Infinity's Shore Page 4

  As she reached for the loop, the noor sprang, using his claws as if her arm were a handy climbing vine. Rety howled, but before she could react, Mudfoot was already up on top, grinning smugly.

  Little yee let out a yelp. The urrish male pulled his head inside her pouch and drew the zipper shut.

  Rety saw blood spots well along her sleeve and lashed in anger, trying to kick the crazy noor off. But Mudfoot dodged easily, inching close, grinning appealingly and rumbling a low sound, presenting the water bottle with two agile forepaws.

  Sighing heavily, Rety accepted it and let the noor settle down nearby-on the opposite side from yee.

  "I can't seem to shake myself loose of any of you guys, can I?" she asked aloud.

  Mudfoot chittered. And from below, Dwer uttered a short laugh-ironic and tired.

  IT WAS A LONELY TIME, CONFINED IN GNAWING PAIN to a cramped metal cell. The distant, humming engine reminded me of umble lullabies my father used to sing, when I came down with toe pox or itchysac. Sometimes the noise changed pitch and made my scales frickle, sounding like the moan of a doomed wooden ship when it runs aground.

  Finally I slept . . . . . . then wakened in terror to find that a pair of metalclad, six-legged monsters were tying me into a contraption of steel tubes and straps! At first, it looked like a pre-contact tenure device I once saw in the Dore-illustrated edition of Don Quixote. Thrashing and resisting accomplished nothing, but hurt like bloody blue blazes.

  Finally, with some embarrassment, I realized. It was no instrument of torment but a makeshift back brace, shaped to fit my form and take weight off my injured spine. I fought to suppress panic at the tight metal touch, as they set me on my feet. Swaying with surprise and relief, I found I could walk a little, though wincing with each step.

  "Well thanks, you big ugly bugs," I told the nearest of the giant phuvnthus. "But you might've warned me first."

  I expected no answer, but one of them turned its armored torso-with a humped back and wide flare at the rear-and tilted toward me. I took the gesture as a polite bow, though perhaps it meant something different to them.

  They left the door open when they exited this time.

  Slowly, cringing at the effort, I stepped out for the first time from my steel coffin, following as the massive creatures stomped down a narrow corridor.

  I already figured I was aboard a submarine of some sort, big enough to carry in its hold the greatest hoonish craft sailing Jijo's seas.

  Despite that, it was a hodgepodge. I thought of Frankenstein's monster, pieced together from the parts of many corpses. So seemed the monstrous vessel hauling me to who-knows-where. Each time we crossed a hatch, it seemed as if we'd pass into a distinct ship, made by different artisans ... by a whole different civilization. In one section, the decks and bulkheads were made of riveted steel sheets. Another zone was fashioned from some fibrous substance-flexible but strong. The corridors changed proportions-from wide to painfully narrow. Half the time I had to stoop under low ceilings . . . not a lot of fun in the state my back was in.

  Finally, a sliding door hissed open. A phuvnthu motioned me ahead with a crooked mandible and Entered a dim chamber much larger than my former cell.

  My hearts surged With joy. Before me stood my friends! All of them-alive!

  They were gathered round a circular viewing port, staring at inky ocean depths. I might've tried sneaking in to surprise them, but qheuens and g'Keks literally have "eyes in the back of their heads," making it a challenge to startle Huck and Pincer.

  (I have managed it, a couple of times.)

  When they shouted my name, Ur-ronn whirled her long neck and outraced them on four clattering hooves. We plunged into a multispecies embrace.

  Huck was first to bring things back to normal, snapping at Pincer.

  "Watch the claws, Crab Face! You'll snap a spoke! Back off, all of you. Can't you see Alvin's hurt? Give him room!"

  "Look who talks," Ur-ronn replied. "Your left wheel just squished his toes, Octopus Head!"

  I hadn't noticed till she pointed it out, so happy was I to hear their testy, adolescent whining once more.

