Last Shadow (9781250252135) Page 28

  Hands went up.

  As far as Peter could tell, everybody was eager to go except him and Wang-Mu. A part of him wanted to be part of the company by raising his hand. But he did not. And Wang-Mu did not. They stuck to their resolve.

  “What armaments will we bring?” asked Sergeant.

  “None,” said Ela. “We will be outnumbered.”

  “Thermopylae,” said Sergeant.

  “Please recall that the Spartans only held the pass for a few hours, and then they all were killed,” said Ender, who was used to countering any idea of Sergeant’s with logic and precedent.

  “There won’t be any fighting,” said Jane. “The instant conflict seems imminent, we will all leave. Those who can do so will transport themselves; I will bring the rest.”

  “You’re assuming that you’ll detect an imminent attack,” said Sergeant.

  “Yes,” said Jane. “They’re still human. If violent desires don’t show, fear will, as will deceptive intent. Human beings have been my study all my life.”

  “We have no choice but to trust you,” said Ela. “You’ve never let us down.”

  There was a momentary silence, till Sprout raised his hand. “Ela, Jane. Why aren’t there any Formics or pequeninos here at this meeting?”

  “The Queen and the fathertrees barred their children from coming with us to Nest,” said Jane.

  “But they’ve been part of everything else we’ve done,” said Sprout. “Fingers in particular has done as much as any of us. Well, almost anyone.”

  “Which one is Fingers?” asked Little Mum.

  “The one who looks exactly like a pequenino,” said Ender.

  “The one who takes care of our computer systems,” said Miro. “You all know him, because he’s the only one you ever call on to help you deal with a computer problem.”

  “I knew him even before he embraced that nickname,” said Ela. “A very bright and industrious rapaz.”

  “We have plenty of time to get to know all the pequeninos who work with us by name,” said Miro. “They all look completely distinct to me, but I know that for others there’s a learning curve.”

  “My intention,” said Ela, “is to address everyone at the banquet, and tell them that we plan to leave Nest for good, as of tomorrow. With the assurance that we will not add their world to any database or atlas.”

  “We’re really going to leave behind a world with four intelligent species, all of Earth origin?” asked Ender.

  “They aren’t specimens,” said Ela. “We have been told that they want us to leave. If, when I make this announcement, they beg us to stay, then we can hold off for a few days and negotiate a time for us to leave.”

  “Can’t we ask the ravens and keas for volunteers to come with us?” said Sprout. “Say, a dozen breeding pairs of each?”

  “I thought you of all people,” said Carlotta, “wouldn’t want to bring any keas along.”

  “A dozen pairs isn’t enough. Fifty pairs would be a small gene pool,” said Quara. “But it’s a good idea. If they can find a hundred of each species to consent to it.”

  “There’s nothing for them here on Lusitania,” said Miro.

  “But our other colony worlds aren’t as bare as Lusitania,” said Jane. “I think there are eight that are worth trying. As long as the keas agree to behave.”

  “They’ll behave like keas,” said Sprout. “You can’t forbid keas to play, any more than you can forbid humans to talk.”

  “Then we may restrict them to one continent—and warn humans to stay away,” said Jane. “There are ways to make it work. Our little colonies are refuges for endangered sentient species. We can add a few more, I think.”

  “The Engineers?” asked Sprout.

  “They are still part of the Folk,” said Jane.

  “They winter with them underground. But if they ask to come, as permanent colonists and not as tourists, we can find out how the Folk feel about it.”

  “Are we done here?” asked Sergeant.

  “I suggest,” said Peter, “that Sergeant be left behind here with us.”

  Dead silence.

  Peter rose to his feet. “Sergeant’s hostile and belligerent attitude, along with his skepticism about all decisions made by the project leaders, makes me fear that he will do something that will provoke an incident with the Folk.”

  “I will not,” said Sergeant.

  “And if you do, who will stop you?” asked Peter.

  “If you plan to take my daughter with you,” said Sergeant, “I will be there too.”

