Heaven's Reach

Harry

IT SEEMED THAT E SPACE WAS NOT THE ONLY realm where ideas had a life of their own. On his return, Harry found Kazzkark Base teeming with hearsay. Strange rumors roamed like ravenous parasites, springing from one nervous being to the next, thriving in an atmosphere of contagious anxiety.

Steering his scoutcraft to the planetoid’s north pole, Harry docked at a slip reserved for the Navigation Institute and cut power with a sense of relief. All he wanted now was to sleep for several days without having to endure relentless exhausting dreams. But no sooner did he debark and begin the protocols of reentry than he found himself immersed in a maelstrom of dubious gossip.

“It is said that the Abdicator Alliance has broken into several heretical factions that are fighting among themselves,” murmured a tourmuj trade representative standing in line ahead of Harry at immigration, chattering in hasty Galactic Four. “And the League of Prudent Neutral Clans are said to have begun mobilizing at last, combining their fleets under pargi command!”

Harry stared at the tourmuj — a lanky, sallow-skinned being that seemed all elbows and knees — before responding in the same language.

“Said? It is said by whom? In which medium? With what veracity?”

“With no veracity at all!” This came from an oulomin diplomat whose tentacle fringes bore colored caps to prevent inadvertent pollen emission. Slithering just behind Harry, the oulomin expressed disdain toward the stooped tourmuj with sprays of orange saliva that barely missed Harry’s arm.

“I have it on good authority that the eminent and much respected pargi intend to withdraw from the League — and from Galactic affairs entirely — out of disgust with the present state of chaos. That noble race will shortly move on to blessed retirement, joining their ancestral patrons in the fortunate realm of tides. Only a regressed fool would believe otherwise.”

It was hardly the sort of speech that Harry would associate with “diplomacy.” The tourmuj reacted by irately unfolding its long legs and both sets of arms so swiftly that its knobby head bumped the ceiling. Wincing in pain, the trader stomped off, sacrificing its place in line.

Oh, I get it, Harry thought, glancing once more at the being behind him, whose grasp of other-species psychology was evident.

Just don’t try the same on me, he thought. I’m not budging, even if you call me a dolphin’s uncle.

The diplomat seemed to recognize this and merely waved two tendrils in a universal gesture of placid goodwill, as they both moved forward.

Harry took out his portable data plaque and stroked its command knobs, swiftly accessing the planetoid’s Galactic Library unit for news. It was an excellent branch, since Kazzkark housed local headquarters for several important institutes. Yet, the master index claimed to know nothing about an Abdicator schism. Moreover, according to official sources, the influential pargi were still active in Galactic councils, calling for peace and restraint, urging all militant alliances to withdraw their armadas and settle the present crisis through mediation, not war.

Were both rumormongers wrong, then? During normal times, Harry would scarcely doubt the master index. In the Civilization of Five Galaxies, it was commonly said that nothing ever really happened until it was logged by the Great Library. A planet might explode before your eyes, but it wasn’t a certified fact without the rayed spiral glyph, flashing in a corner of a readout screen.

Clearly these weren’t “normal times.”

While taking his turn at the customs kiosk, Harry overheard a talpu’ur seed merchant complain to a guldingar pilgrim about how many nauseating thread changes she had had to endure during the crossing from Galaxy Three. Harry found it hard to follow the talpu’ur’s dialect — a syncopated ratchet-rubbing of her vestigial wing cases — but it seemed that several traditional transfer points had shifted their oscillation patterns, either losing coherence or going off-line completely.

The slight, spiderlike guldingar answered in the same rhythmic idiom, speaking through a mechanical device strapped to one leg.

“Those explanations seem dubious. In fact, they are excuses given by great powers, as each attempts to seize and monopolize valuable hyperspatial links for its own strategic purposes.”

