In the early morning hours, Carialle monitored her exterior movement sensors until she heard sounds of life from the marshy area downhill from her bluff. She let down her ramp and sent her two servo robots forth into the pink light of dawn. The boxy units disappeared through the break in the brush and over the edge of the ridge. Carialle, idly noting a half dozen spy-eyes hovering at a hundred meters distant, heard clunks and high-pitched squawking as they reached their goal. In a little while, the servos returned to view, herding before them a pair of globe-frogs. The amphibioids tried to signal their indignation, but had to keep paddling on the inside of their plastic spheres before the boxes bumped into them from behind. With some effort, the servos got their quarry up the ramp. Carialle shut the airlock door and pulled up her ramp behind them.

As the frogs entered the main cabin, Carialle hooked into the IT, calling up all the examples of sign language that she and Keff had managed to record over the last few days.

"Now, little friends," she said, "we're going to see if that sign you made was a fluke or not." She manifested the picture of another frog on the side screen at their level, like them but with enough differences of color and configuration to make sure they knew it was a stranger. "Let's chat."

A few hours later, Keff's door opened, and the brawn emerged, yawning, wearing only uniform pants. Plenna, wrapped in his bathrobe, followed him, trailing a lazy finger down his neck.

"Good morning, young lovers," Carialle said brightly. "We have guests."

Red lights chased around the walls and formed an arrow pointing down at the two globe-frogs huddled together in the corner nearest the airlock corridor. Keff goggled.

"But how did they get past Plenna's barrier? She told me she warded the area. Any intrusion should have set off an alarm."

"We're protected against magic only," Plenna said, eyeing the marsh creatures with distaste. "Not vermin."

"They aren't vermin and they're aware you don't like them," Carialle said indignantly. "We've been exchanging compliments."

On her main screen she displayed an expanded image of the small creatures staring at a strange-looking frog on the wall.

"That's my computer-generated envoy," Carialle explained. "Now, watch." The image made a gesture, to which the native creatures responded with a similar movement. As the complexity and number of signs increased, the frogs became excited, bumping into one another to respond to their imaginary host.

Keff watched the data string, glancing once in a while at the frogs.

"Monkey see monkey do," Keff said, shaking his head. "They observed the Ozrans making signs and copied them. This little performance is without meaning."

"Beasts Blatisant," Carialle countered. Keff grimaced. "Keff, I didn't make a subjective judgment on the frequency and meaning of these symbols. Check IT's function log. Read the vocabulary list."

When Keff lifted his eyes from the small readout screen, they were shining.

"Who'd have thought it?" he said. "Cari, all praise to your sharp wits and powers of observation."

Plennafrey had been listening carefully to the IT box's translation of Carialle's and Keff's conversation. She pointed to the frogs.

"Do you mean they can talk?" she asked.

"More than that," Keff said. "They may be the founders of your civilization." Plenna's jaw dropped open, and she stared at the two amphibioids. "Your belt buckle-may I borrow it?"

The belt flew out of Keff's room and smacked into Plenna's hands. She started to extend it to him, then withdrew it. "What for?" she asked.

"To see if they know what to do with it. Er, take it off the belt. It's too heavy for them." Obligingly, Plenna detached the buckle and handed it to him.

Very slowly, Keff walked to where the frogs stood. They waited passively within their globes, kicking occasionally at the water to maintain their positions and watching him with their beady black eyes. Keff hunkered down and held out the buckle.

Wearing a startled expression on its peaky face, the larger frog met his eyes. Immediately, the case opened, splitting into two halves, splashing water on the cabin floor, and the frog stretched out for the power item. Its skinny wrist terminated in a long, sensitively fingered hand which outspread was as large as Plennafrey's. The ends of the digits slid into the five apertures. There was a nearly audible click. click.

"It is connected to the Core of Ozran," Plennafrey said softly.

The water that had been inside the plastic ball gathered around the frog's body as if still held in place by the shell. Thus sheltered, the amphibioid rose on surprisingly long, skinny legs and made a tour of the cabin. Its small face was alive with wonder. Keff directed it to the astrogation tank showing the position of Ozran and its sun. The frog looked intelligently into the three-dimensional star map, and studied the surrounding control panels and keyboards. Then it returned to Keff.

"Help us," it signaled.

"You win, lady dear. Here're your Ancient Ones," Keff said, turning to Plennafrey with a flourish. "They were among you all the time." The young magiwoman swallowed.

