Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (14 page)

“Fine. I will keep my interscreen with me at all times, but you may have to be discreet. We can’t risk anyone finding out, and the screen I’m using was lent to me by someone I don’t want to get into trouble.”

“Sure.”

“And you’re going to have to carry on here as if nothing had happened.”

“I will be the perfect student,” promised Six.

“I bet you won’t!”

“Well, Atheron won’t notice any difference, at any rate. Hey, don’t worry about me! I can look after myself. No sweat.”

“What is this sweat you keep mentioning?” asked Arcan. “Why do you not have any?”

“It’s an expression … Oh, I give up … you tell him, Grace.”

Six conveniently disappeared from the conversation, leaving Grace to a long and involved explanation of heat loss through perspiration which only served to confuse Arcan totally. “I transmit any extra heat right through me,” he said loftily. “So I never need to lose heat. This concept is very wasteful. I do not think it is efficient.”

Grace had to laugh. “You give the expression a whole new meaning!” she agreed.

“Good.” The lake scintillated, pleased with itself.

DIVA JUST LAY back and vegetated. Since the operation it seemed that they had no further use for her. Atheron hadn’t made an appearance and she had felt too tired to reply to Six’s annoying attempts to talk to her. She had nothing to do, and there was nothing that she wanted to do. It was all the same to her. Nothing mattered very much anymore, she thought. Getting up felt like being hit in the stomach by Sacras so she stayed nearly all the time on the bed. She had little appetite, and delayed eating as long as she could. When there was no choice she moved over to the food lift doubled-up, like an ancient with spacebone disease.

As she shuffled listlessly over on this day, there was a sound in her bubble, and she turned. The pain as she did so made her cry out.

“Diva!” Atheron’s smile filled the interscreen.

“What do you want?” Diva rather thought the time for niceties had passed.

“Just checking on you. Everything all right?”

“As if you cared!”

“You will be pleased to know that the transfer of your genetic material went very well. The client is most satisfied. You have become a
Valhai
, your genes are at this moment being used to strengthen the next generation on Xiantha.”

“Oh boy, bully for me!”

“Exactly. It is an achievement of great transcendence. How many Coriolans could claim to have engendered hundreds of thousands of embryos?” He shook his head in wonder.

“Now what are you going to do with me?” Diva growled.

“Ahh. Well. Of course you are still recuperating at the moment, so it would be unfair of us to expect you to follow the usual study plan. No, I think it is best for you just to relax for a couple of weeks. See how it all goes, you know?”

“No more classes?” That made her look over to where his face was suspended, on the central column.

Atheron seemed to be looking at something outside her view. “N … no,” he told her. “After all, they are no longer necessary, are they? In your case the client required no further proof that your genes would represent an asset to their gene pool.”

“And now I’m a
Valhai
?”

“A
Valhai
,” Atheron agreed. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you. So what is my future?”

“I don’t think we need to worry about that now.” Atheron had looked down again. “I will leave you with some documentaries on the interscreen, in case you get bored.”

“You will not be coming to see me anymore?” Now, warning bells were going off up and down her spine.

“That will not be necessary. Goodbye Diva. Thank you for your attention in class.” The face gave a funny sort of nod. “
Valhai
Diva.” And on those words the face disappeared, to be replaced by a documentary on the Almagest solar system.

Diva began to shake. There was something tremendously wrong. Were they just going to let her rot in this bubble? She felt immediately stifled, unable to breathe. She gave a wry grimace. So things
do
matter after all, Diva! The will to survive was still inside you somewhere.

She tried to calm her breathing down, and stop trembling. Then she went back to bed, but not just to lie inanimately this time. As soon as she had drawn the flimsy cover over her she began to signal to Six.

“And ABOUT TIME!” The reply came back with three times the normal pressure. “Kind of you to deign to talk to us, milady.”

“I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Well I know that,” Six snapped. “Big of you to bother about us at all, I guess, with all the important things going on in your life.”

“I’m sorry. I suppose I was a bit thoughtless.”

“You suppose right!”

“I just couldn’t get my brain around anything much. And it all hurt so much. I don’t know.”

Six didn’t feel very sorry for her. He didn’t do sympathy. “Well, are you all right now?” he demanded.

“I guess. It still hurts a lot.”

“So get used to it.”

“Thanks for the kind advice!” she flared.

Six laughed. “Now you sound more like yourself. Welcome back.”

She told him about the strange interview with Atheron, and then he let her into Arcan’s secret guilt, telling her where the previous generations of donors were.

“All of them?” She was horrified. She must still be weak from the operation, she decided, because tears had started to stream down her cheeks onto the pillow on either side of her head. I never cry, she told herself angrily.

“Then that is what will happen to me?”

“We think so, yes. You are no longer any use to the Sellites, and they have no reason to keep you alive. Since they didn’t kill you straight away we imagine they are keeping you temporarily as some type of back-up, but we don’t know how long that will last for.”

Diva was shaking again. “—Then I shall die.”

“We
have
thought up a plan, only we need more time.” Six explained their idea.

“Can Arcan do that?” she asked.

“Well, not just yet. But he is practising. He told me yesterday that he managed to move one of the old donor bubbles a few feet. And he learns really fast.”

“And have you managed to contact Grace through the interscreen?” her fingers demanded.

“Nearly.”

“Nearly!”

