The Namura Stone (33 page)

“Now I suppose you are cold.” The visitor’s tone was pitying.

“Will Diva be like you, or like the twins?” asked Six.

“I don’t know. Why? Does it matter?”

“N-o-o. I just wondered.”

“All I can tell you is that she is morphic. We were drawn down to the lake here by a tremendous humming noise. Then a bright light appeared out of nowhere; there was a brilliant flash, and … there she was! She wanted to know if you and the others were all right. That was the first thing she asked.”

“But, how much of her is … her?” asked Six.

“What a stupid question. What do you mean?”

Six slipped and nearly fell. He flailed out with his hand. The visitor gave an indignant squawk, only just managing to get out of the way in time.

“Watch out!”

“Well, I couldn’t help it.
You
should try trying to make your way down all this loose shale. It is hard.”

“That’s because of the clumsy skeleton you have. It is very fragile. If you had hollow bones you could fly.”

“And if you didn’t have a hollow head you might be able to think,” snapped Six. “Now, get out of my way, will you? I bet Diva is wondering where on Sacras I have got to.”

“Can’t think why,” said the visitor. “She can go anywhere she wants, now. At least, she will be able to soon.”

“Shows how much you know. She will want to stay with me, of course. Where else would she go?”

“Have you thought this through, Six?”

Six skidded again on his mad rush down into the caverns. “Nothing to think through. She’s my wife.”

“Not now, she isn’t.”

The scree under Six’s feet scrunched as he slowed. “Of course she is.”

“She’s a morphic. She is going to be able to travel across the galaxy, fly wherever she wants. She may not want to be anchored down to you now.”

Six was much struck by this way of looking at it. “I … suppose. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Anyway,” said the visitor – brightly for him, “I expect she will make up her own mind.”

“Yes,” said Six slowly. “I expect she will.” But his feet moved even more slowly down the slope, and a slight frown appeared on his forehead, accentuating the scar he had acquired from volcanic debris on Kintara.

Once he reached the end of the scree slope and was faced only with the last vertical stretch, the morphics left him alone and went to find Diva.

Six let himself down, hand over hand. He was a fool! He should have realized that Diva would not be the same. Of course she was not his wife. His wife had been a flesh-and-blood person, someone who laughed and was larger than life, usually fighting and railing against everything. He wondered suddenly what would be left of her, what part would have survived the transformation.

The closer he got to the base of the cliff, the slower he went. The words of the visitor circled around his mind like vultures over a dead catumba. Maybe he was making a mistake? Maybe she wouldn’t want to see him at all? Maybe she had grown into something so far above him that she would despise him.

An amused voice came from behind his back. “If you hang there for much longer you will turn into a stalactite, nomus.”

He swiveled round, lost his handhold on the rock, and dropped the last few metres to the ground, where he lay, winded, for a moment.

“Do you have to scare people like that?” He looked up at the shining sphere which was hovering above him.

She coloured. “What on Sacras were you thinking about? You looked like a clam stuck in a sweetfruit jar. What took you so long?”

Six got to his feet, staring at the blazing globe. “What took
me
so long?” he echoed. “
You’re
the one who’s taken months to make an appearance, not me.”

Diva spun slightly. “It is harder than you think. In any case, I seem to have been frozen for some time – like the Ammonite animas were. You might say that you are happy to see me, no-name!”

Six stared at the shimmering shape. “Don’t fish, Diva. Can I touch you?”

She edged closer to him. “I suppose. Try!”

He reached out and gently opened his hand. She hovered over it and then settled onto his palm. He nearly stopped breathing.

Then she spun slightly without meaning to, and he snatched his hand back. “You burnt me!”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to. It takes a bit of getting used to, being like this.” She hovered again over his hand, this time with more care, before settling herself gingerly down.

“Is it really you?”

“Were you hoping for somebody else?”

“I … I can’t believe I can talk to you again. You have no idea how much I have longed to do this.”

