Brightness Reef

Rety

Dark, clammy, stifling. Rety didn’t like the cave. It must be the stale, dusty air that made her heart pound so. Or else the painful scrapes on her legs, after sliding down a twisty chute to this underground grotto, from a narrow entrance in a boo-shrouded cleft.

Or maybe what made her jumpy was the way shapes kept crowding in from all sides. Each time Rety whirled with her borrowed lantern, the creepy shadows turned out to be knobs of cold, dead rock. But a little voice seemed to say — Always… so far! But a real monster may wait around the next bend.

She set her jaw and refused to listen. Anyone who called her scared would be a liar!

Does a scared person slink into dark places at night? Or do things they was told not to do, by all the big fat chiefs of the Six?

A weight wriggled in her belt pouch. Rety reached past the fur-lined flap to stroke the squirming creature. “Don’t spook, yee. It’s just a big hole in the groun’.”

A narrow head and a sinuous neck snaked toward her, three eyes glittering in the soft flamelight. A squeaky voice protested.

“yee not spooked! dark good! on plains, li’l man-urs love hidey-holes, till find warm wife!”

“Okay, okay. I didn’t mean—”

“yee help nervous wife!”

“Who’re you calling nervous, you little—”

Rety cut short. Maybe she should let yee feel needed, if it helped him keep his own fear under control.

“ow! not so tight!” The male yelped, echoes fleeing down black corridors. Rety quickly let go and stroked yee’s ruffled mane. “Sorry. Look, I bet we’re gettin’ close, so let’s not talk so much, okay?”

“okay, yee shut up. wife do too!”

Rety’s lips pressed. Then anger flipped into a sudden urge to laugh. Whoever said male urs weren’t smart must’ve never met her “husband.” yee had even changed his accent, in recent days, mimicking Rety’s habits of speech.

She raised the lantern and resumed picking her way through the twisty cavern, surrounded by a sparkle of strange mineral formations, reflecting lamplight off countless glittering facets. It might have been pretty to look at, if she weren’t obsessed with one thing alone. An item to reclaim. Something she once, briefly, had owned.

My ticket off this mudball.

Rety’s footprints appeared to be the first ever laid in the dust — which wasn’t surprising, since just qheuens, and a few humans and urs, had a knack for travel underground, and she was smaller than most. With luck, this tunnel led toward the much larger cave she had seen Lester Cambel enter several times. Following the chief human sage had been her preoccupation while avoiding the group of frustrated men and women who wanted her to help guide them over the mountains. Once she knew for sure where Cambel spent his evenings, she had sent yee scouring the underbrush till he found this offshoot opening, bypassing the guarded main entrance.

The little guy was already proving pretty darn useful. To Rety’s surprise, married life wasn’t so bad, once you got used to it.

There was more tight wriggling and writhing. At times, she had to squirm sideways or slide down narrow chutes, making yee complain when he got squeezed. Beyond the lantern’s dim yellow puddle, she heard soft tinkling sounds as water dripped into black pools, slowly sculpting weird underground shapes out of Jijo’s raw mineral juices. With each step Rety fought a tightness in her chest, trying to ignore her tense imagination, which pictured her in the twisty guts of some huge slumbering beast. The rocky womb kept threatening to close in from all sides, shutting the exits, then grinding her to dust.

Soon the way narrowed to a corkscrew horizontal tube that was tight even for her. She had to send yee ahead before attempting the contorted passage, pushing the lantern along in front of her.

Yee’s tiny hooves clattered on gritty limestone. Soon she heard a welcome hoarse whisper.

“is good! hole opens up, little ways more, come wife, faster!”

His chiding almost made her snort angrily-not a wise idea with her cheek, nose, and mouth scraping rank dust. Contorting her body to turn the next corner, she suddenly felt certain the walls were moving!

She recalled what Dwer’s brother had said about this region, when he led her down that last stretch to the Glade, past steaming sulfur vents. Lark had called this a land of earthquakes, and seemed to think it a good thing!

Twisting uneasily, her hip jammed in a stone cleft.

I’m caught!

Thought of entrapment sent a whimpering moan surging past flecked lips as she thrashed, banging her knee agonizingly. The world really was closing in!

Her forehead struck stone, and pain-dazzles swarmed her dimming vision. The candle lantern rattled from her clutching fingertips, almost toppling over.

“easy, wife! stop! stay!”

The words bounced off the warped mirror of her panic. Stubbornly, Rety kept striving against cold stone, groaning and pushing futilely… until…

Something clicked inside her. All at once, she went limp, suddenly resigned to let the mountain do whatever it wanted with her.

