Bony thought of the Limbics in their circle outside the ship. It was odd, but they seemed less ominous now that he had seem them close up. There was a thought you had to resist. Often the most dangerous things looked the most innocuous. It was still a mystery, though: Why had they come? To destroy, to communicate, from sheer curiosity? Maybe an answer would be provided after the long night watch.
A short time later Liddy moved her position. Bony grunted and opened his eyes.
Impossibly, the cabin was filled with diffuse sunlight streaming in through the ports. He turned his head to ask Liddy what had happened, and found that a cushion had replaced her lap.
He sat up. Liddy was over at the other side of the cabin. She heard his movement and turned.
“Sleep well?”
“Great. But you were awake all night.”
“Don’t kid yourself. I lack your sense of dedication. I woke up just a couple of minutes ago when I heard knocking on the hull.”
“The Limbics?”
“That seems a reasonable assumption.” Liddy was standing by one of the ports. “I was going to rouse you and Indigo in two more seconds if you hadn’t woken by yourselves. Come look at something.”
Bony moved to her side, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“They must be early risers,” she said. “They were all up and about, and they noticed me as soon as I went to the port. I’d like to know if you have my reaction. What do you think they’re doing?”
Bony stared out of the port. Down on the seabed the Limbics had moved from their guarding circle. Now they stood in a group. Forty or more bubble arms waved in unison in the quiet water.
Bony took a deep breath. He waited one more moment to make sure, but there was really no doubt.
“They’re signaling,” he said. “Those waves of their arms mean, Come outside. We want to meet you. ”
12: RECRUITING TULLY O’TOOLE
She knew something she was not willing to admit. Chan, walking the darkened tunnels beneath Mount Ararat at Deb’s side, kept glancing at her profile. A mirthless half-smile was on her lips. He could not see her eyes, hidden within the depths of the black hood, but whenever she turned her head his way her forehead was furrowed and her eyebrows lowered to a frown.
He wondered what surprises lay within the cloak. It was sure to be packed with hidden pockets and secret sewn-in compartments. Chan had been around Weapons-master Deb Bisson long enough to be ready for anything that popped out from the cloak’s inner recesses. He had seen tiny mutated snakes, smaller than a finger, spring from a cloak pocket on command and kill with a single drop of neurotoxic venom delivered from minute fangs. He had watched a thief, tracked by blue-green borer beetles released from a vial in the cloak and tuned to pheromones at the crime scene, run screaming to Deb and beg for mercy after the patient little insects found him, entered his body cavities as he slept, and slowly began to eat him away from inside. He had seen a monofilament thread, woven into the cloak’s hem, become in Deb’s hands first a defensive weapon that cut a swinging club in two, and then in the same continuing movement an edge so keen that the attacker was decapitated while he still believed that he was bludgeoning his helpless victim.
Deb had promised a surprise, but it was nothing in the cloak. Something new and extraordinary — and unpleasant — would be needed to astonish Chan. Deb knew that. No mere method of attack or defense would be enough. Even twenty years ago, responding to a joking challenge, she had listed eighty-two different poisons that resided within her cloak and could leave a victim dead, apparently of natural causes.
The tunnels under Mount Ararat were narrower as they went north. At first, Chan and Deb were able to walk side by side. Then it was one at a time, with Deb in front. Ten minutes later, the hood of her cloak brushed the ceiling and Chan had to crouch in order to avoid banging his head on the unfinished rock of the tunnel roof.
“Are you sure Tully lives out here?” he said, as the tunnel dwindled another five centimeters in height and width.
She turned, so that for the first time since they started out her angry brown eyes stared directly into his. “You think maybe you know better?” She moved back against the wall so that he could squeeze past her, and waved a hand along the tunnel. “Go ahead. Be my guest.”
“No, that’s all right.” Chan wished that he had kept his mouth shut. “I just didn’t expect Tully to be in a place like this. The greatest linguist I ever met—”
“The greatest anybody ever met. But what need has there been for linguists since the starways closed? The translating machines are enough for talk between humans.”
“Even so, Tully could have found a better place to live. Why would he choose to be out here?”
“Thirty seconds more, and you’ll find out. Just around the next corner.”
The tunnel was no wider than Chan’s shoulders, and he had to bend far forward or go down on his hands and knees. The light came from wan yellow tubes, nailed one every twenty meters or so on the rough-cut walls or ceiling. He swore as the tunnel made a sharp turn and he failed to stoop quite low enough. His head banged on one of the lights.
“Welcome to Europa, low-rent district,” Deb’s voice said from around the turn. “Are we having fun yet?”
“This is no worse than parts of the Gallimaufries. The difference is, the Gallimaufries used to be the worst place in the solar system. Earth set the standard for lousy living. But since the quarantine, everywhere is getting more and more like the worst parts of Earth.”
There was a silence from ahead, then Deb’s cold voice. “You don’t stop pushing, do you? I know we need the quarantine to end. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have walked a single step with you. So get off my back, and be ready to say hello to Tully O’Toole.”
Chan squeezed his way along to where Deb was standing in front of a door about four feet high. In the gloom beyond it, Chan saw a steep descending stairway.
“Down there.” Deb pointed. “You, not me.”
Chan hesitated. He had the feeling that something awful was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. “Are you sure Tully will be there?”
“If he’s not, I don’t know where he is.”
The stairs were so steep, the only safe way to go down was to turn and hold the steps above as though descending a ladder. Chan began to go down, counting as he went. By the eighth step, a curious smell hit his nostrils. Suddenly he knew the nature of Deb’s unpleasant surprise. The aroma was quite unmistakable and dreadfully familiar. He paused, wanting to climb back up and run far away.
He couldn’t do that. For Tully O’Toole’s sake, for old times sake, for Chan’s own sake, he had to learn how bad it was. He continued down. As he reached the bottom he took a deep breath and turned the corner leading into a more brightly lit room.
They were on the floor, about forty of them lying on thin mattresses. Each facial expression was different, from joyful bliss to dark, haunted agony. Their dress ranged from expensive and new to old, worn-out rags. A few were fat, most were skeletally thin. All had in common a dead gray tone to the skin and lines of tiny purple-black dots on bare arms and legs: the stigmata of Paradox, the milky alkaloid to which everyone in the room was a slave.
Chan was appalled, but he had seen too many Paradox dens to be shocked by the condition of the occupants. He scanned the rows of mattresses, seeking a familiar face. He had almost given up, ready to tell Deb Bisson back at the top of the stairs that they had made a wasted trip, when a tattered wreck right at his feet raised a hand and croaked, “Mercy me, what do I see? Do my eyes scan Chan the man?”