Brightness Reef

Asx

A strange message has come all the way from Tarek Town, sent by Ariana Foo, emeritus High Sage of human sept.

The exhausted urrish runner collapsed to her knees after dashing uphill from the Warril Plain, so spent that she actually craved water, raw and undiluted.

Center now, my rings. Spin your ever-wavering attention round the tale of Ariana Foo, as it was read aloud by Lester Cambel, her successor. Did not the news send vaporous wonder roiling through my/our core — that a mysterious injured outlander showed up one day near the Upper Roney? A stranger who might possibly be some lost comrade of the star-god visitors who now vex our shared exile! Or else, she speculates, might he be one who escaped these far-raiding adventurers? Could his wounds show evidence of shared enmity?

Ariana recommends we of the Council cautiously investigate the matter at our end, perhaps using truth-scryers, while she performs further experiments at Biblos.,

The forayers do seem to have other interests, beyond seeking pre-sentient species to ravish from Jijo’s fallow peace. They feign nonchalance, yet relentlessly query our folk, offering rewards and blandishments for reports of “anything strange.”

How ironic those words, coming from them.

Then there is the bird.

Surely you recall the metal bird, my rings? Normally, we would have taken it for yet another Buyur relic, salvaged from the entrails of a dead-dying mulc-spider. Yet the sooner girl swears she saw it move! Saw it travel great distances, then fight and kill a Rothen machine!

Was that not the very evening the forayers buried their station, as though they were now fearful of the dread sky?

Our finest techies examine the bird-machine, but with scant tools available they learn little, save that energies still throb within its metal breast. Perhaps the contingent Lester has sent east — to ingather the human sooner band according to our law — will find out more.

So many questions. But even with answers, would our dire situation change in the least?

Were there time, i would set my/our varied rings the task of taking up different sides and arguing these mysteries, each question pouring distinct scents to coat our moist core, dripping syllogisms like wax, until only truth shines through a lacquered veneer. But there is no time for the traeki approach to problem solving. So we sages debate in the dry air, without even rewq to mediate the inadequacies of language. Each day is spent buying futile delays in our destiny.

As for Ariana’s other suggestion, we have employed truth-scryers during discussions with the sky-humans. According to books of lore, this passive form of psi should be less noticeable than other techniques.

“Are you seeking anybody in particular? This we asked, just yesterday. Is there a person, being, or group we should look for in your name?”

Their leader — the one answering to the name-label Rann — seemed to grow tense, then recovered swiftly, confidently, smiling in the manner of his kind.

“It is always our desire to seek strangeness. Have you observed strange things?”

In that moment of revealed strain, one of our scryers claimed to catch something — a brief flash of color. A dark shade of gray, like the hue of a Great Qheuen’s carapace. Only this surface seemed more supple, with a lissome litheness that undulated nimbly, free of adornment by hair, scale, feather, or torg.

The glimpse ended quickly. Still the scryer felt an association — with water.

What else did she describe, my rings, during that scant fey moment?

Ah, yes. A swirl of bubbles.

Scattered in formations, numerous as stars.

Bubbles growing into globes the size of Jijo’s moons. Glistening. Ancient. Ageless.

Bubbles filled with distilled wonder… sealed in by time.

Then nothing more.

Well and alas, what more could be asked? What are we but amateurs at this kind of game? Phwhoon-dau and Knife-Bright Insight point out that even this slim “clue” might have been laid, adroitly, in the scryer’s thoughts, in order to distract us with a paradox.

Yet at times like these, when our rewq and the Holy Egg seem to have abandoned us, it is such slender stems that offer wan hope to the drowning.

In her message, Ariana promised to send another kind of help. An expert whose skill may win us leverage with our foes, perhaps enough to make the invaders willing to bargain.

Oh, Ariana, how we/i have missed your wily optimism! If fire fell from heaven, you would see a chance to bake pots. If the entire Slope shuddered, then sank into the Midden’s awful depths, you would find in that event cause to cry out — opportunity!

Sara

Despite urgent orders to hide by day, the steamship Gopher broke her old record, bolting upstream from Tarek Town, against the Bibur’s springtime flood, boilers groaning as pistons beat their casings, an exuberance of power unsurpassed by anything else on Jijo, save her sister ship, the Mole. Mighty emblems of human technology, they were unapproachable even by clever urrish smiths, laboring on high volcanoes.

Sara recalled her own first ride, at age fifteen, newly recruited to attend advanced studies in Biblos and fiercely proud of her new skills — especially the knack of seeing each clank and chug of the growling steam engine in terms of temperatures, pressures, and pounds of force. Equations seemed to tame the hissing brute, turning its dismaying roar into a kind of music.

Now all that was spoiled. The riveted tanks and pulsing rocker-arms were exposed as primitive gadgets, little more advanced than a stone ax.

Even if the star-gods leave without doing any of the awful things Ariana Foo predicts, they have already harmed us by robbing us of our illusions.

One person didn’t seem to mind. The Stranger lingered near the puffing, straining machinery, peering under the rockers, insisting with gestures that the engine chief open the gear box and let him look inside. At first, the human crew members had been wary of his antics; but soon, despite his mute incapacity with words, they sensed a kindred spirit.

You can explain a lot with hand motions, Sara noted. Another case of language adapting to needs of the moment — much as each wave of Jijoan colonists helped reshape the formal Galactic tongues they had known, culminating when humans introduced half a million texts printed mostly in Anglic, a language seemingly built out of chaos, filled with slang, jargon, puns, and ambiguity.

It was a warped mirror image of what had happened back on Earth, where billion-year-old grammars were pushing human culture toward order. In both cases the driving force was a near monopoly on knowledge.

That was the obvious irony. But Sara knew another — her unusual theory about language and the Six — so heretical, it made Lark’s views seem downright orthodox.

Maybe it is past time I came back to Biblos, to report on my work… and to confront everything I’m afraid of—

The Stranger seemed happy, engrossed with his fellow engineers and closely observed by Ariana Foo from her wheelchair. So Sara left the noisy engine area, moving toward the ship’s bow, where a thick mist was cleaved by the Gopher’s headlong rush. Tattered breaks in the fog showed dawn brightening the Rimmer peaks, south and east, where the fate of the Six would be decided.

Won’t Lark and Dwer be surprised to see me!

Oh, they’II probably yell that I should have stayed safe at home. I’ll answer that I have a job to do, just as important as theirs, and they shouldn’t be such gender-menders. And we’ll all try hard not to show how happy we are to see each other.

