Syrinx forgot everything else as Mosul sent out a burst of rapturous greeting, mingled with mischievously erotic subliminals.
She put her arms around him and enjoyed a long kiss.
I’d like to meet her,
she told him.
Lucky thing that she is.
You shall.
They stood about on the pad, chatting idly, as the island’s lizard-skinned housechimps unloaded the first batch of cases under
Oxley’s careful direction and stacked them on a processor-controlled flat-top trolley. When all eighteen cases were on, the
drone trundled off towards one of the low warehouse domes ringing the park.
Do you want me to bring the rest down tonight?
Oxley asked.
Please,
Eysk said.
I have already organized sales with other families.
The pilot nodded, winked at Syrinx, who was still standing with Mosul’s arm around her shoulder, and went back into the flyer.
Sitting in the command seat he linked his mind with the controlling processor array.
Something was affecting the coherent magnetic-field generation. It took a long time to form, and he had to bring compensator
programs on-line. By the time he finally lifted from the pad the fusion generator was operating alarmingly close to maximum
capacity.
He almost turned back there and then. But once he rose above a hundred metres the field stabilized rapidly. He had to cut
the power levels back. Diagnostic programs reported the systems were all functioning flawlessly.
With a quick curse directed at all Kulu-produced machinery, he ordered the flight computer to design an orbital-injection
trajectory that would bring him to a rendezvous with
Oenone
.
See you in three hours,
Syrinx called as the sparkling artificial comet performed a tight curve around the accommodation towers before soaring up
into the night sky.
Three hours!
Oxley let his groan filter back down the affinity link.
You’re professionals. You can handle it.
He put the flyer into a steep climb. One thing about an oceanic world, there was no worry about supersonic-boom footprints
stomping all over civic areas. He was doing Mach two by the time he was fifteen kilometres away.
Pernik vanished from his affinity perception. Ordinarily a contact would simply fade with distance until it was no more. But
this was different, like steel shutters slamming into place. Oxley was over a hundred and fifty years old, in his time he’d
visited almost ninety per cent of the Confederation, and he had never known an Edenist habitat to react in such a manner.
It was alien to the whole creed of consensual unity.
He switched in the aft sensors. A luminous red pearl haunted the horizon, sending shimmer-spears of light dancing across the
black water.
“What is…” The words dried up at the back of his throat.
Pernik?
he demanded.
Pernik, what is going on? What is that light?
The silence was total. There wasn’t the slightest trace of the personality’s thoughts left anywhere in the affinity band.
Syrinx?
Nothing.
Oenone, something’s happening on Pernik, can you reach Syrinx?
She is there,
the worried voidhawk answered.
But I cannot converse with her. Something is interfering.
Oh, heavens.
He banked the flyer round, heading back for the island.
Affinity broadened out from the single tenuous thread to the orbiting voidhawk, offering him the support of innumerable minds
combining into a homogenized entity, buoying him up on a tide of intellect. He wasn’t alone, and he wasn’t anxious any more.
Doubts and personal fears bled away, exchanged for confidence and determination, a much-needed reinforcement of his embattled
psyche. For a moment, flying over the gargantuan ocean in a tiny machine, he had been horribly lonely; now his kind had joined
him, from the eager honoured enthusiasms of sixteen-year-olds up to the glacial thoughts of the islands themselves. He felt
like a child again, comforted by the loving arms of an adult, wiser and stronger. It was a reconfirmation of Edenism which
left him profoundly grateful for the mere privilege of belonging.
This is Thalia Island, Oxley, we are aware of Pernik’s withdrawal from affinity and we are summoning a planetary consensus
to deal with the problem.
That red lighting effect has me worried,
he replied. The flyer had dropped below subsonic again. Pernik gleamed a sickly vermilion eight kilometres away.
Around the planet, consensus finalized, bringing together every sentient entity in an affinity union orchestrated by the islands.
Information, such as it had, was reviewed, opinions formed, discussed, discarded, or elaborated. Two seconds after considering
the problem the consensus said:
We believe it to be Laton. A ship of the same class as the
Yaku
arrived last night and sent a spaceplane down to the island. From that time onward Pernik’s communication has declined by
sixty per cent.
Laton?
The appalled question came from
Oenone
and its crew.
Yes.
The Atlantean consensus summarized the information that had been delivered by a voidhawk two days earlier.
As we have no orbital stations our checks on arriving ships were naturally less than ideal, depending solely on civil traffic
control satellite-platform sensors. The ship has of course departed, but the spaceplane remained. Pernik and its population
must have been sequestrated by the energy virus.
Oh no,
Oxley cried brokenly.
Not him. Not again.
Ahead of him, Pernik issued a brilliant golden light, as though sunrise had come to the ocean. The flyer gave a violent lurch
to starboard, and began to lose height.
Syrinx watched the little flyer disappear into the east. The night air was cooler than she remembered from her last visit,
bringing up goosebumps below her ship-tunic. Mosul, who was dressed in a baggy sleeveless sweatshirt and shorts, seemed completely
unaffected. She eyed him with a degree of annoyance. Macho outdoors type.
This Clio was a lucky woman.
Come along,
Eysk said.
The family is dying to meet you again. You can tell the youngsters what Norfolk was like. I’d love to.
Mosul’s arm tightened that bit extra round her shoulder as they headed for the nearest tower. Almost proprietary, she thought.
Mosul,
she asked on singular engagement,
what’s wrong down here? You all seem so tense.
It was a struggle to convey the emotional weight she wanted.
Nothing is wrong.
He smiled as they passed under the archway at the foot of the tower.
She stared at him, dumbfounded. He had answered on the general affinity band, an extraordinary breach of protocol.
Mosul caught her expression, and sent a wordless query.
This is…
she began. Then her thoughts flared in alarm.
