We traeki-newly uplifted from the pensive swamps of our homeworld-seemed safe from achieving greatness, no matter how many skills our patrons, the blessed Poa, inserted in our rings. Oh, we found it pleasant to merge in tall, wise stacks. To gather learned wax and travel the stars. But to our patrons' frustration, we never found appealing the fractious rivalries that churn the Five Galaxies. Frantic aspiration and zeal always seemed pointless to our kind.

Then the Poa brought in experts. The Oailie. The Oailie pitied our handicap. With great skill, they gave us tools for achievement. For greatness. The Oailie gave us new rings- Rings of power. Rings of self-centered glory. Rings that turned mere traeki into Jophur. Too late, we and the Poa learned a lesson-that ambition comes at a cost.

We fled, did we not, my rings?

By a fluke, some traeki managed to shuck these Oailie "gifts," and escape.

Only a few wax-crystal remembrance cells survive from those days. Memories laced with dread of what we were becoming.

At the time, our ancestors saw no choice but flight.

And yet ... a pang of conscience trickles through our inner core.

Might there have been another way?

Might we have stayed and fought somehow to tame those awesome new rings? Futile as our forebears' exodus now seems . . . was it also wrong'

Since joining the High Sages, this traeki Asx has pored over Terran books, studying their lonely, epochal struggle-a poignant campaign to control their own deeply solipsistic natures. A labor still under way when they emerged from Earth's cradle to make contact with Galactic civilization.

The results of that Asx investigation remain inconclusive, yet i/we found tantalizing clues.

The fundamental ingredient, it seems, is courage.

Yes, my rings?

Very well then. A majority has been persuaded by the second ring of cognition.

We/i shall once again turn to the hot-new-dreadful waxy trail of recent memory.

Glistening cones stared down at the confused onlookers who remained, milling on the despoiled glade. From a balcony high a-flank the mountain ship, polished stacks of fatty rings dripped luxuriously as they regarded teeming savages below-we enthralled members of six exile races.

Shifting colors play across their plump toruses-shades of rapid disputation. Even at a great distance, i/we sense controversy raging among the mighty Jophur, as they quarrel among themselves. Debating our fate.

Events interrupt, even as our dribbling thought-streams converge.

Near.

At last we have come very near the recent. The present.

Can you sense it, my rings? The moment when our dreadful cousins finished arguing what to do about us? Amid the flashing rancor of their debate, there suddenly appeared forceful decisiveness. Those in command-powerful ring stacks whose authority is paramount-made their decree with stunning confidence.

Such a.s.suredness! Such certainty! It washed over us, even from six arrowflights away.

Then something else poured from the mighty dreadnought.

Hatchet blades of infernal light.

Emerson HE HAS NEVER BEEN ESPECIALLY FOND OF HOLES. This one both frightens and intrigues Emerson. It is a strange journey, riding a wooden wagon behind a four-horse team, creaking along a conduit with dimpled walls, like some endless stretched intestine. The only illumination-a faintly glowing stripe-points straight ahead and behind, toward opposite horizons.

The duality feels like a sermon. After departing the hidden forest entrance, time became vague-the past blurry and the future obscure. Much like his life has been ever since regaining consciousness on this savage world, with a cavity in his head and a million dark s.p.a.ces where memory should be.

Emerson can feel this place tugging a.s.sociations deep within his battered skull. Correlations that scratch and howl beyond the barriers of his amnesia. Dire recollections lurk just out of reach. Alarming memories of abject, gibbering terror, that snap. and sting whenever he seeks to retrieve them.

Almost as if, somehow, they were being guarded.

Strangely, this does not deter him from prodding at the barricades. He has spent much too long in the company of pain to hold it in awe any longer. Familiar with its quirks and ways, Emerson figures he now knows pain as well as he knows himself.

Better, in fact.

Like a quarry who turns at bay after growing bored with running-and then begins hunting its pursuer-Emerson eagerly stalks the fear scent, following it to its source.

The feeling is not shared. Though the draft beasts pant and their hooves clatter, all echoes feel m.u.f.fled, almost deathlike. His fellow travelers react by hunching nervously on the narrow bench seats, their breath misting the chill air.

