Uplift - Infinity's Shore Part 53

WE CAN AFFORD TO WAIT YOU OUT, INVESTIGATING AND ELIMINATING DECOYS FROM SAFE RANGE, OR ELSE, IP NECESSARY, THIS n.o.bLE SHIP WILL FORGO SOLE HONOR AND SEND FOR HELP FROM THE VAST JOPHUR ARMADA.

DELAY MERELY INCREASES OUR WRATH. IT AUGMENTS THE HARM WE SHALL DO TO YOUR TERRAN COUSINS, AND THE OTHER SOONERS WHO DWELL ILLICITLY ON FORBIDDEN LAND. ...

Gillian thought of Alvin, Huck, and Ur-ronn, listening in a nearby dry cabin-and Pincer-Tip, who represented them on the bridge, darting to and fro with flicks of his red claws.

We already drew h.e.l.l down on the locals, when the, Rothen somehow tracked us to Jijo. There must be a way to spare them further punishment on our account.

Soon it will be time to end this.

Gillian turned back to Tsh't. "How much longer before it's our turn?" "*

The lieutenant communed with the tactics-and movement officer.

arl TOGETHER, THEY PROVED ONLY HALF-BLIND, Stumbling down the musty corridors of a vast alien ship filled I with hostile beings. Ling knew more than he did about starships, but Lark was the one who kept them from getting completely lost.

For one thing, there were few symbols on the walls, so their knowledge of several Galactic dialects proved almost useless. Instead, each closed aperture or intersection seemed to project its own, unique smell, effective at short range. As a Jijoan, Lark could sniff some of these and dimly grasp the simplest pheromone indicators-about as well as a bright human four-year-old might read street signs in a metropolis.

One bitter tang reminded him of the scent worn by traeki proctors at Gathering Festival, when they had to break up a fight or subdue a belligerent drunk.

SECURITY, the odor seemed to say. He steered Ling around that hallway.

She had a goal, however, which was one up on him. With his head full of fragrant miasmas, Lark gladly left the destination up to her. No doubt any path they chose would eventually lead to the same place-their old prison cell.

Three more times, they encountered solitary Jophur. But puffs from the purple ring caused them to be ignored. Doors continued sliding open on command. The gift from Asx was incredible. A little too good, in fact.

I can't believe this trick will work for long, he thought as they hurried deeper into the battleship's heart. Asx probably expected us to need it for a midura or so, just till we made it outside. Once the crew was alerted about escaped prisoners, the ruse must surely fail. The Jophur would use countermeasures, wouldn't they?

Then he realized.

Maybe there's been no alert. The Jophur may a.s.sume we already fled the ship!

Perhaps.

Still, each encounter with a gleaming ring stack in some dank pa.s.sage left him feeling eerie. Lark had lived among traeki all his life, but till this moment he never grasped how different their consciousness must be. How strange for a sapient being to look right at you and not see, simply because you gave off the right safe-conduct aroma. . . .

At the next intersection, he sniffed all three corridor branches carefully, and found the indicator Ling wanted- a simple scent that meant LIFE. He pointed, and she nodded.

"As I thought. The layout isn't too different from a type seventy cargo ship. They keep it at the center."

"Keep what at the center?" Lark asked, but she was already hurrying ahead. Two human fugitives, bearing their only tools-she cradling the wounded red traeki ring, while he carried the. purple one.

When the next door opened, Ling stepped back briefly from a glare. The place was more brightly lit than the normal dim corridors. The air smelled better, too. Less cloying with meanings he could not comprehend. Lark's first impression was of a large chamber, filled with color.

"As I hoped," Ling said, nodding. "The layout's standard. We may actually have a chance."

"A chance for what?"

She turned back to look into the vault, which Lark now saw to be quite vast, filled with a maze of crisscrossing support beams ... all of them draped with varied types of vegetation.

"A chance to survive," she answered, and took his hand, drawing him inside.

A jungle surrounded them, neatly organized and regimented. Tier after tier of shelves and platforms receded from view, serviced by machines moving slowly along tracks. Arrayed on this vast network there flourished a riot of living forms, broad leaves and hanging vines, creepers and glistening tubers. Water dripped along some of the twisted green cables, and the two of them rushed to the nearest trickle, lapping eagerly.

Now Lark understood the meaning of the aroma symbol that had led them here.

In the middle of h.e.l.l, they had found a small oasis. At that moment, it felt like paradise.

HE DID NOT LIKE GOING DOWN TO THE WATER. THE harbor was too frenzied.

