by David Brin
"One comes from an umbling sac, a song for you to keep, Two is for a pair of hands, to spin youhappy sleep, Three fat rings will huff and puff out clouds of happy steam, Four eyes wave and dance about, to watch over your dream, Five claws will carve your new hope box, all without a seam, Six will bring you flashing hooves to cross the prairie plain, Seven is for hidden thoughts, waiting in the deep, But eight comes from a giant stone, whose patterns gently creep."
Even half-conscious, she knew something important. He could not sing unless the words were stored deep within, beyond the scarred part of his brain. It meant she must have touched him, when their roles were reversed.
Not all the unguents in the world-nor the cool beauty of mathematics-could do as much for Sara. What finally called her back was knowing someone missed her, when she was gone.
wasx
many days the important work that originally brought us here, even though it means leaving our comrades to make their own repairs in that eastern swamp, while our remaining corvette tours the Slope, photographing and recording evidence. It also gives us an opportunity to demonstrate the irresistible majesty of our power. We did this by destroying egregious structures that sooners should not use, if their goal truly is racial redemption.
IT IS NOTED THAT YOU WERE NOT MUCH HELP IN THIS WORK, MY RINGS. (Accept these reproaching jolts, as tokens of loving guidance.) Asx melted many memories, before capture and conversion, yet we/i did recall certain abominations. We gained credit, for instance, by helping target the Bibur River steamboats, and a refinery tower in Tarek Town, an edifice called the Palace of Stinks.
DON'T WORRY. In time, we of the Polkjhy will find all pathetic objects-of-sin prized by headstrong sooners. We shall help erase the flagrant hypocrisy of tool use among those who chose the Downward Path!
THERE WAS AN ENJOYABLE SENSE OF IMPORTANCE TO our task, was there not, My rings? There we stood, this stack of shabby-looking, retread toruses, deputized with a noble job-explaining to envoys of six races the new order of life on this world.
FIRST-they should not hope for great judges to come from those Institutes who mediate among ten thousand starfaring races. Passions run too high, throughout the Five Galaxies. Institute forces have withdrawn, along with timid, so-called moderate clans, a dithering, ineffectual majority. Only great religious alliances show nerve nowadays, battling over which way the Galactic wheels shall turn during a time of changes.
WE ARE YOUR JUDGES, I told the ambassadors. Out of kindness, we the Polkjhy crew have volunteered to serve as both posse and jury, chastening the seven races who invaded this world's fallow peace.
To demonstrate this benevolence, we have delayed by
SECOND comes our unstoppable demand for justice. The High Sages showed surprising good sense by swiftly emitting a call, soon after our last meeting. A flicker of computer cognizance, leading our corvette to Dooden Mesa. But this token gesture will not suffice for long. We want every living member of the g'Kek race accounted for. That should not be too hard. Stranded on a roadless planet, they are singulariy immobile beings.
"Please do not destroy our wheeled brethren," the envoys entreat. "Let the g'Kek seek holy shelter down Redemption's Path. For is it not said that all debts and vendettas stop, once innocence is resumed?"
At first we see this as yet more lawyerly blather. But then, surprisingly, our senior Priest-Stack agrees! Moreover, that august pile makes an unusual, innovative suggestion-
HERE IS THE QUESTION posed by the Priest-Stack:
What kind of revenge on the g'Kek would transcend even extinction?
ANSWER: to see the g'Kek race become once again eligible for adoption, and for their new patrons to be Jophur
In their second sequence of uplift, we might transform them as we see fit-into creatures their former selves would have disdained!
Vengeance is best when executed with imagination. This justifies bringing a priest along. Indeed, that stack variety has uses.
Of course this daring plan carries complications. It means refraining from informing the Five Galaxies about this sooner infestation. Instead, our Jophur clan must keep it secret, tending Jijo like our own private garden.
