"I." Saba knew then that what she had experienced was no dream, despite fever—despite physical debilitation. It was real, and the metaphor of music was the key. For some reason, her own unique capabilities, her lifelong studies of symbol in relation to sound and sense, had made some kind of limited breakthrough. And she was not the only one who felt the sense of urgency.
"Tonight, I will listen again," she promised. "But where is Zhot?"
"There is sun," Rilla explained.
Even considering all the strange synesthetic experiences associated with terms and verbs, this was a non sequitur.
"I do not understand."
"His people, Zhot more rapidly, they become plants," Rilla explained. "It is his race's great change. Your people, they change the more rapidly, become those-who-fly-and-sing-myth." She waved to the west.
A bomb seemed to go off behind Saba's eyes. "Changes. Do all the races change?"
Virigu and Rilla both made gestures of agreement.
Rilla said, "It must be swift, so Zhot says. Until you hear, he hears best. It is because your metabolism fights the alterations, and thus you are made very ill."
Virigu again opened her long, thin fingers in a gesture of concurrence, and Saba thought immediately of her genetic makeup. Was it because of the sickle-cell gene? No way of knowing without tests. The immediate priority was to let the others know—and to get herself away, as soon as possible.
She thought again of the impending deadline. Whatever had happened to the First Team might be happening to them—and apparently it did not necessarily involve death, but mutation.
Yet the Yilayil did kill. Thinking of the Russian biologist, Saba said, "I have not dared to ask. Those who are buried in the Field-of-Vagabonds. They have been deprived-of-life. Why? For not wishing to attain ti[trill]kee?"
"This data can be found in the Knowledge bank," Rilla said.
"Come," Virigu spoke, rising. "We must view the records."
Rilla looked at her. Saba tasted surprise, then wondered how she had done so. Then she mentally gave herself a shake. It did not matter how, right now, or even why. She was on a data search; at last the puzzle pieces were coming together.
But the picture was not clear yet.
She followed the other two into the great computer room, and they settled around one of the terminals. None of the other beings in the room paid them any attention, as always. Though Saba had experienced great change, that apparently did not affect life in the rest of the House.
She sat, and waves of darkness washed through her consciousness, receding. She would not faint; adrenaline was serving her for now. When they finished this session, she must report to Gordon, then sleep, for she had to be physically ready for the great dance that night.
Thinking these things over, she did not watch what Virigu did to the computer, thus when she looked up at the screen and saw a close-up of one of the beings nicknamed "Baldies" by Terran Project agents, she felt shock zap through her nerves.
Virigu looked at her, her attitude one of concern, but then she turned back to the screen and her chitinous fingers blurred rapidly over the pads.
In silence the three of them looked at an ancient record— the spaceport, Saba realized. Ships of all kinds sat on the vast field, some lifting, some arriving. The reverberations of power seemed to vibrate through the screen as a great vessel lowered slowly, on a blue-white column of fierce light, to the field.
A voice spoke in a staccato language, but Virigu damped that, and brought up the Yilayil translation.
At once Saba realized she was going to have trouble with the Yilayil language. She wondered, as she grappled with meaning, if this was a very old record—if Yilayil had evolved like human languages do. Of course it would, she thought, if the culture has changed. And the Yilayil in the House would see no necessity of changing it—any more than a modern scholar of literature would change Shakespeare, or the epics of Anglo-Saxon. A scholar would have learned the early forms of the language, just as a human scholar did.
So she did not understand everything she heard, but the visual record made it clear enough: the Baldies' globe ships were among those that arrived, but suddenly they arrived in great force, and the visual record changed rapidly as it recorded a horrifically devastating war.
Great areas of the planet's islands were laid waste as the Baldies and their enemies—in this instance a race that looked like ambulatory turtles—fought viciously.
And then the Yilayil appeared, armed with some kind of energy weapons, and began killing both combatants in the war. The narrator did not give any reason for the war (as far as Saba was able to comprehend). It was enough that they were killing anyone and anything in their way.
It was not the Yilayil who ended the war; the narrator said, in flowery language, that the Yilayil were able to halt the ending of life so that the *** could alter the destroyers into harmless form.
And the rapid flow of images showed Baldies metamorphosing into sea life, and vanishing into the great waters, and the other beings altered into flying insects that settled on the mountaintops above the cloud layers.
The record ended, and Saba watched the blank screen, her mind struggling to grasp all she had heard—and consider the consequences. First, the *** term: the closest she could come in translating it was non-ambulatory-life, singular.
Something—some one thing—had caused the Baldies and the turtle-people to mutate into utterly different lifeforms. It apparently had taken many generations; Saba had not heard numbers, or had not understood them if they were mentioned.
But something, some one being, had that power. And this was the same being—or its descendant?—that was changing human beings.
"Field-of-Vagabonds," Rilla said. "Is for those who destroy life. When the Yilayil see them, they end those lives before they can recommence the destruction of before."
And suddenly Saba realized what this implied: that that poor Russian biologist, who emerged so suddenly from the jungle, probably carrying some kind of scientific tool in hand, had been mistaken for a Baldy on the attack. And since he'd not been able to explain himself, the Yilayil had taken summary action.
