The Singers of Time

7

Sork Quintero didn't follow Sue-ling into her office to try to check on the well-being of Captain Krake's crew. He had something more important to do.

Sork wasn't good at making plans, and he knew it. Planning anything complicated always involved so many factors that Sork was sure to leave something out, forget some detail. It took the full concentration of all of Sork's quite high intelligence to perceive a goal and devise a way to get to it—and then it took endless, repetitive going over and over every possible relevant fact before he could be sure he hadn't overlooked something.

His brother Kiri, of course, could see a whole tree of relevances in a single glance and unerringly identify every bond. If Kiri hadn't been his brother, Sork Quintero would surely have resented him intensely.

On the other hand, what Kiri could not do was act. In that quality Sork was superb. Once he had a plan complete he could not be swerved from it.

The plan that was forming in Sork's mind was certain to be —he thought it was certain to be—both sensible and complete. But to make sure, he stalked impatiently back and forth in front of the hospital, rehearsing his arguments; and when Krake came out, followed by Sue-ling Quong, Sork aggressively positioned himself in their way.

"You're Krake," he said, making sure. "You're going to your ship."

The space captain looked at him curiously before agreeing. "Yes, that's where I'm going," he said, "as soon as I make arrangements for Moon and her Taur—if that doesn't take too long. IVe got to see how my crew is coming along. The Turtles up in the orbit station aren't saying much!"

Sork wasn't listening. Impatiently he put his hand on Krake's chest; the space captain looked surprised, but didn't resist. Sork gestured at the desolate scene around them.

"You must help us. Look at those things!" Sork cried, waving an arm toward the abandoned cars of scrap. "Isn't it appalling? IVe watched them go for years—all sorts of things that belong to humanity—gantries from the abandoned space launching sites, giant magnets from supercolliders, all sorts of old research equipment, and it's all disappearing into space. The Turdes have stolen our science!"

Sue-ling was frowning at him. "Please, Sork. The captain has other things on his mind. That stuff is all out of date anyway. Nobody bothers with those things anymore, because Turtle technology is better."

"Turtle science belongs to the Turtles!" he snapped at her, and back immediately to the waveship captain. "Krake, please! YouVe got to help us!"

The space captain was doing his best to be patient with this intense young man. He was not succeeding. "That's all very well, Mr. Quintero, but there isn't anything I can do about Earth science, is there? What do I know about it? The last time I was on Earth nobody even thought of going into space, and I never heard of these—what do you call them— supercolliders and all that. It's my crew I've got to care for."

Sork would not be diverted. He said firmly, "Listen. If the Turtles are all going to die off, then we must learn how to travel in interstellar space ourselves. That's where your duty is."

Krake gave him a hostile stare. "My duty?"

Sork sighed and spelled it out logically for this obstinate man. "It is your duty, because you're the only human being who knows how to fly a turtle waveship! Human science was picking up a lot of momentum before the Turtles came, even if you didn't see it yourself, with rockets and computers and—"

Krake stopped him, puzzled. "Computers?"

"Machines that solved problems. Machines that helped people think. Only once the Turtles showed up with the memo disks, nobody needed computers any more. So now all those things are lost. We're going to have to learn to use Turtle technology to get our birthright back, and that's where you come in. Take us along to space!"

He stopped there. He had put forward the case with total logic; now it was up to Francis Krake to respond.

But the waveship captain wasn't responding. Krake looked around at the others, as though seeking their help in dealing with this persistent man.

Sue-ling Quong broke the silence. "I think," she said hesitantly, "that Sork's right in a way, Captain Krake. You are a pretty special resource for the human race right now."

Krake was aghast. "But Dr. Quong! What are you getting at? You don't want me to take you along into space, do you?"

"I do!" cried Sork, answering for her. "We all do!"

Krake looked at him as at a child who had asked to be handed the Moon. "You're as bad as Moon Bunderan. You simply don't understand what you're asking. Once you take off in a wave-drive ship at relativistic speeds you're committed. It's a one-way trip in time. You'll be leaving everything!"

"Yes, of course," Sork said impadendy. "For a period we will, until we return to help humanity to be reborn."

"For a long period of time! It may be centuries. Why do you think I never came back to Earth before this? Because as soon as I had been in space a few weeks, while the Turtles were still interrogating me and the others, I discovered that everybody I had known on Earth was old or dead. Decades had passed. My crew and I were forgotten."

"But you see, Krake," Sork said flatly, "we don't have anyone to leave behind."

"There's Kiri," Sue-ling put in. Sork blinked at her.

"Oh," he said, "I'm sure Kiri will come with us. He always does."

