"Promise?"

"I promise. Now, are we going to get on with this, or not?"

"O-Okay."

Dar produced his laser knife, set the beam on minimum dispersion. "Don't be scared, it's not going to hurt."

"I'm not scared," Kev protested. Still, he was glad that Dar was going first.

"All right, here we go."

Carefully, Dar nicked his thumb with the hairline beam, then did the same to Kev's.

Alone in the moonlight, the two boys sealed their friendship in a manner that was old as Humanity.

Kev returned to the treehouse the next afternoon with a heavy heart. Dar was gone; a shuttle had called at the s.p.a.ceport for him, and before Kev knew, the ship had vanished into the sky.

He sat at the edge of the platform, his legs dangling into empty air and his chin in cupped hands, and sighed heavily.

His sigh echoed for a moment in the movement of leaves, then blended into the quiet music of the tree around him. Slowly, despite his sadness and loneliness, Kev stretched out a hand until he touched the nearest branch. It was smooth and its touch oddly comforting.

Sing with me, Kev Mathis....

PART THREE: Elder.

From my place, I can see into the courtyard of the Human settlement. I stand tall against the mountainside, my many trunks reach high into the clear, cold sky of Sebya. I am old, old even as the Hlutr count time, old enough to have felt the continents move beneath me, old enough to have seen Sebya's lone moon grow ever more distant in the night sky. The Humans have been here not even seventy times seventy of their years; yet I have watched them well. Of their seaside towns and vast ocean farms I know little, for we Hlutr seldom grow in or near the sea. Yet since they arrived from the sky, I have watched the Humans in their mountain settlement and their gambols through this marvelous wood that we call the Forest of The Dawn.

The Human settlement grew slowly, slowly as even the trees; there has been plenty of time for me to adjust my deep roots around their changing foundations, to send up offshoots of myself in their gardens, even to crack the mountain's hard stone and reach their secret underground fastnesses.

However much I know the Humans, they are not my real love. I have another study, one which has been my steady joy for all my seasons. For Sebya is fortunate among worlds; this globe is one of the few to have sp.a.w.ned its own native race of sapients. You, Little Ones, who in your still-primitive language of grunts and whistles call yourselves the Dawn People- you are my devotion and my chiefest study. Humans came to us already formed in the biological cauldron of their own unfortunate Terra; but the Dawn People sprang from Sebya life in the ceaseless and beautiful Hlutr adjust-ment of the very basis of life itself. Humans are interlopers- you, my Littles, are ours.

Ours. And in truth, Little Ones, you are mine, as much as any Hlut can be presumptuous enough to make such a claim. I have nursed you along in your growth, I have directed the twining of your very genes, since long before you were a separate species. When your distant ancestors were still learning to live in the hostile environment of dry land, when the very weeds and grains were taking their form...then I was a sapling, growing slowly and taking my lessons from the great Hlutr masters beyond the sky.

Do not believe, Little Ones, those who tell you that the Hlutr have made you what you are. You have made yourselves. True, only the Hlutr can fashion and re-fashion the tiny spirals of matter that carry your heredity and your ident.i.ty as a species. This is power, and it is also curse; for only by dying can Hlutr spread our modifications of the very form and basis of life. Seventies upon seventies of Hlutr have died for you, Dawn People, each at a crucial stage of your growth, each to give you a nudge along the path of your destiny. But you, Little Ones, have made your way across nearly seventy million generations: living, dying, adapting, struggling for existence against all the chances of that long, long span. The dead ends, the wrong turnings, the setbacks and disasters- these have numbered more than the stars in Sebya's nighttime sky. Yet you have persisted, and you have responded to Hlutr guidance until you are the gentlest and most profound of creatures.

And now, it appears, the Humans are hunting you.

All through the Forest of the Dawn and beyond, the Hlutr watch...and listen. We listen to one another with the First Language, which is the subtle shift of colors in our leaves and trunks. We listen with the Second Language, which is the soft soughing of trees on a gentle breeze. And we listen with the Inner Voice, which is the song that sings in the hearts and minds of every living thing. All over the planet, we listen: to each other, to thousands of those in the lesser orders who tell us what they know, to the strong, steady beat of life and death in the soil, in the sea and in the air.

You, my Little Ones, are the chief object of our concern. Not a Dawn Person falls, that the Hlutr do not know. And not a Hlut knows, who does not tell me at once.

