by David Brin
All the superficial landmarks and reference points had changed since he first set out from Kazzkark. Still, there was an underlying familiarity to the main route. He never worried about getting lost.
Harry wasn’t much surprised when the red-blue sky overhead gradually angled downward to meet “ground,” like a vast, descending wall. He took over from the autopilot. Gingerly, maneuvering by hand, he sent the station striding daintily through a convenient perforation in heaven.
Sara
THE HIGH SAGES TELL US THAT A SPECIAL KIND OF peace comes with resignation.
With letting go of life’s struggles.
With releasing hope.
Now, for the first time, Sara understood that ancient teaching as she watched Gillian Baskin decide whether to live or die.
No one doubted that the blond Terragens Agent had the right, duty, and wisdom to make that choice, for herself and everyone aboard. Not the dolphin crew, nor Hannes Suessi, nor the Niss Machine. Sara’s mute friend Emerson seemed to agree — though she wondered how much the crippled former engineer comprehended from those manic lights in the holo display, glimmering frantically near Izmunuti’s roiling flame.
Even the kids from Wuphon Port — Alvin, Huck, Urronn, and Pincer — accepted the commander’s authority. If Gillian thought it best to send Streaker diving toward an unripe t-point — in order to lure the enemy after them in an attempt to save Jijo — few aboard this battered ship would curse the decision. At least it would bring an end to ceaseless troubles.
We were resigned. I was at peace, and so was Dr. Baskin.
Only now things aren’t so simple anymore. She sees a possible alternative … and it’s painful as hell.
Sara found most of the crew’s activities confusing, in both the water-filled bridge and the dry Plotting Room nearby, where dolphins moved about on wheeled or six-legged contraptions.
Of course, Sara’s knowledge about Galactic technology was two centuries out of date, acquired by reading Jijo’s sparse collection of paper books. Despite that, her theoretical underpinnings worked surprisingly well when it came to grasping conditions in local spacetime. But she remained utterly dazed by the way crew members dealt with practical matters — conveying status reports along brain-linked cables, or sending each other info-packets consisting of tiny self-contained gobbets of semi-intelligent light. When dolphins spoke aloud, it was often in a terse argot of clicks and overlapping cries that had nothing in common with any standard Galactic tongue. Still, nothing awed Sara quite as much as when Dr. Baskin invited her along to watch an attempt to pry information from a captured unit of the Galactic Library.
The big cube lay in its own chamber, swaddled by a chill fog, one face emblazoned with a rayed-spiral sign that was notorious even to Jijo’s savage tribes. Within its twelve edges and six boundary planes lay an amassment of knowledge so huge that comparing it to the Biblos archive was like matching the great sea against a single teardrop.
Gillian Baskin approached the Library unit clothed in a ghostlike mantle of illusion, her slim human form cloaked behind the computer-generated image of a monstrous, leathery creature called a “Thennanin.” Observing from nearby shadows, Sara could only blink in apprehensive awe as the older woman used this uncanny ruse, speaking a guttural dialect of Galactic Six, making urgent inquiries about enigmatic creatures known as Zang.
The topic was not well received.
“Beware mixing the orders of life,” droned the cube’s frigid voice, in what Sara took to be a ritualized warning.
“Prudent contact is best achieved in the depths of the Majestic Bowl, where those who were born separated may safely combine.
“In that deep place, differences merge and unity is born.
“But here in black vacuum — where space is flat and light rays cut straight trails — young races should not readily mingle with other orders. In this outer realm, they behave like hostile gases. Fraternization can lead to conflagration.”
Impressed by the archive’s vatic tone, Sara pondered how its parabolic language resembled the Sacred Scrolls that devout folks read aloud on shobb holidays, back home on Jijo. The same obliqueness could be found in many other priestly works she had sampled in the Biblos archive, inherited from Earth’s long night of isolation. Those ancient tomes, differing in many ways, all shared that trait of allegorical obscurity.
