Gordon and Saba appeared a moment later, walking quickly down the steep hillock.
"The perimeter of the port seems to be roughly the same as up the timeline," Gordon said quickly. "And completely quiet. Nothing in sight except robotic maintenance devices of various sorts, either shutdown or quiescent. As for this area, our guess was right. It's a kind of park. There's nothing but vegetation in view. But I can see buildings over that way." He pointed to the southeast.
"No spaceships at the port?" Ross asked.
"Not that I can see," Gordon replied, hefting his field scanners. He turned to Viktor. "And the landing area is full of cracks and brush—indicating nothing has either come down or taken off for many years. So let's get the second phase of this mission complete."
Viktor gave a quick nod. "We are ready. We return as quick as possible."
He and Misha vanished into the undergrowth.
Eveleen exchanged a glance with Ross. He looked grim, and she didn't blame him. Misha and Viktor's first order had been to check the burial site of the Russian biologist to make sure the bones were still there. They would not disturb the body in any way, merely make certain it was just as it would be found up the timeline in the present—to double-check that time had not been altered at this end of the timeline.
Already they had one anomaly: the flying creatures.
As if his mind had been following the same track, Gordon said, "There might be landing sites elsewhere, on another island. We're hampered by our use of the globe ships and the autopilot wire in that we can't go on a scouting trip around the planet."
"That would explain the flying people," Saba murmured. "We know we'll be finding other species who have already assimilated. It could be that the flyers landed and figured out how to assimilate some time during the century since the First Team appeared here."
Eveleen nodded her agreement. "In a hundred years, it's certainly not unreasonable."
Vera frowned. "This could include other humanoids."
Eveleen thought immediately of the feral human creatures in the present timeline—their tentacled bodies and utter lack of any form of civilization. If the Russians had disappeared, how could those feral humans be their descendants?
It would mean that either other human-type beings had appeared—or that she and her team would be trapped in this time and place, and those were their descendants. Not the Russians, but hers. Ross's. Gordon's and Misha's and Vera's and the others'.
She turned to Ross, biting her lip. If… if it were true, could she bear to have children?
Don't think about it now, she told herself. Keep your mind on the mission.
"Viktor will be fast," Irina said softly. "He and Mikhail Petrovich have been to the burial site twice since we landed, in the present timeline. They will know where to go."
Mikhail Petrovich. Irina never called Misha by his nickname.
Eveleen pursed her lips. When did the men sleep? She had to admit that Misha, despite his attitudes, was a dedicated agent.
Either dedicated, she temporized—or driven.
"Let's grab some eats, shall we?" Ross suggested. "The tough stuff will be starting soon enough—why start it on an empty stomach?"
Vera grinned, and she and Irina cautiously began exploring in the immediate vicintity. Eveleen watched them go. Their job would be food traders, and as such they had mastered all the details about food experiments recorded by the First Team.
Just as the air was breathable, so was most of the food edible. Within a short time the two women returned laden with fruits and some large nutty gourds that turned out to be delicious. Irina had done a scan on a stream just meters away, and the water had nothing dangerous in it, so they each took a turn drinking after the meal.
They'd just finished when Viktor and Misha returned, appearing silently, without disturbing any of the undergrowth. Eveleen privately awarded them points for superior woodcraft.
"He's there," Misha said, his mouth tight at the corners. "We found the body, buried at the Field-of-Vagabonds. It's been left just as the First Team described."
"Then we will assume the timeline is intact," Gordon replied. "All right, ground rules again. Emergency pulses only, at least until we've had a chance to settle in and know that we're not being overheard. Relay everything through me."
He paused, his blue eyes narrowed. Everyone assented.
Gordon lifted a hand. "Then let's go."
Viktor took over, leading them down a pathway. They all knew, in general, the layout of the Yilayil city as described by the First Team. Viktor had memorized every bit of data available—and he would be mapping the areas that the First Team had not reported on, as he and Misha made their methodical search for forensic evidence of the other First Team members.
"The only thing that gives me hope," Ross murmured to Eveleen as they marched single file through the thick jungle undergrowth, "is that the abrupt disappearance of the First Team might just mean that we did rescue them."
Eveleen said, "Except why don't we find anything left by our future selves, to tell us how to do it? I know I'd do that for myself, if I could. There are no signs of any of us—that we've found."
"Not up the timeline, but there might be here. Right?" Ross asked.
"But if there is, we'd have to have left it from the past, not here—because we just got here. And the apparatus doesn't permit microjumps, so we can assume we don't slap back to this day and hide out to leave us little notes to wherever we're going now."
"Unh," Ross grunted, shaking his head. "This time stuff really makes my brain ache."
On the other side of Ross, Saba was smiling. "It's almost easier to discuss in Yilayil. I need to untangle those odd tense constructions."
"Doesn't matter," Ashe said tersely. "From now on, if you speak, speak Yilayil," he ordered. And he added a quick comment in that language that Eveleen translated to herself; leaving out the identifiers and the false origin they'd developed from the First Team's personae, it meant: We are on their ground, we do as they do.
No further reminder of the fate of the Russian biologist needed to be made.
