If the roof-of-stone had already fallen- Her mind shied away from the unendurable. Instead, she drew from her shoulder bag the draft ma.n.u.script of her second paper on Jijoan language. It was past time to consider what to say to Sage Bonner and the others, if they confronted her.

What have I been doing? Demonstrating on paper that chaos can be a form of progress. That noise can be informing.

I might as well tell them I can prove that black is white, and up is down!

Evidence suggests that long ago, when terran tribes were nomadic or pre-agricultural, most language groups were more rigidly structured than later on. For example, Earth scholars tried rebuilding proto-Indo-European, working backward from Latin, Sanskrit, Greek, and German, deriving a mother tongue strictly organized with many cases and declensions. A rule-based structure that would do any Galactic grammar proud.

In the margin, Sara noted a recent find from her readings, that one native North American tongue, Cherokee, contained up to seventy p.r.o.nouns-ways to say "I" and "you" and "we"-depending on context and personal relationship-a trait shared with GalSix.

To some, this implies humans must have once had patrons, who uplifted Earthling man-apes. Teachers who altered our bodies and brains and also taught a stern logic, through languages tailored to our needs.

Then we lost our guides. Through our own fault? Abandonment? No one knows.

After that, the theory goes, all Earthly languages devolved, spiraling back toward the apelike grunts protohumans used before uplift. . At the time our ancestors left Earth for Jijo, Galactic advisers were counseling that Anglic and other "wolfling" tongues be dropped in favor of codes designed for thinking beings.

Their argument can be ill.u.s.trated by playing the game of Telephone.

Take a dozen players, seated in a circle. Whisper a complex sentence to one, who then whispers the same message to the next, and so on. Question: how soon is the original meaning lost amid confusion and slips of the tongue? Answer: in Anglic, noise can set in from the very start. After just a few relays, a sentence can become hilariously twisted.

The experiment yields different results in Rossic and Nihanic, human grammars that still require verb, noun, and adjective endings specific to gender, ownership, and other factors. If a mistake creeps into a Rossic Telephone message, the altered word often stands out, glaringly. Acute listeners can often correct it automatically.

In pure Galactic languages, one might play Telephone all day without a single error. No wonder the game was unknown in the Five Galaxies, until humans arrived.

Sara had quickly recognized a version of Shannon coding, named after an Earthling pioneer of information theory who showed how specially coded messages can be restored, even from a jumble of static. It proved crucial to digital speech and data transmission, in pre-Contact human society.

Indo-European was logical, error-resistant, like Galactic tongues that suit computers far better than chaotic Anglic.

To many, this implied Earthlings must have had patrons in the misty past. But watching the Stranger commune happily with other engineers, in a makeshift language of grunts and hand gestures, reminded Sara It wasn't Indo-European speakers who invented computers. Nor users of any prim Galactic language. The star-G.o.ds received their mighty powers by inheritance.

In all the recent history of the Five Galaxies, just one folk independently invented computers-and nearly everything else needed for starfaring life-from scratch.

Those people spoke Rossic, Nihanic, French, and especially the forerunner of Anglic, wild, undisciplined English.

Did they do it despite their chaotic language?

Or because of it?

The masters of her guild thought she chased phantoms-that she was using this diversion to evade other obligations.

But Sara had a hunch. Past and present held clues to the destiny awaiting the Six.

That is, if destiny had not already been decided.

Dawn spilled quickly downslope from the Rimmers. It was in clear violation of emergency orders for the gopher to continue, but n.o.body dared say it to the captain, who had a crazed look in his eye.

Probably comes from spending so much time around humans, Sara thought. The steamers had as many men and women on the crew-to tend the machines-as noon sailors. Grawph-phu, the pilot and master, knew the river with sure instincts that arose out of his heritage. He also had picked up more than a few Earthling mannerisms, like wearing a knit cap over his furry pate and puffing a pipe that fumed like the steamer's chimney. Peering through the dawn haze, the captain's craggy features might have come from the flyleaf of some seafaring adventure tale, chosen off the shelves in the Biblos Library-like some piratical old-timer, exuding an air of confidence and close acquaintance with clanger.

Grawph-phu turned his head, noticed Sara looking at him, and closed one eye in a sly wink.

Oh, spare me, she sighed, half expecting the hoon to spit over the side and say-"Arr, matie. 'Tis a fine day for sailin'. Full speed ahead!"

Instead, the gopher's master pulled the pipe from his mouth and pointed.

"Biblos," he commented, a low, hoonish growl accented by a salty tw.a.n.g. "Just beyond the curve after next. Hr-rm. ... A day sooner 'n you expected to arrive."

