Infinity's Shore (31 page)

Sergeant Shen kept the party moving too fast to investigate. Lark and his prisoner had been summoned by two of the High Sages—a command that overruled any other priority. And despite the difficult terrain, recent news from the Glade of Gathering was enough to put vigor in their steps.

Runners reported that the Jophur dreadnought still blocked the sacred valley, squatting complacently inside its swathe of devastation, with the captive Rothen ship doubly imprisoned nearby—first by a gold cocoon, and now a rising lake as well. The Jophur daily sent forth a pair of smaller vessels, sky-prowling daggers, surveying the Slope and the seas beyond. No one knew what the star gods were looking for.

Despite what happened on the night the great ship landed—havoc befalling Asx and others on the Glade—the High Sages were preparing to send another embassy of brave volunteers, hoping to parley. No one asked Lark to serve as an envoy. The Sages had other duties planned for him.

Humans weren't the only ones to cheat a little, when their founding generation came to plant a taboo colony on forbidden Jijo.

For more than a year after it made landfall, the
Tabernacle's
crew delayed sending their precious ship to an ocean abyss. A year spent using god tools to cut trees and print books … then storing the precious volumes in a stronghold that the founders carved beneath a great stone overhang, protected by high walls and a river. During those early days—especially the urrish and qheuen wars—Biblos Fortress served as a vital refuge until humans grew strong enough to demand respect.

The Gray Queens also once had such a citadel, sculpted by mighty engines when they first arrived, before their sneakship fell beneath the waves. The Caves of Shood, near present-day Ovoom Town, must have seemed impregnable. But that maze of deep-hewn caverns drowned under a rising water table when blue and red workers
dropped their slavish maintenance duties, wandering off instead to seek new homes and destinies, apart from their chitin empresses.

Dooden Mesa was the oldest of the sooner ramparts. After Tarek Town, it formed the heart of g'Kek life on Jijo, a place of marvelous stone ramps that curved like graceful filigrees, allowing the wheeled ones to swoop and careen through a swirl of tight turns, from their looms and workshops to tree-sheltered platforms where whole families slept with their hubs joined in slowly rotating clusters. Under an obscuring blur-cloth canopy, the meandering system resembled pictures found in certain Earthling books about pre-contact times—looking like a cross between an “amusement park” and the freeway interchanges of some sprawling city.

Ling's face brightened with amazed delight when she regarded the settlement, nodding as Lark explained the lacy pattern of narrow byways. Like Biblos, Dooden Rampart was not meant to last forever, for that would violate the Covenant of Exile. Someday it all would have to go—g'Kek elders conceded. Still, the wheeled ones throbbed their spokes in sinful pride over their beloved city. Their home.

While Ling marveled, Lark surveyed the busy place with fresh poignancy.

It is their
only
home.

Unless the Rothen lied, it seems there are no more g'Kek living among the Five Galaxies.

If they die on Jijo, they are gone for good.

Watching youngsters pitch along graceful ramps with reckless abandon, streaking round corners with all four eyestalks flying and their rims glowing hot, Lark could not believe the universe would let that happen. How could any race so unique be allowed to go extinct?

With the boo finally behind them, the party now stood atop a ridge covered with normal forest. As they paused, a zookir dropped onto the path from the branches of a nearby garu tree—all spindly arms and legs, covered with white spirals of fluffy torg. Treasured aides and pets of the g'Kek, zookirs helped make life bearable for wheeled beings
on a planet where roads were few and stumbling stones all too many.

This zookir squinted at the party, then scampered closer, sniffing. Unerringly, it bypassed the other humans, zeroing in on Lark.

Trust a zookir to know a sage
—so went a folk saying. No one had any idea
how
the creatures could tell, since they seemed less clever than chimps in other ways. Lark's promotion was recent and he wore the new status of “junior sage” uncomfortably, yet the creature had no trouble setting him apart. It pressed damp nostrils against his wrist and inhaled. Then, cooing satisfaction, it slipped a folded parchment in Lark's hand.

MEET US AT THE REFUGE—That was all it said.

Lester Cambel

A
PAIR OF HIGH SAGES WAITED IN A NARROW CANYON, half a league away. Lester Cambel and Knife-Bright Insight, the blue qheuen whose reputation for compassion made her a favorite among the Six.

Here, too, the paths were smooth and well suited for g'Keks, since this was part of their Dooden Domain. Wheeled figures moved among the meadows, looking after protected ones who lived in thatched shelters beneath the trees. It was a refuge for sacred simpletons—those whose existence promised a future for the Six Races—according to the scrolls.

Several of the
blessed ones
gathered around Knife-Bright Insight, clucking or mewing in debased versions of Galactic tongues. These were hoons and urs, for the most part, though a red qheuen joined the throng as Lester watched, and several traeki stacks slithered timidly closer, burbling happy stinks as they approached. Each received a loving pat or stroke from Knife-Bright Insight, as if her claws were gentle hands.

Lester regarded his colleague, and knew guiltily that he could never match her glad kindness. The
blessed
were
superior beings, ranking above the normal run of the Six. Their simplicity was proof that other races could follow the example of glavers, treading down the Path of Redemption.

It should fill my heart to see them
, he thought.

