Brightness Reef

by David Brin

  "Uthen is here." He pointed to the far end of the tent, where his fellow biologist, a large male qheuen with a slate gray carapace, held conference with Rann, one of the two male forayers, a tall massive man in a tight-fitting uniform.

  "Uthen knows incredible detail about how different species relate to each other." Ling agreed with a nod. "That's not easy on a planet that has had infusions of outsider species every twenty million years or so, for aeons. Your lore is impressive, given your limitations."

  Had she any idea how far Jijoan "lore" really went? So far, the sages had not released his detailed charts, and Uthen must be dragging all five feet, cooperating just enough to stay indispensable. Yet the aliens seemed easily impressed by sketchy glimmers of local acumen, which only showed how insultingly low their expectations were.

  "Thanks," Lark muttered. "Thanks a lot."

  Ling sighed, briefly averting her dark eyes. "Crampers, can't I say anything right, today? I don't mean to offend. It's just . . . look, how about we try starting from scratch, all right?" She held out a hand.

  Lark looked at it. What was he expected to do now?

  She reached out with her left hand to take his right wrist. Then her right hand clasped his. . "It's called a handshake. We use it to signify respect, amicable greeting, or agreement."

  Lark blinked. Her grip was warm, firm, slightly moist.

  "Oh, yes . . . I've rea-heard of it."

  He tried to respond when she squeezed, but it felt so strange, and vaguely erotic, that Lark let go sooner than she seemed to expect. His face felt warm.

  "Is it a common gesture?"

  "Very common, I hear. On Earth."

  You hear? Lark leaped on the passing phrase and knew it had begun again-their game of hints and revelations, mutual scrutiny of clues and things left unsaid.

  "I can see why we gave it up, on Jijo," he commented. "The urs would hate it; their hands are more personal than their genitals. Hoons and qheuens would crush our hands and we'd squash the tendrils of any g'Kek who tried it." His fingers still felt tingly. He resisted an urge to look them over. Definitely time to change the subject.

  "So," Lark said, trying for a businesslike tone of equality, "you've never been to Earth?"

  One eyebrow raised. Then she laughed. "Oh, I knew we couldn't hire you for just a handful of biodegradable Loys. Don't worry, Lark; you'll be paid in answers-some answers-at the end of each day. After you've earned them."

  Lark sighed, although in fact the arrangement did not sound unsatisfactory.

  "Very well, then. Why don't you tell me what it is you want to know."

  Asx

  EACH DAY WE STRIVE TO MEDIATE STRESS AMONG our factions, from those urging cooperation with our uninvited guests, to others seeking means to destroy them. Even my/our own sub-selves war over these options.

  Making peace with felons, or fighting the unfightable.

  Damnation or extinction.

  And still our guests question us about other visitors! Have we seen other outsiders lately, dropping from the sky? Are there Buyur sites we have not told them about? Sites where ancient mechanisms lurk, alert, still prone to vigorous action?

  Why this persistence? Surely they can tell we are not lying-that we know nothing more than we have told.

  Or is that true, my rings? Have all Six shared equally with the Commons, or are some withholding vital information, needed by all?

  That i should think such a thing is but another measure of how far we are fallen, we unworthy, despicable sooners. We, who surely have farther yet to fall.

  Rety

  UNDER A SMALLER, SHABBIER TENT, IN A DENSE grove some secret distance from the research station, Rety threw herself onto a reed mat, pounding it with both fists.,

  "Stinkers. Rotten guts an' rancy meat. Rotten, rotten, rotten!"

  She had good reason to thrash in outrage and self-pity. That liar, Dwer, had told her the sages were good and wise. But they turned out to be horrid!

  Oh, not at the beginning. At first, her hopes had shot up like the geysers back home in the steaming Gray Hills. Lester Cambel and the others seemed so kind, easing her dread over being punished for her grandparents' crime of sneaking east, over the forbidden mountains. Even before questioning her, they had doctors tend her scrapes and burns. It never occurred to Rety to fear the unfamiliar g'Kek and traeki medics who dissolved away drops of clinging mule-fluid, then used foam to drive off the parasites that had infested her scalp for as long as she could remember. She even found it in her to forgive them when they dashed her hopes of a cure for the scars on her face. Apparently, there was a limit even to what Slopies could accomplish.

