Brightness Reef u-4

by David Brin

  Dwer recovered his bow, started a fire, and spent the day’s last half-midura feeding the captive from his meager rations. Tomorrow he’d find it a rotten log to root under for grubs — a favorite, if undignified pastime for members of what had once been a mighty starfaring race.

  Mudfoot sidled close when Dwer unwrapped some hard bread and jerky. Dwer sighed and tossed some to the noor, who snatched chunks out of midair and ate with dainty care. Then Mudfoot sniffed at Dwer’s gourd canteen.

  He had seen the beasts use gourds aboard hoon-crewed riverboats. So after a dubious pause, he pulled the cork stopper and handed it over. The creature used both six-fingered forepaws-nearly as deft as true hands-to adroitly slosh quick dollops over its tongue, smacking loudly.

  Then it poured the remainder over its head.

  Dwer shot to his feet, cursing. But Mudfoot blithely tossed the empty vessel aside. Rivulets ran down its glossy back, dribbling dark splatters in the dust. The noor chirped happily and began to groom.

  Dwer shook the canteen, winning a few drops. “Of all the selfish, ungrateful—”

  It was already too late to hike to the nearest stream, down a narrow, treacherous trail. A waterfall growled, close enough to hear but over a midura away by foot. This was no crisis; he’d done without before. Still, the sound would give him dry-mouth, all night long.

  Never stop learning, said the sage Ur-Ruhols. Tonight, Dwer had learned one more thing about noor. All told, the price of the lesson was pretty cheap.

  He decided to arrange for a wakeup call. For that, he would need a clock teet.

  There were good reasons to get an early start. He might still make it back to the yearly Gathering of the Six, before all the unpledged human boys and girls chose partners for jubilee dancing. Then there was his annual report to Danel Ozawa, and Lena Strong’s ridiculous “tourism” idea to oppose. Also, if he led the glaver away before dawn, he just might manage to leave Mudfoot snoring by the coals. Noor loved sleep almost as much as upsetting the routines of villagers, and this one had had a long day.

  So after supper Dwer brought forth a sheaf of paper folders, his cache of practical things. Many of the wrappers had come from his brother’s wastebasket, or Sara’s.

  Lark’s handwriting, graceful and controlled, usually traced some living species on Jijo’s complex order of life. Dwer used Lark’s castoff notes to store seeds, herbs, and feathers — things useful in the hunt.

  Sara’s hand was expansive yet tense, as if imagination and order held each other in check. Her discards swarmed with baffling mathematics. (Some failed equations weren’t just scratched out but stabbed to death in fits of frustration.) Dwer used his sister’s work-sheets to hold medicines, condiments, and the powders that made many Jijoan foods edible to humans.

  From one folded page he drew six tobar seeds — plump, hard, and fragrant — which he spread across a rock some way downwind. Holding his breath, he used his knife to split one open, then fled a rising, pungent cloud. The glaver mewed unhappily, and the noor glared at him until the breeze swept most of the intense aroma away.

  Back in his sleeping roll, Dwer waited as the stars came out. Kalunuti was a hot reddish pinpoint, set high on the leering face of Sargon, pitiless enforcer of laws. More starry patterns followed, eagle, horse, dragon — and dolphin, beloved cousin, grinning with her. jaw thrust in a direction some said might lead to Earth.

  If we exiles are ever caught, Dwer pondered. Will the Great Galactic Library make a file about our culture? Our myths? Will aliens read our constellation myths and laugh?

  If all went as planned, no one would ever hear of this lonely colony or recall its tales. Our descendants, if any, will be like glavers-simple, and innocent as the beasts of the field.

  Fluttering wings grazed the firelight. A squat form landed near the tobar seeds, with wings of grayish plates that slid like overlapping petals. The birdling’s yellow beak quickly devoured the nut Dwer had cracked.

  Mudfoot sat up, eyes glinting.

  Dwer warned the noor, half-dozing — “You bother it, an’ I’ll have yer hide fer a hat.”

  Mudfoot sniffed and lay down again. Soon there came a rhythmic tapping as the teet started pecking at the next nut. It would take its time, consuming one kernel each midura-roughly seventy minutes-until the last was gone. Then, with a chattering screech, it would fly off. One didn’t need a printout from the Great Library to know what function the -Buyur had designed this creature to fill. The living alarm clock still worked as programmed.

