Divergence

Atvar H’sial crouched silent, apparently inactive.

Only at the last moment, when Nenda was close enough to reach out and touch Holder’s blinded eyes and opening maw, did the Cecropian act.

She took a glassy ovoid from within her wing cases. As Nenda was moved into position and the Zardalu’s maw gaped at its widest, Atvar H’sial jumped.

Two hind limbs stabbed at Holder’s blinded eyes. That was merely a distraction, while a forelimb thrust the oval object deep into Holder’s ingestion slit. A split second after the Cecropian withdrew her arm, the maw snapped shut.

The Zardalu emitted a strange, quivering scream. The great body jerked full upright. The tentacles holding Nenda and Kallik went limp. And as he dropped to the tu

The Starburst had triggered deep inside Holder. The light it provided was so intense that the body of the Zardalu became translucent, lit from within to reveal the interior organs. A diffuse blue glow shone from the maw, from the beak, from the eyes, even from the lower part of the canopy of tentacles. Nenda could see the dark ellipsoid of the brain, nestled in the center above the long cord of the central nerve conduit. Above that he could make out the shape of the eight-chambered heart, pumping its copper-based blood through the massive body. The Starburst itself was at the back of the maw, a dazzling point of blue.

As Nenda watched, that point of light vanished. Holder became again a tall cylinder of midnight blue, supported on powerful tentacles.

Except that those tentacles would no longer support the body. They splayed wider and wider, to spread across the whole width of the corridor. The torso slumped down at their center, lower and lower, until Holder stretched full-length along the floor, head toward her companions.

Louis Nenda moved out of reach. Atvar H’sial had insisted that the Starburst was not really a weapon. It would not explode inside a Zardalu, and it would not kill one. But even without that, the strength of the internal illumination was enough to put the Zardalu out of action, at least in the short term.

Nenda intended to handle the longer term himself. He had promised to take care of Holder personally, at the moment when the Zardalu had pulled Kallik’s leg off.

He drew the long knife from its holder on his calf. Maybe he could not stab the Zardalu’s heart, because it sat too deep; but he could sure as hell carve a way down to it. And now he knew exactly where it lay in the body.

Nenda started forward. And then he hesitated.

Twelve Zardalu were still active. The burns that Hans Rebka, Darya Lang, and E. C. Tally had inflicted from behind were having the desired effect, spi

But that created a new problem. Birdie Kelly lay immobile in his narrow niche by the tu

And the Zardalu were adapting to their blindness. Even as Nenda watched, E. C. Tally came within inches of being swept up by a thrashing, powerful arm.

The embodied computer was in awful physical shape, and he should not have been in the battle at all. He was weaving and staggering, one leg dragging useless as he moved. He stepped close to one of the Zardalu, giving it a maximum intensity burn and forcing it to move, then tottering backwards. But a sweeping arm missed him by only a split-second.

Nenda swore and put away his knife.

Pleasure deferred, not pleasure denied. He’d get Holder later.

It was not safe to speak, but he stood up, braving the forest of waving tentacles. He gestured to Hans Rebka. When the other finally noticed him, he pointed at Graves and the others in his group, and then to the tu

Rebka nodded. He understood the problem. Nenda and the rest were pe

But they might begin to recover their sight at any time. Rebka and the others had to keep harassing them, to drive them over the brink before they knew of the danger.

Nenda shook his head. He made the gesture of firing a flashburn unit, and shrugged. Keep on burning them. We’ll have to find the solution here for ourselves.

Rebka nodded again. He raised a clenched fist in encouragement, stepped closer to one of the turning Zardalu, and burned its eye.

Sound thinking. Make sure they stay blind. But Nenda did not have time to watch.

He made a split-second inventory of the rest of his group. Atvar H’sial could take care of herself, better than anyone. Kallik was missing a limb, but the wound was already sealed. To a Hymenopt it was no more than a minor inconvenience. She’d be all right. No time to worry about J’merlia, either, he’d follow Atvar H’sial’s lead. Birdie Kelly was as safe as anyone, provided that he did not move.

Which left Julius Graves: blinded, battered, and bloody useless.

Nenda cursed. Typical of a councilor, to jump in and do something stupid when he did not know what was really going on. And to hand out orders into the bargain. Nenda had felt like kicking him for sticking his nose in, back in the other chamber when he was trying to lure the Zardalu to the transportation vortex and Graves had insisted on becoming involved.

He resisted the urge to roll the feebly moving Graves down the steep tu

What was the answer?

Nenda felt the touch of a tentacle on his back. He jumped clear and looked around. In the moment he had been wondering what to do, the Zardalu had been driven a foot closer by Rebka and the others. Four feet more, and escape from those killing arms would be impossible.

He ran to J’merlia and Kallik’s side, pointing up to the tu

“Graves.” He pointed, though it was u

Atvar H’sial nodded. “I can. If he is unconscious.”

Which he was not. Not yet. Nenda moved over to Julius Graves and delivered a rabbit punch to the back of the councilor’s neck, knocking him cold.

Atvar H’sial picked up the body easily in two mid-limbs and began to climb up the wall to the corridor ceiling. Nenda saw that J’merlia and Kallik were already there. They were hanging upside down, waiting for a good moment to hurry over the heads of the maddened Zardalu.

Which left only one problem. How was he going to get away? The Zardalu completely blocked the corridor, higher than his head. Crawling along ceilings was easy enough for bugs, impossible for him.

He could see only one answer. It was one that did not appeal at all.

Better do it now before you decide you can’t face it, he told himself.

Nenda moved to the prostrate body of Holder. As the other Zardalu groped for him he forced his way headfirst into the thick tangle of Holder’s limbs. The space between the base of the tentacles was scarcely as wide as his body. There was a throat-clutching smell of musk and ammonia. Nenda shivered at the greasy touch of Zardalu flesh on his face. He could not do it this way; he would choke before he was halfway. He clumsily turned around to move in feet first.