“We have a choice,” Rebka went on. “Not much of one. We can go up, and be torn apart by the Zardalu. Or we can stay here, and starve to death. Or I suppose we could plow on through this cavern, and see if there’s another way up and out.” He was speaking softly, almost in a whisper, his head close to Louis Nenda’s.
“There must be.” The cool, polite voice came from behind them. “Another way out, I mean. Logically, there must be.”
Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda swung around in unison with the precision of figure skaters.
“Huh?” said Nenda. “What the hell—” He stopped in mid-oath.
Rebka said nothing, but he understood Nenda perfectly. “Huh?” and “What the hell—” meant “Hey! Lo’tfians don’t eavesdrop on other people’s private conversations.” They didn’t interrupt, either. And least of all did they stand up and walk away from their dominatrix when she was in the process of questioning them. And Nenda’s sudden pause meant also that he was worried about J’merlia. Whatever the Lo’tfian had been through on his way to join them, it had apparently produced in him a serious derangement, enough to throw him far from his usual patterns of behavior.
“Look at the way you came here,” J’merlia continued as though Nenda had not spoken. “Through a building by the seashore, and down a narrow shaft. And then look at the extent of these underground structures.” He swept a front limb around, taking in the whole giant cavern. “It is not reasonable to believe that all this is served by such mean access, or even that this chamber itself represents a final goal. You asked, Captain Rebka, if we should go up, or stay here, or move through this cavern. The logical answer to all your questions is, no. We should do none of those things. We should go down. We must go down. In that direction, if anywhere, lies our salvation.”
Rebka was ready for his own “Huh?” and “What the hell—” The voice was so clearly J’merlia’s, but the clarity and firmness of opinions were a side of the Lo’tfian that Hans, at least, had never seen. Was that what researchers meant when they said a Lo’tfian’s intellect was masked and shrouded by the presence of other thinking beings? Was this how J’merlia thought all the time, when he was on his own? If so, wasn’t it a crime to let people near him? And if it was true, how come J’merlia could think so clearly now, with others around him?
Rebka pushed his own questions aside. They made no practical difference, not at a time when they were lost, hungry, thirsty, and desperate. The idea expressed by J’merlia made so much sense that it did not matter how or where it had originated.
“If you have light,” J’merlia went on, “I will be more than happy to lead the way.”
Louis Nenda handed over the illumination disk without another word. J’merlia leaped across to the spiral stairway and started down without waiting for the others. Kallik was across, too, in a fraction of a second, but instead of following J’merlia she stood and waited as Atvar H’sial ferried first Louis Nenda and then Hans Rebka across the gap. As the Cecropian moved on down the spiral, Kallik hung behind to position herself last in the group.
“Master Nenda.” The whisper was just loud enough for the human to catch. “I am gravely concerned.”
“You think J’merlia’s got a few screws loose? Yeah, so do I. But he’s right about one thing — we oughta go down rather than up or sideways.”
“Sanity, or lack of it, is not my worry.” Kallik slowed her pace further, to put more space between her and J’merlia. “Master Nenda, my species served the Zardalu for countless generations before the Great Rising. Although my race memory carries no specific data, there is instinctive knowledge of Zardalu behavior ingrained deep within me. You experienced one element of that behavior when we were on Serenity: the Zardalu love to take hostages. They use them as bargaining chips, or they kill them as stern examples to others.”
Rebka had fallen behind, too, listening to the Hymenopt. “Don’t worry, Kallik. Even if the Zardalu get us, Julian Graves and the others won’t trade for us. For one good reason: I won’t let them.”
“That is not my concern.” Kallik sounded as though the idea that anyone would consider her worth trading for was ridiculous. “J’merlia’s behavior is so strange, I wonder if he was already captured by the Zardalu. And if he is now, after conditioning by them, simply carrying out their orders.”
Chapter Fourteen
According to Alliance physicians, Julian Graves could not exist. He was a statistical fluke, a one-in-a-billion accidental variation on a well-proved medical technique. In other words, there was nothing anyone could do to help him.
It had begun as a simple storage problem. Every councilor needed to know the history, biology, and psychology of each intelligent and potentially intelligent species in the spiral arm. But that data volume exceeded the capacity of any human memory, so when he was elected to the council, Julius Graves, as he had been called then, had been given a choice: he could accept an inorganic high-density memory implant, cumbersome and heavy enough that his head and neck would need a permanent brace, or he could allow the physicians to develop within him an interior mnemonic twin, a second pair of cerebral hemispheres grown from his own brain tissue and used solely for memory storage and recall. They would fit inside his skull, posterior to the cerebral cortex, with minimal cranial expansion. The first option was the preference of many Council members, especially those with exoskeletons. Julius Graves chose the second.
The procedure was standardized and not uncommon, though Julius Graves was warned that the initial interface with his interior mnemonic twin through an added corpus callosum was a delicate matter. He must avoid physical stimulants, and he would have to endure the difficult period of time when the interface was being developed. He had readily agreed to that.
What he had not expected — what no one had dreamed might happen — was that the interior mnemonic twin would then develop consciousness and self-awareness.
But it had happened. For fourteen months, Julius Graves had felt his sanity teetering on the brink, as the personality of Steven Graves developed and supplied its own thoughts to Julius in the form of memories — recollections by Julius of events that had never happened to him.
It had been touch and go, but at last the interface had steadied. The synthesis was complete. Both personalities had made their accommodation, until finally neither knew nor cared where a thought originated. Julius Graves and Steven Graves had fused, to become the single entity of Julian Graves.
Now it was hard even to remember those old problems. There had been no recent clash or confusion to suggest that in the bald and bulging skull there once resided two different people…
…until the Erebus entered the twisted geometry of the Torvil Anfract and flew on to orbit the shimmer of nested singularities that guarded the lost world of Genizee; and then the old problem had reemerged to shiver the mind of Julian Graves.
Conflicting thoughts warred within him. For every idea, there seemed to be another running in parallel.
Make Hans Rebka leader of the group who would enter the singularities, because he was a first-rate pilot and had a reputation as a troubleshooter. No. Make the chief of the party Louis Nenda, because with his augment he could communicate with humans, Cecropians, Lo’tfians, and Hymenopts, whereas Rebka could talk to Atvar H’sial only through an interpreter of pheromonal speech.
Send the seedship through the singularities — it was the most agile and versatile. No. Send the Indulgence, which was less nimble but far better armed.
Use Dulcimer as pilot — he was much better even than Hans Rebka. No. He had to stay on the Erebus to guarantee a passage out of the bewildering geometry of the Anfract. No. The whole point of the expedition was to locate Genizee and search for living Zardalu. No. If the expedition did not return to report their findings, there was no point to finding anything.