Infinity's Shore (42 page)

“Used my pusher legs. Kept banging 'em against the wall till I managed to snag one of these.”

Her tendril-like arm unfolded. There, held delicately between the tips, hung a narrow, rectangular strip of what looked like thick paper. I reached for it.

“Careful, it's sticky on one side. I think a book called it
adhesive tape.
Got a bit crumpled when I yanked it off the wall. Had to pry some gummy bits apart. I'm afraid there's not much of an impression left, but if you look closely …”

I peered at the strip—one of the coverings we had seen pressed on the walls, always at the same height, to the left of each doorway in the curved hall, surely masking label signs in some unknown language.

“You wouldn't happen to've been looking when I ripped it off, were you?” Huck asked. “Did you see what it said underneath?”

“Hr-r. Wish I had. But I was too busy avoiding being kicked.”

“Well, never mind. Just look
real
carefully at this end. What d'you see there?”

I didn't have Huck's sensitivity of vision, but hoons do have good eyes. I peered at what seemed a circular pattern with a gap and sharp jog on the right side. “Is it a symbol?”

“That's right. Now tell me—in what alphabet?”

I concentrated. Circles were basic ingredients in most standard Galactic codes. But this particular shape seemed unique.

“I'll tell you my
first
impression, though it can't be right.”

“Go on.”

“Hr-rm … it looks to me like an
Anglic
letter. A letter
G
, to be specific.”

Huck let a satisfied sigh escape her vent mouth. All four eyestalks waved, as if in a happy breeze.

“That was my impression, too.”

We clustered round the viewport when the hull began creaking and popping, indicating a rapid change of pressure. Soon the world outside began to brighten and we knew the sub must be on final approach. Beyond the glass, sunshine streamed through shallow water. We all felt a bit giddy, from changing air density, I guess. Pincer-Tip let out hissing shouts, glad to be back in a familiar world where he would be at home. (Though lacking the comforts of his clan rookery.) Soon water slid off the window in dripping sheets and we saw our destination.

Tilted obelisks and sprawling concrete skeletons, arrayed in great clusters along the shore.

Huck let out a warbling sigh.

Buyur ruins
, I realized.
These must be the scrublands south of the Rift, where some city sites were left to be torn down by wave and wind alone.

The voice read my journal and knew about our interest in coming here. If we must be quarantined, this would be the place.

The cluster of ancient sites had been Huck's special goal, before we ever stepped aboard
Wuphon's Dream.
Now she bounced on her rims, eager to get ashore and read the wall inscriptions that were said to be abundant in this place. Forgotten were her complaints over broken phuvnthu promises. This was a more longstanding dream.

One of the six-limbed amphibians entered, gesturing for us to move quickly. No doubt the phuvnthus were anxious to get us ashore before they could be spotted by their enemies. Huck rolled out after Pincer. Ur-ronn glanced at me, her long head and neck shaking in an urrish shrug. At least she must be looking forward to an end to all this water and humidity. The countryside ahead looked pleasantly dry.

But it was not to be.

This time I was the mutinous one.

“No!” I planted my feet, and my throat sac boomed.

“I ain't movin'.”

My friends turned and stared. They must have seen hoonish obstinacy in the set of my limbs as I gripped the crutches. The amphibian fluttered and squeaked distress.

“Forget it,” I insisted. “We are not getting off!”

“Alvin, it's all right-ight,” Pincer murmured. “They promised
to leave us lots of food, and I can hunt along the shore—”

I shook my head.

“We are not going to be cast aside like this, exiled for our own Ifni-slucking
safety
, like a bunch of helpless kids. Sent away from where things are happening. Important things!”

“What're you talking about?” asked Huck, rolling back into the cabin, while the amphibian fluttered and waved its four arms vainly. Finally, a pair of big phuvnthus came in, their long horizontal bodies metal-clad and slung between six stomping steel legs. But I refused to be intimidated. I pointed at the nearest, with its pair of huge, black, glassy eyes, one on each side of a tapered head.

“You call up the spinning voice and tell him. Tell him we can help. But if you people turn us away, putting us ashore here won't do any good. It won't shut us up, 'cause we'll find a way back home, just as fast as we can. We'll head for the Rift and signal friends on the other side. We'll tell 'em the truth about you guys!”

Ur-ronn murmured, “
What
truth, Alvin?”

I let out a deep, rolling umble to accompany my words.

“That we know who these guys are.”

Sara

I
N THE LODGE OF A HORSE CLAN YOU MIGHT EXPECT to see lariats, bridles, and saddle blankets hanging on the walls. Maybe a guitar or two. It seemed strange to find a
piano
here in Xi.

