Mirror Space - Marianne de Pierres [35]
Mira stopped walking. The Extro was right. She was angry at so many things and the creature’s tedious manner provoked her. ‘I’m a long way from any friends or family, Wanton. Your species has torn me from symbiosis with my biozoon and brought me here. You may not understand humanesque feelings, so I will tell you plainly - I am angry and lonely and filled with uncertainty.’
In the silence that followed her statement Mira noticed something. The sand at her feet had changed colour, from green to a dark glinting black. With a glance, she saw the same thing happening ahead of and behind her - in swaths. Patterned swaths.
‘Perhaps with me as your passenger, you will be less lonely?’ said Wanton in a small voice. ‘Wanton has lost poda and Mira has lost symbiote.’
She did not reply to that, her thoughts overtaken by anxiety. ‘Why is the sand turning black?’
‘It would seem,’ Wanton said finally, ‘the fertilisation process has begun. There is less time than Wanton thought.’
‘Before what? The regeneration?’
‘Yes.’
‘But how can that be so dangerous?’
‘There will be a flood, Mira-fedor. Vegetation requires water to grow.’
Mira stared at the tract of sand before them, bordered on either side by the strange, opaque sky-wall. ‘Quickly. Which way do we go?’ she whispered.
TEKTON
Young Thales’s bandaged necrotic face was so ghastly that Tekton felt quite relieved when he left. Besides, he had things that needed some quiet reflection. Lasper Farr was stalling for time. Tekton could read the signs.
Search all ‘casts for news of the planet Araldis, he told his travel moud.
While he waited for the newsfeeds, he sat back and admired Fenralia’s statue. Opening his robe, he let his akula free to swell his manhood. When his thoughts became lascivious enough to engender something of suitable comparison to the statue, he observed the differences between its erection and his own.
It was indeed, he thought, a very good likeness.
Excuse me, Godhead, said the irritating moud, immediately deflating Tekton’s frame of mind.
Yes, yes.
There has been some news from the planet Araldis. OLOSS has sent forward investigative fleets to a selection of connecting Resonance stations.
Are they able to shift into the Araldis system?
No, Godhead.
What in Sole are they doing then?
Waiting, Godhead. And watching.
Tekton sighed. How typically OLOSS. He went into the bedroom and lay on the wide, oval-shaped bed. He found that space travel sapped his energy for some time after a long trip and he had his best ideas when prone.
Once comfortable, he let his minds drift into random thought and waited for patterns to emerge. Miranda Seeward and Lawmon Jise - his fellow tyros. Araldis and quixite. Lasper Farr and the Extropists. Thoughts paired together, split off and then reformed in new pairs. What should he be seeing in these people and events that he hadn’t recognised?
Step back, logic-mind suggested. What do we know already?
He knew that Lasper Farr couldn’t move any type of force into Araldis while the shift station was compromised, and whoever had invaded the planet wanted - and was most likely helping themselves to - his quixite.
This left Tekton a couple of courses of immediate action. He could simply modify his designs and have Manruben create something from the small quantity of quixite already on its way to Rho Junction. Or he could divert his resources into discovering who had invaded Araldis and bargain with them. Or, perhaps, put his own project on hold and return to Belle-Monde, and unravel Miranda Seeward’s intentions for the planet of Scolar with her nasty little virus.
He immediately dismissed the idea of modification; archiTects did not compromise their designs. And the Araldis questions would be answered soon enough by OLOSS, or Farr, or another group with vested interests. Which left him with Miranda Seeward.
His minds felt in accord over this. Time would unravel the Araldis situation - in the meantime he could interfere with Miranda and Jise and their plans. And possibly keep a close eye on what his cousin Ra was up to.