Just when he was considering picking up a second creature, there was a movement inside the heap of amorphs. They seemed to part slightly, and one in particular made its way through the gap and hovered in front of the two men. They realized it was one of the trimorph twins.
“Six,” it acknowledged. “You came. Thank you. Ledin, how are you?”
“How can we help?”
“We cannot keep the Dessites at bay. They have formed a mental link, not only over the whole of their own world, but with all their travelers as well, and they are bombarding us with wave after wave of thought patterns. They want Arcan, of course, but they now know about the avifauna amorphs, and we are trying to protect those too. It is impossible; the amorphs are not aware enough to know what is going on, and the Dessites are able to manipulate their brains easily. We are only just hanging on.”
“We can help!”
The twin scintillated. “I doubt that very much. However, if you could try to link with us …”
“Of course. Like we linked with the visitor when Arcan contacted the Dessites?”
“Yes. We think we can integrate you in the group.”
“We will do our best.”
“It is dangerous for you – your brains are not designed for this type of transference.”
“Don’t worry about it. We have to do something.”
“Good. Then sit down, and try to think of nothing. We will pick you up into the rest of the group.”
Six and Ledin did as asked, and tried to make their minds completely blank.
AT THE BEGINNING, there was no change. Neither of the Kwaidians were able to trace any type of contact whatsoever. Then, gradually – so gradually that it was almost imperceptible – there was a difference. The emptiness of their minds was replaced by senses. Taste, smell, colour were activated in that part of the brain where they were normally processed. The two men began to feel their minds falling, as if let drop down a hole. But in this case the hole was the group itself. Slowly, they lost their sense of individuality and began to become part of a larger consciousness. It was finally an extension of them; they were part of it themselves.
At that moment, they were no longer in contact with their own bodies. The two empty shells were motionless, away from the buzzing attempts to turn back the Dessites, no longer part of anything, no longer belonging to any higher consciousness.
Six could feel Ledin beside him; a sense of wood, and a deep emerald green. The presence was solid, reassuring, and dependable. Beyond Ledin were the two twins, full of depth and colour. Since they were only small parts of Arcan, they were much less imposing than the full Arcan presence would have been; he found he was able to contemplate them without damage to his senses. Then he became aware of the visitor. The visitor still had the same tinge of temaris on a damp, cool Kwaidian night and appeared as colourless. Six was again intensely aware of his benign presence.
The two new minds slipped in behind the rest. Now they were inside the mindmerge, they could sense the presence of the minds of the avifauna amorphs. These were light and scared; a sea-grey presence with the smell of salt water. Six could feel them acutely; they were trapped in the mindmerge, but trying to pull away.
And behind them was the solid wall of the Dessite minds. It was made up of a seething barrier of individuals, each so tiny that the whole appeared solid. Dimly, he was aware that each individual was marked by its own smell, but that there were so many billions of them that it would be impossible to differentiate between them. The wall was gigantic, unstoppable.
The wall was pressing down on the avifauna minds, and gradually imposing its will upon them. The avifauna amorphs were petrified with fear, and totally unequipped to deal with the threat. They twittered helplessly, pinned in the focus of the Dessite minds, struggling frenetically to free themselves, but not conscious enough to know where to begin. Six and Ledin threw their own minds against the wall, mentally pushing at it as hard as they could, two more ineffectual shimmers of hope against the monumental infinity of the Dessites.
As they pushed, they were aware that Diva and Grace had joined the fight. The twins had managed to find them in the shuttles, then. The cobalt-blue sheen of Diva and the shimmering pearl tinge that was Grace were suddenly alongside the two men, adding their own insubstantial weight against the oppressive wall of Dessite intention.
And there was something else. For off to one side, unconnected to the mixing of minds that Six was in, was the kaleidoscope of colours that was Arcan. He was on his own, surrounded by the wall, which had curved in around him. It seemed to be threatening to engulf him completely. Six gave a mental cry as he saw the huge difficulties of the orthogel entity. The others snapped around, and automatically knew where to look. There was a wave of worry which swept through them all. Six thought about the weapons they had brought down with the shuttles, and found himself shimmering with ironic laughter. What use would they be here? There was no target to acquire. It was hopeless. They could only kill the friendly amorphs. The Dessites would simply disappear.
As the thought came to him, he forced himself to consider it carefully. It might be a welcome release for the avifauna amorphs; he could feel their hysterical fear of the Dessites. If their minds were to be taken over by the distant sea dwellers, they would probably prefer to be dead. But some of these creatures were a million years old! How could they destroy something like that? He pondered their situation with one small part of his mind which had thankfully remained isolated from the chaotic confrontation going on with the attacking consciousness.
Of course, there was the additional disadvantage that if the girls opened fire on the avifauna amorphs from the surface, they would coincidentally rid the world of two Kwaidians who would really rather not depart this life just yet, plus two trimorphs and one rather irritating but quite nice bimorph.
