Infinity's Shore u-5

by David Brin

  But he faced other distractions, just as disturbing to his train of thought.

  Loocen hovered in the same western quarter of the sky, with a curve of bright pinpoints shining along the moon’s crescent-shaped terminator, dividing sunlit and shadowed faces. Tradition said those lights were domed cities. The departing Buyur left them intact, since Loocen had no native ecosystem to recycle and restore. Time would barely touch them until this fallow galaxy and its myriad star systems were awarded to new legal tenants, and the spiral arms once more teemed with commerce.

  How those lunar cities must have tempted the first g’Kek exiles, fleeing here from their abandoned space habitats, just a few sneak jumps ahead of baying lynch mobs. Feeling safe at last, after passing through the storms of Izmunuti, those domes would have enticed them with reminders of home. A promise of low gravity and clean, smooth surfaces.

  But such places offered no reliable, long-term shelter against relentless enemies. A planet’s surface was better for fugitives, with a life-support system that needed no computer regulation. A natural world’s complex messiness made it a fine place to hide, if you were willing to live as primitives, scratching a subsistence like animals.

  In fact, Vubben had few clues of what passed through the original colonists’ minds. The Sacred Scrolls were the only written records from that time, and they mostly ignored the past, preaching instead how to live in harmony on Jijo, and promising salvation to those following the Path of Redemption.

  Vubben was renowned for skill at reciting those hallowed texts. But in truth, we sages stopped relying on the scrolls a century ago.

  He resumed the solitary pilgrimage, commencing his fourth circuit just as another tywush wave commenced. Vubben now felt certain the cycles were growing more coherent. Yet there was also a feeling that much more power lay quiescent, far below the surface — power he desperately needed to tap.

  Hoon and qheuen grandparents passed on testimony that the patterns were more potent in the last days of Drake the Younger, when the Egg was still warm with birth heat, fresh from Jijo’s womb. Compelling dreams used to flood all six races back then, convincing all but the most conservative that a true revelation had come.

  Politics also played a role in the great orb’s acceptance. Drake and Ur-Chown made eager proclamations, interpreting the new omen in ways that helped consolidate the Commons.

  “This stone-of-wisdom is Jijo’s gift, a portent, sanctifying the treaties and ratifying the Great Peace,” they declared, with some success. From then on, hope became part of the revised religion. Though in deference to the scrolls, the word itself was seldom used.

  Now Vubben sought some of that hope for himself, for his race, and all the Six. He sought it in signs that the great stone might be stirring once again.

  I can feel it happening! If only the Egg rouses far enough, soon enough.

  But the increasing activity seemed to follow its own pace, with a momentum that made him feel like an insect, dancing next to some titanic being.

  Perhaps, Vubben suspected, my presence has nothing to do with these changes.

  What happens next may not involve me at all.

  Blade

  THE WINDS WERE BLOWING HIM THE WRONG WAY.

  No real surprise there. Weather patterns on the Slope had been contrary for more than a year. Anyway, metaphorically, the Six Races were being buffeted by gales of change. Still, at the end of a long, eventful day, Blade had more than enough reason to curse the stubbornly perverse breeze.

  By late afternoon, slanting sunshine combed the forests and boo groves into a panorama of shadows and light. The Rimmers were a phalanx of giant soldiers, their armored shells blushing before the lowering sun. Below, a vast marsh had given way to prairie, which in turn became forested hills. Few signs of habitation could be seen from his great height, though Blade was handicapped by a basic inability to look directly down. The chitinous bulk of his wide body blocked any direct view of the ground.

  How I would love, just once in my life, to see what lies below my own feet!

  His five legs weren’t doing much at the moment. The claws dangled over open space, snapping occasionally in reflex spasms, trying futilely to get a grip on the clear air. Even more disconcerting, the sensitive feelers around his mouth had no earth or mud to brush against, probing the many textures of the ground. Instead, they, too, hung uselessly. Blade felt numb and bare in the direction a qheuen least liked being exposed.

