by David Brin
“I confessss, I can’t see how you followed us to this whale-forsaken planet.”
Powerful emotions fought across Emerson’s face. Sara read astonishment, battling surges of both curiosity and frustrated despair.
“K-K-K—”
The dismal effort to speak ended in a groan.
“A-ah-ahh …”
The dolphin seemed upset by this response, chuttering dismay over the human’s condition.
But then Emerson shook his head, seeking to draw on other resources. At last, he found a way to express his feelings, releasing a burst stream of song.
“How quaint the ways of paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
We’ve quips and quibbles heard in
flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!”
Gillian
THE ULTIMATUM BLANKETED ALL ETHERIC WAVE-lengths — a scratchy caterwauling that filled Streaker’s bridge, making the oxy-water fizz. Streams of bubbles swelled and popped with each Galactic Four syntax phrase.
Most neo-dolphin crew members read a text translation prepared by the Niss Machine. Anglic letters and GalSeven glyphs flowed across the main holo screen.
HEAR AND COMPREHEND OUR FINAL COMMAND/OFFER!
• • •
Gillian listened for nuance in the original Jophur dialect, hoping to glean something new. It was the third repetition since the enemy dreadnought began broadcasting from high in the atmosphere.
“YOU WHOM WE SEEK — YOU HAVE PERFORMED CLEVER MANEUVERS, WORTHY OF RESPECT AT THIS JUNCTURE, WE SHALL NO LONGER WASTE BOMBS. WE SHALL CEASE USELESSLY INSPECTING DECOYS.”
The change in tactics was expected. At first, the foe had sent robots into the lightless depths, to examine and eliminate reactivated Buyur ships, one by one. But it was a simple matter for Hannes Suessi’s team to fix booby traps. Each derelict would self-destruct when a probe approached, taking the automaton along with it.
The usual hierarchy of battle was thus reversed. Here in the Midden, big noisy ships were far cheaper than robots to hunt them. Suessi had scores more ready to peel off from widely separated dross piles. It was doubtful the Jophur could spend drones at the same rate.
There was a downside. The decoy ships were discards, in ill repair when abandoned, half a million years ago. Only the incredible hardiness of Galactic manufacture left them marginally useful, and dozens had already burned out, littering the Midden once more with their dead hulks.
“FAILING TO COERCE YOU BY THAT MEANS, WE ARE NOW PREPARED TO OFFER YOU GENEROUS TERMS…”
This was the part Gillian paid close attention to, the first couple of times it played. Unfortunately, Jophur “generosity” wasn’t tempting. In exchange for Streaker’s data, charts, and samples, the Captain-Leader of the Greatship Polkjhy promised cryonic internment for the crew, with a guarantee of revival and free release in a mere thousand years. “After the present troubles have been resolved.”
In other words, the Jophur wanted to have Streaker’s secrets … and to make sure no one else shared them for a long time to come.
While the message laid out this offer, Gillian’s second-in-command swam alongside.
“We’ve managed to c-come up with most of the suppliesss the local wizard asked for,” Tsh’t reported. One of the results of making contact with the Commons of Six Races had been a shopping list of items desperately wanted by the urrish smith, Uriel.
“Several decoy ships are being diverted close to shore, as you requested. Kaa and his new t-team can strip them of the stuff Uriel wants, as they swing by.”
The dolphin lieutenant paused. “I suppose I needn’t add that this increases our danger? The enemy might detect a rhythm in these movementsss, and target their attention on the hoonish seaport-t.”
“The Niss came up with a swarming pattern to prevent that,” Gillian answered. “What about the crew separation? How are Makanee’s preparations coming along?”
Tsh’t nodded her sleek head. Taking a break from the laborious, underwater version of Anglic, she replied in Trinary.
Seasons change the tides,
That tug us toward our fates,
And divide loved ones…
To which she added a punctuating coda:
… forever.…
Gillian winced. What she planned — least awful of a dozen grievous options — would sever close bonds among a crew that had shared great trials. An epic journey Earthlings might sing about for ages to come.
Providing there are still Earthlings, after the Time of Changes.
