Brightness Reef

by David Brin

  Ur-ronn was getting over her funk. "A g'Kek accountant inventories the forge warehouse regularly. He'd notice anything as un-urrish as a suvnarine, just lying around, ready to ve used."

  Her voice was sarcastic. Yet Huck agreed.

  "The difficult parts were there, the pumps and valves and gaskets. I'm sure Uriel and her predecessors figured they could whip up a hull and the rest in a matter of

  months. Who ever expected an emergency to strike so quick? Besides, we bunch of crazy kids offered a perfect cover story. No one will associate us with god-caches from the Galactic past."

  "I prefer to think," Pincer interjected, with a dramatically miffed tone of voice, "that the real reason Uriel begged pretty-please to be allowed to join our team was the superior design and craftsmanship of our ship-hip."

  We quit bickering to stare at him for a moment-then laughter filled the tiny cabin, making the hull vibrate and waking Huphu from her nap.

  The four of us felt better then, ready to get on with the mission. The hard part was over, it appeared. All we had to do now was order Ziz to attach a clamp to the cord on the jack's other side and signal Uriel to haul away. There would then be a long wait while we slowly rose up toward the surface, since g'Keks and urs are even more likely than humans to get the bends if air pressure changes too rapidly. From books we knew it's an awful way to die, so a tedious ascent was an accepted necessity. We had all packed snacks, as well as personal articles to help pass the time.

  Still, I was anxious to get on with it. Claustrophobia was nothing compared with the ordeal that would commence when everyone onboard-each in his or her unique way-started feeling the need to go, as some Earthling books politely put it, "to the bathroom."

  There would be, it seemed, one slight difficulty in clamping on to the second cord.

  We saw the problem at once, upon rolling around to look at the Jack's other side.

  The second cord was missing.

  Or rather, it had been cut. Fresh-looking metal fibers waved gently in the subsea currents, hanging like an unbraided urrish tail from one of the jack's spiky ends.

  Nor was that all. When Ur-ronn cast our beams across the ocean floor, we saw a wavy trail in the mud, meandering south, in which direction the cord apparently had been dragged. None of us knew how to tell if this was done days, or jaduras, or years ago. But the word recent came to mind. No one had to say it aloud.

  Electric sparks flashed as Ur-ronn reported the situation to those waiting in the world of air and light. Surprise was evident in a long delay. Then an answer came back down, crackling pulses across the tiny spark gap.

  If in good health, follow trail for two cables, then report.

  Huck muttered. "As if we've got any choice, with Uriel controlling the winch. Like a little case of narcosis or the cramp-jitters would make a difference to her?"

  This time, Ur-ronn didn't turn around, but both tails switched Huck's torso sharply, just below the neckline.

  "Ahead one half, Alvin," Pincer commanded. With a sigh, I bent over to begin again.

  So we set forth, keeping one beam focused on the snake-trail through the mud, while Ur-ronn cast the other searchlight left and right, up and down. Not that seeing a threat in advance would give us any kind of useful warning. There was never a vessel as unarmed, slow, and helpless as Wuphon's Dream. That severed cord we had seen-it had been made by beings using Galactic technology, intended to survive millennia underwater and still retain immense strength. Whatever had sliced it apart wasn't anything I wanted to make angry.

  A deeper, more solemn mood filled the cabin as we crept onward. After cranking for more than a midura against the ever-changing traction of slippery muck, my arms and back were starting to feel the stinging tingle of second-stage fatigue. I was too tired to umble. Behind me, Huphu expressed her boredom by rummaging through my backpack, tearing open a package of pish fish sandwiches, nibbling part of it and scattering the rest through the bilge. Splashing noises and a wet tickling on my toe-pads told of water accumulating down there- whether.from excess humidity, or some slow leak, or our own disgusting wastes, I didn't care to guess. The aroma inside was starting to get both complex and pretty damn ripe. I was fighting another onset of confinement dread when Pincer let out a shrill yell.

  "Alvin, stop! Back up! I mean engines back full!"

