The Scrolls offer some guidance on these matters. But since most date from the first two or three landings, they shed little light on one of the greatest mysteries.

Why did so many come to this small patch of ground, in such a short span of time?

Against the half a million years since the Buyur left, two thousand years is not very much. Moreover, there are many fallow worlds-so why Jijo? There are many sites on Jijo-so why the Slope?

Each question has answers. The great carbon-spewing star, lzmunuti, began shielding local s.p.a.ce only a few millennia ago. We are told this phenomenon somehow disabled robot sentinels patrolling routes to this system, easing the way for sneakships. There are also vague references to omens that a "time of troubles" would soon spread upheavals across the Five Galaxies. As for the Slope, its combination of robust biosphere and high volcanic activity a.s.sures that our works will be destroyed, leaving few traces we were ever here.

To some, these answers suffice. Others wonder, still.

Are we unique?

In some Galactic languages, the question does not even pa.r.s.e as sane. One can find a precedent for anything in the archives of a billion years. Originality is an illusion, everything that is also was.

Perhaps it is symptomatic of our low state-our uncivilised level of consciousness, compared with the G.o.dlike heights of our ancestors-but one still is tempted to wonder.

Might something unusual be going on here?

Spensir Jones, A Landing Day Homily Asx WE SAGES PREACH THAT IT IS FOOLISH TO a.s.sUME. Yet, during this, our greatest crisis, the invaders often turn out to know much that we thought safely hidden.

Should this surprise us, my rings? Are they not star-G.o.ds from the Five Galaxies?

Worse, have we been united? Have not many of the Six rashly exercised their right of dissent, currying favors from the sky-humans against our advice? Some of these have simply vanished-including the sooner girl who so vexed Lester with her ingrat.i.tude, daring to steal back the treasure she had brought, which intrigued our human sage for days on end. Does she even now dwell within the buried station, pampered as a g'Kek might groom a favorite zookir? Or else, did the sky-felons simply delete her, as a traeki voids its core of spent mulch, or as Earthling tyrants used to eliminate quislings who had finished serving their purpose?

For every secret the raiders uncover, there are as many ways they seem shockingly ignorant, for sky-G.o.ds.

It is a puzzlement-and small solace as we contemplate the proud, intimidating visitor who this morn came before the Council of Sages.

My rings, has memory of this event yet coated your waxy cores? Do you recollect the star-human, Rann, making his request? Asking that several from his group be invited along, when next we commune with the Holy Egg?

The request was courteous, yet it had aspects of a command.

We should not be surprised. How could the aliens not notice what is happening?

At first discernible only to the most sensitive, the tremors strengthen till now they pervade this corner of our world.

curling the mists that rise from geysers and steam pools, guiding patterned flocks of pa.s.sing birdlings, waking dormant rewq, both in caves and in our pouches, even permeating the myriad blue colors of the sky.

"We have heard much about your sacred stone," Rann said. "Its activity triggers fascination in our sensoria. We would see this wonder for ourselves."

"Very well," Vubben answered for the Six, wrapping three eyestalks in a gesture of a.s.sent. Indeed how could we refuse?

"Pray tell-how many will be in your party?"

Rann bowed again, imposing for a human, as tall as any traeki, broad in the shoulders as a young hoon. "There will be three. Myself and Ling, you have met. As for the third, his revered name is Ro-kenn, and it is inc.u.mbent to realize how you are about to be honored. Our master must be shown all expressions of courtesy and respect."

With varied eyes, visors, and sight patches, we sages winked and winced amazement. All save Lester Cambel, who muttered softly next to our traeki stack, "So the b.l.o.o.d.y Dakkins had one underground with them, all along."

Humans are surprising creatures, but Lester's breach in tact so stunned our rings that "i" was unanimously amazed. Did he not fear being overheard?

Apparently not. Through our rewq, i read Lester's ill-regard for the man across from us, and for this news.

