Brightness Reef (6 page)

Great, now he’s spooked it!

At last Dwer spilled from the undergrowth onto a stretch of ancient Buyur highway. Sprinting along the broken pavement, he sheathed the machete and drew his compound bow, cranking the string taut.

Sounds of hissing confrontation spilled from a narrow side canyon, forcing Dwer to leave the old road again, dodging amid vine-crusted trees. Finally he saw them, just beyond a screen of shrubs-two creatures, poised in a showdown of sable and iridescent pale.

Cornered in a slit ravine, the glaver was obviously female, possibly pregnant. She had climbed a long way and was pulling deep breaths. Globelike eyes rotated independently, one tracking the dark noor while the other scanned for dangers yet unseen.

Dwer cursed both of them-the glaver for drawing him on a profitless chase when he had been looking forward to festival, and the meddlesome noor for daring to interfere!

Doubly cursed, because now he was in its debt. If the glaver had reached the plains beyond the Rimmer Range, it would have been no end of trouble.

Neither creature seemed to notice Dwer-though he wouldn’t bet against the noor’s keen senses. What is the little devil doing up here? What’s it trying to prove?

Dwer had named it Mudfoot, for the brown forepaws marring an ebony pelt, from a flattish tail to whiskers that twitched all around a stubby snout. The black-furred creature kept still, its gaze riveted on the flighty glaver, but Dwer wasn’t fooled. You know I’m watching, show-off. Of all species left on Jijo when the ancient Buyur departed, Dwer found noor the least fathomable, and fathoming other creatures was a hunter’s art.

Quietly, he lowered the bow and unfastened a buckskin thong, taking up his coiled lariat. Using patient, stealthy care, he edged forward.

Grinning with jagged, angular teeth, Mudfoot reared almost to the glaver’s height-roughly as tall as Dwer’s thigh. The glaver retreated with a snarl, till her bony back plates brushed rock, causing a rain of pebbles. In her forked tail she brandished a stick-some branchlet or sapling with the twigs removed. A sophisticated tool, given the present state of glaverdom.

Dwer took another step and this time could not avoid crushing some leaves. Behind the noor’s pointy ears, gray spines jutted from the fur, waving independently. Mudfoot kept facing the glaver, but something in its stance said—“Be quiet, fool!”

Dwer didn’t like being told what to do. Especially by a noor. Still, a hunt is judged only by success, and Dwer wanted a clean capture. Shooting the glaver now would be to admit failure.

Her loose skin had lost some opal luster since leaving familiar haunts, scavenging near some village of the Six, as glavers had done for centuries, ever since their innocence was new.

Why do they do this? Why do a few try for the passes, every year?

One might as well guess the motives of a noor. Among the Six, only the patient hoon had a knack for working with the puckish, disruptive beasts.

Maybe the Buyur resented having to quit Jijo and left noor as a joke on whoever came next.

A buzzing lion-fly cruised by, under filmy, rotating wings. The panting glaver tracked it with one eye, while the other watched the swaying noor. Hunger gradually prevailed over fear as she realized Mudfoot was too small to murder her. As if to enhance that impression, the noor sat back on its haunches, nonchalantly licking a shoulder.

Very clever, Dwer thought, shifting his weight as the glaver swung both eyes toward the hovering meal.

A jet of sputum shot from her mouth, striking the fly’s tail.

In a flash, Mudfoot bounded left. The glaver squealed, struck out with the stick, then whirled to flee the other way. Cursing, Dwer sprang from the undergrowth. Moccasins skidded on spoiled granite, and he tumbled, passing just under the flailing club. Desperately, Dwer cast the lariat-which tautened with a savage yank that slammed his chin to the ground. Though starving and weak, the glaver had enough panicky strength to drag Dwer for a dozen meters, till her will finally gave out.

Shivering, with waves of color coursing under her pale skin, she dropped the makeshift club and sank to all four knees. Dwer got up warily, coiling the rope.

“Easy does it. No one’s gonna hurt you.”

The glaver scanned him with one dull eye. “Pain exists. Marginally, “ she crooned, in thickly slurred Galactic Eight.

Dwer rocked back. Only once before had a captured glaver spoken to him. Usually they kept up their insentient to the last. He wet his lips and tried answering in the same obscure dialect.

“Regrettable. Endurance suggested. Better than death.”

“Better?” The weary eye squinted as if vaguely puzzled and unsure it mattered.

Dwer shrugged. “Sorry about the pain.”

