Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

said. ’The Spline are grazing on the
comet.’
    Kapur smiled, but his face was grey. ’This is not a flotilla. It
is a - what is the word? - it is a school.’
    ’They are wild Spline.’
    ’No. They are simply Spline.’
    The school broke and came clustering around Mari’s ship. Huge
forms sailed across her vision like clouds. She saw that the smaller
ones - infants? - were nudging almost playfully against her Spline’s
battered epidermis. It was a collision of giants - even the smallest
of these immature creatures must have been a hundred metres
across.
    And now the Spline rolled. Mart’s view was swivelled away from the
comet, across a sky littered with stars, and towards a planet.
    It was blue: the blue of ocean, of water, the colour of Earth. But
this was not a human world. It was swathed in ocean, a sea broken
only by a scattered litter of gleaming ice floes at the poles, and a
few worn, rusty islands. She could see features on the shallow ocean
floor: great craters, even one glowing pit, the marks of volcanism.
An out-of-view sun cast glittering highlights from that ocean’s
silvery, wrinkled hide, and a set of vast waves, huge to be visible
from this altitude, marched endlessly around the water-world.
    And now she saw a fleet of grey-white forms that cut through the
ocean’s towering waves, leaving wakes like an armada of mighty ships,
visible even from space.
    ’Of course,’ Kapur said, his voice a dry rustle as she described
this to him. ’It must be like this.’
    ’What?’
    ’The home world of the Spline. The breeding ground. We knew they
came from an ocean. Now they swim through the lethal currents of
space. But biology must not be denied; they must return here, to
their original birthing place, to spawn, to continue the species.
Like sea turtles who crawl back to the land to lay their eggs.’ Kapur
folded on himself, tucking his arms into his chest. ’If only I had my
Eyes!… I often wondered how the Spline made that transition from
ocean to vacuum. As giant ocean-going swimmers, they surely lacked
limbs, tools; there would be no need for the sort of manipulative
intelligence that would enable them to redesign themselves. There
must have been others involved - don’t you think? Hunters, or
farmers. For their own reasons they rebuilt the Spline - and gave
them the opportunity to rebel, to take control of their destiny.’
    ’Academician,’ Mari said hesitantly. ’I don’t recognise the stars.
I don’t see any sign of people. I never heard of a world like this.
What part of the Expansion are we in?’
    He sighed. ’Nobody has seen the home world of the Spline before.
Therefore we can’t be in the Expansion. I’m afraid I have no idea
where we are.’ He coughed, feebly, and she saw he was sweating.
    It was getting hot.
    She glanced out of the window-lens. That blue world had expanded
so that it filled up her window, a wall of ocean. But the image was
becoming misty, blurred by a pinkish glow. Plasma.
    ’I think we’re entering the atmosphere.’
    ’The Spline is coming home.’
    Now the glow became a glaring white, flooding the chamber. The
temperature was rising savagely, and the chamber walls began to
shudder. She found herself pulled to the floor and pressed deep into
yielding tissue.
    I’m not going to live through this, she thought. They were simply
too far from home, too far from rescue, the situation too far out of
control. It was the first time she had understood that, deep in her
gut. And yet she felt no fear: only concern for Kapur. She cradled
him in her arms, trying to shield him from the deceleration. His body
felt stick-thin. He gasped, his face working from pain from which she
couldn’t save him. Nevertheless she tried to support his head.
’There, there,’ she murmured.
    ’Do you have any more of that Poole blood?’
    ’No. I’m sorry.’
    ’Pity…’ He whimpered, and tried to raise his hands to his ruined
Eyes. He had never once complained of that injury, she realised now,
even though the agony must have been continual and intense.
    She had always thought of herself as strong, but there were
different sorts of strength, she thought now. She felt as if her head
was full of boulders: huge thoughts, vast impressions that rattled
within her skull, refusing her peace. ’Lieutenant Jarn turned out to
be a good officer. Didn’t she, sir?’
    ’Yes, she did.’
    ’I never liked her, before. But she sacrificed her life for
you.’
    ’That was her duty.