The Trimorphs (The Ammonite Galaxy , book 7)

Chapter 27

ON DESSIA, THE situation was completely chaotic as Arcan and Bennel transported into the council chamber. Arcan dematerialized with Bennel in a protective bubble of orthogel until he could determine what was going on. Because of his translucence, he was almost invisible to the Dessites, taken up as they were with the challenge of how to communicate. Their arrival went unnoticed in the greater confusion.

The Dessites were physically unharmed by the collapse of their quantum communication, but had been left with no means of communication. Their sight was not brilliant, and they had no external hearing at all.

The prognosticator was the only one of them that seemed to be moving with any purpose at all. He was quickly trying to locate all the guards in the chamber, and was urging them to stand beside him, using his membranes to signal them, both visually and by touch. Most of the guards he approached fell instantly in behind him, grateful for any contact with other Dessites. Slowly, he was beginning to accumulate all of the armed Dessites in the area, and he was now gesturing for the guards who were close to other guards to bring them in also in the group.

Arcan paused for a moment, taking in the enormity of what had happened. The whole race was deaf and dumb, only capable of feeling its way cautiously from one spot to the next. The Dessites had lost their only means of communication. They were condemned to a future of interaction only through touch. It was shocking and deeply disturbing. Even though the species had shown itself to be extremely aggressive, it was a terrible price to pay. He wondered how they would manage – if they would manage. Then he became aware of a force field, tugging at him very persistently from all sides. It was much, much stronger than anything they had developed before, and he was forced to push all of the slivers of namura stone to the edges of the bubble to maintain his present position. He flared with dismay.

Bennel felt no twinges of regret at all at the fate of the Dessites. He had learnt to be more practical than that, learnt just to be grateful for the end of a war which had already taken too many casualties. He looked quickly away from the cumbersome Dessites as they stumbled into one another below him, and checked the rest of the council chamber. When he spotted Six and Diva, he was shocked.

They were spread-eagled above the chamber, perhaps thirty metres up from the floor, not far above the current position of the bubble which was supporting him. Something was holding them in place, and it seemed to him that they were not even able to breathe. He muttered something under his breath, and called out to Arcan.

But the orthogel entity was ahead of him. Arcan had already determined what was responsible for Six and Diva's predicament: the black circle of piping which encircled the floor of the chamber. A wave of anger swept through him, actually causing Bennel to stumble.

Arcan reined in his exasperation with this singularly unattractive marine species, not without some difficulty. After all, he told himself, they were now going to be forced to live without their means of communication. Losing their ability to utilize quantum non-locality would be a terrible punishment for them. Even so, it was hard to have many feelings of pity for them, particularly when they had clearly spent much of their energy in trying to better their technology for trapping him. They had spent the years of what he had thought to be an alliance planning to capture him and utilize his abilities to extend their own boundaries. He pulsed outwards with disgust. It really would not be hard to conclude that they deserved what they had got.

He examined the surroundings. He was, in fact, severely restricted in his movements: the machine the Dessites had made had been made quite efficiently. Luckily, what had caused a devastating effect on the two firemorphs was nowhere near as strong on the orthogel entity himself. It was, however, like swimming through jelly: his movements were hampered, and his reactions dulled.