And of course Kiri agreed at once, comfortable with doing whatever his brother chose for them to do, content to explore a new facet of the always fascinating whole that was life. The real surprise was that the young woman from New Mexico insisted on joining them. She was immovable on the subject. "You must take us! I can't stay here, Captain Krake—I'm afraid of that Turde they call Lidun. What if he finds some way of taking Thrayl away from me?"

"He can't do that," Krake said, trying to reassure her—and trying, for one more time, to prevent her from making a terrible, irrevocable mistake . . . though inside him there was a part of his heart that leaped with pleasure at the thought of having flesh-and-blood human companions again. Especially a young female one who looked more and more like the long-dead Madeleine. Then he added, thinking it over, "Well, I don't think he can take your Taur away from you, anyway—"

"But you never know, with Turtles, do you?" She pressed his arm persuasively. "You say we'll just be gone a few weeks, but fifty or a hundred years will have passed? By then maybe there won't be any more Turtles."

"Not many, at least. They won't be running things anymore, there won't be enough of them."

"Then there won't be all those memmies, doing better than ordinary people can?" She turned to gaze up at the kind, broad face of her Taur. "Then maybe we won't have to follow their orders about Taurs anymore, will we?"

Krake studied them, the tiny girl and the great horned beast. Prudence fought longing in his mind. Prudence lost. "If you're all sure this is what you want, then—" surrendering —"all right."

Moon searched his face. "Are you sure?"

Krake, who was not at all sure—who had been surprised to hear his own mouth form the words "all right"—grimaced. "Let's just do it before I change my mind," he said sourly. "We'll need extra food, more supplies—well, we can arrange all that at the orbit station. We'll take a car up the space ladder."

"Right away," Moon Bunderan said firmly.

"Well, why not?" said Krake, smiling at last. "Get your things, whatever you want to take with you, and we'll be on our way."

"All I need to take is Thrayl," Moon said, patting the Taur's broad back. The Taur turned and mooed at her, his great horns glowing bright. A cloud crossed her face as she listened.

"What did he just say?" Sork demanded.

She said slowly, "I don't entirely understand. He was listening to his song, and sometimes when he tells me what the singing was about I don't know what he means. He seems to think that we're doing the right thing, that it's important we go with you. But there's something else, too. I think—" She hesitated, then finished. "I think he said that because of what we do everything will change, in ways we cannot now understand."

The funny thing, Sork thought, was that in the turmoil around the loading area he was almost sure he had seen the Turtle, Litlun, scurrying into an earlier car. Why would the Turtle be heading up to the orbiter? But, Sork told himself perhaps he was wrong; it had been only a fleeting glimpse, and when he thought of mentioning it to the others he decided against. It would only worry Moon Bunderan, to no purpose.

And he had so much on his mind already! He was actually tingling with excitement—literally, tingling—it was almost as though an electric shock were teasing his body, raising the short hairs on his arms. It was the same feeling he had felt just before he took that first, needed drink—back in the days when he needed drinks to survive, before Sue-ling Quong showed up and gave a new purpose to his life. He didn't want a drink now. What he wanted most he was actually about to have\

Sork could hardly sit still in the space ladder lift car as it slid up the cables toward the orbit station. They had been lucky to get space in a car, with so many Turtles going up to orbit with all sorts of strange possessions. The car reeked of the little knot of Turtles that shared it with them, clustered in their own corner. It was an odor that tickled the nostrils, almost stinging, like menthol but tinctured with something repellent, like an opened grave.

Sork craned his neck to see out the window of the elevator car. Disappointingly, there was little but clouds to see. The orbit station itself hung high above, tethered by its three lift cables to Kuala Lumpur, the west coast of Africa and Kansas City. Its central location put it sixty thousand kilometers over equatorial Brazil. Of course there was no hope of seeing it from the lift car yet, and there was nothing to see below but the curve of the Brazilian bulge into the broad Atlantic Ocean. Even that was almost obscured by the clouds.

Sork Quintero sank back into his uncomfortable perch. The lift cars had been designed for Turtles, not human beings; Turtles who were half again as tall as humans, and whose leathery carapaces did not bend in the same way as human bodies. And the thrusting of the car as it pulled itself up its long hundred-thousand-kilometer lift didn't help. At first it had been like being perched on the edge of a tall, uncomfortable desk, with someone twice as heavy as himself riding his shoulders, for the acceleration of the car, too, was set to Turtle standards, not human. But then it had slowed somewhat— or the thrust of acceleration had been eased, Sork did not know which—and now they could at least move about.

