Brightness Reef

by David Brin

  Perhaps it might even be possible to find a way to save her and her people.

  Maybe that was what his hands had said to Prity, just a little while ago.

  If so, no wonder the little chimp broke out in wry, doubtful laughter.

  XVII. THE BOOK OF THE SEA

  Should you succeed in following

  the Path of Redemption--

  to be re-adopted, uplifted anew,

  given a second chance--

  that will not mean an end

  to all your strivings.

  First you must prove yourselves

  as noble clients, obedient and true

  to the new patrons who redeemed you.

  Later you will rise in status,

  and uplift clients of your own,

  generously passing on the

  blessings that you earned.

  But then, in time, there oft

  begins to glimmer a light

  on the horizon of a species' life,

  hinting at other realms,

  beckoning the tired, the worthy.

  This is said to be a sign post.

  Some will call it The Lure,

  or else The Enticement.

  Aeon after aeon, old ones depart,

  seeking paths that younger

  races can't perceive.

  They vanish from our midst,

  those who find these paths.

  Some call it transcendence.

  Others call it death.

  --The Scroll of Destiny

  Alvin's Tale

  ONE THING ALWAYS STRUCK ME ABOUT THE WAY tales are told in Anglic-or any of the other Earthling tongues I've learned-and that's the problem of keeping up suspense.

  Oh, some human authors of Twencen and Twenty-One had it down cold. There've been times that I stayed up three nights straight, taken with some yarn by Conrad or Cunin. What's puzzled me, ever since I got the notion of becoming a writer myself, is how those old-timers managed it.

  Take this account I've been scribbling lately, whenever I get a chance to lie down on this hard deck with my notebook, already gone all ragged at the corners from the places I've taken it, scrawling clumsy hoon-sized letters with a chewed-up pencil clutched in my fist. From the very start I've been telling my story in "first person"-like in a diary, only with all sorts of fancy-gloss tricks thrown in that I've picked up from my reading over the years.

  Why first person? Well, according to Good Fiction by Anderson, that "voice" makes it a whole lot easier to present the reader with a single, solid-feeling point-of-view, even though it means my book will have to be translated if a traeki's ever to understand it.

  But the trouble with a first person chronicle is this- whether it's real-life history or a piece of make-believe, you know the hero survived!

  So during all of the events I'm about to relate, you who are reading this memoir (hopefully after I've had a chance to rewrite it, have a human expert fix my grammar, and pay to have it set in type) you already know that I, Alvin Hph-wayuo, son of Mu-phauwq and Yowg-wayuo of Wuphon Port, and intrepid explorer extraordinaire, simply have to escape alive the jam I'm about to describe, with at least one brain, one eye, and a hand to write it all down.

  I've lain awake some nights, trying to see a way around this problem using some other language. There's the GalSeven tentative case, for instance, but that doesn't work in past-explicit tense. And the quantum-uncertain declension, in Buyur-dialect GalThree, is just too weird. Anyway, who would I be writing for? Huck's the only other GalThree reader I know, and getting praise from her is kind of like kissing your sister.

  Anyway, the waters of the Rift were all a-froth at the point where I last left our tale. The hatchet shadow of Terminus Rock cut across a patch of ocean where both hawser and hose still whirled, chopping the normally placid surface, spinning with tension energy released just moments before, by a disaster.

  It was all too easy to picture what had happened to Wuphon's Dream, our little vessel for exploring the great unknown below. In reluctant imagining I saw the hollow wooden tube-its wheels spinning uselessly, the bulbous glass nose broken-tumbling into black emptiness trailing its broken leash, carrying Ziz, the little traeki partial stack, to perdition along with it.

  As if that weren't enough, we all had fresh in memory the sight of little Huphu, our noor-beast mascot, thrown by the recoiling crane, screeching and gyrating till her tiny black figure vanished into the blue waters of the Rift. As Huck's Earthling nicknamesake might've said- "It warn't a happy sight. Nor a lucky wun."

  For a long time, everybody just stared. I mean, what could we do? Even the protestors from Wuphon Port and The Vale were silent. If any felt smug over our comeuppance as heretics, they felt wiser to withhold jubilation.

