Jaydium (22 page)

Kithri emerged a few minutes later, still pale but steadier on her feet. She'd used one of her socks for a washcloth, and her face and hair were sopping wet. She sat down on one of the two empty benches and Eril took the other. Lennart solemnly dipped some water into a cup and handed it to her.

“Well,” she said after she'd downed the water, “that's over with.”

She glanced at their expectant faces and cleared her throat. “I guess you want to hear about it, huh? Mmmm... There were four or five tests with different kinds of lights, just like you told me, a couple of drills with small objects, and then a thousand questions, most of which Raerquel had already asked.”

As she talked, her color returned and her voice began to sound normal again. “I don't know how much good any of it did. They must have asked me twenty times how we got here, and even then they didn't believe me.”

“You did the best you could,” said Lennart.

Kithri didn't respond, not even a flicker of her gaze in his direction. Eril understood. Maybe things were different where Lennart came from, but here you didn't get any credit for trying. What you got was dead.

“Any idea how long before they make up their minds about us?” he said.

Kithri shook her head.

“If the gastropoids work anything like Dominion funding committees, it could be months,” Brianna sighed. “They delight in keeping grant applicants as anxiety-ridden as possible.”

Kithri managed a brief smile. “My father always said it was a foregone conclusion. The grant people only took their time when the answer was
no
and they were obliged to go through the formalities anyway. But he said you already knew it. Of course, none of this may apply to the sl — gastropoids. Who knows what they're looking for? I sure didn't.”

The door slid open with the faintest of whispers and Raerquel undulated into the room.

Eril got to his feet. News, this must be some kind of news. He held his breath, wishing that the gastropoid's metallic-tinted head discs were either more like eyes or less. He kept expecting to be able to read some expression in them and feeling frustrated when he couldn't.

Raeerquel paused beside the shallow pool. It lowered its head section and uncurled several feathery upper tentacles until they touched the rippling water. For several moments, it held them extended and dripping.

“Your ways are not ours, your...water is not ours,” it said. “Yet I honor the light within your water. I invite you, if you are so...moved, to be reciprocating.”

Without thinking clearly what that meant, Eril dipped his fingers into the pond and held them out, watching the drops fall into the water.
One body,
he thought,
and then separate, and then one again.
A profound gesture, he realized in retrospect. His impulse to act for all of them had been sound.

Raerquel slithered up to the table and halted, unfurling more appendages. “My mammalian friends, without yet knowing how much we have achieved together, still I thank you for your cooperativeness. Especially you, Kithri-human. I am aware of the pain you suffered for the advancement of scientific truth. To my thinking, your ability to transcend the discomforts of the body for a higher goal is itself proof of your personness.”

Kithri reddened and ducked her head.

“Any of us would have done the same,” Eril said. “It's important to establish a relationship between our species and yours. If we've got to satisfy your superiors as to our intelligence, or whatever they're looking for in us, then we'll do whatever we can.”

“We would have much to learn from your kind,” Raerquel began. “We — ”

Whatever the gastropoid scientist was going to say was cut off as a rumble like faint thunder filled the air. It started low, barely more than a vibration. It felt to Eril like a starship taking off from a nearby field. Kithri and the others scrambled to their feet. The shaking escalated sharply. The room shivered, slid sideways with a stomach-twisting jerk, and shivered again.

Earthquake!

“Let's get out of here!” Eril shouted. “Fast!” He yelled at Raerquel to open the door.

But the gastropoid scientist sat as if glued to the floor. Its thick head section wavered back and forth as it spoke. “Be calming yourselves until this activity has subsided and further information is forthcoming.”

Eril did not feel in the least calm as the room rocked again, rolling and swaying. Legs braced and apart, he rode the next wave. His skin felt cold and prickly. He tasted a familiar tang like the thrill before a battle broke loose.

