The Namura Stone (40 page)

“You have nine sibling travelers?” Six was surprised.

“Not any longer. Five were terminated by the council when they found no signs of life in their areas. Two were terminated for disobedient thoughts. One was caught in an explosion of a supernova, and the last one was too close to a gamma ray burst. He was fried by the radiation.” The carrysack shifted again. “Which left only me.” There was a pause. “And you know what happened to me.”

Six gave a frown. “Why didn’t you tell us all this before?”

“You never asked me.”

Ledin shrugged his shoulders. “So now we are going to wake your … your ancestor up? What did you call him? Exemphendiss?”

“That’s right. Arcan wants to negotiate with Dessia, but he needs an interpreter. I could do that, of course, but he also thinks we need a representative who can be here all the time, somebody who can monitor the Dessites mentally all day every day, and who can contact us whenever necessary, in case the Dessites try to subvert any agreement. We don’t know yet if they can be trusted to keep their word. It will all take time.” The visitor spun excitedly. “That is where I come in. Since Exemphendiss is – or was – part of me, we will be able to communicate instantly with each other wherever we are, yet he is a Dessite himself, so can monitor all of their thoughts. Arcan says that because he was the original proponent of birth control, and because of his link to me, Exemphendiss is the only Dessite he is prepared to trust, for the time being.”

“So we are on a diplomatic mission?” asked Ledin, testing the sharpness of his sword, as Six did the same with his kris. Both of them ignored the visitor’s sharp flare of incredulity at the idea of Kwaidians being involved in diplomacy.

Arcan shimmered. “Only if they let us be diplomatic. If they refuse, we might have to continue this war. I am not going to let them cut me up into little pieces and use me as a cheap form of transport; but yes, we are hoping to be able to reach a pacific solution. Setting up a way of communication is the first step. I think Exemphendiss is our only chance of that. Anything else would be too risky.”

“Then, lead on! We are ready.” Six picked up the carrysack, and slung it over his shoulder, ignoring the grieved comments from inside. “Let’s see how many Dessites we can defreeze, shall we?”

Arcan glittered. “The sooner you carry out your mission of rescue, the sooner I can get out of this tank. I dislike being shut in here. It brings back too many dark memories.”

Six nodded. He had been reliving the final few moments of the last battle on this floating island too. He had watched Diva’s bubble being carried away from him in the orthogel time after time after time while Ledin had been sleeping. And in a strange way, it didn’t matter that Diva was still alive, could still speak to him, because the part of her which had died back there was irreplaceable. He still mourned one part of her, although he was pleased she had become a morphic. It was hard. Hard to forget her quicksilver temperament, her mercurial spirits, the way she fought in combat, the way she had held a sword, the—

Six blinked. Ledin was staring at him, and he realized that Arcan had fallen silent, too.

“I … I am sorry. I was … daydreaming.”

“Please don’t. We are on Dessia, remember?” Arcan’s tone was chilly.

“Yes. It won’t happen again.” Six looked down. Ledin gave him a small sympathetic punch on the arm. He knew very well who Six had been thinking about. He missed her too.

A cross little voice came out of the carrysack. “If you are all quite ready, could we get on with it? If we don’t go soon, I might melt through the bottom of this contraption you have put me in.”

Six sighed.

THE BUBBLE LANDED right in the centre of the huge north-south chamber of one of the cryovaults on the Island of the Preborn, and Ledin and Six immediately separated, one moving to each side of the passageway in the centre of the chamber.

The place was immense. It consisted of large vats of some sort of cryogenic liquid which bubbled over into long tubes. Each vat contained the remains of a supine Dessite and was surrounded by what the visitor had referred to as the cryonutrient tanks, together with many tubes, pipes and controls.

Six opened up the carrysack, and a relieved bimorph flew out. The first thing he did was float across to one of the vats and cool himself down by hovering directly over one of the cryoliquid intake tubes. He pulsed at the same time, obviously trying to lose heat. Six was reminded of a panting catumba, unable to cope with the summer sun. He grinned.

