Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5

by Gillian Andrews

  Chapter 3

  AS SOON AS Arcan set the others down some ten metres away, the man who spoke to canths bustled up to them, and bowed low to welcome his new guests. He was wreathed in smiles. He inclined the middle of his body. “This is a great honour.” Then he embraced Grace. “You are looking well.”

  But any further comment was unnecessary, for there was a thudding on the hard ground, and the sound of hooves approaching. The ticket collector stared as several large canths danced up to them, whinnying and nickering softly.

  The man who spoke to canths looked at the ticket collector, obviously rather unhappy about not being able to take him into his confidence.

  “Man who watched the alien ship,” he said, using the ticket collector’s more recent name, “do you think you could go back to the house and bring out some refreshments for our guests?”

  The ticket collector beamed. “With great pleasure.” His whole demeanour showed willingness to help, and they all smiled back at him. It was impossible not to like the rotund figure as he scurried back towards the farmhouse to prepare some food and drink.

  The canth keeper’s eyes followed the stout figure. “I lose colour by not telling him, and others, all I know.”

  “Yes.” Grace was quick to understand. “It must be hard on you. But it is what the canths have asked, isn’t it?”

  “Even so, what right have I to know about all the marvelous things that can happen in the galaxy, yet keep such things to myself?”

  “Perhaps things will change, with time.” She touched him on the shoulder. “After all, it is the canths’ secret to tell, not ours.”

  He nodded. “As always, Girl who found the past, you are right. I shall wait to see if I am allowed to share my knowledge.” Then the canth keeper turned to his visitors. “The canths are upset. They can feel that something is wrong.”

  He tipped his head on one side, and fell silent, holding up a hand to stop them from interrupting. “The canths say that they can follow the trail,” he told them. “But they need to be closer to the trimorphs. They say that we will have to take the New Independence again. But that is not the whole reason for their nerves. There is something bigger happening, something that they can sense, but I am unable to grasp. All I can feel is that the trimorphs are somehow part of it, and that they are afraid.”

  “They can feel where the trimorphs are?”

  “They say there is a great sensation of heaviness, that they are unable to break free. They say it will be extremely dangerous to go.”

  “Even so,” said Ledin. “We have to help.”

  The canth keeper held up his hand again. There was another long silence. Then he looked surprised, rather taken aback.

  “They say only two canths must go. They say that this is to be a journey of colour, both for the canths, and for their linked partners.”

  Ledin and Grace looked at each other. They had just finished their journey of colour.

  The man who spoke to canths smiled. “Not you,” he told them. “This is a journey only the Valhais can undertake. It is to be their journey of colour.”

  Diva caught her breath. Her eyes flashed with excitement, and Six looked elated.

  “We’re ready,” he said.

  “I am instructed that there is no immediate hurry. In any case, you must be married by a Xianthan before you undertake your journey of colour.”

  Six gave an audible groan. “Not again!” he muttered.

  Before Diva could react to that, Grace stepped forward, and Ledin followed her lead. “We will go with them,” she said. There was a mutter of agreement from Bennel, and the two Namuri. Even Cimma looked eager. Tallen’s voice was determined, and he was muttering convincingly about duty.

  The tiny bimorph was quite indignant. “I think I would be rather more use than Six would be.”

  Six gave a laugh, which caused the bimorph to spin angrily. “Well, what could you do, Kwaidian, that I can’t? As far as I know, you can’t travel quantically, or communicate over light years, can you?”

  “No, but I can walk and pick things up, which is more than you can do, Visitor!”

  The canth keeper spread his hands wide, and addressed the angry bimorph. “It is strange,” he agreed, “for I know that you contain part of Arcan. But the canths are telling me that your friends are so far away that many of them are needed to feel their presence, that one single entity would find it impossible.”

  “I must go too. They are my companions.”

  The canths tossed their heads. “You may not go,” repeated their keeper. “The canths are quite adamant.”

