A fraction of the crowd pressed forward, seeking something ineffable from direct experience.
“Curious,” Kiwei Ha’aoulin commented. “I count several racial types that are not normally prone to religious fervor. And quite a few others whose clans are in deep ideological conflict with each other. Note over there! A tourmuj Awaiter and a talpu’ur Inheritor, standing enraptured, side by side. I wonder what conceptual magic has them so captivated.”
“Who cares?” Harry groaned impatiently. He wanted to reach the body shop before closing time, so the trail would not go cold. “Ifni! We’ll never get around this mess.”
He was about to suggest turning around and taking a long detour, when the sound of his Anglic cursing attracted attention from a tall, camellike being, who turned to regard Harry with coal-black eyes.
It was a j’8lek, whose starfaring nation had such a long history of antipathy toward Earthlings that Harry’s right hand twitched, seeking comfort from the touch of his sidearm.
Only this particular j’8lek did something unexpected. After staring at Harry for several duras, it abruptly swept its long neck downward, bowing in a gesture of deep respect! Applying force with all four powerful legs, the creature pushed against the crowd, opening the beginnings of a path for Harry and his companion.
Somewhat amazed, the two of them moved forward, only to have the same thing happen again! Time after time, some onlooker would notice Harry, then hurriedly nudge those in front, clearing a path. No one objected or demurred. Even high-ranking beings from senior patron lines made way graciously, as if to an equal.
The experience was all the more daunting and strange to a chimp who stood less than a meter and a half high: It felt as if some force were dividing a sea of tall aliens before him, creating a narrow lane that he could not see beyond, leaving him with no idea what to expect at the other end. The whole thing would have felt just a bit unnerving, if everybody didn’t seem so damned friendly.
That made it totally unnerving!
He was too immersed in the crowd to catch anything but an occasional glimpse of the big display screens. But soon the preacher’s voice came through in clear Galactic Seven, causing him to stumble with sudden recognition.
“… anyone can understand why the great and mighty religious alliances have been driven to a frenzy by this news, broadcast recently from the sacred martyr world. This gift sent to us from wonderful doomed Earth.
“A gift of truth!
“By combining Galactic science with their own ingenious mathematics, the wolflings have uncovered a secret that high officials of the Institutes tried for many aeons to conceal—a secret also known by majestic beings of the Retired and Transcendent orders—that the convulsions presently racking the Five Galaxies are part of a natural process! One we should embrace, rather than dread!”
At once Harry recognized the manner of speech, as well as the strange message.
It was the Skiano proselyte! The one who used to sermonize in the street, unable to afford even a sidewalk pulpit. Given to extravagant metaphors, it had compared humanity’s “wolfling” nature—supposedly arising to sapience without intervention by a patron race—to legends of “virgin birth.” Harry vividly recalled the great prow-shaped head with twin pairs of inset, flashing eyes, uttering a chilling prophecy that Earth would suffer a kind of crucifixion, gloriously dying for the sake of others, before rising again, in spirit.
Now he understood why the crowd parted for a Terran—even a mere chimpanzee. (One with a tail that twitched nervously!)
Alas, that knowledge came as slim comfort. Clearly, the Skiano was riding a wave of public hysteria. Harry had walked into a revival meeting for one of the most bizarre heresies ever to strike the Five Galaxies!
Entranced and thoroughly amused, Kiwei Ha’aoulin began leading the way, forging ahead eagerly, as if to compensate for Harry’s growing reluctance, acting like a strutting majordomo, alerting one and all that an Earthling was coming through!
In a whispered aside, she urged him to enjoy the special treatment while it lasted.
“Well well. Maybe you should buck up, little furry fellow! With the whole cosmos shaking apart, we might as well have some fun.”
Not a typically Synthian attitude. But then, fatalism can be a strong antidote to cowardice.
This time, Harry decided to accept Kiwei’s reasoning. He squared his shoulders back, trying for the full bipedal dignity that human patrons had imbued into his ancestors while also giving them the gifts of speech and sapiency. He smoothed down the hackles in his pale fur, and even allowed the anomalous tail to rise up, in pride.
