"The Broken Sphere" - читать интересную книгу автора (Findley Nigel)Chapter SevenTeldin could only have been unconscious for a couple of heartbeats if that, not even long enough to fall. As awareness returned, he could feel the deck jolting beneath his feet as the His connection with the ship-his cloak-mediated control-had vanished as consciousness had fled. Now he struggled to regain it. Rosy pink light flared around him. He gasped, almost doubling over with the pain, as his awareness once more encompassed the whole of the stricken squid ship. A huge hole had been smashed in the hull just starboard of the keel-directly amidships, in the middle of the cargo hold. Flames licked around the jagged edges of the hull breach and across the overhead. The large hatch cover had been blown loose and lay smoldering on the main deck. "Fire in the hold!" he gasped, and heard Djan echo the cry. He felt and saw crewmen with buckets of sand jump to deal with the threat. Again, the squid ship was plunging toward the ground. But this time the Cloakmaster knew he had more time to react. They were falling free, not being driven downward in a screaming dive by the power of the ultimate helm. That alone made the threat less immediate, but that benefit was negated by the serious damage to the ship. Cautiously, he extended his awareness throughout the squid ship's structure. The impact of the bolt-whatever in the hells it was-had been tremendous. Joists and thwarts throughout the hull had been cracked or ripped apart. As his consciousness touched each area of damage, he flinched anew. The "wounds" he felt were grievous, maybe even mortal. His chances of bringing the ship out of its plunge rested totally on the condition of the keel. He hesitated, afraid to discover the worst. But then he forged on. The keel was cracked amidships. He could feel the fibers of the timber grinding back and forth against each other, like the two bones in a badly broken arm. But the crack didn't extend right through. There should be enough support for him to bring the ship down in one piece… if he was careful. If he applied too much force, or turned the ship too sharply, the damaged keel would part, and then there'd be nothing even the ultimate helm could do to save it. Carefully, he started to pull the The ship jolted sideways-none of his doing!-threatening to rip the keel in two. "Get her off the helm!" the Cloakmaster screamed, loud enough to tear his throat and bring the bright copper taste of blood into his mouth. In an instant the spurious motions were gone, and he recognized that the ship was again entirely his. Carefully-oh, so carefully-he started to apply forward power. With the stem of the vessel pointing downward, that began to slow its fall. He felt timber strain, felt the keel shift a fraction of an inch, another dozen wood fibers shearing under the stress. Then he started to bring the bow down-a couple of degrees a second, no faster. He tried to gauge how far they still were above the mountains below, but realized instantly that even that slight shift of his attention decreased his control over the ship's motions. "Get Blossom to call out the altitude," he croaked to Djan, and heard the half-elf relay the instructions down the speaking tube. He could feel Blossom sitting on the helm. She was no longer trying to exert any influence on the ship, but he could sense her extended perception overlapping his. He didn't need Djan as a relay when she announced, "Ten leagues." Slowly he continued to push the squid ship's bow over. He tried adding a touch more forward force, instantly felt the damaged keel complain, and backed off again. The ship's attitude was still forty-five degrees stern-down. But now the hull was exposing more surface area to the strong wind that whipped through the atmosphere envelope. He felt their downward speed start to diminish further… as the strain on the keel increased again. "Four leagues." Even through the-artificial calm that connection with a helm brought, he could hear the fear in the woman's voice. He didn't have much time left. The ship had a huge amount of speed; there was nothing he could do to bleed it all off, he knew. It's make or break, he told himself. He forced the bow over even harder. He felt his stomach lurch and his feet almost leave the deck as the ship pivoted around an axis running horizontally through its beam. He felt and heard the screaming of tortured timber. But now the ship was horizontal, falling keel-first through the sky. "Two leagues." Still he pushed the bow over, until the It was working. With the spanker sails catching the wind, some of the ship's downward speed was being converted into forward velocity. If the spanker sails didn't tear loose, and if the keel didn't part… Again he added a touch more forward power. The wind was a howl around him. He knew that, with the main helm effectively inactive, the ship's atmosphere envelope would collapse if he released control. Then the speed of their flight would tear the masts away, fling everyone on deck over the stern, even peel the decks themselves away from the hull. "One league." We really might make it! He knew it with sudden clarity. The ship was still in a screaming dive, but