In fact, she had no choice. Half of Streaker’s neo-dolphin complement were showing signs of stress atavism — a decay of the faculties needed for critical thought. Fear and exhaustion had finally taken their toll. No client race as young as Tursiops amicus had ever endured so much for so long, almost alone.
It’s time to make the sacrifice we all knew would someday come.
The chamber still vibrated with Jophur threats. Coming from some other race, she might have factored in an element of bluster and bravado, but she took these adversaries precisely at their word.
The holo display glowed with menacing letters.
WE ARE THE ONLY GALACTIC WARSHIP IN THIS REGION. NO ONE IS COMING TO HELP YOU. NOR WILL ANY COMPETITORS DISTRACT US, AS HAPPENED ON OTHER OCCASIONS.
WE CAN AFFORD TO WAIT YOU OUT, INVESTIGATING AND ELIMINATING DECOYS FROM SAFE RANGE. OR ELSE, IF NECESSARY, THIS NOBLE SHIP WILL FORGO SOLE HONOR AND SEND FOR HELP FROM THE VAST JOPHUR ARMADA.
DELAY MERELY INCREASES OUR WRATH. IT AUGMENTS THE HARM WE SHALL DO TO YOUR TERRAN COUSINS, AND THE OTHER SOONERS WHO DWELL ILLICITLY ON FORBIDDEN LAND.…
Gillian thought of Alvin, Huck, and Ur-ronn, listening in a nearby dry cabin — and Pincer-Tip, who represented them on the bridge, darting to and fro with flicks of his red claws.
We already drew hell down on the locals, when the Rothen somehow tracked us to Jijo. There must be a way to spare them further punishment on our account.
Soon it will be time to end this.
Gillian turned back to Tsh’t. “How much longer before it’s our turn?”
The lieutenant communed with the tactics-and-movement officer.
“We’ll slip in to shore between the fourth and fifth decoys … about eight hours from now.”
Gillian glanced at Pincer, his reddish carapace covered with oxy-water bubbles, the qheuen visor spinning madly, taking in everything with the avidness of adolescence. The local youths should be glad about what was about to happen. And so will Dwer Koolhan. I hope this pleases him … though it’s not quite what he wanted.
Gillian admitted to herself she would miss the young man who reminded her so much of Tom.
“All right, then,” she told Tsh’t. “Let’s take the kids home.”
Lark
TOGETHER, THEY PROVED ONLY HALF-BLIND, STUMBLING down the musty corridors of a vast alien ship filled with hostile beings. Ling knew more than he did about starships, but Lark was the one who kept them from getting completely lost.
For one thing, there were few symbols on the walls, so their knowledge of several Galactic dialects proved almost useless. Instead, each closed aperture or intersection seemed to project its own, unique smell, effective at short range. As a Jijoan, Lark could sniff some of these and dimly grasp the simplest pheromone indicators — about as well as a bright human four-year-old might read street signs in a metropolis.
One bitter tang reminded him of the scent worn by traeki proctors at Gathering Festival, when they had to break up a fight or subdue a belligerent drunk.
SECURITY, the odor seemed to say. He steered Ling around that hallway.
She had a goal, however, which was one up on him. With his head full of fragrant miasmas, Lark gladly left the destination up to her. No doubt any path they chose would eventually lead to the same place — their old prison cell.
Three more times, they encountered solitary Jophur. But puffs from the purple ring caused them to be
ignored. Doors continued sliding open on command. The gift from Asx was incredible. A little too good, in fact.
I can’t believe this trick will work for long, he thought as they hurried deeper into the battleship’s heart. Asx probably expected us to need it for a midura or so, just till we made it outside. Once the crew was alerted about escaped prisoners, the ruse must surely fail. The Jophur would use countermeasures, wouldn’t they?
Then he realized.
Maybe there’s been no alert. The Jophur may assume we already fled the ship!
Perhaps.
Still, each encounter with a gleaming ring stack in some dank passage left him feeling eerie. Lark had lived among traeki all his life, but till this moment he never grasped how different their consciousness must be. How strange for a sapient being to look right at you and not see, simply because you gave off the right safeconduct aroma.…
At the next intersection, he sniffed all three corridor branches carefully, and found the indicator Ling wanted — a simple scent that meant LIFE. He pointed, and she nodded.
