Part II

Indira Toledo turned the page of the notebook. A passage caught her eye.

It's not as if I hadn't spent years thinking about it. I wanted to be an exobiologist from as far back as I can remember. Fought like hell to win a place on the Magellan. But all those years I was convinced the vertebrate Bauplan—or some variation on it—was the only suitable structure for large terrestrial life-forms. That's why I specialized in vertebrate paleontology.

Well, here I am. My dream come true. A planet full of large terrestrial life-forms. Including intelligent life forms—the first we've ever encountered. And the joke's on me!

Molluscs. Of all things—molluscs!

They're not really molluscs, of course. Hardcore cladists would lynch me for even thinking it. A totally separate evolutionary history. But the convergence is uncanny. It makes you wonder if old Arrhenius was right—all life came from spores drifting through interstellar space. That would make us distant relatives. Very, very, very distant. Even if Arrhenius was right, we'd be more closely related to algae and bacteria than we are to anything on Ishtar.

Indira smiled ruefully. She remembered criticizing Julius once for using the human name for the planet.

"Typical biologist," she'd said to him. "Arrogant beyond belief."

"But it's a great name!" he'd protested. "In most pantheons, the goddess of love and the god of war are separated not only in person but in sex. Ishtar was both. What could be more suited for this planet? A goddess of war and love. I should think you, of all people, would approve."

That had made her even angrier.

"I am not one of those feminists who thinks it's an advance for women to participate in slaughter. Anyway, that's beside the point—and you know it. Throughout history, the first act of aggression on the part of a more advanced society toward a less advanced one is to rename everything. Goes all the way back to your damned Bible. The first thing Adam did was name everything. That gave him the right to do what he pleased with his beasts. Columbus was just following the program. Rhodesia, for God's sake!"

Julius had grinned. "Egad, I'm exposed. Julius Cohen, slavering imperialist." He rubbed his hands, cackling with glee. "Wait till I get these natives into the gold mines! Copper mines, rather. Doesn't seem to be much gold on this planet, curse the luck. Pizarro'll never forgive me."

She chuckled, remembering the argument. Julius was the most good-hearted of men, in all truth. And, in the end, he had been proven right. For reasons which would have astonished all of the adult colonists at the time.

Her eyes watered. She and Julius were all that was left, now, of that small group of adults who had survived the first months after the disaster.

She raised her head and stared at the kolo-cluster down in the valley. They were all buried there. Vladimir Koresz. Janet Mbateng. Hector Quintero. Francis Adams. Following owoc customs, the humans had adopted the grove as their own cemetery. The owoc had a particular reverence for the kolo. Indira was not sure why, exactly. The owoc were not good at explaining things. But she thought it was because of the way the kolo always grew in dense clusters, the willowy shoots intertwining and curling about each other like vines. And they were pale green, color of tranquillity.

The Coil of Beauty. It was when she had finally grasped the meaning of that owoc concept that her gratitude toward them had crystallized into a profound love for the gentle creatures. Even Julius, once she had explained it to him, had been shaken out of his normally linear way of thinking. Thereafter, to her relief, he had stopped referring to the owoc as "dimbulbs."

She shook her head sharply, exorcising the sadness, and resumed reading.

I shouldn't be all that surprised. How long ago was it that Stephen Jay Gould pointed out how chancy the evolution of vertebrates had been? There was hardly a trace of chordates in the Burgess Shale, after all. Even on Earth, the phylum might have easily disappeared during the Permian extinction, if not sooner. And then what would have happened?

Still, I would have bet on some branch of the arthropods. But perhaps not. Maybe the very success of the arthropod Bauplan militates against them ever evolving into forms suitable of filling the ecological niche of large terrestrial life forms. And why should they? Popular mythology to the contrary, that niche has always been on the outer edge of existence. It's amazing, really, how the large size of humans prejudices our view of life. To this day, biologists talk of mammals dominating the earth. That's news to bacteria! Not to mention insects and worms. We, and all our bulky mammal relatives, are just rare clouds drifting over the teeming landscape of life. So were the dinosaurs.

It reminds me of J. B. S. Haldane's quip, when he was asked what his life's study of biology indicated about God. "He has an inordinate fondness for beetles."

No, not the arthropods. They've always been evolution's biggest winners. And winners don't evolve, in any major way. Losers do.

Still, it's odd that I haven't seen any signs of an arthropod equivalent on Ishtar. It's certainly not because of any lack of life! Ishtar's biomass is as big as Earth's. Bigger, probably, than today's Earth. About the same, I would guess, as the Earth during the Mesozoic. The climate's right—semi-tropical, no seasons worth talking about. Whereas the modern Earth is in an unusually frigid period of its existence. Has been for millions of years.

Indira smiled again. The words in the notebook brought back the first conversation she'd ever had with Julius. It had taken place shortly after the Magellan had left Earth orbit, on the start of the first leg of its voyage. It had taken three months to build up the ship's velocity to its maximum 13% of light-speed. During those months, the adults had remained conscious, getting to know each other in order to lay the basis for forging an effective team once they arrived at Tau Ceti. After the Magellan had reached its maximum velocity, and the crew was satisfied that the huge vessel was performing properly, all the adults had joined the children in coldsleep, there to spend the long years of the voyage in blissful unconsciousness. Weeks before that time came, she and Julius had become lovers.

But, she remembered fondly, we began with an argument.

Entering the large equatorial lounge, she had heard a man pontificating loudly on the stupidity of "ecofreaks" in general and their wails about global warming in particular. Mildly curious, and with nothing else to do, she had joined the small group listening to him.

"The idiots have no sense of the real history of life on earth," the man had been saying, as she took a seat on the armchair opposite him. "The average temperature on earth today is as low as it's ever been—at least since the Cambrian explosion. Probably lower. It's because of the modern configuration of the continents. It's not been unusual to have one ice-cap in our history. A continent often gets pushed over one of the poles by plate tectonics, just like Antarctica is today. But there's never been two ice-caps before. So far as we can tell, anyway."

Another man sitting around the circle of chairs (Vladimir Koresz, she later learned, one of the colony's doctors) had spoken up.

"But, Julius, there's no continent today under the north pole."

Julius had leaned forward, gesticulating with great animation (one of his characteristics, she learned over time).

"I know—that's the beauty of the whole thing! Instead, tectonics has encircled the north pole with most of the great continents. The flow of warm water which would normally keep the pole from freezing has been strangled. The result? The formation of a floating ice-cap. Do you have any idea of the odds against that happening?"

He drank from a cup of coffee sitting on the table before him.

"And that's my whole point. The Earth's climate today is a freak. It's not 'normal'—just the opposite. We live in a freezer. For almost the entire Phanerozoic Eon—"

"The what?" asked Koresz.

"Sorry. That's just jargon for the last 700 million years, since the evolution of multi-cellular life. Anyway, throughout that entire period—700 million years, folks—when life spread over the entire planet and evolved into all its wonderful permutations, the average temperature on Earth was much higher than it is today—ten or fifteen degrees, on the average. That's the normal temperature for the planet—and it's the optimum temperature for terrestrial life."

He set down his cup and spread his arms wide.

"You see? The real problem life has on earth today isn't global warming. It's just the opposite! The place is too damned cold. If we really cared about life, we'd go back to using fossil fuels. Crank up the greenhouse effect! It'd be great! It's not just that the temperature would be better, either. What's just as important is that the oceans would rise. That's another problem we have on Earth today. There aren't enough shallow seas and continental shelves, which are always the best environments for life to flourish. Raise the sea level a few hundred feet and we'd double or triple the area where life thrives the best."

She had interrupted at that point.

"I'd like to butt in, if you don't mind."

"Not at all!" said Julius, waving his hands.

She leaned over, extending her hand.

"I'm Indira Toledo. Historian."

"Julius Cohen. Paleontologist."

Her slender hand had been engulfed in Julius' vigorous handshake. He was a large man, fat in a healthy-looking sort of way. His complexion was ruddy, and his features were round and pudgy. Except for the kinky black hair, and the lack of a beard, he was the spitting image of Santa Claus.

Despite his harmless appearance, she was tense with anger. She tried to relax, because she knew that her thin, sharp features (normally quite attractive) were extremely intimidating when she was mad. But she couldn't help herself.

Arrogant bastard.

"Tell me, something, Mr. Cohen—"

"Please, please! Julius!"

"All right, then. Julius. I was born on the Altiplano. My father's Latin American. But I'm descended from Bengali immigrants, and I still have lots of relatives living in Calcutta. It's only been in the last generation or so that the Bengalis have finally been able to pull themselves out of some of the worst poverty the human race has ever experienced. They've even managed to limit the destruction during the monsoon season. But it's still a hard life, for most of them, and they're still packed together like sardines. What are those millions—millions, Mr. Cohen—of people supposed to do after you raise the sea level? Learn to swim? Or will you take them into all the extra space you've got in New York City?"

He shook his head ruefully. "Damn, my accent always gives me away." He stared at her thoughtfully, and she couldn't help but notice the intelligence in his eyes. Then, with a warmth that struck her like a great wave, his eyes had crinkled and a huge grin had spread across his face.

"Hey, lady, I really don't wanna drown a lot of cute little Bengali kids. Honest, I don't."

He made a self-deprecating gesture. "You've got to forgive my big mouth. I have a bad habit of fixing on a point and taking it to its logical conclusion. But I'm really not a stupid jackass, honest."

Then, more seriously: "I know we've got to maintain the earth's temperature where it is. The human race has only finally—barely—managed to carve out a decent enough life for everyone. The last thing we need to do is shatter all that hard work by upsetting the climatic apple-cart. It's just—oh hell, the thing that irritates me about these ecofreaks isn't what they call for, it's their goddammed self-righteousness. For all their claims to being the guardians of life, the truth is that they're at least as homocentric as anyone else. They just won't admit it. It's not 'life' they care about, it's the way life affects humans."

"I think you're being unfair."

He shrugged. "Maybe. But as a professional biologist I've always found that people have the screwiest ideas about life. Let me ask you something. Where would you rather spend a week's vacation—next to a beautiful clear blue lake in the mountains, or next to a swamp?"

She snorted. "What do you think?"

"Of course—at the lake. And while you were there, I'm sure you'd gaze out over that beautiful stretch of bright blue water and think serene philosophical thoughts about the glories of nature. But are you aware that cold mountain lakes are one of the most inhospitable conditions for life? It's true. That lake is a sterile desert. There are a few life-forms that have managed to adapt to those conditions—trout, for instance. But the biomass in that lake is a pittance compared to the life that thrives in a swamp."

He waved his arms about enthusiastically.

"Swamps are great! They're wonderful! Life adores a swamp! You don't believe me? Try walking around in a swamp sometime without stepping all over all kinds of juicy life-forms. Really juicy—soft, and slimy, and wriggly, and crawling all over the place."

She couldn't help but laugh. "Ugh! No thanks."

He grinned. "See? You're just another bigot. And that's my point. People will get all worked up over pollution in a mountain lake. Trout are pretty; tasty, too. But who cares about a swamp?"

He shrugged. "And that's fine with me, in and of itself. I'd much rather spend a week by a mountain lake, myself. Hate swamps. Don't know anybody who doesn't except herpetologists, and they're all a bunch of lunatics." One of the men nearby snorted. "But I don't go around preaching about the sanctity of all life, when what I really care about is life as it impacts on the human race. I'm opposed to destroying life where it's needless. But like any biologist—certainly any paleontologist—I have a keen sense that eventually all species become extinct. That's the way it is—and has been for eons, long before we humans popped onto the scene. So, to get back to your point, I care a hell of a lot more about what happens to people in Bengal than I do about the abstract fact that if we flooded the lowlands we'd enable millions of new species to come into existence. I'm just willing to be honest about it."

"That's all very sane and logical, Mr. Coh—Julius. But let me ask you a question. Would you rather have an ocean with whales or without them?"

He frowned. "What is this, some kind of trick question? With whales, of course."

"You are pleased, then, at the fact that the Earth's oceans are teeming with whales?"

"Sure!"

"Hmm. Yet it's a fact—I'm an historian, as I said—that the whales were only saved from extermination because of the actions of people who were not driven by logic but by an irrational passion. The type of people you call 'ecofreaks.' Had it not been for them, the great cetaceans would have disappeared. For it is also a fact that during the period of the great whale slaughtering, sane and logical men such as yourself stood to one side. Clucking their tongues at the barbarity of it all, of course, and shedding tears over the plight of the poor whales. But always quick to correct the scientific errors of the 'ecofreaks,' as if genocide and failing a biology quiz were of equal weight in the judgement of history."

She relaxed, slightly. "Mind you, I take some pride myself in my own rationality and logic. But I am an historian by profession. And if there is one thing that historians know, it's that nothing great was ever achieved except by those who were filled with passion. Their passion may have been illogical, even bizarre to modern people. Their understanding of the world and what they were doing may have been false. It usually was. But they were not afraid to act, guided by whatever ideas they had in their possession. Do not sneer at such people. You would not be here without them."

Silence followed for a moment. Indira was surprised to see that there was not a trace of irritation in the face of the man opposite her. Instead, Julius was gazing at her with a strange look. Interest, she suddenly realized.

Koresz spoke. "I fear I shall have to exercise my medical skills, lest Julius bleed to death from the many great wounds inflicted upon him."

Laughter erupted, with Julius joining in.

"If I'd known there was an historian in the vicinity," he chuckled, "I would have kept my mouth shut. 'Keep your fat lip buttoned around historians,' my mother alway told me. 'They're too smart for you.' "

Indira peered at him suspiciously. "That's a crude attempt at flattery."

He looked surprised. "What do you mean? It's the simple truth. There's no subject on earth as complex and intricate as human history. I get dizzy just thinking about the variables. Makes the double helix look like a tinker-toy! And there's no comparison to that mindless one-two-three the physicists putter around in."

"You're just jealous, Julius," laughed a woman sitting to his left.

Julius' rubbery face twisted into an exaggerated sneer.

"Jealous? Of what, Ruth? The money they shower you plumbers with? Sure. But I wouldn't be a physicist for all the money in the world." He shuddered. "God, think of it! Spend your whole life counting the elementary particles. How many are there, anyway? Bet I can count them all on my fingers."

He began imitating a toddler.

"Dis widdle piggy is da lepton. An' dis widdle piggy is da quark. Dere's six a dem! Or is it eight? Such a big number! An' dis widdle piggy—oh, boy, is this fun or what?"

Again, the circle erupted in laughter. When the laughter died down, Julius was watching Indira. For a long few seconds, they stared at each other in silence. Then the great warm smile spread across his face, and Indira felt her heart turn over.

I don't believe this, she thought to herself.

But it was true. Within three days, they were lovers. The weeks which followed, before they reluctantly entered the coldcells, were the happiest of her life.

Her reminiscence was interrupted by a commotion in the village below. No, she reminded herself, looking down into the valley, the "homeheart." She sub-vocalized the owoc hoot, trying, as always, to improve her pronunciation. The sounds produced by the owoc speaking tubes—evolved from ancestral water siphons, Julius had speculated—were very difficult for humans to reproduce. Children, with the plasticity of youth, managed fairly well. But she could only make herself passably understood. Julius never managed at all.

The difficulty was not due simply, nor even primarily, to the difference in sound-producing apparatus. The siphons of the gukuy were generically similar to those of their owoc cousins. But she had no trouble speaking any of the gukuy languages which she had encountered. Gukuy thought-processes, and the languages in which they were expressed, were much closer to the human norm than the strange gestalt-concepts of the owoc.

That's because the gukuy approach life the way we do. As a place to establish control, and mastery. A place to manipulate, to change to our liking. A place to conquer. A place to kill.

It was mealtime. The humans were gathering at the center of the homeheart, wearing their khaki-colored feeding scarves. The owoc givers appeared, moving slowly into the excited crowd of children. The boys and girls surrounded the huge beings, hooting affection and stroking their mantles. Their parents—themselves not much older than children—hung back with greater dignity. Each human held a bowl, made from the thick outer integument of awato-plants ("oh, hell," Julius had said, "let's just call it 'bark' "; then he'd muttered something to the effect that if he ran across Willi Hennig in the afterlife he was a dead duck). The owoc givers began regurtitating into the great tureens located at the center of the homeheart. When they were done, each human would scoop a bowlful of the khaki-colored paste and retire to eat it.

Even after all these years, the sight made her queasy. She herself ate the childfood, of course. She would die without it. But she still refused to participate directly in the process. Julius or one of the children would bring her a bowl, which she would eat at a distance. Trying to pretend it was lukewarm porridge. The children had no such compunctions at all. They had never eaten anything else, and took it for granted. Even their parents had only the dimmest memories of a life without childfood.

Julius had tried to find a substitute. His search had become desperate, once it became clear that not all of the humans could survive on the childfood. His daughter, among them.

But he had failed. Completely.

"Goddammit," he had exclaimed once, "if only Estelle had survived the crash! She was the biochemist. I'm just a paleontologist. I can tell you why and how I think every form of life I've seen on this planet evolved, and how they're related to each other, and where they fit into the ecological zones and niches. But I can't tell you why we can't eat anything. Except the childfood."

He rubbed his face wearily. "I know it's a metabolic problem. It has to be. Most of the children seem to thrive on the childfood, after an initial period of adaptation."

A long silence had followed. She hugged him, knowing he was feeling the loss of his daughter. Ann had been a plump, cheerful five-year-old girl, who, when she died in her father's arms only a few months after the crash, had looked like something out of a death camp.

"All the proteins, the amino acids—everything humans need to survive—are out there in that alien biosphere. If they weren't, none of us would still be alive. But there's something about the way they're put together that the human digestive system can't handle. Except that most of the children can survive—survive well, in fact—once the plants have been broken down in the owoc guts."

He rubbed his face again. "But I don't know why. After all this time, all I know is that meat is poisonous and we can only eat vegetation if the owoc process it." A dry, humorless laugh. "And we knew that within two months."

The first two months had been a nightmare, horror piled upon horror.

The confused awakening. Her muddled mind, still sluggish from the long years in coldsleep, had not been able to register much beyond the desperate urgency with which members of the crew had hustled her into one of the landing boats. All she had been able to grasp, as they strapped her into a seat, was that something had gone terribly wrong on the Magellan—ironically, at the very end of its immense voyage. An engineering malfunction of some sort, human error—she never knew. And never would. The only thought which had been clear was that Captain Knudsen had ordered all the children placed into the landing boats, along with a few adults. The adults, Indira realized later, had been ruthlessly selected by Knudsen. Those who had skills which the Captain thought would be most useful for survival (and why me, an historian? Indira often wondered; until the years brought the answer). The children could thus be saved—or, at least, given the best possible chance—while Captain Knudsen made the desperate attempt to land the Magellan itself.

Half-conscious as she was, the shock had registered.

"That's impossible!" she protested.

The face of the crew member strapping her down had been grim.

"It's a long shot," he admitted. "But Knudsen's a great pilot. If anyone can do it, he can."

The Magellan had never been designed to land directly on the planet. It was supposed to stay in permanent orbit, while the colonists were shuttled down on the two landing boats. Before he died, the pilot of her landing boat had told her of the Magellan's end.

"I swear to God," he hissed, "he almost did it!" He paused, coughed blood. Indira stared helplessly. She had not been hurt, beyond bruises, but she was pinned in the wreckage, her hands fluttering helplessly. There was nothing she could do—and, in any event, the pilot's body was a hopelessly shattered mass of bloody tissue.

"I watched it on the screen," he whispered. "He got through the jetstream—he almost made it! But then—" More coughing blood. "I don't know what happened. It blew up. There was nothing left—just a huge red cloud spread over the ocean."

Finally, in a whisper: "Like—like those old pictures of the Challenger." And he died.

Both of the landing boats had crashed. Although they had been designed for planetfall, they were carrying far too much weight—every cubic centimeter, it seemed, had been packed with wailing children. The first boat had landed in the center of a valley atop a huge low mountain, and in fairly good shape. No fatalities, at least. But in his over-riding concern to bring the second boat down near to the first one, its pilot had struck the mountainside, tearing the boat in half.

Indira had suffered little, physically. But the time she had spent—endless hours, it had seemed, although it had only been a few minutes—before she was pried loose were a nightmare.

What had happened to her children?

She had found Juan first. She would not even have known who the mangled little body was, if she hadn't recognized the shirt he was wearing.

But before the tears had barely started to flow, worse horror came. From somewhere outside the broken shell of the landing boat, she heard a piercing shriek.

Ursula!

She raced out of the ship, tripping and falling over pieces of wreckage. Outside, she cast her head wildly about, oblivious to her surroundings, trying to locate her daughter.

Again, the shriek.

"That way!" cried a man, whom she vaguely recognized as Doctor Koresz, pointing down the slope. He raced off, Indira on his heels. They plunged into some kind of trees (trees? at the time she didn't care), floundering through the thick growth, desperately trying to pinpoint Ursula's location.

The child's shriek had become an unending scream of fear and agony.

Koresz found her first.

"Oh God!" he bellowed, lunging forward into a thick patch. A moment later he was hauling Ursula out.

There was a thing on her neck. Vaguely like a huge snail. With a cry of fear and rage, Indira grabbed the thing and yanked it off her daughter. The creature came loose, but she had a glimpse of a horrible sharp proboscis, covered with blood, and the terrifying wound on her daughter's neck.

She flung the thing to the ground and grabbed her daughter. Collapsing, cradling her four-year-old girl's body in her arms, weeping hysterically. She was only dimly aware of Koresz stamping the pseudo-snail into pieces.

She had hoped, at first. The wound looked bad, but the girl's carotid artery hadn't been ruptured. And after a minute or so, Ursula stopped screaming.

"Mommy," she'd whispered. And then she became rigid, and died within seconds.

In the time to come, Indira would learn that the creature which killed her child was a kakapoy. Like many of the snail-like predators on the planet, it was an ambusher, lurking high in the clusters of idu thickets. It would drop down on its prey and kill them with a venomous stinger. The venom was not designed to kill Terran life-forms, of course, but it was more than toxic enough to do the job.

The owoc had little fear of them. They simply avoided idu thickets, which were the only habitat of the small predators. But at Indira's insistence, the adults—and then the children, when they were old enough—scoured every idu thicket in the valley, year after year, killing every kapapoy they found.

She still maintained the patrols, even though no kakapoy had been found in the valley for years. Usually the most rational of people, Indira bore an implacable hatred toward the almost-mindless little killers.

She remembered little of what followed. Koresz had carried both her and her daughter's body back to the wreck of the landing boat. At first, she lay there dazed, unable to move, while all around her the few adults rounded up the surviving children. After a time, the sound of children crying roused her into motion. She did what she could, then, along with the others. She helped Koresz as the doctor organized the triage. Except for the unnatural paleness of his face, there was nothing in his demeanor to indicate the torment he must have been feeling. Professional relexes, she remembered thinking vaguely. It was only days later that she learned how Koresz had assigned one of his own sons to the group of dying children, those whose injuries were too severe to be healed. Somehow, the moral strength of that act brought her courage, if not comfort.

Of the rest of that day, she could remember nothing. Only that darkness came, oddly, in a gray and featureless sky.

The next morning, a party from the other landing boat arrived. Julius was with them, and his daughter Ann. The sight of them brought the first ember of restored life back to her soul.

For Indira, at least, the terrible time which followed was but a pale shadow of the nightmare of the first day. For that reason, perhaps, she became more and more of the central figure in the human colony. Having been already deprived of her own children, she seemed better able than the others to withstand the despair which soon enveloped the colony, when it became obvious that they were doomed to die of starvation.

It had been she who forced the colonists to abandon the landing boats, which were far too cramped, and establish a camp on the hillside nearby. It had been she who organized the search for suitable materials with which to build shelter. It had been she who ordered a halt to all meat-eating, after the first three adults who attempted it died in convulsions. It was then she who organized the systematic experimentation with vegetable food. She used herself as a guinea pig more ruthlessly than anyone, suffering the vomiting and the cramps without complaint.

And while no one died from eating plant life, everyone got sick. Constant nausea became an accepted fact of colony life. Fortunately, only a few of the plants caused diarrhea, which can be so fatal for children, and the colony soon learned to avoid those.

For a while, hope was kindled. Nausea, after all, can be lived with. Only Koresz suspected the truth, from his examination of the colony's fecal waste. Diarrhea, no. But it was obvious to him that most of the "food" was being passed right through without use. Soon enough, it became obvious to everyone that the food was not sustaining them.

The children seemed somewhat more resilient than the adults. That fact, which Indira at first found reassuring, became another source of anxiety.

Who will take care of them when the adults are gone?

And the children were all very young. The oldest was only five. Most of them were three or four years old. That had been the Society's doing. The planning board had concluded, based on obscure psychological reasoning which Indira personally found suspect (but wasn't about to argue with, since she was a beneficiary), that the ideal colonists for the Magellan's expedition would be professional single parents in their mid-thirties with young (but not crib-age) children.

When all seemed lost, the owoc had saved them. The owoc, and the quick mind of Julius Cohen.

The colonists had known the owoc were there, almost from the beginning. The large creatures were impossible to miss. At first the humans had been afraid of the things, because of their size. But, in truth, the creatures seemed very timid. Certainly they never made any threatening motions, and they soon enough began to avoid the humans, staying on the southern side of the valley.

Julius had studied them, for several days. He reported that the creatures seemed to be herbivores, and explained that herbivores are seldom dangerous, so long as they do not feel threatened. Thereafter, the colonists made it a point not to venture onto the southern portion of the valley.

Then a child wandered off, a small boy named Manuel. His absence was not noticed for some time, partly because it was hard to keep track of each individual in the swarm of children, and partly because the adults were now greatly weakened and listless.

Eventually, his absence was noticed. Indira and Julius went in search. The four other adults who were still alive were too weak to do more than watch the children in the camp.

After two hours of scouring the immediate vicinity, they began searching toward the south. After another hour, they heard the faint sounds of a crying child coming from a grove of tall, vaguely fern-like growths. As quickly as their weakened condition permitted, they plunged into the thick foliage. The cries grew louder.

They came to the edge of a small clearing. Through a screen of ferns, they could see one of the herbivores, staring down at the tiny figure of the four year old boy. Manuel was sprawled before the huge creature, crying.

He was wearing, Indira noted absently, a khaki jumpsuit.

She and Julius hesitated, frozen between their fear for the boy and their uncertainty of how to scare away such a formidable-looking beast.

The creature reached down with four of its arms and lifted the boy. It drew him toward its beak. The beak gaped open.

Indecision vanished. Indira and Julius began frantically pushing their way through the last screen of ferns.

Suddenly, a stream of thick paste gushed from the creature's beak. The paste splattered over the child's head and shoulders.

Manuel's wails were extinguished, as a large portion of the paste went into his open mouth. The boy coughed and spluttered.

Indira felt a hand on her shoulder. Then, to her astonishment, Julius forced her to the ground.

"Stop!" he hissed.

She stared back at him. Slowly, Julius lowered himself next to her.

"It's not trying to hurt the boy," he whispered urgently. "It's trying to feed him."

"What?"

"It's true. I've watched them—that's exactly how they feed their own young."

She looked back. In truth, the huge creature did not seem to be threatening the boy. It was simply holding him up, watching Manuel with its huge eyes (so uncannily like human eyes, except that they were four times larger).

The expression on the boy's face was almost comical. Utter bewilderment. His face, head and upper body were covered with paste. It was difficult to tell how much, for the color of the paste blended almost perfectly with his clothing.

Manuel's mouth gaped open again. To cry? No one would ever know, because another stream of paste gushed down his throat. He coughed, gagged. And swallowed. And then, while Indira watched in stunned silence, the bewilderment vanished from the child's face. He lifted his head, eyes closed, and opened his mouth once again.

There was no doubt now what emotion was being expressed by the child. Feed me.

Another stream of paste.

Indira tried to scramble to her feet.

"It's poison! Animal product!"

Again, Julius forced her down helplessly. (He had the great strength possessed by many large, fat men. Not all that strength had melted with the fat.)

"No! It's not milk, Indira. It's regurgitated vegetation."

"Are you certain?" she demanded.

He nodded. "Positive. This is actually quite a common method used by animals to feed their young. Especially when the food which the animals use is difficult—oh, my God!"

Julius was chewing on his upper lip, as he always did when he was pondering a problem. It was a slightly disgusting habit, in Indira's opinion, but she had not tried to break him of it. Her ex-husband had had no obnoxious personal habits; he'd just been a self-centered, unfeeling son-of-a-bitch.

She was still filled with anxiety.

