Seas of Ernathe (13 page)

The world disrupted around him.

The transition seemed gentler this time. There was a swirling of rainstorm-gray cloud, horizontally about him. He felt air puffing from his lungs and squeaking from his ears, and he had a sense of slipping, turning once, twice, and rocketing wildly for about half a second . . . then settling as gently as a leaf to a new and firm ground. The cloudiness cleared for an instant, revealing:

A white, sculptured vista, bitterly cold, moaningly windy. A blast of icy snow raked across his face without warning like a freezing sandstorm. The gust lasted for only a long moment, and then vanished to reveal the frozen landscape unchanged—but by then he was hunched in a reflexive crouch. He shuddered, from the cold, from the unexpected assault; he drew his breath in tight, shivering gasps. Almost peripherally, he was awed. It was a magnificent sight, but the freezing cold was draining the life from his body even as he blinked painfully to look and find his companions at his side. Lo'ela was speaking. He could hear, or feel the anxious mutter of her thoughts in his head, but it was noise—he could not make out a thing through the terrible blur of pain, the terrible loss of heat from his body's core. As the pain turned quickly to numbness he became slowly, dreamily more capable of appreciating the arctic white dust, the glittering crystal in the fore-distance, the gray blur in the far-distance giving way to blue gray sky and the shrouded glow of Lambern. His knees buckled, and as he sank the landscape shimmered, went smoky, and passed like the wind . . .

his knees hit steaming foliage—and he would have toppled, helpless, had he not been supported by a strong arm at either side. He looked up, and even as the sight of simmering foliage struck his eyes he lapsed into a series of bone-shaking shivers, and he choked on the thick, humid air hot with plant-decay, and his arm, neck and jaw muscles shivered with tight, spastic seizures. A cooling rush of breathy music streamed over his mind, calmed him slowly as he struggled to control his body's chaotic acceptance of heat into its chilled core. When his tremors subsided, he felt the soothing notes form themselves into thought, and he turned, suddenly aware of Lo'ela supporting him, watching him with frightened, intense green-gold eyes. Heat and cold still washed alternately along the nerves of his spine, but he managed to respond with a nod and answer the query,
Are you hurt, are you better?
, with a hoarse, "I'm . . . I'm all right. I think. What are you
doing?"

Finally, he could look around for himself to see what she was doing.

They were in what had to be the deepest tropics; Lambern blazed sullenly, high overhead, and he blinked in pain. The vegetation was the densest he had seen anywhere on Ernathe—thick with greenery and bizarre flowers and crawling vines, but nothing taller than a meter. The air buzzed with heat and stank of sweet decay. Hardly any two plants seemed alike. There were spiked leaves probing through soft circular ones and sprawling threads, and blossoms of astonishing colors, from brilliant scarlet to darkly menacing indigo.

"What—" he choked—"are you
doing?"
The heat was of wilting intensity, and was enough in itself to make each breath nearly impossible.

You do not adapt to our places
, she replied sadly, almost accusingly.
You do not find them pleasing
.

Seth choked, not entirely from the air. He shook his head heavily; his muscles would hardly respond. He found his voice again. "No—yes. Yes, it's impressive—but how can you expect me to jump from—to—" he waved limply at the scenery, "without practically . . . killing myself?" And how, he thought, thunderstruck, did you adapt so incredibly fast yourselves? What were they, these Nale'nid?

Lo'ela looked away, nodding somberly. "I thought you would, I did not know it would be this way with you." Her voice carried clear-toned regret; she had learned her human speech well. "Would you . . . like to see more?"
I, we, will try to make it easier for you
.

Seth hesitated. "All right," he said, "but nothing so drastic." He was sweating heavily and panting still, in the humidity. He was anxious to move on, even to another shock.

