Infinity's Shore

PART SEVEN

“MASTER,” THE STUDENT ASKED. “The Universe is so complex, surely the Creator could not have used volition alone to set it in motion. In crafting His design, and in commanding the angels to carry out His will, He must have used computers.”

The great savant contemplated this for several spans before replying in the negative.

“You are mistaken. No reality can be modeled completely by a calculating engine that is contained within and partaking of that same reality. God did not use a computer to create the world. He used mathematics.”

The student pondered this wisdom for a long time, then persisted in his argument.

“That may have been the case when it came to envisioning and creating the world, Master — and to foreseeing future consequences in revealed destiny — but what of maintenance? The cosmos is a vast, intricate network of decisions. Choices are made every femtosecond, and living beings win accordingly, or else lose.

“How can the Creator’s assistants carry out these myriad local branchings, unless they use computer models?”

But once again, the great savant turned his gaze away in rebuke.

“It is Ifni, the chief deputy, who decides such things. But she has no need for elaborate tools for deciding local events.

“In the Creator’s name she runs the world by using dice.”

Kaa

THE SUBSEA HABITAT FELT CROWDED AS FIVE DOLPHINS gathered before a small holo display, watching a raid unfold in real time. Images of the distant assault were blurry, yet they stirred the heart.

While Brookida, Zhaki, and Mopol jostled near Kaa’s left side, he felt more acutely aware of Peepoe on his right — fanning water with her pectorals in order to keep one eye aimed at the monitor. Her presence disturbed his mental and hormonal equilibrium — especially whenever a stray current brushed her against him. To Kaa, this ironically proved the multiple nature of his sapient mind — that the individual he most desired to see was the same one he dreaded being near.

Fortunately, the on-screen spectacle offered distraction — transmitted by a slender fiber strand from a spy camera located hundreds of kilometers away, on a sandy bluff overlooking the Rift. Banks of heavy clouds glowered low, making twilight out of day. But with enhanced contrast, an observer could just make out shadows flicking beneath blue water, approaching the shore.

Abruptly, the line of surf erupted armored figures — six-legged monsters with horizontal cylinders for bodies, flared widely at the back — charging past the beach then through a brackish swamp, firing lasers as they came. Three slim flying robots accompanied the attackers, still dripping seawater as they swooped toward the surprised foe.

The enemy encampment was little more than a rude fabric tent propped against the lee side of a shattered spaceship. A single hovering guardian drone shrieked, rising angrily as it sighted the new arrivals … then became a smoldering cinder, toppling to douse in the frothy swamp. Jophur survivors could only stand helpless as the onslaught swept over them. Eye cells throbbed unhappily atop tapered sap rings, staring in dazed wonder, unable to grasp this humiliation. August beings, taken prisoner by mere dolphins.

By the youngest race of the wolfling clan of Terra.

Kaa felt good, watching his crew mates turn the tables on those hateful stacks of greasy doughnuts. The Jophur alliance had been relentless in pursuing Streaker across the star lanes. This small victory was almost as satisfying as that other raid, on Oakka World, where resolute action took an enemy base from behind, releasing Streaker from yet another trap.

Only that time I didn’t have to watch from afar. I piloted the boat to pick up Engineer D’Anite, dodging fire all the way.

In those days, he had still been “Lucky” Kaa.

Alongside Peepoe and the others, he watched Lieutenant Tsh’t gesture right and left with the metal arms of her walker unit, ordering members of the raiding party to herd their captives toward the shore, where a whalelike behemoth erupted from the surf, spreading mighty jaws.

Despite thick clouds, the raiders had to make this phase brief to avoid detection.

One Jophur captive stumbled in the surf. Its component rings throbbed, threatening to split their mucusy bindings. Mopol chittered delight at the enemy’s discomfiture, thrashing his flukes to splatter the habitat’s low ceiling.

Peepoe sent Kaa a brief sonar click, drawing attention to Mopol’s behavior.

See what I mean? she remarked in clipped Trinary.

Kaa nodded agreement. All trace of illness was gone, replaced by primal exultation. No doubt Mopol longed to be on the raid, tormenting the tormentors.

Peepoe was naturally irked to have come all this way, driving a one-dolphin sled through unfamiliar waters where frightening sound shadows lurked, just to diagnose a case of kingree fever. The name had roots in an Anglic word—malingering. Dolphin spacers knew many clever ways to induce symptoms of food poisoning, in order to feign illness and avoid duty.

“I thought-t so from the beginning,” Kaa had told her earlier. “It was Makanee’s choice to send a nurse, just in case.”

That hardly mollified Peepoe.

“A leader’s job is to motivate,” she had scolded. “If the work is hard, you’re supposed to motivate even harder.”

Kaa still winced from her chiding. Yet the words also provoked puzzlement, for Mopol had no apparent reason to fake illness. Despite his other faults, the crewfin wasn’t known for laziness. Anyway, conditions at this outpost were more pleasant than back at Streaker, where you had to breathe irksome oxy-water much of the time, and struggle for sleep with the weird sonic effects of a high-pressure abyss surrounding you. Here, the waves felt silky, the prey fish were tasty, while the task of spying was varied and diverting. Why should Mopol pretend illness, if it meant being cooped up in a cramped habitat with just old Brookida for company?

On-screen, half a dozen bewildered Jophur were being ushered aboard the submarine, while onshore Lieutenant Tsh’t consulted with two native humans draped in muddy rags — a young man and an even younger girl — who looked quite tattered and fatigued. The male moved with a limp, clutching a bow and quiver of arrows while his companion held a small broken robot.

Brookida let out a shout, recognizing a spy probe of his own design, fashioned months ago to send ashore, snooping in the guise of a Jijoan bird.

The young man pointed toward a nearby dune and spoke words the camera could not pick up. Almost at once, the three Earthling war drones darted to surround that hillock, hovering cautiously. Moments later, sand spilled from a hole and a larger robot emerged, visibly scarred from past violent encounters. Hesitantly, it paused as if unsure whether to surrender or self-destruct. Finally, the damaged machine glided to the beach, where two more humans were being carried on stretchers by dolphin warriors in exo-suits. These men were also mud-splashed. But under a grime coating, the bigger one wore garments of Galactic manufacture. The captive robot took a position next to that man, accompanying him aboard the sub.

Last to board were Tsh’t and the two walking humans. The young man held back for a moment, awed by the entry hatch, gaping like the jaws of some ravenous beast. But the girl radiated delight. Her legs could barely carry her fast enough through the surf as she plunged inside.

Then only Lieutenant Tsh’t remained, staring down at a small creature who lounged indolently on the beach, grooming its sleek fur, pretending it had all the time in the world. Through her exo-suit speakers, Tsh’t addressed the strange being.

“Well? If you’re coming, this is your lassst chance.”

Kaa still found it hard to reconcile. For two weeks he had spied on hoonish sailing ships operating out of Wuphon Port, and watched as tiny figures scampered across the rigging. Not once did he associate the fuzzy shapes with tytlal—a Galactic client species whose patrons, the Tymbrimi, were Earth’s greatest friends.

Who could blame me? With hoons they act like clever animals, not sapient beings. According to the journal of the young hoon adventurer Alvin, Jijoans called the creatures noor beasts. And noor never spoke.

But the one on the beach had! And with a Tymbrimi accent, at that.

Could six races live here all this time without knowing that another band of sooners were right in their midst? Could tytlal play dumb the entire time, without giving themselves away?

The small creature seemed complacently willing to outwait Tsh’t, perhaps testing dolphin patience … until abruptly a new voice broke in, coming from the sub’s open hatch. The camera eye swung that way, catching in its field a tall figure, gangly and white, with scaly arms and a bellowslike organ throbbing below its jaw, emitting a low, resonant hum.

Alvin, Kaa realized. The young author of the memoir that had kept Kaa up late several nights, reading about the strange civilization of refugees.

He must be “umbling” at the tytlal.

In moments the sleek creature was seen perched atop the lieutenant’s striding exo-suit, as Tsh’t hurried aboard. Its grinning expression seemed to say, Oh, well. If you positively insist…

The hatch swung shut and the sub backed away swiftly, sinking beneath the waves. But the images did not stop.

Left alone at last, Streaker’s little scout robot turned its spy eye back toward the field of dunes. Sandy terrain swept past as it sought a vantage point — some ideal site to watch over two blasted wrecks that had once been small spacecraft, but now lay mired by mud and embraced by corrosive vines.

No doubt Gillian Baskin and the ship’s council were deeply interested in who might next visit this place of devastation.

Gillian

THE INITIAL EXERCISES ARE COMPLETE. A WARM TINGLING pervades her floating body, from tip to toes.

Now Gillian is ready for the first deep movement. It is Narushkan—“the starfish”—an outreach of neck, arms, and legs, extending toward the five planar compass points.

Physique discipline lies at the core of weightless yoga, the way Gillian learned it on Earth, when she and Tom studied Galactic survival skills from Jacob Demwa. “Flesh participates in everything we do,” the aged spy master once explained. “We humans like to think we’re rational beings. But feelings always precede reason.”

It is a delicate phase. She needs to release her tense body, allowing the skin itself to become like a sensitive antenna. Yet she cannot afford a complete letting go. Not if it means unleashing the grief and loneliness pent up inside.

Floating in a shielded nul-gee zone, Gillian lets her horizontal torso respond to the tug of certain objects located outside of the suspension tank, elsewhere in the ship, and beyond. Their influence penetrates the walls, making her sensitized nerves throb and twitch.

“Articles of Destiny”—that was how an enigmatic Old One described such things, during Streaker’s brief visit to the Fractal System.

She never got to meet the one who spoke those words. The voice came a great distance, far across that gargantuan edifice of spiky hydrogen ice. The Fractal System was one huge habitat, as wide as a solar system, with a tiny red sun gleaming in its heart. No pursuer could possibly find Streaker in such a vast place, if sanctuary were given.

“Your ship carries heavy freight,” the voice had said. “As fate-laden a cargo as we ever detected.”

“Then you understand why we came,” Gillian replied as Streaker’s lean hull passed jutting angles of fantastic crystal, alternating with planet-sized hollows of black shadow. The ship seemed like a pollen grain lost in a giant forest.

“Indeed. We comprehend your purpose. Your poignant request is being considered. Meanwhile, can you blame us for refusing your invitation to come aboard in person? Or even to touch your vessel’s hull? A hull so recently stroked by dire light?

“We who dwell here have retired from the ferment of the Five Galaxies. From fleets and star battles and political intrigues. You may or may not receive the help you seek — that has yet to be decided. But do not expect glad welcome. For your cargo reawakens many of the hungers, the urgencies, and irksome obsessions of youth.”

She tried to play innocent. “The importance of our cargo is overrated. We’ll hand it over gladly, to those who prove impartial and wise.”

“Speak not so!” the speaker scolded. “Do not add temptation to the poisons you already bring in our midst!”

“Poisons?”

“You carry blessings in your hold … and curses.”

The voice concluded, “We fear what your presence will do to our ancient peace.”

As it turned out, Streaker’s time of sanctuary lasted just a few slim weeks before convulsions began to shake the Fractal System, sending awful sparks crackling along an immense structure built to house quadrillions. Crystal greenhouses, as wide as Earth’s moon, blew apart, exposing sheltered biomass to hard vacuum. Jupiter-sized slivers cracked loose, diffuse as cardboard, though glittering with lighted windows. Like icicles knocked by a violent wind, these tumbled, then collided with other protrusions, exploding into hurricanes of silent dust. Meanwhile, a cacophony of voices swarmed—

The poor wolfling children … we must help the Terrans.…

No! Erase them so we may return to quiet dreaming.…

Objection! Let us instead squeeze them for what they know.…

Yes. Then we’ll share the knowledge with our younger brethren of the Awaiter Alliance.…

No! The Inheritors…

The Abdicators!..

Gillian recalls marveling at the unleashed storm of pettiness.

So much for the vaunted detachment of old age.

But then, when all seemed lost, sympathetic forces briefly intervened.

This icy realm is not the place you seek.

Advice you need, dispassionate and sage. Seek it from those who are older and wiser, still.

Where tides curl tightly, warding off the night.

Hurry, youngsters. Take this chance. Flee while you can.

• • •

Abruptly, an escape path opened for the Earth vessel — a crevice in the vast maze of hydrogen ice, with starspeckled blackness just beyond. Streaker had only moments to charge through … an egress too sudden and brief for Emerson D’Anite, who had already set forth in a brave, desolate sacrifice.

Poor Emerson. Fought over by resentful factions until his scout craft was swallowed by enfolding light.

All of this comes back to Gillian, not in sequence, but whole, timeless, and entire as she recalls that one phrase—

“Articles of Destiny.”

Immersed in a trance state, she can feel those tugging objects. The same ones that caused so much trouble in the Fractal System.

They stroke her limbs — the limbs of Narushkan—not with physical force, but with awful import of their existence.

Abruptly, Narushkan gives way to Abhusha—“the pointer”—and her left hand uncurls toward a massive cube — a portable branch of the great Galactic Library, squatting in a cool mist, two corridors away. With fingers of thought, Gillian traces one of its gemlike facets, engraved with a rayed spiral symbol. Unlike the minimally programmed units that wolfling upstarts could afford, this one was designed to serve a mighty starfaring clan. Had Streaker returned home with this prize alone, her costly voyage might be called worthwhile.

Yet the cube seems least among Streaker’s cargoes.

Abhusha shifts to her right hand, turning palm out, like a flower seeking warmth to counter the Library’s ancient cold.

Toward youth, the antithesis of age.

Gillian hears her little servant, Kippi, move about her private sanctum, straightening up. The Kiqui amphibian, a native of waterlogged Kithrup, uses all six agile limbs impartially while tidying. A cheerful music of syncopated chirps and trills accompanies his labor. Kippi’s surface thoughts prove easy to trace, even with Gillian’s limited psi-talent. Placid curiosity fills the presapient mind. Kippi seems blithely unaware that his young race is embroiled in a great crisis, spanning five galaxies.

## What comes next? — I wonder what?

## What comes?

## What comes next? — I hope it’s something good.

Gillian shares that fervent wish. For the sake of the Kiqui, Streaker must find a corner of space where Galactic traditions still hold. Ideally some strong, benevolent star lineage, able to embrace and protect the juvenile amphibian race while hot winds of fanaticism blow along the starry lanes.

Some race worthy to be their patrons … to help them … as humans never were helped … until the Kiqui can stand on their own.

She had already given up hope of adopting the Kiqui into Terra’s small family of humans, neo-dolphins, and neo-chimps, the initial idea, when Streaker quickly snatched aboard a small breeding population on Kithrup. Ripe presapient species were rare, and this one was a real find. But right now Earthclan could hardly protect itself, let alone take on new responsibilities.

Abhusha shifts again, transmuting into Poposh as one of Gillian’s feet swarms with prickliness, sensing a new presence in the room. Smug irony accompanies the intruder, like an overused fragrance. It is the Niss Machine’s spinning hologram, barging into her exclusive retreat with typical tactlessness.

Tom had thought it a good idea to bring along the Tymbrimi device, when this ill-fated expedition set forth from Earth. For Tom’s sake — because she misses him so — Gillian quashes her natural irritation with the smooth-voiced artificial being.

“The submarine, with our raiding party aboard, is now just hours from returning with the prisoners,” the Niss intones. “Shall we go over plans for interrogation, Dr. Baskin? Or will you leave that chore to a gaggle of alien children?”

The insolent machine seems piqued, ever since Gillian transferred to Alvin and Huck the job of interpreting. But things are going well so far. Anyway, Gillian already knows what questions to ask the human and Jophur captives.

Moreover, she has her own way to prepare. As old Jake used to say, “How can one foresee, without first remembering?”

She needs time alone, without the Niss, or Hannes Suessi, or a hundred nervous dolphins nagging at her as if she were their mother. Sometimes the pressure feels heavier than the dark abyss surrounding Streaker’s sheltering mountain of dead starships.

To answer verbally would yank her out of the trance, so Gillian instead calls up Kopou, an empathy glyph. Nothing fancy — she lacks the inbuilt talent of a Tymbrimi — just a crude suggestion that the Niss go find a corner of cybernetic space and spend the next hour in simulated self-replication, till she calls for it.

The entity sputters and objects. There are more words. But she lets them wash by like foam on a beach. Meanwhile Gillian continues the exercise, shifting to another compass point. One that seems quiet as death.

Abhusha resumes, now reaching toward a cadaver, standing in a far corner of her office like a pharaoh’s mummy, surrounded by preserving fields that still cling after three years and a million parsecs, keeping it as it was. As it had been ever since Tom wrested the ancient corpse from a huge derelict ship, adrift in the Shallow Cluster.

Tom always had a knack for acquiring expensive souvenirs. But this one took the cake.

Herbie.

An ironic name for a Progenitor … if that truly was its nature … perhaps two billion years old, and the cause of Streaker’s troubles.

Chief cause of war and turmoil across a dozen spiral arms.

We could have gotten rid of him on Oakka World, she knew. Handing Herbie over to the Library Institute was officially the right thing to do. The safe thing to do.

But sector-branch officials had been corrupted. Many of the librarians had cast off their oaths and fell to fighting among themselves — race by race, clan by clan — each seeking Streaker’s treasure for its own kind.

Fleeing once again became a duty.

No one Galactic faction can be allowed to own your secret.

So commanded Terragens Council, in the single longrange message Streaker had received. Gillian knew the words by heart.

To show any partiality might lead to disaster.

It could mean extinction for Earthclan.

Articles of Destiny tug at her limbs, reorienting her floating body. Facing upward, Gillian’s eyes open but fail to see the metal ceiling plates. Instead, they look to the past.

To the Shallow Cluster. A phalanx of shimmering globes, deceptively beautiful, like translucent moons, or floating bubbles in a dream.

Then the Morgran ambush … fiery explosions amid mighty battleships, as numerous as stars, all striving for a chance to snare a gnat.

To Kithrup, where the gnat fled, where so much was lost, including the better part of her soul.

Where are you, Tom? Do you still live, somewhere in space and time?

Then Oakka, that green betraying place, where the Institutes failed.

And the Fractal System, where Old Ones proved there is no age limit on perfidy.

