by Timothy Zahn
“Truly, it wasn’t,” Wesowee said ruefully. “At one end of the channel was a downward-running conduit, and as I laid out the plates beside it I slipped and fell through. The conduit carried me into another chamber, also large but much smaller than the testing arena. When I finally was able to find a way out, I fell farther into a shaft carrying heated air upward. The shaft carried me here, and I’ve been searching for a way out ever since then.”
“Wow,” Nicole said dutifully, turning the story over and over as she searched for a good hole to call him on. It was dangerous to flat-out call a scammer a liar, but it was equally risky to look too gullible and accepting. Asking for a clarification or two was a good way to keep the right balance. “So how come you didn’t break a leg or hip or something when you hit?” she asked. “It’s a pretty long way down from the arena to here.”
“I still had a hold on one of the plates,” Wesowee said. “I was able to lift it over my head like a parachute, and it slowed me enough that I wasn’t badly hurt.” He whistled something Nicole’s translator couldn’t decipher. “Nevertheless, my ankles hurt for quite a while afterward. I don’t think they’re completely healed even now.”
Nicole frowned. The Ghorf had been dragging his feet when he first arrived, but she hadn’t noticed any actual limping. “How long ago was this, anyway?”
Wesowee whistled mournfully. “I don’t know. Days, certainly.” He stuffed the last bit of food bar into his mouth and gestured to his vest. “I had four bottles of water and six food bars. I consumed them carefully, but it’s still been at least five days since I ran out.”
He pointed to the heat-transfer duct behind Nicole. “I’ve seen many of these vertical shafts in that time and one very wide, very long one. But I haven’t yet found a set of stairs with which I could return to my home and my fellow workers.”
“Yes,” Nicole murmured, a sudden memory cutting across the cynicism about Wesowee’s story. Back when the Caretaker had first declared her the Fyrantha’s Protector, hadn’t he said something…?
He had. He’d said the arena had once been a fighter-craft hangar, back when the Fyrantha had been somebody’s warship. He’d said that some group called the Lillilli had taken out the racks and turned it into the testing arena. He’d then started to say something about other hangars.
Only Nicole had cut him off with a question. And somehow they’d never gotten back to that subject.
She beckoned over her shoulder to the Wisp still standing patiently behind her. The creature glided over, and Nicole took its hand. Are there other testing arenas aboard the ship? she thought at it.
There are three others, the Wisp replied.
Is one of them like Wesowee described, with a central channel?
Yes, in Q3.
Nicole nodded, feeling like an idiot. She already knew she’d barely scratched the surface of what the Fyrantha had to offer. She also knew that all of that scratching had been confined to Q4.
In other words, not only had Wesowee not been lying about his story, if he’d seen a bunch of heat-transfer ducts he’d clearly been wandering the ship for a lot longer and had covered a lot more distance than Nicole had realized.
She owed the Ghorf an apology. A big apology.
But since he didn’t have the slightest idea of what she’d been thinking, an apology would probably only confuse him. “Okay, let’s start by getting you some more food and water,” she said instead. “After that, we’ll figure out how to get you home.”
“That would be wonderful…” Wesowee trailed off, his head swinging back and forth as he looked around. “But how can that happen? I see no stairs.” He cocked his head. “How did you arrive here? Did you also fall?”
“No, I had help,” Nicole said, turning to the Wisp. For a moment she wondered what Wesowee was going to think about what was about to happen, decided she really didn’t care. As long as he got home okay, he shouldn’t care how scary or befuddling the method was. “I need another Wisp,” she said. She glanced at the Ghorf, noting his size. “On second thought, better make it two.”
“What are these Wisps you speak of?” Wesowee asked.