He did . . .

and was speechless and gratified to feel driving rain wash in great pelts across his shoulders, drenching and cooling and soothing—and finally making him stumble from its sheer weighty intensity. It was a monsoon, apparently—where on Ernathe he could not guess, but surely far from the territory he knew. Nothing stirred except rain, and beyond it more rain. Through the slanted, thundering blur, he could just make out the shapes of hunched, humble trees, stooping almost to the ground. He turned in the muck, only to be blinded by the rain. He began to feel that it was not raining
hard
so much as
endlessly
, and he began to worry, to fear that it would drench him literally to the bones, that the sogginess would penetrate to the center of his brain, that he might simply soften and collapse under the continuing downpour. The drumming on the top of his head was no longer refreshing—it was warm, or cold, or both, and it so dulled his senses that even the two standing figures beside him were no more than grayish upright blurs, and the silent mutter of a friend's thoughts in his head was utterly lost in the din of cascading pellets of water.
Enough!
he thought, and . . .

stood in the center of a flaming, bowl-shaped desert . . .

felt Lo'ela's arm locked securely in his as he stared from the summit of an icy peak over a starlit, stunningly crazed landscape of mountains, the illumination of the stars as bright here as the three blazing moons of Farecogh, the ever-light planet . . .

gulped seawater and choked because there was no air to be inhaled, felt his diaphragm heave in panic, and struggled to subdue his gag reflex until . . .

the walls of Lo'ela's home shielded him from the evening sea and kept him on his feet as he leaned—choking, choking violently—and gasped air back into his windpipe. Lo'ela was nearly in tears, or so he thought when he came to his senses and saw her gazing into his face. Her eyes held bewilderment and fear, and for long minutes she seemed unable to communicate. She went over to where Seth's backpack lay, picked up his blanket and brought it to him; and only then did he realize that he was soaked to the skin and shivering. Gratefully, he wrapped it across his shoulders, sank to sit on a mat, and studied Lo'ela. She sat directly in front of him.
You are all right? You are safe?
she blurted anxiously into his mind.

Seth blinked, and nodded. He was too exhausted, still too much in shock to speak. Lo'ela seemed to understand. She brought him a fruit, and sat quietly with him for perhaps half an hour while he rested, huddled in the blanket. Finally he got up to change into his one dry set of clothes, and then he sat again, Lo'ela as quiet as ever before him. He glanced at his timepiece and was shocked to discover that the better part of a day had passed during their excursion.

"I feel better now," he said, though he was still weak. But he felt like talking. Now that he was clearheaded enough to think about it, he was incredulous and mystified by the places they had seen. Did the Ernathenes know that such places existed? he wondered. But never mind that. Lo'ela's face was lined with worry, but not at all with discomfort or strain from the harsh environments they had faced. "Lo'ela," he said, really quite unsure how to frame his question—"Lo'ela, you didn't seem bothered—you didn't even flinch—when we went to those places."

But they were only places, only different experiences!

"But they didn't affect you! They weren't illusions, were they—were they real?"

Yes, yes, of course they were real! Did you not feel them?

"Yeah," he said. "I felt them. Just wanted to be sure."

You are confused?

He looked at her with his best expression of irony. "Uh, you guessed that, did you?" He looked tiredly around her dwelling. He was hungry. Ga'yl had left like a breath of air, almost as soon as they had returned here. Briefly his thoughts went to Racart, about whom he'd not yet asked. Later. "Lo'ela.
Why
could you withstand those things? Freezing cold. Frying heat. Water.
How?"
He was beginning to feel punch-happy, and he knew that he should wait and ask again tomorrow.

"You would like me to try and explain again?" she asked aloud. Her voice was clear and soft, catlike. He decided that he liked it. As he liked Lo'ela. And he was finding her sturdy, delicate appearance more and more persuasively attractive. With a strong sigh, he reached out and placed his hand, with the slightest bit of shakiness, on hers.

"Later," he said. "Plenty of time later."

Lo'ela smiled, a perfect smile, and her eyes grew wide and pale and clear as she twisted her palm around to link her fingers with his.

As day after day passed with not so much as a breath to suggest an improvement in the situation, the atmosphere in Mission Headquarters had deteriorated steadily. Even the weather was ugly: unseasonably heavy rains, winds, and electrical activity—all prompting speculation that Lambern was entering a new period of high solar activity. (The fact that satellite monitors gave no such indication only made the idea that much more menacing in the minds of the speculators.) Tempers in all quarters were frayed, and with each petty incident concerning the Nale'nid, differences of opinion among the Mission personnel and the Ernathenes flared more sharply—not always divided along company lines. Confusion and unrelieved frustration generated endless quarrels, and supervisors such as Andol Holme were constantly on edge trying to maintain a semblance of peace and decorum among their respective crews.

