David Brin - Infinity's Shore

But all that was in the past. Now she was back doing what she did best — relying on herself.

The control room spanned roughly thirty paces in width, featuring about a dozen wide instrument consoles. All were dark, except one jury-rigged station festooned with cables and makeshift bypass connections. Lights blazed across that panel. On the floor nearby, a portable holosim display revealed a staticky map of the ancient vessel’s surroundings, a dart-shaped glow threading its way through a maze of ridges at the bottom of the great ocean.

Most of the decoy ships cruised with simple autopilots, but a few moved more flexibly, crewed by volunteer teams, making adjustments to the swarm pattern planned by the Niss Machine. In this effort, Rety’s intelligence and agile hands had been helpful to Chuchki, making up for her lack of education. She felt justified in having earned her starship.

“hi captain!”

Her sole companion pranced on the instrument console, each footstep barely missing a glowing lever or switch. The little urrish male greeted her with a shrill ululation.

“we did it! like pirates of the plains! like in legends of the battle aunties! now we free no more noor beasts no more yuckity ship full of water-loving fish!”

Rety laughed. Whenever loneliness beckoned, there was always yee to cheer her up.

“so where to now, captain?” the diminutive creature asked. “shake free of Jijo? head someplace good and sunny, for a change?”

She nodded.

“That’s the idea. Only we gotta be patient a little while longer.”

First Streaker must collect Chuchki and other scattered workers. Rety had an impression that the Earthlings were waiting for events to happen onshore. But after hearing the Jophur ultimatum she knew — Gillian Baskin would soon be forced to act.

I helped them, she rationalized. An’ I won’t interfere with their plan … much.

But in the long run, none o’ that’ll matter. Everybody knows they’re gonna get roasted when they try to get away Or else the Jophur’ll catch ’em, like a ligger snatchin’ up a gallaiter faun.

Nobody can blame me for tryin’ to find my own way out of a trap like that.

And if someone did cast blame her way?

Rety laughed at the thought.

In that case, they can try to outfart a traeki, for all I care. This ship is mine, and there’s nothin’ anybody can do about it!

She was getting away from Jijo — one way or another.

Dwer

THE NIGHT SKY CRACKLED.

At random intervals his hair abruptly stood on end.

Static electricity snapped the balloon’s canopy with a basso boom, while pale blue glows moved up and down the rope cables, dancing like frantic imps. Once, a flickering ball of greenish white followed him across the sky for more than a midura, mimicking each rise, fall, or sway in the wind. He could not tell if it was an arrowflight away, or several leagues. The specter only vanished when a rain squall passed between, but Dwer kept checking nervously, in case it returned.

Greater versions of the same power flashed in all directions — though from a safe distance so far. He made a habit of counting kiduras between each brilliant discharge and the arrival of its rumbling report. When the interval grew short, thunder would shake the balloon like a child’s rag doll.

Uriel had set controls to keep Dwer above most of the gale … at least according to the crude weather calculations of her spinning-disk computer. The worst fury took place below, in a dense cloud bank stretching from horizon to horizon.

Still, that only meant there were moonlit gaps for his frail craft to drift through. Surrounding him towered the mighty heat engines of the storm — churning thunderheads whose lofty peaks scraped the boundaries of space.

Though insanely dangerous, the spectacle exceeded anything in Dwer’s experience — and perhaps even that of any star god in the Five Galaxies. He was tempted to climb the rigging for a better view of nature’s majesty. To let the tempest sweep his hair. To shout back when it bellowed.

But he wasn’t free. There were duties unfulfilled.

So Dwer did as he’d been told, remaining huddled in a wire cage the smiths had built for him, lashed to a wicker basket that dangled like an afterthought below a huge gasbag. The metal enclosure would supposedly protect him from a minor lightning strike.

And what if a bolt tears the bag instead? Or ignites the fuel cylinder? Or…

Low clicks warned Dwer to cover his face just half a dura before the altitude sensor tripped, sending jets of flame roaring upward, refilling the balloon and maintaining a safe distance from the ground.

Of course,“safe” was a matter of comparison.

“In theory, this vehicle should convey you well past the Rinner Range, and then veyond the Foison Flain,” the smith had explained. “After that, there should ve an end to the lightning danger. You can leave the Faraday cage and guide the craft as we taught you.”

As they taught me in half a rushed midura, Dwer amended, while running around preparing one last balloon to launch.

All the others were far ahead of him — a flotilla of flimsy craft, dispersing rapidly as they caught varied airstreams, but all sharing the same general heading. East, driven by near-hurricane winds. Twice he had witnessed flares in that direction, flames that could not have come from lightning alone. Sudden outbursts of ocher fire, they testified to some balloon exploding in the distance.

Fortunately, those others had no crews, just instruments recovered from dross ships. Dwer was the only Jijoan loony enough to go flying on a night like this.

They needed an expendable volunteer. Someone to observe and report if the trick is successful.

Not that he resented Uriel and Gillian. Far from it. Dwer was suited for the job. It was necessary. And the voyage would take him roughly where he wanted to go.

Where I’m needed.

To the Gray Hills.

What might have happened to Lena and Jenin in the time he’d spent as captive of a mad robot, battling Jophur in a swamp and then trapped with forlorn Terrans at the bottom of the sea? By now, the women would have united the urrish and human sooner tribes, and possibly led them a long way from the geyser pools where Danel Ozawa died. It might take months to track them down, but that hardly mattered. Dwer had his bow and supplies. His skills were up to the task.

All I need is to land in roughly the right area, say within a hundred leagues … and not break my neck in the process. I can hunt and forage. Save my traeki paste for later, in case the search lasts through winter.

Dwer tried going over the plan, dwelling on problems he could grasp — the intricacies of exploring and survival in wild terrain. But his mind kept coming back to this wild ride through an angry sky … or else the sad partings that preceded it.

For a time, he and Sara had tried using words, talking about their separate adventures, sharing news of friends living and dead. She told what little she knew about Nelo and their destroyed hometown. He described how Lark had saved his life in a snowstorm, so long ago that it seemed another age.

Hanging over the reunion was sure knowledge that it must end. Each of them had places to go. Missions with slim chance of success, but compelled by duty and curiosity. Dwer had lived his entire adult life that way, but it took some effort to grasp that his sister had chosen the same path, only on a vaster scale.

He still might have tried talking Sara out of her intention — perhaps suicidal — to join the Earthlings’ desperate breakout attempt. But there was something new in the way she carried herself — a lean readiness that took him back to when they were children, following Lark on fossil hunts, and Sara was the toughest of them all. Her mind had always plunged beyond his comprehension. Perhaps it was time for her to stride the same galaxies that filled her thoughts.