Seas of Ernathe (10 page)

He turned around, reached, and tore a red fruit from a nearby branch. Biting it deeply, he closed his eyes to appreciate its juicy sweetness, and sucked it slowly, before turning his eyes back to the Nale'nid.

They were gone.

Annoyed, he cast his gaze up and down along the edges of the meadow, but if they were there at all they were lost in the shadows. Probably they had been following and watching for as long as he had been in this forest, and in the labyrinth. He shrugged, and went back to his eating, and his browsing.

* * *

Later, considerably refreshed, he decided to press on. The Nale'nid had shown no inclination to interfere with his journey, and there appeared to be several more hours of daylight in which he could travel. Pleasant as this glade was, there was no point in remaining. He retrieved his jacket and wrapped in it several pieces of each kind of fruit. Then he glanced quickly to choose a heading, settled on the direction of the declining sun, and marched into the woods. Surrounded by trees again, he felt less uncomfortable than before but no less unsettled as to a goal.
To get out. But to where?
He sighed. This time he moved leisurely, stopping at times to examine an unfamiliar plant, or to admire the solid dignity of an aging tree. Almost before he knew it, he had moved into an area of sparser growth, and, paradoxically, he found himself back in a pathway. The trees were not crowded together in a wall, but were arranged in a curving linear fashion, with the pathway marked only by a slightly wider spacing than among the trees generally. He followed it.

The woods was breaking open, exposing its ground and its terrain to view, while Lambern moved lower and lower, losing power in its golden illumination. A reddish glow suffused the woods, lighting the ground in rich browns, and turning the trees into somber giants brooding over an autumnal scene. Racart walked slowly, unnerved by the deepening colors. If someone were shadowing him, this was surely the place to do it. Slowly, though, as Lambern became visible beneath the treetops as a flattened, glowing orb, he felt himself drawn onward toward the sight itself, through the dwindling woods.

He emerged from the forest, and stood awestricken. The sun Lambern lay before him, beautiful, warm and crimson—half sunk behind a tumbling, painted landscape of rocky wildlands—the sun half sunk, and sinking, so that its blood-red light pooled into the craggy, canyoned wilderness but gave up growing shards of it to half-light and darkness. Racart stood on a plateau of rock, grass covered and shrubbed, and gazed outward and downward to a land which he knew had never before been seen by Ernathene human eyes.

He was still standing, staring, when he felt the arms of the Nale'nid touch lightly upon his shoulders and his arms. He never succeeded in turning his head to look. The plateau shook, and mist filled the tortured wilderness. His vision shimmered, and he sensed motion, fleeting motion beneath his feet, then the sight was lost to him . . . and he knew that he was once more on his way.

He knew, also, that he had solved the escape riddle of the labyrinth—if
solution
it could be called.

* * *

Richel Mondreau looked at Holme with an expression suggesting annoyance, skepticism, and a touch of upper-rank contempt. "Very well, then," he said, "since Mr. Senrith concurs that the fog was a prime factor in Perland's disappearance, I'll accept your explanation as a working hypothesis. But unless someone has a brilliant idea, it's going to be damned impossible to find the man. Good pilot, too, I understand. Eh, Jondrel?"

Captain Gorges smiled slowly and sympathetically, but at Andol Holme, not at Mondreau. "Yes, Richel. He is a good pilot, and considerably more than that. But it would seem, from past experience, that the man is a magnet for Nale'nid shenanigans—so I shouldn't be surprised to learn of their involvement here, as well."

"I agree," Holme said forcefully. "Seth is too careful a person to have let this happen unless something extraordinary were going on. And, since we found the flare casings, it's clear he must either have walked away of his own free will or been taken."

"So we put him in the same category as that Ernathene fellow, Bonhof," Mondreau said. "Conditionally lost."

Holme shrugged, and agreed.

Mondreau turned to discuss strategy with Gorges and Kenelee Savage, who had just finished going over another party member's report. Aside from the disappearance of the starpilot, nothing of note had occurred during the search. Holme, though not specifically invited, stayed around and absorbed the exchange among the three officers. Savage suggested a wait-and-see approach, noting that there was no reasonable action they could take that would be likely to impress the sea-culture (presuming that there
was
an actual culture among the sea-people), and meanwhile the latest batch of process-
mynalar
was being run without difficulty, with unarmed guards stationed heavily about the plant.

