The Namura Stone (3 page)

“Yes, but even though I knew you were inefficient beings I could never have imagined anything as bad as this! I wonder you have any progeny at all!”

Ledin felt that this demanded some sort of a response. “It is the way all mammals deliver their young.”

A shiver of revulsion went through the orthogel entity. “It sounds like torture to me! Even Atheron wouldn’t have been able to think up a worse torment than that, surely? What is the point of creating immovable bones if you are going to make them move later on? It is very illogical.”

Six glared in Arcan’s direction. “Shut up, will you, Arcan? Can’t you see you are making him feel ill?” He gave a jerky nod in Ledin’s direction. The prospective father was now holding himself upright against the tree trunk with some difficulty and looking decidedly green about the gills.

“I am sorry.” Arcan subsided. “—I suppose you transients can’t help the way you are made.” Then he floated over to the man who spoke to canths, and began to converse with this worthy about the colour system on Xiantha.

Six punched Ledin on the arm. “Nothing to worry about,” he said airily. “She will be fine.”

“You are hardly an expert,” retorted Ledin.

Six raised his eyebrows. “I have fifty children, don’t I?”

“They all came out of test tubes. That isn’t the same.”

Six blenched himself, remembering the extraction process only too well. “It was very painful,” he said indignantly. Then he realized that Ledin was referring to the female side of the process, and reddened. “And Diva nearly died after they operated on her.” Too late, he heard his own words, and tried to remedy them. “Though Grace won’t die, of course.”

“DIE?” It was too much to take. With one bound Ledin crossed the gap between the two trees, and bent solicitously over his wife.

“What is happening?” The two trimorphs and the visitor had suddenly appeared, and were hovering slightly to one side and above Six.

“Grace is dying,” Arcan told them morosely.

“DYING?” The morphics all turned black and shivered.

Six blew out air. “No such thing! She is not dying,” he said. “She is having the baby.”

Arcan pulsated. “The rigid structure which holds her together has begun to bend.”

The morphics shivered again. “Then her bones are breaking?”

Six shook his head. “They don’t break, exactly. It is something to do with the ligaments, I think. They just … err … sort of stretch a bit.”

The visitor turned a reproachful gaze on him. “How can a rigid structure stretch?”

“Well, hang it, I am not a girl, am I? How am I supposed to know? They just do. Leave it, will you?”

The morphics and Arcan held a spirited conversation, clearly trying to understand why evolution had not done a better job, while Six stared at them balefully out of the corner of his eye. He scuffed his foot against the hard dirt of the canth farm. He would really have preferred to be somewhere – anywhere – else.

“Six!” His wife’s tone, across the expanse of beaten earth, was peremptory.

Six straightened to attention. He didn’t like the ring of worry in Diva’s voice. “What?”

“Go get some Mesteta wine, will you?”

Six relaxed. “Going to toast the baby?” he asked, pleased.

“It’s to sterilize our hands, you idiot, not to drink! And bring boiling water, too.”

A blaze of panic swept through the orthogel entity. “Now they are going to burn her,” he muttered to the hovering morphics.

“Of course they aren’t!” said Six. “The water is to wash the baby.” Then he looked over at the scene under the temaris tree rather doubtfully. “Isn’t it?”

All the quantum forms regarded him steadily. He shook his head and then signed to the canth keeper, who led him in the direction of his own house. It took them some minutes to boil water, but they made it back as fast as they could. As they dropped off their provisions, Six got a good look at Grace, who was lying on the ground with sweat pouring off her brow. Ledin was stroking her hair, but the Kwaidian was biting down on his lip, and Six noticed that he had drawn blood in one or two places.

Diva reached out an impatient hand for the wine bottle, then signaled him to move back. “Too many people here,” she said sharply. “Get out of the way.”

Cimma smiled up at Six, more understanding. “It won’t be long now,” she told him. “All is going well. Don’t worry.”

Six retreated back to the Eletheian tree, and updated Arcan and the others. Then they all settled down to wait. Six found that his mouth was dry.

Time seemed to pass very slowly.

The sun clawed its way steadily upwards until it was overhead.

