Brightness Reef (59 page)

Harullen’s leg-vents fluted overtones of worry. “No, the machines still hover protectively over Ro-kenn, and the two servant-humans, and the cadavers, all surrounded by a crowd of local sycophants. I refer to a commotion over where the sages have been holding court. More zealots have arrived, it seems. There is ferment. I’m certain we are missing important news!”

Harullen may be right, Lark thought. Yet he was reluctant to leave. Despite the stench, heat, and jagged stubs of metal—all made more dangerous by his own fatigue—dawn was making it easier to prowl the ruins of the buried station in search of anything to help make sense of it all.

How many times had he seen Ling vanish down a ramp into these secret precincts, wondering what lay inside? Now it was a blackened hell.

I aided the zealots, he recalled. I gave them copies of my reports. I knew they were going to do something.

But I never figured anything as brutal as this.

Neither had the star-gods, who clearly never guessed that angry primitives might still know how to make things go boom.

They never asked the right questions.

“I tell you something’s happening!” Harullen shouted again, making no effort at originality. “The sages are in motion—toward the aliens!”

Lark glanced over at Uthen and sighed. “I guess he means it, this time.”

His friend had been silent for some time, standing over the same spot. When Uthen replied, it was in a low voice that barely disturbed the ash beneath his feet.

“Lark, would you please come look at this?”

Lark knew that tone from past field trips, exploring for evidence of Jijo’s complex living past. He picked his way toward the qheuen, slipping gingerly between torn metal braces and seared, buckled plating, lifting his feet to kick up as little of the nasty dust-ash as possible.

“What is it? Did you find something?”

“I-am not sure.” Uthen lapsed into GalSix. “It seems I have seen this before. This symbol. This representation. Perhaps you can confirm?”

Lark bent alongside his friend, peering into a recess where the rising sun had yet to shine. There he saw a jumble of rectangular lozenges, each thick as his hand and twice as long. Uthen had scraped aside some half-melted machinery in order to reveal the pile. One slab lay near enough to make out a symbol, etched across its dark brown surface.

A double spiral with a bar through it. Now where have I seen—

Lark’s hand reached where Uthen could not, stroked the rectangle, then picked it up. It felt incredibly light, though now it dawned on him that it could be the weightiest thing he had ever touched.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked, turning it in the light.

Uthen plucked the slab from his hand, holding it in a trembling claw.

“How can I not be?” the qheuenish scholar replied. “Even half-animal, reverted primitives should recognize the glyph of the Great Galactic Library.”

The “evidence” lay strewn across the trampled grass. Ro-kenn’s piercing eyes surveyed a tangle of wires and glossy spheroids that the zealots had recently brought down from the Valley of the Egg. Clogs of dirt still clung to a necklace of strange objects, from where it had till lately been buried, next to the holiest site on Jijo.

Two clusters of onlookers formed semicircles, one backing the assembled sages, the other reverently standing behind the star-god. Many in the second group had been patients at the forayers’ clinic or believed their claims of righteousness above all law. Among the humans on that side, faith in their rediscovered patrons seemed to glow, depicted by Lark’s new rewq as intense red fire, surrounding their faces.

Gone was the Rothen’s prior mien of furious wrath. Ro-kenn’s humanoid features once more conveyed charismatic poise, even serene indulgence. He spent another dura looking over the jumble of parts, then spoke in prim Galactic Seven.

“I see nothing here of interest. Why do you show me these things?”

Lark expected the young urrish radical—leader of the rebel zealots—to answer, as both plaintiff and defendant, justifying her group’s violence by diverting blame to the aliens. But the young dissenter kept well back, huddling with a crowd of humans and urs, consulting texts.

The hoonish sage, Phwhoon-dau, stepped forward to confront the Rothen emissary.

“We seek to ascertain whether these tools of high acumen are yours. Tools which some of our children found, within the last turning of Jijo’s axis. Tools which someone buried surreptitiously, in close contact with our beloved Egg.”

Lark watched Ling’s reaction. Since he already knew her pretty well, no rewq was needed to translate her shock of recognition. Nor the embarrassment that followed as she worked things out in her own head. That’s all I needed to know, Lark thought.

