by David Brin
Now the secret was out. Everyone knew these were clients of the legendary Tymbrimi. Moreover, their patrons had given the tytlal a boon as uniquely personal as music.
Phwhoondau noticed a soft agitation start to form above the insouciant creature, as if a pocket of air were thickening, and beginning to shimmer. The sages altered their harmony to resonate with the throbbing disturbance, helping it grow as a look of hesitant surprise spread across the sleek, noorlike face.
Reluctant or not, he was now part of the pattern.
Part of the Council of Eight.
In the narrow, resonant confines of the Egg’s abode, they made their art, their music.
And soon, another presence began to make itself known.
Ewasx
BEHOLD, MY RINGS, HOW WELL THE CHASE PROGRESSES!
Already one fugitive convoy is liquidated, its component vessels enjoined to our train of captives. While this growing impediment slows the Polkjhy from engaging her best speed of pursuit, our tactics stacks compute that all but the very last convoy should be in reach before the storms of Izmunuti are near.
To help speed progress, the CaptainLeader has ordered that the string of captive ships be reeled in closer behind us. When robots can board them, we will be able to cast aside the decoys, one by one.
Now the detections stack reports data arriving from Jijo, the planet behind us.
“More digital cognizance traces! More engine signs!”
But the CaptainLeader rules that this is but a futile attempt to distract us from our pursuit. The Earthling vessel may have left salvaged wrecks behind, to turn themselves on after a timed delay. Or else living confederates have acted on Jijo to set off this ruse. It does not matter. Once the fleeing vessels are in tow, we will be in between the Earthers and Izmunuti.
Things would be very different if there were more than one route in or out of this system. But matters are quite convenient for one capital ship to blockade Jijo effectively.
There will be no more breakouts.
That much is true. Yet, I/we hesitate to point out that this may not yet be the end. Indeed, the wolflings may have sent us on a “wild-goose chase,” pursuing only robot ships while they use this respite to cache themselves in new hiding places, deep beneath Jijo’s confused waters. They may even abandon their vessel, taking their vital information ashore, where we will only find it by slay-sifting the entire ecosystem!
The Priest-Stack will not permit so extreme a violation of Galactic law, of course. If such a drastic policy proves necessary, the priest may have to be dismantled, and the watcher-observer destroyed. Then we would be committed irrevocably. In case of failure, we would be labeled bandits and bring shame upon the clan.
How is it possible even to contemplate such measures?
Because all auguries show, with growing certainty, that a Time of Changes has already commenced upon the Five Galaxies. Hence all the desperate activity by so many great clans.
If the Institutes are indeed about to fall, there will be no one to investigate crimes committed on this world.
DO NOT TREMBLE SO, MY RINGS. Have I not assured you, repeatedly, that the mighty Jophur are fated to prevail? And that you/I am destined to be useful toward that end?
Crime and punishment need not be considerations, if we are the ones who will make the new rules.
Anyway, it may not prove necessary to return to Jijo. If the prey ship truly lies before us, the high ambitions of our alliance may soon be within tentacle reach.
We near the second convoy. And now missiles spring forth.
Dwer
WITH THE MIGHTY STARSHIP LOOMING CLOSER ON one side, he had to wait in frustration while the yellow beads clustered on the other, coming together with disheartening slowness. His preparations made, Dwer raced back and forth to check each direction.
In time, he learned a technique to make each crossing go much quicker — kicking off from the wall and flying straight across the open interior.
The Jophur vessel impended, mammothly immense. When its dark mass blocked nearly half the starscape, a door of some sort opened in its curved flank and several tiny octagonal shapes emerged, floating toward Dwer’s prison.
He recognized the silhouettes.
Battle robots.
They took their time drifting closer, and he realized there was still a large span to cross. At least twenty arrowflights. Still, only duras remained until they arrived.
On returning to the rear of the prison sphere, he breathed a sigh of relief. The captive bubbles were touching now! Yellow spheres, they ranged widely in size, but none was anywhere near as large as the battleship. Most were much larger than his own little ball.
Dwer sought the place where his bubble touched the second in line. A low drumming sound carried through each time the surfaces pressed together.
He zipped up the coverall the Streaker crew had given him — a fine garment that covered all but his feet, hands, and head. It had never occurred to him to ask for more.
But right now space gloves and a helmet would be nice.
No matter. The next time the spheres touched, he concentrated for the right frame of mind, and made his move.
Sara
SHE LEFT THE CONTROL ROOM WHEN HER SKIN started puckering from too much exposure to fizzy water. Anyway, there seemed no point hanging around. The same news could be had in her comfortable suite — once the home of a great Earthling sage named Ignacio Metz.
Sara dried herself and changed into simple shipboard garments, snug pants and a pullover shirt that posed no mystery even to an unsophisticated sooner. They were wonders of softness and comfort nevertheless.
When she asked the room to provide a tactical display, vivid 3-D images burst forth, showing that the Jophur dreadnought had once again chosen the wrong decoy swarm, and was just finishing firing missiles. Meanwhile, its string of earlier victims merged with the red glow, as if it were gobbling them one by one.