  “And who are you to tell me where I might and might not go?” demanded the tiny bimorph, spinning so furiously that small vortices appeared in his body.

  Arcan darkened, and his tone was rebuking. “We will do as the canths suggest. They saved our lives on Pictoria, and we owe them that much.”

  The bimorph buzzed angrily. “You are not a morphic,” he accused.

  Arcan went nearly black. “You will stay. In any case, you will need to get back to Pictoria soon, to rest.”

  The visitor seemed to be communicating privately with Arcan, for streaks of colours rippled through both of them. Finally the visitor settled down, and turned a more normal colour.

  “I will stay,” he promised, although he still sounded most reluctant and very resentful.

  “Good. Then everything is settled,” said the canth keeper. “Except for one small thing. The canths insist that they must travel all the way to the planet. They say they must have a way to reach the planetary surface. They are adamant that they need to go bare planet with you, and that Arcan must leave the second he has dropped the trader into the system.”

  Everybody was quiet; that would not be an easy thing to accomplish.

  “There is no way of transporting the canths from the New Independence to the surface of the planet,” said Diva. “They would hardly fit in a shuttle!”

  But Ledin didn’t agree. He was looking thoughtful. “You never saw them, Six,” he began, “but we have dealt with Coriolis for some time now, and they have several larger shuttles for the transfer of large quantities of rexelene to and from the surface of Kwaide and Coriolis. I have had some experience of piloting them and if we had one of those, then I think I could take the canths down in that, providing they were quiet and didn’t panic.”

  The canth keeper communed with the canths, and then smiled. “That would be a good solution, Man who witnessed the future, although the canths will have to put their trust in the Valhais as pilots.”

  “But ... But will one of those attach to the New Independence?” asked Cimma.

  Ledin nodded. “Quite easily. It will make the trader very hard to navigate, but if Arcan transports us reasonably close to the planet, it shouldn’t make very much difference.”

  Arcan gave his equivalent of a nod: a sort of shimmery dipping of his ‘head’. “That would be fine. If the canths are in agreement, then so am I.”

  “What is the planet like?” Six asked the visitor.

  “Like?” The morphic didn’t seem to understand very well.

  “Oh, you know, hot or cold, big or small, can we breathe or not? Those unimportant little details. We know how wrong you can get that, don’t we?”

  “I do not get them wrong!” The bimorph turned a nice shade of puce.

  “Yeah. Tell that to Grace. You nearly killed her the first time Arcan took us to Pictoria. Remember?”

  “That was not my fault!” Then the visitor flushed again. “Well, maybe just a little.”

  Six opened his mouth, but Diva stood on his foot, and he closed it again, turning a now-what-have-I-done-wrong grimace on her. She pressed her lips together, and he subsided.

  “All right then, I suppose we can take your word for it. So what is the planet like?”

  “I don’t know.” The visitor buzzed angrily. “I already told you, I couldn’t go with the twins, they transported without telling me where they were going
. They were dragged away by something or somebody. I do wish you would listen more attentively, Six! You miss half of the information we give you.”

  “At least I don’t manage to lose contact with my friends because I was looking the other way,” said Six, making the visitor darken angrily. “Now, pay attention, please! Cimma won’t be able to come because she is needed back on Kwaide.”

  Cimma looked disappointed, but gave a reluctant nod of agreement. Six went on, “Tallen, Petra and Bennel will go with her.”

  There was an instant outcry from all those mentioned.

  “We will come with you,” said Bennel firmly.

  “Our blood oaths require that we accompany you,” shouted Tallen, not quite accurately.

  “We are your bodyguards. You cannot go without us,” said Petra.

  Six held up one stern hand. “You will go back to Kwaide with Maestra Cimma. That was our agreement, and that is what we will do.”

  Bennel looked worried. “But, First Six ...”

  Six glared around at them all. “I wish people would stop calling me that! I am not first anything.”

  Bennel inclined his head. “As you wish, Valhai Six, but I beg you to reconsider. My job is to protect you and Valhai Diva.”

