Dwer kept wary watch for a whole midura, till long after his pounding pulse finally settled.

At last, when it seemed safe, he slung his bow and set off downstream, running when and where he could, hurrying southward with news.

Asx CAN YOU SEE THE SMOKE, OH MY RINGS? Spiraling from a fresh cavity in Jijo's ruptured soil? Two Umoons cast wan beams through that sooty pall, piercing a crater wherein twisty metal shapes flicker and burn.

Distracting thoughts rise from our second torus-of-cognition.

What is that you say, my ring? That this is a very large amount of dross? Dross that will not degrade back to nature on its own?

Indeed it is. Shall we hope that the aliens themselves will clean up the mess? It would take a hundred donkey-caravans to haul so much hard waste down to the sea.

Another ring suggests a stream be diverted, to form a lake. A transplanted mule-spider might dissolve the sinful wreckage over the course of centuries.

By ma.s.s vote, we send these thoughts to waxy storage for later reflection. For now, let us watch events flow in real time.

A roiling mob of onlookers teems the slopes overlooking this savaged vale, held in check by stunned, overworked proctors. Higher on tree-shrouded hills, we glimpse murky ranks of disciplined silhouettes, wheeling and maneuvering-militia units taking up positions. From here we cannot tell the companies' intent. Are they preparing, counter to all hope, to defend the Commons against overpowering vengeance? Or else have inter-sept grudges finally torn the Great Peace, so that we hasten doomsday tearing each other apart with our own b.l.o.o.d.y hands?

Perhaps even the commanders of those dark battalions don't yet know for sure.

Meanwhile, closer to the heat, Ur-Jah and Lester Cambel supervise teams of brave urs, men, hoon, and gray qheuens, *who descend into the pit armed with ropes and tools of Buyur steel.

Ro-kenn protests at first, does he not, my rings? In hasty GalSeven, the Rothen emissary decries those he calls "wanton looters." One of the remnant robots rises, unfolding spiky organs of punishment.

Vubben urges that Ro-kenn look again. Can he not recognize sincere efforts at rescue? For two tense duras we poise on a precipice. Then, with a grudging mutter, the Rothen recalls his death machine-for now.

From Ro-kenn's charismatic, human-handsome face, our steady old rewq translates undertones of grief and rage. True, this race is new to us, and rewq can be fooled. Yet what else should we expect from one whose home/campsite lies in ruins? Whose comrades languish, dead or dying, in the twisted tangle of their buried station?

The male sky-human, Rann, wears torment openly as he rides the other robot, shouting at those working through the rubble, directing their efforts. A tense but encouraging sign of cooperation.

Ling, the other sky-human, appears in shock, leaning against young Lark as he pokes his foot through debris at the crater's rim. He bends to lift a smoldering plank, sniffing suspiciously. We perceive his head rock back, exclaiming surprise.

Ling draws away, demanding an explanation. Through our rewq, we perceive Lark's reluctance as he shows her the smoky plank, a strip of burned wood from a Jijoan box or crate.

Ling drops her hand from his arm. She spins about, hurrying toward Rann's hovering robot steed.

Much closer to this stack of rings, Ro-kenn has become embroiled in argument. A delegation accosts the Rothen emissary, demanding answers.

Why did he earlier claim the right and power to command the Holy Egg, since it is now clear that the sacred stone violently rejects him and his kind?

Furthermore, why did he seek to sow dissension among the Six with his baseless calumny about the human sept? His groundless lie, claiming that our Earthling brethren are not descendants of sinners, just like the other Five.

"You Rothen may or may not be the high patrons of humanity," the spokesman contends. "But that takes nothing from our ancestors who came here on the Tabernacle. Not from their crime, or their hope, when they set us on the Path of Redemption."

There is anger in the voice of the human intercessor. But we/i also descry thick brushstrokes of theater. An effort to smother the fire of disharmony that Ro-kenn ignited with his tale. Indeed, urrish voices rise in approval of his anger.

Now our second cognition-torus vents yet another thought-hypothesis.

