What had made the artifact shudder like that? She didn’t believe it was the comlink. No, something had switched on inside the enigmatic sphere, perhaps as an automatic reflex to passing a set velocity. Or to moving a set distance away from the planet. Or to something else they couldn’t guess.
But what had switched on? And to what future effect?
SEVENTEEN
THE NEURY MOUNTAINS
David woke first. For a terrified moment he didn’t know where he was. The utter blackness, the hardness below his back, the smell of stone … the cave.
He turned his torch on low, shining upward. The curiously polished rock of the ceiling emerged, flecked with shiny specks. Mica? Gold? Who cared?
Nobody would look at the real gold on World. Nobody but him. And maybe Enli.
He sat up, peering at the sleeping alien. She had saved all their lives yesterday, leading them past that place that disrupted their thinking, that made David feel … But he didn’t want to think about that. Think about Enli. She had courage, and brains. And like all the Worlders, she was good. A good person. Evolution made her that way. The shared-reality mechanism made this stocky sleeping being with the tangled drab neckfur so far superior to his own kind that David was ashamed to be human. Worlders could not lie in any meaningful way, could not torture, could not kill—
But Worlders had killed Bonnie and Ben.
A dull grinding began in the back of David’s head, and for a panicked minute he thought it was the return of whatever had attacked them yesterday in the deep tunnel. But no, he could still think. Worlders had killed the children. Worlders had killed—
“Pek Allen,” Enli whispered. “Wake up! Your dreams wilt you!”
She sat beside him, blinking, one hand on his arm. David seized the hand eagerly, felt it, ran his thumb over the tough skin covering thin bones. Enli tried to pull her hand away, but he grasped it harder. This hand kill children? Hands like these, life-saving hands, child-tending hands? Colert Gamolin’s hands? Or little Nafret’s, in a few years? How could it have happened that way?
“Pek Allen, please … let me go!”
The answer came to David in a burst of sound and color, replacing the grinding in his head. It felt like that: sound and color, with the beautiful inevitability of sunrise and birdsong. It hadn’t happened that way.
“Pek Allen …”
“I’m sorry, Enli,” David said, letting go of her hand. He tried to make his voice reassuring. The poor thing was scared. Of course she was—she couldn’t see what he could, put together what he could. She was good, and courageous, and, above all, moral, but her people did not yet have the vision and insight and knowledge of his. It was in the combination that the answer would lie. The answer, the salvation. The sum greater than its parts.
If it hadn’t happened that way in the crelm house, how had it happened? What had really killed Ben and Bonnie? What had—
“Pek Allen, do you need your doses? Your morning doses?”
It took him a minute to realize what Enli meant. Her concerned voice, soft in the half darkness, a living thing amid the dead stone. She meant his morning neuropharm mixture. How did she know he followed the Discipline? She must have seen Ann do it; she spent most of her time with Ann.
“No, Enli, I’m fine,” he whispered back, but the whispering was wasted because there was that dumb bull Gruber waking everybody up, crash crash, no manners, typical.
“Ahmed, are you awake? Ann, here is enough water for breakfast, I think, but if not I’ll get more. And we should try again to raise the Zeus somewhere open. Here, the food powders …”
Gruber and Ann stirred the powders into water and passed them out in expandocups. Protein, fat, and carbs in ideal proportions, mixed with dehydrated fiber and an appetite suppressant to stay hunger pangs. Plus vitamins and flavoring, the latter usually inadequate. But David drank his without tasting it. His mind raced, and his hand stayed protectively close to Enli. Worlders were good. So what had really happened in the crelm house?
One thing was certain: None of the other humans would be able to help him learn the answer. Gruber, oxlike in his plodding conventionality, knowing nothing but dead rocks. Bazargan, the consummate politician, willing to believe—or act as if he believed—whatever was expedient to the situation. Even Ann, sweet-natured as she was, had too limited a knowledge of the language, was too absorbed in her plant biology, had too limited a worldview.
It was up to him, David Campbell Allen, to discover what had really happened in the crelm house. And not only that. He saw it now, whole, the larger picture Bazargan had so determinedly tried to cloud for him. It was up to David Campbell Allen to overnde Bazargan, to reestablish this mission on World, so that eventually the two genetic stocks, human and World, could be rejoined. Humanity—no, that was the wrong word, the joining would produce something greater than humanity. That greater entity would become whole. Healed. Able to share reality as Worlders did, able to control reality as technological man did. Complete, at last. Restored, and shining, and healed.
