David Brin - Infinity's Shore

Ice floes of the northwest, great floating mountains with snowy towers, sculpted by the wind.

The shimmering, teasing phantasms of the Spectral Flow … and the oasis of Xi, where the gentle Illias had invited him to live out his days, sharing their secrets and their noble horses.

Fallon did not cry out. He knew Dedinger and his fanatics were listening, just beyond this cave in the dunes. When the beast returned home, they would get no satisfaction from the former chief scout of the Commons.

Still, the flood of memory affected him. Fallon shed a single tear of gratitude.

A life is made whole only in its own eyes. Fallon looked back on his, and called it good.

To Uriel — interrupted in a flurry of new projects — the passing wave barged through as an unwelcome interruption. A waste of valuable time. Especially when all her apprentices laid down their tools and stared into space, uttering low, reverent moans, or sighs, or whinnies.

Uriel knew it for what it was. A blessing. To which she had a simple reply.

So what?

She just had too much on her mind to squander duras on things that were out of her control.

In GalTwo she commented, dryly.

“Glad I am, that you have finally de

cided.

Pleased that you, O long-lived Egg,

have deigned to act, at last.

But forgive me if I do not pause long to exult.

For many of us, life is far too short.”

To Ewasx — moments later and half a light-year away — it came as a brief, agonizing vibration in the wax. Ancient wax, accumulated over many jaduras by the predecessor stack — an old traeki sage.

Involuntary steam welled up the shared core of the stack, bypassing the master ring to waft as a compact cloud from the topmost opening.

Praised be destiny.…

Other ring stacks drew away from Ewasx, unnerved by the singular aroma tics, accented with savage traces of Jijoan soil.

But the senior Jophur Priest-Stack responded automatically to the reverent smoke, bowing and adding: Amen…

Lark

LARK, YOUR HAND!”

He trembled, fighting to control the fit that came suddenly, causing him to snatch the amulet from around his neck. He clutched the stone tight, even when it began to burn his flesh.

Crouched behind a set of strange obelisks — their only shelter in the spacious Jophur control room — Lark dared not cry out from pain. He fought not to thrash about as Ling used both hands to pry at his clenched fist. At last, the stone sliver fell free, tumbling across his lap to the floor, leaving a stench of singed flesh. Even now, the heat kept building. They tried backing away, but the stone’s temperature continued rising until a fierce glow made it hard to see.

“No!” Lark whispered harshly as Ling dived toward the blaze, reaching for the thong. To his surprise, enough was still attached for her to grab a loop and whirl it once, then twice around her head, as if slinging a piece of flaming sun.

She let go, hurling Lark’s talisman in an arc across the busy chamber, toward the center of the room.

Dismayed whistles ensued, accompanied by waves of aromatic stench so overpowering, Lark almost gagged.

“Why the hell did you—” he began, but Ling tugged his arm.

“We need a distraction. Come on, now’s our chance!”

Lark blinked, amazed by the power of habit. He was actually angry at her for throwing away his amulet, and even had to quash an urge to go chasing after the damned stone!

Leave it, and good riddance, he thought, and nodded to Ling.

“Right, let’s go.”

Dwer

INSIDE THE DECOY SHIP, HE COLLAPSED ON THE deck and retched, heaving up what little remained in his stomach.

Midway through that unpleasant experience, another, completely different kind of disorientation abruptly swept over Dwer. For a moment, it seemed as if One-of-a-Kind were inside his head, trying to speak again. The strange, heady sensation might have been almost affable, if his body weren’t racked with nausea.

It ended before he had a chance to appraise what was happening. Anyway, by then he figured he had wasted enough time.

The Jophur won’t take long picking through my little urrish balloon. They’ll start on this bubble next.

In full gravity, it might have been impossible to climb along the full length of the captured ship and reach the aft end. But Dwer took advantage of conditions as he found them, and soon taught himself to fly.

Lark

THEY WERE DASHING DOWN A SMOKE-FILLED HALLway, chased by angry shouts and occasional bolts of shimmering lightning, when an abrupt detonation rocked the floor plates. A wall of air struck the two humans from behind, knocking them off their feet.

We’ve had it, he thought, figuring it must be a weapon, used by the pursuers.

Glancing over his shoulder, however, Lark saw the robots suddenly turn and head the other way! Into a noisome storm of roiling black soot pouring out of the control room.

“Do you think …?” he began.

Ling shook her head. “Jophur are tough. I doubt they were more than knocked around by the explosion.”

Well, he thought. It was only a little piece of rock.

He felt its absence acutely.

Lark helped her up, still wary of returning robots.

“I guess now they know we’re here.”

They resumed running. But a few duras later, Ling burst out in laughing agreement.

“Yeah, I guess now they do.”

Gillian

A PSI-DISTURBANCE WAS DETECTED, EMANATING briefly from the planet. Soon after that, the detection officer announced a change on the tactics screen. “Will you looka that-t!”

Gillian saw it. The Jophur configuration was shifting. The bright red disk seemed to shimmer for a moment. Its “tail” of tiny crimson pinpoints, which had been bunching ever closer to the mother ship, now flexed and began to float away.

“It appears the enemy has jettisoned all the decoys they captured. I can only conclude that they figured out how to scan them quickly and eliminate dross ships from consideration. The decoys will now drift independently toward Izmunuti, while the battleship, free of drag, will catch up with us much faster.”

Gillian’s hopes, which had lifted when the psi-wave came, now sank lower than ever.

“We’d better get ready for our last stand,” she said in a low voice.

From the dolphins there was an utter absence of sonar clicks, as if none of them wanted to reify the moment, to make it real by reading it in sound.

“Wait-t a minute,” Kaa announced. “The Jophur’s decelerating! Coming about to retrieve the jettisoned string!”

“But …” Gillian blinked. “Could they have dropped it by accident?”

The Niss hologram whirled, then accepted the possibility with an abstract nod.

“A hypothesis presents itself. The psi-wave we detected was far too weak to have any effect on a war cruiser … unless it was direct-causative.”

“Explain.”

“It might have served as a trigger that — either by accident or design — precipitated the release of potentialities already in place … say, aboard the Jophur ship.”

“In other words, the wave might have affected them after all. Maybe it set off events that disrupted—”

“Indeed. If this caused the Jophur to lose their control over their string of capture boxes, they would certainly go back and retrieve them, even at the cost of some delay. Because they would suspect the string’s release was the intended purpose of the psi-wave.”

“In other words, they’ll be even more eager to check every box. Hmm.”

Gillian pondered, then asked:

“Has their intercept time been delayed much?”

Kaa thrashed his flukes.

“A fair amount. Not-t enough, however. We’ll make it to the Izmunuti corona, but the enemy will be close enough to follow easily with detectorsss. The plasma won’t make any a-ppreciable difference.”