Darya took a couple of steps backward—and was grasped firmly from behind.
Her heart froze in her chest, until she realized that those were human arms encircling her. Louis Nenda, pawing her again! She felt a little guilty at refusing to go to dinner with him, but didn’t the man ever learn? Terror changed to anger, and she spun around ready to give him the hardest slap he had ever felt.
Her hand was already raised and moving when she saw who was behind her.
“Hans!”
“Who else has hugging rights on you?” He was smiling.
“Hans, I had no idea that you were coming to Miranda Port. Where have you been? I’ve sent message after message for two months, and never had one word of answer.”
“None of them got to me. I wasn’t where I could be reached.” He was holding her at arm’s length. “Darya, you’re looking really good.”
“I wish I could say the same for you. Hans, what have you been doing to yourself? You look like hell.”
“If you think this is bad, you should have seen me a week ago. Darya, I didn’t get your messages because I couldn’t. I was in jail on Candela.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you about it later. Just now, I want to know why I’m at Upside Miranda Port. Being called here probably saved my life. Let’s get to the meeting room.”
“Hans, there’s a Zardalu in this corridor.” Darya stared ahead. “Or there was. Where did it go?”
“The only place it could possibly have gone—into the meeting chamber.” He was moving forward.
“Hans, slow down. I’m telling you, it’s a Zardalu.”
“All right, so it’s a Zardalu. I feel sure it’s sedated, or brain-dead, or some form of simulacrum. Otherwise nobody would let it loose.”
He had reached the entrance to the chamber, where he paused. Darya followed and moved cautiously to where she could see what was happening inside.
Her idea of getting to the meeting early had occurred to plenty of others. A fresh-faced, dark-haired human male whom she did not recognize was already seated where she wanted to be, right at the front. Behind him was the Cecropian, Atvar H’sial, flanked by the little Hymenopt, Kallik, and the Lo’tfian, J’merlia. And behind them, in the chamber’s biggest open space, stood Louis Nenda.
She owed him an apology, but this wasn’t the time for it. Because in front of Nenda, sprawling its great length along the floor, was the Zardalu. It was making a series of clicking and snorting sounds.
Nenda snorted right back at it. He said, “Yeah, yeah. Don’t gimme that,” and made his own set of clicks. After a few seconds of hesitation, a thick meter-long tongue of royal purple emerged from the Zardalu’s head.
Louis Nenda said, “I should think so. That’s a damn sight better.” He stepped forward and placed his right boot on the outstretched tongue.
Darya gasped in horror, expecting to see Nenda picked up in thigh-thick tentacles and dismembered. He heard the gasp, glanced her way, and nodded a greeting. “Morning. Archie here has been gettin’ above himself while he was down on Miranda. I had to use Zardalu slave lingo to remind him who’s boss an’ who brought him here in the first place.”
He lifted his foot from the Zardalu’s tongue. “Now, Archie, you get over to the back of the room. You’re too big and ugly to sit in front with the rest of us.” He produced another set of clicks, and the Zardalu rose, bowed its great head, and slithered away to the rear of the chamber.
Nenda turned back toward Darya and seemed to notice Hans Rebka for the first time. “I’d say that little and ugly ought to sit in the back, too.”
“Don’t let me stop you, then. Go there if you feel you ought to.” Rebka calmly made his way toward the front row of seats.
Louis Nenda growled and was heading for Rebka when Atvar H’sial placed her great body between them. She raised her forelimbs, one over Nenda’s head and another above Rebka, and hissed menacingly.
“All right, all right.” Nenda stepped around the Cecropian so that he could see Hans Rebka. “Just so you don’t get the wrong idea about why I’m layin’ off now, it’s because Atvar H’sial says that the meeting’s ready to start—she can smell Julian Graves in the corridor. If we try to fight she says she’ll hold us upside down an’ shake sense into us. She can do it, too. You don’t understand pheromone talk, but J’merlia will confirm her words if you have any doubts.”
“I’ll believe Atvar H’sial.” Rebka continued to the front row of seats, followed by Darya Lang. “As for you, we can take this up some other time.”
“The pleasure will be mine.” Nenda squeezed into the last place up front, next to Darya, just as Julian Graves entered the room.
If the councilor felt surprise at finding an audience already in place—it was well before the official start time of the meeting—he did not choose to reveal it. He nodded his bald, domed head at Hans Rebka, said, “I heard of your arrival. Good,” and turned to face the whole group.
“Since everyone is here, and since you all know each other, I’ll get down at once to business.”
Darya glanced past Hans Rebka at the dark-haired man on her left. The Zardalu at the back of the room—Archie, an incongruous name for such a giant beast—must be the one that Louis Nenda had dragged along, trussed and wriggling, when they all escaped from Labyrinth. But who was the strange human?
She decided not to ask. Julian Graves already blamed her for interrupting yesterday’s meeting.
The councilor went on, “Perhaps the composition of this group has allowed some of you to guess why we are assembled here today. But let me be specific.
“We, like everyone else, grew up with the knowledge that there were Builder artifacts scattered around the local arm. The artifacts had been present for millions of years, and we assumed that they would always be there. Some of us devoted a large part of our lives to studying the Builder artifacts and seeking to understand them.”
Darya felt it was safe to nod. She certainly fell into that category.
“However,” Julian Graves continued, “two years ago, an astonishing thing happened. Following the event known as Summertide, in the Dobelle system, the artifacts started to change. I have heard half a dozen proposed explanations as to the cause of those changes, but one fact cannot be denied: one by one, the artifacts vanished. We saw the appearance of a single new artifact, Labyrinth. And shortly after that, Labyrinth disappeared along with every other artifact. All of you were present during that climactic event. Since then, we have seen no signs of an artifact anywhere in our local arm of the galaxy. For the past two years, all has been quiet.”
Perfectly true, and well-known to any five-year-old. So why are we having this meeting? But Darya remained silent.
Graves said, “At least, we assumed that all was quiet. Then, two months ago, a ship carrying a Chism Polypheme arrived at Upside Miranda Port. The Polyphemes are a species rarely seen in our local arm, since their home world is somewhere in the Sag Arm. The Polyphemes are famously reluctant to give accurate information on its whereabouts.”
Louis Nenda, next to Darya, sniffed loudly. “Why don’t you tell it like it is, Councilor? Any Polypheme would rather lie than tell the truth. They’re the most crooked, unreliable, deceitful species in the galaxy. If you believe anything that the one who came here said, you’re a fool.”
“You may be right, although the Chism Polyphemes accord the doubtful honor of maximum duplicity to humans. However, in this case it was not necessary to take the Chism Polypheme’s word for anything, since it could speak not a word. The ship finished the journey on automatic pilot. The Polypheme was dead on arrival.”