Infinity's Shore David Brin (Back of Jacket) For the fugitive settlers of Jijo, it is truly the beginning of the end. As starships fill the skies, the threat of genocide hangs over the planet that once peacefully sheltered six bands of sapient beings. Now the human settlers of Jijo and their alien neighbors must take heroic--and terrifying--choices. A scientist must turn against the benefactors she's been trained to love. A heretic must rally believers for a cause he never shared. And four youngsters find that what started as a simple adventure--imitating exploits in Earthling books by Verne and Twain--leads them to the dark abyss of mystery. Meanwhile, the Streaker, with her fugitive dolphin crew, arrives at last on Jijo in a desperate search for refuge. Yet what the crew finds instead is a secret hidden since the galaxies first spawned intelligence--a secret that could mean salvation for the planet and its inhabitants. . . or their ultimate annihilation. Streaker [Five Jaduras Earlier] Kaa * What strange fate brought me, * Fleeing maelstroms of winter, * Past five galaxies? * * Only to find refuge, * On a forlorn planet (nude!) * In laminar luxury! * SO HE THOUGHT WHILE PERFORMING SWOOPING rolls, propelling his sleek gray body with exhilarated tail strokes, reveling in the caress of water against naked flesh. Dappled sunlight threw luminous shafts through crystal shallows, slanting past mats of floating sea florets. Silvery native creatures, resembling flat-jawed fish, moved in and out of the bright zones, enticing his eye. Kaa squelched the instinctive urge to give chase. Maybe later. For now, he indulged in the liquid texture of water sliding around him, without the greasiness that used to cling so, back in the oily seas of Oakka, the green-green world, where soaplike bubbles would erupt from his blowhole each time he surfaced to breathe. Not that it was worth the effort to inhale on Oakka. There wasn't enough good air on that horrid ball to nourish a comatose otter. This sea also tasted good, not harsh like Kithrup, where each excursion outside the ship would give you a toxic dose of hard metals. In contrast, the water on Jijo world felt clean, with a salty tang reminding Kaa of the gulf stream flowing past the Florida Academy, during happier days on far-off Earth. He tried to squint and pretend he was back home, chasing mullet near Key Biscayne, safe from a harsh universe. But the attempt at make-believe failed. One paramount difference reminded him this was an alien world. Sound. -a beating of tides rising up the continental shelf-a complex rhythm tugged by three moons, not one. -an echo of waves, breaking on a shore whose abrasive sand had a strange, sharp texture. -an occasional distant groaning that seemed to rise out of the ocean floor itself. -the return vibrations of his own sonar clicks, tracing schools of fishlike creatures, moving their fins in unfamiliar ways. -above all, the engine hum just behind him ... a cadence of machinery that had filled Kaa's days and nights for five long years. And now, another clicking, groaning sound. The clipped poetry of duty. * Relent, Kaa, tell us, * In exploratory prose, * Is it safe to come? * The voice chased Kaa like a fluttering, sonic conscience. Reluctantly, he swerved around to face the submarine Hikahi, improvised from ancient parts found strewn across this planet's deep seafloor-a makeshift contraption that suited a crew of misfit fugitives. Clamshell doors closed ponderously, like the jaws of a huge carnivore, cycling to let others emerge in his wake ... if he gave the all clear. Kaa sent his Trinary reply, amplified by a saser unit plugged into his skull, behind his left eye. * If water were all * We might be in heaven now. * But wait! I'll check above! * His lungs were already making demands, so he obeyed instinct, flicking an upward spiral toward the glistening surface. Ready or not, Jijo, here I come! He loved piercing the tense boundary of sky and sea, flying weightless for an instant, then broaching with a splash and spume of exhalation. Still, he hesitated before inhaling. Instruments predicted an Earthlike atmosphere, yet he felt a nervous tremor drawing breath. If anything, the air tasted better than the water! Kaa whirled, thrashing his tail in exuberance, glad Lieutenant Tsh't had let him volunteer for this-to be the first dolphin, the first Earthling, ever to swim this sweet, foreign sea. Then his eye stroked a jagged, gray-brown line, spanning one horizon, very close. The shore. Mountains. He stopped his gyre to stare at the nearby continent--inhabited, they now knew. But by whom? There was not supposed to be any sapient life on Jijo. Maybe they're just hiding here, the way we are, from a hostile cosmos. That was one theory. At least they chose a pleasant world, he added, relishing the air, the water, and gorgeous ranks of cumulus hovering over a giant mountain. I wonder if the fish are good to eat. * As we await you, * Chafing in this cramped airlock, * Should we play pinochle? * Kaa winced at the lieutenant's sarcasm. Hurriedly, he sent back pulsed waves. * Fortune smiles again, * On our weary band of knaves. * Welcome, friends, to Ifni's Shore. * It might seem presumptuous to invoke the goddess of chance and destiny, capricious Ifni, who always seemed ready to plague Streaker's company with one more surprise. Another unexpected calamity, or miraculous escape. But Kaa had always felt an affinity with the informal patron deity of spacers. There might be better pilots than himself in the Terragens Survey Service, but none with a deeper respect for fortuity. Hadn't his own nickname been "Lucky"? Until recently, that is. From below, he heard the grumble of clamshell doors reopening. Soon Tsh't and others would join him in this first examination of Jijo's surface-a world they heretofore saw only briefly from orbit, then from the deepest, coldest pit in all its seas. Soon, his companions would arrive, but for a few moments more he had it to himself-silken water, tidal rhythms, fragrant air, the sky and clouds. . . . His tail swished, lifting him higher as he peered. Those aren't normal clouds, he realized, staring at a great mountain dominating the eastern horizon, whose peak wore shrouds of billowing white. The lens implanted in his right eye dialed through a spectral scan, sending readings to his optic nerve-revealing steam, carbon oxides, and a flicker of molten heat. A volcano, Kaa realized, and the reminder sent his ebullience down a notch. This was a busy part of the planet, geologically speaking. The same forces that made it a useful hiding place also kept it dangerous. That must be where the groaning comes from, he pondered. Seismic activity. An interaction of miniquakes and crustal gas discharges with the thin overlaying film of sea. Another flicker caught his notice, in roughly the same direction, but much closer-a pale swelling that might also have been a cloud, except for the way it moved, flapping like a bird's wing, then bulging with eagerness to race the wind. A sail, he discerned. Kaa watched it jibe across the stiffening breeze-a two-masted schooner, graceful in motion, achingly familiar from the Caribbean seas of home. Its bow split the water, spreading a wake that any dolphin might love to ride. The zoom lens clarified, magnified, until he made out fuzzy bipedal forms, hauling ropes and bustling around on deck, like any gang of human sailors. . . . Only these weren't human beings. Kaa glimpsed scaly backs, culminating in a backbone of sharp spines. Swathes of white fur covered the legs, and froglike membranes pulsated below broad chins as the ship's company sang a low, rumbling work chant that Kaa could dimly make out, even from here. He felt a chill of unhappy recognition. Hoons! What in all Five Galaxies are they doing here? Kaa heard a rustle of fluke strokes-Tsh't and others rising to join him. Now he must report that enemies of Earth dwelled here. Kaa realized grimly-this news wasn't going to help him win back his nickname anytime soon. She came to mind again, the capricious goddess of uncertain destiny. And Kaa's own Trinary phrase came back to him, as if reflected and reconverged by the surrounding alien waters. * Welcome . . . * Welcome . . . * Welcome to Ifni's Shore . . . * Sooners Tkaat ranger EXISTENCE SEEMS LIKE WANDERING THROUGH A vast chaotic house. One that has been torn by quakes and fire, and is now filled with bitter, inexplicable fog. Whenever he manages to pry open a door, exposing some small corner of the past, each revelation comes at the price of sharp waves of agony. In time, he learns not to be swayed by the pain. Rather, each ache and sting serves as a marker, a signpost, confirming that he must be on the right path. His arrival on this world-plummeting through a scorched sky-should have ended with merciful blankness. What luck instead hurled his blazing body from the pyre to quench in a fetid swamp? Peculiar luck. Since then, he has grown intimate with all kinds of suffering, from crass pangs to subtle stings. In cataloging them, he grows learned in the many ways there are to hurt. Those earliest agonies, right after the crash, had screeched coarsely from wounds and scalding burns-a gale of such fierce torment that he barely noticed when a motley crew of local savages rowed out to him in a makeshift boat, like sinners dragging a fallen angel out of the boggy fen. Saving him from drowning, only to face more damnations. Beings who insisted that he fight for his broken life, when it would have been so much easier just to let go. Later, as his more blatant injuries healed or scarred, other types of anguish took up the symphony of pain. Afflictions of the mind. Holes gape across his life, vast blank zones, lightless and empty, where missing memories must once have spanned megaparsecs and life years. Each gap feels chilled beyond numbness-a raw vacancy more frustrating than an itch that can't be scratched. Ever since he began wandering this singular world, he has probed the darkness within. Optimistically, he clutches a few small trophies from the struggle. Jijo is one of them. He rolls the word in his mind-the name of this planet where six castaway races band together in feral truce, a mixed culture unlike any other beneath the myriad stars. A second word comes more easily with repeated use- Sara. She who nursed him from near death in her tree house overlooking a rustic water mill . . . who calmed the fluxing panic when he first woke to see pincers, claws, and mucusy ring stacks-the physiques of hoons, traekis, qheuens, and others sharing this rude outcast existence. He knows more words, such as Kurt and Prity . . . friends he now trusts almost as much as Sara. It feels good to think their names, the slick way all words used to come, in the days before his mangling. One recent prize he is especially proud of. Emerson . . . It is his own name, for so long beyond reach. Violent shocks had jarred it free, less than a day ago-shortly after he provoked a band of human rebels to betray their urrish allies in a slashing knife fight that made a space battle seem antiseptic by comparison. That bloody frenzy ended with an explosive blast, shattering the grubby caravan tent, spearing light past Emerson's closed lids, overwhelming the guardians of reason. And then, amid the dazzling rays, he had briefly glimpsed ... his captain! Creideiki . . . The blinding glow became a luminous foam, whipped by thrashing flukes. Out of that froth emerged a long gray form whose bottle snout bared glittering teeth. The sleek head grinned, despite bearing an awful wound behind its left eye . . . much like the hurt that robbed Emerson of speech. Utterance shapes formed out of scalloped bubbles, in a language like none spoken by Jijo's natives, or by any great Galactic clan. * In the turning of the cycloid, * Comes a time to break for surface. * Time to resume breathing, doing. * To rejoin the great sea's dreaming. * Time has come for you my old friend. * Time to wake and see what's churning. ... * Stunned recognition accompanied waves of stinging misery, worse than any fleshy woe or galling numbness. Shame had nearly overwhelmed him then. For no injury short of death could ever excuse his forgetting Creideiki ... Terra . . . The dolphins . . . Hannes . . . Gillian . . . How could they have slipped his mind during the months he wandered this barbarian world, by boat, barge, and caravan? Guilt might have engulfed him during that instant of recollection . . . except that his new friends urgently needed him to act, to seize the brief advantage offered by the explosion, to overcome their captors and take them prisoner. As dusk fell across the shredded tent and torn bodies, he had helped Sara and Kurt tie up their surviving foes-both urrish and human-although Sara seemed to think their reprieve temporary. More fanatic reinforcements were expected soon. Emerson knew what the rebels wanted. They wanted him. It was no secret that he came from the stars. The rebels would trade him to sky hunters, hoping to exchange his battered carcass for guaranteed survival. As if anything could save Jijo's castaway races, now that the Five Galaxies had found them. Huddled round a wan fire, lacking any shelter but tent rags, Sara and the others watched as terrifying portents crossed bitter-cold constellations. First came a mighty titan of space, growling as it plunged toward nearby mountains, bent on awful vengeance. Later, following the very same path, there came a second behemoth, this one so enormous that Jijo's pull seemed to lighten as it passed overhead, filling everyone with deep foreboding. Not long after that, golden lightning flickered amid the mountain peaks-a bickering of giants. But Emerson did not care who won. He could tell that neither vessel was his ship, the home in space he yearned for . . . and prayed he would never see again. With luck, Streaker was far away from this doomed world, bearing in its hold a trove of ancient mysteries-- perhaps the key to a new galactic era. Had not all his sacrifices been aimed at helping her escape? After the leviathans passed, there remained only stars and a chill wind, blowing through the dry steppe grass, while Emerson went off searching for the caravan's scattered pack animals. With donkeys, his friends just might yet escape before more fanatics arrived. . . . Then came a rumbling noise, jarring the ground beneath his feet. A rhythmic cadence that seemed to go- taranta taranta taranta taranta The galloping racket could only be urrish hoofbeats, the I expected rebel reinforcements, come to make them prisoners once again. Only, miraculously, the darkness instead poured forth allies-unexpected rescuers, both urrish and human-who brought with them astonishing beasts, Horses. Saddled horses, clearly as much a surprise to Sara as they were to him. Emerson had thought the creatures were extinct on this world, yet here they were, emerging from the "• night as if from a dream. So began the next phase of his odyssey. Riding southward, fleeing the shadow of these vengeful ships, hurrying toward the outline of an uneasy volcano. Now he wonders within his battered brain-is there a plan? A destination? Old Kurt apparently has faith in these surprising saviors, but there must be more to it than that. Emerson is tired of just running away. He would much rather be running toward. In time Emerson recalls how to ease along with the sway of the saddle. And as sunrise lifts dew off fan-fringed trees near a riverbank, swarms of bright bugs whir through the slanted light, dancing as they pollinate a field of purple blooms. When Sara glances back from her own steed, sharing a rare smile, his pangs seem to matter less. Even fear of those terrible starships, splitting the sky with their angry engine arrogance, cannot erase a growing elation as the fugitive band gallops on to dangers yet unknown. Emerson cannot help himself. It is his nature to seize any possible excuse for hope. As the horses pound Jijo's ancient turf, their cadence draws him down a thread of familiarity, recalling rhythmic music quite apart from the persistent dirge of woe. tarantara, tarantara tarantara, tarantara Under insistent stroking by that throbbing sound, something abruptly clicks inside. His body reacts involuntarily as unexpected words surge from some dammed-up corner of his brain, attended by a melody that stirs the heart. Lyrics pour reflexively, an undivided stream, through lungs and throat before he even knows 'that he is singing. "Though in body and in mind, We are timidly inclined, And anything but blind, To the danger that's behind- {tarantara, tarantara] {tarantara!] {tarantara, tarantara] {tarantara!]" While his steed bounds ahead, new aches join the background music of his life-raw, chafed thighs and a bruised spine that jars with each pounding hoofbeat. taranta, taranta, taranta-tara taranta, taranta, taranta-tara Guilt nags him with a sense of duties unfulfilled, and he grieves over the likely fate of his new friends on Jijo, now that their hidden colony has been discovered. And yet . . . {tarantara, tarantara] {tarantara!] His friends grin-this has happened before. "Yet, when the danger's near, We manage to appear, As insensible to fear, As anybody here, As an-y-bo-dy here!" Sara laughs, joining the refrain, and even the dour urrish escorts stretch their long necks to lisp along. "Yet, when the danger's near, We manage to appear, As insensible to fear, As anybody here, As anybody here!" {tarantara, tarantara) {tarantara!}" PART ONE EACH OF THE SOONER RACES making up the Commons of Jijo tells its own unique story, passed down from generation to generation, explaining why their ancestors surrendered godlike powers and risked terrible penalties to reach this far place--skulking in sneakships past Institute patrols, robot guardians, and Zang globules. Seven waves of sinners, each coming to plant their outlaw seed on a world that had been declared off limits to settlement. A world set aside to rest and recover in peace, but for the likes of us. The g'Kek arrived first on this land we call the Slope between misty mountains and the sacred sea-hall a million years alter the last legal tenants--the Buyur--departed Jijo. Why did those g'Kek founders willingly give up their former lives as star-traveling gods and citizens of the Five Galaxies? Why choose Instead to dwell as fallen primitives, lacking the comforts of technology, or any moral solace but for a few engraved platinum scrolls? Legend has it that our g'Kek cousins fled threatened extinction, a dire punishment for devastating gambling losses. But we cannot be sure. Writing was a lost art until humans came, so those accounts may be warped by passing time. What we do know is that it could not have been a petty threat that drove them to abandon the spacefaring life they loved, seeking refuge on heavy Jijo, where their wheels have such a hard time on the rocky ground. With four keen eyes, peering in all directions at the end of graceful stalks, did the g'Kek ancestors see a dark destiny painted on galactic winds? Did that first generation see no other choice? perhaps they only cursed their descendants to this savage life as a last resort. NOT long after the g'Kek, roughly two thousand years ago, a party of traeki dropped hurriedly from the sky, as if tearing pursuit by some dreaded foe. wasting no time, they sank their sneakship in the deepest hollow of the sea, then settled down to be our gentlest tribe. What nemesis drove them from the spiral lanes? Any native Jijoan glancing at those familiar stacks of tatty toruses, venting fragrant steam and placid wisdom in each village or the Slope, must find it hard to imagine the traeki having enemies. In time, they confided their story. The foe they fled was not some other race, nor was there a deadly vendetta among the star gods of the Five Galaxies. Rather, it was an aspect of their own selves. Certain rings--components of their physical bodies- had lately been modified in ways that turned their kind into formidable beings. Into Jophur, mighty and feared among the noble Galactic clans. It was a fate those traeki founders deemed unbearable. SO they chose to become lawless refugees--sooners on a taboo world--in order to shun a horrid destiny. The obligation to be great. It is said that glavers came to Jijo not out of fear, but seeking the Path of Redemption--the kind of innocent oblivion that wipes all slates clean. In this goal they have succeeded far better than anyone else, showing the rest of us the way, if we dare follow their example. Whether or not that sacred track will also be ours, we must respect their accomplishment--transforming themselves from cursed fugitives into a race of blessed simpletons. As starfaring immortals, they could be held accountable for their crimes, including the felony of invading Jijo. But now they have reached a refuge, the purity of ignorance, Free to start again. Indulgently, we let glavers root through our kitchen middens, poking under logs for insects. Once mighty intellects, they are not counted among the sooner races of Jijo anymore. They are no longer stained with the sins of their forebears. QHEUENS were the first to arrive filled with wary ambition. Led by fanatical, crablike gray matrons, their first-generation colonists snapped all five pincers derisively at any thought of union with Jijo's other exile races. Instead, they sought dominion. That plan collapsed in time, when blue and red qheuens abandoned historic roles of servitude, drifting off to seek their own ways, leaving their frustrated gray empresses helpless to enforce old feudal loyalties. Our tall hoonish brethren inhale deeply, whenever the question arises-"Why are you here?" They fill their prodigious throat sacs with low meditation umbles. In rolling tones, hoon elders relate that their ancestors fled no great danger, no oppression or unwanted obligations. When why did they come, risking frightful punishment if their descendants are ever caught living illegally on Jijo? The oldest hoons on Jijo merely shrug with frustrating cheerfulness, as if they do not know the reason, and could not bothered to care. Some do refer to a legend, though. According to that slim tale, a Galactic oracle once offered a starfaring hoonish clan a unique opportunity, if they dared take it. An opportunity to claim something that had been robbed from them, although they never knew it was lost. A precious birthright that might be discovered on a forbidden world. But for the most part, whenever one of the tall ones pulls his throat sac to sing about past times, he rumbles a deep, Joyful ballad about the crude rafts, boats, and seagoing ships that hoons invented from scratch, soon alter landing on Jijo. Things their humorless star cousins would never have bothered looking up in the all-knowing Galactic Library, let alone have deigned to build. LEGENDS told by the fleet-footed urrish clan imply that their foremothers were rogues, coming to Jijo in order to breed-escaping limits Imposed in civilised parts of the Five Galaxies. With their short lives, hot tempers, and prolific sexual style, the urs founders might have gone on to fill Jijo with their kind . . . or else met extinction by now, like the mythical centaurs they vaguely resemble. But they escaped both of those traps. Instead, alter many hard struggles, at the forge and on the battlefield, they assumed an honored place in the commons of Six Races. With their thundering herds, and mastery of steel, they live hot and hard, making up for their brief seasons in our midst. Finally two centuries ago, Earthlings came, bringing chimpanzees and other treasures. But humans greatest gift was paper. In creating the printed trove of Biblos, they became lore masters to our piteous commonwealth of exiles. Printing and education changed tile on the Slope, so that later generations of castaways dared to study their adopted world, their hybrid civilisation, and even their own selves. As for why humans came all this way--breaking Galactic laws and risking everything, Just to huddle with other outlaws under a fearsome sky--their tale is among the strangest told by Jijo's exile clans. -from An Ethnography of the Slope, by Dorti Chang-Jones and Huph-alch-Huo Sooners Alvin I HAD NO WAY TO MARK THE PASSAGE OF TIME, Lying dazed and half-paralyzed in a metal cell, listening to the engine hum of a mechanical sea dragon that was hauling me and my friends to parts unknown. I guess a couple of days must have passed since the shattering of our makeshift submarine, our beautiful Wuphon's Dream, before I roused enough to wonder, What next? Dimly, I recall the sea monster's face as we first saw it through our crude glass viewing port, lit by the Dream's homemade searchlight. That glimpse lasted but a moment as the huge metal thing loomed toward us out of black, icy depths. The four of us--Huck, Pincer, Ur-ronn, and me--had already resigned ourselves to death . . . doomed to crushed oblivion at the bottom of the sea. Our expedition a failure, we didn't feel like daring subsea adventurers anymore, but like scared kids, voiding our bowels in terror as we waited for the cruel abyss to squeeze our hollowed-out tree trunk into a zillion soggy splinters. Suddenly this enormous shape erupted toward us, spreading jaws wide enough to snatch Wuphon's Dream whole. Well, almost whole. Passing through that maw, we struck a glancing blow. The collision shattered our tiny capsule. What followed still remains a painful blur. I guess anything beats death, but there have been moments since that impact when my back hurt so much that I just wanted to rumble one last umble through my battered throat sac and say farewell to young Alvin Hph-wayuo- junior linguist, humicking writer, uttergloss daredevil, and neglectful son of Mu-phauwq and Yowg-wayuo of Wuphon Port, the Slope, Jijo, Galaxy Four, the Universe. But I stayed alive. I guess it just didn't seem hoonish to give up, after every thing my pals and I went through to get here. What if I was sole survivor? I owed it to Huck and the others to carry on, My cell--a prison? hospital room?--measures just two meters, by two, by three. Pretty skimpy for a hoon, event one not quite fully grown. It gets even more cramped whenever some six-legged, metal-sheathed demon tries to squeeze inside to tend my injured spine, poking with what, I assume (hope!) to be clumsy kindness. Despite their efforts, misery comes in awful waves, making me wish desperately for the pain remedies cooked up by Old Stinky--our traeki pharmacist back home. It occurred to me that I might never walk again . . . or see my family, or watch seabirds swoop over the dross ships, anchored beneath Wuphon's domelike shelter trees. I I tried talking to the insecty giants trooping in and out of my cell. Though each had a torso longer than my dad is tall--with a flared back end, and a tubelike shell as hard as Buyur steel--I couldn't help picturing them as enormous phuvnthus, those six-legged vermin that gnaw the walls of wooden houses, giving off a sweet-tangy stench. These things smell like overworked machinery. Despite, my efforts in a dozen Earthling and Galactic languages, they seemed even less talkative than the phuvnthus Huck and I used to catch when we were little, and train to perform in a miniature circus. I missed Huck during that dark time. I missed her quick g'Kek mind and sarcastic wit. I even missed the way she'd snag my leg fur in her wheels to get my attention, if I stared too long at the horizon in a hoonish sailor's trance. I last glimpsed those wheels spinning uselessly in the sea dragon's mouth, just after those giant jaws smashed our precious Dream and we spilled across the slivers of our amateur diving craft. Why didn't I rush to my friend, during those bleak moments after we crashed? Much as I yearned to, it was hard to see or hear much while a screaming wind shoved its way into the chamber, pushing out the bitter sea. At first, I had to fight just to breathe again. Then, when I tried to move, my back would not respond. In those blurry instants, I also recall catching sight of Ur-ronn, whipping her long neck about and screaming as she thrashed all four legs and both slim arms, horrified at being drenched in vile water. Ur-ronn bled where her suede colored hide was pierced by jagged shards-remnants of the glass porthole she had proudly forged in the volcano workshops of Uriel the Smith. Pincer-Tip was there, too, best equipped among our gang to survive underwater. As a red qheuen, Pincer was used to scampering on five chitin-armored claws across salty shallows-though our chance tumble into the bottomless void was more than even he had bargained for. In dim recollection, I think Pincer seemed alive ... or does wishful thinking deceive me? My last hazy memories of our "rescue" swarm with violent images until I blacked out ... to wake in this cell, delirious and alone. Sometimes the phuvnthus do something "helpful" to my spine, and it hurts so much that I'd willingly spill every secret I know. That is, if the phuvnthus ever asked questions, which they never do. So I never allude to the mission we four were given by Uriel the Smith-to seek a taboo treasure that her ancestors left on the seafloor, centuries ago. An offshore cache, hidden when urrish settlers first jettisoned their ships and high-tech gadgets to become just one more fallen race. Only some dire emergency would prompt Uriel to violate the Covenant by retrieving such contraband. I guess "emergency" might cover the arrival of alien robbers, plundering the Gathering Festival of the Six Races and threatening the entire Commons with genocide, Eventually, the pangs in my spine eased enough for me to rummage through my rucksack and resume writing in this tattered journal, bringing my ill-starred adventure up to date. That raised my spirits a bit. Even if none of us survives, my diary might yet make it home someday. Growing up in a little hoonish village, devouring human adventure stories by Clarke and Rostand, Conrad and Xu Xiang, I dreamed that people on the Slope would someday say, "Wow, that Alvin Hph-wayuo was some storyteller, as good as any old-time Earther." This could be my one and only chance. So I spent long miduras with a stubby charcoal crayon clutched in my big hoon fist, scribbling the passages that lead up to this one-an account of how I came to find myself in this low, low state. -How four friends built a makeshift submarine out of skink skins and a carved-out garu log, fancying a treasure hunt to the Great Midden. -How Uriel the Smith, in her mountain forge, threw her support behind our project, turning it from a half-baked dream into a real expedition. -How we four snuck up to Uriel's observatory, and heard a human sage speak of starships in the sky, perhaps bringing foretold judgment on the Six Races. -And how Wuphon's Dream soon dangled from a pole near Terminus Rock, where the Midden's sacred trench passes near land. And Uriel told us, hissing through her cloven upper lip, that a ship had indeed landed up north. But this cruiser did not carry Galactic magistrates. Instead another kind of criminal had come, worse even than our sinner ancestors. So we sealed the hatch, and the great winch turned. But on reaching the mapped site, we found that Uriel's cache was already missing! Worse-when we went looking for the damned thing, Wuphon's Dream got lost and tumbled off the edge of an undersea cliff. Flipping back some pages, I can tell my account of the journey was written by someone perched on a knife-edge of harrowing pain. Yet, there is a sense of drama I can't hope to match now. Especially that scene where the bottom vanished beneath our wheels and we felt ourselves fall toward the real Midden. Toward certain death. Until the phuvnthus snatched us up. So, here I am, swallowed by a metal whale, ruled by cryptic silent beings, ignorant whether my friends still live or if I am alone. Merely crippled, or dying. Do my captors have anything to do with starship landings in the mountains? Are they a different enigma, rising out of Jijo's ancient past? Relics of the vanished Buy ur perhaps? Or ghosts even older still? Answers seem scarce, and since I've finished recounting the plummet and demise of Wuphon's Dream, I daren't waste more precious paper on speculation. I must put my pencil down, even if it robs my last shield against loneliness. All my life I've been inspired by human-style books, picturing myself as hero in some uttergloss tale. Now my sanity depends on learning to savor patience. To let time pass without concern. To live and think, at last, just like a hoon. ASX YOU MAY CALL ME ASX. You, manicolored rings, piled in a high tapered heap, venting fragrant stinks, sharing the victual sap that climbs our common core, or partaking in memory wax, trickling back down from our sensory peak. you, the rings who take up diverse roles in this shared body, a pudgy cone nearly as tall as a hoon, as heavy as a blue qheuen, and slow across the ground like an aged g'Kek with a cracked axle. you, the rings who vote each day whether to renew our coalition. From you rings i/we now request a ruling. Shall we carry on this fiction? This "Asx"? Unitary beings-the humans, urs, and other dear partners in exile-stubbornly use that term, Asx, to signify this loosely affiliated pile of fatty toruses, as if we/i truly had a fixed name, not a mere label of convenience. Of course unitary beings are all quite mad. We traeki long ago resigned ourselves to living in a universe filled with egotism. What we could not resign ourselves to-and the reason for our exile here on Jijo-was the prospect of becoming the most egotistical of all. Once, our/my stack of bloated tubes played the role of a modest village pharmacist, serving others with our humble secretions, near the sea bogs of Far Wet Sanctuary. Then others began paying us/me homage, calling us "Asx," chief sage of the Traeki Sept and member of the Guiding Council of the Six. Now we stand in a blasted wasteland that was formerly a pleasant festival glade. Our sensor rings and neural tendrils recoil from sights and sounds they cannot bear to perceive. And so we are left virtually blind, our component toruses buffeted by the harsh fields of two nearby starships, as vast as mountains. Even now, awareness of those starships fades away. ... We are left in blackness. • • • What has just happened! Be calm, my rings. This sort of thing has transpired before. Too great a shock can jar a traeki stack out of alignment, causing gaps in short-term memory. But there is another, surer way to find out what has happened. Neural memory is a flimsy thing. How much better off we are, counting on the slow/reliable wax. Ponder the fresh wax that slithers down our common core, still hot-slick, imprinted with events that took place recently on this ill-fated glade, where once gay pavilions stood, and banners flapped in Jijo's happy winds. A typical festival, the annual gathering of Six Races to celebrate their hundred-year peace. Until- Is this the memory we seek? Behold ... a starship comes to Jijo! Not sneaking by night, like our ancestors. Not aloofly, like a mysterious Zang globule. No, this was an arrogant cruiser from the Five Galaxies, commanded by aloof alien beings called Rothen. Trace this memory of our first sight of Rothen lords, emerging at last from their metal lair, so handsome and noble in their condescension, projecting a majestic charisma that shadowed even their sky-human servants. How glorious to be a star god! Even gods who are "criminals" by Galactic law. Did they not far outshine us miserable barbarians? As the sun outglows a tallow candle? But we sages realized a horrifying truth. After hiring us for local expertise, to help them raid this world, the Rothen could not afford to leave witnesses behind. They would not leave us alive. No, that is too far back. Try again. What about these other livid tracks, my rings? A red flaming pillar erupting in the night? An explosion, breaking apart our sacred pilgrimage? Do you recall the sight of the Rothen-Danik station, its girders, twisted and smoking? Its cache of biosamples burned? And most dire-one Rothen and a sky human killed? By dawn's light, foul accusations hurled back and forth between Ro-kenn and our own High Sages. Appalling threats were exchanged. No, that still took place over a day ago. Stroke wax that is more recent than that. Here we find a broad sheet of terror, shining horribly down our oily core. Its colors/textures blend hot blood with cold fire, exuding a smoky scent of flaming trees and charred bodies. Do you recall how Ro-kenn, the surviving Rothen master, swore vengeance on the Six Races, ordering his killer robots forward? "Slay everyone in sight! Death to all who saw our secret revealed!" But then behold a marvel! Platoons of our own brave militia. They spill from surrounding forest. Jijoan savages, armed only with arrows, pellet rifles, and courage. Do you now recall how they charged the hovering death demons . . . and prevailed! The wax does not lie. It happened in mere instants, while these old traeki rings could only stare blankly at the battle's awful ruin, astonished that we/i were not ignited into a stack of flaming tubes. Though dead and wounded lay piled around us, victory was clear. Victory for the Six Races! Ro-kenn and his god-' like servants were disarmed, wide-eyed in their offended surprise at this turn of Ifni's ever-tumbling dice. Yes, my rings, i know this is not the final memory. It took place many miduras in the past. Obviously something must f have happened since then. Something dreadful. Perhaps the Danik scout boat came back from its survey trip, carrying one of the fierce sky-human warriors who worship Rothen patron masters. Or else the main Rothen starship may have returned, expecting a trove of bio-plunder, only to find their samples destroyed, their station ruined, and comrades taken hostage. That might explain the scent of sooty devastation that now fills our core. But no later memories are yet available. The wax has not congealed. To a traeki, that means none of it has really happened. Not yet. Perhaps things are not as bad as they seem. It is a gift we traeki reacquired when we came to Jijo. A talent that helps make up for the many things we left behind, when we abandoned the stars. A gift for wishful thinking. Rety THE FIERCE WIND OF FLIGHT TORE DAMPNESS FROM her streaming eyes, sparing her the shame of tears running down scarred cheeks. Still, Rety could weep with rage, thinking of the hopes she'd lost. Lying prone on a hard metal plate, clutching its edge with hands and feet, she bore the harsh breeze as whipping tree branches smacked her face and caught her hair, sometimes drawing blood. Mostly, she just held on for dear life. The alien machine beneath her was supposed to be her loyal servant! But the cursed thing would not slow its panicky retreat, even long after all danger lay far behind. If Rety fell off now, at best it would take her days to limp back to the village of her birth, where less than a midura ago there had been a brief, violent ambush. Her brain still roiled. In just a few heartbeats her plans had been spoiled, and it was all Dwer's fault! She heard the young hunter moan, held captive by metal arms below her perch. But as the wounded battle drone fled recklessly onward, Rety turned away from Dwer's suffering, which he had only brought on himself, trekking all the way to these filthy Gray Hills from his safe home near the sea-the Slope-where six intelligent races lived at a much higher level of ignorant poverty than her own birth clan of wretched savages. Why would slopies hike past' two thousand leagues of hell to reach this dreary wasteland? What did Dwer and his pals hope to accomplish? To conquer Rety's brutish relatives? He could have her smelly kinfolk, for all she cared! And the band of urrish sooners Kunn subdued with fire from his screeching scout boat. Dwer was welcome to them all. Only, couldn't he have waited quietly in the woods till after Rety and Kunn finished their business here and flew off again? Why did he have to rush things and attack the robot with her aboard? I bet he did it out of spite. Prob'ly can't stand knowing that I'm the one Jijo native with a chance to get away from this pit hole of a planet. Inside, Rety knew better. Dwer's heart didn't work that way. But mine does. When he groaned again, Rety muttered angrily, "I'll make you even sorrier, Dwer, if I don't make it off this mudball 'cause of you!" So much for her glorious homecoming. At first it had seemed fun to pay a return visit, swooping from a cloud-decked sky in Kunn's silver dart, emerging proudly to amazed gasps from the shabby cousins, who had bullied her for fourteen awful years. What a fitting climax to her desperate gamble, a few months ago, when she finally found the nerve to flee all the muck and misery, setting forth alone to seek the fabled Slope her greatgrandparents had left behind, when they chose the "free" life as wild sooners. Free of the sages' prying rules about what beasts you may kill. Free from irky laws about how many babies you can have. Free from having to abide neighbors with four legs, or five, or that rolled on humming wheels. Rety snorted contempt for the founders of her tribe. Free from books and medicine. Free to live like animals! Fed up, Rety had set out to find something better or die trying. The journey had nearly killed her-crossing icy torrents and parched wastes. Her closest call came traversing a high pass into the Slope, following a mysterious metal bird into a mule spider's web. A web that became a terrifying trap when the spider's tendrils closed around her, oozing golden drops that horribly preserved. ... Memory came unbidden--of Dwer charging through that awful thicket with a gleaming machete, then sheltering her with his body when the web caught fire. She recalled the bright bird, glittering in flames, treacherously cut down by an attacking robot just like her "servant." The one now hauling her off to Ifni-knew-where. Rety's mind veered as a gut-wrenching swerve nearly spilled her overboard. She screamed at the robot. "Idiot! No one's shooting at you anymore! There were just a few slopies, and they were all afoot. Nothing on Jijo could catch you now!" But the frantic contraption plunged ahead, riding a cushion of incredible god force. Rety wondered, Could it sense her contempt? Dwer and two or three friends, equipped with crude fire sticks, had taken just a few duras to disable and drive off the so-called war bot, though at some cost to themselves. Ifni, what a snarl. She pondered the sooty hole where Dwer's surprise attack had ripped out its antenna. How'm I gonna explain this to Kunn? Rety's adopted rank as an honorary star god was already fragile. The angry pilot might simply abandon her in these hills where she had grown up, among savages she loathed. I won't go back to the tribe, she vowed. I'd rather join wild glavers, sucking bugs off dead critters on the Poison Plain. It was all Dwer's fault, of course. Rety hated listening to the young fool moan. We're heading south, where Kunn flew off to. The robot must be rushin' to report in person, now that it can't farspeak anymore. Having witnessed Kunn's skill at torture, Rety found herself hoping Dwer's leg wound would reopen. Bleeding to death would be better by far. The fleeing machine left the Gray Hills, slanting toward a tree-dotted prairie. Streams converged, turning the brook into a river, winding slowly toward the tropics. The journey grew smoother and Rety risked sitting up again. But the robot did not take the obvious shortcut over water. Instead, it followed each oxbow curve, seldom venturing past the reedy shallows. The land seemed pleasant. Good for herds or farming, if you knew how, and weren't afraid of being caught. It brought