Brightness Reef

Asx

The plunder ship soon departed as it came, amid a storm of whirling fragments of our poor, shattered forest. A tornado leaned in its wake, as if Jijo’s own ghostly hand were reaching, clasping, trying to restrain it.

Alas, this departure was no cause for joy, for the crew vowed an early return. Surety of this promise squatted near the steaming scar where the ship had lain — a black cube, half an arrowflight wide, featureless save where a ramp led to a gaping hatch.

Nearby, two frail cloth pavilions had been transplanted from Gathering, at the request of star-gods who had stayed behind when their ship departed. One to serve as a place of liaison, and a large tent for “examining specimens.” Already a small foray party of star-humans worked under that canopy, feeding dark mysterious machines with samples of Jijoan life.

Shock still throbbed throughout the Commons. Despite unity-entreaties by their sages, the many septs and clans cleaved, each seeking shelter among its own kind. Emissaries darted among these cloistered groups, parleying in hushed secrecy. All save the youngest of the Six, whose envoys were rebuffed.

For the moment no one, not even the traeki, wants to speak to humans.

Sara

Around midafternoon, the river spilled into canyon country. As if remembering some urgent errand, the water hastened through a terrain of thorny scrub, clinging to eroded slopes. Sara recalled these badlands from childhood fossil-hunting trips with Dwer and Lark. Those had been good times, despite the heat, stale food, and gritty dust. Especially when Melina used to come along, before the final lingering illness that took her away, leaving Nelo an old man.

Their mother’s soft accent used to grow stronger, Sara recalled, the farther south they traveled. The open sky never seemed to cause her any dread.

In contrast, the crew of the Hauph-woa grew restless with each southward league, especially after the morning’s episode of inept piracy, by the shattered bridge. Clearly the hoon sailors would prefer tying up for the rest of the day under some rocky shelter. The captain reminded them, with a farty blat from his violet sac, that this was no leisurely dross run but an urgent mission for the Commons.

A prevailing west wind normally filled the sails of craft climbing upstream. In places where the river’s current pushed strongest, trusty hoon operators offered winch tows from cleverly camouflaged windmills-shaped like upright eggbeaters — that tapped the funneled breeze under cliff overhangs. But the first set of lonely vanes swept in and out of sight before anyone could emerge from the attached hut to answer their hails, and half a midura later, the overseer of the next windmill barely finished a rumbling courtesy-preamble before the river hauled the Hauph-woa beyond range.

Like the tug of time, Sara thought. Pulling you into the future before you’re ready, leaving behind a wake of regrets.

If only life let you catch a friendly tow rope now and then, to climb back into the past, offering a chance to change the flow of your own life-stream.

What would she do, with the last year or two to live over again? Could any amount of foresight have averted the sweet pain of giving her heart where it did not belong? Even with foreknowledge of Joshu’s nature, would or could she have rejected in advance all those months of heady joy, when she had pretended in her own mind that he could be hers alone?

Might any amount of prophecy have helped save his life?

An image came to her, unbeckoned and unwelcome out of memory. Recollection of the very day she fled Biblos Citadel, clutching her books and charts, rushing home to that treehouse overlooking Dolo Dam, to drown herself in study.

—black banners flapping in a zephyr that blew past the castle’s heavy roof-of-stone…

—murmur-kites, tugging at their tether strings, moaning their warbling lament during the mulching ceremony for Joshu and the other plague victims…

—a tall, fair-skinned woman, newly come by boat from far-off Ovoom Town, standing by Joshu’s bier, performing a wife’s duty, laying on his brow the wriggling . torus that would turn mortal flesh into gleaming, crystal dust…

—the poised, cool face of Sage Taine, rimmed by a mane of hair like Buyur steel, approaching to graciously forgive Sara’s year-long indiscretion… her “fling” with a mere bookbinder… renewing his offer of a more seemly union…

—her last sight of Biblos, the high walls, the gleaming libraries, with forest-topped stone overhead. A part of her life, coming to an end as surely as if she had died.

The past is a bitter place, said the Scrolls. Only the path of forgetfulness leads ultimately to redemption.

A sharp, horrified gasp was followed by a clatter and crash of fallen porcelain.

“Miss Sara!” an aspirated voice called. “Come quickly, please. All of you!”

She hurried from the starboard rail to find Pzora puffing in agitation, ers delicate arms-of-manipulation reaching out imploringly. Sara’s heart leaped when she saw the Stranger’s pallet empty, blankets thrown in disarray.

She spied him, backed between three barrel-caskets of human dross, clutching a jagged pottery shard. The wounded man’s eyes gaped, wide and wild, staring at the traeki pharmacist.

He’s terrified of Pzora, she realized. But why?

“Do not fear,” she said soothingly in GalSeven, stepping forward slowly. “Fear is inappropriate at this time.”

Eyes showing white above the irises, his gaze swung from her to Pzora, as if unable to picture the two of them in the same frame, the same thought.

Sara switched to Anglic, since some coastal human settlements used it almost exclusively.

“It’s all right. It is. Really. You’re safe. You’ve been hurt. Terribly hurt. But you’re getting better now. Really. You’re safe.”

Some words prompted more reaction than others. He seemed to like “safe,” so she repeated it while holding out her hand. The Stranger glanced anxiously at Pzora. Sara moved to block his view of the traeki, and some tension diminished. His eyes narrowed, focusing on her face.

Finally, with a resigned sigh, he let the jagged sliver fall from trembling fingers.

“That’s good,” she told him. “No one’s going to harm you.”

Though the initial flood of panic was over, the Stranger kept glancing toward the Dolo Village pharmacist, shaking his head with surprise and evident loathing.

“Bedamd… bedamd… bedamd…”

“Now be polite,” she chided, while sliding a folded blanket behind his head. “You wouldn’t be taking a nice boat trip to Tarek Town without Pzora’s unguents. Anyway, why should you be afraid of a traeki? Who ever heard of such a thing?”

He paused, blinked at her twice, then commenced another pathetic attempt to speak.

“A-jo… A-joph… j-j-jo-joph…”

Frustrated, the Stranger abruptly stopped stammering and shut his mouth, squeezing his lips in a tight, flat line. His left hand raised halfway to the side of his head- toward the bandage covering his horrible wound — then stopped just short, as if touching would make his worst fears real. The arm dropped and he sighed, a low, tremulous sound.