He patted the pouch at his side. There had been no time to pack. There also had been little in the way of possessions for any of them worth the trouble of packing. He had insisted on taking all Sue-ling's old university lecture chips—as much out of spite, to keep them from Lidun, as for any use he could see for them.

Next to him the young woman from New Mexico was scribbling on a notepad. Peering over her shoulder, Sork could see that it was a long letter to her parents, to be mailed, no doubt, from the orbiter. The girl was weeping silently as she wrote, and her Taur had rested a hard, warm hand on her shoulders protectively.

Sork looked the creature over with distaste. It was impossible to read expression on that broad, branded face, but the Taur was moaning softly, musically, to himself, his eyes fixed on vacancy. Sork hoped it wasn't going to be airsick. It was a mistake to bring that animal along, Sork was sure; but the girl had been so insistent—

On a compassionate impulse he reached down and touched her arm.

The Taur's eyes came into quick focus, and the great horned head turned warningly toward Sork. Sork hurried his words, as Moon Bunderan looked up inquiringly, "I thought you'd like to see where we're going. We'll be coming in sight of the orbiting station soon, and you've never seen it, have you?" Nor had he himself, of course, except in pictures.

"Thank you, Mr. Quintero," the girl said with polite interest. She put down her pen, dabbed at her eyes and said brightly, "It's a wonderful thing, isn't it? The space ladder, I mean. The Turtles certainly gave us some wonderful inventions."

"But it isn't!" Sork cried. "I mean the skyhook isn't a Turtle invention—or not just theirs, anyway. Human beings had thought of the space ladder long ago, way before the Turtles came."

"Oh, really?" She pondered that. "Well, then, if it's so useful, why didn't we build one ourselves?"

Sork flushed. "It was just too big an engineering project for our resources—then. Oh, we certainly would have done it, sooner or later. But the Turtles had a big advantage."

"They're more advanced scientifically, yes," the girl nodded.

"No, that's not what I mean. It's true enough, but it's not the most important reason. I admit the space ladder has to use some very high-tech materials, cables with a tensile strength that's pretty remarkable, but our scientists would have developed something that would do. No, what made it hard for us to build a ladder like this was the cost."

The girl looked disbelieving. "You mean there wasn't enough money?"

"Not just the money cost, though that would have been spectacular. The important thing was the cost to the environment. Every gram of material in the ladder—cables, cars, orbital station, machinery, everything—and that comes to billions of tons!—every last gram would have had to be mined and manufactured on the surface of the Earth. Then it would have had to be launched from the surface to orbit. It wasn't the building of the ladder that was too hard. It was getting all that stuff into orbit—in the cargo bays of rocket ships! With ten times the mass of fuel having to be lifted for every gram of cargo, and all those terrible rocket exhausts messing up the stratosphere. But the Turtles, you see, had the big advantage that they started in space. They didn't have to fight the gravity well to assemble the orbiter. They built it out of asteroid iron and cometary-nucleus materials, and all those things were already in orbit. The Turtles manufactured the whole skyhook, cables, cars and all, right in space!"

"Oh," the girl said, nodding. "I see." Then, that subject finished, good manners directed that she find another. She gestured around at the three Turtles who were sharing their car. All of them were busily strapping themselves in. "What's happening?"

"We're getting close," Sork told her. "We'd better buckle in, too."

And then, as they fumbled with the straps, "There it is!" his brother shouted, his face pressed against the crystal.

All of them leaned as far forward as they could. The station itself was now in sight, seen from below and rapidly approaching. It was well worth looking at. The orbital station was not a single object. It was several score capsules linked together with cables and passages—like beads on a string, but jumbled together as though the necklace had been squeezed into a tightly interlocking ball.

Sork took it upon himself to be tour guide for the young girl from New Mexico, loosening his safety straps to see better. "Some of those things are the living quarters for the station Turtles and the working parts of the station," he informed her. "They don't have wave-drives. They don't have propulsive capacity at all, not even reaction drives. They don't go anywhere, just stay there as a base. But the other things you see—the things that, some of them, look kind of like peanuts? Those are real ships. The little round ones are the orbital shuttles and workships; they're rocket driven and they don't go very far. But the big ones shaped like peanuts—do you see the ones I'm pointing at? Those are interstellar wave-drive ships."

"I see," Moon said. Then, pointing, "What about that one over there? It's got some kind of design on it, do you see? The red and white stripes, the blue with the white stars?"

"I can't see," Sork complained—and then the car seemed to lurch as abruptly it decelerated. Sork clutched for the webbing and almost missed it. It was the space captain, Francis Krake, who reached out with one strong arm and kept him from flying into the cluster of disapproving Turtles, glaring and murmuring at them.