Lovanideth of the Blue Hills Tribe had been missing for nearly two sevens of days. I paid little attention to her departure...the Dawn People are always wandering off for long stretches to be alone, and with seventy-times-seventy-times-seventy of them on Sebya, it is difficult to attribute significance to only one individual. I told my brethren to search for her, then went back to contemplating the flow of the Hlutr plan for her people. This is a crucial time for the Dawn People, when they must adjust to the most powerful changes in their history. In the next few seventies of years, they will take the first steps along the road of civilization; while their genes have predisposed them toward success, so much depends upon their character and environmental factors. So many races have failed at this point, that we Hlutr have learned to be careful.

I watch the Human settlement especially closely. The sons and daughters of Terra cannot be allowed to interfere with the work of a Hlutr lifetime.

Yet interfere they do.

Sea-birds first located Lovanideth's body where it lay on the northern sh.o.r.es. They knew that the Dawn People did not belong so far north, and carried the news to one of my brethren. He, in turn, sent word to me on the invisible waves of the Inner Voice. Lovanideth of the Blue Hills has been found.

She lies dead on the sands of the Cold Sea.

My reply raced north, carried on prevailing winds by the murmurs and rustles of the Second Language. "Have her brought to you immediately. Inform me as soon as her body arrives. Sing nothing more of this in the Inner Voice." We have built you, Dawn People, to be very sensitive to the Inner Voice, and I do not want you to know of Lovanideth's death. Not yet.

My brother in the north sends large beasts, the scavengers and runners, to bring Lovanideth to him. It is easy for us, when we wish, to control such creatures with the waves of the Inner Voice; the Hlutr will overpowers that of the lower orders. We do not do this often, for it is distasteful to us.

After two days, Lovanideth lies before my brother. He bends low over her body, and tells me all that he sees.

"She has been dead for many days. Her tissues are waterlogged. There are minor wounds on her skin, and her crown fronds are withered." He stops, focussing his attention on the tiny chemical traces that still linger on her and in her. "Salts, and the taste of the sea. The sands. The beasts who bore her hither." There is silence for a moment, and I am acutely conscious of the tortuous chain that brings his meaning to me: nearly seventy single Hlutr who relay his words across the mountains to the place where I stand, just outside the Human settlement. "And wait, Elder...upon her is the scent of the Humans. She has recently been in their custody."

I need not hear more. "Continue your investigation, and tell me all you learn," I sing. Then, I turn my full attention to the settlement below.

Seventy thousand Humans live here, perched in their fortress of granite and iron on the mountain's side. Seventy thousand, doing what Humans do- dancing, eating, sleep-ing and working, their minds a hubbub of images and activity. I examine them all, and I find no reason to believe them hostile to the Dawn People.

Perhaps, then, Lovanideth's death was an accident. A hunting party whose bolts went astray, or a mistake by ignorant tourists. Human law protects the Dawn People much as it protects the Hlutr- those who killed Lovanideth must have panicked, attempted to hide her body, and then dropped her on the northern beaches in the dark of night.

So I tell myself; but I find no memory of her in the Human minds I touch, no counterpoint of guilt sounding in the medley of Human thought and emotion in the settlement.

The guilty ones may be in one of the seaside towns...if they were tourists, they may even have left Sebya entirely. This once, I grant Humans the benefit of my conjectures.

Three days later, it happens again. This time, the Dawn People come to us themselves: the Elders of Riverbank Tribe appeal to the Hlutr because three of their fellows are missing. The previous night, they saw the lights of a Human air vehicle above the forest.

The Hlut who hears their plea contacts me at once. Go back to your Tribe, he tells them, And carry on your work. The Hlutr will search for your lost ones. Then his call is carried to me along soundless waves of color, the hues of the First Language outracing the wind upvalley through Hlutr leaves and trunks until it reaches my place.

You have been told, Little Ones, that the Hlutr are distant, cold and unfeeling...that they do not concern themselves with the doings of the lesser orders. Yet now I give lie to those sayings, for I feel a surge of almost-animal rage. One accidental murder I will overlook- but when one murder is followed by three kidnappings, it is certain that something is afoot in the Human community. After nearly twenty-nine Human centuries of peace, some great upheaval must be taking place in order to bring hostility to Sebya.

I have to know more.

