IT WAS NOT until four hours later that the doctor reappeared again. Ledin looked away as he approached, and stared at the wall, in case what he read in the man’s eyes was not the result he was hoping for.
“She will live,” the doctor told them, “but we have decided to remove the phalange on her right hand which we had been hoping to save, and also the first phalange on the small toe on her left foot. She did herself much damage when she was trying to struggle free.”
Cimma grabbed him by the sleeve, and tugged, making the doctor incline himself away from her in order not to be pulled up to her face. “But she will live?”
The man extricated his sleeve. “Certainly. She will be asleep for at least 24 hours, but she should be quite unharmed by her experience. Apart from the setback with the digits, of course. That will take some time to heal. All the other points of frostbite have suffered too, naturally, and we are rather back to square one with our treatment. We will have to begin the vacuum cures again, and she will continue with the daily immersion plan. It will take at least another ten days before she is well enough to leave here.”
“But she will live. Thank you, Doctor. One of us will stay with her from now on, if you would be so kind as to instruct the nurses to put some sort of an additional bed into the room.”
“From what I have heard, that would be a very good thing,” he said slowly. “Although I understand that you wish for discretion over this matter?”
The man who spoke to canths nodded. “If that is possible without affecting your colour, of course. We will naturally adapt to your own feelings on the subject.”
The doctor hesitated. “I see no reason to broadcast this to all the world. Providing that no suspicion rests on my staff, that is?”
Arcan reassured him, and the doctor excused himself. “Then I will go. I am afraid I have other patients to attend to. She will remain here in intensive care for the next 12 hours at least, so the best thing you can do is get some rest.”
Cimma nodded her thanks, and they broke out in excited chatter as the doctor left, all just as emotional as little children let out of school for the day. Six and Diva were punching each other, and pretending to fight; the visitor’s globe was doing circuits and bumps up to the ceiling and back; Ledin and Cimma were uncharacteristically hugging each other, and Arcan was pulsating with bright lights. It was a colourful change to the silence of only minutes before, and the man who spoke to canths enjoyed watching. He felt privileged to see how passionate these foreigners could be.
THE NEXT DAY Grace was wheeled back to her hospital room, and reconnected to the vacuum pumps which helped to provoke cell regeneration. Her colour was much better, and she was awake, a sign the Xianthan took as a good omen. The canth keeper had undertaken to stay with her until Diva arrived to take her first shift as protector.
He perched on a chair near her bed and asked how she was feeling.
“A little better, thank you. I am happy to still be here.”
“You are lucky to still be here. The colour was with you.”
“You promised to teach me how to measure my colour, remember?”
“Of course I remember, but are you up to it today? I have to leave for the canth farm, but I will be back in a day or two, and I could teach you then.”
Grace shook her head. “Now is the perfect time,” she said.
The man who spoke to canths smiled at her. “All you have to do is think about your life,” he said. “Start when you were very little, and come forward slowly in time. When you hit something important, stop, and mark it with a physical symbol, which you must repeat to yourself. Then you can re-examine the whole string of events much more easily.”
“Well, at the beginning I was just on Valhai …”
“Was there anything important?”
“Maestra … my mother.”
“Good. What object will remind you of her as she was then?”
Grace tried to see through closed eyes, and smiled. “A bath sponge. She was always trying to get me to wash myself more thoroughly.”
“Excellent! Then we write down a bath sponge in the first place on your mental list. Continue. What is the next great event?”
“The death of my father. But … but that doesn’t feel as if it defines me. I don’t know why?”
“Then leave it alone. Find something that does define you.”
Grace blew a sigh. “Now there are many: going bare planet, Arcan, Six, Diva, Vion, my mother’s knife, my brother’s hatred, Solian and Gerrant’s death, the orbital station on Kwaide, the canths, falling …” She opened her eyes suddenly, surprised. “You were right about falling – it did define me, just as Amanita’s attempt to kill me has too!”
He spread his hands. “You see – it is easy. Now all you must do is associate each of those things with a symbol and go through them all every day in your head. Accept the bad ones, and examine the good ones. If you want to go back to one defining moment, you can. Otherwise you go on, hoping to get nearer and nearer to the place you want to be.” He leaned forward. “Now you associate a colour to where you are. If you take your first colour as monochrome, you simply move up or down, according to the feelings you have about each defining point. One defining point may remove colour, one may give much colour. You must feel the colour change inside you.”
Grace nodded. “All right! Since I am sitting here with nothing much else to do it will be easy. But I don’t think I have very much colour at all.”
“You may surprise yourself. Once you know your own colour you will find it much easier to accept yourself as you are. You will find you feel more part of the universe, not so isolated.”
“How do you know that I feel isolated?”
“It is not a difficult thing to see, Girl who fell. And yet, I can also see that this isolation is only self-imposed. Once you fill yourself in with the colours you deserve – good and bad – then you will not feel so isolated.”
Grace was not convinced, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “I’ll give it a try,” she promised.
