Tallen felt a weird, tugging sensation in his bad leg; it was trying to get his attention. No! Not now, please! He had to keep going. Too much – far too much – depended on his being able to keep these people safe. He grunted with pain, but battled on, aware of the irony that he was in a fight to the death with one of his only friends. He thought that the possibility of his ever reaching his 16th birthday, in the near future, had just seriously diminished, and took some twisted pleasure in the thought, although he had not expected to go out quite like this.
Struggling to kill him, Bennel’s eyes were starting out of his head, making the normally kind face quite different. The man was clearly beyond all reasoning; he was looking at Tallen with an eerie, vacuous expression that told the Namuri how very empty the soul controlling him was.
Then Tallen became aware of Lannie. She was creeping up behind her own husband, with a large metal cooking pot in her hand. It was Tallen’s turn to widen his eyes. He wanted to tell her not to do it, that her own husband could turn and kill her and know nothing about it, but he saw from her expression that she was well aware of the dangers. He tried to turn the Coriolan guard away from her, so that she would have a better target. Anything to prevent him from seeing who was creeping up behind him. The twisting movement in the shallow water threw up splashes of spray all around them, which helped, because the sound blocked his wife’s approach.
And it worked. Lannie was in position. She seemed to be muttering something to herself – perhaps some sort of prayer, thought Tallen. Then she raised her hands, closed her eyes completely, and smashed the pot with all her strength down onto Bennel’s skull.
The large Coriolan stopped in his tracks, and then, in slow motion, dropped his fists and started to turn around. He never made it. His whole body began to collapse, from the knees upwards, and he crashed into the few inches of water, his eyes disappearing into the upper part of his eyelids. The resultant wave soaked both of them.
Lannie dropped the pot with a cry and ran to her husband, carefully holding his head above the water, so that he wouldn’t drown. “Have I killed him?” she sobbed.
Tallen, trying unsuccessfully to get his breath back, bent over the prone figure. “Not quite. But remind me never to get on the bad side of you, Lannie!”
“I thought he was going to kill you.”
“He was doing his best. Without you he would probably have succeeded. I thank you.”
She waved him away. “I will take care of him now; you go and help Grace. I don’t know how much longer Sanjai can hold her.”
Tallen glanced over at Sanjai. Lannie was right; he was struggling to keep control of the Sellite girl. He nodded. “Thank you, Lannie. That must have been an extremely hard thing to do.”
She gave him a quizzical look. “You have no idea how often I have wished I could hit him over the head with a crock pot,” she said, managing to dredge up a tired grin, “I just never thought I would do it!”
Tallen did a double take. That was about the last thing he had expected to hear from the passive Lannie.
“Oh, get on with you,” she said, waving him away with another smile. “It’s all part of loving someone. You’ll understand one day, when you find a wife of your own.” She bent over and dropped a kiss on the cold, unconscious face between her hands.
Tallen made his way out of the shallows after a sideways look at her. He wasn’t sure he wanted to, not if his wife would be forever subduing urges to batter his skull into a pulp. He limped out of the water and made his way over to Grace. The kindest thing would be to knock her out, too, but he wasn’t certain how strong her own skull would be, and he didn’t want to damage either her or the baby. He ran up the sand to her, sat on her knees, and nodded to Sanjai, who was still desperately holding on to Temar.
“Here!” Tallen stretched out his arms. “Give him to me. Where are Raven and Quenna?” As he spoke, his eyes were roaming the beach, but he couldn’t see either of the two girls.
Then Sanjai gave a strangled moan, nodding upwards and backwards with his head. Tallen peered in that direction with his hawk-like eyes and his heart gave a momentary stutter at what he saw. Both girls were half-way up the tallest tree, and it was clear that Quenna was fighting to keep Raven from falling.
“Oh, no,” he murmured, remembering Bennel telling him about his daughter’s incapacitating fear of heights. “Hang on, Quenna! Please, hang on!”
Chapter 20
THE DESSITES WORKED in shifts; there was a constant to-ing and fro-ing around the tank which contained Arcan. However, it was clear which was the night shift and which was the day shift. At night, the tests carried out were negligible; those Dessites who were on duty simply limited themselves to watching, and waiting.
There were many video cameras around the chamber, and Arcan suspected that there were many more cloaked, invisible to any except their handlers. He knew that another incursion like the last one would now prove completely impossible. The Dessites were not about to make the same mistake as before. They had clearly taken quite a lot of measures to protect themselves.
But Arcan’s plan did not involve moving around the Island of the Forthgoing; he planned to transport his secret cargo to the Island of the Preborn, and he hoped that they had not thought to extend their security there. He thought it was unlikely they had; there was nothing on that island except cryolized bodies and a few attendants. He doubted the Dessites would think anyone could possibly have an interest in that.
Six and Ledin were now rested, but the visitor had been getting increasingly cross about having to stay within the stuffy space inside the carrysack and had insisted on its being opened. Six was not best pleased with the morphic’s grumbling.
“Look here, spindle-brain,” he told him shortly. “I have just about had it up to here …” he drew his fingers across his face, about the height of his nose, “…with all your moaning. Diva is risking her life for us right now, and all you can think of is your own comfort!”
