“Fovrates, where are you? Help me!”
No answer. Phutes sought to put himself in contact with any grounded metal, to tap into the vibrations humming through the ship to reach his kinsman. His limbs were pinioned so that he couldn’t touch anything but the nonresponsive plastic.
At last, the enormous Solinian yanked the cart to a halt in front of a wide door. Around him. Phutes could hear bellowing of his fellows from rooms along the corridor.
“We are here, brother! Help us!”
“I cannot!” Phutes called back. “I am trapped! Break out, come to me, for Yesa’s sake!”
He heard the buffeting of bodies against heavy obstructions. The trapped Kail were throwing themselves at walls and doors.
“You are close to normal,” Phutes appealed to the Solinian. “You have more native silicon in your body than these rotting Wichu. Let me free! We can take over this ship and free ourselves of the carbon-based menace. Help me, scaly being!”
“That’s Mr. Carbon-based Menace Scaly Being to you, rocky,” the creature said, showing a mouthful of shardlike teeth. “Forget it. You can sit in here until we get to the platform ship.” At the top of the door frame was a brilliant white eye bolt. The Solinian pulled one of the cables securing Phutes through it, then hoisted him off the cart with one massive shrug. Phutes kicked and swung, trying to free himself, but his momentum only propelled him through the door. The Solinian swung it closed. It boomed shut, and bolts shot deep into the walls around it. When Phutes rolled to his feet, the pinioning cables fell to the ground. He immediately tried to shoulder his way out of the door. It was as though it had become one with the frame embracing it. The Solinian shouted over the boom each impact made.
“Someone’ll be around with some lava dust and water later on. In the meantime, yell all you want. The captain will let you know when we reach the platform. Quit banging! You’ll hurt yourself. The captain doesn’t like it when the passengers hurt themselves.”
Phutes stopped heaving his body against the door. He would find a way to be free of this prison! He looked around.
“Are you all right, my brother?” Sofus asked, his voice echoing hollowly. “I am on the next rock to you.”
“I am intact,” Phutes said, putting all the indignity he felt into his words. “I am filthy! Are you well?”
“We are. I did not get my bath before the slime surrounded us all and took us. They touched us. How dare they?”
“We’ll make them pay for the indignity,” Phutes assured him. “Can you speak to Fovrates?”
“No. There is no metal here. We are all speaking by voice only. Do you think they took him into custody as well?”
“I don’t know. He is considered one of them.”
Sofus paused a long while. Phutes knew he was offended by the very thought of being one with the hairy Wichu, even though it was part of their long-term purpose.
“We must get out of here and complete our mission.”
“We will find a way,” Phutes assured him. “Yesa is counting on us.”
He threw the cables away from him. They were of no use, being too small for him to manipulate with his thick hands. Phutes took careful inventory of the chamber. Except that the floor was made in two levels with a step down of approximately .11 of his body height, and that it was 10 times as wide, but almost 11 times as tall as his body, it was featureless. The gray-black walls were lined with more plastic and nonreactive polymers. He could get no nourishment there. That must be what the Solinian meant: he would be brought nutrients and the means to clean himself. The lower part of the floor was furnished with a drain that smelled sickeningly of decaying organic compounds. It was meant to hold one such as he in solitary confinement.
Phutes looked up. But he was not in solitary confinement, not when he had the means to communicate with his fellow Kail. In the center of the ceiling, a light fixture gave off a weak approximation of the sun’s light he enjoyed on the motherworld. He stood under it and smelled the air carefully. It did not stink of organic compounds. In other words, it must be fed by electricity, not chemical reaction. If he could reach it, he could use it.
The slime who had built the prison had taken Kail physiology into consideration, but not Kail intelligence and determination. While it lacked electronics that could be corrupted by his influence, it could still be forced to serve his needs. He tossed aside the round drain cover in the lower floor, set his hands on either side of the opening provided, and heaved.
