Divergence

He put his arm around her, leading the way to where Tally was sitting silent and with closed eyes.

“Darya, we have no idea when or if Speaker-Between is likely to return. If you didn’t sleep at all, you ought to try again. I caught a couple of hours, and you can’t imagine how much better I feel.” He saw her looking around. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you sleeping if the Zardalu come back. And I won’t leave. I’ll keep watch right here.”

At his insistence, Darya lay down and closed her eyes. Given their situation, she did not expect to catch even a second of rest. She thought again of the Zardalu, of Kallik’s whistle of pain as her leg was twisted from her body, of the top of Tally’s skull flying across the chamber. Then she recalled Hans Rebka’s calm, pale face, and Louis Nenda’s anger at what had happened to Kallik, and his irrational self-confidence.

We might be as good as dead, she thought, but those two will never for a second admit it.

She opened her eyes and saw Hans Rebka watching over her. He nodded. She closed her eyes again and was asleep within thirty seconds.

Louis Nenda had not gone far after his encounter with Darya Lang. Less than three hundred meters from where she was sleeping, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor of a small, poorly lit room. Crouched across from him, her carapace close enough for him to reach out and touch, was Atvar H’sial.

“All right.” Nenda’s pheromonal speech pattern diffused across to the waiting Cecropian. “What did you get from the sonics?”

“Less than you hope. In fact, I think it may be wise to share this information with Captain Rebka and Professor Lang. It has no conceivable commercial value.”

“Let me hear it, though, before we decide that.”

“What I saw through low-frequency sonic imaging is probably exactly what you received through your own vision. The external form of the Zardalu is impressively powerful.”

“Nothing new there. One of ’em was enough to hold Kallik.”

“Easily so. The more interesting information came from the whole-body ultrasonic imaging. The necklace of pouches that circles each Zardalu below the main ingestion organ contains, as E. C. Tally reported, young Zardalu in various stages of development. The broad bands of webbing around the upper part of the tentacles conceal no weapons, as I am sure you also suspected, but food and personal belongings. I do not see that as a threat. More important: the Zardalu have twin circulation centers for their body fluids. The main one, that which carries hematic oxygen, was readily accessible to ultrasonic imaging. It lies deep within the center of the main trunk, half a meter below the necklace, and half a meter below the surface.”

Atvar H’sial produced simultaneously the pheromonal equivalents of a curse, a sigh, and a mocking laugh. “Regrettably, the heart is not so easily accessible to your knives as to my sonar. It lies deep. The same is true for their brain center, and for the main conduits of their central nervous system. The brain is below the heart, and the nerve column runs down from there, in the centermost line of the body. It is an efficient design for protection from harm, far better than yours or mine.”

“Damnation.”

“I know. I am sorry, Louis Nenda. I was able to read your emotions when Kallik’s leg was torn off, and I share your ambitions. But their realization will call for more than simple violence.”

“What about your weapons? Don’t you have anything that can take ’em out of action?”

“Not permanently. It was difficult to bring effective weapons through the Bose Transition Points.”

“I told Darya Lang you’d blow the Zardalu away.”

“That is, unfortunately, wishful thinking. I have knives, but too short to reach the Zardalu brain or heart. I also have three flash electrostatic devices. Not intended as weapons, but they will inflict a painful surface burn. On something the size and strength of a Zardalu, however, they would be no more than irritants.”

“Forget it. You might as well try and tickle ’em to death. Is that all?”

“I have one device which was not seen as a weapon in the Bose Network. It could serve me well — but at your expense, as well as that of the Zardalu.”

Atvar H’sial reached back under her wing cases and produced a small black ovoid. Nenda stared at it curiously.

“Doesn’t look like much. What’s it do?”

“It’s known as a Starburst. I have two of them. They each produce an intense flash of light in the wavelength range from oh-point-four to one-point-two micrometers. Any creature which sees by means of such radiation will be temporarily or permanently blinded, depending on ocular sensitivity and directness of exposure. I believe that Zardalu eyes operate in that wavelength region. So, unfortunately, do humans’, Lo’tfians’, and Hymenopts’. I, of course, will be unaffected.”

“Better tell me when to shut my eyes, then. It’s nice, but it don’t solve any problems. How and where could you ever use it? We gotta think, At.”

“We do; and I am obliged to point out to you that we do not have a monopoly on that process. Distasteful as it will be to you, Louis, we must work with Captain Rebka and Professor Lang. At least until such time as the Zardalu are no longer a problem. After that…” The great blind head swung around, as though taking in the whole of the million kilometers of Serenity that surrounded them. “After that, and only after that, can we again begin to operate in rational terms. Which is to say, commercial terms; for which, I suggest, there is more than tempting potential here.”

“You had the same impression as I did. If we could once get the run of this place, there’s things that will have the whole spiral arm drooling.”

“And there is far more than we have so far been permitted to see. Somewhere in this artifact lies the technology that built the being that Rebka and Lang identify as Speaker-Between, and created an intergalactic transportation system. If those secrets can be ours—”

The Cecropian paused. The great ante

Nenda turned with her. “What’s wrong, At? More Zardalu?”

“No. But I am receiving faint new aromatics, like those from The-One-Who-Waits, diffusing in from far away. Unless I am gravely mistaken, the one known as Speaker-Between is entering the stasis-tank chamber containing Rebka, Lang, and Tally. It is, I suspect, a meeting that we would be wise to attend.”

CHAPTER 23

Free movement around the interior of Serenity might be denied to humans, but there were others for whom that restriction did not apply.

Darya had new proof of that when Speaker-Between appeared. The alien construct drifted up like a silver ghost through the impervious floor of the chamber. Halfway through he stopped and began decreasing steadily in size. When Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial came hurrying into the room and had their first sight of the Interlocutor, they were confronted by a bulging hemisphere apparently immovably embedded in the solid floor. Speaker-Between looked just like the upper half of The-One-Who-Waits.

The flower-shaped head craned forward briefly to face the new arrivals, then turned back to Rebka, Lang, and the newly awakened E. C. Tally. The embodied computer was pale and shaky, but fully alert.

“We’ve been waiting for you since the last meeting,” Rebka said. “There are big problems. Do you know who the Zardalu are?”

“Of course.” The flower head drooped and nodded. “Since their arrival they have been my responsibility. It was I who turned off the stasis tanks to permit their reanimation. What is the purpose of your question?”