it was traveling bow first now. He had control of both its attitude and its heading. He started to bleed off speed with feather-touches of reverse power. Wood ground against wood as the keel flexed. If the keel were ever going to let go, now was the time, as his attempts to decelerate effectively tried to compress the But the magnificently strained keel held. The death scream of the wind faded to a faint whistle. Then it fell silent as the ship's air envelope reasserted itself over the slipstream. The ship still was at a fifteen-degree angle and he didn't think he could pull it up again without tearing the vessel in two, but at least the speed was down to manageable levels. "Altitude," he croaked. "Two thousand feet," he heard Blossom gasp. Then she shouted, "Mountains!" But he'd already seen them, some of the peaks reaching several thousand feet above the deck of the squid ship. By sheer luck, he'd brought the What in Paladine's name am I going to do? Teldin asked himself. The squid ship was designed solely for a water landing, but there wasn't any water for dozens of leagues, and he knew he wouldn't be able to keep the stricken ship in the air for much longer before something critical failed. So be it, then, a ground landing it had to be. He knew all too well what it would do to the ship, but his sole concern now was the lives of his friends and his crew. He looked below the ship for a flat place to land, but couldn't spot anywhere suitable. The pass was actually a V-shapeed valley, with boulders-some as large as farmhouses-around the bottom. To bring the ship down there would be to court disaster. The pass was narrowing ahead of the ship, he saw, the valley floor rising in altitude until it merged with a high rampart of mountains two leagues or so directly ahead. He was running out of time. Teldin tried to slow the ship further, managed to bring it down to little more than a walking speed. But each second of flight, he could feel the stress increase on the keel. The cracks in the heavy wood had spread and were on the verge of fracturing the ship's "backbone" at any instant. The The walls of the valley were precipitous-forty-five degrees or even steeper, he judged-covered with a thick blanket of trees. The only places where he could see gaps in the forest were where large outcroppings of red-brown rock jutted out of the mountainsides. The trees will tear the bottom out of the hull, he thought, probably killing us. But if I hit one of those rock outcroppings, we're definitely dead. He smiled mirthlessly. Yet again, circumstances seemed to be conspiring to force him onto a path he hated. "Open space ahead!" Julia screamed. Teldin focused his enhanced perception ahead of the squid ship. Yes, she was right. A quarter of a league ahead, the right side of the pass leveled out, forming a kind of shoulder. For some reason, no trees were growing there, revealing a verdant meadow almost a hundred yards across. The grass-or whatever it was-seemed totally flat, without even any rolls or hummocks. Perfect. He started to turn the ship around so that its bow pointed directly toward the meadow. Simultaneously, he let the vessel's altitude creep down, while trying to decrease the speed even further. Almost there. Just a few more ship-lengths, and he could set the And there was the meadow, right below the bow. Teldin tried to bring the ship to a hover, but as he applied the reverse force, he felt the sickening crack as the keel gave way. His control started to evaporate as the ship ceased to The ram struck first, gouging a furrow in the soft soil of the meadow. Then the tip caught against something-a buried rock, perhaps-and the ram was torn clear away. And the hull itself was down. The impact bowled Teldin off his feet, slammed him into the forward rail of the stern-castle, his head striking something with stunning force. Blackness welled up, threatened to take him again, but he fought it back with pure force of will. Through the ringing in his ears the Cloakmaster could hear cries of fear and pain from belowdecks and around him, and the scream of tortured wood. The ship jolted and jarred, each impact sending bolts of pain through Teldin's body. Then it was over. The power of the cloak faded, and Teldin was completely himself again-not the ship, just a very battered and bruised human being. With, a groan, he forced himself to his feet and looked around him. The squid ship had torn a furrow right across the soft meadow, and had come to a stop only a short dagger cast from the trees on the far side. A couple of seconds later in pushing the bow down, Teldin realized, and they'd have slammed into those heavy trunks. Apart from the missing ram, the squid ship looked relatively undamaged from Teldin's vantage point on the after-deck. But that was an illusion, he knew. As his enhanced perception had faded, he'd felt the keel snap, and felt the heavy planking of the lower hull stave in as though it had no more strength than an eggshell. The He was alive, though, as were Julia, Lucinus, and Djan. The half-elf was bleeding from a nasty gash in his left eyebrow, but didn't seem to notice. As Lucinus and Julia-both looking battered and bruised, but not seriously