Now it made sense, in a weird way. To other races, the humans would look like Baldies. The absence or presence of hair might be too subtle a difference for other races to see; meanwhile, the similarities were strong. The Baldies stood upright, had the same number of limbs as humans, their coloring could be considered similar. They wore clothing.
They carried weapons.
The Yilayil might still have assumed that the First Team— and the present team—were Baldies, and though they spoke Yilayil, lived peaceful lives, and professed to wish to attain ti[trill]kee, the genetic alteration was vastly speeded up—in self-protection.
But it wasn't the Yilayil who caused that, it was this mysterious ***!
They think we're Baldies, she thought as she rose slowly from her seat. A salutory realization!
What do we really know about the Baldies?
Her mind went on its relentless drive to extrapolate to the logical conclusion.
We know they flew about in these futuristic globe ships— and that they have the capability to move about in time through the gates. They are capable of extreme violence.
This, and their humanoid form, would lead anyone to conclude that the Baldies were, in fact, human beings from the future.
Her heart and spirit wished to reject that image utterly, but she forced herself to examine the evidence. What was the likelihood of humanoid races evolving on other worlds? A glance at Rilla—even Virigu—showed that similarities were certainly possible. And biologists argued for bilateral construction and other aspects of Earth lifeforms being logical progressions in the chain of evolution.
But she did not want humanity to become Baldies—at least, not like the glimpse they'd had of Baldies so far. Only, was that the whole picture? The Baldies could in fact be far different than those strange beings who appeared and destroyed, as t
houghtlessly as humans of the past had wiped out peoples of other races, and today wiped out various species of creatures.
She grappled for a time with vast questions of ethics and morality, and then abandoned them. There was not enough evidence. The question of the Baldies' origin was for some other team to discover—some data analysts, who had the time and resources to plumb the question with the thoroughness it demanded.
Right now she had immediate concerns—ones that must be reported to Gordon, before she prepared herself for the night's work.
She said to Rilla and Virigu, "I must rest now. I thank you for this session."
They both nodded, and moved away.
She retreated to her room, grabbed her communicator, and tapped out the code for Gordon.
He connected a moment later.
"Gordon," she said without preamble—appreciating, as she always did, that she could talk to him that way. "We are being modified at a cellular level."
"I know that," he said. "I have a report for you on the flyers, who are our First Team."
"I just found that out as well," she said, "though I haven't had a chance to think it through. But here's a poser for you: the reason all this is happening to us is because every being on this planet, including the mystery being, thinks that we are Baldies."
Silence, then laughter. It was the kind of poignantly painful laughter that Saba immediately recognized, for her own reaction had been the same.
"Well," he said. "Interesting indeed. Quite sobering." Saba said, smiling, "I thought you'd see it that way. Now, shall I report first, or shall you?"
"Go ahead," he said, and they took turns summing up the day's findings.
CHAPTER 27
AS EVELEEN MADE her way slowly out of her dreams the next morning, she became aware of a sense of change—of portent, almost before she opened her eyes.
It was a good feeling of portent, that much she was aware of.
When she did open her eyes, it was to see the familiar rounded, bare walls of their Nurayil dorm cell. She turned on her side, listening to the faint scrunchings the futon material made, and she sniffed the familiar dusty-laundry-room smell.
No more, she thought. Then it struck her what the portent was: they did not have to go to work. It no longer mattered. They were going to go home.
She laughed. Her ever-present thirst no longer mattered, nor did the weird appetite for protein. Or the headache, or the joint-ache. Home—soon, to fresh strawberries, and luxurious baths, and sanity. Home.
Ross stepped out of the fresher just then, and smiled when he saw her smiling. "Good dream?" he asked.
"No. Good wakening," she said, getting up slowly. "Shall we bother rolling this stupid mat? Oh, Ross, I am so glad we're going home. I hope Gordon got Saba already, because—"
A tapping at the door interrupted her.
"You get that, would you?" Eveleen suggested. "I'll go clean up."
She walked into the fresher, enjoying for the first time in what seemed an eternity the strange sensation of passing through the gunk that felt like plastic wrap. Never again, she thought as she stepped through, and never again, she chortled happily as she shoved her clothing through.
From the outer room she heard excited voices, but no sense of alarm accompanied them, for she recognized the high one as Vera. Vera always sounded like that.
She fingered her hair into a braid, then pinned it up off her neck; the walk through the jungle would be hot, if this day was as sunny as the one previous had been.
Stepping into the room, she saw a brief tableau: Ross standing head bowed, hands on his hips. That posture sent a pang of warning through Eveleen.
She turned to Vera, whose hands were spread wide, her round face haggard—as though she hadn't slept.
"Everywhere," Vera said, her accent very strong. "Everywhere I could think. Each Moova house. Each place we have found food. I hide from Yilayil—I do everything. No Irina."
"What?"
It sounded like someone else's voice. Eveleen grabbed her middle, which cramped suddenly. "What? Don't tell me Irina is missing."
