Brightness Reef

Asx

The tiny robot was a wonder to behold. No larger than a g’Kek’s eyeball, it lay pinned down to the I ground by a horde of attacking privacy wasps, covered by their crowded fluttering wings.

Lester was the first sage to comment, after the initial surprise.

“Well, now we know why they’re called privacy wasps. Did you see the way they swarmed over that thing? Otherwise, we’d never have known it was there.”

“A device for spying,” surmised Knife-Bright Insight, tipping her carapace to get a closer look at the machine. “Minuscule and mobile, sent to listen in on our council. We would have been helpless, all our plans revealed, if not for the wasps.”

Phwhoon-dau concurred with a deep umble.

“Hr-rm… We are used to seeing the insects as minor irritants, their presence required by tradition for certain ceremonies. But the Buyur must have designed the wasps for just such a purpose. To patrol their cities and homes, thwarting would-be eavesdroppers.”

“Using a (specifically) designed life-form to deal with the (annoying) threat-indeed, that would have been the Buyur way,” added Ur-Jah.

Lester leaned close to peer at the wasps, whose wings rippled in front of the robot’s tiny eyes, beating a maze of colors that reminded me/us of rewq.

“I wonder what the wasps are showing it,” murmured our human sage.

Then Vubben spoke for the first time since the wasps attacked the intruder.

“Probably exactly what it wants to see,” he suggested confidently.

Do you recall, my rings, how we all nodded, sighed, or umbled respectful agreement? Vubben spoke the words so well, in such tones of wise credibility. Only later did it occur to we/us to ask ourselves—

What?

What in the world could he possibly mean by that?

Lark

During two thousand years of illicit settlement, Lark was hardly the first member of the Six to fly. He wasn’t even the first human.

Soon after the sneakship Tabernacle sank forever into the Midden’s sucking embrace, men and women used to soar like kites, riding steady offshore winds from the blue ocean all the way to the white peaks of the Rimmer Range. Back in those days, lacy airfoils used to catch sky-currents, lofting brave pilots to survey their new world from above.

The last silky glider now lay under glass in a Biblos museum, a wonder to behold, made of the mystical materials monomolecular carbon and woven stress polymer, which the brightest wizards of the Chemists’ Guild could not reproduce today, even if the sages allowed it. Time and mishaps eventually smashed all the others, leaving later human generations to walk the heavy ground like everybody else, and erasing one more cause of jealousy among the Six — though lately, since the Great Peace, groups of ambitious youths had resumed a crude version of the pastime, occasionally risking their lives on spindly frames of hollow boo, covered with hand-woven sheets of wic-cotton. Or else urrish middlings rode bulging balloons, wafting upward on puffs of torrid air. Sometimes success caused a local sensation, but none of the efforts had much lasting effect. Available materials were too heavy, weak, or porous. The wind was much too strong.

Some, with ardent piety, claimed this was a good thing. The sky was not where redemption would be found. Nor in clinging to vanities of the past. Lark normally agreed with the orthodox view, but in this case, he mused—

Such a modest dream. To waft a few leagues through the lower air. Is that so much to ask, when once we had the stars?

He was never one to waste time on idle fancies, though. Certainly Lark never expected personally to spy down on Jijo’s mountains from a great height.

But look at me now!

Ling had clearly enjoyed watching his expression, when she told him of today’s plan.

“We’ll be gone most of the day, to pick up some specimens our robots have snared. Later, as the drones roam farther afield, we’ll go for trips of several days at a time.”

Lark had stared at the alien flying machine, a slender arrow with stubby wings that unfolded after it exited a narrow tunnel from the buried research station. The hatch gaped like a pair of hungry jaws.

How like Ling to spring this on him without warning!

While Besh loaded supplies, the big blond man, Kunn, shouted, “Come on, Ling! We’re running late. Coax your pet aboard or get another.”

Lark set his jaw, determined to show no emotion as he followed her up a ramp. He expected a cave-like interior, but it turned out to be more brightly lit than any enclosed space he’d ever seen. There was no need to let his eyes adapt.

Not wanting to gawk like a yokel, he aimed for a padded seat next to a window and dropped his pack nearby. Lark sat down gingerly, finding the voluptuous softness neither comfortable nor comforting. It felt as if he had settled onto the lap of something fleshy and perhaps queerly amorous. Moments later, Ling added to his unease by strapping a belt across his waist. The hissing closure of the metal hatch made his ears feel funny, increasing his disorientation. The moment the engines came on, Lark felt a strange tickling at the base of his neck, as if a small animal were breathing on the hairs back there. He could not help lifting a hand to brush away at the imaginary creature.

Takeoff was surprisingly gentle, a wafting motion, rising and turning, then the sky-boat swept away so quickly that he had no chance to survey the Glade and its surroundings, or to seek the hidden valley of the Egg. By the time he turned around to press close against the window, the continent was already sweeping underneath as they hurtled southward, many times faster than a catapulted stone. Only minutes later, they dropped away from the alpine hills, streaking over a wide-open plain of steppe grass, which bowed and rippled like the ever-changing surface of a phosphorescent sea. At one point, Lark spotted a drove of galloping stem-chompers, a genus of native Jijoan ungulates, which trumpeted distress and reared away from the airboat’s passing shadow. A band of urrish herders stretched their sinuous necks in expressions of curiosity mixed with dread. Near the adults, a group of early middlings gamboled and snapped in mock battle, ignoring their elders’ sudden, dark focus on the heavens.

