Infinity's Shore u-5

by David Brin

  According to Ling’s terse explanation, scribbled on her wax board, the captives lived in a QUANTUM SEPARATED WORLD. She added something about COGNIZANCE INTERFERENCE BY ORGANIC OBSERVERS and seemed to think that explained it. But Lark failed to see why not-looking should make any difference. No doubt Sara would understand better than her brother, the backwoods biologist. I used to tease her that the books she loved best were filled with useless abstractions. Concepts no Jijoan would need again. Guess it just shows how little I knew.

  To Lark the whole thing smacked of a particularly inconvenient kind of magic, as if the capricious goddess, Ifni, had invented the gold barrier to test the patience of mortals.

  Fortunately, their micro — traeki rings provided the human swimmers with all the air they needed. When pressurized supplies ran out, the little toruses unfolded great feathery fans that waved through the lake water like lazy wings, sieving fresh oxygen for Lark and the others to breathe. Another impressive feature of the ever-adaptable ringed ones. Combined with the skink-skin wet suits and rewqs, it made the swimmers look like bizarre sea monsters to those inside the bubble. Finally, though, the prisoners set up an electronic message plaque that flashed words through the translucent barrier in shining Anglic letters.

  WE MUST MAKE COMMON CAUSE, they sent.

  So far, Lark’s idea had been fruitful. Unlike at tragic Dooden Mesa, these prisoners had been sealed within an airtight hull that kept the golden liquor from swamping their bodies and life-support machinery. Moreover, the chill lake carried away enough heat so their idle engines did not broil them. They were surrounded, enmeshed in strange time. But they were alive.

  When Lark stared at one of the Rothen masters, he easily made out the creature’s facade. Rewq-generated colors divided its charismatic features, so noble in human terms, into two parts, each with its own aura. Across the upper half lay a fleshy symbiont beast, shaped to provide the regal brow, high cheeks and trademark stately nose. A gray deadness told that some kind of synthetic lens insert lay over the Rothen’s eyeballs, and the fine white teeth were artificially capped.

  It’s an impressive disguise, he thought. Yet even without masks the Rothen were remarkably humanoid, a resemblance that no doubt originally spurred their cunning plan to win over some impressionable Earthlings back in the frantic, naive days soon after contact, turning those converts into a select tribe of loyal aides — the Daniks. If handled right, it would let the Rothen pull quite a few capers using human intermediaries to do the dirty work. And if Daniks were caught in the act, Earth would get the blame.

  All told, those inside the trapped ship had a destiny they deserved. Lark might have voted to leave them till Jijo reclaimed their dross. Only now an even greater danger loomed, and there was no other place to turn for allies against the Jophur.

  The captives inside the shell seemed eager enough. The last line of their message expressed this.

  GET US OUT OF HERE!

  Floating in the gentle current, Lark saw Rann, the tall Danik leader, write on his wax board.

  WE MAY HAVE A WAY.

  YOU MUST PREPARE A FORMULA.

  IT IS

  Lark grabbed for the board, but Ling got there first, snatching the stylus right out of Rann’s meaty hand. Surprise, then anger, flared across the part of his face visible between the rewq and breathing ring. But the big man was outnumbered, and knew that Jeni Shen had lethal darts in her underwater crossbow. The militia sergeant watched from a vantage point where her vigilance would not interfere with the time-jerked conversation.

  Ling replaced Rann’s message with another.

  HOW DO YOU SUGGEST WE DO THAT?

  She slung the sign’s strap over her neck so the board rested against her back, message outward. At her nodded signal, Rann and Lark joined her turning around. A spooky feeling swarmed Lark’s spine as he imagined a flurry of activity taking place behind them. Without observers peering at them, the Rothen-Danik crew were liberated from frozen time, free to read Ling’s message, deliberate, and shape a reply.

  I never read much physics, Lark thought. But something feels awful screwy about how this works.

  The swimmers let momentum carry them around. Only a few duras passed before they faced the hatch once more, but most of the Rothen and human figures had moved in that narrow moment. The electric placard now glimmered with new writing.

  PREFERRED METHOD: DESTROY THE JOPHUR.

