Infinity's Shore

  Then she turned back toward the interior, beckoning with a smile and an extended arm.

  Four silhouettes approached-one squat, one gangly, one wheeled, and the last clattering like a nervous colt. Kaa knew the tall one, although they had never met. Alvin, the young "humicking" writer, lover of Verne and Twain, whose journal had explained so much about the strange mixed culture of sooner races.

  A moan of overjoyed release escaped those waiting, who flowed forward in a rush.

  So-embraced by their loved ones, and pelted by rain- the adventurous crew of Wuphon's Dream finally came home.

  There were other reunions . . . and partings.

  Kaa went aft to help Makanee debark her patients. Streaker's chief physician seemed older than Kaa remembered, and very tired, as she supervised a growing throng of neo-dolphins, splashing and squealing beyond the Hikahi's starboard flank. While some appeared listless, others dashed about with antic, explosive energy. Two nurses helped Makanee keep the group herded together at the south end of the harbor, using occasional low-voltage discharges from their harnesses to prevent their patients from dashing off. The devolved ones wore nothing but skin.

  Kaa counted their number-forty-six-and felt a shiver of worry. Such a large fraction of Streaker's crew! Gillian must be desperate indeed, to contemplate abandoning them here. Many were probably only experiencing fits of temporary stress atavism, and would be all right if they just had peace and quiet for a time.

  Well, maybe they'll get it, on Jijo, he thought. Assuming this planet sea turns out to be as friendly as it looks. And assuming the Galactics leave us alone.

  In becoming Jijo's latest illegal settler race, dolphins had an advantage over those who preceded them. Fins would not need buildings, or much in the way of tools. Only the j finest Galactic detectors might sieve their DNA resonance out of the background organic stew of a life world, and just at close range. ;

  There are advantages, he admitted. This way, some of) our kind may survive, even if Earth and her colonies don't. And if dolphins are caught here, so what? Haw , could we Terragens get into any more trouble than we' already are? '

  Kaa had read about local belief in Redemption. A species that found itself in trouble might get a second chance, returning to the threshold state, so that some new patron might adopt and guide them to a better destiny. Tursiofs amicus was less than three hundred years old as a toolusing life-form. Confronted by a frolicking mob of his own kind-former members of an elite starship crew, now screeching like animals-Kaa knew it shouldn't take fins long to achieve "redemption."

  He felt burning shame.

  Kaa joined Brookida, unloading Makanee's pallet of supplies. He did not want to face the nurses, who might reproach him for "losing" Peepoe. At least now there's a chance to find her. With our own colony in place, I can serve Makanee as a scout, patrolling and exploring . . . in time I'll catch up with Zhaki andMopol. Then we'll have a reckoning.

  The aft hatch kept cycling after the last dolphin was through. Excited squeaks resonated across the bay as another set of emigres followed Makanee to an assembly point, on a rocky islet in the middle of the harbor. Eager six-limbed amphibian forms, with frilly gill fringes waving about their heads. Transplanted from their native Kithrup, the Kiqui would not qualify as sooners, exactly. They were already a ripe, presapient life-form-a real treasure, in fact. It would have been good to bring them home to Earth in triumph and lay a claim of adoption with the Galactic Uplift Institute. But now Gillian clearly thought it better to leave them here, where they had a chance.

  According to plan, the dolphin-Kiqui colony would stay in Port Wuphon for a few days, while a traeki pharmacist analyzed the newcomers' dietary needs. If necessary, new types of traeki stacks would be designed to create symbiotic supplements. Then both groups would head out to find homes amid islands offshore.

  I'm coming, Peepoe, Kaa thought. Once we get everyone settled, nothing on Jijo or the Five Galaxies will keep me from you.

  A happy musing. Yet another thought kept nagging at him.

  Gillian isn 't just stripping the ship of nonessential personnel. She's putting everyone ashore she can spare . . . for their own safety.

