Infinity's Shore

  A metaphor floats upward, along abused trails of halfmolten wax.

  Are you trying to make a comparison, O second ring-of cognition?

  Ah, yes. I/we see it.

  Forging a noble Jophur out of disparate traeki cells might seem like trying to tame a herd of wild beasts. It is an apt analogy.

  Too bad the metaphor does nothing to help solve My, our problem.

  PIw wasx

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

  WHAT SECRETS LIE BURIED in the melted areas? What memories did the traeki High Sage purposely destroy, during those stressful moments before Asx was converted? I, we can tell, important evidence once glimmered in those layers that lined our common core. Something Jophur were not meant to know.

  But know it we/i shall.

  I must!

  SUGGESTION:

  Perhaps we can tear information out of these recently

  seized humans.

  The ones bearing the name attributes Lark, Ling, and

  Rann.

  REBUTTAL:

  The Priest-Stack vents frustrated steam, upset to learn

  how little data about Earthlings is contained in our ship- , board Library. We have many detailed prescriptions for I truth serums or coercion drugs effective against other races and species who are foes of the Great Jophur, but the archives carry no record of any substance that is humanspecific. Our Library clearly needs updating, despite the '. fact that it is a relatively new unit, less than a thousand '

  years old.

  One tactician stack, assigned to our shipboard planning

  staff, proposed that we use interrogation techniques designed against Tymbrimi. Those devil tricksters are close allies of Earthlings, and appear similar in ways that go beyond bipedal locomotion. Trying out that suggestion, we tried projecting psi-compulsion waves at the prisoners, tuned to Tymbrimi empathic frequencies.

  But the humans seemed deaf to the pulses, showing no

  reaction at all.

  Meanwhile, the Captain-Leader vents irate fumes-acrid

  vapors that send all off-duty personnel fleeing from its

  presence.

  What is the cause of such rancor, My rings?

  Recent news from beyond the nearby hills. Bitter news confirming our fears. Disaster to the east.

  AT LAST, our remaining corvette reached the site where its twin fell silent, two days ago. Aboard the Polkjhy, I/we all stared in dismay at relayed images of devastation.

  Hull wreckage lay sunk beneath swampy waters-the son of marshland morass where a traeki might find it pleasant to wallow while contemplating wax drippings, windblown rain swept the area while searchers scanned for survivors, but all they found were remnants-mostly singleton rings, reverting to a feral animal state, instinctively gathering nests of rotting vegetation, as if they were no more than primitive pretraeki.

  Several of these surviving toruses were harvested. By scraping their cores, we managed to download a few blurry memory tracks. Enough to suggest that dolphins did this deed, emerging from the sea to play havoc with our brethren.

  HOW WERE THEY ABLE TO DO THIS?

  The downed corvette had reported defense systems functional at a forty percent level. More than adequate, if concentrated against just such a sortie by the desperate Earthling quarry. Even amid a lightning-charged thunderstorm, it should not have been possible for the cornered prey to mount a surprise attack. Yet, not even an alarm signal escaped our grounded boat before it was mysteriously overwhelmed.

  Again, doubts rise to disturb us. The wolflings are said to be primitives, not much more capable than the sooner savages whose coward ancestors settled this world. Yet these same Earthers have sent all Five Galaxies into turmoil, repeatedly escaping mighty fleets sent after them.

  Perhaps it was a mistake for our Polkjhy ship commune to take on this mission alone, with just our one mighty battlecruiser to seize destiny for our kind.

  SCENT RUMORS SPREAD THROUGH POLKJHY NOW, alleging the Captain-Leader was deficiently stacked. Subversive pheromones suggest that flawed decision-processing toruses brought us to this unsavory state. Our commander was blinded by obsession with vengeance on the g'Kek, ignoring higher priorities.

  Furious to find mutinous molecules wafting through the air ducts, our Captain-Leader seeks to overwhelm them with his own chemical outpourings-a steamy concoction of smoldering rejection. Perfumes of domineering essence flood all decks.

  What is it now, My ring?

  Ah. Our second torus-of-cognition has come up with another metaphor, this time comparing the Captain-Leader to the skipper of a hoonish sailboat, who tries shouting down his worried crew, using a loud voice to substitute for real

  leadership.

  Very interesting, My ring-making parallels between alien behavior and Jophur ship politics. Such insights make this irksome union seem almost worthwhile.

  Unless . . . Surely you do not ALSO apply this metaphor to your own master ring?

  Do not provoke Me. Be warned. It would be a mistake.

  OUR PROBLEM REMAINS.

  Unlike the tactician stacks, I/we do not attribute wolfling success against our corvette to anomalous technology, or luck. The timing was too coincidental. I am convinced the dolphins knew exactly the right moment to attack, when our attention was diverted by events close by.

  CONCLUSION: The savage races MUST be in communication with the Earthship!

  The captive humans deny knowing of any contact with the dolphin ship. They claim their activities at the lake surface were strictly a manifestation of interhuman dominance struggles, having nothing to do with the prey ship.

