Infinity's Shore (25 page)

T
HE ROBOT PROVED USEFUL AT HEAPING DRIFT-wood onto the seaside shoulder of a high dune overlooking the Rift. Without rest or pause, it dumped a load then scurried for more, in whatever direction Rety indicated with an outstretched arm. The Danik machine
seemed willing to obey once more—so long as her orders aimed toward a reunion with Kunn.

Such single-minded devotion to its master reminded Dwer of Earth stories about dogs—tales his mother read aloud when he was small. It struck him odd that the
Tabernacle
colonists brought horses, donkeys, and chimps, but no canines.

Lark or Sara might know why.

That was Dwer's habitual thought, encountering something he didn't understand. Only now it brought a pang, knowing he might never see his brother and sister again.

Maybe Kunn won't kill me outright. He might bring me home in chains, instead, before the Rothens wipe out the Six Races to cover their tracks.

That was the terrible fate the High Sages foresaw for Jijo's fallen settlers, and Dwer figured they ought to know. He recalled Lena Strong musing about what means the aliens might use to perform their genocide. With gruesome relish, Lena kept topping herself during the long hike east from the Rimmer Range. Would the criminal star gods wash the Slope with fire, scouring it from the glaciers to the sea? Would they melt the ice caps and bring an end by drowning? Her morbid speculations were like a fifth companion as Dwer guided two husky women and a lesser sage past a thousand leagues of poison grass all the way to the Gray Hills, in a forlorn bid to safeguard a fragment of human civilization on Jijo.

Dwer had last glimpsed Jenin, Lena, and Danel during the brief fight near the huts of Rety's home clan. This same robot cut poor Danel down with lethal rays, instants before its own weapons pod was destroyed.

Indeed, the battle drone was no dog to be tamed or befriended. Nor would it show gratitude for the times Dwer helped it cross rivers, anchoring its fields to ground through the conduit of his body.

Mudfoot was hardly any better a comrade. The lithe noor beast swiftly grew bored with wood-gathering chores, and scampered off instead to explore the tide line, digging furiously where bubbles revealed a buried hive of sand clamettes. Dwer looked forward to roasting some … until
he saw that Mudfoot was cracking and devouring every one, setting none aside for the humans.

As useful as a noor
, he thought, quashing stings of hunger as he hoisted another bundle of twisty driftwood slabs, digging his moccasins into the sandy slope.

Dwer tried to remain optimistic.

Maybe Kunn will feed me, before attaching the torture machines.

yee
stood proudly atop the growing woodpile. The diminutive urrish male called directions in a piping voice, as if mere humans could never manage a
proper
fire without urrish supervision. Rety's “husband” hissed disappointment over Dwer's poor contribution—as if being wounded, starved, and dragged across half of Jijo in a robot's claws did not excuse much. Dwer ignored yee's reprimand, dumping his load then stepping over to the dune's seaward verge, shading his eyes in search of Kunn's alien scoutship.

He spied it far away, a silvery bead, cruising back and forth above the deep blue waters of the Rift. At intervals, something small and shiny would fall from the slender spacecraft.
An explosive
, Dwer supposed, for about twenty duras after each canister struck the water, the sea abruptly frothed white. Sometimes a sharp, almost musical tone reached shore.

According to Rety, Kunn was trying to force something—or somebody—out of hiding.

I hope you miss
, Dwer thought … though the star pilot might be in a better mood toward prisoners if his hunt went well.

“I wonder what Jass has been tellin' Kunn, all this time,” Rety worried aloud, joining Dwer at the crest. “What if they become pals?”

Dwer waited as the robot dropped another cargo of wood and went off for more. Then he replied.

“Have you changed your mind? We could still try to escape. Take out the robot. Avoid Kunn. Go our own way.”

Rety smiled with surprising warmth.

“Why, Dwer, is that a whatchamacallum? A
proposal?
What'll we do? Make our own little sooner clan, here on the wind barrens? Y'know I already
have
one husban' and I need his p'rmission to add another.”

Actually, he had envisioned trying to make it back to the Gray Hills, where Lena and Jenin could surely use a hand. Or else, if that way seemed too hard and Rety rigidly opposed returning to the tribe she hated, they might strike out west and reach the Vale in a month or two, if the foraging was good along the way.

Rety went on, with more edge in her voice.

“B'sides, I still have my eye set on an apart'mint on Poria Outpost. Like the one Besh an' Ling showed me a picture of, with a
bal-co-ny
, an' a bed made o' cloud stuff. I figure it'll be just a
bit
more comfy than scratchin' out the rest of my days here with savages.”

Dwer shrugged. He hadn't expected her to agree. As a “savage,” he had reasons of his own for going ahead with the bonfire to attract Kunn's attention.

“Well, anyway, I don't suppose the bot would let its guard down a second time.”

“It was lucky to survive doin' it around you once.”

Dwer took a moment to realize she had just paid him a compliment. He cherished its uniqueness, knowing he might never hear another.

The moment of unaccustomed warmth was broken when something massive abruptly streaked by, so fast that its air wake shoved both humans to the ground. Dwer's training as a tracker let him follow the blurry object … to the top of a nearby dune, which erupted in a gushing spray of sand.

It was the
robot
, he realized,
digging
with furious speed. In a matter of heartbeats it made a hole that it then dived within, aiming its remaining sensor lens south and west.