It took nearly 1100 hours, but the plastic began to bend upward. Phutes’s brachial and dorsal joints strained mightily. He hoped that his structural integrity would prove greater than the ship’s plates. He refused to believe that it was impossible. At 11101 hours, a section of the floor broke off in his hands, sending him tumbling back against the wall. It boomed with the impact.
“Brother, are you all right?” Sofus shouted.
Phutes regarded the chunk of plastic in his grasp with grim satisfaction. It measured 10 times the diameter of his head, and was nearly 11 times as thick.
“Better than all right,” he said. “Our chances of success have just multiplied 10000 times.”
“How?”
“Wait. I will tell you when I succeed. I don’t want those listening to know.”
Twice during the next light period, Wichu guards came to the door. Through a hatch too small for the Kail to climb through, they passed collapsible tubs of water and purified stone dust. Phutes stopped his efforts to sift through the latter, judging whether any of it was fit to be added to his substance. They were used to providing Fovrates with nourishment, so Phutes took a chance that it would be suitable to nourish Kail. He tested it on his skin. It adhered well. The acids in his system bubbled up, surrounded each particle. He couldn’t sense any insulting impurities. It tasted mostly of silicon and aluminum, but carefully devoid of conductive elements. These Wichu were no fools. But they were ignorant of Kail determination.
Once he felt the restorative effects of the new minerals in his body, he resumed his work. Within 1011 more hours, he had pried up another piece of flooring. A join that had not been properly sealed yielded yet one further block of plastic, this one measuring almost half his breadth.
He searched the subflooring for contacts to the electrical system. More than a meter of insulation supported the cell floor, but it and the platform beneath it were also nonconductive. He considered tunneling through the insulation and coming up through a service hatch somewhere else in the ship, but he did not fit in the gap he had produced. The ceiling was his only hope.
Phutes eyed the 11 irregular blocks of plastic he had torn loose. It would not be easy to balance one on top of the other, especially considering the condition of what remained of the floor, but he calculated that together he could reach the ceiling. Freedom was within his grasp.
Time after time, he stacked them together, trying to create a stable ladder. He had assumed that the last block would be his base, since it was larger and heavier than the others, but it had no flat edges. Reluctantly, after more than 11000 tries, he concluded that it must go at the top of the stack.
“Mealtime!” the Solinian’s voice interrupted him. Phutes ceased his efforts and positioned himself close to the door, preparing to lurch out if given the chance. The hatch opened. Phutes surged forward, propelled by all his legs.
The guards had no intention of allowing an escape to happen. As his head emerged from the square opening, they dropped a length of fabric down onto it. Wetness dripped over his shoulders and down his arms. It smelled of decaying vegetation.
“Slime! Slime!”
Shrieking, Phutes retreated into the cell. A cloth tub of water and packet of stone dust were heaved in after him. The hatch slammed shut, and was locked tight with the alloy key.
Phutes sat on the floor, bellowing his outrage. He seized the water and poured it down over himself, seeking to cleanse off the insult. In the hall, he heard muffled cries of protest from the other Kail.
“Cut it out, or you’ll get that, too!” the Solinian barked. “Just sit tight until we get you to the platform! That’s what you want, isn’t it? Stay put and shut up!”
Shaking with fury, Phutes threw aside the water container and rose to his feet.
That was the last chance. He would show no mercy to these creatures either. Once the Kail wreaked their vengeance upon the humans, it would be the Wichus’ turn. But, one step at a time. The Kail had been patient, but no more.
He piled the insulation high and rammed the smallest block into it. Holding it steady, he balanced the medium-sized piece on it. They both teetered. He would have to hold them in place while he climbed.
The last and largest piece had to be propped on top. Phutes steadied the heavy mass with both his hands.
From the upper portion of the floor, he placed one foot carefully on the top of his wobbling tower. It slid apart with a clatter. Patiently, Phutes reassembled his structure, turning the topmost piece so it faced in the opposite direction.
