by David Brin
I noticed, the voice never answered Huck’s question.
Typical grown-up, I thought. Whether hoonish parents or alien contraptions … they’re all basically the same.
• • •
Huck settled down once we left the curved hallway and reentered the maze of reclaimed passages leading to the whale ship. The phuvnthus let her down, and she rolled along with the rest of us. My friend continued grumbling remarks about the phuvnthus’ physiology, habits, and ancestry, but I saw through her pose. Huck had that smug set to her eyestalks.
Clearly, she felt she had accomplished something sneaky and smart.
Once aboard the whale ship, we were given another room with a porthole. Apparently the phuvnthus weren’t worried about us memorizing landmarks. That worried me, at first.
Are they going to stash us in another salvaged wreck, under a different dross pile, in some far-off canyon of the Midden? In that case, who’ll come get us if they are destroyed?
The voice mentioned sending us to a “safe” place. Call me odd, but I hadn’t felt safe since stepping off dry land at Terminus Rock. What did the voice mean about it being a site where we already “wanted to go’?
The whale ship slid slowly at first through its tunnel exit, clearly a makeshift passage constructed out of the hulls of ancient starcraft, braced with rods and improvised girders. Ur-ronn said this fit what we already knew — the phuvnthus were recent arrivals on Jijo, possibly refugees, like our ancestors, but with one big difference.
They hope to leave again.
I envied them. Not for the obvious danger they felt, pursued by deadly foes, but for that one option they had, that we did not. To go. To fly off to the stars, even if the way led to certain doom. Was I naive to think freedom made it all worthwhile? To know I’d trade places with them, if I could?
Maybe that thought laid the seeds for my later realization. The moment when everything suddenly made sense. But hold that thought.
Before the whale ship emerged from the tunnel, we caught sight of figures moving in the darkness, where long shadows stretched away from moving points of sharp, starlike light. The patchiness of brilliance and pure darkness made it hard, at first, to make out very much. Then Pincer identified the shadowy shapes.
They were phuvnthus, the big six-legged creatures whose stomping gait seemed so ungainly indoors. Now, for the first time, we saw them in their element, swimming, with the mechanical legs tucked away or used as flexible work arms. The broad flaring at the back ends of their bodies now made sense — it was a great big flipper that propelled them gracefully through dark waters.
We had already speculated that they might not be purely mechanical beings. Ur-ronn thought the heavy metal carapace was worn like a suit of clothes, and the real creatures lay inside horizontal shells.
They wear them indoors because their true bodies lack legs, I thought, knowing also that the steel husks protected their identities. But why, if they were born swimmers, did they continue wearing the coverings outside?
We glimpsed light bursts of hurtful brilliance — underwater welding and cutting. Repairs, I thought. Were they in a battle, before fleeing to Jijo? My mind filled with images from those vivid space-opera books Mister Heinz used to disapprove of, preferring that we kids broaden our tastes with Keats and Basho. I yearned to get close and see the combat scars … but then the sub entered a narrow shaft, cutting off all sight of the phuvnthu vessel.
Soon, we emerged into the blackness of the Midden. A deep chill seemed to penetrate the glass disk, and we backed away … especially since the spotlights all turned off, leaving the outside world vacant, but for an occasional blue glimmer as some sea creature tried to lure a mate.
I lay down on the metal deck to rest my back, feeling the thrum of engines vibrate beneath me. It was like the rumbling song of some godlike hoon who never needed to pause or take a breath. I filled my air sac and began to umble counterpoint. Hoons think best when there is a steady background cadence — a tone to serve as a fulcrum for deliberation.
I had a lot to think about.
