(Aari? Where are you, yaazil) she called again, disheartened by the distance yet to be covered, the buildings to be explored, the length and breadth of the city.
(Kh.o.r.n.ya!) A cry came, its intensity stunning her. Though the volume was faint, the sound of her name was a desperate plea for help.
(Aari!) she cried, but received no answer. (Aari?) Silence.
She called again and again, until her mind ached and she heard another call, not Aari.
(Kh.o.r.n.ya?) This was from Thariinye, and uncharacteristically timid.
(I heard him, Thariinye, I did! And he sounded terrified,) she said.
"She heard Aari," Thariinye told Mac. "You must have imagined the tone, Kh.o.r.n.ya. Aari would not be terrified, no matter what. He is very brave."
She ignored that, but insisted, "I heard what I heard and he"s here somewhere. They all must be."
"I didn"t hear him. Perhaps it"s your building." "I doubt it, but it"s a theory. Look, from here I can see that there"s actually another floor above the one you"re standing on Mac"s, too. Can you see the same thing on my building? If so, I think we should go to see what"s there."
It was true. Whereas the story on which each of them stood was the last one at the top of the stairs, surrounded, at its perimeter, by something of an open porch with columns on all sides, the very top floor on Mac"s building and Thariinye"s appeared quite solid.
"Yes, your structure contains another layer as well, Kh.o.r.n.ya," Mac said.
Continuing to cast a mental broadcast as loudly and as far as she could, heedless that it could be picked up by whatever unseen enemy had spirited away the other Linyaari, she clicked across the stone tiles and touched the inner wall.
And found herself looking down onto a huge dark globe that encompa.s.sed the center of the building. The inner wall was transparent.
"It"s like one of those ancient lighthouses in Becker"s pirate books!" she said to the others. "See if you have one. If we can light them, we"ll be able to see more of the city, have a better chance of finding our people."
As she spoke she found the single door giving access to the globe. Opening it, she entered.
A narrow circle of floor was separated from the globe by a railing, but she found, leaning forward, that she could easily touch the globe with her hand. Unlike the walls, it failed to light up, and for a fleeting second she was disappointed.
It appeared to be held aloft by columns of something that moved slightly, even in the gloomy light cast by the walls, something quicksilver with a shine to it. The ancestor to the interior streams of the Linyaari pavilions, she decided.
Circling the globe, she saw no controls of any sort. Then, in one place, there was a small narrow extension to the walkway, leading to the globe. When she set foot on it, it jiggled. Then she saw a tiny point on the globe"s vastness, just at the end of the extension. She also noticed that there were loops in the ground level of the railing, and realized that she was meant not to walk on the extension, but to he down upon it, hooking her feet into the railing. She found that by doing this, her horn was in the proper position to touch the globe.
Breathlessly, she craned her neck just a tiny bit and made the touch, then shut her eyes tightly, expecting a blinding light. However, the person who had dreamed this up no doubt had a healthy respect for his or her own vision, for the globe merely shimmered, then glowed, then glittered at various spots, growing a bit brighter. It did all of this without increasing in temperature either on its surface or in the room surrounding it.
Acorna was easily able to return to the outer portion of the building before the light blossomed into a small brilliant sun. It lit the ceiling in the area for two blocks beyond the building with the violet and rose hues of dawn.
"Behold the dawn!" Thariinye bellowed in her ear via the com link. "I have one, too!"
And from beyond the transparent part.i.tion an answering brightness met that of her own globe.
"Mine does not work," Mac said and Acorna heard disappointment in the android"s voice.
"Did you find the little walkway and the contact point?" Thariinye asked.
"Yes, but it does not care for my horn modification. Perhaps the alloy from which I constructed it is inappropriate to the function."
"Hmmm," Thariinye said. "Or it could be that the tip of your horn is the wrong size or shape. Maybe we should do a little filing when we return to the surface."
Mac sounded brighter. "An excellent idea. Actually, I have an array of files along my spine if you..."
"Gentlemen!" Acorna stopped them.
"Yes?" they both said.
"Look!"
Once more standing on the outer balcony, she beheld the city in much, if not all, of its glory.
"I can"t see the end of it!" Thariinye cried. "Where are the gra.s.slands and meadows? But, oh! Now! With color! How beautiful! And how huge! Oh, Kh.o.r.n.ya, we will never find them here!"
Now they could truly appreciate the glory and the magnitude of this underground city and what it had once been, as well as a.s.sess the damage that had been done to it.
Where the globe"s illumination flooded the street, the buildings danced and seemed to change shapes as the walls bulged and buckled, melted and grew, doming, spiraling, flattening, expanding, contracting, a living breathing panorama of color and light. Soft natural colors brightened to vivid, darkened to jewel tones, shifted to alien light modes that Acorna had never seen before pattern and form shifted.
(What an exhausting place to live!) Thariinye thought. (No wonder we saw no sleeping dwellings here. No one could sleep with all that going on.)
(Impressive.) Acorna agreed. (But it brings us no closer than we were before to finding Aari and Maati and the others.)
(True, and Maati"s just a little girl! A youngling! She was so proud of being star-clad, Kh.o.r.n.ya. So proud of finally hearing thoughts. Quite annoying really. Thinks she knows more than I do or anyone else. I wish I could find her right now so I could tell her how irritating she can be.)
(She"ll be with Aari, and the elders.) Acorna told him, (and Kaarlye and Miiri are missing, too. So if they"ve all been taken or sent to the same place, she"ll have more family around her than either of us do right now.)
(Of course she will.) Thariinye said, his thought image one of RK quickly shoveling dirt over a recent production. (I"m not worried or anything, just appalled at how inconsiderate the little scamp is, disappearing when we need her help.)
But the thought-picture of RK reminded Acorna that she hadn"t seen the cat for some time.
"Has anybody seen RK recently?" she said into her com link.
An a.s.sortment of negatives came back to her from the others in her party.
"Oh, no," she said. "Now RK might be missing, too!"
"We must find him then!" Mac said. "Captain Becker will be most aggrieved with us if we lose his first mate."
(Half the Linyaari population missing and now we have to worry about RK.) Thariinye grumbled internally, just loudly enough for Acorna to hear.
But he and Mac joined her swiftly, and helped her hunt the area around the globe and the rest of that floor of the building besides.
She stopped them with, "I"ve called the cat until my throat hurts, and sent him urgent mental messages as well. It"s no good. If RK is here, he is ignoring all calls."
Mac responded sensibly, "It has been, by my calculations, fully twelve hours since the cat last slept. Cats require a great deal of sleep, and my observations of RK lead me to believe that he is very feline in that regard. I suspect we shall find him curled up somewhere warm, snoring."
"A good point," Acorna said. "Then let us continue looking for him."
They searched every floor of the ma.s.sive building, all along the glowing walls and the inner chambers to the ground floor, without success. Acorna began to think the cat had wandered back outside, in which case he would only be found when he wished to be.