Well, he’s awake at least, Sara thought, contemplating a miracle. Alert and no longer feverish.

The commotion attracted gawkers. Sara called for them to move back. If a traeki could set off hysteria in the wounded man, what about the sight of a qheuenish male, with sharp clambering spikes up and down each leg? Even these days, there were humans who disliked having other members of the Six close by.

So the next sound was the last thing Sara expected to hear—

Laughter.

The Stranger sat up, eyeing the gathered passengers and crew. He gaped at Jomah, the exploser’s son, who had climbed Blade’s broad back, clasping the head-cupola jutting from the qheuen’s blue carapace. Blade had always been gentle and popular with the kids of Dolo, so Sara thought little of it. But the Stranger sucked breath, pointed, and guffawed.

He turned and saw a sailor feeding tidbits to a favorite noor, while another hoon patiently let Prity, the chimpanzee, perch on his broad shoulder for a better view. The Stranger let out a dry, disbelieving cackle.

He blinked in puzzled surprise at the sight of the g’Kek scriven-dancer, Fakoon, who had spun over to rest wheels between Pzora and the urrish tinker, Ulgor. Fakoon ogled the injured human with a pair of waving eyestalks, turning the other two toward his neighbors as if to ask — “What’s going on?”

The Stranger clapped hands like a delighted child, laughing uproariously as tears flowed tributaries down his dark, haggard cheeks.

Asx

It was as if a century’s enlightenment by our Holy Egg — and all the earlier hard work to establish the Commons — were forgotten in the aftermath. Few rewq could be seen anywhere, as suspicion-poisons drove them off our brows to sulk in moss-lined pouches, leaving us to rely on mere words, as we had done in ages past, when mere words often led to war.

my/our own folk brought samples of recent noxious rumors, and i laid our base segment over/upon the vileness, letting its vapors rise up our central core, bringing distasteful understanding of these odious thoughts—

—our human neighbors are not trustworthy anymore, if they ever were.

—they will sell us out to their gene-and-clan cousins in the foray party.

—they lied with their colorful tale of being poor, patronless wolflings, scorned among the Five Galaxies.

—they only feigned exile, while spying on us and this world.

Even more bitter was this gossipy slander

—they will depart soon with their cousins, climbing to resume the godlike life our ancestors forsook. Leaving us to molder in this low place, cursed, forgotten, while they roam galaxies.

That was the foulest chattering stench, so repugnant that i/we vented a noisome, melancholy steam.

The humans… might they really do that? Might they abandon us?

If/when that happened, night would grow as loathsome as day. For we would ever after have to look up through our darkness and see what they had reclaimed.

The stars.

Lark

The forayer biologist made him nervous. I Ling had a way of looking at Lark — one that kept him I befuddled, feeling like a savage or a child.

Which he was, in comparison, despite being older in duration-years. For one thing, all his lifetime of study wouldn’t fill even one of the crystal memory slivers she dropped blithely into the portable console slung over her one-piece green coverall.

The dark woman’s exotic, high cheekbones framed large eyes, a startling shade of creamy brown. “Are you ready, Lark?” she asked.

His own pack held four days’ rations, so there’d be no need to hunt or forage, but this time he would leave behind his precious microscope. That treasure of urrish artifice now seemed a blurry toy next to the gadgets Ling and her comrades used to inspect organisms down to the level of their constituent molecules. What could we tell them that they don’t already know? he pondered. What could they possibly want from us?

It was a popular question, debated by those friends who would still speak to him, and by those who turned their backs on any human, for being related to invaders.

Yet the sages charged a human — and a heretic at that — to guide one of these thieves through a forest filled with treasure. To begin the dance of negotiating for our lives.

The Six had one thing to offer. Something missing from the official Galactic Library entry on Jijo, collated by the Buyur before they departed. That thing was recent data, about how the planet had changed after a million fallow years. On that, Lark was as “expert” as a local savage could be.

“Yes, I’m ready,” he told the woman from the starship.

“Good, then let’s be off!’’ She motioned for him to lead.

Lark hoisted his pack and turned to show the way out of the valley of crushed trees, by a route passing far from the cleft of the Egg. Not that anyone expected its existence to stay secret. Robot scouts had been out for days, nosing through the glens, streams, and fumaroles. Still, there was a chance they might mistake the Egg for just another rock formation — that is, until it next started to sing.

Lark’s chosen path also led away from the canyon where the innocents had been sent — the children, chimpanzees, lorniks, zookirs, and glavers. Perhaps the plunderers’ eyes weren’t omniscient, after all. Maybe precious things could be hidden.

Lark agreed with the sages’ plan. Thus far.

Clots of spectators normally gathered at the valley rim to watch the black cube drink sunlight without reflections or highlights. When the two humans reached those heights, one group of urrish onlookers backed away nervously, hooves clattering like pebbles on hard stone. They were all young unbrooded females with empty mate pouches. Just the sort to have an itch for trouble.

Conical heads bobbed and hissed, lowering toward the humans, displaying triangles of serrated teeth. Lark’s shoulders tensed. The rewq in his belt pocket squirmed as it sensed rancor in the air.

“Stop that!” he warned, when Ling started pointing an instrument toward the milling urs. “Just keep walking.”

“Why? I only want to take—”

“Of that I’m sure. But now’s not a good time.”

Lark held her elbow, urging her along. From first contact he could tell she was quite strong.

A rock shot past them from behind and struck the ground ahead. An aspirated shout followed.

“Skirlssss!”

Ling started to turn in curiosity, but Lark kept her moving. Added voices joined in.

“Skirls!”

“Jeekee skirlsss!”

More stones pelted around them. Ling’s eyes showed dawning concern. So Lark reassured her, dryly, “Urs don’t throw very well. Lousy aim, even after they learned about bows and arrows.”

“They are your enemies,” she observed, quickening the pace on her own accord.

“That’s putting it too strong. Let’s just say that humans had to fight a bit for our place here on Jijo, early on.”

The urrish rabble followed, easily keeping up, shouting and stoking their nerve — until one of their own kind galloped in from the east, swerving suddenly in front of the throng. Wearing the brassard of a Proctor of Gathering, she spread her arms wide, displaying two full mating pouches and active scent glands. The mob stumbled to a halt as her head bobbed bold, aggressive circles, snapping and shooing them away from the two humans.

