“What I thought we would do is this.” Glenna, unaware of the exchange of pheromonal messages going on around her, was playing hostess. “Since we’re here, in such primitive conditions, I thought we ought to tell stories to each other the way our ancestors did, thousands and thousands of years ago, sitting terrified around their camp fires.”
Dead silence. Louis didn’t know about Quintus Bloom, but he had sat terrified around a camp fire a lot more recently than that.
Oblivious to the lack of response, Glenna went on. “Sit down, both of you.” She waited until the two men were in place on the divan, half a yard of space between them. “Now, I’ll be the judge, and the one of you who tells the best story will get a special prize.”
She squeezed into the space between them and placed a warm hand on each man’s thigh. “Since we’re almost in the dark, we ought to talk about scary or romantic things. Who wants to start?”
Blank silence.
“Did I not warn you?” The message drifted into the room with an overtone of satisfied humor. “If I may offer advice, Louis, I say: Beware the special prize.”
Nenda glared at the door. As if things weren’t bad enough, Atvar H’sial was laughing at him.
“Oh, come on, Louis!” Glenna squeezed his leg to bring his attention back to her. “Don’t play hard to get. I know from what Atvar H’sial told me that the two of you actually met live Zardalu, when everybody else thinks they’ve been extinct for eleven thousand years. That must have been frightening, even for you. What are they like?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Oh yes I do!” She slid her hand along the inside of his thigh, and added breathily, “You know, I find this sort of thing just makes me tingle.”
That, and everything else. Nenda admitted defeat. Glenna was as single-minded in her own way as Quintus Bloom.
“We said we wouldn’t talk about the Zardalu, At, but I’m going to. Maybe a touch of them will slow her down.”
Nenda turned to Glenna. “You wouldn’t find a Zardalu exciting if you ran into one. You won’t, of course, because they live only on Genizee, here inside the Anfract. But they’re enough to make anybody jump. For starters, they’re huge. Seven meters long when they’re at full stretch. The head of a full-grown Zardalu is as wide across as this divan. They are land-cephalopods, so they stand or slither along on half a dozen thick tentacles. Fast, too, faster than a human can run. The tentacles are pale blue, strong enough to snap a steel cable. The head is a deep, deep blue, as blue as midnight on Pelican’s Wake. A Zardalu has two big blue eyes, each one as wide across as my outstretched hand. And under that is a big beak.”
Glenna’s hand had stopped moving on his thigh. Nenda glanced across to see her expression. She was staring at him with wide, avid eyes, mopping it up. So much for his theory that she would be frightened. The surprise came from the other side of her. Quintus Bloom was also staring at Nenda. He looked puzzled. His hand reached out to form a shape in the half-light.
“A beak with a hook on it,” he said slowly. “Like this.” His hand turned to curve downward. “Hard and blue, and big enough to seize and crack a human skull. And under it a long slit of a mouth, vertical. The head runs straight down to the torso, same width, but separating the two is a thing like a necklace of round openings, each one a bit bigger than your fist and running all around the body.”
“Breeding pouches.” Nenda stared across at Quintus Bloom, his annoyance with Glenna forgotten. “How the devil do you know all this? Have you been reading reports about the Zardalu that we took to Miranda?”
“Not a word. I’d never in my whole life read or heard any physical description of one.”
“You mean you’ve actually seen a live Zardalu?”
“No. A dead one. But I had no idea what it was.” Quintus Bloom’s eyes were wider than Glenna’s. “When I was exploring Labyrinth, I came across an interior chamber with five creatures in it. Each one had started out huge, but when I got to them they were shrunken and wizened. They had been vacuum-dried, and they looked like enormous desiccated plant bulbs. I didn’t even realize they were animals, until I came close and saw those eyes. That’s when I decided to hydrate one — pump warm water into each cell, until it came back to its original size and shape and color.” His gaze moved to Nenda. “Seven meters long, head and torso of midnight blue. Eyes with lids, like human eyes but a hundred times the size. Tentacles pale blue, ending in fine, ropy tips. Right?”