My friends eventually grew bored with staring at the bleak desolation outside. Soon they were all gathered around little Huphu, our noorish mascot, trying to get her to speak. Pincer urged me to come over and use bosun umbles to put her in a cooperative mood, but I declined. I’ve known Huphu since she was a pup, and there’s no way she’s been playing dumb all that time. Anyway, I had seen a difference in that strange noor on the beach, the one that spoke back to the spinning voice in fluent GalSix. Huphu never had that glint in her eyes…
… though as I reflected, I felt sure I’d seen the look before — in just a few noor who lounged on the piers in Wuphon, or worked the sails of visiting ships. Strange ones, a bit more aloof than normal. As silent as their brethren, they nevertheless seemed more watchful somehow. More evaluating. More amused by all the busy activity of the Six Races.
I never gave them much thought before, since a devilish attitude seems innate to all noor. But now perhaps I knew what made them different.
Though noor are often associated with hoons, they didn’t come to Jijo with us, the way chimps, lorniks, and zookirs came with human, qheuen, and g’Kek sooners. They were already here when we arrived and began building our first proud rafts. We always assumed they were native beasts, either natural or else some adjusted species, left behind by the Buyur as a practical joke on whoever might follow. Though we get useful work out of them, we hoon don’t fool ourselves that they are ours.
Eventually, Huck gave up the effort, leaving Pincer and Ur-ronn to continue coaxing our bored mascot. My g’Kek buddy rolled over beside me, resting quietly for a time. But she didn’t fool me for a kidura.
“So tell me,” I asked. “What’d you swipe?”
“What makes you think I took anything?” She feigned innocence.
“Hr-rrm. How ’bout the fakey way you thrashed around, back there in the hall — a tantrum like you used to throw when you were a leg skeeter, till our folks caught on. After we left the curvy hallway, you stopped all that, wearing a look as if you’d snatched the crown jewels under old Richelieu’s nose.”
Huck winced, a reflex coiling of eyestalks. Then she chuckled. “Well, you got me there, d’Artagnan. Come on. Have a look at what I got.”
With some effort, I raised up on my middle stretch of forearm while Huck rolled closer still. Excitement hummed along her spokes.
“Used my pusher legs. Kept banging ’em against the wall till I managed to snag one of these.”
Her tendril-like arm unfolded. There, held delicately between the tips, hung a narrow, rectangular strip of what looked like thick paper. I reached for it.
“Careful, it’s sticky on one side. I think a book called it adhesive tape. Got a bit crumpled when I yanked it off the wall. Had to pry some gummy bits apart. I’m afraid there’s not much of an impression left, but if you look closely …”
I peered at the strip — one of the coverings we had seen pressed on the walls, always at the same height, to the left of each doorway in the curved hall, surely masking label signs in some unknown language.
“You wouldn’t happen to’ve been looking when I ripped it off, were you?” Huck asked. “Did you see what it said underneath?”
“Hr-r. Wish I had. But I was too busy avoiding being kicked.”
“Well, never mind. Just look real carefully at this end. What d’you see there?”
I didn’t have Huck’s sensitivity of vision, but hoons do have good eyes. I peered at what seemed a circular pattern with a gap and sharp jog on the right side. “Is it a symbol?”
“That’s right. Now tell me — in what alphabet?”
I concentrated. Circles were basic ingredients in most standard Galactic codes. But this particular shape seemed unique.
“I’ll tell you my first impression, though it can’t be right.”
“Go on.”
“Hr-rm … it looks to me like an Anglic letter. A letter G, to be
specific.”
Huck let a satisfied sigh escape her vent mouth. All four eyestalks waved, as if in a happy breeze.
“That was my impression, too.”
• • •
We clustered round the viewport when the hull began creaking and popping, indicating a rapid change of pressure. Soon the world outside began to brighten and we knew the sub must be on final approach. Beyond the glass, sunshine streamed through shallow water. We all felt a bit giddy, from changing air density, I guess. Pincer-Tip let out hissing shouts, glad to be back in a familiar world where he would be at home. (Though lacking the comforts of his clan rookery.) Soon water slid off the window in dripping sheets and we saw our destination.
Tilted obelisks and sprawling concrete skeletons, arrayed in great clusters along the shore.
Huck let out a warbling sigh.
Buyur ruins, I realized. These must be the scrublands south of the Rift, where some city sites were left to be torn down by wave and wind alone.
