And in the process, all defects are healed.

Where Daavyor Lenno died, there is a sudden gap in the loop.

String cannot have endpoints, and now, marvelously, the entire loop- as large as seventy times seventy planetary systems- unravels, dissolves, gives up its hidden energies and becomes as normal s.p.a.ce.

Daavyor Lenno has plucked an infinite string...and the music is the song of Creation itself.

Light, heat, gas. In instants, the history of the Universe is replayed on a minor scale. Eddies form, condensations, hot spots that may one day become stars with planets of their own. Someday, like a great vine strung across heaven itself, there will be a loop of worlds here in eternal night.

And we...we will be here, to bring life to those brand new worlds.

I just regret, he said, that the folks at home will never know. Never know of his deeds? They will, Daavyor Lenno. The Talebba will carry the tale, and eventually it shall reach the Home Stars. All will know, my friend, that you are a hero.

Never know...that Little Ones can save the lives of Hlutr? That your folk, whomever they are, can be as selfless and compa.s.sionate as we who consider ourselves so far beyond you? That tale, too, will make its slow way to the Home Stars. If my distant brethren have misjudged your people, Daavyor, they will know.

Or did he mean that they will never know...how sorry he was, for the things he had done?

They will know, Daavyor. I pledge to you.

They will know.

INTERLUDE 9.

It was a beautiful night, clear and cold under a black sky strewn with stars by the thousands. Until he went to New Sardinia, Kev had never known how much he treasured the starry sky of Amny.

They buried Great-Grandma Aponi in the old family cemetary, amid the heather that she loved and the birds she had always enjoyed so much. Everyone cried, but Mama Tiponya most of all. Still, it was a good funeral and a splendid wake.

Mama Cho was the one who comforted him most. She took him aside, looked up into his eyes and said, "She wanted you to know how proud she was of you. On Election Day morning she voted as soon as she could, then spent the rest of the day asking if returns were in. It was almost as if she wouldn't let herself die until she knew the outcome." Mama Cho touched Kev's cheek tenderly. "When she found out that you won, she just smiled. The poor thing was too weak to talk, but she tapped on her terminal how happy she was. And then the next morning, she was gone."

Afterwards Kev made his way back over the hill, where his own house was waiting patiently for him, tended by robots and just as spotless as the day he'd last seen it. A robot had met him at the door with, "Greetings, a.s.semblyman Mathis."

a.s.semblyman. How odd it sounded. Kev supposed he would grow used to it over the next ten years.

The house was too lonely- without Dar and Tim, Elyene and Miai, he just couldn't stand the silence. It was well past local midnight when he crawled out of his sleep coc.o.o.n stepped out into the cool darkness.

In no time at all, he stood beneath the treehouse tree. He stopped for a moment before Immanuel's grave, then stood looking up at stars framed by rustling leaves. Then with a great sigh he started up the old ladder.

The sixth rung was still loose; he'd never managed to remember the glue. He had to crouch to enter the treehouse; it was all so much smaller than he remembered.

One thing had not changed: the almost-soundless beat of whispering music that touched his soul.

"I'm an a.s.semblyman now," he said. "I didn't really think I'd win, historians seldom do. But the voters thought I can do the job, I guess."

No response. What did the a.s.sembly of Humanity mean to the Hlutr? Just another group of animals sitting around chittering to one another.

Never that, Little One.

"Great-Grandma Aponi died. We buried her today. I think...I think she might be the one I got it from, my ability to understand your music." He shrugged. "I guess you can't tell me that, if you even know."

Sit down, friend.

Kev sat. "Another story?"

The Hlut's laugh was like a breath of floral fragrance. You know me too well, Little One.

Kev laughed too, then leaned back against the tree. Under a thousand stars, music swelled within his soul, and he fell into the dream once again.

PART TEN: Biologist.

Now Humans have gone too far.

It begins with the barest echoes of the Inner Voice; with a melody that is at once like Hlut-song, and yet terribly unlike. Few among us hear it, and fewer grasp the awful implications of that song.

Oddly, it is Humans themselves who alert us.

For Human millennia I have stood in the fair soil of Nephestal, not far from the a.s.sembly Hall where meets the Council of the Free Peoples of the Scattered Worlds. My brothers and sisters stand behind me in their seventies, the greatest forest of my folk outside the Secluded Realm. Beyond the a.s.sembly Hall stands the Temple of All Worlds, and beyond that the Singing Stones. Here at the apex of the Scattered Worlds, we have stood for time uncounted; the first of us came as seedlings when the Daamin made this world their own after the Schism and their great migration.

