And yet...if Chiriga never arrives...I do not know what I will do then.

The Hlutr curtain is not an impenetrable barrier. It is only a device of persuasion, and a sufficiently strong mind can pa.s.s through it. This Winter, I find out how strong Chiriga Ho's mind is. For the sound of her Inner Voice is carried on the wind, and even you, my brothers and sisters, cannot deny the strength of that song.

Elders, hear me. Thus in Hlutr language Chiriga demands the attention of the Elders. Her Inner Voice is perfectly modulated, her emotions firmly under control. I ask that this curtain be lifted.

Only now, brethren, must you confront Chiriga. Now you have no other choice, for suddenly the attention of all the Hlutr is upon you.

By what right, asks one of you, Is a Human admitted to the council of the Hlutr?

Any Hlut can sing in council when he demonstrates mastery of the Inner Voice. Elders, the fact that you hear me, gives me the right.

Through the softening curtain, undercurrents of the song reach me. Travesty, say some. Admit her, say others. Most wait, listening.

Chiriga continues, taking as granted her right to sing. The Artist of Inse is my friend and partner. Your curtain prevents me from singing with him. I challenge your wisdom.

From far away, the quiet Voice of an Elder sings, Challenge offered. Brethren of Inse, defend your curtain.

The Artist disrupts the consensus of Hlutr. It is the will of the song that Mankind shall be allowed to perish quietly and happily. The Artist demands that we reverse our consensus. Against the will of the Hlutr, he has taught the Inner Voice to this Human, has taken her far above her station.

Chiriga's ship has landed on the frozen ruins of the Human settlement. In a bulky thermal suit, she stumbles out onto the surface. Let him speak for himself. I hear Chiriga's plea, but still she cannot hear me. Still my song is bound about me by my brothers and sisters.

Child, the Artist has spoken in his own behalf. The Elder sounds almost compa.s.sionate. Now it is your turn. He must have taught you so that you could plead for your own folk- now we will entertain your music.

No, this is not how I meant it to happen. Chiriga and I, we should be singing together. Instead, she is alone while Hlutr from all over the Scattered Worlds turn their attention upon her. Seventy times seventy thousand and more, they listen. What will the Human say?

She sings clearly. You ignore us, and in doing so, you curtain us as surely as you have curtained my Artist. You say that we are a dying race- yet how can we fully live, when the Hlutr have cut us off from the world of nature?

They do not understand, Chiriga. Sing it in terms that they can comprehend.

I have learned the Hlutr song...and now I know that each living creature in the Scattered Worlds has a voice in that song. Aware or not, each sings. Yet with the Hlutr turning away from us, Humans cannot feel that song and cannot be fully a part of the Scattered Worlds.

There is a pause, then one of Inse raises his Voice. Your people turned away from the Universal Song long before we closed our minds to them. The Hlutr will never abandon any race that truly desires to hear the eternal melody of life.

Then do not turn away from us.

Prove that you are worthy.

The wind whistles through my frozen branches, then the night is silent. Pale Eaun, our sister world, shines alone in a star-spattered sky, and carbon dioxide sleet falls from the air. Go inside, Chiriga. This is no place for one of your folk.

Here is my proof, Chiriga says. She raises arms and Voice, and the music she sings is a strange, Human music- yet a familiar one. It is a ghost of the music that the Traveler heard from his Human friends, it recalls fragments of Alex Saburo's song of determination against the Death. And it is wholly new, it is something that only Chiriga Ho could sing.

It is a song of Inse.

Around me, on hillside and mountaintop, on valley floor and even the frigid concrete and metal of the tumbled Human settlement, the Ice Dancers blossom.

We Hlutr- even my brothers and sisters who doubt Chiriga's ability- stand in amazement. For the Ice Dancers, whose mysterious dance carries a meaning always hidden from us...the Ice Dancers are singing in response to Chiriga's melody.

They are wise and beautiful, these poor creatures who live their whole lives in a stately ballet that lasts only until dawn. In the heat of morning they will dissolve, their molecules will sublime back into the air, perhaps to re-form into their descendants on some distant wintry tomorrow night. They create an entire culture between midnight and sunrise, then pa.s.s on what they can in the echo of their song and the inborn movements of their dance.

