“The trouble I spoke of. You’ll learn when you go down.” His voice is grave again.
Exasperated, she can only wish that they were in the wind, not in this eddy. If she could move straight upwind of him, that would convey! I’d do it, too, she thinks. But here there is nothing to do but say it.
“Giadoc.” Her aura comes to formal focus, compelling his attention. “I have lived and had valuable experience, don’t you think? It seems to me I am entitled to a second child. An advantaged egg,” she signs explicitly. “I thought—dearest-Giadoc, I have been thinking so much of you. Do you remember us, how beautiful it was?”
“Dearest-Tivonel!” Another wave of emotion sweeps him, his field is intense. But still he does not polarize.
Stunned by his rejection, she flashes at him, “How you’ve changed! How unFatherly you are! So I don’t please you, now.” She turns to go.
“Tivonel, Tivonel!” His tone is so wild and sad it stops her. “Yes,” he says more quietly, “I have changed, I know. It is the effect of outreach, of touching alien lives. But there is more than that. Dearest-Tivonel, listen. I cannot bring a child into this world now.” His tone is white, solemn. “You will learn it for yourself. We are all about to die soon.”
“Die?” Astounded, she opens her field in receptive-mode. But he only signs verbally, “When you understand what has been observed you’ll realize. Our world, Tyree, is about to end.”
“You mean, like the time of the great explosion? But that’s a joke!” Angrily she lets her mantle glitter sarcasm. Everyone knows the old stories of how the end of Deep was falsely foretold. “We’re safe now, you know the forces of the Abyss are far away.”
“This isn’t from the Abyss. Destruction is coming from beyond the sky.”
“You mean another fireball? But—”
“Worse, much worse. Didn’t you listen to any of the news from Near Pole before you left?”
“Oh, something about dead worlds. Agony hits her. Pain! What hideous pain! A searing life-grief is ripping through her field, feeding back anguish, numbing her senses.
Barely able to hold herself in the wind, she contracts her mind desperately, trying to escape. It’s a blast on the life-bands, like a million-fold amplification of the tiny death-cries of the Wild. But so strong, unbearable. With shame she realizes she’s transmitting waves of personal suffering as the shocking pangs sweep through her. She struggles to hold herself null, but she can’t. The torment is building toward some lethal culmination—
Suddenly it slackens. It takes her a moment to understand that Giadoc is shielding her. He has thrown a Father-field around her, holding the terrible signals off as if she was a child.
“Hold on, it will pass.” He transmits courage. Grateful and ashamed, she reorders herself within his sheltering field. The pain is still quite severe, it must be horrible for him. She finds she has let herself merge with him like a baby, and tries tactfully to withdraw. As she does so she feels strange new emotions in herself; he must have let her touch him deeply, an unheard-of intimacy among adults.
Humbly but proudly she detaches herself. The hurt is less now.
“No more need.” She signals intense-thanks.
“It is passing. Be careful, dear-Tivonel.” Slowly he withdraws protection. The pain is still there, but fading, passing from her nerves. They find they have become entangled in a plant-thicket and right themselves.
“What was it, Giadoc? What hurt so?”
“The death-cry of a world,” he tells her solemnly. “The death-cry of a whole world of people like ourselves.”
The deep sadness in his tone affects her; she understands now.
“Here at the Poles we receive them very strongly. Near Pole has been hit by them all this past year, the life-bands there are torn with these cries. World after world is being killed. Some die slowly, some very fast.”
She is still disoriented by horror and wonder. “But they’re so far away.”
“The deaths are coming closer to Tyree all the time, Tivonel. Near Pole says there are now only five living worlds between us and the destroyed zone.”
She tries to grasp it, to recall her lessons. “The Sounds are so crowded above Near Pole, aren’t they? Are they colliding, like people in a storm?”
“No. It’s not natural.” He pauses, gravely expanding his field.
“Something out there is killing worlds. Deliberately murdering them. We don’t know why. Perhaps they are eating them.”
“How hideous… But—how can you know?”
“We have touched them,” he signs, his words tinged with deep green dread. “We have touched the killers. They are alive. A terrible, incomprehensible form of life between the worlds.”
At his words, she finds in herself a fragment of his memory: a terrifying huge dark sentience, unreachable and murderous. That—approaching their own dear Tyree? Her mantel turns pale.
“And one of the beings, whatever they are, has passed this way alone. It is out beyond Far Pole now, destroying. Undoubtedly that was what we felt. It may be preparing to destroy us.”
“Can’t you turn its mind, the way we do animals?”
“No. Iro tried and was injured by the mere contact. It’s inconceivably alien, like touching death.” With an effort, he changes his tone to the gold of affectionate-converse. “Now you understand, dear-Tivonel. I must go back to our work. A committee from Deep is coming up to discuss the situation.”
“Yes.” She signs reverent-appreciation. But then her energetic spirit breaks out in protest. How can she leave him now? How can she go back and occupy herself with some meaningless activity while all is in danger?
“Giadoc! I want to stay here and help you. I’m strong and hardy, I can hunt for you and keep your Hearers supplied. Please, may I stay?”
His great mind-field eddies curiously toward her. “Are you serious, Tivonel? I’d like nothing better than to have your bright spirit near me. Arid it’s true we don’t have the food we need. But this is dangerous and it will go on. To the death, perhaps.”
“I undersatnd,” she signs stubbornly. “But I proved on the mission that I can stand boredom and persevere, even if I’m a female. The Fathers said so. I was useful.”
“That’s true.”
“Please, Giadoc. I feel—I feel very strongly about you. If there’s danger I want to be with you.”
His mantle has taken on deep, melodious ringing hues, his field is intense. She has never thought him so beautiful. Suddenly he flares out, “How I wish we had met again in better times! Yes, dearest-Tivonel, I remember us. Even if I’ve fallen in love with the strangeness of the sky, I remember us. Perhaps I can show you—” He falls silent, and adds quietly, “Yes, then. I’m sure Lomax, our chief, will agree. But—
She is deeply happy. “But what, Giadoc?”
“I fear that what you experience here will dim your brightness forever.”
Chapter 6
Thursday morning means the Military Air Transport terminal, a scruffy extension of the National Airport warren. It reminds Doctor Daniel Dann of a small-town airport. Crowded, not many uniforms visible, the air-conditioning already beginning to fail.
He makes his way around a party escorting a famous senator—much shorter than his photos—and gets caught among five plump women gretting a saluki dog. Beyond them is Lieutenant Kendall Kirk’s yellow hair.
“Ah, there you are, Dan.” Noah Catledge bustles up. “Two to go. Good morning, Winona .”
Winona turns out to be the Housewife, in a turquoise knit pantsuit. “This is so exciting!” She giggles up at him.