"But—"

"But what, Indira? What's the worst thing that can happen to the boy? Die? He's going to die, anyway. Look at him—he seems okay."

And it was true enough. In fact, at that very moment Manuel began laughing, and playing with one of the creature's arms.

Julius frowned. "There's bound to be some of the critter's fluids mixed with it—saliva, digestive juices, that kind of thing. But—not enough, I think, to hurt the kid. It's worth the chance."

Suddenly, she understood the hope that was dawning in her lover's mind.

"You think—?"

He shrugged. "Who knows? It's a long shot, like filling an inside straight. But we're fresh out of full houses. And it's possible, just maybe. The plant life on this planet isn't deadly to us, the way meat is. But there's something in the way it's put together that makes it too tough for our digestive systems to break down. That's exactly the problem lots of young animals face. Evolution has found several solutions. The solution mammals use is mother's milk. This is another."

She made a face. "It's disgusting."

"Not as disgusting as dying."

She shook her head. "Julius, this is still no good. We can't use a helpless four-year-old boy as a guinea pig."

He nodded. "You're right."

And began slowly crawling toward the center of the clearing.

As soon as he broke through the ferns and came into the clearing, he was spotted. The creature pivoted quickly on its two rail-like fleshy "feet." Julius stopped moving. He opened his mouth.

Slowly, the creature lowered the child to the ground. And edged back.

Julius crept forward, his mouth open.

The creature edged back. Its mantle was now rippling with alternating bands of ochre and pinkish-red.

Julius stopped again. He started chewing his upper lip furiously.

The frozen tableau held for a minute, until Julius suddenly grunted.

"Of course!" Indira heard him say. Slowly, Julius turned his head back to her. His eyes, for some reason, were feverishly scanning her body.

His rubbery upper lip twisted into a grimace of self-deprecation.

"I am so stupid. It's so obvious."

Then: "Go back to the camp, Indira. Find something khaki-colored—as close a match as you get to the shade of Manuel's jumpsuit. A cloth of some kind. A big one—big enough to cover me, or as much of me as possible."

Her brows were knitted. "I don't un—"

"Just do it!"

Uncertainty vanished. As she raced back to the camp, Indira felt like she was floating on air. She had only a vague understanding of what Julius was trying to do, but she was suddenly filled with total confidence in her lover.

And hope. And hope. And hope.

Back at the camp, she ignored all the questions hurled at her. She just cried, over and again— "Manuel's okay, he's okay, he's okay!"—while she rummaged furiously in the broken shell of the lifeboat. Within a minute (which seemed like a hour), she found the khaki canvas she was looking for.

Like an antelope, back to the clearing. Then, at the last curtain of ferns, she screeched to a halt. Knelt, the canvas over her shoulder, and slowly crawled into the clearing.

Julius was still there, now holding Manuel. The boy was asleep. And, to her vast relief, the creature had not moved. It was no longer alone, however. Another had joined it. The two animals were standing side by side, staring. Their hides, she noticed, were still mottled with ochre. But the pinkish-reds had faded considerably.

She hoped she knew what that meant.

A look of relief washed over Julius' face when he saw her enter the clearing. He extended his hand.

"Toss it to me."

She shook her head, and kept crawling toward him. Once at his side, she unfolded the canvas and draped it over both of them.

They knelt there, clasping each other, facing the monsters, their mouths open.

After a time, they saw the pinkish-red fade from the hides, replaced by thin wavering stripes of green. After a time, they saw the green grow into solid bands—still against ochre—and the creatures approach. And the beaks slowly open.

Khaki life washed over them.

Remembering that day, Indira flipped back through the pages of the notebook, looking for the entry.

I should had gotten it immediately. I knew the creatures were chromatophoric. It must be the principal method by which they communicate (outside of the hoots), although I suspect that there's a lot expressed in the way they curl their tentacles. (No—the proper word is "arm." "Tentacles" are those specialized arms that squids develop, the long ones that end in palps. Tentacles are arms specialized for mobile hunters, and these critters ain't hunters of any kind.)

Nice, shy, friendly, giant octopi.

Octopus-heads, I should say.

Okay. Just in case this notebook should someday fall into the hands of an expedition come to our rescue—about a thousand years from now, I estimate—let's try to describe these beautiful nightmares. I don't want to draw down the curses of the historian, like those dopes in Roanoke who didn't keep any diaries. No, sirree. Worst cussers in the universe, historians. I know. I'm in love with one.

Here goes:

Imagine a body shaped like the thorax of a lobster. About the size of a buffalo. Except that a lobster's thorax is the carapace of an arthropod—hard and rigid. The carapace of these creatures is more like the mantle of a squid, without the flukes. That's it. Mantles. They must have evolved from something like squids.

But a squid's mantle is too soft to serve for a land creature. These mantles are much tougher. Cartilaginous inside, I suspect. Squids on earth still have a vestige of a shell inside their mantles. I suspect that on this planet the "molluscs" evolved something that serves the same purpose as a skeleton. Any large terrestrial animal has to have some kind of hard structure to support its weight. Probably pieces of shell-like material, linked together by a network of cartilage and muscle. Terrestrial analogies can be thought of. Some of the dinosaurs maintained rigid tails in a similar way. (Okay. Loosely similar. Give me a break.)

I can't be sure, of course, without dissecting one of them. (Oh boy. I mutter that in my sleep, Indira might cut my throat.)

(Come to think of it, I might cut my own throat.)

The body of the creature is enclosed by the mantle. A hard, but not totally inflexible, carapace. A thick integument covers the mantle. The integument becomes especially thick and hard (almost like soft horn), at the front of the mantle. What I've decided to call the "cowl."

I call it that because the front edge of the mantle looms over and protects the head below. Necessary, I suspect, because the head of this critter has no skull. But we'll get to the head later.

How does this thing get around? Well, here's where the molluscan Bauplan shows its possibilities. I'd love to know what the ancestor looked like. Just when you think it must have been a pseudo-cephalopod, you look at this thing's feet.

A two-legged gastropod. I kid you not. They're not "legs," of course. Not the slightest resemblance. Instead, the creature's peds are like fleshy—what can I call them? The closest analogy I can think of is pontoons. Except pontoons are rigid, and these peds are semi-segmented, like lumpy treads. Again, without cutting them open (down, boy, down) there's no way to be sure—but I'd bet that there's a complicated structure in there. Something like what must exist inside the mantle: a network of "shell"-slivers, cartilage, and muscle.

Lots of muscle. These beasties are strong. The entire body is held up, about fifty centimeters off the ground, by the two rail-feet. (Yeck. Let's stick with "peds.") It's a clumsy-looking method of locomotion, but—

But nothing. It is clumsy. And slow. It's a marvel that a "molluscan" Bauplan could provide enough flexibility for these things to evolve into land animals. Let's not ask for miracles on top of that. The simple fact is that the vertebrate structure is vastly superior to that of the—what do I call this phylum? Panzerpoda? God, no; ain't the slightest resemblance between these sweet creatures and the Wehrmacht!

I'll figure out what to call them later. To get back to the subject, measured by any standard of speed and mobility, vertebrates have it all over these creatures. That's not chauvinism, it's just a fact. From everything I can see—not just these creatures, but all the life-forms I've seen—humans are at least twice as fast as anything that moves on Ishtar. And we're slow, compared to most big warm-blooded vertebrates.

(Oh, yeah, before I forget. The critters are warm-blooded. The genuine article, too—homeothermic, endothermic, and tachymetabolic. I admit I can't prove the last, because I don't have the equipment to precisely analyze their metabolism. But I'm positive about the homeothermy and the endothermy.)

Back to the point. Compared to the dominant large-bodied terrestrial phylum on this planet (whatever we wind up calling it), vertebrates are:

a) Much faster.

b) More mobile, by a large margin.

Score one for the home team. (Visiting team, I should say.)

BUT—any football team that had one of these guys for a fullback would be invincible. Here's how the game goes:

Kickoff. Ball goes into the end zone. Start on the twenty. Hand off to Slow-But-Sure. Three minutes later—one play, mind you—Slow-But-Sure racks up six points. Guaran-teed. And introduces the world to a new culinary delight: linebacker pancake.

I kid you not. I can't imagine being able to knock one of these things down. I'm not sure a rhinoceros could do it.

And they're quicker than you might think. Their reflexes don't seem to be any slower than ours. It's just that their basic structure is so much more limiting than that of vertebrates.

Okay. Let's get to the best part. The head.

The head itself looks—

Oh God, Thy Name is Convergence.

—like an octopus. Almost to a T. Bulging "brow" (only here that's for real—more on that later), two gorgeous eyes (almost human looking, except they're the size of saucer-plates, and the iris takes up more of the eyeball), and a beak for a mouth surrounded by eight tentacles (OK—arms).

There are some differences from octopi, of course. (If there weren't, I'd give up my profession and start spinning prayer wheels.) The eyes are located on the front of the head rather than the sides, giving them binocular vision. And everything seems harder and tougher than on an octopus. The skin, the features, everything. Inevitable. The exact pathway and method was different, but no creature I can imagine could make the transition from marine life to terrestrial life without developing a watertight outer membrane. It's fine for octopi in the ocean deep to have soft, slimy skins. Try that on land and you'll dessicate.

Then, the arms are only generically octopoid. There are at least two obvious differences, one of which is major. First, the minor difference: No suckers. None. Not a trace. Instead—the major difference:

They've got fingers. Sort of. The arms brachiate, more than three-quarters of the way down their length (which, by the way, I estimate at an average of seventy centimeters). The tips of the arms consist of two mini-"tentacles," which have the following chief features:

1) They're flexible, like tentacles; not segmentedly rigid, like fingers.

2) They're flattened—unlike the arms above the branch, which are more or less tubular. (Think of thick fleshy spatulas, about fifteen centimeters long.)

3) The inner surface of the "fingers" consists of a roughened pad, useful for gripping, which makes perfect sense because—you guessed it; give the man a prize—

4) The "fingers" are opposed.

Yup. The critters can manipulate. (So to speak. We'll stretch the Latin.)

A faint glimmer of a possibility is coming to life somewhere deep in the recesses of your mind, is it not?

Yes.

Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes.

They're intelligent.

Not intelligent like in: "Isn't he just the smartest little dog?"

No. Intelligent.

Like in: Critter sapiens.

Even Indira had been doubtful. The other adults were totally unconvinced.

"I tell you, they're intelligent," insisted Julius. It was five days after the discovery of what they would eventually know as "childfood." The adults of the colony were sitting around the campfire where they made a habit of gathering every night, after the children were asleep. This night, and for two nights past, the sound of hungry weeping was mercifully absent.

It wasn't much of a fire. They had found no substance on the planet which burned well. Dry wood, or its equivalent, did not seem to exist. On the lush, verdant world of Ishtar, everything seemed to be full of succulence. When vegetation died, it never had time to dry before it was consumed by "mosses" and what looked for all the world like toadstools. (The resemblance was not superficial—the colonists had discovered early on that the pseudo-mushrooms were highly toxic.)

The mosses, when "ripe," burned the best. But it was impossible to sit in the pungent fumes without gagging, so the colonists were forced to move constantly about the fire as the soft winds in the mountain valley shifted.

"That's nonsense, Julius!" expounded Dr. Francis Adams. (He insisted on the title. Indira thought it typical of the man, whom she considered a pompous ass. To her, "doctors" were people who healed people. Adams had a Ph.D. in physics.)

Privately, she thought Adams was right. But her dislike for the man drove her to speak.

"You can't say that. I'm not sure if Julius is right, but you have to admit that it's striking how these creatures have come to understand our needs."

Adams waved a dismissive hand. "Means nothing. Pure instinct. Julius already explained that these things are chromatophoric. They react to colors as indications of emotions and needs. Khaki just happens to be the color of hunger. That's what tipped Julius off—he saw that the child's clothing was almost the same color as the one which the creatures' young turn when they want to be fed."

He made it sound as if Julius had finally figured out that two plus two makes four. Indira clenched her teeth. She had no doubt that if Adams had been the one to have discovered Manuel, he would have been paralyzed both in mind and body.

"Pure instinct. Not uncommon, you know. Newly-hatched fowl will imprint on humans, if that's the first thing they see, and—"

Julius interrupted. "That's nonsense!"

He overrode Adams' splutter of protest.

"Look, folks, I know you've all heard stories about the marvelous power of blind instinct. And there's certainly a lot of truth to many of those stories. But instinct is not magic. It does not derive from some supernatural power. Every instinctive behavior on the part of an animal is the product of its evolutionary history.

"It's true, there are many examples in natural history of instincts being short-circuited. Adams mentioned one. I can give you a better example. Cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. When the cuckoos hatch—they're big chicks—they expel the rightful hatchlings out of the nest. The parent birds instinctively feed whatever chick is in the nest, and ignore anything outside of it. So the cuckoos get to eat, while the legitimate heirs die of hunger.

"But the reason the cuckoo's stratagem works is because it fits so perfectly into the life cycle of the other birds. The parent birds are expecting a hungry chick to feed. There—in the nest. At that time. The cuckoo hatchling bears a reasonably close physical resemblance to their own chicks, and it's at the right place and at the right time, acting the right way. So it gets fed.

"None of those criteria apply to this situation. These—will somebody think up a name, for Chrissake?"

"Lobsterpusses," proposed Hector Quintero, the pilot of the first landing boat.

Julius glared at him.

"You will burn in the fires of eternal damnation," he predicted.

"How about 'land-squids'?" suggested Janet Mbateng, the chemist.

"Never mind!" Julius exclaimed, throwing up his hands in disgust. "I should know better. I will name the critters, drawing upon my vast store of professional learning."

He winced. "Even though, in so doing, I will bring down upon my head the most ancient and feared curse known to Man."

"What's that, Julius?" asked Hector.

" 'Hell hath no fury like an amateur scorned.' "

When the laughter died down, Julius sat erect in a magisterial pose, his index finger pointed to the sky.

"I pronounce these critters—Maiatherium manuelii. We can call them 'maia' for short."

"What does it mean?" asked Indira.

"Manuel's good mother beasts."

She had liked the name, as had the others. (Adams had snorted, but even he adopted the name within two days.)

Still, Julius was unable to convince them of his thesis. As much as the colonists had confidence in him, there just seemed too many facts about the maia which pointed in the opposite direction.

First and foremost, the maia used no tools. None. Even Julius was forced to admit, after carefully studying them for weeks, that he had not observed even a temporary use of casual tools, such as chimpazees exhibit when they dig for ants with a stick.

Second, there was the placidity of the creatures. No one for years had believed in the preposterous concept that humanity evolved from "killer apes." Dart's thesis—popularized by Ardrey—had been exploded two centuries earlier, when more careful study had shown that the australopithecenes were prey rather than predator. But still, it was difficult to imagine a species evolving into intelligence without some instinct for aggression. And, for all their size and strength, the maia exhibited not a trace of belligerence.

Adams had explained the phenomenon, in his inimitable style, as being due to the fact that they were herbivores.

Julius was no longer even pretending to hold Adams in anything but contempt.

"Is that so, Doctor Adams. Tell me something—are you a big game hunter?"

"Certainly not!"

"Didn't think so. Neither am I. But I know my natural history. Are you aware, Doctor Adams, which of the earth's great animals was most feared and respected by the old big game hunters?"

Adams sniffed. "The tiger, I suppose."

Julius sneered. "No, Doctor Adams. The Cape buffalo. A pure vegetarian."

"Is that a fact, Julius?" asked Hector with interest.

The sneer was replaced with a smile. Julius liked Hector. The pilot's skills were utterly useless now, but the young Mexican had proved to be an energetic and resourceful member of the colony.

"Absolutely. It's one of the great myths, this idea that you can directly derive a creature's temperament from its diet. Absolute nonsense! 'Carnivores are mean and nasty, herbivores are sweet and kind.' " He said the words in a childish sing-song.

"You ever seen a bullfight, Hector?"

"Hey, c'mon, Julius. We don't have bullfights in Mexico anymore. Haven't had for almost a hundred years. Believe it or not, we've even given up human sacrifice."

Julius grinned. "I know, Hector. But don't lie to me. I'm sure you've seen videos. I have. One of the cruelest pastimes our species ever invented, but you can't deny it's fascinating."

Hector nodded.

"Okay. Does a bull eat meat? Nope. Would that make you feel any better, climbing into the corrida with just a cape and a sticker?"

"Hell, no!"

"Me neither."

Indira had interjected herself into the discussion.

"But those fighting bulls were bred that way, Julius."

The biologist shrugged. "True. So what? You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Evolution isn't magic. The potentiality has to be there in the first place. The fighting bulls of Spain were the product of a breeding program, true. But the program wouldn't have succeeded if bulls didn't have a capacity for violent aggression in the first place."

He poked the smoldering moss with a stiff reed, stirring it back into sluggish flame.

"What I wouldn't give for a cord of pine," he muttered. "Hell, I'd settle for a bagel. Burn better'n this crap."

Laying the reed down, he continued.

"It's true down the line, folks. Carnivores are aggressive in a particular way because they have to be to survive. But they have no monopoly on the trait."

"I agree," said Adams firmly. "It is well known that human beings are the most aggressive animals known, and we are omnivores."

Julius couldn't resist.

"We are, are we? Tell me something, Doctor Adams. You're close to forty years old, I estimate. When was the last time you got in a fist fight?"

"I have never been involved in a violent altercation."

"No kidding? Boy, what a sheltered life you must have had. I myself got into several fights when I was a teenager. How 'bout you, Hector? You come from the land of machismo. Bet you've been in more fights than you can remember."

Hector grinned. He enjoyed helping Julius bait the Doctor.

"You ain't gonna believe it, Julius, but I don't think I've been in a fight since I was fifteen. My brother."

Julius nodded. "I'm not surprised. It's probably the oldest myth of all, this idea that humans are filled with instinctive violence and aggression. Pure bullshit. We are probably the most peaceful species among the mammals."

He smiled, observing the looks of disbelief around the campfire.

"Sorry, folks. It's true. The fact is that the vast majority of human beings go through their entire lives without being involved in violence. Other than a mild experience as adolescents. Hell, most people nowadays don't even personally witness an act of violence. Whereas the vast majority of mammals—even rabbits, believe it or not—routinely commit acts of physical aggression against fellow members of their species. Human beings, on the other hand, are the most social of all animals. Cooperation, not conflict, has been the key behavioral pattern in our evolution."

"But Julius," protested Janet, "think of all the wars we've fought—all through history. Well, not for the last fifty years or so, I admit, but before then it seems like there was never a time when we weren't fighting a war. Someplace."

"Yeah, Julius," added Hector. "I hate to say it, man, but the old barrios were a rough place to live."

"I don't deny that human beings have a capacity for violence," he responded. "And when that capacity is triggered off—for social reasons, not biological ones—the violence which results is appalling because of our intelligence and our technological capability." A laugh. "I always got a kick out of those old horror movies. You know—Godzilla tramples Tokyo. What a lot of crap. If Godzilla had ever really wandered into Tokyo, there would have been a new item on restaurant menus the very next day. Godzilla soup."

He pointed a finger at Adams. "There's one thing I do agree with the Doctor about, however. It is, indeed, true that we are omnivores. But does that explain anything about our history? Human beings are omnivores, therefore—therefore what? Therefore the Inquisition? And the conquistadores? Therefore St. Francis of Assisi?"

He snorted. "Therefore nada. Zilch. When I say the name 'Inuit,' does that bring visions of slavering killers to your minds?"

People shook their heads.

"And yet they were an almost purely meat-eating people. The most carnivorous culture ever produced by the human race. Necessary, of course—not too many rice paddies in the Arctic. Now, let me turn the question around: who, in your estimation, was the most murderous single human being our species every produced?"

A brief, animated discussion followed. Various candidates were nominated, but within a short time agreement was reached.

Julius nodded. "Yeah. Adolf Hitler. A vegetarian."

Indira spoke up.

"I'm puzzled by something, Julius. If I understand you correctly, what you're saying is that the reason the maia are feeding us has nothing to do with instinct. Right?"

Julius nodded.

"Then why are they doing it? It's not as if there's anything in it for them. They give to us, without getting anything in return. How do you explain that?"

"I don't know, Indira. I'm just a biologist. I've reached the limit of my understanding. These creatures are not animals. You can't explain their behavior by pointing to their biology. I know the rest of you aren't convinced of that, but it's true. What that means is that they are feeding us because of something in their culture."

Years later, she could still remember the intensity of his stare.

"So you figure it out. You're the historian."

Eight months after that discussion, a maia died. And Julius finally won the argument.

The humans had begun mixing freely with the maia since they began eating the "childfood." (Which Julius persisted in calling upchucksalad, or pukewurst, or barfburger—to the vast irritation of Indira and the other adults.) The maia had seemed edgy around the adult humans, at first, even though they continued to feed them. Then Julius ordered everyone to start wearing as much green-colored clothing as they could find. From studying the creatures, he had concluded that green was the color of tranquillity—and love, he suspected. Thereafter, the maia seemed to relax around the adult humans.

Adams argued that their behavior stemmed from pure chromatophoric instinct. Julius insisted that the reason the color green calmed the maia was because the creatures realized that the humans understood what it meant.

"I don't think the maia are actually all that intelligent," he'd said to Indira in private later. "Sapient, yes; bright, no. Like austrolopithecenes. No, more than that—say, roughly equivalent to Homo habilis, or maybe even Homo erectus. But they're sure a lot smarter than the Doctor. At least they understand that we're intelligent."

The children, once they got over an initial hesitation, fell in love with the maia. Like giant, walking teddy bears. At first, the adult humans grew nervous at the sight of swarms of children romping around the maia—especially after crawling under a maia became a popular game. But it soon became obvious that the creatures were conscious of the childrens' actions. The maia never harmed a human child, not even inadvertantly. And they never seemed to become irritated at the children's antics—even after the children invented a new game, which they called "ride-the-maia."

The day came when Indira saw a maia pick up a child and gently place the girl on the cowl of its mantle. And she wondered.

Then the day came when Joseph Adekunle, the son of the Magellan's electronics officer, came running to her.

She watched him approach with fondness. She would never admit it to anyone (for she maintained a public stance of being an impartial mother who loved all her children equally), but the truth was that Joseph was one of her favorites. He was one of the oldest children in the colony (six, now), and big for his age. Big, and extraordinarily athletic. Only Jens Knudsen, among the boys, and Ludmilla Rozkowski, among the girls, came near to him in physical prowess. But Joseph never abused his strength, never acted the bully, never boasted or bragged. To the contrary. He was invariably helpful to the smaller children. And on two occasions that Indira knew of, when Joseph had witnessed a larger child abuse a smaller, the boy had taken the perpetrator aside and quietly informed him that if he thought he was such hot stuff Joseph would be glad to prove him wrong. He was a charismatic figure, even at the age of six, and he had become, almost as if it were a law of nature, the central figure in the children's generation.

He was also—it was obvious to Indira, even at his age—extraordinarily intelligent.

You would have been so proud of him, Susan, thought Indira, as she watched the boy race across the valley floor and begin climbing the hillside toward the camp. She remembered the electronics officer of the Magellan, with some sadness, but not much. It had been over a year since the disaster. She had even finally been able to stop grieving for her own children.

She had not known Susan Adekunle well, but on the few occasions when they had met she had taken an immediate liking to her. It was impossible not to. The Yoruba woman had been invariably witty and cheerful, in her inimitable big and booming style.

Big. Susan Adekunle had been at least six feet tall, and not at all slender.

And judging from the evidence, thought Susan, Joseph's father must have been even bigger.

The boy was now halfway up the hillside.

He certainly inherited his mother's color.

Joseph's skin color was something of a rarity in the modern age, after two centuries of unparalleled war and migration (and then, blessedly, a world at peace for the first time in millenia) had thoroughly mixed up the human gene pool. The majority of the human species had blended into various shades of brown, usually accompanied by dark hair and, more often than not, at least a trace of epicanthic fold to the eyes.

Joseph, on the other hand, is going to look like an ancient Ashanti king when he grows up.

Among the children in the colony, only Jens Knudsen and Karin Schmidt exhibited the same kind of extreme racial differentiation. They were by no means the only white children in the colony, but they were the only two who would grow up looking like Nordic stereotypes—yellow hair, bright blue eyes, skin as white as milk.

Indira's idle musings vanished as Joseph came near. Tears, she suddenly realized, were pouring from the boy's eyes.

She rose to her feet hastily.

"What's the matter?"

"There's something wrong with one of the maia!" cried Joseph. "With Wolugo!"

She had time, before she started hurrying down the hillside, to wonder at Joseph's use of the name "Wolugo." Since they began playing with the maia, the children had begun imitating the creatures' hoots. Over time, they became adept at producing the strange sounds. They even began mixing maia hoots into their own conversations.

The children began insisting that the hooting was a language. Excited, Julius had immediately experimented with his own attempts at hooting. But he had given up, after a few days, in total frustration.

"There's no way I can do it," he'd grumbled to Indira. "I had a hard enough time with Spanish, and if that hooting's a language it's totally unlike any language on Earth. Although I think it's tonal, like Chinese."

Then, snarling: "And if I have to listen to one more snotty little brat make fun of me, I'll commit mass infanticide."

Indira's interest had been aroused. She herself, unlike Julius, had an extraordinary aptitude for languages. She was fluent in seven, including all four of the global tongues (English, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese), and could make her way fairly well in a number of others.

But when she tried learning "hoot," she hit a brick wall. It did, in fact, remind her in a certain way of Chinese. (A very vague, generic, way.) But she couldn't wrap her mind around any concepts. More than once, she felt she was on the edge of grasping the inner logic of the hoots. But, always, the moment slipped away.

In the end, she gave up. Had she been certain that the hoots were really a conscious language, she would have persevered to her last breath. But she was still not convinced that Julius was right.

The children, on the other hand, for all that they had teased Julius' hopeless attempts at hooting, often expressed the opinion that—at least on the subject of the maia—Julius was the only adult in the colony who had any brains.

And for the past three months, the children had started referring to individual maia with proper names.

Even as she ran through the valley alongside Joseph, Indira could not help but smile at the memory of a conversation between the boy and Francis Adams the previous month.

Joseph had casually referred to one of the maia as "Yuloc." Adams had smiled, in his condescending way, and remarked:

"Is that what you've decided to call it?"

Joseph had given the man a look which belied his years.

"Yuloc's not an 'it.' She's a she—like almost all of the maia are. And I didn't give her the name. It's her own."

Then:

"People don't decide what to call other people. You call them by their own names."

"Is that so?" mocked Adams.

The next words, coming from a six-year-old, had astonished her.

"Yes, Francis, it is."

Adams shot to his feet like a rocket.

"You will call me Doctor Adams, young man!"

Joseph had said nothing. He had simply stared back, and up, at the man looming over him. Without a trace of fear or cringing, his face filled with a dignity she would never have imagined possible in a boy that age.

Gasping for breath, she and Joseph reached the spot in the valley where the boy was leading her. As she drew near, she saw that a large number of maia, and what looked like every child in the colony, were clustered near a grove of tubular, fleshy plants. She recognized the plants. They were the favorite food of the maia. The humans had called it "sortasaguaro," until, beginning a few months earlier, the children had started calling it "oruc," insisting that that was the proper name for the plant according to the maia. Julius immediately adopted the name, with the other adults eventually following suit.

She edged her way through the throng. At the center, she came upon a pitiable tableau. One of the maia had collapsed. The creature was lying on its side, hooting softly. Indira immediately knew the position was unnatural. She had never seen a maia lying on its side before. When the creatures slept, they simply lowered themselves straight to the ground.

Brown tones rippled through the mantles of the maia observing the scene. If the children were to be believed—and the scene she was watching gave strong support to their opinion—brown was the color of misery. The stricken maia herself was also dappled with brown hues, although the predominant color was ochre. Then, as Indira watched, the ochre faded. A few brown stripes continued to move slowly across the maia's mantle, but now green rapidly appeared and spread.

The maia surrounding the scene began hooting. There seemed, somehow, a questioning tone to the hoots.

The stricken maia herself had stopped hooting. Suddenly, to Indira's astonishment, the color of her mantle deepened—first to dark green, and then to midnight black. She had never seen that color on a maia before.

As if it were a signal, three of the maia moved to the fallen one's side. Using their cowls like great shovels, they levered the creature upright. Two other maia moved forward, one on each side of the stricken one, and leaned into her. Then, most of her weight being carried by the two helpers—

No, realized Indira suddenly, pall-bearers.

—the trio began making their slow way north. Everyone followed, maia and human, the maia softly hooting and the children sobbing.

