Brightness Reef u-4

by David Brin

  He started forward at a crouch. Naturally, Mudfoot chose to tag along, scampering ahead, then circling repeatedly to stage mock-ambushes. Dwer’s jaw clenched, but he refused to give the beast the satisfaction of reacting. Ignore it. Maybe it’ll go away.

  That hadn’t worked so far. Jenin seemed thrilled to have Mudfoot as a mascot, while Danel found its tenacity intriguing. Lena had voted with the others, overruling Dwer’s wish to send it packing. “It weighs next to nothing,” she said. “Let it ride a donkey, so long as it fetches its own food and stays out of the way.”

  That’ it did, scrupulously avoiding Lena, posing for Danel’s pensive scrutiny, and purring contentedly when Jenin petted it by the campfire each evening.

  In my case, it acts as if being irritated were my bean’s desire.

  While creeping toward the wadi, Dwer kept mental notes on the lay of the land, the crackling consistency of the grass stems, the fickleness of the breeze. He did this out of professional habit, and also in case it ever became necessary to do this someday for real, pursuing the glaver herd with arrows nocked and ready. Ironically that would happen only in the event of good news. If word came from the Slope that all was well — that the gene-raiders had departed without wreaking the expected genocide — then this expedition would revert to a traditional Mission of Ingathering — a militia enterprise to rid this region of all glavers and humans, preferably by capture, but in the end by any means necessary.

  On the other hand, assuming the worst did happen out west and all the Six Races were wiped out, their small group would join Rety’s family of renegades as exiles in the wilderness. Under Danel’s guidance, they would tame Rety’s cousins and create simple, wise traditions for living in harmony with their new home.

  One of those traditions would be to forbid the sooners from ever again hunting glavers for food.

  That was the bloody incongruity Dwer found so hard to take, leaving little option or choice. Good news would make him a mass-killer. Contrariwise, horrible news would make him a gentle neighbor to glavers and men.

  Duty and death on one side. Death and duty on the other. Dwer wondered, Is survival really worth all this?

  From a small rise, he lifted the binoculars. Two families of glavers seemed to be feeding on the gallaiter, while others kept watch. Normally, such a juicy corpse would be cleaned down to a white skeleton, first by liggers or other large carnivores, then hickuls with heavy jaws for grinding bones, and finally by flyers known simply as vultures, though they looked like nothing in pictures from Old Earth.

  Even now, a pack of hickuls swarmed the far periphery of the clearing. A glaver rose up on her haunches and hurled a stone. The scavengers scattered, whining miserably.

  Ah. I see how they do it.

  The glavers had found a unique way to live on the steppe. Unable to digest grass or boo, or to eat red meat, they apparently used cadavers to attract hordes of insects from the surrounding area, which they consumed at leisure while others in the herd warded off all competition.

  They seemed to be enjoying themselves, holding squirmy things before their globelike eyes, mewling in approval, then catching them between smacking jaws. Dwer had never seen glavers act with such — enthusiasm. Not back where they were treated as sacred fools, encouraged to root at will through the garbage middens of the Six.

  Mudfoot met Dwer’s eyes with a revolted expression.

  Ifni, what pigs! All right if we charge in there now? Bust ’em up good, boss. Then herd ’em all back to civilization, like it or not?

  Dwer vowed to curb his imagination. Probably the noor simply didn’t like the smell.

  Still he chided Mudfoot in a low voice.

  “Who are you to find others disgusting, Mister lick-myself-all-over? Come on. Let’s tell the others, glavers haven’t gone carnivorous, after all. We have more running ahead, if we’re to make it out of this sting-grass by nightfall.”

  Asx

  More word arrives from the far south, sent by the smith of Mount Guenn Forge. The message was sparse and distorted, having come partly by courier, and partly conveyed between mountain peaks by inexperienced mirror-flashers, in the partly-restored semaphore system.

