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“Then what are they doing?” Scudi repeated. “They’re not drifting very fast anymore. It’s as though they were assembling here.”
“The hyb tanks?” Kareen asked.
“How could the kelp—” Scudi began. She broke off, then: “Is this where they’re supposed to come down?”
“Near enough,” Kareen said. “Shadow?”
“The correct quadrant,” he said. He glanced at a chrono. “By the original schedule, splashdown’s already overdue.”
“There’s a strange hylighter,” Brett said. “Or is that really an LTA?” He pointed upward, his finger almost touching the overhead plaz.
“Parachute!” Panille said. “Ship’s guts! There comes the first hyb tank!” “Look at the hylighters!” Scudi said.
The colorful bags had begun a swirling motion, opening a space in their center. The open space drifted somewhat south and a bit west, presenting a net of sea to catch the descending parachute.
Something could be seen dangling from the parachute now—a silvery cylinder that reflected bright flashes from the suns.
“Ship! That thing is big!” Panille said. “I wonder what’s in it,” Kareen whispered.
“We’re about to discover that,” Brett said. “Look! Above the parachute—there comes another one … and another.”
“Ohhhh, if I could only get my hands on one of them … just one,” Panille said.
The first hyb tank was now little more than a hundred meters above the water. It descended swiftly, the actual splashdown concealed within the ring of hylighters. A second hyb tank fell into the open circle, a third … fourth … The watchers counted twenty of them, some larger than the foil.
The circle of hylighters closed in as the last tank hit the water. Immediately, a lane through the kelp began to spread from the foil’s blocked position to where the hylighters had collected.
“We’re being asked to join them,” Scudi said. She fired up the rams and eased the foil ahead at hull speed, keeping it just off the step. A bow wave spread on both sides. The hylighters parted as the foil drew near them, opening a passage into a kelp-free circle where the great tanks bobbed.
The occupants of the foil stared in wonder at the vista opened to them. Hylighter tentacles could be seen working over the closure mechanisms of the tanks, opening them and snaking inside. Wide curved hatches swung aside to the probing tentacles. Abruptly, one of the opened tanks tipped, admitting a surge of water. White-bellied sea mammals emerged and immediately dove into the water.
“Orcas,” Panille breathed. “Look!” He pointed across Brett’s shoulder. “Humpback whales! Just the way they looked in the holos.”
“My whales,” Scudi whispered.
The channel that had been opened for the foil curved left now, directing them to a cluster of six tanks being held side by side in a nest of kelp. Hylighter tentacles could be seen writhing and twisting into the tanks.
As the foil neared this cluster, a dark tentacle emerged with a struggling human form—pale-skinned and naked. Another tentacle came up with another human … another … another … A spectrum of skin shades came out of the tanks—from darker than Scudi to paler than Kareen Ale.
“What are they doing with those poor people?” Kareen demanded.
The faces of the people being taken from the tanks betrayed obvious terror, but the terror began to subside even as the foil’s occupants watched. Slowly, hylighters carrying humans began to drift toward the foil.
“There’s why we were brought in,” Brett said. “Come on, Shadow. Let’s open the hatch.”
Scudi silenced the foil’s jets. “We can’t handle that many people,” she said. She pointed at the massed hylighters removing other humans from the adjacent tanks. More than a hundred human figures could be seen grasped in hylighter tentacles and more humans were being removed from the tanks every second. “That many will sink us!” Scudi said.
Brett, hesitating in the passageway to follow the direction of Scudi’s pointing finger, said: “We’ll have to tow them to the outpost. We’ll see if we can get a line to them.” He whirled and dashed down the passage toward the main hatch. Panille could be heard running behind him.
Hylighters already were clustering around the hatchway when Brett opened it. A tentacle snaked in the opening and grasped Brett. He froze. Words filled his mind, clear and perfect, without any secondary sounds to distort them.
“Gentle human who is loved by Avata’s beloved Scudi, do not fear. We bring you Shipclones to live in peace beside all of you who share Pandora with Avata.”
Brett gasped and sensed Panille beside him: muddy thoughts—nowhere near as clear as those bell-like words entering his senses through the hylighter tentacles. Panille projected awe, schoolboy memories of holoviews displaying hylighters, family stories of that first Pandoran Panille … then fear that the mass of humans being delivered by the hylighters would sink the foil.