On the way, they met Julius and Korecz, who had come to see what the commotion was about. The biologist and the doctor fell in with Indira.

"What—" Julius started to say, but fell silent at the sight of Indira's sharply upthrust hand.

Slowly, the procession made its way north, until they arrived at a grove of striking green plants, twisting vine-like things that curled and wove into each other like an enormous free-standing ball of spaghetti. The color of the stricken maia's mantle, Indira noted, was now very close to that of the vine-plants.

The "bearers" gently set the stricken maia—

Wolugo, thought Indira fiercely. Her name is Wolugo.

—down to the ground. Then, they edged back. Silence followed, for minutes. Wolugo was motionless, except for a faint movement of the fleshy flaps deep within the recesses of her mantle cavity, back of the octopoid head. Julius had often speculated that these were the inhaling orifices for some kind of lungs (or their equivalent).

The rest of the colony's adults arrived at the scene during the course of that long wait. Adams was the last to appear. The metallurgist examined the scene for a moment, then said loudly:

"Yes, of course. The elephant's graveyard."

Indira was shocked at the expression which flooded Julius' face. For a brief moment, she thought the biologist was actually going to strike the man with his fist.

She was even more shocked when she discovered that she was hoping he would.

But the moment passed.

Not long after, Wolugo died. Indira had no doubt of the moment. Deep within the mantle cavity, she could see the maia's flaps stop moving. And, in the space of but a few seconds, all color fade from her mantle, until there was nothing but gray. It seemed, to Indira, the dullest gray she had ever seen.

She found herself fighting back tears. When she realized what she was doing, she stopped fighting, and let the tears flow freely. All the humans, adult and children alike (except Adams), were doing likewise. And she saw that, across the mantles of the living maia, stately waves of brown and green were slowly moving.

A few minutes later, the maia began behaving strangely. Several of the maia left, heading back toward the oruc grove. One of those remaining began a peculiar movement on a patch of soil next to the vines—a kind of slow side-to-side two-step, dragging its peds.

After a minute or so, Indira saw that two mounds of earth were slowly piling up on either side of the patch.

Understanding struck her like a bolt of lightning. Her mouth agape, she turned to Julius.

But Julius was not there. He was already striding up the slope of the mountainside, heading toward the shell of the shattered landing boat. The place where the colony stored its tools.

Not long after, she saw him return. He was carrying a shovel in each of his hands. And over his shoulder were draped strips of various types of cloth and fabric. Green fabric. Brown fabric.

He smiled at her crookedly, but said nothing. He made a gesture to Koresz with one of the shovels. Koresz took the shovel without hesitation. And the doctor did not have to be told to drape strips of colored fabric over his shoulders.

That done, the two men advanced slowly onto the patch of cleared soil, facing the maia who was creating it.

The maia stopped, stared. Ochre bands were added to its coloration. Julius made shoo-ing motions with his hands, which, to a human, would have signaled: "Move back."

When he saw that the maia wasn't moving, Julius sighed heavily.

"Ever play football?" he asked Koresz.

"Please! I am not a barbarian."

"Well, rookie, lend me a shoulder anyway."

So saying, Julius stooped and lowered his upper body until his shoulder was butted gently against the cowl of the maia. Koresz, uncertainly, followed suit.

Then, slowly but with as much strength as he could muster, Julius attempted to push the creature back.

It might have moved an inch. Maybe. But the hoot which it emitted carried a clear tone of surprise.

Julius straightened up, grimacing, rubbing his lower back.

"As I feared," he muttered. "It's like trying to block Lawrence Taylor."

"Who?" asked Koresz.

"An ancient legend from the dawn of time, Vladimir, whose name is known only to barbarians like me who happen to be the few football fans left on Earth in these effete modern days. A hero, from the Golden Past. A demi-god. Think of Hercules, or Theseus. Or both rolled into one. Sorta like that."

He stared at the maia, chewing his upper lip.

"I guess we'll just have to try to dig around—"

Suddenly, the maia edged back until it was clear of the patch.

"Well. Thank you. Took you long enough, dimbulb."

He started digging. He and Koresz.

It took a long time to dig a grave big enough to accommodate the body of Wolugo, especially since Julius insisted on what he called "the regulation six feet." Indira, when she took her turn with the shovel (all the adult humans took a turn in the grave, even Adams—although he only lasted fifteen minutes), suggested to Julius that the maia were probably accustomed to shallow graves. But Julius had been unmoved.

"Yeah, probably so. But I finally found something that humans can do for them that they can't do very well for themselves, and I'm not about to do a slipshod job of it."

Despite her aching muscles, she found herself suddenly in agreement with his point of view.

By the time they were finished, it was late in the day. Indira was not surprised to see that, while the humans had dug the grave, the maia had been gathering clumps of oruc.

Food, to sustain the dead in their voyage.

Nor was she surprised to see that Joseph had organized the children to provide their own gifts. And so it was that when the body of the maia Wolugo was lowered into her grave, she was accompanied not only by clumps of oruc but by strips of cloth, small tools (whose use she would not have understood), toys, trinkets, and several of the small bowls that the colonists had made to eat the maia-food.

It was those last gifts, more than anything else, which brought tears to Indira's eyes.

Bowls. So that the gentle giant, if she encountered starving children in the afterworld, could once again give life to the dead.

The next day, Indira left the human camp and went to live with the maia. She remained there for months, refusing all contact with adult humans (even Julius; but he was not hurt, because he understood), and refusing to speak to the children if they used any Terran language.

When she returned, the adults gathered about the evening campfire. Her first words were simply:

"The name 'maia' is wrong. They are called owoc."

When she told Joseph, he nodded, and corrected her pronunciation.

Interlude: Nukurren

For Nukurren, the first two days after her capture were a blur. She recovered consciousness briefly, at several intervals. But beyond a vague awareness of Dhowifa, she recognized nothing before lapsing again into darkness.

Then, just after dawn on what she would learn was the third day since the massacre of the caravan, she awoke clear-headed. Very, very weak. But clear-headed.

The first thing she saw, out of her good eye, was Dhowifa. He was nestled under her cowl. From his closed eyes, and the way his beak and arms twitched, she thought he was dreaming.

"You're so cute when you're asleep," she whispered softly.

His eyes popped open, glaring at her balefully.

"I am not asleep. I'm thinking."

She began a retort to the effect that, the last time she remembered, he was as mindless as a snail. But the look of love in the curl of his arms, and the green hues which rippled across his mantle, stopped the words in her sac.

"Where are we?" she asked. Then, feeling a strange motion, she looked around.

She could only see to one side, but she saw that she and Dhowifa were being carried on a litter held by two of the hunnakaku. They seemed to be part of a caravan of demons and hunnakaku, climbing a trail on the side of a mountain. On the slopes above, she could see three demons stick-pedding alongside.

Those strange peds are very effective in rough terrain, she thought. Then, seeing the shades of brown in their skins: But why are they so miserable?

Her attention was drawn by another demon, who was stick-pedding alongside the litter. The demon was very large. Not as tall as the demonlord, but heavier. Nukurren was mostly struck by its color. The demon's skin was almost pure white, under the strange yellow armor which covered the top of its head and the rear of its upper torso.

That armor looks too soft to be much good. And this seems a strange time and place to be consumed by passion.

She voiced the last thought aloud. Hearing the sound, the demon looked down at her. The bright blue color of its eyes made her instinctively tighten her muscles. Only pure fury could turn a gukuy's eyes that color. But the creature did not seem enraged, and the tension brought pain to her ravaged body. She slowly relaxed.

"I don't think their emotions show on their mantles," said Dhowifa softly. "I have been watching them for days. They all looked the same to me, at first, except the big one. The terrible one who hurt you so badly. But now I can tell them apart, and their colors never change. Most of them are brown-colored, of one shade or another. But there is this big one"—he whistled amusement— "who looks like it's in perpetual heat. Some of the others are like that, although none is as white as this one. And there is the other big demon, who is always pure black. Nobody can be that implacable. Not even that monster."

"The demonlord."

Dhowifa glowed ochre.

"I am not sure they are demons, Nukurren."

Nukurren started to whistle amusement, but the rippling in her sac caused a wave of pain.

"And what do you know about demons?"

Exquisite turquoise—irritation, leavened by affection—rippled across Dhowifa.

"Would demons be friends with hunnakaku?" he demanded.

Nukurren pondered the question.

"It does seem unlikely," she admitted.

"And there's more, Nukurren. The—demons, whatever they are—you won't believe this, but I've seen it with my own eyes. They eat the hunnakaku ogoto. In fact, as far as I can tell, that's all they ever eat."

Nukurren was stunned into silence. "Ogoto" was the Anshaku word. The Kiktu called it "putoru." The hunnakaku themselves, in their own language, called it "childfood."

Gukuy spawn only lived on ogoto when they were newly born. Within a few eightdays, they were able to feed on soft meat. But the tough plants which were the exclusive diet of hunnakaku were much too difficult for the young sub-gukuy to chew and digest. So they lived on childfood—the regurgitated contents of the adults' stomachs—for years. Until they were half-grown.

"Are you saying these monsters are children?"

"I'm not sure, Nukurren. It would seem so—but if there's one thing I've decided, these past two days, it's that there are too many peculiar things about these—demons—to jump to any conclusions. But I'm sure I'm right about the ogoto. For one thing, there are seven hunnakaku in this party. They freed the four who were in the cages, but where did the other three come from? They must have brought the hunnakaku with them. Why would they do that if not for the ogoto? Hunnakaku can't fight."

A sharp pain stabbed through Nukurren's ruined eye. She reached up an arm, felt a strange thing covering it.

To her surprise, Dhowifa pulled her arm away.

"Don't touch that!" he cried.

"What is it?"

"I don't know. Some kind of thing made of plants." He hesitated. "One of the demons put it there. On the first day. It put similar ones on your other wounds. I tried to pull the things off, of course, because I thought it was trying to poison you. But it wouldn't let me, and it's much stronger than I am. Then, it got this other one—" Dhowifa gestured toward the large white demon who was still stick-pedding alongside the litter "—to talk to me. It speaks Kiktu. I don't understand Kiktu as well as you do, and it's got a horrible accent, but as near as I can make out, it was telling me that the things will help you heal. And I noticed that it's wearing one too. I think it's one of the ones you injured."

Nukurren looked again at the white demon. On one of its upper—tentacles? no, they were jointed like its peds—its upper limbs, a large poultice was strapped.

"So I decided to leave them there," continued Dhowifa. "I think you should leave them alone."

He doesn't understand, Nukurren realized. Oh, Dhowifa, now I must cause you more pain. But better that than to lie.

"It doesn't matter, dear one," she said softly. "I am going to die, anyway."

She started to explain about the diseases which mantle-rupturing wounds always brought in their train. Dhowifa, the poor emotional little thing, tried to interrupt, but Nukurren plowed on. Better that he should face the truth now than to live in the fairy-tale world that truemales preferred.

Suddenly, to her astonishment, the truemale started slapping her with his arms.

"Will you shut up for a moment—you, you clamhead!"

Nukurren stared at him. The azure irritation which suffused Dhowifa's mantle was not, this time, mottled by any affectionate traces of green.

"I know about those diseases," said the truemale angrily. "Do you think I haven't been filled with anguish, worrying about it? Self-righteous fool. Snail!"

He took a deep breath.

"But this big white demon says—well, at least, I think that's what it's been trying to tell me—that you can be healed. When we get to where we're going."

"And where's that?"

Orange surprise. "Didn't you see it? We've already started up the slopes."

He stretched out a tentacle, pointing up and ahead.

"The Chiton."

Nukurren twisted, looked where he was pointing. The sight was awesome.

"We're going there? Why?"

"Because that's where the demons live. Or come from, I'm not quite sure. That's where the ones live who it says can heal you."

After a short silence, Dhowifa added:

"And, if I understand it, that's where the one lives who will decide what to do with us."

"And who is that?" She felt dread at the answer.

"The Mother of Demons."

Suddenly, a voice spoke in Kiktu: "How do you feel?"

Swiveling her remaining eye, Nukurren saw that it was the large white demon who had spoken. Its Kiktu was crude, and, as Dhowifa had said, the accent was horrible—harsh, and sibilant. But Nukurren had no difficulty understanding it.

"Better," she replied. "Very weak, but my brain is clear." She gestured at the demon's injured limb.

"And you?"

The demon flexed its limb—its right limb, Nukurren saw—and examined it.

"It will heal," replied the monster. "But it is painful. You almost tore it off."

For a moment, Nukurren and the demon stared at each other in silence. The bright blue color of its eyes was distracting. Despite Dhowifa's opinion, Nukurren automatically reacted to that color as if she were facing an enraged enemy. But, in truth, the whiteness of its hide never showed the slightest trace of blue fury. And, though the demon's shape and posture was like nothing Nukurren had ever seen, not even in her worst nightmares, there seemed something—

A memory came to her suddenly. Long ago, shortly after Dhowifa and she had sought refuge among the Kiktu, a young Kiktu warrior had challenged her to single combat. The cause, according to the warrior—Kokokda was her name—was her outrage at Nukurren's sexual perversity. But that had been a mere pretext, Nukurren knew. The truth was that the young warrior could not resist the challenge of fighting such a fearsome-looking gukuy, especially one who was reputed to have been a great Anshac warrior.

The combat had been swift and brutal. Kokokda had been quite good, very fast and strong, but much too full of bravado and incaution. It had not taken Nukurren long to leave the young Kiktu dazed and bleeding on the ground, even though she had been handicapped by the need not to kill or cripple her opponent. (It would have been tactless to slaughter Kokokda, given that Nukurren and Dhowifa were seeking sanctuary among her tribe.)

Days later, after recovering sufficiently from her wounds, Kokokda had entered the yurt occupied by Nukurren and Dhowifa. For a long moment, she had stood there, saying nothing. At first, Nukurren had thought Kokokda was seeking to renew the conflict, until, from the subtleties of color and posture, she realized that the young Kiktu was simply seeking to acknowledge a worthy foe and, in the confused way of youth, to gain her victor's respect.

Diplomacy had worked well then, and, Nukurren decided, would possibly work now also, even with a demon.

"You fought well," she said to the white demon.

"I fought like a fool," came the instant reply. "I'm lucky to be alive. I wouldn't be if you hadn't been outnumbered."

It was the simple truth, of course, but Nukurren tried again to flatter the demon with reassurances of its awesome prowess and skill. She had not gotten far into her peroration when the monster's—beak?—gaped wide and began emitting ghastly noises, like a swamp haktu barking in heat.

"I think that's the way the demons whistle when they think something's funny," whispered Dhowifa. Nukurren swiveled her eye back to examine her lover. Her arms made the gesture of skepticism. Ochre uncertainty rippled across Dhowifa's mantle.

"Well, I'm not sure of it, but I think so. As I told you, I've been watching them. They do it a lot."

Nukurren gazed back at the demon. The monster had ceased the hideous barking noises, but Nukurren saw that its—yes, she decided, it is a beak—was still gaping open. Within, on the top and bottom both, were a row of strange little white—stones?

"You are the biggest and ugliest gukuy I ever saw," announced the demon. Nukurren heard Dhowifa's hiss of displeasure at the insult to his beloved, but Nukurren shared none of it. Truth, after all, was the truth. Nukurren was the biggest and ugliest gukuy she had ever met.

"And you are also the biggest liar." A short, sudden burst of barking. "I fought like a stupid young fool, and that's the simple truth." More barking, very brief.

"Do not be offended. I'm the biggest and ugliest"—here came a word Nukurren couldn't quite grasp— "that I know. I'm not the quickest, but I'm the strongest. I rely too much on it." (A word, again, which Nukurren couldn't make out, but she thought it was a name) "is always warning me that my overconfidence is going to get me killed." The demon flexed its injured limb, and a strange crunching motion seemed to briefly flit across the features of its bizarre face. "And sure enough, it almost did."

A long silence followed. Nukurren tried to think of something to say, but she was feeling very weak and her mind was becoming foggy again.

"You were very brave," said the demon suddenly. Then, a moment later, its harsh accent somehow even harsher: "Why are you a slaver?"

"I am not," Nukurren replied.

"You were with them, and you fought for them."

"That is true. I was hired by the caravan master as her bodyguard. I did not like the work, but it was all I could find for Dhowifa and myself."

"Why?"

Nukurren hesitated, then, too tired and weak to think of a clever answer, responded with the blunt truth: "We are perverts." She heard Dhowifa hiss with displeasure, but ignored him. "We are despised and outcast because of it," she continued stolidly.

Again, the features on the monster's face crunched, although it seemed to Nukurren, in some way too subtle for her to grasp clearly, that it crunched differently. She heard Dhowifa whisper: "I think that weird thing it does with its face is the way demons gesture." Nukurren decided Dhowifa was probably correct. Other than the colors of their mantles, gukuy used their arms to express sentiments and attitudes. But the faces of the demons were armless.

The demon spoke. "I do not understand that word you used." Here the monster fumbled with the term, trying to reproduce it.

"Pervert," said Nukurren slowly and clearly. Dhowifa hissed again. "I am too tired to lie, dear one," said Nukurren softly.

"What does that word mean?" demanded the demon.

Nukurren explained, briefly and bluntly. Dhowifa was hissing like a kettle.

After hearing Nukurren's explanation, the monster fell silent. Nukurren examined it closely, but could see no indication of its attitude.

I think Dhowifa's right. Their—mantles?—never change color.

Suddenly, the monster moved away quickly, stick-pedding ahead toward the front of the caravan. Soon thereafter, a few loud and sharp commands were uttered in some utterly strange language and the caravan came to a halt. Moments later, Nukurren saw a number of demons approaching the litter. At the forefront was the white demon and—she felt Dhowifa flinch at her side—the demonlord. Black as night, implacable.

Seeing them side by side, Nukurren saw that the white demon was larger than the black one. Not quite as tall, but wider and more massive. The other demons—there were a total of eight in the approaching party—were considerably smaller. Four of them seemed to be flushed brown with misery. The remaining two were colored a very light brown, almost white, but not the same pale hue as the biggest demon. And as they came nearer, Nukurren suddenly realized that the strange attachments on top of their heads which she had thought to be soft armor were some kind of natural growths.

Parasites? she wondered. Some kind of skinny worms? No, that doesn't make sense. They must be part of their bodies.

The color of the growths varied, she saw. The growths on top of the big white demon were pale yellow, very bright. One of the other whitish demons also had yellow head growths, although the color was much darker, almost ochre. The growths on the remaining demons was dark brown, except for that on the heads of the demonlord and one other. Their growths were pure black. And there was something different about the shape of the demonlord's head growths—like thousands of tiny slender worms, also, but worms which were tightly coiled.

The eight demons drew alongside Nukurren's litter. Now that she could see them together, standing still in clear daylight, Nukurren saw that there were other subtle differences between the demons as well. The body shapes of three of them were somehow different, and the front of their mantles, under the light armor which covered them, seemed misshapen.

"Tell him what you told me," commanded the white demon, gesturing to the demonlord.

"Him?" thought Nukurren, astonished. This monster was a male?

Not possible. The white demon's Kiktu must be worse than I thought.

But then, again: "Tell him."

Could it be?

"Are you a male?" Nukurren blurted to the demonlord.

All the demons began that horrible barking noise. Nukurren decided that Dhowifa was right—they were laughing. She was relieved to see that the demonlord was laughing also, and, when the barking ceased, that its—his—beak was gaping open, with those peculiar little stones exposed. The stones in his beak, she was interested to note, were every bit as white as the ones in the white demon's beak.

Yes, Dhowifa's right. And that must be their gesture of amusement.

The gesture seemed even more pronounced on the part of the white demon, and then, as if the creature could read her mind, the demon said:

"This"—it gaped its beak wider— "is our gesture of amusement. We call it a—" Here came a bizarre word.

"Gurinu?" asked Nukurren.

"Close enough," replied the white demon. "And I am also a male. These"—here the demon pointed to the three whose body shapes Nukurren had thought to be somehow different— "are female."

One of the three females stepped forward. She was light brown in color. Her eyes, like the black demon and one other, were very dark brown, almost black. Her head growths, like those of the demonlord, were also pure black, although hers were very straight and long. Now that she was close, Nukurren could see that her head growths were tied back behind her head by a cord. She was almost as tall as the black and white demons, although much less massive, especially in her upper mantle.

The female demon reached up with her tentacles—upper limbs, rather—and untied the cords which bound together the strips of lacquered yopo stems which made up her body armor. She drew the armor aside, and Nukurren could see that beneath, protruding from the light brown skin of her mantle, were two bizarre, soft-looking growths. Looking over at the male demons, Nukurren saw that no such growths protruded from their mantles.

"There are other differences," said the female demon, in a voice which, though harsh, was much lighter in tone than that of the male demons. Her Kiktu was better than that of the black and white demons, with a less pronounced accent.

The female demon retied her armor. "But we won't get into that now. Or else we'll waste half the day while" (here came a strange word, which Nukurren was sure was a name) "shows off."

All the demons except the big white one began barking loudly. The big white one, to Nukurren's amazement, suddenly changed color. It was a subtle change, but there was no mistaking it—the monster was turning pink!

Apprehension? wondered Nukurren. That doesn't make sense.

It made even less sense when the white demon's beak slowly began to gape wide open, in the gesture of amusement.

He's embarrassed, Nukurren suddenly realized. But, I think, not displeased.

The white demon spoke again: "Tell him what you told me."

To the demonlord, Nukurren repeated the explanation for her presence, and Dhowifa's, among the slavers.

For a moment, the demonlord was silent. Then he made a peculiar jerking motion with his head and turned away. He said something to the white demon in the strange-sounding demon language, and began rapidly stick-pedding away, barking out commands. Moments later the caravan was in motion again. All of the demons left the vicinity of the litter, except the big white one and the female one who had stripped away her armor.

"I think you just saved your life," said the white demon softly. (Here a strange word, but Nukurren was sure it was the name of the demonlord) "was beginning to have second thoughts about not killing you immediately when we captured you. Now he won't."

Dhowifa began to speak, but Nukurren cut him off.

"Why not?"

The white demon did something odd with its mantle, as if quickly raising and lowering its upper torso—where its cowl would be if it had one.

"You were not entirely with the slavers by choice. He hates slavers. We all do. And besides, he's curious."

"About us?"

"Yes."

Dhowifa now spoke, very softly, in his broken Kiktu. "You is—are, not by us, offended?"

"Offended?" asked the white demon. "Because you are"—he struggled with the unfamiliar word— "perverts?"

Dhowifa made the gesture of assent, and it was obvious to Nukurren that the demon understood the meaning of the arm-curls.

Again, the two demons gaped wide their beaks.

"It means nothing to us," said the female one. She moved closer to the white demon, and reached out one of her limbs. Then, with the odd little stick-tentacles at its tip, she began slowly caressing the back of the male demon's head, under the long, soft, bright yellow head-growths.

"My name is"—here she spoke slowly, carefully enunciating— "Ludumilaroshokavashiki, and this is Dzhenushkunutushen. We have often been lovers. More and more often, now, in preference to others." Her beak gaped. "Soon I think he will ask me to be his mate, if he can muster the courage."

The male demon's white hide was again suffused with pink.

"And what will you say?" asked Nukurren.

"I will say 'yes,' " replied the female demon, very softly.

Nukurren stared at the big white demon, Dzhenushkunutushen. The demon stared back at her.

And suddenly, uncertainly, deep within a monster's eyes, eyes the color of insensate blue fury, Nukurren caught a glimpse of something she had never thought to find in her bleak and lonely existence.

Once the survival of the colony was assured, Indira had began looking toward the future. Just a few days after the discovery of the maia-food, she had proposed, and the five other surviving adults had agreed, to begin a school for the children. They were faced with the fact that the technological base which they had always assumed would be the underpinning of the colony was almost gone. One of the landing boats was a wreck, not good for much beyond storage and scrap metal. The equipment on the other boat was still functioning (other than the engines, which were almost out of the complex synthetic chemical which they used for fuel). But Hector pointed out that the batteries which powered the equipment would soon be inoperative.

"They're nuclear batteries!" protested Adams.

Hector shook his head. "No they ain't, Doctor. Sorry. They're just little temporary units, designed to be recharged on a regular basis on the Magellan."

Adams began a vigorous denunciation of the incompetence of the expedition's planners, but Julius cut him off.

"Stow it, Doctor Adams! It's water under the bridge. Spilt milk. Let's get on with the business at hand."

Adams glared at the biologist, but he kept his mouth shut. Julius continued:

"The way I see it, we've got to completely put out of our minds any illusions that we can maintain an advanced technological culture. We've got to face the facts. Every single piece of advanced equipment on the boat—the computers, for instance—presupposes a whole technological support base that just doesn't exist anymore. The problem with the batteries is just the tip of the iceberg."

A sidelong glare at Adams.

"I happen to know how the temporary batteries in the lifeboats were chosen. Everybody on the planning board wanted nuclear batteries. But nuclear batteries are big, and there was nothing as valuable as space. So the decision was made to have nuclear batteries on the mother ship alone, and use small temporary batteries on the lifeboats. It's easy to sneer at that decision now. But it was the logical decision to make at the time.

"We're going to find the same thing is true over and over again. The minute any single component of any of the remaining equipment breaks down, that's it. There aren't any replacement parts, and we've got no way to make them. Even if we knew how, which we don't."

A shrug. "It's one of the prices we pay for having such a technologically advanced culture. We're all specialists, by and large. Take me, for example. I know how to use the equipment in a biological lab. But I don't know how to make it. I don't even fully understand how most of it works. The same's true for all of us."

He smiled. "Except Indira. The historian's profession hasn't changed much over the last five thousand years."

"So what do you propose, Julius?" asked Janet. "Specifically."

"I propose that we concentrate on teaching the children the essential tools of survival—physical and cultural. Reading and writing. Basic mathematics. Basic medicine. Shelter, and clothing. But most of all, we've got to teach them—which means that we've got to learn it ourselves, since none of us is a farmer—basic agriculture."

"That's nonsense!" expostulated Adams. "We can't eat the plants. And we don't need to, anyway—we've got the maia."

Julius stared at Adams in silence for over a minute. Indira started to speak, thought better of it. Everyone else apparently shared her reticence.

Finally, Julius spoke again.

"Do you believe in magic, Doctor Adams?"

"Of course not! And let me say that I find that remark highly—"

"Just shut up!" bellowed the biologist. It was the first time any of them had ever heard Julius raise his voice. All of them, including Adams, were shocked into silence.

Julius glared around the campfire.

"Let me explain something to you, people." He pointed to the south. "The maia are not your fairy godmothers. It doesn't matter whether you think they're animals or sapient beings. If they're animals, they're in ecological balance with their habitat. And if they're sapient, as I believe them to be, they're at the most primitive possible cultural level. Do you understand what that means?"

Silence.

"It means they don't have a surplus. They live on the edge of economic survival. Every ounce of regurgitated food which they provide us is an ounce which they don't have for themselves—or their own young. As it is, we're lucky that they don't have more than a handful of youngsters themselves. How many ounces—no, tons—of food are we going to be demanding from them? Where's it supposed to come from? The maia don't grow anything. They forage. There's only so much forage in this valley, and it's obvious to me that there's not enough when you add us into the equation.

"So—to get back to your point, Doctor Adams—while it's true that we don't need to learn how to cultivate plants for ourselves, we had damn well better learn how to do it for them. Or we're going to die."

He fell silent, still glaring. After a moment, Koresz spoke.

"I believe Julius' point is irrefutable." The doctor smiled crookedly. "If we are to survive, we shall have to adopt toward the maia the classic slogan of the Vulcans. 'Live long, and prosper.' "

Indira took charge, then, proposing a concrete division of labor.

Basic education in literacy and mathematics: Herself and Francis Adams.

Agriculture: Julius, with Hector as his assistant.

("What's this shit?" Hector demanded. "I fly almost twelve light years so I can become a bracero?" But he was grinning when he said it.)

Housing, clothing and dyeing: Janet Mbateng.

Medicine: Vladimir Koresz, with Janet as his assistant.

* * *

Two weeks later, Julius added another basic skill to the list: weapons-maker.

"What?" demanded Indira. "Whatever for? We've seen nothing threatening to us in the valley except for a few small predators. We can handle those with shovels."

The expression on the biologist's face was somber.

"Indira, as part of my job I've been systematically studying the maia. I've gotten to know all of them. In fact, I've catalogued them in my notebook."

"So?"

"So two of them are scarred. Big scars, too. On their mantles."