Harry frowned. Worry made the fur itch beneath his uniform. If something was happening to the viability of t-points, the matter was of vital interest to the Navigation Institute. Once again, he referred to the Branch Library but found little information — just routine travel advisories and warnings of detours along some routes.

I’m sure Wer’Q’quinn will fill me in. The old serpent oughta know what’s goin’ on, if anybody does.

One topic Harry wanted to hear about, but none of the gossipers mentioned, was the Siege of Terra. Weeks ago, when he departed to patrol E Space, the noose around Earth and the Canaan Colonies had been drawing gradually tighter. Despite welcome assistance from the Tymbrimi and Thennanin, battle fleets from a dozen fanatical alliances had ceased their mutual bickering for a time, joining cause and pressing the blockade ever closer, choking off trade and communication to Harry’s ancestral world.

Though tempted, he refrained from querying the Library about that. Given the present political situation — while his status was still probationary — it wouldn’t be wise to make too many inquiries about his old clan. I’m not supposed to care about that anymore. Navigation is my home now.

After clearing customs, his next obstacle was all-too-unpleasantly familiar — a tall sour-faced hoon wearing the glossy robe of a senior patron. With a magisterial badge of the Migration Institute on one shoulder, Inspector Twaphu-anuph gripped a plaque flowing with data while scanners probed Harry’s vessel. Every time Harry returned from a mission, he had to endure the big male biped’s humorless black eyes scrutinizing his ship’s bio-manifest for any sign of illicit genetic cargo, while that prodigious hoonish throat sac throbbed low rumblings of pompous scorn.

So it rocked Harry back a bit when the brawny bureaucrat spoke up this time, using rolling undertones that seemed positively affable!

“I note that you have just returned from E Space,” the inspector murmured in GalSeven, the spacer dialect most favored by Earthlings. “Hr-rm. Welcome home. I trust you had a pleasant, interesting voyage?”

Harry blinked, startled by the tone of informal friendliness. What happened to the usual snub? he wondered.

It was normal for Migrationists to act high and mighty. After all, their institute supervised matters of cosmic importance, such as where oxygen-breathing starfarers might colonize, and which oxy-worlds must lay fallow for a time, untouched by sapient hands. In contrast, Harry’s organization was a “little cousin,” with duties resembling the old-time coastal guardians of Earth’s oceans — surveying hyperlink routes, monitoring spacetime conditions, and safeguarding lanes of travel for Galactic commerce.

“E Space is a realm of surprises,” Harry responded cautiously. “But my mission went as well as can be expected. Thank you for asking.”

A small, furry rousit — a servant-client of the hoon — moved alongside its master, aiming a recorder unit at Harry, making him increasingly nervous. The inspector meanwhile towered closer, pressing his inquiry.

“Of course I am asking purely out of personal curiosity, but would you mind enlightening me on one matter? Would you happen to have noticed any especially large memoid beings while you patrolled E Space? Hrrrm. Perchance a conceptual entity capable of extending beyond its native continuum, into … hrr-rr … other levels of reality?”

Almost instinctively, Harry grew guarded. Like many oxy-races, hoons could not bear the ambiguous conditions of E Space or the thronging allaphors inhabiting that weird realm. Small surprise, given their notorious lack of humor or imagination.

But then why this sudden interest?

Clearly, the awkward situation called for a mix of formal flattery and evasion. Harry fell back on the old yes bwana tactic.

“It is well known that meme organisms throng E Space like vacuum barnacles infesting a slow freighter,” he said, switching to GalSix. “But alas I saw only those creatures that my poor, half-uplifted brain allowed me subjectively to perceive. No doubt those impressions were too crude to interest an exalted being like yourself”

Harry hoped the warden would miss his sarcasm. In theory, all those who swore fealty to the Great Institutes were supposed to leave behind their old loyalties and prejudices. But ever since the disaster at NuDawn, everyone knew how hoons felt toward the upstarts of Earthclan. As a neo-chimpanzee — from a barely fledged client race, indentured to humans — Harry expected only snobbery from Twaphu-anuph.

