The Spheres of Heaven

“It’s hard to describe in words. If only we had a map …”

“One moment.” Vow-of-Silence picked up a flat plate and a marker and began to draw. She did it without looking, and her movements were so fast it seemed impossible for them to be accurate. In less than thirty seconds she was showing the result to Bony and Liddy. She said diffidently, “This is based on conversations with the Sea- wanderers and our own observations. It is, of course, no more than a tiny region of the whole of Limbo, but it represents our current knowledge. Here is where we are.”

She touched the plate, where she had drawn a tiny but recognizable picture of the Finder . “And here is the shoreline. Now, where was the steaming circle in the water?”

“About here.” Bony stabbed at the drawing with an index finger. “I think that’s right. Liddy?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t put it any closer. When we went ashore we travelled as far as here .” She touched a point on the upper right of the plate, and Vow-of-Silence instantly added a notation there and a dotted line leading from the shore. Liddy nodded, frowned, and said, “But what’s this ?”

Bony had not noticed it when he examined the plate, but a small circle toward the top left contained another small and stylized drawing. He stared at it. His eyes were not acute enough to make out the fine detail.

“It looks like—” Liddy turned to Vow-of-Silence. “I’ve never seen one, but I’ve seen drawings of Angels that look like that.”

“Of course.” The narrow head bobbed. “When I said at the beginning of this meeting that there was a third ship, I was referring to your vessel. The second ship, the one that the Sea-wanderers told us about and which apparently arrived soon after we did, is an Angel ship. And there is — not surprisingly — an Angel on board.”

* * *

The Angel ship sat about five kilometers away from the original position of the Mood Indigo , on a narrow part of the same off-shore shelf. Looking at the map drawn by Vow-of-Silence, Bony realized for the first time how lucky they had been. Only a couple of hundred yards seaward of where the Mood Indigo had landed, the map showed the seabed dropping off steeply to a region marked “Deep Water.” Too deep, apparently, for the Sea-wanderers, and more than deep enough to cave in the hull of any ship unfortunate enough to descend there.

The Angel ship had been even luckier than the Mood Indigo . According to the drawing it sat on the very brink of the shelf, which was unusually narrow at that point. Twenty meters in one direction would plunge the ship into the abyss. Fifty meters the other way would bring it onto the rocky beach. Eager Seeker and Vow-of-Silence had been considering a visit to the Angel when Bony and Liddy arrived, but they were reluctant to leave the Finder while there was any chance at all that Blessed Union might return.

There had seemed no great urgency in a visit to the Angel ship. That idea changed as Vow-of-Silence was pointing out a river on the map, used in the past by the Sea-wanderers to penetrate a little way inland while remaining under water.

“Here is the farthest point of their progress.” The Pipe-Rilla tapped it with a black claw. “They call it Bad Things Fork, and also Death Fork. Any Sea-wanderer who went beyond it never returned.”

She was interrupted when a unit in the control desk of the Finder suddenly beeped for attention, and a bubbling voice that seemed to speak without consonants said, “It darkens. Violence comes in the above the world. We will feel it in the world. We go to seek safeness in down.”

“The Sea-wanderers.” Vow-of-Silence leaned across to the sound unit and said clearly, “We hear you, and we thank you for the warning.”

Liddy added, “I hear them, but what do they mean?”

“It has happened before, probably before your arrival on this world.” Vow-of-Silence bent to a remote viewer and called for a new display. “So far as these natives are concerned, the sea is the world. The atmosphere of the planet is the above-the-world. The Sea-wanderers can tell when a surface storm is on the way, and when that is the case they refuse to go near the shore. There are huge breakers, and strong currents. Look at the sky thirty kilometers west of here, and you will see what is coming our way.”

If the ship could receive a distant view from above the surface, why had it not been able to learn the fate of the Tinkers who went ashore? Bony postponed the question. It was less important at the moment than what filled the display. The time was close to the middle of Limbo’s day, but the blue sun’s disk shone only intermittently. The clear sky had filled with clots and streaks of gray and black clouds, torn by wind and driving along furiously. The same force that propelled them across the sky lashed the sea surface into monstrous surges, broken at their peaks and flecked with white foam.

“Can it hurt us?” Liddy asked.

“Not us.” Vow-of-Silence was reaching out at full length to pluck a set of linked tubes from a cabinet. “The Finder is safe at this depth and in this location. So is your ship, providing that it remains more than twenty meters down. I am sending a signal to it, warning of the storm. But the Angel ship will be in peril. It lies on the narrowest part of the shelf. When the storm arrives, shifts of sediment might send it over the edge into deep water. Waves could pick it up and smash it on the shore. The ship must be moved, or at the very least the Angel taken to safety. Let me see, three kilometers across the seabed, that would take …”

Bony wondered how Friday Indigo was doing, up there on the surface. Also what he was doing. The captain had been very secretive. The Mood Indigo could always descend again and sit the storm out safely on the bed of the sea — provided that Indigo had the sense to listen to the warning message, and act on it. On the other hand, this was a situation where the Mood Indigo would have been invaluable. The ship could fly three kilometers far quicker than anyone could walk.

Eager Seeker was already in motion, Tinker components rapidly removing themselves from the main body. The process appeared totally random. Bony began to put his suit back on, but he could not hide his curiosity.

While he was waiting for his suit to climb back up his body, he asked, “How does a Tinker Composite decide what size to be?”

The Pipe-Rilla said at once, “It is all a question of necessary function. If there are—”

“Vow-of-Silence, do you mind? After all, this is our own self that is being discussed.” There was a definite testiness to Eager Seeker’s tone. Bony, recalling that the Tinker Composite had not said one word after their initial greeting, decided that Vow-of-Silence might represent not so much a name as a desire on the part of others.

The blunt head-like upper part of the Composite turned toward Bony, even as components sped away from it. Eager Seeker was taking on a distinctly ragged appearance as the Tinker Composite went on, “A full answer would require much time. But there are certain simple rules. First, if we wish to we can join every component together. When we do so, we have increased thinking power. But we are also less nimble mentally. We are slower , with a longer integration time. Thus, we are not so quick to complete a thought or to reach a decision. The integration time grows very quickly — exponentially — with the number of components. When the problem is large, we combine all units. This, of course, is why we came here as a Composite of unusual size, with the expectation of problems of unusual difficulty. Normally, we choose a compromise between speed of thought and depth of thought. In a possible emergency — as now — smaller is better. And since we must soon leave the ship” — more and more dark-winged bodies flew away from the main bulk of the Composite — “we will take that action not as an entity, but as a non-entity. As individual components …”

The voice faded to nothing, the speaking funnel closed, and a blizzard of purple-black swirled about the cabin before vanishing up a narrow tube in the ceiling.

“Eager Seeker leaves through an airlock too small for me or you.” Vow-of-Silence was wriggling her body and legs into the odd array of tubes, which mysteriously transformed into a suit. “We will use the exit method you so kindly provided. Come now. The Angel’s ship waits for us, but the storm declines to do so.”

She led the way back out through the airlock. Bony and Liddy followed. Under the sea there was no sign of