David Brin - Infinity's Shore

Time passed. By moonlight the marsh seemed alive with movement — ripples and jerky slitherings — as more vines converged on a growing mass surrounding the ship. Snakelike cables squirmed by Dwer, yet he felt none of the heartsick dread that used to come from contact with One-of-a-Kind. Intent is everything. Somehow, he knew this huge entity meant him no harm.

At uneven intervals, Rety used clever calls to warn him of the guard robot’s return. Dwer worried that it might find the cowardly Danik machine, hiding under the sand. If so, the alerted Jophur might emerge, filling the bog with blazing artificial light.

Dwer moved slowly around the vessel; taking its measure. But as he counted footsteps, his thoughts drifted to the Gray Hills, where Lena Strong and Jenin Worley must be busy right now, uniting Rety’s old band with surviving urrish sooners, forging a united tribe.

Not an easy task, but those two can do it, if anyone can.

Still, he felt sad for them. They must be lonely, with Danel Ozawa gone. And me, carried off in the claws of a Rothen machine. They must think I’m dead, too.

Jenin and Lena still had Ozawa’s “legacy” of books and tools, and an urrish sage to help them. They might make it, if they were left alone. That was Dwer’s job — to make sure no one came across the sky to bother them.

He knew this scheme of his was farfetched. Lark would surely have thought of something better, if he were here.

But I’m all there is. Dwer the Wild Boy. Tough luck for Jijo.

The spider’s voice caught him as he was checking the other side of the grounded cruiser, where a long ramp led to a closed hatch.

In here, as well?

His mind filled with another image of the vessel’s damaged recess. Moonlight shone through a jagged rent in the hull. The clutter of sooty machinery seemed even more crowded as vine after vine crammed through, already dripping caustic nectars. But Dwer felt his attention drawn deeper, to the opposite wall.

Dim light shone through a crack on that side. Not pale illumination, but sharp, blue, and synthetic, coming from some room beyond.

The ship probably isn’t even airtight anymore.

Too bad this didn’t happen high in the mountains. Traeki hated cold-weather. A glacier wind would be just the thing to send whistling through here!

No, he answered the spider. Don’t go into the lighted space. Not yet.

The voice returned, pensively serious.

This light … it could interfere with my work?

Dwer assented. Yeah. The light would interfere, all right.

Then he thought no more of it, for at that moment a trace of movement caught his eye, to the southeast. A dark figure waded stealthily, skirting around the teeming mound of mulc vines.

Rety! But she’s supposed to be on lookout duty.

This was no time for her impulsiveness. With a larger moon due to rise in less than a midura, the two of them had to start making their getaway before the untraeki woke to what was happening.

With uncanny courtesy, mulc cables slithered out of his path as he hurried after the girl, trying not to splash too noisily. Her apparent objective was the other crashed ship, the once-mighty sky steed Kunn had used to drop bombs into the Rift, chasing mysterious prey. From the dunes, Dwer and Rety had seen the sleek dart overwhelmed and sent plunging to the swamp, its two human passengers taken captive.

That could happen to us, too. More than ever, Dwer regretted leaving behind Rety’s urrish “husband,” her conscience and voice of good sense.

About the interfering light.

I thought you would like to know.

It is being taken care of.

Dwer shrugged aside the spider’s mind touch as he crossed an open area, feeling exposed. Things improved slightly when he detoured to take advantage of two reed-covered hummocks, cutting off direct sight of the untraeki ship. But the robot guardian still patrolled somewhere out there. Lacking a lookout, Dwer had just his own wary senses to warn him if it neared.

While wading though a deeper patch, floundering in water up to his armpits, he felt a warning shiver.

I’m being watched.

Dwer slowly turned, expecting to see the glassy weapons of a faceless killer. But no smooth-sided machine hovered above the reedy mound. Instead, he found eyes regarding him, perched at the knoll’s highest point, a ledge that might have been the wall of a Buyur home. Sharp teeth grinned at Dwer.

Mudfoot.

The noor had done it again.

Someday, I’ll get even for the times you’ve scared me half to death.

Mudfoot had a companion this time, a smaller creature, held between his paws. Some recent prey? It did not struggle, but tiny greenish eyes seemed to glow with cool interest. Mudfoot’s grin invited Dwer to guess what this new friend might be.

Dwer had no time for games. “Enjoy yourselves,” he muttered, and moved on, floundering up a muddy bank. He was just rounding the far corner, seeking Rety in the shadows of the Rothen wreck, when a clamor erupted from behind. Loud bangs and thumps reverberated as Dwer crouched, peering back at the large vessel.

This side appeared undamaged — a glossy chariot of semidivine star gods, ready at an instant to leap into the sky.

But then a rectangular crack seamed its flank above the ramp, releasing clots of smoke, like foul ghosts charging into the night.

The interference is taken care of.

The spider’s mind touch seemed satisfied, even proud.

Dark figures spilled through the roiling soot, then down the ramp, wheezing in agony. Dwer counted three untraeki … then two shambling biped forms, leaning on each other as they fled the noxious billows.

What followed nauseated Dwer — solitary doughnut shapes, slithering traeki rings shorn from the waxy moorings that once united them as sapient beings. One large torus burst from the murk, galloping on pulsating legs without guidance or direction, trailing mucus and silvery fibers as it plunged off the ramp into deep water. Another hapless circle bumped along unevenly, staring in all directions with panicky eye patches until surging black vapors overtook it.

I have not acted thus — with such vigor and decisiveness — since the early days, when still-animate Buyur servant machines sometimes tried to hide and reproduce amid the ruins, after their masters departed. Back then, we were fierce, we mulc agents of deconstruction, before the long centuries of patient erosion set in.

Now do you see how efficient my kind can be, when we feel a need? And when we have a worthy audience? Now will you acknowledge me, O unique young ephemeral?

Dwer turned and fled, kicking spray as he ran.

The Rothen scout boat was a wreck, split in the middle, its wings crumpled. He found an open hatch and clambered inside. The metal deck felt chill and alien beneath his bare feet.

The interior lacked even pale moonlight, so it took time to find Rety in a far corner, taking treasures from a cabinet and stuffing them in a bag. What’s she looking for? Food? After all the star-god poisons that’ve spilled here since the crash?

“There’s no time for that,” he shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“Gimme a dura,” the girl replied. “I know it’s here. Kunn kept it on one o’ these shelfs.”

Dwer craned his head back through the hatch to look outside. The robot guardian had reappeared, hovering over the stricken untraeki vessel, shining stark light on the survivors mired below. As the thick smoke spread out, Dwer whiffed something that felt sweet in the front of his mouth, yet made the back part gag.

Abruptly, a new thing impacted the senses — sound. A series of twanging notes shook the air. Lines stretched across the water as hundreds of cables tautened, surrounding the skycraft like the tent lines of a festival pavilion. Some vines snapped under the strain, whipping across the landscape. One whirling cord sliced through a surviving stack-of-rings, flinging upper toruses into the swamp while the lower half lurched blindly. Other survivors beat a hasty retreat, deeper into the bog.