Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5 (53 page)

Diva smothered an almost irresistible desire to take out her Coriolan dagger and slit him up the middle with it. He looked taken aback at the expression.

“Whatever were you thinking about? You looked pretty scary there for a moment.”

She gave a mysterious smile. “I was thinking that it is time we got back to the others.”

THEY FOUND THE trimorphs and the threads of light still waiting for them.

Diva grabbed Six’s hand, and pulled him alongside her. Then she turned to Bennel and Tallen, and indicated that they should move up level with them too. The two Coriolans seemed very surprised, but stepped up as requested.

Diva took a deep breath, and began again, still clutching Six’s hand.

“We apologize for that,” she began. “We are honoured to be in your presence, though I think we have already met beings like you, in symbiosis with the canths.”

The diamond star which was hanging in mid air in front of them seemed to shimmer very slightly, but it was a trimorph twin who answered.

“Well, of course they are the same. We told you they were like the lost animas, didn’t we?” The little globe whirred crossly. “I wish you would listen to us. After all, we are the ones they abducted, aren’t we?”

“How do you know who they are?”

The trimorph pulsated darkly. “They absorbed us into some sort of mindmerge with them ... By the way, you might want to be careful—” it broke off, realizing that its advice was going to come too late.

The stellate shape was moving towards the four people standing in front of it, and was slowly enlarging so as to encompass them all.

A searing bright light was coming from the complex stellate figure, and they all cried out as it passed over them and then hovered, holding its position. This time there was no fear; they all remembered only too well how the shining shape had managed to break down the defences in the Dessite mind wall.

The multifaceted diamond star glided smoothly over them. Six could sense both Bennel and Tallen flinching backwards as it did. He and Diva both managed to hold their places, but Six reached down and grabbed her hand again as the aura began to envelop them.

At first it was too bright within it for them to make out anything at all.

It was as if they had been touched by a cloud, except that this mist was warmer than the surroundings, and felt dry. As the points of the star reached them, they were acutely aware of the heaviness of their own bodies, dragging them down to earth.

Then the weight of their limbs suddenly became so unbearable that something inside each of them freed itself from the flesh, and became unchecked. Six was conscious of a feeling of looking down at his land-based body, of looking down at an empty shell which was holding Diva’s hand.

He fixed his attention on the space beside him in the air, and saw that Diva had the same aura as in the mindmerge on Pictoria. She had become the same wonderful cobalt blue, and he could see her shape beside him, leaping with fiery flames that were at the same time crisp and sharp. The flames seemed to be flickering over him, mingling with the edges of his own aura.

Diva had trembled as she had transformed back into the shape she had taken in the mindmerge against the Dessites. The change was strange, as if her flesh were suddenly evaporating into smoke, passing from solid to gas in one all-encompassing sublimation. She took a moment to get used to the airy feeling, and then turned to Six, at her side. He was the same complicated pattern of golden sunbeams, a sensation of warmth, and quickness. Where they had been holding hands the golden pattern was flecked with her own cobalt colour, and the point of contact was bringing them closer together, tugging at her. She felt a sudden need to feel that warmth more closely and moved automatically towards him. Although she was aware that they were being coerced into this merge, Diva felt no fear, no desire to struggle against the magnetic force; she went willingly into it.

Six was aware of a light force tugging at him, and slowly allowed the edges of his consciousness to feather outwards towards the flickering cobalt blue. He, too, seemed to move forwards with no hesitation. He let himself edge towards Diva and the two auras began to flow together, twisting and turning around each other, until Bennel and Tallen could only see one complex pattern beside them, a beautiful mixture of blue and gold threads, dappling the aura with tiny flames of fire. They stared.

Bennel and Tallen had been replaced by the auras that had represented them on Pictoria, and were hovering on either side of Six and Diva, still unwilling to be manipulated by these strange creatures. Bennel examined the feldspar which represented the Namuri, and was aware of a faint sensation of peat, and of a rain-swept marsh. He gave a wan smile at the young Coriolan, and was surprised that this smile translated into a rippling effect of his own aura. He tried it again, and watched, fascinated as the wavelets traveled outwards.

