Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5 (22 page)

Both Ledin and Six realized at the same time that their preoccupation with the past had meant their withdrawal from the mindmerge. They turned to each other in surprise, and opened their mouths. Then they both stopped at the same time. There was still nothing to say. Six put his fist forwards, and they exchanged one of their complicated handshakes. Then they thumped each other on the back – a final goodbye – and sat back to wait for the end.

BECAUSE THEY WERE no longer part of the mindmerge, they weren’t immediately aware of the changes taking place inside the union. But the trimorphs could see clearly what was happening.

The immaterial wall of Dessite minds had surrounded the avifauna amorphs, closing around them completely, and the amorphs were peering in panic at the solid block of minds which was herding them into some sort of state of subjugation.

The visitor and the two Arcan twins spun uselessly around, but there was little that they could do. They still had too many Dessite minds focused on each of them to be able to help the amorphs at all. All they could do was watch, impotent, as the simple avian brains and will were taken over with a single-minded determination. The sheer quantity of the Dessites was overwhelming. How could just a few minds resist the press of 552 billion? It couldn’t be. The avifauna had been simple, prehistoric minds when they were alive and walking around the buttes, they didn’t have any resources to combat such an attack, even now that they had been distilled down into amorphic form.

It was spine-chilling to hear the desperate mental screams of the trapped avian amorphs. They were terrified at what was happening, helpless against the onslaught of the Dessites.

The visitor turned his attention to the orthogel entity, who was still surrounded on all sides by the wall, but seemed to have increased the space between himself and it. With the tendrils of his mind, he ventured closer, and tried to reach out towards Arcan mentally. It was impossible to mix with Arcan, but they could sense each other. The visitor knew that Arcan was already trapped; he could feel that much from the desperation in the orthogel entity. He concentrated on telling Arcan about the avians, and was pleased when Arcan turned his attention to the amorphs. The visitor felt the surge of the orthogel entity’s anger at the mental manipulation of such simple beings, before the whirlpool of colour which was Arcan was forced to turn all his attention back to the wall.

The visitor returned to the trimorphs, where he knew he would be safer, but then they suddenly found themselves alone. Most of the avian amorphs disappeared abruptly from the cavern, and Arcan’s synergetic energy vanished at the same time. They were alone in the dark, except for what seemed to be a guard of about twenty of the avian amorphs.

“What just happened?” muttered Six.

“I think the Dessites have overcome any individuality of the amorphs and they are now using them as their proxies on Pictoria,” said the visitor.

A nasty suspicion crept into Six’s mind. “Do you think they can influence the behaviour of the original avifauna too – the birds themselves?”

The visitor whirred. “Wait here,” he said, “I will go and see.”

“It’s not like we can just shin back up to the surface you know.”

The visitor spun around again, his colours changing. “I know,” he said. “But I can.”

“Yeah. We know. You are morphic now. If you wouldn’t mind … I am worried about the girls. They should have managed to blow us up by now. I hope nothing has happened to them.”

The two trimorph twins buzzed their dismay. “The visitor can’t go anywhere on his own. We have to be with him at all times.”

“Why?”

“Because only our presence is stopping the Dessites from forcing him to transport back to Dessia again. We don’t know why, but we seem to be immune to their way of getting inside minds.”

“And with you beside him he is safe?”

The Arcan twins shimmered. “They can’t touch him. Even in a full mindmerge. They were really taken aback when they realized.”

“Then you must stay with him at all times. I hadn’t even thought about his vulnerability to the Dessites. That is good to know. Couldn’t it work for Arcan?”

The twins flashed black. “His size is disproportionate. We are too small to be able to protect him.”

“A pity.” Six gave a shrug. “Still, at least the visitor is safe. Will you go and check on the girls then?”

They were back in record time, flashing with dismay, and the twins were interchanging long and clearly voluble chatter.

Six, unable to ‘hear’ them, got angry. “Do you think you could let Ledin and I in on things? I know we can’t flit around like you morphics, but we do have a vested interest in all this, you know.”

“Sorry Six.” The visitor gave a last flash and then moved over to hover between the two Kwaidians. He told them what he had seen: Grace, face down in the sand surrounded by avifauna, and one of the shuttles taking off as fast as it could for the Independence. He had also seen that all the weapons had been thrown down from their plinths, and the supports trampled into the ground.

“—Even if we could, it would take hours to set them back up, and some of the smaller struts may be broken,” he finished.

Ledin looked surreptitiously towards the waiting avian amorphs. “Then they are here to keep us in,” he said.

“—Which means we have to get out,” Six continued. “But how? We can’t start scaling the cliff – they have only to burn our hands by whirling near us, and we would fall back down instantly.”

