Brightness Reef

by David Brin

  Dwer's mind reeled away from that awful notion, as his innards wrestled with the remnants of his meal. If this keeps on, I'll be too weak to win a wrestling match, or however else Jass and Bom settle.their tribal ranking. It may come down to Lena and her tools, after all.

  Throughout the journey; the stocky blond woman carefully tended one donkey carrying the gadgets of her personal "hobby"-a human technology passed down since the first ancestors landed on Jijo, one so brutal that it had been seldom used, even during the urrish wars. "My equalizers," Lena called the wax-sealed wooden crates, meaning their contents made her able to enforce Danel's verdicts, as thoroughly as Dwer's muscle and physical skill.

  It won't come to that! he vowed, commanding his body to shape up. Dwer touched several fingertips whose frostbite damage might have been much worse.

  I've always been luckier than I deserved. According to Sara, who had read extensively about Earth's past, the same thing could be said about the whole bloody human race.

  That was when the glowing ember crossed the sky, streaking overhead while Dwer sat at the makeshift latrine. He would never have noticed the sight had he been facing another way or engaged in an activity more demanding of his attention. As it was, he stared glumly after the falling spark while the rumbling thunder of its passage chased up and down nearby canyons, muttering echoes in the night.

  They faced more stream crossings the next day. It was hard country, which must have influenced the sooners' ancestors to come this way in the first place. Guarded first by the Venom Plain, then ravines and whitewater torrents, the Gray Hills were so forbidding that surveyors checked the region just once per generation. It was easy to imagine how Fallen and the others might overlook one small tribe in the tortured badlands Dwer led the party through-a realm of sulfurous geysers and trees that grew more twisted the deeper they went. Low clouds seemed to glower and sulk, giving way to brief glimpses of sunshine. Green moss beards drooped from rocky crevices, trickling oily water into scummy pools. Animal life kept its skittish distance, leaving only faint spoor traces for Dwer to sniff and puzzle over.

  They lost several donkeys crossing the next rushing stream. Even with a rope stretched from bank to bank, and both Lena and Dwer standing waist-deep in the frigid water to help them along, three tired animals lost their footing on slippery stones. One got tangled in the rope, screaming and thrashing, then perished before they could free it. Two others were carried off. It took hours, sloshing through shallows, to retrieve their packs.

  Dwer's fingers and toes seemed to burn the whole time with a queer icy-hot numbness.

  Finally, drying off by a fire on the other side, they measured the damage.

  "Four books, a hammer, and thirteen packets of powder missing," Danel said, shaking his head over the loss. "And some others damaged when their waterproofs tore."

  "Not to mention the last fodder for the beasts," Jenin added. "From now on they forage, like it or not."

  "Well, we're almost there, ain't we?" Lena Strong cut in, cheerful for once as she knelt butchering the donkey that had strangled. "On the bright side, we eat better for a while."

  They rested that night, feeling better-if a bit guilty- with the change in diet. The next morning they marched just one arrowflight east to face a mighty ravine, with sheer walls and a raging torrent in its heart.

  Dwer headed upstream while Lena struck off to the south, leaving Jenin and Danel to wait with the exhausted donkeys. Two days out and two back, that was the agreed limit. If neither scout found a way by then, they might have to make a raft and try the rapids. Not a prospect Dwer relished.

  Didn't I tell Danel we should wait for Rety? I may be a tracker, but she came out through this desolation all by herself.

  More than ever he was impressed by the girl's un-swayable tenacity.

  If there is a second party, and she's with them, Rety's probably chortling over me falling into this trap. If she knows some secret shortcut, they may reach the tribe before us. Now won't that screw up Danel's plans!

  Even moving parallel with the river was awkward and dangerous, a struggle up steep bluffs, then back down the slippery bank of one icy tributary after another. To Dwer's surprise, Mudfoot came along, forsaking DanePs campfire and Jenin's pampering attention. The trek was too hard for any of the noor's standard antics, ambushing Dwer or trying to trip him. After a while, they even began helping each other. He carried the noor across treacherous, foamy creeks. At other times, Mudfoot sped ahead to report with squeals and quivers which of two paths seemed better.