“Come on!” Dwer urged, grabbing his bow and quiver. Rety paused only to snatch up a wailing, hissing yee. Together they fled some distance downslope, where Dwer commenced digging with both hands.

Long ago, Fallon the Scout had taught him—
If you don't know what's happening in a crisis, mimic a creature who does.
If the robot felt a sudden need to hide, Dwer thought it wise to follow.

“Ifni!” Rety muttered. “Now what in hell's he doin?”

She was still standing—staring across the Rift. Dwer yanked her into the hole beside him. Only when sand covered most of their bodies did he poke his head back out to look.

The Danik pilot clearly felt something was wrong. The little craft hurtled toward shore, diving as it came.
Seeking cover
, Dwer thought.
Maybe it can dig underground, like the robot.

Dwer started turning, to spot whatever had Kunn in such a panic, but just then the boat abruptly veered, zigzagging frantically. From its tail bright fireballs arced, like sparks leaping off a burning log. They flared brightly and made the air
waver
in a peculiar way, blurring the escaping vessel's outlines.

From behind Dwer, streaks of fierce light flashed overhead toward the fleeing boat. Most deflected through warped zones, veering off course, but one bypassed the glowing balls, striking target.

At the last moment, Kunn flipped his nimble ship around and fired back at his assailants, launching a return volley just as the unerring missile closed in.

Dwer shoved Rety's head down and closed his eyes.

The detonations were less Jijo-shattering than he expected—a series of dull concussions, almost anticlimactic.

Looking up with sand-covered faces, they witnessed both winner and loser in the brief battle of god chariots.

Kunn's boat had crashed beyond the dune field, plowing into a marshy fen. Smoke boiled from its shattered rear.

Circling above, the victor regarded its victim, glistening with a silvery tint that seemed less metallic than
crystal.
The newcomer was bigger and more powerful looking than the Danik scout.

Kunn never stood a chance.

Rety muttered, her voice barely audible.

“She
said
there'd turn out to be someone stronger.”

Dwer shook his head. “Who?”

“That smelly old urs! Leader o' those four-legged sooners,
back in the village pen. Said the Rothen might be a-feared of somebody bigger. So she was right.”

“
urs
smelly?” yee objected, “you wife should talk?”

Rety stroked the little male as yee stretched his neck, fluting a contented sigh.

The fallen scout boat rocked from a new explosion, this one brightly framing a rectangle in the ship's side. That section fell and two bipeds followed, leaping into the bog, chased by smoke that boiled from the interior. Staggering through murky water, the men leaned on each other to reach a weedy islet, where they fell, exhausted.

The newcomer ship cruised a wary circle, losing altitude. As it turned, Dwer saw a stream of pale smoke pouring from a gash in its other side. A roughness to the engine sound grew steadily worse. Soon, the second cruiser settled down near the first.

Well, it looks like Kunn got in a lick of his own.

Dwer wondered—
Now why should that make me feel glad?

Alvin

B
ONE-RATTLING CONCUSSIONS GREW MORE TERRIFYING with each dura, hammering our undersea prison refuge, sometimes receding for a while, then returning with new force, making it hard for a poor hoon to stand properly on the shuddering floor.

Crutches and a back brace didn't help, nor the little autoscribe, fogging the room with my own projected words. Stumbling through them, I sought some solid object to hold, while the scribe kept adding to the mob of words, recording my frantic curses in Anglic and GalSeven. When I found a wall stanchion, I grabbed for dear life. The clamor of reverberating explosions sounded like a giant, bearing down with massive footsteps, nearer … ever nearer.…

Then, as I feared some popping seam would let in the
dark, heavy waters of the Midden … it abruptly stopped.

Silence was almost as disorienting as the jeekee awful noise. My throat sac blatted uselessly while a hysterical Huphu clawed my shoulders, shredding scales into torglike ribbons.

Fortunately, hoon don't have much talent for panic. Maybe our reactions are too slow, or else we lack imagination.

As I was gathering my wits, the door hatch opened and one of the little amphibian types rushed in, squeaking a few rapid phrases in simplified GalTwo.

A summons. The spinning voice wanted us for another powwow.

“
Perhaps we should share knowledge
,” it said when the four of us (plus Huphu) were assembled.

Huck and Pincer-Tip, able to look all ways at once, shared meaningful glances with Ur-ronn and me. We were pretty rattled by the recent booming and shaking. Even growing up next to a volcano had never prepared us for that!

The voice seemed to come from a space where abstract lines curled in tight patterns, but I knew that was an illusion. The shapes and sounds were projections, sent by some entity whose real body lay elsewhere, beyond the walls. I kept expecting Huphu to dash off and tear away a curtain, exposing a little man in an emerald carnival suit.

Do they think we're rubes, to fall for such a trick?

“Knowledge?” Huck sneered, drawing three eyes back like coiled snakes. “You want to
share
some knowledge? Then tell us what's going on! I thought this place was breaking up! Was it a quake? Are we being sucked into the Midden?”

“
I assure you, that is not happening
,” came the answer in smooth-toned GalSix. “
The source of our mutual concern lies above, not below
.”

“Exflosions,” Ur-ronn muttered, blowing through her snout fringe and stamping a hind hoof. “Those weren't quakes, vut underwater detonations. Clean, sharf, and very
close. I'd say soneone uf there doesn't like you guys very nuch.”