Moments after she stopped fighting, the walls miraculously seemed to stop moving. Or had it been her, all along?

“better now? good-good, now move left leg … left! good, stop now. okay roll other way. go-o-o-ood wife!”

His tiny voice was a lifeline she clutched for the few duras — for the eternity — that it took to win Free. At last, the clutch of the stony passage eased, and she slithered down a sandy bank in a flowing, almost liquid liberation that felt just like being born.

When next she looked up, yee had the lantern cradled in both arms, bowing with forelegs bent.

“good brave wife! no wife ever like yee’s amazing wife!”

This time Rety could not hold it in. She covered her mouth with both hands, yet her escaping laughter bounced off the fluted walls. Combed by stalactites, it came back as a hundred soft echoes of her joy to be alive.

The sage was pondering her bird.

He peered at it, wrote on a notepad, then poked it with some shiny tool.

Rety seethed. The gold-green machine was hers. Hers! She had pursued it from the southern marshes to the Rimmers, rescued it from a greedy mulc-spider, won it with her sweat, suffering, and dreams. She would choose who, if anybody, got to study it.

Anyway, what was a savage shaman going to achieve with his crude glass lenses and such? The tools lying near the bird might have impressed the old Rety, who thought Dwer’s hunting bow was so great. But all that changed after meeting Besh, Rann, and the other star-humans. Now she knew — despite all his airs, Lester Cambel was just like Jass or Bom, or any of the other idiots back in the Gray Hills. Stupid braggarts. Bullies. Always taking things that didn’t belong to them.

Under the bright flare of a mirrored oil lamp, Cambel flipped through a book. Its pages crackled, as if they had not been turned in a very long time. Rety couldn’t make out much from her vantage point, perched on a cleft high up one craggy cavern wall. Not that she could read, anyway. Most of each page seemed to be taken up with drawings with lots of little crisscrossing lines. Nothing much resembled a bird.

Come on, yee, she thought, restlessly. I’m countin’ on you!

She was taking a big risk. The little male had assured her he could handle it, but what if he got lost while sneaking around to the other side? Or forgot his lines? Rety would be furious if the little guy wound up getting hurt!

Cambel’s assistant stood up and left the chamber, perhaps on some brief errand, or else to retire for the night. Either way, this was a perfect time! Come on, yee!

After so long writhing through dark passages, always fearful the little candle would go out, Rety found the cool brilliance of the sage’s lamp harsh to the eyes. With reluctance she had blown out her own light while creeping the last few meters, lest its glow draw attention. Now she regretted it. What if I have to retreat the way I came? She couldn’t willingly face that path again. But as a last resort, if someone were chasing her…?

Too bad she had no way to restart the candle. Maybe I should’ve learned to use one of those “match” things the Slopies boast about. She had been too awed by the sudden burst of flame to pay close attention when Dwer, and later Ur-Jah, tried showing how they worked. It was all the fault of Jass and Bom, of course, who didn’t like womenfolk controlling fire on their own.

But fire’s just fine for scaring or burning women, ain’t it? she pondered angrily, touching her face. Maybe I’ll come back someday, Jass. Maybe I’ll bring another kind of fire.

Rety reentered her favorite fantasy, flying off to live with the sky-humans on their home star. Oh, at first she’d start out as a sort of pet or mascot. But just give her time! She’d learn whatever it took in order to rise up, until she became so important…

So important that some great Rothen prince would put a ship — fleet of ships! — at her command, to go with her back to Jijo.

It was fun picturing the look on Jass’s smug handsome face, when the sky over the Gray Hills went dark at noon, and then her words booming from above—

“you wise mister human sir?”

The tiny voice shook her back to the present. She sought down below — and spied yee trotting nervously near the leg of Lester Cambel’s chair.

“Hm? What was that?” Cambel asked, yee jumped as the chair scraped back, pushed by the sage, who peered about in confusion.

“message for wise human! message from wise grandma urs, Ur-Jah!”

Now Cambel looked down, first amazed, then quizzically intrigued.

“Yes, small one? And how did you get down here past the guard?”

“guard he look out for danger, look right past yee. is yee danger?”

The tiny urs laughed, mimicking Rety’s own nervous giggle. She hoped Cambel didn’t recognize the similarity.

The sage nodded, gravely. “No, I suppose not. Unless someone gets you angry, my friend, which I’ll strive not to do. So now, what’s this about a message at this time of night?”

yee did a little dance with his hooves and lifted both arms dramatically, “urgent time for talk-talk, look at dead birdie later! go Ur-Jah now. now!”

