Brightness Reef

  Speaking of moons, great Loocen sat low in the west, the largest of Jijo's satellites, a familiar reddish crescent, though right now the main part facing us was dark, so no sunlight sparkled off the cold, dead cities the Buyur left there intact, as if to taunt us.

  Stars glittered overhead like . . . well, before writing this down, I wracked my brain for a comparison out of some book I've read, but Earthling authors never had anything in their sky like the Dandelion Cluster, a giant puff-ball of sparkling pinpoints taking up almost a quarter of the sky, skimming the southern horizon. I know 'cause if they did, they'd have competed to describe it over and over, in a million different ways. Visitors from the crowded north part of the Slope always act amazed to see it in its glory, so I guess the Dandelion's one good thing about living here at the southmost boonies.

  It's also one chief reason why Uriel's predecessor built a telescope on that spot, and a dome to protect it against rain and ash from old Guenn's frequent mini-eruptions.

  Ur-ronn says there's just one part of the mountain where the observatory can take advantage of the sea breeze and not have heat currents ruin the seeing. There are probably much better places for astronomy on the Slope. But this spot has one advantage-it's where Uriel lives. Who else has the time, wealth, and knowledge to maintain such a hobby? No one, except perhaps the savants of Great Biblos.

  The heavy cinderblock structure seemed to rise against the dazzling starry cluster, reminding me of a glaver's muzzle, taking a bite out of a big gutchel pear. The sight made my back scales frickle. Of course at this altitude, with no clouds in the sky, the air had a chilly bite.

  Whistling dismay, Ur-ronn halted in a sudden plume of dust, causing Huck to ram into me, eyestalks pronging outward, squinting in all directions at once. Little Huphu reacted by digging her claws into my shoulder, ready to leap and abandon us at the first sign of peril.

  "What is it!" I whispered urgently.

  "The roof is open, " Ur-ronn explained, slipping into GalTwo as her pointed snout sniffed greedily. "The mercury float bearing, I do scent; therefore the telescope (probably) is in use. We must now undertake (swiftly) to return to our beds, not raising suspicion."

  "The hell you say," Huck cursed. "I'm for sneakin' in."

  They looked to me for the deciding vote. I shrugged, human-style. "We're here. Ought to at least take a look."

  Ur-ronn corkscrewed her neck. She snorted a sigh. "Stay behind me, in that case. And in vain hope of Ifni's luck, do remain quiet!"

  So we neared the dome and made out that the roof line was split open, exposing blocky shapes to the shimmering sky. The path ended at a ground-level door- ajar-revealing dim shadows within. Huphu trembled on my shoulder, either from eagerness or from anxiety. I already regretted taking her along.

  Ur-ronn was an outline, pressed against the outer wall, snaking her head through the door.

  "Of all utterjeekee things, what could top her scouting ahead at night?" Huck groused. "Urs can't see in the dark any better'n a glaver can at noon. Oughta let me do it."

  Yeah, I thought. As if g'Keks are built for stealth. But I kept silent, except for a low umble to prevent Huphu jumping off.

  Switching her braided tail nervously, Ur-ronn twisted her neck inside-and her long body followed, twisting nimbly through the doorway. Huck followed close behind, all eyestalks erect and quivering. Taking up the rear, I kept swiveling to check for anyone creeping behind, though of course there was no reason to imagine someone would want to.

  The main floor of the observatory looked deserted. The big scope glittered faintly under starlight. On a nearby table, one hooded lantern spilled a red-filtered glow onto a clipboarded sky chart and a pad covered with what might be mathematical markings-lots of numbers plus some symbols that weren't part of any alphabet . . . though now that I think about it, maybe Mister Heinz did show some of them to our class, hoping to hook an interest.

  "Listen and note," Ur-ronn said. "The motor for tracking objects in compensation against Jijo's rotation; that device is still turned on."

  Sure enough, a low, hoonlike rumble transmitted from the telescope's case, and I smelled faint exhaust from a tiny fuel cell motor. Another extravagance almost unknown elsewhere on the Slope but allowed here because Mount Guenn is a sacred place, certain to cleanse itself of all toys, conceits, and unreverent vanities, if not tomorrow then sometime in the next hundred years.

