Heaven's Reach (83 page)

Groups arrive daily, flying down to our lodge on the deserted coast, emerging from hovercars to stare at the glistening lagoon, nervous to approach so much water, clearly mindful of rote lessons they learned when young—that oceans are
dangerous.

Of course, any hoonish accountant also knows that risk can be justified, if benefits outweigh the potential cost.

It takes just one trip across the breezy bay to convince most of them.

Some things are worth a little jeopardy.

My father-in-law handles the business details. Twaphu-anuph resigned his position with the Migration Institute to run our little resort, meeting investors, arranging environmental permits, and leasing as much prime coastal land as possible, before other hoons catch on to its real value. He still considers the whole thing kind of crazy, and won't step onto a sailboat himself. But each time the old fellow goes over the accounts I can hear him umbling happily.

His favorite song nowadays?
“What shall we do with a drunken sailor”!

I guess it bothers me a little that neither the haunting images of Melville, nor the Jijoan sea poetry of Phwhoon-dau, have as much effect on Twaphu-anuph as a few bawdy Earthling ditties. The rafters resound
when he gets to the crude part about shaving the drunkard's belly with a rusty razor.

Who can figure?

I'm so busy these days—giving sailing lessons and reinventing nearly everything from scratch—that I have no time for literary pursuits. This journal of mine lies unopened for many jaduras at a stretch. I guess my childhood ambitions to be a famous writer will have to wait. Perhaps for another life.

In fact, I found a better way to change my fellow hoons. To bring them a little happiness. To change their reputation as pinched, dour bookkeepers. And perhaps help make them better neighbors.

Back on Jijo, all the other races
liked
hoons! I hope to see that come true here, as well. Among the star-lanes of civilization.

Anyway, the literary renaissance is already in good hands. Or rather, good
eyestalks.

Huck gave in to half of the role assigned to her.

“Ill have babies,” she announced. “If you guys arrange for hoonish nannies to help raise 'em. After all,
I
was raised by hoons, and look how I came out!”

I would have answered this with a jibe in the old days. But without Pincer and Ur-ronn around, it just isn't the same. Anyway, I'm a married man now. Soon to be a father. It's time I learned some tact.

Huck may be resigned to staying pregnant, since she's the only one who can bring a g'Kek race back to life in the Four Galaxies. But she absolutely refused the other half of the original plan—to live in secrecy and seclusion, hiding from the ancient enemies of her kind.

“Let 'em come!” she shouts, spinning her wheel rims and waving her eyes, as if ready to take on the whole Jophur Empire, and the others who helped extinguish her folk, all at the same time. I don't know. Maybe it's her growing sense of prominence, or the freedom of movement she feels racing along the smooth sidewalks of Hurmuphta City, or the students who attend her salons to study Terran and Jijoan literature. But she hardly
ever comes down to the Cove anymore, and when she does, I just wind up listening to her go on for miduras at a stretch, saying little in response.

Maybe she's right. Perhaps I am turning into just another dull old hoon.

Or else the problem is that g'Keks seldom compromise—least of all Huck. She doesn't understand you've got to meet life halfway. For every change you manage to impose on the universe, you can expect to
be
transformed in return.

I brought gifts from Jijo to my spacefaring cousins—adventure and childhood. They, in turn, taught me what serenity can be found in home, hearth, and low, melodic rituals inherited from a misty past, before our race ever trod the road of Uplift or cared about distant stars.

Those stars are farther than they used to be. Ever since the Five Galaxies abruptly became four, half the transfer points and interspatial paths went unstable, and may remain so for the rest of our lifespans. Untold numbers of ships were lost, trade patterns disrupted, and worlds forced to rely on their own resources.

I guess this means it'll be a while before we get a letter from Ur-ronn. I'm sure she's having the time of her life, somewhere out there, consorting with engineers of all races, up to her long neck in pragmatic problems to solve.

Though urs aren't a sentimental people, I do hope she remembers us from time to time.

All I can say about poor Pincer is that I miss him terribly.

Sometimes you just have to let go.

