Dwer didn't bother adding anything to that. He set out down one of the narrow critter byways threading the spiky gra.s.s. It was some distance before he managed to put the donkey stench behind him, as well as the penetrating murmur of his companions' voices.

It's a bad idea to be noisy when the universe is full of things tougher than you are. But that never stopped humans, did it?

He sniffed the air and watched the sway of thigh-high gra.s.s/ In this kind of prairie, it was even more imperative to hunt upwind not only because of scent, but so the breeze might help hinder the racket of your own trampling feet from reaching the quarry-in this case a covey of bush quaile he sensed pecking and scratching, a dozen or so meters ahead.

Dwer nocked an arrow and stepped as stealthfully as he could, breathing shallowly, until he picked out soft chittering sounds amid the brushing stems ... a tiny ruckus of claws scratching sandy loam . . . sharp beaks pecking for seeds ... a gentle, motherly cluck . . . answering peeps as hatchlings sought a feathery breast . . . the faint puffs of junior adults, relaying news from the periphery that all is well. All is well.

One of the sentries abruptly changed its muted report. A breath of tentative alarm. Dwer stooped to make his profile lower and kept stock still. Fortunately, the twilight shadows were deepest to his back. If only he could manage to keep from spooking them for a few more ...

A sudden crashing commotion sent four-winged shapes erupting into the air. Another predator, Dwer realized, raising his bow. While most of the quaile scattered swiftly across the gra.s.stops and vanished, a few spiraled back to swoop over the intruder, distracting it from the brood-mother and her chicks. Dwer loosed arrows in rapid succession, downing one-then another of the guardians.

The ruckus ended as swiftly as it began. Except for a trampled area, the patch of steppe looked as if nothing had happened.

Dwer shouldered his bow and pulled out his machete. In principle, nothing that could hide under gra.s.s should be much of a threat to him, except perhaps a root scorpion. But there were legends of strange, nasty beasts in this realm southeast of the gentle Slope. Even a famished ligger could make a d.a.m.ned nuisance of itself.

He found the first bird where it fell.

This should make Lena happy for a while, he thought, realizing that might be a lifelong task, from now on.

The gra.s.s swayed again, near where he'd shot the second bird. He rushed forward, machete upraised. "Oh, no you don't, thief!"

Dwer braked as a slinky, black-pelted creature emerged with the other quaile clutched between its jaws. The b.l.o.o.d.y arrow trailed in the dust.

"You." Dwer sighed, lowering the knife. "I should've known."

Mudfoot's dark eyes glittered so eloquently, Dwer imagined words.

That's right, boss. Glad to see me?Don't bother thanking me for flushing the birds. I'll just keep this juicy one as payment.

He shrugged in resignation. "Oh, all right. But I want the arrow back, you hear?"

The noor grinned, as usual betraying no sign how much or how little it understood.

Night fell as they ambled toward the oasis. Flames flickered under a sheltering tree. The shifting breeze brought scents of donkey, human, and simmering porridge.

Better keep the fire small enough to seem a natural smolder, he reminded himself.

Then another thought occurred to Dwer.

Rety said noor never came over the mountains. So what's this one doing here?

Rety hadn't lied about there being herds of glaver, southeast of the Rimmers. After two days of swift trekking, loping at a half-jog beside the trotting donkeys, Dwer and the others found clear signs-the sculpted mounds where glavers habitually buried their feces.

"d.a.m.n . . . you're right ..." Danel agreed, panting with hands on knees. The two women, on the other hand, seemed barely winded.

"It looks . . . as if things . . . just got more complicated."

You could say that, Dwer thought. Years of careful enforcement by hunters like himself had all been in vain. We always figured the yellow gra.s.s could be crossed only by well-equipped travelers, never glavers. That's why we aimed most of our surveys farther north.

The next day, Dwer called a halt amid another jog, when he spied a throng of glavers in the distance, scrounging at one end of a scrub wadi. All four humans took turns observing through Danel Ozawa's urrish-made binoculars. The pale, bulge-eyed creatures appeared to be browsing on a steppe-gallaiter, a burly, long-legged beast native to this region, whose corpse lay sprawled across a patch of trampled gra.s.s. The sight stunned them all, except Jenin Worley.

"Didn't you say that's how to survive on the plains? By eating animals who can eat this stuff?" She flicked a stem of the sharp yellow gra.s.s. "So the glavers have adapted to a new way of life. Isn't that what we're gonna have to do?"

