Skeen's Search (38 page)

Giulin swallowed, frightened a little but also indignant at the condescension implicit in the words. “Oh, no,” he said. “How could I be?”

Basso giggle, an absurdity sufficient to restore his equanimity, though he didn't quite know how to react to invisibilities speaking behind him while a visible enigma mouthed silently in front of him. Courtesy urged him to turn and face the speaker, but he knew in his bones there was no one there. Besides, wherever the Voice sounded, there was a real question about who or what was talking. “Come along,” the Voice said, “they won't miss you. We'll show you the holds where the volunteers are stashed. You'll want images of them, won't you? Sure you will.” Virgin reached up and put her hand on his arm, nodded gravely, then she turned and ambled out again.

Giulin glanced around, shrugged and followed her, a disconcerting mix of laughter and whispers trailing along behind him. He couldn't separate out all the voices though he thought he could recognize six different speakers which confused him even more since he'd in a way come to terms with the bass voice, accepting it as the expression of Virgin's thought. Six, though, even more, it was enough to addle any reasonable Ykx.

She led him to a dimly lit hole filled with noises that seemed to echo from eternity. He came from a cave-dwelling species, at least that was what he told himself, but that was then and then was millennia and millennia and millennia ago, and now was a bad-smelling hole filled with scratchy creaks and deep shuddering groans. Not enticing. She looked over her shoulder with that charming meaningless smile, beckoned to him. “Catch hold,” the Voice said, “g-free slide, ride it down.” She pushed off from the sill, drifting up until she could catch hold of a loop attached to a moving chain. Eyes wide, he stumbled after her, had to deal forcibly with a stomach in revolt as the weightlessness hit him, and only remembered to catch hold of a loop after one of them hit him in the head.

It wasn't at all like soaring, but after he got used to the noise and the odd sensations in his interior, he started to enjoy the ride. He gave a small tentative whoop and grinned as it echoed away down the tube and came back at him. There was more laughter around him and several of the voices wove their own whoops in and out of the echoes. He started whistling a jingle he learned when he was a cub and the voices joined him, improvising harmonies of their own.

He tumbled from the tube swaddled in laughter and snatches of song, Virgin dancing round him with a bright-eyed exuberance that convinced him (though he wasn't so much thinking as reacting) that if she was crazy, more people should be skewed that way.

The first hold was a vast cylinder divided into a maze of pipes and gratings with solid panels thrown in to provide sleeping cubicles where the travelers could get a measure of privacy. Already Ykx cubs were making themselves thoroughly at home, g-pull being half what they were used to, they were playing tag through the pipes, swinging from level to level, spreading their downy flight-skins and soaring for short hops, laughing, whistling, shouting, chanting count rhymes, playing with the echoes. Tweeners were scattered in small groups, some gathered around habold players, dancing and singing, others worked off their energy in races through the crooked lanes between the cubicles, some were pairing off, talking intensely in whispers. Adults were stretched out on tumppads, dozing, reading, thinking, or they sat in groups drinking iska, reminiscing or speculating about what was waiting for them, or they exercised in groups or alone, working off surplus energy. The lighting was clever, areas of creamy glow, other areas of shadow, light shifting with dark, slowly but continually (except in those few spots where a reader had flipped on an auxiliary light), the eye never tired because there were always new shapes, textures, intensities to look at, something to break up the stark stiff horizontals and verticals and mitigate the deadening effect of so much metal. Giulin turned to Virgin. “Did you plan this … ah this stage effect?”

She knew what he meant, nodded. The bass Voice chuckled behind him. “Amazing what one can do with such recalcitrant materials.”

Giulin blinked. “Yes,” he said, uncertain what attitude he should take. He sucked in a breath, got his imager ready, took a few panorama shots then plunged into the noisy busy hold to get closer more detailed images, forgetting everything else in his fascination with the task.

