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

by Gillian Andrews

  The trimorphs underwent a strange change of colour, and one of them spoke in her head. “Are you sure, Diva? Six seemed very angry. I have never seen him like that.”

  She gave a ferocious frown. “I don’t care!”

  Bennel treated her to a strange look. “I think you do.”

  She was about to snap at him for his interference, but bit back the harsh words. He was only trying to help. “Well, I am not going after him.”

  “The Ammonites can wait. They have been waiting for your arrival for thousands and thousands of years. A couple of hours will not make any difference. You need to talk to Six.”

  Diva looked at Bennel, who inclined his own head encouragingly.

  “Oh, very well,” she said shortly. “I’ll come back soon.”

  The flickering shapes seemed to pulsate with light, and the twins shimmered.

  “—Though I don’t see why I should apologize. After all, it was Six who started the whole thing ...” As she walked away, back to the folds of the waterfall, she continued to mutter and grumble to herself.

  Bennel gave another bow, this time in the direction of the diamond star of light, and then scurried after her.

  DIVA CAME BACK out of the gloom and into the flat area where the statue was, beside the steps which snaked back up, up to where the canths would hopefully be waiting.

  She found Six seated beside the pool between waterfalls, moodily throwing rocks into the water.

  “What happened back there?” she asked, her voice still tight.

  Six turned to stare at her. “Can’t you stop sounding as if you are demanding an explanation?”

  She wrinkled her brow. “What do you mean?”

  He threw another rock. “You always sound superior, Diva, that’s the problem. You still don’t believe we are equals.”

  She was shocked. “I do!”

  “No, you don’t. You believe you are better than everybody else.”

  “That is not true.”

  “You know it is.” He picked up a smaller stone and tossed it towards the water, this time making it skim across the pool, despite the froth which was the remnant of the previous waterfall. “You were born into a family which thought itself superior. You automatically believe it.”

  “I so do not!”

  Six gave a sigh. “I don’t think we can go on like this. It is ingrained in your psyche.”

  “What is? I don’t know what you are talking about!”

  “This was never going to work. I should have realized years ago. But I was so much in love with you, I never even thought about it.”

  Diva started to pace up and down, getting progressively more upset. “I don’t know what you are going on about. I don’t think I am superior.”

  He shrugged. “You can’t help it. That’s the way you were educated. Like Tartalus. You are cousins, after all.”

  “Second cousins!”

  “Whatever. You can never see that Tallen is as good as me, or Bennel as good as you. You put people on different levels.”

  She stared. “People are on different levels!”

  “No, they aren’t. People are all on the same level.” Then he thought for a while. “Except Tartalus ... and Atheron ... and Xenon ... and people like that. They belong to a whole other world.” He chucked another pebble at the waters in front of them. “It’s like the colours on Xiantha. The canth keeper doesn’t think he is better because he is a panchrome, does he?”

  “N-no, I suppose not, but I don’t see ...” She stopped pacing, and sank down to the ground.

  “He respects the ticket collector, and all the other Xianthans. You think Tallen and Bennel are beneath you.”

  “I don’t!” But she sounded uncertain. Because there might be a tiny bit of truth in what Six was saying. Just a shred, perhaps. She thought about it, and dropped her head. It was hard to think of Bennel as a person, as a man with a wife and a family, and not just a bodyguard. It was even harder to respect a Namuri who had been a thief. She stirred uncomfortably.

  Six pressed home his advantage. “What colour do you think Bennel is? Bichrome?”

  Diva opened her eyes. “I hadn’t thought. No, I suppose he would be more. After all, he left Coriolis under his own steam to come to look for me, risking everything – even his own family. Oh ...!” She looked at him. “He would have gained much colour by doing that.”

  Six nodded. “I think he must be an octochrome, at the least. Which is probably more than we are.”

  She swallowed. “And Tallen?”

  Six pursed his lips. “Maybe he hasn’t gained as much colour as Bennel, yet, but then he is still very young.”

  Diva fell silent. At last she spoke. “What about me?”

  “What do you feel you are? It is always about what colour you yourself feel yourself to be. You are a meritocrat – do you think all meritocrats are panchromes?”

  Diva shook her head vigorously. “Definitely not. It isn’t what you are born as, is it? That is what Xianthan colour is all about.” Then she heard what she had just said, and was able to see what he had been trying to tell her. It wasn’t about birth. Well, she had known that anyway, hadn’t she?

  “You aren’t exactly perfect yourself, you know!” she pointed out.

  There was a very long pause, and Six sent several more rocks dancing across the pool. Then Diva gave a sigh and looked crossly around her.

  “You think we both have a long way to travel to gain more colour.”

  Six nodded. “I think so, yes. I think maybe we are somewhere in the middle of the scale at the moment, but that we need to move on.”

  Diva raised an eyebrow. “No. You have probably gained colour in all sorts of ways that I haven’t. I may be the one who is behind.” She bit her lip as she looked down at the tumbling waters cascading into the pool. It was hard for her to accept that she was behind anybody in anything. “Bennel probably does have more colour than I do. After all, that is why the canth keeper wanted you and me to go on this journey together. He said that the journey of colour was to become equal in colour.” She frowned, not liking what she was saying at all.

