They were separated from L'Kell and escorted out of the chamber by three untalkative guards. The first guard led them across the room while the others followed. They entered a transparent access tube that stretched horizontally toward another habitat. It felt as if they were walking underwater, surrounded by the deep-sea gloom, and the occasional movement of lights or fish. Bandicut glanced up, and could see no lightening of the ocean overhead. He suppressed a shudder, and wondered if it was nighttime on this side of this world.
The next "habitat" turned out to be a gourd-shaped structure whose primary purpose was apparently to be a juncture point among a number of other passageways. The guard leading them touched a spot on the wall, and an entryway opened to a narrower tube that slanted downward and curved away to the right out of sight. It was as steep and twisty as a child's slide; there was no way they could walk, or even crawl, down it without sliding out of control. The guard pointed in. "Go!" he said, waving his speargun.
Bandicut looked at Ik and shrugged. He at carefully on the threshold of the tube. It creaked as it flexed under his weight, a low sound like a thumb rubbing tightly against a bass drum head. He took a deep breath. He pushed off—and slid feetfirst, completely in the blind. He felt a whoosh of air; he hit the curve with a jar, then the slope flattened out a bit. He sensed a barrier ahead, and an instant later his feet hit it and popped through. It slipped up over his body and his face, like nylon fabric whisking over his skin.
The pressure hit him in the ears, and he grunted, wiggling his jaw. He'd just gone down a slope, and thus a little deeper in the sea. He was also flat on his back on the floor of a habitat only a few meters across. There were lights around him in the darkness, and he slowly realized that the bubble was transparent, and he was looking out at the lights of the undersea city. He sat up, looking around. Was Ik coming?
Behind him, on the curved wall, a translucent pressure seal marked the attachment point of the tube. He could see the outside of the tube through the wall, curving upward and away. He also saw a shadow moving fast through the tube. He jumped out of the way—and Ik burst through the translucent seal and landed on the floor beside him.
"Ik, are you okay?"
The Hraachee'an didn't answer for a moment. When he sat up, he murmured, "Hrah, look at that. It would seem that we are to be imprisoned in a—" rasp "—fish bowl. Eh?"
Bandicut grunted. He looked up to see if anyone was following them into the bubble. What he saw made him curse. A ripple passed across the pressure-seal membrane, and the tube pulled free of the bubble. It drew upward and away from their prison cell. "Well, I guess we can forget about escaping."
"Urrr?" Ik followed the direction of Bandicut's gaze. "Urr."
Getting to their feet, they started examining the bubble, top to bottom. They were completely isolated. The bubble was tethered beneath the floor by a cable or rope. Around the attachment point were clustered some solid objects which Bandicut suspected were ballast. The bubble was definitely buoyant, though; as they walked around, it jostled and bobbed slightly. The tether, visible through the floor, disappeared down into the haze of the water. Bandicut could not see where it was attached; but in trying, he gave himself a rush of dizziness and claustrophobia, as he sought to follow it down toward what looked vaguely like a sloping bottom. He shut his eyes and waited for the feeling to pass.
Ik steadied him with a hand. "Are you unwell?"
"I'm okay. Just shouldn't have looked down there. Does that tether look awfully . . .tenuous . . .to you?"
Ik peered down, seemingly untroubled by the depths below. "Perhaps," he said. He looked up, his eyes glittering. "But look at it this way. If it breaks, we'll get to the surface quickly. We'll see the sun. Find out what color the sky is here."
"Yeah," Bandicut grunted, imagining the bubble rocketing to the surface. "Boom!" he said, pantomiming the decompressive explosion that would follow.
"Boom," Ik echoed, hissing with laughter. He folded his legs into the familiar lotuslike position that was his rest pose, and added, "I guess it would be better if we didn't."
"It would be better," Bandicut agreed.
"Take the long view, my friend John Bandicut. Take the long view," Ik said in a voice that was somehow, in spite of everything, reassuring.
* * *
Ik didn't mind too much the darkness or murkiness of the depths. What bothered him was the continual creaking and groaning of these frail-seeming underwater structures. He didn't suffer from claustrophobia, but he was constantly aware of the crushing pressure that surrounded them, and the thickness of the air with its metallic tang and organic richness; and every creak triggered a little spark of tension in his chest, a heightened awareness of the fragility of life here.
