Infinity's Shore

PART FOUR

I WISH I COULD introduce myself to Alvin. I feel I already know the lad, from reading his journal and eavesdropping on conversations among his friends.

Their grasp of twenty-third-century Anglic idiom is so perfect, and their eager enthusiasm so different from the hoons and urs I met before coming to Jijo, that half the time I almost forget I’m listening to aliens. That is, if I ignore the weird speech tones and inflections they take for granted.

Then one of them comes up with a burst of eerily skewed logic that reminds me these arent just human kids after all, dressed up in Halloween suits to look like a crab, a centaur, and a squid in a wheelchair.

Passing the time, they wondered (and I could not blame them) whether they were prisoners or guests in this underwater refuge. Speculation led to a wide-ranging discussion, comparing various famous captives of literature. Among their intriguing perceptions — Ur-ronn sees Richard II as the story of a legitimate business takeover, with Bolingbroke as the king’s authentic apprentice.

The red qheuen, Pincer-Tip, maintains that the hero of the Feng Ho chronicles was kept in the emperor’s harem against his will, even though he had access to the Eight Hundred Beauties and could leave at any time.

Finally, Huck declared it frustrating that Shakespeare spent so little time dealing with Macbeth’s evil wife, especially her attempt to escape sin by finding redemption in a presapient state. Huck has ideas for a sequel, describing the lady’s “reuplift from the fallow condition.” Her ambitious work would be no less than a morality tale about betrayal and destiny in the Five Galaxies!

Beyond these singular insights, I am struck that here on Jijo an illiterate community of castaways was suddenly flooded with written lore provided by human settlers. What an ironic reversal of Earth’s situation, with our own native culture nearly over-whelmed by exposure to the Great Galactic Library. Astonishingly, the Six Races seem to have adapted with vitality and confidence, if Huck and Alvin are at all representative.

I wish their experiment well.

Admittedly, I still have trouble understanding their religion. The concept of redemption through devolution is one they seem to take for granted, yet its attraction eludes me.

To my surprise, our ship’s doctor said she understands the concept, quite well.

“Every dolphin grows up feeling the call,” Makanee told me. “In sleep, our minds still roam the vast songscape of the Whale Dream. It beckons us to return to our basic nature, whenever the stress of sapiency becomes too great.”

This dolphin crew has been under pressure for three long years. Makanee’s staff must care for over two dozen patients who are already “redeemed,” as a Jijoan would put it. These dolphins have “reclaimed their basic nature” all right. In other words, we have lost them as comrades and skilled colleagues, as surely as if they died.

Makanee fights regression wherever she finds symptoms, and yet she remains philosophical. She even offers a theory to explain why the idea revolts me so.

She put it something like so—

“PERHAPS you humans dread this life avenue because your race had to work for sapiency, earning it for yourself the hard way, across thousands of bleak generations.

“We fins — and these urs and qheuens and hoons, and every other Galactic clan — all had the gift handed to us by some race that came before. You can’t expect us to hold on to it quite as tenaciously as you, who had to struggle so desperately for the same prize.

“The attraction of this so-called Redemption Path may be a bit like ditching school. There’s something alluring about the notion of letting go, shucking the discipline and toil of maintaining a rigorous mind. If you slack off, so what? Your descendants will get another chance. A fresh start on the upward road of uplift, with new patrons to show you the way.”

I asked Makanee if she found that part of it especially appealing. The idea of new patrons. Would dolphins be better off with different sponsors than Homo sapiens?

She laughed and expressed her answer in deliciously ambiguous Trinary.

When winter sends ice

Growling across northern seas

Wimps love the gulf stream!

Makanee’s comment made me ponder again the question of human origins.

On Earth, most people seem willing to suspend judgment on the question of whether our species had help from genetic meddlers, before the age of science and then contact. Stubborn Darwinists still present a strong case, but few have the guts to insist Galactic experts are wrong when they claim, with eons of experience, that the sole route to sapiency is Uplift. Many Terran citizens take their word for it.

So the debate rages — on popular media shows and in private arguments among humans, dolphins, and chims — about who our absent patrons might have been. At last count there were six dozen candidates — from Tuvallians and Lethani all the way to Sun Ghosts and time travelers from some bizarre Nineteenth Dimension.

While a few dolphins do believe in missing patrons, a majority are like Makanee. They hold that we humans must have done it ourselves, struggling against darkness without the slightest intervention by outsiders.

How did Captain Creideiki put it, once? Oh yes.

“THERE are racial memories, Tom and Jill. Recollections that can be accessed through deep keeneenk meditation. One particular image comes down from our dreamlike legends — of an apelike creature paddling to sea on a tree trunk, proudly proclaiming that he had carved it, all by himself, with a stone ax, and demanding congratulations from an indifferent cosmos.

“Now I ask you, would any decent patron let its client act in such a way? A manner that made you look so ridiculous?

“No. From the beginning we could tell that you humans were being raised by amateurs. By yourselves.”

AT least that’s how I remember Creideiki’s remark. Tom found it hilarious, but I recall suspecting that our captain was withholding part of the story. There was more, that he was saving for another time.

Only another time never came.

Even as we dined with Creideiki that evening, Streaker was wriggling her way by an obscure back route into the Shallow Cluster.

A day or two later, everything changed.

IT’S late and I should finish these notes. Try to catch some sleep.

Hannes reports mixed results from engineering. He and Karkaett found a way to remove some of the carbon coating from Streaker’s hull, but a more thorough job would only wind up damaging our already weak flanges, so that’s out for now.

On the other hand, the control parameters I hoaxed out of the Library cube enabled Suessi’s crew to bring a couple of these derelict “dross” starships back to life! They’re still junk, or else the Buyur would have taken them along when they left. But immersion in icy water appears to have made little difference since then. Perhaps some use might be found for one or two of the hulks. Anyway, it gives the engineers something to do.

We need distraction, now that Streaker seems to be trapped once more. Galactic cruisers have yet again chased us down to a far corner of the universe, coveting our lives and our secrets.

How?

I’ve pondered this over and over. How did they follow our trail?

The course past Izmunuti seemed well hidden. Others made successful escapes this way before. The ancestors of the Six Races, for instance.

It should have worked.

ACROSS this narrow room, I stare at a small figure in a centered spotlight. My closest companion since Tom went away.

Herbie.

Our prize from the Shallow Cluster.

Bearer of hopes and evil luck.

Was there a curse on the vast fleet of translucent vessels we discovered at that strange dip in space? When Tom found a way through their shimmering fields and snatched Herb as a souvenir, did he bring back a jinx that will haunt us until we put the damned corpse back in its billion-year-old tomb?

I used to find the ancient mummy entrancing. Its hint of a humanoid smile seemed almost whimsical.

But I’ve grown to hate the thing, and all the space this discovery has sent us fleeing across.

I’d give it all to have Tom back. To make the last three years go away. To recover those innocent old days, when the Five Galaxies were merely very, very dangerous, and there was still such a thing as home.

Streakers

Kaa

B-BUT YOU SAID HOONS WERE OUR ENEMIESSS!”

Zhaki’s tone was defiant, though his body posture — head down and flukes raised — betrayed uncertainty. Kaa took advantage, stirring water with his pectoral fins, taking the firm upright stance of an officer in the Terragens Survey Service.

“Those were different noons,” he answered. “The NuDawn disaster happened a long time ago.”

Zhaki shook his bottle snout, flicking spray across the humid dome. “Eatees are eateesss. They’ll crush Earthlings any chance they get, just like the Soro and Tandu and all the other muckety Galactics-cs!”

Kaa winced at the blanket generalization, but after two years on the run, such attitudes were common among the ranks. Kaa also nursed the self-pitying image of Earth against the entire universe. But if that were true, the torment would have ended with annihilation long ago.

We have allies, a few friends … and the grudging sympathy of neutral clans, who hold meetings debating what to do about a plague of fanaticism sweeping the Five Galaxies. Eventually, the majority may reach a consensus and act to reestablish civilization.

They may even penalize our murderers … for all the good it will do us.

“Actually,” said Brookida, turning from his workbench in the far corner of the cramped shelter. “I would not put the hoon in the same category as our other persecutors. They aren’t religious radicals, or power-hungry conquerors. Sourpuss bureaucrats — that’s a better description. Officious sticklers for rules, which is why so many enter service with Galactic Institutes. At NuDawn they were only enforcing the law. When human settlers resisted—”

“They thought they were being invaded!” Zhaki objected.

“Yessss.” Brookida nodded. “But Earth’s colony hadn’t heard about contact, and they lacked equipment to hear Galactic inquiries. When hoonish officials came to give a ritual last warning, they met something not in their manuals … armed trespassersss. Barbarians with no Galactic language. Mistakes followed. Military units swarmed in from Joph—”

“This has nothing to do with our present problem.” Kaa interrupted Brookida’s history lecture. “Zhaki, you must stop cutting the local hoons’ fishing netsss! It draws attention to us.”

“Angry attention,” Brookida added. “They grow wary against your dep-p-predations, Zhaki. Last time, they cast many spears.”

The young dolphin snorted.

Let the whalers throw!

As in autumn storms of old—

Waves come, two-legs drown!

Kaa flinched. Moments ago, Zhaki was eager to avenge humans who had died on a lost colony, back when dolphins could barely speak. Now the irate youth lumped all bipeds together, dredging up a grudge from days before men and women became caretakers of Earth. There was no arguing with a mind that worked that way.