to mind all the wonders she had seen on the Slope, after barely escaping the mule spider. Folk there had all sorts of clever arts Rety's tribe lacked. Yet, despite their fancy windmills and gardens, their metal tools and paper books, the slopies had seemed dazed and frightened when Rety reached the famous Festival Glade. What had the Six Races so upset was the recent coming of a starship, ending two thousand years of isolation. To Rety, the spacers seemed wondrous. A ship owned by unseen Rothen masters, but crewed by humans so handsome and knowing that Rety would give anything to be like them. Not a doomed savage with a scarred face, eking out a life on a taboo world. A daring ambition roused . . . and by pluck and guts she had made it happen! Rety got to know those haughty men and women-Ling, Besh, Kunn, and Rann-worming her way into their favor. When asked, she gladly guided fierce Kunn to her tribe's old camp, retracing her earlier epic journey in a mere quarter day, munching Galactic treats while staring through the scout boat's window at wastelands below. Years of abuse were repaid by her filthy cousins' shocked stares,' beholdinng her transformed from grubby urchin to Rety, the star god. If only that triumph could have lasted. • • • She jerked back when Dwer called her name. Peering over the edge, Rety saw his windburned face, the wild black hair plastered with dried sweat. One buckskin breech leg was stained ocher brown under a makeshift compress, though Rety saw no sign of new wetness. Trapped by the robot's unyielding tendrils, Dwer clutched his precious hand-carved bow, as if it were the last thing he would part with before death. Rety could scarcely believe she once thought the crude weapon worth stealing. "What do you want now?" she demanded. The young hunter's eyes met hers. His voice came out as a croak. "Can I ... have some water?" "Assumin' I have any," she muttered, "name one reason I'd share it with you!" Rustling at her waist. A narrow head and neck snaked out of her belt pouch. Three dark eyes glared-two with lids and one pupilless, faceted like a jewel. "wife be not liar to this one! wife has water bottle! Yee smells its bitterness." Rety sighed over this unwelcome interruption by her miniature "husband." "There's just half left. No one tol' me I was goin' on a trip!" The little urrish male hissed disapproval, "wife share with this one, or bad luck come! no hole safe for grubs or larvae!" Rety almost retorted that her marriage to yee was not real. They would never have "grubs" together. Anyway, yee seemed bent on being her portable conscience, even when it was clearly every creature for herself. I never should've told him how Dwer saved me from the mule spider. They say male urs are dumb. Ain't it my luck to marry a genius one? "Oh ... all right!" The bottle, an alien-made wonder, weighed little more than the liquid it contained. "Don't drop it," she warned Dwer, lowering the red cord. He grabbed it eagerly. "No, fool! The top don't pull off like a stopper. Turn it till it comes off. That's right. Jeekee know-nothin' slopie." She didn't add how the concept of a screw cap had mystified her, -too, when Kunn and the others first adopted her as a provisional Danik. Of course that was before she became sophisticated. Rety watched nervously as he drank. "Don't spill it. An' don't you dare drink it all! You hear me? That's enough, Dwer. Stop now. Dwer!" But he ignored her protests, guzzling while she cursed. When the canteen was drained, Dwer smiled at her through cracked lips. Too stunned to react, Rety knew--she would have done exactly the same. Yeah, an inner voice answered. But I didn't expect it of him. Her anger spun off when Dwer squirmed, tilting his body toward the robot's headlong rush. Squinting against the wind, he held the loop cord in one hand and the bottle in the other, as if waiting for something to happen. The flying machine crested a low hill, hopping over some thorny thickets, then plunged down the other side, barely avoiding several tree branches. Rety held tight, keeping yee secure in his pouch. When the worst jouncing ended she peered down again . . . and rocked back from a pair of black, beady eyes! It was the damned noor again. The one Dwer called Mudfoot. Several times the dark, lithe creature had tried to clamber up from his niche, between Dwer's torso and a cleft in the robot's frame. But Rety didn't like the way he salivated at yee, past needle-sharp teeth. Now Mudfoot stood on Dwer's rib cage, using his forepaws to probe for another effort. "Get lost!" She swatted at the narrow, grinning face. "I want to see what Dwer's doin'." Sighing, the noor returned to his nest under the robot's flank. A flash of blue came into view just as Dwer threw the bottle. It struck watery shallows with a splash, pressing a furrowed wake. The young man had to make several attempts to get the cord twisted so the canteen dragged with its opening forward. The container sloshed when Dwer reeled it back in. I'd've thought of that, too. If I was close enough to try it. Dwer had lost blood, so it was only fair to let him drink and refill a few more times before passing it back up. Yeah. Only fair. And he'll do it, too. He'll give it back full. Rety faced an uncomfortable thought. You trust him. He's the enemy. He caused you and the Daniks heaps of trouble. But you 'd trust Dwer with your life. She had no similar confidence in Kunn, when it came time to face the Rothen-loving stellar warrior. Dwer refilled the bottle one last time and held it up toward her. "Thanks, Rety ... I owe you." , Her cheeks flushed, a sensation she disliked. "Forget it. Just toss the cord." He tried. Rety felt it brush her fingertips, but after half a dozen efforts she could never quite hook the loop. What happens if I don't get it back! The noor beast emerged from his narrow niche and took the cord in his teeth. Clambering over Dwer's chest, then using the robot's shattered laser tube as a support, Mudfoot slithered closer to Rety's hand. Well, she thought. If it's gonna be helpful ... As she reached for the loop, the noor sprang, using his claws as if her arm were a handy climbing vine. Rety howled, but before she could react, Mudfoot was already up on top, grinning smugly. Little yee let out a yelp. The urrish male pulled his head inside her pouch and drew the zipper shut. Rety saw blood spots well along her sleeve and lashed in anger, trying to kick the crazy noor off. But Mudfoot dodged easily, inching close, grinning appealingly and rumbling a low sound, presenting the water bottle with two agile forepaws. Sighing heavily, Rety accepted it and let the noor settle down nearby-on the opposite side from yee. "I can't seem to shake myself loose of any of you guys, can I?" she asked aloud. Mudfoot chittered. And from below, Dwer uttered a short laugh-ironic and tired. IT WAS A LONELY TIME, CONFINED IN GNAWING PAIN to a cramped metal cell. The distant, humming engine reminded me of umble lullabies my father used to sing, when I came down with toe pox or itchysac. Sometimes the noise changed pitch and made my scales frickle, sounding like the moan of a doomed wooden ship when it runs aground. Finally I slept . . . . . . then wakened in terror to find that a pair of metalclad, six-legged monsters were tying me into a contraption of steel tubes and straps! At first, it looked like a pre-contact tenure device I once saw in the Dore-illustrated edition of Don Quixote. Thrashing and resisting accomplished nothing, but hurt like bloody blue blazes. Finally, with some embarrassment, I realized. It was no instrument of torment but a makeshift back brace, shaped to fit my form and take weight off my injured spine. I fought to suppress panic at the tight metal touch, as they set me on my feet. Swaying with surprise and relief, I found I could walk a little, though wincing with each step. "Well thanks, you big ugly bugs," I told the nearest of the giant phuvnthus. "But you might've warned me first." I expected no answer, but one of them turned its armored torso-with a humped back and wide flare at the rear-and tilted toward me. I took the gesture as a polite bow, though perhaps it meant something different to them. They left the door open when they exited this time. Slowly, cringing at the effort, I stepped out for the first time from my steel coffin, following as the massive creatures stomped down a narrow corridor. I already figured I was aboard a submarine of some sort, big enough to carry in its hold the greatest hoonish craft sailing Jijo's seas. Despite that, it was a hodgepodge. I thought of Frankenstein's monster, pieced together from the parts of many corpses. So seemed the monstrous vessel hauling me to who-knows-where. Each time we crossed a hatch, it seemed as if we'd pass into a distinct ship, made by different artisans ... by a whole different civilization. In one section, the decks and bulkheads were made of riveted steel sheets. Another zone was fashioned from some fibrous substance-flexible but strong. The corridors changed proportions-from wide to painfully narrow. Half the time I had to stoop under low ceilings . . . not a lot of fun in the state my back was in. Finally, a sliding door hissed open. A phuvnthu motioned me ahead with a crooked mandible and Entered a dim chamber much larger than my former cell. My hearts surged With joy. Before me stood my friends! All of them-alive! They were gathered round a circular viewing port, staring at inky ocean depths. I might've tried sneaking in to surprise them, but qheuens and g'Keks literally have "eyes in the back of their heads," making it a challenge to startle Huck and Pincer. (I have managed it, a couple of times.) When they shouted my name, Ur-ronn whirled her long neck and outraced them on four clattering hooves. We plunged into a multispecies embrace. Huck was first to bring things back to normal, snapping at Pincer. "Watch the claws, Crab Face! You'll snap a spoke! Back off, all of you. Can't you see Alvin's hurt? Give him room!" "Look who talks," Ur-ronn replied. "Your left wheel just squished his toes, Octopus Head!" I hadn't noticed till she pointed it out, so happy was I to hear their testy, adolescent whining once more. "Hr-rm. Let me look at you all. Ur-ronn, you seem so much . . . drier than I saw you last." Our urrish buddy blew a rueful laugh through her nostril fringe. Her pelt showed large bare patches where fur had sloughed after her dousing. "It took our hosts a while to adjust the humidity of my guest suite, but they finally got it right," she said. Her torso showed tracks of hasty needlework-the phuvnthus' rough stitching to close Ur-ronn's gashes after she smashed through the glass port of Wuphon's Dream. Fortunately, her folk don't play the same mating games as some races. To urs, what matters is not appearance, but status. A visible dent or two will help Ur-ronn show the other smiths she's been around. "Yeah. And now we know what an urs smells like after actually taking a bath," Huck added. "They oughta try it more often." " You should talk? With that green eyeball sweat-" "All right, all right!" I laughed. "Just stopper it long enough for me to look at you, eh?" Ur-ronn was right. Huck's eyestalks needed grooming and she had good reason to worry about her spokes. Many were broken, with new-spun fibers just starting to lace the rims. She would have to move cautiously for some time. As for Pincer, he looked happier than ever. "I guess you were right about there being monsters in the deep," I told our red-shelled friend. "Even if they hardly look like the ones you descr-" I yelped when sharp needles seemed to lance into my back, clambering up my neck ridge. I quickly recognized the rolling growl of Huphu, our little noor-beast mascot, expressing gladness by demanding a rumble umble from me right away. Before I could find out if my sore throat sac was up to it, Ur-ronn whistled from the pane of dark glass. "They turned on the searchlight again," she fluted, with hushed awe in her voice. "Alvin, hurry. You've got to look!" Awkwardly on crutches, I moved to the place they made for me. Huck stroked my arm. "You always wanted to see this, pal," she said. "So gaze out there in wonder. "Welcome to the Great Midden," Asx HERE IS ANOTHER MEMORY, MY RINGS. AN EVENT that followed the brief Battle of the Glade, so swiftly that war echoes still abused our battered forest canyons. Has the wax congealed enough yet? Can you stroke-and sense the awesome disquiet, the frightening beauty of that evening, as we watched a harsh, untwinkling glow pass overhead? Trace the fatty memory of that spark crossing the sky, brightening as it spiraled closer. No one could doubt its identity. The Rothen cruiser, returning for its harvest of bio-plunder, looted from a fragile world. Returning for those comrades it had left behind. Instead of genetic booty, the crew will find their station smashed, their colleagues killed or taken. Worse, their true faces are known! We castaways might testify against them in Galactic courts. Assuming we survive. It takes no cognition genius to grasp the trouble we faced. We six fallen races of forlorn Jijo. As an Earthling writer might put it-we found ourselves in fetid mulch. Very ripe and very deep. Sara THE JOURNEY PASSED FROM AN ANXIOUS BLUR INTO something exalting . . . almost transcendent. But not at the beginning. When they perched her suddenly atop a galloping creature straight out of mythology, Sara's first reaction was terrified surprise. With snorting nostrils and huge tossing head, the horse was more daunting than Tarek Town's stone tribute to a lost species. Its muscular torso flexed with each forward bound, shaking Sara's teeth as it crossed the foothills of the central Slope by the light of a pale moon. After two sleepless days and nights, it still seemed dreamlike the way a squadron of the legendary beasts came trotting into the ruined Urunthai campsite, accompanied by armed urrish escorts. Sara and her friends had just escaped captivity-their former kidnappers lay either dead or bound with strips of shredded tent cloth-but she expected reenslavement at any moment. Only then, instead of fresh foes, the darkness brought forth these bewildering saviors. Bewildering to everyone except Kurt the Exploser, who welcomed the newcomers as expected friends. While Jomah and the Stranger exclaimed wonder at seeing real life horses, Sara barely had time to blink before she was thrust onto a saddle. Blade volunteered to stay by the bleak fire and tend the wounded, though envy filled each forlorn spin of his blue cupola. Sara would trade places with her qheuen friend, but his chitin armor was too massive for a horse to carry. There was barely time to give Blade a wave of encouragement before the troop wheeled back the way they came, bearing her into the night. Pounding hoofbeats soon made Sara's skull ache. I guess it beats captivity by Dedinger's human chauvinists, and those fanatic Urunthai. The coalition of zealots, volatile as. an exploser's cocktail, had joined forces to snatch the Stranger and sell him to Rothen invaders. But they underestimated the enigmatic voyager. Despite his crippling loss of speech, the starman found a way to incite urs-human suspicion into bloody riot. Leaving us masters of our own fate, though it couldn't last. Now here was a different coalition of humans and centauroid urs! A more cordial group, but just as adamant about hauling her Ifni-knew-where. When limnous Torgen rose above the foothills, Sara got to look over the urrish warriors, whose dun flanks were daubed with more subtle war paint than the garish Urunthai. Yet their eyes held the same dark flame that drenched urs' souls when conflict scents fumed. Cantering in skirmish formation, their slim hands cradled arbalests while long necks coiled, tensely wary. Though much smaller than horses, the. urrish fighters conveyed formidable craftiness. The human rescuers were even more striking. Six women who came north with nine saddled horses, as if they expected to retrieve just two or three others for a return trip. But there's six of us. Kurt and Jomah. Prity and me. The Stranger and Dedinger. No matter. The stern riders seemed indifferent about doubling up, two to a saddle. Is that why they're all female? To keep the weight down? While deft astride their great mounts, the women seemed uneasy with the hilly terrain of gullies and rocky spires. Sara gathered they disliked rushing about strange trails at night. She could hardly blame them. Not one had a familiar face. That might have surprised Sara a month ago, given Jijo's small human population. The Slope must be bigger than she thought. Dwer would tell stories about his travels, scouting for the sages. He claimed he'd been everywhere within a thousand leagues. Her brother never mentioned horse-riding amazons. Sara briefly wondered if they came from off-Jijo, since this seemed the year for spaceships. But no. Despite some odd slang, their terse speech was related to Jijoan dialects she knew from her research. And while the riders seemed unfamiliar with this region, they knew to lean away from a migurv tree when the trail passed near its sticky fronds. The Stranger, though warned with gestures not to touch its seed pods, reached for one curiously and learned the hard way. She glanced at Kurt. The .exploser's gaunt face showed satisfaction with each league they sped southward. The existence of horses was no surprise to him. We're told our society is open. But clearly there are secrets known to a few. Not all explosers shared it. Kurt's nephew chattered happy amazement while exchanging broad grins with the Stranger . . . Sara corrected herself. With Emerson. . . . She peered at the dark man who came plummeting from the sky months ago, dousing his burns in a dismal swamp near Dolo Village. No longer the near corpse she had nursed in her tree house, the star voyager was proving a resourceful adventurer. Though still largely mute, he had passed a milestone a few miduras ago when he began thumping his chest, repeating that word-Emerson-over and over, beaming pride over a feat that undamaged folk took for granted. Uttering one's own name. Emerson seemed at home on his mount. Did that mean horses were still used among the god worlds of the Five Galaxies? If so, what purpose might they serve, where miraculous machines did your bidding at a nod and wink? Sara checked on her chimp assistant, in case the jouncing ride reopened Prity's bullet wound. Riding with both arms clenched round the waist of a horsewoman, Prity kept her eyes closed the whole time, no doubt immersed in her beloved universe of abstract shapes and forms-a better world than this one of sorrow and messy nonlinearity. That left Dedinger, the rebel leader, riding along with both hands tied. Sara wasted no pity on the scholar-turnedprophet. After years preaching militant orthodoxy, urging his desert followers toward the Path of Redemption, the ex-sage clearly knew patience. Dedinger's hawklike face bore an expression Sara found unnerving. Serene calculation. The tooth-jarring pace swelled when the hilly track met open ground. Soon Ulashtu's detachment of urrish warriors fell behind, unable to keep up. No wonder some urs clans resented horses, when humans first settled Jijo. The beasts gave us mobility, the trait most loved by urrish captains. Two centuries ago, after trouncing the human newcomers in battle, the 'original Urunthai faction claimed Earthlings' beloved mounts as war booty, and slaughtered every They figured we'd be no more trouble, left to walk and fight on foot. A mistake that proved fatal when Drake the Elder forged a coalition to hunt the Urunthai, and drowned the cult's leadership at Soggy Hoof Falls. Only, it seems horses weren't extinct, after all. How could a clan of horse-riding folk remain hidden all this time? And as puzzling-Why emerge now, risking exposure by rushing to meet Kurt? It must be the crisis of the starships, ending Jijo's blessed,cursed isolation. What point in keeping secrets, if Judgment Day is at hand? Sara was exhausted and numb by the time morning pushed through an overcast sky. An expanse of undulating hills stretched ahead to a dark green marsh. The party dismounted at last by a shaded creek. Hands aimed her toward a blanket, where she collapsed with a shuddering sigh. Sleep came laced with images of people she had left behind. Nelo, her aged father, working in his beloved paper mill, unaware that some conspired its ruin. Melina, her mother, dead several years now, who always seemed an outsider since arriving in Dolo long ago, with a baby son in her arms. Frail Joshu, Sara's lover in Biblos, whose touch made her forget even the overhanging Fist of Stone. A comely rogue whose death sent her spinning. Dwer and Lark, her brothers, setting out to attend festival in the high Rimmer glades . . . where starships were later seen descending. Sara's mind roiled as she tossed and turned. Last of all, she pictured Blade, whose qheuen hive farmed crayfish behind Dolo Dam. Good old Blade, who saved Sara and Emerson from disaster at the Urunthai camp. "Seems I'm always late catching up," her qheuen friend whistled from three leg vents. "But don't worry, I'll be along,Too much is happening to miss." Blade's armor-clad dependability had been like a rock to Sara. In her dream, she answered. "I'll stall the universe . . . keep it from doing anything interesting until you show up." Imagined or not, the blue qheuen's calliope laughter warmed Sara, and her troubled slumber fell into gentler rhythms. The sun was half-high when someone shook Sara back to the world-one of the taciturn female riders, using the archaic word brekkers to announce the morning meal. Sara got up gingerly as waves of achy soreness coursed her body. She gulped down a bowl of grain porridge, spiced with unfamiliar traeki seasonings, while horsewomen saddled mounts or watched Emerson play his beloved dulcimer, filling the pocket valley with a sprightly melody, suited for travel. Despite her morning irritability, Sara knew the starman was just making the best of the situation. Bursts of song were a way to overcome his handicap of muteness. Sara found Kurt tying up his bedroll. "Look," she told the elderly exploser, "I'm not ungrateful to your friends. I appreciate the rescue and all. But you can't seriously hope to ride horses all the way to ... Mount Guenn." Her tone made it sound like one of Jijo's moons. Kurt's stony face flickered a rare smile. "Any better suggestions? Sure, you planned taking the Stranger to the High Sages, but that way is blocked by angry Urunthai. And recall, we saw two starships last night, one after the other, headed straight for Festival Glade. The Sages must have their hands and tendrils full by now." "How could I forget?" she murmured. Those titans, growling as they crossed the sky, had seared their image in her mind. "You could hole up in one of the villages we'll pass soon, but won't Emerson need a first-rate pharmacist when he runs out of Pzora's medicine?" "If we keep heading south we'll reach the Gentt. From there a riverboat can take us to Ovoom Town." "Assuming boats are running . . . and Ovoom still exists. Even so, should you hide your alien friend, with great events taking place? What if he has a role to play? Some way to help sages and Commons? Might you spoil his one chance of goin' home?" Sara saw Kurt's implication-that she was holding Emerson back, like a child refusing to release some healed forest creature into the wild. A swarm of sweetbec flies drifted close to the starman, hovering and throbbing to the tempo of his music, a strange melody. Where did he learn it? On Earth? Near some alien star? "Anyway," Kurt went on, "if you can stand riding these huge beasts awhile longer, we may reach Mount Guenn sooner than Ovoom." "That's crazy! You must pass through Ovoom if you go by sea. And the other way around is worse-through the runnel canyons and the Vale." Kurt's eyes flickered. "I'm told there's a ... more direct route." "Direct? You mean due south? Past the Gentt lies the Plain of Sharp Sand, a desperate crossing under good conditions-which these aren't. Have you forgotten that's where Dedinger has followers?" "No, I haven't forgotten." "Then, assuming we get past the sandmen and flame dunes, there comes the Spectral Flow, making any normal desert seem like a meadow!" Kurt only shrugged, but clearly he wanted her to accompany him toward a distant simmering mountain, far from where Sara had sworn to take Emerson. Away from Lark and Dwer, and the terrible attraction of those fierce starships. Toward a starkly sacred part of Jijo, renowned for one thing above all-the way the planet renewed itself with flaming lava heat. Alvin MAYBE IT WAS THE COMPRESSED ATMOSPHERE WE breathed, or the ceaseless drone of reverberating engines. Or it could have been the perfect darkness outside that fostered an impression of incredible depth, even greater than when our poor little Wuphon's Dream fell into the maw of this giant metal sea beast. A single beam- immeasurably brighter than the handmade eik light of our old minisub-speared out to split the black, scanning territory beyond my wildest nightmares. Even the vivid imagery of Verne or Pukino or Melville offered no preparation for what was revealed by that roving circle as we cruised along a subsea canyon strewn with all manner of ancient dross. In rapid glimpses we saw so many titanic things, all jumbled together, that- Here I admit I'm stumped. According to the texts that teach Anglic literature, there are two basic ways for a writer to describe unfamiliar objects. First is to catalog sights and sounds, measurements, proportions, colors-saying this object is made up of clusters of colossal cubes connected by translucent rods, or that one resembles a tremendous sphere caved in along one side, trailing from its crushed innards a glistening streamer, a liquidlike banner that somehow defies the tug of time and tide. Oh, I can put words together and come up with pretty pictures, but that method ultimately fails because at the time I couldn't tell how far away anything was\ The eye sought clues in vain. Some objects-piled across the muddy panorama-seemed so vast that the huge vessel around us was dwarfed, like a minnow in a herd of behmo serpents. As for colors, even in the spotlight beam, the water drank all shades but deathly blue gray. A good hue for a shroud in this place of icy-cold death. Another way to describe the unknown is to compare it to things you 'already recognize . . . only that method proved worse! Even Huck, who sees likenesses in things I can't begin to fathom, was reduced to staring toward great heaps of ancient debris with all four eyestalks, at an utter loss. Oh, some objects leaped at us with sudden familiarity- like when the searchlight swept over rows of blank-eyed windows, breached floors, and sundered walls. Pushed in a tumbled mound, many of the sunken towers lay upside down or even speared through each other. Together they composed a city greater than any I ever heard of, even from readings of olden times. Yet someone once scraped the entire metropolis from its foundations, picked it up, and dumped it here, sending all the buildings tumbling down to be reclaimed the only way such things can be reclaimed-in Mother Jijo's fiery bowels. I recalled some books I'd read, dating from Earth's Era of Resolution, when pre-contact humans were deciding on their own how to grow up and save their, homeworld after centuries spent using it as a cesspit. In Alice Hammett's mystery The Case of a Half-Eaten Clone, the killer escapes a murder charge, only to get ten years for disposing of the evidence at sea! In those days, humans made no distinction between midden trenches and ocean floor in general. Dumping was dumping. It felt strange to see the enormous dross-scape from two viewpoints. By Galactic law, this was a consecrated part of Jijo's cycle of preservation-a scene of devout caretaking. But having grown up immersed in human books, I could shift perspectives and see defilement, a place of terrible sin. The "city" fell behind us and we went back to staring at bizarre shapes, unknown majestic objects, the devices of star-god civilization, beyond understanding by mere cursed mortals. On occasion, my eyes glimpsed flickerings in the blackness outside the roving beam-lightninglike glimmers amid the ruins, as if old forces lingered here and there, setting off sparks like fading memories. We murmured among ourselves, each of us falling back to what we knew best. Ur-ronn speculated on the nature of materials, what things were made of, or what functions they once served. Huck swore she saw writing each time the light panned over a string of suspicious shadows. Pincer. insisted every other object must be a starship. The Midden took our conjectures the same way it accepts all else, with a patient, deathless silence. Some enormous objects had already sunk quite far, showing just their tips above the mire. I thought-This is where Jijo's ocean plate takes a steep dive under the Slope, dragging crust, mud, and anything else lying about, down to magma pools that feed simmering volcanoes. In time, all these mighty things will become lava, or precious ores to be used by some future race of tenants on this world. It made me ponder my father's sailing ship, and the risky trips he took, hauling crates of sacred refuse, sent by each tribe of the Six as partial payment for the sin of our ancestors. In yearly rituals, each village sifts part of the land, clearing it of our own pollution and bits the Buyur left behind. The Five Galaxies may punish us for living here. Yet we lived by a code, faithful to the Scrolls. Hoonish folk moots chant the tale of Phu-uphyawuo, a dross captain who one day saw a storm coming, and dumped his load before reaching the deep blue of the Midden. Casks and drums rolled overboard far short of the trench of reclamation, strewing instead across shallow sea bottom, marring a site that was changeless, unrenewing. In punishment, Phu-uphyawuo was bound up and taken to the Plain of Sharp Sand, to spend the rest of his days beneath a hollow dune, drinking enough green dew to live, I but not sustain his soul. In time, his heart spine was ground to dust and cast across a desert where no water might wash the grains, or make them clean again. But this is the Midden, I thought, trying to grasp the wonder. We're the first to see it. Except for the phuvnthus. And whatever else lives down here. I found myself tiring. Despite the back brace and crutches, a weight of agony built steadily. Yet I found it hard to tear away from the icy-cold pane. Following a searchlight through suboceanic blackness, we plunged as if down a mine shaft, aimed toward a heap of jewels-glittering objects shaped like needles, or squat globes, or glossy pancakes, or knobby cylinders. Soon there loomed a vast shimmering pile, wider than Wuphon Bay, bulkier than Guenn Volcano. "Now, those are definitely ships!" Pincer announced, gesturing with a claw. Pressed against the glass, we stared at mountainlike piles of tubes, spheres, and cylinders, many of them studded with hornlike protrusions, like the quills of an alarmed rock staller. "Those must be the probability whatchamacallums starships use for going between galaxies," Huck diagnosed from her avid reading of Tabernacle-era, tales. "Probability flanges,"Ur-ronn corrected, speaking Galactic Six. In matters of technology, she was far ahead of Huck or me. "I think you may be right." Our qheuenish friend chuckled happily as the searchlight zeroed in on one tremendous pile of tapered objects. Soon we all recognized the general outlines from ancient texts-freighters and courier ships, packets and cruisers- all abandoned long ago. The engine noise dropped a notch, plunging us toward that mass of discarded spacecraft. The smallest of those derelicts outmassed the makeshift phuvnthu craft the way a full-grown traeki might tower over a herd-chick turd. "I wonder if any of the ancestor vessels are in this pile," Huck contemplated aloud. "You know, the ones that brought our founders here? The Laddu 'kek or the Tabernacle" "Unlikely," Ur-ronn answered, this time in lisping Anglic. "Don't forget, we're in the Rift. This is nothing vut an offshoot canyon of the Nidden. Our ancestors likely discarded their shifs in the nain trench, where the greatest share of Buyur trash went." I blinked at that thought. This, an offshoot? A minor side area of the Midden? Of course she was right! But it presented a boggling image. What staggering amounts of stuff must have been dumped in the main trench, over the ages! Enough to tax even the recycling power of Jijo's grinding plates. No wonder the Noble Galactics set worlds aside for ten million years or more. It must take that long for a planet to digest each meal of sapient-made things, melting them back into the raw stuff of nature. I thought of my father's dross ship, driven by creaking masts, its hold filled with crates of whatever we exiles can't recycle. After two thousand years, all the offal we sooners sent to the Midden would not even show against this single mound of discarded starships. How rich the Buyur and their fellow gods must have been to cast off so much wealth! Some of the abandoned vessels looked immense enough to swallow every house, khuta, or hovel built by the Six Races. We glimpsed dark portals, turrets, and a hundred other details, growing painfully aware of one fact-those shadowy behemoths had been sent down here to rest in peace. Their sleep was never meant to be invaded by the likes of us. Our plummet toward the reef of dead ships grew alarming. Did any of the others feel we were heading in awful fast! "Maybe this is their home," Pincer speculated as we plunged toward one twisted, oval ruin, half the size of Wuphon Port. "Maybe the phuvnthus are made of, like, parts of old machines that got dumped here," Huck mused. "And they kind of put themselves together from whatever's lying around? Like this boat we're on is made of all sorts of junk-" "Perhaps they were servants of the Buyur-" Ur-ronn interrupted. "Or a race that lived here even vefore. Or a strain of nutants, like in that story-" I cut in. "Have any of you considered the simplest idea? That maybe they're just like us?" When my friends turned to look at me, I shrugged, human style. "Maybe the phuvnthus are sooners, too. Ever stop to think of that?" Their blank faces answered me. I might as well have suggested that our hosts were noor beasts, for all the sense my idea made. Well, I never claimed to be quick-witted, especially when racked with agony. We lacked any sense of perspective, no way to tell how close we were, or how fast we were going. Huck and Pincer murmured nervously as our vessel plunged toward the mountain-of-ships at a rapid clip, engines running hard in reverse. I think we all jumped a bit when a huge slab of corroded metal moved aside, just duras before we might have collided. Our vessel slid into a gaping hole in the mountain of dross, cruising along a corridor composed of spaceship hulls, piercing a fantastic pile of interstellar junk. ASX READ THE NEWLY CONGEALED WAX, MY RINGS. See how folk of the Six Races dispersed, tearing down festival pavilions and bearing away the injured, fleeing before the Rothen starship's expected arrival. Our senior sage, Vubben of the g'Kek, recited from the Scroll of Portents a passage warning against disunity. Truly, the Six Races must strive harder than ever to look past our differences of shape and shell. Of flesh, hide, and torg. "Go home," we sages told the tribes. "See to your lattice screens. Your blur-cloth webs. Live near the ground in Jijo's sheltered places. Be ready to fight if you can. To die if you must." The zealots,' who originally provoked this crisis, suggested the Rothen starship might have means to track Rokenn and his lackeys, perhaps by sniffing our prisoners' brain waves or body implants. "For safety, let's sift their bones into lava pools!" An opposing faction called Friends of the Rothen demanded Ro-kenn's release and obeisance to his godlike will. These were not only humans, but some qheuens, g'Keks, hoons, and even a few urs, grateful for cures or treatments received in the aliens' clinic. Some think redemption can be won in this lifetime, without first treading the long road blazed by glavers. Finally, others see this chaos as a chance to settle old grudges. Rumors tell of anarchy elsewhere on the Slope. Of many fine things toppled or burned. Such diversity! The same freedom that fosters a vivid people also makes it hard to maintain a united front. Would things be better if we had disciplined order, like the feudal state sought by Gray Queens of old? It is too late for regrets. Time remains only for improvisation-an art not well approved in the Five Galaxies, we are told. Among poor savages, it may be our only hope. Yes, my rings. We can now remember all of that. Stroke this wax, and watch the caravans depart toward plains, forests, and sea. Our hostages are spirited off to sites where even a starship's piercing scrutiny might not find them. The sun flees and stars bridge the vast territory called the Universe. A realm denied us, that our foes roam at will. Some remain behind, awaiting the ship. We voted, did we not? We rings who make up Asx? We volunteered to linger. Our cojoined voice would speak to angry aliens for the Commons. Resting our basal torus on hard stone, we passed the time listening to complex patterns from the Holy Egg, vibrating our fatty core with strange shimmering motifs. Alas, my rings, none of these reclaimed memories explains our current state, that something terrible must have happened? Here, what of this newly congealed waxy trail? Can you perceive in it the glimmering outlines of a great vessel of space? Roaring from the same part of the sky lately abandoned by the sun? Or is it the sun, come back again to hover angrily above the valley floor? The great ship scans our valley with scrutinizing rays, seeking signs of those they left behind. Yes, my rings. Follow this waxy memory. Are we about to rediscover the true cause of terror? Lark SUMMER PRESSED HEAVILY ACROSS THE RIMMER Range, consuming the unshaded edges of glaciers far older than six exile races. At intervals, a crackling static charge would blur the alpine slopes as countless grass stems wafted skyward, reaching like desperate tendrils. Intense sunshine was punctuated by bursts of curtain rain- water draperies that undulated uphill, drenching the slopes with continuous liquid sheets, climbing until the mountaintops wore rainbow crowns, studded with flashes of compressed lightning. Compact reverberations rolled down from the heights, all -the way to the shore of a poison lake, where fungus swarmed over a forty-hectare thicket of crumbling vines. Once a mighty outpost of Galactic culture, the place was now a jumble of stone slabs, rubbed featureless by abrading ages. The pocket valley sweltered with acrid aromas, as caustic nectars steamed from the lake, or dripped from countless eroding pores. The newest sage of the Commons of Jijo plucked yellow moss from a decaying cable, one of a myriad of strands that once made up the body of a half-million-year-old creature, the mule spider responsible for demolishing this ancient Buyur site, gradually returning it to nature. Lark had last seen this place in late winter-searching alone through snow flurries for the footprints of Dwer and Rety, refugees from this same spider's death fury. Things had changed here since that frantic deliverance. Large swathes of mule cable were simply gone, harvested in some recent effort that no one had bothered explaining when Lark was assigned here. Much of what remained was coated with this clinging moss. "Spirolegita cariola." He muttered the species name, rubbing a sample between two fingers. It was a twisted, deviant cariola variety. Mutation seemed a specialty of this weird, astringent site. I wonder what the place will do to me-to all of us-if we stay here long. He had not asked for this chore. To be a jailor. Just wearing the title made him feel less clean. A chain of nonsense syllables made him turn back toward a blur-cloth canopy, spanning the space between slablike boulders. "It's a clensionating sievelator for refindulating excess torg. . . ." The voice came from deep shade within-a strong feminine alto, though somewhat listless now, tinged with resignation. Soft clinking sounds followed as one object was tossed onto a pile and another picked up for examination. "At a guess, I'd say this was once a glannis truncator, probably used in rituals of a chihanic sect . . . that is, unless it's just another Buyur joke-novelty device." Lark shaded his eyes to regard Ling, the young sky-born scientist and servant of star-god Rothen, in whose employ he had worked as a "native guide" for many weeks . . . until the Battle of the Glade reversed their standing in a matter of heartbeats. Since that unexpected victory, the High Sages had assigned her care and custody to him, a duty he never asked for, even if it meant exalted promotion. Now I'm quite a high-ranking witch doctor among savages, he thought with some tartness. Lord High Keeper of Alien Prisoners. And maybe executioner. His mind shied from that possibility. Much more likely, Ling would be traded to her Danik-Rothen comrades in some deal worked out by the sages. Or else she might be rescued at any moment by hordes of unstoppable robots, overpowering Lark's small detachment of sword-bearing escorts like a pack of santi bears brushing aside the helpless buzzing defenders of a zil-honey tree. Either way, she'll go free. Ling may live another three hundred years on her homeworld, back in the Five Galaxies, telling embroidered tales about her adventure among the feral barbarians of a shabby, illicit colony. Meanwhile, the best we fallen ones can hope for is bare survival. To keep scratching a living from poor tired Jijo, calling it lucky if some of the Six eventually join glavers down the Path of Redemption. The trail to blissful oblivion. Lark would rather end it all in some noble and heroic way. Let Jijo's Six go down defending this fragile world, so she might go back to her interrupted rest. That was his particular heresy, of course. Orthodox belief held that the Six Races were sinners, but they might mitigate their offense by living at peace on Jijo. But Lark saw that as hypocrisy. The settlers should end their crime, gently and voluntarily, as soon as possible. He had made no secret of his radicalism . . . which made it all the more confusing that the High Sages now trusted him with substantial authority. The alien woman no longer wore the shimmering garb of her Danik star clan-the secretive band of humans who worshiped Rothen lords. Instead she was outfitted in an illfitting blouse and kilt ofJijoan homespun. Still, Lark found it hard to look away from her angular beauty. It was said that sky humans could buy a new face with hardly a thought. Ling claimed not to care about such things, but no woman on the Slope could match her. Under the wary gaze of two militia corporals, Ling sat cross-legged, examining relics left behind by the dead mule spider-strange metallic shapes embedded in semitransparent gold cocoons, like archaic insects trapped in amber. Remnants of the Buyur, this world's last legal tenants, who departed half a million years ago when Jijo went fallow. A throng of egglike preservation beads lay scattered round the ashen lakeshore. Instead of dissolving all signs of past habitation, the local mule spider had apparently chosen relics to seal away. Collecting them, if Lark believed the incredible story told by his half brother, Dwer. The luminous coatings made him nervous. The same substance, secreted from the spider's porous conduits, had nearly smothered Dwer