by David Brin
The Niss didn’t think either effort would succeed in the slim time allowed. Anyway, Alvin and Huck had convinced Gillian not to try.
“We know what you Earthlings are trying to do with this breakout attempt,” the young g’Kek had said.
“And yet you volunteered to come?”
“Why not? We risked the Midden in a hollow tree trunk. All sooners know life is something you just borrow for a while. Each person must choose how to spend it.
“All our families and all our septs depend on your venture, Dr. Baskin. This Rety person selected her destiny. Let her follow it.”
As Streaker gradually accelerated, Gillian turned to the dolphin in charge of psi-ops. “Let me know when you get anything at all from the observer,” she ordered.
“No sssignal yet-t,” the fin answered. “It’sss well past due, if you ask me.”
“No one asked,” Gillian snapped.
Without wanting to, she glanced at the Jijoan mathematician, Sara Koolhan, whose brother took off in a hot-air balloon, knowing that if the gale did not get him, the Jophur probably would. Sara floated in a swarm of bubbles, watching intently. But behind the visor of her breathing helmet, Gillian saw a single soft tear, running down the young woman’s cheek.
Gillian did not need more guilt. She tried hard to think pragmatically.
I just wish the boy hadn’t died for nothing. We’re going to have to decide…
She checked the swarm monitors.
… in moments.…
Dwer
THE DAZZLING BLAST JOLTED HIS REWQ, CAUSING IT to retreat, almost comatose. But the creature served its purpose, saving Dwer’s eyes. Except for a few purple spots, vision soon returned almost to normal.
There’ll be a shock wave, he thought. After the abuse of last night and morning, he wondered if the balloon would survive another shaking.
Dwer readied his hammer over the row of crystals, each jammed into the wicker gondola. He peered east, trying to figure out which message to send.
All the decoy balloons were gone — no surprise there.
But dammit, where’s the Jophur ship?
Dwer could not act without data, so he held on and rode out the explosion’s booming echo when it came rolling by, flattening the serrated grass of the Venom Plain.
The balloon survived. Solid urrish workmanship. Picking up binoculars, he sought again for the Jophur, scanning the horizon.
Could it have been blown up by the aerial mine? Gillian Baskin had thought the prospect nearly impossible. No weapon in Streaker’s arsenal could pierce the defense of such a dreadnought, even with the element of surprise. But it might be possible to inconvenience the enemy for a crucial time.
Finally, he made out the distant glint. In fact, the ship seemed to be receding! He had the illusion that it was heading toward the rising sun.
Dwer hesitated over the message crystals. There were only four. None of the prearranged codes took in this possibility … that the foe would flee the scene. Not upward toward space, or west back to the Midden, or even standing still, but away from any chance to spy the Earthling ship!
If I don’t send anything, they’ll think I’m dead.
He thought of Sara, and was tempted to smash all the crystals, just to reassure her.
But then they might make a wrong decision, and she might die instead of me. Because of me.
By now, squadrons of salvaged decoy spaceships would be heading out beyond Jijo’s atmosphere, spiraling toward orbit and beyond. Gillian Baskin had to decide which group to go with. Dwer’s signal was supposed to help.
Frustration locked him in a rigor of indecision. Raising the binoculars once more, he found the Jophur ship again, a bare pinpoint near the horizon.
Then he noticed something.
The distant dot … it had stopped receding. Instead, it seemed to hover beyond a range of craggy highlands.
The Gray Hills, Dwer realized. If only I can give the right signal, I’ll be able to start descending in time to land where I want!
The glittering pinpoint hesitated, then began to move again. Dwer soon confirmed — it was growing larger. The Jophur were heading back this way!
Now I know what to send, he thought with satisfaction. Dwer raised the hammer and brought it smashing down on the second crystal. That instant, his back swarmed with a curious tingling. The feeling came and left quickly.
His duty done at last, Dwer reached for the gas-discharge rope. The battleship was going to pass close again, and the only way he had to maneuver was to lose height.
