Brightness Reef (25 page)

As usual, the Stranger watched with a complex mixture of surprise, delight, and sadness in his eyes. He spurned a stretcher, and went down the ramp leaning on a cane, while Pzora puffed with pride, having delivered a patient from death’s door to the expert healers of Tarek Town. While Prity went to hail a rickshaw, they observed the hoonish crew strain with block and tackle, lifting crates from the hold, many of them bound from Nelo’s paper works for various printers, scribes, and scholars. In their place, stevedores gently lowered ribboned packages, all bound from Tarek for the same destination.

Pottery shards and slag from urrish forges.

Used-up ceramic saws from qheuenish woodcarving shops.

Worn-out printers’ type and broken violin strings.

Whatever parts of the deceased that could not be counted on to rot away, such as the bones of cremated humans and urs, hoonish vertebrae, g’Kek axles, and traeki wax crystals. The glittering dust of ground-up qheuen carapaces.

And always lots of ancient Buyur junk-it all wound up on dross boats, sent to the great Midden, to be cleansed by water, fire, and time.

An urrish rickshaw driver helped them usher the injured man onto her low four-wheeled cart, while Pzora stood behind, holding the Stranger’s shoulders with two tendril-hands. “You’re sure you don’t need me to come along?” Sara asked, having second thoughts.

Pzora waved her gently away. “It is a short distance to the clinic, is it not? Have you not urgent matters to attend? Have i not our own tasks to perform? All-of-you shall meet all-of-us again, tonight. And our lucky patient will your fine selves perceive on the morrow.”

The Stranger’s dark eyes caught hers, and he smiled, patting her hand. There was no sign of his former terror of the traeki.

I guess I was wrong about his injury. He does acquire memories.

Maybe in Tarek we can find out who he is. If family or friends can be brought, they’ll help him more than I ever could. That evoked a pang, but Sara reminded herself that she was no longer a child, tending a wounded chipwing. What matters is that he’s well cared for. Now Pzora’s right. I’ve got other matters to attend.

The anarchic style of Tarek Town meant there was no one “official” at the dock to greet them. But merchants hurried to the quay, eager for their cargoes. Others came in search of news. There were rumors of horrible events up north and east. Of landings by frost-covered Zang ships, or whole towns leveled by titanic rays. Gossip told of a populace herded toward mass trials, conducted by insectoid judges from the Galactic Institute of Migration. One credulous human even argued with Jop, insisting the farmer was mistaken, since everyone knew Dolo Village was destroyed.

That explains why no boats came upstream, Sara thought. From Tarek, the intruder ship must have seemed to lay a streak of fire right over Sara’s hometown.

Rumors were a chief stock in trade of all harbors, but surely cooler heads prevailed elsewhere?

Prity signaled that all of Nelo’s crates were signed for, save the one she pulled on a wheeled dolly to be hand carried to Engril the Copier. Sara bade farewell to the other Dolo emissaries, agreeing to meet them again tonight and compare notes.

“Come, Jomah,” she told Henrik’s son, who was staring at the bustle and tumult of city life. “We’ll take you to your uncle first.”

Voices seemed subdued in the harborside market; the haggling was sullen, perfunctory. Most buyers and sellers did not even wear rewq while dickering with members of other races-a sure sign they were only going through the motions.

One shopkeeper, an elegant gray qheuen with intricate, gold-fleck shell decorations, held up two claw-hands and counted nine jagged toe-pads, indicating by a slant of her cupola that it was her final offer. The trader, a rustic-looking red, hissed in dismay, gesturing at the fine salt crystals she had brought all the way from the distant sea. While passing, Sara overheard the city qheuen’s reply.

“Quality or amount, what difference does it make? The price, why should you or I care?”

The answer shocked Sara. An urbane gray, indifferent over a commercial transaction? The locals must be in a state, all right.

As if we in Dolo were any better?

Townsfolk mostly gathered in small groups, gossiping in dialects of their own kind. Many of the hoons carried iron-shod canes-usually a perquisite of captains- while urrish tinkers, herders, and traders kept close to their precious pack beasts. Each urs carried an ax or machete sheathed at her withers, useful tools in the dry woods and plains where they dwelled.

So why did the sight make Sara feel edgy?