  In other words, the human Terragens agent was planning something desperate . . . and very likely fatal. Kaa had an uneasy feeling that he knew what it was.

  Alvin

  I GUESS REUNIONS CAN BE KIND OF AWKWARD, EVEN when they're happy ones.

  Don't get me wrong! I can't imagine a better moment than when the four of us-Huck, Ur-ronn, Pincer, and me-stepped out of the metal whale's yawning mouth to see the hooded lanterns of our own hometown. My senses were drenched with familiarity. I heard the creaking dross ships and the lapping tide. I smelled the melon canopies and smoke from a nearby cookstove-someone making chubvash stew. My magnetic earbones tickled to the familiar presence of Mount Guenn, invisible in the dark, yet a ^ powerful influence on the hoonish shape-and-location i sense.

  Then there came my father's umble cry, booming from the shadows, and my mother and sister, rushing to my arms. . •

  I confess, my first reaction was hesitant. I was glad to be home, to see and embrace them, but also embarrassed by the attention, and a little edgy about moving around without a cane for the first time in months. When there came a free moment, I bowed to my parents and handed them a package, wrapped in complex folds of the best paper I could find on the Streaker, containing my baby vertebrae. It was an important moment. I had gone away a disobedient child. Now I was returning, an adult, with work to do.

  My friends' homecomings were less emotional. Of course Huck's hoonish adoptive parents were thrilled to have her back from the dead, but no one expected them to feel what my own folks did after giving up their only son for lost, months ago.

  Pincer-Tip touched claws briefly with a matron from the qheuen hive, and that was it for him.

  As for Ur-ronn., she and Uriel barely exchanged greetings. Aunt and niece had one priority-to get out of the rain. They fled the drizzle to a nearby warehouse, swiftly immersing themselves in some project. Urs don't believe in wasting time.

  Does it make me seem heartless to say that I could not give complete attention to my family? Even as they clasped me happily, I kept glancing to see what else was going on. It will be up to me-and maybe Huck-to tell later generations about this event. This fateful meeting on the docks.

  For one thing, there were other reunions.

  My new human friend, Dwer Koolhan, emerged from the Hikahi, a tall silhouette, as sturdy looking as a preteen hoon. When he appeared, a shout pealed from the crowd of onlookers, and a young woman rushed to him, her arms spread wide. Dwer seemed stunned to see her . . . then equally enthused, seizing her into a whirling hug. At first, I thought she might be some long-separated lover, but now I know it is his sister, with adventures of her own to recount.

  The rain let up a bit. Uriel returned, wearing booties and a heavy black waterproof slicker that covered all but the tip of her snout. Behind came several hoons, driving a herd of ambling, four-footed creatures. Glovers. At least two dozen of the bulge-eyed brutes swarmed down the pier, their opal skins glistening. A few carried cloth-wrapped burdens in their grasping tails. They did not complain, but trotted toward the opening of the whale sub without pause.

  This part of the transaction, I did not--and still do not--understand. Why Earthling fugitives would want glavers is beyond me.

  Gillian Baskin had the hoons carry out several large crates in exchange. I had seen the contents and felt an old hunger rise within me.

  Books. There were hundreds of paper books, freshly minted aboard the Streaker. Not a huge amount of material, compared with the Galactic Library unit, or even the Great Printing, but included in the boxes were updates about the current state of the Five Galaxies, and other subjects Uriel requested. More than enough value to barter for a bunch of grub-eating glavers!

  Later, I connected the trade with the dolphins and Kiqui who also debarked in Wuphon Harbor, and I
realized, There's more to this deal than meets the eye.

  Did I mention the tall prisoner? As everybody moved off to the great hall for a hurried feast, I looked back and glimpsed a hooded figure being led down the pier toward the submarine, guarded by two wary-looking urs. It was a biped, but did not move like a human or hoon, and I could tell both hands were tied. Whoever the prisoner was, he vanished into the Hikahi in a hurry, and I never heard a word about it.