"I..." She seemed to have trouble getting the words out. "I do not think that I can respect frogs frogs."

Chaumel was more philosophical when confronted by the facts.

"I refuse to be surprised," he said, shaking his head. "All in the space of a day or so, my whole life is thrown into confusion. The fur-faces turn out to be our long-lost brothers and we have cousins in plenty among the stars ready to search us out. Some of them live inside boxes. Why should we not discover that the Ancient Ones exist under our noses in the swamps?"

"Try talking to one of them," Keff urged him. Doubtfully, Chaumel looked at the three globe-frogs Keff and Plenna had brought to his stronghold. They were rolling around the great room, signing furiously to one another over an artifact or a piece of furniture.

"Well..." Chaumel said, uneasily.

"Go on," Keff said. With a few waves of his hands, Keff got their attention and signed to them to return to him. Once or twice the "courtiers" turned all the way over, trying to negotiate over the slick floor, but the biggest maintained admirable control of his sphere.

After the initial attempts at communication, Keff had let Carialle's two subjects go, asking them to send back one of their leaders. Within an hour, a larger frog speckled with yellow to show its great age had come up the ramp, rolling inside a battered case. A pair of smaller, younger frogs, guards or attendants, hurtled up behind it. The first amphibioid rolled directly over to Plenna and demanded her belt buckle. For his imperious manner as well as his great size, Keff and Carialle had dubbed him the Frog Prince. From the two symbols with which he designated his name, Keff decided he was called something like Tall Eyebrow.

"I'm sure it loses something in the translation," he explained.

Chaumel knelt and made a few signs of polite greeting. He was unsure of himself at first, but grew enthusiastic when his courtesies were returned and expanded upon.

"These are not trained creatures," he said with delight. "It really understands me."

"Tall just said the same thing about you," Keff noted, amused.

"It has feet. What are the globes for?"

"Ozran used to have much higher humidity," Keff said. "The frogs' skins are delicate. The shells protect them from the dry air."

"We cannot tell the other mages about them until we have negotiated the 'cease-fire,'" Chaumel told him seriously. "Already Nokias regrets that he said he will cooperate. He suspects Ferngal of sending those spy-eyes the other night and I have no reason to doubt him. If we present them with speaking animals who need bubbles to live, they will think we are mad, and the whole accord will fall apart."

Neither Keff nor Carialle, listening through the implant contacts, argued the point.

"It's too important to get them to stop using power," Keff said "It goes against my better judgment, but it'll help the frogs' case if we don't try to make the mages believe too many impossible things before breakfast."

During the successive weeks, the brawn and the two magifolk traveled to each mage's stronghold to convince him or her to join with them in the cause of environmental survival.

Keff spent his free time, such as remained of it, divided between Plennafrey in the evenings and the frogs in the early morning. He had to learn another whole new language, but he had never been so happy. His linguistic skills were getting a good, solid workout. Carialle's memory banks began to fill with holos of gestures with different meanings and implications.

Since the mages had always used the signs as sacred or magical communion, Keff had to begin all over again with the frogs on basic language principles. The mages had employed only a small quantity of gestures that had been gleaned from the Old Ones in their everyday lives, giving him a very limited working vocabulary. Chaumel knew only a few hundred signs, Plenna a few dozen. Keff used those to build toward scientific understanding.

Mathematical principles were easy. These frogs were the five-hundredth generation since the life-form came to this world. That verified what Keff had been coming to believe, that none of the three dominant life-forms who occupied Ozran were native to it.

Knowledge of their past had been handed down by rote through the generations. The frogs had manufactured the life-support bubbles with the aid of the one single item of power that remained to them. The other devices had all been borrowed, and then stolen by the Flat Ones, by whom Keff understood them to mean the Old Ones.

For a change, IT was working as well as he had always hoped it would. An optical monitor fed the frogs' gestures into the computer, and the voice of IT repeated the meaning into Keff's implant and on a small speaker for the benefit of the others. Keff worked out a simple code for body language that IT used to transcribe the replies he spoke out loud. Having to act out his sentence after he said it made the going slow, but in no time he picked up more and more of the physical language so he could use it to converse directly.

He was however surprised at how few frogs were willing to come forward to meet with the Ozrans and help bridge the language barrier. The Frog Prince assured him it was nothing personal; a matter of safety. After so many years, they found it difficult to trust any of the Big Folk. Keff understood perfectly what he meant. He was careful never to allude to the frogs when on any of his many visits to the mages' strongholds.

