by David Brin
“What’s Kunn doing?” Dwer asked. He turned to Rety, who shaded her eyes to watch the distant flier. “Do you have any idea?”
The girl started to shrug her shoulders, but yee, the little urrish male, sprawled there, snaking his slender neck to aim all three eyes toward the south. The robot rocked impatiently, bobbing up and down as if trying to signal the distant flier with its body.
“I don’t know, Dwer,” Rety replied. “I reckon it has somethin’ to do with the bird.”
“Bird,” he repeated blankly.
“You know. My metal bird. The one we saved from the mulc spider.”
“That bird?” Dwer nodded. “You were going to show it to the sages. How did the aliens get their hands—”
Rety cut in.
“The Daniks wanted to know where it came from. So Kunn asked me to guide him here, to pick up Jass, since he was the one who saw where the bird came to shore. I never figured that’d mean leavin’ me behind in the village.…” She bit her lip. “Jass must’ve led Kunn here. Kunn said somethin’ about ‘flushin’ prey.’ I guess he’s tryin’ to get more birds.”
“Or else whoever made your bird, and sent it ashore.”
“Or else that.” She nodded, clearly uncomfortable. Dwer chose not to press for details about her deal with the star humans.
As their journey south progressed, the number of marshy streams had multiplied, forcing Dwer to “carry” the robot several more times before he finally called a halt around dusk. There had been a brief confrontation when the combat machine tried intimidating him to continue. But its god weapons had been wrecked in the ambush at the sooner camp, and Dwer faced the robot’s snapping claws without flinching, helped by a strange detachment, as if his mind had somehow grown while enduring the machine’s throbbing fields. Hallucination or not, the feeling enabled him to call its bluff.
With grudging reluctance that seemed lifelike, the robot gave in. By a small fire, Dwer had shared with Rety the donkey jerky in his pouch. After a moment’s hesitation, Rety brought out her own contribution, two small lozenges sealed in wrappers that felt slick to the touch. She showed Dwer how to unwrap his, and guffawed at the look on his face when intense, strange flavors burst in his mouth. He laughed, too, almost inhaling the Danik candy the wrong way. Its lavish sweetness won a place on his List of Things I’m Glad I Did Before Dying.
Later, huddled with Rety on the banked coals, Dwer dreamed a succession of fantastic images far more potent than normal — perhaps an effect of “carrying” the robot, conducting its ground-hugging fields. Instead of crushing weight, he fantasized lightness, as if his body wafted, unencumbered. Incomprehensible panoramas flickered under closed eyelids … objects glimmering against dark backgrounds, or gassy shapes, glowing of their own accord. Once, a strange sense of recognition seized him, a timeless impression of loving familiarity.
The Egg, his sleeping consciousness had mused. Only the sacred stone looked strange — not an outsized pebble squatting in a mountain cleft, but something like a huge, dark sun, whose blackness outshone the glitter of normal stars.
Their journey resumed before dawn, and featured only two more water crossings before reaching the sea. There the robot picked them up and streaked eastward along the beach until it reached this field of dunes — a high point to scan the strange blue waters of the Rift.
At least Dwer thought it was the Rift — a great cleft splitting the continent. I wish I still had my telescope, he thought. With it he might glean some idea what the pilot of the scout ship was trying to accomplish.
Flushing out prey, Rety said.
If that was Kunn’s aim, the Danik star warrior could learn a thing or two about hunting technique. Dwer recalled one lesson old Fallon taught him years ago.
No matter how potent your weapon, or whatever game you’re after, it’s never a good idea to be both beater and shooter. If there’s just one of you, forget driving your quarry.
The solitary hunter masters patience, and silently learns the ways of his prey.
That approach had one drawback. It required empathy. And the better you learn to feel like your prey, the greater the chance you may someday stop calling it prey at all.
