Infinity's Shore u-5

by David Brin

  … and also patterns.

  Patterns of dross! Of ancient buildings, implements, machines, all discarded long ago, ages before the Buyur won their leasehold on this world. Before even their predecessors.

  The things themselves are long gone, melted, smeared out, their atoms dispersed by pressure and heat. Yet somehow a remnant persists. The magma does not quite forget.

  Dross is supposed to be cleansed, Vubben thinks, shocked by the implications. When we dump our bones and tools in the Midden, it should lead to burial and purification by Jijo’s fire. There isn’t supposed to be anything left!

  And yet … who is he to question, if Jijo chooses to remember something of each tenant race that abides here for a while, availing itself of her resources, her varied life-forms, then departing according to Galactic law?

  Is that what you are? He inquires of the Holy Egg. A distillation of memory? The crystallized essence of species who came before, and are now extinct?

  A transcendent thought, yet it makes him sad. Vubben’s own unique race verges on annihilation. He yearns for some kind of preservation, some refuge from oblivion. But in order to leave such a remnant, sophonts must dwell for a long time on a tectonic world.

  For most of its sapiency period, his kind had lived in space.

  Then you don’t care about us living beings, after all, he accuses the Egg. You are like that crazed mulc spider of the hills, your face turned to the past.

  Again, there is no answer in word or image. What Vubben feels instead is a further extension of the sense of connectedness, now sweeping upward, through channels of friction heat, climbing against slow cascades of moist, superheated rock, until his mind emerges in a cool dark kingdom — the sea’s deep, most private place.

  The Midden. Vubben feels around him the great dross piles of more recent habitation waves. Even here, amid relics of the Buyur, the Egg seems linked. Vubben senses that the graveyard of ancient instrumentalities has been disturbed. Heaps of archaic refuse still quiver from some late intrusion.

  There is no anger over this. Nor anything as overt as interest. But he does sense a reaction, like some prodigious reflex.

  The sea is involved. Disturbance in the dross piles has provoked shifts in the formation of waves and tides. Of heat and evaporation. Like a sleeping giant, responding heavily to a tiny itch. A massive storm begins roiling both the surface and the ocean floor, sweeping things back where they belong.

  Vubben has no idea what vexed the Midden so. Perhaps the Jophur. Or else the end of dross shipments from the Six Races? Anyway, his thoughts are coming more slowly as death swarms in from the extremities. Worldly concerns matter less with each passing dura.

  Still, he can muster a few more cogencies.

  Is that all we are to you? he inquires of the planet. An itch?

  He realizes now that Drake and Ur-Chown had pulled a fast one when they announced their “revelation,” a century ago. The Egg is no god, no conscious being. Ro-kenn was right, calling it a particle of psi-active stone, more compact and well ordered than the Spectral Flow. A distillation that had proved helpful in uniting the Six Races.

  Useful in many ways … but not worthy of prayer.

  We sensed what we desperately wanted to sense, because the alternative was unacceptable — to face the fact that we sooners are alone. We always were alone.

  That might have been Vubben’s last thought. But at the final moment there comes something else. A glimmer of meaning that merges with his waning neuronic flashes. In that narrow moment, he feels a wave of overwhelming certainty.

  More layers lie beneath the sleeping strata. Layers that are aware.

  Layers that know.

  Despair is not his final companion. Instead, there comes in rapid succession—

  expectation …

  satisfaction …

  awareness of an ancient plan, patiently unfolding.…

  Kaa

  CAN’T-T YOU USE SOMEBODY ELSE?”

  “Who else? There is no one.”

  “What about Karkaett-t?”

  “Suessi needs him to help nurse the engines. This effort will be hopeless unless they operate above capacity.”

  Hopeless, Kaa used to think it such a simple word. But like the concept of infinity, it came freighted with a wide range of meanings. He slashed the water in frustration. Ifni, will you really trap me this way? Dragging me across the universe again, when all I want to do is stay?