As for the rest of the Council, it did not take rewq to note their curiosity, At long last, we were about to meet the Rothen.

Lark Dear Sara, The caravan bearing your letter took some time to get here, because of troubles on the plains. But how wonderful to see your familiar scrawl, and to hear you're well! And Father, when you saw him last. These days, there are few enough reasons to smile.

I'm dashing this off in hopes of catching the next brave kayak-courier to head down the Bibur. If it reaches Biblos before you leave, I hope I can persuade you not to come up here! Things are awful tense. Recall those stories we told each other about the dam, back home? Well, I wouldn't sleep in that attic room right now, if you smell my smoke. Please stay somewhere safe till we know what's happening.

As you asked, I've inquired carefully about your mysterious stranger. Clearly the aliens are seeking someone or something, beyond their goal of illicitly adopting a candidate species for uplift. I can't prove your wounded enigma-man isn't the object of their search, but I'd bet he's at most a small part of the picture.

I could be wrong. Sometimes I feel we're like kitchen-ants peering upward, trying to comprehend a human quarrel from the stir of shadows overhead.

Oh, I can picture your look right now! Don't worry, I'm not giving up! In fact, I have a different answer to the question you 're always asking me. . . . Yes, I have met a girl. And no, I don't think you'd approve of her. I'm not sure this boy does, either.

Smiling ironically, Lark finished the first page of the letter and put down his pen. He blew on the paper, then picked up his portable blotter, rolling the felt across the still damp lines of ink. He took a fresh sheet out of the leather portfolio, dipped the pen in the ink cup and resumed.

Along with this note you 'II get a hand-cranked copy of the latest report the sages are sending throughout the Commons, plus a confidential addendum for Ariana Foo. We've learned some new things, though so far nothing likely to a.s.sure our survival when the Rothen ship returns. Bloor is here, and I've been helping him put your idea into effect, though I see potential drawbacks to threatening the aliens, the way you recommend.

Lark hesitated. Even such veiled hints might be too much to risk. In normal times it would be unthinkable for anyone to tamper with someone else's mail. But such things used to be done by frantic factions during ancient Earthly crises, according to historical accounts. Anyway, what good would it do Sara to worry? Feeling like a wastrel, he crumpled the second sheet and started fresh.

Please tell Sage Foo that young Shirl, Kurt's daughter, arrived safely along with B-r, whose work proceeds as well as might be expected.

Meanwhile, I've followed up on your other queries. It's delicate questioning these s.p.a.ce people, who always make me pay with information useful to their criminal goals. I must also try not to arouse suspicion over why / want to know certain things. Still, I managed to bargain for a few answers.

One was easy. The star humans do not routinely use Anglic, or Rossic, or any other "barbaric wolfling tongue." That's how Ling put it the other day, as if those languages were much too vulgar and unrigorous for a properly scientific person to use. Oh, she and the others speak Anglic well enough to converse. But among themselves, they prefer GalSeven.

He paused to dip his pen in the cup of fresh ink.

It fits our notion that these humans do not come from the main branch of the race! They aren't representatives of Earth, in other words, but come instead from an offshoot that's bound in loyalty to the Rothen, a race claiming to be the long-lost patrons of humankind.

Recall how Mother used to have us debate the Origins Question? One of us arguing the Danikenite side and the other supporting the Darwinists? At the time it seemed interesting but pretty pointless, since all our facts were out of texts three hundred years old. Who would think we'd live to see an answer proclaimed on Jijo, before our eyes?

As to the validity of the Rothen claim, I can't add anything to the report except that Ling and the others seem pa.s.sionately to believe.

Lark took a sip from an earthenware cup of springwater. He dipped the pen again.

Now for the big news everyone's excited about. It seems we're about to get our first glimpse of one of these mysterious beings! Within hours, one or more Rothen are scheduled to emerge from their buried station and join a pilgrimage to the reawakening Egg! All this time, we never guessed their starship had left any of them behind with Rann and the others.

