Dimly he realized that Zhaki might have saved his life. If that bolt hadn't stopped him, Mopol would surely have fired next, using the more powerful unit on the sled.

But saved me. . . . for what?

Ifni tell me . . . what's the point?

Kaa didn't figure he still had his nickname anymore.

A few hours . . . now it's gone again. She took it with her.

Brookida surfaced next to him, sputtering elation, having achieved quick success.

"Got it-t! Come on, Kaa. I've got Gillian on the line. She wants to talk to you."

Sometimes life is filled with choices. You get to select which current to ride, which tide to pull your destiny.

Other times leave you torn . . . wrenched apart . . . as if two orcas had a grip on you, one biting hard on your flukes while the other plays tug-of-war with your snout.

Kaa heard the order. He understood it.

He wasn't at all sure he could obey.

"I'm sorry about Peepoe, " Gillian Baskin said, her voice crackling over the makeshift comm line, conveyed directly to Kaa's auditory nerves. "We'll rescue her, and deal with *the deserters, when opportunity permits. Believe me, it's a high priority.

"But this other task is crucial. Our lives may depend on it, Kaa." The human paused.

"I want you to bead straight into Wuphon Harbor.

"It's time one of us went to town."

DO NOT SQUIRM SO! Instead you should exult in this recovery of something so important. The Egg.

Sooners wasx MY RINGS, IT HAS FINALLY HAPPENED. Rejoice! Your master torus has ultimately managed to recover some of the fatty memories you,we/i had thought forever lost! Those valuable recall tracks that were erased when brave-foolish Asx melted the wax!

That act of wrong loyalty stymied the usefulness of this hybrid ring stack for much too long. Some of the Polkjhy crew called us/me a failed experiment. Even the CaptainLeader questioned this effort . . . this attempt to convert a wild traeki into our loyal authority on Jijoan affairs.

Admittedly, our/my expertise about the Six Races has been uneven and fitful. Mistakes were made despite, because of our advice.

BUT NOW I/WE HAVE REACQUIRED THIS SECRET! This conviction that once filled the mulch center of the diffuse being called Asx.

Deep beneath the melted layers, a few memory tracks remained.

So far, we have seen only insolence from the sooner races-delays and grudging cooperation with the survey teams we send forth.

No voluntary gathering of g'Kek vermin at designated collection points.

No migration of traeki stacks for appraisal-and-conversion.

Swarms of supervised robots have begun sifting the countryside for groups of g'Kek and traeki, herding them toward enclosures where their numbers can be concentrated at higher density. But this task proves laborious and inefficient. It would be far more convenient if the locals were persuaded to perform the task on their own.

'Worse, these fallen beings still refuse to admit any knowledge of the Earthling prey ship.

IT PROVES DIFFICULT TO COERCE GREATER COOPERATION.

Attacks on population centers are met with resignation and dispersal.

Their dour religion confounds us with stoic pa.s.sivity. It is hard to deprive hope from a folk that never had much.

BUT NOW WE HAVE A NEW TARGET!.

One more meaningful to the Six Races than any of their campsite villages. A target to convince them of our ruthless resolve.

We already knew something of this Great Egg. Its throbbing radiations were an irritant, disrupting our instruments, but we dismissed it as a geophysical anomaly. Psi-resonant formations exist on some worlds. Despite local mythology, our onboard Library cube can cite other cases. A rare phenomenon, but understood.

Only now we realize how deeply this stone is rooted in the savages' religion. It is their central object of reverence. Their "soul."

How amusing. How pathetic. And how very convenient.

Vubben THE LAST TIME HIS AGED WHEELS HAD ROLLED

along this dusty trail, it was in the company of twelve I twelves of white-robed pilgrims-the finest eyes, minds, and rings of all six races-winding their way past sheer cliffs and steam vents in a sacred quest to seek guidance from the Holy Egg. For a time, that hopeful procession had made the canyon walls reverberate with fellowship vibrations-the Commons united and at peace.

Alas, before reaching its goal, the company fell into a maelstrom of fire, bloodshed, and despair. Soon the sages and their followers were too busy with survival to spend time meditating on the ineffable. But during the weeks since, Vubben could never shake a sense of unfinished business. Of something vital, left undone.

Hence this solitary return journey, even though it brought his frail wheels all too near the Jophur foe ship. Vubben's axles and motive spindles throbbed from the cruel climb, and he longingly recalled that a brave qheuen had volunteered to carry him all the way here, riding in comfort on a broad gray back.