Still, it was Kaa’s job to enforce discipline.

If you repeat this act,

No harpoon will sting your

backside

Like my snapping teeth!

It wasn’t great haiku — not poetical Trinary like Captain Creideiki used to dazzle his crew with, crafting devoted loyalty from waves of gorgeous sound. But the warning rocked Zhaki. Kaa followed up, projecting a beam of intense sonar from his brow, piercing Zhaki’s body, betraying fear churnings within.

When in doubt, he thought, fall back on the ancestors’ ways.

“You are dismisssssed,” he finished. “Go rest. Tomorrow’s another long day.”

Zhaki swerved obediently, retreating to the curtained alcove he shared with Mopol.

Alas, despite this brief success, Kaa also knew it would not last.

Tsh’t told us this was an important mission. But I bet she assigned us all here because we’re the ones Streaker could most easily do without.

That night he dreamed of piloting.

Neodolphins had a flair for it — a precocious talent for the newest sapient species in all Five Galaxies. Just three hundred years after human geneticists began modifying natural bottlenose dolphins, starship Streaker was dispatched in a noble experiment to prove the skill of dolphin crews. The Terragens Council thought it might help solidify Earth’s shaky position to become known as a source of crackerjack pilots.

“Lucky” Kaa had naturally been pleased to be chosen for the mission, though it brought home one glaring fact.

I was good … but not the best.

In half slumber, Kaa relived the terrifying ambush at Morgran, a narrow escape that still rocked him, even after all this time.

Socketed in his station on the bridge, helpless to do anything but go along for the ride, as Chief Pilot Keepiru sent the old Snark-class survey ship through maneuvers a Tandu fighter ship would envy, neatly evading lurk mines and snare fields, then diving back into the Morgran maelstrom, without benefit of guidance computation.

The memory lost no vividness after two long years.

Transit threads swarmed around them, a dizzying blur of dimensional singularities. By a whim of cerebral evolution, trained dolphin pilots excelled at picturing the shimmering space-time clefts with sonar imagery. But Kaa had never rushed through such a tangle! A tornado of knotted strands. Any shining cord, caught at the wrong angle, might hurl the ship back into normal space with the consistency of quark stew …

… Yet somehow, the ship sped nimbly from one thread to the next, Keepiru escaped the pursuers, dodged past the normal trade routes, and finally brought Streaker to a refuge Captain Creideiki chose.

Kithrup, where resources for repairs could be found as pure isotopic metal, growing like coral in a poison sea …

… Kithrup, homeworld of two unknown races, one sinking in an ancient wallow of despair, and the other hopeful, new …

… Kithrup, where no one should have been able to follow …

… But they did. Galactics, feuding and battling insanely overhead …

… And soon Keepiru was gone, along with Toshio, Hikahi, and Mr. Orley …

… and Kaa learned that some wishes were better not coming true.

He learned that he did not really want to be chief pilot, after all.

In the years since, he has gained experience. The escapes he piloted — from Oakka and the Fractal System — were performed well, if not as brilliantly.

Not quite good enough to preserve Kaa’s nickname.

I never heard anyone else say they could do better.

All in all, it was not a restful sleep.

• • •

Zhaki and Mopol were at it again, before dawn, rubbing and squealing beyond a slim curtain they nearly shredded with their slashing tails. They should have gone outside to frolic, but Kaa dared not order it.

“It is typical postadolescent behavior,” Brookida told him, by the food dispenser. “Young males grow agitated. Among natural dolphins, unisex play ceases to be sufficient as youths turn their thoughts to winning the companionship of females. Young allies often test their status by jointly challenging older males.”

Of course Kaa knew all that. But he could not agree with the “typical” part. I never acted that way. Oh sure, I was an obnoxious, arrogant young fin. But I never acted intentionally gross, or like some reverted animal.

“Maybe Tsh’t should have assigned females to our team.” He pondered aloud.

“Wouldn’t help,” answered the elderly metallurgist. “If those two schtorks weren’t getting any aboard ship, they wouldn’t do any better here. Our fern-fins have high standards.”

Kaa sputtered out a lump of half-chewed mullet as he laughed, grateful for Brookida’s lapse into coarse humor — though it grazed by a touchy subject among Streaker’s crew, the petition to breed that some had been circulating and signing.

Kaa changed the subject. “How goes your analysis of the matter the hoons dumped overboard?”

Brookida nodded toward his workbench, where several ribboned casks lay cracked open. Bits of bone and crystal glittered amid piles of ashen dust.

“So far, the contents confirm what the hoonish boy wrote in his journal.”

“Amazing. I was sure it must be a fake, planted by our enemies.” Transcripts of the handwritten diary, passed on by Streaker’s command, seemed too incredible to believe.

“Apparently the story is true. Six races do live together on this world. As part of ecology-oriented rituals, they send their unrecyclable wastes — called dross—to sea for burial in special disposal zones. This includes parts of their processed bodies.”

“And you found—”

“Human remainsss.” Brookida nodded. “As well as chimps, hoons, urs … the whole crowd this young ‘Alvin’ wrote about.”

Kaa was still dazed by it all.

“And there are … J-Jophur.” He could hardly speak the word aloud.

Brookida frowned. “A matter of definition, it seems. I’ve exchanged message queries with Gillian and the Niss Machine. They suggest these so-called traeki might have the other races fooled as part of an elaborate, long-range plot.”

“How could that be?”

“I am not sure. It would not require that every traeki be in on the scheme. Just a few, with secret master rings, and the hidden equipment to dominate their fellow beings. I cannot quite fathom it. But Gillian has questioned the captured Library unit. And that seems a possssible scenario.”

Kaa had no answer for that. Such matters seemed so complex, so far beyond his grasp, his only response was to shiver from the tip of his rostrum all the way down to his trembling tail.

They spent another day spying on the local sooners. The hoonish seaport, Wuphon, seemed to match the descriptions in Alvin’s journal … though more crude and shabby in the eyes of beings who had seen the sky towers of Tanith and bright cities on Earth’s moon. The hoons appeared to pour more lavish attention on their boats than their homes. The graceful sailing ships bore delicate carving work, down to proud figureheads shaped like garish deities.

When a vessel swept past Kaa, he overheard the deep, rumbling sounds of singing, as the sailors boomed evident joy across the whitecaps.

It’s hard to believe these are the same folk Brookida described as passionless prigs. Maybe there are two races that look alike, and have similar-sounding names. Kaa made a mental note to send an inquiry in tonight’s report.

Hoons weren’t alone on deck. He peered at smaller creatures, scrambling nimbly over the rigging, but when he tried using a portable camera, the image swept by too fast to catch much more than a blur.

Streaker also wanted better images of the volcano, which apparently was a center of industrial activity among the sooner races. Gillian and Tsh’t were considering sending another independent robot ashore, though earlier drones had been lost. Kaa got spectral readings of the mountain’s steaming emissions, and discovered the trace of a slender tramway, camouflaged against the rocky slopes.

He checked frequently on Zhaki and Mopol, who seemed to be behaving for a change, sticking close to their assigned task of eavesdropping on the red qheuen colony.

But later, when all three of them were on their way back to base, Mopol lagged sluggishly behind.

“It must-t have been something I ate,” the blue dolphin murmured, as unpleasant gurglings erupted within his abdomen.

Oh great, Kaa thought. I warned him a hundred times not to sample local critters before Brookida had a chance to test them!

Mopol swore it was nothing. But as the water surrounding their shelter dimmed with the setting sun, he started moaning again. Brookida used their tiny med scanner, but was at a loss to tell what had gone wrong.

Tsh’t

NOMINALLY, SHE COMMANDED EARTH’S MOST FAMOUS spaceship — a beauty almost new by Galactic standards, just nine hundred years old when the Terragens Council purchased it from a Puntictin used-vessel dealer, then altered and renamed it Streaker to show off the skills of neodolphin voyagers.

Alas, the bedraggled craft seemed unlikely ever again to cruise the great spiral ways. Burdened by a thick coat of refractory Stardust — and now trapped deep underwater while pursuers probed the abyss with sonic bombs — to all outward appearances, it seemed doomed to join the surrounding great pile of ghost ships, sinking in the slowly devouring mud of an oceanic ravine.

Gone was the excitement that first led Tsh’t into the service. The thrill of flight. The exhilaration. Nor was there much relish in “authority,” since she did not make policies or crucial decisions. Gillian Baskin had that role.

What remained was handling ten thousand details … like when a disgruntled cook accosted her in a water-filled hallway, wheedling for permission to go up to the realm of light.

“It’ssss too dark and c-cold to go fishing down here!” complained Bulla-jo, whose job it was to help provide meals for a hundred finicky dolphins. “My harvesst team can hardly move, wearing all that pressure armor. And have you seen the so-called fish we catch in our nets? Weird things, all sspiky and glowing!”

Tsh’t replied, “Dr. Makanee has passed at least forty common varieties of local sea life as both tasty and nutritious, so long as we sssupplement with the right additives.”

Still, Bulla-jo groused.

“Everyone favors the samples we got earlier, from the upper world of waves and open air. There are great schools of lovely things swimming around up-p there.”

Then Bulla-jo lapsed into Trinary.

Where perfect sunshine

Makes lively prey fish glitter

As they flee from us!

He concluded, “If you want fresh f-food, let us go to the surface, like you p-promised!”

