by David Brin
Death came streaking toward him.
He felt an explosion, a shrill brilliance…
… and found himself here.
A gilded haze surrounded Dwer as he took stock.
I’m alive.
The sensations of a young, strong body accompanied irksome itches and the sting of recent scrapes. His clothes were as they had been. So was the gondola, for that matter — a basket woven out of dried river reeds — its contents undamaged.
The same could not be said of the balloon itself. The great gasbag lay collapsed in a curved heap of blur cloth, its upper half apparently cleaved off. Remnant folds lay spread across the interior of what Dwer came to realize must be a prison of some sort.
A spherical jail. He now saw it clearly. A sphere whose inner surface gave off a pale, golden light, confusing to the eye at first.
“Huh!”
To Dwer’s surprise, his principal reaction was intrigue. In those final moments, as the missile fell, he had bid farewell to life. Now each added moment was profit. He could spend it as he chose.
He decided on curiosity.
Dwer clambered out of the basket and eased his moccasins onto the gold surface. He half expected it to be slick, but the material instead clung to his soles, so that he had to pull with some effort each time he took a step. After a few tentative strides, he came to yet another startling revelation.
“Down” is wherever I happen to he standing!
From Dwer’s new position, it looked as if the gondola was tilted almost sideways, about to topple onto him.
He squatted, looking down at the “floor” between his legs, riding out the expected wave of disorientation. It wasn’t too bad.
I’ll adapt. It’ll be like learning to ice-walk across a glacier. Or probing face caves at the end of a rope, dangling over the Desolation Cliffs.
Then he realized something. Looking down, he saw more than just a sticky golden surface. Something glittered beneath it. Like a dusting of tiny diamonds. Gemstones, mixed with dark loam.
He leaned closer, cupping hands on both sides of his eyes to keep out stray light.
All at once Dwer fathomed; the diamonds were stars.
Lark
CROUCHING BEHIND AN AROMATIC OBELISK, TWO humans had an unparalleled chance to view events in the Jophur control room.
Lark would much rather they had stayed in the quiet, safe “observation chamber.”
Towering stacks of sappy toruses loomed nearby, puffing steam as each Jophur worked at a luminous instrument station. The density of smells made Lark want to gag. It must be worse for Ling, who hadn’t grown up near traeki. Yet she seemed enthralled to be here.
Well, this was a terrific idea, he groused mentally, recalling the impulse that had sent them charging into a pit of foes.
Hey, look! The Jophur seem stunned! Let’s rush down from this nice, safe hiding place and sabotage their instruments while they’re out!
Only the Jophur didn’t stay out long enough. By the time he and Ling made it halfway across the wide control room, several ring piles abruptly started puffing and swaying as they roused from their torpor. While machine voices reported status to their reviving masters, the two humans barely managed to leap behind this cluster of spirelike objects, roughly the shape of idealized Jophur, but twice as tall and made of some moist, fibrous substance.
Lark dropped down to the floor. All he wanted was to scrunch out of sight, close his eyes, and make objective reality go away.
Responding to his racing heartbeat, the purple ring twitched in its cloth bag. Lark put his hand on it and the thing eventually calmed down.
“I think I can tell what’s going on!”
Lark glanced up the twin, tanned columns of Ling’s legs, and saw that she was leaning around one of the soggy pillars, staring at the Jophur data screens. Reaching up, he seized her left wrist and yanked her down. She landed on her bare bottom beside him.
“Make like vermin,” was his advice. On matters of concealment and survival, Ling had a lot to learn from a Jijoan sooner.
“Okay, brother rat.” She nodded with surprising cheerfulness, then went on eagerly. “Some of their screens are set to spectra I can’t grok. But I could tell we’re in space now, racing toward Izmunuti.”