  “Your daughter will go where she likes,” said Jane, “as you well know. However, I think that if Cincinnatus wishes to go, we shouldn’t leave him behind.”

  “How magnanimous of you,” said Sergeant.

  “We already have his promise to commit no provocations,” said Jane.

  “He’s not even part of the project,” said Ela.

  “Only because Jane sequestered all three of the Giant’s children on Nokonoshima, on a fool’s errand,” said Sergeant. “But she chose to bring us back, and now we are part of the project, since we know as much about genetics as any of you, having repaired our own twisted genome years ago.”

  “Cincinnatus is right,” said Jane. “I haven’t heard a real reason, other than personal dislike, for me not to transport him. Anything else?”

  Sprout raised his hand again. Peter realized for the first time that this hesitant, shy-seeming child was not one to hold back. He seemed timid, but Peter suspected he was as fearless as Thulium.

  “Thulium isn’t here,” said Sprout.

  “That is true,” said Jane.

  “Is she going with us or not?” asked Sprout. “She won’t want to be left out.”

  “I know where she is,” said Jane.

  “Where?” asked Sprout.

  “Where she chose to be,” said Jane.

  “Will we see her on Nest?” asked Sprout.

  “I expect so,” said Jane. “As you said, she’s not likely to miss this.”

  * * *

  The descolada team stood in a circle in a meadow. A moment before, they had been in the same formation on the lawn outside the compound. A few pequeninos and Formics were there to see them off, but there were no speeches. A few of them had put canteens on their belts, but nobody had packed food and nobody carried a weapon.

  As soon as they arrived on Nest, they heard the crashing of waves against the shore not very far away. There was a shelf of sand that blocked the view of the breakers, but beyond that they could see ocean stretching on into the distance.

  “Why here?” asked Sergeant. “An underground civilization can’t be built this close to the ocean.”

  Jane said nothing.

  “They must be constantly patching leaks,” said Sergeant.

  A few keas rose up from the grass, and everyone with canteens put their hands on them, but these keas seemed not to be in a playful mood. One kea flew up to Sprout’s shoulder. “Where is my Royal Mother?” asked the kea.

  “Royal Son?” asked Sprout. “She’s pregnant, and didn’t want to endanger the baby.”

  “There’s no danger,” said Royal Son. “And she was pregnant when she came before.”

  “Maybe she didn’t yet know,” said Ela. “Are you our guide?”

  “We are all your guides. We have promised the Raven Council, no pranks, no misleading you, no false paths. We will take you to the passage down to the human Folk in this part of Nest.”

  “We’re ready,” said Sprout.

  “Is it far?” asked Sergeant.

  “Far can mean so many different distances,” said Royal Son, “I can’t answer, except to say that no human has ever found this distance taxing. But if you need to rest, stop. We’ll notice and wait for you.”

  So they set out, and even the cousins, with shorter legs, had no trouble keeping up.

  Sprout walked beside Jane, so he could ask questions. “Why is Uncle Sergeant with us, and Valentine is not?”
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  “She was afraid that as the oldest among us, she would be regarded as the chief of our party,” said Jane.

  “What’s wrong with that?” said Sprout.

  “It was her preference, as it was Peter’s and Wang-Mu’s.”

  “So now who will they think is our chief?” asked Sprout.

  “Don’t worry, Sprout,” said Jane. “It probably won’t be you.”

  “Don’t be sure,” said Miro. “Sprout was our best diplomat. He earned enough credibility to hear Ruqyaq’s history.”

  “Oh my,” said Jane. But Sprout knew she and Miro were teasing him.

  Though what if they weren’t? What if he was greeted with great honor? Sometimes young people could be honored for their deeds. Not as often as they deserved, perhaps, or maybe far more than was good for them; but those who knew what he had done might give him respect.