Ordinarily, when a Hlutr Elder needs information, it is readily available. The waves of the Inner Voice permeate s.p.a.ce just as they fill the atmosphere of Sebya; my brethren Elders beyond the sky are only a simple song away. And at their disposal are all the resources of the Free Peoples of the Scattered Worlds- the great archives on Nephestal as well as the ma.s.sed databanks of Aveth.e.l.l and the Iaranor. The Daamin scholars of Nephestal, for example, were studying the sons of Terra even before Humans left that fair world. Most of their information is available to the Free Peoples.

However, one must know the questions to ask. And I do not know enough.

Among Humankind, there are always those to whom we can turn for aid. Many there are, whose minds are open to the Inner Voice: children, madmen, dreamers, fools...and all those of compa.s.sionate heart and the ability to feel wonder. The children and madmen are no use to me now, but the others may help.

Night falls, as clouds boil up from the south to hide the stars. The forest sleeps, Dawn People and Humans alike. I am already living as fast as the small animals live, even faster than Humans. Slowly, carefully, I catch the melody of Human dreams...and I match that song in the Inner Voice, guiding slumbering minds along the path I choose. Tell me, I sing, What is new in the Human community. Tell me why Humans hunt the Dawn People. My informants will not remember this night; at most, they will have vague recollections of dreams in which the trees sang and they joined the chorus. They will awake happy and refreshed, and will imagine that they dreamed of being one with the world around them.

This is the gift I leave them in return for their information.

That night, then, I tour Human minds and when the cloudy sky lightens in the east, when the Dawn People awake and stretch their fronds toward the hidden sun, then I withdraw my attention and stand alone, pondering what I have learned.

Human politics shift like Sebya's tides; we Hlutr pay little attention to it. Thus far, the changing course of Mankind's statecraft has left Sebya virtually untouched. At best a minor member of the Terran Empire, Sebya became independent soon after that dominion dissolved nearly three Human millennia ago. Since then Sebya has pa.s.sed out of the main flow of Galactic events. This suits us well, for the world's isolation has given us peace to conduct our important work with the Dawn People.

Now, it seems, Sebya's seclusion is over.

Dream-images from my informants are misleading- or perhaps the Hlutr will never truly understand animal behavior. It is unclear whether Sebya was conquered, traded or simply purchased. Whatever the terminology, whatever the motivation, our world has a new governor. I know nothing of the man, only his Human name: Darineb Khria. Yet I tremble in the early morning cold, while moist wind carries the scent and sound of my discomfort northward across the mountains.

Sebya's new owner, I fear, may have found the Hlutr's most precious secret.

My orders go forth to all my brethren in both Languages, in ever-widening circles through the forest and beyond: "Conceal the Dawn People. Watch for Humans. Dissuade them from entering the Forest of the Dawn. Find the missing Dawn People of Riverbank Tribe. And await my further instructions."

Perhaps what I fear is untrue. Yet what else has Sebya to offer Humans? Native lifeforms will not nourish them, and only in the seas has their Terran life cycle been allowed to flourish. Our world is a light one, with useful metals buried far deeper than on other planets. Our sun is small and pale compared to those under which Terra's sons thrive; Sebya is far from their Galactic trade lanes. The only thing we have of value is the Dawn People themselves...and the abilities which I have bred into them.

I beseech the stars, let it be something else. Even as I reach out with the Inner Voice, out to my Elders who can counsel me even now I hope that the Humans have found something else of value on Sebya. For if they are truly after the Dawn People, if they truly know our secret...then the work of ages must come to an end in nothing but ruin.

I wait, as my cry goes forth into empty interstellar dark.

Elders, tell me of the Human called Darineb Khria. Tell me, that I may find my suspicions false.

I fear that there will be no happy answer to that cry.

You have been told, Little Ones, that the Hlutr grow slowly; that your years are to us as hours. And indeed this is true, else how could I have directed the very evolution of your race? Yet what you have heard is also false, for when we wish we can live rapidly indeed, and your hours might seem to us as years. Fast or slow, however, the total duration of our life is the same. To live fast is to die sooner. This is a price we do not often pay.

Today I pay gladly, to protect the efforts of ages of my kin. I am old, I have lived more than three-quarters my allotted span- and if I feel already the approaching chill in my upper limbs, the numbness of roots that is the first whisper of death...at least I know that my life is spent on the greatest project my folk have ever imagined.

The grey morning does not lighten, even as we turn to follow the path of the hidden sun. About me in the damp, my brethren Hlutr weave a curtain around the Forest of the Dawn. This curtain is part the swish and sigh of the Second Language, part the brooding glower of seventies upon seventies of Hlutr, part the unheard song of the Inner Voice pitched for the Human soul to hear. My brethren set out this curtain for one purpose alone: to keep Humans out of the Forest. To keep the Dawn People safe.

