Uplift - Brightness Reef Part 23

The Stranger looked up at Ariana Foo, eyes filled with pain and questions he could not pose.

"What can this prove?" Sara asked, writhing inside.

"He finds the image of the ship troubling," Ariana answered.

"As it would any thoughtful member of the Six," Sara pointed out.

The older woman nodded. "I had expected a happier response."

"You think he's one of them, don't you?" Sara asked. "You think he crashed into the swamp east of Dolo, aboard some kind of flying machine. He's a Galactic. A criminal."

"It seemed the simplest hypothesis, given the coincidence in timing-a total stranger, burned amid a humid swamp, appearing with injuries unlike anything our doctors have seen. Let's try another one."

The next sketch showed the same little valley, but with the starship replaced by what the sages called a "research station," a.s.signed the task of a.n.a.lyzing Jijoan life. The Stranger peered at the black cube, intrigued and perhaps a little frightened.

Finally, Ariana presented a drawing showing two figures with strong, confident faces. A pair who had come a hundred thousand light-years to plunder.

This time a sharp gasp escaped him. The Stranger stared at the human forms, touching the symbol-patches on their one-piece exploration suits. It did not require fey sensitivity to read despair in his eyes. With an incoherent cry, he crumpled the sketch and flung it across the room, then covered his eyes with an arm.

"Interesting. Very interesting," Ariana murmured.

"I fail to understand," the doctor sighed. "Does this mean he is from off-Jijo or not?"

"It is too soon to tell, I fear." She shook her head. "But let's say it turns out he is from the Five Galaxies? If the forayers are seeking a mislaid confederate, and we have him in hand to offer in trade, it might work to our advantage."

"Now just a darn-" Sara began, but the older human only continued, thinking aloud.

"Alas, his reaction isn't one I'd call eager to be reunited with lost comrades. Do you think he might be an escaped foe? That somehow he survived imprisonment, even attempted murder, just a day or so before the foray ship came down to land? If so, how ironic his particular injury, which prevents him from telling so much! I wonder if they did it to him . . . the way barbaric kings of old Earth used to rip out an enemy's tongue. How horrible, if true!"

The range of possibilities rattled off by the sage left Sara momentarily stunned. There was a long stretch of silence, until the doctor spoke once more.

"Your speculations intrigue and terrify me, old friend.

Yet now I must ask that you not agitate my patient further."

But Ariana Foo only shook her head in somber pondering. "I had thought to send him up to the Glade right away. Let Vubben and the others decide for themselves what to do next."

"Indeed? I could never allow you to move one so seriously-"

"Of course an opportunity to offer him Galactic-level treatment of his injuries would make a fine synergy, combining pragmatism with kindness."

The g'Kek medic's oral flap opened and shut soundlessly, as he worked to find a way past Ariana's logic. Finally, his stalks contracted unhappily.

The retired sage sighed. "Alas, the point seems moot. From what we've seen, I doubt very much that our guest here will be willing to go."

Sara was about to tell the old woman where she could go, with her intent to meddle in a man's life. But just then the subject of their deliberations lowered his arm. He looked at Ariana and Sara. Then he picked up one of the sketches.

"G-guh . . . ?" He swallowed, and his brow furrowed with intense concentration.

All eyes stared back at him. The man lifted one of the drawings, showing the starship nestled in a bower of shattered trees. He stabbed the scene with his index finger.

"G-g-g-oh!"

Then he looked into Sara's eyes, pleadingly. His voice dropped to a whisper. .

"Go."

After that, discussion of Sara's plan seemed almost anticlimactic. I won't be going back to Dolo on the next boat, after all. I'm on my way to see the aliens.

Poor Father. All he ever wanted was to raise a gaggle of safe little paper makers. Now every heir goes rushing into danger's pincers, just as fast as our legs can carry us!

Engril and Bloor, the portraitist, arrived, bearing portable tools of their trades.

Bloor was a short, fair-skinned man with ringlets of yellow hair showering over his shoulders. His hands were stained blotchy from years creating the delicate emulsions required by his art. He held up a plate of metal, as wide as his palm, which shimmered with finely etched lines and depressions. From certain angles, those acid-cut shapes coalesced to form sharp profiles of shadow and light.

