Brightness Reef

I’ve lain awake some nights, trying to see a way around this problem using some other language. There’s the GalSeven tentative case, for instance, but that doesn’t work in past-explicit tense. And the quantum-uncertain declension, in Buyur-dialect GalThree, is just too weird. Anyway, who would I be writing for? Huck’s the only other GalThree reader I know, and getting praise from her is kind of like kissing your sister.

Anyway, the waters of the Rift were all a-froth at the point where I last left our tale. The hatchet shadow of Terminus Rock cut across a patch of ocean where both hawser and hose still whirled, chopping the normally placid surface, spi

It was all too easy to picture what had happened to Wuphon’s Dream, our little vessel for exploring the great unknown below. In reluctant imagining I saw the hollow wooden tube — its wheels spi

As if that weren’t enough, we all had fresh in memory the sight of little Huphu, our noor-beast mascot, thrown by the recoiling crane, screeching and gyrating till her tiny black figure vanished into the blue waters of the Rift. As Huck’s Earthling nicknamesake might’ve said — “It warn’t a happy sight. Nor a lucky wun.”

For a long time, everybody just stared. I mean, what could we do? Even the protestors from Wuphon Port and The Vale were silent. If any felt smug over our comeuppance as heretics, they felt wiser to withhold jubilation.

We all backed away from the ledge. What point in peering at a velvety-smooth grave?

“Retract the hawser and hose,” Urdo

“Acid vurn!” Ur-ro

Urdo

“Get away from here!” Huck shouted angrily, rolling toward the dissenters, spi

Pincer and I rushed to Huck’s side. It might’ve gotten ugly, but then a bunch of big grays and burly urrish smiths from Mount Gue

“Bastards!” Huck cursed after them. “Horrid, jeekee murderers!”

Not by law, I thought, still numb from shock. Neither Huphu nor little Ziz had strictly been citizens of the Commons. Nor even honorary ones, like glavers, or members of any threatened species. So it wasn’t murder, exactly.

But close enough, by my reckoning. My hands clenched, and I sensed something give as my back flexed with fight-hormones. Anger is slow to ignite in a hoon and hard to snuff once lit. It’s kind of disturbing to look back on how I felt then, even though the sages say what you feel isn’t evil, only what you do about it.

No one said a word. We must’ve moped for a while. Urdo

Then a stuttering whistle pierced our pit of mourning, coming from behind us, toward the sea. We turned to see Pincer-Tip, teetering bravely at the edge, blowing dust as he piped shrilly from three leg-vents while motioning with two claws for us to come back.

“Look-ook-ook!” came his aspirated stammer. “Huck, Alvin — hurry!”

Huck claimed later she realized right off what Pincer must’ve seen. I guess in retrospect it is kind of obvious, but at the time I had no idea what could have him so excited. On reaching the edge, I could only peer down in amazement at what had popped out of the belly of the Rift.

It was our bathy! Our beautiful Wuphon’s Dream floated upright, almost peaceful in the bright sunshine. And on its curved top sat a small black figure, wet and bedraggled from nose to tail. It didn’t take a g’Kek’s vision to tell that our little noor was as amazed to be alive as we were to see her. Faint whispers of her yelping complaint floated up to us.

“But how—” Urdo

“Of course!” Ur-ro

I blinked a couple of times.

“Oh, the ballast! Hr-rm. Yes, the Dream’d be buoyant without’ it. But there was no crew to pull the release, unless—”

“Unless Ziz did it!” Huck finished for me.

“Insufficient explanation,” Urdo

“Hrm-rm, I think I see what made the difference,” I suggested, shading my eyes with both hands. “Huck, what is that… thing surrounding the bathy?”

Again, our wheeled friend teetered at the edge, spreading two eyestalks far apart and sticking out a third for good measure. “It looks like a balloon of some sort, Alvin. A tube, wrapped around the Dream like a life preserver. A circular — Ziz!”

That matched my own guess. A traeki torus, inflated beyond anything we might have thought possible.

Everybody turned to stare at Tyug, the Mount Gue

“A precaution. One that i/we contemplated in consultation with our lord, Uriel. A safeguard of unknown, untried efficacy.

“Glad we/i are to have vle

“In other words-ords,” Pincer interpreted, “stop staring like a bunch of day-blind glavers. Let’s go fetch ’em back-ack-ack!”