Meanwhile, I must examine the Humans.

I have driven shoots throughout the Human settlement, so that now there are bits of me in their gardens, clinging like vines to their stone walls, even in the dark depths of their storage chambers far below the surface. So distant that they are nearly independent of me, these shoots watch and listen as men and women go about their daily business. Now I give my full attention to those far pieces of myself. My many-colored leaves turn and twitch though there is no wind, and I strain to make sense of all the different impressions they bring me.

I know Human speech, harsh and rude as it is...I listen, waiting for some hint to tell me where I might find Darineb Khria. I must live very fast indeed, now- with typical animal frenzy, the Humans are doing thousands of things at once. My mind races, trying to interpret and understand all that I hear and see. I fear that no Hlut will ever be able to completely comprehend the Humans- so much that they do is meaningless, mere motion without any possible purpose. Yet I cherish them, in my way, and I would not wish them gone from the Universal Song.

As the sun climbs toward zenith, one sc.r.a.p of Human speech draws my full attention: "What do you want done with them, Doctor Khria?"

I have found my adversary at last.

Two Humans are walking in a garden. Behind them floats some Terran contraption- a metal box all of winking lights and circuits and artificial limbs like the dangling tendrils of an uprooted tree. I do not trust Human machines. This the Humans have done, which we cannot understand: they have created minds of silicon, minds which can think seventy times itself seventy times faster than the Hlutr at their best. But you, Little Ones, you will understand, if your evolution goes....

But no. I am sure that one of the Humans must be the one I seek. Yet both of them turn to look at the floating box, and it speaks.

"Throw the bodies into the sea, like the others. And make sure they don't float back ash.o.r.e."

At first I think the box to be some Human sort of communications device, and I spread my senses wide trying to locate the speaker on the other end. Then I feel the songs of the Inner Voice that come from that courtyard, patterns that can only have their source in the minds of sapient creatures: two faint echoes, such as Humans generate- and one song much stronger, steadier, almost relentless in its singleminded beat. The metal box...is alive.

Sebya spins madly beneath me, and it is as if I feel solid soil slipping away under my roots. What sort of creature have these Humans created? Within that box is a living Human brain, a brain that is at one with their electronic circuits and computer devices. The sheer power of that mind! Why, it approaches the cla.s.s of Hlutr mentality.

It still speaks, and I listen carefully. There must be no mistake.

"I'm certain that we're on to something here. I need to examine more of these creatures. A dozen, from different areas. Send out as many hunting parties as necessary. Bounty of two hundred thousand soldos for each of the first twelve brought in." It is silent for a moment. "I'm having more sophisticated genotyping equipment sent from Neordan. The ship should be here by nightfall; I want the equipment unloaded and set up in my lab the instant it arrives."

"Yes, Doctor Khria."

"Go." The two Humans depart quickly. There is another moment of silence, while the metal box floats across the courtyard toward a door. It pauses, and gla.s.s lenses track in the direction of my twitching leaves. For just an instant, that powerful mind sends out a single melody of the Inner Voice and I have the feeling that Darineb Khria is staring through my leaves and into the very depths of my being. We confront one another silently, tension keen like slumbering lightnings in the still, wet air. Then the moment is over, the door slides shut, and Khria is gone.

In my place on the side of the mountain, I shiver. My fears are realized.

A Human geneticist- and one whose brain is linked to Human computers. Such a combination is formidable. And how much more so when the Human's brief lifespan is expanded by artificial means, so that he can follow genetic change through generations. Then, the ability of that Human might even approach the power of a Hlut.

Might threaten Hlutr plans and hopes.

You see, my Little Ones, the Hlutr race will not live forever. You think this odd, even shocking- you Dawn People whose short lives burn out in a few sevens of Sebya's revolutions, who know that the Hlutr around you are more ancient than the forest or the streams. You are amazed to hear me talk this way- I who am older than mountains, I who have felt the continents shifting beneath me. And my Elders are more aged still. The Eldest of us all, She who sits at Her place in the Secluded Realm...She is as old as stars, as old as life itself in the Scattered Worlds.

And yet the Hlutr shall pa.s.s. Not soon; but there will come a day when even the youngest of us shall die, when Hlutr yet unborn will drop their leaves and give up their spirits to the Universal Song. This is the way of the Song.

Long before we go, however, we will have made our successors.