“Your enemies certainly are graceful creatures,” Ling commented.

Lark turned and stared at her. What’s she going on about now?

Ling must have misinterpreted his look, hurrying as if to placate. “Of course I mean that in a strictly limited sense, the way a horse or other animal can be graceful.”

Lark pondered before answering. “Hrm. It’s too bad your visit disrupted Gathering. We’d normally be having the Games about now. That’s when you’d see real grace in action.”

“Games?’ Oh, yes. Your version of the fabled Olympics. Lots of running and jumping around, I suppose?”

He nodded guardedly. “There are speed and agility events. Others let our best and bravest test their endurance, courage, adaptability.”

“All traits highly prized by those who brought humanity into being,” Ling said. Her smile was indulgent, faintly condescending. “I don’t imagine any of the six species go up against each other directly in any events, do they? I mean, it’s hard to picture a g’Kek outrunning an urs, or a qheuen doing a pole vault!” She laughed.

Lark shrugged. Despite Ling’s hint regarding a subject of great moment — the question of human origins — he found himself losing interest in the conversation.

“Yes, I suppose it could be. Hard. To picture.”

He turned to look back out the window, watching the great plain sweep by — wave after wave of bending grass, punctuated by stands of dark boo or oases of gently swaying trees. A distance requiring several days to cross by caravan was dismissed in a few brief duras of blithe flight. Then the smoldering mountains of the southern range swarmed into view.

Besh, the forayer pilot, banked the craft to get a closer look at Blaze Mountain, circling at an angle so that Lark’s window stared vertiginously on a vast lava apron where past eruption layers spilled across a country that was both ravaged and starkly renewed. For an instant, he glimpsed the smelters that lay clustered halfway up the mighty eminence. Fashioned to resemble native magma tubes and floes, the forge vented steam and smoke no different from that exhaled by nearby wild apertures. Of course, the camouflage was never meant to endure scrutiny as close as this.

Lark saw Besh share a knowing glance with Kunn, who tapped one of his magical viewing screens. Out of several score glowing red lights, outlining the mountain’s shape, one was marked by sharp symbols and glowing arrows. Dotted lines traced underground passages and workrooms where famed urrish smiths labored to make tools out of those special alloys sanctioned by the sages, second in quality only to those produced farther south, near the peak of towering Mount Guenn.

Incredible, Lark thought, trying to memorize the level of detail shown on Kunn’s screen, for his report to Lester Cambel. Clearly that monitor had little to do with the ostensible purpose of this mission — scouting for advanced “candidate” life-forms. From a few brief exchanges, Lark reckoned Kunn was no biologist. Something in the man’s stance, his way of moving, reminded one of Dwer stalking through a forest, only more deadly. Even after generations of relative tranquillity, a few men and women on the Slope still carried themselves like that, experts whose chief job was to circulate each summer from village to village, training local human militias.

Just in case.

Each of the other five races had similar specialists. A prudent policy, since even now there were regular minor crises — a criminal act here, a wayward tribe of soon-ers there, and spates of hot-tempered friction between settlements. Enough to make “peacetime warrior” no contradiction in terms.

The same might also be true of Kunn. Looking lethally competent didn’t mean he was coiled, preparing to wreak murder.

What’s your purpose, Kunn? Lark wondered, watching symbols flash across the screen, crisscrossing reflections of the outlander’s face. What, exactly, are you looking for?

Blaze Mountain fell behind them as the little vessel now seemed to leap ahead at a new angle, spearing across a brilliant whiteness known as the Plain of Sharp Sand. For a long time, low dunes swept past, undulating in windswept perfection. Lark saw no caravans laboring across the sparkling desert, carrying mail or trade goods to isolated settlements of The Vale. But then, no one sane ranged those searing wastes by day. There were hidden shelters down there, where travelers awaited nightfall, which even Kunn’s rays shouldn’t be able to pick out/amid the glaring immensity.

That pale dazzle was nothing compared to the next sudden transition, crossing over from the sand ocean to the Spectral Flow, a blurry expanse of shifting colors that made Lark’s eyes sting. Ling and Besh tried to peer at it past their sheltering hands, before finally giving up, while Kunn muttered sourly at the static on his display. Lark struggled against a natural reflex to squint, endeavoring instead to loosen his habitual way of focusing. Dwer had once explained that it was the only way to let oneself see in this realm where exotic crystals cast an ever-changing wildness of luminance.

That had been shortly after Dwer won master hunter status, when he hurried home to join Lark and Sara at their mother’s bedside, during the illness that finally took her away, turning Nelo almost overnight into an old man. Melina accepted no food during that final week, and very little drink. Of her two eldest, whose minds she had doted on, day in, day out, ever since arriving in Dolo to be a papermaker’s wife, she now seemed to need nothing. But from her youngest child, she devoured tales of his wanderings, the sights, sounds, and sensations of far corners of the Slope where few ever trod. Lark recalled feeling a jealous pang when he saw the contentment Dwer’s stories gave in her last hours, then chiding himself for having such unworthy thoughts.

That memory swept over him starkly, apparently triggered by the stabbing colors.

Some credulous folk among the Six said these layers of poison stone had magical properties, poured into them by aeons of overlapping volcanic effusions. “Mother Jijo’s blood,” they called it. At that moment, Lark could almost credit the superstition, so struck was he by uncanny waves of familiarity. As if he had been here before, sometime long ago.