But he could not accept. Despite creakiness and age, Vubben had to come alone.

At last he reached the final turn before entering the Nest. Vubben paused to catch his breath and smooth his ruffled thoughts in preparation for the trial ahead. He used a soft rag to wipe green sweat off all four eye hoods and stalks.

It is said thatg'Kek bodies could never have evolved on a planet. Our wheels and wbiplike limbs better suit the artificial worlds where our star-G.o.d ancestors dwelled, before they gambled a great wager, won their bet, and lost everything.

He often wondered what it must have been like to abide in some vast spinning city whose inner s.p.a.ce was spanned by countless slender roadways that arched like ribbons of spun sugar. Intelligent paths that would twist, gyre, and reconnect at your command, so the way between any two points could be just as straight or deliciously curved as you liked. To live where a planet's grip did not press you relentlessly, every dura from birth till death, squashing your rims and wearing away your bearings with harsh grit.

More than any other sooner race, the g'Kek had to work hard in order to love Jijo. Our refuge. Our purgatory.

Vubben's eyestalks contracted involuntarily as the Egg once again made its presence known. A surge of tywush vibrations seemed to rise from the ground. The sporadic patterning tremors had grown more intense, the nearer he came to the source. Now Vubben shivered as another wave front stroked his tense spokes, making his brain resound in its hard case. Words could not express the sensation, even in Galactic Two or Three. The psi-effect provoked no images or dramatic emotions. Rather, a feeling of expectation seemed to build, slowly but steadily, as if some longawaited plan were coming to fruition at long last.

The episode peaked . . . then pa.s.sed quickly away, still lacking the coherence he hoped for.

Then let us begin in earnest, Vubben thought. His motor spindles throbbed, helped along by slender pusher legs, as both wheels turned away from the sunset's dimming glow, toward mystery.

The Egg loomed above, a rounded shelf of stone that stretched ahead for half an arrowflight before curving out of sight. Although a century of pilgrimages had worn a trail of packed pumice, it still took almost a midura for Vubben to roll his first circuit around the base of the ovoid, whose ma.s.s pressed a deep basin in the flank of a dormant volcano. Along the way, he raised slender arms and eyestalks, lofting them in gentle benediction, supplementing his mental entreaty with the language of motion.

Help your people. . . . Vubben urged, seeking to atune his thoughts, harmonizing them with the cyclical vibrations.

Rise up. Waken. Intervene to save us. . . .

Normally, an effort at communion involved more than one suppliant. Vubben would have merged his contribution with a hoon's patience, the tenacity of a qheuen, a traeki's selfless affinity, plus that voracious will to know that made the best urs and humans seem so much alike, But such a large group might be detected moving about close to the Jophur. Anyway, he could not ask others to risk being caught in the company of a g'Kek.

With each pa.s.s around the Egg, he sent one eye wafting up to peer at Mount Ingul, whose spire was visible beyond the crater's rim. There, Phwhoon-dau had promised to station a semaph.o.r.e crew to alert Vubben in case of any approaching threat-or if there were changes in the tense standoff with the aliens. So far, no warnings were seen flashing from that western peak.

But he faced other distractions, just as disturbing to his train of thought.

. Loocen hovered in the same western quarter of the sky, with a curve of bright pinpoints shining along the moon's crescent-shaped terminator, dividing sunlit and shadowed faces. Tradition said those lights were domed cities. The departing Buyur left them intact, since Loocen had no native ecosystem to recycle and restore. Time would barely touch them until this fallow galaxy and its myriad star systems were awarded to new legal tenants, and the spiral arms once more teemed with commerce.

How those lunar cities must have tempted the first g'Kek exiles, fleeing here,row their abandoned s.p.a.ce habitats, just a few sneak jumps ahead of baying lynch mobs. Feeling safe at last, after pa.s.sing through the storms of Izmunuti, those domes would have enticed them with reminders of home^ A promise of low gravity and clean, smooth surfaces.

But such places offered no reliable, long-term shelter against relentless enemies. A planet's surface was better for fugitives, with a life-support system that needed no computer regulation. A natural world's complex mossiness made it a fine place to hide, if you were willing to live as primitives, scratching a subsistence like animals.

In fact, Vubben had few clues of what pa.s.sed through the original colonists' minds. The Sacred Scrolls were the only written records from that time, and they mostly ignored the past, preaching instead how to live in harmony on Jijo, and promising salvation to those following the Path of Redemption.

Vubben was renowned for skill at reciting those hallowed texts. But in truth, we sages stopped relying on the scrolls a century ago.

