Transvergence

by Charles Sheffield

  Tally overrode the body's reflex that wanted to breathe. He kept his mouth closed and reflected, with some annoyance, that a few more minutes of this, and he would have to be embodied yet again, even though the body he was wearing was in most respects as good as new. And it was becoming more and more determined to breathe water, no matter how much he tried to block the urge. Tally cursed the designers of the computer/body interface who had left the reflexes organic, when he could certainly have handled them with ease. Don't breathe, don't breathe, don't breathe. He sent the order to his body with all his power.

  The breathing reflex grew stronger and stronger. His lips were moving—parting—sucking in liquid. Don't breathe!

  In midgulp he was turned rapidly through a hundred and eighty degrees and placed on his feet.

  He coughed, spat out a mouthful of brackish water, and blinked his eyes clear. He glanced around. He stood at the edge of a great shallow upturned bowl, forty or fifty meters across, with a raised area and a gray circular parapet at its center. Two tentacles of the Zardalu were loosely wrapped around him. Another pair were holding Dulcimer, who was coughing and choking and seemed to have taken in a lot more water than Tally. The wall of the bubble was pale blue. Tally decided that it was transparent, they were underwater, and its color was that of the sea held at bay outside it.

  Of Darya Lang and J'merlia there was no sign. Tally hoped they were all right. So far as he could tell, the treatment he had received was not intended to kill or maim—at once. But there was plenty of time for that.

  And he could think of a variety of unpleasant ways that it might happen.

  One of them was right in front of him. At first sight the space between Tally and the raised center of the room was a lumpy floor, an uneven carpet of pale apricot. But it was moving. The inside of the chamber was a sea of tiny heads, snapping with sharp beaks at anything in sight. Miniature tentacles writhed, tangling each with its neighbor.

  They were in an underwater Zardalu breeding ground. A rapid scan counted more than ten thousand young—up from a total of fourteen just a few months earlier. Zardalu bred fast.

  He was recording full details of the scene for possible future use by others when the Zardalu lifted him and Dulcimer and carried them effortlessly forward, on through the sea of waving orange tentacles. The little Zardalu made no attempt to get out of the way. They stood their ground and snapped aggressively at the base of the adult Zardalu as it passed. In return, the infants were swatted casually out of the way by leg-thick tentacles, with a force that sent them flying for many meters.

  Tally and Dulcimer were dropped before a hulking Zardalu squatted on the waist-high parapet of the inner ring of the bowl. This alien was a real brute, far bigger than the one that had been carrying them. Tally could see a multicolored sheath of webbing around its thick midriff, marked with a pattern of red curlicues.

  It looked familiar. He took a closer look at the Zardalu itself. Surprise! He recognized the creature. To most people, those massive midnight-blue torsos, bulging heads, and cruel beaks might have made all Zardalu identical, but Tally's storage and recall functions were of inhuman accuracy and precision.

  And now, at last, that "wasted" effort of language learning back on Miranda could pay off.

  "May I speak?" Tally employed the pattern of clicks and whistles that he had learned from Kallik. "This may sound odd, but I know you."

  The Zardalu behind Tally at once smacked him flat to the slimy floor and muttered a warning growl, while the big one in front writhed and wriggled like a tangle of pythons.

  "You speak." The king-size Zardalu leaned forward, producing the whistling utterances with the slitted mouth below its vicious beak. "You speak in the old tongue of total submission. But that tongue is to be spoken by slaves only when commanded. The penalty for other use by slaves is death."

  "I am not a slave. I speak when I choose."

  "That is impossible. Slaves must speak the slave tongue, while only submissive beings may speak it. The penalty for other beings who speak the slave tongue is death. Do you accept total slavery? If not, the young are ready. They have large appetites."

  There was a nice logical problem here on the question of nonslaves who chose to use the slave tongue, but Tally resisted the temptation to digress. The Zardalu in front of him was reaching down with a powerful tentacle. Flat in the slime next to Tally, Dulcimer was gibbering in terror. The Chism Polypheme could not understand anything that was being said, but he could see the vertical slit of a mouth, and above it the up-curved sinister beak, opening and closing and big enough to bite a human—or a Polypheme!—in two.

  "Let's just agree that I can speak, and defer the slave question," Tally said. "The main thing is, I know you."

  "That is impossible. You dare to lie? The penalty for lying is death."

  An awful lot of things in the Zardalu world seemed to require the death penalty. "It's not impossible." Tally lifted his head again, only to be pushed back down into the slime by the junior Zardalu behind him. "You were in the fight on Serenity, the big Builder construct. In fact, you were the one who grabbed hold of me and pulled me to bits."

  That stopped the questing tentacle, a few inches from Tally's left arm. "I was in battle, true. And I caught one of your kind. But I killed it."