SO WE BECOME CRIMINALS, under Galactic law. But that hardly matters. For those laws will change, once our alliance assumes leadership during the next phase of history.
Especially if the Progenitors have indeed returned.
THIRD comes opportunity for profit. Perhaps the Rothen gene raiders were onto something. Jijo seems exceptionally rich for a fallow world. (The Buyur were good caretakers who left the planet filled with biopossibilities.) Might the Rothen have discovered a likely presentient race already? One ripe for uplift? Should we have bought off the gene raiders so we might have access to their data, instead of sealing them away in time?
REJECT THE NOTION. They are known blackmailers and double-crossers. We will bring in our own biologists to survey Jijo.
AND WHO KNOWS? Perhaps we might accelerate the sooner races along the path they seek! Glavers are already far progressed toward innocence. Hoons, urs, and qheuens have living star cousins who might object if we adopt too soon. But that may change as battle fires burn across the galaxies. As for human wolflings, at last word their homeworld was under siege, in desperate straits.
Perhaps those on Jijo are already the sole remnant of their kind.
THAT LEAVES OUR TRAEKI RELATIVES TO CONSIDER. The rebel stacks who came here sought to reject the gift of the Oailie-the specialized rings that give us purpose and destiny. It is wrenching to see traeki stumbling about like our pathetic ancestors. Such ungainly beings, so placid and unambitious! We should at once commence a program to create master rings in large quantities. Once converted, our cousins will be ideal instruments of dominance and control, able to knowledgeably run this planet for us without further cost to the clan.
ALL THESE CONCERNS SEEMED PARAMOUNT. Yet from the start, some members of the crew chafed at talk of vengeance, or profit, or redemption. Even the fate of local traeki seemed unimportant, compared with .the matter that brought the Polkjhy here in the first place.
Hints by the Rothen that they knew the whereabouts of the missing prey ship.
The prey ship carrying news of the Progenitors' return.
DROP ALL OTHER CONCERNS AT ONCE! these stacks insisted. Send the remaining corvette east! Do not wait for the first boat's crew to make repairs on their own. Fetch and interrogate the human-slaves-of-Rothen. Search deepwater places where the prey ship might be hiding. Delay no longer!
But our Captain-Leader and Priest-Stack agreed that a few more days would not matter. Our hold on this world is total. The prey cannot escape.
PALE DAYLIGHT PENETRATED THE LAKE TO WHERE A few drowned trees wafted their branches, as if to a gusting breeze. The rewq over his eyes helped him see, amplifying the dim glow, but Lark found the resulting shadows creepy, adding to a feeling that none of this could possibly be real.
Working underwater alongside Rann and Ling, he took part in an odd ritual, communicating with the trapped inhabitants of the preservation bubble. Since the process began, the hatchway of the imprisoned ship had filled with humans and Rothen, pressing eagerly against the gold barrier. Yet, from the outside no motion was seen. Those within were as still as statues, like wax effigies, depicting people with worried expressions.
Only when Lark and the other swimmers turned away, averting their gaze, did the "statues" change, shifting positions at incredible speed.
According to Ling's terse explanation, scribbled on her wax board, the captives lived in a QUANTUM SEPARATED WORLD. She added something about COGNIZANCE INTERFERENCE BY ORGANIC OBSERVERS and seemed to think that explained it. But Lark failed to see why not-looking should make any difference. No doubt Sara would understand better than her brother, the backwoods biologist. I used to tease her that the books she loved best were filled with useless abstractions. Concepts noJijoan would need again. Guess it just shows how little I knew.
To Lark
the whole thing smacked of a particularly inconvenient kind of magic, as if the capricious goddess, Ifni, had invented the gold barrier to test the patience of mortals.