Indira had noticed scars on one of the maia herself, but hadn't really thought much about it.

"An accident—"

"Not a chance." Julius was vigorously shaking his head. "They're not lacerations, such as might be caused by a fall. The maia never leave level ground, anyway. They're puncture wounds, Indira. Caused by some kind of tooth, or claw, or something."

Indira's face was pale. Julius smiled, in his lopsided way, and stroked her cheek.

"Sorry, sweetheart. There's trouble in paradise."

The other adults—except Hector—were skeptical. But Julius insisted, and Hector was released from his former duties in order to design and construct weapons. The pilot was not unpleased at the change.

"Hey, I've gone from field hand to head of the military-industrial complex at one fell swoop." He shrugged modestly. "It's a small step for a man, but it's a giant step for La Raza."

Then, more seriously:

"But, hey, Julius—it's a weetle bit hard to figure out what kind of weapons we need when I've got no idea what we're going to be using them against. What are we talking about here? Giant snakes? Super-snails? The creature from the black lagoon?"

Julius squatted and began chewing his upper lip.

"Let me try to apply my biological expertise, such as it is. As far as I've been able to tell, just about all the terrestrial animals on this planet fall into two basic phyla—pseudo-molluscs and pseudo-worms."

He waved his hand. "Yeah, yeah, sure, the worms are probably divided into umpteen different phyla, like they are on Earth. Who cares? A worm is a worm is a worm is a worm. Most boring critters ever made. A moving hose—food goes in one end, crap comes out the other."

He spit on the ground. "So fuck the worms."

More lip-chewing.

"As far as the molluscs go, based on what I've seen so far I've tentatively broken them down into six classes: the pseudo-snails, the pseudo—oh, screw the pseudo business!—there's snails, there's these things that are like land-clams, there's the whole chiton group, there's a pile of slugs, there's those bizarre little brachiating critters that have no equivalent on Earth except (so help me!) primitive primates, and there's the maia. The Ishtarian equivalent of cephalopods."

"There's also those weird floating things, like balloons. I've seen a few of them pass overhead."

"Yeah, I forgot about them. I'm dying for one of them to land in the valley so I can cut it open. At a guess, they're probably a whole separate phylum. Something roughly like what we used to call coelenterates. But they're all small. And they don't seem to have much capability for directed movement. From a distance, at least, it looks like they're just drifting with the breeze. I can't imagine them being dangerous—at least, not to something the size of a maia."

"So what's your conclusion?"

"It has to be something relatively similar to a maia. In the same general class, at least. Unless there's a phylum or a mollusc class I haven't seen—which is always possible, mind you; we've only seen a tiny portion of Ishtar's surface—it has to be a quasi-cephalopod of some type. Or types."

"You sure?"

Julius shrugged. "No, I'm not. But it's a hell of a good bet. If analogies to Earth mean anything, the cephalopods were the only large, fast-moving, advanced predators produce by the molluscs. By any of the invertebrate phyla, as a matter of fact. Well, there were the eurypterids, but I've never agreed with those people who think the eurypterids were—"

"Julius!"

"Huh? Oh. Sorry. Old habits die hard. All right, Hector, to cut to the chase—yeah, I'm almost sure it has to be something like the maia. More or less, you understand."

The look Hector gave him was not filled with admiration.

" 'More or less' doesn't cut it, Julius. We're talking mano-a-mano here, not horseshoes."

Julius threw up his hands with exasperation.

"So I'm not a genius!" He blew out a deep breath. "All right, Hector. Try to imagine a mean, bad-tempered maia. With some kind of long tentacles instead of short arms. The tentacles will have some kind of cutting or stabbing tip—something like a horn, maybe."

"Are they going to be bigger or smaller than the maia?"

Julius pondered the question.

"Hard to say. Among invertebrates, predators are usually bigger than their prey. The same's generally true for marine predators, including vertebrates. But the rule doesn't always hold up with advanced land forms. Quite a few mammalian predators are smaller than their prey."

"That'd be a break."

Julius gave him a sidelong glance. "Not necessarily, amigo. Predators who are smaller than their prey usually hunt in packs."

Hector rolled his eyes. "That's great. Just great."

Julius was chewing his lip fiercely.

"But whether they're bigger or smaller than the maia, the predators will almost certainly be faster. Course, that's not saying much. That'll be one of our big advantages, by the way. I can't be positive, but I'm almost certain that human beings will be able to run a lot faster than anything on Ishtar."

He pointed a finger at Hector. "But—don't assume that because we can run faster that our reflexes are any faster. These predators can probably move their tentacles as fast as we can move our arms. Hell, even the maia can move their arms pretty quickly when they want to."

"Yeah, I know. I saw one of the kids fall off a maia's cowl the other day. Damned if the maia didn't catch her before she hit the ground."

The pilot scratched his chin thoughtfully.

"Weelll. I'd kinda been thinking in terms of swords, but—"

"No! Swords would be almost useless. If you tried to use it as a chopping weapon, you'd be trying to cut through that godawful tough mantle. Take hours. Unless you were El Cid or something, which we ain't. Same problem with axes. Look, Hector—there's one really vulnerable part on the body of a cephalopod: the head. Unless these critters are completely different from Terran cephalopods, which is possible but there's no way to tell for sure without cutting open—"

"Don't even think it, Julius."

"—I'm surrounded by saints! The point is, they don't have skulls. There's nothing protecting the brain except a mass of flesh. Which is probably thinnest right between the eyes."

"Well, you can use a sword to stab. Especially something like an epee."

Julius goggled. "You want to play matador with something that looks like a walking version of It Came From Beneath the Sea? Such a hero! Such cojones! Such a fucking moron!"

The pilot laughed. "All right, already!"

"Spears, Hector. We want spears. Something we can stab straight in with, while keeping a distance."

"Sounds good. What kind of spear, do you think?"

"You're asking me?" demanded Julius. "When we've got Indira? Who's spent a lifetime studying the wicked ways of times gone by, when men were men and didn't suffer fools gladly."

Indira proved a reluctant consultant, but Hector was finally able to get from her what he needed.

"It's basically an assegai," he explained to Julius four days later, showing him the spear he had made. "The blade's heavy, shaped like a narrow leaf, about forty centimeters long. It'll stab real good, and you can still chop with it if you have to. But instead of a short handle, like a real assegai, I put a long one on it. What do you think?"

The weapon was certainly ferocious-looking, thought Julius.

"I see you made the handle out of 'sortabamboo.' What's the blade made out of?"

"Steel. It's a piece of the battery shield."

"Why'd you use that? There can't be much of it. Why not use that stuff the boat's hull is made out of?"

"How many lifetimes you got? That's stuff's a weird alloy made out of titanium and God knows what else. Ask Adams, he could probably tell you. All I know is that they have to use special tooling in factories to work with it."

When asked, Adams confirmed that the metal of boat hulls was useless for anything except shelter and storage.

"Most refractory metal known to man. Titanium, basically, but—"

He began what would have been a long and arcane lecture on the process by which the metal was made, but Julius cut him short.

"Never mind, never mind. I'll take your word for it. That leaves us with a problem. We've only got enough of the shielding, and stuff like that, to make a few hundred steel spears."

"Then what's the problem? There are only a handful of us to begin with."

Julius restrained himself. "Some day, Doctor Adams, the children will grow up. And then they will have children. And then—do you get the drift?"

"I still don't see the problem. We'll simply have to find some iron ore and make our own metal."

A supercilious sniff. "You do know what iron ore looks like, don't you?"

Julius sighed heavily. "Of course I know what it looks like. Paleontologists are just specialized geologists, basically. But I have no idea how you make steel—or even iron—out of hematite. Do you?"

Needless to say, he didn't. Nor did Indira.

"But I'll tell you one thing," she said. "It's not easy. In fact, Julius, I wouldn't even think about it. Try to make bronze, if you can find copper and tin."

He frowned. "How do you know iron's hard to make?"

"Because it was invented so rarely in history. The only case that's certain is the Hittites. Many historians think that the Hittites were the only people who ever actually invented iron—everybody else got it through cultural diffusion. Personally, I think there's a strong case for an independent discovery in West Africa, and the Chinese—"

"For God's sake! Does everybody in this place have to play professor?"

She chuckled. "Sorry. The point is that bronze, unlike iron, was independently invented any number of times in human history. So it must be fairly easy to do."

Later, Hector commented: "Hey, Julius, you'd think all you super-educated types would know how to do something as basic as make iron."

"Au contraire, mon ami. Our super-education's the problem. Did you ever read Jules Verne's Mysterious Island?"

Hector shook his head.

"Well, it's about a small group of men who wind up on a desert island in the middle of the 19th century. Without anything except a couple of matches and a pocket watch. But one of them's an engineer, and over the next few years he invents everything. From scratch."

Julius frowned. "Actually, I've always suspected that Verne was stretching the possibilities. But it's barely plausible. And you know why? Because the hero was a 19th century engineer. A basic kind of guy, you might say. Whereas we—" He sighed. "As useless a bunch of over-educated specialists as you could ask for."

He glared at Hector. "That includes you, pal. Don't give me any of this simple-Sam-the-sailor-man routine. What do you know how to do? Besides fly spacecraft? Now, there's a useful skill in the stone age!"

Julius searched, but he found no hematite. Nor did he find any copper. Nor tin. Eventually, however, he found bronze. But he did not have to invent it, for it had already been invented on Ishtar. Any number of times.

Luckily, the discovery of bronze did not come for many years. Years in which the colony slowly settled into a stable and symbiotic existence with the owoc. Symbiotic, not parasitic. For although he was never able to invent metallurgy, the biologist was able to invent agriculture.

Julius had initially concentrated on domesticating the succulent oruc, whose leaves were the favorite food of the owoc. But he met with little success, for he soon discovered that it was a finicky plant. It would only grow in soil patches with just the right composition, and, try as he might, he was unable to reproduce the composition elsewhere in the valley.

Eventually, he concentrated on a bushy plant which looked vaguely like a soft-bodied manzanita (if such a thing can be imagined), which he had seen the owoc browse upon. Here, he met with almost immediate success. The plants were rare in the valley itself, although they were profuse on the hillsides. Since the owoc were poorly equipped by nature to climb hills, they only fed on those occasional bushes which grew at the fringes of the valley floor.

When he transplanted the upunu (as the owoc called it) to the valley floor, the plants flourished. For three weeks, before they began dying off rapidly.

The cause was obvious: each plant was infested with several softball-sized snails. They were a type of snail which was common enough in the valley, but was never seen on the hillsides.

The owoc called the snails "uduwo." But Julius put his linguistic foot down. He called them "cossacks," and that was the name they used when he led a horde of eager children, armed with spears, to wreak havoc upon the snails. They began by killing all the snails in the upunu field, and then scoured the rest of the valley. After two days, they came upon a swarming nest in the far north end of the valley. Julius pronounced the nest the root of all evil, whereupon the children gleefully committed mass gastropodicide.

Thenceforth, Julius would refer to the slaughter as The Day Kishinev Was Avenged, a phrase the children happily adopted without having the faintest idea what it meant. Indira knew, of course, but she chose not to enlighten them.

Within a year, large swathes of the valley floor were covered with upunu fields. The owoc took to the fields without hesitation, and upunu soon became the staple of their diet. It was noted, however, that they continued to browse on the oruc. Adams analyzed this behavior with sage remarks regarding trace elements and essential dietary supplements. Julius did not publicly disagree, for the possibility could not be discounted. Privately, however, he suspected the owoc had a sweet tooth.

Three years later, within a space of just weeks, the valley floor was suddenly covered with tiny little owoc, and Julius cursed himself for a fool.

It was not that he was concerned about overpopulation. It quickly became evident—to the distress of the human adults and the absolute horror of the children—that the initial flood of baby owoc would rapidly ebb. For the tiny creatures died in droves.

Died from disease, many of them; many more fell prey to snails and other small predators.

No, he was concerned about the emotional state of the human children. For they were utterly unable to comprehend the reaction of the owoc to the massacre of their babies.

The reaction was—nothing. In an offhand way, the owoc fed the swarm of tiny creatures. Not individually, as they did with the small number of owoc tots in the valley (if the word "tot" can be applied to a creature about the size of a black bear), but en masse. Adult owoc would periodically regurgitate great piles of food on the ground, which would rapidly be surrounded by owoc babies. (And then, within minutes, by predators.) But other than that, the owoc ignored their offspring as if they didn't even exist. Time and again, boys and girls would bring owoc babies, cupped in their hands, to the adults. Begging them to shelter the babies and protect them. The adult owoc would simply stare, apparently dumbfounded, and then amble away.

Joseph finally cornered an owoc, and spoke with her for an hour.

When the conversation was over, he came to Julius and said, fighting tears:

"She says—it's not very clear to me—but I thinks she's saying that the babies die because they have to. She says it's part of the Coil of Beauty."

"I know, Joseph," replied Julius sadly. He reached out an arm and hugged the boy. "She's right, you know. It's the way it has to be, with the owoc. It seems unnatural to humans, because we're K-strategists. But the owoc aren't. They're r-strategists."

Joseph demanded to know what that meant, and Julius explained it to him. The boy did not understand all of it, but he understood enough. That night, after asking the adults not to attend, Joseph called a meeting of all the children. (It was the first time the boy ever assumed that mantle of authority among the younger generation; it would not be the last.) He explained, in his own terms, what Julius had taught him. The children discussed the matter thoroughly, for hours, with a seriousness and gravity far beyond what one would expect of nine and ten year-olds. At the end, they were satisfied (if not happy). But Julius noted that each child took an owoc baby as a personal pet, and kept it free from harm.

He was upset at the situation himself, of course, as were all of the adult humans. But, for he alone, the emotion of unhappiness was offset by another.

Awe, and wonder.

I would have sworn (he wrote in his notebook) that no intelligent species could evolve using the r-strategy. Prejudice, pure prejudice. We humans have always been Earth's quintessential K-strategists, so naturally we assume that the reproductive strategy of producing a few (only one, usually, in our case) offspring—and then lavishing care upon them—is the inevitable method for the higher forms of life. It's not just homo sapiens, after all—most of the mammals follow the same strategy, even if they don't take it to the same extremes that we do.

But the invertebrates have always been r-strategists. The hell with protecting a few kids. Just have a few thousand. Sure, most of them will get it in the neck. So what? A few will make it. Everything evens out in the end.

The owoc don't follow a pure r-strategy, of course. There's always been a handful of youngsters, ever since we arrived, and they take care of them well enough. That's one of the reasons I assumed, without thinking about it, that they were K-strategists. I'm willing to bet that as the babies get older—the few of them that survive—a critical point will be reached when different instincts kick in.

He was right. A year later, the surviving owoc babies began to hoot, and it was as if the eyes of the adult owoc suddenly focused on them. They were very surprised, though—according to the human children, who were still the only ones who could readily understand the hoots—at how many young owoc there were. In fact, the adult owoc seemed utterly bewildered. The reason for the surplus, of course, was the human children. Julius estimated that 90% of the surviving babies were the ones the children had taken in as pets. But, bewildered or not, the adult owoc began taking care of their young. And there was no shortage of food, because of the upunu fields. There was even an unexpected side benefit, noted Julius with amusement. The human children, who had previously complained bitterly about "field-work" and used every excuse to avoid it, were now the most assiduous of cultivators.

Of course, if I hadn't been so preoccupied with the immediate necessities of life in the colony, I would have been able to spend my time doing what I'd like to do, which is—hey, once a prof, always a prof—research. (Yum yum.) Which I've been doing, finally, this past few weeks. And made some discoveries.

The big news?

The owocs are social animals. Not social, as in: "Let's throw a party!" No, social, as in: bees; or ants.

I kid you not. All this time I thought the owoc were more or less like us. You know, boys and girls. Differences, of course. The sexual dimorphism among the owoc makes the miniscule differences between human males and females positively subatomic. The males are tiny, compared to the females. Tiny, and weak. At least, the bodies are. The heads are quite well developed. Much smaller, compared to those of the females. But I'm willing to bet that if you plotted the comparative brain sizes of the males and females against their relative body sizes, you'd find that they are just about identical on the EQ scale. So the two sexes are probably of equivalent intelligence. But other than that, the males are a shadow of the females, like super-runts. Hell, most of the time I see one of the few males (oh, yeah—note: males are only 6.25% of the population, by exact count) they're riding inside the females—nestled in the anterior mantle cavity, next to the head. Cozy as can be—even got a cowl over their heads to keep off the semi-constant drizzle.

(Time out for complaint: Is there ever any sunshine on this misbegotten planet? Day after day, the same solid light-gray sky. Makes Seattle look like Miami.)

Back to the ranch. The peculiar "riding" position of the males inside the females is so common that I'm even beginning to think it explains the (relatively) much longer arms of the males. Although that might be one of those "Just So Stories" kind of explanations. I can see where the males would enjoy it well enough—beats working—but I can't really see where there's any adaptive advantage to—Julius Cohen. Julius Cohen. Reproductive organs, dummy. That's why the male arms are so long. So they can reach way down deep inside the female's mantle, where the good stuff is. Talk about convergence! That's how male octopi transmit their sperm to the female—one of the arms is specially designed to carry sperm packets from the male sex organ to the female's. (If I remember right, that arm's called a hectocotylus.) More logical system than we have, when you think about it. Why waste valuable biotic energy growing a separate penis when you can do double duty with an arm?

OK. But why are all the arms long? If the owoc parallel the octopi, only one of the arms is adapted as a sexual organ. The others are just arms. So why are they all the same length?

Bingo. That's just the way the genetic switches work with the owoc. The regulatory DNA (or whatever equivalent exists on Ishtar—and would I love to know!—but I'm willing to bet that it's the same trusty old adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine, or at least three out of four of them) has all eight arms linked. You want just one of them long? Sorry, ma'am. Only comes in the economy eight-pack.

Anyway. To get back to the point, I always knew there were males and females. What I didn't know is that there are also mothers.

I just thought Kupu, the female who hardly ever moves out of that one little oruc grove, was the owoc equivalent of the fat lady in the circus.

Turns out the reason she's four times as big as all the other females is because she isn't really a female at all, she's a "mother." This distinction seems bizarre to humans, because for us "female-ness" and "mother-ness" are almost identical. But among the owoc, they're practically a different sex.

No, that's not the best way to put it. Makes it seems like there's three sexes. And there aren't. There's only two—female and male. But the females come in variants. Female and mother.

Why not female (meaning mother) and "neuter." Because it slides around the question. What's a "neuter," after all? It's either a neutered something—male or female—or it's some kind of bizarre sex-that-isn't-a-sex.

Fie on it. Let's stick to the ABCs of biology. In all sexed species, the female is the fundamental sex. Gotta have females. Males—the thought grieves my chauvinist heart, but facts, as the man says, are stubborn things—are unnecessary. Oh, sure, lots of species use males to reproduce. (Including mine, praise the Lord.) But they can be done away with, if necessary. Parthenogenesis, for instance. So the basic body plan of any sexed species is female. Males are just a specialized adaptation.

Since the infertile females are far and away the most common type of owoc—and the dominant ones, insofar as that aggressive term can be used with these beings—it seems to me most logical to refer to them as the females, and to call the ones which are specialized to actually reproduce "mothers."

I'll stick with that for now. (Note: ask Joseph to talk to the owoc about it. Be interesting to see what they have to say.)

He did, and Joseph reported that the owoc term for female was, just as Julius suspected, used to refer to the infertile ones. Kupu was called a term which translated quite closely as "mother." Joseph also reported that, according to the owoc, males came in two variants as well—the fertile ones, which were by far the most common type; and a rare type of male, which was not fertile. According to the owoc, there was no representative of that quasi-sex currently living in the valley. There had been one, some (indefinite—the owoc were always vague regarding questions of time) period ago, but he had died.

Julius tentatively labeled the sterile males "eumales." And then drove himself crazy trying to figure out an adaptive reason for the evolution of infertile males. ("The most useless creatures imaginable!" he exploded once, in Indira's presence; to his everlasting regret, for she expanded on the theme, at length.)

So there you are—just like a colony of bees. A queen—the mother—who does all the actual breeding. A small number of males, to service her. And a host of infertile females, to do everything else.

Like all analogies, of course, you can't take it too far. For one thing, the owoc are intelligent (not very, but intelligent nonetheless) whereas the social insects are as dumb as—hey, what do you expect?—bugs. For another, owoc society has none of the "slavish" characteristics of insect hives.

But I'd be willing to bet that if the owoc were smarter their complicated sexual relations would produce all kinds of fascinating cultural variants. Including, probably, some variants that are savagely oppressive.

He proved to be right. On both counts.

Doctor Koresz was the first adult to die, six years after their arrival on Ishtar.

It did not come as a surprise, for he had known for months he was dying.

"I do not know why, really," he had told them, lying on his pallet in the hut which the doctor shared with Janet and Hector. "I have only been able to scratch the surface, when it comes to understanding life and death on Ishtar. I shouldn't be dying, of course. I am only forty-two years old, and if I had not been in perfect health the Society would never have approved me for the Magellan. But—as Julius never tires of reminding us—facts are stubborn things. And the fact is that I am dying."

All of the adults were gathered around, except Adams, who had drawn more and more apart from the colony as time went on. He was the only one of the adults who still lived in the landing boat. All the others had long since moved into the huts which Janet had designed from native vegetation. The children were housed in four large barracks (no, "long houses," Indira had named them, after the Iroquois).

Except for Adams, the adults lived in two separate huts: Indira and Julius in one, the doctor and Janet and Hector in the other. The ménage à trois into which Hector, Koresz and Janet had happily settled, within a few months after the crash, was a logical enough arrangement under the circumstances. And sexual mores on Earth in the 22nd century were characterized by considerable latitude and tolerance.

Julius immediately named their hut "Sodom and Gomorrah." And he demonstratively refused to come near it, fearing, or so he claimed, the wrath of God.

"You don't even believe in God!" Indira had once protested.

Julius chewed his lip. "No, I don't. But you never know. And if He does exist, He has two outstanding characteristics. Judging, at least, from the Old Testament."

"Which are?"

"He's the most hot-tempered, narrow-minded, mean-spirited, intolerant, anal-compulsive, bigoted redneck who ever lived. And, what's more to the point, he's a lousy shot."

"It's true!" he insisted, in the face of Indira's laughter. "Read the Book yourself. Somebody pisses Him off, does He nail 'em right between the eyes like Buffalo Bill? Hell, no! He drowns everything. Or He blasts whole cities, or drops seven lean years on entire nations. Indiscriminate, that's what He is. The Sawed-off Shotgun In The Sky. So I ain't getting anywhere near that den of iniquity."

And he hadn't, until he realized that Koresz was really dying.

"But why?" demanded Janet. She wiped away tears. "If it's a disease, maybe you can find a cure. You've done miracles, Vladimir! Not just with us, with the owoc too."

Koresz shook his head weakly.

"It is not a disease, Janet. At least, not in the sense that you are using the term. It is—call it massive systemic shock."

"Explain," said Julius softly.

"I cannot, Julius. Not clearly. There is still an enormous amount we do not understand about life. Organisms are adapted by evolution to a particular environment. Some are more finicky about it than others, but any organism only has a certain tolerance range. Humans do quite well, in that regard, compared to most animals. But we have long known that totally new environments place a tremendous stress on organisms. In unforeseen ways, often. Did you ever read any of those old science fiction classics, written before humanity actually got into space?"

Julius shook his head.

"It is fascinating, really. The writers all thought that weightlessness would improve human health. Seemed like a logical idea at the time, I suppose. Gravity does wear our bodies down. But we are adapted to gravity. And when we finally got into space, we discovered that we cannot survive weightlessness. Not for really extended periods of time. Bone loss; muscle atrophy; eventually, Kabakov's syndrome and death."

He levered himself to a semi-erect position.

"But we can survive weightlessness for quite some time before we succumb. And that, I think, is a good analogy to what is happening to me. My body lasted for years, but it is finally just giving up."

Indira gasped. "Does that mean—?" She swallowed. "The kids—"

Koresz shook his head. "I believe the children will be fine. Young animals are more adaptable than adults. The ones who survive, that is to say. Typically, young animals either survive or they die quickly. But the ones who make it—"

He stopped, turned pink with embarrassment. "I'm sorry, Julius. Indira. My big mouth."

The biologist's face was pale, as was Indira's. But Julius smiled his lopsided smile, and said:

"S'okay, Vladimir. It was a long time ago. My daughter—oh, hell, if I'd left the poor kid on Earth she would have been all right. But here—" He sighed heavily. "Nobody ever said natural selection was kind."

He shook his head sharply, clearing away the memory.

"But what's important now is that I think you're right. A few of the kids who died in the first year, like Indira's, died of trauma. But most of them—just died. Nothing we could do to stop it, as hard as we tried. Lost almost twenty percent, the first year. A few the next year. But since then, they seem to be doing just fine. And you think they'll be okay from now on—and their kids, too, I assume?"

Koresz nodded. "Basically. Oh, I expect there will be a high child mortality rate. But the colony will survive that, especially if the children follow nature's age-old strategy. Be fecund."

He cleared his throat. "Which brings up something I have been meaning to raise. I have not said anything about it before, because it was a moot point. But the children are just about at the age where they discover a fascinating new game."

He gave them a hard stare. "I do not know what cultural prejudices may still be lurking deep within the recesses of your nasty little minds—"

"This—from you?" demanded Julius. "The pervert who's going to fry for eternity?"

When the laughter died down, Koresz continued.

"You must allow the children maximum sexual freedom. More than that. You must positively encourage promiscuity. This is not the time and place for the nuclear family and sexual fidelity. The gene pool is small enough as it is. I believe we have a large enough gene pool—barely—if the genes are mixed up constantly. Even then, genetic drift is going to loom large. I suspect we shall see the resurgence of all sorts of recessive traits. Hemophilia, that sort of thing."

His face grew harsh. "Natural selection will do its job, like always. But we want the genetic mayhem to be as small as possible. That means—"

"Swingers' paradise," snorted Julius. "Rome of the Caesars."

Koresz smiled. "Not so bad as all that, Julius. At least, I have not seen much of a sadistic streak among the children."

He looked at Indira. "Why the big frown, Indira? You never struck me as the sexually-repressive type." A chuckle. "Even though you and Julius have selfishly refused to share your treasures with us sinners."

Indira smiled, faintly. "It's not that, Vladimir. I have no moral problems with allowing the kids to develop a sexually permissive culture. I'm in favor of it, actually. It'll avoid a lot of social neuroses. No, it's just . . ."

She took a deep breath.

"It's just that up until now the boys and the girls have been on a equal footing. They understand that there's a difference between the sexes, of course. But they don't think much of it. Their games are completely integrated, and a number of the girls are emerging as leaders. But if they start having lots of kids, well . . ."

She fell silent. Koresz seemed puzzled.

"I still don't—"

"She's worried about the rise of the patriarchy, Vladimir," explained Julius. "She's mentioned it to me before, in private. Indira says that if the colony were to remain in the state of primitive hunters and gatherers that it wouldn't be a problem. Primitive cultures, she says, are generally characterized by sexual equality."

Indira interrupted. "There's always a division of labor between the sexes, but it rarely translates into a relationship of dominance and subjugation. But the point is that we're not primitive hunters and gatherers. We've already developed agriculture, of a sort—a kind of modified pastoralism, without the migration—and with everything else we've taught the kids they're well on their way toward civilization, of a basic sort. And throughout human history, the rise of civilization was always accompanied by a transformation in the relationship between the sexes. What's called the patriarchy."

She tightened her jaws. "Which was always very oppressive to women. Suttee. Purdah. Kinder, Küche, Kirche. You name it."

Janet interrupted. "But, Indira, that's all in the past. Really, it is. Oh, yeah, sure, you still run across a few guys with some Neanderthal notions, but it's never a real problem."

Indira was shaking her head.

"That's beside the point, Janet. You're right—today. But the modern equality between the sexes is only possible because of the vast wealth of twenty-second century civilization. Even then, it didn't come without long and bitter struggle. But our kids aren't going to be living in that kind of world. They'll be living in the Bronze Age—"

"If I can find any bronze," muttered Julius.

"—and abstract ideas have very little power in the face of social forces that emerge out of the material circumstances of real life."

She chewed her lip, unconsciously imitating Julius.

"I'll have to give it some thought. We won't have much maneuvering room, but there'll be some. Socioeconomic forces are the locomotives of history, but they're not impervious to cultural influence. And there was always a lot of variation in human history, within a range. I'd have much rather been a woman among the Iroquois, for instance, than a woman in ancient India.