  Bubbles burst past Lark’s breathing tube as he choked back a guffaw. Ling glanced his way, conveying agreement with a shake of her head. The second half of the message was more serious.

  OTHER POSSIBILITY: OFFER JOPHUR WHAT THEY WANT.

  BUY OUR FREEDOM!

  Lark scanned the crowded statues, where many human faces wore expressions of desperation. He could not help feeling moved as they pleaded for their lives. In a way it’s not their fault. Their ancestors made a stupid deal on their behalf just as mine did. People must have been both crazed and gullible in those days, right after Earthlings first met Galactic culture.

  It took effort to harden his heart, but Lark knew he must.

  Again, Rann tried for the big writing tablet, but Ling wrote fiercely.

  WHAT CAN YOU OFFER US, IN RETURN?

  On seeing her message, Lark and Rann both stared at her. But Ling seemed unaware that her words carried a personal as well as general meaning. They turned again, giving the prisoners a chance to read and react to Ling’s demand. While sweeping the slow circle, Lark glanced toward her, but living goggles made direct eye contact impossible. Her rewq-mediated aura conveyed grim resolve.

  Lark expected to find the captives in turmoil, upset by Ling’s implied secession. Then he realized. They only see us when our backs are turned. They may not even know it’s Rann and Ling out here, after all!

  WHATEVER WE HAVE.

  That was the frank answer, arrayed in shining letters.

  Ling’s next message was as straight to the point.

  RO-KENN RELEASED QHEUEN AND HOON PLAGUES.

  MAYBE OTHERS.

  CURE THEM, OR ROT.

  At this resumed accusation, Rann nearly exploded. Strangled anger echoed in his pharynx, escaping as bubbles that Lark feared might carry his curses all the way to the far surface of the lake. The starman tried to grab the message board, briefly struggling with Ling. But when Lark made slashing motions across his throat, Rann glanced back as Jeni approached from the ship’s curved flank, brandishing her deadly bow, accompanied by two strong young qheuens.

  Rann’s shoulders slumped. He went through the next turning time sweep mechanically. Lark heard a low, grating sound, and knew the big Danik was grinding his teeth.

  Lark expected protestations of innocence from the imprisoned starfarers, and sure enough, when they next looked, the signboard proclaimed—

  PLAGUES? WE KNOW NOTHING OF SUCH.

  But Ling was adamant to a degree that clearly surprised Rann. Using forceful language, she told the captives — her former friends and comrades — to answer truthfully next time, or be abandoned to their fate.

  That brought grudging admission, at last.

  RO-KENN HAD OPTIONS,

  HIS CHOICE TO USE SUCH MEANS.

  GET US OUT.

  WE CAN PROVIDE CURES.

  Lark stared at the woman next to him, awed by the blazing intensity of her rewq aura. Till that moment, she must have held a slim hope that it was all a mistake … that Lark’s indictment of her Rothen gods had a flaw in it somewhere. That there was some alternative explanation.

  Now every complicating what-if vanished. The flame of her anger made Rann’s seem like a pale thing.

  While both Daniks fumed, each for different reasons, Lark took the wax board, wiped it, and wrote a reply.

  PREPARE CURES AT ONCE.

  BUT THERE IS MORE.

  WE MUST HAVE ONE MORE THING.

  It made sense that the Jophur used this weird weapon — pouring chemically synthesized time-stuff over their enemies. It suited their rac
ial genius for manipulating organic materials. But in their contempt, the master rings had forgotten something.

  They have cousins on Jijo, who are loyal to the Six.

  True, local traekis lacked ambitious natures, and were unschooled in advanced Galactic science. Regardless, a team of talented local pharmacists had analyzed the substance — a viscous, quasi-living tissue — by taste alone. Without understanding its arcane temporal effects, they managed to secrete a counteragent from their gifted glands.

  Unfortunately, it was no simple matter of applying the formula, then rubbing away the golden cocoon surrounding the Rothen ship. For one thing, the antidote was miscible with water. Applying it under a lake presented problems.

  But there was a possible way. At Dooden Mesa, they found that the old mulc spider’s preservation beads could be pushed against the golden wall and made to merge with it, flowing into the barrier like stones sinking in soft clay.