On his knees at the end of another dusty row of roots, Brannel observed Keff and Plennafrey returning to the silver ship. Scraping away at the base of a wilted plant as long as he dared, he waited for Keff to keep Carialle's promise and come get him. It seemed funny they couldn't see him, but perhaps they hadn't looked his way when he was standing up. He knew he could go up to the door and be admitted, but he was reluctant to do so until asked as they seemed disinterested in asking him. Weighing the question of waiting or not waiting, he pushed his gathering basket into the next row and started digging through the clay-thick soil for more of the woody vegetables.

His thoughts were driven away by a stunning blow to the side of the head. Brannel fell to the earth in surprise. Alteis stood over him, waving a clump of roots from his basket, spraying dirt all over the place. Some of it was on Brannel's head. A female with light brown fur stood beside the old leader, her eyes flashing angrily.

"You're in the wrong row, Brannel!" Alteis exclaimed. "This is Gonna's row. You should go that way." He pointed to the right and waited while Brannel picked up his gear and moved.

"Your mind in the mountains?" Fralim chortled from his position across the field. What traces of long-term memory the others retained came from rote and repetition, and they had been witness to Brannel's peculiarities and ambitions since he was small. Everyone but his mother scorned the young male's hopes. "We saw the Mage Keff and the Magess Plennafrey fly into the tower. You planning to set yourself up with the mages?" He cackled.

Another worker joined in with the same joke he had been using for twenty years. "Gonna shave your face and call yourself Mage, Brannel?'

Brannel was stung. "If I do, I'll show you what power the overlords wield, Mogag," he said in a voice like a growl. Alteis walked up and slapped him in the head again.

"Work!" the leader said. "The roots won't pull themselves."

The others jeered. Brannel worked by himself until the sun was just a fingertip's width above the mountain rim at the edge of the valley. Any time, food would arrive, and he would be able to sneak away. Perhaps, if no one was looking, he might go now. now.

It was his bad luck that Alteis and his strapping son were almost behind him. Fralim yanked him back by the collar and seat of his garment from the edge of the field, and plunked him sprawling into his half-worked row.

"Stay away from that tower," Alteis ordered him. "You have duties to your own folk."

Moments crept by like years. Brannel, fuming, finished his day's chores with the least possible grace. As soon as the magess kept her promise to teach him, he would never return to this place full of stupid people. He would study all day, and work great works of magic, like the ancestors and the Old Ones.

At the end of the day, he hung back from the crowd hurrying toward the newly materialized food. With Alteis busy doing something else, there was no one watching one discontented worker. Brannel sneaked away through the long shadows on the field and hurried up to the ship.

As he reached the tall door, it slid upward to disgorge Magess Plennafrey and Keff on her floating chair.

"Oh, Brannel!" Mage Keff said, surprised. "I'm glad you came up. I am sorry, but we've got to run now. Carialle will look after you, all right?" Before Brannel could tell him that nothing was "all right," the chair was already wafting them away. "See you later!" Keff called.

Brannel watched them ascend into the sky, then made his way toward the heart of the tower.

Inside, Magess Carialle was doing something with a trio of marsh creatures.

"Oh, Brannel," she said, in an unconscious echo of Keff. "Welcome. Have you eaten yet?" A meal was bubbling in the small doorway even before he had stopped shaking his head. "I promised you a peep at the tapes. Will you sit down in the big chair? I've got to keep doing another job at the same time, but I can handle many tasks at once."

Keff's big chair turned toward him and, at that direct invitation, Brannel came forward, only a little uneasy to be alone in the great silver cylinder without any other living beings. Marsh creatures didn't count, he thought, as he ate his dinner, and he wasn't sure what Carialle was.

Though she didn't seem to eat, in deference to his appetite, Magess Carialle had prepared for him a meal twice the size of the one he had eaten last time. Each dish was satisfying and most delicious. With every bite he liked the thought less and less of returning to raw roots and grains. He was nearly finished eating when the big picture before him lit up and he found himself looking into the weird green face of an Old One. He stopped with a half-chewed mouthful.

"Here's the first of the tapes, starting at the point we left off last time," Carialle's voice said.

"Ah," Brannel said, recovering his wits.

He couldn't not watch for he was fascinated and her voice kept supplying translations in his tongue. Brannel asked her the occasional question. She answered, but without offering as much of her attention as she gave one of Keff's inquiries. He glanced back over his shoulder, wondering why she had made a picture of the marsh creatures, and what they found so interesting in it.