  "That means it may still be pointed wherever they were looking before they left!" Huck responded eagerly.

  Who says "they" have left?-I was about to add. Turning around again, I noticed a closed door outlined by a pale rim of light. But Huck rushed on.

  "Alvin, give me a boost so I can look!"

  "Hr-r-rm? But-"

  "Alvin!" A wheel stroked one of my footpads, as a warning to do what I was told.

  "What? A boost?" I saw no ramp or other way for Huck to reach the scope's eyepiece, only a chair resting next to the table. Still, the best course would be to let her have her way, as quickly and silently as possible, rather than forcing an argument.

  "Hrrrm . . . well, all right. But keep it quiet, will you?"

  I stepped behind Huck, squatted down, and slung both arms under her axle frame. I grunted, lifting her to bring one stalk level with the eyepiece.

  "Hold still!" she hissed.

  "I am . . . hrm-rm . . . trying . . ."

  I let my arm bones slip slightly, so the elbow joints clicked into a locked position-a trick I'm told humans and urs are jealous of, since even the strongest human who tried this would have to do it using muscle power alone. Even so, Huck had put on weight, and holding her in place meant standing in a bent-over half-squat. Whenever I grunted, she'd twist a free stalk round to glare, just a handsbreadth from my face, as if I was annoying her on purpose.

  "Hold it, you unbuff hoon! . . . Okay, I can see now ... a whole lot of stars . . . more stars. . . . Hey, there's nothing but stars in here!"

  "Huck," I murmured, "did I ask you to keep it quiet?"

  Ur-ronn whistled a sigh. "Of course there's only stars, you hoof-stinky g'Kek! Did you think you could count the fortholes on an orviting starshif with this little tele-scofe? At that height, it'll twinkle like any other foint source."

  I was impressed. We all know Ur-ronn is the best mechanic in our bunch, but who figured she knew astronomy, as well?

  "Here, give ne a chance to look. It's fossible I can tell which star isn't a star, if its fosition changes in relation to others."

  Huck's wheels spun angrily in air, but she could no more deny the fairness of Ur-ronn's request than keep me from lowering her to the ground. I straightened with relief, and some crackling of cartilage, as she rolled away, grumbling. Ur-ronn had to put both forehooves on the chair in order to rise up and peer through the eyepiece.

  For a few moments, our urrish pal was silent; then she trilled frustration. "They really are all just stars, far as I can tell. Anyway, I forgot-a starshif in orvit would drift out of view in just a few duras, even with the tracking engine turned on."

  "Well, I guess that's it," I said, only half disappointed. "We'd better head on back now-"

  That's when I saw that Huck was gone. Whirling, I finally spied her, heading straight for the doorway I had seen earlier!

  "Remember what we discussed?" she called rearward at us, speeding toward the back-lit rectangle. "The real evidence will be on those photographic plates you say Gybz spoke of. That's what we came up here to look at in the first place. Come on!"

  I admit staring like a stranded fish, my throat sac blatting uselessly while Huphu gouged my scalp, gathering purchase for a spring. Ur-ronn took off in a mad scramble after Huck, trying desperately to tackle her by the spokes before she reached the door--

  --which swung open, I swear, at that very instant, casting a painful brightness that outlined a human silhouette. A short, narrow-shouldered male whose fringe of head hair seemed aflame in the glare of several lanterns behind him. Blinking, raising a hand to shade
my eyes, I could dimly make out several easels in the room beyond, bearing charts, measuring rules, and slick glass plates. More square plates lay racked on shelf after shelf, crowding the walls of the little room.

  Huck squealed to a stop so suddenly her axles glowed. Ur-ronn nearly rammed her, halting in frantic haste. We all froze, caught in the act.

  The human's identity wasn't hard to guess, since only one of his race lived on the mountain at the time. He was only known far and wide as the most brilliant of his kind, a sage whose mind reached far, even for an Earth-ling, to grasp many of the arcane secrets that our ancestors once knew. One whose intellect even the mighty self-assured Uriel bowed before.

  The Smith of Mount Guenn was not going to be pleased with us for intruding on her guest.

