Resurgence

The notion of being anyone’s heart’s desire was utterly alien to Louis. It took him a few seconds to realize that this was an open invitation, and one that he badly needed. He had been without a woman for an awful long time. The fact that Sinara was smashed out of her mind and might regret this tomorrow was no concern of his. The fact that Atvar H’sial would claim that her worst suspicions had been realized did not matter. What stopped Louis was no concept of morality or post-coital criticisms, but an awful thought. “Claudius got you this way, but what about him? He didn’t go to any radiation hot spots, did he?”

“Dunno.” Sinara frowned and went cross-eyed with the effort to think. “Lessee. I remember some names of the places we went. The Solar Plexus, Roentgen’s Rendezvous, the Gamma Grille, Sunbathers’ Bar, the X-rayted . . . I’m missing some of ’em, there were at least five more. What you doing? Don’t go without me!”

Louis was trying to move past her and head for the aft part of the ship. She had her arms around him and held on, so she was towed along complaining at waist-level behind him.

“Claudius,” he said over his shoulder. “Where did you leave him on the ship?”

“Don’t know. Said he had work to do. I wasn’t interested in wriggly old Claudius. Did you know, he’s totally hairless? I like hair. Like yours. Did anyone ever tell you that you have a cute ass? Oof!”

Her face had banged hard into Nenda’s muscular rear, because he had frozen at the door of the aft control cabin. Claudius sat in the control chair. Every inch of visible skin bore the luminous apple-green that showed the Chism Polypheme to be baked to a turn.

“Claudius!”

“Yes?” The Polypheme turned. His five hands were flying over the controls so fast that Louis could not make out the individual movements. “Ah, it’s you, Captain. We’re toasty-warm and ready to go. On our way. Shipshape and Bristol fashion. Up anchor, splice the mainbrace, souse the herring and split the difference. Space reefs and space sounders, I spit on ’em. Marglot, here we come.”

“Claudius, don’t do it! Not ’til you’re off the boil.”

But Louis was too late. Inside him he could feel the multidimensional twists and turns that went with a Bose entry. Outside him, Sinara was busy with the personal explorations of his anatomy that normally preceded entry of a different kind.

The combination was certainly a first. Louis resigned himself to whatever came next. The Have-It-All was making a Bose transition, while at the same time Sinara continued to satisfy her prurient curiosity. Where either of them would finish up was anyone’s guess.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Marglottas?

Guardian of Travel had promised a transit to another world, but that long-abandoned being had offered no guarantees as to how much time the passage might take, or how it would feel.

Darya was drowning. Her eyes, mouth, nose, and lungs were filled with thick viscous mud. The suffocation had gone on forever, long past the point where she must be dead.

She tried to breathe, tried to cough, tried to scream—and could do none of them. After several lifetimes of misery, a new discomfort was added. Her body was now being extruded, forced through a tube far too narrow to admit it. She was changing shape, transformed by remorseless pressure to a long, pale worm. The agony of breathlessness was nothing compared to this.

And then, without warning, the pain ended. Darya felt a final moment of compression and rapid release, as though her body was being expelled like a cork from a bottle. Suddenly she was curled into a fetal position and lying on something soft. Her lungs and eyes were clear. She could breathe and see.

She sat up, but had to wait until a wave of nausea passed. She looked down at her suit, convinced that it must be coated with thick mud. But the outside was spotless, cleaner than ever before, as though the transit had removed every trace of dust and grime.

As she stood up, still unsteady on her feet, the ground a couple of meters from her began to boil and seethe. She backed away. A dark bubble was pushing its way out of the quaking earth. It grew steadily until it reared to twice Darya’s height, then suddenly burst and vanished. Left behind where the bubble had emerged from the ground lay two still forms.

As Darya stepped cautiously toward them, one sat up. It said, “Stone me. I wouldn’t call that first-class travel. But I guess we weren’t promised anything more than a transit. Ben? Are you all right?”

It was Hans Rebka, shuffling on hands and knees across to the other suited figure.

Ben Blesh said, like someone in a dream, “I don’t seem to be dead. That’s a surprise. But I can’t sit up, and I can’t move my arms.”

“Let me take a look.” Hans turned to Darya, as casual as if this sort of thing happened every day. “Give me a hand, would you?”

Darya moved behind Ben as Hans lifted him, and held him in a sitting position. “Where are we, Hans?”