“Exactly right. That’s a Zardalu to the life. Or to the death.” Nenda caught a quick question from Atvar H’sial, who was following the conversation as best she could from Nenda’s scraps of pheromonal translation. He passed it on to Bloom. “What’s your interest in the Zardalu?”
“I care nothing for Zardalu — living or dead.” Bloom’s beaky nose jutted superciliously at Nenda. “My interest is in the Builders, and only the Builders. But you have raised a question that I cannot answer.”
“An unforgivable sin.” But Louis sent that remark only to Atvar H’sial, along with his translation of Bloom’s arrogant comments.
“You assert that the Zardalu live only in one place,” Bloom went on. “On Genizee. What makes you think that your statement is true?”
“I don’t think it, I know it. At the time of the Great Rising, the Zardalu were just about exterminated from the spiral arm. Only fourteen specimens were saved, and they were held in stasis until a year ago. They went straight from there to Genizee. I know all that, because I was there when it happened. The only one not on Genizee today is a baby, brought back to Miranda by Darya Lang and her party. Why does that get you so upset?”
Bloom glared back at Nenda. He seemed quite unaware of the flicker of the ship’s lighting, or the tentative moan of electrical systems returning to power. “Because, you ignoramus, of the implication of your words. Think, if you are at all capable of such a thing, of these facts. First, every Zardalu except one infant is to be found on Genizee, and only on Genizee. Second, I discovered the dried corpses of five Zardalu floating in an interior chamber of Labyrinth. Third, Labyrinth is a new artifact. It did not exist eleven thousand years ago, or a century ago, or even a year ago. Put those items together, and what do you get?”
One thing you got, very clearly, was that Glenna’s romantic evening was not going quite according to plan. But that was unlikely to be what Quintus Bloom had in mind for a conclusion. In any case, Nenda’s thoughts were moving to other things. He knew what the flicker of light meant: the Gravitas was emerging from the hiatus.
“What do you get?” His question was automatic. Whatever it was, it was less important than regaining control of the ship.
But now, after all that build-up, Quintus Bloom had apparently decided not to supply an answer. He rose to his feet, brushed off Glenna’s hold on his sleeve, and strode out of the boudoir.
“Use your tiny mind, and work it out for yourself,” he snapped over his shoulder.
“Quintus!” Glenna wailed, and ran out after him.
“Most interesting.” The drift of Cecropian pheromones came in more strongly. “I assume that you made the same deduction as Quintus Bloom?”
Nenda did not move, not even when the pheromonal question was followed a moment later by the stately entry of Atvar H’sial’s crouched form. The Cecropian’s yellow horns turned to face him, then Atvar H’sial shook her head and just as slowly departed.
There was no need for words. She knew that Louis had made no deductions at all. He couldn’t see what there was to be deduced.
He remained brooding on the divan. Live Zardalu only on Genizee. Dead Zardalu discovered on Labyrinth. Labyrinth a new artifact. So what? All that might say something to Bloom and to Atvar H’sial, but it didn’t offer one syllable to Louis. Anyway, with power restored the ship needed his attention. So maybe he had his own question: When there were so many smart-asses around, why was he only one who knew how to fly the Gravitas?
He was still asking himself that when
Glenna returned. Her chin was up and her manner jaunty as she circled the room blowing out the candles.
It didn’t fool Louis for a second. She was upset as hell. He felt unexpected sympathy. “Hey, take it easy. You’ll get another shot at him. You know Quintus. He’s too wrapped up in his godawful Builders to take notice of anything.”
“It’s not just that.” Glenna sat down next to Nenda. She lifted the hem of her dress and dabbed at her eyes with it. “I was hoping we’d have a really pleasant evening, something to make us feel good. It started so nicely. And then it all fell apart.”
“Yeah. It just wasn’t your night. But don’t let it get to you. I’ve had nights like that. Lots of ’em.” Louis patted her warm shoulder consolingly, and flinched when she leaned back into the crook of his arm.