Ro-kenn seemed nonchalant. “I can only guess that some among you natives placed it there—as your foolish rebels placed explosives under our station.”

Now Ling’s reaction was to blink in surprise. She didn’t expect to hear him lie. At least not so baldly, with no time to prepare a smooth performance.

Glancing to one side, the star-woman noticed Lark’s scrutiny and quickly looked away. Lark wasn’t proud of the satisfaction he felt, over the reversal of their moral positions. Now it was her turn to feel ashamed.

“Use your instrumentalities,” Phwhoon-dau urged the tall Rothen. “Analyze these implements. You will find the technology far beyond anything we Six can now produce.”

Ro-kenn shrugged with an elegant roll of his shoulders. “Perhaps they were left by the Buyur.”

“In that place?” Phwhoon-dau boomed amusement, as if Ro-kenn had made a good-natured jest. “Only a century ago, that entire valley glowed white-hot from the Egg’s passage to the upper world. These tendrils would not have survived.”

The crowd murmured.

Lark felt a tug on his sleeve. He glanced around to see that a short blond figure—Bloor the Portraitist—had slinked up behind, bearing a box camera and tripod.

“Let me shoot under your arm!” the photographer whispered urgently.

Lark felt a frisson of panic. Was Bloor mad? Trying this in the open, with the robots at their wariest? Even if Lark’s body shielded that angle, people on both sides would see. Despite Phwhoon-dau’s masterful performance, could they count on loyalty from everyone in the milling throng?

With a helpless sigh, he lifted his left arm enough for Bloor to aim at the confrontation on the Glade.

“Then I have no other explanation for these items, “ Ro-kenn answered, referring to the snarled mass of gear. “You are welcome to speculate to the extent that you are able, until our ship arrives.”

Ignoring the implied threat, the hoonish sage went on with an air of calm reason that made the Rothen seem edgy by comparison.

“Is speculation required? It’s been asserted that several sets of eyes observed your robots, on a recent foggy night, deliberately implanting these devices underneath our sacred stone—“

“Impossible!” Ro-kenn burst forth, temper once more flaring. “No life-forms were in any position to witness on that night. Careful scans beforehand showed no sentient beings within range when—“

The Rothen emissary trailed off midsentence, while onlookers stared, awed and amazed that an urbane star-god could be suckered by so obvious a ploy.

He must be awfully accustomed to getting his way, Lark thought, to fall for such a simple trap.

Then a strange notion occurred to him. Many Earthly cultures, from ancient Greece and India to High-California, depicted their gods as spoiled, temperamental adolescents.

Could that be racial memory? Maybe these guys really are our long-lost patrons, after all.

“Thank you for the correction,” Phwhoon-dau answered, with a graceful bow. “I only said it was so asserted. I shall rebuke those who suggested it. We will take your word that there were no witnesses on the night that you now admit your robots planted these strange, alien devices next to our Egg. Shall we leave that aspect now and proceed to why they were planted in the first place?”

Ro-kenn appeared to be chewing on his mistake, working his jaw like a human grinding his teeth. Lark’s rewq showed a discolored swath that seemed to ripple across the upper part of the Rothen’s face. Meanwhile Bloor whispered contentment as he took another picture, pushing a cover slide over the exposed plate. Go away, Lark silently urged the little man, to no avail.

“I see no further purpose to be served by this session,” the alien finally announced. He turned and began to move away, only to stop when confronted by the gaping crater where his station once lay, recalling that he had no place to go.

Of course Ro-kenn could climb aboard a robot and simply fly off. But till either Kunn’s aircraft or the star-ship arrived, there was only wilderness to flee to. No shelter beyond this glade filled with inconvenient questions.

A shout rose up from the cluster of urs and men over to the left. The huddle broke, revealing a beaming Lester Cambel, burdened by several large-format volumes as he hurried forward. “I think we found it!” he announced, kneeling with several assistants beside one of the spheroidal knobs that ran along the tangled mass of cable. While an aide pried at the box, Lester explained.

“Naturally, none of us has the slightest idea how this device works, but Galactic tech is so refined and simplified, after a billion years, that most machines are supposed to be pretty easy to use. After all, if humans could pilot a creaky, fifth-hand starship all the way to Jijo, the things must be darn near idiot-proof!”

