Why had the translator ignored all efforts at communication by the exoarch and technology transfer teams? And why had it resisted being moved? One month and twenty million dollars worth of ruined equipment later, Julie Stone had been sent to find out., THE INFINITE SEA * 323.

So far it was showing no sign of noticing her presence.

"Okay, Jul'--Kim says you're cleared to approach the translator.''

Georgia's voice was calm but dead serious.

Making a conscious effort to breathe slowly and evenly, Julie stepped closer to the translator, until she could almost have reached out and touched the thing. She began to raise a hand but stopped, fearful. She knew what had happened to all those pieces of equipment, melted and vaporized. She stood gazing at the translator, thinking, Who are you really, and what are you doing here? Then she felt it tingling at the edges of her mind. h.e.l.lo? she thought. Are you there?

* We are here.*

Startled, she cleared her throat, trying to quell a tremble that was beginning somewhere in the middle of her spine, and radiating out- ward. You are here. Where? In my head?

*Please focus your thoughts.*

Focus my thoughts? Julie hesitated, trying to decide what that meant. Then she recalled a neurolink technique that John had described to her once, and she frowned, trying to produce the kind of inward direction of her thoughts that people used in the neuro.

/Is this what you mean?/she asked silently.

*Better.*

She waited, wondering if the translator would say more.

Instead, it silently reached into her mind and began to blow her thoughts around, like a rising autumn wind stirring up dry leaves.

Within moments, her mind was filled with a whirlwind of activity.

She froze in place, bewildered, as the wind grew to a cyclone. She felt no pain. She teetered, but did not lose her balance, or con- sciousness./What are you doing?/she whispered. And it answered: *Preparing.*

She blinked./Yes ... but preparing what?/ *Preparing to give you.., the tools that you will need.*

And then her consciousness did flicker, just for an instant, as if she'd nodded off and caught herself. And when she blinked back from it, she had the oddest sense that an array of glittering points of light had danced around her in the ghostly cavern, speaking to her, and then had vanished before she could ask them who or what they were.

"Jul', are you okay? Talk to me, hon'." Georgia was calling insis-tently-not in a panicky or distraught way, but over and over soas to get her attention.324 *

"Huh? Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," she murmured, stepping back a little from the translator. Wait a minute--wasn't she supposed to be approaching the thing? What had just happened here?

"What are you doing now, Julie? Tell us what you saw. Did you hear anything? Talk to me, Julie, talk to me."

"Uh, yeah. I... sensed it. I felt its presence. I know it was aware of me." She felt as if she had dozed oft' there for a second. That seemed impossible, with the adrenaline she had rushing through her veins.

"What, exactly, did you sense, Julie? Are you stepping away from it now? Keep talking. Don't drift out on me."

"What do you mean?" She shook her head. Something was happening in her mind; she couldn't quite tell what.

"Your heart rate spiked, then took a big drop for a couple of seconds. Now it's climbing again. Did you lose consciousness?" "I'm ... not sure."

"Well, I think you did. And I think maybe you should come on out," Georgia said, her voice tinged with worry. "And I think you should tell me everything you remember, and everything that even crosses your mind, before you lose it."

"Okay."

"What happened when you first sensed it?"

Julie blinked hard. Looking at the translator she felt that there was some kind of impenetrable barrier between her and it now. It didn't want her to approach.

* Take time for acclimation,* said a voice, soft but deep in her mind.

"Okay," she murmured, half to the voice and half to Georgia.

"It spoke. But it's not as if I understand exactly..." Her voice faltered.

There was still a voice in her head. She thought she had broken contact with the translator. John had spoken in his letter of an alien intelligence that had somehow come to reside with him, in his mind. Was this one of those?

* We are not the quarx. There is only one quarx, and it lives with John.*

Lives with John? She blinked, wondering if she had heard that right. Lives? She shook her head./If you are not a ... quarx, then who are you? If you are not the translator.../ *

We are the daughter-stones. We are of the translator.*

/Daughter-stones?/She shook her head, peering out through her suit helmet at all the lights glaring off the translucent cavern walls,THE INFINITE SEA * 325 glaring in her eyes. Was she imagining all this? She felt a sudden slight sting, like an electrical tingle, in both of her wrists. She raised her gloved hands--and her arms, encased in the tough, insulated fabric of the pressure suit. For an instant, she had the illusion that she could look right through her suited arms and see her bare wrists--and what she saw, embedded in each wrist, was a pulsing bead of light. Daughter-stones...

The voice spoke again, as she drew a frightened breath.

* There is no need to fear us. There is much that we must tellyou.*

/Tell me--?/ "Julie?" called Georgia. "Julie, keep talking, girl. Kim, I think you'd better get in there right away--"

* You must decideforyourselfwhether to trust us. But we have a journey to take together. And the firstplace we must travel is to your homeworld . . .*THE HARDEST PART BANDICUT FOUND THE enforced waiting almost intolerable.