Unlike Danel Ozawa, who seemed sadly resigned to their mission, Jenin appeared almost avid for this adventure, especially knowing it might be their destiny to preserve the human race on Jijo. When he saw that zealous eagerness in her eyes, Dwer felt he had more in common with the st.u.r.dy, square-jawed Lena Strong. At least Lena looked on all this much the way he did-as one more duty to perform in a world that didn't care about anyone's wishes.

"It's . . . rather surprising," Danel replied, lowering the gla.s.ses and looking upset. "I thought it wasn't possible for glavers to eat red meat."

"Adaptability," Lena commented gruffly. "One of the hallmarks of presentience. Maybe this means they're on their way back up, after the long slide down."

Danel seemed to consider this seriously. "So soon? If so, I wonder. Could it mean-"

Dwer interrupted before the sage had a chance to go philosophical on them. "Let me have those," he said, taking the gla.s.s-and-boo magnifiers. "I'll be right back."

He started forward at a crouch. Naturally, Mudfoot chose to tag along, scampering ahead, then circling repeatedly to stage mock-ambushes. Dwer's jaw clenched, but he refused to give the beast the satisfaction of reacting. Ignore it. Maybe it'll go away.

That hadn't worked so far. Jenin seemed thrilled to have Mudfoot as a mascot, while Danel found its tenacity intriguing. Lena had voted with the others, overruling Dwer's wish to send it packing. "It weighs next to nothing," she said. "Let it ride a donkey, so long as it fetches its own food and stays out of the way."

That' it did, scrupulously avoiding Lena, posing for Danel's pensive scrutiny, and purring contentedly when Jenin petted it by the campfire each evening.

In my case, it acts as if being irritated were my bean's desire.

While creeping toward the wadi, Dwer kept mental notes on the lay of the land, the crackling consistency of the gra.s.s stems, the fickleness of the breeze. He did this out of professional habit, and also in case it ever became necessary to do this someday for real, pursuing the glaver herd with arrows nocked and ready. Ironically that would happen only in the event of good news. If word came from the Slope that all was well-that the gene-raiders had departed without wreaking the expected genocide-then this expedition would revert to a traditional Mission of Ingathering-a militia enterprise to rid this region of all glavers and humans, preferably by capture, but in the end by any means necessary.

On the other hand, a.s.suming the worst did happen out west and all the Six Races were wiped out, their small group would join Rety's family of renegades as exiles in the wilderness. Under Danel's guidance, they would tame Rety's cousins and create simple, wise traditions for living in harmony with their new home.

One of those traditions would be to forbid the sooners from ever again hunting glavers for food.

That was the b.l.o.o.d.y incongruity Dwer found so hard to take, leaving little option or choice. Good news would make him a ma.s.s-killer. Contrariwise, horrible news would make him a gentle neighbor to glavers and men.

Duty and death on one side. Death and duty on the other. Dwer wondered, 7s survival really worth all this?

From a small rise, he lifted the binoculars. Two families of glavers seemed to be feeding on the gallaiter, while others kept watch. Normally, such a juicy corpse would be cleaned down to a white skeleton, first by liggers or other large carnivores, then hickuls with heavy jaws for grinding bones, and finally by flyers known simply as vultures, though they looked like nothing in pictures from Old Earth.

Even now, a pack of hickuls swarmed the far periphery of the clearing. A glaver rose up on her haunches and hurled a stone. The scavengers scattered, whining miserably.

Ah. I see how they do it.

The glavers had found a unique way to live on the steppe. Unable to digest gra.s.s or boo, or to eat red meat, they apparently used cadavers to attract hordes of insects from the surrounding area, which they consumed at leisure while others in the herd warded off all compet.i.tion.

They seemed to be enjoying themselves, holding squirmy things before their globelike eyes, mewling in approval, then catching them between smacking jaws. Dwer had never seen glavers act with such-enthusiasm. Not back where they were treated as sacred fools, encouraged to root at will through the garbage middens of the Six.

Mudfoot met Dwer's eyes with a revolted expression.

Ifni, what pigs! All right if we charge in there now? Bust 'em up good, boss. Then herd 'em all back to civilization, like it or not?

Dwer vowed to curb his imagination. Probably the noor simply didn't like the smell.

Still he chided Mudfoot in a low voice.

"Who are you to find others disgusting, Mister lick-myself-all-over? Come on. Let's tell the others, glavers haven't gone carnivorous, after all. We have more running ahead, if we're to make it out of this sting-gra.s.s by nightfall."

