Infinity's Shore (54 page)

Dwer chuckled contemptuously, under his breath.

Like One-of-a-Kind, this spider could somehow tap Dwer's human memory, using it to make better sentences—more articulate speech—than he ever managed on his own. But Dwer knew better than to bandy words. Instead, he willed himself to turn around.

Behind Dwer, Rety murmured, “What's goin' on!” But he only motioned for her to follow him away from the mulc cords.

Dwer glanced back, and saw several vines tremble. The tremors strengthened, dura after dura, tightening and releasing till several of the largest bunched in a knotty tangle. More duras passed … then one loop
popped up
out of the water, rising high, dripping like some amphibious being, emerging from its watery home.

It was confirmation, not only of the spider's mental reality, but of Dwer's own sane perception. Yet he quashed
all sense of acknowledgment or relief. Rather, Dwer let a feeling of disappointment flow across his surface thoughts.

A fresh shoot of lesser boo moves that much, in the course of a day's growth
, he pondered, without bothering to project the thought at the spider.

Dwer felt an impulse to speak directly. To make his wishes known in the form of a request. But no. His experience with One-of-a-Kind had taught him. That mulc beast might have been mad, but it clearly shared some properties of personality with its kind.

Dwer knew the game to play was “hard to get.” So he let his idea leak out in the form of a fantasy … a daydream. When Rety tried to interrupt again, he made a slashing motion for quiet while he went on picturing what a spider might do to convince him it was real. The sort of thing Dwer would find impressive.

The mulc being's next message seemed intrigued.

Alvin

I
WAS RIGHT! THE PHUVNTHUS ARE EARTHLINGS
! I haven't figured out the little amphibians yet, but the big six-legged creatures? They are dolphins. Just like the ones in
King of the Sea
or
The Shining Shore …
only these talk and drive spaceships! How uttergloss.

And there are humans.

Sky humans!

Well, a couple of them, anyway.

I met the woman in charge—Gillian is her name. Among other things, she said some nice words about my journal. In fact, if they ever succeed in getting away from here, and returning to Earth, she promises to find an agent for me and get it published.

Imagine that. I can't wait to tell Huck.

There's just one favor Gillian wants in return.

Ewasx

O
H, HOW THEY PREVARICATE!

Is this what it means to take the Downward Path?

Sometimes a citizen race decides to change course, rejecting the destiny mapped out for it by patron and clan. The Civilization of the Five Galaxies allows several traditional avenues of appeal, but if all other measures fail, one shelter remains available to all—the road that leads
back
, from starfaring sapience to animal nature. The route to a second chance. To start over again with a new patron guiding your way.

This much I/we can understand. But must that path have an intermediate phase, between citizen and dumb beast? A phase in which the half-devolved species becomes
lawyers?

Their envoys stand before us now, citing points of Galactic law that were handed down in sacred lore. Especially verbose is the g'Kek emissary. Yes, My rings, you identify this g'Kek as Vubben—a “friend and colleague” from your days as Asx the traeki. Oh, how that sage-among-sooners nimbly contorts logic, contending that his folk are not responsible for the debt his kind owes our clan, by rule of vendetta. A debt of extinction.

The senior Priest-Stack aboard our ship insists we must listen to this nonsense, for form's sake, before continuing our righteous vengeance. But most of the
Polkjhy
crew stacks side with our Captain-Leader, whose impatience-with-drivel steams with each throbbing pulse of an angry mulching core. Finally, the Captain-Leader transmits a termination signal to Me/us. To faithful Ewasx.

“ENOUGH!” I interrupt Vubben in loud tones of Oailie decisiveness. All four of his eyestalks quail in surprise at my harsh resonance.

“YOUR CONTENTIOUS REASONINGS ARE BASED ON INVALID ASSUMPTIONS.”

They stand before us/Me, frozen silent by our rebuke. A silence more appropriate to half animals than all that useless jabber. Finally, the qheuen sage, Knife-Bright Insight, bows her blue-green carapace and inquires:

“Might we ask what assumptions you refer to?”

Our second cognition ring performs a writhing twitch that I must overcome with savage pain jolts, preventing the rebellious ring's color ceils from flashing visibly.
Be thou restrained
, I command, enforcing authority over our component selves.
Do not try to signal your erstwhile comrades. The effort will accomplish nothing.

The minirebellion robs Me of resources to maintain a pontifical voice. So when I next speak aloud, it is in more normal tones. Yet the message is no less severe.

“Your faulty assumptions are threefold,” I answer the thoughtful blue qheuen.

“You assume that law still reigns in the Five Galaxies.

“You assume that we should feel restrained by procedures and precedents from the last ten million years.

“But above all, your most defective assumption is that we should care.”

Dwer

I
T WAS NOT ENOUGH SIMPLY TO COAX THE MULC beast. Dwer had to creep close and supervise, for the spider had no clear concept of haste.

Dwer could sense its concentration, shifting fluids and gathering forces from a periphery that stretched league after league, along the Rift coast. The sheer size of the thing was mind-boggling, far greater than the mad little alpine spider that nearly consumed Dwer and Rety. This titan was in the final stages of demolishing a vast city, the culmination of its purpose, and therefore its life. Millennia ago, it might have ignored Dwer, as a busy workman disregards the corner scratchings of a mouse. Now boredom made it responsive to any new voice, offering relief from monumental ennui.