At her voice command, the viewscreen showed Streaker’s goal, the red giant star, magnified tremendously, the whirling filamentary structure of its inflamed chromosphere extending beyond the width of any normal solar system. Izmunuti’s bloated surface seethed, sending out tongues of ionized gas, rich with the heavy elements that made up Sara’s own body.
Purofsky thinks the Buyur had ways to meddle with a star.
Even without that awesome thought, it was a stirring sight to behold. Past those raging fires had come all the sneakships that deposited their illicit seed on Jijo, along with the varied hopes of each founding generation. Their aspirations had ranged from pure survival, for humans and g’Keks, all the way to the hoonish ancestors who apparently came a long way in order to play hooky.
All those hopes will come crashing down, unless Streaker can make it to Izmunuti’s fires.
Sara still had no idea how Gillian Baskin hoped to save Jijo. Would she let the enemy catch up and then blow this ship up, in order to take the Jophur out, as well?
A brave ploy, but surely the enemy would be prepared for that, and take precautions.
Then what?
It seemed Sara would find out when the time came.
She felt bad about the kids — Huck, Alvin, and the others. But they were adults now, and volunteers.
Anyway, the sages say it’s a good omen for members of all six races to be present when something vital is about to happen.
Sara’s own reasons for coming went beyond that.
Purofsky said one of us had to take the risk — either him or me — and go with Streaker, on the slim chance that she makes it.
One of us should try to find out if it’s true. What we figured out about the Buyur.
All her life’s work, in mathematical physics and linguistics, seemed to agree with Purofsky’s conclusion.
Jijo was no accident.
Oh, if she delved into psychology, she might find other motives underlying her insistence on being the one to go.
To continue taking care of Emerson, perh
aps?
But the wounded starman was now with those who loved him. Shipmates he had risked death alongside, many times before. After overcoming initial shame, Emerson had found ways to be useful. He did not need Sara anymore.
No one really needs me.
Face it. You’re going out of curiosity.
Because you are Melina’s child.
Because you want to see what happens next.
Dwer
IT WAS A GOOD THING HE REMEMBERED ABOUT AIR.
There would be none on the other side.
By twisting through the barrier, writhing, and making his body into a hoop, Dwer managed to create a tunnel opening from his prison sphere into the next. A brief hurricane swiftly emptied the atmosphere from his former cell until the pressure equalized. He then pushed through, letting the opening close behind him.
Dwer’s ears popped and his pulse pounded. The trick had severely diluted the available air, taking him from near-sea-level pressure to the equivalent of a mountaintop in just half a dura. Speckles danced before his eyes. His body would not last long at this rate.
There was another reason to hurry. As he departed the sphere containing the balloon remnants, he had seen shadows touch beyond the far side. Jophur robots. Come to inspect their first captive.
His gear had settled against the golden surface of his new cell. Dwer grabbed the makeshift pack and moved toward the only possible place of refuge — the nose of the imprisoned starship.
It looked nothing like the massive Jophur vessel, but resembled a pair of spoons, welded face-to-face, with the bulbous end forward. Fortunately, the enclosure barely cleared the ship, fore and aft. A bank of dim windows nearly touched the golden surface.
And there’s a door!
Dwer gathered strength, flexed his legs, and launched toward the beckoning airlock. He sailed across the gap and barely managed to snag a protruding bracket with the tip of his left hand.
If this takes some kind of secret code, I’m screwed.
Fortunately, the dolphin work crews had a standard procedure for entering and converting Buyur wrecks. He had accompanied them on some trips, lending a hand. Dwer was glad to see the makeshift locking mechanism still in place, set to work in a fashion that even a Jijoan hunter might understand.
To open … turn knob.
Dwer’s luck held. It rotated.
If there’s air inside, the wind will blow out. If there’s none, I’ll be blown in … and die.
He had to brace his feet against the hull and pull in order to get the hatch moving. Vision narrowed to a tunnel and Dwer knew he was just duras away from blacking out.…
A sudden breeze rushed at him, whistling with force from the ship’s interior.
Stale air. Stinky, stale, dank, wonderful air.
Gillian
THE BAD NEWS WAS NOT EXACTLY UNANTICIPATED. Still, she had hoped for better.
As the Jophur ship finished adding another swarm of decoys to its prison chain, the cruiser shifted its attention elsewhere, accelerating to pursue the next chosen group.
Soon the truth became clear.
Streaker’s luck had just run out.
Well, they chose right this time, she thought. It had to happen, sooner or later.
Streaker was square in the enemy’s sights, with seven mictaars of hyperspace yet to cross before reaching safety.
The Sages
THERE ARE OTHERS ON JIJO NOW, PHWHOON-DAU thought, knowing that even eight would not be enough for long. In time, the new dolphin colonists must be invited to join.
I have read in Earth lore about cetaceans and their glorious Whale Dream. What music might we make, when these strange beings add their voices to our chorus?
And after that, who knew? Lorniks, chimps, and zookirs? The Kiqui creatures the dolphins brought from far away? A mélange of vocalizations, then. Perhaps a civilization worthy of the name.