Rety feared his vehemence would rouse suspicion. But the balding human put down his tools at once and stood up. “Well then, let’s go.”

Rety’s hopes soared, then sank as Cambel lifted the bird with both hands.

No! Put it down!

As if prodded by her tense mental urging, the sage paused, shook his head, and put the machine back, picking up his notebook instead.

“Lay on, Macduff,” he said to yee, motioning with a sweep of one arm.

“great sage says what?” the small urs tilted his head.

“I said… oh, never mind. An obscure allusion. Guess I’m just tired. Shall I carry you, sir?”

“no! yee lead wise human, walk this way! this way!” and he scampered off eagerly, pausing impatiently and backtracking several times as the sage followed ploddingly behind.

When they both had vanished up the tunnel leading toward the main entrance, Rety wasted no time slithering down the crumbly, slanting limestone wall till she tumbled bottom-first onto the floor of the laboratory cave. She scrambled up and hurried to the table where her bird lay, headless as it had been ever since the fight with the alien robot.

Its breast lay spread open like a carcass at a feast, exposing innards like none Rety had ever seen, glittering like jewels. What did the stinker do, gut it like a herd chick? She fought to check her rage. Rann might not pay if the fools have ruined it by mucking inside!

She looked closer. The opening was too clean to have been hacked with a knife. In fact, when she hesitantly touched the bird’s ribcage, it seemed to roll smoothly around the line where it was still connected — like the hinged door she had seen on a big cabinet, and marveled at, while visiting the forayers’ medical tent.

I see. You just close it like… this.

She lifted the smaller section through an arc, till it swung shut with a decisive click.

Now Rety regretted her haste. There was no more chance to look closer at the little flashings inside. Oh, well. None of my biznis, anyway, she thought, and plucked up her prize. At least I don’t pretend I’m anythin’ but a sooner an’ a savage.

Though not forever. Once I get off Jijo, I’ll learn. I’ll learn all right!

The bird was heavier than she recalled. Briefly, her heart felt full. She had her treasure back! She crammed the heavy bird-thing into her pouch, bypassing the books strewn across the table as she hurried off, following the same path yee and Lester Cambel had taken, an easy stand-up trail leading toward the outside world.

The way was lit by little lamps, hanging from a thin boo pipe stapled to the hall. Tiny flames flickered an eerie blue color, leaving wide pools of shadow in between. Dim light also spilled from several side chambers, now mostly empty of workers as it was nighttime outside. One cell, however, seemed to blaze with bulky lanterns. Before tiptoeing past, Rety warily eyed two human occupants — who were luckily turned away, murmuring with low voices. Drawings of the star-gods, their aircraft, and other tools lay tacked on a dozen or so easels. The cube-shaped station — which Rety had never seen unburied — lay revealed in fine detail, more grand than some shattered Buyur site. Yet it seemed minute next to the monstrous tube depicted on the next sketch, floating above the forest.

My starship, she mused, though cowed by the thought of boarding the huge vessel when it returned for the forayers. She must remember to hold her chin up that day and show no fear.

The artists had caught Rann’s distant amused gaze, and Kunn’s sharp hunter’s glare as he adjusted the claw arm of a hovering robot. The pale intensity of Besh balanced Ling’s dusky half-cynical expression. Rety knew they were only drawings, like the ones some old grandpas used to scratch on a cliff overlooking the wintering cave, back in the Gray Hills. Still, the lifelike accuracy seemed spooky and magical. The Slopies are studying the star-men. What could it mean?

Rety almost tripped in her haste to get away. Whatever they’re planning, it won’t come to much. She set her mind back to getting out of this place and making the rendezvous, in time.

The mustiness began to lift and the harsh echoes softened. Soon she heard voices ahead… Lester Cambel trading words with a second human. Rety tiptoed to the next bend and peered around. The human sage could be seen talking to the cave guard, who looked down at yee with a chagrined expression.

“Privacy wasps may stop the tiniest robots,” Cambel said. “But what about something the size of this little fellow?”

“Honestly, sir. I can’t imagine how he got past—”

Cambel waved off the apology. “There was no harm done this time, son. It’s mostly their contempt that protects us — their confidence we have nothing worth spying on. Just be more careful from now on, eh?”

He patted the young man’s arm and turned to follow as yee hurried outside. The path seemed brightly lit by moonshine, piercing through gently waving forest branches. Still clearly perplexed, the guard set his jaw and gripped his weapon — a kind of pole with a sharp-looking knife-thing at one end — standing with legs slightly apart, in the center of the entrance. When the scrape of Cambel’s footsteps faded, Rety counted twenty duras, then made her own move. Faking calm, she sauntered toward the young guard, who swiveled when she was close.

