Two pinpoints of moisture dotted his cheek and forehead. Another struck the back of his hand. In the distance, Nelo heard a sharp rumble of thunder.
"Hurry closer!" Ariana urged, flipping open her sketchpad.
Murmuring unhappily, the hoons leaned on their poles and oars to comply.
Nelo stared at the alien craft, but all he could think was dross. When Sixers went gleaning through Buyur sites, one aim was to seek items that might be useful for a time, in a home or workshop. But useful or not, everything eventually went into ribboned caskets to be sent on to the Great Midden. Thus colonists imagined they were helping cleanse Jijo-perhaps doing more good than harm to their adopted world.
"Ifni!" Nelo sighed under his breath, staring at the vehicle that brought the Stranger hurtling out of space. It might be tiny for a starship, but it looked hard as blazes to move by hand.
"We'll be in for a hell of a job draggin' this thing out of here, let alone gettin' it down to sea."
Again, off to the south, the sound of thunder boomed. from the too-timid Poa, completing the final stages of our Uplift.
Those same Oailie who designed new master rings to focus and bind our natures.
Without rings like Me, how could our race ever have become great and feared among the Five Galaxies?
AND YET, even as I learn to integrate your many little selves into our new whole, I am struck by how vivid are these older drippings that I find lining our inner core! Drippings that date from before My fusion with your aged pile of rings. How lustrous clear these memories seem, despite their counterpointing harmonies. I confess, existence had intensity and verve when you,we were merely Asx.
PERHAPS this surprise comes because I,Myself am so young, only recently drawn from the side of our Ship Commander-from that great one's very own ring-of-embryos.
Yes, that is a high heritage. So imagine the surprise of finding Myself in this situation! Designed for duties in the dominion caste, I am wedded, for pragmatic reasons, to a haphazard heap of rustic toruses, ill educated and filled with bizarre, primitive notions. I have been charged to make the best of things until some later time, when surgery-of-reconfiguration can be performed-
AH. THAT DRAWS A REACTION FROM SOME OF YOU? Our second ring of cognition, in particular, finds this notion disturbing.
Fear not, My rings! Accept these jolts of painful love soothing, to remind you of your place-which is not to question, only to serve. Be assured that the procedure I refer to is now quite advanced among the mighty Jophur. When a ring is removed for reassembly in a new stack, often as many as half of the other leftover components can be recovered and reused as well! Of course, most of you are elderly, and the priests may decide you carry other-race contaminations, preventing incorporation into new mounds. But accept this pledge. When the time comes, I, your beloved master ring, shall very likely make the transition in good health, and take fond memories of our association to My glorious new stack.
I know this fact will bring you all great satisfaction, contemplating it within our common core.
wasx
WE JOPHUR ARE TAUGHT THAT IT IS TERRIBLE TO BE traeki-a stack lacking any central self. Doomed to a splintered life of vagueness and blurry placidity. ALL SING PRAISES to the mighty Oailie, who took over
PATHEDRAL-LIKE STILLNESS FILLED THE BOO Forest-a dense expanse of gray-green columns, towering Uto support the sky. Each majestic trunk had a girth like the carapace of a five-clawed qheuen. Some stretched as high as the Stone Roof of Biblos.
Now I know how an insect feels, scuttling under a sea of pampas grass.
Hiking along a narrow lane amid the giant pillars, Lark often could reach out his arms and brush two giant stems at the same time. Only his militia sergeant seemed immune to a sense of confinement infecting travelers in this strange place of vertical perspectives. Other guards expressed edginess with darting eyes that glanced worriedly down crooked aisles at half-hidden shadows.
"How far is it to Dooden Mesa?" Ling asked, tugging the straps of her leather backpack. Perspiration glistened down her neck to dampen the Jijoan homespun jerkin she wore. The effect was not as provocative as Lark recalled from their old survey trips together, when the sheer fabric of a Danik jumpsuit sometimes clung to her biosculpted figure in breathtaking ways.
Anyway, I can't afford that, now that I'm a sage. The promotion brought only unpleasant responsibilities.
"I never took this shortcut before," Lark answered, although he and Uthen used to roam these mountains in search of data for their book. There were other paths around the mountain, and the wheeled g'Keks nominally in charge of this domain could hardly be expected to do upkeep on such a rough trail. "My best guess is we'll make it in two miduras. Want to rest?"
Ling pushed sodden strands from her eyes. "No. Let's keep going."
The former gene raider seemed acutely aware of Jeni Shen, the diminutive sergeant, whose corded arms cradled her crossbow like a beloved child. Jeni glanced frequently at Ling with hunter's eyes, as if speculating which vital organ might make a good target. Anyone could sense throbbing enmity between the two women-and that Ling would rather die than show weakness before the militia scout.
Lark found one thing convenient about their antagonism. It helped divert Ling's ire away from him, especially after the way he earlier used logic to slash her beloved Rothen gods. Since then, the alien biologist had been civil, but kept to herself in brooding silence.
No one likes to have their most basic assumptions
knocked from under them-especially by a primitive savage.
