Following Da Silva down the hall to the lab felt like being marched to a cell – something that had happened several times during Spider's stay at Bridgehead. They went to the blast doors he'd stopped at the previous night, and the guards there saluted Da Silva and then let the group through. They gave Spider some sideways looks, but said nothing. If Da Silva said he was supposed to be there, then they weren't going to argue.
The ceiling of the lab was still damaged, leaving it open to the outside atmosphere, so they put on breathing masks before heading in. This time, Spider could see that a lot of work had been going on. Much of the wrecked equipment had been pulled out and replaced, although on the far wall some was still being dismantled. Giant cables snaked across the floor, carrying more electricity to the new hardware, and people were working on the roof, removing the damaged polycarbonate panels.
As before, everything was focused on the tank in the centre. Was it Spider's imagination, or had the roots grown since he'd been in here last? The tank seemed fuller, somehow.
The first time Spider had been in this room, he'd wanted very much to climb up to the tank and touch the plants. It had been almost overwhelming, but he'd behaved himself in the hope of wringing a few crumbs of approval from Quaritch. Now... he didn't feel that anymore. He would touch the roots if asked to, but he didn't necessarily want to.
"Major Da Silva." One of the men came up and saluted. "We're gonna need a couple more minutes but we should be ready to go. Is there anything else you need?"
Da Silva looked at Spider. "Anything missing?" she asked him.
"Kitty Augustine," he said immediately.
"Why?" asked Da Silva.
"Because this is her work, her Mom's work," said Spider. "She'll be upset if we do this and she wasn't here." That wouldn't convince them, though. These people didn't have hearts. "With Dr. Tham away, she knows more about it than anyone else, I'm sure of that."
Da Silva groaned. "Fine. Whatever will make him cooperate. Somebody go get her."
A couple of people left to do so. Meanwhile, two scientists approached Spider. One was the woman he'd tried to talk to the previous night – she hadn't looked impressed by him then, and she didn't now, but she had a job to do.
"Mr. Socorro?" she said. "Sit down, please. We need to wire you up."
He settled in a chair, and they got to work. One person glued bio-sensors to his chest, while another put a cap of electrodes on his head. They taped this into place and checked the readouts, and then the woman scientist – her nametag called her Dr. De Groot – began to make requests of him.
"Picture a triangle for me, please," she said.
Spider imagined one, and what was initially static in a nearby holographic display began to show the outline of the shape. He felt his heart rate speed up, and quickly he blanked his mind the way he had in the neurosect – although this wasn't painful like that had been. His hands began to shake.
"Try again," said Dr. De Groot.
But Spider couldn't do it. The idea of his thoughts appearing on that screen was unbearable. After picture a triangle it might be picture the Omatikaya camp, picture Jake Sully, and Spider couldn't do that. He felt like the walls were closing in on him. His heart was trying to beat his way out of his chest. He reached for the sensors to rip them off, but people grabbed his arms. Da Silva was yelling at him. Spider tried to stand...
... and suddenly found himself grounded again, because there was Kitty.
She looked at him, at the machines he was hooked to, and her eyes went wide. She set down the books she was carrying, and pushed her way through the scientists to put a hand on his arm. The touch seemed to drain all the tension out of him at a stroke. His knees wobbled, and he sat back down.
Kitty crouched in front of him and squeezed his hand, looking up at him earnestly. "It's okay," she told him. "You're fine. This machine is completely passive. It records brain waves, but it won't show them anything you don't tell it to show."
Spider stared at her as he processed what she'd just said. If she knew what the problem was... then the same thing must have happened to Tslikxyu, and he must have told her about it. Either that, or Kitty herself had been there. Was that possible? Had it been her who'd come in and told them to stop? No, it couldn't have been, because Kavuk must have been there, and the two of them barely seemed to know each other...
If he ever saw her again, would Spider tell Kiri about his experience? He didn't know... the woman in charge, Ardmore, had commented on how strong he was, but the ordeal had left Spider feeling hideously weak. Pulverized. Naked in a way a lack of clothes never could.