Yet I hate coming to this place.

Members of all six races dwelled in simple shelters underneath the canyon walls, tended by local g'Keks, plus volunteers from across the Slope. Whenever a qheuen, or hoon, or urrish village found among their youths one who had a knack for innocence, a gift for animal-like naïveté, the lucky individual was sent here for nurturing and study.

There are just two ways to escape the curse bequeathed to us by our ancestors
, Lester thought, struggling to believe.
We could do as Lark's group of heretics want—stop breeding and leave Jijo in peace. Or else we can all seek a different kind of oblivion, the kind that returns our children's children to presentence. Washed clean and ready for a new cycle of uplift. Thus they may yet find new patrons, and perhaps a happier fate.

So prescribed the Sacred Scrolls, even after all the compromises wrought since the arrival of Earthlings and the Holy Egg. Given the situation of exile races, living here on borrowed time, facing horrid punishment if/when a Galactic Institute finds them here, what other goal could there be?

But I can't do it. I cannot look at this place with joy. Earthling values keep me from seeing these creatures as lustrous beings. They deserve kindness and pity—but not envy.

It was his own heresy. Lester tried to look elsewhere. But turning just brought to view another cluster of “blessed.” This time, humans, gathered in a circle under a ilhuna tree, sitting cross-legged with hands on knees, chanting in low, sonorous voices. Men and women whose soft smiles and unshifting eyes seemed to show simplicity of the kind sought here … only Lester knew them to be liars!

Long ago, he took the same road. Using meditation techniques borrowed from old Earthling religions, he sat under just such a tree, freeing his mind of worldly obsessions,
disciplining it to perceive Truth. And for a while it seemed he succeeded. Acolytes bowed reverently, calling him
illuminated.
The universe appeared lucid then, as if the stars were sacred fire. As if he were united with all Jijo's creatures, even the very quanta in the stones around him. He lived in harmony, needing little food, few words, and even fewer names.

Such serenity—sometimes he missed it with an ache inside.

But after a while he came to realize—the clarity he had found was sterile blankness. A blankness that
felt
fine, but had nothing to do with redemption. Not for himself. Not for his race.

The other five don't use discipline or concentration to seek simplicity. You don't see glavers meditating by a rotten log full of tasty insects. Simplicity calls to them naturally. They
live
their innocence.

When Jijo is finally reopened, some great clan will gladly adopt the new glaver subspecies, setting them once more upon the High Path, perhaps with better luck than they had the first time.

But those patrons won't choose us. No noble elder clan is looking for smug Zen masters, eager to explain their own enlightenment. That is not a plainness you can write upon. It is simplicity based on individual pride.

Of course the point might be moot. If the Jophur ship represented great Institutes of the Civilization of the Five Galaxies, these forests would soon throng with inspectors, tallying up two thousand years of felonies against a fallow world. Only glavers would be safe, having made it to safety in time. The other six races would pay for a gamble lost.

And if they don't represent the Institutes?

The Rothen had proved to be criminals, gene raiders. Might the Jophur be more of the same? Murderous genocide could still be in store. The g'Kek clan, in particular, were terrified of recent news from the Glade.

On the other hand, it might be possible to cut a deal. Or else maybe they'll just go away, leaving us in the same state we were in before.

In that case, places like this refuge would go back to
being the chief hope for tomorrow … for five races out of the Six.

Lester's dark thoughts were cut off by a tug on his sleeve.

“Sage Cambel? The … um, visitors you're, ah, expecting … I think …”

It was a young human, broad-cheeked, with clear blue eyes and pale skin. The boy would have seemed tall—almost a giant—except that a stooped posture diminished his appearance. He kept tapping a corner of his forehead with the fingertips of his right hand, as if in a vague salute.

Lester spoke gentle words in Anglic, the only language the lad ever managed to learn.

“What did you say, Jimi?”

The boy swallowed, concentrating hard.

“I think the … um … the people you want t'see … I think they're here … Sage Cambel.”

“Lark and the Danik woman?”

A vigorous nod.

“Um, yessir. I sent 'em to the visitors' shed … to wait for you an' the other Great Sage. Was that right?”

“Yes, that was right, Jimi.” Lester gave his arm a friendly squeeze. “Please go back now. Tell Lark I'll be along shortly.”

A broad grin. The boy turned around to run the way he came, awkward in his eagerness to be useful.

There goes the other kind of human who comes to this place
, Lester thought.
Our special ones
 …

The ancient euphemism tasted strange.

At first sight, it would seem people like Jimi fit the bill. Simpler minds. Innocent. Our ideal envoys to tread the Path.

He glanced at the blessed ones surrounding Knife-Bright Insight—urs, hoons, and g'Keks who were sent here by their respective races in order to do that. To lead the way.

By the standards of the scrolls, these ones aren't damaged. Though simple, they aren't flawed. They are leaders. But no one can say that of Jimi. All sympathy aside, he is injured, incomplete. Anyone can see that.

We can and should love him, help him, befriend him.

But he leads humanity nowhere.

Lester signaled to his blue qheuen colleague, using an urslike shake of his head to indicate that their appointment had arrived. She responded by turning her visor cupola in a quick series of GalTwo winks, flashing that she'd be along shortly.