“Why should I? He thinks he’s such a miracle! And he hasn’t done very much at all, has he? If you think about it, I mean. Not like Arcan!”
Grace couldn’t let that pass. “You have an awfully short memory, Six. He saved your life, last year. And Ledin’s! What more do you want?”
He gave a grunt. “I suppose you are right.”
“I know I am.”
BY THE TIME they took the amorphs outside into the chill morning air it was quite late, and they found several avifauna perched on the ground around the space shuttle, examining it with great interest. Diva was pleased. “See! These ones don’t seem afraid of us!”
“Give them time. They have only just met you.”
Diva stuck her tongue out at him.
“Well they can’t stay,” he said.
They made their way through the hatch. Once they were outside Diva spoke again.
“That was strange, wasn’t it, yesterday? Why do you think the avifauna congregate around the ortholiquid? These aren’t.”
“Because of the heat,” Six said immediately. “It’s obvious, when you think about it. “Orthogel – so I suppose this ortholiquid too – transmits all the excess temperature to its surroundings. So the rock all around the basin was much warmer than the rest of the planet, didn’t you notice? The birds must shelter in there when the winds start up each day.”
“And the surface of the instellite around the ortholiquid was covered with water vapour which was running down the walls into pools – it almost looked like one of those sauna places you have on Coriolis, Diva. I saw a couple of avifauna drinking from one of the natural hollows in the rock. I suppose the difference in temperature condenses out some of the water vapour in the air. I think they use it as a source of water, as well as heat,” added Grace.
“I shall be sad to leave them though,” mused Diva.
“I could tell. I thought you were going to say you would stay on the planet.”
“Of course I wasn’t! But they are great, aren’t they? Just think how nice it would be to take some back to Kwaide, or Coriolis.”
“They are pretty dumb, these booby birds,” said Six.
“The only booby around here has two feet and no name!”
“If it weren’t for me we would still be in that awful cavern!”
“That’s true. You had better just hope that Arcan was right about getting over the loss of the three bracelet rings, otherwise we will be stuck in orbit around this planet and our only chance will be to come back down here and mingle with the avians, wondering where our next lunch is coming from.”
“I certainly wouldn’t be wondering that,” scorned Six. “Not with all these booby birds cuddling up to me!”
“How could you!” Diva jumped to her feet. “As if we could ever, ever eat one of them.”
“Speak for yourself, lady ethical. You only say that because you have no idea what it is like to be really hungry.”
“I would rather starve!”
Six gave her a skeptical look. “You wouldn’t, if it came to it, but if you want to believe that then do, by all means.”
“So now you think you know better than me, do you?”
“Yes.” Six nodded his head. “Definitely!”
“That is a load of garbage!”
“Oh, very highbrow, Diva!”
“You know I don’t eat meat!”
“You know that stew you liked so much on Kwaide last year? The one Ledin made especially for you and Grace?”
Diva narrowed her eyes, “Yes, what?”
“You know – that time you asked for seconds?”
“Are you trying to tell me that was meat? That’s not true! I would have noticed! You are having me on!” She looked absolutely horrified. Six burst out laughing, pleased that he had managed to take her in. Then she saw something that made her forget about taking revenge on Six.
One of the avians was on the move. It made a few ungainly jumps to take it to the top of the nearest ridge, pushed off hard with its back legs, and then veered in mid glide to turn along the valley and so avoid crashing into the next ridge. It coasted for quite ten seconds, and then flapped its gigantic wings enough to rise slightly into the air again, the back wings stretched out behind it, forming a sort of tepee. As soon as it regained a little height it brought its back legs forward underneath it, and the back wings splayed out horizontally, helping to keep it aloft. The other birds waited for a few moments, and then followed their leader as it headed back to the nearest butte. They were only able to rise a few metres at a time, and in a fairly long distance, but were certainly more efficient than mere gliders would have been.
“Look! They can fly properly after all! Have I time to follow them, to see how far they can fly and where they go?”
Grace grinned. “Sure. Six and I can do the tests with the amorphs. Just don’t get lost!”
Diva had already leapt up onto the ridge. “I won’t! And I will get plenty of samples of the vegetation, don’t worry!”
“Just be back here before the wind gets up!”
“Of course.” Diva took the nearby ridge in a couple of large jumps, and then launched herself off the top into the neighbouring gully, disappearing from sight.
Six turned to Grace. “Time to work,” he said. “For some of us.”
THEY TOOK THE three amorphs they had brought up with them over to the nearest lumps of rock and set up the high definition camera and stand which came with the new space trader. With this, they could slow each frame down, and, hopefully, see what was happening.
It took them quite a few hours to set up everything correctly. Once they were ready, Grace picked up one after the other of the amorphs, and they filmed each creature’s reaction carefully. All three times the amorphs lay uncomplainingly for a few seconds, and then somehow burnt her hand, forcing her to drop them.
They couldn’t repeat the flashes of light which they had seen down in the subterranean chamber, and the reason for the heat transfer wasn’t clear when they played back the videos.
