by David Brin
Lark sighed. “Aren’t you supposed to be guarding your boss?”
“Robots do the real guarding — as if we have anything to fear. Ro-kenn gave Rann and me permission to look around while he talks to your sages, preparing them for what’s about to happen.”
Lark stopped so suddenly, the next pilgrim in line had to stumble to avoid him. He took Ling’s elbow. “What are you talking about? What’s about to happen?”
Ling’s smile carried a touch of the old sardonicism.
“You mean you haven’t guessed by now? Oh, Lark. Think about the coincidences.
“For two thousand years sooners of various races lived on this world, squabbling and slowly devolving. Then humans came and everything changed. Though you started few and helpless, soon your culture became the most influential on the planet.
“Then, just a few generations after your arrival, a miracle suddenly erupts out of the ground, this spirit guide you all revere.”
“You mean the Egg,” he said, brow furrowing.
“Exactly. Did you really think the timing accidental? Or that your patrons had forgotten you?”
“Our patrons.” Lark frowned. “You mean… you’re implying the Rothen knew all along—”
“About the voyage of the Tabernacle? Yes! Ro-kenn explained it to us this morning, and now everything makes sense! Even our own arrival on Jijo is no accident, dear Lark. Oh, our mission is partly to seek deserving presapients, to join our clan. But more than that, we came for you. Because the experiment is finished!”
“Experiment?” He felt an involuntary disorientation.
“An arduous trial for your small branch of humanity, castaway and forgotten — or so you thought — on a savage world. It sounds harsh, but the road of uplift is hard when a race is destined for the heights our patrons plan for us.”
Lark’s mind whirled. “You mean our ancestors were meant to sneak down to Jijo? As part of an ordeal that’s supposed to… transform us somehow? The Egg was — is — part of some Rothen scheme—”
“Design,” Ling corrected, a kind of elation invading her voice. “A grand design, Lark. A test, which your folk passed brilliantly, I’m told, growing stronger, smarter, and more noble even as this awful place tried to grind you down.
“And now the time has come to graft this successful offshoot back onto the main trunk, helping all of humanity to grow, thrive, and better face the challenges of a dangerous universe.”
Her grin was joyful, exuberant.
“Oh, Lark, when I spoke to you last, I thought we might be taking a few human castaways with us, when we go.
“But now the news is pure and grand, Lark.
“Ships are coming. So many ships!
“It is time to bring you all back home.”
Asx
Astonishment! This news bellows through our waxy cavities, driving out the Egg’s pattern/resonance with acrid vapors of surprise.
we/i/we/i/we… cannot coalesce as Asx. Nor contemplate these tidings with any sense of unity.
The worst rumors of recent months — spread by irredentist urrish chiefs and bitter gray queens — claimed that humans might abandon Jijo, departing with their sky-cousins, leaving the other five to fester and be damned.
Yet even that dark fantasy left one solace to the rest of us.
One comfort.
The Egg.
Now, we are told—
(disbelieve it!)
(but how?)
—that the holy ovoid was never ours! Only humans’, all along! Its dual purpose — to guide Earthlings toward greatness while at the same time soothing, domesticating we other Five!
Taming the other septs, in order to keep humans safe during their brief stay on Jijo.
Now this is topped by insulting “kindness,” as Ro-kenn says the Egg will be left as a parting gift.
Left as a token,
a trifle,
a gratuity for our pains.
Left to shame us all!
Pause, my rings. Pause. Ensure fairness. Stroke vapors across the wax drippings. Remember.
Did not Lester Cambel seem as dismayed as the rest of us?
Did not all the sages resolve to conceal this news? Lest rumors do great harm?
It is useless. Even now, eavesdropping citizens rush off, dispersing exaggerated versions of what they overheard, casting a poison up and down the chain of pilgrims, shattering the rhythms that had been uniting us.
Yet from the majestic Rothen, we sense cheerful un-awareness that anything is wrong!
Is this what it means to be a god? To know not what harm you do?
Ripples of infection spread along the twisty trail. The worship-chant breaks apart, dissolving into many twelves of muttering individuals.
Now, from my/our highest peak, we perceive another disturbance, propagating from the front of the procession! The two disruptions meet like waves on a storm-tossed lake, rolling through each other in a great spume of noise.
“The way is blocked,” a galloping messenger cries, hastening back with word. “A rope barrier bars the path, with a banner upon it!”
NO INFIDEL DESECRATION
KEEP SKY FILTH AWAY
JIJO WILL NOT BE MOCKED!
This can only be the work of zealots.
Frustration spins round our core. The fanatics chose a fine time to make their gesture!
We sages must go see. Even Vubben makes haste, and my basal segments labor to keep up. Ro-kenn strides with graceful ease, seeming unperturbed.
And yet, my rings, is this variance we observe, in Ro-kenn’s aura? Through our rewq, we sense discrepancy between parts of his face, as if the Rothen’s outward calm masks a canker of seething wrath.
Can rewq read so much from an alien form we just met, this very day? Is it because i have one of the few older rewq, surviving from earlier days? Or do we notice this because traeki are tuned to perceive disunity of self?
