David Brin - Infinity's Shore

HOW could so much knowledge be lost in a single night? Today it seems odd. Why weren’t copies of such valuable texts printed by those first-wave human colonists, before they sent their sneakship tumbling to ocean depths? Why not place duplicates all over the Slope, safeguarding the learning against all peril?

In our ancestors’ defense, recall what tense times those were, before the Great Peace or the coming of the Egg. The five sapient races already present on Jijo (excluding glavers) had reached an edgy balance by the time starship Tabernacle slinked past Izmunuti’s dusty glare to plant Earthlings illicitly, the latest wave of criminal colonists to plague a troubled world. In those days, combat was frequent between urrish clans and haughty qheuen empresses, while hoonish tribes skirmished among themselves in their ongoing ethical struggle over traeki civil rights. The High Sages had little influence beyond reading and interpreting the Speaking Scrolls, the only documents existing at the time.

Into this tense climate dropped the latest invasion of sooner refugees, who found an unused eco-niche awaiting them. But human colonists were not content simply to take up tree farming as another clan of illiterates. Instead, they used the Tabernacle’s engines one last time before sinking her. With those godlike forces they carved Biblos Fortress, then toppled a thousand trees, converting their pulp into freshly printed books.

The act so astonished the Other Five, it nearly cost human settlers their lives. Outraged, the queens of Tarek Town laid siege to the vastly outnumbered Earthlings. Others, equally offended by what seemed heresy against the Scrolls, held back only because the priest sages refused sanctioning holy war. That narrow vote gave human leaders time to bargain, to cajole the different tribes and septs with practical advice from books, bribing them with useful things. Spoke cleats for g’Kek wheels. Better sails for hoonish captains. And, for urrish smiths, the long-sought knack of brewing clear glass.

How things had changed just a few generations later, when the new breed of scholar sages gathered to affirm the Great Peace, scribing their names on fresh paper and sending copies to each hamlet on the Slope. Reading became a common habit, and even writing is no longer viewed as sin.

An orthodox minority still objects to the clatter of printing presses. They piously insist that literacy fosters memory, and thus attachment to the same conceits that got our spacefaring ancestors in trouble. Surely, they claim, we must cultivate detachment and forgetfulness in order to tread the Path of Redemption.

Perhaps they are right. But few these days seem in a hurry to follow glavers down that blessed trail. Not yet. First, we must prepare our souls.

And wisdom, the New Sages declare, can be nurtured from the pages of a book.

from Forging the Peace, a Historical Meditation-Umble,

by Homer Auph-puthtwaoy

Kaa

STRANDED, BY UNYIELDING FATE, ON IFNI’S SHORE.

Stranded, like a beached whale, barred from ever going home.

Five ways stranded—

First, cut off from Earth by hostile aliens bearing a death grudge toward Terrans in general, and the Streaker crew in particular, though Kaa never quite understood why.

Second, banished from Earth’s home galaxy, blown off course, and off-limits, by a caprice of hyperspace — though many on the crew still blamed Kaa, calling it “pilot’s error.” Third, starship Streaker taking refuge on a taboo world, one scheduled to have a respite from sapient minds. An ideal haven, according to some. A trap, said others.

Fourth, when the vessel’s weary engines finally ceased their labors, depositing the Streaker in a realm of ghosts, deep in this planet’s darkest corner, far from air or light.

And now, this, Kaa thought. Abandoned, even by a crew of castaways!

Of course Lieutenant Tsh’t didn’t put it that way, when she asked him to stay behind in a tiny outpost with three other volunteers for company.

“This will be your first important command, Kaa. A chance to show what you’re made of.”

Yeah, he thought. Especially if I’m speared by a hoonish harpoon, dragged onto one of their boats, and slit open.

That almost happened yesterday. He had been tracking one of the native sailing craft, trying to learn its purpose and destination, when one of his young assistants, Mopol, darted ahead and began surfing the wooden vessel’s rolling bow wake … a favorite pastime on Earth, where dolphins frequently hitched free rides from passing ships. Only here it was so dumb, Kaa hadn’t thought to forbid it in advance.

Mopol offered that lawyerly excuse later, when they returned to the shelter. “B-besides, I didn’t do any harm.” “No harm? You let them see you!” Kaa berated. “Don’t you know they started throwing spears into the water, just as I got you out of there?” Mopol’s sleek torso and bottle beak held a rebellious stance. “They never saw a dolphin before. Prob’ly thought we were some local kind of fish.” “And it’s gonna stay that way, do you hear?”

Mopol grunted ambiguous assent, but the episode unnerved Kaa.

A while later, dwelling on his own shortcomings, he worked amid clouds of swirling bottom mud, splicing optical fiber to a cable the submarine Hikahi had laid, on its return trip to Streaker’s hiding place. Kaa’s newly emplaced camera should let him spy more easily on the hoon colony whose sheltered docks and camouflaged houses lay perched along the nearby bay. Already he could report that hoonish efforts at concealment were aimed upward, at shrouding their settlement against the sky, not the sea. That might prove important information, Kaa hoped.

Still, he had never trained to be a spy. He was a pilot, dammit!

Not that he ever used to get much practice during the early days of Streaker’s mission, languishing in the shadow of Chief Pilot Keepiru, who always got the tough, glamorous jobs. When Keepiru vanished on Kithrup, along with the captain and several others, Kaa finally got a chance to practice his skill — for better and worse.

But now Streaker’s going nowhere. A beached ship needs no pilot, so I guess I’m expendable.

Kaa finished splicing and was retracting the work arms of his harness when a flash of silver-gray shot by at high speed, undulating madly. Sonar strafed him as waves of liquid recoil shoved his body. Clickety dolphin laughter filled the shallows.

Admit it, star seeker!

You did not hear or see me,

Sprinting from the gloom!

In fact, Kaa had known the youth was approaching for some time, but he did not want to discourage Zhaki from practicing the arts of stealth.

“Use Anglic,” he commanded tersely.

Small conical teeth gleamed in a beam of slanted sunshine as the young Tursiops swung around to face Kaa. “But it’s much easier to speak Trinary! Sometimes Anglic makes my head hurt.” Few humans, listening to this exchange between two neo-dolphins, would have understood the sounds. Like Trinary, this underwater dialect consisted mostly of clipped groans and ratchetings. But the grammar was close to standard Anglic. And grammar guides the way a person thinks — or so Creideiki used to teach, when that master of Keeneenk arts lived among the Streaker crew, guiding them with his wisdom.

Creideiki has been gone for two years, abandoned with Mr. Orley and others when we fled the battle fleets at Kithrup. Yet every day we miss him — the best our kind produced.

When Creideiki spoke, you could forget for a while that neo-dolphins were crude, unfinished beings, the newest and shakiest sapient race in the Five Galaxies.

Kaa tried answering Zhaki as he imagined the captain would.