"The way is blocked," a galloping messenger cries, hastening back with word. "A rope barrier bars the path, with a banner upon it!"

NO INFIDEL DESECRATION.

KEEP SKY FILTH AWAY.

JIJO WILL NOT BE MOCKED!.

This can only be the work of zealots.

Frustration spins round our core. The fanatics chose a fine time to make their gesture!

We sages must go see. Even Vubben makes haste, and my basal segments labor to keep up. Ro-kenn strides with graceful ease, seeming unperturbed.

And yet, my rings, is this variance we observe, in Ro-kenn's aura? Through our rewq, we sense discrepancy between parts of his face, as if the Rothen's outward calm masks a canker of seething wrath.

Can rewq read so much from an alien form we just met, this very day? Is it because i have one of the few older rewq, surviving from earlier days? Or do we notice this because traeki are tuned to perceive disunity of self?

Ahead-the defiant banner.

Above-perched on cliffs, shouting youths brandish foolish (but brave!) weapons.

Below-Phwhoon-dau, with his booming voice, calls to them, asking them to state their demands.

Their reply? Echoing down canyons and steam-fumaroles-a command that the aliens depart! Never to return. Or else suffer vengeance by the greatest force on Jijo.

The zealots threaten the Rothen with the Egg?

But did not Ro-kenn just claim the great ovoid as his to command?

Across the Rothen's visage flows what i interpret as cool amus.e.m.e.nt. He calls the zealots' bluff.

"Shall we see who has the power to back up their claims?" the star-G.o.d asks. "This night the Egg, and all Jijo, will sing our truth."

Lester and Vubben plead for restraint, but Ro-kenn ignores them. Still smiling, he commands robots to each side of the gorge, to seize the anchor bolts holding the barrier in place. Overhead, the rebel leader stretches her long neck, keening a curse in plains dialect, invoking the sacred power of Jijo to renew. To cleanse impudent dross with fire.

The young zealot is a fine showman, stamping her hooves, foretelling awful punishments. Our more credulous rings find it possible, for a moment, to believe- to believe- to believe- What is happening?

What-is-happening?

What impressions pour in now, faster than wax can melt?

Then penetrate awareness, ring after ring in a manner that makes all events equal in both timing and import?

What is happening?

twin lightning bolts outline many twelves of pilgrims, their shadows fleeing from white flame . . .

crackling metal complains . . . shattered . . . unable to fly . . . a pair of tumbling cinders . . .

after-image of demolition . . . two junk piles smolder . . . more dross to collect and send to sea . . .

With other eye-patches, we/i glimpse horrified surprise on the face of Rann, the sky-human.

surrounding Ro-kenn, a schism of variance like a traeki sundered between one ring that is jolly and a neighbor filled with wrath . . .

And now, though surfeited with impressions, suddenly there is more!

with eye-patches on the opposite side, we are first to glimpse a fiery spike . . .

a searing brightness climbs the western sky . rising from the Glade of Gathering . .

the ground beneath us trembles . . .

actual sound takes a while longer to arrive, battling upward through thin air to bring us a low groan, like thunder!

At last, the pace of events slows enough for our spinning vapors to keep up. Happenings occur in order. Not disjointed, parallel.

Review, my rings!

Did we perceive two robots destroyed, even as they tore down the zealots' barrier?

Then were we dazzled by some vast explosion behind us? Toward the Glade of Gathering?

What had been a pilgrimage of union dissolves into a mob. Small groups hurry downhill toward a dusty, moon-lit pall, left by that brief flame. Humans hang close together, for protection, clinging to their remaining hoonish and qheuenish friends, while other qheuens and many urs clatter by, aloof, scornful, even threatening in their manner.

Ro-kenn no longer walks but rides a cushioned plate between his two remaining robots, speaking urgently into a handheld device, growing more agitated by the moment. His human servants seem in shock.

The female, Ling, holds the arm of Lark, our young human biologist. Uthen offers a ride, and they climb aboard his broad gray back. All three vanish down the trail after Ro-kenn.

Bravely, Knife-Bright Insight proposes similarly to carry this pile of rings, this Asx!

Can i/we refuse? Already, Phwhoon-dau totes Vubben in his strong, scaly arms. The hoon sage lugs the g'Kek so both might hurry downhill and see what has happened.

By majority ballot, our rings choose to accept the offer. But after several duras of jouncing qheuenish haste, there are calls for a recount! Somehow, we clamp down, managing to hang on to her h.o.r.n.y sh.e.l.l, wishing we had walked.

Time pa.s.ses through a gelatin of suspense, teasing us with idle speculation. Darkness swallows wisdom. Glittering stars seem to taunt.

Finally, at an overlooking bluff, we jostle with others for a view.

