Brightness Reef

Sara

With dawn bleaching the eastern sky, weary travelers trudged into Uryutta’s Oasis after a long night march across the parched Warril Plain — a teeming, thirsty crowd of donkeys and simlas, humans and hoon. Even urrish pilgrims stepped daintily to the muddy shore and dipped their narrow heads, wincing at the bitter, unmasked taste of plain water.

Full summer had broken over the high steppe, when hot winds ignited rings of circle grass, sending herds stampeding amid clouds of dust. Even before the present crisis, wayfarers avoided the summer sun, preferring the cool moonlight for travel. Urrish guides bragged they would know the plain blindfolded.

That’s fine for them, Sara thought, swishing her aching feet in the oasis spring. An urs doesn’t fall on her face when a chance stone turns underfoot. Me, I like to see where I’m going.

Predawn light revealed mighty outlines to the east. The Rimmers, Sara thought. The mixed-race expedition was making good time, hurrying to reach the Glade before events there reached a climax. On the plus side, she was anxious to see her brothers, and to learn how well Bloor was implementing her idea. There might also be medical help for her ward, the Stranger, if it seemed safe to reveal him to the aliens. A big if. Nor had she quite given up on getting to see one of the fabled library consoles of the Great Galactics.

Yet there was also much to fear. If the star-gods did plan on wiping out all witnesses, it would surely start at the Glade. Above all, Sara worried that she might be taking the Stranger into the hands of his enemies. The dark, ever-cheerful man seemed eager to go, but did he really understand what was involved?

A whistling sigh fluted from Pzora’s corrugated cone, as the traeki siphoned water from the pond, fatigued despite having ridden all the way in a donkey-drawn chariot. A new rewq draped across Pzora’s sensor ring, one of two Sara had bought from the fresh supply at Kandu Landing, to help the traeki pharmacist treat the wounded alien, even though she wasn’t keen on the symbionts herself.

A chain of bubbles broke the surface near Sara’s foot. By Loocen’s silver light, she made out Blade, from Dolo Village, resting underwater. The hasty trek had been hard on red qheuens, and blues like Blade, as well as those humans too big to burden a donkey. Sara had been allowed to mount every even-numbered midura. Even so, her body ached. Serves me right for leading a bookish, cloistered life, she thought.

A raucous cheer rose up where urrish donkey-drivers piled grass and dung to make a campfire. Simla blood was drained into a tureen, followed by chopped meat, and soon they were slurping tepid sanguinary stew, lifting their long necks to swallow, then bending for more — sinuous silhouettes whose rise and fall was eerily accompanied by the Stranger’s plinking dulcimer. Meanwhile a hoon cook, proud of her multirace cuisine, banged pots and sprinkled powders until spicy aromas finally overcame the stench of roast simla, restoring even Sara’s queasy appetite.

A little while later, full dawn revealed stunning tan-and-green mountains towering across the eastern horizon. The Stranger laughed as he worked shirtless, helping Sara and the other humans do a typical camp-chore assigned to Earthlings — erecting shelters of g’Kek blur cloth, to shade travelers and beasts through the blazing day. The star-man’s muteness seemed no handicap at working with others. His pleasure at being alive affected all those around him, as he taught the others a wordless song to help pass the time.

Two more days, Sara thought, glancing up toward the pass. We’re almost there.

The oasis was named for a nomad warrior who had lived soon after urrish settlement on Jijo, when their numbers were still small, and their planet-bound crafts pitifully crude. In those olden times, Uryutta fled east from the rich grazing lands of Znunir, where her tribal chiefs had vowed fealty to mighty Gray Queens. Uryutta led her fellow rebels to this wadi in the vast dry plain, to nurse their wounds and plot a struggle for freedom from qheuen dominance.

Or so went the legend Sara heard that afternoon, after sleeping through the hottest part of the day — a slumber during which she had dreamed vaguely of water, cool and clear, raising a terrible thirst. She slaked it at the spring, then rejoined the other travelers under the big tent for another meal.

With a few hours still to go before dusk, and a leaden heat still pressing outside, tinkers and pack-handlers gathered around a storyteller, accompanying her recital with foot-stamps and switched braided tails. Even after gaining books and printing, urs still loved the oral tradition, its extravagance and impromptu variations. When the bard’s chant reached the Battle of Znunir Trading Post, elongated heads swayed together. Triplet eyes stared past the poet toward times gone by.

Listeners hissed contempt for gutless renegades. Sara pulled out her notebook and took notes on the antiquated storytelling dialect, already devolved from GalTwo, long before humans came.

This time the urs listeners vented repeated low grunts, marking respect for a tough foe, a sound humans first heard the third generation after arriving, when Earthlings won their own place in the pre-Commons chaos.

At first Sara had trouble following the action. Then she understood Uryutta’s combat innovation — using “long-sticks,” or rods of boo, to tip over the invincible qheuen infantry. Urrish volunteers served as living fulcrums, braving snapping” claws and crushing weight while their fellows heaved, toppling one qheuen after another.

Despite the ecstatic song of vengeful slaughter, Sara knew the historical Uryutta’s victories had been shortlived, as qheuens adjusted their tactics. It took a later breed of heroes — the warrior smiths of Blaze Mountain — to finally drive gray tyrants off the high plains. And still the queens thwarted the rising Commons, until humans brought new-old skills to the art of war.

Not all the urs were celebrating past glories. The caravan chief and her aides knelt on a peko-skin rug, planning the next trek. From their gestures over a map, they clearly meant to skip the next oasis and make a hard dash for the foothills by sunrise.

Oh, my aching feet, Sara thought.

The chief raised her conical head, hissing as one human pilgrim neared a tent flap.

“Got to go,” explained Jop, the Dolo tree farmer.

“What, leaking again? Are you ill?”

