Galactic Center - Furious Gulf Part 18

Her hurt tone irritated him. "You leaned on me, dammit, made--"

He slammed into Quath in his hurry. As he picked himself up she sent one of her keen-edged staccato bursts that was as close as she got to sounding like human laughter.

222.

flatness of the events there, each coming toward him as the layers peeled off into filmy fog.Abruptly a stalk-thing poked out of the mist. It wriggled. Shards of silvery ice flaked off it. The rubbery stalk extruded from the timestone, thicker than his arm and longer With a pop it wriggled free and fell at his feet. It hooted, low and clear. A plaintive call.And more followed it. They floundered from the timestone as if spat out--moist, s.h.i.+ning, making what had been comfortably distant images suddenly smelly and real. A fountain of liquid obsidian spouted to his left.

It crystallized in air and fell tinkling. Panels of dusky mist marched above his head. One of the blobs grew out of the timestone and attached itself to a floating lump of water The stalk farted a core of hard blue gas and the blob answered with a whorl of velvety fire.Eerie, unreal. s.h.i.+bo said, Remember that all this comes out of laws, physical laws. These are trapped events from somewhere else in the esty. We should explore it.

"Uh..." Head foggy. "How come?"

This is a way tofind what else lurks in the esty. We cannotgo to these places ourselves.

"Can't see how I'd want to anyway." Whispering.

Do not be timid!

"Looks funny.., risky."

Go forward. When I was in flesh I never felt cowardice.

"No, you got me wrong, I'm just saying--"

I wanted to know more about the world. That's the only smart way to stay alive. Believe me, I know how dead you can be inside if something stops you from--if you stop trying, learning, changing.

"s.h.i.+bo ... I don't ..."

Coward. Open yourself to it!

He stepped closer.Blue-black flames danced up and licked at Toby before he could 223.

move. They were warm and soft and made him want more of their obliging comfort. He felt uneasy but within himself there was a push-pull of diverging impulses. s.h.i.+bo's Personality moved ma.s.sively, blotting out his caution with a silky, calming curiosity.

We must explore this place. It is wonderful, I think. You were so right to come here.

"I didn't, really, I just..."His words trailed away. s.h.i.+bo wanted to explore this strangely swarthy flame and so he stooped and put his hands and forearms into the purpling ma.s.s.Cool, slick. Not a fire at all. It felt even better now. So pleasant to thrust up to the shoulders, his face full in it. Fragrances swarmed through him--sweet, pliant.So comfortable. Beckoning.Then he remembered the addictive amus.e.m.e.nts.., back there.., in the gray city.., the one he had left. Something important about that.The stuff wriggled all over his face. He wrenched away. Sc.r.a.ped at it with leaden hands. Gluey ropes stuck to him. Licking strands inched across his mouth, nose, eyes. He slapped at them, stripped them away. A vile reek leapt up into his nostrils: flavors like emotions--angry, vindictive, spiteful, wronged love.He wadded up the cloying filament, struggling against waves of fleeting but sharp emotions. He dropped the fluffy, welcoming resilience and instantly regretted doing it. The pang of remorse was keen and oddly bitter. s.h.i.+bo punched through to him with Get away! Quick!

--and he was off, scrambling fast, part of him flooded with remorse, another scared."What was that?"

Some form of parasite. Rather sophisticated.

"You told me to do it."

I only suggest. I cannot act.

Her hurt tone irritated him. "You leaned on me, dammit, made--"

He slammed into Quath in his hurry. As he picked himself up she sent one of her keen-edged staccato bursts that was as close as she got to sounding like human laughter.

224.

"Those're trouble," Toby said lamely.It had all been internal, he saw. Fever-ripples of contrary emotions danced across his skin where the velvet had grasped. His fresh epidermis on the back of his injured hand sent him a puckering sense of pleasure, as if the flesh was being kissed by a wide, welcoming mouth. 4.

Unsettled MovementThey had run themselves out and still the seeping light did not ebb.

They were not on a revolving planet, so day and night did not make their cyclic claims. A fitful glow soaked through from exposed teeth of timestone, casting shadows among the green and yellow foliage. Toby went hard until his boots dragged, so they stopped and slept. Still no sign of anyone else. Or of pursuit.

He woke up to hear s.h.i.+bo singing. Words pealed, a delicate but persistent melody, light and airy. Then he realized that his eyes were open but he saw nothing.