  We all backed away from the ledge. What point in peering at a velvety-smooth grave?

  "Retract the hawser and hose," Urdonnol commanded. Soon the drums began rotating the other way, rewinding what had unreeled so hopefully just duras before. The same hoonish voice called out depths, only this time the numbers grew steadily smaller, and there was no great, booming enthusiasm in the throaty baritone. Finally, at two and a half cables, the hawser's frayed end popped out of the sea, dripping water like white lymph fluid from a traeki's wounded, dangling tentacle. Those cranking the drum sped up, eager to see what had happened.

  "Acid vurn!" Ur-ronn declared in shock, when the severed end was swung onto the bluff. She lisped in anger. "Savotage!"

  Urdonnol seemed reluctant to leap to conclusions, but the older urs technician kept swinging her narrow head back and forth, low and snakelike, from the burned cable to the crowd of protestors standing on the bluff, gaping at our tragedy. The urrish apprentice's dark suspicion was clear.

  "Get away from here!" Huck shouted angrily, rolling toward the dissenters, spinning up gravel with her rims. She swerved, just missing the toes of several humans and hoon, who backed off nervously. Even a couple of reds withdrew their clawed, armored legs, scuttling away a pace or two, before recalling that a flail-eyed g'Kek isn't much physical threat to a qheuen. Then they moved forward again, hissing and clicking.

  Pincer and I rushed to Huck's side. It might've gotten ugly, but then a bunch of big grays and burly urrish smiths from Mount Guenn Forge hurried up behind us, some carrying cudgels, ready to back up Huck's demand with angry force. The rabble took note and quit our worksite, moving toward their makeshift camp.

  "Bastards!" Huck cursed after them. "Horrid, jeekee murderers!"

  Not by law, I thought, still numb from shock. Neither Huphu nor little Ziz had strictly been citizens of the Commons. Nor even honorary ones, like glavers, or members of any threatened species. So it wasn't murder, exactly.

  But close enough, by my reckoning. My hands clenched, and I sensed something give as my back flexed with fight-hormones. Anger is slow to ignite in a hoon and hard to snuff once lit. It's kind of disturbing to look back on how I felt then, even though the sages say what you feel isn't evil, only what you do about it.

  No one said a word. We must've moped for a while. Urdonnol and Ur-ronn argued over what kind of a message to send to Uriel.

  Then a stuttering whistle pierced our pit of mourning, coming from behind us, toward the sea. We turned to see Pincer-Tip, teetering bravely at the edge, blowing dust as he piped shrilly from three leg-vents while motioning with two claws for us to come back.

  "Look-ook-ook!" came his aspirated stammer. "Huck, Alvin-hurry!"

  Huck claimed later she realized right off what Pincer must've seen. I guess in retrospect it is kind of obvious, but at the time I had no idea what could have him so excited. On reaching the edge, I could only peer down in amazement at what had popped out of the belly of the Rift.

  It was our bathy! Our beautiful Wuphon's Dream floated upright, almost peaceful in the bright sunshine. And on its curved top sat a small black figure, wet and bedraggled from nose to tail. It didn't take a g'Kek's vision to tell that our little noor was as amazed to be alive as
we were to see her. Faint whispers of her yelping complaint floated up to us.

  "But how-" Urdonnol began.

  "Of course!" Ur-ronn interrupted. "The vallast cane loose!"

  I blinked a couple of times.

  "Oh, the ballast! Hr-rm. Yes, the Dream'd be buoyant without' it. But there was no crew to pull the release, unless--"

  "Unless Ziz did it!" Huck finished for me.

  "Insufficient explanation," Urdonnol interjected in GalTwo. "With eight cables of (heavy, down-seeking) metal hawser weighing the diving device, the (minuscule) air pocket within our vessel ought to have been (decisively) overwhelmed."

  "Hrm-rm, I think I see what made the difference," I suggested, shading my eyes with both hands. "Huck, what is that . . . thing surrounding the bathy?"

  Again, our wheeled friend teetered at the edge, spreading two eyestalks far apart and sticking out a third for good measure. "It looks like a balloon of some sort, Alvin. A tube, wrapped around the Dream like a life preserver. A circular--Ziz!"

