I backed down the path leading away from the landing pad, looking over my shoulder frequently to be sure I didn"t step close to the sheer cliff which made this Ersh"s preferred spot for flying lessons. I really wasn"t fond of heights.
There. I rounded an outcropping, intending to leave the last few less obviously in sight before running back to the shuttle, only to find myself surrounded.
Not that the Tumblers were interested in me. I froze, lowering my paw to the ground and letting the crystals fall discretely behind, hopefully out of sight.
They were busy.
It was Eclipse, I remembered, dry mouthed, and, of course, they were busy.
If I"d thought the crystals gorgeous, their makers were beyond description.
Their towering bodies took the sunlight and fractured it into streams of color, flashing with their every movement against rock, ground, and one another until I squinted in order to make out what they were doing. They were picking up crystals with their trowel-like hands and holding them up to the sunlight. I could hear a discordant chime, soft, repeated, as though they chanted to themselves.
Then a loud Crack!
I cried out as crystal shards peppered my snout and dodged behind the outcrop.
The Tumblers noticed me now. "Guest of Ershia," one chimed, the resonating crystals within its chest picking out a minor key of distress. "Are you harmed?"
Licking blood off my nose, I stepped out again and bowed. "I"m fine," I said, knowing there was no point explaining skin damage and blood loss to mineral beings. It would only upset them. "And you?"
One tilted forward, slowly, and gracefully tumbled closer. "In rapture, Guest of Ershia. Do you see it?" The Tumbler held up a crystal identical to those all around me, then placed it somewhere in the midst of its body. I couldn"t make out exactly where in all the reflections. Then the Tumbler began to vibrate, its companions humming along, until my teeth felt loose in their sockets.
There were two possibilities. This was a group of crazed individuals, tumbling around looking for "ritual leavings" as part of a bizarre ceremony, or this was exactly what I"d hoped to find at the start of Eclipse-parental Tumblers hunting their offspring.
Which meant I"d been collecting children, not droppings. My tail slid between my legs.However, this didn"t explain the tiny fragments sticking out of my snout. Or why Ersh hadn"t wanted me to see it.
Another Tumbler held up a crystal, identical, as far as my Lani-varian eyes could detect, to any of the others. The light bending through it must have meant something different to the Tumbler, however, for she gave a melancholy tone, deep and grief-stricken, then closed her hand.
I buried my face in my arms quickly enough to save my eyes, if not my shoulders and forearms, from the spray of fragments.
"Ah, you feel our sorrow, Ershia"s Guest," this from another Tumbler, who graciously interpreted my yip of pain as sympathy.
I stammered something, hopefully polite, and hurried away. The hardest thing was to resist the urge to fill my bag and arms with all the crystals I could carry, to save them from this deadly sorting by light. No wonder Ersh had tried to keep me away from Eclipse. I struggled with the urge to cycle, focusing on that danger to block the sounds of more shattering from behind. What if the Web had so judged me? What if I"d failed that day Ersh tossed me from her mountain?
Different biologies. Different imperatives. Different truths. Different biologies-I ran the liturgy through my mind over and over as I fled home.
"Just a few more minutes, S"kal-ru! I see another one!"
The triumphant announcement brought me skidding to a halt and diving for cover. Uriel! He was running down the path in my direction, pockets bulging, his face flushed with excitement.
I hated it when a plan worked too well.
I was out of options. The thought of going back to join the Tumblers horrified me, however natural their behavior. Cycling into that form was impossible-I needed ma.s.s, almost twice what I had, let alone what might happen if sunlight didn"t travel through my crystal self in a way that enraptured the adults. I fought to stay calm, to think. Ersh had warned me a truly desperate web-being could instinctively cycle to match her surroundings-the oldest instinct. It would be the death of Esen-alit-Quar. Rock couldn"t sustain thought.
"There"s no time for this!" Skalet"s voice might be melodious, but it had no difficulty expressing fury. I could smell her approaching, but didn"t dare look.
"This is the best one so far," I heard her companion protest. "C"mon, S"kal-ru. What"s a minute or two more? We"ll be rich!"
"Only a minute?" my web-kin repeated, her voice calming deceptively even as it came closer. I shivered, knowing that tone. "Do you know how many moves can be made in a game of chess, in one minute?"
The sun was setting, sending a final wash of clean, white light over the mountainside, signaling the end of Eclipse. And more.
There was a strangled sound, followed by a sequence of gradually quieter thuds, soft, as though the source moved away. Or fell.
The seedling"s tender white roots had been exposed. I took a handful ofmoist earth and sprinkled tiny flakes of it into the pot until satisfied. Most of the plants were unharmed. All were back where they belonged. It hadn"t been me.
I"d stayed hidden, afraid of the Tumblers, afraid of the darkness, afraid of letting Skalet know I"d been there.
I hadn"t made it back to the shuttle before Skalet, but Ersh had. Apparently, she hadn"t left-sending away Skalet"s shuttle in some game of her own. Had Ersh set a trap? It paid to remember who had taught Skalet tactics and treachery.
What went on between the two of them, I didn"t know or want to know. It was enough that there were lights in the windows and an open door when I"d finally dared return. The Kraal shuttle and Skalet were gone.