Jop had spent most of the journey immersed in a copy of the Scroll of Exile, but now he seemed affable. He laughed. “Oh, no. I jest drank too much lovely spring water. Time to give it back to Jijo. That’s all.”

While the flap was briefly up, Sara glimpsed bubbles in the pond again. Blade was back under, soaking for the next hard march. Was he also blocking out the storyteller’s victory paean over defeated qheuens?

The flap fell, and Sara looked around the pavilion-shelter.

Kurt the Exploser used a compass to draw loopy arcs on sheets of graph paper, growling over his labors, making a papermaker’s daughter wince as he crumpled one sheet after another in frustration. Nearer to Sara, Prity also drew abstract figures, more economically, in a patch of sand. Pulling at her furry chin, she consulted a topology text Sara had brought from Biblos.

My, what an intellectual caravan, Sara observed sardonically. A would-be priest, a designer of things that go bang, a geometrical chimpanzee, and a fallen mathematician, all hurrying toward possible destruction. And that just begins our list of oddities.

Over to the left, the Stranger had set aside his dulcimer to watch Kurt’s nephew, young Jomah, play a game of Tower of Haiphong with a red-qheuen salt peddler, a pair of Biblos librarians, and three hoonish pilgrims. The contest involved moving colored rings over a hexagonal array of posts, stuck in the sand. The goal was to pile a stack of rings on your Home Post in the right order, largest at the bottom, smallest on top. In the advanced game, where ring colors and patterns signified traeki attributes, one must wed various traits to form an ideal traeki.

Pzora seemed more entranced by the storyteller than the game. Sara had never heard of a traeki taking offense at Tower of Haiphong, even though it mimicked their unique mode of reproduction.

“See here?” the boy explained the game to the Stranger. “So far I got swamp flippers, a mulching core, two memory rings, a Sniffer, a Thinker, and a Looker.”

The star-human showed no sign of frustration by Jomah’s rapid speech. He watched the apprentice ex-ploser with an expression of intelligent interest — perhaps he heard Jomah’s warbling voice as something like musical notes.

“I’m hoping for a better base, to let my traeki move around on land. But Horm-tuwoa snatched a walker torus I had my eye on, so it looks like I’m stuck with flippers.”

The hoon to the boy’s left crooned a low umble of gratification. You had to think fast, playing Tower of Haiphong.

Jomah and the others all stopped what they were doing to stare at the Stranger, who rocked back and laughed.

He’s getting better at this, Sara thought. Still, it seemed eerie whenever the star-man came up with the verse to some song, perfectly apropos to what was going on at the time.

With a glitter in his eye, the Stranger waited till the other players were engrossed once more in their own stacks. Then he nudged Jomah, covertly pointing out a game piece ready to draw from the reserve box. The boy stared at the rare torus called Runner, trying so hard to stifle a yelp of joy that he coughed, while the dark alien patted him on the back.

Now how did he know that? Do they play Tower of Haiphong, among the stars? She had pictured space-gods doing — well, godlike things. It was encouraging to think they might use games with simple pieces — hard, durable symbols of life.

Of course, most games are based on there being winners… and losers.

The audience hissed appreciatively as the bard finished her epic and left the low platform to accept her reward, a steaming cup of blood. Too bad I missed the end, Sara thought. But she would likely hear it again, if the world lasted beyond this year.

When no one else seemed about to take the stage, several urs stretched and started drifting toward the nearest tent flap, to go outside and check their animals, preparing for tonight’s trek. But they stopped when a fresh volunteer abruptly leaped up, clattering hooves on the dais. The new storyteller was Ulgor, the tinker who had accompanied Sara ever since the night the aliens passed above Dolo Village. Listeners regathered around as Ulgor commenced reciting her tale in a dialect even older than the one before.

A mutter of consternation. The caravan chief corkscrewed her long neck. This was a rare topic, widely thought in poor taste, among mixed-races. Several hoon-ish pilgrims turned to watch.

Bad taste or no, a tale under way was sacrosanct till complete. The commander flared her nostril to show she had no part in this breach, while Ulgor went on evoking an era long before urs colonists ever set hoof on Jijo. To a time of space armadas, when god-fleets fought over incomprehensible doctrines, using weapons of unthinkable power.

Sara wondered — why is she doing this? Ulgor had always been tactful, for a young urs. Now she seemed out to provoke a reaction.

Hoon sauntered closer, air sacs puffing, still more curious than angry. It wasn’t yet clear that Ulgor meant to dredge up archaic vendettas — grudges so old they made later, Jijo-based quarrels with qheuens and men seem like tiffs over this morning’s breakfast.

On Jijo, urs and boon share no habitats and few desires. No basis for conflict. It’s hard to picture their ancestors slaughtering each other in space.

Even the Tower of Haiphong game was abandoned. The Stranger watched Ulgor’s undulating neck movements, keeping tempo with his right hand.

Several hoon umbled relief. Perhaps this wasn’t about archaic struggles between their forebears and the urs. Some space-epics told of awesome vistas, or sights baffling to modern listeners, reminders of what the Six had lost, but might regain someday — ironically, by forgetting.

If the first bard had been ardent, chanting bloody glory, Ulgor was coolly charismatic, entrancing listeners with her bobbing head and singsong whistle, evoking pure essences of color, frost, and fear. Sara put her notebook down, spellbound by vistas of glare and shadow, by vast reaches of spacetime, and shining vessels more numerous than stars. No doubt the yarn had grown in retelling, countless times. Even so, it filled Sara’s heart with sudden jealousy.

We humans never climbed so high before our fall. Even at our greatest, we never possessed fleets of mighty starships. We were wolflings. Crude by comparison.

But that thought slipped away as Ulgor spun her rhythmic chant, drawing out glimpses of infinity. A portrait took shape, of a great armada bound for glorious war, which fate lured near a dark region of space. A niche, mysterious and deadly, like the bitter hollows of a mulc-spider’s lair. A place wise travelers skirted, but not the admiral of this fleet. Steeped in her own invincibility, she plotted a course to fall on her foes, dismissing all thought of detour.

