Tropic of Creation (39 page)

The nest occupants were on edge, humming shrilly. Everyone had been upset since the death of Triplet’s baby. They let Sascha bury it, but regarded her with something that felt like blame.

Now, one of the youngsters was at Sascha’s elbow. In the clatter of rain, Sascha hadn’t heard it approach. He snatched a fruit that she had by her side, scampering off, shredding the pod in a trail of yellow pulp. Casting the seed stone aside, he collected his two siblings, and the three of them bounded viciously toward her.

She rose, clutching her lamp. Flipping it on, she sprayed them with light, causing one of them to veer away. The other two slowed, but advanced.

They had grown during her stay here. Now they needn’t stretch their necks far to look her in the eye. She shouldn’t have stared at the lead youngster, it inspired him to move. He leapt forward, but collided with his sibling who had the same aggressive thought. As they extricated themselves from their tangle, Sascha backed up toward the nest wall to protect her back.

Now Brat was among them, droning in excitement, shoving them with his long arms, but playfully. One of the young ones bit him. This wasn’t play anymore. Brat screamed, and Triplet’s head rose from the nest. Her hum filled the enclosure, a short burst of melody. The three siblings now advanced on Sascha, heedless of Triplet’s song. Brat worried the hind legs of one of them, and a small skirmish broke out, sending hums through the nest and causing the vines to tremble with the noise.

Sascha’s ever-present light was losing its power over the youngsters. Now it was only a direct pulse of light that made any difference. She swerved her lamp from one
to the other of the two foremost creatures. They moved apart to make it harder for her, circling to each side.

Behind the woody wall in back of her, she could hear the droning bass thrums of Demon, always a counterpoint to the events in the nest.

The cubs charged. Simultaneously, Watchful erupted from her placid seat. Sascha had never seen her move so fast. She vaulted, her hum pitched so high it sliced painfully into Sascha’s ears. The floor of the nest trembled with her landing, and she crashed forward, ripping up vines and hurtling them at the youngsters, smashing a paw into Triplet’s face as the mother advanced to protect her young.

The three young ones fled to the farther side of the enclosure as Watchful stomped and screamed. Triplet relinquished the center of the nest to Watchful, who raised her head and sent a long, soaring note into the sky. Every Singer now stood frozen, staring at the old denizen. A stream of drool fell from the side of her mouth as she stood there, panting at her exertions.

The uproar was over. Now Watchful turned her great blue eyes to stare down on Sascha. Sascha waited, stick-still. Something in the eyes of her protector had fled.

Watchful advanced toward her. It was a slow, jerky advance, punctuated by hard stomps of her great feet. Sascha knew to back up. And then Watchful moved to one side, forcing Sascha to retreat along the perimeter of the nest. The creature was still panting, her warm breath hitting Sascha in the face, smelling of baking bread. They were headed in the direction of the back door.

Watchful stomped closer, sending Sascha into the opening in the viney wall. The Singer stomped again, leaving no doubt that Sascha’s welcome had run out.

Sascha stood on the border between den and forest. Her mouth parted, to say something to Watchful. But what
could she say?
I’m sorry for the blood. I never meant for it to come
.

Now it had. And just as she had always feared: disastrously.

Sascha turned from the Singer and walked through the hole in the nest wall.

Demon was waiting.

V
od stood up from the watch he had been keeping over Ooan, fellow digger, erstwhile rebel for such a brief span. The physiopath disconnected the tube in Ooan’s windpipe. There was need of it elsewhere, as dozens of fluxors lay here in the SecondWay, driven from the usual ways and bloodied from skirmishes.

At his side, Harn muttered, “Another rug we will never see again.”

Vod heard the message below the words
,
We are dying, fluxors are dying, while you wait
.

The sick lobe was crowded, overflowing into the narrow tunnels of the gomins’ secret world. Vod went from pallet to pallet, encouraging the wounded, paying respects, while Harn kept to his side like a bad conscience.

Nefer had used restraint against those flaunting gomin robes—she was no fool to provoke a reaction among the fluxors—but when she made a show of her troops in the PrimeWay, the fluxors, in an excess of zeal, provoked her guards, who retaliated. There followed a surge of agitated
statics who moved against gomin sector, and deaths occurred.

Zehops then opened the SecondWay to the wounded, perhaps jeopardizing the ancient gomin retreat, but proving her mettle. Now fluxor guards stood at every hidden portal into the SecondWay. Well, Vod reasoned, if they had not gained much, they were at least holding on.

Vod and Harn walked the crowded tunnels, barely able to pass among the pallets and those ministering. Voices echoed strangely in these ways devoid of the hab, where smooth, unfeeling walls seemed more like tubes than home.

This is the ThirdWay, Vod thought. No longer a hideout for gomin, it was now the gallery of his revolution.

But Harn interrupted his reverie, boring home his point. “How long will you wait, Vod-as? If they but knew, they’d turn on her faster than you can say
Nefer Ton Enkar.”

He’d heard it before. He’d said no before. But Harn would not leave his side, and there was no lobe of privacy, no escaping Harn’s voice.

Vod answered, “What ships she has, she’ll launch. And then what will we have loosed?”

Nefer wasn’t ready. If she were, her ships would have burst through their confinement DownWorld and be cruising the Neymium Belt by now. Harn made a sour look, not wanting to hear the rest. “Then we’ll have a new enemy: Congress Worlds. Where will our struggle be then? Back-minded, Harn-as, backminded.”