  Lark had more beads brought from the ancient treasure hoard of the being Dwer called One-of-a-Kind. Agile, five-clawed blues pushed several egg-shaped objects against the section of wall he indicated, opposite the hatch. These beads had been hollowed out and turned into bottles, stoppered at one end with plugs of traeki wax. Within each could be seen machines and other relics of the Buyur era, gleaming like insects caught in amber. Only now those relics seemed to float inside, sloshing in a frothy foam.

  At first there were few visible results to the qheuens’ effort. The water resonated with bumps and clanks, but no merging occurred. Lark scribbled a command.

  EVERYBODY DON’T LOOK!

  Ling nodded vigorously. When earlier experiments were performed at the devastated g’Kek settlement, there had not been observers on the inside. No living ones, that is. Here, the scene was being watched, in a weird alternating manner, by people on both sides of the enclosure. Perhaps the unsymmetrical quantum effects meant that nothing would happen while people observed.

  It took a while to make those within the ship understand that they should turn around, as well. But soon all the Rothen and humans on both sides swiveled away. Young qheuens pushed blindly, with vision cupolas drawn inside their horny shells. This has got to be the strangest way to get anything done, Lark thought, staring across a suffocated landscape, once the Festival Glade of the Commons of Six Races. All his life, teachers and leaders said if you want a job to go well, pay attention to what you are doing. But this reversed way of acting — where inattention was a virtue — reminded him how some Nihanese mystics in the Vale practiced “Zen arts” such as archery while blindfolded, cultivating detachment and readiness for the Path of Redemption.

  Again he glanced at Ling, the star-voyaging biologist. Her aura still seethed, though now in cooler shades. She’s declared an end to her old allegiance. Does she have a new one yet? Other than revenge, that is? He wished they could go somewhere private — and dry — to talk, without the guarded gamesmanship of their earlier conversations. But Lark wasn’t sure she’d want the same thing. Just because his allegations had proved right, that did not mean she should bless him for smashing her childhood idols.

  After counting a long interval, Ling nodded and they turned around again.

  Rann grunted satisfaction, and Lark felt his heart race.

  The beads had penetrated most of the way into the glowing cage! Hardworking blues bubbled satisfaction, then hurried toward the boo grove, fetching air from their makeshift snorkel.

  Lark wrote a message to those inside the Rothen airlock.

  EVERYBODY CLEAR OUT

  BUT 2 SMALL HUMANS.

  WEAR AIR SUPPLY.

  BRING CURES!

  When next he and his companions turned back toward the lock, it was nearly empty. Two women stood on the other side. Petite, though even through their swim-coverings he saw well-developed figures — buxom and wasp-waisted. Clearly, they must have taken advantage of the same cosmetic biosculpting that had made Ling, and the late Besh, so striking. It’s a different universe out there, where you can design yourself like a god.

  Lark swam to where the tip of a mulc capsule protruded from the Jophur barrier. Most of the bead lay deep inside. At its far end the makeshift bottle’s hole was plugged by a thick wax seal.

  From his thigh pouch Lark drew a tool provided by one of Lester Cambel’s techie assistants. A can opener the fellow called it.

  “Our problem is to deliver dissolving fluid into contact with the barrier, but not lake water,” the tech had explained. “Our answer is to use the new traeki fluid to hollow out some mulc beads. Then we coat these cavities with neutral wax, and refill them with more of the antidote fluid. The hole is plugged, so we have a sealed vessel—”

  “I see you left an old Buyur machine inside,” Lark had observed.

  “The fluid won’t affect it, and we need the machine inside. It doesn’t matter what it did in Buyur days, so long as we can signal-activate it to move again, pulling a string attached to the plug. When the plug goes pop! — the contents pour into contact with the Jophur wall! It’s foolproof.”

  Lark wasn’t so sure. There was no telling if clever, homemade electrical devices would work underwater, surrounded by time-warped fields. Here goes everything, he thought, squeezing the activator.

  To his relief, the Buyur device began moving right away … unfolding an appendage, all coiled and springy like a shambler’s tail.

  I wonder what you used to do, he pondered, watching the machine writhe and gyre. Are you aware enough to puzzle over where you are? Where your masters have gone? Do you have an internal clock, to know half a million years have passed? Or did time stop for you inside the bead?