Several hoon umbled relief. Perhaps this wasn’t about archaic struggles between their forebears and the urs.

With a sudden jerk, Sara’s attention was yanked back to the present by a hard tug on her right arm. She blinked. Prity gripped her elbow, tight enough to grow painful — until Sara asked — “What is it?”

Letting go, her chim consort signed.

Listen. Now!

Sara was about to complain — That’s what I was doing, listening — then realized Prity did not mean the story. So she tried to sift past Ulgor’s mesmerizing drone… and finally picked up a low mutter coming from outside the pavilion.

The animals. Something’s upsetting them.

The simlas and donkeys had their own camouflaged shelter, a short distance away. Judging from a slowly rising murmur, the beasts weren’t exactly frightened, but they weren’t happy, either.

The Stranger also noticed, along with a couple of librarians and a red qheuen, all of them backing away, looking around nervously.

By now the caravan chief had joined the crowd of rising-falling urrish heads, lost in a distant place and time. Sara moved forward to nudge the expedition leader — carefully, since startled urs were known to snap — but all at once the chiefs neck went rigid of its own accord, anxious tremors rippling her tawny mane. With a hiss, the urs matron roused two assistants, yanking a third back to reality with a sharp nip to the flank. All four stood and began trotting toward the tent flap—

—then skittered to a halt as phantom shapes began rising along the shelter’s western edge — shadowy centauroid outlines, creeping stealthily, bearing spiky tools. A dismayed screech escaped one of the caravan-lieutenants, just before chaos exploded on all sides.

The audience burst into confusion. Grunts and whistling cries spilled from stunned pilgrims as the tent was ripped in a dozen places by flashing blades. War-painted fighters stepped through the gaps, leveling swords, pikes, and arbalests, all tipped with bronze-colored Buyur metal, driving the churned mass of frightened travelers back toward the ash pit at the center.

Prity’s arms clasped Sara’s waist while young Jomah clung to her other side. She wrapped an arm around the boy, for whatever comfort it might offer.

Urrish militia? she wondered. These warriors looked nothing like the dun-colored cavalry that performed showy maneuvers for Landing Day festivals. Slashes of sooty color streaked their flanks and withers. Their weaving, nodding heads conveyed crazed resolve.

A caravan-lieutenant bolted toward the stand where weapons were kept, mostly to ward off liggers, khoo-bras, or the occasional small band of thieves. The trail boss shouted in vain as the young urs dove for a loaded arbalest — and kept going, toppling through the stand and skidding along a trail of sizzling blood. She tumbled to a stop, riddled with darts, at the feet of a painted raider.

The expedition leader cursed the intruders, deriding their courage, their ancestry, and especially her own complacency. Despite rumors about trouble in far corners of the plains, peacetime habits were hard to break, especially along the main trail. Now her brave young colleague had paid the price.

“What do you want?” she demanded in GalTwo. “Do you have a leader? Show her (criminal) muzzle, if she dares to speak!”

The tent flap nearest the oasis lifted, and a burly urrish warrior entered, painted in jagged patterns that made it hard to grasp her outline. The raider chieftain high-stepped delicately over the lieutenant’s bloody trail, cantering to a halt just before the caravan commander. Surprisingly, both of her brood-pouches were full, one with a husband whose slim head peered under the fighter’s arm. The other pouch was blue and milk-veined, bulging with unfledged offspring.

A full matron was not usually prone to violence, unless driven by duty or need.

“You are not one to judge our (praiseworthy) daring,” the raider captain hissed in an old-fashioned, stilted dialect. “You, who serve (unworthy) client/masters with too-many or too-few legs, you are not fit to valuate this band of sisters. Your sole choice is to submit (obsequiously), according to the (much revered) Code of the Plains.”

The caravan chief stared with all three eyes. “Code? Surely you do not mean the (archaic, irrelevant) rituals that old-time (barbaric) tribes used, back when—”

“The code of war and faith among (noble, true-to-their-nature) tribes. Confirmed! The way of our (much revered) aunts, going back generations before (recent, despicable) corruption set in. Confirmed! Once again, I ask/demand — do you submit?”

Confused and alarmed, the caravan chief shook her head, human style, blowing air uncertainly like a hoon. With a low aspiration, she muttered in Anglic,

“Hr-r-r. Such jeekee nonsense for a grownuf adult to kill over—”

The raider sprang upon the merchant trader, wrapping their necks, shoving and twining forelegs till the caravan chief toppled with a groan of agony, wheezing in shock. Any Earthly vertebrate might have had her spine snapped.

The raider turned to the pilgrims with her head stretched far forward, as if to snap anyone in reach. Frightened prisoners pressed close together. Sara tightened her grip on Jomah, pushing the boy behind her.

“Again I ask/demand — who will (unreservedly) submit, in the name of this (miserable excuse for a) tribe?”

A dura passed. Then out of the circle staggered a surviving lieutenant — perhaps pushed from behind. Her neck coiled tightly, and her single nostril flared with dread as she stumbled toward the painted harlequin. Trembling, the young urs crouched and slowly pushed her head along the ground till it rested between the raider’s forehooves.

“Well done,” the corsair commented. “We shall make a (barely acceptable) plainsman of you.

“As for the rest, I am called UrKachu. In recent (foolish) days I was known as Lord High Aunt of Salty Hoof Clan, a useless, honorary title, bereft of (real) power or glory. Now banished from that (ungrateful) band, I co-lead this new company of cousin-comrades. United, we resurrect one of the (great, lamented) warrior societies — the Urunthai!”

The other raiders raised their weapons, bellowing a piercing cry.

Sara blinked surprise. Few humans grew up ignorant of that name, fearsome from bygone days.

