Brin, David - Uplift 5 - Infinity's Shore

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Sfreahers

[Five Jaduras Earlier]

* What strange fate brought me,

* Fleeing maelstroms of winter,

* Past five galaxies? *

* Only to find refuge,

* On a forlorn planet (nude!)

* In laminar luxury! *

SO HE THOUGHT WHILE PERFORMING SWOOPING

rolls, propelling his sleek gray body with exhilarated tail

strokes, reveling in the caress of water against naked

flesh.

Dappled sunlight threw luminous shafts through crystal

shallows, slanting past mats of floating sea florets. Silvery

native creatures, resembling flat-jawed fish, moved in and

2 0 a v j d B r i n

out of the bright zones, enticing his eye. Kaa squelched the

instinctive urge to give chase.

Maybe later.

For now, he indulged in the liquid texture of water slid-

ing around him, without the greasiness that used to cling

so, back in the oily seas of Oakka, the green-green world,

where soaplike bubbles would erupt from his blowhole

each time he surfaced to breathe. Not that it was worth the

effort to inhale on Oakka. There wasn't enough good air

on that horrid ball to nourish a comatose otter.

This sea also tasted good, not harsh like Kithrup, where

each excursion outside the ship would give you a toxic

dose of hard metals.

In contrast, the water onJijo world felt clean, with a salty

tang reminding Kaa of the gulf stream flowing past the

Florida Academy, during happier days on far-off Earth.

He tried to squint and pretend he was back home, chas-

ing mullet near Key Biscayne, safe from a harsh universe.

But the attempt at make-believe failed. One paramount dif-

ference reminded him this was an alien world.

Sound.

—a beating of tides rising up the continental shelf—a

complex rhythm tugged by three moons, not one.

—an echo of waves, breaking on a shore whose abrasive

sand had a strange, sharp texture. •

—an occasional distant groaning that seemed to rise out

of the ocean floor itself.

—the return vibrations of his own sonar clicks, tracing

schools of fishlike creatures, moving their fins in unfamiliar

ways.

—above all, the engine hum just behind him ... a ca-

dence of machinery that had filled Kaa's days and nights

for five long years.

And now, another clicking, groaning sound. The clipped

poetry of duty.

" Relent, Kaa, tell us,

* In exploratory prose,

* Is it safe to come? *

infiniru's Shore 3

The voice chased Kaa like a fluttering, sonic conscience.

Reluctantly, he swerved around to face the submarine

Hikahi, improvised from ancient parts found strewn across

this planet's deep seafloor—a makeshift contraption that

suited a crew of misfit fugitives. Clamshell doors closed

ponderously, like the jaws of a huge carnivore, cycling to

let others emerge in his wake ... if he gave the all clear.

Kaa sent his Trinary reply, amplified by a saser unit

plugged into his skull, behind his left eye.

* If water were all

* We might be in heaven now.

* But wait! I'll check above! *

His lungs were already making demands, so he obeyed

instinct, flicking an upward spiral toward the glistening

surface. Ready or not, Jijo, here I come!

He loved piercing the tense boundary of sky and sea,

flying weightless for an instant, then broaching with a

splash and spume of exhalation. Still, he hesitated before

inhaling. Instruments predicted an Earthlike atmosphere,

yet he felt a nervous tremor drawing breath.

If anything, the air tasted better than the water! Kaa

whirled, thrashing his tail in exuberance, glad Lieutenant

Tsh't had let him volunteer for this—to be the first dolphin,

the first Earthling, ever to swim this sweet, foreign sea.

Then his eye stroked a jagged, gray-brown line, span-

ning one horizon, very close.

The shore.

Mountains.

He stopped his gyre to stare at the nearby continent—

inhabited, they now knew. But by whom?

There was not supposed to be any sapient life on Jijo.

Maybe they're just hiding here, the way we are, from a

hostile cosmos.

That was one theory.

At least they chose a pleasant world, he added, relishing

the air, the water, and gorgeous ranks of cumulus hovering

over a giant mountain. / wonder if the fish are good to eat.

* As we await you,

* Chafing in this cramped airlock,

* Should we play pinochle? *

Kaa winced at the lieutenant's sarcasm. Hurriedly, he sent

back pulsed waves.