With that thought, his eyes seemed to adjust — to open up, letting the muddle of swirling hues blossom into mirage canyons, figment valleys, ghost cities, and even whole phantom civilizations, vaster than the greatest Buyur sites…

Then, just as he was starting to enter fully into the experience, the blur of illusion suddenly ended, cut off as the Spectral Flow plunged into the sea. Besh banked the craft again, and soon the sweeping domain of color vanished like a dream, replaced on the left by a more normal desert of windswept igneous rock.

The line of crashing surf became like a fabled highway, pointing toward lands unknown. Lark fumbled to unfasten his seat belt, moving across the aisle to stare over the great ocean. So vast, he thought. Yet this was nothing compared to the immensities Ling and her comrades spanned with hardly a thought. His eyes peered in hopes of spotting a camouflaged dross-hauler, its gray-green sails slicing the wind, bearing sacred caskets to their final rest. From this height, he might even glimpse the Midden itself, dark blue waters-of-forgetfulness covering a plunge so deep that its trench could take all the arrogant excesses of a dozen mighty civilizations and still bless them with a kind of absolution — oblivion.

They had already dashed beyond the farthest of Lark’s lifetime travels, seeking data for his ever-hungry charts. Even looking with a practiced eye, he found few scattered traces of sapient habitation — a hoonish fishing hamlet, a red qheuen rookery — tucked under rocky clefts or bayou-root canopies. Of course, at this speed something important might sweep by in the time it took to switch windows, which he did frequently as Besh rolled the craft, playing instruments across both shore and sea.

Even those few signs of settlement ceased when they reached the Rift, crossing a few hundred arrowflights west of the distant, hatchet-shape of Terminus Rock.

A series of towering cliffs and deep subsea canyons split the land here. Jagged promontories alternated with seemingly bottomless fingers of dark sea, as if some great claw had gouged parallel grooves almost due east, to form a daunting natural barrier. Dwelling beyond this border labeled you an outlaw, cursed by the sages and by the Holy Egg. But the alien flier made quick work of the realm of serrated clefts and chasms, dismissing them like minor ruts across a well-traveled road.

League after league of sandy scrublands soon passed by, punctuated at long intervals by stark fragments of ancient cities, eroded by wind, salt, and rain. Explosions and pulverizing rays must have shattered the mighty towers, just after the last Buyur tenant turned off the lights. In time, the ceaseless churning of the Midden and its daughter volcanoes would grind even these sky-stabbing stumps to nothing.

Soon the sky-boat left the continent altogether, streaking over chains of mist-shrouded isles.

Even Dwer never dreamed of going this far.

Lark decided not to mention this trip to the lad without discussing it first with Sara, who understood tact and hurt feelings better than either brother.

Then reality hit home. Sara’s back in Dolo. Dwer may be sent off east, hunting glavers and sooners. And when the aliens finish their survey, we all may meet our end, far from those we love.

Lark sank into his seat with a sigh. For a while there, he had actually been enjoying himself. Damn memory, for reminding him the way things were!

For the rest of the trip he kept low-key and businesslike, even when they finally landed near forests eerily different from those he knew, or while helping Ling haul aboard cages filled with strange, marvelous creatures. Professionalism was one pleasure Lark still allowed himself — a relish for studying nature’s ways. But there remained little zest or wonder in the thought of flying.

It was after nightfall when Lark finally shuffled back to his own shabby tent near the Glade — only to find Harul-len waiting there with news.

The low massive figure took up fully half the shelter. At first, standing in the entry with only dim moonlight behind him, Lark thought it was Uthen, his friend and fellow naturalist. But this qheuen’s ash-colored carapace wasn’t scarred from a lifetime digging into Jijo’s past. Harullen was a bookworm, a mystic who spoke with aristocratic tones reminiscent of Gray Queens of old.

“The zealots sent a message,” the heretic leader announced portentously, without even asking Lark about his day.

“Oh? Finally? And what do they say?” Lark dropped his daypack by the entrance and sagged onto his cot.

“As you predicted, they desire a meeting. It is arranged for tonight at midnight.”

Echo-whispers of the final word escaped speaking vents in back, as the qheuen shifted his weight. Lark suppressed a groan. He still had a report to prepare for the sages, summarizing everything he’d learned today. Moreover, Ling wanted him bright and early the next morning, to help evaluate the new specimens.

And now this?

Well, what can you expect when you play games of multiple loyalty? Old-time novels warn how hard things can get when you serve more than one master.

Events were accelerating. Now the rumored, secretive rebel organization had finally offered to talk. What choice had he but to go?

“All right,” he told Harullen. “Come get me when it’s time. Meanwhile, I have work to do.”

The gray qheuen departed silently, except for a faint clicking of claws on the rocky trail. Lark struck a match that sputtered rank fumes before settling enough to light his tiny oil lamp. He unfolded the portable writing table Sara had given him when he graduated from the Roney School, what seemed a geologic age ago. Pulling out a sheet of his father’s best writing paper, he then shaved black powder from a half-used ink stick into a clay mortar, mixed the dust with fluid from a small bottle, and ground the mixture with a pestle till all the lumps were gone. Lark used his pocket knife to sharpen his tree-staller quill pen. At last he dipped the tip into the ink, paused for a moment, and began to write his report.