  "Hr-rm. Let me look at you all. Ur-ronn, you seem so much . . . drier than I saw you last."

  Our urrish buddy blew a rueful laugh through her nostril fringe. Her pelt showed large bare patches where fur had sloughed after her dousing. "It took our hosts a while to adjust the humidity of my guest suite, but they finally got it right," she said. Her torso showed tracks of hasty needlework-the phuvnthus' rough stitching to close Ur-ronn's gashes after she smashed through the glass port of Wuphon's Dream. Fortunately, her folk don't play the same mating games as some races. To urs, what matters is not appearance, but status. A visible dent or two will help Ur-ronn show the other smiths she's been around.

  "Yeah. And now we know what an urs smells like after actually taking a bath," Huck added. "They oughta try it more often."

  " You should talk? With that green eyeball sweat-"

  "All right, all right!" I laughed. "Just stopper it long enough for me to look at you, eh?"

  Ur-ronn was right. Huck's eyestalks needed grooming and she had good reason to worry about her spokes. Many were broken, with new-spun fibers just starting to lace the rims. She would have to move cautiously for some time.

  As for Pincer, he looked happier than ever.

  "I guess you were right about there being monsters in the deep," I told our red-shelled friend. "Even if they hardly look like the ones you descr-"

  I yelped when sharp needles seemed to lance into my back, clambering up my neck ridge. I quickly recognized the rolling growl of Huphu, our little noor-beast mascot, expressing gladness by demanding a rumble umble from me right away.

  Before I could find out if my sore throat sac was up to it, Ur-ronn whistled from the pane of dark glass. "They turned on the searchlight again," she fluted, with hushed awe in her voice. "Alvin, hurry. You've got to look!"

  Awkwardly on crutches, I moved to the place they made for me. Huck stroked my arm. "You always wanted to see this, pal," she said. "So gaze out there in wonder.

  "Welcome to the Great Midden,"

  Asx

  HERE IS ANOTHER MEMORY, MY RINGS. AN EVENT that followed the brief Battle of the Glade, so swiftly that war echoes still abused our battered forest canyons.

  Has the wax congealed enough yet? Can you stroke-and sense the awesome disquiet, the frightening beauty of that evening, as we watched a harsh, untwinkling glow pass overhead?

  Trace the fatty memory of that spark crossing the sky, brightening as it spiraled closer.

  No one could doubt its identity.

  The Rothen cruiser, returning for its harvest of bio-plunder, looted from a fragile world.

  Returning for those comrades it had left behind.

  Instead of genetic booty, the crew will find their station smashed, their colleagues killed or taken.

  Worse, their true faces are known! We castaways might testify against them in Galactic courts. Assuming we survive.

  It takes no cognition genius to grasp the trouble we faced. We six fallen races of forlorn Jijo.

  As an Earthling writer might put it-we found ourselves in fetid mulch. Very ripe and very deep.

  Sara

  THE JOURNEY PASSED FROM AN ANXIOUS BLUR INTO something exalting . . . almost transcendent.

  But not at the beginning.

  When they perched her suddenly atop a galloping creature straight out of mythology, Sara's first reaction was terrified surprise. With snorting nostrils and huge tossing head, the horse was more daunting than Tarek Town's stone tribute to a lost species. Its muscular torso flexed with each forward bound, shaking Sara's teeth as it crossed the foothills of the central Slope by the light of a pale moon.

  After two sleepless days and nights, it still seemed dreamlike the way a squadron of the legendary beasts came trotting into the ruined Urunthai campsite, accompanied by armed urrish escorts. Sara and her friends had just escaped captivity-their former
kidnappers lay either dead or bound with strips of shredded tent cloth-but she expected reenslavement at any moment. Only then, instead of fresh foes, the darkness brought forth these bewildering saviors.