“Brother, are you all right?” Sofus called.
“I am patient,” Phutes called back. “Silence.”
The Kail’s voices died away in the corridor. The guards would have been wise to pay attention to the sudden quiet, but they did not understand the Kail. They had had their chance.
The tower fell apart time and time again. Phutes rebuilt it with focused calm, adjusting the structure a degree or 10 each way for maximum steadiness. At last, when he put a foot on it, it didn’t move. He shifted his weight onto that foot and brought the next one up to the makeshift platform. It held! He wanted to bellow his triumph, but that might bring the guards again.
Instead, he concentrated on holding as still as he could while he brought the last foot to the top of the structure. The tower sank centimeters into the mound of insulation. Phutes did not have much time until it collapsed irretrievably. He raised his hands with the greatest of care, until he touched the light fixture.
The conductive materials in his skin connected with the metal contacts. Instantly, he felt the surge of electricity flow through his body and with it, the communications and programming that made the ship function.
“Fovrates,” he said, sending his voice as an impulse that only another Kail would hear and understand. “Fovrates, they have taken us prisoner. It is time. We must take control now, or the opportunity will be lost!”
The low chuckle of the elder Kail came back via the circuits. “I have waited a long time for this moment. It is in our hands. Patience, now, and listen.”
At that moment, the tower of blocks collapsed from under Phutes’s feet. There was just enough purchase for him to hold onto the light frame with both hands.
He heard the outcry, through the circuits and through the air. His translator picked up on voices from over 110000 angry Wichu, crew and passengers alike.
“Who turned off the lights?”
“Why won’t the lifts work?”
“Engineering! My door is stuck! I can’t get out of the head!”
“What the hell is going on here?”
“Do you like that, brother?” Fovrates asked.
“Infinitely.” Phutes smiled at the walls of his prison. Now that the Wichu were in the same fix, it did not bother him as much. He hung onto the light fixture, enjoying the annoyed outcry. “Take us to the Zang.”
CHAPTER 7
“I had heard that there is a huge ‘kaboom!’ when the heavenly body disappears,” Xan said, his long legs propped on the end of a deep blue brocade couch. The rest of him lay on a gorgeously embroidered warming rug on the floor beside the broad, transparent viewport at the bow end of our day room. It tended to be chilly at the perimeter of the chamber, thanks to the window, but our parents, aunts and uncles had insisted on this feature when the Jaunter was commissioned some forty or so years before. We all thought it was worth the trouble. When we were not traveling at faster than light speed or in the midst of a jump point, the view of the stars and nebulae was unparalleled. Like the rest of us, he was watching a near pair of stars with a speculative and proprietary air.
We had been cruising along at top speed since leaving the last jump point. The next one was a half-day’s journey ahead, but we were not going directly there. The Jaunter had scheduled a stop for us at Counterweight. This handsome little planet had been discovered four thousand years ago by human settlers. It was renowned for being Earthlike, even more so than our homeworld of Keinolt. It circled the binary pair, which consisted of an enormous yellow giant and a tiny blue-white star. Of all the early human settlements, Counterweight was one of the few where none of our ancestors had needed to live in tight quarters of artificial habitats or make adaptations to their genetics in order to survive. The refreshing atmosphere held a perfect twenty-one percent oxygen level and was perfumed by esters from planktonoids and chlorophyllikes that were so similar to Earth-types that no terraforming had been necessary. Terran plants grew freely in the nitrogen-rich soil.
The difference between Counterweight and Earth, I had been informed, was that no intelligent species had evolved into prominence on the planet. That left it untouched and wild until our ancestors came upon it. Though it was isolated in between two of the most remote jump points in use at this end of Imperium territory, it enjoyed a reputation as a vacation spot and a retirement community for those who could afford the final passage thereto. As a result, the shopping, night life, beach culture, adventure activities and garden tours were all reputed to be excellent. My cousins and I were looking forward to spending three or four leisurely days there. Parsons had already alerted me by private viewpad message that our special guest would join us on Counterweight. All of this had me so filled with excitement, I could not sit down. I circled the room like a doomed planet trying to outrun the Zang.