When Antares asked him if he would like to accompany her to Kailan's lab, he readily agreed. He had spent the better part of two days resting, and didn't know how much longer he could stand to do nothing but stare out into the misty world of perpetual night. All of the reports were promising, but no more than that. The robots reported progress with the factory; S'Cali reported progress at the Astari wreck helping the sick there, repairing the damaged sub, and gathering materials for the factory. They were waiting for some supplies to arrive on an Astari surface craft. Everything added up to the fact that they were just going to have to keep waiting a while longer.

"How's Li-Jared doing?" Bandicut asked Antares, as they rode in the back of a small sub toward Kailan's habitat.

"He's grieving for Harding," Antares murmured, "and working very hard to keep from thinking about it. He didn't want to return to our quarters last night. I think he wanted to keep working all night."

"He is a pa.s.sionate--" Bandicut almost said man, and instead said, "companion."

Antares placed a long-fingered hand on Bandicut's. "Yes," she said. "And he's someone who cares deeply about his friends."

Antares was gazing at Bandicut with wide-pupiled eyes. "You might not have realized, because you were in such distress--but he gave his daughter-stones to Harding in no small part because he was afraid for you."

Bandicut's breath caught. Had he been aware of that? He hadn't thought about it much; but then, that episode was pretty blurred inTHE INFINITE SEA * 327 his mind. But now he could almost feel Li-Jared's concern, and fear, and shame for being afraid--and his hope that perhaps he could do something.

"/Antares is replaying the emotions for you.

Or at least remembering them vividly."/ He nodded slowly to Antares. "Do you think there's anything we can do for him?"

"I think, just staying with him is all we can do. I do not know his Karellian emotions well enough to do more than guess."

Antares blinked. "And you--you are worried for your robots, and maybe for everything that is to come. Please tell me if there is any way I can help you."

Bandicut caught her hand for a moment in his, and finally smiled gratefully.

The sub rumbled, turned, and approached Kailan's habitat.

Bandicut worked a long day with the others, without much suc-cess-trying to help Kailan uncover useful and relevant information about the Astari, about the factory, the Maw, anything they could find. They couldn't find much. It was not, Kailan was sure, that there was nothing there in the Neri records. But what they had was broken up, lost in a knowledge-base whose design was too confusing, and whose instructions and signposts had gotten lost in the pa.s.sage of time, or with the appearance of the Maw.

Li-Jared determinedly kept at it, in the belief that anything they might find could be useful. That was Kailan's philosophy, too, and Bandicut agreed; it made good sense to try to learn all they could.

But he was tiring; he couldn't keep his thoughts on what he was doing.

"/You 'ye been here a long time.

Do you think maybe you should take a break?"/ Bandicut sighed. /Maybe so./ Antares had gone off to take a walk a while ago, and Kailan was deep in conversation with Li-Jared.

He rose from the console where he'd been crouching, stretched, and wandered out of the chamber.

He ended up in a big lounge where the Neri--mostly females here--liked to relax while eating and drinking, or playing with the young. But it was deserted at this hour; he was startled to realize how long they had been working. Almost everyone in the habitat was probably asleep. He walked to the window and peered out into328 * *

the water where lamps illuminated a fish corral, apparently constructed of partial enclosures of netting, without any visible means of keeping the fish in. Several small schools of half-clear, half-silver fish were gathered in the enclosures, despite the fact that they could leave anytime.

"It's something about the currents, I think."

Bandicut glanced up, startled, to find Antares standing beside him. She pointed to the end of the nearest half-cage, where a slow current was carrying suspended debris, including bits of food, through the enclosure where the fish hovered. "They just seem to like it there."

Bandicut nodded silently. Now it was relaxing to be standing here, looking out into the emerald and white world of the artificially lit ocean. Two Neri swimmers came into view, tending the farm, and a solitary sub moved around like a somnolent fish with headlights, performing slow pirouettes in the night as it performed whatever maintenance ch.o.r.es it was out there for.

"There's a nice little dome room upstairs, where we can have some privacy, if you feel like sitting and talking." Antares held up a basket of fruit. "I just came from the storeroom. We could--how do you describe it?--have a picnic."

Bandicut stared at her, astounded by the thought of a picnic at the bottom of the sea. He began to laugh.

"Is this not a good idea?" Antares asked, with a Thespi grin of uncertainty.

"No, no--I mean, yes," he said. "It's a wonderful idea. Thank you." He grinned a human grin, then turned with a gesture and let her lead the way.

It was a small residence room, with a half dome looking out.

