by David Brin
But Dwer’s mind roamed back to their adventure together — as captives of the Danik robot, when Dwer used to carry the machine across rivers by wearing it like a hat, conducting its suspensor fields through his own throbbing nervous system.…
All at once he realized. The recollection was no accident. No random association.
It was a warning.
Creepy shivers coursed his spine. Eerily familiar.
“Dung!” he cried out, swiveling to the west—
— just in time to spy a tremendous object, blue and rounded, like a demon’s face, soar past the Rimmer peaks and hurtle silently toward him, outracing sound.
It was like watching the onrush of an arrow, aimed straight at your nose. In moments the starship grew from a mere speck, burgeoning to fill the world!
Dwer shut his eyes, bracing for erasure.…
Kiduras passed, two for each racing heartbeat. After twenty or so, the gondola was struck by a wall of sound, shaking him like thunder.
But sound was all. No impact.
It must have missed me!
He forced an eye open, turning around…
… and spied it to the east, bearing toward the decoy balloons.
Now he could tell, the behemoth moved at a higher altitude. The imminent collision had been a mirage. It never came within a league of him, or gave Dwer any notice.
But it can’t miss the decoys, he thought. They’re in open view.
Blade, his childhood qheuen playmate, had reported that balloons seemed transparent to Jophur instruments. But that was at night. It’s almost broad daylight now. Surely they see the gasbags by now.
Or maybe not. Dwer recalled how excited the balloon concept made the Niss Machine, which understood a lot about Jophur ways. Perhaps Gillian Baskin knew what she was doing.
The idea was to get the Jophur confused. To send them searching around for supposed enemy ships they could detect only vaguely.
Sure enough, the space titan decelerated ponderously, descending in a long spiral around the general area. An aura of warped air seemed to bend all light passing within half a radius of the tremendous globe. The rewq made clear this was a shield of some sort — apparent grounds for the Jophur assumption of invincibility.
Dwer reached for the hammer at his waist … and waited.
Lark
ME WANTED TO MAKE LOVE AGAIN. Who wouldn’t, after the way Ling had writhed and clutched at him, with animal-like cries that belied her background as an urbane sky god? He, too, had felt a seismic quake of passion. Ardor that reached out of something wild within … followed by a release that was blissfully free of any sapient thought.
Despite their dire circumstance, trapped in a ship filled with mortal enemies, Lark felt fine. Better than he had since—
Since ever. Somehow, this climax did not leave him in a state of lassitude, but filled with energy, a postcoital animation he had never experienced before. So much for my vow of celibacy, he thought. Of course, that vow had been for the sake of Jijo. And we’re not on Jijo anymore.
He reached for Ling. But she stopped him with an upraised hand, sitting up, her breasts still glistening with their commingled sweat.
Ling’s eyes were distant. Her ears twitched, listening.
A jungle surrounded them — supported by lattice scaffolding that filled a chamber larger than the artificial cave of Biblos. A maze of fantastic, profusely varied vegetation nearly filled the cavity. In this far corner, apparently illtended by the maintenance drones, the two fugitive hominids had built a nest. Ling, the trained spatiobiologist, had no trouble spotting several types of fruits and tubers to eat. They might live weeks or months this way … or perhaps the rest of their lives. Unless the universe intruded.
Which it did, of course.
“They’ve turned on their defensive array,” she told him. “And I think they’re slowing down.”
“How can you tell?” Lark listened, but could make out no difference in the mesh of interlacing engine sounds, more complex than the verdant jungle.
Ling slipped into the rag of a tunic that was her sole remaining garment. “Come on,” she said.
With a sigh, he put on his own torn shirt. Lark picked up the leather thong holding his amulet — the fragment of the Holy Egg he had chipped off as a child. For the first time in years, he considered not slipping it on. If the ship had left Jijo, might that make him free at last from the love-hate burden?
“Come on!” Ling was already scooting along the latticeway, heading toward the exit. In a torn cloth sling, she carried the wounded red torus — one of the traeki rings provided by Asx.
He slipped the thong around his neck and reached for the crude sack that contained the purple ring and their few other possessions.
