Rift (63 page)

Below them, a lavender wall enclosed a seemingly endless biome of jumbled colors. It was impossible to judge its height or extent, nor could any feature or building be seen, other than the demarcations created by abrupt changes of color. No orthong milled about in that valley, except, presumably, within the depths of this habitation.

Loon stood beside Reeve, her face wiped clean of any expression. He’d given up trying to communicate with her. A narrow tube had been secured around her waist, and an orthong held the other end of the tether. Responding to the commands of the reins, she accompanied the group passively enough, but with the aura of an animal ready to bolt. He suspected that they had
drugged her in some way, but why, he couldn’t guess. Nor could he protest.

He thought that once they entered the orthong habitat he was unlikely to come out. The lead orthong had made clear that his demand to speak to someone of importance was dangerous. But he’d been in more or less constant danger ever since he set foot on Lithia, and the orthong could not be any worse. If he had wondered at Spar’s harsh life and his keen satisfaction in it, he thought maybe now he understood. Death was on every side. So you just kept going forward, grateful for each of your eight lives. He hoped to die with Spar’s grace, with the grace to say it had all been good.

They climbed down the side of the ravine, a descent over crumbling clay soils and talus slopes scoured of Lithian growth. The breeze brought a sharp new smell that he took for the smell of the orthong forest, sweet and harsh at the same time. As they walked closer to the biome itself, Reeve could see that the purple wall was not uniform, but composed of huge plates that in places appeared to be the remnants of bubbles. In a constant play of light, the wall seemed to change, knitting up here, expanding there. As he watched he became convinced that the thing was altering even as he watched it, becoming more solid, as though to say,
Do not enter
. In fact, they didn’t enter, but stopped some twenty yards from the wall and waited while one of the orthong went into a fissure that Reeve hadn’t noticed before.

He sat with Loon, holding her, feeling the heat of her flushed skin. She was alert, but only to what she saw inside her bright and semiliquid eyes. If he’d hoped for help from Loon in translating, that hope was fast receding. Now that they weren’t moving, his body sagged with weariness. The stray thought came that here was a young Stationer who had once longed for
adventure and who was now surrounded by eight tall aliens and who, even so, might just fall asleep.

Finally a stir among his orthong escort caught his attention as a new fissure appeared in the lavender wall. Out of this rent emerged several orthong, with one leading the way toward Reeve’s group. This individual, wearing the typical long-sleeve coat, had a slight streak of silver flushing its neck and bore the demeanor of a leader.

He—or she—signed to Reeve, but he couldn’t make out the meaning. Turning to Loon, Reeve tried to rouse her so that she could interpret, but although she stood, her attention wavered. His heart sank with the realization that she was not going to help with this. But he gathered his concentration and signed:

the orthong seemed to say.

Reeve responded.

“Tell them,” he heard Loon whisper.

He turned on her. “I
can’t
. Wake up, for the Lord’s sake!” His harsh tone seemed to penetrate for a moment, but then she looked away, vacantly.

He tried his sign again:

The orthong responded, but again, Reeve could not follow the flash of his hands. After a time, one of the other orthong came forward, and instructed him to turn around so that his back was to the group. Gently, they turned Loon to face away as well. His skin crawled as he feared some blow from behind.

They stood thus for a very long time. An hour or more passed. Behind him he could occasionally hear the orthong moving around in some way. At last an orthong came to his side and bade him turn around.

When he did so, the woman called Nerys stood before him.

His shock could not have been more pronounced. Her hair was chopped short, and though she looked healthy, her eyes were haggard and her expression was as grim as those of the orthong creatures around her.

When she looked at Reeve, her face registered her own amazement, followed quickly by a narrowing of her eyes. “You,” she said.

He realized with dismay that this woman had been brought as a translator—perhaps his final piece of ill fortune.

Her glance quickly took in Loon. “I hear you’ve come for a favor of us.” Her tone conveyed the likelihood of a favor being granted. And her reference to
us
—she and the orthong—was not lost on Reeve.

“Nerys. I bring a pice of news that’s bad for all of us. Can you communicate with them?”

Her smile was awful. “It’s hard to believe you bring bad news, Reeve Calder.”