Tallen found he was able to interpret these small undulations as a smile, and even able to reply with shadows and lights of his own. The conversation was just as effective as if they were facing each other in their own bodies. He managed to relax and let go of his usual fleshy counterpart. But it was a very strange feeling for a Namuri. He wondered if, in this form, he would be able to communicate with the blue stone directly. As he thought of the possibility, the unrelenting rain which seemed to represent him became a downpour of sleet. He looked skywards, reveling in the sensation of icy freedom.

But then he realized that they were all being gently nudged into one large aura. The centre part, where Diva and Six had been standing individually, was already whirling around one axis, and he and Bennel were being inexorably dragged inside too. This felt dangerous.

Tallen tried to hang back. His place as a Namuri bodyguard was to protect and to observe, after all, but it was impossible. The diamond star was insistent, and both he and Bennel were being drawn into the central aura. He tried to struggle mentally, baulking against the pull of the star, but his will was feeble in comparison. After a few moments, although his aura boiled with small eddies of distrust, he realized that there was nothing he could do to resist the draw.

Bennel had already come to the same conclusion. He, too, was reluctant to lose his own identity, but whatever this diamond star was, it was not taking any notice of personal preferences. With only mild variations in his sturdy pewter colour, he succumbed to the irresistible force.

Diva was experiencing the strangest of all feelings. Their separate consciousnesses were now part of one being, and she was aware of four different people inside the aura. Six was familiar, warm, and comforting. They knew each other so well that they seemed to fit together easily, complementary in their thoughts. She could feel his emotions, reined back as tightly as possible, but facing this new situation with something like eagerness.

Then she began to notice a new presence inside the mixed aura. It was dependable, and solid, and she recognized Bennel, still wary of this new twist of fate, but trying not to shirk from his duty. The shape was alert, and trying to identify all those parts of the aura around it. Bennel had not lost sight of his obligations, even deep in this mixed merge of personalities.

Tallen, on the other hand, was still struggling to extricate himself. His young aura was hot and resistant. Diva could sense his inner self. He was determined to let nobody inside his thoughts, and was trying to protect the most memorable moments of his past with a wall high enough to block them all out. She moved to face him, aware of his panic, but the Namuri turned a heated focus on her, and she wavered slightly at his vehemence. Then Six’s calming influence was alongside her, and they both tried to calm the boy. There was absolutely nothing any of them could do to escape this process. The pressure on them all to meld into one aura was too strong to ignore.

After a struggle, he agreed, rather unwillingly, to let that part of him which he could still control mingle with the others. Gradually, the feldspar melted into the mists, and the integration was complete.

As soon as the diamond star recognized that fact, the aura which now represented all four of them was transported back through time, to a period long before. They stared collectively at the scenes that were replaying in their head.

First, there was a planet rich in vegetation, full of animal life. It was far more fertile than Kwaide; they could see tens of dozens of different kinds of birds, and animals, and even smaller insects going peaceably about their lives. The sky was a cerulean blue, with puffy white clouds which contrasted with the menacing ones to be found back on Kwaide. As if they were there in person, they could feel the heat of the sun on their heads, and a breeze which was pleasant to feel on the skin.

There was a small movement to their right, and they turned through the mists of the stellate shape towards it. As soon as they tried to bring it into focus, the mists disappeared, and their eyes seemed to zoom in on the scene before them.

There was a clearing in the hilly terrain, with a shallow pool beside it, and a small village. The houses were fashioned out of quarried instellite, and the shining crystals contained inside it twinkled in the sun. The doors and windows were made of wood, but it was wood which had been carved with mathematical symbols and equations all over it. The combined aura spotted some of the most important equivalences, even though the language was different. Mathematical equations, they saw, were interstellarly recognizable. On each door, and each window, there was one particular algorithm which was embossed outwards, as if to give it great importance.