Law and order still function, Lark thought, with relief. Though for how much longer?

“What were they shouting at us?” Ling asked after marching farther under a canopy of fine-needled vor trees. “It wasn’t in GalSix or GalTwo.”

“Local dialect.” Lark chuckled. “Jeekee was originally a hoonish curseword, now in common use. It means smelly — as if those randy little unwed urs should talk!”

“And the other word?”

Lark glanced at her. “Insults are important to urs. Back in pioneer days, they wanted something to call us. Something humans would find both offensive and apropos. So, during an early truce, they very nicely asked our founders to tell ’em the name of an animal familiar to us. One that lived in trees and was known for being silly.”

Her eyes, taken straight on, were large and exquisite. Hardly the sort you’d expect on a pirate.

“I don’t get it,” Ling said.

“To them we’re tree-climbers. Just as they must have reminded our ancestors of horses, hinneys, grass-browsers.”

“So? I still don’t—”

“So we make an effort to act really insulted, when an angry urs calls one of us a squirrel. It makes them so happy, you see.”

She looked puzzled, as if many parts of his explanation confused her. “You want to please your enemies?” she asked.

Lark sighed. “No one on the Slope has enemies anymore. Not on that kind of scale.”

That is, not until lately, he added silently. “Why?” he continued, trying to turn the interrogation around. “Are enemies common where you’re from?”

It was her turn to sigh. “The galaxies are dangerous. Humans aren’t well-liked by many.”

“So said our ancestors. It’s because humans are wolflings, right? Because we uplifted ourselves, without the help of a patron?”

Ling laughed. “Oh, that old myth!” Lark stared. “Do you… You can’t mean…?” “That we know the truth? Our origin and destiny?” She smiled, an expression of serene knowing. “Goodness, lost child of the past, you people have been away a long time. Do you mean that you have never heard of our gracious lords, the Rothen? The beloved patrons of all humankind?”

His foot caught a stone, and Ling grabbed his arm to steady him. “But we can discuss that later. First I want to talk about these — what did you call them — skirrils?”

She held out a finger adorned with a bulbous ring Lark guessed must be a recording device. It took an effort of will to switch mental tracks, suppressing his flare of curiosity about galactic issues. “What? Oh, that’s squirrels.”

“You imply they are arboreal and humanlike. Will we get to see any along the way?”

He blinked at her, then shook his head. “Um, I don’t think so. Not this trip.”

“Well, what can you tell me about them? For instance, do they show any aptitude for tool use?”

Lark needed neither psi nor rewq to read the mind of his lovely guest. He carried her question toward its unmistakable aim.

Do they show a talent for machinery? For war and commerce? For philosophy and an?

Do they have Potential? The magic essence that it takes to profit from the right kind of help?

Do they have the rare tincture, the promise, that makes a patron’s push worthwhile? The stuff to become starfarers someday?

Are they prospects for uplift?

Lark concealed his surprise over her ignorance. “Not to the best of my knowledge,” he answered honestly, since the only squirrels he’d seen were in ancient, faded pictures from old Earth. “If we pass near any, you can see for yourself.”

Clearly, the star-forayers were here seeking bio-treasure. What else might poor Jijo offer that was worth sneaking past the sentries of the Migration Institute, slipping through star-lanes long ceded to the strange, menacing civilization of the Zang, then braving Izmunuti’s deadly carbon wind?

What else? Lark pondered. Except refuge? Ask your own ancestors, boy.

The newcomers made no pretense, as Lark might have expected, of representing a galactic agency or feigning a legal right to survey Jijo’s biosphere. Did they think the exiles had no memory of such things? Or did they simply not care? Their goal — data about changes since the Buyur left — made Lark’s lifework more precious than he ever imagined. So much that Lester Cambel had ordered him to leave his notebooks behind, lest they fall into alien hands.

The sages want me to play it close. Try to find out at least as much from her as she learns from me.

A foredoomed plan, of course. The Six were like infants, ignorant of the rules of a deadly game. Still, Lark would do his best, so long as his agenda and the sages’ remained the same. Which might not always be the case.

They know that. Surely they’ve not forgotten I’m a heretic?

Fortunately the forayers had assigned their least intimidating member to accompany him. It might just as easily have been Rann, a huge male with close-cropped gray hair, a booming voice, and a wedgelike torso that seemed about to burst from his snug uniform. Of the two others who emerged from the black station, Kunn was nearly as masculinely imposing as Rann, with shoulders like a young hoon’s, while pale-haired Besh was so dramatically female that Lark wondered how she moved so gracefully with a body that prodigiously curved. Compared to her colleagues, Ling seemed almost normal, though she would have caused a stir growing up in any Jijoan town — no doubt provoking many duels among hot-tempered suitors.

Don’t forget your vow, Lark reminded himself, puffing in exertion while climbing a steep part of the trail. Perspiration stained the front of Ling’s blouse, which clung to her in provocative ways. He forced himself to look away. You made a choice, to live for a goal greater than yourself. If you wouldn’t forsake that aim for an honest woman of Jijo, don’t even think about giving it up for a raider, an alien, an enemy of this world.

Lark found a new way to direct the heat in his veins. Lust can be blocked by other strong emotions. So he turned to anger.

You plan to use us, he mused silently. But things may turn out different than you think.

That attitude, in turn, roused an obstinate layer, overcoming his natural curiosity. Earlier, Ling had said something about humans no longer being considered wolflings, out among the stars. No longer orphans, without patrons to guide them. From the look in her eye, she had clearly expected this news to cause a stir. No doubt she wanted him to beg for further information.

I’ll beg if I must — but I’d rather buy, borrow, or steal it. We’ll see. The game’s just in its opening rounds.

Soon they passed stands of lesser-boo. Ling took samples of some segmented stems — each no more than ten centimeters across — deftly slicing near-transparent sections into her analyzer.

“I may be a dumb native guide,” he commented. “But I’ll wager boo doesn’t show much sign of pre-sapience.”

Her head jerked when he said the word. Thus Lark ended one pretense.

We know why you’re here.

Ling’s dusky skin did not hide a flush. “Did I suggest any such thing? I just want to track genetic drift since this species was planted by the Buyur. We’ll need a benchmark to compare trends in animals. That’s all.”