Easy does it, he thought. Let her down slowly. Might as well reach the foothills before you have to…
The great ship loomed rapidly, then streaked westward while gaining altitude, missing him by hundreds of arrowflights.
Alas, this time it did not ignore Dwer.
As it hurried by, the mighty blue globe dropped a tiny speck. A minuscule dot that arced away and then dropped rapidly, glittering as it came. Dwer did not have to know much about Galactic technology to recognize a missile when he saw one.
Gillian mentioned that I might attract attention when I signaled.
Dwer sighed, watching the fleck turn a gentle curve and then plunge straight toward him.
Ah, well, he thought, picking up his prize possession — the bow made for him by the master carvers of Ovoom Town, in honor of his skill as tracker for the Commons of Six Races.
When the explosion came, it was unlike anything he expected.
Gillian
THAT’S IT!” SHE CRIED OUT, GLAD OF THE NEWS.
Even more elated was Sara, who let out an urrish sounding yelp, on learning that her brother yet lived.
The signal also confirmed Gillian’s best guess. The Jophur had been slow reacting, but they were doing as she hoped.
“They are predictable,” commented the Niss, whose whirling hologram passed through oxy-water bubbles unperturbed. “The delay only means we get more of a head start.”
Gillian agreed, but in her thoughts added:
We’ll need ten times this much of a lead, in order to make it all the way.
Aloud, she told the pilot:
“Punch us out of here, Kaa. Stay with swarm number two. Put us second from the front of the pack.”
The pilot shouted,“Aye!”
Soon the low, driving harmonies of the motivators notched upward in pitch. Gillian glanced at the engineroom display. Morale seemed high among Suessi’s crewfen. As she watched, Emerson D’Anite threw his head back to sing! Gillian only picked up a fragment, though the lyrics had Emerson’s coworkers in stitches.
“Jijo, Jijo…
It’s off to war we go!”
Even suffering from brain affliction, his puns were terrible. It was good to have some of the old Emerson back again.
External displays showed the planet swiftly receding, a gentle blue-brown globe, swathed in a slim envelope of life-giving weather. Numerous sharp-bordered green patches testified to where some metropolis once stood, before the site was scoured and seeded. Whether now covered with swamp, forest, or prairie, the regions still showed regular outlines that would take eons to erase.
Earth has such scars, she thought. In even greater abundance. The difference is that we were ignorant and didn’t know better. We had to learn the hard way how to manage a world, by teaching ourselves.
Gillian glanced at Sara, whose eyes bore pain and wonder, watching her homeworld diminish to a small orb — the first of her sooner line to look down at Jijo, ever since her ancestors fled here, centuries ago.
A place of refuge. A sanctuary for Earthlings and others. They all meant to hunker down, cowering away from the cosmos, each race redeeming its heritage in its own peculiar way.
Then we brought the universe crashing in on them.
She watched Lieutenant Tsh’t move among the crewfen at their dome consoles, encouraging them with bursts of sonar, always checking for lapses of attention. The meticulous supervision hardly seemed necessary. Not
one of the elite bridge staff had ever shown a trace of stress atavism. All were guaranteed high uplift classifications when they got home.
If we get home.
If there is still a home, waiting for us.
In fact, everyone knew the real reason why half the crew had been left behind on Jijo, along with the Kiqui and copies of Streaker’s records.
We don’t have much of a chance of escaping … but it might be possible to draw the universe away from Jijo. Diverting its attention. Making it forget the sooners, once again.
It would take skill and luck just to achieve that sacrifice. But if successful, what an accomplishment! Preventing the extinction of the g’Kek, or the unwanted transformation of the traeki, or the discovery and blame that would befall Earth, if human sooners were exposed here.
If this works, we’ll have a complete cache of Earthlings on Jijo — humans, chimps, and now dolphins, too. A safety reserve, in case the worst happens at home.