Lark blew air through his cheeks-the hoonish version of a shrug.
"Hr-rm. We'll take a break at the next rise. By then we should be out of the worst boo."
In fact, the thickest zone was already behind them, a copse so dense the monstrous stems rubbed in the wind, creating a low, drumming music that vibrated the bones of anyone passing underneath. Traveling single file, edging sideways where the trunks pressed closest, the party had watched for vital trail marks, cut on one rounded bole after the next.
I was right to leave Uthen behind, he thought, hoping to convince himself. Just hold on, old friend. Maybe we'll come up with something. I pray we can.
Visibility was hampered by drifting haze, since many of the tall boo leaked from water reserves high above, spraying arcs of fine droplets that spread to saturate the misty colonnade. Several times they passed clearings where aged columns had toppled in a domino chain reaction, leaving maelstroms of debris.
Through the fog, Lark occasionally glimpsed other symbols, carved on trunks beyond the trail. Not trail marks, but cryptic emblems in GalTwo and GalSix . . . accompanied by strings of Anglic numbers.
Why would anyone-go scrawling graffiti through a stand of greatboo?
He even spied dim figures through the murk-once a human, then several urs, and finally a pair of traeki- glimpsed prowling amid rows of huge green pillars. At least he hoped the tapered cones were traeki. They vanished like ghosts before he could tell for sure.
Sergeant Shen kept the party moving too fast to investigate. Lark and his prisoner had been summoned by two of the High Sages-a command that overruled any other priority. And despite the difficult terrain, recent news from the Glade of Gathering was enough to put vigor in their steps.
Runners reported that the Jophur dreadnought still blocked the sacred valley, squatting complacently inside its swathe of devastation, with the captive Rothen ship doubly imprisoned nearby-first by a gold cocoon, and now a rising lake as well. The Jophur daily sent forth a pair of smaller vessels, sky-prowling daggers, surveying the Slope and the seas beyond. No one knew what the star gods were looking for.
Despite what happened on the night the great ship landed-havoc befalling Asx and others on the Glade-the High Sages were preparing to send another embassy of brave volunteers, hoping to parley. No one asked Lark to serve as an envoy. The Sages had other duties planned for him.
Humans weren't the only ones to cheat a lit
tle, when their founding generation came to plant a taboo colony on forbidden Jijo.
For more than a year after it made landfall, the Tabernacles crew delayed sending their precious ship to an ocean abyss. A year spent using god tools to cut trees and print books . . . then storing the precious volumes in a stronghold that the founders carved beneath a great stone overhang, protected by high walls and a river. During those early days-especially the urrish and qheuen wars-Biblos Fortress served as a vital refuge until humans grew strong enough to demand respect.
The Gray Queens also once had such a citadel, sculpted by mighty engines when they first arrived, before their sneakship fell beneath the waves. The Caves of Snood, near present-day Ovoom Town, must have seemed impregnable. But. that maze of deep-hewn caverns drowned under a rising water table when blue and red workers dropped their slavish maintenance duties, wandering off instead to seek new homes and destinies, apart from their chitin empresses.
Dooden Mesa was the oldest of the sooner ramparts. After Tarek Town, it formed the heart of g'Kek life on Jijo, a place of marvelous stone ramps that curved like graceful filigrees, allowing the wheeled ones to swoop and careen through a swirl of tight turns, from their looms and workshops to tree-sheltered platforms where whole families slept with their hubs joined in slowly rotating clusters. Under an obscuring blur-cloth canopy, the meandering system resembled pictures found in certain Earthling books about pre-contact times-looking like a cross between an "amusement park" and the freeway interchanges of some sprawling city.
Ling's face brightened with amazed delight when she regarded the settlement, nodding as Lark explained the lacy pattern of narrow byways. Like Biblos, Dooden Rampart was not meant to last forever, for that would violate the Covenant of Exile. Someday it all would have to go- g'Kek elders conceded. Still, the wheeled ones throbbed their spokes in sinful pride over their beloved city. Their home.
While Ling marveled, Lark surveyed the busy place with fresh poignancy.
This their only home.
Unless the Rothen lied, it seems there are no more g'Kek living among the Five Galaxies.
If they die on Jijo, they are gone for good.
Watching youngsters pitch along graceful ramps with reckless abandon, streaking round corners with all four eyestalks flying and their rims glowing hot, Lark could not believe the universe would let that happen. How could any race so unique be allowed to go extinct?
With the boo finally behind them, the party now stood atop a ridge covered with normal forest. As they paused, a zookir dropped onto the path from the branches of a nearby garu tree-all spindly arms and legs, covered with white spirals of fluffy torg. Treasured aides and pets of the g'Kek, zookirs helped make life bearable for wheeled beings on a planet where roads were few and stumbling stones all too many.
This zookir squinted at the party, then scampered closer, sniffing. Unerringly, it bypassed the other humans, zeroing in on Lark.
Trust a zookir to know a sage-so went a folk saying. No one had any idea how the creatures could tell, since they seemed less clever than chimps in other ways. Lark's promotion was recent and he wore the new status of "junior sage" uncomfortably, yet the creature had no trouble setting him apart. It pressed damp nostrils against his wrist and inhaled. Then, cooing satisfaction, it slipped a folded parchment in Lark's hand.
