Infinity's Shore (62 page)

Unlike the others, I can't banish all doubt.

Have we chosen the right side?

Oh, there seem to be good reasons for throwing our fate in with these fugitives. Humans are members of the Six, and that makes the dolphins sort of cousins, I guess. And it's true that
Streaker
seems more like one of our sooner sneakships than those arrogant dreadnoughts, up in the Rimmer Range. Anyway, I was brought up reading Earthling tall tales. My sentiments are drawn to the underdog.

Still, I must keep at least one mental corner detached and uncommitted. My loyalty lies ultimately with family, sept, and clan … and with the High Sages of the Commons of Jijo.

Among the four of us, someone must remember our true priorities. A time may come when they clash with our hosts'.

How have I kept busy all this time?

For one thing, I've been learning to skim the ship's database, extracting historical summaries of what's taken place since the Great Printing. The distilled tale is a treat to a born info hound like me.

And yet, I still can't get that big, mist-shrouded cube out of my mind. Sometimes I hanker to sneak into that cold room and ask questions of the Branch Library—a storehouse so great that the Biblos Archive might as well be a primer for a two-year old.

On our way back from the surface I got to know Rety—the irascible, proud human girl whose illegal tribe of savages would have shaken the Commons with a sensational scandal, in normal times. I also talked to Dwer the Hunter, who I recall visiting Wuphon, a few years back. Dwer chatted about his adventures while Physician Makanee treated his wounds, till he fell into exhausted slumber. Soon Rety collapsed, too, with her little “husband” curled alongside, a slim urrish head draped across her chest.

For the most part, my job has been to umble.

Yeah, that's right. To umble for a noor.

My own pet, Huphu, doesn't know what to make of the newcomer—the one called
Mudfoot.
On first spying him, she hissed … and he hissed back, exactly like a regular noor. It was such a normal reaction that I started to doubt my own memory. Did I really hear and see Mudfoot
talk?

My assigned task is to keep him happy till he decides to talk again.

I guess I owe these people—Gillian Baskin and Tsh't and the dolphins.

They saved us from the abyss … though maybe we wouldn't have fallen at all, if it hadn't been for their interference.

They fixed my broken back … though it was injured when
they
smashed
Wuphon's Dream.

They turned a mere adventure into an epic … but won't let us go home for fear we'd tell the tale.

All right, dammit. I'll umble for the silly noor. He preens and acts starved for sound anyway, after months with just humans for company.

Up close I
can
sense a difference in him. I used to glimpse the same thing now and then, in the eyes of a few strange noor lounging on the Port Wuphon docks.

A sleek arrogance.

A kind of lazy smugness.

The impression that he's in on a great joke. One
you
won't figure out till there's egg all over your face.

Ewasx

T
HE HUMAN CAPTIVES SEEM OBDURATE, MY RINGS, refusing to answer questions. Or else they obfuscate with blatant lies.

QUERY/INTERROGATIVE:

Is there similarity between their behavior and the way
you
misled
Me?

The way you rings have blurred so many of the waxy memories we coinherited from Asx?

The way our union oscillates between grudging cooperation and intermittent passive resistance?

It is enough to provoke unpleasant questions.

DON'T YOU LIKE BEING PART OF OUR MUCH-IMPROVED SHARED WHOLE? OUR AMBITIOUS ONENESS?

Yes, the majority of you claim gladness to be part of a great Jophur entity, instead of a tepid traeki mélange. But can I/we really be sure that you/we love Me/us?

The question is, in itself, a possible symptom of madness. What naturally cojoined Jophur would allow itself to entertain such doubts? The
Polkjhy
Priest-Stack predicted this hybridization experiment would fail. The priest foretold it would be useless to impose a master torus onto traeki rings already set in their ways.

A metaphor floats upward, along abused trails of half-molten wax.

Are you trying to make a comparison, O second ring-of-cognition?

Ah, yes. I/we see it.

Forging a noble Jophur out of disparate traeki cells
might
seem like trying to tame a herd of wild beasts. It is an apt analogy.

