Shipstar (33 page)

Asenath was holding forth to the rapt assembly in a booming voice that had made Tananareve flinch when she first heard it. Study of the Folk conversations had given her some hints of meaning, but the long phrases Asenath used seemed more like chanting. Tananareve asked Memor, “Is this some kind of ritual?”

“Quite observant of you. She is reassuring the Kahalla that the Sil and humans who escaped their capture will be taken in hand soon. No damage shall follow from this Kahalla failure.”

“What’s that about their … children?”

“Nothing important. The Kahalla are losing many eggs to the appetites of scavengers. They seek us to somehow ward off their predators.”

“Will you?”

“We do not intervene in natural matters. Nature runs itself well.”

“You told me earlier that you Folk ran Nature.”

Memor gave a fan-flutter of amber and blue, which seemed to mean pleasant amusement. “And so we do. At a remove, of course. Long ago the Folk set up this dynamic equilibrium, a predator–prey oscillation that will not go too far.”

“So these … Kahalla?… won’t get wiped out?”

“No, they are sufficiently intelligent and wary to deal with their predators—a nasty little vermin species. Both predator and prey have a low mental level and can adapt to changes in the other species, as they occur over long times. Evolution is thus contained. Populations do not sprawl out, consuming natural lands. There are several such interlacing balances in this zone.”

Tananareve pondered this as Asenath’s long bellow went on.

Then a new droning cry came—
shree, kinnne, warrickk, awiiiha …

Memor said, “Ah, they have awakened the memory box.”

Asenath paused, then went on, trying to boom over these new deep tones with their extended cadences. Tananareve saw that the laboring sounds came from the tower with the eye. “What is it?”

“A form of consciousness prison. From a hotworld it came and we are its stewards. Or rather these Kahalla are its attendants.”

“A … rock mind?”

“We have several strewn about the Bowl. They are slow but sure and alert us to long-term trends that otherwise might elude our quick eyes. You are, for example, a somewhat old-fashioned individual intelligence, organic. This is an inorganic one, and the Kahalla are a sort of hybrid mind who attend the stone lattice mind. They are nothing like the vast collective intelligences—but never mind, we have had enough of this slow-thought place. And our escape approaches.”

awrrrragh yoouuiunggg arrraff kinnne yuuf …

Tananareve had not noticed the huge wall of scaly flesh settling down from the sky, beyond the talking tower. Across its rough brown skin silvery fins fanned as the bulk waltzed lazily into place. It spread slender tentacles grasping for ground. They played across the land. Kahalla ran to secure these to boulders, looking in perspective like ants bringing down a sea fish. The tentacles wrapped around catch points and pulled the great thing snug to ground.

Asenath finished and the Kahalla bowed deeply, on their knees with a low, sonorous moan that grew in volume until it washed over Tananareve. Asenath returned the bow, gave a vibrant trill salute and a four-color fan-flurry of farewell. Memor scooped up Tananareve and made short work of the journey to the immense thing—a bag inflated to fly, she guessed. But alive.

By now she knew that Memor enjoyed the open land, and spoke, too, of “the serene voyaging our living craft affords.” They entered by a flap that opened like a mouth. A huge tongue unfurled and Memor walked up it, carrying the primate on her shoulder. It felt to Tananareve unpleasantly like being eaten. Memor said in her booming Anglish, “The mucus of this great beast had been engineered to carry a delicate fragrance unlike anything else. Its scent is a luxury and settles the mind, a necessary aid in air travel. Chaos may come to rage all about us, but we shall be mild.”

Tananareve sucked in a lingering taste. Like flowers, though with an oily undertaste. Bemor, too, sighed, though he said, “We must make haste,” and bellowed an order to small scampering things that had come to greet them.

They were in a wet cavern. This “skyfish” as Memor called it was like a cave of moist membranes lit by phosphorescent swirls embedded behind translucent tissues. They reminded Tananareve of illuminated art back Earthside.

