“Do not struggle.” The voice, which came from a few feet away, was familiar. “It is useless, and this path is steep. If you were dropped now you would not survive the fall.”
“J’merlia! Where did you come from? Can you see?”
“A little. Like Zardalu, I am more sensitive than humans to dim light. But more than that, I am able to speak to the Zardalu who holds me. We are heading down a long stairway. In another half minute you also will be able to see.”
Half a minute! Darya had known shorter weeks. The Zardalu was moving on and on, in a glide so smooth that she hardly felt the motion. But J’merlia was right. A faint gleam was visible below, and it was becoming brighter. She could see the broad back of another Zardalu a few yards ahead, whenever it intercepted the light.
The tunnel made a final turn in the opposite direction. They emerged into a room shaped like a horizontal teardrop, widening out from their point of entry. The floor was smooth-streaked glass, the dark rays within it diverging from the entrance and then converging again at the far end to meet at a horizontal set of round apertures, like the irises and pupils of four huge eyes. In front of the openings stood a long, high table. And at that table, leaning back in a sprawl of pale-blue limbs, sat four giant Zardalu. As they approached, Darya caught the throat-clutching smell of ammonia and rancid grease.
Darya was lowered to the floor next to J’merlia. The two Zardalu who had brought them turned and went back to the entrance. They were noticeably smaller than the massive four at the table, and they lacked the decorated webbing around their midsections.
The Zardalu closest to Darya leaned forward. The slit mouth opened, and she heard a series of meaningless clicks and whistles. When she did not reply, a tentacle came snaking out across the table and poised menacingly just above her head. She cowered down. She could see plate-sized suckers, with their surround of tiny claws.
“They command you to speak to them, like the others,” J’merlia said. “It is not clear what that means. Wait a moment. I will seek to serve as spokesbeing for both of us.”
He crawled forward, pipestem body close to the ground and eight legs splayed wide. A long exchange of clucks and clicks and soft whistles began. After a minute the menacing tentacle withdrew from above Darya’s head.
“I have made it clear to them that you are not able to speak or to understand them,” J’merlia said. “I also took the liberty of describing myself to them as your slave. They therefore find it quite natural that I speak only after I have spoken to you, serving as no more than the vessel for the delivery of your words to them.”
“What are they saying, J’merlia? Why didn’t they kill us all at once?”
“One moment.” There was another lengthy exchange before J’merlia nodded and turned again to Darya. “I understand their words, if not their motives. They know that we are members of races powerful in the spiral arm, and they were impressed by the fact that our party was able to defeat them when we were on Serenity. They appear to be suggesting an alliance.”
“A deal! With Zardalu? That’s ridiculous.”
“Let me at least hear what they propose.” J’merlia went back into unintelligible conversation. After a few seconds the biggest of the Zardalu made a long speech, while J’merlia did no more than nod his head. At last there was silence, and he turned again to Darya.
“It is clear enough. Genizee is the homeworld of the Zardalu, and the fourteen survivors headed here after they were expelled from Serenity and found themselves back in the spiral arm. They began to breed back to strength, as we had feared. But now, for reasons that they cannot understand, they find themselves unable to leave this planet. They saw our seedship arrive, and they saw it take off again. They know that it has not been returned to the surface, while all their takeoff attempts have been returned. Therefore they are sure that we know the secret to coming and going from Genizee as we please.
“They say that if we will help them to leave Genizee, and give them free access to space here and beyond the Torvil Anfract, they will in return offer us something that they have never offered before: we will have status as their junior partners. Not their equals, but more than their slaves. And if we help them to reestablish dominion over all the worlds in this part of the spiral arm, we will share great power and wealth.”
“What if we say no?”
“Then there will be no chance of our survival.”
“So they want us to trust the word of the Zardalu? What happens if they change their minds, as soon as they know how to get away from Genizee?” Darya reminded herself that she had no idea what force had carried the Indulgence to the surface of the planet, or how to get away.
“As proof that they will not later renege on their part of the bargain, they will agree to a number of Zardalu hostages. Even of the infant forms.”
Darya recalled the behavior of the ravenous infant Zardalu. She shuddered.
“J’merlia, I will never, in any circumstances, do anything that might return the Zardalu to the spiral arm. Too many centuries of bloodshed and violence warn us against that. We will not help them, even if it means we all die horribly. Wait a minute!”
J’merlia was turning back to face the four Zardalu. Darya reached out and grabbed him. “Don’t tell them I said that, for heaven’s sake. Say, say…” What? What could she offer, what would stall them? “Say that I am very interested in this proposal, but first I require proof of their honorable intentions — if there’s words for such an idea in the Zardalu language. Tell them that I want E.C. Tally and Dulcimer brought here, safe and unharmed. And Captain Rebka and the rest of the other party, too, if they are still alive.”
J’merlia nodded and had another exchange with the Zardalu, this one much briefer. The biggest of Zardalu began threshing all its tentacles in a furious fashion, flailing at the tabletop with blows that would have pulped a human body.
“They refuse?” Darya asked.
“No.” J’merlia gestured at the Zardalu. “That is not anger, that is their own frustration. They would like to prove that they mean what they say, but they are unable to do so. Tally and Dulcimer will be no problem, they will bring them here. But the other group somehow escaped, into the deep interior of Genizee — and no Zardalu has any idea of their present location.”
Chapter Sixteen
Two kilometers beneath the surface, Genizee was an intriguing world of interlocking caves and corridors; of airspaces spanned by silver domes and paved with crystal; of ceiling-high columns that ran every which way but straight; of stardust floors, twinkling with firefly-light generators.
But five kilometers down, Genizee was more than intriguing. It was incomprehensible.
No longer was it necessary to walk or climb from place to place or floor to floor. Sheets of liquid light flashed horizontally and vertically, or curved away in long rose-red arches through tubes and tunnels of unknown termini. Kallik, touching the tip of a claw to one ruby light-stream, reported propulsive force and resistance to pressure. When she dared to sit on one sheet she was carried, quickly and smoothly, for a few hundred yards before she could climb off. She returned chirping with satisfaction — and immediately took a second ride. After her third try, everyone began to use the sheets of light instead of walking.
The usual laws for strength of materials had also been suspended inside Genizee. Papery, translucent tissues as thin and delicate as butterfly wings bore Atvar H’sial’s full weight without giving a millimeter, while in other places J’merlia’s puny mass pushed his thin legs deep into four-inch plates of solid metal. In one chamber the floor was covered by seven-sided tiles of a single shape that produced an aperiodic, never-repeating pattern. In another, webbed sheets of hexagonal filaments ran from ceiling to deep pools of still water. They continued on beneath the surface, but there the lattice became oddly twisted and the eye refused to follow its submarine progress.