Infinity's Shore (30 page)

He felt another droplet strike his cheek … the tenth since they left the river, plunging into this endless slough. He held his hand under a murky sky and prayed the real downpours would hold off for a few more days.

Then let it come down! The lake is low. We need water
pressure for the wheel, or else I'll have to shut down the mill for lack of power.

His thoughts turned to business—the buying and gathering of recycled cloth from all six races. The pulping and sifting. The pressing, drying, and selling of fine sheets that his family had been known for ever since humans brought the blessing of paper to Jijo.

A blessing that some called a curse. That radical view now claimed support from simple villagers, panicked by the looming end of days—

A shout boomed from above.

“There!” A wiry young hoon perched high on the mast, pointing. “Hr-r … It must be the Stranger's ship. I
told
you this had to be the place!”

Wyhuph-eihugo had accompanied Sara on that fateful gleaning trip—a duty required of all citizens. Lacking a male's throat sac, she nevertheless umbled with some verve, proud of her navigation.

At last!
Nelo thought.
Now Ariana can make her sketches, and we can leave this awful place.
The crisscrossing mulc cables made him nervous. Their boat's obsidiantipped prow had no trouble slicing through the desiccated vines. Still it felt as if they were worming deeper into some fiendish trap.

Ariana muttered something. Nelo turned, blinking.

“What did you say?”

The old woman pointed ahead, her eyes glittering with curiosity.

“I don't see any soot!”

“So?”

“The Stranger was burned. His clothes were ashen tatters. We thought his ship must have come down in flames—perhaps after battling other aliens high over Jijo. But look. Do you see any trace of conflagration?”

The boat worked around a final voow grove, revealing a rounded metal capsule on the other side, gleaming amid a nest of shattered branches. The sole opening resembled the splayed petals of a flower, rather than a door or hatch. The arrival of this intruder had cut a swathe of devastation stretching to the northwest. Several swamp hummocks
were split by the straight gouge, only partly softened by regrown vegetation.

Nelo had some experience as a surveyor, so he helped take sightings to get the ship's overall dimensions. It was small—no larger than this hoonish boat, in fact—certainly no majestic cruiser like the one that clove the sky over Dolo Town, sending its citizens into hysteria. The rounded flanks reminded Nelo of a natural teardrop, more than anything sapient-made.

Two pinpoints of moisture dotted his cheek and forehead. Another struck the back of his hand. In the distance, Nelo heard a sharp rumble of thunder.

“Hurry closer!” Ariana urged, flipping open her sketchpad.

Murmuring unhappily, the hoons leaned on their poles and oars to comply.

Nelo stared at the alien craft, but all he could think was
dross.
When Sixers went gleaning through Buyur sites, one aim was to seek items that might be useful for a time, in a home or workshop. But useful or not, everything eventually went into ribboned caskets to be sent on to the Great Midden. Thus colonists imagined they were helping cleanse Jijo—perhaps doing more good than harm to their adopted world.

“Ifni!” Nelo sighed under his breath, staring at the vehicle that brought the Stranger hurtling out of space. It might be tiny for a starship, but it looked hard as blazes to move by hand.

“We'll be in for a hell of a job draggin' this thing out of here, let alone gettin' it down to sea.”

Again, off to the south, the sound of thunder boomed.

Ewasx

W
E JOPHUR ARE TAUGHT THAT IT IS TERRIBLE TO BE traeki—a stack lacking any central self. Doomed to a splintered life of vagueness and blurry placidity.

ALL SING PRAISES to the mighty Oailie, who took over
from the too-timid Poa, completing the final stages of our Uplift.

Those same Oailie who designed new master rings to focus and bind our natures.

Without rings like Me, how could our race ever have become great and feared among the Five Galaxies?

AND YET, even as I learn to integrate your many little selves into our new whole, I am struck by how vivid are these older drippings that I find lining our inner core! Drippings that date from before My fusion with your aged pile of rings. How lustrous clear these memories seem, despite their counterpointing harmonies. I confess, existence had intensity and verve when you/we were merely
Asx.

PERHAPS this surprise comes because I/Myself am so young, only recently drawn from the side of our Ship Commander—from that great one's very own ring-of-embryos.

