Infinity's Shore u-5

by David Brin

  The lake was low. Maybe the flood didn’t destroy everything.

  Disorientation greeted Nelo, for it seemed at first he was transported far from the village of his birth. Where placid water once glistened, mudflats now stretched for most of a league. A river poured through the near side of his beloved dam.

  To local qheuens, dam and home were one and the same. Now the hive lay sliced open, in cross section. The collapse had sheared the larva room in half. Teams of stunned blue adults struggled to move their surviving grubs to safety, out of the harsh sunlight.

  With reluctant dread, Nelo dropped his gaze to where the famed paper mill had been, next to a graceful power wheel.

  Of his house, his workshops, and pulp vats, nothing more remained than foundation stumps.

  The sight tore his heart, but averting his gaze did not help. Just a short distance downstream Nelo saw more blue qheuens working listlessly by the shore, trying to extricate one of their own from a net of some kind. By their lack of haste, one knew the victim must be dead, perhaps trapped in the shallows and drowned.

  Unhappily, he recognized the corpse, an older female — Log Biter herself — by markings on her shell. Another lost friend, and a blow to everyone along the upper Roney who valued her good wisdom.

  Then he recognized the trap that had pinned her down long enough to smother even a blue qheuen. It was a tangle of wood and metal wires. Something from Nelo’s own home.

  Melina’s precious piano, that I ordered built at great cost.

  A moan escaped his throat, at last. In all the world, he had but one thing left to live for — the hope, frail as it was, that his children were safe somewhere, and would not have to see such things.

  But where was somewhere? What place could possibly be safe, when starships could plunge from the sky, blasting five generations’ work in a single instant?

  Words jarred him from dour thoughts of suicide.

  “I didn’t do this, Nelo.”

  He turned to see another human standing nearby. A fellow craftsman, almost his own age. Henrik the Exploser, whose young son had accompanied Sara and the Stranger on their journey to far lands. At first, Henrik’s words confused Nelo. He had to swallow before finding the strength to reply.

  “Of course you didn’t do it. They say a skyship came—”

  The exploser shook his head. “Fools or liars. Either they have no sense of timing, or else they were in on it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, a ship passed overhead all right, and gave us a look-over. Then it went on its way. ’Twas most of a midura later that a gang of ’em came down, farmers mostly. They knocked the seals off some of my charges, under one of the piers of the dam, and laid a torch against it.”

  Nelo blinked. “What did you say?” He stared, then blinked again. “But who …?”

  Henrik had a one-word answer.

  “Jop.”

  Lark

  THE EXPLORERS EMERGED TRIUMPHANT, RESURFACING from the chill lake into the cave, having brought back almost everything they sought. But bad news awaited them.

  Fatigue lay heavily on Lark, while helpers stripped the diving gear and toweled him off.

  Tense sadness filled the voice of the human corporal, reporting what had happened in Lark’s absence.

  “It hit our grays all at once — wheezing up lots of bubbly phlegm. Then a couple of young blues got it, too. We sent ’em to a pharmacist topside, but word says the plague is getting worse up there. There may not be much time.”

  Attention turned to the Danik women who had just barely escaped from the trapped ship. They still looked woozy from their experience — starting with a blast of highpressure water that had burst into the airlock when the fissure broke through at last. After that came a hurried, nightmarish squeeze through the briefly dilated opening, squirming desperately before the tunnel could close and immure their bodies in liquid time like the poor g’Keks of Dooden Mesa.

  Watching quantum-shifted images of that tight passage nearly unnerved Lark. Instead of two human figures, they looked like jumbled body parts, writhing through a tube that kept shifting around them. One woman he briefly saw with her insides on the outside, offering unwanted knowledge about her latest meal.

  Yet here they were, alive in front of him. Overcoming residual nausea, the two escapees kept their side of the bargain, setting to work right away on a small machine they had brought along. In exchange for a cure, Jijoans would help more of their crew mates break out of the trapped ship, then coordinate joint action against the Jophur — no doubt something quite desperate, calling for a pooling of both groups’ slim knowledge and resources, plus a generous dollop of Ifni’s luck.