"I won't if you don't want me to," Ross said with bleak humor, "but the fact is, she hasn't turned up—not all day yesterday, or, what is more important, last night."
"Gordon," Eveleen said, thinking rapidly. "He was talking to her when he left here yesterday morning. Does he know?"
"Yes," Vera said. "I reported to him very late last night, when I went to sleep. He was not worried—said she was probably following up on some details. So I did not worry either. But she never came back."
Eveleen nodded. "Did she show up at her job?"
"I do not know that, for we work for different Moova. She was not at our meeting place at midday, but sometimes she would not join me because she was busy. I did not really worry at that point."
"No Moova said anything to you?"
Vera shook her head. "That is not their way. We serve, they take no further interest in us."
Ross said, "I still am inclined not to be too alarmed. You said she sometimes takes off to do her data verification on her own, right?"
"It is true," Vera said, drawing in a deep breath, which she let out in a sigh. "She does not always tell me what she is working on. But this is the first time she did not return at night."
Ross glanced at Eveleen, who shook her head slightly. Eveleen realized they'd both had the same thought: Irina might have gone to see Misha—for whatever reason. But they weren't going to bring that one up without more evidence.
"She might even have gone out to see the Jecc place," Ross said slowly. "For the final report."
Eveleen said, trying for lightness, "Good. Then you won't have to write one!"
"Oh, won't I," Ross fired back grimly. "You watch. Milliard and Kelgarries will expect breath-to-breath detail, in triplicate."
Now Eveleen looked from Vera to Ross. "Should we contact Viktor and Misha?" She suggested with what she hoped was delicacy.
"I did," Vera said, for once not smiling. "They do not know where she is. Misha has said they will search the jungle."
Eveleen felt a spurt of worry. So Irina—wherever she was—was not with Misha. A romantic tryst—Irina going to spend time with Misha—would have been simple, despite the emotional fallout for poor Vera and her unrequited crush.
"Why she'd go there makes no sense," Ross said.
"To check on the positions of the First Team's camps," Eveleen said. "She always seems to need to see everything herself."
Vera looked wry. "This is true. She thinks no one observes properly." She sighed again. "Viktor is going to check the Field-of-Vagabonds in case she needed to see the biologist's grave for some reason, and Misha said that after he visits the camps, if she's still missing, he would see if he could track the movement of the ancient transport system."
"She knew about that?" Eveleen asked.
"Oh, yes, Viktor showed her when he gave her his maps. She had to see everything, she said, and so he showed her everything he could think of."
Eveleen looked up at Ross, feeling sick inside. "All I can think of is those disappearances. We're not quite to Disappearance Day—"
"But who says that it has to match up exactly with Katarina's? We already know that the others disappeared at different times than she did," Ross finished, his expression pained.
"But after," Vera said, her tone hopeful, as she turned from Eveleen to Ross. "All of them. After Katarina. Not before."
"We still do not know why they disappeared so abruptly, though," Ross said softly. "We know what happened to them after. But not what made them drop everything and vanish."
Eveleen asked—afraid she knew the answer—"Viktor thought also to check—"
Vera pressed her lips together. "Yes."
Eveleen finished the statement in her mind: check to see if there are any fresh graves at the Field-of-Vagabonds out loud, she asked, "So what should we do? Search as well?"
Vera said, "Gordon was very specific. He said
to meet here, and no one to go anywhere, after I checked my job and hers. This I have just done. She is not there."
As an afterthought, Vera unslung her carryall and pulled out some food.
"I'm not hungry," Eveleen said, sitting down against the wall. She pressed her arms against her middle and brought her knees up.
"We have to eat," Ross said.
Vera nodded. "Must keep up our strength."
Eveleen forced herself to take a few bites, but she kept looking from one to the other, wondering if they were going to disappear next. A firestorm of emotions burned through her. Though she could not claim to have become friends with Irina—not in any sense of the word—she respected the woman as a colleague and as a very fine agent. She did not want her to have been killed, but she also did not want to find out that some—unnamed, unknown—thing had somehow taken over her brain and forced her to, what, run to the island of the flyers?
"The flyers," she whispered. "Then maybe that's the next place to check—and we're the ones to check it."
Vera hesitated, then said, "I promised Gordon. We must do this plan only if he concurs. Too many of us missing—" She gave a shrug. "Then the others must search for us."
Unspoken was the implication that the unnamed something would take them over as well.
Eveleen gritted her teeth, wondering how she could have felt so wonderful on waking.
Vera's fingers trembled as she unhooked her com from her belt. She tabbed the control, then uttered a Russian curse. "He is using his unit," she said. "We must wait."
"I'll prepare our packs," Ross murmured.
Eveleen sat where she was, hugging her arms tightly to herself as Ross moved efficiently around the little chamber, which felt more like a cell every moment. Vera sat down against the opposite wall, and did not speak as she kept tabbing her communicator every minute or so.
Finally—when it seemed to Eveleen that something must happen or she would run out screaming—Vera's face lit with relief, and she said, "Gordon! We think—what? What's that?"
Eveleen clenched her teeth.
Ross froze in the act of hooking a freshly filled canteen to Eveleen's pack.