A deep bass note rang, ending in a
whoosh
that made it seem like an immense sigh. Grav momentarily rose, and Tananareve knew they had lifted off. Ruddy wall membranes fluttered. Warm air eased by them as they entered a large bowl-shaped area. Sunshine lanced through membranes so clear, Tananareve thought at first they were open to the air. But the sweet breeze swept first one way, then reversed, and she realized that it was the breathing of this great beast. The tower that had seemed so tall outside now dwindled away and the skyfish turned, so the sweep of a plain came into view. Clouds stacked like fat blue plates loomed on the shimmering distance. She could see the long arc of Bowl curving up into a pale sky; she was looking across a distance the size of planetary orbits. The eggshell blue of seas dominated the somewhat washed-out greens and browns of landmasses, and made pale the sheet grays of mirror zones. Across that flapped big-winged angular birds with long snouts and crests atop their bony heads.

Memor met the captain of this gasbag being. The whole idea of a captain was odd until Tananareve realized they were like people riding a larger animal, as she had ridden horses. Memor spoke quickly, with booming comments from Bemor, all too fast for her to fathom.

The captain listened for a while, big eyes watery and anxious. This creature was somewhat like some of the Folk—a big thing, four-legged and solemn and slow, mouth wide and salmon-pink and lipless. Bursts of words rattled from the mouth. Its narrow nostrils were veined pink, with fleshy flaps beneath. Large round black eyes watched them, yellow irises flashing in the slanting sunlight. From the top of the captain’s head sprouted a vibrant blue crest, serrated and trimmed with yellow fat, reminding Tananareve of a cock’s comb.

The captain took them on a walk through the ramparts, view balconies, and residential segments of the great living volume. A narrow hissing hydrogen arc heated its eating levels and lit the translucent furniture in blue light, where workers of four and six and even eight legs labored to bring forth live dishes for Folk delight. Pressed, Tananareve cracked a carapace and slurped out the warm white flesh of some sea creature. The next dish was a kicking big insect basted in creamy sauce. Memor said something about how keeping it alive through the cooking added savor to the proteins, but Tananareve decided that it was best to know less about Folk gustatory tastes. She tried to break the thick legs with her hands and snap off the tasty eyestalks. Crunchy but with a peppery flavor that stung her lips and sent a scent like stale meat into her sinuses. A green pudding turned out to be a slime mold that thrust probes out into her mouth as she tried to chew it. The flavor wasn’t nearly worth it.

Still, it was useful food. Folk ate meats and veggies she found mostly dull or repulsive, with little in between. She sat in the steady warm breeze of the skyfish’s sweet internal breath—were they essentially sitting in its trachea?—and listened as Memor rattled on to other Folk sitting nearby about matters political and somehow always urgent. Or so her limited translation abilities told her. Finally Memor turned and said to her—whom she described to the other Folk as “the small Invader primate”—“You must surely admire our craft. We took the early forms of this creature from the upper atmosphere of a gas giant world, long ago. Their ancestors found our deep atmosphere a similar paradise, to cruise on soft moist winds, and mate in their battering fashion, and wallow in our air, to turn falling water into their life fluid, hydrogen.”

“I doubt the primate can follow your description,” Asenath said, coming into view.

Tananareve warily backed away from the lumbering thing. She could
smell
the malice oozing from Asenath. “Still, she could be of some use in capturing the renegades of her kind, whom we shall soon intersect.”

Asenath ushered them all over to the broad window in the skyfish’s side. Elaborate orange-colored fins flexed near the back of the beast. They flared out, capturing winds like a sail, driving the bag forward. Tananareve felt a lurch and a dull thump. She had the sense of rumbling movement under her feet and in the living walls. Memor explained that the bag was “trimming” in flight by shifting weight inside itself. Asenath said, “Our admirable skyfish can torque about its center of mass, and thus navigate.” Tananareve watched the flexible yet controlled fan-fins spread out, at least a hundred meters long. Its gravid majesty seemed somewhat like a ship sailing at angles to the wind, tacking above the lush forest below.

Asenath said, “We are precisely on course to intersect the renegades. They are sailing on this same gathering wind.”

Tananareve watched the opalescent walls shimmer with hot perspiration. Memor remarked that these were “anxiety dewdrops,” brought out by the laboring muscles of the great fish. The shimmering moist jewels hung like gaudy chandeliers, lit by the blue glow of hydrogen flares and phosphorescent yellow bands that ran across the high ceiling. One of the drops, bigger than Tananareve’s head, fell from high up and spattered at her feet with cutting acid odor.