What is it, my ring? You suggest disharmony was Ro-kenn's intent, all along? A deliberate scheme to create strife among the Six?

Our fourth ring rebuts-what purpose might such a bizarre plot serve? To have Five gang up on One? To cause vendetta against the very sept these Rothen claim as beloved clients?

Store and wick this weird postulate, oh my rings. Argue it later. For now the Rothen prepares to respond. Drawing himself up, he surveys the crowd with an expression that seems awesome both to humans and to those who know them-to rewq-wearers and those without.

There is kindness in his expressive gaze. Overstrained patience and love.

"Dear, misguided children. This explosive manifestation was not rejection by Jijo, or the Egg. Rather, some malfunction of the mighty forces contained in our station must have released-"

Abruptly, he stops as Rann and Ling approach, each riding a robot. Each wearing looks of dark anger. They murmur into devices, and the Rothen stares back, listening. Again, my rewq reveals dissonance across his features, coalescing at last in raging fury.

Ro-kenn speaks.

"So, now the (dire) truth is known. Learned. Verified!

"No accident, this (slaying) explosion.

"No (unlikely) malfunction-nor any rejection by your (overly-vaunted) Egg.

"Now it is known. Verified. That this was (foul, unprovoked) murder!

"Murder by deceit, by subterfuge.

"By use of subterranean explosives. By sneak attack.

"By you!"

He points, stabbing with a long, graceful finger. The crowd reels back from Ro-kenn's fierce wrath, and this news.

At once it is clear what the zealots have done. Secretly, taking advantage of natural caverns lacing these hills, they must have laboriously burrowed deep beneath the station to lay chests of eruptive powder-crude but plentiful-which then awaited a signal, the right symbolic moment, to burst forth flame and destruction.

"With scanners tuned for chemical sleuthing, we now perceive the depth of your shared perfidy. How undeserved were the rewards we planned conferring on murderous half-beasts!"

He might say more to the cowering throng, adding terrible threats. But at that moment, a new disturbance draws our focus toward the smoldering pit. The crowd parts for a phalanx of soot-stained rescuers, coughing and gasping as they bear pitiable burdens.

Rann cries out, bounding from his mount to inspect a crumpled form, borne upon a litter. It is Besh, the other female sky-human. From her mangled figure, our rewq reads no life flicker.

Again, the crowd divides. This time it is Ro-kenn who exclaims a distinctly unhuman wail. The litter brought before him bears the other of his race, Ro-pol, whom we guessed to be female. (His mate?) This time, a slim thread of breath swirls in the near infrared, from the victim's soot-stained but still splendid face. Ro-kenn bends close, as if seeking some private communion.

The poignant scene lasts but a few moments. Then the reed of living tension is no more. A second corpse lies in the hollow, under bitter-bright stars.

The living Rothen stands to his full height, a terrible sight, emoting vast anger.

"Now comes the reward (foul) treachery deserves!" Ro-kenn cries, reaching skyward, his voice reverberating with such wrath that every rewq in the valley trembles. Some humans drop to their knees. Do not even gray queens whistle awe and dismay?

"For so long you have feared (righteous) judgment from above. Now behold its incarnate form!"

Along with the others, we/i look up, our gaze following Ro-kenn's extended arm.

There, crossing the sky, we perceive a single glaring spark. A pitiless glimmer that ponderously moves, pa.s.sing from the Spider's Web into the constellation humans call The Sword.

The great ship is still a distant point, but it does not wink, nor does it twinkle. Rather, it seems to throb with an intensity that hurts those who watch for long.

One can hardly fault the zealots' timing, suggests our ever-thoughtful second-torus-of-cognition. If their objective was to bring an end to pretense, they could have chosen no better way.

Sara SAGE TAINE WANTED TO SPEAK WITH HER BEFORE she left for Kandu Landing. So did Ariana Foo. Both wished she would delay her departure, but Sara was eager to be off.

Yet with just a midura to go before the gopher set sail, she decided on impulse to visit her old office, high in the cathedral-tower housing the Library of Material Science.

