“Still not sufficient?” the Representative said.
The Representative limped onto his emerald leg, but this time, Esther did not move out of his way. Kolya, too, held his ground.
The Representative had broken away all the thin ruby fibers; now he walked on clusters of fist-sized jewels. Another handsbreadth higher on his legs, the clusters had fused into a single crystal.
He raised his ruby leg, and smashed it against a chunk of rock. The rock exploded. He struck loose segments of blood-red stone. Nerves and matrix hung loose. His joints convulsed, contracted, jerking his leg into a sharp, painful angle. Rubies lay amidst sharp gravel.
“Stop, please!” Esther said. “Why won’t you stop?”
“My gift is insufficient.”
“Will you stop if we take your gift?”
“No!” Kolya said. “Take nothing from him!”
The Representative raised his diamond leg. Shakily, his ruby leg still clenched, he balanced on only four supports. He positioned his diamond leg above the large sharp chunk of ruby.
Esther plunged forward and grabbed the diamond fibers as they struck toward the ruby cutting surface. The diamond edges ripped against her gloves. Air burst out. Water vapor froze instantly into ice crystals. The air dissipated, exploding the cloud of ice against Esther’s face-plate. Her suit pressure dropped, then stabilized as the self-sealing function kicked in. The Representative’s first leg joint struck her fingers, numbing them with the shock. The Representative struggled. He tried to jerk his leg free. Despite the pain in her hands, Esther held the cold diamond spike.
“Let me go! Let go! Do you —” The Representative’s loud voice caught and faltered for the first time. “Do you want my whole leg?” A stream of pale yellow fluid oozed from the upper joint of his diamond leg.
He tapped Esther’s shoulder with the sharp edge of his broken ruby leg-tip. The outer layer of fabric ripped with a sharp scream. The Representative raised his leg again.
Kolya lunged for the ruby leg, grabbing it, immobilizing the Representative.
“We want nothing from you!” Kolya said. “But if you hurt my friend you will not survive!”
The numbness in Esther’s hands gave way to tingling, to sharp pain. Her gloves sealed against the surface of the diamond, pressing the sharp surfaces into the cuts. A warm trickle of blood ran down her fingers, into her palms, down her wrists.
The air pressure in her suit increased slowly.
“We want you to stop trying to give us gifts,” Esther said. “We won’t trade Nautilus for twenty-four dollars’ worth of beads!”
The Representative grew very still. Esther looked up at Kolya. Ghostly behind his gilded face-plate, his face was pale, his expression grim.
“Your hands?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I’m stuck to this guy.”
“Now what?”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
She was afraid to let the Representative go, afraid he would continue to crack himself to bits, afraid the sealant on her gloves would rupture again. The Representative remained preternaturally still.
Esther did not know what to do. She looked out into space, wishing J.D. would hurry. Largernearer loomed overhead. Esther felt cold and distant.
She picked out the Chi’s glint against the cloud-streaked blue surface of the planet. On Largernearer’s dark limb, in the night, luminous patterns flickered across the sea. They wound through the clear spots, beneath breaks in the clouds. The distant, obscure disk of Smallernearer answered in kind: electric blue sparks flowed over it.
Her bloody hands full of diamond, Esther wondered what the two worlds were saying to each other.
She wished they would give her a hint what to do.
o0o
J.D. felt helpless. The struggle between Esther and Kolya and the Representative went on, in miniature, in the center of the observer’s circle. It reached an impasse.
“Oh, Christ in a canoe,” Stephen Thomas said. “Look.”
A second space boat floated free of the Four Worlds ship.
“Quickercatcher!” J.D. cried. “What is going on now? You’ve got to stop this!”
The Largerfarthing took a very long time to respond. In the transmission from Starfarer, the quartet huddled together, peering anxiously at a cluster of holographic images.
Behind them, Late lay so still he was almost invisible; his spines had flattened beneath his pelt. Two meerkats scampered around him. A third stood on a rock ledge above them, keeping watch.