  They must be lying. Ways must be found to increase their level of cooperation.

  (If only I could lace their apelike cores with silvery fibers, the way a master ring shows other components of a stack how to cooperate in joyful oneness!)

  We must, it seems, fall back on classic, barbarous interrogation techniques.

  Shall we threaten the humans with bodily damage? Shall we assail them with metaphysical torment? Overruling My,our expertise, the Captain-Leader has decided on a technique that is known to be effective against numerous warm-blooded races. We shall use atrocity.

  sara

  TRAEKI UNGUENTS FILLED HER SINUSES WITH PLEASant numbness, as if she'd had several glasses of wine. Sara felt the chemicals at work, chasing pain, making room for herself to reemerge.

  A day after rejoining the world, she let Emerson push her wheelchair onto the stone veranda at Uriel the Smith's sanctuary, watching dawn break over a phalanx of royal peaks, stretching north and east. West of the mountains, dusty haze muted the manicolored marvel of the Spectral Plow, and the Plain of Sharp Sand beyond.

  The view helped draw Sara's attention from the handheld mirror on her lap-lent her by Uriel-which she had examined all through breakfast. Jijo's broad vista made clear Emerson's quiet sermon.

  The world is bigger than all our problems.

  Sara handed the looking glass over to the starman, who performed sleight-of-hand motions, causing it to vanish up one sleeve of his floppy gown. Emerson grinned when Sara laughed out loud.

  What's the point in dwelling on my stitches and scrapes, she thought. Scars won't matter in the days to come. Any survivors will scratch their living from the soil. Pretty women won't have advantages. Tough ones will.

  Or was this complacence another result of chemicals in her veins? Potions tailored by Tyug, master alchemist of Mount Guenn Forge. Jijo's traekis had learned a lot about healing other races while qheuens, urs, hoons, and men fought countless skirmishes before the Great Peace. In recent years, texts from Biblos helped molecule maestros like Tyug supplement practical lore with fresh insights, using Anglic words like peptide and enzyme, reclaiming some of the knowledge their settler ancestors had abandoned.

  Only not by looking it up in some Library. Earthling texts served as a starting point. A basis for fresh
discoveries.

  Which illustrated her controversial thesis. Six Races climbing back upward, not via Redemption's Path, the route their forebears used . . . but on a trail all our own.

  Other examples filled the halls behind this stony para- ! pet, in workshops and labs where Uriel's staff labored near lava heat, wresting secrets from nature. Despite her suffer- | ing, Sara was glad to see more evidence on Mount Guenn that Jijoan civilization had begun heading in new directions.

  Until starsbips came. Sara winced, recalling what they had witnessed last '

  night, from this same veranda. She and her friends were being regaled at a feast under the Stars, celebrating her recovery. Hoonish sailors from the nearby seaport boomed [ festive ballads and Uriel's apprentices cavorted in an intricate dance while diminutive husbands perched on their backs, mimicking each twist and gyre. Gray qheuens, their broad chitin shells embellished with gemstone cloisonne, sculpted wicked impromptu caricatures of the party guests, using their adroit mouths to carve statuettes of solid stone.

  Even Uigor was allowed to take part, playing the violus, drawing rich vibrato tones as Emerson joined in with his dulcimer. The wounded starman had another unpredictable outburst of song, each verse pouring whole from

  some recessed memory.

  "In a cottage of Fife, lived a man and wife, who, believe me, were comical folk;

  For to people's surprise, they both saw with their eyes, and their tongues moved whenever they spoke!"

  Then, as the feast was hitting its stride, there came a rude interruption. Staccato flashes lit the northwest horizon, outlining the distant bulk of Blaze Mountain, drawing everyone to the balcony rim.

  Duras passed before sounds arrived, smeared by distance to murmuring growls. Sara pictured lightning and thunder-like the storm that had drenched the badlands lately, drumming at her pain-soaked delirium. But then a chill coursed her spine, and she felt glad to have Emerson nearby. Some apprentices counted intervals separating each flash from its long-retarded echo.

  Young Jomah voiced her own thoughts.

  "Uncle, is Blaze Mountain erupting?"

  Kurt's face had been gaunt and bleak. But it was Uriel who answered, shaking her long head.

  "No, lad. It's not an erufshun. I think ..."

  She peered across the poison desert.

  "I think it is Ovoon Town."

  Kurt found his voice. The words were grim.

  "Detonations. Sharp. Well-defined. Bigger than my guild could produce."

  Realization quenched all thought of revelry. The biggest city on the Slope was being razed, and they could only watch, helplessly. Some prayed to the Holy Egg. Others muttered hollow vows of vengeance. Sara heard one person explain dispassionately why the outrage was taking place on a clear night-so the violence would be visible from much of the Slope, a demonstration of irresistible power.