  Lark is wrong about our place on this world, Dwer thought, lulled by the unvaried tapping. We do a service. Jijo would be a sad place without people to use its gifts.

  There were dreams. Dwer always had dreams. Shapeless foes lurked beyond sight as he wandered a land covered with colors, like a rainbow that had melted, flowed across the ground, then frozen in place. The harsh hues hurt his eyes. Moreover, his throat felt parched, and he was unarmed.

  The dream shifted. All of a sudden, .he found himself alone in a forest of trees that seemed to stretch up past the moons. For some reason, the trees were even more threatening than the colored landscape. He fled, but could find no exit from the forest as their trunks glowed, burst into flame, then started to explode.

  The furious intensity of the nightmare yanked him awake, sitting up with a racing heart. Dwer stared wide-eyed, glad to find the real woods intact, though dark and threaded by a chill breeze. There was no raging firestorm. He had dreamed the whole thing.

  Still, uneasiness gnawed. Something felt wrong.

  He rubbed his eyes. Different constellations swarmed the sky, fading in the east under a wash of predawn gray. The biggest moon, Loocen, hovered over silhouetted peaks, its sunlit face spangled with bright pinpoints — the domes of long-abandoned cities.

  So what’s wrong?

  It wasn’t just intuition. The clock teet had stopped. Something must have disturbed it before the time to chatter its alarm. He checked the area and found the noor snoring on quietly. The glaver tracked Dwer dully with one thoughtless eye, the other still closed.

  All at once, he knew the problem.

  My bow!

  It wasn’t where he’d left it, within arm’s reach. It was gone.

  Stolen!

  Anger flooded the predawn dimness with blinding adrenaline outrage. Dozens had spoken enviously of his bow-a masterpiece of laminated wood and bone, fashioned by the qheuenish craftsmen of Ovoom Town. But who…?

  Calm down. Think.

  Could it be Jeni Shen? She often joked about luring him into a poker game, with the bow at stake. Or might it be—

  Stop!

  He took a deep breath, but it was hard disciplining his young body, so full of need to act.

  Stop and hear what the world has to say…

  First, he must calm the furious spilling of his own unspoken words. Dwer pushed aside all noisy thoughts. Next he made himself ignore the rasping sound of breath and pulse.

  The distant, muttering waterfall was by now familiar, easy to cancel out. The wind’s rustle, less regular, soon went away, too.

  One hovering sound might be the clock teet, cruising in hope of more tobar seeds. Another flutter told of a honey bat-no, a mated pair-which he also disregarded. The noor’s snoring he edited, and the soft grind of glaver-molars as the prisoner rechewed her cud.

  There! Dwer turned his head. Was that a scrape on gravel? Pebbles rattling down a scree, perhaps. Something, or someone-bipedal? Almost man-size, he guessed, and hurrying away.

  Dwer took off after the sound. Gliding ghostlike in his moccasins, he ran some distance before noting that the thief was heading the wrong direction. Away from the coast. Away from the Slope. Higher into the Rimmer Range.

  Toward the Pass.

  Padding up the rocky trail, Dwer’s angry flush gave way to the scrupulous cadence of pursuit-a tense, almost ecstatic concentration on each thrust of heel and toe; the efficiency of motion needed for silence; an eager probing beyond hi
s own soft noise to seize any trace of the pursued. His head felt clear, no longer poisoned by fury. Whatever the reason for this chase, tie could not help feeling a kind of joy. This was his art, the thing he loved best.

  Dwer was near the notch of gray light separating two shadowy peaks, when a problem occurred to him.

  Wait a minute!

  He slowed to a trot, then down to a walk.

  This is stupid. Here I am, chasing off after a sound I’m not even sure I heard — maybe a hangover of a dream — when the answer was there all along!

  The noor.

  He stopped, beating his fist against his thigh and feeling like an idiot.

  It’s just what a noor would do-stealing things. Swapping a villager’s chipped cup for a treasure, or vice versa.

  When he returned, would a pile of ligger turds sit where the bow had lain? Or a diamond wrested from the crown of some long dead Buyur king? Or would they all-noor, bow, and glaver-simply be gone? Mudfoot had been quite an actor, snoozing by the coals. Did the beast cackle when he hightailed off, chasing his own outraged imagination?