Herbie seems amused by that thought.

“Old Ones? From my perspective, those inhabitants of a giant snowflake are mere infants, like yourself!”

Of course the voice comes from her imagination, putting words in a mouth that might have spoken when Earth’s ocean was innocent of any life but bacteria … when Sol’s system was half its present age.

Gillian cracks a smile and Abhusha transforms into Kuntatta—laughter amid a storm of sleeting vacuum rays.

Soon, she must wrestle with the same quandary — how to arrange Streaker’s escape one more time, just ahead of baying hounds. It would take a pretty neat trick this time, with a Jophur dreadnought apparently already landed on Jijo, and Streaker’s hull still laden with refractory soot.

It would take a miracle.

How did they follow us? she wonders. It seemed a perfect hideout, with all trails to Jijo quantum collapsed but one, and that one passing through the atmosphere of a giant carbon star. The sooner races all did it successfully, arriving without leaving tracks. What did we do wrong?

Recrimination has no place in weightless yoga.

It spoils the serenity.

Sorry, Jake, she thinks. Gillian sighs, knowing this trance is now forfeit. She might as well emerge and get back down to business. Perhaps the Hikahi will bring useful news from its raid on the surface.

I’m sorry, Tom. Maybe a time will come when I can clear my mind enough to hear you … or to cast a piece of myself to wherever you have gone.

Gillian won’t let herself imagine the more likely probability — that Tom is dead, along with Creideiki and all the others she was forced to abandon on Kithrup, with little more than a space skiff to convey them home again.

The emergence process continues, drawing meditation en-forms back into their original abstractions, easing her toward the world of unpleasant facts.

And yet…

In the course of preparing to exit, Gillian abruptly grows aware of a fifth tug on her body, this one stroking the back of her neck, prickling her occipital vertebrae, and follicles along the middle of her scalp. It is familiar. She’s felt it before, though never this strong. A presence, beckoning not from nearby, or even elsewhere in the ship, but somewhere beyond Streaker’s scarred hull. Somewhere else on the planet.

There is a rhythmic, resonant solidity to the sensation, like vibration in dense stone.

If only Creideiki were here, he could probably relate to it, the way he did with those poor beings who lived underground on Kithrup. Or else Tom might have figured out a way to decipher this thing.

And yet, she begins to suspect this time it is something different. Correcting her earlier impression, Gillian realizes—

It is not a presence on this world, or beneath it, but something of the planet. An aspect of Jijo itself.

Narushkan orients her like the needle of a compass, and abruptly she feels a strange, unprovoked commotion within. It takes her some time to sort out the impression. But recognition dawns at last.

Tentatively — like a long-lost friend unsure of its welcome—hope sneaks back into her heart, riding on the stony cadence.

Ewasx

ABRUPTLY COMES NEWS. TOO SOON FOR YOU RINGS to have interpreted the still-hot wax. So let me relate it directly.

WORD OF DISASTER! WORD OF CALAMITY!

Word of ill-fated loss, just east beyond this range of mountain hills. Our grounded corvette — destroyed!

Dissension tears the Polkjhy crew. Chem-synth toruses vent fumes of blame while loud recriminations pour from oration rings.

Could this tragedy be the work of the dolphin prey ship, retaliating against its pursuers? For years its renown has spread, after cunning escapes from other traps.

But it cannot be. Longrange scans show no hint of gravitic emanations or energy weapons. Early signs point to some kind of onboard failure.

And yet, clever wolflings are not to be underrated. I/we can read waxy memories left by the former Asx — historical legends of the formative years of the Jijoan Commons, especially tales of urrish-human wars. These stories demonstrate how both races have exceptional aptitudes for improvisation.

Until now, we thought it was coincidence — that there were Earthling sooners here, that the Rothen had human servants, and the prey ship also came from that wolfling world. The three groups seem to have nothing in common, no motives, goals, or capabilities.

But what if there is a pattern?

I/we must speak of this to the Captain-Leader … as soon as higher-status stacks pause their ventings and let us get a puff in edgewise.

Prepare, My rings. Our first task will surely be to interrogate the prisoners.

Tsh’t

WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?

She fretted over her predicament as the submarine made its way back to the abyssal mountain of dead starships. While other members of the Hikahi team exulted over their successful raid, looking forward to reunion with their crew mates on the Streaker, Tsh’t anticipated docking with a rising sense of dread.

To outward appearances, all was well. The prisoners were secure. The young adventurers, Alvin and Huck, were debriefing Dwer and Rety — human sooners who had managed somehow to defeat a Jophur corvette. Once Hikahi leveled its plunge below the thermocline, Tsh’t knew she and her team had pulled it off — striking a blow for Earth without being caught.

The coup reflected well on the mission commander. Some might call Tsh’t a hero. Yet disquiet churned her sour stomach.

Ifni must hate me. The worst of all possible combinations of events has caught me in a vise.

“Wait a minute,” snapped the female g’Kek, who had assumed the name of an ancient Earthling literary figure. As her spokes vibrated with agitation, she pointed one eyestalk at the young man whose bow and arrows lay across his knees. “You’re saying that you walked all the way from the Slope to find her hidden tribe … while she flew back home aboard the Dakkin sky boat …”

The human girl, Rety, interrupted.

“That’s Danik, you dumb wheelie. And what’s so surprisin’ about that? I had Kunn an’ the others fooled down to their scabs, thinkin’ I was ready to be one of ’em. O’ course I was just keepin’ my eyes peeled fer my first chance to …”

Tsh’t had already heard the story once through, so she paid scant attention this time, except to note that “Huck” spoke far better Anglic than the human child. Anyway, she had other matters on her mind. Especially one of the prisoners lying in a cell farther aft … a captive starfarer who could reveal her deepest secret.

Tsh’t sent signals down the neural tap socketed behind her left eye. The mechanical walker unit responded by swiveling on six legs to aim her bottle-shaped beak away from the submarine’s bridge. Unburdened by armor or lifesupport equipment, it maneuvered gracefully past a gaggle of dolphin spectators. The fins seemed captivated by the sight of two humans so disheveled, and the girl bearing scars on her cheek that any Earth hospital could erase in a day. Their rustic accents and overt wonder at seeing real live dolphins seemed poignantly endearing in members of the patron race.

The two seemed to find nothing odd about chatting with Alvin and Huck, though, as if wheeled beings and Anglicspeaking hoons were as common as froth on a wave. Common enough for Rety and Huck to bicker like siblings.

“Sure I led Kunn out this way. But only so’s I could find out where the bird machine came from!” Rety stroked a miniature urs, whose long neck coiled contentedly around her wrist. “And my plan worked, didn’t it? I found you!”

Huck reacted with a rolling twist of all four eyestalks, a clear expression of doubt and disdain. “Yes, though it meant revealing the Earthship’s position, enabling your Danik pilot to target its site from the air.”

“So? What’s yer point?”

From the door, Tsh’t saw the male human glance at the big adolescent hoon. Dwer and Alvin had just met, but they exchanged commiserating grins. Perhaps they would compare notes later, how each managed life with such a “dynamic” companion.

Tsh’t found all the varied voices too complicated. It feels like a menagerie aboard this tub.

The argument raged on while Tsh’t exited the bridge. Perhaps recordings would prove useful when Gillian and the Niss computer analyzed every word. Preparations were also under way to interrogate the Jophur survivors using techniques found in the Thennanin Library cube — sophisticated data from a clan that had been fighting Jophur since before Solomon built his temple.

Tsh’t approved … so far.

But Gillian will also want to question Kunn. And she knows her own kind too well to be fooled.

The Hikahi was a makeshift vessel, built out of parts salvaged from ancient hulks lining the bottom of the Rift. Tsh’t passed down corridors of varied substance, linked by coarsely welded plates, until she reached the cell where two human prisoners were held. Unfortunately, the guard on duty turned out to be Karkaett, a disciple of former Captain Creideiki’s keeneenk mental training program. Tsh’t couldn’t hope to send Karkaett off on some errand and have him simply forget. Any slip in regulations would be remembered.

“The doughnuts are sedated,” the guard reported. “Also, we z-zapped the damaged Rothen battle drone and put it in a freezer. Hannes and I can check its memory store later.”

“That-t’s fine,” she replied. “And the tytlal?”

Karkaett tossed his sleek gray head. “You mean the one that talks? Isolated in a cabin, as you instructed. Alvin’s pet is just a noor, of course. I assume you didn’t mean to lock her up, t-too.”

Actually, Tsh’t wasn’t sure she grasped the difference between a noor and a tytlal. Was it simply the ability to talk? What if they all could, but were good at keeping it secret? Tytlal were legendary for one trait — going to any length for a joke.

“I’ll see the human prisoners now,” she told the guard.

Karkaett transmitted a signal to open the door. Following rules, he accompanied her inside, weapons trained on the captives.

Both men lay on cots with medical packs strapped to their arms. Already they seemed much improved over their condition in the swamp, where, coughing and desperate for breath, they had clutched a reed bank, struggling to keep their heads above water. The younger one looked even more grubby and half-starved than Rety — a slightly built young man with wiry muscles, black hair, and a puckered scar above one eye. Jass, Rety had identified him — a sooner cousin, and far from her favorite person.

The other man was much larger. His uniform could still be recognized beneath the caked filth. Steely gray eyes drilled Tsh’t the moment she entered.

“How did you follow us to Jijo?”

That was what Gillian would surely ask the Danik voyager. It was the question Tsh’t feared most.

Calm down, she urged herself. The Rothen only know that someone sent a message from the Fractal System. They can’t know who.

Anyway, would they confide in their Danik servants? This poor fellow is probably just as bewildered as we are.

Yet Kunn’s steady gaze seemed to hold the same rock-solid faith she once saw in the Missionary … the disciple who long ago brought a shining message-of-truth to the small dolphin community of Bimini-Under, back when Tsh’t was still a child gliding in her mother’s slipstream wake.

“Humans are beloved patrons of the neo-dolphin race, it’s true,” the proselytizer explained, during one secret meeting, in a cave where scuba-diving tourists never ventured. “Yet, just a few centuries ago, primitive men in boats hunted cetaceans to the verge of extinction. They may act better today, but who can deny their new maturity is fragile, untested? Without meaning disloyalty, many neo-fins feel discomfort, wondering if there might not be something or somebody greater and wiser than humankind. Someone the entire clan can turn to, in dangerous times.”

“You mean God?” one of the attending dolphins asked. And the Missionary responded with a nod.

“In essence, yes. All the ancient legends about divine beings who intervene in Earth’s affairs … all the great teachers and prophets … can be shown to have their basis in one simple truth.

“Terra is not just an isolated forlorn world — home to bizarre wolflings and their crude clients. Rather, it is part of a wonderful experiment. Something I have come from afar to tell you about.

“We have been watched over for a very long time. Lovingly guarded throughout our long time of dreaming. But soon, quite soon, it will be time to waken.”

Kaa

MOPOL’S FEVER SHOWED NO SIGN OF RETURNING. In fact, he seemed quite high in spirits when he left the next morning, swimming east with Zhaki, resuming their reconnaissance of Wuphon Port.

“You see? All he needed was a stern talking-to,” Peepoe explained with evident pride. “Mopol just had to be reminded of his duty.”

Kaa sensed the implied rebuke in her words, but chose to ignore it.

“You have a persuasive bedside manner,” he replied. “No doubt they teach it in medical school.”

In fact, he was quite sure that Mopol’s recovery had little to do with Peepoe’s lecture. The half-stenos male had agreed too readily with everything the young nurse said, tossing his mottled gray head and chittering “Yessss!” repeatedly.

He and Zhaki are up to something, Kaa thought, as he watched the two swim off toward the coastal hoon settlement.

“I need to be heading back to the ship soon,” Peepoe said, causing Kaa to dip his narrow jaw.

“But I thought you’d stay a few days. You agreed to come see the volcano.”

Her expression seemed wary. “I don’t know.… When I left, there was talk of shifting Streaker to another hiding place. Searchers were getting too damned c-close.”

Not that moving the ship a few kilometers would make much difference, if Galactic fleets already had her pinned. Even hiding under a great pile of discarded starcraft would not help, once pursuers had the site narrowed down close enough to use chemical sniffers. Earthling DNA would lure them, like male moths to a female’s pheromones.

Kaa shrugged by twisting his flukes.

“Brookida will be disappointed. He was so looking forward to showing off his collection of dross from all six sooner races.”

Peepoe stared at Kaa, scanning him with penetrating sound till she found the wryness within.

Her blowhole sputtered laughter.

“Oh, all right. Let’s see this mountain of yours. Anyway, I’ve been aching for a swim.”

As usual, the water felt terrific. A little saltier than Earth sea, but with a fine mineral flavor and a gentle ionic oiliness that helped it glide over your skin. The air’s rich oxygen level made it seem as if you could keep going well past the horizon.

It was a far friendlier ocean than on Kithrup or Oakka, where the oceans tasted poisonously foul. Friendlier, that is, unless you counted the groaning sounds that occasionally drifted from the Midden, as if a tribe of mad whales lived down there, singing ballads without rhyme or reason.

According to Alvin’s Journal, their chief source on Jijo, some natives believed that ancient beings lived beyond the continental shelf, fierce and dangerous. Such hints prompted Gillian Baskin to order the spying continued.

So long as Streaker doesn’t need a pilot, I might as well play secret agent. Anyway, it’s a job Peepoe might respect.

Beyond all that, Kaa relearned how fine it was to cruise in tandem with another strong swimmer, jetting along on powerful fluke strokes, building momentum each time you plunged, then soaring through each upper arc, like flying. The true peak of exhilaration could never be achieved alone. Two or more dolphins must move in unison, each surf-riding the other’s wake. When done right, surface tension nearly vanished and the planet merged seamlessly, from core to rock, from sea to sky.

And then … to bitter-clear vacuum?

A modern poet might make that extrapolation, but it never occurred to natural cetaceans — not even species whose eyesight could make out stars — not until humans stopped hunting and started teaching.

They changed us. Showed us the universe beyond sun, moon, and tides. They even turned some of us into pilots. Wormhole divers. I guess that makes up for their ancestors’ crimes.

Still, some things never change. Like the semierotic stroke of whitecaps against flesh, or the spume of hot breath meeting air. The raw, earthy pleasure of this outing offered much that he felt lacking aboard Streaker.

It also made a terrific opening to courtship.

Assuming she thinks the same way I do.

Assuming I can start winning her esteem.

They were approaching shore. He could tell by the echoes of rock-churned surf up ahead. A mist-shrouded mountain could be glimpsed from the top of each forward leap. Soon they would reach the hidden cave where his spy equipment lay. Then Kaa must go back to dealing with Peepoe in awkward, inadequate words.

I wish this could just go on without end, he thought.

A brief touch of sonar, and he knew Peepoe felt the same. She, too, yearned for this moment of primitive release to last.

Kaa’s sonic sense picked out a school of pseudo-tunny, darting through nearby shoals, tempting after a pallid breakfast of synthi flesh. The tunny weren’t quite in their path — it would mean a detour. Still, Kaa squirted a burst of Trinary.

In summer sunlight,

Fish attract like edible

Singularities!

Kaa felt proud of the haiku — impulsive, yet punning as it mixed both space-and planet-bound images. Of course, free foraging was still not officially sanctioned. He awaited Peepoe’s rejection.

Passing an abyss, or bright reef,

Or black hole — what sustains us?

Our navigator!

Her agreement filled Kaa’s pounding heart, offering a basis for hope.

Peepoe’s strong, rhythmic strokes easily kept pace alongside as he angled toward a vigorous early lunch.

Lark

I ’VE BEEN ABOARD A FLYING MACHINE BEFORE, HE told himself. I’m no simple nature child, astonished by doors, metal panels, and artificial light.

This place should not terrify me.

The walls aren’t about to close in.

His body wasn’t convinced. His heart raced and he could not rest. Lark kept experiencing a disturbing impression that the little room was getting smaller.

He knew it must be an illusion. Neither Ling nor Rann showed outward concern over being crushed in a diminishing space. They were used to hard gray surfaces, but the metal enclosure seemed harsh to one who grew up scampering along the branch-top skyways of a garu forest. The floor plates brought a distant vibration, rhythmic and incessant.

Lark suddenly realized what it reminded him of — the machinery of his father’s paper mill — the grinders and pulping hammers — designed to crush scrap cloth into a fine white slurry. That pounding noise used to drive him away into the wilderness, on long journeys seeking living things to study.

“Welcome to a starship, sooner,” Rann mumbled, nursing both a headache and a grudge after their fight in the lake. “How do you like it?”

All three human prisoners still wore their damp underwear, having been stripped of their tools and wet suits. For some reason, the Jophur let them keep their rewq symbionts, though Rann had torn his off, leaving red welts at his temples where the crumpled creature had had no time to withdraw its feeding suckers.

At least no one had been injured during the swift capture, when a swarm of tapered cone beings swept down from the mammoth ship, each Jophur riding its own platform of shimmering metal. Suspensor fields pressed the lake, surrounding the human swimmers between disklike watery depressions. Hovering robots crackled with restrained energy — one even dived beneath the surface to cut off escape — crowding the captives toward one of the antigravity sleds, and then to prison.

To Lark’s surprise, they were put in the same cell. By accounts from Earth’s dark ages, it used to be standard practice to separate prisoners, to break their spirits. Then he realized.

If Jophur are like traeki, they can’t quite grasp the notion of being alone. A solitary traeki would be happy arguing among its rings till the Progenitors came home.

“They are probably at a loss, trawling through their database for information about Earthlings,” Ling explained.

“Till recently, there wasn’t much available.”

“But it’s been three hundred years since contact!”

“That may seem long to us, Lark. But Earth was minor news for most of that time — a back-page sensation. By now the first detailed Institute studies of our homeworld have barely made it through the sector-branch Library, on Tanith.”

“Then why not …” He sought a word she had used several times. “Why not upload Earthling books. Our encyclopedias, medical texts, self-analyses … the knowledge we spent thousands of years accumulating about ourselves?”

She lifted her eyes. “Wolfling superstitions. Even we Daniks are taught to think that way.” She glanced at Rann. “It took your thesis, Lark — the one you wrote with Uthen — to convince me things might be different.”