and Rety, the wild sooner girl, the same night two alien robots quarreled, igniting a living morass of corrosive vines, ending the spider's long, mad life. The gold stuff felt queer to touch, as if a strange, slow liquid sloshed under sheaths of solid crystal. "Toporgic, " Ling had called the slick material during one of her civil moments. "It's very rare, but I hear stories. It's said to be a pseudo-matter substrate made of organically folded time.". Whatever that meant. It sounded like the sort of thing Sara might say, trying to explain her beloved world of mathematics. As a biologist, he found it bizarre for a living thing to send "folded time" oozing from its far-flung tendrils, as the mule spider apparently had done. Whenever Ling finished examining a relic, she bent over a sheaf of Lark's best paper to make careful notes, concentrating as if each childlike block letter were a work of art. As if she never held a pencil before, but had vowed to master the new skill. As a galactic voyager, she used to handle floods of information, manipulating multidimensional displays, sieving data on this world's complex ecosystem, searching on behalf of her Rothen masters for some biotreasure worth stealing. Toiling over handwritten notes must seem like shifting from starship speeds to a traeki's wooden scooter. It's a steep,all-one moment a demigoddess, the next a hostage of uncouth sooners. All this diligent note taking must help take her mind off recent events-that traumatic day, just two leagues below the nest of the Holy Egg, when her home base exploded and Jijo's masses violently rebelled. But Lark sensed something more than deliberate distraction. In scribing words on paper. Ling drew the same focused satisfaction he had seen her take from performing any simple act well. Despite his persistent seething anger, Lark found this worthy of respect. There were folk legends about mule spiders. Some were said to acquire odd obsessions during their stagnant eons spent chewing metal and stone monuments of the past. Lark once dismissed such fables as superstition, but Dwer had proved right about this one. Evidence for the mule beast's collecting fetish lay in countless capsules studding the charred thicket, the biggest hoard of Galactic junk anywhere on the Slope. It made the noxious lakeshore an ideal site to conceal a captured alien, in case the returning starship had instruments sifting Jijo for missing crew mates. Though Ling had been thoroughly searched, and all possessions seized, she might carry in her body some detectable trace element-acquired growing up on a far Galactic world. If so, all the Buyur stuff lying around here might mask her presence. There were other ideas. Ship sensors may not penetrate far underground, one human techie proposed. Or else, suggested an urrish smith, a nearby lava flow may foil alien eyes. The other hostages-Ro-kenn and Rann-had been taken to such places, in hopes of holding on to at least one prisoner. With the lives of every child and grub of the Six at stake, anything seemed worth trying. The job Lark had been given was important. Yet he chafed, wishing for more to do than waiting for the world to end. Rumors told that others were preparing to fight the star criminals. Lark knew little about weapons-his expertise was the natural flux of living species. Still, he envied them. A burbling, wheezing sound called him rushing to the far end of the tent, where his friend Uthen squatted like an ash-colored chitin mound. Lark took up a makeshift aspirator he had fashioned out of boo stems, a cleft pig's bladder, and congealed mule sap. He pushed the nozzle into one of the big qheuen's leg apertures and pumped away, siphoning phlegmy fluid that threatened Uthen's ventilation tubes. He repeated the process with all five legs, till his partner and fellow biologist breathed easier. The qheuen's central cupola lifted and Uthen's seeing stripe brightened, "Th-thank you, L-Lark-ark ... I am-I am sorry to be so-be so-to be a burden-en-en. ..." Emerging uncoordinated, the separate leg voices sounded like five miniature qheuens, getting in each other's way. Or like a traeki whose carelessly stacked oration rings all had minds of their own. Uthen's fevered weakness filled Lark's chest with a burning ache. A choking throat made it hard to respond with cheerful-sounding lies. "You just rest up, claw brother. Soon we'll be back in the field . . . digging fossils and inventing more theories to turn your mothers blue with embarrassment." That brought a faint, gurgling laugh. "S-speaking-king of heresies ... it looks as if you and Haru . . . Haru . . . Harullen-ullen, will be getting your wish." Mention of Lark's other gray qheuen friend made him wince with doubled grief. Uthen didn't know about his cousin's fate, and Lark wasn't about to tell him. "How do you mean?" "It seems-eems the raiders-raiders found a way to rid Jijo of at least one of the S-S-Six P-p-pests. ..." "Don't say that," Lark urged. But Uthen voiced a common thought. His sickness baffled the g'Kek medic resting in the next shelter, all four eyes curled in exhaustion. The malady frightened the militia guards. All knew that Uthen had been with Lark in the ruined Danik station, poking among forbidden things. "I felt sorrow when-hen zealots-lots blew up the alien base." Uthen's carapace shuddered as he fought for breath. "Even when the Rothen tried to misuse our Holy Egg . . . sending false dreams as wedges-edges ... to drive the Six Races apart-part. . . . Even that did not justify the . . . inhospitable-able murder of strangers." Lark wiped an eye. "You're more charitable than most." "Let me finish-ish. I was-as going to say that now we know what the outsiders were up to all along-long . . . something worse than dreams. Designing-ing bugs to bring us down-own-own." So, Uthen must have overheard the rumors-or else worked it out for himself. Biological warfare. Genocide. "Like in War of the Worlds" It was one of Uthen's favorite old novels. "Only with the roles reversed." Lark's comparison made the gray qheuen laugh-a raspy, uneven whistle. "I ... always-ways did identify . . . with those . . . with those poor Martians-ans-ans. ..." The ribbon eye went foggy, losing the light of consciousness as the cupola' sank. Lark checked his friend's breathing, and found it no worse. Uthen was simply tired. So strong, he thought, stroking the rigid shell. We picture grays as toughest of the tough. But cbitin won't slow a laser ray. Harullen found that out. Death came to Uthen's cousin during the brief Battle of the Glade, when the massed militia of Six Races barely overcame Ro-kenn's robot assassins. Only the advantage of surprise had carried that day. The aliens never realized that savages might have books showing how to make rifled firearms-crude, but potent at short range. But victory came late for Harullen. Too dedicated or obstinate to flee, the heretic leader spent his last frenzied moments whistling ornate pleas for calm and reason, crying in five directions at once, beseeching everyone to lay down their arms and talk things over-until Harullen's massive, crablike body was cleaved in uneven parts by a killer drone, just before the machine was itself blown from the sky. There will be mourning among the gray matrons of Tarek Town, Lark thought, resting both arms across Uthen's broad shell, laying his head on the mottled surface, listening to the strained labor of his friend's phlegmy breathing, wishing with all his heart that there was more he could do. Irony was but one of many bitter tastes in his mouth. I always figured, if the end did come, that qheuens would be the last to go. Emerson JIJO'S COUNTRYSIDE FLOWS RAPIDLY PAST THEM now, as if the mysterious horsewomen fear any delay might turn faint hope to dust. Lacking speech, Emerson has no idea where they are riding in such a hurry, or why. Sara turns in her saddle now and then, to give an encouraging smile. But rewq-painted colors of misgiving surround her face-a nimbus of emotion that he can read the way he used to find meaning in letters on a data display. Perhaps he should find her qualms unnerving, since he depends on her guidance in this strange, perilous world. Yet Emerson cannot bring himself to worry. There are just too many other things to think about. Humidity closes in as their caravan veers toward a winding river valley. Dank aromas stir memories of the swamp where he first floundered after the crash, a shattered cripple, drenched in agony. But he does not quail. Emerson welcomes any sensation that might trigger random recall- a sound, a chance smell, or else a sight around the next bend. Some rediscoveries already float across a gulf of time and loss, as if he has missed them for quite a while. Recovered names connect to faces, and even brief snatches of isolated events. Tom Orley ... so strong and clever. Always a sure eye for trouble. He brought some back to the ship, one day. Trouble enough for Five Galaxies. Hikahi . . . sweetest dolphin. Kindest friend. Dashing off to rescue her lover and captain . . . never to be seen again. Toshio ... a boy's ready laughter. A young man's steady heart. Where is he now? Creideiki . . . captain. Wise dolphin leader. A cripple like himself. Briefly, Emerson wonders at the similarity between Creideiki's injury and his own. . . . But the thought provokes a searing bolt of pain so fierce that the fleeting thought whirls away and is lost. Tom . . . Hikahi . . . Toshio ... He repeats the names, each of them once attached to friends he has not seen for . . . well, a very long time. Other memories, more recent, seem harder to reach, more agonizing to access. Suessi . . . Tsh't . . . Gillian ... He mouths each sound repeatedly, despite the tooth jarring ride and difficulty of coordinating tongue and lips. He does it to keep in practice-or else how will he ever recover the old handiness with language, the skill to roll out words as he used to, back when he was known as such a clever fellow . . . before horrid holes appeared in both his head and memory. Some names come easy, since he learned them after waking on Jijo, delirious in a treetop hut. -Prity, the little chimp who teaches him by example. Though mute, she shows flair for both math and sardonic hand speech. -Jomah and Kurt . . . sounds linked to younger and older versions of the same narrow face. Apprentice and master at a unique art, meant to erase all the dams, towns, and houses that unlawful settlers had built on a proscribed world. Emerson recalls Biblos, an archive of paper books, where Kurt showed his nephew well-placed explosive charges that might bring the cave down, smashing the library to dust. If the order ever came. -The captive fanatic, Dedinger, rides behind the explosers, deeply tanned with craggy features. Leader of human rebels with beliefs Emerson can't grasp, except they preach no love of visitors from the sky. While the party hurries on, Dedinger's gray eyes rove, calculating his next move. Some names and a few places-these utterances have meaning now. It is progress, but Emerson is no fool. He figures he must have known hundreds of words before he fell, broken, to this world. Now and again he makes out snatches of half meaning from the "wab-wah" gabble as his companions address each other. Snippets that tantalize, without satisfying. Sometimes the torrent grows tiresome, and he wonders-might people be less inclined to fight if they talked less? If they spent more time watching and listening? Fortunately, words aren't his sole project. There is the haunting familiarity of music, ?nd during rest stops he plays math games with Prity and Sara, drawing shapes in the sand. They are his friends and he takes joy from their laughter. He has one more window to the world. As often as he can stand it, Emerson slips the rewq over his eyes ... a masklike film that transforms the world into splashes of slanted color. In all his prior travels he never encountered such a creature-a species used by all six races to grasp each other's moods. If left on too long, it gives him headaches. Still he finds fascinating the auras surrounding Sara, Dedinger, and others. Sometimes it seems the colors carry more than just emotion . . . though he cannot pin it down. Not yet. One truth Emerson recalls. Advice drawn from the murky well of his past, putting him on guard. Life can be full of illusions. PART TWO ? LEGENDS TELL OF MANY PRECIOUS TEXTS that were lost one bitter evening, during an unmatched disaster some call the Night of the (ghosts, when a quarter of the Diblos Archive burned. Among the priceless volumes that vanished by that cruel winters twilight, one tome reportedly showed pictures of Buyur-the mighty race whose lease on Jijo expired five thousand centuries ago. Scant diary accounts survive from witnesses to the calamity, but according to some who browsed the Xenoscience Collection be, lore It burned, the Buyur were squat beings, vaguely resembling the bullfrogs shown on page ninety-six of C^,earys C-'uiae to lerres' trial L,iK-rorms, though with elephantine legs and sharp, forward-looking eyes. They were said to be master shapers or useful organisms,and had a reputation for prodigious wit. But other sooner races already knew of that much about the Buyur, both from oral traditions and the many clever servant organisms that nit about Jijo's forests, perhaps still looking for departed masters. Beyond these few scraps, we have very little about the race whose mighty civilisation thronged this world for more than a million years. HOW could so much knowledge be lost in a single night' Today it seems odd. Why weren't copies of such valuable texts printed by those first-wave human colonists, before they sent their sneakship tumbling to ocean depths' Why not place duplicates all over the Mope, safeguarding the learning against all peril' In our ancestors defense I recall what tense times those were, before the Great Peace or the coming of the bgg. The live sapient races already present on Jijo (.excluding glavers, had reached an edgy balance by the time starship tabernacle slinked past l^munutts dusty glare to plant Earthlings illicitly, the latest wave of criminal colonists to plague a troubled world. In those days, combat was frequent between urrtsh clans and haughty qheuen empresses, while hoonlsh tribes skirmished among themselves in their ongoing ethical struggle over traeki civil rights. The nigh Sages had little inlluence beyond reading and interpreting the Speaking Scrolls, the only documents existing at the time. Into this tense climate dropped the latest Invasion of sooner relugees, who found an unused eco-niche awaiting them. But human colonists were not content simply to take up tree tarming as another clan of illiterates. Instead, they used the tabernacles engines one last time before sinking her. With those godlike torces they carved Diblos fortress, then toppled a thousand trees, converting their pulp into ireshly printed books. The act so astonished the Other five, It nearly cost human settlers their lives. Outraged, the queens of larek town laid siege to the vastly outnumbered Carthlings. Others, equally offended by what seemed heresy against the Scrolls, held back only because the priest sages refused sanctioning holy war. That narrow vote gave human leaders time to bargain, to cajole the ditlerent tribes and septs with practical advice from books, bribing them with useful things. Spoke cleats (or g'Kek wheels. Better sails for hoonish captains. And, for urrish smiths, the long-sought knack of brewing clear glass. How things had changed Just a few generations later, when the new breed of scholar sages gathered to aihrm the Great peace, scribing their names on fresh paper and sending copies to each hamlet on the Slope. Reading became a common habit, and even writing is no longer viewed as sin. An orthodox minority still objects to the clatter of printing presses, they piously Insist that literacy fosters memory, and thus attachment to the same conceits that got our spacefaring ancestors in trouble. Surely, they claim, we must cultivate detachment and forgetfulness in order to tread the lath of Redemption. perhaps they are right. Out lew these days seem in a hurry to lollow glavers down that blessed trail. 1'Jot yet. first, we must prepare our souls. And wisdom, the New Sages declare, can be nurtured from the pages of a book. from forging the peace, a Historical ,VIeditation-Umble, by Homer ,wph-puthtwaoy Streakers Kaa STRANDED, BY UNYIELDING FATE, ON IFNI'S SHORE. Stranded, like a beached whale, barred from ever going home. Five ways stranded- First, cut off from Earth by hostile aliens bearing a death grudge toward Terrans in general, and the Streaker crew in particular, though Kaa never quite understood why. Second, banished from Earth's home galaxy, blown off course, and off-limits, by a caprice of hyperspace-though many on the crew still blamed Kaa, calling it "pilot's error." Third, starship Streaker taking refuge on a taboo world, one scheduled to have a respite from sapient minds. An ideal haven, according to some. A trap, said others. Fourth, when the vessel's weary engines finally ceased their labors, depositing the Streaker in a realm of ghosts, deep in this planet's darkest corner, far from air or light. And now, this, Kaa thought. Abandoned, even by a crew of castaways! Of course Lieutenant Tsh't didn't put it that way, when she asked him to stay behind in a tiny outpost with three other volunteers for company. "This will be your first important command, Kaa. A chance to show what you're made of." Yeah, he thought. Especially if I'm speared by a hoonish harpoon, dragged onto one of their boats, and slit open. That almost happened yesterday. He had been tracking one of the native sailing craft, trying to learn its purpose and destination, when one of his young assistants, Mopol, darted ahead and began surfing the wooden vessel's rolling bow wake ... a favorite pastime on Earth, where dolphins frequently hitched free rides from passing ships. Only here it was so dumb, Kaa hadn't thought to forbid it in advance. Mopol offered that lawyerly excuse later, when they returned to the shelter. "B-besides, I didn't do any harm." "No harm? You let them see you!" Kaa berated. "Don't you know they started throwing spears into the water, just as I got you out of there?" Mopol's sleek torso and bottle beak held a rebellious stance. "They never saw a dolphin before. Prob'ly thought we were some local kind of fish." "And it's gonna stay that way, do you hear?" Mopol grunted ambiguous assent, but the episode unnerved Kaa. A while later, dwelling on his own shortcomings, he worked amid clouds of swirling bottom mud, splicing optical fiber to a cable the submarine Hikahi had laid, on its return trip to Streaker's hiding place. Kaa's newly emplaced camera should let him spy more easily on the hoon colony whose sheltered docks and camouflaged houses lay perched along the nearby bay. Already he could report that hoonish efforts at concealment were aimed upward, at shrouding their settlement against the sky, not the sea. That might prove important information, Kaa hoped. Still, he had never trained to be a spy. He was a pilot, dammit! Not that he ever used to get much practice during the early days of Streamer's mission, languishing in the shadow of Chief Pilot Keepiru, who always got the tough, glamorous jobs. When Keepiru vanished on Kithrup, along with the captain and several others, Kaa finally got a chance to practice his skill-for better and worse. But now Streaker's going nowhere. A beached ship needs no pilot, so I guess I'm expendable. Kaa finished splicing and was retracting the work arms of his harness when a flash of silver-gray shot by at high speed, undulating madly. Sonar strafed him as waves of liquid recoil shoved his body. Clickety dolphin laughter filled the shallows. * Admit it, star seeker! * You did not bear or see me, * Sprinting from the gloom! * In fact, Kaa had known the youth was approaching for some time, but he did not want to discourage Zhaki from practicing the arts of stealth. "Use Anglic," he commanded tersely. Small conical teeth gleamed in a beam of slanted sunshine as the young Tursiops swung around to face Kaa. "But it's much easier to speak Trinary! Sometimes Anglic makes my head hurt." Few humans, listening to this exchange between two neo-dolphins, would have understood the sounds. Like Trinary, this underwater dialect consisted mostly of clipped groans and ratchetings. But the grammar was close to standard Anglic. And grammar guides the way a person thinks-or so Creideiki used to teach, when that master of Keeneenk arts lived among the Streaker crew, guiding them with his wisdom. Creideiki has been gone for two years, abandoned with Mr. Orley and others when we fled the battle fleets at Kithrup. Yet every day we miss him-the best our kind produced. When Creideiki spoke, you could forget for a while that neo-dolphins were crude, unfinished beings, the newest and shakiest sapient race in the Five Galaxies. Kaa tried answering Zhaki as he imagined the captain would. "The pain you feel is called concentration. It's not easy, but it enabled our human patrons to reach the stars, all by themselves." "Yeah. And look what good it did them," Zhaki retorted. -Before Kaa could answer, the youth emitted the need-air signal and shot toward the surface, without even performing a wariness spiral to look out for danger. It violated security, but tight discipline seemed less essential as each Jijoan day passed. This sea was too mellow and friendly to encourage diligence. Kaa let it pass, following Zhaki to the surface. They exhaled and drew in sweet air, faintly charged with distant hints of rain. Speaking Anglic with their gene-modified blowholes out of the water called for a different dialect, one that hissed and sputtered, but sounded more like human speech. "All right-t," Kaa said. "Now report." The other dolphin tossed his head. "The red crabs suspect nothing. They f-fixate on their crayfish pensss. Only rarely does one look up when we c-come near." "They aren't crabs. They're qheuens. And I gave strict orders. You weren't to go near enough to be seen!" Hoons were considered more dangerous, so Kaa had kept that part of the spy mission for himself. Still, he counted on Zhaki and Mopol to be discreet while exploring the qheuen settlement at the reef fringe. , guess I was wrong. "Mopol wanted to try some of the reds' delicaciesss, so we'd pulled a diversion. I rounded up a school of those green-finned fishies-the ones that taste like Sargasso eel-and chased 'em right through the q-qheuen colony! And guess what? It turns out the crabs have pop-up nets they use for jussst that kind of: luck! As soon as the school was inside their boundary, they whipped those things up-p and snatched the whole swarm!" "You're lucky they didn't snag you, too. What was Mopol doing, all this time?" "While the reds were busy, Mopol raided the crayfish pens." Zhaki chortled with delight. "I saved you one, by the way. They're delisssh." Zhaki wore a miniharness fastened to his flank, bearing a single manipulator arm that folded back during swimming. At a neural signal, the mechanical hand went to his seamed pouch and drew out a wriggling creature, proffering it to Kaa. What should I do? Kaa stared at the squirmy thing. Would accepting it only encourage Zhaki's lapse of discipline? Or would rejection make Kaa look stodgy and unreasonable? "I'll wait and see if it makes you sick," he told the youth. They weren't supposed to experiment on native fauna with their own bodies. Unlike Earth, most planetary ecosystems were mixtures of species from all across the Five Galaxies, introduced by tenant races whose occupancy might last ten million years. So far, many of the local fishoids turned out to be wholesome and tasty, but the very next prey beast might have its revenge by poisoning you. "Where is Mopol now?" "Back doing what we were told," Zhaki said. "Watching how the red crabs interact with hoonsss. So far we've seen 'em pulling two sledge loads toward the port, filled with harvested ssseaweed. They came back with cargoes of wood. You know . . . ch-chopped tree trunks." Kaa nodded. "So they do trade, as we suspected. Hoons and qheuens, living together on a forbidden world. I wonder what it means?" "Who knows? If they weren't mysterious, they wouldn't be eateesss. C-can I go back to Mopol now?" Kaa had few illusions about what was going on between the two young spacers. It probably interfered in their work, but if he raised the issue, Zhaki would accuse him of being a prude, or worse, "jealous." If only I were a real leader, Kaa thought. The lieutenant should never have left me in charge. "Yes, go back now," he said. "But only to fetch Mopol and return to the shelter. It's getting late." Zhaki lifted his body high, perched on a thrashing tail. * Yes, oh exalted! * Your command shall be obeyed, * As all tides heed moons. * With that, the young dolphin did a flip and dived back into the sea. Soon his dorsal fin was all Kaa saw, glinting as it sliced through choppy swell. Kaa pondered the ambiguous insolence of Zhaki's last Trinary burst. In human terms-by the cause-and-effect logic the patron race taught its dolphin clients-the ocean bulged and shifted in response to the gravitational pull of sun and moon. But there were more ancient ways of thinking, used by cetacean ancestors long before humans meddled in their genes. In those days, there had never been any question that tides were the most powerful of forces. In the old, primal religion, tides controlled the moon, not vice versa. In other words, Zhaki's Trinary statement was sassy, verging on insubordination. Tsh't made a mistake, Kaa mused bitterly, as he swam toward the shelter. We should never have been left here by ourselves. Along the way, he experienced the chief threat to his mission. Not hoonish spears or qheuen claws, or even alien battlecruisers, but Jijo itself. One could fall in love with this place. The ocean's flavor called to him, as did the velvety texture of the water. It beckoned in the way fishlike creatures paid him respect by fleeing, but not too quick to catch, if he cared to. Most seductive of all, at night throbbing echoes penetrated their outpost walls-distant rhythms, almost too low to hear. Eerie, yet reminiscent of the whale songs of home. Unlike Oakka, the green-green world-or terrible Kithrup-this planet appeared to have a reverent sea. One where a dolphin might swim at peace. And possibly forget. Orderly dolphin whose frailty had grown as Streaker fled ever farther from home. Brookida's samples had been taken when the Hikahi followed a hoonish sailboat beyond the continental shelf, to a plunging abyssal trench, where the ship had proceeded to dump its cargo overboard! As casks, barrels, and chests fell into the murk, a few were snagged by the submarine's gaping maw, then left here for analysis as the Hikahi returned to base. Brookida had already found what he called "anomalies," but something else now had the aged scientist excited. "We got a message while you were out. Tsh't picked up something amazing on her way to Streaker\" 'Kaa. nodded. "I was here when she reported, remember? They found an ancient cache, left by illegal settlers when-" "That's nothing." The old dolphin was more animated than Kaa had seen Brookida in a long time. "Tsh't called again later to say they rescued a bunch of kids who were about to drown." Kaa blinked. "Kids? You don't mean-" "Not human or fin. But wait till you hear who they are . . . and how they came to be d-down there, under the sea." Brookida was waiting when Kaa cycled through the tiny airlock, barely large enough for one dolphin at a time to pass into the shelter-an inflated bubble, half-filled with water and anchored to the ocean floor. Against one wall, a lab had been set up for the metallurgist geologist, an el Sooners Alvin A FEW SCANT DURAS BEFORE IMPACT, PART OF THE wall of debris ahead of us began to move. A craggy slab, consisting of pitted starship hulls, magically slipped aside, offering the phuvnthu craft a long, narrow cavity. Into it we plummeted, jagged walls looming near the glass, passing in a blur, cutting off the searchlight beam and leaving us in shadows. The motors picked up their frantic backward roar . . . then fell away to silence. A series of metallic clangs jarred the hull. Moments later the door to our chamber opened. A clawed arm motioned us outside. Several phuvnthus waited-insectoid-looking creatures with long, metal-cased torsos and huge, glassy-black eyes. Our mysterious saviors, benefactors, captors. My friends tried to help me, but I begged them off. "Come on, guys. It's hard enough managing these crutches without YOU all crowding around. Go on. I'll be right behind." At the intersection leading back to my old cell, I moved to turn left but our six-legged guides motioned right instead. "I need my stuff," I told the nearest phuvnthu-thing. But it gestured no with a wave of machinelike claws, barring my path. Damn, I thought, recalling the notebook and backpack I had left behind. I figured I'd be coming back. A twisty, confused journey took us through all sorts of hatches and down long corridors of metal plating. Ur-ronn commented that some of the weld joins looked "hasty." I admired the way she held on to her professionalism when faced with awesome technology. I can't say exactly when we left the sea dragon and entered the larger base,camp,city,hive, but there came a time when the big phuvnthus seemed more relaxed in their clanking movements. I even caught a snatch or two of that queer, ratcheting sound that I once took for speech. But there wasn't time for listening closely. Just moving forward meant battling waves of pain, taking one step at a time. At last we spilled into a corridor that had a feel of permanence, with pale, off-white walls and soft lighting that seemed to pour from the whole ceiling. The peculiar passage curved gently upward in both directions, till it climbed out of sight a quarter of an arrowflight to either side. It seemed we were in a huge circle, though what use such a strange hallway might serve, I could not then imagine. Even more surprising was the reception committee! At once we faced a pair of creatures who could not look more different from the phuvnthus-except for the quality of having six limbs. They stood upright on their hind pair, dressed in tunics of silvery cloth, spreading four scaly webbed hands in a gesture I hopefully took to mean welcome. They were small, rising just above my upper knees, or the level of Pincer's red chitin shell. A frothy crown of moist, curly fibers topped their bulb-eyed heads. Squeaking rapidly, they motioned for us to follow, while the big phuvnthus retreated with evident eagerness. We four Wuphonites consulted with a shared glance ... then a rocking, qheuen-style shrug. We turned to troop silently behind our new guides. I could sense Huphu purring on my shoulder, staring at the little beings, and I vowed to drop my crutches and grab the noor, if she tried to jump one of our hosts. I doubted they were as helpless as they looked. All the doorways lining the hall were closed. Next to each portal, something like a paper strip was pasted to the wall, always at the same height. One of Huck's eyestalks gestured toward the makeshift coverings, then winked at me in Morse semaphore. SECRETS UNDERNEATH! I grokked her meaning. So our hosts did not want us to read their door signs. That implied they used one of the alphabets known to the Six. I felt the same curiosity that emanated from Huck. At the same time, though, I readied myself to stop her, if she made a move to tear off one of the coverings. There are times for impulsiveness. This was not one of them. A door hatch slid open with a soft hiss and our little guides motioned for us to enter. Curtains divided a large chamber into parallel cubicles. I also glimpsed a dizzying array of shiny machines, but did not note much about them, because of what then appeared, right in front of us. We all stopped in our tracks, facing a quartet of familiarlooking entities-an urs, a hoon, a red qheuen, and a young g'Kek! Images of ourselves, I realized, though clearly not reflections in a mirror. For one thing, we could see right through the likenesses. And as we stared, each figure made beckoning motions toward a different curtained nook. After the initial shock, I noticed the images weren't perfect portraits. The urrish version had a well groomed pelt, and my hoonish counterpart stood erect, without a back brace. Was the difference meaningful? The hoonish caricature smiled at me in the old-fashioned way, with a fluttering throat sac, but no added grimace of mouth and lips that Jijoan hoons had added since humans came. "Yeah right," Huck muttered, staring at the ersatz g'Kek in front of her, whose wheels and spokes gleamed, tight and polished. "I am so sure these are sooners, Alvin." I winced. So my earlier guess was wrong. There was no point rubbing it in. "Hr-rm . . . shut up, Huck." "These are holographic Projections," Ur-ronn lisped in Anglic, the sole Jijoan language suitable for such a diagnosis. The words came from human books, inherited since the Great Printing. "Whatever you s-say," Pincer added, as each ghost backed away toward a different curtained cell. "What d-d-do we do now?" Huck muttered. "What choice do we have? Each of us follows our own guy, and see ya on the other side." With an uneven bumping of her rims, she rolled after the gleaming g'Kek image. A curtain slid shut after her. Ur-ronn blew a sigh. "Good water, you two." "Fire and ash," Pincer and I replied politely, watching her saunter behind the urrish cartoon figure. The fake hoon waved happily for me to enter the cubby on the far right. "Name, rank, and serial number only," I told Pincer. His worried-"Huh?"-aspirated from three leg vents in syncopation. When I glanced back, his cupola eye still whirled indecisively, staring in all directions except at the translucent qheuen in front of him. A hanging divider closed between us. My silent guide in hoonish form led me to a white obelisk, an upright slab, occupying the center of the small room. He pantomimed stepping right up to it, standing on a small metal plate at its base. When I did so, I found the white surface soft against my face and chest. No sooner were my feet on the plate than the whole slab began to tilt . . . rotating down and forward to become a table, with my own poor self lying prone on top. Huphu scrambled off my shoulders, muttering guttural complaints, then yowled as a tube lifted up from below and snaked toward my face! I guess I could have struggled, or tried to flee. But to what point? When colored gas spilled from the tube, the odor reminded me of childhood visits to our Wuphon infirmary. The House of Stinks, we kids called it, though our traeki pharmacist was kindly, and always secreted a lump of candy from an upper ring, if we were good. ... As awareness wavered, I recall hoping there would be a tasty sourball waiting for me this time, as well. "G'night," I muttered, while Huphu cluttered and wailed. Then things kind of went black for a while. Asx STROKE THE FRESH-PLOWING WAX, MY RINGS, .streaming hot with news from real time. Here, trace this ululation, a blaring cry of dismay, echoing round frosted peaks, setting stands of mighty greatboo a-quivering. Just moments earlier, the Rothen ship hovered majestically above its ruined station, scanning the Glade for signs of its lost spore buds, the missing members of its crew. Angry the throbbing vessel seemed, broody and threatening, ready to avenge. Yet we/i remained in place, did we not, my rings? Duty rooted this traeki stack in place, delegated by the Council of Sages to parley with these Rothen lords. Others also lingered, milling across the trampled festival grounds. Curious onlookers, or those who for personal reasons wished to offer invaders loyalty. So we/i were not alone to witness what came next. There were several hundred present, staring in awe as the Rothen starship probed and palped the valley with rays, sifting the melted, sooty girders of its ravaged outpost. Then came that abrupt, awful sound. A cry that still fizzes, uncongealed, down our fatty core. An alarm of anguished dread, coming from the ship itself! Yes? You are brave, my rings. . . . Behold the Rothen ship-suddenly bathed in light! Actinic radiance pours onto it from above . . . cast by a new entity, shining like the blazing sun. It is no sun, but another vessel of space! A ship unbelievably larger than the slim gene raider, looming above it the way a full-stacked traeki might tower over a single, newly vienned ring. Can the wax be believed? Could anything be as huge and mighty as that luminous mountain-thing, gliding over the valley as ponderous as a thunderhead? Trapped, the Rothen craft emits awful, grating noises, straining to escape the titanic newcomer. But the cascade of light now presses on it, pushing with force that spills across the vale, taking on qualities of physical substance. Like a solid shaft, the beam thrusts the Rothen ship downward against its will, until its belly scours Jijo's wounded soil. A deluge of saffron color flows around the smaller cruiser, covering the Rothen craft in layers-thickening, like gobs of cooling sap. Soon the Rothen ship lies helplessly encased. Leaves and twigs seem caught in midwhirl, motionless beside the gold-sealed hull. And above, a new power hovered. Leviathan. The searing lights dimmed. Humming a song of overpowering might, the titan descended, like a guest mountain dropping in to take its place among the Rimmers. A stone from heaven, cracking bedrock and reshaping the valley with its awful weight. Rety Rety never believed Kunn's people came across vast space just to teach some critters how to blab. Then what was the real reason? And what were they afraid of? RETY THOUGHT ABOUT HER BIRD. THE BRIGHT bird, so lively, so unfairly maimed, so like herself in its .stubborn struggle to overcome. All her adventures began one day when Jass and Born returned from a hunting trip boasting about wounding a mysterious flying creature. Their trophy-a gorgeous metal feather-was the trigger she had been waiting for. Rety took it as an omen, steadying her resolve to break away. A sign that it was time, at last, to leave her ragged tribe and seek a better life. I guess everybody's looking for something, she pondered, as the robot followed another bend in the dreary river, meandering toward the last known destination of Kunn's flying scout craft. Rety had the same goal, but also dreaded it. The Danik pilot would deal harshly with Dwer. He might also judge Rety, for her many failings. She vowed to suppress her temper and grovel if need be. Just so the starfolk keep their promise and take me with them when they leave Jijo. They must! I gave 'em the bird. Rann said it was a clue to help the Daniks and their Rothen lords search . . . Her thoughts stumbled. Search for what? They must need somethin' awful bad to break Galactic law by sneakin' to far-off Jijo. Rety never swallowed all the talk about "gene raiding"- that the Rothen expedition came looking for animals almost ready to think. When you grow up close to nature, scratching for each meal alongside other creatures, you soon realize everybody thinks. Beasts, fish . . . why, some of her cousins even prayed to trees and stones! Rety's answer was-so what? Would a gallaiter be less smelly if it could read? Or a wallow kleb any less disgusting if it recited poetry while rolling in dung? By her lights, nature was vile and dangerous. She had a bellyful and would gladly give it up to live in some bright Galactic city. The robot avoided deep water, as if its force fields needed rock or soil to push against. When the river widened, and converging tributaries became rivers themselves, further progress proved impossible. Even a long detour west offered no way around. The drone buzzed in frustration, hemmed by water on all sides. "Rety!" Dwer's hoarse voice called from below. "Talk to it again!" "I already did, remember? You must've wrecked its ears in the ambush, when you ripped out its antenna thing!" "Well ... try again. Tell it I might . . . have a way to get across a stream." Rety stared down at him, gripped by snakelike arms. "You tried to kill it a while back, an' now you're offerin' to help?" He grimaced. "It beats dying, wandering in its clutches till the sun burns out. I figure there's food and medicine on the flying boat. Anyway, I've heard so much about these alien humans. Why should you get all the fun?" She couldn't tell where he stopped being serious, and turned sarcastic. Not that it mattered. If Dwer's idea proved useful, it might soften the way Kunn treated him. And me, she added. "Oh, all right," Rety spoke directly to the machine, as she had been taught. "Drone Four! Hear and obey commands! I order you to let us down so's we can haggle together about how to pass over this here brook. The prisoner says he's got a way mebbe to do it." The robot did not respond at first, but kept cruising between two high points, surveying for any sign of a crossing. But finally, the humming repulsors changed tone as metal arms lowered Dwer, letting him roll down a mossy bank. For a time the young man lay groaning. His limbs twitched feebly, like a stranded fish. More than a little stiff herself, Rety hoisted her body off the upper platform, wincing at the singular touch of steady ground. Both legs tingled painfully, though likely not as bad as Dwer felt. She got down on her knees and poked his elbow. "Hey, you all right? Need help gettin' up?" Dwer's eyes glittered pain, but he shook his head. She put an arm around his shoulder anyway as he struggled to sit. No fresh blood oozed when they checked the crusty dressing on his thigh wound. The alien drone waited silently as the young man stood, unsteadily. "Maybe I can help you get across water," he told the machine. "If I do, will you change the way you carry us? Stop for breaks and help us find food? What d'you say?" Another long pause-then a chirping note burst forth. Rety had learned a little Galactic Two during her time as an apprentice star child. She recognized the upward sliding scale meaning yes. Dwer nodded. "I can't guarantee my plan'll work. But here's what I suggest." It was actually simple, almost obvious, yet she looked at Dwer differently after he emerged from the stream, dripping from the armpits down. Before he was halfway out, the robot edged aside from its perch above Diver's head. It seemed to glide down the side of the young hunter's body until reaching a point where its fields could grip solid ground. All the way across the river, Dwer looked as if he wore a huge, eight-sided hat, wafting over his head like a balloon. His eyes were glazed and his hair stood on end as Rety sat him down. "Hey!" She nudged him. "You all right?" Dwer's gaze seemed fixed far away. After a few duras though, he answered. "Um ... I ... guess so." She shook her head. Even Mudfoot and yee had ceased their campaign of mutual deadly glares in order to stare at the man from the Slope. "That was so weird!" Rety commented. She could not bring herself to say "brave," or "thrilling" or "insane." He winced, as if messages from his bruised body were just now reaching a dazed brain. "Yeah ... it was all that. And more." The robot chirruped again. Rety guessed that a triple upsweep with a shrill note at the end meant-That's enough resting. Let's go! She helped Dwer onto a makeshift seat the robot made by folding its arms. This time, when it resumed its southward flight, the two humans rode in front with Mudfoot and little yee, sharing body heat against the stiff wind. Rety had heard of this region from those bragging hunters, Jass and Born. 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 nature along. 