Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5 (10 page)

“I will go.”

“That would be me.”

Both Six and Ledin had stepped forward at the same time, and they touched knuckles with a faint grimace. The girls turned to look at them. Now it was their turn to speak at the same time.

“We will all go.”

“You are not going on your own.”

They, too, smiled at each other and this time Diva extended her hands in the open salute of the binary system. She could have kicked herself, because Grace paused visibly before giving a small swallow and reaching out with her own hands to meet Diva’s. They were only able to touch three complete fingers and the thumbs, because of Grace’s accident. Diva flushed, most uncharacteristically. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

“That’s okay, Diva. No problem.” Grace gave one of her sweet smiles, but it didn’t make Diva feel any better. She should think before she acted, she told herself fiercely. Grace was the last person that she wanted to hurt.

Grace gave her a knowing look. “It really is all right,” she insisted. “Look!” She held up her hands for all to see. “Only three fingertips left!” She wiggled her wrecked digits in the air. “I have got used to it, see. No problem. Let’s move on, shall we?”

Ledin raised one eyebrow, and inclined his head slightly. The others looked rather confused. Grace was left with her mangled hands up in the air until she became aware of them again. Hastily she lowered them, and hid them behind her back. Perhaps she still wasn’t quite so used to them as she thought.

“You girls are not coming.” Six was adamant.

“We are too.” Diva stiffened.

Ledin looked over at Grace, and hesitated. Both girls were glaring at him with a savage frown, obviously expecting him to side with Six. He gave a faint sigh.

“I think we should all go,” he said.

Now it was Six’s turn to look like thunder. “Not going to happen,” he said, in a flat voice.

Diva’s eyes were flashing. “No Kwaidian is going to tell me what to do!” she pronounced.

“Diva – you have children to consider now. You can’t just go throwing yourself into any old battle that comes your way.”

“Oh? And you can, I suppose? What? Fathers don’t matter?”

“I’m a man.” Six sounded most surprised. “We have to do this kind of thing.”

“And I—” she lifted her head up as far as it would go, “—am a Coriolan meritocrat.”

“Yes,” he mused. “I know. Always thought that was a bit of a misnomer, myself. I mean, what has your family done to merit being the head of a planet?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Take that back!”

“Because nobody seems to vote on Coriolis, so it would be more accurate to call yourselves autocrats, perhaps even despots.”

“We are not!”

“No? Well – think about it.”

Diva’s eyebrows had met in the middle, and she was rigid with anger. “As if a no-name from Kwaide could know anything about it!”

Six looked at her sadly. “I realize you don’t like to hear this, Diva, but it is true. All that privilege! Your lot needs to modernize a bit.”

Diva was looking decidedly feline. “What do you know about it?” she demanded.

“I have been on the receiving end of your father’s idea of hospitality, and I can’t say I enjoyed it very much. And since one of our children is going to become the ruler of Coriolis then I think it would be a good idea to teach them something about fair government, don’t you?”

“No!”

Grace and Ledin looked at her expressionlessly and Diva thought about it. “That is, yes – I suppose we should. Really, Six, did you have to bring this all up now? We are supposed to be rescuing the visitor! You are the limit!”

“I know.” He preened. “But you started it yourself with all that meritocracy bit.”

“Huhh! So when do we leave?”

Six turned to Ledin for some support, but that worthy only shrugged. Six was forced to capitulate.

“Oh, very well. I suppose we might need all the force we can muster down there. You had better tell us how to get to the visitor, Trimorph!”

“He is being held in a building on one of the floating islands on Dessia.” The trimorph exchanged some information with Arcan, and the orthogel entity became a map of the area they would be going into.

“This is the main island, which is where all the exploration of outer space is coordinated. All you will find on the surface of the island is an open-air compound, surrounded by high outside walls, with small huts every twenty metres or so. The visitor is being held below here—” Arcan made one of the huts pulsate in flashing red, “—on an underwater level.”

There was a general groan. It would be far harder to get him out if he was being held underwater.

“But there are escape hatches all through the underwater parts of the city. Since the Dessites can withstand larger pressures than we can, and they naturally breathe underwater, they actually use the escape hatches as exit and entry points quite often. Dessia is a water world, and the air itself is saturated with 100% humidity, so you will find it uncomfortable.”

“Does it rain all the time?” asked Ledin.

“Most of the time. Some of the days are a wet sort of fog instead of rain. But it does mean that the air you are breathing will be very damp, and your lungs may suffer.”

