Brightness Reef

by David Brin

  "There it is!" Jomah pointed excitedly. The boy dashed toward a massive monument whose smooth flanks appeared dappled by filtered sunshine. Humanity's Sacrifice was its title, commemorating the one thing men and women had brought with them to Jijo that they esteemed above all else, even their precious books.

  Something they renounced forever, as a price of peace.

  The sculpted creature seemed poised in the act of bounding forward, its noble head raised, wind brushing its mane. One had but to squint and picture it in motion, as graceful in full gallop as it was powerful. Mentioned lovingly in countless ancient human tales, it was one of the great legendary wonders of old Earth. The memorial always moved Sara.

  "It isn't like a donkey at all!" Jomah gushed. "Were horses really that big?"

  Sara hadn't believed it herself, till she looked it up. "Yes, they got that big, sometimes. And don't exaggerate, Jomah. Of course it looks quite a bit like a donkey. They were cousins, after all."

  Yeah, and a garu tree is related to a grickle bush.

  In a hushed voice Jomah asked, "Can I climb up on top?"

  "Don't speak of that!" Sara quickly looked around. No urrish faces were in sight, so she relented a little and shook her head. "Ask your uncle. Maybe he'll take you down here at night."

  Jomah looked disappointed. "I bet you've been up there, haven't you?"

  Sara almost smiled. She and Dwer had indeed performed the ritual when they were teens, late on a chill winter's eve, when most urs were snug among their wallow mates. No triple-eyes, then, to grow inflamed at a sight that so enraged them for the first century after Earthlings landed-that of human beings magnified by symbiosis with a great beast that could outrun any urs. Two creatures, amplified into something greater than either one alone.

  They thought, after the second war, that it would put us down forever to demand all the horses, then wipe the species out.

  I guess they learned different.

  Sara shook off the bitter, unworthy thought. It all happened so long ago, before the Great Peace or the coming of the Egg. She glanced up past the stone figure and the flower-draped skeleton of the ancient Buyur town, toward a cloud-flecked sky. They say when poison falls from heaven, its most deadly form will be suspicion.

  The Explosers Guild occupied a building whose formal name was Tower of Chemistry, but that most Tareki-ans called the Palace of Stinks. Tubes of treated boo climbed the spire's flank like parasitic vines, puffing and steaming so the place vaguely resembled Pzora after a hard day in the pharmacy. Indeed, after humans, traeki were most numerous among those passing through the front portal, or riding a counterweighted lift to upper floors, where they helped make items coveted throughout the Slope-matches for lighting cook stoves, oils to treat qheuen shells against Itchyflake, soaps for cleaning human and hoon garments, lubricants to keep elderly g'Kek rolling after Dry-Axle set in-as well as paraffin for reading lamps, ink for writing, and many other products, all certified to leave no lasting trace in Jijo's soil. Nothing to worsen punishment when the inevitable Day of Days came.

  Despite smells that made Prity chuff in disgust, Sara felt a lightening of her spirit inside the tower. All races mixed in the lobby, without any of the cliquishness she'd seen elsewhere in town. The hustle of commerce, with crisp murmurs in the language of science, showed some folk weren't letting the crisis drive them to gloom or hostility. There was just too much to do.

  Three floors up, Explosers Hall seemed to boil with confusion. Men and boys shouted or hurried by, while guildswomen with clipboards told hoon helpers where to push barrels of ingredients. Off in a corner, gray-headed human elders bent over long tables, consulting with traeki colleagues whose hardworking secretion rings were adorned with beakers, collecting volatile drippings. What had seemed chaotic gradually resolved as Sara saw patterned order in the ferment.

  This crisis may be confusing to others, but it's what explosers have spent all their lives thinking about. In this place, the mood would be fierce dedication. It was the first justification for optimism Sara had seen.

  Jomah gave Sara a swift, efficient hug, then marched over to a man with a salt-and-pepper beard, poring over schematics. Sara recognized the paper, which Nelo made in special batches once a year, for painters and explosers.

  A family resemblance went beyond features of face or posture, to the man's expression when he set eyes on Jomah. A lifted eyebrow was all Kurt the Exploser betrayed as Jomah placed a long leather tube in his calloused palm.