"You're okay," Kitty repeated. "Pänutìng," she whispered in Na'vi. I promise.
Spider nodded. His heartbeat was calming down again – as well as feeling it in his chest, he could see it on the readouts. "Okay, sorry," he said. "Let's try again."
As they had with Baxter the morning of the first accident, they had him picture a series of increasingly complex images. They asked for a flower – and with Kitty holding his hand, he was able to relax and imagine a sprig of blue seze. She smiled when she saw it appear on the screen. They asked for a bird – he imagined a kawtsyal, with its distinctive iridescence in transparent wing membranes. It was actually a fun little game to make them appear, and he slowly relaxed as he was reassured that Kitty was right. This machine wasn't forcing him.
Finally, the scientists declared that he was ready. They moved out of the way for him to climb to the top of the hydroponic tank.
Maybe Spider should have been nervous, but oddly enough, he was entirely calm. With Kitty there to calm his fear of the machine reading his mind, the only thing he really felt was a desire to get this over with. He was quite sure that nothing much was going to happen, and one they were sure of that, maybe they could help him figure out what Eywa wanted him to do.
He crossed to the middle of the catwalk and knelt down to grip a root in both hands. Nothing happened. No visions, no sensations, Spider was just crouched there hanging on to a piece of plant.
"Anything?" Da Silva asked the people watching the display.
There were mumbled negatives and shaking heads.
"I told you," said Dr. De Groot. "Whatever happened did it in. It's just a tree."
Da Silva swore under her breath. "All right, Mr. Socorro, thank you for your cooperation. I'm sorry it didn't accomplish anything."
Spider climbed down again and, without waiting for the scientists, pulled the electrode cap off his head. One of them came up ans snatched it out of his hands, as if afraid he'd damaged it. He pulled the sensors off his chest, ignoring the sting of the glue, and put those in another person's hands. Then he asked Da Silva, "now what?"
"Do I look like I have any idea?" she asked. "If it won't respond to us, we can't study it, and we sure as hell can't try to send you back where you came from. I want to get rid of you. No offence, but you're not useful, and I'd rather not have to give Kavuk bad news."
"Not offended," said Spider. He wanted to get rid of this situation, too.
Da Silva began to pace. "You said you were having dreams about this," she said. "Was there anything in those that might give you a clue how this works? God, I can't believe I'm asking you that. It's like those cops who get so desperate to solve a murder that they ask a psychic. You said the tree wants something. What does it want?"
"I don't know," said Spider. "If I did, I'd just do it. We need to ask a Tsahìk."
"A what?" asked Da Silva, then held up a finger. "No, I know that one. That's the natives' high priestess, right?"
"She who Interprets the Will of Eywa," said Spider. It was most often, though not always, a female. "She's usually the mate of Olo'eyktan, although in some clans she's his sister."
"You've got to be kidding," said Da Silva.
"He's not," said Kitty Augustine, coming to join them. "My hypothesis is that the plant was using the... quantum effects that I won't describe in detail. It was using them to communicate with the gestalt eco-consciousness through an alternate universe, and that's how we ended up with this. That planet-spanning mind is what the Na'vi call Eywa, so if we want to know what it needs from Spider... yeah, the best person to ask about that would be somebody who is good at understanding what Eywa wants."
Da Silva sighed. "I don't know if you've noticed this, but we're at war with the Na'vi. We can't just call somebody up."
That was true. Spider looked at Kitty and asked, "what do you think she wants?"
If he'd said that to Kiri, she would have rolled her eyes and wanted to know why he was asking her – but a moment later she would have had an answer, and she would have been right.
Kitty, however, shook her head. "I'm not qualified to even guess."
"Let me talk to some people," sighed Da Silva.
She went to speak to the scientists, and Spider moved closer to Kitty. Now that he wasn't in the midst of a panic attack, he was able to look at her properly. She'd come here expecting to work: she was wearing a lab coat, and carrying a thick notebook with a dozen colourful bookmarks sticking out of it. Spider wasn't sure how well anyone else in the room could hear them, and she'd used the language a moment ago, so he decided to speak in Na'vi.