injured-disentangled themselves from each other and the forward railing, Djan took up his familiar position by the speaking tube. "Report," he called down to Blossom. After listening for a moment, he looked up at Teldin and gave a tired smile. "Heavy damage," he reported, "lots of minor injuries, but nothing major. Amazing." He shook his head. "I thought we were all dead. That was the most amazing piece of ship-handling I've ever seen." Teldin looked away, embarrassed. "We should check out the damage," he said briskly, to change the subject. "Djan, Julia?" Both officers followed the Cloakmaster down the ladder to the main deck, then down one more flight to the cargo deck. The hold was filled with acrid smoke, which was only now starting to dissipate. At least the fires were all out, Teldin saw. He crouched by the hole the magical bolt had smashed in the deck. Roughly circular, it was almost a man's height in diameter. As he looked down into it he could see an even larger hole in the hull planking below. He shook his head, looking up at Djan. "What The half-elf was silent for a moment. "I've never seen anything like it," he admitted at last. "The magical power involved was… well, it was staggering. Most attack spells I'm familiar with have ranges measured in hundreds of yards. What was our altitude when we were struck? Fifteen leagues? Twenty?" "Something like that," Teldin agreed. "Then I take back any sarcastic comments I made about the impossibility of world-altering magic," Djan announced dryly. "If your Juna were trying to convince me of their existence, I think they should consider the point made." "Was it the Juna?" Julia asked, her voice little more than a whisper. Teldin didn't answer immediately. What was it that the elves at the embassy on the Rock of Bral had told him? That the ruins of the "Star Folk's" works are sometimes guarded with magic so powerful and old that it's lost its meaning, and now strikes out in its madness at all who trespass? It was something like that, even though he couldn't recall the exact words. And that could well describe what had happened to the "How can we find out?" Julia pressed. "I'd guess these Juna will make it clear to us if they actually exist," Djan answered. "Not that I'm overly enthusiastic about meeting creatures who can fire fifteen-league-long bolts and cause mini-suns to chase ships out of the sky." Teldin shook his head impatiently. Discussions such as this weren't going to do them any good. Whether or not Nex was home to living Juna, the knowledge wouldn't be of any value unless the Cloakmaster could get off-planet again and act on the knowledge, would it? And that would require a functional ship. "I'm going down into the bilges," he announced. "Can someone give me a light?" ***** "Can it be fixed?" Teldin asked. Teldin, Djan, and Julia were sitting in the Cloakmaster's cabin. Although the squid ship had come down on a fairly even keel, the cant to the deck was enough to be irritating. The small oil lamp suspended by chains from the overhead didn't hang straight, and when he leaned back in his chair, Teldin kept thinking he was on the verge of going over backward. Overhead the Cloakmaster could hear the crew moving about, working on repairing the peripheral damage that the rigging had taken. Wasted effort, he thought glumly, unless we can do something about the hull and the keel. "The hull, yes," Djan replied at once. "The bow took a fiend's beating, and then there's the hole farther aft. But still, that's just a matter of patching and reinforcing. I think the ship's next landing would be its last, particularly if we put down on water, but I could guarantee you the hull would handle normal flight… if that were the only problem. "Unfortunately, it isn't," the half-elf continued. "You saw the keel, Teldin. It's split right through amidships, almost split just forward of the mainmast, with cracks just about everywhere else." He shrugged. "If the damage was localized to one spot, I'd say let's try strapping it and take our chances. But the way it is now, the moment it's put under any stress-like trying to take off-it's going to shatter into half a dozen pieces." "Can we replace it?" Teldin asked-then instantly knew from his comrades' expressions that it was a stupid question. "Replacing a keel's not much different than building an entire ship," Julia explained gently. "It takes facilities and resources we just don't have here." "The Teldin nodded slowly. He'd suspected as much from the moment he'd lowered himself into the squid ship's bilges. Even to his relatively inexperienced eye, the damage had seemed just too extensive. "You may as well tell the crew to lay off," he said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. "Tell them to save their energy for…" For what? he asked himself. For building another ship? Julia had as much as said that was impossible. For making a life here, then? As though she could sense his worry and mentally overhear his questions, Julia laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "We can think about all this later," she pointed out reasonably. "You're on Nex, where you wanted to be. Don't you want to find out more about it before you start obsessing