  That matched my own guess. A traeki torus, inflated beyond anything we might have thought possible.

  Everybody turned to stare at Tyug, the Mount Guenn Master of Mixes. The full-sized traeki shuddered, letting out a colored cloud that smelled like released tension.

  "A precaution. One that i/we contemplated in consultation with our lord, Uriel. A safeguard of unknown, untried efficacy.

  "Glad we/i are to have vlenned a success. These rings, and those below, anticipate relishing recent events. Soon. In retrospect."

  "In other words-ords," Pincer interpreted, "stop staring like a bunch of day-blind glavers. Let's go fetch 'em back-ack-ack!"

  XVIII. THE BOOK OF THE SLOPE

  Legends

  It is said that earlier generations interpreted the Scrolls in ways quite different than we do now, in our modern Commons.

  Without doubt, each wave of immigrants brought to the Slope a new crisis of faith, from which beliefs emerged restructured, changed.

  At the start, every fresh arrival briefly held advantages, bearing godlike tools from the Five Galaxies. Newcomers kept these powers for intervals ranging from a few months to more than eight years. This helped each sept establish a secure base for their descendants, as humans did at Biblos, the hoon on Hawph Island, and the g'Kek at Dooden Mesa.

  Yet each also knew its handicaps--a small founding population and ignorance about how to live a primitive existence on an unknown world. Even the haughty gray queens conceded they must accept certain principles, or risk vendetta from all the others combined. The Covenant of Exile set rules of population control, concealment, and Jijo-preservation, as well as proper ways to handle dross. These fundamentals continue to this day.

  It is all too easy to forget that other matters were settled only after mordant struggle.

  For instance, bitter resistance to the reintroduction of metallurgy, by urrish smiths, was only partly based on qheuens protecting their tool-monopoly. There was also a sincere belief, on the part of many hoon and traeki, that the innovation was sacrilege. To this day, some on the Slope will not touch reforged Buyur steel or let it in their villages or homes, no matter how many times the sages rule it safe for temporary use.

  Another remnant belief can be seen among those puritans who despise books. While paper itself can hardly be faulted--it decays well and can be used to reprint copies of the Scrolls--there is still a dissident minority who call the Biblos trove a vanity at best, and an impediment to those whose goal should lie in blessed ignorance. In the early days of human life on Jijo, such sentiments were exploited by urrish and qheuen foes--until the great smiths discovered profit in the forging of type, and book-addiction spread unstoppably throughout the Commons.

  Strangely, it is the most recent crisis-of-faith that shows the least leftover effects today. If not for written accounts, it would be difficult to believe that, only a century ago, there were many on the Slope who loathed and feared the newly arrived Holy Egg. Yet at the time there were serious calls for the Explosers Guild to destroy it! To demolish the stone-that-sings, lest it give away our hiding place or, worse, distract the Six away from following the same path already blamed by glavers.

  "If it is not in the Scrolls, it cannot be sacred."

  That has always been the declaration of orthodoxy, since time immemorial. And to this day it must be confessed--there is no mention in the Scrolls of anything even remotely like the Egg.

  Rety

  DARK, CLAMMY, STIFLING. Rety didn't like the cave. It must be the stale, dusty air that made her heart pound so. Or else the painful scrapes on her legs, after sliding down a twisty chute to this underground grotto, from a narrow entrance in a boo-shrouded cleft.

  Or maybe what made her jumpy was the way shapes kept crowding in from all sides. Each time Rety whirled with her borrowed lantern, the creepy shadows turned out to be knobs of cold, dead rock. But a little voice seemed to say--Always . . . so far! But a real monster may wait around the next bend.

  She set her jaw and refused to listen. Anyone who called her scared would be a liar!

  Does a scared person slink into dark places at night? Or do things they was told not to do, by all the big fat chiefs of the Six?

  A weight wriggled in her belt pouch. Rety reached past the fur-lined flap to stroke the squirming creature. "Don't spook, yee. It's just a big hole in the groun'."

