"Safe house," Sara returned the blessing. "May she roll you long life."

Ariana's chimp aide pushed her upslope, toward the comfort of an evening fire. It was becoming a habit for Sara to doubt she would ever see someone again.

The captain gave the order to cast off, guiding his precious boat gingerly away from the camouflage shelter. Jop and Ulgor joined Sara at the rail, along with several morose-faced librarians, appointed to carry precious volumes to uncertain safety in the wilderness. Soon the churning shove of the paddle wheels settled to a rea.s.suring rhythm, working with the Bibur's current to turn them downstream.

The s.p.a.ceman played along with focused monomania. Hunched over a small, wedgelike instrument, he hammered its strings with two small curved mallets, faltering often but radiating pa.s.sion. The music laced through bittersweet memory as Sara watched the mighty fortress slip by, with its many-windowed halls. The stone canopy seemed to hover like a patient fist of G.o.d. I wonder if I'll ever be back.

Soon they pa.s.sed the westernmost edge of laser-cut stone-the mulching grounds. There were no banners today, or mourners, or busy little subtraekis consuming flesh, preparing white bones for the sea. But then, amid the dusky gloom, she did spy a solitary figure overlooking the river. Tall and straight-backed, with a sleek mane of silver-gray, the human leaned slightly on a cane, though he seemed far from frail. Sara's breath caught as the gopher swept by.

Sage Taine nodded-a friendly, even ardent display for such a diffident person. Then, to Sara's surprise, he lifted an arm, in a gesture of unadorned goodwill.

At the last moment she gave in, raising her own hand. Peace, she thought.

Biblos fell behind the chugging steamboat, swallowed by gathering night. Nearby, the Stranger's voice broke in, singing words to a song about a voyage of no return. And while she knew the lyrics expressed his own sense of loss and poignant transition, they also rubbed, both sweetly and painfully, against conflicts in her own heart.

For I am bound beyond the dark horizon, And ne'er again will I know your name . . .

XXIII. THE BOOK OF THE SEA.

g'Kek roller, can you stand and gallop across the heavy ground?

Traeki stack, can you weave a tapestry, or master the art of fire?

Royal qheuen, will you farm the forest heights? Can you heal with your touch?

Hoonish sailor, will you endure the plains, or spin along a cable, stretched up high?

Urrish plainsman, would you sail to sea, or sift fine pages out of slurried cloth?

Human newcomer, do you know this world?

Can you weave, or spin, or track Jijo's song?

Will all or any of you follow in the trail blazed by glavers?

The Trail of Forgiveness through oblivion?

If you do, save room to remember this one thing- You were one part of a union greater than its parts.

The Scroll of the Egg (unofficial) Alvin's Tale I DIDN'T BEGRUDGE MY POSITION CRAMMED WAY back, far from the window. At least not during the long descent down the cliff face with the sea looming ever-closer, closer. After all, I'd seen this part before and the others hadn't. But once we hit water, and my friends started cooing and oohing over what they saw through the bubble up front, I started getting a little resentful. It also put me in a bind as a writer, faced with having to describe the descent later, to my readers. At best I could see a bare patch of blue over the backs of my compeers. Looking back on it, I suppose I could solve the problem, in several ways.

First, I could He. I mean, I haven't decided whether to turn this story into a novel, and according to Mister Heinz, fiction is a kind of lying. In a later draft I might just write in a window aft. That way my character could describe all sorts of things I only heard about from the others. Or else I could pretend I was up front all along. In fiction, you can be captain if you want to be.

Or maybe I should rewrite it from Pincer's point of view. After all, it was his boat, more than any of ours. And he had the best view of what happened next. That would mean having to write believably from a qheuen's perspective. Not as alien as a traeki's, I suppose. Still, maybe I'm not ready to take on that kind of a challenge, just yet.

All of this a.s.sumes I live to do a rewrite, or that anyone else survives who I'd care to have read my tale. Anyway, for now, this semitruthful journal style will have to do, and that means telling what I really saw, felt, and heard.

The deploying drums transmitted a steady vibration down the hawser. The fresh air inlet hissed and gurgled by my left ear, so it was hardly what I had pictured as a serene descent into the silent deep. Now and then, Ur-ronn would gasp-"What was that?"-and Pincer identified some fish, piscoid, or 'skimmer-creatures a hoon usually saw dead in a net-catch, and an urs likely never glimpsed at all. Still, there were no monsters of fantasy. No faery minarets of undersea cities, either. Not so far.

