David Brin - Infinity's Shore

Suessi hoped we might offer clues toward ridding Streaker’s hull of a thick carbon coating. Oral traditions speak of star soot, weighing down each sneakship that reached Jijo after passing close by Izmunuti. But I never heard of a clan trying to remove it. Why would our ancestors bother, since they scuttled their arks soon after arriving?

Anyway, why not just refurbish one of the old hulks lying under the Midden, and use it to make an escape?

Ur-ronn says Suessi and Dr. Baskin considered the idea. But the ships are junk, after all. If the wrecks could fly well, wouldn’t the Buyur have taken them along?

For helping the engineers, Ur-ronn hopes to get some cooperation in return … fulfilling the assignment we were given when our little homemade Wuphon’s Dream first dropped to the sea by Terminus Rock. Uriel had asked us to find a hidden cache — equipment to help the High Sages deal with intruding starships.

Now that we know more about those invaders — a Rothen cruiser, followed later by a Jophur battleship — it seems unlikely that cache would help against forces so godlike and lofty. Anyway, Uriel and our parents must have given us up for dead, ever since the air hose tore away from Wuphon’s Dream.

Still, Ur-ronn’s right. An oath is an oath.

I can see why Dr. Gillian Baskin prefers we don’t contact our folks. But I must persuade her to try.

Pincer-Tip spends most of his time with the Kiqui — those six-limbed amphibians we once thought to be masters of this ship. Instead, they are something even more revered in the Five Galaxies — honest-to-goodness presapient beings. Pincer seems to have an affinity for them, since his red qheuen race is also adapted to live where waves meet a rocky coast. But that may just begin to cover Pincer’s attraction to them.

He talks of building a new bathy to explore the Midden. Not just this mound of dead starcraft, but some of the vast jumbled cities, filled with wonders discarded by the departing Buyur.

Clearly he enjoyed his brief stint as captain of Wuphon’s Dream. Only this time he hopes for a new crew. Agile, obedient, water-loving Kiqui may be ideal, compared to a too-tall hoon, a prolix g’Kek, and a hydrophobic urs.

Maybe Pincer still hopes to find real monsters.

Huck refuses to believe anything important can take place without her. As soon as we returned with Lieutenant Tsh’t, she got involved in the serious business of questioning the Jophur prisoners, taken from the wrecked scoutship.

According to spy and adventure novels, the art of interrogation has a lot to do with language trickery. Fooling the other guy into blurting out something he never intended. That’s just the kind of stuff Huck thinks she’s oh so clever at. So what if Jophur are different from traeki. She expected to break their obstinate silence and get them talking.

So imagine her shock when she rolled into their chamber and the very sight of her sent them into a fit, throwing themselves against the restraining field trying to get at her! The room filled with a stench of pure hatred.

Strangely enough, that proved useful! For the Jophur abruptly lost their sullen muteness and started babbling. Mostly, their GalTwo and GalFive utterance streams were steeped with fuming anger. But soon the sneaky Niss Machine popped in, making insinuations and smooth-voiced hints.…

Huck turned all four eyestalks to stare at the whirling hologram when it suggested the Jophur might be given this tasty g’Kek, if they cooperated! Soon, mixed among the vengeance vows and retribution exclamatives were bits of useful information, such as the name of their ship and the rank of its Captain-Leader. And one further crucial fact. Although their battlecruiser is a giant compared to outmatched Streaker, the Jophur ship came to Jijo alone.

Huck says she knew all along that the Niss was bluffing about handing her over. In fact, she claimed a triumph, as if it had been her plan all along.

I knew better than to comment on the green sweat coating her eye hoods. After the interview, she needed a bath.

• • •

Unlike the others, I can’t banish all doubt.

Have we chosen the right side?

Oh, there seem to be good reasons for throwing our fate in with these fugitives. Humans are members of the Six, and that makes the dolphins sort of cousins, I guess. And it’s true that Streaker seems more like one of our sooner sneakships than those arrogant dreadnoughts, up in the Rimmer Range. Anyway, I was brought up reading Earthling tall tales. My sentiments are drawn to the underdog.

Still, I must keep at least one mental corner detached and uncommitted. My loyalty lies ultimately with family, sept, and clan … and with the High Sages of the Commons of Jijo.

Among the four of us, someone must remember our true priorities. A time may come when they clash with our hosts’.

How have I kept busy all this time?

For one thing, I’ve been learning to skim the ship’s database, extracting historical summaries of what’s taken place since the Great Printing. The distilled tale is a treat to a born info hound like me.

And yet, I still can’t get that big, mist-shrouded cube out of my mind. Sometimes I hanker to sneak into that cold room and ask questions of the Branch Library — a storehouse so great that the Biblos Archive might as well be a primer for a two-year old.

On our way back from the surface I got to know Rety — the irascible, proud human girl whose illegal tribe of savages would have shaken the Commons with a sensational scandal, in normal times. I also talked to Dwer the Hunter, who I recall visiting Wuphon, a few years back. Dwer chatted about his adventures while Physician Makanee treated his wounds, till he fell into exhausted slumber. Soon Rety collapsed, too, with her little “husband” curled alongside, a slim urrish head draped across her chest.

• • •

For the most part, my job has been to umble.

Yeah, that’s right. To umble for a noor.

My own pet, Huphu, doesn’t know what to make of the newcomer — the one called Mudfoot. On first spying him, she hissed … and he hissed back, exactly like a regular noor. It was such a normal reaction that I started to doubt my own memory. Did I really hear and see Mudfoot talk?

My assigned task is to keep him happy till he decides to talk again.

I guess I owe these people — Gillian Baskin and Tsh’t and the dolphins.

They saved us from the abyss … though maybe we wouldn’t have fallen at all, if it hadn’t been for their interference.

They fixed my broken back … though it was injured when they smashed Wuphon’s Dream.

They turned a mere adventure into an epic … but won’t let us go home for fear we’d tell the tale.

All right, dammit. I’ll umble for the silly noor. He preens and acts starved for sound anyway, after months with just humans for company.

Up close I can sense a difference in him. I used to glimpse the same thing now and then, in the eyes of a few strange noor lounging on the Port Wuphon docks.

A sleek arrogance.

A kind of lazy smugness.

The impression that he’s in on a great joke. One you won’t figure out till there’s egg all over your face.

Ewasx

THE HUMAN CAPTIVES SEEM OBDURATE, MY RINGS, refusing to answer questions. Or else they obfuscate with blatant lies.

• • •

QUERY/INTERROGATIVE:

Is there similarity between their behavior and the way you misled Me?

The way you rings have blurred so many of the waxy memories we coinherited from Asx?

The way our union oscillates between grudging cooperation and intermittent passive resistance?

It is enough to provoke unpleasant questions.

DON’T YOU LIKE BEING PART OF OUR MUCH-IMPROVED SHARED WHOLE? OUR AMBITIOUS ONENESS?