"Thanks," Sork muttered, hastily lashing himself in.

"That's all right," Krake said. "You were asking about the insignia?"

Sork looked up at him. "What insignia?"

"On the ship you were looking at. The red, white and blue? That's my ship, the Golden Hind. That thing painted on the side—I had it put there. It's an American flag."

Of them all, only Krake had been off Earth before. Getting out of the lift car every one of them found himself stumbling and swaying. "Microgravity," Krake warned, grinning. "You'll get used to it—but make sure you're holding on to something every chance you get until you do, all right? Now, let's see if we can find Chief Thunderbird and get my crew back." He started to turn away, then paused, looking at Sork. "Are you all right?" he demanded impatiently.

Sork licked his lips. He felt so odd\ As though he were floating—but not floating serenely like a cloud in a summer sky, but uneasily slipping, sliding—Sork had never been at sea, but he recognized the term "seasickness." "I—think so," he said hoarsely, and then corrected himself. "Well, not very," he admitted.

His brother was no better off than he, and Moon Bunderan was holding tight to the arm of her Taur, her face mirroring interior problems of her own. Sue-ling looked at the brothers with worry. "It's not serious, you know," she told them. "It's just what's called vestibular disorientation. Try not to move your heads any more than you have to; moving around shakes up the little ear canals." But Sork saw that she was showing signs of strain herself.

"Oh, hell," Krake said, exasperated. "Come on, let's go to the surgery. You'll feel better if you keep doing something. Anyway this won't last too long ... I hope," he finished, in a lower voice.

Sork swallowed and tried to obey orders. Moving about in microgravity was a whole unlearned skill for him, but he saw how Krake pulled himself along by railings, hardly bothering to walk at all. Hazily, Sork was aware of his surroundings. He noticed, in a dim way, the unnatural stillness of the orbit station: There were great lashed-down mounds of supplies, redfruit seed and machinery and all the myriad commodities the Turtles traded to Earth. But they were not being transferred to the down cars that would take them to the surface of the human planet. They were simply sitting there, and the few Turtles in sight seemed dazed, or obsessed—some wandering at random, some hurrying recklessly about. The shock that had disabled the Turtles on the surface of the Earth had clearly reached here too.

There were no other human beings in sight, but Sork hadn't expected any. Everyone knew that the whole orbit station was Turtle territory.

Sork did his best to follow the instructions of the expert. They helped a little. By holding his head as rigid as possible, and especially by fixing his eyes on things as far distant as possible, he managed to still most of the uneasiness in his belly. He felt Krake's encouraging hand on his shoulder. "Almost there," the waveship captain said, and Sork nodded gratefully.

Then Krake stopped short.

Sork saw that a Turtle half again as tall as Litlun, twice as tall as any human, stood commandingly in their way. His shell was ruby red, his beak black and hooked as he challenged them.

"That's Chief Thunderbird—the 'Proctor,' they call him," Krake whispered. "He's in charge of the port. Let me do the talking."

As they approached, the Turtle gave all of them a withering glance from each eye. He addressed the space captain. "You," he stated, engaging his transposer to make his words intelligible, "are the one who is permitted to captain one of our ships. Who are these other creatures?"

"My new crew," Krake said without hesitation. "I've added a few for—for special purposes. They are Kiri and Sork Quintero, Sue-ling Quong, Moon Bunderan. I will require additional supplies for them. At least twice the usual quantities."

The huge Turtle's roving eyes scanned them all again before he spoke. Both locked on Thrayl, gazing mildly at the Turtle. "One has heard of this Taur," Chief Thunderbird said. "It is an adult male, but neither castrated nor dehorned."

"Thrayl isn't dangerous!" Moon Bunderan said quickly. "I promise he won't do any harm."

The eyes swiveled briefly toward her, then focused on Sork and Kiri. "Quintero and Quintero," the Turtle said musingly. "One has heard of these humans as well." Then the eyes returned to Francis Krake, and the Turtle said, "It is permitted. Additional supplies are appropriate and will be installed. It will be done at once."

"Fine," Krake said. "Now, what about my crew? Are they ready to travel?"

One of the huge Turtle's eyes remained on Krake, the other seemed to wander at random. Once again the Proctor took his rime about replying. "They are," he said at last.

Krake said suspiciously, "What are you hiding? Is something wrong I haven't been told?"

The Turtle shrugged the massive carapace indifferendy. "Nothing is Svrong.' It is simply that certain events have caused unanticipated changes in large-scale planning," he squawked. "Your crew has been summoned. As soon as they arrive here you may proceed to your ship, for it is necessary to leave soon."

