Infinity's Shore

  The newcomer ship cruised a wary circle, losing altitude. As it turned, Dwer saw a stream of pale smoke pouring from a gash in its other side. A roughness to the engine sound grew steadily worse. Soon, the second cruiser settled down near the first.

  Well, it looks like Kunn got in a lick of his own. Dwer wondered-Now why should that make me feel glad?

  Alvin

  BONE-RATTLING CONCUSSIONS GREW MORE TERRIfying with each dura, hammering our undersea prison refuge, sometimes receding for a while, then returning with new force, making it hard for a poor hoon to stand properly on the shuddering floor.

  Crutches and a back brace didn't help, nor the little autoscribe, fogging the room with my own projected words. Stumbling through them, I sought some solid object to hold, while the scribe kept adding to the mob of words, recording my frantic curses in Anglic and GalSeven. When I found a wall stanchion, I grabbed for dear life. The clamor of reverberating explosions sounded like a giant, bearing down with massive footsteps, nearer . . . ever nearer. . . .

  Then, as I feared some popping seam would let in the dark, heavy waters of the Midden ... it abruptly stopped.

  Silence was almost as disorienting as the jeekee awful noise. My throat sac blatted uselessly while a hysterical Huphu clawed my shoulders, shredding scales into torglike ribbons. Fortunately, hoon don't have much talent for panic.

  Maybe our reactions are too slow, or else we lack imagination.

  As I was gathering my wits, the door hatch opened and one of the little amphibian types rushed in, squeaking a few rapid phrases in simplified GalTwo.

  A summons. The spinning voice wanted us for another powwow.

  "Perhaps we should share knowledge," it said when the four of us (plus Huphu) were assembled.

  Huck and Pincer-Tip, able to look all ways at once, shared meaningful glances with Ur-ronn and me. We were pretty rattled by the recent booming and shaking. Even growing up next to a volcano had never prepared us for that!

  The voice seemed to come from a space where abstract lines curled in tight patterns, but I knew that was an illusion. The shapes and sounds were projections, sent by some entity whose real body lay elsewhere, beyond the walls. I kept expecting Huphu to dash off and tear away a curtain, exposing a little man in an emerald carnival suit. Do they think we're rubes, to fall for such a trick?

  "Knowledge?" Huck sneered, drawing three eyes back like coiled snakes. "You want to share some knowledge? Then tell us what's going on! I thought this place was breaking up! Was it a quake? Are we being sucked into the Midden?"

  "I assure you, that is not happening," came the answer in smooth-toned GalSix. "The source of our mutual concern lies above, not below."

  "Explosions," Ur-ronn muttered, blowing through her snout fringe and stamping a hind hoof. "Those weren't quakes, but underwater detonations. Clean, sharp, and very close. I'd say soneone up there doesn't like you guys very much."

  Pincer hissed sharply and I stared at our urrish friend, but the spinning voice conceded.

  "That is an astute guess."

  I couldn't tell if it was impressed, or just sarcastic.

  "And since our local guild of explosers could hardly achieve such feats, this suggests you have other, powerful foes, far greater than we feevie Six."

  "Again, a reasonable surmise. Such a bright young lady."

  "Hr-rm," I added, in order not to be left out of the sardonic abuse. "We're taught that the simplest hypothesis should always be tried first. So let me guess-you're being hunted by the same folks who landed a while back in the Festival Glade. Those gene raiders Uriel got word about before we left. Is that it?"

  "A goodly conjecture, and possibly even true . . . though it could as easily be someone else."

  "Someone else? What're you say-ay-aying?" Pincer-Tip demanded, raising three legs and teetering dangerously on the remaining two. His chitin skin flared an anxious crimson shade. "That the eatees-tees-tees on the Glade might not be the only ones? That you've got whole passels of enemies?"

  Abstract patterns tightened to a tornado of meshing lines as silence reigned. Little Huphu, who had seemed fascinated by the voice from the very start, now dug her claws in my shoulder, transfixed by the tight spiral form.

  Huck demanded, in a hushed tone.

  "How many enemies have you guys got?" when the voice spoke again, all sardonic traces were gone. Its tone seemed deeply weary.

  "Ah, dear children. It seems that half of the known sidereal universe has spent years pursuing us."

  Pincer clattered his claws and Huck let out a low, mournful sigh. My own dismal contemplation-umble roused Huphu from her trancelike fixation on the whirling display, and she chittered nervously.

  Ur-ronn simply grunted, as if she had expected this, vindicating her native urrish cynicism. After all, when things seem unable to get any worse, isn't that when they nearly always do? Ifni has a fertile, if nasty imagination. The goddess of fate keeps shaving new faces on her infinite-sided dice.

  "Well, I guess this means-hrm-m-that we can toss out all those ideas about you phuvnthus being ancient Jijoans, or native creatures of the deep."

  "Or remnants of cast-off Buyur machines," Huck went on. "Or sea monsters."

