Brightness Reef

by David Brin

  "Yeah," Huck said. "Well, maybe it's time someone pointed out the difference between taking a calculated risk and committing flat-out suicide. Which is what it'd be if we ever took a ride aboard that contraption of yours, Pincer!"

  Our poor qheuenish friend looked like someone had stuck him in a leg-vent with a stick. His cupola went all wobbly. "You all know-ow I'd never ask my friends-ends-"

  "To go anywhere you wouldn't go?" Huck retorted. "Big of you, since you're talking about dragging us around underwater, where you 're built to be perfectly comfortable."

  "Only at first-irst!" Pincer retorted. "After some test dives, we'll go deeper. And I'll be in there with you, taking all the same chances-ances!"

  "Come on, Huck," I put in. "Give the poor guy's shell a buff."

  "Anyway-ay," Pincer retaliated, "what about your plan? At least the bathy would be lawful and upright. You want to break the rules and do sooner stuff-uff!"

  Now it was Huck's turn to go defensive. "What sooner stuff? None of us can breed with each other, so there's no chance of committing that crime .while we're over the border. Anyhow, hunters and inspectors go beyond the markers."

  "Sure. With permission from the sages-ages!"

  Huck shrugged two stalks, as if to say she couldn't be bothered with petty legalistic details. "I still prefer a misdemeanor over flat-out suicide."

  "You mean you prefer a silly little trip to some broken-down Buyur ruin, just to read boring ol' wall markings-ings, over a chance to see the Midden-idden? And real live monsters?"

  Huck groaned and spun a disgusted circle. Earlier, Pincer had told us about a thing he glimpsed that morning, in the shallows south of town. Something with silvery-bright scales swooped by, he swore, flapping what looked in the murky distance like underwater wings. After hearing similar stories almost since Pincer's molting day, we didn't give this one a lot of credit.

  That was when both of them turned to me to decide!

  "Remember, Alvin," Huck crooned. "You just promised-"

  "You promised me, months ago!" Pincer cried, so avid that he didn't stutter.

  Right then I felt like a traeki standing between two piles of really ripe mulch. I liked the notion of getting to see the deep Midden, where everything slick and Galactic had gone since the Buyur went away. An undersea adventure like in books by Haller or Verne.

  On the other hand, Huck was right about Pincer's plan being Ifni-spit. The risk might seem worth it to a low-kay qheuen, who didn't even know for sure who his mother was, but I know my folks would sicken awful if I went off and died without leaving even my heart-spine behind for soul-grinding and vuphyning.

  Anyway, Huck offered a prospect almost as gloss-to find writings even more ancient than the books humans brought to Jijo. Real Buyur stories, maybe. The idea set off tingles in my sucker pads.

  As it turns out, I was spared having to decide. That's because my noor, Huphu, arrived right then, darting under Pincer's legs and Huck's wheels, yapping something about an urgent message from Ur-ronn.

  Ur-ronn wanted to see us.

  More than that-she had a big surprise to share.

  Oh, yes. Huphu needs introducing.

  First off, she's not really my noor. She hangs around me a lot, and my rumble-umbles seem to work, getting her to do what I want a good part of the time. Still, it's kind of hard to describe the relationship between hoon and noor. The very word--relationship--implies a lot of stuff that's just not there. Maybe this is one of those cases where Anglic's flexibility, usually the most utterbuff thing about it, simply falls apart into vagueness.

  Anyway, Huphu's no talker-decider. Not a sapient being, like us members of the Six. But since she comes along on most of our adventures, I guess she's as much a part of the gang as anyone. Lots of folks say noors are crazy. For sure, they don't seem to care if they live or die, so long as they're seeing something new. More have probably perished of curiosity than from liggers on land or sea-starks offshore. So I knew how Huphu would vote in our argument, if she could talk.

  Fortunately, even Pincer knows better than to suggest ever letting her decide anything.

  So there we were, arguing away, when this little noor bounds up the jetty, yipping like mad. Right off we can tell it's,a semaphore message she's relaying, on account of it makes sense. Noors can't speak Galactic Two or any other language anyone's ever grokked, but they can

  memorize and repeat any short mirror-flash signal they happen to pick up with their sharp eyes. They can even tell from the opener-tag who a message is for. It's a gloss talent that'd be awfully useful-if only they did it reliably, instead of just when they felt like it.