Glenna snuggled closer. “You know, you were the only one who even tried to tell a scary story, the way I wanted.” She reached up to put her hand over his. “I think that was really nice of you.”
Louis edged away along the divan. “Yeah, well. I dunno. Not that nice. We were stuck in the hiatus, we all had nothing to do. Might as well tell stories to each other. Now we’re clear, though, and I have to get busy. Gotta start figurin’ out how we make it through the Anfract.”
He was pulling his hand free of hers when all the lights went out again. There was a dying groan from the ship’s electrical system.
“Damnation!” Louis sat through a long, waiting silence. Finally he heard a giggle from the darkness next to him.
“Back in the hiatus! Oh, dear. Not my night, Louis. And not your night either, it seems.” Glenna lowered her voice, changing its sad overtone to a more intimate one. “But you know, this could be our night.”
It didn’t need an augment to pick up the message of her pheromones. He heard a rustle of fabric falling to the floor. A warm bare foot rubbed along his calf, and he stood up abruptly.
“You’re not leaving, are you?” She had felt him jerk to his feet.
Leaving. He certainly was.
Wasn’t he?
Nenda made a sudden decision. The hell with it. In the middle of a hiatus, what else should he be doing?
“No, I’m not leaving. Definitely not leaving. I just thought it might be nice to make sure the door was closed. Tight.”
Atvar H’sial was an alien without the slightest interest in human sex. All the same, Louis didn’t want snide pheromonal comments as an accompaniment to what he was going to do. He didn’t have much faith in his skills as a lover in the best of circumstances.
It was a side benefit of staying, he decided, as he groped his way back toward Glenna. She was a very experienced woman. She would be used to sophistication. One night together, and chances were she would never come near him again.
Chapter Twenty
The Builders had made things to last. The exteriors of their free-space structures might bear minor pitting from meteor collisions, and the interiors always collected dust, but the overall artifacts remained as hard and indestructible as the day they were fabricated.
Hans Rebka knew all this. So it was absolutely astonishing to tug open a wall cabinet as he was examining the chamber’s food supplies, and feel the cabinet itself move a fraction as he did so.
He braced himself, gripped the sides of the cabinet, and pulled harder. The whole cupboard ripped away from the wall. Hans went rolling away across the chamber, holding on to a cabinet without a back. Not only that — when he returned to look at the wall, he found that part of it contained a big crack.
That started a whole new train of thought. He could not travel outward, toward the surface of Paradox, because of the one-way field. He could not travel directly toward the center, because the inner wall of the chamber was smooth and impenetrable. But maybe he could break through a side wall, and so progress around the circumference of the torus. Even if he found no way to escape, at least he could look for E.C. Tally.
Smashing through walls might be possible, but it surely wouldn’t be easy. Before he began, Rebka went once more to the opening through which he had originally entered. A brief experiment told him that the one-way field was still in operation. Also, unless his suit’s instruments were not working correctly inside Paradox, the outer boundary of the artifact had moved much closer. For as long as humans had known of its existence, the radius of the artifact had always been measured as twenty-five kilometers; now the boundary was no more than five kilometers away. Paradox was shrinking. More evidence of profound artifact changes.
Rebka returned to the inside of the chamber. At the back of his mind he couldn’t help wondering how small Paradox might become — and what would happen to the central region and its contents if the outer boundary came all the way in to meet it.
Well, he’d either discover a way to escape, or find out the hard way the consequence of the final shrinkage. Meanwhile…
He went across to the wall and wondered about the best way to attack it. His suit tools contained fine needle drills, but nothing intended for major demolition work. One way might be to pull a massive cabinet free, and propel it with his suit thrustors at the weak point of the wall.
Rebka went across to the damaged section from which he had pulled the food cabinet and thumped it experimentally with his gloved fist. He was hoping to gauge its thickness. He was astonished when his fist went right in, the whole surface crumbling away to flakes under the blow.
