David Brin - Infinity's Shore

Though he had more experience than other Sixers with Galactic god machines, it was his first time near this interloper whose dramatic coming so rudely shattered Gathering Festival, many weeks ago. So magnificent and terrible it had seemed! Daunting and invincible. Yet now it was helpless. Dead or implacably imprisoned.

Tentatively, Lark identified some features, like the jutting anchors that held a ship against quantum probability fluctuations … whatever that meant. The self-styled techies who worked for Lester Cambel were hesitant about even the basics of starcraft design. As for the High Sage himself, Lester had taken no part in Lark’s briefing, choosing instead to brood in his tent, guilt-ridden over the doom he helped bring on Dooden Mesa.

Despite the crowding sense of danger, Lark discovered a kind of spooky beauty, swimming in this realm where sunlight slanted in long rippling shafts, filled with sparkling motes — a silent, strangely contemplative world.

Besides, even wrapped in skink membranes, Ling’s athletic body was a sight to behold.

They rounded the star cruiser’s rim, where a sharp shadow abruptly cut off the sun. It might be a cloud, or the edge of a mountain. Then he realized—

It’s the Jophur ship.

Though blurred by murky water, the domelike outline sent shivers down his back. Towering mightily at the lake’s edge, it could have swallowed the Rothen vessel whole.

A strange thought struck him.

First the Rothen awed us. Then we saw their “majesty” cut down by real power. What if it happens again? What kind of newcomer might overwhelm the Jophur? A hovering mountain range? One that throws the whole Slope into night?

He pictured successive waves of “ships,” each vaster than before, matching first the moons, then all Jijo, and — why not? — the sun or even mighty Izmunuti!

Imagination is the most amazing thing. It lets a ground-hugging savage fill his mind with fantastic unlikelihoods.

Churning bubbles nearly tore the rewq off his face as Ling sped up, kicking urgently. Lark hurried after … only to arrest himself moments later, staring.

Just ahead, Ling traced the golden barrier with one hand, just meters from a gaping opening. A hatchway, backlit by a radiant interior. Several figures stood in the portal — three humans and a Rothen lord, wearing his appealing symbiotic mask. The quartet surveyed their all-enclosing golden prison with instruments, wearing expressions of concern.

Yet, all four bipeds seemed frozen, embedded in crystal time.

Up close, the yellow cocoon resembled the preservation beads left by that alpine mulc spider, the one whose mad collecting fetish nearly cost Dwer and Rety their lives, months back. But this trap was no well-shaped ovoid. It resembled a partly melted candle, with overlapping golden puddles slumped around its base. The Jophur had been generous in their gift of frozen temporality, pouring enough to coat the ship thoroughly.

Like at Dooden Mesa, Lark thought.

It seemed an ideal way to slay one’s enemies without using destructive fire. Maybe the Jophur can’t risk damaging Jijo’s ecosphere. That would be a major crime before the great Institutes, like gene raiding and illegal settlement.

On the other hand, the untraeki invaders hadn’t been so scrupulous in scything the forest around their ship. So perhaps the golden trap had another purpose. To capture, rather than kill? Perhaps the g’Kek denizens of Dooden Mesa might yet be rescued from their shimmering tomb.

That had been Lark’s initial thought, three days ago. In hurried experiments, more mulc-spider relics were thawed out, using the new traeki solvents. Some of the preserved items had once been alive, birds and bush creepers that long ago fell into the spider’s snare.

All emerged from their cocoons quite dead.

Perhaps the Jophur have better revival methods, Lark thought at the time. Or else they don’t mean to restore their victims, only to preserve them as timeless trophies.

Then, night before last, an idea came to Lark in the form of a dream.

The hivvern lays its eggs beneath deep snow, which melts in the spring, letting each egg sink in slushy mud, which then hardens all around. Yet the ground softens again, when rainy season comes. Then the hivvern larva emerges, swimming free.

When he wakened, the idea was there, entire.

A spaceship has a sealed metal shell, like the hivvern egg. The Rothen ship may be trapped, but its crew were never touched.

Those within may yet live.

And now proof stood before him. The four in the hatchway were clearly aware of the golden barrier surrounding their ship, examining it with tools at hand.

Just one problem — they did not move. Nor was there any sign they knew they were being observed from just a hoon’s length away.

Treading water, Ling scrawled on her wax-covered note board and raised it for Lark to see.

TIME DIFFERENT INSIDE.

He fumbled with his own board, tethered to his waist.

TIME SLOWER?

Her answer was confusing.

PERHAPS.

OR ELSE QUANTIZED.

FRAME-SHIFTED.

His perplexed look conveyed more than written words. Ling wiped the board and scratched again.

DO EXACTLY AS I DO.

He nodded, watching her carefully. Ling swished her arms and legs to turn away from the ship. Imitating her, Lark found himself looking across the poor wounded Glade. All the trees had been shattered by ravening beams, left to submerge under the rising lake. Turbid water made everything hazy, but Lark thought he saw bones mixed among the splinters. Urrish ribs and hoonish spines, jumbled with grinning human skulls. Not the way bodies ought to be drossed. Not respectful of the dead, or Jijo.

Perhaps the Jophur will let us seed a mulc spider in this new lake, he mused. Something ought to be done to clean up the mess.

He was jarred by Ling’s nudge. TURN BACK NOW, her wax board said. Lark copied her maneuver again … and stared in surprise for a second time.

They had moved!

As before, statues stood in the hatchway. Only now their poses were all changed! One human pointed outward wearing an amazed look. Another seemed to peer straight at Lark, as if frozen in midrealization.

They did all this while we were turned away?

Time’s flow within the golden shell was stranger than he could begin to comprehend.

THIS MAY TAKE SOME DOING, Ling Wrote.

Lark met her eyes, noting they held tense, hopeful irony.

He nodded.

You could say that again.

Alvin

I SPENT MOST OF THE RETURN TRIP WITH MY NOSE buried in my journal, reviewing all the things that I’ve seen and heard since Wuphon’s Dream plunged below Terminus Rock. Pincer kindly chewed my pencil to a point for me. Then I lay down and wrote down the section before this one.

What began as a guess grew into reinforced conviction.

Concentration also diverted attention from nervous anticipation and the pain in my slowly healing spine. My friends tried wheedling me, but I lapsed into hoonish stubbornness, refusing to confide in them. After all, the phuvnthus had gone to great lengths to hide their identity.

The spinning voice said it was to protect us. Maybe that was just patronizing glaver dreck. Typical from grown-ups. But what if he told the truth? How can I risk my friends?

When the time comes, I’ll confront the voice alone.

Sara

SHE DRIFTED IN A CLOUD OF MATHEMATICS.

All around her floated arcs and conic sections, glowing, as though made of enduring fire. Meteors streaked past, coruscating along paths smoothly ordained by gravity.

Then more stately shapes joined the frolicking figures and she guessed they might be planets whose routes were elliptical, not parabolic. Each had its own reference frame, around which all other masses seemed to move.