Rebka was shocked, too. Not with concern for Kallik — he knew the Hymenopt’s physical resilience and regeneration power. But for one second, as J’merlia leaped for the bright column, Rebka had thought that the pillar must be part of a Builder transportation system. Now Kallik, nursing her partial limb, banished any such idea. Louis Nenda was already crouched on the ground next to her, helping to cover the cauterized wound with a piece ripped off his own shirt. He was clucking and whistling to Kallik as he worked.
“I shoulda known.” He straightened. “I should’ve realized somethin’ was up when we came back an’ saw J’merlia talkin’ a blue streak. Kallik says he was tellin’ her a whole bunch of twists an’ turns an’ corridors, a route up through the tunnels, an’ he wouldn’t say where he got it. She figures he must have learned it before, when he was with World-Keeper or even earlier. She says she’s all right, she’ll be good as new in a few days — but what now? J’merlia said before he killed himself that World-Keeper wouldn’t be comin’ back here. If that’s right, we’re on our own. So what do we do?”
It was phrased as a question, but Hans Rebka knew Nenda too well to treat it as one. The Karelian might be a crook, but he was as tough and smart as they came. He knew they had no options. There was nothing down here humans could eat. If World-Keeper was not coming back, they had to try for the surface.
“You remember everything that J’merlia said to you?” At Kallik’s nod, Rebka did not hesitate. “Okay. As soon as you can walk, lead the way. We’re going — up.”
Kallik raised herself at once onto her remaining seven legs.
“To the surface,” Nenda said. He laughed. “Zardalu an’ all, eh? Time to get tough.”
Hans Rebka nodded. He fell in behind the Hymenopt as she stood up and started for the exit to the great square room with its flaring funeral pyre. Louis Nenda was behind him. Last of all came Atvar H’sial. Her wing cases drooped, and her proboscis was tucked tight into its chin pleat. She did not speak to Hans Rebka — she could not — but he had the conviction that she was, in her own strange way, mourning the passage of J’merlia, her devoted follower and sometime slave.
Going up, perhaps; but it was not obvious. Kallik led them down, through rooms connected by massive doors that slid closed behind them and sealed with a clunk of finality. Rebka hung back and tried one after Atvar H’sial had scrambled through. He could not budge it. He could not even see the line of the seal. Wherever this route led them, there would be no going back. He hurried after the others. After ten minutes they came to another column of blue plasma, a flow of liquid light that ran vertically away into the darkness. Kallik pointed to it. “We must ride that. Upwards. To its end.”
To whose end? Rebka, remembering J’merlia’s fate, was hesitant. But he felt no radiated heat from the flaming pillar, and Louis Nenda was already moving forward.
“Git away, Kallik,” he muttered. “Somebody else’s turn.”
He fumbled a pen from his pocket, reached out at arm’s length, and extended it carefully to touch the surface of the column. The pen was at once snatched out of his hand. It shot upward, so fast that the eye was not sure what it had seen.
“Lotsa drag,” Nenda said. “Don’t feel hot, though.” This time he touched the blue pillar with his finger, and his whole arm was jerked upward. He pulled his finger back and stuck the tip in his mouth. “ ‘Sall right. Not hot — just a big tug. I’ll tell you one thing, though, it’s all or nothin’. No way you’re gonna ease yourself into that. You’d get pulled in half.”
He turned, but before he could move, Kallik was past him. One leap took her into the heart of the blue pillar, and she was gone. Atvar H’sial followed, her wing cases tight to her body to keep them within the width of the column of light.
Louis Nenda moved forward, but paused on the brink. “How many gravities you think that thing pulls? Acceleration kills as good as fire.”
“No idea.” Rebka moved to stand next to him. “I guess we’re going to find out, though. Or stay here till we die.” He gestured to the column, palm up. “After you.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” And Nenda was gone, swallowed up in a flash of blue.
Rebka took a last look around — was this his last sight of the deep interior of Genizee? his last sight of anything? — and jumped forward. There was a moment of dislocation, too brief and alien to be called pain, and then he was standing on a flat surface. He swayed, struggling to hold his balance. He was in total darkness.
He reached out, groping all around him, and felt nothing.
“Anyone there?”
“We’re all here,” said Louis Nenda’s voice.
“Where’s here? Can you see?”
“Not a thing. Black as a politician’s heart. But At’s echolocation’s workin’ fine. She says we’re outside. On the surface.”
As they spoke, Hans Rebka was revising his own first impression. The brilliance of the light column as he entered it had overloaded his retinas, but now they were slowly regaining their sensitivity. He looked straight up and saw the first flicker of light, a faded, shimmering pink and ghostly electric blue.
“Give it a minute,” he said to Nenda. “And look up. I’m getting a glimmer from there. If it’s the surface, it has to be night. All we’ll see is the aurora of the nested singularities.”
“Good enough. I’m gettin’ it, too. At can’t detect that, ’cause it’s way outside the atmosphere. But she can see our surroundings. She says don’t move, or else step real careful. There’s rocks an’ rubble an’ all that crap, easy to break a leg or three.”
Rebka’s eyes were still adjusting, but he was seeing about as much as he was likely to see. And it was not enough. The faint glow of the singularities revealed little of the ground at his feet, just sufficient to be sure that there was no sign of the blue pillar that had carried them here. Like the doors, it had closed behind them. There would be no going back. And Rebka felt oddly isolated. Atvar H’sial could see as well by night as by day, and Kallik also had eyes far more sensitive than a human’s. Both aliens could sense their environment and talk of it in their own languages to Louis Nenda. The Karelian understood both Cecropian and Hymenopt speech. If they choose, the three of them could leave Rebka out of the conversations completely.
It was ironic. The first time Hans Rebka had seen Nenda’s augment for Cecropian speech, he had been revolted by the ugly pits and black molelike nodules on the other man’s chest. Now he would not mind having one himself.
“Any sign of Zardalu?” he said.
“At says she can’t see ’em. But she can smell ’em. They’re somewhere around, not more than a mile or two from here.”
“If only we knew where here is.”
At says “hold tight. She’s climbin’ a big rock, takin’ a peek all round. Kallik’s goin’ up behind her.”
Rebka strained his eyes into the darkness. No sign of Atvar H’sial or of Kallik, although he could hear the muted click of unpadded claws on hard rock. It added to the soft rustle of wind through dry vegetation and something like a distant, low-pitched murmur, oddly familiar, that came from Rebka’s right. Both sounds were obliterated by a sudden grunt from Louis Nenda.
“We made it. At says we’re right near where we landed — she can see the green moss an’ shoreline, right down to the water.”