By no means were all the Nale'nid incidents petty. The entire plankton production chain had been disrupted by several new intrusions. Production was shut down altogether, and the harvesters remained port-bound. This was a state of affairs which could not long be tolerated. A solid plankton harvest was essential to assure the colony a sufficiency of food and materials; however, peak plankton-bloom would be occurring within two weeks, and the next season would not begin for another one hundred twenty days.

And finally, yesterday there had been a second fatal shooting—two Nale'nid killed by security guards during a disturbance in the wharf area. The weapons used, pulse-guns from the
Warmstorm
arms lockers, had ostensibly been secured at
stun
settings; but they had caused far greater damage than a harmless "stun." Two Nale'nid, a male and a female, had been killed instantly, charred. Recriminations abounded as to who had failed to properly lock the weapons settings, and two
Warmstorm
technicians had been relieved of sensitive duties.

Still there had not been a capture of a live Nale'nid, and no one had any better idea than before of the reason for the Nale'nid's strange behavior, or of how that answer could be found.

Adding further to the confusion was the peculiar affair of the missing Racart Bonhof. Twice in the last week, Racart had appeared in the middle of a Lambrose street—"materialized," according to witnesses—both times in the company, more probably the control, of two male Nale'nid. The first time, few people had been present to notice. A woman who had known Racart from childhood swore that she had clearly seen him step from a puff of sea-mist, a Nale'nid holding each of his arms, and stand in the open for about five seconds before vanishing once again. Though he was obviously conscious, she said, he had neither spoken nor given the slightest sign of recognition—of her, of anyone else, or even of the town. He had vanished as suddenly as he had appeared—into the mist. The woman could not say
how
he had vanished, nor could any of the corroborating witnesses. But vanished, he had.

News of that event quickly reached Mona Tremont, who was understandably both overjoyed and distressed. She was nearby, herself, during a second appearance the following day. Hearing shouts of Racart's name, she sprinted into the street, gasped and halted, finding people gathered discussing Racart's second disappearance. Some believed it to have been an image, an illusion. Mona denied that, and maintained that she had seen him—albeit from a distance. But whatever the "facts" of his appearance, no rational explanation for it could be put forward.

Mona, at least, was comforted in having found a friend in Andol Holme. He seemed to be the one official in the
Warmstorm
Mission who was as worried about Racart and Seth as about the
mynalar
production. They met often to exchange such news as there was and to bolster one another's morale. But Holme was chronically troubled; he was not at all sure that his senior officers, particularly Mondreau, were paying due concern to Seth's and Racart's safety as they considered their possible courses of action.

Holme found Mondreau in a particularly stiff mood as staff meetings got underway to consider the latest information and to finalize strategy. He caught Mondreau's eye, entering Mission Headquarters, and with a head-shake signaled his failure to locate a young weapons tech Mondreau had wanted to see. The scowl he got in return did nothing to ease the knot in his stomach.

"You haven't ordered her to report?" Mondreau said.

"I haven't
found
her. The last time she was seen, apparently, was last night when she went off with an Ernathene woman, supposedly to a discussion group of some sort." Holme paused unhappily. He doubted that the young crew-woman had deliberately stayed off duty, but people were reacting so strangely around this place—some older Ernathenes wanted simply to pick up and leave the planet, for instance—and Holme was beginning to wonder if anyone could be trusted to behave in a consistent manner. And now Mondreau's stare suggested that Holme was personally to blame for the chaos.

Perhaps, in a sense, he was. He was trying to understand the Ernathene state of mind, and the Nale'nid state of mind—and he had made no secret of his disapproval of the decision to arm Ernathene ships.

"The order is out for her to report," he said brusquely, and stepped from Mondreau's desk over to the planning table, to see what had happened in his absence. A full report on the undersea scouting survey had arrived, flown in by aircraft from the ships still stationed in the Jamean Sea. That would be presented shortly.