  Gillian Baskin knelt on the quay nearby, her raincoat glistening. Distant lightning flashes periodically lit up the bay, revealing that the Hikahi had already closed her clamshell doors, preparing to depart.

  “Besides,” Gillian added. “You are our chief pilot. Who could be as well qualified?”

  Gratifying words, but in fact Streaker used to have a better pilot, by far.

  “Keepiru ought to’ve stayed with the crew, back on Kithrup-p. I should have been the one who went on the skiff with Creideiki.”

  The woman shrugged. “Things happen, Kaa. I have confidence in your ability to get us off this world in one piece.”

  And after that? He chuttered a doubt-filled raspberry. Everyone knew this would be little more than a suicide venture. The odds had also seemed bad on Kithrup, but at least there the eatee battle fleets chasing Streaker had been distracted, battling each other. Fleeing through that maelstrom of combat and confusion, it proved possible to fool their pursuers by wearing a disguise — the hollowed-out shell of a Thennanin dreadnought. All that ploy took was lots of skill … and luck.

  Here in Jijo space there was no sheltering complexity. No concealing jumble of warfare to sneak through. Just one pursuer — giant and deadly — sought one bedraggled prey.

  For the moment, Streaker was safe in Jijo’s sea, but what chance would she have once she tried to leave?

  “You don’t have to worry about Peepoe,” Gillian said, reading the heart of his reluctance. “Makanee has some solid fins with her. Many are Peepoe’s friends. They’ll scan relentlessly till they find Zhaki and Mopol, and make them let her go.

  “Anyway,” the blond woman went on, “isn’t Peepoe better off here? Won’t you use your skill to keep her safe?”

  Kaa eyed Gillian’s silhouette, knowing the Terragens agent would use any means to get the job done. If that meant appealing to Kaa’s sense of honor … or even chivalry … Gillian Baskin was not too proud.

  “Then you admit it-t,” he said.

  “Admit what?”

  “That we’re heading out as bait, nothing elsssse. Our aim is to sacrifice ourselves.”

  The human on the quay was silent for several seconds, then lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

  “It seems worthwhile, don’t you think?”

  Kaa pondered. At least she was being honest — a decent way for a captain to behave with her pilot.

  A whole world, seven or eight sapient races, some near extinction, and a unique culture. Can you see giving up your life for all that?

  “I guesss so,” he murmured, after a pause.

  Gillian had won. Kaa would abandon his heart on Jijo, and fly out to meet death with open eyes.

  Then he recalled. She had made exactly the same choice, long ago. A decision that still must haunt her sleep, though it could have gone no other way.

  Yet it surprised Kaa when Gillian slipped off the stone quay, entering the water next to him, and threw her arms around his head. Shivers followed her hands as she stroked him gratefully.

  “You make me proud,” she said. “The crew will be glad, and not just because we have the best pilot in this whole galaxy.”

  Kaa’s flustered confusion expressed itself in a sonar interrogative, casting puzzled echoes through the colonnade of a nearby pier. Gillian wove her Trinary reply through that filtered reverberation, binding his perplexity, braiding a sound fabric whose texture seemed almost like a melody.

  Amid the star lanes,

  Snowballs sometimes thrive near

  flame.…

&nb
sp; Don’t you feel Lucky?

  Rety

  THE DOLPHIN ENGINEER SHOUTED AT HER FROM the airlock of the salvaged dross ship.

  “C-come on, Rety! We gotta leave now, t-to make the rendezvous!”

  Chuchki had reason to be agitated. His walker unit whined and jittered, reacting to nervous signals sent down his neural tap. It was cramped in the airlock, which also held the speed sled to carry them from this ghost ship back to Streaker. Providing all went according to plan.

  Only I ain’t part of the plan anymore, Rety thought.

  Stepping in front of Chuchki, with the sill of the hatch between them, she removed the tunic they had given her, as an honorary member of the crew. At first the gesture had pleased Rety — till she saw the Terrans were just another band of losers.

  Rety tossed the garment in the airlock.