Though flushed at the compliment, Lark reined in his imagination. He tried not to let his eyes drop to her nearly bare figure. Skimpy underclothes would not hide his physical arousal. Besides, this was hardly the time.

“I still find their attitude hard to credit. The Galactics would rather wait centuries for a formal report on us?”

“Oh, I’m sure the great powers — like the Soro and Jophur — got access to early drafts. And they’ve urgently sought more data since the Streaker crisis began. Their strategic agencies almost certainly kidnapped and dissected some humans, for instance. But they could hardly update every star cruiser with illicit data. That would risk contaminating the onboard Libraiy cubes. I’d have to guess this crew has been improvising — not a skill much encouraged in Galactic society.”

“But humans are known for it. Is that why your ship came to Jijo? Improvising an opportunity?”

Ling nodded, rubbing her bare shoulders. “Our Rothen lor …” She paused, then chose another phrasing. “The Inner Circle received a message. A time-drop capsule, tuned for pickup by anyone with a Rothen cognition wave.”

“Who sent it?”

“Apparently, a secret believer living among the crew of the dolphin ship. Or one desperate enough to break from Terragens orders, and summon help from a higher source.”

“A believer …” Lark mused. “In the Danik faith, you mean. But Daniks teach that humans are the secret recipients of Rothen patronhood.”

“And by tradition, that means a dolphin crew could also call on Rothen help, in case of dire need … which those poor creatures surely face.”

“Like running to your grandparents, if your own folks can’t handle a problem. Hrm.”

Lark had already picked up parts of the story. How the first dolphin-crewed starship set forth on a survey mission, assigned to check the accuracy of the small planetary branch Earth had received from the Library Institute. Most civilized clans simply accepted the massive volumes of information stored by past generations, especially concerning far corners of space, where little profit could be gained by exploration.

It was supposed to be routine. A shakedown cruise. But then, somewhere off the beaten track, Earthship Streaker confronted something unexpected — a discovery that made the great alliances crazy. Clues to a time of transition, perhaps, when ancient verities of the known galaxies might abruptly change.

“It is said that when this happens, just one race in ten shall make the passage to a new age,” the hoonish High Sage, Phwhoondau, had explained one night by a camp-fire, just after the fall of Dooden Mesa, drawing on his deep readings of the Biblos Archive. “Those bent on surviving into the next long phase of stability would naturally want to learn as much as possible. Hr-r-r-rm. Yes, even a sooner can understand why this Earthling ship found itself in trouble.”

“A dolphin Danik.” Lark marveled. “So this … believer sent a secret message to the Rothen.…”

“To is the wrong word. You might better use at. In fact, nothing in Anglic adequately describes the skewed logic of communicating by time drop.” Ling kept running her fingers through her hair. It had grown since the Battle of the Glade, and was still tangled from their long dive under the lake.

“But yes, the message from the dolphin believer explained where the Streaker ship was — in one of the hydrogen-ice habitat zones where many older races huddle close to stellar tides, after retiring from active Galactic affairs.

“More important — it hinted where the Earthship commander next planned to flee.” Ling shook her head. “It turned out to be a clever version of the Sooner Path. A difficult passage, uncomfortably close to fiery Izmunuti. No wonder you Six were left undetected for so long.”

“Hr-rm,” Lark umbled contemplatively. “Unlike our ancestors, you let yourselves be followed.”

This drew a reaction from Rann, sullenly holding his aching head in the opposite corner of the cell.

“Fool. We did no such thing!” the tall Danik muttered sourly. “Are you saying we cannot easily repeat any feat accomplished by a gaggle of cowardly sooners?”

“Putting insults aside, I agree,” Ling said. “It seems unlikely we were followed. That is, not the first time our ship came to Jijo.”

“What do you mean?” Lark asked.

“When our comrades left us — four humans and two Rothen, with the job of doing a bioassay on Jijo — I thought the others were going to cruise nearby space, in case the dolphin ship was hiding on some nearby planetoid. But that was not their aim at all.

“Their real intent was to go find a buyer.”

Lark frowned in puzzlement. “A Buyur? But aren’t they extinct? You mean the Rothen wanted to hire one as a guide, to come back to Jijo and—”

“No … a buyer!” Ling laughed, though it was not a happy sound. “You were right about the Rothen, Lark. They live by bartering unusual or illicit information, often using human Daniks as agents or intermediaries. It was an exciting way of life … till you made me realize how we’ve been used.” Ling’s expression turned dark. Then she shook her head.

“In this case, they must have realized Jijo was worth a fortune to the right customer. There are lifeforms on this planet whose development seems ahead of schedule, rapidly approaching presapience. And there are the Six Races. Surely someone would pay to know about such a major infestation of criminal sooners … no offense.”

“None taken. And of course, the clue to the dolphin ship was worth plenty. So …” He blew an airy sigh through his nostrils, like a disgusted urs. “Your masters decided to sell us all.”

Ling nodded, but her eyes bored into Rann. “Our patrons sold us all.”

The big Danik did not meet her gaze. He pressed both hands against his temples, emitting a low moan that seemed half from pain and half disgust at her treason. He turned toward the wall, but did not touch the oily surface.

“After all we’ve seen, you still think the Rothen are patrons of humanity?” Lark asked.

Ling shrugged her shoulders. “I cannot easily dismiss the evidence I was shown while growing up — evidence dating back thousands of years. Anyway, it might explain our bloody, treacherous history. The Rothen lords claim it’s because our dark souls kept drifting from the Path. But maybe we are exactly what they uplifted us to be. Raised to be shiils for a gang of thieves.”

“Hrm. That might relieve us of some of the responsibility. Still, I’d rather be wolflings, with ignorance our only excuse.”

Ling nodded, lapsing into silence, perhaps contemplating the great lie her life had revolved around. Meanwhile, Lark found a new perspective on the tale of humanity. It went beyond a dry litany of events, recited from dusty tomes in the Biblos Archive.

The Daniks claim that we had guidance all along … that Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Fuller, and others were teachers in disguise. But if we were helped — by the Rothen or anybody else — then our helpers clearly did a lousy job.

Like a problem child who needs open, honest, personal attention, we could have used a lot more than a few ethical nostrums. Vague hints like,“Have faith” and “Be nice to each other.” Moralizing platitudes aren’t enough to guide a rowdy tyke … and they sure did not prevent dark ages, slavery, the twentieth-century Holocaust, or the despots of the twenty-first.

All those horrors reflect as poorly on the teacher as the students. Unless…

Unless you suppose we actually did it all alone…

Lark was struck by the same feeling as when he and Ling spoke beside the mulc spider’s lake. His mind filled with an image of poignant, awful beauty. A tapestry spanning thousands of years — human history seen from afar. A tale of frightened orphans, floundering in ignorance. Of creatures smart enough to stare in wonder at the stars, asking questions of a night that never answered, except with terrifying silence.

Sometimes, from desperate imaginations, the silence provoked roaring hallucinations, fantastic rationalizations, or self-serving excuses for any crime the strong might choose to commit against the weak. Deserts widened as men ignorantly cut forests. Species vanished as farmers burned and plowed. Wars spread ruin in the name of noble causes.

Yet, amid all that, humanity somehow began pulling together, learning the arts of calmness, peering forward in time, like a neglected infant teaching itself to crawl and speak.

To stand and think.

To walk and read.

To care … and then become a loving parent to others.

The kind of parent poor orphans never had.

Born on a refuge world whose crude safety had vanished, imprisoned in the bowels of an alien starship, Lark nevertheless felt drawn away from worrying about his own fate, or even the six exile clans of Jijo. After all, on the vast scale of things, his life hardly mattered. The Five Galaxies would spin on, even if every last Earthling vanished.

Yet he found his heart torn by the tragic story of Homo sapiens, the self-taught wolflings of Terra. It was a bittersweet tale, pulling from his reluctant eyes trickles of tart brine that tasted like the sea.

The voice was familiar … horrifyingly so.

“Tell us now.”

When all three humans kept silent, the Jophur interrogator edged closer, towering over them. Anglic words hissed from atop the swaying stack of fatty rings, accompanied by liquid burblings and mucusy pops.

“Explain to us; why did you transmit the signal that led to your capture? Did you sacrifice yourselves in order to buy time for unseen comrades? Those we most eagerly pursue?”

It had introduced itself as “Ewasx,” and part of Lark’s horror lay in recognizing torus markings of the former traeki High Sage, Asx. One major difference appeared at the bottom of the stack, where a new, agile torus-of-legs let the composite being move about more quickly than before. And silvery fibers now laced the doughy tubes, leading up to a glistening young ring that had no apparent features or appendages. Yet Lark sensed it was the chief thing turning the old traeki sage into a Jophur.

“We detected a disturbance in the toporgic time field, imprisoning the Rothen vessel below the lake,” it said. “But these tremors were well within noise variance levels, and our leaders were otherwise too busily engaged to investigate. However, we/I now clearly discern what you were trying to accomplish with this trick.”

The declaration left Lark unsurprised. Once alerted, the mighty aliens would naturally pierce his jury-rigged scheme for letting Daniks out of the trapped vessel. He only hoped that Jeni Shen, and Jimi, and the others made it out before hunter robots swarmed around the Rothen time cocoon, then through the network of caves.

While all three humans kept silent, Ewasx continued.

“The chain of logic is apparent, revealing a persistent effort on the part of you sooners to divert us from our main purpose on this world.

“In short, you have been attempting to distract us.”

Now Lark looked up, baffled. He shared a glance with Ling.

What is the Jophur talking about?

“It began several Jijo rotations ago,” Ewasx went on. “Although no other crew stack thought it unusual, I was perplexed when the High Sages acceded so swiftly to our Captain-Leader’s demand. I did not expect Vubben and Lester Cambel to obey so quickly, revealing the coordinates of the chief g’Kek encampment.”

Lark spoke at last. “You mean Dooden Mesa.”

He still felt guilty over how a stray computer resonance betrayed the secret colony’s location. Apparently, Ewasx thought the transmission had been made on purpose.

“Dooden Mesa, correct. The timing of the signal now seems too convenient, too out of character. Memory stacks inherited from Asx indicate a disgusting level of interspecies loyalty among the mongrel races of Jijo. Loyalty that should have delayed compliance with our demand. Normally the sages would have dithered, in hopes of evacuating the g’Keks before giving in.”

“Why did you have to wait for a signal at all?” Lark asked. “If you’ve got memories from Asx, you knew all along where Dooden was! Why bother asking the High Sages?”

For the first time, Lark saw signs of what might be called an emotional response. Uneven ripples coursed several Ewasx rings, as if they were writhing from unpleasant sensations within. When it spoke next, the voice seemed briefly labored.

“Reasons for incomplete data retrieval access are not your concern. Suffice it to say that the immurement of Dooden Mesa was gratifying to our Polkjhy Ship Commanders … yet I/we nursed brooding reservations within this stack of restless rings. The timing seemed too convenient.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the signal came just as we were about to launch our remaining corvette to succor another, which had made a forced landing beyond the mountains. That mission was postponed on learning where the chief g’Kek hideout lay. The corvette was outfitted with toporgic, to attack our sworn feud enemies, lest any escape that nest of wheeled vipers.”

Lark caught Rann glancing at Ling, meaningfully. Beyond the mountains. The Daniks had sent Kunn’s scout vessel out that way, just before the Battle of the Glade. And now the Jophur reported losing a corvette in the same direction?

Not lost. A forced landing. Still, they have strange priorities. Vengeance before rescue.

“After dealing with Dooden Mesa, there were other delays. Then, just as we were resuming preparations to send aid to our grounded cousins, this new distraction came about. I refer to your activity below the lake. You cleverly found some rude way to vibrate the toporgic seal around the Rothen ship. We ignored this at first, since mere sooners could never actually penetrate the cocoon—”

Another tremor crossed the creature’s rings, though this time the voice did not pause.

“Soon, however, there came a distraction we could not ignore. The appearance of three humans at the surface of the lake, deep within our perimeter! This event triggered alarms, concentrating our attention for a lengthy period.

“I/we are now quite certain that was your intent all along.”

Lark stared in astonishment.

Just after they were captured, he and Ling had speculated in whispers about Rann’s betrayal, swimming to the surface and using the portable computer to blatantly attract Jophur attention. Ling had illuminated a likely motive.

“Rann is more loyal to our masters than I ever imagined. He knows the Six Races possess evidence that can blow the lid off the grand Rothen deception. Helping our crew mates escape the trapped ship would just make matters worse, by exposing more Daniks to your arguments, Lark. Your evidence of genocide and other wrongs. Like me, they might be converted away from our lords.

“Before allowing that to happen, Rann would rather let the Jophur wipe out everybody, and leave our crew sealed forever. At least that way the Rothen home clan might be safe.”

Ling’s explanation had rocked Lark. But this one from Ewasx was weirder still.

“You’re saying we … uh, vibrated the golden shell around the submerged ship … in order to attract your attention? And when that didn’t work, we swam up to the surface to make even more noise, trying to draw your gaze our way?”

As he said the words, Lark realized in surprise that the scenario made more sense than what had actually happened! In comparison, it did seem improbable that primitive sooners would find a way to pierce the toporgic trap … or that a Danik would betray his crew mates in order to keep them buried forever. There was just one logical problem.

“But …” he went on. “But why would we be desperate enough to do such a thing? What aim could make such a sacrifice worthwhile?”

The Jophur emitted an aggravated sigh.

“You know perfectly well what aim. However, in order to establish a clear basis for interrogation, I will explain.

“I/we know your secret,” it told Lark.

“You must certainly be in communication with the Earthling ship.”

Alvin

THE DOLPHINS HAVENT GIVEN A NAME TO THIS mountain of abandoned starships. This heap of discards from a lost civilization, moldering at the bottom of the Midden.

Huck wants to call it Atlantis. But for once I find her suggestion lacking imagination.

I prefer that mythical place described so hauntingly by the great Clarke. The Seven Suns. Where my namesake found ancient relics long forgotten by titans who had moved on, leaving their obsolete servants behind.

Remnants of a mighty past, now lost between the city and the stars.

We don’t spend much time together anymore. We four from Wuphon Port. We four comrades and adventurers. We’ve gone off in different directions, led by our own obsessions.

Ur-ronn spends her time where you’d expect — in the engine room, eagerly learning about the hardware of a starship and getting thick as thieves with Hannes Suessi. I get an impression these dolphins aren’t as good at delicate hand-eye work as an urs, so Suessi seems glad to have her around.

It’s also the driest place aboard this waterlogged cruiser. Still, I figure Ur-ronn would spend time down there even if it meant sloshing through knee-deep slush. It’s where a smith belongs.

Suessi hoped we might offer clues toward ridding Streaker’s hull of a thick carbon coating. Oral traditions speak of star soot, weighing down each sneakship that reached Jijo after passing close by Izmunuti. But I never heard of a clan trying to remove it. Why would our ancestors bother, since they scuttled their arks soon after arriving?

Anyway, why not just refurbish one of the old hulks lying under the Midden, and use it to make an escape?

Ur-ronn says Suessi and Dr. Baskin considered the idea. But the ships are junk, after all. If the wrecks could fly well, wouldn’t the Buyur have taken them along?

For helping the engineers, Ur-ronn hopes to get some cooperation in return … fulfilling the assignment we were given when our little homemade Wuphon’s Dream first dropped to the sea by Terminus Rock. Uriel had asked us to find a hidden cache — equipment to help the High Sages deal with intruding starships.

Now that we know more about those invaders — a Rothen cruiser, followed later by a Jophur battleship — it seems unlikely that cache would help against forces so godlike and lofty. Anyway, Uriel and our parents must have given us up for dead, ever since the air hose tore away from Wuphon’s Dream.

Still, Ur-ronn’s right. An oath is an oath.

I can see why Dr. Gillian Baskin prefers we don’t contact our folks. But I must persuade her to try.

Pincer-Tip spends most of his time with the Kiqui — those six-limbed amphibians we once thought to be masters of this ship. Instead, they are something even more revered in the Five Galaxies — honest-to-goodness presapient beings. Pincer seems to have an affinity for them, since his red qheuen race is also adapted to live where waves meet a rocky coast. But that may just begin to cover Pincer’s attraction to them.

He talks of building a new bathy to explore the Midden. Not just this mound of dead starcraft, but some of the vast jumbled cities, filled with wonders discarded by the departing Buyur.

Clearly he enjoyed his brief stint as captain of Wuphon’s Dream. Only this time he hopes for a new crew. Agile, obedient, water-loving Kiqui may be ideal, compared to a too-tall hoon, a prolix g’Kek, and a hydrophobic urs.

Maybe Pincer still hopes to find real monsters.

Huck refuses to believe anything important can take place without her. As soon as we returned with Lieutenant Tsh’t, she got involved in the serious business of questioning the Jophur prisoners, taken from the wrecked scoutship.

According to spy and adventure novels, the art of interrogation has a lot to do with language trickery. Fooling the other guy into blurting out something he never intended. That’s just the kind of stuff Huck thinks she’s oh so clever at. So what if Jophur are different from traeki. She expected to break their obstinate silence and get them talking.

So imagine her shock when she rolled into their chamber and the very sight of her sent them into a fit, throwing themselves against the restraining field trying to get at her! The room filled with a stench of pure hatred.

Strangely enough, that proved useful! For the Jophur abruptly lost their sullen muteness and started babbling. Mostly, their GalTwo and GalFive utterance streams were steeped with fuming anger. But soon the sneaky Niss Machine popped in, making insinuations and smooth-voiced hints.…

Huck turned all four eyestalks to stare at the whirling hologram when it suggested the Jophur might be given this tasty g’Kek, if they cooperated! Soon, mixed among the vengeance vows and retribution exclamatives were bits of useful information, such as the name of their ship and the rank of its Captain-Leader. And one further crucial fact. Although their battlecruiser is a giant compared to outmatched Streaker, the Jophur ship came to Jijo alone.

Huck says she knew all along that the Niss was bluffing about handing her over. In fact, she claimed a triumph, as if it had been her plan all along.

I knew better than to comment on the green sweat coating her eye hoods. After the interview, she needed a bath.