Tsh’t quashed an exasperated sigh over Bulla-jo’s forget-fulness. In this early stage of their Uplift, neodolphins often perceived whatever they chose, ignoring contradictions.

I do it myself now and then.

She tried cultivating patience, as Creideiki used to teach.

“Dr. Baskin canceled plans to send more parties to the sunlit surface,” she told Bulla-jo, whose speckled flanks and short beak revealed ancestry from the stenos dolphin line. “Did it escape your notice that gravitic emissions have been detected, cruising above this deep fissure? Or that someone has been dropping sonic charges, seeking to find usss?”

Bulla-jo lowered his rostrum in an attitude of obstinate insolence. “We can g-go naked … carry no tools the eatees could detect-ct.”

Tsh’t marveled at such single-minded thinking.

“That might work if the gravitics were far away, say in orbit, or passing by at high altitude. But once they know our rough location they can cruise low and slow, ssseeking the radiochemical spoor of molecules in our very blood. Surface-swimming fins would give us away.”

Irony was a bittersweet taste to Tsh’t, for she knew something she had no intention of sharing with Bulla-jo. They are going to detect us, no matter how many precautions Gillian orders.

To the frustrated crew member, she had only soothing words.

“Just float loose for a while longer, will you, Bulla-jo? I, too, would love to chase silvery fish through warm waters. All may be resolved sh-shortly.”

Grumpy, but mollified, the messmate saluted by clapping his pectoral fins and swimming back to duty … though Tsh’t knew the crisis would recur. Dolphins disliked being so far from sunlight, or from the tide’s cycloid rub against shore. Tursiops weren’t meant to dwell so deep, where pressurized sound waves carried in odd, disturbing ways.

It is the realm of Physeter, sperm whale, great-browed messenger of the ancient dream gods, who dives to wrestle great-armed demons.

The abyss was where hopes and nightmares from past, present, and future drifted to form dark sediments — a place best left to sleeping things.

We neo-fins are superstitious at heart. But what can you expect, having humans as our beloved patrons? Humans, who are themselves wolflings, primitive by the standards of a billion-year-old culture.

This she pondered while inhaling deeply, filling her gill lungs with the air-charged fluid, oxy-water, that filled most of Streaker’s residential passages — a genetically improvised manner of breathing that nourished, but never comfortably. One more reason many of the crew yearned for the clean, bright world above.

Turning toward the Streaker’s bridge, she thrust powerfully through the fizzing liquid, leaving clouds of effervescence behind her driving flukes. Each bubble gave off a faint pop! as it hiccuped into existence, or merged back into supercharged solution. Sometimes the combined susurration sounded like elfin applause — or derisive laughter — following her all over the ship.

At least I don’t fool myself she thought. I do all right. Gillian says so, and puts her trust in me. But I know I’m not meant for command.

Tsh’t had never expected such duty when Streaker blasted out of Earth orbit, refurbished for use by a neodolphin crew. Back then — over two years ago, by ship-clock time — Tsh’t had been only a junior lieutenant, a distant fifth in line from Captain Creideiki. And it was common knowledge that Tom Orley and Gillian Baskin could step in if the need seemed urgent … as Gillian eventually did, during the crisis on Kithrup.

Tsh’t didn’t resent that human intervention. In arranging an escape from the Kithrup trap, Tom and Gillian pulled off a miracle, even if it led to the lovers’ separation.

Wasn’t that the job of human leaders and heroes? To intercede when a crisis might overwhelm their clients?

But where do we turn when matters get too awful even for humans to handle?

Galactic tradition adhered to a firm — some said oppressive — hierarchy of debts and obligations. A client race to its patron. That patron to its sapience benefactor … and so on, tracing the great chain of uplift all the way back to the legendary Progenitors. The same chain of duty underlay the reaction of some fanatical clans on hearing news of Streaker’s discovery — a fleet of derelict ships with ancient, venerated markings.

But the pyramid of devotion had positive aspects. The uplift cascade meant each new species got help crossing the dire gap dividing mere animals from starfaring citizens. And if your sponsors lacked answers, they might ask their patrons. And so on.

Gillian had tried appealing to this system, taking Streaker from Kithrup to Oakka, the green world, seeking counsel from impartial savants of the Navigation Institute. Failing there, she next sought help in the Fractal Orb — that huge icy place, a giant snowflake that spanned a solar system’s width — hoping the venerable beings who dwelled there might offer wise detachment, or at least refuge.

It wasn’t Dr. Baskin’s fault that neither gamble paid off very well. She had the right general idea, Tsh’t mused. But Gillian remains blind to the obvious.

Who is most likely to help, when you’re in trouble and a lynch mob is baying at your tail?

The courts?

Scholars at some university?

Or your own family?

Tsh’t never dared suggest her idea aloud. Like Tom Orley, Gillian took pride in the romantic image of upstart Earthclan, alone against the universe. Tsh’t knew the answer would be no.

So, rather than flout a direct order, Tsh’t had quietly put her own plan into effect, just before Streaker made her getaway from the Fractal System.

What else could I do, with Streaker pursued by horrid fleets, our best crew members gone, and Earth under siege? Our Tymbrimi friends can barely help even themselves. Meanwhile, the Galactic Institutes have been corrupted and the Old Ones lied to us.

We had no choice.

… I had no choice …

It was hard concealing things, especially from someone who knew dolphins as well as Gillian. For weeks since Streaker arrived here, Tsh’t half hoped her disobedience would come to nought.

Then the detection officer reported gravitic traces. Starcraft engines, entering Jijo space.

So, they came after all, she had thought, hearing the news, concealing satisfaction while her crew mates expressed noisy chagrin, bemoaning that they now seemed cornered by relentless enemies on a forlorn world.

Tsh’t wanted to tell them the truth, but dared not. That good news must wait.

Ifni grant that I was right.

Tsh’t paused outside the bridge, filling her gene-altered lungs with oxy-water. Enriching her blood to think clearly before setting in motion the next phase of her plan.

There is just one true option for a client race, when your beloved patrons seem overwhelmed, and all other choices are cut off.

May the gods of Earth’s ancient ocean know and understand what I’ve done.

And what I may yet have to do.

Nelo

ONCE, A BUYUR URBAN CENTER STRETCHED BETWEEN two rivers, from the Roney all the way to the far-off Bibur.

Now the towers were long gone, scraped and hauled away to distant seas. In their place, spiky ferns and cloudlike voow trees studded a morass of mud and oily water. Mulc-spider vines laced a few rounded hummocks remaining from the great city, but even those tendrils were now faded, their part in the demolition nearly done.

To Nelo, this was wasteland, rich in life but useless to any of the Six Races, except perhaps as a traeki vacation resort.

What am I doing here? he wondered. I should be back in Dolo, tending my mill, not prowling through a swamp, keeping a crazy woman company.

Behind Nelo, hoonish sailors cursed low, expressive rumblings, resentful over having to pole through a wretched bog. The proper time for gleaning was at the start of the dry season, when citizens in high-riding boats took turns sifting the marsh for Buyur relics missed by the patient mulc beast. Now, with rainstorms due any day, conditions were miserable for exploring. The muddy channels were shallow, yet the danger of a flash flood was very real.

Nelo faced the elderly woman who sat in a wheelchair near the bow, peering past obscuring trees with a rewq over her eyes.

“The crew ain’t happy, Sage Foo,” he told her. “They’d rather we waited till it’s safe.”

Ariana Foo answered without turning from her search. “Oh, what a great idea. Four months or more we’d sit around while the swamp fills, channels shift, and the thing we seek gets buried in muck. Of course, by then the information would be too late to do any good.”

Nelo shrugged. The woman was retired now. She had no official powers. But as former High Sage for all humans on Jijo, Ariana had moral authority to ask anything she wanted — including having Nelo leave his beloved paper mill next to broad Dolo Dam, accompanying her on this absurd search.

Not that there was much to do at the mill, he knew. With commerce spoiled by panic over those wretched starships, no one seems interested in buying large orders.

“Now is the best time,” Ariana went on. “Late in dry season, with water levels low, and the foliage drooping, we get maximum visibility.”

Nelo took her word. With most young men and women away on militia duties, it was mostly adolescents and old-timers who got drafted into the search party. Anyway, Nelo’s daughter had been among the first to find the Stranger from Space in this very region several months ago, during a routine gleaning trip. And he owed Ariana for bringing word about Sara and the boys — that they were all right, when last she heard. Sage Foo had spent time with Nelo’s daughter, accompanying Sara from Tarek Town to the Biblos Archive.

He felt another droplet strike his cheek … the tenth since they left the river, plunging into this endless slough. He held his hand under a murky sky and prayed the real downpours would hold off for a few more days.

Then let it come down! The lake is low. We need water pressure for the wheel, or else I’ll have to shut down the mill for lack of power.

His thoughts turned to business — the buying and gathering of recycled cloth from all six races. The pulping and sifting. The pressing, drying, and selling of fine sheets that his family had been known for ever since humans brought the blessing of paper to Jijo.

A blessing that some called a curse. That radical view now claimed support from simple villagers, panicked by the looming end of days—

A shout boomed from above.

“There!” A wiry young hoon perched high on the mast, pointing. “Hr-r … It must be the Stranger’s ship. I told you this had to be the place!”

Wyhuph-eihugo had accompanied Sara on that fateful gleaning trip — a duty required of all citizens. Lacking a male’s throat sac, she nevertheless umbled with some verve, proud of her navigation.