  /s that all? I could have delivered it for Henrik myself. No need to send the boy on what might be a perilous mission.

  If anyone knew about events up the Rimmers, it would be those in this room. But Sara held back. The explosers seemed busy. Besides, she had her own source of information, nearby. And now it was time to go there.

  Engril the Copier refilled cups of tea while Sara read a slim sheaf of pages-a chronology of events and conjectures that had arrived from the Glade of Gathering, by urrish galloper, this very morning. Sara's first emotion was a flood of relief. Till now, there had been no way of knowing which rampant rumor to believe. Now she knew the landing in the mountains had occurred without casualties. Those at Gathering were safe, including her brothers. For the time being.

  In the next room, Engril's aides could be seen duplicating photostats of the report's pen-and-ink illustrations, while an offset press turned out printed versions of the text. Soon copies would reach notice boards in

  Tarek Town, then surrounding hives, hamlets, and herds.

  "Criminals!" Sara sighed, putting down the first page. She couldn't believe it. "Criminals from space. Of all the possibilities-"

  "It always seemed the most far-fetched," Engril agreed. She was a portly, red-headed woman, normally jovial and motherly but today more somber than Sara recalled. "Perhaps it wasn't much discussed because we dared not think of the consequences."

  "But if they came illegally, isn't that better than Institute police putting us all under arrest? Crooks can't report us without admitting their own crime."

  Engril nodded. "Unfortunately, that logic twists around the other way. Criminals cannot afford to let us report them."

  "How reasonable a fear is that? It's been several thousand years since the g'Kek came, and in all that time there's been just this one direct contact with Galactic culture. The ancients calculated a half-million-year gap before the next orbital survey, and two million before a major inspection."

  "That's not so very long."

  Sara blinked. "I don't get it."

  The older woman lifted a steaming pot. "More tea? Well, it's like this. Vubben suspects these are gene raiders. If true, the crime has no-what did the ancients call it?-no sculpture of limitations? No time limit for punishing perpetrators. Individuals from the foray party might be long dead, but not the species or Galactic clan they represent, which can still be sanctioned, from the eldest patron race down to the youngest client. Even a million years is short by the reckoning of the Great Library, whose memory spans a thousand times that long."

  "But the sages don't think we'll even be around in a million years! The ancestors' plan-the Scrolls-"

  "Gene raiders can't count on that, Sara. It's too serious a felony."

  Sara shook her head. "All right, let's say some distant descendants of the Six are still around by then, telling blurry legends about something that happened long ago. Who would believe their story?"

  Engril lifted her shoulders. "I can't say. Records show there are many jealous, even feuding, factions among the oxygen-breathing clans of the Five Galaxies. Perhaps all it would take is a hint, just a clue, to put rivals on the scent. Given such a hint, they might sift the biosphere of Jijo for stronger proof. The entire crime could come unraveled."

  Silence fell as Sara pondered. In Galactic society, the greatest treasures were biological-especially those rare natural species rising now and then out of fallow worlds. Species with a spark called Potential. Potential to be uplifted. To be adopted by a pa
tron race and given a boost-through teaching and genetic manipulation- crucial to cross the gap from mere clever beasts to starfaring citizens. Crucial, unless one believed the Earthlihgs' legend of lonely transcendence. But who in all the Five Galaxies credited that nonsense?

  Both wilderness and civilization had roles to play in the process by which intelligent life renewed itself. Neither could do it alone. The complex, draconian rules of migration-including forced abandonment of planets, systems, even whole galaxies-were meant to give biospheres time to recover and cultivate feral potential. New races were then apportioned for adoption, according to codes time-tested over aeons.

  The raiders hoped to bypass those codes. To find something precious here on Jijo, off limits and ahead of schedule. But then, even if they made a lucky strike, what could they do with their treasure?

  Take some mated pairs far away from here, to some world the thieves already control, and seed the stock quietly, nudging them along with gene infusions so they fit into a natural-seeming niche. Then wait patiently for millennia, or much longer, till the time seems right to "find" the treasure, right under their noses. Eureka!