Kurt the Exploser seems a little less surprised by all this than Sara or Dedinger, as if the old man long suspected the existence of a subterranean path. Yet, his white-rimmed eyes keep darting, as if to catch dreaded movement in the surrounding shadows. Even their guides, the taciturn women riders, appear uneasy. They must have come this way before, yet Emerson can tell they dislike the tunnel.

Tunnel.

He mouths the word, adding it proudly to his list of recovered nouns.

Tunnel.

Once upon a time, the term meant more than a mere hole in the ground, when his job was fine-tuning mighty engines that roamed the speckled black of s.p.a.ce. Back then it stood for ...

No more words come to mind. Even images fail him, though oddly enough, equations stream from some portion of his brain less damaged than the speech center. Equations that explain tunnels, in a chaste, sterile way-the sort of multidimensional tubes that thread past treacherous shoals of hypers.p.a.ce. Alas, to his disappointment, the formulas lack any power to yank memories to life.

They do not carry the telltale spoor of fear.

Also undamaged is his unfailing sense of direction. Emerson knows when the smooth-walled pa.s.sage must be pa.s.sing under the broad river, but no seepage is seen. The tunnel is a solid piece of Galactic workmanship, built to last for centuries or eons-until the a.s.signed time for dismantling.

That time came to this world long ago. This place should have vanished along with all the great cities, back when Jijo was lain fallow. By some oversight, it was missed by the great destroyer machines and living acid lakes.

Now desperate fugitives use the ancient causeway to evade a hostile sky, suddenly filled with ships.

While still vague on details, Emerson knows he has been fleeing starships for a very long time, along with Gillian, Hannes, Tsh 't, and the crew of Streaker.

Faces flicker, accompanying each name as recall agony makes him grunt and squeeze his eyelids. Faces Emerson pines for . . . and desperately hopes never to see again. He knows he must have been sacrificed somehow, to help the others get away.

Did the plan succeed? Did Streaker escape ahead of those awful dreadnoughts? Or has he suffered all of this for nothing?

His companions breathe heavily and perspire. They seem taxed by the stale air, but to Emerson it is just another kind of atmosphere. He has inhaled many types over the years. At least this stuff nourishes the lungs . . . . . . unlike the wind back on the green-green world, where a balmy day could kill you if your helmet failed. ...

And his helmet did fail, he now recalls, at the worst possible time, while trying to cross a mat of sucking demiveg, running frantically toward- Sara and Prity gasp aloud, snapping his mental thread, making him look up to see what changed.

At a brisk pace the wagon enters a sudden widening of the tunnel, like the bulge where a snake digests its meal. Dimpled walls recede amid deep shadows, where dozens of large objects dimly lurk-tubelike vehicles, corroded by time. Some have been crushed by rock falls. Piles of stony debris block other exits from the underground vault.

Emerson lifts a hand to stroke a filmy creature riding his forehead, as lightly as a scarf or veil. The rewq trembles at his touch, swarming down to lay its filmy, translucent membrane over his eyes. Some colors dim, while others intensify. The ancient transit cars seem to shimmer like specters, as if he is looking at them not through s.p.a.ce, but time. It is almost possible to imagine them in motion, filled with vital energies, hurtling through a network that once girdled a living, global civilization.

The horsewomen sitting on the foremost bench clutch their reins and peer straight ahead, enclosed by a nimbus of tension made visible by the rewq. The film shows Emerson their edgy, superst.i.tious awe. To them, this is no harmless crypt for dusty relics, but a macabre place where phantoms prowl. Ghosts from an age of G.o.ds.

The creature on his brow intrigues Emerson. How does the little parasite translate emotions-even between beings as different as human and traeki-and all without words? Anyone who brought such a treasure to Earth would be richly rewarded.

To his right, he observes Sara comforting her chimpanzee aide, holding Prity in her arms. The little ape cringes from the dark; echoless cavern, but the rewq's overlaid colors betray a fringe of deceit in Prity's distress. It is partly an act! A way to distract her mistress, diverting Sara from her own claustrophobic fears.