  "No, you didn't. That was me. You pulled my arms off, remember, first this one, then this one." Tally held up his intact arms. "Then you pulled my legs off. And then you threw me away to smash me against the corridor wall. The top of my skull broke off, and the impact just about popped my brain out. Then that loose piece of my skull was crushed flat—but now I think of it, one of your companions did that, not you."

  The tentacle withdrew. When Tally raised his head again, nothing pushed him back down.

  The big Zardalu was leaning close. "You survived such drastic dismemberment?"

  "Of course I did." Tally stood up and wiggled his fingers. "See? Everything as good as new."

  "But the agony . . . and with your refusal to accept slave status, you risk it again. You would dare such pain a second time?"

  "Well, that's a bit of a sore point with me. My kind doesn't feel pain, you see. But I can't help feeling that there are times when it would be better for my body if I did. Hey! Put me down."

  Tentacles were reaching out and down. Tally was lifted in one pair, Dulcimer in another. The big Zardalu turned and dropped the two of them over the waist-high parapet. They fell eight feet and landed with a squelch in a smelly heap that sank beneath their weight.

  "You will wait here until we return." A bulbous head peered over the edge of the parapet. A pair of huge cerulean blue eyes stared down at them. "You will be unharmed, at least until I and my companions decide your fate. If you attempt to leave, the penalty is death."

  The midnight-blue head withdrew. Tally tried to stand up and reach the rim of the pit, but it was impossible to keep his balance. They had been dropped onto a mass of sea creatures, fish and squid and wriggling sea cucumbers and anemones. There was just enough water in the pit to keep everything alive.

  "Dulcimer, you're a lot taller than I am when you're full-length. Can you stretch up to the edge?"

  "But the Zardalu . . ." The great master eye stared fearfully at E.C. Tally.

  "They left. They've gone for a consultation to decide what to do with us." Tally gave Dulcimer a summary of the whole conversation. "Strange, wasn't it," he concluded, "how their attitude changed all of a sudden?"

  "Are you sure that they have gone?"

  "If we could just reach the edge, you could see for yourself."

  "Wait one moment." Dulcimer coiled his spiral downward, squatting in among the writhing fish. He suddenly straightened like a released spring and soared fifteen feet into the air, rotating as he flew.

  "You are right," he said as he splashed back down. "The chamber is empty."

  "Then, jump right out this time, and reach over to help me. We have to look for a way to escape."

  "But
we know the way out. It is underwater. We will surely drown, or be caught again."

  "There must be another way in and out."

  "How do you know?"

  "Logic requires it. The air in here is fresh, so there has to be circulation with the outside atmosphere. Go on, Dulcimer, jump out of this pit."

  The Polypheme was cowering again. "I am not sure that your plan is wise. They will not harm us if we accept slave status. But they said that if we try to escape, they will surely kill us. Why not agree to be slaves? An opportunity to escape safely will probably come along in three or four hundred years, maybe less. Meanwhile—"

  "Maybe you're right. But I'm going to do my best to get out of here." Tally stared down and poked with his foot at a hideous blue crustacean with spiny legs. "I'd have more faith in the word of the Zardalu if they hadn't left us here in their larder—"

  "Larder!"

  "—while they're having their consultation to decide what to do with us."

  But Dulcimer was too busy leaping out of the pit to hear Tally finish the sentence.

  Darya had fared better—or was it worse?—than the others. She was grabbed and held, but at first the Zardalu who captured her remained near the sandstone buildings. She saw the other three taken and carried underwater, presumably to their deaths. When her turn came after ten more minutes, her intellect told her that it was better to die quickly. But the rest of her would have nothing to do with that idea. She took in the deepest breath that her lungs would hold as the Zardalu headed for the sea's edge. There was the shock of cold water, then the swirl of rapid movement through it. She panicked, but before her lungs could complain of lack of oxygen, the Zardalu emerged into air.

  Dry, fresh air.

  Darya felt a stiff breeze on her wet face. She pushed hair out of her eyes and saw that she was in a great vaulted chamber, with the draft coming from an open cylinder in the middle of it. The Zardalu hurried in that direction. Darya heard the chugging rhythm of air pumps, and then she was being carried down a spiraling path.

  They went on, deeper and deeper. The faint blue light of the chamber faded. Darya could see nothing, but ahead of her she heard the click and whistle of alien speech. She felt the unreasoning terror that only total darkness can produce. She strained to see, until she felt that her eyes were bleeding into the darkness. Nothing. She began to fight against the firm hold of the tentacles.

  "Do not struggle." The voice, which came from a few feet away, was familiar. "It is useless, and this path is steep. If you were dropped now you would not survive the fall."

  "J'merlia! Where did you come from? Can you see?"

  "A little. Like Zardalu, I am more sensitive than humans to dim light. But more than that, I am able to speak to the Zardalu who holds me. We are heading down a long stairway. In another half minute you also will be able to see."