  I wish I could report that I saw what caused this outburst, but my view was blocked by frenzied silhouettes. Besides, I had my hands full fighting the momentum of the crank, which seemed determined to keep turning in the same direction despite me, driving the wheels ever forward. I held the wooden rods in a strangle grip and heaved with all my might, feeling something pop in my spine. Finally, I managed to slow the axles, then at last bring them to a stop. But for all my grunting effort, I could not make them turn the other way.

  "I'm getting a list!" Huck announced. "Tilting forward and to port."

  "I didn't see it coming!" Pincer cried out. "We were climbing a little hill, then it just came out of nowhere, I swear!"

  Now I could feel the tilt. The Dream was definitely tipping forward even as Huck frantically pumped ballast aft. The eik beams seemed to flail around the darkness up ahead, offering an unsettling view of yawning emptiness where before there had been a gently sloping plain.

  I finally managed to get the crank turning backward, but any sense of victory was short-lived. One of the magnetic clutches-attached to a wheel salvaged from Huck's aunt, I believe-gave way. The remaining roller bit hard into the mud, with the effect of abruptly slewing us sideways.

  The beams now swung along the lip of the precipice we were poised upon. Apparently, what we had thought was the main floor of the Rift had been but a shelf along the outskirts of the actual trench. The true gash now gaped, ready to receive us, as it had received so many other things that would never again partake in affairs up where stars glittered bright.

  So many dead things, and we were about to join them.

  "Shall I cut ballast?" Huck asked, frantically. "I can cut ballast. Pull the signal cord to have Ziz inflate. I can do it! Shall I do it?"

  I reached out and took two eyestalks, gently stroking them in the calming way I had learned over the years. She wasn't making any sense. The weight of all the steel hawser we trailed was greater than a few bricks slung under the belly of Wuphon's Dream. If we cut the hawser too, we might rise all right. But then what would keep the air hose from tangling and snapping as we spun and tumbled? Even if it miraculously survived, unsnarled, we would shoot up like the bullet-ship in Verne's First Men in the Moon. Even Pincer would probably die of the bends.

  More practical with death looming before us, Ur-ronn fired off rapid spark-pulses, telling Uriel to yank us home without delay. Good idea. But how long would it take, I wondered, for the crew above to haul in all the slack? How fast could they do it without risking a crimp in the air hose? How far might we fall before two opposite pulls met in a sudden jerk? That moment of truth would be when we discovered just how well we'd built the Dream.

  Helplessly, I felt the wheels lose contact with the muddy shelf as our brave little bathy slid over the edge, starting a long languid fall into darkness.

  That, I guess, would be a nice, dramatic place to end a chapter, with our heroes tumbling into the black depths. A true-to-life cliff-hanger.

  Will the crew ever make it home again?

  Will they survive?

  Yeah, that'd make a good stopping point. What's more, I'm tired and hurting. I need to call for help, so I can make it to the bucket in the corner of this dank place and get some relief.

  But I won't stop there. I know a better place, just a bit farther down the stream of time, as Wuphon's Dream slowly fell, rotating round and round, and we watched the eik beams sweep a cliff face that rose beside us like the wall of an endless tomb. Our tomb.

  We dropped half of our ballast, which helped slow the plunge-till a current yanked ahold of the Dream, dragging us faster. We dropped the remainder but knew our sole cha
nce lay in Uriel reacting perfectly, and then a hundred other things working better than there was any hope of them working.

  Each of us was coming to terms with death in our own way, alone, facing the approaching end of our personal drama.

  I missed my parents. I mourned along with them, for my loss was in many ways as bitter to me as it would be to them, though I wouldn't have to endure for years the sorrow they'd carry, on account of my foolish need for adventure. I stroked and umbled Huphu, while Ur-ronn whistled a plains lament and Huck drew all four eyes together, looking inward, I supposed, at her life.

  Then, out of nowhere, Pincer shouted a single word that overrode the keening of our fears. A word we had heard from his vents before, too many times, but never quite like this. Never with such tones of awe and wonder.

  "Monsters-ers-ers!" he yelled.

  Then, with rising terror and joy, he cried it out again. "Monsters!"

  No one has come to answer my call. I'm stuck lying here with a back that won't bend and a terrible need for that bucket. My pencil is worn down and I'm almost out of paper ... so while I'm waiting I might as well push on to the real dramatic moment of our fall.

