by David Brin
He had not asked for this chore. To be a jailor. Just wearing the title made him feel less clean.
A chain of nonsense syllables made him turn back toward a blur-cloth canopy, spanning the space between slablike boulders.
"It's a clensionating sievelator for refindulating excess torg. . . ."
The voice came from deep shade within-a strong feminine alto, though somewhat listless now, tinged with resignation. Soft clinking sounds followed as one object was tossed onto a pile and another picked up for examination.
"At a guess, I'd say this was once a glannis truncator, probably used in rituals of a chihanic sect . . . that is, unless it's just another Buyur joke-novelty device."
Lark shaded his eyes to regard Ling, the young sky-born scientist and servant of star-god Rothen, in whose employ he had worked as a "native guide" for many weeks . . . until the Battle of the Glade reversed their standing in a matter of heartbeats. Since that unexpected victory, the High Sages had assigned her care and custody to him, a duty he never asked for, even if it meant exalted promotion.
Now I'm quite a high-ranking witch doctor among savages, he thought with some tartness. Lord High Keeper of Alien Prisoners.
And maybe executioner. His mind shied from that possibility. Much more likely, Ling would be traded to her Danik-Rothen comrades in some deal worked out by the sages. Or else she might be rescued at any moment by hordes of unstoppable robots, overpowering Lark's small detachment of sword-bearing escorts like a pack of santi bears brushing aside the helpless buzzing defenders of a zil-honey tree.
Either way, she'll go free. Ling may live another three hundred years on her homeworld, back in the Five Galaxies, telling embroidered tales about her adventure among the feral barbarians of a shabby, illicit colony. Meanwhile, the best we fallen ones can hope for is bare survival. To keep scratching a living from poor tired Jijo, calling it lucky if some of the Six eventually join glavers down the Path of Redemption. The trail to blissful oblivion.
Lark would rather end it all in some noble and heroic way. Let Jijo's Six go down defending this fragile world, so she might go back to her interrupted rest.
That was his particular heresy, of course. Orthodox belief held that the Six Races were sinners, but they might mitigate their offense by living at peace on Jijo. But Lark saw that as hypocrisy. The settlers should end their crime, gently and voluntarily, as soon as possible.
He had made no secret of his radicalism . . . which made it all the more confusing that the High Sages now trusted him with substantial authority.
The alien woman no longer wore the shimmering garb of her Danik star clan-the secretive band of humans who worshiped Rothen lords. Instead she was outfitted in an illfitting blouse and kilt ofJijoan homespun. Still, Lark found it hard to look away from her angular beauty. It was said that sky humans could buy a new face with hardly a thought. Ling claimed not to care about such things, but no woman on the Slope could match her.
Under the wary gaze of two militia corporals, Ling sat cross-legged, examining relics left behind by the dead mule spider-strange metallic shapes embedded in semitransparent gold cocoons, like archaic insects trapped in amber. Remnants of the Buyur, this world's last legal tenants, who departed half a million years ago when Jijo went fallow. A throng of egglike preservation beads lay scattered round the ashen lakeshore. Instead of dissolving all signs of past habitation, the local mule spider had apparently chosen relics to seal away. Collecting them, if Lark believed the incredible story told by his half brother, Dwer.
The luminous coatings made him nervous. The same substance, secreted from the spider's porous conduits, had nearly smothered Dwer and Rety, the wild sooner girl, the same night two alien robots quarreled, igniting a living morass of corrosive vines, ending the spider's long, mad life. The gold stuff felt queer to touch, as if a strange, slow liquid sloshed under sheaths of solid crystal.
"Toporgic, " Ling had called the slick material during one of her civil moments. "It's very rare, but I hear stories. It's said to be a pseudo-matter substrate made of organically folded time.".
Whatever that meant. It sounded like the sort of thing Sara might say, trying to explain her beloved world of mathematics. As a biologist, he found it bizarre for a living thing to send "folded time" oozing from its far-flung tendrils, as the mule spider apparently had done.
Whenever Ling finished examining a relic, she bent over a sheaf of Lark's best paper to make careful notes, concentrating as if each childlike block letter were a work of art. As if she never held a pencil before, but had vowed to master the new skill. As a galactic voyager, she used to handle floods of information, manipulating multidimensional displays, sieving data on this world's complex ecosystem, searching on behalf of her Rothen masters for some biotreasure worth stealing. Toiling over handwritten notes must seem like shifting from starship speeds to a traeki's wooden scooter.
It's a steep,all-one moment a demigoddess, the next a hostage of uncouth sooners.
All this diligent note taking must help take her mind off recent events-that traumatic day, just two leagues below the nest of the Holy Egg, when her home base exploded and Jijo's masses violently rebelled. But Lark sensed something more than deliberate distraction. In scribing words on paper. Ling drew the same focused satisfaction he had seen her take from performing any simple act well. Despite his persistent seething anger, Lark found this worthy of respect.
