Charles Sheffield - Transcendence

“It was awful.”

“I know. The only thing worse than a takeoff like that is no takeoff at all. My main worry now is the scrape on the hull, but I think we’re fit for space.” He glanced away from Darya to where Nenda and Tally were down on the floor next to the moaning Dulcimer. “You’re not shutting him up, you know — he’s making more noise than ever.”

“He is. An’ I don’t see why, he looks just fine.” Nenda grabbed hold of the Chism Polypheme, who appeared to be trying to form himself into a seamless blubbering sphere of dark green. “Hold still, you great streak of green funk. There’s not a thing wrong with you.”

“Agony,” Dulcimer whimpered. “Oh, the sheer agony.”

“Where do you say you’re hurtin’?”

Five little arms waved in unison, pointing down toward Dulcimer’s tail. Nenda followed the direction, probing down with his hands into the tight-coiled spiral.

“Nothing here,” he muttered. And then he gave a sudden hoot of triumph. “Hold it. You’re right, an’ I’m wrong. Jackpot! Dulcimer, you’re a marvel, bein’ smart enough to grab this with your rear end. Relax, now, I’ve got to pull it off you.”

“No! It’s in my flesh.” Dulcimer gave a whistling scream. “My own flesh. Don’t do that.”

“Already did. All over.” Louis Nenda was bending low at the Polypheme’s tail and chuckling with satisfaction. “Think of it this way, Dulcimer. You got a contract with us that gives you twelve percent of this. An’ not only that, I think mebbe there’s others will give you their share of it, too.”

While Darya stared at him in total confusion, Louis Nenda slowly straightened up. He raised his right hand.

“Look-see. They’re not gonna be able to say we made the whole thing up this time.”

And finally the others could see it. Held firmly between Nenda’s finger and thumb, wriggling furiously and trying to take a bite out of him with its tiny razor-sharp beak, was a pale apricot form: the unmistakable shape of an angry infant Zardalu.

If Hans Rebka had been asked — without giving him time to think about it — how long it was from leaving the Erebus to his return with Darya Lang and the rest, he might have guessed at fifteen to twenty hours. Certainly more than twelve. It was a shock to glance at the ship’s log on the Indulgence as they docked, and learn that less than three hours had passed since they had floated free of the main ship.

Nothing on board the Erebus seemed to have changed. The ship was drifting along in the same high orbit, silent and apparently lifeless. No one greeted them as they emerged from the hold.

Rebka led the way to the bridge. Everyone followed him, not because they were needed there but because they were too drained to think of doing anything else. Dulcimer was the sole exception. The Polypheme went toward the nearest reactor with a single-minded fixity of intention that made him oblivious to everything else.

“Ah, let him have it,” Nenda muttered, seeing Darya’s questioning face. “Look at the color of him. He’ll be good for nothin’ anyway, till he gets a jolt of sun-juice. An’ close that damned reactor door behind you,” he called out to Dulcimer as they went past him.

The two of them had been walking last in the group, Darya drinking from every spigot until she felt like a rolling ball of water. They were both exhausted, drifting along and talking about nothing. Or rather, she was exhausted and Nenda was talking about something , but Darya was too tired to fathom what. He seemed to be trying to lead up to a definite statement, but then always he backed away from it. Finally she patted his arm and said, “Not just now, Louis. I’m too wiped out for hard thinking.”

He grunted his disagreement. “We gotta talk now, Darya. This may be our only chance.”

“Of course it won’t be. We’ll talk later.”

“Can’t do it later. Has to be now. Know what the Cecropians say? ‘Delay is the deadliest form of denial.’ ”

“Never heard of that saying before.” Darya yawned. “Why don’t you just wait and tell me about it tomorrow?” She moved on, vaguely aware that he did not seem pleased with her answer.

Nenda followed, the infant Zardalu tucked under one arm. It was peering around with bright, inquisitive eyes and trying to turn far enough to bite his chest. He sighed, gave the Zardalu a reproving swipe on the head, and increased his pace until he was again side by side with Darya. He put his free arm around her and hugged her shoulders, but he did not speak again on the way to the control room of the Erebus .

Hans Rebka had been there for a couple of minutes, staring into one of the alcoves of the huge room. His shoulders were bowed with fatigue — but he straightened up quickly enough when he saw Nenda’s arm around Darya.

She knew that expression. To avoid an argument she pulled free and hurried across to the alcove herself — and received the biggest shock of all. Atvar H’sial was there, sitting crouched by J’merlia’s limp and silent body.

J’merlia. Darya had seen him vanish, down on Genizee. He could not be here, lying on the floor of the control room.

“J’merlia…” she began, and then subsided. Her head was full of cotton. She didn’t know where to begin.

“At says J’merlia’s doin’ all right,” Nenda said. He had followed her over to the alcove. “She’s in communication with him. She says he’s not quite conscious yet, but his condition’s improving. We just hafta be patient and wait a minute.”

J’merlia was beginning to groan and mutter. Darya leaned closer. It was a language that she could not understand. She looked around the group. “Anyone recognize that?”

“Recognize, yes,” E.C. Tally said. “Understand, no. That is J’merlia’s native tongue; the language of an adult male Lo’tfian. Unfortunately there is no dictionary in the central data bank. I suspect that no one in this party speaks it.”

“But that don’t matter,” Nenda added. “There’s some sorta trauma in J’merlia for human speech, but everything’ll come out anyway in the pheromones. Atvar H’sial can tell me what J’merlia’s tryin’ to say, and I can tell you. She says it might be a couple of minutes more before we get sense, but she wants us to be ready for it. Kallik, gimme a computer recording mode.”

The Hymenopt nodded, and her paws flew across the console. She had apparently recovered from her earlier meeting with the vanishing J’merlia. Now she was perched on the rail of the console, staring intently down at the Lo’tfian and at Atvar H’sial hovering worriedly over him.

Darya noticed that Kallik was using her middle paws. One forelimb was missing. What had happened to it? No one bothered to mention it. Her eyes went on to Louis Nenda; his arms were covered with blister burns from contact with some hot or corrosive liquid. Those two were the worst off physically, but no one else was much better. Every face and body was lined with fatigue and covered with grime.

Darya must look as bad herself. And her inside was worse than her outside. She felt a thousand years old.

The ridiculous nature of the whole effort struck her. To take this motley, wounded, and exhausted bunch of cripples, slaves, and misfits, and expect them to make progress in understanding anything , let alone the mysteries of Genizee and its shrouded belt of singularities…

That was some joke. Except that she could not laugh at it. She could not even feel angry anymore. And she had not faced up to the biggest mystery of all: J’merlia’s very presence.

“How can he be here?” Darya found herself blurting out her questions and pointing at the Lo’tfian. “He was on Genizee with me and Tally. And then he vanished — into the air.”