That, and no less, was his mission.
A deep peace filled David. He squeezed Enli’s hand once more, then stood and stretched. At his full height, his fingers brushed the top of the cave, smooth and burnished as glass. Looking down, he found the seated Bazargan watching him, empty expando in hand. Bazargan wore David’s discarded ssuit. Fitting. David smiled at him. Not even Bazargan could bother him now. Bazargan was merely a middle-aged administrator. He, David Allen Campbell, was beyond Bazargan, above him. Beyond irritation at Gruber, beyond jealousy over Ann. He was the selected one, the means to heal the sentient universe.
Him.
“Are you all right, David?” Bazargan asked quietly.
“Of course.”
There was a little pause before Gruber said, “Then if we are all ready, let’s go. We need a place above ground to raise the Zeus and find out what the hell is happening.”
“Enli,” Pek Bazargan said to her in a low voice, “what was Pek Allen talking to you about this morning?”
They had been walking only a short time, and the tunnel clearly led upward. But it was not as smooth as yesterday’s tunnels. Pek Allen, without one of the strange Terran suits, walked directly behind Pek Gruber. Then came Pek Sikorski, Enli, and Pek Bazargan. There was no way Pek Allen could hear what the head of his household had just asked.
“His dreams wilted him,” Enli answered. “I woke him.” Who, she wondered, complained in Pek Allen’s dreams? Did the unreal Terrans have their own unreal dead wander and moan through dreams? The thought made her head hurt.
She had no government pills left.
Pek Bazargan said, “Did he say what his dream was about?”
No, he—” A sudden stab in her gut made her stop.
“Enli? What is it?”
Another pain, flooding her gut, overwhelming the pain in her head. Hurriedly Enli fumbled at the close-fitting suit.
“What? Tell me!”
“Diarrhea,” she said in World, working faster to strip off the constricting suit. From Pek Bazargan’s face, it was clear he didn’t know the word. Enli didn’t know it in Terran. She said, “Loose bowels like smelly water … Oh!” It hurt.
To her surprise, Pek Bazargan looked embarrassed. Why? Diarrhea was normal, was part of shared reality. His embarrassment must be because he was unreal.
Now the pain in her head outweighed even the one in her gut.
“Dieter, wait,” Pek Bazargan called. “Enli has … a personal problem.”
He walked quickly away from her, along the tunnel after the others. Enli turned off her light and squatted. Until now everyone had used a designated alcove or side tunnel for this, but there were no alcoves or side tunnels here. The smell was terrible. Enli hoped they would not have to retrace their steps for any reason. And then she could hope nothing, overtaken by a wave of nausea. Her bowels were being torn loose inside her body. She gasped.
“Enli, it’s Ann.” She shone her
light obliquely on the tunnel wall, rather than on Enli. “Do you need help?”
“No, I … I’m all right.”
“We’ll wait for you around the bend in the tunnel.”
It took Enli a long time, and the bout left her weak. Leaning against the tunnel wall, she finally lurched after the others. Her legs felt watery, and she carried her Terran suit, afraid of another attack.
“Enli?” Pek Allen said softly. The males held scarves of thin cloth over their mouths and noses.
“I’m … all right.”
“No, you’re not,” said Pek Sikorski, the healer. “Come, lean on me. Dieter’s instruments say there’s a larger cavern ahead.”
“Don’t … talk,” Enli pleaded, too exhausted to even say please. But if Pek Sikorski—any of them—said anything to violate shared reality and make her head ache again … Her gut twisted once more.
“I won’t talk, Enli. Come on, dear. Go slow.”
They hobbled forward, Enli leaning on the Terran. The alien, unreal, kind Terran female, whose arms felt warm on Enli’s cold, suitless skin. Enli let all thought melt, puddle formlessly into Pek Sikorski’s warmth.
Until the tunnel abruptly ended.
“Verdammt,” Pek Gruber muttered. “The display indicated … Wait, here it is.”
