Infinity's Shore u-5

by David Brin

  “Speak not so!” the speaker scolded. “Do not add temptation to the poisons you already bring in our midst!”

  “Poisons?”

  “You carry blessings in your hold … and curses.”

  The voice concluded, “We fear what your presence will do to our ancient peace.”

  As it turned out, Streaker’s time of sanctuary lasted just a few slim weeks before convulsions began to shake the Fractal System, sending awful sparks crackling along an immense structure built to house quadrillions. Crystal greenhouses, as wide as Earth’s moon, blew apart, exposing sheltered biomass to hard vacuum. Jupiter-sized slivers cracked loose, diffuse as cardboard, though glittering with lighted windows. Like icicles knocked by a violent wind, these tumbled, then collided with other protrusions, exploding into hurricanes of silent dust. Meanwhile, a cacophony of voices swarmed—

  The poor wolfling children … we must help the Terrans.…

  No! Erase them so we may return to quiet dreaming.…

  Objection! Let us instead squeeze them for what they know.…

  Yes. Then we’ll share the knowledge with our younger brethren of the Awaiter Alliance.…

  No! The Inheritors…

  The Abdicators!..

  Gillian recalls marveling at the unleashed storm of pettiness.

  So much for the vaunted detachment of old age.

  But then, when all seemed lost, sympathetic forces briefly intervened.

  This icy realm is not the place you seek.

  Advice you need, dispassionate and sage. Seek it from those who are older and wiser, still.

  Where tides curl tightly, warding off the night.

  Hurry, youngsters. Take this chance. Flee while you can.

  • • •

  Abruptly, an escape path opened for the Earth vessel — a crevice in the vast maze of hydrogen ice, with starspeckled blackness just beyond. Streaker had only moments to charge through … an egress too sudden and brief for Emerson D’Anite, who had already set forth in a brave, desolate sacrifice.

  Poor Emerson. Fought over by resentful factions until his scout craft was swallowed by enfolding light.

  All of this comes back to Gillian, not in sequence, but whole, timeless, and entire as she recalls that one phrase—

  “Articles of Destiny.”

  Immersed in a trance state, she can feel those tugging objects. The same ones that caused so much trouble in the Fractal System.

  They stroke her limbs — the limbs of Narushkan—not with physical force, but with awful import of their existence.

  Abruptly, Narushkan gives way to Abhusha—“the pointer”—and her left hand uncurls toward a massive cube — a portable branch of the great Galactic Library, squatting in a cool mist, two corridors away. With fingers of thought, Gillian traces one of its gemlike facets, engraved with a rayed spiral symbol. Unlike the minimally programmed units that wolfling upstarts could afford, this one was designed to serve a mighty starfaring clan. Had Streaker returned home with this prize alone, her costly voyage might be called worthwhile.

  Yet the cube seems least among Streaker’s cargoes.

  Abhusha shifts to her right hand, turning palm out, like a flower seeking warmth to counter the Library’s ancient cold.

  Toward youth, the antithesis of age.

  Gillian hears her little servant, Kippi, move about her private sanctum, straightening up. The Kiqui amphibian, a native of waterlogged Kithrup, uses all six agile limbs impartially while tidying. A cheerful music of syncopated chirps and trills accompanies his labor. Kippi’s surface thoughts prove easy to trace, even with Gillian’s limited psi-talent. Placid curiosity fills the presapient mind. Kippi seems blithely unaware that his young race is embroiled in a great crisis, spanning five galaxies.

  ## What comes next? — I wonder what?

  ## What comes?

  ## What comes next? — I hope it’s something good.

  Gillian shares that fervent wish. For the sake of the Kiqui, Streaker must find a corner of space where Galactic traditions still hold. Ideally some strong, benevolent star lineage, able to embrace and protect the juvenile amphibian race while hot winds of fanaticism blow along the starry lanes.

  Some race worthy to be their patrons … to help them … as humans never were helped … until the Kiqui can stand on their own.