But first, Sage Foo wanted this side trip to check her notion about the Stranger, despite Sara’s instinct to protect the wounded man from further meddling.

Those instincts have caused me enough trouble. Is it not time to temper them with reason?

One ancient text called it “nurturing mania,” and it might have seemed cute when she was a child, nursing hurt creatures of the forest. Perhaps it would have posed no problem, if she followed the normal life path of Jijoan women, with children and a fatigued farmer-husband tugging at her, demanding attention. What need, then, to sublimate maternal instincts? What time for other interests, without all the labor-saving tools tantalizingly described in Terran lore? Plain as she was, Sara felt certain she would have been successful at such a modest life and made some simple, honest man happy.

If a simple life was what I wanted.

Sara tried to shrug the wave of introspection. The cause of her funk was obvious.

Biblos. Center of human hopes and fears, focus of power, pride, and shame, the place where she once found love — or its illusion — and lost it. Where the prospect of a “second chance” drove her off in panicked flight. Nowhere else had she felt such swings of elation and claustrophobia, hope and fear.

Will it still be standing when we round the final bend?

If the roof-of-stone had already fallen—

Her mind shied away from the unendurable. Instead, she drew from her shoulder bag the draft manuscript of her second paper on Jijoan language. It was past time to consider what to say to Sage Bonner and the others, if they confronted her.

What have I been doing? Demonstrating on paper that chaos can be a form of progress. That noise can be informing.

I might as well tell them I can prove that black is white, and up is down!

In the margin, Sara noted a recent find from her readings, that one native North American tongue, Cherokee, contained up to seventy pronouns — ways to say “I” and “you” and “we” — depending on context and personal relationship — a trait shared with GalSix.

Sara had quickly recognized a version of Shannon coding, named after an Earthling pioneer of information theory who showed how specially coded messages can be restored, even from a jumble of static. It proved crucial to digital speech and data transmission, in pre-Contact human society.

Indo-European was logical, error-resistant, like Galactic tongues that suit computers far better than chaotic Anglic.

To many, this implied Earthlings must have had patrons in the misty past. But watching the Stranger commune happily with other engineers, in a makeshift language of grunts and hand gestures, reminded Sara

It wasn’t Indo-European speakers who invented computers. Nor users of any prim Galactic language. The star-gods received their mighty powers by inheritance.

In all the recent history of the Five Galaxies, just one folk independently invented computers — and nearly everything else needed for starfaring life — from scratch.

Those people spoke Rossic, Nihanic, French, and especially the forerunner of Anglic, wild, undisciplined English.

Did they do it despite their chaotic language?

Or because of it?

The masters of her guild thought she chased phantoms — that she was using this diversion to evade other obligations.

But Sara had a hunch. Past and present held clues to the destiny awaiting the Six.

That is, if destiny had not already been decided.

Dawn spilled quickly downslope from the Rimmers. It was in clear violation of emergency orders for the gopher to continue, but nobody dared say it to the captain, who had a crazed look in his eye.

Probably comes from spending so much time around humans, Sara thought. The steamers had as many men and women on the crew — to tend the machines — as hoon sailors. Grawph-phu, the pilot and master, knew the river with sure instincts that arose out of his heritage. He also had picked up more than a few Earthling mannerisms, like wearing a knit cap over his furry pate and puffing a pipe that fumed like the steamer’s chimney. Peering through the dawn haze, the captain’s craggy features might have come from the flyleaf of some seafaring adventure tale, chosen off the shelves in the Biblos Library — like some piratical old-timer, exuding an air of confidence and close acquaintance with clanger.

Grawph-phu turned his head, noticed Sara looking at him, and closed one eye in a sly wink.

Oh, spare me, she sighed, half expecting the hoon to spit over the side and say — “Arr, matie. ’Tis a fine day for sailin’. Full speed ahead!”

Instead, the Gopher’s master pulled the pipe from his mouth and pointed.

“Biblos,” he commented, a low, hoonish growl accented by a salty twang. “Just beyond the curve after next. Hr-rm. … A day sooner ’n you expected to arrive.”

Sara looked ahead once more. I should be glad, she thought. Time is short.

At first she could make out little but Eternal Swamp on the left bank, stretching impassably all the way to the Roney, an immensity of quicksand that forced the long detour past Tarek Town. On the right began the vast Warril Plain, where several passengers had debarked earlier to arrange overland passage. Taking a fast caravan were Bloor, the portraitist, and a petite exploser carrying dispatches for her guild. Both were slight enough to ride donkeys all the way and with luck might reach the Glade in three days. Prity and Pzora also went ashore at Kandu Landing to hire carts in case the Stranger must be taken before the High Sages — to be decided during this trip to Biblos.

As the fog cleared, there now reared to the right a wall of stone, rising from the water line, getting taller with each passing dura. The cliff shimmered, almost glassy smooth, as though impervious to erosion or time. Arguments raged as to whether it was natural or a Buyur relic.

Against these mirror-like cliffs, Ulgor had said the citizens of Dolo Village might see flames from burning books. Two centuries ago, settlers had witnessed such a sight, horrible even from afar. A disaster never equaled since, not by the massacre at Tolon, or when Uk-rann ambushed Drake the Elder at Bloody Ford.

But we saw no flames.

Still, tension reigned until the steamer turned a final bend…

Sara let out a tense sigh. The Archive… it stands.

She stared for some time, awash in emotion, then hurried aft to fetch the Stranger and Ariana Foo. Both of them would want to see this.

It was a castle, adamant, impervious, carved with tools that no longer existed. Godlike tools, sent to the deep soon after they cut this stronghold. A citadel of knowledge.

The original granite outcrop still jutted like a finger into the curving river, with its back braced against the shiny-smooth cliff. From above, it probably looked much as it always had, with woody thickets disguising atrium openings that let filtered daylight into courtyards and reading groves below. But from the dock where the Gopher tied up, one saw imposing defensive battlements, then row after row of massive, sculpted pillars that held up the natural plateau, suspending its undermined weight as a roof against the sky.

Inside this abnormal cave, wooden buildings protected their precious contents against rain, wind, and snow — all except the inferno that once rocked the southern end, leaving rubble and ruin. In a single night, fully a third of the wisdom left by the Great Printing had gone up in smoke and despair.

The sections that would have been most useful today. Those devoted to Galactic society, its many races and clans. What remained gave only sketchy outlines of the complex bio-social-political relationships that fluxed through the Five Galaxies.