“But the air on Kwaide is sometimes very damp too, and we don’t have any problems there?”

“No. The difference is in the temperature and in the pressure. Dessia is a very warm climate, and the air pressure is greater than that of Kwaide. You would, I am afraid, find it constricting, although you could survive for short periods without protection. However, you will all need to wear mask packs and bodywraps when you go bare planet.”

“How do the Dessites survive?” asked Grace.

“They don’t have lungs. Their whole body is covered by membranes which increase their surface area by 300%. They breathe through their membranes, and air is transferred to the blood vessels just below the skin. They couldn’t survive in climates like Kwaide, or Coriolis.”

“That means they will be desperate to find out how the visitor is still alive. They must be searching for ways to adapt to drier planets.”

“Yes. I wouldn’t give much for his chances. We have to get him out.”

“But these Dessites seem very technologically advanced. How can we get away from the planet once we have the visitor?”

“You will have to make it back to the shuttle. The visitor should be able to transport out, once he is outside the area of influence of the carbon nanographite which permeates all the rock, but he can’t take anybody else. Make him go immediately, though. Tell him to come here, to us. He can find us through the trimorphs. His abilities could put Pictoria in immediate danger.”

“Whereas they can get very little out of us.”

“You wouldn’t survive long enough to tell them much,” said Arcan. “Once your mask packs run out you would only be able to put up with the conditions down there for a couple of hours, at most.”

Six gave a nod. “Hmm. Not much fun. And we will be on our own. Arcan, you mustn’t come down under any circumstances. They know all about you, and they would keep you forever trapped on their rotten planet.”

“I will not risk myself, I promise. With so much carbon nanographite around, I mustn’t.”

“Even if we don’t come back?”

Arcan hesitated. He didn’t like the conclusion he was being forced to come to. “No. I will stay here – whatever happens.”

“Stay here, no. You must take the visitor back to Pictoria.”

There was a long pause. “Very well,” Arcan said finally, although they could all hear the reluctance in his voice.

“Good. Then we had better get kitted up, hadn’t we? And we will take as many mask packs as we can.”

ARCAN TRANSPORTED THE space shuttle to a couple of metres off the surface of Dessia, leaving it to fall the rest of the way. He simply did not dare to touch down physically on the planet himself, in case he got caught up by the same compound which had trapped the visitor.

The shuttle landed with a stiff jerk which rattled Grace’s teeth inside her skull. She winced.

“Right then,” said Six happily, unsheathing his kris – the Kwaidian sword he always carried. “Let’s go!”

He and Diva were so eager to get started that they both tried to squeeze through the hatch at the same time, causing a bottleneck. There was a moment of eye-to-eye challenge, before Six waved Diva in front of him, rolling his eyes at Grace so that she knew it was not what he would have chosen. She giggled and glanced towards Ledin, who was taking all this in with one raised eyebrow and a small shake of his head.

The shuttle had come down on the main island – an extension of perhaps two square miles floating in the middle of an ocean which covered the whole of the water-world of Dessia. They were right on the edge of the ocean; Arcan had brought them to a shelf of rock half-way up the cliff which led from the sea up to the built-up area. Grace stared around her. The rocks were grey, streaked with patches of black which lit them up rather eerily. Rain was dousing everything in water, and visibility was limited through the impenetrable drizzle. It was like trying to see through a cloud, and gave the whole landscape a surreal feeling. She looked up. Diva was already half-way up the cliff, with Six hot on her heels, obviously determined not to let her get to the top first. She sighed, and looked down at her own hands.

“We will let a rope down for you, Grace,” said Ledin. “There is no way you can scale that on your own.”

A sensation of heaviness settled in her heart. She was slowing them down already. “I know,” she forced herself to answer lightly. “I will wait here then, until you get a rope down to me.”

Ledin gently touched the discoloured spot on the tip of her nose with his finger, and then turned to the cliff. Within seconds, he was already metres up the rock face, making as good a time as Six. They must have both spend a lot of their childhood shinning up and down cliffs, she mused to herself. She watched until he disappeared into the misty downpour, and then settled back to wait. It seemed only seconds later that a rope uncoiled, and snaked its way back down to her. She tied a mariner’s knot with some difficulty, passed the rope through that to make a harness, and fitted it around her bodywrap. Then she began to make her way up the cliff face, using her hands and feet, but held firmly by four strong arms higher up.