So we begin the outright lies, he thought. From fossil evidence, Lark knew that boo already thrived on Jijo long before the Buyur won their lease, twenty million years ago. Perhaps it was imported by a previous tenant. Whole ecosystems had coevolved around the successful vegetal type, and countless animals now relied on it. But things must have been rough for the first aeon or so, as boo pushed native flora out of many watersheds.

Lark knew little about the biochemical level, but from fossils he was sure the genus hadn’t changed much in a hundred million years.

Why would she lie about something so unimportant? The Scrolls taught that deceit was not only wrong, but also a fickle, dangerous ally. And habit forming. Once you start lying, it’s hard to stop. Eventually it is small, needless lies that get you caught.

“Speaking of pre-sapience,” Ling said, folding her sample case, “I can’t help wondering where you folks stashed your chimpanzees. I’m sure they must have drifted in interesting ways.”

It was Lark’s turn to give away too much with an involuntary twitch. Denial was useless. Humans don’t need rewq to play this game with each other — reading clues in each other’s faces. Lester must know I’ll betray as much as I learn.

“Chimps are like children. Naturally we sent them away from possible danger.”

Ling looked left and right. “Do you see any danger?”

Lark almost burst out with sardonic laughter. In Ling’s eyes danced a complexity of things he could only guess. But some thoughts were clear without being spoken aloud.

You know that I know. I know that you know that I know. And you know that I know that you know that I know…

There is another emotion that can overcome hormonal lust, or the fury of anger.

Respect.

He nodded to his adversary, meeting her gaze full on.

“I’ll let you know if we pass near any chimps, so you can see for yourself.”

Ling had extremely sharp vision and proved it frequently by spotting movements Lark would have missed — forest creatures foraging, browsing, hunting, or tending their young. In this, she reminded him of Dwer. But Ling also owned many tools, which she brought swiftly to bear on whatever crawling, flitting, or ambling thing caught her attention.

She must really have studied those old Buyur records, for their progress was slowed by frequent sighs of recognition, when she would classify a species of shrub, tree, or four-winged bird, then ask Lark to add whatever quaint name the locals used. Lark gave cautious answers — just enough to support his value as a local expert.

Sometimes Ling would pause and mutter into her ring, as if contemplating what she had learned. Lark realized with a shiver that she must be in contact with her base. This was speech at a distance, not like semaphore, far-casting, or even rare psi-telepathy, but the high-tech kind mentioned in books, perfect and reliable. The voice of the person at the other end could barely be made out as a whisper. He guessed it must be projected somehow, compactly, to the region near her ear.

At one point, Ling murmured in a dialect form of Anglic, rather hard to follow.

“Yea, yea… Oright. A’ll try to speed ip. But yigotta chuz — distince er ditail.”

The other party must have been persuasive, for Ling picked up the pace when the march resumed — until the next excited discovery caused her to forget her promise and go right back to dawdling over some intriguing detail. Lark found this character flaw — how easily she was distracted by the sight of living things — the first thing he honestly liked about her.

Then Ling spoiled it by patronizing him, defining — in slow, simple words — what “nocturnal” meant. Lark quashed resentment. He had read enough adventure novels as a kid to know how a native guide was supposed to act. So he thanked her respectfully. There might be future advantages to be had in letting her maintain her stereotypes.

For all of Ling’s enthusiasm and keen eyesight, she was no hunter like Dwer. Even to Lark, the surroundings frothed with signs-footprints and broken stems, feces and territory marks, wisps of fur, scale, feather, and torg. Any child of the Six could read such stories, found along the path. But Ling seemed aware only of what was currently alive.

Thinking about Dwer made Lark smile. By the time he gets back from his mundane glaver hunt, I’ll be the one with wild stories to tell, for a change.

At intervals, Ling unfolded an instrument with twin “holio screens,” one showing a forest scene that rippled and moved as Lark stared over her shoulder, showing someplace nearby, he could tell from the foliage. The other screen displayed charts and figures he found indecipherable-which was humbling. He had read nearly every biology text in Biblos and figured he should at least understand the vocabulary.

Maybe the “Yes, bwana” routine isn’t such an act. Turns out I may be illiterate, after all.

Ling explained this was data from one of the robot probes, climbing the same path some distance ahead. “Could we move faster now?” she asked eagerly. “The robot has subdued some interesting specimens. I want to reach them before they deteriorate.”

She had been the one dawdling. Still, Lark only nodded.

“Whatever you say.”

The first specimen was a hapless wuankworm whose burrow had been sliced open with scalpel-smoothness. A web of fibrous stuff defied repeated battering by the worm’s bony head, as it fought futilely to escape.

Ling spoke into her ring. “This feral form seems related to ore-gleaners the Buyur imported from Dezni, three aeons ago. Dezni-evolved organisms should estivate after injection with clathrate of methane. We’ll try a larger dose now.”

She aimed a device that sent a slender tube flashing like a resolute predator, piercing a crease between two armor plates. The worm flinched, then slumped, quivering.

“Good. Now let’s see if encephalization has changed during the last megayear.” She turned to Lark and explained. “That’s to see if they have more brain matter.”

Now that I knew, he thought, but restrained himself and remarked instead,

“How perfectly amazing.”

Lark learned to pass instruments, draw blood, and assist his employer as required. At one point the raspy tongue of an angry longsnout whipped between the strands of its cage and would have torn strips off Ling’s arm, if he had not yanked it away in time. After that, Ling seemed to realize her “native guide” had uses beyond toting, carrying, and being impressed whenever she spoke.

Though the robot’s specimens were “brainy” types, living by their wits as hunters or omnivorous gatherers, Lark thought none of them likely prospects for uplift. Maybe in ten million years, when this galaxy is reopened for legal settlement. By then, longsnouts or leap raptors may be ready, tested by evolution and Ifni’s luck, primed for adoption by some kindly elder race.

Yet, watching her use sorcerous rays and probes to appraise a mangy-looking carrion snorter, Lark could not help but imagine the beast responding by rearing up on its hind legs and reciting an ode to the comradeship of living things. Ling’s group clearly thought they might find something precious, emerging on Jijo ahead of schedule. Once potential is there, all it takes is help from a patron to set a new race on the Upward Path.

A few texts in Biblos disagreed. A birth does not always need a midwife, they claimed.

Lark chose to follow up that idea during the next part of the trek.

