Chapter Five

Talia arose at 5 a.m., again. After breakfast and a few perfunctory exercises she slipped on the dress and shoes and a minute later joined the crew assembled in the departure bay.

"We are going to the lord's chamber by a different route this time," Stenvo announced. "The scenic route. The Tentacons want us to take a sight-seeing tour of their fair city and meet and greet some of its inhabitants."

"Are you sure this is safe, Mr. Stenvo?" asked Carson Veen, security chief.

"I've been assured it is, and I have no reason to believe it won't be," Stenvo said, no trace of nervousness in his voice. "Here's the shuttle now."

This shuttle was different from the one the day before. It resembled a cylinder partly cut away at the bottom, where the floor was. The floor was opaque, but most of the curved portion of the cylinder was clear, giving the crew an unimpeded view of their surroundings. The shuttle was piloted by a robot seated at the back.

"You are free to stand during our flight, if you wish," the robot said over a speaker. "The gyros adjust for any rocking and momentum forces and the ride will be very smooth."

The shuttle lifted off the floor and hovered to the bay door, which opened with a soft whoosh. The shuttle moved forward, and Talia noticed immediately that the robot had been right. The yaw, pitch, and roll of the shuttle adjusted constantly to its forward and sideways motion, leaving passengers with a sense of barely moving. The movement was smooth and gradual, as well, so the environment outside the glass didn't appear to jerk around.

When the shuttle left the bay, it climbed to a height of 200 feet, giving the Earth crew their first close, sustained view of Tentos City

It didn't take long to appreciate its size. It stretched endlessly in every direction, no natural features in sight anywhere. Talia's first impression was how monochrome it was. The range of color was limited; almost everything within view fell within a stifling spectrum of green-blue and gray-blue. But the variety and intricacy of the sinuous shapes of the structures around them nearly made up for the lack of color. There was nothing that looked recognizably like a building; everything was curved. There were no straight lines anywhere. The contours of the buildings appeared to defy gravity and basic engineering principles.

Roads, if that's what they were, widened and narrowed in ways that to Talia defied explanation, and the buildings lifted and twisted around them in an infinite variety of shapes, with exquisite and intricate patterns inlaid in their surfaces. Everything was asymmetrical.

Traffic was heavy, the air filled with shuttle craft of varied shapes and sizes, and as curved as the buildings. Traffic moved in horizontal layers, with traffic in one layer moving this way and traffic in another moving that. Yet, traffic moved constantly between layers, too, with no pattern Talia could detect. The traffic had the same sinuous, superficially planless quality that everything else there had. She supposed the Tentacons let the robots take care of that, as humans did on Earth.

The shuttle wound through large swaths of the city in a seemingly random way. The pilot was a poor tour guide. He identified a few things -- a school, a science building, an administrative center, something that looked like a stadium, and a few other things Talia couldn't understand. But most of the alien urban landscape around them went unexplained.

They don't really want us to know much, Talia thought.

The shuttle descended, at last. A space had been cleared ahead for them to land. Around the clearing stood thousands and thousands of Tentacons, waiting for them.

The shuttle set down, and the Tentacon crowd approached from every side.

The aliens in front pressed their bodies and tentacles against the glass walls of the shuttle. Their bodies writhed constantly, never completely stopping. With the tentacles mashed flat against the glass, Talia could pay attention to their anatomy for the first time.

It was difficult to count how many tentacles they had, because they moved so frequently. Despite the superficial resemblance to a squid or octopus, a Tentacon had more tentacles than either. And, despite the difficulty of counting, she could have sworn that some had more than others. The tentacles weren't the same either. Some were pointy, others rounded or padded. Some had suckers, and some didn't.

Despite the alien nature of their bodies, and the number of them, she didn't feel scared. They weren't menacing. But there was something in the way that they looked at the crew that was very curious. She couldn't quite figure it out. Then she understood. It was their eyes. Their eyes were expressive, and they more closely resembled eyes of a human than she could have imagined.

She walked to the edge and put her hand to the glass. Several Tentacons crowded round her and jostled each other to put their tentacles on the glass against her hand.

One Tentacon in particular stared at her with particular intensity. A long tentacle extended from its body, whipping toward her and pressing against the glass at her waist level. The tentacle thickened at its nearly cylindrical tip, which opened suddenly. A thick tube, dripping with moisture, extended from the tip and pressed against the glass.

"Oh!" Talia gasped, stepping back.

"I think he likes you!" Tracy laughed.

"Is that what I think it is?" Talia asked.

"Yes," Tracy replied. "That's a male Tentacon. Males and females look nearly the same. They keep their sex organs inside the mating tentacle, and it's almost impossible for a human to tell which is which until the organ emerges. It's emerged on that one."

"They're not very discreet," Talia said.

"Not by our standards."

The shuttle took off, into the air again, and it traversed the city for another 10 minutes, this time in a less sinuous course. They descended toward an open door in one of the larger buildings, which was capped in what looked almost like a crown.

"That's the lord's chamber," Dars Stenvo announced. "We finally get to see it from the outside."

