Brightness Reef Read online

  "Come on, sprig. There's another pool down a ways, easy to get to."

  But Rety stood for a time, rooted in place, with a line of moisture on her cheek, though Dwer guessed it might have come from floating mist.

  Asx

  THEY DO NOT SHOW THEIR FACES. PLANS MIGHT go astray. Some of us might survive to testify. So naturally, they hide their forms.

  Our scrolls warn of this possibility. Our destiny seems foredoomed.

  Yet when the starship's voice filled the valley, the plain intent was to reassure.

  "(Simple) scientists, we are.

  "Surveys of (local, interesting) lifeforms, we prepare.

  "Harmful to anyone, we are not."

  That decree, in the clicks and squeaks of highly formal Galactic Two, was repeated in three other standard languages, and finally-because they saw men and pans among our throng-in the wolfling tongue, Anglic.

  "Surveying (local, unique) lifeforms, in this we seek your (gracious) help.

  "Knowledge of the (local) biosphere, this you (assuredly) have.

  "Tools and (useful) arts, these we offer in trade.

  "Confidentially, shall we (mutually) exchange?"

  Recall, my rings, how our perplexed peoples looked to one another. Could such vows be trusted? We who dwell on Jijo are already felons in the eyes of vast empires. So are those aboard this ship. Might two such groups have reason for common cause?

  Our human sage summed it up with laconic wit. In Anglic, Lester Cambel muttered wisely--"Confidentially, my hairy ancestors' armpits!"

  And he scratched himself in a gesture that was both oracular and pointedly apropos.

  Lark

  THE NIGHT BEFORE THE FOREIGNERS CAME, a chain of white-robed pilgrims trekked through a predawn mist. There were sixty, ten from each race.

  Other groups would come this way during festival, seeking harmony patterns. But this company was different-its mission more grave.

  Shapes loomed at them. Gnarled, misgrown trees spread twisted arms, like clutching specters. Oily vapors merged and sublimed. The trail turned sharply to avoid dark cavities, apparently bottomless, echoing mysteriously. Knobs of wind-scoured rock teased form-hungry agents of the mind, stoking the wanderers' nervous anticipation. Would the next twisty switchback, or the next, bring it into sight--Jijo's revered Mother Egg?

  Whatever organic quirks they inherited, from six worlds in four different galaxies, each traveler felt the same throbbing call toward oneness. Lark paced his footsteps to a rhythm conveyed by the rewq on his brow.

  I've been up this path a dozen times. It should be familiar by now. So why can't I respond?

  He tried letting the rewq lay its motif of color and sound over the real world. Feet shuffled. Hooves clattered. Ring nubs swiveled and wheels creaked along a dusty trail pounded so smooth by past pilgrims that one might guess this ritual stretched back to the earliest days of exile, not a mere hundred or so years.

  Where did earlier folk turn, when they needed hope?

  Lark's brother, the renowned hunter, once took him by a secret way up a nearby mountain, where the Egg could be seen from above, squatting in its caldera like the brood of a storybook dragon, lain in a sheer-sided nest. From that distant perspective, it might have been some ancient Buyur monument, or a remnant of some older denizens of Jijo, aeons earlier-a cryptic sentinel, darkly impervious to time.

  With the blink of an eye, it became a grounded star-ship-an oblate lens meant to glide through air and ether. Or a fortress, built of some adamantine essence, light-drinking, refractory, denser than a neutron star. Lark even briefly pictured the shell of some titanic being, too patient or proud to rouse itself over the attentions of mayflies.

  It had been disturbing, forcing him to rethink his image of the sacred. That epiphany still clung to Lark. Or else it was a case of jitters over the speech he was supposed to give soon to a band of fierce believers. A sermon calling for extreme sacrifice.

  The trail turned-and abruptly spilled into a sheer-walled canyon surrounding a giant oval form, a curved shape that reared fantastically before the pilgrims, two arrowflights from end to end. The pebbled surface curved up and over those gathered in awe at its base. Staring upward, Lark knew.

  It couldn't be any of those other things I imagined from afar.

  Up close, underneath its massive sheltering bulk, anyone could tell the Egg was made of native stone.