Abruptly, the throng ended. He and Kiwei found themselves at a raised platform where visiting dignitaries could sit and watch the spectacle in comfort.
Harry wanted only to get away and resume his earlier business, searching for the wayward sooners. But the only path available aimed straight up a ramp to the reserved area. As he climbed alongside Kiwei, the Skiano missionary’s strange dogma resonated.
“… why do the mighty alliances and Old Ones so oppose the idea of a God who loves each person? One who finds importance not in race or clan, but in every particular entity who is aware and capable of compassion?
“Could it be because they fear such an idea might bring an end to Uplift or species improvement?
“Nonsense! Those things would still take place, undertaken by free individuals! By sovereign souls who have faith in themselves and a personal redemption—when each honorable sapient will meet the Creator of All, finding utter fulfillment at the Omega Point.”
Harry had heard it all before—a strange blending of ancient Earth beliefs—many of them mutually incompatible—upgraded to address the mass fears of a Galactic civilization where the accustomed certainty was melting on all sides. The Skiano’s brilliant added touch—portraying the wolfling planet in the role of glorious, redeeming martyr—took advantage of Terra’s plight … while doing little to help save it from wrathful battle fleets.
If Harry thought the sermon bizarre, something more interesting awaited him among the varied dignitaries—none other than his old antagonist, the port inspector, who slouched as low as possible, clearly wishing to be elsewhere.
Harry loudly greeted the big hoon, calling out his name.
“Twaphu-anuph! Is that really you? Come to expand your horizons a bit, have you? Decided it was time to see the light?”
Upon spying Harry, Twaphu-anuph recoiled. With his elegantly dyed throat sac flapping miserably, he gestured lamely toward a young female hoon sitting next to him.
“My presence here … it was not voluntary. My … hr-rrm … daughter made me come.”
Harry barely stifled a guffaw. If hoons had one appealing trait, it was how they doted on their offspring. Harry still found it mystifying why this charming attribute nevertheless resulted in a race of dour, prudish, inflexible bureaucrats.
While Harry savored Twaphu-anuph’s discomfort, the Skiano kept preaching.
“Today we see the great powers striving to suppress truth—even as they vie to rain ruin down on Blessed Earth. Why? Because they worry about the Big Mistake.
“Long ago, a so-called ‘heresy’ was quashed. But truth can only be hidden, never destroyed.
“Now they fear all sapients will see at last—”
The prow-headed missionary paused dramatically.
“—that the vaunted ‘Embrace of Tides’ may be an embrace of lies!”
The crowd must have already known the gist of this message. Yet a moan coursed the vast hall when it was said aloud.
It gave Harry a chance to torment the port official some more.
“How ’bout that, old fellow?” he murmured. “Generation after generation, workin’ and slaving and havin’ no fun, just so’s your distant smart-aleck descendants will get to jump through a black hole to paradise. But what if there’s nothing down there, at the other end of the singularity? What if it’s all for nothin?”
While Twaphu
-anuph slumped miserably, his daughter leaned forward eagerly, peering with excitement toward the dais, where the Skiano paced back and forth under spotlights.
“… but there is another kind of salvation! One that needn’t dwell on far horizons of space and time. One that comes to each of us, if we just open up …”
Twaphu-anuph’s daughter turned to her other companion, a sturdy-looking young male hoon, whose arm she held with evident affection. A slender rousit perched on her shoulder, staring at a black, ferretlike creature lounging on the male’s back. Another inexplicable irony was that animals tended to like hoons, something that sapient beings seldom did.
Both youths were clearly well embarked on a bonding cycle—a scene that might have looked fetching, except the inevitable outcome would be yet another generation of sullen oppressors.
Why would hoons attend this bizarre rally? It runs counter to everything they stand for!
Harry jerked reflexively, reacting to a nudge from his Synthian companion.
“Over there!” Kiwei Ha’aoulin pointed. “Is that possibly one of the Earthlings you seek?”