It hardly seemed like a joyous reunion to see Kaa and other friends again. He recognized good old Brookida, and Tussito, and Wattaceti. They all seemed glad to see him, but far too busy to spend time visiting, or catching up. Perhaps that was just as well. Emerson felt ashamed. Shame that he could not greet them with anything more than their names . . . and an occasional snippet of song.

Shame that he could not help them in their efforts- hauling all sorts of junk out of the sea, instructing Uriel's a.s.sistants, and sending the materials up by tram to the peak of Mount Guenn.

Above all, he felt shame over the failure of his sacrifice, back at that immense s.p.a.ce city made of snow-that fluffy metropolis, the size of a solar system-called the Fractal System.

Oh, it seemed so n.o.ble and brave when he set forth in a salvaged Thennanin scout, extravagantly firing to create a diversion and help Streaker escape. With his last glimpse- as force fields closed in all around him-he had seen the beloved, scarred hull slip out through an opening in the vast sh.e.l.l of ice, and prayed she would make it.

Gillian, he had thought. Perhaps she would think of him, now. The way she recalled her Tom.

Then the Old Ones took him from the little ship, and had their way with him. They prodded and probed. They made him a cripple. They gave him forgetfulness.

And they sent him here.

The outlines are still hazy, but Emerson now saw the essential puzzle.

Streaker had escaped to this forlorn planet, only to be trapped. More hard luck for a crew that never got a break.

But . . . why . . . send . . . me . . . here?

That action by the Old Ones made no sense. It seemed crazy.

Everyone would be better off if he had died, the way he planned.

The whole population of the hoonish seaport was dashing about. Sara seemed preoccupied, spending much of her time talking rapidly to Uriel, or else arguing heatedly with the gray-bearded human scholar whose name Emerson could not recall.

Often a messenger would arrive, bearing one of the pale' paper strips used for transcribing semaph.o.r.e bulletins Once, the urrish courier came at a gallop, panting and clearly shaken by the news she bore. An eruption of dismayed babble swelled as Emerson made out a single repeated word-"Biblos."

Everyone was so upset and distracted, n.o.body seemed to mind when he indicated a wish to take the tram back up to Uriel's forge. Using gestures, Sara made clear that he must come back before sunset, and he agreed. Clearly i something was going to happen then. Sara made sure Prity went along to look after him.

Emerson didn't mind. He got along well with Prity. They were both of a kind. The little chim's crude humor, expressed with hand-signed jokes, often broke him up.

Those fishie things are cousins? she signaled at one point, referring to the busy, earnest dolphins. , was hoping they tasted good!

Emerson laughed. Earth's two client-level races had an ongoing rivalry that seemed almost instinctive.

During the ride upslope, he examined some of the machinery Kaa and the others had provided at Uriel's request. Most of it looked like junk-low-level Galactic computers, ripped out of standard consoles that might be hundreds or millions of years old. Many were stained or slimy from long immersion. The melange of devices seemed to share just one trait-they had been refurbished enough to be turned on. He could tell because the power leads were all wrapped in tape to prevent it. Otherwise, it looked like a pile of garbage.

He longed to squat on the floor and tinker with the things. Prity shook her head though. She was under orders to prevent it. So instead Emerson looked out through the window, watching distant banks of dense clouds roll ominously closer from the west.

He fantasized about running away, perhaps to Xi, the quiet, pastoral refuge hidden in a vast desert of color. He would ride horses and practice his music . . . maybe fix simple, useful tools to earn his keep. Something to help fool himself that his life still had worth.

For a while he had felt valued here, helping Uriel get results from the Hall of Spinning Disks, but no one seemed to need him anymore. He felt like a burden.

It would be worse if he returned to Streaker, a sh.e.l.l. A fragment. The chance of a cure beckoned. But Emerson was smart enough to know the prospects weren't promising. Captain Creideiki once had an injury like his, and the ship's doctor had been helpless to correct such extensive damage to a brain.

Perhaps at home, though . . . On Earth . . .

He painted the blue globe in his mind, a vision of beauty that ached his heart.

Deep inside, Emerson knew he would never see it again. The tram docked at last. His mood lifted for a little while, helping Uriel's staff unload cargo. Along with Prity, he followed the urs and qheuens down a long, twisty corridor toward a flow of warm air. At last they reached a big underground grotto-a cave with an opening at the far end, facing north. Hints of color gleamed far beyond, reminding him of the Spectral Flow.

Workers scurried about. Emerson saw g'Kek teams busy sewing together great sheets of strong, lightweight cloth. He watched urs delicately adjust handmade valves as gray qheuens bent lengths of pipe with their strong claws. Already, breaths of volcanically heated air were flowing into the first of many waiting canopies, creating bulges that soon joined together, forming a globe-ended bag.