UNLIKE PICAREFY'S HECTIC JOURNEY (HECTIC IN THE FIRST PART, THOUGH THE LATER LEGS PROVED MORE SEDATE), THE TRANSPORT TOOTLED PEACEFULLY ALONG. AT FIRST ZELZONY HELD HERSELF APART FROM THE COLONISTS, SPENDING HOURS WATCHING THE CONVOLUTED FLOW OF FAINT COLOR IN THE COMMONROOM SCREEN, TALKING OCCASIONALLY WITH BOHALENDAS, THOUGH HE SPENT MOST OF HIS TIME WANDERING ABOUT THE BRIDGE AND THE ENGINE ROOMS, USING LIPITERO TO QUESTION HOPELESS. LATER, ZELZONY DESCENDED TO THE HOLD, SEARCHING FOR SOME CLUE THAT WOULD HELP HER UNDERSTAND HOW THESE APPARENTLY SANE AND SENSIBLE FOLK COULD DO SOMETHING SO EXTRAORDINARY AS LEAVE BEHIND FOREVER EVERYTHING THEY KNEW AND HELD DEAR. GIULIN SPENT THE FIRST PART OF THE VOYAGE IN THE FIVE HOLDS, ENTERING HUNDREDS OF IMAGES TO THE MATRICES THE KINRAVALY HAD PROVIDED, TALKING TO OTHER TWEENERS AND SOMETIMES TO THE ADULTS, PLAYING EXUBERANT GAMES WITH VIRGIN AND HER VOICES, FLINGING HIMSELF AFTER HER THROUGH THE SEVERAL TRANSPORT TUBES. HE SLOWED DOWN SOME AS THE DAYS PASSED, SPENT MORE TIME READING, BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE ZEMTRALLEN HAD PASSED ON TO HIM FROM THE ALIENS, THAT TRAVEL IN A STARSHIP WAS A LOT LIKE SITTING FOR A LONG TIME IN A SMALL ROOM WITH NOTHING MUCH TO LOOK AT.

AFTER SIXTY-SEVEN DAYS HOPELESS BROUGHT THE TRANSPORT INTO REALSPACE AND SLID IT INTO ORBIT ABOUT A CINDER OF A WORLD.

PART VI: THROUGH THE GATE

Lipitero stood beside Zelzony watching a world turn in the screen, a dead cinder of a world moving past beneath them. “That was once Surranal, the Nagamar homeworld,” she murmured. “It was a waterworld, green and wet and hot. Timka told me that in the Tanul Lumat, that's a university of sorts, a museum of sorts, a lot of things, anyway, in the Tanul Lumat they have ancient Naga carvings and tapestries showing Naga memories of Surranal. It was a lush, beautiful place before the Six Year War.” She sighed. “Hopeless has had a message from Skeen. She's out and clear, she'll be here in two or three days. Kildun Aalda is five days on.” She held up her hands. They were trembling. “Five days. Six maybe. And I'm home. And I'm home with Ykx to fill the Gathers.”

Zelzony only half-listened to Lipitero. She was thinking more of Rallen and what the coming years would do to it. Nothing would be the same. Even when she got back from this useless trip, she couldn't be sure she'd find the world she left. The Kinravaly had rented Workhorse, paying for it with some of the Great Treasures in the Kinravaly's Horde, masterpieces collected over the millennia since the Ykx had been on Rallen. What good will treasures do us if we die, she said, it isn't as if they'll be destroyed. Very much on the contrary, so Skeen tells me. But they won't be ours, Zelzony said, they won't be here. They are the heritage of our species, Zo. A part of that heritage, Zeli. Only a part. Tell me, my love, tell me if you can, what use are treasures to a nation of ghosts? With that tug we can mine our asteroids, the aliens say some of them are almost pure iron, our Seekers confirm the possibility. We gain far more than we lose by this trade, Zel Zeli. It's not exaggerating much to say we can have space flight in ten years, my Zel, our own tugs. In twenty, who knows where we'll be. Ah, Zo, Zelzony thought, ah, Zo, she wanted to say, it isn't as easy as that. You can't separate out a single strand of endeavor and keep it pure. In ten years we might have our own tugs, in ten years we might have war. Do you have any notion how bad things are getting in Urolol, how explosive that situation is? Do you have any notion how far the infection from there has spread through workers everywhere? Even Itekkillykx workers are restless and unhappy. They aren't content to be what they were born to be, not any longer; they can turn ugly at the blink of an eye. Do you remember telling me that honors mean more than achievement to our managerials? You're going to have your hands full of displaced managerials, Zo. Once this space ranging gets started, they won't be about to cope, they won't have the flexibility of mind, and I might be one of those, saa saa, all this gives me a headache that won't go away. Yeasty times! tchah. So many angry Ykx. We've always comforted ourselves with the proved notion that Ykx may get angry and thump each other now and then, but they don't kill, that Gurns and Gurn-sets can argue and reach the point of explosion, but they explode into boycotts and attacks against property, they don't fight wars. Where's that comfort now when three Ykx have tortured and killed for the pleasure in it? Are they sports thrown off the main line of development, sterile failures, at least none of them had any children. No official children. Are there others out there with that heritage and ignorant of it? Are Peeper, Eshkel and Laroul harbingers of genetic change? Are there hundreds, perhaps thousands, among us with that capacity for savagery who don't know it themselves because for one reason or another it hasn't been triggered in them? What's going to happen in Urolol? In Marallat? What are we going to do about them? Borrentye thinks he's getting somewhere in Marallat, that he's going to be able to displace Sulleggen and her pets with a minimum of distress, but he's got nothing to work with in Urolol. The Consortium won't budge a hair's breadth and the workers have mocked his efforts, he has nightmares of a bloodbath one day soon, there's too much hate, too much fear, the place is too polarized. I suppose we'll have to wait till it happens then do our best to patch things together. Aliens, ayy All-Wise, look what happened when a few came down on us, there'll be more of them now that we're found. This first bunch is friendly, probably honest enough, though who can say that for sure even now? but what will the next bunch be like? What will they do to us? Ah, Zo, I'm supposed to handle this, how can I? Hmmm. Bohalendas is riding this wind easily enough, well, he's an easy-going sort, not much interested in anything outside his field. Have to talk to Selyays, get an angversen group ready to evaluate alien artifacts, alien ways of thinking, we'll need one of those translators, saa saa, Zel, scratch a reminder on your ear, you don't like thinking about all the confusion out here, but you won't be able to get away from it, so a translator for the Kinravaly Rallen and the Zem-trallen. What are they going to do to us, my Zo? All these aliens. Ahh, I was placating my guilts when I brought young Giulin along. My undermind could be brighter than my intellect. He comes from Seekers and managerials, he's no rebel or malcontent and has no intention of leaving Rallen, but he's at ease here, with the colonists and the aliens both, he's made friends with the weird one called Virgin, he uses the shipways as if he'd been born to them. Might be a useful thing to gather angversen groups of Tweeners. Use Giulin to help with this, saa saa; if I'd been thinking, perhaps I could have talked the aliens into bringing a dozen tweeners along for the ride. No use regretting what can't be helped. Ay All-Wise, I dreamed of soaring starflight, but that was controlled soaring, on our own terms, at our own pace. A dream. A nightmare now. Control? Saaa.

