good?” she repeated.

“Yes, good. Why should I get cold just because you have an inferior body heat retention?”

“Well, I certainly don’t want any of that hugging stuff!”

“No. Me neither.”
 

There was a strained silence for another half-an-hour. Then Six gave a shiver.

“Hah! Now you are cold too!” said Diva with glee, though through chattering teeth.

“My back hurts. Leaning against this icy rock isn’t helping. I will have to lie down.” He matched action to words.

“Oh. Sorry! Can I do anything to help?”

“The cold seems to make it ten times worse. It would help if I had something warm to put against it.” Six gazed off into the distance, and she could see no sign of a grin. He winced again. “It might help to keep you a bit warmer, too.”

Diva considered. It
was
awfully cold down here. Six waited, wondering how long it would take her.