Brightness Reef

by David Brin

  Even if the star-gods never wreck Biblos, or force the explosers to do it for them, fanatics like Jop and UrKachu will only grow more numerous and bold as the social fabric unravels.

  As if to illustrate the point, a squadron of Jop's comrades entered camp before sundown-a dozen hard-looking men equipped with bows and swords, who slaked their parched throats at the oasis without turning their backs on UrKachu's clansmen, but glanced with satisfaction at the pyre of dying books.

  The two groups have a common goal. An end to literary "vanities." Replacing the current sages. Hewing closer to the dictates of the Scrolls.

  Later, when we're all firmly on the Path, we can return to slaughtering and ambushing each other, deciding who's top predator on a sinking pyramid of redeemed animals.

  The blaze collapsed, spewing sparks and curled paper scraps that seemed to swoop in whirling air currents. Standing next to Sara, the Stranger caught one in his hand and peered, as if trying to read what it once said. Perhaps he recognized something that was much like him, in a poignant way. Once eloquent, it had now lost the magic of speech.

  The librarians weren't alone watching with horrified, soot-streaked faces. A young mated pair of hoonish pilgrims clutched each other, umbling a funeral dirge, as if a loved one's heart spine lay in the filthy coals. Several qheuens stared in apparent dismay, along with-lest we forget-a handful of sorrowful urrish traders.

  The smoke-stench made her think of darkness. The kind that does not end with dawn.

  "All right, everybody! Your attention, please. Here is the plan."

  It was Jop, breaking the somber silence, approaching as part of a foursome, with UrKachu, Ulgor, and a grim, sunburned man whose rugged face and flinty hardness made him seem almost a different species from the soft, bookish librarians. Even the Urunthai treated this human with grudging deference. Painted warriors stepped quickly out of his way. Sara found him familiar somehow.

  "We'll be leaving in two groups," Jop went on. "The larger will proceed to Salty Hoof Marsh. If any militia platoons hear o' this raid and care to give chase, that's the first place they'll look, so some of you may be 'rescued' in a week or so. That's fine by us.

  "The smaller group's gonna go faster. Humans will ride, switchin' to fresh donkeys every half midura. Don't cause trouble or even think of sneakin' off in the dark. The Urunthai are expert trackers, and you won't get far. Any questions?"

  When no one spoke, Jop shoved a finger at the Stranger. "You. Over there." He gestured where the biggest, strongest-looking beasts were tethered single file, beside the oasis pond. The Stranger hesitated, glancing at Sara.

  "It's all right. She can go along. Can't have our hostage goin' sick on us, eh?" Jop turned to Sara. "I expect you'll be willin' to take care of him awhile longer."

  "If I can take my bags. And Prify, of course."

  The four leaders muttered among themselves. UrKachu hissed objections, but Ulgor sided with the humans, even if it meant sacrificing some of the booty robbed from the caravan merchants. Two donkeys had their trade goods dumped on the ground, to make room.

  Another argument erupted when the Stranger straddled the animal he had been assigned, with his feet almost dragging on both sides. He refused to surrender the dulcimer, keeping the instrument clutched under one arm. With ill temper, UrKachu snorted disgust but gave in.

  From her own perch on a sturdy donkey, Sara watched the hard-faced man gesture toward Kurt the Exploser, sitting with his nephew, silently watching events unfold.

  "And you, Lord Exploser," Jop told Kurt with a respectful bow, "I'm afraid there are questions my friends want to ask, and this is no place to persuade you to answer "em."

  Ignoring the implied threat, the gray-bearded man from Tarek Town carried his satchel over to the donkey train, with Jomah close behind. When a pair of Urunthai reached for the valise, Kurt spoke in a soft, gravelly voice.

  "The contents are . . . delicate."

  They backed away. No one interfered as he chose a pack beast, dumped its load of plunder on the ground, and tied the valise in place.

  Equal numbers of human radicals and Urunthai warriors made up the rest of the "fast group." The men looked almost as ungainly on their donkeys as the tall Stranger, and more uncomfortable. For many, it must be their first experience riding.

