A grin. "Why do I have the feeling that more rests on this decision than I'm aware? Wu Plenr made it sound like a matter of cosmic importance, LeMoine keeps telling me I'll wind up the subject of a thousand ballads, even the cabin boy seems to think that the Twilight Dancers will destroy the Human race if we don't leave them alone."

"If others want to make a moon out of a dust speck, my friend, how can you stop them? They will whether you wish it or not."

"So I should forget about whatever else hangs in the balance, and simply decide?"

"You must do as you think best, Captain."

"I suppose so." He touches my sister's trunk, and both of us are instantly aware of the conflict that rages within Mal Arin.

(If he solves this dilemma, he will be much strengthened by the experience.) He is right. So much to rest on the actions of one man: the fate of his race. Sister, can we find no better way to make our own choice?

(No, Brother. This is the best way.) Quietly, Mal Arin steps into the dropshaft, and is gone.

Once every ten Nephestalan years, the Galactic Riders hold a festival to honor their founder, Tenedden. Virgo Mariner's three Riders had made arrangements with Mal Arin before leaving the Scattered Worlds, and now the appointed day has come.

There is no work today. For the first time since our arrival at Metaneira, the whole crew is aboard the ship. The mid-decks resound with the music of the Galactic Riders and their invited performers. For Mondappen this festival is a triumph- for his folk, like Humans, count by tens, and this is his hundredth festival. He sings the Tale of Tenedden in the original Iaranori language, and when he finishes no eye is dry.

Mal Arin rises and stands before the crew. "My friends, I ask for your attention please." He smiles for an instant. "I hope you'll forgive me for dropping into Human speech: the announcement I'm about to make is being recorded for the folks at home and I don't want any translation problems."

In Mal Arin's mind there is no hesitation, no uncertainty. His inner song is clear and strong.

"This happy day, when we remember one of the greatest heroes of the Scattered Worlds, is a appropriate time for me to give the decision you've all been waiting for. Geneticist Osteva Rul has proposed that we set up a permanent research station on Metaneira, and that Virgo Mariner return to our home Galaxy so that we may tell what we've learned. Some of you support the plan, others oppose it."

He pauses for a breath, and there is no other sound. Even the song of the Twilight Dancers, which pervades s.p.a.ce around Metaneira, seems strangely hushed. The Dancers are listening.

"I won't keep you in suspense. After much discussion and contemplation, I have decided that Virgo Mariner is going home. We will bear news of the Twilight Dancers but I will ask each of you for your oath not to reveal the nature of their genetic abilities. After five billion years, these folk have earned their rest. Beside them, we are tiny, ephemeral creatures- let us go, and not disturb them further. Navigation will begin calculating flight plans; departure will be no later than local noon tomorrow."

Mal Arin settles back onto his couch, and for a timeless instant there is silence.

(Well, Brother? He made the right decision. In the face of all pressures and all potential gain for his own people, he made a judgement worthy of a Hlut. Do you still say that this race is incapable of guiding its own development?) "Wait!" Osteva Rul jumps to her feet, her eyes ablaze and her mental song casting angry discord toward the stars. "That's not all there is to it. You can't simply forbid us to talk, against our rights. On a matter this important, the High Academy should make the final decision, if not the Empress Herself."

Mal Arin looks toward her, and in his mind there is great weariness...and a touch of regret. "Appeal to them, Osteva. But I'll be there first; I and dozens from the crew. When the facts are known, I'm confident that the High Academy and the Empress will see things the same way I do."

"You..." She clenches her fists, and her mental song dissolves into a cacophony of discordant emotions. "You've ruined my career. Whichever way things fall, you've destroyed me."

"Enough!" His tone is sharp, carrying firmness and the unmistakeable tenor of command. "With the discoveries we've made here, everyone is ent.i.tled to the Imperial Science Medal as well as a share of the glory. You can write your own tickets at any academy, university or inst.i.tute in the Empire. Osteva, if your career is to be ruined, then it will be your own doing. Not mine."

Through the discord one emotion rises above all: the ugly, searing notes of hatred. Without a word, Osteva Rul turns and walks away.

Mal Arin sighs. "Well, that's done. We have many things to do before tomorrow. Mondappen, will you give us one last song?"

Mondappen sings, but I cannot keep my mind on the tale.

Sister, you see only Mal Arin; what of Osteva Rul and Humans like her? We have the ability to eliminate that branch from the Human tree- why should we restrain ourselves?

(She is planet-born, Brother. Leave Humanity alone, and soon the excesses of her kind will be bred out of the Human strain. But could Mal Arin be what he is, without Osteva Rul?

