“Come out at once if you feel you are losing memories,” Graves called.
Tally waved an arm without slowing his progress. “Certainly. Though I do not expect that to happen. How can it, when I am with you in the hands of Commissioner Kelly?”
He was already past the green ring and moving on to the purple one. Two seconds more, and he was sinking slowly to sit on the floor beside Kallik, careful to keep his head upright. His fingers touched the Hymenopt’s furry thorax. “She is alive. Unconscious, but not apparently injured. I cannot lift the line around her from the floor, but if I release her from it I see no difficulty in carrying her out.”
Tally stood up and peered toward the center of the chamber. “But first, I think it is better if I proceed all the way in, and examine the situation there. I can retrieve Kallik as I return.”
Not what I’d do, Birdie thought. A bird in the hand… He glanced at the sphere of the now-disembodied computer. It was strange that the only way to pass messages to the real E. C. Tally was to call them to the brainless body moving slowly toward the middle of the room, and have the sensory input fed back through the cable to the brain that Birdie was holding.
Tally was moving more slowly. The low central platform was only fifteen meters away, but he took twenty cautious seconds to reach it. Two steps from the silent figure of Louis Nenda he paused.
“There is something peculiar about the dais itself. As I have approached it, an interior structure has gradually become visible. It is a set of dodecahedra, invisible from fifteen meters. At ten I saw a hazy outline, like gray smoke. Now the pattern is apparently solid. Tendrils run from two of the dodecahedral faces and surround the heads of Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial. That must be why the bodies can remain seated upright, although both are unconscious.”
Birdie glanced at Graves, then peered toward the platform. From where he stood it looked empty except for the outward-facing seats, the Cecropian, and the human.
“I propose to try to remove Nenda from the platform first,” Tally said. “I have no idea if there will be resistance, active or passive.”
He took the final two steps, reached up, and grasped Louis Nenda by the shoulders. He began to lift. To the watchers it appeared that the two bodies moved to an unstable position, leaning back far from the vertical.
“There is definite resistance,” Tally said. “But also there is progress. We are a few centimeters farther from the platform, and the connecting tendril has thinned. It is starting to turn in on itself, like a ring of blown smoke—” He lurched backward suddenly, and fell to the floor with Nenda on top of him. ” — and now the tendril has gone completely. Be ready to reel in the line and the neural cable. We are coming out.”
With Nenda’s body set over his right shoulder in a fireman’s lift, Tally began to walk slowly back from the center of the chamber. Another minute, and he was by the side of Julius Graves. Together they lowered Louis Nenda to the floor.
Birdie Kelly stared at the pitted and noduled chest, gray and disfigured. “Look at that. What did they do to him?”
Graves bent low, studying the roughened skin. “Nothing was done here, according to Steven. This is a Zardalu augment, designed to permit a human to speak to a Cecropian via pheromonal transfer. We thought this was a lost technology, and a banned one. There must be places in the Communion where the old slave races had mastered and retained parts of the Zardalu sciences.”
Tally had already turned and was heading back toward the middle of the vaulted chamber. Cable was pulling through J’merlia’s too-tight grip. He began to pay it out again just as Louis Nenda grunted and his lips twitched.
“Where the hell am I?” The eyes opened and glared around. The squat figure began trying to sit up.
“That’s a good sign,” Graves said. “He can speak, so at least he hasn’t been wiped totally clean.” He turned to Nenda. “You’re inside a planetoid near Gargantua. Do you remember coming here?”
Nenda shook his dark head and struggled to his feet. “Not a glimmer.” His speech was labored and swollen-tongued.
“So what’s the last thing you do remember?”
Nenda ignored the question. He was too busy staring at the others. “How about that. Fancy you showing up. Julius Graves. And Birdie Kelly. And J’merlia. And all alive.”
“All alive, and no thanks to you.” Graves leaned close. “Come on, Nenda, this is important. What’s the last thing you recall, before you went unconscious?”
Nenda rubbed his hand over his unshaven jaw. “Last thing I remember?” He gave Graves a cautious look. “Mmm. Last thing I remember, Atvar H’sial an’ me were lifting off Quake in the Have-It-All. Summertide was nearly there. I guess it came, and I guess it went.”
“You don’t remember firing on another ship?”
“Firing? Me?” Nenda cleared his throat. “No way. I didn’t fire on anything.”
“Remember it or not, you’ll have to answer for that when we get back to Opal. You’ve already been formally charged with lethal assault.”
“Won’t be the first time someone’s accused an innocent man.” Nenda was recovering fast, the black eyes blinking furiously. “What happened to At? She was with me on the ship.”
“Atvar H’sial?” Graves turned toward the middle of the great chamber. He nodded. “In there. Good. I see they’re on the way out now.”
J’merlia was squeaking with excitement. While Graves and Nenda were talking, E. C. Tally had returned to the dais, pulled Atvar H’sial clear, and was staggering back toward them. He was doubled over with the weight of the great Cecropian body. Nenda followed Graves’s gesture, taking in the bandaged, tottering form, the cable leading from its head to where they stood, the recumbent figure of Kallik four paces behind, and the backdrop of the great, vaulted chamber.
“Hey, what’s going on here? What’d you do to At?”
“We did nothing, and we’re not sure what’s going on. All we know is that you and Atvar H’sial were unconscious in the middle of the chamber, and we have been trying to rescue you.”
“And Kallik? What did you do to my Hymenopt?”
“She became unconscious, trying to get you out.”
J’merlia was jumping up and down with excitement as Tally emerged from the outermost ring. As the Lo’tfian helped to lower Atvar H’sial to the floor, Tally staggered a couple of paces farther and sat down suddenly. The blue eyes closed, and his hands went up to touch his bandaged head.
“This body is regrettably close to its physical limit.” He spoke in a whisper. “I must rest for a few moments. However, we can be pleased with our progress. I am confident that the difficult part is all over. Kallik weighs little. I will take a brief pause to recuperate, and then I will carry her out of the chamber. She is ready to be moved.”
“Hell, I can get her.” Nenda was pushing forward. “You sit down, take it easy. She’s mine, and she’s my responsibility.”
“No.” Graves caught his arm. “Go in there and you’ll be in the same condition as she is in — as you were in. The chamber contains a Lotus field. That is why it was necessary to disembody E. C. Tally before he entered.” He pointed at the rough-surfaced sphere that Kelly was handing to J’merlia. “His brain remained here.”
Nenda took another and more thoughtful look at the crouched body and the cable running from its bandaged head. “Good enough,” he said after a few moments. “I’d better look after At, though — she’ll be coming round in a minute, from the look of her, and she might get violent. Don’t worry, I know how to handle her.”
The Cecropian’s black wing cases had opened to reveal four delicate vestigial wings marked by red and white elongated eyespots. The end of the proboscis was moving out from its home in the pleated chin, and the yellow trumpetlike horns on the head were lifting.