Rety gave a smile and an easygoing wave. “Well, guess I’m all done for the night.” She yawned, sidling past his bulk, sensing his startled indecision. “Boy I’ll tell ya, that science sure is hard work! Well, g’night.”

Now she was outside, gratefully inhaling fresh mountain air and trying not to break into a run. Especially when he shouted — “Hey, stop right there!”

Swiveling around but continuing to walk backward down the path, Rety delayed him a few more seconds by grinning broadly. “Yeah? You need somethin’?”

“What… who are you—?”

“Got something here I figure the sage’d want to be seein’,” she replied with deceptive truthfulness, patting her belt pouch and still backing away.

The guard started toward her.

With a joyful shout, Rety spun about and took off into the forest, knowing pursuit was hopeless at this point. He had lost his chance, the stinker! Still, she was kind of glad that he tried.

yee met her where they had agreed, by the log bridge, halfway to the place where she was to join Rann. On spying her, the little urs yelped and seemed to fly into her arms.

He was less pleased on trying to burrow into his accustomed place, only to find a cold hard object taking up the pouch. Rety tucked him into the folds of her jacket, and after a moment he seemed to find that acceptable.

“yee tell wife, yee see—”

“We did it!” Rety chortled gleefully, unable to contain the rush of an adventure so well closed. The chase had been a perfect way to finish, leaping and laughing as she ran through the forest, leaving the big oaf to flounder in the dark while she circled around, then slinked right past the noisy guard on her way back to the Glade.

“You were great, too,” she told yee, sharing credit. “Would’ve been harder to do it without you.” She hugged his little body till he complained with a series of short grunts. “Did you have any trouble getting away from Cambel?” she asked.

“wiseman human no problem, yee get ’way good, but then—”

“Great, then it’s over. We better go now, though. If Rann has to wait, he may not be in as good a mood as—”

“—but then yee see something on way to meet wife! whole herd of urs… qheuens… hoons… men … all going sneak-sneak in dark, carry big boxes!”

Rety hurried down a side trail leading toward the rendezvous point. “Hm-hm? Do tell? Prob’ly one of those silly pilgrim things, headin’ up to pray to that big rock they think is a god.” She had only contempt for the superstitions of planet-grubbing sooners. To her, all the talk she’d heard about the Slopies’ fabulous “Egg” was just more scare-you-in-the-dark stuff, like those tales of ghosts and huge beasts and spirit glavers that were common campfire fare back in the Gray Hills, especially since Jass and Bom took over. Whenever times were hard, the hunters would argue into the night, seeking some reason why the prey animals might be angry, and ways to appease them.

“herd of sneakers not go holy rock!” yee protested, “head wrong way! no white robes, no sing-songs! just sneak-sneak, I say! sneak with boxes to ’nother cave!”

Rety’s interest was almost piqued, yee sure seemed to think it important…

But just then the trail turned to overlook the little valley where the sky-humans dwelled. Moonlight spilled across pavilions that seemed strangely less well camouflaged now, in the vivid dimness.

A soft hum warbled from the west, and a glint drew her eye as a glistening teardrop shape floated into view, folding away two delicate wings as it descended. Rety felt a tingle, recognizing the small flying boat of the forayers, returning from another mysterious expedition. She watched, transfixed, as the lovely thing settled gracefully to the valley floor. A hole opened, swallowing it into the ground.

Excitement filled Rety’s lungs, and her heart felt light.

“Hush, husband,” she told yee when he complained of being ignored. “We got some tradin’ and dickerin’ to do.

“Now’s when we’ll see if they pay what they promised.”

Asx

My rings, you need not my weakly focused musings to inform you. Surely all of you must feel it, deep within each oily torus core?

The Egg. Slowly, as if rising from a deep torpor, it wakens!

Perhaps now the Commons will be filled once more with comity, with union of spirit, with the meshed resolve that once bound jointly our collective wills.

Oh, let it be so!

We are so fractured, so far from ready. So far from worthy.

Oh, let it be so.

Sara

The stacks were infested with polisher bees, and the music rooms thronged with hungry, biting parrot fleas, but the chimps on the maintenance staff were too busy to fumigate for minor pests.

While taking some air in the west atrium, Sara watched several of the hairy workers help a human librarian pack precious volumes into fleece-lined crates, then seal them with drippings from a big red candle. Gobbets of wax clung to the chimps’ matted fur, and they complained to each other with furtive hand signs.