The self-deprecating jest drew laughter from both sides of the crowd. Pressing close to watch, the throng left no easy or dignified avenue for Ro-kenn or his servants to escape.

“In this case,” Cambel continued, “we assume the gadget was meant to go off when all the pilgrims were in place near the Egg, at our most impressionable, perhaps as we finished the invocation. A good guess would be either a timer or some remote control trigger, possibly a radio signal.”

An aide succeeded in getting the cover off, with an audible pop. “Now let’s see if we can find something like the standard manual override switch they show on page fifteen-twelve,” Lester said, crouching closer, consulting one of the open volumes.

Ro-kenn stared at the book, filled with crisp diagrams, as if he had just seen something deadly creep out of his own bedsheets. Lark noticed that Ling was looking at him once again. This time, her expression seemed to say, What have you been hiding from me?

Although she lacked a rewq, Lark figured a wry smile would convey his reply.

You assume too much, my dear. It blinded you, preventing you from asking sound questions. It also made you patronizing, when we might have been friends.

All right, maybe that was too complex to transmit by facial expression alone. Perhaps what his smirk actually said was-Such nerve! You accuse me of hiding things?

“I protest!” interjected the male sky-human, Rann, towering over all but the hoon and a few traeki as he stepped forward. “You have no right to meddle with the property of others!”

Phwhoon-dau crooned softly, “Hr-r-then you avow ownership of this invasive thing, placed without permission in our most sacred site?”

Rann blinked. Clearly he hated the present weakness of the aliens’ position, having to fence words with savages. Confused, the tall sky-human turned to Ro-kenn for guidance. While they conferred, heads close together, Lester Cambel continued.

“The purpose of this contraption was what had us stymied for a while. Fortunately, I’d already been doing some research on Galactic technologies, so the texts were somewhat familiar. Finally, I found it listed under psi emitters!”

“Here’s the switch, sir,” an aide declared. “Ready when you are.”

Lester Cambel stood up, raising both hands.

“People! This is a first and final warning. We’ve no idea what we’re about to set off. I assume nothing fatal, since our guests aren’t flying out of here at top speed.

However, since we’ve no time for careful experiments, I advise you to at least step back. The cautious among you may retreat some greater distance, perhaps twice the diameter of the Egg. I’ll count down from ten.”

Uthen wanted to stay and watch, Lark thought. But I made him go hide those library disk-things we found.

Did I actually do him a favor?

Cambel drew a deep breath.

“Ten!”

“Nine!”

“Eight!”

Lark had never seen a g’Kek outrace an urs before. But as the crowd dissolved, some of the Six showed surprising haste to depart. Others remained, tethered by curiosity.

Courage is one trait that binds any true union, he thought with some pride.

“Seven!”

“Six!”

Now Ro-kenn himself glided forward. “I avow ownership of this device, which-“

“Five!”

“Four!”

Ro-kenn hurried, speaking louder to be heard past the tumult. “-which consists merely of instrumentation, innocently emplaced- “

“Three!”

“Two!”

Faster, in frantic tones.
 
“—to study patterns cast by your revered and sacred- “ ‘
   
“One!”

“Now!”

Some humans instinctively brought their hands up to their ears, crouching and squinting as if to protect their eyes against an expected flash. Urs pressed arms over pouches. g’Keks drew in their eyes, while qheuens and traeki squat-hugged the ground. Rewq cringed, fleeing the intense emotions pouring from their hosts. Whatever a “psi emitter” might be, everyone was about to find out.

Lark tried to ignore instinct, taking his cue instead from Ling. Her response to the countdown seemed a queer mix of anger and curiosity. She clasped both hands together, turning to meet his eyes at the very moment Cambel’s aide stroked a hidden switch.

Asx

CONFUSION BRIMS OUR CENTRAL CORE, OOZING through the joint-seals that bind us/we/i/me, seeping bewilderment down our outer curves, like sap from a wounded tree.

This voice, this rhythmic recitation, can it be what we know it not to be?

The Egg’s patternings have stroked us so many ways. This ruction has familiar elements, like the Sacred One’s way of singing. . . .