  "So you're saying," she resumed, "the raiders may not want to leave witnesses. But then why land here on the Slope? Why not beyond the Sunrise Desert, or even the small continent on the far side of Jijo, instead of barging in on us!"

  Engril shook her head. "Who can say? The forayers claim to want our expertise, and they say they're willing to pay for it. But we are the ones likely to pay in the end."

  Sara felt her heart thud. "They-have to kill us all."

  "There may be less drastic answers. But that's the one that strikes the sages as most practical."

  "Practical!"

  "From the raiders' point of view, of course."

  Sara absorbed this quietly. To think, part of me looked forward to meeting Galactics, and maybe asking to peek at their portable libraries.

  Through the door to Engril's workshop, she glimpsed the copier's assistants hard at work. One girl piloted a coelostat, a big mirror on a long arm that followed the sun, casting a bright beam through the window onto whatever document was being duplicated. A moving slit scanned that reflected light across a turning drum of precious metal, cranked by two strong men, causing it to pick up carbon powder from a tray, pressing it on fresh pages, making photostatic duplicates of drawings, art works, designs-anything but typescript text, which was cheaper to reproduce on a printing press.

  Since this technology came to Jijo, nothing so dire had ever been copied.

  "This is awful news," Sara murmured.

  Engril agreed. "Alas, child, it's not the worst. Not by far." The old woman motioned toward the report. "Read on."

  Hands trembling, Sara turned more sheets over. Her own memory of the starship was of a blurry tablet, hurtling overhead, shattering the peaceful life of Dolo Village. Now sketches showed the alien cylinder plain as day, even more fearsome standing still than it had seemed in motion. Measurements of its scale, prepared by engineering adepts using arcane means of triangulation, were hard to believe.

  Then she turned another page and saw two of the plunderers themselves.

  She stared, dismayed, at the portrayal. "My God."

  Engril nodded. "Indeed. Now you see why we delayed printing a new edition of the Dispatch. Already some hotheads among the qheuens and urs, and even a few traeki and hoon, have begun muttering about human collusion. There's even talk of breaking the Great Peace.

  "Of course, it may never come to that. If the interlopers find what they seek soon enough, there may not he time for war to break out among the Six. We human exiles may get to prove our loyalty in the most decisive way-by dying alongside everyone else."

  Engril's bleak prospect made awful sense. But Sara looked at the older woman, shaking her head. "You're wrong. That's not the worst thing." Her voice was hoarse with worry. Engril looked back at her, puzzled. "What could be worse than annihilation of every sapient being on the Slope?"

  Sara lifted the sketch, showing a man and a woman, unmistakably human, caught unawares by a hidden artist as they looked down haughtily on Jijo's savages.

  "Our lives mean nothing," she said, tasting bitter words. "We were doomed from the moment our ancestors planted their outlaw seed on this world. But these"-she shook the paper angrily-"these fools are dabbling in an ancient game no human being could possibly know how to play well.

  "They'll perform their theft, then slay us to erase all witnesses, only to get caught anyway.

  "And when that happens, the real victim will be Earth."

  Asx

  THEY HAVE FOUND THE VALLEY OF THE innocents. We tried hard to conceal it, did we not, my rings? Sending them to a far-off vale-the glavers, lorniks, chimpanzees, and zookirs. And those children of our Six who came to Gathering with their parents, before the ship pierced our lives.

  Alas, all efforts at concealment were unavailing. A robot from the black station followed their warm trail through the forest to a sanctuary that was not as secret as we hoped.

  Among our sage company, Lester was the least surprised.

  "They surely expected us to try hiding what we value most. They must have sought the deep-red heat spoor of our refugees, before it could dissipate." His rueful smile conveyed regret but also respect. "It's what I would have done, if I were them."

  Anglic is a strange language, in which the subjunctive form allows one to make suppositions about impossible might-have-beens. Thinking in that tongue, i (within my/our second ring-of-cognition) understood Lester's expression of grudging admiration, but then i found it hard to translate for my/our other selves.

  No, our human sage is not contemplating betrayal.

  Only through insightful empathy can he/we learn to understand the invaders.