  All was confusion inside Wuphon's Dream as we plunged toward our doom. We tumbled left and right, banging against the inner hull, against cranks, handles, levers, and each other. The view outside, when I could see past my wildly gesturing comrades, was a jumbled confusion of phosphorescent dots caught in the eik beams, plus occasional glimpses of a rising cliff face, and then quick flashes of something else.

  Something-or some things-lustrous and gray. Agile, flitting movements. Then curious strokings, rubbing our vessel's hull, followed by sharp raps and bangs all along the flanks of our doomed boat.

  Pincer kept babbling about monsters. I honestly thought he'd gone crazy, but Ur-ronn and Huck had changed their wailing cries and were leaning toward the glass, as if transfixed by what they saw. It was all so noisy, and Huphu was clawing my aching backside between frenzied attacks on the walls.

  I felt sure I made out Huck saying something like-

  "What-or who-could they possibly be?"

  That's when the whirling shapes divided, vanishing to both sides as a new entity arrived, causing us all to gasp.

  It was huge, many times the size of our bathy, and it swam with easy grace, emitting a growl as it came. From my agonizing prison at the back, I could not make out much except two great eyes that seemed to shine far brighter than our failing eik beams.

  And its mouth. I recall seeing that all too well, as it spread wide, rushing to meet us.

  The hull groaned, and there were more sharp bangs. Ur-ronn yelped as a needle spray of water jetted inward, ricocheting back at me.

  Numb with fear, I could not stop my whirling brain long enough to have a single clear thought, only a storm of notions.

  These were Buyur ghosts, I guessed, come to punish living fools who dared invade their realm.

  They were machines, cobbled together from relics and remnants that had tumbled into the Rift since long before the Buyur, in epochs so old, even the Galactics no longer recalled.

  They were home-grown sea monsters. Jijo's own. Products of the world's most private place.

  These and other fancies flashed through my muddled brain as I watched, unable to look away from those terrible onrushing jaws. The Dream buffeted and bucked-in sea currents, I now suppose, but at the time it felt she was struggling to get away.

  The jaws swept around us. A sudden surge brought us hurtling to one side. We hit the interior of the great beast's mouth, crashing with such force that the beautiful glass bubble cracked. Frosted patterns spread from the point of impact. Ur-ronn wailed, and Huck rolled her eyestalks tight, like socks going in a drawer.

  I grabbed Huphu, ignoring her tearing claws, and took a deep breath of stale air. It was awful stuff, but I figured it would be my last chance.

  The window gave up at the same moment the air hose snapped.

  The dark waters of the Rift found their rapid way into our shattered ship.

  XXIV. THE BOOK OF THE SLOPE

  Legends

  It took twenty years to recover the first human band of sooners--a sizeable group who fled to the scrublands south of the vale, rejecting the Covenant of Exile that their leaders had signed, just before the Tabernacle went tumbling to the depths. They risked both desolation and the law in order to get away, and had to be dragged back, shuddering in dread, all because they could not bring themselves to trust hoon or traeki.

  In retrospect this seems so ironic, since it was qheuens and urs who caused human settlers grief during two subsequent centuries of war. Why then did so many Earthlings fear the peaceful ringed ones, or our cheerful friends with the broad shoulders and booming voices? The star-cousins of both traeki and hoon must have seemed quite different when our ancestors' first starships emerged onto the lanes of Galaxy Four.

  Unfortunately, most galactology records burned in the Great Fire. But other accounts tell of relentless hostility by mighty, enigmatic star-lords calling themselves Jophur, who took a leading role in the Sequestration of Mudaun. That fearsome atrocity led directly to the Tabernacle exodus--an outrage executed with single-minded precision and utter resoluteness. Traits not often observed in traeki here on the Slope.

  It is also said that hoon were at Mudaun, portrayed in the accounts as dour, officious, unhappy beings. A race of stern accountants, dedicated to population control and tabulating the breeding rates of other races, unswayed by appeals to mercy or forbearance.

  Could anyone recognise, in these descriptions, the two most easy-going members of the Six?