Asx MORE WORD ARRIVES FROM THE FAR SOUTH, SENT by the smith of Mount Guenn Forge. The message was spa.r.s.e and distorted, having come partly by courier, and partly conveyed between mountain peaks by inexperienced mirror-flashers, in the partly-restored semaph.o.r.e system.

Apparently, the alien forayers have begun visiting all the fishing hamlets and red qheuen rookeries, making pointed inquiries. They even landed in the water, far out at sea, to badger the crew of a dross-hauler, on its way home from holy labors at the Midden. Clearly the interlopers feel free to swoop down and interrogate our citizens wherever they dwell, with questions about "strange sights, strange creatures, or lights in the sea."

Should we make up a story, my rings? Should we fabulate some tale of ocean monsters to intrigue our unwanted guests and possibly stave off fate for a while?

a.s.suming we dare, what would they do to us when they learn the truth?

Lark ALL THAT MORNING, LARK WORKED NEXT TO LING in a state of nervous tension, made worse by the fact that he did not dare let it show. Soon, with luck, he would have his best chance to line things up just right. It would be a delicate task though, doing spywork at the behest of the sages while also probing for information he needed, for reasons of his own.

Timing would be everything.

The Evaluation Tent bustled with activity. The whole rear half of the pavilion was stacked with cages made by qheuenish crafters out of local boo, filled with specimens brought from all over this side of Jijo. A staff of humans, urs, and hoon labored full-time to keep the animals fed, watered, and healthy, while several local g'Kek had shown remarkable talent at running various creatures through mazes or performing other tests, supervised by robots whose instructions were always in prim, flawless Galactic Two. It had been made clear to Lark that it was a mark of high distinction to be asked to work directly with one of the star-humans.

His second airborne expedition had been even more exhausting than the first, a three-day voyage beginning with a zigzag spiral far out to sea, cruising just above the waves over the dark blue expanse of the Midden, then hopping from one island to the next along an extended offsh.o.r.e archipelago, sampling a mult.i.tude of wildly varied life-forms Lark had never seen before. To his surprise, it turned out to be a much more enjoyable trip than the first.

For one thing, Ling grew somewhat less condescending as they worked together, appreciating each other's skills. Moreover, Lark found it stirring to see what evolution had wrought during just a million fallow years, turning each islet into a miniature biological reactor, breeding delightful variations. There were flightless avians who had given up the air, and gliding reptiloids that seemed on the verge of earning wings. Mammiforms whose hair grew in h.o.r.n.y protective spikes, and zills whose coatings of fluffy torg shimmered with colors never seen on their bland mainland cousins. Only later did he conclude that some of the diversity might have been enhanced from the start, by Jijo's last legal tenants. Perhaps the Buyur seeded each isle with different genetic stock as part of a very long scale experiment.

Ling and Besh often had to drag him away when it came time to leave a sampling site, while Kunn muttered irascibly by his console, apparently happy only when they were aloft. On landing, Lark was always first to rush out the hatch. For a while, all the dour brooding of his dreams lay submerged under a pa.s.sion for discovery.

Still, as they cruised home on the last leg-another unexplained back-and-forth gyration over open sea-he had found himself wondering. This trip was marvelous, but why did we go? What did they hope to accomplish? Even before humans left Earth, biologists knew-higher life-forms need room to evolve, preferably large continents. Despite the wild variety encountered on the archipelago, there wasn't a single creature the star-folk could hope to call a candidate for uplift.

Sure enough, when he rejoined Ling the next day, the outlander woman announced they would return to a.n.a.lyzing rock-stallers, right after lunch. Besh had already resumed her intensive investigation of glavers, clearly glad to be back to work on her best prospect.

Glavers. The irony struck Lark. Yet he held back his questions, biding his time.

Finally, Ling put down the chart they had been working on-duplicating much that already covered the walls of his Dolo Village study-and led him to the table where machines offered refreshments in the sky-human fashion. The light was very good there, so Lark gave a furtive nod to a small man cleaning some animal pens. The fair-haired fellow moved toward a stack of wooden crates, used for hauling foodstuffs for the raucous zoo of captive creatures.

Lark positioned himself at the south end of the table so he would not block the man's view of Ling, as well as Besh and everything beyond. Especially Ling. For this to work, he must try to keep her still for as long as possible.

"Besh seems to think you've found yourselves a first-cla.s.s candidate species."

"Mm?" The dark-eyed woman looked up from a complex machine lavishly dedicated to producing a single beverage-a bitter drink Lark had tried just once, appropriately named coughee.