Sara looked ahead once more. , should be glad, she thought. Time is short.

At first she could make out little but Eternal Swamp on the left bank, stretching impa.s.sably all the way to the Roney, an immensity of quicksand that forced the long detour past Tarek Town. On the right began the vast Warril Plain, where several pa.s.sengers had debarked earlier to arrange overland pa.s.sage. Taking a fast caravan were Bloor, the portraitist, and a pet.i.te exploser carrying dispatches for her guild. Both were slight enough to ride donkeys all the way and with luck might reach the Glade in three days. Prity and Pzora also went ash.o.r.e at Kandu Landing to hire carts in case the Stranger must be taken before the High Sages-to be decided during this trip to Biblos.

As the fog cleared, there now reared to the right a wall of stone, rising from the water line, getting taller with each pa.s.sing dura. The cliff shimmered, almost gla.s.sy smooth, as though impervious to erosion or time. Arguments raged as to whether it was natural or a Buyur relic.

Against these mirror-like cliffs, Ulgor had said the citizens of Dolo Village might see flames from burning books. Two centuries ago, settlers had witnessed such a sight, horrible even from afar. A disaster never equaled since, not by the ma.s.sacre at Tolon, or when Uk-rann ambushed Drake the Elder at b.l.o.o.d.y Ford.

But we saw no flames.

Still, tension reigned until the steamer turned a final bend. . . .

Sara let out a tense sigh. The Archive . . . it stands.

She stared for some time, awash in emotion, then hurried aft to fetch the Stranger and Ariana Foo. Both of them would want to see this.

It was a castle, adamant, impervious, carved with tools that no longer existed. G.o.dlike tools, sent to the deep soon after they cut this stronghold. A citadel of knowledge.

The original granite outcrop still jutted like a finger into the curving river, with its back braced against the shiny-smooth cliff. From above, it probably looked much as it always had, with woody thickets disguising atrium openings that let filtered daylight into courtyards and reading groves below. But from the dock where the gophertied up, one saw imposing defensive battlements, then row after row of ma.s.sive, sculpted pillars that held up the natural plateau, suspending its undermined weight as a roof against the sky.

Inside this abnormal cave, wooden buildings protected their precious contents against rain, wind, and snow-all except the inferno that once rocked the southern end, leaving rubble and ruin. In a single night, fully a third of the wisdom left by the Great Printing had gone up in smoke and despair.

The sections that would have been most useful today. Those devoted to Galactic society, its many races and clans. What remained gave only sketchy outlines of the complex bio-social-political relationships that fluxed through the Five Galaxies.

Despite the crisis, dawn summoned a stream of pilgrims from hostelries in the nearby tree-shrouded village, scholars who joined the gopher pa.s.sengers climbing a zigzag ramp toward the main gate. Traeki and g'Kek students caught their breath at resting spots. Red qheuens from the distant sea paused now and then to spray salt.w.a.ter over their cupolas. Ulgor and Blade gave them wide berth.

A donkey-caravan edged by the line of visitors, heading downhill. Wax-sealed crates told of precious contents. They're still evacuating, Sara realized. Taking advantage of the sages' delaying tactics.

Would she find empty shelves inside, as far as the eye could see?

Impossible! Even if they could somehow move so many volumes, where would they store them all?

The Stranger insisted on pushing Ariana's wheelchair, perhaps out of respect, or to show how far his physical recovery had come. In fact, his dusky skin now had a healthy l.u.s.ter, and his deep laughter was hearty. He stared in wonder at the mighty stone walls, then the drawbridge, portcullis, and militia guards. Instead of the token detail Sara recalled, now a full platoon patrolled the parapets, equipped with spears, bows, and arbalests.

Ariana looked pleased by the Stranger's reaction. The old woman glanced at Sara *with an expression of satisfaction.

He's never been here before. Even the damage he's suffered could not have erased a memory as vivid as Biblos. Either he is a rube from the farthest, most rustic human settlements, or else . . .

They pa.s.sed the final battlements, and the Stranger gazed in amazement at the buildings of the Archive itself. Wooden structures, modeled after stone monuments of Earth's revered past-the Parthenon, Edo Castle, and even a miniature Taj Mahal, whose minarets merged into four heavy pillars holding up part of the roof-of-stone. Clearly, the founders had a taste for the dramatically ironic, for all the ancient originals had been built to last, dedicated in their day to vain resistance against time, while these buildings had a different goal- to serve a function and then vanish, as if they had never been.