“Well, we settled one thing,” Rety commented, watching the robot semaphore its arms wildly at the highest point of the dune, like a small boy waving to parents who were too far away to hear. “You must’ve done a real job on its comm gear. Even the short range won’t work, on line-o’-sight.”
Dwer was duly impressed. Rety had learned a lot during her stint as an adopted alien.
“Do you think the pilot could spot us by eye, when he heads back toward the village to pick you up?” Dwer asked.
“Maybe … supposin’ he ever meant to do that. He may forget all about me when he finds what he wants, and just zip west to the Rothen station, to report.”
Dwer knew that Rety had already lost some favor with the sky humans. Her voice was bitter, for aboard that distant flying dot rode Jass, her tormentor while growing up in a savage tribe. She had arranged vengeance for the bully. But now Jass stood at the pilot’s elbow, currying favor while Rety was stuck down here.
Her worry was clear. What if her lifelong enemy won the reward she had struggled and connived for? Her ticket to the stars?
“Hmm. Well, then we better make sure he doesn’t miss us when he cruises by.”
Dwer wasn’t personally anxious to meet the star pilot who had blasted the poor urrish sooners so unmercifully from above. He fostered no illusion of gentle treatment at Kunn’s hands. But the scout boat offered life and hope for Rety. And perhaps by attracting the Danik’s attention he could somehow prevent the man’s quick return to the Gray Hills. Danel Ozawa had been killed in the brief fight with the robot, but Dwer might still buy time for Lena Strong and the urrish chief to work out an accord with Rety’s old band … beating a stealthy retreat to some place where star gods would never find them. A delaying action could be Dwer’s last worthwhile service.
“Let’s build a fire,” the girl suggested, gesturing toward the beach, littered with driftwood from past storms.
“I was just about to suggest that,” Dwer replied.
She chuckled.
“Yeah, right! Sure you were.”
Sara
AT FIRST THE ANCIENT TUNNEL SEEMED HORRID and gloomy. Sara kept imagining a dusty Buyur tube car coming to life, an angry phantom hurtling toward the little horse-drawn wagon, bent on punishing fools who disturbed its ghostly domain. Dread clung fast for a while, making each breath come short and sharp between rapid heartbeats.
But fear has one great enemy, more powerful than confidence or courage.
Tedium.
Chafed from sitting on the bench for miduras, Sara eventually let go of the dismal oppression with a long sigh. She slipped off the wagon to trot alongside — at first only to stretch her legs, but then for longer periods, maintaining a steady jog.
After a while, she even found it enjoyable.
I guess I’m just adapting to the times. There may be no place for intellectuals in the world to come.
Emerson joined her, grinning as he kept pace with long-legged strides. And soon the tunnel began to lose its power over some of the others, as well. The two wagon drivers from the cryptic Illias tribe — Kepha and Nuli — grew visibly less tense with each league they progressed toward home.
But where was that?
Sara pictured a map of the Slope, drawing a wide arc roughly south from the Gentt. It offered no clue where a horse clan might stay hidden all this time.
How about in some giant, empty magma chamber, beneath a volcano?
What a lovely thought. Some magical sanctuary of hidden grassy fields, safe from the glowering sky. An underground world, like in a pre-contact adventure tale featuring vast ageless caverns, mystic light sources, and preposterous monsters.
Of course no such place could form under natural laws.
But might the Buyur — or some prior Jijo tenant — h
ave used the same forces that carved this tunnel to create a secret hideaway? A place to preserve treasures while the surface world was scraped clean of sapient-made things?
Sara chuckled at the thought. But she did not dismiss it.
Sometime later, she confronted Kurt.
“Well, I’m committed now. Tell me what’s so urgent that Emerson and I had to follow you all this way.”
But the exploser only shook his head, refusing to speak in front of Dedinger.
What’s the heretic going to do? Sara thought. Break his bonds and run back to tell the world?
The desert prophets captivity appeared secure. And yet it was disconcerting to see on Dedinger’s face an expression of serene confidence, as if present circumstances only justified his cause.