"I'm gonna guess Nash doesn't know you're here," he said.
"He knows, but he doesn't know you are," she replied. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna tell him."
"You must have some kind of guess what Eywa wants from me," Spider said. "Even just a hunch. Kiri would know." He should have talked to Tslikxyu in the dream, after all. He could have asked if the other boy had met Kiri... if it really were something more than just a dream, he could even have passed on a message.
Kitty thought about it for a moment, then shook her head again. "I couldn't. I... I wouldn't presume to guess what Eywa's thinking, if she even thinks in a way we'd recognize. Maybe Kiri would know, but she's Na'vi, right? She's... uh... she's 'met' Eywa. I can't do that."
Spider wanted to protest that she must know something. Kitty had come into the world by the same route Kiri had, with the scientists able to say what had happened but not how. She had to be a part of Eywa's plan, too... but that didn't mean she was the same part as Kiri, or even that this version of Eywa had the same plan. Unless... did Kitty's talk about communicating across different universes mean it was all one Eywa? Again, Spider kind of wished he'd paid more attention to his schooling, but he had a feeling no amount of lessons would give him answers for this. This was way above and beyond the kind of quantum physics you could do math for.
"Sorry," said Kitty, and then changed the subject. "Are you doing okay other than this? If you're like Tslikxyu, you must be bored out of your mind."
"Kinda, yeah," Spider admitted. "How about you?"
"Mr. McKosker has been watching me constantly," she said with a scowl. "I've heard him talking about asking security to weld the grates shut, but I know they won't do that because then nobody can get into the ducts if they need to repair something. He thinks you're going to carry me off."
Nash had made that clear to Spider, too. "I won't."
"I know you won't, because Tslikxyu wouldn't, but I can't tell him you're just Tslikxyu from another universe – and he doesn't like Tslikxyu much anyway. He and Mrs. McKosker got pretty fed up with the Omatikaya over the past sixteen years."
"Yeah, I remember," said Spider. "Um... I'm sorry I ran off the other day. I was upset about... stuff."
"I could tell," said Kitty.
"Hey, kids," said a man.
Both looked up as a group of soldiers moved to surround them. Spider tensed and stepped protectively closer to Kitty. What had they done wrong?
The answer turned out to be 'nothing'. "We're supposed to escort you both back to your quarters," the soldier told them.
Kitty sighed, but nodded. "I'll see you soon?" she said to Spider.
"I hope so," said Spider. As the soldiers ushered them apart, he realized there was one more thing she was more likely to have an answer to than anything else.
"I had a dream about him," he said. "Tslikxyu. He was wearing a beaded headband." He drew a finger across his face, right at the top of his breathing mask, to show where it sat. If that were indeed something his counterpart wore, it would indicate that he hadn't just been dreaming.
"What did he say?" Kitty asked.
"Nothing. He greeted me, and then I woke up. Does it mean something? Can I talk to him that way?"
"I don't know," said Kitty, and then they were separated.
Back in his quarters that night, Spider tried a new video game. This one was about racing cars, which was a very foreign concept to him, and he had a hard time working up any interest in it. After his first two attempts ended in fiery crashes, he put the controller aside and tried to find something else to do.
He sat at the window a while, watching lightning flicker in the clouds and rain run down the glass, but thunderstorms were never the same from indoors. When Spider had been a child, he would sit in the marui with the Sullys and counter the intervals between the lightning and thunder that would sometimes shake the trees. Through the ten centimetres of polycarbonate in the window the thunder couldn't even be heard.
The lightning was affecting hardware in the compound, though. It made the lights in the room flicker and sizzle, and the communication unit kept beeping unhappily. That was annoying enough, but then it started buzzing. Spider tried to drown it out by stuffing his head under a pillow... it was only when the buzzing continued that he realized it wasn't a malfunction. Somebody wanted to talk to him.