In science — real science — there was always a way to improve a good question, making it harder to dismiss with prevarication. Nature might not give explicit answers right away, but you could tell when someone gave you the old runaround. In contrast, mystical ambiguity sounded grand and striking — it could send chills down your spine. But in the end it boiled down to evasion.
Ah, but ancient Earthlings — and early Jijoan sages — had an excuse. Ignorance. Vagueness and parables are only natural among people who know no other way. I just never expected it from the Galactic Library.
From an early age, Sara had dreamed of facing a unit like this one, posing all the riddles that baffled her, diving into clouds of distilled acumen collected by the great thinkers of a million races for over a billion years. Now she felt like Dorothy, betrayed by a charlatan in the chamber of Oz.
Oh, the knowledge must be there, all right — crammed in deep recesses of that chilled cube. But the Library wasn’t sharing readily, even to Dr. Baskin’s feigned persona as a warlord of a noble clan.
“Gr-tuthuph-manikhochesh, zangish torgh mph,” Gillian demanded, wearing the mask of a Thennanin admiral. “Manik-hophtupf, mph!”
A button in Sara’s ear translated the eccentric dialect.
“We understand that Zang, by nature, dislike surprise,” Dr. Baskin inquired. “Tell me how they typically react when one rude shock is followed by several more.”
This time, the Library was only slightly more forthcoming.
“The term Zang refers to just one subset of hydrogen-breathing forms — the variant encountered most often by oxy-life in open-space situations. The vast majority of hydro breathers seldom leave the comfort of dense circulation storms on their heavy worlds. …”
The lecture ran on, relating information Sara would normally find mesmerizing. But time was short. A crucial decision loomed in less than a midura.
Should Streaker continue her headlong drive for the resurrected transfer point? After lying dormant for half a million years — ever since Galaxy Four was declared fallow to sapient life — it was probably unripe for safe passage. Still, its uncanny rebirth offered Streaker’s crew a dour opportunity.
The solution of Samson. To bring the roof down on our enemies, and ourselves.
Only now fate proffered another daring possibility. The presence of collector machines and Zang ships still lacked clear explanation. The harvesting armada seemed weak, scattering in confusion before Izmunuti’s unexpected storms. And yet — Might they somehow help us defeat the Jophur without it costing our lives?
Orders from the Terragens Council made Gillian’s top priority clear. This ship carried treasure — relics of great consequence that might destabilize the Five Galaxies, especially if they were seized by a single fanatic clan. Poor little Earth could not afford to be responsible for one zealot alliance gaining advantage over all the others. There was no surer formula for Terran annihilation. Far better that both ship and cargo should be lost than some malign group like the Jophur seize a monopoly. Especially if a prophesied Time of Changes was at hand.
But what if Streaker could somehow deliver her burdens to the proper authorities? Ideally, that would force the Great Institutes and “moderate” clans to end their vacillation and take responsibility. So far, relentless pursuit and a general breakdown of law had made that seemingly simple step impossible. Neutral forces proved cowardly or unwilling to help Streaker come in out of the cold. Still, if it were done just right, success could win Earthclan a triumph of epic proportions.
Unfortunately, the passing duras weren’t equipping Gillian any better for her decision. Listen
ing in growing frustration to the Library’s dry oration, she finally interrupted.
“You don’t have to tell me again that Zang hate surprise! I want practical advice! Does that mean they’ll shoot right away, if we approach? Or will they give us a chance to talk?
“I need contact protocols!”
Still, the Library unit seemed bent on remaining vague, or else inundating Gillian with useless details. Standing where the Thennanin disguise did not block her view, Sara watched Gillian grow craggy with tense worry.
There is another source, Sara thought. Someone else aboard who might be able to help with the Zang.
She had been hesitant to mention the possibility before. After all, her “source” was suspect. Fallen beings whose ancestors had turned away from sapiency and lacked any knowledge of spatial dilemmas. But now, as precious duras passed and Gillian’s frustration grew, Sara knew she must intervene.
If the Great Library can’t help us, maybe we should look to an unlikely legend.
