The Namura Stone (39 page)

WHEN ARCAN ALLOWED himself to succumb to the forces which were dragging him over as a prisoner to the Island of the Forthgoing, he had company. Hidden deep inside him were Six, Ledin and the visitor. Six and Ledin were firmly ensconced inside a bubble of orthogel, which had made Six glumly relive the moment Diva had been carried away from him. The visitor was doubly protected, as he was also tucked inside a large carrysack, which had been lined with a material soaked in some remnants of namura dust. It would protect him both from the mental strength of the Dessites and the carbon nanographite which would surround him once they were inside the floating island. It was unlikely that he could be detected like this, and he would have a good chance of getting to the Island of the Preborn without any of the Dessites realizing he was here. He did not wish to provoke their anger just yet.

Arcan tried to react as he had the previous time, lethargically allowing the Dessites to submit him to various scans and probes. It was a simple matter to transport any namura deposits out of the way of the probes, and he was fairly sure that the scans couldn’t pick them up in any case.

Six sat in the orthogel bubble, fuming with impatience and impotence. He knew that Diva was risking her life to combat the Ammonites, and he couldn’t wait for his own turn to come.

Ledin looked across at his friend. “All right?”

Six nodded. “I have spent far too much of my life in orthogel bubbles,” he said. “I want to get going.”

Ledin felt just the same. “I hate waiting.”

Six grinned. “It isn’t one of the Kwaidian traits, is it? We are more about doing things.”

Arcan must have been listening. “We will have to wait until they have finished all these tests on me. There are far too many interested Dessites around at the moment. You are just going to have to be patient, Six.”

“I keep thinking of Diva.”

Ledin gave a small jerk of his hand. He couldn’t stop worrying about Grace, either.

Arcan replied to Six. “Diva can look after herself.”

“I know.” Six’s face blazed with pride. “She always could.”

“Then stop worrying about her. And Ledin should put his trust in Tallen and Bennel to help Grace, too. All this worrying is counterproductive. Can’t you two do something to pass the time away?”

Six glared. “What do you suggest? We watch a
vimpic
or two?”

It was Arcan’s turn to give an angry flash. “There is no need to be sarcastic, Six. You know I was unaware of what was going on when you were a donor apprentice, at first.”

Six bent his head. “Yes, I know. I am sorry. I am just … oh, I don’t know … eager to get started, I suppose.”

“We all are. Too much depends on this.”

“Should we let the visitor out?”

“No. We decided it might be too dangerous. He knows what he has to do; it is better to leave him until he is in the cryonutrient area. We don’t want to risk his detection too early.”

Ledin rubbed his eyes. “Don’t know about you, mate, but I could do with a bit of sleep. I was up nearly all night because of a malfunction in the docking area.”

Arcan made part of the bubble become a bed, and Ledin whistled. “All mod cons, I see, Arcan. Thank you.”

Six shrugged. “I suppose there is nothing else to do. I hope you brought enough air along for a prolonged stay, Arcan?”

“I did. In any case there are plenty of mask packs, so you won’t suffocate.”

Ledin stretched and yawned, and Six’s subconscious made him copy the action. He did feel surprisingly tired, he realized. It must be all this stress of worrying about people. He lay down on the bed, demanded a pillow of orthogel from Arcan, punched it a few times to make it comfortable, and then closed his eyes. Ledin was soon fast asleep, and Six was at least lying still.

Arcan was relieved. Now he could concentrate on giving the Dessites the answers they were expecting.

TALLEN WAS TIRING fast, on the beach by the Emerald Lake, but he had not been taken over yet by the Enaran Ammonites. He didn’t know if that was because, as a Namuri, he was able to block them better, or whether it was sheer luck, and they were too busy elsewhere. Whatever the reason, he had to be relieved.

Bennel was fighting like the true warrior he had always been. His punches were damaging and true, and Tallen wasn’t sure exactly how much longer he would last. At least the Namuri could see that Lannie had managed to drag Grace out of the water. Ledin’s wife was now writhing around on the sand, with Sanjai sitting on her neck, his own arms clutched around the squirming body of Temar. Even so, it was clear that he was having great trouble keeping her down. She was tossing and twisting her body, and Tallen began to be seriously worried about the baby Grace was carrying. She would do both of them great damage if this was allowed to continue for very much longer.

