Evershore(Skyward #3.1)(50)

“Hey!” Rig said. “Get back here!”

I looked through the doorway to see Fine, our original comms slug, wriggling out of his grasp.

“Hey!” Fine shrieked at him. “Get back here!”

Snuggles disappeared from the crook of my arm and reappeared on the floor by Fine, and then picked him up and brought him to me.

“I’m trying to concentrate,” I said.

“Sorry,” Rig said. “I think I figured out which box is the hypercomm, but when I tried to test it he went crazy.”

“Crazy!” Fine shouted.

Rig looked at him. Fine wasn’t usually this agitated…

“Leave him,” I said. “Try again in a minute when he calms down.”

“Okay,” Rig said. “Sure.”

I reached down and petted Fine on his spines. This slug—in conjunction with Gill—had saved us on Sunreach. The least I could do was give him a little breathing room.

I reached toward the planet again, down toward the vibrations that were actually taynix. Many of them, beneath the surface, in caves we hadn’t yet discovered. As I did I felt that texture again, the strange bumps in the nowhere—little ridges, all packed together in clumps below the surface of the planet. They weren’t taynix—they didn’t vibrate with energy. Instead they felt hollow, like little vessels waiting to be filled. The way they grouped together, thousands upon thousands of them, was familiar somehow. The shape of the gatherings. The pattern.

Scud. Those were the Defiant caverns. They were filled with thousands of somethings. They couldn’t be delvers, could they? No, they were something else. Maybe—

Stars, were they people?

I focused on one little raised vessel, drawing close to it, examining it. It was…thinking. Its mother had set it here, and told it not to move until it was ready to apologize for hitting its brother. But it would never be ready to apologize, because its brother had really, really deserved it.

My mouth fell open. I wasn’t supposed to be able to do that, was I? Find the minds of non-cytonics?

Listen to them?

“Juno,” I said. “In your books, are there meditations for communicating with other people? People who don’t have cytonic powers?”

“You communicate with them all the time,” Juno said. “You use words.”

“This is not the time to be pedantic!” I said. “Could your cytonics talk to other people mind-to-mind?”

Juno’s little brow furrowed. “I have read that a few achieved it. But if there are meditations for that, I have not read them. As you are just learning, it seems like it might be wiser to try to stick to the more general skills, and not rely on those only a few were ever able to achieve.”

That did seem wiser. And I hadn’t communicated with that little kid, only listened to his thoughts. That could also be useful—scud, the espionage possibilities were endless.

Now though, we had cities under attack on Evershore and a room full of empty taynix boxes. I searched for the slugs in the areas around the caverns. I felt the vibrations, concentrated in the caverns away from people. Minds that were smaller yet louder, projecting themselves into the nowhere instead of remaining self-contained.

I could figure out what to do with the rest of it later. For now I needed to focus on the taynix. I didn’t know how many of them would come to me—they hadn’t jumped on it the first time I asked, but maybe I could convince them.

We need your help, I said. Please.

Someone else reached for me, so near that I startled. Another cytonic mind joined my plea, and with it came an image.

Mushrooms. Caviar. Friends. Family. Danger. The fear was so strong, though the mind that sent it was small. I saw all of us crowded together on Sunreach, holding on to each other while Gill took us home.

Help. It wasn’t a word so much as a feeling.

Fine was helping me. He was making a case for me, though not in so many words. Telling the other taynix he was happy here. That he liked us, that we treated him well and were good to him, that he cared about us.

We care about you too, I thought at him. FM cared most of all. I knew she thought I was heartless sometimes, but I didn’t want anything terrible to happen to them if I could prevent it.

I didn’t want anything terrible to happen to anyone.

Maybe when I was speaking to the taynix I should focus less on the words. Everything was translated to thoughts through the nowhere anyway—that was how Alanik and I could understand each other.

I focused on the idea of home—my home, and what it meant to me. The danger the Superiority posed to this planet we all shared. The power we had to stop it, but only with help.

It was more hope than I truly felt, but it was the message they needed and it wasn’t a lie. It was simply a different way to tell the story.

Do better than we did.

“Scud!” Rig shouted, and I opened my eyes as hundreds of taynix all appeared in the corridor at once. They spilled into the various control rooms, all wriggling on top of one another. They were bunched together in groups, taynix of many colors all rolling and sliding away from the hyperslugs they’d been huddled around.

The ones who could hyperjump had answered me, and they’d brought friends.

There were so many of them. Commslugs, and mindblade slugs, and the hyperslugs too, of course. Also the blue and green kind we’d found on Wandering Leaf, the ones that powered inhibitors. It made sense there were some on Detritus—there had to be a few somewhere, enabling our cytonic inhibitor.