All that lay ahead, a glimmering possibility, defying all likelihood or reason. For now, the council was made of those who had earned their place by surviving on Jijo. Partaking of the world. Raising offspring whose atoms all came from the renewing crust of their mother planet. This trait pervaded the musical harmony of the Eight.
We inhale Jijo, with each and every breath.
So Phwhoondau umbled in the deep, rolling vibrations of his throat sac.
We drink her waters. At death, our loved ones put us into her abyss. There we join the patterned rhythms of the world.
The presence that joined them was at once both familiar and awesome. The council felt it throb in each note of the flute or myrliton. It permeated the clatter of the glaver’s rattle, and the wry empathy glyphs of the tytlal.
For generations, their dreams had been brushed by the Egg. Its soft cadences repaid each pilgrimage, helping to unite the Commons.
But during all those years, the sages had known. It only sleeps. We do not know what will happen when it wakes.
Was the Egg only rousing now because the council finally had its missing parts? Or had the cruel Jophur ray shaken it from slumber?
Phwhoondau liked to think that his old friend Vubben was responsible.
Or else, perhaps, it was simply time.
The echoes steadily increased. Phwhoondau felt them with his feet, reverberating beneath the surface, building to a crescendo. An accretion of pent-up power. Of purpose.
Such energy. What will happen when it is liberated? His sac pulsed with umbles, painful and mightier than he ever produced before.
Phwhoondau envisioned the mountain caldera blowing up with titanic force, spilling lava down the tortured aisles of Festival Glade.
As it turned out, the release came with nothing more physical than a slight trembling of the ground.
And yet they all staggered when it flew forth, racing faster than the speed of thought.
The Slope
TO NELO — STANDING IN THE RUINS OF HIS PAPER mill, exhausted and discouraged after a long homeward slog — it came as a rapid series of aromas.
The sweet-sour odor of pulped cloth, steaming as it poured across the drying screens.
The hot-vital skin smell of his late wife, whenever her attention turned his way after a long day spent pouring herself into their peculiar children.
The smell of Sara’s hair, when she was three years old … addictive as any drug.
Nelo sat down hard on a shattered wall remnant, and though the feelings passed through him for less than a kidura, something shattered within as he broke down and wept.
“My children …” Nelo moaned. “Where are they?” Something told him they were no longer of his world.
To Fallon — staked down and spread-eagled in an underground roul shambler’s lair, waiting for death — the sensation arrived as a wave of images. Memories, yanked back whole.
The mysterious spike trees of the Sunrise Plain, farther east than anyone had traveled in a century.
Ice floes of the northwest, great floating mountains with snowy towers, sculpted by the wind.
The shimmering, teasing phantasms of the Spectral Flow … and the oasis of Xi, where the gentle Illias had invited him to live out his days, sharing their secrets and their noble horses.
Fallon did not cry out. He knew Dedinger and his fanatics were listening, just beyond this cave in the dunes. When the beast returned home, they would get no satisfaction from the former chief scout of the Commons.
Still, the flood of memory affected him. Fallon shed a single tear of gratitude.
A life is made whole only in its own eyes. Fallon looked back on his, and called it good.
To Uriel — interrupted in a flurry of new projects — the passing wave barged through as an unwelcome interruption. A waste of valuable time. Especially when all her apprentices laid down their tools and stared into space, uttering low, reverent moans, or sighs, or whinnies.
Uriel knew it for what it was. A blessing. To which she had a simple reply.
So what?
She just had too much on he
r mind to squander duras on things that were out of her control.
In GalTwo she commented, dryly.
“Glad I am, that you have finally de
cided.
Pleased that you, O long-lived Egg,
have deigned to act, at last.
But forgive me if I do not pause long to exult.
For many of us, life is far too short.”
To Ewasx — moments later and half a light-year away — it came as a brief, agonizing vibration in the wax. Ancient wax, accumulated over many jaduras by the predecessor stack — an old traeki sage.
Involuntary steam welled up the shared core of the stack, bypassing the master ring to waft as a compact cloud from the topmost opening.
Praised be destiny.…
Other ring stacks drew away from Ewasx, unnerved by the singular aroma tics, accented with savage traces of Jijoan soil.
But the senior Jophur Priest-Stack responded automatically to the reverent smoke, bowing and adding: Amen…
Lark
LARK, YOUR HAND!”
He trembled, fighting to control the fit that came suddenly, causing him to snatch the amulet from around his neck. He clutched the stone tight, even when it began to burn his flesh.
Crouched behind a set of strange obelisks — their only shelter in the spacious Jophur control room — Lark dared not cry out from pain. He fought not to thrash about as Ling used both hands to pry at his clenched fist. At last, the stone sliver fell free, tumbling across his lap to the floor, leaving a stench of singed flesh. Even now, the heat kept building. They tried backing away, but the stone’s temperature continued rising until a fierce glow made it hard to see.
“No!” Lark whispered harshly as Ling dived toward the blaze, reaching for the thong. To his surprise, enough was still attached for her to grab a loop and whirl it once, then twice around her head, as if slinging a piece of flaming sun.
She let go, hurling Lark’s talisman in an arc across the busy chamber, toward the center of the room.