Brightness Reef (42 page)

With some effort, he pushed the thought aside as much too vast to be grappled with right now.

“When did the Rothen reveal the truth to you . . . Danikites?”

“Longer back than you might think, Lark. Even before your ancestors headed off in their creaky junkyard star-ship, taking their foolish wild gamble in coming to this world. Soon after humanity entered interstellar space, a few men and women were chosen by the Rothen to receive the word. Those who had already been keeping faith, holding steadfast vigil. Some stayed on Earth to help guide the race in secret, while others •went off to dwell in joy among the Rothen, aiding them in their work.”

“And what work is that?”

She had a look Lark sometimes saw on the faces of those returning from pilgrimages to the Egg, on those blessed occasions when the sacred stone sang its serene harmonies. An expression of having experienced splendor.

“Why, rescuing the lost, of course. And nurturing what might-yet-be.”

Lark worried she might drift into complete mysticism. “Will we get to meet some Rothen?”

Her eyes had defocused while pondering vistas of time and space. Now they turned and glittered sharply.

“Some of you may, if you are lucky.

“In fact, a few of you may get luckier than you ever dreamed.”

Her implication set his head awhirl. Could she mean what he thought she meant?

That evening, by candlelight, he went over his calculations one more time.

From our best measurements, the starship had a volume of about half a million cubic meters. If you stacked every human on Jijo like frozen cordwood, we just might fit—providing you left no room for anything else.

The first time he had worked out the numbers, his intent was simply to dispel rumors among some younger urs and qheuens that the human settlers would soon abandon Jijo. It was physically impossible, he showed, for the youngest sept to forsake the Commons for a ticket back to the stars. At least with this ship alone.

But she said “some of you.”

Even after loading aboard hundreds of wuankworms, longsnouts, orglavers, there’d still be room for a few lost cousins. Those who had proved useful.

Lark knew a bribe when he heard one.

Much as he condemned the ancestors’ choice to come here, Lark loved this world. He would feel a pang if he ever left, and for all his days thereafter.

Yet if things were different, I’d go in a shot. Who wouldn’t?

The zealots are right. No human can be completely trusted these days. Not when any of us might be suborned. Bought with an offer to be made into a god.

In fact, he had no idea what the zealots planned. Only that they felt free to act without advice or approval from the dithering sages. There were humans in the cabal, of course. What could be accomplished without Earthling skill and lore? But men and women were excluded from the inner circle.

So what have I learned?

He looked down at a blank sheet. Surely the sages and zealots had other feelers out. Even Harullen must be hedging his bets. Still, Lark knew his words carried weight.

If Ling is telling the truth, and the zealots believe it, they might call off whatever action they planned. What do they care if a few glavers or rock-stallers are taken off-planet, so long as the intruders leave us in peace, as we were before?

But what if Ling was lying? Might the zealots lose their best chance to strike, for nothing?

On the other hand, suppose no one believed Ling, but she really was telling the truth? The zealots might attack, and fail, only to goad the very response they feared!

At the opposite extreme of radicalism from the fiery zealots, some of the most radical heretics actually favored their own destruction, along with the rest of the Six. Some hoon and urs members of Harullen’s society yearned for a time of transcendent ending-the urrish apostates because of their hot blood, and the hoon precisely because their passions stirred slowly, but once whipped, they stopped for nothing.

If our extremists think Ling’s folk haven’t the guts to do the job, they may plot to provoke genocide.’This despite his speech, urging that the Six cede their place on Jijo by consensus and birth control.

Then there was this scheme to try blackmailing the forayers. Lark had helped Bloor set up candid shots, but were the sages aware of how the scheme might backfire?

Did they think they had nothing to lose?

Lark rubbed his stubbled chin, feeling wearier than his years. What a tangled web we weave, he pondered. Then he licked the tip of his pen, dipped it in the ink, and began to write.