A wave of nausea struck Lark — a sensation akin to panic. Unlike his siblings, who used to talk and dream about star-flight when they were little, he had never wanted to leave Jijo. The very thought made him feel sick. Sensing his discomfort, Ling took his head and stroked it, but that did not stop her from talking, describing a complex hunt through space that Lark failed to visualize, no matter how he tried.
“Apparently there must have been a fleet of ships on or near Jijo,” she explained. “Though I can’t imagine how they got there. Maybe they came snooping from Izmunuti and the Jophur are chasing them away. Anyway, the mystery fleet seems to have split into five groups, all of them heading separately for the flare star. And from there to the transfer point, I suppose.
“There’s also a couple of small objects trailing behind this ship … connected to it, as far as I can tell, by a slender force string. I don’t know what their purpose is. But give me time.…”
Lark wanted to laugh out loud. He would give Ling the world. The universe! But right now all he really wanted was their nest. Their little green hideaway, where sweet fruits dangled within reach and no one could find them.
Lark was starting to push the vertigo away at last, when a noise blared from across the room.
“What’s that?” he asked, sitting up. He did not try to stop Ling from rising partway and peering around for a look.
“Weapons release,” she explained. “The Jophur are firing missiles at the nearest squadron. They must be pretty confident, because they sent just one for each ship.”
Lark silently wished the new aliens luck, whoever they were. If any of them got away, they might report what they saw to the Galactic Migration Institute. Although Jijo’s Six Races had lived in fear of the law for two thousand years, the intervention of neutral judges would be far better than any fate the Jophur planned to mete out, in private.
“The small ships are trying evasive maneuvers, but it’s doing no good,” Ling said. “The missiles are closing in.”
Rety
SHE CURSED THE DROSS SHIP, FOR NOT GIVING HER control.
She cursed Gillian Baskin and the dolphins, for putting her in a position where she had no choice but to escape from their incompetence into this impossible trap.
She cursed the Jophur for sending missiles after this decoy flotilla, instead of expertly finding the right prey.
Above all, Rety swore an oath at herself. For in the end, she had no one else to blame.
Her teaching unit explained the symbols representing those deadly arrows, now clearly visible in the display, catching up fast.
One by one, the ships behind hers met their own avenging predators. Surprisingly, the amber pinpoints did not snuff out, but turned crimson instead. Each then drifted backward, toward a meeting with the big red dot.
The Jophur did not swallow their captives. That would take too much time. Instead, they were snagged at the end of a chain — like a tadpole’s tail — that waved behind the mighty ship.
Rety wondered. Maybe they don’t want to kill, after all. Maybe they just want prisoners!
If so, Rety would be prepared. She held yee with one arm, and the teaching unit with the other, setting it to begin teaching her Galactic Two — Jophur dialect.
When her own missile arrived, Rety was calmer than she expected.
“Don’t worry, yee,” she said, stroking her little husband. “We’ll find somethin’ they want, an’ make a deal. Just you wait an’ see.”
With desperate confidence, she held on as the ancient Buyur vessel suddenly quivered and shook. In moments, the motors’ grating drone cut off … and then so did the downward tug of the deck beneath her. In its place, a gentler pull seemed to draw her toward the nose of the
disabled ship.
The lights went out. But Rety could see a bit. Stepping and sliding carefully along the slanted floor and walls, she followed the source of illumination to an unobstructed viewing port, where she peered outside and saw a world of pale yellow dawn.
yee commented dryly.
“beats being dead, i guess.”
Rety agreed. “I guess.” Then she shrugged.
“At least we’ll see, one way or t’other.”
Gillian
I FOUND A LIBRARY REFERENCE. THEY ARE CALLED capture boxes,” the Niss explained. “This weapon offers a clever solution to the Jophur dilemma.”
“How do you figure?” Gillian asked.
“We thought we had them in an awkward situation, where they must come close and inspect every decoy in order to find us. A cumbersome, time-consuming process.
“But this way, the Jophur need only get near enough to dispatch special missiles. They can then move on, dragging a string of captives behind them.”
