The smell in here was even worse than it had been in Yoleus. The journey had been horrific. Dirigible behemothaurs were riddled with fissures, chambers, cavities and tunnels disposed so that their collection of tributary fauna could carry out their various tasks. Many of these were large enough to admit raptor scouts and it was down one of these that they had journeyed from an entrance behind the behemothaur’s rear dorsal fin complex.
The effects of the creature’s own attendant entities turning against it were everywhere. Great gouges and tears had been slashed through the tunnel’s walls, making the curved floor slick with liquid in some places and cloyingly sticky in others; flaps of decaying tissue hung from the ceiling like obscene banners, and rents in the floor could swallow a leg, a wing, or even – certainly in Uagen’s case – a whole body.
Here and there smaller creatures still feasted upon the body of the being they had served; other corpses littered the floor of the winding tunnel, and where the two raptor scouts accompany- ing 974 Praf and Uagen Zlepe down into the body of the behemothaur could do so without delaying their progress, they swiped out at the parasites and tore them to pieces, leaving them twitching on the floor behind.
Finally they had arrived at the chamber where the behemothaur sought knowledge from its self-kin and guests. A great tremor ran through the cavern just as they entered, making the walls shake and dislodging some of the half-rotted bodies.
Two of the specialist raptor scouts had clawed their way up the wall beside the creature which still appeared to be alive. They were intent on an examination of its head where the cable root disappeared into it. One of the raptor scouts held something small and glittering.
‘Do you know the nature of this being?’ 974 Praf asked.
Uagen stared up at the creature. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Well, not properly. It looks vaguely familiar. I might have seen it on screen or something. But I don’t know what it is.’
‘It is not of your sort?’
‘Well, of course not. Look at it. It’s bigger, it’s got enormous eyes and a totally different sort of head. I mean, umm, I’m not of my sort, not originally, if you know what I n~ean,’ he said, turning to Praf, who blinked up at him. ‘But the main thing, umm, difference, is that middle bit. That looks like a sort of extra leg and foot. Well, like two that have grown together. Do you see those, ah, ridges? I’ll bet those are the bones of what used to be two separate legs in its forebears, before it evolved into a single limb.’
‘It is not known to you?’
‘Hmm? Umm, sorry. No.’
‘Do you think if it can be made to speak it will be able to be understood in its talking by you?’
‘What?’
‘It is not dead. It is linked to the mind of the Sansemin but the mind of the Sansemin is dead. But the creature is not dead. If we are able to sever its link to the mind of the Sansemin, which is dead, then it might be able to speak. If this were to happen, would you be able to understand that which it says?’
‘Oh. Umm. I doubt it.’
‘That is unfortunate.’ 974 Praf was silent for a moment. ‘And yet this means that we would be wise to sever its link soon rather than later, and that is good because then we would be less likely to die when the Sansemin suffers its catastrophic explosion.’
‘What?’ Uagen yelped. The Interpreter started to repeat itself, talking slightly slower, but he waved both hands at it. ‘Never mind! Sever its links now; let’s get out quick! I mean, quickly!’
‘This will be done,’ 974 Praf said. It babbled and clicked at the two raptor scouts clinging to the wall by the side of the alien creature. They turned and jabbered back. There seemed to be a disagreement.
Another tremor shook the whole chamber. The floor under Uagen’s feet quaked. He put his arms out to each side to balance himself and felt his mouth go dry. There was a draught, then a distinct breeze of warm air, scented with a smell he suspected was methane. It took most of the smell of rotting flesh away, but he felt sickened with terror. His skin had gone cold and clammy. ‘Please let’s go,’ he whispered.
The raptor scouts on either side of the hanging creature did something behind its head. It slumped forward and down, then the thing trembled as though shivering and brought its head back up. It worked its jaw, then opened its eyes. They were very large and black.
It looked around, at the raptor scouts on either side, at the rest of the chamber, then at 974 Praf, then at Uagen Zlepe. It made a sound, or set of sounds, but it was no language that Uagen had ever heard before.
‘This is not a speech-form which is known to you?’ the Interpreter asked. On the barbed wall of living, dying tissue, the alien creature’s eyes went suddenly wide.
‘No,’ Uagen said. ‘Doesn’t mean a thing to me, I’m afraid. Umm, look, can we please, please get the hell out of here?’
‘You, you there,’ gasped the creature on the wall, in accented but recognisable Marain. It was staring at Uagen, who was staring right back. ‘Help me,’ it wheezed.
‘Wh – wh – what?’ Uagen heard himself say.
‘Please,’ the creature said. ‘Culture. Agent.’ It swallowed with obvious pain and croaked, ‘Plot. Assassin. Need. Get word. Please. Help. Urgent. Very. Urgent.’
Uagen tried to speak but could not. There was a smell of something burning in the wind blowing through the chamber.
974 Praf adjusted her footing as another huge tremor shook the chamber and made the floor swell. She looked from Uagen to the creature on the wall and back again. ‘This speech-form is known to you?’ she asked.
Uagen nodded.
The Memory of Running
The figure seemed to coalesce out of nothing, out of the air. Anyone or anything watching would have needed more than natural senses to have noticed the slow fall of dust spread out over an hour of time and a radial kilometre of the grasslands; that anything out of the ordinary was happening would only have become obvious a little later when an odd sort of wind seemed to stir itself out of the gentle breeze, disturbing the grass on the broad plain and producing what appeared to be a slowly revolving dust devil, whirling quietly in the air and gradually shrinking and tightening and darkening and speeding up until, suddenly, it disappeared, and where it had been there stood what looked like a tall and graceful Chelgrian female, dressed in the country day clothes of the Given caste.
The first thing she did when she felt she was complete was to crouch down and dig into the earth beneath the grass with her fingers. Her claws slid out, spearing the ground. She ripped out a handful of the soil and grass. She held the handful of earth and vegetation up to her broad, dark nose, and sniffed slowly.
She was waiting. She had nothing better to do for the moment, and so she thought that she would take a good hard look and a good long sniff at the ground she stood on.
There were so many different tones and flavours to the smell. The grass held a spectrum of odours of its own, all of them fresher and brighter than the heavy notes of the soil, giving it a scent of the air and the winds rather than the ground.
She raised her head, letting the breeze ruffle her head fur. She took in the view. It was almost perfectly simple; ankle-high grass stretching in every direction. There was a hint of cloud to the far north-east, where the Xhesseli Mountains were. She had seen them on the way down. Above, and everywhere else in the sky, just aquamarine clarity. No sign of contrails. That was good. The sun was halfway up the southern sky. To the north, both moons shone full face, and a single day star twinkled near the eastern horizon.
She was aware of some part of her mind using the information in the sky to calculate her position, the time and the precise compass direction she was facing in. The resulting knowledge made its existence felt, but did not force itself upon her; it was like the presence of somebody in an ante-room, signalled by a polite knock on the door. She called up another layer of data and was presented with an overlay across the sky; suddenly she could see a grid superimposed across the heavens, and drawn on it were the paths of numerous satellites and a few sub-orbital transport craft, with identities attached and a further stratum of more finely detailed information on each implied. The satellites whose images were slowly flashing were the ones which had been interfered with.