The Stranger

This place makes him want to laugh. It makes him want to cry. So many books—he even remembers that word for them—lay stacked high all around him, in row after mighty row, vanishing around corners or up twisty, spiral ramps. Books bound in the leather of unknown animals, filling the air with strange scents, especially when he cracks some volume taken off a shelf at random and inhales the fumes of paper and ink.

It jolts something within him, dredging up memories more effectively than anything since he regained consciousness.

Suddenly, he recalls a cabinet of books like these, in his room when he was very young . . . and that brings back the pinch and crinkling flex of paper pages, covered with bright pictures. Grown-ups did not use books very much, he remembers. Adults needed the constant flash and jangle of their machines. Machines that talked at you faster than a child was trained to hear, or cast flickering beams directly at the eyeball, filling it with facts that faded the moment you blinked. That was one reason he used to like the solid promise of paper-where a favorite story would not go away like smoke, or vanish when the info-screens went dark.

Another image leaps out from childhood—holding his mother’s hand while strolling in a public place filled with busy, important people. Several walls were rimmed with bound volumes, much like the books surrounding him right now. Big books without pictures, filled with black, unmoving dots. Filled with words and nothing else. Hardly anyone used them anymore, his mother had explained. But they were important nonetheless, as decorations lining many of the places most sacred or important to human beings.

They were reminders of something . . . of something he cannot quite recall right now. But it must have been important. That much he knows.

Perhaps it might even be possible to find a way to save her and her people.

Maybe that was what his hands had said to Prity, just a little while ago.

If so, no wonder the little chimp broke out in wry, doubtful laughter.

Patiently, he waits for the two women—Sara and Arianafoo-to finish their meetings and return for him. Passing the time, he sketches on a pad of rich, almost luminous paper, first refining some of his drawings of the machinery aboard the steamship, then trying to capture the eerie perspectives of the stone cavern where all these odd wooden buildings lay sheltered from the sky- under a cave whose roof is propped up by incredible, massive stone pillars.

A few names are coming easier now, so he knows that it is Prity who brings him a cup of water, then checks his dressing to make sure it’s still tight. Her hands seem to flutter and dance before her, then his do likewise. He watches, fascinated, as his own fingers make movements independent of his will or command. It might be frightening to behold . . . except that Prity suddenly grins broadly and slaps her knee, chuffing hoarse, appreciative chimpanzee laughter.

He feels a wash of pleasure to know his joke had pleased her. Though it puzzles and slightly miffs him that his hands never saw fit to share the humor with him.

Well, well. The hands seem to know what they are doing, and he draws some satisfaction from their work. Now they pick up the pencil once again, and he lets time slip away, concentrating on the moving pencil, and on the stretch and tilt of line and shadow. When Sara returns for him, he will be ready for whatever comes next.

Perhaps it might even be possible to find a way to save her and her people.

Maybe that was what his hands had said to Prity, just a little while ago.

If so, no wonder the little chimp broke out in wry, doubtful laughter.

Should you succeed in following

the Path of Redemption—

to be re-adopted, uplifted anew,

given a second chance—

that will not mean an end

to all your strivings.

First you must prove yourselves

as noble clients, obedient and true

to the new patrons who redeemed you.

Later you will rise in status,

and uplift clients of your own,

generously passing on the

blessings that you earned.

But then, in time, there oft

begins to glimmer a light

on the horizon of a species’ life,

hinting at other realms,

beckoning the tired, the worthy.

This is said to be a sign post.

Some will call it The Lure,

or else The Enticement.

Aeon after aeon, old ones depart,

seeking paths that younger

races can’t perceive.

They vanish from our midst,

those who find these paths.

Some call it transcendence.

Others call it death.

The Scroll of Destiny

Alvin’s Tale

ONE THING ALWAYS STRUCK ME ABOUT THE WAY tales are told in Anglic-or any of the other Earthling tongues I’ve learned-and that’s the problem of keeping up suspense.

Oh, some human authors of Twencen and Twenty-One had it down cold. There’ve been times that I stayed up three nights straight, taken with some yarn by Conrad or Cunin. What’s puzzled me, ever since I got the notion of becoming a writer myself, is how those old-timers managed it.

