Summertide

CHAPTER 8 Summertide minus twenty-six

The moment of death. A whole life flashing before your eyes.

Darya Lang heard the side-wind hit just as the wheels of the aircar touched down for the second time. She saw the right wing strike — felt the machine leave the runway — knew that the car was flipping onto its back. There was a scream of overstressed roof panels.

Suddenly dark earth was whizzing past, a foot above her head. Soggy mud sprayed and choked her. The light vanished, leaving her in total darkness.

As the harness cut savagely into her chest, her mind cleared with the pain. She felt cheated.

That was her whole life, supposedly rushing past her? If so, it has been a miserably poor one. All that she could think of was the Sentinel. How she would never understand it, never penetrate its ancient mystery, never learn what had happened to the Builders. All those light years of travel, to be squashed like a bug in the dirt of a lousy minor planet!

Like a bug. The thought of bugs made her feel vaguely guilty.

Why?

She remembered then, hanging upside down in her harness. Thinking was hard, but she had to do it. She was alive. That liquid dripping down her nose and into her eyes stung terribly, but it was too cold to be blood. But what about the other two, Atvar H’sial and J’merlia, in the passenger seats? Not bugs, she thought; in fact, less like insects than she was. Rational beings. Shame on you, Darya Lang!

Had she killed them, though, with her lousy piloting?

Darya craned her head around and tried to look behind her. There was something wrong with her neck. A shock of pure heat burned its way into her throat and her left shoulder even before she turned. She could see nothing.

“J’merlia?” No good calling for Atvar H’sial. Even if the Cecropian could hear, she could not reply. “J’merlia?”

No answer. But those were human voices outside the ship. Calling to her? No, to each other — hard to hear above the whistling wind.

“Can’t do it that way.” A man’s voice. “The top’s cracked open. If that strut goes, the weight will smash their skulls in.”

“They’re goners anyway.” A woman. “Look at the way they hit. They’re crushed flat. Want to wait for hoists?”

“No. I heard someone. Hold the light. I’m going inside.”

The light! Darya felt a new panic. The darkness before her was total, blacker than any midnight, black as the pyramid in the heart of the Sentinel. At that time of year Opal had continuous daylight, from Mandel or its companion, Amaranth. Why could she not see?

She tried and failed to blink her eyes: reached up her right hand to rub at them. Her left hand had vanished — there was no sensation from it, no response but shoulder pain when she tried to move it.

Rubbing just made her eyes sting worse. Still she could see nothing.

“God, what a mess.” The man again. There was the faintest glimmer in front of her, like torchlight seen through closed eyes. “Allie, there’s three of ’em in here — I think. Two of ’em are aliens, all wrapped round each other. There’s bugjuice everywhere. I don’t know what’s what, and I daren’t touch ’em. Send a distress call; see if you can find anybody near the port who knows some alien anatomy.”

There was a faint and unintelligible reply.

“Hell, I don’t know.” The voice was closer. “Nothing’s moving — they could all be dead. I can’t wait. They’re covered in black oil, all over. One good flame in here, they’ll be crisps.”

Distant chatter, diffuse: more than one person.

“Doesn’t matter.” The voice was right next to her. “Have to pull ’em out. Somebody get in here to help.”

The hands that took hold of Darya did not mean to be rough. But when they grabbed her shoulder and neck multiple galaxies of pain pinwheeled across the blackness in her eye sockets. She gave a scream, a full-throated howl that came out like a kitten’s miaow.

“Great!” The grip on her shifted and strengthened. “This one’s alive. Coming through. Catch hold.”

Darya was dragged on her face across a muddy tangle of roots and broken stalks of fern. A clod of slimy and evil-tasting moss crammed into her open mouth. She gagged painfully. As a protruding root dug deep into her broken collarbone it suddenly occurred to her: She did not need to stay awake for such indignity!

Darkness enveloped her. It was time to stop fighting; time to rest; time to escape into that soothing blackness.

It had taken Darya a day to learn, but at last she was sure: dialog between human and Cecropian was impossible without the aid of J’merlia or another Lo’tfian intermediary; but communication was feasible. And it could carry a good deal of meaning.

A Cecropian’s rigid exoskeleton made facial expression impossible in any human sense. However, body language was employed by both species. They merely had to discover each other’s movement codes.