“This is a Wisp,” Nicole said, gesturing to the one beside her. As she did so, two more of them floated down the shaft, their descent slowed by the hot air rising against their butterfly wings. Their wings folded and they glided toward the Ghorf, their arms rising from their sides. “They’ll take us to food, and then—”
She broke off at a terrified-sounding whistle from the alien. “No!” he pleaded, his hands extending outward, palms toward the Wisps, as he backed away. “Don’t let them touch me! They kidnapped us from our world—don’t let them now take me away from my friends here! Please!”
“Easy, Wesowee,” Nicole admonished. “They’re not going to hurt you. You must have seen them moving around the ship. They didn’t do anything to you then, right?”
She might as well have been talking to the cafeteria’s food dispenser. Wesowee continued to back away, whistling incoherently, his pawlike hands outstretched as if he was trying to hold back rush-hour traffic.
She already knew from her time with Kahkitah that the Ghorfs were strong and loyal but not particularly bright. Apparently, they were also easily spooked. “It’s all right,” she tried again, as the two Wisps passed her and continued toward him. “They’re going to help you. You can’t get up the heat duct without them.”
Abruptly, Wesowee stopped, the frantic whistling fading away. He trilled a question—“We’re going up the ducts?”
“That’s the only way up,” Nicole said. “Don’t worry—they’re stronger than they look.”
“Their wings can lift both themselves and me?” he asked, looking back and forth between the Wisps as they came up to him.
“Two of them? Sure,” Nicole said. “One of them is enough to carry me, and you’re no more than, what, one and a half times my weight? Trust me. And trust them.”
Wesowee still looked doubtful. But he remained silent as he followed the Wisps back to the duct. “I’ll go first,” Nicole said, stepping to her Wisp and touching its arm. Where is the nearest supply closet to this heat-transfer duct? she asked it.
Four levels up, it replied. Thirty steps forward.
Nicole nodded. Four levels up, it is. Let’s go. The other two will follow with the Ghorf. Keep it nice and smooth, okay?
The Wisp wrapped its arms around her, and a moment later she was floating upward on the updraft. Too late, she realized she should have turned her head downward before the usual paralysis of this kind of travel set in, so that her eyes would be in position to watch Wesowee’s progress. But she hadn’t, and she would just have to hope he was doing all right.
She could still hear, though, and all the way up she kept her ears pealed for the distant thud that would mean the Ghorf had managed to break his own paralysis and the Wisps’ grip and had fallen back to the air-purifier grating.
But the thud didn’t come. She and the Wisp rode the upward wind four levels, the wall opened at the Wisp’s unheard command, and a minute later she and Wesowee were once again on solid flooring.
“This way,” Nicole said, heading toward the supply closet. “Or you can wait here if you’d rather.”
“Thank you, but I’ll come with you,” Wesowee said, shambling his way to her side. “That was a most interesting experience. How did you discover that they would obey us?”
“Mostly by accident,” Nicole said evasively. “And I’m not sure they’ll obey everyone.”
“Just you?” Wesowee gave another untranslatable whistle. “You must be very special, Sibyl.”
“That’s what my grandmother used to tell me,” Nicole said with a sigh. For all the problems the two of them had had, she would give anything to be back in the old woman’s kitchen in Philadelphia right now. Even if it meant eating her terrible soup. “So where exactly is your team located? You have any idea?”
Wesowee waved a hand vaguely. “I really don’t know,” h
e admitted. “All these areas look alike.”
“Right, but you must have noticed the plates beside each of the doors,” Nicole said. “Those give the room’s location.”
“So I was told,” Wesowee said with a hint of embarrassment. “But I never learned to read them. I was told it wasn’t necessary, because I would always be with my team.”
Because someone in the group had decided to make sure their extra Ghorf muscle was always within reach? Probably. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out,” she promised as they reached the supply closet. She popped open the door and beckoned for her Wisp. “There’s the food—help yourself.”
“Thank you.”
The Ghorf grabbed two bottles of water and two food bars, eased himself onto the floor, and started gorging himself. The Wisp Nicole had called came up to her, and Nicole took its hand. Do you know where the human work teams are in Q3?
No. I am part of Q4 only.
