Then, just as he was starting to enter fully into the experience, the blur of illusion suddenly ended, cut off as the Spectral Flow plunged into the sea. Besh banked the craft again, and soon the sweeping domain of color vanished like a dream, replaced on the left by a more normal desert of windswept igneous rock.

The line of crashing surf became like a fabled highway, pointing toward lands unknown. Lark fumbled to unfasten his seat belt, moving across the aisle to stare over the great ocean. So vast, he thought. Yet this was nothing compared to the immensities Ling and her comrades spanned with hardly a thought. His eyes peered in hopes of spotting a camouflaged dross-hauler, its gray-green sails slicing the wind, bearing sacred caskets to their final rest. From this height, he might even glimpse the Midden itself, dark blue waters-of-forgetfulness covering a plunge so deep that its trench could take all the arrogant excesses of a dozen mighty civilizations and still bless them with a kind of absolution-oblivion.

They had already dashed beyond the farthest of Lark's lifetime travels, seeking data for his ever-hungry charts. Even looking with a practiced eye, he found few scattered traces of sapient habitation-a hoonish fishing hamlet, a red qheuen rookery-tucked under rocky clefts or bayou-root canopies. Of course, at this speed something important might sweep by in the time it took to switch windows, which he did frequently as Besh rolled the craft, playing instruments across both sh.o.r.e and sea.

Even those few signs of settlement ceased when they reached the Rift, crossing a few hundred arrowflights west of the distant, hatchet-shape of Terminus Rock.

A series of towering cliffs and deep subsea canyons split the land here. Jagged promontories alternated with seemingly bottomless fingers of dark sea, as if some great claw had gouged parallel grooves almost due east, to form a daunting natural barrier. Dwelling beyond this border labeled you an outlaw, cursed by the sages and by the Holy Egg. But the alien flier made quick work of the realm of serrated clefts and chasms, dismissing them like minor ruts across a well-traveled road.

League after league of sandy scrublands soon pa.s.sed by, punctuated at long intervals by stark fragments of ancient cities, eroded by wind, salt, and rain. Explosions and pulverizing rays must have shattered the mighty towers, just after the last Buyur tenant turned off the lights. In time, the ceaseless churning of the Midden and its daughter volcanoes would grind even these sky-stabbing stumps to nothing.

Soon the sky-boat left the continent altogether, streaking over chains of mist-shrouded isles.

Even Dwer never dreamed of going this far.

Lark decided not to mention this trip to the lad without discussing it first with Sara, who understood tact and hurt feelings better than either brother.

Then reality hit home. Sara's back in Dolo. Dwer may be sent off east, hunting glavers and sooners. And when the aliens finish their survey, we all may meet our end, far from those we love.

Lark sank into his seat with a sigh. For a while there, he had actually been enjoying himself. d.a.m.n memory, for reminding him the way things were!

For the rest of the trip he kept low-key and businesslike, even when they finally landed near forests eerily different from those he knew, or while helping Ling haul aboard cages filled with strange, marvelous creatures. Professionalism was one pleasure Lark still allowed himself-a relish for studying nature's ways. But there remained little zest or wonder in the thought of flying.

It was after nightfall when Lark finally shuffled back to his own shabby tent near the Glade-only to find Harul-len waiting there with news.

The low ma.s.sive figure took up fully half the shelter. At first, standing in the entry with only dim moonlight behind him, Lark thought it was Uthen, his friend and fellow naturalist. But this qheuen's ash-colored carapace wasn't scarred from a lifetime digging into Jijo's past. Harullen was a bookworm, a mystic who spoke with aristocratic tones reminiscent of Gray Queens of old.

"The zealots sent a message," the heretic leader announced portentously, without even asking Lark about his day.

"Oh? Finally? And what do they say?" Lark dropped his daypack by the entrance and sagged onto his cot.

"As you predicted, they desire a meeting. It is arranged for tonight at midnight."

Echo-whispers of the final word escaped speaking vents in back, as the qheuen shifted his weight. Lark suppressed a groan. He still had a report to prepare for the sages, summarizing everything he'd learned today. Moreover, Ling wanted him bright and early the next morning, to help evaluate the new specimens.

And now this?