“Come on, Meritocrat!” he whispered, under his breath. “You need to do something – NOW!”

But the struggles persisted. Clearly, Diva had not yet managed to find the home of the astrand, or if she had, she had been unable to destroy it.

Tallen felt a weird, tugging sensation in his bad leg; it was trying to get his attention. No! Not now, please! He had to keep going. Too much – far too much – depended on his being able to keep these people safe. He grunted with pain, but battled on, aware of the irony that he was in a fight to the death with one of his only friends. He thought that the possibility of his ever reaching his 16
th
birthday, in the near future, had just seriously diminished, and took some twisted pleasure in the thought, although he had not expected to go out quite like this.

Struggling to kill him, Bennel’s eyes were starting out of his head, making the normally kind face quite different. The man was clearly beyond all reasoning; he was looking at Tallen with an eerie, vacuous expression that told the Namuri how very empty the soul controlling him was.

Then Tallen became aware of Lannie. She was creeping up behind her own husband, with a large metal cooking pot in her hand. It was Tallen’s turn to widen his eyes. He wanted to tell her not to do it, that her own husband could turn and kill her and know nothing about it, but he saw from her expression that she was well aware of the dangers. He tried to turn the Coriolan guard away from her, so that she would have a better target. Anything to prevent him from seeing who was creeping up behind him. The twisting movement in the shallow water threw up splashes of spray all around them, which helped, because the sound blocked his wife’s approach.

And it worked. Lannie was in position. She seemed to be muttering something to herself – perhaps some sort of prayer, thought Tallen. Then she raised her hands, closed her eyes completely, and smashed the pot with all her strength down onto Bennel’s skull.

The large Coriolan stopped in his tracks, and then, in slow motion, dropped his fists and started to turn around. He never made it. His whole body began to collapse, from the knees upwards, and he crashed into the few inches of water, his eyes disappearing into the upper part of his eyelids. The resultant wave soaked both of them.

Lannie dropped the pot with a cry and ran to her husband, carefully holding his head above the water, so that he wouldn’t drown. “Have I killed him?” she sobbed.

Tallen, trying unsuccessfully to get his breath back, bent over the prone figure. “Not quite. But remind me never to get on the bad side of you, Lannie!”

“I thought he was going to kill you.”

“He was doing his best. Without you he would probably have succeeded. I thank you.”

She waved him away. “I will take care of him now; you go and help Grace. I don’t know how much longer Sanjai can hold her.”

Tallen glanced over at Sanjai. Lannie was right; he was struggling to keep control of the Sellite girl. He nodded. “Thank you, Lannie. That must have been an extremely hard thing to do.”

She gave him a quizzical look. “You have no idea how often I have wished I could hit him over the head with a crock pot,” she said, managing to dredge up a tired grin, “I just never thought I would do it!”

Tallen did a double take. That was about the last thing he had expected to hear from the passive Lannie.

“Oh, get on with you,” she said, waving him away with another smile. “It’s all part of loving someone. You’ll understand one day, when you find a wife of your own.” She bent over and dropped a kiss on the cold, unconscious face between her hands.

Tallen made his way out of the shallows after a sideways look at her. He wasn’t sure he wanted to, not if his wife would be forever subduing urges to batter his skull into a pulp. He limped out of the water and made his way over to Grace. The kindest thing would be to knock her out, too, but he wasn’t certain how strong her own skull would be, and he didn’t want to damage either her or the baby. He ran up the sand to her, sat on her knees, and nodded to Sanjai, who was still desperately holding on to Temar.

“Here!” Tallen stretched out his arms. “Give him to me. Where are Raven and Quenna?” As he spoke, his eyes were roaming the beach, but he couldn’t see either of the two girls.

Then Sanjai gave a strangled moan, nodding upwards and backwards with his head. Tallen peered in that direction with his hawk-like eyes and his heart gave a momentary stutter at what he saw. Both girls were half-way up the tallest tree, and it was clear that Quenna was fighting to keep Raven from falling.

“Oh, no,” he murmured, remembering Bennel telling him about his daughter’s incapacitating fear of heights. “Hang on, Quenna! Please, hang on!”

Chapter 20

THE DESSITES WORKED in shifts; there was a constant to-ing and fro-ing around the tank which contained Arcan. However, it was clear which was the night shift and which was the day shift. At night, the tests carried out were negligible; those Dessites who were on duty simply limited themselves to watching, and waiting.