  She had already given up hope of adopting the Kiqui into Terra’s small family of humans, neo-dolphins, and neo-chimps, the initial idea, when Streaker quickly snatched aboard a small breeding population on Kithrup. Ripe presapient species were rare, and this one was a real find. But right now Earthclan could hardly protect itself, let alone take on new responsibilities.

  Abhusha shifts again, transmuting into Poposh as one of Gillian’s feet swarms with prickliness, sensing a new presence in the room. Smug irony accompanies the intruder, like an overused fragrance. It is the Niss Machine’s spinning hologram, barging into her exclusive retreat with typical tactlessness.

  Tom had thought it a good idea to bring along the Tymbrimi device, when this ill-fated expedition set forth from Earth. For Tom’s sake — because she misses him so — Gillian quashes her natural irritation with the smooth-voiced artificial being.

  “The submarine, with our raiding party aboard, is now just hours from returning with the prisoners,” the Niss intones. “Shall we go over plans for interrogation, Dr. Baskin? Or will you leave that chore to a gaggle of alien children?”

  The insolent machine seems piqued, ever since Gillian transferred to Alvin and Huck the job of interpreting. But things are going well so far. Anyway, Gillian already knows what questions to ask the human and Jophur captives.

  Moreover, she has her own way to prepare. As old Jake used to say, “How can one foresee, without first remembering?”

  She needs time alone, without the Niss, or Hannes Suessi, or a hundred nervous dolphins nagging at her as if she were their mother. Sometimes the pressure feels heavier than the dark abyss surrounding Streaker’s sheltering mountain of dead starships.

  To answer verbally would yank her out of the trance, so Gillian instead calls up Kopou, an empathy glyph. Nothing fancy — she lacks the inbuilt talent of a Tymbrimi — just a crude suggestion that the Niss go find a corner of cybernetic space and spend the next hour in simulated self-replication, till she calls for it.

  The entity sputters and objects. There are more words. But she lets them wash by like foam on a beach. Meanwhile Gillian continues the exercise, shifting to another compass point. One that seems quiet as death.

  Abhusha resumes, now reaching toward a cadaver, standing in a far corner of her office like a pharaoh’s mummy, surrounded by preserving fields that still cling after three years and a million parsecs, keeping it as it was. As it had been ever since Tom wrested the ancient corpse from a huge derelict ship, adrift in the Shallow Cluster.

  Tom always had a knack for acquiring expensive souvenirs. But this one took the cake.

  Herbie.

  An ironic name for a Progenitor … if that truly was its nature … perhaps two billion years old, and the cause of Streaker’s troubles.

  Chief cause of war and turmoil across a dozen spiral arms.

  We could have gotten rid of him on Oakka World, she knew. Handing Herbie over to the Library Institute was officially the right thing to do. The safe thing to do.

  But sector-branch officials had been corrupted. Many of the librarians had cast off their oaths and fell to fighting among themselves — race by race, clan by clan — each seeking Streaker’s treasure for its own kind.

  Fleeing once again became a duty.

  No one Galactic faction can be allowed to own your secret.

  So commanded Terragens Council, in the single longrange message Streaker had received. Gillian knew the words by heart.

  To show any partiality might lead to disaster.

  It could mean extinction for Earthclan.

  Articles of Destiny tug at her limbs, reorienting her floating body. Facing upwar
d, Gillian’s eyes open but fail to see the metal ceiling plates. Instead, they look to the past.

  To the Shallow Cluster. A phalanx of shimmering globes, deceptively beautiful, like translucent moons, or floating bubbles in a dream.

  Then the Morgran ambush … fiery explosions amid mighty battleships, as numerous as stars, all striving for a chance to snare a gnat.

  To Kithrup, where the gnat fled, where so much was lost, including the better part of her soul.

  Where are you, Tom? Do you still live, somewhere in space and time?

  Then Oakka, that green betraying place, where the Institutes failed.

  And the Fractal System, where Old Ones proved there is no age limit on perfidy.

  Herbie seems amused by that thought.

  “Old Ones? From my perspective, those inhabitants of a giant snowflake are mere infants, like yourself!”

  Of course the voice comes from her imagination, putting words in a mouth that might have spoken when Earth’s ocean was innocent of any life but bacteria … when Sol’s system was half its present age.