Stepping carefully, he said, “I’ve lived with your curse long enough, Nerys. You know that Dante killed your daughter, not me.”

“But you helped, didn’t you?”

“If I’d chosen her, it wouldn’t have helped! She would have died quickly in the wilderness on her own.”

“She died quickly anyway, didn’t she? She died in an instant!” In the next moment she stepped forward and hit him on the side of his face, a strong blow. He took that blow, though he could have blocked it.

“You chose,” she said hoarsely.

“By the Lord of Worlds, Nerys! They forced me to choose. Try to forgive me.”

At her fierce stare, he braced for another blow, but instead, her face sagged. She took a very deep breath and looked past Reeve, past his shoulders to the wall of the valley.

They stood silently a very long while as the orthong looked on with an eerie patience. Finally she said, “If
you’ve come to tell the orthong about the spaceship, they already know that piece of bad news.”

“No,” he said. “It’s a lot worse than that.”

Nerys looked up as the orthong chief signed to her. Looking back to Reeve, she said, “This orthong lord is called Hamirinan. Don’t get crosswise with him. Now tell me your news. A summary, quickly.”

Reeve told his tale. He told of the ship that might stay, and the faction of humans that wanted to be sure they didn’t. He told of Loon, and how she was altered, and how she lived and thrived, although the orthong had drugged her into stupidity. He described the trade that he proposed: human lives for orthong.

Nerys stared at him all through his tale, murmuring once, “Everything is changing, as he said.” She looked back at the orthong called Hamirinan, whose expression was a curdled maze of white. The creatures almost had faces; a ripple of skin could be mistaken for a human emotion registering there—could be
mistaken
, Reeve reminded himself.

When he had finished, she said, “If you’re lying, we’ll all be punished. You’ll die, and many more. Is that what you want?”

“What I want is the same as you. To live. This is a chance for us all to live.”

She watched him, fiercely. Then, she turned to Hamirinan and moved before him, in what looked like a slow, measured dance. He realized she was speaking to Hamirinan, but it was not like any sign he had ever seen.

The dance was short. Nerys glanced back at Reeve, saying, “I told him that for a matter of such importance, this breeder woman craved the instruction of Lord Salidifor.”

“Lord who?”

“The one who taught me to speak, and much else.”

Hamirinan was advancing on Nerys. She stepped backward as though she expected a blow. As the great
creature towered over her, she did an astonishing thing: She started to remove her clothes. Her jacket dropped to the ground. She began unbuttoning her shirt.

Hamirinan signed, and she obeyed.

With fewer clothes on, Nerys looked as though she might be pregnant. The whole scene was bizarre in the extreme. But Reeve knew enough to remain silent just now.

Hamirinan and Nerys faced off. She said,

It seemed to Reeve that she was afraid of this Hamirinan, that she spoke with elaborate deference. Perhaps, he reflected, it was required by the orthong, as the conquerors. Hamirinan watched her closely, then gestured to one of his attendants, who dashed off and disappeared into a narrow gap in the front wall of the habitat.

“What’s going on, Nerys?”

She ignored this question. “If you’re lying, I’ll kill you with my own hands.”

He held her eyes with his own. “I’m not lying. I wish to the Lord above I was.”

She nodded. “Then perhaps you bring Salidifor’s redemption.”

His expression begged her for explanation, but she merely smiled. “Only tell the truth. I’ll interpret. We’ll then be bound together by your words. Don’t dishonor me here. I have enough of that already.”

“I swear, Nerys.”

She snorted. “Why do I listen to you?” She turned her back to him and stood impassively, like the orthong. After a moment he heard her whisper to him, “No matter what happens, avoid looking at an orthong directly. Never touch one. And do exactly as I say.”

After a long wait, a crack appeared in the lavender wall and an orthong emerged from the habitat to join them.

“This is my Lord Salidifor,” she said in a low voice. “You will obey him in everything, you understand?”

Nerys approached the orthong and engaged him in a flurry of hand sign. Suddenly the creature strode over to Loon. In alarm, Reeve moved to her side.

“Stay away, Calder,” Nerys warned.