“So, Visitor, where is your esteemed ancestor?”

The visitor pointed up the passageway. “Near the top, about fifteen vats further up. Come on, we haven’t got all day, you know!”

“Excuse me? We are not the ones hanging around over a cryotube, now are we? —Oh never mind!” Six shook his head at Ledin, and they both moved forwards, looking around them warily.

There were only about five Dessites in the whole area, so that was in their favour, and so far, there had been no alarm raised, which probably meant that the prognosticator hadn’t thought to install video cameras on the Island of the Preborn itself. That was good news, too.

They followed the visitor until he came to a stop before a vat which was unmarked. All the others sported a commemorative plaque which contained their name, together with some short history of their achievements. This one did not. It was older than most of the others and bare of achievements. There were marks where the plaque had been, but it had been torn down – not too long ago, thought Six, looking at the fairly recent marks where it should have been.

“This is me,” said the visitor, hovering rather proudly in front of the Dessite shape inside the vat.

Six peered at it. “You are not very big, as far as Dessites go,” he said.

“Of course I’m not. I was cryolized before my time.”

“How do we … uncryolize you … him?”

The visitor buzzed around the large apparatus. “We have to turn off this feed, open that one, wait for the temperature to rise, and then help me … I mean Exemphendiss … out of the vat.”

“That doesn’t sound too hard.”

“No-o-o.” The visitor looked around. “Although I think there might be an alarm system connected to the apparatus.”

“Of course there would be.” Six gazed down the chamber. “Oh well, might as well get started. If they are going to come, they will. Can’t Arcan simply transport him out of there?”

“NO! He could be permanently damaged. The process must be reversed correctly, or his tissues will begin to die.”

“All right. We understand. But … Arcan …?”

“Yes, Six?”

“We need to seal off the chamber. We are likely to have quite a lot of company rather soon otherwise.”

Ledin stepped forwards. “I will undertake to close up the doors,” he said. “I can do the nearest one now, and then, while you are dealing with the valves, maybe Arcan could transport me down to the other end of the chamber?”

Arcan agreed, and Ledin slipped quickly away to the large entry door. It took him a few moments, but then the large double doors slipped closed, and Six saw Ledin put heavy iron bars in place across the doors, to prevent them reopening. The Kwaidian swung on them with all his weight and then signaled that the doors were now secured. Arcan transported Ledin to the other set of doors into the vault, and soon confirmed that he had managed to close the double doors at the far end too, so Six began to tackle the small valve to the pumps.

The visitor had been right, however. As soon as the valve was touched, a light began to flash imperiously on the side of the vat which faced the passageway, and a siren started up. Six hurried to crank the valves open and closed. This was harder than he had imagined, because they were opened by pumping a long handle up and down, which might have been easy if you had membranes, but was rather more difficult for somebody with only a pair of hands.

“Come on, Six! Can’t you go any faster?” muttered the visitor, surreptitiously looking behind him to see whether the Dessites had figured out where the noise was coming from yet.

“No I can’t!” snapped Six. “A bit of help would be nice.”

The visitor glistened. “I AM helping,” he pointed out. “I am telling you what to do, aren’t I?”

“Thanks.”

The sarcasm went undetected. “That’s all right.”

Six sighed and moved on to the next valve. “Is anything happening yet?”

“Definitely. If you can just manage to open that next valve fully, we can leave him here for fifteen or twenty minutes. He will warm up nicely.”

Six continued to crank the lever. Sweat poured down his brow, but he persisted for a good three minutes. “How is that?”

“Nearly there. That gives us an inflow of normal temperature water. The vat needs to be left now. If we attempt to raise the temperature too much, we could damage him permanently.”

“That would be a tragedy,” said Six, in a neutral tone, managing to finish opening the valve, and securing it so that it could not close.

“Indeed it would.” The visitor seemed gratified. “After all, he might stave off war. That would be a reason for all of Dessia to remember his name.”

“I doubt it.” Six dusted his hands off, and then jumped down onto the floor of the chamber, pulling out his sword and turning to face the incoming Dessites, those who had been trapped in the vault with them..

