Infinity's Shore (46 page)

Even when the horse caravan departs the land of stabbing colors to climb a steep mountain trail, he has other tools to work with—music, math, and hand signs that he trades with Prity, sharing jokes of ultimate crudity. During rest breaks, his sketchpad helps tap the subconscious, using impatient slashes and curves to draw free-form images from the dark time.

Streaker…

The ship takes form, almost drawing itself—a lovingly rendered cylinder with hornlike flanges arrayed in circuits along its length. He draws her
underwater
—surrounded by drifting seaweed—abnormal for a vessel of deep space, but it makes sense as other memories fill in.

Kithrup…

That awful world where the
Streaker
came seeking shelter after barely escaping a surprise ambush, learning that a hundred fleets were at war over the right to capture her.

Kithrup.
A planet whose oceans were poison … but a useful place to make repairs, since just half a dozen crew members had legs to stand on. The rest—bright, temperamental dolphins—needed a watery realm to work in. Besides, it seemed a good place to hide after the disaster at …

Morgran …

A transfer point. Safest of the fifteen ways to travel from star to star. Simply dive toward one at the right slope and distance, and you'd exit at some other point, far across the stellar wheel. Even the Earthling slowboat
Vesarius
had managed it, though quite by accident, before humanity acquired the techniques of Galactic science.

Thinking of Morgran brings
Keepiru
to mind, the finest pilot Emerson ever knew—the show-off!—steering
Streaker
out of danger with flamboyance that shocked the ambushers, plunging her back into the maelstrom, away from the brewing space battle…

 … like the other battle that developed weeks later, over Kithrup. Fine, glistening fleets, the wealth of noble clans, tearing at each other, destroying in moments the pride of many worlds. Emerson's hand flies as he draws exploding arcs across a sheet of native paper, ripping it as he jabs, frustrated by inability to render the gorgeous savagery he once witnessed with his own eyes.…

Emerson folds the drawings away when the party remounts, glad that his flowing tears are concealed by the rewq.

Later, when they face a steaming volcano caldera, he abruptly recalls another basin, this one made of folded space … 
the Shallow Cluster … Streaker
's last survey site before heading for Morgran—a place empty of anything worth noting, said the Galactic Library.

Then what intelligence or premonition provoked Captain Creideiki to head for such an unpromising site?

Surely, in all the eons, someone else must have stumbled on the armada of derelict ships
Streaker
discovered there—cause of all her troubles. He can envision those silent arks
now, vast as moons but almost transparent, as if they could not quite decide
to be.

This memory hurts in a different way. Claw marks lie across it, as if some outside force once pored over it in detail—perhaps seeking to read patterns in the background stars. Retracing
Streaker
's path to a single point in space.

Emerson figures they probably failed. Constellations were never his specialty.

“
Emerson, you don't have to go
.”

His head jerks as those words peel from a memory more recent than Morgran or Kithrup, by many months.

Emerson pans the land of fevered colors, now seen from high above. At last he finds her face in rippling glimmers. A worried face, burdened with a hundred lives and vital secrets to preserve. Again she speaks, and the words come whole, because he never stored them in parts of the brain meant for mundane conversation.

Because everything she said to him had always seemed like music.

“
We need you here. Let's find another way
.”

But there was no other way. Not even Gillian's sarcastic Tymbrimi computer could suggest one before Emerson climbed aboard a salvaged Thennanin fighter, embarking on a desperate gamble.

Looking back in time, he hopes to see in Gillian's eyes the same expression she used to have when bidding Tom farewell on some perilous venture.

He sees worried concern, even affection. But it's not the same.

Emerson frees his gaze from the torment-colored desert, turning east toward less disturbing vistas. Far-off mountains offer respite with natural undulating shapes, softened by verdant green forests.

Then, from one tall peak, there comes a glittering flash! Several more gleam in series. A rhythm that seems to
speak.…

His intrigued detachment is cut short by a frightened yell. Yet, for an instant Emerson remains too distant, too slow to turn. He does not see Sara tumble off the path. But Prity's scream tears through him like a torch thrust into cobwebs.

Sara's name pours from his throat with involuntary clarity. His body finally acts, leaping in pursuit.

Hurtling down the jagged talus slope, he flings eloquent curses at the universe, defying it—
daring it
—to take another friend.

Lark

T
HE SERGEANT'S FACE WAS STREAKED WITH CAMOUFLAGE. Her black hair still bore flecks of loam and grass from worming through crevices and peering between brambles. Yet Lark had never seen Jeni Shen look better.

People thrive doing the thing they were bom for. In Jeni's case, that's being a warrior. She'd rather have lived when the elder and younger Drakes were fashioning the Great Peace out of blood and fire than during the peace itself.

“So far, so good,” the young militia scout reported. Blur-cloth overalls made it hard to trace her outline amid stark lantern shadows.

“I got close enough to watch the emissaries reenter the valley, bringing the sages' reply to the Jophur. A couple of guard robots swooped in to look them over, especially poor Vubben, sniffing him from wheel rims to eyestalks. Then all six ambassadors headed down to the Glade, with the bots in escort.” Jeni made slanting downward motions with her hands. “That leaves just one or two drones patrolling this section of perimeter! Seems we couldn't ask for a better chance to make our move.”

