by David Brin
Sara tried picturing a man alone on horseback, crossing a vast desert of poison stone and cutting light. “Do you think he can make it?”
“You mean can we catch him before he dies out there?”
It was Foruni’s turn to shrug. “Fallon is not as spry as he was, but he departed a midura ago with some of our most able young riders. The fanatic should be back in care soon, and we’ll watch him more closely—”
Foruni stopped, midsentence, glancing down at her hand. An insect had landed, and was sniffing at a vein. Sara recognized a skeeter—a blood-sucking irritant familiar across the Slope. Skeeters were slow and easily smacked, but for some reason Foruni refrained. Instead, she let the vampire wasp leisurely insert a narrow tube and take its meal. When finished, it proceeded to perform a little dance, one filled with jerky, beckoning motions.
Sara stared, fascinated. Skeeters seldom survived landing on a human long enough to do this.
Come with me, it seemed to say with each swing of its tiny abdomen and tail. Come with me now.
Sara realized, it must be another remnant servant beast of the vanished Buyur. A useful messenger, if you knew how to use it.
Foruni sighed. “Alas, dear cousin, it’s time for you to go. You and Kurt and the others must hurry to where you’re needed most.”
Needed? Sara wondered. In times like these, what could a person like me possibly be needed for?
The journey south resumed, this time on horseback. They used the ancient Buyur transit tunnel at first, where the failed deconstructor left its demolition unfinished. But soon it lay cracked open for stretches, like the spent larval casing of a newly fledged qheuen, leaving a dusty cavity or else a pit filled with water. Thereafter they had to ride in the open, awash in the luminous tides of the Spectral Flow. The Illias provided hooded cloaks. Still, it felt as if the colors were probing the reflective garments for some gap to worm their way inside.
Kurt and Jomah rode ahead with Kepha, their guide. The elderly exploser leaned forward in his saddle, as if that might get them to their goal quicker. Then came Prity, on a donkey more suited for her small form.
Emerson seemed strangely subdued, though he smiled at Sara from time to time. He wore the rewq constantly, though from his ever-turning head, Sara gathered the filmy symbiont was doing more than just softening the colors. It must be adjusting, translating them. Sometimes, the starman stiffened in the saddle … though whether from pain, surprise, or exaltation, Sara could never be quite sure.
Taking up the rear was Ulgor, the urrish traitor. Wisely, she had not tried to break across the poison plain with her erstwhile ally, Dedinger. Guarded by two of her own kind from the Xi colony, Ulgor swung her head in growing eagerness as the party neared Mount Guenn. Urrish nostrils flared at scents of smoke and molten rock, as the volcano loomed to fill the southern sky.
Sara felt surprisingly good. The saddle was a tool her body had mastered. When the going grew steep and riders dismounted to lead the horses by hand, her legs were suffused with waves of comfortable warmth, with strength still in reserve.
So, a hermit math potato can manage to keep up, after all. Or is this euphoria an early sign of altitude sickness?
They were mounting one of countless knee hills along the sloping volcano, when suddenly all three urs bolted forward, hissing excitement and trailing clouds of pumice, forgetting their separate roles as they jostled toward the next outlook. Outlined against the sky, their long heads swept in unison, from left to right and back again.
Finally, winded from the climb, she and Emerson arrived to find a mighty caldera spread before them … one of many studding the immense volcano, which kept rising to the southeast for many more leagues.
Yet this crater had the urs transfixed. Steamy exhalations rose from vents that rimmed the craggy circle. Cautiously, Sara removed her sunglasses. The basalt here was of a coarser, less gemlike variety. They had entered a different realm.
“This was the site of the first forge,” Ulgor announced, her voice tinged with awe. She tilted her muzzle to the right, and Sara made out a tumble of stone blocks, too poorly shaped to have been laser-cut by the Buyur, and now long-abandoned. Such tumbled shelters were hand-hewn by the earliest urrish seeker smiths who dared to leave the plains pursuing lava-borne heat, hoping to learn how to cast the fiery substance of Jijoan bronze and steel. In its day, the venture was fiercely opposed by the Gray Queens, who portrayed it as sacrilege — as when humans much later performed the Great Printing.
