Chapter 34

Pulling information out of Vayvay was almost impossible. The Coromar seemed to have only two interests in life: finding food, and eating it. Chan had sat in on three weary hours of Angel’s careful questioning and re-questioning, then he had given up. He lacked Angel’s infinite patience. He wandered out to the lip of the tent, where S’greela and Shikari were basking in the mid-morning sunlight.

“How can Angel stand it?” he said. “Every question has to be repeated ten times, and still there’s nothing to show at the end.”

“Talking to Vayvay?” S’greela nudged Shikari with one hind-limb. As usual, the Tinker was trying to creep up into a lumpy heap around their legs. “I admit, Vayvay is not easily mistaken for a genius. In fact, I myself asked Angel the same question, how was it possible to be so patient with such an idiot?”

“But Angel did not answer you.”

“Indeed, yes. Angel indicated that communication with humans provided a sufficient base of prior experience.”

Chan glared, and decided not to react. He had noticed a strange phenomenon. S’greela, and even Angel, seemed to be picking up the Tinker’s perverse sense of humor. In fact, they were all beginning to sound more and more like each other. It was harder all the time to tell who made a remark simply from its content, or the way in which it was phrased. Was he starting to sound like the rest of them, too?

Chan thought not. In some ways, he was the outsider of the group. When he had rushed back yesterday to tell them what had happened to him in the tunnels, they had listened quietly enough; but he knew that they rejected what he said, almost without considering it.

That idea was full of disturbing possibilities. Angel insisted that the Construct had not moved from its original putative location, far from them. And Mondrian had told Chan that Nimrod’s powers for mental disturbance were short-range. Close contact would be needed for it to have any effect. So if Chan’s bewildering encounter had not been with Nimrod, there was only one other clear possibility: he was going crazy.

Chan had other evidence for that. After his arrival back at the camp the previous night, he had almost no memory of the rest of the evening. He recalled sitting in a close, compact group, listening to Angel talk to the Coromar. And that was all that he remembered, until he had awakened today under the outspread mantle of the Tinker Composite.

Suppose that fears and confusion were affecting his judgement? Then he had to discover the source of those delusions, before he put the others in danger. And that urgency made him want to proceed too fast with the hunt for Nimrod. Festina lente — hasten slowly. But it was hard to do, when the others were so in favor of rapid action.

This morning they were raring to go. Angel was now sure that the task of stalking Nimrod through Travancore’s vertical forest could be simplified. “There is, as you conjectured, a grid of horizontal tunnels.” Angel had finally emerged from the long dialogue with Vayvay. “It becomes denser and more continuous, down close to the true surface of the planet. But it is not so well maintained as the tunnels higher up. The Coromar look after the high tunnels much better, because they are their primary feeding grounds. However, the lower network will be adequate for our needs. We can use it to move close to Nimrod, and still minimize the chance of our detection.”

“It would be quicker and easier to come straight down from above,” objected S’greela.

“Easier, but not safer,” said Chan. “Nimrod will sense our presence if we try to move straight down through the vegetation. But the surface of the planet may confuse the return signal for the Construct’s sensors. We’ll use the horizontal tunnels. Is Vayvay willing to lead the way?”

“That is not clear.” Angel turned to the Coromar, who was slowly emerging from inside the tent. A few more seconds of squeaks produced a shake of Angel’s topmost fronds, and a human-sounding sigh. “Why even ask? The answer could have been predicted. Vayvay will take us to within a safe distance from Nimrod, provided that we guarantee plenty of food as payment. Vayvay asks, how close to Nimrod do we wish to approach?”

Chan thought about that, as the three others waited impatiently. “I really don’t know. For all I can say — and my experience yesterday supports it — Nimrod could be aware of us all the time. How else do you explain what happened to me down in the shaft?”

There was a non-committal silence, while Chan began to feel annoyed all over again. The others were being diplomatic, but still they didn’t believe him. When he had filed his report on the incident and sent it back to the Q-ship, the three of them had been annoyingly passive. They did not comment on or add to what he had sent — and that was unusual in such an opinionated group.

“All right.” Chan turned again to Angel. “Let’s take the problem from the other end. How close is Vayvay willing to approach to Nimrod?”

Another sequence of bat-squeaks from Angel’s communicator, dipping in and out of Chan’s audible range, led to a reply from the Coromar, and then another longer exchange between the two.

Angel turned at last to the others. “Apologies, for the time taken. The first answer was quickly given, but it was not in terms that are easily translated to your notations. Truly, there is no fixed reply. The answer is a nonlinear equation, a complicated balance of food offered against risks taken. And the distance unit that Vayvay employs is also not a constant. It is measured in browsing-distance-days, and is therefore location-dependent. In oversimplified terms, Vayvay will go as close as we want, provided that we always guarantee sufficient amounts of food.”

“Can’t you negotiate something a bit more specific?”

“That is already done. Primitive in some ways, Vayvay certainty seems to understand the barter principle. For three thousand kilos of synthesized high-protein vegetable matter, Vayvay will take us to within two kilometers of Nimrod’s most likely current position — for which a probability of 0.98 now seems appropriate.”

Angel was still leaving the most difficult decision to Chan. How close to Nimrod dare they go, before they descended to the solid surface of Travancore? Traveling above the vegetation could be done in the aircar, and swiftly, but surface travel would be on foot and slow.

Chan made the decision, probably quicker than he should have. “We’ll go down a shaft one full day’s march from the estimated location of the Morgan Construct. Say, twenty kilometers away from it.”

“The coordinates for such a shaft are already available. But of course,” Angel added, “these coordinates are time-dependent. When would we leave?”

“As soon as feasible. At once, if we can.”

But having made that decision, Chan began to worry about it. He had no faith in his own judgment. All morning he had been feeling feverish and light-headed. Was he actually getting sick? His immune system had been boosted at the beginning of pursuit team training, making it supposedly robust enough to handle any microorganisms on Barchan or Travancore. But that was just theory. Maybe yesterday’s hallucinations and today’s uneasiness were the result of a real physical ailment, nothing to do with Nimrod, nothing to do with mental instability.

Chan had little time for brooding. The aircar had already been recalled from its high, hovering orbit, and arrived within minutes. It took all their efforts to lift Vayvay aboard, but then they were off, heading around the great planetary curve of Travancore. The car skimmed over billowing waves of vegetation rising and falling below them like an endless turbulent sea.

They were at the chosen entry shaft in less than an hour. Before they entered the threatening black eye of the tunnel, S’greela sent the capsule back to orbit. If they returned safely, fine. It would be easy enough to recall it and use it to take them to the Q-ship. If they died …