“A while back you implied Earthlings aren’t known as wolflings anymore.”

Ling smiled enigmatically. “Some still believe that old myth. But others have known the truth for quite a while.”

“The truth?”

“About where we came from. Who gave humanity the boon of thought and reason. Our true patrons. The Rothen mentors and guides we owe everything we are, and ever will be.”

Lark’s heart beat faster. A few tomes on the subject had survived the fire that ravaged the Biblos xenology shelves, so he knew the debate was still raging when the sneakship Tabernacle left for Jijo, three centuries ago. In those days, some speculated that humanity had been helped, in secret by clandestine benefactors, long before the historical era. Others held out for the model of Darwin — that intelligence could evolve all by itself, without outside help, despite the skepticism of Galactic science. Now Ling insisted the debate was settled.

“Who are they?” Lark asked in a hushed voice. “Did some Rothen come to Jijo with you?”

That smile returned, a knowing look, tugging her high cheekbones. “Truth for truth. First you tell me the real story. What’s a pack of humans doing here on this dreary little world?”

“Uh… which pack are you talking about? Yours or mine?”

Her silent smile was his only answer, as if to say — “Go ahead and be coy, I can wait.”

Ling followed tracers left by the relentless robot, leading from one sedated creature to the next. As the day waned, she picked up the pace until they reached the crest of a long ridge. From there, Lark saw several more plateaus to the north, slanting up toward Rimmer peaks. Instead of the usual covering of native trees, the nearest mesa bore a blanket of darker green, a dense sward of giant boo — stems so huge that individuals could be made out even from where he stood. A few streaks of stone, and one of water, broke the expanse of gently swaying tubes.

Their final specimen was an unfortunate rock-staller, no more than a curled-up ball of spines when they cut away the webbing the robot used to restrain its victims. Ling prodded the creature with a tool that emitted a short, sharp spark, but got no reaction. She repeated, at a higher setting. Lark’s stomach turned as he caught a stench from curling smoke.

“It’s dead,” he diagnosed. “I guess your robot ain’t perfect, after all.”

Lark dug a latrine ditch and prepared a fire. His meal was leaf-wrapped bread and cheese. Hers bubbled when she broke the foil seals, stinging Lark’s nose with unfamiliar, enticing tangs. It wasn’t quite dark by the time he gathered her empty packets to be carried back and sealed as dross.

Ling seemed inclined to resume their conversation.

“Your sage, Cambel, says that no one recalls exactly why your ancestors came. Some sooners sneak into fallow worlds as rogue breeding groups. Others are fleeing war or persecution. I’d like to know what your own founders told the races already here, when they arrived.”

Among the Six, the term sooner applied to small bands who slinked away from the Slope to invade territory forbidden under the sacred Scrolls. But I guess we’re all “sooners” in that sense. Even those living on the Slope. In his heart, Lark had always known it.

Still, he had been commanded to lie.

“You are mistaken,” he said. Deceit tasted foul. “We’re castaways. Our combined ship—”

The forayer woman laughed. “Please. That clever trick set us back a day or so. But before our ship left, we knew. The story is impossible.”

Lark’s lips pressed. No one had expected the bluff to last long. “How do you figure?”

“It’s simple. Humans have only been in Galactic space four centuries or so-three hundred and fifty Jijoan cycles. It’s quite impossible for Earthlings to have been aboard the same ship that brought g’Keks to this world.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, my good rustic cousin, by the time humans entered the galactic scene, there weren’t any g’Kek to be found.”

Lark blinked while she continued.

“When we saw you all there, lining the valley rim, we recognized most of the types. But we had to look up the g’Kek. Imagine our surprise when one word flashed, right at the top.

“The word was — extinct.”

Lark could only stare.

“Your wheeled friends are rare,” Ling concluded. “Those here on Jijo are surely the last of their kind.”

And just when I was starting to like you…

Lark could swear there was a kind of satisfaction in her eyes, over the shock her news caused.

“So you see,” Ling added, “each of us has truths to share. I’ve just told you one. I hope you’ll be as open with me.”

He kept his voice even. “You haven’t found me helpful so far?”

“Don’t get me wrong! Your sages have been so obscure about certain matters. They may not have understood our questions. As you and I converse at greater length, some issues may clarify.”

Lark saw what was going on. Divide and interrogate. He had not been present when the sky-humans met with the sages. She was sure to catch him in a net of discrepancies if he weren’t extremely careful.

“For instance, when Kunn asked about sightings of other spacecraft, since the first sooners came to Jijo, we were told about visits by Zang globes, dipping down to lick the sea, and some distant lights long ago that might have been Institute survey ships. But we’re really interested in occurrences that might have taken place much more—”

A sharp trill interrupted her. Ling lifted the blue finger-ring.

“Yes?”

Her head tilted, listening to a whisper projected near one ear.

“For sure?” she demanded, surprise infecting her voice. Ling’s hands flapped at her belt pouch, pulling forth the pocketbook receiver, whose twin screens came alight with forest images, moving ahead through the lowering evening gloom. Machines don’t sleep, Lark observed.

“Switch view from probe four to probe five,” Ling requested. The scene changed abruptly to a blur of static. On the right, all the charts and graphs showed the flat slashes that denoted “zero” in Galactic Six.

“When did it happen?” the forayer woman demanded of her unseen colleague. Lark watched her face, wishing he could hear more of the other end of the conversation than a vague murmur.

“Replay the last ten minutes before the probe failed.”

The left-hand screen soon lit with images, showing a narrow green corridor with a ribbon of sky above and a stream of scummy water below. The close walls consisted of closely packed stems of towering great-boo.

“Go to double speed,” Ling asked impatiently. The great columns swept by in a blur. Lark leaned closer, finding the scene familiar.

Abruptly, the slim aisle spilled into a shallow crater, a rubble-strewn bowl with a small lake at its center, rimmed by a thorny barricade of looping vines.

Wait a minute. I know this place…

A set of livid cross-hairs crawled across the holio display, converging near the frothy lake shore, while the right-hand screen flashed red symbols in technical Gal-Six. Lark had to labor, but managed to make out certain words—

…anomaly… unknown source… strong digital activity…

His stomach churned as the camera-eye sped toward the disturbance, swooping by slabs of ancient Buyur masonry, as crimson symbols clustered toward the central field of view. Everything inside that tunnel of attention grew more vivid, while the periphery dimmed. Seething emblems flashed preparations that Lark read with dismay — the readying of weapons, powering up for use.

