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snaked out and grasped J.D.'s wrist. She gripped it, her fingers closing around silky fur. The tentacle felt hot, like the tail of a cat basking in the sun. "These are my friends, my colleagues," J.D. said to Nemo. "Welcome," Nemo said. "Thank you," J.D. said. The others took off their helmets. J.D. had warned them of the exhaust-fume smell, and they had seen the LTM analyses. Stephen Thomas wrinkled his nose in distaste, and Zev sneezed. "Tell me if you thought new things." Nemo said. "I sure did," J.D. said. "We all did." She and her companions removed their spacesuits and left them at the edge of the inner chamber. J.D. approached the squidmoth. "How are you? Did you think new things, too?" "I thought of some old things," Nemo said. "I want to introduce my friends," J.D. said. "Victoria Fraser MacKenzie, who's the head of the alien contact department, and a physicist. She discovered how to use the cosmic string to enter transition." METAPHASE 47 "I am glad to meet you, Victoria," Nemo said. The long central tentacle snaked out and hovered. Victoria extended her hand, and Nemo laid the soft tip of the tentacle in her palm. She shivered. "I'm glad to meet you, too, Nemo," Victoria said through her internal link. "Here's Satoshi Lono. He's a geographer. He studies how communities interact with their environments. And Stephen Thomas Gregory, who studies genetics. And this is my friend Zev. Zev is a diver." Nemo went through the new greeting ritual with each of J.D.'s colleagues in turn. "You're the ichthyocentaur," Nerno said to Zev. "That's what Europa called me," Zev said. "But the word means I'm part fish. I'm not." "You are different from J.D.," Nemo said. "Of course. I'm a diver, and J.D.'s still a regular human being." J.D. was touched that he used the word "still." She would probably always regret turning down the chance to become a diver that Zev's mother had offered her. "And Stephen Thomas is different from you all," Nemo said. "I'm changing into a diver," Stephen Thomas said. "I'm about half and a a T T n n s s F F f f o o D D r r P P m m Y Y e e Y Y r r B B 2 2 . . B B A A Click here to buy Click here to buy w w m m w w o o w w c c . . . . A A Y Y B B Y Y B B r r half at this point." "Maybe someday J.D. will decide to change, too," Zev said. A spinner crept from a fold. Nerno's tentacle snapped out and grabbed it and teased it into spinning and urged it in a tight circle and started to weave another pouch. "Can we look around?" Stephen Thomas said. "You would like to see other parts of me." "Yes.,, "The attendants will take you to what you wish to see.,, Three lifeliners crept into the chamber. 48 VONDA N. McINTYRE The lifeliners led Victoria, Satoshi, and Stephen Thomas out of Nemo's chamber through the same path. At the first split in the path, two went one way and one went another. "See you guys later," Stephen Thomas said. He strolled after the spinning creature and disappeared between two curtains. Victoria started to call after him. "He'll be all right," Satoshi said. Victoria stepped back, took a shallow breath of the fetid air, and blew it out abruptly. "I know," she said. "But I'd feel easier if our guides didn't look so much like scorpions." Intellectually she understood all the reasons for believing they were safe with Nemo. Emotionally, she had a harder time. She was very glad Nemo had not offered them all decorative food. I wonder how you turn it down if you don't want it? she said to herself. Maybe you say, Thank you very much, but I don't care to be decorated. Satoshi grinned. "They do look like scorpions, don't they? Not as mean, though, or they'd be beating the hell out of each other right now." The other two lifeliners scuttled down the path. At the next fork in the corridor, they diverged. Satoshi grabbed Victoria in a quick, fierce hug, then hurried after his lifeliner. Victoria descended through twisting tunnels, curving tubes of watered silk that spiraled steeply downward. The color-shot patterns quivered beneath her footsteps, and the lifeliner scuttled drunkenly along the shifting floor. Victoria jumped, experimentally, cautious because of the low gravity. She hit the ceiling, pressing into the warm, slightly sticky fabric. She broke away from it with a faint ripping sound, bounced to the floor, and rebounded. By the time she came to a sprawling halt she METAPHASE 49 was laughing at the position she was in, and even at her fear. a a T T n n s s F F f f o o D D r r P P m m Y Y e e Y Y r r B B 2 2 . . B B A A Click here to buy Click here to buy w w m m w w o o w w c c . . . . A A Y Y B B Y Y B B r r Above her, the ceiling darkened where she had hit it. A shape passed over the bruise. The silk dimpled from the other side as one of Nerno's attendants stepped lightly across the upper curve of the tunnel. It was like being underwater during rain. The brief shadow of the cloud, the quick touch of raindrops sweeping delicately across the surface. The shadow faded; the bruise disappeared. Victoria continued down the tunnel. The air grew sharp and clear. Ozone tinged it. When she touched her hair, static electricity crackled. And the gravity grew stronger. At first she thought she was imagining the gradual effect, but it was real. It makes sense, she thought. Grade-school physics. I knew there had to be something inside Nerno's ship at least as dense as neutronium. And I'm getting closer to it. The LTM sensors registered a slight increase in the radiation level. Nothing dangerous yet. Victoria knew she should not stay long, but curiosity drew her on. The lifeliner scrambled onward and downward, leading her toward a lambent glow. Victoria followed the creature around a bend in the tunnel. The creature stopped. The tunnel ended its spiral and curved abruptly straight down. Victoria glanced back. Her escape route was open and clear. She crossed the last few meters to the sharp curve of the tunnel, passing the lifeliner. A thick panel of transparent webbing covered the end. She knelt on the floor and gazed down through the clear surface. It was like looking into a well, a well lit from below, or through a pane of old, wavery glass. A shining sphere lay in the center of Nerno's planetoid. A curving pattern of pale cables suspended it and held it in place-held the planetoid in the proper relationship to it. Here and there, more of Nemo's crea- so VONDA N. MONTYRE tures crept about. They looked like the lifeliners, but they had much heavier carapaces, shorter spinners, legs nearly invisible. They picked their way across the suspension cables. In front of them, the white cables flexed in response to the spinners' motion and the faint occasional vibration of Nerno's sphere. Behind them, they left dark metallic rope of twisted wire. Victoria ignored the faint scratching noise behind her. She wished she could see into the sphere, but she knew it was protecting her from radiation and energy flux that would kill her, and all her colleagues, and probably Nemo as well. The sphere hid the engine that powered Nemo's voyaging. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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