There were folk legends about mule spiders. Some were said to acquire odd obsessions during their stagnant eons spent chewing metal and stone monuments of the past. Lark once dismissed such fables as superstition, but Dwer had proved right about this one. Evidence for the mule beast's collecting fetish lay in countless capsules studding the charred thicket, the biggest hoard of Galactic junk anywhere on the Slope. It made the noxious lakeshore an ideal site to conceal a captured alien, in case the returning starship had instruments sifting Jijo for missing crew mates.
Though Ling had been thoroughly searched, and all possessions seized, she might carry in her body some detectable trace element-acquired growing up on a far Galactic world. If so, all the Buyur stuff lying around here might mask her presence.
There were other ideas.
Ship sensors may not penetrate far underground, one human techie proposed.
Or else, suggested an urrish smith, a nearby lava flow may foil alien eyes.
The other hostages-Ro-kenn and Rann-had been taken to such places, in hopes of holding on to at least one prisoner. With the lives of every child and grub of the Six at stake, anything seemed worth trying. The job Lark had been given was important. Yet he chafed, wishing for more to do than waiting for the world to end. Rumors told that others were preparing to fight the star criminals. Lark knew little about weapons-his expertise was the natural flux of living species. Still, he envied them.
A burbling, wheezing sound called him rushing to the far end of the tent, where his friend Uthen squatted like an ash-colored chitin mound. Lark took up a makeshift aspirator he had fashioned out of boo stems, a cleft pig's bladder, and congealed mule sap. He pushed the nozzle into one of the big qheuen's leg apertures and pumped away, siphoning phlegmy fluid that threatened Uthen's ventilation tubes. He repeated the process with all five legs, till his partner and fellow biologist breathed easier. The qheuen's central cupola lifted and Uthen's seeing stripe brightened,
"Th-thank you, L-Lark-ark ... I am-I am sorry to be so-be so-to be a burden-en-en. ..."
Emerging uncoordinated, the separate leg voices sounded like five miniature qheuens, getting in each other's way. Or like a traeki whose carelessly stacked oration rings all had minds of their own. Uthen's fevered weakness filled Lark's chest with a burning ache. A choking throat made it hard to respond with cheerful-sounding lies.
"You just rest up, claw brother. Soon we'll be back in the field . . . digging fossils and inventing more theories to turn your mothers blue with embarrassment."
That brought a faint, gurgling laugh. "S-speaking-ki
ng of heresies ... it looks as if you and Haru . . . Haru . . . Harullen-ullen, will be getting your wish."
Mention of Lark's other gray qheuen friend made him wince with doubled grief. Uthen didn't know about his cousin's fate, and Lark wasn't about to tell him.
"How do you mean?"
"It seems-eems the raiders-raiders found a way to rid Jijo of at least one of the S-S-Six P-p-pests. ..."
"Don't say that," Lark urged. But Uthen voiced a common thought. His sickness baffled the g'Kek medic resting in the next shelter, all four eyes curled in exhaustion. The malady frightened the militia guards. All knew that Uthen had been with Lark in the ruined Danik station, poking among forbidden things.
"I felt sorrow when-hen zealots-lots blew up the alien base." Uthen's carapace shuddered as he fought for breath. "Even when the Rothen tried to misuse our Holy Egg . . . sending false dreams as wedges-edges ... to drive the Six Races apart-part. . . . Even that did not justify the . . . inhospitable-able murder of strangers."
Lark wiped an eye. "You're more charitable than most."
"Let me finish-ish. I was-as going to say that now we know what the outsiders were up to all along-long . . . something worse than dreams. Designing-ing bugs to bring us down-own-own."
So, Uthen must have overheard the rumors-or else worked it out for himself.
Biological warfare. Genocide.
"Like in War of the Worlds" It was one of Uthen's favorite old novels. "Only with the roles reversed."
Lark's comparison made the gray qheuen laugh-a raspy, uneven whistle.
"I ... always-ways did identify . . . with those . . . with those poor Martians-ans-ans. ..."
The ribbon eye went foggy, losing the light of consciousness as the cupola' sank. Lark checked his friend's breathing, and found it no worse. Uthen was simply tired.
So strong, he thought, stroking the rigid shell.
We picture grays as toughest of the tough. But cbitin won't slow a laser ray.
Harullen found that out. Death came to Uthen's cousin during the brief Battle of the Glade, when the massed militia of Six Races barely overcame Ro-kenn's robot assassins. Only the advantage of surprise had carried that day. The aliens never realized that savages might have books showing how to make rifled firearms-crude, but potent at short range.
But victory came late for Harullen. Too dedicated or obstinate to flee, the heretic leader spent his last frenzied moments whistling ornate pleas for calm and reason, crying in five directions at once, beseeching everyone to lay down their arms and talk things over-until Harullen's massive, crablike body was cleaved in uneven parts by a killer drone, just before the machine was itself blown from the sky.
There will be mourning among the gray matrons of Tarek Town, Lark thought, resting both arms across Uthen's broad shell, laying his head on the mottled surface, listening to the strained labor of his friend's phlegmy breathing, wishing with all his heart that there was more he could do.
Irony was but one of many bitter tastes in his mouth. I always figured, if the end did come, that qheuens would be the last to go.
