“I have been monitoring the damage reports.” The beaked nose came pushing over Nenda’s left shoulder. Bloom was staring at the status flags. “Are we in a position to continue my mission?”
Nenda turned his head. No sign of fear or concern was visible on Bloom’s face. He was plenty tough, in his own way. My mission, eh? They would see about that.
“We can continue.” Louis nodded to the screen. “See that star? We’ll soon be in orbit around Genizee.”
“Excellent. Any sign of Darya Lang?”
Bloom was not so much tough, Louis decided, as protected from all outside worries by the strength of his own obsession.
“Not a hint. We beat her to it, or more likely she went someplace else.”
“Either is satisfactory.” Bloom considered for a moment. “The records I made during our entry to the Anfract remain intact, but I would prefer more tangible evidence to take back with us to Sentinel Gate. As one who knows this region well, do you have suggestions?”
No doubt in Bloom’s mind that they would get back. Nature — and now Louis Nenda — looked after drunks, idiots, babies, and Quintus Bloom.
“Certainly.” It was time to improvise. Louis had his own agenda. “The planet Genizee contained structures that could only have come from the Builders.” A perfectly true statement, even if those structures had been fast disappearing when Nenda and Atvar H’sial made their hasty departure. “So a landing on Genizee might serve a double purpose. First, it will allow you to obtain the evidence you need. And second, I can take a good look at the external damage to the ship.”
“Very well. Proceed.” Bloom was already leaving.
“One other thing.” Nenda’s call halted him at the door. “Genizee is the home of the Zardalu.”
“I have no interest in Zardalu.”
“Maybe not.” Louis throttled back his irritation. “But they’ll have plenty of interest in you — and in tearing you to bits. When we land, let me deal with ’em. I can talk to them.”
“Such was already my intention. I consider it part of your duties.”
That, and everything else that comes to your mind. Louis turned to monitor once more the conversation between Glenna Omar and Atvar H’sial. He cursed. Too late. The Cecropian had gone, and Glenna was relaxed on the divan, her face as unlined and innocent as a small child’s.
Louis stared at the scene, and felt dizziness and a surge of intense desire. His blood sugar must be very low. He would give anything right now for one of those sticky, sugary confections sitting on the low table next to Glenna.
Nenda had left Genizee, swearing never to make another landing there. Here was the landing he would never make. The Gravitas came wobbling down toward the familiar sandy shore. Zardalu were emerging from the sea and the tall, sandstone towers at the water’s edge, long before the ship made its touch-down.
Aware of the poor condition of the ship’s equipment, Nenda worried that they would plummet the final fifty meters and squash a batch of the welcoming committee. It wouldn’t help the subsequent conversation. Or maybe, knowing the Zardalu, it might help a great deal.
The Gravitas flopped in sideways, dropping like a wounded duck at the very edge of the beach. Zardalu slid out of the way at the last moment, and returned at once to form a crouching ring around the ship on land and in the water.
There was no point in putting off the critical moment. Nenda, with Atvar H’sial right behind him, opened the one working hatch on the side of the ship and stepped out onto the sand. He was aware of Glenna Omar and Quintus Bloom, curious and unafraid, standing behind him at the hatch. He was strangely calm himself. Maybe constant exposure to horrors was making him blasé. Unfortunately that was one very easy way to get yourself killed.
Louis beckoned to the biggest Zardalu. It lifted its monstrous body and slipped noiselessly forward like a gigantic blue ghost. Right in front of Nenda it subsided in a sprawl of thick tentacles.
“Just as we promised, we have returned.” The clicks and whistles Louis used were in the master form of the old Zardalu slave language, but that hardly mattered. What counted was going to be the reply. How had things been going here, in the months since he and Atvar H’sial left?
“We have dreamed of your return.”
In slave talk! Nenda waited, until the broad head bowed and a long tongue of royal purple stretched four feet along the beach. He placed his boot firmly on it for five seconds, easily long enough to satisfy the ritual requirement, and then stepped back. He resisted the urge to scuff the slime from his boot. What Bloom and Glenna Omar thought of all this nonsense was anyone’s guess. They certainly didn’t realize the possible danger.
“It is time for our other pledge to be fulfilled. We have proved that we are able to come and go from Genizee as we choose. Now it is time for us to prove that we are able to take you with us.”
The head of midnight-blue rose and turned, to scan the waiting circle. “We are ready. We await only your permission.”
Now for the tricky bit. “Not all can go at once. We will begin by taking with us a single individual, as a demonstration. After that we will organize for the departure of larger groups.”
There was a long, long silence, while all Nenda’s worries about growing too blasé slipped silently away.
“That will be satisfactory. If the Masters will wait for a few moments and permit a turning of the back.”
“It is permitted.”
The big Zardalu swiveled its body around without moving its tentacles. It made a short speech in a language that Nenda did not understand at all.
A very short speech. Surely those few clicks were not enough to explain what Nenda had said. But all the other Zardalu were backing away. Thirty meters. Fifty meters.
The Zardalu in front of Louis turned back to face him. “It is done. I am the chosen Zardalu, and I am ready to go at once. It will be desirable to move with speed, once we begin.”
“No point in waiting.” Louis turned, and was gesturing Atvar H’sial back into the hatch when the noise began. It came from everywhere in the ring of waiting Zardalu, a high-pitched buzz that rose rapidly in volume.
He took one look, and knew exactly what had happened. Zardalu never changed. The big one hadn’t explained anything at all to the rest. It had decided who was going, and just commanded the others to stand back — giving Louis, for a bet, as the source of the order.
The thought wasn’t complete before he was at the hatch. Atvar H’sial, even quicker on the uptake, was already through and had swept Quintus Bloom and Glenna Omar along in front of her. Louis took a swift look behind. The self-appointed Zardalu representative was at his heels, while a hundred furious others were gliding in hot pursuit.
Nothing ever went the way you planned! Louis threw himself through the hatch. It was anybody’s guess whether the big Zardalu would be able to squeeze in after him, but if that one could, so could others.
Louis didn’t wait to find out. He bee-lined for the controls and slapped in the lift-off sequence. The Gravitas started its rise, tilting far to the left. Nenda knew why. The big Zardalu was wedged halfway through the hatch on the side of the ship and was struggling to wriggle in farther. A dozen others had grabbed the tentacles that were still dangling outside. The ship was lifting with twenty tons of excess and unbalanced mass. But it was lifting. And the Zardalu in the hatch was flailing with one free tentacle at the hangers-on.
Louis watched, with no regret at all, as the first of the hanging Zardalu lost its grip, dropped a couple of hundred feet, and splattered on a line of jutting rocks that bordered the beach.