  Sage Purofsky stared for a long moment, blinking into the darkness beyond the doorway, then he raised a hand straight toward us, pointing.

  "You!" he snapped in a strangely distracted tone of voice. "You surprised me."

  Huck was the first of us to recover.

  "Um, sorry . . . uh, master. We were just, er . . ."

  Cutting her off, but without any trace of rancor, the human went on.

  "It's just as well, then. I was about to ring for somebody. Would you kindly take these notes to Uriel for me?"

  He held out a folded sheaf of papers, which Huck accepted in the grasp of one quivering tentacle-arm. Her half-retracted eyestalks blinked in surprise.

  "That's a good lad," the savant went on absentmindedly, and turned to go back into the little room. Then Sage Purofsky stopped and 'swiveled to face us once more.

  "Oh, please also tell Uriel that I'm now sure of it. Both ships are gone. I don't know what happened to the bigger one, the first one, since it appeared only by lucky accident on one early set of plates, before anyone knew to look for it. That orbit can't be solved except to say I think it may have landed. But even a rough calculation based on the last series shows the second ship de-orbiting, heading into an entry spiral down to Jijo. Assuming no later deviations or corrections, its course would have made landfall some days ago, north of here, smack dab in the Rimmers."

  His smile was rueful, ironic.

  "In other words, the warning we sent up to the Glade may be somewhat superfluous." Purofsky rubbed his eyes tiredly and sighed. "By now our colleagues at Gathering probably know a lot more about what's going on than we do."

  I swear, he sounded more disappointed than worried over the arrival of something the exiles of Jijo had feared for two thousand years.

  We all, even Huphu, stared for a long time-even after the man thanked us again, turned around, and closed the door behind him, leaving us alone with our only company millions of stars, like pollen grains scattered on a shimmering ocean, stretching over our heads. A sea of darkness that suddenly felt frighteningly near.

  XII. THE BOOK OF THE SLOPE

  Legends

  There is a word we are asked not to say too often. And to whisper, when we do.

  The traeki ask this of us, out of courtesy, respect, and superstition.

  The word is a name--with just two syllables--one they fear ever to hear again.

  A name they once called themselves.

  A name presumably still used by their cousins, out on the star-lanes or the Five Galaxies.

  Cousins who are mighty, terrifying, resolute, pitiless, and single-minded.

  How different that description seems to make our own sept of ringed ones, from those who still roam the cosmos, like gods. Those Jophur.

  Of all the races who came to Jijo in sneakships, some, like qheuens and humans, were obscure and almost unknown in the Five Galaxies. Others, like g'Keks and glavers, had reputations of modest extant, among those needing their specialised skills. Hoon and urs had made a moderate impression, so much that Earthlings knew of them before landing, and worried.

  But it is said that every oxygen-breathing, starfaring clan is familiar with the shape of stacked rings, piled high, ominous and powerful.

  When the traeki sneakship came, the g'Kek took one look at the newcomers and went into hiding for several generations, cowering in fright until, at last, they realised--these were different rings.

  When qheuen settlers saw them already here, they very nearly left again, without unloading or even landing their sneakship.

  How came our beloved friends to have such a reputation to live down? How came they to be so different from those who still fly in space, using that awful name?

  --Reflections on the Six,

  Ovoom Press,

  Year-of-Exile 1915

  Asx

  EITHER THE INVADERS ARE TRYING TO CONFUSE us, or else there is something strange about them. At first, their powers and knowledge appeared as one might expect-so far above us that we seem as brutish beasts. Dared we contrast our own meager wisdom, our simple ways, against their magnificent, unstoppable machines, their healing arts, and especially the erudition of their piercing questions about Jijoan life? Erudition showing the vast sweep and depth of records at their command, surely copied from the final survey of this world, a million years ago. Yet . . .

  They seem to know nothing about lorniks or zookirs.

  They cannot hide their excitement, upon measuring specimen glavers, as if they have made a great discovery.

  They make puzzling, nonsensical remarks concerning chimpanzees.

  And now they want to know everything about mule-spiders, asking naive questions that even this inexpert stack of manicolored rings could answer. Even if all of our/my toruses of sapiency were vlenned away, leaving nothing but instinct, memory, and momentum.