• • •

Unlike the others, I can’t banish all doubt.

Have we chosen the right side?

Oh, there seem to be good reasons for throwing our fate in with these fugitives. Humans are members of the Six, and that makes the dolphins sort of cousins, I guess. And it’s true that Streaker seems more like one of our sooner sneakships than those arrogant dreadnoughts, up in the Rimmer Range. Anyway, I was brought up reading Earthling tall tales. My sentiments are drawn to the underdog.

Still, I must keep at least one mental corner detached and uncommitted. My loyalty lies ultimately with family, sept, and clan … and with the High Sages of the Commons of Jijo.

Among the four of us, someone must remember our true priorities. A time may come when they clash with our hosts’.

How have I kept busy all this time?

For one thing, I’ve been learning to skim the ship’s database, extracting historical summaries of what’s taken place since the Great Printing. The distilled tale is a treat to a born info hound like me.

And yet, I still can’t get that big, mist-shrouded cube out of my mind. Sometimes I hanker to sneak into that cold room and ask questions of the Branch Library — a storehouse so great that the Biblos Archive might as well be a primer for a two-year old.

On our way back from the surface I got to know Rety — the irascible, proud human girl whose illegal tribe of savages would have shaken the Commons with a sensational scandal, in normal times. I also talked to Dwer the Hunter, who I recall visiting Wuphon, a few years back. Dwer chatted about his adventures while Physician Makanee treated his wounds, till he fell into exhausted slumber. Soon Rety collapsed, too, with her little “husband” curled alongside, a slim urrish head draped across her chest.

• • •

For the most part, my job has been to umble.

Yeah, that’s right. To umble for a noor.

My own pet, Huphu, doesn’t know what to make of the newcomer — the one called Mudfoot. On first spying him, she hissed … and he hissed back, exactly like a regular noor. It was such a normal reaction that I started to doubt my own memory. Did I really hear and see Mudfoot talk?

My assigned task is to keep him happy till he decides to talk again.

I guess I owe these people — Gillian Baskin and Tsh’t and the dolphins.

They saved us from the abyss … though maybe we wouldn’t have fallen at all, if it hadn’t been for their interference.

They fixed my broken back … though it was injured when they smashed Wuphon’s Dream.

They turned a mere adventure into an epic … but won’t let us go home for fear we’d tell the tale.

All right, dammit. I’ll umble for the silly noor. He preens and acts starved for sound anyway, after months with just humans for company.

Up close I can sense a difference in him. I used to glimpse the same thing now and then, in the eyes of a few strange noor lounging on the Port Wuphon docks.

A sleek arrogance.

A kind of lazy smugness.

The impression that he’s in on a great joke. One you won’t figure out till there’s egg all over your face.

Ewasx

THE HUMAN CAPTIVES SEEM OBDURATE, MY RINGS, refusing to answer questions. Or else they obfuscate with blatant lies.

• • •

QUERY/INTERROGATIVE:

Is there similarity between their behavior and the way you misled Me?

The way you rings have blurred so many of the waxy memories we coinherited from Asx?

The way our union oscillates between grudging cooperation and intermittent passive resistance?

It is enough to provoke unpleasant questions.

DON’T YOU LIKE BEING PART OF OUR MUCH-IMPROVED SHARED WHOLE? OUR AMBITIOUS ONENESS?

Yes, the majority of you claim gladness to be part of a great Jophur entity, instead of a tepid traeki mélange. But can I/we really be sure that you/we love Me/us?

The question is, in itself, a possible symptom of madness. What naturally cojoined Jophur would allow itself to entertain such doubts? The Polkjhy Priest-Stack predicted this hybridization experiment would fail. The priest foretold it would be useless to impose a master torus onto traeki rings already set in their ways.

A metaphor floats upward, along abused trails of half-molten wax.

Are you trying to make a comparison, O second ring-of-cognition?

Ah, yes. I/we see it.

Forging a noble Jophur out of disparate traeki cells might seem like trying to tame a herd of wild beasts. It is an apt analogy.

Too bad the metaphor does nothing to help solve My/ our problem.

WHAT SECRETS LIE BURIED in the melted areas? What memories did the traeki High Sage purposely destroy, during those stressful moments before Asx was converted? I/ we can tell, important evidence once glimmered in those layers that lined our common core. Something Jophur were not meant to know.

But know it we/I shall.

I must!

• • •

SUGGESTION:

Perhaps we can tear information out of these recently seized humans.

The ones bearing the name attributes Lark, Ling, and Rann.

REBUTTAL:

The Priest-Stack vents frustrated steam, upset to learn how little data about Earthlings is contained in our shipboard Library. We have many detailed prescriptions for truth serums or coercion drugs effective against other races and species who are foes of the Great Jophur, but the archives carry no record of any substance that is human-specific. Our Library clearly needs updating, despite the fact that it is a relatively new unit, less than a thousand years old.

One tactician stack, assigned to our shipboard planning staff, proposed that we use interrogation techniques designed against Tymbrimi. Those devil tricksters are close allies of Earthlings, and appear similar in ways that go beyond bipedal locomotion. Trying out that suggestion, we tried projecting psi-compulsion waves at the prisoners, tuned to Tymbrimi empathic frequencies.

But the humans seemed deaf to the pulses, showing no reaction at all.

Meanwhile, the Captain-Leader vents irate fumes — acrid vapors that send all off-duty personnel fleeing from its presence.

What is the cause of such rancor, My rings?

Recent news from beyond the nearby hills.

Bitter news confirming our fears.

Disaster to the east.

AT LAST, our remaining corvette reached the site where its twin fell silent, two days ago. Aboard the Polkjhy, I/we all stared in dismay at relayed images of devastation.

Hull wreckage lay sunk beneath swampy waters — the sort of marshland morass where a traeki might find it pleasant to wallow while contemplating wax drippings. Windblown rain swept the area while searchers scanned for survivors, but all they found were remnants — mostly singleton rings, reverting to a feral animal state, instinctively gathering nests of rotting vegetation, as if they were no more than primitive pretraeki.

Several of these surviving toruses were harvested. By scraping their cores, we managed to download a few blurry memory tracks. Enough to suggest that dolphins did this deed, emerging from the sea to play havoc with our brethren.

HOW WERE THEY ABLE TO DO THIS?

The downed corvette had reported defense systems functional at a forty percent level. More than adequate, if concentrated against just such a sortie by the desperate Earthling quarry. Even amid a lightning-charged thunderstorm, it should not have been possible for the cornered prey to mount a surprise attack. Yet, not even an alarm signal escaped our grounded boat before it was mysteriously overwhelmed.

Again, doubts rise to disturb us. The wolflings are said to be primitives, not much more capable than the sooner savages whose coward ancestors settled this world. Yet these same Earthers have sent all Five Galaxies into turmoil, repeatedly escaping mighty fleets sent after them.

Perhaps it was a mistake for our Polkjhy ship commune to take on this mission alone, with just our one mighty battlecruiser to seize destiny for our kind.

SCENT RUMORS SPREAD THROUGH POLKJHY NOW, alleging the Captain-Leader was deficiently stacked. Subversive pheromones suggest that flawed decision-processing toruses brought us to this unsavory state. Our commander was blinded by obsession with vengeance on the g’Kek, ignoring higher priorities.

Furious to find mutinous molecules wafting through the air ducts, our Captain-Leader seeks to overwhelm them with his own chemical outpourings — a steamy concoction of smoldering rejection. Perfumes of domineering essence flood all decks.

What is it now, My ring?

Ah. Our second torus-of-cognition has come up with another metaphor, this time comparing the Captain-Leader to the skipper of a hoonish sailboat, who tries shouting down his worried crew, using a loud voice to substitute for real leadership.

Very interesting, My ring — making parallels between alien behavior and Jophur ship politics. Such insights make this irksome union seem almost worthwhile.

Unless…

Surely you do not ALSO apply this metaphor to your own master ring?

Do not provoke Me. Be warned. It would be a mistake.

OUR PROBLEM REMAINS.

Unlike the tactician stacks, I/we do not attribute wolfling success against our corvette to anomalous technology, or luck. The timing was too coincidental. I am convinced the dolphins knew exactly the right moment to attack, when our attention was diverted by events close by.

CONCLUSION: The savage races MUST be in communication with the Earthship!

The captive humans deny knowing of any contact with the dolphin ship. They claim their activities at the lake surface were strictly a manifestation of interhuman dominance struggles, having nothing to do with the prey ship.

They must be lying. Ways must be found to increase their level of cooperation.

(If only I could lace their apelike cores with silvery fibers, the way a master ring shows other components of a stack how to cooperate in joyful oneness!)

We must, it seems, fall back on classic, barbarous interrogation techniques.

Shall we threaten the humans with bodily damage?

Shall we assail them with metaphysical torment?

Overruling My/our expertise, the Captain-Leader has decided on a technique that is known to be effective against numerous warm-blooded races.

We shall use atrocity.

Sara

TRAEKI UNGUENTS FILLED HER SINUSES WITH PLEASANT numbness, as if she’d had several glasses of wine. Sara felt the chemicals at work, chasing pain, making room for herself to reemerge.

A day after rejoining the world, she let Emerson push her wheelchair onto the stone veranda at Uriel the Smith’s sanctuary, watching dawn break over a phalanx of royal peaks, stretching north and east. West of the mountains, dusty haze muted the manicolored marvel of the Spectral Flow, and the Plain of Sharp Sand beyond.

The view helped draw Sara’s attention from the handheld mirror on her lap — lent her by Uriel — which she had examined all through breakfast. Jijo’s broad vista made clear Emerson’s quiet sermon.

The world is bigger than all our problems.

Sara handed the looking glass over to the starman, who performed sleight-of-hand motions, causing it to vanish up one sleeve of his floppy gown. Emerson grinned when Sara laughed out loud.

What’s the point in dwelling on my stitches and scrapes, she thought. Scars won’t matter in the days to come. Any survivors will scratch their living from the soil. Pretty women won’t have advantages. Tough ones will.

Or was this complacence another result of chemicals in her veins? Potions tailored by Tyug, master alchemist of Mount Guenn Forge. Jijo’s traekis had learned a lot about healing other races while qheuens, urs, hoons, and men fought countless skirmishes before the Great Peace. In recent years, texts from Biblos helped molecule maestros like Tyug supplement practical lore with fresh insights, using Anglic words like peptide and enzyme, reclaiming some of the knowledge their settler ancestors had abandoned.

Only not by looking it up in some Library. Earthling texts served as a starting point. A basis for fresh discoveries.

Which illustrated her controversial thesis. Six Races climbing back upward, not via Redemption’s Path, the route their forebears used … but on a trail all our own.

Other examples filled the halls behind this stony parapet, in workshops and labs where Uriel’s staff labored near lava heat, wresting secrets from nature. Despite her suffering, Sara was glad to see more evidence on Mount Guenn that Jijoan civilization had begun heading in new directions.

Until starships came.

Sara winced, recalling what they had witnessed last night, from this same veranda. She and her friends were being regaled at a feast under the stars, celebrating her recovery. Hoonish sailors from the nearby seaport boomed festive ballads and Uriel’s apprentices cavorted in an intricate dance while diminutive husbands perched on their backs, mimicking each twist and gyre. Gray qheuens, their broad chitin shells embellished with gemstone cloisonné, sculpted wicked impromptu caricatures of the party guests, using their adroit mouths to carve statuettes of solid stone.

Even Ulgor was allowed to take part, playing the violus, drawing rich vibrato tones as Emerson joined in with his dulcimer. The wounded starman had another unpredictable outburst of song, each verse pouring whole from some recessed memory.

“In a cottage of Fife,

lived a man and wife,

who, believe me, were comical folk;

For to people’s surprise,

they both saw with their eyes,

and their tongues moved whenever

they spoke!”

Then, as the feast was hitting its stride, there came a rude interruption. Staccato flashes lit the northwest horizon, outlining the distant bulk of Blaze Mountain, drawing everyone to the balcony rim.

Duras passed before sounds arrived, smeared by distance to murmuring growls. Sara pictured lightning and thunder — like the storm that had drenched the badlands lately, drumming at her pain-soaked delirium. But then a chill coursed her spine, and she felt glad to have Emerson nearby. Some apprentices counted intervals separating each flash from its long-retarded echo.

Young Jomah voiced her own thoughts.

“Uncle, is Blaze Mountain erupting?”

Kurt’s face had been gaunt and bleak. But it was Uriel who answered, shaking her long head.

“No, lad. It’s not an erufshun. I think …”

She peered across the poison desert.

“I think it is Ovoon Town.”

Kurt found his voice. The words were grim.

“Detonations. Sharp. Well-defined. Bigger than my guild could produce.”

Realization quenched all thought of revelry. The biggest city on the Slope was being razed, and they could only watch, helplessly. Some prayed to the Holy Egg. Others muttered hollow vows of vengeance. Sara heard one person explain dispassionately why the outrage was taking place on a clear night — so the violence would be visible from much of the Slope, a demonstration of irresistible power.

Awed by the lamentable spectacle, Sara had been incapable of coherent thought. What filled her mind were images of mothers—hoonish mothers, g’Kek mothers, humans, and even haughty qheuen queens — clutching their children as they abandoned flaming, collapsing homes. The visions stirred round her brain like a cyclone of ashes, till Emerson gave her a double dose of traeki elixir.

Dropping toward a deep, dreamless sleep, she had one last thought.

Thank God that I never accepted Sage Taine’s proposal of marriage.… I might have had a child of my own by now.

This is no time … to allow so deep a love.

Now, by daylight, Sara found her mind functioning as it had before her accident — rapidly and logically. She was even able to work out a context for last night’s calamity.

Jop and Dedinger will preach we should never have had cities in the first place. They’ll say the Galactics did us a favor by destroying Ovoom Town.

Sara recalled legends her mother used to read aloud, from books of folklore covering many precontact Earthling traditions. Most Earth cultures told sagas of some purported golden age in the past, when people knew more. When they had more wisdom and power.

Many myths went on to describe angry gods, vengefully toppling the works of prideful mortals, lest men and women think themselves worthy of the sky. No credible evidence ever supported such tales, yet the story seemed so common it must reflect something deep and dour within the human psyche.

Maybe my personal heresy was always a foolish dream, and my notion of “progress” based on concocted evidence. Even if Uriel and others had begun to embark on a different path, the point seems moot now.

Dedinger proved right, after all.

As in those legends, the gods have resolved to pound us down.

Confirmation of the outrage came later by semaphore — the same system of flashing mirrors that had surprised Sara days ago, when a stray beam caught her eye during the steep climb from Xi. Using a code based on simplified GalTwo, the jittering signal followed a twisty route from one Rimmer peak to the next, carrying clipped reports of devastation by the River Gentt.

Then, a few miduras later, an eyewitness arrived, swooping out of the sky like some fantastic beast of fable, landing on Uriel’s stone parapet. A single human youth emerged beneath shuddering wings, unstrapping himself after a daring journey across the wide desert, skimming from one thermal updraft to the next in a feat that would have caused a sensation during normal times.

But heroism and miraculous deeds are routine during war, Sara thought as crowds gathered around the young man. His limbs trembled with exhaustion as he peeled off the rewq that had protected his eyes above the Spectral Flow. He gave the Smith a militia salute when Uriel trotted out of the workshop grottoes.

“Before attacking Ovoom Town, the Jophur issued a two-part ultimatum,” he explained in a hoarse voice. “Their first demand is that all g’Keks and traekis must head to special gathering zones.”

Uriel blew air through her nostril fringe, a resigned blast, as if she had expected something along these lines.

“And the second fortion of the ultinatun?”

She had to wait for her answer. Kepha, the horsewoman from Xi, arrived bearing a glass of water, which the pilot slurped gratefully, letting streams run down his chin. Most urrish eyes turned from the unpleasant sight. But Uriel stared patiently till he finished.

“Go on,” she prompted again, when the youth handed the empty glass back to Kepha with a smile.

“Um,” he resumed. “The Jophur insist that the High Sages must give up the location of the dolphin ship.”

“The dolphin shif?” Uriel’s hooves clattered on the flagstones. “We heard vague stories of this thing. Gossif and conflicting hints told vy the Rothen. Have the Jophur now revealed what it’s all avout?”

The courier tried to nod, only now Tyug had come forward, gripping the youth’s head with several tentacles. He winced as the traeki alchemist secreted ointment for his sun-and windburns.

“It seems … Hey, watch it!” He pushed at the adamant tendrils, then tried ignoring the traeki altogether.

“It seems these dolphins are the prey that brought both the Rothen and the Jophur to Galaxy Four in the first place. What’s more, the Jophur say the sages must be in contact with the Earthling ship. Either we give up its location, or face more destruction, starting with Tarek Town, then lesser hamlets, until no building is left standing.”

Kurt shook his head. “They’re bluffin’. Even Galactics couldn’t find all our wood structures, hidden under blur cloth.”

The courier seemed less sure. “There are fanatics everywhere who think the end is here. Some believe the Jophur are agents of destiny, come to set us back on the Path. All such fools need do is start a fire somewhere near a building and throw some phosphorus on the flame. The Jophur can sniff the signal using their rainbow finder.”

Rainbow finder … Sara pondered. Oh, he means a spectrograph.

Jomah was aghast. “People would do that?”

“It’s already happened in a few places. Some folks have taken their local explosers hostage, forcing them to set off their charges. Elsewhere, the Jophur have established base camps, staffed by a dozen stacks and thirty or so robots, gathering nearby citizens for questioning.” His tone was bleak. “You people don’t know how lucky you have it here.”

Yet Sara wondered. How could the High Sages possibly give in to such demands? The g’Kek weren’t being taken off-planet in order to restore their star-god status. As for the traeki, death might seem pleasant compared with the fate planned for them.

Then there was the “dolphin ship.” Even the learned Uriel could only speculate if the High Sages truly were in contact with a bunch of fugitive Terran clients.

Perhaps it was emotional fatigue, or a lingering effect of Tyug’s drug, but Sara’s attention drifted from the litany of woes recited by the pilot. When he commenced describing the destruction and death at Ovoom, Sara steered her wheelchair to join Emerson, standing near the courier’s glider.