For instance, when Atvar H’sial was confident that she knew the answer that Darya would give to a question, she would lean away a little. Often she also lifted one or both front legs. When she did not know the answer and was anxious to hear it, the delicate proboscis pleated and shortened — just a bit. And when she was truly excited — or worried; it was difficult to know the difference — by a comment or a question, the hairs and bristles on her long fanlike antennas would stand up straighter and a fraction bushier.

As they had done, strikingly, when Julius Graves had come on the scene.

Darya knew about the Council — everyone did — but she had been too preoccupied with her own interests to take much notice of it. And she was still vague about its functions, though she knew it involved ethical questions.

“But everyone is supposed to be vague, Professor Lang,” Graves had said. He gave her a smile which his enlarged, skeletal head turned into something positively menacing. It was not clear how long ago he had landed at Starside Port, but he had certainly chosen to pay her a visit at an inconvenient time. She and Atvar H’sial had held their preliminary discussions and were all set to get down to the nitty-gritty: who would do what, and why, and when?

“Everyone is vague, that is,” Graves went on, “except those whose actions make the Council necessary.”

Darya’s face was betraying her again, she was sure of it. What she was about to do with the Cecropian ought to be no business of the Council; there was nothing unethical about short-circuiting a bureaucracy in a good scientific cause, even if that cause had not been fully revealed to anyone on Opal. What else did Council members do?

But Graves was staring at her with those mad and misty blue eyes, and she was sure he must be reading guilt in hers.

If he were not, he surely could detect it in Atvar H’sial! The antennas stood out like long brushes, and even J’merlia was almost gibbering in his eagerness to get out the words.

“Later, esteemed Councilor, we will be most delighted to meet with you later. But at the moment, we have an urgent prior appointment.” Atvar H’sial went so far as to take Darya Lang’s hand in one jointed paw. As the Cecropian pulled her toward the door — to the outside, where it was pelting with rain! — Darya noticed for the first time that the paw’s lower pad was covered with black hairs, like tiny hooks. Darya could not have pulled away, even if she had been willing to make a scene in front of Julius Graves.

It was another vestigial remnant of a distant flying ancestor of Atvar H’sial, one who had perhaps needed to cling to trees and rocks.

Well, none of us sprang straight from the head of the gods, did we? she reflected. We all have bits and pieces left over by evolution. Darya glanced automatically at her own fingernails. They were filthy. It seemed she was already slipping into the disgusting ways of Opal and Quake.

“Where to?” She spoke in a whisper. Julius Graves would need phenomenal hearing to pick up anything she said over the hissing rain, but she was sure he was staring after them. Wondering, no doubt, where they were going and why, when the weather loomed so foul. She felt a lot better out of his presence.

“We will talk of it in a moment.” J’merlia, receiving the direct benefit of Atvar H’sial’s nervous pheromones, was hopping up and down as though the sodden apron of the aircar facility were blistering hot. The Lo’tfian’s voice quivered with urgency. “Inside the car, Darya Lang. Inside!”

They were both actually reaching out to lift her in!

She pushed the paws away. “Do you want Graves to think something illegal is going on?” she hissed at Atvar H’sial. “Calm down!”

Her reaction even made her feel a little superior. The Cecropians had such a reputation for clear, rational thought. Many — including every Cecropian — said that they were far superior to humans in intellectual powers and performance. And yet here was Atvar H’sial, as jittery as if they were planning a major crime.

The two aliens crowded into the car after her, pushing her forward.

“You do not understand, Darya Lang.” While Atvar H’sial closed the door, J’merlia was urging her toward the pilot’s seat. “This is your first encounter with a member of a major clade council. They cannot be trusted. They are supposed to confine themselves to ethical matters, but they do not! They have no shame. They feel it their right to dabble in everything, no matter how little it concerns them. We could not have discussions with Julius Graves present! He would surely have sensed and sniffed out and interfered with and ruined everything we have planned. We have to get away from him. Quickly.”

Even as J’merlia spoke, Atvar H’sial was waving frantically for Darya to take off — into storm clouds that had piled up ominously over half the sky. Darya pointed, then realized that the Cecropian’s echolocation would “see” nothing at such a distance. Even with those incredible ears, Atval H’sial’s world must be confined to a sphere no more than a hundred meters across.