"Or—" she frowned at Julius "—among the Hebrews."

"Bad enough I catch hell for what I do," complained the biologist. "Now I got to catch hell for what my ancestors did three thousand years ago?"

Unexpectedly, Hector intervened in the discussion.

"I think you might be worrying too much, Indira. There's something you're overlooking. I don't know much about history, but I know for sure that there's a factor in the equation here that never existed on Earth."

He jerked his head, toward the south.

"The owoc."

Indira was puzzled. "I don't get it, Hector. The owoc won't be able to stop—oh, hell, I wish Julius would stop calling them 'dimbulbs,' even in jest, but I can't deny that they aren't exactly mental giants."

Hector was shaking his head.

"You're missing the forest for the trees, Indira. It's not anything that the owoc would do. It's—just the fact that they are."

He gazed at the blank faces staring at him.

"Don't you see? The kids already think they're half-owoc. Hell, they're even starting to speak in their own dialect—English, basically, with a hefty dose of Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. And lots and lots of hoots. Sometimes, I can't understand what the kids are saying anymore."

He sighed. They still didn't understand.

"Look, folks. Just three days ago, I saw one of the littler boys—Kenny Wright—climb up onto Ludmilla's neck. For all the world like he was a tiny male owoc looking for his favorite spot. He didn't fit, of course, and at first I was afraid Ludmilla would beat him into a pulp. But she just seemed to take it for granted. Even carried Kenny around like that for half an hour.

"So maybe you're right, Indira. You know human history, I don't. But what I do know is that our kids aren't—they aren't just human, anymore. They're something a little different. Something new."

Indira was doubtful. But a small hope was born in her heart that day, at the deathbed of Vladimir Koresz. A small and faint glimmer, under the growing tidal wave of an historian's fear.

They buried Koresz three days later, near the kolocluster. All the humans in the colony attended, even Adams. And it seemed that every owoc in the valley was there also. Several of them owed their wellbeing to Koresz, who had over the years managed to find cures for a number of the illnesses which afflicted the creatures. The owoc, of course, did not understand the means by which Koresz worked his magic. Nor did they seem to care. They simply called him, in their hooting language, "the Stroke of Slow Beauty." (Humans, thought Indira, would have said: "the Touch of Long Life.")

Fortunately, not all of Koresz's skill went with him into the grave. Janet would never be his equal as a doctor, of course. Neither her own keen mind nor his careful tutorship could make up for the years which the doctor had spent learning his craft. But she was still very good. Much better—much, much better—than the medical practitioners which the human race had possessed for all but the last three centuries of its existence. And Janet had drawn around her four children who showed a deep interest in medicine. She believed that at least one of them, Maria De Los Reyes, had the potentiality for becoming a great doctor.

It was fortunate, and not a moment too soon. For, just as Koresz had foreseen, the children soon learned a new and vastly entertaining game. Less than a year later, the first babies began arriving.

They lost many of the babies, of course. But they lost none of the young mothers, although it was a close call with Keiko Watanabe. Janet performed her first Caesarean, and it was a success. Keiko and her child survived, although the girl would never bear another.

Indira was aghast at the child mortality rate, but Julius was (bleakly) satisfied.

"Twenty-five percent after one year," he said. "That's horrible, by modern Terran standards, I agree. But look, Indira—and please don't accuse me of being a cold-hearted biologist—it's better than what the human race put up with for most of its existence. In fact, a twenty-five percent child mortality rate is incredibly good, when you consider they're being born on an alien planet."

Indira knew he was right, but the knowledge didn't help much. Not when she had to help bury the pitiful little bodies. And then look at the hurt and bewildered faces of the children who had borne them.

But, over time, the children—teenagers, now—came to accept the facts of life. Here, of course, they were helped by the attitude of the owoc. Over time, Indira would be both appalled and fascinated by the way in which the inter-penetration of the two species' cultures would produce a unique hybrid. The humans would never share the owoc indifference toward new-born babes, of course. That was biologically precluded. They would care for them, and caress them, and nurse them, and pamper them. But they would withhold the core of their hearts, until the infants began to walk.

Eighteen months. That seemed to be the critical point. If a child could survive that long, and struggle to its uncertain little feet, he or she stood an excellent chance.

Janet Mbateng was the next to die. She knew it was coming months before it finally happened, just as Koresz had known.

"It's like something turned off, inside," she explained to them. "I'm just going through the motions, now."

She groped for words. "I can't explain it. It's not that I want to die, or anything like that. It's just—I don't know. Somehow I can just tell my body's given up."

The final weeks of her life, Janet spent every hour of the day surrounded by her pupils. (The nights, of course, were given to Hector; who held her wasted body in his arms, until he cried himself to sleep.) Hour after hour, passing on to them everything she had learned from Koresz. Hector tried to convince her to rest, but the little woman—no bigger than a child herself, now—adamantly refused.

In the end, she was satisfied she had done all she could. The day before her death, she administered the Hippocratic Oath to Maria De Los Reyes, and urged her other students to continue their efforts so that they too could become Doctors. (And they all did, over time.)

The last night, and day, she gave to Hector.

Hector followed her into the grave soon after. He claimed that he felt the same sensations that Janet and Koresz had described. Indira believed him, but Julius knew he was lying. The pilot's muscular physique never showed more than a trace of the horrible wasting symptoms which Janet and Koresz had exhibited. True, he grew very thin. But Julius knew that Hector hardly ate anything.

No, Julius knew the truth. Hector Quintero had become the closest friend he'd ever had. Over the years, working side by side, he had come to cherish the man's intelligence, cheerfulness, wit and courage. Inexhaustible courage, it had seemed.

But courage comes in different ways, to different people. Hector could face anything, except the empty vision of a future without Janet.

* * *

Francis Adams, strangely, seemed indestructible. The physicist was a total recluse—had been since before Koresz's death. And for at least a year prior to that, he had stopped giving classes to the children. (Which Indira regretted not at all; Adams had been an unbelievably bad teacher, totally incapable of explaining things in a way which would be comprehensible to his students.) He dwelt by himself, as he had for years, alone in the landing boat. The last time Julius saw the portion of the boat where Adams lived, the place looked like a pigsty. Adams himself—formerly so fastidious—looked like a complete savage. He acted like one, too. He had screeched at Julius, his voice filled with fear and rage, ordering him to leave. The physicist had even seized a spear which he had secreted in his lair, brandishing it in a manner which would have been frightening if it hadn't been so pitifully awkward.

But Julius obeyed. There was no purpose to be served in doing otherwise.

For years, now, the only time the colonists saw Adams was at mealtimes. These had become the central institution of daily social life for the colony—a time of festivity and relief from the morning's labor in the upunu fields and the afternoon's labor in the large longhouse which served as a school. Twice a day, mid-morning and late afternoon, the entire colony would gather in the center of the valley. There, in a cleared space surrounded on three sides by the long houses and the adults' huts, and on the fourth side by an oruc grove, a line of owoc would slowly enter. Each in turn would regurgitate her childfood into six huge basket/tureens, made of ruporeeds coated with dried resin.

The baskets had been Indira's invention. She felt that receiving the childfood directly into little personal bowls was undignified and wasteful, since much of it slopped over the sides. (It also made her nauseous.) Once the childfood was in the tureens, each human would approach with a bowl and scoop out their own portion. Before retiring to eat in animated circles, the humans would stand before the watching owoc, bowing deeply. The gesture of respect had not been taught to the human young. They had invented it themselves, drawing on some deep pool of cultural inheritance.

Indira herself never scooped her own bowl. She insisted on having a bowl brought to her, so that she could put out of her mind (more or less) the knowledge of where it came from. She was the only member of the human colony who felt that way, but the others had long since accepted her wishes.

Almost always, Julius was the one who brought her bowl. She wished it were otherwise, but she never said so, knowing it would hurt his feelings. Much as she loved Julius, she would have preferred another bowl-bringer, one who wouldn't smack his lips in anticipation of the meal, and make gross remarks such as: "Hey, the barf's good today!"

Adams would always make his appearance after the owoc left. The half-crazed physicist would emerge from his lair and scurry down the hillside. He would stop at the edge of the clearing, hunched, glaring at nothing in particular, saying not a word.

After a moment, Joseph would arise from whichever circle he was eating with and scoop out a bowl. He would approach Adams slowly and solemnly, and extend the bowl. After a moment, Adams would take the bowl and devour the contents like a wolf. Then, he would return the bowl and scuttle back to his lair.

The ritual was one of the many ways—unconsciously, thought Indira—that Joseph had established his position as the unquestioned leader of the younger generation. The children were afraid of Adams, she knew. The fear was not rational. Adams had never been a physically prepossessing man, even in his prime. Any number of the teenagers, of either sex, could have easily handled him. Jens Knudsen, who already had the size and musculature of a heavyweight wrestler, could have broken him with one hand. Ludmilla might have needed two hands.

No, it was not a physical fear. It was that the teenagers knew there was something deeply wrong about Adams, something that was utterly unlike anything else they had encountered. People fear the unknown.

But Joseph did not. He had not feared Adams as a boy. He did not fear him now.

His fearlessness, like the fear which the other teenagers felt, had little to do with physique. In that respect, of course, Adams posed no danger. The time when Adams could loom threateningly over Joseph Adekunle was long gone. Instead, Joseph towered over the physicist—and would have, even were Adams erect. At the age of seventeen, he was already almost two hundred centimeters tall. And while Indira thought that he would not grow much taller, she knew that his frame—already muscular—would fill out even further. By the time Joseph was twenty, he would be as magnificent a physical specimen as the human race had ever produced. Joseph would never have the sheer brute strength that Jens Knudsen possessed, but Indira had noted that he beat Jens as often as Jens beat him whenever they engaged in one of their frequent (and good-natured) wrestling matches. Joseph's speed, reflexes, and balanced poise were positively awesome.

But, as she watched the scene, Indira knew that the essence of it was not physical, but spiritual. The calm, confident serenity that exuded from Joseph's person as he watched the physicist take and gobble down his food did not stem from simple confidence in his muscles. They stemmed from the very soul of the boy.

Indira recognized what she was seeing. It was that vision the human race had always possessed of youth in its glory. Not arrogant, not callous, not vainglorious—simply the calm certainty of young strength and courage. Utter fearlessness in the face of danger; total willingness to stand against it.

The vision was found in all human cultures, expressed in a myriad ways. But Indira thought it had been completely captured only once, by the greatest artist the human race perhaps ever produced.

The superficial appearance was, of course, different. Joseph's skin was black; his hair was kinky; his features were African. But those were meaningless things. The soul of the boy was the same as that captured by the artist's genius.

The young shepherd, guarding his flock. Sling in hand. Poised, yet not tense; calmly gazing forward, secure in his youth, ready to deal with whatever horrors might come over the horizon. Lions; or bears; or perhaps even a giant. Whatever. It made no difference, for he would slay the monster without fail.

She had seen it once, that vision. In Florence.

The David, by Michelangelo.

David had not failed. Nor did Joseph, when the monsters came to his people, three months after Hector died.

The long years of the colony's peaceful existence ended, and gave way to the washing of the spears.

The first slaver raid caught the colony by surprise.

It shouldn't have, in theory. The colonists had been preparing to defend themselves, and the owoc, for over ten years. Enough spears had been produced to arm every single human down to the new-born babies, with a number left over. The teenagers had been organized into five-person squads, which, in turn, had been organized into three platoons.

Hector, who was the only adult with any military training at all, had been selected as the commander of the defense force. The organizational structure was his idea, and it had been he who had drilled the young humans in basic tactics.

The other adults had participated in the training, in the first few years. But once the children became teenagers, all the adults except Julius stopped engaging in the exercises. And if Hector had had his way, Julius would have been barred as well.

"It's a young person's game, man."

"You're saying I'm too old and feeble and slow?" demanded Julius.

"Yes. Exactly. Precisely."

But Julius had refused to quit, to Indira's disgust. Indira had never been an avid supporter of the military exercises in the first place. And as the years went by without any signs of trouble, she came to the private conclusion that the training was a waste of time and energy. But she did not interfere, except in three ways.

First, she made clear to Julius that she considered his insistence on remaining in the defense guard to be a prime example of delayed adolescence, of which, to his discomfort, she pointed to numerous other symptoms.

Secondly, she insisted that if there was going to be a defense guard, the girls would participate on an equal basis. This had caused no difficulty, for Hector was quite favorable to the idea. In fact, he had appointed Ludmilla Rozkowski one of the three platoon leaders (the others were Joseph Adekunle and Takashi Mizoguchi). After the babies began arriving, Hector maintained the sexual egalitarianism by establishing a platoon rotation system. Each month one of the platoons was assigned the primary duty of rounding up and protecting the children in the event of a military crisis.

Finally, and most forcefully, Indira refused to accept Hector's proposed title for his own position.

"What's wrong with it?" he complained.

"Admiral of the Ocean Sea?" demanded Indira.

He pouted. "It's got a nice ring to it."

"Not a chance. You can be Captain Quintero."

The training had been maintained for several years, but it had slowly become more and more lackadaisical. After Hector died, the defense guard essentially disintegrated. Julius assumed the mantle of Captain, but he was too preoccupied with other matters to pay any real attention to the task.

In the last weeks prior to the raid, only a handful of the teenagers continued their training and exercises. They formed themselves into an informal squad, consisting of the three former platoon leaders, as well as Jens Knudsen and a few others.

The first sign of trouble was a sudden flurry of hoots coming from the southernmost end of the valley. When Julius first heard the hooting, while he was writing in his notebook, he shrugged it off. He was curious, for the owoc rarely hooted loudly, but he was not alarmed.

As the hoots continued, and seemed to grow nearer, he went to investigate. Still curious rather than concerned, he walked out of the hut carrying his notebook.

Seconds later he had dropped the notebook and was racing for the stand of spears next to the long houses. He still didn't know what was wrong, but he had no doubt that foul play was afoot.

An owoc stampede has a certain comical air to it, given their slow speed, but Julius was not in the slightest amused. He had never seen owoc stampede before, and at least one of the beings was bleeding from a large wound in its mantle.

Whether driven by fear, instinct, or a conscious understanding that the humans were protection, the owoc had done exactly the right thing. They ran (shuffled, it might be better to say) directly into the center of the human village. Thereby drawing their pursuers into what became an impromptu trap.

Julius spotted the first invader just before he reached the spears.

His first thought was: Tentacles.

Then, almost simultaneously: Weapons. Armor. Intelligent.

When he reached the stack of spears, Julius was so frantic that he knocked them over. Then, in his haste to pick up a spear, he tripped and fell flat on his face.

He observed the ensuing events from his belly.

Joseph was the first to grab a spear from the pile on the ground. The boy sprang into the center of the village. He was facing the invaders from a distance of five meters.

Did I call it right, or what? thought Julius. The thing's the spitting image of an owoc, except that it's smaller and has tentacles. And that lean and hungry look. The peds are less massive, too. Must be faster—but why isn't it moving?

Later, he realized that the creature must have been frozen with shock. It had never seen a human before, and humans looked like nothing else on Ishtar.

They moved like nothing else, too. Julius was amazed at the speed and ferocity of Joseph's attack. He was even more amazed that the boy never hesitated.

The spear sank two feet into the invader's head, right between the eyes. The creature dropped to the ground, instantly slain.

Three more invaders charged into the village. Joseph wrenched the spear loose from his first victim's head and immediately cast it at one of the new arrivals. The spear sailed through the air and struck perfectly.

By now, Ludmilla and Jens had arrived. They snatched up spears and took their position next to Joseph's side. Ludmilla handed him a new spear.

The three teenagers stood poised, facing the two remaining invaders from a distance of ten meters. Loud and rapid noises came from the invaders' speaking tubes. A moment later, seven more of the creatures surged into the center of the village.

Belatedly, Julius scrambled to his feet.

"Bring us more spears!" shouted Joseph.

Julius bent over and grabbed a half a dozen in his hands.

"Throw!" commanded Joseph. The three teenagers hurled their spears. Joseph and Ludmilla hit squarely, killing their targets. Jens' spear struck the cowl of his target.

In frustration, Jens raced forward and reached out for the spear sticking out from the cowl.

The monsters finally reacted. The one toward which Jens was running whipped its right tentacle around, wielding a weapon that looked something like a morning star: a wooden shaft about a meter long, from the end of which protruded eight spikes, each one about 20 centimeters long and tipped with some kind of sharp stone.

One of the spikes pierced completely through Jens' right calf. The boy cried out in pain and dropped to one knee. A moment later, another of the invaders lashed him with a peculiar weapon that looked something like a cat-o'-nine-tails. Jens threw up his left arm to ward off the blow. The weapon tore great pieces of flesh from his arm and shoulder. Anyone less massively built than Jens Knudsen would have been crippled. As it was, blood gushed all over the left side of the boy's body.

Joseph raced up and killed the one who had lashed Jens with one thrust of his spear. He timed his charge perfectly, stopping at just the right time and place to avoid the lash of the weapon.

Ludmilla killed another, using the same tactics. Race in; stop suddenly when the enemy whips the weapon around; lunge. If anything, the girl's strike was done even more gracefully than Joseph's. Julius was not surprised. The girl was not only big, she was possessed of uncanny speed and reflexes—as good as Joseph's, if not better.

As he watched, Julius was struck again by the discrepancy between Ludmilla's Russian name and her appearance.

She's the spitting image of a Manchu princess—no, warrior.

Jens Knudsen roared with rage and jerked his spear from his enemy's cowl. Still on one knee, the boy threw himself forward and drove the spear almost completely into the creature's body. He missed the brain—but three feet of spear driven through the eye, the head, and deep into the body beyond was more than enough.

God, that kid's strong! Got to work on his tactics, though.

A lifetime spent observing nature had left Julius with ineradicable habits. He wasn't much use in the actual fracas, but he never stopped observing and taking mental notes.

Julius himself squared off with another invader, but the "combat" which followed was almost comical. He skittered back and forth, well beyond range of the monster's weapons. Well beyond range of spear-thrust as well. For its part, the invader did likewise.

What a pair of wallflowers! Julius clenched his teeth, and prepared to lunge. It was not necessary—Joseph charged past him and killed his opponent.

Julius gasped for breath. Looking around wildly, he saw that the village was a scene of utter confusion. Incoherent human shouts and owoc hoots filled the air. Except for Joseph, Ludmilla and Jens—who was still in the fray, covered with blood—all the other humans were racing about in total panic.

No, not all. He saw Indira shepherding four little children toward one of the long houses. Her face was pale and strained, but she seemed otherwise calm and collected.

There were three invaders left alive. They spun around and began moving (quite rapidly, thought Julius—much faster than owoc) out of the village, back toward the south.

"Don't let them get away!" he shouted. Joseph and Ludmilla raced off in pursuit. Jens collapsed. From a distance, Julius saw Takashi Mizoguchi racing up from the upunu fields where he had been working. The boy was brandishing his only weapon—a useless hoe.

But the sight of him running toward them terrified the fleeing invaders. (The gukuy had not yet learned to distinguish between human tools and weapons.) Two of them veered farther to the right, still heading south. Julius watched with amazement as Joseph and Ludmilla slaughtered them like hardened veterans.

Joseph never even paused at the first one he caught. He simply drove his spear through the creature's left ped, pinning it to the ground. The invader squawled and spun around in a half-circle, whipping its flail. Joseph avoided the blow by leaping high into the air. When he landed on the other side, he snatched the spear that Ludmilla tossed him (she was carrying two) and continued in pursuit of the last enemy while Ludmilla efficiently butchered the pinned one.

No—not the last one! Julius watched in horror as one of the invaders turned back and raced into the village. It was heading directly toward Indira and the children.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Julius desperately tried to interpose himself, but he was too far away. He was a slow runner at the best of times, and the invader was moving much faster than he would have believed possible. He saw Indira spin around. Her jaw dropped open. She pushed the children behind her and faced the onrushing monster. The creature squawled and drew back its weapons.

Suddenly, from nowhere, Francis Adams appeared. The physicist was shrieking like a maniac, holding a spear in both hands. His strike was pitifully clumsy. The spear glanced off the leatherish-looking armor which covered the creature's mantle. Adams' opponent whipped its flail around; the weapon practically ripped the physicist's legs off at the knees. Still shrieking, Adams collapsed onto the monster, grappling it like a wrestler.

With horror, Julius saw the creature raise its head, clutch the physicist's body with its tentacles and six small arms, and bite his chest with its small but sharp beak. Blood spurted everywhere.

A moment later, Julius drove his spear into the monster's mantle. His own strike was poorly done. The spear didn't glance off. He managed to drive it through the armor and well into the tough tissue of the mantle. But it was neither a killing nor even a crippling blow.

He had no time for a second strike. The thing was biting Adams. He simply threw himself into the spear with the frenzy of desperation.

Luckily, Julius was a strong man. He managed to lever the monster onto its side, where it lay squirming and writhing.

God, the thing must weigh at least three hundred pounds. But it's let go of Adams.

At that moment, the rest of the defense guard finally arrived. Three boys and a girl, brandishing spears, surrounded the stricken monster. They drew back their weapons.

"No!" shouted Julius. "Don't kill it! I want to keep one of them alive!"

Hesitantly, they obeyed. For its part, the monster was now lying still. Its huge eyes seemed filled with terror; its body was colored bright scarlet.

Julius turned to Adams. He knelt and cradled the physicist. Adams' legs were a mangled ruin, and his chest was covered with blood. But his eyes were open and he was conscious.

"Take it easy, Francis, take it easy," crooned the biologist. "You're going to be all right. Your legs are a mess, but the wound on your chest isn't fatal. Looks terrible, but—" (He was about to say: "but I can see the white bone of your sternum, and it's intact," but decided against it.)

Thankfully, Maria De Los Reyes appeared. She took one look at the wounds and began bawling orders. Still blessed (cursed?) with his observer's instincts, Julius saw that a semblance of order and sanity was returning to the village. From the south, he could see Joseph and Ludmilla loping back. They were moving quickly, but it was obvious that all danger had passed. As soon as Ludmilla saw Jens' prostrate form, she raced over and knelt at his side, crying and crooning.

"Julius—" A whisper.

"Don't talk, Francis. You're going to be all right."

He glanced questioningly at Maria. She nodded.

But Adams seemed not to hear.

"Julius—I— I'm sorry, Julius."

"Sorry? For what?"

A faint shake of the head. "I just couldn't—I just couldn't be of much use."

Julius started to say something, but at that moment Adams went into convulsions. He died thrashing in Julius' arms, in less than two minutes.

Julius heard the children shouting. He looked over and saw that the surviving invader was also thrashing about. Within seconds, it too was dead.

I forgot, he thought vaguely. On earth, octopi have poisonous bites. Must be true here also.

He looked over at the dead body of Adams' killer.

Well, you bastards figured out one way to kill us. But you have to pay a hell of a price. It cuts both ways, asshole.

When they buried Adams the next day, Julius erected a marker over the grave, as had become customary. The marker, carved on a small block of stone, simply read:

Francis Adams

Born Earth, AD 2126

Died Ishtar, CY 12

"CY" stood for "Colony Year." The colonists no longer knew what year it was by the Terran calendar, so they had established the day they crash-landed as the base for their own calendar. They still maintained, out of habit, the time measurement of years, months, and weeks. Ironically, the one advanced technological device which still worked was their well-nigh indestructable watches. So the colonists were able to keep precise track of time. But on Ishtar, these measurements were arbitrary and meaningless. The planet had neither seasons nor a moon. Constellations, which could have enabled them to calculate the year, couldn't be seen through the ever-present cloud cover. The Ishtarian day was the only objective criteria. It was slightly over 23 hours long, divided equally between daylight and darkness.

After a few minutes, as they stared at the grave, Indira heard Julius mutter something.

"What's the matter?"

Julius looked at her and sighed.

"I'm going to have to make another marker."

"What's wrong with this one?"

Julius shook his head. "He was a complete jackass the whole time I knew him, except for the last few minutes of his life. But that made up for everything."

The next day he erected a new marker. The only change was the name: Doctor Francis Adams.

The one positive development, thought Julius, was that he would finally be able to dissect a pseudo-cephalopod. But, again, he was frustrated.

"They want to what?" he demanded.

"They insist on burying them," said Indira. "And they're upset at the idea of harming them further."

"The things are already dead!"

Indira shrugged. "The owoc don't look at it the same way. They're quite insistent, Julius."

Inevitably, Julius lost the argument.

"I just don't get it," he grumbled, after the mass burial of the invaders. "Why should the owoc care what happens to the damn things? They're hereditary enemies. Carnivores, to boot."

Indira glared at him, fists planted on her hips.

"Is that so? The great biologist Julius Cohen has already analyzed the situation in every detail. The new creatures are carnivores, therefore—therefore what? I can remember you giving a different speech a few years ago."

Julius looked uncomfortable. "Well, I'm not claiming I understand everything about the watchamacallits. But I know a savage enemy when I see one!"

"Really? Such a brilliant mind. Let me ask you something, O great one. What was the relationship between the Amish and the Nazis?"

Julius frowned. "I don't understand the question."

"Really? How strange. A minute ago you had all the answers. I'll give you a hint—it's obvious."

Julius was still frowning. Indira snorted.

"They were both members of the human race. So, according to your logic, it would make sense to kill Amish because they belonged to the same species as the Nazis. Am I right?"

Julius hemmed and hawed, but Indira had him cold and he knew it.

She reinforced her point a few days later, after talking to the owoc.

"They're as unclear as they usually are, but there's no question that they don't think all of the—they're called gukuy, by the way—are the same. The owoc say that many of the gukuy—most of them, I get the impression—are dangerous and dreadful. But there are others whom the owoc seem to think rather highly of."

"Which others? And how can you tell the difference?"

Indira shrugged.

"That's great," muttered Julius. "That's just great."

* * *

Within a few months, the issue was resolved. And it became clear that the difference between "good" and "bad" gukuy was not all that difficult to determine.

Before that time came, however, the colony went through a major social transformation.

The transformation occurred on two levels. On one level, the change was simple—the colony readopted Hector's military organization, with a vengeance. To Julius Cohen's great satisfaction.

The more significant change, however, he greeted with much less pleasure.

"Do you mean to tell me I'm fired?" he demanded, goggle-eyed.

Indira gazed at him patiently.

"I wouldn't put it that way, dear. I think of it as a necessary and beneficial transition in leadership."

"They're too young! Immature!"

"Really?" demanded Indira. "Then explain to me why they were the ones who—" She stopped abruptly.

Julius winced; looked away.

"Who saved the day. While yours truly, the great leader, tripped all over his feet and ran around like a chicken with its head cut off."

Indira's eyes softened. She reached out a hand and stroked his cheek.

"You were very brave, Julius. I was proud of you. And I saw no resemblance to a chicken whatsoever."

Julius puffed out his cheeks, exhaled noisily. His lopsided grin appeared.

"Nevertheless, it's true I didn't cut the most glorious martial figure."

He thought it over for a moment, then nodded his head.

"I suppose you're right. Joseph would make a better Captain. Or Ludmilla."

"Yes, they would. Much better, to be honest with you. But that's not even my main concern. The heart of the problem isn't military, it's social. And it doesn't just involve you, it involves me as well. All of us."

"What do you mean?"

"Julius, the children aren't children any longer. They have children of their own now, and they have for some time been assuming more and more responsibility for organizing the colony. As an historian, I can tell you that the way in which a society handles the transition of leadership from one generation to another is one of the key aspects of its health. There are few worse social cancers than an older generation that won't give way to new blood when the time is right."

"Yeah, I know. I've thought about it myself, now and then. I just figured—oh, I don't know. Later, I guess. I thought—I suppose I thought we still needed to lead things so that the kids would—what's the expression?—grow up in the path of righteousness."

She chuckled. "That's exactly why we have to step down now, Julius. Nothing gains greater respect for an older generation than initiating and leading a transition in authority. We won't be in the direct chain of command, any longer. But I strongly suspect that our moral authority will, if anything, increase."

The next day, Indira summoned the entire colony to a meeting. There, she explained that the time had come for the younger generation to assume the mantle of authority. She was a bit surprised at the matter of fact way in which the teenagers accepted the change.

I've lagged behind, she realized. They've been ready for this for some time. What nice, polite kids.

She was even more surprised at the outcome of the colony's deliberation. Both at the speed in which the decisions were made and the end result.

The teenagers adopted a five-person governing council, to be elected by direct vote. They ruled that the governing council would select one of its members to serve as the official leader of the colony whenever the council was not in session. The title of this post, proposed by Julius as a joke and immediately adopted, was "Admiral of the Ocean Sea."

