Brightness Reef u-4

by David Brin

  “Replay the last ten minutes before the probe failed.”

  The left-hand screen soon lit with images, showing a narrow green corridor with a ribbon of sky above and a stream of scummy water below. The close walls consisted of closely packed stems of towering great-boo.

  “Go to double speed,” Ling asked impatiently. The great columns swept by in a blur. Lark leaned closer, finding the scene familiar.

  Abruptly, the slim aisle spilled into a shallow crater, a rubble-strewn bowl with a small lake at its center, rimmed by a thorny barricade of looping vines.

  Wait a minute. I know this place…

  A set of livid cross-hairs crawled across the holio display, converging near the frothy lake shore, while the right-hand screen flashed red symbols in technical Gal-Six. Lark had to labor, but managed to make out certain words—

  …anomaly… unknown source… strong digital activity…

  His stomach churned as the camera-eye sped toward the disturbance, swooping by slabs of ancient Buyur masonry, as crimson symbols clustered toward the central field of view. Everything inside that tunnel of attention grew more vivid, while the periphery dimmed. Seething emblems flashed preparations that Lark read with dismay — the readying of weapons, powering up for use.

  Dwer always said this mulc-spider was nastier than most and warned people to stay away. But what on Jijo could the robot have to worry about?

  Another thought struck him.

  My God, isn’t this the direction Dwer was headed, chasing after that runaway glaver?

  The machine decelerated. Lark recognized the thick tangle of an aged mulc-spider, its vines splayed across the remains of some ancient Buyur structure.

  The robot’s view skimmed past a pale figure, hunched on the ground, and Lark blinked.

  Was that a glaver, lying in the open? Ifni, we went to such trouble hiding them, and this machine shoots past one without noticing.

  Another surprise slipped by the camera’s periphery as it slowed. A lean animal, four-footed and wiry, black fur nearly blending with the dark tangle. The white teeth of a noor flashed briefly, chattering surprised defiance at the onrushing machine, then vanishing to one side as the robot cruised on, single-mindedly.

  A noor? Up in the mountains? Without knowing why, Lark tasted bile.

  The machine slowed to a crawling hover. Red crosshairs converged downward toward a point throbbing with rhythms of crimson menace.

  …digital cognizance… level nine or greater… the GalSix symbols throbbed. Little could be made out in the gloomy snarl below, except some vague flutterings near the center of the cross-hairs. The robot must be targeting with senses other than vision.

  …autonomous decision… terminate threat immediately…

  Suddenly, the dim scene flashed with brilliance. The central field blazed white as shafts of angry lightning tore into the morass, slicing the mulc-spider’s medusa limbs. Boiling juices sprayed from whipping, severed vines while red targeting circles danced back and forth, seeking something that kept dodging randomly within a confined space.

  Ling was reading the data-filled right-hand screen, cursing the robot’s inability to make a clean kill. So Lark felt sure he alone glimpsed a brief outline at one edge of the holio panel. It flashed just an instant but seemed to sear his optic nerve.

  One — no, two clusters of arms and legs, intermeshed among the shuddering vines, cowering from the burning fury above.

  Static again filled the displays.

  “No, I can’t head over there right now. It’s half a mictaar from here. My guide and I would flounder in the dark. It’ll have to wait till—”

  Listening again, Ling sighed. “All right, I’ll ask him.” She lowered her ring and turned.

  “Lark, you know this country. Is there a trail—”

  She stopped, and stood up quickly, peering left, then right.

  “Lark?”

  She called into the night, now a velvet blackness dusted with the winking luster of this galaxy’s third brightest spiral arm.

  “Lark! Where are you?”

  Wind stirred branches overhead, brushing the forest silence. There was no way of knowing how long it was since he had left, or in which direction.

  With a sigh, Ling lifted her hand and reported the abandonment.

  “How should I know?” she replied to a curt query. “Can’t blame the nervous monkey for spooking. Never saw a robot’s cut-beam at work before. He may be halfway home by now, if he stops before the coast—

  “Yes, yes. I know we hadn’t decided about that, but it’s too late now. Hardly matters, anyway. All he got away with are a few hints and clues. We’ve got plenty more to bribe the natives with. And there’s more where he came from.”

