Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy) (23 page)

“You were to keep me busy. Shame on you, Xenon!” And then she pushed the button to turn the machine off completely and made her way at a run to the lift area.

Vion was crouched beside Cimma, but there was no sign of anybody else. A lethargic trail of blood led from a cut on her mother’s neck down to the floor. A medical bag was open on the floor, and he was working on her mother. Grace felt her heart stutter and pause. Her throat tightened. She swallowed, but it didn’t get rid of the constriction.

“She was defending us,” Vion told Grace. “There were about fifteen of them, all armed to the teeth, but she was ready to take them on anyway, just Cimma with her Xianthan dagger!” He shook his head in admiration. “Sacras! That was something to see. I just wish I had been close enough to take a hand in it myself.”

“Where are they?”

“I have no idea. One minute the lift was overflowing with Sellites about to pour out and invade us, and the next the lift doors thickened on them and they disappeared. They only had time to throw a couple of knives at Cimma.”

Arcan! thought Grace. Thank you.

“Is it very bad?”

Vion nodded.

“Will she . . .?”

“She has a knife buried in her, Grace.” His voice was rough.

“Matri!” Grace dropped down and took her mother in her arms.Cimma’s eyes were open, and they moved to look at her daughter. There was no chance she could speak. An ornate knife protruded from her stomach, slightly to the right side. “Magestra!” Grace whispered brokenly. Hot tears fled down her cheeks and onto her mother’s face. Grace brushed them away softly. “Matri! I am so sorry! You were right all the time. We were going to be attacked. But you did it! They have gone.” She rocked her mother slightly and tried to cradle her closer without causing any more damage.

Her mother’s eyes never left her daughter’s. She drew a thin breath with a strain which was audible, and then with an immense effort she managed to close her hand about her daughter’s arm. She gave a squeeze. It was a meant to be a goodbye.

“Oh no you don’t!” Vion said, through clenched teeth. He held her with one arm, while the other hand searched his open medical case. He came up with a syringe, and tore open the paper seal with his teeth. With one swift movement, he plunged the syringe into the side of her neck, and then looked urgently at Grace.

“I have to get her to hospital,” he said. “Now!”

Grace stared at him as if she hadn’t heard.

“Come on Grace!” he raised his voice. “If we don’t get immediate medical attention she won’t make it.”

Grace focused on him, and then her brow cleared. “The lift,” she shouted. “Get her into the lift.” Grace ran to push the call button, and then between them they picked Cimma up gently and edged with great care to the doors. As soon as the lift arrived and the doors thinned, they carried Cimma inside. Once there, Grace laid Cimma’s feet down, and to Vion’s amazement began to push her fingers against the walls of the lift.

“What are you doing?” he asked her, thinking she had gone completely mad.

“Shh! I can’t concentrate. Oh, come on, Arcan!”

Suddenly Grace paused as if to listen to someone, and then she turned to Vion. “Where does she have to go?”

He sighed. “The hospital on the ground floor of our skyrise. It is her only hope.”

Grace paused again. Then she nodded and turned to Vion. “Will you go with her?”

“I will have to,” the doctor said. “I’m not sure my father would agree to treat her, under the circumstances, and she is going to need immediate surgery. I will have to operate on her myself.”

“Did they see you?”

He was disorientated for a moment. “Did who see me?”

“The Sellites, the ones who came in the lift.”

His face cleared. “Oh, sorry. No, I am sure they didn’t. I was quite a distance away, and the corridor was unlit. You know what your mother was like about that! So although I could see them, they wouldn’t have seen me. That’s why Cimma is still alive, if the lights had been on in the corridor she would be dead by now. And the doors never really thinned out completely either.”

“Then you can go back.” Grace nodded. “You can say you were somewhere else for the day, and that you found Cimma in the ortholift. It will be true, after all. You don’t have to say you were with her at the time! Thank you Vion.”

“Will you be all right? I had been going to stay,” he said.

“I know. But I think it is better this way.” Grace got out of the lift. “Hold on Vion, the lift is going to express you to the hospital. Matri, good luck. I will be thinking of you!”

“What do you mean, express—” But he was cut short and Grace was left to give a wan smile to thin air. She closed her eyes for a moment.

Grace looked up. Diva and Six were standing a short distance away, staring down at the patch of blood left by Cimma, and the rest of the candidates were huddled behind them. There was a dreadful silence.

GRACE WOKE UP from a short, drug-induced sleep and thought she was in her own bed. She turned over, and felt for the familiar table. Then a black memory inched its way into her waking state, and in a second had flooded all her mind with its grim reminder. Cimma! Was she still alive? Had Vion managed to save her? Even though her mother had been acting so strangely recently she still loved her. Grace closed her eyes again, and made a conscious decision to stay where she was. Forever.

“You have to get up, Grace.” Diva’s voice penetrated the worry.