Six pondered. Nothing gave him the right to put his own life above that of Arcan. He and Ledin had spoken about that only a short time ago. They had both known that they might be required to lay down their own lives for a cause that was far more important than any one person’s existence. As he was considering all this, he realized that three of the identities in the mix of the mindmerge had moved closer to him. Suddenly they were touching his mind directly; he could feel the essence of each of them as they did so. And as they touched him, he became sharply aware of the core of each. Diva was crisp and sharp, cobalt and fiery. Grace was pearl, and clarity, soft and hazy. Ledin seemed to match Grace. His emerald blended with her pearl, his patience with her clarity. He was also somehow firm and solid; his was a comforting presence. Six could feel them with the same overwhelming sensory perception he had once felt back on the spaceship with Arcan, when he and the girls had tried to make mental contact with the visitor. He was also aware of how they felt and thought, and it was unnecessary to comment on his idea of firing down into the cavern. They reached an effortless agreement. The sight of the wall towering over Arcan, gradually reducing him to a virtual prisoner within its confines left them no choice. While the shell bodies left behind were motionless, the awareness that made up the four of them made its irrevocable decision.
The whirlpool of colours which was Arcan felt their determination. “NO!” he shouted inside their thoughts. “YOU CANNOT DO THAT!”
But it was the only thing they could do. There was nothing else that could save Arcan from being sucked across the intervening light years between Pictoria and Dessia, nothing else that could save the avifauna amorphs from the Dessites, nothing else that could save their own Binary System. There was, they were all in sad agreement, absolutely no other course of action possible. They let their thoughts touch each other briefly, one last time, before the two girls withdrew from the mindmerge to prepare the charges. They went back to bodies which had streaks of tears running out of their eyes, bodies which were bowed down by the terrible thing that had become necessary.
Chapter 14
UP AT THE shuttles, Diva and Grace found that they couldn�
��t speak. No words were wanted or needed. The day had broken sometime previously, so together, with white, stunned faces, they began to set up the two big missiles they had brought down. Diva did lean over to Grace once, but it was only to help her with a particularly difficult catch, which the Sellite girl’s own hands had been unable to unfasten. Their eyes, deadened by the shock, met. Both girls were in agonizing pain from the task they had been set, both horribly aware that there could be no going back.
The seconds passed like years, the minutes like centuries. Their heartbeats stuttered and once or twice seemed to stop, unable to cope with the thought of what they had to do. But they were not to be lucky enough to escape into death; their destiny was to watch the consequences of their actions, to know what they had done. Grace could feel her soul falter, but the rest of her went on grimly with the task she had been given. The touch of Ledin’s consciousness still lingered in her own mind, a trace of sensation that was slowly dissipating, a memory that was sadly leaving her.
Then she was ready. She looked over at Diva, only to find the Coriolan girl was already looking at her, having finished her preparations earlier. Diva gave a sort of sob, and then a nod, holding up a hand, and beginning to countdown from five, one finger disappearing behind the back of her hand with each number.
“Five—” One finger disappeared.
“Four—” Another followed.
“Three—”
But she got no further. There was a sudden whoosh and the sky was at that moment full of avifauna – the original kind with large wings and beaks. They were coasting in on the girls, and squawking at the top of their lungs. The first two birds thudded directly into the girls, knocking them feet away from the missile launchers. Others thumped to ground nearby, and then hurried over to surround the girls, both of whom had been winded by the first thundering blow, and were struggling to get their breath.
The launchers were displaced from their targeted position, and then knocked over into the dust; the girls were smothered by feathered wings, and then dragged away from the shuttles by knife-sharp claws which they were unable to avoid. The avifauna systematically did their best to pound the smaller weapons and the two missile launchers into the dry Pictoria sand, and then sat back and cackled at each other.
Diva was the first to open her eyes. The scene around her was chaotic, and the only thing that was abundantly clear to her was that there would be no weapons fired on the cavern. Everything they had brought down from the shuttle had been rendered temporarily useless. She felt something hot and sticky running into her eyes, and put up a hand to find that she had been sliced by one of the wicked claws. She tried to wipe aside some of the blood, but it still flowed freely into one of her eyes. Diva looked around. Grace was some metres away, lying prone on the sandy ground. Her eyes were open, and for one ghastly moment Diva’s heart leapt into her throat, warning her that Grace might be dead. Then the Sellite girl moved and blinked in the light, and Diva breathed a sigh of relief.
“Are you all right?” she whispered.
“I think so. What happened?”
“The avifauna have gone mad, and are acting as if they were intelligent.”
“What does that mean?”
Diva shrugged. “I guess it means that the Dessites have managed to take over the avifauna amorphs’ minds, and they have somehow been able to pass that on to the avifauna themselves.”
“What about Six and Ledin, and the twins and the visitor? Do you think they will be all right?”
Diva blew a ragged sigh. “Better than they would have been had we fired those missiles. I never thought I could be glad and so sad at the same time. What about us? Are you up to escaping from this lot?”
Grace moved slightly, testing various parts of her anatomy. “I’m all right,” she said, wincing slightly at certain movements. “What do you want to do?”
“Our job has to be to get out of here. Our only chance is to get to one of the shuttles and then up to the Independence. From there we might have a chance of doing something about this.”
Grace considered, and looked cautiously around her. “There are an awful lot of avians here,” she said doubtfully. “And the nearest shuttle is twenty metres away.”