Indira was the only one who voted against the title. But she was not too upset, for she knew it was a gesture of fondness and respect for Hector Quintero.

They also formally adopted Hector's military organization, and established the ranks of one Captain, three Lieutenants, and as many Sergeants as were needed to lead each squad.

Joseph then proposed that the Captain and the Lieutenants should automatically become additional members of the governing council, with voice but no vote. He also proposed that, by law, no one elected to any of the four major military positions could also be elected as a voting member of the council.

His proposals were adopted, with almost no discussion. (More accurately, Indira realized, the discussions had already taken place informally over a considerable period of time.)

The elections also went quickly and smoothly. Indira and Julius were elected to the governing council. They both argued against the idea, but they were outvoted. Everybody else to two.

The other members elected were Maria De Los Reyes, Jack Turrennes, and Anna Cheng.

Joseph was elected Captain. Ludmilla, Takashi, and a boy named Andrew MacPherson were elected Lieutenants. There was a bit of awkwardness around the election of Lieutenants, for there were many who thought that Jens Knudsen deserved the position. Others felt that while Jens' strength and courage were unquestioned, he lacked other requirements for military leadership.

The discussion was frank and open, especially Jens' own comments. (The boy was recovering well from his wounds. The scars on his arm and shoulders were horrible, but Maria said he would eventually recover his full strength.)

"I haven't got the temperament," he announced cheerfully. "It's that simple."

He waved off the protests.

"I didn't say I was stupid or anything. But you've got to have people who can stay calm and think on their feet. Like Joseph or Ludmilla. Or Andrew. Me, I tend to forget everything else except what I'm doing with my own spear. It won't work."

Julius resolved the problem by proposing the title of Sergeant Major. His proposal was adopted by acclaim, and Jens was unanimously elected.

In private, after the meeting was over, Julius remarked:

"I don't really understand why Joseph made his proposal. About the Captain and the Lieutenants not being voting members of the council."

"He's very shrewd, Julius. I hadn't thought of the idea myself, but it's a good one. It allows the colony to elect the people they feel most confident holding the military positions, without automatically imposing the military chain of command onto the colony as a whole."

"Still, I would have thought they'd want Joseph on the council, as a voting member. As the leader of the council, actually." He chuckled. "'Admiral of the Ocean Sea' Adekunle."

Indira shook her head. "I'm afraid the youngsters are seeing the picture more clearly than we are, Julius. They're expecting the military structure to be the dominant one."

Julius was surprised. "You mean they think we're going to be another Sparta?"

Indira shook her head again. "I doubt if they remember much of what I taught them about the ancient Greeks. And I mainly concentrated on Athens, anyway. Besides, the Spartan analogy's inaccurate. The military structure of Spartan society was shaped by the necessity of holding down the helot class that did all the actual work. It wasn't just militarist, it was class-ridden and highly oppressive. Our colony doesn't resemble that in the slightest. No, the structure's more like that of the Zulus, except it's democratic. Or the early Romans. That's probably a better analogy."

"Well, that's a relief." Then, after gazing at her for a few minutes:

"I notice that you don't seem too relieved. Why?"

"What? Oh, sorry. I'm—" She paused, heaved a sigh. "I am afraid, Julius."

"Of what? That we'll survive?"

"No, not that." A humorless chuckle. "Human beings have always been quite good at surviving. No, I'm worried about the future. What'll become of this little society we've built, after we're gone."

"We seem to be off to a good start. They're nice kids, Indira. Not a tyrant in the lot. And if there were, the rest of them wouldn't tolerate it. If I say so myself, we've raised them with good ideas."

Indira shook her head. "That means nothing, Julius. Or almost nothing. The forces that shape history have their roots in the most basic conditions of social and economic life. Good ideas are like the morning dew in the face of those forces."

"I don't understand."

She stared at him, grim-faced. "The Zulus were an impressive people, in many ways. But they were a disaster for their neighbors. So were the Romans, if you recall. It's easy to admire the culture of the early Roman republic. But the republic didn't last, Julius. It gave way to the empire, and all the rest of it. Not immediately, of course. It took centuries. But historians think in terms of centuries. Sure, our kids are filled with democratic and egalitarian ideas. How many generations will that last—in a Bronze Age society?"

She stared down the valley.

"What have we set loose upon this world?"

Whatever the future might bring, the change in authority set loose an immediate whirlwind of activity.

The first thing Joseph did, after re-establishing the training program, was to institute a systematic policy of exploration and reconnaissance. Despite the fact that it had been twelve years since the humans arrived on Ishtar, they really knew very little about the planet except the immediate vicinity of the valley. Julius had often expressed a desire to explore further, but the press of immediate concerns had always led him to postpone the task.

The task would no longer be postponed. Nor was there any need to postpone it. Grudgingly, Julius admitted to himself that he had fallen into a pattern of inertia and routine. The truth was that the cultivation of the upunu fields did not require all that much of the colony's labor. In fact, the fields were producing a surplus well above what the owoc in the valley needed, even without the colonists engaging in constant toil. In the first years of upunu agriculture, the colonists had been kept very busy exterminating the uduwo-snails that proliferated every few months. But years of systematic slaughter had done their work. For the past three years, they had only found snails on rare occasions. And those were obviously recent immigrants from outside the valley—which only emphasized the importance of learning more about the region surrounding them.

The first exploring expedition was led by Joseph himself. The explorers were gone for only four days. (The limit was set by the length of time that childfood would last without spoiling. Julius had once tried to find a way to prepare the childfood for longer storage— "puke jerky," he called it—but his experiments had not succeeded.)

When they returned, Joseph reported that the valley was nestled on a plateau atop the huge mountain, near to its southern crest. They had only been able to explore the southern and western crests of the mountain. According to Joseph, the western slope of the mountain was very steep and rocky. Humans could climb it, with difficulty, but the boy doubted that gukuy could manage to do so.

Nor was the steep slope the only obstacle to potential invaders. A river, coming somewhere from the north-west, curved around the western edge of the mountain, before disappearing to the southeast into a gigantic swampy jungle. The jungle stretched west and south-west almost to the distant horizon—many, many kilometers away.

The danger lay to the south. There, the mountain's slope was much shallower, and divided by many canyons which—from a distance; they had not gone down into them—seemed to provide relatively easy access to the plateau above. One of those canyons must have been the route followed by the invaders.

Joseph intended to explore those canyons, and soon. But his next project was to complete the circumnavigation of the plateau.

After resting for only a day, Joseph and his explorers set forth once again.

Four days later, they returned with exciting—and disturbing—news. The mountain plateau contained three more valleys like the one in which the colony was situated. Two of those valleys were of approximately the same size, but the third was much larger. It was located on the eastern side of the plateau. And there were owoc living in it. And gukuy.

"Gukuy?" demanded Julius. "Did you . . . Was there any fighting?"

Joseph shook his head firmly.

"No, Julius. We first saw them from a distance, while we were still coming down the slope into the valley. The gukuy were doing some kind of—dance, I guess you could call it. In front of a big hut of some kind, in a clearing on the floor of the valley. There were some owoc there, too. The owoc weren't participating in the activity, they were just browsing. But they didn't seem at all nervous. Their mantles were gray, with even a touch of green.

"We tried to sneak up and spy on the gukuy, but they spotted us once we got close."

Julius grunted. That was not surprising. If the gukuy were like owoc—and there seemed no reason not to suppose so; they were obviously cousin species—their vision would be better than that of humans. The beings' color sensitivity was especially acute, naturally enough. But they were also even better than humans at detecting movement.

"Then what happened?"

"It was the strangest thing, Julius. The gukuy started whistling, and they all turned red. But instead of fleeing, they—well, I know this sounds weird, but I'd swear they started trying to herd the owoc into the fern groves. As if they were trying to hide them, or something. And then some of the gukuy went into the hut and came back out carrying those whip-like weapons. But they weren't threatening the owoc with them. Instead, they started to come toward us. We left at that point. I didn't want to do anything further without discussing it with the council."

"It sounds like they were trying to protect the owoc," commented Indira. "That's a hopeful sign."

Hearing an odd noise coming from Julius, she eyed him quizzically.

"You don't agree?"

"Well, yes and no. Or maybe, yes or no. Oh, hell! The point is this: I agree that the gukuy were trying to protect the owoc. But I don't necessarily see that as a good sign."

"Why ever not?" demanded Indira.

Julius sighed. "Am I the only one around here with a dark and evil imagination? Indira, not everyone who protects someone else does so from good motives. Ranchers on Earth protect their calves against coyotes. So that they can eat the meat themselves."

Indira gasped. "You can't be serious!"

He shrugged. "I'm not saying that's what's happening here. I'm just suggesting we not jump to conclusions."

At the council meeting that night, it was decided that another expedition would be sent to the big valley. A larger expedition—a full platoon, in fact. But the size of the expedition was simply to protect Indira. Julius was unhappy at the idea of her going. But it was a fact, which he admitted, that she was still the best linguist in the colony. Her owoc accent would never be as good as that of the younger generation, but she was far better trained and equipped than they were to learn a new language.

It was also agreed that the colonists would attempt to convince one or two of the owoc to accompany them on their journey. The presence of owoc would, hopefully, reassure the inhabitants of the other valley. They would also make it possible to extend the length of the trip. One or even two owoc could not, of course, feed an entire platoon. (The colonists had found from experience that one owoc could feed three humans.) But they could enable the expedition to stay out for a few extra days.

To Indira's surprise, the owoc agreed readily to the trip. She had thought the timid beings would be fearful of undertaking such a journey. But it seemed that they had developed a mystical confidence in the ability of humans to protect them. It was, as always, difficult to understand the owoc. But she knew that the beings had, over the years, woven the existence of humans into their concept of the Coil of Beauty. The term which the giant creatures used for humans was "the Shell of Beauty." The term had not made much sense to her before. But now she understood.

For a mollusc, a shell is that which protects. So help me, we've become the guardian angels of their quasi-religion.

The real problem, in fact, turned out to be that all the owoc wanted to come. Oddly enough, Kupu was particularly adamant. She seemed quite upset (judging by the mottled blue and brown of her mantle) when Indira insisted that she could not accompany the expedition. It would be hard enough for any of the owoc to manage the trek through high country, much less the huge and bulky mother.

"Why in the world would she want to come?" Indira asked Julius later. "Kupu usually never leaves her oruc grove. What's so funny?"

Julius was howling.

"Don't you get it?" he gasped. "The other owoc want to come because they think it would be nice to pay a social call on their neighbors. But Kupu—"

He stopped speaking, choked with laughter. Indira waited impatiently.

"But Kupu wants to come because—" Wheeze, wheeze. "Because she's a swinger."

Indira was not amused, until the next morning, when Julius' little joke came to life. More than anything else, it was the dumbfounded expression on his face when she told Julius that the owoc were now insisting that Kupu had to come along.

"You mean—?" His rubbery face twisted into a befuddled scowl. "It's not possible! They're primitives. They can't possibly understand the dangers of inbreeding."

Indira was grinning from ear to ear. As much as she loved Julius, she often found him excessively opinionated.

"Don't ask me, O great biologist. But the owoc are quite clear on the matter—much clearer than usual, in fact. Kupu has to come along because, and I quote, 'the clan needs to twine itself further into the Coil.' Sounds like a clear argument for exogamy to me. But what do I know? I'm just a lowly historian."

Julius' glare was a joy to behold.

The trip was long and difficult. Not arduous, for the humans. Joseph had found that the mountain valleys were all interconnected by passes and gullies which posed no more than a mild challenge for humans in as good a physical condition as the colonists were. But it was hard for the four owoc who accompanied them, especially Kupu. Seeing how terribly the trip strained the ungainly mother, Indira was amazed at her stoic determination to continue.

I never fully realized just how ill-suited the owoc are to live in the mountains.

She turned and looked to the south. She could not see it, of course, but Joseph had described the vast, lush, flat plain which stretched south of the mountain to the distant horizon.

What horror must live on that plain, to drive these poor beings here?

The trip took so much longer than anticipated that Indira began to wonder if the humans could sustain their activity on the small amount of childfood they each received every day. When the expedition arrived at the first of the valleys which Joseph had found, however, the owoc immediately began gorging themselves on the uroc which grew thickly there. At first, Indira thought they were just indulging themselves in their favorite treat. But when she saw the great quantities of childfood which they produced, she realized that the beings had understood the problem. Not for the first time, she had underestimated their intelligence. The owoc were perhaps not as smart as humans—they certainly did not think the same way—but they occasionally showed an uncanny grasp of things.

They stayed in the valley for an entire day. The owoc clearly needed the rest, and the humans were glad to eat more than rations. The next day, before they left, the owoc spent most of an hour tearing off succulent oruc leaves, until they each had as much as they could carry. When the humans realized what they were doing, they immediately made lashing material out of various vines which they found in the area. In the end, the owoc set off with their broad backs piled high with leaves.

Finally, on the seventh day of a trip which the humans alone could have easily managed in two, the expedition came over the crest of a pass and onto the slope leading down to the big valley.

God, it is big, thought Indira. Three or four times the size of the one we live in. So much for my occasional worries about overpopulation.

Then she remembered that this valley was already populated, and felt a sudden shame.

We are not conquerors, to do with this land and its people what we will. Let it never be so. Conquistadores are an evil of our past.

(It did not occur to her, then, that humans might not be the only conquistadores on Ishtar.)

As they descended into the valley, Indira gradually realized that this huge valley was much less thinly populated than their own. Even before the humans had arrived, the small valley to the south had been fairly thick with owoc. Twelve years of human agriculture had produced a bounty of food beyond the owoc's wildest dreams. That surplus, combined with the high numbers of surviving spawn, had resulted in a population density which sometimes reminded Indira of her visits to her mother's Bengali homeland.

Eventually—still at a distance of well over a kilometer away—she spotted the "big hut" Joseph had described. Joseph's description, she now understood, had been inaccurate.

He's never seen one before, of course. But if that's not a temple, I'm going to resign in disgrace from the World Historical Association.

The structure was quite large, given the limitations of the bamboo-like plant which the colonists had found to be the only suitable wood on the mountain for construction. On Earth it would have been labeled "three-stories." From what Indira could see at a distance, she doubted that the building actually had stories, as such. It was built along the lines of a simple A-frame. A shallow ramp led up to a terrace, which stretched across the entire width of the building. From a distance, she could not see into the building itself. The terrace was covered by the sloping roofs, but she could not tell how far back it ran.

Perhaps it runs all the way through. There might not be any interior walls at all. The building may just be a place for congregation. In this warm climate, the only real reason for shelter is to keep off the drizzle. And personal privacy. We humans have even adopted the dress of Polynesians. Sarongs.

She smiled wrily. Since Janet died, Indira was the only woman on the planet who covered her breasts. The young women simply wrapped the sarongs around their waists.

As they neared the building, Indira began to spot owoc and gukuy moving about. There were not many of them, and they were not engaged in the "dance" which Joseph had described. (Which, she now suspected, was some kind of religious ritual.) The handful of owoc she could see were scattered about, browsing on patches of oruc. The gukuy—she counted three of them—were all clustered in a field of upunu. Now that she was closer, she could see that the field had a cultivated look about it. Yet there was something odd about its appearance, which nagged at her memory until recognition came.

That field's absolutely infested with uduwo snails. Why don't they do something about them?

(It was not until later that she remembered what Julius had told her. The beaks of the gukuy were adapted for eating meat, not vegetation. The gukuy cultivated upunu fields not for the plants themselves but for the snails which fed on them.)

Indira now began rehearsing her speech of peace and well-wishes. Halfway through the rehearsal, the speech became a moot point.

The owoc, it turned out, had their own ideas on proper social behavior.

Suddenly, the four owoc with them began hooting loudly. Kupu's hoots were especially deafening.

Immediately, the owoc and the gukuy in the valley stopped what they were doing and looked up.

Within a few seconds, hoots were being exchanged back and forth between the owoc on the slope and the owoc in the valley. Indira understood the hoots of her owoc companions—poetic variations, basically, on the general theme of "howdy." She could almost understand the hoots which came in return.

It's a different dialect. But I don't think—a sigh of relief—that it's a separate language.

At first, the gukuy observing the scene showed no reaction but a mild mottling in their mantles. Green, Indira noted with relief. But then they spotted the humans; and their mantles turned, in an instant, scarlet and ochre.

Fear. Indecision. What frightening creatures we must appear to them. Nothing on this planet looks remotely like human beings.

The owoc in the valley seemed totally unconcerned about the humans (whom they had certainly spotted, at this distance). The beings were lumbering toward the interlopers, issuing hoots which Indira could generically recognize as happy greetings. And their mantles were now solid green, untouched by even a trace of any other color.

But the three gukuy in the upunu field suddenly broke and raced toward the "temple," whistling loudly. A moment later, four other gukuy emerged from the building. A rapid exchange of sounds and whistles.

Everything seemed to be happening at once. By now, the two groups of owoc had met and were beginning to intermingle. Formality, Indira noted, did not seem to be a prominent feature of owoc culture. But her attention, for the moment, was on the temple.

A moment later, as she had feared, the seven gukuy in the temple re-emerged and began hurrying toward them.

Bearing weapons. The same type which the raiders had carried—those stone-tipped whips and long-spiked morning stars. (Flails and forks, the gukuy called them, as she would learn later.) And as they neared, she saw that blue was beginning to ripple in their mantles. Blue was a color rarely seen in the mantles of owoc.

Rage.

She saw the other humans in her party grow stiff and tense. Suddenly, at Joseph's command, the youngsters—

They're not youngsters anymore, you damn fool! They're warriors, and if you don't think fast they're going to react like warriors.

—reversed their grip on the spears.

Indira sighed with relief. Until she remembered that the grip which holds a spear in the point-down position of peace is the same one used to hurl it. And each of the—warriors—was carrying three spears.

She had not paid much attention to the military exercises, but she knew enough to know that Joseph had trained his people to start an attack with a cast of spears.

"Joseph!"

The youth did not look at her; his eyes remained fixed on the approaching gukuy. But he gestured with his hand, in a manner which simultaneously conveyed acknowledgement and surety. Then, when the gukuy were no more than thirty meters away, he hooted loudly:

we not good

peace

is break are

The gukuy suddenly stopped. The ochre in their mantles strengthened. Red fear remained, but the blue began to fade.

Joseph hooted again.

we must owoc

friends

us be are

The owoc from both groups suddenly began hooting back and forth. The exchange was too rapid for Indira to follow, even if she had been able to understand the dialect of the new ones. But whatever they were saying, there was no mistaking the reaction of the gukuy. The blue disappeared entirely, as did the red. Ochre remained, but it grew slowly dimmer. And within minutes, faint traces of dappled green began to appear.

That's one of the great advantages chromatophoric beings have over we poor humans. Even if they can't speak another's language, they can still read their emotions. What must they make of us, I wonder?

Incongruously, she snickered.

A bunch of miserable monsters, whose leader is always implacable about everything and one of whom is always in heat.

She glanced at Jens, and had to suppress an outright laugh.

Not far from the truth, actually. It's amazing how the youngsters adapt to the owoc. Even though they know that human color means nothing, they can't help reacting unconsciously to Jens' white skin. I think every youngster in the colony has shared either Jens or Karin Schmidt's bed. Or both.

(She'd mentioned that to Julius, once. The biologist had laughed, and said: "Yeah, I know. On this planet, the myth is going to be that white people are hyper-sexual. Give it a few generations and I wouldn't be surprised to see pale skin make a genetic comeback. I doubt if the Nazis would be pleased, though, given the circumstances. Unless they decided the owoc were honorary Aryans.")

Eventually, expressing themselves in owoc hoots which Indira and Joseph were able to interpret, the gukuy invited the humans into the building which Indira thought to be a temple. Indira immediately accepted.

The minute she walked up the ramp, and saw the interior of the building (as she had suspected, it was open all the way through), all doubt vanished. There was no mistaking the meaning of the huge figurine which rested at the center of the temple.

It was not a carving, but a construct—a wicker-like framework of some kind, embellished and decorated with shells, precious stones, and carved—horn?

She was deeply impressed by the artistry of the piece. The style was in no sense naturalistic. It rather reminded her of the exaggerated style of ancient African carvings. Except for the intricacy of the detail, which had a vague resemblance to the ornate idols in Hindu temples.

But even more than the stylistic resonances, she was stunned by the essence of the figurine itself. It was the statue of a gukuy, in repose. Deep green, in color. She thought that the curl of the arms had meaning, as well.

But whatever the specific significance of any particular detail of the statue, the sense of the whole was unmistakable. Light years apart, and thousands of year later in time, an alien race had produced a being whose vision could not have been so different from one glimpsed on Earth.

Staring at the statue, she took a deep breath. Then, for the first time since entering the valley, felt the tension wash out of her completely.

Siddartha Gautama. The Buddha.

"The similarity's only general, of course," she explained to Julius after she returned. "Until I learn the gukuy language, I won't be sure. Owoc is such a difficult language in which to convey precise meaning. Still, from what I could glean, their faith absolutely resonates with quasi-Buddhist conceptions."

"And just how did the teachings of the Buddha find their way to Ishtar—interstellar transcendentalism?" demanded Julius. "Have you become a mystic yourself now?"

Indira smiled. "No, Julius. I'm still the hard-boiled rationalist you know and love. But convergence operates on more than a biological level, my dear. It's not surprising at all, actually. Most of the great religions on Earth arose within a relatively short time, you know—in cultures scattered all over the planet. Beginning around a half millenium before the birth of Christ. In China, you had Confucius and Lao-Tse. In India, Buddha and the founders of Jainism, and the transformation of the Vedic traditions into Hinduism. In Greece, the rise of philosophy. For that matter, it was during the same general period that your Hebrew ancestors were hammering out their own faith. The last great world religion, Islam, arose not much more than a millenium later. A short time, really, in terms of the whole sweep of human history."

Julius was frowning. "I don't see the point."

"The point, Julius, is that this gukuy religion tells me a great deal about the general state of current gukuy society. Societies, I should say. The Earth's great religions and philosophies all arose in response to the development of civilization. Animism and tribal pantheons are inadequate to explain a varied and complex world. Intelligent beings inevitably begin to grope for universal truths. And a universal morality."

"That sounds like good news."

Indira shrugged. "Yes and no. All of the great religions created a basic code of ethics, which were actually quite similar in their principles. Variations on the Golden Rule, essentially. That represented a gigantic stride forward in human culture, no matter how often those principles were later violated in practice. But the great religions also quickly became a powerful tool for ruling classes to expand and strengthen their domination. Constantine's conversion to Christianity was accompanied by the Church's allegiance to the temporal authority of the Roman Empire, to give just one example."

"There are empires on this planet?"

She nodded. "At least one, that I know of. They call it 'Ansha.' Most of the gukuy in the valley are from there, in fact."

"Oh, great. Our next door neighbors are imperialist missionaries."

Indira hesitated, pursing her lips.

"I don't think so. I won't be certain until I learn their own language, but I'm pretty sure the gukuy in the big valley are refugees."

"Refugees? From what?"

"Religious persecution, I imagine. I don't think their religion is very old, Julius. A generation or two, at the most. The gukuy say the statue in the temple is a representation of someone named Goloku."

"Their god?"

She shook her head. "That's not the sense I get. More like a revered sage, or a prophet. The founder of their religion. But the point is that the gukuy talk about Goloku in a familiar sort of way."

Julius stared.

"Yes, Julius. If I'm right, we're not dealing with an old and well-established universal church."

She smiled. "We are there—with the apostles."

Later, Julius took her to the hut which had been formerly occupied by Hector. Once inside, she saw that the center of the hut's floor was dominated by a huge pile of clay, oddly shaped.

"What in the world is that for?"

Julius looked apologetic.

"Hey, I only got started. It's going to be a three-dimensional map of the mountain. I've already roughed out the western side."

Indira saw that the pile of clay was in the general shape of an oval. Julius pointed to one of the long sides of the pile.

"That's the southern slope," he explained. "I've just started there. That's going to be a lot of work, with all those canyons. But I've got the time, since it'll be a while before Ludmilla's expedition finishes exploring the east and north."

"It seems like a lot of work, Julius. It's very interesting, I admit, but why—"

She stopped suddenly, seeing the bleak look on her lover's face.

"It's a military map."

Julius nodded. "Yeah. Andrew suggested the idea, and Joseph immediately adopted it. Joseph asked me to start the map just before you left. He wants to have a good picture of possible invasion routes onto the mountain. And I think he's already thinking in terms of fortifications."

Indira sighed heavily. "Do you really think this is necessary, Julius?"

The biologist's voice was harsh. "Yes, I do. But it really doesn't matter what I think. Or what you think, Indira. Captain Adekunle wants it."

She stared at him. Julius shrugged. "You can't have it both ways, Indira. If the man's in charge, he's in charge."

She remembered the authority in Joseph's gesture when the gukuy were approaching, and nodded. And the fear in her heart suddenly flamed brighter.

Much to Julius' distress, Indira began making plans for an extended sojourn among the gukuy in the big valley. She would be gone for weeks, if not months, immersing herself in the gukuy culture and language.

But his unhappiness, and her plans, proved unnecessary. Four days after her return, a delegation of gukuy arrived from the big valley. Upon their arrival, they announced that they had come for an extended visit. So that they could learn from the humans.

"Except they don't call us 'humans,' " Indira explained. "Gukuy can't seem to handle hard aspirates at all, and sibilants are difficult for them. So I made it simple—we are now 'ummun.' "

Julius scowled. "Dirty, rotten linguistic imperialism, if you ask me."

Indira ignored the quip. She was frowning, deep in thought.

"What's on your mind, fair lady?"

"Huh? Oh, nothing. It's just—I'm not sure yet. They seemed to agree to the term 'ummun' readily enough, but I don't think—"

She fell silent. Julius prodded her, but the historian refused to speculate until she felt she understood the gukuy language well enough.

Two months later, she understood.

"They'll call us 'ummun,' out of politeness. But that's not really how they think of us. We're demons."

"What?"

"You heard me. Demons. Powerful and fearful creatures from beyond the known world."

"But—why demons? We haven't done anything wicked to them. Or to the owoc, for that matter."

Indira smiled, and patted his cheek.

"Poor Julius. So stunted you are by that horrid Judeo-Christian outlook."

Julius scowled. "What's my ancestry got to do with this?" he demanded.

"In the rigidly monotheistic religions—which shaped your cultural views, regardless of whether you personally are still a believer—all powerful non-divine creatures are amalgated into devils. Pure evil. But the original conception of demons doesn't necessarily carry the connotation of evil. Although evil is always there, lurking below the surface. Not evil, actually. Power. Tremendous, unbridled, fearful power—which can, of course, often manifest itself in evil ways."

"Why should they think we are powerful? Our technological level's really no higher than theirs, when you get right down to it. Our theoretical knowledge is vastly greater, of course. That's even true for the kids, even though I often think the disrespectful little bastards think most of what we teach them are fairy tales."

Indira smiled. As much as he carped on the sins of the younger generation, she knew that the biologist adored them. Much more uncritically, in fact, than she did.

"It has nothing to do with technology, Julius. At a Bronze Age stage of historical development, there's really not that much difference between the technological level of civilized societies and barbarians. The difference is social."

"So?"

"So these beings are not stupid, dear. They don't understand us, but they understand that we are very, very different. And then there's the frightening way we move."

"Huh?"

She frowned. "Surely you, a biologist, can understand that fear. Other than size—and we're much taller than gukuy, even if they outweigh us—what's the other physical trait that all animals instinctively fear? Especially intelligent animals?"

Understanding came to him. "Speed."

"Yes. Especially uncanny speed, produced by unusual forms of motion. Didn't you tell me once that the reason humans have such an irrational fear of snakes is because of the way in which they strike?"

"Yeah. A coiled snake can strike like a lightning bolt, so most people think the reptiles are inhumanly fast. Truth is, a human can outrun any snake that ever lived."

"Have you ever thought of how the way humans move must look to gukuy? Like nothing they've ever seen. Almost magical, is the sense I get from them. Even with their excellent eyesight, their brains have a hard time processing our motion. To them, we—we flicker. Half-seen; half invisible. And so quickly. And we can move easily over terrain that they have to struggle through. You should have seen how their mantles were flooded with orange when they saw two of the children having a race up the mountainside."

"Orange? I've never seen that color on the owoc."

"No, neither have I. I'm certain that it's the color of astonishment. Owoc are never astonished. Puzzled, often. But then their mantles turn ochre with indecision and uncertainty. To be astonished—amazed—requires more of a rational sense of what is normal in the world. To the owoc the world simply is what it is. They may not understand it—they often don't—but they accept it."