Vod accepted a morsel of food from a digger in a tattered white robe. They served him as though he were their prime leader, they looked to him for answers, for direction. He thought they would not long follow him if they comprehended how little he knew, how little he had of the certainty they needed. He nodded in courtesy at the digger, as though the plate of food was his due, acting the part even in front of Harn.

“You talk of containing her, Vod-as,” Harn responded, “but she is containing us! She is controlling us, controlling you. The longer we wait, the more flock to her. We need to be outward, as she is!”

“That is a wager we’d lose. How many turned on Nefer’s guards to protect us? How many urged against Nefer in the flow? Plug in, Harn-as, wager for our cause, see how many join you.” He locked gazes with his coworker. Then, challenging him, he cocked his head to a data trunk clinging to the wall. Harn looked at the trunk, then at the floor, acquiescing.

They had been in the flow, reading its crests and surges. Every span, Vod was plugged in, contending with the self-styled Extreme Prime. He fought Nefer for the fore and backminds of the dwellers, a battleground where he could test himself without ultimate risk. He and Nefer traded speech for speech, argument for argument. This struggle dominated the flow, with Vod reminding the dwellers of the many dead from the reign of Hemms-Nefer, the many injustices endured by the gomin.

But it wasn’t enough. He must give the dwellers more than digger and gomin grievances. There had always been digger deaths. They sacrificed so that others could dwell in security. It would be tradition.

For revolution he must have something more powerful than complaint. He must have a vision. A vision tied to the prosperity of the kin nets and the strength of the bloodlines.

There grew within him a vision of a new time of outwardness; of a new alliance with humans. Ahtra security would be based not on arms, but on trade and renewal. It would extend beyond Down World, encompassing the FarReaches, their galactic home. It was not, he admitted, the absolute security Nefer promised. It was relational, a process of ahtra becoming secure in relation to human security. As the Data Guides said, all matter, all life was a
process. No thing was fundamental in itself. There is no foolproof security. It made Zehops and Harn nervous for him to say these things publicly. But it was his vision.

He might be no philosopher, but it would have to do.

Down the way, he saw Zehops hurrying toward him. For all her personal courage, he saw her pale for the first time.
Well, if Zehops falters, she brings a dark strand of news, indeed
, he thought.

“Come,” she said, breathlessly.

“With arms?” Harn asked, clearly sharing Vod’s alarm.

“Just hurry!” she urged. Dwellers, those who could walk, followed the three of them in a jumble of voices. Weapons were drawn, rumors flowed, and the odor of fear stained the air. “An army …” someone said. Vod and Harn were running now, close on the heels of Zehops Cer Aton.

They came to a hidden entrance, tucked in the back of a lobe. The guards stood aside, and Vod and his companions crawled through.

They were in Zehops’ den.

Now, with the clamor of the SecondWay muted, they stood in the quiet apartment, looking to Zehops for the cause of such a rush.

She took Vod by the arm, murmuring, “We ran out of robes.”

As he turned into the way, a ribbon of light caught his eye. Down the path were two bright ranks of dwellers, lined against the hab walls, in military order. Stretching to the next bend in the way stood dwellers wearing armbands of white, holding such weapons as mavs and knives, and lengths of hose. Slowly turning in the other direction, Vod saw the same banners extending to the limit of sight.

He caught Harn’s slow blink. They were witnessing the gathering of his army. The White.

Zehops whispered in his ear: “Say something to them.”

He
was
trying. But his voice had fled.

Turning to Harn, he murmured, “Now we will move against her.” Harn nodded.

“But first, I’ll talk to them, one-on-one. You, Harn-as, walk down the way, speak to them, know their names.”

Harn smiled, and turned to the fluxor beside him, first in line.

Vod and Zehops walked the other way, taking the long walk down the length of the armed ranks, learning their names.

T
hey crept through the night, not stopping to rest, the five of them, the last of the contingent of the
Lucia
and the
Fury
. With Juric and Pig wounded, the defense fell to Eli, Nazim, and Vecchi. Vecchi fought like a madman, an ahtra mav in one hand, an L-31 in the other, firing alternately, or two-fisted, at anything that moved.

By dawn they were staggering, and pressing on through a light rain that evaporated under the crushing light of the two suns. Juric looked like the walking dead, his face rigid and blanched. His arm smelled like it had been dead a long time.

Then they heard Vecchi shouting up ahead. Nazim strode forward, the domino raised for action. In another moment she was back.

“Sir. It’s there.” Her grin looked positively feral. “The
Lucia.”

They walked out of the tall grass to see Pig standing at the edge of the clearing, gazing on the
Lucia
with something close to religious rapture. Vecchi was prancing around the ship, slapping its sides and hooting. Even to
Eli the squat, gray transport ship was a vision of beauty. The industrial housings of the external modules were sculptured and symmetrical. A profusion of rivets dotted the craft like stitchery, interrupted by tanks, ports, casings, feed lines, forward and aft fuel tanks, and landing/take-off assemblies. A work of Congress Worlds art.

And swarming with vines.

Vecchi jumped up and swung on one of them that draped from the radio array. He warbled like Tarzan, then jumped down, managing to convey his thoughts without accumulating push-ups.

“That will do, Private,” Eli said, grinning despite himself.