The Trimorphs (The Ammonite Galaxy , book 7)

Chapter 8

BACK ON PICTORIA, the three who had been left in the cavern had been busy.

Tallen had scaled laboriously all the way back to the surface, and had begun to airlift the canths to safety.

It was even harder to get them back up than it had been to let them into the cavern. Tallen could only see part of the cleft down, so he had no idea if the cable was in the centre of the opening shaft, all those metres down. He watched the small side-to-side movement of the taut cable anxiously as the first canth, together with the canth keeper, came up. The only thing he could do was to keep it centred to the best of his capabilities. He shuddered to think what would happen if the animal scraped the sides of the stone shaft.

Little by little, the equine and its cargo edged upwards towards the belly of the shuttle. The canth keeper was having quite a battle to keep the animal quiet, Tallen saw. It's ears were twitching and its head was thrown upwards and back from. He gave a sigh. Getting all six canths safely back up was going to be a challenge, he could see.

At last the canth cleared the sides of the black pit. With great care, Tallen edged it along the gantry until it was safely to one side of the cleft, and then settled the metallic stall onto the cargo bay floor. He watched as the canth keeper slid off, loosened the bolts which held the back part of the stall firmly in place, and backed the canth calmly out of the cage.

As Tallen moved slowly to lower the now empty stall back down again into the cavern, he saw the Xianthan out of the corner of his eye. The man was tending to his canth with great care. He was stroking its heaving sides lovingly and he had already grabbed a piece of cloth and was rubbing the white strips of sweat off its neck and shoulders. Tallen allowed himself a quick feeling of satisfaction before he looked away, his concentration a hundred percent on the next extraction.

Down in the dark cavern, Cimma was the next to mount her canth. The four who were staying behind, on their own, rolled the whites of their eyes, but she could do nothing else. She tried to soothe them by muttering words of encouragement, but they tossed their heads, and whickered nervously. She hoped that they would be all right. She hated leaving them down here alone, but the canth keeper thought that they would need even more support after the journey than before it.

The cable snaked down through the shaft, and the cage hit the rocky floor with a clatter which spooked the canths even more. They shied away from it.

Cimma hurried across the stone ground and forced open the bolts, dragging the back part of the stall open with some difficulty. She found that her hands didn't really respond to the challenge: they were too stiff and awkward for her liking. She glared down at them, and tried to make her unwilling fingers loosen the cold pins more quickly. Her canth was already dancing away from the hook, and prancing in consternation.

She pulled the blinkers down over its eyes, hoping to gain more control, but it didn't seem to calm the animal at all. Clearly, it could remember the journey down, and was having none of a repeat trip.

Cimma stroked its neck, and tried talking calmly to it. It took her far too long, but at last she managed to get it to stand still. Feeling relieved, she finally managed to get it onto the platform, tied the remaining clasps and clambered onto its back.

She was not a moment too soon, for as she did so the rope tautened and they began to move slowly upwards, the rope spinning slightly in a most unnerving way. Cimma closed her eyes, but didn't stop soothing her canth. She struggled to keep her own panic at bay, knowing that the equine would be able to feel her fear. She wound her fingers around its mane, and forced her mind to travel back to Valhai, to Valhai all those years ago, when her son was head of house, and nobody had ever heard of the orthogel entity. It seemed like a different person's life. There was nothing to link this person she had now become to that Sellite she had used to be. She let her mind flit from scene to scene in her memory, and left her eyes closed. There was nothing about this journey up through the black shaft to the surface of Pictoria that she wanted to see.