Emerson looked across the scene, then back at the salvaged junk the dolphins had donated.

Slowly, a smile spread across his face.

To his great satisfaction, the urrish smiths seemed glad when he silently offered to lend a hand.

Kaa THE SKIES OPENED AROUND NIGHTFALL, LETTING down both rain and lightning.

The whale sub Hikahi delayed entering Port Wuphon until the storm's first stinging drizzle began peppering the wharves and huts. The sheltered bay speckled with the impact of dense droplets as the submersible glided up a slanted coastal shelf toward an agreed rendezvous.

Kaa swam just ahead, guiding her through the narrow channel, between jagged shoals of demicoral. No one I would have denied him the honor. , am still chief pilot, he thought. With or without my nickname.

The blunt-nosed craft mimicked his long turn around the . sheltering headland, following as he showed the way with powerful, body-arching thrusts of his tail. It was an older piloting technique than wormhole diving, not highly technical. But Kaa's ancestors used to show human sailors the ,' way home in this manner, long before the oldest clear I memory of either race.

"Another two hundred meters, Hikahi, "he projected using sonar speech. "Then a thirty-degree turn to port. After that, it's three hundred and fifty meters to full stop."

The response was cool, professional.

"Roger. Preparing for debarkation."

Kaa's team-Brookida and a half-dozen neo-fins who had come out earlier to unload Uriel's supplies-moored the vessel when it reached the biggest dock. A small crowd of dignitaries waited on the pier, under heavy skies. Umbrellas sheltered the urrish delegates, who pressed together in a shivering ma.s.s, swaying their long necks back and forth. Humans and hoons made do with cloaks and hats, while the others simply ignored the rain.

Kaa was busy for a time, giving instructions as the helmsman fine-tuned her position, then cut engines. Amid a froth of bubbles, the Hikahi brought her bow even with the wharf. Clamsh.e.l.l doors opened, like a grinning mouth.

Backlit by the bright interior, a single human being strode forward. A tall female whose proud bearing seemed to say that she had little left to lose-little that life could take from her-except honor. For a long moment, Gillian Baskin looked on the surface of Jijo, inhaling fresh air for the first time in years.

Then she turned back toward the interior, beckoning with a smile and an extended arm.

Four silhouettes approached-one squat, one gangly, one wheeled, and the last clattering like a nervous colt. Kaa knew the tall one, although they had never met. Alvin, the young "humicking" writer, lover of Verne and Twain, whose journal had explained so much about the strange mixed culture of sooner races.

A moan of overjoyed release escaped those waiting, who flowed forward in a rush.

So-embraced by their loved ones, and pelted by rain- the adventurous crew of Wuphon's Dream finally came home.

There were other reunions . . . and partings.

Kaa went aft to help Makanee debark her patients. Streaker's chief physician seemed older than Kaa remembered, and very tired, as she supervised a growing throng of neo-dolphins, splashing and squealing beyond the Hikahi's starboard flank. While some appeared listless, others dashed about with antic, explosive energy. Two nurses helped Makanee keep the group herded together at the south end of the harbor, using occasional low-voltage discharges from their harnesses to prevent their patients from dashing off. The devolved ones wore nothing but skin.

Kaa counted their number-forty-six-and felt a shiver of worry. Such a large fraction of Streaker's crew! Gillian must be desperate indeed, to contemplate abandoning them here. Many were probably only experiencing fits of temporary stress atavism, and would be all right if they just had peace and quiet for a time.

Well, maybe they'll get it, on Jijo, he thought. a.s.suming this planet sea turns out to be as friendly as it looks. And a.s.suming the Galactics leave us alone.

In becoming Jijo's latest illegal settler race, dolphins had an advantage over those who preceded them. Fins would not need buildings, or much in the way of tools. Only the j finest Galactic detectors might sieve their DNA resonance out of the background organic stew of a life world, and just at close range. ; There are advantages, he admitted. This way, some of) our kind may survive, even if Earth and her colonies don't. And if dolphins are caught here, so what? Haw , could we Terragens get into any more trouble than we' already are? '

Kaa had read about local belief in Redemption. A species that found itself in trouble might get a second chance, returning to the threshold state, so that some new patron might adopt and guide them to a better destiny. Tursiofs amicus was less than three hundred years old as a toolusing life-form. Confronted by a frolicking mob of his own kind-former members of an elite starship crew, now screeching like animals-Kaa knew it shouldn't take fins long to achieve "redemption."