  "You aren't coming?" Sara asked Jop.

  "I've been away from my farm too long," he answered. "Also, there's unfinished business in Dolo. A certain dam needs tendin' to, the sooner the better."

  Sara's head jerked, but it wasn't Jop's statement of destructive intent that made her blink suddenly. Rather, she had glimpsed something over his shoulder: a stream of bubbles, rising to the surface of the pond.

  Blade. He's still underwater, listening to everything!

  "Don't worry, lass," Jop assured, misconstruing her briefly dazed look. "I'll make sure your dad gets out, before the cursed thing blows."

  Before Sara could reply, UrKachu cut in.

  "Now it is (well past) time to end delays and perform actions! Let us be off!"

  One of her tails switched the lead donkey's rump, and the queue jostled forward.

  Abruptly, Sara slid off her saddle and planted her feet, causing her mount to stutter in confusion, sending a ripple of jerks down the chain in both directions. One of the rough men tumbled to the ground, raising amused snorts from some Urunthai.

  "No!" Sara said, with grim determination. "First I want to know where we are going."

  Jop urged in a low voice, "Miss Sara, please. I don't even know myself--"

  He cut off, glancing past her nervously as the flinty-eyed hunter approached.

  "What seems to be the problem?" His deep voice seemed strangely cultured for his rough appearance. Sara met his steady gray eyes.

  "I won't mount till you tell me where we're going."

  The hunter lifted an eyebrow. "We could tie you aboard."

  Sara laughed. "These little donkeys have enough trouble carrying a willing rider, let alone one who's throwing her weight around, trying to trip the poor beast. And if you truss me like a bag o' spuds, the bouncing will break my ribs."

  "Perhaps we're willing to take that chance," he began-then frowned as the Stranger, Kurt, and Prity slid off their beasts as well, crossing their arms.

  The warrior sighed. "What difference can it possibly make to you, knowing in advance?"

  The more he spoke, the more familiar he sounded. Sara felt sure she had met him before!

  "My ward needs medical attention. So far, we've held off infection with special unguents provided by our traeki pharmacist. Since you don't plan to bring ers chariot along with your 'fast group,' we had better ask Pzora for a supply to take with us."

  The man nodded. "That can be arranged." He motioned for the Stranger to go join Pzora.

  Unwrapping the rewq that had lately replaced his gauze bandages, the spaceman exposed the gaping wound in the side of his head. On seeing it, several desert-men hissed and made superstitious gestures against bad luck. While his symbiont joined Pzora's rewq in a tangled ball, exchanging enzymes, the Stranger made a flutter of rapid hand motions to the traeki-Sara thought she caught a brief snatch of song--before he bowed to present his injury for cleaning and treatment.

  She spoke again.

  "Furthermore, any stock Pzora provides will stay good for just a few days, so you better figure on taking us someplace with another expert pharmacist, or you may have a useless hostage on your hands. The star-gods won't pay much for a dead man, whether he's their friend or foe."

  The renegade looked at her for a long, appraising moment, then turned to confer with UrKachu and Ulgor. When he returned, he wore a thin smile.

  "It means a slight detour, but there is a town so equipped, not far from our destination. You were right to point this out. Next time, however, please consider simply voicing the problem, without starting out quite so confrontationally."

  Sara stared at him, then burst out with a guffaw. It seemed to cut some
of the tension when he joined with a booming chuckle-one that took Sara back to her earliest days as a student, underneath the overhanging fist-of-stone.

  "Dedinger," she said, breathing the name without voice.

  The smile was still thin, disdainfully bitter.

  "I wondered if you'd recognize me. We labored in different departments, though I've followed your work since I was expelled from paradise."

  "A paradise you sought to destroy, as I recall."

  He shrugged. "I should have acted, without trying for consensus first. But collegial habits were hard to break., By the time I was ready, too many people knew my beliefs. I was watched night and day until the banishment."

  "Aw, too bad. Is this your way of getting another chance?" She motioned toward the bonfire.