At last! Nelo thought. Now Ariana can make her sketches, and we can leave this awful place. The crisscrossing mulc cables made him nervous. Their boat’s obsidiantipped prow had no trouble slicing through the desiccated vines. Still it felt as if they were worming deeper into some fiendish trap.

Ariana muttered something. Nelo turned, blinking.

“What did you say?”

The old woman pointed ahead, her eyes glittering with curiosity.

“I don’t see any soot!”

“So?”

“The Stranger was burned. His clothes were ashen tatters. We thought his ship must have come down in flames — perhaps after battling other aliens high over Jijo. But look. Do you see any trace of conflagration?”

The boat worked around a final voow grove, revealing a rounded metal capsule on the other side, gleaming amid a nest of shattered branches. The sole opening resembled the splayed petals of a flower, rather than a door or hatch. The arrival of this intruder had cut a swathe of devastation stretching to the northwest. Several swamp hummocks were split by the straight gouge, only partly softened by regrown vegetation.

Nelo had some experience as a surveyor, so he helped take sightings to get the ship’s overall dimensions. It was small — no larger than this hoonish boat, in fact — certainly no majestic cruiser like the one that clove the sky over Dolo Town, sending its citizens into hysteria. The rounded flanks reminded Nelo of a natural teardrop, more than anything sapient-made.

Two pinpoints of moisture dotted his cheek and forehead. Another struck the back of his hand. In the distance, Nelo heard a sharp rumble of thunder.

“Hurry closer!” Ariana urged, flipping open her sketchpad.

Murmuring unhappily, the hoons leaned on their poles and oars to comply.

Nelo stared at the alien craft, but all he could think was dross. When Sixers went gleaning through Buyur sites, one aim was to seek items that might be useful for a time, in a home or workshop. But useful or not, everything eventually went into ribboned caskets to be sent on to the Great Midden. Thus colonists imagined they were helping cleanse Jijo — perhaps doing more good than harm to their adopted world.

“Ifni!” Nelo sighed under his breath, staring at the vehicle that brought the Stranger hurtling out of space. It might be tiny for a starship, but it looked hard as blazes to move by hand.

“We’ll be in for a hell of a job draggin’ this thing out of here, let alone gettin’ it down to sea.”

Again, off to the south, the sound of thunder boomed.

Ewasx

WE JOPHUR ARE TAUGHT THAT IT IS TERRIBLE TO BE traeki — a stack lacking any central self. Doomed to a splintered life of vagueness and blurry placidity.

ALL SING PRAISES to the mighty Oailie, who took over from the too-timid Poa, completing the final stages of our Uplift.

Those same Oailie who designed new master rings to focus and bind our natures.

Without rings like Me, how could our race ever have become great and feared among the Five Galaxies?

AND YET, even as I learn to integrate your many little selves into our new whole, I am struck by how vivid are these older drippings that I find lining our inner core! Drippings that date from before My fusion with your aged pile of rings. How lustrous clear these memories seem, despite their counterpointing harmonies. I confess, existence had intensity and verve when you/we were merely Asx.

PERHAPS this surprise comes because I/Myself am so young, only recently drawn from the side of our Ship Commander — from that great one’s very own ring-of-embryos.

Yes, that is a high heritage. So imagine the surprise of finding Myself in this situation! Designed for duties in the dominion caste, I am wedded, for pragmatic reasons, to a haphazard heap of rustic toruses, ill educated and filled with bizarre, primitive notions. I have been charged to make the best of things until some later time, when surgery-of-reconfiguration can be performed—

AH. THAT DRAWS A REACTION FROM SOME OF YOU? Our second ring of cognition, in particular, finds this notion disturbing.

Fear not, My rings! Accept these jolts of painful love soothing, to remind you of your place — which is not to question, only to serve. Be assured that the procedure I refer to is now quite advanced among the mighty Jophur. When a ring is removed for reassembly in a new stack, often as many as half of the other leftover components can be recovered and reused as well! Of course, most of you are elderly, and the priests may decide you carry other-race contaminations, preventing incorporation into new mounds. But accept this pledge. When the time comes, I, your beloved master ring, shall very likely make the transition in good health, and take fond memories of our association to My glorious new stack.

I know this fact will bring you all great satisfaction, contemplating it within our common core.

Lark

CATHEDRAL–LIKE STILLNESS FILLED THE BOO FOREST — a dense expanse of gray-green columns, towering to support the sky. Each majestic trunk had a girth like the carapace of a five-clawed qheuen. Some stretched as high as the Stone Roof of Biblos.

Now I know how an insect feels, scuttling under a sea of pampas grass.

Hiking along a narrow lane amid the giant pillars, Lark often could reach out his arms and brush two giant stems at the same time. Only his militia sergeant seemed immune to a sense of confinement infecting travelers in this strange place of vertical perspectives. Other guards expressed edginess with darting eyes that glanced worriedly down crooked aisles at half-hidden shadows.

“How far is it to Dooden Mesa?” Ling asked, tugging the straps of her leather backpack. Perspiration glistened down her neck to dampen the Jijoan homespun jerkin she wore. The effect was not as provocative as Lark recalled from their old survey trips together, when the sheer fabric of a Danik jumpsuit sometimes clung to her biosculpted figure in breathtaking ways.

Anyway, I can’t afford that, now that I’m a sage. The promotion brought only unpleasant responsibilities.

“I never took this shortcut before,” Lark answered, although he and Uthen used to roam these mountains in search of data for their book. There were other paths around the mountain, and the wheeled g’Keks nominally in charge of this domain could hardly be expected to do upkeep on such a rough trail. “My best guess is we’ll make it in two miduras. Want to rest?”

Ling pushed sodden strands from her eyes. “No. Let’s keep going.”

The former gene raider seemed acutely aware of Jeni Shen, the diminutive sergeant, whose corded arms cradled her crossbow like a beloved child. Jeni glanced frequently at Ling with hunter’s eyes, as if speculating which vital organ might make a good target. Anyone could sense throbbing enmity between the two women — and that Ling would rather die than show weakness before the militia scout.

Lark found one thing convenient about their antagonism. It helped divert Ling’s ire away from him, especially after the way he earlier used logic to slash her beloved Rothen gods. Since then, the alien biologist had been civil, but kept to herself in brooding silence.

No one likes to have their most basic assumptions knocked from under them — especially by a primitive savage.

Lark blew air through his cheeks — the hoonish version of a shrug.

“Hr-rm. We’ll take a break at the next rise. By then we should be out of the worst boo.”

In fact, the thickest zone was already behind them, a copse so dense the monstrous stems rubbed in the wind, creating a low, drumming music that vibrated the bones of anyone passing underneath. Traveling single file, edging sideways where the trunks pressed closest, the party had watched for vital trail marks, cut on one rounded bole after the next.

I was right to leave Uthen behind, he thought, hoping to convince himself. Just hold on, old friend. Maybe we’ll come up with something. I pray we can.

Visibility was hampered by drifting haze, since many of the tall boo leaked from water reserves high above, spraying arcs of fine droplets that spread to saturate the misty colonnade. Several times they passed clearings where aged columns had toppled in a domino chain reaction, leaving maelstroms of debris.

Through the fog, Lark occasionally glimpsed other symbols, carved on trunks beyond the trail. Not trail marks, but cryptic emblems in GalTwo and GalSix … accompanied by strings of Anglic numbers.

Why would anyone go scrawling graffiti through a stand of greatboo?

He even spied dim figures through the murk — once a human, then several urs, and finally a pair of traeki — glimpsed prowling amid rows of huge green pillars. At least he hoped the tapered cones were traeki. They vanished like ghosts before he could tell for sure.

Sergeant Shen kept the party moving too fast to investigate. Lark and his prisoner had been summoned by two of the High Sages — a command that overruled any other priority. And despite the difficult terrain, recent news from the Glade of Gathering was enough to put vigor in their steps.

Runners reported that the Jophur dreadnought still blocked the sacred valley, squatting complacently inside its swathe of devastation, with the captive Rothen ship doubly imprisoned nearby — first by a gold cocoon, and now a rising lake as well. The Jophur daily sent forth a pair of smaller vessels, sky-prowling daggers, surveying the Slope and the seas beyond. No one knew what the star gods were looking for.

Despite what happened on the night the great ship landed — havoc befalling Asx and others on the Glade — the High Sages were preparing to send another embassy of brave volunteers, hoping to parley. No one asked Lark to serve as an envoy. The Sages had other duties planned for him.

Humans weren’t the only ones to cheat a little, when their founding generation came to plant a taboo colony on forbidden Jijo.

For more than a year after it made landfall, the Tabernacle’s crew delayed sending their precious ship to an ocean abyss. A year spent using god tools to cut trees and print books … then storing the precious volumes in a stronghold that the founders carved beneath a great stone overhang, protected by high walls and a river. During those early days — especially the urrish and qheuen wars — Biblos Fortress served as a vital refuge until humans grew strong enough to demand respect.

The Gray Queens also once had such a citadel, sculpted by mighty engines when they first arrived, before their sneakship fell beneath the waves. The Caves of Shood, near present-day Ovoom Town, must have seemed impregnable. But that maze of deep-hewn caverns drowned under a rising water table when blue and red workers dropped their slavish maintenance duties, wandering off instead to seek new homes and destinies, apart from their chitin empresses.

