Infinity's Shore

“Also, a certain fraction of boys tend to shrug off social constraints during adolescence, no matter how carefully they are raised. Eventually, some young man would have burst from the Illias realm without adequate preparation — and all it would take is one. In his need to preen and make a name, he might spill our secret to the Commons at large.”

“Girls act that way, too, sometimes,” Sara pointed out.

“Yes, but our odds were better this way. Ponder the young men you know, Sara. Imagine how they would have behaved.”

She pictured her brothers, growing up in this narrow oasis. Lark would have been sober and reliable. But Dwer, at fifteen, was very different than he became at twenty.

“And yet, I see you aren’t all women.…”

The senior rider grinned. “Nor are we celibates. From time to time we bring in mature males — often chief scouts, sages, or explosers — men who already know our secret, and are of an age to be calm, sensible companions … yet still retain vigor in their step.”

Fallon laughed to cover brief embarrassment. “My step is no longer my best feature.”

Foruni squeezed his arm. “You’ll do for a while yet.”

Sara nodded. “An urrish-sounding solution.” Sometimes a group of young urs, lacking the means to support individual husbands, would share one, passing him from pouch to pouch.

The senior rider nodded, expressing subtleties of irony with languid motions of her neck. “After many generations, we may have become more than a bit urrish ourselves.”

Sara glanced toward Kurt the Exploser, sitting on a smooth rock studying carefully guarded texts, with both Jomah and Prity lounging nearby.

“Then you sent the expedition to fetch Kurt because you want another—”

“Ifni, no! Kurt is much too old for such duties, and when we do bring in new partners it is with quiet discretion. Hasn’t Kurt explained to you what this is all about? His role in the present crisis? The reason why we gambled so much to fetch you all?”

When Sara shook her head, Foruni’s nostrils flared and she hissed like an urrish auntie, perplexed by foolish juniors.

“Well, that’s his affair. All I know is that we must escort you the rest of the way as soon as possible. You’ll rest with us tonight, my niece. But alas, family reminiscence must wait till the emergency passes … or once it overwhelms us all.”

Sara nodded, resigned to more hard riding.

“From here … can we see—?”

Fallon nodded, a gentle smile on his creased features.

“I’ll show you, Sara. It’s not far.”

She took his arm as Foruni bade them return soon for a feast. Already Sara’s nose filled with scents from the cook-fire. But soon her thoughts were on the path as they crossed narrow, miraculous meadows, then scniblands where simlas grazed, and beyond to a steepening pass wedged between two hills. Sunlight was fading rapidly, and soon the smallest moon, Passen, could be seen gleaming near the far west horizon.

She heard music before they crested the pass. The familiar sound of Emerson’s dulcimer, pinging softly ahead. Sara was loath to interrupt, yet the glow drew her — a shimmering lambency rising from Jijo, filling a vista beyond the sheltered oasis.

The layered terrain seemed transformed in pearly moonlight. Gone were the garish colors, yet there remained an extravagant effect on the imagination. It took an effort of will in order not to go gliding across the slopes, believing in false oceans and battlements, in ghost cities and starscapes, in myriad phantom worlds that her pattern-gleaning brain crafted out of opal rays and shadows.

Fallon took Sara’s elbow, turning her toward Emerson.

The starman stood on a rocky eminence with the dulcimer propped before him, beating its forty-six strings. The melody was eerie. The rhythm orderly, yet impossible to constrain, like a mathematical series that refused to converge.

Emerson’s silhouette was framed by flickering fire as he played for nature’s maelstrom.

This fire was no imagining — no artifact of an easily fooled eye. It rippled and twisted in the far distance, rimming the broad curves of a mighty peak that reared halfway up the sky.

Fresh lava.

Jijo’s hot blood.

The planet’s nectar of renewal, melted and reforged.

Hammering taut strings, the Stranger played for Mount Guenn, serenading the volcano while it repaid him with a halo of purifying flame.

PART FIVE

A PROPOSAL FOR A USEFUL TOOL/STRATEGY BASED ON OUR EXPERIENCE ON JIJO

IT HAS BEEN NEARLY A MILLENNIUM SINCE A LARGE OUTBREAK OF TRAEKINESS WAS FOUND.

These flare-ups used to be frequent embarrassments, where stacks of hapless rings were found languishing without even a single master torus to guide them. But no word of such an occurrence has come within the memory of living wax.

The reaction of our Polkjhy ship to this discovery on Jijo was disgusted loathing.