As we watch and listen, the Ice Dancers grow and change. Children at first, they realize their doom and give in to regret; then with an upward movement of the dance they deny the triumph of time, and cast their voices out into infinity. By the time Eaun touches the Western horizon, these Ice Dancers have discovered other worlds, have conversed with beings like them on a million planets, have plumbed the mysteries of time and s.p.a.ce that they will never visit.

Chiriga shivers, yet she keeps up her music...the music that enables us all to understand the Ice Dance. And now it is near dawn, the valley is heating and the Ice Dancers begin their futile retreat up the slopes. It is too late, for warm air currents bring death from Inse's dayside; yet still they struggle.

Their song is one of indomitable will. Stronger than Hlutr Elders, they face the extinction of their people with a courage and strength that I am sure we could never match. The structure of the Universe itself conspires against them, and still they fight to live.

In the last seconds, the peaks are alight with deadly sunshine and only a few Ice Dancers survive in still-frigid eddies. Only now do they give over to despair, and their cry is for succor in the face of an awful destiny. Tomorrow night the story will be played out again, and the night after, as it has been played every cold Winter since Inse cooled; each generation starts where its predecessors started, and each ends the same way- with the inevitable genocide of sunrise.

Could Hlutr weep, we would cry for this catastrophe, for the loss of this race that could teach us so much.

No.

The last Ice Dancers regard Chiriga, who bows her head. I will remember your melody. I will sing it to those who come tomorrow night. They will start knowing what you know now. All curtains are down now, and I can feel the cold tracks of frozen tears on her face. This tragedy will end. I promise you.

Sun creeps above the horizon, and the last Ice Dancers swirl away into nothingness. And the emotions they project are grat.i.tude, hope and...at long last...peace.

Chiriga sighs, and all the Hlutr are still. Finally, one of the Elders says gently, Hlutr of Inse, have you any statement to make?

Waves of shame fill the atmosphere; the planet will smell of it for years. Nothing, Elders.

The answer is quick and decisive as it must be. Chiriga Ho, you are the first Human ever to gain the right to sing with the Hlutr. This right is yours by your nature and your ability, and none may take it from you.

And my people?

The consensus of the Hlutr is a slippery thing, but for now it is clear enough for even Chiriga to read: any race that can produce a singer like her, is deserving of Hlutr friendship.

The sun is higher in the sky, and Chiriga is beside me in her thermal suit. I have much work to do, repairing the damage that the cold night has wrought, but I will always have time for her. Our work is not over, Little One. The Hlutr will hear your people and will support them, but Humans must want to live and grow. Times are still dark for your folk.

No, Artist. Like the Ice Dancers, we have hope now. She bares her hand to the frigid air, lays it on my ice-coated trunk. Like them, we have friends.

Some of us, Little One, never left you.

She smiles, and her happiness is a gift. Let's sing together.

And we do.

INTERLUDE 4.

Kev was so excited that he couldn't sleep.

Tomorrow he was going to Credix. Not for vacation, not for a joyride: this time he was going permanently, or at least for the next few years.

All six families in the valley- nearly half the Human population of Amny- had come to his going-away party. It was the biggest bash since Dar left four years ago. Kev saw cousins, nieces and nephews whom he hadn't seen since he was little. For the first time, he joined the younger men in one of their drinking contests...until Mama Tiponya caught him at it.

"I don't care if you are going off to University, as long as you're under this roof you're my little boy and I don't want to see you getting drunk with the rest of those b.u.ms."

"Mama, I didn't mean to-"

"I know you're happy, Kev, and G.o.ds know there'll be enough drinking and carousing when you're on Credix. It's just...you make a woman feel old. Don't be in too much of a hurry to grow up."

"Besides," Father Alekos interjected with a wink, "You don't want to be too hung-over tomorrow."

Mama Tiponya hugged him. "I know I'm being silly. Just humor me, just tonight? I hate seeing my baby grow up."

"Aww, it's not like I'm going to the ends of the Galaxy. I'll only be an hour away." Even as he said it, Kev knew that he spoke only part of the truth. University would change him, and inevitably on his next visit to Amny he would find his home far different from his memories.

Then a cousin called to him and he raced off, hardly noticing the trace of hastily-concealed tears in Mama Tiponya's eyes.