He moved in close and examined the material. The wall was about four inches thick, but impossibly weak, so soft and friable that he could powder it between his thumb and forefinger. It had not been like this when he first entered the room. Just to be sure, he went back to the exact place where he had hit the side wall earlier. One punch now, and his hand went completely through.
He leaned forward and found that he could see into the next chamber. From a superficial inspection, it was no different from the one he was in. There was no sign of E.C. Tally.
Hans Rebka enlarged the hole until it was big enough for him to pass through it, and headed for the far side of the new room. This time he did not pause to select any special place. He drove feet-first at a space on the wall between two gas supply lines, and was not much surprised when it disintegrated under the impact.
He went through and stared around him. Another empty chamber. At this rate he was going to destroy every room in the torus looking for E.C. Tally. Unless the whole place crumbled to dust by itself, with no help from him. It seemed to be heading that way, weaker by the minute.
One more time. Rebka launched himself forward. Again the wall collapsed beneath his impact. Again he drove on through, and found himself in still another room.
But here, at last, was something different. Radically different. He emerged amid a cloud of powder and wall chips, and ran straight into something solid.
He heard a startled grunt, and felt a sudden grip on his arms. Right in front of his face and staring into his visor was a thin, fair-haired woman. She was not wearing a suit, and her face and hair were covered with chalky dust.
She sneezed violently, then glared at the wall behind him in disbelief. “I’ve bashed that wall a hundred times in the past week, and never made even a dent in it. Who are you, some kind of superman?”
“No, indeed.” A familiar voice spoke from behind Hans. “This is not a superman. Permit me to perform the introductions. This is Captain Hans Rebka, from the planet Teufel, and lately of Sentinel Gate.”
The three women were sisters, from the salt world of Darby’s Lick. Rebka had never been there, but he knew its reputation and location, in the no-man’s-zone of dwarf stars between the Phemus Circle and the Fourth Alliance.
“So you’re from Teufel,” said Maddy Treel, the oldest, shortest, and darkest of the three. “We’ve all heard of that. ‘What sins must a man commit, in how many past lives, to be born on Teufel?’ ”
Those words threw Hans back at once to his childhood. He was on water duty again, a terrified seven-year-old, waiting for the night pred
ators to retreat to their caves; five and a half more minutes, and the Remouleur, the dreaded Grinder, would arrive. Margin of error on water duty: seven seconds. If you are caught outside when the Remouleur dawn wind hits, you are dead…
Maddy Treel went on, jerking Hans back to the present: “But I believe Darby’s Lick can give Teufel a run for its money, at least if you’re a woman. I guess I don’t have to tell you why we came to Paradox. We wanted a better choice than the ones women have, salt-mining or breeding. When they asked for volunteers, we jumped at it.”
They were sitting around the makeshift table. Hans Rebka had been persuaded to remove his suit, but only after he had been back to the hole through which he had entered and examined it. He remained mystified. There was an atmosphere on the other side, but it was pure helium. Something was able to keep gases contained within each chamber, even when the wall between them had been partly destroyed. Impossible. But no more impossible than the diamond-shaped entrance to the chamber, which somehow did the same thing. Air within did not escape to the vacuum outside.
“I’ve done a bit of salt-mining,” Rebka replied absently to Maddy. “On Teufel. It wasn’t all that bad.”
She snorted. “Uranium salts? The good news was, after a year of that no one talked about breeding any more.”
“I never had to handle uranium. Maybe Teufel’s not so bad after all. I couldn’t wait to get out, though. Nobody wanted to breed me, but a lot of things wanted to kill me. Anywhere else looked better. But I don’t know if I was right.” Rebka gestured around him. “The future here doesn’t seem too promising. Did you know that Paradox is shrinking?”
“You mean, the whole thing’s getting smaller?” Lissie Treel, the tall skinny blonde who had caught Rebka on his arrival, stared at him in disbelief. “How can it? It’s always been the same size.”
“Sure. And it’s always had a Lotus field inside, and it never stopped anything from getting out before.” Rebka shrugged. “Paradox is changing — fast. Don’t take my word for it. Go have a look for yourself.”
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