Brightness Reef u-4

by David Brin

  “You have your charts?” Uriel inspected Pincer’s pouch to make sure. Made of laminated plastic by a human-invented process, the sheets were tough, durable, and therefore somewhat less than legal. But we were heading for the Midden anyway, so wasn’t it all right? We had studied the course chosen by Uriel, to follow as soon as the Dream’s wheels touched the muddy bottom.

  “Compass?”

  Both Pincer and Ur-ronn were equipped. Huck’s magnetically driven axles shouldn’t interfere much, if she didn’t get too excited.

  “We’ve gone over contingency tactics and rehearsed as nuch as fossifle, given our haste. I hope.” Uriel shook her head in the manner of a human expressing regret. “There’s just one thing left to cover, an ovject you are to seek out, while down there. A thing I need you to find.”

  Huck craned an eyestalk around to semaphore me.

  See? I told you so! she flashed in visual GalTwo. Huck had maintained for days that there must be some item Uriel desperately wanted. An ulterior motive for all this support. Something we alone, with our amateur bathy, were qualified to find. I ignored her smug boast. The problem with Huck is that she’s right just often enough to let her think it’s a law of nature.

  “This is what you are looking for,” Uriel said, lifting up a sketch pad so that no one but we four could see, showing a spiky shape with six points, like a piece in a child’s game of jacks. Tendrils, or long cables, stretched outward from two of the arms, trailing in opposite directions off the page. I wondered if it might be some kind of living thing.

  “It is an artifact we need rather urgently,” Uriel went on. “Even nore infortant than the artifact, however, is the strand of wire running away fron it. It is this strand that you seek, that you shall seize and fasten with the retrieval cord, so that we can haul it vack.”

  Sheesh, I thought. The four of us were modernist gloss-junkies who would gladly raid the Midden for treasure, even in defiance of the Scrolls. But now to have a sage order us to do that very thing? No wonder she preferred not letting nearby citizens in on this heresy!

  “Will do!” Pincer exclaimed, briefly teetering on two legs in order to salute with three. As for the rest of us, we already stood on the ramp. What were we going to do? Use this as an excuse to back out?

  All right, I considered it. So strap me to the Egg and sing till I confess.

  I was the last one aboard — unless you count Huphu, who scampered through my legs as I was about to dog the hatch. I tightened the wheel and the skink-bladder seals spread thin, oozing like immunity caulk between a traeki’s member rings. The closing shut us off from nearly all sound — except the hissing, gurgling, rumbling, and sighing of four frightened kids just coming to realize what a fix all their humicking daydreams had gotten them into.

  It took half a midura to make certain the air system and dehumidifiers worked. Pincer and Ur-ronn went over a checklist up front and Huck tested her steering bars, while I squatted in the very back with nothing to do but stroke the crank that I would use, whenever the Dream needed the services of an “engine.” To pass the time, I umbled Huphu, whose claws were a welcome distraction, scratching a nervous itch that tickled the outer surface of my heart spine.

  If we die, please let Uriel at least drag our bodies home, I thought, and maybe it was a prayer, like humans often do in tight spots, according to books I’ve read. Let my folks have a life-bone for vuphyning, to help them in their grief and disappointment over how I misspent the investment of their love.

  XXII. THE BOOK OF THE SLOPE

  Legends

  Anyone who travels by riverboat, and listens to the compelling basso of a hoonisn helmsman, knows something of the process that once made them starfaring beings.

  For one thing, the sound is clearly where their race-name comes from. According to legend, the Guthatsa patrons who originally adopted and uplilted presapient hoon were entranced by the musical trait. While splicing in speech, reason, and other niceties, the Guthatsa also worked to enhance the penetrating, vibrant output of the hoonisn throat sac, so that it might enrich their clients’ adulthood, when they took up mature responsibilities in Galactic society.

  It would, the Guthatsa predicted, help make the hoon better patrons when their turn came to pass on the gift of wisdom, continuing the billion-year-old cycle of intellect in the Five Galaxies.