She began to spin, and then stopped herself, obviously with quite an effort. “Sorry, I forgot; I will burn you again if I do that.”

“What is it like – to be morphic?”

“It is extraordinary. It’s a bit like being a spark of electricity; you can feel the potential to leap across huge reaches of space. You are so free that it takes your breath away, except of course, you don’t have any breath to take away in the first place. The funny thing is, though, Six, I still feel as if I have my previous body. I can move arms and legs, even though I no longer have any. And I can laugh and smile, although no sound comes out. It is very strange. I feel like a crab rabbit in a shuffle dance, though I suppose it will pass.”

“Is it very lonely?”

“Yes. Though there is a sense of belonging, of it being inevitable. And I miss you terribly, which is strange.”

“Oh, thanks very much!”

“No, I mean it is strange for a morphic, not that it is strange for anybody to miss you. Stop that, no-name, and listen to me for a moment!”

Diva sounded so much like her usual self that Six laughed out loud. He felt immensely relieved. It would be different, but at least she still felt the tie, the strange bond that they had. He could almost sense the cells of his skin begin to regenerate, as if some missing life force inside him had begun to flow again through his veins. He put his head back and felt a fizz of euphoria flash through him.

“I wish I could still hug you,” he said wistfully.

“I am still here, nomus. Petra isn’t.”

“I know. I didn’t know what to say to Tallen.”

“Tallen understands. The Namuri may be just a clan which lives in the middle of the marshes, but sometimes I think they know a whole lot more than the rest of us.”

“The sibyla walked into the sacred marsh with your stone.”

“WHAT!”

Six explained what had happened, and the small sphere turned dark.

“That makes me feel terrible.”

“Can you still feel?”

“Well, of course I can? What did you think?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t know what to think. This is all … a bit … unusual, wouldn’t you say?”

Diva was still for a few seconds. Then she began to shake slightly, which Six interpreted as a laugh.

“I suppose it is. I can’t say I ever expected to … what? … resurrect? … as a trimorph. If that is what I am.”

“You think you might be something different?”

She shimmered. “I am not sure. I can feel the lost anima and the canth surrounded by the ortholiquid and I am also getting a strange sensation of Arcan, too. Some part of him, anyway. But mostly I just feel like me, especially with all these arms and legs and heads that morphics aren’t supposed to have. I guess I won’t know until I have been around for a bit longer.”

“Thank you for contacting me.”

She flashed – a brilliant hard white which damaged his eyes. “I had to tell you I was still alive.” Then she thought. “I
am
alive, aren’t I?”

Six grinned. “More than most of us, I should say. When do you think you will be able to come to Xiantha? When will you be back?”

There was a long pause. “I am not sure I will be able to come back all the time. The twins and the visitor tell me that it takes a great effort to travel quantically all that way; they say it is much, much easier just to flit through the ortholiquid to other systems. Something about energy levels. But I will spend as much time as I can on Xiantha, with you. That won’t be just yet, though; I need a bit of time to get strong, to find out how to utilize all this … this power. At the moment I can’t quite get the hang of it. I don’t even know how to transport myself anywhere yet. I will have to stay here on Pictoria until I get better as a morphic.”

Six felt his heart stop. It was happening all over again. He was going to lose her for a second time. He felt a dark pressure surround his rib cage. He gave a swallow.

“Yes. I see. Of course; I should have realized.”

“Oh Six! Don’t be like that.”

“It’s all very well for you – you are not the one left on his own! You will be flitting around the stars like an angel!”

She quivered with amusement. “Hardly like an angel. Even my best friends wouldn’t call me that!”

“You know what I mean.” He refused to be mollified.

“Yes, I do, and I think you are being very unreasonable about all this.”

“You DIED!”

“I didn’t, in fact. I am still here. See?” She spun against his skin and he snatched his hand away automatically.

“Stop doing that!”

Diva went still and settled back down on his palm. “Six, are we arguing?”

His face was set. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Because anyone would think that you aren’t glad to see me again.”