It was true, Lark realized later, during a tense conclave by the wan opal glow of Torgen, the second moon. Tentatively, suspiciously, the zealots were indeed offering alliance with Harullen’s loose-knit society of heretics.

Why? The two groups have different aims. We seek to reduce, then end, our illegal presence on this fragile world. The zealots only want the old status quo back, our hidden secrecy restored, as it was before the raider ship came — and perhaps a few old scores settled along the way.

Still, envoys of the two groups gathered in the dead of night, near a steaming fumarole, by the winding path leading to the silent nest of the Egg. Most of those in the conspiracy wore heavy cloaks to hide their identities. Harullen, who was among the few still to possess a functioning rewq, was asked to remove the squirming symbiont from his sensory cupola, lest the delicate creature burn itself out in the atmosphere of strained intrigue. Creatures of the Great Peace, rewq were not suited for times of war.

Or is it because the zealots don’t want us to see too much, Lark pondered. Not for nothing were rewq called the “mask that reveals.” Their near-universal hibernation was as troubling as the heavy silence of the Egg itself.

Before starting, the zealots first cracked open several jars, releasing swarms of privacy wasps around the periphery-an ancient ritual whose origins had been lost but that now made earnest sense, after discoveries of the last few days. Then the urrish spokesman for the cabal stepped forward, speaking in Galactic Two.

“Your association sees opportunity in the (greatly lamented) coming of these felons,” she accused. The whistles and clicks were muffled by a cowl, obscuring all but the tip of her muzzle. Still, Lark could tell she wasn’t many seasons past a middling, with at most one husband pouched under an arm. Her diction implied education, possibly at one of the plains academies where young urs, fresh from the herd, gathered within sight of some steaming volcano, to apprentice in their finest arts. An intellectual, then. All full of book learning and the importance of her own ideas.

Yeah, a part of him answered honestly. In other words, not too different from yourself.

Harullen answered the rebel’s challenge, making a political point by speaking Anglic.

“What do you mean by that strange proposition?”

“We mean that you perceive, in these (disliked/unwelcome) aliens, a chance to see your ultimate goals fulfilled!”

The urs stamped a foreleg. Her insinuation sent angry murmurs through the heretic delegation. Yet Lark had seen it coming.

Harullen’s gray carapace rocked an undulating circle. A traeki gesture, which the ringed ones called Objection to Unjust Impeachment.

“You imply that we condone our own murder. And that of every sapient on Jijo.”

The urrish conspirator imitated the same motion, but in reverse — Reiteration of Indictment.

“I do so (emphatically) imply. I do so (in brutal frankness) mean. All know this is what you heretics (misguidedly) desire.”

Lark stepped forward. If the zealots’ murmur included any anti-human slurs, he ignored them.

“That is not (negation reiterated) what we desire!” Lark complained, garbling the qualifier trill-phrase in his haste to speak up.

“There are two reasons for this,” he continued, still struggling in GalTwo.

“First among our grounds (for rebuttal) is this — the aliens (greedy to extreme fault) must not only eliminate all sapient witnesses (to crime/to theft) who might testify in a Galactic court. They must also wipe out the native stock of any (unlucky) species they steal from Jijo! Otherwise, how embarrassing would it be someday, when the (foolish) thieves announce their adoption of a new client race, only to be confronted with proof that it was stolen from this world? For this reason they must exterminate the original population, when they depart.

“This we (in righteousness) cannot allow! Genocide of innocent life is the very crime our group was (in selfless righteousness) formed to fight!”

Harullen and the other heretics shouted approval.

Lark found his throat too dry to continue in Galactic Two. He had made the gesture. Now he switched to Anglic.

“But there is another reason to resist being slaughtered by the aliens.

“There is no honor in simply being killed. Our group’s goal is to seek agreement, consensus, so that the Six shall do the right thing slowly, painlessly, voluntarily, by means of birth control, as an act of nobility and devotion to this world we love.”

“The effect, in the end, would ve identical,” the urrish speaker pointed out, slipping into the same language Lark used.

“Not when the truth is finally revealed! And it will be, someday, when this world has new legal tenants, who take up the common hobby of archaeology.”

That statement triggered confused silence. Even Harullen rotated his cupola to stare at Lark.

“Exflain, flease.” The urrish rebel bent her forelegs, urging him to continue. “What difference will archaeology signify, once we and all our descendants are long gone, our hoof bones littering the wallows of the sea?”

Lark drew himself up, fighting fatigue.

“Eventually, despite all efforts to live by the Scrolls and leave no permanent marks, this story will someday be told. A million years from now, or ten, it will become known that a society of sooners once dwelled here, descendants of selfish fools who invaded Jijo for reasons long forgotten. Beings who nonetheless transcended their ancestors’ foolishness, teaching themselves where true greatness lies.

“That is the difference between seeking dignified self-extinction and being foully murdered. For honor’s sake, and by all the blessings of the Egg, the choice must be ours, every individual’s, not imposed on us by a pack of criminals!”

Harullen and his other friends were clearly moved. They shouted, hissed, and umbled fervent support. Lark even heard some approving murmurs among the cowled zealots. Without benefit of rewq, he could tell he was managing to sound convincing — although deep inside, he scarcely believed his own words.

Ling’s bunch don’t seem to fear archaeological hobbyists of some future aeon.

In fact, Lark didn’t give a damn either, whether some obscure historical footnote said nice things about the Six, far in the distant future.