He blinked to restore vision. Twisted trees, big-bellied clouds, rock--his vision flickered, stabilized. He sat up, disturbed. Nothing threatening nearby. Wind sighing in the stringy brush. A sulphurous lance of light cutting a foggy glade to his left.

There was no reason for her to co-opt his senses."What... ?"

I needed an outing. You were soundly asleep so -- "Yeasay, and now I'm not. No thanks to you."

After your misadventure yesterday, I expect you could use a little help.

"Misad--oh, the purple flames? You were the one wanted to give it a closer look."You misremember. I alerted you to it when you were up to your chin in226.

"Not the way I recall. You were at my back, pus.h.i.+n' the whole time, wanting to touch it."

You have edited out your own attraction.

"The h.e.l.l I have. I wondered what it was, sure, but--"

Let's not argue. We escaped without harm -- together. That is the important point. As long as we remain together and alert, even in such a strange and wonderful place we can stay safe.

This little lecture put his teeth on edge but he kept quiet. Directing thoughts to her would just make her say more and right now he wanted inner silence, a chance to think by himself. For himself.He went for a call of nature. While he was burying it so the smell would be hard to track, s.h.i.+bo talked to him. He b.u.t.ted her back--pressure against a stiff wall. He struggled silently, mouth twisting, and then came the shock: he could not get rid of her. She was always there now, riding behind his eyes.

Why should you not want my help?

"Why? 'Cause I got no choice anymore."

You are too young to go forth without my aid.

"How 'bout I decide that?"

y point exactly. You can make bad decisions, you know."At least they'd be mine."We have such a closeness. Do not push me away.Something about her "closeness" made him uneasy, but he could not find the words.

--a cloying sense of moist pressures, syrupy air that would not leave his heaving lungs, liquid running in through his nose and ears and unwilling mouth, snaky fog-feelers sweet, so sweet-- When his breathing was back to normal he tramped back to Quath. She had warmed up some of his own field grub, stock she was carrying for him.

He forgot about s.h.i.+bo. The greasy excellences of the hot, oily food pushed her presence clear out of his consciousness. Which was a relief. She had been hanging in him for days now, heavy as a wet boot. He only realized this when she was subdued.227.

"Uh huh. Dreams, I guess."

"How would you know?""You read my face when I'm asleep?" "Measurements of what?""My G.o.d! You work pretty hard.""Naysay, I just give people a squint and figure out--hey, you mean that's how I know how people feel?" "But for you it is?"

"And if you don't?"Toby knew that thought was a net of racing electrical impulses, the dance of atoms speaking through their fleet messengers. But was that all his thoughts meant? He looked at Quath without knowing what to say. "It's s.h.i.+bo. Something about her."

"Yeah..."< p="">

You are impelled to unsettled movement, androgen-agitated. Your moralerrors are most often a quick brutishness.>"Hey, I'm better than that.""Hey, come on. That's so simplified. h.e.l.l, I feel steady and composed plenty of times--just not lately, is all. And Besen, lookit her. She's as kick-a.s.s as they come, when she gets riled.""You got s.e.x on the brain, big-bug," Toby said uneasily.< p="">

Man is pointed toward invasion. Woman exploits the advantages of the hidden, the never-fully-knowable, the grotto of welling darkness. This is the strategy of your species. Merging them in a mind so young as yours is inherently destabilizing.> "That's what's going on in me?"

"What'll I do?"

"Which?"

"So if I built up this 'self-sense' ... ?"

"Ummm." He was having trouble keeping his attention on the discussion.

He felt a foreboding when he paid exact attention to Quath's words.

But then an itch in his servo-couplers would make him scratch, or a yawn, or some small piping of his sensorium. He would lose the thread of Quath's argument.

It seemed as if all kinds of little things were poking at him, making his attention veer away from this problem. "The other way--"

"Yeasay." A deep breath. "Look, I'll handle this on my own."

"We got plenty more to worry about."

"Leave me--and her!--alone."

Toby leaped up, p.r.i.c.kly with energy. He walked off, contracting his sensorium, cutting off discussion. Quath's words were still with him. You are impelled to unsettled movement, androgen-agitated. His boot thumped in frustration on a chunk of timestone.

He drank from the stream that muttered nearby. The water was sharp and fast-running. It cleared his head and quite suddenly he became aware that he felt deliciously lazy from the sleep. The uneasiness in him was gone, soothed away somehow, and he did not ask what had done it.

As he walked back to Quath a distant peak cracked apart and showered down glittering fragments. Pensively he gazed around at the warped greatness. "Hey, y'know, we could name these."

