where he was, the sound became more like a groan. Then he recognized its source. It was Ik, and he was in distress.

"Ik, what's wrong?" he called hoa.r.s.ely, peering through the gloom at his friend. It seemed darker than it had been before; many of the Neri habitats were dimmer, casting less light.

It was several seconds before Ik could speak. The words were nearly indecipherable. "Hurt ... ball ... center ..." But where words failed, the translator-stones seemed to grasp the Hraachee'an's tones. Bandicut realized that Ik was suffering from terrible ... kairenkroffpain. Stomach pain.

Illness? Bandicut wondered. Or food poisoning?

Bandicut felt his own stomach knot with worry. He took a quick internal inventory to see if he felt any symptoms himself. As far as he could tell, he felt fine. But Ik had eaten more, and faster.

The quarx stirred.

"/What is it? The fruit?"/ /I don't know. We're supposed to be normalized. We're supposed to be able to eat the food here./ "/Maybe his normalization was faulty."/ Bandicut crouched close to Ik. "Is it the food you ate? Are you having a bad reaction?"

Ik's eyes flickered, but their internal light was dim, like fading embers. "Hrrrrrr, yes," he managed finally. He was holding himself with both hands, right about where a human's diaphragm would have been.*

THE INFINITE SEA * 59.

/What can we do? If it were me, I'd have you trying to fix it./ "/ If I knew how, you mean."/ That stopped him for a moment. /If your predecessors could, you should be able to./ "/Maybe. But that was them.

This is me."/ Bandicut watched Ik, jarred by what seemed indifference in the quarx's voice./Well, would you mind trying to learn what the other Charlies learned? It could mean the difference between life and death--for Ik now, for us maybe later./ "/ Lemme ask the stones."/ Bandicut waited, reaching out to touch Ik's arm. The Hraa- chee'an was shivering violently. /What do they say?/ he asked impatiently.

Before Charlie could answer, something else interrupted Bandi- cut's thoughts--a shadow moving under the bubble. The membrane-circle appeared in the floor, and a Neri poked his head up into the bubble. In the gloom, he couldn't tell who it was. Then the Neri lifted himself into the habitat, and Bandicut saw the flicker on the side of his head. "Am I disturbing your rest?"

"L'KelI! No--but my friend Ik is not well."

"Vol"?" said L'Kell, turning to look. "Why did you not ring the gong?"

"I just woke up and found him this way. I think it was the food-- I'm not sure what's wrong--but I don't think he can eat it." Bandi-cut turned, squinting. He thought his friend looked worse than he had a moment ago, greyer in the dim light.

L'Kell muttered in puzzlement, "If you come from another world, do you not have ways to cope with such difficulties?"

Bandicut felt helpless to explain. He didn't understand it him- self; all he knew about normalization was that it worked. Usually.

Ik spoke with great difficulty. "Something... about your world .. or me... that the transformational field got wrong." He gasped air through his ears and rocked, holding his abdomen.

Bandicut scowled with frustration and fear./Charlie? Have you found out anything?/ "/Well, the stones say they learned a lot about him.

But they didn't cover Hraachee'an pysiology. "/ /But--d.a.m.n it--can't they talk to Ik's stones?/ Charlie seemed to go away again, and came back a few mo- ments later.60 * .

"/You 'ye got to touch Ik's stones."/ Bandicut let out a slow breath. "Ik, my stones might be able to do something to help. Or the quarx." No point just now in trying to explain the quarx to L'Kell, who stirred with interest at that statement.

"But they need to make contact again, to learn some things.

Do you mind?"

Ik's voice was a gasp. "What do you think, John Bandicut?"

Bandicut managed a smile as he raised his wrists to Ik's head.

The link was broken after just a few seconds. By Charlie. Bandicut knew that something had been exchanged which his stones found helpful--and which made Charlie extremely uncomfortable.

/What?/he asked, rocking back on his haunches.

"/What do you think?

Now we've got the info, you're going to want me to go in and do the work.

Right?"/ /Well--/ "/Of course you are.

The stones can manipulate forcefi'elds and all sorts of Jancy thinga; but they're not expeenced with low-level biological fu nctions.

That's why Ik's stones aren't healing him.

You were just lucky."/ Bandicut blinked, wishing he could see better in the dark. L'Kell was watching him; Ik was in too much pain.

"/Lucky to have me.