  Asx

  Dissension grows.

  The Commons writhes against itself like a traeki whose rings were cruelly stacked, without nurturing rapport between the married toruses.

  Word arrives by galloping urrish courier from settlements downslope, where anxiety and chaos reign like despotic qheuenish empresses of old. Some villages topple their water tanks, their grain silos, solar heaters, and windmills, claiming authority in the sacred Scrolls, overruling the rescript that our sage council sent in haste the day the ship came — a policy urging that all folk wait-and-see.

  Meanwhile, others protect their barns and docks and weirs, laboring to pile concealing vegetation — and violently repelling angry neighbors who approach their precious property bearing torches and crowbars.

  Should we not do better here at Gathering? Did not the finest of the Six come together here for yearly rites of union? Yet poison also roils in this place.

  First discord — foul suspicion of our youngest sept. Might our human neighbors be allied with invaders? With plunderers? If not now, could they grow tempted, in time?

  Oh, dire notion! Theirs is the highest grasp of science among the Six. What hope have we, without their aid, ever to pierce the deceits of godlike felons?

  So far, some faith has been restored by the noble example of Lester and his deputies, who swear devotion to Jijo and our Holy Egg. Yet do not rumors and odious doubts still fly, like whirling soot, amid these gentle glades?

  Dissension multiplies. A harvest team returns from one of the deep caves where wild rewq breed, to find the cavern walls deserted, no rewq to be seen. And the ones within our pouches languish. They will not sup our vital fluids, nor help us share the secrets of each other’s souls.

  Further discord — in each race many are tempted by a siren song. Sweet utterances by our unwelcome guests. Unctuous promises, words of comradeship.

  And not merely words.

  Do you recall, my rings, when the star-humans spread word they would heal!

  Under a canopy brought over from the festival grounds — shaded by their dark, cubic outpost — they call forth the lame, sick, and hurt. We sages can but watch, helpless and confused, as queues of our wounded brethren limp inside, then amble out elated, transformed, in some part cured.

  In truth, many seemed palliated only in their pain. But for some others — miraculous change! Death’s door is transmuted, now a portal to restored youth, vigor, potency.

  What can we do, forbid? Impossible. Yet what profuse samplings do the healers gain! Vials brimming with specimens of our diverse biologies. Whatever gaps once filled their dossiers, they now know all about our strengths and weaknesses, our genes and latent natures.

  Those returning from the healing, are they well-greeted? Some call their own sept-mates traitor. Some perceive defilement, turning away in hatred.

  So we divide. In fresh enmity, we subdivide.

  Are we a gathering any longer? Are we a Commons?

  Did not you, my/our own third basal ring — ailing for a year with the ague known as torus plaque — did you not attempt to twist this aging pile toward that green pavilion where wonder cures are offered, though not unselfishly? If dissension infests this entity which others call Asx, can a society of individuals c
ohere any better?

  The heavens above have always been our dread. But disharmony now swarms these very meadows, filling our frustrated days and nights until Jijo’s soil now seems as fearsome as her sky.

  Can we hope, my rings?

  Tonight we do pilgrimage. The most sage of the Six shall travail under darkness, arduously, past fuming pits and misty cliffs, to reach the place of the Holy Egg.

  This time, will it answer us? Or shall the fell silence of recent weeks go on?

  Can we still hope?

  There is a sensation we traeki have learned to describe only since meeting humans on Jijo. Yet never till now have i felt this pang so terribly. It is a desolation not well rendered in Galactic languages, which emphasize tradition and close relations, subsuming thoughts of self to those of race and clan. But in Anglic the feeling is central and well known. Its name is — alone.

  Dwer

  They took turns rescuing each other. It wasn’t easy. Consciousness kept threatening to own under surges of pain from his many cuts and burns. To make matters worse, Dwer suspected he was deaf.

  Rety kept stumbling, yet she would not use her arms for anything except to clutch her treasure tightly to her breast.