  The sigil of the Great Library was missing from the bow of the great vessel that left their station here. We thought its absence a mere emblem of criminality. A negative symbol, denoting a kind of skulking shame.

  Can it mean more than that? Much more?

  Sara

  OROM ENGRIL'S SHOP ON PIMMIN CANAL, IT WAS but a short walk to the clinic where Pzora had taken the Stranger yesterday. Engril agreed to meet Sara there with Bloor the Portraitist. Time was short. Perhaps Sara's idea was foolish or impractical, but there would be no better moment to broach it, and no better person to present it to than Ariana Foo.

  A decision had to be made. So far, the omens weren't good.

  The emissaries from Dolo Village had gathered last night, in a tavern near the Urrish Quarter, to discuss what each of them had learned since the Hauph-woa docked. Sara showed a copy of the sages' report, fresh from Engril's copy shop, expecting it to shock the others. But by that evening even Pzora knew most of the story.

  "I see three possibilities," the stern-browed farmer Jop had said, nursing a mug of sour buttermilk. "First-the story's an Egg-cursed lie. The ship really is from the great Institutes, we're about to be judged as the Scrolls say, but the sages are spreading a pebble-in-my-hoof fable about bandits to justify musterin' the militia, preparin' for a fight."

  "That's absurd!" Sara had complained.

  "Oh yeah? Then why've all the units been called up? Humans drilling in every village. Urrish cavalry wheelin' in all directions, and the hoons oilin' their old catapults, as if they could shoot down.a starship by hurlin' rocks." He shook his head. "What if the sages've got some fantasy about resisting? It wouldn't be the first time leaders were driven mad by an approaching end to their days of petty power."

  "But what of these sketches?" asked the scriven-dancer, Fakoon. The g'Kek touched one of Engril's reproductions, portraying a pair of humans dressed in one-piece suits, staring brazenly at sights both new to them and yet somehow pathetic in their eyes.

  Jop shrugged. "Ridiculous on the face of it. What would humans be doin' out here? When our ancestors left Earth on an aged thirdhand tub, not a single human scientist understood its workings. The folks back home couldn't have caught up with galactic standard tech for another ten thousand years."

  Sara watched Blade and the hoon captain react with surprise. It was no secret, what Jop had said a
bout human technology at the time of exile, but they must find it hard to picture. On Jijo, Earthlings were the engineers, the ones most often with answers.

  "And who would want to ferfetrate such a hoax?" Ulgor asked, lowering her conical head. Sara read tension in the urs's body stance. Uh-oh, she thought.

  Jop smiled. "Why, maybe some bunch that sees opportunity, amid the chaos, to besmirch our honor and have one last chance at revenge before Judgment Day."

  Human and urs faced each other, each grinning a bright display of teeth-which could be taken equivocally as either friendly or threatening. For once, Sara blessed the sickness that had caused nearly everyone's rewq to curl up and hibernate. There would have been no ambiguity with symbionts to translate~the meaning in Jop's and Ulgor's hearts.

  At that moment, a squirt of pinkish steam jetted between the two-a swirling fume of cloying sweetness. Jop and Ulgor retreated from the cloud in opposite directions, covering their noses.

  "Oops, i express repentance on our/my behalf. This pile's digestive torus still retains, processes, deletes the richness of esteemed hoonish shipboard fare."

  Unperturbed, the captain of the Hauph-woa said- "How fortunate for you, Pzora. As to the subject at hand, we must still decide what advice to send back to Dolo Village and the settlements of the Upper Roney. So let me ask Jop. . . . Hrrrm--what if we consider a simpler theory-there is no hoax by the honored sages, brr?"

  Jop still waved the air in front of his face, coughing. "That brings us to possibility number two-that we are being tested. The Day has come at last, but the noble Galactics are undecided what to do with us. Maybe the great Institutes hired human actors to play this role, offering us a chance to tip the scales one way through right action, or the other by choosing incorrectly. As for what advice we send upriver, I say we counsel that demolition should proceed according to the ancient plan!"

  Blade, the young qheuen delegate, reared back on three legs, lifting his blue carapace, stammering and hissing so that his initial attempts at Anglic came out garbled. He switched to Galactic Two.