To kindle the gift of thought and ponder the rich occasions and chances sentience brings. So much I have considered throughout my existence. So many sights I have seen on this world. I have lived on every continent. I have tasted every plant that is eatable, raced with fastfoxes, flown with eagles, dived with whalfish. Each season has been lived through and admired for the change it brings. I have learned to appreciate nature, and through that life in every form.

My world.

I have known it all. I have exchanged thought with all ten thousand of us remaining. We have admired and discussed that which we know, that which we aspire to. I have dwelled within the flights of fancy those more imaginative than I have conjured. I have manifested places that do not exist in reality, calling them out of the folds of darkness which lurk beneath our universe and embellishing them with my whimsy. I have heard dark echoes from the past which filled me with dread. I have bathed in the tears of triumph and delight that rose from adversity. I have filled my head with the merry songs of success.

They come.

Those who guide fall from the sky in a tide of sparkling light that shines through my very skull. My family and I streak downward to hurtle along the narrow jagged streets of Makkathran. Fast, so fast that the walls and windows and roofs merge into a single blur of color. I manifest wings that flow out of my arms to turn and twist against the heady rush of air. My body spins and gyrates with the elegance of those born to the air. Our shouts of admiration are the only sounds to fill the alleys and squares for over a century.

Our welcome.

We fly across the sea outside the city's port. Dipping and weaving around the armada of elegant yachts which delivered us all to this place and time from across our world. Grand white sails curve against the gentle sea breeze just as they did in days of yore. For art's sake, for completement of form. Such ocean-ranging beauties deserve to be more than functional, and so it is. Our family yacht needs only my will to propel it across the water, yet the sails billowing out bring comfort and rightness to the mind, as easing as a child's night toy.

The gathering.

A wind blows strong ahead of those who guide us as they sweep along the air road they have returned to time and time again. Bringing rippling half shadows and vivacious starlit twinkles to dazzle and deceive the eye, they blow the yachts playfully across the skittish water beneath them. Tumbling mischievously in their wake, our wings flapping with slow grace, we crowd together and cheer with minds and voice alike. Both cries lost amid their ethereal glamour. The accord cannot last, and soon we separate. I bid farewell to those four of my family who have fulfilled their lives here on this planet of bounty and promise. I bid my farewell to the splendid thousand who are to pay the ultimate tribute this day, this moment.

Departure.

Cold sparkling light streaks from the towers of Eyrie, great flames of opalescence that reach out with such yearning to stroke the ever-shifting crystal bodies of those who guide. Into the flares fly the essence of those who would ascend to the Heart of the Void. Now as always the power of the towers thrusts them on their way as their bodies bloom to dust. Then they are gone, flashing upward to dwell as colorful shadows amid the fantastical geometry of crystal. Gone to destiny's reward.

I descend.

Gently, gently, dissolving my wings back into nothingness. Growing clothes about my form. I land upon Golden Park to observe with mind and sight as those who guide launch themselves back into the empty chasm of s.p.a.ce which lies between us and the nebulae of this universe. I am content that yet more of us have gone to join our ancestors and all those who used to live within this eternal Void that is gracious enough to provide us a warm comforting home amid the raw chaos burning outside its boundary. I am sad that so many have left. I am sad that so few of us now remain. But not disheartened.

That which remains.

Is small. I will not bear any more children. Nor will my two remaining children. That time is over now for us. Any new mind born into this world would only learn what we have already experienced. We are history now. We are the pinnacle of life.

Ident.i.ty.

The cells of which I am composed yearn to continue. Such desires are inbuilt. They are me, entwined with my essence. I recognize that is right, for to deny it is to renounce myself. Purpose grows from many sources. None should be ignored. I will live for a while more. But not forever.

My journey.

I have only one voyage left now. I walk across Golden Park, admiring and acknowledging the times and events that have played out here. The rich past is become a ghost memory. So much suffering, so much endeavor has gone to bringing me to this place and time. This is my milieu, and I am grateful to those who came before. I wish them to know nothing was in vain. No word they spoke, no deed they performed, all of it went into my making. I am the nexus of their existence, and I am content to be such.

A tribute.

