Infinity's Shore

The tram docked at last. His mood lifted for a little while, helping Uriel’s staff unload cargo. Along with Prity, he followed the urs and qheuens down a long, twisty corridor toward a flow of warm air. At last they reached a big un der-ground grotto — a cave with an opening at the far end, facing north. Hints of color gleamed far beyond, reminding him of the Spectral Flow.

Workers scurried about. Emerson saw g’Kek teams busy sewing together great sheets of strong, lightweight cloth. He watched urs delicately adjust handmade valves as gray qheuens bent lengths of pipe with their strong claws. Already, breaths of volcanically heated air were flowing into the first of many waiting canopies, creating bulges that soon joined together, forming a globe-ended bag.

Emerson looked across the scene, then back at the salvaged junk the dolphins had donated.

Slowly, a smile spread across his face.

To his great satisfaction, the urrish smiths seemed glad when he silently offered to lend a hand.

Kaa

THE SKIES OPENED AROUND NIGHTFALL, LETTING down both rain and lightning.

The whale sub Hikahi delayed entering Port Wuphon until the storm’s first stinging drizzle began peppering the wharves and huts. The sheltered bay speckled with the impact of dense droplets as the submersible glided up a slanted coastal shelf toward an agreed rendezvous.

Kaa swam just ahead, guiding her through the narrow channel, between jagged shoals of demicoral. No one would have denied him the honor. I am still chief pilot, he thought. With or without my nickname.

The blunt-nosed craft mimicked his long turn around the sheltering headland, following as he showed the way with powerful, body-arching thrusts of his tail. It was an older piloting technique than wormhole diving, not highly technical. But Kaa’s ancestors used to show human sailors the way home in this manner, long before the oldest clear memory of either race.

“Another two hundred meters, Hikahi,” he projected using sonar speech. “Then a thirty-degree turn to port. After that, it’s three hundred and fifty meters to full stop.”

The response was cool, professional.

“Roger. Preparing for debarkation.”

Kaa’s team — Brookida and a half-dozen neo-fins who had come out earlier to unload Uriel’s supplies — moored the vessel when it reached the biggest dock. A small crowd of dignitaries waited on the pier, under heavy skies. Umbrellas sheltered the urrish delegates, who pressed together in a shivering mass, swaying their long necks back and forth. Humans and hoons made do with cloaks and hats, while the others simply ignored the rain.

Kaa was busy for a time, giving instructions as the helmsman fine-tuned her position, then cut engines. Amid a froth of bubbles, the Hikahi brought her bow even with the wharf. Clamshell doors opened, like a grinning mouth.

Backlit by the bright interior, a single human being strode forward. A tall female whose proud bearing seemed to say that she had little left to lose — little that life could take from her — except honor. For a long moment, Gillian Baskin looked on the surface of Jijo, inhaling fresh air for the first time in years.

Then she turned back toward the interior, beckoning with a smile and an extended arm.

Four silhouettes approached — one squat, one gangly, one wheeled, and the last clattering like a nervous colt. Kaa knew the tall one, although they had never met. Alvin, the young “humicking” writer, lover of Verne and Twain, whose journal had explained so much about the strange mixed culture of sooner races.

A moan of overjoyed release escaped those waiting, who flowed forward in a rush.

So — embraced by their loved ones, and pelted by rain — the adventurous crew of Wuphon’s Dream finally came home.

There were other reunions … and partings.

Kaa went aft to help Makanee debark her patients. Streaker’s chief physician seemed older than Kaa remembered, and very tired, as she supervised a growing throng of neo-dolphins, splashing and squealing beyond the Hikahi’s starboard flank. While some appeared listless, others dashed about with antic, explosive energy. Two nurses helped Makanee keep the group herded together at the south end of the harbor, using occasional low-voltage discharges from their harnesses to prevent their patients from dashing off. The devolved ones wore nothing but skin.

Kaa counted their number — forty-six — and felt a shiver of worry. Such a large fraction of Streaker’s crew! Gillian must be desperate indeed, to contemplate abandoning them here. Many were probably only experiencing fits of temporary stress atavism, and would be all right if they just had peace and quiet for a time.

Well, maybe they’ll get it, on Jijo, he thought. Assuming this planet sea turns out to be as friendly as it looks. And assuming the Galactics leave us alone.