about getting off-planet again?" He met her ironic smile with one of his own. "You're right, of course," he admitted. "Julia, Djan, would you care to join me for a little exploration?" ***** The meadow felt springy and resilient-and undeniably, vibrantly alive-under his feet as Teldin dropped the last couple of feet from the rope ladder. How long has it been since I walked on good, honest grass? he asked himself. How long since I've had fertile earth under my feet, and not ship decks or paved city streets? Far, far too long. He crouched down, ran his fingers over the grass… To discover that it wasn't grass, not as he thought of it at least: not single, narrow blades rising out of the earth. Instead, the "grass" here was composed of stalks from which sprouted a dozen tiny branches, each bearing tiny, almost circular leaves. Each plant looked, then, like a miniature tree standing about an inch tall. Still, he told himself, grass is as grass does. This is still a meadow. He climbed back to his feet as the rest of the scouting party joined him. Julia and Djan were with him, of course, as was Beth-Abz-in human form, at the Cloakmaster's order. They were accompanied by the half-orc Dargeth, plus another burly crewman, both armed with short swords and slings. The latter three had come along solely on Djan's insistence. It hadn't occurred to Teldin that they'd need any kind of defense. But of course it should have, he chided himself. Someone or something on the planet had tried- multiple times-to blast the At the moment, though, it was all too easy to forget about the danger. The environment around him was so beautiful, so peaceful. At first glance, the steep-sided gorge could easily be part of a mountain range on Krynn or Toril, and the forest that enshrouded it wouldn't look out of place on any of the other worlds Teldin had visited. That was at first glance. On closer inspection, however, there were enough jarring elements to keep the Cloakmaster constantly aware that this world was quite different from any other he'd visited. There was the sky, first of all. The azure blue and pure-white clouds were familiar, but instead of the disk of a normal sun, the light came from half a dozen speeding mini-suns crisscrossing the sky. Then, too, there was the forest itself. While speeding above the trees in the stricken squid ship, Teldin had thought they were standard deciduous trees-oaks, perhaps, or maybe larches. Now he could see that they didn't match any tree species he was familiar with… if they could even be called trees at all, he added mentally. In fact, they looked like vastly larger versions of the "grass" plants he'd examined a few moments before. Their overall shape was reminiscent of normal trees, but that was about it. Instead of bark-covered trunks, he could see that the central member of each plant was as green as the leaves were, and much more fibrous-looking. To the touch, however, they felt rock-hard, without even the minuscule give of an old oak. If the As he let the sensations wash over him, Teldin had to admit that everything was alien: the strange, sweet-sharp scents of unfamiliar flowers carried by the breeze; the chattering of unseen creatures in the foliage; even the way the grass-tree leaves rustled and clattered as gusts of wind struck them. Now, why is this all hitting me so hard? Teldin asked himself. He'd been on new worlds before, worlds more different from Krynn than this place. Why was he so hypersensitive to the deviations? Almost the instant he posed the question, the answer came to him. The Juna, he told himself. This isn't just another new world; this is-maybe-the home of the Juna, who might well be "the creators" he'd been seeking. His five companions were as edgy as he felt, Teldin could see. They had different reasons, no doubt; but still they seemed more alert, more sensitive to the slightest sensory cues, than he'd ever seen them before. When a bird-or They reached the edge of the meadow. There was a path of some kind leading into the forest, Teldin thought. The undergrowth-plants following the same paradigm as the grass" and the "trees" but about two feet tall-was sparser here, hinting at a trail. What creatures used it? he wondered. Animals? Or the Star Folk themselves? Djan signaled for a stop. He turned to Teldin. "Well, where from here?" he asked quietly. "Into the forest?" The Cloakmaster nodded wordlessly. From his expression, Teldin knew that the first mate didn't really like, or agree with, the decision. Even before they'd left Teldin's cabin, he'd made it clear that he considered it too much of a risk to go far from the ship until they knew more about the environment and the dangers it might contain. "On board ship we've got the catapult and the ballistae to protect us," he'd pointed out. "They won't do any good against magic-not on the scale we've already seen-but they're enough to give the biggest predator something to think about." But-now, as then-Teldin was convinced that they should explore. The half-elf had backed down before his captain's orders; and, even though he still disagreed, he didn't seem to take being overruled as a personal affront. Djan sighed. "Beth-Abz and Dargeth, take the lead," he