Brightness Reef Read Free Page B

when we had to sit indoors anyway. Especially when it looked like it’d never actually happen. We had a great game of pretend.
    “But things are getting serious! Pincer talks about actually making a deep dive in a month or two. Didn’t we agree that’s crazy? Didn’t we, Alvin?” Huck rolled closer and did something I’ve never heard another g’Kek do. She rumbled an umble at me, mimicking the undertone a young hoon female might use if her big, handsome male was having trouble seeing things her way.
    “Now wouldn’t you rather come with me to see some uttergloss writings, so burnish and ancient they were written with computers and lasers and such? Hr-rm? Doesn’t that beat drowning in a stinky dross coffin, halfway to the bottom of the sea?”
    Time to switch languages. While I normally find Anglic more buff than smug old star-god tongues, even Mister Heinz agrees that its “human tempos and loose logical structure tend to favor impetuous enthusiasms.”
    Right then, I needed the opposite, so I shifted to the whistles and pops of Galactic Two.
    “Consideration of (punishable) criminality—this has not occurred to thee?”
    Unfazed, she countered in GalSeven, the formal tongue most favored by humans.
    “We are minors, friend. Besides, the border law is meant to thwart illicit breeding beyond the permitted zone. Our gang has no such intent!”
    Then, in a quick flip to Galactic Two—
    “—Or hast thee (perverted) designs to attempt (strange, hybrid) procreation experiments with this (virginal female) self?”
    What a thought! Plainly she was trying to keep me off balance. I could feel control slip away. Soon I’d find myself vowing to set sail for those dark ruins you can dimly see from Terminus Rock, if you aim an urrish telescope across the Rift’s deep waters.
    Just then, my eye caught a familiar disturbance under the placid bay. A ruddy shape swarmed up the sandy bank until a dappled crimson carapace burst forth, spraying saltwater. From that compact pentagonal shell, a fleshy dome raised, girdled by a glossy black ring.
    “Pincer!” I cried, glad of a distraction from Huck’s hot enthusiasm. “Come over and help me talk to this silly—“
    But the young qheuen burst ahead, cutting me off even before water stopped burbling from his speech vents.
    “M-m-mo-mo-mon—“
    Pincer’s not as good at Anglic as Huck and me, especially when excited. But he uses it to prove he’s as
    humicking modern as anyone. I held up my hands. “Easy, pal! Take a breath. Take five!”
    He exhaled a deep sigh, which emerged as a pair of bubble streams where two spiky legs were still submerged. “I s-s-seen ‘em! This time I really s-seen ‘em!”
    “Seen what?” Huck asked, rolling across squishy sand.
    The vision band rimming Pincer’s dome looked in all directions at once. Still, we could feel our friend’s intense regard as he took another deep breath, then sighed a single word.
    “Monsters!”
     

II. THE BOOK OF THE SLOPE
    Legends
    The better part of a million years has passed since the Buyur departed Jijo, obeying Galactic rules of planetary management when their lease on this world expired, whatever they could not carry off, or store in lunar caches, the Buyur diligently destroyed, leaving little more than vine-crusted rubble where their mighty cities once towered, gleaming under the sun.
    Yet even now, their shadow hangs over us—we cursed and exiled savages—reminding us that gods once ruled on Jijo.
    Living here as illegal squatters—as sooners who must never dwell beyond this strip between the mountains and the sea—we of the Six Races can only look with superstitious awe at eroded Buyur ruins. Even after books and literacy returned to our Commons, we lacked the tools and skills to analyze the remains or to learn much about Jijos last lawful tenants.   Some recent enthusiasts, styling themselves archaeologists, have begun borrowing techniques from dusty Earthling texts, but these devotees cannot