  Six didn’t look too happy to be called Valhai, either, but he decided not to mention it. “That is true, Bennel, but—”

  “That is what my assignment is.” The man bowed his head, and fell silent.

  “Oh, very well. I suppose you can com—”

  “If he goes, we go!” shouted Tallen. “Why should he have all the fun? This is meritocratic discrimination!”

  Everybody stared at him at that. He went slightly pink. “Well, it is. We swore a blood oath to protect Fir—, I mean Valhai Six. The agreement to protect Maestra Cimma was only temporary.”

  “It was until you both graduated the highest level class in combat training.”

  “Maybe. But what we just did on Pictoria is equivalent.”

  Six gave a sigh. He looked towards Cimma, who seemed to be appreciating this interchange. “Oh, all right,” he said finally. “But if we have to take a heavy-duty shuttle, then there will only be one shuttle available for the others. We should limit our number to four at the very most, just in case. I suppose one of you Namuri can come with us, if the other stays with Maestra Cimma.”

  Tallen looked askance at Diva. “With you, Valhai Six,” he said, emphasizing the second word carefully. He glared around at them all, and then exchanged some sort of unspoken communication with his sister. Petra’s eyes flashed at first, and she appeared ready to debate, but then her face saddened, she nodded slightly, and looked down at the floor to hide her disappointment.

  Tallen pushed his chest out. “I shall be the one to accompany you.”

  Diva bristled, and the look she gave Six promised retaliation. She had no wish to go traipsing across the galaxy in company of a Namuri rebel who hated her very existence. Six gave a shrug which expressed his total indifference, and it was her turn to blow out air.

  Cimma smiled around at them all. “Well, I wish that I could come with you, but apart from not being on top form, Six is right. It’s time I should be getting back to Kwaide.”

  Ledin nodded. “I have to return to work too,” he told her. “They must think that I have dropped off the face of the Xianthes. I will go with you as far as the orbital space station above Kwaide.”

  Six smiled at his friend. He knew very well that if Ledin was with the orthogel entity nobody on Kwaide would think twice about him not reporting for duty, but he appreciated his friend’s effort to make everything seem inevitable.

  “Make sure they are behaving themselves, then. And try to keep the Elders in order, between you.”

  Both Cimma and Ledin nodded, and then Ledin went on, “I will organize the rental of one of the Coriolan transport shuttles for you. Then Arcan won’t need to buy one. You can stop off at the Coriolan orbital station to pick it up.”

  Cimma walked up to her sorrel canth, and stroked its neck with tenderness, before turning back to the others. “I am ready.” She smiled her warm smile at Grace and then at the rest.

  Ledin walked over to hug his wife. “Take care on Valhai, will you? I’ll come over for a visit as soon as I can.”

  Petra’s eyes never left her brother’s. She said nothing however, merely waiting as Arcan moved over to encompass the three of them, and they disappeared. Grace vanished at the same time, bound for her desk job in Sell.

  The morphic turned to the others. “I am sorry,” he told them. “But I must go too. I have already been here for too long. I need to get back to Pictoria to rest.” With that, he disappeared from the hot Xianthan air.

  The man who spoke to canths gave a smile at those who were left: Six, Diva, Bennel and Tallen. “We just have to perform the marriage ceremony and then Valhai Six and Valhai Diva can leave, together with their canths.”

  “We are already married,” pointed out Six. “Hang it, I don’t see why I should have to go through yet another ceremony!” This comment earned him a sharp look from Diva.

  “Yes,” said the canth keeper, “but it is the custom here. I am sure you would want to respect our customs. A Coriolan ceremony is definitely not the correct way to start to a journey of colour.”

  “You know,” said Six slowly. “I really ought to be getting back to Kwaide. Couldn’t somebody stand in for me this time? You know, marriage by proxy ...?” Six paused, tried to look winning, and then stared at Diva hopefully.

  She said nothing, but her posture was eloquent.

