"The time is right," the creaky voice said. "The system is ready for planned transitions. However, the trip is much easier on individuals if they pass through singly. Who will be first?"
Everyone stared at each other, until Hans Rebka stepped forward. "I guess I will. I'm ready."
One by one, the others formed into single file behind him. Birdie Kelly, followed by J'merlia, Kallik, and Julius Graves. Darya Lang came last of all, still staring around her at the mysterious works of the Builders. Beside the line, awkwardly, as though unsure of their own role in the others' departure, stood Atvar H'sial and Louis Nenda.
"You may proceed." Speaker-Between drifted to the back of the group.
"Thanks." Rebka turned to look at the others, one by one. "I don't think this is a time for speeches, so I'll just say, see you there, and I know we're lucky to be on our way home." His eye caught Louis Nenda's. "And I wish you were coming with us. Tell Atvar H'sial, we owe both of you our special thanks. Tell her I don't know what you two did back on Quake, but so far as I'm concerned, what you did
here
, to get rid of the Zardalu, and the sacrifice you are making now, by staying, more than cancels that out. I hope I'll see you again, back in the spiral arm."
Nenda waved his hand dismissively. "Ah, we don't need thanks. Me and At, we'll manage. You go ahead, Captain. And good luck."
Rebka nodded and stepped onto the descending ramp of the tunnel. The others watched him walk forward, leaning far back to keep his balance. His hair and clothes began to blow wildly about him, and his pace slowed. Twenty meters along he paused. They heard his voice echoing through to them, oddly distorted.
"This is the point of no return. A couple more meters and I'll have no choice but to go."
He turned and waved.
"Meet you at the other end. Safe trip everybody, and bon voyage."
He took two slow steps, and then a new force gripped him. He tumbled forward down the ramp. There was an audible gasp, a
whomp
of displaced air, and a shiver in the outline of the tunnel walls.
The others peered down toward the spinning singularity. Rebka was gone.
"You may proceed," Speaker-Between said.
"Yeah," Birdie Kelly said softly. "I may. But I may not." He was clutching the rough sphere of E. C. Tally's brain to his chest like a holy relic. "Come on, Birdie. You've been saying for weeks that you want to go home. So let's do it. Feet, get moving."
As Louis Nenda patted him on the shoulder Birdie took a first hesitant step along the tunnel. The whole line followed, like a slow processional.
"One by one,"
Speaker Between cautioned.
Birdie was muttering to himself as he walked forward. Halfway along the tunnel he reached some decision and started to run. He shouted as he hit the transition zone, and again there was the rush of displaced air.
J'merlia and Kallik tried to pause by Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial, but the Cecropian waved them on.
"That's right," Nenda said. "Keep moving, Kallik, don't hold up the line. And don't worry about us. We'll fight things out here between us. Get on back to the spiral arm."
"As you command. Farewell, beloved Master." The rear-facing eyes in the Hymenopt's dark head watched Nenda all the way, to the point where she was taken by the vortex field. Kallik vanished in silence, followed a few seconds later by a shivering J'merlia.
Julius Graves refused to be hurried. He paused in front of Louis Nenda and shook his hand. "Good luck. If you do succeed in returning, you can be sure of one thing. Whatever you did at Summertide on Quake, the charges against you and Atvar H'sial will be dropped. Please make sure that she knows, too."
"Appreciate it, Councilor." Nenda shook Graves's hand vigorously. "I'll tell her. And don't worry about us. We'll get by."
"You are a very brave man." The misty-blue eyes stared sightless into Nenda's dark ones. "You make me proud to be a human. And if I were a Cecropian, I would be just as proud." Graves touched his hand to Atvar H'sial's foreclaw and stepped onto the ramp.
In seconds he was gone. Darya Lang stood alone with Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial.
She took Nenda by the hand. "I agree with Julius Graves. I don't care if you
were
a criminal before you came to Opal, it's what you are like
now
that counts. People
do
change, don't they?"
He shrugged. "I guess they do—when they have a reason to. And mebbe I had a good reason."
"The Zardalu?"
