Brightness Reef by David Brin Page A

a rumor that dwindled with each retelling.
    Rolling downhill was easier for the g’Keks. But several traeki, built for life in swampy fens, chuffed with exertion as they twisted and turned, striving to keep up. In order to ease the journey, hoonish pilgrims rumbled low atonal music, as they often did at sea. Most pilgrims no longer wore their exhausted rewq. Each mind dwelled alone, in its own thoughts.
    Legend says it’s different among machine intelligences, or the Zang. Group minds don’t bother with persuasion. They just put their heads together, unify, and decide.
    It wouldn’t be that easy convincing the common citizenry of the Six to go along with the new heresy. Deep instincts drove each race to reproduce as best it could. Ambition for the future was a natural trait for people like his father.
    But not here, not on this world.
    Lark felt encouraged by this morning’s meeting. We’ll convince a few this year. Then more. First we’ll be tolerated, later opposed.. In the long run, it must be done without violence, by consensus.
    Around noon, a mutter of voices carried up the trail- the day’s first regular pilgrims, making an outward show of reverence while still chattering about the pleasures of Gathering. Lark sighted white-robed figures beyond some vapor fumaroles. The leaders called greetings to Lark’s group, already returning from devotions, and began shuffling aside to give up right of way.
    A crack of thunder struck as the two parties passed alongside, slamming their bodies together and flapping their robes. Hoons crouched, covering their ears, and g’Kek eyestalks -recoiled. One poor qheuen skittered over the edge, clutching a gnarled tree with a single, desperate claw.
    Lark’s first thought was of another gas discharge.
    When the ground shook, he pondered an eruption.
    He would later learn that the noise came not from Jijo, but the sky. It was the sound of fate arriving, and the world he knew coming abruptly to an end, before he ever expected it.
    Asx
    THOSE WITHIN THE STARSHIP INDUCED A SMALL opening in its gleaming side. Through this portal they sent an emissary, unlike anything the Commons had seen in living memory.
    A robot!
    my/our ring-of-associations had to access one of its myriad moist storage glands in order to place its contours, recalling an illustration -we/i once perused in a human book.
    Which book? Ah, thank you my self. Jane’s Survey of Basic Galactic Tools. One of the rarest surviving fruits of the Great Printing.
    Exactly as depicted in that ancient diagram, this floating mechanism was a black, octagonal slab, about the size of a young qheuen, hovering above the ground at about the level of my ring-of-vision, with various gleaming implements projecting above or hanging below. From the moment the hatch closed behind it, the robot ignored every earthly contour, leaving a trail where grass, pebbles, and loam were pressed flat by unseen heaviness.
    Wherever it approached, folk quailed back. Just one group of beings kept still, awaiting the creature of not-flesh. We sages. Responsibility was our cruel mooring, so adamant that even my basal segment stayed rigid, though it pulsed with craven need to flee. The robot—or its masters in the ship—thus knew who had the right/ duty to parlay. It hesitated in front of Vubben, appearing to contemplate our eldest sage for five or six duras, perhaps sensing the reverence we all hold for the wisest of the g’Kek. Then it backed away to confront us all.
    i/we watched in mystified awe. After all, this was a thing, like a hoonish riverboat or some dead tool left by the vanished Buyur. Only the tools we make do not fly, and Buyur remnants show no further interest in doing so.
    This thing not only moved, it spoke, commencing first with a repeat of the earlier message.
    “Surveying (local, unique) lifeforms, in this we seek your (gracious) help.
    “Knowledge of the (local) biosphere, this you (assuredly) have.
    “Tools and (useful) arts, these we