Infinity's Shore (13 page)

“Yeah right,” Huck muttered, staring at the ersatz g'Kek in front of her, whose wheels and spokes gleamed, tight and polished. “I am so sure these are
sooners
, Alvin.”

I winced. So my earlier guess was wrong. There was no point rubbing it in.

“Hr-rm … shut up, Huck.”

“These are holographic frojections,” Ur-ronn lisped in Anglic, the sole Jijoan language suitable for such a diagnosis. The words came from human books, inherited since the Great Printing.

“Whatever you s-say,” Pincer added, as each ghost backed away toward a different curtained cell. “What d-d-do we do now?”

Huck muttered. “What choice do we have? Each of us follows our own guy, and see ya on the other side.”

With an uneven bumping of her rims, she rolled after the gleaming g'Kek image. A curtain slid shut after her.

Ur-ronn blew a sigh. “Good water, you two.”

“Fire and ash,” Pincer and I replied politely, watching her saunter behind the urrish cartoon figure.

The fake noon waved happily for me to enter the cubby on the far right.

“Name, rank, and serial number only,” I told Pincer.

His worried—“Huh?”—aspirated from three leg vents in syncopation. When I glanced back, his cupola eye still whirled indecisively, staring in all directions
except
at the translucent qheuen in front of him.

A hanging divider closed between us.

My silent guide in hoonish form led me to a white obelisk, an upright slab, occupying the center of the small room. He pantomimed stepping right up to it, standing on a small metal plate at its base. When I did so, I found the white surface
soft
against my face and chest. No sooner were my feet on the plate than the whole slab began to
tilt
 … rotating down and forward to become a table, with my own poor self lying prone on top. Huphu scrambled off my shoulders, muttering guttural complaints, then yowled as a
tube
lifted up from below and snaked toward my face!

I guess I could have struggled, or tried to flee. But to what point? When colored gas spilled from the tube, the odor reminded me of childhood visits to our Wuphon infirmary. The House of Stinks, we kids called it, though our
traeki pharmacist was kindly, and always secreted a lump of candy from an upper ring, if we were good.…

As awareness wavered, I recall hoping there would be a tasty sourball waiting for me this time, as well.

“G'night,” I muttered, while Huphu chittered and wailed. Then things kind of went black for a while.

Asx

S
TROKE THE FRESH-FLOWING WAX, MY RINGS, streaming hot with news from real time.

Here, trace this ululation, a blaring
cry of dismay
, echoing round frosted peaks, setting stands of mighty greatboo a-quivering.

Just moments earlier, the Rothen ship hovered majestically above its ruined station, scanning the Glade for signs of its lost spore buds, the missing members of its crew.

Angry
the throbbing vessel seemed, broody and threatening, ready to avenge.

Yet we/i remained in place, did we not, my rings? Duty rooted this traeki stack in place, delegated by the Council of Sages to parley with these Rothen lords.

Others also lingered, milling across the trampled festival grounds. Curious onlookers, or those who for personal reasons wished to offer invaders
loyalty.

So we/i were not alone to witness what came next. There were several hundred present, staring in awe as the Rothen starship probed and palped the valley with rays, sifting the melted, sooty girders of its ravaged outpost.

Then came that abrupt, awful sound. A cry that still fizzes, uncongealed, down our fatty core. An alarm of anguished dread, coming from the ship itself!

Shall we recall more? Dare we trace this waxy trail yet further? Even though it gives off painful molten heat?

Yes?

You are brave, my rings.…

Behold the Rothen ship—suddenly bathed in light!

Actinic radiance pours onto it
from above
 … cast by a new entity, shining like the blazing sun.

It is no sun, but
another
vessel of space! A ship unbelievably larger than the slim gene raider, looming above it the way a full-stacked traeki might tower over a single, newly vlenned ring.

Can the wax be believed? Could anything be as huge and mighty as that luminous mountain-thing, gliding over the valley as ponderous as a thunderhead?

Trapped, the Rothen craft emits awful, grating noises, straining to escape the titanic newcomer. But the cascade of light now presses on it, pushing with force that spills across the vale, taking on qualities of physical substance. Like a solid shaft, the beam thrusts the Rothen ship downward against its will, until its belly scours Jijo's wounded soil.

A deluge of saffron color flows around the smaller cruiser, covering the Rothen craft in layers—thickening, like gobs of cooling sap. Soon the Rothen ship lies helplessly encased. Leaves and twigs seem caught in midwhirl, motionless beside the gold-sealed hull.

