Brightness Reef (31 page)

“So you see it does not matter,” he concluded with a shrug of finality. “Whether the visitors from space are noble chancellors from the Institute of Migration or the foulest criminals to prowl space. Either way, they are our judgment, come at last. Our sole option remains the same.”

Shaking her head in bemusement, Sara had commented, “You’re starting to sound like Lark.”

But Jop saw nothing ironic in that. His radicalization had intensified each day since the deafening, terrifying specter shook the tree farms, leaving trails of noise and heat that seared the sky.

“This is a bad thing,” Blade had said to Sara, later that evening, after Jop left to meet friends and fellow believers. “He seems sure of his reasoning and virtue-like a gray queen, unshakably convinced of her righteousness.”

“Self-righteousness is a plague that afflicts all races, except the traeki,” answered Fakoon, bowing two stalks toward Pzora. “Your folk are lucky to be spared the curse of egotism.”

The Dolo Village pharmacist had vented a soft sigh. “i/we urge you to make no simple assumptions, dear comrades. It is said that we, too, once possessed that talent, whose partner is the gift/curse of ambition. To excise it from our natures meant leaving behind some of our greatest treasures, our finest rings. It must not have been an easy thing to do.

“One of the things we/i fear most about restored contact with Galactics is something you other species and beings may. not understand-we fear temptation by an enticing offer.

“We fear an offer to be made whole.”

The clinic was a place of wheels-of g’Kek surgeons and patients on push-chairs. Many of the traeki pharmacists used skooter-wagons, pushing along faster than most could walk alone. No wonder the smooth planarity of city life appealed to two of the Six.

The Stranger’s room was on the fifth floor, looking out across the confluence of the rivers Roney and Bibur. Both steam ferries could be seen moored under screening arbors, now operating only at night, since vigilante groups had threatened to burn them if they budged by day. And this morning confirming word came down from the Glade. The High Sages, too, wanted no unnecessary signs of technology revealed by the Six. Destroy nothing. Conceal everything.

It only added to a growing sense of confusion among common folk. Was this Judgment Day or not? Sounds of raucous argument were heard in all parts of town. We need some goal to unite us, Sara thought, or we’ll start coming apart, skin and pelt, shell and spokes.

A traeki attendant motioned Sara through to the private chamber that had been given the Stranger. The dark man looked up when she entered, and smiled with clear delight to see her. He laid aside a pencil and pad of pale paper, on which Sara glimpsed the scene outside the window-one of the steam ferries, outlined with subtle countershading. Pinned to the wall was another sketch depicting the shipboard concert on the fantail of the Hauph-woa, capturing a gentle interlude amid the storm of crisis.

“Thank you for coming,” said an elderly, sallow-faced woman seated by the Stranger’s bedside, looking surprisingly like a g’Kek, in coloration, her startling blue eyes, and also the way a wheelchair framed her blanket-shrouded form. “We have been making progress, but there are some things I wanted to try only after you arrived.”

Sara still wondered why Ariana Foo, of all people, had taken an interest in the wounded man. With Lester Cambel and most other sages away, she was the highest ranking human savant left this side of Biblos. One might expect her to have more urgent things on her mind right now, than focusing her keen intellect on the problem of the Stranger’s origins.

The g’Kek doctor rolled forward, his voice mellow, with a cultured accent.

“First, Sara, please tell us-have you recalled anything further about our patient’s aspect, the day you pulled him from the swamp all burned and torn?”

She shook her head silently.

“His clothing, none was recovered?”

“There were a few scraps, mostly charred. We threw them out while treating his burns.”

“Did those scraps go to dross barrels?” he asked eagerly. “Those very barrels aboard the Hauph-woa right now?”

“There were no ornaments or buttons, if that’s what you’re looking for. The scraps went to recycling, which in the case of old cloth means going straight to my father’s pulping machine. Would they have helped?”

“Perhaps,” answered the old woman, clearly disappointed. “We try to consider all possibilities.”

The Stranger’s hands lay folded on his lap, and his eyes darted back and forth, focusing on faces as if he were fascinated not by words but the sounds themselves.

“Can”-she swallowed-“can you do anything for him?”

“That depends,” the doctor replied. “All burns and contusions are healing well. But our finest unguents are useless against structural damage. Our enigmatic guest has lost part of his left temporal lobe, as though it had been torn out by some horrid predator. I am sure you know this area is where you humans process speech.”

“Is there any chance-“

“Of recovering what he has lost?” A g’Kek shrug, twining two eyestalks, had never became fashionable among the other races. “If he were very young or female, there might be some transfer of speech facility to the right lobe. A few stroke victims do this. But the feat is rare for adult males, whose brain structures are more rigid, alas.”

The light in the dark Stranger’s eyes was deceptive. He smiled amiably, as if they were discussing the weather. His reliable cheerfulness tore at Sara’s heart.

“Nothing can be done?”

“Out in the Galaxy, perhaps.”

It was an old expression, almost habitual, whenever one hit the limits of the crude arts available on the Slope.

“But we can do no more. Not in this place.”

There was something in the doctor’s tone. All four eyes stared inward-as if a human being were studying his fingernails, waiting for someone else to say the unspoken. Sara looked to Ariana Foo, whose face was composed.

Too composed. Sara leaped on the doctor’s hanging implication.

“You can’t be serious.”

The sage briefly closed her eyes. When they reopened, there was a daring glitter.

“Word comes down that our invaders are plying mass opinion, winning converts with drugs, potions, and miracle cures. Already, unsanctioned caravans of the sick and lame have set out from Tarek and other sites, hobbling up the hard trails in desperate search of remedies. I admit, the thought even crossed my mind.” She lifted her stick-thin arms from her fragile body. “Many may die on the trek, but what matters such risk against the lure of hope?”

Sara paused. “Do you think the outsiders can help him?”

Ariana shrugged in the hoonish manner, with a puff of air in her cheeks. “Who can say? Frankly, I doubt even Galactics could repair such damage. But they may have palliatives to improve his lot. Anyway, all bets are off if my suspicion is true.”

“What suspicion?”

“That our Stranger is no poor savage at all.”

Sara stared, then blinked. “Ifni,” she breathed.

“Indeed.” Ariana Foo nodded. “Shall we see if our guest truly was delivered to us by our goddess of luck and change?”

Sara could barely manage a nod. While the old woman rummaged in her valise, Sara pondered. This must be why everyone was in awe of her, when she was chief human sage before Cambel. They say genius is a knack for seeing the obvious. Now I know it’s true.

How could I have been so blind!

Ariana took up several of the sheets recently copied on Engril’s machine. “I thought of asking a Sensitive to sit in, but if I am right, we’ll want this kept quiet. So we’ll make do by watching how he reacts. Note that he is probably the only person in Tarek Town who has not seen these yet. Everybody pay close attention, please.”

She rolled closer to the patient, who watched attentively as Ariana laid a single sheet on the coverlet.

His smile gradually thinned as he picked up the drawing, touching the fine expert lines. Mountains framed a bowllike vale littered with shattered trees-nest lining for a thick javelin, adorned with jutting spines, whose contours Sara had first seen hurtling above her shaken home. Fingertips traced the sloping curves, trembling. The smile was gone, replaced by a look of agonized perplexity. Sara sensed that he was trying to remember something. Clearly there was familiarity here, and more, much more.

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,” assigned the task of analyzing 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.”