  This whole enterprise had been Lark’s idea … and he gave it the same odds as a ribbit walking unscathed through a ligger’s den.

  “Symptoms?” asked the first woman, with hair a shade of red Lark had never seen on any Jijoan.

  “Don’t you know already what bug it is?” Jeni Shen demanded.

  “A variety of pathogens were kept in stock aboard the research station,” answered the other one, a stately brunette who seemed older than any other Danik Lark had seen. She looked a statuesque forty, and might be two centuries old.

  “If Ro-kenn did release an organism from that supply,” she continued, “we must pin down which one.”

  Even having stripped off his rewq, he had no trouble reading fatalistic reluctance in her voice. By helping solve the plague, she was in effect confessing that Ro-kenn had attempted genocide … and that their ship routinely carried the means for such a crime. Perhaps, like Ling, she had been in the dark about all that till now. Only utter helplessness would have forced the Rothen to reveal so much to their human servants, as well as to the sooners of Jijo.

  From the look on Rann’s face, the tall star warrior disagreed with the decision, and Lark knew why.

  It goes beyond mere morality and crimes against Galactic law. Our local qheuens and hoons have relatives out there, among the stars. If word of this gets out, those home populations might declare vendettas against the Rothen. Or else, with this evidence, Earth might file suit to reclaim the Danik population group that the Rothen have kept secreted away for two centuries.

  Of course that assumes Earth still lives. And there’s still law in the Five Galaxies.

  Rann clearly felt the risk too great. Ship and crew should have been sacrificed to keep the secret.

  Tough luck, Rann, Lark thought. Apparently your fellow spacers would rather live.

  While Ling described the disease that ravaged Uthen before her eyes, Lark overheard Rann whisper impatiently to Jeni Shen.

  “If we are to get the others out, it must be a complete job! There are weapons to transfer, and supplies. The traeki formula must be duplicated aboard ship, in order to make a durable passageway—”

  Jeni interrupted sharply.

  “After we verify a cure, starman. Or else your compadres and their master race can sit in their own dung till Jijo grows cold, for all we care.”

  Colorful, Lark thought, smiling grimly.

  Soon the machine was programmed with all the relevant facts.

  “Many hoons are showing signs of a new sickness, too,” Ling reminded.

  “We’ll get to that,” said the redhead. “This will take a min or two.”

  Lark watched symbols flash across the tiny screen. More computers, he mulled unhappily. Of course it was a much smaller unit than the big processor they used near Dooden Mesa. This “digital cognizance” might be shielded by geologic activity in the area, plus fifty meters of solid rock.

  But can we be sure?

  The device issued a high-pitched chime.

  “Synthesis complete,” said the older Danik, taking a small, clear vial from its side, containing a greenish fluid. “This is just two or three doses, but that should suffice to test it. We can mass-produce more aboard the ship. Which means we’ll need a permanent channel through the barrier, of course.”

&nbs
p; Clearly, she felt her side now had a major bargaining chip. Holding up the tube with three fingers, she went on. “Now might be a good time to discuss how each group will help the other, your side with manpower and sheer numbers, and our side providing—”

  Her voice cut off when Ling snatched the capsule from her grasp, swiveling to put it in Jeni Shen’s hand.

  “Run,” was all Ling said.

  Jeni took off with a pair of excited noor beasts yapping at her heels.

  • • •

  Any return to the imprisoned ship would have to wait for dawn. Even a well-tuned rewq could not amplify light that was not there.

  Ling wanted to keep the two rescued Daniks busy producing antidotes against every pathogen listed in the little Library, in case other plagues were loose that no one knew about, but Lark vetoed the idea. Since the Dooden disaster, all computers made him nervous. He wanted this one turned on as little as possible. Let the Rothen produce extra vaccines inside their vessel and bring them out along with other supplies, he said, if and when a new tunnel was made. Ling seemed about to argue the point, but then her lips pressed hard and she shrugged. Taking one of the lanterns, she retreated to a corner of the cave, far from Rann and her former comrades.

