Infinity's Shore

The occasion was interrupted when a pair of big hoons wearing proctors’ badges pushed through leather door strips into the feasting hall, gripping the arms of a male human I had never seen before. He was of middle height for their kind, with a dark complexion and an unhappy expression. He wore a rewq on his forehead, and hair combed to hide a nasty scar near his left ear. A small chimp followed close behind, her appearance rueful.

I wasn’t close enough to hear the details firsthand, but later I pieced together that this was a long-lost crew mate of the Streakers, whose appearance on Jijo had them mystified. He had been on Mount Guenn, helping Uriel’s smiths work on some secret project, when he suddenly up and tried to escape by stealing some kind of flying machine!

As the guards brought him forward, Gillian’s face washed with recognition. She smiled, though he cringed, as if dreading this meeting. The dark man turned left to hide his mutilation, but Gillian insistently took his hands. She expressed pleasure at seeing him by leaning up to kiss one cheek.

Perhaps later I’ll learn more about where he fits in all this. But time is short and I must close this account before the Hikahi sets sail to rejoin the dolphin-crewed ship. So let me finish with the climax of an eventful evening.

A herald burst in. His vibrating sac boomed an alert umble.

“Come! Come and see the unusual!”

Hurrying outside, we found the rain had stopped temporarily. A window opened in the clouds, wide enough for Loocen to pour pale, liquid luminance across a flank of Mount Guenn. Swathes of brittle stars shone through, including one deep red, cyclopean eye.

In spite of this lull, the storm was far from over. Lightning flickered as clouds grew denser still. The west was one great mass of roiling blackness amid a constant background of thunder. In miduras, the coast was really going to get hit.

People started pointing. Huck rolled up near my right leg and gestured with all four agile eyestalks, directing my gaze toward the volcano.

At first, I couldn’t tell what I was seeing. Vague, ghostlike shapes seemed to bob and flutter upward, visible mostly as curved silhouettes that blocked sporadic stars. Sometimes lightning caused one of the objects to glow along a rounded flank, revealing a globelike outline, tapered at the bottom. They seemed big, and very far away.

I wondered if they might be starships.

“Balloons,” Huck said at last, her voice hushed in awe. “Just like Around the World in Eighty Days!”

Funny. Huck seemed more impressed at that moment than she ever had been aboard Streaker, by all the glittering consoles and chattering machines. I stared at the flotilla of fragile gasbags, wondering what kind of volunteers were brave enough to pilot them on a night like this, surrounded by slashing electricity, and with ruthless foes prowling higher still. We watched as scores wafted from Mount Guenn’s secret caves. One by one, they caught the stiff west wind and flowed past the mountain, vanishing from sight.

I happened to be standing near Gillian Baskin, so I know what the Earthwoman said when she turned to Uriel the Smith.

“All right. You kept your side of the bargain. Now it’s time to keep ours.”

PART TEN

Vubben

SMASHED UP. Wheels torn or severed. His braincase leaking lubricant. Motivator spindles shredded and discharging slowly into the ground.

Vubben lies crumpled next to his deity, feeling life drain away.

That he still lives seems remarkable.

When the Jophur corvette slashed brutally at the Holy Egg, he had been partway around the great stone’s flank, almost on the other side. But the moatlike channel of the Nest funneled explosive heat like a river, outracing his fruitless effort at retreat.

Now Vubben lies in a heap, aware of two facts.

Any surviving g’Keks would need a new High Sage.

And something else.

The Egg still lives.

He wonders about that. Why didn’t the Jophur finish it off? Surely they had the power.

Perhaps they were distracted.

Perhaps they would be back.

Or else, were they subtly persuaded to go away?

The Egg’s patterning rhythms seem subdued, and yet more clear than ever. He ponders whether it might be an artifact of his approaching death. Or perhaps his frayed spindles — draped across the stony face — are picking up vibrations that normal senses could not.

Crystalline lucidity calls him, but Vubben feels restrained by the tenacious hold of life. That was what always kept sages and mystics from fully communing with the sacred ovoid, he now sees. Mortal beings — even traeki — have to care about continuing, or else the game of existence cannot properly be played. But the caring is also an impediment. It biases the senses. Makes you receptive to noise.

He lets go of the impediment, with a kind of gladness. Surrender clears the way, opening a path that he plunges along, like a youth just released from training wheels, spinning ecstatically down a swooping ramp he never knew before, whose curves change in delightfully ominous ways.