stopped.
Silence was almost as disorienting as the jeekee awful noise. My throat sac blatted uselessly while a hysterical Huphu clawed my shoulders, shredding scales into torglike ribbons.
Fortunately, hoon don’t have much talent for panic. Maybe our reactions are too slow, or else we lack imagination.
As I was gathering my wits, the door hatch opened and one of the little amphibian types rushed in, squeaking a few rapid phrases in simplified GalTwo.
A summons. The spinning voice wanted us for another powwow.
“Perhaps we should share knowledge,” it said when the four of us (plus Huphu) were assembled.
Huck and Pincer-Tip, able to look all ways at once, shared meaningful glances with Ur-ronn and me. We were pretty rattled by the recent booming and shaking. Even growing up next to a volcano had never prepared us for that!
The voice seemed to come from a space where abstract lines curled in tight patterns, but I knew that was an illusion. The shapes and sounds were projections, sent by some entity whose real body lay elsewhere, beyond the walls. I kept expecting Huphu to dash off and tear away a curtain, exposing a little man in an emerald carnival suit.
Do they think we’re rubes, to fall for such a trick?
“Knowledge?” Huck sneered, drawing three eyes back like coiled snakes. “You want to share some knowledge? Then tell us what’s going on! I thought this place was breaking up! Was it a quake? Are we being sucked into the Midden?”
“I assure you, that is not happening,” came the answer in smooth-toned GalSix. “The source of our mutual concern lies above, not below.”
“Exflosions,” Ur-ronn muttered, blowing through her snout fringe and stamping a hind hoof. “Those weren’t quakes, vut underwater detonations. Clean, sharf, and very close. I’d say soneone uf there doesn’t like you guys very nuch.”
Pincer hissed sharply and I stared at our urrish friend, but the spinning voice conceded.
“That is an astute guess.”
I couldn’t tell if it was impressed, or just sarcastic.
“And since our local guild of exflosers could hardly achieve such feats, this suggests you have other, fowerful foes, far greater than we feevle Six.”
“Again, a reasonable surmise. Such a bright young lady.”
“Hr-rm,” I added, in order not to be left out of the sardonic abuse. “We’re taught that the simplest hypothesis should always be tried first. So let me guess — you’re being hunted by the same folks who landed a while back in the Festival Glade. Those gene raiders Uriel got word about before we left. Is that it?”
“A goodly conjecture, and possibly even true … though it could as easily be someone else.”
“Someone else? What’re you say-ay-aying?” Pincer-Tip demanded, raising three legs and teetering dangerously on the remaining two. His chitin skin flared an anxious crimson shade. “That the eatees-tees-tees on the Glade might not be the only ones? That you’ve got whole passels of enemies?”
Abstract patterns tightened to a tornado of meshing lines as silence reigned. Little Huphu, who had seemed fascinated by the voice from the very start, now dug her claws in my shoulder, transfixed by the tight spiral form.
Huck demanded, in a hushed tone.
“How many enemies have you guys got?”
When the voice spoke again, all sardonic traces were gone. Its tone seemed deeply weary.
“Ah, dear children. It seems that half of the known sidereal universe has spent years pursuing us.”
Pincer clattered his claws and Huck let out a low, mournful sigh. My own dismal contemplation-umble roused Huphu from her trancelike fixation on the whirling display, and she chittered nervously.
Ur-ronn simply grunted, as if she had expected this, vindicating her native urrish cynicism. After all, when things seem unable to get any worse, isn’t that when they nearly always do? Ifni has a fertile, if nasty imagination. The goddess of fate keeps shaving new faces on her infinite-sided dice.
“Well, I guess this means — hrm-m — that we can toss out all those ideas about you phuvnthus being ancient Jijoans, or native creatures of the deep.”
“Or remnants of cast-off Buyur machines,” Huck went on. “Or sea monsters.”
“Yeah,” Pincer added, sounding disappointed. “Just another bunch of crazy Galactics-tic-tics.”
The swirling patterns seemed confused. “You would prefer sea monsters?”
“Forget it,” Huck said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
The patterns bent and swayed.
“I am afraid you may be right about that. Your small band of comrades has us terribly perplexed. So much that a few of us posed a sly scenario — that you were planted in our midst to sow confusion.”
“How do you mean?”
“Your values, beliefs, and evident mutual affection contribute to undermining assumptions we regarded as immutably anchored in the nature of reality.
“Mind you, this confusion is not wholly unpleasant. As a thinking entity, one of my prime motives might be called a lust for surprise. And those I work with are hardly less bemused by the unforeseen marvel of your fellowship.”
“Glad you find us entertaining,” Huck commented, as dryly sarcastic as the voice had been. “So you guys came here to hide, like our ancestors?”
“There are parallels. But our plan was never to stay. Only to make repairs, gather stores, and wait in concealment for a favorable window at the nearest transfer point.”
“So Uriel and the sages may be wrong about the ship that came to the Glade? Being a gang of gene raiders — that could just be a cover story. Are you the real cause of our troubles?”
“Trouble is synonymous with being a metabolizing entity. Or else why have you young adventurers sought it so avidly?
“But your complaint has merit. We thought we had eluded all pursuit. The ship that landed in the mountains may be coincidental, or attracted by a confluence of unlucky factors. In any event, had we known of your existence, we would have sought shelter somewhere off-planet instead, perhaps in a dead city on one of your moons, though such places are less convenient for effecting repairs.”
That part I had trouble believing. I’m just an ignorant savage, but from the classic scientific romances I grew up reading, I could picture working in some lunar ghost town like my nicknamesake, waking mighty engines that had slept for ages. What kind of starfaring beings would find darkness and salt water more “convenient” than clean vacuum?
We lapsed into moody silence, unable to stay outraged at folks who accept responsibility so readily. Anyway, weren’t they fellow refugees from Galactic persecution?
Or from justice, came another, worried thought.
“Can you tell us why everyone’s so mad at you?” I asked.
The spinning figure turned into a narrow, whirling funnel whose small end seemed diminished and very far away.
“Like you, we delved and probed into unvisited places, imagining ourselves bold explorers.…” the voice explained in tones of boundless sadness. “Until we had the misfortune to find the very thing we sought. Unexpected wonders beyond our dreams.
“Breaking no law, we planned only to share what we had found. But those pursuing us abandoned all pretense of legality. Like giants striving over possession of a gnat, they war lustily, battling each other for a chance to capture us! Alas, whoever wins our treasure will surely use it against multitudes.”
Again, we stared. Pincer unleashed awed whispers from all vents at once.
“Tr-tr-treasure-ure-ure …?”
Huck wheeled close to the spinning pattern. “Can you prove what you just said?”
“Not at this time. Not without putting your people in more danger than they already are.”
I recall wondering — what could be more dangerous than the genocide Uriel had spoken of, as one likely outcome of contact with gene raiders?