This is not correct, Sara interpreted one worker’s flurry of gestures and husky grunts. In this intemperate haste, we are making regrettable errors.

The other replied, How true, my associate! This volume of Auden should not go in among Greek classics! We shall never get these books properly restacked when this crisis finally blows over, as surely it must.

Well, perhaps she was generous in her mental translation. Still, the chimps who labored in these hallowed halls were a special breed. Almost as special as Prity.

Overhead towered the atrium of the Hall of Literature, spanned by bridges and ramps that linked reading rooms and galleries, all lined with shelves groaning under the weight of books, absorbing sound while emitting a redolence of ink, paper, wisdom, and dusty time. Weeks of, frantic evacuation, hauling donkey-loads to faraway caves, had not made a dent in the hoard — still crammed with texts of every color and size.

Sage Plovov called this hall — dedicated to legend, magic, and make-believe — the House of Lies. Yet Sara always felt this place less burdened by the supremacy of the past than in those nearby structures dedicated to science. After all, what could Jijo’s savages ever add to the mountain of facts brought here by their godlike ancestors? A mountain said to be like a sand grain next to the Great Galactic Library. But the tales in this hall feared no refutal by ancient authority. Good or bad, great or forgettable, no work of literature was ever provably “false.”

Plovov said — “It’s easy to be original when you don’t have to care whether you’re telling the truth. Magic and an arise from an egomaniac’s insistence that the artist is right, and the universe wrong.”

Of course, Sara agreed. On the other hand, she also thought Plovov was jealous.

When humans came to Jijo, the effect on the other five races must have been like when Earth met Galactic culture. After centuries with just a handful of engraved scrolls, the urs, g’Kek, and others reacted to the flood of paper books with both suspicion and voracious appetite. Between brief, violent struggles, nonhumans devoured Terran fables, dramas, and novels. When they wrote stories of their own, they imitated Earthly forms — like ersatz Elizabethan romances featuring gray-shelled queens, or Native North American legends recast for urrish tribes.

But lately, a flowering of new styles had also started emerging, from heroic adventures to epic poems set in strange meters and rhymes, unraveling the last shreds of order from dialects of GalSeven, and even GalTwo. Printers and binders had as many orders for new titles as reprints. Scholars debated what it all might mean — an outbreak of heresy? Or a freeing of the spirit?

Few dared use the term renaissance.

All of which may end in a matter of days or weeks, Sara pondered glumly. News from the Glade — brought by a kayak pilot braving the Bibur rapids — showed no change in the sages’ grim appraisal of the alien gene-raiders, or their intent.

Well, Bloor should be there by now. Sara’s plan might not dissuade the sky-humans from genocide, but a folk as helpless as the Six must be willing to try anything.

Including Ariana’s crazy notion. Even if it’s cruel.

The voice of the elderly sage carried from the chamber behind Sara.

“There now, dear. You’ve struggled long enough with that one. Let’s see what you can make of this nice book. Have you ever seen symbols and words like these before?”

Sighing, Sara turned around to reenter the Children’s Wing.

The Stranger sat near Ariana Foo’s wheelchair, surrounded by volumes bearing bright colors and simple text, printed in large friendly type. Though his face was haggard, the tall dark man resignedly accepted yet another book and ran his hand over the dots, slashes, and bars of a GalTwo teaching rhyme — a primer meant for young urrish middlings. Sara was unsurprised when his lips pursed and his tongue clicked as he worked across the page, laboriously. His eyes recognized the symbols, but clearly, no sense was being made of the sentence-phrase itself.

It had been the same with books in GalSix, Anglic, and GalSeven, tearing Sara’s heart to see his frustration turn into torment. Perhaps only now was the injured man coming to know fully what had been ripped away from him. What he had forever lost.

Ariana Foo, on the other hand, seemed eminently satisfied. She beamed at Sara. “This is no rube from the outer hamlets,” the old woman ruled. “He was an educated person, familiar with every language currently in use among the Six. If we have time, we must take him to the Linguistics Wing and try some of the forgotten dialects! Galactic Twelve would clinch it. Only three scholars on Jijo know any of it today.”

“What’s the point?” Sara asked. “You’ve made your case. Why not let him be?”

“In a minute, dear. One or two more, then we’ll be off. I’ve saved the best for last.”

Two library staff members watched nervously as Ariana reached over to a stack of books by her side. Some were priceless, with rings set in their spines where chains normally kept them locked to their shelves. The archivists clearly did not like seeing them pawed by a speechless barbarian.

Unwilling to watch, Sara turned away.

