Huphu is all the way out at the end of the deployer crane, back arched with pleasure. Meanwhile, someone counts off.
“One cable, forty…
“One cable, sixty…
“One cable, eighty…
“Two cables!
“Two cables, twenty…”
The chant reminds me of Mark Twain’s tales of river pilots on the romantic Mississippi, especially one scene with a big black man-human up at the bow of the Delta Princess, swinging a weight on a line, calling out shoals in a treacherous fog, saving the lives of everyone aboard.
I’m an ocean hoon. My people sail ships, not sissy boats. Still, those were among my father’s favorite tales. And Huck’s too, back when she was a little orphan, toddling around on her pusher legs, four eyes staring in lost wonder as Dad recited tales set on a wolfling world that never knew the stifling wisdom of Galactic ways. A world where ignorance wasn’t exactly noble, but had one virtue — it gave you a chance to see and learn and do things no one else had ever seen or learned or done before.
Humans got to do that back on Earth.
And now we’re doing it here!
Before I even know I’m doing it, I sit up on my double-fold haunches, rock my head back, and belt out an umble of joy. A mighty, rolling hoot. It resounds across the mesa, strokes the grumbling equipment, and floats over the serrated stones of the Great Rift.
For all I know, it’s floating out there still.
Sunshine spills across calm waters at least twenty cables deep. We imagine Wuphon’s Dream, drifting ever downward, first through a cloud of bubbles, then a swollen wake of silence as the light from above grows dimmer and finally fails completely.
“Six cables, sixty…
“Six cables, eighty…
“Seven cables!”
When we go down, this is where we’ll turn on the eik lights and use the acid battery to send sparks up the hawser, telling those above that all is well. But Ziz has no lights, or any way to signal. The little stack is all alone down there — though I guess no traeki ever feels entirely lonely. Not when its rings can argue endlessly among themselves.
“Eight cables!”
Someone brings a jar of wine for me and some warm simla blood for Ur-ronn. Huck sips pungent galook-ade from a long curvy straw, while Pincer sprays his back with salt water.
“Nine cables!”
This experiment’s only supposed to go to ten, so they begin gently increasing pressure on the brake. Soon they’ll reverse the drums to bring Wuphon’s Dream back to the world of air and light.
Then it happens — a sudden twang, like a plucked vio-lus string, loud as thunder.
The deployer chief cries — “Release the brake!”
An operator leaps for a lever… too late as bucking convulsions hit the derrick, like backlash on a fishing pole when a big one gets away. Only this recoil is massive, unstoppable.
We all gasp or vurt at the sight of Huphu, a small black figure clinging to the farthest spar as the crane whips back and forth.
One paw, then another, loses its grip. She screams.
The tiny noor goes spinning across space, barely missing the hawser’s cyclone whirl amid a frothing patch of sea. Staring in helpless dismay, we see our mascot plunge into the abyss that already swallowed Ziz, Wuphon’s Dream, and all the hopes and hard work of two long years.
XVI. THE BOOK OF THE SLOPE
The urs tell of a crisis of breeding.
Out among the stars, they were said to live longer than they do on Jijo, with spans much enhanced by artificial means. Moreover, an urs never stops wanting a full pouch, tenanted either with a husband or with brooding young. There were technical ways to duplicate the feeling, but to many, these methods just weren’t the same.
Galactic society is harsh on over-breeders, who threaten the billion-year-old balance. There is constant dread of another “wildfire” — a conflagration of overpopulation, like one that burned almost half the worlds in Galaxy Three, a hundred or so million years ago.
Especially, those species who reproduce slowly, like hoon, seem to have a deep-set fear of “low-K” spawners, like urs.
Legend tells of a conflict over this matter. Reading between the lines of ornate urrish oral history, it seems the bards must be telling of a lawsuit — one judged at the higher levels of Galactic society.
The urs lost the suit, and a bitter war-of-enforcement that followed.
Some of the losers did not wish to settle, even then. They turned one ship toward forbidden spaces, there to search for a wild prairie they could call home.
A place to hear the clitter-clatter of myriad little urrish feet.
Asx
A strange message has come all the way from Tarek Town, sent by Ariana Foo, emeritus High Sage of human sept.
The exhausted urrish runner collapsed to her knees after dashing uphill from the Warril Plain, so spent that she actually craved water, raw and undiluted.
Center now, my rings. Spin your ever-wavering attention round the tale of Ariana Foo, as it was read aloud by Lester Cambel, her successor. Did not the news send vaporous wonder roiling through my/our core — that a mysterious injured outlander showed up one day near the Upper Roney? A stranger who might possibly be some lost comrade of the star-god visitors who now vex our shared exile! Or else, she speculates, might he be one who escaped these far-raiding adventurers? Could his wounds show evidence of shared enmity?
Ariana recommends we of the Council cautiously investigate the matter at our end, perhaps using truth-scryers, while she performs further experiments at Biblos.,
The forayers do seem to have other interests, beyond seeking pre-sentient species to ravish from Jijo’s fallow peace. They feign nonchalance, yet relentlessly query our folk, offering rewards and blandishments for reports of “anything strange.”
How ironic those words, coming from them.
Then there is the bird.
Surely you recall the metal bird, my rings? Normally, we would have taken it for yet another Buyur relic, salvaged from the entrails of a dead-dying mulc-spider. Yet the sooner girl swears she saw it move! Saw it travel great distances, then fight and kill a Rothen machine!
Was that not the very evening the forayers buried their station, as though they were now fearful of the dread sky?
Our finest techies examine the bird-machine, but with scant tools available they learn little, save that energies still throb within its metal breast. Perhaps the contingent Lester has sent east — to ingather the human sooner band according to our law — will find out more.
So many questions. But even with answers, would our dire situation change in the least?
Were there time, i would set my/our varied rings the task of taking up different sides and arguing these mysteries, each question pouring distinct scents to coat our moist core, dripping syllogisms like wax, until only truth shines through a lacquered veneer. But there is no time for the traeki approach to problem solving. So we sages debate in the dry air, without even rewq to mediate the inadequacies of language. Each day is spent buying futile delays in our destiny.
As for Ariana’s other suggestion, we have employed truth-scryers during discussions with the sky-humans. According to books of lore, this passive form of psi should be less noticeable than other techniques.
“Are you seeking anybody in particular? This we asked, just yesterday. Is there a person, being, or group we should look for in your name?”