Eveleen toiled along, her knapsack on her back. The humid air made her feel damp and hot before long, and the scents of the millions of herbs and blossoms around them were overpowering. She knew they'd eventually be coming to a cleared area; maybe her sinuses would unclog.
As she walked, she heard Saba half suppress a sneeze, followed almost immediately by Irina. Viktor and Gordon began breathing through their mouths. But no one spoke again as they kept walking.
Once they stopped. Viktor lifted a hand, then dashed down the trail aways, followed by Misha. Eveleen watched them move silently and swiftly. She thought she heard a low thrumming, but it was soon gone, and she wondered if it was just the pounding of her own heartbeat in her skull.
Then Misha and Viktor reappeared, and waved them on.
They had to emerge from the jungle within the borders for the foreign enclaves, or Nurayil. Yilayil meant "People of the People"; this designation was only for the nocturnal weasel folk. All other races were Nurayil—"People of the Stars."
They descended a hill, and Eveleen glimpsed buildings through the thinning trees.
At once they halted, and Misha and Viktor withdrew into the trees. Ashe nodded at Eveleen, Ross, and Saba, and the four started down the trail, Eveleen walking with Ross, and the other two just behind.
Eveleen felt her palms sweating. She knew her story, she felt comfortable in the simple forms of the question-rituals, but still, her adrenaline was spiking.
A series of round, low buildings were the first things they saw. Each had a round opening, into which beings of several kinds moved in and out. Eveleen felt slightly reassured when she saw those who met one another on the trail make the expected ritual gestures before one or the other stepped aside. The heavy air did not carry the sounds of the ritual responses, at least not at first. As they neared the first building, she could hear the tweets, whistles, and dron
es of many beings communicating.
It was all much quicker and noisier than she had ever imagined. She saw Ross staring around, his forehead tense. Ashe focused directly ahead of him; Saba, however, gazed around, her eyes narrowed.
Almost at once they encountered three short, heavy-looking bipeds with tough, bumpy hides. Their whistles were so high and quick Eveleen almost couldn't follow, but she recognized familiar notes among them.
Saba whistled in return, and stepped aside. The other three followed. The beings continued on their way without another glance.
Beside Eveleen, Ross let out a long, slow sigh.
It worked! It worked! Etiquette declared that the stranger defer to all; when one met acquaintances, the one who performed a service the more recently took precedence.
If they just deferred to everyone, at least now, they'd manage.
Four buildings in, they found the Transport Center, and Ashe gave Eveleen and Ross a quick nod.
"Here we go," Ross murmured under his breath.
Eveleen watched Ashe and Saba move on. They were going to try to get to the House of Knowledge, and at least see it, even if they couldn't get Saba in as a worker right away. Some time spent in its proximity ought to provide a sense of what was going on there.
In the meantime, Ross and Eveleen had to establish themselves as transportation workers. In private they'd called themselves cabbies, as they memorized the data provided by the First Team on the rail-skimmers the Yilayil and Nurayil used for transport.
The big building was full of beings, the warm, heavy air shrill with whistling, the droning sounding like an orchestra of out-of-tune bagpipes. Ross and Eveleen made their way to one side, where functionaries sat at a complicated console. Eveleen felt Ross walking tensely at her side, as he scanned the crowds for the familiar shapes of Baldies. Eveleen did not see anyone that remotely matched that description. She did see at the console two of the tall, spidery beings that the First Team had identified as being involved in all aspects of Nurayil tech.
They made their way up the line, and found themselves abruptly addressed not by the spidery beings, but by a tall, imposing creature with six arms. Related to the weasel folk?
Eveleen desperately banished speculation as the being addressed them: "I, Fargag of Nurayil Transport, this morning see strangers here?"
Eveleen wet her lips, and responded with slow care, "I, Eveleen of Fire Mountain Enclave, come to learn ti[trill]kee and to work as I learn."
Fargag fired at them a question of challenge: "Fire Mountain Enclave—unknown to me!"
"I, Ross of Fire Mountain, say that our Enclave is known to us," Ross whistled. "Known many generations to us, but we now travel to learn ti[trill]kee."
Fargag whistled a liquid phrase that made Eveleen's knees tremble with relief. It was a kind of cautious acceptance of temporary status. Beings who were anxious to learn "proper deportment" ti[trill]kee were provisionally accepted. At least, so it seemed, Eveleen thought. She could never forget that the First Team had been provisionally accepted—but they had disappeared.
Fargag instructed them to pass on to Virigu, one of the spidery beings.
They deferred as Fargag passed to the next newcomers, and Eveleen heard his challenging whistle/drone as they waited to address Virigu.
Within a short time they were tested in maintenance of the transport vehicles. They both had studied until they knew the mechanics of the rail-skimmers in their sleep; in fact, Eveleen reflected, as she swiftly disassembled, cleaned, then assembled a series of parts, that she had done this several times during her strange jumble of dreams aboard the globe ship.
They were accepted as maintenance workers—which meant pressing their palm on a square silver measure—and when questioned about their domicile, their second delicate moment came. They admitted that no one from Fire Mountain Enclave was currently in residence among the Nurayil, but they wished to establish a domicile, and once again they were accepted at face value. Virigu put them to work at once, for the turnover was apparently high at this job.