A pattern of beach pebbles, grass blades, and glimmering beads lay on the ledge beside the meerkat.
“It’s the Eldest,” Quickercatcher said.
“The Eldest, of Smallerfarther,” Longestlooker said.
“No one ever sees her,” Fasterdigger said.
“No one but Smallernearer has ever seen her!” Sharphearer exclaimed.
They all spoke together; J.D. had trouble separating the information from their excitement and apprehension.
J.D. groaned.
The Chi entered orbit around Nautilus and prepared to descend.
But the second space boat was already landing.
o0o
The Eldest’s boat fell toward Nautilus.
“Petrovich!” Kolya shouted.
Griffith saw everything that happened, heard everything that happened. Kolya cried out for his help, but it was too late.
Griffith groaned, in misery and confusion, folded up with his knees against his chest, and hid his face. He cut off communication with the outside world.
Weightless, he tumbled slowly.
o0o
The desperation in Kolya’s voice, when he cried out to Griffith, chilled Esther even through her shock.
Griffith did not respond.
The second boat landed.
The spatter of dust particles against Esther’s helmet, against her suit, felt like a million tiny blows; it sounded like a sandstorm at hurricane force. She ducked her head, protecting her faceplate. She dreaded hearing a puncture of her suit, but she could do nothing to protect herself but hunker down and hope the self-sealing continued to work. What she could do was keep herself from being stuck out here helpless and blind. A few dust grains scraped the faceplate, leaving bright-edged scars. But Esther could still see. She heard no hiss of escaping air, felt no drop in pressure.
She raised her head.
The bright pinpoint of the Chi streaked past, far above.
And the Eldest’s ship had landed.
Kolya, too, had made it safely through the storm of the Eldest’s exhaust.
“Now what?” Esther said, more to be sure her suit radio was working than because she hoped for an answer. “Representative! What’s happening?”
In the shadow of his gilded faceplate, Kolya was tense and pale, his expression drawn into a grimace. He clutched the Representative’s leg with a death grip.
“Kolya?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”
“I fear...” the Representative said, speaking for the first time in long minutes, “... you have bested me. So the Eldest has come.”
The second boat puffed vapor, then split open. Inside, an adamantine glitter shifted.
Maybe Kolya can keep hold of the Representative. Esther’s thoughts ran wildly forward. Maybe I can stop the Eldest. Are they going to send one person after another, till one of them gets past us and wrecks what J.D. wants most to keep?
“You have failed.”
The new voice was a rusty monotone.
“Not yet, we haven’t!” Esther said belligerently. “Do you call this civilized behavior?”
“I have failed,” the Representative said, ignoring Esther. “I have failed, I have broken myself, I have spent my life.”
Esther looked up, stunned.
The Eldest used English, she thought. I thought she meant me and Kolya. Doesn’t she?
“A noble failure,” the Eldest said.
The hard glitter within her ship shifted, then stilled.
“Join me,” the Eldest said.
The Representative’s legs jerked feebly.
“Let me go, youngests,” the Representative said. “You’ve nothing to fear from me. Let me go.”
“I can’t,” Esther said. Her palms stung violently, and her fingers cramped. She wanted to flex her hands, but she was afraid of breaking the sealant. At the same time she thought, How do we know we have nothing to fear anymore?
“I must join the Eldest,” the Representative said.
“Don’t move!” Kolya snapped. “Esther’s suit might seal again, it might not. It’s too dangerous.”
He sounded himself; he had lost the desperate uncertainty of the last few minutes.
The Representative strained against Esther’s hands. She gasped; the sharp, shattered fibers cut deeper into her wounded palms.
“I told you not to move!” Kolya shouted at the Representative. He jabbed upward with the ruby leg, as if it were a spear.
“Please, youngests, let me go,” the Representative pleaded.
“I’m going to let your leg loose,” Kolya said. “And then I’m going to pick up your body and carry you to our tent. When we’re close enough for Esther to get inside safely, we’ll let you loose.”