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. "The 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. "Please accept my thanks," I responded in formal GalSeven, 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. "There 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. "True," 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 shallow waters. 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. "You 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. "I assert ... a right to inspect the item . . . and reserve an option to make further claims later." Purple swirls invaded the spinning pattern, and I could almost swear it seemed amused. Perhaps this strange entity already had pursued the same line of questioning with my pals. I may be articulate-Huck says no one can match me in GalSeven-but I never claimed to be the brightest one in our gang. "The matter can be discussed another time," the voice said. "After you tell us of your life, and recent events in the upper world." This triggered something in me ... call it the latent trading instinct that lurks in any hoon. A keenness for the fine art of dickering. Carefully, tenderly, I sat up, allowing the supple back brace to take most of the strain. "Hr-r-rm. You're asking us to give away the only thing we have to barter-our story, and that of our ancestors. What do you offer in exchange?" The voice made a pretty good approximation of a rueful hoonish rumble. "Apologies. It did not occur to us that you would look at it that way. Alas, you have already told us a great deal. We will now return your information store. Please accept our contrition over having accessed it without expressed permission." A door slid open and one of the little amphibian creatures entered the cubicle, bearing in its four slim arms my backpack! Better yet, on top lay my precious journal, all battered and bent, but still the item I most valued in the world. I snatched up the book, flipping its dog-eared pages. "Rest assured," the spinning pattern enounced. "Our study of this document, while enlightening, has only whetted our appetite for information. Your economic interests are undiminished." I thought about that. "You read my journal?" "Again, apologies. It seemed prudent, when seeking to understand your injuries, and the manner of your arrival in this realm of heavy wet darkness." Once again, the words seemed to come at me with layers of meaning and implications I could only begin to sift. At the time, I only wanted to end the conversation as soon as possible, and confer with Huck and the others before going any further. "I'd like to see my friends now," I told the whirling image, switching to Anglic. It seemed to quiver, as if with a nod. "Very well. They have been informed to expect you. Please follow the entity standing at the door." The little amphibian attended while I set foot on the floor, gingerly testing my weight. There were a few twinges, just enough to help me settle best within the support of the flexible body cast. I gripped the journal, but glanced back at my knapsack and the bowl of baby vertebrae. "These items will be safe here," promised the voice. I hope so, I thought. Mom and Dad will want them . . . assuming that I ever see Mu-phauwq, and Yowg-wayuo again . . . and especially if I don't. "Thank you." The speckled pattern whirled. "It is my pleasure to serve." Holding my journal tight, I followed the small being out the door. When I glanced back at the bed, the spinning projection was gone. ASX HERE IT IS, AT LAST. THE IMAGE WE HAVE SOUGHT, now cool enough to stroke. Yes, my rings. It is time for another vote. Shall we remain catatonic, rather than face what will almost certainly be a vision of pure horror? Our first ring of cognition insists that duty must take precedence, even over the natural traeki tendency to flee unpleasant subjectivities. Is it agreed? Shall we be Asx, and meet reality as it comes? How do you rule, my rings? stroke the wax. . . . follow the tracks. . . . see the mighty starship come. ... Humming a song of overwhelming power, the monstrous vessel descends, crushing every remaining tree on the south side of the valley, shoving a dam across the river, filling the horizon like a mountain. Can you feel it, my rings? Premonition. Throbbing our core with acrid vapors? Along the starship's vast flank a hatch opens, large enough to swallow a small village. Against the lighted interior, silhouettes enter view. Tapered cones. Stacks of rings. Frightful kin we had hoped never again to see. Sara SARA LOOKED BACK FONDLY AT LAST NIGHT'S WILD ride, for now the horses sped up to a pace that made her bottom feel like butter. And to think, as a child I wished I could gallop about like characters in storybooks. Whenever the pace slackened, she eyed the enigmatic female riders who seemed so at home atop huge, mythological beasts. They called themselves Illias, and their lives had been secret for a long time. But now haste compelled them to travel openly. Can it really be just to get Kurt the Exploser where he wants to go? Assuming his mission is vital, why does he want my help? I'm a theoretical mathematician with a sideline in linguistics. Even in math, I'm centuries out of date by Earth standards. To Galactics I'd be just a clever shaman. Losing altitude, the party began passing settlements-at first urrish camps with buried workshops and sunken corrals hidden from the glowering sky. But as the country grew more lush, they skirted dams where blue qheuen hives tended lake-bottom farms. Passing a riverside grove, they found the "trees" were ingeniously folded masts of hoonish fishing skiffs and khuta boats. Sara even glimpsed a g'Kek weaver village where sturdy trunks supported ramps, bridges, and swaying boardwalks for the clever wheeled clan. At first the settlements seemed deserted as the horses sped by. But the chick coops were full, and the blur canopies freshly patched. Midday isn't a favorite time to be about, especially with sinister specters in the sky. Anyone rousing from siesta glimpsed only vague galloping figures, obscured by dust. But attention was unavoidable later, when members of all six races scurried from shelters, shouting as the corps of beasts and riders rushed by. The grave Illias horsewomen never answered, but Emerson and young Jomah waved at astonished villagers, provoking some hesitant cheers. It made Sara laugh, and she joined their antics, helping turn the galloping procession into a kind of antic parade. When the mounts seemed nearly spent, the guides veered into a patch of forest where two more women waited, dressed in suede, speaking that accent Sara found tantalizingly familiar. Hot food awaited the party-along with a dozen fresh mounts. Someone is a good organizer, Sara thought. She ate standing up-a pungent vegetarian gruel. Walking helped stretch kinked muscles. The next stage went better. One of the Illias showed Sara a trick of flexing in her stirrups to damp the jouncing rhythm. Though grateful, Sara wondered. Where have these people lived all this time? Dedinger, the desert prophet, caught Sara's eye, eager to discuss the mystery, but she turned away. The attraction of his intellect wasn't worth suffering his character. She preferred spending her free moments with Emerson. Though speechless, the wounded starman had a good soul. Villages grew sparse south of the Great Marsh. But traeki flourished there, from tall cultured stacks, famed for herbal industry, all the way down to wild quintets, quartets, and little trio ring piles, consuming decaying matter the way their ancestors must have on a forgotten homeworld, before some patron race set them on the Path of Uplift. Sara daydreamed geometric arcs, distracting her mind from the heat and tedium, entering a world of parabolas and rippling wavelike forms, free of time and distance. By the time she next looked up, dusk was falling and a broad river flowed to their left, with faint lights glimmering on the other bank. "Traybold's Crossing." Dedinger peered at the settlement, nestled under camouflage vines. "I do think the residents have finally done the right thing . . . even if it inconveniences wayfarers like us." The wiry rebel appeared pleased. Sara wondered. Can he mean the bridge? Have local fanatics torn it down, without orders from the sages? Dwer, her well-traveled brother, had described the span across the Gentt as a marvel of disguise, appearing like an aimless jam of broken trees. But even that would not satisfy fervent scroll thumpers these days. Through twilight dimness she spied a forlorn skeleton of charred logs, trailing from sandbar to sandbar. Just like at Bing Hamlet, back home. What is it about a bridge that attracts destroyers? Anything sapient-made might be a target of zealotry, these days. The workshops, dams, and libraries may go. We'll,allow glavers into blessed obscurity. Dedinger's heresy may prove right, and Lark's prove wrong. She sighed. Mine was always the unlikeliest of all. Despite captivity, Dedinger seemed confident in ultimate success for his cause. "Now our young guides must spend days trying, to hire boats. No more rushing about, postponing Judgment Day. As if the explosers and their friends could ever have changed destiny." "Shut up," Kurt said. "You know, I always thought your guild would be on our side, when the time came to abandon vanities and take redemption's path. Isn't it frustrating, preparing all your life to blow up things, only to hold back at the crucial moment?" Kurt looked away. Sara expected the horsewomen to head to a nearby fishing village. Hoonish coracles might be big enough to ferry one horse at a time, though that slow process would expose the Illias to every gawking citizen within a dozen leagues. Worse, Urunthai reinforcements, or Dedinger's own die-hard supporters, might have time to catch up. But to her surprise, the party left the river road, heading west down a narrow track through dense undergrowth. Two Illias dropped back, brushing away signs of their passage. Could their settlement lie in this thicket? But hunters and gleaners from several races surely went browsing through this area. No secret horse clan could remain hidden for more than a hundred years! Disoriented in a labyrinth of trees and jutting knolls, Sara kept a wary eye on the rider in front of her. She did not relish wandering' lost and alone in the dark. Gaining altitude, the track finally crested to overlook a cluster of evenly spaced hills-steep mounds surrounding a depression filled with dense brush. From their symmetry, Sara thought of Buyur ruins. Then she forgot about archaeology when something else caught her eye. A flicker to the west, beckoning from many leagues away. The mountain's wide shoulders cut a broad wedge of stars. Near its summit, curved streaks glowed red and orange. Flowing lava. Jijo's blood. A volcano. Sara blinked. Might they already have traveled to- "No," she answered herself. "That's not Guenn. It's Blaze Mountain!' "If only that were our destination, Sara. Things'd be simpler." Kurt spoke from nearby. "Alas, the smiths of Blaze Peak are conservative. They want no part of the hobbies and pastimes that are practiced where we're headin'." Hobbies? Pastimes? Was Kurt trying to baffle her with riddles? "You can't still reckon we're going all the way to-" "To the other great forge? Aye, Sara. We'll make it, don't fret." "But the bridge is out! Then there's desert, and after that, the Spec . . ." She trailed off as the troop turned downward, into the thorn brake between the hills. Three times, riders dismounted to shift clever barriers that looked like boulders or tree trunks. At last, they reached a small clearing where the guides met and embraced another group of leatherclad women. There was a campfire . . . and the welcome aroma of food. Despite a hard day, Sara managed to unsaddle her own mount and brush the tired beast. She ate standing, doubtful she would ever sit again. I should check Emerson. Make sure he takes his medicine. He may need a story or a song to settle down after all this. A small figure slipped alongside, chuffing nervously. No-Go-Hole- Prity motioned with agile hands. Scary-Hole. Sara frowned. "What hole are you talking about?" The chimp took Sara's hand, pulling her toward several Illias, who were shifting baggage to a squat, boxy object. A wagon, Sara realized. A big one, with four wheels, instead of the usual two. Fresh horses were harnessed, but to haul it where? Surely not through the surrounding thicket! Then Sara saw what "hole" Prity meant-gaping at the base of a cone hill. An aperture with smooth walls and a flat floor. A thin glowing stripe ran along the tunnel's center, continuing downhill before turning out of sight. Jomah and Kurt were already aboard the big wagon, with Dedinger strapped in behind, a stunned expression on his aristocratic face. For once Sara agreed with the heretic sage. Emerson stood at the shaft entrance and whooped, like a small boy exploring a cave first with his own echoes. The starman grinned, happier than ever, and reached for her hand. Sara took his while inhaling deeply. Well, I bet Dwer and Lark never went anywhere like this. I may yet be the one with the best story to tell. I FOUND MY FRIENDS IN A DIM CHAMBER WHERE frigid fog blurred every outline. Even hobbling with crutches, my awkward footsteps made hardly a sound as I approached the silhouettes of Huck and Ur-ronn, with little Huphu curled on Pincer's carapace. All faced the other way, looking downward into a soft glow. "Hey, what's going on?" I asked. "Is this any way to greet-" One of Huck's eyestalks swerved on me. "We're-glad-'to-see-you're-all-right-but-now-shut-up and-get-over-here." Few other citizens of the Slope could squeeze all that into a single GalThree word-blat. Not that skill excused her rudeness. "Hr-rm. The-same-to-you-I'm-sure, oh-obsessed-beingtoo-transfaxed-to-qffer-decent-courtesy," I replied in kind. Shuffling forward, I noted how my companions were transformed. Ur-ronn's pelt gleamed, Huck's wheels were realigned, and Pincer's carapace had been patched and buffed smooth. Even Huphu seemed sleek and content. "What is it?" I began. "What're you all staring . . ." My voice trailed off when I saw where they stood-on a balcony without a rail, overlooking the source of both the pale glow and the chill haze. A cube-two hoon lengths on a side, colored a pale shade of brownish yellow-lay swathed in a fog of its own making, unadorned except by a symbol embossed on one face. A spiral emblem with five swirling arms and a bulbous center, all crossed by a gleaming vertical bar. Despite how far the people of the Slope have fallen, or how long it's been since our ancestors roamed as star gods, that emblem is known to every grub and child. Inscribed on each copy of the Sacred Scrolls, it evokes awe when prophets and sages speak of lost wonders. On this frosted obelisk it could only mean one thing-that we stood near more knowledge than anyone on Jijo could tally, or begin to imagine. If the human crew of sneakship Tabernacle had kept printing paper books till this very day, they could have spilled only a small fragment of the trove before us, a hoard that began before many stars in the sky. The Great Library of the Civilization of the Five Galaxies. I'm told moments like these can inspire eloquence from great minds. "J-j-jeez," commented Pincer. Ur-ronn was less concise. "The questions . . . ," she lisped. "The questions we could ask ..." I nudged Huck. "Well, you said you wanted to go find something to read." For the first time in all the years I've known her, our little wheeled friend seemed at a loss for words. Her stalks trembled. The only sound she let out was a gentle keening sigh. Asx If only we/i had nimble running feet, i/we would use them now, to flee. If we/i had burrowers' claws, i/we would dig a bole and hide. If we/i had the wings, i/we would fly away. Lacking those useful skills, the member toruses of our composite stack nearly vote to draw permanently, sealing out the world, negating the objective universe, waiting for the intolerable to go away. It will not go away. So reminds our second torus of cognition. Among the greasy trails of wisdom that coat our aged core, many were laid down after reading learned books, or holding lengthy discussions with other sages. These tracks of philosophical wax agree with our second ring. As difficult as it may be for a traeki to accept, the cosmos does not vanish when we turn within. Logic and science appear to prove otherwise. The universe goes on. Things that matter keep happening, one after another. Still, it is hard to swivel our trembling sensor rings to face toward the mountain dreadnought that recently lowered itself down from heaven, whose bulk seems to fill both valley and sky. Harder to gaze through a hatchway in the great ship's flank-an aperture broad as the largest building in Tarek Town. Hardest to regard the worst of all possible sights-those cousins that we traeki fled long ago. Terrible and strong-the mighty Jophur. How gorgeous they seem, those glistening sap rings, swaying in their backlit portal, staring without pity at the wounded glade their vessel alters with its crushing weight. A glade thronging with half-animal felons, a miscegenous rabble, the crude descendants of fugitives. Exiles who futilely thought they might elude the ineludable. Our fellow Commons citizens mutter fearfully, still awed by the rout of the smaller Rothen ship-that power we had held in dread for months-now pressed down and encased in deadly light. Yes, my rings, i/we can sense how some nearby Sixers- the quick and prudent-take to their heels, retreating even before the landing tremors fade. Others foolishly mill toward the giant vessel, driven by curiosity, or awe. Perhaps they have trouble reconciling the shapes they see with any sense of danger. As harmless as a traeki, so the expression goes. After all, what menace can there be in tapered stacks of fatty rings? Oh, my,our poor innocent neighbors. You are about to find out. i^arl THAT NIGHT HE DREAMED ABOUT THE LAST TIME HE saw Ling smile-before her world and his forever changed. It seemed long ago, during a moonlit pilgrimage that crept proudly past volcanic vents and sheer cliffs, bearing shared hope and reverence toward the Holy Egg. Twelve twelves of white-clad celebrants made up that processsion-qheuens and g'Keks, traekis and urs, humans and hoons-climbing a hidden trail to their sacred site. And accompanying them for the first time, guests from outer space-a Rothen master, two Danik humans, and their robot guards-attending to witness the unity rites of a quaint savage tribe. He dreamed about that pilgrimage in its last peaceful moment, before the fellowship was splintered by alien words and fanatical deeds. Especially the smile on her face, when she told him joyous news. "Ships are coming, Lark. So many ships! "It's time to bring you all back home." Two words still throbbed like sparks in the night. Rhythmically hotter as he reached for them in his sleep. . . . ships ... . . . home ... . . . ships . . . . . . home ... One word vanished at his dream touch-he could not tell which. The other he clenched hard, its flamelike glow increasing. Strange light, pushing free of containment. It streamed past flesh, past bones. A glow that clarified, offering to show him everything. Everything except . . . Except now shewas gone. Taken away by the word that vanished. Pain wrenched Lark from the lonely night phantasm, tangled in a sweaty blanket. His trembling right hand clenched hard against his chest, erupting with waves of agony. Lark exhaled a long sigh as he used his left hand to pry open the fingers of his right, forcing them apart one by one. Something rolled off his open palm- It was the stofle fragment of the Holy Egg, the one he had hammered from it as a rebellious child, and worn ever since as penance. Even as sleep unraveled, he imagined the rocky talisman throbbing with heat, pulsing in time to the beating of his heart. Lark stared at the blur-cloth canopy, with moonlight glimmering beyond. I remain in darkness, on Jijo, he thought, yearning to see once more by the radiance that had filled his dream. A light that seemed about to reveal distant vistas. Ling spoke to him later that day, when their lunch trays were slipped into the tent by a nervous militiaman. "Look, this is stupid," she said. "Each of us acting like the other is some kind of devil spawn. We don't have time for grudges, with your people and mine on a tragic collision course." Lark had been thinking much the same thing, though her sullen funk had seemed too wide to broach. Now Ling met his eyes frankly, as if anxious to make up for lost time. "I'd say a collision's already happened," he commented. Her lips pressed a thin line. She nodded. "True. But it's wrong to blame your entire Commons for the deeds of a minority, acting without authority or-" He barked a bitter laugh. "Even when you're trying to be sincere, you still condescend, Ling." She stared for a moment, then nodded. "All right. Your sages effectively sanctioned the zealots' attack, post facto, by keeping us prisoner and threatening blackmail. It's fair to say that we're already-" "At war. True, dear ex-employer. But you leave out our own casus belli." Lark knew the grammar must be wrong, but he liked showing that even a savage could also drop a Latin phrase. "We're fighting for our lives. And now we know genocide was the Rothen aim from the start." Ling glanced past him to where a g'Kek doctor drew increasing amounts of nauseating fluid from the air vents of a qheuen, squatting unconscious at the back of the shelter. She had worked alongside Uthen for months, evaluating local species for possible uplift. The gray's illness was no abstraction. "Believe me, Lark. I know nothing of this disease. Nor the trick Ro-kenn allegedly pulled, trying to broadcast psi influentials via your Egg." "Allegedly? You suggest we might have the technology to pull off something like that, as a frame-up?" Ling sighed, "I don't dismiss the idea entirely. From the start you Jijoans played on our preconceptions. Our willingness to see you as ignorant barbarians. It took weeks to learn that you were still literate! Only lately did we realize you must have hundreds of books, maybe thousands!" An ironic smile crossed his face, before Lark realized how much the expression revealed. "More than that? A lot more?" Ling stared. "But where? By Von Daniken's beard-how?" Lark put aside his meal, mostly uneaten. He reached over to his backpack and drew forth a thick volume bound in leather. "I can't count how many times I wanted to show you this. Now I guess it doesn't matter anymore." In a gesture Lark appreciated, Ling wiped her hands before accepting the book, turning the pages with deliberate care. What seemed reverence at first, Lark soon realized was inexperience. Ling had little practice holding paper books. Probably never saw one before, outside a museum. Rows of small type were punctuated by lithographed illustrations. Ling exclaimed over the flat, unmoving images. Many of the species shown had passed through the Danik research pavilion during the months she and Lark worked side by side, seeking animals with the special traits her Rothen masters desired. "How old is this text? Did you find it here, among all these remnants?" Ling motioned toward a stack of artifacts preserved by the mule spider, relics of the long-departed Buyur, sealed in amber cocoons. Lark groaned. "You're still doing it, Ling. For Ifni's sake! The book is written in Anglic." She nodded vigorously. "Of course. You're right. But then who-" Lark reached over and flipped the volume to its title page. fl PHVLOGENEIIC INTERDEPENDENCE PROFILE OF ECOLOGICRL SYSTEMS ON THE JIJO lN SLOPE "This is part one. Part two is still mostly notes. I doubt we'd have lived long enough to finish volume three, so we left the deserts, seas, and tundras for someone else to take on." Ling gaped at the sheet of linen paper, stroking two lines of smaller print, below the title. She looked at him, then over toward the dying qheuen. "That's right," he said. "You're living in the same tent with both authors. And since I'm presenting you with this copy, you have a rare opportunity. Care to have both of us autograph it? I expect you're the last person who'll get the chance." His bitter sarcasm was wasted. Clearly she didn't understand the word autograph. Anyway, Ling the biologist had replaced the patronizing alien invader. Turning pages, she murmured over each chapter she skimmed. "This would have been incredibly useful during our survey!" "That's why I never showed it to you." Ling answered with a curt nod. Given their disagreement over the rightness of gene raiding, his attitude was understandable. Finally, she closed the volume, stroking'the cover. "I am honored by this gift. This accomplishment. I find I cannot grasp what it must have taken to create it, under these conditions, just the two of you. ..." "With the help of others, and standing on the shoulders of those who came before. It's how science works. Each generation's supposed to get better, adding to what earlier ones knew. . . ." His voice trailed off as he realized what he was saying. Progress? But that's Sara's apostasy, not mine! Anyway, why am I so bitter? So what if alien diseases wipe out every sapient being on Jijo? Weren't you willing to see that as a blessing, a while ago? Didn't it seem an ideal way to swiftly end our illegal colony? A harmful invasion that should never have existed in the first place? Over the course of Uthen's illness, Lark came to realize something-that death can sometimes seem desirable in abstract, but look quite different when it's in your path, up close and personal. If Harullen the Heretic had lived, that purist might have helped Lark cling to his belief in Galactic law, which for good reason forbade settlements on fallow worlds. It was our goal to atone for our ancestors' egotistical sin. To help rid Jijo of the infestation. But Harullen was gone, sliced to bits by a Rothen robot, and now Lark grappled with doubts. I'd rather Sara were right. If only I could see nobility here. Something worth enduring. Worth fighting for. I don't really want to die. Ling pored through the guidebook again. Better than most, she could appreciate the work he and Uthen spent their adult lives creating. Her professional esteem helped bridge the chasm of their personalities. "I wish I had something of equal value to give you," she said, meeting his eyes again. Lark pondered. "You really mean that?" "Of course I do." "All right then, wait here. I'll be right back." At the rear of the shelter, the g'Kek physician indicated with twined eyestalks that Uthen's condition was unvaried. Good news, since each change till now had been for the worse. Lark stroked his friend's chitin carapace, wishing he could impart comfort through the gray's stupor. "Is it my fault you caught this bug, old friend? I made you go with me into the station wreckage, rummaging for alien secrets." He sighed. "I can't make up for that. But what's in your bag may help others." He lifted Uthen's private satchel and took it back to Ling. Reaching inside, he felt several slablike objects, cool to the touch. "Earlier, we found something that you might help me learn to read. If you meant your promise." He put one of the flat lozenges in her hand-pale brown and smooth as glass, with a spiral shape etched on each face. Ling stared at it for several duras. When she looked up, there was something new in her countenance. Was it respect for the way he had cornered, her? Trapping her with the one other trait they shared-a compelling sense of honor? For the first time since they met, Ling's eyes seemed to concede that she was dealing with an equal. ASX CALM DOWN, MY RINGS. NO ONE CAN FORCE YOU to stroke wax against your will. As traeki we are each of us sovereign, free not to recall intolerable memories before we are ready. Let the wax cool a little longer-a majority of rings demands-before we dare look again. Let the most recent terror wait. But our second cognition ring demurs. It insists-we/i should delay no longer confronting the dread news about Jophur, our terrible cousins, arriving on Jijo. Our second ring of cognition reminds us of the Quandary of Solipsism-the riddle that provoked our traeki founders to flee the Five Galaxies. Solipsism. The myth of the all-important self. Most mortal sapient beings hold this conceit, at one level or another. An individual can perceive others by sight, touch, and empathy, yet still reckon them as mere figments or automatons. Caricatures, of little importance. Under solipsism, the world exists for each solitary individualist. Examined dispassionately, it seems an insane concept. Especially to a traeki, since none of us can thrive or think alone. Yet egotism can also be useful to ambitious creatures, driving their single-minded pursuit of success. Madness seems essential in order to be "great." Terran sages knew this paradox from their long isolation. Ignorant and lonely, humans wallowed in one bizarre superstition after another, frantically trying concepts that no uplifted species would consider for even a dura. According to wolfling tales, humans wrestled endlessly with their own overpowering egos. Some tried suppressing selfness, seeking detachment. Others subsumed personal ambition in favor of a greater whole-family, religion, or a leader. Later they passed through a phase in which individualism was extolled as the highest virtue, teaching their young to inflate the ego beyond all natural limits or restraint. Works from this mad era of the self are found in the Biblos Archive, with righteous, preening rage flowing across every page. Finally, just before contact, there emerged another approach. Some of their texts use the word maturity. We traeki-newly uplifted from the pensive swamps of our homeworld-seemed safe from achieving greatness, no matter how many skills our patrons, the blessed Poa, inserted in our rings. Oh, we found it pleasant to merge in tall, wise stacks. To gather learned wax and travel the stars. But to our patrons' frustration, we never found appealing the fractious rivalries that churn the Five Galaxies. Frantic aspiration and zeal always seemed pointless to our kind. Then the Poa brought in experts. The Oailie. The Oailie pitied our handicap. With great skill, they gave us tools for achievement. For greatness. The Oailie gave us new rings- Rings of power. Rings of self-centered glory. Rings that turned mere traeki into Jophur. Too late, we and the Poa learned a lesson-that ambition comes at a cost. We fled, did we not, my rings? By a fluke, some traeki managed to shuck these Oailie "gifts," and escape. Only a few wax-crystal remembrance cells survive from those days. Memories laced with dread of what we were becoming. At the time, our ancestors saw no choice but flight. And yet ... a pang of conscience trickles through our inner core. Might there have been another way? Might we have stayed and fought somehow to tame those awesome new rings? Futile as our forebears' exodus now seems . . . was it also wrong' Since joining the High Sages, this traeki Asx has pored over Terran books, studying their lonely, epochal struggle-a poignant campaign to control their own deeply solipsistic natures. A labor still under way when they emerged from Earth's cradle to make contact with Galactic civilization. The results of that Asx investigation remain inconclusive, yet i/we found tantalizing clues. The fundamental ingredient, it seems, is courage. Yes, my rings? Very well then. A majority has been persuaded by the second ring of cognition. We/i shall once again turn to the hot-new-dreadful waxy trail of recent memory. Glistening cones stared down at the confused onlookers who remained, milling on the despoiled glade. From a balcony high a-flank the mountain ship, polished stacks of fatty rings dripped luxuriously as they regarded teeming savages below-we enthralled members of six exile races. Shifting colors play across their plump toruses-shades of rapid disputation. Even at a great distance, i/we sense controversy raging among the mighty Jophur, as they quarrel among themselves. Debating our fate. Events interrupt, even as our dribbling thought-streams converge. Near. At last we have come very near the recent. The present. Can you sense it, my rings? The moment when our dreadful cousins finished arguing what to do about us? Amid the flashing rancor of their debate, there suddenly appeared forceful decisiveness. Those in command-powerful ring stacks whose authority is paramount-made their decree with stunning confidence. Such assuredness! Such certainty! It washed over us, even from six arrowflights away. Then something else poured from the mighty dreadnought. Hatchet blades of infernal light. Emerson HE HAS NEVER BEEN ESPECIALLY FOND OF HOLES. This one both frightens and intrigues Emerson. It is a strange journey, riding a wooden wagon behind a four-horse team, creaking along a conduit with dimpled walls, like some endless stretched intestine. The only illumination-a faintly glowing stripe-points straight ahead and behind, toward opposite horizons. The duality feels like a sermon. After departing the hidden forest entrance, time became vague-the past blurry and the future obscure. Much like his life has been ever since regaining consciousness on this savage world, with a cavity in his head and a million dark spaces where memory should be. Emerson can feel this place tugging associations deep within his battered skull. Correlations that scratch and howl beyond the barriers of his amnesia. Dire recollections lurk just out of reach. Alarming memories of abject, gibbering terror, that snap. and sting whenever he seeks to retrieve them. Almost as if, somehow, they were being guarded. Strangely, this does not deter him from prodding at the barricades. He has spent much too long in the company of pain to hold it in awe any longer. Familiar with its quirks and ways, Emerson figures he now knows pain as well as he knows himself. Better, in fact. Like a quarry who turns at bay after growing bored with running-and then begins hunting its pursuer-Emerson eagerly stalks the fear scent, following it to its source. The feeling is not shared. Though the draft beasts pant and their hooves clatter, all echoes feel muffled, almost deathlike. His fellow travelers react by hunching nervously on the narrow bench seats, their breath misting the chill air. Kurt the Exploser seems a little less surprised by all this than Sara or Dedinger, as if the old man long suspected the existence of a subterranean path. Yet, his white-rimmed eyes keep darting, as if to catch dreaded movement in the surrounding shadows. Even their guides, the taciturn women riders, appear uneasy. They must have come this way before, yet Emerson can tell they dislike the tunnel. Tunnel. He mouths the word, adding it proudly to his list of recovered nouns. Tunnel. Once upon a time, the term meant more than a mere hole in the ground, when his job was fine-tuning mighty engines that roamed the speckled black of space. Back then it stood for ... No more words come to mind. Even images fail him, though oddly enough, equations stream from some portion of his brain less damaged than the speech center. Equations that explain tunnels, in a chaste, sterile way-the sort of multidimensional tubes that thread past treacherous shoals of hyperspace. Alas, to his disappointment, the formulas lack any power to yank memories to life. They do not carry the telltale spoor of fear. Also undamaged is his unfailing sense of direction. Emerson knows when the smooth-walled passage must be passing under the broad river, but no seepage is seen. The tunnel is a solid piece of Galactic workmanship, built to last for centuries or eons-until the assigned time for dismantling. That time came to this world long ago. This place should have vanished along with all the great cities, back when Jijo was lain fallow. By some oversight, it was missed by the great destroyer machines and living acid lakes. Now desperate fugitives use the ancient causeway to evade a hostile sky, suddenly filled with ships. While still vague on details, Emerson knows he has been fleeing starships for a very long time, along with Gillian, Hannes, Tsh 't, and the crew of Streaker. Faces flicker, accompanying each name as recall agony makes him grunt and squeeze his eyelids. Faces Emerson pines for . . . and desperately hopes never to see again. He knows he must have been sacrificed somehow, to help the others get away. Did the plan succeed? Did Streaker escape ahead of those awful dreadnoughts? Or has he suffered all of this for nothing? His companions breathe heavily and perspire. They seem taxed by the stale air, but to Emerson it is just another kind of atmosphere. He has inhaled many types over the years. At least this stuff nourishes the lungs . . . . . . unlike the wind back on the green-green world, where a balmy day could kill you if your helmet failed. ... And his helmet did fail, he now recalls, at the worst possible time, while trying to cross a mat of sucking demiveg, running frantically toward- Sara and Prity gasp aloud, snapping his mental thread, making him look up to see what changed. At a brisk pace the wagon enters a sudden widening of the tunnel, like the bulge where a snake digests its meal. Dimpled walls recede amid deep shadows, where dozens of large objects dimly lurk-tubelike vehicles, corroded by time. Some have been crushed by rock falls. Piles of stony debris block other exits from the underground vault. Emerson lifts a hand to stroke a filmy creature riding his forehead, as lightly as a scarf or veil. The rewq trembles at his touch, swarming down to lay its filmy, translucent membrane over his eyes. Some colors dim, while others intensify. The ancient transit cars seem to shimmer like specters, as if he is looking at them not through space, but time. It is almost possible to imagine them in motion, filled with vital energies, hurtling through a network that once girdled a living, global civilization. The horsewomen sitting on the foremost bench clutch their reins and peer straight ahead, enclosed by a nimbus of tension made visible by the rewq. The film shows Emerson their edgy, superstitious awe. To them, this is no harmless crypt for dusty relics, but a macabre place where phantoms prowl. Ghosts from an age of gods. The creature on his brow intrigues Emerson. How does the little parasite translate emotions-even between beings as different as human and traeki-and all without words? Anyone who brought such a treasure to Earth would be richly rewarded. To his right, he observes Sara comforting her chimpanzee aide, holding Prity in her arms. The little ape cringes from the dark; echoless cavern, but the rewq's overlaid colors betray a fringe of deceit in Prity's distress. It is partly an act! A way to distract her mistress, diverting Sara from her own claustrophobic fears. Emerson smiles knowingly. The hues surrounding Sara reveal what the unaided eye already knows-that the young woman thrives on being needed. "It's all right, Prity," she soothes. "Shh. It'll be all right." The phrases are so simple, so familiar that Emerson understands them. He used to hear the same words while thrashing in his delirium, during those murky days after the crash, when Sara's tender care helped pull him back from that pit of dark fire. The vast chamber stretches on, with just the glowing stripe to keep them from drifting off course. Emerson glances back to see young Jomah, seated on the last bench with his cap a twisted mass between his hands, while his uncle Kurt tries to explain something in hushed tones, motioning at the distant ceiling and walls-perhaps speculating what held them up ... or what explosive force it would take to bring them crashing down. Nearby, with fastened hands and feet, the rebel, Dedinger, projects pure hatred of this place. Emerson snorts annoyance with his companions. What a gloomy bunch! He has been in spots infinitely more disturbing than this harmless tomb . . . some of them he can even remember! If there is one sure truth he can recall from his former life, it is that a cheerful journey goes much faster, whether you are in deep space or the threshold of hell. From a bag at his feet, he pulls out the midget dulcimer Ariana Foo had given him back at the Biblos Archive, that ornate hall of endless corridors stacked high with paper books. Not bothering with the hammers, he lays the instrument on his lap and plucks a few strings. Twanging notes jar the others from their anxious mutterings to look his way. Though Emerson's ravaged brain lacks speech, he has learned ways to nudge and cajole. Music comes from a different place than speech, as does song. Free association sifts the shadowy files of memory. Early drawers and closets, undammed by the traumas of later life. From some cache he finds a tune about travel down another narrow road. One with a prospect of hope at the end of the line. It spills forth without volition, as a whole, flowing to a voice that's unpracticed, but strong. "I've got a mule, her name is Sal, Fifteen miles down the Erie Canal. She's a good old worker and a good old pal, Fifteen miles down the Erie Canal. We've hauled some cargo in our day, Filled with lumber, coal, and hay, And we know every inch of the way, From Albany to Buffalo-o-o. ..." Amid the shadows, they are not easily coaxed from their worries. He too can feel the weight of rock above, and so many years. But Emerson refuses to be oppressed. He sings louder, and soon Jomah's voice joins the refrain, followed tentatively by Sara's. The horses' ears flick. They nicker, speeding to a canter. The subterranean switching yard narrows again, walls converging with a rush. Ahead, the glowing line plunges into a resuming tunnel. Emerson's voice briefly falters as a flicker of memory intrudes. Suddenly he can recall another abrupt plunge . . . diving through a portal that opened into jet vacuum blankness . . . then falling as the universe converged on him from all sides to squeeze. . . . And something else. A row of pale blue eyes. Old Ones . . . But the song has a life of its own. Its momentum pours unstoppably from some cheerful corner of his mind, overcoming those brief, awful images, making him call out the next verse with a vigor of hoarse, throaty defiance. "Low bridge, everybody down! Low bridge! 