Howling Stones (16 page)

The one who had stepped forward raised a three-fingered hand in greeting. Narrow, slitted eyes stared unblinkingly. The native ignored the rain that coursed in gleaming rivulets down his bare skin.

“What is it you wish here?”

Though it was hardly the most propitious time for exchanging pleasant inanities, Essasu felt obligated to at least try to talk the natives away, as opposed to shooting
them outright. Wind whipped their sharply pointed ears sideways as they awaited his reply.

“Why, to check on our human friends and make certain they are all right. It is a bad storm and we feared for their safety.” He was pleased with his practiced fluency in the native tongue.

The seni exchanged a look. “They have never had trouble during any other storms,” remarked the female member of the trio. “Why would they need your help now?”

Essasu restrained his impatience, not to mention his anger at being spoken to in such a fashion by a member of a lesser species.

“We are simply paying a courtesy. You wouldn’t understand. It is—
sssish
—part of our mutual kusum.”

The younger male spoke up. “We have listened often to the humans speak of their relationship with your kind. The road between you is difficult, and broken in many places.” Eyes double-blinked. “You come with many weapons.”

Essasu hissed under his breath but remained polite. Above him, the station’s inhabitants continued to evince no knowledge of the AAnn presence. “We must protect ourselves against the creatures of the night. Surely you can understand that.”

The leader of the trio replied. “The creatures of the night are denned up out of the mastorm.” His eyes were fixed on the AAnn’s.

Essasu glanced at his wrist. Barometric pressure was starting to rise. The fury of the mastorm was always brief. Lose the storm and they would lose their anonymity.

The native was right, of course. All sensible creatures took cover at the first sign of an incoming mastorm. So—what were he and his three companions doing out here, exposed and unprotected? He posed the question.

“You were seen coming from Iliumafan and it was decided to find out what you wanted. The humans did not warn us of your intended arrival.”

“It is only a courtesy call. There is no need to announce such things.” Essasu’s exasperation was starting to boil over. His finger twitched on the trigger of his pistol. “We apologize if we have violated any protocol.”

“Not ours.” The female glanced upward, her long snout pointed toward the underside of the station. “You come at night, at the height of a mastorm, with weapons showing. That is not the manner of visitors intent on help.”

He’d had about enough of this aboriginal interrogation. “It is really none of your business. You would not understand such things.”

“But we do understand such things,” the younger male declared. “Anyone who appears uninvited outside the hut of another in the middle of the night with weapons drawn can only mean mischief.”

“Why are you interested? The motivations of our visit remain a matter between us and the humans. It does not concern the Parramati.”

“But it does.” The senior male was insistent. “You have come into our space.”

Essasu indicated the station. “The humans live in it.”

“By our leave. You do not have permission to enter. You must apply through the appropriate village. Your people have followed the appropriate procedures before and know them well.”

Barometric pressure continued to rise while Essasu’s anger began to soar. For a moment he considered composing a formal apology and calling the whole business off. But sooner or later these three were bound to inform the two humans of the nocturnal intrusion. However
much Essasu might deny it, upon receiving the information the pair of softskins would surely intensify their guard. And there was the little matter of the breach his techs had made in the station’s security perimeter.

He took a step forward, gesturing with the pistol. “Let us alone. We have business here that does not concern you.” Unlike the neuronic pistols carried by two of his companions, the explosive projectile weapon in his hand would make no fine distinction between human or seni. He didn’t want to kill these natives, but he was tired and running out of time.

The three Parramati took an impressive hop backward and immediately raised objects in front of them. Expecting spears or knives, Essasu flinched, then relaxed. The natives held only samples of the familiar, etched glassy stones that formed such an important part of their kusum mythology. If thrown, they wouldn’t make much of an impact.

His voice gentle and reassuring, he addressed the trio’s wary leader. “You are not really going to throw those at us, are you?”

“The sacred stones are not for throwing,” the senior native declared with dignity. He held out his own. “This is a road stone, and that—” He indicated the irregular mass reverently cradled by the other male. “—a stone of the earth.”

“A seeing stone.” The female displayed her own modest burden.

“Very interesting.” Undertones of third-degree humor crept into the commander’s voice. The subtleties were lost on his audience, of course. “Then you should be able to see the path we intend to take.”

The native leader’s lips rippled. “You must find another road. Yours does not come through this place.”

“Why do you care? Ah, yes. This business of your space.”

One of the techs impatiently shook water from her headgear. “Enough, Commander. Let us be done with this.”

“I agree.” Essasu raised his pistol. “We must finish what we came for, and I regret that your interference requires a response. All space is our space, and within it the AAnn go where they please.”

“This is not your road.” So saying, the senior male turned his back on the commander. As a threatening gesture, it didn’t carry much weight. Essasu aimed carefully and assumed that his companions were doing likewise. A single silent shot to the back of the head would end this unfortunate dialogue cleanly.

All three Parramati tossed their stones into the air. They aimed them not at the scaly intruders but at one another. There were many times thereafter when Essasu carefully reviewed what had happened. It was very clear. It just wasn’t very believable.

Spinning through the night toward one another, the three stones appeared to slow. Silently they struck. Instead of tumbling to the ground, they stuck and hovered, the resultant unified mass visibly altering its shape like the parts of a completed puzzle. A pale yellow-green efflorescence emanated from the amorphous lump, intensely bright in the darkness of the storm-swept night.

A disk appeared beneath the suspended mass. Several body-lengths in diameter, it formed a translucent barrier between AAnn and Parramati. The reflective surface was bright with stars. Beyond, the natives could be seen huddled together and chanting softly.

A projector of some kind, Essasu thought in disbelief. How had these primitives come by such a device? One of the techs was jogging his shoulder.

“Commander? The storm is ending.”