  Marks of Jijo's fiery womb scored its flanks, tracing the story of its birth, starting with a violent conception, far underground. Layered patterns were like muscular cords. Crystal veins wove subtle dendrite paths, branching like nerves.

  Travelers filed slowly under the convex overhang, to let the Egg sense their presence, and perhaps grant a blessing. Where the immense monolith pressed into black basalt, the sixty began a circuit. But while Lark's sandals scraped gritty powder, chafing his toes, the peacefulness and awe of the moment were partly spoiled by memory.

  Once, as an arrogant boy of ten, an idea took root in his head-to sneak behind the Egg and take a sample.

  It all began one jubilee year, when Nelo the Papermaker set out for Gathering to attend a meeting of his guild, and his wife, Melina the Southerner, insisted on taking Lark and little Sara along.

  "Before they spend their lives working away at your paper mill, they should see some of the world."

  How Nelo must have later cursed his consent, for the trip changed Lark and his sister.

  All during the journey, Melina kept opening a book recently published by the master printers of Tarek Town, forcing her husband to pause, tapping his cane while she read aloud in her lilting southern accent, describing varieties of plant, animal, or mineral they encountered along the path. At the time, Lark didn't know how many generations had toiled to create the guidebook, collating oral lore from every exile race. Nelo thought it a fine job of printing and binding, a good use of paper, or else he would have forbidden exposing the children to ill-made goods.

  Melina made it a game, associating real things with their depictions among the ink lithographs. What might have been a tedious trip for two youngsters became an adventure outshadowing Gathering itself, so that by the time they arrived, footsore and tired, Lark was already in love with the world.

  The same book, now yellow, worn, and obsolete thanks to Lark's own labors, rested like a talisman in one cloak-sleeve. The optimistic part of my nature. The part that thinks it can learn.

  As the file of pilgrims neared the Egg's far side, he slipped.a hand into his robe to touch his other amulet. The one he never showed even Sara. A stone no larger than his thumb, wrapped by a leather thong. It always felt warm, after resting for twenty years next to a beating heart.

  My darker side. The part that already knows.

  The stone felt hot as pilgrims filed by a place Lark recalled too well.

  It was at his third Gathering that he finally had screwed up the nerve-a patrician artisan's son who fancied himself a scientist-slinking away from the flapping pavilions, ducking in caves to elude passing pilgrims, then dashing under the curved shelf, where only a child's nimble form might go, drawing back his sampling hammer. ...

  In all the years since, no one ever mentioned the scar, evidence of his sacrilege. It shouldn't be noticeable among countless other scratches marring the surface up close. Yet even a drifting mist didn't hide the spot when Lark filed by.

  Should he still be embarrassed by a child's offense, after all these years?

  Knowing he was forgiven did not erase the shame.

  The stone grew cooler, less restive, as the procession moved past.

  Could it all be illusion? Some natural phenomenon, familiar to sophisticates of the Five Galaxies? (Though toweringly impressive to primitives hiding on a forbidden world.) Rewq symbionts also came into widespread use a century ago, offering precious insight into the moods of other beings. Had the Egg brought them forth, as some said, to help heal the Six of war and discord? Or were they just another quirky marvel left b
y Buyur gene-wizards, from back when this galaxy thronged with countless alien races?

  After poring through the Biblos archives, Lark knew his confusion was typical when humans puzzled over the sacred. Even the great Galactics, whose knowledge spanned time and space, were riven by clashing dogmas. If mighty star-gods could be perplexed, what chance had he of certainty?

  There's one thing both sides of me can agree on.

  In both his scientific work and the pangs of his heart, Lark knew one simple truth--We don't belong here.

  That was what he told the pilgrims later, in a rustic amphitheater, where the rising sun surrounded the Egg's oblate bulk with a numinous glow. They gathered in rows, sitting, squatting, or folding their varied torsos in attentive postures. The qheuen apostate, Harullen, spoke first in a poetic dialect, hissing from several leg vents, invoking wisdom to serve this world that was their home, source of all their atoms. Then Harullen tilted his gray carapace to introduce Lark. Most had come a long way to hear his heresy.