Each cry from beneath the other tree made all of them look uncertainly at each other.

More time passed.

The sun now poured all of its strength down on the beaten earth.

And then, suddenly, there was a thready wail in the hot Xianthan sunshine and they all looked up, expectant. Six took a step towards the temaris tree and then paused.

The wail was repeated, then settled down into the prolonged mewling of a newly-born baby. Six slapped the canth keeper on the back and gave a grinning nod at the others.

“I told you so!” he said triumphantly.

But there was a bustling still going amongst the other group, and he looked over with more worry.

The sounds of the baby crying gradually disappeared as the cleaning process finished and it was wrapped in warm towels. There was more movement as the afterbirth was removed and then Grace herself was tidied up, before they were beckoned over to the temaris tree. Sheepishly, one by one, they moved across the small distance.

Grace was propped up now with her baby lying along one arm, tucked up against her shoulder. She was clearly exhausted, but looked happy.

“We have a son!”

Six touched knuckles with Ledin, who was looking almost as exhausted as Grace, and then gazed down at the tiny figure. He put one fingertip down and felt a feathery touch as one of the minute hands held it momentarily. A broad smile lit up his face. “What is his name going to be?” he asked.

Grace looked across at the canth keeper, and her eyes sparkled. “He will make his own name here on Xiantha, of course,” she said, “but for people who live outside Xiantha, he could be … ‘Temar’, if Ledin agrees,” —she looked towards her husband, who nodded— “because he made his way into the world under a temaris tree.”

Six nodded, then smiled down at the Sellite girl as she lay on the sandy ground, in the shade of the tree. He remembered the first time he had seen her, when she and Arcan had saved all of the donor apprentices from certain death. It seemed as though it had happened to other people, in another life. “He is a beautiful baby, Grace,” he said gently. “Congratulations.” Then he slapped Ledin on the back with a wide grin. “How does it feel to be a father?”

Ledin swallowed. “Terrible. I feel quite sick. For a moment there, I thought Grace was going to die.”

Arcan and the morphics now crowded in. “Are your bones broken, Grace?” The orthogel entity sounded worried.

She stared. “No, of course not. They will move back into place now.”

“They will unbend?”

She grinned. “I certainly hope so.”

Arcan and the visitor exchanged some sort of telepathic communication. “Extraordinary!” he said finally.

FAR AWAY, ON Dessia, the prognosticator was enjoying a well-deserved popularity. Just over a year ago, he had been merely one of 570 billion. That had been before one of the travelers under his orders had detected unusual activity around the planet the binary system knew as Pyraklion. It had been enough to ensure that the prognosticator, and his whole family, be put on the privileged list.

But the stroke of utter genius had come with what he had thought of afterwards, and that was what would make him immortal, his body to be cryolized and conserved forever in one of the cryonutrient tanks available for only the select few. The prognosticator’s would not be a transitory life; he would be reconnected completely as soon as technology allowed it, and in the meantime would be used to create many thousands of the individual travelers which manned their spaceships.

In the old ages, before the new order had been devised, any Dessite could qualify for traveler donation; sometimes even prisoners had been used. It had turned out to be a poor policy. The travelers were often faced with complex decisions which an ordinary Dessite mind couldn’t contemplate. For the last century only a select few – only those who had proved their utter dependability - could be donors. There would be no more travelers who would betray their homeworld!

The prognosticator would also, under the new laws being drawn up, be eligible to rule the whole Dessite empire. He had become one of the preserved twelve, one of the enjoined, one of the tallest. And he had no intention of staying as merely one of the twelve. No. His intention was to be the Prime. Prime to the council of guardians of the Dessite hinterlands. The only one that mattered. The one who decided. The most thought-of Dessite in history. The one to win most accolades. Whether he was to be alive or dead when that moment came was irrelevant. He did not distinguish between the two; he had no need to, now.

His mind drifted back to that greatest moment, a little over a year ago now, when the aliens had landed in the Pyraklies system.