“This we have done because (so-called) aunts and sages have betrayed our glory race, falling into a (reviled) human trap. A scheme of extermination, planned by alien criminals.”

From an abstract corner of her mind, Sara noted that the raider was losing control over her tailored, old-fashioned GalTwo phrasing, giving way to more modern tones, even allowing bits of hated Anglic to slip in.

The other raiders hissed supportive counterpoint to their leader’s singsong phrasings. UrKachu leveled her head toward the pilgrims, twisting and searching, then stopped before a tall, dark human male — the Stranger.

“Is this he? The star-demon?”

The spaceman smiled back, as if not even bloody murder could break his good humor. This, in turn, seemed to set the painted urs back momentarily.

“Is this the (selected, sought-after) one?” UrKachu went on. “Sky-cousin to those two-legged devils we have lived among for (long-suffering) generations?”

As if trying to perceive a new form of life, the crippled star-alien flipped the veil of his new rewq over his eyes, then off again, comparing perspectives on the urrish marauder. Perhaps, with meaning robbed from words, he found some in the riot of emotion-laden colors.

A new voice spoke up, as smooth and coolly magnetic as the warrior chief was fiery-fierce, answering from behind the mass of huddled pilgrims.

“This is the one,” Ulgor assured, emerging from the tight-packed, sweaty crowd, stepping toward UrKachu. Like the Stranger, she showed no trace of fear.

“It is the (promised) prize, recovered from far-off Dolo Town. Recently confirmed by a human sage to be one of the star-demons, not Jijo born.”

While the pilgrims muttered dismay at Ulgor’s betrayal, UrKachu’s hooves clattered joy. “Those from space will pay (dearly) for his return. For this they may offer one thing valuable above all else — survival for some (though not all) urs on Jijo.”

Many things suddenly made sense. The motive for this raid, as well as Ulgor’s spellbinding performance on the storytelling platform, designed to keep the caravan crew inside while the Urunthai moved stealthily into position.

A slim shadow fell between the two urrish leaders. A new voice cut in, speaking Anglic.

“Don’t forget friends, we’ll be demandin’ a bit more’n just that.”

A human form stood in the torn entry. Moving away from the late-afternoon glare, it resolved as Jop, the Dolo Village tree farmer. “There’s a whole list o’ things we’ll be needin’ if they’re to get their boy back, hale and whole” — Jop glanced at the Stranger’s scarred scalp — “or as whole as the poor veg will ever be.”

Sara realized. He went outside to signal the raiders while Vigor kept us distracted.

A strange alliance. A human purist helping urrish fanatics who named their group after the ancient Earthling-hating Urunthai Society.

A frail alliance, if Sara overheard rightly when UrKachu muttered sideways to Ulgor—

“Would things not prove simpler without this one?”

Tellingly, the painted warrior winced and shut up when Ulgor gave her leg a sharp kick, out of view of the other urs.

Sara detached Jomah and Prity, sheltering them in the crowd before taking a step forward.

“You can’t do this,” she said.

Jop’s smile was grim. “And why not, little bookworm?”

It was a victory to keep a tremor out of her voice.

“Because he may not be one of the gene-thieves at all! I have reason to believe he may actually be an enemy of theirs.”

Ulgor looked the Stranger up and down, nodding. “A fossivility that natters not at all. What counts is — we have goods to sell and can set a frice.”

That price Sara could envision. For UrKachu, a return to glory days of wild warriors roaming free — not incompatible with Jop’s goal to have all the dams, machines, and books cast down, speeding humanity along the Path of Redemption.

Neither seemed to fear the chance of renewed war, so clear was the contempt each held for the other. At the moment, it hardly mattered.

We are in the hands of maniacs, Sara thought. Fools who will ruin us all.

Asx

And now returns the Rothen ship. Back from its cryptic mission probing nearby space for some unknown god-purpose.

Back to collect the station it left behind, and its crew of biological prospectors.

Back to gather up a treasure-hold of purloined genes.

Back to cover up their crime.

Only now, that erstwhile-buried station gapes before us, a twisted ruin. One Rothen and a sky-human lie on makeshift biers, robbed of life, while the surviving visitor-invaders rage choleric, vowing retribution. If any doubted their intent before, my rings, can it be ambiguous anymore? We are bound to be punished. Only means and extent remain in doubt.

This is what the rebel zealots desired. No more confusion. An end to hints and sweet, lying promises. Only the cleanliness of righteous opposition, however uneven our powers against those we must resist. Let us be judged, the zealots demand, by our courage and faith, not our hesitation.

The hot, unwinking star moves across our pre-dawn sky, orbiting slowly closer, an angel — or demon — of vengeance. Do those aboard already know what has happened? Are they even now plotting the storm to come?

The zealots argue we must seize the survivors — Ro-kenn, Ling, and Rann — as hostages for the protection of every member of the Commons. And the remaining star-man, Kunn, when his aircraft returns to its shattered base.

Horrified, our qheuenish High Sage, Knife-Bright Insight, skewers the zealot logic.

“You would pile one crime on another? Did they harm us, these aliens? Did they strike the first blow, with their clinics and high-paying jobs? You have slain two of them based on mere speculation of ill intent! Now you would kidnap the rest? Let us imagine that those on the ship agree to your demands, promising not to attack the Six. What is to stop them changing their minds, once the hostages go free?”

The zealot chief replies—

“Who says they will go free? Let them dwell among us for the rest of their natural spans, living as deterrents to alien vileness.”

“And after that? How foolish to think in terms of mere lifespans! Star-gods ponder long thoughts. They plan long plans. To slay us now or in fifty years, what difference will that make, in the grand scheme of things?”

Some onlookers murmur agreement. To others, however, it is as if the sage has made a fine joke. They laugh in various ways and shout, “It makes a big difference to those now alive!”

“Anyway,” the urrish leader of the zealots adds — “You are wrong to say they had not yet attacked us, or attempted (villainous) harm. To the contrary, our (justified) explosive feat stopped their (vile) scheme just in time!”

