“Come out with your hands up, Shongili, Maddock! I saw you rendezvous!” Torkel yelled. “And my father had better be unharmed or-”
“Are you with me?” Sean asked Yana quickly. She nodded, and they stood, one on either side of the passage, flush against the wall, while Torkel, forgetting all training in his agitation, barreled into their ambush. Yana disarmed him easily and caught him in a wristlock, while Sean, on the other side, did something that made Torkel sag against them. Other footsteps could be heard in the outer cave then, but Sean ignored them as he dragged Torkel onward. Yana stepped forward to help, and together they steered him through the passage and into the inner cave, where Clodagh, Bunny, Sinead, Nanook, and Dinah surrounded Dr. Fiske.
A warm mist was already rising from the rivulets running down the cavern walls and along the sides of the floor. It was scented with earth, ozone, plant life, both green and decaying, and the faintest hint of the perfume of exotic flowers. The mist trickled along the floor and twined up the knees of the people in the cavern, gently tugging them down.
The luminescence on the cavern walls danced with shadow play as if lit by firelight; the walls themselves seemed to pulse. The mist thickened and rolled up around them, veiling their faces: heavy, warm, scented mist; the distilled essence of the caves, the ground, the water, the air, moving in and out of their bodies with each breath they took.
Feet shuffled briefly behind Yana, and the disturbance in the air pressure told her that yet others had entered the room. They said nothing, and when she could bring herself to glance over her shoulder, she saw that the late arrivals were cloaked by the mist as well, their nostrils and mouths and lungs and hearts adding to the rhythm with which the cave pulsed.
Every sound was magnified, the trickle of the water rattling like rain on a roof or rustling leaves, a whispered accent to the measured throb in the cave.
Suddenly Torkel writhed in Yana’s hands, and she felt him wake, heard his ragged breathing tear against the fabric of the thing that was happening here.
“No!” he cried. “No, stop! This is how they brainwash you. Dad, don’t listen!”
Dr. Fiske’s voice sounded muffled and distracted as he answered, ” ‘M fine. Don’t be such a horse’s ass.”
And Clodagh murmured encouragingly, “You’re both just fine, just fine.”
From behind Yana, other hands joined hers on Torkel and other arms wrapped around him-in reassurance, not restraint.
“Don’t fight, Captain,” Diego’s voice whispered. “Please don’t fight. Listen. It doesn’t mean to hurt you, it just wants you to listen.”
“I’m here, Captain Fiske,” Steve Margolies whispered in a less solicitous tone. “I’m a scientist, and so is your father. If this is all bull, we’ll know. You’re safe with us. Greene and the other pilot just joined us. You’re safe.”
“You’re safe and well and here because Petaybee has much to tell the sons of those who first woke the planet to life,” Clodagh said.
Torkel started to struggle again, and the whole cave suddenly vibrated with a thumping tremor that repeated over and over to the beat it had established from their breathing. The walls swirled with images, and Yana once more felt the jolt of contact running up her spine, exploding in her nervous system with blossoms of pure joy as she experienced a greater unity than she had ever known. A part of her heard Torkel gasp as he was infused with it, too, and then others became included. Contact was made with them now, each touching another; warm skin or warm cave, warm mist or warm breath, all were mingled in the heavy beat of the planet’s great heart.
In the cold cave floor she felt the ice-and-rock shell that had once imprisoned that heart. Then a shock rocked through her, over and over again, the world’s greatest orgasm, this world’s great orgasm. She was so full of life and joy that her body could not contain it all and lovely things began growing from her skin, her hair, her eyes and mouth and ears and nose, her womb and anus and fingers and toes and hair, giving birth to thousands of new beauties every second, flowering things and furred things, winged things and hoofed things, soft dense creeping mosses and towering trees with undulating sweet-scented fronds. And through each thing, with no more than a whim of a try, she could speak and sing, act and dance, love and laugh and live. Even dying was a kind of life, and she felt that, too, with regret but no grief.