Despite the crisis, dawn summoned a stream of pilgrims from hostelries in the nearby tree-shrouded village, scholars who joined the Gopher passengers climbing a zigzag ramp toward the main gate. Traeki and g’Kek students caught their breath at resting spots. Red qheuens from the distant sea paused now and then to spray saltwater over their cupolas. Ulgor and Blade gave them wide berth.

A donkey-caravan edged by the line of visitors, heading downhill. Wax-sealed crates told of precious contents. They’re still evacuating, Sara realized. Taking advantage of the sages’ delaying tactics.

Would she find empty shelves inside, as far as the eye could see?

Impossible! Even if they could somehow move so many volumes, where would they store them all?

The Stranger insisted on pushing Ariana’s wheelchair, perhaps out of respect, or to show how far his physical recovery had come. In fact, his dusky skin now had a healthy luster, and his deep laughter was hearty. He stared in wonder at the mighty stone walls, then the drawbridge, portcullis, and militia guards. Instead of the token detail Sara recalled, now a full platoon patrolled the parapets, equipped with spears, bows, and arbalests.

Ariana looked pleased by the Stranger’s reaction. The old woman glanced at Sara with an expression of satisfaction.

He’s never been here before. Even the damage he’s suffered could not have erased a memory as vivid as Biblos. Either he is a rube from the farthest, most rustic human settlements, or else…

They passed the final battlements, and the Stranger gazed in amazement at the buildings of the Archive itself. Wooden structures, modeled after stone monuments of Earth’s revered past — the Parthenon, Edo Castle, and even a miniature Taj Mahal, whose minarets merged into four heavy pillars holding up part of the roof-of-stone. Clearly, the founders had a taste for the dramatically ironic, for all the ancient originals had been built to last, dedicated in their day to vain resistance against time, while these buildings had a different goal — to serve a function and then vanish, as if they had never been.

Even that was too much for some people.

“Arrog’ance!” muttered Jop, the tree farmer, who had chosen to come along when he learned of this expedition. “It all has to go, if we’re ever to be blessed.”

“In time, it must,” Ariana Foo nodded, leaving vague whether she meant next week, or in a thousand years.

Sara saw fresh clay smeared over holes at the base of several great pillars. Just like back home, she realized. The explosers are making sure all is ready.

She could not help turning to glance behind Jop. Taking up the rear were the last two Gopher passengers, young Jomah, Henrik’s son, and his uncle, Kurt. The elder exploser bent to point out structural features to the boy, using hand motions that made Sara think of tumbling chunks of ancient granite. She wondered if the Stranger, staring about in apparent delight, had any idea how little it would take to turn all this into rubble, indistinguishable from a hundred other places demolished by the Buyur when they departed, leaving the planet to revert to nature.

Sara felt a return of the old tightness in her shoulder blades. It hadn’t been easy, at first, being a student in this place. Even when she had taken her books to the forest up top, to read under the shade of a homey garu tree, she could never shake off a sense that the whole plateau might shudder and collapse beneath her. For a while, the nervous fantasies had threatened her studies — until Joshu came along.

Sara winced. She had known it would all come back if she returned to this place. Memories.

“Nothing lasts forever,” Jop added as they neared the Athenian portico of Central Hall, unaware how stingingly the words struck Sara’s private thoughts.

Ariana agreed. “Ifni insists on it. Nothing can resist the goddess of change.”

If the elder sage meant the remark to be sardonic, Sara missed her point. She was too deep in reminiscence to care, even as they neared the giant double doors — carved from the finest wood as a gift from the qheuen race, then bound with urrish bronze, lacquered by traeki secretions and painted by g’Kek artists. The work towered ten meters high, depicting in ornate symbolism the thing most treasured by all, the latest, best, and most hard-won accomplishment of Jijo’s Commons in Exile.

The Great Peace.

This time, Sara hardly noticed when the Stranger gasped in appreciation. She couldn’t share his pleasure. Not when all she felt within this place was sadness.

Asx

The portraitist did not even ask to rest after the long, hard trek from Kandu Landing. He set to work at once, preparing his materials — caustic chemicals and hard metals whose imperviousness to time make them suspect under Commons law — yet ideal for blackmail.

Others of his guild were already here, having come to Gathering in order to sell paper photographs of visitors, guildmasters, winners at the games — anyone vain enough to want a graven image keepsake to last out a lifetime, maybe two. A few of these skilled likeness-peddlers had offered to secretly record the invaders, but to what purpose? Paper portraits are designed to fade and rot, not last aeons. Better not to risk the aliens catching them in the act, and so discovering some of our hidden arts.

But Ariana, Bloor, and young Sara Koolhan appear to have come up with something different, have they not, my rings? Despite exhaustion from the road, Bloor appeared at once before us to show off the daguerreotype. An implausibly precise image stored on etched metal, centuries in age. Ur-Jah trembled as she fondled the accurate depiction of a great tattooed chieftain of old.

“If we attempt this, secrecy is essential. Our foes must not know how few pictures were taken,” Phwhoon-dau pointed out, while privacy wasps swarmed our hidden tent-of-conclave, fluttering drops of bitter color from their glowing wings.

“The sky-gods must imagine that we have scribed hundreds of plates already safely hidden far from here, in so many deep places they could never find them all.”

“True,” Vubben added, his eyestalks “weaving a dance of caution. “But there is more. For this to work, the portraits cannot simply show the human invaders’ faces. Of what use will that be as evidence, a million years hence? They must include the aliens’ machines, and clear Jijoan landmarks, and also the local animals they inspect as candidates for ravishment.”

“And their costumes, their garish garb,” Lester Cambel inserted urgently. “Any identifiers to show they are renegade humans. Not representatives of our sept on Jijo, or of Earth.”

We all assented to this last request, though it seems futile to satisfy. How could a few etched plates express such fine distinctions to prosecutors so long after we are gone?

We asked Bloor to consult with our agents, bearing all these criteria in mind. If anything comes of this, it will indeed be a miracle.

We believe in miracles, do we not, my rings? Today, the rewq in our/my pouch came out of dormant state. So did that of Vubben, our Speaker of Ignition. Others report stirrings.

Is it possible to call this cause for hope? Or have they only begun awakening, as rewq sometimes do in the last stages of illness, shortly before they roll up and die?

Dwer

The trail over the Rimmers was steep and broken. That never mattered during Dwer’s prior trips into the eastern wilderness — survey sweeps sanctioned by the sages — carrying just his bow, a map, and a few necessities. The first time, right after old Fallon’s retirement, he got so elated that he ran down to the misty plains letting gravity yank him headlong, yelling as he leaped from one teetering foothold to the next.