Mondreau was distinctly dissatisfied with that proposal. "At the very least," he said, "we ought to have more parties out searching. We know—" and he pinched his eyebrows together to emphasize the point, "we know how effective security measures have been. With all respect, Kenelee." To which the Ernathe Manager made no reply.

Again, Holme spoke up. "Isn't one of the search ships due soon, with some kind of report of a sighting?" He looked questioningly at Savage.

"Should be docking now," Savage acknowledged. "They got through enough of a radio report to say that they had found something." He turned up empty palms. "So let's see what they have."

"You won't have long to wait," said an Ernathene aide from near the window. "Here comes an officer from
Orregi
, now. It's Jonas."

The officer entered and reported. Sonar probes had found hollow structures, apparently chambers, on or near the seafloor in two different locations. "Both clusters of structures were located by probe-dragging drones, about two thousand kilometers to the northwest," he said, pointing out the coordinates on a chart. "That's the Jamean Sea, about four days' journey by surface ship. We have only rudimentary details on the sightings, since they were made by roving drones, and by the time we had analyzed the recordings it was too late, fuel-wise, to send them back for another look. But the structures seem too regular, too perfect to be natural. They could be Nale'nid dwellings."

"On the seafloor?" Mondreau asked skeptically.

"Yes sir. There were unconfirmed reports of Nale'nid dwellings underwater from the original hemisphere surveys. Though those reports placed them even nearer the equator than the ones we found." Jonas hesitated. "No doubt, sir, you're wondering how a nontechnological people would be living in structures underwater. Well, we'd like to know, too."

"There's a lot we'd like to know," Savage said softly. His voice hardened. "Barring objections from our
Warmstorm
friends, then, I'll instruct the masters of
Orregi
and
Barsuthe
to prepare for another trip north to examine the sightings in detail.
Barsuthe
will carry two subs for a good close look if her master deems it advisable. Richel?"

Mondreau scowled. "Can you airlift a search? Four days there and four back is a long time."

Savage scratched his throat thoughtfully. "Well, we have two seafliers available; we'd have to send both for safety, which would leave us without an air backup here. Still, they could make sonar mappings, and relay them by line-o-sight to the ships. Save some time. All right."

"You can't make a submergence?"

"The subs can only go by ship—and that leaves divers," Savage said. "How deep were those sightings—fifty-three meters? No, I won't risk divers—not until we know more."

Savage was firm on the point, and though Mondreau was nominally the senior officer, he could not very well order Savage with respect to his own men. The meeting broke up with little more discussion. Holme left, moodily, with Captain Gorges. "It's the Ernathenes' job, now, I suppose," he muttered. "Beginning to wonder just what good we're doing here."

The Captain walked silently, and stopped near the spacepad shuttle-van. "Well now," he offered, "just remember what Perland's attitude was about his friend, that fellow Racart. If there's nothing you can do, you might as well simply hope for the best and trust the Nale'nid." He nodded genially and entered the van before Holme could even begin to think of an answer.

* * *

Crossing the harbor avenue, Holme came out of his reverie to notice a familiar young woman angling across the street toward him; familiar, though he could not quite place her. The woman met his gaze and approached. She seemed nervous. "You're Seth's friend, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yes—yes, I am. Andol Holme. I'm afraid I've forgotten your name, though," he said awkwardly.

"Mona. You haven't actually met me—"

"Of course. Racart's—"

Her jaw became rigid for a moment: an acknowledgement. Holme pressed his lips together sympathetically. "You've heard about Seth, then?" Mona nodded, her face darkening. He went, "I guess that you and Seth had a disagreement of some sort, but that can't be as important as the fact that he's—"

"No, no! Yes, we did have at first—or I did—but that doesn't matter. You were there—do you think he was taken by the same people who took Racart?"

Her hopeful tone made Holme a bit wary, but he answered truthfully that he didn't know. He could only hope, as she did. Mona accepted that thoughtfully. She seemed to be considering what next to say. Holme prompted her.