Well, what can you expect when you play games of multiple loyalty? Old-time novels warn how hard things can get when you serve more than one master.

Events were accelerating. Now the rumored, secretive rebel organization had finally offered to talk. What choice had he but to go?

"All right," he told Harullen. "Come get me when it's time. Meanwhile, I have work to do."

The gray qheuen departed silently, except for a faint clicking of claws on the rocky trail. Lark struck a match that sputtered rank fumes before settling enough to light his tiny oil lamp. He unfolded the portable writing table Sara had given him when he graduated from the Roney School, what seemed a geologic age ago. Pulling out a sheet of his father's best writing paper, he then shaved black powder from a half-used ink stick into a clay mortar, mixed the dust with fluid from a small bottle, and ground the mixture with a pestle till all the lumps were gone. Lark used his pocket knife to sharpen his tree-staller quill pen. At last he dipped the tip into the ink, paused for a moment, and began to write his report.

It was true, Lark realized later, during a tense conclave by the wan opal glow of Torgen, the second moon. Tentatively, suspiciously, the zealots were indeed offering alliance with Harullen's loose-knit society of heretics.

Why? The two groups have different aims. We seek to reduce, then end, our illegal presence on this fragile world. The zealots only want the old status quo back, our hidden secrecy restored, as it was before the raider ship came-and perhaps a few old scores settled along the way.

Still, envoys of the two groups gathered in the dead of night, near a steaming fumarole, by the winding path leading to the silent nest of the Egg. Most of those in the conspiracy wore heavy cloaks to hide their ident.i.ties. Harullen, who was among the few still to possess a functioning rewq, was asked to remove the squirming symbiont from his sensory cupola, lest the delicate creature burn itself out in the atmosphere of strained intrigue. Creatures of the Great Peace, rewq were not suited for times of war.

Or is it because the zealots don't want us to see too much, Lark pondered. Not for nothing were rewq called the "mask that reveals." Their near-universal hibernation was as troubling as the heavy silence of the Egg itself.

Before starting, the zealots first cracked open several jars, releasing swarms of privacy wasps around the periphery-an ancient ritual whose origins had been lost but that now made earnest sense, after discoveries of the last few days. Then the urrish spokesman for the cabal stepped forward, speaking in Galactic Two.

"Your a.s.sociation sees opportunity in the (greatly lamented) coming of these felons," she accused. The whistles and clicks were m.u.f.fled by a cowl, obscuring all but the tip of her muzzle. Still, Lark could tell she wasn't many seasons past a middling, with at most one husband pouched under an arm. Her diction implied education, possibly at one of the plains academies where young urs, fresh from the herd, gathered within sight of some steaming volcano, to apprentice in their finest arts. An intellectual, then. All full of book learning and the importance of her own ideas.

Yeah, a part of him answered honestly. In other words, not too different from yourself.

Harullen answered the rebel's challenge, making a political point by speaking Anglic.

"What do you mean by that strange proposition?"

"We mean that you perceive, in these (disliked/unwelcome) aliens, a chance to see your ultimate goals fulfilled!"

The urs stamped a foreleg. Her insinuation sent angry murmurs through the heretic delegation. Yet Lark had seen it coming.

Harullen's gray carapace rocked an undulating circle. A traeki gesture, which the ringed ones called Objection to Unjust Impeachment.

"You imply that we condone our own murder. And that of every sapient on Jijo."

The urrish conspirator imitated the same motion, but in reverse-Reiteration of Indictment.

"I do so (emphatically) imply. I do so (in brutal frankness) mean. All know this is what you heretics (misguidedly) desire."

Lark stepped forward. If the zealots' murmur included any anti-human slurs, he ignored them.

"That is not (negation reiterated) what we desire!" Lark complained, garbling the qualifier trill-phrase in his haste to speak up.

"There are two reasons for this," he continued, still struggling in GalTwo.

"First among our grounds (for reb.u.t.tal) is this-the aliens (greedy to extreme fault) must not only eliminate all sapient witnesses (to crime/to theft) who might testify in a Galactic court. They must also wipe out the native stock of any (unlucky) species they steal from Jijo! Otherwise, how embarra.s.sing would it be someday, when the (foolish) thieves announce their adoption of a new client race, only to be confronted with proof that it was stolen from this world? For this reason they must exterminate the original population, when they depart.