  From the moment she and Lark strode into the Glade of Gathering, everyone seemed awfully excited and distracted. At first Rety thought it was because of her, but it soon grew clear that the real cause was visitors from the sky!

  No matter. It still felt like coming home. Like being welcomed into the embrace of a family far bigger and sweeter than the dirty little band she had known for fourteen awful years.

  At least it felt that way for a while.

  Till the betrayal.

  Till the sages called her once again to their pavilion and told her their decision.

  "It's all Dwer's fault," she muttered later, nursing hot resentment. "Him an' his rotten brother. If only I could've snuck in over the mountains without being seen. No one would've noticed me in all this ruckus." Rety had no clear notion what she would have done after that. The oldsters back home had been murky in their handed-down tales about the Slope. Perhaps she could make herself useful to some remote village as a trapper. Not for food-Slopies had plenty of that-but for soft furs that'd keep townfolk from asking too closely where she came from.

  Back in the Gray Hills, such dreams used to help her pass each grinding day. Still, she might never have found the guts to flee her muddy clan but for the beautiful bright bird.

  And now the sages had taken it away from her!

  "We are grateful for your part in bringing this enigmatic wonder to us," Lester Cambel said less than an hour ago, with the winged thing spread on a table before him. "Meanwhile though, something terribly urgent has come up. I hope you'll understand, Rety, why it's become so necessary for you to go back."

  Back? At first, she could not bring herself to understand. She puzzled while he gabbled on and on.

  Back?

  Back to Jass and Bom and their strutting ways? To the endless bullying of those big, strong hunters? Always boasting around the campfire about petty, vicious triumphs that grew more exaggerated with each telling? To those wicked oafs who used fire-tipped sticks to punish anyone who dared to talk back to them?

  Back to where mothers watched half their babies waste away and die? To where that hardly mattered, because new babies kept on coming, coming and coming, till you dried up and died of old age before you were forty? Back to all that hunger and dirt?

  The human sage had muttered words and phrases that were supposed to sound soothing and noble and logical. But Rety had stopped listening.

  They meant to send her back to the tribe!

  Oh, it might be fine to see Jass's face when she strode into camp, clothed and equipped with all the wonders the Six could offer. But then where would she be? Condemned once more to that awful life.

  / won't go back. I won't!

  With that resolution, Rety rolled over, wiped her eyes, and considered what to do.

  She could try running away, taking shelter elsewhere. Rumors told that all was not in perfect harmony among the Six. So far, she had obeyed Cambel's request not to blab the story of her origins. But Rety wondered-might some urrish or qheuen faction pay for the information? Or invite her to live among them?

  It's said the urs sometimes let a chosen human ride upon their backs, when the human's light enough, and worthy.

  Rety tried to picture life among the galloping clans, roaming bold and free across the open plains with wind blowing through her hair.

  Or
what about going to sea with hoons? There were islands nobody had ever set foot on, and flying fish, and floating mountains made of ice. What an adventure that would be! Then there were the traeki of the swamps . . .

  A new thought abruptly occurred to her. Another option that suddenly appeared to lie open. One so amazing to contemplate that she just lay there silently for several duras, hands unclenching at last from their tightly clutched fists. Finally, she sat up, pondering with growing excitement a possibility beyond any other ambition she had ever conceived.

  The more she thought about it, the better it began to seem.

  XI. THE BOOK OF THE SEA

  Animals think nothing of race, clan, or

  philosophy.

  Nor of beauty, ethics, or investment

  in things that will long outlast their lives.

  All that matters to beasts is the moment.

  All that counts is self.

  Mates, offspring, siblings, and hive-consorts,

  All these offer continuity of self.