  Today we know our hoonish neighbors as patient, decent folk, slow to anger, though doughty in a fix. It is hard to reconcile this image with the reaction of urrish and later human settlers, on first learning that the Tall Ones dwelled on Jijo — a response of animosity and fear.

  Whatever the initial reasons for that loathing, it soon ebbed, then vanished within a single generation. Whatever quarrels divided our star-god ancestors, we on Jijo do not share them. These days, it is hard to find anyone among the Six who can claim not to like the hoon.

  Yet there remains a mystery — why do they dwell on Jijo at all? Unlike other races of the Six, they tell no tale of persecution, or even of a quest for breeding space. When asked why their sneakship defied great odds to seek this hidden refuge, they shrug and cannot answer.

  A sole clue lies in the Scroll of Redemption, where we read of an inquiry by the last glaver sage, who asked a first-generation hoonish settler why his folk came, and got this deeply-umbled answer—

  “To this (cached) haven, we came, (in hope) seeking.

  “On a (heartfelt) quest to recover the (lamented) spines of (lost) youth.

  “Here we were sent, on the advice of (wise, secret) oracles.

  “Nor was the (danger-ridden) trip in vain.

  “For behold what, in (delighted) surprise, we already have won!”

  At that point, the hoon colonist was said to point at a crude raft, fashioned from boo logs and sealed with tree sap — earliest precursor of all the vessels to follow, plying Jijo’s rivers and seas.

  From our perspective, a thousand years later, it is hard to interpret the meaning of it all. Can any of us today imagine our shaggy friends without boats? If we try to picture them cruising space in starships, do we not envision those, too, running before storm and tide, sluicing their way between planets by keel, rudder, and sail?

  By that logic, does it not follow that urs once “galloped” across Galactic prairies, with stellar winds blowing their waving tails? Or that any star-craft fashioned by humans ought to resemble a tree?

  —from A Re-appraisal of Jijoan Folklore, by Ur-Kintoon and Herman Chang-Jones

  Tarek City Printers, Year-of-Exile 1901.

  Dwer

  It was a midura past nightfall when the ember crossed the sky, a flicker that grew briefly as it streaked by, crossing the heavens to descend southeast. Dwer knew it was no meteor, because the spark traveled below the clouds.

  Only after it was gone, dropping beyond the next rank of forested knolls, did he hear a low, muttering purr, barely above the rustling of the tree branches.

  Dwer might never have noticed if his dinner had agreed with him. But his bowels had been shaky ever since the four humans began supplementing their meager supplies with foraged foods. So he sat at the makeshift latrine, in a cleft between two hills, waiting for his innards to decide whether to accept or reject his hard-won evening meal.

  The others were no better off. Danel and Jenin never complained, but Lena blamed Dwer while her intestines growled.

  “Some mighty hunter. You’ve been over the pass dozens of times and can’t tell what’s poison from what’s not?”

  “Please, Lena,” Jenin had asked. “You know Dwer never crossed the Venom Plain. All he can do is look for stuff that’s like what he knows.”

  Danel tried his hand at peacemaking. “Normally, we’d eat the donkeys as their packs lightened. But they’re weak after recent stream-crossings, and we can’t spare any from carrying our extra gear.”

  He referred to the weight of books, tools, and special packages that were meant to make human life beyond the Rimmers somewhat more than purely savage. If i
t was finally decided to stay here forever. Dwer still hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  “One thing we do know,” Danel went on. “Humans can survive here in the Gray Hills, and without all the vat processes we’re used to back home. Right now we’re adjusting to some local microbes, I’m sure. If the sooner band got used to them, so can we.”

  Yes, Dwer had thought, but survival doesn’t mean comfort. If Rety’s any indication, these sooners are a grumpy lot. Maybe we’re getting a taste of how they got that way.

  Things might improve once Danel set up vats of his own, growing some of the yeasty cultures that made many Jijoan foods palatable to humans, but there would be no substitutes for the traeki-refined enzymes that turned bitter ping fruit and bly-yoghurt into succulent treats. Above all, Dwer and the other newcomers would count on the sooners to explain which local foods to avoid.

