Infinity's Shore (58 page)

To answer verbally would yank her out of the trance, so Gillian instead calls up
Kopou
, an empathy glyph. Nothing fancy—she lacks the inbuilt talent of a Tymbrimi—just a crude suggestion that the Niss go find a corner of cybernetic space and spend the next hour in simulated self-replication, till she calls for it.

The entity sputters and objects. There are more words. But she lets them wash by like foam on a beach. Meanwhile Gillian continues the exercise, shifting to another compass point. One that seems quiet as death.

Abhusha
resumes, now reaching toward a cadaver, standing in a far corner of her office like a pharaoh's mummy, surrounded by preserving fields that still cling after three years and a million parsecs, keeping it as it was. As it had been ever since Tom wrested the ancient corpse from a huge derelict ship, adrift in the Shallow Cluster.

Tom always had a knack for acquiring expensive souvenirs. But this one took the cake.

Herbie.

An ironic name for a Progenitor … if that truly was its
nature … perhaps two billion years old, and the cause of
Streaker
's troubles.

Chief cause of war and turmoil across a dozen spiral arms.

We could have gotten rid of him on Oakka World
, she knew. Handing Herbie over to the Library Institute was officially the right thing to do. The safe thing to do.

But sector-branch officials had been corrupted. Many of the librarians had cast off their oaths and fell to fighting among themselves—race by race, clan by clan—each seeking
Streaker
's treasure for its own kind.

Fleeing once again became a duty.

No one Galactic faction can be allowed to own your secret.

So commanded Terragens Council, in the single longrange message
Streaker
had received. Gillian knew the words by heart.

To show any partiality might lead to disaster.

It could mean extinction for Earthclan.

Articles of Destiny tug at her limbs, reorienting her floating body. Facing upward, Gillian's eyes open but fail to see the metal ceiling plates. Instead, they look to the past.

To the Shallow Cluster. A phalanx of shimmering globes, deceptively beautiful, like translucent moons, or floating bubbles in a dream.

Then the Morgran ambush … fiery explosions amid mighty battleships, as numerous as stars, all striving for a chance to snare a gnat.

To Kithrup, where the gnat fled, where so much was lost, including the better part of her soul.

Where are you, Tom? Do you still live, somewhere in space and time?

Then Oakka, that green betraying place, where the Institutes failed.

And the Fractal System, where Old Ones proved there is no age limit on perfidy.

Herbie seems amused by that thought.

“
Old Ones? From my perspective, those inhabitants of a giant snowflake are mere infants, like yourself!
”

Of course the voice comes from her imagination, putting words in a mouth that might have spoken when Earth's ocean was innocent of any life but bacteria … when Sol's system was half its present age.

Gillian cracks a smile and
Abhusha
transforms into
Kuntatta
—laughter amid a storm of sleeting vacuum rays.

Soon, she must wrestle with the same quandary—how to arrange
Streaker
's escape one more time, just ahead of baying hounds. It would take a pretty neat trick this time, with a Jophur dreadnought apparently already landed on Jijo, and
Streaker
's hull still laden with refractory soot.

It would take a miracle.

How did they follow us?
she wonders.
It seemed a perfect hideout, with all trails to Jijo quantum collapsed but one, and that one passing through the atmosphere of a giant carbon star. The sooner races all did it successfully, arriving without leaving tracks. What did we do wrong?

Recrimination has no place in weightless yoga.

It spoils the serenity.

Sorry, Jake
, she thinks. Gillian sighs, knowing this trance is now forfeit. She might as well emerge and get back down to business. Perhaps the
Hikahi
will bring useful news from its raid on the surface.

I'm sorry, Tom. Maybe a time will come when I can clear my mind enough to hear you … or to cast a piece of myself to wherever you have gone.

Gillian won't let herself imagine the more likely probability—that Tom is dead, along with Creideiki and all the others she was forced to abandon on Kithrup, with little more than a space skiff to convey them home again.

The emergence process continues, drawing meditation en-forms back into their original abstractions, easing her toward the world of unpleasant facts.

And yet…

In the course of preparing to exit, Gillian abruptly grows aware of a
fifth
tug on her body, this one stroking the back of her neck, prickling her occipital vertebrae, and follicles along the middle of her scalp. It is familiar. She's felt it before, though never this strong. A presence, beckoning
not from nearby, or even elsewhere in the ship, but somewhere beyond
Streaker
's scarred hull. Somewhere else on the planet.