The evening pa.s.sed too quickly; by twenty-eight o'clock everyone had left and Kev's mothers and fathers went to sleep. But Kev couldn't sleep, and he stayed up in his room, looking at the stars and dreaming.

Perhaps it was the wine, perhaps he was more sensitive because he was leaving Amny tomorrow, perhaps it was simply a clear, calm night. In any case, he heard the old music calling, and saw the great tree silhouetted against the rising larger moon.

Music called, and Kev had no choice but to listen. He sat in his open window, head propped against a pillow, and closed his eyes.

"Tell me a story," he whispered.

PART FIVE: Cadet.

I am not old; I broke soil scarcely a few seventies of seasons before the Humans came here to Escen.

For all that I am young, I have been busy during my life, and I have lived far faster than Hlutr ordinarily do.

The other Hlutr call me Cadet, for I am one of a new breed decreed by the Elders- it is my duty and my pleasure to watch the Humans, to learn their ways. So well have I done my job, that just a few seasons ago I was granted the rank of Elder myself. I am still surprised ... and pleased...to have been selected for this great honor, and it is with trepidation still that I enter the councils of the Elders as they sing across s.p.a.ce on the waves of the Inner Voice.

My major work is with the Human children, who are the future of the race. I began singing with these littlest of Little Ones even before their parents suspected that we Hlutr were sapient, more than five and a half of their millennia ago. I did not abandon them, as so many of my brothers and sisters did, during the deep Winter of the the Human Race; now that the fortunes of Mankind are again on the rise, I still pleasure in their company. Oh, I have my duties- it is not easy to co-ordinate Hlutr relations with Humans, not only on Escen but throughout the entire fifty-world Hegemony. However, I never allow those duties to prevent me from spending time with the Human children.

I love them all: the cheerful ones and the sad ones, the fussbudgets and the gigglers, the brain-damaged ones who only stare at the patterns of light in my trunk and leaves, and the bright ones who sing with me in the soundless melodies of the Inner Voice.

There is something that happens to Humans as they grow older, something that I do not completely understand. It is a look in their eyes, and it is a coldness in their hearts; and when it comes upon them, they lose the essence of their childhood.

For some this thing comes soon, in the winter of their tenth year when they first discover betrayal or the death of friendship. For some it comes slowly, over many seasons, and it is mainly concerned with the telling of time, and the ticking of clocks, and the meeting of deadlines. For many, the change is a deepening frost that comes when they begin to bury their own feelings under the cloak of their neighbors' opinions.

For some lucky ones the change never comes. Or it comes but does not take hold completely, so later their hearts will thaw and they will regain what they were in childhood. These few are the most fortunate of Humans, and they are the ones I love nearly as much as I love the children.

Such a one is Sten Koleno, who serves now in the exalted post of Foreign Secretary for the Escen Hegemony. Those are strange words, Human words of diplomacy and government, and Sten Koleno sometimes laughs with me at the odd sound of them. We Hlutr have a simpler term for Sten's work of maintaining tranquility between the various Human and Nonhuman societies that surround Escen: we would call him Harmonizer, for he keeps his small part of the Universal Song free of discord.

Because part of my job is similar- I try to maintain harmony with the Humans, while doing what little I can to encourage them on the path to true maturity- I often have occasion to talk with Sten Koleno. Whenever he can escape from the Palace and his official duties, he comes to my grove with a bottle of wine and his guitar, and we sing. Always it is pleasure, to talk with him.

And because I love the children of Mankind, I often have occasion to sing with Sten's little daughter, Fenelia.

Fenelia Koleno was seven Terran years old this Summer. This is a perfect age for Human children; they are on the verge of the great freedoms that will come with adulthood, yet most of them are still allowed to act immature when they must. I do not understand many of the things Fenelia tells me- the day-to-day events of study, games, holovideos and playmates are foreign to the Hlutr mind. However, I rejoice in Fenelia's energy, in her wonderment as she learns more of the marvelous world around her. Of all the Human children I have tended these many centuries, she is my favorite. In her, I see the direction that I would like all my Little Ones to follow.

Perhaps it is waiting for Fenelia, that nameless something that destroys Human innocence and brings an end to childhood. If so, I shall sing a mournful tune to the stars in the Inner Voice, for the loss of such great promise.