I can mediate with the nervous system and s.h.i.t like that, as long as the stones have the basic knowledge."/ Bandicut tried to suppress his annoyance. Nervous system and s.h.i.t./I'm glad you're willing to do it,/he answered.

"/I didn't say I was willing.

I hate the whole idea."/ Bandicut closed his eyes./So what are you saying?/ "/Well...

I guess I can't refuse, but--"/ /But what?/*

THE INFINITE SEA * 61.

"/Never mind.

I guess we should just do it and be done with it."/ Bandicut hesitated. If Charlie felt a sense of revulsion at making intimate contact with another lifeform--even though he was already inside a human who was an alien . . .

"/Look, let's get it over with, all right?"/ Bandicut nodded, and spoke to Ik. "Charlie thinks he can help you. If you're willing to try." Ik flicked his fingers in something like a shrug of helplessness. "Okay." Bandicut glanced at L'Kell. "This might take a little while. I don't know if it's going to work."

The Neri said nothing, but crouched down to watch.

Bandicut carefully touched the side of Ik's head with his fingertips.

The curves of the alien's head felt bony and smooth, like ivory. Bandicut felt a tingle, and a slight rush...

.. and then a sudden wave of nausea...

Pulsing of blood, murmur of hydraulics, roar of bubbling air and roiling chemicals. The stench of activity was overwhelming...

He moved on, somehow, without moving at all. He had to pick his way through a vast and convoluted system, peering out from his virtual presence in the alien nervous system to locate leverage points from which the changes could be introduced into the system. It felt like an invasion of Ik's privacy; he had no real idea what he was doing at all. Guided by the unseen influence of the stones, he/Charlie found their way to a deeper place, where spasming nerve endings were triggering great rushes of inflammatory chemicals. And there they found a promontory and stood fast as waves of pain rose up from a sea of mingling ions and dashed over him like breakers on a restless ocean. And the breakers seemed to be groing stronger, threatening to consume them, threatening to consugie their host, Ik, and drown him forever.

Bandicut/Charlie stood there in jangling confusion, listening as wordless voices carried messages up and down the surrounding array. Somewhere within, they were listening and measuring, a.s.sessing the hidden causes of this maelstrom, searching out solutions, balancing risk against possible benefits. At last, without conscious62 , .

thought or understanding, they stretched out both hands--like a wizard from an old tale, raising a staff in incantation. Fire flashed from his hands, flickering, then brightening into two shafts of steady luminescence playing over the troubled sea below. It was the sea of Ik's neurotransmitters, the sea of chemicals that surged within his body, the sea of impulses that merged to become his body's responses to its environment. The shafts of light carried information and instructions down into the sea, and the sea began to change, but slowly. He sensed it in the air: a shift in the salt breeze from a bitter, metallic tang to something sweeter and more aromatic. The sea began to grow quieter.

He knew that everything he saw here was not a view but a metaphor, an interpretation; but it was no less real for that. They were making changes in Ik's digestive subsystems--programming changes, fine-tuning something that the normalization had altered but not gotten quite right. He had enough comprehension to be grateful that the changes required were small. And even if he did not understand them, his stones--and Ik's stones--were beginning to. Even so, they labored a long time, weaving their changes, coaxing the system to correct itself. And then he watched, Charlie watched, the stones watched as the seas began to glow from within and turned into a gently rippling, clear lake.

And then he felt the nausea of disorientation once more, and his foothold slipping away.., and felt himself spinning back into his own body.

He sat back with a lurch, struggling for breath.

"Hrrraahhh--" gasped Ik, drawing his own breath with a sharp rasp. "What did you do, I feel--I am much more--"

"/Don't thank me, but don't ever ask me to do something like that again,"/ Charlie wheezed, interrupting.

Bandicut drew in a ragged lungful of air and tried to bring his reeling thoughts into focus. He blinked, and forced a grin. Ik was sitting upright, touching his abdomen with murmurs of wonderment.

"John Bandicut--I am--"

"Did it work? Are you better?" he whispered.

"You have done it!" the Hraachee'an marveled. "My pain is nearly gone."

Beside him, L'Kell was rising and turning. "You do have the power to heal, then! Why did you say--?"*

THE INFINITE SEA * 63.

But the rest of L'KelI's words were lost as a wave of fatigue came over Bandicut and he fell over in a dead faint.

"I don't think there's any way to know."

