Infinity's Shore (27 page)

I WISH I COULD introduce myself to Alvin. I feel I already know the lad, from reading his journal and eavesdropping on conversations among his friends.

Their grasp of twenty-third-century Anglic idiom is so perfect, and their eager enthusiasm so different from the hoons and urs I met before coming to Jijo, that half the time I almost forget I'm listening to aliens. That is, if I ignore the weird speech tones and inflections they take for granted.

Then one of them comes up with a burst of eerily skewed logic that reminds me these arent just human kids after all, dressed up in Halloween suits to look like a crab, a centaur, and a squid in a wheelchair.

Passing the time, they wondered (and I could not blame them) whether they were prisoners or guests in this underwater refuge. Speculation led to a wide-ranging discussion, comparing various famous captives of literature. Among their intriguing perceptions—Ur-ronn sees
Richard II
as the story of a legitimate
business takeover, with Bolingbroke as the king's authentic apprentice.

The red qheuen, Pincer-Tip, maintains that the hero of the
Feng Ho
chronicles was kept in the emperor's harem against his will, even though he had access to the Eight Hundred Beauties and could leave at any time.

Finally, Huck declared it frustrating that Shakespeare spent so little time dealing with Macbeth's evil wife, especially her attempt to escape sin by finding redemption in a presapient state. Huck has ideas for a sequel, describing the lady's “reuplift from the fallow condition.” Her ambitious work would be no less than a morality tale about betrayal and destiny in the Five Galaxies!

Beyond these singular insights, I am struck that here on Jijo an illiterate community of castaways was suddenly flooded with written lore provided by human settlers. What an ironic reversal of Earth's situation, with our own native culture nearly over-whelmed by exposure to the Great Galactic Library. Astonishingly, the Six Races seem to have adapted with vitality and confidence, if Huck and Alvin are at all representative.

I wish their experiment well.

Admittedly, I still have trouble understanding their religion. The concept of
redemption through devolution
is one they seem to take for granted, yet its attraction eludes me.

To my surprise, our ship's doctor said she understands the concept, quite well.

“Every dolphin grows up feeling the call,” Makanee told me. “In sleep, our minds still roam the vast songscape of the Whale Dream. It beckons us to return to our basic nature, whenever the stress of sapiency becomes too great.”

This dolphin crew has been under pressure for three long years. Makanee's staff must care for over two dozen patients who are already “redeemed,” as a Jijoan would put it. These dolphins have “reclaimed their basic nature” all right. In other words, we
have lost them as comrades and skilled colleagues, as surely as if they died.

Makanee fights regression wherever she finds symptoms, and yet she remains philosophical. She even offers a theory to explain why the idea revolts me so.

She put it something like so—

“PERHAPS you humans dread this life avenue because your race had to work for sapiency, earning it for yourself the hard way, across thousands of bleak generations.

“We fins—and these urs and qheuens and hoons, and every other Galactic clan—all had the gift handed to us by some race that came before. You can't expect us to hold on to it quite as tenaciously as you, who had to struggle so desperately for the same prize.

“The attraction of this so-called Redemption Path may be a bit like ditching school. There's something alluring about the notion of letting go, shucking the discipline and toil of maintaining a rigorous mind. If you slack off, so what? Your descendants will get another chance. A fresh start on the upward road of uplift, with new patrons to show you the way.”

I asked Makanee if she found that part of it especially appealing. The idea of new patrons. Would dolphins be better off with different sponsors than
Homo sapiens?

She laughed and expressed her answer in deliciously ambiguous Trinary.

Makanee's comment made me ponder again the question of human origins.

On Earth, most people seem willing to suspend judgment on the question of whether our species had help from genetic meddlers, before the age of science and then contact. Stubborn Darwinists still present a strong case, but few have the guts to insist Galactic experts are wrong when they claim, with eons of experience, that the sole route to sapiency is Uplift. Many Terran citizens take their word for it.

So the debate rages—on popular media shows and in private arguments among humans, dolphins, and chims—about who our absent patrons might have been. At last count there were six dozen candidates—from Tuvallians and Lethani all the way to Sun Ghosts and time travelers from some bizarre Nineteenth Dimension.

While a few dolphins do believe in missing patrons, a majority are like Makanee. They hold that we humans must have done it ourselves, struggling against darkness without the slightest intervention by outsiders.

How did Captain Creideiki put it, once? Oh yes.

“THERE are racial memories, Tom and Jill. Recollections that can be accessed through deep
keeneenk
meditation. One particular image comes down from our dreamlike legends—of an apelike creature paddling to sea on a tree trunk, proudly proclaiming that he had carved it, all by himself, with a stone ax, and demanding congratulations from an indifferent cosmos.

“Now I ask you, would any decent patron let its client act in such a way? A manner that made you look so ridiculous?

“No. From the beginning we could tell that you humans were being raised by amateurs. By yourselves.”

AT least that's how I remember Creideiki's remark. Tom found it hilarious, but I recall suspecting that our captain was withholding part of the story. There was more, that he was saving for another time.

Only another time never came.

Even as we dined with Creideiki that evening,
Streaker
was wriggling her way by an obscure back route into the Shallow Cluster.

A day or two later, everything changed.

IT'S late and I should finish these notes. Try to catch some sleep.

Hannes reports mixed results from engineering. He and Karkaett found a way to remove some of the carbon coating from
Streaker
's hull, but a more thorough job would only wind up damaging our already weak flanges, so that's out for now.

On the other hand, the control parameters I hoaxed out of the Library cube enabled Suessi's crew to bring a couple of these derelict “dross” starships back to life! They're still junk, or else the Buyur would have taken them along when they left. But immersion in icy water appears to have made little difference since then. Perhaps some use might be found for one or two of the hulks. Anyway, it gives the engineers something to do.

We need distraction, now that
Streaker
seems to be trapped once more. Galactic cruisers have yet again chased us down to a far corner of the universe, coveting our lives and our secrets.

How?

I've pondered this over and over. How did they follow our trail?

The course past Izmunuti seemed well hidden. Others made successful escapes this way before. The ancestors of the Six Races, for instance.

It should have worked.

ACROSS this narrow room, I stare at a small figure in a centered spotlight. My closest companion since Tom went away.

Herbie.

Our prize from the Shallow Cluster.

Bearer of hopes and evil luck.

Was there a curse on the vast fleet of translucent vessels we discovered at that strange dip in space? When Tom found a way through their shimmering fields and snatched Herb as a souvenir, did he bring back a jinx that will haunt us until we put the damned corpse back in its billion-year-old tomb?

I used to find the ancient mummy entrancing. Its hint of a humanoid smile seemed almost whimsical.

But I've grown to hate the thing, and all the space this discovery has sent us fleeing across.

I'd give it all to have Tom back. To make the last three years go away. To recover those innocent old days, when the Five Galaxies were merely very, very dangerous, and there was still such a thing as home.