West from the Grand Staircase, her ascent first took her by the vast, rambling stacks of physics and chemistry, where the recent evacuation had taken a visible toll. The maze of shelves showed frequent gaps. Sc.r.a.ps of paper lay in place of absent volumes, to help staff put things back if the present crisis pa.s.sed. In places, the wood surface looked almost new, implying this was the first time a book had budged since the Great Printing.

Glancing down one crooked aisle, Sara glimpsed young Jomah, teetering under a load of heavy volumes, lumbering gamely behind his uncle to begin the ornate rituals-of-borrowing. None too soon if they hoped to make the Gopher in time. The explosers and quite a few others were bound the same way as Sara, first by boat, then donkey-caravan to the Glade of Gathering.

The winding labyrinth triggered complex emotions. She used to get lost back in the early days, but never cared, so happy had she been to dwell in this splendid place. This temple of wisdom.

Her long year away had hardly changed her little office, with its narrow window overlooking the green-flanked Bibur. Everything seemed much as she had left it, except for the dust. Well, I always figured I'd be back before this. Many competed to be chosen by human sept for this life, subsidized by a race of farmers and gleaners whose one great sinful pride lay in their books.

Tacked to the far wall lay a chart showing the "devolution" of various dialects spoken on the Slope. Like branches splitting off from parent roots, there were multiple downward shoots for each Galactic language in current use. This older depiction showed the bias of scholars over in Linguistics, and was colored by one una.s.sailable fact-the billion-year-old Galactic languages had once been perfect, efficient codes for communication. Deviation was seen as part of a foretold spiral toward the innocence of animal-like grunts-the Path of Redemption already blazed by glavers-a fate variously dreaded or prayed for by folk of the Slope, depending on one's religious fervor.

Human tongues were also traced backward, not over a billion years but ten thousand. Earthling authorities like Childe, Schrader, and Renfrew had carefully rebuilt ancestral languages and many of those grammars were more primly structured, better at error-correction, than the "b.a.s.t.a.r.d" jargons that followed. What better evidence that human devolution began long before the landing on Jijo? Did not all Earth cultures have legends of a lost Golden Age?

One conclusion-the missing Patrons of Earth must have been interrupted in their work, forced to leave humanity half finished. True, the ensuing fall was masked by some flashy tricks of precocious technology. Still, many scholars believed Earthlings had much to gain from any road leading toward re-adoption and a second chance, especially since they appeared to be heading that way anyway.

That's the orthodox view. My model takes the same data, but projects a different outcome.

Her most recent chart resembled this one-turned upside down, with lightless roots transformed into trees, showing the Six heading in a new direction. In many directions. If no one interferes. Yesterday, she had shown her latest work to Sage Bonner, whose enthusiasm reignited the pleasure of a colleague's praise.

"Well, my dear," said Jijo's oldest mathematician, stroking his bald pate, "you do seem to have a case. So let's schedule a seminar! Interdisciplinary, of course."

He punctuated his enthusiasm with a sloppy GalTwo emotion trill of antic.i.p.ation.

"We'll invite those stuffy pedants from Linguistics. See if they can bear to hear a bold new idea for a change. Heh. Heh-cubed!"

Bonner probably hadn't much followed her discussion of "redundancy coding" and chaos in information theory. The elderly topologist just relished the prospect of a brisk debate, one that might knock down some ensconced point of view.

If only you knew how good an example you are of my thesis, she had thought affectionately. Sara hated to disappoint him.

"We can have it when I get back from Gathering, with luck."

Alas, there might be no return from her coming journey. Or else, it might be to find that the explosers had done their duty at last, bringing down the stony roof, and with it a prophesied age of darkness and purity. She was turning to go, when a low thunk announced a message ball, landing on her desk. Above the in-box, a fleshy tube bounced in recoil, having spit the ball from a maze of pipes lacing the Biblos complex.

Oh no. Sara backed away, hoping to leave before the furry sphere unrolled. If the messenger found no one home, it would simply reenter the tube and report the fact to whoever sent it.