Times like these bring heretics swarming … like privacy wasps converging on a gossip. We shouldn’t be surprised to see fanatics thriving.
The Sacred Scrolls prescribed two ways for Jijo’s illegal colonists to ease their inherited burden of sin — by preserving the planet, and by following the Path of Redemption. Ever since the days of Drake and Ur-Chown, the sages had taught that both goals were compatible with commerce and the comforts of daily life. But some purists disagreed, insisting that the Six Races must choose.
We should not be here, proclaimed Lark’s faction. We sooners should use birth control to obey Galactic law, leaving this fallow world in peace. Only then will our sin be healed.
Others thought redemption should take higher priority.
Each clan should follow the example of glavers, preached Dedinger’s cult, and the Urunthai. Salvation and renewal come to those who remove mental impediments and rediscover their deep natures.
The first obstacle to eliminate — the anchor weighing down our souls — is knowledge.
Both groups called today’s High Sages true heretics, pandering to the masses with their wishy-washy moderation. When dread starships came, fresh converts thronged to purer faiths, preaching simple messages and strong medicine for fearful times.
Sara knew her own heresy would not attract disciples. It seemed ill matched to Jijo — a planet of felons destined for oblivion of one sort or another. And yet …
Everything depends on your point of view.
So taught a wise traeki sage.
we/i/you are oft fooled by the obvious.
Lark
AN URRISH COURIER CAME RUSHING OUT OF THE forest of tall, swaying greatboo.
Could this be my answer already?
Lark had dispatched a militiaman just a few miduras ago, with a message to Lester Cambel in the secret refuge of the High Sages.
But no. The rough-pelted runner had galloped up the long path from Festival Glade. In her rush, she would not even pause for Lark to tap the vein of a tethered simla, offering the parched urs a hospitable cup of steaming blood. Instead, the humans stared amazed as she plunged her fringed muzzle into a bucket of undiluted water, barely shuddering at the bitter taste.
Between gasping swallows, she told dire news.
As rumored, the second starship was titanic, squatting like a mountain, blocking the river so a swamp soon formed around the trapped Rothen cruiser, doubly imprisoning Ling’s comrades. Surviving witnesses reported seeing familiar outlines framed by the battleship’s brightly lit hatchway. Corrugated cones. Stacks of ring’s, luxuriously glistening.
Only a few onlookers, steeped in ancient legends, knew this was not a good sign, and they had little time to spread a warning before torrid beams sliced through the night, mowing down everything within a dozen arrowflights.
At dawn, brave observers peered from nearby peaks to see a swathe of shattered ground strewn with oily smudges and bloody debris. A defensive perimeter, stunned observers suggested, though such prudence seemed excessive for omnipotent star gods.
“What casualties?” asked Jeni Shen, sergeant of Lark’s militia contingent, a short, well-muscled woman and a friend of his brother, Dwer. They had all seen flickering lights in the distance, and heard sounds like thunder, but imagined nothing as horrible as the messenger related.
The urs told of hundreds dead … and that a High Sage of the Commons was among those slaughtered. Asx had been standing near a group of curious spectators and confused alien lovers, waiting to parley with the visitors. After the dust and flames settled, the traeki was nowhere to be seen.
The g’Kek doctor tending Uthen expressed the grief they all felt, rolling all four tentacle-like eyes and flailing the ground with his pusher leg. This personified the horror. Asx had been a popular sage, ready to mull over problems posed by any of the Six Races, from marriage counseling to dividing the assets of a bisected qheuen hive. Asx might “mull” for days, weeks, or a year before giving an answer — or several answers, laying out a range of options.
Before the courier departed, Lark’s status as a junior sage won him a brief look at the drawings in her dispatch pouch. He showed Ling a sketch of a massive oval ship of space, dwarfing the one that brought her to this world. Her face clouded. The mighty shape was unfamiliar and frightening.