  That had been the hardest part to get used to, after takeoff. To a qheuen, life’s texture is determined by its medium. Sand and salt water to a red. Freshwater and mud to a blue. A world of stony caverns to imperial grays. Al though their ancestors had starships, Jijo’s qheuens seemed poor candidates for flight.

  As open country glided majestically past, Blade pondered being the first of his kind in hundreds of years to soar.

  Some adventure! It will be worth telling Log Biter and the other matrons about, when I return to that homey lodge behind Dolo Dam. The grubs, in their murky den, will want to hear the story at least forty or fifty times.

  If only this voyage would get a little less adventurous, and more predictable.

  I hoped to be communicating with Sara by now, not drifting straight toward the enemy’s toothy maw.

  Above Blade’s cupola and vision strip, he heard valves open with a preliminary hiss — followed by a roaring burst of heat. Unable to shift or turn his suspended body, he could only envision the urrish contraptions in a wicker basket overhead, operating independently, using jets of flame to replenish the hot-air bag, keeping his balloon to a steady altitude.

  But not a steady heading.

  Everything was as automatic as the smiths’ technology allowed, but there was no escaping the tyranny of the wind. Blade had just one control to operate — a cord attached to a distant knife that would rip the balloon open when he pulled, releasing the buoyant vapors and dropping him out of the sky at a smooth rate — so the smiths assured — fast, but not too fast. As pilot, he had one duty, to time his plummet so it ended in a decent-sized body of water.

  Even arriving at a fair clip, no mere splash should harm his armored, disklike form. If a tangle of rope and torn fabric pinned his legs, dragging him down, Blade could hold his breath long enough to chew his way free and creep ashore.

  Nevertheless, it had been hard to convince the survivors’ council, ruling over the ruins of Ovoom Town, to let him try this crazy idea. They naturally doubted his claim that a blue qheuen should be their next courier.

  But too many human boys and girls have died in recent days, rushing about in flimsy gliders. Urrish balloonists have been breaking necks and legs. All I have to do is crash into liquid and I’m guaranteed to walk away. Today’s crude circumstances make me an ideal aviator!

  There was just one problem. While hooking Blade into this conveyance, the smiths had assured him the afternoon breeze was reliable this time of year, straight up the valley of the Gentt. It should waft him all the way to splashdown at Prosperity Lake within a few miduras, leaving more than enough time to dash at a rapid qheuen gait and reach the nearest semaphore station by nightfall. His packet of reports about conditions at ravaged Ovoom would then slide into the flashing message stream. And then Blade could finally scratch his lingering duty itch, restoring contact with Sara as he had vowed. Assuming she was at Mount Guenn, that is.

  Only the winds changed, less than a midura after takeoff. The promised quick jaunt east became a long detour north.

  Toward home, he noted. Unfortunately, the enemy lay in between. At this rate he’d be shot down before Dolo Village ever hove into view.

  To make matters worse, he was starting to get thirsty.

  This situation — it is ridiculous, Blade grumbled as sunset brought forth stars. The breeze broke up into rhythmic, contrary gusts. Several times, these bursts raised his hopes by shoving the balloon toward peaks where he spied other semaphore stations, passing soft flashes down the mountain chain. There was appa
rently a lot of message activity tonight, much of it heading north.

  But whenever some large lake seemed about to pass below the bulging gasbag, another hard gusset blew in, pushing him at an inftiriating angle, back over jagged rocks and trees. Frustration only heightened his thirst.

  If this keeps up, I’ll be so dehydrated that I’d dive for a little puddle.

  Blade soon realized how far he had come. As the last light of day vanished from the tallest peaks, he spied a cleft in the mountains that any Sixer would recognize — the pass leading to Festival Glade, where each year the Commons of Six Races gathered to celebrate — and mourn — another year of exile. For some time after the sun was gone, Loocen’s bright crescent kept him company, illuminating the foothills. Blade expected the surface to draw closer as he was pushed northeast, but the simpleminded urrish altimeter somehow sensed changing ground levels and reacted with another jet of flame, preventing the balloon from meeting the valley floor.