“There’s bad weather — that way, to the east.”

“Then fly west,” J’merlia said. “Or north, or south. But fly.” The Lo’tfian was crouched on the floor of the aircar, while Atvar H’sial leaned with her head against the side window, her blind face staring off at nothing.

Darya took the car up in a steep climbing turn, fleeing for the lighter clouds far to their left. If once she could get above them, the car could cruise for many hours.

How many? She was not keen to find out. It would be better to keep on ascending, clear the storm completely, and seek a quiet place where she could set them down near the edge of the Sling.

Two hours later she had to abandon that idea. The rough air went on endlessly, and there was no drop in the force of the winds. They had flown to the edge of the Sling and circled far beyond it, seeking another landing spot, and found nothing. Worse than that, the dark mass of major thunderstorms was pursuing them. A solid wall of gray stretched across three quarters of the horizon. Car radio weather reported a “Level Five” storm but did not bother to define it. Mandel had set, and they flew only by the angry light of Amaranth.

She turned to Atvar H’sial. “We can’t stay up here forever, and I don’t want to leave things to the last minute. I’m going to take us higher, right over the top of the storm. Then we’ll stay above it and head back the way we came. The best place to land is the one we started from.”

Atvar H’sial nodded complacently as the message was relayed to her by J’merlia. The storm held no fears for the Cecropian — perhaps because she could not see the black and racing clouds that showed its strength. Her worries were still with Julius Graves.

As they flew Atvar H’sial laid out through J’merlia her complete plan. They would learn the official word on the proposed trips to Quake as soon as Captain Rebka came back. If permission were denied, they would then proceed at once to Quakeside, in an aircar whose rental was already paid. It sat waiting for them, on the small takeoff field of another Sling not far from Starside Port. To reach it, they would rent a local car, one whose travel range was so limited that Rebka and Perry would never dream that they intended to go so far.

Atvar H’sial, with J’merlia as interpreter, could make all those arrangements without difficulty. What she could not do, the one task for which Darya Lang was absolutely essential, was to requisition a capsule on the Umbilical.

She stated her reasons, as Darya listened with half an ear and fought the storm. No Cecropian had ever before visited Opral. The appearance of one on Quakeside, trying to board an Umbilical capsule, would produce immediate questions. Permission would not be given without checking entry permits, and that would lead back to Rebka and Perry.

“But you,” J’merlia said, “you will be accepted at once. We have the correct documents already prepared for you.” The pleated surface of Atvar H’sial’s proboscis tightened a fraction. She was leaning over Darya, forelimbs together in a position that looked like earnest prayer. “You are a human… and you are a female.”

As if that helped. Darya sighed. Full interspecies communication might be impossible. She had told them three times, but the Cecropian could not seem to accept the concept that in humans, the females were not the unquestioned and dominant ruling gender.

Darya set out to gain altitude. This storm was something. They needed to be above and beyond those thundercaps before they started any descent, and despite the stability and strength of the aircar she did not relish the job ahead of her.

“And we know the correct control sequences to employ in ascending the Umbilical,” J’merlia went on. “Once you have cleared us for access to the capsule, nothing will stand between us and the surface of Quake.”

Those words were intended to encourage Darya and soothe any worries. Curiously, they had the opposite effect. She began to wonder. The Cecropian had arrived on Opal after her — and yet she had false documents, already prepared? And she knew all about Umbilical control sequences. Who had given those to her?

“Tell Atvar H’sial that I’ll have to think about all this before I can make a final decision.”

Think, and learn a lot more for herself, before she committed to any joint trip to Quake with Atvar H’sial. The alien seemed to know just about everything on Dobelle.

Except, possibly, about the dangers of Opal’s storms.

They were descending, and the turbulence was frightening. Darya heard and felt giant wind forces on the car. She prayed that its automatic stabilization and approach system could fly better than she could. She was no superpilot.

Atvar H’sial and J’merlia were quite unperturbed. Maybe beings who were descended, however remotely, from flying ancestors had a more sanguine view of air travel.

Darya would never acquire that, for sure. Her guts were knotting. They were through the clouds and dropping in a rainstorm more violent than any she had ever known on Sentinel Gate. With visibility less than a hundred meters and no landmarks, she had to rely on the beacons of Starside’s automatic landing system.