  Six said nothing, but managed to skim a flat pebble six times across the water.

  “How come you have this innate ability to make me so cross, no-name?”

  He shrugged, and threw another stone.

  She watched it skitter across the water and the tautness in her shoulders began to relax. “I don’t think I am better than you.” She picked up her own stone, and tried to bounce it off the water. It was swallowed up with a resounding plop as soon as it touched the surface.

  Six grinned. “Not at skimming, anyway.”

  Diva frowned. “The stone was too big.”

  Six’s smile widened. “So it was the stone’s fault? You are better than me?”

  She ground her teeth. “Oh, shut up, Six. You are the very limit! You turn everything I say around! Can’t you just leave it alone?”

  “Who is better at skimming?”

  She spread her arms. “ALL RIGHT! You are! NOW can we get back to first contact?”

  He jumped up. “Don’t know what took you so long.”

  Diva smothered an almost irresistible desire to take out her Coriolan dagger and slit him up the middle with it. He looked taken aback at the expression.

  “Whatever were you thinking about? You looked pretty scary there for a moment.”

  She gave a mysterious smile. “I was thinking that it is time we got back to the others.”

  Chapter 10

  THEY FOUND THE trimorphs and the threads of light still waiting for them.

  Diva grabbed Six’s hand, and pulled him alongside her. Then she turned to Bennel and Tallen, and indicated that they should move up level with them too. The two Coriolans seemed very surprised, but stepped up as requested.

  Diva took a deep breath, and began again, still clutching Six’s hand.

  “We apologize for that,” she began. “We are honoured to be in your presence, though
I think we have already met beings like you, in symbiosis with the canths.”

  The diamond star which was hanging in mid air in front of them seemed to shimmer very slightly, but it was a trimorph twin who answered.

  “Well, of course they are the same. We told you they were like the lost animas, didn’t we?” The little globe whirred crossly. “I wish you would listen to us. After all, we are the ones they abducted, aren’t we?”

  “How do you know who they are?”

  The trimorph pulsated darkly. “They absorbed us into some sort of mindmerge with them ... By the way, you might want to be careful—” it broke off, realizing that its advice was going to come too late.

  The stellate shape was moving towards the four people standing in front of it, and was slowly enlarging so as to encompass them all.

  A searing bright light was coming from the complex stellate figure, and they all cried out as it passed over them and then hovered, holding its position. This time there was no fear; they all remembered only too well how the shining shape had managed to break down the defences in the Dessite mind wall.

  The multifaceted diamond star glided smoothly over them. Six could sense both Bennel and Tallen flinching backwards as it did. He and Diva both managed to hold their places, but Six reached down and grabbed her hand again as the aura began to envelop them.

  At first it was too bright within it for them to make out anything at all.

  It was as if they had been touched by a cloud, except that this mist was warmer than the surroundings, and felt dry. As the points of the star reached them, they were acutely aware of the heaviness of their own bodies, dragging them down to earth.

  Then the weight of their limbs suddenly became so unbearable that something inside each of them freed itself from the flesh, and became unchecked. Six was conscious of a feeling of looking down at his land-based body, of looking down at an empty shell which was holding Diva’s hand.

  He fixed his attention on the space beside him in the air, and saw that Diva had the same aura as in the mindmerge on Pictoria. She had become the same wonderful cobalt blue, and he could see her shape beside him, leaping with fiery flames that were at the same time crisp and sharp. The flames seemed to be flickering over him, mingling with the edges of his own aura.

  Diva had trembled as she had transformed back into the shape she had taken in the mindmerge against the Dessites. The change was strange, as if her flesh were suddenly evaporating into smoke, passing from solid to gas in one all-encompassing sublimation. She took a moment to get used to the airy feeling, and then turned to Six, at her side. He was the same complicated pattern of golden sunbeams, a sensation of warmth, and quickness. Where they had been holding hands the golden pattern was flecked with her own cobalt colour, and the point of contact was bringing them closer together, tugging at her. She felt a sudden need to feel that warmth more closely and moved automatically towards him. Although she was aware that they were being coerced into this merge, Diva felt no fear, no desire to struggle against the magnetic force; she went willingly into it.

  Six was aware of a light force tugging at him, and slowly allowed the edges of his consciousness to feather outwards towards the flickering cobalt blue. He, too, seemed to move forwards with no hesitation. He let himself edge towards Diva and the two auras began to flow together, twisting and turning around each other, until Bennel and Tallen could only see one complex pattern beside them, a beautiful mixture of blue and gold threads, dappling the aura with tiny flames of fire. They stared.

  Bennel and Tallen had been replaced by the auras that had represented them on Pictoria, and were hovering on either side of Six and Diva, still unwilling to be manipulated by these strange creatures. Bennel examined the feldspar which represented the Namuri, and was aware of a faint sensation of peat, and of a rain-swept marsh. He gave a wan smile at the young Coriolan, and was surprised that this smile translated into a rippling effect of his own aura. He tried it again, and watched, fascinated as the wavelets traveled outwards.

