David Brin - Infinity's Shore

She tried to play innocent. “The importance of our cargo is overrated. We’ll hand it over gladly, to those who prove impartial and wise.”

“Speak not so!” the speaker scolded. “Do not add temptation to the poisons you already bring in our midst!”

“Poisons?”

“You carry blessings in your hold … and curses.”

The voice concluded, “We fear what your presence will do to our ancient peace.”

As it turned out, Streaker’s time of sanctuary lasted just a few slim weeks before convulsions began to shake the Fractal System, sending awful sparks crackling along an immense structure built to house quadrillions. Crystal greenhouses, as wide as Earth’s moon, blew apart, exposing sheltered biomass to hard vacuum. Jupiter-sized slivers cracked loose, diffuse as cardboard, though glittering with lighted windows. Like icicles knocked by a violent wind, these tumbled, then collided with other protrusions, exploding into hurricanes of silent dust. Meanwhile, a cacophony of voices swarmed—

The poor wolfling children … we must help the Terrans.…

No! Erase them so we may return to quiet dreaming.…

Objection! Let us instead squeeze them for what they know.…

Yes. Then we’ll share the knowledge with our younger brethren of the Awaiter Alliance.…

No! The Inheritors…

The Abdicators!..

Gillian recalls marveling at the unleashed storm of pettiness.

So much for the vaunted detachment of old age.

But then, when all seemed lost, sympathetic forces briefly intervened.

This icy realm is not the place you seek.

Advice you need, dispassionate and sage. Seek it from those who are older and wiser, still.

Where tides curl tightly, warding off the night.

Hurry, youngsters. Take this chance. Flee while you can.

• • •

Abruptly, an escape path opened for the Earth vessel — a crevice in the vast maze of hydrogen ice, with starspeckled blackness just beyond. Streaker had only moments to charge through … an egress too sudden and brief for Emerson D’Anite, who had already set forth in a brave, desolate sacrifice.

Poor Emerson. Fought over by resentful factions until his scout craft was swallowed by enfolding light.

All of this comes back to Gillian, not in sequence, but whole, timeless, and entire as she recalls that one phrase—

“Articles of Destiny.”

Immersed in a trance state, she can feel those tugging objects. The same ones that caused so much trouble in the Fractal System.

They stroke her limbs — the limbs of Narushkan—not with physical force, but with awful import of their existence.

Abruptly, Narushkan gives way to Abhusha—“the pointer”—and her left hand uncurls toward a massive cube — a portable branch of the great Galactic Library, squatting in a cool mist, two corridors away. With fingers of thought, Gillian traces one of its gemlike facets, engraved with a rayed spiral symbol. Unlike the minimally programmed units that wolfling upstarts could afford, this one was designed to serve a mighty starfaring clan. Had Streaker returned home with this prize alone, her costly voyage might be called worthwhile.

Yet the cube seems least among Streaker’s cargoes.

Abhusha shifts to her right hand, turning palm out, like a flower seeking warmth to counter the Library’s ancient cold.

Toward youth, the antithesis of age.

Gillian hears her little servant, Kippi, move about her private sanctum, straightening up. The Kiqui amphibian, a native of waterlogged Kithrup, uses all six agile limbs impartially while tidying. A cheerful music of syncopated chirps and trills accompanies his labor. Kippi’s surface thoughts prove easy to trace, even with Gillian’s limited psi-talent. Placid curiosity fills the presapient mind. Kippi seems blithely unaware that his young race is embroiled in a great crisis, spanning five galaxies.

## What comes next? — I wonder what?

## What comes?

## What comes next? — I hope it’s something good.

Gillian shares that fervent wish. For the sake of the Kiqui, Streaker must find a corner of space where Galactic traditions still hold. Ideally some strong, benevolent star lineage, able to embrace and protect the juvenile amphibian race while hot winds of fanaticism blow along the starry lanes.

Some race worthy to be their patrons … to help them … as humans never were helped … until the Kiqui can stand on their own.

She had already given up hope of adopting the Kiqui into Terra’s small family of humans, neo-dolphins, and neo-chimps, the initial idea, when Streaker quickly snatched aboard a small breeding population on Kithrup. Ripe presapient species were rare, and this one was a real find. But right now Earthclan could hardly protect itself, let alone take on new responsibilities.

Abhusha shifts again, transmuting into Poposh as one of Gillian’s feet swarms with prickliness, sensing a new presence in the room. Smug irony accompanies the intruder, like an overused fragrance. It is the Niss Machine’s spinning hologram, barging into her exclusive retreat with typical tactlessness.

Tom had thought it a good idea to bring along the Tymbrimi device, when this ill-fated expedition set forth from Earth. For Tom’s sake — because she misses him so — Gillian quashes her natural irritation with the smooth-voiced artificial being.

“The submarine, with our raiding party aboard, is now just hours from returning with the prisoners,” the Niss intones. “Shall we go over plans for interrogation, Dr. Baskin? Or will you leave that chore to a gaggle of alien children?”

The insolent machine seems piqued, ever since Gillian transferred to Alvin and Huck the job of interpreting. But things are going well so far. Anyway, Gillian already knows what questions to ask the human and Jophur captives.

Moreover, she has her own way to prepare. As old Jake used to say, “How can one foresee, without first remembering?”

She needs time alone, without the Niss, or Hannes Suessi, or a hundred nervous dolphins nagging at her as if she were their mother. Sometimes the pressure feels heavier than the dark abyss surrounding Streaker’s sheltering mountain of dead starships.

To answer verbally would yank her out of the trance, so Gillian instead calls up Kopou, an empathy glyph. Nothing fancy — she lacks the inbuilt talent of a Tymbrimi — just a crude suggestion that the Niss go find a corner of cybernetic space and spend the next hour in simulated self-replication, till she calls for it.

The entity sputters and objects. There are more words. But she lets them wash by like foam on a beach. Meanwhile Gillian continues the exercise, shifting to another compass point. One that seems quiet as death.

Abhusha resumes, now reaching toward a cadaver, standing in a far corner of her office like a pharaoh’s mummy, surrounded by preserving fields that still cling after three years and a million parsecs, keeping it as it was. As it had been ever since Tom wrested the ancient corpse from a huge derelict ship, adrift in the Shallow Cluster.

Tom always had a knack for acquiring expensive souvenirs. But this one took the cake.

Herbie.

An ironic name for a Progenitor … if that truly was its nature … perhaps two billion years old, and the cause of Streaker’s troubles.

Chief cause of war and turmoil across a dozen spiral arms.

We could have gotten rid of him on Oakka World, she knew. Handing Herbie over to the Library Institute was officially the right thing to do. The safe thing to do.

But sector-branch officials had been corrupted. Many of the librarians had cast off their oaths and fell to fighting among themselves — race by race, clan by clan — each seeking Streaker’s treasure for its own kind.

Fleeing once again became a duty.