He had realized at once that it was probably the best chance that the Dessites would ever have to find out more about the ortholiquid and orthogel and had been quick to order the traveler to monitor the situation with video cameras, well-camouflaged with their blending mechanisms. As soon as he had ‘seen’ what had happened in the cave half way up the cliff on the planet the transients knew as Pyraklion, he had realized the possibilities for his kind. He put his extraordinary mental powers to work, slowly linking with all of his most trusted collaborators, together nurturing a plan which might be viable.

For the small brain inside that particular traveler’s ship was of immense worth. It had been formed from the cryonutrient tank of one of the most loyal Dessite subjects ever to waft the seas. That had allowed the prognosticator to consider a drastic strategy.

Between them, they had devised a way to follow the orthogel entity, to trace the final destination of the Ammonites, to transport part of Dessia from place to place. The drum roll of glory had been so close to the prognosticator on that occasion; he had almost been able to savour the pleasure of being head of the whole empire, one day.

Deep inside the floating island which the Dessites referred to as the Island of the Forthgoing, back on the Dessite homeworld, the preparations had been carefully checked and rechecked. It would require perfect timing and coordination if they were to succeed, and the prognosticator knew that practice made perfect.

Dessites had frozen all over the planet as the time came for the operation to be put into action. Most of the planet was now listening in to what was happening in one small traveler’s ship, many thousands of light years away.

In orbit around Pyraklion, the small traveler had been shaking with pride. This would be fame, indeed. It might only be a small bunch of neurons in a nutrient tank, but here was its chance for true recognition!

The mental link with the prognosticator strengthened, and the small traveler braced itself. Now was the time to act! NOW!

With a tremendous effort, it allowed its thought to move over towards one wall of the small spacecraft. There, carefully stored in piles, were the various dozens of video camera spheres which the Dessites had been using for generations to take images of new planets they visited. The tiny traveler concentrated all its effort on bringing one of the spheres down, down inside the nutrient tank, towards its own position.

The watchers on Dessia gasped as the sphere slowly opened.

Inside, there was only room for a small quantity of liquid and a few thin strands of neurons. But calculations indicated that it would be enough. The traveler slowly separated about a quarter of his cells, peeling them off where they drifted close to the open sphere. The traveler had virtually no motor skills, but, luckily, it did have control of the sphere.

Slowly it pushed the casing towards the slim threads. Equally slowly the sphere reacted. The globe inched towards its new components, until it surrounded the delicate wisps of life, and ripples of approbation ran through the membranes of those watching back on Dessia.

The visitor shut the casing and then tried to contact the strand of DNA trapped inside.

Would the prognosticator’s idea work?

There had been long moments of tension after the two sides of the sphere closed over the small strands of neurons trapped inside. If this part of the experiment didn’t work, then the idea was doomed to failure.

Even the traveler seemed frozen in place, waiting to see if the new strands would have enough strength to manage the globe, whether they would be able to match in with the command circuitry.

At last the sphere had given a shaky wobble, and there was such a rustle of membranes from the homeworld Dessites that even the partial being in the sphere heard them. It wavered, then managed to get control of the sphere, and rose out of the nutrient tank, hovering above the liquid in triumph. All over Dessia eye-folds fluttered in furious applause.

The small sphere tested out its systems to check that the internal waterproofing, which was a specialty of the Dessite homeworld, was standing up to the test.

It was. The globe was fully functional and able to communicate individually with the homeworld. Within a short span of time it had flashed out of the spaceship and down to the planet. Long before Six and Ledin were hauled up from the cavern by Diva, the small globe had activated the blending device and had secreted itself aboard the New Independence. The transients from the binary system had noticed nothing. Within a few hours they had transported back to their own system and no-one had been the wiser.

Dessia had waited stoically for news from its smallest, yet most important component. Hours had turned into days and there was real concern for the well-being of the few neurons trapped in an airless environment. They knew that it would be touch and go whether the subtraveler would still be alive when the Ammonite animas were released.

Nerves had been taut on Dessia, and the prognosticator’s descendancy noticed that the parent stock was worried. They tried to cheer their progenitor up by waving their developing membranes around in concerted waves, something that usually made him shake with amusement. It had no effect now.