  Huphu sure must've felt like it, 'cause next thing you know she's yelping the upper denotation train of a GalTwo memorandum. (I figure an old Morse code telegraph operator like Mark Twain could've managed GalTwo, if he tried.)

  As I said before, the message was from our urrish pal, Ur-ronn, and it said--WINDOW FINISHED. COME QUICK. OTHER VERY WEIRD STUFF HAPPENING!

  I put an exclamation point at the end 'cause that's how Huphu finished reciting the bulletin she'd seen flash down from Mount Guenn, terminating her report with a bark of ecstatic excitement. I'm sure the phrase "weird stuff was what had her bounding in circles, biting at her shadow.

  "I'll get my water bag," Pincer-Tip said after a short pause.

  "I'll fetch my goggles," Huck added.

  "I'll grab my cloak and meet you at the tram," I finished. There was no need for discussion. Not after an invitation like that.

  IV. THE BOOK OF THE SLOPE

  Legends

  There is a fable told by the g'Kek, one of the oldest handed down since their sneakship came to Jijo, passed on orally for almost two thousand years, until it was finally recorded on paper.

  The saga tells of a youth whose "thread skating" prowess was renowned in one of the orbital cities where g'Keks dwelled, arter losing their homeworld on a wager.

  In this particular city, unhampered by the drag of solid ground, young wheel-lords of a space-born generation fashioned a new game--skimming with flashing rims along the thinnest or colored strands--cables that they strung at angles throughout the vast inner cavity of their artificial world. One skater, the tale says, used to take on dare after dare, relishing risk, hopping among gossamer strands and sometimes even flying free, wheels spinning madly before catching the next cord, swooping in ecstatic abandon.

  Then, one day, a defeated opponent taunted the young champion.

  I'll bet you can't skim close enough to wrap a thread round the sun!

  Today's Jijoan scholars find this part of the tale confusing. How could a sun be within reach, inside a hollow, spinning rock? With much of our Space Technologies section destroyed, the Biblos Scholarium is ill-equipped to interpret such clues. Our best guess is that the story became garbled over time, along with most other memories of a godlike past.

  The technical details do not matter as much as the moral of the tale--the imprudence of messing with forces beyond your comprehension. A fool doing so can get burned, like the skater in the tale, whose dramatic end ignited a storm of slender, blazing trails, crisscrossing the doomed city's suddenly fiery inner sky.

  --Collected Fables of Jijo 's Seven,

  Third Edition. Department of Folklore

  and Language, Biblos, Year 1867 of Exile.

  Dwer

  SINCE FINISHING HIS APPRENTICESHIP, DWER HAD visited nearly every village and farm in Jijo's settled zone, including the islands and one or two secret places he was sworn never to speak of. He had met a great many settlers from every race, including most of the Slope's human population.

  He grew more certain with each passing dura that the new prisoner wasn't one of them.

  Surprise flustered Dwer. Irrational guilt made him doubly angry.

  "Of all the stupid things to do," he told the girl rubbing her head by the cold campfire, "stealing my bow ranks pretty high. But pulling a knife tops all! How was I to know you were just a kid, up th
ere in the dark? I might've broke your neck in self-defense!"

  It was the first time either of them had spoken since her skull smacked the ground, leaving her body limp to be slung over a shoulder and lugged back to camp. Never quite losing consciousness, the strange youth had recovered most of her wits by the time he sat her down near the coals. Now she kneaded her bruised head, watched by the glaver and the noor.

  "I ... thought you was ... a ligger," she stammered at last.

  "You stole my bow, ran away, then thought you were being chased by a ligger?"

  This much could be said in her favor-she was a lousy liar. By dawn's light, her small frame sat bundled in garments of poorly tanned leather, stitched with sinew. Her hair, tied in a chopped-off ponytail, was a wavy reddish brown. Of her face-what could be made out under smudges-the stand-out features were a nose that had once been broken and a nasty burn scar along her left cheek, marring a face that might otherwise have been pretty, after a good scrubbing.