'Cause we're comin' to a town. And you I'll always know your neighbor, Always know your pal, If you ever navigate along the Erie Canal." His companions lean away from the rushing walls. Their shoulders press together as the hole sweeps up to swallow them again. PART THREE ONCE A LENGTHY EPISODE of colonization finally comes to an end, subduction recycling Is among the more commonly used methods for clearing waste products on a llle world. Where natural cycles of plate tectonics provide a powerful indrawing force, the planets own hot convection processes can melt and remix elements that had been rationed into tools and civilised implements. materials that might otherwise prove poisonous or intrusive to new-rising species are thus removed from the (allow environment, as a world eases into the necessary dormant phase. What happens to these refined materials, alter they have been drawn in, depends on mantle processes peculiar to each planet. Certain convection systems turn the molten substance into high-purity ores. borne become lubricated by water seeps, stimulating the release or great liquid magma spills, ,et another result can be sudden expulsions of volcanic dust, which richly coat the planet and can later be traced in the refractory-metal enrichment of thin sedimentary layers. Each of these outcomes can result in perturbations of the local biosphere, and occasional episodes of extinction. However, the resulting enrichment fccunJity usually proves benehcial enough to compensate, encouraging development of new presapient species. . . .from A. Oalactograpfuc Tutorial for Ignorant Voiding Tsrrans, a. special publication of the Library Institute of the Five Galaxies, year 42 EC, in partial satisfaction of the debt obligation of 35 t,C Hannes SUESSI FELT NOSTALGIC ABOUT BEING HUMAN. NOW and then, he even wished he were still a man. Not that he was ungrateful for the hoon the Old Ones had granted him, in that strange place called the Fractal System, where aloof beings transformed his aged, failing body into something more durable. Without their gift, he would be stone dead-as cold as the giant corpses surrounding him in this dark ossuary of ships. The ancient vessels seemed peaceful, in dignified repose. It was tempting to contemplate resting, letting eons pass without further care or strife. But Suessi was much too busy to spare time for being dead. "Hannes," a voice crackled directly to his auditory nerve. "Two minutes, Hannes. Then I think-k we'll be ready to resume cut-t-ting." Shafts of brilliant illumination speared through the watery blackness, casting bright ovals toward one curved hull segment of the Terran starship Streaker. Distorted silhouettes crisscrossed the spotlight beams-the long undulating shadows of workers clad in pressurized armor, their movements slow, cautious. This was a more dangerous realm than hard vacuum. Suessi did not have a larynx anymore, or lungs to blow air past one if he had. Yet he retained a voice. "Standing by, Karkaett," he transmitted, then listened as his words were rendered into groaning saser pulses. "Please keep the alignment steady. Don't overshoot." One shadow among many turned toward him. Though cased in hard sheathing, the dolphin's tail performed a twist turn with clear body-language meaning. Trust me . . . do you have any choice? Suessi laughed-a shuddering of his titanium rib cage that replaced the old, ape-style method of syncopated gasps. It wasn't as satisfying, but then, the Old Ones did not seem to have much use for laughter. Karkaett guided his team through final preparations while Suessi monitored. Unlike some others in Streaker's crew, the engineering staff had grown more seasoned and confident with each passing year. In time, they might no longer need the encouragement-the supervising crutch- of a member of the patron race. When that day came, Hannes would be content to die. I've seen too much. Lost too many friends. Someday, we'll be captured by one of the eatee factions pursuing us. Or else, we'll finally get a chance to turn ourselves in to some great Institute, only to learn Earth was lost while we fled helter-skelter across the universe. Either way, I don't want to be around to see it. The Old Ones can keep their Ifni-cursed, immortality. Suessi admired the way his well-trained team worked, setting up a specially designed cutting machine with cautious deliberation. His audio pickups tracked low mutterings-keeneenk chants, designed to help cetacean minds concentrate on explicit thoughts and tasks that their ancestral brains were never meant to take on. Engineering thoughts-the kind that some dolphin philosophers called the most painful price of uplift. These surroundings did not help-a mountainous graveyard of long-dead starcraft, a ghostly clutter, buried in the kind of ocean chasm that dolphins traditionally associated with their most cryptic cults and mysteries. The dense water seemed to amplify each rattle of a tool. Every whir of a harness arm resonated queerly in the dense liquid environment. Anglic might be the language of engineers, but dolphins preferred Trinary for punctuation-for moments of resolution and action. Karkaett's voice conveyed confidence in a burst phrase of cetacean haiku. * Through total darkness * Where the cycloid's gyre comes never . . . * Behold-decisiveness! f The cutting tool lashed out, playing harsh fire toward the vessel that was their home and refuge . . . that had carried them through terrors unimaginable. Streaker's hull- purchased by the Terragens Council from a third-hand ship dealer and converted for survey work-had been the pride of impoverished Earthclan, the first craft to set forth with a dolphin captain and mostly cetacean crew, on a mission to check the veracity of the billion-year-old Great Library of the Civilization of the Five Galaxies. Now the captain was gone, along with a quarter of the crew. Their mission had turned into a calamity for both Earthclan and the Five Galaxies. As for Streaker's hull- once so shiny, despite her age-it now lay coated by a mantle of material so black the abyssal waters seemed clear by comparison. A substance that drank photons and weighed the ship down. Oh, the things we've put you through, dear thing. This was but the latest trial for their poor ship. Once, bizarre fields stroked her in a galactic tide pool called the Shallow Cluster, where they "struck it rich" by happening upon a vast derelict fleet containing mysteries untouched for a thousand eons. In other words, where everything first started going wrong. Savage beams rocked her at the Morgran nexus point, where a deadly surprise ambush, barely failed to snare Streaker and her unsuspecting crew. Making repairs on poisonous Kithrup, they ducked out almost too late, escaping mobs of bickering warships only by disguising Streaker inside a hollowed-out Thennanin cruiser, making it to a transfer point, though at the cost of abandoning many friends. Oakka, the green world, seemed an ideal goal after that-a sector headquarters for the Institute of Navigation. Who was better qualified to take over custody of their data? As Gillian Baskin explained at the time, it was their duty as Galactic citizens to turn the problem over to the great institutes-those august agencies whose impartial lords might take the awful burden away from Streaker's tired crew. It seemed logical enough-and nearly spelled their doom. Betrayal by agents of that "neutral" agency showed how far civilization had fallen in turmoil. Gillian's hunch saved the Earthling company-that and a daring cross-country raid by Emerson D'Anite, taking the conspirators' base from behind. Again, Streaker emerged chastened and worse for wear. There was refuge for a while in the Fractal System, that vast maze where ancient beings gave them shelter. But eventually that only led to more betrayal, more lost friends, and a flight taking them ever farther from home. Finally, when further escape seemed impossible, Gillian found a clue in the Library unit they had captured on Kithrup. A syndrome called the "Sooner's Path." Following that hint, she plotted a dangerous road that might lead to safety, though it meant passing through the licking flames of a giant star, bigger than Earth's orbit, whose soot coated Streaker in layers almost too heavy to lift. But she made it to Jijo. This world looked lovely, from orbit. Too bad we had only that one glimpse, before plunging to an abyssal graveyard of ships. Under sonar guidance by dolphin technicians, their improvised cutter attacked Streaker's hull. Water boiled into steam so violently that booming echoes filled this cave within a metal mountain. There were dangers to releasing so much energy in a confined space. Separated gases might recombine explosively. Or it could make their sanctuary detectable from space. Some suggested the risk was too great . . . that it would be better to abandon St reaker and instead try reactivating one of the ancient hulks surrounding them as a replacement. There were teams investigating that possibility right now. But Gillian and Tsh't decided to try this instead, asking Suessi's crew to pull off one more resurrection. The choice gladdened Hannes. He had poured too much into Streaker to give up now. There may be more of me in her battered shell than remains in this cyborg body. Averting his sensors from the cutter's actinic glow, he mused on the mound of cast-off ships surrounding this makeshift cavern. They seemed to speak to him, if only in his imagination. We, too, have stories, they said. Each of us was launched with pride, flown with hope, rebuilt many times with skill, venerated by those we protected from the sleeting desolation of space, long before your own race began dreaming of the stars. Suessi smiled. All that might have impressed him once- the idea of vessels millions of years old. But now he knew a truth about these ancient hulks. You want old? he thought. I've seen old. I've seen ships that make most stars seem young. The cutter produced immense quantities of bubbles. It screeched, firing ionized bolts against the black layer, just centimeters away. But when they turned it off at last, the results of all that eager destructive force were disappointing. "That-t's all we removed?" Karkaett asked, incredulously, staring at a small patch of eroded carbon. "It'll take years to cut it all away, at-t this rate!" The engineer's mate, Chuchki, so bulky she nearly burst from her exo-suit, commented in awed Trinary. * Mysteries cluster * Frantic, in Ifni's shadow-^ * Where did the energy go! * Suessi wished he still had a head to shake, or shoulders to shrug. He made do instead by emitting a warbling sigh into the black water, like a beached pilot whale. * Not by Ifni's name, * But her creative employer- *I wish to God I.knew. * Gillian IT ISN'T EASY FOR A HUMAN BEING TO PRETEND she's an alien. Especially if the alien is a Thennanin. Shrouds of deceitful color surrounded Gillian, putting ersatz flesh around the lie, providing her with an appearance of leathery skin and a squat bipedal stance. On her head, a simulated crest rippled and flexed each time she nodded. Anyone standing more than two meters away would see a sturdy male warrior with armored derma and medallions from a hundred stellar campaigns-not a slim blond woman with fatigue-lined eyes, a physician forced by circumstances to command a little ship at war. The disguise was pretty good by now. It ought to be. She had been perfecting it for well over a year. "Gr-phmph pitith," Gillian murmured. When she first started pulling these charades, the Niss Machine used to translate her Anglic questions into Thennanin. But now Gillian figured she was probably as fluent in that Galactic dialect as any human alive. Probably even Tom. It still sounds weird though. Kind of like a toddler making disgusting fart imitations for the fun of it. At times, the hardest part was struggling not to break out laughing. That would not do, of course. Thennanin weren't noted for their sense of humor. She continued the ritual greeting. "Fhishmishingul parfful, mph!" Chill haze pervaded the dim chamber, emanating from a sunken area where a beige-colored cube squatted, creating its own wan illumination. Gillian could not help thinking of it as a magical box-a receptacle folded in many dimensions, containing far more than any vessel its size should rightfully hold. She stood at a lipless balcony, masked to resemble the former owners of the box, awaiting a reply. The barredspiral symbol on its face seemed slippery to the eye, as if the emblem were slyly looking back at her with a soul far older than her own. "Toftorph-ph parffuL Fhishfingtumpti parfffui" The voice was deeply resonant. If she had been a real Thennanin, those undertones would have stroked her ridge crest, provoking respectful attentiveness. Back home, the Branch Library of Earth spoke like a kindly human grandmother, infinitely experienced, patient, and wise. "I am prepared to witness," murmured a button in her ear, rendering the machine's words in Anglic. "Then I will be available for consultation." That was the perpetual trade-off. Gillian could not simply demand information from the archive. She had to give as well. Normally, that would pose no problem. Any Library unit assigned to a major ship of space was provided camera views of the control room and the vessel's exterior, in order to keep a WOM record for posterity. In return, the archive offered rapid access to wisdom spanning almost two billion years of civilization, condensed from planet scale archives of the Library Institute of the Civilization of Five Galaxies. Only there's a rub, Gillian thought. Streaker was not a "major ship of space." Her own WOM units were solid, cheap, unresponsive-the only kind that impoverished Earth could afford. This lavish cube was a far greater treasure, salvaged on Kithrup from a mighty war cruiser of a rich starfaring clan. She wanted the cube to continue thinking it was on that cruiser, serving a Thennanin admiral. Hence this disguise. "Your direct watcher pickups are still disabled," she explained, using the same dialect. "However, I have brought more recent images, taken by portable recording devices. Please accept-and-receive this data now." She signaled the Niss Machine, her clever robotic assistant in the next room. At once there appeared next to the cube a series of vivid scenes. Pictures of the suboceanic trench that local Jijoans called the "Midden"-carefully edited to leave out certain things. We're playing a dangerous game, she thought, as flickering holosims showed huge mounds of ancient debris, discarded cities, and abandoned spacecraft. The idea was to pretend that the Thennanin dreadnought Krondor's Fire was hiding for tactical reasons in this realm of dead machines . . . and to do this •without showing Streaker's own slender hull, or any sign of dolphins, or even revealing the specific name and locale of this planet. If we make it home, or to a neutral Institute base, we'll be legally bound to hand over this unit. Even under anonymous seal, it would be safest for it to know as little as we can get away with telling. Anyway, the Library might not prove as cooperative to mere Earthlings. Better to keep it thinking it was dealing with its official lease-holders. Ever since the disaster at Oakka, Gillian had made this her chief personal project, pulling off a hoax in order to pry data out of their prize. In many ways, the Library cube was more valuable than the relics Streaker had snatched from the Shallow Cluster. In fact, the subterfuge had worked better than expected. Some of the information won so far might prove critically useful to the Terragens Council. Assuming we ever make it home again . . . Ever since Kithrup, when Streaker lost the best and brightest of her crew, that had always seemed a long shot, at best. In one particular area of technology, twenty-second-century humans had already nearly equaled Galactic skill levels, even before contact. Holographic imagery. Special-effects wizards from Hollywood, Luanda, and Aristarchus were among the first to dive confidently into alien arts, undismayed by anything as trivial as a billionyear head start. Within mere decades Earthlings could say they had mastered a single narrow field as well as the best starfaring clans- Virtuosity at lying with pictures. For thousands of years, when we weren't scratching for food we were telling each other fables. Prevaricating. Propagandizing. Casting illusions. Making movies. Lacking science, our ancestors fell back on magic. The persuasive telling of untruths. Still it seemed a wonder to Gillian that her Thennanin disguise worked so well. Clearly the "intelligence" of this unit, while awesome, was of a completely different kind than hers, with its own limitations. Or else maybe it simply doesn 't care. From experience, Gillian knew the Library cube would accept almost anything as input, as long as the show consisted of credible scenes it had never witnessed before. So Jijo's abyss flashed before it-this time the panoramas came over fiber cable from the western sea, sent by Kaa's team of explorers, near the settled region called the Slope. Ancient buildings gaped-drowned, eyeless, and windowless-under the scrutiny of probing searchlight beams. If anything, this waste field was even greater than the one where Streaker took refuge. The accumulated mass of made-things collected by a planetary culture for a million years. Finally, the cascade of images ceased. There followed a brief pause while Gillian waited edgily. Then the beige box commented. "The event stream remains disjointed from previous ones. Occurrences do not'take place in causal-temporal order related to inertial movements of this vessel. Is this effect a result of the aforementioned battle damage?" Gillian had heard the same complaint-the very same words, in fact-ever since she began this ruse, shortly after Tom brought the'captured prize aboard Streaker . . . only days before he flew away to vanish from her life. In response, she gave the same bluff as always. "That is correct. Until repairs are completed, penalties for any discrepancies may be assessed to the Krondor's Fire mission account. Now please prepare for consultation." This time there was no delay. "Proceed with your request," Using a transmitter in her left hand, Gillian signaled to the Niss Machine, waiting in another room. The Tymbrimi spy entity at once began sending data requisitions, a rush of flickering light that no organic being could hope to follow. Soon the info flow went bidirectional-a torrential response that forced Gillian to avert her eyes. Perhaps, amid that flood, there might be some data helpful to Streaker's crew, increasing their chances of survival. Gillian's heart beat faster. This moment had its own dangers. If a starship happened to be scanning nearby-perhaps one of Streaker's pursuers-onboard cognizance detectors might pick up a high level of digital activity in this area. But Jijo's ocean provided a lot of cover, as did the surrounding mountain of discarded starships. Anyway, the risk seemed worthwhile. If only so much of the information offered by the cube weren't confusing! A lot of it was clearly meant for starfarers with far more experience and sophistication than the Streaker crew. Worse, we're running out of interesting things to show the Library. Without fresh input, it might withdraw. Refuse to cooperate at all. That was one reason she decided yesterday to let the four native kids come into this misty chamber and visit the archive. Since Alvin and his friends didn't yet know they were aboard an Earthling vessel, there wasn't much they could give away, and the effect on the Library unit might prove worthwhile. Sure enough, the cube seemed bemused by the unique sight of an urs and hoon, standing amicably together. And the existence of a living g'Kek was enough, all by itself, to satisfy the archive's passive curiosity. Soon afterward, it willingly unleashed a flood of requested information about the varied types of discarded spaceships surrounding Streaker in this underwater trash heap, including parameters used by ancient Buyur control panels. That was helpful. But we need more. A lot more. I guess it won't be long until I'm forced to pay with real secrets, Gillian had some good ones she could use ... if she dared. In her office, just a few doors down, lay a mummified cadaver well over a billion years old. Herbie. To get hold of that relic-and the coordinates where it came from-most of the fanatic, pseudo-religious alliances in the Five Galaxies had been hunting Streaker since before Kithrup. Pondering the chill beige cube, she thought- I'll bet if I showed you one glimpse of of' Herb, you 'd have a seizure and spill every datum you've got stored inside. Funny thing is . . . nothing would make me happier in all the universe than if we'd never seen the damned thing. As a girl, Gillian had dreamed of star travel, and someday doing bold, memorable things. Together, she and Tom had planned their careers-and marriage-with a single goal in mind. To put themselves at the very edge, standing between Earth and the enigmas of a dangerous cosmos. Recalling that naive ambition, and how extravagantly it was fulfilled, Gillian very nearly laughed aloud. But with pressed lips she managed to keep the bitter, poignant irony bottled inside, without uttering a sound. For the time being, she must maintain the dignified presence of a Thennanin admiral. Thennanin did not appreciate irony. And they never Sooners ASX YOU MIGHT AS WELL GET USED TO IT, MY RINGS. The piercing sensations you feel are My fibrils of control, creeping down our shared inner core, bypassing the slow, old-fashioned, waxy trails, attaching and penetrating your many toroid bodies, bringing them into new order. Now begins the lesson, when I teach you to be docile servants of something greater than yourselves. No longer a stack of ill-wed components, always quarreling, paralyzed with indecision. No more endless voting over what beliefs shall be held by a fragile, tentative ('. That was the way of our crude ancestor stacks, meditating loose, confederated thoughts in the odor-rich marshes of Jophekka World. Overlooked by other star clans, we seemed unpromising material for uplift. But the great, sluglike Poa saw potential in our pensive precursors, and began upraising those unlikely mounds. Alas, after a million years, the Poa grew frustrated with our languid traeki natures. "Design new rings for our clients," they beseeched the clever Oailie, "to boost, guide, and drive them onward." The Oailie did not fail, so great was their mastery of genetic arts. WHAT WAS THEIR TRANSFORMING GIFT? New, ambitious rings. Master rings. LIKE ME. Will they break their promise, once we've shared all we know? Maybe they'll fake the answers. (How could we tell?) Or perhaps they'll let us talk to the cube all we want, because they figure the knowledge won't do us any good, since we're never going home again. On the other hand, let's say it's all open and sincere. Say we do get a chance to pose questions to the Library unit, that storehouse of wisdom collected by a billion-year-old civilization. What on Jijo could we possibly have to say? Alvin THIS IS A TEST. I'M TRYING OUT A BURNISH-NEW WAY of writing. If you call this "writing"-where I talk out loud and watch sentences appear in midair above a little box I've been given. Oh, it's uttergloss all right. Last night, Huck used her new autoscribe to fill a room with words and glyphs in GalThree, GalEight, and every obscure dialect she knew, ordering translations back and forth until it seemed she was crowded on all sides by glowing symbols. Our hosts gave us the machines to help tell our life stories, especially how the Six Races live together on the Slope. In return, the spinning voice promised a reward. Later, we'll get to ask questions of the big chilly box. Huck went delirious over the offer. Free access to a memory unit of the Great Library of the Five Galaxies! Why, it's like telling Cortes he could have a map to the Lost Cities of Gold, or when the legendary hoonish hero Yuqwourphmin found a password to control the robot factories of Kurturn. My own nicknamesake couldn't have felt more awe, not even when the secrets of Vanamonde and the Mad Mind were revealed in all their fearsome glory. Unlike Huck, 'though, I view the prospect with dark worry. Like a detective in some old-time Earth storybook, I gotta ask-where's the catch? I've just spent a midura experimenting. Dictating text. Backing up and rewriting. The autoscribe sure is a lot more flexible than scratching away with a pencil and a ball of guarru gum for an eraser! Hand motions move chunks of text like solid objects. I don't even have to speak aloud, but simply will the words, like that little tickle when you mutter under your breath so's no one else can hear. I know it's not true mind reading-the machine must be sensing muscle changes in my throat or something. I read about such things in The Black Jack Era and Luna City Hobo. But it's unnerving anyway. Like when I asked to see the little machine's dictionary of Anglic synonyms! I always figured I had a good vocabulary, from memorizing the town's copy of Roget's Thesaurus'. But it turns out that volume left out most of the Hindi and Arabic cognate grafts onto the English-Eurasian rootstock. This tiny box holds enough words to keep Huck and me humble ... or me, at least. My pals are in nearby rooms, reciting their own memoirs. I expect Huck will rattle off something fast-paced, lurid, and carelessly brilliant to satisfy our hosts. Ur-ronn will be meticulous and dry, while Pincer will get distracted telling breathless stories about sea monsters. I have a head start because my journal already holds the greater part of our personal story-how we four adventurers got to this place of weirdly curved corridors, far beneath the waves. So I have time to worry about why the phuvnthus want to know about us. It could just be curiosity. On the other hand, what if something we say here eventually winds up hurting our kinfolk, back on the Slope? I can hardly picture how. I mean, it's not like we know any military secrets-except about the urrish cache that Uriel the Smith sent us underwater to retrieve. But the spinning voice already knows about that. In my cheerier moments I envision the phuvnthus letting us take the treasure back, taking us home to Wuphon in their metal whale, so we seem to rise from the dead like the fabled crew of the Hukuph-tau . . . much to the surprise of Uriel, Urdonnol, and our parents, who must have given us up for lost. Optimistic fantasies alternate with other scenes I can't get out of my head, like something that happened right after the whale sub snatched Wuphon's Dream out of its death plunge. I have this hazy picture of bug-eyed spiderthings stomping through the wreckage of our handmade vessel, jabbering weird ratchety speech, then jumping back in mortal terror at the sight of Ziz, the harmless little traeki five-stack given us by Tyug the Alchemist. Streams of fire blasted poor Ziz to bits. You got to wonder what anyone would go and do a mean thing like that for. effortless and easily corrected. It encourages running off at the mouth, when good old pencil and paper meant you had to actually think in advance what you were going to sa- Wait a minute. What was that? There it goes again. A faint booming sound . . . only louder this time. Closer. I don't think I like it. Not at all. Ifni! This time it set the floor quivering. The rumble reminds me of Guenn Volcano back home, belchin' and groanin', making everybody in Wuphon wonder if it's the long-awaited Big 0-Jeekee sac-rot! No fooling this time. Those are explosions, getting close fast! Now comes another noise, like a zookir screeching its head off 'cause it sat on a quill lizard. Is that the sound a siren makes? I always wondered- Gishtuphwayo! Now the lights go dim. The floor jitters- What is Ifni-slucking going on! Dwer I might as well get to work. How to begin my story? Call me Alvin. ... No. Too hackneyed. How about this opening? Alvin Hph-wayuo woke up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant . . . Uh-uh. That's hitting too close to home. Maybe I should model my tale after 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Here we are, castaways being held as cordial prisoners in an underwater world. Despite being female, Huck would insist she's the heroic Ned Land character. Ur-ronn would be Professor Aronnax, of course, which leaves either Pincer OR me to be the comic fall guy, Conseil. So when are we going to .finally meet Afewo? Hmm. That's a disadvantage of this kind of writing, so THE VIEW FROM THE HIGHEST DUNE WASN'T Promising The Danik scout craft was at least five or six leagues out to sea, a tiny dot, barely visible beyond a distinct line where the water's hue changed from pale bluish green to almost black. The flying machine cruised back and forth, as if searching for something it had misplaced. Only rarely, when the wind shifted, did they catch the faint rumble of its engines, but every forty or so duras Dwer glimpsed something specklike tumble from the belly of the sleek boat, glinting in the morning sun before it struck the sea. Ten more duras would pass after the object sank- then the ocean's surface bulged with a hummock of roiling foam, as if an immense monster suffered dying spasms far below. "What's Kunn doing?" Dwer asked. He turned to Rety, who shaded her eyes to watch the distant flier. "Do you have any idea?" The girl started to shrug her shoulders, but yee, the little urrish male, sprawled there, snaking his slender neck to aim all three eyes toward the south. The robot rocked impatiently, bobbing up and down as if trying to signal the distant flier with its body. "I don't know, Dwer," Rety replied. "I reckon it has somethin' to do with the bird." "Bird," he repeated blankly. "You know. My metal bird. The one we saved from the mule spider." " That bird?" Dwer nodded. "You were going to show it to the sages. How did the aliens get their hands-" Rety cut in. "The Daniks wanted to know where it came from. So Kunn asked me to guide him here, to pick up Jass, since he was the one who saw where the bird came to shore. I never figured that'd mean leavin' me behind in the village. . . ." She bit her lip. "Jass must've led Kunn here. Kunn said somethin' about 'flushin' prey.' I guess he's tryin' to get more birds." "Or else whoever made your bird, and sent it ashore." "Or else that." She nodded, clearly uncomfortable. Dwer chose not to press for details about her deal with the star humans. As their journey south progressed, the number of marshy streams had multiplied, forcing Dwer to "carry" the robot several more times before he finally called a halt around dusk. There had been a brief confrontation when the combat machine tried intimidating him to continue. But its god weapons had been wrecked in the ambush at the sooner camp, and Dwer faced the robot's snapping claws without flinching, helped by a strange detachment, as if his mind had somehow grown while enduring the machine's throbbing fields. Hallucination or not, the feeling enabled him to call its bluff. , With grudging reluctance that seemed lifelike, the robot gave in. By a small fire, Dwer had shared with Rety the donkey jerky in his pouch. After a moment's hesitation, Rety brought out her own contribution, two small lozenges sealed in wrappers that felt slick to the touch. She showed Dwer how to unwrap his, and guffawed at the look on his face when intense, strange flavors burst in his mouth. He laughed, too, almost inhaling the Danik candy the wrong way. Its lavish sweetness won a place on his List of Things I'm Glad I Did Before Dying. Later, huddled with Rety on the banked coals, Dwer dreamed a succession of fantastic images far more potent than normal-perhaps an effect of "carrying" the robot, conducting its ground-hugging fields. Instead of crushing weight, he fantasized lightness, as if his body wafted, unencumbered. Incomprehensible panoramas flickered under closed eyelids . . . objects glimmering against dark backgrounds, or gassy shapes, glowing of their own accord. Once, a strange sense of recognition seized him, a timeless impression of loving familiarity. The Egg, his sleeping consciousness had mused. Only the sacred stone looked strange-not an outsized pebble squatting in a mountain cleft, but something like a huge, dark sun, whose blackness outshone the glitter of normal stars. Their journey resumed before dawn, and featured only two more water crossings before reaching the sea. There the robot picked them up and streaked eastward along the beach until it reached this field of dunes-a high point to scan the strange blue waters of the Rift. At least Dwer thought it was the Rift-a great cleft splitting the continent. I wish I still had my telescope, he thought. With it he might glean some idea what the pilot of the scout ship was trying to accomplish. Flushing out prey, Rety said. If that was Kunn's aim, the Danik star warrior could learn a thing or two about hunting technique. Dwer recalled one lesson old Fallon taught him years ago. No matter how potent your weapon, or whatever game you're after, it's never a good idea to be both beater and shooter. If there's just one of you, forget driving your quarry. The solitary hunter masters patience, and silently learns the ways of his prey. That approach had one drawback. It required empathy. And the better you learn to feel like your prey, the greater the chance you may someday stop calling it prey at all. "Well, we settled one thing," Rety commented, watching the robot semaphore its arms wildly at the highest point of the dune, like a small boy waving to parents who were too far away to hear. "You must've done a real job on its comm gear. Even the short range won't work, on line-o'-sight." Dwer was duly impressed. Rety had learned a lot during her stint as an adopted alien. "Do you think the pilot could spot us by eye, when he heads back toward the village to pick you up?" Dwer asked. "Maybe . . . supposin' he ever meant to do that. He may forget all about me when he finds what he wants, and just zip west to the Rothen station, to report." Dwer knew that Rety had already lost some favor with the sky humans. Her voice was bitter, for aboard that distant flying dot rode Jass, her tormentor while growing up in a savage tribe. She had arranged vengeance for the bully. But now Jass stood at the pilot's elbow, currying favor while Rety was stuck down here. Her worry was clear. What if her lifelong enemy won the reward she had struggled and connived for? Her ticket to the stars? "Hmm. Well, then we better make sure he doesn't miss us when he cruises by." Dwer wasn't personally anxious to meet the star pilot who had blasted the poor urrish sooners so unmercifully from above. He fostered no illusion of gentle treatment at Kunn's hands. But the scout boat offered life and hope for Rety. And perhaps by attracting the Danik's attention he could somehow prevent the man's quick return to the Gray Hills. Danel Ozawa had been killed in the brief fight with the robot, but Dwer might still buy time for Lena Strong and the urrish chief to work out an accord with Rety's old band . . . beating a stealthy retreat to some place where star gods would never find them. A delaying action could be Dwer's last worthwhile service. "Let's build a fire," the girl suggested, gesturing toward the beach, littered with driftwood from past storms. "I was just about to suggest that," Dwer replied. She chuckled. "Yeah, right! Sure you were." Sara AT FIRST THE ANCIENT TUNNEL SEEMED HORRID and gloomy. Sara kept imagining a dusty Buyur tube car coming to life, an angry phantom hurtling toward the little horse-drawn wagon, bent on punishing fools who disturbed its ghostly domain. Dread clung fast for a while, making each breath come short and sharp between rapid heartbeats. But fear has one great enemy, more powerful than confidence or courage. Tedium. Chafed from sitting on the bench for miduras, Sara eventually let go of the dismal oppression with a long sigh. She slipped off the wagon to trot alongside-at first only to stretch her legs, but then for longer periods, maintaining a steady jog. After a while, she even found it enjoyable. I guess I'm just adapting to the times. There may be no place for intellectuals in the world to come. Emerson joined her, grinning as he kept pace with longlegged strides. And soon the tunnel began to lose its power over some of the others, as well. The two wagon drivers from the cryptic Illias tribe-Kepha and Nuli-grew visibly less tense with each league they progressed toward home. But where was that?, Sara pictured a map of the Slope, drawing a wide arc roughly south from the Gentt. It offered no clue where a horse clan might stay hidden all this time. How about in some giant, empty magma chamber, beneath a volcano? What a lovely thought. Some magical sanctuary of hidden grassy fields, safe from the glowering sky. An underground world, like in a pre-contact adventure tale featuring vast ageless caverns, mystic light sources, and preposterous monsters. Of course no such place could form under natural laws. But might the Buyur-or some prior Jijo tenant-have used the same forces that carved 'this tunnel to create a secret hideaway? A place to preserve treasures while the surface world was scraped clean of sapient-made things? Sara chuckled at the thought. But she did not dismiss it. Sometime later, she confronted Kurt. "Well, I'm committed now. Tell me what's so urgent that Emerson and I had to follow you all this way." But the exploser only shook his head, refusing to speak in front of Dedinger. What's the heretic going to do? Sara thought. Break his bonds and run back to tell the world? The desert prophet's captivity appeared secure. And yet it was disconcerting to see on Dedinger's face an expression of serene confidence, as if present circumstances only justified his cause. Times like these bring heretics swarming . . . like privacy wasps converging on a gossip. We shouldn 't be surprised to see fanatics thriving. The Sacred Scrolls prescribed two ways for Jijo's illegal colonists to ease their inherited burden of sin-by preserving the planet, and by following the Path of Redemption. Ever since the days of Drake and Ur-Chown, the sages had taught that both goals were compatible with commerce and the comforts of daily life. But some purists disagreed, insisting that the Six Races must choose. We should not be here, proclaimed Lark's faction. We sooners should use birth control to obey Galactic law, leaving this fallow world in peace. Only then will our sin be healed. Others thought redemption should take higher priority. Each clan should follow the example of glavers, preached Dedinger's cult, and the Urunthai. Salvation and renewal come to those who remove mental impediments and rediscover their deep natures. The first obstacle to eliminate-the anchor weighing down our souls-is knowledge. Both groups called today's High Sages true heretics, pandering to the masses with their wishy-washy moderation. When dread starships came, fresh converts thronged to purer faiths, preaching simple messages and strong medicine for fearful times. Sara knew her own heresy would not attract disciples. It seemed ill matched to Jijo-a planet of felons destined for oblivion of one sort or another. And yet . . . Everything depends on your point of view. So taught a wise traeki sage. we/i/you are oft fooled by the obvious. BIN URRISH COURIER CAME RUSHING OUT OF THE forest of tall, swaying great boo. Could this be my answer already? Lark had dispatched a militiaman just a few miduraS ago, with a message to Lester Cambel in the secret refuge of the High Sages. But no. The rough-pelted runner had galloped up the long path from Festival Glade. In her rush, she would not even pause for Lark to tap the vein of a tethered simla, offering the parched urs a hospitable cup of steaming blood. Instead, the humans stared amazed as she plunged her fringed muzzle into a bucket of undiluted water, barely shuddering at the bitter taste. Between gasping swallows, she told dire news. As rumored, the second starship was titanic, squatting like a mountain, blocking the river so a swamp soon formed around the trapped Rothen cruiser, doubly imprisoning Ling's comrades. Surviving witnesses reported seeing familiar outlines framed by the battleship's brightly lit hatchway. Corrugated cones. Stacks of rings, luxuriously glistening. Only a few onlookers, steeped in ancient legends, knew this was not a good sign, and they had little time to spread a warning before torrid beams sliced through the night, mowing down everything within a dozen arrowflights. At dawn, brave observers peered from nearby peaks to see a swathe of shattered ground strewn with oily smudges and bloody debris. A defensive perimeter, stunned observers suggested, though such prudence seemed excessive for omnipotent star gods. "What casualties?" asked Jeni Shen, sergeant of Lark's militia contingent, a short, well-muscled woman and a friend of his brother, Dwer. They had all seen flickering lights in the distance, and heard sounds like thunder, but imagined nothing as horrible as the messenger related. The urs told of hundreds dead . . . and that a High Sage of the Commons was among those slaughtered. Asx had been standing near a group of curious spectators and confused alien lovers, waiting to parley with the visitors. After the dust and flames settled, the traeki was nowhere to be seen. The g'Kek doctor tending Uthen expressed the grief they all felt, rolling all four tentacle-like eyes and flailing the ground with his pusher leg. This personified the horror. Asx had been a popular sage, ready to mull over problems posed by any of the Six Races, from marriage counseling to dividing the assets of a bisected qheuen hive. Asx might "mull" for days, weeks, or a year before giving an answer-or several answers, laying out a range of options. Before the courier departed, Lark's status as a junior sage won him a brief look at the drawings in her dispatch pouch. He showed Ling a sketch of a massive oval ship of space, dwarfing the one that brought her to this world. Her face clouded. The mighty shape was unfamiliar and frightening. Lark's own messenger-a two-legged human-had plunged into the ranks of towering boo at daybreak, carrying a plea for Lester Cambel to send up Ling's personal Library unit, so she might read the memory bars he and Uthen had found in the wrecked station. Her offer, made the evening before, was limited to seeking data about plagues, especially the one now sweeping the qheuen community. "If Ro-kenn truly was preparing genocide agents, he is a criminal by our own law." "Even a Rothen master?" Lark had asked skeptically. "Even so. It is not disloyal for me to find out, or else prove it was not so. "However," she had added, "don't expect me to help you make war against my crew mates or my patrons. Not that you could do much, now that their guard is raised. You surprised us once with tunnels and gunpowder, destroying a little research base. But you'll find that harming a starship is beyond even your best-equipped zealots." That exchange took place before they learned about the second vessel. Before word came that the mighty Rothen cruiser was reduced to a captive toy next to a true colossus from space. While they awaited Cambel's answer, Lark sent his troopers sifting through the burned lakeshore thicket, gathering golden preservation beads. Galactic technology had been standardized for millions of years. So there just might be a workable reading unit amid all the pretty junk the magpie spider had collected. Anyway, it seemed worth a try. While sorting through a pile of amber cocoons, he and Ling resumed their game of cautious question-and-evasion. Circumstances had changed-Lark no longer felt as stupid in her presence-still, it was the same old dance. Starting off, Ling quizzed him about the Great Printing, the event that transformed Jijo's squabbling coalition of sooner races, even more than the arrival of the Holy Egg. Lark answered truthfully without once mentioning the Biblos Archive. Instead he described the guilds of printing, photocopying, and especially papermaking, with its pounding pulp hammers and pungent drying screens, turning out fine pages under the sharp gaze of his father, the famed Nelo. "A nonvolatile, randomly accessed, analog memory store that is completely invisible from space. No electricity or digital cognizance to detect from orbit." She marveled. "Even when we saw books, we assumed they were handcopied-hardly a culture-augmenting process. Imagine, a wolfling technology proved so effective . . . under special circumstances." Despite that admission, Lark wondered about the Danik attitude, which seemed all too ready to dismiss the accomplishments of their own human ancestors-except when an achievement could be attributed to Rothen intervention. It was Lark's turn to ask a question, and he chose to veer onto another track. "You seemed as surprised as anybody, when the disguise creature crawled off of Ro-pol's face." He referred to events