There was none of that now. No exhilaration. No contest of youth and skill against Jijo’s ardent hug. This was a sober affair, coaxing a dozen heavily laden donkeys over patches of unsteady footing, using patient firmness to overcome the animals’ frequent bouts of stubbornness. He wondered how Urrish traders made it look so easy, guiding their pack trains with shrill, clipped whistles.

And they say these things come from Earth? he wondered, dragging yet another donkey out of trouble. Dwer wasn’t warm to the idea of being a close genetic cousin to such creatures.

Then there were the human charges he must also shepherd into the wilderness.

In fairness, it could have been worse. Danel Ozawa was an experienced forester, and the two women were strong, with their own unique skills. Still, nothing back on the tame Slope compared to this kind of trekking. Dwer found himself frequently moving up and down the train, helping his companions out of jams.

He wasn’t sure which unnerved him more, the stolid indifference of Lena Strong or the gawky friendliness of Jenin Worley, frequently catching his eye with a shy smile. They had been obvious choices, since Jenin and Lena were already at Gathering to lobby for their “tourism” idea — hoping to enlist Dwer’s help, and approval from the sages, to start taking groups of “sight-seers” over the Rimmers.

In other words, bright people with too much time on their hands, overly influenced by notions they found in old Earth books.

I was going to fight it. Even same-sex groups risked violating the anti-sooner covenant.

But now — I’m part of a scheme to break the law I’m sworn to uphold.

He couldn’t help glancing repeatedly at the two women, the same way they were surely appraising him.

They sure looked… healthy.

You’re a true wild man now. Learn to prize the-honest virtues of wild females.

There would be women in the Gray Hills, too, but Rety said most of them began childbirth at fourteen. Few kept more than half their teeth past age thirty.

There was supposed to be a second group of volunteer exiles from the Slope, following behind this one. For their sake, Dwer smeared dabs of porl paste on prominent landmarks every half a midura or so, blazing a trail any moderately competent Jijoan could follow, but that should be untraceable by Galactic raiders or their all-seeing machinery.

Dwer would rather be home at the bitter end, preparing to fight hopelessly against the aliens, alongside other militia soldiers of the Six. But no one was better qualified to lead this expedition to the Gray Hills, and he had given Danel his word.

So now I’m a tour-guide, after all, he thought.

If only he felt sure it was right.

What are we doing? Fleeing to another place we don’t belong, just like our sinner ancestors? It made Dwer’s head ache to think about such things. Just please don’t let Lark find out what I’m doing. It’d break his heart.

The trek grew a little easier when they spilled off the mountain onto a high steppe. But unlike his other expeditions, this time Dwer turned south, toward a rolling domain of bitter yellow grass. Soon they were stomping through a prairie of calf-high shoots, whose florets had sharp tips, forcing the humans — and even the donkeys — to wear leather leggings for protection.

No one complained, or even murmured discomfort. Danel and the others took his guidance without question, wiping sweat from their hat brims and collars as they slogged alongside the stolid donkeys. Fortunately, scattered oases of real forest helped Dwer pilot the company from one water source to the next, leaving markers for the next group.

Rety must’ve been dogged to cross all this, chasing after her damn bird.

Dwer had suggested waiting for the girl. “She’s your real guide,” he had told Danel.

“Not true,” Ozawa demurred. “Would you trust her advice? She might steer us wrong in some misguided gesture to protect her loved ones.”

Or to avoid ever seeing them again. Still, Dwer wished Rety had made it back in time to depart with this group. He kind of missed her, sullen sarcasm and all.

He called a halt at a large oasis, more than an hour before sunset. “The mountains will cut off daylight early,” he told the others. Westward, the peaks were already surrounded by a nimbus of yellow-orange. “You three should clear the water hole, tend the animals, and set up camp.”

“And where are you going?” Lena Strong asked sharply, mopping her brow.

Dwer strapped on his hip quiver. “To see about shooting some supper.”

She gestured at the sterile-looking steppe. “What, here?”

“It’s worth a try, Lena,” Danel said, slashing at some yellow grass with a stick. “With the donkeys unable to eat this stuff, our grain must last till we hit hill country, where they can forage. A little meat for the four of us could help a lot.”

Dwer didn’t bother adding anything to that. He set out down one of the narrow critter byways threading the spiky grass. It was some distance before he managed to put the donkey stench behind him, as well as the penetrating murmur of his companions’ voices.

It’s a bad idea to be noisy when the universe is full of things tougher than you are. But that never stopped humans, did it?

He sniffed the air and watched the sway of thigh-high grass/ In this kind of prairie, it was even more imperative to hunt upwind not only because of scent, but so the breeze might help hinder the racket of your own trampling feet from reaching the quarry — in this case a covey of bush quaile he sensed pecking and scratching, a dozen or so meters ahead.

Dwer nocked an arrow and stepped as stealthfully as he could, breathing shallowly, until he picked out soft chittering sounds amid the brushing stems … a tiny ruckus of claws scratching sandy loam… sharp beaks pecking for seeds … a gentle, motherly cluck… answering peeps as hatchlings sought a feathery breast… the faint puffs of junior adults, relaying news from the periphery that all is well. All is well.

One of the sentries abruptly changed its muted report. A breath of tentative alarm. Dwer stooped to make his profile lower and kept stock still. Fortunately, the twilight shadows were deepest to his back. If only he could manage to keep from spooking them for a few more …

A sudden crashing commotion sent four-winged shapes erupting into the air. Another predator, Dwer realized, raising his bow. While most of the quaile scattered swiftly across the grasstops and vanished, a few spiraled back to swoop over the intruder, distracting it from the brood-mother and her chicks. Dwer loosed arrows in rapid succession, downing one — then another of the guardians.

The ruckus ended as swiftly as it began. Except for a trampled area, the patch of steppe looked as if nothing had happened.

Dwer shouldered his bow and pulled out his machete. In principle, nothing that could hide under grass should be much of a threat to him, except perhaps a root scorpion. But there were legends of strange, nasty beasts in this realm southeast of the gentle Slope. Even a famished ligger could make a damned nuisance of itself.

He found the first bird where it fell.

This should make Lena happy for a while, he thought, realizing that might be a lifelong task, from now on.

The grass swayed again, near where he’d shot the second bird. He rushed forward, machete upraised. “Oh, no you don’t, thief!”

Dwer braked as a slinky, black-pelted creature emerged with the other quaile clutched between its jaws. The bloody arrow trailed in the dust.

“You.” Dwer sighed, lowering the knife. “I should’ve known.”