  Ah, but our foes learn about us much faster. Their robots flutter over the once-secret glen, recording, analyzing-then swooping to nip cell or fluid samples from frightened lorniks or chimps. Next, they want us to send individuals of each species for study, and seek to learn our spoken lore. Those g'Kek who know zookirs best, the humans who work with chimps, and those qheuens whose lorniks win medallions at festivals-these "native experts" must come share their rustic expertise. Though the interlopers speak softly of paying well (with trinkets and beads?), there is also implied compulsion and threat.

  our rings quiver, surprised, when Lester expresses satisfaction.

  "They must think they've uncovered our most valued secrets."

  "Have they not?" complains Knife-Bright Insight, snapping a claw. "Are not our greatest treasures those who depend on us?"

  Lester nods. "True. But we could never have hidden them for long. Not when higher life-forms are the very thing the invaders desire. It's what they expect us to conceal.

  "But now, if they are smug, even satiated for a while, we may distract them from learning about other things, possible advantages that offer us-and our dependents-a slim ray of hope."

  "How can that ve?" demanded Ur-Jah, grizzled and careworn, shaking her black-streaked mane. "As you said-what can we conceal? They need only pose their foul questions, and those profane rovots gallop forth, piercing any secret to its hoof and heart."

  "Exactly," Lester said. "So the important thing is to keep them from asking the right questions."

  Dwer

  HIS FIRST WAKING THOUGHT WAS THAT HE MUST be buried alive. That he lay--alternately shivering and sweltering-in some forgotten sunless crypt. A place for the dying or the dead.

  But then, he wondered muzzily, what stony place ever felt like this? So sweaty. Threaded by a regular, thudding rhythm that made the padded floor seem to tremble beneath him.

  Still semi-incoherent-with eyelids stubbornly stuck closed-he recalled how some river hoons sang of an afterlife spent languishing within a narrow fetid space, listening endlessly to a tidal growl, the pulse-beat of the universe. That fate seemed all too plausible in Dwer's fading delirium, while he struggled to shake off the wrappers of s
leep. It felt as if fiendish imps were poking away with sharp utensils, taking special pains with his fingers and toes.

  As more roiling thoughts swam into focus, he realized the clammy warmth was not the rank breath of devils. It carried an aroma much more familiar.

  So was the incessant vibration, though it seemed higher-pitched, more uneven than the throaty version he'd grown up with, resounding through each night's slumber, when he was a boy.

  It's a water wheel. I'm inside a dam!

  The chalky smell stung his sinuses with memory. A qheuen dam.

  His rousing mind pictured a hive of twisty chambers, packed with spike-clawed, razor-tooth creatures, scrambling over each other's armored backs, separated by just one thin wall from a murky lake. In other words, he was in one of the safest, most heartening places he could ask.

  But . . . how? The last thing I recall was lying naked in a snowstorm, halfway gone, with no help in sight.

  Not that Dwer was astonished to be alive. I've always been lucky, he thought, though it dared fate to muse on it. Anyway, Ifni clearly wasn't finished with him quite yet, not when there were still more ways to lure him down trails of surprise and fate.

  It took several tries to open his heavy, reluctant eyelids, and at first the chamber seemed a dim blur. Tardy tears washed and diffused the sole light-a flame-flicker coming from his left.

  "Uh!" Dwer jerked back as a dark shape loomed. The shadow resolved into a stubby face, black eyes glittering, tongue lolling between keen white teeth. The rest of the creature reared into view, a lithe small form, black pelted, with agile brown paws.

  "Oh . . . it's you," Dwer sighed in a voice that tasted scratchy and stale. Sudden movements wakened flooding sensations, mostly unpleasant, swarming now from countless scratches, burns, and bruises, each yammering a tale of abuse and woe. He stared back at the grinning noor beast, amending an earlier thought.

  I was always lucky, till I met you.

  Gingerly, Dwer pushed back to sit up a bit and saw that he lay amid a pile of furs, spread across a sandy floor strewn with bits of bone and shell. That untidy clutter contrasted with the rest of the small chamber- beams, posts, and paneling, all gleaming in the wan light from a candle that flickered on a richly carved table. Each wooden surface bore the fine marks of qheuen tooth-work, all the way down to angle brackets sculpted in lacy, deceptively strong filigrees.