“Just do it for a week,” he asked. “If you don’t find any benefit then stop after seven days.”
She nodded her agreement.
“But remember one thing. You have a special link which ties you to Xiantha, and that will help you.”
“Thank you. You have been very kind to me.”
“You are worthy of much colour.”
Grace breathed in. “We’ll see! I would like to be!”
He raised one eyebrow. “That is the question, I think. I hope that you will find the answer.” Then he picked up the panchrome coat he had just bought for himself, to reflect his new status, and flung it around his shoulders. “We will meet again soon, Girl who fell. I wish you a speedy recovery.”
“Take good care of the canths!”
“Always.”
Chapter 20
GRACE WAS SITTING up in a chair. It was her first day without the vacuum pumps on her hands and feet, and they were all celebrating her release from what had felt very much like purgatory. At least now she could get out of bed, and walk around the room. And the Sellite delegation had returned with the coffins to Valhai, so now that the other Xianthan collaborators had finally been rounded up she was safe from attack. A round-the-clock watch was deemed unnecessary. She felt so much better that she was euphoric, and they had all been giggling like little children for the last two hours. Then she realized with a sinking feeling that today was the last day that Cimma and Ledin could be there.
It was silly of her to wish they could stay longer, but her recent Xianthan meditations had made her realize how important they were to her. They had both insisted on staying until she was safely on the road to recovery, but New Kwaide needed them: the Elders were refusing to maintain the agreements, and there had been some half-hearted skirmishes around the boundaries marked out in the Independence Agreements. Cimma said that it was only to be expected, and that both she and Ledin were essential just at the moment. T
he newly elected president was good, but inexperienced, and the skirmishes should be played down, and underemphasized. She thought it was quite normal that the Elders should take some time to adapt, and that New Kwaide should try to give them that time. Since she was worried that the president might let things escalate, she was determined to get back to Kwaide that same day.
So the last few minutes were much more solemn. Grace was waiting for the moment to arrive, which meant it came all the more quickly. Her mother got to her feet.
“Please try at least not to get into any more trouble, will you?” she said, bending down to stroke Grace’s hair to one side. “Ledin and I are getting tired of having to come out and rescue you!”
Grace gave a wan smile, but stood up shakily to give her a fierce hug. “I will be very careful,” she promised. She turned to Ledin, who was looking rather uncertain. She gave him a smile, and then hugged him too. He held her very tight against him for a few seconds, before letting her go.
“Take care, Grace,” he told her, in a low voice. “I know you can! Come and visit us on Kwaide when you are able. There are places to go out there now. With music, and dancing. You can actually have fun!”
“I will.” For a moment Ledin thought that Grace was going to kiss him. He seemed to read the intention on her face, and then she stepped back, and the moment was gone, leaving him to wonder if he had imagined it. He and Cimma disappeared, Ledin with a laconic wave of goodbye to the others, and there was a long pause.
“I hear you finally found the facility,” said Grace, to break the uncomfortable silence.
“Wouldn’t have mattered if we hadn’t, as it turned out,” Six told her. “Atheron had dismantled everything before he left. It was as clean as a whistle. Terrific amount of work for no return. All we had to do was throw out a few surplus drums of chemical products used to manufacture the orange compound, and pull the structure down. The rest of the orange compound was on the shuttles Atheron had come on. Arcan transported those straight into a declining orbit around Almagest!”
“A lot of trouble over nothing,” agreed Diva. “We could have been lying on the sands at the Emerald Lake for all the good we did!”
The visitor whirred. “In that case I think Six should probably stay at the Emerald lake all the time!”
There was another silence as they digested that remark with its implications, and then Diva burst out laughing. “Serves you right, Six! For cruelty to inanimate objects!”
Six grinned back, taking it in good part. “I see you have got used to our ways, Visitor! That was a joke! If you keep on like this you’ll forget that you are Dessite altogether!”
The little globe twittered. “No chance of that, I am afraid. My case is due for review this afternoon on Dessia.”
“So soon?” Diva was horrified. “I thought we had loads more time to come up with something to help. That is not good news. What can we do?”
The visitor clicked. “They will reach a decision later in the day. Whatever they decide will be implemented tomorrow.”
“Then we had better do something about it. We are NOT going to lose you, whatever Six says!”
Six looked hurt. “Hey! That isn’t fair at all. I never said I wanted the visitor dead!” he exclaimed. He thought for a moment, and then, in the interests of truth, admitted, “I MIGHT have said that he talks to much!”
“Six! Stop mithering on and start thinking! We haven’t got all day, you know!”
Six lifted his shoulders. “Grace is the one who always comes up with the good ideas!”
They all turned and looked in Grace’s direction. She had been thinking about this for some time, but felt very uncertain about the direction she thought they ought to take.
“You know,” she said slowly. “I have the strangest feeling …” She turned to look in Arcan’s direction. “Arcan, do you remember what we were talking about …?”
The orthogel entity shimmered. “About Pictoria? Of course. Do you think that may be important now?”