Partly to keep his mind occupied, he began a methodical study of all the lights that he could see from their bubble. In his view, it was always helpful to gather knowledge—anywhere, anytime, but especially in strange surroundings. He started piecing together a mental map of the undersea city, as far as he could make it out. There was just enough light cast through the water from various sources that he could identify several distinct clusters of interconnected bubbles, and perhaps a dozen more that appeared to float in isolation. He could just glimpse, past the edge of one of the nearer habitats, the artifical reef they had passed on their way in. Twice he spotted small submersibles similar to the one they had ridden in, but most of the activity he saw was individual Neri swimming around and among the habitats. Ik found himself envying their adaptation to this environment, and their ability to move with ease through both air and water.
He wondered if he would still envy them once he knew what was wrong here. He had just seen the dreadfully injured or sick Neri who had been brought in. But brought in from where? And why were they so badly hurt? There was no question in his mind that something serious was going on. Why else would Shipworld have hurled them across the galaxy to this place? Presumably some care had been taken to give them a fighting chance to survive, if for no other reason than that they were expected to accomplish something useful. Not that he didn't share John Bandicut's concern about their safety here—it would be idiotic not to. Especially given his previous experiences.
Before he'd met Bandicut, before he'd met Li-Jared, he'd been dropped by star-spanner onto a world in crisis, a world torn by strife. The people on that world called themselves the Pelli, meaning "as one, from the soil." But their society was broken into fractious elements, and their knowledge of the life sciences was great enough to permit deadly biological warfare. They had experienced alien contact before—which was probably the only thing that kept them from killing Ik outright, as an invader—but though they could accept outsiders to their world, they could not accept their own people. Despite Ik's efforts to act as peacemaker, in the end the factions would not come to terms. Ik was forced to flee, carried back to Shipworld by the star-spanner even as a cloud of airborne toxins was killing most of the population of the planet. He didn't know, even now, if anyone had survived.
And yet, despite that, he had to presume that there was hope in this situation. The long view, he thought, in his private inner refrain. Keep taking the long view.
A dim flicker of light caught his eye, and he peered off to his left, searching out its source. There it was again—not like a headlight or habitat light, but dimmer and more diffuse, like distant heat lightning in a stormy sky. He was about to call Bandicut's attention to it, when it faded from view.
Before he could describe it, his human friend asked, "What do you suppose they've done with Antares and Li-Jared?"
Ik sighed through his ears and turned, facing his friend. "I suspect they're probably in a jail just like this one, somewhere out there. I trust they're being treated fairly."
"Mm." Bandicut was walking around the bubble now, pressing his hands to the walls. "Well . . .the air here seems okay, anyway. It hasn't gotten stale yet." He paused and visibly drew a deep breath. "They must have some way of renewing it that we can't see."
Ik murmured agreement. "Perhaps some sort of osmotic or chemosynthetic process through the walls." He recalled their earlier observation that the translucent chamber walls looked almost as if they were made of plant material. But he wondered now, having seen some of the Neri's remarkably versatile membranes at work, if this clear material were not simply a variation on the theme.
His friend nodded, but still looked worried as he touched the walls. "Are you afraid that the walls might fail?" Ik asked.
Bandicut raised his shoulders momentarily in that human up-and-down motion that indicated uncertainty. "There's no moisture condensation," he said, not answering the question.
Ik touched the wall. It was smooth and cool to the touch. "It must breathe somehow."
A movement outside caught his eye, and he peered out and glimpsed some small fish flashing by, their long slender bodies a muted quicksilver. "John," he murmured, pointing.
"I see them," said Bandicut. "It's incredible." There was a tone in his voice that Ik was able to recognize as strong emotion—though he couldn't say precisely which emotion.
"Why 'incredible'?" Ik asked. "Did you not expect to see marine life here, because of the depth? Or is it something else?"
Bandicut shook his head, walking slowly as if to follow the silver school as they swerved away into the darkness. "No," he said, and his voice seemed on the verge of failure. "Not that."
"Then—"
"It's just that they look so much like the fish back home on Earth," Bandicut whispered. "I feel as if I could be on Earth." He gazed at Ik, and it was finally clear what he was feeling. Homesickness.
"Is this world . . .like your Earth in other ways, too?" Ik asked, feeling a sharp reminder of his own loss of a homeworld. "Do the Neri look as if they could be from your world?"
Bandicut shook his head no, peering outside again. "But who knows what's happened since I left? Millions of years could have passed."
"Well, we don't really know that, John Bandicut. My impression is—"
"That's just it! We have nothing but impressions!" the human cried. "How can we know?"