“Our dwelling constructions are possessing considerable elastic properties.” Raerquel continued in its expressionless voice. “Only detachable external ornamentations present any immediate danger. Whatever the cause of this disturbance, the greatest protection lies within these walls.

“Elastic properties”
— that was so much comet dust! Eril knew glass when it saw it and he'd been through the Academy's survival drills. Even the doorways — if they could find them — wouldn't provide decent protection in an earthquake. Any moment now, the walls would crack and shatter under the strain. They'd be buried under tons of splintered crystal. And, despite its infuriating calm, Raerquel would be buried along with them. The slug wasn't going to do a damned thing to save them!

At times like this, Eril knew he couldn't count on anyone but himself. If there was any way out, he'd have to find it himself. But what? Where? Knowing he had to act now, he took a step towards where the door had been.

A muffled cry broke through the low rumble. He spun around to see Brianna hunched over the bench she'd been sitting on, her head buried between her knees. Her ribs, visible through the supple alien cloth, heaved in shuddering, soundless sobs, one after the other. Lennart wrapped her in his arms and rocked her back and forth, murmuring syllables of comfort.

Kithri stood behind Brianna, knees flexed, looking frightened but alert, ready for anything. She glanced down at the other woman and a puzzled expression flickered across her face.

Eril stared at them, momentarily baffled by Brianna's reaction. What the hell was going on with her? She'd been through a bad time with the pirates and then the lights, but he couldn't see her panicking like this, going half catatonic. Not from something like an earthquake. She had her limits — so did they all — but she was tough and self-reliant too. She'd have to be to work alone on a site like Stayman. Now she curled into a helpless ball, trembling violently.

Eril took a step toward her, not quite sure what he was going to do — drag her to her feet, slap her to break the shock? Throw her across his shoulders and carry her? Carry her
where?

Suddenly Possiv burst through the doorway, propelling itself across the smooth floor in a flurry of leaps.

“Clan-superior Raerquel! We are receiving confirmation from City-of-Light headquarters. NewHome has carried through with the threatened detonation in the Northern Arctic Desert. The emergency negotiation committees are disbanding — ”

Raerquel slithered to the doorway with unexpected speed. It paused, head discs gleaming kaleidoscopically, and turned back to the astonished humans.

“Urgent matters require my presence elsewhere,” it said. “Wait here, where you will be safe!”

The room shook as if Raerquel had slammed the door behind itself. Then came more rumbling, wave after wave, eventually dying into silence.

Kithri stared at the blank wall and the water that had splashed around the lip of the shallow pool where only a few minutes ago, Raerquel and Eril had performed that strangely moving ritual. Now her heart pounded and her hands clenched unconsciously into fists. Her mouth tasted metallic, as if she'd bitten her lip. Brianna might have turned inward on herself, shutting out the world, but what Kithri wanted to do —
needed
to do — was to run, strike out, hit something. Adrenalin, shock, conditioning — that's all it was. Not enough to save any of them now.

Brianna and Lennart had not moved. Neither had Eril. He'd been standing with his back to Kithri, taut and poised for action. He turned and his eyes locked with hers, burning as they had in the shattered crystal garden. She felt him reach out an imaginary hand to her and felt herself grasp it. Fire and hope surged through her.

She took one slow breath and then another. Her heartbeat quieted and she realized the quaking had stopped. The room was silent except for Brianna's sobbing.

“It's all right,” Lennart murmured, stroking Brianna's hair. “It's all over now.”

Kithri and Eril sat down at the table again. Kithri felt even more useless than she had at the camp. There was nothing she could do for Brianna that Lennart wasn't already doing. He kept talking to her, gentle soothing nonsense about how they'd be fine now and everything was going to be all right.

It worked better than the truth would have. Brianna stopped crying. By gradual degrees she unlocked her arms, straightened her back and lifted her head. Her hair hung around her face in damp curls and her cheeks were flushed, dark lashes beaded with tears. She dipped her hands in the table fountain and rinsed her face.

