The Loranth (Star Sojourner Book 1) (23 page)

Jack's eyes were half closed, his jaw slack. He fumbled with the jacket of his suit, trying to open it.

“Leave it alone, buddy.” I pushed off a wall, and came unexpectedly through the surface and into an air pocket within a domed vault. The muscles in my chest spasmed as I climbed a ledge. I gritted my teeth and pulled Jack up after me.

Things were worse than I'd thought. He remained flat on his back and I was on my hands and knees, feeling as though I were going to heave. There was a taste of salami in my burning throat and my stomach kept cramping. I cursed as I fumbled my light, dropped it and heard the sound of metal echo in this small tomb as it hit rock and sent reflections bouncing. I set up our remaining light. We removed masks and breathed in clammy air. The song still rang in my mind.

Gabriel's trumpet?

I took off Jack's sonar headgear. A muscle in his cheek twitched and his right hand kept spasming. An hour ago he'd been all right except for feeling hot. Kor didn't waste time with lingering diseases!

“I'm thirsty,” he said and wiped an arm across his brow. “Can you figure that?”

“At least it's no problem.” I used his concave sonar screen to scoop up water. This far away from Kor's den it would be pure. He drank, asked for more. “Tastes like medicine,” he commented.

Too bad it wasn't. I drank some. It had no taste. Jack's cheek was hot to my touch, even though his face was wet. We were the first beings to breathe the air in this pocket and I wondered what we were putting into it.

The Loranths continued their siren call while we rested and kept our thoughts to ourselves.

“What 'dya think that music's about?” he asked between strained breaths.

I shook my head, put a hand in the river and felt the cooling water part around my wrist. “I wish… “

He coughed. “What?”

“Nothing.”

It was too easy to compare the river to time, but I don't think I'd have minded death so much if only -

“Julie, we're doing the best we know how, remember?”

“It's not good enough.” If only I'd told Althea how I really felt about her and Lisa before it was too late. If only I hadn't locked myself in my own inner vault, more impregnable than this rocky chamber. If only I'd gone home. “You shouldn't have come with me,” I told Jack. “You should be home with Annie and the kids.”

“Well, I can't say I got any regrets.” He stared at the ceiling, which rippled with water reflections. “Now the whole mess is in God's hands.”

God's hands?
He really believed that, down where it counted. I wished I could. But my stomach felt tight and despair drank at my soul.

We had lost!

Maybe the whole human race had lost. Whatever else I said or felt or did, mankind had probably lost the evolutionary game and that was a nightmare that gouged a place for itself in my brain and wouldn't go away. “You think God might come up with a vaccine?”

“Always the scientist, huh, Julie?” He coughed again and pressed a hand to his chest. “Wonder what it's like in the kwaii state? Might be nice not to have a body.”

“Geth state,” I corrected. “Morth says there's nothing like it.” I felt dizzy and hot as I helped Jack sit up and put his headgear back on. “But first we'll let Kor try it out, right?” I adjusted my own headgear to relieve the pressure on my temples.

Jack leaned back against the wall while I unsheathed his knife, cut off his knife straps and used them to tie the stingler to his hand. “It's gonna be a close race,” he muttered.

I made three slits in the arm of his wet suit and sleeved his knife through them, then I put his free hand over it. “You feel that?”

His eyes remained closed.

“Jack!”

“What? What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong. That's where your knife is. You feel it?”

He nodded.

We fitted masks, slid into the water and activated leg braces.

It was easy to follow the song. I felt it intensify as we drew close to the source. It would've been hard not to follow it.

A victory ballad over Terrans? The water became salty and our suits' buoyancy systems compensated. Apparently we had bypassed the reservoir and were nearing the open sea. Visibility remained good, so we stayed with our lights. The walls of the tunnel ended abruptly and we were ejected into a vast underwater grotto where the current finally ceased.

Here the song rose to a crescendo inside my head, steel notes wounding brain cells. Was this raw sensitivity just another symptom of the disease? I shined my light down, felt vertigo and almost made a grab for the wall.

About fifteen fathoms below in crystal water, green stone Loranths reclined in frozen postures. Marble spires reached up like tentacles to touch the high ceiling. Limestone tiers and altars rimmed the hall in colossal steps, were bridged with dark whorls of draped netting. Squat pagoda structures bore death-grin niches where shadows darted when I threw light.