Krake glared at him, puzzled. "What do you know about when it's time for my ship to leave?"

The Turde did not answer, but simply turned and stalked off. Krake scowled after him, until Sork Quintero, who had been glancing from one to the other, touched his arm. "Is he always like that?" he asked.

Krake shrugged irritably. "I don't know him that well. I never even saw him until I came in a few days ago, with Marco and Daisy Fay needing attention, and I certainly don't see that he has anything to do with when my ship leaves."

"What about your crew?" asked Sue-ling.

"I wish I knew! I guess the only thing we can do is wait here at the Proctor's office until they show up," said Krake, tugging angrily at his beard. He was obviously very displeased.

Sork Quintero said, "If you want my opinion, Krake, you're handling this all wrong. Why do you let that Turde push you around?"

Krake turned the scowl on Sork. "And what is it that you think I should do?"

"Why—just go to wherever your people are and pick them up-"

"Where's that? Where's the place where my crew is?"

"How should I know that?" Sork said, sounding indignant. "You're the one who's supposed to know his way around this place."

"Thank you. I wish it was true. IVe been here exactly once before in my life, and only for a couple of hours then," Krake pointed out.

"So we're just going to stand here, doing nothing?" Sork blustered. "God, Krake! If that's the way you run your ship, maybe we're better off with the Turdes after all!"

"Sork, Sork," said his brother, distressed. "Captain Krake, too—let's not argue like this."

"Kiri's right," Sue-ling seconded. "Sork, don't get so belligerent, please. Remember, we're all going to be together in a small ship for a long time, so we'd better work at getting along."

Sork stared at his twin and his love, the picture of offended innocence. "What did I do?" he demanded. "I was only saying that it's stupid to be just standing here. If that hurt your feelings, I'm sorry."

Then Kiri put his hand on Sork's shoulder to quiet him. Kiri was studying the space captain's face. "Francis," he said, his voice gentle, "is there something wrong that you haven't told us?"

Krake flushed. He tugged at the beard for a moment, then said, "I guess there is something I should have mentioned. Well, not anything wrong, but anyway there's something different—about Marco and Daisy Fay, I mean. My crew."

"What about them?" Sork demanded suspiciously.

Krake ran his fingers through his cinnamon-colored beard. "They're a little unusual," he said.

"Unusual how? Do we have to drag it out of you? If youVe got something to say, then say it!"

Krake held up a mollifying hand. "All right, youVe made your point. It's just that, you see, when we were—rescued—or kidnapped, whichever way you want to look at it—both Daisy Fay and Marco were in really bad shape. They'd been in a plane crash, and then, to make it worse, they were trapped in an avalanche. They had it all—frostbites, broken limbs, terrible internal injuries—it was a miracle the Turtles were able to keep them alive at all."

Sue-ling said sympathetically, "We know what great surgeons the Turtles are—they're where I get the memo disks I use myself."

Krake nodded. "Exactly. Or, I mean, that's not exactly what I was going to say. Remember, when the Turtles worked on us they'd never dealt with human beings before, so they had to—well—sort of figure tilings out as they went along. And-"

That was as far as he got. There was a lowing sound from the Taur, whose horns had begun to glow in prismatic colors, and Moon Bunderan said softly, "Oh, my dear Lord! What are those?"

Around a bend in the hall came two figures. Sork gasped as he saw them, and even Kiri caught his breath.

They did not look at all human. They were two hard-shelled, egg-shaped bodies, one glinting of copper, the other the black of Japanese lacquer. Each had eight boneless, prehensile limbs protruding from the globular body, all of them writhing at once. Two large eyes—Turtle eyes, not at all the eyes of human beings—gazed out at the newcomers from the ends of flexible stalks. And, strangest of all, there was something like a video screen on the belly of each shell, and each screen showed a friendly, animated human face.

"Hello, Francis," said a voice from the copper-colored one. The face on its screen was that of a young woman, fresh-faced and eager. The machine turned to the others in the group. "I'm Daisy Fay," it said.

"And I'm Marco," said the other, the voice human enough to sound embarrassed, the face on the belly screen a dark-skinned man with an engaging, diffident smile.

Sork whirled on Francis Krake. "And these are your crew?" he demanded.

Krake sighed. "I tried to tell you," he said. "They've been like this ever since."

Though the aiodoi are not of space and time, it is of space and time that they sing, and it is to the smallsongs of space and time they hear (for they hear all songs, always and everywhere) that they listen most closely . . . even though so many of the smallsongs are sad, or angry, or simply wrong.