“You all right now?” Kithri asked.

Brianna turned reddened eyes toward her. “As much as any of
you
are.”

“I meant — about the way you reacted — ”

“I
know
what you meant!”

“I know when something's none of my business,” Kithri said.

Brianna pulled away from the circle of Lennart's arms. “I'm sorry. You're right. I owe you — all of you — an explanation.”

“You don't owe us anything,” said Lennart.

Brianna looked up at the ceiling, blinking back fresh tears. “We're locked in here,” she said, each word a visible struggle. “There's nothing we can do. But if it had been some other circumstance... If some action on our part had been required and I had
‘reacted'
like that...” Her gaze was steady and level now, her voice surer. “I could have cost us all our lives. I owe you that.”

“All right,” Eril said quietly. “What happened to you?”

And,
Kithri thought,
will you do it again, the next time something deadly dumps on us?

Brianna took a gulp of air and pushed her hair back from her face. “You have to understand, nothing bad ever happens —
happened
— to me. The security routines, even the infraprotection, they were just an exciting game. I even did my doctoral field work on Ytervi, with all those active volcanoes. But they went dormant the whole year I was there. I almost thought — no, I
did
think — I had a magic touch.

“Anyway, we'd been here about a half-year when it happened. We were mapping the underground chambers, working late because it was such a long climb back up and — ”

“Wait a second,” Kithri broke in. “Who's this ‘we'?”

“The others. There were four of us — Fabrice, the senior scientist who got us the grant to study the city, myself and two graduate students.”

“So where are they? I thought you were alone — ”

“Please!” Brianna held up her hands, eyes wide and white-rimmed. “I'll get to that! Just let me...tell the story...”

Kithri heard the grief and terror ringing through Brianna's words. She held her tongue and waited.

A few heartbeats later, Brianna took up the story again. “I'll never know if we got careless and didn't check the seismic predictors or if it was freak chance. We were below, as I told you. There was a quake — a big one — and a slide. Crystalline wall material, rock, dust. Everything. We were trapped. It might have been better if we'd all died then. But we didn't. It took three days. And the last day I was alone.”

She placed her hands, palms down, on the narrow strip of table surface. The scar tissue stood out, livid and shiny. Her fingers, with their blackened, broken nails, curled into claws. “The last day...I dug. And dug...

“I suppose...I've been a little crazy since then. I don't even remember how I got back up. I remember climbing out of the resuscitation unit...”

The sobs had left Brianna's voice, replaced by a dispassionate calm. Only her phrasing, clusters of words parenthesized by almost inaudible breaths, betrayed her.

“The computer's psychiatry module kept me on medication therapy for weeks. I could even go below for short times. To map the slide area. There wasn't much burial I could...needed to do. The Institute said I was well enough to continue on alone until they sent the regular re-supply ship.”

“You mean they'd send a special ship for the jaydium but not for you,” Kithri said bleakly. She thought of the weeks and months, waiting for the lithicycline shipments that never came, watching her father grow weaker and weaker, of the terrible moment when she realized there would be no more.

“None of it matters now,” Brianna said. Her hands moved like drunken moths, taking in the room, the shallow pool and the city outside, “Here is a whole new civilization — a
living alien
civilization — all mine to study! It makes everything that's come before it insignificant — the quake, the recovery — yes, even the pirates! Can you understand that?”

“Yes,” said Lennart, “I think we've all felt that way about something. I did about getting into space.”

Eril's eyes were grim, his expression cryptic. “We may have stumbled into more than any of us imagined.”

Brianna smiled, taking his words for agreement, but Kithri suppressed an instinctive shudder, hearing the warning in them.

o0o

An unfamiliar gastropoid brought them food, which they ate more for something to do than out of any real appetite. They were sitting around the table, picking at the last bits of seaweed and going over Possiv's message, when Raerquel came back. It paused again beside the shallow pool and repeated the ritual dipping into the water. Eril got up and did the same.