  Assuming they cooperate. Rety’s relatives might not appreciate having the new order-of-life explained to them. I wouldn’t either, in their position. While Danel was skilled at negotiation and persuasion, Dwer’s role would be to back up the sage’s words, giving them force of law.

  From Rety’s testimony, her tribe likely totaled no more than forty adults. The social structure sounded like a typical macho-stratified hunting band — a standard human devolution pattern that old Fallon long ago taught Dwer to recognize — with a fluid male-ranking order enforced by bluster, personal intimidation, and violence.

  The preferred approach to ingathering such a group, worked out by Dwer’s predecessors, was to make contact swiftly and dazzle the sooners with gifts before shock could turn into hostility, buying time to map the web .of alliances and enmities within the band. After that, the procedure was to choose some promising middle-ranked males and help those candidates perform a coup, ousting the formerly dominant group of bully boys, whose interest lay in keeping things as they were. The new leaders were then easy to persuade to “come home.”

  It was a time-tested technique, used successfully by others faced with the task of retrieving wayward human clans. Ideally, it shouldn’t prove necessary to kill anybody.

  Ideally.

  In truth, Dwer hated this part of his job.

  You knew it might come to this. Now you pay for all the freedom you’ve had.

  If gentle suasion didn’t work, the next step was to call in militia and hunt down every stray. The same hard price had been agreed to by every sept in the Commons, as an alternative to war and damnation.

  But this time things are different.

  This time we don’t have any law on our side — except the law of survival.

  Instead of bringing illegal settlers back to the Slope, Ozawa planned to take over Rety’s band. Guiding them toward a different way of life, but one still hidden from sight.

  Only if the worst happens. If we’re the last humans alive on Jijo.

  Dwer’s mind reeled away from that awful notion, as his innards wrestled with the remnants of his meal. If this keeps on, I’ll be too weak to win a wrestling match, or however else Jass and Bom settle.their tribal ranking. It may come down to Lena and her tools, after all.

  Throughout the journey; the stocky blond woman carefully tended one donkey carrying the gadgets of her personal “hobby” — a human technology passed down since the first ancestors landed on Jijo, one so brutal that it had been seldom used, even during the urrish wars. “My equalizers,” Lena called the wax-sealed wooden crates, meaning their contents made her able to enforce Danel’s verdicts, as thoroughly as Dwer’s muscle and physical skill.

  It won’t come to that! he vowed, commanding his body to shape up. Dwer touched several fingertips whose frostbite damage might have been much worse. I’ve always been luckier than I deserved.

  According to Sara, who had read extensively about Earth’s past, the same thing could be said about the whole bloody human race.

  That was when the glowing ember crossed the sky, streaking overhead while Dwer sat at the makeshift latrine. He would never have noticed the sight had he been facing another way or engaged in an activity more demanding of his attention. As it was, he stared glumly after the falling spark while the rumbling thunder of its passage chased up and down nearby canyons, muttering echoes in the night.

  They faced more stream crossings the next day. It was hard country, which must have influenced the sooners’ ancestors to come this way in the first place. Guarded first by the Venom Plain, then ravines and whitewater torrents, the Gray Hills were so forbidding that surveyors checked the region just once per generation. It was easy to imagine how Fallen and the others might overlook one small tribe in the tortured badlands Dwer led the party through — a realm of sulfurous geysers and trees that grew more twisted the deeper they went. Low clouds seemed to glower and sulk, giving way to brief glimpses of sunshine. Green moss beards drooped from rocky crevices, trickling oily water into scummy pools. Animal life kept its skittish distance, leaving only faint spoor traces for Dwer to sniff and puzzle over.

  They lost several donkeys crossing the next rushing stream. Even with a rope stretched from bank to bank, and both Lena and Dwer standing waist-deep in the frigid water to help them along, three tired animals lost their footing on slippery stones. One got tangled in the rope, screaming and thrashing, then perished before they could free it. Two others were carried off. It took hours, sloshing through shallows, to retrieve their packs.

  Dwer’s fingers and toes seemed to burn the whole time with a queer icy-hot numbness.