just before the Battle of the Glade, when a dead Rothen was seen stripped of its charismatic, symbiotic mask. Ro-pol's eyes, once warm and expressive, had bulged lifeless from a revealed visage that was sharply slanted, almost predatory, and distinctly less humanoid. Ling had never seen a master so exposed. She reacted to Lark's question cautiously. "I am not of the Inner Circle." "What's that?" Ling inhaled deeply. "Rann and Kunn are privy to knowledge about the Rothen that most Daniks never learn. Rann has even been to one of the secret Rothen home sites. Most of us are never so blessed. When not on missions, we dwell with our families in the covered canyons of Poria Outpost, with just a hundred or so of our patrons, Even on Poria, the two races don't mix daily." "Still, not to know something so basic about those who claim to be-" "Oh, one hears rumors. Sometimes you see a Rothen whose face seems odd ... as if part of it was, well, put on wrong. Maybe we cooperate with the deception by choosing at some level not to notice. Anyway, that's not the real issue, is it?" "What is the real issue?" "You imply I should be horrified to learn they wear symbionts to look more humanoid. To appear more beautiful in our eyes. But why shouldn't the Rothen use artificial aids, if it helps them serve as better guides, shepherding our race toward excellence?" Lark muttered, "How about a little thing called honesty?" "Do you tell your pet chimp or zookir everything? Don't parents sometimes lie to children for their own good? What about lovers who strive to look nice for each other? Are they dishonest? "Think, Lark. What are the odds against another race seeming as gloriously beautiful to human eyes as our patrons appear? Oh, part of their attraction surely dates back to early stages of uplift, on Old Earth, when they raised our apelike ancestors almost to full sapiency, before the Great Test began. It may be ingrained at a genetic level . . . the way dogs were culled in favor of craving the touch of man. "Yet, we are still unfinished creatures. Still crudely emotional. Let me ask you. Lark. If your job were to uplift flighty, cantankerous beings, and you found that wearing a cosmetic symbiont would make your role as teacher easier, wouldn't you do it?" Before Lark could answer an emphatic no, she rushed ahead. "Do not some members of your Six use rewq animals for similar ends? Those symbionts that lay their filmy bodies over your eyes, sucking a little blood in exchange for help translating emotions? Aren't rewq a vital part of the complex interplay that is your Commons?" "Hr-rm." Lark throat-umbled like a doubtful hoon. "Rewq don't help us lie. They are not themselves lies." Ling nodded. "Still, you never faced a task as hard as the Rothens'-to raise up creatures as brilliant, and disagreeable, as human beings. A race whose capability for future majesty also makes us capricious and dangerous, prone to false turns and deadly errors." Lark quashed an impulse to argue. She might only dig in, rationalizing herself into a corner and refusing to come out. At least now she admitted that one Rothen might do evil deeds-that Ro-kenn's personal actions might be criminal. And who knows? That may be all there is to it. The scheming of a rogue individual. Perhaps the race is just as wonderful as she says. Wouldn 't it be nice if humanity really had such patrons, and a manifest greatness waiting, beyond the next millennium? Ling had seemed sincere when she claimed the Rothen ship commander would get to the bottom of things. "It's imperative to convince your sages they must release the hostages and Ro-pol's body, along with those 'photograms' your portraitist took. Blackmail won't work against the Rothen-you must understand this. It's not in their character to respond to threats. Yet the 'evidence' you've gathered could do harm in the long run." That was before the stunning news-that the Rothen ship was itself captured, encased in a prison of light. Lark mused over one of the mule spider's golden eggs while Ling spoke for a while about the difficult but glorious destiny her masters planned for impulsive, brilliant humanity. "You know," he commented. "There's something screwy about the logic of this whole situation." "What do you mean?" Lark chewed his lip, like an urs wrestling with uncertainty. Then he decided-it was time to bring it all in the open. "I mean, let's put aside for now the added element of the new starship. The Rothen may have feuds you know nothing about. Or it may be a different gang of gene raiders, come to rob Jijo's biosphere. For all we know, magistrates from the Galactic Migration Institute have brought Judgment Day as foretold in the Scrolls. "For now, though, let's review what led to the Battle of the Glade-the fight that made you my prisoner. It began when Bloor photo'd the dead Ro-pol without her mask. Ro-kenn went livid, ordering his robots to kill everyone who had seen. "But didn't you once assure me there was no need to delete local witnesses to your team's visit? That your masters could handle it, even if oral and written legacies survive hundreds or thousands of years, describing a visit by human and Rothen gene raiders?" "I did." "But you admit gene raiding is against Galactic law! I know you feel the Rothen are above such things. Still, they don't want to be caught in the act. "Let's assume credible testimony, maybe even photos, finally reach Migration Institute inspectors next time they visit Jijo. Testimony about you and Rann and Kunn. Human gene raiders. Even I know the rule-'police your own kind'-prevails in the Five Galaxies. Did Ro-kenn explain how the Rothen would prevent sanctions coming down on Earth?" Ling wore a grim expression. "You're saying he played us for fools. That he let me spread false assurances among the natives, while planning all along to strew germs and wipe out every witness." Obviously it was bitter for her to say it. Ling seemed surprised when Lark shook his head. "That's what I thought at first, when qheuens fell sick. But what I now imagine is worse yet." That got her attention. "What could be worse than mass murder? If the charge is proved, Ro-kenn will be hauled off to the home sites in dolor chains'. He'll be punished as no Rothen has been in ages." Lark shrugged. "Perhaps. But stop and think a bit. "First, Ro-kenn wasn't relying on disease alone to do the job. "Oh, he probably had a whole library of bugs-infectious agents used in past wars in the Five Galaxies. No doubt starfaring qheuens long ago developed countermeasures against the germ raging through Uthen's lymph pipes right now. I'm sure Ro-kenn's concoctions will kill a lot more of us." Ling started to protest, but Lark forged ahead. "Nevertheless, I know a thing or two about how pestilence works in natural ecosystems. It would be a complete fluke for even a string of diseases to wipe out every member of the Six. Random immunities would stymie the best-designed bugs. Furthermore, the sparser the population got, the harder it would be to reach and infect dispersed survivors. "No, Ro-kenn needed something more. A breakdown of the Commons into total war! A war that could be exploited, pushed to the limits. A stmggle so bitter that each race would pursue its victims to the farthest corners of Jijo, willingly helping to spread new parasites in order to slay their foes." He saw Ling struggle to find a way around his logic. But she had been present when Ro-kenn's psi-recordings were played-sick dream images, meant to incite fatal grudges among the Six. Those present weren't fooled because they were forewarned, but what if the messages had been broadcast as planned . . . amplified through the compelling wave forms of the Holy Egg? "I will tell of this, back home," she vowed in a low, faint voice. "He will be punished." "That's gratifying," Lark went on. "But I'm not finished. You see, even by combining plagues with war, Ro-kenn could never guarantee annihilation of all six races, or eliminate the off chance that credible testimony might be passed down the generations-perhaps stored in some cave-to finally reach Institute prosecutors. On the other hand, he could influence which race or sept would be left standing at the end, and which would perish first. There is one, in particular, whose fate he knows well how to manipulate. That one is Homo sapiens. "The way I see it, Ro-kenn's plan had several parts. First, he had to make sure Earthlings were hated. Second, he must weaken the other five races by releasing diseases that could then be blamed on humans. But the ultimate goal was to make sure humans went extinct on Jijo. He didn't give a damn if others left a few survivors to tell the tale." Ling stared. "What good would that do? You said testimony might be passed down-" "Yes, but with Earthlings on Jijo only a hated memory, all history will tell is that once upon a time a ship full of humans came down, stole genes, and tried to kill everybody. No one will bother emphasizing which humans did these things. "In the future-perhaps only a few centuries, if someone plants an anonymous tip-Galactic judges would arrive and hear that people from Earth did these dreadful things. Earth will bear the full brunt of any sanctions, while the Rothen get off scot-free." Ling was silent for a long moment, working her way through his logic. Finally, she looked up with a broad grin. "You had me worried a minute, but I found the defect in your reasoning!" Lark tilted his head. "Do tell." "Your diabolical scenario just might make sense, but for two flaws- "First-the Rothen are patrons of all humanity. Earth and her colonies, while presently governed by Darwinist fools on the Terragens Council, still represent the vast majority of our gene pool. The Rothen would never let harm come to our homeworld. Even in the current galactic crisis, they are acting behind the scenes to ensure Earth's safety from the enemies besetting her." There it was again ... a reference to dire events happening megaparsecs away. Lark yearned to follow that thread, but Ling continued with her argument. "Second-let's say Ro-kenn wanted all blame shifted to humans. Then why did he and Ro-pol emerge from the station and show themselves? By walking around, letting artists sketch them and scribes take down their words, weren't they jeopardizing the Rothen to the same eyewitness accounts you say could damage Earth?" Ling seemed ready to accept that her immediate boss might be criminal or insane, but with bulwarks of logic she defended her patron race. Lark had mixed feelings about demolishing such faith. He, too, had his heresies. "I'm sorry, Ling, but my scenario still stands. "Your first point only has validity if it is true that the Rothen are our patrons. I know that's the central premise around which you were raised, but believing does not make it so. You admit your people, the Daniks, are small in number, live on an isolated outpost, and see just a few. Rothen. Putting aside mythic fables about ancient visitors and Egyptian pyramids, all you really have is their word regarding a supposed relationship with our race. One that may simply be a hoax. "As for your second point, just look back at the way events unfolded. Ro-kenn surely knew he was being sketched when he emerged that evening, using his charisma on the crowd and planting seeds of dissension. After living so long together, all six races are affected by each other's standards of beauty, and the Rothen were indeed beautiful! "Ro-kenn may even have known we had the ability to etch our drawings onto durable plates. Later, when he saw Bloor's first set of photographic images, he hardly batted an eye. Oh, he pretended to dicker with the sages, but you and I could both tell he was unafraid of the 'proof being used to blackmail him. He was only buying time till the ship returned. And it might have worked-if Bloor hadn't uncovered and recorded Ro-pol's corpse, bare and unmasked. That's when Ro-kenn went hysterically murderous, ordering a massacre!" "I know." Ling shook her head. "It was madness. But you must understand. Disturbing the dead is very serious. It must have pushed him over the edge-" "Over the edge, my left hind hoof! He knew exactly what he was doing. Think, Ling. Suppose someday Institute observers see photos showing humans, and a hunch of very humanlike beings nobody ever heard of, committing crimes on Jijo. Could such crude pictures ever really implicate the Rothen? "Perhaps they might, If that's what Rothen looked like. But till Bloor shot Ro-pol's naked face, our crude images posed no threat to Rothen security. Because in a century or two those facial disguise symbionts won't exist anymore, and no one alive will know that Rothen ever looked like that." "What are you talking about? Every Danik grows up seeing Rothen as they appear with symbionts on. Obviously there will be people around who know . . ." Her voice faded. She stared at Lark, unblinking. "You can't mean-" "Why not? After long association with your people, I'm sure they've acquired the necessary means. Orsce humans are of no further use as front men for their schemes, your 'patrons' will simply use a wide spectrum of tailored viruses to wipe out every Danik, just as they planned to eliminate humans on Jijo. "For that matter, once they've tested it on both our peoples, they'll be in a good position to sell such a weapon to Earth's enemies. After all, once our race goes extinct, who will protest our innocence? Who will bother to look for other suspects in a series of petty felonies that were committed, all over the Five Galaxies, by groups of bipeds looking a lot like-" "Enough!" Ling shouted, standing suddenly, spilling gold cocoons from her lap. She backed away, hyperventilating. Unrelenting, he stood and followed. "I've thought about little else since we left the Glade. And it all makes sense. Even down to the way the Rothen won't let your kind use neural taps." "I told you before. It's forbidden because the taps might drive us mad!" "Really? Why do the Rothen themselves have them? Because they're more highly evolved?" Lark snorted. "Anyway, I hear that nowadays humans elsewhere use them effectively." "How do you know what humans elsewhere-" Lark hurriedly cut her off. "The truth is, the Rothen can't risk letting their pet humans make direct mind-computer links, because someday one of you Daniks might bypass sanitized consoles, draw on the Great Library directly, and figure out how you've been pawns-" Ling backed away another pace. "Please, Lark ... I don't want to do this anymore." He felt an impulse to stop, to take pity. But he quashed it. This had to come out, all of it. "I must admit it's quite a scam, using humans as front men for gene theft and other crimes. Even two centuries ago, when the Tabernacle departed, our race had a vile reputation as one of the lowest-ranking citizen tribes in the Five Galaxies. So-called wolflings, with no ancient clan to stand up for us. If anybody gets caught, we'll make perfect patsies. The Rothen scheme is clever. The real question is, why would any humans let themselves be used that way? "History may hold the answer, Ling. According to our texts, humans suffered from a major inferiority complex at the time of contact, when our primitive canoe-spacecraft stumbled onto a towering civilization of star gods. Your ancestors and mine chose different ways of dealing with the complex, each of them grasping at straws, seeking any excuse for hope. "The Tabernacle colonists dreamed of escaping to some place out of sight of bureaucrats and mighty Galactic clans-a place to breed freely and fulfill the old romance of colonizing a frontier. In contrast, your Danik forebears rushed to embrace a tall tale they were told by a band of smooth talkers. A flattering fable that indulged their wounded pride, promising a grand destiny for certain chosen humans and their descendants , . . providing they did exactly as they were told. Even if it meant raising their children to be shills and sneak thieves in service to a pack of galactic gangsters." Tremors rocked Ling as she held up one hand, palm out, at the end of a rigid arm, as if trying physically to stave off any more words. "I asked . . . you to stop," she repeated, and seemed to have trouble breathing. Pain melted her face. Now Lark did shut up. He had gone too far, even in the name of truth. Raggedly, trying to maintain some remnant of her dignity, Ling swiveled and strode off to the acrid lake that lay below a boulder field of tumbled Buyur ruins. Does anybody like having their treasured worldview torn away? Lark mused, watching Ling hurl stones into the caustic pond. Most of us would reject all the proof in the cosmos before considering that our own beliefs might be wrong. But the scientist in her won't let her dismiss evidence so easily. She has to face facts, like them or not. The habit of truth is bard to learn, and a mixed blessing. It leaves no refuge when a new truth comes along that hurts. Lark knew his feelings were hardly a testament to clarity. Anger roiled, mixed with shame that he could not hold on to the purity of his own convictions. There was childish satisfaction from upsetting Ling's former smug superiority . . . and chagrin at finding such a motive smoldering inside. Lark enjoyed being right, though it might be better, this time, if he turned out to be wrong. Just when I had her respecting me as an equal, and maybe starting to like me, that's when I have to go stomping through her life, smashing idols she was raised to worship, showing off the bloodstained hands of her gods. You may win an argument, boy. You may even convince her. But could anyone fully forgive you for doing something like that? He shook his head over how much he might have just thrown away, all for the torrid pleasure of harsh honesty. Wasx DO NOT BE AFRAID, MY LESSER PARTS. The sensations you feel may seem like coercive pain, but they convey a kind of love that will grow dear to you, with time. I am part of you now, one with you. I will never do anything to cause us harm, so long as this alliance serves a function. Go ahead, stroke the wax if you wish, for the old ways of memory still have lesser uses (so long as they serve My purpose). Play over recent images so we may recall together events leading to our new union. Re-create the scene perceived by Asx, staring up in awe, watching the great Jophur warship, Polkjhy, swoop from the sky, taking the pirates captive, then landing in this tortured valley. Poor, loosely joined, scatterbrained Asx-did you,we not stare in tremulous fear? Yes, I can stroke another driving motivation. One that kept you admirably unified, despite swirling dread. It was a cloying sense of duty. Duty to the not-self community of half beings you call the Commons. As Asx, your stack planned to speak for the Commons. Asx expected to face star-traveling humans, along with creatures known as "Rothen." But then Jophur forms were seen through our ship ports! After some hesitation, did you not turn at last and try to flee? How slow this stack was before the change! When knives of fire lanced forth from this mighty vessel, how did you react to the maelstrom of destruction? To hot ravening beams that tore through wood, stone, and flesh, but always spared this pile of aged rings? Had you then possessed the bright new running legs we now wear, you might have thrown yourselves into that roaring calamity. But Asx was slow, too slow even to shelter nearby comrades with its traeki bulk. All died, except this stack. ARE YOU NOT PROUD? The next ray from the ship seized this multistriped cone, lifting it into the night air, sweeping the fatty rings toward doors that gaped to receive them. Oh, how well Asx spoke then, despite the confusion! With surprising coherence for a stack without a master, tapping waxy streaks of eloquence, Asx pleaded, cajoled, and reasoned with the enigmatic creatures who peered from behind glaring lights. Finally, these beings glided forward. The starship's hold filled with Asx's ventings of horrified dread. How unified you were, My rings! The testimony of the wax is clear. At that moment, you were one as never before. United in shared dismay to see those cousin toroids your ancestors sought to escape, many cycles ago. We Jophur, the mighty and fulfilled. Dwer THE ROBOT PROVED USEFUL AT HEAPING DRIFTwood onto the seaside shoulder of a high dune overlooking the Rift. Without rest or pause, it dumped a load then scurried for more, in whatever direction Rety indicated with an outstretched arm. The Danik machine seemed willing to obey once more-so long as her orders aimed toward a reunion with Kunn. Such single-minded devotion to its master reminded Dwer of Earth stories about dogs-tales his mother read aloud when he was small. It struck him odd that the Taber- nacle colonists brought horses, donkeys, and chimps, but no canines. Lark or Sara might know why. That was Dwer's habitual thought, encountering something he didn't understand. Only now it brought a pang, knowing he might never see his brother and sister again. Maybe Kunn won't kill me outright. He might bring me borne in chains, instead, before the Rothens wipe out the Six Races to cover their tracks. That was the terrible fate the High Sages foresaw for Jijo's fallen settlers, and Dwer figured they ought to know. He recalled Lena Strong musing about what means the aliens might use to perform their genocide. With gruesome relish, Lena kept topping herself during the long hike east from the Rimmer Range. Would the criminal star gods wash the Slope with fire, scouring it from the glaciers to the sea? Would they melt the ice caps and bring an end by drowning? Her morbid speculations were like a fifth companion as Dwer guided two husky women and a lesser sage past a thousand leagues of poison grass all the way to the Gray Hills, in a forlorn bid to safeguard a fragment of human civilization on Jijo. Dwer had last glimpsed Jenin, Lena, and Danel during the brief fight near the huts of Rety's home clan. This same robot cut poor Danel down with lethal rays, instants before its own weapons pod was destroyed. Indeed, the battle drone was no dog to be tamed or befriended. Nor would it show gratitude for the times Dwer helped it cross rivers, anchoring its fields to ground through the conduit of his body. Mudfoot was hardly any better a comrade. The lithe noor beast swiftly grew bored with wood-gathering chores, and scampered off instead to explore the tide line, digging furiously where bubbles revealed a buried hive of sand clamettes. Dwer looked forward to roasting some . . . until he saw that Mudfoot was cracking and devouring every one, setting none aside for the humans. As useful as a noor, he thought, quashing stings of hunger as he hoisted another bundle of twisty driftwood slabs, digging his moccasins into the sandy slope. Dwer tried to remain optimistic. Maybe Kunn will feed me, before attaching the torture machines. yee stood proudly atop the growing woodpile. The diminutive urrish male called directions in a piping voice, as if mere humans could never manage a proper fire without urrish supervision. Rety's "husband" hissed disappointment over Dwer's poor contribution-as if being wounded, starved, and dragged across half of Jijo in a robot's claws did not excuse much. Dwer ignored yee's reprimand, dumping his load then stepping over to the dune's seaward verge, shading his eyes in search of Kunn's alien scoutship. He spied it far away, a silvery bead, cruising back and forth above the deep blue waters of the Rift. At intervals, something small and shiny would fall from the slender spacecraft. An explosive, Dwer supposed, for about twenty duras after each canister struck the water, the sea abruptly frothed white. Sometimes a sharp, almost musical tone reached shore. According to Rety, Kunn was trying to force something-or somebody-out of hiding. I hope you miss, Dwer thought . . . though the star pilot might be in a better mood toward prisoners if his hunt went well. "I wonder what Jass has been tellin' Kunn, all this time," Rety worried aloud, joining Dwer at the crest. "What if they become pals?" Dwer waited as the robot dropped another cargo of wood and went off for more. Then he replied. "Have you changed your mind? We could still try to escape. Take out the robot. Avoid Kunn. Go our own way." Rety smiled with surprising warmth, "Why, Dwer, is that a whatchamacallum? A proposal What'll we do? Make our own little sooner clan, here on the wind barrens? Y'know I already have one husban' and I need his p'rmission to add another." Actually, he had envisioned trying to make it back to the Gray Hills, where Lena and Jenin could surely use a hand. Or else, if that way seemed too hard and Rety rigidly opposed returning to the tribe she hated, they might strike out west and reach the Vale in a month or two, if the foraging was good along the way. Rety went on, with more edge in her voice. "B'sides, I still have my eye set on an apart'mint on Poria Outpost. Like the one Besh an' Ling showed me a picture of, with a bal-co-ny, an' a bed made o' cloud stuff. I figure it'll be just a bit more comfy than scratchin' out the rest of my days here with savages." Dwer shrugged. He hadn't expected her to agree. As a "savage," he had reasons of his own for going ahead with the bonfire to attract Kunn's attention. "Well, anyway, I don't suppose the bot would let its guard down a second time." "It was lucky to survive doin' it around you once." Dwer took a moment to realize she had just paid him a compliment. He cherished its uniqueness, knowing he might never hear another. The moment of unaccustomed warmth was broken when something massive abruptly streaked by, so fast that its air wake shoved both humans to the ground. Dwer's training as a tracker let him follow the blurry object . . . to the top of a nearby dune, which erupted in a gushing spray of sand. It was the robot, he realized, digging with furious speed. In a matter of heartbeats it made a hole that it then dived within, aiming its remaining sensor lens south and west. "Come on!" Dwer urged, grabbing his bow and quiver. Rety paused only to snatch up a wailing, hissing yee. Together they fled some distance downslope, where Dwer commenced digging with both hands. Long ago,. Fallen the Scout had taught him-If you don't know what's happening in a crisis, mimic a creature who does. If the robot felt a sudden need to hide, Dwer thought it wise to follow. "Ifni!" Rety muttered. "Now what in hell's he doin'?" She was still standing-staring across the Rift. Dwer yanked her into the hole beside him. Only when sand covered most of their bodies did he poke his head back out to look. The Danik pilot clearly felt something was wrong. The little craft hurtled toward shore, diving as it came. Seeking cover, Dwer thought. Maybe it can dig underground, like the robot. Dwer started turning, to spot whatever had Kunn in such a panic, but just then the boat abruptly veered, zigzagging frantically. From its tail bright fireballs arced, like sparks leaping off a burning log. They flared brightly and made the air waver in a peculiar way, blurring the escaping vessel's outlines. From behind Dwer, streaks of fierce light flashed overhead toward the fleeing boat. Most deflected through warped zones, veering off course, but one bypassed the glowing balls, striking target. At the last moment, Kunn flipped his nimble ship around and fired back at his assailants, launching a return volley just as the unerring missile closed in. Dwer shoved Rety's head down and closed his eyes. The detonations were less Jijo-shattering than he expected-a series of dull concussions, almost anticlimactic. Looking up with sand-covered faces, they witnessed both winner and loser in the brief battle of god chariots. Kunn's boat had crashed beyond the dune field, plowing into a marshy fen. Smoke boiled from its shattered rear. Circling above, the victor regarded its victim, glistening with a silvery tint that seemed less metallic than crystal. The newcomer was bigger and more powerful looking than the Danik scout. Kunn never stood a chance. Rety muttered, her voice barely audible. "She said there'd turn out to be someone stronger." Dwer shook his head. "Who?" "That smelly old urs! Leader o' those four-legged sooners, back in the village pen. Said the Rothen might be a-feared of somebody bigger. So she was right." "urs smelly?" yee objected, "you wife should talk?" Rety stroked the little male as yee stretched his neck, fluting a contented sigh. The fallen scout boat. rocke'd from a new explosion, this one brightly framing a rectangle in the ship's side. That section fell and two bipeds followed, leaping into the bog, chased by smoke that boiled from the interior. Staggering through murky water, the men leaned on each other to reach a weedy islet, where they fell, exhausted. The newcomer ship cruised a wary circle, losing altitude. As it turned, Dwer saw a stream of pale smoke pouring from a gash in its other side. A roughness to the engine sound grew steadily worse. Soon, the second cruiser settled down near the first. Well, it looks like Kunn got in a lick of his own. Dwer wondered-Now why should that make me feel glad? Alvin BONE-RATTLING CONCUSSIONS GREW MORE TERRIfying with each dura, hammering our undersea prison refuge, sometimes receding for a while, then returning with new force, making it hard for a poor hoon to stand properly on the shuddering floor. Crutches and a back brace didn't help, nor the little autoscribe, fogging the room with my own projected words. Stumbling through them, I sought some solid object to hold, while the scribe kept adding to the mob of words, recording my frantic curses in Anglic and GalSeven. When I found a wall stanchion, I grabbed for dear life. The clamor of reverberating explosions sounded like a giant, bearing down with massive footsteps, nearer . . . ever nearer. . . . Then, as I feared some popping seam would let in the dark, heavy waters of the Midden ... it abruptly stopped. Silence was almost as disorienting as the jeekee awful noise. My throat sac blatted uselessly while a hysterical Huphu clawed my shoulders, shredding scales into torglike ribbons. Fortunately, hoon don't have much talent for panic. Maybe our reactions are too slow, or else we lack imagination. As I was gathering my wits, the door hatch opened and one of the little amphibian types rushed in, squeaking a few rapid phrases in simplified GalTwo. A summons. The spinning voice wanted us for another powwow. "Perhaps we should share knowledge," it said when the four of us (plus Huphu) were assembled. Huck and Pincer-Tip, able to look all ways at once, shared meaningful glances with Ur-ronn and me. We were pretty rattled by the recent booming and shaking. Even growing up next to a volcano had never prepared us for that! The voice seemed to come from a space where abstract lines curled in tight patterns, but I knew that was an illusion. The shapes and sounds were projections, sent by some entity whose real body lay elsewhere, beyond the walls. I kept expecting Huphu to dash off and tear away a curtain, exposing a little man in an emerald carnival suit. Do they think we're rubes, to fall for such a trick? "Knowledge?" Huck sneered, drawing three eyes back like coiled snakes. "You want to share some knowledge? Then tell us what's going on! I thought this place was breaking up! Was it a quake? Are we being sucked into the Midden?" "I assure you, that is not happening," came the answer in smooth-toned GalSix. "The source of our mutual concern lies above, not below." "Explosions," Ur-ronn muttered, blowing through her snout fringe and stamping a hind hoof. "Those weren't quakes, but underwater detonations. Clean, sharp, and very close. I'd say soneone up there doesn't like you guys very much." Pincer hissed sharply and I stared at our urrish friend, but the spinning voice conceded. "That is an astute guess." I couldn't tell if it was impressed, or just sarcastic. "And since our local guild of explosers could hardly achieve such feats, this suggests you have other, powerful foes, far greater than we feevie Six." "Again, a reasonable surmise. Such a bright young lady." "Hr-rm," I added, in order not to be left out of the sardonic abuse. "We're taught that the simplest hypothesis should always be tried first. So let me guess-you're being hunted by the same folks who landed a while back in the Festival Glade. Those gene raiders Uriel got word about before we left. Is that it?" "A goodly conjecture, and possibly even true . . . though it could as easily be someone else." "Someone else? What're you say-ay-aying?" Pincer-Tip demanded, raising three legs and teetering dangerously on the remaining two. His chitin skin flared an anxious crimson shade. "That the eatees-tees-tees on the Glade might not be the only ones? That you've got whole passels of enemies?" Abstract patterns tightened to a tornado of meshing lines as silence reigned. Little Huphu, who had seemed fascinated by the voice from the very start, now dug her claws in my shoulder, transfixed by the tight spiral form. Huck demanded, in a hushed tone. "How many enemies have you guys got?" when the voice spoke again, all sardonic traces were gone. Its tone seemed deeply weary. "Ah, dear children. It seems that half of the known sidereal universe has spent years pursuing us." Pincer clattered his claws and Huck let out a low, mournful sigh. My own dismal contemplation-umble roused Huphu from her trancelike fixation on the whirling display, and she chittered nervously. Ur-ronn simply grunted, as if she had expected this, vindicating her native urrish cynicism. After all, when things seem unable to get any worse, isn't that when they nearly always do? Ifni has a fertile, if nasty imagination. The goddess of fate keeps shaving new faces on her infinite-sided dice. "Well, I guess this means-hrm-m-that we can toss out all those ideas about you phuvnthus being ancient Jijoans, or native creatures of the deep." "Or remnants of cast-off Buyur machines," Huck went on. "Or sea monsters." "Yeah," Pincer added, sounding disappointed. "Just another bunch of crazy Galactics-tic-tics." The swirling patterns seemed confused. "You would prefer sea monsters'"' "Forget it," Huck said. "You wouldn't understand." The patterns bent and swayed. "I am afraid you may be right about that. Your small band of comrades has us terribly perplexed. So much that a few of us posed a sly scenario-that you were planted in our midst to sow confusion." "How do you mean?" "Your values, beliefs, and evident mutual affection contribute to undermining assumptions we regarded as immutably anchored in the nature of reality. "Mind you, this confusion is not wholly unpleasant. As a thinking entity, one of my prime motives might be called a lust for surprise. And those I work with are hardly less bemused by the unforeseen marvel of your fellowship." "Glad you find us entertaining," Huck commented, as dryly sarcastic as the voice had been. "So you guys came here to hide, like our ancestors?" "There are parallels. But our plan was never to stay. Only to make repairs, gather stores, and wait in concealment for a favorable window at the nearest transfer point." "So Uriel and the sages may be wrong about the ship that came to the Glade? Being a gang of gene raiders-that could just be a cover story. Are you the real cause of our troubles?" "Trouble is synonymous with being a metabolizing entity. Or else why have you young adventurers sought it so avidly? "But your complaint has merit. We thought we had eluded all pursuit. The ship that landed in the mountains may be coincidental, or attracted by a confluence of unlucky factors. In any event, had we known of your existence, we would have sought shelter somewhere off-planet instead, perhaps in a dead city on one of your moons, though such places are less convenient for effecting repairs. " That part I had trouble believing. I'm just an ignorant savage, but from the classic scientific romances I grew up reading, I could picture working in some lunar ghost town like my nicknamesake, waking mighty engines that had slept for ages. What kind of starfaring beings would find darkness and salt water more "convenient" than clean vacuum? We lapsed into moody silence, unable to stay outraged at folks who accept responsibility so readily. Anyway, weren't they fellow refugees from Galactic persecution? Or from justice, came another, worried thought. "Can you tell us why everyone's so mad at you?" I asked. The spinning figure turned into a narrow, whirling funnel whose small end seemed diminished and very far away. "Like you, we delved and probed into unvisited places, imagining ourselves bold explorers. . . . ," the voice explained in tones of boundless sadness. "Until we bad the misfortune to find the very thing we sought. Unexpected wonders beyond our dreams. "Breaking no law, we planned only to share what we had found. But those pursuing us abandoned all pretense of legality. Like giants striving over possession of a gnat, they war lustily, battling each other for a chance to capture us! Alas, whoever wins our treasure will surely use it against multitudes." Again, we stared. Pincer unleashed awed whispers from all vents at once. "Tr-tr-treasure-ure-ure . . . ?" Huck wheeled close to the spinning pattern. "Can you prove what you just said?" "Not at this time. Not without putting your people in more danger than they already are." I recall wondering-what could be more dangerous than the genocide Uriel had spoken of, as one likely outcome of contact with gene raiders? "Nevertheless, "the voice continued, "it may prove possible to improve our level of mutual confidence. Or even help each other in significant ways." Sara SUPPOSE THE WORLD'S TWO MOST CAREFUL OBservers witnessed the same event. They would never agree precisely on what had happened. Nor could they go back and check. Events may be recorded, but the past can't be replayed. And the future is even more nebulous-a territory we make up stories about, mapping strategies that never go as planned. Sara's beloved equations, derived from pre-contact works of ancient Earth, depicted time as a dimension, akin to the several axes of space. Galactic experts ridiculed this notion, calling the relativistic models of Einstein and others "naive." Yet Sara knew the expressions contained truth. They had to. They were too beautiful not to be part of universal design. That contradiction drew her from mathematics to questions of language-how speech constrains the mind, so that some ideas come easily, while others can't even be expressed. Earthling tongues-Anglic, Rossic, and Nihanic-seemed especially prone to paradoxes, tautologies, and "proofs" that sound convincing but run counter to the real world. But chaos had also crept into the Galactic dialects used byJijo's other exile races, even before Terran settlers came. To some Biblos linguists, this was evidence of devolution, starfaring sophistication giving way to savagery, and eventually to proto-sapient grunts. But last year another explanation occurred to Sara, based on pre-contact information theory. An insight so intriguing that she left Biblos to work on it. Or was I just looking for an excuse to stay away? After Joshu died of the pox-and her mother of a stroke-research in an obscure field seemed the perfect refuge. Perched in a lonely tree house, with just Prity and her books for company, Sara thought herself sealed off from the world's intrusions. But the universe has a way of crashing through walls. Sara glanced at Emerson's glistening dark skin and robust smile, warmed by feelings of affection and accomplishment. Aside from his muteness, the starman scarcely resembled the shattered wreck she had found in the mule swamp near Dolo and nursed back from near death. Maybe I should quit my intellectual pretensions and stick with what I'm good at. If the Six Races fell to fighting among themselves, there would be more need of nurses than theoreticians. So her thoughts spun on, chaotically orbiting the thin glowing line down the center of the tunnel. A line that never altered as they trudged on. Its changelessness rebuked Sara for her private heresy, the strange, blasphemous belief that she held, perhaps alone among all Jijoans. The quaint notion of progress. Out of breath after another run, she climbed back aboard the wagon to find Prity chuffing nervously. Sara reached over to check the little chimp's wound, but Prity wriggled free, clambering atop the bench seat, hissing through bared teeth as she peered ahead. The drivers were in commotion, too. Kepha and Nuli inhaled with audible sighs. Sara took a deep breath and found her head awash with contrasts. The bucolic smell of meadows mixed with a sharp metallic tang . . . something utterly alien. She stood up with the backs of her knees braced against the seat. Was that a hint of light, where the center stripe met its vanishing point? Soon a pale glow was evident. Emerson nipped his rewq over his eyes, then off again. "Uncle, wake up!" Jomah shook Kurt's shoulder. "I think we're there!" But the glow remained vague for a long time. Dedinger muttered impatiently, and for once Sara agreed with him. Expectation of journey's end made the tunnel's remnant almost unendurable. The horses sped without urging, as Kepha and Nuli rummaged beneath their seats and began passing out dark glasses. Only Emerson was exempted, since his rewq made artificial protection unnecessary. Sara turned the urrishmade spectacles in her hand. I guess daylight will seem unbearably bright for a time, after we leave this hole. Still, any discomfort would be brief until their eyes readapted to the upper world. The precaution seemed excessive. At last we'll find out where the horse clan hid all these years. Eagerness blended with sadness, for no reality-not even some god wonder of the Galactics-could compare with the fanciful images found in pre-contact tales. A mystic portal to some parallel reality? A kingdom floating in the clouds? She sighed. It's probably just some out-of-the-way mountain valley where neighboring villagers are too inbred and ignorant to know the difference between a donkey and a horse. The ancient transitway began to rise. The stripe grew dim as illumination spread along the walls, like liquid trickling from some reservoir, far ahead. Soon the tunnel began taking on texture. Sara made out shapes. Jagged outlines. Blinking dismay, she realized they were plunging toward sets of triple jaws, like a giant urrish mouth lined with teeth big enough to spear the wagon whole! Sara took her cue from the Illias. Kepha and Nuli seemed unruffled by the serrated opening. Still, even when she saw the teeth were metal-corroded with flaking rust-Sara could hardly convince herself it was only a dead machine. A huge Buyur thing. She had never seen its like. Nearly all the great buildings and devices of the meticulous Buyur had been hauled to sea during their final years on Jijo, peeling whole cities and seeding mule spiders to eat what remained. So why didn't the deconstructors carry this thing away? Behind the massive jaws lay disks studded with shiny stones that Sara realized were diamonds as big as her head. The wagon track went from smooth to bumpy as Kepha maneuvered the team along a twisty trail through the great machine's gullet, zigzagging around the huge disks. At once Sara realized- This is a deconstructor! It must have been demolishing the tunnel when it broke down. I wonder why no one ever bothered to repair or haul it away. Then Sara saw the reason. Lava. Tongues and streamlets of congealed basalt protruded through a dozen cracks, where they hardened in place half a million years ago. It was caught by an eruption. Much later, teams of miners from some of the Six Races must have labored to clear a narrow path through the belly of the dead machine, chiseling out the last stretch separating the tunnel from the surface. Sara saw marks of crude pickaxes. And explosives must have been used, as well. That could explain the guild's knowledge of this place. Sara wanted to gauge Kurt's reaction, but just then the glare brightened as the team rounded a final sharp bend, climbing a steep ramp toward a maelstrom of light. Sara fumbled for her glasses as the world exploded with color. Swirling colors that stabbed. Colors that shrieked. Colors that sang with melodies so forceful that her ears throbbed. Colors that made her nose twitch and skin prickle with sensations just short of pain. A gasping moan lifted in unison from the passengers, as the wagon crested a short rise to reveal surroundings more foreign than the landscape of a dream. Even with the dark glasses in place, each peak and valley shimmered more pigments than Sara could name. In a daze, she sorted her impressions. To one side protruded the mammoth deconstructor, a snarl of slumped metal, drowned in ripples of frozen magma. Ripples that extended to the far horizon-layer after layer of radiant stone. At last she knew the answer to her question. Where on the Slope could a big secret remain hidden for a century or more? Even Dedinger, prophet of the sharp-sand desert, moaned aloud at how obvious it was. They were in the last place on Jijo anyone would go looking for people. The very center of the Spectral Flow. PART FOUR FROM THE NOTES OF GILLIAN BASKIN I WISH I COULD introduce myself to Alvin. I feel I already know the lad, from reading his Journal and eavesdropping on conversations among his mends. Their grasp of twenty-third-century Anglic idiom is so perfect, and their eager enthusiasm so dllierent from the hoons and urs I met before coming to Jijo, that half the time I almost forget I'm listening to aliens. that is, it I ignore the weird speech tones and inflecttons they take for granted. Then one of them comes up with a burst of eerily skewed logic that reminds me these arent just human kids alter all, dressed up in Halloween suits to look like a crab, a centaur, and a squid on a wheelchair. passing the time, they wondered vand I could not blame them,, whether they were prisoners or guests in this underwater refuge. Speculation led to a wide-ranging discussion, comparing various tamous captives of literature. Among their intriguing perceptions-Ur-ronn sees Richard II as the story of a legitimate business takeover, with Dolingbroke as the kings authentic apprentice. The red qheuen, I incerlip, maintains that the hero of the leng Ho chronicles was kept in the emperors harem against his will, even though he had access to the bight Hundred Beauties and could leave at any time. finally, Huck declared It frustrating that Shakespeare spent so little time dealing with Macbeths evil wile, especially her attempt to escape sin by iinding redemption in a presapient state. [luck has ideas for a sequel, describing the ladys reuplilt from the tallow condition. Iner ambitious work would be no less than a morality tale about betrayal and destiny in the Five Galaxies! Beyond these singular insights, I am struck that here on Jijo an illiterate community of castaways was suddenly Hooded with written lore provided by human settlers. What an ironic reversal of Larths situation, with our own native culture nearly overwhelmed by exposure to the Great Galactic Library. Astonishingly, the Six Kaces seem to have adapted with vitality and confidence, if tluck and Alvin are at all representative. I wish their experiment well. Admittedly, I still have trouble understanding their religion. the concept of redemption through devolution is one they seem to take for granted, yet its attraction eludes me. to my surprise, our ships doctor said she understands the concept, quite well. Every dolphin grows up tee ling the call, Makanee told me. In sleep, our minds still roam the vast songscape of the Whale Dream. It beckons us to return to our basic nature, whenever the stress of sapiency becomes too great. This dolphin crew has been under pressure for three long years. Makanees tfait must care for over two dozen patients who are already redeemed, as a Jijoan would put it. These dolphins have reclaimed their basic nature all right. In other words, we have lost them as comrades and skilled colleagues, as surely as it they died. Makanee fights regression wherever she finds symptoms, and yet she remains philosophical. She even otters a theory to explain why the idea revolts me so. She put it something like so-- 1 L,Ktiy\l S you humans dread this lite avenue because your race had to work for sapiency, earning it for yourself the hard way across thousands of bleak generations. We tins-and these urs and qheuens and noons, and every other Galactic clan--all had the gitt handed to us by some race that came before. you can t expect us to hold on to it quite as tenaciously as you, who had to struggle so desperately for the same prize. The attraction of this so-called Redemption lath may be a bit like ditching school. There s something alluring about the notion of letting go, shucking the discipline and toil of maintaining a rigorous mind. It you slack off, so what' YOM descendants will get another chance. A fresh start on the upward road of uplift, with new patrons to show you the way. I asked Makanee it she found that part of it especially appealing. The idea of new patrons. Would dolphins be better off with ditlerent sponsors than Homo sapiens' She laughed and expressed her answer in deliclously ambiguous Trinary. *When winter sends ice* *growling across northern seas* *Wimps love the gull stream!