Careful that only his face would be in view of the camera, Spider turned it on. "What?"
"Dinner," said the soldier at the door. She held up a tray, then set it on the floor and left without saying anything more.
Spider waited a few seconds, then cracked the door open, hiding behind it in case there was anyone in the hallway who might object to seeing him in only his tewng. He pulled the tray inside, shut the door, and stood up.
When he removed the cover, Spider found a plate of something made with shrimp, rice, and flatbread. The people at Hell's Gate certainly ate well – that might be half the reason the McKoskers were so much quieter here than Spider remembered them. Human food when he'd been growing up had been an assortment of easily synthesized things and some reconstituted rations, the latter more and more soggy and tasteless as they aged.
Under the plate was a paper napkin, and under the napkin was a photograph with a yellow post-it note stuck to the back.
The picture was of a human girl and a Na'vi boy, sitting on the back of a direhorse and smiling at the camera. Spider recognized both of them. The girl was, of course, Kitty Augustine, and the boy... that was exactly the face Spider had seen in his dream. It was Tslikxyu. He was wearing Omatikaya clothing, but with the same headband and anklets Spider remembered. That settled it, then... somehow or other, the dream had been communication with the other universe.
He turned it over to see the note. Somebody, hopefully Kitty herself, had written: quantum entanglement – particles continue to interact even after they're separated.
When Spider tilted the piece of paper so the light fell across it sideways, he could see impressions on the surface from a practice version of the note, which appeared to have included an equation. He had to smile as he imagined Kitty going through several versions, muttering the words too much science to herself as she tried to come up with something he would understand.
Not that he particularly understood what she had written. The picture of herself and Tslikxyu could only be an answer to his question about the dream. The headband, with a beaded motif in red and black, wasn't something he could have guessed and gotten right. And the note about quantum entanglement was evidently suggesting a mechanism, but it didn't tell him how to lear anything from it.
What were the odds that in Spider's home universe, Tslikxyu was out there right now riding a direhorse... with Kiri? Were they laughing together, like the people in the photograph? The idea made Spider feel like he'd been punched in the chest. He put the photo and note into one of the drawers under the bed, so he wouldn't have to look at it anymore.
What if Kiri liked Tslikxyu better than she liked him?
He shook his head and made a decision: if he had that same dream again tonight, Spider would not just tell Tslikxyu to screw off. He would try to talk to him. What he would say he wasn't sure... it probably shouldn't include are you trying to steal my girlfriend. He would come up with something.
Spider woke up to the sound of the communications buzzer and blinked at the ceiling a few times, trying to figure out what had happened. He remembered going to bed. He remembered lying there in the dark, trying to focus on the dream he'd had with Tslikxyu at the tree in the ruined lab, hoping that would make it happen again. And then... he'd opened his eyes and the buzzer was sounding and the sun was shining in the window. He'd slept through the whole night with no dreams at all.
He rolled over and pressed the button on the comm unit. "What?" he asked.
Da Silva was standing outside his room, looking up at the camera. "You said we needed to talk to a Tsahìk," she said.
"Yeah?" said Spider.
"You speak decent Na'vi?"
"I've been speaking it all my life," Spider informed her, in that language.
He doubted she understood, but she didn't look like she cared. "Great. You can translate. We're going to see the... uh..." she frowned at the holopad she was holding, and pressed an icon to hear it pronounce the name for her.
Yayononga, said the synthesized voice.
"Those," said Da Silva.
Spider knew the Yayononga. They were a nomadic group who moved between the forest and the plains. The Omatikaya didn't talk to them anymore – rather than fight, the Yayononga had made a treaty with the Sky People, to stay out of areas the latter had claimed. But he could remember them stopping by the village when he was little, and being fascinated by the saddles and blankets they made for their direhorses, which dripped with shiny beads and little wooden bells.
"They'll trust me more if I'm not dressed like a human," said Spider, seeing an opportunity.
"You have to get dressed again when we get back," Da Silva told him.
