“Off you go, Keith. I’ll give you two the signal when one of them has come close enough for you to flank it and get a good look.”
“I’ll be waiting.” Macmillan wandered off, angling to the front of the column.
“Now, Ambassador, why don’t you join me over here, where we have a great view of the valley?”
Gaspard did. They gazed at the many shades of green and no small amount of orange, violet, yellow, and black. After half a minute, the ambassador commented, almost casually, “Your breathing is becoming worse, Captain.”
“I am fi—”
“Spare me your brave denials. A blind man could see it with a cane. The question is, what are we to do about it?”
“Frankly, Ambassador, we have bigger problems than my respiratory infection. We are down to our last food and water. Two days from now, most everyone in this party is going to be staggering around from the lack of both. In five days, all but a few of us will be immobile. Once we solve the food and water problem, then we can worry about my ability to keep up.”
Gaspard nodded tightly. “I cannot argue the logic of that, but—”
“Ambassador.” Riordan waited for Gaspard to make eye contact. “I’m going to keep doing my job. I’m going to get us to safety.”
Gaspard glanced away, then nodded.
Riordan looked out over the valley, keeping an ear and an eye on the situation developing behind them. Veriden and Macmillan were drifting further apart, and closer to the tree-line.
As the river descended toward the valley, it was marked by intermittent but gentle rapids. Each bank’s flood margin had become meadows dotted with rushes resembling uptwisting orange helixes. Among those bright, motionless spirals flitted examples of the region’s most common animaclass="underline" a wiry creature that recalled a flying squirrel crossed with a newt. They pursued and ate various insects that hovered near the boundary between the exogenous species and their indigenous rivals.
Most species of the two biota did not interact; they ignored each other if they came close to their own borders and rarely crossed over. But in a few noteworthy cases, the rivalry became competition and ultimately violence. In the past few days, Riordan had seen a smaller variety of the predators he’d fended off circling a multieyed arboreal marsupial that was vaguely reminiscent of the Slaasriithi themselves. Hissing, clattering, screeching, the two species marked their respective territories until, as if by mutual agreement, they rushed together in a sudden tangle of bodies and flashing teeth — and then sped apart just as fast, neither appearing any worse for the wear.
Having now witnessed many similar scenes, Riordan understood why Yiithrii’ah’aash insisted that the story of the Slaasriithi had to be seen, not read. The legation would have certainly understood logical explanations of what they were witnessing: slow-motion terraforming that replaced the human tactic of supplantation with cooption. But they would not have realized that they were also witnessing the core truths of the Slaasriithi in action. This terraforming was not driven by economics or grand strategy or population pressures. It was an affirmation: of life, of death, of limitless time, of integration with a reality that transcended any one species or epoch. Consequently, there were no endless committee meetings over budgetary or procedural problems, there was no desperate concern about maintaining the political will to see projects to completion, there was no perpetual need to reinform, reexcite and reassure a voting populace that today’s path was, indeed, the right path. And above all, there was no conflation of the Slaasriithi’s objectives with the egos of those who were charged with attaining them over the course of decades, centuries, even millennia.
Riordan, relaxing from the exertions of the trail, enjoyed a slightly deeper breath and stared out across the increasingly misty valley: a planet so superficially similar to the green worlds of the Consolidated Terran Republic, yet strikingly different from its monocellular foundations up to its most complex organisms.
Some of which were apparently still tracking them. Riordan glanced over his shoulder, saw that Veriden had retraced the last one hundred meters covered by the group. Macmillan had made equivalent progress in the other direction. That separation would be sufficient for an effective flanking move. Riordan turned to Gaspard. “Ambassador, if you will be so good to run toward the woods when I do so—”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“You mean, toward the animals following us?”
“That is exactly what I mean. Trackers as cautious as these will tend to scatter if confronted swiftly and by surprise. And if Keith or Dora manages to bring one or two down, that will dissuade these creatures even further.”
Gaspard stared wide-eyed into the foliage. “But I—”
“Etienne: this is not a matter for debate. Just do it—now!”
Veriden and Macmillan reacted to Riordan’s shout by turning and sprinting straight into the tree line. Caine and Gaspard, closer to where the group had halted, and further from the foliage, were longer in reaching its shadowy outer fringes. By which time, Macmillan was shouting:
“I’ve flushed them; they’re heading your way.”
“Dora?” yelled Caine through wracking gasps for air.
No report came from her.
But up ahead in the bush and in the trees, there was a surprising amount of motion. Most of it was withdrawing toward the taller, inland stands of bumbershoots and cone trees, but there was also some crisscrossing confusion as creatures fled from one human flanker, only to find themselves confronted by the other. Through a gap between two sapling-sized ferns, Caine saw one of these trapped creatures leap from the ground into the lower branches of a frond-tree, its long-limbed torso a blur of motion — and Riordan stopped, paralyzed by a memory:
Delta Pavonis Three. He was suddenly reliving the first moment he encountered the regressed Slaasriithi of that planet, glimpsed their gibbonlike leaps into the trees— Those motions were the same as these motions, right here—
“Macmillan, Veriden, stop! Stay where you are! Don’t move! And for Christ’s sake, don’t shoot!”
“What?” Macmillan shouted back at Caine; he sounded slightly annoyed.
“Why?” cried Veriden; she sounded downright pissed.
“These aren’t animals.”
“Then what are they?” asked Macmillan.
But Veriden had obviously had an epiphany of her own. “Shit,” she said.
Deeper in the forest and overhead, the sounds — a panicked rout in the face of an unexpected charge — diminished, the noises quieting more rapidly than could be explained by dwindling into the distance.
“Now what?” Veriden hissed from almost fifteen meters away.
“Now we wait,” Caine answered with no more volume than was necessary.
Chapter Forty. SOUTHERN EXTENTS OF THE THIRD SILVER TOWER BD +02 4076 TWO (“DISPARITY”)
Akin to Riordan’s initial encounter with the regressed Slaasriithi on Delta Pavonis Three, the passage of time seemed impossibly dilatory. And when Veriden shifted impatiently, Riordan was gratified to see Gaspard make a savage gesture of cessation in her direction.
A faint movement stirred in the bush, well ahead of Caine.
“Something coming,” Macmillan muttered.
Riordan nodded. “Let it come. Lower your rifle. And stay where you are.” Caine was about to suggest that the Scotsman should also try to relax when a great wave of calm flowed through not just his mind, but his body — which Riordan reflexively resisted, much the same way he would shake off drowsiness when driving at night.