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evolving fractal

it, but not Bandicut.
Nevertheless, he felt that the answers were embedded here, waiting to be found. If only he had the quarx! But he did have the translator-stones. Whatever they were doing, the images continued to change; they were woven through now with sounds like the subsea rumble of tectonic shifting, with peculiar vocal choruses, with a fragmented mosaic of musical chords. He smelled the sea; he smelled crushed herbs; he smelled the mingled scents of warm alien bodies. . .
He was being watched from across the datastream.
The realization startled him, but he had no sense that it was a hostile presence, just an alien one. Or more than one; it felt like a collection of presences. He tried to call out a greeting. /Hello?/
There was a hiss like wind over sea. Then:
/We. . .the Mxx. . .sss./
He struggled to interpret. /Say again?/
Something shifted in the datastream, and the sound became clearer. /We are. . .the Maksu. . .sent by the shadow-people. . .to assist. . ./
The Maksu. Their presence became clearer; it was like a cloud of buzzing mosquitoes—or writhing electric wires, highly charged, and joined to something distant and greater. He sensed that they were on the outside, linking to him through the icecore.
/I could certainly use assistance,/ he murmured. /How can you help?/
/You seek information, as do we. You can reach where we cannot. But we do know certain e