  Apparently, the alien forayers have begun visiting all the fishing hamlets and red qheuen rookeries, making pointed inquiries. They even landed in the water, far out at sea, to badger the crew of a dross-hauler, on its way home from holy labors at the Midden. Clearly the interlopers feel free to swoop down and interrogate our citizens wherever they dwell, with questions about “strange sights, strange creatures, or lights in the sea.”

  Should we make up a story, my rings? Should we fabulate some tale of ocean monsters to intrigue our unwanted guests and possibly stave off fate for a while?

  Assuming we dare, what would they do to us when they learn the truth?

  Lark

  All that morning, Lark worked next to Ling in a state of nervous tension, made worse by the fact that he did not dare let it show. Soon, with luck, he would have his best chance to line things up just right. It would be a delicate task though, doing spywork at the behest of the sages while also probing for information he needed, for reasons of his own.

  Timing would be everything.

  The Evaluation Tent bustled with activity. The whole rear half of the pavilion was stacked with cages made by qheuenish crafters out of local boo, filled with specimens brought from all over this side of Jijo. A staff of humans, urs, and hoon labored full-time to keep the animals fed, watered, and healthy, while several local g’Kek had shown remarkable talent at running various creatures through mazes or performing other tests, supervised by robots whose instructions were always in prim, flawless Galactic Two. It had been made clear to Lark that it was a mark of high distinction to be asked to work directly with one of the star-humans.

  His second airborne expedition had been even more exhausting than the first, a three-day voyage beginning with a zigzag spiral far out to sea, cruising just above the waves over the dark blue expanse of the Midden, then hopping from one island to the next along an extended offshore archipelago, sampling a multitude of wildly varied life-forms Lark had never seen before. To his surprise, it turned out to be a much more enjoyable trip than the first.

  For one thing, Ling grew somewhat less condescending as they worked together, appreciating each other’s skills. Moreover, Lark found it stirring to see what evolution had wrought during just a million fallow years, turning each islet into a miniature biological reactor, breeding delightful variations. There were flightless avians who had given up the air, and gliding reptiloids that seemed on the verge of earning wings. Mammiforms whose hair grew in horny protective spikes, and zills whose coatings of fluffy torg shimmered with colors never seen on their bland mainland cousins. Only later did he conclude that some of the diversity might have been enhanced from the start, by Jijo’s last legal tenants. Perhaps the Buyur seeded each isle with different genetic stock as part of a very long scale experiment.

  Ling and Besh often had to drag him away when it came time to leave a sampling site, while Kunn muttered irascibly by his console, apparently happy only when they were aloft. On landing, Lark was always first to rush out the hatch. For a while, all the dour brooding of his dreams lay submerged under a passion for discovery.

  Still, as they cruised home on the last leg — another unexplained back-and-forth gyration over open sea — he had found himself wondering. This trip was marvelous, but why did we go? What did they hope to accomplish? Even before humans left Earth, biologists knew — higher life-forms need room to evolve, preferably large continents. Despite the wild variety encountered on the archipelago, there wasn’t a single creature the star-folk could hope to call a candidate for uplift.

  Sure enough, when he rejoined Ling the next day, the outlander woman announced they would return to analyzing rock-stallers, right after lunch. Besh had already resumed her intensive investigation of glavers, clearly glad to be back to work on her best prospect.

&
nbsp; Glavers. The irony struck Lark. Yet he held back his questions, biding his time.

  Finally, Ling put down the chart they had been working on — duplicating much that already covered the walls of his Dolo Village study — and led him to the table where machines offered refreshments in the sky-human fashion. The light was very good there, so Lark gave a furtive nod to a small man cleaning some animal pens. The fair-haired fellow moved toward a stack of wooden crates, used for hauling foodstuffs for the raucous zoo of captive creatures.

  Lark positioned himself at the south end of the table so he would not block the man’s view of Ling, as well as Besh and everything beyond. Especially Ling. For this to work, he must try to keep her still for as long as possible.

  “Besh seems to think you’ve found yourselves a first-class candidate species.”