Harry peered toward one end of the glare-lighted stage, where the Skiano’s attendants swarmed in flowing robes of blue and gold. In their midst stood a smallish human figure, similarly attired, who made commanding gestures, sending acolytes fanning through the congregation, armed with collection plates.
Harry blinked in surprise.
Rety!
A bath alone would have transformed the sooner girl. Resplendent garments took things further. But Harry saw that her face had also changed. Where scar tissue had once puckered her cheek and jaw, smooth pink skin now glistened.
The customer at the body shop wasn’t Diver, after all. I should’ve guessed.
Rety must have nosed around Kazzkark till she found the one group that would find her invaluable—a cult whose icon was the blue wolfling planet. Indeed, from the looks of things, she had risen to some prominence. A survivor, if Harry ever saw one.
“And now,” Kiwei Ha’aoulin murmured. “We complete the circle. You are about to be reunited in full, and I will take my leave.”
Harry reached out to stop the Synthian … then noticed that the audience was rippling once again. Like the Red Sea, parting. Emerging from a morass of beings who shuffled, slithered, flopped, or crawled out of the way, there strode a slim figure dressed in dun-colored clothing that seemed blurry to the eye. With the hood of his homespun garment thrown back, Dwer Koolhan’s shock of unruly hair seemed to gleam in contrast, like his dark eyes.
Well, he must’ve spent some of the seventy-five coins, Harry thought, noting that the young man held a small electronic tablet and was using it the way natives on Horst would hold a dowsing rod, searching back and forth for water. On the back of one arm, Dwer also wore a makeshift arrangement of bent metal tubes and elastic bands that no Galactic would see as a weapon, but Harry recognized as a vicious-looking wrist catapult—more useful at close urban quarters than any bow and arrows. At his waist, the human wore a long knife in a sheath.
To anyone but another Earthling, he might have seemed completely calm, oblivious to the crowd. But Harry read tension in Dwer’s shoulders as the living aisle spilled him toward the dignitaries’ ramp. Kiwei had begun edging away again, but now the Synthian’s curiosity overcame caution and she stayed to watch the young sooner approach.
“Well, well …,” Kiwei said, over and over, licking her whiskers nervously.
Dwer acknowledged Kiwei with a nod, showing no sign of any rancor over being cheated—much to the Synthian’s obvious relief.
Approaching Harry, he turned off the small finder tool.
“Smart of you to set up a personal beacon, Captain Harms. I bought some lessons how to set this tracker onto your signal. We use sniffer-bees for the same purpose, back home.”
Harry shrugged. He hadn’t expected it to work. But clearly, wherever these sooners came from, their schooling included resiliency.
“I’m just glad you two are all right,” he replied gruffly, nodding toward Rety.
Dwer scanned the scene onstage, where Rety could now be seen with the Skiano’s parrot on her shoulder, leading the audience in a strangely compelling psalm, merging contributions from at least half a dozen Galactic dialects with slow, sonorous Anglic. Though his pupils dilated, Dwer’s face showed no surprise.
“Shoulda figured,” he commented with a terse head-shake. “So, how d’you suggest we get her out of there without startin’ a riot among these—”
The young man stopped abruptly. His jaw dropped … then snapped shut again.
“I don’t believe it,” he murmured. Then, with an expression of grim determination, he added, “Excuse me, Cap’n Harms. There’s something I got to do right now.”
Harry blinked. “But … what—”
Dwer moved past him, quickly and silently slipping off his outer tunic. With rapid, agile motions, he tied the arms and hooded neck, creating a makeshift bag which he grasped in his left hand. Creeping in back of the first row of dignitaries, Dwer ignored protesting grunts from those seated in the second rank. The crowd’s continued chanting covered all complaints as he sidled behind Twaphu-anuph and the inspector’s daughter, making straight for the third hoon—the young male, whose ferretlike pet seemed at last to sense something. Though it faced the other way, spiny hackles on its neck lifted from the mass of black fur. It started to turn, bringing both glittering eyes around. Eyes that flared with shocked realization the same moment that Dwer lunged.