Dooden Mesa was the oldest of the sooner ramparts. After Tarek Town, it formed the heart of g’Kek life on Jijo, a place of marvelous stone ramps that curved like graceful filigrees, allowing the wheeled ones to swoop and careen through a swirl of tight turns, from their looms and workshops to tree-sheltered platforms where whole families slept with their hubs joined in slowly rotating clusters. Under an obscuring blur-cloth canopy, the meandering system resembled pictures found in certain Earthling books about pre-contact times — looking like a cross between an “amusement park” and the freeway interchanges of some sprawling city.

Ling’s face brightened with amazed delight when she regarded the settlement, nodding as Lark explained the lacy pattern of narrow byways. Like Biblos, Dooden Rampart was not meant to last forever, for that would violate the Covenant of Exile. Someday it all would have to go — g’Kek elders conceded. Still, the wheeled ones throbbed their spokes in sinful pride over their beloved city. Their home.

While Ling marveled, Lark surveyed the busy place with fresh poignancy.

It is their only home.

Unless the Rothen lied, it seems there are no more g’Kek living among the Five Galaxies.

If they die on Jijo, they are gone for good.

Watching youngsters pitch along graceful ramps with reckless abandon, streaking round corners with all four eyestalks flying and their rims glowing hot, Lark could not believe the universe would let that happen. How could any race so unique be allowed to go extinct?

With the boo finally behind them, the party now stood atop a ridge covered with normal forest. As they paused, a zookir dropped onto the path from the branches of a nearby garu tree — all spindly arms and legs, covered with white spirals of fluffy torg. Treasured aides and pets of the g’Kek, zookirs helped make life bearable for wheeled beings on a planet where roads were few and stumbling stones all too many.

This zookir squinted at the party, then scampered closer, sniffing. Unerringly, it bypassed the other humans, zeroing in on Lark.

Trust a zookir to know a sage—so went a folk saying. No one had any idea how the creatures could tell, since they seemed less clever than chimps in other ways. Lark’s promotion was recent and he wore the new status of “junior sage” uncomfortably, yet the creature had no trouble setting him apart. It pressed damp nostrils against his wrist and inhaled. Then, cooing satisfaction, it slipped a folded parchment in Lark’s hand.

MEET US AT THE REFUGE — That was all it said.

Lester Cambel

APAIR OF HIGH SAGES WAITED IN A NARROW CANYON, half a league away. Lester Cambel and Knife-Bright Insight, the blue qheuen whose reputation for compassion made her a favorite among the Six.

Here, too, the paths were smooth and well suited for g’Keks, since this was part of their Dooden Domain. Wheeled figures moved among the meadows, looking after protected ones who lived in thatched shelters beneath the trees. It was a refuge for sacred simpletons — those whose existence promised a future for the Six Races — according to the scrolls.

Several of the blessed ones gathered around Knife-Bright Insight, clucking or mewing in debased versions of Galactic tongues. These were hoons and urs, for the most part, though a red qheuen joined the throng as Lester watched, and several traeki stacks slithered timidly closer, burbling happy stinks as they approached. Each received a loving pat or stroke from Knife-Bright Insight, as if her claws were gentle hands.

Lester regarded his colleague, and knew guiltily that he could never match her glad kindness. The blessed were superior beings, ranking above the normal run of the Six. Their simplicity was proof that other races could follow the example of glavers, treading down the Path of Redemption.

It should fill my heart to see them, he thought.

Yet I hate coming to this place.

Members of all six races dwelled in simple shelters underneath the canyon walls, tended by local g’Keks, plus volunteers from across the Slope. Whenever a qheuen, or hoon, or urrish village found among their youths one who had a knack for innocence, a gift for animal-like naïveté, the lucky individual was sent here for nurturing and study.

There are just two ways to escape the curse bequeathed to us by our ancestors, Lester thought, struggling to believe. We could do as Lark’s group of heretics want — stop breeding and leave Jijo in peace. Or else we can all seek a different kind of oblivion, the kind that returns our children’s children to presentence. Washed clean and ready for a new cycle of uplift. Thus they may yet find new patrons, and perhaps a happier fate.

So prescribed the Sacred Scrolls, even after all the compromises wrought since the arrival of Earthlings and the Holy Egg. Given the situation of exile races, living here on borrowed time, facing horrid punishment if/when a Galactic Institute finds them here, what other goal could there be?

But I can’t do it. I cannot look at this place with joy. Earthling values keep me from seeing these creatures as lustrous beings. They deserve kindness and pity — but not envy.

It was his own heresy. Lester tried to look elsewhere. But turning just brought to view another cluster of “blessed.” This time, humans, gathered in a circle under a ilhuna tree, sitting cross-legged with hands on knees, chanting in low, sonorous voices. Men and women whose soft smiles and unshifting eyes seemed to show simplicity of the kind sought here … only Lester knew them to be liars!

Long ago, he took the same road. Using meditation techniques borrowed from old Earthling religions, he sat under just such a tree, freeing his mind of worldly obsessions, disciplining it to perceive Truth. And for a while it seemed he succeeded. Acolytes bowed reverently, calling him illuminated. The universe appeared lucid then, as if the stars were sacred fire. As if he were united with all Jijo’s creatures, even the very quanta in the stones around him. He lived in harmony, needing little food, few words, and even fewer names.

Such serenity — sometimes he missed it with an ache inside.

But after a while he came to realize — the clarity he had found was sterile blankness. A blankness that felt fine, but had nothing to do with redemption. Not for himself. Not for his race.

The other five don’t use discipline or concentration to seek simplicity. You don’t see glavers meditating by a rotten log full of tasty insects. Simplicity calls to them naturally. They live their innocence.

When Jijo is finally reopened, some great clan will gladly adopt the new glaver subspecies, setting them once more upon the High Path, perhaps with better luck than they had the first time.

But those patrons won’t choose us. No noble elder clan is looking for smug Zen masters, eager to explain their own enlightenment. That is not a plainness you can write upon. It is simplicity based on individual pride.

Of course the point might be moot. If the Jophur ship represented great Institutes of the Civilization of the Five Galaxies, these forests would soon throng with inspectors, tallying up two thousand years of felonies against a fallow world. Only glavers would be safe, having made it to safety in time. The other six races would pay for a gamble lost.

And if they don’t represent the Institutes?

The Rothen had proved to be criminals, gene raiders. Might the Jophur be more of the same? Murderous genocide could still be in store. The g’Kek clan, in particular, were terrified of recent news from the Glade.

On the other hand, it might be possible to cut a deal. Or else maybe they’ll just go away, leaving us in the same state we were in before.

In that case, places like this refuge would go back to being the chief hope for tomorrow … for five races out of the Six.

Lester’s dark thoughts were cut off by a tug on his sleeve.

“Sage Cambel? The … um, visitors you’re, ah, expecting … I think …”

It was a young human, broad-cheeked, with clear blue eyes and pale skin. The boy would have seemed tall — almost a giant — except that a stooped posture diminished his appearance. He kept tapping a corner of his forehead with the fingertips of his right hand, as if in a vague salute.

Lester spoke gentle words in Anglic, the only language the lad ever managed to learn.

“What did you say, Jimi?”

The boy swallowed, concentrating hard.

“I think the … um … the people you want t’see … I think they’re here … Sage Cambel.”

“Lark and the Danik woman?”

A vigorous nod.

“Um, yessir. I sent ’em to the visitors’ shed … to wait for you an’ the other Great Sage. Was that right?”

“Yes, that was right, Jimi.” Lester gave his arm a friendly squeeze. “Please go back now. Tell Lark I’ll be along shortly.”

A broad grin. The boy turned around to run the way he came, awkward in his eagerness to be useful.

There goes the other kind of human who comes to this place, Lester thought. Our special ones …

The ancient euphemism tasted strange.

At first sight, it would seem people like Jimi fit the bill. Simpler minds. Innocent. Our ideal envoys to tread the Path.

He glanced at the blessed ones surrounding Knife-Bright Insight — urs, hoons, and g’Keks who were sent here by their respective races in order to do that. To lead the way.

By the standards of the scrolls, these ones aren’t damaged. Though simple, they aren’t flawed. They are leaders. But no one can say that of Jimi. All sympathy aside, he is injured, incomplete. Anyone can see that.

We can and should love him, help him, befriend him.

But he leads humanity nowhere.

Lester signaled to his blue qheuen colleague, using an urslike shake of his head to indicate that their appointment had arrived. She responded by turning her visor cupola in a quick series of GalTwo winks, flashing that she’d be along shortly.

Lester turned and followed Jimi’s footsteps, trying to shift his thoughts back to the present crisis. To the problem of the Jophur battleship. Back to urgent plans he must discuss with the young heretic and the woman from the stars. There was a dire proposal — farfetched and darkly dangerous — they must be asked to accept.

Yet, as he passed by the chanting circle of meditating humans — healthy men and women who had abandoned their farms, families, and useful crafts to dwell without work in this sheltered valley — Lester found his contemplations awash with bitter resentment. The words in his head were unworthy of a High Sage, he knew. But he could not help pondering them.

Morons and meditators, those are the two types that our race sends up here. Not a true “blessed” soul in the lot. Not by the standards set in the scrolls. Humans almost never take true steps down redemption’s path. Ur-Jah and the others are polite. They pretend that we, too, have that option, that potential salvation.

But we don’t. Our lot is sterile.

With or without judgment from the stars — the only future humans face on Jijo is damnation.