The visitor turned black. “How dare you! You are only a transient, what would you know about anything?”
Six laughed. “More than you, apparently. At least I wouldn’t carry on just because I was shut into a carrysack.”
“It is hot in here!”
“It is hot in here!” Six mimicked him with a high-pitched voice, flapping his hands about. “Huh! No staying power, that’s your problem.”
“At least I have a brain, which is more than you, numbskull.”
“Who are you calling numbskull, pinhead? My brain is much bigger than yours!”
“Yes, but so much less efficient. You have all those raging emotions rattling around in there.”
“Well, be careful; they might reach out and choke you.”
The visitor sighed. “—If this namura lining doesn’t finish me off first.”
Arcan interrupted. “Right. We are ready to make a move. Are you prepared?”
“Thank Sacras,” said the visitor. “If you had left it any longer I would have been delivered in liquid form.”
Six gave a hiss of disgust and raised his eyes heavenwards. “We are ready, Arcan. Can you see where to go?”
“The visitor has shown me. He has vivid memories of his ancestor being placed there.”
“His ancestor?” Both Ledin and Six turned towards the carrysack.
The voice that answered was still slightly muffled by the material. “Yes, my ancestor. They called him Exemphendiss. He was a dissenter.”
Six raised his eyebrows. “Exemwhat? What sort of a name is that?”
The visitor flashed. “The name was modernized during the period of expansion. In the old language he was known as ‘he who would wish to separate himself from the rest by advocating a limiting of our numbers’.”
Six winked at Ledin. “Put that way, Exemwhatever seems quite s
hort. What was it again?”
The visitor spun. “Exemphendiss.”
“And he wanted to limit your numbers …?”
“He wanted to implement birth control. He had established a way to prevent budding. We could have limited our numbers to fewer than 50 billion. If we had done that, then we would have coexisted with all the other marine species living at that time on Dessia.”
Ledin raised one eyebrow. “That sounds very sensible. Why didn’t the Dessites do it?”
The visitor gave a small buzz inside the carrysack. “They didn’t believe there was a problem. They said he was exaggerating, that the planet could sustain many more of us. They accused him of trying to bring down the council of guardians, of being a traitor to the cause. He was summarily cryolized.”
“Sacras! Your former co-citizens sound like nice people.”
The carrysack moved again. “He was one of the lucky ones. Shortly after him, anybody branded a dissenter was actually terminated and their remnants evacuated into the water, to enrich the sea.”
“Oh, charming!”
“Actually Exemphendiss was rather more than my ancestor. I am part of his brain, so I suppose you could say that he was me, or that I am him. I still remember that last, long walk to the cryovat that was to be his final resting place. He was lucky; there was still room in the north-south chamber.” The visitor explained about the inadvisability of resting sempiternally with magnetic lines crossing your remains. Ledin and Six listened politely, although Six’s eyes were glazing over.
Ledin asked the question they had both been thinking. “Why on Lumina did they use your neurons for a traveler, then? I mean, if you … he … had been classed a dissenter?”
“At the very beginning of the space program, it was considered so dangerous that they didn’t want to risk any important neurons. I was really a … I think you would call it a guinea-pig. I wasn’t expected to live.” The carrysack shifted slightly. “In fact, over a thousand neurons were taken from Exemphendiss at the beginning of the space program, and only ten of us survived.”
“You have nine sibling travelers?” Six was surprised.
“Not any longer. Five were terminated by the council when they found no signs of life in their areas. Two were terminated for disobedient thoughts. One was caught in an explosion of a supernova, and the last one was too close to a gamma ray burst. He was fried by the radiation.” The carrysack shifted again. “Which left only me.” There was a pause. “And you know what happened to me.”
Six gave a frown. “Why didn’t you tell us all this before?”
“You never asked me.”
Ledin shrugged his shoulders. “So now we are going to wake your … your ancestor up? What did you call him? Exemphendiss?”
“That’s right. Arcan wants to negotiate with Dessia, but he needs an interpreter. I could do that, of course, but he also thinks we need a representative who can be here all the time, somebody who can monitor the Dessites mentally all day every day, and who can contact us whenever necessary, in case the Dessites try to subvert any agreement. We don’t know yet if they can be trusted to keep their word. It will all take time.” The visitor spun excitedly. “That is where I come in. Since Exemphendiss is – or was – part of me, we will be able to communicate instantly with each other wherever we are, yet he is a Dessite himself, so can monitor all of their thoughts. Arcan says that because he was the original proponent of birth control, and because of his link to me, Exemphendiss is the only Dessite he is prepared to trust, for the time being.”
“So we are on a diplomatic mission?” asked Ledin, testing the sharpness of his sword, as Six did the same with his kris. Both of them ignored the visitor’s sharp flare of incredulity at the idea of Kwaidians being involved in diplomacy.
Arcan shimmered. “Only if they let us be diplomatic. If they refuse, we might have to continue this war. I am not going to let them cut me up into little pieces and use me as a cheap form of transport; but yes, we are hoping to be able to reach a pacific solution. Setting up a way of communication is the first step. I think Exemphendiss is our only chance of that. Anything else would be too risky.”