Ahead — the defiant banner.
Above — perched on cliffs, shouting youths brandish foolish (but brave!) weapons.
Below — Phwhoon-dau, with his booming voice, calls to them, asking them to state their demands.
Their reply? Echoing down canyons and steam-fumaroles — a command that the aliens depart! Never to return. Or else suffer vengeance by the greatest force on Jijo.
!?!?
The zealots threaten the Rothen with the Egg?
But did not Ro-kenn just claim the great ovoid as his to command?
Across the Rothen’s visage flows what i interpret as cool amusement. He calls the zealots’ bluff.
“Shall we see who has the power to back up their claims?” the star-god asks. “This night the Egg, and all Jijo, will sing our truth.”
Lester and Vubben plead for restraint, but Ro-kenn ignores them. Still smiling, he commands robots to each side of the gorge, to seize the anchor bolts holding the barrier in place. Overhead, the rebel leader stretches her long neck, keening a curse in plains dialect, invoking the sacred power of Jijo to renew. To cleanse impudent dross with fire.
The young zealot is a fine showman, stamping her hooves, foretelling awful punishments. Our more credulous rings find it possible, for a moment, to believe—
—to believe—
—to believe—
What is happening?
What — is — happening?
What impressions pour
in
now,
faster than
wax can melt?
Then penetrate
awareness,
ring after
ring
in a manner that
makes
all events
equal in both
timing and
import?
What is happening?
—twin lightning bolts outline many twelves of pilgrims, their shadows fleeing from white flame…
—crackling metal complains… shattered… unable to fly… a pair of tumbling cinders…
&nb
sp; —after-image of demolition… two junk piles smolder… more dross to collect and send to sea…
With other eye-patches, we/i glimpse horrified surprise on the face of Rann, the sky-human.
—surrounding Ro-kenn, a schism of variance like a traeki sundered between one ring that is jolly and a neighbor filled with wrath…
And now, though surfeited with impressions, suddenly there is more!
—with eye-patches on the opposite side, we are first to glimpse a fiery spike…
—a searing brightness climbs the western sky . rising from the Glade of Gathering . .
—the ground beneath us trembles…
—actual sound takes a while longer to arrive, battling upward through thin air to bring us a low groan, like thunder!
At last, the pace of events slows enough for our spinning vapors to keep up. Happenings occur in order. Not disjointed, parallel.
Review, my rings!
Did we perceive two robots destroyed, even as they tore down the zealots’ barrier?
Then were we dazzled by some vast explosion behind us? Toward the Glade of Gathering?
What had been a pilgrimage of union dissolves into a mob. Small groups hurry downhill toward a dusty, moon-lit pall, left by that brief flame. Humans hang close together, for protection, clinging to their remaining hoonish and qheuenish friends, while other qheuens and many urs clatter by, aloof, scornful, even threatening in their manner.
Ro-kenn no longer walks but rides a cushioned plate between his two remaining robots, speaking urgently into a handheld device, growing more agitated by the moment. His human servants seem in shock.
The female, Ling, holds the arm of Lark, our young human biologist. Uthen offers a ride, and they climb aboard his broad gray back. All three vanish down the trail after Ro-kenn.
Bravely, Knife-Bright Insight proposes similarly to carry this pile of rings, this Asx!
Can i/we refuse? Already, Phwhoon-dau totes Vubben in his strong, scaly arms. The hoon sage lugs the g’Kek so both might hurry downhill and see what has happened.
By majority ballot, our rings choose to accept the offer. But after several duras of jouncing qheuenish haste, there are calls for a recount! Somehow, we clamp down, managing to hang on to her horny shell, wishing we had walked.
Time passes through a gelatin of suspense, teasing us with idle speculation. Darkness swallows wisdom. Glittering stars seem to taunt.
Finally, at an overlooking bluff, we jostle with others for a view.
Can you sense it, my rings?
Unified now, in shock, i see a steaming crater, filled with twisted metal. The sanctuary where Ro-kenn and the sky-humans dwelled among us for weeks. Their buried outpost — now a fiery ruin.
Acting with hot-blooded decisiveness, Ur-Jah and Les-ter call for volunteers to leap into that smoky pit, reckless of their own lives, heroically attempting rescue. But how could anyone survive within the wrecked station? Can anyone be found alive?
We all share the same thought. All members of the Six. All of my rings.
Who can doubt the power of the Egg? Or the fury of a planet scorned?
The Stranger
Doors seem to open with every song he rediscovers, as if old melodies are keys to unlock whole swaths of time. The earlier the memory, the more firmly it seems attached to a musical phrase or snippet of lyrics. Nursery rhymes, especially, take him swiftly down lanes of reclaimed childhood.
He can picture his mother now, singing to him in the safety of a warm room, lying sweetly with ballads about a world filled with justice and love — sweet lies that helped fix his temperament, even when he later learned the truth about a bitter, deadly universe.
