Brightness Reef Page 9

  When Prity later brought a pair of blankets, Sara chose the plushest to tuck over the Stranger, sleeping near the main hold with its neatly stacked crates of dross. His brow bore a sheen of perspiration, which she wiped with a dry cloth. Since early yesterday, he had shown none of the lucidity so briefly displayed when the ill-omened bolide split the sky.

  Sara had misgivings about hauling the wounded man on a hurried, stressful trek. Still, there was a good clinic in Tarek Town. And this way she might keep an eye on him while performing her other duty-one rudely dropped in her lap last night, after that frenzied conclave in the Meeting Tree.

  Pzora stood nearby, a dark tower, dormant but ever-vigilant over the patient's condition. The pharmacist vented steamy puffs from the specialized ring that routinely performed ad hoc chemistry beyond the understanding of Jijo's best scholars or even the traeki themselves.

  Wrapping her shoulders in another soft g'Kek-spun blanket, Sara turned and watched her fellow passengers.

  Jomah, the young son of Henrik, the exploser, lay curled nearby, snoring softly after the excitement of leaving home for the first time. Closer to the mast sat Jop, the bristle-cheeked delegate of Dolo's farmers and crofters, peering in the half-light at a leather-bound copy of some Scroll. Over by the starboard rail, Ulgor, the urrish tinker who had spoken at the village meeting, knelt facing a qheuenish woodcarver named Blade, one of many sons of the matriarch, Log Biter. Blade had lived for years among the sophisticated Gray Qheuens of Tarek Town, so his choice as representative of Dolo Hive seemed natural.

  From a moss-lined pouch, Ulgor drew a quivering rewq symbiont, of the type suited for lean urrish heads. The trembling membrane crawled over each of her triple eyes, creating the Mask-That-Reveals. Meanwhile, Blade's rewq wrapped itself around the seeing-strip bisecting his melonlike cupola. The qheuen's legs retracted, leaving only the armored claws exposed.

  The pair conversed in a bastard dialect of Galactic Two, at best a difficult tongue for humans. Moreover, the breeze carried off the treble whistle-tones, leaving just the lower track of syncopated clicks. Perhaps for those reasons the two travelers seemed unconcerned anyone might listen.

  Maybe, as often happened, they underrated the reach of human hearing.

  Or else they're counting on something called common courtesy, she thought ironically. Lately Sara had become quite an eavesdropper, an unlikely habit for a normally shy, private young woman. Her recent fascination with language was the cause. This time though, fatigue overcame curiosity.

  Leave them alone. You 'II have plenty of chances to study dialects in Tarek Town.

  Sara took her blanket over to a spot between two crates marked with Nelo's seal, exuding the homey scents of Dolo's paper mill. There had been little time for rest since that frenetic town meeting. Only a few miduras after adjournment, the village elders had sent a herald to wake Sara with this assignment-to lead a delegation downriver in search of answers and guidance. She was chosen both as one with intimate knowledge of Biblos and also to represent the Dolo craft workers-as Jop would speak for the farmers, and Blade for the upriver qheuens. Other envoys included Ulgor, Pzora, and Fakoon, a g'Kek scriven-dancer. Since each was already billeted aboard the Hauph-woa, with business in Tarek Town, they could hardly refuse. Together with the ship's captain, that made at least one representative from all Six exile races. A good omen, the elders hoped.

  Sara still wondered about Jomah. Why would Henrik dispatch the boy on a trip that promised danger, even in quiet times?

  "He will know what to do, " the taciturn exploser had said, putting his son in Sara's nominal care. "Once you reach Tarek Town."

  If only I could say as much for myself, Sara worried. It had been impossible to turn down this assignment, much as she wanted to.

  It's been a year since Joshu died-since shame and grief made a hermit of you. Besides, who is going to care that you made a fool of yourself over a man who could never be yours? That all seems a small matter, now that the world we know is coming to an end.

  Alone in the dark, Sara worried.

  Are Diver and Lark safe? Or has something dreadful already happened at Gathering?

  She felt Prity curl up alongside in her own blanket, sharing warmth. The hoonish helmsman rumbled a crooning melody, with no words in any language Sara knew, yet conveying a sense of muzzy serenity, endlessly forbearing.

  Things work out, the hoonish umble seemed to say.

  Sleep finally climbed out of her body's fatigue to claim Sara as she thought-

  I . . . sure . . . hope . . . so.

  Later, in the middle of the night, a dream yanked her bolt upright, clutching the blanket close. Her eyes stared over the peaceful river, lit by two moons, but Sara's heart pounded as she quailed from an awful nightmare image.

  Flames.

  Moonlight flickered on the water, and to her eyes it became fire, licking the Biblos roof-of-stone, blackening it with the heat and soot of half a million burning books.

  The Stranger

  Unconscious, he is helpless to control dark images roiling across the closed universe of his mind. It is a tight universe-narrow and confined-yet teeming with stars and confusion. With galaxies and remorse. With nebulae and pain.

  And water. Always water-from dense black ice fields all the way to space-clouds so diffuse, you might never know they thronged with beings the size of planets. Living things as slow and thin as vapor, swimming through a near-vacuum sea.

  Sometimes he thinks water will never leave him alone. Nor will it let him simply die.

  He hears it right now, water's insistent music, piercing his delirium. This time it comes to him as a soft lapping sound-the sluicing of wooden boards through gentle liquid, like some vessel bearing him along from a place he can't remember, toward another whose name he'll never learn. It sounds reassuring, this melody, not like the sucking clutch of that awful swamp, where he had thought he was about to drown at last-

  -as he so nearly drowned once, long ago, when the Old Ones forced him, screaming, into a crystal globe they then filled with a fluid that dissolved everything it touched.