“I’m on my way,” he murmured, clambering out of the nest, wondering if they would ever be back.
Ling had her bearings now. With Lark to sniff scent indicators at tunnel intersections, and the purple ring serving as a passkey, they had little trouble hurrying “north” up the ship’s axis. Twice they sped along by using antigravity drop tubes. Lark’s stomach did somersaults as his body went careening up a jet-black tunnel. The landings were always soft, though. Even better, they did not meet a single Jophur or robot along the way.
“They’re at battle stations,” she explained. “Here. Their control room should be just below this level. If I’m right, there should be an observers’ gallery.…”
Lark smelled an oddly familiar aroma, much like the fragrance traeki used when they referred to Biblos.
Ling pointed to a rare written symbol inscribed on the wall. She crowed. “I was right!”
Lark had seen the glyph before — a rayed spiral with five swirling arms. Even Jijo’s fallen races knew what it stood for. The Great Galactic Library. Symbol for both patience and knowledge.
“Hurry!” Ling said as he applied the purple ring to the entrance plate. The barrier slid open, giving access to a dim chamber whose sole illumination came through a broad window, directly opposite the door. It took just a few strides to cross over and stare through the glass at a bright gallery below. A chamber filled with Jophur.
There were scores of the tapered stacks. Taller and more slickly perfect than any Jijoan traeki, they squatted next to instrument stations, many of them surrounded by flashing panels and lighted controls. At the very center, one gleaming torus pile perched on a raised dais, surveying the labors of the crew.
“A lot of big ships have observation decks, like the one we’re in,” Ling explained in a low voice. “They’re for when legates from any of the great Institutes come aboard — say on an inspection tour. Most of the time, though, they just contain a watcher.”
“A what?”
She gestured to her left, where Lark now saw a roughly man-sized cube with a single dark lens in the middle, looking over the Jophur control room.
“It’s a WOM … or Write-Only Memory. A witness. Any capital ship from a great clan is supposed to carry one, especially if engaged in some major venture. It takes a record that can then be archived in deep storage so later generations may learn from the experience of each race, after a certain time period expires.”
“How long?”
Ling shrugged. “Millions of years, I guess. You hear about watchers being sent for storage, but I’ve never known of a WOM being read during the present epoch. I guess when you put it that way, it kind of sounds like a contradiction in terms. A typical Galactic hypocrisy. Or maybe I don’t grasp some subtlety of the concept.”
You and me, both, Lark thought, dismissing the watcher from his mind, like a slab of stone.
“Look,” he said, pointing toward one end of the Jophur headquarters chamber. “Those big screens show the outside! Seems we just passed over the Rimmers.”
“Toward the sun.” Ling nodded. “Either it’s morning or—”
“Nothing on the Slope looks like that prairie. That’s poison grass. So it is morning and that’s east.”
&nb
sp; “See the clouds,” Ling commented. “They’re breaking up, but it must’ve been some stor—” She stopped, blinking. “Hear that? The Jophur are excited. Maybe I can adjust these knobs and—”
Sound abruptly boomed through the observation deck. A screech and ratchet of accented GalTwo.
“ … COMMANDED TO CORRECT THE DISSONANCE/DISAGREEMENTS BETWEEN YOUR VARIED REPORTS! JUSTIFY THIS PATTERNED SEARCH! EXPLAIN REASONS WHY WE SHOULD NOT RETURN TO OUR PRIMARY MISSION — SIFTING FOR THE WOLFLING CRAFT!”
Lark saw the Jophur on the central dais gesticulate along with these word glyphs, so perhaps that one was in command. If only I had a weapon, he mused. But the glasslike barrier was probably too strong for anything as crude as a Jijoan axe or rifle.
“We/I cannot recommend departing this area until we verify/rebuke the possibility of foe ships/smallships,”replied a nearby stack, using a less imperious version of the same dialect. “Starship cognizances hover nearby, undetectable on any other band! But how can that be? Flight without gravitics? The Jophur, great and mighty, must have/pierce this secret, for safety’s sake!”