I almost swam into a dangling sword of polished shell hung from the ceiling, a chime I'd venture, to catch river current and transform it into vibrations along the lateral lines. Music, if one were Loranth. A transparent ruby globe drifted by. Within was a miniature scene of trees, moons and stars wrought in exquisite detail. And above the hall a magnificent gold pendant, a drowned sun hanging over this shrouded city.

I felt like an intruder, until I remembered why we were here. I held Jack by his shoulder straps as we descended, slowly, so his ears would clear, and shined the light on his face. He squinted and turned his head away. “Robbie,” he mumbled, lifted an arm and said something about a schooner. The weapon tied to his hand just dangled.

I can't remember ever feeling so alone in my life. And it had been a lonely life, I suddenly saw very clearly. I couldn't look at Jack's face, pale, remote, already wearing death, but I felt panic begin. Soon I'd be dragging a corpse. Soon after that I'd probably be one myself. How many times was this drama being played out right now in Cape Leone? Great Mind! On Earth itself?

I felt outrage at the thought of dying in this underwater Loranth sepulcher, and envied Jack his non-awareness. Suddenly I wanted solid land beneath my feet, a hot sun burning overhead. I hugged Jack close and swam to the bottom, wondering if his ears were adjusting to the increasing pressure, then almost laughed at the absurdity of the thought. My friend was dying and I was concerned with his ears being punctured. But I needed ground beneath me.

The pain in my chest sharpened to a knife edge and spread to my ribs as I settled on the bottom. Breathing was painful and my muscles burned as though I'd spent the day breaking rocks with a pick axe. It was hard to think with the headache and that incessant slug muzak. I ignored a desire to purge our suits, curl beside my friend and let it all fade away.

Jack spasmed as though hit by electricity. “I'll make it back!” He gasped and tried to swim. I held him. “I Promise, Kit!”

“It's all right, Jack. It's OK.”

And still the Loranths sang.

Movement at the edge of my light. I swung the beam and unholstered the stingler. Caged fish turned toward the light, swam to the bars of their aerie and stared.
The food supply,
I thought. I played the light across stone reptilian hunters, then approached a Loranth statue. Its neckless head was thrust forward. Its body poised in a graceful arch ending in fanned, ribbed fins. It seemed to be contemplating the long lower jawbone it held in one stubby hand. There was writing on the pedestal, and beautiful raised designs. But then, in some of man's fiercer periods, aggressors had composed lovely marching songs while they attempted to wipe out entire races, to a tune, so to speak.

My light touched a statue which sent a hard edge of rage through me. A Terran, kneeling, head bowed, offered a dead snuffler to a waiting Loranth. The Terran was male, naked, accurate. I trembled with more than one kind of Loranth sickness as I pressed the firing stud and blew off the slug's head, then returned the rest of him to dust.

I demolished the Terran, the prey offering. It felt good, so I attacked other things. Stone exploded. The sound was muffled in water. Limestone crumbled, bounced, drifted to the floor. One by one the Loranths came off their pedestals in slow motion, until only dismembered chunks of their anatomy littered the floor. I hoped this museum was their legacy of ages, the sum total of their Michelangelos, da Vincis, McGarretts, priceless and irreplaceable.

I raked the ceiling and their Sun God did a slow sunset in a great golden puzzle there upon the stone floor. Finally I returned to Jack, avoided shining the light on his face, afraid to look into his eyes. If his eyes were open, staring, I think I would have gone slightly insane.

A wail in my mind, above the singing.

Oh, dispersal, dispersal! This can no be. Great Mind! I can no see wha I am looking. No! This projecting you illusion ta me, Jewels Terran. Say et just illusion!

“You like it, Morth? It's as real as any art. I call it Guernica II. Where's Kor? Is that fucking slug still alive? I want him to see this.”

How could yo Krae drak! How could… Worked I na hard tai your peoples? Krae, Krae,
he wailed.
All Terrans drensh Krae. Drensh n'muc.

Somehow I wasn't touched. “When you're through swearing, bring Kor here. Tell him -“ I coughed and pressed a hand to my chest. There was a slow fire inside me. “Tell him I'm ready to finish what he started.” I tried taking shallow breaths to ease the pain. The suit felt suffocatingly hot. I wanted to unseal it and rip off that damned headgear which kept my temples throbbing.