  “Mm?” The dark-eyed woman looked up from a complex machine lavishly dedicated to producing a single beverage — a bitter drink Lark had tried just once, appropriately named coughee.

  “Found what?” Ling stirred a steaming mug and leaned back against the edge of the table.

  Lark gestured at the subject Besh studied, complacently chewing a ball of sap while a contraption perched on its head, sifting neurons. There had been a spurt of excitement when Besh swore she heard the glaver “mimic” two spoken words. Now Besh seemed intent, peering through her microscope, guiding a brain probe with tiny motions of her hands, sitting rock still.

  “I take it glavers have what you seek?” Lark continued.

  Ling smiled. “We’ll know better when our ship returns and more advanced tests are made.”

  Out the corner of his eye, Lark saw the small man remove the cover from a hole in one side of a box. There was a soft sparkle of glass.

  “And when will the ship be back?” he asked, keeping Ling’s attention.

  Her smile widened. “I wish you folks would stop asking that. It’s enough to make one think you had a reason for caring. Why should it matter to you when the ship comes?”

  Lark blew his cheeks, hoon fashion, then recalled that the gesture would mean nothing to her. “A little warning would be nice, that’s all. It takes time to bake a really big cake.”

  She chuckled, more heartily than his joke deserved. Lark was learning not to take umbrage each time he suspected he was being patronized. Anyway, Ling wouldn’t be laughing when shipboard archives revealed that glavers — their prime candidate for uplift — were already Galactic citizens, presumably still flitting around their own backwater of space, in secondhand ships.

  Or would even the star-cruiser’s onboard records reveal it? According to the oldest scrolls, glavers came from an obscure race among the myriad sapient clans of the Five Galaxies. Maybe, like the g’Kek, they had already gone extinct and no one remembered them, save in the chilly recesses of the largest-sector branch Libraries.

  This might even be the moment foretold long ago by the final glaver sage, before humans came to Jijo. A time when restored innocence would shrivel their race, peel away their sins, and offer them a precious second chance. A new beginning.

  If so, they deserve better than to be adopted by a pack of thieves.

  “Suppose they prove perfect in every way. Will you take them with you when you go?”

  “Probably. A breeding group of a hundred or so.”

  Peripherally, he glimpsed the small man replacing the cover of the camera lens. With a satisfied smile, Bloor the Portraitist casually lifted the box, carrying it outside through the back tent flap. Lark felt a knot of tension release. Ling’s face might be a bit blurry in the photo, but her clothes and body stood a good chance of coming through, despite the long exposure time. By good fortune, Besh, the glaver, a robot, and a sleeping rock-staller had remained still the entire time. The mountain range, seen through the open entrance, would pin down location and season of the year.

  “And what of the rest?” he asked, relieved to have just one matter on his mind now.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what will happen to all the glavers you leave behind?”

  Her dark eyes narrowed. “Why should anything happen to them?”

  “Why indeed?” Lark shifted uncomfortably. The sages wanted to maintain the atmosphere of tense ambiguity for a while longer rather than confront the aliens directly over their plans. But he had already done the sages’ bidding by helping Bloor. Meanwhile, Harullen and the other heretics were pressuring Lark for answers. They must decide soon whether to throw their lot in with the zealots’ mysterious scheme.

  “Then… there is the matter of the rest of us.”

  “The rest of you?” Ling arched an eyebrow.

  “We Six. When you find what you seek, and depart — what happens to us?”

  She groaned. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked about this!”

  Lark stared. “Who—?”

  “Who hasn’t?” She blew an exasperated sigh. “At least a third of the patients we treat on clinic day sidle up afterward to pump us about how we’ll do it. What means do we plan to use when we finally get around to killing every sentient being on the planet! Will we be gentle? Or will it come as firebolts from heaven, on the day we depart? It gets so repetitious, sometimes I want to— agh!” She clenched her fist, frustration apparent on her normally composed features.

  Lark blinked. He had planned edging up to the very same questions.