* Makanees comment made me ponder again the question of human origins. On Earth, most people seem willing to suspend Judgment on the question of whether our species had help from genetic meddlers, before the age of science and then contact. Stubborn Darwinists still present a strong case, but few have the guts to insist Galactic experts are wrong when they claim, with eons of experience, that the sole route to sapiency is Uplift. Many terran citizens take their word (or it. So the debate rages--on popular media shows and in private arguments among humans, dolphins, and chims-about who our absent patrons might have been. At last count there were six dozen candidates-from luvalllans and L"ethani all the way to Sun Ghosts and time travelers from some bizarre (Nineteenth Dimension. While a few dolphins do believe in missing patrons, a majority are like Makanee. I hey hold that we humans must have done it ourselves, struggling against darkness without the slightest Intervention by outsiders. How did Chaplain Creideiki put it, once" Oh yes. 1 Hr,Kt are racial memories, lorn and Jill. Recollections that can be accessed through deep keeneenk meditation. One particular image comes down from our dreamlike legends--of an apelike creature paddling to sea on a tree trunk, proudly proclaiming that he had carved it, all by himself, with a stone ax, and demanding congratulations from an indifferent cosmos. Now I ask you, would any decent patron let its client act in such a way a manner that made you look so ridiculous' INO. From the beginning we could tell that you humans were being raised by amateurs. Dy yourselves. AT least thats how I remember Creidelki's remark, lorn found it hilarious, but I recall suspecting that our captain was withholding part of the story. There was more, that he was saving for another time. Only another time never came. Even as we dined with Creideiki that evening, Streaker was wriggling her way by an obscure back route into the Shallow duster. A day or two later, everything changed. It is late and I should finish these notes. Try to catch some sleep. Mannes reports mixed results from engineering, lie and l\arkaett found a way to remove some of the carbon coating from Streaker's hull, but a more thorough job would only wind up damaging our already weak Ranges, so that's out for now. On the other hand, the control parameters I hoaxed out or the Library cube enabled Suessi's crew to bring a couple or these derelict dross starships back to lire! They re still Junk, or else the Buyur would have taken them along when they lett. Out immersion in icy water appears to have made little difference since then. perhaps some use might be found for one or two of the hulks. Anyway, it gives the engineers something to do. We need distraction, now that Streaker seems to be trapped once more. Galactic cruisers have yet again chased us down to a far corner or the universe, coveting our lives and our secrets. How? I've pondered this over and over. How did they follow our trail? The course past l?munuti seemed well hidden. Others made successful escapes this way before. The ancestors of the Six Races, for instance. It should have worked. ACROSS this narrow room, I stare at a small figure in a centered spotlight. My closest companion since lorn went away. Herbie. Our prize from the Shallow cluster. Bearer of hopes and evil luck. Was there a curse on the vast fleet of translucent vessels we discovered at that strange dip in space? When Tom lound a way through their shimmering fields and snatched Herb as a souvenir, did he bring back a Jinx that will haunt us until we put the damned corpse back in its billion-year-old tomb! I used to find the ancient mummy entrancing. Its hint of a humanoid smile seemed almost whimsical. But I've grown to hate the thing, and alt the space this discovery has sent us Heeing across. I'd give it all to have Tom back. To make the last three years go away. To recover those innocent old days, when the rive Galaxies were merely very, very dangerous, and there was still such a thing as home. B-BUT YOU SAID HOONS WERE OUR ENEMIESSS!" Zhaki's tone was defiant, though his body posture- head down and flukes raised-betrayed uncertainty. Kaa took advantage, stirring water with his pectoral fins, taking the firm upright stance of an officer in the Terragens Survey Service. "Those were different hoons," he answered. "The NuDawn disaster happened a long time ago." Zhaki shook his bottle snout, flicking spray across the humid dome. "Eatees are eateesss. They'll crush Earthlings any chance they get, just like the Soro and Tandu and all the other muckety Galactics-cs!" Kaa winced at the blanket generalization, but after two years on the run, such attitudes were common among the ranks. Kaa also nursed the self-pitying image of Earth against the entire universe. But if that were true, the torment would have ended with annihilation long ago. We have allies, a few friends . . . and the grudging sympathy of neutral clans, who hold meetings debating what to do about a plague of fanaticism sweeping the Five Galaxies. Eventually, the majority may reach a consensus and act to reestablish civilization. They may even penalize our murderers . . . for all the good it will do us. "Actually," said Brookida, turning from his workbench in the far corner of the cramped shelter. "I would not put the hoon in the same category as our other persecutors. They aren't religious radicals, or power-hungry conquerors. Sourpuss bureaucrats-that's a better description. Officious sticklers for rules, which is why so many enter service with Galactic Institutes. At NuDawn they were only enforcing the law. When human settlers resisted-" "They thought they were being invaded!" Zhaki objected. "Yessss." Brookida nodded. "But Earth's colony hadn't heard about contact, and they lacked equipment to hear Galactic inquiries. When hoonish officials came to give a ritual last warning, they met something not in their manuals ... armed trespassersss. Barbarians with no Galactic language. Mistakes followed. Military units swarmed in from Joph-" "This has nothing to do with our present problem." Kaa interrupted Brookida's history lecture. "Zhaki, you must stop cutting the local hoons' fishing netsss! It draws attention to us." "Angry attention," Brookida added. "They grow wary against your dep-p-predations, Zhaki. Last time, they cast many spears." The young dolphin snorted. * Let the whalers throw! * As in autumn storms of old- * Waves come, two-legs drown! * Kaa flinched. Moments ago, Zhaki was eager to avenge humans who had died on a lost colony, back when dolphins could barely speak. Now the irate youth lumped all bipeds together,, dredging up a grudge from days before men and women became caretakers of Earth. There was no arguing with a mind that worked that way. Still, it was Kaa's job to enforce discipline. * If you repeat this act, * No harpoon will sting your backside * Like my snapping teeth! * It wasn't great haiku-not poetical Trinary like Captain Creideiki used to dazzle his crew with, Grafting devoted loyalty from waves of gorgeous sound. But the warning rocked Zhaki. Kaa followed up, projecting a beam of intense sonar from his brow, piercing Zhaki's body, betraying fear churnings within. When in doubt, he thought, fall back on the ancestors' ways. "You are dismisssssed," he finished. "Go rest. Tomorrow's another long day." Zhaki swerved obediently, retreating to the curtained alcove he shared with Mopol. Alas, despite this brief success, Kaa also knew it would not last. Tsh't told us this was an important mission. But I bet she assigned us all here because we're the ones Streaker could most easily do without. That night he dreamed of piloting. Neo-dolphins had a flair for it-a precocious talent for the newest sapient species in all Five Galaxies. Just three hundred years after human geneticists began modifying natural bottlenose dolphins, starship Streaker was dispatched in a noble experiment to prove the skill of dolphin crews. The Terragens Council thought it might help solidify Earth's shaky position to become known as a source of crackerjack pilots. "Lucky" Kaa had naturally been pleased to be chosen for the mission, though it brought home one glaring fact. I was good . . . but not the best. In half slumber, Kaa relived the terrifying ambush at Morgan, a narrow escape that still rocked him, even after -all this time. Socketed in his station on the bridge, helpless to do anything but go along for the ride, as Chief Pilot Keepiru sent the old Snark-class survey ship through maneuvers a Tandu fighter ship would envy, neatly evading lurk mines and snare fields, then diving back into the Morgan maelstrom, without benefit of guidance computation. The memory lost no vividness after two long years. Transit threads swarmed around them, a dizzying blur of dimensional singularities. By a whim of cerebral evolution, trained dolphin pilots excelled at picturing the shimmering space-time clefts with sonar imagery. But Kaa had never rushed through such a tangle,A tornado of knotted strands. Any shining cord, caught at the wrong angle, might burl the ship back into normal space with the consistency of quark stew ... . . . Yet somehow, the ship sped nimbly from one thread to the next, Keepiru escaped the pursuers, dodged past the normal trade routes, and finally brought Streaker to a refuge Captain Creideiki chose. Kithrup, where resources for repairs could be found as pure isotopic metal, growing like coral in a poison sea . . . . . . Kithrup, homeworld of two unknown races, one sinking in an ancient wallow of despair, and the other hopeful, new ... . . . Kithrup, where no one should have been able to follow ... . . . But they did. Galactics, feuding and battling insanely overhead . . . . . . And soon Keepiru was gone, along with Toshio, Hikahi, and Mr. Orley . . . . . . and Kaa learned that some wishes were better not coming true. He learned that he did not really want to be chief pilot, after all. In the years since, he has gained experience. The escapes he piloted-from Oakka and the Fractal System- were performed well, if not as brilliantly. Not quite good enough to preserve Kaa's nickname. I never heard anyone else say they could do better. All in all, it was not a restful sleep. Zhaki and Mopol were at it again, before dawn, rubbing and squealing beyond a slim curtain they nearly shredded with their slashing tails. They should have gone outside to frolic, but Kaa dared not order it. "It is typical postadolescent behavior," Brookida told him, by the food dispenser. "Young males grow agitated. Among natural dolphins, unisex play ceases to be sufficient as youths turn their thoughts to winning the companionship of females. Young allies often test their status by jointly challenging older males." Of course Kaa knew all that. But he could not agree with the "typical" part. I never acted that way. Oh sure, I was an obnoxious, arrogant young fin. But I never acted intentionally gross, or like some reverted animal. "Maybe Tsh't should have assigned females to our team." He pondered aloud. "Wouldn't help," answered the elderly metallurgist. "If those two schtorks weren't getting any aboard ship, they wouldn't do any better here. Our fern-fins have high standards." Kaa sputtered out a lump of half-chewed mullet as he laughed, grateful for Brookida's lapse into coarse humor- though it grazed by a touchy subject among Streaker's crew, the petition to breed that some had been circulating and signing. Kaa changed the subject. "How goes your analysis of the matter the hoons dumped overboard?" Brookida nodded toward his workbench, where several ribboned casks lay cracked open. Bits of bone and crystal glittered amid piles of ashen dust. "So far, the contents confirm what the hoonish boy wrote in his journal." "Amazing. I was sure it must be a fake, planted by our enemies." Transcripts of the handwritten diary, passed on by Streaker's command, seemed too incredible to believe. "Apparently the story is true. Six races do live together on this world. As part of ecology-oriented rituals, they send their unrecyclable wastes-called dross-to sea for burial in special disposal zones. This includes parts of their processed bodies." "And you found-" "Human remainsss." Brookida nodded. "As well as chimps, hoons, urs . . . the whole crowd this young 'Alvin' wrote about." Kaa was still dazed by it all. "And there are ... J-Jophur." He could hardly speak the word aloud. Brookida frowned. "A matter of definition, it seems. I've exchanged message queries with Gillian and the Niss Machine. They suggest these so-called traeki might have the other races fooled as part of an elaborate, long-range plot." "How could that be?" "I am not sure. It would not require that every traeki be in on the scheme. Just a few, with secret master rings, • and the hidden equipment to dominate their fellow beings. I cannot quite fathom it. But Gillian has questioned the captured Library unit. And that seems a possssible scenario." Kaa had no answer for that. Such matters seemed so complex, so far beyond his grasp, his only response was to shiver from the tip of his rostrum all the way down to his trembling tail. They spent another day spying on the local sooners. The hoonish seaport, Wuphon, seemed to match the descriptions in Alvin's journal . . . though more crude and shabby in the eyes of beings who had seen the sky towers of Tanith and bright cities on Earth's moon. The hoons appeared to pour more lavish attention on their boats than their homes. The graceful sailing ships bore delicate carving work, down to proud figureheads shaped like garish deities. When a vessel swept past Kaa, he overheard the deep, rumbling sounds of singing, as the sailors boomed evident joy across the whitecaps. It's hard to believe these are the same folk Brookida described as passionless prigs. Maybe there are two races that look alike, and have similar-sounding names. Kaa made a mental note to send an inquiry in tonight's report. Hoons weren't alone on deck. He peered at smaller creatures, scrambling nimbly over the rigging, but when he tried using a portable camera, the image swept by too fast to catch much more than a blur. Streaker also wanted better images of the volcano, which apparently was a center of industrial activity among the sooner races. Gillian and Tsh't were considering sending another independent robot ashore, though earlier drones had been lost. Kaa got spectral readings of the mountain's steaming emissions, and discovered the trace of a slender tramway, camouflaged against the rocky slopes. He checked frequently on Zhaki and Mopol, who seemed to be behaving for a change, sticking close to their assigned task of eavesdropping on the red qheuen colony. But later, when all three of them were on their way back to base, Mopol lagged sluggishly behind. "It must-t have been some-thing I ate," the blue dolphin murmured, as unpleasant gurglings erupted within his abdomen. Oh great, Kaa thought. I warned him a hundred times not to sample local critters before Brookida had a chance to test them! Mopol swore it was nothing. But as the water surrounding their shelter dimmed with the setting sun, he started moaning again. Brookida used their tiny med scanner, but was at a loss to tell what had gone wrong. NOMINALLY, SHE COMMANDED EARTH'S MOST Famous spaceship-a beauty almost new by Galactic standards, just nine hundred years old when the Terragens Council purchased it from a Puntictin used-vessel dealer, then altered and renamed it Streaker to show off the skills of neo-dolphin voyagers. Alas, the bedraggled craft seemed unlikely ever again to cruise the great spiral ways. Burdened by a thick coat of refractory stardust-and now trapped deep underwater while pursuers probed the abyss with sonic bombs-to all outward appearances, it seemed doomed to join the surrounding great pile of ghost ships, sinking in the slowly devouring mud of an oceanic ravine. Gone was the excitement that first led Tsh't into the service. The thrill of flight. The exhilaration. Nor was there much relish in "authority," since she did not make policies or crucial decisions. Gillian Baskin had that role. What remained was handling ten thousand details . . . like when a disgruntled cook accosted her in a water-filled hallway, wheedling for permission to go up to the realm of light. "It'ssss too dark and c-cold to go fishing down here!" complained Bulla-jo, whose job it was to help provide meals for a hundred finicky dolphins. "My harvesst team can hardly move, wearing all that pressure armor. And have you seen the so-called fish we catch in our nets? Weird things, all sspiky and glowing!" Tsh't replied, "Dr. Makanee has passed at least forty common varieties of local sea life as both tasty and nutritious, so long as we sssupplement with the right additives." Still, Bulla-jo groused. "Everyone favors the samples we got earlier, from the upper world of waves and open air. There are great schools of lovely things swimming around up-p there." Then Bulla-jo lapsed into Trinary. * Where perfect sunshine * Makes lively prey fish glitter * As they flee from us! * He concluded, "If you want fresh f-food, let us go to the surface, like you p-promised!" Tsh't quashed an exasperated sigh over Bulla-jo's forgetfulness. In this early stage of their Uplift, neo-dolphins often perceived whatever they chose, ignoring contradictions. J do it myself, now and then. She tried cultivating patience, as Creideiki used to teach. "Dr. Baskin canceled plans to send more parties to the sunlit surface," she told Bulla-jo, whose speckled flanks and short beak revealed ancestry from the stenos dolphin line. "Did it escape your notice that gravitic emissions have been detected, cruising above this deep fissure? Or that someone has been dropping sonic charges, seeking to find usss?" Bulla-jo lowered his rostrum in an attitude of obstinate insolence. "We can g-go naked . . . carry no tools the eatees could detect-ct." Tsh't marveled at such single-minded thinking. "That might work if the gravities were far away, say in orbit, or passing by at high altitude. But once they know our rough location they can cruise low and slow, ssseeking the radiochemical spoor of molecules in our very blood. Surface-swimming fins would give us away." Irony was a bittersweet taste to Tsh't, for she knew something she had no intention of sharing with Bulla-jo. They are going to detect us, no matter how many precautions Gillian orders. To the frustrated crew member, she had only soothing words. "Just float loose for a while longer, will you, Bulla-jo? I, too, would love to chase silvery fish through warm waters. All may be resolved sh-shortly." Grumpy, but mollified, the messmate saluted by clapping his pectoral fins and swimming back to duty . . . though Tsh't knew the crisis would recur. Dolphins disliked being so far from sunlight, or from the tide's cycloid rub against shore. Tursiops weren't meant to dwell so deep, where pressurized sound waves carried in odd, disturbing ways. It is the realm of Physeter, sperm whale, great-browed messenger of the ancient dream gods, who dives to wrestle great-armed demons. The abyss was where hopes and nightmares from past, present, and future drifted to form dark sediments-a place best left to sleeping things. We neo-fins are superstitious at heart. But what can you expect, having humans as our beloved patrons? Humans, who are themselves wolflings, primitive by the standards of a billion-year-old culture. This she pondered while inhaling deeply, filling her gill lungs with the air-charged fluid, oxy-water, that filled most of Streaker's residential passages-a genetically improvised manner of breathing that nourished, but never comfortably. One more reason many of the crew yearned for the clean, bright world above. Turning toward the Streaker's bridge, she thrust powerfully through the fizzing liquid, leaving clouds of effervescence behind her driving flukes. Each bubble gave off a faint pop! as it hiccuped into existence, or merged back into supercharged solution. Sometimes the combined susurration sounded like elfin applause-or derisive laughter-following her all over the ship. At least I don't fool myself, she thought. I do all right. Gillian says so, and puts her trust in me. But I know I'm not meant for command. Tsh't had never expected such duty when Streaker blasted out of Earth orbit, refurbished for use by a neodolphin crew. Back then-over two years ago, by shipclock time-Tsh't had been only a junior lieutenant, a distant fifth in line from Captain Creideiki. And it was common knowledge that Tom Orley and Gillian Baskin could step in if the need seemed urgent ... as Gillian eventually did, during the crisis on Kithrup. Tsh't didn't resent that human intervention. In arranging an escape from the Kithrup trap, Tom and Gillian pulled off a miracle, even if it led to the lovers' separation. Wasn't that the job of human leaders and heroes? To intercede when a crisis might overwhelm their clients? But where do we turn when matters get too awful even for humans to handle? Galactic tradition adhered to a firm-some said oppressive-hierarchy of debts and obligations. A client race to its patron. That patron to its sapience benefactor . . . and so on, tracing the great chain of uplift all the way back to the legendary Progenitors. The same chain of duty underlay the reaction of some fanatical clans on hearing news of Streaker's discovery-a fleet of derelict ships with ancient, venerated markings. But the pyramid of devotion had positive aspects. The uplift cascade meant each new species got help crossing the dire gap dividing mere animals from starfaring citizens. And if your sponsors lacked answers, they might ask their patrons. And so on. Gillian had tried appealing to this system, taking Streaker from Kithrup to Oakka, the green world, seeking counsel from impartial savants of the Navigation Institute. Failing there, she next sought help in the Fractal Orb-that huge icy place, a giant snowflake that spanned a solar system's width-hoping the venerable beings who dwelled there might offer wise detachment, or at least refuge. It wasn't Dr. Baskin's fault that neither gamble paid off very well. She had the right general idea, Tsh't mused. But Gillian remains blind to the obvious. Who is most likely to help, when you're in trouble and a lynch mob is baying at your tail? The courts? Scholars at some university? Or your own family? Tsh't never dared suggest her idea aloud. Like Tom Orley, Gillian took pride in the romantic image of upstart Earthclan, alone against the universe. Tsh't knew the answer would be no. So, rather than flout a direct order, Tsh't had quietly put her own plan into effect, just before Streaker made her getaway from the Fractal System. What else could I do, with Streaker pursued by horrid fleets, our best crew members gone, and Earth under siege? Our Tymbrimi friends can barely help even themselves. Meanwhile, the Galactic Institutes have been corrupted and the Old Ones lied to us. We had no choice. . . . I had no choice . . . It was hard concealing things, especially from someone who knew dolphins as well as Gillian. For weeks since Streaker arrived here, Tsh't half hoped her disobedience would come to nought. Then the detection officer reported gravitic traces. Starcraft engines, entering Jijo space. So, they came after all, she had thought, hearing the news, concealing satisfaction while her crew mates expressed noisy chagrin, bemoaning that they now seemed cornered by relentless enemies on a forlorn world. Tsh't wanted to tell them the truth, but dared not. That good news must wait. Ifni grant that I was right. Tsh't paused outside the bridge, filling her gene-altered lungs with oxy-water. Enriching her blood to think clearly before setting in motion the next phase of her plan. There is just one true option for a client race, when your beloved patrons seem overwhelmed, and all other choices are cut off. May the gods of Earth's ancient ocean know and understand what I've done. And what I may yet have to do. Sooners Nelo ONCE, A BUYUR URBAN CENTER STRETCHED BEtween two rivers, from the Roney all the way to the faroff Bibur. Now the towers were long gone, scraped and hauled away to distant seas. In their place, spiky ferns and cloudlike voow trees studded a morass of mud and oily water. Mule-spider vines laced a few rounded hummocks remaining from the great city, but even those tendrils were now faded, their part in the demolition nearly done. To Nelo, this was wasteland, rich in life but useless to any of the Six Races, except perhaps as a traeki vacation resort. What am I doing here? he wondered. I should he back in Dolo, tending my mill, not prowling through a swamp, keeping a crazy woman company. Behind Nelo, hoonish sailors cursed low, expressive rumblings, resentful over having to pole through a wretched bog. The proper time for gleaning was at the start of the dry season, when citizens in high-riding boats took turns sifting the marsh for Buyur relics missed by the patient mule beast. Now, with rainstorms due any day, conditions were miserable for exploring. The muddy channels were shallow, yet the danger of a flash flood was very real. Nelo faced the elderly woman who sat in a wheelchair near the bow, peering past obscuring trees with a rewq over her eyes. "The crew ain't happy, Sage Foo," he told her. "They'd rather we waited till it's safe." Ariana Foo answered without turning from her search. "Oh, what a great idea. Four months or more we'd sit around while the swamp fills, channels shift, and the thing we seek gets buried in muck. Of course, by then the information would be too late to do any good." Nelo shrugged. The woman was retired now. She had no official powers. But as former High Sage for all humans on Jijo, Ariana had moral authority to ask anything she wanted-including having Nelo leave his beloved paper mill next to broad Dolo Dam, accompanying her on this absurd search. Not that there was much to do at the mill, he knew. With commerce spoiled by panic over those wretched starsbips, no one seems interested in buying large orders. "Now is the best time," Ariana went on. "Late in dry season, with water levels low, and the foliage drooping, we get maximum visibility." Nelo took her word. With most young men and women away on militia duties, it was mostly adolescents and oldtimers who got drafted into the search party. Anyway, Nelo's daughter had -been among the first to find the Stranger from Space in this very region several months ago, during a routine gleaning trip. And he owed Ariana for bringing word about Sara and the boys-that they were all I right, when last she heard. Sage Foo had spent time with Nelo's daughter, accompanying Sara from Tarek Town to the Biblos Archive. He felt another droplet strike his cheek . . . the tenth since they left the river, plunging into this endless slough. He held his hand under a murky sky and prayed the real downpours would hold off for a few more days. Then let it come down! The lake is low. We need water pressure for the wheel, or else I'll have to shut down the mill for lack of power. His thoughts turned to business-the buying and gathering of recycled cloth from all six races. The pulping and sifting. The pressing, drying, and selling of fine sheets that his family had been known for ever since humans brought the blessing of paper to Jijo. A blessing that some called a curse. That radical view now claimed support from simple villagers, panicked by the looming end of days- A shout boomed from above. "There!" A wiry young hoon perched high on the mast, pointing. "Hr-r ... It must be the Stranger's ship. I told you this had to be the place!" Wyhuph-eihugo had accompanied Sara on that fateful gleaning trip-a duty required of all citizens. Lacking a male's throat sac, she nevertheless umbled with some verve, proud of her navigation. At last! Nelo thought. Now Ariana can make her sketches, and we can leave this awful place. The crisscrossing mule cables made him nervous. Their boat's obsidiantipped prow had no trouble slicing through the desiccated vines. Still it felt as if they were worming deeper into some fiendish trap. Ariana muttered something. Nelo turned, blinking. "What did you say?" The old woman pointed ahead, her eyes glittering with curiosity. "I don't see any soot!" "So?" "The Stranger was burned. His clothes were ashen tatters. We thought his ship must have come down in flames-perhaps after battling other aliens high over Jijo. But look. Do you see any trace of conflagration?" The boat worked around a final voow grove, revealing a rounded metal capsule on the other side, gleaming amid a nest of shattered branches. The sole opening resembled the splayed petals of a flower, rather than a door or hatch. The arrival of this intruder had cut a swathe of devastation stretching to the northwest. Several swamp hummocks were split by the straight gouge, only partly softened by regrown vegetation. Nelo had some experience as a surveyor, so he helped take sightings to get the ship's overall dimensions. It was small-no larger than this hoonish boat, in fact-certainly no majestic cruiser like the one that clove the sky over Dolo Town, sending its citizens into hysteria. The rounded flanks reminded Nelo of a natural teardrop, more than anything sapient-made. Two pinpoints of moisture dotted his cheek and forehead. Another struck the back of his hand. In the distance, Nelo heard a sharp rumble of thunder. "Hurry closer!" Ariana urged, flipping open her sketchpad. Murmuring unhappily, the hoons leaned on their poles and oars to comply. Nelo stared at the alien craft, but all he could think was dross. When Sixers went gleaning through Buyur sites, one aim was to seek items that might be useful for a time, in a home or workshop. But useful or not, everything eventually went into ribboned caskets to be sent on to the Great Midden. Thus colonists imagined they were helping cleanse Jijo-perhaps doing more good than harm to their adopted world. "Ifni!" Nelo sighed under his breath, staring at the vehicle that brought the Stranger hurtling out of space. It might be tiny for a starship, but it looked hard as blazes to move by hand. "We'll be in for a hell of a job draggin' this thing out of here, let alone gettin' it down to sea." Again, off to the south, the sound of thunder boomed. from the too-timid Poa, completing the final stages of our Uplift. Those same Oailie who designed new master rings to focus and bind our natures. Without rings like Me, how could our race ever have become great and feared among the Five Galaxies? AND YET, even as I learn to integrate your many little selves into our new whole, I am struck by how vivid are these older drippings that I find lining our inner core! Drippings that date from before My fusion with your aged pile of rings. How lustrous clear these memories seem, despite their counterpointing harmonies. I confess, existence had intensity and verve when you,we were merely Asx. PERHAPS this surprise comes because I,Myself am so young, only recently drawn from the side of our Ship Commander-from that great one's very own ring-of-embryos. Yes, that is a high heritage. So imagine the surprise of finding Myself in this situation! Designed for duties in the dominion caste, I am wedded, for pragmatic reasons, to a haphazard heap of rustic toruses, ill educated and filled with bizarre, primitive notions. I have been charged to make the best of things until some later time, when surgery-of-reconfiguration can be performed- AH. THAT DRAWS A REACTION FROM SOME OF YOU? Our second ring of cognition, in particular, finds this notion disturbing. Fear not, My rings! Accept these jolts of painful love soothing, to remind you of your place-which is not to question, only to serve. Be assured that the procedure I refer to is now quite advanced among the mighty Jophur. When a ring is removed for reassembly in a new stack, often as many as half of the other leftover components can be recovered and reused as well! Of course, most of you are elderly, and the priests may decide you carry other-race contaminations, preventing incorporation into new mounds. But accept this pledge. When the time comes, I, your beloved master ring, shall very likely make the transition in good health, and take fond memories of our association to My glorious new stack. I know this fact will bring you all great satisfaction, contemplating it within our common core. wasx WE JOPHUR ARE TAUGHT THAT IT IS TERRIBLE TO BE traeki-a stack lacking any central self. Doomed to a splintered life of vagueness and blurry placidity. ALL SING PRAISES to the mighty Oailie, who took over PATHEDRAL-LIKE STILLNESS FILLED THE BOO Forest-a dense expanse of gray-green columns, towering Uto support the sky. Each majestic trunk had a girth like the carapace of a five-clawed qheuen. Some stretched as high as the Stone Roof of Biblos. Now I know how an insect feels, scuttling under a sea of pampas grass. Hiking along a narrow lane amid the giant pillars, Lark often could reach out his arms and brush two giant stems at the same time. Only his militia sergeant seemed immune to a sense of confinement infecting travelers in this strange place of vertical perspectives. Other guards expressed edginess with darting eyes that glanced worriedly down crooked aisles at half-hidden shadows. "How far is it to Dooden Mesa?" Ling asked, tugging the straps of her leather backpack. Perspiration glistened down her neck to dampen the Jijoan homespun jerkin she wore. The effect was not as provocative as Lark recalled from their old survey trips together, when the sheer fabric of a Danik jumpsuit sometimes clung to her biosculpted figure in breathtaking ways. Anyway, I can't afford that, now that I'm a sage. The promotion brought only unpleasant responsibilities. "I never took this shortcut before," Lark answered, although he and Uthen used to roam these mountains in search of data for their book. There were other paths around the mountain, and the wheeled g'Keks nominally in charge of this domain could hardly be expected to do upkeep on such a rough trail. "My best guess is we'll make it in two miduras. Want to rest?" Ling pushed sodden strands from her eyes. "No. Let's keep going." The former gene raider seemed acutely aware of Jeni Shen, the diminutive sergeant, whose corded arms cradled her crossbow like a beloved child. Jeni glanced frequently at Ling with hunter's eyes, as if speculating which vital organ might make a good target. Anyone could sense throbbing enmity between the two women-and that Ling would rather die than show weakness before the militia scout. Lark found one thing convenient about their antagonism. It helped divert Ling's ire away from him, especially after the way he earlier used logic to slash her beloved Rothen gods. Since then, the alien biologist had been civil, but kept to herself in brooding silence. No one likes to have their most basic assumptions knocked from under them-especially by a primitive savage. Lark blew air through his cheeks-the hoonish version of a shrug. "Hr-rm. We'll take a break at the next rise. By then we should be out of the worst boo." In fact, the thickest zone was already behind them, a copse so dense the monstrous stems rubbed in the wind, creating a low, drumming music that vibrated the bones of anyone passing underneath. Traveling single file, edging sideways where the trunks pressed closest, the party had watched for vital trail marks, cut on one rounded bole after the next. I was right to leave Uthen behind, he thought, hoping to convince himself. Just hold on, old friend. Maybe we'll come up with something. I pray we can. Visibility was hampered by drifting haze, since many of the tall boo leaked from water reserves high above, spraying arcs of fine droplets that spread to saturate the misty colonnade. Several times they passed clearings where aged columns had toppled in a domino chain reaction, leaving maelstroms of debris. Through the fog, Lark occasionally glimpsed other symbols, carved on trunks beyond the trail. Not trail marks, but cryptic emblems in GalTwo and GalSix . . . accompanied by strings of Anglic numbers. Why would anyone-go scrawling graffiti through a stand of greatboo? He even spied dim figures through the murk-once a human, then several urs, and finally a pair of traeki- glimpsed prowling amid rows of huge green pillars. At least he hoped the tapered cones were traeki. They vanished like ghosts before he could tell for sure. Sergeant Shen kept the party moving too fast to investigate. Lark and his prisoner had been summoned by two of the High Sages-a command that overruled any other priority. And despite the difficult terrain, recent news from the Glade of Gathering was enough to put vigor in their steps. Runners reported that the Jophur dreadnought still blocked the sacred valley, squatting complacently inside its swathe of devastation, with the captive Rothen ship doubly imprisoned nearby-first by a gold cocoon, and now a rising lake as well. The Jophur daily sent forth a pair of smaller vessels, sky-prowling daggers, surveying the Slope and the seas beyond. No one knew what the star gods were looking for. Despite what happened on the night the great ship landed-havoc befalling Asx and others on the Glade-the High Sages were preparing to send another embassy of brave volunteers, hoping to parley. No one asked Lark to serve as an envoy. The Sages had other duties planned for him. Humans weren't the only ones to cheat a little, when their founding generation came to plant a taboo colony on forbidden Jijo. For more than a year after it made landfall, the Tabernacles crew delayed sending their precious ship to an ocean abyss. A year spent using god tools to cut trees and print books . . . then storing the precious volumes in a stronghold that the founders carved beneath a great stone overhang, protected by high walls and a river. During those early days-especially the urrish and qheuen wars-Biblos Fortress served as a vital refuge until humans grew strong enough to demand respect. The Gray Queens also once had such a citadel, sculpted by mighty engines when they first arrived, before their sneakship fell beneath the waves. The