Too bad the metaphor does nothing to help solve My/ our problem.

WHAT SECRETS LIE BURIED in the melted areas? What memories did the traeki High Sage purposely destroy, during those stressful moments before Asx was converted? I/ we can tell, important evidence once glimmered in those layers that lined our common core. Something Jophur were not meant to know.

But know it we/I shall.

I must!

SUGGESTION:

Perhaps we can tear information out of these recently seized humans.

The ones bearing the name attributes
Lark, Ling
, and
Rann.

REBUTTAL:

The Priest-Stack vents frustrated steam, upset to learn how little data about Earthlings is contained in our shipboard Library. We have many detailed prescriptions for truth serums or coercion drugs effective against other races and species who are foes of the Great Jophur, but the archives carry no record of any substance that is human-specific. Our Library clearly needs updating, despite the fact that it is a relatively new unit, less than a thousand years old.

One tactician stack, assigned to our shipboard planning staff, proposed that we use interrogation techniques designed against
Tymbrimi.
Those devil tricksters are close allies of Earthlings, and appear similar in ways that go beyond bipedal locomotion. Trying out that suggestion, we tried projecting psi-compulsion waves at the prisoners, tuned to Tymbrimi empathic frequencies.

But the humans seemed deaf to the pulses, showing no reaction at all.

Meanwhile, the Captain-Leader vents irate fumes—acrid vapors that send all off-duty personnel fleeing from its presence.

What is the cause of such rancor, My rings?

Recent news from beyond the nearby hills.

Bitter
news confirming our fears.

Disaster to the east.

AT LAST, our remaining corvette reached the site where its twin fell silent, two days ago. Aboard the
Polkjhy
, I/we all stared in dismay at relayed images of devastation.

Hull wreckage lay sunk beneath swampy waters—the sort of marshland morass where a traeki might find it pleasant to wallow while contemplating wax drippings. Windblown rain swept the area while searchers scanned for survivors, but all they found were remnants—mostly singleton
rings, reverting to a feral animal state, instinctively gathering nests of rotting vegetation, as if they were no more than primitive pretraeki.

Several of these surviving toruses were harvested. By scraping their cores, we managed to download a few blurry memory tracks. Enough to suggest that
dolphins
did this deed, emerging from the sea to play havoc with our brethren.

HOW WERE THEY ABLE TO DO THIS?

The downed corvette had reported defense systems functional at a forty percent level. More than adequate, if concentrated against just such a sortie by the desperate Earthling quarry. Even amid a lightning-charged thunderstorm, it should not have been possible for the cornered prey to mount a surprise attack. Yet, not even an alarm signal escaped our grounded boat before it was mysteriously overwhelmed.

Again, doubts rise to disturb us. The wolflings are said to be primitives, not much more capable than the sooner savages whose coward ancestors settled this world. Yet these same Earthers have sent all Five Galaxies into turmoil, repeatedly escaping mighty fleets sent after them.

Perhaps it was a mistake for our
Polkjhy
ship commune to take on this mission alone, with just our one mighty battlecruiser to seize destiny for our kind.

SCENT RUMORS SPREAD THROUGH
POLKJHY
NOW, alleging the Captain-Leader was deficiently stacked. Subversive pheromones suggest that flawed decision-processing toruses brought us to this unsavory state. Our commander was blinded by obsession with vengeance on the g'Kek, ignoring higher priorities.

Furious to find mutinous molecules wafting through the air ducts, our Captain-Leader seeks to overwhelm them with his own chemical outpourings—a steamy concoction of smoldering rejection. Perfumes of domineering essence flood all decks.

What is it now, My ring?

Ah. Our second torus-of-cognition has come up with another metaphor, this time comparing the Captain-Leader to the skipper of a hoonish sailboat, who tries shouting down his worried crew, using a loud voice to substitute for real leadership.

Very interesting, My ring—making parallels between alien behavior and Jophur ship politics. Such insights make this irksome union seem almost worthwhile.