Today, we play a game that we have played before: I visualize an object in the woods, and Fenelia finds it for me. It may be a rock, or a leaf, or even a small lizard or some manner of bug. This is a teaching game that we Hlutr play with the young of a billion different species, always with much success. For while they are distracted by the search, and their minds open to our mental pictures, we set the seeds that may grow into full-scale melodies in the Inner Voice.

This day, however, Fenelia's concentration is not on the game. When she brings a wiggling, furred insect instead of the rock I asked for, I turn my attention more carefully toward the tenor of her thoughts.

What troubles you, Little One? I ask in silent song. I know that Fenelia hears my meaning as a gentle voice in the breeze.

"Daddy doesn't love me," she says, putting the caterpillar on my trunk and turning away.

Nonsense. I know this is not true: Sten and his mate cherish Fenelia deeply. What makes you say that?

"He and Mommy were mad at me yesterday. And this morning he didn't say h.e.l.lo, and when I tried to kiss him h-he got up and left."

The pictures in her mind were distorted by anger and fear; I know that Sten Koleno would never run from his daughter the way Fenelia remembers. Human children often do not see things the way they actually occur. Many times they are swayed by their feelings, and some times they see a truth that is hidden from even the Inner Voice.

But not today.

Where is your Daddy now?

"Somewhere else. He went to the s.p.a.ceport."

I am tall enough to see the s.p.a.ceport from my woods behind the Palace, my senses acute enough to detect Sten Koleno's mind anywhere in the Capital. He is not here...probably not even on Escen. His job often takes him travelling.

Since I have the status of amba.s.sador, the Humans have given me a few amenities not often granted to plants. A clever little Human computer system reads the changing colors of trunk and leaves that we Hlutr call the First Language, and replies to me in a pidgin form of the Second Language. Now I tell it to find Fenelia's mother and ask her to talk to me.

Sten's mate, Emele, is in the Palace; she answers quickly and now that I know where to look I can see her through the broad windows of Sten's office. "Koleno here."

I tell her that Fenelia is with me, and that the girl is feeling neglected and needs her mother. Before I am half done, however, Emele interrupts.

"It's wonderful that you're taking care of her, it helps Sten and me so much to know that Fenelia's in good...er...hands. If she's bothering you, I'll send a robot out to bring her back."

"No. It is my honor and my pleasure to care for Fenelia. But the child is distressed and needs one of her parents."

"But she loves being with you so much- it's all she talks about at dinner- and honestly, I can't take the time right now. It's this Fekrein thing, their economic minister is threatening embargo, and if that happens it could be war with Geled."

I consider the matter. Sten and Emele's work is vital- I who have seen Human wars appreciate fully the importance of preventing them. And Fenelia's distress, while real, is transitory. By tomorrow she will have forgotten it. "Continue with your work, Madame Koleno. I will send Fenelia home at dusk."

"Thank you."

I turn back to Fenelia. Your Daddy is on another planet and your Mommy is very busy. I am lonely, Little One; would you stay to play with me?

"Of course, silly," she answers. But her thoughts are elsewhere.

When the sun sets, I send Fenelia back to the Palace. I welcome the quiet of the night, the time of contemplation that comes when the creatures of the wood are asleep and Human minds become more tranquil.

With brilliant stars mounting the midsummer sky, I sing with my brothers and sisters scattered around Escen. We are not many on this globe, fewer than seventy seventies of us in all the forests of Escen. Before the Humans came this was a happy, quiet world without many large animals; a world that had known life for years numbering seventy-times-itself-five-times. Since Mankind arrived, our Elders have striven to maintain all that is best about our world: few though we are, we have kept Escen intact and kept her children happy and in balance.

There are always many decisions to be made and many things to discuss- and the presence of a s.p.a.cefaring race like our dear friends the Humans only complicates matters. They have recently introduced a new strain of rice from Thunda Pol, a strain that disrupts the biochemistry of fen and paddy; we must decide how best to encourage slow change in the ecology of the northern plains. Our world continues its millennial slide into a cooler climate, and we discuss whether to ask the Humans to take control, or to allow another ice age to begin.

Deep in this conversation, the Human computer calls for my attention. "Emele Koleno here. Is Fenelia with you?"