In time, what had been profane became tradition.
“They must’ve found conditions better, on high,” Jomah commented, for the trail continued steadily upslope. An urrish guard nodded. “Vut it was fron this flace that early urs exflorers discovered the secret way across the Sfectral Flow. The Secret of Xi.”
Sara nodded. That explained why one group of urs conspired to thwart another — the powerful Urunthai — in their plan to make horses extinct when humanity was new on Jijo. The smiths of those days cared little for power games played by high aunties of the plains tribes. It did not matter to them how Earthlings smelled, or what beasts they rode, only that they possessed a treasure.
Those books the Earthlings printed. They have secrets of metallurgy. We must share, or be left behind.
So it was not a purely idealistic move — to establish a secret herd in Xi. There had been a price. Humans may be jijo’s master engineers, but we stayed out of smithing, and now I know why.
Even after growing up among them, Sara still found it fascinating how varied urs could be. Their range of personalities and motives — from fanatics to pragmatic smiths — was as broad as you’d find among human beings. One more reason why stereotypes aren’t just evil, but stupid.
Soon after they remounted, the trail followed a ridgeline offering spectacular views. The Spectral Flow lay to their left, an eerie realm, even dimmed to sepia shades by distance and dark glasses. The maze of speckled canyons spanned all the way to a band of blazing white — the Plain of Sharp Sand. Dedinger’s home, where the would-be prophet was forging a nation of die-hard zealots out of coarse desert folk. Sandmen who saw themselves as humanity’s vanguard on the Path of Redemption.
In the opposite direction, southwest through gaps in the many-times-folded mountain, Sara glimpsed another wonder. The vast ocean, where Jijo’s promised life renewal was fulfilled. Where Melina’s ashes went after mulching. And Joshu’s. Where the planet erased sin by absorbing and melting anything the universe sent it.
The Slope is so narrow, and Jijo is so large. Will star gods judge us harshly for living quiet careful lives in one corner of a forbidden world?
There was always hope the aliens might just finish their business and go away, leaving the Six Races to proceed along whatever path destiny laid out for them.
Yeah, she concluded. There are two chances that will happen — fat and slim.
The trek continued, more often dismounted than not, and the view grew more spectacular as they moved east, encompassing the southern Rimmer Range. Again, Sara noted skittishness among the urs. In spots the ground vented steaming vapors, making the horses dance and snort. Then she glimpsed a red glimmer, some distance below the trail — a meandering stream of lava, flowing several arrowflights downslope.
Perhaps it was fatigue, thin air, or the tricky terrain, but as Sara looked away from the fiery trail, her unshielded eyes crossed the mountains and were caught unready by a stray flash of light. Sensitized by her time in Xi, the sharp gleam made her cringe.
What is that?
The flash repeated at uneven intervals, almost as if the distant mountaintop were speaking to her.
Then Sara caught another, quite different flicker of motion.
Now that must be an illusion, she thought. It has to be … yet it’s so far from the Spectral Flow!
It seemed … she could almost swear … that she saw the widespread wings of some titanic bird, or dragon, wafting between—
It had been too long since
she checked her footing. A stone unexpectedly turned and Sara tripped. Throwing her weight desperately the other way, she overcompensated, losing her balance completely.
Uttering a cry, Sara fell.
The gritty trail took much of the initial impact, but then she rolled over the edge, tumbling down a scree of pebbles and jagged basalt flakes. Despite her tough leather garments, each jab lanced her with fierce pain as she desperately covered her face and skull. A wailing sound accompanied her plunge. In a terrified daze Sara realized the screamer was not her, but Prity, shrieking dismay.
“Sara!” someone yelled. There were scrambling sounds of distant, hopeless pursuit.
In midtumble, between one jarring collision and the next, she glimpsed something between blood-streaked fingers — a fast-approaching rivulet winding across the shattered landscape. A liquid current that moved languidly, with great viscosity and even greater heat. It was the same color as her blood … and approaching fast.
