Brightness Reef

Back? At first, she could not bring herself to understand. She puzzled while he gabbled on and on.

Back?

Back to Jass and Bom and their strutting ways? To the endless bullying of those big, strong hunters? Always boasting around the campfire about petty, vicious triumphs that grew more exaggerated with each telling? To those wicked oafs who used fire-tipped sticks to punish anyone who dared to talk back to them?

Back to where mothers watched half their babies waste away and die? To where that hardly mattered, because new babies kept on coming, coming and coming, till you dried up and died of old age before you were forty? Back to all that hunger and dirt?

The human sage had muttered words and phrases that were supposed to sound soothing and noble and logical. But Rety had stopped listening.

They meant to send her back to the tribe!

Oh, it might be fine to see Jass’s face when she strode into camp, clothed and equipped with all the wonders the Six could offer. But then where would she be? Condemned once more to that awful life.

I won’t go back. I won’t!

With that resolution, Rety rolled over, wiped her eyes, and considered what to do.

She could try ru

It’s said the urs sometimes let a chosen human ride upon their backs, when the human’s light enough, and worthy.

Rety tried to picture life among the galloping clans, roaming bold and free across the open plains with wind blowing through her hair.

Or what about going to sea with hoons? There were islands nobody had ever set foot on, and flying fish, and floating mountains made of ice. What an adventure that would be! Then there were the traeki of the swamps…

A new thought abruptly occurred to her. Another option that suddenly appeared to lie open. One so amazing to contemplate that she just lay there silently for several duras, hands unclenching at last from their tightly clutched fists. Finally, she sat up, pondering with growing excitement a possibility beyond any other ambition she had ever conceived.

The more she thought about it, the better it began to seem.

XI. THE BOOK OF THE SEA

Animals think nothing of race, clan, or philosophy.

Nor of beauty, ethics, or investment in things that will long outlast their lives.

All that matters to beasts is the moment.

All that counts is self.

Mates, offspring, siblings, and hive-consorts,

All these offer continuity of self.

To even a loving beast, altruism has deep roots, founded in self-interest.

Sapient beings are not beasts.

Loyalty binds even the i

To race, clan, or philosophy.To beauty, ethics, or investment in fruits you and 1 will never harvest.

If you seek the downward trail, the long road to redemption —

If you want a second chance, shriven of your grief and worry —

Seek that path by returning to the soil,

In forgetfulness of race, clan, or philosophy.

Yet beware! Lest the road take you too far.

Keep faith in something greater than you are.

Beware resumed obsession with the self.

To those who have tasted vacuum and stardust, that way lies damnation.

Alvin’s Tale

The others are asleep now. It’s late, but I want to get all this down, ’cause things are about to get busy and I don’t know when I’ll have another chance.

Tomorrow we head back down the mountain, loaded with all kinds of gear lent to us by Uriel the Smith-so much good stuff that we’re feeling pretty dumb right now about our former plans.

To think, we were willing to trust our lives to some of the junk we designed!

Uriel already sent messages to our parents, calligraphed on heavy cloth paper and sealed with her signet as a sage of the Commons. So there’s not much Huck’s folks or mine can do to stop us.

Kot that I looked forward to facing them, anyway. What would I say? “Hey, Pop. It’ll be just like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea! Remember how often you read it to me, when I was little?”

I recall now how that tale ended for Captain Nemo’s submarine crew, and I can see why Yowg-wayuo regrets what a humicker I’ve become. If my father confronts me over this, I’ll discuss it in a language other than Anglic, to show that I really have thought it out several ways. This trip is more than a passing kid-obsession but something meaningful for our village and our race. Me and the others are going to make history. It’s important for a hoon to be involved, from notion to motion to recollection.

Once she decided, Uriel really got things rolling. Pincer-Tip headed out the very same evening after Ziz was vle

Test dives start in just five days!

The choice of a site was vital. There’s just one place where the Midden’s deep watery trench plunges like a scythe blade toward the coast. Where it sends a deep rupture of jagged canyons passing right next to Terminus Rock. By deploying a boom from an overhanging ledge, we won’t even need to hire a ship.

It’s a relief to have a decision made at last. Even Huck admits the die is cast, accepting destiny with a shrugged rubbing of two eyestalks.

“At least we’ll be right there at the border, where I want to be anyway. When we finish, Uriel will owe us. She’ll have to write us a warrant to go over the line and visit some Buyur ruins.”

There’s an Anglic word — tenacity — that comes out as stubbor