“You are probably right about that” came the noon’s response. “Still, I remain interested in your observations. Might you have sighted any memoids traveling in company with transcendent life-forms?”

The inspector’s data plaque was turned away, but its glow reflected off a patch of glossy chest scales, flashing familiar blue shades of approval. All checks on Harry and his vessel were complete. There was no legal excuse to hold him anymore.

He switched languages again, this time to Anglic, the tongue of wolflings.

“I’ll tell you what, Twaphu-anuph. I’ll do you a favor and make an official inquiry about that … in your name, of course.”

Harry aimed his own plaque and pointedly took an ident-print before the warden could object.

“That is not necessary! I only asked informally, in order—”

Harry enjoyed interrupting.

“Oh, you needn’t thank me. We are all sworn to mutual cooperation, after all. So shall I arrange for the usual inter-institute discount and forward the report to you in care of Migration HQ? Will that do?”

Before the flustered hoon could respond, Harry continued.

“Good! Then according to the protocols of entry, and by your exalted leave, I guess I’ll be going.”

The little rousit scurried out of the way as Harry moved forward, silently daring the barrier to prevent him.

It swished aside, opening his path onto the avenues of Kazzkark.

Perhaps perversely, Harry found it exciting to live in a time of danger and change.

For almost half a galactic rotation — millions of years — this drifting, hollowed-out stone had been little more than a sleepy outpost for Galactic civil servants, utilizing but a fraction of the prehistoric shafts that some extinct race once tunneled through a hundred miles of spongy rock. Then, in just the fifteen kaduras since Harry was assigned here, the planetoid transformed. Catacombs that had lain silent since the Ch ’th ’turn Epoch hummed again as more newcomers arrived every day. Over the course of a couple of Earth years, a cosmopolitan city came to life where each cavity and corridor offered a melange for the senses — a random sampling of the full range of oxy-life culture.

Some coincidence, Harry thought sardonically. It’s almost as if all this was waiting to happen, until I came to Kazzkark.

Of course, the truth was a little different. In fact, he was one of the least important free sapients walking around these ancient halls.

Walking … and scooting, slithering, creeping, ambling … name a form of locomotion and you could see it being used. Those too frail to stand in half an Earth gravity rolled everywhere on graceful carts, some with the sophistication of miniature spaceships. Harry even saw a dozen or so members of a long-armed species that looked something like gibbons — with purple, upside-down faces — leaping and brachiating from convenient bars and handholds set in the high ceiling. He wanted to laugh and hoot at their antics, but their race had probably been piloting starcraft back when humans lived in caves. Galactics seldom had what he would call a sense of humor.

Not long ago, a majority of those living on Kazzkark wore uniforms of MigrInst, NavInst, WarInst, or the Great Library. But now those dressed in livery made a small minority, lost amid a throng. The rest sported wildly varied costumes, from full body enviro suits and formal robes carrying runes describing their race genealogy and patronymics, all the way to beings who strode unabashedly naked — or with just an excretory-restraint cloth — revealing a maximum of skin, scale, feather, or torg.

When he first entered service, most Galactics seemed unable to tell a neo-chimpanzee from a plush recliner, so obscure and unimportant was the small family of Terra. But that had changed lately. Quite a few faces turned and stared as Harry walked by. Beings nudged each other to point, sharing muted utterances — a sure sign that the Streaker crisis hadn’t been solved while he was away. Clearly Earthclan was still gaining a renown it never sought.

A venerable Galactic expression summed up the problem.

“Look ye to peril — in attracting unplanned notice from the mighty.”

Still, for the most part it was easy enough to feel lost in the crowd as he took a long route back to headquarters, entranced by how much busier things had become since he left on patrol.