Good laws don’t need rewards or recognition to make them right. They’re true and just on their own account and should be honored even if you know that no one else is watching. Even if no one ever knows.

Despite all the well-recited flaws of Galactic civilization, Lark knew the rules protecting fallow worlds were right. Though he’d been born flouting them, it was still his duty to help see to it they were obeyed.

Contrary to his own words, he had no objection, in principle, to Ling’s bunch eliminating local witnesses, if the means were gentle. Take a gene-tailored plague, one leaving everyone healthy but sterile. That might handle their witness predicament and solve Jijo’s problem as well.

Ah, but Lark also had a duty to oppose the raiders’ gene-stealing scheme. That, too, was a violation of Jijo, not unlike rape. With the sages apparently •waffling, only the zealot conspiracy seemed willing to fight the alien threat.

Hence Lark’s impassioned lie, meant to build trust between two very different radical bands. He wanted a coalition with the zealots, for one simple reason. If there were plans afoot, Lark wanted a say in them.

Cooperate for now, he told himself as he spoke on, using his best oratorical skills to soothe their suspicions, arguing persuasively for alliance.

Cooperate, but keep your eyes open.

Who knows? There may come a way to accomplish both goals with a single stroke.

Asx

The Universe demands of us a sense of irony. For example, all the effort and good will that forged the Great Peace was worthwhile. We folk of the Commons became better, wiser because of it. We also supposed it would work in our favor, if/when Galactic inspectors came to judge us. Warring nations do more harm to a world than those who calmly discuss how best to tend a shared garden. It would surely weigh well that we were courteous and gentle criminals, not rapacious ones.

Or so we reasoned. Did we not, my rings?

Alas, no judges dropped from the sky, but thieves and liars. Suddenly, we must play deadly games of intrigue, and those skills are not what they were in days before Commons and Egg.

How much more capable we might have been, if not for peace!

We rediscovered this truth with sharp pangs today, when a panting galloper showed up with dispatches from the forge-study of Uriel the Smith. Words of warning. Dire admonitions, telling of sky-portents, urging that we brace ourselves for visitation by a starship!

Oh, tardy premonition! A caution that arrived too late by far.

Once, stone citadels nestled on bitter-cold peaks, from north of Biblos all the way down to the tropic settlements of the Vale, flashing messages via cleverly fashioned mirrors, outracing the swiftest urrish couriers or even racing birds. With their semaphore, humans and their allies mobilized speedily for battle, making up skillfully for their lack of numbers. In time, urs and hoon developed systems of their own, each clever in its way. Even we traeki formed a network of scent-spore trackers, to warn of possible danger.

None of these feats survived peace. The semaphore was abandoned, the system of signal rockets allowed to lapse. Until lately, commerce alone simply did not justify such costly media — though ironically just last year investors had begun speaking of reoccupying those frigid stone aeries, resuming the network of flashed messages.

Had they moved faster, would we have received Uriel’s warning in time?

Would receiving it have made any difference in our fate?

Ah, my rings. How vain it is to dwell on might-have-beens. Other than solipsism, it may be the most mad thing that unitary beings waste their time doing.

Rety

“Do you have something for me?”

Rann, the tall, stern-looking leader of the sky-humans, held out his hand toward her. In the late twilight, with wind rustling a nearby thicket of pale boo, it seemed to Rety that each of his calloused fingers was like her entire wrist. Moonlight brought out shadows on Rann’s craggy features and wedgelike torso. She tried not to show it, but Rety felt all too insignificant in his presence.

Are all men like this, out there among the stars?

The thought made her feel funny, like earlier, when Besh told her it was possible to smooth away her scars.

First had come bad news.

“We cannot do anything about it here in our little clinic,” the forayer woman had told her, during Rety’s brief turn at the aliens’ sick call, near their buried station.

She had been standing in line for half the morning, a horrid wait, spent shuffling between a g’Kek with a wheezy, lopsided wheel and an aged urs whose nostril dripped a ghastly gray fluid. Rety tried hard not to step in it each time the queue moved forward. When her chance finally came to be examined under bright lights and probing rays, her hopes soared, then crashed.

“This kind of dermal damage would be easy to repair back home,” Besh had said, while ushering Rety toward the tent flap. “Bio-sculpting is a high art. Experts can mold a pleasant form out of even primitive material.”

Rety wasn’t offended. Primitive material. It’s what I am, all right. Anyway, at the time she was dazed from imagining — what if Galactic wizardry could give her a face and body like Besh, or Ling?

She set her feet, refusing to budge till Besh let her speak.

“They— they say you may take some humans with you, when you go.”

Besh had looked down at her with eyes the color of golden-brown gemstones.

“Who says such things?”

“I … hear stuff. Rumors, I guess.”

“You should not believe all rumors.”

Had there been extra emphasis on the word all? Rety leaped on any excuse for hope.

“I also hear you pay good when folks bring things you want — or news you need.”

“That much is true.” Now the eyes seemed to glitter a little. From amusement? Or greed?

“And if the news is really, really valuable? What’d be the reward then?”

The star-woman smiled, a grin full of friendship and promise. “Depending on how helpful or precious the information — the sky’s the limit.”

Rety had felt a thrill. She started to reach into her belt pouch. But Besh stopped her. “Not now,” the woman said in a low voice. “It is not discreet.”

Looking left and right, Rety realized there were other patients around, and employees of the forayers — members of the Six serving as assistants in the aliens’ many enterprises. Any one could be a spy for the sages.