Emerson
JIJO'S COUNTRYSIDE FLOWS RAPIDLY PAST THEM now, as if the mysterious horsewomen fear any delay might turn faint hope to dust.
Lacking speech, Emerson has no idea where they are riding in such a hurry, or why.
Sara turns in her saddle now and then, to give an encouraging smile. But rewq-painted colors of misgiving surround her face-a nimbus of emotion that he can read the way he used to find meaning in letters on a data display.
Perhaps he should find her qualms unnerving, since he depends on her guidance in this strange, perilous world. Yet Emerson cannot bring himself to worry. There are just too many other things to think about.
Humidity closes in as their caravan veers toward a winding river valley. Dank aromas stir memories of the swamp where he first floundered after the crash, a shattered cripple, drenched in agony. But he does not quail. Emerson welcomes any sensation that might trigger random recall- a sound, a chance smell, or else a sight around the next bend.
Some rediscoveries already float across a gulf of time and loss, as if he has missed them for quite a while. Recovered names connect to faces, and even brief snatches of isolated events.
Tom Orley ... so strong and clever. Always a sure eye for trouble. He brought some back to the ship, one day.
Trouble enough for Five Galaxies.
Hikahi . . . sweetest dolphin. Kindest friend. Dashing off to rescue her lover and captain . . . never to be seen again.
Toshio ... a boy's ready laughter. A young man's steady heart. Where is he now?
Creideiki . . . captain. Wise dolphin leader. A cripple like himself.
Briefly, Emerson wonders at the similarity between Creideiki's injury and his own. . . . But the thought provokes a searing bolt of pain so fierce that the fleeting thought whirls away and is lost.
Tom . . . Hikahi . . . Toshio ... He repeats the names, each of them once attached to friends he has not seen for . . . well, a very long time.
Other memories, more recent, seem harder to reach, more agonizing to access.
Suessi . . . Tsh't . . . Gillian ...
He mouths each sound repeatedly, despite the tooth jarring ride and difficulty of coordinating tongue and lips.
He does it to keep in practice-or else how will he ever recover the old handiness with language, the skill to roll out words as he used to, back when he was known as such a clever fellow . . . before horrid holes appeared in both his head and memory.
Some names come easy, since he learned them after waking on Jijo, delirious in a treetop hut.
-Prity, the little chimp who teaches him by example. Though mute, she shows flair for both math and sardonic hand speech.
-Jomah and Kurt . . . sounds linked to younger and older versions of the same narrow face. Apprentice and master at a unique art, meant to erase all the dams, towns, and houses that unlawful settlers had built on a proscribed world. Emerson recalls Biblos, an archive of paper books, where Kurt showed his nephew well-placed explosive charges that might bring the cave down, smashing the library to dust. If the order ever came.
-The captive fanatic, Dedinger, rides behind the explosers, deeply tanned with craggy features. Leader of human rebels with beliefs Emerson can't grasp, except they preach no love of visitors from the sky. While the party hurries on, Dedinger's gray eyes rove, calculating his next move.
Some names and a few places-these utterances have meaning now. It is progress, but Emerson is no fool. He figures he must have known hundreds of words before he fell, broken, to this world. Now and again he makes out snatches of half meaning from the "wab-wah" gabble as his companions address each other. Snippets that tantalize, without satisfying.
Sometimes the torrent grows tiresome, and he wonders-might people be less inclined to fight if they talked less? If they spent more time watching and listening?
Fortunately, words aren't his sole project. There is the haunting familiarity of music, ?nd during rest stops he plays math games with Prity and Sara, drawing shapes in the sand. They are his friends and he takes joy from their laughter.
He has one more window to the world.
As often as he can stand it, Emerson slips the rewq over his eyes ... a masklike film that transforms the world into splashes of slanted color. In all his prior travels he never encountered such a creature-a species used by all six races to grasp each other's moods. If left on too long, it gives him headaches. Still he finds fascinating the auras surrounding Sara, Dedinger, and others. Sometimes it seems the colors carry more than just emotion . . . though he cannot pin it down. Not yet.
One truth Emerson recalls. Advice drawn from the murky well of his past, putting him on guard.
Life can be full of illusions.
PART TWO
? LEGENDS TELL OF MANY PRECIOUS TEXTS that were lost one bitter evening, during an unmatched disaster some call the Night of the (ghosts, when a quarter of the Diblos Archive bur
ned. Among the priceless volumes that vanished by that cruel winters twilight, one tome reportedly showed pictures of Buyur-the mighty race whose lease on Jijo expired five thousand centuries ago.
Scant diary accounts survive from witnesses to the calamity, but according to some who browsed the Xenoscience Collection be, lore It burned, the Buyur were squat beings, vaguely resembling the bullfrogs shown on page ninety-six of C^,earys C-'uiae to lerres' trial L,iK-rorms, though with elephantine legs and sharp, forward-looking eyes. They were said to be master shapers or useful organisms,and had a reputation for prodigious wit.
But other sooner races already knew of that much about the Buyur, both from oral traditions and the many clever servant organisms that nit about Jijo's forests, perhaps still looking for departed masters. Beyond these few scraps, we have very little about the race whose mighty civilisation thronged this world for more than a million years.