by David Brin
Oh, how well Asx spoke then, despite the confusion! With surprising coherence for a stack without a master, tapping waxy streaks of eloquence, Asx pleaded, cajoled, and reasoned with the enigmatic creatures who peered from behind glaring lights.
Finally, these beings glided forward. The starship’s hold filled with Asx’s ventings of horrified dread.
How unified you were, My rings! The testimony of the wax is clear. At that moment, you were one as never before.
United in shared dismay to see those cousin toroids your ancestors sought to escape, many cycles ago.
We Jophur, the mighty and fulfilled.
Dwer
THE ROBOT PROVED USEFUL AT HEAPING DRIFTwood onto the seaside shoulder of a high dune overlooking the Rift. Without rest or pause, it dumped a load then scurried for more, in whatever direction Rety indicated with an outstretched arm. The Danik machine seemed willing to obey once more — so long as her orders aimed toward a reunion with Kunn.
Such single-minded devotion to its master reminded Dwer of Earth stories about dogs — tales his mother read aloud when he was small. It struck him odd that the Tabernacle colonists brought horses, donkeys, and chimps, but no canines.
Lark or Sara might know why.
That was Dwer’s habitual thought, encountering something he didn’t understand. Only now it brought a pang, knowing he might never see his brother and sister again.
Maybe Kunn won’t kill me outright. He might bring me home in chains, instead, before the Rothens wipe out the Six Races to cover their tracks.
That was the terrible fate the High Sages foresaw for Jijo’s fallen settlers, and Dwer figured they ought to know. He recalled Lena Strong musing about what means the aliens might use to perform their genocide. With gruesome relish, Lena kept topping herself during the long hike east from the Rimmer Range. Would the criminal star gods wash the Slope with fire, scouring it from the glaciers to the sea? Would they melt the ice caps and bring an end by drowning? Her morbid speculations were like a fifth companion as Dwer guided two husky women and a lesser sage past a thousand leagues of poison grass all the way to the Gray Hills, in a forlorn bid to safeguard a fragment of human civilization on Jijo.
Dwer had last glimpsed Jenin, Lena, and Danel during the brief fight near the huts of Rety’s home clan. This same robot cut poor Danel down with lethal rays, instants before its own weapons pod was destroyed.
Indeed, the battle drone was no dog to be tamed or befriended. Nor would it show gratitude for the times Dwer helped it cross rivers, anchoring its fields to ground through the conduit of his body.
Mudfoot was hardly any better a comrade. The lithe noor beast swiftly grew bored with wood-gathering chores, and scampered off instead to explore the tide line, digging furiously where bubbles revealed a buried hive of sand clamettes. Dwer looked forward to roasting some … until he saw that Mudfoot was cracking and devouring every one, setting none aside for the humans.
As useful as a noor, he thought, quashing stings of hunger as he hoisted another bundle of twisty driftwood slabs, digging his moccasins into the sandy slope.
Dwer tried to remain optimistic.
Maybe Kunn will feed me, before attaching the torture machines.
yee stood proudly atop the growing woodpile. The diminutive urrish male called directions in a piping voice, as if mere humans could never manage a proper fire without urrish supervision. Rety’s “husband” hissed disappointment over Dwer’s poor contribution — as if being wounded, starved, and dragged across half of Jijo in a robot’s claws did not excuse much. Dwer ignored yee’s reprimand, dumping his load then stepping over to the dune’s seaward verge, shading his eyes in search of Kunn’s alien scoutship.
He spied it far away, a silvery bead, cruising back and forth above the deep blue waters of the Rift. At intervals, something small and shiny would fall from the slender spacecraft. An explosive, Dwer supposed, for about twenty duras after each canister struck the water, the sea abruptly frothed white. Sometimes a sharp, almost musical tone reached shore.
According to Rety, Kunn was trying to force something — or somebody — out of hiding.
I hope you miss, Dwer thought … though the star pilot might be in a better mood toward prisoners if his hunt went well.
“I wonder what Jass has been tellin’ Kunn, all this time,” Rety worried aloud, joining Dwer at the crest. “What if they become pals?”