  Thulium should be here, thought Sprout. Yes, she fled the keas’ onslaught, but she was right—they were going to be relentless and why shouldn’t she get away? He had been a fool for staying. Until he was no longer a fool. Thulium had earned her place here. How would she know where they were, so she could join them? Jane seemed awfully cavalier about it.

  The distance was only a little more than a mile. Away from the river’s mouth, the ground rose upward to a height at least thirty meters above the sea. Down below the hill, there was still a beach, bright yellow in the daylight. Sprout wondered what it was made of, because it didn’t seem like the normal color for silicon dioxide sand.

  What mattered, though, was not to stray away from the group. He realized that a couple of keas were trying to herd him away from the brow of the hill and back to the little flock of Ribeiras and Delphikis.

  An awful thought occurred to him. The Folk might be perfectly sincere in their invitation to share a meal in their underground habitat. But they might also be planning to kill everyone capable of—what was the new term? Detouring.

  But they were the least killable people in the world. The Folk couldn’t be stupid—Ruqyaq proved that. Different as his body was, he was still part of their society. They all must know how impossible it would be to use any kind of weapon against them.

  I am limiting myself with words like “impossible,” thought Sprout. Instead of rejecting the idea that they had any useful weapon, Sprout should try to imagine what kind of weapon they would use. A silent projectile weapon that was undetectable until it struck? For that matter, bullets could travel faster than sound so they would easily be silent until after they hit the target. Would it be bullets?

  Where would the Folk learn to practice shooting? They did no hunting on the surface, surely. No stray bullets could be allowed to strike a bird or one of the Yachachiyruna by accident.

  Nothing’s impossible. And even if an attempt would fail, that didn’t mean the Folk wouldn’t try it.

  They had nothing to gain by killing anybody, Sprout told himself.

  The Folk’s main goal probably wouldn’t be murder. They wanted to get the Box out of the sky and make sure it never came back. They would erase all knowledge of Nest from the human universe.

  Except two of the most prominent visitors to the surface were missing—Peter and Wang-Mu. And also Thulium, who came only once—but arrived with Sprout.

  What are their weapons? What is their science? From Ruqyaq, Sprout had learned that the Yachachiyruna were the engineers, the technicians, the builders. If they had any weapons, then as machines they would surely be created by the engineers. Yet Ruqyaq did not seem to be a treacherous sort of person, a calculating person. He enjoyed telling stories; he seemed to like talking to Sprout. Would he have built weapons designed to kill intrusive visitors like the humans of the descolada project?

  They came to a doorway built into a recessed place in a rocky cliff. They were on high enough ground that they could go down fifty meters without reaching sea level, so Sergeant’s concern about a leaky roof was probably not a problem. The caverns here would be dry. Except maybe leaking groundwater from above them. And if they lived underground, they’d make sure that it wouldn’t be leaky and promote the growth of mold.

  The door opened automatically—or had a kea pecked on some hidden control? Maybe some observer had opened it remotely.

  Inside, there was plenty of room for them all to enter. The walls were smooth but didn’t seem to be made of metal. Or wood. Plastic, then? Not a texture or feel that Sprout was familiar with. He wanted to see if he could scratch the surface, but he had nothing to scratch it with, and anyway, what kind of impression would it make if his first impulse was vandalism?

  The floor shuddered a little and Sprout thought, Did they think they could make us fall through a huge trap door and die on the stalagmites below?

  Nonsense. Why was he so afraid? It was just a large elevator, one that could probably raise and lower a hundred people at a time. At harvest time, they might bring enough people up to the surface to need to make several trips, but with a ten-person elevator they couldn’t possibly bring a few hundred harvesters up and down in a reasonable time.

  The elevator went down a long time, but there was no way to gauge how fast they were moving. Had they reached sea level? Deeper? Or only a dozen meters at a very slow pace?

  The floor shuddered again, and then the back wall rose up and a vast room opened before them. It did not seem to be a cave at all—the walls were straight and smooth, the ceiling complete and solid, and the floor wasn’t stone. The room was cooler than the air on the surface, because that’s how it was in caves—but it wasn’t bone-chilling. It didn’t feel like what Sprout imagined a deep cave would feel like. The air was clean and fresh. Their ventilation system must be superb.