Julius grunted. "True. They really aren't all that bright."

Indira's stare was stony.

"That's one way to put it. But there's another way to look at it, you know. The capacity to be amazed presupposes that you believe in your ability to understand the world. When something then happens which doesn't fit your conception of reality, you are astonished and amazed."

"So?"

"So you see that as a sign of intelligence. To me, it's also a sign of arrogance."

"Arrogance?"

"Of course. Only an arrogant creature thinks it understands the universe. Like a cocky biologist from the streets of Noo Yawk."

She smiled sweetly. "That's why you're so often astonished and amazed, dear."

Julius' face twisted into a rueful grimace.

"Skewered again, damme. But what are you trying to say, Indira? You don't really think the owoc are as intelligent as we are, do you? Or as intelligent as the gukuy?"

She shrugged. "What's intelligence? To you, it means the capacity for rational, linear thought. Problem solving. In that sense, no—the owoc are like retarded children. But if you use the word 'intelligence' in a broader sense, who's to say? The only thing I do know, after years of living with them, is that the owoc view reality in a totally different manner than we do. We think in terms of truth and falsehood. Things are, or they are not. But with the owoc—"

She paused, then continued.

"Do you realize, Julius, that there is no equivalent in the owoc language for the concept of 'falsehood'—or 'lying.' "

"Hey, lady, give me a break. I never denied the sweet critters are as honest as the day is long. I'd trust 'em with my piggybank in a minute, if I still had one."

She shook her head. "You're missing my point. Perhaps I put it badly. In the owoc language, Julius, there is no such idea as the truth."

"What? But how—"

She smiled. "You can't imagine that, can you? The concept of 'truth' is at the very bedrock of human consciousness. That's why"—the smile became a broad grin— "you are amazed at the idea that another species could even think at all without the idea of 'truth' at the center of their thoughts."

The expression on Julius' face caused her to laugh.

"Dear Julius! Did you ever read the poetry of Keats? 'Ode On a Grecian Urn'?"

He shook his head.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

She stared into the distance. "Perhaps that ancient poet understood the way of the owoc. We never will. But do not sneer at it, Julius. If I might quote from another great English poet:

"There are more things in heaven

and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

The next several months were a busy time in Julius' life, however, so he rarely had time to think about Indira's ideas. In truth, he saw very little of his lover. Indira, as she had years before with the owoc, insisted on living with the gukuy. Total immersion, she explained, was the only efficient way to learn a new language.

He missed her company, of course, but he was engrossed in his own work. Exploring expeditions were out constantly now, bringing back a steady stream of reports. The topographic model of the mountain steadily took shape and detail, until it was finally finished.

"I've decided to call the mountain Mons Ishtar," he announced to Indira proudly that night.

"That's nice, dear," she replied absently. "But the mountain already has a name. The gukuy were here first, and they call it the Chiton."

Julius was disgruntled, but he accepted the change in names. By way of obscure linguistic revenge, however, he began referring to the map hut as "the Pentagon."

The youngsters acquiesced in the name, although they didn't understand it. In truth, they thought the name was silly—the hut was obviously square, not five-sided. Indira understood the name, of course. She did not think it was silly; she thought it was grotesque.

But the next morning, when Julius examined the model, he admitted to himself that the name change was appropriate. Especially from the south, where all the gukuy seemed to come from, the canyons which were regularly spaced along the mountain's flank would give it the appearance of a ridged, flattish shell. Rising from the plain like a gigantic chiton, moving from east to west.

The view from the north would seem different, of course. There the long crest of the mountain broke sharply into a talus slope that, for the uppermost hundred meters, was almost a sheer cliff. From the north, the mountain would look like an enormous granite iceberg. (If there were such a thing as an iceberg on Ishtar, which Julius doubted.) But it was unlikely that many gukuy had ever seen the mountain from that angle. Beyond the base of the talus slope stretched a vast broken badlands, as far as the eye could see. By the verdant standards of Ishtar, the region to the north was a barren wasteland.

From a military point of view, that discovery was relieving. There would be nothing to fear from the north. The region was probably uninhabited. And not even humans could ascend the northern cliff, without specialized mountaineering equipment.

The danger lay south, and east. The eastern flank of the Chiton tapered down much more gently than did its western flank—like a flattened tail. True, the eastern slope contained the densest vegetation on the mountain—much of it a type of quasi-bramble which Julius suspected any gukuy would find well-nigh impenetrable. But there were still many open areas, providing relatively easy access to the entire plateau. When questioned by Indira, the gukuy confirmed that they themselves had reached the big valley through that route. (And still did. Over time, Indira realized that the gukuy in the valley maintained communication with their co-believers in the south.)

Joseph and his lieutenants, after discussing the question with Julius, decided to ignore the potential danger from the east, for the moment. The gukuy in the big valley would warn them of any invaders coming from that direction. It was decided that, after Indira established good enough communications with the gukuy, the colonists would request permission to station one of the platoons in the big valley. But until that time came, they would concentrate on the immediate problem. The southern slope, and its canyons.

There were six canyons along the southern flank of the mountain. Three of them veered off into cul-de-sacs, and could be safely ignored. But the other three led straight toward the summit—and one of them, the largest, reached almost to the crest.

Andrew MacPherson was assigned the task of planning fortifications. The task was daunting, given the small numbers of the colonists, but Joseph was determined to create a stone wall barring access through the canyon.

Andrew came to Julius for advice on how to design fortified walls. As he had years before with Hector, Julius steered him toward Indira. But Indira refused to discuss the matter. Later, she promised, when she was done with learning the gukuy language.

"Later" turned out to be much later. Indira had thought it would be easier to learn the gukuy language than it had been to learn owoc. True, she assumed the language would be more complex. But, on the positive side, she thought there would be two big advantages:

First, she suspected that the gukuy mentality was much closer to human than was the owoc. Second, the fact that both she and the gukuy could speak (at least to some extent) the hooting language of the owoc gave them a mutual verbal Rosetta stone.

Both of those assumptions turned out to be correct. But what she hadn't counted on was two other factors. One: there was no such thing as a "gukuy language." There were five languages represented among the gukuy pilgrims. Three of those languages obviously belonged to the same language group. They were among the languages spoken by the civilized societies which lived somewhere to the south. Two of them were quite closely related. (In her own mind, she thought of the relationship between the three languages as being similar to trying to learn French, Spanish and Russian at the same time.) Unfortunately, the dominant language of the three—and the language spoken by the majority of the pilgrims—was the "Russian" oddball. The language in question was called Anshaku, and she soon learned that it was the principal language of the largest and most powerful empire in that part of Ishtar known to the pilgrims.

The two other languages belonged to an entirely different language group—the language group spoken by most of the barbarian tribes which, she learned, inhabited the great plain south of the Chiton. One of the languages was Kiktu, the language of the largest and most powerful of those tribes. The other "language" was an argot, a Kiktu-based lingua franca which could apparently be understood by all of the barbarians.

After dithering a bit (as someone who was both adept at languages and enjoyed learning them), Indira decided that practical considerations required her to focus her efforts on Anshaku and Kiktu. All of the gukuy pilgrims from the south could speak Anshaku, at least to some extent. And while only two of the pilgrims who came from the barbarian tribes were Kiktu, the other barbarians could speak the language to some extent.

Even after narrowing it down, she was still faced with a linguistic task which would be equivalent to learning Russian and Arabic simultaneously.

And then another massive task was dropped upon her.

"They insist that I teach them to speak 'ummun,' " she complained to Julius.

The biologist shrugged. "So?"

Indira glared. "So? This—from a man who can barely speak one language?"

Julius shrugged again, grinning. "Hey, I'm bad at languages. But I don't need to be good at it. Most biological research is published in English. You don't really need any other language that much, except Spanish—which I can read well enough."

He chewed his upper lip. "Unless you want to be a dinosaur specialist. Then, of course, you have to know Chinese. Fluently." A shudder; another grin. "Not the least of the reasons I didn't specialize in dinosaurs."

Indira was still glaring. "But the whole thing doesn't make sense! There are only a handful of humans on this planet. Why should they take the time and trouble to learn our language when we're willing to learn theirs?"

Julius stared at her. "A question like that? Coming from an historian?"

He started counting off on thick fingers.

"I can think of three reasons, right off the top of my head. One. They don't know how many of us there are." He held up a hand, forestalling her protest. "Oh, sure, they can see there's only a handful of us here. Today. But where did we come from? And how many more of us might follow?"

"I have every intention of explaining where we came from and why there won't be any more of us. Not for centuries, at the earliest."

"And how will you convince them? The beings on this planet can't have the faintest conception of astronomical reality. In all the time we've lived here, not once has the cloud cover broken. Not for even a minute. The earliest civilizations on Earth—even barbarians, for that matter—had a highly advanced empirical knowledge of astronomy. These people can't have any whatsoever. We came from beyond the sky—that's the most they'll understand."

"But—"

"But what, Indira? How can you possibly expect people at this stage of cultural development to understand the reality and the limits of an advanced technological culture like our own? You know and I know that the society was barely able to muster the resources to equip our expedition. You know and I know that it was a one-shot deal. You know and I know that humanity is still utterly preoccupied with the gigantic task of rebuilding our own planet. You know and I know that it'll be generations—centuries, more likely—before another interstellar expedition is sent out. You know and I know that faster-than-light travel has been proven to be a complete pipe dream, and that space travel is going to remain limited to slightly above 10% of the speed of light. You know and I know that means another expedition to Tau Ceti would take over a century to get here even after it left Earth orbit. You know and I know that even then the priority would probably be to try for a new solar system altogether."

He stopped and took a deep breath.

"When we signed up for this trip, love, the Society warned us that we couldn't expect a follow-up expedition for at least five hundred years. Minimum. More likely a millenium. But how are you going to even explain any of that to the gukuy—in any way that they could possibly understand?

"So how do you expect them to believe you?" He held up a second finger. "Which leads me to point two. If I were in their shoes (so to speak), I would damn well want to learn as much as possible about a bunch of strange demons who landed in our midst. Sure, right now the demons seem friendly, and there ain't many of them. But who knows? Best to learn what we can about them—and the best way to do that is to learn how to speak 'demon.' "

He stopped. Indira was scowling up at him.

"And?"

"And what?"

"What's the third reason, dammit? You said you could think of three, right off."

"Oh." He grinned, and made an annoying clucking sound with his tongue.

"Such a question—from an historian! Indira, what's the language that all bright young kids all over the world want to learn—as soon as they get to school?"

"English."

"Yes. But why? It's a completely foreign language—comes from a small little island half way around the world from most of them. Originally spread by rapacious imperialists, in fact."

Indira sighed. "Because it's one of the global languages. The dominant one, in fact. And because much of the world, especially Africa and large parts of Asia, are still so fragmented linguistically that knowing how to speak your own tongue doesn't get you very far in the big, wide world."

"Exactly. My best friend in college was from Pakistan. His English was better than mine. So was his accent, according to everybody except Noo Yawkers. But he barely spoke Urdu. I asked him why, once. He asked me if insanity ran in my family."

"But none of that's true here, Julius," protested Indira. "No human language occupies that position on Ishtar."

"True—and not true. I'm interested in something. You just called this planet 'Ishtar.' Why? You're always chiding me for being a linguistic chauvinist, Indira. But here you are using a name for this planet which was adopted on Earth over a century before we even got here. Why not use the native word?"

Indira took a deep breath. "Which one? Each language has a different name for 'the world.' Most of them mean 'the Meat of the Clam,' but—"

"But which one should you use? Without offending the others? So you took the practical course—you fell back on a name that's not offensive to any local foibles because it's so utterly alien."

Indira's eyes widened. "You think—"

"I think you're underestimating these people, Indira. I think you're dealing with some very intelligent people. Visionaries, in fact. Who are struggling to forge a universal faith which can be common to gukuy from all cultures."

He reached out and stroked her cheek. "So give them the universal language they need, love. The language brought by demons from beyond the sky, that all peoples and tribes can learn to speak without fearing their own culture will be subordinated."

She initially thought to teach the gukuy Spanish, but finally settled on English. True, English was a notoriously difficult language to learn. In many ways, Chinese would have been the best choice, since all of the gukuy languages tended to be tonal. But Chinese was a difficult language in too many other respects. The Chinese themselves had struggled for centuries to fit the precise rigidities of technological society into the amorphous grammar of their language. (The ideogrammatic writing style had been abandoned completely almost a century earlier, in favor of a modified version of the Latin alphabet.)

In the end, her decision was not determined by narrow linguistic factors. It was a simple fact of history that English was well on its way to becoming the universal language of the human race. At the historic Singapore Convention, where the world's language practices were finally agreed upon, English had been listed as simply one of the four accepted "global languages." The decision had been a compromise. Even then, English was obviously in a league of its own as an international language. But there had been no reason to ruffle the feathers of the Chinese, who were prone to complain that as many people spoke their language as did English (even though, in private, their representatives would admit that Chinese had never spread very far beyond the boundaries of those who were ethnically Han). And the French, outraged at their own demotion to a "regional language," had made clear that they would under no conditions agree to the elevation of English to the world's sole accepted global language. (For the first time in centuries, the phrase "perfidious Albion" had echoed in the corridors and chambers of diplomacy.) So, wisely, the representatives of English had cheerfully agreed to the polite fiction that English was only one of four "global languages," trusting to the logic of history and the common sense of the world's population to settle the question in practice.

Spanish would have been easier to teach to gukuy than English. But English was the language of the colonists, and many of the younger generation spoke no other tongue. And, in the back of her mind, Indira knew that someday contact with Earth would be reestablished. Centuries in the future, true, but it would happen eventually. Better then for the gukuy to be fluent in English.

Then, just as she thought she had settled the question, a new (and, to her, disturbing) twist arose. Joseph approached her, a few days after her conversation with Julius, and asked which of the four global human tongues would be the most difficult for gukuy to learn—even if they already knew English.

"Arabic," she replied instantly. "It's a Semitic language, totally unlike English. So's Chinese, of course. But gukuy could learn Chinese easily enough. I'm not sure they could ever really learn Arabic. Not to speak it, at least—the aspirates in Arabic are brutal. They could learn to read Arabic, I imagine. But Arabic script's totally different from the Latin alphabet."

Joseph nodded thoughtfully, and left. The next day he instituted classes in basic Arabic (oral and written), taught by six of the youngsters for whom it was their (still-remembered) native tongue. All members of the platoons were strongly encouraged to attend (which meant everyone except Indira and Julius). For officers and sergeants, attendance was mandatory.

Indira was upset, but she made no protest. 'If the man's in charge, he's in charge.'

She knew what Joseph was doing, of course. She didn't think she'd ever mentioned it in the history classes she'd given the children as they grew up. But it hardly mattered. Joseph was extraordinarily intelligent—certainly as intelligent as the officers of the United States Army during World War II who'd thought of using Navajo soldiers to send radio messages in a language which was incomprehensible to the Japanese Empire.

Battle language.

The military training which Joseph and his lieutenants had reinstituted—indeed, taken far beyond the level achieved by Hector Quintero—was soon put to use.

A scouting patrol reported the appearance, on the lower southern slope of the Chiton, of a small party of gukuy slavers. The identity of this party as slavers was confirmed by the Pilgrims of the Way (as the gukuy from the big valley called themselves), when they heard the scouts' report. The gukuy on the slope were bearing large manacle-like devices, identical to ones discovered on the bodies of the earlier group of invaders. The Pilgrims informed Joseph that these devices were employed exclusively by slavers seeking owoc. The devices had no military use whatsoever.

Two platoons—Ludmilla's and Takashi's—set forth immediately to destroy the slaver party, with Joseph in overall command. Joseph chose those two platoons because Takashi's platoon had been experimenting with the use of shields, in addition to the light "sortabamboo" armor with which all the platoons were equipped. Joseph wanted to learn from practical experience whether the experiment would bear fruit. If so, he would arm all three platoons with shields. If not, Takashi's platoon would resume training with spears only.

The slaver party had moved. It took the human warriors almost another day to find them. The slavers had apparently chosen to approach the mountain-top through one of the smaller canyons. (Joseph took note of the problem; thereafter scouting patrols were instructed to continue shadowing the enemy, sending back only one individual to report.)

During the middle of that night, the humans surrounded the slaver camp on both sides of the canyon. Joseph thought that the slavers would not expect an attack directly down the slopes of the canyon, given the gukuy difficulty with steep terrain. (In this regard, he proved to be correct; and took note.) He also thought that by attacking in the middle of the night the humans would completely surprise the slavers. (In this regard, he proved to be wrong; and took note.)

The attack did not surprise the slavers. At least, not in the sense that Joseph had intended. As soon as the first human warrior began moving down the slope, the inhumanly perceptive eyes of the gukuy camp guard spotted her. The guard instantly raised the alarm. By the time the first human reached the base of the canyon (within seconds), all of the gukuy slavers were roused and armed.

Joseph was deeply impressed by the quick reactions of the gukuy; and took note. Later, in the course of discussions with the Pilgrims of the Way, he learned that the slavers' reactions had been unusually quick. The Pilgrims thought that these slavers had been exceptionally edgy—no doubt because they were fearful of Kiktu. He filed the information away; but ordered the platoons to increase their wind sprints and emphasized training in rapid movement over rough terrain.

Although Joseph failed to achieve the surprise he had intended, the net effect was hardly any different. The gukuy simply stared in shock and amazement at the bizarre shapes flickering down the mountain sides toward them, at a speed they could barely comprehend. Six of the ten slavers were butchered before any of them so much as moved. The remaining four did not survive more than fifteen seconds. Only one of them put up any kind of effective resistance at all. She managed to inflict a minor wound on a boy's upper arm before his spear went into her brain.

The boy was one of Ludmilla's warriors. A girl in Takashi's platoon was much more seriously injured. The injury resulted not so much from any skill on the part of her opponent, but from the fact that the large shield she was carrying had caused her to fall off balance when she reached the floor of the canyon. She was unable to move back quickly enough when the last surviving slaver almost accidentally flailed her leg. The slaver died immediately thereafter from three spear thrusts. But the girl's leg was horribly mangled. So horribly, in fact, that she limped for the rest of her life and was unable to remain in the platoon.

(A fact which upset her deeply, until Joseph appointed her to replace Takashi as the head of the fortification project. The girl threw herself into the effort, as a result of which the mountain's fortifications took shape far more quickly than would have happened otherwise. Over the years, Adrian Harabi would become famed as the shrewdest designer of fortifications—and siege tactics—of any being in the known portion of Ishtar. But she would always take her deepest satisfaction from the first fortified wall she constructed, across the big canyon of the Chiton. The wall would ever after be called "Adrian's Wall," to Indira's amusement.)

Despite the casualties, Joseph considered the ambush a great success. An entire party of slavers had been exterminated. But more importantly, he and his warriors had learned much.

The shields were immediately discarded. Nine out of the ten slavers had been slain by members of Ludmilla's platoon—principally because they had arrived at the canyon floor several seconds before any of the shield-laden members of the other platoon. It was obvious that the protection provided by the shields was a poor exchange for lessened mobility.

Over the next two days, Joseph assessed the results of the battle with his platoon lieutenants and Jens Knudsen. In the end, they adopted what would become the central principle of the little human army's military doctrine. Speed and mobility are the heart of victory. All else is subordinate.

It was a simple idea, to them; even obvious. When they told Indira of their conclusion, she said nothing. She could have encouraged them, for she knew they were right. She could have reinforced their conclusion with a thousand illustrations from human history, had she so chosen. Indeed, Joseph waited patiently for long minutes before he walked away, the stiffness in his face the only indication of the deep hurt at her silence. Soon thereafter, his lieutenants followed him, their expressions equally stiff. Only Jens Knudsen remained behind; but he was silent, and would not look at her.

Some part of Indira wept, as she watched the tall figure of the boy she loved walk away from her. A breach had occurred, she knew. It would only widen in the years ahead; and might never be healed.

But she could not speak. Her love of Joseph had, in that moment, been overwhelmed by dread.

Of him. Barely eighteen, the boy was, with no experience or training to guide him. Yet, in one battle—not even a battle, a minor skirmish—he had grasped the secret which had eluded the vast majority of humanity's generals throughout the long and bloody history of the species.

The advent of mechanized warfare had made the secret obvious—but, even then, not in time to prevent the ghastly slaughter of the trenches in World War I. The Nazi blitzkrieg tactics had finally burned the lesson home, a generation later.

Of course, the secret had been known earlier. Much earlier, and by more than one general or people. But never, Indira knew, had the secret been taken closer to heart than by a people whose technology was barely Neolithic. A people who had created the greatest empire in the history of the human race.

As she watched Joseph Adekunle walk away, Indira did not see a tall boy whose ancestors had lived in the rain forest of West Africa. She saw the much shorter and lighter-skinned ghost of a different man, from a different continent.

The maneuvers of that man's armies had been measured in degrees of latitude and longitude, despite the fact that their only vehicles were horses and camels. His soldiers were reputed by his defeated foes to have been an innumerable "horde"; yet, in actual fact, he had been outnumbered in every battle he won. And he won almost all his battles. He had developed principles of discipline combined with lower-level initiative which, to his bewildered and hapless victims, had seemed like magic on the battlefield. He, and his fellow generals, had incorporated the systematic use of artillery into warfare, more than half a millenium before Napoleon. He had, centuries before the invention of electronic communication, discovered the centrality of what a word-besotted later culture would call CCCI— "communication, control, command and intelligence."

His armies, which continued his traditions after his death, shattered every realm which opposed them. China, the most powerful civilization of the epoch, had fallen to them. The cumbersome armies of Europe, moving like snails beneath iron shells, had been slaughtered like lambs. The vastnesses of the Russian forest and people defeated every invader which came against them, throughout history. Except once. Except when they were conquered by armies trained and led by the greatest general the human race ever produced.

Subedei Bat'atur. Born into the Reindeer people, an extremely primitive and obscure tribe related to another obscure and only slightly less primitive tribe, called the Mongols.

Subedei Bat'atur. Commander of the tumens, the 10,000 strong divisions of Genghis Khan's armies.

By his lights, and those of his people, Subedei Bat'atur had been neither cruel nor sadistic. The Mongols simply approached warfare as a practical task, to be carried out as efficiently as possible. The nomads—derided as superstitious savages by the civilized peoples who surrounded them—had, in fact, studied warfare with the clear and unblinkered eyes of a child. They experimented with the tactics and methods of their enemies, and adopted those which they found useful. For all the breathtaking scope of their vision—which was nothing less than the conquest of the entire known world—they were neither haughty nor arrogant. Quite unlike the vastly more cultured Chinese mandarins and the (much less vastly) cultured knights of Europe, who thought there was nothing to be learned from others.

The Mongols taught them otherwise. Or, at least, taught them to fear what they could not understand or learn.

In truth, Indira had always had a certain genuine admiration for the Mongols. The commonly accepted verdict of later history, she thought, was quite unfair. The Europeans who, at the time, had been able to do nothing more than pray for deliverance (which they received, simply because the Mongols, having already conquered half of Europe, decided the other half wasn't worth it) had taken their scholarly revenge centuries later. The Mongols had become synonomous with pure and simple brutality.

How many people knew, Indira wondered, that the Mongols instituted and enforced a policy of religious toleration which was unheard of in the Middle Ages? (She even smiled, then, in that moment of heartbreak, remembering the time that the Great Khan Mongke invited representatives from all the great religions to come to the imperial capital at Qarakorum. They had come—representatives from Islam, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism—and had debated theology before the Great Khan and his court. Gritting their teeth, because the holy men were accustomed to other methods of settling accounts with heretics and nonbelievers. But the debate had not degenerated into violence. Not with the Mongol tumens prepared to enforce the law.)

How many people knew that the Mongols fostered the greatest explosion of trade and commerce that had ever taken place prior to that time between China and the western lands of Islam and Christendom? That they built, in China, twenty-seven observatories—and then invited the world's greatest astronomers to come from Persia to help the Chinese learn to use them? That the Mongols built hospitals and even a medical academy, institutions which would have mystified the Europeans of the time?

Almost no one, thought Indira, beyond a few professional historians. Whatever the glories of their later rule, the methods which the Mongols used to create that rule were all that remained in the common memory of the human race.

An admirable people, in many ways. But they had approached warfare with the clear eyes of a young and unfettered people. They had examined war, and grasped its secret.

Speed above all else. Mobility above all else.

Utter ruthlessness.

Their victims had numbered in the millions.

She watched Joseph walk away, paralyzed between the warm heart of a mother and the cold brain of an historian.

Julius soon noticed the quiet estrangement between Indira and Joseph, and was greatly distressed. In his clumsy way, he attempted to intervene. Indira, at first, denied that there was any such estrangement. Denied it hotly, in fact; and accused Julius of various unsavory psychological traits. She was lying, Julius knew—perhaps as much to herself as to him. He knew she was lying because the accusations had been grotesquely unfair (if not totally groundless). Indira's criticisms of Julius were normally rather mild—but excruciatingly accurate.

He then approached Joseph. At first, the boy also denied that any estrangement existed. But he did not throw up a cloud of anger. So Julius persevered, until he managed to crack, slightly, the shell of hurt which Joseph had erected.

"She is keeping secrets from me, Julius. Secrets I must learn."

Julius was dumbfounded. "Secrets? What secrets?"

Joseph groped for words. "Things she knows. She is wise, Julius. She is the wisest being that exists. Especially in those matters which are at the heart of things."

The boy gestured, in a way which encompassed both the village and the lands beyond.

"How people live, and grow. What roads they must take, and which they must avoid."

His face grew hard.

"And she also knows the secrets of war. And she will not tell me. My mother has abandoned me, when I need her most."

He refused to speak further. And Julius did not press him, for he understood the boy was right.

Yet, he also understood the fear possessing Indira. He did not feel that fear so deeply, himself. Perhaps it was because he was wiser; or, perhaps, more foolish. More likely, he thought, it was because he saw the world through the eyes of a biologist rather than an historian. A paleontologist, to boot—for whom all of life is a grand and glorious testament to the inevitability of extinction; and to the new life for which that extinction makes room.

As a human with a good heart, he regretted the suffering of the past. But he thought it had been a necessary evil, an inescapable part of the progress of humanity. Indira, ironically, had a considerably cooler personality than Julius. And she knew, even better than he, that the anguish of human history had been the inevitable accompaniment of human advancement. But she also knew—far, far better than Julius—just how truly horrible and protracted that anguish had been.

Historical suffering, to Julius—as to most people of the early 22nd century—was a pale shadow, an abstraction. He had heard of things, even read about them. He knew who the Mongols were. And Tamerlane.

But Indira had walked the barren vastnesses of Central Asia, where a great civilization had flourished while Europe was a land of fur-clad savages. Before the Mongols came, and Tamerlane. Julius had heard of those things, and read about them upon occasion. Indira had studied the chronicles, and looked at the ruins.

And the bones.

To the warm-hearted Julius, bones were the stuff of his trade. To the cool and distant Indira, each bone had cried out with agony; and horror.

Common bones. Not buried in great sepulchres. The bones of illiterate peasants, lying where they had been kicked aside by conquerors. The bones of the ocean of humanity, the uncountable multitudes of unknown people whose little lives had been the real stuff of history. Without whose endless toil, suffering and perseverance, nothing else would have been possible.

It could be said that the end result of human history had been worth the cost. It was said often, in fact, in the 22nd century. By professional historians as well as laymen.

Indira did not disagree with that assessment. As an historian—certainly as a woman—she had not the slightest romantic illusions about the realities of human life during the long childhood of the species. That period, tens of thousands of years in duration, when a relative handful of hunters and gatherers had been simply a part of the biological landscape of the planet. Tiny cultures, which had been characterized by a degree of social egalitarianism which would not be recaptured until the last century of human history.

Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years of relative peace and social tranquillity. And, she knew as well, lives of utter ignorance; ending at an age when modern humans were barely out of school.

No, modern civilization was worth the price it had cost. Indira had no doubt of it. Many times, back on Earth, she had closed the book she was reading; and heaved a sigh of relief that she was fortunate enough not to have been born in the past. Any part of that past—prehistorical or civilized. She had been blessed with the rare good fortune not to have been a hunter-gatherer; or a slave; or a peasant toiling in the fields of her lord; or the victim of a bombing raid.

Indira knew she had been blessed beyond belief. She had been born in the 22nd century. At the only time in the history of the human race when life was truly all it could be. A time when the daughter of Bengali peasants and Bolivian tin miners could aspire to anything.