It got dark pretty fast as we dropped. Soon all I made out were little streaks of phosphor that Tyug had smeared in vital spots around the cabin, such as the tips of my motor cranks, the depth gauge, and the ballast release levers. With nothing to do, I catalogued the odors a.s.sailing me from my friends. Familiar aromas, but never quite so pungent as now. And this was just the beginning.

A reason to be glad no human came along, I thought. One of many problems contributing to friction between urs and Earthlings had been how each race smelled to the other. Even today, and despite the Great Peace, I don't figure either sept would much enjoy being cooped up in an oversized coffin with the other for very long.

Ur-ronn started calling out depths from the pressure-bladder gauge. At seven cables she turned a switch, and the eik light came on, casting twin beams into cool, dark waters. I expected those in front to resume their excited exclamations, but apparently there was less to see at this depth. Pincer identified something only every few duras, in a voice that seemed disappointed.

We all tensed at nine cables, since trouble had struck there the first time. But the milestone pa.s.sed uneventfully. It should, since Uriel had inspected every hoof of the hawser personally.

At eleven and a half cables, a sudden chill swept the cabin, causing fog briefly to form. Every hard surface abruptly went damp and Huck cranked up the dehumidifier. I reached out to touch the garuwood hull, which seemed markedly cooler. Wuphon's Dream turned and tilted slightly, facing a new tug, no longer the same languid downward drift. From soundings, we had known to expect a transition to a deep frigid current. Still, it was unnerving.

"Adjusting ballast for trim," Huck announced. Closest to dead center, she used Uriel's clever pumps to shift water among three tanks till the spirit levels showed an even keel. That would be vital on reaching bottom, lest we topple over at the very moment of making history.

I thought about what we were doing. In Galactic terms, it was consummately primitive, of course. Earth history makes for much more flattering comparisons- which may be one reason we four find it so attractive. For instance, when Jules Verne was writing Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, no human had ever gone as far down into the oceans of Terra as we were heading today. We savages of Jijo.

Huck shouted-"Look! Is that something down below?"

Those eyes of hers. Even peering past Pincer and Ur-ronn, she had glimpsed bottom first. Ur-ronn turned the eik beams and soon the three of them were back at it again, driving me crazy with oohs, ahs, and k-k-k-k wonderment clicks. In frustration I turned the crank, making the rear wheels thrash till they yelled at me to quit, and agreed to describe what they saw.

"There's a wavy kind of plant," Pincer said, his voice no longer stuttering. "And another kind that's all thin and skinny. Don't know how they live, with no light getting down here. There's lots of that kind, sort of waving about. And there are snaky trails in the mud, and some kind of weird fishes dodging in and out of the skinny plants. ..."

After a bit more of that, I would've gladly gone back to wonderment clicks. But I kept quiet.

"... And there are some kurtle crabs-bright red and bigger than any I ever seen before! And what's that, Ur-ronn, a mudworm? You think so? What a mud-worm! . . . Hey, what's that thing? Is that a dro-"

Ur-ronn interrupted, "Half a cavle to bottom. Signaling the surface crew to slow descent."

Sharp electric sparks broke the cabin's darkness as she touched a contact key, sending coded impulses from our battery up an insulated strand, woven through the hawser. It took a few duras for the rumbling grumble of the deploying drums to change pitch as the brakes dug in. Wuphon's Dream jerked, giving us all a start. Huphu's claws raked my shoulder.

The descent slowed. It was specially agonizing for me, not knowing how much farther bottom lay, when we'd make contact, or with how much force. Naturally, n.o.body was confiding in good old Alvin!

"Hey, fellas," Pincer resumed, "I think I just saw-"

"Adjusting trim!" Huck announced, peering with one eye at each of the spirit levels.

"Refocusing the lights," Ur-ronn added. "Ziz shows one yellow tentacle to starvoard. Current flowing that direction, five knots."

Pincer murmured-"Fellas? I thought I just saw . . . oh, never mind. Bottom appears to slope left, maybe twenty degrees."

"Turning forward wheels to compensate," Huck responded. "Alvin, we may want a slow rearward crank on the driver wheels."

That jerked me out of any resentful mood. "Aye-aye," I said, turning the zigzag bar in front of me, causing the rear set of wheels to rotate. At least I hoped they were responding. We wouldn't know for sure till we hit the ground.

"Here it comes," Huck announced. And then, apparently recollecting her missed estimates during the trial run, she added-"This time for sure. Brace yourselves!"