“Hylighters will buoy you,” the tentacles transmitted. “Do not fear. What a splendid day this is! What marvelous surprises have come to us, the gift of blessed Ship.”
Slowly, Brett regained the use of his own senses. He found himself braced against loops of hylighter tentacles. Naked humans were being slipped through the hatchway one after another. How tall the newcomers were! Some of them had to duck in the passageway.
Panille looked dazed in a similar tentacle grasp. He waved the newcomers up the passage toward the control cabin.
“Some of you can go into the cargo bays along this passage,” Brett called.
They went where Brett and Panille directed them … no questions, no arguments. They appeared to be in shock from awakening into the tentacles of hylighters.
“We’re being moved toward the outpost,” Panille said. He nodded toward the edge of black rock visible out the hatchway. The sound of the surf against the base of the outpost was clearly audible.
“Gallow!” Brett said.
As Brett spoke, the hylighter tentacles unwound from his body. Panille, too, was released. The space around them remained crowded with silent newcomers. More could be seen held in hylighter tentacles, other tentacles clutching the lip of the hatchway. Slowly, he began squeezing his way forward, apologizing, feeling the pressure of naked skin that made way for him.
The pilot cabin was not quite as crowded as the passage. Space had been left around the unconscious form of Bushka on the cot. More space insulated the command seats where Scudi and Kareen sat. A lacework of hylighter tentacles covered most of the plaz, leaving only small framed bits of the forward view. The outpost loomed high there, the surf sound loud.
“Kelp is right up against the outpost now,” Kareen said. “Look at it! There’s almost no open space left.”
One of the newcomers, a man so tall that his head almost touched the top of the cabin, came forward and bent to peer through a small opening in the lacework of hylighter tentacles. He straightened presently and looked down at the webs between Scudi’s toes, then to the similar growth on Kareen’s feet. He brought his attention at last to Brett’s large eyes.
“God save us!” he said. “If we breed on this planet will our offspring all be deformed?”
Brett was caught first by the man’s accent, an odd lilting in the way he spoke, then by the words. The man looked at Mermen and Islanders with the same obviously revolted expression.
Kareen, shocked, shot a glance at Brett and then at the cabin full of giant humans, the looks of dazed withdrawal slowly vanishing from all of those faces—those strangely similar faces. Kareen wondered how these people could identify each other … except for the variations in skin tone. They all looked so much alike!
It dawned on her then that she was seeing Ship-normals … human-normals. She, with her small stature and partly webbed toe
s, she was the freak.
Ship! How would these newcomers take to people like the Chief Justice or even Queets Twisp with his ungainly arms? What would they say on encountering the C/P?
The foil grated against rock then … again … again. It lifted slightly and was set down hard on a solid surface.
“We’ve arrived,” Scudi said.
“And we’re going to have to deal with GeLaar Gallow somehow,” Panille said.
“If the kelp hasn’t already done it for us,” Kareen said.
“There’s no telling what it’ll do,” Panille said. “I’m afraid Twisp was right. It’s not to be trusted.”
“It can be damned convincing, though,” Brett said, recalling the touch of hylighters at the hatchway.
“That’s its real danger,” Panille said.
Chapter 45
Fools! who slaughtered the cattle sacred to the sun-king;
behold, the god deprived them of their day of homecoming.
—Homer, Shiprecords
Twisp could hear Gallow’s people talking down in the basin, a nervousness in their chatter that told him the strength of his own position. Gallow had brought him up a narrow trail cut in the rock and out onto a flat promontory that jutted seaward on the southeastern edge of the outpost. A breeze blew against Twisp’s face.
“One day, I will have my administrative building here,” he said, gesturing expansively.
Twisp glanced around him at the black rock sparkling with mineral fragments in the light of both suns. He had seen many days such as this one—both suns up, the sea rolling easily under a blanket of kelp—but never from such a vantage. Not even the highest point on Vashon commanded such a view—high, solid and unmoving.
Gallow would build here?
Twisp tried to catch snatches of the conversations from below them, but mostly it was words of nervousness that permeated this place. Gallow was not immune to it.