The rest of the Children’s Wing was placid — and contained few children. Scholars, teachers, and traveling librarians from all six races came here to study, copy, or select books to borrow, carrying their precious cargo by cart, boat, or pack donkey to settlements throughout the Slope. Sara observed a red qheuen carefully gather some of the heavy, brass-bound albums required by her kind, assisted by two lorniks trained as assistants and page-turners. One lornik swatted at a polisher bee that was working its way across the cover of a book, rubbing its abdomen amorously across the jacket, buffing it to a fine sheen and erasing part of the title. No one knew what function the insectoids once served for the departed Buyur, but they were a damned nuisance nowadays.

Sara saw others from every race, educators who refused to let a mere crisis interfere with the serious task of instructing the next generation. Beyond the qheuen, an elderly traeki selected volumes treated to resist the fluids emitted by new stacks of rings, too clumsy to control their secretions.

A low moan brought Sara back around to see the Stranger holding before him a long, slim book so old, the colors had gone all dingy and gray. The man’s dark features clouded with clashing emotions. Sara had no time to read the title, only to glimpse a skinny black feline figure on the cover, wearing a red-and-white-striped stovepipe hat. Then, to the librarians’ gasping dismay, he clutched the volume tightly to his chest, rocking back and forth with eyes closed.

“Something from his childhood, I’ll warrant,” Ariana Foo diagnosed, scribbling on her pad. “According to the indexes, this fable was widely popular among children in northwestern Earth civilization almost continuously for over three centuries, so we can tentatively localize his cultural origins…”

“How nice. Then you’re finished?” Sara demanded, caustically.

“Hm? Oh, yes, I suppose so. For now. Get him settled down will you, pet? Then bring him along. I’ll be waiting in the main Listening Parlor.” With that, Ariana nodded briskly to the chim assigned to push her chair, leaving Sara behind to deal with the upset Stranger.

He was muttering to himself, as he did from time -to time, repeating the same short phrase, over and over. Something that wormed its way out, despite the damage to his brain. In this case, it was clearly nonsense, sparked by intense emotion.

“…a wocket in my pocket…” he said again and again, chortling poignantly, “…a wocket in my pocket…”

Gently, firmly, Sara managed to pry the ancient tome out of his trembling hands, returning the treasure to the disapproving librarians. With patience she encouraged the wounded man to stand, though his dark eyes were fogged with a kind of misery Sara found she could fathom. She, too, had lost someone precious to her.

Only the one he was mourning was himself.

Two g’Kek savants met them by the entrance to the Listening Parlor, physician researchers who had examined the Stranger soon after he arrived in Biblos. One now took him by the hand.

“Sage Foo wishes you to attend her in the observing room, next door,” the other one said. One eyestalk gestured toward an opening farther down the hall. When the Stranger looked at Sara questioningly, she gave him an encouraging nod. His trusting smile only made her feel wor.se.

The observing room was dimly illuminated by light streaming in through two circular windows — exquisite slabs of spun glass, flawless except for the characteristic central stem — which looked into another chamber where the two g’Kek doctors could be seen seating the Stranger before a large box with a crank on one side and a trumpetlike horn rising from the other.

“Come in, pet. And please close the door.”

It took several duras for Sara’s eyes to adapt and see who sat with Ariana. By then it was too late to flee.

The whole party from Tarek Town was present, along with two humans dressed in scholars’ robes. Ulgor and Blade had reason to be here, of course. Blade had helped rescue the Stranger from the swamp, and Ulgor was an honorary delegate from Dolo Village. Even Jop had an official interest. But why were Jomah and Kurt the Exploser in the room? Whatever cryptic guild business brought them from Tarek, the old man and boy now watched the proceedings with the silent intensity that was a trademark of their family and craft.

The human scholars turned toward her.

Banner and Taine — the very persons she had hoped to avoid during this visit.

Both men rose to their feet.

Sara hesitated, then bowed at the waist. “Masters.”

“Dear Sara.” Bonner sighed, leaning on his cane more than she recalled when she had last seen the balding topologist. “How we’ve missed you in these dusty halls.”

“As I’ve missed you, master,” she replied, surprised how true it was. Perhaps in the numbness after Joshu’s passing, she had closed off too many good memories as well as bad. The warmth of the old savant’s hand on her arm recalled their many walks, discussing the arcane, endlessly fascinating habits of shapes, the sort that could be described with symbols but never seen by human eyes.

“Please don’t call me master anymore,” he asked. “You are an adept now, or should be soon enough. Come, have a seat between us, like old times.”

