Infinity's Shore

Guiding the work, urrish and human craft workers pored over ancient designs found in a single rare Biblos text, dating from precontact days, dealing with an obscure wolfling technology that no Galactic power had needed or used for a billion years. Side by side, men and women joined their urs colleagues, adapting the book’s peculiar concepts, translating its strange recipes to native materials and their own cottage skills.

Conditions were spartan. Many volunteers had already suffered privation, hiking great distances along steep mountain trails to reach this tract of tall green columns, stretching like a prairie as far as any eye could see.

All recruits shared a single motive — finding a way for the Commons of Six Races to fight back.

Amid the shouting throng, it was Ur-Jah who brought order out of chaos, galloping from one site to the next, making sure the traeki synthesists had food and raw material, and that every filament was wound tight. Of all the High Sages, Ur-Jah was most qualified to share Lester’s job of supervision. Her pelt might be ragged with age and her brood pouches dry, but the mind in that narrow skull was sharp — and more pragmatic than Lester’s had ever been.

Of the High Sages, that left only Vubben.

Judicious and knowing. Deep in perception. Leader of a sept that had been marked long ago for destruction by foes who never forgot, and never gave up. Among Jijo’s exile races, Vubben’s folk had been first to brave Izmunuti’s stiffening winds, seeking Jijo’s bright shoal almost two thousand years ago.

The wheeled g’Kek — both amiable and mysterious.

Neighborly, if weird.

Elfin but reliable.

Faceless, yet as open as a book.

How lessened the universe would be without them!

Despite their difficulty on rough trails, some g’Kek had made it to this remote mountain base, laboring to weave fabric, or applying their keen eyes to the problem of making small parts. Yet their own sage was nowhere in sight.

Vubben had gone south, to a sacred place dangerously near the Jophur ship. There, he was attempting in secret to commune with Jijo’s highest power.

Lester worried about his wise friend with the squeaky axles, venturing down there all alone.

But someone has to do it.

Soon we’ll know if we have been fools all along … or if we’ve put our faith in something deserving of our love.

Fallon

A DOMAIN OF BLINDING WHITENESS MARKED THE border of the Spectral Flow, where that slanting shelf of radiant stone abruptly submerged beneath an ocean of sparkling grains. North of this point commenced a different kind of desert — one that seemed less hard on the brain and eyes, but just as unforgiving. A desert where hardy lifeforms dwelled.

Dangerous lifeforms.

The escaped heretic’s footprints transformed as they crossed the boundary. No longer did they glow, each with a unique lambency of oil-slick colors, telling truths and lies. Plunging ahead without pause, the tracks became mere impressions on the Plain of Sharp Sand — indentations that grew blurrier as gusty winds stroked the dunes — revealing only that someone recently came this way, a humanoid biped, favoring his left leg with a limp.

Fallon could tell one more thing — the hiker had been in an awful hurry.

“We can’t follow anymore,” he told his young companions. “Our mounts are spent, and this is Dedinger’s realm. He knows it better than we do.”

Reza and Pahna stared at the sandy desert, no less dismayed than he. But the older one dissented — a sturdy redhead with a rifle slung over her shoulder.

“We must go on. The heretic knows everything. If he reaches his band of ruffians, they’ll soon follow him back to Xi, attacking us in force. Or else he might trade our location to the aliens. The man must be stopped!”

Despite her vehemence, Fallon could tell Reza’s heart was heavy. For several days they had chased Dedinger across the wasteland they knew — a vast tract of laminated rock so poisonous, a sliver under the skin might send you into thrashing fever. A place almost devoid of life, where daylight raised a spectacle of unlikely marvels before any unprotected eye — waterfalls and fiery pits, golden cities and fairy dust. Even night offered no rest, for moonbeams alone could make an unwary soul shiver as ghost shadows flapped at the edge of sight. Such were the terrible wonders of the Spectral Flow — in most ways a harsher territory than the mundane desert just ahead. So harsh that few Jijoans ever thought to explore its fringes, allowing the secret of Xi to remain safe.

Reza was right to fear the consequences, should Dedinger make good his escape — especially if the fanatic managed to reforge his alliance with the horse-hating clan of urrish cultists called the Urunthai. The fugitive should have succumbed to the unfamiliar dangers of the Flow by now. The three pursuers had expected to catch up with him yesterday, if not the day before.

It’s my fault, Fallon thought. I was too complacent. Too deliberate. My old bones can’t take a gallop and I would not let the women speed on without me.