If it worked at all, in such a downpour.

The view through the forward window was useless, nothing but driving rain. They had been descending for a long time — too long. She steadied herself on the console and peered at the instrument panel. Altitude, three hundred meters. Beacon slant range, two kilometers. They must be just seconds away from landing. But where was the field?

Darya looked up from the panel and saw the approach lights for a couple of seconds. They were right in place, dead ahead. She reduced power, drifting them down along the glowing line. The wheels touched briefly. Then a rolling crosswind grabbed the car, lifted it, and carried them up again and off to the side.

Everything moved to slow motion.

The car dipped. She saw one wing catch on rain-slick earth…

…watched it dig a furrow, bend and buckle…

…heard the crack as it broke in two…

…felt the beginning of the aircar’s first cartwheel…

…and knew, beyond doubt, that the best part of the landing was over.

Darya never once lost consciousness. She was so convinced of that fact that after a while her brain came up with an explanation of what was happening. It was simple: Every time she closed her eyes, even for a moment, someone changed the scenery.

First, the agony and indignity of a drag across wet, uneven soil. No scenery there, because her eyes were not working.

(blink)

She was lying face-upward, while someone leaned over her and sponged at her head. “Chin, mouth, nose,” a voice said. “Eyes.” And terrible pain.

“Transmission fluid, looks like.” He was not speaking to her. “It’s all right, not toxic. Can you handle it on the others?”

“Yeah,” another man said. “But the big one has a crack in its shell. It’s dribbling gunk and we can’t suture. What should I do?”

“Tape, maybe?” A dark shape moved away from her. Cold raindrops splashed into her stinging eyes.

(blink)

Green walls, a beige ceiling, and the hissing and purring of pumps. A computer-controlled IV dripped into her left arm, cantilevered up over her body by a metal brace. She felt warm and comfortable and just wonderful.

Neomorph, said a detached voice in her brain. Fed in by the computer whenever the telemetry shows you need it. Powerful. Rapidly addictive. Controlled use on Sentinel Gate. Employ only under controlled conditions with reverse epinephrine triggers.

Nuts, the rest of her said. Feels great. Phemus Circle really know how to use drugs. Hooray for them.

(blink)

“Feeling better?”

A stupid question. She did not feel good at all. Her eyes ached, her ears ached, her teeth ached, her toes ached. Her head buzzed, and there were stabs of pain that started near her left ear and ran all the way to her fingertips. But she knew that voice.

Darya opened her eyes. A man had magically appeared at the bedside.

“I know you.” She sighed. “But I don’t know your first name. You poor man. You don’t even have a first name, do you?”

“Yes, I do. It is Hans.”

“Captain Hans Rebka. That’s all right, then, you do have a name. You’re pretty nice, you know, if you’d just smile a bit more. But you’re supposed to be away on Quake.”

“We got back.”

“I want to go to Quake.”

The damned drug, she thought. It was the drug, it must be, and now she knew why it was illegal. She had to shut up before she said something really damaging.

“Can I go there, nice Hans Rebka? I have to, you see. I really have to.”

He smiled and shook his head.

“See, I knew you’d look a lot better if you smiled. So will you let me go to Quake? What do you say, Hans Rebka?”

She blinked before he could reply. He disappeared.

When she opened her eyes again there was a major addition to the room. Over to her right a lattice of black metal tubes had been erected to form a cubical scaffolding. A harness hung at the center of it, attached by strong cords to the corners. In that harness, pipe-stem torso swathed in white tape, head drooping low, and thin limbs stretched out vertically and to both sides, hung J’merlia.

The contorted position of the wrapped body suggested the agony of a final death spasm. Darya automatically looked around for Atvar Hsial. There was no sign of the Cecropian. Was it possible that the symbiosis between the two was so complete that the Lo’tfian could not survive without the other? Had he died when the two were separated?

“J’merlia?”

She spoke without thinking. Since J’merlia’s words were nothing more than than a translation of Atvar H’sial’s pheromonal speech, it was stupid to expect an independent response.

One lemon eye swiveled in her direction. So at least he knew she was there.

“Can you hear me, J’merlia? You look as though you are in terrible pain. I don’t know why you are in that awful harness. If you can understand me, and you need help, tell me.”