Dwer always said this mulc-spider was nastier than most and warned people to stay away. But what on Jijo could the robot have to worry about?

Another thought struck him.

My God, isn’t this the direction Dwer was headed, chasing after that runaway glaver?

The machine decelerated. Lark recognized the thick tangle of an aged mulc-spider, its vines splayed across the remains of some ancient Buyur structure.

The robot’s view skimmed past a pale figure, hunched on the ground, and Lark blinked.

Was that a glaver, lying in the open? Ifni, we went to such trouble hiding them, and this machine shoots past one without noticing.

Another surprise slipped by the camera’s periphery as it slowed. A lean animal, four-footed and wiry, black fur nearly blending with the dark tangle. The white teeth of a noor flashed briefly, chattering surprised defiance at the onrushing machine, then vanishing to one side as the robot cruised on, single-mindedly.

A noor? Up in the mountains? Without knowing why, Lark tasted bile.

The machine slowed to a crawling hover. Red crosshairs converged downward toward a point throbbing with rhythms of crimson menace.

…digital cognizance… level nine or greater… the GalSix symbols throbbed. Little could be made out in the gloomy snarl below, except some vague flutterings near the center of the cross-hairs. The robot must be targeting with senses other than vision.

…autonomous decision… terminate threat immediately…

Suddenly, the dim scene flashed with brilliance. The central field blazed white as shafts of angry lightning tore into the morass, slicing the mulc-spider’s medusa limbs. Boiling juices sprayed from whipping, severed vines while red targeting circles danced back and forth, seeking something that kept dodging randomly within a confined space.

Ling was reading the data-filled right-hand screen, cursing the robot’s inability to make a clean kill. So Lark felt sure he alone glimpsed a brief outline at one edge of the holio panel. It flashed just an instant but seemed to sear his optic nerve.

One — no, two clusters of arms and legs, intermeshed among the shuddering vines, cowering from the burning fury above.

Static again filled the displays.

“No, I can’t head over there right now. It’s half a mictaar from here. My guide and I would flounder in the dark. It’ll have to wait till—”

Listening again, Ling sighed. “All right, I’ll ask him.” She lowered her ring and turned.

“Lark, you know this country. Is there a trail—”

She stopped, and stood up quickly, peering left, then right.

“Lark?”

She called into the night, now a velvet blackness dusted with the winking luster of this galaxy’s third brightest spiral arm.

“Lark! Where are you?”

Wind stirred branches overhead, brushing the forest silence. There was no way of knowing how long it was since he had left, or in which direction.

With a sigh, Ling lifted her hand and reported the abandonment.

“How should I know?” she replied to a curt query. “Can’t blame the nervous monkey for spooking. Never saw a robot’s cut-beam at work before. He may be halfway home by now, if he stops before the coast—

“Yes, yes. I know we hadn’t decided about that, but it’s too late now. Hardly matters, anyway. All he got away with are a few hints and clues. We’ve got plenty more to bribe the natives with. And there’s more where he came from.”

Asx

Dissension grows.

The Commons writhes against itself like a traeki whose rings were cruelly stacked, without nurturing rapport between the married toruses.

Word arrives by galloping urrish courier from settlements downslope, where anxiety and chaos reign like despotic qheuenish empresses of old. Some villages topple their water tanks, their grain silos, solar heaters, and windmills, claiming authority in the sacred Scrolls, overruling the rescript that our sage council sent in haste the day the ship came — a policy urging that all folk wait-and-see.

Meanwhile, others protect their barns and docks and weirs, laboring to pile concealing vegetation — and violently repelling angry neighbors who approach their precious property bearing torches and crowbars.

Should we not do better here at Gathering? Did not the finest of the Six come together here for yearly rites of union? Yet poison also roils in this place.

First discord — foul suspicion of our youngest sept. Might our human neighbors be allied with invaders? With plunderers? If not now, could they grow tempted, in time?

Oh, dire notion! Theirs is the highest grasp of science among the Six. What hope have we, without their aid, ever to pierce the deceits of godlike felons?

So far, some faith has been restored by the noble example of Lester and his deputies, who swear devotion to Jijo and our Holy Egg. Yet do not rumors and odious doubts still fly, like whirling soot, amid these gentle glades?

Dissension multiplies. A harvest team returns from one of the deep caves where wild rewq breed, to find the cavern walls deserted, no rewq to be seen. And the ones within our pouches languish. They will not sup our vital fluids, nor help us share the secrets of each other’s souls.

Further discord — in each race many are tempted by a siren song. Sweet utterances by our unwelcome guests. Unctuous promises, words of comradeship.

And not merely words.

Do you recall, my rings, when the star-humans spread word they would heal!

Under a canopy brought over from the festival grounds — shaded by their dark, cubic outpost — they call forth the lame, sick, and hurt. We sages can but watch, helpless and confused, as queues of our wounded brethren limp inside, then amble out elated, transformed, in some part cured.

In truth, many seemed palliated only in their pain. But for some others — miraculous change! Death’s door is transmuted, now a portal to restored youth, vigor, potency.

What can we do, forbid? Impossible. Yet what profuse samplings do the healers gain! Vials brimming with specimens of our diverse biologies. Whatever gaps once filled their dossiers, they now know all about our strengths and weaknesses, our genes and latent natures.

Those returning from the healing, are they well-greeted? Some call their own sept-mates traitor. Some perceive defilement, turning away in hatred.

So we divide. In fresh enmity, we subdivide.

Are we a gathering any longer? Are we a Commons?

Did not you, my/our own third basal ring — ailing for a year with the ague known as torus plaque — did you not attempt to twist this aging pile toward that green pavilion where wonder cures are offered, though not unselfishly? If dissension infests this entity which others call Asx, can a society of individuals cohere any better?

The heavens above have always been our dread. But disharmony now swarms these very meadows, filling our frustrated days and nights until Jijo’s soil now seems as fearsome as her sky.

Can we hope, my rings?

Tonight we do pilgrimage. The most sage of the Six shall travail under darkness, arduously, past fuming pits and misty cliffs, to reach the place of the Holy Egg.

This time, will it answer us? Or shall the fell silence of recent weeks go on?