“Tonight,” Besh had told her in a low voice. “Rann goes walking each evening, down by the stream. Wait next to the stand of yellow boo. The one just coming into bloom. Come alone, and speak to no one you see along the way.”

Great! Rety had thought jubilantly on leaving the tent. They’re interested! It’s exactly what I was hoping for. And just in the nick o’ time.

All might have been lost if it had taken much longer to make contact. The chief human sage had decreed she must leave tomorrow, accompanying a small donkey caravan aimed up into the mountains, along with two silent men and three big women she had never met before. Nothing was said, but she knew the goal was to catch up with Dwer, and from there head back to the wilderness she came from.

No chance of that, she had thought, relishing tonight’s rendezvous. Dwer’s welcome to go play hunter in the forest. While he’s scratchin’for eats in the Gray Hills, I’ll be living high an’ mighty, up on the Dolphin’s Tail.

That was the constellation where, rumor had it, the forayers came from, although the crablike sage, Knife-Bright Insight, once tried explaining to Rety about galaxies and “transfer points” and how the route back to civilization was twisty as a mulc-spider’s vine. None of it made sense, and she figured the old qheuen was probably lying. Rety far preferred the idea of going to a star she could clearly see — which meant she would someday look back at Jijo from the beautiful Galactic city where she’d gone to live, and stick her tongue out every night at Jass and Bom and their whole stinking tribe. And Dwer and the sages, for that matter, along with everyone else on this rancy planet who was ever mean to her.

All day after meeting Besh she had avoided the sages and their servants, seeking the clearings several arrow-flights to the west, where some pilgrims were trying to restore a few of the festivities of Gathering. Pavilions that had been taken down in panic were now restored, and many folk had come out of hiding. There was still plenty of tension. But some people seemed determined to get on with.life, even if just for a little while.

She visited one tent where craft workers showed wares brought from all over the Slope. Their goods would have impressed Rety even yesterday. But now she smiled scornfully, having seen the bright machines the sky-humans used. At one panel discussion, she watched hoon, g’Kek, and human experts discuss improved techniques for weaving rope. The atmosphere was hushed, and few in the audience asked questions.

Nearby, a traeki ring-breeder displayed some flabby donut shapes with slender arms, eye buds, or stubby feet. A trio of mature traeki stood near the pen, perhaps pondering additions to a newborn stack they were building back home. Or maybe they were just browsing.

Farther along, in a sun-dappled glade, chimp acrobats performed for a crowd of children, and an all-race sextet played by a simmering hot spring. It all might have seemed quite gay if Rety didn’t sense a pall, spoiling the mood. And if she had not already hardened her heart to all things Jijoan.

These Slopies think they’re so much better than a pack of dirty sooners. Well, maybe it’s so. But then, everybody on Jijo is a sooner, ain’t they?

I’m going far away, so it won’t matter to me anymore.

In a rougher clearing, she passed much of the afternoon watching human kids and urrish middlings vie in a game of Drake’s Dare.

The playing field was a strip of sand with a stream along one side. The other border was a long pit filled with coals, smoldering under a coating of gray ash. Wisps of hot smoke wafted into Rety’s face, tugging painful memories of Jass and Bom. Her scars tightened till she moved a ways uphill, sitting under the shade of a dwarf garu.

Two contestants arrived — a human boy starting at the north end of the field and a burly urrish middling at the south — sauntering and hurling insults as they neared the center, where two umpires waited.

“Hey, hinney! Get ready to take a bath!” the boy taunted, trying to swagger but hindered by his left arm, which was trussed back with cloth bindings. He wore a leather covering from crotch to chin, but his legs and feet were bare.

The young urs had her own protections and handicaps. Tough, transparent junnoor membranes stretched tight over her delicate pouches and scent glands. As the middling drew close, she tried to rear up threateningly — and almost fell over, to the amusement of onlookers. Rety saw the reason — her hind pair of legs were hobbled together.

“Silly skirl!” the urs shouted at her adversary, regaining her balance to hop forward once more. “Vavy skirl gonna get vurned!”

Along both boundaries — beyond the coal bed and across the stream — crowds of other youths gathered to watch. Many wore leather or membrane protectors, hanging jauntily open, while waiting for their own turn in the arena. Some boys and girls smeared salve over livid reddish streaks along their calves and thighs and even their faces, making Rety wince. True, none of the burns looked anywhere near as deep or wounding as her own. No blisters or horrid, charred patches. Still, how could they risk getting scorched on purpose?

The thought both nauseated and queerly fascinated Rety.

Was this so very different from her own story, after all? She had known that standing up to Jass would have consequences, yet she did it anyway.

Sometimes you just gotta fight, that’s all. Her hand lifted briefly to touch her face. She regretted nothing. Nothing.

Some urrish spectators also bore marks of recent combat, especially on their legs, where swaths of fur had gone mangy or sloughed off. Strangely, there wasn’t any clear separation along race lines — no human cheering section versus an urrish one. Instead, there was a lot of mixing, preliminary sparring, and friendly comparing of techniques and throws. Rety saw one human boy joke with a middling urs, laughing with his arm on her sleek mane.

A sizable group of zookirs and chimps screeched at each other in excitement, making wagers of piu nodules and pounding the ground with their hands.