Well I’ll be shaved, Harry thought as the creature writhed in Dwer’s hard grasp, snapping and hissing furiously until it was swallowed by the improvised sack. Even then, the fabric container bulged and jerked as the beast fought confinement.
That was a tytlal! He had thought there was something familiar about the lithe creature—but the size had seemed wrong. A miniature tytlal … riding the shoulder of a boon!
No wonder recognition was slow. Tytlal normally massed nearly as much as a chimpanzee. Far from being mere pets, they were intelligent, articulate starfarers, well known and admired on Earth. Also, like their Tymbrimi patrons, they thoroughly disliked hoons!
Possible explanations occurred to Harry. Was Dwer rescuing a captive tytlal child from captivity?
That theory vanished when the third hoon turned around, saw Dwer, and cried out an umble of delighted surprise. While the bag kept quivering, onlookers were treated to a sight unprecedented in the annals of the Civilization of Five Galaxies—a human and hoon embracing each other joyfully, like long-lost cousins from the same hometown.
They found a place to talk, assembling in the lattice space supporting the dignitaries’ platform. Harry watched in amazement as Dwer’s huge alien friend spoke colloquial Anglic perfectly, though with an archaic accent.
“Alvin” also exuded an enthusiasm—a joie de vivre—that seemed totally natural, though Harry had never seen anything like it in a hoon before.
“Hr-rr. The last time I saw you, Dwer, you were dangling under a hot-air balloon, preparing to take on a Jophur battleship single-handed. How did you wind up here?”
“It’s a long story, Alvin. And we’d never have made it without Captain Harms, here. But what about you? Does this mean the Str—”
Dwer stopped abruptly and shook his head, amending what he had been about to say.
“Does this mean our friends escaped to the transfer point all right?”
For the first time in his life, Harry saw a hoon shrug—a surprisingly graceful and expressive gesture for such an uptight species.
“Yeah, they did. That is, sort of. In a way.” The tattooed throat sac fluttered and sighed. “For now let’s just say it’s also a long story.”
Kiwei the Synthian had a suggestion.
“I know a very nice establishment where they offer free food and drink to tellers of fine tales, no matter how long. Shall we all go—”
Dwer ignored Kiwei.
“And your pals
? Ur-ronn? Huck? Pincer? Tyug?”
“They are well—along with the friend who brought us here. You can imagine that some of us find it easier to get around in public than others do.”
Dwer nodded, and Harry saw that levels of meaning passed between the two.
Wait a minute, he pondered. If Dwer and Rety are sooners, from some hidden colony world, but they know this hoon, then that must mean—
He lost the thought as Alvin responded to something Dwer said by umbling with jovial tones that sounded uncannily like laughter.
“So, you finally got the drop on old Mudfoot.”
The young human held up the now quiescent bag. “Yeah, I did. And he doesn’t come out till I get some answers, at long last.”
Alvin laughed again—making Twaphu-anuph shiver with visible confusion. But the bureaucrat’s daughter seemed to adore the sound. With a second show of rather unhoonish enthusiam, she introduced herself as Dor-hinuf, and surprised both Earthlings by offering to shake their hands.
“Ever since he arrived, Alvin has been telling us about your wonderful world of Shangri-la,” she told Dwer. “Where so many races live together in peace, and where hoons have learned to sail!”
Her infectious excitement seemed as strange as the sudden bizarre image filling Harry’s mind—of hoons braving sea and spume in spindly boats.
Shangri-la? Harry noted.
Of course he’d mask the true name of the sooner planet. But why under that particular name? Why a Terran literary reference?
For that matter, how did a boon ever come to be called Alvin?
From the sound of things behind them, the Skiano’s heretical rally was starting to break up at last. Harry brought this to the others’ attention.
“For once, I agree with Kiwei. We should go someplace private and talk further, before I have to report back to headquarters. But first let’s collect Rety—”
He stopped then, sensing that something was changing. Through the soles of his feet, Harry felt another of the tremors that had made Kazzkark tremble intermittently for several jaduras. Only this time a new rhythm seemed to take over.