Prathachulthorn frowned. For a moment he seemed to concentrate, as if a thread of her logic hung almost within reach. She felt his attention shimmer as he tried… but then it faded. He grimaced and spat again. “What a load of crap. Show me dead birds. That’s currency I can count. Pile them up to the level of this cage, little Miss Ambassador’s Daughter, and maybe, just maybe I’ll let you live when I finally break out of here.”
Athaclena shivered. She knew how futile it was to try to hold a man such as this prisoner. He should have been kept drugged. He should have been killed. But she could not bring herself to do either, or to further- prejudice the fate of the chims in her cabal by involving them in such crimes.
“Good day, major,” she said. And turned to go.
He did not shout as she left. In a way, the parsimonious use he made of his threats made those few seem all the more menacing and believable.
She took a hidden trail from the secret glade over a shoulder of the mountain, past warm springs that hissed and steamed uncertainly. At the ridge crest Athaclena had to draw in her tendrils to keep them from being battered in the autumn wind. Few clouds could be seen in the sky, but the air was hazy with dust blowing in from faraway deserts.
Hanging from a nearby branch she encountered one of the parachutelike kite and spore pod combinations blown up here from some field of plate ivy. The autumn dispersal was fully under way now. Fortunately, it had begun in earnest more than two days ago, before the Gubru announced their truce. That fact might turn out to be very important indeed.
The day felt odd, more so than any time since that night of terrible dreams, shortly before she climbed this mountain to wrestle with her parents’ fierce legacy.
Perhaps the Gubru are warming up their hyperwave shunt, again.
She had since learned that her fit of dreams on that fateful night had coincided with the invaders’ first test of their huge new facility. Their experiments had let surges of unallocated probability loose in all directions, and those who were psychically sensitive reported bizarre mixtures of deathly dread and hilarity.
That sort of mistake did not sound like.the normally meticulous Gubru, and it seemed to be validation of Fiben Bolger’s report, that the enemy had serious leadership problems.
Was that why tutsunucann collapsed so suddenly and violently that evening? Was all that loose energy responsible for the terrific power of her s’ustru’thoon rapport with Uthacal thing?
Could that and the subsequent tests of those great engines explain why the gorillas had begun behaving so very strangely?
All Athaclena knew for certain was that she felt nervous and afraid. Soon, she thought. It will all approach climax very soon.
She had descended halfway down the trail leading back to her tent when a pair of breathless chims emerged from the forest, hurrying^ uphill toward her. “Miss… miss …” one of them breathed. The other held his side, panting audibly.
Her initial reading of their panic triggered a brief hormone rush, which only subsided slightly when she traced their fear and kenned that it did not come from an enemy attack. Something else had them terrified half out of their wits.
“Miss Ath-Athaclena,” the first chim gasped. “You gotta come quick!”
“What is it, Petri? What’s happening?”
He swallowed. “It’s the Villas. We can’t control ’em anymore!”
So, she thought. For more than a week the gorillas’ low, atonal music had been driving their chim guardians to nervous fits. “What are they doing now?”
“They’re leaving!” the second messenger wailed plaintively.
She blinked. “What did’you say?”
Petri’s brown eyes were filled with bewilderment. “They’re leaving. They just got up and left! They’re headin’ for the Sind, an’ there doesn’t seem t’be anythin’ we can do to stop “em!”
82
Uthacalthing
Their progress toward the mountains had slackened considerably recently. More and more of Kault’s time seemed to be spent laboring over his makeshift instruments… and in arguing with his Tymbrimi companion.
How quickly things change, Uthacalthing thought. He had labored long and hard to bring Kault to this fever pitch of suspicion and excitement. And now he found himself recalling with fondness their earlier peaceful comradeship — the long, lazy days of gossip and reminiscences and common exile — however frustrating they had seemed at the time.
Of course that had been when Uthacalthing was_whole, when he had been able to look upon the world through Tymbrimi eyes, and the softening veil of whimsy.
Now? Uthacalthing knew that he had been considered dour and serious by others of his race. Now, though, they would surely think him crippled. Perhaps better off dead.
Too much was taken from me, he thought, while Kault muttered to himself in the corner of their shelter. Outside, heavy gusts blew through the veldt grasses. Moonlight brushed long hillcrests that resembled sluggish ocean waves, locked amid a rolling storm.
Did she actually have to tear away so much? he wondered, without really being able to feel or care very much.
Of course Athaclena had hardly known what she was doing, that night when she decided in her need to call in the pledge her parents had made. S’ustru’thoon was not something one trained for. A recourse so drastic and used so seldom could not be well described by science. And by its very nature, s’ustru’thoon was something one could do but once in one’s lifetime.
Anyway, now that he looked back upon it, Uthacalthing remembered something he hadn’t noticed at the time.
That evening had been one of great tension. Hours beforehand he had felt disturbing waves of energy, as if ghostly half-glyphs of immense power were throbbing against the mountains. Perhaps that explained why his daughter’s call had carried such strength. She had been tapping some outside source!
And he remembered something else. In the s’ustru’thoon storm Athaclena triggered, not everything torn from him had gone to her!
Strange that he had not thought of it until now. But Uthacalthing now seemed vaguely to recall some of his essences flying past her. But where they had actually been bound he could not even imagine. Perhaps to the source of those energies he had felt earlier. Perhaps…
Uthacalthing was too tired to come up with rational theories. Who knows? Maybe they were drawn in by Garth lings. It was a poor joke. Not even worth a tiny smile. And yet, the irony was encouraging. It showed that he had not lost absolutely everything.
“I am certain of it now, Uthacalthing.” Kault’s voice was low and confident as the Thennanin turned to face him. He put aside the instrument he had constructed out of odd items salvaged from the wrecked pinnace.
“Certain of what, colleague?”
“Certain that our separate suspicions are focusing in on a probable fact! See here. The data you showed me — your private spools regarding these ‘Garthling’ creatures — allowed me to tune my detector until I am now sure that I have found the resonance I was seeking.”
“You are?” Uthacalthing didn’t know what to make of this. He had never expected Kault to find actual confirmation of mythical beasts.
“I know what concerns you, my friend,” Kault said, raising one massive, leather-plated hand. “You fear that my experiments will draw down upon us the attention of the Cubru. But rest assured. I am using a very narrow band and am reflecting my beam off the nearer moon. It is very unlikely they would ever be able to localize the source of my puny little probe.”