* Fortune smiles again,

* On our weary band of knaves.

* Welcome, friends, to Ifni's Shore. *

It might seem presumptuous to invoke the goddess of

chance and destiny, capricious Ifni, who always seemed

ready to plague Streaker's company with one more sur-

prise. Another unexpected calamity, or miraculous escape.

But Kaa had always felt an affinity with the informal patron

deity of spacers. There might be better pilots than himself

in the Terragens Survey Service, but none with a deeper

respect for fortuity. Hadn't his own nickname been

"Lucky"?

Until recently, that is.

From below, he heard the grumble of clamshell doors

reopening. Soon Tsh't and others would join him in this

first examination ofJijo's surface—a world they heretofore

saw only briefly from orbit, then from the deepest, coldest

pit in all its seas. Soon, his companions would arrive, but

for a few moments more he had it to himself—silken wa-

ter, tidal rhythms, fragrant air, the sky and clouds. . . .

His tail swished, lifting him higher as he peered. Those

aren 't normal clouds, he realized, staring at a great moun-

tain dominating the eastern horizon, whose peak wore

shrouds of billowing white. The lens implanted in his right

eye dialed through a spectral scan, sending readings to his

optic nerve—revealing steam, carbon oxides, and a flicker

of molten heat.

A volcano, Kaa realized, and the reminder sent his ebul-

lience down a notch. This was a busy part of the planet,

geologically speaking. The same forces that made it a use-

ful hiding place also kept it dangerous.

That must be where the groaning comes from, he pon-

1 n f i n i r u ' s Shore 5

dered. Seismic activity. An interaction of miniquakes and

crustal gas discharges with the thin overlaying film of sea.

Another flicker caught his notice, in roughly the same

direction, but much closer—a pale swelling that might also

have been a cloud, except for the way it moved, flapping

like a bird's wing, then bulging with eagerness to race the

wind.

A sail, he discerned. Kaa watched it jibe across the stiff-

ening breeze—a two-masted schooner, graceful in motion,

achingly familiar from the Caribbean seas of home.

Its bow split the water, spreading a wake that any dol-

phin might love to ride.

The zoom lens clarified, magnified, until he made out

fuzzy bipedal forms, hauling ropes and bustling around on

deck, like any gang of human sailors.

. . . Only these weren't human beings. Kaa glimpsed

scaly backs, culminating in a backbone of sharp spines.

Swathes of white fur covered the legs, and froglike mem-

branes pulsated below broad chins as the ship's company

sang a low, rumbling work chant that Kaa could dimly

make out, even from here.

He felt a chill of unhappy recognition.

Hoons! What in all Five Galaxies are they doing here?

Kaa heard a rustle of fluke strokes—Tsh't and others ris-

ing to join him. Now he must report that enemies of Earth

dwelled here.

Kaa realized grimly—this news wasn't going to help him

win back his nickname anytime soon.

She came to mind again, the capricious goddess of un-

certain destiny. And Kaa's own Trinary phrase came back

to him, as if reflected and reconverged by the surrounding

alien waters.

* Welcome . . .

* Welcome to Ifni's Shore . . . *

Sooners

TkeSt ranger

EXISTENCE SEEMS LIKE WANDERING THROUGH A

vast chaotic house. One that has been torn by quakes

and fire, and is now filled with bitter, inexplicable fog.

Whenever he manages to pry open a door, exposing some

small corner of the past, each revelation comes at the price

of sharp waves of agony.

In time, he learns not to be swayed by the pain. Rather,

each ache and sting serves as a marker, a signpost, con-

firming that he must be on the right path.

His arrival on this world—plummeting through a scorched

sky—should have ended with merciful blankness. What

luck instead hurled his blazing body from the pyre to

quench in a fetid swamp?

Peculiar luck.

Since then, he has grown intimate with all kinds of suf-

fering, from crass pangs to subtle stings. In cataloging

them, he grows learned in the many ways there are to hurt.

Those earliest agonies, right after the crash, had

In f i n i r u's Shore 7

screeched coarsely from wounds and scalding burns—a

gale of such fierce torment that he barely noticed when a

motley crew of local savages rowed out to him in a make-

shift boat, like sinners dragging a fallen angel out of the

boggy fen. Saving him from drowning, only to face more

damnations.