Death has always been the one great, hopelessly impassable gulf. Now there is another. When Galaxy Four finally ripped loose, it seems every sapient being felt it happen, at some deep, organic level. Even on a planet's surface, it staggered many folks. For days, people walked around kind of numb.

Scientists think the recoil effects must've been far worse in Galaxy Four itself, but we'll never know for sure, because now that entire giant wheel of stars lies beyond reach, forevermore. And with it, Jijo. My parents. Home.

There are consolations. It feels nice to imagine dolphins, swimming with abandon through the silky waters off Wuphon, playing tag with my father's dross ship, then coming near shore each evening to discuss poetry by Loocen's opal light.

Of course the Commons of Six Races can now tear up the Sacred Scrolls and stop hiding their faces from the sky. For the laws of the Civilization of Five Galaxies don't apply to them any longer. Perhaps Jijo's people have already dealt with the Jophur invaders. Or maybe they face even worse crises. Either way, the burden of guilt we inherited from our criminal ancestors can be shrugged off at last. The folk of the Slope aren't trespassers—or
sooners
—anymore.

Jijo is theirs, to care for and defend as best they can.

I have faith they'll come out all right. With a little help from Ifni's dice.

Speaking of strange colonists, I'm now being nagged by a little otterlike creature who wants yet another favor.

Ever since admitting he could talk, Mudfoot has been a real chatterbox, constantly demanding to know if Tymbrimi ships have come to Hurmuphta Port, or if any vessels are bound for the war front in Galaxy Two. Mudfoot's impatience is characteristic. Though he calls himself a
tytlal
, he'll always be a
noor
to me. I prove it by puffing my throat sac and humming a favorite umble. He joins my pet Huphu on my shoulder, and soon they're wrapped up together, dumb to the outside world.

“He will never leave,” Dor-hinuf predicts. Indeed, Mudfoot seems to enjoy his daytime job on the yacht, scrambling among the sails and spars, chewing sourballs and muttering caustic remarks about the landlubber passengers.

Yet, I'm not so sure. A flame burns inside the small creature, like a human with a cause, or an urs with a gadget she wants to try. Mudfoot will never rest till he's taken care of unfinished business.

Knowing what I do about tytlal, it probably has to do with a joke. Something long range and desperately funny … unless you happen to be on the receiving end, that is.

Someday, I figure we'll wake up and find him gone—with all our lanyards tied in knots as his way of saying a fond good-bye.

Mudfoot is reading over my shoulder as I write this, panting and grinning enigmatically, enjoying my speculations without offering a clue.

Enough. Come on, you little rascal. There are customers waiting. The breeze is fine, and companies of clouds march in neat rows past a silver horizon.

Let's go give some stuffy old hoons the thrill of their lives.

g'Keks—the first sooner race to arrive on Jijo, some two thousand years ago. Originally uplifted by the Drooli, the g'Kek have biomagnetically driven wheels and four eyestalks rising from a combined torso-braincase. Due to vendettas by enemies, the g'Kek are extinct throughout the Five Galaxies, except on Jijo.

glavers—the third sooner race to reach Jijo. Uplifted by the Tunuctyur, who were themselves uplifted by the Buyur. Glavers are partly bipedal with opalescent skin and large, bulging eyes. Roughly a meter tall, they have a prehensile forked tail to assist their inefficient hands. Since illegally settling Jijo they devolved to a state of presapience, dropping out of the Commons of Six Races. To some, glavers seem to be shining examples, having shown the way down the Path of Redemption.

hoons—the fifth wave of settlers to arrive on Jijo, bipedal omnivores, with pale scaly skin and woolly white leg fur. Their spines are massive, hollow structures that form part of their circulatory system. Hoons' inflatable throat sacs, originally for mating displays, are now used for “umbling.” Since their Uplift by the Guthatsa, this race have found widespread service as dour, officious bureaucrats in Galactic culture.

humans—the youngest sooner race arrived on Jijo less than three hundred years ago. Human “wolflings” evolved on Earth, apparently achieving technological civilization and crude interstellar travel on their own, or
else assisted by some unknown patron. Passionate debates rage over this issue.