He resumed the solitary pilgrimage, commencing his fourth circuit just as another tywush wave commenced. Vubben now felt certain the cycles were growing more coherent. Yet there was also a feeling that much more power lay quiescent, far below the surface-power he desperately needed to tap.

Hoon and qheuen grandparents pa.s.sed on testimony that the patterns were more potent in the last days of Drake the Younger, when the Egg was still warm with birth heat, fresh from Jijo's womb. Compelling dreams used to flood all six races back then, convincing all but the most conservative that a true revelation had come.

Politics also played a role in the great orb's acceptance. Drake and Ur-Chown made eager proclamations, interpreting the new omen in ways that helped consolidate the Commons.

"This stone-of-ivisdom is Jijo's gift, a portent, sanctifying the treaties and ratifying the Great Peace, " they declared, with some success. From then on, hope became part of the revised religion. Though in deference to the scrolls, the word itself was seldom used.

Now Vubben sought some of that hope for himself, for his race, and all the Six. He sought it in signs that the great stone might be stirring once again.

I can feel it happening! If only the Egg rouses far enough, soon enough. But the increasing activity seemed to follow its own pace, with a momentum that made him feel like an insect, dancing next to some t.i.tanic being.

Perhaps, Vubben suspected, my presence has nothing to do with these changes.

What happens next may not involve me at all.

BLade THE WINDS WERE BLOWING HIM THE WRONG WAY. ' No real surprise there. Weather patterns on the Slope had been contrary for. more than a year. Anyway, metaphorically, the Six Races were being buffeted by gales of change. Still, at the end of a long, eventful day, Blade had more than enough reason to curse the stubbornly perverse breeze.

By late afternoon, slanting sunshine combed the forests and boo groves into a panorama of shadows and light. The Rimmers were a phalanx of giant soldiers, their armored sh.e.l.ls blushing before the lowering sun. Below, a vast marsh had given way to prairie, which in turn became forested hills. Few signs of habitation could be seen from his great height, though Blade was handicapped by a basic inability to look directly down. The chitinous bulk of his wide body blocked any direct view of the ground.

How I would love, just once in my life, to see what lies below my own feet!

His five legs weren't doing much at the moment. The claws dangled over open s.p.a.ce, snapping occasionally in reflex spasms, trying futilely to get a grip on the clear air, Even more disconcerting, the sensitive feelers around his mouth had no earth or mud to brush against, probing the many textures of the ground. Instead, they, too, hung uselessly. Blade felt numb and bare in the direction a qheuen least liked being exposed.

That had been the hardest part to get used to, after takeoff. To a qheuen, life's texture is determined by its medium. Sand and salt water to a red. Freshwater and mud to a blue. A world of stony caverns to imperial grays. Although their ancestors had starships, Jijo's qheuens seemed poor candidates for flight.

As open country glided majestically past, Blade pondered being the first of his kind in hundreds of years to soar.

Some adventure! It will be worth telling Log Biter and the other matrons about, when I return to that homey lodge behind Dolo Dam. The grubs, in their murky den, will want to hear the story at least forty or fifty times.

If only this voyage would get a little less adventurous, and more predictable.

I hoped to be communicating with Sara by now, not drifting straight toward the enemy's toothy maw.

Above Blade's cupola and vision strip, he heard valves open with a preliminary hiss-followed by a roaring burst of heat. Unable to shift or turn his suspended body, he could only envision the urrish contraptions in a wicker basket overhead, operating independently, using jets of flame to replenish the hot-air bag, keeping his balloon to a steady alt.i.tude.

But not a steady heading.

Everything was as automatic as the smiths' technology allowed, but there was no escaping the tyranny of the wind. Blade had just one control to operate-a cord attached to a distant knife that would rip the balloon open when he pulled, releasing the buoyant vapors and dropping him out of the sky at a smooth rate-so the smiths a.s.sured-fast, but not too fast. As pilot, he had one duty, to time his plummet so it ended in a decent-sized body of water.

Even arriving at a fair clip, no mere splash should harm his armored, disklike form. If a tangle of rope and torn fabric pinned his legs, dragging him down, Blade could hold his breath long enough to chew his way free and creep ash.o.r.e.

Nevertheless, it had been hard to convince the survivors' council, ruling over the ruins of Ovoom Town, to let him try this crazy idea. They naturally doubted his claim that a blue qheuen should be their next courier.

