Kenelee Savage responded, with obvious distaste for what he had to say. "I think most of you know how I feel. That the use of force carries a great risk of being counterproductive, and should be avoided if at all possible. The fact remains, though, that if the colony is to be sure of survival, we must resume harvesting before the peak of the plankton-bloom. There is no other reliable source of food, or of raw materials for synthetics. Probably we could last for a season, through strict rationing. But there would be no guarantee of freedom to harvest again next season, and at that point we would have no reserves. We must face facts—this colony is in serious danger, and that consideration overrides all others."
Mondreau backed him up quickly. "Let's not forget that there is danger here from more than one quarter. Need I remind the people of Ernathe of the importance of their world to the growth and security of all the Cluster Worlds. Your mynalar-g may well be one of the keys to better starflight and to the breaking of those barriers that hold our worlds apart, and which also make them vulnerable. The Lacenthi and the Querlin are preying races. With the supply of mynalar-g we may well achieve techniques that were lost to us in the entropy wars. But without it, our hopes would dim, and the future of all the worlds would become uncertain—and that includes the future of Ernathe. You are the only supplier of mynalar-g. You know that, it was why your fathers came to this world.
"Please do not forget it. The Querlin will not, should they learn of the fact. The Lacenthi will not. More than one Cluster starship has already been lost in battle to keep this part of space clear of those enemies.
"But it may all be lost if we allow a race of this planet to interrupt us; a race that ignores even the most unmistakable attempts to communicate. We do not propose aggression, we do not propose war. We do propose a simple demonstration of our urgency and our determination.
"And that is what we will do. Should the opportunity present itself, we will send envoys into the Nale'nid city itself—but not without some assurance for their safe conduct. We have lost two valuable men already, who came too closely into contact with the sea-people."
The discussion did not end there, but it was clear that belief in the necessity of action was to prevail. Even Andol Holme, concerned as he was about the possible threat to Seth and Racart, was forced to admit privately that he could offer no better plan. The colony could not afford to risk further delay. Nevertheless, he was far from happy in his own mind with the inevitable decision.
* * *
He took the news, later, to Mona. She listened quietly as he talked; it had come as no surprise. But Holme was left wondering how much longer she could hold her emotions somberly in check. She continued moving about her kitchen—thoughtfully, unperturbedly preparing her dinner.
"Ardello is to be flagship," he said. "And I'll be going along aboard one of the ships, though in what capacity I don't know. Captain Gorges insisted upon that—said I should be there. I don't think he approves of the plan, really, either. But he has no authority in that regard, and I suppose he knows how far to push his advisory status without losing it."
He realized that Mona had hardly heard a word. She was staring at him and nodding, but her gaze was somewhere else entirely.
* * *
For what seemed an eternity Racart had waited, frozen in open-mouthed agony, with a fire in the cortex of his brain. He had waited, and not been able to scream and not dared think of relief. But to his huge surprise relief did come; it came as a startling psychic implosion, a crazed storm of random stimuli, marvelous shocks of light and a war of exploding colors behind his eyelids, breezy aromas of red fruit and mintleaf and the sea, and the tang of sour acid and ozone, washed with spume and mist-borne salt. Iced droplets of music sputtered and choked the quick hurtful violet, the burning flame, and drowned it in a chorus of thunder, of drowsing rainfalls and sheets of pummeling cool rain . . . which in time faded to white noise, gray sunshine, and no-pain. The confusion wound slowly down, giving way to quietude, and recovery.
In time, he opened his eyes and became, after a fashion, aware. He was lying inside a cavern; location unknown. (Had he been here before?) His trial, if that was what it was, was turning into a lengthy affair. Since his emergence from the labyrinth he had seen locations uncounted and unimagined; he had been shocked, broiled, frozen, sprayed, battered, and drenched by the elements in a dozen or a hundred ways—and he was utterly and incontrovertibly exhausted. He was numb. He had long since lost track of time and was only vacantly aware that day and night in any case had no meaning, so many times had he been skipped around the globe. Twice—(or was it three times, four? One?)—he had dazedly looked to discover his own town before him, his people, and once even the sound of Mona's voice. Could they have been real? No, far likelier hallucinations. The town, or the vision, had winked out like an extinguished light and he had traveled on to other lands, and thoughts unknown.
