“My sons, today is a happy day! For the first time since the expulsion of Anak and Gisenda from his fruitful bosom, your father turned his eyes toward you, his true sons. His empire is coming closer, and Zhan’s valley awaits you, laden with fruits. You only have to ask for them; you only have to step over the doorstep with his name on your lips and his seal on your foreheads. For you, great Zhan, have made the skies and the earth; you gave birth to Antyrans in your resemblance, from the moisture of your temples. You split the light from darkness and lifted the sky from earth. You gave juice to the acajaa stains and made all the living or lifeless things for our joy, your humble servants!”
The text troubled Omal, and he couldn’t escape the terrible feeling of déjà vu. “You split the light from darkness and lifted the sky from earth”—it was the myth of creation, even if slightly changed. He had heard it on other occasions… he was pretty sure about that. Just a coincidence? Or could it be, after all, a siamese world? The tales of a galactic civilization, destroyed or self-destroyed in a long-forgotten war, survived in the collective memory of different species spread in the web of space and time throughout the corners of the galaxy…
He didn’t dare to think of all the implications. If there was no coincidence, the discovery would have alarming consequences. If Grammia didn’t succeed with them, the kralls would have to turn everything upside down in the most unceremonious way possible. He might have to pressure Sirtam to forget about diplomacy when the time for violent actions came.
No matter how things turned out, one thing was certain: this world would give them some big surprises. Omal took Baila’s recording and pushed it inside the scanning slot of the Corbelian sphere to send it to Lacrilia—they had access to the Rigulian galactic encyclopedia and could check his suspicions. With a bit of luck, in a week or two, he’d get a detailed report about the myth of creation and its roots in the Federal worlds.
As for now… he had to relax. Hibernation was such a distant dream, a chimera running away from him, as intangible as the pressurized room where Bantara 21 was resting on Rigulia IX.
Flabbiness. Everything he wished for, all he dreamed of, was to succumb to the seductive flabbiness. It would be so simple… all he needed to do was forget to take his hormones once, and nature would follow its course. It would take hours and days, days of lying without any movement, days when the painfully pleasurable chills would flood him to the brim with endorphins… Then, thoroughly exhausted, he would fall prey to a well-deserved half-year-long sleep.
***
Several hours had passed since he met Ugo, during which time Gill had tried in vain to use the holophone. The holofluxes didn’t work, and the only connections he could dial were in the underground Ropolis. Unfortunately, he didn’t know any codes, and the holographic index had been carefully deleted. All he could do was wait for the architect to follow through on his threats. Of course, he’d have to defend himself, and then he’d fall again in the ocean of uncertainties he struggled so desperately to leave. He couldn’t make any prediction beyond the attack, except to imagine some cloudy, fancy scenarios with no connection to the muddy reality in which he was dragged against his will by the chief archivist Tadeoibiisi.
Moreover, the expected attack worried him a bit. Ugo didn’t seem to be a hasty fool—he surely saw something in the tunnel through the eyes of the metal licants. Therefore, even if it would be impossible for him to understand the nature of the bracelet’s control over space and the extent to which the distortion worked, he’d probably be cautious. Maybe cunning. Gill suspected that Ugo would want to test him, to provoke a crisis and observe his methods while he was fighting for his life.
But the time passed, and nothing happened—no one came to scan him and trigger his riposte. Soon, he’d have to make a decision: Escape through the skylight, or keep waiting for an attack that might never come? The second option would bring him closer to the moment when he’d have to abandon his tired body to the softness of the nest…
What about the old Antyran wandering in the virtual worlds, the realms of legends that attracted him like a magnet? It was a possibility, but he’d have to go into a trance to reach him.
The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that escape was the worst idea; he ran away from the initiates, but the Ropolitans would prove more formidable enemies. He couldn’t forget how they had repulsed Baila’s attack; a world of holograms and mirages populated with trance soldiers and metal licants wouldn’t give him much of a chance to hide. Therefore, he decided he’d meet the old Antyran to find out who the architects were and how to reach them. He’d stay connected only for a short time, and with a bit of luck, Ugo wouldn’t have time to do anything nasty while he was unconscious…
He reached for the seed box near the nest, hesitating. The drug, bixan, allegedly resulted in a strong dependency. The drug or the other world? He had no clue which of the two, but he saw with his very eyes the ones who forgot to disconnect… Gill had an overwhelming feeling that he was pinched by the tail to do it, that he was manipulated to enter the forbidden world. Had he been in Alixxor, he would have never done such a folly—even if he had lost his smell. But here was no Alixxor.
The box was oval, yellowish-brown in color. It didn’t have the standard shape and wasn’t carved from tekal wood to preserve the aromas over time, as the aromary tradition requested. Under normal circumstances, any Antyran would have been too offended to use it, but Gill couldn’t afford such trifles. He opened it and searched for the yellow seeds. There were plenty of them at the bottom; he grabbed one in his palm and smelled it. A pungent stench invaded his nostrils—bixan didn’t smell very pleasant.
After checking his fellow prisoner’s interface, he attached the suckers on his head spikes and immediately felt how they began to buzz warmly. He pressed the seed between his fingers until it snapped; a clear gel oozed onto his fingers. Slowly, he took his hand to his nostrils and inhaled deeply. A stinging pain invaded his lungs and left him without air. But then, the feeling of discomfort disappeared, and a surprisingly pleasant tingling ran through his veins in all directions, leaving a trail of deep relaxation behind—as if thousands of tiny invisible hands massaged him from the inside. For the first time since the madness began, he felt relaxed. Still, a bit dizzy. Dizzy and light as fluff…
He managed to coil sluggishly in the nest and plunged into a deep sleep.
Gill was sleeping so well after all the commotion of his arrival in the caverns that he didn’t notice the annoying scratches. Soon, however, he couldn’t ignore them anymore: something was walking shamelessly with its tiny feet on his recessive gills. He barely opened his eyelids, heavy as neutronium, and glimpsed about five adult licants fluttering their lazy wings to take off from him, leaving behind a web of sticky trails.70 Disgusted by the prospect of finding his head spikes messed with the same substance excreted by their tail glands, he touched them… but he found the interface. What the… Then he noticed his surroundings. The green meadow where he lay on his back was covered by a spectacular blue sky, with no trace of the purple misty bacteria.
Thoughts hardly came to his numbed kyi, but he gradually remembered everything. He smelled the bixan after he had connected the interface, and he fell asleep… Now, he woke up here. He was somewhat puzzled that the suckers were still attached to his spikes, but after all, why not? The cups didn’t lead anywhere—each had a small tail of about six inches, curved backward.
The meadow was on a gentle slope of a hill bordered on its sides by two deep, dark valleys framed by ravines; beyond them, other meadows dotted the undulating landscape. Unidentified brush laden with beautiful pink flowers covered the upper part of the hills. Right on the hilltops, clumps of large trees shadowed the grass with their opulent canopy.