Nelo
ARIANA FOO SPENT THE RETURN BOAT JOURNEY mulling over her sketches of the tiny space pod that had brought the Stranger to Jijo. Meanwhile, Nelo fumed over this foolish diversion. His workmen would surely not have kept to schedule. Some minor foul-up would give those louts an excuse to lie about like hoons at siesta time.
Commerce had lapsed during the crisis, and the warehouse tree was full, but Nelo was determined to keep producing paper. What would Dolo Village be without the groaning waterwheel, the thump of the pulping hammer, or the sweet aroma that wafted from fresh sheets drying in the sun?
While the helmsman umbled cheerfully, keeping a steady beat for the crew poling the little boat along, Nelo held out a hand, feeling for rain. There had been drops a little earlier, when disturbing thunder pealed to the south.
The marsh petered out as streamlets rejoined as a united river once more. Soon the young people would switch to oars and sweep onto the gentle lake behind Dolo Dam.
The helmsman’s umble tapered, slowing to a worried moan. Several of the crew leaned over, peering at the water. A boy shouted as his pole was ripped out of his hands. It does seem a bit fast, Nelo thought, as the last swamp plants fell behind and trees began to pass by rapidly.
“All hands to oars!” shouted the young hoon in command. Her back spines, still fresh from recent fledging, made uneasy frickles.
“Lock them down!”
Ariana met Nelo’s eyes with a question. He answered with a shrug.
The boat juttered, reminding him of the cataracts that lay many leagues downriver, past Tarek Town, an inconvenience he only had to endure once, accompanying his wife’s dross casket to sea.
But there are no rapids here! They were erased when the lake filled, centuries ago!
The boat veered, sending him crashing to the bilge. With stinging hands, Nelo climbed back to take a seat next to Ariana. The former High Sage clutched the bench, her precious folio of drawings zipped shut inside her jacket.
“Hold on!” screamed the young commander. In dazed bewilderment, Nelo clutched the plank as they plunged into a weird domain. A realm that should not be.
So Nelo thought, over and over, as they sped down a narrow channel. On either side, the normal shoreline was visible — where trees stopped and scummy water plants took over. But the boat was already well below that level, and dropping fast!
Spume crested the gunnels, drenching passengers and crew. The latter rowed furiously to the hoon lieutenant’s shrill commands. Lacking a male’s resonating sac, she still made her wishes known.
“Backwater-left … backwater-left, you noor-bitten ragmen!.. Steady … Now all ahead! Pull for it, you spineless croakers! For your lives, pull!”
Twin walls of stone rushed inward, threatening to crush the boat from both sides. Glistening with oily algae, they loomed like hammer and anvil as the crew rowed frantically for the narrow slot between, marked by a fog of stinging white spray. What lay beyond was a mystery Nelo only prayed he’d live to see.
Voices of hoons, qheuen, and humans rose in desperation as the boat struck one cliff a glancing blow, echoing like a door knocker on the gateway to hell. Somehow the hull survived to lunge down the funnel, drenched in spray.
We should be on the lake by now, Nelo complained, hissing through gritted teeth. Where did the lake go!
They shot like a javelin onto a cascade where water churned in utter confusion over scattered boulders, shifting suddenly as fresh debris barricades built up or gave way. It was an obstacle course to defy the best of pilots, but Nelo had no eyes for the ongoing struggle, which would merely decide whether he lived or died. His numbed gaze lifted beyond, staring past the surrounding mud plain that had been a lake bed, down whose center rushed the River Roney, no longer constrained. A river now free to roll on as it had before Earthlings came.
The dam … The dam …
A moan lifted from the pair of blue qheuens, lent for this journey by the local hive. A hive whose fisheries and murky lobster pens used to stretch luxuriously behind the dam wherein they made a prosperous home. Remnants of the pens and algae farms lay strewn about as the boat swept toward the maelstrom’s center.
Nelo blinked, unable to express his dismay, even with a moan.
The dam still stood along most of its length. But most wasn’t a word of much use to a dam. Nelo’s heart almost gave way when he saw the gap ripped at one end … the side near his beloved mill.
