Infinity's Shore (100 page)

“
But this way, the Jophur need only get near enough to dispatch special missiles. They can then move on, dragging a string of captives behind them
.”

“Won't all that additional mass slow them down?” asked Kaa, the pilot.

“
Yes, and that works in our favor. Alas, not enough to make up for the advantage this technique gives them
.”

Gillian shook her head. “Too bad we didn't know about this in time to incorporate it in our plans.”

The Niss answered with a defensive tone. “
Great clans can access weaponry files spanning a billion years of Galactic history
.”

Silence reigned on the bridge, until Sara Koolhan spoke, her voice transposed by the amplifying faceplate of her helmet.

“What happens if we get caught by a missile?”

“
It creates a field related to the toporgic cage your Six Races found enveloping the Rothen ship. Of course that one was meters thick, and missiles cannot carry that much pseudo-material. The chief effect of a capture box is to suppress digital cognizance
.”

Sara looked confused, so Gillian explained.

“Digital computers are detectable at a distance, and can be suppressed by field-effect technologies. A principal reason why organic life-forms dominate the Five Galaxies, instead of machines.

“Unfortunately, this means our decoys can be disabled easily, by enclosing them in a thin shell of warped spacetime.”

“
Indeed, it seems an ideal weapon to use against resurrected starships lacking crews. The Jophur may be malign and limited in many ways, but they do not lack for skill or reasoning power
.”

Sara nodded. “You mean the method won't work as well against
Streaker?
”

“Exactly,” Gillian said. “We'll prepare our computers to stand a temporary shutdown without inconvenience—”

“
Speak for yourself
,” the Niss muttered.

“As soon as the capture box surrounds us, organic crew members can use simple tools to dissolve it from the inside. Estimated period of shutdown, Niss?”

The hologram whirled.

“
I wish we had better data from the expedition the sooners sent to the Rothen vessel. They reported major quantum effects from a toporgic layer meters thick.

“
But the Jophur missiles will cast thin bubbles. If prepared, crews should burst us free in mere minutes
.”

A happy sigh escaped Kaa and several dolphins. But then the Niss Machine went on.

“
Unfortunately, when we pop the bubble, it will alert the Jophur which captured vessel contains living prey. After that, our restored freedom will be brief indeed
.”

Dwer

T
HE STUFF FELT STRANGE. IT SEEMED TO REPEL HIS hand slightly, until he got within a couple of centimeters.

Then it
pulled.
Neither effect was overwhelming. He could yank his hand back fairly easily.

He could not quite place why it was eerily familiar.

Dwer walked all the way around his circular cage, stopping on occasion to bend down and examine the starscape beyond. He recognized most of the constellations, except for one patch that had always been invisible from the Slope.
So that's what the southern sky is like.
Undimmed by dust or atmosphere, the entire Dandelion Cluster lay before
him, a vast unwinking spectacle. It would be even more fantastic without the filmy golden barrier in the way.

Thank Ifni for that harrier
, he reminded himself.
There is no air out there.

In one direction lay a tremendously bright star he did not recognize at first.

Then he knew … it was the
sun
, much diminished, and getting smaller all the time.

In the opposite direction lay Izmunuti's fierce eye. The red glare grew more pronounced, until he began to make out an actual disk. Yet he realized it must still be farther away than the sun. Izmunuti was said to be a giant among stars.

In time he noticed other objects. Not stars or nebulae, but gleaming dots. At first they all seemed rather distant. But over the course of a midura, they drew ever closer, rounded shapes that revealed themselves more by their glimmering rims, occulting the constellations, than for any brightness they themselves put out.

One of them—a rippled sphere on the side toward Izmunuti—had to be a starship. It loomed larger with each passing dura. Soon he recognized it as the behemoth that had twice crossed the sky over the Poison Plain, shaking his hapless balloon with each passage.

When Dwer crossed his prison to peer through the membrane on the other side, he saw a line of yellowish globes, even closer than the starship. Their color made him realize,
They're other captives, like me.

Pressing close to the barrier, a tingle coursed his scalp and spine. He felt similarities to when the Danik robot sent its fields through his body, changing his nervous system in permanent, still-uncertain ways.