  Still, the river and its canyon tormented them, appearing almost to open up, then abruptly closing again, narrower and steeper than before. By noon of the second day, Dwer was muttering sourly over the obstinate nastiness of the terrain. Fallon warned me about the Gray Hills. But I always figured I'd get to go through the old man's notes and maps. Pick a path based on the trips of earlier hunters.

  Yet none of them had ever found any trace of Rety's band, so maybe they relied too much on each other's advice, repeatedly taking the same route in and out of these badlands. A route the sooners knew to avoid. Maybe all this horrid inaccessibility meant Danel's group was getting near the tribe's home base.

  That's it, boy. Keep thinkin' that way, if it makes you feel better.

  Wouldn't it be great to struggle all this way, and back, only to learn that Lena had already found a good crossing, just a little ways downstream? That thought tortured Dwer as he shared food with Mudfoot. Going on seemed futile, and he'd have to call the trip a loss in a few hours anyway. Dwer's fingers and toes ached, along with overstrained tendons across his back and legs. But it was the pounding roar of rushing water that really wore away at him, as if a clock teet had been hammering inside his head for days.

  "Do you think we oughta head back?" he asked the noor.

  Mudfoot cocked its sleek head, giving Dwer that deceptively intelligent expression, reminding him of legends .that said the beasts could grant wishes-if you wanted something so bad, you didn't care about the cost. Workmen used the expression "Let's consult a noor" to mean a problem couldn't be solved, and it was time to soften frustration with a set of stiff drinks.

  "Well," Dwer sighed, hoisting his pack and bow, "I don't guess it'd hurt to go on a ways. I'd feel silly if it turned out we missed a good ford just over the next rise."

  Thirty duras later, Dwer crawled up a thorny bank, cursing the brambles and the slippery wetness that soaked his skin, wishing he was on his way back to a hot meal and a dry blanket. Finally, he reached a place to stand, sucking an oozing scratch across the back of his hand.

  He turned-and stared through a mist at what lay ahead.

  A crashing waterfall, whose roar had been masked by the turbulent river, stretched low and wide from far to the left all the way to the distant right. A wide curtain of spray and foam.

  Yet that was not what made Dwer gape.

  Just before the roaring plummet, traversing the river from bank to bank, lay a broad expanse of rocky shallows that appeared nowhere more than ankle deep.

  "I guess this settles the question of whether or not to proceed" He sighed.

  Shortly, he and Mudfoot stood at last on the other shore, having sloshed easily across to prove the ford was safe. From there an obvious game trail zigzagged through the forest, departing the canyon eastward.

  On my way back downstream I'll scout an easier path for Danel and the others to get up here. Success took much of the sting out of his aches and pains. There's a chance Lena beat me to a way across. Still, I found this place, and maybe I'm the first! If all this stupid alien stuff blows over and we get to go home, I'll check Fallon's maps to see if anyone's named this spot since the Buyur went away.

  The broad falls reminded him of the spillway back at Dolo Village, a thought that was sweet, but also a bitter reminder of why he was here, so far from Sara and everyone else he loved.

  I'm here to survive. It's my job to cower and have babies with women I barely know, while tho
se on the Slope suffer and die.

  The pleasure of discovery evaporated. Shame he displaced with a wooden determination to do the job he had been commanded to do. Dwer started to head back across the shallows . . . then paused in his tracks, acutely aware of a tickling sensation in the middle of his back.

  Something was wrong.

  Frowning, he slipped off the bow and drew the string-tightening lever. With an arrow nocked, he flared his nostrils to suck humid air. It was hard to make out anything in the musty dankness. But judging from Mudfoot's arched spines, the noor felt it too.

  Someone's here, he thought, moving swiftly inland to get under the first rank of trees. Or was here, recently. Away from the shore, the place stank with a terrible muddle of scents, which was natural next to the only river crossing for many leagues. Animals would come to drink, then leave territorial markings. But Dwer sensed something else, inserting a wary hint of threat.

  Painfully aware that open water lay at his back, he moved deeper into the forest.

  I smell . . . burnt wood-someone had a fire, not too long ago.

  He scanned. Sniffing and peering. It was over . . . there.