"It's called the Daguerre process," he explained. "Actually, it is quite a simple technique for creating permanent images. One of the first methods of photography ever invented by wolfling humans, back on Old Earth. Or so say our reference books. We don't employ the procedure for portraits nowadays, as paper is faster and safer."

"And paper decays," Ariana Foo added, turning the plate over in her hands. Depicted on the etched metal was an urrish warrior of high rank, with both husbands perched on her back in a formal pose. The female's sinuous neck was painted with garish, zigzag stripes, and she held a large crossbow, as if cradling a beloved scent-daughter.

"Indeed." The portraitist conceded. "The fine papers produced by Sara's father are guaranteed to corrupt in less than a century, leaving no traces to betray our descendants. This sample daguerreotype is one of only a few not sent to the dross middens since our strengthened Commons started promoting wider respect for the Law. I have special permission to hold on to this excellent example. See the fine detail? It dates from before the third urrish-human war. The subject is a chieftain of the Sool tribes, I believe. Note the tattoo scars. Marvelous. As crisp and clear as the day it was taken."

Sara leaned forward as Ariana pa.s.sed the slim plate over. "Has anyone used this process on Jijo since then?"

Bloor nodded. "All members of my guild create one daguerreotype, as part of our master work. Nearly all are then sent to the Midden, or given to smiths for remelting, but the capability remains." He lifted a satchel, causing a faint clinking of bottles. "There's enough acid and fixative here to treat and develop several dozen plates-but I have only about twenty of the plates themselves. If we want more, they must be ordered from Ovoom Town, or one of the volcano smithies."

Sara felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see the Stranger holding out his hand. She gave him the small photograph, and he traced the finely etched grooves with his fingertips.

Now that her mind had shifted to encompa.s.s Ariana's theory, everything the wounded man did seemed to refract differently. Was he smiling now over the crudeness of this photographic technology, or expressing enchantment at its cleverness? Or was the sparkling delight in his eyes a reaction to the depicted image of a savage warrior, whose bow and lance had been such a scourge during that age of heroic struggle, ten generations ago?

Ariana Foo rubbed her chin. "Twenty plates. Let's say you get good pictures with just half-"

"A generous estimate, my sage, since the technique requires long exposure times."

Ariana grunted. "A half-dozen successes, then. And several must be handed over to the forayers, in order for a threat to be believable."

"Copies can be made," Engril put in.

"We won't need copies," Sara said. "They'll have to a.s.sume we have plenty of others. The crucial point is, can these pictures last a million years?"

The portraitist blew at a strand of yellow hair. From his throat, there emerged a soft strangling sound, like a qheuen sigh. "Given the right storage conditions, this metal oxidizes a nice protective layer. . . ."He laughed nervously, looking from Sara to Ariana. "You aren't serious, are you? A bluff is one thing. We're desperate enough to clutch at straws, but do you really imagine you can store evidence somewhere until the next Galactic survey?"

The g'Kek doctor twisted two eyestalks to stare in opposite directions. "It appears we have entered into entirely new realms of heresy."

Asx IT MAY HAVE BEEN A MISTAKE TO HAVE STRIVEN SO hard to suppress psi powers among the Six. For most of the long millennia of our exile, it seemed the wisest move. Was not our greatest goal to remain hidden? We had only to build modestly, in harmony with nature, and let the inverse square law do the rest.

But psi channels are fey, nonlinear. Or so say books printed by the humans, who admit that their kind knew little about the subject when their ancestors fled this way.

When the Holy Egg first gave us rewq, some among the Six feared the symbionts worked by psi, which might make our fugitive enclave more detectable. Despite satisfying proof it is not so, that old slander has now returned, once more stirring friction among us.

Some even contend that the Holy Egg itself may have attracted our ruin! After all, why do pirates come now, a mere century after the blessed day the Egg emerged? Others point out that we might by now know much more about our invaders, if only we had bred adepts of our own, instead of the few sensitives and truth-scryers we have today.

Regret is a silly, useless thing, i might as well pine for the rings our ancestors were said to have abandoned, simply because those toroids were tainted with sin.

Oh, how many things the legends say those rings once let us do! To run before the wind, as fleet as any urs. To swim like qheuens and walk beneath the sea. To touch and handle the world at all levels of its grainy texture. Above all, to face this dire, dread-filled universe with a self-centered confidence that was utterly, biologically serene. No uncertainty to plague our complex community of selves. Only the towering egotism of a central, confident "I."