  “Folks are frightened,” he began. “The logic of the situation—”

  “Yes, yes. I know,” Ling interrupted impatiently. “If we came to steal presapient life-forms from Jijo, we can’t afford to leave any witnesses. And especially, we can’t leave any native stock of the species we stole! Honestly, where do you people get such ideas?”

  From books, Lark almost answered. From the warnings of our ancestors.

  But, indeed, how well could those accounts be trusted? The most detailed had been lost to fire soon after humans arrived. Anyway, weren’t humans naive newcomers on the Galactic scene back in those days, worried to the point of paranoia? And wasn’t it the most paranoid who had boarded the Tabernacle, smuggling themselves to a far, forbidden world to hide?

  Might the danger be exaggerated?

  “Seriously, Lark, why should we fear anything a bunch of sooners might say about us? The odds of another Institute inspection team arriving at Jijo in under a hundred thousand years are very small. By the time one does, if any of you are still around, our visit will surely have dissolved into vague legends. We have no need to commit genocide — as if we could ever bring ourselves to do such a horrid thing, however strong the reason!”

  For the first time, Lark saw beyond Ling’s normal mask of wry sardonicism. Either she deeply believed what she was saying, or she was a very skilled actress.

  “Well then, how do you plan to adopt any presentient species you find here? Surely you can’t admit you picked them up on a restricted world.”

  “At last, an intelligent question.” She seemed relieved. “I confess, it won’t be easy. They must be planted in another ecosystem for starters, along with any symbionts they need, and other evidence to imply they’ve been there for some time. Then we must wait quite a while—”

  “A million years?”

  Ling’s smile returned, thinly. “Not quite so long. We have a couple of advantages going for us, you see. One is the fact that on most worlds the bio-record is a jumble of phylogenic anomalies. Despite rules to minimize harmful cross-flow, each time a new starfaring clan wins tenant rights to a world, they inevitably bring in their favorite plants and animals, along with a host of parasites and other hangers-on. Take glavers, for instance.” She nodded over at the subject. “I’m sure we’ll find records of places where similar genes flowed in the past.”

  Now it was Lark’s turn to smile, briefly. You don’t know the half of it.

  “So you see,” Ling went on. “It won’t matter much if a residual population stays on Jijo, as long as we have time to modify the borrowed s
tock, artificially enhancing the apparent rate of genetic divergence. And that will happen anyway when we begin the process of uplift.”

  So, Lark realized, even if the forayers eventually find glavers unsuitable, they might still make off with some other promising species and turn a nice profit from their crime.

  Moreover, they appeared completely comfortable seeing it as no crime at all.

  “And your other advantage?” he asked.

  “Ah, now that’s the real secret.” A shine seemed to enter the woman’s dark eyes. “You see, what it really comes down to is a matter of skill.”

  “Skill?”

  “On the part of our blessed patrons.” Now her words struck a reverent tone. “The Rothen are past masters at this art, you see. Witness their greatest success so far — the human race.”

  There it was again, mention of the mysterious clan that had the utter devotion of Ling, Rann, and the others. The star-humans had started out reticent. Ling had even made it clear that Rothen was not their real name. But with time she and the others grew more talkative, as if their pride could not be contained.

  Or else, because they had no fear the tale would spread.

  “Imagine. They managed to uplift humanity in complete secrecy, subtly altering the records of the Migration Institute so that our homeworld, Earth, remained untouched, on fallow status, for an incredible half a billion years! They even kept their gentle guidance unknown to our own ancestors, leaving them with the fantastic but useful illusion that they were uplifting themselves!”

  “Amazing,” Lark commented. He had never seen Ling so animated. He wanted to ask, “How could such feats be feasible?” But that might imply he doubted her, and Lark wanted this openness to continue. “Of course, self-uplift is impossible,” he prompted.

  “Completely. It’s been known since the fabled days of the Progenitors. Evolution can bring a species all the way up to pre-sapience, but the final leap needs help from another race that’s already made it. This principle underlies the life-cycle of all oxygen-breathing races in the Five Galaxies.”