  To even a loving beast, altruism has deep roots,

  founded in self-interest.

  Sapient beings are not beasts.

  Royalty binds even the innately egotistic

  to things nobler, more abstract,

  than mere continuity, or self.

  To race, clan, or philosophy.

  To beauty, ethics, or investment

  in fruits you and 1 will never harvest.

  If you seek the downward trail, the long

  road to redemption--

  If you want a second chance, shriven of your

  grief and worry--

  Seek that path by returning to the soil,

  In forgetfulness of race, clan, or philosophy.

  Yet beware! Lest the road take you too far.

  Keep faith in something greater than you are.

  Beware resumed obsession with the self.

  To those who have tasted vacuum and stardust,

  that way lies damnation.

  -- The Scroll of Redemption

  Alvin's Tale

  THE OTHERS ARE ASLEEP NOW. IT'S LATE, BUT I want to get all this down, 'cause things are about to get busy and I don't know when I'll have another chance.

  Tomorrow we head back down the mountain, loaded with all kinds of gear lent to us by Uriel the Smith-so much good stuff that we're feeling pretty dumb right now about our former plans.

  To think, we were willing to trust our lives to some of the junk we designed!

  Uriel already sent messages to our parents, calligraphed on heavy cloth paper and sealed with her signet as a sage of the Commons. So there's not much Huck's folks or mine can do to stop us.

  Kot that I looked forward to facing them, anyway. What would I say? "Hey, Pop. It'll be just like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea/ Remember how often you read it to me, when I was little?"

  I recall now how that tale ended for Captain Nemo's submarine crew, and I can see why Yowg-wayuo regrets what a humicker I've become. If my father confronts me over this, I'll discuss it in a language other than Anglic, to show that I really have thought it out several ways. This trip is more than a passing kid-obsession but something meaningful for our village and our race. Me and the others are going to make history. It's important for a hoon to be involved, from notion to motion to recollection.

  Once she decided, Uriel really got things rolling. Pincer-Tip headed out the very same evening after Ziz was vlenned, taking the newly budded traeki to his home hive for water-adapting in the tidepools south of Wuphon. Pincer will also use the smith's authority to hire some red-shelled cousins to haul the bathy's wooden hull to a meeting point down near the Rift. The rest of us will come overland with supply wagons.

  Test dives start in just five days!

  The choice of a site was vital. There's just one place where the Midden's deep watery trench plunges like a scythe blade toward the coast. Where it sends a deep rupture of jagged canyons passing right next to Terminus Rock. By deploying a boom from an overhanging ledge, we won't even need to hire a ship.

  It's a relief to have a decision made at last. Even Huck admits the die is cast, accepting destiny with a shrugged rubbing of two eyestalks.

  "At least we'll be right there at the border, where I want to be anyway. When we finish, Uriel will owe us. She'll have to write us a warrant to go over the line and visit some Buyur ruins."

  There's an Anglic word-tenacity-that comes out as stubbornness when I translate into GalSix. Which is one more reason why human speech best describes my pal Huck.

  All of us, even Ur-ronn, are more than a little surprised by how Uriel is throwing resources at our "little adventure" all of a sudden. We talked about the smith's outbreak of helpfulness during our last evening on Mount Guenn, after a long day spent packing crates and going over inventory lists, waiting for the factory complex to settle down for the night.

  "It nust have to do with the starshifs," Ur-ronn said, lifting her muzzle from the straw of her sleeping pallet.

  Huck turned two stalks toward Ur-ronn-leaving just one buried in her well-thumbed copy of Lord Valen-. tine's Castle. She groaned. "Not that again! What in the world could our dumbass little diving trip have to do

  with Galactic cruisers coming to Jijo? Don't you think Uriel would have more important things on her mind?"

  "Vut Gyfz said, a week ago-"

  "Why not just admit you overheard Gybz wrong? We asked er again today, and that traeki doesn't recall seeing any spaceships."