This is our dream, and this is my work. On Sebya, and on a few similar worlds, Hlutr Elders work at creating the race who will succeed us. You, my Dawn People, are that race. Born of Hlutr tissue, every step of your development guided by Hlutr minds...you are fashioned to become even greater than we.

Of all the candidates, the Dawn People of Sebya are furthest along the road to maturity. And of all the candidates, thus far you alone have been given the secret to Hlutr strength and greatness. Locked away in your genes, awaiting a biochemical release that will come when the Elders deem you ready, is the ability to change the very structure of life. To create the chemicals which will guide other lifeforms along the paths you will choose.

Each Hlut is a living laboratory of genetics, far beyond poor Human skill- and each Dawn Person, as well, has that potential built into her cells.

This is the secret Darineb Khria has learned. And worse: I fear that he seeks to release your slumbering power, and use it for his own ends.

One of my brethren is aware of my concern. He stands very near the Human seaside cities and has made them his lifelong study. Sister, he sings to me in the calm melody of the Inner Voice, Perhaps the Human Khria wishes to use his knowledge for the betterment of life. It would not be the first time that Mankind has contributed to the Universal Song. This is true, for everywhere Humans go, they take new forms of life with them. Human-bred plants and animals share the forest with native life, to the enrichment of both.

Yet they bring discord as well, I remind my brother. It took their Empire a dozen Human generations to repair the damage it did to the ecologies of seventies of worlds. Every generation since has seen its destructive wars, its excesses of misused strength and simple carelessness.

Look with me, Elder. He shows me a city of Humans, where men and women stand together on a crowded field of skycraft, waving bright placards and speaking loudly to pa.s.sersby. They have heard of the deaths of the Dawn People, and they attempt to convince their brethren to hunt no more.

A n.o.ble effort, I admit. Yet still I would as soon trust in the curtain which the Hlutr weave around the forest, to stop the hunting.

I too, Elder. But we do not know everything about Khria. It is possible that he wishes to learn about the Dawn People so that he can help them...or help others.

It is possible. But I have heard the song of Khria's mind, and I do not think it likely that his motives are benign.

I must know for sure.

My cry for information about Darineb Khria has gone unanswered. The planet Nephestal is a unique source of knowledge, and the Hlutr Elders there receive seventies of queries daily from all over the Scattered Worlds. Usually a Hlut is in no hurry, and a few extra days or years do not matter. But now I need an answer quickly.

There is a way. For although we Hlutr are bound to the earth by our roots, and rarely leave the spot where we broke soil, yet you must not think us limited. Through the First and Second Languages we can converse with one another though the breadth of the planet lay between us- and through the Inner Voice we can leave planet entirely and fly the winds of s.p.a.ce.

Nephestal lies so far from Sebya that a beam of light dispatched when the first Dawn Person spoke her first recognizable word would still be on its way today- yet that distance is nothing to the Inner Voice, when there exists an intellect on Nephestal able to echo my mind's song. Volunteers from the Free Peoples of the Scattered Worlds, most of them strongly empathic or even gifted with telepathy, wait for just such a need...and then give their bodies over entirely to offworld Hlutr visitors. I have projected myself onto Nephestal before, in the course of my early training; now I marshall my strength to do this thing again.

A host is found. I sing, I cast forth my being. There is a moment of extreme cold, a taste of the winter that will one day claim my leaves, my branches, my essential song itself- then I shiver, and I am in an animal body amid the snows of Nephestal.

Most animal races love centralization. This is a consequence of their physiology: every system in their bodies has a center, a heart or brain or master gland. I have made certain, Little Ones, that you are free of this bias; while the Hlutr gave you the biochemical structure to allow free movement for part of your lives, we also took care to retain your essential plant-hood, and no one part of you is more vital than another.

Still, centralization can have its uses. What brain or heart is to the animal body, the planet Nephestal is to the Free Peoples of the Scattered Worlds. There, scarce 210 pa.r.s.ecs from the boundary of the Galactic Core, the Daamin have built a joyous and peaceful world that is the cultural and intellectual center of the thriving Galaxy.

My host is of the race of Aveth.e.l.l, and she is well-used to carrying Hlutr visitors. After a few moments of introduction, she withdraws her consciousness into deep meditation, giving me full control of her body and her mind.

Soon I am at the library, which rises in a series of delicate buildings from a low island in a lake next to the forest of the Hlutr. Briefly I sing greeting to my fellows and Elders, then I enter the library itself.