  A narrow head and a sinuous neck snaked toward her, three eyes glittering in the soft flamelight. A squeaky voice protested.

  "yee not spooked! dark good! on plains, li'l man-urs love hidey-holes, till find warm wife!"

  "Okay, okay. I didn't mean-"

  "yee help nervous wife!"

  "Who're you calling nervous, you little-"

  Rety cut short. Maybe she should let yee feel needed, if it helped him keep his own fear under control.

  "ow! not so tight!" The male yelped, echoes fleeing down black corridors. Rety quickly let go and stroked yee's ruffled mane. "Sorry. Look, I bet we're gettin' close, so let's not talk so much, okay?"

  "okay, yee shut up. wife do too!"

  Rety's lips pressed. Then anger flipped into a sudden urge to laugh. Whoever said male urs weren't smart must've never met her "husband." yee had even changed his accent, in recent days, mimicking Rety's habits of speech.

  She raised the lantern and resumed picking her way through the twisty cavern, surrounded by a sparkle of strange mineral formations, reflecting lamplight off countless glittering facets. It might have been pretty to look at, if she weren't obsessed with one thing alone. An item to reclaim. Something she once, briefly, had owned.

  My ticket off this mudball.

  Rety's footprints appeared to be the first ever laid in the dust-which wasn't surprising, since just qheuens, and a few humans and urs, had a knack for travel underground, and she was smaller than most. With luck, this tunnel led toward the much larger cave she had seen Lester Cambel enter several times. Following the chief human sage had been her preoccupation while avoiding the group of frustrated men and women who wanted her to help guide them over the mountains. Once she knew for sure where Cambel spent his evenings, she had sent yee scouring the underbrush till he found this offshoot opening, bypassing the guarded main entrance.

  The little guy was already proving pretty darn useful. To Rety's surprise, married life wasn't so bad, once you got used to it.

  There was more tight wriggling and writhing. At times, she had to squirm sideways or slide down narrow chutes, making yee complain when he got squeezed. Beyond the lantern's dim yellow puddle, she heard soft tinkling sounds as water dripped into black pools, slowly sculpting weird underground shapes out of Jijo's raw mineral juices. With each step Rety fought a tightness in her chest, trying to ignore her tense imagination, which pictured her in the twisty guts of some huge slumbering beast. The rocky womb kept threatening to close in from all sides, shutting the exits, then grinding her to dust.

  Soon the way narrowed to a corkscrew horizontal tu
be that was tight even for her. She had to send yee ahead before attempting the contorted passage, pushing the lantern along in front of her.

  Yee's tiny hooves clattered on gritty limestone. Soon she heard a welcome hoarse whisper.

  "is good! hole opens up, little ways more, come wife, faster!"

  His chiding almost made her snort angrily-not a wise idea with her cheek, nose, and mouth scraping rank dust. Contorting her body to turn the next corner, she suddenly felt certain the walls were moving!

  She recalled what Dwer's brother had said about this region, when he led her down that last stretch to the Glade, past steaming sulfur vents. Lark had called this a land of earthquakes, and seemed to think it a good thing!

  Twisting uneasily, her hip jammed in a stone cleft.

  I'm caught!

  Thought of entrapment sent a whimpering moan surging past flecked lips as she thrashed, banging her knee agonizingly. The world really was closing in!

  Her forehead struck stone, and pain-dazzles swarmed her dimming vision. The candle lantern rattled from her clutching fingertips, almost toppling over.

  "easy, wife! stop! stay!"

  The words bounced off the warped mirror of her panic. Stubbornly, Rety kept striving against cold stone, groaning and pushing futilely . . . until . . .

  Something clicked inside her. All at once, she went limp, suddenly resigned to let the mountain do whatever it wanted with her.

  Moments after she stopped fighting, the walls miraculously seemed to stop moving. Or had it been her, all along?

  "better now? good-good, now move left leg ... left! good, stop now. okay roll other way. go-o-o-ood wife!"

  His tiny voice was a lifeline she clutched for the few duras--for the eternity--that it took to win Free. At last, the clutch of the stony passage eased, and she slithered down a sandy bank in a flowing, almost liquid liberation that felt just like being born.