Part 17 (1/2)
Chelsea limped badly and kept touching the side of her face, but otherwise seemed to be recovering. Her harlequin orchid fenced her in tendrils, reminding Bened.i.c.k of a parent caging a stumbling toddler. Upon inspection, that was not a particularly rea.s.suring comparison.
”Are we prisoners?”
There was a sense that the orchids conferred-Bened.i.c.k had the sense of a tight, exclusionary glance, though whatever transpired had happened below his or his symbiont's threshold of perception. Then one of them said, ”You are on the Captain's business. We will treat your wounds, see you nourished, and escort you to the edge of our sphere of influence. Will that suffice?”
With his peripheral vision, Bened.i.c.k saw Chelsea's faint nod. She chafed her forearms as if feeling the absence of her armor. Bened.i.c.k could not have agreed more. Being unprotected-in the face of the Enemy, and whatever Arianrhod could throw at them-worried him more than the threat of combat.
Bened.i.c.k said, ”That would be kind. Are you taking us to your settlement?”
”Settlement?” Another pause, as if for conference. ”We do not hive, as do animals. We are taking you through.”
That seemed to settle it, and for a while Bened.i.c.k did not find many further opportunities for conversation. Instead, he concentrated on the jungle, on Chelsea-who was moving more fluidly as her symbiont effected repairs-and on the threats that might lie around every corner.
With the a.s.sistance of the orchids, the descent proceeded fast. After half an hour or so, he tried again. ”How far down does your domaine extend?”
”We live in this shaft,” one of the orchids said-the striped one, Bened.i.c.k thought, wondering if they had leaders. ”There is no light above, nor water below. There, we cannot flourish.”
Chelsea perked up, her matted hair breaking over her shoulders. She said, ”Do you know what lies below?”
”Surveyors have journeyed south,” one said. ”We have charts. They are approximate, and may not be useful to you. They are enzymatic.”
Chelsea and Bened.i.c.k shared a glance. ”No,” he said. ”I don't think we would find those easily readable. Can you offer us a description?”
”We can show you.” This time, Bened.i.c.k was certain it was the spotted orchid that had spoken.
”Show us how?” he asked.
It rustled. ”On the television.”
His symbiont had supplied a definition for the word the first time an orchid used it, so he knew his guide referred to a communications technology as obsolete as daguerreotype or the World Wide Web. Chelsea must have run the same research, because she said, ”You're broadcasting on the electromagnetic spectrum?”
Rustling. Mammals, apparently, were pretty funny to a carnivorous plant. The striped orchid swiveled two faces at each of them and said, ”We will show you.”
The angle of their descent changed. Now, the orchids brought them closer to the shaft walls, slowing travel as the undergrowth thickened so close to the wall-mounted illumination panels. But they seemed to have not far to go. The orchids led them around one last enormous tree trunk and onto a sort of ledge dripping with thigh-thick vines, next to what appeared to be a vine-covered cliff face strangely unpunctuated by the ubiquitous trees.
The spotted orchid flipped two of its bladelike leaves forward, an impressive swivel, and used them to nudge between the vines. If Bened.i.c.k had his armor, he suspected sonar would map a s.p.a.ce beyond-but that suspicion was inadequate to the reality because, as the orchid spread wide its leaves, pus.h.i.+ng the vines aside like drapes, flickering light spilled forth and a cavernous bay was revealed.
It was neither a room nor a cavern, but instead something like a hangar with flat video screens lining every wall of a s.p.a.ce approximately ten meters tall and over fifty meters deep. Many of them were cracked, smeared, some of those flickering and others dark-but more than half burned brightly, glimmering with transitory images.
The floor was covered with more overgrowth of the vines, while down the center of the hangar ran long, parallel ridges about a meter and a half high, humped up under the foliage. At random intervals upon them, three dozen or so orchids rested, dazzling in their array of shapes and colors.