“Of course I am glad … Oh, shut up!”

“Who are you telling to shut up,
moron
?”

“
Imbecile!
”

“
Cretin!
”

The glowing sphere and the belligerent Kwaidian stared at each other for a moment, and then both of them felt a warm sense of coming home suffuse them.

“I did miss you, Kwaidian!”

“Don’t ever do that to me again, Diva. Don’t make me watch you die again—” his fingers tightened on the morphic shape and made her squeak, “—Sorry, I forgot. Damn it, Diva, can’t you change shape or something?”

“Give me a chance. I was only born a few hours ago!”

“Well, don’t take too long to learn. We may need you.” He began to explain what had happened since she left. Diva was dumbstruck.

“Five months have passed since my death? The visitor told me it hadn’t been instantaneous, but I didn’t realize it had been that long. How are the others? How is Raven? How are the children?”

It took him a while to get her up to date, and then she thought about everything for a moment.

“I am glad you brought Bennel’s family over. We should have asked him about them; that was remiss of us. And Raven sounds fine. But I am worried about Arcan. I don’t think the Dessites will be prepared to leave things quite as they are, do you?”

He shook his head. “Arcan is getting the Namuri to give him namura dust. He says that he believes the namura stone may act as an impurity in the quantum trap; that if he suffuses the orthogel with tiny quantities of it, it will mean that he can no longer be caught by the Dessites with their carbon nanographite. But nothing is certain.”

“It allowed him to escape from Dessia,” pointed out Diva, “though look what happened; there was some sort of a flashback reaction, and he was split – part of him was bounced back into the trap.”

“He says that was because of the size of the stone. It was far too big. He could only flow around the outer edges – tiny faults in the actual stone enabled him to make use of them. He thinks that, if he uses grains of fine namura dust, the shockwave won’t happen.”

“That is good. I wonder if I will be immune.”

“Maybe. The lost animas are, remember?”

“Hmm. The visitor isn’t, though. I had better start concentrating on how to use this new body of mine, hadn’t I?”

Six stared at her. He felt a jumbled mix of emotions which threatened to engulf him. “So I won’t see you for a while?” The words felt hard: diamond chips of letters strung together. They stung.

Diva had gone cloudy, too. “It looks as if we will have to stay apart for a little while. It … It is hard to i-i-imagine.”

Six bit down on his lip. A slow sense of desolation was spreading over him again. He stood up.

“I … I suppose I should be heading back.” His eyes were bright in the dark penumbra of the cavern.

Diva’s voice in his head was muffled, thicker than usual. “I … suppose you had. Will you … will you tell Raven I am still alive?”

“I don’t know what to tell her.”

“No. I don’t either.”

Six scratched his forehead, breathed in and then out again, as he made the decision to leave, and then turned to smile at her. “I am glad you are here, Diva. I missed you more than you can ever imagine.”

“I know. I missed you too.”

“But this is going to be harder than I thought. It isn’t going to be like going back to where we were.”

“No. It is moving forwards, going on to a new place. It … we can’t go back to the past.”

“We will find a way. We always do.”

She brightened. “Of course we will. It is just … hard for me to stay here on my own. You have Grace and Ledin, Bennel and Tallen; you have Raven and the other children. I feel somehow very alone.” Her voice trailed off, showing momentary doubt. “It isn’t going to be easy to get used to the dark down here, even though I know I somehow belong to Pictoria now.”

He nodded slowly. “I will come as often as I can. I promise. If only I could be here with you …”

“Don’t even think that, Six! You can’t join me here. Not yet, at least. There are far too many things to put right first. Don’t make me have died in vain, please! You have to live on, be happy, have a full life.”

His face sagged. “I wish it could be like it was …”

She shimmered sadly. “Me too.”

“When you signed to me, I was so happy to hear you …”

“It shouldn’t take me long to find out how to function as a morphic, and then I will come over to Xiantha, and stay for as long as I possibly can. We will have fun again.”