Dwer waited as the robot dropped another cargo of wood and went off for more. Then he replied.
“Have you changed your mind? We could still try to escape. Take out the robot. Avoid Kunn. Go our own way.”
Rety smiled with surprising warmth.
“Why, Dwer, is that a whatchamacallum? A proposal? What’ll we do? Make our own little sooner clan, here on the wind barrens? Y’know I already have one husban’ and I need his p’rmission to add another.”
Actually, he had envisioned trying to make it back to the Gray Hills, where Lena and Jenin could surely use a hand. Or else, if that way seemed too hard and Rety rigidly opposed returning to the tribe she hated, they might strike out west and reach the Vale in a month or two, if the foraging was good along the way.
Rety went on, with more edge in her voice.
“B’sides, I still have my eye set on an apart’mint on Poria Outpost. Like the one Besh an’ Ling showed me a picture of, with a bal-co-ny, an’ a bed made o’ cloud stuff. I figure it’ll be just a bit more comfy than scratchin’ out the rest of my days here with savages.”
Dwer shrugged. He hadn’t expected her to agree. As a “savage,” he had reasons of his own for going ahead with the bonfire to attract Kunn’s attention.
“Well, anyway, I don’t suppose the bot would let its guard down a second time.”
“It was lucky to survive doin’ it around you once.”
Dwer took a moment to realize she had just paid him a compliment. He cherished its uniqueness, knowing he might never hear another.
The moment of unaccustomed warmth was broken when something massive abruptly streaked by, so fast that its air wake shoved both humans to the ground. Dwer’s training as a tracker let him follow the blurry object … to the top of a nearby dune, which erupted in a gushing spray of sand.
It was the robot, he realized, digging with furious speed. In a matter of heartbeats it made a hole that it then dived within, aiming its remaining sensor lens south and west.
“Come on!” Dwer urged, grabbing his bow and quiver. Rety paused only to snatch up a wailing, hissing yee. Together they fled some distance downslope, where Dwer commenced digging with both hands.
Long ago, Fallon the Scout had taught him—If you don’t know what’s happening in a crisis, mimic a creature who does. If the robot felt a sudden need to hide, Dwer thought it wise to follow.
“Ifni!” Rety muttered. “Now what in hell’s he doin?”
She was still standing — staring across the Rift. Dwer yanked her into the hole beside him. Only when sand covered most of their bodies did he poke his head back out to look.
The Danik pilot clearly felt something was wrong. The little craft hurtled toward shore, diving as it came. Seeking cover, Dwer thought. Maybe it can dig underground, like the robot.
Dwer started turning, to spot whatever had Kunn in such a panic, but just then the boat abruptly veered, zigzagging frantically. From its tail bright fireballs arced, like sparks leaping off a burning log. They flared brightly and made the air waver in a peculiar way, blurring the escaping vessel’s outlines.
From behind Dwer, streaks of fierce light flashed overhead toward the fleeing boat. Most deflected through warped zones, veering off course, but one bypassed the glowing balls, striking target.
At the last moment, Kunn flipped his nimble ship around and fired back at his assailants, launching a return volley just as the unerring missile closed in.
Dwer shoved Rety’s head down and closed his eyes.
The detonations were less Jijo-shattering than he expected �
� a series of dull concussions, almost anticlimactic.
Looking up with sand-covered faces, they witnessed both winner and loser in the brief battle of god chariots.
Kunn’s boat had crashed beyond the dune field, plowing into a marshy fen. Smoke boiled from its shattered rear.
Circling above, the victor regarded its victim, glistening with a silvery tint that seemed less metallic than crystal. The newcomer was bigger and more powerful looking than the Danik scout.
Kunn never stood a chance.
Rety muttered, her voice barely audible.
“She said there’d turn out to be someone stronger.”
Dwer shook his head. “Who?”
“That smelly old urs! Leader o’ those four-legged sooners, back in the village pen. Said the Rothen might be a-feared of somebody bigger. So she was right.”
“urs smelly?” yee objected, “you wife should talk?”