Soot-stained and fatigued, Lester Cambel sits on a nearby boulder. Now he lifts his head from his hands, and asks—

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean their (foul) intent was to begin a program of annihilation by igniting (fratricidal) war among the Six!”

The gathered onlookers absorb this silently.

Knife-Bright Insight demands — “Can you prove this?”

“Solid (irrefutable) evidence is on the way. But first, should you not hear (supportive) testimony from your own (highly revered) fellow sage?”

Confusion reigns, until Phwhoon-dau steps forward to speak. Our hoonish colleague has been strangely silent, taking little part in events, save to carry Vubben downhill from the ill-starred pilgrimage. Now his long, scaly spine unbends, as if glad to pass a heavy burden.

“It is too short a time that I have had to ruminate upon these matters,” he demurs.

“You would ruminate a geologic age, dear friend,” Lester Cambel jests in a gentle way. “Even your most tentative wisdom is greater than any other, except the Egg’s. Please share it with us.”

A deep, rolling sound emanates from Phwhoon-dau’s pendulous, vibrating sac.

“Hr-r-rm… For almost two jaduras, I have kept careful records of statements made by our guests from space, especially those spoken formally, as if written by someone else for the sky-humans to say aloud. I had several linguistic reference works from Biblos, which I sometimes consult when judging disputes between individuals of different races, speaking different tongues. Despite our local dialect devolution, these works contain useful charts regarding syntax and variable meaning. I do not claim great expertise — just a backwoods practicality — in scrutinizing the aliens’ statements.”

“But you reached conclusions?”

“Hr-r. Not conclusions. Correlations perhaps. Indicating a possible pattern of intent.”

“Intent?”

“Intent… r-r-rm … to incite divisiveness.”

Ur-Jah comments from the wallow where she curls in exhaustion from the futile rescue effort, scratching for survivors amid the smoky ruin of the aliens’ station.

“This is not the first tine such a susficion has veen raised. We all have anecdotes to tell, of innocent-sounding renarks which sting gently at first, like a shaedo-fly, laying eggs that fester a wound that never heals. Now you say there is a consistent fattern? That this was vart of a deliverate flan? Why did you not sfeak of this vefore?”

Phwhoon-dau sighs. “A good scholar does not publish provisional data. Also, the aliens seemed unaware that we have retained this skill, charting the meaning in phrases. Or rather, that we recovered it with the Great Printing. I saw no reason to leak the fact too soon.”

He shrugs like a traeki, with a left-right twist. “I finally became convinced when Ro-kenn spoke to us all, during the pilgrimage. Surely it occurred to some of you that his aim was to strike sparks of dissension with his words?”

“It sure did!” Lester Cambel growls. Assent echoes loudly from many humans present, as if to convince others of their sincerity. Hoofed urs stamp uncertainly, their hot tempers clearly frayed from the long enervating night. Only hard-won habits of the recent Peace have kept things calm till now.

Phwhoon-dau continues. “The formal dialect of Galactic Six used by the Rothen star-god allows little room for ambiguity. Ro-kenn’s disconcerting words can have but two possible interpretations. Either he is tactless to a degree beyond all stupidity, or else the objective was to incite a campaign of genocide against human-sept.”

“Against their own veloved clients?” Ur-Jah asks, incredulous.

“That is irrelevant. Even if the Rothen claim of patronhood is true, why should they care about one small, isolated band of feral humans, long cut off from the race as a whole, genetically inbred and several hundred years out of date, perchance even defective, psychologically backward, polluted by—”

“You’ve made your point,” Lester interrupts testily. “But in that case, why pick on us?”

Phwhoon-dau turns to our human peer, umbling apologetically. “Because among the Six, man-sept is greatest in its technic lore, in its imperfect-but-useful recollection of Galactic ways, and in its well-remembered skill at the art of war.”

There rises a muttering from some qheuenish and urrish listeners, yet no actual disagreement. Not from anyone who knows the tale of Battle Canyon, or Townsend’s Ambush, or the siege of Tarek Town.

“All of these factors make your kind the obvious first target. Moreover, there is another reason. The effect your race has had upon the rest of us. As newcomers, when your rank was lowest, still you opened your sole treasure, your library, to all. After your great victories, when your status towered highest, you refused many privileges of dominance, instead bowing to the sages, accepting limits called for by the Great Peace.

“It is this record of restraint that makes you dangerous to Rothen plans. For what good is it to incite war, if your intended victims choose not to fight?”

Yes, my rings, we observe/note the crowd’s reaction. A hush as Phwhoon-dau evokes images of reconciliation, gently dousing still-simmering sparks of resentment. It is a masterwork of mediation.

“Once men-sept is gone,” Phwhoon-dau goes on, “it would prove simple to goad disaffection among the rest, pretending secret friendships, offering assistance. Handing over tailored plagues, for instance, letting each race come up with clever ways to deliver death bugs to their foes. Within less than a generation the job would be complete. The sparse record left in Jijo’s soil would show only that six sooner races once sank low here, never reaching redemption.”

Uneasy silence, greets this scenario painted by our hoonish sage.

“Of course, none of this is proven,” Phwhoon-dau concludes, rounding to stab a finger toward the zealot chieftain. “Nor does it justify the horrors we have seen this night, perpetrated rashly, without consulting the sages or the Commons.”

The urrish rebel lifts her head high, in order to peer over the crowd toward the east. With a glad snort, she turns back to Phwhoon-dau.

“Now arrives your proof!” She whistles jubilantly, helping shove an opening through the ranks of spectators, as dawn reveals dusty figures galloping down the trail from the Holy Glade.

“Here, also, is your justification.”

Lark

Harullen called down from the crater’s edge. “You two had better come up now!” the heretic shouted. “Someone’s going to catch you and it’ll mean trouble. Besides — I think something’s happening!”