  The coiled arm flailed as the machine sought to right itself, yanking a cord attached to the stopper at the far end. The plug slipped, caught, then slipped some more.

  It was hard to follow events in the region of “quantum separated time.” Things seemed to happen in fits and starts. Sometimes effect seemed to precede cause, or he saw the far side of a rotating object while closer parts remained somehow obscured. It was a strange, sideways manner of seeing that reminded Lark of “Cubist” artworks, depicted in an ancient book his mother loved borrowing from the Biblos Archive.

  Finally, the stopper slid free. At once reddish foam spread from the nozzle of the makeshift bottle, where its contents met the golden wall. Lark’s heart pounded, and he felt his amulet, the fragment of the Holy Egg, react with growing heat. His left hand clawed at the skink-skin wrappers, but could not gain entry to grab the vibrating stone. So, like an itch that could not be scratched, he endured the palpitation as his breastbone was rubbed from both sides.

  Grunts of satisfaction escaped Rann as the foamy stain spread, eroding the Jophur barrier from within. The widening hole soon met a neighboring “bottle,” embedded in the wall near the first. In moments, fresh supplies of dissolving fluid gushed. The material of the barrier seemed to shiver, as if it were alive. As though in pain. Waves of color rippled around the growing cavity, as his rewq tried reading strange emotions.

  So fixed was everyone on the process, for long intervals no one looked beyond, to the airlock and its two inhabitants, until a stray current tugged Lark aside. Lacking outside observers, the Danik women must have experienced time’s passage in a somewhat linear fashion. They looked tense, hunching away from the red foam, crouching near the airlock’s sealed inner door as the bubble slowly approached. Fear showed through their transparent face masks. No one knew what would happen when the hissing effervescence broke through.

  It was also getting closer to Lark’s side of the wall. He backpedaled toward the others … only to find they had retreated farther still. Ling grabbed his arm.

  Apparently, if they succeeded in making a tunnel, it would be wide in the middle but awfully narrow at both ends. Also, the wall material wasn’t solid, but a very viscous liquid. Fresh toporgic could already be seen slumping toward the wound. Any passage was bound to be temporary.

  If we didn’t estimate right … i
f the two ends open in the wrong order … we might have to start all over again. There are more bottles of fluid, back at the cave. But how many times can we try?

  Yet he could not talk himself out of feeling pride.

  We’re not helpless. Faced with overwhelming power, we innovate. We persevere.

  The realization was ironic confirmation of the heresy he had maintained all his adult life.

  We aren’t meant for the Path of Redemption. No matter how hard we try, we’ll never tread its road to innocence.

  That is why our kind should never have come to Jijo.

  We’re meant for the stars. We simply don’t belong here.

  Nelo

  THE OLD MAN DID NOT KNOW WHICH WAS THE SADDEST sight.

  At times he wished the boat had capsized during that wretched, pell-mell running of the rapids so he would not have lived to see such things.

  It took half a day of hard labor at the oars to climb back upstream to Dolo Village. By the time they reached the timber pile that had been the town dock, all the young rowers were exhausted. Villagers rushed down a muddy bank to help them drag the boat ashore, and carried Ariana Foo to dry ground. A stout hoon ignored Nelo’s protests, picking him up like a baby, until he stood safely by the roots of a mighty garu tree.

  Many survivors milled listlessly, though others had formed work gangs whose first task was collecting dross. Especially bodies. Those must be gathered quickly and mulched, as required by sacred law.

  Nelo saw corpses gathered in a long row — mostly human, of course. Numbly he noted the master carpenter and Jobee the Plumber. Quite a few craft workers lay muddy and broken along a sodden patch of loam, and many more were missing, carried downstream when the lake came crashing through the millrace and workshops. Tree farmers, in contrast, had suffered hardly a loss. Their life on the branch tops did not expose them when the dam gave way.

  No one spoke, though stares followed the papermaker as Nelo moved down the line, allowing a wince or a grunt when he recognized the face of an employee, an apprentice, or a lifelong friend. When he reached the end, he did not turn but kept walking in the same direction, toward what had been the center of his life.