Mentally he didn’t seem much impaired. His verbal responses might be a trifle slowed but not significantly. Nile thought she still could depend on him for quick and accurate reaction, as she might have to do. Because the final factor in the calculation here was Ticos Cay’s collection of floatwood life. On the worktable, next to the cutter-sealer she’d mentally earmarked, lay several objects like hard-shelled wrinkled gray fruits, twice the size of her fist. Ticos had taken them out of a container to explain the purpose they were to serve in his research, left them lying there.
They were called wriggler apples and the shells showed they had ripened. The thing to know about ripe wriggler apples was that they remained quiescent until they received the specific environmental stimulus of contact with salt water. At that moment they split open. And the wrigglers came out. . . .
At best, the apples were a dubious research item. And they were not at all the only specimens in that category here. At a rough estimate, one in fifty of the life forms which cluttered the shelf stands and walls had caused Nile to flinch inwardly at first glimpse or whiff of identifying odor. Floatwood stuff she’d been conditioned against almost since she was big enough to walk. It wasn’t all small or unobtrusive. Dominating the center of the room was a great purple-leafed inhis, the pale blue petals of its pseudoflowers tightly furled. A rarity, to no one’s regret. In the forests, Nile wouldn’t have come willingly within thirty feet of one. By classification it was a plant form. A vegetable, with lightning reactions. The sledmen, with good reason, had named it the Harpooneer. For some weeks it had loomed above and just behind the Palachs who had come and squatted on the platform, staring down at the human prisoner. . . .
It was dormant now, as were most of the other unreliable specimens—totally innocuous, metabolism slowed to a timeless pulse. In biological stasis. It would remain innocuous until it was given the precise measured stimulus, massive enzyme jolt or whatever, that broke the stasis.
And who could produce such stimuli? Why, to be sure, Dr. Cay with his push-button control device. He’d made certain that when it came time to die, he should have the means of taking some of the enemy with him.
Which might not be a detached scientific attitude but was certainly a very human one. . . .
Nile flicked another glance at her watch. Forty-three and a half minutes.
The door at the left clanged open.
The Palach Moga came first along the walkway. The bag into which the UW had disappeared swayed at his side, its strap slung over his shoulder. That detail might have been reassuring if the group behind him had looked less like an execution squad.
Nile stood with her back to the worktable, feeling tensions surge up and trying to show nothing. Ticos gave her an uncertain, questioning look, then turned and moved off slowly along the table, stopping a dozen feet away to watch the Parahuans. The fingers of his right hand fiddled absently with the control device. Moga was approaching the central platform in his grotesquely dainty upright walk, webbed feet placed carefully for each step. Two Oganoon guards came behind him, staring at Nile, massive short-barreled guns held ready for action. Two unfamiliar Palachs followed, moving in an uncompromising Parahuan waddle. Their strap harnesses were an identical crimson; and each carried two sizable handweapons, one on either side, grips turned forward. Another pair of guards concluded the procession. These had their guns slung across their backs and held items like folded black nets. A fifth guard had stopped inside the door, which had closed again after the party passed through. He had another kind of gun with a long narrow barrel, attached to a chunky tripod. He set the tripod down with a thump on the walkway, squatted behind it. The gun muzzle swung around and pointed at Nile.
She didn’t move. She’d given them some reason not to trust her.
The group reached the platform, spread out. Moga stood near the platform’s edge. The red-harnessed Palachs flanked him, hands clamped on their gun grips. The guards with the guns took up positions to either side of the Palachs. The guards with the black nets remained a little to the rear, at the left side of the platform. There were, Nile thought, indications of as much nervous tenseness as she was able to make out in a Parahuan visage—silently writhing speech slits, blinking atmosphere eyes. And all eyes were fixed on her, on the Tuvela. Nobody looked at Ticos Cay.
“Guardian, I shall speak first for myself,” Moga’s voice said suddenly.
Nile didn’t answer. The voice resumed. “I am in great fear for Porad Anz. . . . When you agreed to address the Everliving, I was certain that your mission would succeed and that the Balance would shift to reason. And the response of the Assembly was strongly favorable. Your logic was persuasive. But there has been an unforeseen development. By violence the Voice of Action has assumed control of our forces. It is against all custom, an unprecedented Violation of Rules—but that appears to be no longer important. Here, on the Command Ship and elsewhere on this world, many Great Palachs and Palachs lie dead. Those who survive have submitted to the Voice of Action which now alone speaks for the Everliving. I have come to inform you of what has been decreed. And having spoken for myself, I shall speak now with the words of the Voice of Action.”
Silence.
The group on the platform remained tautly motionless. Nile watched them; they stared at her. So the red-harnessed Palachs represented the Voice of Action. . . . The thought came suddenly that these must be very courageous creatures. They’d entered the laboratory to confront a legend. They were braving gromgorru. They waited now to see what the Tuvela might do in response to Moga’s statement.
The Tuvela also stayed silent and motionless.
The Palach to Moga’s right began speaking abruptly in a series of fluctuating Parahuan hootings, eyes fixed on Nile. After perhaps half a minute he stopped. Moga promptly began to translate.
“Whatever you call yourself, you are a Tuvela. We know this now. You have threatened Porad Anz in the name of your kind. That cannot be tolerated. You have told us that in any hostile encounter with the Guardians the Everliving must be defeated. Once and for all, that lie shall now be disproved. . . . ”
Moga’s voice ended. The red-harnessed Palach spoke again. His fellow turned his head for an instant, addressed the two Oganoon holding the nets. The two took the nets from their arms, shook them out. Black straps dangled from their rims. . . .
Moga took up the translation.
“The Voice of Action offers you and Dr. Cay the death of Palachs. It is painful but honorable. If you accept, you will submit to being enclosed by the confinement nets. If you attempt to resist, you will be shot down and die here like Hulons. In either case, Tuvela, your defeat and death signal the beginning of the hour of our attack on your world. And now, if it is within the power of a Tuvela to defy our purpose, show what you can do.”
Beyond the group, the Parahuan at the door sagged silently forward over the gun, head and upper body obscured by the curling green fog lifting from a specimen on the wall beside him. The armed guards on the platform had pointed their guns at Nile. The red-harnessed Palachs drew their weapons. A dozen or so of the Harpooneer’s pseudoflowers behind the platform quivered and unfurled in a flick of motion like great yellow-blue eyes blinking open. Nile dropped flat.
There had been at least two guns aimed directly at her in that instant; and fast as the Harpooneer was, it might not be fast enough to keep the guns from going off.
They didn’t go off. There were other sounds instead. Something landed with a thump on the floor not far away. With a brief shock of surprise her mind recorded the bag Moga had been carrying. She was coming back up on her feet by then, scooped two of the gray-shelled wriggler apples from the worktable, lobbed them across the partitioning wall into the flooded section of the room. She heard them splash. A detached part of her awareness began counting off seconds. She looked around.
They were dead up there, nervous systems frozen, unlidded double-lensed eyes staring hugely. Embedded in their backs were bone-white spikes, tipping the thick coiled tendrils extended from the pseudoflowers. Four still stood swaying, transfixed, long legs stretched out rigidly. Three had been lifted from the platform, were being drawn over to the Harpooneer. Nile upended Moga’s bag, shook out the UW, had it clipped to her climb-belt as the part of her mind that was counting seconds reached thirty and stopped. There’d been a few violent splashings from beyond the partition, but she heard nothing now. Ticos, holding the control device in both hands, face taut and white, gave her a quick nod.