  Bewildering to everyone except Kurt the Exploser, who welcomed the newcomers as expected friends. While Jomah and the Stranger exclaimed wonder at seeing real life horses, Sara barely had time to blink before she was thrust onto a saddle.

  Blade volunteered to stay by the bleak fire and tend the wounded, though envy filled each forlorn spin of his blue cupola. Sara would trade places with her qheuen friend, but his chitin armor was too massive for a horse to carry. There was barely time to give Blade a wave of encouragement before the troop wheeled back the way they came, bearing her into the night.

  Pounding hoofbeats soon made Sara's skull ache.

  I guess it beats captivity by Dedinger's human chauvinists, and those fanatic Urunthai. The coalition of zealots, volatile as. an exploser's cocktail, had joined forces to snatch the Stranger and sell him to Rothen invaders. But they underestimated the enigmatic voyager. Despite his crippling loss of speech, the starman found a way to incite urs-human suspicion into bloody riot.

  Leaving us masters of our own fate, though it couldn't last.

  Now here was a different coalition of humans and centauroid urs! A more cordial group, but just as adamant about hauling her Ifni-knew-where.

  When limnous Torgen rose above the foothills, Sara got to look over the urrish warriors, whose dun flanks were daubed with more subtle war paint than the garish Urunthai. Yet their eyes held the same dark flame that drenched urs' souls when conflict scents fumed. Cantering in skirmish formation, their slim hands cradled arbalests while long necks coiled, tensely wary. Though much smaller than horses, the. urrish fighters conveyed formidable craftiness.

  The human rescuers were even more striking. Six women who came north with nine saddled horses, as if they expected to retrieve just two or three others for a return trip.

  But there's six of us. Kurt and Jomah. Prity and me. The Stranger and Dedinger.

  No matter. The stern riders seemed indifferent about doubling up, two to a saddle.

  Is that why they're all female? To keep the weight down?

  While deft astride their great mounts, the women seemed uneasy with the hilly terrain of gullies and rocky spires. Sara gathered they disliked rushing about strange trails at night. She could hardly blame them.

  Not one had a familiar face. That might have surprised Sara a month ago, given Jijo's small human population.

  The Slope must be bigger than she thought.

  Dwer would tell stories about his travels, scouting for the sages. He claimed he'd been everywhere within a thousand leagues.

  Her brother never mentioned horse-riding amazons.

  Sara briefly wondered if they came from off-Jijo, since this seemed the year for spaceships. But no. Despite some odd slang, their terse speech was related to Jijoan dialects she knew from her research. And while the riders seemed unfamiliar with this region, they knew to lean away from a migurv tree when the trail passed near its sticky fronds. The Stranger, though warned with gestures not to touch its seed pods, reached for one curiously and learned the hard way.

  She glanced at Kurt. The .exploser's gaunt face showed satisfaction with each league they sped southward. The existence of horses was no surprise to him.

  We're told our society is open. But clearly there are secrets known to a few.

  Not all explosers shared it. Kurt's nephew chattered happy amazement while exchanging broad grins with the Stranger . . .

  Sara corrected herself.

  With Emerson. . . .

  She peered at the dark man who came plummeting from the sky months ago, dousing his burns in a dismal swamp near Dolo Village. No longer the near corpse she had nursed in her tree house, the star voyager was proving a resourceful adventurer. Though still largely mute, he had passed a milestone a few miduras ago when he began thumping his chest, repeating that word-Emerson-over and over, beaming pride over a feat that undamaged folk took for granted. Uttering one's own name.

  Emerson seemed at home on his mount. Did that mean horses were still used among the god worlds of the Five Galaxies? If so, what purpose might they serve, where miraculous machines did your bidding at a nod and wink?

  Sara checked on her chimp assistant, in case the jouncing ride reopened Prity's bullet wound. Riding with both arms clenched round the waist of a horsewoman, Prity kept her eyes closed the whole time, no doubt immersed in her beloved universe of abstract shapes and forms-a better world than this one of sorrow and messy nonlinearity.