  The last reunion took place half a midura later, when we were all gathered in the town hall.

  According to a complex plan worked out by the Niss Machine, the whale sub did not have to depart for some time, so a banquet was held in the fashion of our Jijoan Commons. Each race claimed a corner of the hexagonal chamber for its own food needs, then individuals migrated round the center hearth, chatting, renewing acquaintance, or discussing the nature of the world. While Gillian Baskin was engrossed in deep conversation with my parents and Uriel, my sister brought me up to date on happenings in Wuphon since our departure. In this way I learned of school chums who had marched north to war, joining militia units while we four adventurers had childish exploits in the cryptic deep. Some were dead or missing in the smol-' dering ruins of Ovoom Town. Others, mostly qheuens, had died in the plagues of late spring.

  The hoonish disease never had a chance to take hold here in the south. But before the vaccines came, one ship had been kept offshore at anchor-in quarantine-because a sailor showed symptoms.

  Within a week, half the crew had died.

  Despite the gravity of her words, it was hard to pay close attention. I was trying to screw up my courage, you see Somehow, I must soon tell my family the news they would least want to hear.

  Amid the throng, I spotted Dwer and his sister huddled near the fire, each taking turns amazing the other with tales about their travels. Their elation at being reunited was clearly muted by a kind of worry familiar to all of usconcern about loved ones far away, whose fates were still unknown. I had a sense that the two of them knew, as I did, that there remained very little time.

  Not far away I spied Dwer's noor companion, Mudfoot-the one Gillian called a "tytlal"-perched on a rafter, communing with others of his kind. In place of their normal, devil-may-care expressions, the creatures looked somber. Now we Six knew their secret-that the tytlal are a race hidden within a race, another tribe of sooners, fully alert and aware of their actions. Might some victims of past i pranks now scheme revenge on the little imps? That seemed the least of their worries, but I wasted no sympathy on them.

  Welcome to the real world, I thought.

  Tyug squatted in a corner of the hall, furiously puffing away. Every few duras, the traeki's synthi ring would pop out another glistening ball of some substance whose value the Six Races had learned after long experience. Supplements to, keep glavers healthy, for instance, and other chemical wonders that might serve Gillian's crew, if some miracle allowed them to escape. If Tyug finished soon, Uriel hoped to keep her alchemist. But I would lay bets that the traeki meant to go along when the Earthhngs de-' parted.

  The occasion was interrupted when a pair of big hoons wearing proctors' badges pushed through leather door strips into the feasting hall, gripping the arms of a male human I had never seen before. He was of middle height for their kind, with a dark complexion and an unhappy expression. He wore a rewq on his forehead, and hair combed to hide a nasty scar near his left ear. A small chimp followed close behind, her appearance rueful.

  I wasn't close enough to hear the details firsthand, but later I pieced together that this was a long-lost crew mate of the Streakers, whose appearance on Jrjo had them mystified. He had been on Mount Guenn, helping Uriel's smiths work on some secret project, when he suddenly up and tried to escape by stealing some kind of flying machine!

  As the guards brought him forward, Gillian's face washed with recognition. She smiled, though he cringed, as if dreading this meeting. The dark man turned left to hide his mutilation, but Gillian insistently took his hands.

  She expressed pleasure at seeing him by leaning up to kiss one cheek.

  Perhaps later I'll learn more about where he fits in all this. But time is short and I must close this account before the Hikahi sets sail to rejoin the dolphin-crewed ship. So let me finish with the climax of an eventful evening. I

  A herald burst in. His vibrating sac boomed an alert umble.

  "Come! Come and see the unusual!"

  Hurrying outside, we found the rain had stopped temporarily. A window opened in the clouds, wide enough for Loocen to pour pale, liquid luminance across a flank of Mount Guenn. Swathes of brittle stars shone through, including one deep red, cyclopean eye.