  "Indeed. After years in the wilderness, ministering to a flock of the fallen-humans who have progressed furthest along the Path-I've learned enough-"

  UrKachu's shrill whistle of impatience was not in any known language, yet its short-tempered insistence was plain. Again, Dedinger lifted an eyebrow.

  "Shall we go, now?"

  Sara weighed trying again to get him to name a destination, out loud. But Dedinger was insane, not stupid. Her insistence might rouse suspicions and maybe even give Blade away.

  With an acquiescent shrug, she clambered back aboard the patient donkey. Watching with narrowed eyes, the Stranger remounted, too, followed by Kurt and Prity.

  The remaining survivors of the ill-starred caravan seemed both pitying and relieved to be less important to the Urunthai. As the fast group rode out of the Oasis, heading south, the fading bonfire wafted bitter odors, along with dust and pungent animal smells.

  Sara glanced back toward the moonlit pool.

  Did you hear any of that, Blade? Were you asleep? Was it a garbled blur of uncertain noise?

  Anyway, what good could a lone blue qheuen do, in the middle of a parched plain? His best bet was to stay by the pond till help came.

  A mutter of beasts lifted behind Sara as the second party got under way, more slowly, following the same path.

  Makes sense. The larger bunch will trample the trail of the smaller. At some point, UrKachu will veer us off, letting any pursuers keep following the main party.

  Soon they were alone on the high steppe. Urunthai trotted alongside, agile and contemptuous of the awkward humans, who winced, dragging their toes as they rode. In reaction, the men began taking turns sliding off their mounts to run at a steady lope for several arrow-flights before swinging back aboard. This shut up the derisive urs and also seemed a good way to avoid saddle sores.

  Alas, Sara knew she was in no physical condition to try it. If I live through this, I'm definitely getting into shape, she thought, not.for the first time.

  The man with slate eyes ran next to Sara for a few duras, sparing her a wry, eloquent smile^He was so wiry and strong, it amazed Sara that she recognized him. The last time she had seen Savant Dedinger, he was a pale intellectual with a middle-aged paunch, an expert on the most ancient scrolls, and author of a text Sara carried in her own slim luggage. A man once honored with status and trust, till his orthodox fanaticism grew too extreme for even the broad-minded High Council.

  These days, the sages preached a complex faith of divided loyalty, split evenly between Jijo, on the one hand, and the ancestors' outlaw plan, on the other. It was a tense trade-off. Some solved it by choosing one allegiance over the other.

  Sara's brother gave his full devotion to the planet. Lark saw wisdom and justice in the billion-year-old Galactic ecological codes. To him, no fancied "path of redemption" could ever make up for flouting those rules.

  Dedinger took the opposite extreme. He cared little about ecology or species preservation, only the racial deliverance promised by the Scrolls. Seeking pure innocence as a way to better days. Perhaps he also saw in this crisis a way to regain lost honors.

  By moonlight, Sara watched the banished sage move with wiry grace-alert, focused, powerful-living testimony for the simpler style that he preached.

  Deceptively simple, she thought. The world has countless ways of not being quite as it seems.

  The Urunthai slowed after a while, then stopped to rest and eat. Those with pouched husbands or larvae needed warm Simla blood every midura or so, although the human raiders chafed and complained, preferring a steady pace over the urrish fashion of hurry-and-relax.

  Soon after the second of these breaks, UrKachu veered the party onto a stony ledge that extended roughly southeast like the backbone of some fossilized behemoth. Rougher terrain slowed the pace, and Sara took advantage to dismount, giving respite to the donkey and her own bottom. Exercise might also take some chill stiffness out of her joints. She kept her right arm on the saddle though, in case some unseen stone made her stumble in the dark.

  The going went a little easier with second moonrise. Backlit by silvery Torgen, the mountains seemed to loom larger than ever. North-side glaciers drank the satellite's angled light, giving back a peculiar blue luminance.

  The Stranger sang for a while, a sweet, soft melody that made Sara think of loneliness.

  I am a bar'n island,

  apart in the desult sea,

  and the nearest skein of land

  is my stark thought o' thee.

  O' say I were a chondrite,

  tumblin' sool an' free,

  would you be my garner-boat?