"It was the way Racart talked," she said, frowning, "when he spoke about the afternoon he spent out with Seth. He didn't say a lot, but it was enough that I knew something important had happened, something that he was too nervous about to tell me right then—and he hadn't told Seth, either, so Seth couldn't have really known what it was all about. But that something changed, somehow, the way Racart felt about the Nale'nid."

"How do you mean? For them? Against them?"

Mona sighed. "I don't know, and that's part of what is bothering me. I think his feelings were divided and he didn't know quite how to handle them. A part of his sympathies were with the Nale'nid, and a part of them with Seth, with you people. And I suppose that includes us, as well."

Holme was silent, considering for a moment her unflattering appraisal of the relationship between Ernathe and the Mission; he decided that she had not meant it to be insulting. "I would like to think," he said, "that the interests of Ernathe and the whole Cluster are the same—and that they're not irreconcilable with the interests of the Nale'nid. Perhaps that's naive. And, since your people so rarely go offworld, maybe you can't easily appreciate the value of interworld exchange." He paused, thought again, and gestured helplessly. "Perhaps a lot of things."

For the first time, Mona laughed, though gloomily. "Okay, your intentions are good. I guess I can believe that." Her face dropped. "But it doesn't help about my worry—and that's Racart."

"It doesn't much help Seth, either," Holme reminded her.

She looked up again. "Guess I'm worried about Seth, too. And I know Racart would be."

"Then let's go worry together over a solid meal, okay?"

"Right," she said, with the closest thing yet to a smile.

Pal'onar was an impossibility, Seth had decided at one point; but the judgment hadn't lasted—the city was too real, too visible outside Lo'ela and her brothers' fragile-looking dome. He was in a fishbowl looking out, his mind filled with question after question, and no answers. He wished that Lo'ela would hurry and return—from tasks having to do, he had gathered, with the communal harvesting of food. Seth put on his jacket. The dwelling was chilly; there was apparently little more to it than the protective bubble, the floor and several partitions, and two portals, one to the city and one directly out to the sea. There were few furnishings—sleeping mats, some bowls, a basin of fresh water (brought from where, he didn't know), some garments and personal items he had refrained from handling.

He wondered what time it was here. He wore his timepiece, still, but had no idea of the city's longitude on the globe; as nearly as he could guess, it was midafternoon. The blue light percolating downward through the sea was steady and, in its diffuse way, full; but he judged it to be somewhat less intense than a while ago. The scene outside was still, though occasionally a few fish, or a school, would pass within his sight. From time to time, when he looked carefully, he could glimpse sea-people moving about inside the shadowy worlds of the other seafloor domes; and occasionally he would see Nale'nid swimming in the sea—in a leisurely, fishlike fashion, from place to place or from dome to dome, or just moving about on the bottom. The sight was puzzling, to say the least. The Nale'nid wore no swimming equipment, no breathing aids, and they did not—Lo'ela had assured him—hold their breaths while swimming. What then? Did they breathe water? Another of the questions he would have to ask, probably several times.

He became engrossed in the undersea view and totally failed to notice Lo'ela's approach. When she stirred at his side, he was so startled that she said:
Don't be afraid!

He turned, laughing, and answered, "I wasn't afraid—only startled."

You noticed me very suddenly?

"Yes. Yes, wouldn't that startle you, also?"

Startle?
Lo'ela studied him with keen eyes, flickering; her face was framed by wet brown hair, as if she had been swimming.
No, not startle . . . we notice things slowly, not suddenly.

Seth looked at her in amusement.

You are different . . . interesting.

Reddening, Seth looked out again. "Is that why you . . . 'focused' on me?"

Of course.

"Of course," he mimicked, and could not help laughing again. Lo'ela laughed, too (shyly, he thought), and walked across to a point under the dome from which the densest part of the city could be viewed. Seth stood a little behind her, gazing into the sunlighted mist of the ocean. He experienced, curiously, the feeling that she had turned to face him, though she had not in fact moved. Perhaps, he thought wonderingly, he was beginning to grow more adept at reading her attention. Or her
focus
.