David Brin - Infinity's Shore

My friends tried to help me, but I begged them off.

“Come on, guys. It’s hard enough managing these crutches without you all crowding around. Go on. I’ll be right behind.”

At the intersection leading back to my old cell, I moved to turn left but our six-legged guides motioned right instead. “I need my stuff,” I told the nearest phuvnthu-thing. But it gestured no with a wave of machinelike claws, barring my path.

Damn, I thought, recalling the notebook and backpack I had left behind. I figured I’d be coming back.

A twisty, confused journey took us through all sorts of hatches and down long corridors of metal plating. Ur-ronn commented that some of the weld joins looked “hasty.” I admired the way she held on to her professionalism when faced with awesome technology.

I can’t say exactly when we left the sea dragon and entered the larger base/camp/city/hive, but there came a time when the big phuvnthus seemed more relaxed in their clanking movements. I even caught a snatch or two of that queer, ratcheting sound that I once took for speech. But there wasn’t time for listening closely. Just moving forward meant battling waves of pain, taking one step at a time.

At last we spilled into a corridor that had a feel of permanence, with pale, off-white walls and soft lighting that seemed to pour from the whole ceiling. The peculiar passage curved gently upward in both directions, till it climbed out of sight a quarter of an arrowflight to either side. It seemed we were in a huge circle, though what use such a strange hallway might serve, I could not then imagine.

Even more surprising was the reception committee! At once we faced a pair of creatures who could not look more different from the phuvnthus — except for the quality of having six limbs. They stood upright on their hind pair, dressed in tunics of silvery cloth, spreading four scaly webbed hands in a gesture I hopefully took to mean welcome. They were small, rising just above my upper knees, or the level of Pincer’s red chitin shell. A frothy crown of moist, curly fibers topped their bulb-eyed heads. Squeaking rapidly, they motioned for us to follow, while the big phuvnthus retreated with evident eagerness.

We four Wuphonites consulted with a shared glance … then a rocking, qheuen-style shrug. We turned to troop silently behind our new guides. I could sense Huphu purring on my shoulder, staring at the little beings, and I vowed to drop my crutches and grab the noor, if she tried to jump one of our hosts. I doubted they were as helpless as they looked.

All the doorways lining the hall were closed. Next to each portal, something like a paper strip was pasted to the wall, always at the same height. One of Huck’s eyestalks gestured toward the makeshift coverings, then winked at me in Morse semaphore.

SECRETS UNDERNEATH!

I grokked her meaning. So our hosts did not want us to read their door signs. That implied they used one of the alphabets known to the Six. I felt the same curiosity that emanated from Huck. At the same time, though, I readied myself to stop her, if she made a move to tear off one of the coverings. There are times for impulsiveness. This was not one of them.

A door hatch slid open with a soft hiss and our little guides motioned for us to enter.

Curtains divided a large chamber into parallel cubicles. I also glimpsed a dizzying array of shiny machines, but did not note much about them, because of what then appeared, right in front of us.

We all stopped in our tracks, facing a quartet of familiar-looking entities — an urs, a hoon, a red qheuen, and a young g’Kek!

Images of ourselves, I realized, though clearly not reflections in a mirror. For one thing, we could see right through the likenesses. And as we stared, each figure made beckoning motions toward a different curtained nook.

After the initial shock, I noticed the images weren’t perfect portraits. The urrish version had a well groomed pelt, and my hoonish counterpart stood erect, without a back brace. Was the difference meaningful? The hoonish caricature smiled at me in the old-fashioned way, with a fluttering throat sac, but no added grimace of mouth and lips that Jijoan hoons had added since humans came.

“Yeah right,” Huck muttered, staring at the ersatz g’Kek in front of her, whose wheels and spokes gleamed, tight and polished. “I am so sure these are sooners, Alvin.”

I winced. So my earlier guess was wrong. There was no point rubbing it in.

“Hr-rm … shut up, Huck.”

“These are holographic frojections,” Ur-ronn lisped in Anglic, the sole Jijoan language suitable for such a diagnosis. The words came from human books, inherited since the Great Printing.

“Whatever you s-say,” Pincer added, as each ghost backed away toward a different curtained cell. “What d-d-do we do now?”

Huck muttered. “What choice do we have? Each of us follows our own guy, and see ya on the other side.”

With an uneven bumping of her rims, she rolled after the gleaming g’Kek image. A curtain slid shut after her.

Ur-ronn blew a sigh. “Good water, you two.”

“Fire and ash,” Pincer and I replied politely, watching her saunter behind the urrish cartoon figure.

The fake noon waved happily for me to enter the cubby on the far right.

“Name, rank, and serial number only,” I told Pincer.

His worried—“Huh?”—aspirated from three leg vents in syncopation. When I glanced back, his cupola eye still whirled indecisively, staring in all directions except at the translucent qheuen in front of him.

A hanging divider closed between us.

My silent guide in hoonish form led me to a white obelisk, an upright slab, occupying the center of the small room. He pantomimed stepping right up to it, standing on a small metal plate at its base. When I did so, I found the white surface soft against my face and chest. No sooner were my feet on the plate than the whole slab began to tilt … rotating down and forward to become a table, with my own poor self lying prone on top. Huphu scrambled off my shoulders, muttering guttural complaints, then yowled as a tube lifted up from below and snaked toward my face!

I guess I could have struggled, or tried to flee. But to what point? When colored gas spilled from the tube, the odor reminded me of childhood visits to our Wuphon infirmary. The House of Stinks, we kids called it, though our traeki pharmacist was kindly, and always secreted a lump of candy from an upper ring, if we were good.…

As awareness wavered, I recall hoping there would be a tasty sourball waiting for me this time, as well.

“G’night,” I muttered, while Huphu chittered and wailed. Then things kind of went black for a while.

Asx

STROKE THE FRESH-FLOWING WAX, MY RINGS, streaming hot with news from real time.

Here, trace this ululation, a blaring cry of dismay, echoing round frosted peaks, setting stands of mighty greatboo a-quivering.

Just moments earlier, the Rothen ship hovered majestically above its ruined station, scanning the Glade for signs of its lost spore buds, the missing members of its crew.

Angry the throbbing vessel seemed, broody and threatening, ready to avenge.

Yet we/i remained in place, did we not, my rings? Duty rooted this traeki stack in place, delegated by the Council of Sages to parley with these Rothen lords.

Others also lingered, milling across the trampled festival grounds. Curious onlookers, or those who for personal reasons wished to offer invaders loyalty.

So we/i were not alone to witness what came next. There were several hundred present, staring in awe as the Rothen starship probed and palped the valley with rays, sifting the melted, sooty girders of its ravaged outpost.

Then came that abrupt, awful sound. A cry that still fizzes, uncongealed, down our fatty core. An alarm of anguished dread, coming from the ship itself!