The safest place, Forlam decided, would be behind one of the drones, preferably the nautiloid one, which was probably Polity. He began edging along the wall in that direction, expecting the shooting between the two drones to start again at any moment. Strangely, nothing happened for long-drawn-out seconds, then suddenly the Prador drone was withdrawing, and a new vibration began shaking the ship.
‘That is the sweet sound of a fusion engine test,’ said the Polity drone. ‘And now the ship’s antigravity is coming online.’
‘Erm,’ was all Forlam managed.
A silver tentacle whipped out, wound around his waist, and hauled him in. He only realized the others had been grabbed when, drawn close to the drone’s cold body, he found himself pressed against someone else’s back. Luckily the woman could not turn her head or extend her tongue far enough, else Forlam felt sure he would have lost an eye to her.
Then the rescuing drone was moving very fast along the ship’s corridors. A door disintegrated before it, another stretch of corridor, another door turned to fragments, then some kind of chamber opening to a triangular patch of sky. They shot out above a waterfall—sea water pouring from that chamber—then over the sea. Forlam glimpsed the Prador ship turning, like a city detached from the ground, till the drone turned sharply and accelerated across the ocean, cutting that view. He now spotted an island and, distantly, the Sable Keech. When the drone dipped down towards the island, Forlam prayed he would not be left there with Orbus and his merry crew. Before he could think to protest, he was released to drop onto a wooden deck. As immediately he scrambled away from the woman’s horrible wriggling tongue, his back came to rest against a pair of solid legs.
‘Well, that’s a bugger—we ain’t got no rope left,’ said a familiar voice.
An equally familiar one added, ‘Nor any harpoons.’
The news from one of the passengers, that she had seen some man climbing the side of the hull carrying two blue corpses on his back, had not attracted Janer’s attention so much as watching the Prador ship rise from the ocean. Now the spaceship was just sitting motionless in the sky. It had not reacted to the Golem sail taking wing, nor had it reacted to a human figure with metal hands and feet departing the deck, suspended in an AG harness. Now he had missed out, for after committing murder the Golem sail was gone, and Isis Wade had gone after it.
‘Here we are,’ said Captain Ron, as they entered the submersible enclosure.
Janer stared at the four lying on the floor. Unlike the two he had earlier seen up on deck, these were struggling against their bonds, trying to chew through the cables binding their wrists, when their serpentine tongues did not get in the way. Seeing Janer and Ron with the six accompanying Hoopers, all four of them struggled to their feet and tried to make a break for it, issuing whooping hissing sounds as they ran around the enclosure. Ron stepped back and closed the door, resting his back against it. He folded his arms. ‘Go get ‘em, lads.’
The six Hoopers gave chase, quickly clubbing two of the four to the ground and binding their legs with reels of ducting tape. A third was tackled just before managing to throw himself out through the shimmer-shield. The fourth ran straight into Ron’s fist and sat down abruptly with his eyes crossed. Janer looked down at the gun he had drawn and sighed. Then he looked around, realizing that here was his opportunity, for Wade had told him Zephyr’s intended destination. Janer holstered his weapon.
‘Ron, I have to leave,’ he announced.
The Captain raised an eyebrow as, one-handed, he hoisted the stunned Hooper to his feet. ‘Where?’
‘Places to go, things to do.’ Janer headed for the submersible, climbed the ladder and stepped into the conning tower. ‘This is important. Don’t try to stop me.’
Ron was showing no sign of doing any such thing. He waved a dismissive hand at Janer, then rapped his captive’s head against the wall as the Hooper showed signs of regaining consciousness.
Janer dropped inside the submersible, sat down in the pilot’s seat and studied the controls. Simple really. He turned on the screens giving him an outside view, waited until the Hooper currently between him and the shimmer-shield had dragged his captive aside, then hit the touch-plate labelled launch.
The acceleration flung him hard back into the seat. Then the shield rapidly approached, engulfed the sub, and he was hurtling through white water. He pulled safety straps down and clicked them into place, before taking hold of the joystick. It was standard simple format: you moved the stick in the direction you wanted to go, and the further you moved it in that direction the faster you got there. He pulled the stick up, heard the engine roar behind him, and felt the seat press up against his backside.
‘Whooo! Hoo!’
The sub leapt from the ocean like a dolphin and came down in an explosion of spume. A further tinkering with the controls gave him a positional map. On that he located ‘Olian’s’ clearly marked, experimentally shifted the stick from side to side so the submersible icon on the map turned, then finally got it directed towards that same location. He then pushed the stick forwards and the acceleration forced him back in his seat. Eyeing the many readouts before him, he wondered if he would recognize one warning him that the engine was overheating and burning out. Then he relaxed and thought about what he had learnt: how mistaken had been the young hive mind, and how more deadly were the intentions of one part of that ancient mind: Zephyr.
Hive minds were now unlikely to send their agents here to obtain sprine. Firstly, because with all that by now was known about this planet’s life forms, right down to their genomes, any focused research would ascertain the poison’s formula offworld. But, secondly and most importantly, because here was the only place it could be used and the Warden would not allow that. No, the agent of one half of the ancient hive mind had not come here for that purpose, since it already possessed the formula.
Wade had explained to him: ‘Each separate part of the mind can work on things without the other parts knowing. On the planet Hive, the Zephyr part of the mind synthesized sprine then, using the advanced genetic manipulation technologies known there, made a virus to destroy it.’
‘But why do that?’ Janer had asked.
‘Because here sprine is Death, and Zephyr wants to kill Death.’
‘You’re saying Zephyr could release that virus at any moment? Do you realize what might happen? We have to stop him now!’
Wade shook his head. ‘The small quantity Zephyr carries would be unlikely to survive long enough in this environment to propagate. Any leech infected by it would quickly die and be destroyed by all the other predators here. In such a situation the chances of it spreading planetwide are less than ten per cent.’
‘Oh, that’s okay then.’
‘It is, admittedly, an appreciable risk.’
‘How does Zephyr intend to up those odds?’
‘The virus needs to be added to a very large quantity of sprine. With a sufficient food supply it can double its mass every few minutes, and it will then spread itself via a form of air- or water-borne sporulation.’
‘A large quantity of sprine?’
Wade had nodded.
‘Olian’s,’ realized Janer.
You waited too long, Wade.
Janer considered what might be the result of Zephyr’s attempt to kill Death. The collapse of the present planetary economy, which was based on sprine, was the least significant worry. Through long and painful experience, humans had learnt how subtly balanced were all ecologies. The big leeches topped the food chain here, consuming whole other large creatures living in the ocean. Without them, therefore, their prey would just keep on growing and feeding, wiping out other species and causing a further cascade of imbalances. All the leeches would then die out, because it was only the large ones that procreated. Some might think that a good thing. It was not. If they were lucky, some new balance might be restored—in about ten thousand years or so. Quite possibly the entire biosphere would collapse into something almost Precambrian.