Brightness Reef

by David Brin

  Dwer frowned, concentrating on getting the words right. "Look . . . nobody on the Slope has seen an active Buyur machine since-well, long before humans came to Jijo. This is important. I want to get that thing out of there as much as you do."

  All of which was true, or would have been if his first concern weren't saving the girl's life and his own. Stall for time, Dwer thought. There's only a midura of daylight left. Get her to retreat till tomorrow. Then you can drag her away by force if you have to.

  "Go on," Rety said. "You want to come down an' chop with your big knife? I bet you'd splatter, hacking at live vines. Lotta pain that way, if the sap goes spraying around." Still, she seemed interested.

  "Actually, I know a way that won't bruise a single branch but might spread a hole big enough to get your bird-thing out. We'd use some of the-um, natural resources handy hereabouts."

  "Yeah?" She frowned. "The only stuff around here is rock, and dirt, and-"

  Her eyes lit. "Boo!"

  He nodded. "We'll cut some young shoots, trim them tonight, and return in the morning with bridges and ladders to cross on top of the boulders-and enough pry bars to spread a path through all this"-he waved at the surrounding thicket-"without spilling any acid or gunk on ourselves. We'll get your birdie-thing out long before it's sealed in a crystal egg, and march right up to the sages with a surprise that'll make a hoon's spine pop. How does that sound?"

  Dwer saw distrust in her eyes. She was naturally suspicious, and he had never been a very good liar. When she glanced back at the trapped mystery machine, he knew she must be gauging whether it could hold out overnight. "It still looks strong," he told her. "If it lasted in

  there several days, one more night shouldn't make that much difference."

  Rety lowered her head, pondering. "Might even be good if its wings got stickier. Won't be able to fly off when we free it." She nodded. "All right. Let's go cut us some boo."

  With one hesitant, longing scan behind her, Rety swung her legs over the thick branch and reached up to begin climbing. She carefully examined each hand or foothold before committing herself, eyeing it for caustic leaks, then testing whether the next vine would bear her weight. Clearly, she was an experienced explorer.

  But Rety had never ventured through a spider like this one. When she was about a third of the way through the twisty tangle, she suddenly winced, withdrawing her hand and staring at a single pale-golden droplet, glistening on the back of her wrist. It did not burn, or she would have screamed. For a moment, she seemed more entranced by the color than afraid.

  "Quick, shake it off!" Dwer cried.

  She complied. The glob flew into the foliage. But instantly there followed two more soft splatting sounds. A drop appeared on her shoulder, and one in her hair. Rety looked up to see where they came from-and took one more in the middle of her forehead. Cursing, she tried wiping it off-but managed only to smear it down her cheek. Rety backed away rapidly.

  "Not that way!" Dwer urged. He saw some active vines snake toward her, golden dew oozing .from crevices. Rety hissed in dismay, taking more drops in her hair as she scrambled in a new direction.

  (Tell her not to fight. There need be no pain.)

  Dwer's angry snarl was voiceless, inarticulate, hurling the spider's mind-touch away. He shrugged the bow off of his shoulder, leaving it atop the boulder, and began clambering down to the girl. Vaguely, he was aware that the noor had departed, sensibly fleeing danger. Unlike some fools I know, Dwer thought, slipping the machete out of its sheath.

  "I'm coming, Rety," he said, testing his weight on a branch. Dwer saw Rety try to ascend by another route, easily evading the sluggishly pursuing vines.

  "Don't bother!" she called. "I'm all right. I don't need your hel-ack!"

  The branch she was holding, which had seemed inert moments before, suddenly beaded a line of golden moisture. Rety recoiled, cursing. Several drops adhered to her hand. "Don't rub them!" Dwer urged.

  "I'm not an idiot!" she retorted, backing away. Unfortunately, that took her deeper into the morass.

  Dwer's machete, an artfully reshaped length of Buyur metal, gleamed as he took a swipe at one of the vines between them. It looked lifeless, but he was ready to leap back in case-

  It severed neatly, a crumbling, decaying tube, spilling nothing but cloying dust. A good thing he had decided against using it as a foothold, then. This place wasn't forgiving of mistakes.