He shone his powerful torch upward. Just above the height of their heads, the light showed a narrow opening about the width and height of a man’s shoulders. Gruber jumped, angling his torch into it. He landed unevenly on the broken rock of the tunnel floor and crashed sideways into the wall.
“Dieter!”
“I’m fine, Ann,” he said crossly, rubbing his shoulder. “But that’s the connection to the next cave, I’m afraid. I don’t think it’s very long, but I can’t be sure; the radiation affects the instrument.”
“How much radiation?” Pek Bazargan said.
“Not too much … yet. Still, Enli should put on her suit now.”
Enli shook her head. She feared another attack of diarrhea.
Pek Gruber said, “I think first I should see how long the tunnel is, and how wide. This may be the worst piece. David, if you will.”
Pek Allen stepped forward. He had said nothing as they walked, but now Enli could see his face. He was smiling. In the weird shadows reflected off the cave wall, his smile looked exultant, as if he had just had a great triumph of some sort. What sort? It made no sense, these Terrans made no sense, of course not what did she expect, they were unreal …
“Steady, Enli,” Pek Sikorski said, “I’m here,” and once more the kindness brought Enli back from the brink, anchoring her before she fell into the abyss.
Pek Allen cupped his hands, Pek Gruber stepped into them, and the younger human threw Pek Gruber upward. He shoved his body into the opening. For a moment Enli thought his shoulders were too wide, but as the four others stood below him, shadowy in their lesser torches, Pek Gruber’s body wriggled forward like a fish until his torso disappeared. Then his legs, his feet … He had wriggled into the rock.
No one spoke until Pek Sikorski whispered, “If he gets stuck …”
“He’s an experienced spelunker,” Pek Allen said, and his exultant voice matched his exultant smile. “But if he gets stuck, I’ll go in and pull him out. Easy!”
Pek Bazargan turned to look hard at Pek Allen.
Time crawled by. No one spoke. Pek Sikorski pulled Enli to sit down, and Pek Bazargan joined them. Only Pek Allen stayed standing, smiling, his eyes blinking rapidly.
“Ja!” Finally a shout came from the tunnel, muffled by stone. More minutes, and Pek Gruber’s face reappeared at the high opening, dirty and grinning. “You must see to believe it! Come, it is not so long a tunnel. Not even seventy yards. And not much tighter than this.”
Pek Allen demanded, “See what?”
“I won’t tell you, but it’s wonderful. And a space beyond open to the sky. With more water.” More and more of him protruded from the opening: head, shoulders, torso, hips, until Enli thought he surely must topple forward and fall to the tunnel floor. But Pek Allen reached out, Pek Gruber embraced him, and Pek Gruber was drawn out of stone like a plug from a pel bottle.
“Ann, you first. Then Ahmed and Enli. David and I can help get you up, and we will come last.”
Pek Sikorski said, “Enli is still sick, I think. It’s the protein powders. Her system apparently can’t handle them. But I thought she needed to eat something, and took the gamble. Only—”
“Enli,” Pek Allen said, kneeling in front of her, “are you sick still? More diarrhea?” He used the World word; unlike the others, he knew it. Of course, he had worked in the crelm house, with babies. She nodded at him.
“Would you rather wait until the sickness passes?”
“I’ll wait with her,” Pek Sikorski said.
“You can’t,” Pek Allen said, and Enli wondered briefly why Pek Bazargan wasn’t giving the orders. “You couldn’t get her back through that high hole.”
“Yes, I could,” Pek Sikorski said, flushing slightly. “You underestimate my strength, David.”
“Ann,” Pek Bazargan began, just as Pek Gruber said impatiently, “It isn’t—”
“I am not staying here,” Enli said loudly, in World. These Terrans, they acted as if she were a child. She was not a child; she was the only real person here. And she was not staying in this dark cramped place when there was a larger place beyond open to the sky. Diarrhea or not. Although now that she had spoken up, the attack in her gut actually seemed to be subsiding.
For a moment all the Terrans stared at her from their light, depthless eyes. Then Pek Gruber nodded. “Enli may choose for herself. Like the rest of us.”
Did he have any idea how alien he sounded, how unreal? One did not choose reality; it simply was. Once again pain stabbed her head.
“You are hurting her, Dieter,” Pek Bazargan said quietly. “Just start the lifting.”