Using his plaque to scan immigration profiles, Harry knew that many of these sophonts were emissaries and commercial delegates, sent by their race, alliance, or corporation to seek some advantage as the staid routines of civilization dissolved in an age of rising misgivings. There were opportunities to be gained from chaos, so agents and proxies maneuvered, playing venerable games of espionage. Compacts were made and broken. Bribes were offered and loyalties compromised in double-cross gambits so ornate that the court intrigues of the Medicis might have occurred in a sandbox. Small clans, without any stake in galacto-politics or the outcome of fleet engagements, nevertheless swarmed about, endeavoring to make themselves useful to great powers like the Klesh, Soro, or Jophur, who in turn spent lavishly, seeking an edge over their foes.

With so much portable wealth being passed around, an economy flourished serving the needs of each deputy or spy. Almost a million free sophonts and servitor machines saw to the visitors’ biotic needs, from distinct atmospheric preferences to exotic foodstuffs and intoxicants.

It’s a good thing we chims had to give up some of our sense of smell, trading the brain tissue for use in sapience, Harry thought as he sauntered along the Great Way — a mercantile avenue near the surface of Kazzkark, stretching from pole to pole, where bubble domes interrupted the rocky ceiling every few kilometers to show dazzling views of an inner spiral arm of Galaxy Five. This passage had been a ghostly corridor when he first came from training at Navigation Central. Now shops and restaurants filled every niche, casting an organic redolence so thick that any species would surely find something toxic in the air. Most visitors underwent thorough antiallergic treatments to prepare their immune systems before leaving quarantine. And even so, many walked the Great Way wearing respirators.

Harry found the experience heady. Every few meters, fresh aromatics assailed his nostrils and sinuses. Some provoked waves of delight or overpowering hunger. Others brought him to the brink of nausea.

It kind of reminds me of New York, he pondered, recalling that brief time on Earth.

His ears also verged on sensory overload. The dozen or so standard Galactic tongues came in countless dialects, depending on how each race made signals. Sound was the most frequent carrier of negotiation or gossip, and the buzzing, clicking, groaning clamor of several hundred species types made the Great Way seem to throb with physical waves of intrigue. Those preferring visual gestures made things worse by waving, dancing, or flashing message displays that Harry found at once both beautiful and intimidating.

Then there’s psi.

Stern rules limited how adepts might use the “vivid spectrum” indoors. Vigilant detectors caught the most egregious offenders. Still, Harry figured part of his tension came from a general background of psychic noise.

Fortunately, most neo-chims are deaf to psi stuff. Some of the same traits that made a good observer in E Space also kept him semi-immune to the cacophony of mental vibrations filling Kazzkark right now.

Of course many of the “restaurants” were actually shielded sites of rendezvous, where informal meetings could take place, sometimes between star clans registered as enemies under edicts of the Institute for Civilized Warfare. Harry glimpsed a haughty, lizardlike Soro, accompanied by a minimal retinue of Pila and Paha clients, slip into a shrouded establishment whose proprietor at once turned off the flashing “Available” sign … but left the door ajar, as if expecting one more customer.

It might have been interesting to stand around and see who entered next to parley with the Soro matriarch, but Harry spotted at least a dozen loiterers who were already doing that very thing, pretending to read info-plaques or sample wares from street vendors, while always keeping clear line of sight to the dimmed entranceway.

Harry recalled the clumsy effort of the hoon inspector to probe him about E Space. As trust in the Institutes unraveled, everyone seemed eager for supplementary data, perhaps hoping a little extra might make a crucial difference.

He couldn’t afford to be mistaken for another spy. Especially not in uniform. Some of the other great services might be showing signs of strain, losing their trustworthiness and professionalism, but Navigation had an unsullied reputation to uphold.

Passing a busy intersection, Harry glimpsed a pair of racoonish Synthian traders, whose folk had a known affinity for Terran art and culture. They were too far away to make eye contact, but he was distracted by the sight and moments later carelessly bumped into the bristly, crouched form of a Xatinni.