Emerson smiles knowingly. The hues surrounding Sara reveal what the unaided eye already knows-that the young woman thrives on being needed. "It's all right, Prity," she soothes. "Shh. It'll be all right." The phrases are so simple, so familiar that Emerson understands them. He used to hear the same words while thrashing in his delirium, during those murky days after the crash, when Sara's tender care helped pull him back from that pit of dark fire.

The vast chamber stretches on, with just the glowing stripe to keep them from drifting off course. Emerson glances back to see young Jomah, seated on the last bench with his cap a twisted ma.s.s between his hands, while his uncle Kurt tries to explain something in hushed tones, motioning at the distant ceiling and walls-perhaps speculating what held them up ... or what explosive force it would take to bring them crashing down. Nearby, with fastened hands and feet, the rebel, Dedinger, projects pure hatred of this place.

Emerson snorts annoyance with his companions. What a gloomy bunch! He has been in spots infinitely more disturbing than this harmless tomb . . . some of them he can even remember! If there is one sure truth he can recall from his former life, it is that a cheerful journey goes much faster, whether you are in deep s.p.a.ce or the threshold of h.e.l.l.

From a bag at his feet, he pulls out the midget dulcimer Ariana Foo had given him back at the Biblos Archive, that ornate hall of endless corridors stacked high with paper books. Not bothering with the hammers, he lays the instrument on his lap and plucks a few strings. Tw.a.n.ging notes jar the others from their anxious mutterings to look his way.

Though Emerson's ravaged brain lacks speech, he has learned ways to nudge and cajole. Music comes from a different place than speech, as does song.

Free a.s.sociation sifts the shadowy files of memory. Early drawers and closets, undammed by the traumas of later life. From some cache he finds a tune about travel down another narrow road. One with a prospect of hope at the end of the line.

It spills forth without volition, as a whole, flowing to a voice that's unpracticed, but strong.

"I've got a mule, her name is Sal, Fifteen miles down the Erie Ca.n.a.l.

She's a good old worker and a good old pal, Fifteen miles down the Erie Ca.n.a.l.

We've hauled some cargo in our day, Filled with lumber, coal, and hay, And we know every inch of the way, From Albany to Buffalo-o-o. ..."

Amid the shadows, they are not easily coaxed from their worries. He too can feel the weight of rock above, and so many years. But Emerson refuses to be oppressed. He sings louder, and soon Jomah's voice joins the refrain, followed tentatively by Sara's. The horses' ears flick. They nicker, speeding to a canter.

The subterranean switching yard narrows again, walls converging with a rush. Ahead, the glowing line plunges into a resuming tunnel.

Emerson's voice briefly falters as a flicker of memory intrudes. Suddenly he can recall another abrupt plunge . . . diving through a portal that opened into jet vacuum blankness . . . then falling as the universe converged on him from all sides to squeeze. . . .

And something else.

A row of pale blue eyes.

Old Ones . . .

But the song has a life of its own. Its momentum pours unstoppably from some cheerful corner of his mind, overcoming those brief, awful images, making him call out the next verse with a vigor of hoa.r.s.e, throaty defiance.

"Low bridge, everybody down!

Low bridge! 'Cause we're comin' to a town.

And you I'll always know your neighbor, Always know your pal, If you ever navigate along the Erie Ca.n.a.l."

His companions lean away from the rushing walls. Their shoulders press together as the hole sweeps up to swallow them again.

PART THREE.

ONCE A LENGTHY EPISODE of colonization finally comes to an end, subduction recycling Is among the more commonly used methods for clearing waste products on a llle world. Where natural cycles of plate tectonics provide a powerful indrawing force, the planets own hot convection processes can melt and remix elements that had been rationed into tools and civilised implements. materials that might otherwise prove poisonous or intrusive to new-rising species are thus removed from the (allow environment, as a world eases into the necessary dormant phase.

What happens to these refined materials, alter they have been drawn in, depends on mantle processes peculiar to each planet. Certain convection systems turn the molten substance into high-purity ores. borne become lubricated by water seeps, stimulating the release or great liquid magma spills, ,et another result can be sudden expulsions of volcanic dust, which richly coat the planet and can later be traced in the refractory-metal enrichment of thin sedimentary layers.

