What was inside was totally unexpected, however, and she nearly let out a yell. Her surprise was due to the apparent absence of floor. Then she saw the re- flections in the comers. Gingerly she stepped out onto the transparency.
Her uncertainty rapidly gave way to delight. The floor of the surprisingly s.p.a.cious room was completely transparent. Six meters below she could see wonder- fully bizarre, multihued creatures swimming back and forth, lit by lights someone had thoughtfully turned on for her prior to her arrival. Meters farther lay a sandy bottom spotted with hexalate formations.
On the clear floor sat a lounge and bed woven from some dried blue sea plant, an exquisite chunk of polish hexalate containing the tridee unit, and scat- tered mats of spiral design and exquisite workman- ship.
Cora knelt and ran her hands over the smooth floor. The gla.s.salloy was perhaps half a meter thick.
The room-wide shaft that continued deeper on all sides was part of the polymer raft on which Vai"oire rested.
It was the lack of motion which had deceived her into thinking she was stepping out into nothingness.
Further investigation revealed a hatch in the far corner. It was part of the same transparent material.
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CACHALOT.
Steps cut into the white wall of the raft structure led down to a bench resting just above the water. There a guest could sit beneath the floor of her room and bathe in complete privacy in the warm sea.
The guest building was located on the edge of the town, so the water beneath would be relatively warm.
Rising, Cora found the one-way window which looked out over the ocean and the small docks holding pleas- ure craft. Outside, people walked past clad in the familiar pareus, occasionally in a diving gelsuit. Small children often went naked.
Such casual imagination expended on behalf of the rare guest hinted at an industry only marginally ex- ploited on Cachalot: tourism. She envisioned floating hotels anch.o.r.ed above or near the seamount reefs and atolls-and chided herself. Tourism and science rarely mixed. No doubt the resident cetaceans would vigor- ously oppose any such form of permanent floating de- velopment. She should be devoting all her thoughts to the serious mission at hand.
Though perhaps not too serious any more. Her thoughts were not on enigmatic sources of death and destruction, but on a cave filled with living stars. She glanced around the empty room again and for the first time in a long while felt the key word in the description to be "empty." Maybe Sam would enjoy sharing a dive. There was a new reef to explore.
She checked the other rooms a.s.signed their party.
Merced was luxuriating in the shaft of his. Rachael, he told her, should be on her way back to the boat, in whose lower cabin she would practice frantically for the demanded concert. As to the whereabouts of Mataroreva, he had no idea.
She thanked Merced, cut off, and left her room.
Vai"oire was not so enormous that she wouldn"t be able to locate him. In the air of a muggy afternoon she asked questions of the townsfolk.
For a while the answers were identical. "No,
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haven"t seen him; yes, know who you mean, but I"ve been out fishing all day; no, sorry..."
As she wandered around the town she came to feel progressively more isolated. The differences hadn"t been so obvious back on Mou"anui. Many technicians from off-planet worked at the Administration Center and its processing facilities. Here on Vai"oire the ma- jority of the population was of traceable Polynesian ancestry. Their ma.s.sive bodies and cafe au lait color, encased only in pareus or skimpy diving gear, made her feel like an awkward splinter of jet set among twenty-karat topazes. She felt smothered by sweaty, heaving flesh, pressing in on all sides.
Eventually she ran into someone who had seen Sam. "The peaceforcer captain?"
She nodded energetically.
"He was headed over that way." The young man pointed, added good-naturedly, "Two buildings down, you turn to the left. Town Communications. I"ll bet he was going there."
Communications-yes, that made sense. She thanked the youth, followed his directions carefully.
She needn"t have been so intense. One could not be- come very lost on Vai"oire, since all steps led eventu- ally to the sea.
The structure was clearly marked, with curved cor- ners. Its walls, like all on Vai"oire, were formed of a light but extremely durable honeycomb plastic that was impervious to salt corrosion and placed little bur- den on the supporting polymer base; Several small domes protruded from its upper sides and roof, along with a broad dish antenna. An impressive array of electronic webwork connected antennaes and domes and other projections, spun of t.i.tanium and magensoy and gla.s.s instead of silk.
Inside she found not a single worker. She was not surprised. Automation and robotic sensors could han- dle the prosaic, monotonous ch.o.r.es of aligning anten-
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nae and distributing long-distance bulletins. The bulk of radiowave information went directly into the in- habitants" homes, ready for display on individual
tridee units.
She finally found a man using one of several public viewers. His home unit had blown a module and had
not yet been repaired.
"Mataroreva? Big fellow, real easygoing?" She nodded. He jerked a thumb to his right, his attention still wholly on the viewscreen. "Went into the library,
I think."
Two rooms farther on she found the town storage bank. Thousands of tape chips with information on everything from how to dissect local forms of poison- ous fish to entertainment shows imported all the way from Terra filled the slots in the bank. The room was very small. No one except the librarian needed to use the room, since the chipped information could be called up on any screen in town.
Maybe Sam was hunting a restricted chip, or pro- viding information to be stored and shipped hard copy to Mou"anui, to back up his broadcasts. She tried the transparent door. It wasn"t locked. Yes, he was prob- ably encoding a chip. For all his seeming frivolity, she knew he was a diligent and conscientious worker.
She could surprise him as effectively as he had sur- prised her. She opened the door quietly and slipped inside. There was no sign of him ... no, there, toward the back of the room, some noise. A local technician was probably helping him, she realized. That would spoil some of her surprise.
As it developed, her surprise was as total as she could have wished, but she drew no joy from its effect.
A technician was also present, as she had suspected.
The trouble came from the fact that Sam and the woman weren"t engaged in research or programming.
Cora simply stood and stared, her expression com-
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pletely blank, like a mindwiped idiot awaiting imprint- ing.
Oddly enough, her attention was focused mostly on the technician, the stranger, who was taller, fuller, at least ten years younger, than Cora. Sam moved slightly away from the woman, shattered the incredi- bly awkward tableau by doing the worst possible thing.
He smiled apologetically.
"Pardon me," Cora finally managed to say, with the incredible calm that so often occurs in times of emo- tional paralysis. "It wasn"t anything important."
"Cora?" She had already left the room. He did not follow.
Still icily composed, she exited the building. She managed to get halfway back to the visitors" apart- ments before she broke into a run. A few locals eyed her curiously. There was no need to run on Vai"oire.
Everything was close to everything else.
Cora entered the reception area. The fates had chosen to bestow a small favor: Rachael was not to be seen. Stumbling into her room, Cora sealed the door behind her. Then she collapsed on the woven bed and lay there interminably, trying to cry. She dis- covered that she could not. She laughed wildly, her throat burning. Out of practice. Old habits die hard.
No tears fell from her eyes. Not for Sam, not for her- self.
Exhausted, she eventually rolled over. Her head hung toward the floor. Rainbows danced and swirled beneath the distant water.
Why so upset? she asked herself silently, angrily.
What do you have to be so upset about? He promised you nothing, he forced you into nothing. It was the mildest possible seduction.
Yes? What about the cavern, then? Beauty that he knew would overcome you. And you were overcome, but he and the beauty were separate, and you will-