In the end, I enlist the aid of the Hlutr of Telorbat and a dozen other worlds within a kilopa.r.s.ec. That the Human child is somewhere within this volume of s.p.a.ce there can be no doubt; no Hlut can mistake its anguished wail. At my direction, the Hlutr listen closely, then each tells me the direction from which the cry comes. I mark these on Saburo's master charts; we wait for a few hours, then we try again.

This is exactly the sort of work at which animal intelligences excel: the splitting of time and s.p.a.ce into tiny bits, the measurement of direction and duration. With computers to do his calculation and Kef's starcharts as a basis, Saburo manages to pinpoint the source to within a few billion cubic kilometers. The size of a planetary system, and in an empty volume far from any planet! Are we mad to think we can locate the child?

No.

The emotion is unmistakeable as the echo on a radar screen, and in Human hours we have located the center of the disturbance that called me from Amny seven thousand pa.r.s.ecs away. A lone Human starship floats powerless in starry s.p.a.ce. Saburo is taken by a coughing fit, then gains control of himself. "Commander, take us in. Dock with that ship."

"They don't answer our challenges, sir. I think it's a ghost ship."

I shake my head. Something is alive aboard that dark hulk.

"Just follow my orders," Saburo says evenly. The Commander shrugs, and turns to his control board.

Soon the ships are mated together, and Saburo and I stand before a closed hatch that leads to the mystery vessel. I do not know what to expect; seventy thousand times seventy Hlutr, and more, watch with me as the door slides back.

The sight, the smell, the sound we experience is something that no living being should ever face. Saburo, retching, falls back; even some of the Elders turn away from that terrible scene.

The ship, a cargo vessel, is crammed with dead, decaying Human bodies. Most of them show the ravages of the Death: flat, empty stomachs, the agony of death, the trace of fluids on faces and chests. It is indeed a ghost ship, one inhabited by victims of the Death. Or so we think. Only when we blast into the sealed control room, only when we inspect the destroyed panels and recover the damaged log, do we find the truth. And when we find that horrible truth, it is my cry that echoes in the heavens and disturbs the Hlutr at their meditation.

We may never know the home planet of that charnel ship, for all references were carefully edited out of the log. Only the record of their deeds remained, as if they were actually proud of what they had done.

Over seventy times seventy times seventy Humans were put aboard that ship: more than four hundred thousand bodies. And more than half of them were still alive. The unknown rulers of that unknown world herded all the victims of the Death, along with their families and friends, along with the doctors who tried to treat them, along with the ministers who tried to comfort them- herded all into that vast cargo hold, then sealed them off and set them on a journey to nowhere. The controls were set to destroy themselves after a certain time in tachyon phase; after which, the ship dropped back into normal s.p.a.ce and floated aimlessly, a macabre prison that offered no hope of escape.

There the tragedy did not end...for somewhere in this ship, a Human child still cries.

It is Saburo who finds him, huddled in a curve of the hull with corpses pressed tight around him. The boy is naked, filthy and starved; he draws back with a scream when Saburo reaches for him.

"Let me." I step forward, and call on all the Hlutr to help me. All Human children are sensitive to the Inner Voice, this one more than most: we join in a song of rea.s.surance, of peace, and the boy falls silent. I lift him, and Saburo leads the way back to our own ship.

His name is Ved, and he does not know where he comes from. As I probe his mind, I sense a good deal of damage; he builds walls against the terror he has experienced, and I am loath to disturb those walls. Later, in the care of Hlutr specialists on Amny, perhaps Ved can be brought back to full mental health; for now I am content to let him fall asleep to the Hlutr lullabye.

When I am sure that the boy will not wake, I face Saburo. For once, I feel something akin to animal rage...and I know that you, my brothers and sisters, feel this anger with me.

"You dare?" I challenge him. "You dare to crawl to the Hlutr and ask us to spare your race? To spare that?" With one gesture, I indicate the charnel ship, the world that launched it, the people who committed this atrocity and all their brothers, sisters and cousins throughout the Galaxy. "Beg rather than we do not increase the virulence of the Death seventy-times-seventy- fold, to give your people the agony they deserve."

Saburo coughs, falls into his chair, then raises defiant eyes. "Is this Hlutr compa.s.sion?"

"The Hlutr do not waste compa.s.sion on beasts who have proven unworthy of it. We do not grant compa.s.sion to creatures who are incapable of showing it."

