pause.
This part of the transaction, I did not — and still do not — understand. Why Earthling fugitives would want glavers is beyond me.
Gillian Baskin had the hoons carry out several large crates in exchange. I had seen the contents and felt an old hunger rise within me.
Books. There were hundreds of paper books, freshly minted aboard the Streaker. Not a huge amount of material, compared with the Galactic Library unit, or even the Great Printing, but included in the boxes were updates about the current state of the Five Galaxies, and other subjects Uriel requested. More than enough value to barter for a bunch of grub-eating glavers!
Later, I connected the trade with the dolphins and Kiqui who also debarked in Wuphon Harbor, and I realized There’s more to this deal than meets the eye.
• • •
Did I mention the tall prisoner? As everybody moved off to the great hall for a hurried feast, I looked back and glimpsed a hooded figure being led down the pier toward the submarine, guarded by two wary-looking urs. It was a biped, but did not move like a human or hoon, and I could tell both hands were tied. Whoever the prisoner was, he vanished into the Hikahi in a hurry, and I never heard a word about it.
The last reunion took place half a midura later, when we were all gathered in the town hall.
According to a complex plan worked out by the Niss Machine, the whale sub did not have to depart for some time, so a banquet was held in the fashion of our Jijoan Commons. Each race claimed a corner of the hexagonal chamber for its own food needs, then individuals migrated round the center hearth, chatting, renewing acquaintance, or discussing the nature of the world. While Gillian Baskin was engrossed in deep conversation with my parents and Uriel, my sister brought me up to date on happenings in Wuphon since our departure. In this way I learned of school chums who had marched north to war, joining militia units while we four adventurers had childish exploits in the cryptic deep. Some were dead or missing in the smoldering ruins of Ovoom Town. Others, mostly qheuens, had died in the plagues of late spring.
The hoonish disease never had a chance to take hold here in the south. But before the vaccines came, one ship had been kept offshore at anchor — in quarantine — because a sailor showed symptoms.
Within a week, half the crew had died.
Despite the gravity of her words, it was hard to pay close attention. I was trying to screw up my courage, you see. Somehow, I must soon tell my family the news they would least want to hear.
Amid the throng, I spotted Dwer and his sister huddled near the fire, each taking turns amazing the other with tales about their travels. Their elation at being reunited was clearly muted by a kind of worry familiar to all of us — concern about loved ones far away, whose fates were still unknown. I had a sense that the two of them knew, as I did, that there remained very little time.
Not far away I spied Dwer’s noor companion, Mudfoot — the one Gillian called a “tytlal”—perched on a rafter, communing with others of his kind. In place of their normal, devil-may-care expressions, the creatures looked somber. Now we Six knew their secret — that the tytlal are a race hidden within a race, another tribe of sooners, fully alert and aware of their actions. Might some victims of past pranks now scheme revenge on the little imps? That seemed the least of their worries, but I wasted no sympathy on them.
Welcome to the real world, I thought.
Tyug squatted in a corner of the hall, furiously puffing away. Every few duras, the traeki’s synthi ring would pop out another glistening ball of some substance whose value the Six Races had learned after long experience. Supplements to keep glavers healthy, for instance, and other chemical wonders that might serve Gillian’s crew, if some miracle allowed them to escape. If Tyug finished soon, Uriel hoped to keep her alchemist. But I would lay bets that the traeki meant to go along when the Earthlings departed.
The occasion was interrupted when a pair of big hoons wearing proctors’ badges pushed through leather door strips into the feasting hall, gripping the arms of a male human I had never seen before. He was of middle height for their kind, with a dark complexion and an unhappy expression. He wore a rewq on his forehead, and hair combed to hide a nasty scar near his left ear. A small chimp followed close behind, her appearance rueful.
I wasn’t close enough to hear the details firsthand, but later I pieced together that this was a long-lost crew mate of the Streakers, whose appearance on Jijo had them mystified. He had been on Mount Guenn, helping Uriel’s smiths work on some secret project, when he suddenly up and tried to escape by stealing some kind of flying machine!
As the guards brought him forward, Gillian’s face washed with recognition. She smiled, though he cringed, as if dreading this meeting. The dark man turned left to hide his mutilation, but Gillian insistently took his hands. She expressed pleasure at seeing him by leaning up to kiss one cheek.
Perhaps later I’ll learn more about where he fits in all this. But time is short and I must close this account before the Hikahi sets sail to rejoin the dolphin-crewed ship. So let me finish with the climax of an eventful evening.
A herald burst in. His vibrating sac boomed an alert umble.
“Come! Come and see the unusual!”
Hurrying outside, we found the rain had stopped temporarily. A window opened in the clouds, wide enough for Loocen to pour pale, liquid luminance across a flank of Mount Guenn. Swathes of brittle stars shone through, including one deep red, cyclopean eye.
In spite of this lull, the storm was far from over. Lightning flickered as clouds grew denser still. The west was one great mass of roiling blackness amid a constant background of thunder. In miduras, the coast was really going to get hit.
People started pointing. Huck rolled up near my right leg and gestured with all four agile eyestalks, directing my gaze toward the volcano.
At first, I couldn’t tell what I was seeing. Vague, ghostlike shapes seemed to bob and flutter upward, visible mostly as curved silhouettes that blocked sporadic stars. Sometimes lightning caused one of the objects to glow along a rounded flank, revealing a globelike outline, tapered at the bottom. They seemed big, and very far away.
I wondered if they might be starships.
“Balloons,” Huck said at last, her voice hushed in awe. “Just like Around the World in Eighty Days!”
Funny. Huck seemed more impressed at that moment than she ever had been aboard Streaker, by all the glittering consoles and chattering machines. I stared at the flotilla of fragile gasbags, wondering what kind of volunteers were brave enough to pilot them on a night like this, surrounded by slashing electricity, and with ruthless foes prowling higher still. We watched as scores wafted from Mount Guenn’s secret caves. One by one, they caught the stiff west wind and flowed past the mountain, vanishing from sight.
I happened to be standing near Gillian Baskin, so I know what the Earthwoman said when she turned to Uriel the Smith.
“All right. You kept your side of the bargain. Now it’s time to keep ours.”
PART TEN
Vubben
SMASHED UP. Wheels torn or severed. His braincase leaking lubricant. Motivator spindles shredded and discharging slowly into the ground.
Vubben lies crumpled next to his deity, feeling life drain away.
That he still lives seems remarkable.
When the Jophur corvette slashed brutally at the Holy Egg, he had been partway around the great stone’s flank, almost on the other side. But the moatlike channel of the Nest funneled explosive heat like a river, outracing his fruitless effort at retreat.