He felt burning shame.

Kaa joined Brookida, unloading Makanee's pallet of supplies. He did not want to face the nurses, who might reproach him for "losing" Peepoe. At least now there's a chance to find her. With our own colony in place, I can serve Makanee as a scout, patrolling and exploring . . . in time I'll catch up with Zhaki andMopol. Then we'll have a reckoning.

The aft hatch kept cycling after the last dolphin was through. Excited squeaks resonated across the bay as another set of emigres followed Makanee to an a.s.sembly point, on a rocky islet in the middle of the harbor. Eager six-limbed amphibian forms, with frilly gill fringes waving about their heads. Transplanted from their native Kithrup, the Kiqui would not qualify as sooners, exactly. They were already a ripe, presapient life-form-a real treasure, in fact. It would have been good to bring them home to Earth in triumph and lay a claim of adoption with the Galactic Uplift Inst.i.tute. But now Gillian clearly thought it better to leave them here, where they had a chance.

According to plan, the dolphin-Kiqui colony would stay in Port Wuphon for a few days, while a traeki pharmacist a.n.a.lyzed the newcomers' dietary needs. If necessary, new types of traeki stacks would be designed to create symbiotic supplements. Then both groups would head out to find homes amid islands offsh.o.r.e.

I'm coming, Peepoe, Kaa thought. Once we get everyone settled, nothing on Jijo or the Five Galaxies will keep me from you.

A happy musing. Yet another thought kept nagging at him.

Gillian isn 't just stripping the ship of nonessential personnel. She's putting everyone ash.o.r.e she can spare . . . for their own safety.

In other words, the human Terragens agent was planning something desperate . . . and very likely fatal. Kaa had an uneasy feeling that he knew what it was.

Alvin I GUESS REUNIONS CAN BE KIND OF AWKWARD, EVEN when they're happy ones.

Don't get me wrong! I can't imagine a better moment than when the four of us-Huck, Ur-ronn, Pincer, and me-stepped out of the metal whale's yawning mouth to see the hooded lanterns of our own hometown. My senses were drenched with familiarity. I heard the creaking dross ships and the lapping tide. I smelled the melon canopies and smoke from a nearby cookstove-someone making chubvash stew. My magnetic earbones tickled to the familiar presence of Mount Guenn, invisible in the dark, yet a ^ powerful influence on the hoonish shape-and-location i sense.

Then there came my father's umble cry, booming from the shadows, and my mother and sister, rushing to my arms. . *

I confess, my first reaction was hesitant. I was glad to be home, to see and embrace them, but also embarra.s.sed by the attention, and a little edgy about moving around without a cane for the first time in months. When there came a free moment, I bowed to my parents and handed them a package, wrapped in complex folds of the best paper I could find on the Streaker, containing my baby vertebrae. It was an important moment. I had gone away a disobedient child. Now I was returning, an adult, with work to do.

My friends' homecomings were less emotional. Of course Huck's hoonish adoptive parents were thrilled to have her back from the dead, but no one expected them to feel what my own folks did after giving up their only son for lost, months ago.

Pincer-Tip touched claws briefly with a matron from the qheuen hive, and that was it for him.

As for Ur-ronn., she and Uriel barely exchanged greetings. Aunt and niece had one priority-to get out of the rain. They fled the drizzle to a nearby warehouse, swiftly immersing themselves in some project. Urs don't believe in wasting time.

Does it make me seem heartless to say that I could not give complete attention to my family? Even as they clasped me happily, I kept glancing to see what else was going on. It will be up to me-and maybe Huck-to tell later generations about this event. This fateful meeting on the docks.

For one thing, there were other reunions.

My new human friend, Dwer Koolhan, emerged from the Hikahi, a tall silhouette, as st.u.r.dy looking as a preteen hoon. When he appeared, a shout pealed from the crowd of onlookers, and a young woman rushed to him, her arms spread wide. Dwer seemed stunned to see her . . . then equally enthused, seizing her into a whirling hug. At first, I thought she might be some long-separated lover, but now I know it is his sister, with adventures of her own to recount.

The rain let up a bit. Uriel returned, wearing booties and a heavy black waterproof slicker that covered all but the tip of her snout. Behind came several hoons, driving a herd of ambling, four-footed creatures. Glovers. At least two dozen of the bulge-eyed brutes swarmed down the pier, their opal skins glistening. A few carried cloth-wrapped burdens in their grasping tails. They did not complain, but trotted toward the opening of the whale sub without pause.

This part of the transaction, I did not-and still do not-understand. Why Earthling fugitives would want glavers is beyond me.