David Brin - Infinity's Shore

“YOUR CONTENTIOUS REASONINGS ARE BASED ON INVALID ASSUMPTIONS.”

They stand before us/Me, frozen silent by our rebuke. A silence more appropriate to half animals than all that useless jabber. Finally, the qheuen sage, Knife-Bright Insight, bows her blue-green carapace and inquires:

“Might we ask what assumptions you refer to?”

Our second cognition ring performs a writhing twitch that I must overcome with savage pain jolts, preventing the rebellious ring’s color ceils from flashing visibly. Be thou restrained, I command, enforcing authority over our component selves. Do not try to signal your erstwhile comrades. The effort will accomplish nothing.

The minirebellion robs Me of resources to maintain a pontifical voice. So when I next speak aloud, it is in more normal tones. Yet the message is no less severe.

“Your faulty assumptions are threefold,” I answer the thoughtful blue qheuen.

“You assume that law still reigns in the Five Galaxies.

“You assume that we should feel restrained by procedures and precedents from the last ten million years.

“But above all, your most defective assumption is that we should care.”

Dwer

IT WAS NOT ENOUGH SIMPLY TO COAX THE MULC beast. Dwer had to creep close and supervise, for the spider had no clear concept of haste.

Dwer could sense its concentration, shifting fluids and gathering forces from a periphery that stretched league after league, along the Rift coast. The sheer size of the thing was mind-boggling, far greater than the mad little alpine spider that nearly consumed Dwer and Rety. This titan was in the final stages of demolishing a vast city, the culmination of its purpose, and therefore its life. Millennia ago, it might have ignored Dwer, as a busy workman disregards the corner scratchings of a mouse. Now boredom made it responsive to any new voice, offering relief from monumental ennui.

Still, Dwer wondered.

Why was I able to communicate with One-of-a-Kind? And now this spider, as well? We are so different — creatures meant for opposite sides of a planet’s cycle.

His sensitivity, if anything, had increased … perhaps from letting the Danik robot conduct force fields down his spine. But the original knack must be related to what made him an exceptional hunter.

Empathy. An intuitive sense for the needs and desires of living things.

The Sacred Scrolls spoke darkly of such powers. Psitalents. They were not recommended for the likes of the Six, who must cringe away from the great theater of space. So Dwer never mentioned it, not to Sara and Lark, or even Fallon, though he figured the old chief scout must have suspected.

Have I done this before? He mused on how he coaxed the spider into action. I always thought my empathy was passive. That I listened to animals, and hunted accordingly.

But have I been subtly influencing them, all along? When I shoot an arrow, is it my legendary aim that makes it always strike home? Or do I also nudge the flight of the bush quail so it dodges into the way of the shaft? Do I make the taniger swerve left, just as my stone is about to strike?

It made him feel guilty. Unsporting.

Well? What about right now? You ’re famished. Why not put out a call for nearby fish and fowl to gather round your knees for plucking?

Somehow, Dwer knew it did not work that way.

He shook his head, clearing it for matters close at hand. Just ahead, rounded silhouettes took uneven bites out of the arching star field. Two sky boats, unmoving, yet mysterious and deadly as he drew near. He swished a finger through the water and tasted, wincing at some nasty stuff leaking into the fen from one or both fallen cruisers.

Now Dwer’s sensitive ears picked up noise coming from the larger vessel. Clankings and hammerings. No doubt the crew was working around the clock to make repairs. Despite Rety’s assurances, he had no faith that the new day would see a Rothen starship looming overhead to claim both its lost comrades and long-sought prey. The opposite seemed rather more likely.

Either way, he had a job to do.

Till I hear otherwise from the sages, I’ve got to keep acting on Danel Ozawa’s orders.

He said we must defend Jijo.

Star gods don’t belong here, any more than sooners do. Less, in fact.

The cry of a mud wren made Dwer slide his torso lower in the water.

Rety’s mimicked call came from a lookout point on a Buyur ruin near the dunes. He scanned above the reeds, and caught sight of a glimmering shape — a patrol robot sent out by the stranded untraekis, returning from its latest search spiral.

The mulc spider read his concern and expressed curiosity.

More dross?

Maintaining aloof reserve, Dwer suggested the creature concentrate on its present task, while he worried about flying things.

Your memories assert one of these hovering mechanisms slew my brother of the highlands. Mad he may have been, but his job was left undone by that untimely end. Now who will finish it?

A fair enough question. This time, Dwer formed words.

If we survive this time of crisis, the sages will have a mulc bud planted in the old one’s lake. It’s our way. By helping get rid of Buyur remains, each generation of the Six leaves Jijo a little cleaner, making up for the small harm we do. The scrolls say it may ease our penance, when judges finally come.

But don’t worry about this robot now. You have a goal to focus on. Over there, in that hull of the larger ship, there is a rip, an opening…

Dwer felt hairs on his neck prickle. He crouched low while the unmistakable tingle of gravitic fields swept close. Clearly this was a more powerful robot than the unit he nearly defeated back at the sooner village. That one still cowered in a hole under the sand, while he and Rety took on its enemies.

He hunched like an animal and even tried thinking like one as the humming commotion passed, setting the tense surface of the water trembling like a qheuen drum. Dwer closed his eyes, but an onslaught of images assailed him. Sparks flew from an urrish forge. Stinging spray jetted over a drowned village. Starlight glinted off a strange fish whose noorlike mouth opened in a wry grin.…

The creepy force receded. He cracked his eyelids to watch the slab-sided drone move east down a line of phosphorescent surf, then vanish among the dunes.

More vines now clustered and writhed around the base of the larger sky boat, bunching to send shoots snaking higher. This whole crazy idea counted on one assumption — that the ship’s defenses, already badly damaged, would be on guard against “unnatural” things, like metals or energy sources. Under normal conditions, mere plants or beasts would pose no threat to a thick-hulled vessel.

In here?

The spider’s query accompanied mental images of a jagged recess, slashed in the side of the untraeki vessel … the result of Kunn’s riposte, even as his air boat plunged in flames. The visual impression reaching Dwer was tenuous as a daydream, lacking all but the most vague visual details. Instead, he felt a powerful scent of substance. The spider would not know or care how Galactic machines worked, only what they were made of — and which concocted juices would most swiftly delete this insult to Jijo’s fallow peace.

Yes, in there, Dwer projected. And all over the outside, as well

Except the transparent mewing port, he added. No sense warning the creatures by covering their windows with slithering vines. Let them find out in the morning. By then, with Ifni’s luck, it would be too late.

Remember—he began. But the spider interrupted.

I know. I shall use my strongest cords.

Mulc monofiber was the toughest substance known to the Six. With his own eyes, Dwer had seen one rare loop of reclaimed filament pull gondolas all the way to the heights of Mount Guenn. Still, a crew of star gods would have tools to cut even that staunch material. Unless they were distracted.