  Awed by the lamentable spectacle, Sara had been incapable of coherent thought. What filled her mind were images of mothers-hoonish mothers, g'Kek mothers, humans, and even haughty qheuen queens-clutching their children as they abandoned flaming, collapsing homes. The visions stirred round her brain like a cyclone of ashes, till Emerson gave her a double dose of traeki elixir.

  Dropping toward a deep, dreamless sleep, she had one last thought.

  Thank God that I never accepted Sage Taine's proposal of marriage. . . . I might have had a child of my own by now.

  This is no time . . . to allow so deep a love.

  Now, by daylight, Sara found her mind functioning as it had before her accident-rapidly and logically. She was even able to work out a context for last night's calamity. fop and Dedinger will preach we should never have had cities in the first place. They'll say the Galactics did us a favor by destroying Ovoom Town.

  Sara recalled legends her mother used to read aloud, from books of folklore covering many pre-contact Earthling traditions. Most Earth cultures told sagas of some purported golden age in the past, when people knew more. When they had more wisdom and power.

  Many myths went on to describe angry gods, vengefully toppling the works of prideful mortals, lest men and women think themselves worthy of the sky. No credible evidence ever supported such tales, yet the story seemed so common it must reflect something deep and dour within the human psyche.

  Maybe my personal heresy was always a foolish dream, and my notion of "progress" based on concocted evidence. Even if Uriel and others had begun to embark on a different path, the point seems moot now.

  Dedinger proved right, after all.

  As in those legends, the gods have resolved to pound us down.

  Confirmation of the outrage came later by semaphore-the same system of flashing mirrors that had surprised Sara days ago, when a stray beam caught her eye during the steep climb from XL Using a code based on simplified GalTwo, the jittering signal followed a twisty route from one Rimmer peak to the next, carrying clipped reports of devastation by the River Gentt.

  Then, a few miduras later, an eyewitness arrived, swooping out of the sky like some fantastic beast of fable, landing on Uriel's stone parapet. A single human youth emerged beneath shuddering wings, unstrapping himself after a daring journey across the wide desert, skimming from one thermal updraft to the next in a feat that would have caused a sensation during normal times.

  But heroism and miraculous deeds are routine during war, Sara thought, as crowds gathered around the young man. His limbs trembled with exhaustion as he peeled off the rewq that had protected his eyes above the Spectral Flow. He gave the Smith a militia salute when Uriel trotted out of the workshop grottoes.

  "Before attacking Ovoom Town, the Jophur issued a two-part ultimatum," he explained in a hoarse voice. "Their first demand is that all g'Keks and traekis must head to special gathering zones."

  Uriel blew air through her nostril fringe, a resigned blast, as if she had expected something along these lines.

  "And the second fortion of the ultinatun?"

  She had to wait for her answer. Kepha, the horsewoman from Xi, arrived bearing a glass of water, which the pilot slurped gratefully, letting streams run down his chin. Most urrish eyes turned from the unpleasant sight. But Uriel stared patiently till he finished.

  "Go on," she prompted again, when the youth handed the empty glass back to Kepha with a smile.

  "Um," he resumed. "The Jophur insist that the High Sages must give up the location of the dolphin ship."

  "The dolphin shif?" Uriel's hooves clattered on the flagstones. "We heard vague stories of this thing. Gossif and conflicting hints told vy the Rothen. Have the Jophur now revealed what it's all avout?"

  The courier tried to nod, only now Tyug had come forward, gripping the youth's head with several tentacles. He winced as the traeki alchemist secreted ointment for his sun- and windburns.

  "It seems . . . Hey, watch it!" He pushed at the adamant tendrils, then tried ignoring the traeki altogether.

  "It seems these dolphins are the prey that brought both the Rothen and the Jophur to Galaxy Four in the first place. What's more, the Jophur say the sages must be in contact with the Earthling ship. Either we give up its location, or face more destruction, starting with Tarek Town, then lesser hamlets, until no building is left standing."

  Kurt shook his head. "They're bluffin'. Even Galactics couldn't find all our wood structures, hidden under blur cloth."

  The courier seemed less sure. "There are fanatics everywhere who think the end is here. Some believe the Jophur are agents of destiny, come to set us back on the Path. All such fools need do is start a fire somewhere near a building and throw some phosphorus on the flame. The Jophur can sniff the,signal using their rainbow finder."

  Rainbow finder . . . Sara pondered. Oh, he means a spectrograph.

  Jomah was aghast. "People would do that?" "It's already happened in a few places. Some folks have taken their local explosers hostage, forcing them to set off their charges. Elsewhere, the Jophur have established base camps, staffed by a dozen stacks and thirty
or so robots, gathering nearby citizens for questioning." His tone was bleak. "You people don't know how lucky you have it here."

  Yet Sara wondered. How could the High Sages possibly give in to such demands? The g'Kek weren't being taken off-planet in order to restore their star-god status. As for the traeki, death might seem pleasant compared with the fate planned for them.

  Then there was the "dolphin ship." Even the learned Uriel could only speculate if the High Sages truly were in contact with a bunch of fugitive Terran clients.