“Won’t all that additional mass slow them down?” asked Kaa, the pilot.
“Yes, and that works in our favor. Alas, not enough to make up for the advantage this technique gives them.”
Gillian shook her head. “Too bad we didn’t know about this in time to incorporate it in our plans.”
The Niss answered with a defensive tone. “Great clans can access weaponry files spanning a billion years of Galactic history.”
Silence reigned on the bridge, until Sara Koolhan spoke, her voice transposed by the amplifying faceplate of her helmet.
“What happens if we get caught by a missile?”
“It creates a field related to the toporgic cage your Six Races found enveloping the Rothen ship. Of course that one was meters thick, and missiles cannot carry that much pseudo-material. The chief effect of a capture box is to suppress digital cognizance.”
Sara looked confused, so Gillian explained.
“Digital computers are detectable at a distance, and can be suppressed by field-effect technologies. A principal reason why organic life-forms dominate the Five Galaxies, instead of machines.
“Unfortunately, this means our decoys can be disabled easily, by enclosing them in a thin shell of warped spacetime.”
“Indeed, it seems an ideal weapon to use against resurrected starships lacking crews. The Jophur may be malign and limited in many ways, but they do not lack for skill or reasoning power.”
Sara nodded. “You mean the method won’t work as well against Streaker?”
“Exactly,” Gillian said. “We’ll prepare our computers to stand a temporary shutdown without inconvenience—”
“Speak for yourself,” the Niss muttered.
“As soon as the capture box surrounds us, organic crew members can use simple tools to dissolve it from the inside. Estimated period of shutdown, Niss?”
The hologram whirled.
“I wish we had better data from the expedition the sooners sent to the Rothen vessel. They reported major quantum effects from a toporgic layer meters thick.
“But the Jophur missiles will cast thin bubbles. If prepared, crews should burst us free in mere minutes.”
A happy sigh escaped Kaa and several dolphins. But then the Niss Machine went on.
“Unfortunately, when we pop the bubble, it will alert the Jophur which captured vessel contains living prey. After that, our restored freedom will be brief indeed.”
Dwer
THE STUFF FELT STRANGE. IT SEEMED TO REPEL HIS hand slightly, until he got within a couple of centimeters.
Then it pulled. Neither effect was overwhelming. He could yank his hand back fairly easily.
He could not quite place why it was eerily familiar.
Dwer walked all the way around his circular cage, stopping on occasion to bend down and examine the starscape beyond. He recognized most of the constellations, except for one patch that had always been invisible from the Slope. So that’s what the southern sky is like. Undimmed by dust or atmosphere, the entire Dandelion Cluster lay before him, a vast unwinking spectacle. It would be even more fantastic without the filmy golden barrier in the way.
Thank Ifni for that harrier, he reminded himself. There is no air out there.
In one direction lay a tremendously bright star he did not recognize at first.
Then he knew … it was the sun, much diminished, and getting smaller all the time.
In the opposite direction lay Izmunuti’s fierce eye. The red glare grew more pronounced, until he began to make out an actual disk. Yet he realized it must still be farther away than the sun. Izmunuti was said to be a giant among stars.
In time he noticed other objects. Not stars or nebulae, but gleaming dots. At first they all seemed rather distant. But over the course of a midura, they drew ever closer, rounded shapes that revealed themselves more by their glimmering rims, occulting the constellations, than for any brightness they themselves put out.
One of them — a rippled sphere on the side toward Izmunuti — had to be a starship. It loomed larger with each passing dura. Soon he recognized it as the behemoth that had twice crossed the sky over the Poison Plain, shaking his hapless balloon with each passage.
When Dwer crossed his prison to peer through the membrane on the other side, he saw a line of yellowish globes, even closer than the starship. Their color made him realize, They’re other captives, like me.
Pressing close to the barrier, a tingle coursed his scalp and spine. He felt similarities to when the Danik robot sent its fields through his body, changing his nervous system in permanent, still-uncertain ways.