Many swiveled a face as the striped and the spotted orchid and their two escorted human guests came within the chamber, but not all, leading Bened.i.c.k to wonder what exactly their sensory organs were and where they might be located. Some of the orchids were meters in length, shuffling arrays of tubers and blossoms with tens of heads. The smallest were no larger than a dog, and these had no blossom-faces at all.
They looked, but they did not come closer. There was some rustling of leaves and puffing of tubers among the orchids who accompanied them. Bened.i.c.k wondered what they might be explaining.
Studying the layout of the chamber, Bened.i.c.k came to understand that the humped ridges were rows of chairs, buried under vinous overgrowth. The orchids were only putting them to their intended purpose, although not in their intended fas.h.i.+on. He said, ”It's a waiting room.”
Chelsea shook her head, then made a face as if regretting the reflexive motion. Here, where the light was better, he could see that her right iris was clouded, but the raw acid burns beneath the flaking green foam that surrounded it were drying and growing over. It was only a matter of time before the eyeball healed, also.
”Transfer station,” she corrected. ”It's a terminal. What's through that way?”
She pointed at what Bened.i.c.k had thought to be the back wall. But now, when he squinted, he could see the dense, narrow lines of another wall of vines.
The striped orchid leaned a blossom over her shoulder. ”A pressure seal,” it said. Bened.i.c.k saw it shudder; from Chelsea's sidelong glance, she felt the trembling of petals beside her face. ”The Enemy lies beyond. There was once another transit shaft there, but it is long failed and disa.s.sembled.”
The orchid shuffled to the side and fanned all its petals and its blade leaves forward until its outline resembled a parabolic mirror. He knew he was projecting, but Bened.i.c.k could not help but read its body language as pleased and proud. ”Look!” it said. ”Television!”
Bened.i.c.k stepped forward to examine the images. Dramas, comedies, doc.u.mentaries, something that seemed to feature tiny screaming people running from a creature represented by a man in a poorly articulated costume-all in two dimensions, some of them low-definition in crudely unfocused images, some in images without color. Each one seemed to be broadcast in silence, until he realized that if one sat or stood beside one of the tiny, self-damping, unidirectional speakers that projected from the back of each chair, one could choose a channel. Some of the larger orchids were watching several screens at once, their awkward bodies arranged so as to surround multiple speakers and their blossom-faces twisted this way and that.
Bened.i.c.k stepped forward, momentarily captivated by an image of a bright wave of fast-moving water humping up, peaking, and curling over itself to break in a long, foaming tube. The sky behind was as brilliant as blood, and as he watched a human being, crouched on a narrow, colorful oblong, shot the length of the tube, just ahead of where it was collapsing into itself.
”What is he doing?” he asked, not caring if Chelsea saw his fascination.
”It's called surfing. That was on Earth,” the orchid said. Bened.i.c.k could hear the foreignness of the ancient words in its tone, or in the hesitation before it said them. ”That was all filmed on Earth. The shaft has a library. The oldest among us say the programming repeats after about seventy-two years.”
Bened.i.c.k need not have worried about his sister. She was just as captivated, one hand stretched out as if she could reach the screen-reach into the screen, perhaps. ”Is that what planets look like?”
”Parts of them,” the orchid answered.
Her tongue flicked out the corner of her mouth. She said, very softly, ”I always thought the thing about the sky being blue was poetic license. You know. Hyperbole.”
Bened.i.c.k looked at his youngest sister and thought of Rien, and still could not manage to make himself take her hand, or even to put into words what he thought. Which was: I should like to see one someday, too.
14.
when we had a library
”But,” I asked, ”how will man be after that? Without G.o.d and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?”
”Didn't you know?” he said and he laughed. ”Everything is permitted to the intelligent man.”
-FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY, The Brothers Karamazov
Walking beside Samael in the midst of the serpents and their wardens, Mallory tilted his head and said into Tristen's ear, ”Does it seem accidental to you that we should find exactly these persons here, at exactly this time?”
”Providence,” Samael whispered on his other side.