“Hmm. How about—?” Ledin stroked his chin, and then realized that his idea wouldn’t work, “—No.”

Then Six brightened. “Of course, we
could
just disappear,” he told Ledin, who raised one eyebrow dubiously.

“How do you intend to do that?”

“By using the ortholiquid. It can transport us wherever it likes.”

“Wherever
it
likes – not wherever we like?”

“Unfortunately, no. But it is our only chance to get out of here. The trimorphs should be able to disappear whenever they like—” Six looked at the three entities in question to make sure that this was true before going on, “—so you and I are the problem.”

“Maybe we could overpower them?” suggested Ledin. “The Dessites only left twenty of them with us, after all.”

A ripple of amusement ran through the visitor and the trimorphs. “Not a chance,” said the visitor. “They can simply transport themselves out of harm’s way. Something you can’t do. You would stand no chance of getting up the cliffs. They would simply burn your hands until they forced you to let go.”

“But we can’t be of any use to the girls if we get transported to some cavern we can’t get out of, can we? What help will that be?”

Six glared at him. “It is one step better than being held a prisoner in a cavern we can’t get out of, isn’t it?”

Ledin put his head on one side. “Put like that, you could be right.”

“Thank you. One thing, though – we had better hang on to each other, because otherwise the ortholiquid could send us to two different places.”

“It might not send us anywhere.”

“True. But I think we ought to try.”

Ledin looked at the twins and the visitor, hovering close by. “Will the avian amorphs be able to follow us?”

All three morphics darkened. “No,” they chorused. “We don’t think so.”

“But you three can?”

“We believe so. But during our stay here we have seen no sign of the avian amorphs doing anything like that on their own. They are constantly in and out of the ortholiquid, which transports them around when it wants or needs to, but they don’t appear to have the autonomy to do it on their own.”

“But they might now? If the Dessites are controlling their minds?”

“Oh.” The visitor spun slowly and turned a sick grey. “Yes, they might. We will just have to hope that the Dessites don’t access that part of their brains then. We three morphics will transport ourselves somewhere at the same time, so that if they try to follow us they might lose the trail. The trouble is, so will we. You will be completely on your own.”

“All right.” Six glanced sideways at the neat line of guard amorphs. “You try to keep their attention, then. We will be on our way.”

The trimorphs flashed their understanding, and buzzed over to the avifauna amorphs. There was a shiver of light which traversed each of them as they all began to chatter at once.

Six looked at Ledin, and nodded. They edged further and further towards the shore. When they were some ten metres away from the conversation behind them, they stood up and flung themselves into the ortholiquid, Six putting his arm across Ledin’s shoulder as they dived. As soon as they were submerged, Six wished the ortholiquid to transport them away from that place. “Anywhere!” he bellowed silently to it. “Anywhere you like, but away from here!” He very much doubted that the ortholiquid would understand, but it made him feel better.

They tried to sink down into the liquid. Its lack of friction felt strange because it was more buoyant than water. For a long time nothing seemed to happen.

Then, as they were about to come up for a gulp of air, Six felt a movement along his skin. The liquid was attaching itself to him, enveloping him. He kept his arm tightly around Ledin’s shoulders as the second skin of ortholiquid crept slowly over both of them. When it covered their eyes and nose, Ledin felt a brief moment of panic, and then it was over, and the liquid was receding again. He opened his eyes to see where it had brought them.

DIVA LAID ON all the thrust she could to detach the shuttle from the planet’s gravity. For once in her life, she was shaking all over, and felt utterly drained. First they had been on the point of killing Six and Ledin, and now she had had to leave Grace in the hands of the Dessite avifauna supplanters.

She looked down crossly at her trembling hands.
That
was not going to help anything at all. She had to get her brain thinking. What could she do? How could she break the Dessite stronghold on the planet? There must be something she could do to reverse the situation.

She thought of all the people who depended on her – and only her – and fought to get her mind and body under control. It was no good letting all these feelings rage up and smother her judgement. She had to calm her mind and heart down, try her best to look on everything from a distance – as if it were all some sort of mathematical problem, perhaps. Diva closed her eyes. She had never been much good at mathematical problems. Six – for a moment a mental image came into her head, causing her such a shaft of pain that she gasped – Six had been the one for solving problems, back on Valhai. She remembered all the hours he had spent, laboriously explaining quantum mechanics to her, talking through the finger language they had invented. As she thought back through the years, the fiercest determination she had ever known came to her.