The plants, needing my care, were not.
Ersh, as usual, was in Tumbler form, magnificent and terrifying. I shivered when she rolled herself into the greenhouse. It was probably shock. I hadn"t cleaned my cuts or fed. Those things didn"t seem important.
Secrets. They were important.
"You went out in the Eclipse."
A transgression so mild-seeming now, I nodded and kept working.
"And learned what it means to the Tumblers."
I hadn"t thought. To her Tumbler perceptions, I was covered in the glittering remains of children. My paws began to shake.
"Look up, Esen-alit-Quar, and learn what it means to be Web."
I didn"t understand, but obeyed. Above me was the rock slab forming the ceiling, imbedded with the lights that permitted the duras plants to grow. It needed frequent dusting, a job my Laniv-arian-self found a struggle-then I saw.
Between the standard lighting fixtures were others. I"d never paid attention to them before, but now I saw those lights weren"t lights at all. Well, they were, but only in the sense that, like a prism, their crystalline structure was being used to gather and funnel light from outside.
They were crystals. Tumbler crystals. Children.
"Like us, Tumblers are one from many," Ersh chimed beside me. "To grow into an adult, a Tumbler must acc.u.mulate others, each to fulfill a different part of the whole. The very youngest need help to begin formation and are collected for that reason. But Tumblers are wise beings and have learned to use the sun"s light to find any young who are-incompatible. It is a fact of Tumbler life that some are born without a stable internal matrix. If they were left, they could mistakenly be acc.u.mulated into a new Tumbler only to eventually shatter-crippling or destroying that individual. It is a matter of survival, Youngest."
"You could have told me," I grumbled.
Ersh made a wind-over-sand sound. A sigh. "I was waiting for some sign you were mature enough not to take this personally. You think too much. Was I right?"
There must have been thousands of the small crystals dotting the ceiling.
There was room for more. "You were right, Ersh," I admitted. "But . . . this?" Iwaved a dirty paw upward.
She hesitated. "Let"s leave it that it seemed a waste to turn them into dust.
Speaking of dust, go and clean yourself. That form takes time to heal."
I nodded and took a step away, when suddenly, I felt her cycle behind me and froze.
Ersh knew whatever Skalet knew.
She didn"t know-yet-what I knew.
Suddenly, I wanted it to stay that way. I didn"t want Ersh to taste that memory of hearing a murder and not lifting a paw to stop it. I didn"t want Skalet, through Ersh, to ever learn I"d been there. I wanted it to never have happened.
Which was impossible. So I wanted it private.
I didn"t know if I could, but as I loosened my hold on my Lani-varian-self, cycling into the relief of web-form, I shunted what must stay mine deep within, trying to guard it as I always tried to hold what was Esen alone safe during a.s.similation.
I formed a pseudopod of what I was willing to share, and offered it to Ersh"s teeth.
I"d succeeded in the unimaginable, or Ersh deliberately refused to act on the event. Either satisfied me, considering I couldn"t very well ask her. Her sharing was just as incomplete. There was nothing in her taste of Skalet"s attempted theft or her plans for the Kraal. Or Uriel"s existence. I supposed, from Ersh"s point of view, one Human life didn"t matter on a scale of millennia. I wondered if I"d ever grow that old.
Our lives returned to normal under Piece"s orange glare, normal, that is, until the next Eclipse. Ersh went out in Tumbler form, with me by her side.
There weren"t many failed offspring this time, but those she found, we brought home to add to the ceiling. More prisms to light the greenhouse. I found a pleasing symmetry in the knowledge, a restoration of balance badly shaken.
Later that night, Ersh surprised me again. "I"ve had enough of you underfoot," she announced without warning. "Go visit Lesy."
Go? I blinked, waiting for the other side of this too-promising coin to show itself.
"Well, what are you waiting for? The shuttle"s on its way. Don"t bother to pack-no doubt Lesy went on a shopping spree the moment she knew you were coming. You"ll be in a shipping crate, of course, since you can"t hold anything but this birth-shape of yours long enough to get outsystem, let alone mingle with a crowd. And don"t come out on your own. Lesy is expecting you."
Don"ts, Dos, and Details went flying past, none of them important. "But I can come back ..." I ventured, holding in a whine.
A low reverberation. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a growl. "Do you think you"ve learned everything you need to know, Youngest?"
My jaw dropped down with relief. "Of course not," I said happily.
Ersh came closer, lifting my jaw almost gently into place with her rock-hardfingers. "You aren"t ready, Esen-alit-Quar," she told me in her blunt, no-nonsense voice, the one she used before inspecting anything I"d done. "But you have become- interesting. It"s time you broadened your horizons."
I trembled in her hold. Did she know? Could she? Had I been wrong to believe I could, like Ersh, hide my memories? I drew a breath-to ask or to blurt out a confession, I wasn"t sure which- when she released me and turned away, saying only: "Don"t worry about your plants, Youngest. Skalet"s coming to tend the greenhouse. I think I"ll have her dig out an extension while she"s here-put some of that military training to use."
This time, I let my tail wag all it wanted.
I wasn"t that old yet.
end.