Alvin’s Journal
EVER SINCE WE BRAVE VOLUNTEERS JOINED THE Earthlings on their forlorn quest, I’ve compared it to our earlier trip aboard a handmade submarine — a little summer outing that wound up taking four settler kids all the way to the bottom of the sea, and from there to the stars.
Of course our little Wuphon’s Dream was just a hollowed-out log with a glass nose, hardly big enough for an urs, a hoon, a qheuen, and a g’Kek to squeeze inside, providing we took turns breathing. In contrast, Streaker is so roomy you could fit all the khutas of Port Wuphon inside. It has comforts I never imagined, even after a youth spent reading crates of Terran novels about starfaring days.
And yet, the trips have similarities.
In each case we took a willing chance, plunging into a lightless abyss to face unexpected wonders.
On both expeditions, my friends and I had different assigned tasks.
And sure enough, aboard Streaker, just like Wuphon’s Dream, I got the worst job to do.
Keeper of Animals. That’s me.
Ur-ronn gets to follow her passion for machinery, helping Suessi’s gang down in engineering.
Pincer runs errands for the bridge crew. He’s having a grand time dashing amphibiously from dry to watery parts of the ship and back again, with flashing claws and typical qheuen enthusiasm.
Huck spins her wheels happily. She gets to play spy, waving all four eyestalks to taunt the Jophur captives in their cell below, enraging them with the sight of a living g’Kek, provoking them into revealing more information than they would by other means. The nyah-nyah school of interrogation, I call it.
All three of them get to interact with the dolphin crew, helping in ways that matter. Even if we all get blown to bits soon, at least Huck and the others got to do interesting things.
But me? I’m stuck in the hold, keeping herd on twenty bleating glavers and a pair of cranky noors, with the combined conversational abilities of a qheuen larva.
According to the Niss Machine, one of these noors ought to be quite a conversationalist. It’s not a noor, you see, but a tytlal — from a starfaring race that look like noor, smell like noor, and have the same knavish temperament. Somehow they hid among us on Jijo all these years without ever being recognized. A seventh race of sooners — illegal settlers — who benefited from our Commons, but never bothered to formally join.
That’d take some cleverness, I admit. But Mudfoot acts just like my pet noor, Huphu. Lounging around, eating anything that isn’t bolted down, and licking his sleek black pelt all the way to the discolored paws that give him his name. Everyone thinks I’m an expert at coaxing noor, just because hoonish mariners hire some of them to help on our sailing ships, scooting deftly along the spars and rigging, working for umbles and sourballs. But I say that only shows how easy it is to fool a hoon. A thousand years. That’s how long we worked with the nimble creatures, and we never caught on.
Now they’re counting on me to get Mudfoot to speak once more.
Yeah, right. And this journal of mine is going to be published when we reach Earth, and win a Sheldon Award.
• • •
Huphu and Mudfoot still glare at each other, hissing jealously — not unusual for two noor who haven’t worked out their mutual status yet. Meanwhile, I try to keep my other wards comfortable.
We never saw very many glavers in my hometown, down along the Slope’s volcanic coast. They love rooting through garbage piles and rotten logs for tasty bugs, but such things are in short supply aboard Streaker.
Dr. Baskin worked out an exchange with Uriel the Smith, swapping this little herd for several dozen crew members who stayed behind to form a new dolphin colony on Jijo. It hardly seems an even trade. Watching the glavers mewl and jostle in a corner of the hold, I can scarcely picture their ancestors as mighty starfarers. Those bulging, chameleon eyes — swiveling independently, searching the sterile metal hold for crawling things — hold no trace of sapient light. According to Jijo’s Sacred Scrolls, that makes the opal-skinned quadrupeds sacred beings. They’ve attained the highest goal of any sooner race — reaching simplicity by crossing the Path of Redemption.
Renewed, cleansed of ancestral sin, they face the universe with reborn innocence, ready for a fresh start. Or so the sages say.
Forgive me for being unimpressed. You see, I have to clean up after the smelly things. If some patron race ever takes on the honored task of reuplifting glavers, they had better make housebreaking their first priority.