"This we (in righteousness) cannot allow! Genocide of innocent life is the very crime our group was (in selfless righteousness) formed to fight!"

Harullen and the other heretics shouted approval.

Lark found his throat too dry to continue in Galactic Two. He had made the gesture. Now he switched to Anglic.

"But there is another reason to resist being slaughtered by the aliens.

"There is no honor in simply being killed. Our group's goal is to seek agreement, consensus, so that the Six shall do the right thing slowly, painlessly, voluntarily, by means of birth control, as an act of n.o.bility and devotion to this world we love."

"The effect, in the end, would ve identical," the urrish speaker pointed out, slipping into the same language Lark used.

"Not when the truth is finally revealed! And it will be, someday, when this world has new legal tenants, who take up the common hobby of archaeology."

That statement triggered confused silence. Even Harullen rotated his cupola to stare at Lark.

"Exflain, flease." The urrish rebel bent her forelegs, urging him to continue. "What difference will archaeology signify, once we and all our descendants are long gone, our hoof bones littering the wallows of the sea?"

Lark drew himself up, fighting fatigue.

"Eventually, despite all efforts to live by the Scrolls and leave no permanent marks, this story will someday be told. A million years from now, or ten, it will become known that a society of sooners once dwelled here, descendants of selfish fools who invaded Jijo for reasons long forgotten. Beings who nonetheless transcended their ancestors' foolishness, teaching themselves where true greatness lies.

" That is the difference between seeking dignified self-extinction and being foully murdered. For honor's sake, and by all the blessings of the Egg, the choice must be ours, every individual's, not imposed on us by a pack of criminals!"

Harullen and his other friends were clearly moved. They shouted, hissed, and umbled fervent support. Lark even heard some approving murmurs among the cowled zealots. Without benefit of rewq, he could tell he was managing to sound convincing-although deep inside, he scarcely believed his own words.

Ling's bunch don't seem to fear archaeological hobbyists of some future aeon.

In fact, Lark didn't give a d.a.m.n either, whether some obscure historical footnote said nice things about the Six, far in the distant future.

Good laws don't need rewards or recognition to make them right. They're true and just on their own account and should be honored even if you know that no one else is watching. Even if no one ever knows.

Despite all the well-recited flaws of Galactic civilization, Lark knew the rules protecting fallow worlds were right. Though he'd been born flouting them, it was still his duty to help see to it they were obeyed.

Contrary to his own words, he had no objection, in principle, to Ling's bunch eliminating local witnesses, if the means were gentle. Take a gene-tailored plague, one leaving everyone healthy but sterile. That might handle their witness predicament and solve Jijo's problem as well.

Ah, but Lark also had a duty to oppose the raiders' gene-stealing scheme. That, too, was a violation of Jijo, not unlike rape. With the sages apparently *waffling, only the zealot conspiracy seemed willing to fight the alien threat.

Hence Lark's impa.s.sioned lie, meant to build trust between two very different radical bands. He wanted a coalition with the zealots, for one simple reason. If there were plans afoot, Lark wanted a say in them.

Cooperate for now, he told himself as he spoke on, using his best oratorical skills to soothe their suspicions, arguing persuasively for alliance.

Cooperate, but keep your eyes open.

Who knows? There may come a way to accomplish both goals with a single stroke.

Asx THE UNIVERSE DEMANDS OF US A SENSE OF IRONY. For example, all the effort and good will that forged the Great Peace was worthwhile. We folk of the Commons became better, wiser because of it. We also supposed it would work in our favor, if/when Galactic inspectors came to judge us. Warring nations do more harm to a world than those who calmly discuss how best to tend a shared garden. It would surely weigh well that we were courteous and gentle criminals, not rapacious ones.

Or so we reasoned. Did we not, my rings?

Alas, no judges dropped from the sky, but thieves and liars. Suddenly, we must play deadly games of intrigue, and those skills are not what they were in days before Commons and Egg.

How much more capable we might have been, if not for peace!

