CHAPTER 8

Summertide minus twenty-six

The moment of death. A whole life flashing before your eyes.

Darya Lang heard the side-wind hit just as the wheels of the aircar touched down for the second time. She saw the right wing strike — felt the machine leave the runway — knew that the car was flipping onto its back. There was a scream of overstressed roof panels.

Suddenly dark earth was whizzing past, a foot above her head. Soggy mud sprayed and choked her. The light vanished, leaving her in total darkness.

As the harness cut savagely into her chest, her mind cleared with the pain. She felt cheated.

That was her whole life, supposedly rushing past her? If so, it has been a miserably poor one. All that she could think of was the Sentinel. How she would never understand it, never penetrate its ancient mystery, never learn what had happened to the Builders. All those light years of travel, to be squashed like a bug in the dirt of a lousy minor planet!

Like a bug. The thought of bugs made her feel vaguely guilty.

Why?

She remembered then, hanging upside down in her harness. Thinking was hard, but she had to do it. She was alive. That liquid dripping down her nose and into her eyes stung terribly, but it was too cold to be blood. But what about the other two, Atvar H’sial and J’merlia, in the passenger seats? Not bugs, she thought; in fact, less like insects than she was. Rational beings. Shame on you, Darya Lang!

Had she killed them, though, with her lousy piloting?

Darya craned her head around and tried to look behind her. There was something wrong with her neck. A shock of pure heat burned its way into her throat and her left shoulder even before she turned. She could see nothing.

“J’merlia?” No good calling for Atvar H’sial. Even if the Cecropian could hear, she could not reply. “J’merlia?”

No answer. But those were human voices outside the ship. Calling to her? No, to each other — hard to hear above the whistling wind.

“Can’t do it that way.” A man’s voice. “The top’s cracked open. If that strut goes, the weight will smash their skulls in.”

“They’re goners anyway.” A woman. “Look at the way they hit. They’re crushed flat. Want to wait for hoists?”

“No. I heard someone. Hold the light. I’m going inside.”

The light! Darya felt a new panic. The darkness before her was total, blacker than any midnight, black as the pyramid in the heart of the Sentinel. At that time of year Opal had continuous daylight, from Mandel or its companion, Amaranth. Why could she not see?

She tried and failed to blink her eyes: reached up her right hand to rub at them. Her left hand had vanished — there was no sensation from it, no response but shoulder pain when she tried to move it.

Rubbing just made her eyes sting worse. Still she could see nothing.

“God, what a mess.” The man again. There was the faintest glimmer in front of her, like torchlight seen through closed eyes. “Allie, there’s three of ’em in here — I think. Two of ’em are aliens, all wrapped round each other. There’s bugjuice everywhere. I don’t know what’s what, and I daren’t touch ’em. Send a distress call; see if you can find anybody near the port who knows some alien anatomy.”

There was a faint and unintelligible reply.

“Hell, I don’t know.” The voice was closer. “Nothing’s moving — they could all be dead. I can’t wait. They’re covered in black oil, all over. One good flame in here, they’ll be crisps.”

Distant chatter, diffuse: more than one person.

“Doesn’t matter.” The voice was right next to her. “Have to pull ’em out. Somebody get in here to help.”

The hands that took hold of Darya did not mean to be rough. But when they grabbed her shoulder and neck multiple galaxies of pain pinwheeled across the blackness in her eye sockets. She gave a scream, a full-throated howl that came out like a kitten’s miaow.

“Great!” The grip on her shifted and strengthened. “This one’s alive. Coming through. Catch hold.”

Darya was dragged on her face across a muddy tangle of roots and broken stalks of fern. A clod of slimy and evil-tasting moss crammed into her open mouth. She gagged painfully. As a protruding root dug deep into her broken collarbone it suddenly occurred to her: She did not need to stay awake for such indignity!

Darkness enveloped her. It was time to stop fighting; time to rest; time to escape into that soothing blackness.

It had taken Darya a day to learn, but at last she was sure: dialog between human and Cecropian was impossible without the aid of J’merlia or another Lo’tfian intermediary; but communication was feasible. And it could carry a good deal of meaning.

A Cecropian’s rigid exoskeleton made facial expression impossible in any human sense. However, body language was employed by both species. They merely had to discover each other’s movement codes.

For instance, when Atvar H’sial was confident that she knew the answer that Darya would give to a question, she would lean away a little. Often she also lifted one or both front legs. When she did not know the answer and was anxious to hear it, the delicate proboscis pleated and shortened — just a bit. And when she was truly excited — or worried; it was difficult to know the difference — by a comment or a question, the hairs and bristles on her long fanlike antennas would stand up straighter and a fraction bushier.

As they had done, strikingly, when Julius Graves had come on the scene.

Darya knew about the Council — everyone did — but she had been too preoccupied with her own interests to take much notice of it. And she was still vague about its functions, though she knew it involved ethical questions.

“But everyone is supposed to be vague, Professor Lang,” Graves had said. He gave her a smile which his enlarged, skeletal head turned into something positively menacing. It was not clear how long ago he had landed at Starside Port, but he had certainly chosen to pay her a visit at an inconvenient time. She and Atvar H’sial had held their preliminary discussions and were all set to get down to the nitty-gritty: who would do what, and why, and when?

“Everyone is vague, that is,” Graves went on, “except those whose actions make the Council necessary.”

Darya’s face was betraying her again, she was sure of it. What she was about to do with the Cecropian ought to be no business of the Council; there was nothing unethical about short-circuiting a bureaucracy in a good scientific cause, even if that cause had not been fully revealed to anyone on Opal. What else did Council members do?

But Graves was staring at her with those mad and misty blue eyes, and she was sure he must be reading guilt in hers.

If he were not, he surely could detect it in Atvar H’sial! The antennas stood out like long brushes, and even J’merlia was almost gibbering in his eagerness to get out the words.

“Later, esteemed Councilor, we will be most delighted to meet with you later. But at the moment, we have an urgent prior appointment.” Atvar H’sial went so far as to take Darya Lang’s hand in one jointed paw. As the Cecropian pulled her toward the door — to the outside, where it was pelting with rain! — Darya noticed for the first time that the paw’s lower pad was covered with black hairs, like tiny hooks. Darya could not have pulled away, even if she had been willing to make a scene in front of Julius Graves.

It was another vestigial remnant of a distant flying ancestor of Atvar H’sial, one who had perhaps needed to cling to trees and rocks.

Well, none of us sprang straight from the head of the gods, did we? she reflected. We all have bits and pieces left over by evolution. Darya glanced automatically at her own fingernails. They were filthy. It seemed she was already slipping into the disgusting ways of Opal and Quake.