David Brin - Infinity's Shore

Rety wasn’t sure what that meant, but clearly the news was bitter to the dolphins.

Then a new voice intruded from thin air, where a spinning abstract figure suddenly whirled.

“Lieutenant, please recall instructions. Have the prisoner explain how his vessel tracked us to this world.”

Rety recalled seeing a tremor course down the dolphin’s sleek gray flank, perhaps from irritation over the machine’s snide tone. But Tsh’t snapped her jaw in a gesture of submission, and sent her walker unit looming closer to Kunn’s bunk. The human star voyager had nowhere to retreat as her machine pressed close, threateningly. Rety recalled sweat popping out on the Danik warrior’s brow, giving lie to his false air of calm. Having watched him intimidate others, she was pleased to see the tables turned.

Then it happened. Some piece of equipment failed, or else the lieutenant’s walker took a misstep. The right front ankle abruptly snapped, sending the dolphin’s great mass crashing forward.

Only lightning reflexes enabled Kunn to scramble out of the way and avoid being crushed. By the time guards arrived to help Tsh’t untangle herself, the dolphin officer was bruised, angry, and in no humor to continue the interview.

But I’m ready now, Rety thought later, as one of the brig wardens prepared to escort her down a narrow passage with numbers etched on every hatch. I’ve got a plan … and this time Kunn and Jass better do as I say.

“Are you sure you want-t to do this now, miss?” the guard asked. “It’s night cycle and the prisoners are asleep.”

“That’s just how I want ’em. Groggy an’ logy. They may blab more.”

In fact, Rety hardly cared if Kunn named the admirals of all the fleets in the Five Galaxies. Her questions would only serve as cover for communication on another level.

She had been busy in the room the Streakers assigned her — a snug chamber once occupied by a human named Dennie Sudman, whose clothes fit her pretty well. Pictures on the wall portrayed a young woman with dark hair, who was said to have gone missing on some foreign planet years ago, along with several human and dolphin crew mates. On her cluttered desk Dennie had left a clever machine that spoke in a much friendlier manner than the sarcastic Niss. It seemed eager to assist Rety, telling her all about the Terran ship and its surroundings.

I’ve studied the passages leading from this jail to the OutLock. I can name what kind of skiffs and star boats they keep there. And most important, these Earthfish trust me. My passwords should let us out.

All I need is a pilot … and someone strong and mean enough to do any fighting, if we run into trouble.

And luck. Rety had carefully timed things so there was little chance of running into Dwer along the way.

Dwer knows not to trust me … and I can’t be sure that both Jass and Kunn together would be enough to bring him down.

Anyway, all else being equal, she’d rather Dwer didn’t get hurt.

Maybe I’ll even think about him now and then, while I’m livin’ high on some far galaxy.

There wasn’t much else about Jijo that she planned on remembering.

Dwer

I DON’T BELONG HERE,” HE TRIED TO EXPLAIN. “AND neither does Rety. You’ve got to help us get back.”

“Back where?” The woman seemed honestly perplexed. “To that seaside swamp, with toxic engine waste and dead Jophur rings for company? And more Jophur surely on the way?”

Once again, Dwer was having trouble with words. He found it difficult to concentrate in these sealed spaces they called “starship cabins,” where the air felt so dead. Especially this one, a dimly lit chamber filled with strange objects Dwer could not hope to understand.

Lark or Sara would do fine here, but I feel lost. I miss the news that comes carried on the wind.

It didn’t help settle his nerves that the person sitting opposite him was the most beautiful human being Dwer had ever seen, with dark yellow hair and abiding sadness in her pale eyes.

“No, of course not,” he answered. “There’s another place where I’m needed.… And Rety, too.”

Fine lines crinkled at the edges of her eyes.

“The young hoon, Alvin, wants to let his parents know he’s alive, and report to the urrish sage who sent the four of them on their diving mission. They want help getting home.”

“Will you give it?”

“How can we? Aside from putting our own crewfolk in clanger, and perhaps giving our position away to enemies, it seems unfair to endanger your entire culture with knowledge that’s a curse to any who possess it.

“And yet …”

She paused. Her scrutiny made Dwer feel like a small child.

“Yet, there is a reticence in your voice. A wariness about your destination that makes me suspect you’re not talking about going home. Not to the tranquil peace you knew among friends and loved ones, in the land you call the Slope.”

There seemed little point in trying to conceal secrets from Gillian Baskin. So Dwer silently shrugged.

“The girl’s tribe, then,” the woman guessed. “Rety’s folk, in the northern hills, where you were wounded fighting a war bot with your bare hands.”

He looked down, speaking in a low voice.

“There’s … things that still need to be done there.”

“Mm. I can well imagine. Obligations, I suppose? Duties unfulfilled?” Her sigh was soft and distant sounding. “You see, I know how it is with your kind. Where your priorities lie.”

That made him look up, wondering. What did she mean by that? There was resigned melancholy in her face … plus something like recognition, as if she saw something familiar in him, wakening affectionate sadness.

“Tell me about it, Dwer. Tell me what you must accomplish.

“Tell me who depends on you.”

Perhaps it was the way she phrased her question, or the power of her personality, but he found himself no longer able to withhold the remaining parts of the story. The parts he had kept back till now.

— about his job as chief scout of the Commons, seeing to it that no colonist race moved east of the Rimmers — sparing the rest of Jijo from further infestation. Enforcing sacred law.

— then how he was ordered to break that law, guiding a mission to tame Rety’s savage cousins — a gamble meant to ensure human survival on Jijo, in case the Slope was cleansed of sapient life.

— how the four of them — Danel Ozawa, Dwer, Lena, and Jenin — learned the Gray Hills were no longer a sanctuary when Rety guided a Danik sky chariot to her home tribe.

— how Dwer and the others vowed to gamble their forfeit lives to win a chance for the sooner tribe … four humans against a killer machine … a gamble that succeeded, at great cost.

“And against all odds, I’d say,” Gillian Baskin commented. She turned her head, addressing the third entity sharing the room with them.

“I take it you were there, as well. Tell me, did you bother to help Dwer and the others? Or were you always a useless nuisance?”

After relating his dour tale, Dwer was startled by a sudden guffaw escaping his own gut. Fitting words! Clearly, Gillian Baskin understood noor.

Mudfoot lay grooming himself atop a glass-topped display case. Within lay scores of strange artifacts, backlit and labeled like treasures in the Biblos Museum. Some light spilled to the foot of another exhibit standing erect nearby — a mummy, he guessed. When they were boys, Lark once tried to scare Dwer with spooky book pictures of old-time Earth bodies that had been prepared that way, instead of being properly mulched. This one looked vaguely human, though he knew it was anything but.

At Gillian’s chiding, Mudfoot stopped licking himself to reply with a panting grin. Again, Dwer imagined what the look might mean.