Some distance beyond the coals, Rety saw another makeshift arena being used by juvenile traekis with newly wedded rings, engaged in a different kind of sport with g’Kek youngsters so light and agile, they spun wheelies and even lifted to stride briefly on their rear pusher legs. That tournament seemed to involve a sort of rolling, whirling dance. Rety couldn’t make out the point, but clearly the pastime was less violent than Drake’s Dare.

A pair of qheuen umpires — one gray and one blue — awaited the two contestants in the middle of the sandy strip. They carefully inspected the human’s sleeve for weapons, then checked the middling’s teeth for caps on her scythelike incisors. The blue qheuen then backed away into the stream while the gray extended armored legs and, to Rety’s blinking surprise, stepped daintily onto the bed of steaming coals! From then on it kept shifting its weight, lifting two clawed feet at a time high above the fuming surface, then switching to another pair, and so on.

After ritually — and warily — bowing to each other, the boy and middling began circling, looking for weakness.

Abruptly, they sprang at each other, grappling, each trying to push, twist, or throw the other in the direction he or she least wanted to go. Now Rety saw the reason for the handicaps. With both hind legs tied, the urs could not stomp her opponent or simply power her way to victory. Likewise, the boy’s strong, agile arms might throttle the middling, unless one was bound to his side.

“drak’s dare! drak’s dare! yippee yooee!”

The tiny, squeaky voice startled Rety, coming from much closer than the crowd of shouting onlookers. She swiveled, seeking the source, but saw no one nearby till a tug on her tunic made her look down.

“pouch-safe? yee talk! you me pouch-safe and yee talk you!”

Rety stared. It was a tiny urs! No bigger than her foot, it danced delicately on four miniature hooves while still plucking at her garment. The little creature tossed its mane, rotating a sinuous neck to peer around behind it, nervously, “yee need pouch! need pouch!”

Rety turned to follow its anxious stare and glimpsed what had it terrified. A sleek black shape crouched in the undergrowth, panting slightly, a lolling tongue hanging between rows of sharp white teeth. At first, Rety felt a shock of recognition, thinking it was Mudfoot, grouchy old Dwer’s funny companion in the mountains. Then she saw this one had no brown paw patches. A different noor, then.

The predator raised its head and leered at the tiny urs, taking a step, then another.

On impulse, Rety scooped up the quivering prey and slipped it in her leather hip-pouch.

The noor gave her a look of puzzled disappointment, then turned to vanish in the shrubs.

Cheers, boos, and excited snorts made her look up in time to see the human contestant tumble through a cloud of billowing ash. To Rety’s amazement, the boy was not instantly set ablaze but rolled erect, dancing from bare foot to bare foot on the coals, swiftly but calmly brushing embers from crevices in his leather garment. He waved off the gray qheuen, who had hurried protectively to his side. The youth ran a hand along his collar one more time, then sauntered across more glowing cinders back to the sandy arena.

Rety was impressed. Slopies seemed tougher than she’d thought.

“hot-hot, but not much heat!” the little voice squeaked from her pouch, as if pleased by her surprise. All memory of flight from the hungry noor seemed forgotten, “boy make boo-boo. slip and fall, but not again, not this boy! he tops! watch silly hinney get wet!”

Rety wrestled with her own amazement, unable to decide which thing dumbfounded her more, the contest below or the entity in her pocket, providing running commentary.

Combat won her attention as the young human launched at his opponent once more. Whatever his mistake the first time, the boy seemed bent on making up for it as he bobbed and weaved, then leaped to catch a handful of the middling’s mane. She snorted and snapped, pushing vainly with both slim handling-arms to break his grip. She tried lifting a foreleg to tug with its stubby grasping paw, but that just left her teetering dangerously.

“drak’s dare!” the tiny urs shouted gleefully, “drak say to Ur-choon. you-me tussle, tussle ’stead of kill!”

Rety caught her breath.

Oh, I remember now.

She had heard the legend when she was little, told round the campfire by one of the old grandpas. A tale that died with the old man, since Jass and the young hunters preferred exaggerated retellings of their own exploits over stories of life beyond the mountains.

To Rety’s best recollection, there once had been a man named Drak — or Drake — a hero mightier and bolder than any human before or since. Once, when Earthlings were still new on Jijo, a giant urrish chieftain fought Drak in a wrestling match. For three days and nights they grappled, pounding and tearing at each other, making the ground shake, drying up rivers, ripping all the countryside between a fiery mountain and the sea, till both volcano and ocean vanished in curling steam. When the clouds finally cleared, a bright region glowed from horizon to horizon with all the colors one could paint by mixing urrish and human blood.

Then, out of the smoke and mist, two heroes strode forth — he missing an arm and she a leg — leaning on each other, inseparable from that day forth.

While there would be more wars between the tribes, from that day forth all were fought with honor, in memory of Drak and Ur-choon.

“watch!” the little urs called.

The boy faked a leftward lean, then planted his right foot and heaved. Snorting dismay, the urs could not keep her greater weight from pivoting over his hip, sailing head-over-withers to crash into the nearby stream. There came a shrill sigh as she floundered, slipping in the mud. Finally, the blue qheuen surfaced behind her, using one clenched foot to give a helpful shove. With a grateful cry, the middling dove into the sand, raising plumes of dust.

“hee! go roll in hot ash, silly hinney! sand too slow! hair gonna rot!”