  Then Loocen sank as well, abandoning him to a world of shadows. The mountains became little more than black bites, torn out of the starry heavens. It left Blade all alone with his imagination, speculating how the Jophur were going to deal with him.

  Would there be a flash of cold flame, as he had seen darting from the belly of the cruel corvette that devastated Ovoom Town? Would they rip him to bits with scalpels of sound? Or were he and the balloon destined for vaporization upon making contact with some defensive force field? The kind of barrier often described in garish Earthling novels?

  Worst of all, he pictured a “tractor beam,” seizing and dragging him down to torment in some Jophur-designed hell.

  The cord — should I pull it now? he wondered. Lest our foes learn the secret of hot-air balloons?

  Qheuens never used to laugh before coming to Jijo. But somehow the blue variety picked up the habit, infuriating their Gray Queens, even before hoons and humans could be blamed as bad influences. Blade’s legs now contracted, quivering as a calliope of whistles escaped his breathing vents.

  Right! We mustn’t allow this “technology” to fall into the wrong hands … or rings. Why, the Jophur might make balloons of their own, to use against us!

  The upland canyons answered with faint repetitions of his laughter — echoes that cheered him up a little, as if there were an audience for his imminent parting from the universe. No qheuen likes to die alone, Blade thought, tightening his grip on the cord that would send him plunging to Jijo’s dark embrace. I only hope someone finds enough shell fragments to dross.…

  At that moment, a faint glimmer made him pause. It came from dead ahead, farther up the narrowing valley, below the mountain pass. Blade tried focusing his visor, but again had to curse the poor vision his race inherited from ancient times. He peered at the pale shine.

  Could it be …?

  The soft rays reminded him of starlight, glancing off water, making him hold off yanking the cable for a few duras. If it was an alpine lake, he might have just a little time to estimate the distance, include his rate of drift, and guess the right moment to pull. With my luck, it will turn out to be a mulc spider’s acid pit. At least that would take care of the mulching problem.

  The glimmer drew nearer, but its outline seemed strangely smooth, unlike a natural body of water. Its profile was oval, and the reflections had a convex quality that—

  Ifni and the ancestors! Blade cursed in surprised dismay. It is the Jophur ship!

  He stared in blank awe at the size of the globular thing.

  So huge, I thought it was part of the landscape.

  Worse, he measured his course and heading.

  Soon, I’ll be right on top of it.

  If anything, the wind stiffened from behind, accelerating his approach.

  At once, Blade had an idea. One that changed his mind about the cruelty of fate.

  This is better, he decided. It will be like that novel I read last winter, by that pre-contact human, Vonnegut. The book ended with the hero making a bold, personal gesture toward God.

  The point seemed apropos then, and even more so now. When faced with casual extinction by an omnipotent force, sometimes the only option left to a poor mortal is to go out with defiance.

  That proved remarkably feasible. Qheuen mouth parts served many functions, including sexual. So Blade made a virtue of his exposed posture, and got ready to present himself to the enemy in the most deliberately offensive manner possible.

  Look THIS up in your Galactic Library! he thought, waving his sensor feelers suggestively. Perhaps, before he was vaporized, the Jophur would call up reference data dealing with starfaring qheuens, and realize the extent of his insolence. Blade hoped his life would count for at least that much. To be killed in anger, not as an afterthought.

  Waves of tingling sensation coursed his feelers, and Blade wondered if danger was provoking some perverted version of the mating urge. Well, after all, here I am, veering toward a big, armored, dominant entity with my privates bared.

  Log Biter would not approve of the comparison, I suppose.

  As the wind pushed him toward the battleship — a thing so huge it rivaled nearby mountains — all sight of it vanished beneath the forward edge of his chitin carapace. It would be out of sight during final approach, an irony Blade did not find amusing.

  Then, to his great surprise, there rushed into sight the very thing he had been longing for — a lake. A large one, dammed up behind the great cruiser, drowning the Festival Glade under hectares of cool snowmelt.