My acknowledgment is simple. My mind elevates the fabric of this universe as I manifest my will. Suddenly Golden Park is filled with people one last time as past intersects present; the air thickens with sound and smell. I am jostled good-naturedly by those who never envisioned me as they go about their business. Over there are Rah and the Lady alighting from their small boat to stare in wonder at the domes of the Orchard Palace for the first time. There goes the exquisitely pretty young maiden Florrel to entrap her first lover. Here I see a dejected Akeem trudge back to his guild, the first steps along his path to self-imposed exile. A furtive Salrana hurries by on her way to that fateful meeting in the Blue Fox tavern. And there he is, the Waterwalker in all his glory, following his never-to-be love, knowing in his heart that he is about to witness a haunting grief.

Love.

I love them all, worshipping them from afar. And so my manifestation ends, and the city is empty again save for me and my kind walking along empty streets, making our way back to our yachts, and from there our homes. We will not return.

Life.

I have succeeded in living. Soon now, when my home is in order, I will rise up to those who guide, knowing all that can be done has been done. We have achieved so much. There is nothing left here now. Nothing.

The future.

What is to come? I cannot know the most beautiful mystery of all. Not yet. It awaits us within the Heart of the Void. A song which grows stronger with each pa.s.sing day.

NINE.

DAWN ARRIVED as the Last Throw Last Throw lifted silently back into the chill air above the Delivery Man. Ahead of him the sun was rising, a sliver of rose-gold incandescence emerging above the mountains on the horizon. He could feel the weak heat on his face as he started to walk down the slope. Thin strands of mist were stirring above the tiny coils of gra.s.s-equivalent, filling the folds in the land to form wraithlike streams. Local birds were already calling out in their guttural warbles, taking flight from the black trees as the light grew stronger. lifted silently back into the chill air above the Delivery Man. Ahead of him the sun was rising, a sliver of rose-gold incandescence emerging above the mountains on the horizon. He could feel the weak heat on his face as he started to walk down the slope. Thin strands of mist were stirring above the tiny coils of gra.s.s-equivalent, filling the folds in the land to form wraithlike streams. Local birds were already calling out in their guttural warbles, taking flight from the black trees as the light grew stronger.

The Delivery Man watched them lumber upward, amused by the sight. It looked like evolution hadn't gotten it quite right on this world; what they lacked in grace, they made up for in bulk.

A sleeping herd of quadruped beasts grunted and shook themselves, greeting the new day in their own laborious way: ponderous creatures the size of a terrestrial rhino and imbued with almost the same temper. Their heavily creased hide was a dapple of rust-brown and gray, and legs as thick as the Delivery Man's torso could plod onward all day with prodigious stamina. These were the animals the Anomine kept to pull their plows and wagons.

The Delivery Man skirted the herd before they noticed that something strange walked among them. It would hardly do to stampede the animals before he'd had a chance to greet the natives.

He could smell smoke upon the breeze as he neared the village. Fires that had blazed throughout the night were finally dying down to embers now that they had performed their task and warned off the wilder animals during the long hours of darkness.

The Last Throw Last Throw's sensors had run a pa.s.sive scan across the village as they came down to land, revealing a broad semicircular sprawl of buildings along the banks of a small river. There was little evidence of stonework aside from a few low circular walls that appeared to be grain silos. The buildings all employed wooden construction. Retinal enrichments gave him a good look at them as he covered the last half mile to the village. The houses stood on thick legs a couple of meters above the dusty ground. Roofs were tightly packed dried reeds overhanging bowed walls made from curving ovals of polished wooden frames that held some kind of hardened translucent membrane. He could just make out shadows moving within the houses he was approaching.

A couple of Anomine tending one of the village's five fire pits stopped moving and twitched their antennae. They were elderly; he could tell that from the dark lavender color of their limbs and the way their lower legs curved back, reducing their height. Youngsters were a nearly uniform copper color, whereas the adults in their prime had a jade hue. These ones were also larger around the trunk section. Weight gain clearly didn't affect only humans as they got older.

He walked into the village as his u-shadow ran one last check through the translator unit hanging around his neck on a gold chain. It was a palm-size rectangle, capable of producing the higher-frequency sounds employed in the Anomine language. Navy cultural anthropologists had resequenced their vocal chords so they could speak with the Anomine directly, but it hadn't been an unqualified success. The effort had been appreciated, though; the Anomine really didn't like machines more advanced than a wheel.