Spider was at the door seconds later, wearing his jewellery and loincloth. The Yayononga would recognize these as Omatikaya, and he hoped they wouldn't bear him any ill will for that. The last parting between the two peoples had not been friendly.
Da Silva looked him over and sighed. She had a couple of underlings with her. One of them handed Spider a long coat, and the other gave him a breathing mask.
"Wear that until we get where we're going," said Da Silva, as Spider took the coat. "Nobody needs to see your backside."
Spider put it on, noticing as he did that his stripes were fading. "Do you have any spartan fruit?" he asked. "Or even just, I don't know, blue paint?"
"No," said Da Silva.
That left Spider feeling rather unprotected – like the clothes, it made him look more human than he felt comfortable with. There was nothing to be done about it now, though, so he had to go bare and pink with Da Silva and the soldiers as she led the way to a small flying vehicle waiting in the courtyard. As he'd already observed, these had different names in this universe. The callsign painted on the side identified the vessel as a Sparrowhawk.
Kitty Augustine was sitting inside, holding a holopad. She was wearing shorts and a dark red t-shirt with Stanford written on it. Spider had seen that in old photographs – it had belonged to Grace. She was also wearing a crocheted shawl made to resemble green leaves and pink flowers, and a necklace that Spider also recognized as something that had belonged to her mother. In his universe, Kiri wore it.
He hadn't been expecting to see Kitty, but he was happy to. "What are you doing here?" he asked, sitting down across from her.
"Major Da Silva thinks I'll have the easiest time explaining the problem," said Kitty.
Da Silva climbed in and sat next to Kitty. "This is my first time on a diplomatic mission where my staff are minors," she noted. "Please, you two, don't make me regret it."
"We'll be good," Kitty told her, and glanced at Spider. "I promise." He wondered what she thought he would try to do.
It was clear what Da Silva was expecting him to try. "Incidentally," she said, "there's only four hours of air in your rebreathers. So let's not wander off, shall we?"
"Yes, Ma'am," said Kitty.
The trip to the current Yayononga camp turned out to be over an hour in itself, but the Sparrowhawk was designed to transport humans and had doors that sealed. With the atmosphere contained, they could breathe freely inside, and save their oxygen bottles for later. Kitty must have had some warning of how long it would take, because she'd brought her hobby with her. She had yarn and a crochet hook, and was making a cardigan. This, too, reminded Spider of Kiri, who was always adding things to her clothing and jewellery.
About twenty minutes into the flight, Kitty suddenly asked him in Na'vi: "did you get the picture?"
"Yeah," said Spider. "It was him in my dream. Tslikxyu. That's exactly what he looked like."
Kitty nodded and her eyes darted over to Da Silva. The woman was watching them, with one eyebrow raised, but she didn't try to interrupt.
"Did you dream about him again?" Kitty wanted to know.
"No. I didn't have any dreams last night. I think I might've pissed him off," Spider told her. "I was kinda rude the other night."
Kitty shook her head and turned her attention back to her craft.
Mountains and trees drifted by the windows, with banshees darting in and out as they hunted the smaller animals that lived among the rocks and vines. Spider watched these for a while, and then asked, "did Tslikxyu have a banshee?"
"Of course he did," said Kitty, surprised.
Of course he did. He had everything that Spider couldn't.
"He almost didn't manage it, his first try," Kitty added, "but Neteyam caught him when he fell and he tried again. Did... did Kiri have one?"
"Yeah. She didn't even need to tame it. She just asked Tanhì if she wanted to be friends and she did. What was it's name? Tslikxyu's banshee?"
"Telisi," said Kiri. "He wanted to call her Hurricane, which is an English word for a storm, but Neytiri said it would be an insult to the animal."
That did sound like Mrs. Sully... and it sounded curiously like a quotation. "Were you there?"
"Yes. They don't usually let humans watch, but the Omatikaya liked Mom, so they let me. And Tslikxyu asked if I could come."
Like Spider himself being present for Lo'ak's Iknimaya, by special request. Spider nodded.