The Representative quivered, but did not struggle.
“Do you understand me?” Kolya said.
“I understand. Please hurry.”
Across the plain, the side of the Eldest’s boat began slowly to knit.
“If you resist, I will break you.”
“I understand.”
Kolya slowly let loose of the long shank. The Representative stood stock-still.
Kolya lifted the Smallerfarthing elder from the ground. Esther followed the motion with her stuck hands. She clenched her teeth. Her knees felt shaky, and she saw everything at a distance. She moved along with Kolya as best she could. The tent stood only a hundred meters away, but the distance felt enormous.
“Please hurry,” the Representative said.
“Shut up,” Kolya snarled.
They reached the entryway of the expedition tent. Kolya lowered the Representative, who stood shakily on five legs.
“We’ll free your hands and dive into the airlock,” Kolya said to Esther. “When you’re loose, push your hands together. Even if it doesn’t seal, you ought to be all right. Understand me?”
“Uh huh.”
He eased her fingers from the long shattered jewel of the Representative’s leg. The sealant pulled away. Her hands came free. The air rushed out, deathly cold on her blood-wet wrists. She clamped her hands together, slowing the leak. The pressure on her palms was excruciating.
The Representative sprang away from them and limped toward the Eldest’s boat, stumbling and awkward on his uneven legs.
With her last energy, Esther plunged into the tent’s entryway. Kolya followed. The airlock closed and the small chamber repressurized.
“Damn that hurts!” Esther muttered. “Damn.” She staggered. Kolya grabbed her.
“Just a minute more. A minute more, we’ll be safe.”
Air, warm, thick air, filled the entry tunnel. The inner door opened. Esther’s knees gave out.
“It’s all right,” Kolya said. “Bojemoi, spasiba, ochin bog...”
o0o
On the surface of Nautilus, the Representative spidered unevenly across the pitted ground. The Eldest’s boat gaped, half closed — half open! The Representative probed with two front legs, found the aperture, slid two leg-tips inside. At his caress, the aperture eased. The Representative pulled the rest of his body inside.
The Eldest held herself across the width of the boat’s interior. A geometric pattern of diamond spikes and threads nearly obscured her body, and her eyes. She stared at him steadily.
“I did not tell you why I called you to me,” she said.
“No,” the Representative said.
“What do you expect? What do you hope?”
“I’ve always hoped for your favor. I’m prepared to pay the price of your disappointment.”
The boat quivered around him. He pressed his leg tips against the spongy walls, bracing himself. His legs hurt, they hurt so much, they would hurt him forever.
o0o
Esther gasped when Kolya drew her mangled gloves from her hands. Blood and sealant and needles of diamond stuck them to her skin. They pulled free reluctantly.
You’re lucky, she kept telling herself. Lucky. You could have lost your hands. You could have lost pressure entirely. You could be dead.
When she freed her arms from the suit, she almost fainted. She was covered with blood from the elbows down.
“What a mess,” she said. Her voice felt far away. “That will take some cleaning up.” She meant her space suit.
Kolya slapped pressure bandages against her palms. They oozed into the cuts, stopped the bleeding, secreted a topical anesthetic, encapsulated dirt particles and small faceted diamonds and pulled them from the wounds.
Kolya helped her the rest of the way out of her suit and made her lie down. The blood did not faze him; he washed it from her arms.
He’s probably seen a lot worse, Esther thought. A lot worse.
“Glad I wasn’t wearing my jacket,” she said. Her ugly fluorescent lime-green jacket hung on its hook in her cubicle.
What a dumb thing to say, she thought, I never wear my jacket inside a space suit.
Kolya blinked, his eyelids flickering for a long moment as he went into a communications fugue. Through her own link, Esther heard him reassuring their colleagues, then asking for a few moments of quiet and privacy.