That seems worthwhile. A result worth paying for.
Of course, like everything in the cosmos, it would come at a price.
They had passed Loocen — the moon still glittering with abandoned cities — and accelerated about a million kilometers beyond when the detection officer declared:
“Enemy cruiser leaving atmosphere! Vectoring after swarm number one!”
The spatial schematic showed a speck rising from Jijo, larger and brighter than any other, lumbering to accelerate its titanic mass.
We could outrun you, once, Gillian thought. We still can … for a while.
Even handicapped by the irksome carbon sheathing, Streaker would spend some time increasing the gap between her and the pursuing battleship. Newtonian inertia must drag down the heavier Jophur — that is, until it reached speeds adequate for level-zero hyperdrive.
Then the speed advantage would start to shift. If only a transfer point were nearer. Gillian shook her head, and kept on wishing.
If only Tom and Creideiki were here. They’d get us away without much trouble, I bet. I could retire to sick bay with confidence, treating dolphins for itchy-flake and spending my copious free time contemplating the mysteries of Herbie.
In a moment of decision, she had elected to take along the billion-year-old mummy, despite the high likelihood Streaker would be destroyed in a matter of hours or days. She could not part with the relic, which Tom had fought so hard to snatch from a fleet of ghost ships in the Shallow Cluster — back in those heady days before the whole Civilization of the Five Galaxies seemed to turn against Streaker.
Back when the naive crew expected gratitude for their epochal discovery.
Never surprise a stodgy Galactic, went a Tymbrimi saying. Unless you’re prepared with twelve more surprises in your pocket.
Good advice.
Unfortunately, her supply of tricks was running low. There were, in fact, only a few left.
The Sages
THE LATEST GROUP OF PILGRIMS UNDERSTOOD more now, about the Holy Egg.
More than Drake and Ur-Chown knew, when they first stared at the newly emerged wonder, glowing white-hot from its fiery emergence. Those two famed heroes conspired to exploit the Egg for their own religious and political purposes, declaring it an omen. A harbinger of unity. A god.
Now the sages have printouts provided by the dolphin ship. The report, downloaded from a unit of the Great Galactic Library, calls the Egg—a psi-active geomorph. A phenomenon observed on some life worlds whose tectonic restoration processes are smoothly continuous, where past cycles of occupation and renewal had certain temporal and technologic traits…
Phwhoondau contemplated this as the newly reassembled Council of Sages approached the sacred site, walking, slithering, and rolling toward the place they had all separately been heading when they heard Vubben’s dying call.
In other words, the Egg is a distillation, a condensation of Jijo’s past. All the dross deposited by the Buyur … and those who came before … has combined to contribute patterns.
Patterns that somehow wove their way through magma pressure and volcanic heat.
To the south, these spilled forth chaotically, to become the Spectral Flow. But here, conditions permitted coalescence. A crystalline tip consisting of pure memory and purpose.
At last he understood the puzzle of why every sooner race settled on the Slope, despite initial jealousies and feuds.
We were summoned.
Some said this knowledge would crush the old ways, and Phwhoondau agreed. The former faith — founded in the Sacred Scrolls, then modified by waves of heresy — would never be the same.
The basis of the Commons of Six Races had changed.
But the basis survived.
A re-formed Council of Six entered the scarred canyon circle, where they spent a brief time contemplating the charred remains of their eldest member, a jumble of frail nerves and fibers, plastered against the Egg’s pitted, sooty flank.
They buried Vubben there — the only sage ever so honored. Then began their work.
Others would join them soon. A re-formed council meant re-formed duty.
At last we know what you are, Phwhoondau thought silently, leaning back to regard the Egg’s great curving mass.
But other questions remain. Such as … why?
Rety
THE CONTROLS REFUSED TO RESPOND!
“Come on!” she shouted, slamming the holosim box with the palm of her hand, then jiggling more levers.