Fortunately, their micro-traeki rings provided the human swimmers with all the air they needed. When pressurized supplies ran out, the little toruses unfolded great feathery fans that waved through the lake water like lazy wings, sieving fresh oxygen for Lark and the others to breathe. Another impressive feature of the ever-adaptable ringed ones. Combined with the skink-skin wet suits and rewqs, it made the swimmers look like bizarre sea monsters to those inside the bubble. Finally, though, the prisoners set up an electronic message plaque that flashed words through the translucent barrier in shining Anglic letters.
WE MUST MAKE COMMON CAUSE, they sent.
So far, Lark's idea had been fruitful. Unlike at tragic Dooden Mesa, these prisoners had been sealed within an airtight hull that, kept the golden liquor from swamping their bodies and life-support machinery. Moreover, the chill lake carried away enough heat so their idle engines did not broil them. They were surrounded, enmeshed in strange time. But they were alive.
When Lark stared at one of the Rothen masters, he easily made out the creature's facade. Rewq-generated colors divided its charismatic features, so noble in human terms, into two parts, each with its own aura. Across the upper half lay a fleshy symbiont beast, shaped to provide the regal brow, high cheeks and trademark stately nose. A gray deadness told that some kind of synthetic lens insert lay over the Rothen's eyeballs, and the fine white teeth were artificially capped.
It's an impressive disguise, he thought. Yet even without masks the Rothen were remarkably humanoid, a resemblance that no doubt originally spurred their cunning plan to win over some impressionable Earthlings back in the frantic, naive days soon after contact, turning those converts into a select tribe of loyal aides-the Daniks. If handled right, it would let the Rothen pull quite a few capers using human intermediaries to do the dirty work. And if Daniks were caught in the act, Earth would get the blame.
All told, those inside the trapped ship had a destiny they deserved. Lark might have voted to leave them till Jijo reclaimed their dross. Only now an even greater danger loomed, and there was no other place to turn for allies against the Jophur.
The captives inside the shell seemed eager enough. The last line of their message expressed this.
GET US OUT OF HERE!
Floating in the gentle current, Lark saw Rann, the tall Danik leader, write on his wax board.
WE MAY HAVE A WAY. YOU MUST PREPARE A FORMULA.
Lark grabbed for the board, but Ling got there first, snatching the stylus right out of Rann's meaty hand. Surprise, then anger, flared across the part of his face visible between the rewq and breathing ring. But the big man was outnumbered, and knew that Jeni Shen had lethal darts in her underwater crossbow. The militia sergeant watched from a vantage point where her vigilance would not interfere with the time-jerked conversation.
Ling replaced Rann's message with another.
HOW DO YOU SUGGEST WE DO THAT?
She slung the sign's strap over her neck so the board rested against her back, message outward. At her nodded signal, Rann and Lark joined her turning around. A spooky feeling swarmed Lark's spine as he imagined a flurry of activity taking place behind them. Without observers peering at them, the Rothen-Danik crew were liberated from frozen time, free to read Ling's message, deliberate, and shape a reply.
I never read much physics, Lark thought. But something feels awful screwy about how this works.
The swimmers let momentum carry them around. Only a few duras passed before they faced the hatch once more, but most of the Rothen and human figures had moved in that narrow moment. The electric placard now glimmered with new writing.
PREFERRED METHOD: DESTROY THE JOPHUR.
Bubbles burst past Lark's breathing tube as he choked back a guffaw. Ling glanced his way, conveying agreement with a shake of her head. The second half of the message was more serious.
OTHER POSSIBILITY: OFFER JOPHUR WHAT THEY WANT.
BUY OUR FREEDOM!
Lark scanned the crowded statues, where many human faces wore expressions of desperation. He could not help feeling moved as they pleaded for their lives. In a way it's not their fault. Their ancestors made a stupid deal on their behalf, just as mine did. People must have been both crazed and gullible in those days, right after Earthlings first met Galactic culture.
It took effort to harden his heart, but Lark knew he must. Again, Rann tried for the big writing tablet, but Ling wrote fiercely.
WHAT CAN YOU OFFER US, IN RETURN?