"Do you think I'm not sickened by what I saw today? Do you think I don't want revenge on those who did it? By what right do you condemn all of us on the basis of some who commit atrocity?" He turns to the intercom. "Take us to Telorbat. I need a planet with medical facilities."

"Our right comes from our nature. Our place in the Universal Song. The power that we alone possess." He bends over Ved's sleeping form, and I catch his arm. "What are you doing?"

"In dwelling on his tragedy, you obviously haven't noticed the most important thing about this child. The fact that he's alive."

"He lives- which is the core of his tragedy."

"You still don't get it. Look at him. He hasn't caught the Death."

My Human body shivers. "After days...weeks...of exposure...."

Saburo nods. "He's immune. And if I can figure out why, we might have a chance to end the Death yet."

And if you do, Saburo...will the Hlutr permit it?

In confusion, I withdraw to Amny and the song of the Hlutr, while our ship races toward Telorbat.

I think too much like a Human; my sojourn with them has affected me. For Galactic Revolutions have I stood faithfully in my grove, while the patterns of stars and the very face of Amny changed around me, and I have sung the will of the Universal Song. I have earned the t.i.tle of Elder and the name of Teacher. I have sung in the councils of the Hlutr, and have even advised the Eldest of all. Yet these Humans make of me but a newborn seedling, a foolish sapling facing his first Winter snows.

My brothers and sisters, tell me what I should do.

You sing, and I listen.

You will counsel me, you will give me reasons and opinions...but you will not decide for me. Some of you think the Humans should be saved, others believe they should perish- and still more of you think that we ought to ignore these children of Terra. Brethren, what am I to do?

Saburo, Ved and my operative arrive on Telorbat, and I am drawn to them once again.

It is the season of cold in the higher lat.i.tudes where the major Human city sits. You are there already, my fellows, rising snow-clad only a few kilometers from the city- for Ciudad Telorba rises like a vast pyramid from the midst of a great forest, and since Humans arrived on this world you have kept watch on them. I wonder, have you ever seen events like today's?

Saburo coughs, and even my operative is not spared the curse of the Death: my borrowed body is wracked with a choking fit, and when it is over I still find it hard to breathe. I begin to ease my awareness out of that fleshy prison, leaving the body to manage itself. I want nothing more than to return to Amny and be done with this sordid matter...yet I must see it through to a conclusion.

We are met by a robot on whose shoulders floats the image of a woman's head. She nods. "I am Gingiber Maur, Undersecretary of State. We received your message, Doctor Saburo, and our foremost medical laboratory is yours. You will forgive me for not meeting you in person...?" She seems a little embarra.s.sed, yet Saburo pays her no mind.

"Yes, yes," he says, suppressing a cough. "Show me to the lab. I must examine the boy with proper instruments."

"We have few visitors from s.p.a.ce," she tells us as we board an empty train and are whisked forth. "Have you come from far?"

"From the Credixian Imperium ultimately. Immediately, from a ship a few pa.r.s.ecs out from your sun."

She glances at Ved and my operative. "Tell me, you are escaping from the Death? This ship, was it infected?"

Ved quivers at this talk of the Death, and I broaden my awareness to sing him calm melodies of the Inner Voice. He is not yet sure who I am, but he responds to the song of the Hlutr.

Saburo nods, foaming with impatience. "We rescued the boy from a charnel ship- he was the only survivor. The sooner I get to your medical equipment, the sooner I'll be able to start figuring out why he lived."

"To be sure." The train slows, and the robot shows us through the door into a narrow corridor. As soon as we are through, the door slides shut. The robot stands before it, pointing toward the opposite end. "This way, if you please."

Saburo's eyes narrow. "This isn't a hospital. Where are we?"

The robot advances, and we have no choice but to fall back before it. Gingiber Maur's smile fades. "I am sorry, Doctor. Telorbat is under strict quarantine. We have no choice but to isolate those who have had contact with the Death." We are halfway down the corridor, now, and the far door begins to open. "As a medical man, I am sure you understand. You will be cared for; our prisons have a complete range of services."

"Prison?" Saburo echoes. Then the robot shoves us forward, and we tumble through the door.

Ved clings to my operative's hand, and I wrap an arm about him, all the while singing to quiet him. For we have surely walked into his worst nightmares.

A room the size of an s.p.a.cecraft hangar is crowded with coughing, weeping Humans. Some are dead already, others are motionless upon mats and have only hours of life left. Some of the healthier ones are ministering to the others.