* * *
He heard a tapping sound, tink tink tink. He gathered his wits sufficiently to realize that he was lying on a smooth, cold rock slab, that the only illumination around him was a shimmering watery blue from somewhere beyond his feet, and that the tapping sound was being made by one of the sea-people farther back in the cavern. Despite aching, bone-deep weariness, he forced himself to sit up and look around. The cavern recesses were gloomy, shadowy; he could just discern the outline of a Nale'nid, the smaller of his two captors, he thought, rapping with a tool against something in the rock wall. Tink tink tink. The "something" broke away from the wall with a crick, and the Nale'nid picked it up and carried it to Racart.
He seemed mildly surprised that Racart was watching him.
"What's that?" Racart asked dully. At one time he might have felt outrage, or even mild annoyance—but all that had been drained from him, and he felt little beyond wondering where he was, and what was happening.
The sea-man gave his question no immediate notice, which did not particularly surprise Racart. It was unlikely that the Nale'nid could understand his language, but he tried again, hoping at least to get some attention. He failed.
The object was a large piece of raw crystal, perhaps silica, and the sea-man was placing it carefully at the end of the stone slab. "What is that? What are you doing?" Racart demanded.
This time he got a response. The Nale'nid spoke, or whistled, and was quickly joined by the other, the larger of the two captors. The two sea-men looked at him with what he took to be curiosity, with sharp, steady eyes that seemed not merely to acknowledge him, but to burrow into his gaze, to brush the fine nervous tracings behind his eyes and touch something within. He felt a curious twinge, a heady sensation of energy, and then the thought grew in his mind—not as from another source, but as a conclusion from some intuitive, deductive process—You are alert. That is interesting; unexpected.
That shook him a little. It was communication, for real, and for the first time. He was surprised by the cold impersonality behind it. .
"Yes," he said loudly. "Yes, and I would like to know what it is you plan to do with me."
Wordless amusement, not his.
That angered him, but before he could speak or move, the smaller Nale'nid stepped up and pushed the crystal in front of him. He resisted looking at it, and stared instead at the two Nale'nid faces; but he felt a quick pressure in his head, a sensation that was neither quite physical, nor quite mental, urging his gaze lower, a steady magnetic coercion forcing him to turn his eyes to the rock, to stare—to stare without focus or definition, to lose his attention in the facets of the rough crystal and to lose himself . . .
He was wandering bodiless in a refractory maze, of elements, of planes, of lights. A great hall of mirrors and lenses—clear or broken or smoky or silvery. Tripping, skipping, he wound farther and deeper until he had forgotten his origin, or purpose if there was one . . . and then he realized that he was not alone. Two others, moving bodiless as he, shadowed him with a muttering kind of insistence and, when he glanced quickly enough, laid bare parts of their
souls in flickerings and flashes of light. Curiosity, curiosity. Animosity? Perhaps, perhaps no. Uncertain. Stumblings, probings, testings and trials. Curiosity. Angling his attention sneakily closer, but not too close, he saw more of their souls, and clearly—and he was thunderingly bewildered. There was no other motive . . . .
The vision in the crystal crumbled to powder, and Racart looked up in wonder into the eyes of the Nale'nid, probing and hypnotic. He relaxed.
And then, slowly began the chill, the freeze. Even as he met the gaze of the Nale'nid he sensed distance, their distance. Quite suddenly he was alone, trapped within thoughts that were slowed—sluggish, stiff, missing a part of the life-force, the field. At first it was merely confusing; he saw the Nale'nid but they were not there, he felt no presence, they were dead things shifting in the wind, and whistling. But the change was in him, and he knew that it was not of his doing. There was a draining of his energy, a seeping of life from his cells; or perhaps it was a closing, a sealing in. He could not be sure. Synapses closed. Opened. Chattered, uncertain. Colors, rhythms, voices in his soul were being forcibly and mercilessly subdued. There was light around him, but he was imprisoned within himself, surrounded by darkness.