At first sight, you wouldn’t think the filthy things had much in common with fastidious noor. But they both seem to like it when I puff out my throat sac and give a low, booming umble-song. Ever since my adult verte-broids erupted, I’ve acquired a deep resonance that I’m rather proud of. It helps keep the critters calm whenever Streaker makes a sudden maneuver and her gravity fields waver.
I try not to think about where the ship is right now, tearing along at incredible speed, diving through the flames of a giant star.
Fortunately, I can umble while editing and updating my diary on a little teacher-scribe device that Dr. Baskin provided. By now I’m used to working with letters that float before me, instead of lying fixed on an ink-stained page. It’s convenient to be able to reach into my work, shifting and nudging sentences by hand or voice command. Still, I wish the machine would stop trying to fix my grammar and syntax! I may not be human, but I’m one of Jijo’s best experts on the Anglic language, and I don’t need a smart-aleck computer telling me my dialect’s “archaic.” If my journal ever gets published on a civilized world, I’m sure my colonial style will enhance its charm, like the old-time appeal of works by Defoe and Swift.
It grows harder to stave off frustration, knowing my friends are in the thick of things, and me stuck below, staring at blank walls, with just dumb beasts for company. I know, by doing this I freed a member of Streaker’s understaffed crew to do important work. Still, it sometimes feels like the bulkheads are closing in.
“Who do you think you’re looking at?” I snapped, when I caught Mudfoot glancing alternately at me and the floating lines of my journal. “You want to read it?”
I swiveled the autoscribe so hovering words swarmed toward the sleek creature.
“If you tytlal are so brainy, maybe you know where I should take the story next. Hrm?”
Mudfoot peered at the glyph symbols. His expression made my spines frickle. I wondered.
Just how much memory do they retain — this secret clan of supernoor? When did the Tymbrimi plant a clandestine colony of their clients on Jijo? It must have been before we boons came. Perhaps they predate even the g’Kek.
I had heard many legends of the clever Tymbrimi, of course — a spacefaring race widely disliked by conservative Galactics for their scamplike natures. The same trait made them befriend Earthlings, when that naive clan first stumbled onto the star lanes. Ignorance can be fatal in this dangerous universe, and Terra might have quickly suffered the typical Wolflings’ Fate, if not for Ty
mbrimi sponsorship and advice.
Only now crisis convulses the Five Galaxies. Mighty alliances are wreaking vengeance for past grievances. Earth and her friends may have reached the end of their luck, after all.
Even before meeting humans, the Tymbrimi must have known a day might come when all their enemies would converge against them. They must have been tempted to stash a small population group in some secluded place, before war, accident, or betrayal extinguished their main racial stock.
Did they consider taking the sooners’ path?
I’m no expert, but from what I’ve read, it seems unlikely that their natures would ever let Tymbrimi settle down to quiet pastoral lives on a hick world like Jijo. Humans barely accomplished it, and they are much more down to earth.
But if the Tymbrimi couldn’t hide out as sooners, it wasn’t too late for their beloved clients. The tytlal were still largely unknown. Still close to their animal roots. A small gene pool might be partly devolved and safely cached on far-off Jijo. It all made eerie sense. Including the notion of a race within a race — a band of un-devolved noor, hidden among them. Guardians, keeping twin black eyes open for danger … or opportunity.
Watching Mudfoot, I recalled stories told by Dwer Koolhan — during his brief time aboard this ship, when Streaker hid beneath Jijo’s sea — about how this wild animal kept snooping and meddling, following Dwer across half a continent. Ever mysterious, infuriating, and unhelpful. The behavior seemed to combine noorish recklessness with an attention span worthy of a hoon.
Intelligent irony now seemed to dominate Mudfoot’s snub-nosed, carnivorous face while he scanned my most recent lines of prose — the very musings about tytlal nature that lay just above. His black-pelted form coiled tightly, in an expression that I mistook for studious interest. I could almost imagine mute noorish whimsy transforming into eloquent speech — witty commentary perhaps, or else a brutal putdown of my dense composition style.