  Lark spent some time composing a report to the High Sages, requesting more bottles of the traeki dissolving fluid and describing the preliminary outlines of an alliance between the Six Races and their former enemies. Not that he had much confidence in such a coalition.

  They promise weapons and other help, he wrote. But I urge caution. Given Phwhoon-dau’s description of the Rothen as Galactic “petty criminals,” and the relative ease with which they were overwhelmed, we should prefer almost any advantageous deal that can be worked out with the Jophur, short of letting them commit mass murder.

  Insurrection ought to be considered a last resort.

  The sages might find his recommendation odd, since his own plan made the Rothen alliance possible in the first place. But Lark saw no contradiction. Unlocking a door did not mean you had to walk through it. He just believed in exploring alternatives.

  There was little to do then but wait, hoping news from the medics would be happy and. swift. The party could not even light a fire in the dank cavern.

  “It’s cold,” Ling commented when Lark passed near her niche. He had been looking for a place to unroll his sleeping bag … not so close he’d seem intrusive, yet nearby in case she called. Now he paused, wondering what she meant.

  Was that an invitation? Or an accusation?

  The latter seemed more likely. Ling might have been much better off remaining forever in the warmth of hightech habitats, basking in the glow of a messianic faith.

  “It is that,” he murmured. “Cold.”

  It was hard to move closer. Hard to expect anything but rejection. For months, their relationship had been based on a consensual game, a tense battle of wits that was part inquisition and part one-upmanship … with moments of intense, semierotic flirting stirred in. Eventually he won that game, but not through any credit of his own. The sins of her Rothen gods gave him a weapon out of proportion to personal traits either of them possessed, leaving him just one option — to lay waste to all her beliefs. Ever since, they had labored together toward shared goals without once trading a private word.

  In effect, he had conquered her to become Jijo’s ally, only to lose what they had before.

  Lark did not feel like a conqueror.

  “I can see why they call you a heretic,” Ling said, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

  Either out of shyness or diffidence, Lark had not looked at her directly. Now he saw she had a book open on her lap, with one page illuminated by the faint beam of her glow lamp. It was the Jijoan biology text he had written with Uthen. His life’s work.

  “I … tried not to let it interfere with the research,” he answered.

  “How could it not interfere? Your use of cladistic taxonomy clashes with the way Galactic science has defined and organized species for a billion years.”

  Lark saw what she was doing, and felt gladdened by it. Their shared love of biology was neutral ground where issues of guilt or shame needn’t interfere. He moved closer to sit on a stony outcrop.

  “I thought you were talking about my Jijoan heresy. I used to be part of a movement”—he winced, remembering his friend Harullen—“whose goal was to persuade the Six Races to end our illegal colony … by voluntary means.”

  She nodded. “A virtuous stance, by Galactic standards. Though not easy for organic beings, who are programmed for sex and propagation.”

  Lark felt his face flush, and was grateful for the dim light.

  “Well, the question is out of our hands now,” he said. “Even if Ro-kenn’s plagues are cured, the Jophur can wipe us out if they like. Or else they’ll hand us over to the Institutes, and we’ll have the Judgment Day described in the Sacred Scrolls. That might come as a relief, after the last few months. At least it’s how we always imagined things would end.”

  “Though your people hoped it wouldn’t happen till you’d been redeemed. Yes, I know that’s your Jijoan orthodoxy. But I was talking about a heresy of science—the way you and Uthen organized animal types in your work — by species, genus, phylum, and so on. You use the old cladistic system of pre-contact Earthling taxonomy.”

  He nodded. “We do have a few texts explaining Galactic nomenclature. But most of our books came from Earth archives. Few human biologists had changed over to Galactic systematics by the time the Tabernacle took off.”