  Tallen found he was able to interpret these small undulations as a smile, and even able to reply with shadows and lights of his own. The conversation was just as effective as if they were facing each other in their own bodies. He managed to relax and let go of his usual fleshy counterpart. But it was a very strange feeling for a Namuri. He wondered if, in this form, he would be able to communicate with the blue stone directly. As he thought of the possibility, the unrelenting rain which seemed to represent him became a downpour of sleet. He looked skywards, reveling in the sensation of icy freedom.

  But then he realized that they were all being gently nudged into one large aura. The centre part, where Diva and Six had been standing individually, was already whirling around one axis, and he and Bennel were being inexorably dragged inside too. This felt dangerous.

  Tallen tried to hang back. His place as a Namuri bodyguard was to protect and to observe, after all, but it was impossible. The diamond star was insistent, and both he and Bennel were being drawn into the central aura. He tried to struggle mentally, baulking against the pull of the star, but his will was feeble in comparison. After a few moments, although his aura boiled with small eddies of distrust, he realized that there was nothing he could do to resist the draw.

  Bennel had already come to the same conclusion. He, too, was reluctant to lose his own identity, but whatever this diamond star was, it was not taking any notice of personal preferences. With only mild variations in his sturdy pewter colour, he succumbed to the irresistible force.

  Diva was experiencing the strangest of all feelings. Their separate consciousnesses were now part of one being, and she was aware of four different people inside the aura. Six was familiar, warm, and comforting. They knew each other so well that they seemed to fit together easily, complementary in their thoughts. She could feel his emotions, reined back as tightly as possible, but facing this new situation with something like eagerness.

  Then she began to notice a new presence inside the mixed aura. It was dependable, and solid, and she recognized Bennel, still wary of this new twist of fate, but trying not to shirk from his duty. The shape was alert, and trying to identify all those parts of the aura around it. Bennel had not lost sight of his obligations, even deep in this mixed merge of personalities.

  Tallen, on the other hand, was still struggling to extricate himself. His young aura was hot and resistant. Diva could sense his inner self. He was determined to let nobody inside his thoughts, and was trying to protect the most memorable moments of his past with a wall high enough to block them all out. She moved to face him, aware of his panic, but the Namuri turned a heated focus on her, and she wavered slightly at his vehemence. Then Six’s calming influence was alongside her, and they both tried to calm the boy. There was absolutely nothing any of them could do to escape this process. The pressure on them all to meld into one aura was too strong to ignore.

  After a struggle, he agreed, rather unwillingly, to let that part of him which he could still control mingle with the others. Gradually, the feldspar melted into the mists, and the integration was complete.

  As soon as the diamond star recognized that fact, the aura which now represented all four of them was transported back through time, to a period long before. They stared collectively at the scenes that were replaying in their head.

  First, there was a planet rich in vegetation, full of animal life. It was far more fertile than Kwaide; they could see tens of dozens of different kinds of birds, and animals, and even smaller insects going peaceably about their lives. The sky was a cerulean blue, with puffy white clouds which contrasted with the menacing ones to be found back on Kwaide. As if they were there in person, they could feel the heat of the sun on their heads, and a breeze which was pleasant to feel on the skin.

  There was a small movement to their right, and they turned through the mists of the stellate shape towards it. As soon as they tried to bring it into focus, the mists disappeared, and their eyes seemed to zoom in on the scene
before them.

  There was a clearing in the hilly terrain, with a shallow pool beside it, and a small village. The houses were fashioned out of quarried instellite, and the shining crystals contained inside it twinkled in the sun. The doors and windows were made of wood, but it was wood which had been carved with mathematical symbols and equations all over it. The combined aura spotted some of the most important equivalences, even though the language was different. Mathematical equations, they saw, were interstellarly recognizable. On each door, and each window, there was one particular algorithm which was embossed outwards, as if to give it great importance.

  They found themselves gliding towards the house. The movement made them dizzy, because they were actually still standing in the same place, and it was difficult to process the contradictory information. They were brought to the open door of one particular house, and transported easily through under the lintel and inside.

  The first thing they saw was a worktable covered with star maps, and pages and pages of calculations on sheets of paper. Then they saw the head of a being, a copy of the statue they had seen outside the grotto. It was attached to a body only slightly taller than they were themselves, but the limbs were thinner and the head was bigger. It looked up as they entered, and they had the impression that it was able to see them through the fog of time. The Ammonite’s eyes seemed to examine them with great benevolence, and find them passable, for they wrinkled up in an enormous smile of welcome, a genuine lighting up of inside happiness which seemed to burst out of the thin body and illuminate the air around it.

  The Ammonite motioned the composite aura urgently over to the table, which they saw was illuminated with electric lights set into the wooden framework of the timber roof. They looked up. The lights were set into the roof in the pattern of a galaxy, and the roof had a large moveable structure in a turret. Below this, there was a huge telescope, recognizable only by the long cylindrical tube which was pointing up at the sky. The machinery which ran it was unknown to them.