Remember, she alone of all discovered the Twilight Dancers' genetic secret. If Human evolution is allowed to proceed at its own pace, her best qualities may be preserved.) Our brothers and sisters will heed us? They will decide as we have?

(They will listen, Brother. And we will convince them.) Then I am agreed. We will let Humans find their own way to maturity, though it may take much longer.

I think on the Twilight Dancers, who face eternity with patience and joy. We Hlutr can learn from these, our distant forbears.

We will wait....

We pause seventy kilopa.r.s.ecs outside the Ring galaxy, allowing our navigators to make their final calculations and our pilots to tune the marvelous music of our engines. Virgo Mariner is going home.

Mal Arin stands before me, his eyes on a projection of the Ring as it appears now, a gloriously-bright loop of mist and smoke across a black sky strewn with tiny bits of light, the far-off galaxies of the Virgo Cl.u.s.ter. He is silent, but his inner song reveals many things: loneliness and regret, yes, but also the firm joy of rightness. And an echo, however faint, of the song of the Twilight Dancers.

In the last day I have come to know Mal Arin far better than ever before. Now his inner song is part of me, and mine of him. We have much in common, he and I, much that I never saw before.

"The Twilight Dancers revealed themselves to us, you know," he says suddenly.

"What do you mean?"

"With their abilities, they could have stayed hidden. But they let us find them. They let Osteva discover their genetic abilities. They set up this whole situation."

"Typical animal paranoia." But he is right. The Twilight Dancers knew we were coming, knew more about us than we know ourselves. "Why would they do such a thing?"

"I don't know. But then, I don't know everything about what's gone on. I just have a feeling that much greater decisions were made here than mine."

"I think you may be right, Mal Arin."

He is silent for a time, and both of us regard the Ring. Metaneira's sun is invisible at this distance, but its location is marked on my soul.

"We're both leaving a lot behind there," he says after a moment.

"We are, Mal Arin. My condolences on your loss."

He shrugs. "She wanted to stay. Song of the Eventide Wind promised he would take care of her. She ought to be happy- she'll never run out of things to learn." He shakes his head. "She would never be satisfied back in the Empire. There's nothing for her to go back to. On Metaneira she can achieve a kind of greatness she never thought possible."

The Ring trembles, just a little, as our pilots make some last-minute adjustments in the engines. Mal Arin chuckles. "Besides, maybe the Twilight Dancers can teach her to forget and forgive." Then, more serious, he says, "But you've lost a lot too."

If I could shrug, I would. "As you say, she wanted to stay."

And yet...stars above, will I ever become accustomed to the strange feeling in my trunk, where skillful Dancer surgeons cut her away? Will I ever become accustomed to the silence in my mind, where once she used to speak?

"One of us must return to the Scattered Worlds, friend Mal Arin. And she...she needs to stay here more than I."

The Dancers sing, and carried upon their song is another Voice, one I know all too well. Fare well, Brother. I will listen for your song.

And I for yours, Sister.

Thank you....

"Ready for tachyon phase, Captain."

Mal Arin gives one last glance to the Ring. "Execute," he says.

The engines surge, their unnatural music filling s.p.a.ce then the Ring falls behind us, and Virgo Mariner is on its way home. I can still hear my sister's song, but already...too soon...her meaning grows indistinct.

There is motion on the mid-decks, and Tila Zakodny steps from the dropshaft and walks to Mal Arin's side.

"I waited until we were launched. I didn't want to distract you."

"What can I do for you, Doctor Zakodny?"

"Captain, I just wanted to say that I'm grateful for your decision. Even though it cost you a lot, it was the right thing to do. I...thank you."

She turns to go, but he stops her with a single touch. "Doct Tila, I couldn't have decided the way I did without you. I kept asking myself what you would do in my place. And in the end, there was no choice to be made."

"You flatter me."

"It's true. Every word." He reaches out, hesitant, and she takes his hand in hers. "Do you...that is, do you think we might spend a little more time together during the trip back?"

She smiles. "When we return to the Empire, you're going to be the most famous scientist in Akademii de Savoire's history. Do you think I'd give up a chance to monopolize your attention for the next hundred days? That is, if you want to be seen with an ancient wreck like me."

"Eighty-eight isn't old. It's I who am too young for you. I'll bet you have children older than me."

"As a matter of fact, no. I've never had any. I guess...I guess I've just always been too busy. And I've never found anyone that I- "

Suddenly, clumsily, they kiss. It comes as a surprise to both of them, then they smile and do it again.

Hand in hand, radiating joy, they walk into the dropshaft and are gone.

The Ring falls away behind, and I turn my thoughts and my song to the future.