Well, I was unusual even before that. For instance, no one else I know ever talked to a mulc spider.…

Dwer yanked his head back, recalling at last what this stuff reminded him of. The fluid used by the mad old spider of the mountains—One-of-a-Kind—to seal its victims away, storing its treasured collections against the ravages of time. Months back, a coating of that stuff had nearly smothered him, until he escaped the spider's trap.

A strange sensation came over Dwer. An odd idea.

I could talk to spiders, not just in the mountains, but the one in the swamp, too.

I wonder if that means …

Once again, he put his hand against the golden material, pushing through the initial resistance, pressing his fingertips ahead. The resistance was springy. The material seemed adamant.

But Dwer let his mind slide into the same mode of thinking that used to open him to communion with mulc beings. Always before, he had felt that the spider was the one doing most of the work, but now he realized,
It's my own talent. My own gift. And by the Holy Egg, I think I can—

Something gave way. Resistance against his fingertips suddenly vanished and they slipped through, as if penetrating some greasy fluid.

Abrupt
cold
struck the exposed hand, plus a feeling as if a thousand vampire ants were trying to drink his uncovered veins through straws. Dwer jerked back his arm and it popped out, the fingers red and numb, but mostly undamaged. The membrane flowed back instantly, never leaving an opening to space.

Lucky me
, he thought.

When Dwer next checked, the starship had grown to mammoth size. A great bull beast, bearing down on him rapidly, with a hunter's complacent confidence.

I'm a fish on a line. It's reeling me in!

On the other side, the captive globes bobbed almost touching, like toy balloons gathered along an invisible string. The separating distances diminished rapidly.

Dwer sat and thought for a while.

Then he started gathering supplies.

P
HWHOON-DAU LED THE NEW SEXTET, COMMENC-ing the serenade with a low, rolling umble from his resonating throat sac.

Knife-Bright Insight followed by rubbing a myrliton drum with her agile tongue, augmenting this with syncopated calliope whistles from all five leg vents.

Ur-Jah then joined in, lifting her violus against a fold in her long neck, raising stringed harmonies with the double bow.

After that, by seniority, the new sages for traeki, human, and g'Kek septs added their own contributions, playing for a great ovoid-shaped chunk of wounded stone. The harmonies were rough at first, but soon they melded into the kind of union that focused the mind.

So far, the assembly was unexceptional. Other groups of six had performed for the Egg, over the course of a hundred years. Some of them more gifted and musical.

Only this time things were fundamentally different. It was no group of
six
, after all.

Two other Jijoan types were present.

The first was a glaver.

The devolved race always had an open invitation to participate, but it was centuries since any glaver took part in rituals of the Commons—long before Earthlings arrived, and certainly before the coming of the Egg.

But glavers had been acting strangely for months. And today, a small female came out of the brush and began slogging up the Pilgrimage Path, just behind Phwhoondau, as if she had the same destination in mind. Now her huge eyes glistened as the music swelled, and strange mewling noises emerged from her grimaced mouth. Sounds vaguely reminiscent of words. With her agile forked tail, she waved a crude rattle made of a stretched animal skin, with stones shaking inside.

Not much of an instrument, but after all, her kind were out of practice.

What must it take
, Phwhoon-dau pondered,
to draw them back from the bliss of Redemption's Path?

Lounging on a nearby boulder, an eighth creature paused licking himself now and then to survey the proceedings. The noor-tytlal had two blemishes on an otherwise jet-black pelt—white patches under each eye—adding to its natural expression of skeptical disdain.

The sages were not fooled. It had arrived just after the others, gaunt, bedraggled, and tired, having run hard for several days. Only urgency, not complacent inquisitiveness could have driven a noor to strive so. The creature's mobile ears flicked restlessly, and pale, spiky hairs waved behind the skull, belying its air of feigned nonchalance.

Now the secret was out. Everyone knew these were clients of the legendary Tymbrimi. Moreover, their patrons had given the tytlal a boon as uniquely personal as music.

Phwhoon-dau noticed a soft agitation start to form above the insouciant creature, as if a pocket of air were thickening, and beginning to shimmer. The sages altered their harmony to resonate with the throbbing disturbance, helping it grow as a look of hesitant surprise spread across the sleek, noorlike face.

Reluctant or not, he was now part of the pattern.

Part of the Council of Eight.

In the narrow, resonant confines of the Egg's abode, they made their art, their music.

And soon, another presence began to make itself known.

Ewasx