Oh, hell, he thought as the ocelot face whirled toward him with a twist of sour hatred. Wasting no time, Harry ducked his head and crossed both arms before him in the stance of a repentant client, backing away as the creature launched into a tirade, berating him in shrill patronizing tonal clefts of GalFour.

“To explain this insolent interruption! To abase thyself and apologize with groveling sincerity! To mark this affront on the long list of debts accumulated by your clan of worthless—”

Not a great power, the Xatinni routinely picked on Earthlings for the oldest reason of bullies anywhere — because they could.

“To report in three miduras at my apartment for further rebukes, at the following address! Forty-seven by fifty-two Corridor of the—”

Fortunately, at that moment a bulky Vriiilh came gallumping down the avenue, grunting ritual apologies to all who had to scoot aside before the amiable behemoth’s two-meter footsteps. The Xatinni fell back with an angry yowl as the Vriiilh pushed between them.

Harry took advantage of the interruption to escape by melting through the crowd.

So long, pussycat, he thought, briefly wishing he could psi cast an insult as he fled. Instead of shameful abasement, he would much rather have smacked the Xatinni across the kisser — and maybe removed a few excess limbs to improve the eatee’s aerodynamics. I hope we meet again sometime, in a dark alley with no one watching.

Alas, self-control was the first criterion looked for by the Terragens Council, before letting any neo-chim head unsupervised into the cosmos at large. Small and weak, Earthclan could not afford incidents.

Yeah … and a fat lotta good that policy did us in the long run.

They gave dolphins a starship of their own, and look what the clever fishies went and did. They stirred up the worst crisis in Ifni-knows-how-many millions of years.

If the honest truth be told, it made Harry feel just a little jealous.

Beyond those coming to Kazzkark on official business, the streets and warrens supported a drifting population of others — refugees from places disrupted by the growing chaos, plus opportunists, altruists, and mystics.

The lattermost seemed especially plentiful, these days.

On most worlds, matters of philosophy or religion were discussed at a languid pace, with arguments spanning slow generations and even being passed from a patron race to the clients of its clients, over the course of aeons. But here and now, Harry detected something frenetic about the speeches being given by missionaries who had set up shop beneath Dome Sixty-Seven. While clusters and nebulae shimmered overhead, envoys of the best-known denominations offered ancient wisdom from perfumed pavilions — among them the Inheritors, the Awaiters, the Transcenders … and the Abdicators, showing no apparent sign of fragmentation as red-robed acolytes from a dozen species hectored passersby with their orthodox interpretation of the Progenitors’ Will.

Harry knew there were many aspects of Galactic Civilization he would never understand, no matter how long or hard he tried. For instance, how could great alliances of sapient races feud for whole epochs over minute differences in dogma?

He wasn’t alone in this confusion. Many of Earth’s greatest minds stumbled over such issues as whether the fabled First Race began the cycle of Uplift two billion years ago as a manifestation of predetermined physical law — or as an emergent property of self-organizing systems in a pseudovolitionary universe. All Harry ever figured out was that most disputes revolved around how oxy-life became sapient, and what its ultimate destiny might be as the cosmos evolved.

“Not exactly worth killing anybody over,” he snorted. “Or gettin’ killed, for that matter.”

Then again, humans could hardly claim complete innocence. They had slaughtered countless numbers of their own kind over differences even more petty and obscure during Earth’s long dark isolation before Contact. Before bringing light to Harry’s kind.

“Now this is new,” he mused, pausing at the far end of the dome.

Beyond the glossy pavilions of the main sects, an aisle had opened featuring proselytes of a shabbier sort, preaching from curtained alcoves and stony niches, or even wandering the open Way, proclaiming unconventional beliefs.

“Go ye hence from this place!” screeched a dour-looking pee’oot with a spiral neck and goggle eyes. “For each of you, but one place offers safety from the upheavals to come. That is the wellspring where you began!”