ordered. "Anson, watch our backs." Teldin watched as the crewmen followed their orders, the half-orc and the disguised beholder moving forward ahead of them, the human, Anson, taking up a position behind them all. Quietly, they moved into the forest. Among the trees, the air was cooler-like a mid-fall day in Ansalon, Teldin thought-and slightly more humid than out in the meadow. Light lanced down through the foliage in spears of yellow-gold light, shifting at angles visible as the mini-suns sped by in the unseen sky. The sounds the group made seemed somehow hushed under the green canopy. Paradoxically, Teldin could hear his own breathing and heartbeat with preternatural clarity. A sense of peace, of belonging, enfolded him. He felt a smile spread across his face. He slowed to a stop, breathing the fresh air of the forest deep into his lungs. As he looked around him, he saw similar expressions of peace on the faces of his companions. All except Beth-Abz. If the eye tyrant was feeling the same sensations, it was resisting them, maintaining its alertness. Suddenly, the big figure stopped dead in its tracks, staring off into the dappled forest ahead. It signaled silently to the others, who stopped as well. "Something is up ahead," it reported in a harsh whisper. "It comes this way." As quickly as it had come, Teldin felt the sense of serenity, of belonging, evaporate. Tension once more squeezed his chest. "More than one of them," Beth-Abz hissed. Beside him, the half-orc sank into a sword-fighter's crouch, while Anson readied his sling, seating a lead ball in the leather pocket. Teldin took a step forward to join Beth-Abz, but Djan's hand on his shoulder restrained him. Gently, he disengaged himself from the half-elf s grip and moved to stand between Dargeth and the beholder. He strained his senses to the utmost. Yes, he could hear movement ahead, the rustle of underbrush as something-or multiple somethings, he couldn't be sure-approached along the path. The shifting spears of light interfered with his vision, not letting him see as far as he wanted to. But then… There they were, strange shapes moving toward them at a slow walking pace. Teldin could feel his comrades' tension around him and felt his own heartbeat start to race. The figures ahead weren't humanoid-not even close-but he still couldn't make out their true shapes. The Juna… ? Then the creatures emerged into a broad beam of sunlight, and he could see them clearly. His breath caught in his throat, and his pulse pounded in his ears like a mighty drum. There were three of them, slender shapes slightly taller than Teldin's almost-six-foot height. Each creature had a smooth cylindrical body supported by three legs arranged evenly around the bottom of the torso. The legs looked flexible, with more joints and better articulation than a human limb, and ended in broad, soft-looking feet with three long toes. From two-thirds of the way up the body sprouted three more limbs-arms, Teldin labeled them, though they seemed boneless, more like muscular tentacles. Overall, each tentacle was about six feet long. Halfway along its length, each tentacle split into three, and each of those split again into three. The nine tips, each more slender and delicate than a child's finger, were in constant motion, writhing and twisting in complex patterns. Above each tentacle was mounted a single large eye, as big across as the span of Teldin's palm. The eyes were all bright gold, catching and reflecting the light of the hurtling mini-suns, with black, three-lobed pupils in their centers. The creatures wore no clothes of any kind and had no hair. They were covered in smooth skin, a pale yellow-cream color, that showed a satinlike sheen in the bright light. Teldin guessed each creature weighed about as much as an adult human, if not slightly more, but they moved with a grace and delicacy that made him think they were weightless. The Cloakmaster gaped at them in wonder. He "heard" Estriss's mental voice speaking in his memory, describing the mysterious creatures he'd dedicated his life to following. Are these the Juna? The instant the three creatures emerged into the light, they stopped dead in their tracks. As surprised to see us as we are to see them, Teldin thought. Maybe they're surprised that we survived their magical onslaught…. The Cloakmaster braced himself for some kind of hostile response. But no attack came. For a few of his racing heartbeats, he watched as the three-legged creatures remained totally still, even their tentacle tips motionless. Then the tentacles resumed their weaving. They were moving faster, he thought, jerkier, more anxiously-or was that his own mind reading an inappropriate meaning into something totally different? Slowly, almost cautiously, the creatures turned around their central axes-one third of a circle at a time, pointing one eye after another at Teldin and the others. Only when each creature had scrutinized the humans and demihumans with all three of its eyes did one of them start forward in a strange, crablike gait. Teldin felt Dargeth and Anson tense beside him, readying their weapons, and saw the lines of the beholder's disguise start to shift like water. "No," he said, his voice