  He let the machete hang by the pommel loop while he lowered himself one level, to what seemed a stable vine, setting his weight down gingerly; then he sidled along the horizontal span seeking a way downward. The next foothold seemed thinner, less anchored, but he didn't have much choice. At least it didn't gush acid or try to wrap his ankle like a snake. How did she get this far in the first place? He wondered, glad that most of the tendrils were dead. The hedge would have been impassable when the mule-spider was in its prime.

  "Dwer!"

  He swiveled, wobbling as the ropy strand rocked to and fro. Peering past shadows, he watched Rety climb a chimneylike funnel, offering what seemed a way out. Only now, halfway up the slim gap, she saw something begin twisting into place above. Another clump of living vines . . . moving in to block the promise of escape. Meanwhile, the chimney's base was closing the same way. Her face betrayed rising panic. Flushed, she held out her slim blade, eyes darting for some vital spot to stab her foe. But all she could do was saw at some nearby strand, hoping it would not gush vitriol or golden death.

  A short way beyond, Dwer saw the bird-thing, still struggling within its own trap.

  Let her go, One-of-a-Kind, Dwer thought as he crouched, then leaped with both hands outstretched for another cable-which fortunately held as he swung across a dark opening to land straddling another almost horizontal branch, as thick as a sapling's trunk. Let her go, or I'll-

  His mind seemed to strangle on the .demand, not knowing how one intimidated a mule-spider. Could he do more than irritate it with a machete? He might threaten to depart and return with tools to destroy the ancient thing, with flame and explosives, but somehow Dwer knew that would seem too abstract. The spider appeared to have little sense of perspective or cause and effect, only immediacy and avarice, combined with enough patience to make a hoon seem like a cranky noor.

  Anyway, by the time Dwer could carry out his retribution, Rety would be sealed in a golden cocoon, preserved for all time . . . and dead as a stone.

  Let's talk a trade, One-of-a-Kind, he projected as he took up the machete once more. What will you take in exchange for her?

  There was no answer. Either One-of-a-Kind was too busy pushing vines and fluids around, acting with unaccustomed haste, or else-

  The spider's silence felt eerie, predatory. Smug. As if it felt no need for conversation when it had two treasures and seemed about to get a third. Grimacing, Dwer sidled deeper into the quagmire. What else could he do?

  He hacked at three more vines. The last sent streams of caustic sap arcing between crisscrossing branches. Smoke curled up from the rubbish-strewn floor below, adding to the acrid stench.

  "Dwer, help me!"

  Rety was fully hemmed in now, and touchy pride no longer suppressed the normal panic of a frightened child. Seen through a matrix of ensnaring mule-twine, her hair glistened like an urrish tinker's mane on a dewy morning, coated with a fine dusting of golden droplets. A vine parted under her sawing knife-and two more slithered in to take its place.

  "I'm coming!" he promised, splitting two more cables, then dropping to the next stable-looking branch. It sagged, then Dwer's footing went slippery as it seeped a clearish, greasy liquor. He shouted, and his feet slid out from under him.

  The same dense tangle he'd been cursing saved him from a broken neck. His windmilling arms caught a vine, wrapping round it desperately as his legs swung in midair. But his sigh of relief turned into a gagging gasp. Under his chin, livid veins pulsed with some vile, crimson solution. Blisters formed as corrosive liquid welled beneath the thinnest of me
mbranes. Dwer's eyes stung from escaping vapor.

  (No, no. Don't think I would ever harm you so! You are much too precious for that.)

  Before Dwer's tear-blurred gaze, the blisters stopped rising-then reddish fluid seemed to drain out of the throbbing arteries.

  (That nectar is for plain stone. For you, my unique one, only the gold.)

  Dwer grimaced. Thanks a lot!

  Peering to one side, he found another tangle within reach of his feet. Risking that perch, he pushed away from the loathsome branch that had broken his fall.

  (Think nothing of it.)

  Dwer was almost at Rety's level now, close enough to see grim determination replace panic in her eyes as she sawed another vine in half. A fine spray rewarded her, gilding the forearm she raised to protect her face. All of a sudden, Dwer realized-She's cutting in the wrong direction!

  Instead of taking the most direct route toward daylight, she was heading deeper into the morass--toward the mechanical bird-thing!

  Of all the times to chase an Ifni-slucking obsession!