There were many video cameras around the chamber, and Arcan suspected that there were many more cloaked, invisible to any except their handlers. He knew that another incursion like the last one would now prove completely impossible. The Dessites were not about to make the same mistake as before. They had clearly taken quite a lot of measures to protect themselves.

But Arcan’s plan did not involve moving around the Island of the Forthgoing; he planned to transport his secret cargo to the Island of the Preborn, and he hoped that they had not thought to extend their security there. He thought it was unlikely they had; there was nothing on that island except cryolized bodies and a few attendants. He doubted the Dessites would think anyone could possibly have an interest in that.

Six and Ledin were now rested, but the visitor had been getting increasingly cross about having to stay within the stuffy space inside the carrysack and had insisted on its being opened. Six was not best pleased with the morphic’s grumbling.

“Look here, spindle-brain,” he told him shortly. “I have just about had it up to here …” he drew his fingers across his face, about the height of his nose, “…with all your moaning. Diva is risking her life for us right now, and all you can think of is your own comfort!”

The visitor turned black. “How dare you! You are only a transient, what would you know about anything?”

Six laughed. “More than you, apparently. At least I wouldn’t carry on just because I was shut into a carrysack.”

“It is hot in here!”

“It is hot in here!” Six mimicked him with a high-pitched voice, flapping his hands about. “Huh! No staying power, that’s your problem.”

“At least I have a brain, which is more than you, numbskull.”

“Who are you calling numbskull, pinhead? My brain is much bigger than yours!”

“Yes, but so much less efficient. You have all those raging emotions rattling around in there.”

“Well, be careful; they might reach out and choke you.”

The visitor sighed. “—If this namura lining doesn’t finish me off first.”

Arcan interrupted. “Right. We are ready to make a move. Are you prepared?”

“Thank Sacras,” said the visitor. “If you had left it any longer I would have been delivered in liquid form.”

Six gave a hiss of disgust and raised his eyes heavenwards. “We are ready, Arcan. Can you see where to go?”

“The visitor has shown me. He has vivid memories of his ancestor being placed there.”

“His ancestor?” Both Ledin and Six turned towards the carrysack.

The voice that answered was still slightly muffled by the material. “Yes, my ancestor. They called him Exemphendiss. He was a dissenter.”

Six raised his eyebrows. “Exemwhat? What sort of a name is that?”

The visitor flashed. “The name was modernized during the period of expansion. In the old language he was known as ‘he who would wish to separate himself from the rest by advocating a limiting of our numbers’.”

Six winked at Ledin. “Put that way, Exemwhatever seems quite short. What was it again?”

The visitor spun. “Exemphendiss.”

“And he wanted to limit your numbers …?”

“He wanted to implement birth control. He had established a way to prevent budding. We could have limited our numbers to fewer than 50 billion. If we had done that, then we would have coexisted with all the other marine species living at that time on Dessia.”

Ledin raised one eyebrow. “That sounds very sensible. Why didn’t the Dessites do it?”

The visitor gave a small buzz inside the carrysack. “They didn’t believe there was a problem. They said he was exaggerating, that the planet could sustain many more of us. They accused him of trying to bring down the council of guardians, of being a traitor to the cause. He was summarily cryolized.”

“Sacras! Your former co-citizens sound like nice people.”

The carrysack moved again. “He was one of the lucky ones. Shortly after him, anybody branded a dissenter was actually terminated and their remnants evacuated into the water, to enrich the sea.”

“Oh, charming!”

“Actually Exemphendiss was rather more than my ancestor. I am part of his brain, so I suppose you could say that he was me, or that I am him. I still remember that last, long walk to the cryovat that was to be his final resting place. He was lucky; there was still room in the north-south chamber.” The visitor explained about the inadvisability of resting sempiternally with magnetic lines crossing your remains. Ledin and Six listened politely, although Six’s eyes were glazing over.

Ledin asked the question they had both been thinking. “Why on Lumina did they use your neurons for a traveler, then? I mean, if you … he … had been classed a dissenter?”

“At the very beginning of the space program, it was considered so dangerous that they didn’t want to risk any important neurons. I was really a … I think you would call it a guinea-pig. I wasn’t expected to live.” The carrysack shifted slightly. “In fact, over a thousand neurons were taken from Exemphendiss at the beginning of the space program, and only ten of us survived.”