On his screen, and in the middle of the rough circle in which they were all sitting, appeared a three-dimensional map of part of the Yaldiv city-hive. “This is incomplete,” Spot said, “but it’s possible to extrapolate a lot of structures we didn’t actually examine from the tunnel openings we passed, and the road signs on the walls.” A small pulsing light appeared in front of one chamber in the diagram. “Here’s where you saw the Hesper,” Spot said.
Dairine leaned down to look at the label that was flashing on the diagram on Spot’s screen. “‘Grubbery’?”
“Possibly we would say ‘nursery,’” Filif said. “A place where the younger and more fragile members of the species are kept or reared.”
“It looks like they reproduce sort of backward from the way hive insects work on Earth,” Dairine said, bringing up another display on Spot’s screen and scrolling down it, while the main map display remained rotating gently in the air in the midst of them. “Instead of a female with a lot of male mates, they have a ‘king’ male who visits a sort of harem and fertilizes chosen females. Then they go off to the nurseries, and—”
“Oh, please,” Kit said. “Sex stuff.” He hid his eyes briefly with one hand. “Aren’t we supposed to be protected from this kind of thing?”
“You’re getting kind of old for that now,” Dairine said, unconcerned. “If standard operating procedure’s actually operating that way at the moment. Anyway, where other species are involved, I think as soon as we’re old enough to ask, we’re old enough to find out.” She gave Kit a slightly cockeyed look, then glanced away again. There were things she herself was still finding uncomfortable about this particular species’ take on reproduction… particularly what happened to the females after the many eggs they bore were fertilized. It brought to mind a particularly vivid sequence from a nature movie she’d seen on one of the educational channels last year—a wasp laying its egg inside some hapless caterpillar, which then went about its business until the day the egg hatched, and the wasp grub started eating its way out. That times a hundred, Dairine thought. Or a thousand. More workers, more warriors for the king. And as for the poor handmaiden, or what’s left of her—
Kit turned to Ronan. “You think you can cover for us again when we go back in?”
The way things are at the moment, I don’t see any problem with that, the Champion said.
“Then let’s do it in the morning,” Dairine said. “The handmaidens don’t go out of the hive with the workers and warriors; there’ll be a lot fewer Yaldiv to avoid if we want to have a chat with her.”
“The question being,” Filif said, “what do we say to her, exactly? ‘Go well, Hesper, and would you kindly now rise up and save the universe?’”
“Don’t ask me,” Dairine said, getting up and stretching. “Improvisation seems to be the order of the day, so I’m gonna wing it. Or better still,” she said, ambling over to look at her mochteroof, “wait for one of you older-and-wiser types to think of something.” She threw what was intended to be an annoying look at Roshaun, and turned away.
A few moments later, he came up behind her and looked over her shoulder, pretending to flick a speck of dust off the gleam of the mochteroof‘s skin. “You are somewhat on edge, are you not?” Roshaun said under his breath.
“Now why would I admit to a thing like that?” Dairine said softly, meeting his reflection’s eye. “But since you ask, I haven’t been so freaked since we were talking to your dad back on Wellakh. I forget what he said, but you gave him this really dirty look and your stone changed color. I thought maybe you were getting ready to blast him or something and then blame it on my unhealthy alien influence.”
Roshaun stared at her. “You saw the Sunstone do what?”
Dairine looked at him curiously. “It got clear. While you were talking to your father. You weren’t going to blast him? I’m glad.”
He looked perturbed. “It wouldn’t be that I wasn’t in something of two minds,” he said, “but all the same—”
She turned away. “Tell me about it,” she said. “He was getting on my nerves, too.”
From behind them Filif said, “This has been a taxing day. We should all root, or rest, or whatever. Tomorrow will almost certainly be more challenging still.”
Dairine sighed. “My favorite leafy green vegetable has a point,” she said. “I’m gonna turn in.”
“And just who are you calling a vegetable?”
“‘Whom,’” Dairine said. “Spot, you coming?”
Stalked sensor-eyes swiveled to follow Dairine. “Shortly. I have a little more analysis to do.”
“Okay. Get me up as soon as anything starts to happen. ‘Night, guys.”
Dairine went into Nita’s pup tent and got as comfortable as she could in the sleeping bag—the couch was far too lumpy for her. She left just a thin glow of wizard-light outlining the door of the pup-tent interface, spent a few moments punching her sleeping bag’s pillow into the right shape, and gratefully lay down and closed her eyes.
But it took her a long time to stop her mind going around and around over the same piece of mental ground. What do we do next? Is it going to be enough? What if it’s not? What’s going on at home? And where the hell is Neets? She should be back by now. Whenever “now” is…
And the next thing she knew, she heard a voice saying from outside, “It does not understand. It does not know.”
Dairine sat bolt upright in the sleeping bag, her eyes wide. The voice had been quiet, almost trembling; there had been as much wonder in it as fear. And it had also not been human. Well, these days that was hardly a big deal. But it also hadn’t been Sker’ret, or Roshaun, or—
She was out of the pup tent about three seconds later, standing on the warm, gritty stone of the cavern floor and feeling grotty and half conscious in the rumpled clothes she hadn’t bothered to take off before bed. Everyone else was standing there looking much the same, give or take a few items of clothing … and also staring in astonishment at an eight-foot-high Yaldiv that was presently walking delicately and a little uncertainly around the mochteroofs, feeling them with long slender scenting palps. Wandering around after her was Ponch, wagging his tail and sniffing the back end of her long abdominal shell in a curious way.
“Ponch!” Kit said. He was standing there in pajama bottoms and a beat-up, plaid flannel bathrobe, looking bleary, astonished, and annoyed. “Cut that out!”
Ponch lolloped over to Kit, plainly far too pleased to be troubled by his annoyance. I found her. Can we keep her?
Kit rubbed his eyes. “My dog brings home strays,” he said in Ronan’s general direction. “I should have mentioned. You think It noticed?”
Difficult to tell, but I think perhaps not, the One’s Champion said from inside Ronan. Otherwise, I should have noticed. Ponch’s way of getting places doesn’t seem to register as a transit.
“I guess we should be relieved,” Kit said. “Ponch, promise me you won’t go off like that again without telling me first!”
Ponch stood up on his hind legs, putting his feet on Kit’s chest. I didn’t do anything bad! he said, sounding worried and a little perturbed. You all wanted to see her! And I wanted to see if she smelled like I thought she should have smelled, Ponch said. And she did!
“Yeah, but we also wanted to give her a chance to get used to us—”
I gave her a chance to get used to me! I smelled her, and she smelled me. And then we started talking.