David Brin - Infinity's Shore

All his setbacks and injuries — and simple common sense — seemed to demand that he flee this deadly place, crawling on his belly, taking Rety with him to whatever hideout they could find in a deadly world.

But one idea had now crystallized, as clear as the nearby waters of the Rift.

I’m not running away, he decided. I don’t really know how to do that.

A hunter — that was what he had been born and trained to be.

Alvin

ALL RIGHT, SO THERE WE WERE, WATCHING FARAWAY events through the phuvnthus’ magical viewer, when the camera eye suddenly went jerky and we found ourselves staring into the grinning jaws of a giant noor! Hugely magnified, it was the vista a fen mouse might see — its last sight on its way to being a midday snack.

Huphu reacted with a sharp hiss. Her claws dug in my shoulder.

The spinning voice, our host, seemed as surprised as we. That whirling hologram-thing twisted like the neck of a confused urs, nodding as if it were consulting someone out of sight. I caught murmurs that might be hurried Anglic and GalSeven.

When the voice next spoke aloud, we heard the words twice, the second time delayed as it came back through the drone’s tiny pickups. The voice used accented GalSix, and talked to the strange noor. Three words, so high-pitched I barely understood.

“Brother,” the voice urged quickly. “Please stop.”

And the strange noor did stop, turning its head to examine the drone from one side to the other.

True, we hoons employ noor beasts as helpers on our boats, and those learn many words and simple commands. But that is on the Slope, where they get sour balls and sweet umbles as pay. How would a noor living east of the Rimmers learn Galactic Six?

The voice tried again, changing pitch and timbre, almost at the limit of my hearing range.

“Brother, will you speak to us, in the name of the Trickster?”

Huck and I shared an amazed glance. What was the voice trying to accomplish?

One of those half memories came back to me, from when our ill-fated Wuphon’s Dream crashed into the open-mawed phuvnthus whale ship. Me and my friends were thrown gasping across a metal deck, and soon after I stared through agonized haze as six-legged monsters tromped about, smashing our homemade instruments underfoot, waving lantern beams, exclaiming in a ratchety language I didn’t understand. The armored beings seemed cruel when they blasted poor little Ziz, the five-stack traeki. Then they appeared crazy upon spying Huphu. I recall them bending metal legs to crouch before my pet, buzzing and popping, as if trying to get her to speak.

And now here was more of the same! Did the voice hope to talk a wild noor into releasing the remote-controlled drone? Huck winked at me with two waving g’Kek eyes, a semaphore of amused contempt. Star gods or no, our hosts seemed prize fools to expect easy cooperation from a noor.

So we were more surprised than anyone — even Pincer and Ur-ronn — when the on-screen figure snapped its jaws, frowning in concentration. Then, through gritted teeth came a raspy squeak … answering in the same informal tongue.

“In th’ nam o’ th’ Trickst’er … who th’ hell’r you?”

My healing spine crackled painfully as I straightened, venting an umble of astonishment. Huck sighed and Pincer’s visor whirled faster than the agitated hologram. Only Huphu seemed oblivious. She licked herself complacently, as if she had not heard a blessed thing.

“What do you jeekee, Ifni-slucking turds think you’re doing!” Huck wailed. All four eyes tossed in agitation, showing she was more angry than afraid. Two hulking, six-legged phuvnthus escorted her, one on each side, carrying her by the rims of her wheels.

The rest of us were more cooperative, though reluctant. Pincer had to tilt his red chitin shell in order to pass through some doorways, following as a pair of little amphibian creatures led us back to the whale ship that brought us to this underwater sanctuary. Ur-ronn trotted behind Pincer, her long neck folded low to the ground, a pose of simmering dejection.

I hobbled on crutches behind Huck, staying out of reach of her pusher leg, which flailed and banged against corridor walls on either side.

“You promised to explain everything!” she cried out.

“You said we’d get to ask questions of the Library!”

Neither the phuvnthus nor the amphibians answered, but I recalled what the spinning voice had said before sending us away.

“We cannot justify any longer keeping four children under conditions that put you all in danger. This location may be bombed again, with greater fury. Also, you now know much too much for your own good.”

“What do we know?” Pincer had asked, in perplexity.

“That noors can talk-alk-alk?”

The hologram assented with a twisting nod. “And other things. We can’t keep you here, or send you home as we originally intended, since that might prove disastrous for ourselves and your families. Hence our decision to convey you to another place. A goal mentioned in your diaries, where you may be content for the necessary time.”

“Wait!” Huck had insisted. “I’ll bet you’re not even in charge. You’re prob’ly just a computer … a thing. I want to talk to someone else! Let us see your boss!”

I swear, the whirling pattern seemed both surprised and amused.

“Such astute young people. We had to revise many assumptions since meeting the four of you. As I am programmed to find incongruity pleasant, let me thank you for the experience, and sincerely wish you well.”

I noticed, the voice never answered Huck’s question.

Typical grown-up, I thought. Whether hoonish parents or alien contraptions … they’re all basically the same.

• • •

Huck settled down once we left the curved hallway and reentered the maze of reclaimed passages leading to the whale ship. The phuvnthus let her down, and she rolled along with the rest of us. My friend continued grumbling remarks about the phuvnthus’ physiology, habits, and ancestry, but I saw through her pose. Huck had that smug set to her eyestalks.

Clearly, she felt she had accomplished something sneaky and smart.

Once aboard the whale ship, we were given another room with a porthole. Apparently the phuvnthus weren’t worried about us memorizing landmarks. That worried me, at first.

Are they going to stash us in another salvaged wreck, under a different dross pile, in some far-off canyon of the Midden? In that case, who’ll come get us if they are destroyed?

The voice mentioned sending us to a “safe” place. Call me odd, but I hadn’t felt safe since stepping off dry land at Terminus Rock. What did the voice mean about it being a site where we already “wanted to go’?

The whale ship slid slowly at first through its tunnel exit, clearly a makeshift passage constructed out of the hulls of ancient starcraft, braced with rods and improvised girders. Ur-ronn said this fit what we already knew — the phuvnthus were recent arrivals on Jijo, possibly refugees, like our ancestors, but with one big difference.

They hope to leave again.

I envied them. Not for the obvious danger they felt, pursued by deadly foes, but for that one option they had, that we did not. To go. To fly off to the stars, even if the way led to certain doom. Was I naive to think freedom made it all worthwhile? To know I’d trade places with them, if I could?

Maybe that thought laid the seeds for my later realization. The moment when everything suddenly made sense. But hold that thought.

Before the whale ship emerged from the tunnel, we caught sight of figures moving in the darkness, where long shadows stretched away from moving points of sharp, starlike light. The patchiness of brilliance and pure darkness made it hard, at first, to make out very much. Then Pincer identified the shadowy shapes.