Infinity's Shore (36 page)

Or else, without her, we'd all be safe at home.

Either way, there was no escaping her participation.

Ifni, capricious goddess of chance.

Hannes

I
T WAS HARD TO GET ANYTHING DONE. DR. BASKIN kept stripping away members of his engine-room gang, assigning them other tasks.

He groused. “It's too soon to give up on
Streaker
, I tell you!”

“I'm not giving her up quite yet,” Gillian answered. “But with that carbonite coating weighing the hull down—”

“We've been able to analyze the stuff, at last. It seems the stellar wind blowing off Izmunuti wasn't just atomic or molecular carbon, but a kind of star soot made up of tubes, coils, spheres, and such.”

Gillian nodded, as if she had expected this.

“
Buckyballs.
Or in GalTwo—” Pursed lips let out a clicking trill that meant
container home for individual atoms.
“I did some research in the captured Library cube. It seems an interlaced mesh of these microshapes can become superconducting, carrying away vast amounts of heat. You're not going to peel it off easily with any of the tools we have.”

“There could be advantages to such stuff.”

“The Library says just a few clans have managed to synthesize the material. But what good is it, if it makes the hull heavy and seals our weapons ports so we can't fight?”

Suessi argued that
her
alternative was hardly any better. True, a great heap of ancient starships surrounded them, and they had reactivated the engines of a few. But that was a far cry from finding a fit replacement for the Snark-class survey craft that had served this crew so well.

These are ships the Buyur didn't think worth taking with them, when they evacuated this system!

Above all, how were dolphins supposed to operate a starship that had been built back when humans were learning to chip tools out of flint?
Streaker
was a marvel of clever compromises, redesigned so beings lacking legs or arms could move about and get their jobs done—either
striding in six-legged walker units, or by swimming through broad flooded chambers.

Dolphins are crackerjack pilots and specialists. Someday lots of Galactic clans may hire one or two at a time, offering them special facilities as pampered professionals. But few races will ever want a ship like
Streaker,
with all the hassles involved.

Gillian was insistent.

“We've adapted before. Surely some of these old ships have designs we might use.”

Before the meeting broke up, he offered one last objection.

“You know, all this fiddling with other engines, as well as our own, may let a trace signal slip out, even through all the water above us.”

“I know, Hannes.” Her eyes were grim. “But speed is crucial now. Our pursuers already know roughly where we are. They may be otherwise occupied for the moment, but they'll be coming soon. We must prepare to move
Streaker
to another hiding place, or else evacuate to a different ship altogether.”

So, with resignation, Suessi juggled staff assignments, stopped work on the hull, and augmented teams sent out to alien wrecks—a task that was both hazardous and fascinating at the same time. Many of the abandoned derelicts seemed more valuable than ships impoverished Earth had purchased through used vessel traders. Under other circumstances, this Midden pile might have been a terrific find.

“Under other circumstances,” he muttered. “We'd never have come here in the first place.”

Emerson

W
HAT A WONDERFUL PLACE!

Ever since glorious sunset, he had serenaded the stars and the growling volcano … then a crescent of, sparkling reflections on the face of the largest moon. Dead cities, abandoned in vacuum long ago.

Now Emerson turns east toward a new day. Immersed in warm fatigue, standing on heights protecting the narrow meadows of Xi, he confronts the raucous invasion of dawn.

Alone.

Even the horse-riding women keep inside their shelters at daybreak, a time when glancing beams from the swollen sun sweep all the colors abandoned by night, pushing them ahead like an overwhelming tide. A wave of speckled light. Bitter-sharp, like shards of broken glass.

His former self might have found it too painful to endure—that logical engineer who always knew what was real, and how to classify it. The clever Emerson, so good at fixing broken things.
That
one might have quailed before the onslaught. A befuddling tempest of hurtful rays.

But now that seems as nothing compared with his other agonies, since crashing on this world. In contrast to having part of his brain ripped out, for instance, the light storm could hardly even be called irritating. It feels more like the claws of fifty mewling kittens, setting his callused skin a-prickle with countless pinpoint scratches.