Lark’s own messenger — a two-legged human — had plunged into the ranks of towering boo at daybreak, carrying a plea for Lester Cambel to send up Ling’s personal Library unit, so she might read the memory bars he and Uthen had found in the wrecked station.
Her offer, made the evening before, was limited to seeking data about plagues, especially the one now sweeping the qheuen community.
“If Ro-kenn truly was preparing genocide agents, he is a criminal by our own law.”
“Even a Rothen master?” Lark had asked skeptically.
“Even so. It is not disloyal for me to find out, or else prove it was not so.
“However,” she had added, “don’t expect me to help you make war against my crew mates or my patrons. Not that you could do much, now that their guard is raised. You surprised us once with tunnels and gunpowder, destroying a little research base. But you’ll find that harming a starship is beyond even your best-equipped zealots.”
That exchange took place before they learned about the second vessel. Before word came that the mighty Rothen cruiser was reduced to a captive toy next to a true colossus from space.
While they awaited Cambel’s answer, Lark sent his troopers sifting through the burned lakeshore thicket, gathering golden preservation beads. Galactic technology had been standardized for millions of years. So there just might be a workable reading unit amid all the pretty junk the magpie spider had collected. Anyway, it seemed worth a try.
While sorting through a pile of amber cocoons, he and Ling resumed their game of cautious question-and-evasion. Circumstances had changed — Lark no longer felt as stupid in her presence — still, it was the same old dance.
Starting off, Ling quizzed him about the Great Printing, the event that transformed Jijo’s squabbling coalition of sooner races, even more than the arrival of the Holy Egg. Lark answered truthfully without once mentioning the Biblos Archive. Instead he described the guilds of printing, photocopying, and especially papermaking, with its pounding pulp hammers and pungent drying screens, turning out fine pages under the sharp gaze of his father, the famed Nelo.
“A nonvolatile, randomly accessed, analog memory store that is completely invisible from space. No electricity or digital cognizance to detect from orbit.” She marveled. “Even when we saw books, we assumed they were hand-copied — hardly a culture-augmenting process. Imagine, a wolfling technology proved so effective … under special circumstances.”
Despite that admission, Lark wondered about the Danik attitude, which seemed all too ready to dismiss the accomplishments of their own human ancestors — except when an achievement could be attributed to Rothen intervention.
It was Lark’s turn to ask a question, and he chose to veer onto another track.
“You seemed as surprised as anybody, when the disguise creature crawled off of Ro-pol’s face.”
He referred to events just before the Battle of
the Glade, when a dead Rothen was seen stripped of its charismatic, symbiotic mask. Ro-pol’s eyes, once warm and expressive, had bulged lifeless from a revealed visage that was sharply slanted, almost predatory, and distinctly less humanoid.
Ling had never seen a master so exposed. She reacted to Lark’s question cautiously.
“I am not of the Inner Circle.”
“What’s that?”
Ling inhaled deeply. “Rann and Kunn are privy to knowledge about the Rothen that most Daniks never learn. Rann has even been to one of the secret Rothen home sites. Most of us are never so blessed. When not on missions, we dwell with our families in the covered canyons of Poria Outpost, with just a hundred or so of our patrons. Even on Poria, the two races don’t mix daily.”
“Still, not to know something so basic about those who claim to be—”
“Oh, one hears rumors. Sometimes you see a Rothen whose face seems odd … as if part of it was, well, put on wrong. Maybe we cooperate with the deception by choosing at some level not to notice. Anyway, that’s not the real issue, is it?”
“What is the real issue?”
“You imply I should be horrified to learn they wear symbionts to look more humanoid. To appear more beautiful in our eyes. But why shouldn’t the Rothen use artificial aids, if it helps them serve as better guides, shepherding our race toward excellence?”
Lark muttered, “How about a little thing called honesty?”
“Do you tell your pet chimp or zookir everything? Don’t parents sometimes lie to children for their own good? What about lovers who strive to look nice for each other? Are they dishonest?
