The Ashes of Worlds - Kevin J. Anderson [96]
“You call that ‘unusual’?” Steinman said. “I’d try a few more emphatically descriptive terms myself.”
Cesca stepped forward, smiling at Kotto. She had always been able to wring the best work out of him. “A long time ago, when your mother designated me as Speaker, I asked Roamers to find new ways to survive after the hydrogues prevented us from skymining. You truly answered that call, Kotto, and helped the clans survive those terribly austere years.”
He was embarrassed, shuffling his feet. “I just did what I do best.”
“That’s exactly what we need from you now,” Jess said. “And it’s more important than ever before.”
Intrigued, Orli moved closer to the shifting, flexible water shapes. “Can I touch them?” Once Jess assured her the strange water was safe, the girl touched her fingertip to the shimmering quicksilver skin, then plunged her hand in all the way up to the elbow.
“Don’t you have a speck of caution, girl?” Steinman cried.
“When it’s appropriate.” Orli withdrew her hand. Her skin glistened for a moment, but then it dried as the droplets pulled themselves back into the self-contained wentals. The two shapes twisted, jiggled, then braided themselves together to form one large, bouncing shape.
Kotto observed, amazed and delighted.
Cesca spread her hands. “The wentals need your help to stand against the faeros.”
“The faeros . . . I’ve been trying to figure that out, but I’m stumped. Thermal armor? Some kind of cold beam? Heat-resistant technologies?” Kotto grinned, trying to impress her. “In the meantime, we’ve been working on a gadget to use against the Klikiss. A melodic siren that could shut down the hive mind — ”
“The faeros,” Jess said, forcing the engineer to return his focus. “Maybe you just need the right raw materials.” He stepped aside so the wental shape could lurch forward. “These wentals are here for you, as specimens. I promise they’ll cooperate in any way possible.”
Kotto blinked. “To do what? You mean . . . experiment with them?”
“Help them become effective weapons. We need you to be brilliant, Kotto.” Cesca’s eyes glowed warm with pride. “Do things that have never been done before — that’s your specialty, isn’t it?”
Kotto bent over to pick up the curved spanner he had dropped on the floor. He walked around the pulsing, shapeless mass of water, both perplexed and fascinated. “When have I ever let you down, Speaker?”
* * *
66
Caleb Tamblyn
Even with the extra equipment he had brought down from low orbit, Caleb didn’t stand much of a chance for long-term survival. But he felt less edgy, less desperate.
After he returned to the crashed escape pod with his last sled full of recovered material from the satellite, Caleb recharged his suitpack, used the air regenerator to refill his tanks with fresh oxygen cooked out of the ice, and finally went out to investigate the strange lights that glimmered across the landscape.
For hours now, the ice around the great meltdown crater had shimmered as if auroral curtains had somehow been locked into the frozen matrix. Caleb had never seen anything like it. In his years living in the water mines under the thick Plumas ice sheet, he had experienced some bizarre things, and these sparkling lights reminded him of the wentals he had seen.
He wasn’t particularly keen to face another tainted elemental force like the one that had reanimated Karla Tamblyn. On the other hand, Jess and Cesca had used the power of wentals to restore the ruined water mines . . . so the exotic water entities couldn’t be all bad. Besides, he wasn’t in a position to be choosy.
As he trudged around the rim of the frozen crater, he saw more lights sparkling deep beneath the iron-gray lake. The whole disaster site seemed to be awakening. Far below, he saw liquid water, quicksilver streams that spread out in a network like a circulatory system. Runnels flowed of their own accord, changed direction, gathered strength.
Yes, these were wentals. He could tell. Standing on an uphill slope at the edge of the blasted rim, Caleb watched trickles of water flowing upward against