But the ball uncoiled swiftly and a tiny mouselike form scrambled up the box to see her, squeaking delight over achieving the purpose bred into it by the ancient Buyur-to deliver brief messages via a network of cross-linked tunnels and vines. With a sigh, Sara put out her hand, and the courier spat a warm pellet into her palm. The pill squirmed.

Suppressing distaste, she raised the little symbiont-a larger cousin of a parrot tick-and let it writhe inside her ear.

Soon, as she feared, it began speaking with the voice of Sage Taine.

"Sara, if this reaches you, I'd like to talk before you go. . . . It is essential to clear up our misunderstanding. "

There came a long pause, then the voice hurried on. "I've thought about it and have lately come to believe that this situation is largely my fau-"

The message stopped there. The record bug had reached its limit. It began repeating the message over again, from the beginning.

Fault? Was "fault" the word you were about to say? Sara tipped her head until the bug realized it wasn't wanted anymore and crawled out of her ear. Taine's voice grew distant, plaintive, as she tossed the bug back to the furry little messenger, who s.n.a.t.c.hed it, tweaking it between sharp jaws, making the bug receptive for Sara's reply.

I'm sorry, she almost said aloud. I should have made allowances. You were tactless, but meant well, in your haughty way.

I should have been honored by your proposal, even if you first made it out of a sense of duty.

I reacted badly when you renewed the offer at Joshu's funeral.

A month ago, I was thinking about finally saying yes. There are worse lives on the Slope than the one you offered.

But now everything had changed. The aliens had seen to that. Dwer had what it would take in the new era to come. He'd thrive and sire generations of fine hunter-gatherers, if an age of innocence really was at hand.

And if it's death the aliens have in mind for us? Well, Dwer will fool them, too, and survive. That thought made Sara poignantly glad. Either way, what use will Jijo have for intellectuals like us, Taine?

The two of them would soon be more equal than ever, alike in useless obsolescence, before the end.

Sara said nothing aloud. The messenger ball gave a stymied squeak. It popped the bug into one cheek, then reentered the tube, vanishing into the maze-work of conduits that laced Biblos like a system of arteries and veins.

You're not the only one. Sara cast a thought after the frustrated creature. There's more than enough disappointment to go around.

The Gopher was already putting on steam when Sara hurried to the dock. Ariana Foo waited nearby, the twilight shrouding her wheelchair so that she resembled some human-g'Kek hybrid.

"I wish I could have a few more days with him," she said, taking Sara's hand.

"You've done wonders, but there's no time to spare."

"The next kayak pilot may bring vital news-"

"I know. And I'd give anything to hear from Lark. But that reasoning will only take us in circles. If something urgent happens, you can send a galloper after us. Meanwhile I have ... a feeling that we'd better hurry."

"More dreams?"

Sara nodded. For several nights her sleep had been disturbed by ill-defined impressions of alpine fire, then watery suffocation. It might just be a return of the claustrophobia she felt years ago, as a youthful newcomer under the overhanging roof-of-stone. Or else maybe her nightmares echoed something real. An approaching culmination.

Mother believed in dreams, she recalled. Even as she drilled into Lark and me a love of books and science, it was Dwer whom she heeded, whenever he woke with those powerful visions, back when he was little-and then the week before she died.

The steam packet hissed, its boilers straining. Two dozen donkeys thumped and whinnied, tethered at the stern alongside sealed crates of books.

Contrasting strangely, a different sound came from the ship's bow. Delicate, melodic music consisting of parallel chains of halting notes, somewhat tw.a.n.gy. Sara tilted her head.

"He's getting better fast."

"He has motivation," the sage replied. "I expected him to choose a simpler instrument, like a flute or violus. But he pulled the dulcimer off the museum shelf and seemed to draw some deep satisfaction out of counting its strings. It's simple to learn, and he can sing along, when a tune spills out of memory. Anyway, he's fit for a journey, so"-she took a deep breath, looking weary and old-"give Lester and the other High Mucketies my regards, will you? Tell them to behave."

Sara bent to kiss Ariana's cheek. "I'll do that." The retired sage gripped her arm with unexpected strength. "Safe journey, child. Ifni roll you sixes."