  Finally, drying off by a fire on the other side, they measured the damage.

  “Four books, a hammer, and thirteen packets of powder missing,” Danel said, shaking his head over the loss. “And some others damaged when their waterproofs tore.”

  “Not to mention the last fodder for the beasts,” Jenin added. “From now on they forage, like it or not.”

  “Well, we’re almost there, ain’t we?” Lena Strong cut in, cheerful for once as she knelt butchering the donkey that had strangled. “On the bright side, we eat better for a while.”

  They rested that night, feeling better — if a bit guilty — with the change in diet. The next morning they marched just one arrowflight east to face a mighty ravine, with sheer walls and a raging torrent in its heart.

  Dwer headed upstream while Lena struck off to the south, leaving Jenin and Danel to wait with the exhausted donkeys. Two days out and two back, that was the agreed limit. If neither scout found a way by then, they might have to make a raft and try the rapids. Not a prospect Dwer relished.

  Didn’t I tell Danel we should wait for Rety? I may be a tracker, but she came out through this desolation all by herself.

  More than ever he was impressed by the girl’s un-swayable tenacity.

  If there is a second party, and she’s with them, Rety’s probably chortling over me falling into this trap. If she knows some secret shortcut, they may reach the tribe before us. Now won’t that screw up Danel’s plans!

  Even moving parallel with the river was awkward and dangerous, a struggle up steep bluffs, then back down the slippery bank of one icy tributary after another. To Dwer’s surprise, Mudfoot came along, forsaking DanePs campfire and Jenin’s pampering attention. The trek was too hard for any of the noor’s standard antics, ambushing Dwer or trying to trip him. After a while, they even began helping each other. He carried the noor across treacherous, foamy creeks. At other times, Mudfoot sped ahead to report with squeals and quivers which of two paths seemed better.

  Still, the river and its canyon tormented them, appearing almost to open up, then abruptly closing again, narrower and steeper than before. By noon of the second day, Dwer was muttering sourly over the obstinate nastiness of the terrain. Fallon warned me about the Gray Hills. But I always figured I’d get to go through the old man’s notes and maps. Pick a path based on the trips of earlier hunters.

  Yet none of them had ever found any trace of Rety’s band, so maybe they relied too much on each other’s advice, repeatedly taki
ng the same route in and out of these badlands. A route the sooners knew to avoid. Maybe all this horrid inaccessibility meant Danel’s group was getting near the tribe’s home base.

  That’s it, boy. Keep thinkin’ that way, if it makes you feel better.

  Wouldn’t it be great to struggle all this way, and back, only to learn that Lena had already found a good crossing, just a little ways downstream? That thought tortured Dwer as he shared food with Mudfoot. Going on seemed futile, and he’d have to call the trip a loss in a few hours anyway. Dwer’s fingers and toes ached, along with overstrained tendons across his back and legs. But it was the pounding roar of rushing water that really wore away at him, as if a clock teet had been hammering inside his head for days.

  “Do you think we oughta head back?” he asked the noor.

  Mudfoot cocked its sleek head, giving Dwer that deceptively intelligent expression, reminding him of legends .that said the beasts could grant wishes — if you wanted something so bad, you didn’t care about the cost. Workmen used the expression “Let’s consult a noor” to mean a problem couldn’t be solved, and it was time to soften frustration with a set of stiff drinks.

  “Well,” Dwer sighed, hoisting his pack and bow, “I don’t guess it’d hurt to go on a ways. I’d feel silly if it turned out we missed a good ford just over the next rise.”

  Thirty duras later, Dwer crawled up a thorny bank, cursing the brambles and the slippery wetness that soaked his skin, wishing he was on his way back to a hot meal and a dry blanket. Finally, he reached a place to stand, sucking an oozing scratch across the back of his hand.

  He turned — and stared through a mist at what lay ahead.

  A crashing waterfall, whose roar had been masked by the turbulent river, stretched low and wide from far to the left all the way to the distant right. A wide curtain of spray and foam.

  Yet that was not what made Dwer gape.