The day's work lasted until the light outside began to fade. At that time, all Nurayil but those formally accepted for service to the Yilayil were expected to withdraw to their domiciles.
Ross and Eveleen followed a number of other beings who didn't have family or clan domiciles. The housing for all the unconnected beings was inconveniently located at the far edge of the Nurayil enclave, but Eveleen and Ross were grateful that it was still there at all. They found that things had changed little in the hundred years since the First Team discovered the place—small round chambers, like cells in a beehive, lined a large round building that Ross and Ashe had found empty and hollow in the present timeline.
No one organized it; Eveleen and Ross poked their heads in at the doors of any unmarked or open rooms as they wound their way slowly up a ramp, until at last they found one—an inner cell, with no window—that had apparently been recently vacated.
No belongings were in it, and the little identity console on the opposite wall from the access gleamed purple, indicating that no one currently claimed the place.
In haste Ross slapped his palm on the metal plate below the light, and Eveleen followed suit, for they could hear feet shuffling out in the corridor, and it was possible that some tired, grumpy being might want to try to claim their place if they weren't formally "in." No one protected Nurayil, unless their families or clans did. This meant that those without either were at the bottom of all hierarchies, and must look out for themselves.
The light gleamed yellow—it was theirs.
Ross hit the door control, and the door slid shut. They were alone.
Eveleen looked around. The cell was just that, smaller even than the cabins aboard the globe ship. A storage compartment opened next to the door, and she shoved her knapsack into it. There were no furnishings; they'd have to scout those out. At least the flooring had some give, and Eveleen felt tired enough to sleep on brick. But she made herself look in the little alcove in one corner of the room. There was a waste recycle unit, and next to it an adjustable frame that vibrated slightly; it was cleaning the air that moved through it. Remembering the instructions from the First Team, she activated it, took off her clothes, then stepped through. It felt a little like pushing one's way through some kind of invisible gelatinous mass, but when she stepped out the other side, all the grit and dead skin was gone from her body. It wasn't refreshing like a good hot shower, or even like the sonic bath on the globe ship, but she did feel clean.
She passed her clothes through the field, and watched the grime in them patter down to the gutter at the bottom of the frame, and slurp away to the recycler.
Dressed again, and feeling slightly better, she went out to find Ross digging in his pack.
"Let's get the sticker on the door," Ross said.
"Oh. Right. Here, I'll do it." Eveleen held out her hand.
Ross handed her a plastic-backed sticker that they'd brought from Earth. The cells of the domicile were all marked in some way by their owners, for there was no other way to tell them apart, unless you counted—and they were at sixty or seventy cells up the ramp.
Irina and Vera and the others also had stickers; this was the only way they'd be able to find one another at night, at least until they had assimilated and could trust using the radios freely.
Eveleen opened the door, affixed the sticker to the outside of it, and closed it again. When she turned around, Ross had gone into the fresher alcove. She squatted down to dig in his pack for food, but before her hand closed on a container a soft tapping came at the door: three short, three long.
She bounced up and hit the control. Vera stood out in the hall, looking tired and sweaty but triumphant.
"Come in," Eveleen said. "Have you found a room yet?"
"Irina is there. She will be here in a moment." The redhead sat down cross-legged, and pulled a substantial packet from her knapsack. "So! We are successful—we are now food gatherers. Here is a meal!" She u
nwrapped her packet with a triumphant air. "Is good, all of it," she added.
"Shall we divide it into six portions?"
Vera shook her head. "We ate. Save out four only."
Eveleen said, "Have you seen Gordon and Saba?"
Vera shook her head just as another tapping came at the door, the same code.
Ross opened it, and Irina walked in, graceful and quiet as always. She frowned slightly. "No Gordon? Saba?" she asked directly. "It is very dark without."
Ross looked grim, and Eveleen felt her adrenaline spiking once again. No one was supposed to be out at night but the Yilayil and those who had gained their sanction. It had been dangerous a hundred years before, and there was no evidence that it was any safer now.
"Maybe we'd better wait on the food," Ross said, unclipping his radio transmitter from his belt. "I'll zap them once, and see if we get an answer." He looked around.
Eveleen and the two Russians all nodded agreement.
Part of Zina's orders had been to keep actual communications to a minimum, until they knew that it was safe. Various sonic codes were to be used, and those sparingly.
Ross tapped out the "Check in!" code, then sat down— and a tapping came at the door, the usual pattern, but somehow more urgent.
Ross moved fast, opening the door.
Gordon stood there alone, his face tired and grim.
"Saba?" Eveleen asked. "Don't tell me they already took her in?"
Gordon did not speak until the door was shut behind him. "As soon as we crossed into the zone of the House of Knowledge, I knew something was wrong. Everyone we met ignored me, nor did they challenge Saba. They didn't even address her."
"What?" Irina asked. "No questions? No demands for proper Nurayil deference?"
"What happened?" Eveleen began.
Gordon turned to her. "As soon as we got there, she was taken right in, and I was left outside staring at faces carved on giant poles—twenty feet high at least. A different face on each, from various races."