Rety stroked the little male as yee stretched his neck, fluting a contented sigh.
The fallen scout boat rocked from a new explosion, this one brightly framing a rectangle in the ship’s side. That section fell and two bipeds followed, leaping into the bog, chased by smoke that boiled from the interior. Staggering through murky water, the men leaned on each other to reach a weedy islet, where they fell, exhausted.
The newcomer ship cruised a wary circle, losing altitude. As it turned, Dwer saw a stream of pale smoke pouring from a gash in its other side. A roughness to the engine sound grew steadily worse. Soon, the second cruiser settled down near the first.
Well, it looks like Kunn got in a lick of his own.
Dwer wondered—Now why should that make me feel glad?
Alvin
BONE-RATTLING CONCUSSIONS GREW MORE TERRIFYING with each dura, hammering our undersea prison refuge, sometimes receding for a while, then returning with new force, making it hard for a poor hoon to stand properly on the shuddering floor.
Crutches and a back brace didn’t help, nor the little autoscribe, fogging the room with my own projected words. Stumbling through them, I sought some solid object to hold, while the scribe kept adding to the mob of words, recording my frantic curses in Anglic and GalSeven. When I found a wall stanchion, I grabbed for dear life. The clamor of reverberating explosions sounded like a giant, bearing down with massive footsteps, nearer … ever nearer.…
Then, as I feared some popping seam would let in the dark, heavy waters of the Midden … it abruptly stopped.
Silence was almost as disorienting as the jeekee awful noise. My throat sac blatted uselessly while a hysterical Huphu clawed my shoulders, shredding scales into torglike ribbons.
Fortunately, hoon don’t have much talent for panic. Maybe our reactions are too slow, or else we lack imagination.
As I was gathering my wits, the door hatch opened and one of the little amphibian types rushed in, squeaking a few rapid phrases in simplified GalTwo.
A summons. The spinning voice wanted us for another powwow.
“Perhaps we should share knowledge,” it said when the four of us (plus Huphu) were assembled.
Huck and Pincer-Tip, able to look all ways at once, shared meaningful glances with Ur-ronn and me. We were pretty rattled by the recent booming and shaking. Even growing up next to a volcano had never prepared us for that!
The voice seemed to come from a space where abstract lines curled in tight patterns, but I knew that was an illusion. The shapes and sounds were projections, sent by some entity whose real body lay elsewhere, beyond the walls. I kept expecting Huphu to dash off and tear away a curtain, exposing a little man in an emerald carnival suit.
Do they think we’re rubes, to fall for such a trick?
“Knowledge?” Huck sneered, drawing three eyes back like coiled snakes. “You want to share some knowledge? Then tell us what’s going on! I thought this place was breaking up! Was it a quake? Are we being sucked into the Midden?”
“I assure you, that is not happening,” came the answer in smooth-toned GalSix. “The source of our mutual concern lies above, not below.”
“Exflosions,” Ur-ronn muttered, blowing through her snout fringe and stamping a hind hoof. “Those weren’t quakes, vut underwater detonations. Clean, sharf, and very close. I’d say soneone uf there doesn’t like you guys very nuch.”
Pincer hissed sharply and I stared at our urrish friend, but the spinning voice conceded.
“That is an astute guess.”
I couldn’t tell if it was impressed, or just sarcastic.
“And since our local guild of exflosers could hardly achieve such feats, this suggests you have other, fowerful foes, far greater than we feevle Six.”
“Again, a reasonable surmise. Such a bright young lady.”
“Hr-rm,” I added, in order not to be left out of the sardonic abuse. “We’re taught that the simplest hypothesis should always be tried first. So let me guess — you’re being hunted by the same folks who landed a while back in the Festival Glade. Those gene raiders Uriel got word about before we left. Is that it?”
“A goodly conjecture, and possibly even true … though it could as easily be someone else.”
“Someone else? What’re you say-ay-aying?” Pincer-Tip demanded, raising three legs and teetering dangerously on the remaining two. His chitin skin flared an anxious crimson shade. “That the eatees-tees-tees on the Glade might not be the only ones? That you’ve got whole passels of enemies?”