“All we can say is that they can use heat,” said Six, looking rather disappointed. “I suppose they use it to defend themselves from predators like the bats.”
“Or us!” Grace agreed, bending down again to examine the film more carefully. “I think you must be right, though I can’t see why that should burn us, can you?”
He gave a shrug. He had no further knowledge of even ordinary superfluids, and this was beyond him.
Grace pointed down at the amorphs. “What shall we do with them now? Should we take them back to one of the caves?”
“Let them go, of course – what else? And before you say it, NO, you can’t take them home with you. Honestly, between you and Diva …! What’s the betting she will want to take her avifauna home too?”
“Then I will take them back to the lake,” decided Grace. “They don’t look as if they are used to being out here, and they might not be able to find their way home.”
“Grace, they are the ones that live here on Pictoria!”
“I know, but they’re so small.” She bent down to pick up one of the creatures, which promptly disappeared.
Grace closed her eyes and then opened them again. There were still only two. The other had simply vanished. “Err … Six …”
He turned around to her. “What?”
“One of them just vanished.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, that would mean …” He trailed off himself, as the second amorph disappeared right under his eyes. They both hurried to stare at the third amorph, which duly winked out and vanished. Grace’s mouth had dropped open.
“Six! They are like Arcan! They are quantum!”
Six was looking around for the visitor. “You’ll have to upgrade these things! You got it wrong!”
The video camera chittered. “I don’t get things wrong,” it said mechanically. “I am not like you!”
Six narrowed his eyes. “No. That is why Arcan transported us directly into the upp
er atmosphere of a gas giant, I suppose?”
“Sckrssckkskkkkkch!” said the tiny globe.
“I accept your apology.”
“Sckkkrsskk. Skkkkkch!”
THEY WERE SERIOUSLY worried by the afternoon. They had spent the rest of the day cataloguing the geological specimens they had taken, and taking photographs of some of the nearby area. Diva should have been back hours before. They were long past the point of no return, and her late arrival meant that they would all have to spend another night on the planet’s surface. Apart from that, she was cutting it very fine with the wind, which was due to start up in another twenty minutes. Six had worried himself into a foul temper, and Grace was not enjoying the idea of sharing another night’s insomnia with him in this enclosed space.
“I am going out to look for her!” For about the fiftieth time, he got to his feet.
“NO! You can’t. You have no idea where she is, and no chance at all at finding her on foot. The rest of the avifauna left hours ago, and the visitor has already been all over the immediate area. We just have to wait here. Sit down, please!”
Reluctantly, he allowed his legs to bend, and he slumped back against the bulkhead. “How dare she do this to us!” he grunted. “She must have known how worried you would get!”
Grace looked up at him under her brows, but wisely refrained from comment.
“Well she needn’t think she is going to get a hero’s welcome when she does finally deign to arrive! And she is probably risking her neck in the process. She must know we can’t do anything until tomorrow!”
He refused to shut the hatch until the wind was so strong that it took the combined strength of both of them to manage to pull it shut.
“Six! Please! She can’t possibly come now! There is no way at all that she could be out in this! She will be sitting it out in one of those chambers. You know she always falls on her feet. Stop worrying about her!”
He glowered. “I am not worried about her. As if! I just hate that she should have let you get into this state. She is totally thoughtless! I could wring her aristocratic neck. In fact, I very well might!”
“So you shall. But tomorrow, Six, as soon as it is light. There is nothing more we can do today.”
Six was like a Cesan frogling on hot sand. “And it’s not as if we can even contact Arcan,” he moaned. “Because we will never be able to get through on the interscreen with this howling gale outside.”
The visitor’s machine, which had been sitting in a corner, whirred, startling them. “I am in touch with the Independence,” it said. “What do you wish to know?”
“Oh. Can you get through with all this wind?”
The globe looked at him pityingly. “Of course,” it crackled. “Our technology is excellent.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know if the wind … Oh, never mind. I suppose your technology is so superior that it isn’t affected by mere things like winds, right?”
“Naturally. The Dessites have a clear understanding of such things. I don’t suppose a category 3b like yourself would know much about physics?”
“Of course I do. I got a good grade.”
“Well I wouldn’t have thought it.”
Six growled, and the video camera moved prudently as far away as it could. “I was only trying to help,” it said plaintively.
“Thank you, Visitor,” said Grace. “Is Arcan all right? Will he have the strength to transport us home?” She caught the involuntary movement of Six out of the corner of her eye. “When Diva comes back, that is.”
“He believes so. He is working on it, but thinks that in a few more days he will have been able to boost his remaining cells.”
“And has he any idea of what happened? I mean, did he feel anything, or did the bracelets just disappear? Surely he can tell where they are?”
The machine relayed the question, and the answers that came back were all in the negative. It appeared Arcan had no way of tracing the missing orthogel bracelets. They had simply disappeared, and he could find no trace of them whatsoever.
“It might be different if I were there on the planet with you,” he told them. “That way I might be able to detect some sort of vibrations, but as it is, up here in orbit, there is nothing I can do. And it would be unwise for me to travel down to the planet’s surface.”