Beings who insisted that he fight for his broken life,

when it would have been so much easier just to let go.

Later, as his more blatant injuries healed or scarred,

other types of anguish took up the symphony of pain.

Afflictions of the mind.

Holes gape across his life, vast blank zones, lightless and

empty, where missing memories must once have spanned

megaparsecs and life years. Each gap feels chilled beyond

numbness—a raw vacancy more frustrating than an itch

that can't be scratched.

Ever since he began wandering this singular world, he

has probed the darkness within. Optimistically, he clutches

a few small trophies from the struggle.

Jijo is one of them.

He rolls the word in his mind—the name of this planet

where six castaway races band together in feral truce, a

mixed culture unlike any other beneath the myriad stars.

A second word comes more easily with repeated use—

Sara. She who nursed him from near death in her tree

house overlooking a rustic water mill . . . who calmed

the fluxing panic when he first woke to see pincers, claws,

and mucusy ring stacks—the physiques of boons, traekis,

qheuens, and others sharing this rude outcast existence.

He knows more words, such as Kurt and Prity . . .

friends he now trusts almost as much as Sara. It feels good

to think their names, the slick way all words used to come,

in the days before his mangling.

One recent prize he is especially proud of.

Emerson . . .

It is his own name, for so long beyond reach. Violent

shocks had jarred it free, less than a day ago—shortly after

he provoked a band of human rebels to betray their urrish

allies in a slashing knife fight that made a space battle seem

8 David B r i n

antiseptic by comparison. That bloody frenzy ended with

an explosive blast, shattering the grubby caravan tent,

spearing light past Emerson's closed lids, overwhelming

the guardians of reason.

And then, amid the dazzling rays, he had briefly

glimpsed ... his captain!

Creideiki . . .

The blinding glow became a luminous foam, whipped

by thrashing flukes. Out of that froth emerged a long gray

form whose bottle snout bared glittering teeth. The sleek

head grinned, despite bearing an awful wound behind its

left eye . . . much like the hurt that robbed Emerson of

speech.

Utterance shapes formed out of scalloped bubbles, in a

language like none spoken byJijo's natives, or by any great

Galactic clan.

* In the turning

of the cycloid,

* Comes a time

to break for surface.

* Time to resume

breathing,

doing.

* To rejoin the

great sea's

dreaming. !

* Time has come

for you my old friend.

* Time to wake

and see what's churning. ... *

Stunned recognition accompanied waves of stinging mis-

ery, worse than any fleshy woe or galling numbness.

Shame had nearly overwhelmed him then. For no injury

short of death could ever excuse his forgetting

Creideiki ...

Terra . . . '

The dolphins . . .

Hannes . . .

Infiniru's Shore 9

Gillian . . .

How could they have slipped his mind during the

months he wandered this barbarian world, by boat, barge,

and caravan?

Guilt might have engulfed him during that instant of rec-

ollection . . . except that his new friends urgently needed

him to act, to seize the brief advantage offered by the ex-

plosion, to overcome their captors and take them prisoner.

As dusk fell across the shredded tent and torn bodies, he

had helped Sara and Kurt tie up their surviving foes—both

urrish and human—although Sara seemed to think their

reprieve temporary.

More fanatic reinforcements were expected soon.

Emerson knew what the rebels wanted. They wanted

him. It was no secret that he came from the stars. The

rebels would trade him to sky hunters, hoping to exchange

his battered carcass for guaranteed survival.

As if anything could save Jijo's castaway races, now that

the Five Galaxies had found them.

Huddled round a wan fire, lacking any shelter but tent

rags, Sara and the others watched as terrifying portents

crossed bitter-cold constellations.

First came a mighty titan of space, growling as it plunged

toward nearby mountains, bent on awful vengeance.

Later, following the very same path, there came a second

behemoth, this one so enormous that Jijo's pull seemed to

lighten as it passed overhead, filling everyone with deep

foreboding.

Not long after that, golden lightning flickered amid the

mountain peaks—a bickering of giants. But Emerson did

not care who won. He could tell that neither vessel was his

ship, the home in space he yearned for . . . and prayed

he would never see again.