Harry had to decode the heretical creed from highly inflected Galactic Three. Use of the Collective-Responsive case meant that the Pee’oot was referring to salvation of species, of course, not individuals. Even heresy had its limits.

Is he saying each race should return to its homeworld? The mudball where its presapient ancestors evolved and were first adopted by some patron for Uplift?

Or did the preacher refer to something more allegorical?

Perhaps he means that each chain of Uplift is supposed to seek knowledge of its own legacy, distinct from the others. That would call for breaking up the Institutes and letting every oxy-life clan go its own way.

Of course Harry wasn’t equipped to parse out the fine points of Galactic theology, nor did he really care. Anyway, the next zealot was more interesting to watch.

A komahd evangelist — with a tripod lower torso but humanoid trunk and arms — looked jovial and friendly. Its lizardlike head featured a broad mouth that seemed split by a permanent happy grin, while long eyelashes made the face seem almost beguiling. But a single, fat rear leg thumped a morose beat while the komahd chanted in GalSix. Its sullen tale belied those misleadingly cheerful features.

“All our social disruptions have their roots in a plot by the enemies of all oxygen-breathing life!

“See how our great powers and alliances bleed each other, wasting their armed might, struggling and striving in search of hints and clues to a return of the Progenitors!

“This can only serve the interests of hydrogen breathers! Jealous of our speed and metabolisms, they have feared us for aeons, plotting schemes. Now, at last, they are ready. See how the hydros maneuver for our end!

“Who does not recall how recently we had to give up one of our Five Galaxies! Just half a million years ago, Galaxy Four was declared ‘fallow’ and emptied of all oxy-life culture. Never before has the Migration Institute agreed to such a ceding of territory, whose repercussions are still being felt!

“We are told that the hydros abandoned Galaxy Five, but do we not hear reports of strange sightings and perturbations in normal space that can only be work of the Zang?

“What of the transfer points? What of tracts in hyperspace that now turn sluggish and unusable? Why do the Institutes not tell us the truth?”

The komahd finished by pointing an all-too-humanlike finger straight at Harry, who in his uniform seemed a convenient representative of NavInst. Blushing under his fur, Harry backed away quickly.

Too bad. That was starting to get interesting. At least someone’s complaining about the stupid way the Soro and other powers are acting. And the komahd’s message was about the future, instead of the regular obsession with the past. All right, it’s a bit paranoid. But if more sophonts believed it, they might ease the pressure off Earth and give those poor dolphins a chance to come home.

Harry found it ironic then that the freethinking Komahd generally disliked Terrans. For his own part, Harry rather fancied their looks, and thought they smelled pretty good, too. What a pity the admiration wasn’t reciprocal.

A ruckus from behind made him swivel around — just in time to join a crowd scooting hurriedly toward the nearest wall! Harry felt a shiver course his spine when he saw what was coming. A squadron of twenty frightening, mantislike Tandu warriors, unarmed but still equipped with deadly, razor-sharp claws, trooped single file down the middle of the boulevard, the tops of their waving eye pods almost brushing the corrugated ceiling. Everyone who saw them coming scurried aside. No one argued right of way with a Tandu, nor did any vendors try to hawk wares at the spiky-limbed beings.

Before departing on his latest mission, Harry had seen a Tandu bite off the head of an obstinate Paha who had proudly refused to give way. Almost at once, the leader of that Tandu group had reproved the assailant by casually chopping its brother to bits. By that act, a simple tit-for-tat justice was served, preventing any action by the authorities. And yet, the chief lesson was clear to all and sundry.

Don’t mess with us.

No inquiry was ever held. Even the Paha’s commanders had to admit that its bravado and demise amounted to a case of suicide.

Harry’s pulse raced till the terrifying squadron entered a side avenue and passed out of sight.

I … better not dawdle anymore, he thought, suddenly feeling drained and oppressed by all the clamorous crowding. Wer’Q’quinn is gonna spit bile if I don’t hand in my mission report soon.