He tried to speak but his voice failed as a moan in the dying reality around him. A final journey was beginning, it seemed, and from this one he could see no return. He felt a queer numbness in his toes and legs, his arms, his chest and throat; and then he was no longer aware.
Chapter Eleven
Seth was beginning to understand the Nale'nid. At least the explanations he had come up with made sense to him, he decided, watching Lo'ela pucker and pop her lips, a nervous habit she had picked up from him. The problem at first had been his failure to realize the extent to which this perception-focus was a totally integral element of the Nale'nid makeup, both physiologically and psychologically. It comprised far more than just a set of perceptual viewpoints; it was more than an extreme case of specialized personal world views.
Nale'nid survived freezing cold climates without protection, without discomfort. Focus: upon the heat, the molecular kinetic energy, the radiant warmth of the sun to whatever extent it was present. Upon drawing heat from the surroundings, even if the surroundings were colder. This was not a trick to be accomplished without a rather fancy sidestepping of the laws of thermodynamics of normal-space.
Nale'nid lived and breathed in water without air-carrying apparatus, without gills, and with no obvious strain. Focus: upon the oxygen richness of the water, upon efficient use of body energy.
Nale'nid, upon appearing in the Ernathene settlements and ships, remained inconspicuous at need, almost to the point of invisibility. Focus: upon suppression of the sea-human aura, the electric field of the living body that betrays that body's presence non-visually and non-audibly, that signals to other bodies, "There is someone here."
Nale'nid moved to and from the high-pressure environment of the undersea city without a trace of decompression sickness. Focus: upon control of the physiological balance, upon containment and orderly removal of unwanted gases from within the bodily tissues.
Nale'nid traveled virtually anywhere in their world; at the speed of a whisper and an eyeblink. Focus . . .
Ah, this was the perplexing one, the exciting one, the giveaway to all the rest.
It was dizzying to think about, but Seth was beginning to get used to the dizziness.
"You travel through flux-space, don't you?" he asked Lo'ela, and felt that for the first time he was asking an educated question.
That is what you call it, the world within the world? Yes, then, we do. She lightly rubbed the top of his right hand and reached to give him a quick tickle in the ribs; this was a trick she had just learned, and she thought it great fun.
"Stop that!" he shouted, squirming and slapping at her hand.
"Ha-ha, ho!" she said, going after him again. He could not keep from laughing this time, but he shook a warning finger at her.
She fell suddenly sober, solemn. You wish to learn more of this "flux" business.
"It could be very important."
Whether, maybe, it is the same as the "flux" business of your own people?
Seth nodded.
I don't know. Perhaps if you told me more of it, so that I could gather an image as you talk.
He considered that. "All right." And he talked, much as before, about the flux-space in which his ship and others operated—what was known of it, what not known, how it was thought that it might be mastered more efficiently, the currents and energies harnessed . . .
Yes. Yes, Starman Friend, it is the same. But this travel from world to world—that is something of which we know nothing. We do not build ships, we build homes and things of this world. Lo'ela gazed at him with a deeply interested frown.
"Then—" and he stopped. The thought went no further. What was it he ought to be thinking of?
The watery light outside the dome was fading to a somber indigo blue, as evening settled downward through the sea to the ocean-floor city of the Nale'nid. Pal'onar was an assortment of gloomy, gray shapes on the darkening seabed—and though Seth could no longer actually see the movements of people in the other domes, he knew that life and movement went on as always. Soon the soft glow of the luminescent sea-mosses and the cultured anemones would begin to appear, to gently push back the cold dark of night from the bottom of the sea.