"Maybe n.o.body's been in this particular Lane before. Could be, right?"

229.

"How long?""Ummm." Toby thought of history in terms of his Aspects, not in "years." Isaac was of the later Arcologies. Poor fractured Zeno was from even further back. History was people, not numbers. Impatiently he said,"So if we're the first to be here, we get to do the naming."

"Tradition, we call it. A right, really."

<"rights" are="" not="" a="" useful="" concept="" here.="">"Hey, come on. We could use some of those fancy names. Places the Aspects go on about."Instantly there flooded into his idling mind a shotgun blast of names, t.i.tles, all tinged with faint echoes of silvery memory. Tombs of Ishtar.

Grand Palace. Altars of Innocence. G.o.ddammountain. Bamboozle Bridge.

Androscogginn. Pinnacle Prime. Da.s.sadummakeag. Ever-rest. Pike's Pyramid.

Isis. Mount Olive. DoDeDeed. Angry Sink. Quath asked quietly.Something in her tone made Toby blink. It was an odd human vanity, he saw, a desire to grab and hold. s.h.i.+bo helped him see what every nomad knew in his sinews--that the world was to see and use and move on, partof the flow and trek of life. Naming the land didn't fit."Well... Let 'em name themselves, then."But a part of him felt frustrated. He hid that from s.h.i.+bo. Or tried.

Hard Spark Despite steep pa.s.ses and rough ground they made good time--whatever that meant, in a twisted esty-place that kept confusing Toby's ways of thinking. Several times the air and rock swayed like things seen under water and he felt sick.Weather, Quath said. The esty adjusting to the infall of ma.s.s. His inner ear told him that "down" was a matter of opinion, s.h.i.+fting as the timestone groaned and flakes popped off.They entered wind-whipped desert. Jumbled terrain curved up and away into a burnt-orange sky. The other side of the Lane was so far away he could not make it out even under highest closeupping."Big place. Gravity's opposite over there?" "Uh huh. There's somethin' more, though. You feel it?"

< p="">

"Yeasay. I can't pin it down."

"Some ways, maybe."

"You figure it was made for us? I mean, humans?""I remember you saying once that you'd mingled genetic stuff with some species, way back in history. Was it with us?""Oh yeasay? How high?"Toby wasn't sure what "advanced" might mean, and was not much impressed if it meant you were huge and had to clank around in a hard carapace and knock over things without noticing.He had tried to shave in the mornings here but the water and soap had the fluid sucked out of them by the air before he was half through. Aridity squared, air like a sponge.Breezes of thwarted gravity led them into a territory of demented vegetation. Corkscrew ferns twisted in tight loops all around them. Giant fronds feathered to catch the sporadic light of the distant esty walls. Quath said. and was off, moving fast.Toby followed. To watch Quath go up a slope was to see the job reduced to its essentials. They got under some dense trees. He was running and trying to identify the skittering sensorium traces when a ma.s.sive boom hammered down through the forest.It flattened them both. His sensorium rang. Limbs crashed nearby.

Helical fronds rained down. "Mechs. They're high up."

"d.a.m.n!"

232. "Double dog d.a.m.n!"

"They must've broken in."

"I remember some of these patterns and--" Something in his sensorium, coming fast.

"Quath... It's the Mantis."

A long silence. Striations moved at the edge of his sensorium.

"Dangerous as h.e.l.l, too."

The Mantis shape moved in a strange zigzag way. One moment it was shrinking, seeming to go further down the Lane--and next he caught its movement along a ridgeline nearby, half hidden by the glowing rock.

Smaller forms flitted among puffball clouds. One skimmed whispering over the canopy, veered, was gone.

"We thought we killed the Mantis back on Snowglade."

"We blew it to pieces with Argo's exhaust!"

"Well, slicing them up seemed to work pretty well."

Toby laughed. "Mechs with relatives?" Family was so human; mechs had no need of the concept. "So you figure it's coming here, snooping e round..." "My Family's escape from Snowglade..."

"Maybe it was a setup?"

"You figure the Mantis meant for that to happen?"

Quath settled down on her many legs. Their shared sensoria contracted further and her sensors, better than his, scanned the sky. "So? Why'd any mech want us here?"

"I never saw them do any different."

"Lower?"

233.

"We did all right. Stayed alive.""Umm. Like the Mantis." Shadowy shapes came nearer, slipping over hills like sheets of gliding oil."Doesn't make all the work and danger look so d.a.m.n glorious, does it?" Quath had anantiseptic tone, a polite disdain for such animal excesses.