“You excited everyone, Glim,” Wert said. “You gave us all hope. But now-some say that you’re stalling.”
“We have to be prepared,” Glim said. “We have to be careful. Once we start, there’s no turning back. Does everyone understand that?”
“They do,” Wert said. “They’re ready to do what you say, Glim. But you have to say something.”
Glim felt his heart sink. “Soon,” he said.
“How soon?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Wert frowned, but nodded. Then he turned to Oluth.
“Go with Glim. He’ll show you about the lower sump. You’ll be working down there with him.”
“It’ll be an honor,” Oluth said.
Glim waited for Oluth to go take the vapors and felt guilty. The caustic fumes allowed the skraws to breathe underwater, but they also killed them young, as they had just killed Joacin. Of all the skraws, he was the only one who hadn’t been born on Umbriel, the only Argonian-the only one who didn’t need the vapors to breathe beneath the surface.
When the youngster joined him in the shallows, Glim took him down below the midway of the cone-shaped body of water and showed him the cocooned figures fastened to the wall. Inside each was something that had started as a worm smaller than his least claw, but were now in various stages of becoming inhabitants of Umbriel. He brushed against one near term, a lanky female who-in appearance-would be human. Next to her grew a brick- red creature with horns, and farther along a man with the dusky skin of a Dunmer. All began as worms, however, and beneath appearances they were all Umbrielians. He tried not to be annoyed by Oluth’s eagerness as he explained the procedures for tending the unborn and moving them to the birthing pools when their time came, and how to know that time. He could tell the boy was only half paying attention. He kept glancing around, especially down, to the bottom of the sump, where the actinic glare of the connexion with the ingenium lay.
“You’re curious about that?” Glim asked.
“That’s the ingenium,” Oluth said. “That’s the heart and soul of Umbriel. If we controlled that…”
“Even if we could do it,” Glim said, “that would be too much.”
“But if we’re to really revolt, carry the fight to the lords-”
“SSht, husst, slow down,” Glim said. “Who ever said anything about taking the fight to anyone? Or fighting at all?”
“Well, I guess we thought it would come to that,” Oluth said.
“Who is ‘we’?” Glim asked.
“Oh.” He looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“The younger skraws. We call ourselves the Glimmers. We’ve pledged to follow you and help you.”
Glim absorbed that, feeling claustrophobic.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Our goals are simple: We want a substitute for the vapors, so you don’t have to tear your lungs up and die early just to do your job. We’re looking for ways to inconvenience the lords, to make them aware of your needs. We don’t want it to come to a fight.”
“Right,” Oluth said. “Inconvenience them. Like how?”
“Well, what do we skraws do? We keep the sump working. That means food, water, nutrients for everyone on Umbriel and the fringe gyre-and of course, we bring the newborns into the world. We just need to emphasize our worth by showing what happens if things don’t get done down here-or if things break, clog up, and so forth. Do you understand?”
Oluth nodded vigorously. “I do!” he said. Then his gaze darted past Glim. “What’s that?”
Glim followed his regard to a small embryo sac, nearly transparent, and the thing curled in it. It was still small, but it wasn’t like a baby-more like an unfinished and undersized adult. It had scales and was a pale pink color with huge eyes and tiny little claws.
“It’s an Argonian,” he said.
“It looks a little like you.”
“Soon enough it will look a lot like me,” Mere-Glim said. “I’m an Argonian.”
He’d known it was going to happen, but now that it had, he felt a sort of sick spot in his gut.
He needed to see Annaig.
“I really am sorry I tried to kill you,” Slyr told Annaig.
Annaig blinked and glanced up at the gray-skinned woman fidgeting across the table from her.
“Have you tried again, or is this still about last week?” she asked.
Slyr’s red eyes widened. “I haven’t tried again, I swear.”
“Right. So you’ve apologized already,” Annaig said. “This means you’re now wasting my time.”
Slyr didn’t reply, but she didn’t leave either, just stood there, shuffling her feet a bit. Trying not to let her irritation show, Annaig bent back to her task of emulsifying horse brains and clove oil, whisking the gray matter vigorously and adding the oil a few drops at a time. When it reached the consistency of mayonnaise, she set it aside.
Slyr was still standing there.
“What?” Annaig exploded.
“I-you haven’t assigned anything for me to do.”
“Fine. I assign you to go sit in our quarters.”
“I have to work,” Slyr said. “Toel thinks little enough of me as it is. If he finds me idle-I worry, Annaig.”
Annaig closed her eyes and counted to four. When she opened them, she half expected to see Slyr lunging at her with a knife, but Slyr was still just standing there looking pitiful.
“Go husk the durian,” she said.
“But-”
“What now?”
“Durian is so smelly. ” She waved the back of her hand at Annaig’s preparations. “What are you doing there?”
She’s just spying, Annaig thought. Trying to steal my ideas.
It didn’t matter, though, did it?
“I’m extracting terror,” she said.
“Come again?”
She lifted the emulsion. “Terror, fear, happiness-any strong emotion leaves something of itself in the brain.”
“But if the soul has fled, hasn’t all of that gone with it?”
Annaig smiled, despite the company, and scraped some of the emulsion into a glass cylinder, divided three- quarters of the way down by a thin membrane.
“What’s that?” Slyr asked, indicating the divider.
“It’s the humorous membrane from a chimera-eel,” she replied. “It’s what allows them to change color to suit their emotions. I’ve altered this one to let only terror through.”
“You’re filtering horse-terror through eel-skin?”
“Very specially prepared eel-skin,” she replied. She placed the tube in a small centrifuge and cranked the handle, spinning the vial. After a few moments she detached it and held it up, showing a pale yellow ichor in the bottom.
“That’s terror?” Slyr said. She sounded skeptical.
“Do you want to understand this or not?” Annaig asked.
“I do. Please. I’m sorry.”
“Sit down, then-you’re making me nervous, hovering there.”
Slyr scootched onto a stool and folded her hands in her lap.
“You were right, in a way-terror-or any emotion-isn’t merely chemical. But the substance acts as a vessel, a shaper of soul stuff, just as-at a higher level-does the brain and body.” She opened a small valve on the bottom of the tube and let the liquid empty into a small glass cone. She then sealed a second, identical cone base-to-base with the first to form a spiculum. She shook the container so that the liquid coated the interior surface evenly, then slid the whole thing into a coil of translucent fibers that in turn was connected to a pulsing cable of the same