“I’m working on that too. The good news is that they haven’t killed you yet.”

“Yeah. Terrific.”

“And Grace’s idea is really good. It just can’t happen quite yet, you see.”

“I know, Six, thank you. But it is kind of hard to be dispassionate about it. You know it’s funny … earlier I just wanted to die; and now I might really die, today, some huge ravening monster has raged into existence inside me screaming ‘NO-O-O!’.”

“I always feel like that. Welcome to my world.”

“No wonder you’ve always been touchy.”

“Comes with the monster kit. You’ll find out.”

“I certainly don’t feel much like Divina anymore,” she admitted.

“Thank Kwaide!”

“Why you …!” Then she thought better of it. Now she came to think about it, Divina had been anything but divine from time to time.

“Don’t much like yourself either, eh?” Six could smell her weakness through her fingers, apparently.

“Don’t like
you
!” she retaliated.

“Yes you do. Couldn’t live without me … literally.”

A very small smile finally appeared on her wan face. “You will
have
to save me if you want to use that one in the future.”

“All part of the service. Anything else her madamship desires?”

“Just get me out of here.”

“Sure. I’ll wave my wand, shall I?”

“I wish.”

“Goodnight, Diva. Try to rest; you will need to get your strength back. Eat properly.”

“Yes, nanny!”

“Just do it,” he admonished. “There’s not a lot of point in us rescuing you if you have starved yourself to death by that time.”

“I promise. You said that just like Atheron would.”

“You want somebody to save you or what?”

“Sorry. Please!”

ALTHOUGH GRACE COULD speak with Arcan via the back lift, she preferred to go bare planet, down to the lake. There she could really feel this strange entity. In the lift it all felt rather surreal. But here … here she could sense how utterly alone Arcan had been for all those thousands of years … here where it was never day and never night, and where the light bathed everything into grey, where it was perpetually freezing cold … here it was different.

“Arcan?” She placed her hands carefully on the lake.

“Grace!” The lake shimmered, pleased at her visit.

“How is it going? Have you managed to move anything yet?”

“No, I am looking for a ‘volunteer’!”

That didn’t sound so good. Grace wasn’t too sure that she wanted to be a guinea pig for his trials. What if he found it was all too complicated? She could end up in the middle of the lake with no source of oxygen once her mask pack ran out.

“Err …”

“I knew you would be happy to help. It is very nice to be able to depend upon another being.”

“Err …”

“Just step into the lake, until you are fully covered. Don’t worry, I won’t drop you!”

“Ha-ha!” She gave a hollow laugh, but found herself wading into the lake as ordered. It felt very strange, because she knew the lake consisted of a very thick substance, yet there was no resistance to her movement at all. She was able to glide smoothly into the lake until she was out of her depth. Heart flipping over unhappily, she took an unnecessary gulp of air from her face mask, and dipped her head under the surface.

There was enough time for three more ragged breaths, and then she managed to make herself open her eyes. She had felt nothing, but she was in a different place. Her eyes could see through the lake, she found, although it pressed in on them. She was floating beside a bubble, and she could just discern the shape of a skeleton inside. She gasped, and then had to steady her respiration so that the mask pack could cope. She felt slightly sick, closed her eyes again, and when she reopened them the bubble had disappeared. She flailed around a little, feeling panic overcome her, and then she felt herself lightly break the surface.

Even though she was moving from one unbreathable atmosphere to another, she felt easier. She let her breath out slowly through a rounded mouth.

Arcan showed how he felt, by causing the lake around her to wave so that she bobbed up and down like a cork. Happily, her feet touched the bottom and she managed to wade her way out. Once she stretched her hands back to the lake he erupted into an exultant chatter.

“See! How about that! I did it!”

“Fantastic!”

“How did it feel? Did I shake you?”

“No. It was fine, I didn’t even know that I was moving!” Then honesty found its way to her lips. “Though I was a bit scared.”

“Of course.”

“You expected that?”

“Look Grace. You are a small, vulnerable animal. It is quite normal that you should be scared of me. I am VERY big.”

“Yes, we are totally different.”

“No. Not so. I am just much bigger.”

“But you
are
different!”

“In what way?” The lake darkened threateningly.

Grace swallowed. “I can move around and you can’t. I can eat and you can’t. I have a skeleton and you haven’t. I—”

“You are a total waste of space.”

“ I am not!”

“Certainly you are. Think about it. You have legs because you have to run around after food. So you need more food to feed the legs. You have arms to catch the food. Those need more food too. Nearly all the space you use is dedicated to eating. Very wasteful! No, there is really only one difference between us – you have a shell and I don’t need one.”

“A shell?”

“A skeleton, then. Another waste of space. I manage perfectly well – better, in fact – without one. You only need one because of all that running about after food. Otherwise we are just the same – an agglomeration of specialized cells. Of course you are far more primitive.”

Grace frowned fiercely. “Who are you calling primitive? You make me sound like a Cesan trogling! I am much more than that!” she asserted. “Much!”

The lake heaved in front of her. “Actually, Grace, it is I who am much more than that. You are, I am sorry to say, only a very underdeveloped being. But even so, you have some interesting characteristics – for a transient life form.” There was a noticeable pause. “—And I like you,” he added kindly.

Grace decided that would have to do, even if he did seem to regard her as some sort of amusing pet. “Listen, Arcan, the great news is that you can move me around the lake.”