The Delivery Man studied the etiquette profile file displayed by his exovision. "I greet you this fine morning," he said, which immediately came out as a series of squeaks and whistles similar to dolphin chatter. "I have traveled from another world to visit you. I would ask you to share stories of your ancestors." He bowed slightly, which was probably a gesture wasted on the aliens.

They were taller than he by nearly a meter, especially when they stood up straight, which they did to walk. Their tapering midsections were nearly always bent forward, and the upper knee joints of the triple-segment legs folded the limbs back to balance.

The one whose limbs were shading from purple toward black replied. "I greet you this morning, star traveler. I am Tyzak. I am an old-father to the village. I can spare some time to exchange stories with you."

"I thank you for showing me such a kindness," the Delivery Man said. If there was excitement or curiosity in Tyzak's posture, he couldn't gauge it. Unlike the weight issue, there was no human-parallel body language, no jittering about or understandable agitation. It would have been hard, he admitted to himself. Their skin was almost like scales, making subtle muscle motion impossible. As for the cla.s.sic darting eyes, their twin antennae were a uniform slime-gray of photosensitive receptor cells waving up from the small k.n.o.bbly head that was mostly mouth, giving them a visual interpretation of their world wholly different from that of a human. The brain was a third of the way down inside the torso, between the small midarms and larger main upper arms.

"Your true voice is silent," Tyzak said.

"Yes. I cannot make the correct sounds to speak to you directly. I apologize for the machine which translates."

"No apology is required."

"I was told you do not approve of machines."

The two Anomine touched the small claws of their midarms. "Someone has been less than truthful with you," Tyzak said. "I am grateful you have come to our village that we might speak the truth with you."

"It was my own kind who informed me of your aversion to machinery. We visited a long time ago."

"Then your kind's memory has faded over time. We do not dislike machines; we simply choose not to use them."

"May I ask why?"

Tyzak's middle and upper knees bent, lowering him into a squatting position. The other Anomine walked away. "We have a life path laid out by this world which formed us," Tyzak said. "We know what happened to us when we chose a life path centered around machines and technology. Our ancestors achieved greatness, as great as you, even."

"Your ancestors reached farther than we have in so many ways," the Delivery Man said. "Our debt to them is enormous. They safeguarded so many stars from an aggressive race, for which we are forever grateful."

"You speak of the oneness which lives around two stars. It sought to devour all other life."

"You know of them?"

"Our life path is separate from our great ancestors, for which we feel sorrow, but we rejoice in their achievements. They went on to become something other, something magnificent."

"Yet you didn't follow them. Why was that?"

"This planet created us. It should choose the nature of our final days."

"Sounds like another G.o.dd.a.m.n religion to me," Gore said over the secure link.

"More like our factions," the Delivery Man countered. "Their version of the Accelerators went off and elevated, while the Natural Darwinists wanted to see what nature intended for them."

More Anomine were coming down from their houses, jumping easily onto the ground from thin doorways several meters above the ground. Once they were on the ground, they moved surprisingly swiftly. Long legs carried them forward in a fast loping gait, with each stride almost a bounce. As they moved, they bobbed forward at a precarious angle.

Their balance was much better than a human's, the Delivery Man decided, even though the motion sparked an inappropriate comparison to a pigeon walk.

A group of younger ones bounded over. He was soon surrounded by Anomine children who simply couldn't keep still. They bopped up and down as they chattered loudly among themselves, discussing him, the strange creature with its odd body and clothes and weak-looking pincers and fur on top. The noise level was almost painful to his ears.

He heard Tyzak explaining what he was.

"Where do you come from?" one of the children asked. It was taller than its fellows, getting on toward the Delivery Man's height, and its apricot skin was darkening to a light shade of green.

"A planet called Earth, which is light-years from here."

"Why are you here?"

"I search out wisdom. Your ancestors knew so much."

The children's high-pitched calls increased. The translator caught it as a round of self-reinforcing: "Yes. Yes, they did."

"I eat now," Tyzak said. "Will you join me?"

"That would please me," the Delivery Man a.s.sured him.