"Keep Ved back," Saburo tells me, and I am only too glad to comply. We stand in the middle of an open s.p.a.ce, and I turn the boy's face to the wall while at the same time I hiss, "Saburo, what are we to do?"

"Don't worry. These people are paranoid, but they're stupid." He glances at an instrument clasped about his wrist. "My ship will be here in five minutes, and in another five we'll be blasted out of here."

"Unless they have ships to destroy yours."

"You won't find a working starship on this planet. Everyone who could leave, did. That's why the city's so empty. The ones who got left behind decided to set up this quarantine, but it won't help them." He bares his teeth in haughty animal aggression. "How's Ved?"

"Upset. We sing to calm him, and it seems to help."

"Good. Keep it up."

When Saburo's ship arrives, there is no doubt: a bright flash and a noise like thunder, then half a wall collapses in upon itself. Through smoke and dust, I see a moving wall of dark metal- the ship.

Saburo points and slaps my operative on the back. "Run!" he shouts.

By the time we reach the ship's hatch, twice seventy others have arrived as well. Some are too sick to move, yet they push themselves forward only to fall into the path of others. Their minds beat with terror and panic.

Saburo pushes through them roughly, then grabs Ved and my operative in firm hands and pulls us toward the ship as if through crashing surf. Human bodies press up against me, choking and vomiting, and I feel Ved's mind shake in counterpoint to his nervous body. The quiet melody of the Inner Voice pauses, then fragments as the boy's mental walls break and the full horror of his last few weeks comes smashing down on him.

He screams in an agony that paralyzes Hlutr on all nearby worlds. And I...who stand as close to that cry as I am to the soil of Amny...I stagger back, nearly driven from my perch in my Human operative's brain.

In that brain, in the confusion of the Inner Voice and Ved's pain, a miracle happens.

A personality submerged for a lifetime- the original ident.i.ty of my operative- hears Ved's cry through the endless distance that she has driven between herself and reality. I feel her stir in that Human brain, and I am shocked to silence. Even the Hlutr could not reach her! Yet she comes forth, responding to a pain greater than her own.

Her name is Irisa, this Human whose body I have borrowed. She is almost as sensitive to the Inner Voice as is Ved, and she knows only that she must help him. Limbs move of their own volition, and Irisa lifts Ved, hugs him to herself. The ship's solid wall parts, and she carries him across the threshold to safety, followed by Saburo. The hatch closes, and the ship lifts off, soaring high above city and forest.

Rejoice with me, brothers and sisters of Telorbat. Give me your Inner Voices in song: for Irisa was lost, and has come back. For Ved, whose cry brought even the Hlutr out of their age-old reveries, is delivered from his h.e.l.l. Irisa, moved to mercy by his need, has saved him.

Riding high above that world, rooted unregarded in Irisa's brain, I sigh. When a poor creature such as this, so frightened of mere existence that she turns her back on it and chooses the cool depths of madness...when this poor beast can feel such mercy, dare a Teacher of the Hlutr feel less? These Humans are wild and terrible, yet there is within them a core of true beauty. An age ago as they count time, we Hlutr agreed to help them as we could, to find and develop that beauty. To guide them when they faltered on their road to truth. To aid the honest ones among them as they sought maturity. And now, as I watch the dawning of a consciousness even I had thought lost forever, I reaffirm that vow.

Behind me, I feel my own Elders, and theirs, perhaps up to the Eldest Herself, I feel them sway in agreement. You have learned, Little One, they seem to say.

Irisa knows what I require, and gladly she gives me the use of her body one last time. "Very well, Saburo," I say, "Bring Ved to me on Amny. We will find your cure to the Death. And the Hlutr shall administer it, though it cost the lives of many times twelve thousand of us."

Saburo nods, and the ship turns back toward home.

Ved and Irisa stand before me, in the peaceful night of Amny, and the gentle breeze brings me their alien scents. Saburo is weak, and must be carried on a litter; they settle him next to my trunk, where I can feel the fevered warmth of his body.

Help me, brothers and sisters. Sing with me, Elders. Time is short, and the problem very complex. You who know Humans, and you who are experts in animal biochemistry: sing with me.

The Hlutr sing in the Inner Voice, for now we are decided and there can be no hesitation. Those of us who study the problem, must live more quickly than is our wont- for the Death would require many seasons of Human study to yield its secrets. We Hlutr do not have their machines, their computers, their vast laboratories; we have far better, the ma.s.sed minds of the Hlutr themselves. This is our work, the work we are meant for, and as we unlock the mysteries of the Death, I feel the orange-red flush of deepest happiness creep over my body.

