by David Brin
More dross to clean up, Blade observed, as fires spread across several mountainsides. But his body was content to live in the moment, shrieking celebration whistles from all his breathing vents, competing with the gaudy fireworks to shout at the stars.
With qheuen vision, he could witness the corvette’s destruction while also following as most of the missiles continued their flight — those that did not veer off course, or explode on their own. Dozens still thrust noisily into the upper sky, spouting red, flickering tails.
Blade screamed even louder when they finished their brief arc and turned back toward Jijo, plummeting like hail toward Festival Glade.
Lester Cambel
THE FOREST ERUPTED IN FLAME AROUND LESTER. Failed missiles crashed back amid the secret launching sites, setting off explosions of withering heat and igniting tall columns of boo. South, a searing glow told where the shattered spaceship fell. Still, Lester held fast to the clearing where he and a g’Kek assistant had come to watch the flickering sky.
An urrish corporal galloped to report. “Fires surround us. Sage, you must flee!”
But Lester stayed rooted, peering at the fuming heavens. His voice was choked and dry.
“I can’t see! Did any make it to burnout? Are they on their way?”
The young g’Kek answered, all four eyes waving upward.
“Many flew true, O sage,” she answered. “Several score are airborne. Your design was valid. Now there’s nothing more to do. It’s time to go.”
Reluctantly, Lester let himself be pulled away from the clearing, into the planned escape route through the boo.
Only they soon found the way blocked by fierce tongues of fire. Lester and his companions had to retreat, back past sheltered work camps whose blur-cloth canopies were ablaze, where vats of traeki paste exploded one after another … along with some of the traeki themselves. Other figures could be seen fleeing through the clots of smoke as all the labor of months, spent creating a hidden center of industry, was consumed in a roiling maelstrom.
“There is no way out,” the urs sighed.
“Then save yourself. I command it!”
Lester pushed her resisting flank, repeating the order until the corporal let out a moan and plunged toward a place where the flames seemed least intense. An urs just might survive the passage. Lester knew better than to try.
Alone with his young assistant, he huddled in the center of the clearing, holding one of her trembling wheels.
“It’s all right,” he told her, between hacking coughs. “We did what we set out to do.
“All things come to an end.
“Now it all lies with Ifni.”
Lark
THE EARLIER HOLOSCENES HAD BEEN CONFUSING, but these new images left Lark stunned, breathless, confused. He had no way to grasp the blazing spectacle … mighty tubes of boo, their bottoms explosing in flame … scores of them, jetting upward like a swarm of angry fire bees.
The distant camera veered as the corvette struggled to evade a volley of makeshift rockets. The view lurched so suddenly, Lark’s stomach reeled and he had to look away.
The others seemed just as amazed. Ling laughed aloud, clapping both hands, while Rann’s face mixed astonishment with dismay. Then what’s happening must be good. Lark allowed a spark of hope to rise within.
Ewasx, the Jophur, vented gurgling sounds, along with snatches of Galactic Two.
“Outrageous … treacherous … unexpected … unforeseen!”
Tremors shook its composite body, quivering from the peak down to its basal segment. Most of the elderly, waxy toroids were familiar to Lark. Once, they composed a friend, a sage, wise and good. But a newcomer had taken over — a glistening young collar, black and featureless, without appendages or sensory organs.
Both Ling and Rann cried out. But when Lark turned around, the holoscene was all white — a blank slate.
“The corvette,” Ling explained, her voice awed. “It’s been destroyed!”
A shrill sigh escaped the Jophur. The tremors turned into convulsions.
Ewasx is having some kind of fit, Lark thought. Should I attack now? Strike the master ring with all my might?
Ling was babbling excitedly about “the other rockets—” But Lark had decided, striding toward the shuddering Jophur. His sole weapons were his hands, but so what?
Lester, you pulled off a fantastic wolfling trick. Asx would have been proud of you.
Just as old Asx would have wanted me to do this.
He brought back a fist, aimed at the shivering master ring.