  "Not that traeki," I corrected. "We never had a chance to ask Gybz anything, before the vlenning. It's Tyugwho said er doesn't remember."

  "Tyug, Gybz. The difference can't be that great. Not even a vlenned traeki would forget something like that!"

  I wasn't so sure about that. Traeki memory wax can be tricky stuff, I hear.

  Then again, I'm hardly ever as sure of anything as Huck is of everything.

  Of course, there was one other person we could ask, but in the course of stowing gear and going over plans, I guess the fiery old smith dazzled us out of bringing the subject up. Intimidated may be a better word, though I'm not sure, since I'm writing this by candlelight without my handy dictionary. All during the last few days, Uriel galloped from her normal duties, to talks with her human guest, to tending her precious hall of disks, to flooding us with more details we never thought of during a'1 our long months planning an undersea adventure-a voyage none of us ever really expected to come true. In all the rushing about, there never seemed time to raise other questions. Or else Uriel made it plain that some things weren't any of our business.

  At one point I did try to ask about all the changes she had made in our plan.

  "We always figured on starting by exploring the shallows near home. Then redesign and refit before trying deeper water from a boat. Maybe going down ten or twenty cords. Now you're talking about doing thirty, right from the start!"

  "Thirty cords is not so very nuch," Uriel dismissed with a snort. "Oh, I agree that your old air circulators wouldn't have veen uf to it. That's why I reflaced the systen with a suferior one we had on hand. Also, your gaskets would have leaked. As for the hull itself, your design will do."

  I couldn't help wondering-where did all the equipment come from? We hadn't figured on needing a gas pressure regulator, for instance. Good thing Uriel pointed out the mistake and happened to have a beautiful handmade one in stock. But why did she already have one? Why would even the Smith of Guenn Volcano need such a thing?

  Huck admitted, it wasn't hurting our chances to have Uriel's competence behind us. Yet I worried. An air of mystery shrouded the enterprise.

  "All will ve nade clear when you get to the Rock, and everything is ready to go. I'll check the gear out nyself, then I'll exflain what you can do for ne."

  Barring day trips to Wuphon, Uriel hardly ever left her forge. Now she wanted to take two weeks off, adventuring with us? Never in my life has a single piece of news struck me the way that one did-at o
nce both reassuring and terrifying. Perhaps my nick-namesake felt the same way when, exploring the deep catacombs under Bias-par, he found something unimaginable, a mystery tunnel leading all the way to faraway Lys.

  So there we were, Huck, Ur-ronn, and me, all packed up and ready to set off in the morn, on an exploit that would either make us famous or kill us. Before that, though, there was one bit of business we had to take care of. We waited till night settled fully over Mount Guenn, when sunshine no longer filled the hundred clever sky-lights, leaving nothing to compete with the lava pools and glowing forges. The ore buckets and casting furnaces went silent and laborers downed tools. Soon after evening meal, seven gongs clanged, summoning urrish workers to perform their ritual grooming before settling down to sleep.

  Ur-ronn didn't like moving about at that hour-what urs does?-but she knew there was no other choice. So we set forth single file from the warehouse chamber where Urdonnol had us barracked, picking our way without lanterns. Huck led, with two eyestalks stretched

  ahead as she spun quickly along a swooping stone ramp. The eyes facing backward seemed to glare at us each time she passed under a sky-duct, catching glimmers of moonlight.

  "Come on, you guys! You're so jeekee slow!"

  Ur-ronn muttered, "Who had to carry her across rock-fields for three days, when we went exfloring the Yootir Caves? I still have sfoke scars in ny flanks."

  An exaggeration. I know how tough urrish hide is. Still. Huck does have a way of recalling only whatever seems convenient at the time.

  She had to stop and wait, huffing impatiently, at intersections to let Ur-ronn show the way. Soon that meant exiting the warren of underground passages and following a trail of pounded pumice across a rocky plain that looked even more eerily alien, more starkly un-Jijoan, by night than it did by day. In fact, we were crossing terrain much like pictures I've seen of Earth's moon.