Dwer

SMOKE SPIRALED FROM THE CRASH SITE. IT WAS against his better judgment to sneak closer. In fact, now was his chance to run the other way, while the Danik robot cowered in a hole, showing no further interest in its prisoners.

And if Rety wanted to stay?

Let her! Lena and Jenin would be glad to see Dwer if he made the long journey back to the Gray Hills. That should be possible with his trusty bow in hand. True, Rety needed him, but those up north had better claim on his loyalty.

Dwer’s senses still throbbed from the din of the brief battle, when the mighty Danik scoutship was shot down by a terrifying newcomer. Both vessels lay beyond the next dune, sky chariots of unfathomable power … and Rety urged him to creep closer still!

“We gotta find out what’s going on,” she insisted in a harsh whisper.

He gave her a sharp glance, demanding silence, and for once she complied, giving him a moment to think.

Lena and Jenin may be safe for a while, now that Kunn won’t be returning to plague them. If the Daniks and Rothens have enemies on Jijo, all the star gods may be too busy fighting each other to hunt a little band in the Gray Hills.

Even without guidance from Danel Ozawa, Lena Strong was savvy enough to make a three-way deal, with Rety’s old band and the urrish sooners. Using Danel’s “legacy,” their combined tribe might plant a seed to flourish in the wilderness. Assuming the worst happened back home on the Slope, their combined band might yet find its way to the Path.

Dwer shook his head. He sometimes found it hard to concentrate. Ever since letting the robot use his body as a conduit for its fields, it felt as if voices whispered softly at the edge of hearing. As when the crazy old mulc spider used to wheedle into his thoughts.

Anyway, it wasn’t his place to ponder destiny, or make sagelike decisions. Some things were obvious. He might not owe Rety anything. She may deserve to be abandoned to her fate. But he couldn’t do that.

So, despite misgivings, Dwer nodded to the girl, adding with emphatic hand motions that she had better not make a single sound. She replied with a happy shrug that seemed to say, Sure … until I decide otherwise.

Slinging his bow and quiver over one shoulder, he led the way forward, creeping from one grassy clump to the next, till they reached the crest of the dune. Cautiously they peered through a cluster of salty fronds to stare down at two sky vessels — the smaller a smoldering ruin, half-submerged in a murky swamp. The larger ship, nestled nearby, had not escaped the fracas unscarred. It bore a deep fissure along one flank that belched soot whenever the motors tried to start.

Two men lay prostrate on a marshy islet, barely moving. Kunn and Jass.

Dwer and Rety scratched a new hole to hide in, then settled down to see who — or what — would emerge next.

They did not wait long. A hatch split the large cylinder, baring a dark interior. Through it floated a single figure, startlingly familiar — an eight-sided pillar with dangling arms — close cousin to the damaged robot Dwer knew all too well. Only this one gleamed with stripes of alternating blue and pink, a pattern Dwer found painful to behold.

It also featured a hornlike projection on the bottom, aimed downward. That must be what lets it travel over water, he thought. If the robot is similar, could that mean Kunn’s enemies are human, too?

But no, Danel had said that machinery was standard among the half a million starfaring races, changing only slowly with each passing eon. This new drone might belong to anybody.

The automaton neared Kunn and Jass, a searchlight playing over their bodies, vivid even in bright sunshine. Their garments rippled, frisked by translucent fingers. Then the robot dropped down, arms outstretched. Kunn and Jass lay still as it poked, prodded, and lifted away with several objects in its pincers.

A signal must have been given, for a ramp then jutted from the open hatch, slanting to the bog. Who’s going to go traipsing around in that stuff? Dwer wondered. Are they going to launch a boat?

He girded for some weird alien race, one with thirteen legs perhaps, or slithering on trails of slime. Several great clans had been known as foes of humankind, — even in the Tabernacle’s day, such as the legendary Soro, or the insectlike Tandu. Dwer even nursed faint hope that the newcomers might be from Earth, come all this vast distance to rein in their criminal cousins. There were also relatives of hoons, urs, and qheuens out there, each with ships and vast resources at their command.

Figures appeared, twisting down the ramp into the open air.

Rety gasped. “Them’s traekis!”

Dwer stared at a trio of formidable-looking ring stacks, with bandoliers of tools hanging from their toroids-of-manipulation. The tapered cones reached muddy water and settled in. Abruptly, the flipper legs that seemed awkward on the ramp propelled them with uncanny speed toward the two survivors.

“But ain’t traekis s’posed to be peaceful?”

They are, Dwer thought, wishing he had paid more attention to the lessons his mother used to give Sara and Lark. Readings from obscure books that went beyond what you were taught in school. He reached back for a name, but came up empty. Yet he knew a name existed. One that inspired fear, once-upon-a-time.

“I don’t—” he whispered, then shook his head firmly. “I don’t think these are traeki. At least not like anyone’s seen here in a very long while.”

Alvin

THE SCENE WAS HARD TO INTERPRET AT FIRST. HAZY blue-green images jerked rapidly, sending shivers down my still-unsteady spine. Huck and Pincer seemed to catch on more quickly, pointing at various objects in the picture display, sharing knowing grunts. The experience reminded me of our trip on Wuphon’s Dream, when poor Alvin the Hoon was always the last one to grok what was going on.

Finally, I realized — we were viewing a faraway locale, back in the world of sunshine and rain!

(How many times have Huck and I read about some storybook character looking at a distant place by remote control? It’s funny. A concept can be familiar from novels, yet rouse awe when you finally encounter it in real life.)

Daylight streamed through watery shallows where green fronds waved in a gentle tide. Schools of flicking, silvery shapes darted past — species that our fishermen brought home in nets, destined for the drying racks and stewpots of hoonish khutas.

The spinning voice said there were sound “pickups” next to the moving camera lens, which explained the swishing, gurgling noises. Pincer shifted his carapace, whistling a homesick lament from all five vents, nostalgic for the tidal pens of his red qheuen rookery. But Ur-ronn soon had quite enough, turning her sleek head with a queasy whine, made ill by the sight of all that swishing water.

Slanting upward, the surf grew briefly violent. Then water fled the camera’s eye in foamy sheets as our viewpoint emerged onto a low sandscape. The remote unit scurried inland, low to the ground.

“Normally, we would send a drone ashore at night. But the matter is urgent. We must count on the land’s hot glare to mask its emergence.”

Ur-ronn let out a sigh, relieved to see no more liquid turbulence.

“It forces one to wonder,” she said, “why you have not sent sleuthy agents vefore.”

“In fact several were dispatched to seek signs of civilization. Two are long overdue, but others reported startling scenes.”

“Such as?” Huck asked.

“Such as hoon mariners, crewing wooden sailing ships on the high seas.”

“Hr-rr … What’s strange about that?”

“And red qheuens, living unsupervised by grays or blues, beholden to no one, trading peacefully with their hoonish neighbors.”

Pincer huffed and vented, but the voice continued.

“Intrigued, we sent a submarine expedition beyond the Rift. Our explorers followed one of your dross ships, collecting samples from its sacred discharge. Then, returning to base, our scout vessel happened on the urrish ‘cache’ you were sent to recover. Naturally, we assumed the original owners must be extinct.”

“Oh?” Ur-ronn asked, archly. “Why is that?”

“Because we had seen living hoon! Who would conceive of urs and hoon cohabiting peacefully within a shared volume less broad than a cubic parsec? If hoon lived, we assumed all urs on Jijo must have died.”

“Oh,” Ur-ronn commented, turning her long neck to glare at me.

“Imagine our surprise when a crude vessel plummeted toward our submarine. A hollowed-out tree trunk containing—”

The voice cut off. The remote unit was in motion again. We edged forward as the camera eye skittered across sand mixed with scrubby vegetation.

“Hey,” Ur-ronn objected. “I thought you couldn’t use radio or anything that can ve detected from sface!”

“Correct.”

“Then how are you getting these fictures in real tine?”

“An excellent question, coming from one with no direct experience in such matters. In this case, the drone needs only to travel a kilometer or so ashore. It can deploy a fiber cable, conveying images undetectably.”

I twitched. Something in the words just spoken jarred me, in an eerie-familiar way.

“Does it have to do with the exflosions?” Ur-ronn asked. “The recent attack on this site vy those who would destroy you?”

The spinning shape contracted, then expanded.

“You four truly are quick and imaginative. It has been an unusual experience conversing with you. And I was created to appreciate unusual experiences.”

“In other words, yes,” Huck said gruffly.

“Some time ago, a flying machine began sifting this sea with tentacles of sound. Hours later, it switched to dropping depth charges in a clear effort to dislodge us from our mound of concealing wreckage.

“Matters were growing dire when gravitic fields of a second craft entered the area. We picked up rhythms of aerial combat. Missiles and deadly rays were exchanged in a brief, desperate struggle.”

Pincer rocked from foot to foot. “Gosh-osh-osh!” he sighed, ruining our pose of nonchalance.

“Then both vessels abruptly stopped flying. Their inertial signatures ceased close to the drone’s present location.”

“How close?” Ur-ronn asked.

“Very close,” the voice replied.

Transfixed, we watched a hypnotic scene of rapid motion. An ankle-high panorama of scrubby plants, whipping past with blurry speed. The camera eye dodged clumps of saber fronds, skittering with frantic speed, as the drone sought height overlooking a vast marshy fen.

All at once, a glint of silver! Two glints. Curving flanks of—

That was when it happened.

