"Compassion," repeated Drawtood. "Have I no alternatives?"

"You tell me."

"I could take my own life."

"I would be honor-bound to try to stop you."

"If you knew what I was doing."

"Yes. If I knew."

"But if I were to kill myself quietly, while we were talking…"

"I might not realize it until too late."

"How does one kill oneself quietly?"

"Poison might be effective."

"I have none."

"No, of course not. On another matter, there are some documents in my carrying case that you might find interesting. I’ve left it by the doorway. Can you see it?"

"It’s very dark."

"Tell me about it," said Afsan, but there was no clicking of teeth.

"Yes," said Drawtood, "I see it."

"Please go get them."

Ticking claws. "Which compartment are they in?"

"The main one. Oh, but be careful. There’s a vial of haltardark liquid in there, too. It’s a cleaning compound for far-seer lenses. Your mother asked me to get some for her; it’s quite deadly. You’d do well not to touch it."

A long silence. "Yes," said Drawtood. Silence again. Then: "The vial has a symbol on it. It’s hard to see in this light … a drop shape, and the outline of some animal lying on its side."

"That’s the chemist’s symbol for poison."

"I didn’t know that."

"You do now."

"Afsan … ?"

"Yes."

"I’m sorry."

"Yes."

And that was followed by the longest silence of all.

*43*

Musings of The Watcher

I watched it happen, helpless to intervene.

Everything had gone flawlessly so far. The final Jijaki ark, the Ditikali-ot, had traversed the light-years to the target without incident. It had been timed to arrive a few Crucible centuries after the previous arks, bringing fauna specimens that would do better after the rest of the animals had been established.

Sliding down the star’s gravity well had gone as planned, and a double-loop maneuver braked the craft first by swinging around the gas-giant fifth planet, then around the target moon. The Ditikali-ot settled into a stationary orbit around the moon, holding position directly above the great watery rift that separated the two landmasses, landmasses that would eventually jam together into one as convective heat drove their respective plates closer and closer.

The Ditikali-ot consisted of a habitat module made of super-strong blue kiit held by a metal superstructure between the funnel-shaped ramscoop at one end and the fusion exhaust cone at the other. Restraining clips retracted, allowing the habitat to separate from the stardrive portion of the ship. The precious cargo from the Crucible, and the entire Jijaki crew — the last survivors of that race, now that war and old age had taken all their kin — began to enter the atmosphere.

Everything went fine until the explosion. The habitat careened wildly, spinning around its long axis, and plummeted to the ground.

One Jijaki did survive the crash, although she was badly injured. She made it out onto the ground, along with her handheld computer, an expensive model also made of kiit. The area was too moist for fossilization — her space suit, then her body, rotted away, but the indestructible artifact eventually came to be buried, as did the massive ark.

The habitat module had crashed not far inland on the western shore of the eastern landmass. If it had hit just a little farther to the west, in the water between the two continents, it would have eventually been subducted as the tectonic plates drove together. But where it did fall, it would probably remain for a very long time.

I had hoped to leave no trace of my handiwork, but the Ditikali-ot was indeed the final ark. I had no way to remove its wreckage, and every last Jijaki was now dead, so none of them could be summoned to clean up the mess.

Fra’toolar

Toroca looked up at the night sky.

He reflected that he was a child of the new universe, conceived by Afsan and Novato in the very moment at which the two of them, pooling what they had learned through her far-seers, came realize the shape of space, the structure of the cosmos.

Before then, the Face of God was an object of veneration, not merely a planet, and the other planets were just points in the night, not distinct spheres. Before then, the moons were something unto themselves, instead of more examples of what the world was — globes spinning around the Face of God. Before then, the rings around the planets Kevpel and Bripel were unknown. Before then, the sky river was thought to be the reflection of the great body of water that Land was said to float upon, instead of, as Toroca himself had seen through lenses, countless stars.

Before then, too, the world was simpler, for it was Afsan’s work, and the work of his master, the great Tak-Saleed, that had demonstrated that the world was doomed, its orbit about the Face too close to be stable.

But now the universe was even more complex, for other beings apparently lived on one of the objects in the night sky, strangers who had visited this world once, long ago, leaving behind one of their ships and, apparently, their cargo of plants and animals.

Did the strangers live on one of the other moons of the Face of God? On Swift Runner? Slowpoke? The Guardian? The thirteen other moons had been observed now for kilodays through the finest far-seers from the tops of the tallest mountains. None seemed to have liquid seas or fertile land.

Could the strangers have come from another planet? It seemed clear that the closer one moved toward the sun, that brilliant white point that lit the world, the hotter it would be. Likewise, moving farther away would plunge a world into cold, more bitter than even that of the ice caps. No, the inner planets, Carpel. Patpel, and Davpel, were surely barren and scorched, and distant Gefpel, seeming almost unmoving in the night sky, must be chilled beyond all imagining. Perhaps Kevpel, next closest to the sun from here. Or perhaps Bripel, one planet farther out. Or perhaps one of their moons, those tiny points that could be seen to accompany them through a far-seer.

Or perhaps from somewhere else, somewhere much farther away.

The sun was tiny but hot, showing a barely perceptible disk.

There were those who said the other stars were also suns, just farther away.

And if those suns had planets…

And if those planets had moons…

The strangers could have come from any one of them.

From one with a longer day…

A longer day! Quintaglios slept every other day because they’d originated on a world with a day perhaps twice as long, and, despite all the time that they’d been on this world, they’d somehow been unable to acclimatize to sleeping more frequently…

And yet … the once-a-year mating cycle had adapted to the rhythms of this world, apparently.

They’d been here long enough to become attuned to this world in most ways, but still, deep within their beings, there were ties to whatever crucible they’d originally formed in.

Toroca stared up at the firmament, at the wide awe and wonder of the night.

One of those points of light, perhaps, was that crucible. He wondered if they would ever discover which one.