  Gillian cracks a smile and Abhusha transforms into Kuntatta—laughter amid a storm of sleeting vacuum rays.

  Soon, she must wrestle with the same quandary — how to arrange Streaker’s escape one more time, just ahead of baying hounds. It would take a pretty neat trick this time, with a Jophur dreadnought apparently already landed on Jijo, and Streaker’s hull still laden with refractory soot.

  It would take a miracle.

  How did they follow us? she wonders. It seemed a perfect hideout, with all trails to Jijo quantum collapsed but one, and that one passing through the atmosphere of a giant carbon star. The sooner races all did it successfully, arriving without leaving tracks. What did we do wrong?

  Recrimination has no place in weightless yoga.

  It spoils the serenity.

  Sorry, Jake, she thinks. Gillian sighs, knowing this trance is now forfeit. She might as well emerge and get back down to business. Perhaps the Hikahi will bring useful news from its raid on the surface.

  I’m sorry, Tom. Maybe a time will come when I can clear my mind enough to hear you … or to cast a piece of myself to wherever you have gone.

  Gillian won’t let herself imagine the more likely probability — that Tom is dead, along with Creideiki and all the others she was forced to abandon on Kithrup, with little more than a space skiff to convey them home again.

  The emergence process continues, drawing meditation en-forms back into their original abstractions, easing her toward the world of unpleasant facts.

  And yet…

  In the course of preparing to exit, Gillian abruptly grows aware of a fifth tug on her body, this one stroking the back of her neck, prickling her occipital vertebrae, and follicles along the middle of her scalp. It is familiar. She’s felt it before, though never this strong. A presence, beckoning not from nearby, or even elsewhere in the ship, but somewhere beyond Streaker’s scarred hull. Somewhere else on the planet.

  There is a rhythmic, resonant solidity to the sensation, like vibration in dense stone.

  If only Creideiki were here, he could probably relate to it, the way he did with those poor beings who lived underground on Kithrup. Or else Tom might have figured out a way to decipher this thing.

  And yet, she begins to suspect this time it is something different. Correcting her earlier impression, Gillian realizes—

  It is not a presence on this world, or beneath it, but something of the planet. An aspect of Jijo itself.

  Narushkan orients her like the needle of a compass, and abruptly she feels a strange, unprovoked commotion within. It takes her some time to sort out the impression. But recognition dawns at last.

  Tentatively — like a long-lost friend unsure of its welcome—hope sneaks back into her heart, riding on the stony cadence.

  Ewasx

  ABRUPTLY COMES NEWS. TOO SOON FOR YOU RINGS to have interpreted the still-hot wax. So let me relate it directly.

  WORD OF DISASTER! WORD OF CALAMITY!

  Word of ill-fated loss, just east beyond this range of mountain hills. Our grounded corvette — destroyed!

  Dissension tears the Polkjhy crew. Chem-synth toruses vent fumes of blame while loud recriminations pour from oration rings.

  Could this tragedy be the work of the dolphin prey ship, retaliating against its pursuers? For years its renown has spread, after cunning escapes from other traps.

  But it cannot be. Longrange scans show no hint of gravitic emanations or energy weapons. Early signs point to some kind of onboard failure.

  And yet, clever wolflings are not to be underrated. I/we can read waxy memories left by the former Asx — historical legends of the formative years of the Jijoan Commons, especially tales of urrish-human wars. These stories demonstrate how both races have exceptional aptitudes for improvisation.

  Until now, we thought it was coincidence — that there were Earthling sooners here, that the Rothen had human servants, and the prey ship also came from that wolfling world. The three groups seem to have nothing in common, no motives, goals, or capabilities.

  But what if there is a pattern?

  I/we must speak of this to the Captain-Leader … as soon as higher-status stacks pause their ventings and let us get a puff in edgewise.

  Prepare, My rings. Our first task will surely be to interrogate the prisoners.

  Tsh’t

  WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?

  She fretted over her predicament as the submarine made its way back to the abyssal mountain of dead starships. While other members of the Hikahi team exulted over their successful raid, looking forward to reunion with their crew mates on the Streaker, Tsh’t anticipated docking with a rising sense of dread.