"Naw." He refused to meet her eyes, and his voice was gentle. "Nothin' so exotic. A simple reason. You know what they say, the love of a good woman, an' all that stuff . . . but you should be going, and I shouldn't be talking this way."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm nothin'. You've got a good thing going with Captain Rebka, and you're a lot righter for him than you ever could be for somebody like me. I come up the hard way. I'm loud, an' I'm coarse, an' I don't know how to talk to women, never did."
"I'd say you're doing just fine."
"Well, this isn't the time an' place for it. Go now. But maybe if I ever get back to the spiral arm—"
"You'll come right to Sentinel Gate, and look for me." Darya turned to nod to Atvar H'sial. "I want to say good luck to her, too, but that's stupid. I know only one of you can win, and I hope it's you, Louis. I have to go now—before I make a complete fool of myself. The rest of them will be waiting at the other end. I mustn't stay longer."
She reached out to take his face between her hands, leaned down, and kissed him on the lips. "Thanks, for everything. And don't think of this as good-bye. We'll meet again, I just know we will."
"Hope so." Nenda reached out and patted her again on the curve of her hip. He grinned. "This sure feels like unfinished business. Take care of yourself, Darya. And stay sassy."
She walked away from him along the ramp, turning to smile and wave as she went. There was a moment when she stood motionless, with the vortex blowing her hair into a cloudy chaos around her head. Then she took one more step and spun away down to the singularity. There was the usual explosion of displaced air. She did not cry out.
Nenda and Atvar H'sial stood staring after her.
"It is finished," Speaker-Between said from behind them. "I will receive confirmation when they reach their destination. And now—for you it begins. You must continue, human and Cecropian, until the selection process is complete."
"Sure thing. You're just gonna leave us to it, then?"
"I am. I see no need for my presence. I will check periodically to ascertain the situation, just as I did when your group expelled the Zardalu."
Speaker-Between was sinking steadily into the floor. The tail and lower part of his body had already vanished.
"Hold on a minute." Nenda reached out to grab the flowerlike head. "Suppose that
we
want to contact
you
?"
"Until one of you triumphs over the other, there can be no reason for me to talk to you. A warning: Do not seek to escape using the transportation system. You will not be accepted by it. In case of need, however, I will tell you a way to reach me. Activate one of the stasis tanks. That fact will be drawn to my attention . . ." The stem was sinking, until only the head itself was left. It nodded, at floor level. "This is farewell—to
one
of you. I do not expect to see both of you again."
Speaker-Between disappeared. Atvar H'sial and Louis Nenda stared at each other for a full minute.
"Has he gone?" The pheromonal message diffused across to Nenda.
"I think so. Give it a few more seconds, though." And then, when another half minute had passed, he said, "We oughta start right now, but we haven't had a chance to talk for a while. What do you think?"
"I think that something new and unprecedented has happened to the iconoclastic Louis Nenda." The pheromones were full of mockery. "I did not understand your spoken interaction with the female, but I could monitor your body chemistry. There was
emotion
there—and genuine sentiment. A grave weakness, and one that may prove your undoing."
"No way." Nenda snorted "You were reading me wrong, dead wrong. It's an old human saying: Always leave 'em hot, someday it may pay off. That's all I was doing."
"I was
not
reading you wrong, Louis Nenda. and I remain unpersuaded."
"Hey, you didn't hear
her
. She was all ready to change her mind and stay—I could see it in her eyes. I couldn't have that, her stickin' around and poking her nose in. I
had
to make her realize how noble I was, see, remainin' here like this, because then she couldn't stay, too, without making me look less like Mr. Wonderful. Anyway I don't want to talk about that. Let's drop it an' get right to the real stuff."
"One moment more. I may accept that you were not deceiving me concerning your feelings for the woman, Darya Lang—accept it
someday
, if not yet. But I know you were seeking to deceive me, and everyone else, on another matter."
"Deceive you? What are you talkin' about?"
"Please, Louis. I am not a larval form, or a human innocent. If I inspected the Zardalu and their equipment with ultrasonic signals, is it likely I would do less for you? Let us discuss the contents of your satchel—the small one. Open it, if you please."
"Hey, I was goin' to show you anyway, soon as the rest was gone. You don't think I'd try an' keep it from you, do you? We both know that wouldn't work for more than a minute."