The voice read my journal and knew about our interest in coming here. If we must be quarantined, this would be the place.
The cluster of ancient sites had been Huck’s special goal, before we ever stepped aboard Wuphon’s Dream. Now she bounced on her rims, eager to get ashore and read the wall inscriptions that were said to be abundant in this place. Forgotten were her complaints over broken phuvnthu promises. This was a more longstanding dream.
One of the six-limbed amphibians entered, gesturing for us to move quickly. No doubt the phuvnthus were anxious to get us ashore before they could be spotted by their enemies. Huck rolled out after Pincer. Ur-ronn glanced at me, her long head and neck shaking in an urrish shrug. At least she must be looking forward to an end to all this water and humidity. The countryside ahead looked pleasantly dry.
But it was not to be.
This time I was the mutinous one.
“No!” I planted my feet, and my throat sac boomed.
“I ain’t movin’.”
My friends turned and stared. They must have seen hoonish obstinacy in the set of my limbs as I gripped the crutches. The amphibian fluttered and squeaked distress.
“Forget it,” I insisted. “We are not getting off!”
“Alvin, it’s all right-ight,” Pincer murmured. “They promised to leave us lots of food, and I can hunt along the shore—”
I shook my head.
“We are not going to be cast aside like this, exiled for our own Ifni-slucking safety, like a bunch of helpless kids. Sent away from where things are happening. Important things!”
“What’re you talking about?” asked Huck, rolling back into the cabin, while the amphibian fluttered and waved its four arms vainly. Finally, a pair of big phuvnthus came in, their long horizontal bodies metal-clad and slung between six stomping steel legs. But I refused to be intimidated. I pointed at the nearest, with its pair of huge, black, glassy eyes, one on each side of a tapered head.
“You call up the spinning voice and tell him. Tell him we can help. But if you people turn us away, putting us ashore here won’t do any good. It won’t shut us up, ’cause we’ll find a way back home, just as fast as we can. We’ll head for the Rift and signal friends on the other side. We’ll tell ’em the truth about you guys!”
Ur-ronn murmured, “What truth, Alvin?”
I let out a deep, rolling umble to accompany my words.
“That we know who these guys are.”
Sara
IN THE LODGE OF A HORSE CLAN YOU MIGHT EXPECT to see lariats, bridles, and saddle blankets hanging on the walls. Maybe a guitar or two. It seemed strange to find a piano here in Xi.
An instrument much like the one back home in Dolo Village, where Melina used to read to her children for hours on end, choosing obscure books no one else seemed eager to check out from the Biblos Archive — some crinkly pages wafting aromas from the Great Printing, two hundred years before. Especially books of written music Melina would prop on the precious piano Nelo had made for her as part of the marriage price.
Now, in the great hall of the Illias, Sara ran her hands along white and black keys, stroking fine tooth traces left by expert qheuen wood-carvers, picturing her mother as a little girl, raised in this narrow realm of horses and mind-scraping illusions. Leaving Xi must have been like going to another planet. Did she feel relief from claustrophobic confinement, passing through the Buyur tunnel for a new life in the snowy north? Or did Melina long in her heart for the hidden glades? For the visceral thrill of bareback? For the pastoral purity of life unconstrained by men?
Did she miss the colors that took each dream or nightmare, and spread its secret panorama before your daylight gaze?
Who taught you to play the piano, Mother? Sitting with you on this very bench, the way you used to sit beside me, trying to hide your disappointment in my awkward fingers?
A folio of sheet music lay atop the piano’s polished surface. Sara flipped through it, recalling ancient compositions that used to transfix her mother for duras at a stretch, rousing young Sara’s jealousy against those dots on a page. Dots Melina transformed into glorious harmonies.
Later, Sara realized how magical the melodies truly were. For they were repeatable. In a sense, written music was immortal. It could never die.