Even that was too much for some people.

"Arrog'ance!" muttered Jop, the tree farmer, who had chosen to come along when he learned of this expedition. "It all has to go, if we're ever to be blessed."

"In time, it must," Ariana Foo nodded, leaving vague whether she meant next week, or in a thousand years.

Sara saw fresh clay smeared over holes at the base of several great pillars. Just like back home, she realized. The explosers are making sure all is ready.

She could not help turning to glance behind Jop. Taking up the rear were the last two gopher pa.s.sengers, young Jomah, Henrik's son, and his uncle, Kurt. The elder exploser bent to point out structural features to the boy, using hand motions that made Sara think of tumbling chunks of ancient granite. She wondered if the Stranger, staring about in apparent delight, had any idea how little it would take to turn all this into rubble, indistinguishable from a hundred other places demolished by the Buyur when they departed, leaving the planet to revert to nature.

Sara felt a return of the old tightness in her shoulder blades. It hadn't been easy, at first, being a student in this place. Even when she had taken her books to the forest up top, to read under the shade of a homey garu tree, she could never shake off a sense that the whole plateau might shudder and collapse beneath her. For a while, the nervous fantasies had threatened her studies-until Joshu came along.

Sara winced. She had known it would all come back if she returned to this place. Memories.

"Nothing lasts forever," Jop added as they neared the Athenian portico of Central Hall, unaware how stingingly the words struck Sara's private thoughts.

Ariana agreed. "Ifni insists on it. Nothing can resist the G.o.ddess of change."

If the elder sage meant the remark to be sardonic, Sara missed her point. She was too deep in reminiscence to care, even as they neared the giant double doors- carved from the finest wood as a gift from the qheuen race, then bound with urrish bronze, lacquered by traeki secretions and painted by g'Kek artists. The work towered ten meters high, depicting in ornate symbolism the thing most treasured by all, the latest, best, and most hard-won accomplishment of Jijo's Commons in Exile.

The Great Peace.

This time, Sara hardly noticed when the Stranger gasped in appreciation. She couldn't share his pleasure. Not when all she felt within this place was sadness.

Asx THE PORTRAITIST DID NOT EVEN ASK TO REST after the long, hard trek from Kandu Landing. He set to work at once, preparing his materials-caustic chemicals and hard metals whose imperviousness to time make them suspect under Commons law-yet ideal for blackmail.

Others of his guild were already here, having come to Gathering in order to sell paper photographs of visitors, guildmasters, winners at the games-anyone vain enough to want a graven image keepsake to last out a lifetime, maybe two. A few of these skilled likeness-peddlers had offered to secretly record the invaders, but to what purpose? Paper portraits are designed to fade and rot, not last aeons. Better not to risk the aliens catching them in the act, and so discovering some of our hidden arts.

But Ariana, Bloor, and young Sara Koolhan appear to have come up with something different, have they not, my rings? Despite exhaustion from the road, Bloor appeared at once before us to show off the daguerreotype. An implausibly precise image stored on etched metal, centuries in age. Ur-Jah trembled as she fondled the accurate depiction of a great tattooed chieftain of old.

"If we attempt this, secrecy is essential. Our foes must not know how few pictures were taken," Phwhoon-dau pointed out, while privacy wasps swarmed our hidden tent-of-conclave, fluttering drops of bitter color from their glowing wings.

"The sky-G.o.ds must imagine that we have scribed hundreds of plates already safely hidden far from here, in so many deep places they could never find them all."

"True," Vubben added, his eyestalks "weaving a dance of caution. "But there is more. For this to work, the portraits cannot simply show the human invaders' faces. Of what use will that be as evidence, a million years hence? They must include the aliens' machines, and clear Jijoan landmarks, and also the local animals they inspect as candidates for ravishment."

"And their costumes, their garish garb," Lester Cambel inserted urgently. "Any identifiers to show they are renegade humans. Not representatives of our sept on Jijo, or of Earth."

We all a.s.sented to this last request, though it seems futile to satisfy. How could a few etched plates express such fine distinctions to prosecutors so long after we are gone?

We asked Bloor to consult with our agents, bearing all these criteria in mind. If anything comes of this, it will indeed be a miracle.

We believe in miracles, do we not, my rings? Today, the rewq in our/my pouch came out of dormant state. So did that of Vubben, our Speaker of Ignition. Others report stirrings.

Is it possible to call this cause for hope? Or have they only begun awakening, as rewq sometimes do in the last stages of illness, shortly before they roll up and die?