Tyzak stood swiftly, scattering several of the children, who bounded about in circles. He started walking toward one of the nearby houses, moving fast. His lower curving legs seemed almost to roll off the ground. The Delivery Man jogged alongside, keeping pace. "I should tell you, I may not be physically able to eat most of your food."

"I understand. It is unlikely your biochemistry is compatible with our plants."

"You understand the concept of biochemistry?"

"We are not ignorant, star traveler. We simply do not apply our knowledge as you do."

"I understand."

Tyzak reached his house and jumped up to a small platform outside the door. The Delivery Man took a fast look at the thick posts the house stood on and swarmed up the one below the platform.

"You are different," Tyzak announced, and went inside.

The membrane windows allowed a lot of light to filter through. Now that he was inside, the Delivery Man could see oil-rainbow patterns on the taut surface, which he thought must be some kind of skin or bark that had been cured. Inside, Tyzak's house was divided into three rooms. There wasn't much furniture in the largest one where they entered. Some plain chests were lined up along an inner wall. There were three curious cradle contraptions that the Delivery Man guessed were chairs and five benches arranged in a central pentagon, all of which were covered by fat earthenware pots.

His first impression was that half of them were boiling their contents. Bubbles fizzed away in their open tops. And the air was so pungent, it made his eyes water. He recognized the scent of rotting or fermenting fruit, but so much stronger than he'd ever smelled before.

After a moment he realized there was no heater or fire in the room even though the air was a lot warmer than outside. The pots really were fermenting-vigorously. When he took a peek in one, the sticky ma.s.s it held reminded him of jam, but before the fruit was properly pulped.

Tyzak pulled one of the pots toward him and bent over it, opening his clam mouth wide enough to cover the top. The Delivery Man had a brief glimpse of hundreds of little tooth mandibles wiggling before the Anomine closed his mouth and sucked the contents down in a few quick gulps.

"Would you like to sample some of my >no direct translation: cold-cook conserve/soup

"No, thank you. So you do remember members of my species visiting this world before?"

"We hold the stories dear." Tyzak picked up another pot and closed his mouth around it.

"No one else seems interested in me except for the younger villagers."

"I will tell the story of you at our gathering. The story will spread from village to village as we cogather. Within twenty years the world will know your story. From that moment on you will be told and retold to the new generations. You will never be lost to us, star traveler."

"That is gratifying to know. You must know a lot of stories, Tyzak."

"I do. I am old enough to have heard many. So many that they now begin to fade from me. This is why I tell them again and again, so they are not lost."

"Stupid," Gore observed. "They're going to lose a lot of information like that. We know they used to have a culture of writing; you can't develop technology without basic symbology, especially math. Why dump that? Their history is going to get badly distorted this way; that's before it dies out altogether."

"Don't worry," the Delivery Man told him. "What we need is too big to be lost forever; they've certainly still got that."

"Yeah, sure; the suspense is killing me."

"I would hear stories of your ancestors," the Delivery Man said to Tyzak. "I would like to know how it was that they left this world, this universe."

"All who visit us upon this world wish this story above everything else. I have many other stories to tell. There is one of Gazuk, whose bravery saved five youngsters from drowning when a bridge fell. I listened to Razul tell her own story of holding a flock of >no direct translation: wolf-equivalent< at="" bay="" while="" her="" sisters="" birthed.="" razul="" was="" old="" when="" i="" attended="" that="" cogathering,="" but="" his="" words="" remain="" true.="" there="" are="" stories="" of="" when="" fozif="" flew="" from="" this="" world="" atop="" a="" machine="" of="" flame="" to="" walk="" upon="" ithal,="" our="" neighboring="" planet,="" the="" first="" of="" our="" kind="" ever="" to="" do="" such="" a="" thing.="" that="" is="" our="" oldest="" story;="" from="" that="" grows="" all="" stories="" of="" our="" kind="">

"Which do you want to tell me?"

"Every story of our beautiful world. That is what we live for. So that everything may be known to all of us."

"But isn't that contrary to what you are? Knowledge lies in the other direction, the technology and science you have turned from."

"That is the story of machines. That story has been told. It is finished. We tell the stories of ourselves now."

"I think I understand. It is not what was achieved by your ancestors but the individuals who achieved it."

"You grow close to our story, to living with us. To hear the story of what we are today, you must hear all our stories."