Infinity's Shore

Blade felt hooks of urrish steel yank his carapace at all five suspension points. One anchor broke free, tearing chitin armor like paper, then flinging wildly as the balloon was sucked after the skyship’s wake.

The world passed in a blur, teaching him what real flying was about.

Then the Jophur vessel was gone, ignoring balloon and passenger with contempt, or else indifference. He glimpsed it once more, still climbing steadily toward the Rimmer peaks, leaving him swirling in a backwash of confusion and disturbed air.

Vubben

AFTER A TIME, VUBBEN FINALLY SUCCEEDED IN quelling his busy thoughts, allowing the tywush resonance to pervade his soul, washing away distractions and doubts. Another midura passed, and another prayer circuit, while his meditation deepened. After Loocen set, a vast skyscape of constellations and nebulae passed overhead. Twinkling abode of the gods.

As he rounded back to the west side, another kind of winking light caught one of Vubben’s eyes — a syncopated flash unlike any gleaming star. Still wrapped in his trance, Vubben had to labor just to lift a second stalk and recognize the flicker as coded speech.

It took more effort, and yet a third eye, to decipher it.

JOPHUR SMALLSHIP/DEATHSHIP IN MOTION, flashed the lantern on Mount Ingul. HEADING TOWARD EGG.

The message repeated. Vubben even glimpsed a distant sparkle, echoing the words on a farther peak, and realized that other semaphore stations must be relaying the message. Still, his brain was tuned to another plane, preventing him from quite grasping its significance.

Instead, he went back to the sensory phantasm that had been drawing him inward — an impression of being perched atop a swaying ribbon, one that slowly yawed and pitched like some undulating sea.

It was not an unpleasant feeling. Rather, he felt almost like a youngster again, growing up in Dooden Mesa, zooming recklessly along a swaying suspension bridge, feeling its planks rattle beneath his rims, swooping and banking without a safety rail while lethal drops gaped on both sides. His taut spokes hummed as he sped like a bullet, with all four eyestalks stretched wide for maximum parallax.

The moment came back to him whole — not as a distant, fond memory, but in all its splendor. It was the closest thing to paradise he had ever experienced on Jijo’s rough orb.

Amid the exhilaration, part of Vubben knew he must have crossed some boundary. He was with the Egg now, sensing the approach of a massive object from the west. A deadly thing, complacent and terrible, cruising at a leisurely pace uphill from the Glade.

Leisurely — according to those aboard, that is.

Somehow, Vubben could sense gravitic fields pressing down, tearing leaves from trees, scraping and penetrating Jijo’s soil, disturbing ancient rocks. He even knew intuitive things about the crew within — multiringed entities, far more self-assured and unified than traeki.

Strange rings. Egotistical and driven.

Determined to wreak havoc.

Blade

THE BALLOON’S ALTIMETER MUST BE MALFUNCTIONING, he realized. Or else the fuel tank was running low. Either way, the automatic adjustments were growing more sporadic. Unnerving sputtering sounds accompanied each burst of heat, and the pulses came less frequently.

Finally, they halted altogether.

The lake had vanished behind him during those frantic duras when the spaceship’s wake dragged the balloon behind it, past the ruined Glade into a narrow pass, toward the Rimmer heights. Also gone was Blade’s last chance to pull the rip cord and land in deep water. Instead, trees spired around him, like teeth of a comb you used to pluck fleas from your pet lornik.

And I am the flea.

Assuming he survived when a forest giant snatched him from the sky, someone might hear his cries and come. But then, what will they think when they find a qheuen in a tree?

The phrase was a popular metaphor for unlikeliness — a contradiction in terms — like a swimming urs, or a modest human, or an egotistical traeki.

This appears to be the year for contradictions.

A branch top brushed one of his claw tips. Blade yanked back so reflexively that his whole body spun around. All five legs were kept drawn in after that. Still, he expected another impact at any moment.

Instead, the forest abruptly ended. Blade had an impression of craggy cliffs, and a sulfurous odor stroked his tongue. Then came a sensation of upward motion!

And heat. His mouth feelers curled in reaction to a blast from below.

Of course, he realized. Go east from the Glade for a few leagues, and you’re in geyser country.

The balloon soared, its drooping canopy now buoyed by a warm updraft.

The Jophur ship must have dragged me into a particular canyon. The Pilgrimage Track.

The path leading to the Egg.

Blade’s body kept spinning, even as the gasbag climbed. To other beings, it might have been disconcerting, but qheuens had no preferred orientation. It never mattered which way he was “facing.” So Blade was ready when the object he sought came into view.

There it is!