The starman stroked its lacy wings and delicate spars, beaming with appreciation of its ingenious design. At first Sara thought it must be the same little flier she had seen displayed in a Biblos museum case — the last of its kind, left over from those fabled days just after the Tabernacle arrived, when brave aerial scouts helped human colonists survive their early wars. Over time, the art had been lost for lack of high-tech materials.

But this machine is new!

Sara recognized g’Kek weaving patterns in the fine fabric, which felt slick to the touch.

“It is a traeki secretion,” explained Tyug, having also abandoned the crowd surrounding the young messenger. The alchemist shared Emerson’s preference for physical things, not words.

“i/we sample-tasted a thread. The polymer is a clever filamentary structure based on mulc fiber. No doubt it will find other uses in piduras to come, as our varied schemes converge.”

There it was again. Hints of a secret stratagem. A scheme no one had yet explained, though Sara was starting to have suspicions.

“Forgive us/me for interrupting your contemplation, honored Saras and Emersons,” Tyug went on. “But a scent message has just activated receptor sites on my/our fifth sensory torus. The simplified meaning is that Sage Purofsky desires your presences, in proximity to his own.”

Sara translated Tyug’s awkward phrasing.

In other words, no more goofing off. It’s time to get back to work.

Back to Uriel’s den of mysteries.

Sara saw that the Smith had already departed, along with Kurt, leaving Chief Apprentice Urdonnol to finish debriefing the young pilot. Apparently, even such dire news was less urgent than the task at hand.

Calculating problems in orbital mechanics, Sara pondered. I still don’t see how that will help get us out of this fix.

She caught Emerson’s eye, and with some reluctance he turned away from the glider. But when the star voyager bent over Sara to tuck in the corners of her lap blanket, he made eye contact and shared an open smile. Then his strong hands aimed her wheelchair down a ramp into the mountain, toward Uriel’s fantastic Hall of Spinning Disks.

I feel like a g’Kek, rolling along. Perhaps all humans should spend a week confined like this, to get an idea what life is like for others.

It made her wonder how the g’Kek used to move about in their “natural” environment. According to legend, those were artificial colonies floating in space. Strange places, where many of the assumptions of planet-bound existence did not hold.

Emerson skirted ruts countless generations of urrish hooves had worn in the stone floor. He picked up the pace when they passed a vent pouring fumes from the main forge, keeping his body between her and waves of volcanic heat.

In fact, Sara was almost ready to resume walking on her own. But it felt strangely warming to wallow for a time in their reversed roles.

She had to admit, he was good at it. Maybe he had a good teacher.

Normally, Prity would have been the one pushing Sara’s chair. But the little chimp was busy, perched on a high stool in Uriel’s sanctuary with a pencil clutched in one furry hand, drawing arcs across sheets of ruled graph paper. Beyond Prity’s work easel stretched a vast underground chamber filled with tubes, pulleys, and disks, all linked by gears and leather straps — a maze of shapes whirling on a timber frame, reaching all the way up to a vaulted ceiling. In the sharp glare of carboacetylene lanterns, tiny figures could be seen scurrying about the scaffolding, tightening and lubricating — nimble urrish males, among the first ever to find useful employment outside their wives’ pouches, earning a good income by tending the ornate “hobby” of Uriel the Smith.

When Sara first saw the place, squinting through her fever, she had thought it a dream vision of hell. Then a wondrous thing happened. The spinning glass shapes began singing to her.

Not in sound, but light. As they turned, rolling their rims against one another, narrow beams reflected from mirrored surfaces, glittering like winter moonbeams on the countless facets of a frozen waterfall. Only there was more to it than mere gorgeous randomness. Patterns. Rhythms. Some flashes came and went with the perfect precision of a clock, while others performed complex, wavelike cycles, like rolling surf. With the fey sensitivity of a bared subconscious, she had recognized an overlapping harmony of shapes. Ellipses, parabolas, catenaries … a nonlinear serenade of geometry.

It’s a computer, she had realized, even before regaining the full faculties of her searching mind. And for the first time since departing her Dolo Village tree house, she had felt at home.

It is another world.

My world.

Mathematics.

Blade

HE MIGHT HAVE STAYED DOWN LONGER. BUT AFTER three or four miduras, the air in his leg bladders started growing stale. Even a full-size blue qheuen needs to breathe at least a dozen times a day. So by the time filtered sunlight penetrated to his murky refuge, Blade knew he must abandon the cool river bottom that had sheltered him through the night’s long firestorm. He fought the Gentt’s current, digging all five claws into the muddy bank, climbing upward till at last it was possible to raise his vision cupola above the water’s smeary surface.

It felt as if he had arrived at damnation day.

The fabled towers of Ovoom Town had survived the deconstruction age, then half a million years of wind and rain. Vanished were the sophisticated machines that made it a vibrant Galactic outpost. Those had been taken long ago by the departing Buyur, along with nearly every windowpane. Yet, even despite ten thousand gaping openings, the surviving shells had been luxury palaces to the six exile races — providing room for hundreds of apartments and workshops — all linked by shrewd wooden bridges, ramps, and camouflage lattices.

Now only a few jagged stumps protruded through a haze of dust and soot. Sunshine beat down from a glaring sky, showing how futile every cautious effort at concealment had been.

Picking his way along the riverbank, now cluttered with blocks of shattered stone, Blade encountered a more gruesome kind of debris—bodies floating in back eddies of the river, along with varied dismembered parts … biped limbs, g’Kek wheels, and traeki toruses. In the qheuen manner, he did not wince or experience revulsion while claw-stepping past the drifting corpses, but hoped that someone would organize a collection of the remains for proper mulching. Little was gained by maundering over the dead.

Blade felt more disturbed by the chaos at the docks, where several collapsing spires had fallen across the riverside piers and warehouses. Not a single ship or coracle appeared untouched.

Pausing to watch one crew of disconsolate hoons examine their once-beautiful craft, Blade felt a brief surge of hope when he recognized the ship, and saw its gleaming wooden hull had survived intact! Then he realized — all the masts and rigging were gone. Bubbles of disappointment escaped three of five leg vents.

Just yesterday, Blade had booked passage aboard that vessel. Now he might as well toss the paper ticket from his moisture pouch to join the other flotsam drifting out to sea.

Much of that dross had been alive till last night, when the starry sky lit up with the spectacle of a Galactic god ship, arriving well ahead of its own shock wave, announcing its sudden arrival instead with a blare of braking engines. Then it glided a complacent circle above Ovoom Town, as gracefully imperturbable as a fat, predatory fish.

The sight had struck Blade as both beautiful and terrible.

At last, an amplified voice boomed forth, declaring a ritual ultimatum in a dense, traekilike dialect of Galactic Two.

Blade had already been through too many adventures to stand and gawk. The lesson taught by experience was simple — when someone much bigger and nastier than you starts making threats, get out! He barely listened to the roar of alien words as he joined an exodus of the prudent. Racing toward the river, Blade made it with kiduras to spare.

Even when ten meters of turbulent brown liquid lay overhead, he could not shut out what followed. Searing blasts, harsh flashes, and screams.

Especially the screams.

Now, under the sun of a new day, Blade found all the concept facets of his mind overwhelmed by a scene of havoc. The biggest population center on the Slope, a oncevibrant community of art and commerce, lay in complete ruins. At the center of devastation, buildings had not simply been toppled, but pulverized to a fine dust that trailed eastward, riding the prevailing breeze.

Had similar evil already befallen Tarek Town, where the pleasant green Roney met the icy Bibur? Or Dolo Village, whose fine dam sheltered the prosperous hive of his aunts and mothers? Though Blade had grown up near humans, he now found that stress drove Anglic out of his mind. For now, the logic of his private thoughts worked better in Galactic Six.

My situation — it seems hopeless.

To Mount Guenn — there is no longer a path by ocean ship.

With Sara and the others — I cannot now rendezvous.

So much for my promise … So much for my vow.

Other qheuens were rising out of the water nearby, their cupolas bobbing to the surface like a scattering of corks. Some venturesome blues had already reached the ruined streets ahead of Blade, offering their strong backs and claws to assist rescue parties, searching through the rubble of fallen towers for survivors. He also saw a few reds and several giant grays, who must have somehow survived the night of horrors without a freshwater refuge. Some appeared wounded and all were dust-coated, but they set to work alongside hoons, humans, and others.

A qheuen feels uneasy without a duty to fulfill. Some obligation that can be satisfied, like a scratched itch, through service. On the original race homeworld, gray matrons used to exploit that instinct ruthlessly. But Jijo had changed things, promoting a different kind of fealty. Allegiance to more than a particular hive or queen.

Seeing no chance that he could accomplish his former goal and catch up with Sara, Blade consciously rearranged his priority facets, assigning himself a new short-term agenda.

Corpses meant nothing to him. He was unmoved by the dead majority of Ovoom Town. Yet he roused his bulk, pumping five legs into rapid motion, rushing to help those left with a spark of life.

• • •

Survivors and rescuers picked through the wreckage with exaggerated care, as if each overturned stone might conceal danger.

Like most settlements, this one had been mined by a chapter of the Explosers Guild, preparing the city for deliberate razing if ever the long-prophesied Judgment Day arrived. But when it finally came, the manner was not as foreseen by the scrolls. There were no serene, dispassionate officials from the great Institutes, ordaining evacuation and tidy demolition, then weighing the worth of each race by how far it had progressed along the Path of Redemption. Instead there had poured down an abrupt and cruelly impartial cascade of raging flame, efficient only at killing, igniting some of the carefully placed charges that the explosers had reverently tended for generations … and leaving others smoldering like booby traps amid the debris.

When the explosers’ local headquarters blew up, a huge fireball had risen so high that it briefly licked the underbelly of the Jophur corvette, forcing a hurried retreat. Even now, several miduras after the attack, delayed blasts still rocked random parts of town, disrupting mercy efforts, setting rubble piles tottering.

Matters improved when urrish volunteers from a nearby caravan galloped into town. With their sensitive nostrils, the urs sniffed for both unexploded charges and living flesh. They proved especially good at finding unconscious or hidden humans, whose scent they found pungent.

Miduras of hard labor merged into a blur. By late afternoon, Blade was still at it, straining on a rope, helping clear the stubborn obstruction over a buried basement. The rescue team’s ad hoc leader, a hoonish ship captain, boomed out rhythmic commands.

“Hr-r-rm, now pull, friends!.. Again, it’s coming!.. And again!”

Blade staggered as the stone block finally gave way. A pair of nimble lorniks and a lithe chimpanzee dived through the exposed opening, and soon dragged out a g’Kek with two smashed wheel rims. The braincase was intact, however, and all four eyestalks waved a dance of astounded gratitude. The survivor looked young and strong. Rims could be repaired, and spokes would reweave all by themselves.

But where will he live until then? Blade wondered, knowing that g’Keks preferred city life, not the nearby jungle where many of Ovoom’s citizens had fled. Will it be a world worth rolling back to, or one filled with Jophur-de-signed viruses and hunter robots, programmed to satisfy an ancient vendetta?

The work crew was about to resume its unending task when a shrill cry escaped the traeki who had been assigned lookout duty, perched on a nearby rubble pile with its ring-of-sensors staring in all directions at once.

“Observe! All selves, alertly turn your attentions in the direction indicated!”

A pair of tentacles aimed roughly south and west. Blade lifted his heavy carapace and tried bringing his cupola to bear, but it was dust-coated and he had no water to clean it. If only qheuens had been blessed with better eyesight.

By Ifni, right now I’d settle for tear ducts.

An object swam into view, roughly spherical, moving languidly above the forested horizon, as if bobbing like a cloud. Lacking any perspective for such a strange sight, Blade could not tell at first how big it was. Perhaps the titanic Jophur battleship had come, instead of dispatching its little brother! Were the Jophur returning to finish the job? Blade remembered tales of Galactic war weapons far worse than the corvette had used last night. Weapons capable of melting a continent’s crust. A mere river would prove no refuge, if the aliens meant to use such tools.

But no. He saw the globelike surface ripple in an unsteady breeze. It appeared to be made of fabric, and much smaller than he had thought.

Two more globelike forms followed the leader into view, making a threesome convoy. Blade instinctively switched organic filters in his cupola, observing them in infrared. At once he saw that each flying thing carried a sharp heat glow beneath, suspended by cables from the globe itself.

Others standing nearby — those with sharper eyesight — passed through several reactions. First anxious dread, then puzzlement, and finally a kind of joyful wonder they expressed with shrill laughter or deep, umbling tones.

“What is it?” asked a nearby red qheuen, even more dust-blind than Blade.

“I think—” Blade began to answer. But then a human cut in, shading his eyes with both hands.

“They’re balloons! By Drake and Ur-Chown … they’re hot air balloons!”

A short time later, even the qheuens could make out shapes hung beneath the bulging gasbags. Urrish figures standing in wicker baskets, tending fires that intermittently flared with sudden, near-volcanic heat. Blade then realized who had come, as if out of the orange setting sun.

The smiths of Blaze Mountain must have seen last night’s calamity from their nearby mountain sanctum. The smiths were coming to help succor their neighbors.

It seemed blasphemous, in a strange way. For the Sacred Scrolls had always spoken of doom arriving from the fearsome open sky.

Now it seemed the cloudless heavens could also bring virtue.

Lester Cambel

HE WAS TOO BUSY NOW TO FEEL RACKED WITH conscience pangs. As commotion at the secret base neared a fever pitch, Lester had no time left for wallowing in guilt. There were slurry tubes to inspect — a pipeline threading its meandering way through the boo forest, carrying noxious fluids from the traeki synthesis gang to tall, slender vats where it congealed into a paste of chemically constrained hell.

Lester also had to approve a new machine for winding league after league of strong fiber cord around massive trunks of greatboo, multiplying their strength a thousandfold.

Then there was the matter of kindling beetles. One of his assistants had found a new use for an old pest — a dangerous, Buyur-modified insect that most Sixers grew up loathing, but one that might now solve an irksome technical problem. The idea seemed promising, but needed morc tests before being incorporated in the plan.

Piece by piece, the scheme progressed from Wild-Eyed Fantasy all the way to Desperate Gamble. In fact, a local hoonish bookie was said to be covering bets at only sixty to one against eventual success — the best odds so far.

Of course, each time they overcame a problem, it was replaced by three more. That was expected, and Lester even came to look upon the growing complexity as a blessing. Keeping busy was the only effective way to fight off the same images that haunted his mind, replaying over and over again.

A golden mist, falling on Dooden Mesa. Only immersion in work could drive out the keening cries of g’Kek citizens, trapped by poison rain pouring from a Jophur cruiser.

A cruiser he had carelessly summoned, by giving in to his greatest vice — curiosity.

“Do not blame yourself Lester,” Ur-Jah counseled in a dialect of GalSeven. “The enemy would have found Dooden soon anyway. Meanwhile, your research harvested valuable information. It helped lead to cures for the qheuen and hoonish plagues. Life consists of trade-offs, my friend.”

Perhaps. Lester admitted things might work that way on paper. Especially if you assumed, as many did, that the poor g’Kek were doomed anyway.

That kind of philosophy comes easier to the urrish, who know that only a fraction of their offspring can or should survive. We humans wail for a lifetime if we lose a son or daughter. If we find urs callous, it’s good to recall how absurdly sentimental we seem to them.

Lester tried to think like an urs.

He failed.

Now came news from the commandos who so bravely plumbed the lake covering the Glade of Gathering. Sergeant Jeni Shen reported partial success, freeing some Daniks from their trapped ship … only to lose others to the Jophur, including the young heretic sage, Lark Koolhan. A net loss, as far as Lester was concerned.

What might the aliens be doing to poor Lark right now?

I never should have agreed to his dangerous plan.

Lester realized, he did not have the temperament to be a war leader. He could not spend people, like fuel for a fire, even as a price for victory.

When all this was over, assuming anyone survived, he planned to resign from the Council of Sages and become the most reclusive scholar in Biblos, creeping like a specter past dusty shelves of ancient tomes. Or else he might resume his old practice of meditation in the narrow Canyon of the Blessed, where life’s cares were known to vanish under a sweet ocean of detached oblivion.

It sounded alluring — a chance to retreat from life.

But for now, there was simply too much to do.

The council seldom met anymore.

Phwhoondau, who had made a lifelong study of the languages and ways of fabled Galactics, had responsibility for negotiating with the Jophur. Unfortunately, there seemed little to haggle about. Just futile pleading for the invaders to change their many-ringed minds. Phwhoondau sent repeated entreaties to the toroidal aliens, protesting that the High Sages knew nothing about the much-sought “dolphin ship.”

Believe us, O great Jophur lords, the hoonish sage implored. We have no secret channel of communication with your prey. The events you speak of were all unrelated … a series of coincidences.

But the Jophur were too angry to believe it.

In attempting to negotiate, Phwhoondau was advised by Chorsh, the new traeki representative. But that replacement for Asx the Wise had few new insights to offer. As a member of the Tarek Town Explosers Guild, Chorsh was a valued technician, not an expert on distant Jophur cousins.

What Chorsh did have was a particularly useful talent — a summoning torus.

Shifting summer winds carried the traeki’s scent message all over the Slope — a call from Chorsh to all qualified ring stacks.

Come … come now to where you/we are needed.…

Hundreds of them already stood in single file, a chain of fatty heaps that stretched on for nearly a league, winding amid the gently bending trunks of boo. Each volunteer squatted on its own feast of decaying matter that work crews kept stoked, like feeding logs to a steam engine. Chuffing and smoking from exertion, the chem-synth gang dripped glistening fluids into makeshift troughs made of split and hollowed saplings, contributing to a trickle that eventually became a rivulet of foul-smelling liquor.

Immobile and speechless, they hardly looked like sentient beings. More like tall, greasy beehives, laid one after another along a twisty road. But that image was deceiving. Lester saw swathes of color flash across the body of one nearby traeki — a subtle interplay of shades that rippled first between the stack’s component rings, as if they were holding conversations among themselves. Then the pattern coalesced, creating a unified shape of light and shadows at the points that lay nearest to the traeki’s neighbors, on either side. Those stacks, in turn, responded with changes in their own surfaces.