Emerson spreads his arms wide, opening himself to the enchanted land, whose colors slice through roadblocks in his mind, incinerating barriers, releasing from numb imprisonment a spasm of pent-up images.

Banded canyons shimmer under layer after lustrous layer of strange images. Explosions in space. Half-drowned worlds where bulbous islets glimmer like metal mush-rooms. A
house
made of ice that stretches all the way around a glowing red star, turning the sun's wan glow into a hearth's tamed fire.

These and countless other sights waver before him. Each clamors for attention, pretending to be a sincere reflection of the past. But most images are illusions, he knows.

A phalanx of armored damsels brandishes whips of forked lightning against fire-breathing dragons, whose wounds bleed rainbows across the desert floor. Though intrigued, he dismisses such scenes, collaborating with his rewq to edit out the irrelevant, the fantastic, the easy.

What does that leave?

A lot, it seems.

From one nearby lava field, crystal particles reflect tart sunbursts that his eye makes out as vast, distant
explosions.
All sense of scale vanishes as mighty ships die in furious battle before him. Squadrons rip each other. Fleet formations are scythed by moving folds of tortured space.

True!

He knows this to be a real memory. Unforgettable. Too exquisitely horrible to let go, this side of death.

So why was it lost?

Emerson labors to fashion words, using their rare power to lock the recollection back where it belongs.

I … saw … this … happen.

I … was … there.

He turns for more. Over in
that
direction, amid a simple boulder field, lay a galactic spiral, seen from above the
swirling wheel. Viewed from a
shallow place
where few spatial tides ever churn. Mysteries lay in that place, undisturbed by waves of time.

Until someone finally came along, with more curiosity than sense, intruding on the tomblike stillness.

Someone …?

He chooses a better word.

 … 
We …

Then, a better word, yet.

 … Streaker!

A slight turn and he sees her, traced among the stony layers of a nearby mesa. A slender caterpillar shape, studded by the spiky flanges meant to anchor a ship to this universe … a universe hostile to everything
Streaker
stood for. He stares nostalgically at the vessel. Scarred and patched, often by his own hand, the hull's beauty could only be seen by those who loved her.

 … loved her …

Words have power to shift the mind. He scans the horizon, this time for a human face. One he adored, without hope of anything but friendship in return. But her image isn't found in the dazzling landscape.

Emerson sighs. For now, it is enough to sort through his rediscoveries. A single correlation proves especially useful. If it
hurts
, then it must be a real memory.

What could that fact mean?

The question, all by itself, seems to make his skull crack with pain!

Could that be the intent? To
prevent
him from remembering?

Stabbing sensations assail him. That question is worse! It must never be asked!

Emerson clutches his head as the point is driven home with hammerlike blows.

Never; ever, ever …

Rocking back, he lets out a howl. He bays like a wounded animal, sending ululations over rocky outcrops. The sound plummets like a stunned bird … then catches itself just short of crashing.

In a steep, swooping turn, it comes streaking back … as
laughter!

Emerson bellows.

He roars contempt.

He brays rebellious joy.

Through streaming tears, he
asks
the question and glories in the answer, knowing at last that he is no coward. His amnesia is no hysterical retreat. No quailing from traumas of the past.

What happened to his mind was no accident.

Hot lead seems to pour down his spine as programmed inhibitions fight back. Emerson's heart pounds, threatening to burst his chest. Yet he scarcely notices, facing the truth head-on, with a kind of brutal elation.

Somebody … did … this.…

Before him, looming from the fractured mesa, comes an image of cold eyes. Pale and milky. Mysterious, ancient, deceitful. It might have been terrifying—to someone with anything left to lose.

Somebody … did … this … to … me!

With fists clenched and cheeks awash, Emerson sees the colors melt as his eyes fill with liquid pain. But that does not matter anymore.

Not what he
sees.

Only what he knows.

The Stranger casts a single cry, merging with the timeless hills.

A shout of defiance.

Ewasx