Rety gazed down at the tiny urs. It was no baby, as first she thought. Somewhere she recalled hearing that urrish newborns stayed in their mothers’ pouches for a few months, then were spilled by the dozen into tall grass to fend for themselves. Anyway, infant urs couldn’t talk.

It must be a male! Rety saw that its throat and muzzle looked unlike a female’s, lacking the flashy neck colors or pendulous cloven lip, which explained why it could speak Anglic sounds a female could not.

Back in the arena, the boy crouched for a third round, but the urrish youth lowered her head, conceding. The human raised a red-streaked arm in victory, then helped guide the limping loser off the playing field. Meanwhile, two new contestants flexed and stretched, while helpers trussed their handicapped limbs.

Wistfully, Rety watched the human kids, joking with friends from the other septs. She wondered how the boy had managed to get just slightly singed by the coals-but could not bring herself to approach with questions. They might only laugh at her unkempt hair, her uncouth speech, and her scars.

So forget ’em, anyway, she thought bitterly. All the dry heat and smoke was making her face itch. In any case, she had important business. An item to retrieve from her tent before dark. Something to use as down payment on a ticket away from here, to a place none of these big handsome kids would ever see, despite all their pride and skill and strutting around. A place where no one from her past would bother her. That was lots more important than watching savages play violent games with fire and water.

“Look, I gotta go,” she told the little urrish male, rising to her feet and looking around. “I think the nasty ol’ noor’s gone away, so you can be off now too.”

The tiny creature peered at her, his tail and muzzle drooping. Rety cleared her throat.

“Um, can I drop you off somewhere? Isn’t your — uh — wife prob’ly worried about you?”

The dark eyes glittered sadly. “Uf-roho need yee no more, pouch home now full of slimy newbrats. push yee out. right-pouch still husband-full, yee must find new pouch, or grass burrow to live/die in. but no sweet grass in mountain! just rocks!”

That last was sung mournfully. It sounded like an awful thing to do to a helpless little guy, and Rety felt mad just thinking about it.

“this nice pouch, this one.” He crooned a strange reverberating melody, surprisingly low for a creature so small. Rety’s skin tingled where he lay closest.

“yee serve new wife good, do good things she want.”

Rety stared at him, dazed to think of what he offered. Then she burst out laughing, leaning on a tree, guffawing till her sides hurt. Through clouded eyes, she saw that yee seemed to laugh too, in his own fashion. At last she wiped her face and grinned. “Well, you done one thing for me, already. Ain’t chortled so good in I dunno how long.

“An” you know what else? Come to think of it, there is somethin’ you might be able to do. Somethin’ that’d make me even happier.”

“yee do anything! new wife feed yee. yee make wife happy!”

Rety shook her head, amazed once more at the twists and turns life seemed to push on the unwary. If her new idea worked out, this could turn out to be an awfully lucky break.

“Do you have something for me?”

Rann held out his enormous hand. In the dim twilight, with the yellow boo rustling nearby, Rety stared at the man’s calloused fingers, each like her wrist. His craggy features and massive torso — so much greater than the biggest boy-wrestler playing Drake’s Dare that day — made her feel callow, insignificant.

Rety wondered — Are all men like this, out there among the stars?

Could I ever trust anyone with hands like those, to have a husband’s power over me?

She had always thought she’d rather die than marry.

Yet now she had a husband, purring next to her belly. Rety felt yee’s warm tongue on her hand as she stroked his silky neck.

Rann seemed to note her ironic smile. Did it make her seem more confident?

She reached past yee to pluck a slender object, fluffy at one end, pointy-hard at the other, and laid the feather on Rann’s open palm. Puzzled, he drew forth an instrument to shine at it from several sides, while her mind still cycled round-and-round the events leading to this moment, when her hopes hung in the balance.

On her way here, Rety had passed other members of the Six, each waiting alone by some landmark along Rann’s regular evening stroll. As instructed, no one spoke or made eye contact, though Rety spied observers — a g’Kek, two hoons, and a human — taking notes from a distance.

Rety didn’t give a damn what they told Lester Cambel about her “treason.” After tonight, the sages wouldn’t make plans for her anymore.

On arriving at the yellow boo, she had waited nervously, petting yee and biting her fingernails. A few duras before Rann appeared, a soft whine announced one of the mighty robots — eight-sided, intimidating — and a wave of horrid memory recalled another floating monster, firing savagely into the mulc-spider’s lair… and Dwer’s strong arms yanking her out of the path of a searing beam, holding her fiercely against falling, sheltering her with his body.

Rety bit her lip, quashing any thought, any memory, that might shake her resolve. Now was no time to go sappy and soft. That was what the sages wanted.

As she had done countless times back home — making herself stand up to Jass despite horrid punishments — she had stopped cowering from the dark robot, standing straight, forcing her chin out.

You can’t harm me, she projected defiantly. You wouldn’t dare!

But an unwelcome thought fizzed up from below.

One of these killed the bird.

The bird fought it and died.

A surge of guilt nearly made her spin around and flee. But then the robot had swerved aside, vanishing into the night, and Rann took its place, holding out his massive hand.

“Do you have something for me?” he had asked, smiling till Rety handed over the feather.

Now she watched him grow excited as he played instruments over the souvenir, once her prize possession. Pressing lips together, she bore down to reinforce her resolve.

Hell yes, I have somethin’ for you, Mister Star-Man. Somethin’ I bet you want pretty bad.

The point is-you better have somethin’ for me, too!