Take this account I’ve been scribbling lately, whenever I get a chance to lie down on this hard deck with my notebook, already gone all ragged at the corners from the places I’ve taken it, scrawling clumsy hoon-sized letters with a chewed-up pencil clutched in my fist. From the very start I’ve been telling my story in “first person”-like in a diary, only with all sorts of fancy-gloss tricks thrown in that I’ve picked up from my reading over the years.

Why first person? Well, according to Good Fiction by Anderson, that “voice” makes it a whole lot easier to present the reader with a single, solid-feeling point-of-view, even though it means my book will have to be translated if a traeki’s ever to understand it.

But the trouble with a first person chronicle is this- whether it’s real-life history or a piece of make-believe, you know the hero survived!

So during all of the events I’m about to relate, you who are reading this memoir (hopefully after I’ve had a chance to rewrite it, have a human expert fix my grammar, and pay to have it set in type) you already know that I, Alvin Hph-wayuo, son of Mu-phauwq and Yowg-wayuo of Wuphon Port, and intrepid explorer extraordinaire, simply have to escape alive the jam I’m about to describe, with at least one brain, one eye, and a hand to write it all down.

I’ve lain awake some nights, trying to see a way around this problem using some other language. There’s the GalSeven tentative case, for instance, but that doesn’t work in past-explicit tense. And the quantum-uncertain declension, in Buyur-dialect GalThree, is just too weird. Anyway, who would I be writing for? Huck’s the only other GalThree reader I know, and getting praise from her is kind of like kissing your sister.

Anyway, the waters of the Rift were all a-froth at the point where I last left our tale. The hatchet shadow of Terminus Rock cut across a patch of ocean where both hawser and hose still whirled, chopping the normally placid surface, spinning with tension energy released just moments before, by a disaster.

It was all too easy to picture what had happened to Wuphon’s Dream, our little vessel for exploring the great unknown below. In reluctant imagining I saw the hollow wooden tube-its wheels spinning uselessly, the bulbous glass nose broken-tumbling into black emptiness trailing its broken leash, carrying Ziz, the little traeki partial stack, to perdition along with it.

As if that weren’t enough, we all had fresh in memory the sight of little Huphu, our noor-beast mascot, thrown by the recoiling crane, screeching and gyrating till her tiny black figure vanished into the blue waters of the Rift. As Huck’s Earthling nicknamesake might’ve said- “It warn’t a happy sight. Nor a lucky wun.”

For a long time, everybody just stared. I mean, what could we do? Even the protestors from Wuphon Port and The Vale were silent. If any felt smug over our comeuppance as heretics, they felt wiser to withhold jubilation.

We all backed away from the ledge. What point in peering at a velvety-smooth grave?

“Retract the hawser and hose,” Urdonnol commanded. Soon the drums began rotating the other way, rewinding what had unreeled so hopefully just duras before. The same hoonish voice called out depths, only this time the numbers grew steadily smaller, and there was no great, booming enthusiasm in the throaty baritone. Finally, at two and a half cables, the hawser’s frayed end popped out of the sea, dripping water like white lymph fluid from a traeki’s wounded, dangling tentacle. Those cranking the drum sped up, eager to see what had happened.

“Acid vurn!” Ur-ronn declared in shock, when the severed end was swung onto the bluff. She lisped in anger. “Savotage!”

Urdonnol seemed reluctant to leap to conclusions, but the older urs technician kept swinging her narrow head back and forth, low and snakelike, from the burned cable to the crowd of protestors standing on the bluff, gaping at our tragedy. The urrish apprentice’s dark suspicion was clear.

“Get away from here!” Huck shouted angrily, rolling toward the dissenters, spinning up gravel with her rims. She swerved, just missing the toes of several humans and hoon, who backed off nervously. Even a couple of reds withdrew their clawed, armored legs, scuttling away a pace or two, before recalling that a flail-eyed g’Kek isn’t much physical threat to a qheuen. Then they moved forward again, hissing and clicking.