Come to think of it, many humans were behaving much the same, walking in close company, armed with tools suitable for chopping, digging, hunting-or uses Sara did not want to think about. The g’Kek populace kept to their apartments and studios.

I’d better find out what’s going on, and soon, Sara thought.

It was a relief when the tense market zone ended at the glaring brightness of the Jumble.

Till now, they had walked in shade, but here an opening gaped under the shelter-canopy. Once towering structures lay in heaps, their neat geometries snapped, splintered and shoved together, giving the place its name. Scummy fluid shimmered between the shattered stones, where oily bubbles formed and popped, relics of a time when this place was caustic, poisonous, and ultimately restoring.

Jomah shaded his eyes. “I don’t see it,” he complained.

Sara resisted an impulse to pull him back out of the light. “See what?”

“The spider. Isn’t it s’pozed to be here, in the middle?”

“This spider’s dead, Jomah. It died before it could do much more than get started. That’s why Tarek Town isn’t just another swamp full of chewed-up boulders, like we have east of Dolo.”

“I know that. But my father says it’s still here.”

“It is,” she agreed. “We’ve been passing beneath it ever since the boat docked. See all those cables overhead? Even the ramps and ladders are woven from old mule-spider cords, many of them still living, after a fashion.”

“But where’s the spider?”

“It was in the cables, Jomah.” She motioned toward the crisscrossing web, twining among the towers. “United, they made a life form whose job was to demolish this old Buyur place. But then one day, before even the g’Kek came to Jijo, this particular spider got sick. The vines forgot to work together. When they went wild, the spider was no more.”

“Oh.” The boy pondered this awhile, then he turned around. “Okay, well there’s another thing I know is around here-“

“Jomah,” Sara began, not wanting to squelch the child, who seemed so much like Dwer at that age. “We have to get-“

“I heard it’s here near the Jumble. I want to see the horse.”

“The ho-“ Sara blinked, then exhaled a sigh. “Oh! Well, why not. If you promise we’ll go straight to your uncle’s, right after. Yes?”

The boy nodded vigorously, slinging his duffel again.

Sara picked up her own bag, heavy with notes from her

research. Prity wheeled the dolly behind.

Sara pointed. “It’s this way, near the entrance to Earthtown.”

Ever since the Gray Queens’ menacing catapults were burned, Tarek Town had been open to all races. Still, each of the Six had a favored section of town, with humans holding the fashionable south quarter, due to wealth and prestige generated by the book trade. The three of them walked toward that district under a shaded loggia that surrounded the Jumble. The arching trellises bloomed with fragrant bowlflowers, but even that strong scent was overwhelmed as they passed the sector where urs traders kept their herds. Some unmated urrish youths loitered by the entrance. One lowered her head, offering a desultory snarl at Sara.

Suddenly, all the urs lifted their long necks in the same direction, their short, furry ears quivering toward a distant rumble that came rolling from the south. Sara’s reflex thought was thunder. Then a shiver of concern coursed her spine as she turned to scan the sky.

Can it be happening again?

Jomah took her arm and shook his head. The boy listened to the growling echo with a look of professional interest. “It’s a test. I can tell. No muffling from confinement or mass loading. Some exploser is checking his charges.”

She muttered-“How reassuring.” But only compared to the brief, fearsome thought of more god-ships tearing across the heavens.

The young urs were eyeing them again. Sara didn’t like the look in their eyes.

“All right then, Jomah. Let’s go see the horse.”

The Statuary Garden lay at the Jumble’s southern end. Most of the “art works” were lightly scored graffiti, or crude caricatures scratched on stone slabs during the long centuries when literacy was rare on the Slope. But some rock carvings were stunning in their abstract intricacy-such as a grouping of spherical balls, like clustered grapes, or a jagged sheaf of knifelike spears, jutting at pugnacious angles-all carved by the grinding teeth of old-time gray matriarchs who had lost dynastic struggles during the long qheuenish reign and were chained in place by victorious rivals, whiling away their last days under a blazing sun.

A sharply realistic bas relief, from one of the earliest eras, lay etched on a nearby pillar. Slow subsidence into corrosive mud had eaten away most of the frieze. Still, in several spots one could make out faces. Huge bulging eyes stared acutely from globelike heads set on bodies that reared upward with supple forelegs raised, as if straining against the verdict of destiny. Even after such a long time, the eyes seemed somehow lit with keen intelligence. No one on Jijo had seen expressions of such subtlety or poignancy on a glaver’s face for a very long time.