“As I thought. The layout isn’t too different from a type-seventy cargo ship. They keep it at the center.”
“Keep what at the center?” Lark asked, but she was already hurrying ahead. Two human fugitives, bearing their only tools — she cradling the wounded red traeki ring, while he carried the purple one.
When the next door opened, Ling stepped back briefly from a glare. The place was more brightly lit than the normal dim corridors. The air smelled better, too. Less cloying with meanings he could not comprehend. Lark’s first impression was of a large chamber, filled with color.
“As I hoped,” Ling said, nodding. “The layout’s standard. We may actually have a chance.”
“A chance for what?”
She turned back to look into the vault, which Lark now saw to be quite vast, filled with a maze of crisscrossing support beams … all of them draped with varied types of vegetation.
“A chance to survive,” she answered, and took his hand, drawing him inside.
A jungle surrounded them, neatly organized and regimented. Tier after tier of shelves and platforms preceded from view, serviced by machines moving slowly along tracks. Arrayed on this vast network there flourished a riot of living forms, broad leaves and hanging vines, creepers and glistening tubers. Water dripped along some of the twisted green cables, and the two of them rushea to the nearest trickle, lapping eagerly.
Now Lark understood the meaning of the aroma symbol that had led them here.
In the middle of hell, they had found a small oasis. At that moment, it felt like paradise.
Emerson
HE DID NOT LIKE GOING DOWN TO THE WATER. THE harbor was too frenzied.
It hardly seemed like a joyous reunion to see Kaa and other friends again. He recognized good old Brookida, and Tussito, and Wattaceti. They all seemed glad to see him, but far too busy to spend time visiting, or catching up.
Perhaps that was just as well. Emerson felt ashamed.
Shame that he could not greet them with anything more than their names … and an occasional snippet of song.
Shame that he could not help them in their efforts — hauling all sorts of junk out of the sea, instructing Uriel’s assistants, and sending the materials up by tram to the peak of Mount Guenn.
Above all, he felt shame over the failure of his sacrifice, back at that immense space city made of snow — that fluffy metropolis, the size of a solar system — called the Fractal System.
Oh, it seemed so noble and brave when he set forth in a salvaged Thennanin scout, extravagantly firing to create a diversion and help Streaker escape. With his last glimpse — as force fields closed in all around him — he had seen the beloved, scarred hull slip out through an opening in the vast shell of ice, and prayed she would make it.
Gillian, he had thought. Perhaps she would think of him, now. The way she recalled her Tom.
Then the Old Ones took him from the little ship, and had their way with him. They prodded and probed. They made him a cripple. They gave him forgetfulness.
And they sent him here.
The outlines are still hazy, but Emerson now saw the essential puzzle.
Streaker had escaped to this forlorn planet, only to be trapped. More hard luck for a crew that never got a break.
But … why … send … me … here?
That action by the Old Ones made no sense. It seemed crazy.
Everyone would be better off if he had died, the way he planned.
The whole population of the hoonish seaport was dashing about. Sara seemed preoccupied, spending much of her time talking rapidly to Uriel, or else arguing heatedly with the gray-bearded human scholar whose name Emerson could not recall.
Often a messenger would arrive, bearing one of the pale paper strips used for transcribing semaphore bulletins. Once, the urrish courier came at a gallop, panting and clearly shaken by the news she bore. An eruption of dismayed babble swelled as Emerson made out a single repeated word—“Biblos.”
Everyone was so upset and distracted, nobody seemed to mind when he indicated a wish to take the tram back up to Uriel’s forge. Using gestures, Sara made clear that he must come back before sunset, and he agreed. Clearly something was going to happen then. Sara made sure Prity went along to look after him.
Emerson didn’t mind. He got along well with Prity. They were both of a kind. The little chim’s crude humor, expressed with hand-signed jokes, often broke him up.
Those fishie things are cousins? she signaled at one point, referring to the busy, earnest dolphins. I was hoping they tasted good!