  “Tell Dr. Baskin an’ the others thanks, but I’ll be makin’ my own way from here on. Good luck. Now scram.”

  Chuchki stared at first, unable to move or speak. Then servos whirred. The walker started to move.

  “Hit the button, yee!” Rety shouted over her left shoulder.

  Back in the control room, her little “husband” pressed a lever triggering the airlock’s emergency cycle. The inner hatch slid shut, severing Chuchki’s wail of protest. Soon, a row of purple lights showed the small chamber filling with water as the outer door opened.

  A few duras later, she heard engine noise — the now-familiar growl of the speed sled that had brought the two of them here — ebbing with distance as the machine fled. She ordered the outer door closed and locked against the possibility that Chuchki might try something “heroic.” Some still thought of her as a child, and many dolphins also had a mystical attachment to their human patrons.

  But I’ll be just fine. A lot better off than those fools, in fact.

  Several low, squat hallways led away from the lock, but only one was lit by a string of glow bulbs. Following this trail, she made her way back toward the control room, sometimes lingering to stroke a panel or gaze into a chamber filled with mysterious machines. For the last few days she had looked over this salvaged starship — once a Buyur packet boat, according to Chuchki. Though a mess, it was one of the “best” recovered derelicts, capable of life support as well as full engine maneuvering, owing its remarkable state to the Midden’s chill, sterile waters. Durable Galactic machines might lie there unchanged forever, or until Jijo sucked them underground.

  It’s mine now, she mused, surveying her prize. I’ve got my own starship.

  Of course it was still a hunk of dross. All odds were against her getting anywhere in this moving scrap pile.

  But the odds always had been against her, ever since she was born into that filthy tribe of savages, so proud of their sickly ignorance. And especially since she realized she’d rather be whipped for speaking up than be a slave to some bully with rotting teeth and the mind of a beast.

  Rety had suffered some disappointments lately. But now she saw what each of the setbacks had in common. They all came about because of trusting others — first the sages of the Commons, then the Rothens, and finally a ragtag band of helpless Earthlings.

  But all that was in the past. Now she was back doing what she did best — relying on herself.

  The control room spanned roughly thirty paces in width, featuring about a dozen wide instrument consoles. All were dark, except one jury-rigged station festooned with cables and makeshift bypass connections. Lights blazed across that panel. On the floor nearby, a portable holosim display revealed a staticky map of the ancient vessel’s surroundings, a dart-shaped glow threading its way through a maze of ridges at the bottom of the great ocean.

  Most of the decoy ships cruised with simple autopilots, but a few moved more flexibly, crewed by volunteer teams, making adjustments to the swarm pattern planned by the Niss Machine. In this effort, Rety’s intelligence and agile hands had been helpful to Chuchki, making up for her lack of education. She felt justified in having earned her starship.

  “hi captain!”

  Her sole companion pranced on the instrument console, each footstep barely missing a glowing lever or switch. The little urrish male greeted her with a shrill ululation.

  “we did it! like pirates of the plains! like in legends of the battle aunties! now we free no more noor beasts no more yuckity ship full of water-loving fish!”

  Rety laughed. Whenever loneliness beckoned, there was always yee to cheer her up.

  “so where to now, captain?” the diminutive creature asked. “shake free of Jijo? head someplace good and sunny, for a change?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s the idea. Only we gotta be patient a little while longer.”

  First Streaker must collect Chuchki and other scattered workers. Rety had an impression that the Earthlings were waiting for events to happen onshore. But after hearing the Jophur ultimatum she knew — Gillian Baskin would soon be forced to act.

  I helped them, she rationalized. An’ I won’t interfere with their plan … much.

  But in the long run, none o’ that’ll matter. Everybody knows they’re gonna get roasted when they try to get away Or else the Jophur’ll catch ’em, like a ligger snatchin’ up a gallaiter faun.

  Nobody can blame me for tryin’ to find my own way out of a trap like that.

  And if someone did cast blame her way?

  Rety laughed at the thought.