He also wanted to ask the old snake about things he had heard and seen since landing — about hoons interested in E Space, and t-points going on the blink, and komahd preachers who claimed—

Harry’s heart almost did a back flip when his shoulder was suddenly engulfed by a bony hand bigger than his forearm. Slim white fingers — tipped with suckers — gripped softly but adamantly.

He pivoted, only to stare up past an expanse of silver robe at a tall biped who must surely mass half a metric ton. Its head was cast like a sea ship’s prow, but where an ancient boat might have a single eye painted on each side, this creature had two pairs, one atop the other. A flat jaw extended beneath, resembling the ram of a Greek trireme.

It’s … a Skiano … Harry recalled from the endless memory drills during training. He had never expected to encounter this race on the street, let alone have one accost him personally.

What’ve I done now? he worried, preparing to go through another humiliating kowtow and repentance. At least the walking skyscraper can’t accuse me of blocking his light.

A colorful birdlike creature perched on one of the Skiano’s broad shoulders, resembling an Earthly parrot.

“I beg your pardon for startling you, brother,” the titan said mellowly, preempting Harry’s apology. It spoke through a vodor device held in its other mammoth hand. The mouth did not move or utter sound. Instead, soft light flashed from its lower pair of eyes. The vodor translated this into audible sound.

“It seemed to me that you looked rather lost.”

Harry shook his head. “Apologies for contradiction, elder patron. Your concern warms this miserable client-spawn. But I do know where I’m going. So, with thanks, I’ll just be on my—”

The bird interrupted, squawking derisively.

“Idiot! Fool! Not your body. It’s your soul. Your soul! Your soul!”

Only then did Harry realize — the conversation was taking place in Anglic, the wolfling tongue of his birth. He took a second squint at the bird.

Given the stringent requirements of flight, feathered avians had roughly similar shapes, no matter what oxy-world they originated on. Still, in this case there could be no mistake. It was a parrot. A real one. The yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum kind … which made the Skiano seem even stranger than before.

Wrong number of eyes, Harry thought numbly. You should be wearing a patch over one — or even three! Also oughta have a peg leg … and a hook instead of a hand.…

“Indeed, my good ape,” the buzzing voice from the vodor went on, agreeing with the talking bird. “It is your soul that seems in jeopardy. Have you taken the time to consider its salvation?”

Harry blinked. He had never heard of a Skiano proselyte before, let alone one that preached in Anglic, wearing a smartass Terran bird as an accessory.

“You’re talking about me,” he prompted.

“Yes, you.”

Harry blinked, incredulous.

“Me … personally?”

The parrot let out an exasperated raspberry, but the Skiano’s eyes seemed to carry a satisfied twinkle. The machine sounds were joyous.

“At last, someone who quickly grasps the concept! But indeed, I should not be surprised that one of your noble lineage comprehends.”

“Uh, noble lineage?” Harry repeated. No one had ever accused him of that before.

“Of course. You are from Earth! Blessed home of Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Tipler, and Weimberg-Chang! The abode where wolflings burst to sapience in a clear case of virgin birth, without intervention by any other race of Galactic sinners, but as an immaculate gift from the Cosmos itself!”

Harry stepped back, staring in blank amazement. But the Skiano followed.

“The world whence comes a notion that will change the universe forever. A concept that you, dear brother, must come help us share!”

The huge evangelist leaned toward Harry, projecting intense fervor through both sound and an ardent light in its eyes.

“The idea of a God who loves each person! Who finds importance not in your race or clan, or any grand abstraction, but every particular entity who is self-aware and capable of improvement.

“The Creator of All, who promises bliss when we join Him at the Omega Point.

“The One who offers salvation, not collectively, but to each individual soul.”

• • •

Harry could do nothing but blink, flabbergasted, as his brain and throat locked in a rigor from which no speech could break free.

“Amen!” squawked the parrot. “Amen and hallelujah!”