But too many human boys and girls have died in recent days, rushing about in flimsy gliders. Urrish balloonists have been breaking necks and legs. All I have to do is crash into liquid and I'm guaranteed to walk away. Today's crude circ.u.mstances make me an ideal aviator!

There was just one problem. While hooking Blade into this conveyance, the smiths had a.s.sured him the afternoon breeze was reliable this time of year, straight up the valley of the Gentt. It should waft him all the way to splashdown at Prosperity Lake within a few miduras, leaving more than enough time to dash at a rapid qheuen gait and reach the nearest semaph.o.r.e station by nightfall. His packet of reports about conditions at ravaged Ovoom would then slide into the flashing message stream. And then Blade could finally scratch his lingering duty itch, restoring contact with Sara as he had vowed. a.s.suming she was at Mount Guenn, that is.

Only the winds changed, less than a midura after takeoff. The promised quick jaunt east became a long detour north.

Toward borne, he noted. Unfortunately, the enemy lay in between. At this rate he'd be shot down before Dolo Village ever hove into view.

To make matters worse, he was starting to get thirsty.

This situation-it is ridiculous, Blade grumbled as sunset brought forth stars. The breeze broke up into rhythmic, contrary gusts. Several times, these bursts raised his hopes by shoving the balloon toward peaks where he spied other semaph.o.r.e stations, pa.s.sing soft flashes down the mountain chain. There was apparently a lot of message activity tonight, much of it heading north.

But whenever some large lake seemed about to pa.s.s below the bulging gasbag, another hard gusset blew in, pushing him at an infuriating angle, back over jagged rocks and trees. Frustration only heightened his thirst.

If this keeps up, I'll be so dehydrated that I'd dive fora little puddle.

Blade soon realized how far he had come. As the last light of day vanished from the tallest peaks, he spied a cleft in the mountains that any Sixer would recognize-the pa.s.s leading to Festival Glade, where each year the Commons of Six Races gathered to celebrate-and mourn-another year of exile. For some time after the sun was gone, Loocen's bright crescent kept him company, illuminating the foothills. Blade expected the surface to draw closer as he was pushed northeast, but the simpleminded urrish altimeter somehow sensed changing ground levels and reacted with another jet of flame, preventing the balloon from meeting the valley floor.

Then Loocen sank as well, abandoning him to a world of shadows. The mountains became little more than black bites, torn out of the starry heavens. It left Blade all alone with his imagination, speculating how theJophur were going to deal with him.

Would there be a flash of cold flame, as he had seen darting from the belly of the cruel corvette that devastated Ovoom Town? Would they rip him to bits with scalpels of sound? Or were he and the balloon destined for vaporization upon making contact with some defensive force field? The kind of barrier often described in garish Earthling novels?

Worst of all, he pictured a "tractor beam," seizing and dragging him down to torment in some Jophur-designed h.e.l.l, The cord-should I pull it now? he wondered. Lest our foes learn the secret of hot-air balloons?

Qheuens never used to laugh before coming to Jijo. But somehow the blue variety picked up the habit, infuriating their Gray Queens, even before hoons and humans could be blamed as bad influences. Blade's legs now contracted, quivering as a calliope of whistles escaped his breathing vents.

Right' We mustn't allow this "technology" to fall into the wrong hands ... or rings. Why, theJophur might make balloons of their own, to use against us!

The upland canyons answered with faint repet.i.tions of his laughter-echoes that cheered him up a little, as if there were an audience for his imminent parting from the universe. No qheuen likes to die alone, Blade thought, tightening his grip on the cord that would send him plunging to Jijo's dark embrace. , only hope someone finds enough sh.e.l.l fragments to dross. . . .

At that moment, a faint glimmer made him pause. It came from dead ahead, farther up the narrowing valley, below the mountain pa.s.s. Blade tried focusing his visor, but again had to curse the poor vision his race inherited from ancient times. He peered at the pale shine.

Could it be . . . ?

The soft rays reminded him of starlight, glancing off water, making him hold off yanking the cable for a few duras. If it was an alpine lake, he might have just a little time to[ estimate the distance, include his rate of drift, and guess the right moment to pull. With my luck, it will turn out to be a mule spider's acid pit. At least that would take care of the mulching problem.

The glimmer drew nearer, but its outline seemed strangely smooth, unlike a natural body of water. Its profile was oval, and the reflections had a convex quality that- Ifni and the ancestors! Blade cursed in surprised dismay. It is the Jophur ship!

He stared in blank awe at the size of the globular thing so huge, I thought it was part of the landscape.

Worse, he measured his course and heading.

Soon, I'll be right on top of it.