Abstract patterns tightened to a tornado of meshing lines as silence reigned. Little Huphu, who had seemed fascinated by the voice from the very start, now dug her claws in my shoulder, transfixed by the tight spiral form.
Huck demanded, in a hushed tone.
“How many enemies have you guys got?”
When the voice spoke again, all sardonic traces were gone. Its tone seemed deeply weary.
“Ah, dear children. It seems that half of the known sidereal universe has spent years pursuing us.”
Pincer clattered his claws and Huck let out a low, mournful sigh. My own dismal contemplation-umble roused Huphu from her trancelike fixation on the whirling display, and she chittered nervously.
Ur-ronn simply grunted, as if she had expected this, vindicating her native urrish cynicism. After all, when things seem unable to get any worse, isn’t that when they nearly always do? Ifni has a fertile, if nasty imagination. The goddess of fate keeps shaving new faces on her infinite-sided dice.
“Well, I guess this means — hrm-m — that we can toss out all those ideas about you phuvnthus being ancient Jijoans, or native creatures of the deep.”
“Or remnants of cast-off Buyur machines,” Huck went on. “Or sea monsters.”
“Yeah,” Pincer added, sounding disappointed. “Just another bunch of crazy Galactics-tic-tics.”
The swirling patterns seemed confused. “You would prefer sea monsters?”
“Forget it,” Huck said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
The patterns bent and swayed.
“I am afraid you may be right about that. Your small band of comrades has us terribly perplexed. So much that a few of us posed a sly scenario — that you were planted in our midst to sow confusion.”
“How do you mean?”
“Your values, beliefs, and evident mutual affection contribute to undermining assumptions we regarded as immutably anchored in the nature of reality.
“Mind you, this confusion is not wholly unpleasant. As a thinking entity, one of my prime motives might be called a lust for surprise. And those I work with are hardly less bemused by the unforeseen marvel of your fellowship.”
“Glad you find us entertaining,” Huck commented, as dryly sarcastic as the voice had been. “So you guys came here to hide, like our ancestors?”
“There are parallels. But our plan was never to stay. Only to make repairs, gather stores, and wait in concealment for a favorable window at the nearest transfer point.”
“So Uriel and the sages may be wrong about the ship that came to the Gl
ade? Being a gang of gene raiders — that could just be a cover story. Are you the real cause of our troubles?”
“Trouble is synonymous with being a metabolizing entity. Or else why have you young adventurers sought it so avidly?
“But your complaint has merit. We thought we had eluded all pursuit. The ship that landed in the mountains may be coincidental, or attracted by a confluence of unlucky factors. In any event, had we known of your existence, we would have sought shelter somewhere off-planet instead, perhaps in a dead city on one of your moons, though such places are less convenient for effecting repairs.”
That part I had trouble believing. I’m just an ignorant savage, but from the classic scientific romances I grew up reading, I could picture working in some lunar ghost town like my nicknamesake, waking mighty engines that had slept for ages. What kind of starfaring beings would find darkness and salt water more “convenient” than clean vacuum?
We lapsed into moody silence, unable to stay outraged at folks who accept responsibility so readily. Anyway, weren’t they fellow refugees from Galactic persecution?
Or from justice, came another, worried thought.
“Can you tell us why everyone’s so mad at you?” I asked.
The spinning figure turned into a narrow, whirling funnel whose small end seemed diminished and very far away.
“Like you, we delved and probed into unvisited places, imagining ourselves bold explorers.…” the voice explained in tones of boundless sadness. “Until we had the misfortune to find the very thing we sought. Unexpected wonders beyond our dreams.
“Breaking no law, we planned only to share what we had found. But those pursuing us abandoned all pretense of legality. Like giants striving over possession of a gnat, they war lustily, battling each other for a chance to capture us! Alas, whoever wins our treasure will surely use it against multitudes.”
Again, we stared. Pincer unleashed awed whispers from all vents at once.
“Tr-tr-treasure-ure-ure …?”
Huck wheeled close to the spinning pattern. “Can you prove what you just said?”