“It would be crazy. You have to stay up there.”
“Yes. I know.” They broke off the conversation, and Six lapsed into an incessant game of moving one stone over another in the palm of his hand. Each time they clicked as they touched each other, until Grace wondered if she would actually lose her own sanity before morning came.
“Err … Six?”
“What?”
“Could you stop making that clicking noise, please?”
“Sure. Sorry.” There was about ten minutes silence until, without knowing it, the stones started their clacking again. After the first four times Grace held her peace. She wasn’t going to get any sleep in any case – the shuttle was shuddering from tip to tail fin. She tried to think of pleasant things, but found it hard to find any in the middle of a very long night. Then she found her thoughts moving off to Kwaide. Cimma was on Kwaide, of course. She wondered how her mother was getting along, letting her thoughts travel through the base camp, imagining what the people there would be doing now. And the orbital station? What would they be doing up there? She found that this picture calmed her down, and enabled her to survive the night without resorting to violence, something she really felt she should be congratulated on.
SHORTLY AFTER THE wind dropped the next morning there was a loud knocking on the door, and Diva breezed in.
“Hello, sleepyheads—” She stopped abruptly. “Ack! The air is really stale in here, we need to leave the hatch open for a while before we take off. Sorry I didn’t get back yesterday, only I got a bit lost, and had to rest up in one of the buttes, beside one of the upper lakes. I suppose you guessed what had happened?”
“Of course,” said Six, feigning a return to the present from a deep sleep. “I knew you would be all right. Grace was a bit worried, though.”
“Oh, Grace, I’m sorry! I hope you managed to get some sleep?”
“A little.”
“And I have been sleeping like a log on that wonderful hot stone by the lake, using the avifauna as mattresses. They finally lost their fear of me.” She gave a stretch and a yawn, showing her even teeth. At that moment Six suffered an irrepressible urge to knock them clean down her throat. He twitched. Grace shot him a look of warning.
“Well, at least Six has had a good night, too,” went on Diva sunnily. “Good. You know I wish we could take a couple of the avifauna home with us!”
“You are not adopting any booby birds!”
“Why not? And they are avifauna, not booby birds!”
“Because you can’t, and that’s that.” He threw the stones he had been playing with all night out of the hatch, moodily. “But don’t listen to me, take it up with Arcan, why don’t you?”
“What’s got into you?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Diva shrugged her shoulders. “Boy, you sure got out of bed the wrong way,” she said.
“Just take us up to the space trader,” said Six, “—since you’re the one who has slept so well.”
Diva obeyed, and they were soon standing in front of Arcan, who seemed just the same as always, despite the loss of part of his orthogel.
Arcan greeted them with relief.
“I am sorry,” he said. “Something happened to me on that planet—”
“We’re calling it Pictoria,” Diva informed him.
Arcan nodded. “—Pictoria then. Something happened to me on Pictoria that completely annulled my capacity to act quantically. It was as if there were some magnets pulling down on me, stopping me from decohering anywhere at all, and then the connexion was completely severed. It was a struggle for me to understand the information the visitor was relaying to me, and that was only from
his ship up here on the Independence.” Colours coalesced up and down the orthogel shape and he gave a shiver, shimmering in the half-light of the control deck. “It was a not a pleasant experience.”
“Tell me about it,” nodded Six. Diva glared at him, and he spread his hands. “What? First I was nearly smothered by a booby bird and then we almost rotted in a cavern!”
“I wish you would stop complaining about every little thing!”
“I like that! Even Arcan admits to it being a pretty awful place. So is the ortholiquid an ancestor of yours, Arcan?”
The orthogel entity gave a rather plaintive shiver of light. “I am afraid it is, Six,” he said, “but it seems that I was the one to evolve, and it has stayed stationary in time. There is no question that the basic make-up is the same, it is just that the liquid in there is not organic – or at least it doesn’t seem to be, from what you have told me.”
“No, we know.”
“It is a pity. I was hoping to find something like myself. Something that can live as long as it seems I will. Otherwise the universe will seem a very lonely place.”
“Are you ready, then?” asked Diva. “Or do you need more time to recuperate for the journey back?”
Arcan shimmered again. “I am almost ready to leave now,” he said. “Though I would like to come back here again.” His voice echoed in their heads. “But I think we should wait until we have had time to think about what happened here. I think next time I come, we should all be better prepared. I nearly got you all killed. That isn’t acceptable. I let my eagerness get in the way of my sense. That mustn’t happen again.”
“Do you think you can get us home, Arcan?” asked Grace.
“I think so, yes, though it is a sad thing for me to have to leave part of myself behind. I would just like to stay for a little longer, in case the missing orthogel is trying to contact me.”
“Take your time, Arcan,” said Six sarcastically. “I hope you stocked up this ship with some food, though! Some of us need to eat from time to time.”
“I’m afraid I forgot that, too. There are only the nutripacks. Don’t worry, Six. You will be back in orbit around Valhai long before you get hungry.”
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