A string of whimsical ditties brings back to mind the bearded twins, two brothers who for many years shared the Father Role in his family-web, a pair of incurable jokers who routinely set all six of the young web-sibs giggling uncontrollably at their quips and good-natured antics. Reciting some of the simplest verses over and over, he finds he can almost comprehend the crude punchlines — a real breakthrough. He knows the humor is puerile, infantile, yet he laughs and laughs at the old gag-songs until tears stream down his cheeks.
Arianafoo plays more records for him, and several release floods of excitement as he relives the operettas and musical plays he used to love in late adolescence. A human art form, to help ease the strain as he struggled, along with millions of other earnest young men and women, to grasp some of the lofty science of a civilization older than most of the brightest stars.
He felt poignant pain in recovering much of what he once had been. Most words and facts remain alien, unobtainable — even his mother’s name, or his own, for that matter — but at least he begins to feel like a living , being, a person with a past. A man whose actions once had meaning to others. Someone who had been loved.
Nor is music the only key! Paper offers several more. When the mood strikes, he snatches up a pencil and sketches with mad abandon, using up page after page, compelled to draw even though he knows each sheet must cost these impoverished folk dearly.
When he spies Prity doodling away, graphing a simple linear equation, he delightedly finds that he understands! Math was never his favored language, but now he discovers a new love for it. Apparently, numbers hadn’t quite deserted him the way speech had.
There is one more communion that he realizes while being treated by Pzora, the squishy pile of donut-rings that used to frighten him so. It is a strange rapport, as foreign to words as day is to night. Robbed of speech, he seems better attuned to notice Pzora’s nuances of smell and touch. Tickling shimmers course his body, triggered by the healer’s ever-changing vapors. Again, his hands seem to flutter of their own accord, answering Pzora’s scent-queries on a level he can only dimly perceive.
One does not need words to notice irony. Beings shaped much like this one had been his deadly foes — this he knew without recalling how. They were enemies to all his kind. How strange then that he should owe so much to a gentle pile of farting rings.
All these tricks and surprises offer slim rays of hope through his desolation, but it is music that seems the best route back to whoever he once was. When Arianafoo offers him a choice of instruments, laid out in a glass case, he selects one that seems simple enough to experiment with, to use fishing for more melodies, more keys to unlock doors.
His first awkward efforts to play the chosen instrument send, clashing noises down the twisty aisles of this strange temple of books, hidden beneath a cave of stone. He strives diligently and manages to unloose more recollections of childhood, but soon discovers that more recent memories are harder to shake free. Perhaps in later life he had less time to learn new songs, so there were fewer to associate with recent events.
Events leading to a fiery crash into that horrid swamp.
The memories are there, he knows. They still swarm through his dreams, as they once thronged his delirium. Impressions of vast, vacuum vistas. Of vital missions left undone. Of comrades he feels shamed to have forgotten.
Bent over the instrument with its forty-six strings, he hammers away, one and two notes at a time, seeking some cue, some tune or phrase that might break the jam-up in his mind. The more it eludes him, the more certain he grows that it is there.
He begins to suspect it is no human song he seeks, but something quite different. Something both familiar and forever strange.
That night, he dreams several times about water. It seems natural enough, since Sara had made it clear they would be departing on the steamboat tomorrow, leaving behind the great hall of paper books, heading for the mountain where the starship landed.
Another ship voyage might explain the vague, watery images.
Later, he knew better.
XXI. THE BOOK OF THE SEA
In traveling the downward path, that of redemption, be not unaware of what you seek.
To divorce your racial destiny from your former clan, from your associations, from the patrons who first gave your species s
peech, and reason, and starflight.
You are saying that they failed the first time. That someone else should have a new chance to adopt your kind and try again.
There is nobility in this gamble. Nobility and courage.
But do not expect gratitude from those you have spurned.
—The Scroll of Exile
Alvin’s Tale
The day came. After all our fantasies, preparations, and endless details, there we were at last, the four of us, standing by the open hatch of Wuphon’s Dream.
“Shoulda built a raft instead,” Huck muttered nervously, while static from her nearest wheel hub made my leg hair stand out. “There’s lots of rivers we could’ve explored all summer, all by ourselves. Done some nice quiet fishing, too.”
I was hyperventilating my throat sacs, as if packing their livid tissues with pure oxygen would help much where we were going! Fortunately, Tyug had provided each of us with mild relaxant drugs, which might explain Ur-ronn’s easy composure.
“I couldn’t’ve gone on a raft,” Ur-ronn replied, in flat deadpan tones. “I’d’ve gotten wet.”
We all turned to stare at her, then each of us, in our own way, burst out laughing. Pincer whistled, Huck guffawed, and I umbled till it hurt. Oh, Ur-ronn-what a character!
“You’re right,” added Pincer-Tip. “The hot-air balloon would have been a much better plan. Let’s talk Uriel into doing a retrofit-fit.”
“Hush up, you two!” Huck chided, a little unfairly, since she had started it. We all turned as Uriel approached, Tyug following two paces behind. The traeki’s little partial, Ziz, now recovered from its distending ordeal, lay back in its assigned cage, under the Dream’s bubble window.