Infinity's Shore by David Brin Page B

against the stiff wind.
    Rety had heard of this region from those bragging hunters, Jass and Bom. It was a low country, dotted with soggy marshes and crisscrossed by many more streams ahead.
Alvin

    I WOKE FEELING WOOZY, AND HIGH AS A CHIMP that’s been chewing ghigree leaves. But at least the agony was gone.
    The soft slab was still under me, though I could tell the awkward brace of straps and metal tubes was gone. Turning my head, I spied a low table nearby. A shallow white bowl held about a dozen familiar-looking shapes, vital to hoon rituals of life and death.
    Ifni!
I thought.
The monsters cut out my spine bones!
    Then I reconsidered.
    Wait You’re a kid. You’ve got two sets. In fact, isn’t it next year you’re supposed to start losing your first
 …
    I really was
that
slow to catch on. Pain and drugs can do it to you.
    Looking in the bowl again, I saw all my baby vertebrae. Normally, they’d loosen over several months, as the barbed adult spines took over. The accident must have jammed both sets together, pressing the nerves and hurrying naturealong. The phuvnthus must have decided to take out my old verts, whether the new ones were ready or not.
    Did they guess? Or were they already familiar with hoons?
    Take things one at a time
, I thought.
Can you feel your toe hooks? Can you move them?
    I sent signals to retract the claw sheaths, and sensed the table’s fabric resist as my talons dug in. So far so good.
    I reached around with my left hand, and found a slick bulge covering my spine, tough and elastic.
    Words
cut in. An uncannily smooth voice, in accented Galactic Seven.
    â€œThe new orthopedic brace will actively help bear the stress of your movements until your next-stage vertebroids solidify. Nevertheless, you would be well advised not to move in too sudden or jerky a manner.”
    The fixture wrapped all the way around my torso, feeling snug and comfortable, unlike the makeshift contraption the phuvnthus provided earlier.
    â€œPlease accept my thanks,” I responded in formal Gal-Seven, gingerly shifting onto one elbow, turning my head the other way. “And my apologies for any inconvenience this may have cause—”
    I stopped short. Where I had expected to see a phuvnthu, or one of the small amphibians, there stood a whirling shape, ghostly, like the
holographic projections
we had seen before, but ornately abstract. A spinning mesh of complex lines floated near the bed.
    â€œThere was no inconvenience.” The voice seemed to emerge from the gyrating image. “We were curious about matters taking place in the world of air and light. Your swift arrival—plummeting into a sea canyon near our scout vessel—seemed as fortuitous to us as
our
presence was for you.”
    Even in a drugged state, I could savor multilevel irony in the whirling thing’s remarks. While being gracious, it was also reminding me that the survivors of
Wuphon’s Dream
owed a debt—our very lives.
    â€œTrue,” I assented. “Though my friends and I might never have fallen into the abyss if
someone
had not removed the article we were sent to find in more shallowwaters. Our search beyond that place led us to stumble over the cliff.”
    The pattern of shifting lines took a new slant of bluish, twinkling light.
    â€œYou assert ownership over this thing you sought? As your property?”
    Now it was my turn to ponder, wary of a trap. By the codes laid down in the Scrolls, the cache Uriel had sent us after should not exist. It bent the spirit and letter of the law, which said that sooner colonists on a forbidden world must ease their crime by abandoning their godlike tools. It made me glad to be speaking a formal dialect, forcing more careful thought than I might have used in our local patois.
    â€œI assert … a right to
inspect
the item … and reserve an option to make further claims later.”
    Purple swirls invaded the spinning