She was
going
to find a solution. The fact that the Dessites had been able to supplant the avifauna and stop her and Grace from arming those missiles had been a sign. And Divina Senate Magmus of Coriolis was going to find the way. She was going to save everybody.

As soon as the determination came to her she knew that she was going to need help. Arcan was essential, and she would have to get a couple of other minds on the problem. The first thing to do was to extricate Arcan from the Dessites, free him from the fight. The second was to ask him to bring in another mind – somebody whose input might make all the difference.

She edged the shuttle deftly into the docking bay on the Independence, and looked around. It felt dead, empty. She could detect no trace of Arcan, but he had to be somewhere on the spaceship.

Diva made her way to the bridge, her mind in overdrive trying to find a solution. It was no good attacking the cavern now – the Dessites were no longer concentrated there, and only a few would feel the explosion. The sacrifice of Six and Ledin, together with the visitor bimorph and the trimorph twins would not serve the purpose anymore. No, her main priority was to loosen their grip on Arcan, to make that mental wall that was overwhelming him dissipate, disintegrate. And now she was on her own. She sat at the console and buried her face in her hands, willing her brain to work correctly – at least this once.

But the thoughts simply tumbled around in her brain, each one displacing the last in a repetitive circle of possibilities which turned all her neurons into a chaos. She pressed her temples, and made herself visualize what she needed to do.

And then she had it. With cool dignity she stood up from the console and made her way over to the secondary console. Here, she could find out just what stores were available to the occupants of the Independence. Her fingers darted across the screen. She found that she was holding her breath.

At last she located what she was looking for. She checked the ubication in the stores, and the quantity available. There would be more than enough. But she would only have this chance. If her idea failed, there wouldn’t be enough left to try again. It would either work, or the Dessites would have a clear path to the ortholiquid here on Pictoria, and the orthogel entity on Valhai, their two principal objectives.

Diva gave a strange laugh. In addition, it would give them all just the tiniest chance of survival – at least in the short term. It might only be delaying the inevitable. Her chin came up. They would continue to fight, one small step at a time. That was all they could do.

She began to put a series of orders into effect on the console, making sure that the various stages were timed correctly so that it would all dovetail together.

She paused. There wasn’t much time; she knew that Arcan was still fighting for his life down on the planet, fighting to stop the Dessites from taking him over and getting access to his main body on Valhai. Still, she could take one or two things with her.

She ran around the ship, grabbing the things she thought most necessary, and flinging them haphazardly into the shuttle. Then she ran back to the console, waited for the enablement screen to come up, pushed ‘YES’, ‘YES’, ‘YES’ and ‘YES’; and then ran for the shuttle. She had half-an-hour. That was not a very long time; she hoped it would be enough.

Once back in the shuttle, she spent the precious minutes getting as far away as she could from the Independence. She wasn’t too sure what was going to happen, but she did know that it was not likely to be a good place to be in the near future.

When she was at a safe distance, she turned the tiny pod around so that she could see the effects of her intervention through the rexelene visor, and waited. Her fingers were crossed, because she could only guess at the effect this would have, and hope that it would liberate Arcan from the Dessites, without harming him too much.

There was a blossoming of fire from the centre of the visor, and she watched as it radiated out, away from the source, carrying with it specks of material which were in fact parts of the fuselage of the Independence. Because of the intervening space, there was no sound, but it was clear that her stratagems had worked, and it looked as if she had succeeded in blowing up the space trader.

She waited. What would happen to Arcan? Would he realize that somebody must have set off the explosion? Would he still be alive? Would he have been able to free himself of the Dessites? Had she at least saved what remained of Arcan, on Valhai?

There was a long pause. The fragments of the Independence were still hurtling outwards, but the flash had dissipated, so there was really nothing much to see. Now the sky had darkened again, she was unable to see the whirling pieces of flotsam. Suddenly the whole visor clouded over, and she looked around her, sharply.

“Arcan? Is that you? Get us away from here as fast as you can, please. Take us to Kwaide. Now!”

There was no reply, but Diva had the vague impression that she had been listened to. She peered at the cloudy visor, trying to make outwhere she was, but could still see nothing.

Then the mists began to clear, and she gave a whoop of joy. They were docked on the Kwaide Orbital Station. They were safe.

Arcan appeared almost as soon as they were docked.

“Thank you, Diva. You may have saved my life. Although you very efficiently killed off the part of me above Pictoria.”

“I’m sorry. I was hoping that maybe that part of the orthogel might turn into more Arcan amorphs.”

“I’m afraid not. I have no impression of survival. But don’t be sorry. I am more than grateful for your efficiency. I am only slightly weakened, and now their link to me is broken.”

