Brightness Reef

The blinding flash was the last thing he clearly remembered for a long time to come.

VII. THE BOOK OF THE SEA

Do not make poisons that you ca

Use all of the poisons that you make.

If others must clean up after you,

Do not act offended when they exact a price.

Alvin’s Tale

So there we were, just arrived at the top-end tram platform after a long ride from Wuphon Port, and no sooner do Huck, Pincer, and me step off the tram car (with little Huphu riding Pincer’s shell for luck) than our urrish pal, Ur-ro

Worse, a moment later she starts nipping at us, like we were a bunch of pack donkeys to be herded down the hall!

“Hrrrrm! Now hold it right there,” I insisted. “Nothing ever gets done right by letting yourself get so igsee frantic. Whatever you’ve got to say can surely wait for a proper hello to friends you haven’t seen in weeks. After all — yi-houongwa!”

Yes, that was a hoonish throat-blat of pain. Huck had rolled one of her main-wheels over my left foot.

“Varnish it, Alvin. You sound just like your father!”

My father? I thought. How utterly ungloss.

“Haven’t you been listening to Ur-ro

My sac panted a few times as I ran back over the last few duras, piecing together some of what Ur-ro

It was a wild tale all right, and we’ve told each other some whoppers.

“Hr-r-r — a starship?” I stared at our urrish pal. “You mean it this time? It’s not just a comet, like you tried fooling us with a year ago?”

Ur-ro

On plates, I translated from the way her cleft upper lip mangles some Anglic consonants. Photographic plates. Maybe Ur-ro

An urrish moan of frustration. “You jeekee file of scales and fur! That’s where I veen trying to take you guys since the tran stoffed!”

“Oh.” I bowed with a sweep of one arm. “Well then, what are we waiting around here for? Let’s go!”

Years ago, Uriel the Smith inherited the Mount Gue

Ur-ro

It kind of makes you glad humans didn’t come any sooner, ’cause the answers would’ve been right there in some book — how to make knives and lenses and windows and such. Sure, it would’ve made it easier for the other exile races to free themselves from dominion by qheuenish woodcarvers. On the other hand, all you have to do is hear Ur-ro

They did it themselves, you see, earning liberty and self-respect. Ask any hoon how we’d feel without our swaying ships. Earthling lore has made improvements, but no one gave us the sea! Not our far-off Guthatsa patrons, or the Great Galactic Library, or our selfish ancestors who dumped us on Jijo, naive and unready. It’s a proud thing to have done it for ourselves.

Pride can be important, when you don’t have much else.

Before entering the forge-inferno, Pincer-Tip draped a water-soaked mantle over his soft red carapace. I gathered my cloak around me while Huck checked her goggles and axle-guards. Then Ur-ro

We hurried along a walkway of treated boo, hung between bubbling pools that glowed white with Jijo’s blood heat. Cleverly diverted updrafts guided smoldering vapors into stone baffles, venting them outside to look no different than any other smoker on Mount Gue

Huge buckets dangled overhead — one filled with reclaimed Buyur scrap and the other with a sandy mix — each waiting to be dipped in that blazing heat, then poured into clay molds. Urrish workers hauled pulleys and ladles. Another twirled a big glob of liquid glass at the end of a tube, spi

They were assisted by several gray qheuens who, in one of Jijo’s ironies, turned out to be the other sept well suited to these conditions. The grays may even be happier than when their queens used to dominate the Commons. But I never could read much expression on their stony cupolas. I often wonder how our wild, emotional Pincer could be related to them.

Farther from the heat, half a dozen g’Keks skittered across the smooth floor, handling account ledgers, while a traeki specialist with throbbing synthi rings tasted each mix to certify the mill’s products would rust or decay in less than two hundred years, as required by the sages.

Some orthodox scroll-pounders say we shouldn’t have smithies at all — that they’re vanities, distracting us from salvation through forgetfulness. But I think the place is gloss, even if the smoke frets my throat sac and sets my spine-scales itching.

Ur-ro

Huck skittered down a hallway lined with many doors, peering into various laboratory chambers. “Hsst! Alvin!” she whispered urgently, waving me over with one arm and two eyestalks. “Come look. Care to guess who’s here again?”

“Who is it?” Pincer whistled, leaving five wet trails of prints behind him. Ur-ro

I already had a pretty good idea who Huck was talking about, since no ship passenger enters Wuphon without being known to the harbor master — my mother. She hadn’t a

“Hrrrm. I’ll bet you a sweetboo cane it’s that sage again,” I ventured before arriving at the door. “The one from Biblos.”