So the Wisps were anchored to their quadrant of the ship? Ushkai hadn’t mentioned that part. Do you know where the human work teams in Q4 are?
No. That is not part of our function.
Nicole scowled. It might have mentioned that in the first place. Getting information out of these things could be like pulling teeth.
Still, a lot of Trake’s people had been that same way. Bungie, especially, had been a pain to get information out of.
But over the years Nicole had learned how to cross-examine them when she wanted to find out what they’d been up to or what they were hiding. She would figure out the Wisps, too.
Which still left the problem of finding a group of humans rattling around in a full quarter of a monster ship. Fortunately, there were ways to cut down the territory. In Q4, each of the work teams was headquartered in a group of rooms called a hive, each hive centered around a cafeteria and medical center. She would start by seeing if the Wisps or Ushkai could provide her with a list of cafeterias—
“But I do know how to find my way from the testing arena,” Wesowee offered as he finished off his first food bar. “Can you lead me there?”
Nicole smiled tightly. And he might have mentioned that in the first place. “Yeah, I think I can find it,” she said. “Grab some bars and water for the road and let’s get you home.”
two
The heat ducts provided a handy way to move up and down the ship, at least for Wisps and people the Wisps were willing to carry. For a while Nicole had hoped there would be an equally convenient way to travel front-to-back and side-to-side, but that hadn’t panned out. She’d heard there were some horizontal tubes, but the Wisps didn’t use them and she’d never gotten around to figuring out where they were.
Fortunately, getting to the Q3 testing arena was a simple procedure. Nicole led Wesowee along a half dozen corridors to the thick barrier wall that separated the Q4 areas from the central core of the ship, then walked forward along it until they reached the lefnizo section. On the other side of the wall was the long vertical duct that ran along the whole midline of the ship, separating the left-hand Q1 and Q3 sections from the righthand Q2 and Q4 sections. Another long duct went crossways, she knew, the two ducts isolating the four quadrants of the ship.
Fortunately, they wouldn’t need to cross that latter duct today. She ordered the Wisps to open the hidden door to the front-back duct, then had them pick up her and Wesowee and ride the hot wind upward to level 32. Once there, the Wisp opened the wall on the far side of the duct and deposited the two of them on the deck in Q3 beside the curved wall marking the edge of the Q3 testing arena.
Through it all Wesowee remained mostly silent, trudging beside her as he worked his way through his supply of food and water. Only occasionally did he ask a question, and he never wondered—at least not out loud—if Nicole knew where she was going.
That made him either trusting, oblivious, or merely focused on getting back to his hive and his own bed. From what Nicole had seen of Kahkitah, she suspected it was probably all three.
“Okay, here we are,” Nicole said as the wall closed behind them, cutting off the hot wind at their backs. “You said you can find your way from here, right?”
Wesowee whistled uncertainly as he looked around. “This doesn’t look familiar,” the translation came. “I must have been on a different side. There are other sides, are there not?”
“Yes, there’s at least a front and a back,” Nicole agreed, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. At least the Ghorfs were an even-tempered group. A lot of Trake’s people had been just as slow-witted, but also bad-tempered, and they were rough to deal with. She never knew what might set them off.
On the other hand, the ones like Bungie who were bad-tempered but had a level of cunning and street smarts could be even worse. Especially the ones, again like Bungie, who thought they were smarter than they really were.
So now she and Wesowee had to get to the other side of the arena? Still, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. This arena with a channel running through it was something she’d wanted to see anyway. Instead of trying to go around the huge room, they could simply take a shortcut straight through it.
She gazed at the curved wall in front of them, pulling up a mental picture of the area around the Q4 arena. Assuming this arena was similar to that one, there should be an entrance just around the curve. It would be locked, of course, but one of the Wisps could supply her with the access code. She turned around and beckoned.
To discover that all three of the Wisps who’d been accompanying them since they left the Fyrantha’s basement had vanished.
