Infinity's Shore (21 page)

Master rings.

LIKE ME.

Alvin

T
HIS IS A TEST. I'M TRYING OUT A BURNISH-NEW WAY of writing.

If you call this “writing”—where I talk out loud and watch sentences appear in midair above a little box I've been given.

Oh, it's uttergloss all right. Last night, Huck used her new autoscribe to fill a room with words and glyphs in Gal-Three, GalEight, and every obscure dialect she knew, ordering translations back and forth until it seemed she was crowded on all sides by glowing symbols.

Our hosts gave us the machines to help tell our life stories, especially how the Six Races live together on the Slope. In return, the spinning voice promised a reward. Later, we'll get to ask questions of the big chilly box.

Huck went delirious over the offer. Free access to a memory unit of the Great Library of the Five Galaxies! Why, it's like telling Cortes he could have a map to the Lost Cities of Gold, or when the legendary hoonish hero Yuqwourphmin found a password to control the robot factories of Kurturn. My own nicknamesake couldn't have felt more awe, not even when the secrets of Vanamonde and the Mad Mind were revealed in all their fearsome glory.

Unlike Huck, though, I view the prospect with dark worry. Like a detective in some old-time Earth storybook, I gotta ask—
where's the catch?

Will they break their promise, once we've shared all we know?

Maybe they'll fake the answers. (How could we tell?)

Or perhaps they'll let us talk to the cube all we want, because they figure the knowledge won't do us any good, since we're never going home again.

On the other hand, let's say it's all open and sincere. Say we
do
get a chance to pose questions to the Library unit, that storehouse of wisdom collected by a billion-year-old civilization.

What on Jijo could we possibly have to say?

I've just spent a midura experimenting. Dictating text. Backing up and rewriting. The autoscribe sure is a lot more flexible than scratching away with a pencil and a ball of
guarru
gum for an eraser! Hand motions move chunks of text like solid objects. I don't even have to speak aloud, but simply
will
the words, like that little tickle when you mutter under your breath so's no one else can hear. I know it's not true mind reading—the machine must be sensing muscle changes in my throat or something. I read about such things in
The Black Jack Era
and
Luna City Hobo.
But it's unnerving anyway.

Like when I asked to see the little machine's dictionary of Anglic synonyms! I always figured I had a good vocabulary, from memorizing the town's copy of
Roget's Thesaurus!
But it turns out that volume left out most of the Hindi and Arabic cognate grafts onto the English-Eurasian root-stock. This tiny box holds enough words to keep Huck and me humble … or me, at least.

My pals are in nearby rooms, reciting their own memoirs. I expect Huck will rattle off something fast-paced, lurid, and carelessly brilliant to satisfy our hosts. Ur-ronn will be meticulous and dry, while Pincer will get distracted telling breathless stories about sea monsters. I have a head start because my journal already holds the greater part of our personal story—how we four adventurers got to this place of weirdly curved corridors, far beneath the waves.

So I have time to worry about
why
the phuvnthus want to know about us.

It could just be curiosity. On the other hand, what if something we say here eventually winds up hurting our kinfolk, back on the Slope? I can hardly picture how. I mean, it's not like we know any military secrets—except about the urrish cache that Uriel the Smith sent us underwater to retrieve. But the spinning voice already knows about that.

In my cheerier moments I envision the phuvnthus letting us take the treasure back, taking us home to Wuphon in their metal whale, so we seem to rise from the dead like the fabled crew of the
Hukuph-tau
 … much to the surprise of Uriel, Urdonnol, and our parents, who must have given us up for lost.

Optimistic fantasies alternate with other scenes I can't get out of my head, like something that happened right after the whale sub snatched
Wuphon's Dream
out of its death plunge. I have this hazy picture of bug-eyed spiderthings stomping through the wreckage of our handmade vessel, jabbering weird ratchety speech, then jumping back in mortal terror at the sight of
Ziz
, the harmless little traeki five-stack given us by Tyug the Alchemist.

Streams of fire blasted poor Ziz to bits.

You got to wonder what anyone would go and do a mean thing like that for.

I might as well get to work.

How to begin my story?

Call me Alvin.
…

No. Too hackneyed. How about this opening?

Alvin Hph-wayuo woke up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant
 …

Uh-uh. That's hitting too close to home.