Mudfoot’s dark eyes glittered so eloquently, Dwer imagined words.

That’s right, boss. Glad to see me?Don’t bother thanking me for flushing the birds. I’ll just keep this juicy one as payment.

He shrugged in resignation. “Oh, all right. But I want the arrow back, you hear?”

The noor grinned, as usual betraying no sign how much or how little it understood.

Night fell as they ambled toward the oasis. Flames flickered under a sheltering tree. The shifting breeze brought scents of donkey, human, and simmering porridge.

Better keep the fire small enough to seem a natural smolder, he reminded himself.

Then another thought occurred to Dwer.

Rety said noor never came over the mountains. So what’s this one doing here?

Rety hadn’t lied about there being herds of glaver, southeast of the Rimmers. After two days of swift trekking, loping at a half-jog beside the trotting donkeys, Dwer and the others found clear signs — the sculpted mounds where glavers habitually buried their feces.

“Damn… you’re right …” Danel agreed, panting with hands on knees. The two women, on the other hand, seemed barely winded.

“It looks… as if things… just got more complicated.”

You could say that, Dwer thought. Years of careful enforcement by hunters like himself had all been in vain. We always figured the yellow grass could be crossed only by well-equipped travelers, never glavers. That’s why we aimed most of our surveys farther north.

The next day, Dwer called a halt amid another jog, when he spied a throng of glavers in the distance, scrounging at one end of a scrub wadi. All four humans took turns observing through Danel Ozawa’s urrish-made binoculars. The pale, bulge-eyed creatures appeared to be browsing on a steppe-gallaiter, a burly, long-legged beast native to this region, whose corpse lay sprawled across a patch of trampled grass. The sight stunned them all, except Jenin Worley.

“Didn’t you say that’s how to survive on the plains? By eating animals who can eat this stuff?” She flicked a stem of the sharp yellow grass. “So the glavers have adapted to a new way of life. Isn’t that what we’re gonna have to do?”

Unlike Danel Ozawa, who seemed sadly resigned to their mission, Jenin appeared almost avid for this adventure, especially knowing it might be their destiny to preserve the human race on Jijo. When he saw that zealous eagerness in her eyes, Dwer felt he had more in common with the sturdy, square-jawed Lena Strong. At least Lena looked on all this much the way he did — as one more duty to perform in a world that didn’t care about anyone’s wishes.

“It’s… rather surprising,” Danel replied, lowering the glasses and looking upset. “I thought it wasn’t possible for glavers to eat red meat.”

“Adaptability,” Lena commented gruffly. “One of the hallmarks of presentience. Maybe this means they’re on their way back up, after the long slide down.”

Danel seemed to consider this seriously. “So soon? If so, I wonder. Could it mean—”

Dwer interrupted before the sage had a chance to go philosophical on them. “Let me have those,” he said, taking the glass-and-boo magnifiers. “I’ll be right back.”

He started forward at a crouch. Naturally, Mudfoot chose to tag along, scampering ahead, then circling repeatedly to stage mock-ambushes. Dwer’s jaw clenched, but he refused to give the beast the satisfaction of reacting. Ignore it. Maybe it’ll go away.

That hadn’t worked so far. Jenin seemed thrilled to have Mudfoot as a mascot, while Danel found its tenacity intriguing. Lena had voted with the others, overruling Dwer’s wish to send it packing. “It weighs next to nothing,” she said. “Let it ride a donkey, so long as it fetches its own food and stays out of the way.”

That’ it did, scrupulously avoiding Lena, posing for Danel’s pensive scrutiny, and purring contentedly when Jenin petted it by the campfire each evening.

In my case, it acts as if being irritated were my bean’s desire.

While creeping toward the wadi, Dwer kept mental notes on the lay of the land, the crackling consistency of the grass stems, the fickleness of the breeze. He did this out of professional habit, and also in case it ever became necessary to do this someday for real, pursuing the glaver herd with arrows nocked and ready. Ironically that would happen only in the event of good news. If word came from the Slope that all was well — that the gene-raiders had departed without wreaking the expected genocide — then this expedition would revert to a traditional Mission of Ingathering — a militia enterprise to rid this region of all glavers and humans, preferably by capture, but in the end by any means necessary.

On the other hand, assuming the worst did happen out west and all the Six Races were wiped out, their small group would join Rety’s family of renegades as exiles in the wilderness. Under Danel’s guidance, they would tame Rety’s cousins and create simple, wise traditions for living in harmony with their new home.

One of those traditions would be to forbid the sooners from ever again hunting glavers for food.

That was the bloody incongruity Dwer found so hard to take, leaving little option or choice. Good news would make him a mass-killer. Contrariwise, horrible news would make him a gentle neighbor to glavers and men.

Duty and death on one side. Death and duty on the other. Dwer wondered, Is survival really worth all this?

From a small rise, he lifted the binoculars. Two families of glavers seemed to be feeding on the gallaiter, while others kept watch. Normally, such a juicy corpse would be cleaned down to a white skeleton, first by liggers or other large carnivores, then hickuls with heavy jaws for grinding bones, and finally by flyers known simply as vultures, though they looked like nothing in pictures from Old Earth.

Even now, a pack of hickuls swarmed the far periphery of the clearing. A glaver rose up on her haunches and hurled a stone. The scavengers scattered, whining miserably.

Ah. I see how they do it.

The glavers had found a unique way to live on the steppe. Unable to digest grass or boo, or to eat red meat, they apparently used cadavers to attract hordes of insects from the surrounding area, which they consumed at leisure while others in the herd warded off all competition.

They seemed to be enjoying themselves, holding squirmy things before their globelike eyes, mewling in approval, then catching them between smacking jaws. Dwer had never seen glavers act with such — enthusiasm. Not back where they were treated as sacred fools, encouraged to root at will through the garbage middens of the Six.

Mudfoot met Dwer’s eyes with a revolted expression.

Ifni, what pigs! All right if we charge in there now? Bust ’em up good, boss. Then herd ’em all back to civilization, like it or not?

Dwer vowed to curb his imagination. Probably the noor simply didn’t like the smell.

Still he chided Mudfoot in a low voice.

“Who are you to find others disgusting, Mister lick-myself-all-over? Come on. Let’s tell the others, glavers haven’t gone carnivorous, after all. We have more running ahead, if we’re to make it out of this sting-grass by nightfall.”

Asx

More word arrives from the far south, sent by the smith of Mount Guenn Forge. The message was sparse and distorted, having come partly by courier, and partly conveyed between mountain peaks by inexperienced mirror-flashers, in the partly-restored semaphore system.