We rediscovered this truth with sharp pangs today, when a panting galloper showed up with dispatches from the forge-study of Uriel the Smith. Words of warning. Dire admonitions, telling of sky-portents, urging that we brace ourselves for visitation by a starship!

Oh, tardy premonition! A caution that arrived too late by far.

Once, stone citadels nestled on bitter-cold peaks, from north of Biblos all the way down to the tropic settlements of the Vale, flashing messages via cleverly fashioned mirrors, outracing the swiftest urrish couriers or even racing birds. With their semaph.o.r.e, humans and their allies mobilized speedily for battle, making up skillfully for their lack of numbers. In time, urs and hoon developed systems of their own, each clever in its way. Even we traeki formed a network of scent-spore trackers, to warn of possible danger.

None of these feats survived peace. The semaph.o.r.e was abandoned, the system of signal rockets allowed to lapse. Until lately, commerce alone simply did not justify such costly media-though ironically just last year investors had begun speaking of reoccupying those frigid stone aeries, resuming the network of flashed messages.

Had they moved faster, would we have received Uriel's warning in time?

Would receiving it have made any difference in our fate?

Ah, my rings. How vain it is to dwell on might-have-beens. Other than solipsism, it may be the most mad thing that unitary beings waste their time doing.

Rety DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING FOR ME?"

Rann, the tall, stern-looking leader of the sky-humans, held out his hand toward her. In the late twilight, with wind rustling a nearby thicket of pale boo, it seemed to Rety that each of his calloused fingers was like her entire wrist. Moonlight brought out shadows on Rann's craggy features and wedgelike torso. She tried not to show it, but Rety felt all too insignificant in his presence.

Are all men like this, out there among the stars? The thought made her feel funny, like earlier, when Besh told her it was possible to smooth away her scars.

First had come bad news.

"We cannot do anything about it here in our little clinic," the forayer woman had told her, during Rety's brief turn at the aliens' sick call, near their buried station.

She had been standing in line for half the morning, a horrid wait, spent shuffling between a g'Kek with a wheezy, lopsided wheel and an aged urs whose nostril dripped a ghastly gray fluid. Rety tried hard not to step in it each time the queue moved forward. When her chance finally came to be examined under bright lights and probing rays, her hopes soared, then crashed.

"This kind of dermal damage would be easy to repair back home," Besh had said, while ushering Rety toward the tent flap. "Bio-sculpting is a high art. Experts can mold a pleasant form out of even primitive material."

Rety wasn't offended. Primitive material. It's what I am, all right. Anyway, at the time she was dazed from imagining-what if Galactic wizardry could give her a face and body like Besh, or Ling?

She set her feet, refusing to budge till Besh let her speak.

"They-they say you may take some humans with you, when you go."

Besh had looked down at her with eyes the color of golden-brown gemstones.

"Who says such things?"

"I ... hear stuff. Rumors, I guess."

"You should not believe all rumors."

Had there been extra emphasis on the word all? Rety leaped on any excuse for hope.

"I also hear you pay good when folks bring things you want-or news you need."

"That much is true." Now the eyes seemed to glitter a little. From amus.e.m.e.nt? Or greed?

"And if the news is really, really valuable? What'd be the reward then?"

The star-woman smiled, a grin full of friendship and promise. "Depending on how helpful or precious the information-the sky's the limit."

Rety had felt a thrill. She started to reach into her belt pouch. But Besh stopped her. "Not now," the woman said in a low voice. "It is not discreet."

Looking left and right, Rety realized there were other patients around, and employees of the forayers-members of the Six serving as a.s.sistants in the aliens' many enterprises. Any one could be a spy for the sages.

"Tonight," Besh had told her in a low voice. "Rann goes walking each evening, down by the stream. Wait next to the stand of yellow boo. The one just coming into bloom. Come alone, and speak to no one you see along the way."

Great! Rety had thought jubilantly on leaving the tent. They're interested! It's exactly what I was hoping for. And just in the nick o' time.

All might have been lost if it had taken much longer to make contact. The chief human sage had decreed she must leave tomorrow, accompanying a small donkey caravan aimed up into the mountains, along with two silent men and three big women she had never met before. Nothing was said, but she knew the goal was to catch up with Dwer, and from there head back to the wilderness she came from.