The wental voices in his head were part of him now, a new pattern of incomprehensible desires overlaid on his own thoughts. Jess flew across open space, simultaneously solitary and connected, linked with the water entities, encapsulated within a pearl-and-coral vessel that throbbed with liquid power.
He was proud of his volunteer water bearers, who were traveling around the Spiral Arm seeking out untouched planetary reservoirs where wentals could thrive. Each new seedpoint of the water entities was like another cell in a great and powerful organism. The wental presence grew stronger day by day—and, so far, the hydrogues knew nothing about the return of their primal enemies.
The amniotic seawater that filled his spherical vessel should have blurred his vision as he stared out at the open starscape, but the liquid was part of him. He could see with absolute clarity, extending his senses through the wentals. Small native sea creatures from the primeval ocean world still drifted about inside his vessel, a self-contained bubble of an alien ecosystem.
Jess continued his hunt for candidate planets, even those inhospitable to human life. Water was the only necessary ingredient.
Like echoes at the back of his thoughts, he experienced wental images from long ago, fragmented memories of the titanic struggle that had annihilated the water beings, stripping them apart molecule by molecule and strewing them across the vacuum of space. He knew, as if by half-forgotten instinct, about the wentals’ alliance with the worldtrees, how they had joined together to create gigantic seedships as their battle vessels . . . before the burning treachery of the faeros. Jess squeezed his eyes shut against the horror, but the nightmare was inside his head as he experienced a wental dragged screaming into the inferno of a sun.
But the strength and confidence of the wentals thrummed through him, and he had no choice but to set aside his uneasiness. We will start again, one drop at a time, and we will succeed.
Then his mind filled with a flood of startling new images, fresh attacks that were occurring even now, as witnessed by another wental cluster, a group of samples carried by Nikko Chan Tylar. Through the watery film over his eyes, he saw what the other wentals were witnessing. Jess watched as a large artificial installation—Hurricane Depot!—was attacked by giant battleships. Not by hydrogue ships this time. The aggressors were Earth Defense Forces vessels, Mantas and Juggernauts. The Eddies had launched a full-scale invasion, capturing Roamer prisoners, stealing supplies . . . then completely destroying the depot!
All wentals saw the same thing and communicated to each of his water bearers what had happened. No one was close enough to help Hurricane Depot, including Jess. Even so, his scattered volunteers knew. The Big Goose could not keep this a secret.
“Damn them,” he said. He thought the water inside his ship and all around him might boil as his energized skin reacted to his anger.
But though he could not reach Hurricane Depot in time, he could help. He could send a message. He could take action.
Go to Cesca! He sent the thought like a shout. Whichever one of you is closest, find Speaker Peroni, tell her what has happened. Then, Nikko, you track her down and deliver your proof.
The warning would spread like fast ripples in a pond. He and his volunteers would restore the wentals to help in the fight against the hydrogues. But the Speaker for all clans was the right person to face the Hansa Chairman.
* * *
Unconsciously, Jess’s heart led him back to a large roving comet, outbound now after it had looped around its isolated sun. As the ball of ice and snow headed back out on its long orbit, the gases in the coma and tail would condense again. Only a year ago, he had arranged to meet Cesca for a secret romantic rendezvous in the wispy tail.
Here, Jess could think only of his love and his foolish choices, his poor timing. This comet would always be special to him, a place of memories. Now, with the help of the wentals, he would transform the comet into something even more magical.
“Do you require liquid water, or is ice good enough to contain you?”
Water is water—steam, liquid, or ice. The material state does not matter to us.
Even though the exotic wental ship responded to his thoughts and gestures, Jess needed all of his piloting skill to bring the coral-and-pearl bubble through the pelting sleet of the comet’s coma to land on the frozen surface. He walked through the gelatinous wall of his vessel and stepped out, unprotected except for a film of sparkling moisture and his pearlescent gossamer garment, onto black ice and grayish-white snow. The wental presence kept his body intact even in the vacuum of open space.
As he set his bare foot on the rugged, sterile ground, just a few droplets of the possessed water seeped out of his energized skin and permeated the crystal lattice of cometary ice. Jess stared in amazement as the tumbling, evaporating iceberg came to eerie life.
The sparkle and power of the wentals began to grow like phosphorescent dye spreading into a pool. The expanding wentals swiftly penetrated fissures and swept through the solid blocks of ice that bound the comet together.
The hydrogues will never think to look for us here, the wentals said in his mind.
Jess remained for a long moment in the cold, still silence. Finally, he returned to his water-bubble vessel, detached it from the comet, and flew away.
Jess felt immense satisfaction to see the comet crackle and glow. It lit up like a spotlight now, a new cluster of wentals in a cannonball of watery energy. Counting it another victory, Jess flew off in search of more places where he could seed humanity’s unexpected allies.