Oh, Kor je right truepath. All Terrans n'muc! I will ta Carrier forever.

“Is Kor still alive?”

Live yes.

“Then bring him here now, Morth, if he wants revenge.”

Revenge? Break I my Oneness fo Terran brother. Thris Binding call. I tai Terrans, yo, darksheller!

I felt a muscle in my arm spasm.

Oh, brens hatred Terrans, brens! So beauty here was. So joy ta lifebinds all.

“So, I've destroyed your legacy? The truth and beauty of your heritage?”

Yesh. N'muc! Those words.

“It was all a lie anyway.”

Darkpath! Terrans blackpath. No brother destroyer!

“Go find yourself a body, Morth, I'll show you Terran destructiveness.”

Oh, what tell I now Sarr Kris N'? Tai desolate ta Carrier, ta Carrier.

“Tell him to stay out of my way when I find Kor.”

Sye Kor brother crenish you best, Terran.

I felt his presence drift away.

How could you? Ostrich? I've ostrich now mine own kin.

“Go fetch Kor, goddammit.”

But Morth was gone. “That's ostracized, you slime-bellied barbarian mudsucker.” I got an arm around Jack's chest and had to turn on my leg braces to swim. “Come on, buddy. Let's go kill us a Loranth.”

I found the passageway by the current running through it, low in a wall opposite the river entrance. I went into it with Jack's limp form, and emerged in a great gathering of the Lords of Syl'Tyrria.

The singing trailed off. Ripples of silence spread outward through the hall, which was larger than the first, its curved walls fading to darkness at the edge of strange glowing sacks of light. An amphitheater holding thousands. They flashed by in my light, silver, gray, charcoal, surrounding me and Jack. It was like swimming among a vast community of whales.

Their mind-pulse swarmed inside me, but the pure hatred of one mental link drew me like the pull of a black hole. The fury it sent could have energized storms. I clipped the light to my belt, lowered my sonar screen and slid the stingler from its holster. I'd provide the lightning.

The screen's distance grids were filled with overlapping contours of Loranth forms as I got a grip on Jack's shoulder straps and started forward against the pain in my chest and joints. The screen's perimeters showed side and back views. More slugs. Yet none mindlinked with me now and none even brushed against us. Instead, they moved aside as I homed in on Kor. They opened a path that burned with our mutual hatred. Morth must have reported the demise of their legacy.

Welcome, Jules.

I stopped, shocked, as a black Loranth swam into my path.

I am Sarr Kris N' Morth T, and you are the Terran emissary Jules. Welcome.

I had so little time! Was he trying to stall me while the fever ate me alive? If the quivering muscles in my arm spasmed, I might not be able to aim the stingler for that one last shot.

“There are no emissaries from dead races.” I raised the stingler. “There's only vengeance for all my people.” I wanted to kill the Monarch, too, leave the ship without its captain. I cared nothing for his life or mine. But I wanted Sye Kor even more. When I tried to swim around Kris N', others shouldered me back.

Sarr Kris N', the museum,
I heard Morth cry inside my head as he entered the hall.
It's ruined, Sarr. The Terran -

I know, Sye Morth,
Kris N' sent.
Be still.

They were speaking Loranth, I realized. Yet I understood, not the language, but the thoughts in their minds behind the forming of words. What a shame that so close to death my tel powers were increasing.

The Terran has desecrated it, Sarr,
Morth sent.
All the magnificent works of our kin for so many Turnings. Even the head of Great Mind! Oh. I was wrong to believe in these savages. Will,
will
you banish me, my Monarch?

Sye Morth,
the Monarch sent,
you were not wrong. But if you don't silence your mind, you may wish I had banished you.

The museum
. A whispered image from one of the Loranths. I felt it reverberate through other minds.

No, not the museum! It couldn't be in ruins,
another Loranth sent.

I chuckled as disbelief and denial grew to a sense of horror, like a wave surging through me. “They're not happy about our cultural exchange program, Jack.” I laughed.

Some of the nearer Loranths tightened their swimming circle around us.

My kin, listen to me,
Kris N' sent.
The museum is only stone. But we are questing the very future of our race. Our artists and teachers can restore the works. But who can restore the Oneness if we break it now?