Dwer THE BLUE QHEUENS OF THE MOUNTAINS HAD different traditions than their cousins who lived behind I mighty Dolo Dam. Molting rituals back home always seemed informal. Human youngsters from the nearby village ran free with their chitinous friends, while grown-ups shared nectar-beer and celebrated the coming-of-age of a new generation.

In this alpine sanctuary, the chants and hissing rituals felt more solemn. Guests included the local g'Kek doctor, some traeki gleaners, and a dozen human neighbors, who took turns at a warped window pane, to view events in the larva creche next door. The hoons who fished the lake behind the dam had sent the usual regrets. Most hoon felt incurably squeamish toward the qheuen way of reproduction.

Dwer was here out of grat.i.tude. If not for this kindly hive, he might be flexing stumps instead of a nearly full set of fingers and toes, still tender but recovering. The occasion also came as a break from tense preparations with Danel Ozawa. When beckoned to the window by Carving Tongue, the local matriarch, Dwer and Danel bowed to the matriarch, and to the human tutor, Mister Shed.

"Congratulations to you both," Ozawa said. "May you have a fine clutch of graduates."

"Thank you, honored sage." Carving Tongue's breathy sigh seemed edgy. As head female, she laid more than half the eggs. Many of the throbbing shapes next door would be her offspring, preparing to emerge at last. After waiting twenty years or more, some strain was expected.

Mister Shed had no genetic investment in the young qheuens transforming next door, but anxiety wrote across the instructor's gaunt face.

"Yes, a fine clutch. Several will make excellent senior students, when their sh.e.l.ls harden and they take names."

Carving Tongue added-"Two are already precocious chewers of wood-though I believe our tutor refers to other talents."

Mister Shed nodded. "There is a school downslope, where local tribes send their brightest kids. Elmira should qualify, if she makes it through-"

The matriarch erupted a warning hiss. "Tutor! Keep your private nicknames to yourself. Do not jinx the larvae on this sacred day!"

Mister Shed swallowed nervously. "Sorry, matron." He rocked side to side, in the manner of a qheuen boy, caught stealing a crayfish from the hatchery ponds.

Fortunately, a traeki caterer arrived then with a cauldron of vel nectar. Humans and qheuens crowded the table. But Dwer saw that Ozawa felt as he did. Neither of them had time for a euphoric high. Not while preparing for a deadly serious mission.

Too bad, though, Dwer thought, noting how the traeki spiked each goblet with a race-specific spray from its chem-synth ring. Soon the mood in the chamber lightened as intoxicants flowed. Carving Tongue joined the throng at the cauldron, leaving the three humans alone by the window.

"That's it, my beauties. Do it gently," murmured the scholar contracted to teach qheuen children reading and math-a long patient task, given the decades larvae spent in one muddy suite, devouring wrigglers and slowly absorbing the mental habits of sapient beings. To Dwer's surprise, Mister Shed slipped a functioning rewq over his face. Lately, most of the symbionts had gone dormant, or even died.

Dwer peered through the window, a rippled convex lens with a broken stem in the middle. A greasy pool filled the center of the next room, which dim shapes traversed, casting left and right as if in nervous search.

Those may have been Mister Shed's beloved pupils a few days ago, and some would be again, after molting into adolescent qheuens. But this play hearkened back millions of years, to a time long before the patrons of the qheuen race meddled and reshaped them into starfarers. It had a b.l.o.o.d.y logic all its own.

"That's right, children, do it softly-"

Shed's hopeful sigh cut off with a yelp as the pond erupted in froth. Wormlike forms flipped out of the water in a thrashing tangle. Dwer glimpsed one shape that was already nearly five-sided, with three legs flailing under a glistening carapace of aquamarine. The new sh.e.l.l bore livid marks of recent raking. Trailing were tatters of white tissue, the larval body ma.s.s that must be sloughed.

Legend said that qheuens who still roamed the stars had ways to ease this transition-machines and artificial environments-but on Jijo, molting was much the same as when qheuens were clever animals, hunting the shallows of the world that gave them birth.