The Commons is tense as a violus that's been strung too tight. You could cut the anxiety here with an overused metaphor.

I'd better wrap this up if I'm to slip it in the mail packet.

Let's see. You also asked about "neural taps." Do the aliens use such things to communicate directly with computers and other devices?

I was going to answer yes. Ling and the rest do carry tiny devices that bring them voice and data information, arriving as if by magic from afar.

Then I reread your account of the Stranger's injury and reconsidered. The forayers command their machines by voice and gesture. I never saw anything like a brain-direct computer link, or the sort of "instant man-machine rapport" Ariana spoke of.

Now that I think about it Lark dipped the pen again, poised to continue, then stopped.

Footsteps clattered on the gravel path beyond his tent. He recognized the heavy, sc.r.a.pe-ratchet of a gray qheuen. Nor was it the casual, unpretentious rhythm of Uthen. This was a stately twist-and-swivel cadence, using a complex ripple of alternating feet-a difficult aristocratic step, taught by chitinous matriarchs who sometimes styled themselves royal queens.

Lark laid down his pen and closed the portfolio. A low, wide silhouette loomed against the tent flap. Harul-len's voice was accompanied by fluting sighs from three speech vents, each singing a different note in a high qheuenish dialect of Galactic Six.

"Friend Lark, are you within? Please greet me. I come bearing precious gifts."

Lark lifted the flap, shading his eyes as he emerged from dimness to face the lowering sun, poking sharp rays between rows of forest giants. "I greet you, Harul-len, faith-comrade," he replied in the same language.

Harullen wore pilgrim's robes draped across his pentagonal carapace, leaving the central cupola uncovered. The g'Kek-woven finery shimmered under glancing sunshine. It took a moment for Lark's adapting eyes to spot what else was different-something wound around the qheuen's ash-colored cupola.

"Aha," he commented, slipping into a more relaxed sevenish dialect. "So it's true. The mask renews its offer."

"To take nourishment of our bodies in exchange for revelation of the soul. Indeed. The mask returns among us. Caves which had seemed barren now swarm with labile young rewq, even as the Egg resumes its patterning song. Are these not good omens? Shall we rejoice?"

With a snap of one claw, Harullen signaled to a lornik, which had been crouching out of view behind its master. The small servant creature hurried around the qheuen's great flank, scuttling and twisting in a four-legged imitation of Harullen's own stately walk. With small, three-fingered hands it bore a box of polished wood, showing fluted traces of personal tooth-carving.

"From among this crop of cave fledglings, there were many shaped for n.o.ble human brows," Harullen continued. "Please accept these to choose from, as offerings of deep esteem."

Lark took the box from the lornik, knowing better than to thank or make eye contact with the shy creature. Unlike chimps and zookirs, lorniks seemed able to bond only with the race that brought their ancestors to Jijo, nearly a thousand years ago.

He lifted the delicately grooved lid of the gift box, which by qheuenish tradition had been gnawed by the giver and could never be used again for any other purpose. Inside, resting on a bed of garu sawdust, several cl.u.s.ters of brown-speckled tendrils quivered, coupled by colored bands of translucent film.

There's been so little time. I've had so many duties. This really is a fine favor. . . .

Still, all told, Lark would rather have gone to the caves and picked his next rewq for himself, as he had done on three other occasions since pa.s.sing p.u.b.erty. It seemed strange to choose one out of a box. What was he to do with the others?

Several tentacles raised tentatively, reaching toward the light, then twisting, searching. Only one pair showed no indecision, wafting gently in Lark's direction, spreading a gossamer web between them.

Well, it's a humaniform rewq, all right, he thought. It looks new, robust.

To feel diffident was only natural. A person usually held on to a personal rewq for many years. It had been painful to watch helplessly as the last one wasted in its moss-lined pouch, during the many weeks the Egg was silent. Nor could he share someone else's symbiont. Among humans, one was more likely to pa.s.s around a toothbrush than a rewq.