Emerson laughed. Earth’s two client-level races had an ongoing rivalry that seemed almost instinctive.
During the ride upslope, he examined some of the machinery Kaa and the others had provided at Uriel’s request. Most of it looked like junk — low-level Galactic computers, ripped out of standard consoles that might be hundreds or millions of years old. Many were stained or slimy from long immersion. The melange of devices seemed to share just one trait — they had been refurbished enough to be turned on. He could tell because the power leads were all wrapped in tape to prevent it. Otherwise, it looked like a pile of garbage.
He longed to squat on the floor and tinker with the things. Prity shook her head though. She was under orders to prevent it. So instead Emerson looked out through the window, watching distant banks of dense clouds roll ominously closer from the west.
He fantasized about running away, perhaps to Xi, the quiet, pastoral refuge hidden in a vast desert of color. He would ride horses and practice his music … maybe fix simple, useful tools to earn his keep. Something to help fool himself that his life still had worth.
For a while he had felt valued here, helping Uriel get results from the Hall of Spinning Disks, but no one seemed to need him anymore. He felt like a burden.
It would be worse if he returned to Streaker, a shell. A fragment. The chance of a cure beckoned. But Emerson was smart enough to know the prospects weren’t promising. Captain Creideiki once had an injury like his, and the ship’s doctor had been helpless to correct such extensive damage to a brain.
Perhaps at home, though … On Earth …
He painted the blue globe in his mind, a vision of beauty that ached his heart.
Deep inside, Emerson knew he would never see it again.
The tram docked at last. His mood lifted for a little while, helping Uriel’s staff unload cargo. Along with Prity, he followed the urs and qheuens down a long, twisty corridor toward a flow of warm air. At last they reached a big un der-ground grotto — a cave with an opening at the far end, facing north. Hints of color gleamed far beyond, reminding him of the Spectral Flow.
Workers scurried about. Emerson saw g’Kek teams busy sewing together great sheets of strong, lightweight cloth. He watched urs delicately adjust handmade valves as gray qheuens bent lengths of pipe with their strong claws. Already, breaths of volcanically heated air were flowing into the fir
st of many waiting canopies, creating bulges that soon joined together, forming a globe-ended bag.
Emerson looked across the scene, then back at the salvaged junk the dolphins had donated.
Slowly, a smile spread across his face.
To his great satisfaction, the urrish smiths seemed glad when he silently offered to lend a hand.
Kaa
THE SKIES OPENED AROUND NIGHTFALL, LETTING down both rain and lightning.
The whale sub Hikahi delayed entering Port Wuphon until the storm’s first stinging drizzle began peppering the wharves and huts. The sheltered bay speckled with the impact of dense droplets as the submersible glided up a slanted coastal shelf toward an agreed rendezvous.
Kaa swam just ahead, guiding her through the narrow channel, between jagged shoals of demicoral. No one would have denied him the honor. I am still chief pilot, he thought. With or without my nickname.
The blunt-nosed craft mimicked his long turn around the sheltering headland, following as he showed the way with powerful, body-arching thrusts of his tail. It was an older piloting technique than wormhole diving, not highly technical. But Kaa’s ancestors used to show human sailors the way home in this manner, long before the oldest clear memory of either race.
“Another two hundred meters, Hikahi,” he projected using sonar speech. “Then a thirty-degree turn to port. After that, it’s three hundred and fifty meters to full stop.”
The response was cool, professional.
“Roger. Preparing for debarkation.”
Kaa’s team — Brookida and a half-dozen neo-fins who had come out earlier to unload Uriel’s supplies — moored the vessel when it reached the biggest dock. A small crowd of dignitaries waited on the pier, under heavy skies. Umbrellas sheltered the urrish delegates, who pressed together in a shivering mass, swaying their long necks back and forth. Humans and hoons made do with cloaks and hats, while the others simply ignored the rain.
Kaa was busy for a time, giving instructions as the helmsman fine-tuned her position, then cut engines. Amid a froth of bubbles, the Hikahi brought her bow even with the wharf. Clamshell doors opened, like a grinning mouth.