Lester recognized the wavelike motif — traeki laughter. The workers were sharing jokes, among their own rings and from stack to stack.

They are the strangest of the Six, Lester thought. And yet we understand them … and they, us.

I doubt even the sophisticates of the Five Galaxies can say the same thing about the Jophur. Out there, none of their advanced science could achieve what we have simply by living next to traeki, day in and day out.

It was pretty crude humor, Lester could tell. Many of these workers were pharmacists, back in their home villages all over the Slope. The one nearest Lester had been speculating about alternative uses of the stuff they were making — perhaps how it might also serve as a cure for the perennial problem of hoonish constipation … especially if accompanied by liberal applications of heat.…

At least that was how Lester interpreted the language of color. He was far from expert in its nuances. Anyway, these workers were welcome to a bit of rough-edged drollery. Their hard labor lasted day in, day out, and still production lagged behind schedule.

But more traeki arrived with each passing midura, following the scent trail emitted by their sage.

Now we have to hope that the Jophur are too advanced and urbane to use the same technique, and trace our location by reading the winds.

The qheuen sage, Knife-Bright Insight, bore all the duties of civil administration on her broad blue back.

There were refugees to relocate, food supplies to organize, and militia units to dispatch, quashing outbreaks of civil war among the Six. One clear success came lately in subduing foreign plagues, duplicating the samples Jeni Shen brought from the Glade Lake, then using a new network of glider couriers to distribute vaccines.

Yet despite such successes, the social fabric of the Commons continued dissolving. News arrived telling of sooner bands departing across the official boundaries of the Slope, seeking to escape the doom threatened for the Six Races. The Warril Plain was aflame with fighting among hot-tempered urrish clans. And more bad news kept rolling in.

Recent reports told of several hives of Gray Queens declaring open secession from the Commons, asserting sovereignty over their ancient domains. Spurred by the devastation of Ovoom Town, some rebel princesses even rejected their own official High Sage.

“We accept no guidance from a mere blue,” came word from one gray hive, snubbing Knife-Bright Insight and resurrecting ancient bigotry.

“Come give us advice when you have a real name.”

Of course no red or blue qheuen ever used a name, as such. It was cruel and haughty to mention the handicap, inherited from ancient days and other worlds.

Worse, rumors claimed that some gray hives had started negotiating with the Jophur on their own.

• • •

A crisis can tear us apart, or draw us together.

Lester checked on the mixed team of qheuens and hoons who were erecting spindly scaffolding around selected spires of greatboo. Only a small fraction of the designated trunks had been trimmed and readied, but the crews were getting better at their unfamiliar task. Some qheuens brought expertise learned from their grandmothers, who in olden times used to maintain fearsome catapults at Tarek Town, dominating two rivers until a great siege toppled that ancient reign.

So much activity might be detectable by prying sky eyes. But taller trunks surrounded each chosen one, drowning the tumult in a vast sea of Brobdingnagian grass.

Or so we hope.

Guiding the work, urrish and human craft workers pored over ancient designs found in a single rare Biblos text, dating from precontact days, dealing with an obscure wolfling technology that no Galactic power had needed or used for a billion years. Side by side, men and women joined their urs colleagues, adapting the book’s peculiar concepts, translating its strange recipes to native materials and their own cottage skills.

Conditions were spartan. Many volunteers had already suffered privation, hiking great distances along steep mountain trails to reach this tract of tall green columns, stretching like a prairie as far as any eye could see.

All recruits shared a single motive — finding a way for the Commons of Six Races to fight back.

Amid the shouting throng, it was Ur-Jah who brought order out of chaos, galloping from one site to the next, making sure the traeki synthesists had food and raw material, and that every filament was wound tight. Of all the High Sages, Ur-Jah was most qualified to share Lester’s job of supervision. Her pelt might be ragged with age and her brood pouches dry, but the mind in that narrow skull was sharp — and more pragmatic than Lester’s had ever been.

Of the High Sages, that left only Vubben.

Judicious and knowing. Deep in perception. Leader of a sept that had been marked long ago for destruction by foes who never forgot, and never gave up. Among Jijo’s exile races, Vubben’s folk had been first to brave Izmunuti’s stiffening winds, seeking Jijo’s bright shoal almost two thousand years ago.

The wheeled g’Kek — both amiable and mysterious.

Neighborly, if weird.

Elfin but reliable.

Faceless, yet as open as a book.

How lessened the universe would be without them!

Despite their difficulty on rough trails, some g’Kek had made it to this remote mountain base, laboring to weave fabric, or applying their keen eyes to the problem of making small parts. Yet their own sage was nowhere in sight.

Vubben had gone south, to a sacred place dangerously near the Jophur ship. There, he was attempting in secret to commune with Jijo’s highest power.

Lester worried about his wise friend with the squeaky axles, venturing down there all alone.

But someone has to do it.

Soon we’ll know if we have been fools all along … or if we’ve put our faith in something deserving of our love.

Fallon

A DOMAIN OF BLINDING WHITENESS MARKED THE border of the Spectral Flow, where that slanting shelf of radiant stone abruptly submerged beneath an ocean of sparkling grains. North of this point commenced a different kind of desert — one that seemed less hard on the brain and eyes, but just as unforgiving. A desert where hardy lifeforms dwelled.

Dangerous lifeforms.

The escaped heretic’s footprints transformed as they crossed the boundary. No longer did they glow, each with a unique lambency of oil-slick colors, telling truths and lies. Plunging ahead without pause, the tracks became mere impressions on the Plain of Sharp Sand — indentations that grew blurrier as gusty winds stroked the dunes — revealing only that someone recently came this way, a humanoid biped, favoring his left leg with a limp.

Fallon could tell one more thing — the hiker had been in an awful hurry.

“We can’t follow anymore,” he told his young companions. “Our mounts are spent, and this is Dedinger’s realm. He knows it better than we do.”

Reza and Pahna stared at the sandy desert, no less dismayed than he. But the older one dissented — a sturdy redhead with a rifle slung over her shoulder.

“We must go on. The heretic knows everything. If he reaches his band of ruffians, they’ll soon follow him back to Xi, attacking us in force. Or else he might trade our location to the aliens. The man must be stopped!”

Despite her vehemence, Fallon could tell Reza’s heart was heavy. For several days they had chased Dedinger across the wasteland they knew — a vast tract of laminated rock so poisonous, a sliver under the skin might send you into thrashing fever. A place almost devoid of life, where daylight raised a spectacle of unlikely marvels before any unprotected eye — waterfalls and fiery pits, golden cities and fairy dust. Even night offered no rest, for moonbeams alone could make an unwary soul shiver as ghost shadows flapped at the edge of sight. Such were the terrible wonders of the Spectral Flow — in most ways a harsher territory than the mundane desert just ahead. So harsh that few Jijoans ever thought to explore its fringes, allowing the secret of Xi to remain safe.

Reza was right to fear the consequences, should Dedinger make good his escape — especially if the fanatic managed to reforge his alliance with the horse-hating clan of urrish cultists called the Urunthai. The fugitive should have succumbed to the unfamiliar dangers of the Flow by now. The three pursuers had expected to catch up with him yesterday, if not the day before.

It’s my fault, Fallon thought. I was too complacent. Too deliberate. My old bones can’t take a gallop and I would not let the women speed on without me.

Who would guess Dedinger could ride so well after so little practice, driving his stolen horse with a mixture of care and utter brutality, so the poor beast expired just two leagues short of this very boundary?

Even after that, his jogging pace kept the gap between them from closing fast enough. While the Illias preserved their beloved mares, the madman managed to cross ground that should have killed him first.

We are chasing a strong, resourceful adversary. I’d rather face a hoonish ice hermit, or even a Gray Champion, than risk this fellow with his back cornered against a dune.

Of course Dedinger must eventually run out of reserves, pushing himself to the limit. Perhaps the man lay beyond the next drift, sprawled in exhausted stupor.

Well, it did no harm to hope.

“All right.” Fallon nodded. “We’ll go. But keep a sharp watch. And be ready to move quick if I say so. We’ll follow the trail till nightfall, then head back whether he’s brought down or not.”

Reza and Pahna agreed, nudging their horses to follow. The animals stepped onto hot sand without enthusiasm, laying their ears back and nickering unhappily. Color-blind and unimaginative, their breed was largely immune to the haunting mirages of the Spectral Flow, but they clearly disliked this realm of glaring brightness. Soon, the three humans removed their rewq symbionts, pulling the living veils from over their eyes, trading them for urrish-made dark glasses with polarized coatings made of stretched fish membranes.

Ifni, this is a horrid place, Fallon thought, leaning left in his saddle to make out the renegade’s tracks. But Dedinger is at home here.

In theory, that should not matter. Before ceding the position to his apprentice, Dwer, Fallon had been chief scout for the Council of Sages — an expert who supposedly knew every hectare of the Slope. But that was always an exaggeration. Oh, he had spent some time on this desert, getting to know the rugged, illiterate men who kept homes under certain hollow dunes, making their hard living by spear hunting and sifting for spica granules.

But I was much younger in those days, long before Dedinger began preaching to the sandmen, flattering and convincing them of their righteous perfection. Their role as leaders, blazing a way for humanity down the Path of Redemption.

I’d be a fool to think I still qualify as a “scout” in this terrain.

Sure enough, Fallon was taken by surprise when their trail crossed a stretch of booming sand.

The fugitive’s footprints climbed up the side of a dune, following an arc that would have stressed the mounts to follow. Fallon decided to cut inside of Dedinger’s track, saving time and energy … but soon the sandy surface ceased cushioning the horse’s hoofbeats. Instead, low groans echoed with each footfall, resonating like the sound of tapping on a drum. Cursing, he reined back. As an apprentice he once took a dare to jump in the center of a booming dune, and was lucky when it did not collapse beneath him. As it was, he spent the next pidura nursing an aching skull that kept on ringing from the reverberations he set off.

After laborious backtracking, they finally got around the obstacle.

Now Dedinger knows we’re still after him. Fallon chided himself. Concentrate, dammit! You have experience, use it!

Fallon glanced back at the young women, whose secret clan of riders chose him to spend pleasant retirement in their midst, one of just four men dwelling in Xi’s glades. Pahna was still a lanky youth, but Reza had already shared Fallon’s bed on three occasions. The last time she had been kind, overlooking when he fell asleep too soon.

They claim experience and thoughtfulness are preferable traits in male companions — qualities that make up for declining stamina. But I wonder if it’s a wise policy. Wouldn’t they be better off keeping a young stallion like Dwer around, instead?

Dwer was far better equipped for this kind of mission. The lad would have brought Dedinger back days ago, all tied up in a neat package.

Well, you don’t always have the ideal man on hand for every job. I just hope old Lester and the sages found a good use for Dwer. His gifts are rare.

Fallon had never been quite the “natural” that his apprentice was. In times past, he used to make up for it with discipline and attention to detail. He had never been one to let his mind wander during a hunt.

But times change, and a man loses his edge. These days, he could not help drifting away to the past. Something always reminded him of other days, his past was so filled with riches.

Oh, the times he used to have, running across the steppe with Ul-ticho, his plains hunting companion whose grand life was heartbreakingly short. Her fellowship meant more to Fallon than any human’s, before or since. No one else understood so well the silences within his restless heart.

Ul-ticho, be glad you never saw this year when things fell apart. Those times were better, old friend. Jijo was ours, and even the sky held no threat you and I couldn’t handle.

Dedinger’s tracks still lay in plain sight, turning the rim of a great dune. The marks grew steadily fresher, and his limp grew worse with every step. The fugitive was near collapse. Assuming he kept going, it would be a half midura, at most, before the mounted party caught him.

And still some distance short of the first shelter well. Not bad. We may pull this off yet.

Assumptions are a luxury that civilized folk can afford. But not warriors or people of the land. In those staggered footprints, Fallon read a reassuring story, and so violated a rule that he used to pound into his apprentice.

They were riding in the same direction as the wind, so no scent warned the animals before they turned, slanting down to the shadowed north side of the dune. Abruptly, a murmur of voices greeted them — shouts, filled with wrath and danger. Before Fallon’s blinking eyes could adjust to the changed light, he and the women found themselves staring down the shafts of a dozen or more cocked arbalests, all aimed their way, held by grizzled men wearing cloaks, turbans, and membrane goggles.

Now he made out a structure just ahead, shielded from the elements, made of piled stones. Fallon caught a belated sniff of water.

A new well? Built since I last came here as a young man? Or did I forget this one?

More likely, the desert men never told the visiting chief scout all their secret sites. Far better, from their point of view, to let the High Sages think their maps complete, while holding something in reserve.

Lifting his hands slowly and carefully away from the pistol at his belt, Fallon now saw Dedinger, sunburned and shaking as he clutched devoted followers — who tenderly poured water over the prophet’s broken lips.

We came so close!

The hands holding Dedinger right now should have been Fallon’s. They would have been, if only things had gone just a little differently.

I’m sorry, Fallon thought, turning in silent apology to Reza and Pahna. Their faces looked surprised and bleak.

I’m an old man … and I let you down.

Nelo

THE BATTLE FOR DOLO VILLAGE INVOLVED LARGER issues, but the principal thing decided was who would get to sleep indoors that night.

Most of the combatants were quite young, or very old.

In victory, the winners took possession of ashes.

In defeat, the losers marched forth singing.

Aided by a few qheuen allies, the craft workers started the fight evenly matched against the fanatical followers of Jop the Zealot. Both sides were angry, determined, and poorly armed with sticks and cudgels. Every man, woman, and qheuen of fighting age was away on militia duty, taking the swords and other weapons with them.

Even so, it was a wonder no one died in the melee.

Combatants swelled around the village meeting tree in a sweaty, disorderly throng, pushing and flailing at men who had been their neighbors and friends, raising a bedlam that blocked out futile orders by leaders of both sides. It might have gone on till everyone collapsed in hoarse exhaustion, but the conflict was abruptly decided when one side got unexpected reinforcements.

Brown-clad men dropped from the overhanging branches of the garu forest, where gardens of luscious, protein-rich moss created a rich and unique niche for agile human farmers. Suddenly outflanked and outnumbered, Jop and his followers turned and fled the debris-strewn valley.

“The zealots went too far,” said one gnarled tree farmer, explaining why his people dropped their neutrality to intervene. “Even if they had an excuse to blow up the dam without guidance from the sages … they should’ve warned the poor qheuens first! A murder committed in the name of reverence is still a crime. It’s too high a toll to pay for following the Path.”

Nelo was still catching his breath, so Ariana Foo expressed thanks on the craft workers’ behalf. “There has already been enough blood spilled down the Bibur’s waters. It is well past time for neighbors to care for one another, and heal these wounds.”

Despite confinement to her wheelchair, Ariana had been worth ten warriors during the brief struggle, without ever aiming or landing a blow. Her renowned status as the former High Sage of human sept meant that no antagonist dared confront her. It was as if a bubble of sanity moved through the mob, interrupting the riot, which resumed again as soon as she had passed. The sight of her helped the majority of farmers decide to come down off the garu heights and assist.

No one pursued Jop’s forces as they retreated on canoes and makeshift rafts to the Bibur’s other bank, re-forming on a crest of high ground separating the river from a vast swamp. There the zealots chanted passages from the Sacred Scrolls, still defiant.

Nelo labored for breath. It felt as if his ribs were half torn loose from his side, and he could not tell for some time which pains were temporary, and which were from some fanatic’s baton or quarterstaff. At least nothing seemed broken, and he grew more confident that his heart wasn’t about to burst out of his chest.

So, Dolo has been won back, he thought, finding little to rejoice over in the triumph. Log Biter was dead, as well as Jobee and half of Nelo’s apprentices. With his paper mill gone, along with the dam and qheuen rookery, the battle had been largely to decide who would take shelter in the remaining dwellings.

A makeshift infirmary was set up surrounding the traeki pharmacist, on a stretch of leaf-covered loam. Nelo spent some time sewing cuts with boiled thread, and laying plaster compresses on bruised comrades and foes alike.

The task of healing and stitching was hardly begun when a messenger dropped down from the skyway of rope bridges that laced the forest in all directions. Nelo recognized the lanky teenager, a local girl whose swiftness along the branch-top ways could not be matched. Still short of breath, she saluted Ariana Foo and recited a message from the commander of the militia base concealed some distance downriver.

“Two squads will get here before nightfall,” she relayed proudly. “They’ll send tents and other gear by tomorrow morn … assuming the Jophur don’t blow the boats up.”

It was fast action, but a resigned murmur was all the news merited. Any help now was too little, and far too late to save the rich, united community Dolo Village had been. No wonder Jop’s people had been less tenacious, more willing to retreat. In their eyes, they had already won.

The Path of Redemption lies before us.

Nelo walked over to sit on a tree stump near the town exploser, whose destructive charges were commandeered and misused by Jop’s mob. Henrik’s shoulders slumped as he stared over the Bibur, past the shattered ruins of the craft shops, at the zealots chanting on the other side.

Nelo wondered if his own face looked as bleak and haggard as Henrik’s.

Probably not. To his own great surprise, Nelo found himself in a mood to be philosophical.

“Never have seen such a mess in all my days,” he said, with a resigned sigh. “I guess we’re gonna have our hands full, rebuilding.”

Henrik shook his head, as if to say, It can’t be done.

This, in turn, triggered a flare of resentment from Nelo. What business did Henrik have, wallowing in self-pity? As an exploser, his professional needs were small. Assisted by his guild, he could be back in business within a year. But even if Log Biter’s family got help from other qheuen hives, and held a dam-raising to end all dam-raisings, it would still be years before a waterwheel, turbine, and power train could convert lake pressure into industrial muscle. And that would just begin the recovery. Nelo figured he would devote the rest of his life to building a papery like his former mill.

Was Henrik ashamed his charges had been misused by a panicky rabble? How could anyone guard against such times as these, when all prophecy went skewed and awry? Galactics had indeed come to Jijo, but not as foreseen. Instead, month after month of ambiguity had mixed with alien malevolence to sow confusion among the Six Races. Jop represented one reaction. Others sought ways to fight the aliens. In the long run, neither policy would make any difference.

