Brightness Reef

Alvin’s Tale

All right, so i’m not as quick as some. I’ll never think as fast as Huck, who can run verbal circles around me.

It’s just as well, I guess. I could’ve grown up in this little hoon port thinking I was such a clever fellow — as witty and gloss as my literary nicknamesake — just ’cause I can read any Anglic book and fancy myself a writer. Good thing I had this little g’Kek genius living in the khuta next door, to remind me that an above-average hoon is still a hoon. Dull as a brick.

Anyway, there I was, squatting between two of my best friends while they fussed over what we should do with the coming summer, and it never occurred to me that both Huck and Pincer were ring-coring me at more than one level.

Pincer only spent a few duras trying to tell us about his latest “monsters” — grayish shapes he thought he glimpsed through the murk, while bored, tending his hive’s lobster pens. He’s pulled that one on us so many times, we wouldn’t listen if he brought us a molar from Moby Dick, with a peg leg jammed like a toothpick on one end. Sighing from all five vents at once, he gave up babbling about his latest sighting, and switched over to defending his Project Nautilus.

Pincer was upset to learn that Huck wanted to abandon the scheme. Legs lifted on opposite sides of his hard shell, hissing like tubes on a calliope.

“Look, we already agreed-deed. We just gotta finish the bathy, or else what’ve we been working-king on for a year now-ow!”

“You did most of the carpentry and testing,” I pointed out. “Huck and I mostly drew up plans for—”

“Exactly!” Huck interrupted, two eyes bobbing for emphasis. “Sure, we helped with designs and small parts. That was fun. But I never signed on to actually ride the dam’ thing to the bottom of the sea.”

Pincer’s blue cupola lifted all the way up, and his slit-of-eyes seemed to spin. “But you said it was interesting-ing! You called the idea uttergloss-loss!”

“True,” Huck agreed. “In theory, it’s totally puff. But there’s one problem, friend. It’s also jeekee dangerous.”

Pincer rocked back, as if the thought had never occurred to him. “You… never said anything about that before.”

I turned to look at Huck. I don’t think I ever heard her speak that word till then. Dangerous. In all our adventures growing up, she always seemed the one ready to take a chance, sometimes daring the rest of us with cutting taunts, the way only a g’Kek can on those rare occasions when they put away politeness and try to be nasty. With Huck an orphan, and Ur-ronn and Pincer coming from low-kay races, no one was going to miss them much if they died. So it normally fell on me to be the voice of caution — a role I hated.

“Yeah,” Huck said. “Well, maybe it’s time someone pointed out the difference between taking a calculated risk and committing flat-out suicide. Which is what it’d be if we ever took a ride aboard that contraption of yours, Pincer!”

Our poor qheuenish friend looked like someone had stuck him in a leg-vent with a stick. His cupola went all wobbly. “You all know-ow I’d never ask my friends-ends—”

“To go anywhere you wouldn’t go?” Huck retorted. “Big of you, since you’re talking about dragging us around underwater, where you’re built to be perfectly comfortable.”

“Only at first-irst!” Pincer retorted. “After some test dives, we’ll go deeper. And I’ll be in there with you, taking all the same chances-ances!”

“Come on, Huck,” I put in. “Give the poor guy’s shell a buff.”

“Anyway-ay,” Pincer retaliated, “what about your plan? At least the bathy would be lawful and upright. You want to break the rules and do sooner stuff-uff!”

Now it was Huck’s turn to go defensive. “What sooner stuff? None of us can breed with each other, so there’s no chance of committing that crime while we’re over the border. Anyhow, hunters and inspectors go beyond the markers.”

“Sure. With permission from the sages-ages!”

Huck shrugged two stalks, as if to say she couldn’t be bothered with petty legalistic details. “I still prefer a misdemeanor over flat-out suicide.”

“You mean you prefer a silly little trip to some broken-down Buyur ruin, just to read boring ol’ wall markings-ings, over a chance to see the Midden-idden? And real live monsters?”

Huck groaned and spun a disgusted circle. Earlier, Pincer had told us about a thing he glimpsed that morning, in the shallows south of town. Something with silvery-bright scales swooped by, he swore, flapping what looked in the murky distance like underwater wings. After hearing similar stories almost since Pincer’s molting day, we didn’t give this one a lot of credit.

That was when both of them turned to me to decide!

“Remember, Alvin,” Huck crooned. “You just promised—”

“You promised me, months ago!” Pincer cried, so avid that he didn’t stutter.

Right then I felt like a traeki standing between two piles of really ripe mulch. I liked the notion of getting to see the deep Midden, where everything slick and Galactic had gone since the Buyur went away. An undersea adventure like in books by Haller or Verne.

On the other hand, Huck was right about Pincer’s plan being Ifni-spit. The risk might seem worth it to a low-kay qheuen, who didn’t even know for sure who his mother was, but I know my folks would sicken awful if I went off and died without leaving even my heart-spine behind for soul-grinding and vuphyning.

Anyway, Huck offered a prospect almost as gloss — to find writings even more ancient than the books humans brought to Jijo. Real Buyur stories, maybe. The idea set off tingles in my sucker pads.

As it turns out, I was spared having to decide. That’s because my noor, Huphu, arrived right then, darting under Pincer’s legs and Huck’s wheels, yapping something about an urgent message from Ur-ronn.

Ur-ronn wanted to see us.

More than that — she had a big surprise to share.

Oh, yes. Huphu needs introducing.

First off, she’s not really my noor. She hangs around me a lot, and my rumble-umbles seem to work, getting her to do what I want a good part of the time. Still, it’s kind of hard to describe the relationship between hoon and noor. The very word — relationship — implies a lot of stuff that’s just not there. Maybe this is one of those cases where Anglic’s flexibility, usually the most utterbuff thing about it, simply falls apart into vagueness.

Anyway, Huphu’s no talker-decider. Not a sapient being, like us members of the Six. But since she comes along on most of our adventures, I guess she’s as much a part of the gang as anyone. Lots of folks say noors are crazy. For sure, they don’t seem to care if they live or die, so long as they’re seeing something new. More have probably perished of curiosity than from liggers on land or sea-starks offshore. So I knew how Huphu would vote in our argument, if she could talk.

Fortunately, even Pincer knows better than to suggest ever letting her decide anything.

So there we were, arguing away, when this little noor bounds up the jetty, yipping like mad. Right off we can tell it’s,a semaphore message she’s relaying, on account of it makes sense. Noors can’t speak Galactic Two or any other language anyone’s ever grokked, but they can memorize and repeat any short mirror-flash signal they happen to pick up with their sharp eyes. They can even tell from the opener-tag who a message is for. It’s a gloss talent that’d be awfully useful — if only they did it reliably, instead of just when they felt like it.

Huphu sure must’ve felt like it, ’cause next thing you know she’s yelping the upper denotation train of a GalTwo memorandum. (I figure an old Morse code telegraph operator like Mark Twain could’ve managed GalTwo, if he tried.)

As I said before, the message was from our urrish pal, Ur-ronn, and it said — WINDOW FINISHED. COME QUICK. OTHER VERY WEIRD STUFF HAPPENING!

I put an exclamation point at the end ’cause that’s how Huphu finished reciting the bulletin she’d seen flash down from Mount Guenn, terminating her report with a bark of ecstatic excitement. I’m sure the phrase “weird stuff was what had her bounding in circles, biting at her shadow.

“I’ll get my water bag,” Pincer-Tip said after a short pause.

“I’ll fetch my goggles,” Huck added.

“I’ll grab my cloak and meet you at the tram,” I finished. There was no need for discussion. Not after an invitation like that.