  Alongside anger, there arose a grudging appreciation.

  A good one. He really got me.

  Then again, this noor might have a surprise coming. Of all the humans on Jijo, perhaps only Dwer was qualified to find the beast and get even.

  It would be a difficult chase. Maybe impossible.

  Or else the hunt of a lifetime.

  Sudden insight filled Dwer with wonder. Was that the noor’s gift? To offer Dwer—

  Ahead of him, in the vague dimness, the corner of a shadow moved.

  His unfocused eyes had been open to peripheral vision, habituated to a static scene. A reflex hunter’s trick that made one especially sensitive to motion — as when a “boulder” shifted to the left, then moved onward toward the Pass.

  Ears snatched distant tickling scrapes, softer than the wind. Dwer’s eyebrows knotted as he started forward again, slowly at first, then stealthily faster.

  When the blurry shadow stopped, he stopped, splaying his arms for balance.

  Profiled against predawn gray, the silhouette waited a few duras more, then turned and continued on its way.

  Trust your instincts, Fallon the Tracker used to teach. The old man was nobody’s fool.

  Mudfoot had been the obvious suspect. Perhaps that was why it didn’t occur to Dwer, back at the campsite. He would have wasted valuable time blaming the logical culprit. His first impulse had been right, after all. The initial clue, a true one.

  The shadow turned again. Dwer traced a human shape, alarmed now, fleeing with his purloined bow. This time he sprinted, forsaking stealth for speed. Pebbles flew, rattling the pass with echoes. The other swiveled too, leaping away like a striped gusul in flight.

  Only three humans on Jijo could outrun Dwer, and none at all in rough terrain.

  End game, he thought, bearing down for a final dash.

  When his quarry turned, he was ready. When it drew a knife, he knew this was no joke. Dwer launched into a tackling dive, primed to hear shouts of anger and dismay.

  Unexpected was the thief s face, looming as he hurtled forward.

  Human.

  Female.

  Terribly young.

  Above all — a complete and total stranger.

  Asx

  Fate had fallen from the sky.

  To Jijo.

  To the Slope.

  To the Glade of Gathering.

  To the nexus of our fears, much sooner than expected.

  Across megaparsecs, a ship from the Five Galaxies had come! Such a vast distance… the least we poor exiles could do was march a short way to where it landed, and courteously greet it.

  Vubben declined the honor of leading. Jijo’s gravity so hobbles our dear g’Kek, they must rely solely on wheels, using their stilt-legs for balance only, moving over rough ground almost as slowly as a traeki. So, Vubben and i hobbled along, urging our hoon, qheuenish, human, and urrish counterparts to forge ahead.

  Do i/we sense a foul odor of envy fuming in our central core? Do some of you, my several selves, resent our awkward slowness compared to those long hoonish legs or nimble urrish feet? Things might have been different had our traeki exile-ship come equipped with the full menagerie of rings our kin were said to own. Legends tell of adroit running limbs-gifts of the mighty Oailie- limbs to make even a heavy stack like ours as speedy as a song jackal. Speedy as a Jophur.

  But then, would we also have carried Oailie arrogance? Their madness? Would we have fought wars, the way qheuens and urs and hoons and men did for centuries here on Jijo, bickering until the Commons grew strong enough for peace? Those traeki who fled to Jijo had reasons to leave some rings behind. Or so we believe.

  But again, digression thwarts our tale. Discipline, my rings! Give the fumes another spin. Stroke the waxy imprints, and remember -

  Recall how we marched, each at ers own pace, toward the side valley where the intruder ship had set down. Along the way, Vubben recited from the Book of Exile, greatest of scrolls, the one least altered by quarrel, heresy, or waves of new arrivals.

  “The right to live is tentative,” Vubben chanted in a voice that seemed to caress the soul.

  “Material things are limited, though the mind is free.

  “Of protein, phosphorus, nor even energy is there ever enough to slake all hungers. Therefore, show not affront when diverse beings vie over what physically exists. Only in thought can there be true generosity. So let thought be the focus of your world.”

  Vubben’s voice had a calming way with our people. The slim-boled welpal trees seemed to resonate his words, tuned as they are to the music of the Egg.