There was a long silence. Hopeless, Darya thought.

“Thank you for your concern,” a dry and familiar voice said finally. “But I am in no pain. This harness was built at my own request, for my comfort. You were not conscious when it was being done.”

Was that really J’merlia speaking? Darya automatically looked around the room again. “Is that you, or Atvar H’sial? Where is Atvar H’sial? Is she alive?”

“She is. But regrettably, her wounds are worse than yours. She required major surgery on her exoskeleton. You have one broken bone and many bruises. You will be fully mobile in three Dobelle days.”

“How about you?”

“I am nothing; my situation is unimportant.”

J’merlia’s self-effacing manner had been acceptable when Darya had thought him no more than a mouthpiece for Cecropian thoughts. But now this was a rational being, with its own thoughts, its own feelings.

“Tell me, J’merlia. I want to know.”

“I lost two joints of one hind limb — nothing important; they will grow back — and I leaked a little at my pedicel. Negligible.”

It had its own feelings — and its own rights?

“J’merlia.” She paused. Was it her business? A member of the Council was here, on this very planet. In fact, running away from him had been the prime cause of their injuries. If anyone should be worrying about the status of the Lo’tfians, it ought to be Julius Graves, not Darya Lang.

“J’merlia.” She found herself talking anyway. How long before the drug was out of her system? “When Atvar H’sial is present you never speak any of your own thoughts. You never say anything at all.”

“That is true.”

“Why not?”

“I have nothing to say. And it would not be appropriate. Even before I reached second shape, when I was no more than postlarval, Atvar H’sial was named my dominatrix. When she is present, I serve only to carry her thoughts to others. I have no other thoughts.”

“But you have intelligence, you have knowledge. It’s wrong. You should have your own rights…” Darya paused.

The Lo’tfian was wriggling in his harness, so that both compound eyes could be turned toward the human.

He bowed his head to her. “Professor Darya Lang, with permission. You and all humans are far above me, above all Lo’tfians. I would not presume to disagree with you. But will you permit me to tell you of our history, and also of the Cecropians? May I?”

She nodded. That was apparently not enough, for he waited until she finally said, “Very well. Tell me.”

“Thank you. I will begin with us, not because we are important, but only for purposes of comparison. Our homeworld is Lo’tfi. It is cold and clear-skied. As you might guess from my appearance, we have excellent vision. We saw the stars every night. For thousands of generations we made use of that information only to tell at what time of the year certain foods should be available. That was all. When it was colder or hotter than usual, many of us would starve to death. We could speak to each other, but we were hardlv more than primitive animals, knowing nothing of the future and little of the past. We would probably have stayed so forever.

“Think now of Atvar H’sial and her people. They developed on a dark and cloud-covered world — and they were blind. Because they by echolocation, sight for them implies the presence of air to carry the signal. So their senses could never receive information of anything beyond their own atmosphere. They deduced the presence of their own sun, only because they felt its weak radiation as a source of warmth. They had to develop a technology that told them of the very existence of light. And they had to build instruments that were sensitive to light and to other electromagnetic radiation, so that they could detect and measure it.

“That was just the beginning. They had to turn those instruments to look at the sky, and deduce the existence of a universe beyond their homevorld and beyond their sun. And finally they had to acknowledge the importance of the stars, measure their distances, and build ships to travel to and explore them.

“They did this — all this — while we Lo’tfians sat around dreaming. We are the older race, but if they had not found our world and raised us to self-awareness and to understanding of the universe, we would be sitting there still, as animals.

“Compared to Cecropians, or to humans, Lo’tfians are nothing. Compared to Atvar H’sial, I am nothing. When her light shines, mine should not be seen. When she speaks, it is my honor to be the instrument that gives her thoughts to you.

“Do you hear me, Professor Darya Lang? It is my honor. Darya Lang?”

She had been listening — and listening hard. But she was beginning to hurt, and the computer-controlled IV was not ready to allow that. The pump had started again, a few seconds before.

She forced her eyes to remain open.

I am nothing! What a racial inferiority complex. But the Lo’tfians should not be allowed to be a slave race even if they wanted it. As soon as she could get to him, she would go and report it.

To him.

To whom?

Mad and misty blue eyes, but she could not recall his name. Was she afraid of him? Surely not.

She would report this to—

(blink).