The skyfish rolled to port and then back, with an alarming twist running down the great beast’s spine as well. Their compartment twisted as the skyfish fought to right itself. In this very low gravity zone, the air density fell off slowly and there was less acceleration to gain from venting hydrogen. The floor tilted as they accelerated downward at a steep angle. Memor staggered, then abruptly sat. The capsule where Tananareve was in immersion with someone—could it be Bemor was right, and she spoke now with the Ice Minds? Surely that was impossible. The mismatch of mind states was surely too much for that. Memor herself had encountered difficulties with the primate. The Ice Minds were scarcely reachable without considerable training, such as Bemor had endured.
The deck heaved sickeningly, but Memor forced herself to her feet. Bemor was gone on a task he said came from the Ice Minds, and Asenath lay whimpering in a slung rack. It was one of the water-clasping type, so she now floated in a sleeve, only her head visible. Her eyes wandered, and Memor judged Asenath would be paying no attention to Memor. Good.
Each step she took came freighted with fear. The deck rolled with flesh waves. The body around them groaned and sloshed. The hydrogen exhaust was roaring and she felt its dull tone through her legs. Memor had made herself put away the terrifying—and, she now realized, quite embarrassing—storm within her. Suppressed truths had overwhelmed her. She realized that her Undermind had sheltered much of the Bowl’s long history from her and she had never suspected. The Undermind somehow knew she could not bear facts that clashed with her deepest beliefs in the role, status, and glory of the Folk.
Then, in shocking moments that she never wanted to relive, all the tensions and layered lies of her entire lifetime came welling up. Spewing as from a volcano, it burst through her.
Now she made herself put all that aside. She sealed layers over her Undermind. She confronted a problem demanding all her ability now. Put a foot forward. Brace against the rumbling, twisted flooring. Take another step. Each demanded labor and focus, and it seemed to take a long while to reach the external panel of the capsule.
The harness fit her head, and the connections self-aligned. She sank into the inner discourse, but only as an observer. She could affect nothing inside.
She felt Tananareve’s mind as a skittering, quick bright thing. Few images, but thoughts of the Ice Minds played through the strata of the primate mind. They seemed to fragment and go into separate channels, streams fracturing as they flowed.
Memor struggled to make sense of the hot-eyed fervor of these flows. Revelation dawned along axes of the primate Undermind. New data flowed into Memor and she could flick back and forth between her own mental understory and the primate’s. These laced with the shadowy strangeness of linear minds. Hereditary neural equipment governed these divided minds—straight down the middle, a clear cleft. Such was common in the Bowl’s explored region of the galaxy.
She saw Tananareve’s mind taking in the Ice Minds’ conversation and hammering that on the twin forges of reason and intuition, with great speed. So the Ice Minds wished to enlist her! Astounding, but perhaps it was only to speak to that Captain Redwing. Still, Bemor was the proper pathway for such diplomacy.
The deck lurched. Memor barely kept her purchase. Shouts and cries echoed.
The conversations and images seemed to condense in Memor’s mind like a vapor forming a shape. The precise words shifted and changed as the translations moved restlessly. Memor had to cling to nuance, not precision. Something about Redwing the Captain and the jet, yes, and how much humans could help in dealing with the Glorians. A need to intervene between Redwing and—
A hard jerk knocked her over. Memor struggled up to her feet and grasped for the harness, which had come unfastened. She just got it positioned when another twisting roll came through the ship and Asenath collided with her. “We are down!” she cried. “Get out!”
“But the primate—”
“Bemor is in charge, and he says we should go out and seek the central shelter. Come!” Asenath turned and fled.
Memor hesitated. She wanted to know what the Ice Minds said. She started to settle in, restarting the harness configuration, when a voice bellowed at her, “Go! I will care for this.”
She turned, and joy flooded through her at the sight of Bemor. The ship trembled, and a great wheezing came rattling down through the corridor outside. She hurried away.
Within a few moments, Memor lost her footing in the dim light outside. She curled up and slammed to ground. Screams, shouts, crashes. The mountain’s firm rock snapped and cracked, heaved and buckled. The path to the shelter now had a great pit crossing it. Sound came from everywhere, and the ground seemed to be grinding against itself, sending gray dust plumes shooting up.
A black curtain boiled across the sky. Within its churn, flashes snapped like eyes in a great beast. Ozone stung the howling breeze. With it came rain.
Not rain—mud. Pellets of it, hard and dry on their skins, soft at their centers. They splatted down, rapping Memor’s skull. “From some body of water,” she said wonderingly, “thrown up by something hitting—”
She extended her long tongue and tasted the warm rain, like water from a bath, and—salt. The great sea was pelting even this high fortress mountain. Memor folded her feathers close and tight, a raincoat of sorts.
A pool of ink poured across the sky, layers of cloud sliding over each other as if liquid. The reassuring steady day had now turned to a dim night, one filled with sky fireworks far brighter now than the star and jet. Her view flashed in blue-white light and then vanished into the murk. “Bemor!” No answer. She got up and walked on legs like pillows through strobes of lightning.
The flashes showed ahead a new problem—a crevasse yawned. It was a split in the crowning rock slab itself, showing fresh sharp edges. She could barely glimpse the far side in the lightning flashes. Far away. Even in this low gravity, nothing could leap it, certainly none of the bulky Folk. It blocked their way to the station.
Memor looked around in anxious despair. Various staff and crew milled at the edge of this gap, looking desperate. She sniffed their acrid fears. Asenath was nowhere among them. Another blue-white flash allowed her to survey the gathering jam all along the broken path, jostling and shouting strident calls.
Memor saw a new problem. Where were the Sil? And the primates?
FORTY-THREE
Redwing paced the bridge and watched the approaching shapes, flitting close now among the roiling turbulent knots. Moments ticked by, and the bridge was silent. Beth was ready to focus their exhaust as much as the tunable scoop mag fields allowed. And now there was something new and strange as well.
Their hull resounded with a strange strumming symphony. The long notes were just at the edge of hearing but clear and distinct. Haunting low notes came like the beating of a giant heart, or of grand booming waves crashing with slow majesty upon a crystal beach, ceramic resonating instrument. Redwing felt the notes with his whole body, recalling a time when as a boy he stood in a cathedral and heard Bach on a massive pipe organ. The pipes sent resounding wavelengths longer than the human body. He did not so much hear notes as feel them as his body vibrated in sympathy. A feeling like being shaken by something invisible conveyed grandeur in a way beyond words.
Beth said, “Whatever’s outside—and I can’t see a thing on these screens, just plasma and magnetic signatures—is trying to say something.”
Karl said, “Their last attempt killed Clare.”
“Yes, a horrible way to die. I … I wonder how whatever is outside makes sounds?” Beth said. “Oh—Cap’n, there’s a dense plasma knot headed for us.”