Rebka nodded and stepped onto the descending ramp of the tunnel. The others watched him walk forward, leaning far back to keep his balance. His hair and clothes began to blow wildly about him, and his pace slowed. Twenty meters along he paused. They heard his voice echoing through to them, oddly distorted.
“This is the point of no return. A couple more meters and I’ll have no choice but to go.” He turned and waved. “Meet you at the other end. Safe trip everybody, and bon voyage.”
He took two slow steps, and then a new force gripped him. He tumbled forward down the ramp. There was an audible gasp, a whomp of displaced air, and a shiver in the outline of the tunnel walls.
The others peered down toward the spinning singularity. Rebka was gone.
“You may proceed,” Speaker-Between said.
“Yeah,” Birdie Kelly said softly. “I may. But I may not.” He was clutching the rough sphere of E. C. Tally’s brain to his chest like a holy relic. “Come on, Birdie. You’ve been saying for weeks that you want to go home. So let’s do it. Feet, get moving.”
As Louis Nenda patted him on the shoulder Birdie took a first hesitant step along the tunnel. The whole line followed, like a slow processional.
“One by one,” Speaker Between cautioned.
Birdie was muttering to himself as he walked forward. Halfway along the tunnel he reached some decision and started to run. He shouted as he hit the transition zone, and again there was the rush of displaced air.
J’merlia and Kallik tried to pause by Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial, but the Cecropian waved them on.
“That’s right,” Nenda said. “Keep moving, Kallik, don’t hold up the line. And don’t worry about us. We’ll fight things out here between us. Get on back to the spiral arm.”
“As you command. Farewell, beloved Master.” The rear-facing eyes in the Hymenopt’s dark head watched Nenda all the way, to the point where she was taken by the vortex field. Kallik vanished in silence, followed a few seconds later by a shivering J’merlia.
Julius Graves refused to be hurried. He paused in front of Louis Nenda and shook his hand. “Good luck. If you do succeed in returning, you can be sure of one thing. Whatever you did at Summertide on Quake, the charges against you and Atvar H’sial will be dropped. Please make sure that she knows, too.”
“Appreciate it, Councilor.” Nenda shook Graves’s hand vigorously. “I’ll tell her. And don’t worry about us. We’ll get by.”
“You are a very brave man.” The misty-blue eyes stared sightless into Nenda’s dark ones. “You make me proud to be a human. And if I were a Cecropian, I would be just as proud.” Graves touched his hand to Atvar H’sial’s foreclaw and stepped onto the ramp.
In seconds he was gone. Darya Lang stood alone with Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial.
She took Nenda by the hand. “I agree with Julius Graves. I don’t care if you were a criminal before you came to Opal, it’s what you are like now that counts. People do change, don’t they?”
He shrugged. “I guess they do — when they have a reason to. And mebbe I had a good reason.”
“The Zardalu?”
“Naw.” He refused to meet her eyes, and his voice was gentle. “Nothin’ so exotic. A simple reason. You know what they say, the love of a good woman, an’ all that stuff… but you should be going, and I shouldn’t be talking this way.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m nothin’. You’ve got a good thing going with Captain Rebka, and you’re a lot righter for him than you ever could be for somebody like me. I come up the hard way. I’m loud, an’ I’m coarse, an’ I don’t know how to talk to women, never did.”
“I’d say you’re doing just fine.”
“Well, this isn’t the time an’ place for it. Go now. But maybe if I ever get back to the spiral arm—”
“You’ll come right to Sentinel Gate, and look for me.” Darya turned to nod to Atvar H’sial. “I want to say good luck to her, too, but that’s stupid. I know only one of you can win, and I hope it’s you, Louis. I have to go now — before I make a complete fool of myself. The rest of them will be waiting at the other end. I mustn’t stay longer.”
She reached out to take his face between her hands, leaned down, and kissed him on the lips. “Thanks, for everything. And don’t think of this as good-bye. We’ll meet again, I just know we will.”
“Hope so.” Nenda reached out and patted her again on the curve of her hip. He grinned. “This sure feels like unfinished business. Take care of yourself, Darya. And stay sassy.”
She walked away from him along the ramp, turning to smile and wave as she went. There was a moment when she stood motionless, with the vortex blowing her hair into a cloudy chaos around her head. Then she took one more step and spun away down to the singularity. There was the usual explosion of displaced air. She did not cry out.
Nenda and Atvar H’sial stood staring after her.
“It is finished,” Speaker-Between said from behind them. “I will receive confirmation when they reach their destination. And now — for you it begins. You must continue, human and Cecropian, until the selection process is complete.”
“Sure thing. You’re just gonna leave us to it, then?”
“I am. I see no need for my presence. I will check periodically to ascertain the situation, just as I did when your group expelled the Zardalu.”
Speaker-Between was sinking steadily into the floor. The tail and lower part of his body had already vanished.
“Hold on a minute.” Nenda reached out to grab the flowerlike head. “Suppose that we want to contact you?”
“Until one of you triumphs over the other, there can be no reason for me to talk to you. A warning: Do not seek to escape using the transportation system. You will not be accepted by it. In case of need, however, I will tell you a way to reach me. Activate one of the stasis tanks. That fact will be drawn to my attention…” The stem was sinking, until only the head itself was left. It nodded, at floor level. “This is farewell — to one of you. I do not expect to see both of you again.”
Speaker-Between disappeared. Atvar H’sial and Louis Nenda stared at each other for a full minute.
“Has he gone?” The pheromonal message diffused across to Nenda.
“I think so. Give it a few more seconds, though.” And then, when another half minute had passed, he said, “We oughta start right now, but we haven’t had a chance to talk for a while. What do you think?”
“I think that something new and unprecedented has happened to the iconoclastic Louis Nenda.” The pheromones were full of mockery. “I did not understand your spoken interaction with the female, but I could monitor your body chemistry. There was emotion there — and genuine sentiment. A grave weakness, and one that may prove your undoing.”
“No way.” Nenda snorted “You were reading me wrong, dead wrong. It’s an old human saying: Always leave ’em hot, someday it may pay off. That’s all I was doing.”
“I was not reading you wrong, Louis Nenda. and I remain unpersuaded.”
“Hey, you didn’t hear her. She was all ready to change her mind and stay — I could see it in her eyes. I couldn’t have that, her stickin’ around and poking her nose in. I had to make her realize how noble I was, see, remainin’ here like this, because then she couldn’t stay, too, without making me look less like Mr. Wonderful. Anyway I don’t want to talk about that. Let’s drop it an’ get right to the real stuff.”
“One moment more. I may accept that you were not deceiving me concerning your feelings for the woman, Darya Lang — accept it someday, if not yet. But I know you were seeking to deceive me, and everyone else, on another matter.”