MEET US AT THE REFUGE-That was all it said.
RPAIR OF HIGH SAGES WAITED IN A NARROW CANyon, half a league away. Lester Cambel and Knife-Bright Insight, the blue qheuen whose reputation for compassion made her a favorite among the Six.
Here, too, the paths were smooth and well suited for g'Keks, since this was part of their Dooden Domain. Wheeled figures moved among the meadows, looking after protected ones who lived in thatched shelters beneath the trees. It was a refuge for sacred simpletons-those whose existence promised a future for the Six Races-according to the scrolls. ,
Several of the blessed ones gathered around Knife-Bright | Insight, clucking or mewing in debased versions of Galac- i tic tongues. These were hoons and urs, for the most part, though a red qheuen joined the throng as Lester watched, and several traeki stacks slithered timidly closer, burbling happy stinks as they approached. Each received a loving pat or stroke from Knife-Bright Insight, as if her claws were gentle hands.
Lester regarded his colleague, and knew guiltily that he
could never match her glad kindness. The blessed were superior beings, ranking above the normal run of the Six. Their simplicity was proof that other races could follow the example of glavers, treading down the Path of Redemption.
It should fill my heart to see them, he thought.
Yet I hate coming to this place.
Members of all six races dwelled in simple shelters underneath the canyon walls, tended by local g'Keks, plus volunteers from across the Slope. Whenever a qheuen, or hoon, or urrish village found among their youths one who had a knack for innocence, a gift for animal-like naivete, the lucky individual was sent here for nurturing and study.
There are just two ways to escape the curse bequeathed to us by our ancestors, Lester thought, struggling to believe. We could do as Lark's group of heretics want-stop breeding and leave Jijo in peace. Or else we can all seek a different kind of oblivion, the kind that returns our children's children to presentience. Washed clean and ready for a new cycle of uplift. Thus they may yet find new patrons, and perhaps a happier fate.
So prescribed the Sacred Scrolls, even after all the compromises wrought since the arrival of Earthlings and the Holy Egg. Given the situation of exile races, living here on borrowed time, facing horrid punishment if,when a Galactic Institute finds them here, what other goal could there be?
But I can't do it. I cannot look at this place with joy. Earthling values keep me from seeing these creatures as lustrous beings. They deserve kindness and pity-but not envy.
It was his own heresy. Lester tried to look elsewhere. But turning just brought to view another cluster of "blessed." This time, humans, gathered in a circle under a ilhuna tree, sitting cross-legged with hands on knees, chanting in low, sonorous voices. Men and women whose soft smiles and unshifting eyes seemed to show simplicity of the kind sought here . . . only Lester knew them to be liars!
Long ago, he took the same road. Using meditation techniques borrowed from old Earthling religions, he sat under just such a tree, freeing his mind of worldly obsessions, disciplining it to perceive Truth. And for a while it seemed he succeeded. Acolytes bowed reverently, calling him illuminated. The universe appeared lucid then, as if the stars were sacred fire. As if he were united with all Jijo's creatures, even the very quanta in the stones around him. He lived in harmony, needing little food, few words, and even fewer names.
Such serenity-sometimes he missed it with an ache inside.
But after a while he came to realize-the clarity he had found was sterile blankness. A blankness that felt fine, but had nothing to do with redemption. Not for himself. Not for his race.
The other five don't use discipline or concentration to seek simplicity. You don't see glavers meditating by a rotten log full of tasty insects. Simplicity calls to them naturally. They live their innocence.
When Jijo is finally reopened, some great clan will gladly adopt the new glaver subspecies, setting them once more upon the High Path, perhaps with better luck than they bad the first time.
But those patrons won't choose us. No noble elder clan is looking for smug Zen masters, eager to explain their own enlightenment. That is not a plainness you can write upon. It is simplicity based on individual pride.
Of course the point might be moot. If the Jophur ship represented great Institutes of the Civilization of the Five Galaxies, these forests would soon throng with inspectors, tallying up two thousand years of felonies against a fallow world. Only glavers would be safe, having made it to safety in time. The other six races would pay for a gamble lost.
And if they don't represent the Institutes?
The Rothen had proved t
o be criminals, gene raiders. Might the Jophur be more of the same? Murderous genocide could still be in store. The g'Kek clan, in particular, were terrified of recent news from the Glade.
On the other hand, it might be possible to cut a deal. Or else maybe they'll just go away, leaving us in the same state we were in before.
In that case, places like this refuge would go back to being the chief hope for tomorrow ... for five races out of the Six.
Lester's dark thoughts were cut off by a tug on his sleeve.
"Sage Cambel? The . . . um, visitors you're, ah, expecting ... I think . . -."
It was a young human, broad-cheeked, with clear blue eyes and pale skin. The boy would have seemed tall- almost a giant-except that a stooped posture diminished his appearance. He kept tapping a corner of his forehead with the fingertips of his right hand, as if in a vague salute.