  That prize very nearly finished them both off, a while ago, when she plunged screaming back into the maelstrom of fire and acid steam, desperately seeking remnants of her precious “bird” amid smoldering stumps and glowing wreckage of the horrible machine that fell from the burning sky.

  Dwer had just about had it by the time he got her out of there a second time.

  You go back in again, and you can stay for all I care.

  For a distance of two arrowflights, he had carried her with aching lungs and scalded skin, fleeing the burning mulc-spider till the worst stench, heat, and suffocating vapors lay well behind. Finally, he had put her down by the muddy creek at the lake’s outlet and plunged his face and arms into the cooling stream. The slaking liquid cut his agony in half, and that was almost more shock than his system could bear. Gasping some water into his lungs, he pushed back, gagging and coughing. When his hands slipped, he fell into the muck, floundering weakly. If Rety had not caught his hair and dragged him out, he might have drowned right there.

  A hiccup of ironic laughter joined his hacking cough.

  After all that… what a way to go…

  For some time they lay there, exhausted and shivering side-by-side, stirring only to scoop mud and slather it over each other’s seared nakedness. It coated raw nerves and offered some small guard against the deepening night chill. Dwer thought of the warm clothes in his pack, nestled amid the boulders somewhere back there amid the fires.

  And my bow, left on a boulder. He suppressed that worry with a silent curse. Forget the damn bow! Come back for it later. Now just get out of here.

  He tried to gather strength to rise. Rety was pursuing the same goal, with identical results, sagging back with a moan after each effort. Finally, Dwer managed to sit up. The stars swayed as he teetered, pushed by a “wintry wind.

  Get moving, or you’ll freeze.

  Insufficient reason. Not enough to overcome shock and fatigue.

  The girl then. Get her moving, or—

  Or what? Dwer somehow doubted even twice this much suffering could kill Rety. Trouble would not spare her yet. Trouble must find her too useful as an ally and friend.

  But he was on the right track, Dwer felt sure. There was something else. Another duty. Someone awaiting his return…

  The glaver. Dwer’s mud-crusted eyelids opened. I left her hobbled. She’ll starve. Or a Hgger will get her.

  With quaking limbs, he fought his way up to his knees — and found he could rise no further.

  Rety struggled up, too, and sagged against him. They rested, leaning against each other for support. When folks find our frozen bodies lying together this way, someone’s sure to think we must’ve liked each other.

  That, alone, was good reason to move. But messages to his arms and legs weren’t obeyed.

  A soft moistness stroked his cheek…

  Stop that, Rety.

  It repeated. Wet and scratchy.

  What’s the kid doing now — licking me? Of all the weird…

  Again a wet tongue — rather long and raspy for a little sooner girl. Dwer managed to turn his head… and blinked at the sight of two huge bulging eyes, rotating independently on each side of a broad rounded head. The glaver’s mouth opened again. This time the tongue abraded a path right up Dwer’s lip and over both nostrils. He flinched, then managed to wheeze—

  “H-how… how-w…?”

  Vaguely, distantly, he heard his own words. So he wasn’t completely deaf, after all.

  Knowing a better perch when she saw it, Rety transferred her one-armed grip from his neck to the glaver’s. The other hand still clenched her prize — a fragment of knobs, lumps, and scorched metal feathers.

  Dwer didn’t pause to question fortune. He flung himself over the glaver’s other side, sucking warmth from her downy hide. Patiently — or apathetically — the creature let both humans hang on, till Dwer finally found the strength to gather his feet and stand.

  One of the glaver’s hind legs still bore remnants of a rope hobble, chewed off at the knot. Behind her, the cause of this miracle grinned with the other end in its mouth. Mudfoot leered at Dwer, eyes glittering.

  Always gotta make sure to get full credit, don’t you? Dwer thought, knowing it was ungrateful but thinking it anyway.

  Another brilliant explosion sent rays of brightness cutting through black shadows, all centered on the fiery site by the lake. Two more reports followed within a few duras, erasing any thought of going back after his supplies. Flames continued to spread.

