“Yeah,” Huck said. “Well, maybe it’s time someone pointed out the difference between taking a calculated risk and committing flat-out suicide. Which is what it’d be if we ever took a ride aboard that contraption of yours, Pincer!”
Our poor qheuenish friend looked like someone had stuck him in a leg-vent with a stick. His cupola went all wobbly. “You all know-ow I’d never ask my friends-ends—”
“To go anywhere you wouldn’t go?” Huck retorted. “Big of you, since you’re talking about dragging us around underwater, where you’re built to be perfectly comfortable.”
“Only at first-irst!” Pincer retorted. “After some test dives, we’ll go deeper. And I’ll be in there with you, taking all the same chances-ances!”
“Come on, Huck,” I put in. “Give the poor guy’s shell a buff.”
“Anyway-ay,” Pincer retaliated, “what about your plan? At least the bathy would be lawful and upright. You want to break the rules and do sooner stuff-uff!”
Now it was Huck’s turn to go defensive. “What sooner stuff? None of us can breed with each other, so there’s no chance of committing that crime while we’re over the border. Anyhow, hunters and inspectors go beyond the markers.”
“Sure. With permission from the sages-ages!”
Huck shrugged two stalks, as if to say she couldn’t be bothered with petty legalistic details. “I still prefer a misdemeanor over flat-out suicide.”
“You mean you prefer a silly little trip to some broken-down Buyur ruin, just to read boring ol’ wall markings-ings, over a chance to see the Midden-idden? And real live monsters?”
Huck groaned and spun a disgusted circle. Earlier, Pincer had told us about a thing he glimpsed that morning, in the shallows south of town. Something with silvery-bright scales swooped by, he swore, flapping what looked in the murky distance like underwater wings. After hearing similar stories almost since Pincer’s molting day, we didn’t give this one a lot of credit.
That was when both of them turned to me to decide!
“Remember, Alvin,” Huck crooned. “You just promised—”
“You promised me, months ago!” Pincer cried, so avid that he didn’t stutter.
Right then I felt like a traeki standing between two piles of really ripe mulch. I liked the notion of getting to see the deep Midden, where everything slick and Galactic had gone since the Buyur went away. An undersea adventure like in books by Haller or Verne.
On the other hand, Huck was right about Pincer’s plan being Ifni-spit. The risk might seem worth it to a low-kay qheuen, who didn’t even know for sure who his mother was, but I know my folks would sicken awful if I went off and died without leaving even my heart-spine behind for soul-grinding and vuphyning.
Anyway, Huck offered a prospect almost as gloss — to find writings even more ancient than the books humans brought to Jijo. Real Buyur stories, maybe. The idea set off tingles in my sucker pads.
As it turns out, I was spared having to decide. That’s because my noor, Huphu, arrived right then, darting under Pincer’s legs and Huck’s wheels, yapping something about an urgent message from Ur-ronn.
Ur-ronn wanted to see us.
More than that — she had a big surprise to share.
Oh, yes. Huphu needs introducing.
First off, she’s not really my noor. She hangs around me a lot, and my rumble-umbles seem to work, getting her to do what I want a good part of the time. Still, it’s kind of hard to describe the relationship between hoon and noor. The very word — relationship — implies a lot of stuff that’s just not there. Maybe this is one of those cases where Anglic’s flexibility, usually the most utterbuff thing about it, simply falls apart into vagueness.
Anyway, Huphu’s no talker-decider. Not a sapient being, like us members of the Six. But since she comes along on most of our adventures, I guess she’s as much a part of the gang as anyone. Lots of folks say noors are crazy. For sure, they don’t seem to care if they live or die, so long as they’re seeing something new. More have probably perished of curiosity than from liggers on land or sea-starks offshore. So I knew how Huphu would vote in our argument, if she could talk.
Fortunately, even Pincer knows better than to suggest ever letting her decide anything.
So there we were, arguing away, when this little noor bounds up the jetty, yipping like mad. Right off we can tell it’s,a semaphore message she’s relaying, on account of it makes sense. Noors can’t speak Galactic Two or any other language anyone’s ever grokked, but they can memorize and repeat any short mirror-flash signal they happen to pick up with their sharp eyes. They can even tell from the opener-tag who a message is for. It’s a gloss talent that’d be awfully useful — if only they did it reliably, instead of just when they felt like it.
Huphu sure must’ve felt like it, ’cause next thing you know she’s yelping the upper denotation train of a GalTwo memorandum. (I figure an old Morse code telegraph operator like Mark Twain could’ve managed GalTwo, if he tried.)
As I said before, the message was from our urrish pal, Ur-ronn, and it said — WINDOW FINISHED. COME QUICK. OTHER VERY WEIRD STUFF HAPPENING!
I put an exclamation point at the end ’cause that’s how Huphu finished reciting the bulletin she’d seen flash down from Mount Guenn, terminating her report with a bark of ecstatic excitement. I’m sure the phrase “weird stuff was what had her bounding in circles, biting at her shadow.
“I’ll get my water bag,” Pincer-Tip said after a short pause.
“I’ll fetch my goggles,” Huck added.
“I’ll grab my cloak and meet you at the tram,” I finished. There was no need for discussion. Not after an invitation like that.
IV. THE BOOK OF THE SLOPE
There is a fable told by the g’Kek, one of the oldest handed down since their sneakship came to Jijo, passed on orally for almost two thousand years, until it was finally recorded on paper.
The saga tells of a youth whose “thread skating” prowess was renowned in one of the orbital cities where g’Keks dwelled, arter losing their homeworld on a wager.
In this particular city, unhampered by the drag of solid ground, young wheel-lords of a space-born generation fashioned a new game — skimming with flashing rims along the thinnest or colored strands — cables that they strung at angles throughout the vast inner cavity of their artificial world. One skater, the tale says, used to take on dare after dare, relishing risk, hopping among gossamer strands and sometimes even flying free, wheels spinning madly before catching the next cord, swooping in ecstatic abandon.
Then, one day, a defeated opponent taunted the young champion.
I’ll bet you can’t skim close enough to wrap a thread round the sun!
Today’s Jijoan scholars find this part of the tale confusing. How could a sun be within reach, inside a hollow, spinning rock? With much of our Space Technologies section destroyed, the Biblos Scholarium is ill-equipped to interpret such clues. Our best guess is that the story became garbled over time, along with most other memories of a godlike past.
The technical details do not matter as much as the moral of the tale — the imprudence of messing with forces beyond your comprehension. A fool doing so can get burned, like the skater in the tale, whose dramatic end ignited a storm of slender, blazing trails, crisscrossing the doomed city’s suddenly fiery inner sky.