  “I never saw cladistics used in a real ecosystem,” Ling commented. “You present a strong argument for it.”

  “Well, in our case it’s making a virtue out of necessity.

  We’re trying to understand Jijo’s past and present by studying a single slice of time — the one we’re living in. For evidence, all we have to go on are the common traits of living animals … and the fossils we dig up. That’s comparable to mapping the history of a continent by studying layers of rocks. Earthlings did a lot of that kind of science before contact, like piecing together evidence of a crime, long after the body has grown cold. Galactics never needed those interpolative techniques. Over the course of eons they simply watch and record the rise and fall of mountains, and the divergence of species. Or else they make new species through gene-splicing and uplift.”

  Ling nodded, considering this. “We’re taught contempt for wolfling science. I suppose it affected the way I treated you, back when … well, you know.”

  If that was an apology, Lark accepted it gladly.

  “I wasn’t exactly honest with you either, as I recall.”

  She laughed dryly. “No, you weren’t.”

  Another silence stretched. Lark was about to talk some more about biology, when he realized that was exactly the wrong thing to do. What had earlier served to bridge an uncomfortable silence would now only maintain a reserve, a neutrality he did not want anymore. Awkwardly, he moved to change the subject.

  “What kind of …” He swallowed and tried again. “I have a brother, and a sister. I may have mentioned them before. Do you have family … back at …”

  He let the question hang, and for a moment Lark worried he had dredged a subject too painful and personal. But her relieved look showed Ling, too, wanted to move on.

  “I had a baby brother,” she said. “And a share daughter, whose up-parents were very nice. I miss them all very much.”

  For the next midura, Lark listened in confusion to the complex Danik way of life on far-off Poria Outpost. Mostly, he let Ling pour out her sadness, now that even her liberated crew mates were like aliens to her, and nothing would ever be the same.

  Later, it seemed wholly natural to stretch his sleeping bag next to hers. Divided by layers of cloth and fluffy torg, their bodies shared warmth without touching. Yet, in his heart, Lark felt a comfort he had lacked till now.

  She doesn’t hate me.

  It was a good place to start.r />
  The second dive seemed to go quicker, at first. They had a better knack for underwater travel now, though several human volunteers had to fill in for blue qheuens who were sick.

  About the illness, recent word from topside was encouraging. The vaccine samples seemed to help the first few victims. Better yet, the molecules could be traeki-synthe-sized. Still, it was too soon for cheers. Even in the event of a complete cure, there were problems of distribution. Could cures reach all the far-flung communities before whole populations of qheuens and hoons were devastated?

  Back at the Rothen ship, they found the airlock already occupied by crew members wearing diving gear — three humans and a Rothen — along with slim crates of supplies. Like wax figures, they stood immobile while Lark and Ling trained new assistants in the strange art they had learned the day before. Then it was time to begin making another tunnel through the golden time-stuff.

  Again, they went through turnaround sweeps, letting those inside the hatch prepare. Again, volunteers swam close with mulc preservation beads that had been hollowed and turned into bottles for the special dissolving fluid. Once more, the actual act of embedding had to take place in a shroud of nescience, without anyone watching directly. Nothing happened the first few tries … until Jeni caught one of the new helpers peeking, out of curiosity. Despite watery resistance, she smacked him so hard the sound traveled as a sharp crack.

  Finally, they got the hang of it. Six beads lay in place, at varying distances inside the barrier. As yesterday, Lark applied the “can opener,” turning on an ancient Buyur machine, which in turn pulled a wax plug, setting in motion a chain reaction to eat a gap through the viscous material. He backed up, fascinated again by creepy visions as the red foam spread and a cavity began to form.

  Someone abruptly tapped his shoulder.

  It was Jeni, the young militia sergeant, urgently holding a wax board.

  WHERE IS RANN?

  He blinked, then joined Ling in a shrug. The tall Danik leader had been nearby till a moment ago. Jeni’s expression was anguished. Lark wrote on his own board.