"My grat.i.tude is manifest in acceptance of this unexcelled gift," he said. Though reluctant, Lark lifted the squirming ma.s.s to his brow.

His former rewq had been like a pair of old shoes-or a favorite pair of urrish-made sungla.s.ses-comfortable and easy to use. This one twitched and wriggled in agitated eagerness, palpating his temples in avid search of rich surface veins where it might feed. The gauzy membrane spread taut over Lark's eyes, rippling with the rewq's own excitement, conveying nothing more useful than a wave of vertigo. It would take time to reach an understanding with the new creature. Ideally you let your old one teach the new, during an overlapping time before the elderly rewq died.

Ifni's miracles often have ironic timing. We had to face the aliens for so long without the help rewq might have offered. Now, at a critical moment, they return so suddenly that they may only prove a distracting hindrance.

Still, for courtesy's sake, he pretended pleasure, bowing and thanking Harullen for the fine gift. With luck, Harullen's own rewq would be noisy too, and not convey any of Lark's own mixed feelings.

The heretic leader's satisfaction was evident in a mincing, clattering dance of feet and dangling claws. The film over Lark's eyes added a blur of sparks that might be translated qheuenish emotions-or else just static from the excited, untrained rewq.

Then Harullen abruptly changed the subject, slipping into Anglic.

"You know that the time of pilgrimage is almost at hand?"

"I was just writing a letter. I'll don my robe 'and join our group at the Wheel Stone in a midura."

Partly because Ling requested Lark's presence, the . Sages had granted the heretical faction two sixes among the twelve twelves selected to make the first climb, setting forth to greet the rousing Egg. Since hearing the news, Lark had felt a familiar heat coming from the k.n.o.b of stone that hung by a thong around his neck. His reminder and penance. No pilgrimage was ever easy wearing that amulet.

"Very well, then," Harullen replied. "At the Wheel Stone we shall consider the zealots' latest entreaty before proceeding to join . . ."

The heretic's voice trailed off, m.u.f.fling as he crouched down, drawing all five legs into his carapace, bringing his sensitive tongue into contact with the ground. This time, Lark's rewq conveyed a vivid image of emotions- a halo depicting distaste mixed liberally with disapproval.

Harullen resumed. "There is another on the trail. One whose stone-hard lineage is belied by disorderly foot-haste."

One whose what is what? Lark puzzled. Sometimes the way other races used Anglic left him confused. Maybe it wasn't such a good thing the chaotic human language had become so popular on Jijo.

Soon he also felt ground-tremors, tickling the soles of his feet. A five-beat vibration even more familiar than Harullen's earlier footsteps. Similar to that rhythmic beat, yet simpler, less aristocratic, a pace too hurried and eager to waste time on etiquette or show.

Another armored form burst into view, trailing twigs and leaves.

Like Harullen, Uthen the Taxonomist was dressed for pilgrimage-in a carelessly draped, once-white rag that flapped behind him like somebody's old bedsheet. His carapace was a slightly deeper shade of slate than his disdainful cousin's. Like Harullen, Uthen wore a new rewq, which might explain his stumbling progress, twice veering off the path as if distracted by swarms of buzzing insects. Lark peeled his own reluctant symbiont back from his eyes. He needed no help reading his colleague's excitement.

"Lark-ark, Harullen-en," Uthen stammered out several vents, in unmatched timbres. Harullen scornfully turned his cupola while the newcomer caught his breath.

"Come quickly, both of you. They've come out!"

"Who's come-?" Lark began, before realizing that Uthen could mean but one thing.

He nodded. "Just give me a dura."

Lark ducked back under the tent flap, fumbled for his own pilgrimage robe, then paused by the writing desk. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the unfinished letter from under the folio and slid it into a sleeve, along with a sharpened pencil. Ink was more elegant and wouldn't smudge. Still, Sara wouldn't give a d.a.m.n, so long as the letter got there and contained the latest news.