  Amid the shadows, half a stone's throw away, he made out the remnants, set in a modest clearing. A large pit of black ashes.

  Some of Rety's band? He worried. Might Jass and Bom be watching right now, picking their best shot at an intruder from the dreaded west?

  Clues lay in the brushing rustle of wind in the branches, the furtive movements of insects and birds. But this terrain and wildlife were strange to him, and the racket from the waterfall would drown out a militia company on maneuvers.

  Mudfoot made a low chuffing growl and sniffed close to the ground while Dwer scanned the complex dimness beyond the next rank of trees. "What is it?" he asked, kneeling where Mudfoot scratched a layer of freshly fallen leaves.

  A familiar odor struck him fully.

  "Donkey shit?"

  He risked a quick glance-and didn't need a second look.

  Donkeys? But Rety said the sooners didn't have any!

  With dark-adapting eyes he now picked out traces of pack beasts all over the clearing. Hoofprints and droppings from at least a dozen animals. A stake where a remuda line was tethered. Flattened spots where cargo carriers must have lain.

  He lowered the bow. So a second expedition had set out, passing the first by a better route, no doubt led by Rety herself.

  Well, at least we won't be quite so outnumbered by the sooners, even if contact doesn't happen in the order Danel planned.

  An element of relief was more personal, if ungallant. My choice in a future mate might go beyond Jenin, Lena, or some surly cousin of Rety's.

  Something still nagged at Dwer, however, making him reluctant to put down the bow. He was counting wallows-the depressions made by donkeys as they lay- and realized there were just too many. Or rather, there were two different kinds of wallow. Nearer the fire they were smaller, closer. ...

  No. It can't be.

  Anywhere else, scent would have hit him long before this. Now a sharp, familiar pungency smacked Dwer in his sinuses. He bent to pluck a clump of stringy fur, still coated from when the owner rolled, in ash after an unpleasantly wet river crossing.

  Glossy strands from an urrish mane.

  It had been generations since the last war. Regardless, instinctive fear surged in Dwer's chest-a heart-pounding wave of angst.

  An urrish caravan in these parts could not be up to anything good.

  Here in the wilderness, far from the restraint of sages and the Commons, with the Six possibly already extinct back home, all the old rules were clearly moot. As in days before the Great Peace,. Dwer knew how dangerous these beings would be to have as enemies.

  Silent as a ghost, he crept away, then crossed the river in a zigzag dash, leaping behind a boulder, then swiveling to cover the opposite bank while Mudfoot came splashing behind, clearly as eager to get out of there as he was.

  Dwer kept wary watch for a whole midura, till long after his pounding pulse finally settled.

  At last, when it seemed safe, he slung his bow and set off downstream, running when and where he could, hurrying southward with news.

  Asx

  CAN YOU SEE THE SMOKE, OH MY RINGS? Spiraling from a fresh cavity in Jijo's ruptured soil? Two Umoons cast wan beams through that sooty pall, piercing a crater wherein twisty metal shapes flicker and burn.

  Distracting thoughts rise from our second torus-of-cognition.

  What is that you say, my ring? That this is a very large amount of dross? Dross that will not degrade back to nature on its own?

  Indeed it is. Shall we hope that the aliens themselves will clean up the mess? It would take a hundred donkey-caravans to haul so much hard waste down to the sea.

  Another ring suggests a stream be diverted, to form a lake. A transplanted mule-spider might dissolve the sinful wreckage over the course of centuries.

  By mass vote, we send these thoughts to waxy storage for later reflection. For now, let us watch events flow in real time.

  A roiling mob of onlookers teems the slopes overlooking this savaged vale, held in check by stunned, overworked proctors. Higher on tree-shrouded hills, we glimpse murky ranks of disciplined silhouettes, wheeling and maneuvering-militia units taking up positions. From here we cannot tell the companies' intent. Are they preparing, counter to all hope, to defend the Commons against overpowering vengeance? Or else have inter-sept grudges finally torn the Great Peace, so that we hasten doomsday tearing each other apart with our own bloody hands?

  Perhaps even the commanders of those dark battalions don't yet know for sure.