Each of these outcomes can result in perturbations of the local biosphere, and occasional episodes of extinction. However, the resulting enrichment fccunJity usually proves benehcial enough to compensate, encouraging development of new presapient species. . . .from A. Oalactograpfuc Tutorial for Ignorant Voiding Tsrrans, a. special publication of the Library Inst.i.tute of the Five Galaxies, year 42 EC, in partial satisfaction of the debt obligation of 35 t,C Hannes SUESSI FELT NOSTALGIC ABOUT BEING HUMAN. NOW and then, he even wished he were still a man. Not that he was ungrateful for the hoon the Old Ones had granted him, in that strange place called the Fractal System, where aloof beings transformed his aged, failing body into something more durable. Without their gift, he would be stone dead-as cold as the giant corpses surrounding him in this dark ossuary of ships.

The ancient vessels seemed peaceful, in dignified repose. It was tempting to contemplate resting, letting eons pa.s.s without further care or strife.

But Suessi was much too busy to spare time for being dead.

"Hannes," a voice crackled directly to his auditory nerve.

"Two minutes, Hannes. Then I think-k we'll be ready to resume cut-t-ting."

Shafts of brilliant illumination speared through the watery blackness, casting bright ovals toward one curved hull segment of the Terran starship Streaker. Distorted silhouettes crisscrossed the spotlight beams-the long undulating shadows of workers clad in pressurized armor, their movements slow, cautious.

This was a more dangerous realm than hard vacuum.

Suessi did not have a larynx anymore, or lungs to blow air past one if he had. Yet he retained a voice.

"Standing by, Karkaett," he transmitted, then listened as his words were rendered into groaning saser pulses.

"Please keep the alignment steady. Don't overshoot."

One shadow among many turned toward him. Though cased in hard sheathing, the dolphin's tail performed a twist turn with clear body-language meaning.

Trust me . . . do you have any choice?

Suessi laughed-a shuddering of his t.i.tanium rib cage that replaced the old, ape-style method of syncopated gasps. It wasn't as satisfying, but then, the Old Ones did not seem to have much use for laughter.

Karkaett guided his team through final preparations while Suessi monitored. Unlike some others in Streaker's crew, the engineering staff had grown more seasoned and confident with each pa.s.sing year. In time, they might no longer need the encouragement-the supervising crutch- of a member of the patron race. When that day came, Hannes would be content to die.

I've seen too much. Lost too many friends. Someday, we'll be captured by one of the eatee factions pursuing us. Or else, we'll finally get a chance to turn ourselves in to some great Inst.i.tute, only to learn Earth was lost while we fled helter-skelter across the universe. Either way, I don't want to be around to see it.

The Old Ones can keep their Ifni-cursed, immortality.

Suessi admired the way his well-trained team worked, setting up a specially designed cutting machine with cautious deliberation. His audio pickups tracked low mutterings-keeneenk chants, designed to help cetacean minds concentrate on explicit thoughts and tasks that their ancestral brains were never meant to take on. Engineering thoughts-the kind that some dolphin philosophers called the most painful price of uplift.

These surroundings did not help-a mountainous graveyard of long-dead starcraft, a ghostly clutter, buried in the kind of ocean chasm that dolphins traditionally a.s.sociated with their most cryptic cults and mysteries. The dense water seemed to amplify each rattle of a tool. Every whir of a harness arm resonated queerly in the dense liquid environment.

Anglic might be the language of engineers, but dolphins preferred Trinary for punctuation-for moments of resolution and action. Karkaett's voice conveyed confidence in a burst phrase of cetacean haiku.

Through total darkness Where the cycloid's gyre comes never . . .

Behold-decisiveness! f The cutting tool lashed out, playing harsh fire toward the vessel that was their home and refuge . . . that had carried them through terrors unimaginable. Streaker's hull- purchased by the Terragens Council from a third-hand ship dealer and converted for survey work-had been the pride of impoverished Earthclan, the first craft to set forth with a dolphin captain and mostly cetacean crew, on a mission to check the veracity of the billion-year-old Great Library of the Civilization of the Five Galaxies.