We should have followed a third course — wait and see. Go on living normal lives until the universe decides what to do with us.

Nelo wondered at his own attitude. The earlier shocked dismay had given way to a strange feeling. Not numbness. Certainly not elation amid such devastation.

I hate everything that was done here.

… and yet…

And yet, Nelo found a spirit of anticipation rising within. He could already smell fresh-cut timber and the pungency of boiling pitch. He felt the pulselike pounding of hammers driving joining pegs, and saws spewing dust across the ground. In his mind were the beginnings of a sketch for a better workshop. A better mill.

All my life I tended the factory my ancestors left me, making paper in the time-honored way.

It was a prideful place. A noble calling.

But it wasn’t mine.

Even if the original design came from settlers who stepped off the Tabernacle, still wearing some of their mantle as star gods, Nelo had always known, deep inside—I could do a better job.

Now, when his years were ripe, he finally had a chance to prove it. The prospect was sad, daunting … and thrilling. Perhaps the strangest thing of all was how young it made him feel.

“Don’t blame yourself, Henrik,” he told the exploser, charitably. “You watch and see. Everything’ll be better’n ever.”

But the exploser only shook his head again. He pointed across the river, where Jop’s partisans were now streaming toward the northeastern swamp, carrying canoes and other burdens on their backs, still singing as they went.

“They’ve got my reserve supply of powder. Snatched it from the warehouse. I couldn’t stop ’em.”

Nelo frowned.

“What good’ll it do ’em? Militia’s coming, by land and water. Jop can’t reach anywhere else along the river that’s worth blowing up.”

“They aren’t heading along the river,” Henrik replied, and Nelo saw it was true.

“Then where?” he wondered aloud.

Abruptly, Nelo knew the answer to his own question, even before Henrik spoke. And that same instant he also realized there were far more important matters than rebuilding a paper mill.

“Biblos,” the exploser said, echoing Nelo’s thought.

The papermaker blinked silently, unable to make his brain fit around the impending catastrophe.

“The militia … can they cut ’em off?”

“Doubtful. But even if they do, it’s not Jop alone that has me worried.”

He turned to show his eyes for the first time, and they held bleakness.

“I’ll bet Jop’s bunch ain’t the only group heading that way, even as we speak.”

Rety

THE MORE SHE LEARNED ABOUT STAR GODS, THE less attractive they seemed.

None of ’em is half as smart as a dung-eating glaver,

she thought, while making her way down a long corridor toward the ship’s brig. It must come from using all those computers and smarty-ass machines to cook your food, make your air, tell you stories, kill your enemies, tuck you in at night, and foretell your future for you. Count on ’em too much, and your brain stops working.

Rety had grown more cynical since those early days when Dwer and Lark first brought her down off the Rimmer Mountains, a half-starved, wide-eyed savage, agog over the simplest crafts produced on the so-called civilized Slope — all the way from pottery to woven cloth and paper books. Of course that awe evaporated just as soon as she sampled real luxury aboard the Rothen station, where Kunn and the other Daniks flattered her with promises that sent her head spinning.

Long life, strength and beauty … cures for all your aches and scars … a clean, safe place to live under the protection of our Rothen lords … and all the wonders that come with being a lesser deity, striding among the stars.

There she had met the Rothen patrons of humankind. Her patrons, they said. Gazing on the benevolent faces of Ro-kenn and Ro-pol, Rety had allowed herself to see wise, loving parents — unlike those she knew while growing up in a wild sooner tribe. The Rothen seemed so perfect, so noble and strong, that Rety almost gave in. She very nearly pledged her heart.

But it proved a lie. Whether or not they really were humanity’s patrons did not matter to her at all. What counted was that the Rothen turned out to be less mighty than they claimed. For that she could never forgive them.

What use was a protector who couldn’t protect?

For half a year, Rety had fled one band of incompetents after another — from her birth tribe of filthy cretins to the Commons of Six Races. Then from the Commons to the Rothen. And when the Jophur corvette triumphed over Kunn’s little scout boat, she had seriously contemplated heading down to the swamp with both hands upraised, offering her services to the ugly ringed things. Now wouldn’t that have galled old Dwer!

At one point, while he was floundering in the muck, talking to his crazy mulc-spider friend, she had actually started toward the ramp of the grounded spaceship, intending to hammer on the door. Surely the Jophur were like everybody else, willing to deal for information that was important to them.

At a critical moment, only their stench held her back — an aroma that reminded her of festering wounds and gangrene … fortunately, as it turned out, since the Jophur also proved unable to defend themselves against the unexpected.

So I got to just keep looking for another way off this mud ball. And who cares what Dwer thinks of me? At least 1 don’t make fancy excuses for what I do.

Rety’s tutor had been the wilderness, whose harsh education taught just one lesson — to survive, at all cost. She grew up watching as some creatures ate others, then were eaten by something stronger still. Lark referred to the “food chain,” but Rety called it the who-kills mountain. Every choice she made involved trying to climb higher on that mountain, hoping the next step would take her to the top.

So when the Jophur were beaten and captured by mythical dolphins, it seemed only natural to hurry aboard the submarine and claim sanctuary with her “Earth cousins.” Only now look where I am, buried under a trash heap at the bottom of the sea, hiding with a bunch of chattering Earthfish who have every monster and star god in space chasing them.

In other words, back at the bottom of the mountain again. Doomed always to be prey, instead of the hunter.

Crax! I sure do got a knack for picking ’em.

• • •

There were a few small compensations.

For one thing, dolphins seemed to hold humans in awe — the same kind as the Daniks had for their Rothen patrons. Furthermore, the Streaker crew considered Rety and Dwer “heroes” for their actions in the swamp against the Jophur sky boat. As a result, she had free run of the ship, including a courtesy password that let her approach a sealed entrance to the Streaker’s brig.

For a brief time both airlock doors were closed, and she knew guards must be examining her with instruments. Prob’ly checkin’ my innards, to see if I’m smugglin’ a laser or something. Rety took a breath and exhaled deeply, washing away her body’s instinctive panic over confinement in a cramped metal space. It’ll pass … it’ll pass.…

That trick had helped her endure years of frustration in her feral tribe, whenever defeat and brutality seemed to press in from all sides.

Don’t react like a savage. If others can stand living in boxes, you can, too … for a little while.

The second hatch opened at last, showing Rety a ramp that dropped steeply to a chamber that was flooded, chesthigh, with water.

Ugh.

She disliked the mixed compartments making up a large part of this weird vessel — half-immersed rooms that were spanned above by dry catwalks, allowing access to both striding and swimming beings. The liquid felt warm as Rety sloshed downslope, reminding her of volcanic springs back home in the Gray Hills, but with an added fizzy quality that left trails of tiny bubbles wherever she moved. Feigning relaxed confidence, Rety approached the guard station, where two sentries were assisted by a globular robot whose whirring antennae watched her acutely. One of the dolphins rode a six-legged walker unit — without the bug-eyed body armor — enabling it to stride about dry areas of the ship. The other “fin” wore just a tool harness, using languid motions of his flippers to face a set of monitor displays.

“May we help you, missss?” the latter one asked, with a tail splash added for punctuation.

“Yeh. I came to question Kunn an’ Jass again. I figure I’ll get more out of ’em if I try it alone.”

The guard focused one eye back at her with a dubious expression. The first attempt had not gone well, when Rety accompanied Lieutenant Tsh’t to interrogate the human prisoners. They had been groggy and unhelpful, still wearing bandages and medic pacs for their various injuries. While the dolphin officer tried grilling Kunn about matters back in the Five Galaxies, Rety endured a hot glare of hatred from her cousin Jass, who murmured the word traitor and spat on the floor.

Who’d you figure I betrayed, Jass? she had wondered, eyeing him coldly until his stare broke first. The Daniks? Even Kunn isn’t surprised I switched sides, after the way he treated me.

Or do you mean I’ve turned against our home clan? The band of grubby savages that birthed me, then never showed me a day’s kindness since?

Before looking away, his eyes showed it was personal. She had arranged for Jass to be seized, tormented, and pressed into service as Kunn’s guide. His being locked in this metal cage was also her doing.

That thought cheered her up a bit. You gotta admit, Jass, I finally made an impression on you.

But soon things are gonna get even worse.

I’m gonna make you grateful.

Meanwhile, Kunn told Tsh’t that the siege of Earth went on, though eased somewhat by a strange alliance with the Thennanin.

“But to answer your chief question, there has been no amnesty call by the Institutes. Several great star clans have blocked a safe-conduct decree to let your ship come home.”

Rety wasn’t sure what that meant, but clearly the news was bitter to the dolphins.

Then a new voice intruded from thin air, where a spinning abstract figure suddenly whirled.

“Lieutenant, please recall instructions. Have the prisoner explain how his vessel tracked us to this world.”

Rety recalled seeing a tremor course down the dolphin’s sleek gray flank, perhaps from irritation over the machine’s snide tone. But Tsh’t snapped her jaw in a gesture of submission, and sent her walker unit looming closer to Kunn’s bunk. The human star voyager had nowhere to retreat as her machine pressed close, threateningly. Rety recalled sweat popping out on the Danik warrior’s brow, giving lie to his false air of calm. Having watched him intimidate others, she was pleased to see the tables turned.

Then it happened. Some piece of equipment failed, or else the lieutenant’s walker took a misstep. The right front ankle abruptly snapped, sending the dolphin’s great mass crashing forward.

Only lightning reflexes enabled Kunn to scramble out of the way and avoid being crushed. By the time guards arrived to help Tsh’t untangle herself, the dolphin officer was bruised, angry, and in no humor to continue the interview.

But I’m ready now, Rety thought later, as one of the brig wardens prepared to escort her down a narrow passage with numbers etched on every hatch. I’ve got a plan … and this time Kunn and Jass better do as I say.

“Are you sure you want-t to do this now, miss?” the guard asked. “It’s night cycle and the prisoners are asleep.”

“That’s just how I want ’em. Groggy an’ logy. They may blab more.”

In fact, Rety hardly cared if Kunn named the admirals of all the fleets in the Five Galaxies. Her questions would only serve as cover for communication on another level.

She had been busy in the room the Streakers assigned her — a snug chamber once occupied by a human named Dennie Sudman, whose clothes fit her pretty well. Pictures on the wall portrayed a young woman with dark hair, who was said to have gone missing on some foreign planet years ago, along with several human and dolphin crew mates. On her cluttered desk Dennie had left a clever machine that spoke in a much friendlier manner than the sarcastic Niss. It seemed eager to assist Rety, telling her all about the Terran ship and its surroundings.

I’ve studied the passages leading from this jail to the OutLock. I can name what kind of skiffs and star boats they keep there. And most important, these Earthfish trust me. My passwords should let us out.

All I need is a pilot … and someone strong and mean enough to do any fighting, if we run into trouble.

And luck. Rety had carefully timed things so there was little chance of running into Dwer along the way.

Dwer knows not to trust me … and I can’t be sure that both Jass and Kunn together would be enough to bring him down.

Anyway, all else being equal, she’d rather Dwer didn’t get hurt.

Maybe I’ll even think about him now and then, while I’m livin’ high on some far galaxy.

There wasn’t much else about Jijo that she planned on remembering.

Dwer

I DON’T BELONG HERE,” HE TRIED TO EXPLAIN. “AND neither does Rety. You’ve got to help us get back.”

“Back where?” The woman seemed honestly perplexed. “To that seaside swamp, with toxic engine waste and dead Jophur rings for company? And more Jophur surely on the way?”

Once again, Dwer was having trouble with words. He found it difficult to concentrate in these sealed spaces they called “starship cabins,” where the air felt so dead. Especially this one, a dimly lit chamber filled with strange objects Dwer could not hope to understand.

Lark or Sara would do fine here, but I feel lost. I miss the news that comes carried on the wind.

It didn’t help settle his nerves that the person sitting opposite him was the most beautiful human being Dwer had ever seen, with dark yellow hair and abiding sadness in her pale eyes.

“No, of course not,” he answered. “There’s another place where I’m needed.… And Rety, too.”

Fine lines crinkled at the edges of her eyes.

“The young hoon, Alvin, wants to let his parents know he’s alive, and report to the urrish sage who sent the four of them on their diving mission. They want help getting home.”

“Will you give it?”

“How can we? Aside from putting our own crewfolk in clanger, and perhaps giving our position away to enemies, it seems unfair to endanger your entire culture with knowledge that’s a curse to any who possess it.

“And yet …”

She paused. Her scrutiny made Dwer feel like a small child.

“Yet, there is a reticence in your voice. A wariness about your destination that makes me suspect you’re not talking about going home. Not to the tranquil peace you knew among friends and loved ones, in the land you call the Slope.”

There seemed little point in trying to conceal secrets from Gillian Baskin. So Dwer silently shrugged.

“The girl’s tribe, then,” the woman guessed. “Rety’s folk, in the northern hills, where you were wounded fighting a war bot with your bare hands.”

He looked down, speaking in a low voice.

“There’s … things that still need to be done there.”

“Mm. I can well imagine. Obligations, I suppose? Duties unfulfilled?” Her sigh was soft and distant sounding. “You see, I know how it is with your kind. Where your priorities lie.”

That made him look up, wondering. What did she mean by that? There was resigned melancholy in her face … plus something like recognition, as if she saw something familiar in him, wakening affectionate sadness.

“Tell me about it, Dwer. Tell me what you must accomplish.

“Tell me who depends on you.”

Perhaps it was the way she phrased her question, or the power of her personality, but he found himself no longer able to withhold the remaining parts of the story. The parts he had kept back till now.

— about his job as chief scout of the Commons, seeing to it that no colonist race moved east of the Rimmers — sparing the rest of Jijo from further infestation. Enforcing sacred law.

— then how he was ordered to break that law, guiding a mission to tame Rety’s savage cousins — a gamble meant to ensure human survival on Jijo, in case the Slope was cleansed of sapient life.

— how the four of them — Danel Ozawa, Dwer, Lena, and Jenin — learned the Gray Hills were no longer a sanctuary when Rety guided a Danik sky chariot to her home tribe.

— how Dwer and the others vowed to gamble their forfeit lives to win a chance for the sooner tribe … four humans against a killer machine … a gamble that succeeded, at great cost.

“And against all odds, I’d say,” Gillian Baskin commented. She turned her head, addressing the third entity sharing the room with them.

“I take it you were there, as well. Tell me, did you bother to help Dwer and the others? Or were you always a useless nuisance?”

After relating his dour tale, Dwer was startled by a sudden guffaw escaping his own gut. Fitting words! Clearly, Gillian Baskin understood noor.

Mudfoot lay grooming himself atop a glass-topped display case. Within lay scores of strange artifacts, backlit and labeled like treasures in the Biblos Museum. Some light spilled to the foot of another exhibit standing erect nearby — a mummy, he guessed. When they were boys, Lark once tried to scare Dwer with spooky book pictures of old-time Earth bodies that had been prepared that way, instead of being properly mulched. This one looked vaguely human, though he knew it was anything but.

At Gillian’s chiding, Mudfoot stopped licking himself to reply with a panting grin. Again, Dwer imagined what the look might mean.

Who, me, lady? Don’t you know I fought the whole battle and saved everybody’s skins, all by myself?

After his experience with telepathic mulc spiders, Dwer did not dismiss the possibility that it was more than imagination. The noor showed no reaction when he tried mind speaking, but that proved nothing.

Gillian had also tried various techniques to make the noor talk — first asking Alvin to smother the creature with umble songs, then keeping Mudfoot away from the young hoon, locking it instead in this dim office for miduras, with only the ancient mummy for company. The Niss Machine had badgered the noor in a high-pitched dialect of GalSeven, frequently using the phrase dear cousin.

“Danel Ozawa tried talkin’ to it, too,” Dwer told Gillian.

“Oh? And did that seem strange to you?”

He nodded. “There are folktales about talking noor … and other critters, too. But I never expected it from a sage.”

She slapped the desktop.

“I think I get it.”

Gillian stood up and began pacing — a simple act that she performed with a hunter’s grace, reminding him of the prowl of a she-ligger.

“We call the species tytlal, and where I come from, they talk a blue streak. They are cousins of the Niss Machine, after a fashion, since the Niss was made by our allies, the Tymbrimi.”

“The Tymb … I think I heard of ’em. Aren’t they the first race Earth contacted, when our ships went out—”

Gillian nodded. “And a lucky break that turned out to be. Oh, there are plenty of honorable races and clans in the Five Galaxies. Don’t let the present crisis make you think they’re all evil, or religious fanatics. It’s just that most of the moderate alliances have conservative mind-sets. They ponder caution first, and act only after long deliberation. Too long to help us, I’m afraid.

“But not the Tymbrimi. They are brave and loyal friends. Also, according to many of the great clans and Institutes, the Tymbrimi are considered quite mad.”

Dwer sat up, both intrigued and confused. “Mad?”

Gillian laughed. “I guess a lot of humans would agree. A legend illustrates the point. It’s said that one day the Great Power of the Universe, in exasperation over some Tymbrimi antic, cried out, ‘These creatures must be the most outrageous beings imaginable!’

“Now, Tymbrimi like nothing better than a challenge. So they took the Great Power’s statement as a dare. When they won official patron status, with license to uplift new species, they traded away two perfectly normal client races for the rights to one presapient line that no one else could do anything with.”

“The noor,” Dwer guessed. Then he corrected himself.

“The tytlal.”

“The very same. Creatures whose chief delight comes from thwarting, surprising, or befuddling others, making the Tymbrimi seem staid by comparison. Which brings us to our quandary. How did they get to Jijo, and why don’t they speak?”

“Our Jijo chimpanzees don’t speak either, though your Niss-thing showed me moving pictures of them talking on Earth.”

“Hmm. But that’s easily explained. Chims were still not very good at it when the Tabernacle left, bringing your ancestors here. It would be easy to suppress the talent at that point, in order to let humans pretend …”

Gillian snapped her fingers. “Of course.” For a moment, her smile reminded Dwer of Sara, when his sister had been working on some abstract problem and abruptly saw the light.