“Hold on!” the pilot cried redundantly, as they plunged for the opening. And the waterfall they all heard roaring violently just ahead.
PART SIX
FROM THE NOTES OF GILLIAN BASKIN
MY DECISION may not be wholly rational.
For all I know, Alvin may be bluffing in order to avoid exile. He may have no idea who we are.
Or perhaps he really has surmised the truth. After all, dolphins are mentioned in many of the Earth books he’s read. Even wearing a fully armored, six-legged walker unit, a fin’s outline can he recognized if you look in the right way. Once the idea occurred to him, Alvin’s fertile imagination would cover the rest.
As a precaution, we could intern the kids much farther south, or in a subsea habitat. That might keep them safe and silent. Tsh’t suggested as much, before I ordered the Hikahi to turn around and bring them back.
I admit I’m biased. I miss Alvin and his pals. If only the fractious races of the Five Galaxies could have a camaraderie like theirs.
Anyway, they are grown-up enough to choose their own fate.
WE’VE had a report from Makanee’s nurse. On her way by sled to check on a sick member of Kaa’s team, peepoe spotted two more piles of junked spacecraft, smaller than this one, but suitable should we have to move Streaker soon. Hannes dispatched crews to start preparatory work.
Again, we must rely on the same core group of about fifty skilled crewfen. The reliable ones, whose concentration remains unflagged after three stressful years. Those who aren’t frightened by superstitious rumors of sea monsters lurking amid the dead Buyur machines.
AS for our pursuers — we ve seen no more gravitic signatures of flying craft, east of the mountains. That may be good news, but the respite makes me nervous. Two small spacecraft can’t be the whole story. Sensors detect some great brute of a ship, about five hundred klicks northwest. Is this vast cruiser related to the two vessels that fell near here?
They must surely realize that this region is of interest.
It seems creepy they haven’t followed up.
As if they are confident they have all the time in the world.
THE Niss Machine managed to exchange just a few more words with that so-called noor beast that our little drone encountered ashore. But the creature keeps us on tenterhooks, treating the little scout robot like its private toy, or a prey animal to be teased with bites and scratches. Yet it also carries it about in its mouth, careful not to get tangled in the fiber cable, letting us have brief, tantalizing views of the crashed sky boats.
We had assumed that “noor”
were simply devolved versions of tytlal … of little interest except as curiosities. But if some retain the power of speech, what else might they be capable of?
At first I thought the Niss Machine would be the one best qualified to handle this confusing encounter. After all, the noor is its “cousin,” in a manner of speaking.
But family connections can involve sibling rivalry, even contempt. Maybe the Tymbrimi machine is simply the wrong spokesman.
One more reason I’m eager to bring Alvin back.
AMID all this, I had time to do a bit more research on Herbie. I wish there were some way to guess the isotopic input profiles, before he died, but chemical racemization analyses of samples taken from the ancient mummy appear to show considerably less temporal span than was indicated by cosmic-ray track histories of the hull Tom boarded, in the Shallow Cluster.
In other words, Herbie seems younger than the vessel Tom found him on.
That could mean a number of things.
Might Herb simply be the corpse of some previous grave robber, who slinked aboard just a few million years ago, instead of one to two billion?
Or could the discrepancy be an effect of those strange fields we found in the Shallow Cluster, surrounding that fleet of ghostly starcraft, rendering them nearly invisible? Perhaps the outer hulls of those huge, silent ships experienced time differently than their contents.
It makes me wonder about poor Lieutenant Yachapa-jean, who was killed by those same fields, and whose body had to be left behind. Might some future expedition someday recover the well-preserved corpse of a dolphin and go rushing around the universe thinking they have the recovered relic of a progenitor?
Mistaking the youngest sapient race for the oldest. What a joke that would be.
A joke on them, and a joke on us.
Herbie never changes. Yet I swear I sometimes catch him grinning.
OUR stolen Galactic Library unit gets queer and opaque at times. If I werent in disguise, the big cube probably wouldn’t tell me anything at all. Even decked out as a Thennanin admiral, I find the Library evasive when shown those symbols that Tom copied aboard the derelict ship.