An instrument much like the one back home in Dolo Village, where Melina used to read to her children for hours on end, choosing obscure books no one else seemed eager to check out from the Biblos Archive—some crinkly pages wafting aromas from the Great Printing, two hundred years before. Especially books of
written music
Melina would prop on the precious piano Nelo had made for her as part of the marriage price.

Now, in the great hall of the Illias, Sara ran her hands along white and black keys, stroking fine tooth traces left by expert qheuen wood-carvers, picturing her mother as a little girl, raised in this narrow realm of horses and mind- scraping illusions. Leaving Xi must have been like going to another planet. Did she feel relief from claustrophobic confinement, passing through the Buyur tunnel for a new life in the snowy north? Or did Melina long in her heart for the hidden glades? For the visceral thrill of bareback? For the pastoral purity of life unconstrained by men?

Did she miss the colors that took each dream or nightmare, and spread its secret panorama before your daylight gaze?

Who taught you to play the piano, Mother? Sitting with you on this very bench, the way you used to sit beside me, trying to hide your disappointment in my awkward fingers?

A folio of sheet music lay atop the piano's polished surface. Sara flipped through it, recalling ancient compositions that used to transfix her mother for duras at a stretch, rousing young Sara's jealousy against those dots on a page. Dots Melina transformed into glorious harmonies.

Later, Sara realized how magical the melodies truly were. For they were
repeatable.
In a sense, written music was immortal. It could never die.

The typical Jijoan ensemble—a sextet including members from each sooner race—performed spontaneously. A composition was never quite the same from one presentation to the next. That trait appealed especially to blue qheuens and hoons, who, according to legend, had no freedom to innovate back in ordered Galactic society. They expressed puzzlement when human partners sometimes suggested recording a successful piece in traeki wax, or writing it down.

Whatever for?
they asked.
Each moment deserves its own song.

A Jijoan way of looking at things, Sara acknowledged.

She laid her hands on the keys and ran through some scales. Though out of practice, the exercise was like an old friend. No wonder Emerson also drew comfort from tunes recalling happier days.

Still, her mind churned as she switched to some simple favorites, starting with “Für Elise.”

According to Biblos anthropology texts, most ancient cultures on Earth used to play music that was impulsive, just like a Jijoan sextet. But shortly before they made their own way into space, humans also came up with written forms.

We sought order and memory. It must have seemed a refuge from the chaos that filled our dark lives.

Of course that was long ago, back when mathematics also had its great age of discovery on Earth.
Is that a common thread? Did I choose math for the same reason Melina loved this instrument? Because it lends predictability amid life's chaos?

A shadow fell across the wall. Sara drew back, half rising to meet the brown eyes of Foruni, aged leader of the horse-riding clan.

“Sorry to disturb you, dear.” The gray-headed matriarch motioned for Sara to sit. “But watching you, I could almost believe it was Melina back home with us, playing as she did, with such intensity.”

“I'm afraid I don't look much like my mother. Nor do I play half as well.”

The old woman smiled. “A good parent wants her offspring to excel—to do what she could not. But a wise parent lets the child select
which
excellence. You chose realms of deep thought. I know she was very proud.”

Sara acknowledged the kindness with a nod, but took small comfort from aphorisms.
If the choice really were mine, don't you think I'd have been beautiful, like Melina? A dark woman of mystery, who amazed people with many graceful talents?

Mathematics chose me … it seized me with cool infinities and hints at universal truth. Yet whom do I touch with my equations? Who looks at my face and form with unreserved delight?

Melina died young, but surrounded by those who loved her. Who will weep over me, when I am gone?

The Illias leader must have misunderstood Sara's frown.

“Do my words disturb you?” Foruni asked. “Do I sound like a heretic, for believing that generations can improve?
Does it seem an odd belief for a secret tribe that hides itself even from a civilization of exiled refugees?”

Sara found it hard to answer.

Why were Melina's children so odd, by Jijoan standards? Although Lark's heresy seems opposite to mine, we share one thread—rejecting the Path of Redemption.

The books Mother read to us often spoke of hope, drawn from some act of rebellion.

To the Illias leader, she replied, “You and your urrish friends rescued horses, back when they seemed doomed. Your alliance foreshadowed that of Drake and Ur-Chown. You are a society of dedicated women, who carefully choose your male companions from the best Jijo has to offer. Living in splendid isolation, you see humanity at its best—seldom its more nasty side.

“No, it does not surprise me that the Illias are optimists at heart.”

Foruni nodded. “I am told that you, in your investigations of language theory, reached similar conclusions.”

Sara shrugged. “I'm no optimist. Not personally. But for a while, it seemed that I could see a pattern in the evolution of Jijo's dialects, and in all the new literary activity taking place across the Slope. Not that it matters anymore, now that aliens have come to—”