David Brin - Infinity's Shore

Lark hated being a sage. He loathed the way he was expected to think — contemplating trade-offs that left you damned, either way you turned.

Cambel sighed. “Might as well make the attempt. I doubt the artifact will even turn on.”

At a rough log table, Cambel’s human and urrish aides compared several gleaming objects with ancient illustrations. Rann stared in amazement at the articles, which had been carried here from the shore of a far-off caustic lake.

“But I thought you discarded all your digital—”

“We did. Our ancestors did. These items are leftovers. Relics of the Buyur.”

“Impossible. The Buyur withdrew half a million years ago!”

Lark told an abbreviated version of the story — about a crazy mulc spider with a collecting fetish. A creature fashioned for destruction, who spent millennia sealing treasures in cocoons of congealed time.

Laboring day and night, traeki alchemists had found a formula to dissolve the golden preservation shells, spilling the contents back into the real world. Lucky for us these experts happened to be in the area, Lark thought. The tiredlooking traekis stood just outside, venting yellow vapor from chem-synth rings.

Rann stroked one reclaimed object, a black trapezoid, evidently a larger cousin to his portable data plaque.

“The power crystals look negentropic and undamaged. Do you know if it still works?”

Lark shrugged. “You’re familiar with the type?”

“Galactic technology is fairly standard, though humans didn’t exist, as such, when this thing was made. It is a higher-level model than I’ve used, but …” The sky human sat down before the ancient artifact, pressing one of its jutting bulges.

The device abruptly burst forth streams of light that reached nearly to the canopy. The High Sage and his team scrambled back. Urrish smiths snorted, coiling their long necks while human techs made furtive gestures to ward off evil.

Even among Cambel’s personal acolytes — his bookweaned “experts”—our sophistication is thin enough to scratch with a fingernail.

“The Buyur mostly spoke Galactic Three,” Rann said. “But GalTwo is close to universal, so we’ll try it first.”

He switched to that syncopated code, uttering clicks, pops, and groans so rapidly that Lark was soon lost, unable to follow the arcane dialect of computer commands. The star lord’s hands also moved, darting among floating images. Ling joined the effort, reaching in to seize ersatz objects that had no meaning to Lark, tossing away any she deemed irrelevant, giving Rann working room. Soon the area was clear but for a set of floating dodecahedrons, with rippling symbols coursing each twelve-sided form.

“The Buyur were good programmers,” Rann commented, lapsing into GalSix. “Though their greatest passion went to biological inventions, they were not slackers in the digital arts.”

Lark glanced at Lester, who had gone to the far end of the table to lay a pyramidal stack of sensor stones, like a hill of gleaming opals. Tapping one foot nervously, the sage kept wary vigil, alert for any spark of warning fire.

Turning farther, Lark found the mountain cleft deserted. The militia company had departed.

No one with sense would remain while this is going on.

Rann muttered a curse.

“I had hoped the machine would recognize idiosyncrasies in the encryption, if it is a standard commercial cypher used widely in the Five Galaxies. Or there may be quirks specific to some race or alliance.

“Alas, the computer says it does not recognize the cryptographic approach used in these memory slabs. It calls the coding technique … innovative.”

Lark knew the term was considered mildly insulting among the great old star clans.

“Could it be a pattern developed since the Buyur left Jijo?”

Rann nodded. “Half an eon is a while, even by Galactic standards.”

Ling spoke, eagerly. “Perhaps it’s Terran.”

The big man stared at her, then nodded, switching to Anglic.

“That might explain the vague familiarity. But why would any Rothen use an Earther code? You know what they think of wolfling technology. Especially anything produced by those unbelieving Terragens—”

“Rann,” Ling cut in, her voice grown hushed. “These slabs may not have belonged to Ro-kenn or Ro-pol.”

“Who then? You deny ever seeing them before. Neither have I. That leaves …”

He blinked, then pounded a heavy fist on the wooden slats. “We must crack this thing! Ling, let us commence unleashing the unit’s entire power on finding the key.”

Lark stepped forward. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

“You seek disease cures for your fellow savages? Well, the Jophur ship squats on the ruins of our station, and our ship is held captive. This may be your only chance.”

Clearly, Rann had another reason for his sudden zeal. Still, everyone apparently wanted the same thing — for now.

Lester looked unhappy, but he gave permission with a nod, returning to his vigil over the sensor stones.

We’re doing it for you, Uthen, Lark thought.

Moments later, he had to retreat several more steps as space above the prehistoric computer grew crowded. In-numerable glyphs and signs collided like snowflakes in an arctic blizzard. The Buyur machine was applying prodigious force of digital intellect to solving a complex puzzle.

As Rann worked — hands darting in and out of the pirouetting flurry — he wore an expression of simmering rage. The kind of resentful anger that could only come from one source.

Betrayal.

A midura passed before the relic computer announced preliminary results. By then Lester Cambel was worn out. Perspiration stained his tunic and he wheezed each breath. But Lester would let no one else take over watching the sensor stones.

“It takes long training to sense the warning glows,” he explained. “Right now, if I relax my eyes in just the right way, I can barely make out a soft glow in a gap between two of the bottommost stones.”

Long training? Lark wondered as he peered into the fragile pyramid, quickly making out a faint iridescence, resembling the muted flame that licked the rim of a mulching pan when a dead traeki was boiled, rendering the fatting rings for return to Jijo’s cycle.

Cambel went on describing, as if Lark did not already see.

“Someday, if there’s time, we’ll teach you to perceive the passive resonance, Lark. In this case it is evoked by the Jophur battleship. Its great motors are now idling, forty leagues from here. Unfortunately, even that creates enough background noise to mask any new disturbance.”

“Such as?”

“Such as another set of gravitic repulsors … moving this way.”

Lark nodded grimly. Like a rich urrish trader with two husbands in her brood pouches, big starships carried smaller ships — scrappy and swift — to launch on deadly errands. That was the chief risk worrying Lester.

Lark considered going back to watch the two Daniks work, invoking software demons in quest of a mathematical key. But what good would he do staring at the unfathomable? Instead, he bent close to the stones, knowing each flicker to be an echo of titanic forces, like those that drove the sun.

For a time he sensed no more than that soft bluish flame. But then Lark began noticing another rhythm, matching the mute shimmer, beat by beat. The source throbbed near his rib cage, above his pounding heart.

He slid a hand into his tunic and grabbed his amulet — a fragment of the Holy Egg that hung from a leather thong. It was warm. The pulselike cadence seemed to build with each passing dura, causing his arm to vibrate painfully.

What could the Egg have in common with the engines of a Galactic cruiser? Except that both seem bent on troubling me till I die?