Eventually the forest petered out, and they began flying over the rolling grassland. For a while this just passed by, as featureless as the ocean. A herd of 'Rrpxoang, frightened by the roar of the Sparrowhawk's engines, broke into a stampede. These were related to the Titanotheres that lived in the forest, but with longer legs for running on the plain, and instead of hammers on their snouts, they had two long tusks that curved forward, which they used both for fighting each other and for digging up roots and tubers, which they would then pull into their mouths using long, prehensile tongues. Humans called them Gruffalo.
They left the animals behind, and up ahead, trails of smoke betrayed the location of the Yayononga campsite. Spider sat up straighter and leaned against the window to watch as they got closer. The camp was made of a series of round tents, set up around a big open space covered by a roof but without walls. All these were made of Gruffalo hides, painted with the insignia of the tribe and the various families within it, and could be easily take down and packed up to be carried to the next campsite on sledges drawn by direhorses.
Their approach did not, of course, go unnoticed. The horses started to squeal and rear at the sight and sound of this unfamiliar mechanical monster in the sky, and the leather tents flapped in the wind kicked up by the rotors. People appeared, running to secure their belongings and children, and to grab their weapons.
The Sparrowhawk circled the camp, and somebody made an announcement over a loudspeaker in very awkward Na'vi. "Uh... ayo zuf pom..." the pilot began, clearly reading off a card.
Spider was embarrassed for the man, and only let him get through another few syllables before undoing his harness and heading forward to take the microphone out of his hands. "Ayoe pìmähem fteke kxu sivi aynga," he said. We aren't here to hurt you. "We want to ask advice from your Tsahìk. Stay back and let us land." He handed the device back to the pilot and went and sat down again.
Kitty's eyebrows quirked, and she was suppressing a smile as he sat down again.
The Yayononga made a space outside their circle of tents, and the pilot landed there. Everyone inside put their masks on, and the seals hissed as the door rolled open.
A party of Na'vi were there to meet them. The Yayononga looked similar to the Omatikaya, as the two clans had a recent common ancestry, but they dressed in very much their own way, covering themselves in beads, feathers, and chimes, often hanging from elaborate ponchos. The woman who stepped forward to greet them was wearing a poncho embroidered with beads in iridescent black and shiny yellow – the latter were made of a bright metal the Yayononga found in nuggets in some of the rivers that came down out of the mountains. They said it wasn't against the Laws of Eywa to use it, since it came not from the earth, but from the water, and did not require fire to shape it.
It was not the poncho, however, but the wreath of feathers on her head that identified this woman as the community's Tsahìk. Spider was a bit disappointed. He realized he'd been expecting her to be the woman in blue he was vaguely aware of from his visions, but she definitely was not.
Da Silva greeted her with a clumsy gesture. "Uh... I see you, Tsahìk," she said.
"I see you, Sky Woman," the Tsahìk replied, in heavily accented English. "Why do you come? You frighten our pa'li, you make our children cry. We are not in your land."
"We have a weird problem," said Da Silva. "I'll let the kids explain it to you." She nodded to the two young people.
That was Spider and Kitty's cue to step forward, and it was Kitty who took the lead. "I see you, Tsahìk," she said, performing the accompanying gesture flawlessly. "My name is Catherine Augustine, and my companion is Spider Socorro."
"I am Yawevin," the woman replied. "What advice do you want from me? The Sky People don't care about the will of Eywa. You have made that very clear by your actions."
"It's for me," said Spider, choosing his words and grammar very carefully to match Kitty's formal diction. "We believe Eywa brought me to this place, and she won't let me return home until I complete a task for her. We don't know what that task is. I've been trying to figure it out based on dreams I've been having, but I need your help."
Yawevin narrowed her golden eyes suspiciously at him. "What place were you in before you came here? Your own world, your Urtu?"
"No," said Spider. "This world, Eywa'eveng, but a different incarnation of it."
"Come inside," Yawevin ordered, "and explain."