Dwer THE TRAIL OVER THE RIMMERS WAS STEEP AND broken. That never mattered during Dwer's prior trips into the eastern wilderness-survey sweeps sanctioned by the sages-carrying just his bow, a map, and a few necessities. The first time, right after old Fallon's retirement, he got so elated that he ran down to the misty plains letting gravity yank him headlong, yelling as he leaped from one teetering foothold to the next.

There was none of that now. No exhilaration. No contest of youth and skill against Jijo's ardent hug. This was a sober affair, coaxing a dozen heavily laden donkeys over patches of unsteady footing, using patient firmness to overcome the animals' frequent bouts of stubbornness. He wondered how Urrish traders made it look so easy, guiding their pack trains with shrill, clipped whistles.

And they say these things come from Earth? he wondered, dragging yet another donkey out of trouble. Dwer wasn't warm to the idea of being a close genetic cousin to such creatures.

Then there were the human charges he must also shepherd into the wilderness.

In fairness, it could have been worse. Danel Ozawa was an experienced forester, and the two women were strong, with their own unique skills. Still, nothing back on the tame Slope compared to this kind of trekking. Dwer found himself frequently moving up and down the train, helping his companions out of jams.

He wasn't sure which unnerved him more, the stolid indifference of Lena Strong or the gawky friendliness of Jenin Worley, frequently catching his eye with a shy smile. They had been obvious choices, since Jenin and Lena were already at Gathering to lobby for their "tourism" idea-hoping to enlist Dwer's help, and approval from the sages, to start taking groups of "sight-seers" over the Rimmers.

In other words, bright people with too much time on their hands, overly influenced by notions they found in old Earth books.

I was going to fight it. Even same-s.e.x groups risked violating the anti-sooner covenant.

But now-I'm part of a scheme to break the law I'm sworn to uphold.

He couldn't help glancing repeatedly at the two women, the same way they were surely appraising him.

They sure looked . . . healthy.

You're a true wild man now. Learn to prize the-honest virtues of wild females.

There would be women in the Gray Hills, too, but Rety said most of them began childbirth at fourteen. Few kept more than half their teeth past age thirty.

There was supposed to be a second group of volunteer exiles from the Slope, following behind this one. For their sake, Dwer smeared dabs of porl paste on prominent landmarks every half a midura or so, blazing a trail any moderately competent Jijoan could follow, but that should be untraceable by Galactic raiders or their all-seeing machinery.

Dwer would rather be home at the bitter end, preparing to fight hopelessly against the aliens, alongside other militia soldiers of the Six. But no one was better qualified to lead this expedition to the Gray Hills, and he had given Danel his word.

So now I'm a tour-guide, after all, he thought.

If only he felt sure it was right.

What are we doing? Fleeing to another place we don't belong, just like our sinner ancestors? It made Dwer's head ache to think about such things. Just please don't let Lark find out what I'm doing. It'd break his bean.

The trek grew a little easier when they spilled off the mountain onto a high steppe. But unlike his other expeditions, this time Dwer turned south, toward a rolling domain of bitter yellow gra.s.s. Soon they were stomping through a prairie of calf-high shoots, whose florets had sharp tips, forcing the humans-and even the donkeys-to wear leather leggings for protection.

No one complained, or even murmured discomfort. Danel and the others took his guidance without question, wiping sweat from their hat brims and collars as they slogged alongside the stolid donkeys. Fortunately, scattered oases of real forest helped Dwer pilot the company from one water source to the next, leaving markers for the next group.

Rety must've been dogged to cross all this, chasing after her d.a.m.n bird.

Dwer had suggested waiting for the girl. "She's your real guide," he had told Danel.

"Not true," Ozawa demurred. "Would you trust her advice? She might steer us wrong in some misguided gesture to protect her loved ones."

Or to avoid ever seeing them again. Still, Dwer wished Rety had made it back in time to depart with this group. He kind of missed her, sullen sarcasm and all.

He called a halt at a large oasis, more than an hour before sunset. "The mountains will cut off daylight early," he told the others. Westward, the peaks were already surrounded by a nimbus of yellow-orange. "You three should clear the water hole, tend the animals, and set up camp."

"And where are you going?" Lena Strong asked sharply, mopping her brow.

Dwer strapped on his hip quiver. "To see about shooting some supper."

She gestured at the sterile-looking steppe. "What, here?"

"It's worth a try, Lena," Danel said, slashing at some yellow gra.s.s with a stick. "With the donkeys unable to eat this stuff, our grain must last till we hit hill country, where they can forage. A little meat for the four of us could help a lot."