With the support of the rope, it didn’t take her very long to make her way up the cliff. She arrived at the top with some slight bleeding from the scars on her fingers, but shut Ledin up with a look when he opened his mouth to comment on them. He closed his lips with such a hasty snap that Six laughed.

They looked around them. At least the appalling weather on the island would make it difficult to detect or follow them. On the other hand, it also made it nigh on impossible to find their own way about. They carefully curled up the long rope they had used, and hid it underneath one of the many loose boulders. Then Six, who was the one with the keenest sense of direction, took the lead, signing them to make no noise whatsoever.

As they crept along the drenched and foggy undergrowth large metallic walls which surrounded the open-air compound suddenly loomed up out of the mist. Ledin gave a silent whistle. The walls were the rich colour of copper, covered with the unmistakable green patina of oxidation, but they were mottled with patches of black, so must also contain some of the carbon nanographite that caused Arcan so much trouble. He let his hand feel the texture. Some sort of composite, he thought. The walls were smooth and at least two stories high. He couldn’t see Grace getting over one of those, not as she was now. His frown deepened.

But it seemed that Six had no intention of scaling the walls. Once in up close, under their shadow, he simply skirted around them, making more signs to all of them to be absolutely silent. At last they came to a heavily embossed pair of gates, flanked on either side by small turrets. Six signaled to them all to stop and then went on ahead himself to scout out the lie of the land.

The others waited, frozen in place, and trying to breathe carefully, lest the noise of their mask packs be audible. Six must have been away for five minutes – though it felt like ten – before they saw his shape reappear through the streaming rain.

He raised his thumbs and signaled again, to tell them to follow him. One by one they obeyed, edging carefully along the sides of the copper composite wall, still concentrating on minimizing the sound of their breathing. Grace could feel her own heart bounding inside her ribcage and somehow seeming to lodge itself in her throat. They passed the turrets and found, as Six had before, that the main gate had a smaller portal inset near the centre. This was closed, but unlocked – a few scratches on the surface showed where Six had worked his magic on the tumblers.

It was a moment’s work to slip through, and close the door behind them. The key – very similar to those used on both Kwaide and Coriolis – had been left on a string hanging up behind the door, so Six abstracted the key, and relocked the door behind them. Then he made signs to the girls to follow him, and indicated to Ledin that he should bring up the rear, and keep a tight surveillance behind them. Ledin nodded his understanding. They stopped for a moment to change mask packs. Diva risked a slight breath of the air, and then regretted it, for it seemed to sear her throat as she breathed in, and she felt that it set her lungs on fire. She could taste a rather sulphurous tinge, too. With great difficulty, she managed to suppress the automatic cough, and returned Six’s glare with one of her own. The others made sure not to breathe the local atmosphere after seeing her distress.

Six moved off. They were now inside the enclosure, but the undergrowth was much the same as it had been outside. There had been no sign of the local inhabitants, but that was about to come to an end. Six stopped dead in mid stride as he picked up movement in front of him, and the others immediately copied him. A shadowy figure passed, at the very edge of their perception. Even so, Grace almost recoiled, because the shape was much larger than she had imagined. She couldn’t make out any details, but it was almost twice her own height. She gave a gulp.

The shadowy figure showed no signs of noticing them, moving slowly off and disappearing smoothly into the masking mist. They waited for some little time, and then continued their journey, creeping gingerly around the open-air compound. The only buildings which broke up the green scrubland were the small huts which loomed out of the mist every so often; more copper composite walls which this time didn’t reach so high. The huts must have been merely entrances, for they were not big enough to be offices or dwellings of any kind – not for creatures as big as the ones Grace had just seen. Arcan’s map had been right – the work was carried out underground, and these were merely entrances to the different bunkers.

Grace wondered how on Sacras Six was finding his way around; he was quite firm and determined, and seemed to know exactly where he was going. She had lost count of these copper huts – they must have passed at least twenty already. The rain lashed down on them, and even the bodywrap was beginning to feel uncomfortably hot and sweaty.

AT LAST THEY arrived at the particular hut that Six had been aiming for. The door was locked, but the same key that he had taken from the entrance gate opened it easily. This species had clearly never needed high security on their home planet, at least until now. So there were no threats to their safety in the near vicinity. It was a good sign. He began to feel that the operation could be a success. Not that it would be easy – they were still only at the very beginning – but it helped a lot that their opponents were clearly not expecting any sort of rescue operation. It seemed that they had, after all, decided that the recent apparition in their skies had been due to natural causes.