The sons and daughters of forgotten Terra are seen more frequently here in the three and a half millennia since their Second (and last) Empire dissolved; as Galactic Riders, as volunteers in the schools and the temples, as performers in our theatre and concert halls- and most of all as tourists, craning at the Singing Stones, kissing in the Lovers' Grove where Jel Haran and Lirith first plighted their troth, and swarming into the Temple of All Worlds to gaze at the artifacts and precious treasures of their culture on display for all to appreciate.

Still, it is seldom that we see Humans even on the edge of our Forest; more seldom still that a group of them approaches accompanied by three high officials of the Council. They stop beneath me in a pleasant grove that the Daamin have constructed for visitors, and wait for me to acknowledge their presence.

"Greetings, friends," I say after an interval that is short even as Humans count time.

A single woman seems to be chief of the Humans; she steps forward and bows. "I am Bandaranaike Thovold, and I speak for the a.s.sembly of Humanity." Mankind, like most other races nearing maturity, has given up his childish experiments at "government"- yet still structure and order are necessary. The a.s.sembly, which meets on ancient New Sardinia, speaks for the billion-or-so Humans who inhabit a few dozen worlds and countless settlements in the Scattered Worlds.

"Welcome, Bandaranaike Thovold." I recognize the three with her, but not any of her Human companions. "Welcome, my friends of the Council."

They nod in answer, and Clombortau Nor'Piqenn, an overly-friendly giant lizard from Marpethal, wags his tail with such intensity that the ground quivers.

"How may I serve you, Bandaranaike Thovold?"

"I will get right to the point, Elder. We feel that a Human scientist is conducting dangerous research, and we have come to the Council of the Free Peoples for advice and aid. These three honored ones have agreed to investigate the matter with us. Friend Arhineal delv Trespidaan here advised that we seek your opinion."

"What is the nature of this research?"

"Biological, Elder. Lately some strange creatures have appeared, one at a time, in various Human settlements. We do not recognize these creatures, and at least one seemed particularly susceptible to Human diseases." She shrugs. "Lacking knowledge, we are nonetheless disturbed to see something which mimics our biochemistry. When we communicated with the scientist involved, we were told to mind our own business. Further communications have been refused."

"I do not know how the Hlutr may help you in this matter."

Sinlath Trnas, a Daamin scholar of Humans, raises her eyes toward me. "Elder, we have brought a specimen of the unknown lifeform. Will you grant us the courtesy of examining it?"

"Let it be brought here."

Sinlath Trnas gives an order, and in only a moment the strange beast is here, carried in a web of insubstantial forces projected by a tiny Daamin device floating above it. Suddenly the web collapses, and the creature stands before me, exhausted and frightened.

It is perhaps one-quarter the height of an adult Human, and it bears the same general shape. At first sight, I think it is one of their monkeys- then the cool breeze of Nephestal brings me scent of its tissues, and I start at a taste so familiar and yet so unexpected.

Whimpering, it moves away...and the grove is filled with song, with the same freakish melody which has echoed through the stars of late on the waves of the Inner Voice.

My brothers and sisters speak to me in the First Language, sing to me in the Inner Voice, cry out with the sounds of the Second Language- all voicing their outrage, their disgust at what has appeared in our midst.

Sinlath Trnas acts quickly, and the beast is once more trussed. The Humans huddle together, frightened; even Clombortau Nor'Piqenn is still.

I sigh. "You know the scientist who has created this beast?"

Bandaranaike Thovold nods. but does not speak.

"What he has done is forbidden. We will go to him, and we will judge him."

Finally she finds her voice. "We?"

"I will join the panel of judgement; together the four of us will judge this scientist in accord with the laws and customs of the Free Peoples."

"Elder," Sinlath Trnas says, "You will accompany us? In your own being?"

"It is not unheard of. Call a vessel, and summon a work crew. I will be uprooted by evening."

A drastic step, yes...but this time the Humans have gone too far. My brothers and sisters cry out for punishment, even for death- and I cannot blame them.

"What prompts this act, Elder? What has this Human scientist discovered?"

"You will know, my honored friends, when we arrive and I can confirm our suspicions. I ask your patience until that time."

I will go to this Human place, and I will be the senses of the Hlutr race. Then a decision will be made, and action will be taken.

Thus is the Hlutr way.

I am rooted in an artificial ecosystem; a huge, mobile device that simulates the soil, air and lifeforms of my Nephestalan wood. This pocket ecology is aboard a large star-vessel of Human manufacture; this vessel approaches the Human world of Phuctra.