When I write about all this someday from these notes, perhaps I'll describe sudden billows of mud as we plowed into the ocean floor, gouging a long furrow, sending vegetation tumbling and blind subsea creatures fleeing in panic. Maybe I'll throw in fierce salt.w.a.ter spray from a blown seal or two, tightened frantically by the heroic crew, in the nick of time.

What I probably won't admit in print is that I couldn't even tell the exact moment when our wheels touched down. The event was, well, more than a bit murky. Like sinking a probe fork into the rind of a shuro fruit and not being quite sure whether you've speared the core nut yet.

"Murky" also described the scene around us as slime-swirls spiraled, slowly settling to reveal a dead-black world, except down twin corridors of dazzling blue cast by the eiks. What I could see of those narrow tunnels snowed a slanting plain of mud, broken here and there by pale slim-stemmed "plants" that needed no sunlight to thrive, though I couldn't begin to guess what else they lived on. Their leaves or fronds seemed to wave back and forth, as if in a breeze. No animal life moved in our beams, which wasn't that surprising. Wouldn't we top-dwellers hide if some weird vessel plunged into our midst from above, casting forth both noise and a searing gaze?

Forcing the comparison, I wondered if any suboceanic locals thought their judgment day had just come.

With her telegraph key, Ur-ronn pulsed the message everyone above waited to hear. We are down, she sent. All is well.

Yes, it lacks the poetic imagery of flags planted, eagles landed, or infinitives boldly split. I shouldn't complain. Not all urs are born to recite epic sagas on demand. Still, I think I'll change it in rewrite-if I ever get the chance, which right now seems pretty unlikely.

Again, sparks jumped the tiny gap, this time without Ur-ronn touching it. A reply from above.

Welcome news. Proceed.

"Ready, Alvin?" Pincer called back. "All ahead, one quarter."

I responded-"Ahead one quarter, aye, Captain."

My back and arm muscles flexed. The crank seemed reluctant at first. Then I felt the magnetic clutch take hold-a strange sense of attachment to once-living g'Kek parts that I tried not thinking about. The special mud treads worked as I felt resistance. Wuphon's Dream shuddered forward.

I concentrated on maintaining a steady pace. Pincer shouted steering instructions at Huck while holding Uriel's map for reference. Ur-ronn correlated our bearing with her compa.s.s. The hawser and air hose resumed transmitting the distant rumble of deployer drums, unreeling more tether so we might wander ever farther from safety. The confined s.p.a.ce resonated with my deep work umble, but no one complained. The sound wrapped itself around me till I felt encircled by hoonish shipmates, making the cramped confinement more bearable. Like a ship far at sea, we were all alone, dependent on Ifni's luck and our own resourcefulness to make it home again.

Time pa.s.sed. We fell into a rhythmic routine. I pushed, Huck steered, Ur-ronn aimed the headlights, and Pincer was pilot. Pretty soon, it began to feel like we were old hands at this.

Huck asked-"What were you saying, Pincer, just before we landed? Something you saw?"

"Sonething with lots of teeth, I vet!" Ur-ronn teased. "Isn't this just avout when we're suffosed to see nonsters?"

Monsters, I thought. My umble annexed a laugh-quaver.

Pincer took the teasing well. "Give it time, chums. You never can tell when . . . there! Over to the left; that's what I saw before!"

The Dream listed a bit as Huck and Ur-ronn leaned forward to look, causing the rear wheels to lose half their traction. "Hey!" I complained.

"Well, I be despoked-" Huck murmured.

"And I vee drenched," Ur-ronn added.

All right, so I whined a bit-"Come on, you gra.s.s-fed bunch of sour-mulching-"

Just then the ground slanted a bit more, and my narrow tunnel view finally swept across the scene they'd all been staring at.

"Hr-rm-rm!" I exclaimed. "So that's what got you all stirred up? A bunch of dross coffins?"

They lay scattered across the ocean floor, canted at all angles, many half buried in the mud. Scores of them. Mostly oblong and rectangular, though a few were barrel-shaped. Naturally, all traces had vanished of the ribbons that once bedecked them, honoring the bones or spindles or worn-out tools cast off by some earlier generation of sooners.

"But dross ships never come into the Rift," Huck complained, pushing two stalks toward my face. "Ain't that right, Alvin?"

I twisted to peer past her d.a.m.n floating eyes.

"They don't. Still, the Rift is officially part of the Midden. Another section of the same down-sucking whatsit."