“But they are slower on the ground. And they are bigger than we are. It is bound to take them longer to get into motion.”
“Ye-e-s. On the other hand, they can probably reach us in one single pounce from ten metres away.”
Diva blew another sigh. “True. What else can we do?”
Grace thought again. “Nothing. Unless we get into a shuttle and manage to close the hatch we are stuck with the avifauna. And we don’t know what the Dessites are planning for us. We are only 3b’s, remember. They don’t think very much of category three beings, as I recall.”
“And we were about to blow up all the amorphs in the cavern. I don’t suppose we are the flavour of the day.”
“No. So we might as well try it, don’t you think?”
Grace closed her eyes for such a long time that Diva wondered if she was about to pass out. When she reopened them there was a fierce determination that Diva hadn’t expected to see.
“No,” the Sellite girl said quite resolutely. “I don’t. I think we should divide. Divide and conquer, they say, don’t they? Well, let’s do that.”
Diva stared at her. “What on Sacras are you talking about?”
“You are the fastest of us, and you still have all your fingers. If I let myself lag slightly behind, there is a faint chance that they will go for me first, and that I can give you that extra couple of seconds you might need.”
“I won’t leave you,” Diva said flatly.
“Diva, think about it, please. Somebody has to get away, and you will be far more use than I would. If you wait for me to get to the shuttle they will be on us before we can close the hatch. You know that they will! Please be sensible. You are stronger than me, braver than me. You will stand a much better chance of saving us. Please, Diva!”
“You are wrong about one thing. You are one of the bravest people I know.” Diva sniffed.
Grace pressed home her advantage. “I’m right, and you know it. This is the same as the missiles, Diva. You can’t think about what you want. You have to think about what is best for Arcan.”
Diva gave her friend an agonized look, and tears started in her eyes. “I … I …”
“You have to, Diva. It is the only way.”
Diva kept miserably silent, and then reluctantly nodded her head.
“Good.” Grace breathed in slowly. “On my mark, then. And Diva—”
“What?”
“—Don’t look back, and don’t hesitate, will you?”
Diva pressed her teeth together. Then she nodded her head again, not trusting her voice to speak. It was Grace who had to start the countdown.
“Ready ... Aim ... FIRE!”
Both girls hurled themselves towards the nearest shuttle as fast as they could. Grace flapped her arms and fell in directly behind Diva, still running almost as fast as she could. All that was necessary was that she protect the Coriolan girl’s back as she raced to safety. She didn’t want to get too far behind, because then the avians might be able to attack both of them separately.
Sand particulates sprayed up behind them as they flung themselves towards safety. Grace could hardly move her legs fast enough to keep up with her body. She gulped back a breath of the icy air of Pictoria and for a moment glanced up at the green and blue streaks against the yellowish atmosphere. The emerald green streaks reminded her of Ledin, and she smiled to herself. He was still with her. Always would be, she thought.
And then she didn’t have time for any more thought. Two enormous talons sank into her back, tearing at muscle and bone alike. As if in slow motion, she saw herself tumbling down onto the ground, felt another heavy blow as a second avian smashed into the first, and then all her breath was pulverized out of her lungs as she landed and the combined weight of both avifauna hammered
into her.
As she desperately but unsuccessfully tried to suck in air, she twisted her head to the left and looked behind her. Another two avians were in mid air above her, leaping for Diva. But that small fraction of time that Grace had been able to give her friend had been enough. Diva was already hurling herself through the hatch. Grace felt a shaft of triumph pierce right through her, and a smile lit her battered face. She watched with shining eyes as the avifauna crashed against the hatch. One succeeded in pushing its long neck and head right through the opening, but Diva must have already activated the hydraulic mechanism, for there was a loud squawk as the creature realized that it was about to be decapitated, and then it wrenched itself back, just in time to safeguard its own existence.
The engines of the shuttle roared into life, and avians scattered in all directions, the two that had landed on top of Grace pulling her hastily out of danger. Then they stared, their long necks drooping, as Diva piled on the thrust and the shuttle powered up into the atmosphere. It tore through the air, rending it apart thunderously, deafening them with the sound of its departure. Grace, still unable to catch her breath, covered her ears with her hands. The avians, unable to do that, screeched in discomfort and shied further away from the scene, leaving Grace sprawled alone on the red ground.
Grace doubted that Diva would be able to see her, or would even be looking, but she raised one fist above her head, and bore the deafening sound for a few seconds. Clouds of particulates flurried around her, but still she held her stance.
Diva peered down at the ground through clouds of dust. At first she could see nothing, and then the dust cleared as the shuttle began to climb, and she could see the prone figure of Grace. She narrowed her eyes, peering to see if the Sellite girl was still all right. Then she saw that the girl was holding one fist straight up in the air; one victorious fist. Diva closed her eyes and covered her nose and mouth with both hands, trying to force her mind away from the spectacle of her prostrate friend. Then she made herself breathe calmly. There wasn’t time for regrets now. It was up to her now to get them out of this disaster. Her lips moved behind her fingers. I won’t let you down, Grace. I promise.
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