Another ring stack edged forward, and Lark felt a shiver of recognition. That awkward pile of ragged toruses had once been the former traeki High Sage, though its speech held none of the unassuming gentleness of Asx.
“I/we offer this wisdom — that the scent indicators we pursue have all the stink of an elaborate ruse! Recall the flame-tube weapons that the savage sooners used against our corvette! Now our comrades in the captured Biblos Archive report they have identified the wolfling trick as ‘rockets.’ Contradicting the tactics officer, I/we must point out that these rockets flew quite successfully without gravitics! I/we further maintain that—”
Another stack interrupted.
“Localization! One of the nearby cognizance sites has remained active long enough to verify its location.”
The commander vented compact clots of purple vapor.
“PROCEED ON ATTACK VECTOR! PREPARE A CAPTURE BOX FOR SEIZURE OF SOURCE! WHETHER IT IS A SOPHISTICATED STAR ENEMY OR ANOTHER SOONER RUSE, WE SHALL SECURE IT FOR LATER INSPECTION, THEN RETURN TO OUR PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVE.”
The ring piles reacted more swiftly than Lark had ever witnessed traeki move, setting to work in a whirl of base feet and flailing tendrils. Soon the outside monitors showed clouds and prairie rushing by in a blur, depicted in many spectral bands. On some displays, flashing concentric circles closed in.
“Targeting brackets—” Ling explained. But the circles seemed to contain nothing. Only open space.
Lark’s right hand drifted under his shirt, stroking the sliver of the Egg. “I feel …”
Ling tugged his arm. “Look at the far left screen!”
He squinted, and began to make out something small and round. A ghostly shape, depicted as nearly transparent. Blur cloth, he realized, recognizing the effects of that specialized g’Kek weaving. All at once Lark understood. The Jophur were streaking toward an object that was invisible to nearly all their sensors, because it was made of nothing but air and fabric plaited to smear light.
If only his rewq had not lapsed into exhausted hibernation! The hazy globe loomed larger, even as Lark’s heart beat faster. His amulet throbbed in response.
“What is it?” Ling wondered, perplexed.
Before he could answer, without warning, all the forward viewing screens abruptly went black.
One Jophur let out a shrill wail. Several vented colored steam. The commander flexed and blared.
“HOSTILITIES ALERT! ROBOTIC DEFENSE! ALL STATIONS PREPARE FOR THE DRAWBA—”
Gillian
DETONATION!”
Streaker’s detection officer shouted excitedly. “One of our proximity bombs just went off, almost on t-top of the Jophur!”
The bridge filled with neo-dolphin cheers. “Maybe that got the bastardss,” someone chittered hopefully.
Gillian called for quiet.
“Keep it down, everyone. That firecracker won’t do more than scratch their paint.” She took a deep breath. It was the crucial moment of decision, for commitment to the plan.
“Launch the swarm!” she ordered. “Get us up, Kaa. Exactly the way we planned.”
“Aye!” The pilot’s back showed momentary waves of tension as he sent commands down his neural tap. Streaker responded instantly, engines ramping up to full power for the first time in almost a year. The sound was thrilling, though the act would surely give them away once Jophur sensors recovered.
Telemetry showed the motivators running well. Gillian glanced at viewers showing the engine room. Hannes Suessi darted back and forth, checking the work of his well-trained crew. Even Emerson D’Anite seemed engrossed, running his long, dark hands over the prime resonance console, his old duty station during so many other rough scrapes. Speech seemed hardly relevant at this point, when physical insight and tactile skill mattered most.
Perhaps this time, too, the ship would hear Emerson’s rich baritone victory yell.
If the repairs all worked. If we get full use out of the spare parts we mined from discarded wrecks. If the decoys run as planned. If the enemy does what we hope … if … if…
Overhead, the stress crystal dome of the control room changed color. The jet black of the abyss faded rapidly as Streaker aimed upward, lightening to a royal blue, then a clear pale green. The engine’s roar changed tone as Jijo’s ocean reluctantly let go its heavy grasp.
Streaker blew out of the sea with explosive force, already traveling faster than a bullet, trailed by a spoor of superheated steam.
