Dulcimer lolled back in his chair, prepared to be thoroughly skeptical and bored.
The Indulgence had negotiated the final annular singularity. They were inside, and Darya could see the planet of Genizee, surely no more than half-a-million kilometers away. She did a quick scan of the surface for the seedship beacon, whose signal should have been easily detected from this distance.
There was no sign of it. She was not worried. There was no chance that the beacon could have been destroyed, no matter how fast the atmospheric entry or how hard the impact with the surface. The beacon was meant to withstand temperatures of thousands of degrees, and decelerations of many hundreds of gravities.
The seedship must be on the other side of the planet, with its signal shielded by Genizee’s bulk. The planet was amazingly close. Darya decided that Dulcimer had done an outstanding job. Who had said that the Polypheme was only a good pilot when he was radiation-hot? Well, they were quite wrong.
She headed from the observation bubble of the Indulgence to the control room, intending to congratulate Dulcimer. He was sitting in the pilot’s chair, but his corkscrew body was coiled so tightly that he was no more than three feet long. His scanning eye was withdrawn, his master eye focused on infinity. E.C. Tally was sitting next to him.
“We’ve arrived, E.C. That planet outside is Genizee.” She bent to peer at Dulcimer. “What’s wrong with him? He hasn’t been soaking up hard radiation again, has he?”
“Not one photon.” Tally moved his shoulders in the accepted human gesture of puzzlement. “I have no idea what has happened to him. All we have done is talk.”
“Just talk?” Darya noticed that Tally had a neural cable attached to the back of his skull. “Are you sure?”
“Talk — and show a few visuals. Dulcimer told me of one of his numerous dangerous experiences. Nothing comparable has ever happened to me, but I in return explained our encounter with the Zardalu, back on Serenity. I fed some of my recollections into the display system of the Indulgence, though I chose to do so from the point of view of an uninvolved third party, rather than from my own perspective.”
“Oh, my lord. Louis Nenda warned us — Dulcimer is easily excited. Run it again, E.C. Let me see what you showed him.”
“Very little, really.”
The three-dimensional display in the center of the control room came alive. The chamber filled with a dozen hulking Zardalu, advancing on a small group of humans who were vainly trying to hold them off with flashburn weapons that did little more than sting them. In the center of the group, noticeably less nimble than the others, stood E.C. Tally. He hopped clumsily from side to side, then closed with one of the Zardalu to provide a maximum-intensity burn. He was too slow jumping clear. Four tentacled arms, as thick as human thighs, seized and lifted him.
“Tally! Stop it there.”
“I explained to Dulcimer,” E.C. Tally said defensively. “I told him that although I am sensitive to my body’s condition, I do not feel pain in any human or Polypheme sense. It is curious, but I have the impression that when I began to talk he did not really believe that we had encountered the Zardalu. Certainly his manner suggested skepticism. I think it was at this point that he became convinced.”
The display was still running. The Zardalu, filled with rage and bloodlust, had started to pull E.C. Tally apart. Both arms were plucked free, then the legs, one by one. Finally the bloody stump of the torso was hurled away, to smash against a wall. The top of Tally’s skull was ripped loose. It flew free and was cracked like an eggshell by a questing Zardalu tentacle.
“Tally, will you for God’s sake stop it!” Darya reached for the arm of the embodied computer, just as the display flickered and vanished.
“That is exactly where I did stop it.” Tally reached behind his head and unplugged the neural connect cable. “And when I looked again at Dulcimer, he was already in this condition. Is he unconscious?”
“He might as well be.” Darya moved her hand up and down in front of the Polypheme’s eye. It did not move. “He’s petrified.”
“But I do not understand it. Polyphemes thrive on danger. Dulcimer enjoys it — he told me so himself.”
“Well, he seems to have enjoyed more of it than he can stand.” Darya leaned down and grabbed the Polypheme by the tail. “Come on, E.C., give me a hand. We need him in working order if we’re going to orbit Genizee and locate Captain Rebka and his party.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“Take him down to the reactor. It’s the only thing that might bring him out of this in a hurry. We’ll let him have some of his favorite radiation.” Darya began to lift the Polypheme, then paused. “That’s very strange. Did Dulcimer program an approach orbit before you scared him half to death?”
“He did no programming of any kind. We came in through the singularities on autopilot.”
“Well, we’re in a capture orbit now. Look.” The display screen above the control board in front of Darya showed Genizee, much closer than when they had emerged from the innermost spherical singularity.
Tally shook his head. The embodied computer could do his own trajectory computations almost instantaneously. “That is not a capture orbit.”
“Are you sure? It certainly looks like one.”
“But it is not.” Tally released his hold on Dulcimer and straightened up. “With respect, Professor Lang, I suggest that there may be more urgent matters than providing Dulcimer with radiation. Or with anything else.” He nodded at the display of Genizee, growing fast on the screen. “What we are flying is not a capture orbit. It is an impact orbit. If we do not change our velocity vector, the Indulgence will intersect the surface of Genizee. Hard. In seventeen minutes.”
Chapter Twelve
Like most rational beings in the spiral arm given any opportunity to do so, J’merlia had read the description of his own species in the Universal Species Catalog (Subclass: Sapients). And like most rational beings, he had found his species’ entry most puzzling.
The physical description of an adult male Lo’tfian was not a matter of dispute. J’merlia could look at himself in a mirror, and agree with it point by point: pipestem body, eight articulated legs, lidless yellow compound eyes. Fine. No argument about that. Great gift for languages. No doubt about it. What he found mystifying was the description of male Lo’tfian mental processes: “Confronted by a Lo’tfian female, the reasoning ability of a male Lo’tfian apparently switches off. The same mechanism is believed to be at work to a lesser extent when a Lo’tfian male encounters Cecropians or other intelligences.”
Could it be true? J’merlia had felt no evidence of it — but if it was true, would he even know it? Was it possible that his own intelligence changed according to his company? When he was in the presence of Atvar H’sial, what could be more right and natural than that he should subdue his own thought processes and desires in favor of hers? She was his very own dominatrix! And had been, since he was first postlarval.
Yet what he could not deny was the change in his level of activity when he was left alone, without instructions from anyone. He became nervous and worried, his body moved in jerks, his thoughts jumped and skittered in a dozen random directions, his mind was ten times as active as comfort permitted.
Like now.
He was dead. He had to be dead. No one could fly smack into the middle of an unstructured singularity and live. And yet he couldn’t be dead. His mind was still working, chasing a hundred thoughts at once. Where was he, why was he, what had happened to the seedship? Would the others survive? Would they ever learn what had happened to him? How could any mind pursue so many thoughts in parallel? Could even a dead mind do that, operating in limbo?