He stopped in mid-stride, and watched as Salidifor reached out to touch Loon on the neck. The creature’s great paw remained there for some time. When he withdrew his hand, Reeve didn’t know whether he had satisfied himself of Loon’s validity or not; but he suspected that Loon’s chemistry spoke in some way to the orthong.

Salidifor then approached Reeve, signing, Reeve gave up trying to follow him.

Nerys said, “Your people are destroyers of worlds?”

Reeve answered Salidifor: “To my shame, my people will destroy this one.”

Nerys interpreted Salidifor’s hand sign: “Why would our chief listen to such creatures?”

Reeve spoke, taking care not to look Salidifor in the eyes. “You only have to stop them. That’s not much risk. If you succeed, you’ll live.”

“And if,” Nerys said, watching Salidifor’s sign language, “if we succeed, you will ask a very magnificent favor. To surround us with many generations of shame-filled humans.”

“Do not make the mistake of thinking all humans alike,” Reeve said.

The side of Nerys’ mouth moved into a half smile, and she interpreted this to Salidifor, her eyes pointedly downcast. It was odd to see this bold woman taking on an attitude of slavish deference; but he suspected the woman had been well broken to their service.

Salidifor gazed at Reeve for a very long while, as though he might discern truth just by standing still and watching. Turning to the other leader, Salidifor exchanged a brief flurry of sign, after which the one
called Hamirinan gathered his escort around him and strode away.

Nerys’ eyes shone with a great intensity. “Yes,” she whispered, and “Let’s see if Tulonerat falls asleep
this
time.”

Reeve moved to put his arm around Loon. He had no idea what was going on, except that he was on his way, it would appear, to unburden himself of the message he had traveled so far to deliver. “It must be soon, Nerys. We have to hurry,” he said.

She turned an incredulous look on him. “The only time I ever saw an orthong move fast was to kill something. I suggest you cultivate patience.” She turned back to Salidifor, but the great orthong remained silent, treating her, Reeve thought, with not much more respect than the other leader had done.

“We should go
now
, Nerys, if our efforts are going to count.”

Without looking at him she said, “They won’t let you into the outfold. The females won’t allow it. I don’t think they have much tolerance for the enemy being inside, infecting their forest.”

Beside Reeve, Loon stirred, but her eyes were still vacant.

“Why have they drugged her?” Reeve asked Nerys.

Nerys shrugged. “She’s sick. She mustn’t eat anything for a while.”

They stood thus in the brilliant sun, watching the lavender wall for whatever would come next. Some eight of the orthong escort still remained, and they stood perfectly immobile, as though their lives had been devoted to silent waiting.

When it began it was almost unnoticeable. A shimmering of the wall, which might have been a play of light. Then it became pronounced, as a puckering of a ten-foot-wide section slowly lifted the front face of the outfold, as Nerys called it. The wall over the last hour had been solidifying, with each declivity and crack
slowly filling in as though the entire front had been heating up and melting into one unit. Now, a pattern was emerging. The rumpled edges formed a cowl, in the center of which a hole appeared. The cowl crept forward—rapidly, by orthong standards—producing a tunnel with twists and folds. From it wafted a breeze filled with a piquant smell. After the tube had extended to a distance of about twenty feet the forward edge began darkening to blue and then black. It was done growing.

Something appeared in the depths of this great tentacle, a human figure. No, an orthong. The creature, slightly smaller than any Reeve had seen before, moved into sight at the end of the tube, surrounded by many other orthong, creatures draped in black sleeveless garments, solemnly gazing out at Loon, it seemed. Their numbers stretched to the limits of his sight.

“Tulonerat,” Nerys said softly.

Salidifor appeared to have understood her, for he signed something briefly, and Nerys whispered to herself, “No. It’s Divoranon.”

“I know that name.…” Reeve searched his memory.

Nerys nodded. “She was once called Divor, before her adulthood came to her. Didn’t you say that Loon’s parents saved one called Divor?”

“Yes.”

Nerys nodded. “Well then. Divoranon is important now.” She watched the tube with its pale assembly of watchers. “When my lord commands you, tell your story, Reeve.”