  That left Dedinger, the rebel leader, riding along with both hands tied. Sara wasted no pity on the scholar-turnedprophet. After years preaching militant orthodoxy, urging his desert followers toward the Path of Redemption, the ex-sage clearly knew patience. Dedinger's hawklike face bore an expression Sara found unnerving.

  Serene calculation.

  The tooth-jarring pace swelled when the hilly track met open ground. Soon Ulashtu's detachment of urrish warriors fell behind, unable to keep up.

  No wonder some urs clans resented horses, when humans first settled Jijo. The beasts gave us mobility, the trait most loved by urrish captains.

  Two centuries ago, after trouncing the human newcomers in battle, the 'original Urunthai faction claimed Earthlings' beloved mounts as war booty, and slaughtered every

  They figured we'd be no more trouble, left to walk and fight on foot. A mistake that proved fatal when Drake the Elder forged a coalition to hunt the Urunthai, and drowned the cult's leadership at Soggy Hoof Falls.

  Only, it seems horses weren't extinct, after all. How could a clan of horse-riding folk remain hidden all this time?

  And as puzzling-Why emerge now, risking exposure by rushing to meet Kurt?

  It must be the crisis of the starships, ending Jijo's blessed,cursed isolation. What point in keeping secrets, if Judgment Day is at hand?

  Sara was exhausted and numb by the time morning pushed through an overcast sky. An expanse of undulating hills stretched ahead to a dark green marsh.

  The party dismounted at last by a shaded creek. Hands aimed her toward a blanket, where she collapsed with a shuddering sigh.

  Sleep came laced with images of people she had left behind.

  Nelo, her aged father, working in his beloved paper mill, unaware that some conspired its ruin.

  Melina, her mother, dead several years now, who always seemed an outsider since arriving in Dolo long ago, with a baby son in her arms.

  Frail Joshu, Sara's lover in Biblos, whose touch made her forget even the overhanging Fist of Stone. A comely rogue whose death sent her spinning.

  Dwer and Lark, her brothers, setting out to attend festival in the high Rimmer glades . . . where starships were later seen descending.

  Sara's mind roiled as she tossed and turned.

  Last of all, she pictured Blade, whose qheuen hive farmed crayfish behind Dolo Dam. Good old Blade, who saved Sara and Emerson from disaster at the Urunthai camp.

  "Seems I'm always late catching up," her qheuen friend whistled from three leg vents. "But don't worry, I'll be along,Too much is happening to miss."

  Blade's armor-clad dependability had been like a rock to Sara. In her dream, she answered.

  "I'll stall the universe . . . keep it from doing anything interesting until you show up."

  Imagined or not, the blue qheuen's calliope laughter warmed Sara, and her troubled slumber fell into gentler rhythms.

  The sun was half-high when someone shook Sara back to the world-one of the taciturn female riders, using the archaic word brekkers to announce the morning meal. Sara got up gingerly as waves of achy soreness coursed her body.

  She gulped down a bowl of grain porridge, spiced with unfamiliar traeki seasonings, while horsewomen saddled mounts or watched Emerson play his beloved dulcimer, filling the pocket valley with a sprightly melody, suited for travel. Despite her morning ir
ritability, Sara knew the starman was just making the best of the situation. Bursts of song were a way to overcome his handicap of muteness.

  Sara found Kurt tying up his bedroll.

  "Look," she told the elderly exploser, "I'm not ungrateful to your friends. I appreciate the rescue and all. But you can't seriously hope to ride horses all the way to ... Mount Guenn." Her tone made it sound like one of Jijo's moons.

  Kurt's stony face flickered a rare smile. "Any better suggestions? Sure, you planned taking the Stranger to the High Sages, but that way is blocked by angry Urunthai. And recall, we saw two starships last night, one after the other, headed straight for Festival Glade. The Sages must have their hands and tendrils full by now."