pitched barely above a whisper. "Let's not do anything hasty." Obediently, Beth-Abz resumed its disguised form, and the crewmen lowered their weapons. Still, however, the Cloakmaster could feel their tension radiating from them in waves. If I can sense it, he wondered, looking at the trilaterals, can they? And, if so, how will they interpret it? He watched as the single trilateral-already he found himself considering it the leader, or at least the spokesperson- approached. It moved slower than a walking man, though Teldin couldn't shake the feeling that it could sprint much faster if it had to. Its motions were less graceful, less sure, than it had appeared before it had sensed the presence of the strangers. Although it showed none of the emotional cues that were normal to demihumanity, Teldin strongly suspected it was anxious, if not downright fearful. He frowned slightly. That didn't make any sense. Anxiety in the face of four humans fit his image of the Juna about as badly as… as fear did his perception of the He shook his head, forcing those thoughts away from his mind. Worry about the The trilateral stopped thirty feet away from the crewmen. While the eye itself remained motionless, Teldin could see the three-lobed pupil opening and closing in precise, almost mechanical gradations-presumably scrutinizing the two figures standing in front of the creature. After a few seconds, it edged a couple of feet closer, then stopped again. The Cloakmaster waited for almost half a minute, but the creature didn't move again. Neither did it make a sound, or try to communicate. It just stood there, its tentacle tips writhing like baskets of snakes. I suppose it's my turn, he told himself. Taking a deep breath in an effort to calm himself, he stepped forward, between Beth-Abz and Dargeth, toward the creature. Stopping twenty feet in front of the creature, he opened his hands to show them empty. It watched him in utter silence, its only movement the rapid opening and closing of its pupil. Without warning, Teldin felt a warm pulse of power from the cloak at his back. The back of his neck tingled, and the sensation-almost like a slight jolt of static electricity- spread up his spine and into his brain… And he could suddenly sense and interpret the trilateral's thoughts, a confusing mix of concepts and emotions blended with symbols for which Teldin's mind had no referents. Teldin staggered backward a step under the impact- almost painful-of the creature's thoughts. If Estriss's mental voice had been the "volume" of normal speech, this unexpected rush of thoughts was more like a full-throated yell. As he regained his balance, in his peripheral vision he saw Julia and Djan running to help him. He waved them back. "I'm all right," he told them. "Everything's okay." Then he turned back to the trilateral and took another slow step toward it. "I mean you no harm," he said calmly, trusting to the cloak to convert his words into something the creature could understand. Around his shoulders, the cloak pulsed and throbbed with power. It suddenly struck him that this was the most complex translation task to which he'd ever put the ultimate helm, and it was pushing the powerful item to its limits. "I wish to talk to you." The trilateral jerked as though it had been whipped or stung. Lightning fast, it pivoted around to focus a different eye on Teldin. Its thoughts flooded out and into the Cloak-master's mind, filtered through the cloak to a more bearable psychic "volume." Teldin almost smiled. He could understand the creature's denial all too well. Before the reigar's ship had crashed on his farm, if some strange apparition that didn't match his image of how an intelligent creature "should" look had spoken to him, he'd probably have denied it and dismissed it as some kind of mistake or hoax. He took another slow step forward. "It's not a mistake," he said quietly, and felt the cloak processing his meaning. "I can understand you, and I can speak. I The trilateral pivoted again to give its third eye a view. It was "silent" for a long time-processing his words, Teldin thought. Then it edged a couple of steps closer. "We came here from Heartspace," Teldin explained. "You might call it something else, of course. We followed the river in the phlogiston…" A rush of thoughts cut him off. The cloak wasn't capable of handling complex subjects, Teldin decided. Quickly-before the trilateral decided his incompletely translated words were just mindless babble after all-he rephrased his answer. "This world is in a crystal sphere," he explained. "Outside the crystal sphere is what we call the phlogiston, or the Flow. We came here from another crystal sphere, one with more worlds inside it." Discrete thoughts faded into a kind of "mental white noise," blurring into a mishmash of symbols for which Teldin had no referents, no basis for understanding. There was no mistaking the emotional content, however-profound shock, mixed with fear and a kind of panicked doubt. Without changing its orientation, the creature strode quickly away from Teldin-one of the advantages of trilateral symmetry, he thought-and joined its comrades. Over the intervening distance, he could sense their rapid mental