Physical and emotional exhaustion had taken their toll of the gray aristocrat’s polished accent. He sounded frantic, as if serving as reluctant lookout were as risky as poking through perilous wreckage.

“What’s happening?” Uthen shouted back. Though a cousin to the qheuen above, Lark’s fellow biologist looked like a different species, with his scarred carapace streaked by gummy ash. “Are they sending a robot this way?”

Harullen’s leg-vents fluted overtones of worry. “No, the machines still hover protectively over Ro-kenn, and the two servant-humans, and the cadavers, all surrounded by a crowd of local sycophants. I refer to a commotion over where the sages have been holding court. More zealots have arrived, it seems. There is ferment. I’m certain we are missing important news!”

Harullen may be right, Lark thought. Yet he was reluctant to leave. Despite the stench, heat, and jagged stubs of metal — all made more dangerous by his own fatigue — dawn was making it easier to prowl the ruins of the buried station in search of anything to help make sense of it all.

How many times had he seen Ling vanish down a ramp into these secret precincts, wondering what lay inside? Now it was a blackened hell.

I aided the zealots, he recalled. I gave them copies of my reports. I knew they were going to do something.

But I never figured anything as brutal as this.

Neither had the star-gods, who clearly never guessed that angry primitives might still know how to make things go boom.

They never asked the right questions.

“I tell you something’s happening!” Harullen shouted again, making no effort at originality. “The sages are in motion — toward the aliens!”

Lark glanced over at Uthen and sighed. “I guess he means it, this time.”

His friend had been silent for some time, standing over the same spot. When Uthen replied, it was in a low voice that barely disturbed the ash beneath his feet.

“Lark, would you please come look at this?”

Lark knew that tone from past field trips, exploring for evidence of Jijo’s complex living past. He picked his way toward the qheuen, slipping gingerly between torn metal braces and seared, buckled plating, lifting his feet to kick up as little of the nasty dust-ash as possible.

“What is it? Did you find something?”

“I— am not sure.” Uthen lapsed into GalSix. “It seems I have seen this before. This symbol. This representation. Perhaps you can confirm?”

Lark bent alongside his friend, peering into a recess where the rising sun had yet to shine. There he saw a jumble of rectangular lozenges, each thick as his hand and twice as long. Uthen had scraped aside some half-melted machinery in order to reveal the pile. One slab lay near enough to make out a symbol, etched across its dark brown surface.

A double spiral with a bar through it. Now where have I seen—

Lark’s hand reached where Uthen could not, stroked the rectangle, then picked it up. It felt incredibly light, though now it dawned on him that it could be the weightiest thing he had ever touched.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked, turning it in the light.

Uthen plucked the slab from his hand, holding it in a trembling claw.

“How can I not be?” the qheuenish scholar replied. “Even half-animal, reverted primitives should recognize the glyph of the Great Galactic Library.”

The “evidence” lay strewn across the trampled grass. Ro-kenn’s piercing eyes surveyed a tangle of wires and glossy spheroids that the zealots had recently brought down from the Valley of the Egg. Clogs of dirt still clung to a necklace of strange objects, from where it had till lately been buried, next to the holiest site on Jijo.

Two clusters of onlookers formed semicircles, one backing the assembled sages, the other reverently standing behind the star-god. Many in the second group had been patients at the forayers’ clinic or believed their claims of righteousness above all law. Among the humans on that side, faith in their rediscovered patrons seemed to glow, depicted by Lark’s new rewq as intense red fire, surrounding their faces.

Gone was the Rothen’s prior mien of furious wrath. Ro-kenn’s humanoid features once more conveyed charismatic poise, even serene indulgence. He spent another dura looking over the jumble of parts, then spoke in prim Galactic Seven.

“I see nothing here of interest. Why do you show me these things?”

Lark expected the young urrish radical — leader of the rebel zealots — to answer, as both plaintiff and defendant, justifying her group’s violence by diverting blame to the aliens. But the young dissenter kept well back, huddling with a crowd of humans and urs, consulting texts.

The hoonish sage, Phwhoon-dau, stepped forward to confront the Rothen emissary.

“We seek to ascertain whether these tools of high acumen are yours. Tools which some of our children found, within the last turning of Jijo’s axis. Tools which someone buried surreptitiously, in close contact with our beloved Egg.”

Lark watched Ling’s reaction. Since he already knew her pretty well, no rewq was needed to translate her shock of recognition. Nor the embarrassment that followed as she worked things out in her own head. That’s all I needed to know, Lark thought.

Ro-kenn seemed nonchalant. “I can only guess that some among you natives placed it there — as your foolish rebels placed explosives under our station.”

Now Ling’s reaction was to blink in surprise. She didn’t expect to hear him lie. At least not so baldly, with no time to prepare a smooth performance.

Glancing to one side, the star-woman noticed Lark’s scrutiny and quickly looked away. Lark wasn’t proud of the satisfaction he felt, over the reversal of their moral positions. Now it was her turn to feel ashamed.

“Use your instrumentalities,” Phwhoon-dau urged the tall Rothen. “Analyze these implements. You will find the technology far beyond anything we Six can now produce.”

Ro-kenn shrugged with an elegant roll of his shoulders. “Perhaps they were left by the Buyur.”

“In that place?” Phwhoon-dau boomed amusement, as if Ro-kenn had made a good-natured jest. “Only a century ago, that entire valley glowed white-hot from the Egg’s passage to the upper world. These tendrils would not have survived.”

The crowd murmured.

Lark felt a tug on his sleeve. He glanced around to see that a short blond figure — Bloor the Portraitist — had slinked up behind, bearing a box camera and tripod.

“Let me shoot under your arm!” the photographer whispered urgently.

Lark felt a frisson of panic. Was Bloor mad? Trying this in the open, with the robots at their wariest? Even if Lark’s body shielded that angle, people on both sides would see. Despite Phwhoon-dau’s masterful performance, could they count on loyalty from everyone in the milling throng?