Apparently, the alien forayers have begun visiting all the fishing hamlets and red qheuen rookeries, making pointed inquiries. They even landed in the water, far out at sea, to badger the crew of a dross-hauler, on its way home from holy labors at the Midden. Clearly the interlopers feel free to swoop down and interrogate our citizens wherever they dwell, with questions about “strange sights, strange creatures, or lights in the sea.”

Should we make up a story, my rings? Should we fabulate some tale of ocean monsters to intrigue our unwanted guests and possibly stave off fate for a while?

Assuming we dare, what would they do to us when they learn the truth?

Lark

All that morning, Lark worked next to Ling in a state of nervous tension, made worse by the fact that he did not dare let it show. Soon, with luck, he would have his best chance to line things up just right. It would be a delicate task though, doing spywork at the behest of the sages while also probing for information he needed, for reasons of his own.

Timing would be everything.

The Evaluation Tent bustled with activity. The whole rear half of the pavilion was stacked with cages made by qheuenish crafters out of local boo, filled with specimens brought from all over this side of Jijo. A staff of humans, urs, and hoon labored full-time to keep the animals fed, watered, and healthy, while several local g’Kek had shown remarkable talent at running various creatures through mazes or performing other tests, supervised by robots whose instructions were always in prim, flawless Galactic Two. It had been made clear to Lark that it was a mark of high distinction to be asked to work directly with one of the star-humans.

His second airborne expedition had been even more exhausting than the first, a three-day voyage beginning with a zigzag spiral far out to sea, cruising just above the waves over the dark blue expanse of the Midden, then hopping from one island to the next along an extended offshore archipelago, sampling a multitude of wildly varied life-forms Lark had never seen before. To his surprise, it turned out to be a much more enjoyable trip than the first.

For one thing, Ling grew somewhat less condescending as they worked together, appreciating each other’s skills. Moreover, Lark found it stirring to see what evolution had wrought during just a million fallow years, turning each islet into a miniature biological reactor, breeding delightful variations. There were flightless avians who had given up the air, and gliding reptiloids that seemed on the verge of earning wings. Mammiforms whose hair grew in horny protective spikes, and zills whose coatings of fluffy torg shimmered with colors never seen on their bland mainland cousins. Only later did he conclude that some of the diversity might have been enhanced from the start, by Jijo’s last legal tenants. Perhaps the Buyur seeded each isle with different genetic stock as part of a very long scale experiment.

Ling and Besh often had to drag him away when it came time to leave a sampling site, while Kunn muttered irascibly by his console, apparently happy only when they were aloft. On landing, Lark was always first to rush out the hatch. For a while, all the dour brooding of his dreams lay submerged under a passion for discovery.

Still, as they cruised home on the last leg — another unexplained back-and-forth gyration over open sea — he had found himself wondering. This trip was marvelous, but why did we go? What did they hope to accomplish? Even before humans left Earth, biologists knew — higher life-forms need room to evolve, preferably large continents. Despite the wild variety encountered on the archipelago, there wasn’t a single creature the star-folk could hope to call a candidate for uplift.

Sure enough, when he rejoined Ling the next day, the outlander woman announced they would return to analyzing rock-stallers, right after lunch. Besh had already resumed her intensive investigation of glavers, clearly glad to be back to work on her best prospect.

Glavers. The irony struck Lark. Yet he held back his questions, biding his time.

Finally, Ling put down the chart they had been working on — duplicating much that already covered the walls of his Dolo Village study — and led him to the table where machines offered refreshments in the sky-human fashion. The light was very good there, so Lark gave a furtive nod to a small man cleaning some animal pens. The fair-haired fellow moved toward a stack of wooden crates, used for hauling foodstuffs for the raucous zoo of captive creatures.

Lark positioned himself at the south end of the table so he would not block the man’s view of Ling, as well as Besh and everything beyond. Especially Ling. For this to work, he must try to keep her still for as long as possible.

“Besh seems to think you’ve found yourselves a first-class candidate species.”

“Mm?” The dark-eyed woman looked up from a complex machine lavishly dedicated to producing a single beverage — a bitter drink Lark had tried just once, appropriately named coughee.

“Found what?” Ling stirred a steaming mug and leaned back against the edge of the table.

Lark gestured at the subject Besh studied, complacently chewing a ball of sap while a contraption perched on its head, sifting neurons. There had been a spurt of excitement when Besh swore she heard the glaver “mimic” two spoken words. Now Besh seemed intent, peering through her microscope, guiding a brain probe with tiny motions of her hands, sitting rock still.

“I take it glavers have what you seek?” Lark continued.

Ling smiled. “We’ll know better when our ship returns and more advanced tests are made.”

Out the corner of his eye, Lark saw the small man remove the cover from a hole in one side of a box. There was a soft sparkle of glass.

“And when will the ship be back?” he asked, keeping Ling’s attention.

Her smile widened. “I wish you folks would stop asking that. It’s enough to make one think you had a reason for caring. Why should it matter to you when the ship comes?”

Lark blew his cheeks, hoon fashion, then recalled that the gesture would mean nothing to her. “A little warning would be nice, that’s all. It takes time to bake a really big cake.”

She chuckled, more heartily than his joke deserved. Lark was learning not to take umbrage each time he suspected he was being patronized. Anyway, Ling wouldn’t be laughing when shipboard archives revealed that glavers — their prime candidate for uplift — were already Galactic citizens, presumably still flitting around their own backwater of space, in secondhand ships.

Or would even the star-cruiser’s onboard records reveal it? According to the oldest scrolls, glavers came from an obscure race among the myriad sapient clans of the Five Galaxies. Maybe, like the g’Kek, they had already gone extinct and no one remembered them, save in the chilly recesses of the largest-sector branch Libraries.

This might even be the moment foretold long ago by the final glaver sage, before humans came to Jijo. A time when restored innocence would shrivel their race, peel away their sins, and offer them a precious second chance. A new beginning.

If so, they deserve better than to be adopted by a pack of thieves.

“Suppose they prove perfect in every way. Will you take them with you when you go?”

“Probably. A breeding group of a hundred or so.”

Peripherally, he glimpsed the small man replacing the cover of the camera lens. With a satisfied smile, Bloor the Portraitist casually lifted the box, carrying it outside through the back tent flap. Lark felt a knot of tension release. Ling’s face might be a bit blurry in the photo, but her clothes and body stood a good chance of coming through, despite the long exposure time. By good fortune, Besh, the glaver, a robot, and a sleeping rock-staller had remained still the entire time. The mountain range, seen through the open entrance, would pin down location and season of the year.