Jophur—semicommunal organisms resembling cones of stacked donuts. Like their traeki cousins, Jophur consist of interchangeable spongy “sap-rings,” each with limited intelligence, but combining to form a sapient community being. Specialized rings give the stack its senses, manipulative organs, and sometimes exotic chemosynthetic abilities. As traeki, this unique species was originally gentle and unaspiring when first uplifted by the Poa. The zealous Oalie later reinvented them by providing “master rings,” transforming the traeki into Jophur, willful and profoundly ambitious beings.

qheuens—the fourth sooner race on Jijo. Originally uplifted by the Zhosh, qheuens are radially symmetric exoskeletal beings with five legs and claws. Their brain is partly contained in a retractable central dome or “cupola.” A rebel band of qheuens settled Jijo attempting to hold on to their ancient caste system, with the gray variety providing royal matriarchs while red and blue types were servants and artisans. Conditions on Jijo—including later human intervention—provoked the breakdown of this system.

Rothen—a mysterious Galactic race. One human group (the dakkins or Daniks) believe the Rothen to be Earth's lost patrons. Rothen are bipeds, somewhat larger than humans but with similar proportions and charismatic features. Believed to be carnivores.

traeki—second illicit settler race to arrive on Jijo. Traeki are a throwback variant of Jophur, who fled the imposition of master rings.

urs—the sixth sooner race on Jijo. Carnivorous, centauroid plains dwellers; they have long, flexible necks, narrow heads, and shoulderless arms ending in dexterous hands. Urs start life as tiny, six-limbed grubs, turned out of their mothers' pouches to fend for themselves.
Any that survive to “childhood” may be accepted into an urrish band. Urrish females reach the size of a large deer, and possess twin brood pouches where they keep diminutive mates, who are smaller than a house cat. A female with prelarval young ejects one or both husbands to make room for the brood. Urs have an aversion to water in its pure form.

allaphor—the metaphorical interpretation made by sentient minds of certain features
in
E-Level hyperspace.

Anglic—a human language created in the Twenty-First century, using many English words, but influenced by other pre-Contact tongues and modified according to new understandings of linguistic theory.

Buyur—former legal tenants of Jijo, froglike appearance, known for wit, foresight, and gene-crafting of specialized animal-tools. Departed when Jijo was declared fallow half a million years ago.

client—a race still working out a period of servitude to the patrons that uplifted it from presapient animal status.

criswell structures—fractal shells designed to surround small red suns, utilizing all light energy. The fractal shape allows maximum possible “window area,” unlike a simple Dyson sphere.

Daniks—a vulgarized term for “Danikenite,” a cultural movement dating from humanity's first contact with Galactic Civilization. Daniks believe Earthlings were uplifted by a Galactic patron race that chose to remain hidden for unknown reasons. An offshoot cult believes Rothen are this race of wise, enigmatic guides.

dura—approximately one-third of a minute.

E-Level hyperspace—a dangerous hyperspatial region in which the distinctions between consciousness and reality become blurred. Self-consistent concepts may exist without a host brain or computer to contain or contemplate them. See allaphor.

Earthclan—a small, eccentric Galactic “family” of sapient races consisting of neo-chimpanzee and neodolphin clients, along with their human patrons.

Egg—see Holy Egg.

Embrace of Tides—a quasi addiction that causes elder races to seek the sensation of gravitational tides, close to very dense stars.

er—genderless pronoun, sometimes used when referring to a traeki.

fen—plural of “fin,” Anglic shorthand for a neo-dolphin.

Fractal World—a place of retirement for races that have nearly transcended the Civilization of the Five Galaxies. (See criswell structures.)

Galactic—a person, race, concept, or technology deriving from the aeons-old Civilization of the Five Galaxies.

Galactic Institutes—vast, powerful academies, purportedly neutral and above interclan politics. The Institutes regulate various aspects of Galactic Civilization. Some are over a billion years old.

Galactic Library—a fantastically capacious collection of knowledge gathered over the course of hundreds of millions of years. Quasi-sapient “Branch Libraries” are found in most Galactic starships and settlements.

Gronin Collapse—historical name given to the last time in Galactic history when the expansion of the universe
caused transfer points between galaxies to “pull apart,” thus fragmenting Galactic society.