  Meanwhile, closer to the heat, Ur-Jah and Lester Cambel supervise teams of brave urs, men, hoon, and gray qheuens, •who descend into the pit armed with ropes and tools of Buyur steel.

  Ro-kenn protests at first, does he not, my rings? In hasty GalSeven, the Rothen emissary decries those he calls "wanton looters." One of the remnant robots rises, unfolding spiky organs of punishment.

  Vubben urges that Ro-kenn look again. Can he not recognize sincere efforts at rescue? For two tense duras we poise on a precipice. Then, with a grudging mutter, the Rothen recalls his death machine-for now.

  From Ro-kenn's charismatic, human-handsome face, our steady old rewq translates undertones of grief and rage. True, this race is new to us, and rewq can be fooled. Yet what else should we expect from one whose home/campsite lies in ruins? Whose comrades languish, dead or dying, in the twisted tangle of their buried station?

  The male sky-human, Rann, wears torment openly as he rides the other robot, shouting at those working through the rubble, directing their efforts. A tense but encouraging sign of cooperation.

  Ling, the other sky-human, appears in shock, leaning against young Lark as he pokes his foot through debris at the crater's rim. He bends to lift a smoldering plank, sniffing suspiciously. We perceive his head rock back, exclaiming surprise.

  Ling draws away, demanding an explanation. Through our rewq, we perceive Lark's reluctance as he shows her the smoky plank, a strip of burned wood from a Jijoan box or crate.

  Ling drops her hand from his arm. She spins about, hurrying toward Rann's hovering robot steed.

  Much closer to this stack of rings, Ro-kenn has become embroiled in argument. A delegation accosts the Rothen emissary, demanding answers.

  Why did he earlier claim the right and power to command the Holy Egg, since it is now clear that the sacred stone violently rejects him and his kind?

  Furthermore, why did he seek to sow dissension among the Six with his baseless calumny about the human sept? His groundless lie, claiming that our Earthling brethren are not descendants of sinners, just like the other Five.

  "You Rothen may or may not be the high patrons of humanity," the spokesman contends. "But that takes nothing from our ancestors who came here on the Tabernacle. Not from their crime, or their hope, when they set us on the Path of Redemption."

  There is ange
r in the voice of the human intercessor. But we/i also descry thick brushstrokes of theater. An effort to smother the fire of disharmony that Ro-kenn ignited with his tale. Indeed, urrish voices rise in approval of his anger.

  Now our second cognition-torus vents yet another thought-hypothesis.

  What is it, my ring? You suggest disharmony was Ro-kenn's intent, all along? A deliberate scheme to create strife among the Six?

  Our fourth ring rebuts-what purpose might such a bizarre plot serve? To have Five gang up on One? To cause vendetta against the very sept these Rothen claim as beloved clients?

  Store and wick this weird postulate, oh my rings. Argue it later. For now the Rothen prepares to respond. Drawing himself up, he surveys the crowd with an expression that seems awesome both to humans and to those who know them-to rewq-wearers and those without.

  There is kindness in his expressive gaze. Overstrained patience and love.

  "Dear, misguided children. This explosive manifestation was not rejection by Jijo, or the Egg. Rather, some malfunction of the mighty forces contained in our station must have released-- "

  Abruptly, he stops as Rann and Ling approach, each riding a robot. Each wearing looks of dark anger. They murmur into devices, and the Rothen stares back, listening. Again, my rewq reveals dissonance across his features, coalescing at last in raging fury.

  Ro-kenn speaks.

  "So, now the (dire) truth is known. Learned. Verified!

  "No accident, this (slaying) explosion.

  "No (unlikely) malfunction--nor any rejection by your (overly-vaunted) Egg.

  "Now it is known. Verified. That this was (foul, unprovoked) murder!

  "Murder by deceit, by subterfuge.

  "By use of subterranean explosives. By sneak attack.

  "By you!"

  He points, stabbing with a long, graceful finger. The crowd reels back from Ro-kenn's fierce wrath, and this news.

  At once it is clear what the zealots have done. Secretly, taking advantage of natural caverns lacing these hills, they must have laboriously burrowed deep beneath the station to lay chests of eruptive powder-crude but plentiful-which then awaited a signal, the right symbolic moment, to burst forth flame and destruction.