Not that Rety had much idea what she’d do if she gained mastery over the decoy vessel. At first, the stunning views of Jijo and space sent her brain reeling. It was all so much bigger than she ever imagined. Since then, she had left the big visual holo turned off, while continuing to fiddle with other panels and displays.
Wisdom preached that she ought to leave the machinery alone … and finally, Rety listened. She forced herself to back away, joining yee at her small stack of supplies, smuggled off the sled when Chuchki wasn’t looking. She stroked her little husband while munching a food-concentrate bar, pondering the situation.
Every salvaged decoy ship had been programmed to head out — by a variety of routes — toward the nearest “transfer point.” From there, they would jump away from fallow Galaxy Four, aiming for distant, traffic-filled lanes where oxygen-breathing life-forms teemed.
That was good enough for Rety, providing she then found a way to signal some passing vessel.
This old ship may not be worth much, but it oughta pay my passage to their next stop, at least.
What would happen next remained vague in her mind. Getting some kind of job, most likely. She still had the little teaching machine that used to belong to Dennie Sudman, so learning those jabber-talk alien languages shouldn’t be too hard.
I’ll find a way to make myself useful. I always have.
Of course, everything depended on making it to the transfer point.
Gillian prob’ly set things up so the decoys’ll try to lure the Jophur. Maybe they give off some sort of light or noise to make ’em think there are dolphins aboard.
That might work for a while. The stinky rings’ll chase around, losin’ time while checkin’ things out.
But Rety knew what would happen next. Eventually, the Jophur gods would catch on to the trick. They’d figure out what to look for, and realize which ship was the real target.
Suppose by then they’ve torn apart half the decoys. That still leaves me fitty-fitty odds. Which is Ifni times more than I’d have aboard old Streaker. Once they figure which one she is, they’ll leave the rest of us decoys alone to go about our business.
At least that was the overall idea. Ever since she had found Kunn and Jass, dead in their jail cells, Rety knew she must get off the Earthling ship as fast as possible and make it on her own.
I’d better be able to send out a signal, when we pop into a civilized galaxy, she thought. I s’pose it’ll take more than just shining a light out through a window. Guess I better study some more about radio and that hyperw
ave stuff.
As wonderful and patient as the teaching unit was, Rety did not look forward to the drudgery ahead … nor to relying on the bland paste put out by the ancient food processor, once her supply of Streaker food ran out. The machine had taken the sample of fingernail cuticle she gave it, and after a few moments put out a substance that tasted exactly like cuticle.
Chirping tones interrupted her thoughts. A light flashed atop the holosim casing. Rety scooted over to the machine.
“Display on!”
A 3-D image erupted just above the floor plates. For a time, she made little sense of the image, which showed five small groups of amber points spiraling away from a tiny blue disk. It took moments to realize the dot was Jijo, and the decoy swarms had already left the planet far behind. The separation between the convoys also grew larger, with each passing dura.
One dot lagged behind, brighter than the others, gleaming red instead of yellow. It crept toward one of the fleeing swarms as she watched.
That must be the Jophur ship, she realized. Squinting closer, she saw that the big dot was trailed by a set of much tinier crimson pinpricks, almost too small to see, following like beads on a string.
The red symbol accelerated, slowly closing the distance to its intended prey.
Boy, I pity whoever’s in that swarm, when the stink rings catch up with ’em.
It took Rety a while longer to fathom the unpleasant truth.
That swarm was the one that contained her own ship.
The Jophur were coming for her first.
My usual luck, she complained, knowing better than to think the universe cared.
Dwer
EVERYTHING CHANGED.
One moment, he had been surrounded by sky. Mountains, clouds, and prairies stretched below his wicker gondola. The urrish balloon bulged and creaked overhead.
From the high northwest, a glittering object fell toward him, like a stoop raptor, unstoppable once it has chosen its prey.
That’s me, he thought, feeling transfixed, like a grass mouse who, caught in the open, knows there is no escape, and so has little choice but to watch the terrible beauty of Death on the wing.