  Sprout had a sudden thought, and he tugged on Jane’s hand. She stopped, and so did Miro. Sprout looked up at her, not sure if he dared to speak aloud.

  Jane mouthed words and whispered very softly. “Look at me. I can read your words even if you make no sound at all.”

  Sprout spoke accordingly. He didn’t even whisper, just mouthed these words:

  “Their weapons will be biological,” he said. “That is their most advanced science.”

  Jane squeezed his hand and nodded. “If you’re right,” she whispered very softly, “we are probably infected already.”

  “It’s a crazy idea,” said Sprout, this time with a bit of a whispery sound.

  “Your fear is rational,” said Miro. “Fearless people are fools—and quite often dead fools.”

  “I’m monitoring everybody’s vital signs,” said Jane.

  Reassured, Sprout let go of her hand and moved with the others into the room.

  There were tables arranged in untidy bunches, as if nobody cared whether it was convenient to walk among them. The keas were no longer with them—they must have stayed on the surface. But they saw humans scattered among the tables. Tall, well-nourished people, so however they handled agriculture here, it must be working well.

  The introductions were all among adults; the children were not really ignored—Ela said their names—but the Folk directed all their attention toward the adults in their party. That saved Sprout the trouble of trying to figure out polite things to say.

  Their speech was a fair-sounding Stark, but with an accent that made it hard for Sprout to understand them. It was as if some consonants were said so far back in their throats that the sounds could barely escape. And the vowels—a lot of words seemed to use “ee” and “ah” and “oo” as their only vowels, even when other vowels were required. So it was all odd.

  But at least they hadn’t evolved some weird system of tones or something. No doubt the limited vowel set was inherited from Quechua or Aymara, or both. And Stark, being based on English, had an extravagant set of vowels and diphthongs. Without any corrections from contact with the Hundred Worlds, why wouldn’t their Stark pronunciations glide in directions more comfortable to them?

  Ela, at the front of their party, stopped cold. The others quickly stopped, too. Ela�
��s gaze seemed to be fixed on the dais at the far end of the room. They were almost in the center of the vast cavern, so now was the first time they could have made out the features of the people on the dais.

  There were several highly elaborate chairs in the middle. Only one of them was occupied, apparently by a child. A princess of some royal family?

  Miro lifted Sprout up so he could see better.

  It was Thulium.

  She had come down here ahead of them. She might even have appeared right here in this room, skipping any journey from the surface. Sprout knew well that you could never put anything past Thulium. If she thought of it, she’d figure out how to do it, and then she’d do it, without asking permission or informing anybody of what she had done.

  Thulium had appointed herself the first ambassador to the Folk, as Peter and Wang-Mu had first met the keas and ravens, and Sprout himself had first met a Yachachi.

  But knowing Thulium, Sprout feared that she had said too much or too little, or had chosen words that would make all the wrong impressions. And she hadn’t been at the meeting, where the plan of announcing the complete departure of all offworlders was explained. Thulium had no idea of the plan, and yet she had preempted it with whatever she decided was the right thing to say.

  Sprout felt a flash of anger at her. How dare she!

  And then his normal calm returned to him. They had treated her well enough. She was dressed in some fine clothing of a style and fabric that Sprout didn’t recognize. It certainly wasn’t the clothing Thulium would have arrived in.

  Unless it was a Japanese costume. Yes, that’s what it was. She went to visit her mother on Nokonoshima, Sprout realized. Of course she did. Uncle Sergeant couldn’t persuade his wife to come with him, but Thulium would never allow that to keep her from meeting her mother. And Airi would have given her some fine clothing to wear on her return trip.

  Did Thulium go directly from Nokonoshima to here? Was she that skilled now that she could go to a place where she had never been, and pass through solid rock to reach a subterranean cavern?