On seeing her message, Lark and Rann both stared at her. But Ling seemed unaware that her words carried a personal as well as general meaning. They turned again, giving the prisoners a chance to read and react to Ling's demand. While sweeping the slow circle, Lark glanced toward her, but living goggles made direct eye contact impossible. Her rewq-mediated aura conveyed grim resolve.
Lark expected to find the captives in turmoil, upset by Ling's implied secession. Then he realized. They only see us when our backs are turned. They may not even know it's Rann and Ling out here, after all!
WHATEVER WE HAVE.
That was the frank answer, arrayed in shining letters. Ling's next message was as straight to the point.
RO-KENN RELEASED QHEUEN AND HOON PLAGUES. MAYBE OTHERS. CURE THEM, OR ROT.
At this resumed accusation, Rann nearly exploded. Strangled anger echoed in his pharynx, escaping as bubbles that Lark feared might carry his curses all the way to the far surface of the lake. The starman tried to grab the message board, briefly struggling with Ling. But when Lark made slashing motions across his throat, Rann glanced back as Jeni approached from the ship's curved flank, brandishing her deadly bow, accompanied by two strong young qheuens.
Rann's shoulders slumped. He went through the next turning time sweep mechanically. Lark heard a low, grating sound, and knew the big Danik was grinding his teeth.
Lark expected protestations of innocence from the imprisoned starfarers, and sure enough, when they next looked, the signboard proclaimed-
PLAGUES, WE KNOW NOTHING OF SUCH.
But Ling was adamant to a degree that clearly surprised Rann. Using forceful language, she told the captives-her former friends and comrades-to answer truthfully next time, or be abandoned to their fate.
That brought grudging admission, at last.
RO-KENN HAD OPTIONS,
HIS CHOICE TO USE SUCH MEANS.
GET US OUT.
WE CAN PROVIDE CURES.
Lark stared at the woman next to him, awed by the blazing intensity of her rewq aura. Till that moment, she must have held a slim hope that it was all a mistake . . . that Lark's indictment of her Rothen gods had a flaw in it somewhere. That there was some alternative explanation.
Now every complicating what-if vanished. The flame of her anger made Rann's seem like a pale thing.
While both Daniks fumed, each for different reasons, Lark took the wax board, wiped it, and wrote a reply.
PREPARE CURES AT ONCE. BUT THERE IS MORE. WE MUST HAVE ONE MORE THING.
It made sense that the Jophur used this weird weapon- pouring chemically synthesized time-stuff over their enemies. It suited their racial genius for manipulating organic materials. But in their contempt, the master rings had forgotten something.
They have cousins on Jijo, who are loyal to the Six.
True, local traekis lacked ambitious natures, and were unschooled in advanced Galactic science. Regardless, a team of talented local pharmacists had analyzed the substance-a viscous, quasi-living tissue-by taste alone. Without understanding its arcane temporal effects, they managed to secrete a counteragent from their gifted glands.
Unfortunately, it was no simple matter of applying the formula, then rubbing away the golden cocoon surrounding the Rothen ship. For one thing, the antidote was miscible with water. Applying it under a lake presented problems.
; But there was a possible way. At Dooden Mesa, they found that the old mule spider's preservation beads could be pushed against the golden wall and made to merge with it, flowing into the barrier like stones sinking in soft clay.
Lark had more beads brought from the ancient treasure hoard of the being Dwer called One-of-a-Kind. Agile, fiveclawed blues pushed several egg-shaped objects against the section of wall he indicated, opposite the hatch. These beads had been hollowed out and turned into bottles, stoppered at one end with plugs of traeki wax. Within each could be seen machines and other relics of the Buyur era, gleaming like insects caught in amber. Only now those relics seemed to float inside, sloshing in a frothy foam.
At first there were few visible results to the qheuens' effort. The water resonated with bumps and clanks, but no merging occurred. Lark scribbled a command.