And above, a new power hovered. Leviathan.

The searing lights dimmed.

Humming a song of overpowering might, the titan descended, like a guest mountain dropping in to take its place among the Rimmers. A stone from heaven, cracking bedrock and reshaping the valley with its awful weight.

Now the wax stream changes course. The molten essence of distilled chagrin veers in a new direction.

Its heading, my rings?

Over a precipice.

Into hell.

Rety

R
ETY THOUGHT ABOUT HER BIRD. THE BRIGHT bird, so lively, so unfairly maimed, so like herself in its stubborn struggle to overcome.

All her adventures began one day when Jass and Bom returned from a hunting trip boasting about wounding a mysterious flying creature. Their trophy—a gorgeous metal feather—was the trigger she had been waiting for. Rety took it as an omen, steadying her resolve to break away. A sign that it was time, at last, to leave her ragged tribe and seek a better life.

I guess everybody's looking for something
, she pondered, as the robot followed another bend in the dreary river, meandering toward the last known destination of Kunn's flying scout craft. Rety had the same goal, but also dreaded it. The Danik pilot would deal harshly with Dwer. He might also judge Rety, for her many failings.

She vowed to suppress her temper and grovel if need be.
Just so the starfolk keep their promise and take me with them when they leave Jijo.

They must! I gave 'em the bird. Rann said it was a clue to help the Daniks and their Rothen lords search
 …

Her thoughts stumbled.

Search for what?

They must need somethin' awful bad to break Galactic law by sneakin' to far-off Jijo.

Rety never swallowed all the talk about “gene raiding”—that the Rothen expedition came looking for animals almost ready to think. When you grow up close to nature, scratching for each meal alongside other creatures, you soon realize
everybody
thinks. Beasts, fish … why, some of her cousins even prayed to trees and stones!

Rety's answer was—
so what?
Would a gallaiter be less smelly if it could read? Or a wallow kleb any less disgusting if it recited poetry while rolling in dung? By her lights, nature was vile and dangerous. She had a bellyful and would gladly give it up to live in some bright Galactic city.

Rety never believed Kunn's people came across vast space just to teach some critters how to blab.

Then what was the real reason? And what were they afraid of?

The robot avoided deep water, as if its force fields needed rock or soil to push against. When the river widened, and converging tributaries became rivers themselves, further progress proved impossible. Even a long detour west offered no way around. The drone buzzed in frustration, hemmed by water on all sides.

“Rety!” Dwer's hoarse voice called from below. “Talk to it again!”

“I already did, remember?
You
must've wrecked its ears in the ambush, when you ripped out its antenna thing!”

“Well … try again. Tell it I might … have a way to get across a stream.”

Rety stared down at him, gripped by snakelike arms. “You tried to kill it a while back, an' now you're offerin' to help?”

He grimaced. “It beats dying, wandering in its clutches till the sun burns out. I figure there's food and medicine on the flying boat. Anyway, I've heard so much about these alien humans. Why should you get all the fun?”

She couldn't tell where he stopped being serious, and turned sarcastic. Not that it mattered. If Dwer's idea proved useful, it might soften the way Kunn treated him.

And me
, she added.

“Oh, all right.”

Rety spoke directly to the machine, as she had been taught.

“Drone Four! Hear and obey commands! I order you to let us down so's we can haggle together about how to pass over this here brook. The prisoner says he's got a way mebbe to do it.”

The robot did not respond at first, but kept cruising between two high points, surveying for any sign of a crossing. But finally, the humming repulsors changed tone as metal arms lowered Dwer, letting him roll down a mossy
bank. For a time the young man lay groaning. His limbs twitched feebly, like a stranded fish.

More than a little stiff herself, Rety hoisted her body off the upper platform, wincing at the singular touch of steady ground. Both legs tingled painfully, though likely not as bad as Dwer felt. She got down on her knees and poked his elbow.

“Hey, you all right? Need help gettin' up?”

Dwer's eyes glittered pain, but he shook his head. She put an arm around his shoulder anyway as he struggled to sit. No fresh blood oozed when they checked the crusty dressing on his thigh wound.

The alien drone waited silently as the young man stood, unsteadily.

“Maybe I can help you get across water,” he told the machine. “If I do, will you change the way you carry us? Stop for breaks and help us find food? What d'you say?”