Someone seized his arm, holding it back in a fierce grip. Lark swiveled, cocking his other fist at Rann. But the bull-headed Danik only shook his head.
“What will it prove? You’d just make them angry, native boy. We remain trapped here, at their mercy.”
“Get out of my way,” Lark growled. “I’m gonna free my traeki friend.”
“Your friend is long gone. If you kill a master ring, the whole stack dissolves! I know this, young savage. I’ve put it in practice.”
Lark was angry enough to turn his attack on the burly Danik. Sensing it, Rann released Lark and stepped back, raising both hands in a combatant’s stance.
Yeah, Lark thought, dropping to a crouch. You’re a star-god soldier. But maybe a savage knows some tricks you don’t.
“Stop it, you two!” Ling shouted. “We’ve got to get ready—”
She cut off as a chain of low vibrations throbbed the metal floor — mighty forces at work, growling elsewhere in the vast ship.
“Defensive cannon,” Rann identified the din. “But what could they be firing—?”
“The rockets!” Ling replied. “I told you, they’re coming this way!”
Realization dawned on Rann, that sooners might actually threaten a starship. He cursed, diving for a corner of the cell.
Lark allowed Ling to lead him as the battleship shivered, its weapons firing frantically. A mutter of distant detonations crept closer as they held each other. The moment had a heady vividness, a hormonal rush, mixing the pleasure of Ling’s touch with sharp awareness of onrushing death.
Yet Lark found himself hoping, praying, that the next few moments would end his life.
Come on. You can do it, Lester. Finish the job!
The fragment of the Egg lay against his chest, where its last outburst had left seething weals. He clutched the stone amulet with his free hand, expecting throbbing heat. Instead, Lark felt an icy cold. A brittleness that breath would shatter.
PART NINE
FROM THE NOTES OF GILLIAN BASKIN
WE’RE ALL FEELING rather down right now. Suessi called from the second dross pile where his work crew just had an accident. They were trying to clear the area around an old Buyur ore-hauler when a subsea quake hit. The surrounding heap of junk ships shifted and an ancient hulk came rolling down on a couple of workers — Satima and Sup-peh. Neither of them had time to do more than stare at the onrushing wall before it crushed them.
So we keep getting winnowed down where it hurts most. Our best colleagues — the skilled and dedicated — inevitably pay the price.
Then there’s Peepoe, everyone’s delight. A terrible loss, kidnapped by Zhaki and his pal. If only I could get my hands on that pair!
I had to lie to poor Kaa, though. We cannot spare time to go hunting across the ocean for Peepoe.
That doesn’t mean she’ll be abandoned. Friends will win her freedom, someday. This I vow.
But our pilot won’t be one of them.
Alas, I fear Kaa will never see her again.
MAKANEE finished her autopsies of Kunn and Jass. The prisoners apparently took poison rather than answer our questions. Tsh’t blames herself for not searching the Danik agent more carefully, but who would have figured Kunn would be so worried about our amateur grilling?
And did he really have to take the hapless native boy with him? Rety’s cousin could hardly know secrets worth dying for.
Rety herself can shed
no light on the matter. Without anyone to interrogate, she volunteered to help Suessi, who can certainly use a hand. Makanee recommends work as good therapy for the poor kid, who had to see those gruesome bodies firsthand.
I wonder. What secret was Kunn trying to protect? Normally, I’d drop everything to puzzle it out. But too much is going on as we prepare to make our move.
Anyway, from the Jophur prisoners we know the Rothen ship is irrelevant. We have more immediate concerns.
THE Library cube reports no progress on that symbol — the one with nine spirals and eight ovals. The unit is now sifting its older files, a job that gets harder the further back it goes.
In compensation, the cube has flooded me with records of other recent “sooner outbreaks”—secret colonies established on fallow worlds.
It turns out that most are quickly discovered by guardian patrols of the Institute of Migration. Jijo is a special case, with limited access and the nearby shrouding of Izmunuti. Also, this time an entire galaxy was declared fallow, making inspection a monumental task.