Can you sense it, my rings?

Unified now, in shock, i see a steaming crater, filled with twisted metal. The sanctuary where Ro-kenn and the sky-humans dwelled among us for weeks. Their buried outpost-now a fiery ruin.

Acting with hot-blooded decisiveness, Ur-Jah and Les-ter call for volunteers to leap into that smoky pit, reckless of their own lives, heroically attempting rescue. But how could anyone survive within the wrecked station? Can anyone be found alive?

We all share the same thought. All members of the Six. All of my rings.

Who can doubt the power of the Egg? Or the fury of a planet scorned?

The Stranger Doors seem to open with every song he rediscovers, as if old melodies are keys to unlock whole swaths of time. The earlier the memory, the more firmly it seems attached to a musical phrase or snippet of lyrics. Nursery rhymes, especially, take him swiftly down lanes of reclaimed childhood.

He can picture his mother now, singing to him in the safety of a warm room, lying sweetly with ballads about a world filled with justice and love-sweet lies that helped fix his temperament, even when he later learned the truth about a bitter, deadly universe.

A string of whimsical ditties brings back to mind the bearded twins, two brothers who for many years shared the Father Role in his family-web, a pair of incurable jokers who routinely set all six of the young web-sibs giggling uncontrollably at their quips and good-natured antics. Reciting some of the simplest verses over and over, he finds he can almost comprehend the crude punchlines-a real breakthrough. He knows the humor is puerile, infantile, yet he laughs and laughs at the old gag-songs until tears stream down his cheeks.

Arianafoo plays more records for him, and several release floods of excitement as he relives the operettas and musical plays he used to love in late adolescence. A human art form, to help ease the strain as he struggled, along with millions of other earnest young men and women, to grasp some of the lofty science of a civilization older than most of the brightest stars. He felt poignant pain in recovering much of what he once had been. Most words and facts remain alien, un.o.btainable-even his mother's name, or his own, for that matter-but at least he begins to feel like a living , being, a person with a past. A man whose actions once had meaning to others. Someone who had been loved.

Nor is music the only key! Paper offers several more. When the mood strikes, he s.n.a.t.c.hes up a pencil and sketches with mad abandon, using up page after page, compelled to draw even though he knows each sheet must cost these impoverished folk dearly.

When he spies Prity doodling away, graphing a simple linear equation, he delightedly finds that he understands! Math was never his favored language, but now he discovers a new love for it. Apparently, numbers hadn't quite deserted him the way speech had.

There is one more communion that he realizes while being treated by Pzora, the squishy pile of donut-rings that used to frighten him so. It is a strange rapport, as foreign to words as day is to night. Robbed of speech, he seems better attuned to notice Pzora's nuances of smell and touch. Tickling shimmers course his body, triggered by the healer's ever-changing vapors. Again, his hands seem to flutter of their own accord, answering Pzora's scent-queries on a level he 'can only dimly perceive.

One does not need words to notice irony. Beings shaped much like this one had been his deadly foes-this he knew without recalling how. They were enemies to all his kind. How strange then that he should owe so much to a gentle pile of farting rings.

All these tricks and surprises offer slim rays of hope through his desolation, but it is music that seems the best route back to whoever he once was. When Arianafoo offers him a choice of instruments, laid out in a gla.s.s case, he selects one that seems simple enough to experiment with, to use fishing for more melodies, more keys to unlock doors.

His first awkward efforts to play the chosen instrument send, clashing noises down the twisty aisles of this strange temple of books, hidden beneath a cave of stone. He strives diligently and manages to unloose more recollections of childhood, but soon discovers that more recent memories are harder to shake free. Perhaps in later life he had less time to learn new songs, so there were fewer to a.s.sociate with recent events.

Events leading to a fiery crash into that horrid swamp.

The memories are there, he knows. They still swarm through his dreams, as they once thronged his delirium. Impressions of vast, vacuum vistas. Of vital missions left undone. Of comrades he feels shamed to have forgotten.

Bent over the instrument with its forty-six strings, he hammers away, one and two notes at a time, seeking some cue, some tune or phrase that might break the jam-up in his mind. The more it eludes him, the more certain he grows that it is there.

He begins to suspect it is no human song he seeks, but something quite different. Something both familiar and forever strange.

That night, he dreams several times about water. It seems natural enough, since Sara had made it clear they would be departing on the steamboat tomorrow, leaving behind the great hall of paper books, heading for the mountain where the starship landed.

Another ship voyage might explain the vague, watery images.

Later, he knew better.

XXI. THE BOOK OF THE SEA.

In traveling the downward path, that of redemption, be not unaware of what you seek.

To divorce your racial destiny from your former clan, from your a.s.sociations, from the patrons who first gave your species speech, and reason, and starflight.

