stretched as high as the Stone Roof of Biblos.
Now I know how an insect feels, scuttling under a sea of pampas grass.
Hiking along a narrow lane amid the giant pillars, Lark often could reach out his arms and brush two giant stems at the same time. Only his militia sergeant seemed immune to a sense of confinement infecting travelers in this strange place of vertical perspectives. Other guards expressed edginess with darting eyes that glanced worriedly down crooked aisles at half-hidden shadows.
“How far is it to Dooden Mesa?” Ling asked, tugging the straps of her leather backpack. Perspiration glistened down her neck to dampen the Jijoan homespun jerkin she wore. The effect was not as provocative as Lark recalled from their old survey trips together, when the sheer fabric of a Danik jumpsuit sometimes clung to her biosculpted figure in breathtaking ways.
Anyway, I can’t afford that, now that I’m a sage. The promotion brought only unpleasant responsibilities.
“I never took this shortcut before,” Lark answered, although he and Uthen used to roam these mountains in search of data for their book. There were other paths around the mountain, and the wheeled g’Keks nominally in charge of this domain could hardly be expected to do upkeep on such a rough trail. “My best guess is we’ll make it in two miduras. Want to rest?”
Ling pushed sodden strands from her eyes. “No. Let’s keep going.”
The former gene raider seemed acutely aware of Jeni Shen, the diminutive sergeant, whose corded arms cradled her crossbow like a beloved child. Jeni glanced frequently at Ling with hunter’s eyes, as if speculating which vital organ might make a good target. Anyone could sense throbbing enmity between the two women — and that Ling would rather die than show weakness before the militia scout.
Lark found one thing convenient about their antagonism. It helped divert Ling’s ire away from him, especially after the way he earlier used logic to slash her beloved Rothen gods. Since then, the alien biologist had been civil, but kept to herself in brooding silence.
No one likes to have their most basic assumptions knocked from under them — especially by a primitive savage.
Lark blew air through his cheeks — the hoonish version of a shrug.
“Hr-rm. We’ll take a break at the next rise. By then we should be out of the worst boo.”
In fact, the thickest zone was already behind them, a copse so dense the monstrous stems rubbed in the wind, creating a low, drumming music that vibrated the bones of anyone passing underneath. Traveling single file, edging sideways where the trunks pressed closest, the party had watched for vital trail marks, cut on one rounded bole after the next.
I was right to leave Uthen behind, he thought, hoping to convince himself. Just hold on, old friend. Maybe we’ll come up with something. I pray we can.
Visibility was hampered by drifting haze, since many of the tall boo leaked from water reserves high above, spraying arcs of fine droplets that spread to saturate the misty colonnade. Several times they passed clearings where aged columns had toppled in a domino chain reaction, leaving maelstroms of debris.
Through the fog, Lark occasionally glimpsed other symbols, carved on trunks beyond the trail. Not trail marks, but cryptic emblems in GalTwo and GalSix … accompanied by strings of Anglic numbers.
Why would anyone go scrawling graffiti through a stand of greatboo?
He even spied dim figures through the murk — once a human, then several urs, and finally a pair of traeki — glimpsed prowling amid rows of huge green pillars. At least he hoped the tapered cones were traeki. They vanished like ghosts before he could tell for sure.
Sergeant Shen kept the party moving too fast to investigate. Lark and his prisoner had been summoned by two of the High Sages — a command that overruled any other priority. And despite the difficult terrain, recent news from the Glade of Gathering was enough to put vigor in their steps.
Runners reported that the Jophur dreadnought still blocked the sacred valley, squatting complacently inside its swathe of devastation, with the captive Rothen ship doubly imprisoned nearby — first by a gold cocoon, and now a rising lake as well. The Jophur daily sent forth a pair of smaller vessels, sky-prowling daggers, surveying the Slope and the seas beyond. No one knew what the star gods were looking for.
Despite what happened on the night the great ship landed — havoc befalling Asx and others on the Glade — the High Sages were preparing to send another embassy of brave volunteers, hoping to parley. No one asked Lark to serve as an envoy. The Sages had other duties planned for him.
Humans weren’t the only ones to cheat a little, when their founding generation came to plant a taboo colony on forbidden Jijo.
For more than a year after it made landfall, the Tabernacle’s crew delayed sending their precious ship to an ocean abyss. A year spent using god tools to cut trees and print books … then storing the precious volumes in a stronghold that the founders carved beneath a great stone overhang, protected by high walls and a river. During those early days — especially the urrish and qheuen wars — Biblos Fortress served as a vital refuge until humans grew strong enough to demand respect.
The Gray Queens also once had such a citadel, sculpted by mighty engines when they first arrived, before their sneakship fell beneath the waves. The Caves of Shood, near present-day Ovoom Town, must have seemed impregnable. But that maze of deep-hewn caverns drowned under a rising water table when blue and red workers dropped their slavish maintenance duties, wandering off instead to seek new homes and destinies, apart from their chitin empresses.
Dooden Mesa was the oldest of the sooner ramparts. After Tarek Town, it formed the heart of g’Kek life on Jijo, a place of marvelous stone ramps that curved like graceful filigrees, allowing the wheeled ones to swoop and careen through a swirl of tight turns, from their looms and workshops to tree-sheltered platforms where whole families slept with their hubs joined in slowly rotating clusters. Under an obscuring blur-cloth canopy, the meandering system resembled pictures found in certain Earthling books about pre-contact times — looking like a cross between an “amusement park” and the freeway interchanges of some sprawling city.
Ling’s face brightened with amazed delight when she regarded the settlement, nodding as Lark explained the lacy pattern of narrow byways. Like Biblos, Dooden Rampart was not meant to last forever, for that would violate the Covenant of Exile. Someday it all would have to go — g’Kek elders conceded. Still, the wheeled ones throbbed their spokes in sinful pride over their beloved city. Their home.
While Ling marveled, Lark surveyed the busy place with fresh poignancy.
It is their only home.
Unless the Rothen lied, it seems there are no more g’Kek living among the Five Galaxies.
If they die on Jijo, they are gone for good.
Watching youngsters pitch along graceful ramps with reckless abandon, streaking round corners with all four eyestalks flying and their rims glowing hot, Lark could not believe the universe would let that happen. How could any race so unique be allowed to go extinct?
With the boo finally behind them, the party now stood atop a ridge covered with normal forest. As they paused, a zookir dropped onto the path from the branches of a nearby garu tree — all spindly arms and legs, covered with white spirals of fluffy torg. Treasured aides and pets of the g’Kek, zookirs helped make life bearable for wheeled beings on a planet where roads were few and stumbling stones all too many.
This zookir squinted at the party, then scampered closer, sniffing. Unerringly, it bypassed the other humans, zeroing in on Lark.
Trust a zookir to know a sage—so went a folk saying. No one had any idea how the creatures could tell, since they seemed less clever than chimps in other ways. Lark’s promotion was recent and he wore the new status of “junior sage” uncomfortably, yet the creature had no trouble setting him apart. It pressed damp nostrils against his wrist and inhaled. Then, cooing satisfaction, it slipped a folded parchment in Lark’s hand.
MEET US AT THE REFUGE — That was all it said.
Lester Cambel
APAIR OF HIGH SAGES WAITED IN A NARROW CANYON, half a league away. Lester Cambel and Knife- Bright Insight, the blue qheuen whose reputation for compassion made her a favorite among the Six.
Here, too, the paths were smooth and well suited for g’Keks, since this was part of their Dooden Domain.
