David Brin - Infinity's Shore

A brave ploy, but surely the enemy would be prepared for that, and take precautions.

Then what?

It seemed Sara would find out when the time came.

She felt bad about the kids — Huck, Alvin, and the others. But they were adults now, and volunteers.

Anyway, the sages say it’s a good omen for members of all six races to be present when something vital is about to happen.

Sara’s own reasons for coming went beyond that.

Purofsky said one of us had to take the risk — either him or me — and go with Streaker, on the slim chance that she makes it.

One of us should try to find out if it’s true. What we figured out about the Buyur.

All her life’s work, in mathematical physics and linguistics, seemed to agree with Purofsky’s conclusion.

Jijo was no accident.

Oh, if she delved into psychology, she might find other motives underlying her insistence on being the one to go.

To continue taking care of Emerson, perhaps?

But the wounded starman was now with those who loved him. Shipmates he had risked death alongside, many times before. After overcoming initial shame, Emerson had found ways to be useful. He did not need Sara anymore.

No one really needs me.

Face it. You’re going out of curiosity.

Because you are Melina’s child.

Because you want to see what happens next.

Dwer

IT WAS A GOOD THING HE REMEMBERED ABOUT AIR.

There would be none on the other side.

By twisting through the barrier, writhing, and making his body into a hoop, Dwer managed to create a tunnel opening from his prison sphere into the next. A brief hurricane swiftly emptied the atmosphere from his former cell until the pressure equalized. He then pushed through, letting the opening close behind him.

Dwer’s ears popped and his pulse pounded. The trick had severely diluted the available air, taking him from near-sea-level pressure to the equivalent of a mountaintop in just half a dura. Speckles danced before his eyes. His body would not last long at this rate.

There was another reason to hurry. As he departed the sphere containing the balloon remnants, he had seen shadows touch beyond the far side. Jophur robots. Come to inspect their first captive.

His gear had settled against the golden surface of his new cell. Dwer grabbed the makeshift pack and moved toward the only possible place of refuge — the nose of the imprisoned starship.

It looked nothing like the massive Jophur vessel, but resembled a pair of spoons, welded face-to-face, with the bulbous end forward. Fortunately, the enclosure barely cleared the ship, fore and aft. A bank of dim windows nearly touched the golden surface.

And there’s a door!

Dwer gathered strength, flexed his legs, and launched toward the beckoning airlock. He sailed across the gap and barely managed to snag a protruding bracket with the tip of his left hand.

If this takes some kind of secret code, I’m screwed.

Fortunately, the dolphin work crews had a standard procedure for entering and converting Buyur wrecks. He had accompanied them on some trips, lending a hand. Dwer was glad to see the makeshift locking mechanism still in place, set to work in a fashion that even a Jijoan hunter might understand.

To open … turn knob.

Dwer’s luck held. It rotated.

If there’s air inside, the wind will blow out. If there’s none, I’ll be blown in … and die.

He had to brace his feet against the hull and pull in order to get the hatch moving. Vision narrowed to a tunnel and Dwer knew he was just duras away from blacking out.…

A sudden breeze rushed at him, whistling with force from the ship’s interior.

Stale air. Stinky, stale, dank, wonderful air.

Gillian

THE BAD NEWS WAS NOT EXACTLY UNANTICIPATED. Still, she had hoped for better.

As the Jophur ship finished adding another swarm of decoys to its prison chain, the cruiser shifted its attention elsewhere, accelerating to pursue the next chosen group.

Soon the truth became clear.

Streaker’s luck had just run out.

Well, they chose right this time, she thought. It had to happen, sooner or later.

Streaker was square in the enemy’s sights, with seven mictaars of hyperspace yet to cross before reaching safety.

The Sages

THERE ARE OTHERS ON JIJO NOW, PHWHOON-DAU thought, knowing that even eight would not be enough for long. In time, the new dolphin colonists must be invited to join.

I have read in Earth lore about cetaceans and their glorious Whale Dream. What music might we make, when these strange beings add their voices to our chorus?

And after that, who knew? Lorniks, chimps, and zookirs? The Kiqui creatures the dolphins brought from far away? A mélange of vocalizations, then. Perhaps a civilization worthy of the name.

All that lay ahead, a glimmering possibility, defying all likelihood or reason. For now, the council was made of those who had earned their place by surviving on Jijo. Partaking of the world. Raising offspring whose atoms all came from the renewing crust of their mother planet. This trait pervaded the musical harmony of the Eight.

We inhale Jijo, with each and every breath.

So Phwhoondau umbled in the deep, rolling vibrations of his throat sac.

We drink her waters. At death, our loved ones put us into her abyss. There we join the patterned rhythms of the world.

The presence that joined them was at once both familiar and awesome. The council felt it throb in each note of the flute or myrliton. It permeated the clatter of the glaver’s rattle, and the wry empathy glyphs of the tytlal.

For generations, their dreams had been brushed by the Egg. Its soft cadences repaid each pilgrimage, helping to unite the Commons.

But during all those years, the sages had known. It only sleeps. We do not know what will happen when it wakes.

Was the Egg only rousing now because the council finally had its missing parts? Or had the cruel Jophur ray shaken it from slumber?

Phwhoondau liked to think that his old friend Vubben was responsible.

Or else, perhaps, it was simply time.

The echoes steadily increased. Phwhoondau felt them with his feet, reverberating beneath the surface, building to a crescendo. An accretion of pent-up power. Of purpose.

Such energy. What will happen when it is liberated? His sac pulsed with umbles, painful and mightier than he ever produced before.

Phwhoondau envisioned the mountain caldera blowing up with titanic force, spilling lava down the tortured aisles of Festival Glade.

As it turned out, the release came with nothing more physical than a slight trembling of the ground.

And yet they all staggered when it flew forth, racing faster than the speed of thought.

The Slope

TO NELO — STANDING IN THE RUINS OF HIS PAPER mill, exhausted and discouraged after a long homeward slog — it came as a rapid series of aromas.

The sweet-sour odor of pulped cloth, steaming as it poured across the drying screens.

The hot-vital skin smell of his late wife, whenever her attention turned his way after a long day spent pouring herself into their peculiar children.

The smell of Sara’s hair, when she was three years old … addictive as any drug.

Nelo sat down hard on a shattered wall remnant, and though the feelings passed through him for less than a kidura, something shattered within as he broke down and wept.

“My children …” Nelo moaned. “Where are they?” Something told him they were no longer of his world.

To Fallon — staked down and spread-eagled in an underground roul shambler’s lair, waiting for death — the sensation arrived as a wave of images. Memories, yanked back whole.

The mysterious spike trees of the Sunrise Plain, farther east than anyone had traveled in a century.