Yes, that is a high heritage. So imagine the surprise of finding Myself in this situation! Designed for duties in the dominion caste, I am wedded, for pragmatic reasons, to a haphazard heap of rustic toruses, ill educated and filled with bizarre, primitive notions. I have been charged to make the best of things until some later time, when surgery-of-reconfiguration can be performed—

AH. THAT DRAWS A REACTION FROM SOME OF YOU? Our second ring of cognition, in particular, finds this notion disturbing.

Fear not, My rings! Accept these jolts of painful love soothing, to remind you of your place—which is not to question, only to serve. Be assured that the procedure I refer to is now quite advanced among the mighty Jophur. When a ring is removed for reassembly in a new stack, often as many as half of the other leftover components can be recovered and reused as well! Of course, most of you are elderly, and the priests may decide you carry other-race contaminations, preventing incorporation into new mounds. But accept this pledge. When the time comes, I, your beloved master ring, shall very likely make the transition in good health, and take fond memories of our association to My glorious new stack.

I know this fact will bring you all great satisfaction, contemplating it within our common core.

Lark

C
ATHEDRAL-LIKE STILLNESS FILLED THE BOO FOREST—a dense expanse of gray-green columns, towering to support the sky. Each majestic trunk had a girth like the carapace of a five-clawed qheuen. Some stretched as high as the Stone Roof of Biblos.

Now I know how an insect feels, scuttling under a sea of pampas grass.

Hiking along a narrow lane amid the giant pillars, Lark often could reach out his arms and brush two giant stems at the same time. Only his militia sergeant seemed immune to a sense of confinement infecting travelers in this strange place of vertical perspectives. Other guards expressed edginess with darting eyes that glanced worriedly down crooked aisles at half-hidden shadows.

“How far is it to Dooden Mesa?” Ling asked, tugging the straps of her leather backpack. Perspiration glistened down her neck to dampen the Jijoan homespun jerkin she wore. The effect was not as provocative as Lark recalled from their old survey trips together, when the sheer fabric of a Danik jumpsuit sometimes clung to her biosculpted figure in breathtaking ways.

Anyway, I can't afford that, now that I'm a sage.
The promotion brought only unpleasant responsibilities.

“I never took this shortcut before,” Lark answered, although he and Uthen used to roam these mountains in search of data for their book. There were other paths around the mountain, and the wheeled g'Keks nominally in charge of this domain could hardly be expected to do upkeep on such a rough trail. “My best guess is we'll make it in two miduras. Want to rest?”

Ling pushed sodden strands from her eyes. “No. Let's keep going.”

The former gene raider seemed acutely aware of Jeni Shen, the diminutive sergeant, whose corded arms cradled her crossbow like a beloved child. Jeni glanced frequently at Ling with hunter's eyes, as if speculating which vital
organ might make a good target. Anyone could sense throbbing enmity between the two women—and that Ling would rather die than show weakness before the militia scout.

Lark found one thing convenient about their antagonism. It helped divert Ling's ire away from
him
, especially after the way he earlier used logic to slash her beloved Rothen gods. Since then, the alien biologist had been civil, but kept to herself in brooding silence.

No one likes to have their most basic assumptions knocked from under them—especially by a primitive savage.

Lark blew air through his cheeks—the hoonish version of a shrug.

“Hr-rm. We'll take a break at the next rise. By then we should be out of the worst boo.”

In fact, the thickest zone was already behind them, a copse so dense the monstrous stems rubbed in the wind, creating a low, drumming music that vibrated the bones of anyone passing underneath. Traveling single file, edging sideways where the trunks pressed closest, the party had watched for vital trail marks, cut on one rounded bole after the next.

I was right to leave Uthen behind
, he thought, hoping to convince himself.
Just hold on, old friend. Maybe we'll come up with something. I pray we can.

Visibility was hampered by drifting haze, since many of the tall boo
leaked
from water reserves high above, spraying arcs of fine droplets that spread to saturate the misty colonnade. Several times they passed clearings where aged columns had toppled in a domino chain reaction, leaving maelstroms of debris.

Through the fog, Lark occasionally glimpsed
other
symbols, carved on trunks beyond the trail. Not trail marks, but cryptic emblems in GalTwo and GalSix … accompanied by strings of Anglic numbers.

Why would anyone go scrawling graffiti through a stand of greatboo?

He even spied dim figures through the murk—once a human, then several urs, and finally a pair of traeki—glimpsed prowling amid rows of huge green pillars. At
least he
hoped
the tapered cones were traeki. They vanished like ghosts before he could tell for sure.