“Then, lead on! We are ready.” Six picked up the carrysack, and slung it over his shoulder, ignoring the grieved comments from inside. “Let’s see how many Dessites we can defreeze, shall we?”
Arcan glittered. “The sooner you carry out your mission of rescue, the sooner I can get out of this tank. I dislike being shut in here. It brings back too many dark memories.”
Six nodded. He had been reliving the final few moments of the last battle on this floating island too. He had watched Diva’s bubble being carried away from him in the orthogel time after time after time while Ledin had been sleeping. And in a strange way, it didn’t matter that Diva was still alive, could still speak to him, because the part of her which had died back there was irreplaceable. He still mourned one part of her, although he was pleased she had become a morphic. It was hard. Hard to forget her quicksilver temperament, her mercurial spirits, the way she fought in combat, the way she had held a sword, the—
Six blinked. Ledin was staring at him, and he realized that Arcan had fallen silent, too.
“I … I am sorry. I was … daydreaming.”
“Please don’t. We are on Dessia, remember?” Arcan’s tone was chilly.
“Yes. It won’t happen again.” Six looked down. Ledin gave him a small sympathetic punch on the arm. He knew very well who Six had been thinking about. He missed her too.
A cross little voice came out of the carrysack. “If you are all quite ready, could we get on with it? If we don’t go soon, I might melt through the bottom of this contraption you have put me in.”
Six sighed.
THE BUBBLE LANDED right in the centre of the huge north-south chamber of one of the cryovaults on the Island of the Preborn, and Ledin and Six immediately separated, one moving to each side of the passageway in the centre of the chamber.
The place was immense. It consisted of large vats of some sort of cryogenic liquid which bubbled over into long tubes. Each vat contained the remains of a supine Dessite and was surrounded by what the visitor had referred to as the cryonutrient tanks, together with many tubes, pipes and controls.
Six opened up the carrysack, and a relieved bimorph flew out. The first thing he did was float across to one of the vats and cool himself down by hovering directly over one of the cryoliquid intake tubes. He pulsed at the same time, obviously trying to lose heat. Six was reminded of a panting catumba, unable to cope with the summer sun. He grinned.
“So, Visitor, where is your esteemed ancestor?”
The visitor pointed up the passageway. “Near the top, about fifteen vats further up. Come on, we haven’t got all day, you know!”
“Excuse me? We are not the ones hanging around over a cryotube, now are we? —Oh never mind!” Six shook his head at Ledin, and they both moved forwards, looking around them warily.
There were only about five Dessites in the whole area, so that was in their favour, and so far, there had been no alarm raised, which probably meant that the prognosticator hadn’t thought to install video cameras on the Island of the Preborn itself. That was good news, too.
They followed the visitor until he came to a stop before a vat which was unmarked. All the others sported a commemorative plaque which contained their name, together with some short history of their achievements. This one did not. It was older than most of the others and bare of achievements. There were marks where the plaque had been, but it had been torn down – not too long ago, thought Six, looking at the fairly recent marks where it should have been.
“This is me,” said the visitor, hovering rather proudly in front of the Dessite shape inside the vat.
Six peered at it. “You are not very big, as far as Dessites go,” he said.
<
br /> “Of course I’m not. I was cryolized before my time.”
“How do we … uncryolize you … him?”
The visitor buzzed around the large apparatus. “We have to turn off this feed, open that one, wait for the temperature to rise, and then help me … I mean Exemphendiss … out of the vat.”
“That doesn’t sound too hard.”
“No-o-o.” The visitor looked around. “Although I think there might be an alarm system connected to the apparatus.”
“Of course there would be.” Six gazed down the chamber. “Oh well, might as well get started. If they are going to come, they will. Can’t Arcan simply transport him out of there?”
“NO! He could be permanently damaged. The process must be reversed correctly, or his tissues will begin to die.”
“All right. We understand. But … Arcan …?”
“Yes, Six?”
“We need to seal off the chamber. We are likely to have quite a lot of company rather soon otherwise.”
Ledin stepped forwards. “I will undertake to close up the doors,” he said. “I can do the nearest one now, and then, while you are dealing with the valves, maybe Arcan could transport me down to the other end of the chamber?”
Arcan agreed, and Ledin slipped quickly away to the large entry door. It took him a few moments, but then the large double doors slipped closed, and Six saw Ledin put heavy iron bars in place across the doors, to prevent them reopening. The Kwaidian swung on them with all his weight and then signaled that the doors were now secured. Arcan transported Ledin to the other set of doors into the vault, and soon confirmed that he had managed to close the double doors at the far end too, so Six began to tackle the small valve to the pumps.
The visitor had been right, however. As soon as the valve was touched, a light began to flash imperiously on the side of the vat which faced the passageway, and a siren started up. Six hurried to crank the valves open and closed. This was harder than he had imagined, because they were opened by pumping a long handle up and down, which might have been easy if you had membranes, but was rather more difficult for somebody with only a pair of hands.
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