“I know.” He gestured. “Step through this. Shoot all three natives but do not damage their interesting device. We will take it back with us and let the appropriate specialists examine it.”

Did the humans know anything about this? he found himself wondering. If so, all the more reason to eliminate them. An upward glance showed the station still quiescent, its inhabitants still oblivious to the little drama being played out below them. It wasn’t surprising. The violence of the storm would have smothered the sounds of a small war.

“Choose!” The senior male was speaking again, from behind the disk. “The road that leads back to Mallatyah—or this one.”

“Some kind of mirror device,” Essasu murmured aloud. “I wonder how they came into possession of it? Well, we will find out later.” He gestured sharply.

Two of the tech-soldiers stepped forward, simultaneously crossing the lip of the disk. A couple of brief, startled screams resounded over the communicators just before they fell out of sight. It was exactly as if they had stepped into a hole. The disk swallowed them as neatly as if they’d gone over a cliff.

Darting forward, Essasu and his remaining companion peered cautiously into the swirling translucency. They could see the pair who had gone in and over, flailing and kicking madly as they tumbled out of sight. Not down, he thought. They weren’t falling down so much as up. He started to put out a hand.

The remaining tech restrained him. “Commander, don’t.” She struggled to pull Essasu back from the brink.

Shaking her off, he reached out. His hand and forearm entered the translucency. His suit sensed nothing unusual, but something pulled forcefully on his arm. With
an effort, he drew it back. At the same time he recognized the pattern of stars revealed by the disk, remembering it clearly now from the standard manual on Senisran. The faint memory had been nagging at him ever since the disk had first materialized.

The constellations depicted in the disk were exactly what would be seen if one were standing somewhere in the planet’s southern hemisphere and looking up at the night sky. He could not pinpoint the exact location. The Seurapan Reef system, perhaps, or the Challooriat Atolls. Those locales and others were known to him from official familiarization scrolls that suddenly seemed no longer immaterial. Both island groupings were situated almost exactly as far below Senisran’s equator as Parramat was above it.

The disk
was
a hole, or if one chose to use the Parramati definition, a road. Right through this side of the planet.

The two unfortunate tech-soldiers? They had fallen, all right. Right through Senisran into the night sky in the southern hemisphere. Shaken, Essasu lifted his gaze to the three Parramati. They were watching him silently.

The storm in his mind mirrored the greater, darker one raging about him. Three stones come together: earth, road, seeing. A way of seeing a road through the earth to the sky?

But how? Though more administrator than scientist, Essasu still was aware that several important laws of physics had just been violated directly in front of him. Not magic. He was no believer in superstition. It was technology, but of another order. Three stones. Surely the Parramati weren’t responsible for them.

Then who were? How had they come to be here, on this backward watery world? Clearly the locals had learned how to make use of them. Had they been instructed, or was learning the properties of each individual stone a matter of trial and error? He’d seen no switches thrown, no surreptitious controls nudged. The Parramati had simply thrown the three objects together.

To become useful they had to be combined. A single stone was nothing more than a lump of inscribed slag. But when pushed against another, or several others, it
helped to open a gate. In this case, a gate to another part of Senisran.

His thoughts reeled. Mallatyah and Torrelau were each home to dozens of the sacred stones. Many more were held and cared for on the other islands of the archipelago. Were some inert, no more than what they appeared to be, or were all potentially capable of equally inexplicable higher functions?

What else could the sacred stones do? What would happen if a sea stone was combined with a pair of road stones, or growing stones with sky stones? Did only certain specific combinations have a higher function, or would any work?

Puzzle pieces, he told himself. Hundreds of them, scattered the length and breadth of the Parramati archipelago. Each one looked after by a designated individual, or family, or clan. What else, if anything, besides the sky disk transporter could the stones become?

He had a thousand questions, the answer to any one of which was more important than the elimination of a couple of bothersome humans.

The female was speaking. “We are sorry for your friends, but they chose their road.”

“Yes. Yes, they did.” Mumbling, Essasu and his remaining companion backed away from the glistening sky disk. Rain was sucked into it as readily as bodies, he noticed. How much control did these primitives have over a device clearly not of their own making? Could its locus be shifted? Toward him, for example? What if they pushed it forward and it slid under his feet? Would he, too, fall through to the sky in the southern hemisphere?

Madness it was, utter and complete. Except that he’d seen it happen. As she retreated, the surviving tech stumbled slightly, reminding him that he was not alone, that another had witnessed the impossibility.

Tilting his head slightly within the protective hood, he tried to raise the pair who had vanished into the disk on their communicators. When there was no response, he addressed the other members of the expedition who had taken up positions just inside the station’s breached defensive perimeter.

“Interdiction is aborted. Return to the floater. Any who delay will be left behind. I repeat, return to the floater.”

The tech glanced at him. “Commander, the mastorm … should we not wait awhile?”

Essasu continued to back away from the three Parramati. “We are leaving
now.”
Suddenly nothing, not even the roaring storm, posed nearly the threat implied by the inexplicable translucent disk.

“Did you see it? Did you see what happened?”

The tech responded with a gesture of first-degree concurrence, massively emphasized. “I saw, Commander, but I do not understand. What happened to Suugil and Rieibaa? Where did they go?”

“On a journey from which I fear they will not be returning.” Again he addressed himself to his suit pickup. “Assemble at the prearranged point. Do not, I repeat, do not attempt to question or interfere in any way with any natives you may encounter.”

Moments later the remainder of the assault team had reunited outside the station’s defensive perimeter. The senior among them eyed the commander searchingly.

“What happened? Why have we aborted?”

Essasu stared back evenly. “It seems we have chosen a wrong road.” At this, the other members of the group looked uncertainly at one another. Essasu did not elaborate. Let them query their surviving companion. Other thoughts occupied his thinking.