  To outward appearances, all was well. The prisoners were secure. The young adventurers, Alvin and Huck, were debriefing Dwer and Rety — human sooners who had managed somehow to defeat a Jophur corvette. Once Hikahi leveled its plunge below the thermocline, Tsh’t knew she and her team had pulled it off — striking a blow for Earth without being caught.

  The coup reflected well on the mission commander. Some might call Tsh’t a hero. Yet disquiet churned her sour stomach.

  Ifni must hate me. The worst of all possible combinations of events has caught me in a vise.

  “Wait a minute,” snapped the female g’Kek, who had assumed the name of an ancient Earthling literary figure. As her spokes vibrated with agitation, she pointed one eyestalk at the young man whose bow and arrows lay across his knees. “You’re saying that you walked all the way from the Slope to find her hidden tribe … while she flew back home aboard the Dakkin sky boat …”

  The human girl, Rety, interrupted.

  “That’s Danik, you dumb wheelie. And what’s so surprisin’ about that? I had Kunn an’ the others fooled down to their scabs, thinkin’ I was ready to be one of ’em. O’ course I was just keepin’ my eyes peeled fer my first chance to …”

  Tsh’t had already heard the story once through, so she paid scant attention this time, except to note that “Huck” spoke far better Anglic than the human child. Anyway, she had other matters on her mind. Especially one of the prisoners lying in a cell farther aft … a captive starfarer who could reveal her deepest secret.

  Tsh’t sent signals down the neural tap socketed behind her left eye. The mechanical walker unit responded by swiveling on six legs to aim her bottle-shaped beak away from the submarine’s bridge. Unburdened by armor or lifesupport equipment, it maneuvered gracefully past a gaggle of dolphin spectators. The fins seemed captivated by the sight of two humans so disheveled, and the girl bearing scars on her cheek that any Earth hospital could erase in a day. Their rustic accents and overt wonder at seeing real live dolphins seemed poignantly endearing in members of the patron race.

  The two seemed to find nothing odd about chatting with Alvin and Huck, though, as if wheeled beings and Anglicspeaking hoons were as common as froth on a wave. Common enough for Rety and Huck to bicker like si
blings.

  “Sure I led Kunn out this way. But only so’s I could find out where the bird machine came from!” Rety stroked a miniature urs, whose long neck coiled contentedly around her wrist. “And my plan worked, didn’t it? I found you!”

  Huck reacted with a rolling twist of all four eyestalks, a clear expression of doubt and disdain. “Yes, though it meant revealing the Earthship’s position, enabling your Danik pilot to target its site from the air.”

  “So? What’s yer point?”

  From the door, Tsh’t saw the male human glance at the big adolescent hoon. Dwer and Alvin had just met, but they exchanged commiserating grins. Perhaps they would compare notes later, how each managed life with such a “dynamic” companion.

  Tsh’t found all the varied voices too complicated. It feels like a menagerie aboard this tub.

  The argument raged on while Tsh’t exited the bridge. Perhaps recordings would prove useful when Gillian and the Niss computer analyzed every word. Preparations were also under way to interrogate the Jophur survivors using techniques found in the Thennanin Library cube — sophisticated data from a clan that had been fighting Jophur since before Solomon built his temple.

  Tsh’t approved … so far.

  But Gillian will also want to question Kunn. And she knows her own kind too well to be fooled.

  The Hikahi was a makeshift vessel, built out of parts salvaged from ancient hulks lining the bottom of the Rift. Tsh’t passed down corridors of varied substance, linked by coarsely welded plates, until she reached the cell where two human prisoners were held. Unfortunately, the guard on duty turned out to be Karkaett, a disciple of former Captain Creideiki’s keeneenk mental training program. Tsh’t couldn’t hope to send Karkaett off on some errand and have him simply forget. Any slip in regulations would be remembered.

  “The doughnuts are sedated,” the guard reported. “Also, we z-zapped the damaged Rothen battle drone and put it in a freezer. Hannes and I can check its memory store later.”