  No wonder hoon and traeki seem the least prone to nostalgia about good old days, back when they new about as gods of space.

  --Annals of the Jijoan Commons

  Sara

  WITH DAWN BLEACHING THE EASTERN SKY, weary travelers trudged into Uryutta's Oasis after a long night march across the parched Warril Plain--a teeming, thirsty crowd of donkeys and simlas, humans and hoon. Even urrish pilgrims stepped daintily to the muddy shore and dipped their narrow heads, wincing at the bitter, unmasked taste of plain water.

  Full summer had broken over the high steppe, when hot winds ignited rings of circle grass, sending herds stampeding amid clouds of dust. Even before the present crisis, wayfarers avoided the summer sun, preferring the cool moonlight for travel. Urrish guides bragged they would know the plain blindfolded.

  That's fine for them, Sara thought, swishing her aching feet in the oasis spring. An urs doesn't fall on her face when a chance stone turns underfoot. Me, I like to see where I'm going.

  Predawn light revealed mighty outlines to the east. The Rimmers, Sara thought. The mixed-race expedition was making good time, hurrying to reach the Glade before events there reached a climax. On the plus side, she was anxious to see her brothers, and to learn how well Bloor was implementing her idea. There might also be medical help for her ward, the Stranger, if it seemed safe to reveal him to the aliens. A big if. Nor had she quite given up on getting to see one of the fabled library consoles of the Great Galactics.

  Yet there was also much to fear. If the star-gods did plan on wiping out all witnesses, it would surely start at the Glade. Above all, Sara worried that she might be taking the Stranger into the hands of his enemies. The dark, ever-cheerful man seemed eager to go, but did he really understand what was involved?

  A whistling sigh fluted from Pzora's corrugated cone, as the traeki siphoned water from the pond, fatigued despite having ridden all the way in a donkey-drawn chariot. A new rewq draped across Pzora's sensor ring, one of two Sara had bought from the fresh supply at Kandu Landing, to help the traeki pharmacist treat the wounded alien, even though she wasn't keen on the symbionts herself.

  A chain of bubbles broke the surface near Sara's foot. By Loocen's silver light, she made out Blade, from Dolo Village, resting underwater. The hasty trek had been hard on red qheuens, and blues like Blade, as well as those humans too b
ig to burden a donkey. Sara had been allowed to mount every even-numbered midura. Even so, her body ached. Serves me right for leading a bookish, cloistered life, she thought.

  A raucous cheer rose up where urrish donkey-drivers piled grass and dung to make a campfire. Simla blood was drained into a tureen, followed by chopped meat, and soon they were slurping tepid sanguinary stew, lifting their long necks to swallow, then bending for more--sinuous silhouettes whose rise and fall was eerily accompanied by the Stranger's plinking dulcimer. Meanwhile a hoon cook, proud of her multirace cuisine, banged pots and sprinkled powders until spicy aromas finally overcame the stench of roast simla, restoring even Sara's queasy appetite.

  A little while later, full dawn revealed stunning tan-and-green mountains towering across the eastern horizon. The Stranger laughed as he worked shirtless, helping Sara and the other humans do a typical camp-chore assigned to Earthlings--erecting shelters of g'Kek blur cloth, to shade travelers and beasts through the blazing day. The star-man's muteness seemed no handicap at working with others. His pleasure at being alive affected all those around him, as he taught the others a wordless song to help pass the time.

  Two more days, Sara thought, glancing up toward the pass. We're almost there.

  The oasis was named for a nomad warrior who had lived soon after urrish settlement on Jijo, when their numbers were still small, and their planet-bound crafts pitifully crude. In those olden times, Uryutta fled east from the rich grazing lands of Znunir, where her tribal chiefs had vowed fealty to mighty Gray Queens. Uryutta led her fellow rebels to this wadi in the vast dry plain, to nurse their wounds and plot a struggle for freedom from qheuen dominance.

  Or so went the legend Sara heard that afternoon, after sleeping through the hottest part of the day--a slumber during which she had dreamed vaguely of water, cool and clear, raising a terrible thirst. She slaked it at the spring, then rejoined the other travelers under the big tent for another meal.