"Is flux—is it the source of your other powers, also?" he asked softly.
Lo'ela looked at him with uncertain eyes. A welter of perplexed thoughts struck him, rattled around, and subsided. Lo'ela suddenly became shy. How can I say, without better knowing your ways of thinking? But I believe, yes, you might call it a "source"—or, perhaps better, a "focus." She sighed, her eyes wide.
Seth realized that questions-and-answers would only take him so far; the best he might do would be to puzzle out as much as possible himself, and meanwhile to immerse himself in Nale'nid ways, until he knew he understood. But then, that was what he wanted to do, anyway. He gazed at the sea-girl and accepted her smiling stare in return. Lo'ela was, he realized, beginning to focus more keenly upon him than ever before. But he would not yet admit that the same might be true of him, as well.
* * *
Later, he asked Lo'ela to tell him something of the history of her people.
I can find someone who knows of it, if you would like, she responded brightly. That surprised him, but she explained that there were relatively few persons who focused upon such matters as history, parentage, and the like. There are a few things I can tell you, though, she added on second thought. We came to live beneath the sea many generations ago, but not beyond the memory of our learned rememberers. We came because the sun was harming us, and we were a failing people. We learned not to fail here.
Learned to focus beneath the sea? Seth wondered. Unstable Lambern—yes, and some day it would act up again and drench the Ernathe landscape with killing or mutating radiation. Was that it, then, was focus a result of forced evolution? "Many generations" ago could have been near the time of the entropy wars. Had Ernathe been settled at that time, a planet whose danger was never suspected? Were the Nale'nid evolved humans, an offshoot of his own people?
That, Lo'ela did not know.
But it made the entire human-Nale'nid confrontation seem that much more ludicrous. Though when he considered the matter, he thought of the Nale'nid as "people"—regardless of whether or not they were of "true human" origin.
It was time, perhaps, that he asked the questions he had been putting off for so long. "Lo'ela, why are your people at war with my people? What have we done that has so disturbed you—or the others?"
War? Disturbed? She blinked rapidly.
"The things they are doing to our settlements, disrupting production plants, and harvesting ships. And—" suddenly it came back, in a nerve-jarring rush—"Lo'ela, when my own ship was arriving, coming to land on this planet—you, somebody, some of the sea-people attacked us."
Lo'ela looked at him blankly, wonderingly.
"They took over the defenses that protect the planet from intruders, they took over those weapons and attacked us. My ship, Lo'ela. We weren't harmed, fortunately, but we might well have been destroyed.
"Why?" he demanded softly, only half trying to keep the until-now repressed anger from his voice.
Lo'ela's face changed slowly, to an expression of concentration. Well, she thought slowly and very deliberately, I do not know of these things, myself, so I can only tell you why they would have occurred if in fact I did know of them.
"Yes, please."
Curiosity.
He stared. "Curiosity? That's all? Curiosity?" What madness was this? Shooting at starships, sabotaging ocean-ships—out of curiosity?
Curiosity, yes. To learn of your kind, to experiment. I have heard it said by others of my own that you seem such structured creatures. That has been found remarkable—your human unadaptability. She swallowed uncomfortably and looked as though she wanted to get off the subject. A Nale'nid reaction, or a human one?
Seth's mouth froze in a crooked, disbelieving gape—while his thoughts churned. Well, he'd wanted to know, so he had it coming. "Are you all in on this?" he asked tightly, sounding a bit more paranoid than he had intended.
Oh no, no. I am not certain, even, just who is involved. Only those who—
"—focus," he said sourly, even as she finished the thought.
She grinned uncertainly.
Seth sighed. "Lo'ela, I have a friend. An Ernathene. His name is Racart, and—"
I do not know.
"You—"
I do not know if he is with my people. Or if he is safe. That is what you wonder. I—
"Can you find out? It is very important." He told her of Racart's first abduction and return, and of the affair on the harvester Ardello. "Of course it is possible that he may have come back to the settlement by now."
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