Grace gave a sigh. “It has been in my mind for the last few days. If what we suspect is true, then it seems to me that there might be a way to harness it …?”
There was a long pause this time, and then Arcan swelled up so much that he threatened to encompass the whole room.
“Hey! Mind what you’re doing!” Six told him.
“Sorry Six.” Immediately the alien deflated slightly, but colours of excitement were still running up and down his shape. “Grace! If that were possible! It would … it would be HUGE! Like me!”
Six sighed again. “Always so modest, Arcan!”
Grace nodded. “Yes, I think it would. But I don’t know if we will have time to organize something for the visitor … we have left things a bit late.”
“Would somebody mind telling me what is going on?” asked Diva, who sounded quite cross. “Neither of you are making much sense at the moment.”
Grace looked towards Arcan again, to get his tacit permission to tell the others, and then explained about the amorphs.
“It seems to me that there can only be one explanation,” she told them finally. “The three amorphs which accompanied us to the surface were in fact the remnants of the orthogel bracelets. I can’t see any other explanation.”
“WHAT?” Six’s jaw dropped. “You mean that the ortholiquid on Pictoria somehow changed the bracelets into amorphs?”
Diva made a face. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t see how that could work!”
Grace shook her head. “I don’t think there is any other way it could have happened. Only something with the knowledge which Arcan possesses could have found him here, and on Valhai. Which means that the amorph or amorphs that have been seen here contained some part of Arcan, right?”
They all thought about that, and there were reluctant nods.
“Arcan’s own feeling was that they were somehow related to him, but that just doesn’t work. If they were only distant relatives they wouldn’t have known how to travel here, 30,000 light years away.”
“I still don’t understand,” said Diva.
Grace bit her lip. “I think that in some way the ortholiquid on Pictoria is in symbiosis with the avifauna. That it is organic, if in a very primitive form. There was no other source of energy for it down there, no means of alimentation. I think it developed a symbiosis with the avifauna. They must provide some knowledge that it needs.”
Six thought for a moment. “You mean that when an avifauna dies, it is assimilated into the ortholiquid. Ok, but how does that explain the amorphs?”
“Think about it, Six! What if the central parts of the brain – the memories and the things that made that avifauna special – were preserved, wrapped around by the ortholiquid? That would be a kind of immortality for them, wouldn’t it?”
Both Six and Diva gaped. “You mean that the ortholiquid transforms the essence of the avifauna into an amorph? Grace, that can’t be right!”
“But don’t you see? If it is, then we have a chance of saving the visitor!”
The small machine gave a burst of static, and seemed to vibrate excitedly on the spot. “I could become like the orthogel entity? Magnificent! I want to do it!”
“There is a snag,” Grace told him. “You would have to die first.”
The video camera gave a disdainful buzz. “I don’t think I will have much choice about that anyway. The case against me is very solid. The Dessites are bound to find me guilty.”
“Guilty of what?” asked Six, angry on the visitor’s behalf. “These Dessites sound like a load of crooks, if you ask me!”
“I have broken their laws. They are right to punish me.”
“What do you think we should do, then, Grace?” said Arcan.
The Sellite girl considered. “I suppose we will all have to go back to Pictoria,” she said slowly. “I can’t think of any other way. Once there, maybe your amorph surrogates – if that’s what they are – can contact you.”
“Yes, but Arcan can’t ris
k going down onto the planet,” said Six.
“I know. He mustn’t, especially now that we know that the ortholiquid somehow managed to destroy the bracelets. But it seems pretty clear that the amorphs have been trying to contact him, and haven’t been able to. That might be because he is physically too far away.”
The visitor clacked its disapproval. “Either they are quantum entities or they aren’t,” it told them precisely. “If they are, then distance is not a factor. If they aren’t then they can’t travel even to a spaceship in orbit without help.”
Everybody stared at the small globe, which then rectified. “On the other hand, we have seen the amorphs here so they must be quantum.”
“Thank you, Visitor. Have you any explanation?”
The machine ed busily. “I suppose,” it said, reluctantly, “that if it were made partially with orthogel, then it could have retained the quantum decoherence abilities which Arcan possesses. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t have my non-locality capabilities, so it probably wouldn’t be able to converse mentally at a distance.”
Grace nodded. “That fits,” she said. “Though it still doesn’t tell us why it can only transport for a few seconds, and is unable to retain the transportation.”
Arcan darkened. “I suppose the … amorph-Arcan mix is very new to its habitat. Perhaps it is still learning how to control everything?”
“Yes. That might explain it. Or maybe it is very weak, maybe it has no means of sustaining itself. We shan’t know if we don’t investigate.” Grace looked around at all of them. “Are we agreed then? We go back to Pictoria?”
Diva gave a small sigh. “Grace, you are still meant to be recovering. Do you think you are in any condition to go back to that cavern?”
Six was quite definite. “No way is she going back down there!”
Grace thought again. “I suppose I could stay in the Independence with Arcan,” she proffered. “That wouldn’t require any strain on my part. But it would mean leaving you two—”
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