“Are you sure, Arcan? They didn’t somehow break through to Valhai?”

He shimmered. “I have been able to hold them back. But they are very persistent, and I am afraid that next time they find me, it will be impossible to resist. The wall is so very large, and thick. There are just so many of them. They are a very dangerous adversary.”

“We know.” She told him how the Dessites had overcome the avians and been able to stop them firing the missiles, how Grace had sacrificed herself.

Arcan darkened and swelled up alarmingly. “We have been very lucky. I would never have forgiven myself if I had been the cause of the annihilation of so many of my friends. I must be grateful to the Dessites for that, at least. What are we going to do now?”

“Well. I have to go back to Pictoria, and you must not.”

“But—”

“You can do nothing there. You only make things twice as difficult, Arcan, because we would all die to protect you. You simply must not put yourself at risk again! I forbid it!”

“And do you think that a transient may order the orthogel entity about?” Arcan grew in stature until he filled the gap between the station floor and ceiling.

Diva straightened her shoulders and lifted her head imperiously. “I do.”

Arcan deflated. “I suppose,” he said, changing colour again, “that you could be right. I would be unable to do very much to help you rid the planet of the Dessites.”

“You would only get in the way.”

“Then what can I do?”

“I am going to get some help, and then I want you to drop us back into the Pictoris system when I do. But not directly in orbit around Pictoria – the Dessites may be waiting for you there.”

“Do you remember the mistake I made when we first transported to the Pictoris system? When I dropped you all into the atmosphere of the gas giant?”

“Hard to forget that, Arcan.”

“I could drop you there, inside the top atmospheric cover, if we had another spaceship. Nobody would expect that.”

“Brilliant! Do you think you could ask the Sellites for another ship while I am sorting things out here on Kwaide?”

Arcan nodded. “I will borrow or buy one. Will you need anything else?”

Diva thought hard. “What we really need is something to temporarily block the non-locality in the area around Pictoria, and a way for you to escape from any traps the Dessites might set for you with that carbon nanographite stuff. Why don’t you put your immense intellect to work on that? If we could somehow do that, then all the rest would just go away.”

“Very well. I will try.” Arcan left a bracelet of orthogel around Diva’s wrist and disappeared. Diva gave a slow, long smile. Things weren’t good yet, but at least they had saved Arcan, which was the main thing. She turned to the hatch, and let herself out into the corridor of the Kwaide Orbital Station. There was a group of people waiting to greet her, first and foremost among them Samoso, who was in charge of the station when Ledin was away.

“
Valhai
Diva,” he gave a slight bow. “Did you know that you have dried blood all down your face?”

“Hi Samoso.” She raised her hands to touch his in the standard binary system greeting. “It’s nothing – just a scratch. Can you do something for me?”

“Of course. Anything.”

“Send somebody to the surface and ask Grace’s mother to come up straight away, will you? Tell her Grace needs her help.”

“I will go myself.”

“N-o-o. Send somebody else. You need to stay here. Ledin is … that is … Ledin may be delayed.”

“Has something happened to him? Where is he?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”

Samoso frowned. “Are there security implications for Kwaide?”

“No. —At least, I don’t think so. Not exactly.” She squirmed. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Perhaps you should tell us what the problem is.”

“I … I don’t think I can do that. I’m sorry. —But can you make sure that the council knows Ledin has not just taken longer holidays?”

Samoso laughed. “Nobody who knows him would think that, but I will make sure everybody knows he is on a mission with you.” He walked quickly to one of the other members of station personnel and gave some rapid instructions. The man listened attentively, nodded once, and left. “There. I have put all that in hand. Now, how else can I help you?”

“I’m not quite sure yet. I need a detox shower first of all. Perhaps we could talk after that?”

Samoso grinned. “Whenever you like. I will hold myself at your disposal.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry I can’t be more explicit.”

“Is
First
Six involved?”

“First—? Oh, yes, he is.”

“Then it is not necessary to explain anything. Whatever you need, we shall give you.”

“Thank you.”

“Can you find your way to the detox showers?”

“Yes. I remember them clearly.”

Samoso laughed again. “You may be surprised. Ledin ordered more efficient showers to be installed. The new ones are individual, and much more thorough than the last ones that the Sellites invented.”

As Diva lathered herself in the shower, and washed the blood off, she was forced to admit that Samoso had been right. These showers were almost luxurious compared to the old ones. She let herself stand under the hot jets for a wonderful few moments, directing the hot stream of water onto the back of her neck and the top of her back. The feeling was wonderful, and she wished things had been different. It would have been nice to stand under the shower for a full hour, but she knew she couldn’t. There were far too many things to do for that.