They landed and were ushered into the lord's chamber again. Two groups of Noids and Tentacons were clustered together on either side of the chamber, but the lord had not arrived yet.

A Noid stepped forward to greet Talia.

"Professor Denzer," he said. "Thank you for your work on the translator. It is most useful to us, and it will be useful to our mutual communication. It requires some calibration, however. Thanks to the grammar and vocabulary modules we are learning more about your language, but we require assistance with some of the subtleties of human speech -- pitch, inflection, etc. Will you assist us?"

Talia noticed Stenvo staring intently at her, as if wondering if she would cooperate.

"Sure," she said. "What do you need from me?"

"This way."

The Noid directed her to a door that opened to a smaller chamber to the side. Talia felt nervous about being separated from the other humans, but Carson Veen went with her. She didn't like him, but she was grateful for his presence. The Noid beckoned her to sit in a chair with large armrests, next to an upright, oblong device with blinking lights that she guessed was a Tentacon computer. It was the first time she had seen one.

She sat in the chair and the Noid quickly attached several green metal disks to her forehead, hands, heart, and over her femoral artery. They were cool to the touch, and the one on her thigh nearly made her jump.

"What are those for?" she asked. She couldn't still her nervousness.

"We will be playing recordings of Tentacons speaking in English," the Noid said. "The disks will record your approval/disapproval reaction. It will monitor heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature, pupil dilation, and brain waves. The translator will process your reactions and help us calibrate the translators so when the Tentacons speak the speech will sound more normal to you. Human languages are very hard for my masters to learn.

"Inflection is a . . . bitch, I think you might say."

Talia had to smile at that, despite her unease. "Very good," she said.

"I got that from one of your vocabulary units," the Noid said, his mouth folding into an unsettling imitation of a grin.

"Let's begin the calibration," he said.

A stream of statements and questions, in a variety of pitches and inflection, played over a small speaker to her side. Most of the questions were simple and odd: do you like furry cats? Do you prefer a white house? She guessed that the content wasn't important; the purpose of the calibration was to register how her body and face reacted to the manner in which the voice spoke.

It lasted two hours. When she was done, Talia was exhausted. She sat quietly in the chair for a minute before rising. She was alone in the side chamber, but for the stooped Noid staring at her. Carson Veen had left without her noticing.

"Let's go back," the Noid said.

Talia expected the lord's chamber to be full, with humans and Tentacons in the midst of negotiations. But the only figures in the chamber were Dars Stenvo and Carson Veen. Veen's expression was wolfish, as usual; Stenvo's was harder to read.

"Where is everyone?" she asked. "Where's Tracy?"

"Professor Partaro and Mr. Hines are meeting with the Tentacon biologists as we speak," Stenvo said. "Near here. We're going to meet the rest of the crew at a separate location. Our geologists are communicating with Tentacon geologists, thanks in part to your translator. Tracy will meet us there later. Let's go."

Stenvo led, and Talia followed. Carson brought up the rear. Talia disliked having her backside exposed to his eyes, but there was nothing she could do. A small robot led the three of them into a shuttle bay, with an enormous window overlooking the city.

"Where's the shuttle?" Talia asked.

"It's on its way," Stenvo answered.

For a few minutes the three of them stood at the window, no one saying anything. Stenvo appeared deep in thought. He broke the silence.

"I've led this company for 30 years," he said. "My father led it before me. He always wanted me to follow him. I didn't want to, when I was young. I wanted to be a physicist. But father wouldn't accept that. He said our company had a great mission, and it was my duty to fulfill it.

"My duty. Hmmm. I didn't believe that for a long time. I didn't know what that word meant. But father became ill when I was 31. On his deathbed I pledged to him that I would do my duty. And I did. I have, to this day."

Stenvo didn't look at her. He looked out the window, straight and unmoving, as he spoke. Talia tried to read his face. Out of the side of her eye she could tell Carson was staring at her, standing close.

"Today is the culmination of that duty, and of our company's mission. We all have to do our duty, Professor Denzer. Me, Carson, you." He turned his face to her. Still inscrutable.

Talia saw a dark point in the sky outside the window grow larger as it drew closer. The shuttle.

"This is the finest moment in our company's history. By securing this deal, we have locked up the greatest reserves of Osnerium in the galaxy. We have the key to Transit, the key to the galactic economy."

Talia was confused.

"Deal? Is it done already?"

"Yes," Stenvo said. "We finished negotiations while you were working on the translator. It wasn't easy. Lots of back and forth. They were very demanding. But, finally, we sealed the deal by offering Odorin the one thing he really wanted."

"What?" she asked.

"You."

Talia's face, shocked and blank at first, filled with understanding.

"You son of a . . . ." Carson's hand suddenly slapped against her triceps, silencing her. He held a needle between his fingers. She felt the prick in her skin. Two moments later her head went cloudy. Her knees buckled. Stenvo took her hand, and he guided her gently to the floor.

"We all have to do our duty, Professor Denzer," he said. "I am sure you will do yours."

Fog encircled her, crowding out the light. Dars Stenvo's face floated away. Talia's eyes fluttered, and blackness took her.