A bit too much like old times, Sara realized, meeting the eyes of the other mathematician-sage. The tall, silver-haired algebraist seemed unchanged, still distant, enigmatic. Taine nodded and spoke her name, then sat again facing the windows. Typically, he had chosen the position farthest from the nonhumans in the room.

Sage Taine’s discomfort around the other septs was not rare. A minority felt that way in every race, a reaction deep-rooted in ancient drives. What mattered was how you dealt with it, and Taine was unfailingly polite to the urs or g’Kek teachers who came to consult him about the binomial theorem. Given the handicap, it was just as well the tall savant could live a scholar’s cloistered life… like the one Sara herself had expected—

—until a visiting bookbinder became an unlikely suitor, filling Sara’s heart with unexpected possibilities.

—until she boldly announced to her confused colleagues a new focus for her studies, language, of all things.

—until Joshu sickened when pepper pox swept through the Valley of the Bibur, a plague that took its victims with agonizing suddenness, and she had to watch another woman perform the rites of mourning, knowing that everyone was watching, to see how she’d react.

—until, after the funeral, Sage Taine approached her with stiff formality and renewed his earlier proposal of marriage.

—until, in a rush, she fled this place of dust and memories, running home to her treehouse overlooking the great dam where she was born.

Now it all circled around again. Taine had seemed so austerely beautiful when she first came to Biblos in her teens, a towering figure, impressive beyond compare. But things had changed inside her since. Everything had changed.

Abruptly, Taine’s aristocratic bearing broke as he cursed and slapped his neck, then peered at his hand, frowning in disappointment. Sara glanced at Bonner, who whispered, “Parrot ticks. Such annoyances. If one gets in your ear, Ifni help you. I heard everything double for a week, till Vorjin fished the damn thing out.”

Ariana Foo made an emphatic throat-clearing sound,

drawing their attention forward. “I’ve already explained to the others, Sara, my belief that your Stranger is a man from the stars. Further research illuminates the nature of his injuries.”

Her chimp assistant passed out sheets of paper, streaked from hasty, hand-cranked photocopying, showing the stylized profile of a man’s head, with arrows and captions pointing to parts. Most of the words were gibberish to Sara, though Lark might have found them familiar.

“I recalled reading about this once and was lucky enough to find the reference quickly. It seems that when our ancestors departed Earth, experiments had been taking place with the objective of creating direct connections between computers and living human brains.”

Sara heard an awed hiss from somewhere in back. To many of the Six, the word computer carried superstitious power. The crews of every sneakship to reach Jijo had melted all their digital calculating engines, down to the very smallest, before sinking their star-cruisers in the depths of the Midden. No other possession had such potential for betraying illegal sapience on a forbidden world.

Sara had read a few gaudy stories from Earth days, in which the author used mind-to-computer links in the narrative. She had always dismissed them as a metaphor, like legends of humans flying with feathers glued to their arms. But Ariana said the notion was once taken seriously.

“This illustration shows some of the brain areas being proposed for neural-electronic junctions at the time our ancestors departed,” Ariana continued. “Research surely proceeded during the three hundred years since. In fact, it’s my belief that our Stranger possessed the product- an aperture which let him commune with computers and other devices, inset just above the left ear.”

Now it was Sara’s turn to gasp. “Then his—”

Ariana held up a hand. “It is a safe guess that his burns and lesser injuries resulted when his ship or flying craft crash-landed in the Eternal Swamp, not far from where Sara and her friends found him. Alas, his miraculous escape from fiery death was spoiled by one bit of bad luck, when the artificial connector attached to his head was violently ripped away, taking with it portions of his left temporal lobe.

“I needn’t add, this is the portion of the human brain most closely identified with speech.”

Sara could only blink. Through the glass, she saw the man Ariana referred to, eyes bright and interested, watching the g’Kek doctors prepare their apparatus.

“I’d have thought such damage would kill him,” Bon-ner said, summarizing her own surprise.

“Indeed, he seems to have made a remarkable recovery. Were he not adult and male, with a rigid synaptic structure, perhaps he might have roused speech from the semidormant right temporal lobe, as some children and women do, after suffering damage to the left side. As things stand, there remains one possib—” She paused, noticing a waving of eyestalks in the next room.

“Well, I see our good doctors are ready, so let’s proceed.”

Ariana opened a listening vent under the nearest pane of glass. At almost the same moment, Sara felt a sudden sharp pain on her thigh, and Taine slapped his neck again. “Damn pests!” he muttered, and glanced sideways at Sara. “Things have been going to hell in more ways than one around here.”