Can we still hope?

There is a sensation we traeki have learned to describe only since meeting humans on Jijo. Yet never till now have i felt this pang so terribly. It is a desolation not well rendered in Galactic languages, which emphasize tradition and close relations, subsuming thoughts of self to those of race and clan. But in Anglic the feeling is central and well known. Its name is — alone.

Dwer

They took turns rescuing each other. It wasn’t easy. Consciousness kept threatening to own under surges of pain from his many cuts and burns. To make matters worse, Dwer suspected he was deaf.

Rety kept stumbling, yet she would not use her arms for anything except to clutch her treasure tightly to her breast.

That prize very nearly finished them both off, a while ago, when she plunged screaming back into the maelstrom of fire and acid steam, desperately seeking remnants of her precious “bird” amid smoldering stumps and glowing wreckage of the horrible machine that fell from the burning sky.

Dwer had just about had it by the time he got her out of there a second time.

You go back in again, and you can stay for all I care.

For a distance of two arrowflights, he had carried her with aching lungs and scalded skin, fleeing the burning mulc-spider till the worst stench, heat, and suffocating vapors lay well behind. Finally, he had put her down by the muddy creek at the lake’s outlet and plunged his face and arms into the cooling stream. The slaking liquid cut his agony in half, and that was almost more shock than his system could bear. Gasping some water into his lungs, he pushed back, gagging and coughing. When his hands slipped, he fell into the muck, floundering weakly. If Rety had not caught his hair and dragged him out, he might have drowned right there.

A hiccup of ironic laughter joined his hacking cough.

After all that… what a way to go…

For some time they lay there, exhausted and shivering side-by-side, stirring only to scoop mud and slather it over each other’s seared nakedness. It coated raw nerves and offered some small guard against the deepening night chill. Dwer thought of the warm clothes in his pack, nestled amid the boulders somewhere back there amid the fires.

And my bow, left on a boulder. He suppressed that worry with a silent curse. Forget the damn bow! Come back for it later. Now just get out of here.

He tried to gather strength to rise. Rety was pursuing the same goal, with identical results, sagging back with a moan after each effort. Finally, Dwer managed to sit up. The stars swayed as he teetered, pushed by a “wintry wind.

Get moving, or you’ll freeze.

Insufficient reason. Not enough to overcome shock and fatigue.

The girl then. Get her moving, or—

Or what? Dwer somehow doubted even twice this much suffering could kill Rety. Trouble would not spare her yet. Trouble must find her too useful as an ally and friend.

But he was on the right track, Dwer felt sure. There was something else. Another duty. Someone awaiting his return…

The glaver. Dwer’s mud-crusted eyelids opened. I left her hobbled. She’ll starve. Or a Hgger will get her.

With quaking limbs, he fought his way up to his knees — and found he could rise no further.

Rety struggled up, too, and sagged against him. They rested, leaning against each other for support. When folks find our frozen bodies lying together this way, someone’s sure to think we must’ve liked each other.

That, alone, was good reason to move. But messages to his arms and legs weren’t obeyed.

A soft moistness stroked his cheek…

Stop that, Rety.

It repeated. Wet and scratchy.

What’s the kid doing now — licking me? Of all the weird…

Again a wet tongue — rather long and raspy for a little sooner girl. Dwer managed to turn his head… and blinked at the sight of two huge bulging eyes, rotating independently on each side of a broad rounded head. The glaver’s mouth opened again. This time the tongue abraded a path right up Dwer’s lip and over both nostrils. He flinched, then managed to wheeze—

“H-how… how-w…?”

Vaguely, distantly, he heard his own words. So he wasn’t completely deaf, after all.

Knowing a better perch when she saw it, Rety transferred her one-armed grip from his neck to the glaver’s. The other hand still clenched her prize — a fragment of knobs, lumps, and scorched metal feathers.

Dwer didn’t pause to question fortune. He flung himself over the glaver’s other side, sucking warmth from her downy hide. Patiently — or apathetically — the creature let both humans hang on, till Dwer finally found the strength to gather his feet and stand.

One of the glaver’s hind legs still bore remnants of a rope hobble, chewed off at the knot. Behind her, the cause of this miracle grinned with the other end in its mouth. Mudfoot leered at Dwer, eyes glittering.

Always gotta make sure to get full credit, don’t you? Dwer thought, knowing it was ungrateful but thinking it anyway.

Another brilliant explosion sent rays of brightness cutting through black shadows, all centered on the fiery site by the lake. Two more reports followed within a few duras, erasing any thought of going back after his supplies. Flames continued to spread.

He helped Rety up, leaning on the glaver for support. Come on, Dwer said, with a slight incline of the head. Better to die in motion than just lying here.

Even stumbling in the dark, numbed by cold, pain, and weariness, Dwer couldn’t help pondering what he’d seen.

One little bird-machine might have been rare but explainable — a surviving relic of Buyur days, somehow preserved into this era, wandering confused across a continent long abandoned by its masters. But the — machine — that daunting, floating menace — was no dazed leftover of vanished Jijoan tenants. It had been powerful, resolute.

A new thing in the world.

Together they weaved unsteadily down another avenue between two forests of boo. The channel spared them from the frigid wind, and also from having to make any decisions. Each step took them farther from the lakeside conflagration, which suited Dwer fine.

Where there’s one death machine, might there be more?

Could another levitating minifortress come to avenge its brother? With that thought, the narrow, star-canopied aisle ceased seeming a refuge, rather an awful trap.

The boo-lined corridor ended at last, spilling the four of them onto a meadow of knee-high grass swaying before a stiff, icy wind that drained their bodies as they shuffled along. Frost flurries whirled all around. Dwer knew it was just a matter of time before they collapsed.

A grove of scrubby saplings clustered by a small watercourse, some distance from the path. Shivering, he nudged the glaver across the crunching, crackling grass. We’re leaving tracks, the hunter in him carped. Lessons drilled by old Fallen floated to mind. Try keeping to hare rock or water… When you’re being stalked, head downwind…

None of which was helpful now. Instinct led him to a rocky ledge, an outcrop shrouded by low bushes. Without his fire-lighter or even a knife or piece of flint, their best hope lay in finding shelter. Dwer yanked Rety off the glaver’s neck, pushing till she understood to bend and crawl under the shelf. The glaver shuffled inward on all four knees, Mudfoot hitching a ride on her corrugated back. Dwer yanked some fallen branches where the wind would pile leaves on top. Then he also dropped, slithering to join an interspecies tangle of limbs, fur, skin — and someone’s fetid breath not far from his face. Snowflakes sublimed off flesh as body heat spread through the confined space. Just our luck to have a late flurry, so far into spring, he thought. Old Fallen used to say there were just two seasons in the mountains. One was called Winter. The other was also winter, with some green stuff growing to trick the unwary.