“Where did they go?” she demanded, looking up and down the hallway. Like its counterpart in Q4, one end of the passageway dead-ended fifty yards away, while in the other direction it stretched out most of the way to the rear of the ship. Neither direction showed any sign of their Wisps.
“They backed again into the opening before it closed,” Wesowee said. “Should I have stopped them?”
“No, that’s all right,” Nicole growled, mildly surprised that he’d even noticed. “I doubt you could have done anything even if you’d tried.” She looked back and forth one more time. There were no Wisps in sight. “Wisp?” she called.
Nothing. She tried twice more, with the same lack of results. “Perhaps they can’t hear you through the wall,” Wesowee suggested.
“There should be more of them over here,” Nicole said.
“Perhaps these don’t listen to you.”
“Yeah, maybe not,” Nicole conceded. “I guess we’ll have to go around after all.”
“Wait,” Wesowee said, digging his big fingers into one of the pockets of his vest. “Our Sibyl—ah.” Proudly, he withdrew his hand from the pocket and held out—
An inhaler.
Nicole stared at it, her stomach tightening. So simple a device. So innocent looking. So important.
So deadly.
“Our Sibyl uses them to hear the ship,” Wesowee continued, completely oblivious to Nicole’s sudden change in expression and mood. “That’s how we know what needs fixing.” He gave another untranslatable whistle. “But of course you know that. You’re also a Sibyl.” He edged his hand a little closer to her. “She asks me to carry a spare one for her because she often runs out. You may use it if you’d like.”
Nicole winced. If Wesowee’s Sibyl ran out of inhalant a lot, it must mean she was using it a lot. Maybe Q3 had a lot of small jobs, no more than an hour or two for each, forcing her to use the inhaler four or five times a day. Or maybe she got confused easily, or had a bad memory and had to keep asking the ship to repeat itself.
But whichever it was, it sounded like she was using a lot of the chemical.
Which meant she was dying even faster than she should.
“Sibyl?” Wesowee prompted.
“No, thanks,” Nicole said, trying to shake off the sudden black mood. It worked about as well as trying to shake off a hangover. “Caretaker? Hey—Caretaker.”
Nothing. Like the Fyrantha’s basement, appar
ently this part of the ship wasn’t wired for holograms. “Wisps?” she tried again. “Wisps! Come on, you guys—I need a couple of you.”
Again, no response. It was as if by passing from Q4 to Q3 she’d completely lost her new status as the Fyrantha’s Protector.
Maybe she had. Ushkai had warned her at their first meeting that the ship had been fragmented into four different parts. It had sounded a lot vaguer than just the physical split between the different quadrants, and more like which parts of the ship could talk to her. But maybe there was a physical aspect to it, too.
Of course, he’d also said the Wisps were all controlled by their own part of that computer, which should mean they would be under her control wherever she went. Either he’d been wrong, or else all the Q3 Wisps were off doing other things.
But whatever the reason, it looked like she and Wesowee were on their own.
She gazed at the curved wall, trying to visualize what she knew about the ship’s layout. They probably couldn’t get around the arena on this level—the corresponding one on Q4 was blocked on both sides. But it should be possible to take the stairs down a few levels, head toward the front of the ship, and get to the other side from underneath. It would be a lot of walking, but she and Wesowee should both be used to that by now.
Of course, that assumed Q3 had the same layout as Q4. That wasn’t necessarily the case. Still, as long as she kept her wits about her they wouldn’t get lost. And of course, there would be plenty of food and water along the way.
On the other hand …
She glared at the wall. The last thing she wanted was to take more of that poisonous inhaler drug into her lungs.
But damn it all, she really wanted a look inside that arena.
Abruptly, she reached out and snatched the inhaler from Wesowee’s hand. “Fine,” she growled. “Come on.”
Spinning around, she stalked along the curved wall toward the door. “Did I do something wrong?” Wesowee asked anxiously as he hurried to catch up.