"I knew that you could not
succeed
in doing so. It is good to hear that you did not intend to try." Atvar H'sial turned the yellow trumpets of her hearing organs to Nenda as he crouched down to open the little satchel that accompanied him everywhere.
After a few moments a pale-apricot head peeped out.
Atvar H'sial released the chemical equivalent of a sigh. "Louis Nenda, I
knew
of this, minutes after the last adult Zardalu vanished into the vortex. Where did you get it?"
"Little bugger bit me, when I was hiding inside Holder." Nenda peered into the satchel, careful to keep clear of the young Zardalu's questing beak. "Greedy little devil, that's for sure—eaten every last scrap of food I stuck in there."
"But you did not have to take and hide it. What act of folly is this, to keep in your possession a member of the spiral arm's most dangerous life-form? It can be of no use to you in the struggle here."
"Well, you don't seem too upset. Look at it this way. If the other Zardalu are all
alive
, then one more won't make a bit of difference. An' if the others are all
dead
, one surviving specimen would be absolutely priceless to anybody who got back home. Think of it, At."
"I did think of it—long since." The Cecropian reached out a forelimb and picked up the infant Zardalu. It wriggled furiously in her grasp. "And I agreed with you; otherwise I would have made my own thoughts known." She watched the writhing orange form. "It is alive, and obviously healthy. Apparently the Zardalu idea that their young need meat in order to thrive has no validity."
"Or maybe with no meat they grown up less vicious. That'd be nice. So you agree—I should keep it?"
"At least for a while." Atvar H'sial placed the little Zardalu down on the ground, close to Nenda's feet. "But let me give you a solemn warning. The Zardalu were the galaxy's most feared species. There must have been good reason for that, and our small victory over a few bewildered and desperate specimens does nothing to gainsay it. Remember, in a couple of years this infant will be big enough to tear you apart and eat you."
"Mebbe. I'm not worried. Hell, if I can't control a
baby
, I oughta be ashamed of myself."
"It will not
remain
a baby. And perhaps you
will
be ashamed of yourself—if you live so long. But now . . ." Atvar H'sial crouched close to Louis Nenda. Her emotional intensity had heightened, in subtle waves of chemicals. "Now the time for conversation has ended, and the time for action is here. There is a battle to be fought. Are you ready to put your new plaything to one side and begin the conflict?"
"I must reiterate to you the
grea
t
importance
of this matter." The speaker paused, and his eyes glared out of the screen. "And although it pains me to add this, I must remind you of your failure to honor your
commitment
and
promises
."
Darya Lang wriggled in her wicker chair and stared at Professor Merada's recorded image with a mixture of disbelief and irritation. The video signal had been sent skipping across the Bose Communications Network, bearing its MOST URGENT—IMMEDIATE ACTION insignia and her full name and title. Within minutes of her final descent from Midway Station and her arrival at the surface of Opal, the video in her room had been flashing for attention.
"Forty standard days,"
the speaker went on. "The fifth edition of the
Universal Artifact Catalog
is due for final compilation in just forty standard days! It cannot be completed without your assistance. As you well know, I told you of my great concern and worry when you announced your intention to travel to the Phemus Circle and observe the event you described as
Summertide
. If my cautionary words at the time were less strong than they should have been, it was only that I had your reassurance and
personal promise
that the journey would not affect your schedule for delivery of materials. It is imperative that the Catalog appear on time." The full mouth pursed in disapproval. "And if your material does not reach me in twenty days, at the very latest, it will be
too late
. The consequences of that will be most severe. I intend to—"
Darya turned off the sound.
Hans Rebka had entered the room as the words p
ersonal promise
were spoken. He was carrying a sheaf of messages. He shook his head, sighed, and dropped into a chair at Darya's side.
"Half an hour we've been back on Opal," he said, "and look at these. Dozens of 'em. From Shipping Control: 'Please explain the failure of the Zardalu Communion ship, the
Have-It-All
, to file a flight plan before leaving the Dobelle system.' From Port Authority: 'Define current location and status of the freighter
Incomparable
." From Transient Control and Emigration: 'Provide the present location of the Cecropian, Atvar H'sial'—hell, I just wish I
could
provide that."