Metaphase. Part 7

He looked up and around just in time to see the third set of curtains quiver. He watched long enough to see them open, pulling apart in the center, remaining closed at top and bottom. Beyond the curtains, acid 52.

VONDA N. MONTYRE.dripped down color-striped stone, dissolving it, releasing roiling clouds of gas.

He ducked again as the hot, polluted air filled the chamber and billowed out through the tunnels. The curtains fell closed with a wet slap.

He pushed himself cautiously to his feet. He felt damp and greasy. The curtains hung motionless.

"Nerno!" he said through his link. "What's going on down here?"

"Fresh air," Nemo said.

Satos.h.i.+ started to laugh. "That's more fresh air than I can handle all at once," he said. "This place is amazing -but do you mind if I leave before the next storm?"

"I'll wait till you're safely away."

"How long do I have? Can I look around?"

"I must hold my breath."

"Oh. Okay, I'll hurry."

As he headed for the exit tunnel and the silken guideline, he took one last look around, at Nemo's lungs, at the symbiotic creatures who not only pumped air through Nerno's body but created the air as well.

Stephen Thomas strolled after his lifeliner. When he was well out of sight of his partners, he stopped at the intersection of several tunnels. The creature beetled on and disappeared around a curve.

Stephen Thomas deliberately turned down a different tunnel.

He made it about a hundred meters. The lifeliner's carapace sc.r.a.ped the floor behind him as the creature scuttled after him, spewing thread.

"Think you're going to stop me, huh?" Stephen Thomas said. "Just how the f.u.c.k are you going to do that?"

It closed the gap, spinning out a lifeline of increasing slenderness and delicacy.

"Stephen Thomas," Nemo said directly to the internal link.

Stephen Thomas stopped. J.D. had adapted easily to 53.direct communication. But Stephen Thomas wished he had brought a portable radio headset.

"I hear you," he replied.

"It's hard to follow you when you go so fast."

"That's all right," Stephen Thomas said. "I won't get lost, I don't need a babysitter."

"You do not wish to study genetics."

"I-What?"

"My attendant will take you to where you can study genetics."

"Can I take samples?"

"You have a sample."

Great, Stephen Thomas thought. A few alien bacteria off a shred of string. They probably have as much relation to Nemo as E. coli does to human beings.

"Thanks a lot."

"You are welcome."

"Oh, f.u.c.k it," Stephen Thomas muttered aloud.

When the lifeliner went into reverse and trailed a thread parallel to the one it had left coming in, Stephen Thomas shrugged and followed the creature wherever it wanted to,take him.

"Suppose I'd kept going," Stephen Thomas said to Nemo through the link.

"I suppose you'd kept going," Nemo said.

Stephen Thomas waited. Finally it occurred to him that Nemo had done exactly what he had suggested.

"If I'd kept going," Stephen Thomas said, "what would you have done?"

"Nothing."

"Would you let me go anywhere I wanted?"

"I'd warn you of dangerous spots."

The lifeliner stopped in a gap among several curtains. Light s.h.i.+ned out into the corridor, brighter than the light from the optical strands woven into the walls. The new light s.h.i.+mmered, like reflections from water.

The lifeliner leaped, trailing silk, and disappeared.

Stephen Thomas moved forward curiously. Warm, pungent air flowed toward him. Sulfur and hydrogen sulfide and other, more complicated chemicals made 54 him breathe shallowly through his mouth. If the air got much worse, he would have to turn back. He tapped into the a.n.a.lysis of the LTM clinging to his pocket, and scanned the chemicals. None of them would kill him in their current concentrations. Not immediately.

The curtains created a spherical chamber around and above a water-filled depression, and trapped the heat and the stench. Stephen Thomas stood on the bank, inspecting the place curiously. Sweat beaded on his forehead, on the back of his neck.

The lifeliner's thread vanished into the oily, organic sheen floating on the pool. The light was so bright, the surface so obscured with rainbow brilliance, that Stephen Thomas could not see to the bottom.

Nemo likes water as scungy as the air, Stephen Thomas thought. If I'm supposed to dive in after the lifeliner, forget it.

He lifted the thread. Its end emerged, broken, from the water.

Broken or dissolved, Stephen Thomas thought.

"Hey, critter," he said aloud.

The water s.h.i.+vered at his feet. He stooped down, expecting the lifeliner to answer his summons.

The surface splashed upward, spraying him with the sc.u.mmy soup. He shouted in shock and flung himself back, His feet slipped into the water.

"s.h.i.+t!" He jerked his feet back and scrambled for the entrance. He reached safety. He pulled off his s.h.i.+rt. The front and the arms were stained-he was glad that for once lie had worn a long-sleeved s.h.i.+rt and long pants-but the back was clean. He used it to wipe the liquid from his face and hands.

The pale blue silk of his s.h.i.+rt discolored to brown.

"Jesus, Nemo, what's-oh, f.u.c.k!"

His sandals were smoking. He s.n.a.t.c.hed them off and threw them into the corridor and rubbed his feet on the remnants of his s.h.i.+rt.

"What's going on down here?"

"Genetics."

"Survival of the fittest?" I knew there was a good 55.reason to study molecular genetics, he thought. "You told me you'd warn me of dangerous places."

"But you asked to observe, not interact," Nemo said.

"I didn't mean to fall in your d.a.m.ned pond."

Stephen Thomas got the distinct impression that the squidmoth was laughing at him. Scowling, he sat crosslegged well above the waterline, rested his elbows on his knees, and leaned his chin on his fists.