With luck, Streaker was far away from this doomed

world, bearing in its hold a trove of ancient mysteries—

perhaps the key to a new galactic era.

Had not all his sacrifices been aimed at helping her es-

cape?

After the leviathans passed, there remained only stars

and a chill wind, blowing through the dry steppe grass,

while Emerson went off searching for the caravan's scat-

v i d B r i n

Infiniru's Shore

tered pack animals. With donkeys, his friends just might

yet escape before more fanatics arrived. . . .

Then came a rumbling noise, jarring the ground beneath

his feet. A rhythmic cadence that seemed to go—

taranta taranta

The galloping racket could only be urrish hoofbeats, the I

expected rebel reinforcements, come to make them prison-

ers once again.

Only, miraculously, the darkness instead poured forth

allies—unexpected rescuers, both urrish and human—who

brought with them astonishing beasts. ':

Horses. \

Saddled horses, clearly as much a surprise to Sara as they |

were to him. Emerson had thought the creatures were ex- i

tinct on this world, yet here they were, emerging from the "•

night as if from a dream. \

So began the next phase of his odyssey. Riding south-1

ward, fleeing the shadow of these vengeful ships, hurrying \

toward the outline of an uneasy volcano.

Now he wonders within his battered brain—is there a

plan? A destination?

Old Kurt apparently has faith in these surprising saviors,

but there must be more to it than that.

Emerson is tired of just running away.

He would much rather be running toward.

In time Emerson recalls how to ease along with the sway

of the saddle. And as sunrise lifts dew off fan-fringed trees

near a riverbank, swarms of bright bugs whir through the

slanted light, dancing as they pollinate a field of purple

blooms. When Sara glances back from her own steed, shar-

ing a rare smile, his pangs seem to matter less. Even fear of

those terrible starships, splitting the sky with their angry

engine arrogance, cannot erase a growing elation as the

fugitive band gallops on to dangers yet unknown.

Emerson cannot help himself. It is his nature to seize any

possible excuse for hope. As the horses pound Jijo's an-

cient turf, their cadence draws him down a thread of famil-

iarity, recalling rhythmic music quite apart from the

persistent dirge of woe.

tarantara, tarantara

Under insistent stroking by that throbbing sound, some-

thing abruptly clicks inside. His body reacts involuntarily

as unexpected words surge from some dammed-up corner

of his brain, attended by a melody that stirs the heart.

Lyrics pour reflexively, an undivided stream, through lungs

and throat before he even knows 'that he is singing.

"Though in body and in mind,

We are timidly inclined,

And anything but blind,

To the danger that's behind—

{tarantara, tarantara]

{tarantara!]

{tarantara, tarantara]

{tarantara!]"

While his steed bounds ahead, new aches join the back-

ground music of his life—raw, chafed thighs and a bruised

spine that jars with each pounding hoofbeat.

taranta, taranta, taranta-tara

Guilt nags him with a sense of duties unfulfilled, and he

grieves over the likely fate of his new friends on Jijo, now

that their hidden colony has been discovered.

And yet . . .

{tarantara, tarantara]

{tarantara!]

His friends grin—this has happened before.

"Yet, when the danger's near,

We manage to appear,

As insensible to fear,

As anybody here,

As an-y-bo-dy here!"

Sara laughs, joining the refrain, and even the dour urrish

escorts stretch their long necks to lisp along.

12 David B r i n

"Yet, when the danger's near,

We manage to appear,

As insensible to fear,

As anybody here,

As anybody here!"

{tarantara, tarantara)

{tarantara!}"

m ONE

I EACH OF THE SOONER RACES making up

i the Commons ot JiJo tells (ts own unique

; story/ passed down irom generation to gener-

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摘要：

Sfreahers[FiveJadurasEarlier]aa*Whatstrangefatebroughtme,*Fleeingmaelstromsofwinter,*Pastfivegalaxies?**Onlytofindrefuge,*Onaforlornplanet(nude!)*Inlaminarluxury!*SOHETHOUGHTWHILEPERFORMINGSWOOPINGrolls,propellinghissleekgraybodywithexhilaratedtailstrokes,revelinginthecaressofwateragainstnakedflesh....

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