  Sudden liquid coolness brushed Dwer's wrist. A shimmering meniscus bead lay amid the dark hairs. He moved aside quickly, before another drop could fall from the seep-pore overhead. Dwer shook the droplet off, but even after it was gone, the spot still felt chilled, touched with a not-unpleasant numbness, like when the village dentist spread powdered Nural leaves along a patient's gums, before spinning his hand-cranked drill.

  The machete now wore its own streaked coating, already starting to crystallize in places. Certainly it was an artifact worth collecting, a slab of star-god stuff, adapted by a tribe of primitives to new use in 'a twilight place, between the gritty earth and urbane sky. Grimly, he raised his weapon and set to with a will.

  Concentration was vital, so he ignored the stench and grinding dust with a hunter's narrow-minded focus. Sweat beaded his brow, face, and neck, but he dared not wipe. No doubt he already looked like Rety, who now glittered like some fairy confection, dusted with beads of honey. Dwer did not bother shouting for her to turn and head toward him. Given her obstinacy, he might as well save his breath.

  Glancing back, he saw his escape route still looked clear-a tunnel lined by chopped branches and dangling severed vines. One-of-a-Kind could marshal more, but the mule-spider was old, slow. As Dwer neared Rety's cage, he felt sure he could thwart the spider's move, when it came.

  Now he called, hoarsely.

  "Okay, Rety. No foolin'. Let's get outta here."

  The girl was over at the far end of her funnel opening, staring at the bird-thing past the branches that blocked her way. "Hey, it noticed me! It's turning around!"

  Dwer wouldn't care if it stood on its head and gave Drake's Farewell Address in Buyur-accented Galactic Three. He sliced another cable and coughed as fumes flowed from both writhing ends. "Rety, we haven't got time!"

  When the smoke cleared, he sidled closer and saw that the bird-thing had risen up within its cell, peering skyward and ignoring droplets that settled, mistlike, on its feathered back. Rety, too, seemed to notice its attention shift. She turned to look upward, as Dwer heard a shrill, chittering sound from the same general direction. It's just the bloody noor.

  Beyond the diffracting crisscross of vines, he saw Mudfoot, returned from wherever it had fled. Only now the creature stood on its hind legs, sinuous body upraised, whiskered snout pulled back, snarling at something out of sight, to the south.

  Another flicker caught Dwer's eye. Like an epileptic snake, a kinked vine twisted into view, crossing part of the opening Dwer had cut through the hedge. Its jerky fits and starts seemed pathetic, all alone-but that tendril was followed by another, and another still.

  "Rety!" He shouted, preparing to slash at the remaining barrier between them. "The trap's closing. It's now or never!"

  On her face lay the frustration of coming within arm's reach of her grail, only to have it snatched away by cruel fate. Not waiting for her answer, he lifted the heavy machete with both weary arms and cried out, splitting with three hard strokes the heavy cable blocking his way forward. Don't throw it away, Rety, he pleaded inside, knowing it would do no good to say anything more aloud.

  With a cry of frustration, Rety whirled around, forsaking her treasure, hurling herself at smaller vines with her tiny blade, then squeezing between others with lithe, squirmy agility. The tight passage smeared gold drops until she resembled a streaked pastry of swirled nut cream. Dwer sliced relentlessly and at last was close enough to stretch one arm into the morass.

  Rety's hand clasped his wrist.

  Dwer planted his feet and hauled backward, drawing her through a dark, fetid funnel. A low moan accompanied the passage. He could not tell if it came from her, or himself, or both of them at once.

  She slid free at last and clung to him with sudden fury, wrapping his torso in quivering arms and legs. Underneath all her macho bravado, Dwer knew she must have been terrified in there.

  "We've got to hurry," he said, tugging at one arm.

  Rety resisted but a moment, then slithered off. She inhaled. "Okay, let's go."

  He gave her a boost with his hands, sending her clambering into the tunnel-chimney he had carved through the hedge.

  (Oh, going so soon? Have I been so poor a host?)

  "Dry up and burn, One-of-a-Kind," Dwer muttered under ragged breaths as he climbed after Rety, trusting her strong instincts to lead the way.

  (Someday I surely will. But by then I'll have preserved a legacy.