  Six sighed. “On the other hand, I suppose we do live on Xiantha now ...”

  The man who spoke to canths relaxed. “Good. It will be of great benefit to your fifty children.”

  Diva looked up. “Where is the ceremony to be?”

  “Where else? The Emerald Lake, of course. All the canths are eager to go back there. It is their favourite place on Xiantha.”

  “And will you marry us, Man who speaks to canths?”

  The canth keeper looked down at the dust around his feet, and seemed to hesitate before answering. “I ... am ... afraid that I am not allowed to marry you. There are ... certain ... incompatibilities.”

  Six looked at him, with one eyebrow raised. “Incompatibilities?”

  “What sort of incompatibilities?” asked Diva, at the same time.

  “Err ... ” The canth keeper’s eyes darted around, as if trying to find a way out of the difficulty. “Err ... I ... that is ... there are children in common.”

  “Excuse me?” Diva stared.

  “I thought you knew, Valhai Diva.” He moistened his lips. “I was ... fortunate enough to be chosen as one of the donors for your oocytes. If you remember, there were no male Valhais at the time. I don’t know the exact number, but I believe that around 48,000 of your offspring here on Xiantha are coproducts of my own genetic signature. I am therefore disqualified by Xianthan law from performing the marriage ceremony.”

  Six was just grasping the point. “You mean, you have more children with Diva than I do?”

  “Considerably more.” The Xianthan gave a wry, yet diffident, smile.

  Diva’s face was a picture. “I ... I ... I ...”

  “There is no need to comment, Valhai Diva. I am aware that the honour was entirely mine. You gave me much colour. I became a panchrome because of it.”

  “I ... I ...” Diva gave a convulsive swallow, and tried hard to think how Grace would have taken such information. “Err ... thank you, Man who speaks to canths! I am ... fortunate that such a worthy subject was chosen for my offspring.” She tried not to look appalled. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the man; it was just a bit unexpected to find she had nearly 50,000 children with him. As far as she knew, there weren’t any protocols for news like that.

  Six was looking disconcerted and a bit suspicious. “Why did they choose you?”

  The canth keeper shrugged. “As you know, Xiantha is now almost totally i
rradiated by the flares of Almagest. There are only a few spots which escape the damaging rays. The canth farm is one. That is why the canths are now kept inside such a small area. It would be disastrous if their reproduction were to be halted too. Of course, one of the side benefits of my job is that I, too, am considered to be a safe genetic depository.”

  Diva hated to be reminded of the way all her genetic material had been forcibly removed. “How ... how ... nice.”

  The man who spoke to canths smiled. “It was a very great privilege,” he said gently. “I am sorry if you do not see it in the same way. I hope that our children will grow strong and will find great colour.”

  “G-great c-colour,” Diva replied blankly. “Of c-course. Great colour.” She looked around rather desperately, as if checking out an escape route.

  The man who spoke to canths seemed satisfied, and looked thoughtful. “I need to find a panchrome to marry you. I am not sure ...” He thought for a few moments. “I shall ask the man who contrives children to meet us at the lake. He would seem to be the most suitable choice.”

  Diva stared at Six. This was turning into a very strange day.

  THEY WERE MARRIED for the final time on the banks of the Emerald Lake, and Six shifted from foot to foot.

  “This is the third time I have had to marry you,” he grumbled. “It is getting awfully repetitive!”

  Diva gave him the look, and he noticed that one of her canine teeth was overlapping her bottom lip - never a good sign.

  “Now what? Oh come on, Diva! You can hardly expect me to be happy about having to go through the whole thing three times!”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  Six didn’t seem to notice. “You’d think that once would be enough for any man. I bet Ledin wouldn’t have married you three times. I mean, it’s a lot to ask, is all.” He pulled the edges of his tunic together and managed to look uncomfortable. “Still, at least we know that the Xianthan marriage ceremony only lasts five minutes. That’s one thing to be grateful for, at least.”