  In that case, they can try to outfart a traeki, for all I care. This ship is mine, and there’s nothin’ anybody can do about it!

  She was getting away from Jijo — one way or another.

  Dwer

  THE NIGHT SKY CRACKLED.

  At random intervals his hair abruptly stood on end.

  Static electricity snapped the balloon’s canopy with a basso boom, while pale blue glows moved up and down the rope cables, dancing like frantic imps. Once, a flickering ball of greenish white followed him across the sky for more than a midura, mimicking each rise, fall, or sway in the wind. He could not tell if it was an arrowflight away, or several leagues. The specter only vanished when a rain squall passed between, but Dwer kept checking nervously, in case it returned.

  Greater versions of the same power flashed in all directions — though from a safe distance so far. He made a habit of counting kiduras between each brilliant discharge and the arrival of its rumbling report. When the interval grew short, thunder would shake the balloon like a child’s rag doll.

  Uriel had set controls to keep Dwer above most of the gale … at least according to the crude weather calculations of her spinning-disk computer. The worst fury took place below, in a dense cloud bank stretching from horizon to horizon.

  Still, that only meant there were moonlit gaps for his frail craft to drift through. Surrounding him towered the mighty heat engines of the storm — churning thunderheads whose lofty peaks scraped the boundaries of space.

  Though insanely dangerous, the spectacle exceeded anything in Dwer’s experience — and perhaps even that of any star god in the Five Galaxies. He was tempted to climb the rigging for a better view of nature’s majesty. To let the tempest sweep his hair. To shout back when it bellowed.

  But he wasn’t free. There were duties unfulfilled.

  So Dwer did as he’d been told, remaining huddled in a wire cage the smiths had built for him, lashed to a wicker basket that dangled like an afterthought below a huge gasbag. The metal enclosure would supposedly protect him from a minor lightning strike.

  And what if a bolt tears the bag instead? Or ignites the fuel cylinder? Or…

  Low clicks warned Dwer to cover his face just half a dura before the altitude sensor tripped, sending jets of flame roaring upward, refilling the balloon and maintaining a safe distance from the ground.

  Of course,“safe” was a matter of comparison.

  “In theory, this vehicle should convey you well past the Rinner Range, and then veyond the Foison Flain,” the smith had explained. “After that, th
ere should ve an end to the lightning danger. You can leave the Faraday cage and guide the craft as we taught you.”

  As they taught me in half a rushed midura, Dwer amended, while running around preparing one last balloon to launch.

  All the others were far ahead of him — a flotilla of flimsy craft, dispersing rapidly as they caught varied airstreams, but all sharing the same general heading. East, driven by near-hurricane winds. Twice he had witnessed flares in that direction, flames that could not have come from lightning alone. Sudden outbursts of ocher fire, they testified to some balloon exploding in the distance.

  Fortunately, those others had no crews, just instruments recovered from dross ships. Dwer was the only Jijoan loony enough to go flying on a night like this.

  They needed an expendable volunteer. Someone to observe and report if the trick is successful.

  Not that he resented Uriel and Gillian. Far from it. Dwer was suited for the job. It was necessary. And the voyage would take him roughly where he wanted to go.

  Where I’m needed.

  To the Gray Hills.

  What might have happened to Lena and Jenin in the time he’d spent as captive of a mad robot, battling Jophur in a swamp and then trapped with forlorn Terrans at the bottom of the sea? By now, the women would have united the urrish and human sooner tribes, and possibly led them a long way from the geyser pools where Danel Ozawa died. It might take months to track them down, but that hardly mattered. Dwer had his bow and supplies. His skills were up to the task.

  All I need is to land in roughly the right area, say within a hundred leagues … and not break my neck in the process. I can hunt and forage. Save my traeki paste for later, in case the search lasts through winter.

  Dwer tried going over the plan, dwelling on problems he could grasp — the intricacies of exploring and survival in wild terrain. But his mind kept coming back to this wild ride through an angry sky … or else the sad partings that preceded it.