  (Think on it! When Jijo 's fallow age ends, and new tenants possess this world for an aeon of shining glory, they will gaze in wonder at this collection I've gathered. Amid their glittering city towers, they'll cherish my samplings of the interregnum, setting my prize pieces on pedestals for all to see. And paramount among those specimens will he you, my trophy, my treasure. Perhaps the best-conserved exemplar of your by then long-extinct wolfling race.)

  Dwer puzzled-how did the spider sink hooks into his brain to draw forth words he didn't recall ever learning, like exemplar and interregnum. Lark might have used them in his presence sometime, when perhaps they lodged somewhere deep in memory.

  You're the one who's going to be extinct, spider! You and your whole damn race.

  This time his blistering reply did not shove away the entity's mind-touch.

  (By then, certainly. But our type-design is always to be found in the Great Galactic Library, and we are far too useful ever to be forgotten. Whenever a world must be evacuated, tidied up, and allowed to lay fallow once more-whenever the mighty works of some former tenant race must be rubbed down to recycled dust-then we shall always rise again.

  (Can your tribe of ignorant monkeys claim such usefulness, my precious? Can you claim any "purpose" at all? Save a tenacious will to keep on existing?)

  This time Dwer did not answer. He needed to conserve his strength. If the earlier descent had been awful, ascending became pure hell. It was twice as hard craning backward to hack away at vines overhead as it had been striking down. In addition to danger from whipping cables and spurting acid, he and Rety had to climb through a mist of shimmering drops. It was no longer a matter of shaking them off one by one, but of dodging the thicker drifts and somehow preventing them from adhering to their eyes, noses, and ears. Through that luminous miasma, Dwer saw more creepers twist and flop into a gathering mesh above, more quickly than he would have believed possible. Clearly, One-of-a-Kind had been holding back till now.

  (What did you expect? That I would show you all the things that I am capable o--

  (. . . that I would show you all the . . .

  (. . . that I would show . . .)

  When the voice in Dwer's head trailed off, his first reaction was relief. He had other worries, like an agonizing crick in his neck and a right arm that looked as if it had been dipped in a jeweler's vat, and that seemed about to cramp from the repetitive hacking, hacking, hacking. Now if only the chattering noor would shut up too, with its shrill keening. Mudfoot's pier
cing chitters crescendoed, rising in pitch beyond the limit of Dwer's direct hearing but not past ability to scrape a vexing runnel under his skull.

  Through it all, a nagging worry bothered Dwer.

  I left the glaver all tied up. Will she die of thirst if I never make it back?

  "Left!" Rety shouted. He quickly obeyed, swinging as far as possible, trusting her swift reflexes to warn of jets of yellow sap.

  "Okay, clear!" she called.

  The machete slipped. Dwer fumbled at the wrist strap three times before getting a grip to resume chopping the slender vines filling the chimney overhead, cutting off the swiftly failing twilight. If they didn't make it out by full nightfall, every advantage would belong to the crazy mule-spider.

  Now a sound he had dismissed as background noise grew too loud to ignore. A low rumbling counterbass overrode the noor's yapping. All around Rety and Dwer, the hedge began vibrating. A number of brittle vines shuddered to dust while others sprouted cracks and dripped fluids-red, orange, and milky-noxious additions to a fog that already stung human eyes. Through that blur, Dwer blinked upward to see Mudfoot, perched nimbly atop the hedge of vines, withdrawing in snarling defiance as something new entered view from the south-something that hovered in the air, without any visible means of support!

  A machine! A symmetrical, slab-sided form with gleaming flanks that reflected the sunset, drifting to a point just above the shuddering hedge.

  Suddenly, its belly blazed forth a bitter light that diffracted past the vines. The slender beam lanced right past Rety and Dwer, as if probing for something deeper. . . .

  "It's hunting the bird!" Rety crouched beside Dwer, seizing his arm and pointing.

  "Never mind the damn bird!" he cursed. The hedge was shaking worse than ever. Dwer dragged her behind him just as a sundered tube whipped past, spurting caustic fluid, splattering a trail of fizzing agony along his back as he shielded the girl. Purple spots swarmed across his field of vision, and the machete slipped its thong to fall, clattering off branches on its way down.