I wondered — why set aside a whole galaxy, when the basic unit of ecological recovery is a planet, or at most a solar system?
The cube explained that much larger areas of space are usually quarantined, all at once. Oxygen-breathing civilization evacuates an entire sector or spiral arm, ceding it to the parallel culture of hydrogen breathers — those mysterious creatures sometimes generically called Zang. This helps keep both societies separated in physical space, reducing the chance of friction.
It also helps the quarantine. The Zang are unpredictable, and often ignore minor incursions, but they can be fierce if large numbers of oxy-sapients appear where they don’t belong.
We detected what must have been Zang ships, before diving past Izmunuti. I guess they took us for a “minor incursion,” since they left us alone.
The wholesale trading of sectors and zones makes more sense now. Still, I pressed the Library cube.
Has an entire galaxy ever been declared off-limits before?
The answer surprised me.
Not for a very long time … at least one hundred and fifty million years.
Now, where have I heard that number before?
WE’RE told there are eight orders of sapience and quasisapience. Oxy-life is the most vigorous and blatant — or as Tom put it, “strutting around, acting like we own the place.” In fact, though, I was surprised to learn that hydrogen breathers far outnumber oxygen breathers. But Zang and their relatives spend most of their time down in the turbid layers of Jovian-type worlds.
Some say this is because they fear contact with oxy-types.
Others say they could crush us anytime, but have never gotten around to it. Perhaps they will, sometime in the next billion years.
The other orders are Machine, Memetic, Quantum, Hypothetical, Retired, and Transcendent.
Why am I pondering this now?
Well, our plans are in motion, and soon Streaker will be, too. It’s likely that in a few days we’ll be dead, or else taken captive. With luck, we may buy something worthwhile with our lives. But our chances of actually getting away seem vanishingly small.
And yet … what if we do manage it? After all, the Jophur may get engine trouble at just the right moment. They might decide we’re not worth the effort.
The sun might go nova.
In that case, where can Streaker go next?
We’ve tried seeking justice from our own oxy-culture — the Civilization of the Five Galaxies — but the Institutes proved untrustworthy. We tried the Old Ones, but those members of the Retired Order proved less impartial than we hoped.
In a universe filled with possibilities, there remain half a dozen other “quasisapient” orders out there. Alien in both thought and substance. Rumored to be dangerous.
What have we got to lose?
Streakers
Kaa
GLEAMING MISSILES STRUCK THE WATER WHENEVER he surfaced to breathe. The spears were crude weapons — hollow wooden shafts tipped with slivers of vol-canic glass — but when a keen-edged harpoon grazed his flank, Kaa lost half his air in a reflexive cry. The harbor — now a cramped, exitless trap — reverberated with his agonized moan.
The hoonish sailors seemed to have no trouble moving around by torchlight, rowing their coracles back and forth, executing complex orders shouted from their captains’ bulging throat sacs. The water’s tense skin reverberated like a beaten drum as the snare tightened around Kaa. Already, a barrier of porous netting blocked the narrow harbor mouth.
Worse, the natives had reinforcements. Skittering sounds announced the arrival of clawed feet, scampering down the rocky shore south of town. Chitinous forms plunged underwater, reminding Kaa of some horror movie about giant crabs. Red qheuens, he realized, as these new allies helped the hoon sailors close off another haven, the water’s depths.
Ifni! What did Zhaki and Mopol do to make the locals so mad at the mere sight of a dolphin in their bay? How did they get these people so angry they want to kill me on sight?
Kaa still had some tricks. Time and again he misled the hoons, making feints, pretending sluggishness, drawing the noose together prematurely, then slipping beneath a gap in their lines, dodging a hail of javelins.
My ancestors had practice doing this. Humans taught us lessons, long before they switched from spears to scalpels.
Yet he knew this was a contest the cetacean could not win. The best he could hope for was a drawn-out tie.