The faint light drifted out of focus.

“Not blamed. Dour melody. Now ready to eat.”

The flicker of intellect vanished once more under a bolus of animal density.

Both amazed and drained, Dwer tethered the creature to a nearby tree. Only then did he take account of his own wincing cuts and bruises while Mudfoot lay on a rock, basking in the last rays of the setting sun.

The noor couldn’t talk. Unlike the glaver, its ancestors had never been given the knack. Still, its open-mouth grin seemed to say—“That was fun. Let’s do it again!”

Dwer recovered his bow, started a fire, and spent the day’s last half-midura feeding the captive from his meager rations. Tomorrow he’d find it a rotten log to root under for grubs—a favorite, if undignified pastime for members of what had once been a mighty starfaring race.

Mudfoot sidled close when Dwer unwrapped some hard bread and jerky. Dwer sighed and tossed some to the noor, who snatched chunks out of midair and ate with dainty care. Then Mudfoot sniffed at Dwer’s gourd canteen.

He had seen the beasts use gourds aboard hoon-crewed riverboats. So after a dubious pause, he pulled the cork stopper and handed it over. The creature used both six-fingered forepaws-nearly as deft as true hands-to adroitly slosh quick dollops over its tongue, smacking loudly.

Then it poured the remainder over its head.

Dwer shot to his feet, cursing. But Mudfoot blithely tossed the empty vessel aside. Rivulets ran down its glossy back, dribbling dark splatters in the dust. The noor chirped happily and began to groom.

Dwer shook the canteen, winning a few drops. “Of all the selfish, ungrateful-“

It was already too late to hike to the nearest stream, down a narrow, treacherous trail. A waterfall growled, close enough to hear but over a midura away by foot. This was no crisis; he’d done without before. Still, the sound would give him dry-mouth, all night long.

Never stop learning, said the sage Ur-Ruhols. Tonight, Dwer had learned one more thing about noor. All told, the price of the lesson was pretty cheap.

He decided to arrange for a wakeup call. For that, he would need a clock teet.

There were good reasons to get an early start. He might still make it back to the yearly Gathering of the Six, before all the unpledged human boys and girls chose partners for jubilee dancing. Then there was his annual report to Danel Ozawa, and Lena Strong’s ridiculous “tourism” idea to oppose. Also, if he led the glaver away before dawn, he just might manage to leave Mudfoot snoring by the coals. Noor loved sleep almost as much as upsetting the routines of villagers, and this one had had a long day.

So after supper Dwer brought forth a sheaf of paper folders, his cache of practical things. Many of the wrappers had come from his brother’s wastebasket, or Sara’s.

Lark’s handwriting, graceful and controlled, usually traced some living species on Jijo’s complex order of life. Dwer used Lark’s castoff notes to store seeds, herbs, and feathers—things useful in the hunt.

Sara’s hand was expansive yet tense, as if imagination and order held each other in check. Her discards swarmed with baffling mathematics. (Some failed equations weren’t just scratched out but stabbed to death in fits of frustration.) Dwer used his sister’s work-sheets to hold medicines, condiments, and the powders that made many Jijoan foods edible to humans.

From one folded page he drew six tobar seeds—plump, hard, and fragrant—which he spread across a rock some way downwind. Holding his breath, he used his knife to split one open, then fled a rising, pungent cloud. The glaver mewed unhappily, and the noor glared at him until the breeze swept most of the intense aroma away.

Back in his sleeping roll, Dwer waited as the stars came out. Kalunuti was a hot reddish pinpoint, set high on the leering face of Sargon, pitiless enforcer of laws. More starry patterns followed, eagle, horse, dragon—and dolphin, beloved cousin, grinning with her. jaw thrust in a direction some said might lead to Earth.

If we exiles are ever caught, Dwer pondered. Will the Great Galactic Library make a file about our culture? Our myths? Will aliens read our constellation myths and laugh?

If all went as planned, no one would ever hear of this lonely colony or recall its tales. Our descendants, if any, will be like glavers-simple, and innocent as the beasts of the field.

Fluttering wings grazed the firelight. A squat form landed near the tobar seeds, with wings of grayish plates that slid like overlapping petals. The birdling’s yellow beak quickly devoured the nut Dwer had cracked.

Mudfoot sat up, eyes glinting.

Dwer warned the noor, half-dozing—“You bother it, an’ I’ll have yer hide fer a hat.”