"We can't," Ik admitted, hearing in his friend's voice the anguish of someone who's left behind everyone he has ever known, to be thrown in among alien strangers. And to be put repeatedly into danger, for reasons unexplained. Ik understood his anguish very precisely. But though he, like Bandicut, felt driven to find answers, he was more able to accept the short-term ambiguities. To Bandicut he said, "I believe that the star-spanners complete their transits in outward time intervals not greatly different from the inner, subjective time." He clacked his mouth shut for a moment before admitting, "I do not know if the same applies to the means by which you or I were brought to Shipworld."
Bandicut stared at him, pinching his lower lip. Contemplating the spatial transformation that had carried him out of the galaxy? Bandicut made a gesture of uncertainty. "I know the quarx spent eons inside the moon Triton, traveling to my solar system after it was knocked out of another system by a terrible war." Bandicut's eyes went out of focus for a moment, but if the quarx was imparting any further information to him, he didn't speak of it.
"Hrrm," Ik murmured, following another school of fish swerving by—shorter, striped ones. "John Bandicut," he said, "if you are suffering with the thought that your world has died and vanished eons ago, you must not be so sure." He clacked his mouth shut then, and stood, seeing nothing, as he rubbed his fingers on his chest and wept silently for his own world— destroyed, not by the passing of eons, but by an exploding sun.
He finally faced Bandicut again and found his friend watching him. "Ik, have you been through the star-spanner before? You've never talked about it."
Ik found himself hissing with sad laughter. "You and I have done enough together to fill a turn of seasons—and yet, we have not been together so long. We have had so much to talk about—and so little time in which to talk." Though in truth, he had not been eager to speak of such difficult memories.
"What happened? Can you tell me now?"
Ik closed his eyes, remembering the pain. When he spoke, his voice was dry and hollow. "I was sent alone to a world at war, where I tried to bring peace. And I failed . . .I could not do it by myself . . ."
* * *
"That's terrible," Bandicut whispered, as he listened to the end of Ik's story. He guessed that Charlie must have felt a deep sadness, too, if he was listening—or at least the earlier Charlies would have. The quarx had tried and failed in more than one effort to help a world find its way to peace and survival. Bandicut couldn't tell what the present Charlie was thinking; the quarx wasn't talking.
When Ik fell silent, Bandicut asked softly, "Had you made friends there?"
Ik rocked his right hand in a side to side motion. "I tried. But in the end, there was no one I could trust, or who fully trusted me. And that was one of the things I thought, afterward—that I needed friends, partners, people I could trust to work with me, and whom I could trust with my life."
Bandicut nodded slowly. He did, in fact, trust his companions with his life. They had already saved each other several times over.
"When I met Li-Jared, and again when I met you, I felt that I had met such a person. And perhaps—who can say yet?— Antares." Ik hesitated, then hissed with laughter. "I wasn't so sure that I wanted to put it straightaway to the test, though."
Bandicut stared at him, unable to believe that Ik could laugh about it, until finally the absurdity of their situation began to bring laughter welling up in him, too. Ik's laughter stopped first; he slapped his side with a loud clapping sound.
"You okay?" Bandicut asked. He thought the Hraachee'an looked distressed.
Ik peered around in apparent befuddlement. "I was just wondering, hrrm, what one uses for a relief station around here."
* * *
They had to wait a while to learn the answer to that question. Bandicut was about ready to give up and go to sleep to postpone the issue, when a Neri swimmer appeared at the bottom of the bubble. He appeared to be towing something. The Neri made a wiping motion across the underside of the floor, and a shadowy circle appeared. A moment later, he pushed his head up through the floor, looked from Ik to Bandicut, and lifted himself into the bubble. He reached back down through the floor and pulled in two boxlike objects on tethers, one large and one small. He set the smaller one aside, and tilted the larger one. Water poured out of the box and drained out through the membrane in the bottom of the habitat, as if by magic.
Bandicut watched in amazement, wondering if Earth's technology could ever have done that.
The Neri opened the box's lid and indicated a round opening. He pointed, squawked briefly at Ik and Bandicut, and set it down on the floor of the habitat. Bandicut stared at the box, then at the Neri. "What the hell is that?" he said. "A portajohn?"
The Neri didn't answer, but made a hand gesture from below its waist into the box. Apparently that was exactly what it was. Bandicut scowled, but had to admit that it was a lot better than going for a swim to relieve himself.