"Then we must talk when he awakes."

It was the sound of Ik's and L'Kell's voices that brought him back to consciousness. He opened his eyes, struck by Ik's calm. He pushed himself upright.

"John Bandicut!" cried Ik. "Are you all right?"

He grunted, remembering what he had just been through.

"/Remember it well,"/ Charlie whispered ominously, deep inside him.

"/And understand why you should never expect me to do that again."/ Bandicut groped for understanding. Why was the quarx so determinedly unhappy about this? He had helped save Ik, possibly from a fatal poisoning. All Bandicut could capture was a maelstrom of unidentifiable feelings in Charlie which seemed in the aggregate to amount to a combination of revulsion and.., unworthiness. What the h.e.l.l? Why would Charlie feel unworthy.> "John Bandicut. Was it you, or your quarx, that I sensed--?" Ik gestured vaguely with one hand.

Bandicut answered with a hoa.r.s.e voice. "I'm not sure, to be honest. Charlie was there, along with the stones. But I was there, too." As he focused on the memories, he realized that while the quarx had reacted with revulsion, his own reaction was a deepened sense of empathy with his friend, as a result of sharing his pain.

Ik sighed through his ears r "Well, I thank you. But what did you do?"

Bandicut opened his mouth, but found it hard to answer. Finally he mumbled, "Well, we... readjusted something in your inner con- trol system. Somehow."

"Is this becoming a specialty of yours?" Ik asked, and Bandicut heard the silent chuckle. "I did not know you could do it in peo- ple as well as machines."

"Neither did I," Bandicut admitted.

L'Kell made a husky sound. Bandicut knew exactly what the Neri was thinking. "You want to know if I can do the same thing with your people."64 * .

"You said earlier that you could not," L'Kell answered. "I believed you then."

"And I thought it was true. But now--I am not so sure. You must understand, it is not just me. It is--"

"I know of the second one within you," said L'KeI1. "Ik explained, as you rested."

"Ah. You know of my... companion." He almost said friend. But the word caught in his throat. He wasn't really sure it was true, with this Charlie.

"/Same to you, buddy."/ He felt a sting of shame. But the fact remained. This Charlie was so dark, so moody. Did he trust Charlie-Four the way he had trusted the others? He wasn't sure.

"/I saved your friend's a.s.s, didn't I?"/ /Yes. And I am grateful,/he murmured, and meant it, even as he wished that he could keep some thoughts to himself.

"John Bandicut, my people are dying."

He blinked his eyes open with a start.

L'Kell leaned forward and spoke slowly and precisely. "You must understand. I know you are weary, and perhaps uncertain. But you have shown yourself capable of healing." The Neri's eyes seemed to grow larger. "Healing someone not of your own kind."

"Yes, but it's not just--"

"Not just you."

"But not just the quarx, either. I do not think I could have healed Ik without his stones a.s.sisting." Bandicut nodded toward his friend.

"My people are dying," repeated L'Kell. "In the eyes of my people, and Askelanda, if you are unwilling to at least try to use this power to heal--"

Bandicut exhaled. "We will be considered enemies. Yes?"

"Yes."

Bandicut closed his eyes./Charlie? Did you hear that?/There was no answer from the quarx. "I am very tired," he said at last, not knowing what else to say. "I know that without rest, I can do nothing more."

L'Kell gave a slow nod of his head. "If you must take rest, then take it. But we cannot wait long for your answer."

As if in reply to his words, a low rumbling sound began to vibrate through the walls and floor of the habitat. Bandicut thought,THE INFINITE SEA * 65 but wasn't sure, that he saw a faint glimmer of light far off in the distance. He rubbed his eyes. It was gone now--if it had been there at all. But when he looked back at the Neri, he saw L'Kell peering worriedly out into the deep, dark night of the sea.THE BLIQ THEY HAD BEEN sitting a long time in the dark, watching and waiting. Suddenly Antares stirred. "I feel someone I.

coming."

"Where? Are they hostile?" asked Li-Jared, an arm's length away.

"They are--" she paused, concentrating "--determined, I think.

And uncertain."

"Confused? We could put that to use, perhaps."

"Not confused, exactly. More like cautious." She gazed at her companion, wary of the rising and falling tide of fear within the Karellian. Poor Li-Jared; he was terrified of being underwater, and no amount of rationality could take away that base, primal instinct.