Well, I was unusual even before that. For instance, no one else I know ever talked to a mulc spider.…
Dwer yanked his head back, recalling at last what this stuff reminded him of. The fluid used by the mad old spider of the mountains — One-of-a-Kind — to seal its victims away, storing its treasured collections against the ravages of time. Months back, a coating of that stuff had nearly smothered him, until he escaped the spider’s trap.
A strange sensation came over Dwer. An odd idea.
I could talk to spiders, not just in the mountains, but the one in the swamp, too.
I wonder if that means …
Once again, he put his hand against the golden material, pushing through the initial resistance, pressing his fingertips ahead. The resistance was springy. The material seemed adamant.
But Dwer let his mind slide into the same mode of thinking that used to open him to communion with mulc beings. Always before, he had felt that the spider was the one doing most of the work, but now he realized, It’s my own talent. My own gift. And by the Holy Egg, I think I can—
Something gave way. Resistance against his fingertips suddenly vanished and they slipped through, as if penetrating some greasy fluid.
Abrupt cold struck the exposed hand, plus a feeling as if a thousand vampire ants were trying to drink his uncovered veins through straws. Dwer jerked back his arm and it popped out, the fingers red and numb, but mostly undamaged. The membrane flowed back instantly, never leaving an opening to space.
Lucky me, he thought.
When Dwer next checked, the starship had grown to mammoth size. A great bull beast, bearing down on him rapidly, with a hunter’s complacent confidence.
I’m a fish on a line. It’s reeling me in!
On the other side, the captive globes bobbed almost touching, like toy balloons gathered along an invisible string. The separating distances diminished rapidly.
Dwer sat and thought for a while.
Then he started gathering supplies.
The Sages
PHWHOONDAU LED THE NEW SEXTET, COMMENC-ing the serenade with a low, rolling umble from his resonating throat sac.
Knife-Bright Insight followed by rubbing a myrliton drum with her agile tongue, augmenting this with syncopated calliope whistles from all five leg vents.
Ur-Jah then joined in, lifting her violus against a fold in her long neck, raising stringed harm
onies with the double bow.
After that, by seniority, the new sages for traeki, human, and g’Kek septs added their own contributions, playing for a great ovoid-shaped chunk of wounded stone. The harmonies were rough at first, but soon they melded into the kind of union that focused the mind.
So far, the assembly was unexceptional. Other groups of six had performed for the Egg, over the course of a hundred years. Some of them more gifted and musical.
Only this time things were fundamentally different. It was no group of six, after all.
Two other Jijoan types were present.
The first was a glaver.
The devolved race always had an open invitation to participate, but it was centuries since any glaver took part in rituals of the Commons — long before Earthlings arrived, and certainly before the coming of the Egg.
But glavers had been acting strangely for months. And today, a small female came out of the brush and began slogging up the Pilgrimage Path, just behind Phwhoondau, as if she had the same destination in mind. Now her huge eyes glistened as the music swelled, and strange mewling noises emerged from her grimaced mouth. Sounds vaguely reminiscent of words. With her agile forked tail, she waved a crude rattle made of a stretched animal skin, with stones shaking inside.
Not much of an instrument, but after all, her kind were out of practice.
What must it take, Phwhoondau pondered, to draw them back from the bliss of Redemption’s Path?
Lounging on a nearby boulder, an eighth creature paused licking himself now and then to survey the proceedings. The noor-tytlal had two blemishes on an otherwise jet-black pelt — white patches under each eye — adding to its natural expression of skeptical disdain.
The sages were not fooled. It had arrived just after the others, gaunt, bedraggled, and tired, having run hard for several days. Only urgency, not complacent inquisitiveness could have driven a noor to strive so. The creature’s mobile ears flicked restlessly, and pale, spiky hairs waved behind the skull, belying its air of feigned nonchalance.