Good old, cheerful Taine, she thought, quashing an urge to brush at her own neck. Parrot ticks were generally harmless-another mysterious vestige of Buyur times. Who would ever want the “symbiosis” of a creature who attached itself to one of your veins and repaid you by reiterating every sound you heard? The Buyur must have been strange beings indeed.

In the next room, one of the g’Kek doctors opened a large album whose thick sleeves held several dozen slim black disks. The physician delicately removed one and •laid it on a round platform which began to spin.

“An elenentary sfring action device,” Ulgor explained. “Easily constructed fron scraf netal and slices of voo.”

“A primitive but effective analog storage and retrieval system,” Taine elucidated.

“Safely nondigital,” Bonner added.

“Yesss,” the blue qheuen, Blade, hissed in agreement. “And I hear it plays music. Sort of.”

The g’Kek doctor gently lowered a wooden armature until a slender stylus touched the rim of the spinning disk. Almost at once, low strains of melody began crooning from the machine’s hornlike speaker. A strange tinny melody — accompanied by faint crackling pops — which seemed to tickle the roots of Sara’s hair.

“These disks are originals,” Ariana Foo said, “pressed by the Tabernacle colonists at the same time as the Great Printing. Nowadays, only a few experts play them. Earthly musical forms aren’t popular in the modern Commons, but I’m betting our Stranger won’t agree.”

Sara had heard of the disk-playing device. It seemed bizarre to listen to music with no living performer involved. Almost as bizarre as the music itself, which sounded unlike anything she had heard. Sara quickly recognized some instruments — violins, drums, and horns-which was natural, since string and wind instruments had been introduced to Jijo by Earthlings. But the arrangement of notes was strange, and Sara soon realized — what seemed most eerie was its orderliness.

A modern Jijoan sextet involved the blending of six solo performers, each spontaneously merging with the others. Half the excitement came from waiting for unpredictable, felicitous blendings of harmony, emerging and then vanishing once more, much like life itself. No two performances were ever the same.

But this is purely human music. Complex chords coiled and gyred in sequences that reiterated with utter disciplined precision. As in science, the point is to make something repeatable, verifiable.

She glanced at the others. Ulgor seemed fascinated, twitching her left hand-cluster — the one used for fingering notes on a violus. Blade rocked his heavy carapace in bewilderment, while young Jomah, sitting next to his stolid uncle, seemed twitchy with confused ennui.

Although she’d never heard its like, something felt ineffably familiar about the orderly sweep and flow of harmony. The notes were like… integers, the phrases like geometric figures.

What better evidence that music can be like mathematics?

The Stranger was reacting, as well. He sat forward, flushed, with clear recognition in his squinting eyes. Sara felt a wave of concern. Too much more emotional turbulence might push the poor exhausted man past his limit.

“Ariana, is all of this going somewhere?” she asked.

“In a minute, Sara.” The sage held up her hand once more. “That was just the overture. Here comes the part we’re interested in.”

How does she know? Sara wondered. Apparently, the breadth of Ariana’s eclectic knowledge stretched even to obscure ancient arts.

Sure enough, in moments the instrumental arrangement crescendoed and paused. Then a new element joined in — the unmistakable twang of human voices. After missing the first few stanzas, Sara bent forward, concentrating to make out queerly accented words.

The effect on the Stranger was profound. He stood up, trembling. The emotion spilling across his face was not simply recognition, but joyful surprise.

Then — to his own clear amazement as much as Sara’s — he opened his mouth and sang along!

Sara stood up, too, staring in astonishment. From Ariana Foo came a shout of satisfaction.

“Aha! A hit with the very first try! Even with the cultural cue, I expected to work through many before finding one he knew.”

“But his injury!” objected Taine. “I thought you said—”

“Quite right,” Bonner cut in. “If he can’t speak, how can he sing?”

“Oh, that.” Ariana dismissed the miracle with a wave. “Different functions. Different parts of the brain. There are precedents in the medical references. I’m told it’s even been observed here on Jijo, once or twice.

“No, what startles me is the cultural persistence this experiment demonstrates. It’s been three hundred years. I’d have thought by now Galactic influences would overwhelm all native Earthly—” The old woman paused, as if realizing she was running off on a tangent. “Well, never mind that. Right now what matters is that our off-planet visitor seems to have found a way to communicate, after all.”

Even in the dimness, Ariana’s smile was broad and anything but humble.

Sara laid her hand on the glass, feeling its cool slickness vibrate to the music in the next room, which had passed on to a new song. The cadence slowed and melody changed, though apparently not the topic.

She closed her eyes and listened as the Stranger plunged ahead with throaty joy, outracing the recording in his eagerness to be heard at last.