Mudfoot sniffed and lay down again. Soon there came a rhythmic tapping as the teet started pecking at the next nut. It would take its time, consuming one kernel each midura-roughly seventy minutes-until the last was gone. Then, with a chattering screech, it would fly off. One didn’t need a printout from the Great Library to know what function the -Buyur had designed this creature to fill. The living alarm clock still worked as programmed.

Lark is wrong about our place on this world, Dwer thought, lulled by the unvaried tapping. We do a service. Jijo would be a sad place without people to use its gifts.

There were dreams. Dwer always had dreams. Shapeless foes lurked beyond sight as he wandered a land covered with colors, like a rainbow that had melted, flowed across the ground, then frozen in place. The harsh hues hurt his eyes. Moreover, his throat felt parched, and he was unarmed.

The dream shifted. All of a sudden, .he found himself alone in a forest of trees that seemed to stretch up past the moons. For some reason, the trees were even more threatening than the colored landscape. He fled, but could find no exit from the forest as their trunks glowed, burst into flame, then started to explode.

The furious intensity of the nightmare yanked him awake, sitting up with a racing heart. Dwer stared wide-eyed, glad to find the realwoods intact, though dark and threaded by a chill breeze. There was no raging firestorm. He had dreamed the whole thing.

Still, uneasiness gnawed. Something felt wrong.

He rubbed his eyes. Different constellations swarmed the sky, fading in the east under a wash of predawn gray. The biggest moon, Loocen, hovered over silhouetted peaks, its sunlit face spangled with bright pinpoints-the domes of long-abandoned cities.

So what’s wrong?

It wasn’t just intuition. The clock teet had stopped. Something must have disturbed it before the time to chatter its alarm. He checked the area and found the noor snoring on quietly. The glaver tracked Dwer dully with one thoughtless eye, the other still closed.

All at once, he knew the problem.

My bow!

It wasn’t where he’d left it, within arm’s reach. It was gone.

Stolen!

Anger flooded the predawn dimness with blinding adrenaline outrage. Dozens had spoken enviously of his bow-a masterpiece of laminated wood and bone, fashioned by the qheuenish craftsmen of Ovoom Town. But who . . . ?

Calm down. Think.

Could it be Jeni Shen? She often joked about luring him into a poker game, with the bow at stake. Or might it be—

Stop!

He took a deep breath, but it was hard disciplining his young body, so full of need to act.

Stop and hear what the world has to say. . . .

First, he must calm the furious spilling of his own unspoken words. Dwer pushed aside all noisy thoughts. Next he made himself ignore the rasping sound of breath and pulse.

The distant, muttering waterfall was by now familiar, easy to cancel out. The wind’s rustle, less regular, soon went away, too.

One hovering sound might be the clock teet, cruising in hope of more tobar seeds. Another flutter told of a honey bat-no, a mated pair-which he also disregarded. The noor’s snoring he edited, and the soft grind of glaver-molars as the prisoner rechewed her cud.

There! Dwer turned his head. Was that a scrape on gravel? Pebbles rattling down a scree, perhaps. Something, or someone-bipedal? Almost man-size, he guessed, and hurrying away.

Dwer took off after the sound. Gliding ghostlike in his moccasins, he ran some distance before noting that the thief was heading the wrong direction. Away from the coast. Away from the Slope. Higher into the Rimmer Range.

Toward the Pass.

Padding up the rocky trail, Dwer’s angry flush gave way to the scrupulous cadence of pursuit-a tense, almost ecstatic concentration on each thrust of heel and toe; the efficiency of motion needed for silence; an eager probing beyond his own soft noise to seize any trace of the pursued. His head felt clear, no longer poisoned by fury. Whatever the reason for this chase, tie could not help feeling a kind of joy. This was his art, the thing he loved best.

Dwer was near the notch of gray light separating two shadowy peaks, when a problem occurred to him. Wait a minute!

He slowed to a trot, then down to a walk. This is stupid. Here I am, chasing off after a sound I’m not even sure I heard—maybe a hangover of a dream- when the answer was there all along!

The noor.

He stopped, beating his fist against his thigh and feeling like an idiot.

It’s just what a noor would do-stealing things. Swapping a villager’s chipped cup for a treasure, or vice versa.

When he returned, would a pile of ligger turds sit where the bow had lain? Or a diamond wrested from the crown of some long dead Buyur king? Or would they all-noor, bow, and glaver-simply be gone? Mudfoot had been quite an actor, snoozing by the coals. Did the beast cackle when he hightailed off, chasing his own outraged imagination?