Some few Hlutr live on Phuctra's inhospitable swampy surface, directing the course of life on a planet whose oceans are a salty, poisonous soup and whose air pressure is ten times that of Nephestal. They greet me, concerned with my mission but distracted by the constant struggle for existence.

Around Phuctra stretches the Ring, an inhabited loop of metal and plastic that glows with the light of a million captive stars. The Ring has expanded in the fifteen thousand years since its construction during the Human First Empire, but it is largely deserted now; a few thousand men and women live here, where once ten billion Humans thrived. If nothing else, Mankind has done well in bringing his numbers down to reasonable levels.

"The Human scientist is here?" I ask.

Clombortau Nor'Piqenn bleats an answer in the subtle language of Marpethtal: "One can only admire them. Where best to conduct possibly-dangerous biological experiments? If anything goes wrong, the scientist can evacuate his laboratory and open it to vacuum and radiation. Few organisms could withstand that treatment."

"Hlutr spores could," I say, leaving Clombortau to wonder.

We come closer, and I am suddenly aware of the same dissonant near-Hlutr song that I heard on Nephestal...but stronger, far stronger. The source is somewhere nearby.

"Who is this scientist?" Arhineal delv Trespidaan asks.

Bandaranaike answers at once, "His name is Saburo Imhotep. He's the son of Gregor Mendel Watson, a brilliant geneticist who left the University of Credix a few decades ago."

"Does Saburo Imhotep know we are coming?"

"He has been informed; we have received no answer from him." Bandaranaike's mind seethes with resentment, and also with a touch of anxiety. What terrible thing, she wonders, has this scientist done, that causes a Hlut to lift himself from the soil of his native world?

She will learn soon enough.

We approach the Ring, and in a terrifying instant of whirling, contradictory motions our vessel effortlessly mates with that great structure.

Arhineal delv Trespidaan raises an obvious question. "What if Doctor Imhotep doesn't receive us?"

"Don't worry," answers Bandaranaike. "We can force our way in."

Clombortau Nor'Piqenn pulls himself to his full height, which is nearly half my own. "I do not think we will have much trouble on that score," he says with a laugh.

"My robots can take care of anything," says Bandaranaike. "Wait here, and I will return with Imhotep."

We do not wait long. Bandaranaike returns in minutes, followed by a tall, pale Human male.

Indignantly, Saburo Imhotep says, "I understand that you want to talk to me about my research. What gives you the right- "

His eyes find my trunk, follow it upward, and then he stops abruptly.

"You speak of right?" All my life I have communicated with the lower orders in their own languages; it is simplicity for me to produce the racous sounds of the Human tongue. "What gives you the right, Saburo Imhotep, to use what you have taken in defiance of the will of the Hlutr?"

"I might have known," he mutters. Then, hands on hips, he faces me with defiance singing in his Inner Voice. "The same thing that gives you Hlutr the right to direct the evolution of other lifeforms: I have the ability."

Bandaranaike stamps her foot. "Someone," she commands, "Had better explain what's going on here."

Saburo Imhotep answers at once, "The Hlutr are upset because of my father's work which I am continuing. It seems that we're using Hlutr genetic material without their permission."

"What you are doing is worse than casual use of genetic material. Your products and investigations are an insult to the Hlutr race, and a threat to the well-being of all the Scattered Worlds."

Clombortau Nor'Piqenn laughs. "One of you is right, one is wrong. A pretty dilemma, to decide which."

"With due respect, Elder," Bandaranaike says, "I must ask Doctor Imhotep to explain himself. Afterwards I will give you a chance to express your opinion." She takes my silence for a.s.sent, and gestures to Imhotep. "Well, Doctor?"

"I don't suppose any of you know the origin of the Human mitochondria? No, I didn't think so. Mitochondria are the structures within Human cells responsible for energy production. We can't live without them. The interesting thing is that our mitochondria are really independent organisms. They have their own genetic material, and they reproduce independently of the cells they inhabit."

"How can such a thing be possible?" asks Arhineal delv Trespidaan, with a feeling of repugnance.

"Billions of years ago the ancestors of mitochondria swam into the ancestors of Terran animal cells. They liked it, and became symbionts. Since then they've been pa.s.sed down through the ovum, with perhaps a few contributed by the remnants of the sperm cell, for millions of generations."

"What does that have to do with- ?"

"Everything, my dear Bandaranaike. Don't suppose for an instant that the mitochondria are the only such symbionts we know of. If you go back far enough, many structures in Human cells were independent. Chloroplasts are a.n.a.logous symbionts in plant cells. The Metrinaire are collections of symbiotic organisms. Other races have their similar structures."

"So Humans," chuckles Clombortau "Despite your traditions, are not individuals at all. Each of you is a colony."