  In spite of this lull, the storm was far from over. Lightning flickered as clouds grew denser still. The west was, one great mass of roiling blackness amid a constant back-;

  ground of thunder. In miduras, the coast was really going to get hit.

  People started pointing. Huck rolled up near my right leg and gestured with all four agile eyestalks, directing my' gaze toward the volcano.

  At first, I couldn't tell what I was seeing. Vague, ghostlike shapes seemed to bob and flutter upward, visible mostly as curved silhouettes that blocked sporadic stars. Sometimes lightning caused one of the objects to glow along a rounded flank, revealing a globelike outline, tapered at the bottom. They seemed big, and very far away.

  I wondered if they might be starships.

  "Balloons," Huck said at last, her voice hushed in awe "Just like Around the World in Eighty Days"

  Funny. Huck seemed more impressed at that moment than she ever had been aboard Streaker, by all the glittering consoles and chattering machines. I stared at the flotilla of fragile gasbags, wondering what kind of volunteers were brave enough to pilot them on a night like this, surrounded by slashing electricity, and with ruthless foes prowling higher still. We watched as scores wafted from Mount Guenn's secret caves. One by one, they caught the stiff west wind and flowed past the mountain, vanishing from sight.

  I happened to be standing near Gillian Baskin so

  know what the Earthwoman said when she turned to Urie the Smith.

  "All right. You kept your side of the bargain. Now it'' time to keep ours."

  PflBHEII

  Vuboen

  SMASHED UP. Wheels torn or severed. His braincase leaking lubricant. ,Viotivator spindles shredded and discharging slowly into the ground. '

  Vubben lies crumpled next to his deity, reeling lire drain away.

  That he still lives seems remarkable. When the Jophur corvette slashed brutally at the Holy Egg, he had been partway around the great stones Hank, almost on the other side. But the moatlike channel of the Nest (unneled explosive heat like a river, outracing his Iruttless enort at retreat.

  Now Vubben lies in a heap, aware of two tacts.

  Any surviving glxeks would need a new High lay.

  And something else. the bgg still lives.

  He wonders about that. Why didnt the Jophur (inish It on' Surely they had the power.

  perhaps they were distracted.

  perhaps they would be back.

  Or else, were they subtly persuaded to 30 away The t,gg s patterning rhythms seem subdued, and yet more clear than ever. He ponders whether it might be an artilact of his approaching death. Or perhaps his irayed spindles--draped across the stony race--are picking up vibrations that normal senses could

  not.

  crystalline lucidity calls him, but Vubben reels restrained by the tenacious hold of lite. I hat was what always kept sages and mystics From mlly communing with the sacred ovoid, he now sees. A,iortal beings--even traeki--have to care about continuing, or else the game of existence cannot properly be played. But the caring is also an Impediment. It biases the senses. AAakes you receptive to noise.

  Me lets go of the impediment, with a kind of gladness. Surrender clears the way, opening a path that he plunges along, like a youth just released from training wheels, spinning ecstatically dow
n a swooping ramp he never knew beiore, whose curves change in dellghtiulty ominous ways.

  Vuboen leels the world grow transparent around him. And with blossoming clarity, he begins to perceive connections.

  In legend, and in human lore, gods were depicted speaking to their prophets, and those on the verge of death. But the great stone does not vocalise. Psio words come to Vubben, or even images. )4t he finds himself able to trace the Lggs torm, its vibrating unity. l_ike a runnel, it draws him down, toward the

  bowels of Jt)o.

  rhat is the first surprise. From its shape alone, the Six saw assumed the L,gg was sell-contained, an oval stone birthed out of Jijo's inner heat, now wholly part of the upper world. Apparently it still maintains links to the world below. Vubben s da^ed mind beholds the realm beneath the Slope . . . not as a pic!,ure but in its gestalt, as a vast domain threaded by dendritic patterns or lava heat, like branches of a magma (orest, iceding and maintaining a growing mountain range