“There isn’t a ‘ka’ anything,” Nalney said, lying back on the brilliant green damask couch he had claimed as his own with his eyes covered by a long-suffering arm. “No one can hear sound in space.”
“I know that!” Xan said, impatiently, kicking a toe into the air. “But what about the shock waves? Don’t they make any noise?”
“I suppose that they could be translated into noise,” I said. “If there was a resounding chamber set to catch them. If it wouldn’t be destroyed in the blast.”
“There is no blast,” Erita said, curled in the round chair she favored. A sticklike serverbot worked on her fingernails with tiny brushes and tweezers brandishing gems and miniature feathers. “The object just disappears. I have watched digitavids and old-style video recordings of the Zang. I’ve seen them over and over again. It doesn’t explode. It just … goes.” She fluttered her free hand, already decorated copiously with blue crystals, to match the day’s blue gown.
“Please don’t move, my lady,” the ’bot said, in a plaintive little voice. It brought out a minute tool and scrubbed away at a place on her nail where it must have made a mistake.
“Oh, sorry.”
“But there are shock waves,” Xan insisted. “They ripple out to the edge of the heliopause. Beyond it, too, I believe.”
“Marvelous!” Jil said, clapping her hands, which had already been adorned in red and green crystals and white feathers by the same ’bot. They looked rather marvelous. “I can’t wait to see.”
“It’s quite wonderful,” Erita said, fluttering her free hand. “According to the narrator, Professor Derrida, who is a scientist who’s made numerous very popular digitavid series, the process is known only to the Zang. It doesn’t seem to involve anything in the way of mechanisms. Not that we can see, anyhow. They evoke the energy from within their bodies. Well, who knows what they are concealing? They are so odd and blobby-looking. I wonder how they evoke anything at all.” This thought appeared to puzzle her deeply.
“Or why they decided to do it in the first place,” Jil said, lying back in her cushion-filled chair with a small cup of espresso garnished with a curl of citrus peel. Sinim, dressed in salmon pink
silk, sat crosslegged on a massive blue pillow beside her. “I’ve never really seen the difference when it comes to doing bonsai on a plant. I know it’s an art form, but what’s the purpose of it? When you’re done, you have a plant that is missing a few branches. Is it any more use than an unaltered plant?”
“What is the use of art?” Xan asked, lazily turning a hand palm up. “To be beautiful.”
I could hardly help myself moving around at the thought. I executed a grand jete and landed on one knee before Erita.
“Do you think the star lanes are made more beautiful by what the Zang do?” I asked. Erita made a face at me.
“Oh, Thomas, how should I know? I’m no expert! All I did was watch the programs, darling. Star systems all look rather the same to me. Sun or suns in the middle, planets and space debris farther out, and that messy Oort cloud surrounding it all.”
“Sounds like a pastry with layered filling,” Nalney said, mischief causing playful wrinkles to form around his deep brown eyes.
“Now you’re making me hungry,” Xan said. He snapped his fingers, and an LAI rolled toward him with a tray held out. It helped him to a tiny plate of canapés. “I have a reservation at the finest mini-cuisine restaurant in town on the surface. If this delay continues for too long, I shall miss it, and that will make me cross.”
“Would you like to see some of my digitavids?” Erita offered. “I think you will find the destruction of the binary system in the Dendrobium sector worth watching. It may divert you from worrying.”
“No, thank you very much, Erita,” Xan said, selecting a pastry topped with a bright green slice of fish. “I’d rather let the surprise unfold when we get to witness the real thing.”
“I shall scream,” Sinim said, her dark eyes huge in her small face. “I just know it.” Jil patted her on the shoulder.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she said. “It’s not as if the planet they are removing is of any importance to us.”
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