There is a rhythmic, resonant solidity to the sensation, like vibration in dense stone.

If only Creideiki were here, he could probably relate to it, the way he did with those poor beings who lived underground on Kithrup. Or else Tom might have figured out a way to decipher this thing.

And yet, she begins to suspect this time it is something different. Correcting her earlier impression, Gillian realizes—

It is not a presence
on
this world, or beneath it, but something
of
the planet. An aspect of Jijo itself.

Narushkan
orients her like the needle of a compass, and abruptly she feels a strange, unprovoked commotion within. It takes her some time to sort out the impression. But recognition dawns at last.

Tentatively—like a long-lost friend unsure of its welcome—
hope
sneaks back into her heart, riding on the stony cadence.

Ewasx

A
BRUPTLY COMES NEWS. TOO SOON FOR YOU RINGS to have interpreted the still-hot wax. So let me relate it directly.

WORD OF DISASTER! WORD OF CALAMITY!

Word of ill-fated loss, just east beyond this range of mountain hills. Our grounded corvette—destroyed!

Dissension tears the
Polkjhy
crew. Chem-synth toruses vent fumes of blame while loud recriminations pour from oration rings.

Could this tragedy be the work of the dolphin prey ship, retaliating against its pursuers? For years its renown has spread, after cunning escapes from other traps.

But it cannot be. Long-range scans show no hint of gravitic emanations or energy weapons. Early signs point to some kind of onboard failure.

And yet, clever wolflings are not to be underrated. I/we can read waxy memories left by the former Asx—historical legends of the formative years of the Jijoan Commons, especially tales of urrish-human wars. These stories demonstrate how both races have exceptional aptitudes for improvisation.

Until now, we thought it was coincidence—that there were Earthling sooners here, that the Rothen had human servants, and the prey ship also came from that wolfling world. The three groups seem to have nothing in common, no motives, goals, or capabilities.

But what if there is a pattern?

I/we must speak of this to the Captain-Leader … as soon as higher-status stacks pause their ventings and let us get a puff in edgewise.

Prepare, My rings. Our first task will surely be to interrogate the prisoners.

Tsh't

W
HAT AM I GOING TO DO?

She fretted over her predicament as the submarine made its way back to the abyssal mountain of dead starships. While other members of the
Hikahi
team exulted over their successful raid, looking forward to reunion with their crew mates on the
Streaker
, Tsh't anticipated docking with a rising sense of dread.

To outward appearances, all was well. The prisoners were secure. The young adventurers, Alvin and Huck, were debriefing Dwer and Rety—human sooners who had managed somehow to defeat a Jophur corvette. Once
Hikahi
leveled its plunge below the thermocline, Tsh't knew she and her team had pulled it off—striking a blow for Earth without being caught.

The coup reflected well on the mission commander.
Some might call Tsh't a hero. Yet disquiet churned her sour stomach.

Ifni must hate me. The worst of all possible combinations of events has caught me in a vise.

“Wait a minute,” snapped the female g'Kek, who had assumed the name of an ancient Earthling literary figure. As her spokes vibrated with agitation, she pointed one eye-stalk at the young man whose bow and arrows lay across his knees. “You're saying that you walked all the way from the Slope to find
her
hidden tribe … while
she
flew back home aboard the Dakkin sky boat …”

The human girl, Rety, interrupted.

“That's
Danik
, you dumb wheelie. And what's so surprisin' about that? I had Kunn an' the others fooled down to their scabs, thinkin' I was ready to be one of 'em. O' course I was just keepin' my eyes peeled fer my first chance to …”

Tsh't had already heard the story once through, so she paid scant attention this time, except to note that “Huck” spoke far better Anglic than the human child. Anyway, she had other matters on her mind. Especially one of the prisoners lying in a cell farther aft … a captive starfarer who could reveal her deepest secret.

Tsh't sent signals down the neural tap socketed behind her left eye. The mechanical walker unit responded by swiveling on six legs to aim her bottle-shaped beak away from the submarine's bridge. Unburdened by armor or lifesupport equipment, it maneuvered gracefully past a gaggle of dolphin spectators. The fins seemed captivated by the sight of two humans so disheveled, and the girl bearing scars on her cheek that any Earth hospital could erase in a day. Their rustic accents and overt wonder at seeing real live dolphins seemed poignantly endearing in members of the patron race.