“A way of signaling?”
“Ah, you know about that, at least. That’s much newer than musculators, of course—in fact, so new that we’re still stringing them overland between cities, and I think this is the first-ever underwater connection. I hope it’s being done in time, that’s all. We’ve got to link up everybody on the planet if we’re ever to get away.”
There followed a long baffled silence. Reacting to it, Nemora said eventually, “I’m sorry about that. I was just so stunned to realize you had no idea what I’m referring to. Aren’t the Jingtexts available on Neesos?”
“Not many people can read them,” Tenthag muttered. “I’ve never been allowed even to study the language of them.”
“But this is awful!” She erupted out of her sitting-pit in a single graceful surge, and Tenthag had his first chance to see her entire. He was embarrassed all over again. She was perfectly lovely, and there was no way he could hide the exudate that signaled his reaction. Luckily she took it as a compliment.
“Hold that for a while, young’un!” she commanded. “There are some things more important than pairing, you know! You really haven’t been told that our sun and all its planets are being drawn into the Major Cluster, and if we don’t escape we shall wind up fueling a celestial fire? My goodness, how old are you?”
He had to answer frankly, though he could have wished to pretend he was older. Lying was pointless with anybody who had a weather-sense as acute as Nemora’s … and would not someone who piloted a porp single-clawed across great oceans have been selected for precisely that talent?
“I was born in the year called Two-red-stars-turn-blue.”
“Then you really ought to be better informed! Why did they turn blue?”
“People here don’t pay much attention to the sky,” he said defensively.
“That’s obvious! Well, the answer is this.” Padding up and down, so that her mantle rippled in curves it almost hurt him to watch, she launched into the sort of lecture he had always dreamed of being given by someone older and wiser than himself. “The fixed lights in the sky are suns like ours, but far away. We have records showing that some of them, the nearest, are moving apart; this proves that we’re approaching them. I don’t mean the ones that move visibly. They’re planets like ours, revolving around our sun, and the ones that spill out of the sky are just odd lumps of nothing much which heat up when they fall into our air. But there are too many of them for comfort. We think we’re drawing closer to a volume of space where there are so many of these lumps that some must be very big indeed, big as the nubs of comets, and if one of them falls on a city, or even in mid-ocean—! And eventually we think our whole world may be drawn into a sun and go up in another star-turned-blue. The more fuel you put on a fire, the hotter it gets, right? And we don’t want to be burned!”
Once more there was a period of silence, but this time it was for reflection. Tenthag felt as though he had been afflicted with acute mental indigestion, but what Nemora had said made excellent sense. Besides, how could someone as ignorant as himself challenge her?
He wanted to ask another million questions, but suddenly one became more urgent than any other. He said faintly, recalling what he had heard about the Bowocker divers, “Just now you told me there were some things more important than pairing. But suppose we don’t breed, and there aren’t enough people left when we find out how to—what did you say?—escape? In any case, I don’t see how we could! First we’d have to learn to fly like cloudcrawlers, and then…”
Speech failed him; he sat dumbstruck.
With a deep chuckle she dropped beside him, so close their mantles touched.
“There are people working on means to fly better than cloudcrawlers,” she murmured. “One of these days I hope to carry the news of somebody’s success in that endeavor. But you’re perfectly correct. There must be people to enjoy the benefit of what we’re doing now. Would you like to pair with me? I guess it may be your first time, and they do say a first tune can be fruitful.”