Without warning, just as we had our first thrilling glimpse of crashed flyships, the screen was abruptly filled by a grinning face.

We rocked back, shouting in surprise. I recoiled so fast, even the high-tech back brace could not save my spine from surging pain. Huphu’s claws dug in my shoulder as she trilled an amazed cry.

The face bared a glittering, gleeful display of pointy teeth. Black, beady eyes stared at us, inanely magnified, so full of feral amusement that we all groaned with recognition.

Our tiny drone pitched, trying to escape, but the grinning demon held it firmly with both forepaws. The creature raised sharp claws, preparing to strike.

The spinning voice spoke then — a sound that flew out, then came back to us through the drone’s tiny pickups. There were just three words, in a queerly accented form of GalSeven, very high-pitched, almost beyond a hoon’s range.

“Brother,” the voice said quickly to the strange noor.

“Please stop.”

Ewasx

WORD COMES THAT WE HAVE LOST TRACK OF A CORVETTE!

Our light cruiser sent to pursue an aircraft of the Rothen bandits.

Trouble was not anticipated in such a routine chore. It raises disturbing questions. Might we have underestimated the prowess of this brigand band?

You, our second ring-of-cognition — you provide access to many memories and thoughts once accumulated by our stack, before I joined to become your master ring. Memories from a time when we/you were merely Asx.

You recall hearing the human gene thieves making preposterous claims. For instance, that their patrons — these mysterious “Rothen”—are unknown to Galactic society at large. That the Rothen wield strong influence in hidden ways. That they scarcely fear the mighty battle fleets of the great clans of the Five Galaxies.

We of the battleship Polkjhy heard similar tall tales before arriving at this world. We took it all for mere bluff. A pathetic cover story, attempting futilely to hide the outlaws’ true identity.

BUT WHAT IF THE STORY IS TRUE?

No one can doubt that mysterious forces do exist — ancient, aloof, influential. Might we have crossed fates with some cryptic power, here in an abandoned galaxy, far from home?

OR TAKE THE IDEA MORE BROADLY. Might such a puissant race of cloaked ones stand secretly behind all Terrans, guiding their destiny? Protecting them against the fate that generally befalls wolfling breeds? It would explain much strangeness in recent events. It could also bode ill for our Obeyer Alliance, in these dangerous times.

BUT NO! Facts do not support that fear.

You primitive, rustic rings would not know this, so let Me explain.

NOT LONG AGO, the Polkjhy was contacted by certain petty data merchants, unscrupulous vermin offering news for sale. Through human agents, these “Rothen” approached us — the great and devout Jophur — because our ship happened to be on search patrol nearby. Also, they calculated Jophur would pay twice as much for the information they wanted to sell.

— ONCE for clues to find the main quarry we seek, a missing Earth vessel that ten thousand ships have pursued for years, as great a prize as any in the Five Galaxies—

— AND A SECOND TIME for information about the ancestor-cursed g’Kek, a surviving remnant who took refuge here many planet cycles ago, thwarting our righteous, extinguishing wrath.

The Rothen and their henchmen hoped to reap handsome profit by selling us this information, added to whatever genetic scraps they might steal from this unripe world. The arrangement must have seemed ideal to them, for both sides would be well advised to keep the transaction secret forever.

Is that the behavior of some great, exalted power? One risen above trivial mortal concerns?

Would deity-level beings have been so rudely surprised by local savages, who vanquished their buried station with mere chemical explosives?

Did they prove so mighty when we turned our rings around half circle in an act of pious betrayal, and pounced upon their ship? Freezing it in stasis by means of a not-unclever trick?

No, this cannot be a reasonable line of inquiry, My rings. It worries me that you would waste our combined mental resources pursuing a blind pathway.

This digression — IS IT YET ANOTHER VAIN EFFORT TO DISTRACT ME FROM THE NARROWNESS OF PURPOSE THAT IS MY PRINCIPAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE STACK?

Is that also why some of you keep trying to tune in so-called guidance patterns from that silly rock you call a “Holy Egg”?

Are these vague, disjointed efforts aimed at yet another rebellion?

HAVE YOU NOT YET LEARNED?

Shall I demonstrate, once again, why the Oailie made My kind, and named us “master rings”?

LET US drop these silly cogitations and consider alternative explanations for the disappearance of the corvette. Perhaps, when our crew hunted down the scout boat of the Rothen, they stumbled onto something else instead?

Something more powerful and important, by far?

…?

Is this true? You truly, have no idea what I am hinting at?

Not even a clue? Why, most of the inhabitants of the Five Galaxies — even the enigmatic Zang — know of the ship we seek. A vessel pursued by half the armadas in known space.

You have indeed lived in isolation, My rustic rings! My primitive subselves. My temporary pretties, who have not heard of a ship crewed by half-animal dolphins.

How very strange indeed.

Sara

WITHOUT DARK GLASSES PROVIDED BY THE HORSERIDING Illias, Sara feared she might go blind or insane. A few stray glints were enough to stab her nerves with unnatural colors, cooing for attention, shouting dangerously, begging her to remove the coverings, to stare … perhaps losing herself in a world of shifted light.

Even in sepia tones, the surrounding bluffs seemed laden with cryptic meaning. Sara recalled how legendary Odysseus, sailing near the fabled Sirens, ordered his men to fill their ears with wax, then lashed himself to the mast so he alone might hear the temptresses’ call, while the crew rowed frantically past bright, alluring shoals.

Would it hurt to take the glasses off and stare at the rippled landscape? If transfixed, wouldn’t her friends rescue her? Or might her mind be forever absorbed by the panorama?

People seldom mentioned the Spectral Flow — a blind spot on maps of the Slope. Even those hardy men who roamed the sharp-sand desert, spearing roul shamblers beneath the hollow dunes, kept awed distance from this poison landscape. A realm supposedly bereft of life.

Only now Sara recalled a day almost two years ago, when her mother lay dying in the house near the paper mill, with the Dolo waterwheel groaning a low background lament. From outside Melina’s sickroom, Sara overheard Dwer discussing this place in a low voice.

Of course her younger brother was specially licensed to patrol the Slope and beyond, seeking violations of the Covenant and Scrolls. It surprised Sara only a little to learn he had visited the toxic land of psychotic colors. But from snippets wafting through the open door, it sounded as if Melina had also seen the Spectral Flow — before coming north to marry Nelo and raise a family by the quiet green Roney. The conversation had been in hushed tones of deathbed confidentiality, and Dwer never spoke of it after.

Above all, Sara was moved by the wistful tone of her dying mother’s voice.

“Dwer … remind me again about the colors.…”

The horses did not seem to need eye protections, and the two drivers wore theirs lackadaisically, as to stave off a well-known irritation rather than dire peril. Relieved to be out of the Buyur tunnel, Kepha murmured to Nuli, sharing the first laughter Sara had heard from any Illias.

She found her thoughts more coherent now, with surprise giving way to curiosity. What about people and races who are naturally color-blind? The effect must involve more than mere frequency variations on the electromagnetic spectrum, as the urrish glasses probably did more than merely darken. There must be some other effect. Light polarization? Or psi?

Emerson’s rewq satisfied his own need for goggles. But Sara felt concern when he peeled back the filmy symbiont to take an unprotected peek. He winced, visibly recoiling from sensory overflow, as if a hoonish grooming fork had plunged into his eye. She started toward him — but that initial reaction was brief. A moment later the starman grinned at her, an expression of agonized delight.

Well, anything you can do—she thought, nudging her glasses forward.…

Her first surprise was the pain that wasn’t. Her irises adjusted, so the sheer volume of illumination was bearable.

Rather, Sara felt waves of nausea as the world seemed to shift and dissolve … as if she were peering through layer after layer of overlapping images.

The land’s mundane topography was a terrain of layered lava flows, eroded canyons, and jutting mesas. Only now that seemed only the blank tapestry screen on which some mad g’Kek artist had embroidered an apparition in luminous paint and textured thread. Each time Sara blinked, her impressions shifted.

— Towering buttes were fairy castles, their fluttering pennants made of glowing shreds of windblown haze.…

— Dusty basins became shimmering pools. Rivers of mercury and currents of blood seemed to flow uphill as merging swirls of immiscible fluid.…

— Rippling like memory, a nearby cliff recalled Buyur architecture — the spires of Tarek Town — only with blank windows replaced by a million splendid glowing lights.…

— Her gaze shifted to the dusty road, with pumice flying from the wagon wheels. But on another plane it seemed the spray made up countless glittering stars.…

— Then the trail crested a small hill, revealing the most unlikely mirage of all … several narrow, fingerlike valleys, each surrounded by steep hills like ocean waves, frozen in their spuming torrent. Underneath those sheltering heights, the valley bottoms appeared verdant green, covered with impossible meadows and preposterous trees.

“Xi,” announced Kepha, murmuring happily in that accent Sara found eerily strange-familiar …

… and she abruptly knew why!

Surprise made Sara release the glasses, dropping them back over her eyes.

The castles and stars vanished …

… but the meadows remained. Four-footed shapes could be seen grazing on real grass, drinking from a very real stream.

Kurt and Jomah sighed. Emerson laughed and Prity clapped her hands. But Sara was too astonished to utter a sound. For now she knew the truth about Melina the Southerner, the woman who long ago came to the Roney, supposedly from the far-off Vale, to become Nelo’s bride. Melina the happy eccentric, who raised three unusual children by the ceaseless drone of Dolo Dam.

