Brightness Reef

Alvin’s Tale

The Mount Guenn tram climbs a steep route from Wuphon Port all the way up to the workshops of Uriel the Smith. The railway is small and hard to see, even when you’re looking for it. Still, it’s allowed by the sages only because it’s important for getting Uriel’s forgings down to market. Also, it uses no artificial power. Water from a hot spring, high up on the mountain, pours into a tank aboard whichever car is waiting at the top station. Meanwhile, the bottom car’s tank is emptied, so it’s much lighter, even with passengers aboard. When the brake is cut, the heavier car starts down, pulling the cable, which in turn hauls the bottom car up.

It sounds gimmicky, but in fact it goes pretty fast and can even get scary for a few seconds in the middle, when the other car seems to be rushing right at you along the same set of slim wooden rails. Then you reach a split section where that car streaks past in a blur. What a thrill!

It’s a trip of over forty arrowflights, but the water’s still near boiling hot in the first car’s tank when it reaches bottom — one reason folks like it when Uriel ships her wares down to port on laundry day.

Ur-ronn says one piece of salvaged Buyur cable is what makes it all possible. A real treasure that can’t ever be replaced.

Mount Guenn was behaving itself that day, so there wasn’t much ash in the air and I didn’t really need my cloak. Huck wore her goggles anyway, one strapped over each eyebulb, and Pincer still had to spray his red cupola as the air got thinner, and Wuphon turned into a toy village under its blanket of camouflage greenery. Thick stands of lowland boo soon gave way to hedgerows of multitrunked gorreby trees, followed by tufts of feathery shrubs that got sparser as we climbed. This was not red-qheuen country. Still, Pincer was excited over the news from Ur-ronn.

“You see? The window’s done! The last big piece we needed for the bathy. A little more work an’ it’ll be ready-eady!”

Huck sniffed disdainfully. She did a good job of it, too, since that’s one of those human gestures you read about that we actually get to see pretty often, whenever Mister Heinz, our local schoolmaster, hears an answer he doesn’t like.

“Great,” Huck remarked. “Whoever rides the thing can see whatever’s about to eat him.”

I had to laugh. “Hrrrm. So now you admit there might be sea monsters after all?”

Huck swiveled three stalks toward me in a look of surprise. It’s not often I can catch her like that.

“I’ll admit I’d want more than just a slab of urrish glass between me and whatever’s down there, twenty thousand leagues under the sea!”

I confess being puzzled by her attitude. This bitterness wasn’t like Huck at all. I tried lightening the mood.

“Say, I’ve always wondered. Has anybody ever figured out exactly how long a league is?”

Two of her eyes gazed at each other, then back at me with a glint of whimsy.

“I looked in the dictionary once, but I couldn’t fathom the answer.”

Pincer complained, “Look, are you two about to start—”

I interrupted, “If anyone does know the answer, I’d sure like to meter.”

“Heh!” Huck made a thrumming sound with her spokes. “That’s assuming you could parsec what she says.”

“Hrrrm. I don’t know if I can take this furlong.”

“Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!” Pincer complained, feigning agony with all five mouths at once.

That’s how we passed the time while climbing into chilly badlands bare of life, and I guess it shows my dad’s right about us being humickers. But GalTwo and GalSix aren’t any fun for word games. You can’t pun in them at all! You can in GalSeven, but for some reason it just doesn’t hurt as much.

The mountainside got even more stark as we neared the top, where steam vents mark Mount Guenn’s broad shoulders and mask the hot breath of Uriel’s forges. Here some of the old volcanic spills crystallized in special ways that reflect shimmering colors, shifting as your eye moves. Only a short journey from here, the same kind of stuff stretches as far as you can see across a poison plain that’s called the Spectral Flow.

That day, my imagination was unhoonly active. I couldn’t help pondering all the power bubbling away, deep under the mountain. Nowhere do Jijo’s innards churn more intensely than under the region we exiles call the Slope. We’re told that’s why all the different ancestor-ships planted their seed in the same part of the planet. And nowhere else on the Slope do folks live in closer daily contact with that pent-up power than my hometown. No wonder we were never assigned a family of explosers to prepare our village for destruction. I guess everyone figures Wuphon will be blessed by the volcano anyway, inside the next hundred years. A thousand at most. Maybe any day now. So why bother?

We’re told it’s proper that no trace of our homes will be left after that happens. Still, Jijo can take her own sweet time, as far as I’m concerned.

Despite dozens of tram trips, I still find it kind of surprising whenever the car nears the end of the climb and suddenly a great big cave seems to open out of nowhere, with the rail heading straight for it. Maybe it was all that earlier talk of monsters, but this time I felt a twirl in my heart-spine when that black hollow gaped wide and we plunged toward what looked an awful lot like a hungry mouth, set in the face of an angry, impulsive mountain.

The dark stillness inside was suddenly hot and dry as dust. Ur-ronn waited for us when the car came to a jarring halt. She seemed skittish, dancing clip-clop with all four hooves while her stubby work-arms held the door and I helped Huck roll out of the car. Little Huphu rode on Pincer-Tip’s back, eyes all aglitter, as if ready for anything.

Maybe the noor was ready, but Huck, Pincer, and I were thrown completely off balance by what our urrish friend said at that point. Ur-ronn spoke in GalSix, since it’s easier for an urs to speak without lisping.

“I am glad in my pouches that you, my friends, could come so soon. Now swiftly to Uriel’s observatory, where she has, for several days, been tracking strange objects in the sky!”

I confess, I was struck dumb. Like the others, I just stared at her for several duras. Finally, we all unfroze at once.

“Hrrrrm, you can’t—”

“What do you—”

“Surely you don’t mean—”

Ur-ronn stamped her front-left foot. “I do mean it! Uriel and Gybz claim to have perceived one or more starships, several days ago! Moreover, when last sighted, one or all of them seemed poised to land!”