Inside, there was a double-rimmed cylinder of water glittering in the dim light. It was about three times the width of Ledin, and seemed to disappear down into the nether regions of the island. Water was noisily streaming out of the top of the inner cylinder, over the side, and down to the depths again on the outside of the inner cylinder, but contained within the outer one. It looked to be a long trip down, and the flow of water upwards meant that none of them could possibly dive down through the steep pressure gradient. The Dessites obviously used the cylinders only for ascent. Then Diva opened her eyes wide, and pointed. Curving around the double rimmed cylinder was a spiral slideway, which disappeared into the gloom below. Beside the start of the slide there was a pile of mats, made out of some rough black material, which was stiff but pliant. The front of each mat curved upwards, to protect its occupant.

Diva danced on the spot, her eyes begging for the chance to try out this unusual form of transport. Six hesitated, and then peered down into the gloom, and shrugged. There was no other way to get down. It was this, or nothing. He gave a reluctant nod.

Since the Dessites were much bigger than they were, there was room for two of them on each mat. Diva leapt onto the first mat and settled herself comfortably at the front. Six raised his eyes heavenwards and wedged himself in behind her, extending one arm to each side of her body to hold firmly onto the front curve of the mat. Diva’s eyes tracked to the arms to either side of her, appeared to be thinking about a comment, then turned back to the slide in front of them. With a wicked grin she pushed them off from the horizontal launch platform, and they plunged into the darkness, accelerated rapidly and disappeared. Even so, Grace could just make out a muffled whoop of glee as the mat build up speed.

Ledin pulled out the following mat, and gestured to Grace to climb aboard. She hopped nimbly onto it, and sat down. Then he copied Six and positioned himself behind her, with arms to either side of her body holding the front curve of the mat. She felt safe, and he bent forward to give her the slightest of touches at the back of her neck. It was hardly a kiss – it couldn’t be because of the mask pack protection – but it felt good. She nodded her head slightly and then pushed them off.

There were a few seconds of expectation as the mat began to pick up speed. Then a few more of enjoyment as a sense of exhilaration kicked in. Then everything began to flash past much too quickly and the spiraling of the mat around the column of water began to make Grace feel horribly dizzy. Her stomach seemed to have been left behind.

She found that she couldn’t hold on because of her hands, and would have been pushed against the walls if it hadn’t been for the steely arms of Ledin holding her firmly in place. She closed her eyes, but that seemed to make it worse. She hoped she wasn’t going to be sick.

They plunged further and further down, and the mat seemed to be traveling faster and faster. The copper-composite chute glistened a rich red colour in the semi-darkness, but flashed by so fast it all became a blur. It went on, and on, and on.

At long last the spiral leveled out into a long stretch of straight slide, and the mat began to slow down. It didn’t stop Grace’s head from spinning, although it did help her stomach. The mat hurtled its way along the shining chute, and slipped into a slightly uphill zone, where it began to decelerate rapidly. Finally they drew to a stop on a platform, and Ledin helped Grace out.

Diva and Six were making sure that there were no aliens around, so they missed their friends’ arrival. Ledin and Grace clutched at each other until the platform stopped turning ominously, and then managed to stand upright on their own as the dizzy effects wore off. Grace gave a puff of relief. It seemed she was not going to be sick, after all.

But it looked as if their luck was about to run out. Six was making frantic signs to them to hide, and they could hear some sort of shuffling, rasping sound from below the platform. Quickly, they ducked behind a pile of mats, and froze into place.

A huge figure moved directly past them, and began to open a hatch in the wall. Although they had been hidden before, Ledin and Grace were now in full view of the Dessite. Luckily, its whole attention was on the locking device of the hatch. They edged round the corner of the mats, amazed at the creature in front of them.

It was covered in membranes. They ran the length of its body, about forty or fifty of them, Grace thought. Each membrane was a fold of flesh protruding out of the body in a semicircle, as if the spikes of a hedgehog had been joined together in ridges from top to tail. These folds moved continuously, undulating from one side to another in a sinuous wave. There was a distinct head, but this too was covered in membranes. Although much less protuberant than those on the body, they were also in continual movement. The eyes were the only part of the head which was still. These were two huge plates set in concentric deep folds of skin. The eyes were black and seemed very flat, instead of the rounded ones usually seen on the binary system. Grace could see no sign of a mouth or ears. Perhaps the Dessites needed neither, as they had quantum non-locality to use for communication?