They found themselves gliding towards the house. The movement made them dizzy, because they were actually still standing in the same place, and it was difficult to process the contradictory information. They were brought to the open door of one particular house, and transported easily through under the lintel and inside.

The first thing they saw was a worktable covered with star maps, and pages and pages of calculations on sheets of paper. Then they saw the head of a being, a copy of the statue they had seen outside the grotto. It was attached to a body only slightly taller than they were themselves, but the limbs were thinner and the head was bigger. It looked up as they entered, and they had the impression that it was able to see them through the fog of time. The Ammonite’s eyes seemed to examine them with great benevolence, and find them passable, for they wrinkled up in an enormous smile of welcome, a genuine lighting up of inside happiness which seemed to burst out of the thin body and illuminate the air around it.

The Ammonite motioned the composite aura urgently over to the table, which they saw was illuminated with electric lights set into the wooden framework of the timber roof. They looked up. The lights were set into the roof in the pattern of a galaxy, and the roof had a large moveable structure in a turret. Below this, there was a huge telescope, recognizable only by the long cylindrical tube which was pointing up at the sky. The machinery which ran it was unknown to them.

They floated over to the table, and began to examine the cuneiform writing. It was impossible to decipher, but the part that was a map was much easier to understand. The central supermassive black hole was clear to them all. Around the Great Magnet were many star systems.

The Ammonite pressed some buttons and the same map suddenly leapt into being right in front of their eyes, suspended in three dimensions over the table.

The Ammonite crinkled all the multiple wrinkles around its eyes again, giving the immediate impression of tremendous approval. It made a soft clicking sound and moved its hands. Immediately, the holographic map began to move, all the stars spinning dangerously close to the central black hole until one of them was catapulted off, out of the system at hypervelocity.

The hologram paused, and zoomed in on that area. They were able to see that the star had left a planet behind it, and that the planet had fallen immediately into a tighter orbit around the black hole.

That must be this planet!
The thought was collective, but they all knew that it came from Diva. Her crisp fieriness was written all over it. The others gave a combined nod. They were being shown the past history of this planet.

The hologram resumed, and they watched as the planet began to circle around and around the central singularity, each time falling a little closer to the black hole. The orbit was highly elliptical, and as the planet approached the black hole, at each periapsis, the hologram zoomed in, to show how it was squeezed in one direction, and relaxed in the other.

Tidal heating.
This time the flavour of the thought was Six’s.

The orbits began to speed up and each time the shape of the ball representing the planet was more and more deformed.

The tidal forces are accumulating.

The alien’s eyes again disappeared into the folds around them as it seemed to show them its pleasure at their quick understanding. It nodded, and then pointed at the ball representing its planet and tried to make the sound of an explosion. Its mouth was obviously unable to utter more than one sound, for this came out as a rapid-fire sequence of clicks which got louder and louder.

They nodded again.
Your planet is going to explode.

The Ammonite pointed to the planet, and its name came instantly to all four of them at once, like a distant wind which formed itself into comprehensible sound.
Kintara. We call it Kintara, which means ancient beauty in our language.

Then the Ammonite deactivated the hologram and pointed instead at itself. It mimicked pages and pages of mathematical calculations, and indicated much time passing. Then it went back to the controls and pushed some more buttons.

A different hologram emerged above the table. This time, it was that of an Ammonite, who was turning slowly around in mid air. Inside the shell of the body was a small white flame, which burned brightly, flickering with life.

The Ammonite again indicated much mathematical calculation, and then its face was suddenly transformed with pride and satisfaction. Its eye-folds ridged out until it was like looking at a concentric ring of craters around the central intelligent iris. It waved its long, three-fingered hand, and the small white flame inside the holographic body detached and separated from the flesh.

This time the thought had the unmistakeable tang of peat and mist that was Tallen.
They learnt to separate the spirit from the body!

The others pulsed their agreement. This, then, was where the animas had come from.