INTERLUDE 8.

At four tendays, Kimee was old enough. Kev carried the little body carefully, as her nanny followed nervously behind, its cradle perched to catch her should she fall.

"Leave me alone, you stupid machine," Kev said, "I know how to carry a baby." The nanny fell back a meter or so, but still it followed.

It was very warm; Kimee cried and kicked until Kev took her blanket from her. Once they were outside she stopped crying and her little blue eyes darted this way and that as if they could actually track on the surroundings.

When they reached Kev's glade, the nanny insistently took Kimee from him and started changing her diaper. Kev smiled. "This is where your mommies and daddies were married, little girl," he said. "I don't expect that means much to you right now. Wait until you're a little older."

Kimee gurgled and waved her tiny hands.

The nurse finished quickly; Kev lifted Kimee to his shoulder and strode to the treehouse tree.

Was he becoming more sensitive to the Inner Voice, or did the Hlut sing more distinctly with Kimee's mind to focus upon? Kev didn't know...but he felt a welcome and delight that was almost in words.

"I brought her for you to see," he said to the tree. "I don't know exactly why, it just seemed the right thing to do."

I welcome you and your Little One, the music seemed to say.

"I-I don't know how often I'm going to be back. We're talking about moving the family to New Sardinia. It's more convenient for Miai's concerts, and I'm just dying to organize a study of the Iglesias memory cubes. Trelin Carnodip has a theory that they contain some hints as to the location of Old Earth, and I have an idea that he may be right."

There was no reply from the tree.

Kimee cooed, reaching her little arms toward the tree. Kev brought her closer, and she giggled as she touched the bark.

Kev shrugged. "I don't know exactly why I'm here. I guess I guess I just want to know that it's okay for me to go offplanet. I know that's stupid...you're a Hlut, you have important concerns on your mind. Why should you care about me?"

We care, Little One.

Kev shivered. "Why? Why me in particular? What am I to you? Is it because I can hear your music, like Chiriga Ho and Sten Koleno?"

The tree did not answer.

Kev felt silly. "Anyway, I just wanted to show Kimee to you, and to tell you that we're all going away." He waited a moment, but there was no further response. To his surprise, he was disappointed.

Silently, he turned back toward the house. The nanny spun, following him. Then, out of nowhere, music sang.

Wait, Little One. Listen....

Kimee quieted, and Kev sat down with her to listen.

PART NINE: Astronomer.

My midnight sky is dark and empty. The walls of the material world are so far away that they seem less than the merest hazy backdrop for vast, unrelieved blackness.

And death spins toward us, a single filament of web drifting through eternal night, closer each pa.s.sing instant.

There are not many of us here; this poor world will not support a large population and we must be careful to preserve the fragile ecology we have built up over the ages. Thus, less than half seventy Hlutr are rooted worldwide, surrounded by scrub and small starving beasts. The tiny creatures of the ocean are the most successful forms of life here; without them the atmosphere would soon be unbreatheable, so we preserve them at all cost.

We are not near enough one another for the colors of the First Language, and the gentle susurrus of the Second is drowned in rolling surf and whispering breeze. When we must communicate, we do it through the song of the Inner Voice. In truth, we do not have much opportunity to converse; sometimes we sing merely for the joy of the singing.

Who can hear us, in this void that spans three hundred fifty million pa.r.s.ecs? The nearest galaxy is so far away that its light departed in the last days of the Pylistroph. Our own home stars are yet more distant, and could we see them we would observe the Gathered Worlds as they were at the height of the Pylistroph, before the Schism of the Hlutr and the colonization of the Scattered Worlds.

Yes, I know of the Schism. For even though we are sundered from the Home Stars by unimaginable gulfs, yet still we hear tales of the galaxy we left behind.

We live very slowly, and s.p.a.ce is quite flat here in the Void. Now and again we can hear the song of the crystalline Talebba; now and again they bring us tidings, repeated over and over again, of the doings of our brethren. We know of the Schism, and the Little Ones of the Scattered Worlds, and the tyranny of the Core.

Once we might have cared.

Four of us remain, of those who came to this world with the original Coruman scientific expedition. A lone star, bearing three planets, had been ripped from its home galaxy and thrown into the void finding it, the Coruma could not resist exploring it. We are still not exactly sure what happened to the vessel that bore us here; it was long ago and we Hlutr do not pretend to understand the mysteries of stardrive.

We were stranded, marooned on a barren world whose few metals were buried deed in the crust and whose atmosphere was all but poison.

Many Coruma died, but in dying gave they us the genetic and biological material we needed to tame this planet. Their companions survived a few seventies of generations, and built up a rather rich culture.