The caustic liquid had not discolored the skin of his feet, or of his hands, even the delicate new swimming webs, so he supposed his face was not disfigured either.

The splas.h.i.+ng creature had submerged, unseen. But the surface roiled slowly, as if gentle whirlpools drifted across it, now and then colliding, mixing, separating.

From the safety of the entrance, Stephen Thomas could not see what was going on. He rose and went cautiously nearer the edge. He bent just far enough to peer into the pool.

The lifeliner burrowed into the bottom until nothing showed but its two scorpion tails. Dark blue filaments, slender at the root, wide and flat in the center, and tapered at the ends, grew from the bottom like kelp. They stretched toward the center of the pond. Just above the root, each bore a cl.u.s.ter of scarlet flowers.

A tantalizing array of ent.i.ties crawled and swam and burrowed among and below the kelp. Stephen Thomas wished he had a protective suit. He was not going swimming unprotected in Nerno's pool. He doubted even his s.p.a.cesuit would help. It might keep out the noxious liquid and gases the pool was emitting . . . then fail catastrophically as soon as he entered vacuum.

Another unfamiliar creature ploughed toward the lifeliner. It was shaped like a sowbug, but the size of Stephen Thomas's cupped hands. Several rows of spines ran down its back. They wavered, pressed backward as the creature crossed the muddy bottom.

The spined sowbug lunged forward, straight between the lifeliner's extended scorpion tails. Silk burst from the tails, erupting onto the spines, and the tails flailed at the attacker. But the sowbug fastened on. Silt spewed56 up, obscuring the fight. Trails of yellow blood filmed the water. The lifeliner humped up out of its burrow, flexing its body spasmodically. One tail crushed a patch of spines. The sowbug shuddered, then clenched.

The lifeliner relaxed and grew still. As Stephen Thomas watched, the sowbug bore down on it. It fell apart in battered pieces, leaking guts and golden blood.

Stephen Thomas backed away from the pond. He felt sick. His vision blurred. He stumbled out into the corridor, fighting for breath.

Don't throw up, he told himself. Not here, not now. Whatever you've seen, whatever it signifies, don't let it affect you.

He grabbed his s.h.i.+rt and his sandals and fled from the soft vicious sounds of struggle.

J.D. and Zev remained with Nemo.

One of the armor-scaled creatures flowed up to Zev's bare foot and extended its frilly mantle, rippling out to touch him. Zev watched it curiously. Then, fearless, he picked it up and turned it over to look at it. Its feathery appendages waved frantically, and a stream of fluid spurted from its underside. Zev laughed. An old hand at catching creatures who used water jets and ink and even tiny poison darts for defense and escape, he had been holding it at an angle. The liquid jet missed him and spattered, pungent and oily, on the floor. Zev put the creature down, and it zipped off under one of the silk-sheet walls.

Zev crossed the distance to Nemo. He knelt down and touched Nerno's sleek side, stroking the iridescent skin. Nemo blinked slowly. The long eyelid closed. Nemo reminded J.D. for all the world like a huge mutant cat being petted. The long tentacles moved languorously, tapping against the silk floor, the spinners, Zev's leg.

Nemo plucked one of the honey ants and gave it to Zev, plucked another and handed it to J.D. J.D. ate hers S7.slowly, preparing for the rush and dizziness. Zev popped his into his mouth and crunched it.

"Oh, I like that," he said out loud, his voice breathy. He returned to using his link. "Thanks, Nerno! I wonder if you'd like beer."

Nerno's long eyelid opened; the glittery eyes peered out. The long tentacles Surrounded Zev, touching and stroking him.

"I eat only insubstantial food," Nemo said.

Zev sat quiet and interested as Nerno's tentacles explored him.

The tentacles touched and probed his body through the thin fabric of his shorts and s.h.i.+rt. Zev, not in the least uncomfortable, stroked Nerno's back and played his fingers along the shorter proboscises that formed Nerno's mustache.

Nemo touched Zev's face with the tip of one long tentacle.

"You have had your children."

"Me?" Zev said, startled, yet flattered. "No, I've never been asked to father a child. Not yet."

Nerno's short tentacles wuffled in a complex wave.

"You're a juvenile."

"I'm grown!"

Nemo pulled the tentacle sharply back. Zev leaned toward the squidmoth and touched the purple fur.

"I didn't mean to frighten you," Zev said.

"Zev's an adult," J.D. said. "But divers wait till they're older, usually, before they reproduce."

"Humans change to divers," Nemo said.

J.D. was having trouble following Nerno's reasoning, though the insubstantial food made her feel intense as well as dizzy, able to make great leaps of intuition. Unfortunately, figuring out what Nemo meant, or what Nemo wanted to know, was too great a leap even for J.D.

"Divers started out as human beings. But we changed ourselves. My grandparents did."

"Divers are not the adult form of human beings."

"No," J.D. said. "I mean, that's right. Humans can58 change to divers and divers can change to humans, but we usually don't."

"I was never an ordinary human being," Zev said. "And we breed true. Diver genes are dominant. If J.D. and I had children, they'd be divers."

"There's another difference between Zev and me," J.D. said. "Zev is male and I'm female."

She was glad to have a relatively neutral way of bringing up the subject of s.e.x and gender. Though Nemo had not balked at any of J.D.'s questions so far, she had felt shy of asking about the reproductive strategies of squidmoths. And though J.D. a.s.sured herself that a squidmoth would be shy of completely different subjects than the ones human beings found difficult and delicate, she did not find broaching the question of s.e.x any easier.

"Europa is a female and Androgeos is a male," Nemo said.

"Yes. Exactly."

"This is significant for your reproduction."