“Can there be any question?” added Rann. The tall starfarer leaned against a limestone wall with arms folded. The Danik was unarmed, but otherwise Rann acted as if this were
his
expedition. “Of course we shall proceed. There is no other option.”

Despite Rann's poised assurance, the plan was actually Lark's. So was the decision whether to continue. His would be the responsibility, if three-score brave lives were lost in the endeavor … or if their act provoked the Jophur into spasms of vengeful destruction.

We might undermine the High Sages at the very moment when they have the Galactic untraekis calmed down.

On the other hand, how could the Six Races possibly pay the price the Jophur were demanding? While the sages tried to negotiate a lower cost, someone had to see if there was a better way. A way not to pay at all.

Anxious eyes regarded him from all corners of the grotto—one of countless steamy warrens that laced these hills. Ling's gaze was among the most relentless, standing far apart from Rann. The two star lords had been at odds since they worked to decode those cryptic data slabs—that awful afternoon when Rann cried “treason!” then a dread gold mist fell on Dooden Mesa. Each sky human had a different reason to help this desperate mission.

Lark found little cheer in Jeni's report.
Only one or two drones left.
According to Lester Cambel's aides, the remaining robots could still probe some distance underground, on guard against approaching threats. On the plus side, this terrain was a muddle of steam vents and juttering quakes. Then there were the subtle patterning songs put out by the Holy Egg—emanations that set Lark's stone amulet trembling against his chest.

They all watched, awaiting his decision—human, urs, and hoon volunteers, plus some qheuens who weren't yet sick.

“All right.” Lark nodded. “Let's do it.”

A terse, decisive command. Grinning, Jeni spun about to forge deeper into the cavern, followed by lantern bearers.

What Lark had meant to say was,
Hell no! Let's get out of here. I'll buy a round of drinks so everyone can raise a glass for poor Uthen.

But if he mentioned his friend's name, he might sob the wrenching grief inside. So Lark took his place along the twisty column of figures stooping and shuffling through the dim passage, lit by glow patches stuck to the walls.

His thoughts caromed as he walked. For instance, he
found himself wondering where on the Slope all six races
could
drink the same toast at the same time? Not many inns served both alcohol and fresh simla blood, since humans and urs disdained each other's feeding habits. And most traeki politely refrained from eating in front of other races.

I do know one bar in Tarek Town … that is, if Tarek hasn't already been smothered by a downpour of golden rain. After Dooden, the Jophur may go for the bigger towns, where so many g'Kek live.

It makes you wonder why the g'Kek came to Jijo in the first place. They can only travel the Path of Redemption if it is paved.

Lark shook his head.

Trivia. Minutiae. Brain synapses keep firing, even when your sole concern is following the man in front of you … and not slamming your skull on a stalactite.

When they glanced at him, his followers saw a calm, assertive pose. But within, Lark endured a run-on babble of words, forever filling his unquiet mind.

I should be mourning my friend, right now.

I should be hiring a traeki undertaker, arranging a lavish mulching ceremony, so Uthen's polished carapace can go in style to join the bones and spindles of his foremothers, lying under the Great Midden.

It's my duty to pay a formal visit to the Gray Queens, in that dusty hall where they once dominated most of the Slope. The Chamber of Ninety Tooth-Carved Pillars, where they still make pretenses at regal glory. But how could I explain to those qheuen matrons how two of their brightest sons died—Harullen, sliced apart by alien lasers, and Uthen, slain by pestilence?

Can I tell those ashen empresses their other children may be next?

Uthen had been his greatest friend, the colleague who shared his fascination with the ebb and flow of Jijo's fragile ecosystem. Though never joining Lark in heresy, Uthen was the one other person who understood
why
sooner races should never have come to this world. The one to comprehend why some Galactic laws were good.

I let you down, old pal. But if I can't perform all those
other duties, maybe I can arrange something to compensate.

Justice.

Debris littered the floor of the last large cavern, strewn there during the Zealots' Plot, when a cabal of young rebels used these same corridors to sneak explosives under the Danik research station, incinerating Ling's friend Besh and one of the Rothen star lords. Repercussions still spread from that event, like ripples after a large stone strikes a pond.

The Jophur battleship now lay atop the station wreckage, yet no one suggested using the same method of attack a second time. Assuming a mighty starcraft
could
be blown up, it would take such massive amounts of exploser paste that Lark's team would still be hauling barrels by next Founders' Day. Anyway, there were no volunteers to approach the deadly space behemoth. Lark's plan meant coming no closer than several arrowflights. Even so, the going would be hard and fraught with peril.

“From here on, the way's too close for grays,” Jeni said.

Urrish partisans peered down a passage that narrowed considerably, coiling their long necks in unison, sniffing an aroma their kind disliked.

The gray qheuens squatted while others unstrapped supplies from their chitin backs. Given enough time, the big fellows might widen the corridor with their digging claws and diamond-like teeth, but Lark felt better sending them back. Who knew how much time they had, with plague spreading on Jijo's winds? Was it a genocide bug? Ling had found supporting evidence on decoded data wafers, though Rann still denied it could be of Rothen origin.