But the humans seemed deaf to the pulses, showing no reaction at all.
Meanwhile, the Captain-Leader vents irate fumes — acrid vapors that send all off-duty personnel fleeing from its presence.
What is the cause of such rancor, My rings?
Recent news from beyond the nearby hills.
Bitter news confirming our fears.
Disaster to the east.
AT LAST, our remaining corvette reached the site where its twin fell silent, two days ago. Aboard the Polkjhy, I/we all stared in dismay at relayed images of devastation.
Hull wreckage lay sunk beneath swampy waters — the sort of marshland morass where a traeki might find it pleasant to wallow while contemplating wax drippings. Windblown rain swept the area while searchers scanned for survivors, but all they found were remnants — mostly singleton rings, reverting to a feral animal state, instinctively gathering nests of rotting vegetation, as if they were no more than primitive pretraeki.
Several of these surviving toruses were harvested. By scraping their cores, we managed to download a few blurry memory tracks. Enough to suggest that dolphins did this deed, emerging from the sea to play havoc with our brethren.
HOW WERE THEY ABLE TO DO THIS?
The downed corvette had reported defense systems functional at a forty percent level. More than adequate, if concentrated against just such a sortie by the desperate Earthling quarry. Even amid a lightning-charged thunderstorm, it should not have been possible for the cornered prey to mount a surprise attack. Yet, not even an alarm signal escaped our grounded boat before it was mysteriously overwhelmed.
Again, doubts rise to disturb us. The wolflings are said to be primitives, not much more capable than the sooner savages whose coward ancestors settled this world. Yet these same Earthers have sent all Five Galaxies into turmoil, repeatedly escaping mighty fleets sent after them.
Perhaps it was a mistake for our Polkjhy ship commune to take on this mission alone, with just our one mighty battlecruiser to seize destiny for our kind.
SCENT RUMORS SPREAD THROUGH POLKJHY NOW, alleging the Captain-Leader was deficiently stacked. Subversive pheromones suggest that flawed decision-processing toruses brought us to this unsavory state. Our commander was blinded by obsession with vengeance on the g’Kek, ignoring higher priorities.
Furious to find mutinous molecules wafting through the air ducts, our Captain-Leader seeks to overwhelm them with his own chemical outpourings — a steamy concoction of smoldering rejection. Perfumes of domineering essence flood all decks.
What is it now, My ring?
Ah. Our second torus-of-cognition has come up with another metaphor, this time comparing the Captain- Leader to the skipper of a hoonish sailboat, who tries shouting down his worried crew, using a loud voice to substitute for real leadership.
Very interesting, My ring — making parallels between alien behavior and Jophur ship politics. Such insights make this irksome union seem almost worthwhile.
Unless…
Surely you do not ALSO apply this metaphor to your own master ring?
Do not provoke Me. Be warned. It would be a mistake.
OUR PROBLEM REMAINS.
Unlike the tactician stacks, I/we do not attribute wolfling success against our corvette to anomalous technology, or luck. The timing was too coincidental. I am convinced the dolphins knew exactly the right moment to attack, when our attention was diverted by events close by.
CONCLUSION: The savage races MUST be in communication with the Earthship!
The captive humans deny knowing of any contact with the dolphin ship. They claim their activities at the lake surface were strictly a manifestation of interhuman dominance struggles, having nothing to do with the prey ship.
They must be lying. Ways must be found to increase their level of cooperation.
(If only I could lace their apelike cores with silvery fibers, the way a master ring shows other components of a stack how to cooperate in joyful oneness!)
We must, it seems, fall back on classic, barbarous interrogation techniques.
Shall we threaten the humans with bodily damage?
Shall we assail them with metaphysical torment?
Overruling My/our expertise, the Captain-Leader has decided on a technique that is known to be effective against numerous warm-blooded races.
We shall use atrocity.
Sara
TRAEKI UNGUENTS FILLED HER SINUSES WITH PLEASANT numbness, as if she’d had several glasses of wine. Sara felt the chemicals at work, chasing pain, making room for herself to reemerge.
A day after rejoining the world, she let Emerson push her wheelchair onto the stone veranda at Uriel the Smith’s sanctuary, watching dawn break over a phalanx of royal peaks, stretching north and east. West of the mountains, dusty haze muted the manicolored marvel of the Spectral Flow, and the Plain of Sharp Sand beyond.
The view helped draw Sara’s attention from the handheld mirror on her lap — lent her by Uriel — which she had examined all through breakfast. Jijo’s broad vista made clear Emerson’s quiet sermon.
The world is bigger than all our problems.
Sara handed the looking glass over to the starman, who performed sleight-of-hand motions, causing it to vanish up one sleeve of his floppy gown. Emerson grinned when Sara laughed out loud.
What’s the point in dwelling on my stitches and scrapes, she thought. Scars won’t matter in the days to come. Any survivors will scratch their living from the soil. Pretty women won’t have advantages. Tough ones will.
Or was this complacence another result of chemicals in her veins? Potions tailored by Tyug, master alchemist of Mount Guenn Forge. Jijo’s traekis had learned a lot about healing other races while qheuens, urs, hoons, and men fought countless skirmishes before the Great Peace. In recent years, texts from Biblos helped molecule maestros like Tyug supplement practical lore with fresh insights, using Anglic words like peptide and enzyme, reclaiming some of the knowledge their settler ancestors had abandoned.
Only not by looking it up in some Library. Earthling texts served as a starting point. A basis for fresh discoveries.
Which illustrated her controversial thesis. Six Races climbing back upward, not via Redemption’s Path, the route their forebears used … but on a trail all our own.
Other examples filled the halls behind this stony parapet, in workshops and labs where Uriel’s staff labored near lava heat, wresting secrets from nature. Despite her suffering, Sara was glad to see more evidence on Mount Guenn that Jijoan civilization had begun heading in new directions.
Until starships came.
Sara winced, recalling what they had witnessed last night, from this same veranda. She and her friends were being regaled at a feast under the stars, celebrating her recovery. Hoonish sailors from the nearby seaport boomed festive ballads and Uriel’s apprentices cavorted in an intricate dance while diminutive husbands perched on their backs, mimicking each twist and gyre. Gray qheuens, their broad chitin shells embellished with gemstone cloisonne, sculpted wicked impromptu caricatures of the party guests, using their adroit mouths to carve statuettes of solid stone.
Even Ulgor was allowed to take part, playing the violus, drawing rich vibrato tones as Emerson joined in with his dulcimer. The wounded starman had another unpredictable outburst of song, each verse pouring whole from some recessed memory.
“In a cottage of Fife,
lived a man and wife,