From submarine, back to ship of space. Here we go again.
Go, old girl.
Go!
Rety
WAKENED FROM A HALF-MILLION-YEAR SLEEP, THE ancient wreck clattered and shrieked. Forced into furious effort, it howled, like some beast screaming in ag-ony.
Rety screamed back, pressing both hands over her ears. Harsh fists seemed to pummel her against the arching pillar where she had tied herself down. With each shake, strips of rope and electrical cable dug into her skin.
From Rety’s belt pouch, yee’s head waved toward her face.
“wife! wife don’t cry! don’t worry, wife!”
But the piping words were lost amid a maelstrom of sound. Soon his calls merged into a wail, an urrish ululation.
Overwhelmed with dread of being trapped, Rety tore at the straps with her nails, struggling for release.
She never noticed the transition from water to air. The little holosim display showed whitecaps stretching to a sandy shore, then the tops of clouds.
Crawling across the hard metal floor, Rety toiled toward the airlock, seeing only a narrow tunnel through a haze of pain.
Ewasx
THE EFFECTS START TO WEAR OFF.
I emerge from stun state, blind and alone. More duras pass before I coalesce My sense of oneness. Of purpose.
Sending trace signals down the tendrils of control, I reestablish rapport with subservient rings. Soon I have access to their varied senses, staring in all directions with eye buds that flutter and twitch.
HELLO, MY RINGS. Report now and prepare for urgent movement. Clearly we have experienced — and survived — an episode of the Drawback.
The what?
Truly, you do not know, My rings? You have no experience of the chief disadvantage of the Oailie gift?
Certain weapons exist which can render us Jophur insensate for a time, forcing us to rely on robotic protection for the duration of that brief incapacity.
What incapacity? you ask.
I/we look around. We are no longer near the CaptainLeader, but stand instead at the main control panel, our tendrils wrapped around the piloting wheels.
WHAT ARE WE DOING?
I command the tendrils to draw back, and they obey. Viewscreens show a blur of high-speed motion as the Polkjhy races across a landscape of jagged, twisty canyons, unlike anything our memory tracks recall from the Slope. Inertial indicators show us racing east, e
ver farther from the sea. Away from the prey.
Other stacks are beginning to stir, as their master rings rouse from the Drawback. Hurriedly, I send our basal torus in motion, taking us away from the pilot station. We scurry around behind the CaptainLeader, who is just now rousing from torpor.
In all likelihood others will assume that our sophisticated robotic guardians — programmed to serve/protect during a Drawback interlude — had good reason to send Polkjhy careening in this unfavorable direction. Feigning innocence, I/we watch as the pilot stacks resume control, arresting this headlong flight, preparing to regain altitude once more.
MY RINGS, WHAT WAS YOUR AIM? WHAT WERE YOU TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH WHILE YOUR MASTER TORUS WAS INCAPACITATED? TO SEND US CRASHING INTO A MOUNTAIN, PERHAPS?
The robots would not have allowed that. But diverting the course of Polkjhy—that was in your power, no?
I perceive we are not finished learning the arts of cooperation.
Gillian
THRILLING AS IT WAS TO BE MOVING AGAIN, GILLIAN knew this wasn’t the same old Streaker. It ran sluggishly for a snark-class survey ship. The nearby landmass receded with disheartening slowness compared with the rabbitlike agility she used to show. Suessi’s motors weren’t at fault. It was the damned carbon-carbon coating, sealing Streaker’ s hull under countless tons of dead weight, clogging the probability flanges and gravitics radiators, costing valuable time to gain orbital momentum. Minutes of vulnerability.
Gillian glanced at the swarm display. A scatter of bright dots showed at least twenty decoys out of the water, with a dozen more now rising from their ancient graves, screaming joy — or agony — over this unwonted mass resurrection. Groups of bait ships speared away in different directions, disbanding according to preset plans, though empty of life.
All empty, except one.
Gillian thought of the human girl, Rety, self-exiled aboard one of those glimmering lights. Would it have been better to break into her hijacked ship? Or try to seize control of the computer, reprogramming it to bring Rety ashore?
