Brightness Reef

Alvin’s Tale

One thing always struck me about the way tales are told in Anglic — or any of the other Earthling tongues I’ve learned — and that’s the problem of keeping up suspense.

Oh, some human authors of Twencen and Twenty-One had it down cold. There’ve been times that I stayed up three nights straight, taken with some yarn by Conrad or Cunin. What’s puzzled me, ever since I got the notion of becoming a writer myself, is how those old-timers managed it.

Take this account I’ve been scribbling lately, whenever I get a chance to lie down on this hard deck with my notebook, already gone all ragged at the corners from the places I’ve taken it, scrawling clumsy hoon-sized letters with a chewed-up pencil clutched in my fist. From the very start I’ve been telling my story in “first person” — like in a diary, only with all sorts of fancy-gloss tricks thrown in that I’ve picked up from my reading over the years.

Why first person? Well, according to Good Fiction by Anderson, that “voice” makes it a whole lot easier to present the reader with a single, solid-feeling point-of-view, even though it means my book will have to be translated if a traeki’s ever to understand it.

But the trouble with a first person chronicle is this — whether it’s real-life history or a piece of make-believe, you know the hero survived!

So during all of the events I’m about to relate, you who are reading this memoir (hopefully after I’ve had a chance to rewrite it, have a human expert fix my grammar, and pay to have it set in type) you already know that I, Alvin Hph-wayuo, son of Mu-phauwq and Yowg-wayuo of Wuphon Port, and intrepid explorer extraordinaire, simply have to escape alive the jam I’m about to describe, with at least one brain, one eye, and a hand to write it all down.

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, spinning with tension energy released just moments before, by a disaster.

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 spinning uselessly, the bulbous glass nose broken-tumbling into black emptiness trailing its broken leash, carrying Ziz, the little traeki partial stack, to perdition along with it.

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,” Urdonnol commanded. Soon the drums began rotating the other way, rewinding what had unreeled so hopefully just duras before. The same hoonish voice called out depths, only this time the numbers grew steadily smaller, and there was no great, booming enthusiasm in the throaty baritone. Finally, at two and a half cables, the hawser’s frayed end popped out of the sea, dripping water like white lymph fluid from a traeki’s wounded, dangling tentacle. Those cranking the drum sped up, eager to see what had happened.

“Acid vurn!” Ur-ronn declared in shock, when the severed end was swung onto the bluff. She lisped in anger. “Savotage!”

Urdonnol seemed reluctant to leap to conclusions, but the older urs technician kept swinging her narrow head back and forth, low and snakelike, from the burned cable to the crowd of protestors standing on the bluff, gaping at our tragedy. The urrish apprentice’s dark suspicion was clear.

“Get away from here!” Huck shouted angrily, rolling toward the dissenters, spinning up gravel with her rims. She swerved, just missing the toes of several humans and hoon, who backed off nervously. Even a couple of reds withdrew their clawed, armored legs, scuttling away a pace or two, before recalling that a flail-eyed g’Kek isn’t much physical threat to a qheuen. Then they moved forward again, hissing and clicking.

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 Guenn Forge hurried up behind us, some carrying cudgels, ready to back up Huck’s demand with angry force. The rabble took note and quit our worksite, moving toward their makeshift camp.

“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. Urdonnol and Ur-ronn argued over what kind of a message to send to Uriel.

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—” Urdonnol began.

“Of course!” Ur-ronn interrupted. “The vallast cane loose!”

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,” Urdonnol interjected in GalTwo. “With eight cables of (heavy, down-seeking) metal hawser weighing the diving device, the (minuscule) air pocket within our vessel ought to have been (decisively) overwhelmed.”

“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 Guenn Master of Mixes. The full-sized traeki shuddered, letting out a colored cloud that smelled like released tension.

“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 vlenned a success. These rings, and those below, anticipate relishing recent events. Soon. In retrospect.”

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