“Go away!”

“I can’t do that. And we need you. So you will just have to be upset some other time, won’t you?” The voice was harsh, critical.

“Sure. And just when does her ladyship feel it would be convenient?” Grace hated her friend at that moment.

“All I know is that you can’t fall apart now,” Diva said. “If that means you have to do it later, well tough! Get over it!”

“Let me be!”

Diva shook her head. “Not going to happen. We have given you a couple of hours sleep, and there just isn’t that much time. Now get up, and come out. We have to talk to Arcan.”

Grace thought of Arcan. He might have some news of her mother. Of course he was bound to know something! She started to get dressed, hardly noticing that Diva had handed her one of the bodywraps, rather than normal clothes. Her movements were slower, her mind sluggish. But she was trying.

The two girls made their way out into the family area. There, the rest of the company was waiting. The nine Sacrans they had rescued, and Six. All were wearing bodywraps, and all had several mask packs around their waists. Grace blinked.

“Right,” Diva stepped to a point in front of them. It seemed the natural place for her to be. “We have to speak to Arcan, so we will call the lift and then we can see what solutions there are.”

“Who is this Arcan?” the tallest of the new boys demanded.

“Wh—” Then Diva was interrupted by an intense hissing noise.

“Masks on!” She shouted hurriedly. “Quickly!” She drew her own on in one rapid movement and then went around the rest, checking they had all put them on correctly. Grace found Six beside her, quietly helping her to fasten her own mask in place.

“They have turned off the oxygen supply and depressurized the House!” Diva told them. “They are hoping to finish most of us off, and that any survivors will surrender in a couple of hours, once they see that they are going to run out of mask packs. It was an obvious move on their part. We were hoping we had more time,” she signed to Six. “Tell Arcan!”

Six moved to the edge of the corridor and called the lift. There was no answering hiss. Orthogel used its own energy of course, but the auxiliary electricity used to summon the lift had been shut off. “No use!” he called.

Diva glanced at Grace. There was a question in her eyes. Grace tried to make her brain work, but she couldn’t think of any way they could contact Arcan. She shook her head.

“Where’s the interscreen?” Six asked.

“In the office.” She indicated vaguely.

“What would you do without me, girls?” Six wondered.

Diva caught on. “You can contact Arcan through the interscreen? Great.”

Six held up a hand. “It might not be as easy as that,” he warned, “because the bubbles are no longer in place. But I should think he would be monitoring Atheron, and I think I can do the same thing I did before, only the other way around.”

“So go to it!” Diva said.

But they didn’t need to because just at that moment a bubble of orthogel materialized out of thin air in front of them, enveloped Grace and Six, floated gently over to Diva and engulfed her too. The remaining candidates stared as they disappeared into thin air in front of them.

Arcan transported them to the lakeside, and there the bubble merged with the rest of the orthogel, leaving them on the shore. They all moved to place their hands on the surface.

Arcan was the first to sign. “I am so sorry about your mother, Grace. I regret I was not able to act faster. I wish I had been more alert.”

“Do you know how she is? Can you tell me anything?” Grace found her fingers trembling as she signed the question.

“She is still alive at the moment. I am sorry but I cannot tell you any more than that. Vion finished the operation, and he has stayed on the ground floor with her. You did not teach him to sign, or tell him about me?”

Grace shook her head. “I wasn’t sure I could tell him, at first; whether you would mind or not. And then at the end, there wasn’t time to tell him about everything.”

“A pity. He is unaware that he can contact you.”

Grace bit her bottom lip. “At least she is still alive at the moment.” She felt relief wash over her.

“How long can you breathe with the mask packs you have?” he asked, moving on to the matter at hand.

Diva and Six had been the ones who had foreseen the possibility of punitive action by the Sellites, and planned accordingly. She answered with certainty. “Twelve hours.”

“Not very long.”

“No.”

“Suggestions?” Arcan asked. Nobody moved their hands to sign an answer. “Grace?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t seem to think straight at the moment. If we had something they need we could negotiate, but I don’t think we have.”

The lake took on a greenish shimmer. “But we have,” Arcan signed slowly. “At least, I have.”

“Now would be a good time,” Six pointed out.

“They need me in order to work all the orthotubes and lifts,” said Arcan. “And that includes the main supply tubes as well. Everything you eat, drink or breathe comes through orthogel tubing. I can close it all down in a second.”

“That’s great,” breathed Diva. “let’s go negotiate!”

“They resupply us with air, or they get their own cut off.” Grace considered. Then she thought of something. “We should do it first.”

“Do what first?”

“Cut them off. That way they might be more prepared to come to an agreement.”

The lake glittered a moment, and then: “It is done,” said Arcan.

“Great,” said Diva. “
Now
they will have to listen to us. Come on Arcan, take us to . . . ” She looked at Grace, “where, Grace?”