  If they don’t shoot me down, he could not help speculating. If they fail to notice me, I might yet reach…

  But how could they not spy this approaching gasbag? Surely they must already have him pinned by star-god instruments.

  Sure enough, the tingling of Blade’s exposed feelers multiplied in rapid waves, as if they were being stroked — then stung — by a host of squirming shock worms. Not a sexual stirring, though. Instead the sensation triggered foraging instincts, causing his diamond-tipped incisors to snap reflexively, as if grabbing through mud at armored prey.

  The feelers pick up magnetic and electric vibrations from hidden muck crawlers, he recalled.

  Electromagnetic … I’m being scanned!

  Each time he panted breath through a leg vent, another dura passed. The lake swelled, and he knew the ship must be almost directly below by now. What were they waiting for?

  Then a new thought occurred to Blade.

  I’m being scanned … but can they see me?

  If only he had studied more science at the Tarek Town academy. Although grays tended to be better at abstractions — the reason why they took real names — Blade knew he should have insisted on taking that basic physics course.

  Lets see. In human novels, they speak of “radar”… radio waves sent out to bounce off distant objects, giving away the location of intruders, for instance.

  But you only get a good echo if it’s something radio will bounce off. Metal, or some other hard stuff.

  Blade quickly pulled his teeth back in. Otherwise, his bottom was his softest part, featuring multifaceted planes that might deflect incoming rays in random directions. The gasbag, he figured, must seem hardly more dense than a rain cloud!

  Now, if only the urrish altimeter would wait awhile longer before adjusting the balloon’s height, shooting hot flame with a roar to fill the night …

  The tingling peaked … then started to diminish. Moments later, coolness stroked Blade’s underside and he sensed the allure of water below. Tentative relief came accompanied by worry, for cold air would increase his rate of sink.

  Now? Shall I pull the cord, before the flames turn on and give me away?

  Water beckoned. Blade yearned to wash the dust from his vent pores. Yet he held back. Even if his sudden plummet from the sky didn’t draw attention, he would land in the worst lake on Jijo, deep inside the Jophur defense perimeter, presumably patrolled by all sorts of hunter machines. Perhaps the robots had missed him till now because the
possibility of floating qheuens had never been programmed into them. But a swimming qheuen most certainly was.

  Anyway, the water gave him a strange feeling. There were flickerings under the surface — eerie flashes that reinforced his decision to hold back.

  Each passing dura ratified the choice, as a separation slowly increased between Blade and the giant dreadnought, reappearing behind him as a dark curve with glimmering highlights, divided about a third of the way up by a rippling, watery line. It made him feel distinctly creepy.

  Abruptly, a pinpoint of brilliance flared from the side of the globe ship, seeming to stab straight toward him.

  Here it comes, Blade thought.

  But the flaring light was no heat ray. No death beam, after all. Instead, the pinpoint widened. It became a glowing rectangular aperture. A door.

  A mighty big door, Blade realized, wondering what could possibly take up so much room inside a mammoth star cruiser.

  Apparently — another star cruiser.

  From the gaping hangar, a sleek cigar shape emerged with a low hum, moving gradually at first, then accelerating toward Blade.

  All right then. Not extinction. Capture. But why send that big thing after me?

  Perhaps they saw his obscene gesture, and understood better than he expected.

  Once more, Blade readied the rip cord. At the last moment, he would plummet from their grasp … or else they’d shoot him as he fell. Or hunter robots would track him, underwater or overland. Still, it seemed proper to make the effort. At least I’ll get a drink.

  Again, night vision gave him trouble. Estimating the corvette’s rate of closure proved futile. In frustration, Blade’s thoughts slipped from Anglic and into the easier grooves of Galactic Six.

  This specter of terror — I have seen it before.

  This thing I saw last — as it burned down a city.

  A city of felons — of sooners — my people.

  His legs flexed spasmodically as the ship rushed toward him without slowing…