You are saying that they failed the first time.

That someone else should have a new chance to adopt your kind and try again.

There is n.o.bility in this gamble.

n.o.bility and courage.

But do not expect grat.i.tude from those you have spurned.

The Scroll of Exile Alvin's Tale THE DAY CAME. AFTER ALL OUR FANTASIES, preparations, and endless details, there we were at last, the four of us, standing by the open hatch of Wuphon's Dream.

"Shoulda built a raft instead," Huck muttered nervously, while static from her nearest wheel hub made my leg hair stand out. "There's lots of rivers we could've explored all summer, all by ourselves. Done some nice quiet fishing, too."

I was hyperventilating my throat sacs, as if packing their livid tissues with pure oxygen would help much where we were going! Fortunately, Tyug had provided each of us with mild relaxant drugs, which might explain Ur-ronn's easy composure.

"I couldn't've gone on a raft," Ur-ronn replied, in flat deadpan tones. "I'd've gotten wet."

We all turned to stare at her, then each of us, in our own way, burst out laughing. Pincer whistled, Huck guffawed, and I umbled till it hurt. Oh, Ur-ronn-what a character!

"You're right," added Pincer-Tip. "The hot-air balloon would have been a much better plan. Let's talk Uriel into doing a retrofit-fit."

"Hush up, you two!" Huck chided, a little unfairly, since she had started it. We all turned as Uriel approached, Tyug following two paces behind. The traeki's little partial, Ziz, now recovered from its distending ordeal, lay back in its a.s.signed cage, under the Dream's bubble window.

"You have your charts?" Uriel inspected Pincer's pouch to make sure. Made of laminated plastic by a human-invented process, the sheets were tough, durable, and therefore somewhat less than legal. But we were heading for the Midden anyway, so wasn't it all right? We had studied the course chosen by Uriel, to follow as soon as the Dream's wheels touched the muddy bottom.

"Compa.s.s?"

Both Pincer and Ur-ronn were equipped. Huck's magnetically driven axles shouldn't interfere much, if she didn't get too excited.

"We've gone over contingency tactics and rehea.r.s.ed as nuch as fossifle, given our haste. I hope." Uriel shook her head in the manner of a human expressing regret. "There's just one thing left to cover, an ovject you are to seek out, while down there. A thing I need you to find."

Huck craned an eyestalk around to semaph.o.r.e me.

See? I told you so! she flashed in visual GalTwo. Huck had maintained for days that there must be some item Uriel desperately wanted. An ulterior motive for all this support. Something we alone, with our amateur bathy, were qualified to find. I ignored her smug boast. The problem with Huck is that she's right just often enough to let her think it's a law of nature.

"This is what you are looking for," Uriel said, lifting up a sketch pad so that no one but we four could see, showing a spiky shape with six points, like a piece in a child's game of jacks. Tendrils, or long cables, stretched outward from two of the arms, trailing in opposite directions off the page. I wondered if it might be some kind of living thing.

"It is an artifact we need rather urgently," Uriel went on. "Even nore infortant than the artifact, however, is the strand of wire running away fron it. It is this strand that you seek, that you shall seize and fasten with the retrieval cord, so that we can haul it vack."

Sheesh, I thought. The four of us were modernist gloss-junkies who would gladly raid the Midden for treasure, even in defiance of the Scrolls. But now to have a sage order us to do that very thing? No wonder she preferred not letting nearby citizens in on this heresy!

"Will do!" Pincer exclaimed, briefly teetering on two legs in order to salute with three. As for the rest of us, we already stood on the ramp. What were we going to do? Use this as an excuse to back out?

All right, I considered it. So strap me to the Egg and sing till I confess.

I was the last one aboard-unless you count Huphu, who scampered through my legs as I was about to dog the hatch. I tightened the wheel and the skink-bladder seals spread thin, oozing like immunity caulk between a traeki's member rings. The closing shut us off from nearly all sound-except the hissing, gurgling, rumbling, and sighing of four frightened kids just coming to realize what a fix all their humicking daydreams had gotten them into.

It took half a midura to make certain the air system and dehumidifiers worked. Pincer and Ur-ronn went over a checklist up front and Huck tested her steering bars, while I squatted in the very back with nothing to do but stroke the crank that I would use, whenever the Dream needed the services of an "engine." To pa.s.s the time, I umbled Huphu, whose claws were a welcome distraction, scratching a nervous itch that tickled the outer surface of my heart spine.

If we die, please let Uriel at least drag our bodies home, I thought, and maybe it was a prayer, like humans often do in tight spots, according to books I've read. Let my folks have a life-bone for vuphyning, to help them in their grief and disappointment over how I misspent the investment of their love.

XXII. THE BOOK OF THE SLOPE.