Diving under one hoonish coracle, Kaa impulsively spread his jaws and snatched the rower’s oar in his teeth, yanking it like the tentacle of some demon octopus. The impact jarred his mouth and tender gums, but he added force with a hard thrust of his tail flukes.
The oarsman made a mistake by holding on — even a hoon could not match Kaa, strength to strength. A surprised bellow met a resounding splash as the mariner struck salt water far from the boat. Kaa released the oar and kicked away rapidly. That act would not endear him to the hoon. On the other hand, what was there left to lose? Kaa had quite given up on his mission — to make contact with the Commons of Six Races. All that remained was fighting for survival.
I should have listened to my heart.
I should have gone after Peepoe, instead.
The decision still bothered Kaa with nagging pangs of guilt. How could he obey Gillian Baskin’s orders — no matter how urgent — instead of striking off across the dark sea, chasing after the thugs who had kidnapped his mate and love?
What did duty matter — or even his oath to Terra — compared with that?
After Gillian signed off, Kaa had listened as the sun set, picking out distant echoes of the fast-receding speed sled, still faintly audible to the northwest. Sound carried far in Jijo’s ocean, without the myriad engine noises that made Earth’s seas a cacophony. The sled was already so far away — at least a hundred klicks by then — it would seem forlorn to follow.
But so what? So the odds were impossible? That never mattered to the heroes one found in storybooks and holosims! No audience ever cheered a champion who let mere impossibility stand in the way.
Maybe that was what swayed Kaa, in an agonized moment. The fact that it was such a cliché. All the movie heroes — whether human or dolphin — would routinely forsake comrades, country, and honor for the sake of love. Relentless propaganda from every romantic tale urged him to do it.
But even if I succeeded, against all odds, what would Peepoe say after I rescued her?
I know her. She’d call me a fool and a traitor, and never respect me again.
So it was that Kaa found himself entering Port Wuphon as ordered, long after nightfall, with all the wooden sailboats shrouded beneath camouflage webbing that blurred their outlines into cryptic hummocks. Still hating himself for his decision, he had approached the nearest wharf, where two watchmen lounged on what looked like walking staffs, beside a pair of yawning noor. By starlight, Kaa had reared up on his churning flukes to begin reciting his m
emorized speech of greeting … and barely escaped being skewered for his trouble. Whirling back into the bay, he dodged razor-tipped staves that missed by centimeters.
“Wait-t-t!” he had cried, emerging on the other side of the wharf. “You’re mak-ing a terrible mistake! I bring news from your own lossssst ch-ch-children! F-from Alvi—”
He barely escaped a second time. The hoon guards weren’t listening. Darkness barely saved Kaa as growing numbers of missiles hurled his way.
His big mistake was trying a third time to communicate. When that final effort failed, Kaa tried to depart … only to find belatedly that the door had shut. The harbor mouth was closed, trapping him in a tightening noose.
So much for my skill at diplomacy, he pondered, while skirting silently across the bottom muck … only to swerve when his sonar brushed armored forms ahead, approaching with scalloped claws spread wide.
Add that to my other failures … as a spy, as an officer … Mopol and Zhaki would never have antagonized the locals so, with senseless pranks and mischief, if he had led them properly.
… and as a lover.…
In fact, Kaa knew just one thing he was good at. And at this rate, he’d never get another chance to ply his trade.
A strange, thrashing sound came from just ahead, toward the bottom of the bay. He nearly swung around again, dodging it to seek some other place, dreading the time when bursting lungs would force him back to the surface.…
But there was something peculiar about the sound. A softness. A resigned, melodious sadness that seemed to fill the water. Curiosity overcame Kaa as he zigzagged, casting sonar clicks through the murk to perceive—
A hoon!
But what was one of them doing down here?
Kaa nosed forward, ignoring the growing staleness of his air supply, until he made out a tall biped amid clouds of churned-up mud. Diffracted echoes confirmed his unbelieving eyes. The creature was undressing, carefully removing articles of clothing, tying them together in a string.