  Half a minute! Darya had known shorter weeks. The Zardalu was moving on and on, in a glide so smooth that she hardly felt the motion. But J'merlia was right. A faint gleam was visible below, and it was becoming brighter. She could see the broad back of another Zardalu a few yards ahead, whenever it intercepted the light.

  The tunnel made a final turn in the opposite direction. They emerged into a room shaped like a horizontal teardrop, widening out from their point of entry. The floor was smooth-streaked glass, the dark rays within it diverging from the entrance and then converging again at the far end to meet at a horizontal set of round apertures, like the irises and pupils of four huge eyes. In front of the openings stood a long, high table. And at that table, leaning back in a sprawl of pale-blue limbs, sat four giant Zardalu. As they approached, Darya caught the throat-clutching smell of ammonia and rancid grease.

  Darya was lowered to the floor next to J'merlia. The two Zardalu who had brought them turned and went back to the entrance. They were noticeably smaller than the massive four at the table, and they lacked the decorated webbing around their midsections.

  The Zardalu closest to Darya leaned forward. The slit mouth opened, and she heard a series of meaningless clicks and whistles. When she did not reply, a tentacle came snaking out across the table and poised menacingly just above her head. She cowered down. She could see plate-sized suckers, with their surround of tiny claws.

  "They command you to speak to them, like the others," J'merlia said. "It is not clear what that means. Wait a moment. I will seek to serve as spokesbeing for both of us."

  He crawled forward, pipestem body close to the ground and eight legs splayed wide. A long exchange of clucks and clicks and soft whistles began. After a minute the menacing tentacle withdrew from above Darya's head.

  "I have made it clear to them that you are not able to speak or to understand them," J'merlia said. "I also took the liberty of describing myself to them as your slave. They therefore find it quite natural that I speak only after I have spoken to you, serving as no more than the vessel for the delivery of your words to them."

  "What are they saying, J'merlia? Why didn't they kill us all at once?"

  "One moment." There was another lengthy exchange before J'merlia nodded and turned again to Darya. "I understand their words, if not their motives. They know that we are members of races powerful in the spiral arm, and they were impressed by the fact that our party was able to defeat them when we were on Serenity. They appear to be suggesting an alliance."

  "A deal! With Zardalu? That's ridiculous."

  "Let me at least hear what they propose." J'merlia went back into unintelligible conversation. After a few seconds the biggest of the Zardalu made a long speech, while J'merlia did no more than nod his head. At last there was silence, and he turned again to Darya.

  "It is clear enough. Genizee is the homeworld of the Zardalu, and the fourteen survivors headed here after they were expelled from Serenity and found themselves back in the spiral arm. They began to breed back to strength, as we had feared. But now, for reasons that they cannot understand, they find themselves unable to leave this planet. They saw our seedship arrive, and they saw it take off again. They know that it has not been returned to the surface, while all their takeoff attempts have been returned. Therefore they are sure that we know the secret to coming and going from Genizee as we please.

  "They say that if we will help them to leave Genizee, and give them free access to space here and beyond the Torvil Anfract, they will in return offer us something that they have never offered before: we will have status as their junior partners. Not their equals, but more than their slaves. And if we help them to reestablish dominion over all the worlds in this part of the spiral arm, we will share great power and wealth."

  "What if we say no?"

  "Then there will be no chance of our survival."

  "So they want us to trust the word of the Zardalu? What happens if they change their minds, as soon as they know how to get away from Genizee?" Darya reminded herself that she had no idea what force had carried the Indulgence to the surface of the planet, or how to get away.

  "As proof that they will not later renege on their part of the bargain, they will agree to a number of Zardalu hostages. Even of the infant forms."

  Darya recalled the behavior of the ravenous infant Zardalu. She shuddered.

  "J'merlia, I will never, in any circumstances, do anything that might return the Zardalu to the spiral arm. Too many centuries of bloodshed and violence warn us against that. We will not help them, even if it means we all die horribly. Wait a minute!"

  J'merlia was turning back to face the four Zardalu. Darya reached out and grabbed him. "Don't tell them I said that, for heaven's sake. Say, say . . ." What? What could she offer, what would stall them? "Say that I am very interested in this proposal, but first I require proof of their honorable intentions—if there's words for such an idea in the Zardalu language. Tell them that I want E.C. Tally and Dulcimer brought here, safe and unharmed. And Captain Rebka and the rest of the other party, too, if they are still alive."

  J'merlia nodded and had another exchange with the
Zardalu, this one much briefer. The biggest of Zardalu began threshing all its tentacles in a furious fashion, flailing at the tabletop with blows that would have pulped a human body.

  "They refuse?" Darya asked.

  "No." J'merlia gestured at the Zardalu. "That is not anger, that is their own frustration. They would like to prove that they mean what they say, but they are unable to do so. Tally and Dulcimer will be no problem, they will bring them here. But the other group somehow escaped, into the deep interior of Genizee—and no Zardalu has any idea of their present location."

  Chapter Sixteen