"Come on!" Uthen urged, impatiently, when Lark reemerged. "Hop aboard and let's hoof it!" The gray qheuen scientist dipped one end of his sh.e.l.l to the ground. This time, Harullen groaned annoyance. Sure, kids did it all the time, but it wasn't dignified for an adult gray-especially one with ancestry like Uthen's-to go around carrying a human on his back. Still, they would move faster now, toward the Meadow of Concealed Aliens, hurrying to see the wonder that had emerged.

If anything, Ling understated when she called them beautiful.

Lark had never envisioned anything quite like them. Not when leafing through ancient picture books, or reading pre-Contact works of s.p.a.ce fiction. Not even in his dreams.

In the vernacular of Jijo's exiled tribes, it was common to call all Galactics "star-G.o.ds." Yet here, strolling a forest clearing, were beings that seemed all but literally worthy of the name, so exquisite were they to behold. Lark could stand it only for moments at a stretch, then had to look away lest his eyes fill with tears and his chest begin to ache.

Ling and the other forayer humans formed a guard of honor around their n.o.ble patrons, while vigilant robots hovered. Occasionally, one of the tall stoop-shouldered Rothen crooked a finger, beckoning Rann or Besh to lean upward and explain something, like children called on to recite, gesturing at a nearby tree, one of the tent-pavilions, a herd of spline beasts, or a shy infant g'Kek.

Crowds gathered. Proctors of Gathering, armed with red-dyed sticks, kept people from pressing too close, but there seemed small likelihood of a shameful outburst. Hardly anyone even whispered, so thick was the atmosphere of awe.

The effect seemed greatest on the humans present, most of whom stared with hushed wonderment and bewildered familiarity. Rothen were humanoid to an uncanny degree, with high n.o.ble foreheads, wide sympathetic eyes, eloquent noses, and droopy, soft-fringed eyebrows that seemed to purse with sincere, attentive interest in anyone or everything they encountered. Nor were these parallels coincidental, Lark supposed. Physical and emotional affinities would have been cultivated during the long process of uplift, tens of thousands of years ago, when Rothen experts tinkered and modified a tribe of graceless but promising apes back on Pliocene Earth, altering them gradually into beings almost ready for the stars.

That a.s.sumed these creatures really were humanity's long-hidden patrons, as Ling claimed. Lark tried to retain an att.i.tude of cautious neutrality but found it hard in the face of such evidence. How could this race be any other than humankind's lost patrons?

When the two august visitors were introduced to the a.s.sembled High Sages, Lark drew comfort from the serene expressions of Vubben, Phwhoon-dau, and the others, none of whom wore rewq for the occasion. Even Lester Cambel remained composed-at least on the outside-when presented to Ro-kenn and Ro-pol, whose names Rann proclaimed for all to hear.

By human standards, Ro-kenn appeared to be male. And though Lark tried not to be overly influenced by a.n.a.logies, the more delicate-featured Ro-pol struck him as possibly female. The crowd murmured when the two smiled-revealing small white teeth-conveying apparent pleasure at the meeting. Ro-pol's grin creased in ways that might even be called dimples. The word merry tempted Lark, as a way to describe the slighter Rothen's cheerful mien. It wouldn't be hard to like a face like that, so warm, open, and filled with understanding.

It makes sense, Lark thought. If the Rothen really are our patrons, wouldn't they have ingrained us with similar esteem patterns?

Nor were Earthlings alone affected. After all, the Six Races had a lot of experience with each other. You didn't have to be a qheuen to sense the charisma of a stately queen, so why shouldn't an urs, or hoon, or g'Kek sense this potent humanoid magnetism? Even without rewq, most of the nonhumans present seemed caught up in the prevailing mood-hope.

Lark recalled Ling's a.s.surance that the forayer mission would succeed without incident, and Jijo's Commons needn't be changed in any but positive ways. "It will all work out," she had said.