  An' come to amass me?

  It was Anglic, though of a dialect Sara had never heard, with many strange words. It was problematical how much the star-man still grasped. Still, the unrolling verses doubtless roused strong feelings in his mind.

  Am I the ice that slakes your thirst,

  that twinkles your bright rings?

  You are the fantoom angel-kin,

  whose kiss gives planets wings . . .

  The recital ended when UrKachu trotted back, nostril flaring, to complain about unbearable Earthling caterwauling. A purely personal opinion, Sara felt, since none of the other urs seemed to mind. Music was on the short list of things the two races tended to agree about. Some urs even said that, for bringing the violus to Jijo, they could almost overlook human stench.

  For an auntie, UrKachu seemed a particularly irritable sort.

  The man from space fell silent, and the group traveled in a moody hush, punctuated by the clip-clop of the animals' hooves on bare stone.

  The next blood-stop took place on the wind-sheltered lee side of some towering slabs that might be natural rock forms but in the dimness seemed like ruins of an ancient fortress, toppled in a long-ago calamity. One of the weathered desert-men gave Sara a chunk of gritty bread, plus a slab of bushcow cheese that was stale, but tasty enough to one who found herself ravenously hungry. The water ration was disappointing, though. The urs saw little point in carrying much.

  Around midnight, the party had to ford a wide, shallow stream that flowed through a desert wadi. Always prepared, Ulgor slipped on sealed booties, crossing with dry feet. The other urrish rebels slogged alongside the humans and animals, then dried each other's legs with rags. After that, the Urunthai seemed eager to run for a while, till the moisture wicked out of their fibrous ankle fur.

  When the pace slackened again, Sara slid off her mount to walk. Soon a low voice spoke from her right.

  "I meant to tell you-I've read your paper on linguistic devolution from Indo-European."

  It was the scholar-turned-hunter, Dedinger, striding beyond her donkey's other flank. She watched him for a long moment before answering.

  "I'm surprised. At fifty pages, I could afford to get only five photocopies cranked, and I kept one."

  Dedinger smiled. "I still have friends in Biblos who send me engaging items, now and then. As for your thesis., while I enjoyed your ideas about grammatical reinforcement in pre-literate trading clans, I'm afraid I can't bring myself to accept your general theory."

  Sara didn't find it surprising. Her conclusions ran counter to everything the ma
n believed in.

  "That's the way of science-a cycle of give-and-take. No dogmatic truth. No rigid, received word."

  "As opposed to my own slavish devotion to a few ancient scrolls that no human had a hand in writing?" The flinty man laughed. "I guess what it comes down to is which direction you think people are heading. Even among conservative Galactics, science is about slowly improving your models of the world. It's future-oriented. Your children will know more than you do, so the truth you already have can never be called 'perfect.'

  "That's fine when your destiny lies upward, Sara. But tradition and a firm creed are preferable if you're embarked on the narrow, sacred road downhill, to salvation. In that case, argument and uncertainty will only confuse your flock."

  "Your flock doesn't seem confused," she acknowledged.

  He smiled. "I've had some success winning these hard men over to true orthodoxy. They dwell much of each year on the Plain of Sharp Sand, trapping the wild spike-sloths that lurk in caves, under the dunes. Most don't read or write, and their few tools are handmade, so they were already far down the Path. It may prove harder convincing some other groups."

  "Like the Explosers Guild?"

  The former scholar nodded.

  "An enigmatic clan. Their hesitation to do their duty, during this crisis, is disturbing."

  Sara raised her eyes toward Kurt and Jomah. While the senior exploser snored atop an ambling donkey, his nephew held another one-sided conversation with the Stranger, who smiled and nodded as Jomah chattered. The star-man made an ideal, uncritical audience for a shy boy, just beginning to express himself.

  "Maybe they figure they can blow it all up just once," Sara commented. "Then they'll have to scratch for a living, like everyone else."

  Dedinger grunted. "If so, it's time someone reminded them, respectfully, of their obligations."

  She recalled Jop's talk of taking Kurt somewhere to be "persuaded." In more violent times, the expression carried chilling implications.