". . . And that's the last of the tapes," Carialle said, sometime later. "What a fine resource to have turn up."

"What am I to do now?" Brannel asked, looking around him. Carialle's picture appeared on the wall beside him. The lady smiled.

"You've done so much for us-and for Ozran, by telling us about farming," she said. "All we can do now is wait to see what the mages think of our evidence."

"I would tell the mages all I know," Brannel said hopefully. "It would help convince them to farm better." The flat magess shook her head.

"Thank you, Brannel. Not yet. It would be better if you didn't get involved-less dangerous for you," she said. "Now, I don't have any tasks that need doing. Why don't you go home and sleep? I'm sure Keff will find you tomorrow, or the next day. As soon as he has any definite news to tell you."

Brannel went away, but Keff didn't come. come.

The worker spent the next day, and the next, waiting for Keff to stop off to see him between his hurried journeys to the far reaches of Ozran on the magess's chair. He never glanced at Brannel. In spite of his promise, he had forgotten the worker existed. He had forgotten their growing friendship.

Worse yet, Brannel now had a head full of information about the ancestors and the Old Ones, and what good did it do him? Nothing to do with teaching him to become a mage, or getting him better food to eat. In time his disappointment grew into a towering rage. How dare dare the strangers build up his hopes and leave him to rot like one of the despised roots of the field! How dare they make him a promise, knowing he never forgot anything, and then pretend it had never been spoken? Brannel swore to himself that he would never trust a mage again. the strangers build up his hopes and leave him to rot like one of the despised roots of the field! How dare they make him a promise, knowing he never forgot anything, and then pretend it had never been spoken? Brannel swore to himself that he would never trust a mage again.

Ferngal's stronghold stood alone on a high, dentate mountain peak, set apart by diverging river branches from the rest of the eastern range. The obsidian-dark stone of its walls offered little of the open hospitality of Chaumel's home. In the dark, relatively low-ceilinged great hall, Keff had the uncomfortable feeling the walls were closing in on him. Brown-robed Lacia and a yellow-coated mage sat with Ferngal as Chaumel gave his by now familiar talk on preserving and restoring the natural balances of Ozran.

Chaumel, in his bright robes, seemed like a living gas-flame as he hovered behind Carialle's illusions. He appealed to each of his listeners in turn, clearly disliking talking to more than one mage at a time. He had voiced a caution to Keff and Plenna before they had arrived.

"In a group, there is more chance of dissension. Careful manipulation will be required and I do not know if I am equal to it."

Keff had felt a chill. "If you can't do it, we're in trouble," he had said. "But we need to speed up the process. The power blackouts are becoming more frequent. I don't know how long you have until there's a complete failure."

"If that happens," Chaumel told his audience, "then mages will be trapped in the mountains with no means of rescue at hand. Food distribution will end, causing starvation in many areas. We have made the fur-faces dependent upon our system. We cannot fail them, or ourselves."

Early in the discussion, Lacia had announced that she viewed the whole concept of the Core of Ozran as science to be sacrilege. She frowned at Chaumel whenever the silver magiman made eye contact with her. The mage in yellow robes, an older man named Whilashen, said little and sat through Chaumel's speech pinching his lower lip between thumb and forefinger.

"I do not like this idea of relying more upon the servant class," Ferngal said. "They are mentally limited."

"With respect, High Mage," Keff said, "how would you know? Chaumel tells me that even your house servants are given a low dose of the docility drug in their food. I have done tests on the workers in the late Mage Klemay's province and can show you the results. They are of the same racial stock as you, and their capabilities are the same. All they need is more nurturing and education, and of course for you to stop the ritual mutilation and cranial mutations. In the next generation all the children will return to normal human appearance, with the possible exception of retaining the hirsutism. That may need to be bred out."

"Tosh!" Ferngal's ruddy face suffused further.

"I can't wait to see what happens when we tell him about the Frog Prince," Carialle said through the implants. "He'll have apoplexy."

Keff leaned forward, his hands outstretched, making an appeal. "I can explain the scientific process and show you proof you'll understand."

"Proof you manufacture proves nothing," Ferngal said. "Illusions, that's all, like these pictures."

"But Nokias said..." Plennafrey began. Chaumel made one attempt to silence her, but it was too late. "Nokias-"

Ferngal cut her off at once. "You've talked to Nokias? You spoke to him before you came to me?" The black magiman's nostrils flared. "Have you no respect for protocol?"