Now we live still faster, and seasons of time to us are but minutes to the watching Humans. The song builds upon itself, reaching toward a shattering crescendo- then there is the taste of victory, the rush of joy, and...silence.

I slow my rate of living, until once again I am in the time-frame of Humans. Exhilirated, I have complete control over my entire body; my answer comes in a song that fills the whole glade.

"Saburo, it is done. We can make a counter-virus for the Death. Hlutr will manufacture it, then spread it on all your twelve thousand worlds. In weeks, the Death will be over."

"Thank you, Teacher," he croaks. "W-when will you begin?"

Before I can even frame the question in the Inner Voice, my Elders answer it. When you wish, Brother Hlut.

"We will commence the cure at once." On all those twelve thousand worlds, many times twelve thousand Hlutr stand ready to give their lives in the final detonation that will a.s.sure survival for Mankind. The night is alive with their song, a mixed song of triumph and a twinge of regret.

One of us must be first.

To the memory of the Traveller within me, I say, "Are you happy with me, little brother?"

"I am happy with you," he seems to say. "Come, Teacher...join me and be remembered forever."

"Stand back," I tell the waiting Humans. The dissolution is catastrophic, as it spreads Hlutr-substance on the winds and streams- but most of the force is directed upward. They need not withdraw too far. And I want Saburo near enough to catch full benefit of the cure.

Now I feel it build within me, as my Elders guide me in this final, most difficult task. The change comes like a building glow from the very center of my being, a welcome swell of warmth that lifts me toward the cool, eternal stars.

Hlutr have done their job well. The cure, I know, will work. There is a last surge in the song of the Hlutr...my brothers and sisters, saluting me and this thing I do. Two faltering Human voices join this song; I look down and see Irisa and Ved standing hand-in-hand over Saburo. And ultimate peace rises from the soil to engulf me.

Content, I fly upward to meet the stars and at last to take my place in the Universal Song.

INTERLUDE 2.

Over the next few years Kev learned of the Hlutr, and recognized that his story-telling tree was actually a member of one of the oldest races known to Man. He spent long hours alone in the treehouse, trying to converse with the tree, but nothing ever came of it. When it wanted, the tree told him stories; otherwise, it remained silent.

He kept his knowledge to himself; somehow he sensed that he could hear a music unknown to others, and knew that they would only make fun of him for it.

Besides, there was much else to keep Kev busy. His school's tales of brave men and women and their heroic deeds sparked an interest in the long-ago days of the First Empire, and soon he was viewing everything he could, even grownups' books he found very hard to understand. During his eighth year he slowly worked through the whole seventy-megabyte text of Mal Arin's Fall of the First Terran Empire, while his school struggled to keep him up-to-date in all his other subjects.

Kev located all the major First Empire sites on Amny, and together he and Dar spent many happy days exploring them. Once, Kev even uncovered an authentic Carroll-period crediplate showing eight hundred Imperial Dollars; he kept it for a long time before conscience finally made him send it to the museum on Credix.

When Kev was ten, Dar left Amny forever.

Dar had always admired the Galactic Riders, the ancient brotherhood dedicated to the cause of peace in the Scattered Worlds. He had always dreamed of joining them. Now he was finally getting his chance. With his family's approval, he was headed for Nephestal and advanced training. The night before he departed, the two boys climbed together up to the treehouse for the last time.

The lesser moon was full, and its golden light threw soft shadows on Dar's face. There was a strange lump in Kev's throat, but he tried to ignore it.

"I hope I'll make it through training," Dar said. "I hear it's tough."

"You will." Kev wrinkled his nose. "What happens if you don't?"

"I'll probably stay on Nephestal and find some other way to serve the Scattered Worlds. I guess I really haven't thought about it much."

"So you're never coming back?"

"Don't be silly. Of course I'll be back. I'm not going to forget everyone, you know."

Kev lifted his eyes to the stars. Soon, he thought, Dar would be up there, flying among them. He touched his terminal, silently tapping in a question although he knew the answer already. In a second, the screen glowed triumphantly: DISTANCE TO NEPHESTAL: 14.7 KILOPa.r.s.eCS.

"It's across the Galaxy," Kev complained. "How are we going to talk to one another?"

"They have phones, dummy. And I'll send holos."