Uplift - Brightness Reef Part 8

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 s.p.a.ce-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 rea.s.suring, 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 pa.s.sage that seemed about to strip him to his spine . . . before abruptly spilling him into a realm where s.h.i.+ning 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 stars.h.i.+p'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, sooners 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 pa.s.sengers 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 mult.i.trunked gorreby trees, followed by tufts of feathery shrubs that got spa.r.s.er 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 gla.s.s between me and whatever's down there, twenty thousand leagues under the sea!"

I confess being puzzled by her att.i.tude. 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 a.s.suming you could pa.r.s.ec 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+mmering colors, s.h.i.+fting 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-s.h.i.+ps 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 a.s.signed 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 stars.h.i.+ps, 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, a.s.sociating 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 s.p.a.ce 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 h.o.m.o 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 fict.i.tious 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 a.s.sessment of this practice. Some say its very primitiveness 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 h.o.a.rded, 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 Inst.i.tutes charged with enforcing quarantine might someday find us. Or t.i.tanic 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-s.h.i.+p of the hydrogen-breathing Zang came to one of our towns, dripping freezing vapors in wrath over our trespa.s.s. These and many other contingencies we discussed, did we not, my rings?

But seldom this thing which had come to pa.s.s-the arrival of desperados.

If malefactors ever did come to Jijo, we reasoned, why should they make themselves known to us? With a world to sieve for riches, would they even deign to notice the hovels of a few coa.r.s.e savages, far devolved from ancient glory, clumped in one small corner of Jijo's expanse?

Yet here they have come into our midst with a boldness that terrifies.

The robot emissary contemplated Vubben's proclamation for ten duras, then responded with a single terse interrogation.

"Your presence on this world, it is a (query) accident?"

Do you recall, my rings, the brief thrill that coursed our linking membranes? The robot's masters were set aback! Against all reason or proportionality of force, the initiative was ours, for a moment.

Vubben crossed two eyestalks in a gesture of polite aloofness.

"Your question, it insinuates doubt.

"More than doubt, it suggests grave a.s.sumptions about our nature.

"Those a.s.sumptions-might they lay upon our ancestors' necks a shackling suspicion?

"(Query) suspicion of heinous crimes?"

How resilient was Vubben's misdirection. How like the web of a mule-spider. He denies nothing, tells no explicit lie. Yet how he implies!

"Forgiveness for (unintended) insults, we implore, " the machine ratcheted hastily. "Descendants of castaways, we take you for. An ill-fated vessel, your ancestors' combined s.h.i.+p must have been. Lost on some n.o.ble errand, this we scarcely doubt."

Now they were the liars, of that we had no doubt at all.

Dwer LEAVING THE CRAGGY RIMMER RANGE, DWER LED Rety and the others into that region of undulating hills, gently slanting toward the sea, that was called the Slope. The domain of the Six.

Dwer tried getting his mysterious young prisoner to talk about herself. But his first efforts were answered in morose monosyllables. Clearly, Rety resented the fact that he could tell so much from her appearance, her animal-skin clothes, her speech and manner.

Well, what did you expect? To sneak over the mountains and walk into one of our villages, no questions asked?

Her burn scar alone would mark her for attention. Not that disfigurement was rare on the Slope. Accidents were common, and even the latest traeki unguents were crude medicine by Galactic standards. Still, people would notice Rety anywhere she went.

At meals, she gaped covetously at the goods he drew from his backpack. His cup and plate, the hammered aluminum skillet, his bedroll of fleecy hurchin down- things to make life a bit easier for those whose ancestors long ago forsook the life of star-G.o.ds. To Dwer there was a simple beauty in the woven cloth he wore, in boots with shape-treated tree sap soles, even the elegant three-piece urrish fire-starter-all examples of primitive cunning, the sort his wolfling ancestors relied on through their lonely isolation on old Earth. Most people took such things for granted on the Slope.

But to a clan of sooners-illegal squatters living jealous and filthy beyond the pale-they might seem marvels, worth any risk to steal.

Dwer wondered, was this the only time? Perhaps Rety was just the first to get caught. Some thefts blamed on noors might be the fault of other robbers, sneaking over the mountains from a far-off hermit tribe.

Was that your idea? To swipe the first worthwhile thing you came across and scoot home to your tribe, a hero?

Somehow, he figured more than that must be involved. She kept peering around, as if looking for something in particular. Something that mattered to her.

Dwer watched Rety lead the captive glaver by a rope tied to her waist. The girl's saucy gait seemed meant to defy him, or anyone else who might judge her. Between clumps of grimy hair, he was nauseated to see puckered tracks made by borer bees, a parasite easily warded off with traeki salve. But no traekis lived where she came from.

It forced uncomfortable thoughts. What if his own grandparents had made the same choice as Rety's? To flee the Commons for whatever reason, seeking far reaches to hide in? Nowadays, with war-and war's refugees-a thing of the past, sooners were rather rare. Old Fallon had found only one squatter band in many years roaming across half a continent, and this was Dwer's first encounter.