The Neri turned to the other box. It opened with a hiss; it had been sealed. He took out several smaller objects wrapped in what looked like large leaves. With a glance at his prisoners, the Neri unwrapped the objects. They appeared to be fruit: yellow, translucent, crescent-shaped wedges like waxy, oversized orange segments.
Bandicut felt his eyes widening with hunger, and unease. He wondered if he dared try it.
/// What th'hell, ///
murmured the quarx, speaking up for the first time in a while.
/You know what this is?/
/// Naw, but what do you want to do?
Starve? ///
Bandicut blinked. He looked at the Neri and made a hand-to-mouth gesture. "Food? To eat?" he asked. When the Neri merely stared at him, he asked, "What is your name?"
The Neri stood straighter, and as if he had finally gained the self-assurance to try speaking to aliens, said in a voice that had a gargling resonance, "I am Hargel. I will provide for your needs, for now."
"Hargel," Bandicut said. "Pleased to meet you. How long are we to be kept here?"
Hargel rubbed his thumbs and fingers together, in what seemed a nervous gesture. "This . . .food . . .should meet your needs. Please tell me if your needs are different." He handed one fruit to Bandicut, and another to Ik. He drew his hands back as if afraid to touch the visitors.
Bandicut accepted the offering, hoping that Hargel would answer his question. But the Neri simply turned away. Then, as though in afterthought, he brought one more thing out of the smaller box. It was a convex disk about the size of Bandicut's hand, balanced on a small base. He set it down, removed a small hammer from the base, and struck the disk. A bonging sound rang through the bubble.
"If you need assistance," said Hargel, "ring three times."
Ik spoke, haltingly, giving Bandicut the sense that the Hraachee'an's stones were working hard to produce Neri speech. "You . . .will . . .hear?"
"We will hear," Hargel said. He bent and touched the floor, and with one smooth movement plunged headfirst through the membrane and into the water. There was no splash, and almost no sound.
Ik and Bandicut looked at each other.
"I guess I'll try the fruit," Bandicut said.
"Hrah. I guess I'll try the portable—"
"Right," said Bandicut.
* * *
The fruit tasted like a combination of lime, mango, and a third taste he could not identify. Bandicut nibbled, his back turned to Ik, and peered out at the Neri city. He was finally beginning to relax enough to absorb the sight. He saw Neri moving through the water, but mostly at the limits of visibility. He thought he saw some smaller figures and he wondered, were those the young, the females, or someone else altogether?
"Hrrm," said Ik, joining him. "It works fine."
Bandicut looked up. "Glad to hear it. Are you going to try some of this fruit?"
Ik eyed the piece that Hargel had given him.
"It tastes pretty good, and I haven't keeled over yet."
"Hrah. That is encouraging." Ik nibbled at the fruit, then took larger bites.
"Ik, do you think we should put our stones together and let them do a linguistic exchange? It might help you talk to the Neri a little more easily."
"Yes," Ik said. "That is a good idea." He took another bite. His fruit was nearly gone.
"You must have been hungry." Bandicut set his own aside to finish later; it was only half eaten, but it had satisfied his appetite.
Ik finished his fruit, then sat, and Bandicut crouched before him and raised his hands. Ik pressed Bandicut's wrists close to his temples. The four stones pulsed. Bandicut felt a buzzing sensation in his mind, now familiar, as his stones joined with Ik's, transferring knowledge . . .
* * *
A wave of dizziness came over Bandicut, as the link dissolved. He swayed, feeling a great heaviness, then sank to the floor. He was nearly overcome with fatigue.
"John Bandicut, are you—?"
He gave a hand gesture to wave off Ik's concern. But he couldn't answer. He felt a strong, tingling preoccupation among his stones, a feeling that they were working hard to assimilate the information they had just received. They had been through a lot today, and they didn't want to have to explain just now. /Did we just download a lot of Hraachee'an background?/
/// Yep. Ik can speak Neri now,
and you're going to know what makes
Ik tick. ///
Bandicut blinked, trying to clear his mind. /I am?/
/// Well, the stones will.
Close enough. ///
Bandicut sighed. He wanted desperately to close his eyes and put all of this out of his head for a while.
"Hrah," Ik murmured. "If it is all the same with you, I would like to meditate in sleep now. Will that disturb you?"
"Only in my dreams, Ik. Only in my dreams."
As Ik sat motionless, Bandicut stretched out on the floor of the bubble. It gave slightly under his weight, and was actually fairly comfortable. In due course he fell into a sound sleep.