With a helpless sigh, he lifted his left arm enough for Bloor to aim at the confrontation on the Glade.

“Then I have no other explanation for these items,” Ro-kenn answered, referring to the snarled mass of gear. “You are welcome to speculate to the extent that you are able, until our ship arrives.”

Ignoring the implied threat, the hoonish sage went on with an air of calm reason that made the Rothen seem edgy by comparison.

“Is speculation required? It’s been asserted that several sets of eyes observed your robots, on a recent foggy night, deliberately implanting these devices underneath our sacred stone—”

“Impossible!” Ro-kenn burst forth, temper once more flaring. “No life-forms were in any position to witness on that night. Careful scans beforehand showed no sentient beings within range when—”

The Rothen emissary trailed off midsentence, while onlookers stared, awed and amazed that an urbane star-god could be suckered by so obvious a ploy.

He must be awfully accustomed to getting his way, Lark thought, to fall for such a simple trap.

Then a strange notion occurred to him. Many Earthly cultures, from ancient Greece and India to High-California, depicted their gods as spoiled, temperamental adolescents.

Could that be racial memory? Maybe these guys really are our long-lost patrons, after all.

“Thank you for the correction,” Phwhoon-dau answered, with a graceful bow. “I only said it was so asserted. I shall rebuke those who suggested it. We will take your word that there were no witnesses on the night that you now admit your robots planted these strange, alien devices next to our Egg. Shall we leave that aspect now and proceed to why they were planted in the first place?”

Ro-kenn appeared to be chewing on his mistake, working his jaw like a human grinding his teeth. Lark’s rewq showed a discolored swath that seemed to ripple across the upper part of the Rothen’s face. Meanwhile Bloor whispered contentment as he took another picture, pushing a cover slide over the exposed plate. Go away, Lark silently urged the little man, to no avail.

“I see no further purpose to be served by this session,” the alien finally announced. He turned and began to move away, only to stop when confronted by the gaping crater where his station once lay, recalling that he had no place to go.

Of course Ro-kenn could climb aboard a robot and simply fly off. But till either Kunn’s aircraft or the star-ship arrived, there was only wilderness to flee to. No shelter beyond this glade filled with inconvenient questions.

A shout rose up from the cluster of urs and men over to the left. The huddle broke, revealing a beaming Lester Cambel, burdened by several large-format volumes as he hurried forward. “I think we found it!” he announced, kneeling with several assistants beside one of the spheroidal knobs that ran along the tangled mass of cable. While an aide pried at the box, Lester explained.

“Naturally, none of us has the slightest idea how this device works, but Galactic tech is so refined and simplified, after a billion years, that most machines are supposed to be pretty easy to use. After all, if humans could pilot a creaky, fifth-hand starship all the way to Jijo, the things must be darn near idiot-proof!”

The self-deprecating jest drew laughter from both sides of the crowd. Pressing close to watch, the throng left no easy or dignified avenue for Ro-kenn or his servants to escape.

“In this case,” Cambel continued, “we assume the gadget was meant to go off when all the pilgrims were in place near the Egg, at our most impressionable, perhaps as we finished the invocation. A good guess would be either a timer or some remote control trigger, possibly a radio signal.”

An aide succeeded in getting the cover off, with an audible pop. “Now let’s see if we can find something like the standard manual override switch they show on page fifteen-twelve,” Lester said, crouching closer, consulting one of the open volumes.

Ro-kenn stared at the book, filled with crisp diagrams, as if he had just seen something deadly creep out of his own bedsheets. Lark noticed that Ling was looking at him once again. This time, her expression seemed to say, What have you been hiding from me?

Although she lacked a rewq, Lark figured a wry smile would convey his reply.

You assume too much, my dear. It blinded you, preventing you from asking sound questions. It also made you patronizing, when we might have been friends.

All right, maybe that was too complex to transmit by facial expression alone. Perhaps what his smirk actually said was — Such nerve! You accuse me of hiding things?

“I protest!” interjected the male sky-human, Rann, towering over all but the hoon and a few traeki as he stepped forward. “You have no right to meddle with the property of others!”

Phwhoon-dau crooned softly, “Hr-r — then you avow ownership of this invasive thing, placed without permission in our most sacred site?”

Rann blinked. Clearly he hated the present weakness of the aliens’ position, having to fence words with savages. Confused, the tall sky-human turned to Ro-kenn for guidance. While they conferred, heads close together, Lester Cambel continued.

“The purpose of this contraption was what had us stymied for a while. Fortunately, I’d already been doing some research on Galactic technologies, so the texts were somewhat familiar. Finally, I found it listed under psi emitters!”

“Here’s the switch, sir,” an aide declared. “Ready when you are.”

Lester Cambel stood up, raising both hands.

“People! This is a first and final warning. We’ve no idea what we’re about to set off. I assume nothing fatal, since our guests aren’t flying out of here at top speed.

However, since we’ve no time for careful experiments, I advise you to at least step back. The cautious among you may retreat some greater distance, perhaps twice the diameter of the Egg. I’ll count down from ten.”

Uthen wanted to stay and watch, Lark thought. But I made him go hide those library disk-things we found.

Did I actually do him a favor?

Cambel drew a deep breath.

“Ten!”

“Nine!”

“Eight!”

Lark had never seen a g’Kek outrace an urs before. But as the crowd dissolved, some of the Six showed surprising haste to depart. Others remained, tethered by curiosity.

Courage is one trait that binds any true union, he thought with some pride.

“Seven!”

“Six!”

Now Ro-kenn himself glided forward. “I avow ownership of this device, which—”

“Five!”

“Four!”

Ro-kenn hurried, speaking louder to be heard past the tumult. “—which consists merely of instrumentation, innocently emplaced—”

“Three!”

“Two!”