Bemor shifted his bulk and remarked, “The new signal from Glory is coded in a different manner. We are having difficulties decoding it, except for a few images.”

Memor shifted into Folkspeech. “Best not to let the primate know. Show what images you have.”

Tananareve felt her pulse speed up but kept her face blank and made a show of turning to gaze out at the view. A huge bird was flapping by below, eyeing the skyfish. Casually she stepped away to the spot where, leaning forward, she could see reflected in the transparent window the projection Bemor was showing Memor. It was an animated series of images. A man in a white robe advanced into view and something leaped at him. It was an alien with ruddy skin and three arms. It jumped at the man, and huge feet kicked him to the ground. The alien wore tight blue clothes that showed muscles bulging as the view drew closer. The alien head was like a pyramid with sharp chin and bones like ribs under tight, ruddy skin. Two large black eyes glinted at the man, who was getting up, his smiling face mild and his long blond hair flowing. He was holding forward an object—a wooden cross—to the alien. Tananareve saw suddenly that the man was Jesus. The alien leaped on the man, hammering him with feet and two fists. Its third arm was bony and sharp, with nasty nails tapering to points. The alien slammed this into the head of Jesus, shattering the skull into pieces. Blood flew into the air and Jesus collapsed. His body lay still. The black alien eyes looked straight out from the screen Bemor held and thick lips pulsed, swelling and narrowing in what must have been some kind of victory gesture.

The sudden raw images startled her. A surge of anger tightened her throat. She made herself keep still and watched the bird flap out of view on its four wings.

“Ah,” Memor said, “similar to the earlier one. But look—we are intersecting the tadfish, as we had hoped to. Now we can deal with these primates, brought together.”

Tananareve saw swimming in the filmy air below them a gossamer tube shape. Fins stroked all along the barrel body as it rose from the forest below. Somehow, she realized, the Folk had found Cliff’s team, and now had them cornered.

PART XI

D
OUBLE
-E
DGED
S
WORD
, N
O
H
ANDLE

It is not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It is because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

—S
ENECA

THIRTY
-
THREE

“What’s that?” Irma pointed.

Hanging among cottony clouds, near to the woody horizon, was a thing that struck him as a silvery, flapping blimp. Coming toward them.

“What’s that?” Cliff echoed to Quert—who scowled.

“Escape,” Quert said. “So you say?”

“From what?”

“Folk know where we are. Track us.”

“They can?” Terry asked.

“Makes sense,” Irma said. “They must have sensors embedded in the original frame that holds the Bowl together. Any smart building does. The trick would be managing such a torrent of data.”

Quert gave an assenting eye-click and fell silent. The Sil took their orders from Quert and studiously let Quert alone speak for them. Cliff wondered about this but did not want to bring up or question an arrangement that was at least keeping his small party out of the hands of the Folk.

When the spidows gave up the chase, the tired party of Sil and humans had moved on awhile, crossed a stream that Quert said spidows could not, and then stopped without a word. Cliff could feel the adrenaline collapse; he had gotten used to it after so many scares and flights. He wondered how the Sil managed crises. The same play of hormones?

Some cold food with water from the convenient spring made them all feel better. Cliff had little storage left in the electronics he had carried all this time. He had chronicled all the places he had been and enjoyed looking back over the images. One from a good while back he liked, a clear day when the great sweep of the Bowl and its jet was sharp and clear. Too often the deep atmosphere blocked long views with enormous stacks of cloud. He had caught some of the team in the foreground, slogging along near a zigzag tree.

“You’re keeping notes?” Irma asked. “I filled my data storage a long time ago.”

Cliff shrugged. “I’m either lazy or just plain picky. After the first week, when I was taking shots of every flower, tree, animal, insect, bird—well, harder to be a scientist when you’re on the run.”

“One thing you’re not is lazy.” She looked at his small working screen. “Notes for each shot, even.”

“I do them at our rest stops, like this.”

But there was no real resting, as the Sil made clear.