Brightness Reef by David Brin Read Free Book Online Page A

stubby snout. The black-furred creature kept still, its gaze riveted on the flighty glaver, but Dwer wasn’t fooled. You know I’m watching, show-off. Of all species left on Jijo when the ancient Buyur departed, Dwer found noor the least fathomable, and fathoming other creatures was a hunter’s art.
    Quietly, he lowered the bow and unfastened a buckskin thong, taking up his coiled lariat. Using patient, stealthy care, he edged forward.
    Grinning with jagged, angular teeth, Mudfoot reared almost to the glaver’s height-roughly as tall as Dwer’s thigh. The glaver retreated with a snarl, till her bony back plates brushed rock, causing a rain of pebbles. In her forked tail she brandished a stick-some branchlet or sapling with the twigs removed. A sophisticated tool, given the present state of glaverdom.
    Dwer took another step and this time could not avoid crushing some leaves. Behind the noor’s pointy ears, gray spines jutted from the fur, waving independently. Mudfoot kept facing the glaver, but something in its stance said—“Be quiet, fool!”
    Dwer didn’t like being told what to do. Especially by a noor. Still, a hunt is judged only by success, and Dwer wanted a clean capture. Shooting the glaver now would be to admit failure.
    Her loose skin had lost some opal luster since leaving familiar haunts, scavenging near some village of the Six, as glavers had done for centuries, ever since their innocence was new.
    Why do they do this? Why do a few try for the passes, every year?
    One might as well guess the motives of a noor. Among the Six, only the patient hoon had a knack for working with the puckish, disruptive beasts.
    Maybe the Buyur resented having to quit Jijo and left noor as a joke on whoever came next.
    A buzzing lion-fly cruised by, under filmy, rotating wings. The panting glaver tracked it with one eye, while the other watched the swaying noor. Hunger gradually prevailed over fear as she realized Mudfoot was too small to murder her. As if to enhance that impression, the noor sat back on its haunches, nonchalantly licking a shoulder.
    Very clever, Dwer thought, shifting his weight as the glaver swung both eyes toward the hovering meal.
    A jet of sputum shot from her mouth, striking the fly’s tail.
    In a flash, Mudfoot bounded left. The glaver squealed, struck out with the stick, then whirled to flee the other way. Cursing, Dwer sprang from the undergrowth. Moccasins skidded on spoiled granite, and he tumbled, passing just under the flailing club. Desperately, Dwer cast the lariat-which tautened with a savage yank that slammed his chin to the ground. Though starving and weak, the glaver had enough panicky strength to drag Dwer for a dozen meters, till her will finally gave out.
    Shivering, with waves of color coursing under her pale skin, she dropped the makeshift club and sank to all four knees. Dwer got up warily, coiling the rope.
    “Easy does it. No one’s gonna hurt you.”
    The glaver scanned him with one dull eye. “Pain exists. Marginally, “ she crooned, in thickly slurred Galactic Eight.
    Dwer rocked back. Only once before had a captured glaver spoken to him. Usually they kept up their insentient to the last. He wet his lips and tried answering in the same obscure dialect.
    “Regrettable. Endurance suggested. Better than death.”
    “Better?” The weary eye squinted as if vaguely puzzled and unsure it mattered.
    Dwer shrugged. “Sorry about the pain.”
    The faint light drifted out of focus.
    “Not blamed. Dour melody. Now ready to eat.”
    The flicker of intellect vanished once more under a bolus of animal density.
    Both amazed and drained, Dwer tethered the creature to a nearby tree. Only then did he take account of his own wincing cuts and bruises while Mudfoot lay on a rock, basking in the last rays of the setting sun.
    The noor couldn’t talk. Unlike the glaver, its ancestors had never been given the knack. Still, its open-mouth grin seemed to say—“That was fun. Let’s do it