"This is where I stay, when I don't return to the other habitat. Come sit." Antares pulled a large pillow to the center of the room, and he pulled another, and they sat with the basket between them, pa.s.sing out food. There were small, yeasty nuggets that tasted like a bitter bread, and orange, waxy fruits shaped like pears, and twisted dried seaweed. They ate for a while in companionable silence.

After a time, Antares said, "Do you think we were sent to this world deliberately, to try to help these people? Could someone on Shipworld have known about the Neri's struggle with the Astari, and the Maw, and the broken factory?"

Bandicut eyed a nugget of bread-fruit, thinking of the normal-THE INFINITE SEA * 329 ization that made it possible for him to sit here under--what?-maybe twenty-five or thirty atmospheres of pressure, breathing uncertain gas mixtures, and eating alien plants that would probably kill him under other circ.u.mstances. "It's hard to see it any other way," he said. "I guess what I wonder isn't whether they sent us here deliberately, which I'm sure they did--whoever they are--but whether they intend to bring us back again. Or will we be spend- ing the rest of our lives here on this world, under this ocean?"

"Or maybe up with the Astari," Antares said.

"Or up with the Astari," he agreed. "It's not a bad place. It's quite beautiful, in many ways. And our friends... L'Kell and Kailan and the others. But it's not home, is it?"

She blew through puckered lips. "No. It's not home." She chewed a bread-nugget thoughtfully, then said, "You miss your home a lot, don't you? And the ones you loved. I can feel it in you."

He grunted. He had not spent a lot of time consciously grieving over his past life, and yet, now that she mentioned it, he felt a renewed pang.

"Yes?" she asked.

He nodded. "I've hardly had time to think about it. But yes. Yes, I do." He gazed at Antares, and allowed himself a confused smile, suddenly thinking about Julie Stone--and then, abruptly, about Antares. She was watching him with great interest. "But there's so much I don't know about you, "he said. "And your world."

"Such as--?"

"I don't know. What was it that took you from your world, and brought you to Shipworld? Was your world saved, the way mine was? The way Ik's wasn't? What can you tell me about your world?"

Her lips turned up in a frown that seemed like a smile. "I do not know what became of my world. As far as I know, it was never in any danger."

"No danger?"

"But I was in danger. I was in prison, awaiting execution."

He remembered the image from the joining of their stones. "The forbidden love."

Antares nodded. Definitely a human gesture, this time. She had been studying him.

Bandicut felt a pressure in his throat, as he remembered the wall that had fallen between them, defining limits in the midst of their330 * .

joining. "And now you feel as though you cannot know love again.

Or... make love ... to another. Yes?"

For a moment, she did not speak, though he felt her conflicted emotions pulling one way and another. She touched his hand, and he turned it palm-up and held her hand for a dozen heartbeats. And he knew, as he squeezed her hand, that she knew what he meant by making love. Close enough, anyway. He wondered suddenly how Thespi females made love, and what it felt like to them. Was it an empathic rush of free-flowing emotion? Was it like human coupling, with rising and crescendoing physical urges? Was it s.e.x at all?

He thought he had felt inklings of this, when they'd joined stones, but now he could not remember.

Antares raised his hand and pressed it to her throat, just above her upper b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He felt the stones come alive, touching hers...

. .. differently, this time. Almost disturbingly so. But not just disturbing: there was a sharpness, and excitement. As though all the images that before had whirled around them, gathering pieces of their past lives, had been stripped away.., leaving only the emotions, and the inner sensations of the body. And then new images.

Touching. Gently stroking. Fingers on skin. Stroking. Arms gliding together, fingertips brushing. Sensations and emotions mingling, before any physical arousal had begun. Then later came the physical, the flickering of fire in the loins. Dance of electricity in the arms, along the neck. Blossoming into the b.r.e.a.s.t.s, sparkling out into the top nipples first. Then the bottom pair slowly brightening, joining.

Bodies slowly coiling around each other, searching for best fit.

Hands here, there. Arms enclosing. Mouths touching shoulders, one to the other. Fingers moving through hair. And then bodies pressing close, skin to skin, nipples to smooth chest. Legs opening and closing around each other, bellies rubbing softly. And with an eruptive sparkle, the tiny probe emerging from his stomach and embedding itself in the soft depression in hers...

And the two minds, two psyches, coiling around each other and joining joining joining who? Antares and Who? The forbidden lover? Ensendor.

And then a curious shifting. For a moment a wall of grieving.

Then the grieving dissolved into a different time, a different place, and the physical joining faded away. Emotions did not fade, but reformed, and bodies reappeared transformed, and he was joined,THE INFINITE SEA * 33i moving slowly. Slowly. Deeply penetrating. Prolonging. Entangled with, joined with Julie, his sensations inside and outside, the heat of her swallowing him. And the shuddering, and eruptive bursts.