“The Valhai Voting Dome,” Grace said without hesitation. “All the tridiscreens are linked there, so we will be seen either in person or virtually by all of Sell. It’s the only public place in Sell, except for the university lowrise. It’s a sort of government building.”

“The Valhai Voting Dome,” Diva repeated. “Do we tell them about you, Arcan?”

“Yes. They must know that this planet is no longer theirs,” was the simple answer. Diva and Grace exchanged looks. Such a lot had happened since they had first speculated on this possibility. Grace’s point of view had changed too. She felt as if she hardly cared what happened to the rest of Sell anymore.

“But you can’t talk to them directly,” Diva pointed out.

“I do not see the problem.”

“They might not believe us.”

“They still have no oxygen or supplies coming in,” Arcan said. “That will be a powerful argument, whether they believe you or not. I am sorry, I am working on a different way to communicate, but I am not . . . developed enough yet.”

“OK.” Diva gave a shrug. “Let’s go see what they say, then.”

This time individual bubbles had surrounded each of them, and transported them to the Voting Dome, where they were set down in the centre part of the huge hemisphere. The bubble did not disappear, however, maintaining a discreet envelope of safety around them.

Their appearance caused turmoil. Shouts of outrage, and sharp fear were the results of their unexpected arrival.

“How did you breach our security? What have you done to the air supply and the food supply?” The voice of Mandalon, the principal Sell interlocutor grated with shock. “What is all this?”

Diva stepped to the fore, and the others gazed at her in surprise. She seemed to have gained about a foot in stature.

“Born to it,” murmured Six. “In her element.”

“When you repressurize and reconnect the 256
^th
skyrise,” she said in a clear voice, “your other systems will come back on line.”

“Who says? Who are you?”

“I am empowered to speak on behalf of Arcan, the orthogel entity who has inhabited this planet for thirty thousand years.”

There was a loud guffaw. “And you are expecting us to believe this because . . .?” Mandalon demanded.

“Because you have no air supply or food and water supply, and time is running out,” Diva said calmly. “Think about it. You are going to get awfully hungry and thirsty, even if the air lasts for a long time because of the lower floors of your skyrises. And that applies to the whole of Sell. All of you. When you accept Arcan’s conditions, then activate the controls to reconnect the 256
^th
skyrise. All supplies will then be reconnected, pending a full agreement between both parties, to be negotiated in the next week.”

“If you are trying to tell me that that bubble you are standing in is alive,” Mandalon taunted, “tell it to do something!”

The bubble surrounding Diva darkened to show Arcan’s anger, and then grew until it dwarfed the man who had spoken, hanging over him in intimidation. He automatically took a step back.

“Do you want him to do anymore?” Diva’s serene voice sounded from the centre of the bubble. “Or is that enough to be going on with?”

Six whispered to Grace. “Got more than he bargained for there, I could have told him no good would come of insulting either Arcan or Diva!”

Grace giggled, and then remembered her mother, and felt guilty.

She looked at Mandalon and was forced to giggle again. The man was trying to retrieve his dignity but his face was ashen and the tridiscreens were registering his shaking hands on the lectern.

“We will consider the proposition,” he conceded. “We need time to discuss it.”

“Take all the time you need.” Diva was generous. “Oh, that’s right, you only have the time it takes you to die of thirst. Or hunger. Or asphyxiation. Whatever. We will be waiting.”

“I don’t think you have so long, Sacran. Or your traitor friends! How many mask packs have you got? Five each? I think you will be dead and decomposing long before we Sellites feel the first pangs of hunger!”

“Maybe. But Arcan doesn’t need oxygen and you do; so you will die all the same. We will just die a little sooner. And if you want to live you will still have to deal with Arcan. If I am dead you won’t know how to do that. And he might be a little annoyed with you by then. Maybe he won’t want to reconnect you Sellites if we die?” Diva looked down her nose at the interlocutor. “You might want to consider that possibility?” she said sweetly.

Violet blue waves of agreement shimmered down the bubbles, which grew again in the air. Mandalon quaked. “We will consider your offer,” he said grudgingly.

Arcan transported them all back to the skyrise, and the twenty-first floor. He deposited them lightly in the corridor in front of the back lift and the bubbles quickly disappeared again.

“Wonder how he did that?” mused Six. “I thought he could only transport us if there were previous tubes or lifts? Those bubbles came out of thin air!”

“You’re right,” Diva said. “I guess he has been developing new skills.”

“He might have stayed long enough to talk!” said Grace.“I wanted to know what he thought.”

“He’ll be back when he can,” decided Six. “Let’s see if the rest have left us any breakfast. I’m starved!”

It was quite hard to attempt to eat in a low atmosphere, Six found. Every bite entailed removing the mask, taking a careful but quick bite, then replacing the mask again rapidly. There was a danger of passing out if the mask was off for more than a few seconds.