In recent years, Tarek’s verdant canopy had been diverted over this part of the Jumble, putting most of the carvings under shade. Even so, orthodox zealots sometimes called for all the sculptures to be razed. But most citizens reasoned that Jijo already had the job in hand. The mule-spider’s ancient lake still dissolved rock, albeit slowly. These works would not outlive the Six themselves.

Or so we thought. It always seemed we had plenty of time.

“There it is!” Jomah pointed excitedly. The boy dashed toward a massive monument whose smooth flanks appeared dappled by filtered sunshine. Humanity’s Sacrifice was its title, commemorating the one thing men and women had brought with them to Jijo that they esteemed above all else, even their precious books.

Something they renounced forever, as a price of peace.

The sculpted creature seemed poised in the act of bounding forward, its noble head raised, wind brushing its mane. One had but to squint and picture it in motion, as graceful in full gallop as it was powerful. Mentioned lovingly in countless ancient human tales, it was one of the great legendary wonders of old Earth. The memorial always moved Sara.

“It isn’t like a donkey at all!” Jomah gushed. “Were horses really that big?”

Sara hadn’t believed it herself, till she looked it up. “Yes, they got that big, sometimes. And don’t exaggerate, Jomah. Of course it looks quite a bit like a donkey. They were cousins, after all.”

Yeah, and a garu tree is related to a grickle bush.

In a hushed voice Jomah asked, “Can I climb up on top?”

“Don’t speak of that!” Sara quickly looked around. No urrish faces were in sight, so she relented a little and shook her head. “Ask your uncle. Maybe he’ll take you down here at night.”

Jomah looked disappointed. “I bet you’ve been up there, haven’t you?”

Sara almost smiled. She and Dwer had indeed performed the ritual when they were teens, late on a chill winter’s eve, when most urs were snug among their wallow mates. No triple-eyes, then, to grow inflamed at a sight that so enraged them for the first century after Earthlings landed-that of human beings magnified by symbiosis with a great beast that could outrun any urs. Two creatures, amplified into something greater than either one alone.

They thought, after the second war, that it would put us down forever to demand all the horses, then wipe the species out.

I guess they learned different.

Sara shook off the bitter, unworthy thought. It all happened so long ago, before the Great Peace or the coming of the Egg. She glanced up past the stone figure and the flower-draped skeleton of the ancient Buyur town, toward a cloud-flecked sky. They say when poison falls from heaven, its most deadly form will be suspicion.

The Explosers Guild occupied a building whose formal name was Tower of Chemistry, but that most Tareki-ans called the Palace of Stinks. Tubes of treated boo climbed the spire’s flank like parasitic vines, puffing and steaming so the place vaguely resembled Pzora after a hard day in the pharmacy. Indeed, after humans, traeki were most numerous among those passing through the front portal, or riding a counterweighted lift to upper floors, where they helped make items coveted throughout the Slope-matches for lighting cook stoves, oils to treat qheuen shells against Itchyflake, soaps for cleaning human and hoon garments, lubricants to keep elderly g’Kek rolling after Dry-Axle set in-as well as paraffin for reading lamps, ink for writing, and many other products, all certified to leave no lasting trace in Jijo’s soil. Nothing to worsen punishment when the inevitable Day of Days came.

Despite smells that made Prity chuff in disgust, Sara felt a lightening of her spirit inside the tower. All races mixed in the lobby, without any of the cliquishness she’d seen elsewhere in town. The hustle of commerce, with crisp murmurs in the language of science, showed some folk weren’t letting the crisis drive them to gloom or hostility. There was just too much to do.

Three floors up, Explosers Hall seemed to boil with confusion. Men and boys shouted or hurried by, while guildswomen with clipboards told hoon helpers where to push barrels of ingredients. Off in a corner, gray-headed human elders bent over long tables, consulting with traeki colleagues whose hardworking secretion rings were adorned with beakers, collecting volatile drippings. What had seemed chaotic gradually resolved as Sara saw patterned order in the ferment.

This crisis may be confusing to others, but it’s what explosers have spent all their lives thinking about. In this place, the mood would be fierce dedication. It was the first justification for optimism Sara had seen.