"A tectonic suvduction zone," Ur-ronn put in.

"Yeah, thanks. So it's a perfectly legal place to dump dross."

"But if no ships come, how did it get here?"

I was trying to make out which kinds of coffins were present and which were missing. That could help pin down when the spill had been made. There were no human-style chests or urrish reed baskets, which wasn't surprising. So far I'd only seen g'Kek and qheuenish work, which could make the site pretty darn old.

"The cartons arrived the same way we did, Huck," I explained. "Somebody dumped them off the cliff at Terminus Rock."

Huck gasped. She started to speak, then paused, and I could almost hear wheels turning in her head. Dumping from land just isn't done. But she must have already reasoned that this place was an acceptable exception. If a portion of the Midden really did pa.s.s right underneath Terminus Rock, and a.s.suming there must have once been settlements nearby, this would have been a cheaper way of burying Grandpa than sending his coffin out to sea by boat.

"But then how did the boxes get so far from land? We've come cables and cables by now."

"Tides, mudslides," Pincer answered. But I rumbled I negation.

"You forget how the Midden's supposed to work. It sucks stuff in, isn't that right, Ur-ronn?"

Ur-ronn whistled despair over my insistent oversimplifying. She motioned with two hands. "One tectonic flate slides under the other, you see, creating a trench and drawing old sea floor along with it."

"To be dragged underground, melted, and renewed, pushing underneath the Slope and making volcanoes. Yeah, I get it." Huck turned all four stalks forward, pensively. "Hundreds of years since these were dumped, and the dross has only come this far from where it fell?"

Only few seconds ago, she had been amazed by how great a distance the crates had come from the cliff! I guess it goes to show how different time can seem, when you shift from the perspective of a person's lifetime to the life cycles of a world. In comparison, I don't suppose humans have much to brag about, living twice as long as urs. We're all bound for Jijo's slow digestion soon enough, whether or not alien invaders leave us alone.

Pincer and Ur-ronn consulted their maps, and shortly we were under way again, leaving that boneyard where another generation of sinners made their slow way toward pardon in melted stone.

About half a midura later, with a sense of great relief, we found Uriel's "jack."

By that time my arms and legs ached from row-boating the crank handle at least a couple of thousand times, responding to Pincer's insistent commands of "speed up!" or "slow down!" or "can't you go any faster?" Of the four of us, he alone seemed to be enjoying himself, without any qualms or physical ague.

We hoon elect our captains, then obey without question 'While any sort of emergency is going on-and this whole voyage qualified in my mind as a screaming emergency-so I tucked away any resentment for later, when I pictured getting even with Pincer in many colorful ways. Maybe the gang's next project should be a hot-air balloon. Make him the first qheuen to fly since they gave up starships. It'd serve him right.

By the time Huck finally yelled "Eureka!" my poor muscles and pivots felt as if we'd covered the entire width of the Rift, and then some. My first relieved thought was-No wonder Uriel provided so much hawser and hose!

Only after that did I wonder-How did she know where to tell us to look for this jeekee thing?

It stood half buried in the mud, about twelve cables south of where we first touched down. Judging from the portion that was visible from my "vantage point" way in back, it consisted of long spikes, each pointed outward in a different direction, as if aimed toward the six faces of a cube. Each spike had a big k.n.o.b at the end, hollow I guessed, to prevent sinking in the muck. It was obviously meant to be found, being colored a garish swirl of reds and blues. Red to really stand out at short range, since the color's almost totally absent underwater, and blue to be visible from farther away, if your beam happened to sweep across it in the deep darkness. Even so, you had to be within less than a cable to see the thing, so we'd never have come across it without Uriel's instructions. Still, it took two search spirals before we stumbled on the jack.

It was the strangest thing any of us had ever encountered. And don't forget, I've heard a g'Kek umble and witnessed a traeki vlen.

"Is it Buyur-uyur?" Pincer asked, superst.i.tious awe invading his voice vents, along with a returned stammer.

"I bet a pile of donkey mulch that's not Buyur-made," Huck said. "What do you think, Ur-ronn?"

Our urs pal stretched her neck past Pincer, her muzzle drying a patch of the bubble window. "No way the Vuyur would've vuilt anything so frightful-ghastly," she agreed. "It's not their style."

"Of course it's not their style," Huck continued. "But I know whose it is."

We all stared at her. Naturally, she milked the moment, pausing till we were on the verge of pummeling her.