He told himself the weather wasn’t really so bad — or wouldn’t be if their clothes hadn’t been burned off their bodies, or if they weren’t already in shock, or if they had supplies.

After a while, Dwer realized the deafness must be fading. He could hear someone’s teeth chattering, then a murmur of some sort, coming from behind him. That was followed by a sharp jab on his shoulder.

“I said could you move jes a bit?” Rety shouted, not far from his ear. “You’re lying on my—”

He shifted. Something bony slid from under his rib-cage. When he lay back down, his flank scraped icy grit. Dwer sighed.

“Are you all right?”

She squirmed some more. “What’d you say?”

He writhed around to see her blurry outline. “Are you okay?” he shouted.

“Oh, sure. Never better, dimmie. Good question.”

Dwer shrugged. If she had energy to be nasty, she was probably far from death’s door.

“You got anything to eat?” Rety added.

He shook his head. “We’ll find something in the morn. Till then, don’t speak ’less you must.”

“Why?”

Because robots probably have ears, he almost said. But why worry the kid?

“Save your strength. Now be good and get some sleep.”

A slight vibration might have been the girl, mimicking his words sarcastically under her breath. But he couldn’t be sure — a blessed side effect to the beating his ears had taken.

With a series of sharp jabs, Mudfoot clambered up his leg to settle in the wedge between his body and Rety’s. Dwer squirmed to a position where his head was less sheltered by the glaver’s warm flank. A bitter chill greeted his face as he peered back at the trail they had just left — the narrow avenue between two vast stands of boo. As a makeshift hunter’s blind, this wasn’t bad — if only more snow would fill in the trampled trail they had left in the broken grass.

We got away from you, One-of-a-Kind, he thought, savoring a victory he had not won. Many patches of skin still seemed too numb, too cool for even the glaver’s warmth to heat up, tracing where the spider’s golden preserving fluid had stuck. No way to clean them right now … if the droplets ever would come off.

Still, we got away, didn’t we?

A faint touch seemed to stroke his mind. Nothing he could pinpoint, but it triggered a tickle of worry. Surely the crazy old mulc-deconstructor couldn’t have survived the inferno by the lake?

It’s just my imagination. Forget it.

Unfortunately, his imagination also supplied what One-of-a-Kind would surely reply.

Ah, my precious. Is that not what you always say?

Shivering from more than mere cold, Dwer settled for a long watch, eyeing the funnel-avenue for other strange things sneaking over the pass through the Rimmer Range.

A sound roused Dwer from a dream filled with sensations of failure and paralysis. His eyes flinched when he opened them to a chill wind. Listlessly, he tried focusing on what had yanked him awake. But all that came to mind was a preposterous notion that someone had called his name.

The Dolphin was up near zenith, its flank shimmering with blue-white stars, seeming to dive between milky waves.

Clouds. And more snow was falling. He blinked, trying to stare. Something was moving out there.

Dwer lifted a hand to rub his eye, but the fingers would not uncurl. When they touched his face, they seemed petrified — a sign of shock compounded by frostbite.

Over there. Is that it?

Something was moving. Not another robot, wafting on smug pillars of force, but a shambling bipedal figure, hurrying upslope at a pace Dwer found professionally lacking. At that rate, whoever-it-was would tire much faster than necessary. No errand was worth taking such risks in this kind of weather.

Of the Six, only a hoon or human could make it this high in a snowfall, and no hoon would let himself get into that much of a hurry.

Hey, you! Don’t go up through the boo! There’s danger thataway!

Dwer’s voice produced only a croak, barely loud enough to rouse the noor, causing Mudfoot to lift its head.

Hey, fool. Can’t you see our trail in the grass and snow? It’s like a Buyur highway out there! Are you blind?

The figure plowed right on by, disappearing into the dark cathedral-like aisle between twin walls of vaulting boo. Dwer slumped, hating himself for his weakness. All I had to do was shout. That’s all. Just a little shout.

Glassy-eyed, he watched more flakes fill the runnel in the grass, slowly erasing all signs leading to this rocky cleft. Well, you wanted to hide, wasn’t that the idea?

Perhaps the four of them would never be found.

Dwer lacked the strength to feel irony.

Some hunter. Some mighty hunter…

The Stranger

It will take some getting used to, this curious unlikely voyage, rushing along in a wooden boat that glides down rocky canyons, swooping past high stone walls, giving a sense of incredible speed. Which is odd, since he knows he used to travel much, much faster than this… though right now it’s hard to recall exactly how.

Then there are his fellow passengers, a mixture of types he finds amazing to behold.

At first, several of them had filled him with raw terror — especially the squishy thing, looking like a stack of phlegmy doughnuts piled up high, venting complex stinks that scrape-tickled his nose and tongue. The mere sight of its corrugated cone wrenched feelings of blank horror — until he realized that something was quite different about this particular Joph—

His mind refuses to bring forth the epithet, the name, even though he trolls and sifts for it.

Words refuse to come easily. Most of the time, they do not come at all.

Worse, he cannot speak or form ideas, or comprehend when others send shaped-sounds toward him. Even names, the simplest of labels, refuse to rest within his grasp but wriggle off like slippery things, too angry or fickle to bear his touch.

No matter.

He resolves to wait, since there is no other choice. He even manages to hold back revulsion when the doughy cone-creature touches him, since healing seems its obvious intent, and since the pain always lessens a bit, each time it ivraps oily tendrils round his throbbing head.

In time, the contact becomes oddly pleasant.

Anyway, she is usually there, speaking to him gently, filling the tunnel-view of his attention with her smile, providing an excuse for frail optimism.

He doesn’t recall much about his former life, but he can dimly remember something about the way he used to live… not so much a philosophy as an attitude—

If the universe seems to be trying to destroy you, the best way to fight back is with hope.