Caves of Snood, near present-day Ovoom Town, must have seemed impregnable. But. that maze of deep-hewn caverns drowned under a rising water table when blue and red workers dropped their slavish maintenance duties, wandering off instead to seek new homes and destinies, apart from their chitin empresses. Dooden Mesa was the oldest of the sooner ramparts. After Tarek Town, it formed the heart of g'Kek life on Jijo, a place of marvelous stone ramps that curved like graceful filigrees, allowing the wheeled ones to swoop and careen through a swirl of tight turns, from their looms and workshops to tree-sheltered platforms where whole families slept with their hubs joined in slowly rotating clusters. Under an obscuring blur-cloth canopy, the meandering system resembled pictures found in certain Earthling books about pre-contact times-looking like a cross between an "amusement park" and the freeway interchanges of some sprawling city. Ling's face brightened with amazed delight when she regarded the settlement, nodding as Lark explained the lacy pattern of narrow byways. Like Biblos, Dooden Rampart was not meant to last forever, for that would violate the Covenant of Exile. Someday it all would have to go- g'Kek elders conceded. Still, the wheeled ones throbbed their spokes in sinful pride over their beloved city. Their home. While Ling marveled, Lark surveyed the busy place with fresh poignancy. This their only home. Unless the Rothen lied, it seems there are no more g'Kek living among the Five Galaxies. If they die on Jijo, they are gone for good. Watching youngsters pitch along graceful ramps with reckless abandon, streaking round corners with all four eyestalks flying and their rims glowing hot, Lark could not believe the universe would let that happen. How could any race so unique be allowed to go extinct? With the boo finally behind them, the party now stood atop a ridge covered with normal forest. As they paused, a zookir dropped onto the path from the branches of a nearby garu tree-all spindly arms and legs, covered with white spirals of fluffy torg. Treasured aides and pets of the g'Kek, zookirs helped make life bearable for wheeled beings on a planet where roads were few and stumbling stones all too many. This zookir squinted at the party, then scampered closer, sniffing. Unerringly, it bypassed the other humans, zeroing in on Lark. Trust a zookir to know a sage-so went a folk saying. No one had any idea how the creatures could tell, since they seemed less clever than chimps in other ways. Lark's promotion was recent and he wore the new status of "junior sage" uncomfortably, yet the creature had no trouble setting him apart. It pressed damp nostrils against his wrist and inhaled. Then, cooing satisfaction, it slipped a folded parchment in Lark's hand. MEET US AT THE REFUGE-That was all it said. RPAIR OF HIGH SAGES WAITED IN A NARROW CANyon, half a league away. Lester Cambel and Knife-Bright Insight, the blue qheuen whose reputation for compassion made her a favorite among the Six. Here, too, the paths were smooth and well suited for g'Keks, since this was part of their Dooden Domain. Wheeled figures moved among the meadows, looking after protected ones who lived in thatched shelters beneath the trees. It was a refuge for sacred simpletons-those whose existence promised a future for the Six Races-according to the scrolls. , Several of the blessed ones gathered around Knife-Bright | Insight, clucking or mewing in debased versions of Galac- i tic tongues. These were hoons and urs, for the most part, though a red qheuen joined the throng as Lester watched, and several traeki stacks slithered timidly closer, burbling happy stinks as they approached. Each received a loving pat or stroke from Knife-Bright Insight, as if her claws were gentle hands. Lester regarded his colleague, and knew guiltily that he could never match her glad kindness. The blessed were superior beings, ranking above the normal run of the Six. Their simplicity was proof that other races could follow the example of glavers, treading down the Path of Redemption. It should fill my heart to see them, he thought. Yet I hate coming to this place. Members of all six races dwelled in simple shelters underneath the canyon walls, tended by local g'Keks, plus volunteers from across the Slope. Whenever a qheuen, or hoon, or urrish village found among their youths one who had a knack for innocence, a gift for animal-like naivete, the lucky individual was sent here for nurturing and study. There are just two ways to escape the curse bequeathed to us by our ancestors, Lester thought, struggling to believe. We could do as Lark's group of heretics want-stop breeding and leave Jijo in peace. Or else we can all seek a different kind of oblivion, the kind that returns our children's children to presentience. Washed clean and ready for a new cycle of uplift. Thus they may yet find new patrons, and perhaps a happier fate. So prescribed the Sacred Scrolls, even after all the compromises wrought since the arrival of Earthlings and the Holy Egg. Given the situation of exile races, living here on borrowed time, facing horrid punishment if,when a Galactic Institute finds them here, what other goal could there be? But I can't do it. I cannot look at this place with joy. Earthling values keep me from seeing these creatures as lustrous beings. They deserve kindness and pity-but not envy. It was his own heresy. Lester tried to look elsewhere. But turning just brought to view another cluster of "blessed." This time, humans, gathered in a circle under a ilhuna tree, sitting cross-legged with hands on knees, chanting in low, sonorous voices. Men and women whose soft smiles and unshifting eyes seemed to show simplicity of the kind sought here . . . only Lester knew them to be liars! Long ago, he took the same road. Using meditation techniques borrowed from old Earthling religions, he sat under just such a tree, freeing his mind of worldly obsessions, disciplining it to perceive Truth. And for a while it seemed he succeeded. Acolytes bowed reverently, calling him illuminated. The universe appeared lucid then, as if the stars were sacred fire. As if he were united with all Jijo's creatures, even the very quanta in the stones around him. He lived in harmony, needing little food, few words, and even fewer names. Such serenity-sometimes he missed it with an ache inside. But after a while he came to realize-the clarity he had found was sterile blankness. A blankness that felt fine, but had nothing to do with redemption. Not for himself. Not for his race. The other five don't use discipline or concentration to seek simplicity. You don't see glavers meditating by a rotten log full of tasty insects. Simplicity calls to them naturally. They live their innocence. When Jijo is finally reopened, some great clan will gladly adopt the new glaver subspecies, setting them once more upon the High Path, perhaps with better luck than they bad the first time. But those patrons won't choose us. No noble elder clan is looking for smug Zen masters, eager to explain their own enlightenment. That is not a plainness you can write upon. It is simplicity based on individual pride. Of course the point might be moot. If the Jophur ship represented great Institutes of the Civilization of the Five Galaxies, these forests would soon throng with inspectors, tallying up two thousand years of felonies against a fallow world. Only glavers would be safe, having made it to safety in time. The other six races would pay for a gamble lost. And if they don't represent the Institutes? The Rothen had proved to be criminals, gene raiders. Might the Jophur be more of the same? Murderous genocide could still be in store. The g'Kek clan, in particular, were terrified of recent news from the Glade. On the other hand, it might be possible to cut a deal. Or else maybe they'll just go away, leaving us in the same state we were in before. In that case, places like this refuge would go back to being the chief hope for tomorrow ... for five races out of the Six. Lester's dark thoughts were cut off by a tug on his sleeve. "Sage Cambel? The . . . um, visitors you're, ah, expecting ... I think . . -." It was a young human, broad-cheeked, with clear blue eyes and pale skin. The boy would have seemed tall- almost a giant-except that a stooped posture diminished his appearance. He kept tapping a corner of his forehead with the fingertips of his right hand, as if in a vague salute. Lester spoke gentle words in Anglic, the only language the lad ever managed to learn. "What did you say, Jimi?" The boy swallowed, concentrating hard. "I think the . . . um . . . the people you want t'see ... I think they're here . . . Sage Cambel." "Lark and the Danik woman?" A vigorous nod. "Um, yessir. I sent 'em to the visitors' shed ... to wait for you an' the other Great Sage. Was that right?" "Yes, that was right, Jimi." Lester gave his arm a friendly squeeze. "Please go back now. Tell Lark I'll be along shortly." A broad grin. The boy turned around to run the way he came, awkward in his eagerness to be useful. There goes the other kind of human who comes to this place, Lester thought. Our special ones . . . The ancient euphemism tasted strange. At first sight, it would seem people like Jimi fit the bill. Simpler minds. Innocent. Our ideal envoys to tread the Path. He glanced at the blessed ones surrounding Knife-Bright Insight-urs, hoons, and g'Keks who were sent here by their respective races in order to do that. To lead the way. By the standards of the scrolls, these ones aren 't damaged. Though simple, they aren't flawed. They are leaders. But no one can say that of Jimi. All sympathy aside, he is injured, incomplete. Anyone can see that. We can and should love him, help him, befriend him. But he leads humanity nowhere. Lester signaled to his blue qheuen colleague, using an urslike shake of his head to indicate that their appointment had arrived. She responded by turning her visor cupola in a quick series of GalTwo winks, flashing that she'd be along shortly. Lester turned and followed Jimi's footsteps, trying to shift his thoughts back to the present crisis. To the problem of the Jophur battleship. Back to urgent plans he must discuss with the young heretic and the woman from the stars. There was a dire proposal-farfetched and darkly dangerous-they must be asked to accept. Yet, as he passed by the chanting circle of meditating humans-healthy men and women who had abandoned their farms, families, and useful crafts to dwell without work in this sheltered valley-Lester found his contemplations awash with bitter resentment. The words in his head were unworthy of a High Sage, he knew. But he could not help pondering them. Morons and mediators, those are the two types that our race sends up here. Not a true "blessed" soul in the lot. Not by the standards set in the scrolls. Humans almost never take true steps down redemption's path. Ur-Jah and the others are polite. They pretend that we, too, have that option, that potential salvation. But we don't. Our lot is sterile. With or without judgment from the stars-the only future humans face on Jijo is damnation. Dwer SMOKE SPIRALED FROM THE CRASH SITE. IT WAS against his better judgment to sneak closer. In fact, now was his chance to run the other way, while the Danik robot cowered in a hole, showing no further interest in its prisoners. And if Rety wanted to stay? Let her! Lena and Jenin would be glad to see Dwer if he made the long journey back to the Gray Hills. That should be possible with his trusty bow in hand. True, Rety needed him, but those up north had better claim on his loyalty. Dwer's senses still throbbed from the din of the brief battle, when the mighty Danik scoutship was shot down by a terrifying newcomer. Both vessels lay beyond the next dune, sky chariots of unfathomable power . . . and Rety urged him to creep closer still! "We gotta find out what's going on," she insisted in a harsh whisper. He gave her a sharp glance, demanding silence, and for once she complied, giving him a moment to think. Lena and Jenin may be safe for a while, now that Kunn won't be returning to plague them. If the Daniks and Rothens have enemies on Jijo, all the star gods may be too busy fighting each other to hunt a little band in the Gray Hills. Even without guidance from Danel Ozawa, Lena Strong was savvy enough to make a three-way deal, with Rety's old band and the urrish sooners. Using Danel's "legacy," their combined tribe might plant a seed to flourish in the wilderness. Assuming the worst happened back home on the Slope, their combined band might yet find its way to the Path. Dwer shook his head. He sometimes found it hard to concentrate. Ever since letting the robot use his body as a conduit for its fields, it felt as if voices whispered softly at the edge of hearing. As when the crazy old mule spider used to wheedle into his thoughts. Anyway, it wasn't his place to ponder destiny, or make sagelike decisions. Some things were obvious. He might not owe Rety anything. She may deserve to be abandoned to her fate. But he couldn't do that. So, despite misgivings, Dwer nodded to the girl, adding with emphatic hand motions that she had better not make a single sound. She replied with a happy shrug that seemed to say, Sure . . . until I decide otherwise. Slinging his bow and quiver over one shoulder, he led the way forward, creeping from one grassy clump to the next, till they reached the crest of the dune. Cautiously they peered through a cluster of salty fronds to stare down at two sky vessels-the smaller a smoldering ruin, half submerged in a murky swamp. The larger ship, nestled nearby, had not escaped the fracas unscarred. It bore a deep fissure along one flank that belched soot whenever the motors tried to start. Two men lay prostrate on a marshy islet, barely moving. Kunn and Jass. Dwer and Rety scratched a new hole to hide in, then settled down to see who-or what-would emerge next. They did not wait long. A hatch split the large cylinder, baring a dark interior. Through it floated a single figure, startlingly familiar-an eight-sided pillar with dangling arms-close cousin to the damaged robot Dwer knew all too well. Only this one gleamed with stripes of alternating blue and pink, a pattern Dwer found painful to behold. It also featured a hornlike projection on the bottom, aimed downward. That must be what lets it travel over water, he thought. If the robot is similar, could that mean Kunn's enemies are human, too? But no, Danel had said that machinery was standard among the half a million starfaring races, changing only slowly with each passing eon. This new drone might belong to anybody. The automaton neared Kunn and Jass, a searchlight playing over their bodies, vivid even in bright sunshine. Their garments rippled, frisked by translucent fingers. Then the robot dropped down, arms outstretched. Kunn and Jass lay still as it poked, prodded, and lifted away with several objects in its pincers. A signal must have been given, for a ramp then jutted from the open hatch, slanting to the bog. Who's going to go traipsing around in that stuff? Dwer wondered. Are they going to launch a boat? He girded for some weird alien race, one with thirteen legs perhaps, or slithering on trails of slime. Several great clans had been known as foes of humankind, even in the Tabernacles day, such as the legendary Soro, or the insectlike Tandu. Dwer even nursed faint hope that the newcomers might be from Earth, come all this vast distance to rein in their criminal cousins. There were also relatives of hoons, urs, and qheuens out there, each with ships and vast resources at their command. Figures appeared, twisting down the ramp into the open air. Rety gasped. "Them's traekis!" Dwer stared at a trio of formidable-looking ring stacks, with bandoliers of tools hanging from their toroids-of-manipulation. The tapered cones reached muddy water and settled in. Abruptly, the flipper legs that seemed awkward on the ramp propelled them with uncanny speed toward the two survivors. "But ain't traekis s'posed to be peaceful?" They are, Dwer thought, wishing he had paid more attention to the lessons his mother used to give Sara and Lark. Readings from obscure books that went beyond what you were taught in school. He reached back for a name, but came up empty. Yet he knew a name existed. One that inspired fear, once-upon-a-time. "I don't-" he whispered, then shook his head firmly. "I don't think these are traeki. At least not like anyone's seen here in a very long while." Alvin THE SCENE WAS HARD TO INTERPRET AT FIRST. HAZY blue-green images jerked rapidly, sending shivers down my still-unsteady spine. Huck and Pincer seemed to catch on more quickly, pointing at various objects in the" picture display, sharing knowing grunts. The experience reminded me of our trip on Wuphon's Dream, when poor Alvin the Hoon was always the last one to grok what was going on. Finally, I realized-we were viewing a faraway locale, back in the world of sunshine and rain! (How many times have Huck and I read about some storybook character looking at a distant place by remote control? It's funny. A concept can be familiar from novels, yet rouse awe when you finally encounter it in real life.) Daylight streamed through watery shallows where green fronds waved in a gentle tide. Schools of flicking, silvery shapes darted past-species that our fishermen brought home in nets, destined for the drying racks and stewpots of hoonish khutas. The spinning voice said there were sound "pickups" next to the moving camera lens, which explained the swishing, gurgling noises. Pincer shifted his carapace, whistling a homesick lament from all five vents, nostalgic for the tidal pens of his red qheuen rookery. But Ur-ronn soon had quite enough, turning her sleek head with a queasy whine, made ill by the sight of all that swishing water. Slanting upward, the surf grew briefly violent. Then water fled the camera's eye in foamy sheets as our viewpoint emerged onto a low sandscape. The remote unit scurried inland, low to the ground. "Normally, we would send a drone ashore at night. But the matter is urgent. We must count on the land's hot glare to mask its emergence." Ur-ronn let out a sigh, relieved to see no more liquid turbulence. "It forces one to wonder," she said, "why you have not sent sleuthy agents vefore." "In fact several were dispatched to seek signs of civilization. Two are long overdue, but others reported startling scenes." "Such as?" Huck asked. "Such as hoon mariners, crowing wooden sailing ships on the high seas." "Hr-rr . . . What's strange about that?" "And red qheuens, living unsupervised by grays or blues, beholden to no one, trading peacefully with their hoonish neighbors." Pincer huffed and vented, but the voice continued. "Intrigued, we sent a submarine expedition beyond the Rift. Our explorers followed one of your dross ships, collecting samples from its sacred discharge. Then, returning to base, our scout vessel happened on the urrish 'cache' you were sent to recover. Naturally, we assumed the original owners must be extinct." "Oh?" Ur-ronn asked, archly. "Why is that?" "Because we had seen living hoon! Who would conceive of urs and hoon cohabiting peacefully within a shared volume less broad than a cubic parsec? If hoon lived, we assumed all urs on Jijo must have died." "Oh," Ur-ronn commented, turning her long neck to glare at me. "Imagine our surprise when a crude vessel plummeted toward our submarine. A hollowed-out tree trunk containing-" The voice cut off. The remote unit was in motion again. We edged forward as the camera eye skittered across sand mixed with scrubby vegetation. "Hey," Ur-ronn objected. "I thought you couldn't use radio or anything that can ve detected from sface!" "Correct." "Then how are you getting these Pictures in real tine?" "An excellent question, coming from one with no direct experience in such matters. In this case, the drone needs only to travel a kilometer or so ashore. It can deploy a fiber cable, conveying images undetectably." I twitched. Something in the words just spoken jarred me, in an eerie-familiar way. "Does it have to do with the exflosions?" Ur-ronn asked. "The recent attack on this site vy those who would destroy you?" The spinning shape contracted, then expanded. "You four truly are quick and imaginative. It has been an unusual experience conversing with you. And I was created to appreciate unusual experiences." "In other words, yes," Huck said gruffly. "Some time ago, a flying machine began sifting this sea with tentacles of sound. Hours later, it switched to dropping depth charges in a clear effort to dislodge us from our mound of concealing wreckage. "Matters were growing dire when gravitic fields of a second craft entered the area. We picked up rhythms of aerial combat. Missiles and deadly rays were exchanged in a brief, desperate struggle." Pincer rocked from foot to foot. "Gosh-osh-osh!" he sighed, ruining our pose of nonchalance. "Then both vessels abruptly stopped flying. Their inertial signatures ceased close to the drone's present location." "How close?" Ur-ronn asked. "Very close," the voice replied. Transfixed, we watched a hypnotic scene of rapid motion. An ankle-high panorama of scrubby plants, whipping past with blurry speed. The camera eye dodged clumps of saber fronds, skittering with frantic speed, as the drone sought height overlooking a vast marshy fen. All at once, a glint of silver! Two glints. Curving flanks of- That was when it happened. Without warning, just as we had our first thrilling glimpse of crashed flyships, the screen was abruptly filled by a grinning face. We rocked back, shouting in surprise. I recoiled so fast, even the high-tech back brace could not save my spine from surging pain. Huphu's claws dug in my shoulder as she trilled an amazed cry. The face bared a glittering, gleeful display of pointy teeth. Black, beady eyes stared at us, inanely magnified, so full of feral amusement that we all groaned with recognition. Our tiny drone pitched, trying to escape, but the grinning demon held it firmly with both forepaws. The creature raised sharp claws, preparing to strike. The spinning voice spoke then-a sound that flew out, then came back to us through the drone's tiny pickups. There were just three words, in a queerly accented form of GalSeven, very high-pitched, almost beyond a hoon's range. "Brother, " the voice said quickly to the strange noor. "Please stop." wasx WORD COMES THAT WE HAVE LOST TRACK OF A Corvette! Our light cruiser sent to pursue an aircraft of the Rothen bandits. Trouble was not anticipated in such a routine chore. It raises disturbing questions. Might we have underestimated the prowess of this brigand band? You, our second ring-of-cognition-you provide access to many memories and thoughts once accumulated by our stack, before I joined to become your master ring. Memories from a time when we,you were merely Asx. You recall hearing the human gene thieves making preposterous claims. For instance, that their patrons-these mysterious "Rothen"-are unknown to Galactic society at large. That the Rothen wield strong influence in hidden ways. That they scarcely fear the mighty battle fleets of the great clans of the Five Galaxies. We of the battleship Polkjhy heard similar tall tales before arriving at this world. We took it all for mere bluff. A pathetic cover story, attempting futilely to hide the outlaws' true identity. BUT WHAT IF THE STORY IS TRUE? No one can doubt that mysterious forces do exist-ancient, aloof, influential. Might we have crossed fates with some cryptic power, here in an abandoned galaxy, far from home? OR TAKE THE IDEA MORE BROADLY. Might such a puissant race of cloaked ones stand secretly behind all Terrans, guiding their destiny? Protecting them against the fate that generally befalls wolflihg breeds? It would explain much strangeness in recent events. It could also bode ill for our Obeyer Alliance, in these dangerous times. BUT NO! Facts do not support that fear. You primitive, rustic rings would not know this, so let Me explain. NOT LONG AGO, the Polkjhy was contacted by certain petty data merchants, unscrupulous vermin offering news for sale. Through human agents, these "Rothen" approached us-the great and devout Jophur-because our ship happened to be on search patrol nearby. Also, they calculated Jophur would pay twice as much for the information they wanted to sell. -ONCE for clues to find the main quarry we seek, a missing Earth vessel that ten thousand ships have pursued for years, as great a prize as any in the Five Galaxies- -AND A SECOND TIME for information about the ancestor-cursed g'Kek, a surviving remnant who took refuge here many planet cycles ago, thwarting our righteous, extinguishing wrath. The Rothen and their henchmen hoped to reap handsome profit by selling us this information, added to whatever genetic scraps they might steal from this unripe world. The arrangement must have seemed ideal to them, for both sides would be well advised to keep the transaction secret forever. Is that the behavior of some great, exalted power? One risen above trivial mortal concerns? Would deity-level beings have been so rudely surprised by local savages, who vanquished their buried station with mere chemical explosives? Did they prove so mighty when we turned our rings around half circle in an act of pious betrayal, and pounced upon their ship? Freezing it in stasis by means of a not unclever trick? No, this cannot be a reasonable line of inquiry, My rings. It worries me that you would waste our combined mental resources pursuing a blind pathway. , This digression-IS IT YET.ANOTHER VAIN EFFORT TO ( DISTRACT ME FROM THE NARROWNESS OF PURPOSE ' THAT IS MY PRINCIPAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE STACK? I Is that also why some of you keep trying to tune in socalled guidance ^patterns from that silly rock you call a "Holy Egg"? Are these vague, disjointed efforts aimed at yet another rebellion? HAVE YOU NOT YET LEARNED? Shall I demonstrate, once again, why the Oailie made My kind, and named us "master rings"? LET US drop these silly cogitations and consider alternative explanations for the disappearance of the corvette. Perhaps, when our crew hunted down the scout boat of the Rothen, they stumbled onto something else instead? Something more powerful and important, by far? . . . ? Is this true? You truly have no idea what I am hinting at? Not even a clue? Why, most of the inhabitants of the Five Galaxies-even the enigmatic Zang-know of the ship we seek. A vessel pursued by half the armadas in known space. You have indeed lived in isolation, My rustic rings! My primitive subselves. My temporary pretties, who have not heard of a ship crewed by half-animal dolphins. How very strange indeed. Sara WITHOUT DARK GLASSES PROVIDED BY THE HORSE riding Illias, Sara feared she might go blind or insane. A few stray glints were enough to stab her nerves with unnatural colors, cooing for attention, shouting dangerously, begging her to remove the coverings, to stare . . . perhaps losing herself in a world of shifted light. Even in sepia tones, the surrounding bluffs seemed laden with cryptic meaning. Sara recalled how legendary Odysseus, sailing near the fabled Sirens, ordered his men to fill their ears with wax, then lashed himself to the mast so he alone might hear the temptresses' call, while the crew rowed frantically past bright, alluring shoals. Would it hurt to take the glasses off and stare at the rippled landscape? If transfixed, wouldn't her friends rescue her? Or might her mind be forever absorbed by the panorama? People seldom mentioned the Spectral Flow--a blindspot on maps of the Slope. Even those hardy men who roamed the sharp-sand desert, spearing roul shamblers beneath the hollow dunes, kept awed distance from this poison landscape. A realm supposedly bereft of life. Only now Sara recalled a day almost two years ago, when her mother lay dying in the house near the paper mill, with the Dolo waterwheel groaning a low background lament. From outside Melina's sickroom, Sara overheard Dwer discussing this place in a low voice. Of course her younger brother was specially licensed to patrol the Slope and beyond, seeking violations of the Covenant and Scrolls. It surprised Sara only a little to learn he had visited the toxic land of psychotic colors. But from snippets wafting through the open door, it sounded as if Melina had also seen the Spectral Flow-before coming north to marry Nelo and raise a family by the quiet green Roney. The conversation had been in hushed tones of deathbed confidentiality, and Dwer never spoke of it after. Above all, Sara was moved by the wistful tone of her dying mother's voice. "Dwer . . . remind me again about the colors. ..." The horses did not seem to need eye protections, and the two drivers wore theirs lackadaisically, as to stave off a well-known irritation rather than dire peril. Relieved to be out of the Buyur tunnel, Kepha murmured to Nuli, sharing the first laughter Sara had heard from any Illias. She found her thoughts more coherent now, with surprise giving way to curiosity. What about people and races who are naturally color-blind? The effect must involve more than mere frequency variations on the electromagnetic spectrum, as the urrish glasses probably did more than merely darken. There must be some other effect. Light polarization? Or psi? Emerson's rewq satisfied his own need for goggles. But Sara felt concern when he peeled back the filmy symbiont to take an unprotected peek. He winced, visibly recoiling from sensory overflow, as ir a hoonish grooming fork had plunged into his eye. She started toward him-but that initial reaction was brief. A moment later the starman grinned at her, an expression of agonized delight. Well, anything you can do-she thought, nudging her glasses forward. . . . Her first surprise was the pain that wasn't. Her irises adjusted, so the sheer volume of illumination was bearable. Rather, Sara felt waves of nausea as the world seemed to shift and dissolve ... as if she were peering through layer after layer of overlapping images. The land's mundane topography was a terrain of layered lava flows, eroded canyons, and jutting mesas. Only now that seemed only the blank tapestry screen on which some mad g'Kek artist had embroidered an apparition in luminous paint and textured thread. Each time Sara blinked, her impressions shifted. -Towering buttes were fairy castles, their fluttering pennants made of glowing shreds of windblown haze. ... -Dusty basins became shimmering pools. Rivers of mercury and currents of blood seemed to flow uphill as merging swirls of immiscible fluid. . . . -Rippling like memory, a nearby cliff recalled Buyur architecture-the spires of Tarek Town-only with blank windows replaced by a million splendid glowing lights. . . . -Her gaze shifted to the dusty road, with pumice flying from the wagon wheels. But on another plane it seemed the spray made up countless glittering stars. . . . -Then the trail crested a small hill, revealing the most unlikely mirage of all ... several narrow, fingerlike valleys, each surrounded by steep hills like ocean waves, frozen in their spuming torrent. Underneath those sheltering heights, the valley bottoms appeared verdant green, covered with impossible meadows and preposterous trees. "Xi," announced Kepha, murmuring happily in that accent Sara found eerily strange-familiar . . . . . . and she abruptly knew why! Surprise made Sara release the glasses, dropping them back over her eyes. The castles and stars vanished . . . . . . but the meadows remained. Four-footed shapes could be seen grazing on real grass, drinking from a very real stream. Kurt and Jomah sighed. Emerson laughed and Prity clapped her hands. But Sara was too astonished to utter a sound. For now she knew the truth about Melina the Southerner, the woman who long ago came to the Roney, supposedly from the far-off Vale, to become Nelo's bride. Melina the happy eccentric, who raised three unusual children by the ceaseless drone of Dolo Dam. Mother . . . Sara thought, in numb amazement. This must have been your home. The rest of the horsewomen arrived a few miduras later with their urrish companions, dirty and tired. The Illias unsaddled their faithful beasts before stripping off their riding gear and plunging into a warm volcanic spring, beneath jutting rocks where Sara and the other visitors rested. Watching Emerson, Sara verified that one more portion of his battered brain must be intact, for the spaceman's eyes tracked the riders' nude femininity with normal male appreciation. She squelched a jealous pang, knowing that her own form could never compete with those tanned, athletic figures below. The starman glanced Sara's way and flushed several shades darker, so sheepishly rueful that she had to laugh out loud. "Look, but don't touch," she said, with an exaggerated waggle of one finger. He might not grasp every word, but the affectionate admonishment got through. Grinning, he shrugged as if to say, Who, me? I wouldn 't think of it! The wagon passengers had already bathed, though more modestly. Not that nakedness was taboo elsewhere on the Slope. But the Illias women behaved as if they did not know-or care-about the simplest fact all human girls were taught about the opposite sex. That male Homo sapiens have primitive" arousal responses inextricably bound up in their optic nerves. Perhaps it's because they have no men, Sara thought. Indeed, she saw only female youths and adults, tending chores amid the barns and shelters. There were also urs, of Ulashtu's friendly tribe, tending their precious simla and donkey herds at the fringes of the oasis. The two sapient races did not avoid each other-Sara glimpsed friendly encounters. But in this narrow realm, each had its favored terrain. Ulashtu knew Kurt, and must have spent time in the outer Slope. In fact, some Illias women also probably went forth, now and then, moving among unsuspecting villagers of the Six Races. Melina had a good cover story when she came to Dolo, arriving ivith letters of introduction, and baby Lark on her hip. Everyone assumed she came from somewhere in the Vale. A typical arranged remarriage. It never seemed an issue to Nelo, that his eldest son had an unknown father. Melina subtly discouraged inquiries into her past. But a secret like this . . . With Ulashtu's band came a prisoner. Vigor, the urrish tinker who befriended Sara back at Dolo, only to spring a trap, leading to captivity by Dedinger's fanatics and the reborn Urunthai. Now their roles were reversed. Sara noted Vigor's triplet eyes staring in dismay at the astonishing oasis. How the Urunthai would hate this place! Their predecessors seized our horses to destroy them all. Urrish sages later apologized, after Drake the Elder broke the Urunthai. But how can you undo death? You cannot. But it is possible to cheat extinction. Watching fillies and colts gambol after their mares below a bright rocky overhang, Sara felt almost happy for a time. This oasis might even remain unseen by omniscient spy eyes of alien star lords, confused by the enclosing land of illusion. Perhaps Xi would survive when the rest of the Slope was made void of sapient life. She saw Uigor ushered to a pen near the desert prophet, Dedinger. The two did not speak. Beyond the women splashing in the pool and the grazing herds, Sara had only to lift her eyes in order to brush a glittering landscape where each ripple and knoll pretended to be a thousand impossible things. The country of lies was a name for the Spectral Flow. No doubt a person got used to it, blanking out irritating chimeras that never proved useful or informative. Or else, perhaps the Illias had no need of dreams, since they lived each day awash in Jijo's fantasies. The scientist in Sara wondered why it equally affected all races, or how such a marvel could arise naturally. There's no mention of anything like it in Biblos. But humans only had a sprinkling of Galactic reference material when the Tabernacle left Earth. Perhaps this is a common phenomenon, found on many worlds. But how much more wonderful if Jijo had made something unique! She stared at the horizon, letting her mind free-associate shapes out of the shimmering colors, until a mellow female voice broke in. "You have your mother's eyes, Sara." She blinked, drawing back to find two humans nearby, dressed in the leather garments of Illias. The one who had spoken was the first elderly woman Sara had seen here. The other was a man. Sara stood up, blinking in recognition. "F-Fallon?" He had aged since serving as Dwer's tutor in the wilderness arts. Still, the former chief scout seemed robust, and smiled broadly. A little tactlessly, she blurted, "But I thought you were dead!" He shrugged. "People assume what they like. I never said I'd died." A Zen koan if she ever heard one. But then Sara recalled what the other person said. Though shaded against the desert's glow, the old woman seemed to partake of the hues of the Spectral Flow. "My name is Foruni," she told Sara. "I am senior rider." "You knew my mother?" The older woman took Sara's hand. Her manner reminded Sara of Ariana Foo. "Melina was my cousin. I've missed her, these many years-though infrequent letters told us of her remarkable children. You three validate her choice, though exile must not have been easy. Our horses and shadows are hard to leave behind." "Did Mother leave because of Lark?" "We have ways of making it likely to bear girls. When a boy is born we foster him to discreet friends on the Slope, taking a female child in trade." Sara nodded. Exchange fostering was a common practice, helping cement alliances between villages or clans. "But Mother wouldn't give Lark up." "Just so. In any event, we need agents out there, and Melina was dependable. So it was done, and the decision proved right . . . although we mourned, on hearing of her loss." Sara accepted this with a nod. "What I don't understand is why only women?" The elder had deep lines at the corners of her eyes, from a lifetime of squinting. "It was required in the pact, when the aunties of Urchachkin tribe offered some humans and horses shelter in their most secret place, to preserve them against the Urunthai. In those early days, urs found our menfolk disquieting-so strong and boisterous, unlike their own husbands. It seemed simpler to arrange things on a femaleto-female basis. "Also, a certain fraction of boys tend to shrug off social constraints during adolescence,' no matter how carefully they are raised. Eventually, some young man would have burst from the Illias realm without adequate preparation- and all it would take is one. In his need to preen and make a name, he might spill our secret to the Commons at large." "Girls act that way, too, sometimes," Sara pointed out. "Yes, but our odds were better this way. Ponder the young men you know, Sara. Imagine how they would have behaved." She pictured her brothers, growing up in this narrow oasis. Lark would have been sober and reliable. But Dwer, at fifteen, was very different than he became at twenty. "And yet, I see you aren't all women. ..." The senior rider grinned. "Nor are we celibates. From time to time we bring in mature males-often chief scouts, sages, or explosers-men who already know our secret, and are of an age to be calm, sensible companions . . . yet still retain vigor in their step." Fallen laughed to cover brief embarrassment. "My step is no longer my best feature." Foruni squeezed his arm. "You'll do for a while yet." Sara nodded. "An urrish-sounding solution." Sometimes a group of young urs, lacking the means to support individual husbands, would share one, passing him from pouch to pouch. The senior rider nodded, expressing subtleties of irony with languid motions of her neck. "After many generations, we may have become more than a bit urrish ourselves." Sara glanced toward Kurt the Exploser, sitting on a smooth rock studying carefully guarded texts, with both Jomah and Prity lounging nearby. "Then you sent the expedition to fetch Kurt because you want another-" "Ifni, no! Kurt is much too old for such duties, and when we do bring in new partners it is with quiet discretion. Hasn't Kurt explained to you what this is all about? His role in the present crisis? The reason why we gambled so much to fetch you all?" When Sara shook her head, Poruni's nostrils flared and she hissed like an urrish auntie, perplexed by foolish juniors. "Well, that's his affair. All I know is that we must escort you the rest of the way as soon as possible. You'll rest with us tonight, my niece. But alas, family reminiscence must wait till the emergency passes ... or once it overwhelms us all." Sara nodded, resigned to more hard riding. "From here . . . can we see-?" Fallen nodded, a gentle smile on his creased features. "I'll show you, Sara. It's not far." She took his arm as Foruni bade them return soon for a feast. Already Sara's nose filled with scents from the cook- fire. But soon her thoughts were on the path as they crossed narrow,' miraculous meadows, then scrublands where simlas grazed, and beyond to a steepening pass wedged between two hills. Sunlight was fading rapidly, and soon the smallest moon, Passen, could be seen gleaming near the far west horizon. She heard music before they crested the pass. The familiar sound of Emerson's dulcimer, pinging softly ahead. Sara was loath to interrupt, yet the glow drew her-a shimmering lambency rising from Jijo, filling a vista beyond the sheltered oasis. The layered terrain seemed transformed in pearly moonlight. Gone were the garish colors, yet there remained an extravagant effect on the imagination. It took an effort of will in order not to go gliding across the slopes, believing in false oceans and battlements, in ghost cities and starscapes, in myriad phantom worlds that her pattern-gleaning brain Grafted out of opal rays and shadows. Fallon took Sara's elbow, turning her toward Emerson. The starman stood on a rocky eminence with the dulcimer propped before him, beating its forty-six strings. The melody was eerie. The rhythm orderly, yet impossible to constrain, like a mathematical series that refused to converge. Emerson's silhouette was framed by flickering fire as he played for nature's maelstrom. This fire was no imagining-no artifact of an easily fooled eye. It rippled and twisted in the far distance, rimming the broad curves of a mighty peak that reared halfway up the sky. Fresh lava. Jijo's hot blood. The planet's nectar of renewal, melted and reforged. Hammering taut strings, the Stranger played for Mount Guenn, serenading the volcano while it repaid him with a halo of purifying flame. PART FIVE A PROPOSAL FOR A USEFUL TOOL,STRATEGY BASED ON OUR EXPERIENCE ON JIJO: IT HAS BEEN NEARLY A MILLENNIUM SINCE A LARGE OUTBREAK OF TRAEKINESS WAS FOUND. These Hare-ups used to be Frequent embarrassments, where stacks or hapless rings were round languishing without even a single master torus to guide them. But no word of such an occurrence has come within the memory of living wax. The reaction of our lollijhy ship to this discovery on Jijo was disgusted loathing. HOWEVER, LET US NOW PAUSE and consider how the Great Jophur League might learn,benerit from this experiment. Never belore have cousin rings dwelled in such intimacy with other races Although polluted,contaminated, these traeki have also acquired waxy expertise aoout urs, hoon, and qheuen sapient lilc-torms--as well as human wolflings and gis-ek vermin. MOREOVER, the very traits that we Jophur find repellent in traeki-natural rings--their lack of locus, sell, or ambition--appear to enable them to achieve empathy with unitary beings! The other five races of Jijo trust these ring stacks. They confide secrets, share confidences, delegate some traekts with medical tasl