  "What's your name?"

  She lowered Her chin and muttered something.

  "What was that? I couldn't hear."

  "I said, it's Rety!" She met his eyes for the first time, her voice now edged with defiance. "What're you gonna do with me?"

  A reasonable question, under the circumstances. Rubbing his chin, Dwer couldn't see where he had much choice. "Guess I'll take you to Gathering. Most of the sages are there. If you're old enough, you've got a grievance to answer, or else your parents will be fetched. By the way, who are they? Where do you live?"

  The glowering silence returned. Finally, she muttered-"I'm thirsty."

  Both the glaver and the noor had taken turns nuzzling the empty canteen, then scolding him with their eyes. What am I? Dwer thought. Everybody's daddy?

  He sighed. "All right, let's head for water. Rety, you go stand over by the glaver."

  Her eyes widened. "Does-does it bite?"

  Dwer gaped back at her. "It's a glaver, for Ifni's sake!" He took her by the hand. "You'd have reason to fear it if you were a grubworm, or a pile of garbage. Though now that I mention it-"

  She yanked back her hand, glaring.

  "Okay, sorry. Anyway, you're going to lead, so's I can keep an eye on you. And this will make sure you don't scoot off." He tied the free end of the glaver's tether to her belt, in back where she could only reach it with difficulty. Dwer then hoisted his pack and the bow. "Hear the waterfall? We'll take a break for jerky when we get there."

  It was a strange trek--the sullen leading the apathetic, followed by the confused, all tailed by the inveterately amused. Whenever Dwer glanced back, Mudfoot's leering grin seemed only a little strained as the noor panted in the bone-dry morning air.

  Some folks barred their doors when they heard a noor was nearby. Others put out treats, hoping to entice a change in luck. Dwer sometimes saw wild ones in the marshes, where flame trees flourished on the forested backs of drifting acre-lilies. But his strongest memories were from his father's mill, where young noor came each spring to perform reckless, sometimes fatal dives from the ponderously turning power wheel. As a child, Dwer often scampered alongside, taking the same exhilarating risks, much to his parents' distress. He even tried to bond closer to those childhood playmates, bribing them with food, teaching them tricks, seeking a link like Man once had with his helpmate--dog.

  Alas, noor were not dogs. In time, as his life-path took him farther from the gentle river, Dwer came to realize noor were clever, brave--and also quite dangerous. Silently, he warned Mudfoot, Just because you weren't the thief, don't think that makes me trust you one bit.

  A steep trail looks and feels different going down than heading up. At times, this one seemed so wild and untamed, Dwer could squint and imagine he was on a real frontier, untouched by sapient hands since the world was new. Then they'd pass some decayed Buyur remnant-a cement-aggregate wall, or a stretch of rubbery pavement missed by the roving deconstructors when Jijo was laid fallow-and the illusion vanished. Demolition was never perfect. Countless Buyur traces were visible west of the Rimmers.

  Time was the true recycler. Poor Jijo had been assigned enough to restore her eco-web, or so said his brother, Lark. But Dwer rarely thought on such a grand scale. It robbed magic from the Jijo of today-a wounded place, but one filled with wonders.

  Rety needed help over some steeper patches, and the glaver often had to be lowered by rope. Once, after wrestling the lugubrious creature down to a stretch of old road, Dwer swiveled to find the girl gone.

  "Now where did the little--" He exhaled frustration. "Oh, hell."

  Rety's affront deserved some penalty, and her mystery shouted to be solved, but fetching stray glavers came first. After delivering this one, perhaps he'd return to pick up the girl's trail, even though it would make him miss most of Gathering-

  He rounded a sheer stone corner and almost stumbled over the girl, squatting face to face with Mudfoot. Rety looked up at Dwer.

  "It's a noor, right?" she asked.

  Dwer covered his surprise. "Uh, it's the first you've seen?"

  She nodded, bemused by Mudfoot's flirtatious grin.

  "Nor ever met a glaver, it seems." Dwer asked-"How far east do you people live?"

  The scar on her cheek grew livid as her face flushed. "I don't know what you-"

  She stopped as the extent of her slip-up sank in. Her lips pressed in a pale line.