“And what of the rest?” he asked, relieved to have just one matter on his mind now.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what will happen to all the glavers you leave behind?”

Her dark eyes narrowed. “Why should anything happen to them?”

“Why indeed?” Lark shifted uncomfortably. The sages wanted to maintain the atmosphere of tense ambiguity for a while longer rather than confront the aliens directly over their plans. But he had already done the sages’ bidding by helping Bloor. Meanwhile, Harullen and the other heretics were pressuring Lark for answers. They must decide soon whether to throw their lot in with the zealots’ mysterious scheme.

“Then… there is the matter of the rest of us.”

“The rest of you?” Ling arched an eyebrow.

“We Six. When you find what you seek, and depart — what happens to us?”

She groaned. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked about this!”

Lark stared. “Who—?”

“Who hasn’t?” She blew an exasperated sigh. “At least a third of the patients we treat on clinic day sidle up afterward to pump us about how we’ll do it. What means do we plan to use when we finally get around to killing every sentient being on the planet! Will we be gentle? Or will it come as firebolts from heaven, on the day we depart? It gets so repetitious, sometimes I want to— agh!” She clenched her fist, frustration apparent on her normally composed features.

Lark blinked. He had planned edging up to the very same questions.

“Folks are frightened,” he began. “The logic of the situation—”

“Yes, yes. I know,” Ling interrupted impatiently. “If we came to steal presapient life-forms from Jijo, we can’t afford to leave any witnesses. And especially, we can’t leave any native stock of the species we stole! Honestly, where do you people get such ideas?”

From books, Lark almost answered. From the warnings of our ancestors.

But, indeed, how well could those accounts be trusted? The most detailed had been lost to fire soon after humans arrived. Anyway, weren’t humans naive newcomers on the Galactic scene back in those days, worried to the point of paranoia? And wasn’t it the most paranoid who had boarded the Tabernacle, smuggling themselves to a far, forbidden world to hide?

Might the danger be exaggerated?

“Seriously, Lark, why should we fear anything a bunch of sooners might say about us? The odds of another Institute inspection team arriving at Jijo in under a hundred thousand years are very small. By the time one does, if any of you are still around, our visit will surely have dissolved into vague legends. We have no need to commit genocide — as if we could ever bring ourselves to do such a horrid thing, however strong the reason!”

For the first time, Lark saw beyond Ling’s normal mask of wry sardonicism. Either she deeply believed what she was saying, or she was a very skilled actress.

“Well then, how do you plan to adopt any presentient species you find here? Surely you can’t admit you picked them up on a restricted world.”

“At last, an intelligent question.” She seemed relieved. “I confess, it won’t be easy. They must be planted in another ecosystem for starters, along with any symbionts they need, and other evidence to imply they’ve been there for some time. Then we must wait quite a while—”

“A million years?”

Ling’s smile returned, thinly. “Not quite so long. We have a couple of advantages going for us, you see. One is the fact that on most worlds the bio-record is a jumble of phylogenic anomalies. Despite rules to minimize harmful cross-flow, each time a new starfaring clan wins tenant rights to a world, they inevitably bring in their favorite plants and animals, along with a host of parasites and other hangers-on. Take glavers, for instance.” She nodded over at the subject. “I’m sure we’ll find records of places where similar genes flowed in the past.”

Now it was Lark’s turn to smile, briefly. You don’t know the half of it.

“So you see,” Ling went on. “It won’t matter much if a residual population stays on Jijo, as long as we have time to modify the borrowed stock, artificially enhancing the apparent rate of genetic divergence. And that will happen anyway when we begin the process of uplift.”

So, Lark realized, even if the forayers eventually find glavers unsuitable, they might still make off with some other promising species and turn a nice profit from their crime.

Moreover, they appeared completely comfortable seeing it as no crime at all.

“And your other advantage?” he asked.

“Ah, now that’s the real secret.” A shine seemed to enter the woman’s dark eyes. “You see, what it really comes down to is a matter of skill.”

“Skill?”

“On the part of our blessed patrons.” Now her words struck a reverent tone. “The Rothen are past masters at this art, you see. Witness their greatest success so far — the human race.”

There it was again, mention of the mysterious clan that had the utter devotion of Ling, Rann, and the others. The star-humans had started out reticent. Ling had even made it clear that Rothen was not their real name. But with time she and the others grew more talkative, as if their pride could not be contained.

Or else, because they had no fear the tale would spread.

“Imagine. They managed to uplift humanity in complete secrecy, subtly altering the records of the Migration Institute so that our homeworld, Earth, remained untouched, on fallow status, for an incredible half a billion years! They even kept their gentle guidance unknown to our own ancestors, leaving them with the fantastic but useful illusion that they were uplifting themselves!”

“Amazing,” Lark commented. He had never seen Ling so animated. He wanted to ask, “How could such feats be feasible?” But that might imply he doubted her, and Lark wanted this openness to continue. “Of course, self-uplift is impossible,” he prompted.

“Completely. It’s been known since the fabled days of the Progenitors. Evolution can bring a species all the way up to pre-sapience, but the final leap needs help from another race that’s already made it. This principle underlies the life-cycle of all oxygen-breathing races in the Five Galaxies.”

“So why did our ancestors believe they raised themselves up?”

“Oh, the most insightful always suspected we had help from beyond. It explains the depth of feeling underlying most religions. But the true source of our gift of sapiency remained mysterious for most of the time that hidden hands guided our path. Only the Danikites — early precursors of our group — knew the secret all along.”

“Even the Tergens Council—”

“The Terragens Council.” Her voice soured. “The idiots guiding Earth and her colonies during these dangerous times? Their obstinacy hardly matters. Even this Streaker business, sending half the fanatics in the universe into a frenzy, howling for Earthling blood, even this will come out all right, despite the Terragens fools. The Rothen will see to things. Don’t worry.”

Lark hadn’t been worried. Not on the scale she referred to. Not till that moment. Now he found her words anything but reassuring.

From other conversations with the Danik sky-humans, the sages had already pieced together hints that some great crisis was setting the Five Galaxies in an uproar. It might even explain why the gene raiders were here right now, taking advantage of the turmoil to do a little burglary.

What could a feeble clan of Earthlings have done to cause such commotion? Lark wondered.

With some effort, he pushed the thought aside as much too vast to be grappled with right now.

“When did the Rothen reveal the truth to you… Danikites?”