Oenone
, she couldn’t perceive
Oenone
! “Mosul! It’s gone. No, wait. I can feel it, just. Mosul, something is trying to block affinity.”
“Are they?” His smile hardened into something which made her jerk away in consternation. “Don’t worry, little Syrinx. Delicate,
beautiful little Syrinx, so far from home. All alone. But we treasure you for the gift you bring. We are going to welcome
you into a brotherhood infinitely superior to Edenism.”
She spun round, ready to run. But there were five men standing behind her. One of them—she gasped—his head had grown until
it was twice the size it should be. His features were a gross caricature, cheeks deep and lined, eyes wide and avian; his
nose was huge, coming to a knife edge that hung below his black lips, both ears were pointed, rising above the top of his
skull.
“What are you?” she hissed.
“Don’t mind old Kincaid,” Mosul said. “Our resident troll.”
It was getting lighter, the kind of liquid redness creeping across the island’s polyp which she associated with Duchess-night
on Norfolk. Her legs began to shake. It was shameful, but she was so alone. Never before had she been denied the community
of thoughts that was the wonder of Edenism.
Oenone
!
The desperate shout crashed around the confines of her own skull.
Oenone
, my love. Help me!
There was an answer. Not coherent, nothing she could perceive, decipher. But somewhere on the other side of the blood-veiled
sky the voidhawk cried in equal anguish.
“Come, Syrinx,” Mosul said. He held out his hand. “Come with us.”
It wasn’t Mosul. She knew that now.
“Never.”
“So brave,” he said pityingly. “So foolish.”
She was physically strong, her genes gave her that much. But there were seven of them. They half carried, half pushed her
onwards.
The walls became strange. No longer polyp but stone. Big cubes hewn from some woodland granite quarry; and old, the age she
thought she had seen on the approach flight. Water leaked from the lime-encrusted mortar, sliming the stone.
They descended a spiral stair which grew narrower until only one of them could march beside her. Syrinx’s shiptunic sleeve
was soon streaked with water and coffee-coloured fungus. She knew it wasn’t real, that it couldn’t be happening. There was
no “down” in an Atlantean island. Only the sea. But her feet slipped on the worn steps, and her calves ached.
There was no red glow in the bowels of the island. Flaming torches in black iron brands lighted their way. Their acrid smoke
made her eyes water.
The stairway came out onto a short corridor. A sturdy oak door was flung open, and Syrinx shoved through. Inside was a medieval
torture chamber.
A wooden rack took up the centre of the room; iron chains wound round wheels at each end, manacles open and waiting. A brazier
in one corner was sending out waves of heat from its radiant coals. Long slender metal instruments were plunged into it, metal
sharing the furnace glow. The torturer himself was a huge fat man in a leather jerkin. Rolls of hairy flesh spilled over his
waistband. He stood beside the brazier, cursing the slender young woman who was bent over a pair of bellows.
“This is Clio,” Mosul’s stolen body said. “You did say you wanted to meet her.”
The woman turned, and laughed at Syrinx.
“What is the point?” Syrinx asked weakly. Her voice was very close to cracking.
“This is in your honour,” the torturer said. His voice was a deep bass, but soft, almost purring. “You, we shall have to be
very careful with. For you come bearing a great gift. I don’t want to damage it.”
“What gift?”
“The living starship. These other mechanical devices for sailing the night gulf are difficult for us to employ. But your craft
has elegance and grace. Once we have you, we have it. We can bring our crusade to new worlds with ease after that.”
FLEE! Flee,
Oenone
. Flee this dreadful world, my love. And never come back.
“Oh, Syrinx.” Mosul’s handsome face wore the old sympathetic expression she remembered from such a time long ago now. “We
have taken affinity from you. We have sent Oxley away. We have taken everybody from you. You are alone but for us. And believe
me, we know what being alone does to an Edenist.”
“Fool,” she sneered. “That wasn’t affinity, it is love which binds us.”
“And we shall love the
Oenone
too,” a musical chorus spoke to her.
She refused to show any hint of surprise. “
Oenone
will never love you.”
“In time all things become possible,” the witching chorus sang. “For are we not come?”
“Never,” she said.
The corpulent paws of Kincaid the troll tightened around her arms. Syrinx closed her eyes as she was forced towards the rack.
This is not happening therefore I can feel no pain. This is not happening therefore I can feel no pain. Believe it!
Hands tore at the collar of her ship-tunic, ripping the fabric. Hot rancid air prickled her skin.
This is NOT happening therefore I can feel no pain. Not not not—
Ruben sat at his console station in Oenone’s bridge along with the rest of the crew. There were only two empty seats. Empty
and accusing.
I should have gone down with her, Ruben thought. Maybe if I could have provided everything she needed from life she wouldn’t
have gone running to Mosul in the first place.
We all share guilt, Ruben,
the Atlantean consensus said.
And ours is by far the larger failing for letting Laton come to this world. Your only crime is to love her.
And fail her.
No. We are all responsible for ourselves. She knows that as well as you do. All individuals can ever do is share happiness
wherever they can find it.
We’re all ships that pass in the night?
Ultimately, yes.
Consensus was so large, so replete with wisdom, he found it easy to believe. An essential component of the quiddity.
She is in trouble down there,
he said.
Frightened, alone. Edenists shouldn’t be alone.
I am with her,
Oenone
said.
She can feel me even though we cannot converse.
We are doing what we can,
the consensus said.
But this is not a world equipped for warfare.
The part of Ruben which had joined with the consensus was suddenly aware of Pernik igniting to solar splendour—and he was
sitting strapped into a metal flea that spun and tossed erratically as it fell from the sky.
SYRINX!
Oenone
cried.
Syrinx. Syrinx. Syrinx. Syrinx. Syrinx.