  "Don't fret it. I already know all about you," he said, gesturing at her clothes. "No woven cloth. Hides sewn with gut. Good imla and sorrl pelts. Sorrl don't grow that big, west of the Rimmers."

  Reading her dismay, he shrugged. "I've been over the mountains myself, several times. Did your folks say it's forbidden? That's true, mostly. But / can range anywheres I want, on survey."

  She looked down. "So I wouldn't've been safe even if I-"

  "Ran faster and made it over the pass? Cross some imaginary line and I'd have to let you go?" Dwer laughed, trying not to sound too unfriendly. "Rety, go easy on yourself. You stole the wrong fella's bow, is all. I'd've chased you beyond the Sunrise Desert if I had to."

  That was bluster, of course. Nothing on Jijo was worth

  a two-thousand-league trek across volcanoes and burning sands. Still, Rety's eyes widened. He went on.

  "I never spotted your tribe in any of my expeditions east, so I'd guess you're from quite a ways south of east, beyond the Venom Plain. Is it the Gray Hills? I hear that country's so twisty, it could hide a small tribe, if they're careful."

  Her brown eyes filled with a weary pang. "You're wrong. I didn't come from . . . that place."

  She trailed off lamely, and Dwer felt sympathy. He knew all about feeling awkward around one's own kind. The loner's life made it hard getting enough experience to overcome his own shyness.

  Which is why I have to make it to Gathering! Sara had given him a letter to deliver to Plovov the Analyst. Coin-cidentally, Plovov's daughter was a beauty, and unbetrothed. With luck, Dwer might get a chance to ask Glory Plovov out for a walk, and maybe tell a story good enough to impress her. Like how he stopped last year's migration of herd-moribul from stampeding over a cliff during a lightning storm. Perhaps he wouldn't stammer this time, making her giggle in a way he didn't like.

  Suddenly he was impatient to be off. "Well, no sense worrying about it now." He motioned for Rety to lead the glaver again. "You'll be assigned a junior sage to speak for you, so you won't face the council alone. Anyway, we don't hang sooners anymore. Not unless we have to."

  His attempt to catch her eye with a wink failed, so the joke went flat. She studied the ground as he retied the tether, and they resumed moving single file.

  A rising humidity turned into mist as they neared the noise of plunging water. Where the trail rounded a switchback, a streamlet fell from above, dropping staccato spatters across an aquamarine pool. From there, water spilled over a sheer edge, resuming its steep journey toward the river far below, and finally the sea.

  The way down to the pool looked too
treacherous to risk with Rety and the glaver, so he signaled to keep going. They would intersect the brook again, farther along.

  But the noor leaped from rock to rock. Soon they heard him splashing joyfully as they plodded on.

  Dwer found himself thinking of another waterfall, way up where the Great Northern Glacier reached a towering cliff at the continent's edge. Every other year, he hunted brankur pelts there, during spring thaw. But he really made the journey in order to be on hand when the ice dam finally broke, at the outlet of Lake Desolation.

  Huge, translucent sheets would tumble nearly a kilometer, shattering to fill the sky with crystal icebows, bringing the mighty falls back to life with a soul-filling roar.

  In his fumbling way, he once tried describing the scene to Lark and Sara-the shouting colors and radiant noise-hoping practice would school his clumsy tongue. Reliably, his sister's eyes lit up over his tales of Jijo's marvels beyond the narrow Slope. But good old cheerful Lark just shook his head and said-"These fine marvels would do just as well without us."

  But would they? Dwer wondered.

  Is there beauty in a forest, if no creature stops and calls it lovely, now and then? Isn't that what "sapience" is for?

  Someday, he hoped to take his wife-and-mate to Desolation Falls. If he found someone whose soul could share it the way his did.

  The noor caught up a while later, sauntering by with a smug grin, then waiting to shake its sleek back, spraying their knees as they passed. Rety laughed. A short sound, curt and hurried, as if she did not expect any pleasure to last long.

  Farther down the trail, Dwer halted where an outcrop overlooked the cascade, a featherlike trickle, dancing along the cliff face. The sight reminded Dwer of how desperately dry he felt. It also tugged a sigh, akin to loneliness.