Maybe I should model my tale after
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Here we are, castaways being held as cordial prisoners in an underwater world. Despite being female, Huck would insist
she's
the heroic Ned Land character. Urronn would be Professor Aronnax, of course, which leaves either Pincer or me to be the comic fall guy, Conseil.

So when are we going to finally meet
Nemo?

Hmm. That's a disadvantage of this kind of writing, so
effortless and easily corrected. It encourages running off at the mouth, when good old pencil and paper meant you had to actually think in advance what you were going to sa—

Wait a minute. What was that?

There it goes again. A faint booming sound … only louder this time. Closer.

I don't think I like it. Not at all.

…

Ifni! This time it set the floor quivering.

The rumble reminds me of Guenn Volcano back home, belchin' and groanin', making everybody in Wuphon wonder if it's the long-awaited Big O—

Jeekee sac-rot! No fooling this time.

Those are explosions, getting close fast!

Now comes another noise, like a zookir screeching its head off 'cause it sat on a quill lizard.

Is that the sound a
siren
makes? I always wondered—

Gishtuphwayo!
Now the lights go dim. The floor jitters—

What is Ifni-slucking going on!

Dwer

T
HE VIEW FROM THE HIGHEST DUNE WASN'T PROMISING.

The Danik scout craft was at least five or six leagues out to sea, a tiny dot, barely visible beyond a distinct line where the water's hue changed from pale bluish green to almost black. The flying machine cruised back and forth, as if searching for something it had misplaced. Only rarely, when the wind shifted, did they catch the faint rumble of its engines, but every forty or so duras Dwer glimpsed something specklike tumble from the belly of the sleek boat, glinting in the morning sun before it struck the sea. Ten more duras would pass after the object sank—then the ocean's surface
bulged
with a hummock of roiling foam, as if an immense monster suffered dying spasms far below.

“What's Kunn doing?” Dwer asked. He turned to Rety, who shaded her eyes to watch the distant flier. “Do you have any idea?”

The girl started to shrug her shoulders, but yee, the little urrish male, sprawled there, snaking his slender neck to aim all three eyes toward the south. The robot rocked impatiently, bobbing up and down as if trying to signal the distant flier with its body.

“I don't know, Dwer,” Rety replied. “I reckon it has somethin' to do with the bird.”

“Bird,” he repeated blankly.

“You know. My metal bird. The one we saved from the mulc spider.”

“
That
bird?” Dwer nodded. “You were going to show it to the sages. How did the aliens get their hands—”

Rety cut in.

“The Daniks wanted to know where it came from. So Kunn asked me to guide him here, to pick up Jass, since he was the one who saw where the bird came to shore. I never figured that'd mean leavin' me behind in the village.…” She bit her lip. “Jass must've led Kunn here. Kunn said somethin' about ‘flushin' prey.' I guess he's tryin' to get more birds.”

“Or else whoever
made
your bird, and sent it ashore.”

“Or else that.” She nodded, clearly uncomfortable. Dwer chose not to press for details about her deal with the star humans.

As their journey south progressed, the number of marshy streams had multiplied, forcing Dwer to “carry” the robot several more times before he finally called a halt around dusk. There had been a brief confrontation when the combat machine tried intimidating him to continue. But its god weapons had been wrecked in the ambush at the sooner camp, and Dwer faced the robot's snapping claws without flinching, helped by a strange detachment, as if his mind had somehow
grown
while enduring the machine's throbbing fields. Hallucination or not, the feeling enabled him to call its bluff.

With grudging reluctance that seemed lifelike, the robot gave in. By a small fire, Dwer had shared with Rety the
donkey jerky in his pouch. After a moment's hesitation, Rety brought out her own contribution, two small lozenges sealed in wrappers that felt slick to the touch. She showed Dwer how to unwrap his, and guffawed at the look on his face when intense, strange flavors burst in his mouth. He laughed, too, almost inhaling the Danik candy the wrong way. Its lavish sweetness won a place on his List of Things I'm Glad I Did Before Dying.

Later, huddled with Rety on the banked coals, Dwer dreamed a succession of fantastic images far more potent than normal—perhaps an effect of “carrying” the robot, conducting its ground-hugging fields. Instead of crushing weight, he fantasized
lightness
, as if his body wafted, unencumbered. Incomprehensible panoramas flickered under closed eyelids … objects glimmering against dark backgrounds, or gassy shapes, glowing of their own accord. Once, a strange sense of recognition seized him, a timeless impression of loving familiarity.