“Longer back than you might think, Lark. Even before your ancestors headed off in their creaky junkyard star-ship, taking their foolish wild gamble in coming to this world. Soon after humanity entered interstellar space, a few men and women were chosen by the Rothen to receive the word. Those who had already been keeping faith, holding steadfast vigil. Some stayed on Earth to help guide the race in secret, while others •went off to dwell in joy among the Rothen, aiding them in their work.”

“And what work is that?”

She had a look Lark sometimes saw on the faces of those returning from pilgrimages to the Egg, on those blessed occasions when the sacred stone sang its serene harmonies. An expression of having experienced splendor.

“Why, rescuing the lost, of course. And nurturing what might-yet-be.”

Lark worried she might drift into complete mysticism. “Will we get to meet some Rothen?”

Her eyes had defocused while pondering vistas of time and space. Now they turned and glittered sharply.

“Some of you may, if you are lucky.

“In fact, a few of you may get luckier than you ever dreamed.”

Her implication set his head awhirl. Could she mean what he thought she meant?

That evening, by candlelight, he went over his calculations one more time.

From our best measurements, the starship had a volume of about half a million cubic meters. If you stacked every human on Jijo like frozen cordwood, we just might fit — providing you left no room for anything else.

The first time he had worked out the numbers, his intent was simply to dispel rumors among some younger urs and qheuens that the human settlers would soon abandon Jijo. It was physically impossible, he showed, for the youngest sept to forsake the Commons for a ticket back to the stars. At least with this ship alone.

But she said “some of you.”

Even after loading aboard hundreds of wuankworms, longsnouts, orglavers, there’d still be room for a few lost cousins. Those who had proved useful.

Lark knew a bribe when he heard one.

Much as he condemned the ancestors’ choice to come here, Lark loved this world. He would feel a pang if he ever left, and for all his days thereafter.

Yet if things were different, I’d go in a shot. Who wouldn’t?

The zealots are right. No human can be completely trusted these days. Not when any of us might be suborned. Bought with an offer to be made into a god.

In fact, he had no idea what the zealots planned. Only that they felt free to act without advice or approval from the dithering sages. There were humans in the cabal, of course. What could be accomplished without Earthling skill and lore? But men and women were excluded from the inner circle.

So what have I learned?

He looked down at a blank sheet. Surely the sages and zealots had other feelers out. Even Harullen must be hedging his bets. Still, Lark knew his words carried weight.

If Ling is telling the truth, and the zealots believe it, they might call off whatever action they planned. What do they care if a few glavers or rock-stallers are taken off-planet, so long as the intruders leave us in peace, as we were before?

But what if Ling was lying? Might the zealots lose their best chance to strike, for nothing?

On the other hand, suppose no one believed Ling, but she really was telling the truth? The zealots might attack, and fail, only to goad the very response they feared!

At the opposite extreme of radicalism from the fiery zealots, some of the most radical heretics actually favored their own destruction, along with the rest of the Six. Some hoon and urs members of Harullen’s society yearned for a time of transcendent ending — the urrish apostates because of their hot blood, and the hoon precisely because their passions stirred slowly, but once whipped, they stopped for nothing.

If our extremists think Ling’s folk haven’t the guts to do the job, they may plot to provoke genocide! This despite his speech, urging that the Six cede their place on Jijo by consensus and birth control.

Then there was this scheme to try blackmailing the forayers. Lark had helped Bloor set up candid shots, but were the sages aware of how the scheme might backfire?

Did they think they had nothing to lose?

Lark rubbed his stubbled chin, feeling wearier than his years. What a tangled web we weave, he pondered. Then he licked the tip of his pen, dipped it in the ink, and began to write.

The Stranger

This place makes him want to laugh. It makes him want to cry. So many books — he even remembers that word for them — lay stacked high all around him, in row after mighty row, vanishing around corners or up twisty, spiral ramps. Books bound in the leather of unknown animals, filling the air with strange scents, especially when he cracks some volume taken off a shelf at random and inhales the fumes of paper and ink.

It jolts something within him, dredging up memories more effectively than anything since he regained consciousness.

Suddenly, he recalls a cabinet of books like these, in his room when he was very young… and that brings back the pinch and crinkling flex of paper pages, covered with bright pictures. Grown-ups did not use books very much, he remembers. Adults needed the constant flash and jangle of their machines. Machines that talked at you faster than a child was trained to hear, or cast flickering beams directly at the eyeball, filling it with facts that faded the moment you blinked. That was one reason he used to like the solid promise of paper — where a favorite story would not go away like smoke, or vanish when the info-screens went dark.

Another image leaps out from childhood — holding his mother’s hand while strolling in a public place filled with busy, important people. Several walls were rimmed with bound volumes, much like the books surrounding him right now. Big books without pictures, filled with black, unmoving dots. Filled with words and nothing else. Hardly anyone used them anymore, his mother had explained. But they were important nonetheless, as decorations lining many of the places most sacred or important to human beings.

They were reminders of something… of something he cannot quite recall right now. But it must have been important. That much he knows.

Perhaps it might even be possible to find a way to save her and her people.

Maybe that was what his hands had said to Prity, just a little while ago.

If so, no wonder the little chimp broke out in wry, doubtful laughter.

Patiently, he waits for the two women — Sara and Arianafoo — to finish their meetings and return for him. Passing the time, he sketches on a pad of rich, almost luminous paper, first refining some of his drawings of the machinery aboard the steamship, then trying to capture the eerie perspectives of the stone cavern where all these odd wooden buildings lay sheltered from the sky — under a cave whose roof is propped up by incredible, massive stone pillars.

A few names are coming easier now, so he knows that it is Prity who brings him a cup of water, then checks his dressing to make sure it’s still tight. Her hands seem to flutter and dance before her, then his do likewise. He watches, fascinated, as his own fingers make movements independent of his will or command. It might be frightening to behold… except that Prity suddenly grins broadly and slaps her knee, chuffing hoarse, appreciative chimpanzee laughter.

He feels a wash of pleasure to know his joke had pleased her. Though it puzzles and slightly miffs him that his hands never saw fit to share the humor with him.

Well, well. The hands seem to know what they are doing, and he draws some satisfaction from their work. Now they pick up the pencil once again, and he lets time slip away, concentrating on the moving pencil, and on the stretch and tilt of line and shadow. When Sara returns for him, he will be ready for whatever comes next.

Perhaps it might even be possible to find a way to save her and her people.

Maybe that was what his hands had said to Prity, just a little while ago.

If so, no wonder the little chimp broke out in wry, doubtful laughter.