She scowled at the world cinder turning below them and shivered. We are Ykx. We ARE Ykx. We are YKX. That will not happen to us.

Picarefy came swimming round the sun and wiggled into orbit beside the transport, Skeen's face bloomed in the screen on the transport's bridge.

“Ta, Hopeless. How's things?”

“Ta, Skeen. Damn quiet. Virgin's enjoying herself, but me, I'm about to rot.”

“Mmf. Things are going to get hectic soon enough. I came round by Kildun Aalda. Fuckin' Junks, they've cleared the planet all right, but they've left behind a snagship and a couple maulers, I don't know what for, that world is starting to smoke. Hooo, Hopeless, we're going to have to go in when the Gate's nightsided or we'll fry.”

“Try for a sneak?”

Skeen grinned. “Nooo. Petro came up with some neat little tricks. By the way, tell her the Shear worked but it was rather hard on Pic and us. Anyway, give me a five-hour headstart and don't hurry a lot coming after me, Pic will squirt the specs over to get you there when the Gate is in the twilight zone. We don't want to hang around waiting for the world to turn. I should've knocked off that snagger by then and got the maulers out of action. I'll take the Lander down and mark the spot for you to set down. Um, you'd better get the Ykx ready to go; you're going to have to get them out in a little short of twelve hours.”

“No problem. You know, I like them, these Ykx, they don't screw around messing up like most species I come across. Pass me the specs, this is some thing we're doing, Skeen, but believe me, I want it over with. Virgin and me, we've decided we're going to use the rest of the gelt endowing University with Xeno scholarships, then start looking about for something interesting to do.”

“Keep a little for me, eh? I've got a shield for you like nobody's seen, fool all but the best and luckiest of the flow readers.”

“Ah, well, that's different, but you know I have to talk to Virgin and the Abode before I get fancy.”

“Right. Where you want to meet?”

“Sundari. Cidder won't stick his long nose in there. I assume you kicked him in the nuts again and he'll be steaming around hunting for a way to get his teeth in you.”

“So I did and so he is, far as I know. What's the Eye say?”

“Sundari, that's all.”

“Ready?”

“Shoot.” A soft crackle of arriving data, a beep when the flow was done. “Got it. See you down on Aalda.”

“Ta.”

Five days later, Hopeless translated to realspace, located the crippled Honjiukum maulers and eased round them in a wide half-circle. She listened a moment to the messages they were exchanging, grimaced. “That's one crazy mad bunch of Junks, Virgin. How long before reinforcements arrive?” She listened a moment, nodded. “Good enough, we should be out by then.” She listened again. “I know, but that's Skeen. You got to take her as she is or let her alone. I'd bet she did her quota and more getting clear of Cidder's lice and couldn't bring herself to plink another can.” She listened. “Uh-huh, looks like that shield's worth at least half what she's going to sting us for it.” She listened. “Yes. Got it. Here we go.”