Faster, in frantic tones. “—to study patterns cast by your revered and sacred—”

“One!”

“Now!”

Some humans instinctively brought their hands up to their ears, crouching and squinting as if to protect their eyes against an expected flash. Urs pressed arms over pouches. g’Keks drew in their eyes, while qheuens and traeki squat-hugged the ground. Rewq cringed, fleeing the intense emotions pouring from their hosts. Whatever a “psi emitter” might be, everyone was about to find out.

Lark tried to ignore instinct, taking his cue instead from Ling. Her response to the countdown seemed a queer mix of anger and curiosity. She clasped both hands together, turning to meet his eyes at the very moment Cambel’s aide stroked a hidden switch.

Asx

Confusion brims our central core, oozing through the joint-seals that bind us/we/i/me, seeping bewilderment down our outer curves, like sap from a wounded tree.

This voice, this rhythmic recitation, can it be what we know it not to be?

The Egg’s patternings have stroked us so many ways. This ruction has familiar elements, like the Sacred One’s way of singing…

Yet — there is also a metallic tang, simplistic, lacking the Egg’s sonorous pitch and timbre.

One sub-cadence draws us toward it, clattering like a hasty quintet of claws, pulling our attention, as if down a dark underground funnel.

Suddenly, i/we coalesce, submerging into strange existence as a unified being. One encased in a hard shell.

Pentagonal resentment surges. This “me” is filled with rage.

How dare they tell me I am free!

What unnatural law is this Code of the Commons? This rule that “liberates” my kind from the sweet discipline we once knew, imposed by our gracious queens?

We who are blue — we who are red — surely we yearn to serve, deep in our throbbing bile nodes! To work and fight selflessly, assisting gray dynastic ambitions! Was that not our way among the stars, and before?

The native way of all qheuens?

Who dared bring an end to those fine days, forcing alien notions of liberty into carapaces too stiff for a deadly drug called freedom?

Humans dared impose these thoughts, breaking up the union of our well-ordered hives! Theirs is the fault, the shell-bound debt to pay.

And pay they shall!

After that, there will be other scores to settle…

i/we writhe, experiencing what it feels like to crouch and run on five strong legs. Legs meant for service. Not to a mere nest, crouched behind some puny dam, or to some vast abstraction like the Commons, but to grand gray matrons, noble, gorgeous, and strong.

Why does this vivid perception flood through our dazzled core?

It must be the Rothen artifice — their psi-device — part of their scheme to influence each race of the Six. Tricking us into doing their will.

Quivers of surprise shake our/my rings. Even after so many years of friendship, i/we had never realized — the qheuen point of view is so weird!

Yet no weirder than the next sensation that comes barging into our shared consciousness.

The feel of galloping hooves.

A hot breath of the dry steppes.

The burning flare of a psyche at least as egocentric as any human being.

Now I am urrish-ka! Solitary, proud as the day I emerged from the grass, little more than a beast. Nervous, but self-reliant.

I may join the tribe or clan that adopts me off the plain.

I may obey a leader — for life has hierarchies that one must endure.

Yet inside I serve one mistress. Me!

Can humans ever know how their gross smell scrapes my nostril membranes? They make good warriors and smiths, it’s true. They brought fine music to Jijo. These are valid things.

Yet one conceives how much better the world would be without them.

We had fought our way up high before they came. From the plains to fiery mountaintops, we stretched our necks over all others on Jijo — till these bipeds dragged us down, to be just another race among Six.

Worse, their lore reminds us — (me!) — how much we have lost. How much is forgotten.

Each day they make me recall how low and brief my life is doomed to be, here on this spinning ball of mud, with bitter oceans all around…

The indignant narration gallops past our ability to follow. Its resentful thread is lost, but another takes its place, imposed from the outside by a force that throbs through the little mountain vale.

This beat is much easier to follow. A cadence that is heavy, slow to anger — and yet, once roused, its ire seems hopeless to arrest short of death.

It is not a rhythm to be rushed. Still, it beckons us…

Beckons us to ponder how often the quicker races tease we poor, patient hoon,

how they swirl around us,

how often they seem to talk fast on purpose,

how they set us to the most dangerous tasks,

to face the sea alone, although each lost ship wrenches a hundred loved ones, tearing our small families apart with wrenching pain.

Humans and their stinking steamboats, they have kept the skills, pretending to share, but not really. Someday they will leave us rotting here, while they go off on ships made of pure white light.

Should this be allowed? Are there ways they can be made to pay?

Confusion reigns.

If these pernicious messages were meant for each separate race — to sway it toward aggression — then why are we/i receiving all of them? Should the Rothen not have targeted each sept to hear one theme, alone?

Perhaps their machine is damaged, or weak.

Perhaps we are stronger than they thought.

Breaking free of the hoonish rhythm, we sense that two layers of bitter song remain. One is clearly meant for Earthlings. Reverence is its theme. Reverence and pride.

We are superior. Others specialize but we can do anything! Chosen and raised by mighty Rothen, it is proper that we be greatest, even as castaways on this slope of savages.

If taught their place, the others might learn roles of worthy service…

we/i recall a phrase. Direct empathic transmission — a technique used by Galactic science for the better part of half a billion years.

Knowing makes the manipart stream of voice seem more artificial, tinny, even self-satirical. Of course this message was to have been amplified somehow through our Holy Egg, at a time when we would be most receptive. Even so, it is hard to imagine such prattle winning many believers.

Did they actually think we would fall for this?

Another fact penetrates our attention: There is no layer for the wheeled ones! Why is that? Why are the g’Kek left out? Is it because of their apparent uselessness in a program of genocidal war?

Or because they were already extinct, out there among the stars?

One resonance remains. A drumbeat, like hammers pounding on stacks of stiff round tubes. A reverberation that howls in a manner this composite self finds eerily familiar.

Yet, in some ways it is the most alien of all.