Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5 Read Free Page B

shade of blue. Grace had never seen quite that colour before.
    Ledin looked thoughtfully at his own canth. “You know, we could try to make contact through our own canths,” he said. “Perhaps they could tell us if this animal is linked to Arcan – or to anyone else.”
    Grace’s eyes shone. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”
    “You can’t always think of everything. Let’s try it – see if we can get an idea of what is happening here.”
    They shut their eyes and tried to concentrate on their canths. Grace found her focus slipping, found it hard to isolate that part of the brain that somehow was needed for this process. Her eyes flickered open once in exasperation, but they saw Ledin’s face, calm and abstracted. She felt ashamed, and thrust her thoughts back to the canths.
    It took some time, but finally she could feel the tendrils of the canths touching on the edges of her mind. It was a faintly uncomfortable feeling at first, but then it became more familiar until there was a sort of inevitability about it. She was aware of a sensation of great happiness, and the surprise she felt at that feeling almost broke the tenuous connection. The man who spoke to canths had been right – both these animals were delighted to be dying. She could sense the resolution behind their pain; an intensity which overwhelmed their discomfort. They were somehow longing for the end of this life, and there was great excitement amongst the other canths, who could feel that the purpose of the canths was finally to be reached. As she delved deeper into the minds she was encountering she could sense Pictoria behind them; she could feel that the canths were aware of the ortholiquid on the distant planet, that they somehow belonged with it.
    And she saw the visitor’s ship as it exploded into light above the far-away planet, relived those terrible moments when she had been forced to fire upon it, as her friend had begged her to push the button on the console in front of her and fire upon him.
    Unknown to her, tears began to course down her cheeks, falling onto the mane of the blue roan, and mingling with the sweat which stained its coat.
    And suddenly – quite without warning – she sensed Arcan. She could feel his essence as intensely as if he were standing right beside her. She gasped. It was definitely a trace of the orthogel entity – somehow diminished, but all the same unmistakable.
    After further long moments, she opened her eyes and came back to the present. Ledin was staring at her, a broad smile on his lips. “You saw it too?”
    She nodded. “Did you feel the canths’ happiness? They are delighted to be joining with the ortholiquid. I seemed to get the feeling that they have been waiting for this for thousands and thousands of years!”
    He nodded. “I got that thought too. You were right. This blue roan is joined to one of the Arcan amorphs. They are going to be bimorphs!”
    Grace put her head to one side. “They can’t be bimorphs,” she pointed out. “Think! The amorphs are one living thing surrounded by ortholiquid; the ones we know are either avifauna amorphs or Arcan amorphs. Then the visitor bimorph is two living things surrounded by ortholiquid: one of the Arcan amorphs together with the visitor. These new creatures would be formed from one of the canths, one of the Arcan amorphs, and presumably one or part of the lost animas of Xiantha, all protected by an ortholiquid shell. That makes them completely different.”
    “So what are we going to call them … ‘trimorphs’?”
    “Yes! Perfect! Trimorphs is a better name. After all, they do have three components, if you don’t count the ortholiquid. That sounds perfect.” They smiled at each other.
    “But why do you think this is happening now – and not six months ago, when you fired on the visitor’s ship?”
    “Beats me. I don’t see how time can have stopped, do you?”
    “No. On the other hand, the canths clearly relate the death of