  "We're told our ancestors were criminals," he began with a strong voice, belying his inner tension. "Their sneakships came to Jijo, one at a time, running the patrols of the great Institutes, evading wary deputy globes of the Zang, hiding their tracks in the flux of mighty Izmunuti, whose carbon wind began masking this world a few thousand years ago. They came seeking a quiet place to perform a selfish felony.

  "Each founding crew had excuses. Tales of persecution or neglect. All burned and sank their ships, threw their godlike tools into the Great Midden, and warned their offspring to beware the sky.

  "From the sky would come judgment, someday--for the crime of survival."

  The sun crept past the Egg's bulk, stabbing a corner of his eye. He escaped by leaning toward his audience.

  "Our ancestors invaded a world that was set aside after ages of hard use. A world needing time for its many species, both native and artificial, to find restored balance, from which new wonders might emerge. The civilization of the Five Galaxies has used these rules to protect life since before half of the stars we see came alight.

  "So why did our ancestors flout them?"

  Each g'Kek pilgrim watched him with two eyestalks raised far apart and the other two tucked away, a sign of intense interest. The typical urrish listener pointed her narrow head not toward Lark's face but his midriff, to keep his center of mass in view of all three black slits surrounding her narrow snout. Lark's rewq highlighted these signs, and others from hoon, traeki, and qheuen.

  They're with me so far, he saw.

  "Oh, our ancestors tried to minimize the harm. Our settlements lie in this narrow, geologically violent zone, in hopes that volcanoes will someday cover our works, leaving no evidence behind. The sages choose what we may kill and eat, and where to build, in order to intrude lightly on Jijo's rest.

  "Still, who can deny harm is done, each hour we live here. Now rantanoids go extinct. Is it our fault? Who knows? I doubt even the Holy Egg can tell."

  A murmur from the crowd. Colors flowed in the rewq veil over his eyes. Some literalistic hoon thought he went too far. Others, like the g'Kek, were more comfortable with metaphor.

  Let their rewq handle the nuances, Lark thought. Concentrate on the message itself.

  "Our ancestors passed on excuses, warnings, rules. They spoke of tradeoffs, and the Path of Redemption. But I'm here to say that none of it is any good. It's time to end the farce, to face the truth.

  "Our generation must choose.

  "We must choose to be the last of our kind on Jijo."

  The journey back skirted dark caves, exhaling glistening vapors. Now and then, some deep natural detonation sent echoes rolling from one opening, then another, like a rumor that dwindled with each retelling.

  Rolling downhill was easier for the g'Keks. But several traeki, built for life in swampy fens, chuffed with exertion as they twisted and turned, striving to keep up. In order to ease the journey, hoonish pilgrims rumbled low atonal music, as they often did at sea. Most pilgrims no longer wore their exhausted rewq. Each mind dwelled alone, in its own thoughts.

  Legend says it's different among machine intelligences, or the Zang. Group minds don't bother with persuasion. They just put their heads together, unify, and decide.

  It wouldn't be that easy convincing the common citizenry of the Six to go along with the new heresy. Deep instincts drove each race to reproduce as best it could. Ambition for the future was a natural trait for people like his father.

  But not here, not on this world.

  Lark felt encouraged by this morning's meeting. We'll convince a few this year. Then more. First we'll be tolerated, later opposed.. In the long run, it must be done without violence, by consensus.

  Around noon, a mutter of voices carried up the trail- the day's first regular pilgrims, making an outward show of reverence while still chattering about the pleasures of Gathering. Lark sighted white-robed figures beyond some vapor fumaroles. The leaders called greetings to Lark's group, already returning from devotions, and began shuffling aside to give up right of way.

  A crack of thunder struck as the two parties passed alongside, slamming their bodies together and flapping their robes. Hoons crouched, covering their ears, and g'Kek eyestalks -recoiled. One poor qheuen skittered over the edge, clutching a gnarled tree with a single, desperate claw.

  Lark's first thought was of another gas discharge.

  When the ground shook, he pondered an eruption.

  He would later learn that the noise came not from Jijo, but the sky. It was the sound of fate arriving, and the world he knew coming abruptly to an end, before he ever expected it.