Mother … Sara thought, in numb amazement. This must have been your home.

The rest of the horsewomen arrived a few miduras later with their urrish companions, dirty and tired. The Illias unsaddled their faithful beasts before stripping off their riding gear and plunging into a warm volcanic spring, beneath jutting rocks where Sara and the other visitors rested.

Watching Emerson, Sara verified that one more portion of his battered brain must be intact, for the spaceman’s eyes tracked the riders’ nude femininity with normal male appreciation.

She squelched a jealous pang, knowing that her own form could never compete with those tanned, athletic figures below.

The starman glanced Sara’s way and flushed several shades darker, so sheepishly rueful that she had to laugh out loud.

“Look, but don’t touch,” she said, with an exaggerated waggle of one finger. He might not grasp every word, but the affectionate admonishment got through.

Grinning, he shrugged as if to say, Who, me? I wouldn’t think of it!

The wagon passengers had already bathed, though more modestly. Not that nakedness was taboo elsewhere on the Slope. But the Illias women behaved as if they did not know — or care — about the simplest fact all human girls were taught about the opposite sex. That male Homo sapiens have primitive arousal responses inextricably bound up in their optic nerves.

Perhaps it’s because they have no men, Sara thought. Indeed, she saw only female youths and adults, tending chores amid the barns and shelters. There were also urs, of Ulashtu’s friendly tribe, tending their precious simla and donkey herds at the fringes of the oasis. The two sapient races did not avoid each other — Sara glimpsed friendly encounters. But in this narrow realm, each had its favored terrain.

Ulashtu knew Kurt, and must have spent time in the outer Slope. In fact, some Illias women also probably went forth, now and then, moving among unsuspecting villagers of the Six Races.

Melina had a good cover story when she came to Dolo, arriving with letters of introduction, and baby Lark on her hip. Everyone assumed she came from somewhere in the Vale. A typical arranged remarriage.

It never seemed an issue to Nelo, that his eldest son had an unknown father. Melina subtly discouraged inquiries into her past.

But a secret like this …

With Ulashtu’s band came a prisoner. Ulgor, the urrish tinker who befriended Sara back at Dolo, only to spring a trap, leading to captivity by Dedinger’s fanatics and the reborn Urunthai. Now their roles were reversed. Sara noted Ulgor’s triplet eyes staring in dismay at the astonishing oasis.

How the Urunthai would hate this place! Their predecessors seized our horses to destroy them all. Urrish sages later apologized, after Drake the Elder broke the Urunthai. But how can you undo death?

You cannot. But it is possible to cheat extinction. Watching fillies and colts gambol after their mares below a bright rocky overhang, Sara felt almost happy for a time. This oasis might even remain unseen by omniscient spy eyes of alien star lords, confused by the enclosing land of illusion. Perhaps Xi would survive when the rest of the Slope was made void of sapient life.

She saw Ulgor ushered to a pen near the desert prophet, Dedinger. The two did not speak.

Beyond the women splashing in the pool and the grazing herds, Sara had only to lift her eyes in order to brush a glittering landscape where each ripple and knoll pretended to be a thousand impossible things. The country of lies was a name for the Spectral Flow. No doubt a person got used to it, blanking out irritating chimeras that never proved useful or informative. Or else, perhaps the Illias had no need of dreams, since they lived each day awash in Jijo’s fantasies.

The scientist in Sara wondered why it equally affected all races, or how such a marvel could arise naturally. There’s no mention of anything like it in Biblos. But humans only had a sprinkling of Galactic reference material when the Tabernacle left Earth. Perhaps this is a common phenomenon, found on many worlds.

But how much more wonderful if Jijo had made something unique!

She stared at the horizon, letting her mind free-associate shapes out of the shimmering colors, until a mellow female voice broke in.

“You have your mother’s eyes, Sara.”

She blinked, drawing back to find two humans nearby, dressed in the leather garments of Illias. The one who had spoken was the first elderly woman Sara had seen here.

The other was a man.

Sara stood up, blinking in recognition. “F-Fallon?”

He had aged since serving as Dwer’s tutor in the wilderness arts. Still, the former chief scout seemed robust, and smiled broadly.

A little tactlessly, she blurted, “But I thought you were dead!”

He shrugged. “People assume what they like. I never said I’d died.”

A Zen koan if she ever heard one. But then Sara recalled what the other person said. Though shaded against the desert’s glow, the old woman seemed to partake of the hues of the Spectral Flow.

“My name is Foruni,” she told Sara. “I am senior rider.”

“You knew my mother?”

The older woman took Sara’s hand. Her manner reminded Sara of Ariana Foo.

“Melina was my cousin. I’ve missed her, these many years — though infrequent letters told us of her remarkable children. You three validate her choice, though exile must not have been easy. Our horses and shadows are hard to leave behind.”

“Did Mother leave because of Lark?”

“We have ways of making it likely to bear girls. When a boy is born we foster him to discreet friends on the Slope, taking a female child in trade.”

Sara nodded. Exchange fostering was a common practice, helping cement alliances between villages or clans.

“But Mother wouldn’t give Lark up.”

“Just so. In any event, we need agents out there, and Melina was dependable. So it was done, and the decision proved right … although we mourned, on hearing of her loss.”

Sara accepted this with a nod.

“What I don’t understand is why only women?”

The elder had deep lines at the corners of her eyes, from a lifetime of squinting.

“It was required in the pact, when the aunties of Urchachkin tribe offered some humans and horses shelter in their most secret place, to preserve them against the Urunthai. In those early days, urs found our menfolk disquieting — so strong and boisterous, unlike their own husbands. It seemed simpler to arrange things on a female-to-female basis.

“Also, a certain fraction of boys tend to shrug off social constraints during adolescence, no matter how carefully they are raised. Eventually, some young man would have burst from the Illias realm without adequate preparation — and all it would take is one. In his need to preen and make a name, he might spill our secret to the Commons at large.”

“Girls act that way, too, sometimes,” Sara pointed out.

“Yes, but our odds were better this way. Ponder the young men you know, Sara. Imagine how they would have behaved.”

She pictured her brothers, growing up in this narrow oasis. Lark would have been sober and reliable. But Dwer, at fifteen, was very different than he became at twenty.

“And yet, I see you aren’t all women.…”

The senior rider grinned. “Nor are we celibates. From time to time we bring in mature males — often chief scouts, sages, or explosers — men who already know our secret, and are of an age to be calm, sensible companions … yet still retain vigor in their step.”

Fallon laughed to cover brief embarrassment. “My step is no longer my best feature.”

Foruni squeezed his arm. “You’ll do for a while yet.”

Sara nodded. “An urrish-sounding solution.” Sometimes a group of young urs, lacking the means to support individual husbands, would share one, passing him from pouch to pouch.

The senior rider nodded, expressing subtleties of irony with languid motions of her neck. “After many generations, we may have become more than a bit urrish ourselves.”

Sara glanced toward Kurt the Exploser, sitting on a smooth rock studying carefully guarded texts, with both Jomah and Prity lounging nearby.

“Then you sent the expedition to fetch Kurt because you want another—”

“Ifni, no! Kurt is much too old for such duties, and when we do bring in new partners it is with quiet discretion. Hasn’t Kurt explained to you what this is all about? His role in the present crisis? The reason why we gambled so much to fetch you all?”

When Sara shook her head, Foruni’s nostrils flared and she hissed like an urrish auntie, perplexed by foolish juniors.

“Well, that’s his affair. All I know is that we must escort you the rest of the way as soon as possible. You’ll rest with us tonight, my niece. But alas, family reminiscence must wait till the emergency passes … or once it overwhelms us all.”

Sara nodded, resigned to more hard riding.

“From here … can we see—?”

Fallon nodded, a gentle smile on his creased features.

“I’ll show you, Sara. It’s not far.”

She took his arm as Foruni bade them return soon for a feast. Already Sara’s nose filled with scents from the cook-fire. But soon her thoughts were on the path as they crossed narrow, miraculous meadows, then scniblands where simlas grazed, and beyond to a steepening pass wedged between two hills. Sunlight was fading rapidly, and soon the smallest moon, Passen, could be seen gleaming near the far west horizon.

She heard music before they crested the pass. The familiar sound of Emerson’s dulcimer, pinging softly ahead. Sara was loath to interrupt, yet the glow drew her — a shimmering lambency rising from Jijo, filling a vista beyond the sheltered oasis.

The layered terrain seemed transformed in pearly moonlight. Gone were the garish colors, yet there remained an extravagant effect on the imagination. It took an effort of will in order not to go gliding across the slopes, believing in false oceans and battlements, in ghost cities and starscapes, in myriad phantom worlds that her pattern-gleaning brain crafted out of opal rays and shadows.

Fallon took Sara’s elbow, turning her toward Emerson.

The starman stood on a rocky eminence with the dulcimer propped before him, beating its forty-six strings. The melody was eerie. The rhythm orderly, yet impossible to constrain, like a mathematical series that refused to converge.

Emerson’s silhouette was framed by flickering fire as he played for nature’s maelstrom.

This fire was no imagining — no artifact of an easily fooled eye. It rippled and twisted in the far distance, rimming the broad curves of a mighty peak that reared halfway up the sky.

Fresh lava.

Jijo’s hot blood.

The planet’s nectar of renewal, melted and reforged.

Hammering taut strings, the Stranger played for Mount Guenn, serenading the volcano while it repaid him with a halo of purifying flame.