David Brin - Infinity's Shore

Biological warfare. Genocide.

“Like in War of the Worlds” It was one of Uthen’s favorite old novels. “Only with the roles reversed.”

Lark’s comparison made the gray qheuen laugh — a raspy, uneven whistle.

“I … always-ways did identify … with those … with those poor Martians-ans-ans.…”

The ribbon eye went foggy, losing the light of consciousness as the cupola sank. Lark checked his friend’s breathing, and found it no worse. Uthen was simply tired.

So strong, he thought, stroking the rigid shell.

We picture grays as toughest of the tough. But chitin won’t slow a laser ray.

Harullen found that out. Death came to Uthen’s cousin during the brief Battle of the Glade, when the massed militia of Six Races barely overcame Ro-kenn’s robot assassins. Only the advantage of surprise had carried that day. The aliens never realized that savages might have books showing how to make rifled firearms — crude, but potent at short range.

But victory came late for Harullen. Too dedicated or obstinate to flee, the heretic leader spent his last frenzied moments whistling ornate pleas for calm and reason, crying in five directions at once, beseeching everyone to lay down their arms and talk things over — until Harullen’s massive, crablike body was cleaved in uneven parts by a killer drone, just before the machine was itself blown from the sky.

There will be mourning among the gray matrons of Tarek Town, Lark thought, resting both arms across Uthen’s broad shell, laying his head on the mottled surface, listening to the strained labor of his friend’s phlegmy breathing, wishing with all his heart that there was more he could do.

Irony was but one of many bitter tastes in his mouth.

I always figured, if the end did come, that qheuens would be the last to go.

Emerson

JIJO’S COUNTRYSIDE FLOWS RAPIDLY PAST THEM now, as if the mysterious horsewomen fear any delay might turn faint hope to dust.

Lacking speech, Emerson has no idea where they are riding in such a hurry, or why.

Sara turns in her saddle now and then, to give an encouraging smile. But rewq-painted colors of misgiving surround her face — a nimbus of emotion that he can read the way he used to find meaning in letters on a data display. Perhaps he should find her qualms unnerving, since he depends on her guidance in this strange, perilous world. Yet Emerson cannot bring himself to worry. There are just too many other things to think about.

Humidity closes in as their caravan veers toward a winding river valley. Dank aromas stir memories of the swamp where he first floundered after the crash, a shattered cripple, drenched in agony. But he does not quail. Emerson welcomes any sensation that might trigger random recall — a sound, a chance smell, or else a sight around the next bend.

Some rediscoveries already float across a gulf of time and loss, as if he has missed them for quite a while. Recovered names connect to faces, and even brief snatches of isolated events.

Tom Orley … so strong and clever. Always a sure eye for trouble. He brought some back to the ship, one day. Trouble enough for Five Galaxies.

Hikahi … sweetest dolphin. Kindest friend. Dashing off to rescue her lover and captain … never to be seen again.

Toshio … a boy’s ready laughter. A young man’s steady heart. Where is he now?

Creideiki … captain. Wise dolphin leader. A cripple like himself.

Briefly, Emerson wonders at the similarity between Creideiki’s injury and his own.… But the thought provokes a searing bolt of pain so fierce that the fleeting thought whirls away and is lost.

Tom … Hikahi … Toshio … He repeats the names, each of them once attached to friends he has not seen for … well, a very long time.

Other memories, more recent, seem harder to reach, more agonizing to access.

Suessi … Tsh’t … Gillian …

He mouths each sound repeatedly, despite the tooth-jarring ride and difficulty of coordinating tongue and lips. He does it to keep in practice — or else how will he ever recover the old handiness with language, the skill to roll out words as he used to, back when he was known as such a clever fellow … before horrid holes appeared in both his head and memory.

Some names come easy, since he learned them after waking on Jijo, delirious in a treetop hut.

— Prity, the little chimp who teaches him by example. Though mute, she shows flair for both math and sardonic hand speech.

— Jomah and Kurt … sounds linked to younger and older versions of the same narrow face. Apprentice and master at a unique art, meant to erase all the dams, towns, and houses that unlawful settlers had built on a proscribed world. Emerson recalls Biblos, an archive of paper books, where Kurt showed his nephew well-placed explosive charges that might bring the cave down, smashing the library to dust. If the order ever came.

— The captive fanatic, Dedinger, rides behind the explosers, deeply tanned with craggy features. Leader of human rebels with beliefs Emerson can’t grasp, except they preach no love of visitors from the sky. While the party hurries on, Dedinger’s gray eyes rove, calculating his next move.

Some names and a few places — these utterances have meaning now. It is progress, but Emerson is no fool. He figures he must have known hundreds of words before he fell, broken, to this world. Now and again he makes out snatches of half meaning from the “wah-wah” gabble as his companions address each other. Snippets that tantalize, without satisfying.

Sometimes the torrent grows tiresome, and he wonders — might people be less inclined to fight if they talked less? If they spent more time watching and listening?

Fortunately, words aren’t his sole project. There is the haunting familiarity of music, and during rest stops he plays math games with Prity and Sara, drawing shapes in the sand. They are his friends and he takes joy from their laughter.

He has one more window to the world.

As often as he can stand it, Emerson slips the rewq over his eyes … a masklike film that transforms the world into splashes of slanted color. In all his prior travels he never encountered such a creature — a species used by all six races to grasp each other’s moods. If left on too long, it gives him headaches. Still he finds fascinating the auras surrounding Sara, Dedinger, and others. Sometimes it seems the colors carry more than just emotion … though he cannot pin it down. Not yet.

One truth Emerson recalls. Advice drawn from the murky well of his past, putting him on guard.

Life can be full of illusions.

LEGENDS TELL OF MANY PRECIOUS TEXTS that were lost one bitter evening, during an unmatched disaster some call the Night of the Ghosts, when a quarter of the Biblos Archive burned. Among the priceless volumes that vanished by that cruel winter’s twilight, one tome reportedly showed pictures of Buyur — the mighty race whose lease on Jijo expired five thousand centuries ago.

Scant diary accounts survive from witnesses to the calamity, but according to some who browsed the Xenoscience Collection before it burned, the Buyur were squat beings, vaguely resembling the bullfrogs shown on page ninety-six of Clear’s Guide to Terrestrial Life-Forms, though with elephantine legs and sharp, forward-looking eyes. They were said to be master shapers of useful organisms, and had a reputation for prodigious wit.

But other sooner races already knew that much about the Buyur, both from oral traditions and the many clever servant organisms that flit about Jijo’s forests, perhaps still looking for departed masters. Beyond these few scraps, we have very little about the race whose mighty civilization thronged this world for more than a million years.