Dwer recalled running home in tears, the first time he saw a molting, seeking comfort and understanding from his older brother. Even then, Lark had been serious, learned, and a bit pedantic.

"Sapient races have many reproductive styles. Some focus all their effort on a few offspring, which are cherished from the start. Any good parent will die to save her child. Hoons and g'Keks are like humans in this so-called High-K approach.

"Urs breed much like fish in the sea-that's Low-K- casting hordes of offspring to live wild in the bush, until the survivors sniff their way back to blood relatives. Early human settlers thought the urrish way heartless, while many urs saw our custom as paranoid and maudlin.

"Qheuens fall in between. They care about their young but also know that many in each clutch must die, so that others can live. It's a sadness that lends poignancy to qheuen poetry. Truly, I think the wisest of them have a better grasp of life and death than any human ever could."

Sometimes Lark got carried away. Still, Dwer saw truth in what his brother said. Soon a new generation would shamble out of the humid nursery, to a world that would dry their sh.e.l.ls and make them citizens. Or else no survivors would emerge at all. Either way, the bitter-sweetness was so intense, anyone wearing rewq, like Mister Shed, must be crazy or a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t.

He felt a touch on his arm. Danel motioned-time to make a polite exit, before the rituals resumed. They had work, provisions and weapons to prepare, as well as the Legacy they were to take over the mountains.

This morning, Lena Strong had returned from the Glade with another young woman Dwer recognized with a wince-Jenin, one of the big, strapping Worley sisters-along with five donkey-loads of books, seeds, and ominous sealed tubes. He had been expecting Rety as well, but Lena reported that the sages wanted to talk to the sooner girl for a while longer.

No matter. With or without her as a guide, Dwer was ultimately responsible for getting the small expedition to its goal.

And once there? Would there be violence? Death? Or a brave beginning?

Sighing, Dwer turned to follow Ozawa.

Now we'll never know if Sara would've turned out to be right, or Lark. Whether the Six were bound on the Low Road, or the High.

From here on, it's all about survival.

Behind him, Mister Shed pressed both hands against the warped pane, his voice hoa.r.s.e with anguish over small lives that were not his to adore or rightfully to mourn.

The Stranger He wonders how he knows the thing he knows. It used to be so easy, back when wisdom came in compact packages called words. Each one carried a range of meanings, subtly shaded and complex. Strung together, they conveyed a mult.i.tude of concepts, plans, emotions . . .

And lies.

He blinks as that one word comes slickly into mind, the way so many used to do. He rolls it around his tongue, recognizing both sound and meaning at the same time, and this brings on a wash of joy mixed with awe. Awe to imagine that he once did the same thing countless times during the span of any breath, knowing and using innumerable words.

He relishes this one, repeating it over and over.

Lies . . . lies . . . lies . . .

And the miracle redoubles as another, related word slips in- Liars . . . liars . . .

On his lap he sees the crumpled sketch, now smoothed almost flat again, a detailed rendition of human figures with expressive faces, staring disdainfully past a multirace crowd of primitive beings. The newcomers wear uniforms with bright emblems he finds somehow familiar.

He used to know a name for people like this. A name-and reasons to avoid them.

So why had he been so eager to go see them, just a little while ago? Why so insistent? At the time it seemed as if something welled up from deep inside him. An urgency. A need to travel, whatever the cost, to the far-off mountain glen shown in the drawing. To go confront those depicted on a rumpled sheet of off-white paper. The journey had seemed terribly important, though right now he cannot quite remember why.

A cloudy haze covers most of his memory. Things that had waxed vivid during his delirium now can barely be glimpsed as fleeting images- like a star that appears dwarfed by a surrounding structure, a made-thing consisting of countless angles and divided ledges, enclosing a reddish sun's brittle heat within a maze of plane surfaces.

or a world of water, where metal isles jut like mushrooms and the sea is a slow poison to touch.

or one particular shallow place in s.p.a.ce, far from the deep oases where life normally gathers. Nothing lives in that shoal, far beyond the shining spiral arm. Yet amid the strange flatness there cl.u.s.ters a vast formation of globelike forms, strangely bright, floating timelessly, resembling a fleet of moons. . . .

His mind flees from that last impression, reburying it with all the other half-real memories. Losing it along with his past, and almost certainly his future.

XIII. THE BOOK OF THE SEA.