  "Yeah," Pincer added, sounding disappointed. "Just another bunch of crazy Galactics-tic-tics."

  The swirling patterns seemed confused. "You would prefer sea monsters'"'

  "Forget it," Huck said. "You wouldn't understand."

  The patterns bent and swayed.

  "I am afraid you may be right about that. Your small band of comrades has us terribly perplexed. So much that a few of us posed a sly scenario-that you were planted in our midst to sow confusion."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Your values, beliefs, and evident mutual affection contribute to undermining assumptions we regarded as immutably anchored in the nature of reality.

  "Mind you, this confusion is not wholly unpleasant. As a thinking entity, one of my prime motives might be called a lust for surprise. And those I work with are hardly less bemused by the unforeseen marvel of your fellowship."

  "Glad you find us entertaining," Huck commented, as dryly sarcastic as the voice had been. "So you guys came here to hide, like our ancestors?"

  "There are parallels. But our plan was never to stay. Only to make repairs, gather stores, and wait in concealment for a favorable window at the nearest transfer point."

  "So Uriel and the sages may be wrong about the ship that came to the Glade? Being a gang of gene raiders-that could just be a cover story. Are you the real cause of our troubles?"

  "Trouble is synonymous with being a metabolizing entity. Or else why have you young adventurers sought it so avidly?

  "But your complaint has merit. We thought we had eluded all pursuit. The ship that landed in the mountains may be coincidental, or attracted by a confluence of unlucky factors. In any event, had we known of your existence, we would have sought shelter somewhere off-planet instead, perhaps in a dead city on one of your moons, though such places are less convenient for effecting repairs. "

  That part I had trouble believing. I'm just an ignorant savage, but from the classic scientific romances I grew up reading, I could picture working in some lunar ghost town like my nicknamesake, waking mighty engines that had slept for ages. What kind of starfaring beings would find darkness and salt water more "convenient" than clean vacuum?

  We lapsed into moody silence, unable to stay outraged at folks who accept responsibility so readily. Anyway, weren't they fellow refugees from Galactic persecution?

  Or from justice, came another, worried thought.

  "Can you tell us why everyone's so mad at you?" I asked.

  The spinning figure turned into a narrow, whirling funnel whose small end seemed diminished and very far away.

  "Like you, we delved and probed into unvisited places, imagining ourselves bold explorers. . . . ," the voice explained in tones of boundless sadness. "Until we bad the misfortune to find the very thing w
e sought. Unexpected wonders beyond our dreams.

  "Breaking no law, we planned only to share what we had found. But those pursuing us abandoned all pretense of legality. Like giants striving over possession of a gnat, they war lustily, battling each other for a chance to capture us! Alas, whoever wins our treasure will surely use it against multitudes."

  Again, we stared. Pincer unleashed awed whispers from all vents at once.

  "Tr-tr-treasure-ure-ure . . . ?"

  Huck wheeled close to the spinning pattern. "Can you prove what you just said?"

  "Not at this time. Not without putting your people in more danger than they already are."

  I recall wondering-what could be more dangerous than the genocide Uriel had spoken of, as one likely outcome of contact with gene raiders?

  "Nevertheless, "the voice continued, "it may prove possible to improve our level of mutual confidence. Or even help each other in significant ways."

  Sara

  SUPPOSE THE WORLD'S TWO MOST CAREFUL OBservers witnessed the same event. They would never agree precisely on what had happened. Nor could they go back and check. Events may be recorded, but the past can't be replayed.

  And the future is even more nebulous-a territory we make up stories about, mapping strategies that never go as planned.

  Sara's beloved equations, derived from pre-contact works of ancient Earth, depicted time as a dimension, akin to the several axes of space. Galactic experts ridiculed this notion, calling the relativistic models of Einstein and others "naive." Yet Sara knew the expressions contained truth. They had to. They were too beautiful not to be part of universal design.

  That contradiction drew her from mathematics to questions of language-how speech constrains the mind, so that some ideas come easily, while others can't even be expressed. Earthling tongues-Anglic, Rossic, and Nihanic-seemed especially prone to paradoxes, tautologies, and "proofs" that sound convincing but run counter to the real world.

  But chaos had also crept into the Galactic dialects used byJijo's other exile races, even before Terran settlers came. To some Biblos linguists, this was evidence of devolution, starfaring sophistication giving way to savagery, and eventually to proto-sapient grunts. But last year another explanation occurred to Sara, based on pre-contact information theory. An insight so intriguing that she left Biblos to work on it.

  Or was I just looking for an excuse to stay away?

  After Joshu died of the pox-and her mother of a stroke-research in an obscure field seemed the perfect refuge. Perched in a lonely tree house, with just Prity and her books for company, Sara thought herself sealed off from the world's intrusions.

  But the universe has a way of crashing through walls.

  Sara glanced at Emerson's glistening dark skin and robust smile, warmed by feelings of affection and accomplishment. Aside from his muteness, the starman scarcely resembled the shattered wreck she had found in the mule swamp near Dolo and nursed back from near death.