Pek Gruber cupped his hands. Pek Sikorski was thrown up to the hole, caught the edge of rock, and began to wiggle forward until her feet disappeared. Enli stood and pulled on the suit she had peeled off before.
“Ahmed,” Pek Gruber said.
“I can’t.”
Pek Gruber and Pek Allen turned to look at him. Pek Bazargan was very pale, even for a Terran, and his face sweated. Enli could see the bare skin of his neck, where there should have been fur, pulse rapidly.
“I have … difficulties with tunnels. I’ve managed so far, but that opening is so small … trapped in rock. I can’t.” He shuddered violently.
It was the first time Enli had ever seen Pek Bazargan show weakness. Apparently also for the Terrans. Pek Gruber frowned. Pek Allen once again got that strange, exultant smile, and he rose forward on his toes. Enli had never seen anyone do that before: rock themselves higher, then drop, again and again.
“I’m sorry,” Pek Bazargan whispered. “I can’t.”
“Then stay here,” Pek Allen said easily. “We’ll come back for you the way we came, from the outside, after we finish in these mountains and this conspiracy is finally finished.”
“‘Conspiracy’?” Enli didn’t know the Terran word.
“There is no conspiracy, David,” Pek Gruber snapped. “Ahmed, you are coming. We need you to raise the Zeus. And—”
“You can take the—”
“—you’re going through if David and I have to stuff you by force into that tunnel.”
Pek Allen stopped rocking on his toes. His smile broadened, changed, until Enli had to look away. Pek Allen wanted to stuff Pek Bazargan by force into the tunnel. He would enjoy it. Pek Bazargan looked bleakly from one Terran to the other.
“You mean it, Dieter.”
“I mean it. I know you, Ahmed. I know you are not a coward.”
Bazargan, pale and sweating, smiled. “I am too old to be shamed by a young man’s dare, Dieter.”
“Nonetheless, you are going.”
Pek Gruber was like a tumban, Enli thought. She had seen o
ne once, in a traveling zoo. The stupid, tough-hided animal began walking in a straight line, eating leaves as it went, and nothing could make it turn aside. It plodded through swamps, through thorns, through the smoking embers of fire. There were people like that on World; her sister’s husband’s sister was like that. And so was Pek Gruber, this unreal Terran.
Who had seemed increasingly real to her, Enli Pek Brimmidin.
He was not much different from Ano’s marriage-sister.
This time she expected the sharp hard pain in her skull. She was even braced against it, she discovered, although not by nearly enough. Through a shaking blur she watched Pek Bazargan step shakily onto Pek Gruber’s cupped hands, falter, try again. On the second throw he caught the edge of the rock. For a long time he hung there, head and enough torso to balance himself inside the tunnel, buttocks and legs and feet dangling helplessly. The feet flailed. Pek Bazargan was trying to back out. Pek Allen sprang upward and shoved the buttocks, hard.
“David, verdammt—be careful of him!”
“Conspirators don’t deserve care,” said Pek Allen, with vicious glee. Pek Gruber clenched his fists, stopped, looked at the high tunnel. Pek Bazargan’s flailing feet disappeared slowly into the hole.
“Enli,” Pek Allen said, and for a moment fear swamped her stabbing headpain. Would he stuff her in like that? But Pek Allen was gentle, cupping his hands and raising her carefully, while Pek Gruber steadied her. Enli’s bowels gave a sudden lurch but then settled down. She caught the edge of rock and began to wriggle forward.
The headpain, she discovered, was gone. It had vanished when Pek Allen’s cupped palms had cradled the bottom of her feet, and Pek Gruber’s big, callused hands had steadied her hips. Pek Gruber was a tumban, and the blooms in Pek Allen’s mind grew crazily. Pek Bazargan was a coward. Pek Sikorski, kind as she was, was capable of violating reality. They were all capable of violating reality, even among themselves (how?). But they were here, solid as the warmth of hands under her feet, and each had a soul, however weird and strange. They acted like people—thought and argued and planted and reaped and gardened each other, unlike those poor empty children who must be destroyed because they were unreal. Those children did not nurture anyone, or feud with anyone, or hope for anything, or plan for anyone else. The Terrans did all these people things. Enli had seen them do all these people things. She had groped her way through shadowy tunnels with them, felt their individual souls bump and caress and pierce her own—in ways the priests had not.