  -or as he once fought for breath on that green-green-green world whose thick air refused to nourish while he stumbled on and on half-blind toward a fearsome glimmering Jophur tower.

  -or the time his body and soul felt pummeled, squeezed, unable even to gasp as he threaded a narrow passage that seemed about to strip him to his spine . . . before abruptly spilling him into a realm where shining light stretched on and on until-

  His mind rebels, quailing from brief, incoherent images. Fevered, he has no idea which of them are remembered, which are exaggerated, and which his damaged brain simply invented out of the pitchy stuff of nightmare-

  -like a starship's vapor contrail (water!) cleaving a blue sky that reminded him of home.

  -or the sight of beings like himself (more water!) living on a world where they clearly don't belong.

  Amid the chaos of fevered hallucinations, another impression penetrates. Somehow he knows that it comes from beyond his delusion-from someplace real. It feels like a touch, a stroke of softness on his brow. A brush, accompanied by murmurs in a voice that soothes. He can make no sense of the words, but still he welcomes the sensation, even knowing that it should not be. Not here. Not now.

  It is a comfort, that touch, making him feel just a little less alone.

  Eventually, it even pushes back the fearsome images-the memories and dreams-and in time he slips from delirium into a quietude of sleep.

  V. THE BOOK OF THE SEA

  When Judgment comes, you will be asked

  about the dead.

  What living species, beautiful and unique,

  exist no more because you squatters chose

  a forbidden place to live?

  And what of your own dead?

  Your corpses, cadavers, and remains?

  Your tools and cold-made things?

  How have you disposed of them?

  Be righteous, so
oners of Jijo.

  Show how hard you tried.

  Make small the consequences of your crime.

  [The offense or living.]

  Felonies--and their punishment--

  can be made smaller, by the simple fact

  of doing less harm.

  --The Scroll of Advice

  Alvin's Tale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Great," Huck remarked. "Whoever rides the thing can see whatever's about to eat him."

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

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

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

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

  "Say, I've always wondered. Has anybody ever figured out exactly how long a league is?"

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

  "I looked in the dictionary once, but I couldn't fathom the answer."

  Pincer complained, "Look, are you two about to start-"

  I interrupted, "If anyone does know the answer, I'd sure like to meter."

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

  "Hrrrm. I don't know if I can take this furlong."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Hrrrrm, you can't-"

  "What do you-"

  "Surely you don't mean-"

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

  VI. THE BOOK OF THE SLOPE

  Legends

  It seems ironic that most of Jijo's night-time constellations were named by humans, the youngest exile sept. None of the prior six had thought of giving fanciful labels to groups of unrelated stars, associating them with real and mythical beasts.

  The quaint habit clearly derives from humanity's unique heritage as an orphaned race--or as self-evolved wolfings--who burst into space without guidance by a patron. Every other sapient species had such a mentor--as the hoon had the Guthatsa and g'Keks had the Droolt--an older, wiser species, ready to teach a younger one the ropes.

  But not humans.

  This lack scarred Homo sapiens in unique ways.

  Countless bizarre notions bloomed among native Terran cultures during humanity's dark lonely climb. Outtandish ideas that would never occur to an uplifted race--one taught nature's laws from the very start. Bizarre concepts like connecting dots in the sky to form fictitious creatures.

  When Earthlings first did this on Jijo, the earlier groups reacted with surprise, even suspicion. But soon the practice seemed to rob the stars of some of their terror. The g'Kek, hoon, and urs started coming up with sky-myths of their own, while qheuens and traeki were glad to have tales made up about them.

  Since the advent of peace, scholars have disagreed in their assessment of this practice. Some say its very primi
tiveness helps the Six follow in the footsteps of the glavers. This meets with approval from those who urge that we hurry as quickly as possible down the Path of Redemption.

  Others claim it is like the trove of books in Biblos, a distraction from achieving the simple clarity of thought that will help us exiles achieve our goal.

  Then there are those who like the practice simply because it feels good, and makes for excellent art.

  --Cultural Patterns of the Slope, by Ku-

  Phuhaph Tuo, Ovoom Town Guild of Publishers,

  Year-of-Exile 1922

  Asx

  WHO WOULD HAVE IMAGINED THAT A ROBOT might display surprise? Yet did we not discern an unmistakable yank, a twitch, in response to Vubben's manifest lie? An impromptu falsehood, contrived out of sudden necessity by Ur-Jah and Lester, whose quick wits do their hot-blooded tribes proud?

  The first scrolls-a mere ten kilowords, engraved on polymer bars by the original g'Kek pioneers-warned of several ways that doom might fall from heaven. New scrolls were added by glaver, hoon, and qheuen settlers, first jealously hoarded, then shared as the Commons slowly formed. Finally came human-sept and its flooding gift of paper books. But even the Great Printing could not cover all potentialities.

  Among likely prospects, it was thought the Galactic Institutes charged with enforcing quarantine might someday find us. Or titanic cruisers of the great patron clans would descry our violation, if/when the glaring eye, Izmunuti, ceased spewing its wind of masking needles.

  Among other possibilities, we pondered what to do if a great globe-ship of the hydrogen-breathing Zang came to one of our towns, dripping freezing vapors in wrath over our trespass. These and many other contingencies we discussed, did we not, my rings?