  Maybe I should quit my intellectual pretensions and stick with what I'm good at. If the Six Races fell to fighting among themselves, there would be more need of nurses than theoreticians.

  So her thoughts spun on, chaotically orbiting the thin glowing line down the center of the tunnel. A line that never altered as they trudged on. Its changelessness rebuked Sara for her private heresy, the strange, blasphemous belief that she held, perhaps alone among all Jijoans.

  The quaint notion of progress.

  Out of breath after another run, she climbed back aboard the wagon to find Prity chuffing nervously. Sara reached over to check the little chimp's wound, but Prity wriggled free, clambering atop the bench seat, hissing through bared teeth as she peered ahead.

  The drivers were in commotion, too. Kepha and Nuli inhaled with audible sighs. Sara took a deep breath and found her head awash with contrasts. The bucolic smell of meadows mixed with a sharp metallic tang . . . something utterly alien. She stood up with the backs of her knees braced against the seat.

  Was that a hint of light, where the center stripe met its vanishing point?

  Soon a pale glow was evident. Emerson nipped his rewq over his eyes, then off again.

  "Uncle, wake up!" Jomah shook Kurt's shoulder. "I think we're there!"

  But the glow remained vague for a long time. Dedinger muttered impatiently, and for once Sara agreed with him. Expectation of journey's end made the tunnel's remnant almost unendurable.

  The horses sped without urging, as Kepha and Nuli rummaged beneath their seats and began passing out dark glasses. Only Emerson was exempted, since his rewq made artificial protection unnecessary. Sara turned the urrishmade spectacles in her hand.

  I guess daylight will seem unbearably bright for a time, after we leave this hole. Still, any discomfort would be brief until their eyes readapted to the upper world. The precaution seemed excessive.

  At last we'll find out where the horse clan hid all these years. Eagerness blended with sadness, for no reality-not even some god wonder of the Galactics-could compare with the fanciful images found in pre-contact tales.

  A mystic portal to some parallel reality? A kingdom floating in the clouds?

  She sighed. It's probably just some out-of-the-way mountain valley where neighboring villagers are too inbred and ignorant to know the difference between a donkey and a horse.

  The ancient transitway began to rise. The stripe grew dim as illumination spread along the walls, like liquid trickling from some reservoir, far ahead. Soon the tunnel began taking on texture. Sara made out shapes. Jagged outlines.

  Blinking dismay, she realized they were plunging toward sets of triple jaws, like a giant urrish mouth lined with teeth big enough to spear the wagon whole!

  Sara took her cue from the Illias. Kepha and Nuli seemed unruffled by the serrated opening. Still, even when she saw the teeth were metal-corroded with flaking rust-Sara could hardly convince herself it was only a dead machine.

  A huge Buyur thing.

  She had never seen its like. Nearly all the great buildings and devices of the meticulous Buyur had been hauled to sea during their final years on Jijo, peeling whole cities and seeding mule spiders to eat what remained.

  So why didn't the deconstructors carry this thing away?

  Behind the massive jaws lay disks studded with shiny stones that Sara realized were diamonds as big as her head. The wagon track went from smooth to bumpy as Kepha maneuvered the team along a twisty trail through the great machine's gullet, zigzagging around the huge disks.

  At once Sara realized-

  This is a deconstructor! It must have been demolishing the tunnel when it broke down.

  I wonder why no one ever bothered to repair or haul it away.

  Then Sara saw the reason.

  Lava.

  Tongues and streamlets of congealed basalt protruded through a dozen cracks, where they hardened in place half a million years ago. It was caught by an eruption.

  Much later, teams of miners from some of the Six Races must have labored to clear a narrow path through the belly of the dead machine, chiseling out the last stretch separating the tunnel from the surface. Sara saw marks of crude pickaxes. And explosives must have been used, as well. That could explain the guild's knowledge of this place.

  Sara wanted to gauge Kurt's reaction, but just then the glare brightened as the team rounded a final sharp bend, climbing a steep ramp toward a maelstrom of light.

  Sara fumbled for her glasses as the world exploded with color.

  Swirling colors that stabbed. Colors that shrieked.

  Colors that sang with melodies so forceful that her ears throbbed.

  Colors that made her nose twitch and skin prickle with sensations just short of pain. A gasping moan lifted in unison from the passengers, as the wagon crested a short rise to reveal surroundings more foreign than the landscape of a dream.

  Even with the dark glasses in place, each peak and valley shimmered more pigments than Sara could name. In a daze, she sorted her impressions. To
one side protruded the mammoth deconstructor, a snarl of slumped metal, drowned in ripples of frozen magma. Ripples that extended to the far horizon-layer after layer of radiant stone.

  At last she knew the answer to her question. Where on the Slope could a big secret remain hidden for a century or more?

  Even Dedinger, prophet of the sharp-sand desert, moaned aloud at how obvious it was.

  They were in the last place on Jijo anyone would go looking for people.

  The very center of the Spectral Flow.