  He helped Rety up, leaning on the glaver for support. Come on, Dwer said, with a slight incline of the head. Better to die in motion than just lying here.

  Even stumbling in the dark, numbed by cold, pain, and weariness, Dwer couldn’t help pondering what he’d seen.

  One little bird-machine might have been rare but explainable — a surviving relic of Buyur days, somehow preserved into this era, wandering confused across a continent long abandoned by its masters. But the — machine — that daunting, floating menace — was no dazed leftover of vanished Jijoan tenants. It had been powerful, resolute.

  A new thing in the world.

  Together they weaved unsteadily down another avenue between two forests of boo. The channel spared them from the frigid wind, and also from having to make any decisions. Each step took them farther from the lakeside conflagration, which suited Dwer fine.

  Where there’s one death machine, might there be more?

  Could another levitating minifortress come to avenge its brother? With that thought, the narrow, star-canopied aisle ceased seeming a refuge, rather an awful trap.

  The boo-lined corridor ended at last, spilling the four of them onto a meadow of knee-high grass swaying before a stiff, icy wind that drained their bodies as they shuffled along. Frost flurries whirled all around. Dwer knew it was just a matter of time before they collapsed.

  A grove of scrubby saplings clustered by a small watercourse, some distance from the path. Shivering, he nudged the glaver across the crunching, crackling grass. We’re leaving tracks, the hunter in him carped. Lessons drilled by old Fallen floated to mind. Try keeping to hare rock or water… When you’re being stalked, head downwind…

  None of which was helpful now. Instinct led him to a rocky ledge, an outcrop shrouded by low bushes. Without his fire-lighter or even a knife or piece of flint, their best hope lay in finding shelter. Dwer yanked Rety off the glaver’s neck, pushing till she understood to bend and crawl under the shelf. The glaver shuffled inward on all four knees, Mudfoot hitching a ride on her corrugated back. Dwer yanked some fallen branches where the wind would pile leaves on top. Then he also dropped, slithering to join an interspecies tangle of limbs, fur, skin — and someone’s fetid breath not far from his face. Snowflakes sublimed off fl
esh as body heat spread through the confined space. Just our luck to have a late flurry, so far into spring, he thought. Old Fallen used to say there were just two seasons in the mountains. One was called Winter. The other was also winter, with some green stuff growing to trick the unwary.

  He told himself the weather wasn’t really so bad — or wouldn’t be if their clothes hadn’t been burned off their bodies, or if they weren’t already in shock, or if they had supplies.

  After a while, Dwer realized the deafness must be fading. He could hear someone’s teeth chattering, then a murmur of some sort, coming from behind him. That was followed by a sharp jab on his shoulder.

  “I said could you move jes a bit?” Rety shouted, not far from his ear. “You’re lying on my—”

  He shifted. Something bony slid from under his rib-cage. When he lay back down, his flank scraped icy grit. Dwer sighed.

  “Are you all right?”

  She squirmed some more. “What’d you say?”

  He writhed around to see her blurry outline. “Are you okay?” he shouted.

  “Oh, sure. Never better, dimmie. Good question.”

  Dwer shrugged. If she had energy to be nasty, she was probably far from death’s door.

  “You got anything to eat?” Rety added.

  He shook his head. “We’ll find something in the morn. Till then, don’t speak ’less you must.”

  “Why?”

  Because robots probably have ears, he almost said. But why worry the kid?

  “Save your strength. Now be good and get some sleep.”

  A slight vibration might have been the girl, mimicking his words sarcastically under her breath. But he couldn’t be sure — a blessed side effect to the beating his ears had taken.

  With a series of sharp jabs, Mudfoot clambered up his leg to settle in the wedge between his body and Rety’s. Dwer squirmed to a position where his head was less sheltered by the glaver’s warm flank. A bitter chill greeted his face as he peered back at the trail they had just left — the narrow avenue between two vast stands of boo. As a makeshift hunter’s blind, this wasn’t bad — if only more snow would fill in the trampled trail they had left in the broken grass.