“Lie still, be quiet,” Kolya said. “You’re in shock. You’ll be all right.” He covered her with a blanket. The warmth felt good.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Little enough that I did,” he said. “I panicked, like a raw recruit.”
“Could have fooled me,” she said. “We’re okay, we still have Nautilus.”
Outside, a blast of dust scoured the tent wall: the Eldest’s ship had taken off.
“And the Rep has given up.”
A lower, more distant rumble swept beneath her. She bolted upright, afraid the Four Worlds ship had sent more invaders.
“What — ?”
“It’s just the Chi. J.D. will be here soon. Lie down.”
“Kolya... what happened out there?”
“I told you,” he said angrily. “I panicked!”
“No,” she said. His distress broke her heart.
“I wanted Petrovich — Griffith — to behave in character, to blast in and destroy the invaders. To save us —” He laughed bitterly. “No matter what it would have meant to the future of Earth and Civilization.” He fell silent.
Esther tried to think what to say.
“The one time I asked him to act, and he didn’t,” Kolya said, bemused. “There’s hope for him yet.”
He gave Esther a painkiller to augment the bandages’ mild anesthetic. The drugs made her even dizzier.
“Everything’s okay now,” Esther said. “It worked out.” She cast around for something else to say, some way to reassure him. “I’d hug you, only my arms feel kind of numb.”
“What?” he said.
“I don’t know. Forget it. I’m drunk. Don’t you know better than to give drugs to a sick person? I don’t care what you think, I think you were great out there.”
He bent over her cut hands. His shoulders shook.
“Kolya?”
He glanced up. He was chuckling.
“It has been,” he said, “a good long time since anyone called me ‘youngest.’”
Esther grinned at him.
Kolya grew serious again.
“You’re easy on me, my friend,” he said. “Easy on me for what happened today, and hard on yourself for what happened back home. I think you should equalize the standards.”
“I... I don’t know.
Maybe. I’ll see how I feel when I’m not so drunk.”
Kolya smiled. He hesitated. He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.
o0o
The transport returned to Starfarer, returned its controls to Arachne.
The slow slide of the opening hatch vibrated softly. Griffith stiffened, his body ready for attack or defense. He kicked the bulkhead, by mistake. In free fall, his abrupt motion sent him tumbling out of control. Adrenaline propelled his mind from deep, oblivious misery to alertness. He cartwheeled in the center of the observation chamber, out of reach of anything he could grab to stop his spin.
Infinity Mendez floated in the entryway, watching Griffith tumble and flail. Mendez kept his expression carefully neutral. Gerald Hemminge and Avvaiyar Prakesh hovered behind him.
Infinity launched himself easily from the doorway, sailed past Griffith, pushed him in a way that counteracted his spin, and brought himself to rest against the far wall.
Griffith glared. Instead of backing down, Infinity gazed at him with mild amusement that was worse than open contempt.
“You did right,” Infinity Mendez said.
“I — What?” He knew better than to shake his head to clear it; the motion would make him even dizzier than he already was.
“Everything’s all right. The Representative —” Infinity stopped, then shrugged and spread his hands. “I don’t know exactly what the Representative did, or what the Four Worlds did, but they’ve left Nautilus.”
“General Cherenkov?”
“He’s okay.” Infinity added, pointedly, “So’s Esther.”
Griffith used all his training to keep himself from showing any reaction.
“Listen.” Infinity’s voice held uncharacteristic anger. “You could have got my friends killed, and you didn’t. I’m trying to thank you. Kolya’s been trying to tell you the same thing. Maybe you don’t want to hear it, I don’t give a damn. Thank you anyway.”
Griffith hesitated. Strangely enough, he felt good.
“But I —” he said. He stopped. “I mean — you’re, er, you’re welcome.”
o0o
In the expedition tent, J.D. waited patiently while Esther slept. The pilot’s breathing was strong, her pulse steady, and her hands showed no sign of infection, poisoning, or allergic reaction.
Esther shifted beneath the fabric of the sleeping bag.
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