Had he seen this before? Inside the videos sent by the original river, did Rococo ever observe this talent?
No.
A skill unleashed during the rebuilding phase? Rococo suspected Mere would feel just as ignorant as he did. No, there was a person to ask, but he was inside his cabin with his lover. This world didn’t bother speaking to diplomats or exobiologists. Only Amund was given that honor, and only on the river’s schedule. “Next time the two of you chat,” Rococo should say. “Ask about the tendrils sprouting wings. Would you please?”
He smiled out of habit and held tight to the railing. The river had yanked itself as high as ever, Rococo perched at the edge of what looked like a wet purple cliff, and that’s when the sessile forest vanished. Busy life was instantly replaced with what looked like a dead city. Blockish shapes resembled buildings, and there were signs of fire that must have burned hotter as they continued downstream, the black outlines of foundations sketched on the blasted ground, and then long reaches of filthy irradiated glass. Cities were human inventions, and of course this world never had cities. But a facility must have stood here, a sprawling factory where the previous river refined metals and wove the antennae that spoke to the Great Ship, and maybe the bones of those early starships. Maybe this was an intentional side trip, one man shown the devastation wrought by some very bad thoughts. Or maybe this was all chance. Either way, the blast zone impressed him. Rococo estimated distances and the megatons, both of which were substantial. And then the glass vanished, the river spreading into a gelatinous purple lake inside a crater, and Rococo couldn’t stop thinking about what a nuclear device would do to his tiny, perpetually scared mind.
Suddenly that 2 percent chance of survival felt wildly optimistic. He suffered that revelation and then embraced it. Freedom always came when the odds were at their worst. There was no getting off this world. The new river didn’t trust them, and maimed as it was, it had enough power to demand whatever it believed was best, and that included ignoring the two creatures that could transform its future in the most amazing ways.
Holding his breath, Rococo listened to his thoughts.
Far out on the lake, the beast was pulling itself into what looked like a mountain, and then it lifted the prison and prisoners until they were at the summit, hundreds of meters above the land. That’s when they stopped, and a great voice rose from below, shaking the world as it called out, “Amund.”
A few moments passed before the naked man appeared, obviously interrupted from pleasures that didn’t appreciate interruptions.
Rococo continued to hold his breath, his body tingling, alternate metabolisms waking as the last of his oxygen was spent.
Still naked, Amund hurried down the blue slope, and where nobody else could hear him, he paused, speaking a few words while waving his hands.
Mere emerged, wearing clothes and a watchful, unreadable expression.
Rococo breathed again.
The sugar inside his flesh began to burn, the tingling becoming a general warmth, and once again, his thoughts shifted. He wanted to speak to Mere. Honestly and unheard. But that meant using a tongue that the creature beneath them couldn’t understand.
More breathing, more thinking.
The luddy continued to wave his hands, chatting happily with one of the largest creatures in the galaxy.
Rococo cleared his throat. “I’m thinking of that bal’tin proverb.”
The bal’tin were familiar to both of them, and that included a language that this world couldn’t have heard.
Mere stared at him.
Rococo offered a brief statement that sounded like music.
Straightening her back, the woman smiled and then let the smile fall away. This hadn’t been a long meeting. Amund was already returning to the prison, marching uphill because his great friend wouldn’t think of making the journey easy for aging legs. How much radiation was punching up from the lake floor? Probably quite a lot. The entire world was saturated with fallout, and Amund was halfway dead, and even if the cancers didn’t kill him, it was only a matter of decades before he was finished.
With those bleak thoughts swirling, Rococo offered another bal’tin proverb. “Doom and eggs, doom and eggs,” he sang. “Our souls are the boxes that carry forth the doom and the eggs.”
As he spoke, he realized that he was crying.
When did the tears start?
Rococo had never earned a warm smile from Mere. Until now. The tiny woman looked at him, offering a sigh while showing him such a delicious smile. She cared. She felt for him and for both of them. Perhaps she even thought about holding his hand. And there weren’t enough sensors in the Universe to measure the pleasure that smile delivered to one old and very doomed diplomat.
8.
Some voices wanted Amund frozen. The streakship was being fueled and provisioned, and he had minutes to prepare for a quick trip to the Ship’s port, and after that, a sudden introduction to his fellow crewmembers. But friends and strangers had to approach him before he left the Highlands. Using confident voices, they advised him to step inside a cold bottle. None of them had any firsthand experience with spaceflight, much less alien desires, but they promised that his life would be spared at the end of this adventure, and did he want