“Within a few years of making contact with Galactic civilization, the leaders of Earth knew we had entered an incredibly dire phase. At best, we might barely hang on while learning the complex rules of an ancient and dangerous culture. At worst—” She shrugged. “It naturally seemed prudent to set up an insurance policy. To plant a seed where humanity might be safe, in case the worst happened.”

Her expression briefly clouded, and Dwer did not need fey sensitivity to understand. Out there, beyond Izmunuti, the worst was happening, and now it seemed the fleeing Streaker had exposed the “seed,” as well.

That’s what Danel was talking about, when he said, “Humans did not come to Jijo to tread the Path of Redemption.” He meant we were a survival stash … like the poor g’Kek.

“When humans brought chimps with them, they naturally downplayed pans intelligence. In case the colony were ever found, chims might miss punishment. Perhaps they could even blend into the forest and survive in Jijo’s wilderness, unnoticed by the judges of the great Institutes.”

Gillian whirled to look at Mudfoot. “And that must be what the Tymbrimi did, as well! They, too, must have snuck down to Jijo. Only, unlike glavers and the other six races, they planted no colony of their own. Instead, they deposited a secret cache … of tytlal.”

“And like we did with chimps, they took away their speech.” Dwer shook his head. “But then …” He pointed to Mudfoot.

Gillian’s eyebrows briefly pursed. “A hidden race within the race? Fully sapient tytlal, hiding among the others? Why not? After all, your own sages kept secrets from the rest of you. If Danel Ozawa tried speaking to Mudfoot, it means someone must have already known about the tytlal, even in those early days, and kept the confidence all this time.”

Absently, she reached out to stroke the noor’s sleek fur. Mudfoot rolled over, presenting his belly.

“What is the key?” she asked the creature. “Some code word? Something like a Tymbrimi empathy glyph? Why did you talk to the Niss once, then clam up?”

And why did you follow me across mountains and deserts? Dwer added, silently, enthralled by the mystery tale, although the complexity combined with his ever-present claustrophobia to foster a growing headache.

“Excuse me,” he said, breaking into Gillian’s ruminations. “But can we go back to the thing I came here about? I know the problems you’re wrestling with are bigger and more important than mine, and I’d help you if I could. But I can’t see any way to change your star-god troubles with my bow and arrows.

“I’m not asking you to risk your ship, and I’m sorry about being a pest.… But if there’s any way you could just let me … well … try to swim ashore, I really do have things I’ve got to do.”

That was when the tytlal rolled back onto his feet, wearing a look of evident surprise on his narrow face. Spines that normally lay hidden in the fur behind his ears now stood in stiff bristles. Moreover, Dwer felt sure he glimpsed something take shape briefly, in the air above Mudfoot. A ghostly wisp, less than vapor, which seemed to speak of its own accord.

So do I it said, evidently responding to Dwer’s statement.

Things to do.

Dwer rubbed his eyes and would gladly have dismissed the brief specter as another imagining … another product of the pummeling his nervous system had gone through.

Only Gillian must have noted the same event. She blinked a few times, pointed at the now-worried expression on Mudfoot’s face … and burst out laughing.

Dwer stared at her, then found himself breaking up, as well. Till that moment, he had not yet decided about the beautiful Earthwoman. But anyone who could set Mudfoot back like that must be all right.

Rety

AS THE GUARD ESCORTED HER TO THE CAPTIVES’ cell, she eyed several air-circulation grates. Schematics showed the system to be equipped with many safety valves, and the ducts were much too small for prisoners to squeeze through.

But not for a little urrish male, armed with borrowed laser cutters.

Rety’s plan was chancy, and she hated sending her “husband” into the maze of air pipes. But yee seemed confident that he would not get lost.

“this maze no worse than stinky passages under the grass plain,”he had sniffed while examining a holographic chart. “it easier than dodging through root tunnels where urrish grubs and males must scurry, when we have no sweet wife pouch to lie in.” yee curled his long neck in a shrug, “don’t you worry, wife! yee take tools to locked-up men. we do this neat!”

That would be the critical phase. Once Kunn and Jass were beyond the brig airlock, all the other obstacles should quickly fall. Rety felt positive.

Two prison cells had red lights glaring above reinforced hatches. The far one, she knew, contained Jophur rings that had been captured in the swamp. The little g’Kek named Huck was helping the Niss Machine interrogate those captives. Rety had racked her brain to come up with a way they might fit her plan, but finally deemed it best to leave them where they were.

This Streaker ship won’t dare chase us, once we get a star boat outside … but the Jophur ship might. Especially if those rings had a way to signal their crew mates.

As the guard approached Kunn’s cell, Rety fondled a folded scrap of paper on which she had laboriously printed instructions, sounding out the words letter by letter, stretching her newborn literacy to the limit. She knew it must look wrong, but no one could afford to be picky these days.

KUN I KAN GIT U OT UV HIR WANT TU GO?

So went the first line of the note she planned slipping him, while pretending to ask questions. If the Danik pilot understood and agreed to the plan, she would depart and set yee loose to worm his small, lithe body through Streaker’s ducting system. Meanwhile Rety had selected good places to set fires — in a ship lounge and a caigo locker — to distract the Streaker crew away from this area while Kunn used smuggled tools to break out. If all went well, they could then dash for the OutLock, steal a star boat, and escape.

There’s just one condition, Kunn. You gotta agree that we get away from here. Away from these Earthers, away from Daniks and Rothens and Jophur monsters and all that crap. Away from Jijo.

Rety felt sure he’d accept. Anyway, if he or Jass give me any trouble, they’ll find they’re dealin’ with a different Rety now.

The guard maneuvered his walker unit carefully in the narrow hallway. The gangly machine had to bend in order for him to bring a key against the door panel. Finally, it slid aside. Rety glimpsed two bunks within, each supporting a blanket-covered human form.

“Hey, Kunn,” she said, crossing the narrow distance and nudging his shoulder. “Wake up! No more delayin’ or foolin’ now. These folks want t’know how you followed em.…”

The blanket slipped off, revealing his shock of glossy hair, but there was no tremor of movement.

They must have him doped, she thought. I hope he’s not too far under. This can’t wait!

Rety shook harder, rolling Kunn toward her—

And jumped back with a gasp of surprise.

The Danik’s face was purple. His eyes bulged from their sockets, and his tongue had swollen to fill his mouth.

The dolphin guard chattered a dismayed squeal in the instinctive animal language of his kind.

Rety struggled with shock. She had grown up with death, but it took all her force of will to quash the horror rising in her gorge.

Somehow, she made herself turn toward the other bunk.

Sara

“Oh, Doctor Faustus was a good man,

He whipped his scholars now and then;

When he whipped them he made them dance,

Out of Scotland into France,

Out of France, and into Spain,

Then he whipped them back again!”

Emerson’s song resonated through the Hall of Spinning Disks, where dust motes sparkled in narrow shafts of rhythmic light.

Sara winced at the violent lyrics, but the starman clearly enjoyed these outbursts, gushing from unknown recesses of his scarred brain. He laughed, as did a crowd of urrish males who followed him, clambering through the scaffolding of Uriel’s fantastic machine, helping him fine-tune each delicate part. The little urs cackled at Emerson’s rough humor, and showed their devotion by diving between whirling glass plates to tighten a strap here, or a pulley there, wherever he gestured with quick hand signs.

Once an engineer, always an engineer, Sara thought. At times, Emerson resembled her own father, who might go silent for days while tending his beloved paper mill, drawing more satisfaction from the poetry of pulping hammers and rollers than the white sheets that made literacy possible on a barbaric world.

A parallel occurred to her.

Paper suited the Six Races, who needed a memory storage system that was invisible from space. But Uriel’s machine has similar traits — an analog computer that no satellite or spaceship can detect, because it uses no electricity and has no digital cognizance. Above all, Galactics would never imagine such an ornate contraption.

And yet it was beautiful in a bizarre way. No wonder she had dreamed shapes and equations when her eyes first glimpsed this marvel through cracks in her delirium. Each time a disk turned against a neighbor’s rim, its own axle rotated at a speed that varied with the radial point of contact. If that radius shifted as an independent variable, the rotation changed in response, describing a nonlinear function. It was a marvelously simple concept … and hellishly hard to put into practice without years of patient trial and error.

Uriel first saw the idea in an old Earth book — a quintessentially wolfling concept, briefly used in an old-time Amero-Eurasian war. Soon after, humans discovered digital computers and abandoned the technique. But here on Mount Guenn, the urrish smith had extended it to levels never seen before. Much of her prodigious wealth and passion went into making the concept work.

And urrish haste. Their lives are so short, Uriel must have feared she’d never finish before she died. In that case, what would her successor do with all this?

An array of pillars, arches, and boo scaffolding held the turning shafts in proper alignment, forming a three-dimensional maze that stretched away from Sara, nearly filling the vast chamber. Long ago, this cavity spilled liquid magma down the mountain’s mighty flanks. Today it throbbed with a different kind of creative force.

Light rays played a clever role in the dance of mathematics. Glancing off selected disks, pulselike reflections fell onto a stretch of black sand that had been raked smooth across the floor. Each flash affected the grains, causing a slight spray or rustle. Hillocks grew wherever glimmers landed most often.

Uriel even found a use for lightning crabs, Sara marveled.

On Jijo, some shorelines were known to froth during electrical storms, as these tiny creatures kicked up sand in frenzied reaction. We thought it might be static charges in the air, making them behave so. But clearly it is light. I must tell Lark about this, someday.

And Sara realized something else.

The crabs may be another Buyur gimmick species. Bioengineered servants, reverted to nature, but keeping their special trait, even after the gene meddlers left.

Whatever their original function, the crabs now served Uriel, whose hooves clattered nervously as the sandscape swirled under a cascade of sparkling light. Individual flashes mattered little. It was the summed array over area and time that added up to solving a complex numerical problem. Near Uriel, the little chimp, Prity, perched on a high stool with her drawing pad. Prity’s tongue stuck out as she sketched, copying the sand display. Sara had never seen her little assistant happier.

Despite all this impressive ingenuity, the actual equations being solved were not profound. Sara had already worked out rough estimates, within a deviance of ten percent, by using a few simple Delancy approximations. But Lester Cambel needed both precision and accuracy under a wide range of boundary conditions, including atmospheric pressure varying with altitude. For that, machine-derived tables offered advantages.

At least now I understand what it’s all for. In her mind, she pictured bustling activity beneath the towering stems of a boo forest, throngs of workers laboring, the flow of acrid liquids, and discussions in the hushed, archaic dialect of science.

They may be crazy — Lester especially. Probably the effort will backfire and make the aliens more vicious than ever Dedinger would look at this — along with all the semaphores, gliders, balloons, and other innovations — and call it the futile thrashing of the damned.

Yet the attempt is glorious. If they pull it off I’ll know I was right about the Six. Our destiny was not foretold by the scrolls, or Dedinger’s orthodoxy … or Lark’s, for that matter.

It was unique.

Anyway, if we’re to be damned, I’d rather it be for trying.

Just one thing still puzzled her. Sara shook her head and murmured aloud.

“Why me?”

Kurt, the Tarek Town exploser, had acted as if this project desperately needed Sara, for her professional expertise. But Uriel’s machine was already nearly functional by the time the party arrived from Xi. Prity and Emerson were helpful at making the analog computer work, and so were books Kurt hand-carried from Biblos. But Sara found herself with little to contribute.

“I only wish I knew why Uriel asked for me.”

Her answer came from the entrance to the computer vault.

“Is that truly the only thing you wish to understand? But that one is easy, Sara. Uriel did not ask for you at all!”

The speaker was a man of middling stature with a shock of white hair and a stained beard that stood out as if he were constantly thunderstruck. Kawsh leaves smoldered in his pipe, a habit chiefly indulged in by male hoons, since the vapors were too strong for most humans. Politely, Sage Purofsky stood in the draft of the doorway, and turned away from Sara when exhaling.

She bowed to the senior scholar, known among his peers as the best mind in the Commons.

“Master, if Uriel doesn’t need my help, why was I urged to come? Kurt made it sound vital.”

“Did he? Vital. Well, I suppose it is, Sara. In a different way.”

Purofsky’s eyes tracked the glitter of rays glancing off spinning disks. His gaze showed appreciation of Uriel’s accomplishment. “Math must pay its way with useful things,” the sage once said. “Even though mere computation is like bashing down a door because you cannot find the key.”

Purofsky had spent his life in search of keys.

“It was I who sent for you, my dear,” the aged savant explained after a pause. “And now that you’re recovered from your ill-advised spill down a mountainside, I think it’s high time that I showed you why.”

It was still daytime outside, but a starscape spread before Sara. Clever lenses projected glass photoslides onto a curved wall and ceiling, recreating the night sky in a wondrous planetarium built by Uriel’s predecessor so that even poor urrish eyesight might explore constellations in detail. Sage Purofsky wore stars like ornaments on his face and gown, while his shadow cast a man-shaped nebula across the wall.

“I should start by explaining what I’ve been up to since you left Biblos … has it really been more than a year, Sara?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Hmm. An eventful year. And yet …”

He worked his jaw for a moment, then shook his head.

“Like you, I had grown discouraged with my former field of study. At last, I decided to extend the classical, precontact geometrodynamic formalisms beyond the state they were in when the Tabernacle left the solar system.”

Sara stared.

“But I thought you wanted to reconcile precontact Earth physics with Galactic knowledge. To prove that Einstein and Lee had made crude but correct approximations … the way Newton preapproximated Einstein.”

That in itself would have been a daunting task — some might say hopeless. According to reports brought by the Tabernacle, spacetime relativity was ill regarded by those alien experts hired by the Terragens Council to teach modern science to Earthlings. Galactic instructors disdained as superstition the homegrown cosmology humans formerly relied on — the basis of crude star probes, crawling along at sublight speeds. Until the Earthship Vesarius fell through an undetected hyperanomaly, ending humanity’s long isolation, Einstein’s heirs had never found a useful way to go faster — although some methods had been recorded in the Galactic Library for over a billion years.

After contact, humans scrimped to buy some thirdhand hyperships, and the old mathemetric models of Hawking, Purcell, and Lee fell by the wayside. In trying to show validity for precontact physics, Purofsky had taken on a strange, perhaps forlorn, task.

“I had some promising results at first, when I restated the Serressimi Exalted Transfer Shunt in terms compatible with old-fashioned tensor calculus.”

“Indeed?” Sara leaned forward in her chair. “But how did you renormalize all the quasi-simultaneous infinities? You’d almost have to assume—”

But the elder sage raised a hand to cut her off, unwilling to be drawn into details.

“Plenty of time for that later, if you’re still interested. For now let’s just say that I soon realized the futility of that approach. Earth must by now have specialists who understand the official Galactic models better than I’ll ever hope to. They have units of the Great Library, and truly modern computer simulators to work with. Suppose I did eventually manage to demonstrate that our Old Physics was a decent, if limited, approximation? It might win something for pride, showing that wolflings had been on the right track, on our own. But nothing new would come of it.”

Purofsky shook his head. “No, I decided it was time to go for broke. I’d plunge ahead with the old spacetime approach, and see if I could solve a problem relevant to Jijo — the Eight Starships Mystery.”

Sara blinked.

“You mean seven, don’t you? The question of why so many sooner races converged on Jijo within a short time, without getting caught? But isn’t that settled?” She pointed at the most brilliant point on the wall. “Izmunuti started flooding nearby space with carbon chaff twenty centuries ago. Enough to seed the hollow hail and change our weather patterns, more than a light-year away. Once the storm wrecked all the watch robots left in orbit by the Migration Institute, sneakships could get in undetected.”

“Hr-rm … yes, but not good enough, Sara. From wall inscriptions found in a few Buyur ruins, we know two transfer points used to serve this system. The other must have collapsed after the Buyur left.”

“Well? That’s why the Izmunuti gambit works! A single shrouded access route, and the great Institutes not scheduled to resurvey the area for another eon. It must be a fairly unique situation.”

“Unique. Hrm, and convenient. So convenient, in fact, that I decided to acquire fresh data.”

Purofsky turned toward the planetarium display, and a distant expression crossed his shadowed face. After a few duras, Sara realized he must be drifting. That kind of absentmindedness might be a prerogative of genius back in the cloistered halls of Biblos, but it was infuriating when he had her keyed up so! She spoke in a sharp tone.

“Master! You were saying you needed data. Is there really something relevant you can see with Uriel’s simple telescope?”

The scholar blinked, then cocked his head and smiled. “You know, Sara … I find it striking that we both spent the last year chasing unconventional notions. You, a sideline into languages and sociology — yes, I followed your work with interest. And me, thinking I could pierce secrets of the past using coarse implements made of reforged Buyur scrap metal and melted sand.

“Did you know, while taking pictures of Izmunuti, I also happened to snap shots of those starships? The ones causing so much fuss, up north? Caught them entering orbit … though my warning didn’t reach the High Sages in time.” Purofsky shrugged. “But to your question. Yes, I managed to learn a few things, using the apparatus here on Mount Guenn.

“Think again about Jijo’s unique conditions, Sara. The collapse of the second transfer point … the carbon flaring of Izmunuti … the inevitable attractiveness of an isolated, shrouded world to sooner refugees.

“Now ponder this — how could beings with minds as agile as the Buyur fail to notice advance symptoms of these changes, about to commence in nearby space?”

“But the Buyur departed half a million years ago! There may not have been any symptoms back then. Or else they were subtle.”

“Perhaps. And that’s where my research comes in. Plus your expertise, I hope. For I strongly suspect that spacetime anomalies would have been noticeable, even back then.”

“Spacetime …” Sara realized his use of the archaic Earth-physics term was intentional. Now it was her turn to spend several silent duras staring at a blur of stars, sorting implications.

“You’re … talking about lensing effects, aren’t you?”

“Sharp lass,” the sage answered approvingly. “And if I can see them—”

“Then the Buyur must have, and foreseen—”

“Like reading an open book! Nor is that all. I asked you here to help confirm another, more ominous suspicion.”

Sara felt a frisson, climbing her spine like some insect with a million ice-cold feet.

“What do you mean?”

Sage Purofsky briefly closed his eyes. When he reopened them, his gaze seemed alight with fascination.

“Sara, I believe they planned it this way, from the very start.”