  And yet, while Vubben spoke of equanimity, my/our basal segment kept trying to stop, turn its feet around, and carry us away! Dimly, that bottommost ring realized that danger lay ahead, and sensibly voted to flee. Our upper tiers had to apply scent-throbs to urge it onward.

  i/we find strange how fear functions in non-traeki. They say it infuses all parts of a body, and hence must be fought everywhere at once! Once, i/we asked Lester Cambel how humans keep calm in times of crisis. His answer was that generally they don’t!

  How strange. Humans always seem so much in control. Is it just a grand act, to fool both others and themselves?

  Do not digress, Oh Asx. Stroke the wax. Go on. Go on toward the ship.

  Sara

  Henrik seemed reluctant to set off his charges. At first this surprised Sara. Wasn’t this crisis what an exploser always dreamed of? A chance to make things go boom? To destroy works that others spent their lives building?

  In fact, Henrik seemed less avid than many of the citizens crowding the Meeting Tree in panic that night, after witnessing a fireball rattle the forest to its ancient roots. Two gardeners and a worker chimp had fallen from high branches to their deaths, and scores of others had had narrow escapes. The farmers were in a state.

  Carved from the spacious heart knot of a grandfather garu, the great hall was crammed with nearly every sapient adult within a rapid day’s hike. Like a steaming minnow pie, the room seemed stuffed with perspiring humanity.

  A cluster of other folk were also present-hoon sailors mostly, their pale scaly skins and shaggy white leg fur offset by dark green cloaks, cinched with wooden brooches below their puffing throat sacs. Some also wore trembling rewq over their eyes, to help interpret this stew of human emotions.

  Near the north entrance, where it was less humid, a few urrish tinkers chafed and stamped, uneasily switching their braided tails. Sara even spied one forlorn g’Kek pilgrim, anxious green sweat dripping from a single eye-stalk, while the other three lay curled like socks in a drawer, hiding from the raucous ferment.

  Doctor Lorrek had been wise, it seemed, volunteering to spend the evening watching the wounded Stranger.

  Pzora, the town pharmacist, had a defense against having ers lower rings trampled. If pressed too closely, the traeki just vented a little pungent steam, and
even the most agitated citizen gave er room.

  No doubt it was like this wherever folk had seen the dread specter in the sky. Right now human visitors were attending qheuen or hoon assemblies and even urrish tribal conclaves, beside roaring fires on the open plains.

  The Great Peace is our finest accomplishment, Sara thought. Maybe it will weigh in our favor, when we’re judged. We’ve come far since the days of war and slaughter.

  Alas, from the rancor of tonight’s meeting, the Commons still had a long way to go.

  “Minor repairs?”

  Chaz Langmur, the master carpenter, protested from the stage, normally used for concerts and theatricals. “We’re talking about losing everything below the flood line, and that don’t count the dam itself! You ask how many years to rebuild, if this turns out to be a false alarm? Let’s talk lifetimes!”

  Merchants and craft workers supported Langmur with shouts but were opposed by cries of “Shame!” from many wearing the gray garb of farmers. Overhead, excited apelike shrieks joined in. Though not voting citizens, tradition let local chimps clamber up the wall tapestries to observe from slit vents high above. How much they understood was debatable. Some screamed lustily for whichever speaker seemed most impassioned, while others were as partisan as Sara’s father, who clapped the carpenter’s back with encouragement.

  It had gone this way for hours. Angry men and women taking turns citing scripture or bemoaning costs, each side waxing ever louder as their fear and irritation grew. Nor were humans the sole partisans. Log Biter, matriarch of the local qheuenish hive, had spoken urgently for preserving Dolo Dam, while her cousin from Logjam Pond proclaimed it a “gaudy monstrosity.” Sara feared a mêlée would ensue between two huge armored matrons, until the chief elder, Fru Nestor, interposed her small human form, the rewq on her brow flashing soothing colors until both qheuens finally backed down.

  The audience was no better. A woman stepped on Sara’s foot. Someone else must not have bathed this week, comparing badly to Pzora’s worst secretions. Sara envied Prity, a tiny figure perched high on a windowsill next to several human kids too young to vote. Unlike other chimps, she seemed to find her notebook more engaging than the shouting speakers, tugging at her lower lip while she studied lines of complex mathematics.