conversation-or argument, maybe-even though the cloak was incapable of distinguishing individual thoughts or concepts. He felt a presence at his side and turned to see Julia standing next to him. Her eyes were fixed on the three trilaterals. "What in the hells was Teldin didn't answer at once. That was the question, wasn't it: what Were these the Juna? No. They couldn't be. Could they? Even though they definitely matched Estriss's description, he couldn't bring himself to believe that these creatures were the all-powerful Juna-the race that had left artifacts behind them on a hundred worlds, possibly including both the ultimate helm and the Yet the trilateral hadn't understood anything that Teldin had "said" about crystal spheres, or the phlogiston, or other worlds, had it? And that couldn't have been just a translation problem. Eventually the creature had grasped that Teldin meant he'd come from "beyond the suns," and that had disturbed it profoundly, almost as if… Almost as if the sphere surrounding the planet was forbidden territory from But then, what "I don't know," he replied to Julia's question. Could the Juna have devolved? The thought struck him suddenly. Could they have somehow slipped backward, forgotten what they used to know, lost their powers? Could they have become marooned here on this single planet, cut off from the universe that had once been their playground- marooned for so long that their racial memory didn't contain any trace of what they'd once been? That would certainly explain why the Star Folk had vanished from the ken of all other races: they'd just turned in on themselves, somehow, leaving only artifacts behind. He shook his head. It couldn't have been like that, he told himself. That was too sad an ending to the glorious story of the Juna. Leaving this universe for another plane of existence, as many rumors told-now that was a fitting conclusion. But to sink back into obscurity, to become savages again-at least, in comparison with their greatest achievements-was just too ignoble. Even worse, what did that say about humankind and the other demihumans-even long-lived elvenkind? That they, too, could lose everything they'd gained, including even the memory of those gains? It was a chilling, depressing thought…. With an effort, he forced the thoughts away. The trilaterals' argument of thoughts had ended, and one of the creatures-not the first one he'd "spoken" to, though Teldin didn't know what made him quite so sure of that-was approaching him again. Teldin stepped forward to meet it. "I am Teldin Moore," he said. Teldin paused. This trilateral's mental "voice" was slower, more deliberate, and considerably clearer and easier to understand than the first one. Yet he still had to struggle to make sense of what it was trying to communicate. "Speaks First" seemed to be the creature's name-an indication that it was some kind of a leader among "the People," maybe?- and it seemed to view Teldin somewhat differently from the first individual: as an "incomplete person" rather than as an "incomplete animal." Considering that the Cloakmaster only had four limbs instead of six, he could understand the "incomplete" part. Did the transition from "animal" to "person" mean that Speaks First was willing to consider him an equal? "Greetings, Speaks First," Teldin said. "You're right, we're not of the People"-he pointed, one at a time, to the three trilaterals-"or of the World of the People"-he indicated the ground under his feet. "We came here from beyond the suns. And that seemed to scare the first of your group to talk with us. Why was that?" Teldin nodded slowly. He'd met two-legged people like that: anything they didn't understand at once was an object of fear. Yet there was more to it than that, wasn't it? All that babbling about the "ancient time" and "the Others"… The creature edged forward. Although it moved slowly, Teldin didn't get the sense that it did so out of fear-more that it didn't want to frighten For a moment, Teldin considered refusing. This It took him a few seconds to realize the creature wouldn't know how to interpret his gestures. But before he could express his agreement in words, the trilateral had started to reach toward him with one of its twice-trifurcated tentacles. Apparently the cloak will translate gestures as well, part of his mind noted. I'll have to remember that…. With the delicacy of a lover's caress, the nine tentacle tips touched his face, traced the lines of his cheekbones and jaw, brushed his nose and lips. The trilateral's skin was as smooth as a baby's, slightly cooler than human flesh. It exuded a complex, faint odor, with a slight undertone of musk-sharp, yet by no means distasteful. Teldin closed his eyes and felt feather touches across his eyelids. Then the examination was over. The creature backed a step away. "What are the Others?" Teldin demanded. "Wait," Teldin called after it. "What about my friends?" The trilateral paused. With five tentacle tips it indicated Djan, Julia, and the others. Teldin shook his head. "No," he said unwillingly. Speaks First rubbed its tentacle tips together with a hissing sound. And that seemed to be that. |
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