The typical Jijoan ensemble — a sextet including members from each sooner race — performed spontaneously. A composition was never quite the same from one presentation to the next. That trait appealed especially to blue qheuens and hoons, who, according to legend, had no freedom to innovate back in ordered Galactic society. They expressed puzzlement when human partners sometimes suggested recording a successful piece in traeki wax, or writing it down.
Whatever for? they asked. Each moment deserves its own song.
A Jijoan way of looking at things, Sara acknowledged.
She laid her hands on the keys and ran through some scales. Though out of practice, the exercise was like an old friend. No wonder Emerson also drew comfort from tunes recalling happier days.
Still, her mind churned as she switched to some simple favorites, starting with “Für Elise.”
According to Biblos anthropology texts, most ancient cultures on Earth used to play music that was impulsive, just like a Jijoan sextet. But shortly before they made their own way into space, humans also came up with written forms.
We sought order and memory. It must have seemed a refuge from the chaos that filled our dark lives.
Of course that was long ago, back when mathematics also had its great age of discovery on Earth. Is that a common thread? Did I choose math for the same reason Melina loved this instrument? Because it lends predictability amid life’s chaos?
A shadow fell across the wall. Sara drew back, half rising to meet the brown eyes of Foruni, aged leader of the horse-riding clan.
“Sorry to disturb you, dear.” The gray-headed matriarch motioned for Sara to sit. “But watching you, I could almost believe it was Melina back home with us, playing as she did, with such intensity.”
“I’m afraid I don’t look much like my mother. Nor do I play half as well.”
The old woman smiled. “A good parent wants her offspring to excel — to do what she could not. But a wise parent lets the child select which excellence. You chose realms of deep thought. I know she was very proud.”
Sara acknowledged the kindness with a nod, but took small comfort from aphorisms. If the choice really were mine, don’t you think I’d have been beautiful, like Melina? A dark woman of mystery, who amazed people with many graceful talents?
Mathematics chose me … it seized me with cool infinities and hints at universal truth. Yet whom do I touch with my equations? Who looks at my face and form with unreserved delight?
Melina died young, but surrounded by those who loved her. Who will weep over me, when I am gone?
The Illias leader must have misunderstood Sara’s frown.
“Do my words disturb you?” Foruni asked. “Do I sound like a heretic, for believing tha
t generations can improve? Does it seem an odd belief for a secret tribe that hides itself even from a civilization of exiled refugees?”
Sara found it hard to answer.
Why were Melina’s children so odd, by Jijoan standards? Although Lark’s heresy seems opposite to mine, we share one thread — rejecting the Path of Redemption.
The books Mother read to us often spoke of hope, drawn from some act of rebellion.
To the Illias leader, she replied, “You and your urrish friends rescued horses, back when they seemed doomed. Your alliance foreshadowed that of Drake and Ur-Chown. You are a society of dedicated women, who carefully choose your male companions from the best Jijo has to offer. Living in splendid isolation, you see humanity at its best — seldom its more nasty side.
“No, it does not surprise me that the Illias are optimists at heart.”
Foruni nodded. “I am told that you, in your investigations of language theory, reached similar conclusions.”
Sara shrugged. “I’m no optimist. Not personally. But for a while, it seemed that I could see a pattern in the evolution of Jijo’s dialects, and in all the new literary activity taking place across the Slope. Not that it matters anymore, now that aliens have come to—”
The old woman cut in. “You don’t think we are destined to be like glavers, winning our second chance by passing through oblivion?”
“You mean what might have happened, if starships never came? I argued with Dedinger about this. If Jijo had been left alone, I felt there was the possibility of …”
Sara shook her head and changed the subject.
“Speaking of Dedinger, have you had any luck finding him?”
Foruni winced unhappily. “It’s been just a short while since he broke out of the pen where he was kept. We never imagined he would prove so resourceful, knowing how to saddle and steal a horse.”
“He had time to learn by observing.”
“I see that we were naive. It’s a long time since we kept prisoners in Xi.
“Unfortunately, the tracks do not lead back to the tunnel, where we might have trapped him in the narrow darkness. Instead, the wily ligger spawn struck out across the Spectral Flow.”