"Found what?" Ling stirred a steaming mug and leaned back against the edge of the table.

Lark gestured at the subject Besh studied, complacently chewing a ball of sap while a contraption perched on its head, sifting neurons. There had been a spurt of excitement when Besh swore she heard the glaver "mimic" two spoken words. Now Besh seemed intent, peering through her microscope, guiding a brain probe with tiny motions of her hands, sitting rock still.

"I take it glavers have what you seek?" Lark continued.

Ling smiled. "We'll know better when our ship returns and more advanced tests are made."

Out the corner of his eye, Lark saw the small man remove the cover from a hole in one side of a box. There was a soft sparkle of gla.s.s.

"And-when will the ship be back?" he asked, keeping Ling's attention.

Her smile widened. "I wish you folks would stop asking that. It's enough to make one think you had a reason for caring. Why should it matter to you when the ship comes?"

Lark blew his cheeks, hoon fashion, then recalled that the gesture would mean nothing to her. "A little warning would be nice, that's all. It takes time to bake a really big cake."

She chuckled, more heartily than his joke deserved. Lark was learning not to take umbrage each time he suspected he was being patronized. Anyway, Ling wouldn't be laughing when shipboard archives revealed that glavers-their prime candidate for uplift-were already Galactic citizens, presumably still flitting around their own backwater of s.p.a.ce, in secondhand ships.

Or would even the star-cruiser's...o...b..ard records reveal it? According to the oldest scrolls, glavers came from an obscure race among the myriad sapient clans of the Five Galaxies. Maybe, like the g'Kek, they had already gone extinct and no one remembered them, save in the chilly recesses of the largest-sector branch Libraries.

This might even be the moment foretold long ago by the final glaver sage, before humans came to Jijo. A time when restored innocence would shrivel their race, peel away their sins, and offer them a precious second chance. A new beginning.

If so, they deserve better than to be adopted by a pack of thieves.

"Suppose they prove perfect in every way. Will you take them with you when you go?"

"Probably. A breeding group of a hundred or so."

Peripherally, he glimpsed the small man replacing the cover of the camera lens. With a satisfied smile, Bloor the Portraitist casually lifted the box, carrying it outside through the back tent flap. Lark felt a knot of tension release. Ling's face might be a bit blurry in the photo, but her clothes and body stood a good chance of coming through, despite the long exposure time. By good fortune, Besh, the glaver, a robot, and a sleeping rock-staller had remained still the entire time. The mountain range, seen through the open entrance, would pin down location and season of the year.

"And what of the rest?" he asked, relieved to have just one matter on his mind now.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what will happen to all the glavers you leave behind?"

Her dark eyes narrowed. "Why should anything happen to them?"

"Why indeed?" Lark shifted uncomfortably. The sages wanted to maintain the atmosphere of tense ambiguity for a while longer rather than confront the aliens directly over their plans. But he had already done the sages' bidding by helping Bloor. Meanwhile, Harullen and the other heretics were pressuring Lark for answers. They must decide soon whether to throw their lot in with the zealots' mysterious scheme.

"Then . . . there is the matter of the rest of us."

"The rest of you?" Ling arched an eyebrow.

"We Six. When you find what you seek, and depart- what happens to us?"

She groaned. "I can't count the number of times I've been asked about this!"

Lark stared. "Who-?"

"Who hasn't?" She blew an exasperated sigh. "At least a third of the patients we treat on clinic day sidle up afterward to pump us about how we'll do it. What means do we plan to use when we finally get around to killing every sentient being on the planet! Will we be gentle? Or will it come as firebolts from heaven, on the day we depart? It gets so repet.i.tious, sometimes I want to-agh!" She clenched her fist, frustration apparent on her normally composed features.

Lark blinked. He had planned edging up to the very same questions.

"Folks are frightened," he began. "The logic of the situation-"

"Yes, yes. I know," Ling interrupted impatiently. "If we came to steal presapient life-forms from Jijo, we can't afford to leave any witnesses. And especially, we can't leave any native stock of the species we stole! Honestly, where do you people get such ideas?"

From books, Lark almost answered. From the warnings of our ancestors.

But, indeed, how well could those accounts be trusted? The most detailed had been lost to fire soon after humans arrived. Anyway, weren't humans naive newcomers on the Galactic scene back in those days, worried to the point of paranoia? And wasn't it the most paranoid who had boarded the Tabernacle, smuggling themselves to a far, forbidden world to hide?

Might the danger be exaggerated?