Still, it was useful food. Folk ate meats and veggies she found mostly dull or repulsive, with little in between. She sat in the steady warm breeze of the skyfish’s sweet internal breath—were they essentially sitting in its trachea?—and listened as Memor rattled on to other Folk sitting nearby about matters political and somehow always urgent. Or so her limited translation abilities told her. Finally Memor turned and said to her—whom she described to the other Folk as “the small Invader primate”—“You must surely admire our craft. We took the early forms of this creature from the upper atmosphere of a gas giant world, long ago. Their ancestors found our deep atmosphere a similar paradise, to cruise on soft moist winds, and mate in their battering fashion, and wallow in our air, to turn falling water into their life fluid, hydrogen.”

“I doubt the primate can follow your description,” Asenath said, coming into view.

Tananareve warily backed away from the lumbering thing. She could smell the malice oozing from Asenath. “Still, she could be of some use in capturing the renegades of her kind, whom we shall soon intersect.”

Asenath ushered them all over to the broad window in the skyfish’s side. Elaborate orange-colored fins flexed near the back of the beast. They flared out, capturing winds like a sail, driving the bag forward. Tananareve felt a lurch and a dull thump. She had the sense of rumbling movement under her feet and in the living walls. Memor explained that the bag was “trimming” in flight by shifting weight inside itself. Asenath said, “Our admirable skyfish can torque about its center of mass, and thus navigate.” Tananareve watched the flexible yet controlled fan-fins spread out, at least a hundred meters long. Its gravid majesty seemed somewhat like a ship sailing at angles to the wind, tacking above the lush forest below.

Asenath said, “We are precisely on course to intersect the renegades. They are sailing on this same gathering wind.”

Tananareve watched the opalescent walls shimmer with hot perspiration. Memor remarked that these were “anxiety dewdrops,” brought out by the laboring muscles of the great fish. The shimmering moist jewels hung like gaudy chandeliers, lit by the blue glow of hydrogen flares and phosphorescent yellow bands that ran across the high ceiling. One of the drops, bigger than Tananareve’s head, fell from high up and spattered at her feet with cutting acid odor.

Bemor shifted his bulk and remarked, “The new signal from Glory is coded in a different manner. We are having difficulties decoding it, except for a few images.”

Memor shifted into Folkspeech. “Best not to let the primate know. Show what images you have.”

Tananareve felt her pulse speed up but kept her face blank and made a show of turning to gaze out at the view. A huge bird was flapping by below, eyeing the skyfish. Casually she stepped away to the spot where, leaning forward, she could see reflected in the transparent window the projection Bemor was showing Memor. It was an animated series of images. A man in a white robe advanced into view and something leaped at him. It was an alien with ruddy skin and three arms. It jumped at the man, and huge feet kicked him to the ground. The alien wore tight blue clothes that showed muscles bulging as the view drew closer. The alien head was like a pyramid with sharp chin and bones like ribs under tight, ruddy skin. Two large black eyes glinted at the man, who was getting up, his smiling face mild and his long blond hair flowing. He was holding forward an object—a wooden cross—to the alien. Tananareve saw suddenly that the man was Jesus. The alien leaped on the man, hammering him with feet and two fists. Its third arm was bony and sharp, with nasty nails tapering to points. The alien slammed this into the head of Jesus, shattering the skull into pieces. Blood flew into the air and Jesus collapsed. His body lay still. The black alien eyes looked straight out from the screen Bemor held and thick lips pulsed, swelling and narrowing in what must have been some kind of victory gesture.

The sudden raw images startled her. A surge of anger tightened her throat. She made herself keep still and watched the bird flap out of view on its four wings.

“Ah,” Memor said, “similar to the earlier one. But look—we are intersecting the tadfish, as we had hoped to. Now we can deal with these primates, brought together.”

Tananareve saw swimming in the filmy air below them a gossamer tube shape. Fins stroked all along the barrel body as it rose from the forest below. Somehow, she realized, the Folk had found Cliff’s team, and now had them cornered.

PART XI

DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD, NO HANDLE

It is not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It is because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

—SENECA

THIRTY-THREE

“What’s that?” Irma pointed.

Hanging among cottony clouds, near to the woody horizon, was a thing that struck him as a silvery, flapping blimp. Coming toward them.

“What’s that?” Cliff echoed to Quert—who scowled.

“Escape,” Quert said. “So you say?”

“From what?”

“Folk know where we are. Track us.”

“They can?” Terry asked.

“Makes sense,” Irma said. “They must have sensors embedded in the original frame that holds the Bowl together. Any smart building does. The trick would be managing such a torrent of data.”

Quert gave an assenting eye-click and fell silent. The Sil took their orders from Quert and studiously let Quert alone speak for them. Cliff wondered about this but did not want to bring up or question an arrangement that was at least keeping his small party out of the hands of the Folk.

When the spidows gave up the chase, the tired party of Sil and humans had moved on awhile, crossed a stream that Quert said spidows could not, and then stopped without a word. Cliff could feel the adrenaline collapse; he had gotten used to it after so many scares and flights. He wondered how the Sil managed crises. The same play of hormones?

Some cold food with water from the convenient spring made them all feel better. Cliff had little storage left in the electronics he had carried all this time. He had chronicled all the places he had been and enjoyed looking back over the images. One from a good while back he liked, a clear day when the great sweep of the Bowl and its jet was sharp and clear. Too often the deep atmosphere blocked long views with enormous stacks of cloud. He had caught some of the team in the foreground, slogging along near a zigzag tree.

“You’re keeping notes?” Irma asked. “I filled my data storage a long time ago.”

Cliff shrugged. “I’m either lazy or just plain picky. After the first week, when I was taking shots of every flower, tree, animal, insect, bird—well, harder to be a scientist when you’re on the run.”

“One thing you’re not is lazy.” She looked at his small working screen. “Notes for each shot, even.”

“I do them at our rest stops, like this.”

But there was no real resting, as the Sil made clear.

Quert eyed the humans. “We not go under now. Best not.”

“Into the tunnels?” Aybe asked. “The trains? They’ll catch us there?”

Slow steady eye-shifts. “Soon. Yes. Best not go in tunnels.”

“I kind of liked those fast tunnels,” Aybe said.

“Folk hold them now.”

“So … what do we do?” Terry persisted.

“See there.” Quert’s slim arm pointed. The small silvery thing hung in the distance above a dense forest ridgeline. It moved slowly and the sun reflected winking spots of yellow and blue from it. “Tadfish.” The Sil around him shuffled uneasily but as usual said nothing.

“We’re getting away in that?” Irma frowned doubtfully.

“Best way,” Quert said, and they moved forward steadily. “Hide in sky.”