Standing there, so small in front of the barreling aliens, The Kwaidian looked almost ethereal. Except for his eyes. There was a certain anger simmering just under his brows that would have made more astute beings experience a jolt of fear. These did not. For them, he was merely a small blur in their almost spherical lenses. Indeed, when he was standing still, they couldn’t see him at all.

Luckily for them, he was not standing still. Instead, he was charging towards them, light glinting off a piece of sharp metal which he held high in one hand, and a loud cry which the Dessites couldn’t hear coming out of his mouth.

The Dessites stopped, and their membranes automatically stiffened out at right angles to their bodies. The glands at the base of the membranes activated, and there was an emanation of liquid all around Six. To the Dessites, he suddenly became violently visible.

It didn’t stop him; he charged forward as if he were quite happy to meet his maker, lifting his sword arm high as he came close to the four huge bodies in front of him.

Then he stopped dead, confused. All five of the Dessites had vanished. Six looked around, cross.

“Arcan? What have you done with my Dessites? I was nearly on top of them.”

“I have transported them out of this chamber. It seemed to be the wisest thing to do.”

“What do you mean? Why would you do that? They were mine!” Six still looked hostile.

“It occurred to me that, if we are planning to negotiate with them, it might be a good idea to avoid harming any of them.”

Six was breathing heavily. The anticipation of a fight had caused adrenalin to surge through his body, and now he was feeling the effects.

Ledin came running up. “Have you killed them all, Six?”

Six gave a disgruntled snort. “Arcan took them away.”

“Pity.” Ledin sheathed his own sword. “I was ready for a good fight.”

“So was I.” Six examined his kris. “It has been a while since I got to use this in anything but practice.”

“I do not kill if I can possibly avoid it,” said Arcan, sternly. “That is not the answer. We must and will negotiate with these aliens.”

“Yeah, well, good luck with that. They don’t seem to be very keen on talking so far, do they? Remember what they did to the avifauna and to the amorphs on Pictoria? And Grace? They won’t be happy until we are all under their mental control.”

“Grace was being controlled by the Ammonites, not the Dessites.”

“Same difference.”

“Both the trimorphs and the canths are immune to the Dessites. Because of that, we can limit their power. Can’t you feel the canths?”

“Of course I can! But, even though the canths are blocking them for us, I am aware of the mental wall in the background. They are very dangerous, Arcan!”

“I know that. But I will not kill, unless it is to save someone from being killed. We should be more than that. More than they are. Let’s see if we can reason with them first.”

“Whatever. But who is watching our backs?”

“Diva.”

“I hope you’re right.” Six crossed his arms and stared at the vat. “How long will it take for your ancestor to cook, Visitor?”

“Two hours, more or less.”

“Two hours? I could roast a warthog in that time.”

Ledin looked at him and raised an eyebrow. Six hurried to rectify. “Not that I would, of course.”

Ledin nodded. “I don’t think a Kwaidian ambassador should go around talking about roasting warthogs.”

Six opened his eyes. “Well, of all the …! It was only because you turned it down that I was lumbered with that job, as you know very well. And don’t think I have forgotten about that, because I haven’t. I had to sit through two international meetings last month, and nearly fell asleep at both of them. You’re a fine person to talk!”

“Yes, ambassador.” Ledin tugged at an imaginary forelock.

Six gave his friend a push. “Take that back!”

“Won’t. You
are
an ambassador. Why should I take it back?”

“Because I have every intention of making you.” Six flung himself on his friend and they tussled amicably, ending up rolling over and over on the floor as each tried to get a wrestle hold on the other.

“Marvelous!” said the visitor. “Can’t you two prehistoric beings think of anything else to do?”

Six grinned up at him. “Not really, no. Anyway, Arcan took our Dessites away, but left us with all the adrenaline. It is his fault. He knows how worried we are about Diva and Grace. What else is there to do?” He turned back to Ledin, and they began to grapple together again. The visitor moved away, slightly spiky at the edges.