And had. She had aspired to the stars, and reached them.

Until, caught in disaster, a courageous captain had chosen to include an historian among the handful of adults who would survive the catastrophe. Plunged, before she was knew what was happening, back into the Bronze Age.

Years ago, Indira had stopped wondering why Captain Knudsen had included her among the survivors. She knew. He had known that, if they survived, his children would need a guide through the terrors of history.

She tried to explain her dilemma to that Captain's son. For, of all the young leaders of the colony, Jens Knudsen was now the least distant. She tried to explain that history held no "secrets"; that there was no guide through its terrors; that anything she would try would inevitably fail of its purpose—not immediately, but over time, twisted into unforeseen pathways. Stumblingly, she tried to explain that the personal freedom, equality and social justice which 22nd century humanity took for granted was the end product of millenia of struggle and suffering. She tried to explain that, in the end, the precondition for that progress was the vast wealth of modern society, which was itself another end product of the long, tortuous, bitter road of history.

How then could she show them the way forward? In a new Bronze Age, a new Time of Troubles, on a new planet? All she could see in the future was an endless vista of pain. Every way forward led nowhere but down, twisting and winding back into the nightmare coils of ancient history.

Jens had listened patiently to her explanation. When she was done, he had simply shrugged.

"I don't doubt you," he said, "but I don't think you really understand. Joseph is absolutely right, and you are absolutely wrong."

"Why?" she cried.

Jens stood and looked down at her. His face, then, had been as cold as Joseph's.

"Because history is not something that used to happen. It is happening now, and we are in it. And things have to be understood, as best we can, and then things will have to be done, as best we can, and we will have to do them. Alone."

He began to walk away, and then turned back.

"I was too young when my father died to remember him. I know only that he tried to do the impossible—he tried to land a spaceship that was never designed for planetfall. He failed, but at least he tried."

* * *

For months after that episode, Indira was plunged into a deep depression. She dealt with it by monomaniacally immersing herself in the language and culture of the gukuy pilgrims.

During that period, she learned much of their language and culture. Enough to develop a profound admiration for the gukuy of the big valley—coupled with an equally profound fear.

For Indira also, it was one thing to know a truth in the abstract. Another to grasp it in all its concrete permutations.

It was, indeed, a Time of Troubles.

She had intended, as her first act, to convene a meeting of the council, where she would explain the truth to the leaders of the human colony. But when Adrian Harabi approached her, and hesitantly asked for advice concerning the fortified wall she was building, Indira changed her plans.

First things first. She was ruefully amused to see how easily even she could make that decision. It was indeed true, as Samuel Johnson had once said, that the prospect of being hanged concentrates the mind wonderfully.

So she accompanied Adrian to the proposed site of the wall. Soon they were joined by Joseph and his lieutenants.

Joseph was stiff and distant, at first. But as Indira began explaining the historical experience of the human race—the hard-learned techniques of fortifications and siege tactics—she could see the old warmth returning to his face.

She was both happy and sad to see it. Happy, for she loved the boy, and was gladdened to see his love for her returning. And sad, for the means of its return was his eager apprenticeship in the science of slaughter.

When the meeting convened the next day, Indira began by saying that the language of the pilgrims should no longer be referred to as "gukuy." It would be like calling the languages of Earth "human." There were five languages represented among the gukuy on the mountain, she explained to the council.

"The main language is Anshaku. That's the dominant language of the Ansha Prevalate, the great empire to the south."

"How far south?" demanded Joseph immediately.

Indira understood his concern.

"I don't think we need to worry about the Anshac, Joseph. At least, not in the immediate future. Most of the gukuy in the big valley—there are about sixty of them, by the way, and they call themselves the Pilgrims of the Way—are from Ansha. From the helot class, mostly, although there are several former members of the lesser warrior clans—"

She paused, observing their confusion.

"Perhaps I'd better fill you in on the general picture."

A sharp look at Julius.

"If the crotchety member of the council will refrain from sarcastic remarks on the subject of professorialism."

"We are all ears, Indira," responded Anna Cheng immediately.

"I will silence the old crank, if necessary," added Ludmilla.

Indira repressed a smile, seeing the look of outrage on Julius' face.

"The social structure of the gukuy empires—let's call them that, for the moment—has basic parallels to the civilized societies of Earth's Bronze Age. Unstable empires. Independent principalities and city-states. Constant warfare and conquest. Dynastic revolts—except that the gukuy don't really have dynasties.

"That's the biggest difference between the gukuy empires and any human parallel. The reproductive methods of the gukuy don't allow for the development of dynasties—at least, not in the sense that humans use the term. The King begat a King, who begat a King, and so forth."

"They'd be queens," interjected Anna.

Indira shook her head. "No, not even that. I made the same mistake, at first. I assumed that gukuy society would be matriarchal, in the sense that human societies became patriarchal after the Neolothic revolution. But the differences between gukuy and humans run deeper than that. True, the females are dominant. In that sense, you could describe gukuy society as 'matriarchal.' But the gukuy females are not mothers. The gukuy don't have a simple two-sex system. Each sex is further divided. The big majority of gukuy are sterile females. They do most of the work, and the fighting. And they dominate gukuy society on every level.

"You have to understand what this complex sexual relationship means. The sterile females dominate gukuy society, but they are not the ones who produce offspring. So the simple hereditary transmission of power and wealth which characterized the patriarchal societies of Earth's early civilizations can't apply here. There's still a transmission of power and wealth. There has to be, for any ruling class to maintain its cohesiveness. But it works indirectly, through a sort of clan system. All gukuy in a given clan are born to a certain generation of mothers. No one knows which particular mother, because the gukuy—like the owoc—are largely indifferent to new-born spawn. Most of the spawn die off quickly, from disease and—"

She couldn't stop herself from grimacing.

"—from predating on each other. The ones who survive are adopted into the clan. The clans trace their lineage through a succession of generations of mothers, even though the offspring are not the direct descendants of the sterile females who actually rule.

"The end result is a social structure which has no close parallel on Earth. Within each clan, among the members of a particular generation, the relations between the sterile females seem to be relatively egalitarian. Even rather democratic, apparently, in the barbarian tribes. Power and prestige seem largely to accrue through personal achievement.

"But between the clans, and, to a lesser extent, between the generations, relations are based on strict hierarchic domination. That's why the proper term for these 'empires' is prevalates. Ansha, for instance, is that realm in which the Ansha clan prevails over all others."

"Where do the mothers fit into all this?" asked Maria De Los Reyes.

Indira shrugged. "They are highly venerated—especially the oldest mothers, who are called the Paramount Mothers. But they do not seem to have much in the way of real power. I'm reminded of the old Japanese imperial system. The Emperor was a revered figure—a god-like figure, actually. But his duties were essentially religious. Real power lay in the hands of the shoguns, the warlords.

"At least, that's the way it seems to be in the southern societies. But I want to emphasize a point here. Do not assume that all gukuy societies are the same. Among the barbarian tribes, the mothers seem to possess a great deal of actual authority—despite the fact that they are not venerated. In fact, the main tribe even has a class of young mothers whom they call 'battlemothers.' These battlemothers participate in warfare alongside the warriors until they become old enough to start producing offspring. The civilized societies seem to view this custom with disgust."

She took a deep breath.

"And there is a new and powerful tribe rising in the far west, called the Utuku, in which the pattern of sterile female warrior dominance is carried to the extreme. All eumales are slaughtered; as well as all truemales beyond the mininum necessary. The mothers are not venerated, they are simply slaves. Breeders. The Utuku even cripple them at birth."

Indira shuddered slightly. "And they eat the owoc."

A gasp swept the hut.

"It's true. Nor are the Utuku simply cannibalistic toward their owoc cousins. They also practice cannibalism on other gukuy."

"Are all of the barbarian tribes so cruel?" asked Ludmilla.

Indira shook her head. "No. Quite the opposite, in fact. There are a number of tribes living to the west. Pastoralists. There is apparently a type of animal on Ishtar which we've never seen. The gukuy call them 'gana,' and they seem to be the equivalent of cattle. Or sheep."

Julius leaned forward, his ears practically standing out.

"The dominant tribe is called the Kiktu. Barbarians, of course. But the Kiktu religion venerates the owoc. Some sort of animistic totemism, I imagine. The end result is that the Kiktu not only do not mistreat the owoc themselves, but they will not allow others to do so. There has been at least one tribe massacred by the Kiktu for mistreating owoc, according to the Pilgrims. And they tell me that the reason the owoc on the Chiton are so rarely molested is because the region south of the Chiton is Kiktu territory. The Pilgrims themselves fled to the Chiton partly because they thought they would be safe here from persecution. But they had to obtain permission from the Kiktu to pass through their territory. Slavers never come here, according to the Pilgrims, for fear of the Kiktu."

"Then why did that slaving party come here not so long ago?" asked Julius.

Indira's face grew grim. "It seems the Kiktu have been preoccupied, of late. They have been marshalling an alliance of other tribes for war against the invaders."

"What invaders?"

She looked to the southwest, as if she could see through the walls of the hut and the mountainside beyond.

"The Utuku. The cannibals are on the march."

Interlude: Nukurren

During the two days after regaining consciousness, Nukurren spent much of her time, while awake, observing the demons, and discussing her observations with Dhowifa. She was not awake for long, however, and less and less as time passed. Disease had seized her in its grip, and she felt herself growing weaker.

The white demon Dzhenushkunutushen was frequently to be found walking alongside Nukurren's litter. On occasion, he was joined by the female demon Ludumilaroshokavashiki—or Ludumila, as the male demon called her. Nukurren attempted to ask them about themselves, but the demons fended off all such inquiries. On the third day, to Nukurren's surprise, they began asking her about her own life.

At first, Nukurren tried to satisfy them with a few short sentences. But the demons insisted on a full account.

So, in the end, Nukurren obliged.

She had been born a helot in the Ansha Prevalate, clanless and outcast. Her earliest memories consisted of nothing but drudgery in the fields of the high clans, endless days waking at dawn and toiling till dusk. Even the simple pleasures of friendship with other young helots had been denied her, for she was ugly, and overlarge, and generally silent.

One day, driven beyond endurance by a particularly brutal overseer, she had turned upon her. The overseer had beaten Nukurren savagely with her flail, but Nukurren was already—though not yet fully grown—of unusual size and strength. She had wrested the flail from the overseer and had begun repaying her tormentor in kind, before she was overcome by many overseers drawn to the fracas.

Nukurren herself had almost been beaten to death, then. She still bore on her mantle the scars of that flailing. She pointed them out to the demons.

Ludumila ran her hand down the side of Nukurren's mantle. It was the first time a demon had touched her since the demonlord withdrew the demon weapons. Nukurren found the touch gentle and tender.

"There are so many scars here," said Ludumila softly.

"And I thought I was bad," said Dzhenushkunutushen. The demon grinned and took off his armor. His upper torso now exposed, Nukurren could see that the milky white flesh bore several ugly, puckered marks.

"That was my first wound," said Dzhenushkunutushen, pointing to an especially large scar on the upper portion of his left arm. "I got it in my first battle."

"How?" asked Nukurren. Dzhenushkunutushen began to explain, but was interrupted by Ludumila.

"Being stupid! Using his muscles instead of his brain."

Dzhenushkunutushen grinned again, and made the motion with his upper torso which Nukurren had learn to interpret as the gesture of bemused uncertainty. "I'm prone to that," admitted the demon.

"Yes, you are!" said the female demon forcefully. To Nukurren, her posture seemed stiff and rigid. After a moment, however, her posture relaxed. She extended a hand and took the hand of Dzhenushkunutushen.

"You have to stop doing that, Jens," she said softly. Nukurren observed as the two demons stick-pedded alongside her litter, hand holding hand. Had they been gukuy, she realized, their mantles would be glowing green, and it seemed to her the strangest thing she had ever encountered in a loveless world, that demons could love.

Some time later, Dzhenushkunutushen looked back at Nukurren.

"What happened then?" he asked.

"I was condemned to slavery, and sold to a slavemaster. I spent the next many eightyweeks chained and yoked, pulling a sledge filled with trade goods to the market in Shakutulubac. I finished my growth during that time, and by the end I was very strong."

Dhowifa interrupted. "Nukurren is the strongest gukuy who ever lived," said the truemale proudly. "Except for a mother, of course." Nukurren noticed that her lover's Kiktu had improved considerably over the past few days, even though Dhowifa spoke rarely in the presence of the demons.

"Is that true?" asked Dzhenushkunutushen.

Nukurren made the gesture of bemused uncertainty.

"Who can know? I am the strongest gukuy that I have ever met."

"She is also the fastest gukuy who ever lived," added Dhowifa. The little truemale's mantle was rippling with that shade of green which signified pride and admiration.

"Is that true?" asked Dzhenushkunutushen.

Again, Nukurren made the gesture of bemused uncertainty. "Who can know? I am the fastest gukuy that I have ever met. Stop bragging, Dhowifa."

"Why?" demanded her lover. "It's all true! And that's all that saved you from the yoke."

"What happened?" asked Ludumilla.

"One day, in the market, I was seen by a captain of the Anshac legions. She was seeking recruits for a new legion, and she bought me from my owner. I was sent to the training camps to become a warrior."

"Were you freed?" asked Dzhenushkunutushen.

"Not then."

"Did you try to escape?"

"No. To what purpose? Where would I go?" Nukurren made the gesture of resignation. "I was not unhappy at the change. The work was much easier. It is true that I met with no friendship in the ranks of the legion. I was a slave, and despised even by the lowclan recruits. But I did not care."

Nukurren fell silent, mastering the lie. She had cared, and cared deeply, and had spent many nights in the camps filled with aching loneliness. But her shoroku, as always, allowed no trace of her emotions to show.

"You are lying," said the demon Dzhenushkunutushen.

Nukurren stared at him, wondering how a monster could see into her soul. Then she made the gesture of agreement.

"Yes, I am lying. I did care. But I became accustomed to it. Soon enough the other recruits ceased taunting me. After I was attacked by several of them, and I killed two."

"Were you punished?"

"For that?" Nukurren made the gesture of dismissal; yellow contempt rippled briefly in her mantle. "To the contrary. I was praised by my captain and promoted. And then I devoted myself to becoming a mistress of warfare. I was good at it."

Nukurren fell silent. She refused to speak again that day, for reasons which were not clear, even to her. But on the next day, when Dzhenushkunutushen pressed her, she resumed her story.

"There is not much to tell about the eightyweeks which followed. There were many campaigns, and many battles. I acquired many more scars, but I no longer remember which they were. I was given my freedom after one battle where I fought well, and promoted again. Had I been highclan, or midclan, or even lowclan, I would have been promoted very often. Even though I am ugly, and look stupid, I am not. I always observed things carefully, and learned from them."

"How did you meet Dhowifa?"

"After a time, I was promoted again, and assigned to the Motherguard."

"What is the Motherguard?"

"That is the elite legion which guards the Divine Shell."

"Nukurren was the only clanless helot ever assigned to the Motherguard," interjected Dhowifa. "Ever. She was famous."

"Stop bragging, Dhowifa."

"It's true! I remember the day you arrived. My bondbrothers and I snuck out of the Divine Shell to watch."

"And what did you think?" asked Ludumila.

Dhowifa hesitated. Nukurren made the gesture of amusement. "Don't lie, Dhowifa!"

The little truemale's mantle shimmered with a complex web of colors, which suddenly dissolved into green. "I thought Nukurren was the ugliest gukuy I had ever seen. I was terrified of her. Everyone was, I think."

"Not Ushulubang," said Nukurren.

"No," agreed Dhowifa. "Not her."

The demons stopped abruptly, and stared at the two gukuy riding on the litter. Ludumila hooted a sudden command, and the owoc carrying the litter stopped also.

"You know Ushulubang?" demanded Dzhenushkunutushen.

Ochre uncertainty and confusion rippled across Dhowifa's mantle. As always, Nukurren's remained gray.

"Yes," replied Dhowifa.

Instantly, Ludumila began shouting in the harsh demon language. The entire caravan came to a halt, and within moments the black demon came racing back to the litter. Watching him approach, Nukurren was struck again by the astonishing speed of which the demons were capable.

Once he arrived, a rapid exchange took place in the demons' language. The black demon turned and stared at the gukuy on the litter.

"Explain how you know Ushulubang," he commanded. "Are you Pilgrims of the Way?"

"No, I am not," replied Nukurren immediately. Dhowifa's response was slower in coming. The ochre hues in his mantle were now interlaced with pink apprehension.

"I am not either," said Dhowifa hesitantly. "Not really. But I talked with Ushulubang whenever I could, and she trained me in dukuna."

"What is 'dukuna'?" asked the demon Dzhenushkunutushen. But before Dhowifa could answer, the black demon interrupted with a sudden burst of incomprehensible language. Nukurren could not understand it, but she knew that it was a different language than the one which the demons had used heretofore. Even harsher, and full of sounds which no gukuy could ever hope to reproduce.

Within a short time, all the demons in the caravan were gathered about the litter. After a lengthy exchange in the new language, the black demon began hooting. At once the caravan resumed its progress, but now at a more rapid pace than before. Watching the owoc who were carrying her litter, Nukurren realized that the slow and ungainly creatures were moving at the fastest pace possible for them on such difficult terrain.

"Why are you interested in Ushulubang?" she asked the demon Dzhenushkunutushen.

"Because she is—"

He was interrupted by a few short and sharp words uttered in the new demon language by Ludumila. Dzhenushkunutushen fell silent. After a moment, he said curtly: "I am not to speak of it," and moved away.

Nukurren examined the female demon. She was able, from the experience of the past few days, to recognize some of the variations in the demons' features which distinguished one from the other. By now, the difference in body shape between female and male demons was clear to Nukurren. The demons also varied in size and color.

But there were other differences, as well, which were much less obvious. As with gukuy, these differences were mainly in the face. Gukuy recognized each other primarily from the different configurations of the arm-clusters and the subtle variations in the eye-orbits. Nukurren had already learned to distinguish one demon from another with regard to their eye-orbits. Despite their tiny size, demon eyes were much like gukuy eyes; and the orbits were generically similar, except that the demon orbits seemed made of some hard material beneath the flesh.

Some of the demons—about half of them, Nukurren estimated—had deep orbits. The orbits of the remainder were shallower, it seemed. The female demon Ludumila was one of these. Looking at her, Nukurren now realized that the flatness of her eye-orbits was due to an extension of the flesh coming from that strange feature in the middle of her face—the beak-above-the-true-beak.

"What is that called?" she suddenly asked Ludumila. "That feature which protrudes above your beak?"

It required a bit more of an explanation before the demon understood the question.

"A . . . nosu?" asked Nukurren. Ludumila made the peculiar bobbing motion of her head which Nukurren had come to recognize as the demon gesture of affirmation.

That was the key to discerning one human from another, Nukurren now realized. Ludumila's nosu was shallow and flat, spreading widely across her face. The black demon's nosu did likewise. Whereas—

"Dzhenushkunutushen's nosu is bigger than yours, and it protrudes much farther forward."

Ludumila began barking in the demon manner of laughter.

"We call it 'The Beak,' " she said, and barked again. Nukurren tried to understand the humor involved, but could make no sense of it. After a time, she felt herself growing weaker again and was less and less able to observe anything coherently. She felt very hot and feverish, and her mind began to wander. Disease now held her tightly in its arms.

At some point in the vague meanderings of her thoughts, she recalled Dhowifa's earlier remark. Half-unconsciously, her arms curled in the gesture of amusement.

I remember the first time I saw Dhowifa. I was not terrified of him. But I was apprehensive, and tense. He was very high-clan. Ansha royalty.

She had been standing guard at night, alone, by one of the side entrances to the Divine Shell. It was a shabby entrance, used only by servants. The stones of the arch were crudely cut and undecorated. The area was dim, lit only by a small, poorly-fed glowmoss colony.

It had been Nukurren's usual sentry duty. Not for her the prestigious post of standing guard by the main entrances, in daylight. Not for one as ugly as she, and helot-born.

She had heard a slight sound behind her, and turned. A small shape stood in the entryway. As soon as she had turned, the shape—a young truemale, she saw—scuttled back into the gloom of the hallway beyond.

"Who are you?" she had demanded, but her voice had been soft and, Dhowifa later told her, not unpleasant. After a moment, the truemale had come forward.

"I am Dhowifa," he said. Nukurren recognized him then, one of the Paramount Mother's recently wed husbands. It was very odd for such a one to be in that place, in the middle of the night, but Nukurren had not questioned him. After a moment, she had invited him to come forward, and had spent some time thereafter in casual conversation with Dhowifa.

On that night, the truemale had not explained his presence there. But he would reappear again, on many nights in the eightweeks that followed. After a time, as a strange friendship formed between the royal truemale and the lowborn warrior, Nukurren would learn of the cruelties of the Paramount Mother and the misery of Dhowifa.

By what manner, and by what route, the odd friendship turned into passion, Nukurren could never precisely recall. She could only remember that one night, with the rain thundering down, when the love and ecstasy she had only been able to dream of had finally entered her life. That it was a forbidden love and an unnatural ecstasy had mattered to her not at all.

Many nights of secret and illicit passion had followed, until the night when Dhowifa had crawled to her, only half-conscious, his little body a pulpy mass of bruises from the beating administered by the Paramount Mother. It seemed his love-making had displeased her.

They had left Shakutulubac that same night. Dhowifa had hesitated, in despair of leaving his malebond. But, in the end, he had not been able to bear the thought of returning to the Paramount Mother.

A pursuit had been organized, of course. But Nukurren had gained them a considerable lead by the simple expedient of slaughtering all the guards at the northwest gate of the city. Eight butchered guards could only be the work of a large raiding party from an enemy realm, or a massive conspiracy, or . . . Not for days did the Tympani realize the truth, and by then it was too late.

Remembering now, her mind a blur of fevered chaos, Nukurren finally fell asleep. But even in her sleep, her arms remained curled in the gesture of amusement. The captain of the guard at the northwest gate had often taunted Nukurren for her ugliness and her base birth. She had taunted Nukurren again that night, when Nukurren appeared out of the darkness, and the jibes had been echoed by her guards; until it occurred to them to demand an explanation for Nukurren's presence. Her drawn flail and unharnessed fork had provided the answer, though it was not to their liking.

The harsh sound of demon voices awakened Nukurren. Through her one remaining eye, she saw that night was falling. She was very, very weak; her whole body felt aflame. Still, she managed to look about.

They were high up on the Chiton, now, in a steep-walled canyon. Ahead of them loomed a large, partially-finished wall. A fortification, Nukurren realized, though it was oddly designed, with unusual projections and overhangs.

Those would be good for hurling stingers, she thought. Any gukuy below, trying to force a way through, would find nowhere to hide.

Atop the wall stood several demons, both female and male. A large door in the middle of the fortification, made of many interwoven and lacquered strips of yopo, suddenly swung aside. The litter was carried through the entrance, and the door was swung shut behind them.

That night the caravan rested within the shelter of the wall across the canyon. Fascinated by the demon methods of fortification, Nukurren tried to observe as much as she could. But it was soon dark, and, in any event, she found it difficult to concentrate.

The next morning, she was awakened again by the harsh sound of demons speaking. She recognized the voices by their distinct tones and timber: Dzhenushkunutushen and the black demon. And, occasionally, the female demon Ludumila. The voices were very loud, especially that of Dzhenushkunutushen.

"Are you awake?" whispered Dhowifa. "I'm frightened. I think they're arguing."

Nukurren opened her eye—with some reluctance, for the effort caused much pain to her maimed eye. Before her she saw a fascinating tableau.

The two male demons, one of them as white as the other was black, were standing very close together, face to face. Despite their bizarre appearance, it was instantly obvious to Nukurren that Dhowifa was correct. They were arguing, and, she estimated, arguing very fiercely. The female demon Ludumila, Nukurren thought, was attempting to arbitrate—or, perhaps, simply to keep the argument from erupting too far.

Suddenly, the demon Dzhenushkunutushen gestured toward the litter, and Nukurren realized that they were arguing about her.

"The black one wants to kill us," whispered Dhowifa.

Nukurren made the gesture of tentative doubt. "I don't think so. He is implacable, that is true—"

"His color doesn't mean anything, I keep telling you," interrupted Dhowifa crossly.

"It does not matter. He would be implacable, whatever his color. It is in the nature of the monster. But—I do not believe he is cruel. And there is no reason, now, to kill us. They could have done it right after the battle, or at any time since."

"Then why—" Nukurren silenced her lover with a hiss. She was too engrossed by the interaction among the demons to be distracted.

Suddenly, she understood. The black demon, she had known for days, was the commander. The female demon Ludumila, she suspected, was his lieutenant. But she had been unable, before now, to determine the exact position of the white demon Dzhenushkunutushen.

Yet now, analyzing the exchange between the strangest creatures she had ever encountered, she knew Dzhenushkunutushen's position. And knew him, for all that he was a monster.

He was her. Just so, in times past, had Nukurren confronted an officer in the legions, when an issue had been of such importance as to require that a leader of warriors make a stand. Officers were to be respected and obeyed, of course. But, on occasion, it was also necessary to bring them to heel.

The demon shouting became very loud.

"They're going to start fighting!" hissed Dhowifa with alarm. His mantle rippled pink and red.

"No," said Nukurren firmly. "The black demon is a good officer, I think. And so he will yield."

The black demon made a sudden spreading motion with his limbs. He barked a sharp sound. Dzhenushkunutushen fell silent, though he remained stiff and erect. Very tense, Nukurren thought, interpreting the demon's posture as best she could.

Very tense, but, I think, satisfied.

A moment later, the black demon began barking commands and pointing to various of the demons gathered about. Almost at once, the litter was picked up by four of the demons, including the black demon and Dzhenushkunutushen. Nukurren and Dhowifa suddenly found themselves being carried up the trail at a much more rapid pace than ever before. Soon the fortification was left far behind.

Nukurren was deeply impressed by the rapidity of their travel. She realized that the black demon had selected the four largest demons to carry the litter. All of them, she noted, were male. Still, Nukurren thought that she outweighed any one of the demons, even Dzhenushkunutushen, by a large margin. It would have been difficult for four large gukuy to carry her at a normal walking pace, much less at the astonishing speed with which the demons were climbing the trail.

Two other demons accompanied the party, stick-pedding alongside. One of them was Ludumila. She was the only female demon still present. Ludumila was large for a female demon, taller than most of the males, if not as tall as Dzhenushkunutushen and the black one. But she was less massive, especially in her upper mantle. The female demons, Nukurren concluded, were capable of the same speed and agility as the males, but lacked the sheer strength.

Nukurren was surprised, therefore, some time later, when Ludumila replaced one of the male demons carrying the litter. The transfer took place with only a moment's interruption, and the litter was soon moving along as rapidly as before. As time went on, the demons carrying Nukurren and Dhowifa were regularly replaced by one of those who had been able to rest for a time, unburdened by the litter.

These are the most terrifying warriors who ever walked the Meat of the Clam, she thought. If they are numerous, no army could stand against them. Not even the legions of mighty Ansha.

Soon they reached a crest and entered a plateau. The demons began traveling faster still. Shortly thereafter, Nukurren lapsed into semi-consciousness. Dimly, vaguely, she heard Dhowifa conversing with the demon Ludumila.

Nukurren must rest! She is sick!

Soon. Soon.

She will die if she does not rest!

She will die if we do not get her to (strange human word—a name, Nukurren thought). Soon! That is why we left the owoc behind and are carrying you ourselves. Dzhenush (the shortened name for Dzhenushkunutushen, Nukurren knew; odd; few gukuy used diminutive names) insisted. Short barks—laughter. I thought (again, a strange word—the name of the black demon, perhaps) was going to burst a (unknown phrase). It's not often someone gets in his face like that! Short barks. It's good for him.

A short silence. Then: That's Dzhenush. Even in her fevered state, Nukurren could not miss the affection in the bizarre demon voice.

Such strange creatures, with strange customs. Only among the barbarian tribes do officers mate with common warriors. But I do not think these are barbarians. I do not know what they are. Can demons be civilized? I hope not. No Kiktu barbarian was ever as cruel as Ansha.

But her ability to reason was vanishing, splintered by pain. One last, fleeting thought: The demon Dzhenushkunutushen is a warrior, but not, I think, a common one. Nor was I. Nor was I.

Everything faded into an incomprehensible blur. All that remained was the sense of Dhowifa's little body nestled in her mantle, blessedly cool against the scorching heat of the fever; and the tender stroking of his arms.