  Asx

  THOSE WITHIN THE STARSHIP INDUCED A SMALL opening in its gleaming side. Through this portal they sent an emissary, unlike anything the Commons had seen in living memory.

  A robot!

  my/our ring-of-associations had to access one of its myriad moist storage glands in order to place its contours, recalling an illustration -we/i once perused in a human book.

  Which book? Ah, thank you my self. Jane's Survey of Basic Galactic Tools. One of the rarest surviving fruits of the Great Printing.

  Exactly as depicted in that ancient diagram, this floating mechanism was a black, octagonal slab, about the size of a young qheuen, hovering above the ground at about the level of my ring-of-vision, with various gleaming implements projecting above or hanging below. From the moment the hatch closed behind it, the robot ignored every earthly contour, leaving a trail where grass, pebbles, and loam were pressed flat by unseen heaviness.

  Wherever it approached, folk quailed back. Just one group of beings kept still, awaiting the creature of not-flesh. We sages. Responsibility was our cruel mooring, so adamant that even my basal segment stayed rigid, though it pulsed with craven need to flee. The robot--or its masters in the ship--thus knew who had the right/ duty to parlay. It hesitated in front of Vubben, appearing to contemplate our eldest sage for five or six duras, perhaps sensing the reverence we all hold for the wisest of the g'Kek. Then it backed away to confront us all.

  i/we watched in mystified awe. After all, this was a thing, like a hoonish riverboat or some dead tool left by the vanished Buyur. Only the tools we make do not fly, and Buyur remnants show no further interest in doing so.

  This thing not only moved, it spoke, commencing first with a repeat of the earlier message.

  "Surveying (local, unique) lifeforms, in this we seek your (gracious) help.

  "Knowledge of the (local) biosphere, this you (assuredly) have.

  "Tools and (useful) arts, these we offer in trade.

  "Confidentiality, shall we (mutually) exchange?"

  Our rewq were useless-shriveling away from the intense flux of our distress. We sages nonetheless held conference. By agreement, Vubben rolled forward, his roller-wheels squeaking with age. In a show of discipline, all eyestalks turned toward the alien device, though surely oversurfeited with its frightening stimulus.

  "Poor castaways, are we,
"he commenced reciting, in the syncopated pops and clicks of formal Galactic Two. Although our urrish cousins find that language easiest and use it among themselves, all conceded that Vubben, the g'Kek, was peerless in his mastery of the grammar.

  Especially when it came to telling necessary lies.

  "Poor castaways, ignorant and stranded.

  "Delighted are we. Ecstatic at this wondrous thing.

  "Advent of rescue!"

  Sara

  SOME DISTANCE BELOW DOLO VILLAGE, THE river felt its way through a great marsh where even hoon sailors were known to lose the main channel, snagging on tree roots or coming aground on shifting sandbars. Normally, the brawny, patient crew of the dross-hauler Hauph-woa would count on wind and the river's rhythmic rise-and-fall to help them slip free. But these weren't normal times. So they folded their green cloaks-revealing anxious mottles across their lumpy backbone ridges-and pushed the Hauph-woa along with poles made of lesser-boo. Even passengers had to assist, now and then, to keep the muddy bottom from seizing the keel and holding them fast. The uneasy mood affected the ship's contingent of flighty noor, who barked nervously, scampering across the masts, missing commands and dropping lines.

  Finally, just before nightfall, the captain-pilot guided the Hauph-woa's ornate prow past one last fen of droopy tallgrass to Unity Point, where the river's branches reconverged into an even mightier whole. The garu forest resumed, spreading a welcome sheltering canopy over both banks. After such an arduous day, the air seemed all at once to release passengers and crew from its moist clench. A cool breeze stroked skin, scale, and hide, while sleek noor sprang overboard to splash alongside the gently gliding hull, then clambered the masts and spars to stretch and preen.

  Sara thanked Prity when her assistant brought supper in a wooden bowl, then the chimp took her own meal to the side, in order to flick overboard the spicy greens that hoon chefs loved slicing into nearly everything they cooked. A trail of bubbles showed that river creatures, feeding on the scraps, weren't so finicky. Sara didn't mind the tangy taste, though most Earthlings wound up defecating bright colors after too many days of shipboard fare.